Chapter Text
Moai
Marie's head hurts. Marie's arms hurt. Marie's legs... okay, let's just get it over with: Marie's whole body hurts. Someone needs to put warning labels on the Splatlandian Desert: prone to collapse without warning. At least it seems like she's unburied.
She keeps her eyes closed while she focuses on wiggling her fingers and toes and checking for any parts that hurt too much to move, and does a test transform from kid to squid and back. She's kinda cold—guess night fell while she was out, not good. She opens her eyes.
Snow.
Marie sits up, shaking it from her arms. She's on a ledge, a small fence separating her from the sea—the sea? Definitely some sort of lake, not enough waves, and... honestly, as she peers over, that looks more like ink than water, though not a shade she's ever used. There's only one section of fence, the rest of it probably crumbled long ago.
She clambers to her feet. Everything's sore, but as she brushes snow from her long jacket, she can't help but feel a little smug. Good at keeping her from overheating in the sun AND good at keeping her warm in the snow, so there Callie, she didn't overdress!
She taps at her headset. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
Static. She takes it off and checks it. Not broken. No one's in range right now, or maybe they haven't woken up yet. She should look around. Does she have her... yep, hero shot still tucked into the belt under her jacket, her umbrella—with the charger she concealed in the handle after the scuffle with a dozen cohocks and an octoweapon last year, she learned her lesson—on the ground by where she was lying. She picks it up, swings it over her shoulder.
There's a pile of something pinkish-purple and swirly that looks like nope, which she avoids, but there's a board propped against the cliff. She swims up it to get her bearings.
All right, more weirdly swirly gunk ahead, and in patches to her left, and to her right... Marie drops her umbrella.
Standing with its face towards the water, back mostly turned towards her, worn away by wind and who-knows-what in the back until only the basic guidelines of the structure remains, is unmistakably a Moai. Marie should know. She has a replica, perfect in every detail except that it's only as tall as her hand, in a display case in her human room at home.
And it's HUGE.
Marie leaves her umbrella on the ground, her hero shot holstered, as she walks closer. The closer she gets, the slower she moves, until she stops, close enough to touch, and looks up. Five or six times as tall as she is, her head barely clears its base. She sucks in a deep, gasping breath and holds out a hand. Hesitates. Presses it against the
Not stone. Though she could tell already, from the way it wore away; it looks like it was printed, though no printer is big enough to print something like this. The plastic gives under her hand, and she snatches it back; it crumbles away where she touched, worn with age.
Marie holds her hand up to her face. Tiny bits of plastic, dust-like, cling to her fingers.
Marie takes another deep, gasping breath. Holy squit. Holy squit. She knew, she remembered, she was told the Octarian Domes were built in the remnants of human bunkers, the places humans made to try and survive the disasters they'd made on the surface, the disasters that ended them all and led to Inklings evolving. Gramps told her, told her and Callie both, when they started as agents.
She's wished for years the Octarians could have lived somewhere else for the last hundred years. How many human relics have they destroyed, through their lives? She tries not to, but sometimes, late at night, she thinks about the amazing things that may have been lost and cries. And she used to dream about finding an untouched dome someday, and talked online with her human friends about what it would be like to find an actual untouched Human Refuge, and slipped in a few childish dreams of finding one where they'd survived, after all.
But they lived here long enough to create art again.
Marie always thought humans were her size. Maybe a little smaller. The art Inklings make is often smaller than them, but she's seen photos of master carvers, using ladders so they're at the right height to blast precision-shots of ink just so at the marble or stone to create their works. But something like this?
Marie feels small.
Her headset crackles. She puts one hand to it on instinct. “This is Agent Two.” It's not. Nothing about these feelings are Agent anything.
Is this what the Octarian Domes looked like before the Octarians lived in them? Scavenged the broken tech for working parts to cobble together their homes and make power egg conduits?
“Captain here. How'd you make out in that fall?”
That's Cap-Cap, all business even when surrounded by an archaeological marvel. Humans were here, and Marie can feel their presence. “Little sore, but I'll live. Heard from Agent One yet?”
“We landed together; she's a little banged up. Not sure how you got separated, but that was a nasty fall.”
Marie nods, but she doesn't take her eyes off the Moai. Then she remembers Cap-Cap can't see her nod. “Yeah, it was.”
“I probably don't need to tell you this, unlike some agents, but don't touch that Fuzzy Ooze. Info about it was in some of the paperwork left by our senior advisor; it's not pleasant, and we won't be able to treat any major infections down here.”
Infections?
That's enough to get Marie to look away, at the swirling piles of ink around her. “Uh... noted.”
“Superjump to me when you feel ready. We're consolidating our supplies, they got a bit scattered, but there's enough space for a landing.”
Jump to them, huh...
Marie lets out a breath and looks back at the Moai. It looks back at her, ancient and majestic.
First, agent business. Gramps is around here somewhere, maybe fallen down the same hole, and they've gotta deal with that Fuzzy Ooze. But after?
After, Marie Cuttlefish, AKA Wendy HairLuvr, is going to go over every inch of this place before telling the archaeologists and historians about it.