Chapter Text

It was too much.

Pearl stomped her way down the familiar mountain path, clinging desperately to the good memories of this place to try and ward off the overwhelming dread that threatened to swallow her whole. She knew this day was coming. She'd known for as long as she could read a calendar, and yet she hadn't done anything to prepare for it.

She'd spent all her time in the streets of Inkopolis, trying to make a name for herself in spite of everything looming over her head. Fat fucking good that did for me huh? What do I have to show for it, a few tattoos? ANOTHER failed band? A slew of one-night stands? Yeah, right.

Right on the heels of getting kicked from the most promising band she'd been in, she'd been forced to attend a family party that glorified her sister for succeeding in the very same thing that would ruin Pearl's life. There was too much happening; all the expectations of everybody there just piled onto the litany of problems she was already facing. Everybody had something to say, be it unwarranted advice or a 'good luck!' wish that all bled together in her mind, creating an inescapable drone of misery that she absolutely HAD to escape from.

That's how she found herself on the trails of Mt. Nantai. Walking in the brisk November air, savoring the feeling of it on her skin in lieu of the clammy, moist air of the party. Dark clouds of emotion swirled around her, leaving her in a mess of a state. She was boiling with rage one second, on the brink of tears the next, and ready to laugh herself into the grave one later. In truth, she was completely, utterly, and totally overwhelmed, and she didn't know how to process it.

In most circumstances, having such a comprehensive hold on her emotions would be a boon, but here it only served to mock her further. If even nearly two decades of training weren't enough to get her in order, how fucked was she?

Finally, she plowed her way into the clearing, not stopping for anything. She hopped down the 'steps' of the mini amphitheater, which was really nothing more than some vaguely step-shaped rocks and the boxy wooden stage in the center she leapt onto. Here, finally, she could express herself. Pearl channeled every ounce of frustration, anger, fear, tension, dread, sorrow, and every other damn emotion in her chest, and she screamed.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK THIS!!"

The world shook around her as her voice echoed out over the mountain and plains below. Trees on the layer below shook like they'd been jostled by the wind. She could feel the ring in her ears as she gasped for breath.

Damn, that felt good. She lied to herself. The only thing it did was leave her throat vaguely sore. With an aggravated huff, she stepped forward and dropped onto the edge of the stage. She gave the ground a particularly aggravated look, as it was barely too far away for her legs to reach, before she relented and put her head in her hands.

Fuck man... what am I going to do?

She stayed that way for some time, wallowing in her despair and misery, until her emotions started to boil up again. She dropped from the stage and sucked in another deep breath.

"COD DAMN IIIIIIIITTTT!!!"

Tides below, it was stupid how relieving this was... If I think it enough, it'll come true, won't it? She stood there huffing again, but rather than fall back to her ass, she stood her ground this time. She floundered for a second, all the emotions suddenly lacking an outlet, which resulted in her stamping her way around the stage. Fuck dude! What the hell am I going to do!? She worked her fists blindly through the air, needing more movement to try and vent any of this energy. Fuck! What the hell am I going to do!?!

With one decisive action, she suddenly turned, and slammed her fists on the stage.

"FUUUUCK!!!"

Frantic, desperate energy surged through her. The need to move, to act, to do something flared more than it ever had in her life. The feeling left her spinning, utterly disoriented inside and out. Pearl frantically shot her eyes around, looking for something to get rid of this feeling, but there wasn't anything there. She hadn't brought anything with her but her own shitty life and its trail of ghosts.

Fuck it. If this need for action was so overpowering, then she didn't have any choice but to relent. With a determined huff, she launched herself back onto the stage, and sucked in another breath. With everything she had, Pearl started belting the lyrics to the first song that came to mind. The scratchy, gruff metal song demanded a lot from her when performed this hard, but apparently Pearl had more to give than even she anticipated, because she had enough energy to run straight into a second song, and a third after that. After long enough, Pearl wasn't even sure she was saying the lyrics properly, through the tears and snot that clogged her face, and the raw pain in her throat. She circled the stage, gesturing wildly, doing anything she could to burn off this horrible, desperate energy welling up inside her.

She was at the absolute peak of her own song, Fuckin Dudes be Fuckin Sleepin', which no speaker system had managed to survive yet, when she spotted something. Her singing morphed into a panicked shout, before she shut herself up by slapping her hands over her mouth. What the hell is someone doing there!? I could have hurt her!

Just above the cliff's edge was a pair of eyes, staring up at her. It was hard to make much more out beyond that, save for brown skin and somewhat darker brown tentacles.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Pearl shouted towards the person, at a much more reasonable volume. "That's kind of a crazy place to be!"

The person just wiggled in place, and started to descend.

Shit! Maybe they didn't understand me? "Wait!" That time she shouted in Octarian, which seemed to work because the person peered over the edge of the cliff at her again. Pearl dropped off the stage, and it was hard to miss the way the person flinched at her approach, so she slowed down a lot and held out her hands to hopefully inspire peace.

Slowly, the person, no the girl pulled herself up the cliff's edge, along with two heavy looking bags that she sat beside her. She was tired looking, which made sense given she just climbed the side of a mountain, but more than that, she was on edge. Teal eyes with pink pupils flicked frantically between Pearl, the surroundings, the sky, and then back again. Neck-length tentacles twitched sporadically, colored with the same teal that bled into the dark brown color from before. Sweat glistened against the girl's dark skin, which made Pearl realize just how little this girl was wearing. She had some kind of metal... armor(?) on around her chest, but it only covered her upper torso, and it didn't even have sleeves. A black undershirt matched with a pair of scandalously short wax canvas skirt, and high heel boots!? What the hell is this girl wearing!? To make matters worse, Pearl couldn't see any mountain climbing gear, only some random metal scraps affixed to the edge of her boots and under her teal claws.

"You know Octarian?" The girl asked nervously.

Right, Pearl was supposed to be talking to this cute girl. She was the one who called out, after all. "Oh, yeah!" She tried to play things off casually, like she hadn't been shamelessly ogling this girl's outfit. "My dad practically had me speaking it before I could walk!"

There was an odd second of pause, where the girl seemingly processed her words, before her face lit up. "Really? Ohwhow! In'thinkey'deach Octarian upere!" ("Really? Oh, wow! I didn't think they'd teach Octarian up here!")

Apparently, this girl talked fast. What the fuck did she just say? She said like, 6 words per word just now! I didn't even know you could do that! Mentally, Pearl slapped herself. Focus up girl, c'mon. This conversation's already a big enough disaster, let's try not to make it any worse.

"Wow, you talk fast." DAMN! Real fucking smooth Pearl, wow! Did you practice that one in front of a mirror? "I mean, I didn't quite catch what you said. Uh..." Oh cod, just fucking kill me. You've smooth talked a dozen girls before, why the hell am I tripping up now?? No, it isn't related to the mental breakdown I'm stuck three breaths from having."

"So.... You climbed up the side of the mountain?" Desperate to recover this fumble, Pearl shuffled up to the edge of the cliff and looked down without waiting for an answer. She almost missed how the girl stiffened as she passed; she was so focused on her internal turmoil. Again, looking down, she didn't see any climbing equipment, just a long line of small handholds carved into the side of the damn mountain. This girl actually dug her own path up the fucking cliffside, no safety gear, no climbing partner anywhere in sight, AND carrying two massive bags that probably weighed more than Pearl did.

"It was the quickest way up I could see..." It was like a switch was flipped, with one simple sentence, the girl's entire demeanor shifted from apprehension and hesitation to timidity.

"You must be pretty crazy strong to carve those handholds like that, though I have to ask, why not just take the path around? Sure, it's a bit longer but trust me, it's a lot easier." Pearl pointed to the path, clear in the break in the trees, and traced it around the edge of the mountain.

"O-oh..." The girl stuttered. "I didn't realize there was a path..." It was only now that Pearl realized the girl was deliberately working to slow her speech. It was still pretty hard to tell exactly what she was saying, but Pearl had trained her entire life to understand people, something as simple as some slurred words weren't going to stop her.

Then, Pearl realized that the girl was blushing. It was a subtle thing, only really visible on the tip of her nose, and a lot less subtly in the curling of her tentacles. Another needle of panic joined a dozen others on the pin cushion that was Pearl's hearts. Holy shit I don't think you've fumbled something this hard since you downed an entire bottle of Freshwater Spike, and I'm not even trying to flirt right now.

"Hey, don't feel bad about it!" Pearl reached out to pat her shoulder, but immediately thought better of it and relented. "What you did was WAY cooler than just walking up a path. I don't know anyone else who could just... choose to scale the side of a mountain on a whim."

The girl just nodded, hesitant, but didn't say anything else. It was clear this conversation wasn't going anywhere, so Pearl braced herself to rip the metaphorical bandage off.

"The name's Pearl Houzuki." She declared, holding her hand out for a handshake. Internally, she prepared for the flinch. The recognition of the last name that hung over her like an axe.

But the girl didn't react. She just tepidly grabbed Pearl's hand. "Marina..."

Pearl had to blink a few times to recover from the lack of reaction, so she let instinct take over and gave a firm handshake in return. It was only after their hands broke apart did she realize how horribly not fitting for the situation that was. Too late now, add it to the count.

"So... I take it you're not from around her then?" Pearl gave her a smile, and hoped the question wasn't too out of place.

"You could say that..." Marina cryptically responded. Ok... that's a past that's not up for discussion. Cool, got it, I'll stay away from that.

"Are you trying to get somewhere?"

Marina took a moment to think, and then meekly shrugged. "I... don't know?"

"You probably want Inkopolis, then. Even if you don't know a lick of Inklish, you can find your way there. It's a real big international place. There's also plenty of resources to learn, if you wanted to." Another terribly awkward pause. "I could give you a ride if you want one, I have the space in my car.

The girl jolted at the suggestion. "Uhh.. Nothanque! (No thank you!) I, ahem No, thank you. I'm waiting on some people before I leave here."

"Hey, no prob." Pearl tried to reassure, though she wasn't sure how well the sentiment carried. The conversation stalled completely from there. Pearl couldn't think of any way to recover this plane crash of a conversation, and Marina seemed to be growing more nervous by the second, if her wringing hands were anything to go by.

She gave it another minute or two, in the vain hope that something might occur to her, but nothing came. With a silent sigh, Pearl figured it'd be best to give Marina some space. Whatever the hell's going on with her didn't exactly seem easy. Besides, Pearl knew she was just using this girl as a means to run from her problems. Marina didn't deserve that, not when she was dealing with something of her own, and certainly now while Pearl was this much of a mess.

She intended to wander back to the stage to take a seat, but Pearl's attention fixated on the frantic sounds of Marina behind her. She nearly turned back to look when—

"I liked your singing!"

Pearl froze.

Did she just... It had to have been years since someone had said that to her sincerely. The only time she heard it these days was while she was bar hopping, and even then the only people who said it were doing it to bum drinks off of her. Those nights always came with a particularly bad hangover.

"Really?" She squeaked more than she asked. She'd already braced herself for the laughter, or the mocking that would surely follow.

"I've never heard anything like it! Marina's tone was full of awe. "The was so much... She paused for several seconds, almost audibly grasping for words that ultimately alluded her. "There. It was a completely new feeling to me."

Pearl still hadn't moved. "You really mean that? You're not just saying that to... to flatter me?"

"Why would I lie?"

Pearl's breath hitched. "...No reason." she mumbled. Fuck it. "Would... you like to hear more?"

"Yes!" Marina's response was fast, much faster than Pearl was expecting, but she could be quick on her feet."

"Ok then! Here, come away from the edge of the cliff. We've got the amphitheater over here that's a lot more comfortable." Pearl half-walked-half-jogged up to the stage, and jumped up to it.

Sure, she was still running from her problems, but Marina wanted to screw around with her, that had to count for something, right? Everything else in her life might be going to utter shit right now, but, at least for a little while longer, she was going to smile and enjoy things her way. "Oh Marina, I think I'm starting to like you already..."

She gave maybe an hour long impromptu concert, that was cut short when the scratchiness of her throat demanded she stop. It wasn't a moment too soon either, because she got a text only a few moments later from her father.

It saddened her greatly to leave Marina behind so suddenly, but it's how life worked. They bid their farewells, promised to see each other again 'sometime' and parted ways.

Pearl kicked her way down the mountain slope with spirits much lighter than she went up with. Maybe, after she loses everything, she'd still be able to find small moments like that. Maybe, one day, she'd get to meet that Marina girl again. But how likely is that? Oh well... she was cute too.

It was with these vaguely positive thoughts that she climbed into the back of the car, and let Fergus, her caretaker, drive her back to the manor.

Chapter Text

The Houzuki corporation, the largest corporation in the world, headed by the richest family in the world.

Accounting for all subsidiaries, the Houzuki corporation accounts for a staggering 38% of all global shipping capacity, including 900 container ships, 280 cargo aircraft, and spanning rail freight lines on multiple continents. However, this is by no means the only slice of industry the Houzuki clan has a foothold in. Second only to shipping, the corporation oversees major divisions in real estate, telecommunications, mass transportation, auto parts manufacturing, and tourism, among many smaller divisions as well.

Of course, such tremendous success didn't just happen by chance. Each member of the family, from the esteemed founder, Cavell Houzuki, to even the most distant cousin alive today, have all played an instrumental role in shaping the company's success.

"Family is the highest value for us." Said the company's current CEO Henry 'Chet' Houzuki. "And not in some gross middle manger way. [Light laughter.] Trust me, I know the type. No, I mean that every member of our family is capable of something fantastic and we as a group are determined to bring it out of them."

"Really, success is all about the mindset," he would continue to explain. "While the reality might be a bit more nuanced and comprehensive than this, we really follow 10 guiding principles in our lives:

"1: appearance and presentation are tantamount"

March 19th, 2001

30 minutes before the annual Houzuki Co. Shareholder Address

"Pearl, honey, please. We're running short on time."

"Mmm mmm!" Pearl shook her head with all her might, nearly knocking her crown off in the process. She couldn't let that happen.

Mother rolled her eyes, but smiled. "Ok, fine, let's make a deal then. You put on the dress, but you can keep your crown."

Pearl eyed the dress. It was a pretty thing, with little bows on the arms and a frilly collar, the kind she didn't like. But, she'd get to keep her princess crown, so she supposed she could put up with it.

"Mmkay!" She cheered, putting her arms up in the air so Mother could put the dress on.

"You know how important appearances are, right dear?" Mother politely scolded while she walked over.

"But all we're doing is sitting on a stage!" She protested.

"Yes, but it's important that we look proper, so we don't hurt Daddy's image."

Pearl huffed, and crossed her arms. "I think it's dumb!"

That was enough to make Mother laugh. "Yes, well, it's part of the big game we play. You'll understand more when you're older. Now, how still and let me tie your shoes."

"2: Act with respect and decorum at all times."

May 5th, 2002

Formal meeting with Kensaki Co Chief Ambassador Blake Kensaki

"It shouldn't take anymore than three days in transit." The stuffy man said with a smile.

"It's no problem how long it takes." Father dismissed with a wave of his hand. "The Kensaki Corporation has more than proven good faith, I see no need to force arbitrary limits on you."

In the background, Pearl stifled another sigh. She'd been required to watch these two go back and forth, negotiating for half an hour, and she was BORED. She couldn't tune anything out either, because Father would ask her questions after the meeting was over to make sure she was paying attention. All she could do was keep her hands folded, and watch.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. She may have only been sitting in on meetings for a few months now, but the other girl in here with her was clearly a lot newer than she was. Pearl didn't know her name, but she seemed really timid and unsure about being here.

"I think these terms are agreeable then, Mr. Houzuki. Astrid will be delighted to hear this."

Father laughed. "She does seem rather concerned about even the smallest of deals, no?"

The other man sighed, though it was surprisingly fond. "That's just how she is."

"A micromanager?" Pearl blurted without thinking.

The girl's eyes widened in shock, and for the first time Pearl was able to get a good look at her eyes. They were a similar gold to her own, though the girl's pupils darkened where her own lightened.

A surprisingly uproarious laugh cut through the air, making both Pearl and the girl jump. "Ha... leave it to kids to lay things bare, huh?" The other man laughed.

"Oh yes." Father was quick to agree. "They're really good at speaking their minds, I suppose. Anyway, I'll send the details downstairs, and they'll get over to your folks within the hour."

"That works just fine." The other man smiled a final time, and offered a hand, which Father took and firmly shook. "Until next time then. Come, Marie, we're going home."

"Yes Papa." The girl quietly agreed as she stood up. She gave Pearl a shy smile, and a little wave, before following her dad out of the door.

Several tense seconds paused as the departing pair shuffled down the hallway, until Father leaned back in his chair with a resigned sigh. "Pearl, we've talked about your outbursts."

"I know I need to—" Pearl tried to give the lecture before he could, but she was silenced by Father holding up a single finger. She knew that meant she was supposed to let him finish talking.

He regarded her for a moment, before deciding to change tactics. "Any negotiation or deal we make needs to be founded on truth, correct?"

Pearl nodded.

He continued. "Respect is a critical component in any interaction, you understand that, yes?"

Pearl nodded again. "Is it because it's mean?" She asked, trying to circumvent part of the lecture.

Father stopped for a moment and considered her words. "Yes... but there's more to it than just that. It's a social contract. Both parties enter the negotiation in agreement to keep things polite and civil, as that generally makes the meeting both faster, and more pleasant for everyone. And yes, while it is true that Blake's wife is a bit of a micromanager, pointing it out had the potential to drag the meeting down, or even completely upend it."

Pearl smiled, pleased by her father's agreement about that guy's wife, but confusion quickly dominated her mind. "But he laughed! How could the meeting have gone bad?"

"That is because Blake is a nice man. Not everyone is so kind as him. Imagine if you had said that to Fergus, or Anais?"

She pictured the stern face of Mr. Fergus, and the look he gives her when she'd say something mean about one of the staff, or Ms. Anais, and how sad she looked the one time Pearl had said something mean about her, and she suddenly understood what Father was saying. Pearl just nodded, suddenly feeling embarrassed about her outburst.

"It's alright dear, it's a lesson we've all had to learn. Just try not to forget it." He took a moment to straighten the papers on the table in front of him. "Ok, now, before we go to dinner, let's review the meeting real quick."

Pearl groaned and fell back in her chair. Darn! Almost got out of it!

Father chuckled, before adopting his business face. "Ok, now, why did I refrain from negotiating a time limit on this deal?"

"3: Never let your attention to detail falter."

October 30th, 2003

Meeting with Representative from Burbot Lumberyard

"With this agreement, you, the Houzuki Corporation, hereby grant us, Telwart shipping, as contracted by Burbot Lumberyard, to use your shipping vessels to transport products to other material yards in crustacean land." The sleazy representative leaned back in her chair as she set the copy of the contract on the table in front of her. She was an... irritable looking octoling, and if the smell was any indication, ready for this meeting to be done so she could smoke a cigarette or four.

Pearl kept her face neutral, but internally, she was frowning as she eyed the representative. She'd never liked this type of person, especially when it comes to contract deals. They always were too happy to hear themselves talking, so confident they could trick or con their way into a better deal for themselves, and dead set on getting the last work in any negotiation. Of course, in a sense, everyone was trying to do these things, but these people were so grossly transparent about it, it made the entire thing feel gross. On top of that, something about her words rubbed Pearl the wrong way, too.

"Of course!" Father agreed, happily pulling a pen from his suit pocket. "Let's seal the deal then."

'...Use your shipping vessels to transport products to material yards...' The words bounced around in Pearl's mind as she watched her father reach for the contract. 'Shipping vessels...products... Wait.

"If you don't mind me asking," Pearl interjected, causing her father to pause. "Could you clarify what you meant by 'products' specifically? I thought this deal was about shipping raw materials. Also, were multiple vessels specified for any specific reason, or was that just a notation mistake?"

The representative smiled easily, gladly taking the contract back as she attempted to smooth talk her way out of the corner Pearl backed her into. She smiled politely, and said all the right things, but there was an anger behind her eyes that was unmistakable, especially any time her eyes rested on Pearl.

Details were clarified, and a much less ambiguous version of the deal was signed off on, and the representative was gone a few moments later, leaving nothing but a death glare and a fake smile in her wake.

"Excellent job Pearl! That was a very important clarification to make. Your tact was very good as well, if a little pointed."

Pearl smiled, wide and real, at the praise. "Thank you, Father."

"If we had left things as they were, the unclear language meant they could call on multiple ships, which we would have been obligated to provide."

"Or they could have shipped products at a material rate." Pearl added, proud she was remembering things so well. "Either thing would lose profits, and combine they could set back operations."

"Yes! Fantastic!" Father rounded the table, and pulled her into his arms, lifting her into the air. "You're figuring this out so fast, you'll be a master in no time!"

Pearl giggled as she rose into the air, letting the feelings of happiness and pride wash over her.

"4: Never take longer than you need."

April 3rd, 2004

On the trails of Mt. Nantai

"Pearl, slow down!" Mother shouted up at her, but Pearl just shook her head and kept barreling down the path. Normally, anytime she was out on Mt. Nantai, she'd be marveling at the massive trees and rocks that littered the sides of the trails, but not today. Today she was upset, and she wanted to get away from everything. She ran forward until she came to a bridge over a small river, where she finally let herself collapse onto a large rock just off the path.

It was another business meeting, but this time she'd messed up, and the representatives backed out of the deal because of it. I'm seven years old now! I shouldn't be messing things like this up anymore. Father had tried to console her afterwards, but the lecture amidst the reassurances only made things feel worse. It was such a stupid mistake too, which amplified the feeling even more.

"Are you still thinking about earlier?" Mother softly asked from behind her a few minutes later.

Pearl considered trying to deny it, but she knew Mother would persist until she answered. "Yeah..."

"Oh, darling..." Mother pulled her into a hug, which Pearl eagerly returned, finally letting the tears she'd been holding back out. "You're still learning these things, it was an easy mistake to make. You'll—"

"That's the problem!" Pearl shouted. Her voice echoed down the mountain trail, far louder than it should have been. Birds flew from the trees, startled by the noise.

Mother gently patted her on the back. "Shhh... breathe, baby. It's alright. Measured voice, ok?"

Pearl agreed with a solemn nod. "I'm supposed to be better by now, but I'm still messing up!" She lamented, her voice deliberately just above a whisper.

A few moments passed where Mother just rubbed her back gently, before she pulled back to meet Pearl's eyes. "Be still, my little Pearl." She whispered as she pulled Pearl into a hug. "Learning all of this isn't easy, you've done a fantastic job on everything else. Look at all the things you've done right so far."

"But this is supposed to be the easy stuff!" Pearl pouted in response.

Mother sighed, but there wasn't any disappointment in it. "Don't spend longer wallowing in your mistakes than you need to learn from them, alright? That's a mistake you can prevent."

Don't...? "I guess that makes sense..."

"You can't control everything, especially other people." Mother explained. "But you can always control how you react to them. That's what makes your dad so good at what he does."

"Why?" Pearl asked, looking into her mother's eyes.

"Well, what do you think he did the last time he messed up a deal? Do you think he spent the time running from things and crying? Or did he face his mistakes and try to learn from them?"

Pearl thought over the words for a few moments, before nodding slowly. "He probably tried to learn..."

Mother smiled and nodded in turn. "Exactly. Now, do you want to stay on this rock for a little longer, or do you want to try and keep going forward."

With a bit of reluctance, Pearl pulled herself off of the rock, back onto her feet.

"5: The only barriers between you and success are the ones you make."

September 14th, 2005

Preparing a new contract for Indicative Splash Limited

Pearl sighed and looked over the contract in front of her. Normally, she'd sit on the sidelines and review notes while Father did the talking, only interjecting when she felt there was something important going unmentioned. Today was different. She and Father would be switching positions, meaning she would be heading the negotiations today.

"Are you nervous?" Father leaned over her shoulder, looking back at her with a curious expression.

Pearl shook her head no.

"Heh... It's alright to be nervous Pearl. This is some really grown up stuff here."

She wrinkled her nose in response. "I'm gettin' grown up!" She rebuked, holding up her hands to show where her fingers were just starting to separate. That was one of the first signs of an inkfish maturing, which meant she was really close to getting big!

That was enough to make Father laugh with his full belly. "Oh... you absolutely are Pearl. That's why I think you can handle this. Just remember, you're allowed to be nervous, ok? Even I still get nervous when dealing with some of these suits."

"Are you nervous about this meeting?" Pearl looked up at him, now as curious as he was.

"Hmm... no, I don't think so, because you're going to do great. Just remember what we've been over."

Pearl nodded, and looked back at the contract. I can do this. It's just a business deal, I've been through dozens of these things by now, it's nothing. With her resolve steadies, Pearl motioned the secretary at the door to let the consultants in.

The smile remained on her face as the pair walked out of the meeting room. Pearl waited for the door to close to drop the act, slouching all the way back into the chair and resting her forehead on the table.

That was a grueling two hours that she'd never get back. Turns out Splash Limited really liked to flesh out the particulars of their agreements, which was comical considering how small their business really was. On top of that, she spent the entire meeting having to work around the pair's disquiet feelings on negotiating with an eight year old. Pearl more than proved her competence during the meeting, but it didn't stop the furtive glances towards her father throughout. Still, the deal was signed, the terms were amicable, and she'd done it herself.

Pearl lifted her weary head to find Father, who was reviewing the same note sheets she'd have been during the meeting. With her fingers still not quite formed yet, she still relied on pre-written, laminated notes produced for her, which she would follow along with and highlight with her ink as the things happened in the real meetings. Father emulated this perfectly with a highlighter, diligently pouring over the tiny notebook and marking things down as they happened. The entire thing was the exact amount of funny to make her double over laughing. The sheer dedication on his face, mixed with the small size of the notebook, and his tiny reading glasses was just the perfect combination, all he was missing was her crown.

"You did quite well Pearl!" He cheered as he finished marking his last line. "I do apologize, they were a lot more... thorough that I anticipated, but you handled that expertly as well!"

"Only cuz I've seen you do it a hundred times." She deflected, trying to hide the proud blush on her cheeks.

"No, that's perfect! You studied well, and then put it all into practice!" He set the book down and opened his arms to her, which she eagerly jumped into. "Of course, there's some places you need to work on, but there's always room for improvement, so don't let that weigh on you."

Pearl prepared a retort, but was cut off by a sudden, powerful yawn. After being so attentive for so long, and just now falling back into the familiar warmth of her father's arms, a sense of tiredness overwhelmed her in a matter of seconds.

Father chuckled, and brought his arms around her, patting her on the back gently. "I suppose we can review the meeting later. Let's take a break."

Chapter Text

"6: The world can be cruel and uncaring."

April 2nd, 2006

Meeting with Franklin Ger, the COO of a Houzuki subsidiary

"Sir, you have to understand, this quarter is an outlier!" Ger explained. Despite the formal, businesslike tone, it was clear this was a man begging for his life. "The market isn't as invested in the—"

"Mister Ger, please." Father was like a wall, completely stoic, unmoving, unfeeling. "The market's captivity isn't the problem." He pulled a hefty stack of papers up from under his desk, big enough to make an ominous thump sound as he set it down.

Pearl had actually reviewed those same records just a few hours prior, as an informal test. Father didn't explain what he wanted her to find beyond saying "we are losing money." If she had come to the right conclusion, this poor man was not in for good news today.

The first thing she'd found was the company's growth charts. New and returning clients were up, and profits were seeing a steady, if a bit paltry, increase. By all accounts the profits should be much higher with what she was seeing.

The next page held a chart comparing this company's revenue compared to the other subsidiaries in similar markets, and again, things seemed to be better. It had overtaken one of the previous companies even.

She started to grow suspicious when she looked at the company's new and ongoing initiatives. Nestled in amongst standard things like new cybersecurity awareness training and R&D projects was a freshly started environmental sustainability partnership. It was innocuous at first: a simple partnership with a random charity paired with a marketing campaign about sustainability. The performative gesture picked at Pearl the wrong way, but there wasn't anything really wrong with it, in that regard at least.

On a whim, she carried the papers to the nearest computer to find what all she could about the group. She worked her fingers over the keyboard, still somewhat unused to the precision that fingers needed, until she found exactly what she was looking for. That was when the pieces started to click together. It was a simple group, touting intent to help several species of birds that had been dwindling in numbers in recent years. There were two major caveats to that: It was a for-profit charity, with one Mr. Franklin Ger serving as the chairman of the board.

With this new information in mind, it wasn't hard to find the discrepancies. The budget for this campaign was surprisingly hefty, for the comparatively small amount of advertising it was planned to receive. It wasn't hard to conclude that Ger was attempting to siphon the budget's bloat, and likely a good portion of what the campaign would raise into his own pocket with the deal.

Explaining her findings to her father got mixed reactions. On one hand, he was very proud of her and her deduction skills, and impressed with her ingenuity in using the computer. On the other hand, he was extraordinarily angry at Ger for the underhanded move. The profit loss wasn't insubstantial, the reputation damage was steep, but it was the audacity of using the good will of a charity to do this that had her father the most angry.

Now, back in the present, Ger was going to answer for exactly what it was he had done. Of course, he expressly didn't want to do that, which would lead into a depressing, familiar spiel.

First was the deflection.

"Then surely you've seen the growth!" Ger grasped the same line of logic she had. "Even with our metrics falling a bit short, our numbers are still growing!"

"It's not the growth that's the problem." Father emotionlessly shot back.

Then, the indignation.

"If I may ask, sir, why you are focusing on us while other companies are flagging much more severely than we are." Pearl could still picture the exact chart he was talking about. "Our market is still growing, it only makes sense there'd be some bumps in the road, if you will."

"I review all of the subsidiaries, Mr. Gir." There was ice in Father's voice now. He was not amused by the man's desperate attempts at deflection. "What I discuss with them has no bearing on our conversation.

Seeing his red herrings fail, he'd try to buy himself time with an alternative pitch.

"The numbers picked up at the tail end of the quarter, the next one should more than make up for things! We have a new campaign in the works that will surely help get things where they're supposed to be."

Pearl had to hide a wince. Big mistake bringing up the campaign. He was too nervous.

"Oh, yes. The environmental campaign."

The realization that they weren't going to make it always came next. It was the hardest part to watch.

"Yes!" Gir cried. "A partnership with—"

"Save it."

It always ended the same way.

"Sir, there's no need to be so hasty. The campaign is designed to—"

"You're fired."

No, watching them leave had to be the hardest part. She hated it. Logically, Pearl knew this man deserved it. He was trying to line his pockets by hijacking a charity campaign. But seeing them leave, the fear in their bodies, the almost relief in their eyes after they're fired, and the slow, measured walk out of the room, it always felt so dirty to her.

Father sighed and shook his head slowly side to side the same way he did after every hard decision. "Pearl."

"Father?"

"You did a good job with the report analysis. Do you agree with my decision?"

That was a tough question. He wasn't asking if he made the correct decision, that much was obvious. Gir was a detriment to the company and removing him was the only option. No, he was asking if she could have done the same thing. Could she have confronted him, stayed stone-faced, and fired him after the meeting was finished? It wasn't a question she could answer right now.

"7: Proper, formal behavior is important at ALL times."

July 12th, 2007

A side room, during a meeting with Kensaki Co.'s Chief Ambassador

"Miss Kensaki is waiting for you in there, Pearl." Father gestured towards the side room they typically used for these meetings. "Remember to keep things respectful and cordial. You and her will be negotiating deals for decades at least, so it's important to forge a strong relationship now. If you need me, I'll be down the hall with Mr. Kensaki, working on a new deal."

"Yes, Father." Pearl politely answered as she walked towards the room. She paused at the door long enough to watch her father slip out of the floor's break lounge with two cans of beer in hand a few moments later. A small smirk played over her face as she turned back to the door. Truth was, she was always a little excited for these meetings. They were good breakes from the usual droll of the business day, and a chance for her to let some of the 24/7 perfection act down a little.

Inside, she saw 'Miss Kensaki' sitting at the meeting table with her head in her hands, staring down at the black painted wood like it held the secrets of the universe. On the table in front of her was a small plastic binder with several scenarios they were supposed to discuss, essentially their own 'mock' business meetings they were supposed to conduct while the adults did the real thing a room over. It had been months since they'd actually done one, they were solved problems after all, so they usually just spent the time talking, and then the last 5 or so minutes reviewing the case before presenting it to their parents afterwards.

Pearl opened her mouth to announce her presence, but hesitated. If Father's going to treat this more like a hangout than a meeting, then I am too. Instead, she quietly closed the door behind her, and walked up next to the stressed looking girl. Again, she opened her mouth and closed it, biting back the formal greeting she'd been trained to give. It was a good skill to have, and very important for maintaining decorum with strangers, but this girl wasn't a stranger, and frankly, Pearl was getting really tired of keeping the act up all the time.

"Hey Marie!" She didn't yell the greeting, but she wasn't exactly quiet about it either.

The poor girl nearly launched out of her seat. She was a bit younger than Pearl, but she'd finished growing into her adult form like her all the same. Her mantle was a light gray, with two tentacles that fell to around her shoulders tipped in Marie's natural lime green color, which Pearl knew she was only holding out of practice. Red colored the pale skin around her mouth and ears, a clear sign of the agitation she was hiding in her ink coloration.

"Oh, Pearl!" A practiced, polite look covered her face in an instant. "I didn't hear you come in."

"I bet! You were so focused on studying that table there, I don't think you'd hear a splat bomb land next to you!"

"Ahaha... yeah..." Marie laughed awkwardly, but it was clear she was already falling back into her thoughts.

Pearl sighed and rolled her chair next to Marie before sitting down. "Something's got you bothered, and I don't need to stare at you for 5 minutes to figure that out this time."

"It's nothing." Marie was quick to deflect.

"That's not true, if it's bad enough to make you break face, it'd be enough to make anyone else cry."

"Don't worry about it." Marie turned her body away slightly, as if it'd be enough to deter Pearl.

It wasn't. "Aww, c'mon. I wanna know!" Pearl gave her a pleading look, but Marie never turned around to see it. She scoffed at the lack of response. "Yeah, alright." She reached for the plastic binder on the table. There was no intention of actually doing any of the work in it, but she needed to look like the responsible one for a moment. "You KNOW," she started while mindlessly flicking through the papers. "Father says that when something is really—" she pauses for a moment before doing a rather poor imitation of her father's angry voice— " 'makin you pissed off,' you have two options. Talk about it, or deal with it. Otherwise, it's going to compromise your thinking."

Marie finally turned back to glare at her. It wasn't what Pearl wanted, but it was a start. Pearl tried to encourage her by making a face, but Marie just slowly turned her head back.

Well, she'd have to actually go through with the act then. "Fine! We'll just sit here and talk about business then, like every other hour of the day." She leaned back in her chair and grabbed one of the pages at random, before lacing her next words with as much disinterest and sarcasm as she could manage. "Tell me about the steel market then. That's where we need to start out."

It took a few agonizing seconds, but Marie finally raised her head and turned to Pearl. She deliberately avoided meeting Pearl's eyes, but that was fine, as long as she— "Steel prices are up, thanks to the new plant opening up nearby."

Pearl deflated into her chair. "Oh my cod, you're actually just going to pretend like everything is fine."

"That's because it is." Marie reached for the page to read her role in the scenario they were supposed to act out.

"No, Marie, it isn't." Pearl slapped the page back into the binder before Marie could grab it, slamming the plastic lid down on top of it. "You and I don't need this work, and we haven't for months! It's all baby stuff now, who cares!" With a dismissive push, she shoved the binder closer to the center of the table.

Marie's jaw snapped shut. She stared for a few moments, her face blank, before reaching out to grab the binder.

Pearl scoffed again. This is actually starting to get frustrating. "Alright, 'Mama's perfect little squid,' you're the captain now. Tell me what to do and I'll sit here, silent and obedient."

There was a tense moment while Marie stared her down. "Pearl..."

"Nooooooo!" Pearl brushed the gaze off with a sweep of her hand and a turn of her head. "What are you complaining about? We're here on business, right?" She kept her face level, but the frustration seeped into her voice regardless.

She didn't miss the way Marie's hands curled into fists. "Pearl, look. I don't want to talk about it, ok? Can we just move on?"

No, no we can't Marie. This is supposed to be our break from this crap! I don't want to do MORE of it if I don't have to. She pushed away from the table, throwing her hands into the air. "Yes! It's business time! No more distractions, preamble, or banter! No breaks or breathers! No. Fun."

Marie remained locked at the table, her body rigid in an impressive display of discipline.

Unfortunately for her, Pearl was still more persistent than that. She waited until her chair stopped spinning from the kick off, before locking eyes. "Just like the obedient little squids we're supposed to be, yeah?"

A loud bang echoed through the room as Marie's fist slammed down on the table. "Cod!" Marie's chair shot backwards, crashing into the wall from the force she kicked it back with as she stood. "I want to quit! I don't want to do any of this anymore! Is that what you wanted to hear?!"

Pearl fixed her posture and wiped most of the smug look off of her face. "Yeah, actually, it is. Why though?"

Fists clenched and unclenched as Marie sucked down gulps of air. "It's everything! The work, the contests, the seminars—" Marie suddenly wheeled towards Pearl, throwing her hands into the air as she did so— "I hate all of it! It's boring and it takes so long and I don't get to do anything else! Ever! I don't want to do any of it!"

That had to be the most emotion Pearl had ever seen from the girl. I guess it's true that Marie has always hated the scenarios, but for the aversion to run so deep... but I think there's more. "So... why now?"

Marie visibly hesitated, before slumping into her chair in defeat. "It's Callie... she wanted us to do the folk singing contest tomorrow. She even signed us up a spot and everything, but Mama has another seminar she wants me to attend that day instead."

"That was the coral that snapped the crab's claw then." Pearl finished. "It's finally too much."

She got a nod in response. That really explained why this blowup was so out of nowhere. Beyond a few moments of minor annoyance, Pearl had seen no indication that Marie felt this sour. If she'd been shoving it down, and trying to ignore it, it was only a matter of time until that would blow up.

"Why not just... go anyway?" Pearl asked. "It's just one seminar, I'm sure it'd be fine to skip it."

Marie just shook her head morosely, and looked back towards the table.

The Kensaki family was much more strict than the Houzuki family. That much was obvious from their dress alone. Pearl still wore her crown at any chance she got, where Marie was always dressed up like she was a minute from a photoshoot. And with the seminars, Pearl had been to a good share of her own, but she didn't attend every single one on the calendar.

Regardless, if there was one thing Pearl knew how to do, it was read people. Marie's act was tight, it took Pearl an intense amount of study to realize that something was off on the good days, and she'd never have guessed Marie felt like that. Knowing what she did now, there was no way Marie would last through another year of this, let alone another decade.

"So you're just going to shut up and deal with this for the rest of your life?"

Marie didn't answer verbally. They locked eyes for a moment, and Pearl could see the conflict behind them.

The rest of the meeting passed mostly in silence. Surface level pleasantries, and the usual speed review of their scenario right before the end. Pearl thought that was where things would end, but was surprised by Marie suddenly pulling her into a quick hug, before following her dad out. The whole exchange left a strange flavor in her mouth, and a lot more of her own thoughts to dwell on.

"8: You are always capable of more than you think."

July 12th, 2008

The 2nd annual Inkopolis Folk Singing Contest

"Don't count her out yet, she's small, but brings a big sound! It's Pearl!" The announcer happily cried to the crowd, sweeping his arm backwards to highlight her before ducking off stage.

Pearl bounded forward, completely unfazed by the gaze of the crowd. She'd been waiting for months to get here, and she didn't intend to waste the chance. She happily scanned over the crowd as the music for her song started, hoping to spot Marie somewhere among them.

That day, a year ago, was the last time Pearl had seen her friend. From what she knew, the day after that meeting, she ran from her parents, performed at the contest, and then went off with her aunt. Pearl had been hoping to see her here, but it didn't look like she was, which made her hearts fall.

At least, that wasn't the only reason she was here. As the music kicked up, she launched into the verse with gusto, excitedly singing along and getting the crowd into the spirit. She sailed through the chorus and the second verse, building the energy all the while. People cheered and shouted as she blasted into the second chorus, and Pearl felt herself come alive. The singing, the crowd, the energy of the entire thing, she'd never felt anything like it before, and she loved it.

The chorus wound down into the bridge, the music fell away, save for a steady, thumping beat. Pearl mimed clapping, and the crowd eagerly followed, clapping sort-of-kind-of in time with the music as Pearl wound through lyrics. As the other instruments came in, Pearl added shouts of encouragement.

"Yes!!" As the people started clapping along
"That's it!" As the bassline came back.
"Come on!" As the guitars came back.
"BOOYAH!!" As the music hit the crescendo, leading to the final chorus.

BOOM

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Pearl wheeled backwards at the sudden explosion of sound, microphone falling from her hands as she struggled to stay on her feet.

Through the ringing in her ears she could distantly hear the announcer shouting "is anyone hurt?" as he ran past the stage with a first aid kit in hand.

Frantically, Pearl looked left and right. The speakers on either side of the stage were completely blown. Wires visibly dangled out of the hole where the cone was supposed to sit, the cone itself barely hanging by the end. Her breaths came ragged as she tried to get her bearings. Someone appeared behind her a few moments later, asking of she was hurt, which she only shook her head to.

She'd lost control of her voice, something she hadn't done in multiple years at this point. The only thing she could do for the rest of the day was bury her face in shame as the event staggered its way forward.

She didn't win.

"9: Decisions are made with confidence and certainty."

March 3rd, 2009

Before a meeting with Eclectic Inking™

"We are going to decline this deal." Father announced, minutes before another meeting.

"What? Why?" Pearl asked from his side. At this point, she was capable enough that she often handled smaller contract meetings herself, or like today, joined her father as an equal representative of the company.

"Eclectic Inking is a failing company, they'll be bankrupt within a year."

"But this contract could save them! That's—"

"A risk." Father firmly shut her down. "And one that we're not going to take."

Pearl bristled at the words, but kept her mouth shut. She continued to keep her mouth shut through the meeting, only speaking when appropriate. As expected, the representatives were crestfallen at the denial. As expected, father refused to yield.

Had she been on her own, Pearl would have reworked the deal as best she could to minimize the risk while still giving the representatives a chance to save things. But she wasn't, so she had to keep her mouth shut and watch the pair dejectedly walk from the room.

The day proceeded as normal, but the gross taste in her mouth stayed with her the entire time.

"10: The Houzuki family does not have a weak link."

August 22nd, 2010

The Houzuki Manor

The Houzuki manor was capable of hosting the entire extended family, their guests, and any guests those guests might think about bringing. This possible mix of people always made dinners an interesting time, as there was no guarantee who would or wouldn't be present. Unfortunately, there wasn't any visiting extended family today, so it was just the immediate family at the table.

"Well, how is everyone doing today?" Father asked, sending a pleasant smile to everyone. "I'll start. I managedto get 45 minutes on my exercise bike today!"

"That's lovely dear." Mother smiled at him from across the table. "I finished a book, third in it's series, and spent some time preparing the plans for the new library in the west wing."

Conversation paused for a moment as everyone worked on their meals.

Alex, Pearl's oldest sibling, was the next to speak up. "I managed to secure a meeting with several large companies in prawn lands." They said, as they nonchalantly cut into the pigeon on their plate.

Father gasped. "Really?! They've been so resistant to our calls!"

"No business during dinner." Mother politely, but firmly, shut them down.

"But—"

"Henry, love, it's your own rule."

Father relented and put his hands in the air. "You're right. We'll talk after dinner, Alex."

"That took most of my day, which is why I mentioned it, I didn't really do anything else." Alex explained. "Sorry, for breaking the rule."

"Well," Pearl threw herself into the conversation. "I spent my time practicing some new songs!"

"Didja blow out another speaker?" Irving, the youngest of Pearl's siblings, snarked at her with a shit-eating grin.

"No, I didn't." Pearl indignantly shot back. "I haven't done that in months, I don't know why you're so stuck on it!"

He just stuck his tongue out in turn.

"Pt—" Pearl sputtered. "What did you do today then!?"

"I went outside and caught some bugs!"

"Of course you would, you—"

"Alright dears," Mother interjected. "Leigh, how about you? Anything fun?"

"Uh... not really." Leigh was Pearl's other younger sibling by about three years. She was much more soft spoken than the rest of the family, making her a bit hard to hear. "I spent some time with Anthony, while Father was... oh, that's business stuff."

"Do I know Anthony?" Alex asked, giving her a curious look.

"Ah, he's one of the Kensaki people... but he's kind of annoying..."

"Oh! That's like Pearl's friend, right?" They snapped their fingers, "Ma? Mar? Help me out here."

"Marie?" Pearl flatly supplied.

"Yeah her! What's that make Anthony, her brother?"

"He's uh, her cousin I think." Leigh quietly clarified.

"That'd make sense, since...uh. Yeah." Alex trailed off as Pearl sent them a death glare.

It rubbed Pearl the wrong way, how dismissive everyone was of Marie running away. On one hand, not their family, not their problem, and she understood that, but on the other, Marie was her friend. Kind of her only friend, really, and she hadn't ran for no reason.

It made her a little nervous honestly. What would her family do if she ran away? Not that she was going to, tides know she wouldn't, but... would they care? Would they try to find her, or just leave her be? I mean, we still talk to David, and he's kicked out right now, but that's different.

The feeling had been gnawing at her for a few months now, but she knew better than to bring something like that up, especially at dinner. The Houzuki family doesn't have a weak link, so she pushed the thought to the side, and rejoined the conversation.

"Has anyone checked in with David recently?" She asked. "He's been pretty quiet."

"Your brother is a crafty squid, if he's gone quiet it means he's found his thread." Mother not-so-subtly bragged on him, even in his absence. She did that for all of them - at least Pearl assumed.

"You might want to reach out to him yourself," Father suggested, between bites of food. "You've not got too much longer until it's your turn. If he's found a path he thinks he can take to the top, well, it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to take notes."

"Bleguh." Pearl rolled her head, and her eyes, at the response. "He's so hard to get a hold of!"

"Just a suggestion."

Conversation continued, pleasant and light. It was almost enough for Pearl to ignore the pit growing slowly in her stomach, just like it had been for months now.

Chapter Text

January 18th, 2011

Outsize of Houzuki Manor

As quickly as she could, Pearl crept across the large front porch of Houzuki manor, towards the car waiting at the bottom of the steps. She made it to the staircase, then down it, she was a step from the open side door when—

"And where do you think you're going?" Father's stern voice echoed from the top of the steps, freezing Pearl where she stood.

Fuck. "I'm going downtown?" She moreso asked than answered, her conviction wavering under his intense gaze.

"Is that so?" His hands folded over his chest as he looked down on her. "Contract negotiations with the Andrean family begin in an hour."

The silence between them was suffocating. Pearl scrambled internally for any words to say, but nothing she could come up with was better than silence here.

"It's an opportunity to strengthen your connections. You'll need them in your future."

Pearl grit her teeth. "Thank you, father, but I'll have to miss this meeting."

Horrible seconds passed as he looked down at her. It wasn't hard to see that there was clearly more that he wanted to say, but thankfully he schooled himself. "Alright." He said, before turning away and walking towards the front door.

A sickly relief flooded Pearl's system as she likewise turned and climbed into the waiting car, pulling the door shut behind her. Waves of guilt fought to overpower the giddy feeling in her core, creating an entirely unpleasant ride of emotions that she hated every single time Father caught her before she left.

"Where to, Young Miss?" Fergus politely asked from the driver's seat.

The words weighed heavy on her tongue for a few moments, before she swallowed her hesitation, and answered. "Downtown." She hadn't been lying earlier, she was going downtown, she just didn't intend to stay there the whole time.

The car lurched slightly as Fergus put it into drive. "Very well." Pearl stared out the window as they drove, watching the meticulously manicured lines of trees and flowers give way to much more dull foliage on the side of the highway.

She was 14 now, and had been for about two months. That had brought with it a slew of changes she was still struggling to get used to. Most prominently, was her current employment status, or the lack thereof. The Houzuki Corporation was, by technical definition, a family owned business, so up to this point Pearl had been legally able to work for them while underaged. When she turned 14, that law no longer applied, but Pearl could have been officially hired as a legitimate employee, so there was effectively no difference, sans maybe an afternoon of paperwork.

However, Pearl had chosen not to take the position her father offered. The result was that she could no longer conduct any business for the Houzuki Corporation in any capacity. Her family had not taken her decision well. Father was very clearly not pleased with her choices. He cornered her regularly to try and get her to change her mind, or get her to sit in on meetings still. Mother was seemingly more understanding, but still not exactly pleased with her choice either.

Just a year. Pearl told herself. I'm just going to take a year away from it all. I'm 14, I've still got time to pull things together afterwards. I just want a break. She didn't want to experience the same burnout that Marie had. Pearl still hadn't seen her friend since that day, and she didn't want the same thing to happen to her.

She couldn't exactly fault her parents for reacting poorly, though. As far as Pearl knew, she was the first person in the Houzuki family to outright reject the employment contract, as temporary as that rejection was going to be.

Regardless of what her parents thought, Pearl had bought herself one year. Just a single, solitary year to take some time off, and do the things that interested her. It was with that determination, she set herself a bit taller in the car's backseat, and prepared for her day in the city.

September 29, 2011

The Back Alleys of downtown Inkopolis

Over the past months, Pearl had gotten a lot better at navigating the crowds on the fringes of the commercial district. Her small stature was both a blessing and a curse in cases like this. It made it quite easy to simply slide past people, but just as often those same people plowed into her because they didn't notice her.

It was just after one such bump that she pulled the hood of her jacket up over her head, trying her hardest to avoid drawing any more attention to herself. The guy already disappeared into the crowd, barely bothering to give her a dismissive apology before vanishing. Pearl swallowed her frustration and marched on.

Out here, it was mostly locals. They were far enough from all the attractions, and big name stores from downtown that there wasn't hardly a reason for any tourists to come out here. That meant that anything she did to stick out would be remembered, and she'd already made one scene in her time here, it was best not to make another. Turns out that people didn't tend to react well when "an 'entitled rich bitch' was trying to rub elbows with all the 'poor fuckers' out here" as she'd been so kindly informed by a man three times her height and age.

In a lot of ways, she was glad for the interaction. It was nonviolent, it was quick, and it taught her a LOT in a very short amount of time. Namely, that walking around the backstreets of the city wearing clothes worth more than some people make in a year and flaunting the ignorance that brings is a very, very bad idea. Since that day, she'd gotten a lot better at keeping herself discrete, though she felt it was still pretty damn obvious she didn't quite fit in with everyone else.

Often she'd come out here just to wander, see the sights and be around people. Today though, she had a specific goal in mind, but she'd have to be fast if she wanted to make it on time. Her Father had stopped her on her way out again and that had eaten half an hour on its own. Add that to the fact that she had to hike all the way out here from the edge of downtown each and every time she wanted to visit, and it didn't leave much wiggle room for her to make it on time. With a hurry in her step, she wound her way around the people on the sidewalks, with her eyes locked on her destination in the distance: The Anchor's Shore. It was an old, beat-to-shit restaurant that'd been standing for at least 80 years and been through nearly half as many owners.

Pearl squeezed her way past a couple arguing near the doorway to make her way inside. The inside was just about as unimpressive as the outside implied. It was a long, rectangular room with booths on the walls, and tables in the middle. A small bar pushed against the kitchen at the back, and a modest stage at the front for a live band, with a group currently setting up for a show. There was a decent crowd inside, maybe two-thirds full at a glance.

"Welcome to the Anchor's Shore," an expressly bored teenager dully greeted her as she stepped inside. "Just you?"

"...Yes." Pearl agreed, trying to keep her profile down.

"Follow me." The server didn't even bother to look at her as he grabbed a menu and a bundle of silverware and walked her to a table near the back of the room.

"Could I get a seat near the stage?" Pearl asked. That's why she was here, after all, it'd be a waste to get this close only to miss most of it.

"Yeah, sure." He unceremoniously picked a table two steps from where he was standing to set her stuff at. "Your server will be with you in a moment."

Pearl frowned, but kept her head down. "Thanks."

"Uh huh." The server walked off, back to the front of the restaurant where he dropped back onto the little stool he sat on.

She waited until he wasn't looking, which took all of maybe three seconds, before grabbing the silverware and menu and walking herself a few tables closer. She sat down and turned her attention to the stage, where the four people worked to set up their equipment. Two inklings, an octoling, and a mackerel, all made up to hell, with piercings aplenty and all sporting canvas jackets. They made for a the most generic depiction of a punk that one could envision. Pearl could not be more thrilled to see them.

All things considered, The Oysters' Gems were a pretty generic group. There was a reason they were playing in random restaurants in the city, after all, but it was obvious that they had a blast with the whole process. It was that comradery, in addition to the vocal skills of the octoling guy, that really caught her attention. Seriously, he could scream in a way that enraptured Pearl's mind. The way he was able to just let the emotions rip their way from his lungs was something she doubted she'd ever get sick of.

After a bit of confusion due to her tablehopping, Pearl placed an order for something random as she watched the group soundcheck. The singer ran through a series of vocal warmups that Pearl tried her hardest to commit to memory. Then finally, right as she got her food, they launched into their first song, and Pearl was enamored.

April 13th, 2012

The Aquarium: a small, business-clientele centric cafe in the business district

This thing has to be designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. That was the only conclusion Pearl could realistically come to, after barely a half an hour of wearing her collared shirt. She did her best to hide her wandering gaze as she followed her father down the street. From where they were, she could see the edge of downtown, and more interestingly, the entrance to Fire Reef, one of the stores she'd been frequenting to get less... bothersome clothing.

"Keep up Pearl, we've not got long to get there." Father called back over his shoulder.

"The meeting isn't for another 20 minutes!" She shot back, not bothering to hide the flatness in her voice.

It was clear Father wasn't exactly pleased with her blasé response in how his shoulders hiked slightly, but he stayed silent and kept his eyes forward.

It was all because she broke her promise. She'd reassured her family, and herself, time and time again that "it's just for one year. I just need a break for one year." However, when the year came to an end, she couldn't make herself go back. The first meeting she sat in on left her feeling so restless and agitated that she walked out not even halfway into it.

This was supposed to be an easy victory for the two of them. Pearl and her father were meeting the clients at a cafe in the business district. It was a change of location, outside of the stuffy office towers and dim conference rooms, while still retaining that semi-professionalism that business thrived on. A pleasant, neutral location that appealed to both of them. All she wanted was to extend an olive branch to her father, to find some peace, or at least a middle ground for them to occupy. Her decisions were obviously weighing heavily on him, and even if the whole thing was driving her crazy... she didn't want him to feel like that.

But, despite her wants and good intentions, Pearl was finding it nightmarishly difficult to not just walk away. Agreeing to this was a mistake.

They found their way to the cafe, where they took their seats and prepared for the meeting. As they sat, waiting, Pearl could feel every. single. second. that ticked past, each one making her more restless. In times past, she and her father would pass the time with knowledge checks, logic problems, or simple conversation. Now, though, the tension between them was so thick it could trip a passing waiter.

Finally, after Pearl burned three years off her lifespan to hold still, the representatives walked into the building. It almost felt like she was being possessed, as her back straightened and a polite smile found its way onto her face. Despite her less than positive feelings on the matters at hand, Pearl had been trained very well.

"Gentlemen, hello! Glad you could make it!" Father lightly greeted, standing to shake hands with the representatives as they approached. "We appreciate you humoring us. The weather's so pleasant this time of year, and the office can get a bit drab at times."

Pearl stayed still, polite smile shining, while the pleasantries swapped back and forth. She didn't hear a word they said. She'd tune back in when her father said her name next.

"Right this way. This is my daughter, Pearl."

For a one horrible second, silence hung in the air. A part of her wanted to scream. She wanted to launch out of the chair and break the windows. She wanted to escape, she didn't want to be here, to do this.

Instead, she politely reached forward to shake their hands. "Pleasure to meet you both." She said with a smile.

October 1st, 2012

Someone's garrage

"HOUZUKI!"

Pearl cringed at having her name called out like that, but forced a smile and turned to her bandmate. "Yeah?"

"Calm it the fuck down! If you break my windows, YOU'RE gonna be the one to fix them, got it?" Chardin glared at her, his displeasure at her even being here obvious in his eyes.

"Right." She gave him a thumbs up. "I'll tone it down!" Exactly... how, though? Do I just... not scream? But that's kind of the whole thing here, I don't know. Shit, I guess I'll just... shout?

"Oookay!" Grace, the band's drummer called out. "Let's try it from the top then!" She raised her drumsticks, counting them in as Chardin readied his guitar and Beros positioned his bass. Pearl sucked in another breath, and prepared to shout her part.

Of course, the entire practice was a disaster. The drum's tempo was inconsistent, the lead guitar and bass were fighting for the spotlight, one of them was even out of tune, but nothing could compare to the biggest fuckup of the bunch. In a bid to stay quieter, Pearl tried to keep things at a reasonable level, but metal screaming didn't really pair well with volume control, so she ended up completely fumbling her lines when her throat scratched itself wrong and dried out. She'd even made a horrible choking-gurgling noise by accident in her bid to recover.

Things wound down sloppily, with each member resigning themselves to the utter failure of a performance.

Chardin was the first to recover, angerly stomping over to Pearl with a new fire in his eyes. "Mother of the tides do you not know how to be just... not fucking scream EVERYTHING?" He threw his hands in the air and aimlessly wandered backwards.

Pearl could only keep her eyes on the ground. Cod damn it.

"Alright." Grace gracelessly cut through the silence, dropping her drumsticks as she stood up. "Pearl, I don't think this is going to work."

Pearl knew it was coming, but a part of her had hoped beyond reason that it wouldn't. "Yeah." She didn't wait for another word, simply turning towards the unlocked side door, and trudging her way outside.

"Grace, I fucking told you she was a mistake from the beginning." Chardin made no effort to dampen his voice, either not knowing, or not caring that Pearl would be able to hear it through the flimsy garage door.

"I know babe. I thought that maybe she'd—"

"Well you were fucking WRONG. Now we've wasted two weeks! Two fucking weeks..."

Pearl finally got far enough away that she couldn't hear his words anymore. She walked out of the neighborhood, down the edge of the commercial district, and all the way back downtown, where Fergus was waiting for her. She'd even managed to keep the tears of frustration from flowing until she closed the car door.

February 28th, 2013

Houzuki Manor

Pearl kept her head down as she plowed through the spanning hallways of the manor. There was a good number of people home right now, between the servants, family members, and visiting guests, and Pearl didn't want to see any of them. Any encounter would inevitably lead to another lecture about responsibility and networking, as if she hadn't heard it a thousand times already. *You'd think people this smart would be able to figure out I'm avoiding them on purpose.*

Luckily, she knew these hallways quite well, so anytime she heard approaching footsteps, she was able to duck into a side room to avoid them. She'd long gotten over the delightfully bitter mix of irony that was the sheer size of the manor and the fact that she was sneaking through her own home, but it was her only real option if she wanted to do anything she wanted to. *I've had enough Business 101 lectures, thank you. Honestly, Father probably had this built in the far wing on purpose, just to screw with me.

Twenty minutes and 3 close encounters later, and Pearl managed to seclude herself in the sound-proof studio on the edge of the house. This little room had become something of her sanctuary in recent months. Nestled in among several instruments, audio equipment, and a recording booth, was a dresser loaded with her punk clothes. Beside it, piled on the floor, was a mound of turf gear. She'd been all but laughed out of the room the first time she mentioned she'd never played turf before, and she was determined to never let that happen again. Unfortunately, despite having the best weapons money could buy, there was no making up for a lack of skill.

She might enjoy the occasional sprint, but brushes were far too much. Rollers were similarly a problem, though that was more of an issue of weight than anything else. She didn't have the patience to hold a charger steady, or the aim to reliably hoist a shooter in front of her either. At best, she was making use of a slosher, and even then she was barely getting actual use out of it as much as she was wantonly splashing ink vaguely in front of her. Still, that had been good enough play that she'd managed to net two consecutive wins, so that's what she ended up sticking with. Not like I'll be doing much fighting anyway, so it's not like it matters.

For now, she was out here to avoid Father and his entourage of investors that he desperately wanted her to sit in with. To that end, she picked up the nearest bass guitar, sat herself down on the couch, and pulled out her phone to rewatch that tutorial video.

Pearl stared down the neck of the bass guitar for two hours, giving all the focus she had. Moving her hand up and down the neck was a very foreign motion, and getting it to the right place required far more precision than she was used to giving things. She tried again and again, giving her all to play the same simple rhythm as the guy in the tutorial, an eel named Neil, but she just couldn't get her fingers to cooperate with her.

At one point, she nearly threw the damn thing on the floor. Her hand clenched around the neck as tears welled in her eyes, but she caught herself. I WON'T be kicked out of another band for not doing enough. Not again! Not again... When she composed herself, she sat back down, and restarted the video.

Chapter Text

July 25th, 2013

The Anchor's Shore

The small crowd cheered as the band staggered off the stage. Pearl was the last one down, in part because her head was spinning from screaming so much, but also because she was definitely basking in the appreciation of the crowd.

This wasn't her first performance, but the feeling never got old. MudMoths, the band she'd joined, had a decent little following already. The moment she'd heard they were looking to experiment with a vocalist, she jumped at the opportunity. She was learning how to actually write lyrics, but she wasn't new to it at this point either. Still, it seemed like Fuckin' Dudes be Fuckin' Sleepin' was shaping up to be her best so far. All she needed to do really was shape up the ending, because right now she kind of just let her scream fade out into the roaring guitar.

But the crowd liked it well enough, so she was content to let the ending ride for now. She carried her mic and stand down and over to the band's table a few seats away from the stage. Someone else would be going up in a few minutes, so they needed to clear their stuff off so they could set up. Everyone exchanged high fives as they all sat down, gear pushed aside to make room for them all. Conversation was quick, but didn't last long before the next band came on.

Pearl watched with rapt attention, adoring every second of the music she got to hear. She wasn't sure how long passed before someone handed her a plastic cup with some beer in it. Pearl took it gladly, only hesitating a little before throwing it back. She was still warming up to the flavor, needing to take a few seconds to make sure she didn't send it right back up, but soon after she started to enjoy the buzz as her bandmates laughed and cheered.

There was one more band after this next one. At least, she was pretty sure. It didn't really matter in the end, since she was going to end up crashing in a motel with the rest of the band anyway. All that mattered right now was celebrating a successful show and not thinking about tomorrow.

March 9th, 2014

Meeting room inside Houzuki Co HQ

Talk talk talk talk. That's all these fucks know how to do. Pearl sulked in the back of the meeting room. Outwardly, her features were perfectly schooled into a professional disinterest, but internally she was stewing. Internally, she was dealing with a pounding headache, a lovely souvenir from her little bender last night.

How many more times am I going to let him hook me into these stupid things? I can't fucking stand it in here.

"I appreciate your cooperation Mr. Finkner, apologies for such short notice." Father smoothly greeted as he lead the older octoling towards the table.

"Its no bother Mr. Houzuki," the octoling spoke, his nasally voice grating strongly against Pearl's remaining patience. Just, shut up and sit back here for an hour. That'll get him off my ass for a few days.

"Well, we thank you anyway. It's best to keep a positive outlook on these things." Father chuckled as he sat down. It was hard to miss the punitive glance he sent towards her over his shoulder. "Now, onto the business."

Oh fuck this. Pearl shot up from her chair in the back of the room, her heel slamming on the ground in a distinctly unprofessional way. Fuck this and Fuck you. She gave her father a death glare, before wordlessly stomping out the door. She didn't stop moving, plowing past anyone in the hallways, stairways, or elevator until she was finally marching out of the front of the building and onto the streets.

The fucking GALL to give ME a side eye in the middle of that shit. I was there to shut him up, and he has the FUCKING GALL to shade me! She was nearly dead to the world as she shouldered anyone out of her way. Fucking prick taking any chance he gets to try and shame me back into being a good little girl for him. FUCK THAT! NEVER AGAIN! The crowd around her grew thicker as a copious amount of people suddenly stopped moving to stand around. Not Pearl. No shot I ever spend a damn second in another room like that ag—

"It's Inkopolis News time!"

Pearl stopped dead in her tracks. An almost sickly warmth spread down her body, making her skin feel clammy as sweat beaded on her forehead. That voice... she knew that voice. Pearl wheeled around, looking desperately for the source.

"Let's unveil the current regular battle stages!" A voice she didn't recognize shouted.

"The day's regular battle stages are Arowana Mall, and Kelp Dome!"

“I saw chips growing there the other day! I think...”

“I'm pretty sure that was just a dream, Callie.”

Callie... No, there's no way, right? Pearl slowly turned around and looked up, staggering for a moment as her head throbbed. There, on the screen, was Marie. She was older, and behaved almost anthemically to the girl she knew, but the golden eyes, lime green ink, tentacle swoop, it was all there. That was the friend Pearl hadn't seen in seven years. On the screen. Hosting the fucking news.

She's...? Multiple things raced through her mind. She was happy to see her friend doing well, incredibly well even. She was shocked to see her hosting the news, Marie never seemed like the kind to go in front of crowds either. Deeper than that though, a part of her was almost revolted to see her old friend doing so well. Marie was younger than Pearl, yet there she was with her life in order, and everything working out for her.

Pearl's dizziness returned in force. What the hell is even happening anymore? She wanted to stay where she was, to keep watching, but her body demanded her entire attention, so Pearl found herself shuffling to a side alley to spill her guts.

"Oi, watch were yer hurlin' mate. Some of us are tryin' to work down 'ere."

"Shut the hell up." Pearl snapped back. She looked over the arm she was bracing herself on the side of a building with. A lanky sea urchin with a massive head of spines glared up at her. He wore a bizarre poncho, a slew of bracelets, and Pearl didn't care enough to recognize anything else. Without waiting for him to say anything else, Pearl pushed herself off the wall and started walking further down the alleyway. The urchin guy started to say something else, but Pearl dropped a handful of coins on the ground as she trudged past. She didn't know how much she dropped, nor did she care.

She needed to get... somewhere. Not here. Pearl didn't know where she was going to go, but it needed to be dark so her head would stop fucking hurting so much.

August 30, 2014

The Koi Pond, a bar in the depths of Inkopolis' residential district

Every little sound in the bar thrummed against the inside of Pearl's skull. Despite this, she screamed with the crowd as they cheered about something. She had no fucking idea what, but she didn't really care either. The energy was good enough and the music was loud enough that she couldn't really think about anything else either.

She stumbled her way up to the bar, where a stern spider crab worked behind the counter mixing several different drinks at once. "Another!"

The bartender paused all his mixings specifically to give her a warning look. Pearl rolled her eyes and lazily pulled out 10000g and slapped it onto the counter. He averted his gaze, and returned mixing drinks. About a minute later, three fresh shots of cranberry vodka were set on the counter in front of her. She grabbed one and slammed it instantly, savoring the burn and the buzz that soon followed. With a graceless flourish, she scooped the remaining two shots into her hands, and made her way back into the crowd.

She staggered her way around the outskirts of the club, until she made it to a loveseat. Pearl flagrantly dropped onto the seat, causing the other girl on it to squeak in surprise. She was an inkling, a bit taller than Pearl, with shoulder length tentacles tied up in a bow, and a cute little face with a perpetual frown. Pearl didn't even know her name.

"Here ya go, just like I promised." Pearl held out one shot glass to her, which she slowly took.

The girl hesitated for a moment, looking Pearl up and down, before finally relenting with a smile. "Thanks." She said, while holding the glass out for a toast.

"To a great night!" Pearl cried as she sloppily tapped her glass against the girl's, before they both took their shot. They both relaxed back into the seat with a content sigh. The girl's hand found its way to Pearl's thigh a few moments later.

Pearl lazily raised an arm, feigning a yawn as she laid her arm along the girl's shoulders. When she looked over, the girl mether gaze, an inviting look in her eyes. And then her memory went fuzzy after that.

April 13th, 2015

the Sea Leaf Cafe in downtown Inkopolis

Pearl needed space. Going back into the scene was not something she wanted right now. Not after the fallout at last nights absolute disaster of a concert. Staying home was an even worse option, with Father on the prowl, hunting for any chance to lecture or scold her these days.

That was how Pearl found herself walking through the streets of downtown, trying to pass the time. She'd been out here for at least a few hours, stomping her way up and down the street, trying to find any kind of relief or reprise from the world.

Unfortunately, that proved a lot harder than she wanted. No store could hold her attention for more than a handful of minutes, and any attractions or spaces only reinforced just how isolated she felt. That eventually lead to her picking a small cafe nearly twenty minutes out of downtown, to rest her legs after her hours of walking.

"Welcome to the Sea Leaf cafe!" The server behind the counter chipperly called to her.

Pearl froze, caught completely off guard. All the cafes she'd been to before were quiet, formal places where you'd be sat by a server and then left to conduct business. She was not prepared for the open design of this place, nor to have a server yelling at her from across the building.

The server, seemingly unfazed by Pearl standing in the doorway for 30 seconds, just smiled and said "Just let me know whenever you're ready to order."

"Uh..." Pearl's eyes scanned the room, until they finally landed on the space above the counter. A massive chalkboard spanned the length of the wall, with an extensive hand-written menu on it. Small sandwiches, soups, and a few pastries, took up about a third of the menu, while coffee took up the rest. Expresso? Cappuccino? Full city roast? What does any of this mean?

"If you're not sure what to have, we have a daily special that's an absolute treat if you like chocolate." The server called, knocking Pearl out of her thoughts.

"Um... sure!" Pearl answered without thinking.

"Great! Do you want a pastry to go with that? We've got croissants, muffins, and—" the girl pauses, glancing at the case— "well, I guess that's all we have right now. You interested?"

"Um... no." Pearl's brain finally kicked back into gear, and she hastily slapped a "Thank you!" right at the end.

"Alright! That'll be one double fudge chocolate mocha, one shot of expresso, bringing your cost tooooo... 3000g even!" The server smiled, her short orange tentacles bouncing as her head moved.

Pearl hesitantly offered her card.

The server hesitated for a moment, before hopping in place as her eyebrows raised. "Right! Just a moment!" She ducked under the counter, and a few moments later, stood back up with a card processor. "Here we go! Sorry about that, we mostly get turfers in here, and you know how they always have cash in hand."

Things were kind of awkwardly quiet as Pearl scanned her card. The machine eventually beeped, showing a green light for an accepted transaction.

"Would you like your receipt?"

"...No."

"Alright!" The server violently snatched the white strip of paper the moment it spat out of the machine, balled it up, and dropped it presumably into a trash can. "You just take a seat, and I'll bring it out to you when it's done."

Pearl wordlessly walked from the counter, picking a random table to sit herself at. Small relief flooded her system immediately as she took the weight off her feet. What am I even doing? She thought as she propped her head in her hands. Walking into random stores to kill time, rather than showing my face down there again...

Cod. I didn't even mean to blow the speakers! I just got too into the moment again and I—

Her thoughts were interrupted by the lights suddenly flickering, before they shut off completely, the windows providing the only light inside. "What the?" She asked, before the lights suddenly flicked on again, though it was obvious they were dimmer than before.

A quick look out the front window revealed that, while the power was back on, the light up display across the street wasn't. That's odd. the power isn't supposed to drop tiers like that unless a Great Zapfish is off the gird. I don't remember any... eh. The exhaustion of the day quickly caught back up with her as the small excitement faded.

"Hhaaa..." She let out a deep sigh while massaging her face with the palms of her hands. What am I going to do? No chance in hell I'm wandering around downtown again tomorrow, so I guess I'm gonna have to show my face and own the damage... again. Please cod just let someone else need a voca—"

"Here you go!" The energetic voice jolted Pearl from her thoughts. The server stood at the edge of her table, with a large chocolate drink in hand.

"Thanks—" Pear squinted at the girl's nametag— "Nora."

"No problem!" Nora smiled. "Sorry about the wait, that power flash messed up the machines a bit."

"No worries." Pearl assured.

"Enjoy!" And with that Nora wandered off, leaving Pearl only with her thoughts... and a double fudge chocolate mocha.

November 3rd, 2015

Buckly Station

She knew it was coming. Pearl had known this was coming for days at this point. She saw how they whispered amongst themselves when they thought she couldn't hear. The way they looked at her, with a reluctant pity in their eyes. She'd fucked it all up. Again.

Despite this, she still walked ahead of the group with her usual bounce and swagger. It didn't do her any good to capitulate before they said anything. Besides, maybe they'll pussy out and not abandon me like everyone else has.

"Pearl," Karla, the band's bassist, quietly called to her.

Fuck. Pearl spun on the spot, using the easy motion to hide the way her body flinched at the call. She gave the group an easy, almost disinterested smile. "Wha'sup?" It wasn't hard to get a read on the situation. Karla, despite the shell covering her face, had obvious nervousness throughout her body.

Their drummer, Ryu Chang, was similarly wrought with nerves, the large koi carp nearly doubled over in hesitation. "We need to make... a decision. As a group."

"What're we talkin about then?" Pearl inspected her fingertips, glancing overtop of them at the poor carp. "we got another show conflict coming up?"

Ryu Chang floundered under her gaze. "Well... we've all been talking, uh..."

Ronnie, the band's guitarist sighed and stepped forward. "We need to part was." The largehead hairtail was the only one of the three who didn't seem nervous, more annoyed. "This won't work for much longer, and it'd be easier on all of us if we just stop it now."

It felt like the world was spinning. The space behind her eyes burned, and her legs wanted nothing more to give out from under her. But Pearl didn't let that happen. "Ha, just like that then? No apology? No thank you? Just gonna throw me to the side then like a piece of trash then."

"Pearl, no. That's not—"

"Save it Ronnie." Pearl flatly stopped him, the humor gone from her voice. She put it back in a moment later, laying on just how much she didn't care. "If that's what yall want, I'll fuck right off then!" Without waiting for a response, Pearl turned and started stomping away. She made sure her back was straight, and her pace unbothered. "You'll regret this, you know! You're fucked without me! I'm the best damn thing that ever happened to this shit band!"

They called out to her again, but Pearl didn't stop. She stormed her way right up the stairs out of the metro station and onto the street. Now away from the gazes of her ban— former bandmates— tears threatened to spill from her eyes unabated. Again, she didn't let it happen. She'd been dumped far to many times to let it affect her anymore, so she'd make sure everyone knew that.

Through the streets she wound, nearly shoving anyone in front of her out of her way, until finally she slammed her way through the front door of the Koi Pond. The irony of the name was not lost on her. She was early enough that the night scene hadn't really started yet, so the space was still thankfully quiet. She threw herself right up to the bar, thankful that Agatha was the one behind the counter today. She didn't ask questions, and hadn't needed a bribe to serve Pearl before she was old enough. When it came Pearl's turn to order, she pointed straight at the largest bottle of Mitchy Mick's whisky she could see, and gave the bartender a look so hard that she was handed the entire bottle a moment later. Without hesitation, she knocked the cork out with one hand while slapping her card onto the counter with the other. This place may be shady, but they wouldn't dare fuck with the credit card of a Houzuki.

With an unceremonious sigh, she brought her amber escape to her lips before she could feel the guilt of swinging her last name around again. The familiar burn struck her an instant later, but she didn't so much as flinch at the sensation. A third of the bottle vanished in a single chug before she slammed it back onto the counter, her head already starting to swim. In the back of her mind, that annoying, incessant part of her mind was asking questions like 'How are you going to get home?' and 'Is a pounding hangover really the thing I should be giving myself right now?'

Truthfully, she didn't care. That was the part of her that was raised to be a stuck up piece of shit people pleaser. She didn't get anything by listening to it, especially during times like now, when everything was coming apart.

In her pocket, her phone buzzed.

Somehow, each notification managed to hurt her in a different way. The family meeting would invariably draw comparisons between her bother's return and her departure. The mere thought of the future made her head spin worse than the alcohol.

The birthday one was something she'd set up years ago, when there was still something to look forward to when growing up. She'd meant to delete it but it always slipped her mind. It stood out as its own omen about the future, almost mocking her for once having things to look forward to.

The show time especially hurt. It was where she and her band— her former band— were performing next. At least, until she got fucking curbed again.

When the feelings threatened to overtake her again, she grabbed the bottle off the counter and took another deep swig. Those complex emotions and thoughts sizzled away under the scorching burn of whisky, and she couldn't be more grateful. The stress and anxiety were still there, really Pearl doubted she'd know life without them again, but the were dulled, and shoved to the back of her mind for now.

That meant she could focus on more pressing matters, like getting to tomorrow without passing out in an alleyway.

Chapter Text

November 5th, 2015

The Houzuki Ballroom

Alex said "You'll do great!" Leigh said "Ah, I'm sure you'll figure it out." Irving said "Maybe you'll come back less stinky!" Mother said "there's no reason to worry, dear." Grandmother said "Keep your wits about you and you'll do fine." Grandfather said "Keep a good head on your shoulders! Eh, she probably already said that, didn't she? Still, you'll do great!" Her aunts rained a chorus of "You got this!" "Keep your mind focused." "Don't forget what you're working for!" "You didn't hear it from me, but keep your eyes on *this* market. Keep sharp!" "You'll do something great!" While her uncles sang to the tune of "Keep your eye out for frauds!" "You've got nothing to worry about!" "Ah, no, don't stress. You'll do fine!" "Good luck!"

Her father simply said "Do not disappoint me."

For two hours, Pearl shuffled around the ballroom, drowning in the fake, overbearing optimism. Smiles and polite laughs, words of encouragement, pats on the back, shoulders, and in some cases, head overwhelmed every sense she had. The words washed over her, hardly even registering, their meanings entirely hollow.

She wasn't going to make it. Pearl knew. They knew. They all knew it. Why did they have to play pretend?

The third time she got the chance, Pearl slipped past the decorations and tucked herself in a corner, sinking down to the floor as her breath came in shallow. Her head throbbed with each pulse of her hearts, the ache burrowing directly into the center of her brain.

She wasn't going to make it. She couldn't. Pearl had nothing. She was entirely home educated, which meant she had no degrees, certifications, or diplomas to put on a resume. No tangible work experience to fall back on. no marketable skills that didn't want to make her garble saltwater until her eyes bled, and no references to call that could vouch for her. Tomorrow, she wouldn't even be able to fall back on the last name that she hated so, so much.

Overwhelmed with the party, she tipped to her side and brought her knees up to her face, trying to make herself as small as possible. Trying to hide from the suffocating fakeness around her. Trying to ignore just how bad her head hurt, and her hearts hammered, and her eyes burned. Trying to pretend for another hour, another minute that her life wasn't utterly disintegrating before her.

"There you are!"

Pearl jolted where she laid, cautiously looking up to see her older brother. She looked up to him with hollow eyes, before reluctantly pulling herself up and at least trying to get herself under control.

"Hey, David." She said, doing a very poor job of hiding the distress and melancholy in her voice.

"It's pretty stressful, huh?" He asked as he gingerly took a seat on the floor beside her. David was taller than the last time she'd seen him. His frame was thick with muscles that wouldn't ever quite match the scrawny image of her older brother she still had in her head. There was a... presence with him now. A mix of cool, self-assured confidence where once he was tepid and hesitant. His voice now rung with a deep bass that didn't sound like him, but also was entirely him.

"Yeah." is all she said back.

He wore a nice tailored jacket and slacks, with a caddy cap resting comfortably atop his well-groomed mantle. Pearl couldn't help but look down at her own outfit, a crinkled, creased turquoise dress that had spent weeks crumpled on the floor of her practice room. Atop her head sat one of her crowns, this one a dark, twisting, jagged shape that was sharp to the touch. It felt like she was playing dress up compared to him.

David offered her a light smile. "I remember the feeling. I had no idea what I was going to do at the beginning."

She gave him a sideways glance, but didn't make any effort to actually meet his eyes.

"It's not so bad, once you get started," he continued. "That first month is a bit rough, getting everything all set up, but once you get that ball rolling, it's just more of the same-old same-old."

The words did nothing to reassure Pearl. "You got lucky." She bit back, bitter tone cutting through his speech.

There was a few seconds of visible hesitation before David found himself again. "Maybe, but I was there to take advantage of it."

"Yeah, ok, sure." Pearl whipped her head up, meeting his eyes with a scornful glare. "I guess I'll just wait for the Great Zapfish to be stolen a second time! Surely it'll only be a few months, right?"

David scowled at her. "You're deliberately missing my point."

"...Maybe." Pearl couldn't help but pout like she did when she was 12. Dozens of similar interactions from the past echoed in her mind, from before David left. Melancholy prickled against her hearts at the memory of how things used to be. It made her already poor mood plummet even further.

Conversation dried up, leaving the two of them awkwardly sitting in a dark corner, hidden from their own party. Talking to David again was... strange. Seeing this strong and confident version of her brother fall into the same little idiosyncrasies as his younger self completely threw Pearl off her game. A strenuous mix of the past and the future that she just couldn't fully wrap her head around.

Logically, she knew that that was just how people worked. It'd been seven years since she'd seen her brother for more than a passing greeting during the holidays, made worse by her increasing reluctance to even go to those events recently. That was the entire point of the tradition after all, and it clearly worked out for David. Pearl, however, felt she was in a much more precarious place. Her brother changed so much in seven years just by doing the same things he had already been doing before he left. How different was she going to be? Would she even recognize herself? Would she even like herself?

Eventually, David let out a quiet sigh, and stood up again. "Keep in mind that it's not as bad as it feels. Just try your best, and you'll get there eventually." He gave her a small smile and offered a hand to help her up.

She refused.

He cocked his shoulders in a lighthearted shrug, and turned to walk away. "Oh, right, before I go. Dad's going to give his speech soon. He plans on pulling you to the front specifically to 'wish you luck' in front of everyone."

Pearl's eyes immediately darkened. "He sent you here to get me, didn't he?"

David turned away, lifting up his cap to scratch at the top of his head. "Maybe something like that. but I've not been able to spot my little sister anywhere!" He looked back long enough to give her a wink as he walked off. "I hope she turns up in time, or Dad'll lose his mind."

As he walked away, Pearl couldn't help but roll her eyes. It was reassuring to know her brother still had her back, and for a few moments, she was able to sit, feeling a bit better about the entire situation.

Until her head throbbed, at least. "Nngh.." she groaned as her vision pulsed, laying back down and covering her eyes to block out the little bit of light that reached them. Stupid fucking prick. Planning to call me out in front of everyone like that. He KNOWS I don't want to be here.

It felt like all the bad feelings she'd been able to ignore while talking with David were playing back all at once, just to make sure she regretted her night-long bender the other day. Fucking Ronnie... piece of fuckin' shit... She curled into a ball, putting her head back between her knees in an attempt to stop the world from spinning. Oh my cod I'm going to get kicked out tomorrow...

The sounds of the party swelled in her ears. All the voices, each pluck of the violin in the background, every clink of a glass or clop of a shoe echoed through her head, loud enough to bring the tears back to her eyes. It was too much, it was all too much. I can't do this! I can't!

"Everyone!" Father's voice rang throughout the ballroom, silencing all the other sounds. "Thank you all for coming out tonight. It has been a pleasure to see you all again."

Pearl's ragged breaths caught in her throat. Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck! Nononono! I'm not going in front of everyone!

"As you all know, today, we are gathered here to welcome my son, David, back into the family. Seven years ago he started his independent journey into the world to prove his mettle and his merits!"

Tears streamed down Pearl's face as she frantically scrambled upright. Tiny, horrible sounds of effort escaped her lips as she staggered to her feet.

"Stripped of all contracts, wealth, and even the Houzuki name itself, David had to fight his way through the world using only what he himself had earned. A fight, to prove he had what it takes to stand on his own!"

She nearly fell over the second she stopped to try and find the exit. There was a door not too far down the wall from where she was, but she didn't have long. If she didn't escape before her father noticed her, she'd be forced in front of everyone.

"The Houzuki family is not content to simply sit on our laurels and let the world go by! There is no 'good enough' or 'acceptable' to us! Every member must pull their weight, must push with all they have to make things better! To go further! To prove they are worthy of staying within the family, and not content to simply leech from its success!"

There wasn't time. Pearl set her shoulders and barreled towards the door halfway across the room. She tried her hardest to stay close to the wall and out of the spotlights, and if that meant muscling her way past a few family members, at this point she couldn't care less.

"It fills me with pride to say that David has proven himself." At her father's declaration, the room filled with polite, loud cheers. "I won't lie, I initially doubted his choice," Father continued. "Industrial security didn't seem like a particularly bountiful opportunity to me."

The sudden wall of sound from the cheers nearly sent Pearl back to the floor, but she managed to catch herself on the wall. She had to force herself between another cluster of family members, the tears clouding her eyes too much for her to recognize who they were.

"However! He pressed onwards, trusting his intuition, and building his corporate base. Then, when an unprecedented opportunity displayed itself, he was in the perfect position to seize it! Yes, the disappearance of the Great Zapfish was a mystery, but more than that, it was an opportunity. And quite a prosperous one at that!"

Pearl ignored the looks they gave her and the quiet calls of her name from her family as she threw herself through the open doorway out of the ballroom, back into the mansion. Her brother's voice chased her down the hallway as he gave his speech, the echoes quickly becoming too distorted to make out clearly. She tripped after taking a corner too hard, her heels sending her splaying. With a grunt, she hit the ground shoulder first, already kicking her traitorous shoes to the side as she tried desperately to preserve any momentum. Seconds later she was off the ground, now barefoot, tearing through the halls.

The door to her studio slammed open as Pearl ducked inside, the momentum so much it actually bounced off the wall and closed itself a moment later. Pearl wrestled with the dress, trying desperately to get out of the damn thing. It was choking her, suffocating her, in its pomp fakeness. She needed something different, anything would do. It didn't matter how clean or dirty, it just had to be hers. The nearest tank top and jeans were quickly donned, but that wasn't enough, so she pulled on some fingerless gloves and her combat boots as well.

She hesitated for a horrible second as her hands clasped around her crown. Without further thought, she threw it across the room, ignoring the thunk it made as it hit the wall. She couldn't wear that right now, not after she just wore it in the ballroom. Just as it hit the ground, she turned to the couch, where her phone was sitting. Opening her messages, she tapped on the top conversation: her caretaker, Fergus.

Pearl shoved the phone into her pocket and paced the room until she found her wallet. Frantically, her eyes shot across the room, not really looking for anything in particular, but determined not to miss anything all the same. They locked onto a different crown, this one much more simple and subdued in its design. The moment she had it in hand, she threw the door open again, and barreled down the halls. A few minutes later, she nearly fell down the manor's front stairs, but barely managed to avoid it by riding the momentum and unceremoniously slamming into the side of the car. There was no pause between the crash, and her peeling herself off and opening the door.

Fergus sat in the driver's seat, his posture perfect as ever. He waited for a moment, watching her in the rearview mirror. "Seatbelt, please miss."

Without thinking, she reached up and pulled the seatbelt over herself, leaning her head back into the headrest as the car started to move. There would be time to think about the consequences later, right now, she needed to get out. The fresh air of Mt. Nantai would help her get a grip, hopefully.

Chapter Text

Present Day

"Damn it!" Papers fluttered to the ground as Pearl slammed her fists on the table in frustration.

She was stuck. There wasn't a market she could actually break into, not from her current position. Everything either had a startup cost higher than she could cover, already had some form of active Houzuki influence, or needed knowledge so far beyond what she had that it was basically infeasible. There wouldn't be any cozying up to somebody with the smarts and just financing that either, since it wouldn't be "proving herself" the way her father wanted.

Across her laptop screen, a new slew of alerts flashed across the screen, giving her exactly zero helpful information. She clicked through them with barely any hope, and even that was diminishing rapidly.

With a pained and frustrated whine, she let her head fall to the table in a fit of frustration. Six mockingly familiar words stuck in her mind, the same ones that'd been tormenting her for the last week. What am I going to do?

"Uh, excuse me Miss? You dropped some of your papers." a far too chipper voice called from beside her.

Pearl despondently looked up to see one of the cafe's staff standing by her table, hand outstretched with the papers held loosely in them. Her orange tentacles were almost as bright as her smile.

She's pretty cute... If Pearl wasn't in a hellish, life-destroying, capitalist spiral, she might have tried to hit her up.

"Also, your sandwich is ready." With the other hand, the server held out a plate with the aforementioned snack, as well as a double fudge chocolate mocha with one shot of espresso.

"Thanks... Nora." Pearl read the girl's name tag and tried to give an encouraging smile as she took the items on offer. It wasn't convincing.

"Enjoy!" Nora said with a smile, before walking back towards the front counter.

A silent sigh of relief escaped Pearl as she was left on her own again. She took a few bites of the sandwich, before turning back towards her mess of a future. The next grueling hour was spent researching, thinking, planning, and then scratching out those plans as she quickly determined the impossibilities they held. Product after product, service after service, Pearl had to face down the reality that it just wasn't something she could do.

Despite nearly a week of constant, unending efforts, she had nothing to show for it. There hadn't been a moment of reprieve, or even so much as a breather since she hit the streets. It took her three days to find and move into an apartment that wouldn't rend her pockets for every spare coin she had. Three nights sleeping in a hotel stressed her precarious financial situation far more than she wanted right at the onset of this nightmare. It wasn't even pleasant either. I slept like shit all three nights. Of course, that could partially be because of the wine offered in the rooms.

Essentially, she was stuck. Every G she burned was one she wasn't getting back for some time. She had tabs on a few stock options that she expected to grow with the Great Zapfish's return, but anything she made there, barring unpredicted fantastical growth, would only be enough to keep herself alive. Every bit she spent now was less she had to startup her future with.

When it finally became too much, she shoved the papers into a notebook that looked equal parts brand new and beat-to-shit. It, and the one in her bag just like it, had been new a week ago, but the hours upon hours upon hours of increasingly desperate research had seen their pages thoroughly lashed with pen strokes. A scattering of business cards landed on the keyboard of her laptop before she slammed the lid on it, and threw it into her bag, along with the rest of her collection.

The final bites of her sandwich were unceremoniously wrapped in the wax paper they arrived in and were shoved into her pocket. Pearl grabbed the cup with her mocha and made to leave; the server girl's "come again!" echoed behind her as Pearl shouldered the door.

Acting on autopilot, Pearl reached into her pocket for her phone to text Fergus, but stopped when it was halfway up. Right. I can't. Ah. Fuck, ok. Just... I'll just get a taxi. She somehow managed to hold off the thrashing breakdown long enough to make it off the pedestrian streets and flag down a cab. Despite the mental tangent about watching every G she spent, she paid the hefty fare to be driven all the way out to Mt. Nantai. Right now, she couldn't care less.

Unsurprisingly, stomping her way down the familiar mountain path forty minutes later didn't magically make her feel any better. Even as she breathed slowly and tried to calm her nerves, she couldn't help but disparage herself for coming back out here. Two trips in a week was absurd, she had work that needed done and frankly it was a little embarrassing. Tide knew she couldn't have stayed in the city though. If she so much as looked at one more spreadsheet or business card, she would have screamed, and there was no chance she could afford to cover the cost of the damage that'd cause right now.

By the time Pearl stumbled her way off the path and onto that familiar wooden stage, all the energy had sapped from her body. She wanted to scream and shout, punch, kick, hurt— something to give these overpowering emotions an outlet. In the end, all she could do was carry herself to the middle of the stage, drop her sorry ass to the ground, and look out over the landscape.

One whole week had passed. Seven days. One hundred and sixty eight hours. Ten thousand and eighty minutes. And she'd accomplished nothing. There wasn't anything to her name, save for a rapidly vanishing sum of seed money that could only take her so far.

I don't think I can do this.

"Ohysars itsou!" ("Oh my stars it's you!")

The sudden sound nearly knocked Pearl over, which was an impressive feat considering she was already sitting down. She quickly whipped her head side to side, until she found the source of the sounds. Near the edge of the stage, an octoling stood, staring up with stars in her eyes. Pearl recognized the girl almost immediately. It was hard to forget that weird armor thing she wore, or how cute her pouty little face was when she didn't think people were looking. They'd only talked for maybe three hours a week ago, but those were the best three hours in Pearl's recent memory.

Pearl nearly called out her name right then and there, but she remembered the concepts of 'restraint' and 'manners' at the last second and clamped her jaw shut. "Marina, yeah?"

Marina nodded eagerly. "Yes! And you're Pearl!"

That's an... odd way to confirm things, but alright. "I sure am!" She smugly called back, putting her confident front up again. They both hovered awkwardly for a few moments, neither one sure how to move the conversation forward.

Surprisingly, Marina was the one to break the silence this time. "You came back!" She seemed genuinely awestruck by Pearl's presence. Her words sped up significantly as her excitement grew, though it was obvious she was at least trying on some level to slow things down. "Iantedoseeusinceattay!" ("I've wanted to see you since that day!") Her hands jumped from her lap to the air just below her chin, where they hung awkwardly, bouncing with some kind of nervous energy.

It took her a few seconds to sort out the jumble of words. "Really?" Pearl couldn't stop the word from tumbling out of her mouth the moment she'd pieced them together.

"Mmhmm!" Marina watched her eagerly for a few more seconds, before she suddenly seemed to shrink in on herself, a nervous, almost fearful look on her face.

Pearl shook her head to try and get her thoughts in order. She... wanted to see me? What's up with that? When she finally looked back at Marina, her hearts nearly did a flip when she saw the look on the octoling's face.

"Wh-Wait!!" Pearl shook her head to try and dislodge a single coherent thought. Cod, I'm absolutely falling apart. Pearl shuffled closer, trying to come off as calm. "You— I mean- augh!" Pearl grabbed her head with her hands and threw it back in frustration.

They both sat like that for several seconds, completely put out by their own words. Then, Pearl chuckled under her breath. It quickly grew louder, until her entire upper body was shaking from strenuous bouts of laughter, the shockingly jubilant sound echoing through the trees. Marina jumped, startled by the sudden onslaught of sound, but started to relax as she watched Pearl laugh herself to tears.

Finally, she started to calm down. She took measured breaths, as if afraid she'd fall back into laughter again if she wasn't careful. "Ahhaha... Sorry, I'm sorry, It's just. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing out here, but it's good to see you again, Marina. I honestly didn't think we'd get to meet again." Despite everything going on, Pearl found it strangely easy to smile right now.

Marina looked up and down, the apprehension slowly melting from her face, replaced with that excitement from earlier. "I'veenryino findouagin. In't knoenyou'd beackut—" ("I've been trying to find you again! I didn't know when you'd be back, but—") She suddenly cut off and patted her sides. A soft gasp escaped her lips as she realized something. "CanIowumting??" ("Can I show you something??")

Pearl had to stop and pick apart the mash of words that were just said to her. I see she's not gotten better about talking slowly over the past week. I'm.. pretty sure she's asking me to follow her? "Sure!"

She moved to stand, but Marina lurched forward and grabbed her hand before she could get her feet on the ground. "Com'thme!" ("Come with me!") She said as she started to run forward, dragging Pearl off the stage.

Naturally, Pearl shouted in surprise as she was pulled away, stumbling a moment while she got her feet underneath her, and she followed behind as best she could. Cod this girl is STRONG! I guess that makes sense, given she hauled herself up the side of a mountain, but DAMN. A part of her chafed against the thought of following... whatever this was going. She shouldn't have been running off into the woods, not while her life was careening over the edge of a cliff.

Thoughts could go pound sand. "Where are we going!?" She shouted forward.

Marina yelled something back, but her already jumbled words were lost in the sea of sound they were making. Regardless, whatever they were going, Marina seemed particularly eager for her to see it.

Mentally, Pearl was cataloguing her past trips up to the mountain, trying to remember if there was a cave, or a cliffside, or really any other feature in this direction that would be worthy of attention. I don't think there is... I mean, I guess there's the weird rock, but like... I dunno, maybe Marina really likes rocks? Even still, I don't think that'd be a 'drag someone through the woods' kind of thing. It could be an animal or something, but I... What.

They came to a stop just in front of a sight that completely derailed her train of thought. "Have you been sleeping here?" She asked, her words coming out slowly.

Nested in-between a small triplet of trees was something that resembled a campsite, if everything that made it comfortable or habitable was removed. There were several things wrong with the image at a glance. First, there was no tent, just a tarp, strung between the trees with vines. Not string, not rope, honest, tide-blessed vines ripped from the tree itself. There was no sleeping bag, insulation, or anything to help her keep warm. Instead, there was a long, hollowed out log with marks on it nestled between two of the trees. Between another two of the trees, the same bags Marina pulled up the mountain with her acted as a pseudo-wall, making the opening they were standing in the only way into this 'camp' facade. In the center of everything was the most brutalist-industrial looking walkie talkie Pearl had ever seen. The thing was almost literally a grey brick with a speaker on the top, small slit for a microphone on the bottom, and an antenna on top.

Marina eagerly scampered over to the hollowed out log, where she took a seat and looked up at Pearl with stars in her eyes. "Mmhmm!" She dove into an excited ramble about something as she leaned over to dig through one of her bags. Any attempt at slowing down her speech was completely drowned out by the excited babble, but even ignoring that, Pearl couldn't focus on what she was saying.

She was too busy making connections. Marina had been trying to find her. Marina was still wearing the exact same weird armor thing she was when Pearl met her a week ago. And now this... Oh cod, she's been sleeping up here, hasn't she?

"You were really sleeping out here?" Pearl asked, her voice soft.

The stream of words from Marina's mouth cut off instantly, as she looked up at Pearl with wide eyes. "Yes?" She asked, hesitation laden through the single syllable. "I-Ianteteeou—" ("I wanted to see you—")

"That's so stupid! Why would you do that!?!"

Marina flinched at the words. "But I—"

"What if it rained!?" Pearl shouted. "What if it snowed! Hell, it's November, what if the temperature went down ten degrees? What would you do then!?" She sucked in a breath, but at that moment, she could see Marina flinching with her hands over her ears. Her voice died in her throat as she processed what she was seeing. Her face flushed red as shame quickly flooded her system.

She stared for only a moment longer before dropping to her knees, ignoring the rush of pain that came with part of her leg landing on a root. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get loud like that. I forget that my voice can be that powerful, and it's really hard not screaming sometimes when everything just seems to go fucking wrong all the time and—" She stopped herself, again, before she could get any more heated. Her head fell into her hands as her mind started to race.

Tides, I'm fucking worthless. Her career was doomed— hell her entire future was doomed. She couldn't even handle a conversation with the one miraculous person who didn't seem to hate her at first glance. How the hell was she supposed to pull an entire corporate empire together when she lost her shit yelling at the only person who'd been unquestionably nice to her in months? Tears of anger pooled under her eyes, as the breakdown she'd been fighting for so long finally had finally come.

Heartbeats echoed in her ears as the world seemed to shrink. Shaking arms were barely enough to keep her from toppling onto the ground completely. She couldn't do this. There was no corporate future like she was supposed to have, nor was there any hope of her punk rock dreams. Even fucking bartenders gave her weary eyes before serving her these days. Her reputation was trashed. Her prospects were absent. There was no future for her anymore since she blew that too.

Click
"Grhh, dumting..." ('Grhh, dumb thing...") Marina grumbled under her breath. There was a few more seconds of silence, only broken by Pearl's ragged breathing, before a quiet, triumphant "Yes!"

A plucky drumbeat started, and then Marina's voice joined in with some basic chords and an odd, almost bouncy extra synth that gave the whole thing a very unique sound Pearl had never heard before. As she sang, Marina traded the melody back and forth with a single synth line, and then joined it for the chorus.

Stream of the river
[Synth]
Change to deliver, it goes, it goes
Now and forever
[Synth]
Through every moment, tearful joys and woes
Stream of the river, Change to deliver
Alight with a shiver, it goes, it goes
Now and forever, for worse or better
All of it together, life it ebbs and floooOOOOOooows

Life it ebbs and flows!

It was a quaint little song, barely 40 seconds long, and with lyrics brimming with optimism Pearl hadn't felt in years. By all accounts, this song should have been something she disliked; it was cheap, short, cheery, and tides forbid hopeful. Instead, Pearl found herself speechless.

The silence of the forest quickly engulfed the pair once more, but it was different. Her hearts still hammered in her ears, and her breathing was still coming in half-desperate bursts, but it felt like she'd been thrown a lifeline. Something she could hold onto, amidst the all-consuming grief that was destroying her life.

A minute passed, and then another, as Pearl struggled to get a hold of herself. Marina spent the entire time swapping between watching Pearl with an anxious look, and staring out into the forest, most likely trying to hide her face.

"You... made that yourself?" Pearl finally managed, her voice still laden with tears and mucus.

Marina jumped at the sudden sound. "I... Your singing from before, I really liked it." She was talking slowly again, but Pearl couldn't tell if that was because Marina was trying to make herself more understandable, or deliberately weighing each word before she spoke. "It made me want to make something too."

Pearl stared back, her eyes wide. "I inspired you?"

"Yes! You were so good, so passionate about your songs, I wanted to know what it was like." Marina's voice slowly tapered off as she spoke, her confidence waning with each word she spoke. "But I'm stilleally newomusic aniowitoterygoodutIdin'tut—" ("But I'm still really new to music and I know it doesn't sound very good but—")

"It was really good! No, Marina, that was incredible!" Pearl jumped to her feet, stepping forward to grab Marina's hand before the octoling could worry herself into a panic attack. "The melody was really catchy, and your voice sounded great! If you did all of that with that clunky little machine, I can't imagine what you could do with a full studio!"

The sudden praise seemed to catch Marina off guard, but beyond an initial jolt at first contact, she didn't shy away from Pearl's touch. "R-really?"

"Oh Yeah! I bet you could do anything you wanted!"

From there, Pearl let go of Marina's hand, and took a seat on the bench next to her. She listened intently while Marina explained what she did and how she did it to make her song. Eventually, Pearl chimed in with some of her own experience with learning music, though she was careful with the details she shared.

Before either of them knew it, they spent hours huddled in that tiny clearing, talking about music. The only reason Pearl clued into the time was because the sun caught her eye through the trees as it made its slow descent towards the horizon. Cod, how long have we been talking for? She pulled her phone out of her pocket to check the time. FIVE THIRTY?? We've been talking for over 6 hours!

Despite her shock at the time, Pearl waited until the conversation reached a comfortable lull, before finally standing up. "Be honest with me, Marina, are you going to sleep out here tonight?"

Marina looked up at her, and then turned away, trying to hide her face.

Pearl suppressed a sigh and grabbed her phone again, quickly pulling up the weather app. "Look," she said as she pushed her phone towards Marina. "There's storms coming in later this week, and they're bringing a cold front with them. You can't stay out here."

There was a reverence to the way Marina held her phone, like the device was completely foreign to her. Has she not seen a smart phone before? Pearl stood to the side, awkwardly waiting for Marina to do something with it, but her eyes seemed to glaze right over the information on the screen and stay focused on the device itself. When the screen dimmed as it was about to go to sleep, she carefully took it from Marina's hands, and explained what the app was showing.

Obvious hesitance played over Marina's face. It was clear that she wasn't keen on leaving the mountain, but Pearl was determined to keep this girl from splatting herself in the storms. "You should come back to Inkopolis with me. It'd be a good place to take stock of your situation, and restock on supplies."

"I can't— But what if they show up while I'm gone?" Marina asked, her voice lacking conviction.

Pearl frowned. "Are these the same people you've been waiting a week for already?"

Marina nodded.

"Are you sure they're coming?"

Marina nodded again, though this one was notably lacking confidence.

A sigh escaped Pearl. "Marina, you can't just stay up here until they show up. You could get hurt, or lost in the weather! Do you have a plan to deal with the storms? The snow?"

Marina's eyes lifted to the tarp, but it was obvious even she knew that wouldn't cut it. Things were tense as neither of them said another word. Conflict played out across Marina's face, cycling between an anxious, worried expression, and a more schooled, determined look.

Without warning, Marina reached forward and snatched the walkie talkie off the ground, held the button, spoke a rapid series of words into it, and waited.

...

Nearly five minutes passed with Marina sitting there, holding the silent walkie talkie. It never once buzzed, crackled, or made any indication whatsoever that there was even a second device out there to talk to. A gut wrenching well of desperation and fear built in Marina's eyes as her hope dwindled. It tore Pearl's hearts out to watch her struggle to come to terms with the silence.

Wordlessly, Marina stood and began untying the vines holding the tarp up. She slowly disassembled what little constituted her 'camp,' packing it away into the same two bags she'd hauled up the side of the mountain a week ago. Pearl almost stood to help at several points, but she chose not to, as Marina would pause seemingly at random and stare at the walkie talkie, practically begging it to say something.

When everything was finally put away, Marina robotically bent down and picked up the walkie talkie again, and pushed it into her bag. "Ok. I'll go."

Chapter Text

Marina was nervous.

She was on the surface. The real, genuine, rusting surface for star's sake! That alone would be enough to make her nervous, but there was more weighing on her mind than just that.

This wasn't a new feeling, not by any means. Not after everything that happened in the last month. Even a passing thought about how she'd betrayed the cause she'd pledged her life to, disobeyed direct orders from their leader himself, and ran away from everything she'd ever known was enough to tip herself into nausea, even now.

Marina was, or at least she had been, the Head Engineer of the Octavian military. The leader of the Department of Engineering, with hundreds of engineers under her orders. It was a position that came with more privilege and prestige than almost any other soldier would see in their lifetime. As the Head Engineer, she was beholden only to General Octavio himself, who expected her to continuously be improving things as best she could.

It started out well; she was given free reign to work on any project or idea that she saw fit. The work was hard, but fulfilling — if a little isolating. Things started to worsen as her free reign was slowly brought under wraps. At first it was just a subset of projects she had to pick from, then it was specific projects that needed work.

Then it became weapons of war. She was handed a slew of ragged blueprints, theoretical designs dubbed 'The Great Octoweapons' created before they were forced underground. She'd tried to reject the project, since only one of those could even semi-viably be made into an actual functioning machine, much less a weapon, but in the end, orders were orders. As such, Marina found herself spending well over a year creating the Octostomp, reimagining the blueprints with modern processes and techniques, designing an unmatched targeting AI to pilot the system, and even developing a new way to alloy the ancient human metal that made up the domes, allowing them to recycle it efficiently enough to use in production.

As things progressed, her work became more demanding. Soon Marina found herself sporadically skipping meals to make more time to work, a habit that became more and more prevalent as she continued. When cutting out meals wasn't getting her enough time, she started cutting sleep too. It was an exhausting process, but in the end it would all be worth it, once the project was finished.

That was, until Agent 3 began to attack the domes. It quickly became apparent that the best option to stop him would be a trap, and the ever resourceful military generals saw her upcoming weapons tests as the perfect opportunity to solve two problems at once. As such, the Octostomp's first true operations test was a battle against Agent 3, one which the inkling won. The Octostomp was completely destroyed in the process, being rendered beyond inoperable after he goaded it into smashing itself on the walls of the arena built to trap him.

Rather than accept the loss, General Octavio immediately stuck her with another project, this one magnitudes larger. Octavio wanted another weapon, one designed entirely from scratch, in a fraction of the time it took to make the Octostomp. It was an outright impossible ask, one that even the most loyal soldiers should have questioned. Marina didn't. After the Octostomp's failure, she couldn't.

So, she fell right back into the same destructive patterns as before, only now with far, far more pressure on her shoulders. She was working twenty hours a day, starving herself to the point of losing consciousness just to get more work done. In only two months of practically continuous efforts, the Octobot King was brought from a concept to a complete, functional machine capable of everything she'd promised.

Again, this creation was destined to battle Agent 3, and again, the fight turned in the inkling's favor. Marina didn't know the ultimate fate of the Octobot King, and hopefully, she never would.

If not for two people, Marina would have resigned herself to that life, ignoring her own needs and picking up whatever the next project was. She didn't need to imagine what her fate would have ultimately been had she stayed.

The first person was, ironically, the captain of the very Squidbeak Splatoon that was sending Agent 3 into the domes; Craig Cuttlefish. The old man was insistent that she needed to care for herself and fight back, even if the thought felt impossible at the time.

"Marina, ya can't keep doin this to yerself. It ain't right."

The second person was Ahato, the only friend she'd ever had. Ahato was, lightly put, a delinquent. She didn't respect the military, barely did her assigned job, and spent most of her free time producing music in an unsanctioned club called The Hollows. That same disregard for military structure also meant she was the only person Marina had ever met who didn't care that she was the Head Engineer. Unfortunately, Marina hadn't been able to separate herself from her position, which caused them to have a falling out. It was only because of her time with the Squidbeak Captain that her commitment eventually faltered, and she snuck out to reconcile with her friend.

Her doubts continued to grow, up to the fight between Octavio and the Octobot King against Agent 3. Once she saw the fight swing in Agent 3's favor, the fear and dread she felt about another project like the previous two was finally enough to push her doubts over the edge. When Ahato offered her a chance to run with the other musicians in The Hollows, she took it.

They were separated during their escape. Ahato was held back by her sister while Marina ran ahead. The memory of that moment still haunted her now. At the time, she'd been so afraid of being captured, so afraid of being chained to her position as the Head Engineer for the rest of her life, that she hadn't stopped. She later rationalized that, since The Hollows musicians were also trying to escape, Ahato had simply fallen in step with them and their journey to the surface.

It had now been ten days since Marina first saw the sky, and six of those days were spent on top of this mountain. She was up here to gather information, find the best path forward, so she could rejoin the group when they surfaced and help them in the right direction. Only, she hadn't seen any sign of them at all. She was sure she'd be able to spot them crossing the nearby plains, or that Ahato would reach out through the pair of field radios they each had half of. They were strong devices, designed to work across multiple domes, so their signals should easily travel far enough to reach her as long as they were on the surface.

Everything leading up this moment flashed before her eyes as she watched a hand extend towards her.

"Ready?" Pearl asked, giving her a crooked smile.

Marina's eyes lingered on the bag for a moment longer, before she closed them, and nodded. The first bag swung over her back, then the second landed on her shoulder as she stood up and started to follow Pearl.

"Right!" Pearl bounced on the spot, before turning and walking back into the forest. "I'll lead you down the mountain and we'll get a cab into the city. It's a bit of a drive though so I hope that's not a problem. The scenery along the highway is pretty to look at at least, until you get into the towns anyway, but that should help some."

It was hard for Marina to keep up with what Pearl was saying. Even speaking octarian, she was using too many words Marina didn't recognize. It didn't seem like she was saying anything critical at least, more like Pearl was just trying to fill the silence.

Before long, they broke through the trees onto a wide, open path going down the mountain. There was a big enough gap between the trees to see a clear slice of the sky. Marina had to fight to not lose herself staring up into the infinite blue abyss, the experience still enough to awe her after so long on the surface already. The sun sat low in the sky, but not quite enough to stain the horizon with the colors of evening yet. Off in the distance, there was a massive, gray wall hiding the sky, most likely the storm Pearl was talking about.

Seeing the oncoming storm, Marina finally had to admit to herself that Pearl was right: she couldn't stay on the mountain much longer. Her food was running low, her shelter wouldn't stand up to a storm that looked like that, and frankly, it was kind of just a sucky place to be. Even her batteries were all but dead, she'd had to wire both of them together to make sure her keyboard didn't die while Playing Ebb and Flow for Pearl earlier. If she'd only stayed one night on the mountain, she might have been able to make it to a town or something with the supplies she had, but now it was basically hopeless. With no sign of The Hollows members, Pearl was her only way out of here that didn't leave her completely ignorant of everything around her.

Even if that meant going directly into the heart of enemy territory.

The realization sent a slow chill down her spine. Marina was on the surface. The space dominated by the inklings, the enemy, that drove them underground a hundred years ago. Up until now, that hadn't been a consideration, since she was trekking through unsettled land. She'd only seen a small handful of others on the surface, all of which were inklings on the mountain trails that she'd hidden from in the forest. Pearl was the only person she'd spoken to since she escaped the domes.

With a slowly growing dread, she fixed her eyes on the back of Pearl's head. They'd spoken for a few hours at most, and it was all about music. Beyond her name, Marina didn't actually know Pearl, and now she was following her into the largest, most densely populated inkling city. What if Pearl is leading me to a trap?

The Head Engineer is a valuable asset to the domes.

What if she's a soldier, and they're trying to capture me to use me as leverage? Agent 3 saw my face during the Octostomp test... and Captain Cuttlefish very well could be back with the rest of the military by this point. Marina shook her head, trying to get a grip. No, that doesn't make sense. Why would they leave me alone up here for a week, unsupervised? At least, she assumed she was unsupervised. The thought to check for spies in the forest around her never once occurred to her. But Pearl's behavior didn't make sense then, she was screaming with so much emotion the first time I met her, and she seemed so distressed earlier... I don't know...

"Marina?" Pearl's voice came from a short distance ahead.

"O-oh, sorry!" Marina quickly jogged forward to catch up. She'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't noticed how slow she'd been walking. She quickly caught up, but her thoughts were already sliding back into the depths. She could be leading me into an ambush, as revenge for capturing their Captain. Her brow knitted in worry as she failed to rebuke the irrational thoughts. There were just too many unknowns for her to be able to come to any kind of meaningful conclusion.

The best thing she could do then would be to start eliminating variables. "Pearl?"

"What's up?" The inkling peered over her shoulder, giving her a curious look.

"Where are we going, exactly?"

Pearl stopped mid step for about a second, before she shrugged and continued forward. "I'm not sure, I was kinda gonna wing it to be honest. I guess we can plan it out a little. It's a pretty big place, so there's no shortage of stuff. Is there anywhere you're trying to get to? Ah, actually, have you ever been to a big city?"

Her mind immediately flashed to the central dome, with its tall buildings and vendors along the streets. Something told her the strict, orderly control of the military made the experience a bit different from what Pearl was talking about. "N-no, Can't say I have."

"It might be a little overwhelming then, but Inkopolis's whole like, thing is welcoming new people, so you'll be comfortable in no time!" From there, Pearl launched into a speech about some of the city's features. Marina could thankfully follow some of this one, since Pearl explained what each place did in some detail.

It was still mostly a wall of terms she didn't really follow, but from she could understand there were some key locations she wanted to look into: Multiple independent supply mega-complexes, indoor training grounds, and several dozen 'turfing' locations, presumably set up exclusively to train soldiers for the next Great Turf War. Several public recreational spaces also existed, called 'parks,' one of which was uniquely dedicated to amusement — whatever that meant — but Pearl seemed surprisingly excited about it while talking. Most interestingly were the 'museum' places, which seem to be some kind of permanent memorial displays mixed with historical research facilities. It might be useful to understand what kind of propaganda is on display up here.

The conversation died off when Pearl pulled out her pager again. That strange device left Marina feeling completely baffled. It was obviously quite powerful, much more than the pagers she was familiar with. Image display capabilities, full color display, and touch-based controls alone were downright revolutionary. More interesting was the fact that Pearl had requested information, and received it practically instantly from whoever was on the other end.

Any more progress down that line of thought was absolutely stalled when Pearl brought the pager to her ear and started talking into it. It's a field radio as well? It had to be, Marina could hear the other voice coming through, even if she couldn't understand it beyond the language barrier. How powerful is that thing? It has to be some kind of elite technology.

She didn't get long to muse on the implications of that either, since Pearl lowered the pager from her ear and looked back towards her. "Sorry bout that. I wanted to make sure we had a cab waiting for us at the end of the trail."

"It's alright," Marina answered automatically. What exactly am I being led towards? It was the perfect opportunity for an ambush, especially if they knew where she was in advance. Again, Marina shook her head, trying to dislodge the thought. That's completely illogical. Why would they wait until now to capture me? Why would they have Pearl explicitly call them where I could see her?

"What did you say was waiting for us?"

"Hmm?" Pearl looked over her shoulder again. "Did you ask something?"

"You said something was waiting for us? I didn't, uh, hear what you said it was..."

Pearl fully spun so she was walking backwards. "Oh! No worries, just a cab. We're a fair bit from the city so I had to call it out specifically." There was a pause, during which Marina must have made some kind of face, because Pearl quickly asked her "Have you ever taken a cab before?"

Marina shook her head.

"Damn, you must've come from a small ass town then." Pearl gave her a smirk and a shrug. "You don't have to answer that, I'm just givin you a hard time. A cab is like —" She paused, clearly thinking over her words. "It's like a bus, but it's only for your group and they'll drive you anywhere you tell them to, but it costs a lot more."

"I see..." Marina nodded slowly. She still didn't really get it, but it was enough to give her a picture. 'Driving' obviously referred to a vehicle of some kind, and she'd seen several of the old human buses that were clustered in one of the far domes, among the excavators and similar heavy equipment. It stood to reason then, that she could expect something akin to the transport trucks were frequently used around the domes before her flooders revolutionized transport. A large, imposing vehicle, with a reinforced cab, six tires, and a large, covered back side with benches along the sides for passengers.

When they finally finished their trek down the mountain, Marina did not see a massive military truck waiting for them. Instead, she saw a small, short, thin little four wheel vehicle that was painted a stark, almost obnoxiously bright yellow color. A checkerboard of black squares drew stylized lines along the side, framing large bold text in the inkling language, and a small light sat on the top, also bearing text she couldn't read.

"I know it ain't exactly the lap of luxury, but it's not too bad. Plus these guys have a privacy screen so we don't have to make small talk with the driver." Pearl grabbed the door handle, pulled it open and got inside. She wriggled her way across the semi-connected seats in the back until she settled into the spot further from the door. Marina hesitated for a moment before carefully lowering herself into the seat, and gently pulling the door closed after her.

A gruff voice suddenly called from the front of the cab, grumbling angry words she couldn't understand. Marina practically jolted into the floor in surprise.

Pearl immediately snapped something back with a fierce scowl on display, before slamming a small plastic screen between the front and back shut. She took a moment to massage her face, smoothing it out before turning towards Marina with a much more calm look. "You need to kinda, like—" She jerked her arm back as she spoke, vaguely demonstrating what she was saying— "Slam the door closed so that it latches properly."

"I-I see..." Marina muttered as she fumbled with the door handle for a moment. After finding the latch she needed to pull outwards, she pulled the door closed with a lot more force, and a moment later they started to move.

Marina found herself folding her hands in her lap and leaning forward to try and alleviate the sudden tensions she felt. This vehicle could seat maybe 5 people counting the driver, and could be called on command. That couldn't possibly be the best way to do things, it was just inefficient at scale. The only people who ever got something like that in the domes were the generals, and me I suppose, and that was only because our work was important enough to justify the need for haste. Even then, they still had to use the same trucks as the rest of the military for that.

"Oh, Marina, you need to put your seatbelt on too." Pearl gestured to a small belt on the side of the cab, right next to the door. Marina's eyes snapped from the belt back to Pearl, tracing the inkling's own belt across her body, eventually finding the clasp on the other side of the seat. She quickly pulled her own belt until it did the same thing, and then gave a nervous smile as a reassurance.

In her mind, a thousand worries circled around several thousand more. All of them were ultimately the same fundamental problem she'd been fighting since she watched the giant metal fist slam directly into General Octavio: she didn't know. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know what was safe and what wasn't. She didn't know if people knew who she was. She didn't know if it was better for her if they did or didn't. She didn't know the language of the surface, or how to navigate it, or even if there was anything up here she could trust. She didn't know where her friends were, or if they even made it out of the domes to begin with.

Marina didn't know. She didn't know what she was doing, where she was going, or how she was even going to survive. And that terrified her. But what other choice did she have? The mountain was bust, and she couldn't go back to the domes by this point even if she wanted to.

Everything she knew, right now, pointed towards Pearl. Marina's eyes slowly shifted until she was watching the inkling, who was lazily tapping away at something on her pager. There was a lot more that she didn't know about Pearl than she did. For instance, she had both the most advanced pager Marina had ever seen, and could call vehicles designed for personal use on command. This all implied some level of elite status at the very least. Of and for what, Marina couldn't say, but it was clear that Pearl was at least a few ranks above the common soldiers. If she had people like this driver, and then the person on the other end of her pager waiting around for her, it could be even more than she thinks. Why such a powerful person would even notice her, much less go out of her way to spend time with her made no sense.

It didn't, unless they knew who she was. The Head Engineer was a powerful position after all, it made sense they'd want to get their hands on her. It was practically a given that the military intelligence knew who she was at the absolute minimum. Now, here was someone she suspected was an elite leading her into the heart of inkling territory. Someone who could flawlessly speak octarian, just like the Squidbeak Captain could. Was it really such a wild theory that she was being led into a trap?

But again, Pearl threw a wrench into that idea too. Pearl wasn't fit to be a soldier, not by any stretch of the imagination. She was puffing slightly after walking downhill for rust's sake. Pearl was emotionally... inconsistent, with the screaming before they first met, and the breakdown at her base site just a bit ago, behavior absolutely unbecoming of an officer of any rank. Pearl didn't seem particularly observant either. She hadn't heard Marina's approach until she was directly spoken to, and it took her several seconds to find Marina after that.

Perhaps Pearl isn't a military commander then, but something akin to the Head Agriculturist? Responsible for overseeing and understanding something other than combat? That was plausible, but it still didn't feel right.

The thing that kept throwing Marina off more than anything else was that Pearl had been so nice to her. Despite her clear emotional distress at several points, Pearl had still tried her best to be conscious of Marina's conditions. Pearl hadn't pushed for more information about her background, or been evasive when answering any of Marina's questions. At multiple times, Pearl seemed genuinely surprised when she didn't know certain surface things, which didn't make sense if Pearl knew who she was.

Again, Marina didn't know, and that frustrated her to no end.

A hand gently landed on her shoulder. "Hey, Marina?"

Her entire body jolted in surprise, making Pearl jump in response. Marina quickly tried to play it off, looking back with what she hoped was a convincing smile. "Yes?"

"Sorry... I didn't mean to knock you out of your thoughts like that. I just wanted to let you know that we're approaching the city here in a second."

"Oh, uh, thanks." Marina didn't really know what else to say, so after an awkward pause, and a probably even more awkward smile, she turned away to try and escape the non-conversation. She let out an involuntary gasp as her gaze swept out the window.

Inkopolis. It consumed her entire field of view in the same way the plains did. It just kept going further than she could see in all directions, unstopped by any walls or screens. An uncountable number of buildings were speckled across the landscape, somehow simultaneously each distinctly independent, and yet part of the same unending sea that sprawled before her. Hundreds of them rose above the others, each one a different height and shape. Among even those, a handful still towered above the others, scratching so high it made Marina's head spin just trying to imagine what that would be like at ground level. More colors than she knew even existed danced, flashed, and sparkled across her vision with an exuberance unmatched by anything she'd ever seen before.

More than that, Marina could see the ocean. Up on the mountain, she was able to see the water around the city, but this was... this was something else. It surged forward, claiming everything in the distance in the exact way the city didn't. Open. Unending. Infinite. It was like the end of the world, perpetually just a step out of reach. The setting sun baked the sky with a seamless blend of orange and magenta, slowly dipping itself deeper into the infinite ocean and leaving an ever growing darkness in its wake. On the mountain, she'd seen the sunset before, but it wasn't like... this.

She hardly registered as they drove over a bridge. A distant part of her longed to obsess over the structure and construction of such a massive landmark, but Marina couldn't tear her eyes away from the twin sights ahead of her. She didn't know what to think anymore. She stared, awestruck, for as long as she could before their vehicle's path hid the scenery from her. It felt like she was returning to her own body at that moment, and she hadn't even realized she'd left.

Ultimately, Marina didn't know what was coming, but she still had to choose how she was going to go forward all the same. With hesitance, bolstered by awe-inspired confidence, she turned back to Pearl. "...Thank you." She finally managed.

Pearl smiled at her, and for the first time on the surface, Marina felt something akin to relief. "It's no problem. Welcome to Inkopolis!"

Chapter Text

"So," Pearl started as they pulled into the city. "Inkopolis is roughly divided up into districts, but you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who agrees where they start and end."

I guess that makes sense? They don't have the edges of the domes to separate things. Marina listened closely, trying her best to internalize as much information as she could.

"Right now, we're coming in from the backside of the city, so we're entering through the warehouse district. The sights ain't gonna be all that until we get near downtown, unfortunately, but that's what we get for coming from the mountain." She leaned back in her seat and shrugged as she spoke. "Anyway, warehouses. Yeah. That's kinda all there is out here. It's the backbone that keeps everything supplied within the city, but that doesn't make it exciting.

Indeed, just outside were countless spanning rows of storage facilities, each with a slightly different shape and color palette. There's got to be more depots in a single row than the domes had combined, and there's so many rows... The sheer scale of the city's excess storage caused her stomach to drop. When coupled with the sheer size of the city, it sent a chill down her spine that she couldn't shake.

"Um, Pearl?" It took a surprising amount of focus to keep her words slow. "How many ink-er, people live in the city?" She tried to hide the worry in her voice, but it was clear she was doing a very poor job of it.

Pearl thought for a moment, her face falling into a thoughtful scowl, before lifting back up. "It's something like 10 million? Might be more, I'm not sure. It's hard to pin it down since so many people keep showing..."

The rest of Pearl's words faded into the background as Marina felt the transport's wall close in around her. 10 million? 10 MILLION INKLINGS?? The world spun as Marina struggled to wrap her head around the number. Stars above, I don't— I can't— Everything— every plan, strategy, or rust, every idea they'd ever had about the surface was intrinsically doomed to fail. Every invention she'd come up with wouldn't be able to win them the war, even if they were all used in tandem. 10 million. 10 MILLION inklings. The already impossibly large city swelled in her mind, big enough to swallow her whole.

"Hey! Marina! Hello? Are you ok!?"

The real world returned to Marina in waves. Her vision came back first, slowly coming into back focus. Pearl was in the center of her vision, about halfway onto her lap. She had a mixture of a grimace and panic hidden poorly behind a more subdued, but still worried, look. Then Marina felt the weight in her hand, and realized that Pearl was holding it, or more accurately, Marina was crushing Pearl's hand with a grip so tight her claws were digging into Pearl's left arm. Pearl's right arm was against the side of her head, softly locking it into place.

"Sorry!" Pearl pulled her arm back and moved to give Marina some space. "You started freaking out right as you looked out the window, so I... tilted your head away? I didn't mean to hurt you— I didn't hurt you, did I?" Pearl cleared her throat, and cleared her throat before continuing with a half-hidden grimace. "Anyway, sorry. I didn't know you had a thing about crowds. I would have worded that better if I did."

Marina's head was still swimming. Heartbeats still echoed in her ears, and her breathing was still on the frantic side of things, but Marina could feel herself calming down. Enough that she could respond at least. "Not crowds. It's uh..." NO! Marina's mouth clamped shut before she could say anything else. She was NOT going to expose herself like that.

"Hey, no worries! You don't have to justify anything." Pearl was quick to fall back into the confident demeanor from before. "But could you, uh..." Pearl weakly shook the arm that Marina still had locked in a death grip.

"OH!" Marina mechanically forced her fingers to release their prey, each one unlatching like the clasp of a storage crate. "Gosh I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that I wasn't thinking and I—"

Visible relief flooded Pearl's face as she held up a hand. "I didn't catch a word of that, but I think I got the gist. Don't worry Marina, I know you didn't mean it. If it's any consolation, only a fraction of the people will ever be outside at a time, so the crowds aren't as horrible as you're thinking. But I can uh, I can stop talking about the city if you'd rather. I can't imagine it's helping any..."

"No!" Marina squeaked before she could think. "Keep going! I want to know."

Pearl eyed her, hesitant. "Are you sure?"

Marina nodded slowly, trying to get her breathing under control. "I want to know more."

"Well, alright. So, we're about on the edge of the warehouses now. It sits right up against two other districts, the first one being the Harbor. You can't really see it here, but it's a pretty big area since it runs along the entire bay. Lots of shipping vessels, cruises, and other big ass boats like that, but it also catches all the buildings on the edge that do the work to run them. That's why you'll see people arguing about where exactly the line actually is. Half of the warehouses back there are purely to hold the stuff the ships bring in."

Through the window, the wide, plain storage depots gave way to increasingly tall, fancy looking buildings. Marina didn't need any cultural context to figure out that a lot of the buildings away from the edge were not meant to be visited by common soldiers.

"Now we're in the business district." There was a sudden venom in Pearl's voice that Marina hadn't been expecting. "This is where all the boring shit is. Corporate headquarters, venture capital, startups, all that shit. There's literally nothing of worth here unless you're a damn pencil pusher, so don't bother if you can help it. If you want to go anywhere, I'd say go downtown..."

Marina nodded again, trying to keep her focus on Pearl's words, but her attention was forcibly pulled away by the sight of a second yellow transport stopped on the side of the road. A tall inkling, dressed in a bizarre gray form fitting robe with a red stripe down the upper center waved towards the second transport before climbing into its back seat. As it turned away, Marina looked back out the front window, a much more harrowing realization suddenly weighing on her mind.

There were a dozen yellow transports on the roads ahead of them. More than that, though, there were hundreds of other individual transport vehicles that weren't yellow. She'd seen them on the roads as they travelled to the city, but she'd been too preoccupied with other revelations to realize that's what they were. Ice clawed its way up her veins as she really noticed the city's infrastructure for the first time. There were roads everywhere. There were places they intersected, places they overlapped, with one going above another using bridges, and there were even sections that seemingly existed only to connect one road to another.

Personal transport wasn't an exclusive privilege.

It makes sense, actually. The part of her mind that wasn't left stunned tried to rationalize. With how large the city is, and 10... A chill slowly drug itself up her spine. ...And 10 million inklings... it makes sense their standards of transport would be different. Right, yeah. With the lid barely closed on that crisis, she turned her attention back to Pearl, who had been talking this entire time.

"...really not much to that edge of the city. I mean, there's some attractions there and stuff, but unless you live there it's not really worth it. Let's see... uhh, there's Historic Inkopolis, I guess. It's pretty much just old buildings and noise regulations. The residential section, which is just a bunch of apartments, hmm... No I guess that's kinda it, at least for an overview. Pretty cool right?"

"Uh... It's a lot." Marina found herself unconsciously wringing her hands. There was so, so much, and nothing was what she'd thought it'd be. She only just barely managed to keep her thoughts from derailing entirely. I just have to get through this. I can contemplate everything later.

"It sure is, isn't it?" Pearl leaned back in her chair with one hand behind her head.

Marina hesitated for a few moments before asking, "Where are you taking me...?"

"I was gonna drop you off at a hotel near the Plaza downtown." Pearl answered with the same casual, slightly indifferent tone she'd been using most of the day. She was probably telling the truth, or she was incredibly practiced with lying.

"A... hovel? A-and could you explain the downward town again?" She asked, the unfamiliar words sloppily tumbling off her tongue.

Pearl gave her a curious glance. "Downtown is just like, where everything is. All the turf lobbies, the best restaurants, all the shops and museums and stuff I was telling you about are there. Mostly, at least. It's the 'center' of the city, so it's where the majority of people visiting end up."

The surface's equivalent of the Central Dome. That was critical information she'd missed the first time. Does that mean their Generals are there too?

"And the, what did you call them, hovels? That's pretty funny, maybe if you get a cheap one, but I wouldn't do that to ya. A good night's sleep off the ground would do you a lot of good I think. Seriously, that could NOT have been comfy." Marina must have had a look on her face, because Pearl quickly tacked a question onto her words. "Do you know what a hotel is?"

Marina slowly shook her head.

"Do you know what a motel is?"

Again, Marina shook her head, even slower this time.

"Ok, that one's on me since they're kind of the same thing, and if you didn't know you wouldn't— anyway, ok. A motel is just like, a room you pay for to spend the night in. A lot of people use them when traveling, so they don't have to drive overnight, or so they can spend several days somewhere. And a hotel is just a fancier version of that, usually with nicer rooms, a wait staff, and other shit like breakfast or complementary soaps."

The barrage of words gave Marina pause. Pearl sure can fill the silence, does she ever need to breathe? Still, it sounds like she's getting me a barracks to sleep in? Or I guess she said it was fancy, so maybe more like the civilian apartments then? It took her a few moments to remember that she'd also had an apartment in the domes, but her work kept her so busy that she'd hardly been there in at least two years.

"I hope it's not too much of a bother..." She finally said, after figuring out what it was Pearl was trying to do for her.

"Nah, it'll be fine, I'm loaded. I'm gonna welcome you to Inkopolis in style baby, and get you some nights at The Sea Suite!" Pearl threw her hands in the air as she announced the last part, only to pause and pull them back down. "Actually..."

Without explaining anything, she suddenly leaned forward and moved the plastic divider that separated the front and the back. She said something to the driver in Inklish, to which he barked something back. Pearl huffed, then replied tersely before shutting the divider again.

"What was that?"

We're gonna go to a different place, one that's a lot less crowded to get you some breathing room. It's just as nice though, so don't worry about that. It's also a lot closer so we should be there pretty quickly."

The next few minutes passed in a blur of colors and buildings. Marina watched out the windows as the towering structures came and went; each one adorned with its own unique flashing sign or large text display she couldn't read. Dozens more yellow transports crossed her vision, nested among hundreds of other personal transports. Everything around them seemed to glow brighter as they drove deeper, as if the city was collectively working to spite the very concept of nighttime.

Through it all, there was one thing her eyes kept coming back to: the crowds along the sides of the street. Clusters of inklings, all shuffling one way or another. They were talking, laughing, yelling, and dancing around each other as they walked. It all looked so... so normal.

It reminded her of the very first night she'd disregarded her Head Engineer responsibilities. She'd ended up huddled in a side alleyway near the cafeteria, trying to keep herself from being overwhelmed. The memory that stuck out so much was watching the soldiers. How they talked, laughed, yelled, and... danced around each other as they walked.

She didn't know what to think anymore.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the inklings jump into the air, and— and are those suckers on the outside of his tentacles? Marina's head whipped back to look, but he was already lost in the blend of the crowd. No, surely not. It was just because she'd been thinking about the domes. Confirmation bias, and maybe a bit of homesickness. That was all.

Marina fell deep enough into her thoughts that it actually caught her off guard when they turned off the road they'd been on for so long. The transport's sudden deceleration brought her back into her body as she looked around out the windows. They were stopped at one of the multicolored lights, and she could still see the road they were on just a moment ago above them. She watched it as long as she could, until they turned down another road, and got lost in a maze of different buildings.

These ones were different from the ones before. These were shorter, and more decorated. They still towered high into the air, well beyond Marina's limited line of sight in the transport. They continued this way for a while, until suddenly turning towards one of the buildings at random. A few moments later, the transport stopped, and the driver slid the hatch open as he said something in Inklish. He hoisted a small glowing device with a bright screen through, with flashing lights alongside a small gap in the side. Pearl scowled, but pulled a small plastic card out of her pocket and swiped it through the gap before grumbling and putting the card away. The moment it played a little chime, and Pearl threw her door open and climbed out, slamming it shut with much more force than was necessary. Marina hesitantly did the same, though she used much less force.

Marina looked around to get her bearings, but found herself quickly transfixed by the environment. A building rose into the sky, stark white with accents of blue spaced around it, towering so high it gave her vertigo trying to see the top. Spotlights shone from somewhere on the ground, highlighting the building, and the plants around it. There had to be hundreds of flower species she'd never seen before, all aligned neatly in rows. Large squares of leaves lined the walkway towards a covered awning leading to two imposingly large glass doors.

She only knocked herself from her stupor when Pearl walked into her view, nonchalantly walking towards the doors like this wasn't the most extravagant building she'd ever seen. Marina shook her head as she walked forward, giving up on trying to get her bearings at this point.

"Here we are!" Pearl announced as she pulled one of the doors open. To the side, someone Marina could only assume was some kind of guard or keeper bristled as Pearl waved him off. "Come on inside Marina, it's time to get you off your feet."

Marina tepidly stepped past Pearl into the building, which was no less extravagant than the outside. The same pristine white and blue coloration continued inside, swirling around various display pieces. In a funny way, Marina appreciated the simplicity of it all. After seeing so many strange and new things, a uniform appearance was a welcome break, even if it too was foreign to her. Bizarre water displays, enshrined ink drawings, and large statues were all neatly scattered around the room, interwoven with cushioned chairs of different sizes. At the head of it all was a long desk framed by two curving, golden staircases, with silver elevator doors next to each one. Behind the desk, an employee wearing a similar kind of form-fitting robe stood patiently, waiting for their ap—

Marina stopped dead. The attendant was—

She was—

An... an octoling.

An octoling. Like her.

What?

The attendant called out to Pearl in perfect inklish, to which Pearl responded readily.

Marina still hadn't moved. She watched the exchange, completely numb to everything else in the world. An Octoling... up here?

Pearl said a few more words, before turning and gesturing backwards. She clearly hadn't seen Marina stop, because her eyebrows raised when she looked back. "Huh? Marina, are you ok?"

She tried to force out a yes, but she couldn't find her voice. Pearl seemed satisfied with the faint nod she managed at least.

"Oh, you speak Octarian!" The attendant turned to her with a smile. "Sorry, I should have realized!" She spoke slowly, like Pearl and the Squidbeak Captain did. There was undoubtedly an accent in her speech as well, much more pronounced than Pearl's.

Marina stared blankly while the attendant happily clicked away at something on the desk. Pearl mumbled something to her, which made the attendant nod quickly. "Oh! Apologies if I came on a little strong, my Octarian is pretty rusty, and I haven't been home in a few years to brush up."

Nothing made sense anymore. "...Home?" Marina managed, her voice shaky.

"Yeah, my dad's family is up near Ivory Falls in Octolis, but my mom's native born Inkadian." The attendant shrugged before handing a plastic card to Pearl.

At this point, Marina was simply incapable of taking on more information. She was tired, overwhelmed, and had had her understanding of the world obliterated at least three times. She didn't have a response for the attendant other than another nod.

Pearl walked up to her, and gently grabbed one of her hands. "Sorry, she's pretty overwhelmed right now. First time in the big city and all. C'mon Marina, let's get you to your room."

"Oh tides, sorry! I didn't mean to overwhelm you! I love your outfit by the way, I've not seen anyone pull off armor before! It's crazy fresh. Anyway, rest well, and let us know if you need anything!" The attendant waved as Marina was led towards one of the elevators.

Her mind was an absolute mess of disjointed thoughts and confusion. She barely even recognized the comment about her armor, since more pressing thoughts drowned out everything else. There's an octoling on the surface. She has family on the surface. There's— she shouldn't... weren't we all forced underground after the war?

Thoughts continued to swim as Pearl pulled her down the hallway. She numbly mimicked Pearl's instructions with the plastic card— the keycard, apparently— on one of the doors, opening it when she felt the click of the lock unlatching.

Again, the space was overwhelmingly more than she'd ever seen before, but she couldn't bring herself to process anything more than she needed to navigate. Pearl pointed her towards the bed, and stayed to talk a bit longer, but Marina was too out of it to really engage.

Eventually Pearl left with a quiet goodbye and a promise to meet up again soon, leaving Marina alone in the room. She finally remembered the bags she was carrying, dropping them to the floor exactly where she stood. A part of her was impressed she'd managed to keep up with them throughout the day despite her mind being so occupied.

10 million inklings. Octolings on the surface. Everyone has their own transports. There were octolings on the surface. A single city larger than the domes combined. How were there octolings on the surface? Pagers with full color image support.

As her thoughts overwhelmed her, Marina dropped onto the bed Pearl had pulled her to. A sudden soreness flooded her body, momentarily interrupting her every thought. Stars, this bed is comfortable... It was what she imagined a cloud would feel like: infinitely soft with just enough pushback to keep her from falling through. The pillows made it feel like her head was flying, while the warm embrace of the heavy blankets gently held her to the ground, cocooning her from the cold of the room.

There was a lot she had to think about. More than she could have ever guessed, but she was so rusting tired all of the sudden. Maybe she could just rest, and sort everything out later. That... that sounds... good........

Pearl huffed to herself as she stomped out of the front lobby. One hundred and sixty eight thousand, five hundred and twelve G for 5 nights a room. One hundred. And sixty eight. THOUSAND. And then there was the fucking mountain of G she'd left on the desk for Marina to find when she woke up. Sweet Mother of the Tides her finances were fucked enough without her throwing double digit percentages of it at a random women she met on the mountain.

At least that scumbag taxi driver actually waited for her, so that was something. Pearl lazily threw herself into the backseat, and met the prick's eyes in the rearview.

"Where to miss?" He asked, voice neutral.

"Sherman Roe." She deadpanned.

The driver paused, looking between her and the Nantai Lodge, his eyes narrowing.

"Hey, I didn't call you to sit there and judge me, shut the fuck up and drive." Pearl barked.

The driver shrugged. "That'll run you thereabouts nine thousand G."

Fuck me I already forgot about the taxi fee. "Whatever." Getting to and from the damn mountain was a flagrant expense in its own right. "Fuck me." She mumbled to herself as she watched the city pass through the window. The bright, clean buildings soon gave way to the more mundane, weathered but sturdy look of the residential district. That soon gave way to the desolate appearance of The Edge.

It was probably the most worn down area of the city. Nestled right between the low-income housing, and the noisiest edge of the warehouse district, it did not make for a good, or even particularly safe place to live. However, you got you paid for, and Pearl was not paying much to get an apartment in the area. It hadn't been an easy decision to make, but if she wanted any chance at getting something off the ground, she needed every G she could spare. Unfortunately, she made that decision before realizing that she didn't actually have anything to get off the ground in the first place.

She wasn't ever going to die out here on her own, at least. She had been smart enough to secretly throw some money onto the stock market before she was kicked out, and could draw that out any time, but that was a one-time thing. In the absolute worse case scenario, she could get a job, but that was essentially admitting defeat, and accepting that she'd never make it back. Her legacy would be forever cemented at the Houzuki family's most brazen dropout; a stain on the record books and the scorn of the world.

With a final begrudging swipe of her card and the loss of nine thousand G, Pearl exited the taxi. She flipped the driver off once he'd started to pull away, and made her way up the stairs on the side of the building into her flat. The building itself was piss ugly. The cheap, white plastic had long since faded and embrittled, more dirt than anything at this point. The stairs wobbled and threatened to make her renew her tetanus shot each time she climbed them, and the walls might as well have been tissue paper with how damn thin they were. She was sure if the tried to open the window any more than a quarter, the entire thing would fall off the face of the building.

The inside was somehow worse, but at least that was Pearl's fault. Dozens of pages were scattered around the floor, on the table, counters, and even pinned to the walls. Three consecutive, 18 hour days of work, trying to find something she could bring herself to do, all of it ultimately worthless. She'd vainly hoped that a change of scenery would have helped, hence her visit to the Sea Leaf cafe that morning, but it had been just as fruitless as she had feared it would be.

She sloppily slung her bag from the morning into the corner, wincing as she remembered that her laptop was in there. Fuck it. I'll check in the morning. She kicked her way into the kitchen, knocking empty beer cans out of the way as she beelined towards the fridge to grab another. She couldn't afford to hit up the bars she so desperately wanted to, so she'd had to make due with a cheaper, much more boring alternative.

The cheap drink washed down her throat, the foamy bitter taste doing nothing to soothe her worries. With what little care she could muster, Pearl peeled her outer layers off, tossed her crown onto the nightstand beside her, and threw herself onto the bed.

The mattress was hard, cold, and resistant to any attempt she made to change that. Her pillow might as well have been a brick, and the sheet she tugged over herself wouldn't have blocked the wind of a glowfly's wings. But fuck, running up and down a mountain will leave anyone tired. I'll have to figure all this shit out tomorrow. I'm running out of time...

Chapter Text

Waking up was not an easy feat for Marina. Every time she tried, a new, unique wave of exhaustion washed over her, and the bed only seemed to get more comfortable each time. Eventually, though, she did manage to escape the cloud-like clutches of the blankets, though she only did so reluctantly. Even through the half-sleep morning haze, she could tell that she had desperately needed the sleep. Actually feeling rested for even a moment was a luxury she wouldn't have dared to dream of before. As such, the languid soreness from such a deep rest, (and from sleeping in her armor,) wasn't enough to dampen the quiet, pleasant hum in the back of her mind.

She slowly bustled around the room, familiarizing herself with the white and blue decor. It was a surprisingly massive space, the main room alone was easily the size of two or three residential apartments underground. Tiny decorations of little creatures mixed comfortably in with other decorations she didn't recognize, making the whole space feel a kind of... relaxed she wasn't used to. It felt like each little nook had something fun or unique to find, and she busied herself for far longer than she intended looking for them.

What she didn't find, was any food she could access. All the cabinets were empty, and while Marina was mostly sure the inklings weren't plotting to kill her, she still wasn't quite comfortable with drinking from bottles crossed with labels she couldn't read. With all the cabinets explored, she wandered over to her bags, and pulled her final ration bar out. A bottle of water came out with it, one she'd filled at the river on the mountain. Together, it made for the same plain, but sufficient, breakfast she'd grown familiar with over the past week. 

With food sorted, it was time to finally try to figure, well, really anything out. The thing she needed most was information, given that she knew basically nothing about the surface. Unfortunately, gathering said information appeared far easier said than done. given just how deep she'd fallen into Inkling territory. Given this, she decided that the bigger questions like, "What do I do now?" and "Am I still being watched by the Inkling Military?" would have to wait until she solved some of the simpler ones, such as "Where exactly am I?" and "What time is it?"

For the latter, she remembered spotting something earlier that could help. She clamored around her room until she found a small device that she was pretty confident was a clock. It used the same seven-segment display technology to show numbers that she was familiar with. The only point against it being a clock, was the fact that it currently read 1:27, despite the sun quite obviously being out and visible through the window. 0200 implies it's early in the morning, but since it's clearly not... maybe the inklings restart their hour count at midday rather than midnight? Or, I suppose the clock could also be broken... She looked around the room, specifically noting the cleanliness and pristine quality of everything in it. I don't know how likely it is that a place this well kept would let a clock be broken though. 

She hesitated for a moment, flipping the small device around to inspect the sides. If I assume their time rolls over at midday, then that means it's about 14:00 right now... A glance out the window saw the sun a little past its apex, which roughly lined up with where it should be. *Yeah, alright, that leaves me with 5 or so hours of daylight? That should be enough to do some preliminary scouting at least.

Marina did feel somewhat cross with herself for sleeping so long, but there was no denying how overwhelmingly better she felt for having done it. If memory served, she hadn't had a proper full night of rest since she passed out during her fight with the Squidbeak Captain, and even that had been involuntary. Every night before or after that was spent either working on the Octobot King, or sneaking out to spend time with Acht.

Acht! Marina immediately dove back into her bags, searching for the field radio. She pulled it out, flipped the switch, and was met with a crackling wall of static. For a moment, her hearts soared, before she realized that the sound wasn't a broadcast from her friend. It was all clutter, static and junk sounds from the surrounding city. Without a clear airspace for the signal to travel through, the radio was completely useless to her.

She sat there, straining to hear even a hint of a familiar voice, as the reality of her situation started to dawn on her. Marina was completely out of the domes. She was as far from the domes as she could possibly be, in a figurative sense at least, here in the heart of the inkling's biggest city. She had no way of contacting Ahato, the other members of The Hollows, or even Pearl. Not a single other soul knew who, or what she was. 

Marina was completely alone.

That... didn't feel nearly as bad as she thought it would. Sure, a part of her was terrified at the sheer amount of uncertainty and unknowns ahead of her. A part of her was reluctant to do anything in case her newest assumptions about the Inkling military were incorrect, and a single wrong move exposed her completely. A part of her was mad at the complete radio silence from the people she'd been relying on, since she'd waited an entire damn week on that mountain for nothing. 

More than that though, more than any of the hundred other feelings burning through her mind, she felt relief.

The Head Engineer must be willing to sacrifice everything she has for the domes. The position is, after all, a blessing.

A sacrifice she wasn't willing to make for a blessing she didn't want; one she never asked for. A sacrifice she wasn't willing to make for a life that tormented and tortured her with unrealistic expectations and extreme demands.

The Head Engineer has an image she must maintain, as she is a role model for all others to look towards.

A responsibility she hated, playing an idealistic caricature she couldn't stand. Isolation via status and demands that closed her off from everybody she once called a friend.

"Ya've given up Marina! Yer going to let this life KILL YOU before you do a damn thing about it!"

She nearly did. Marina could still vividly remember waking up after the Captain's confrontation. Being so exhausted that so much as moving her arms burned down to her soul with the effort it took. Feeling every muscle in her body cry out in agony as they actively withered away. The excruciatingly monumental task it was to take each breath. She had given almost literally everything to that position, and it would have taken her life without pause.

"Ya have to stop."

I did, Captain Cuttlefish. I finally did. 

She was out of her depth, hopelessly lost, and disconnected from everyone around her, but she was free. 

Marina wasn't the Head Engineer, and she never again would be. This was her chance to live the life she never could have had. Her chance to laugh, rest, and meet people. Her chance to be herself. 

There wasn't a problem before her that couldn't be solved or mitigated in some way; she'd just have to learn how to do it. It was time for something new, and Marina wanted more than anything to embrace that chance with open arms.

With a renewed vigor, she scoured the room, checking every corner, cabinet, shelf, and even under the bed for anything of note. Among the same odd trinkets and furniture as before, she found a few choice things that could help her: A small collection of items presumably left by Pearl, a collection of books tucked neatly on a shelf, and some paper guides that seemed to describe places in the city.

First, the pile of items. They sat on a small desk near the front door. The first thing she noticed was the plastic keycard used to unlock her door, which was sitting right beside a small rectangle of oddly-thick paper about the same size. The keycard was a uniform blue, with white lines cutting around it to make a design vaguely in the shape of a mountain. The back was absolutely layered with text she couldn't read, numbers, and a thick black bar spanning the length of the key card. The other card, the one made of thick paper, was a shiny white, with swirly pink and gold highlights etched along the edges of the card. Several Inklish words were written on the face in the same gold, with a ten digit number below them in black. The final thing on the desk was a small mountain of gold clad coins. It wasn't hard to figure out that it was the surface's currency. While she wasn't sure exactly how much it was, her gut told her that Pearl left her enough to get her bearings.

The second thing was a small collection of different folded papers with full color images on prominent display. Large Inklish lettering sprawled across the fronts, but a smaller Octarian font sat below each word, providing a translation she could read. These were little guides to places within the city, one outlining all the different 'museums' there were, one highlighting the most popular commerce and cafeteria locations, one encouraging her to travel to a centralized location dubbed 'Inkopolis Plaza' as a starting point, and finally, one about a large subsection of the city near the bay called 'Wahoo World.' Oh, that was the amusing park Pearl mentioned yesterday! I didn't realize that was its actual name, I thought she was just oddly excited about it.

The last, and arguably most important thing she found, was the collection of books. There simply being books at all was a marvel to her. Paper was a scarce, limited resource in the domes, and while it could be recycled, there was still a finite amount that could be recycled in the first place. It didn't matter that she couldn't read what was on the pages, simply flipping through them, the feeling of so many pages against her fingers, the combined weight of them bound together, it bordered on magic to her.

There were many different books within the small collection, but her inability to read Inklish made most of them non-starters. There were a few that stuck out though: what she believed was some kind of location-specific field guide, full of pictures and maps of a place outside the city; one that hardly had any words, instead being filled to the brim with artworks that made her breath catch; a guide similar to the first, filled with hundreds of species of birds; and more importantly than anything else, a series of books dedicated to translating Inklish into other languages. 

The language barrier was the one she considered simultaneously the hardest and the simplest problem to solve. Once she found a way to learn the language it'd just be a matter of studying, it was finding that method she was worried about/ That's why her hearts beat like crazy as she held the Octarian-to-Inklish guidebook in her hands. This book was the key, her key to the world of the surface. Hundreds of other books, signs, and most critically, people were suddenly within her reach. 

It made her feel like she might actually have a future to look forward to after all.

With her salvation in hand, Marina turned back to the other items she'd collected. The discovery of the guidebook gave her a surge of motivation. I can actually do this! If memory served, Pearl had only gotten her 'some' nights in this room, so she only had a limited amount of time before having to find a barracks or something similar to stay at. That gave her a few days to get her footing, and draft a plan for what comes next. She have to ask-- probably the... the octoling on the first floor, actually-- in order to know how long she had...

Right. How could she forget. There were octolings on the surface. Ones with family 'up' in 'Octolis', wherever that was. The sense of drive fizzled away as this new thought settled on her shoulders. But I'm not in the same state I was in last night. I'm rested now and have a more level head. I can figure this out. I can solve anything I put my mind to.

The inkling's abundance, both material and population, was easy to explain with how expansive the surface truly was. Lacking the resource scarcity or the walls of the domes, such tremendous growth wasn't hard to understand. Couple that with her limited, likely outdated, and definitely propagandized education, and it made sense why her expectations and reality were so disjointed.

Their technological progress was essentially the same story. While underground, the engineers-- and later Marina-- were limited to the radio technology of the time they'd been forced underground. Material shortages prevented them from attempting to create anything new, limiting them primarily to iteration upon what they had, and what little of the human tech they could understand. Even with those restrictions, they'd bounded forward extensively, up to the point of a complex-wide distributed computing network with enough spare parts that Marina was able to develop primitive AI systems to drive the Octostomp. The inklings had no such restrictions, enabling a much more experimental, rapid approach that the engineers underground simply could not afford. 

Octarians being on the surface was single handedly the one thing she could not explain with the knowledge that she had. That fact tore through everything she'd ever learned about history and the surface with a single claw.

As Marina was taught, one hundred years ago, tenuous peace talks between the Inklings and the Octarians started to break down as tensions grew. Things reached a breaking point when the Inkling's Squidbeak Splatoon took the Harolen Assembly Hall hostage. They held all of the octarian ambassadors and negotiators, including General Octavio, long enough that the remainder of the inkling forces were able to charge through the hills of Octaria, capturing and killing civilians in their mad dash to the capital. It was immediately clear that there would be no peaceful resolution; the inklings were so dedicated to domination that no trace of Octarian culture would survive under their control. In a desperate attempt to preserve what they could, the military leaders gathered everyone they were able to, and fled to the domes.

At least, that was what she'd been taught. In reality, no one believed things were quite as violent as their teachers made it out to be, but it was common knowledge that the inklings were the aggressors, hellbent on stomping out Octarian culture. But that girl could fluently speak Octarian. And Pearl too! Her eyes fell down to the guide book in her hands. Destroying our culture would mean destroying the language, wouldn't it? Not leaving materials to learn it out where anyone could easily find them... 

There was a gap in her knowledge. A serious, world-redefining hole in her understanding of the world. 

Has it been a lie this whole time?

She didn't have anything she could rely on. Her current understanding of the surface wasn't only disjointed with reality, it bordered on being outright wrong. This was something she had to remedy, and she couldn't do that by staying here.

The feeling of drive started to return, but it was different this time. It wasn't a bright-eyes, hopeful push to go out and be herself. Now, it was a much deeper seated desire. A fundamental need to right this wrong in her mind, to understand the world of the surface so she could be herself. 

Marina looked over the papers again. Based on the images, it was clear that the museums were buildings full of Inklish writing, ruling them out as useful destinations for today. The Wahoo World park didn't seem to have any information at all, which did make sense given its purpose was exclusively amusement rather than education. That left one location, Inkopolis Plaza, as her best option for exploration.

With her mind made up, Marina got about preparing to go. She'd need a way to carry the coins that Pearl had left her, and the backpack would probably work best. Out came Ahato's music equipment, the batteries she'd hotwired to power it, and many of the larger, more cumbersome tools like the welding supplies, climbing gear, and after a moment of hesitation, the field radio. In their place fell the coins, the room's key card, and the language guide book. 

She hesitated for a moment, looking at everything she'd taken out to leave behind. I'll be back here in a little bit. It'll all be alright here. I don't need to worry about it. I don't.

When she finally drew the courage, she marched through the door, down the elevator, and into the lobby. Said courage immediately fled her system as she locked eyes with the inkling attendant behind the counter, but she didn't let that stop her. They have no reason to suspect you. No reason to hurt you. They do not know who you are. 

The Head Engineer is a position that demands respect. She should expect to be treated as such.

No. That wasn't her anymore.

With a deep breath, she steadied herself, grabbed the papers about 'The Plaza' and took the final step towards the counter. The inkling behind it was taller than she was. His tentacles were a bright yellow, tied back in a small ponytail, accented by small yellow rings hung from his ears. He wore the same uniform robe-thing that the Octoling had been wearing the previous night.

He gave her a chipper greeting in Inklish. She tried her best to smile back, before holding the papers out. It's ok. People know Octarian up here. This should be as easy as asking a question. Marina opened her mouth, and found she couldn't make a sound.

Her heartbeat echoed in her ears as she froze. *An Inkling! I'm talking to an inkling!* Why was this so hard all of the sudden? She'd talked to Pearl just fine, a day ago! Pearl is different. That wasn't a helpful thought. Why was she freezing up now? Was it because she had to initiate this conversation? Maybe she was feeling intimidated? Or his ink was too bright. There had to be something.

The attendant watched her with a raised eyebrow, but otherwise didn't react. 

Mentally, Marina took a step back. She needed to get a handle on this situation. She had three core problems: Her inability to understand or read the predominant language, her limited and very likely incorrect knowledge about the surface, and only having a singular out-of-reach connection with anybody up here. Talking to people were the quickest way to solve the first two issues, and the only way to solve the third. See, this is easy. It's just solving problems, and I can do that.

She patiently took another deep breath before trying again. Just solving a problem. "Could you h-help me get to, uh, here?" She spoke as formally as she could bring herself too as she offered up the paper guide.

The inkling looked at her, his brow creasing. Oh stars, did I mess it up!? What did I do wrong, can I fix this, save this? 

"Uh..." The inkling gave her a nervous smile. "No.... no Octarian, uh, good?" He cringed a bit at the words before rubbing the back of his head. "Here." He pointed at her boots, before holding up a single finger. "Please?" He asked, before giving her a thumbs up and power walking from behind the desk to a door at the far end of the lobby.

Marina watched him go, unsure exactly what he was asking. I guess he wants me to wait here? Since she didn't really have another option, she stayed where she was, at least for the moment. So not all the inklings can speak Octarian... but even still he knew some words. Knowledge of Octarian wasn't universal. She'd been pretty confident in that. It was nice to have confirmation though. That did leave the question of how exactly she was going to get her question across. I've just got to, oh, what did Acht always say, 'spin with the punches' or something like that.

"It's you!" A voice cried from the far end of the lobby.

Marina's head whipped around to the voice. From the same room the attendant had disappeared into a few moments before, came the octoling who had been behind the counter last night. The inkling followed behind a few beats later, closing the door and hurrying back to the desk.

"Hey!" The octoling smiled and gave a little wave as she approached. "Sorry about Dash, I hope you could at least understand him, I keep telling him he needs to study more, but he never does." She tisk'd and shook her head for a moment, before fixing her gaze on Marina. "Anyway, he said you needed help?"

"Oh, um, yes!" Surprisingly, Marina didn't stumble or hesitate like she thought she would have. Being able to actually talk to someone did wonders for her confidence, even if she did feel a bit silly talking so slowly. "I'm trying to get to here, but I don't know where exactly it is." She held out the paper about The Plaza as she spoke.

For just a moment, the attendant looked at her, brow furrowed, before she looked up with another smile. "That's a good starting choice. The Plaza isn't far from here, and it's got a lot of shops for turf n stuff if that's what you're after."

Marina didn't know what that meant, but it sounded like the attendant could help her get there, so she nodded. "Yes!" 

"Alright, so, getting there isn't that hard." The attendant opened the folded paper and pointed to a map on the inside. It was about 20 minutes by foot, and apparently now was quite a good time to go, since the crowds wouldn't get bad for another 2 hours or so. Marina verbally confirmed the directions with her, before carefully folding up the paper and sliding it into her bag.

With her hearts only beating a little fast, she walked up to the front doors of the hotel, and pushed her way through. One tepid step in front of the other, until she was out in the sunlight again. 

"Wait!" The attendant called as she rushed out the door. She carried a piece of paper with her, which she thrust out towards Marina the moment she was close. "You've still got a few nights here, and I'll be on staff, but if you need anything, let me know, kay?" On the paper was another 10 digit number scrawled in loopy handwriting. It reminded her of the one on the pink and gold card Pearl had left her.

While Marina was caught off guard by the offer, she didn't hesitate to tenderly grab the paper and slide it in with the others. It was... odd... that so many people were offering to help for ostensibly no reward, but it was a strangely comforting feeling, especially compared to how things were in the domes.

Still, that didn't mean she knew what to do with the number. "I'll... try my best! Thank you..."

"My name's Cammie Crestwind! Proud host at the Nantai Lodge, here to help!" Cammie did a cute little bounce on the balls of her feet that quickly transitioned into doing something that distantly resembled standing at attention. After a moment of that, she thrust a hand forward, making Marina jump slightly.

"Eh... Marina... Ida." Marina hesitantly answered, before slowly reaching her own hand out in turn. 

When it was close enough, Cammie grabbed her hand and gave it a firm shake. "I mean it. Anything, big or small. I have some people I can gather if there's something, or uh, someone, causing you problems. Just give me a call, ok?"

There was a deeper implication to the words, but Marina wasn't quite sure what it was. "I'll keep that in mind." 

After a few beats of silence, Cammie suddenly wheeled in place. "Well, I gotta get back inside, my break is almost over. See you around!"

"Oh! Uh, bye!" Marina watched the girl walk back into the building, before making her own way to the sidewalk below, her sights set on Inkopolis Plaza.

Chapter Text

This wasn't the first time Marina had ever seen this many people in one place. For one, the showdown with Agent 3 had been a significantly bigger crowd. The only other time she could think of was the yearly open-field combat drills, where eight entire barracks of soldiers were pit against each other. The difference between then and now, was that those were special events that people went to, while everything in the city game the impression that the swarms of people was normal here.

Marina hadn't even made it to the Plaza and she was already feeling overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the crowd. After Pearl's words yesterday, she'd known logically that she should have expected, but the sheer sprawl of people could only really be processed by being there. Such a large number is nearly impossible to visualize anyway, even with something to use as a frame of reference.

Despite her discomfort, Marina was determined to keep going. Crowds were a normal part of the city, and if she wanted to make it here, she'd need to get used to them. It's likely that my problem isn't with the crowd itself, but the... unfamiliarity with it. I hope, at least. It took some effort, but she kept her gait steady, and her head up as she marched forward, towards her goal.

Urban planning wasn't nearly her area of expertise, but it was obvious what she'd seen so far was very intelligently designed. The 'Downtown' space was exclusively designed for pedestrian use, with a small exception to the small transports used to resupply the various storefronts that lined the streets. The layout was surprisingly similar to the residential domes, with the only real differences being wider streets and taller buildings. The other changes were much smaller, but no less impactful to her once she noticed them. In the domes, every little scrap of detail had been removed for recycling. Marina's eyes caught on every flower bed, bench, sign, and streetlight she passed, weighed against the memories of hollow boxes, bolt-holes, and empty brackets from the streets she grew up with.

It truly was beautiful, these tiny details that had only been absent from her world until now. The splashes of color the flowers brought, the decorations and artwork on the signs, the way people gathered around the benches. In a horrible, roundabout way, it made her heart ache for the world under the screen sky.

No matter what I feel, I will not go back. She reassured herself as she stepped into the Plaza proper. The initial impression was... slightly underwhelming, if she was being honest. It just felt like more city, albeit with a massive green tower in the center. Tracing the famed Inkopolis tower with her eyes left her feeling unsteady on her feet, both from vertigo and craning her neck to see it all. Nestled in the base of the tower, the combat training center was the obvious draw. A small stream of inkfish continuously flowed into and out of it, seemingly unendingly.

More of interest to her, was the slew of brightly colored buildings to either side of the tower. The right side featured a slew of tall buildings so close together they might as well have been interconnected. The first one had a modest-sized cafeteria on the lower floor with an equally modest crowd inside. Above it was some kind of odd lounge that was absolutely drenched in green and pink. If it's meant to be a lounge, it should have people in it, right? But no, it was entirely empty save for two chairs, a table, and what she assumed was a large screen. How odd. The rest of the buildings didn't have much that seemed important to her. A platform outside that lounge had a ramp up in front of the second building, which doubled as the entrance to whatever it was. She couldn't read the sign, but it seemed fairly popular.

The left side, while less vertically impressive, made up for it with a much more eclectic building shape. Really, it was less of one building and more of three buildings half-fused together. A large rounded building had two very visible entrances, one with a massive pink sign, and the other with a much more modest green one. The other end was a second rounded building, one less tall but with a bigger radius, and a truly massive picture of a shoe. Between the two circles, as if filling in the gap was a final section visibly about a third of a circle, with an absolute barrage of advertisements for clothing. Everything in the back of the plaza was significantly less impressive, being either non-descript buildings or under construction of some kind.

Marina looked between her options, the backpack full of coins on her shoulder weighing heavy. The shops on the left seem like, actual shops, and it'd probably be a good idea to get out of this armor if I'm going to spend any time around other people. I don't need anyone asking where I got it. With a plan in mind, Marina walked up to the clothes store, and hesitated at the door. There were at least 10 people inside and the space seemed rather small... so she opted to go to the shoe store instead, since there was only one other person in there.

The immediate first thing she noticed upon entering was just how much stuff there was. The walls were lined with shoes of all different styles, some of them even almost looking like decent work boots. Shelves with more shoes were occasionally interspaced by small benches with mirrors underneath. The center of the store was completely open, leading towards a large display counter against the back wall with yet more shoes behind the glass. A simple song played over the speakers, giving the whole place a relaxed vibe she wasn't really familiar with.

Behind the counter, a tall... oh stars, I don't remember. Marina knew other species existed, everyone was taught about them in early education, and there were three non-octoling species still within the domes, but none of them matched the shopkeeper. Uhh, not a crab, urchin? No, they're spikey. Anemone, shark, no it's... Shrimp! He's a shrimp! There was probably a more correct answer, but she didn't have the time to try and dredge it up.

Behind the counter, a tall shrimp stood with a cheery look on their face. Of the eight arms they had, six of them had shoes overtop their pincers, each one a different style. The shoe-less two worked quickly at a machine of some sort as an inkling handed over several coins. The two exchanged a few quick words in Inklish, before the inkling walked past her towards the door, and the shrimp turned its full attention to her.

Marina could not understand what the shrimp was saying, so she took a slow, tentative step towards the counter, cleared her throat and found her voice. "I, uh, I can't speak Inkling."

"Oh, no prob!" The shrimp waved an arm and gave her a wink. "Though it may not be perfect, my love for shoes can transcend any language barrier! Well, except for crab. Anyway, I was just said, good to see you here in Shrimp Kicks! Are you look for anything in particular or just her to peruse?"

Marina blinked in surprise, before quickly recovering. I'm going to have to get used to this. "I'm looking for... something new?" Her gaze fell down to her boot-clad feet, suddenly feeling a little self conscious about wearing military gear into a store like this.

The shopkeeper's eyes followed her gaze downwards, and then back up, and then down again. When they spoke next, their voice was a bit slower, like they were hesitating on something. "I can certainly help with that, but if you don't mind me ask though, are you doin’ ok kid? That's not exactly turf gear you're wearin there."

The sudden accusation jolted her. Rust! My first interaction with a non-inkfish and I get outed immediately? "I'm not... from here." She tried.

"Not wrong with that." The shrimp lightly replied, but the pressure of the conversation did not abate.

"I..." Marina fought the words in her mouth. Nerves were skyrocketing, and with them, her concentration on small things, like keeping her octarian formal, was slipping. Focus. Keep it together. No one knows who I am. No one will know, if I don't tell them. No one can take this from me. "I want new shoes, ones that will help me fit in more." She declared, voice surprisingly firm.

For a moment, the shrimp just stared at her, before nodding. "Alright, I can certainly helping with that. You're shooting for something around 1500 G, you think you can float that?"

She wasn't sure. Marina knew for a fact she didn't have a thousand coins on her, so that meant the different coins were worth different amounts. She mentally scolded herself for not inspecting them closer back in her room, but it was too late to do that now.

Tepidly, she took the bag off her shoulder, set it on the counter, and unzipped it. "I have this much."

The shrimp peered into the bag with a weary eye. "You're lucky Mr. Sean is an honest prawn, Miss...?"

"Marina."

"It's not wise to go flashin’ cash around like that, otherwise you'll end up with the wrong kind of attention. That says, I do want to help you out, so if it's cool, I'll help you count your G, and then get you some nice shoes to boot."

Twenty minutes later, Marina was standing at the counter with her coins freshly rolled and set back in her bag, just beside a few pairs of socks. Mr. Sean handed her a pair of 'Purple Sea Slug' shoes, which she set in a moment later. "Thank you so much, you don't know how much this means to me." Marina gave him a smile as she zipped her bag closed.

"It was nice doin' business with ya! Come back if you want to switching your gear, alright?" Sean happily called as he closed the drawer on his machine. "I'm afraid I can't help much beyond shoes, but if you have anything shoe-related you want to know about, I'm your prawn!"

"You've been amazing to me Mr. Sean, I wouldn't want to impose, but I'll keep you in mind!" Marina shouldered her bag and walked towards an interior door off to the side. "Thanks again for the help!"

"No prob. Take it easy, yeah?"

"I'll try!" With that, Marina stepped through the door. In the small hallway between stores, she took just a moment to catch her breath.

That went surprisingly well for her first proper venture on the surface. She spoke to a new species, learned about the currency, and got some new shoes all in the same interaction! Granted, it did seem Mr. Sean needed some study on proper word tenses in Octarian, but he was by no means unintelligible. The coinage system was quite simple too, working on a simple factor of 10 scale. The smallest coin was worth 1 G, and the largest 100,000, though that one didn't see much circulation.

With everything accounted for, she had a little over 10,000 G left to spend how she pleased. Hopefully more than enough to last her a few more days. With a surge of confidence, Marina pulled the door to the next shop open, and stepped up to her next challenge.

The next hour and twenty minutes felt like at least three times that as Marina worked her way through the stores. The next stop, Jelly Fresh, was a challenge because the shopkeeper didn't speak Octarian. It took an excessive amount of trial and error, nodding, and shaking her head to eventually reach a shred of understanding. Eventually, she walked out with several new outfits to match her new shoes.

Cooler Heads, the hat shop, was better, but only by definition. The shopkeeper there didn't know Octarian beyond a few pleasantries, but her clownfish did. And he was very rude. Marina tried on a few things, in part because she was intimidated into it, but nothing really felt right, or really comfortable enough for her to spend her limited cash on at the moment.

She considered going to the final store of the 4, the weapons shop, but decided against it. By this point she was mostly certain she wasn't being trailed by a military group, but if she was, they seemed alright with leaving her be for the moment, and she didn't want to risk that by arming herself. And so, Marina found herself wandering out into the center of the Plaza, lost on where to go next. Nothing else in the Plaza seemed really worth visiting, but it felt wrong to go back to her room after just buying some shirts.

Out of nowhere, a seeming flood of inkfish rushed towards the center of the Plaza from two sides, breaking Marina out of her thoughts as the mass of people surged towards her. She quickly threw herself to the side, ducking under the weird balcony platform thing to let the crowd pass by. Only, most of them didn't. The Plaza only seemed to get more and more full as inkfish piled in from every direction. Marina felt her hearts start beating faster as things got more and more cramped.

Everyone was staring up at... a screen. An odd sense of Deja-vu washed over her as she realized this. Before she had any time to think on that, the screen flickered, and an upbeat jingle began to play, and

Something felt... familiar. She couldn't say what it was, but something about the music that was playing just, struck something in her brain. Why does this feel familiar? What about this...? Even as two inklings talked about something as various graphics flashed on the screen, Marina could only focus on the music. What WAS so familiar about it? Her eyes remained unfocused as her brain whirred away, until it suddenly stopped, the broadcast over. Almost as fast as they appeared, the crowd in the Plaza vanished, leaving the space as empty as it had been minutes before.

Marina floated around the edge of the Plaza, her mind relentlessly chewing on this question of familiarity. Where would I even recognize that from?

"Yah alright there, mate?" A deep voice called out, shocking her from her thoughts.

"Eep!" Marina jumped as she scanned for the source of the voice, eventually finding a very lanky urchin sitting on the ground beside her. "I'm fine, why? Did I do something wrong?"

"Nah, jus’ standin there mouthin to yourself for several minutes. Wanted to make sure there's still some thinkin up there." He was, again, a very tall and lanky urchin, dressed in an odd poncho, decorated with a slew of bracelets and wearing clogs. A lone piercing green and purple eye peered at her from a massive head of spikes.

"Yes, I'm still thinking, sorry if I bothered you!" Marina squeaked quickly. "I just heard something familiar from that broadcast and I was trying to remember where I'd heard it before."

"Ah, a Squid Sisters' fan, ya? Good taste, least if you like the popular dribble."

"Squid Sisters?" Marina asked, tilting her head."

The urchin paused, giving her an odd look. "Yeah, they're a popular band these days. Hear their music all around, for better or worse these days."

Marina nodded slowly, trying to shuffle that information away with everything else she was picking up.

"Now, if ya don't mind me askin, what's a bird like you doin standin around here all lost like?"

"I'm just—" How much do I tell him? He seems nice enough, but I don't think it's wise to say all that much? "I'm just out shopping for clothes."

"Mmm. Right, Ow's the first day on the big city been?"

Marina stiffened. How did he know? Am I really that obvious?

"It's not 'ard to tell, love. For one, we're speakin’ Octarin here 'stead of Inklish, and two, ya stared up at the news in slack jawed confusion. Plus, most folk don't go shoppin’ for clothes in the turf stores. 'S a lot cheaper to go to the mall for that kinda thing."

Stars above, did I really mess up that bad? I didn't even think this was something I COULD mess up, but apparently I—

"Easy, love. 'S not a big deal. Whatya bought will work just fine, and save you time when you go to turfin’ later."

What? How... "How did you—?"

"Ya wear that heart'a yours out on your sleeve, doll. It's not 'ard to put what's goin on upstairs to word, 'specially since it's a story I seen countless times before." He took a second to dust off his hands before standing up, stars he's tall. He held down his hand, which only felt a tiny bit intimidating, and gave her an easy smile. "Name's Spyke. I chiefly run a little side gig here swappin’ out chunks for folk who don't want to pay the big stores to do it for ‘em, but I double as a friendly face if someone needs it."

She hesitantly took his hand. "...Marina" She answered slowly. "Should I know what you mean by chunks?"

"If ya want to turf, probably, but I don't think that should be the focus for ya right now. Now, it's clear this is ya first time in the big city, right mate?"

Marina nodded.

"Well, if ya plan to stay here, there's some things ya need sorted out. If ya've got the right kindsa paperwork on hand for when th' suits come knockin, you'll be fine." Spyke paused for a moment, eyeing her. "Righto, so you don't got the right kinda papers then. 'S alright, 's an easy fix so long as ya know where to go."

"Where's that?" She leaned a little closer, eager to hear his words.

"Listen close. Tomorrow mornin, ya need to get over to the library, yeah? Their whole thing is free resources and help, it's bloody awesome if you don't know whatcha doin. They can help ya get th' the papers ya need there, and point you towards the places to get th' others."

Marina nodded again, locking the words into her mind. "The Li-brar-ee" she said slowly, weighing the foreign word on her tongue. It didn't seem like an Inklish word, just one she didn't know. "Alright, where uh, where is that, exactly?"

Spyke opened his mouth, but paused after a second. He bent down and grabbed a notebook from among his little nest, quickly scribbled something, and then ripped the page out. "This here's the library's address." The page showed a string of Inklish writing, each word of which Spike pointed to and said out loud, making sure she understood what each part meant. "Now, you know what a cab is?"

Marina nodded. "I rode one into the city."

"Well, there ya go love, they should pop ya right over! It's not far, so the fee shouldn't be much, and the folks in there can help you loads better than anyone 'round here could. Hand em this slip 'ere even if they don't speak Octarian, and you're golden."

Marina took the paper tenderly, holding it in her hands and tracing the letters with her eyes. Inkopolis Public Library. Alright, I'll see what this is all about. "Thank you so much Spyke. I wasn't sure where to go next."

"It's nothin, love. Jus’ keep me in mind if in need of any gear is all I ask." There was a short pause as he looked behind her. A few inklings stood impatiently, weapons by their side. "Uh, if ya don't mind love, I have a few clients waitin’ behind ya."

"Oh, of course!" Marina immediately backpedaled towards the Plaza. "Sorry to hold up your line!"

Spyke was already talking with one of the inklings, but he held up a hand and waved.

With a quick zip, Marina laid the note carefully in her bag, between two of her new shirts. She briefly considered going to this Library place right now, but a quick glance up at the darkening sky made her hesitate. Tomorrow, then. I'll wake up and check this place out. With her next plan in place, she started back to her room with a new determined glint in her eye.

Chapter Text

It was hard to process the sheer scale of the Inkopolis Public Library. Over the past two days, Marina had gotten mostly used to the vertical scale of buildings on the surface. The Library was not as tall as many of those buildings, though it did reach six stories with its central section, but it was significantly larger, taking up four entire city blocks on its own. She didn't know the exact measurements of length, but just by eyeballing it, Marina was fairly sure it eked out even High Command back in the domes, if you didn't count the outer rings, at least.

The Library itself was an incredibly intricate construction. At its most basic, it was a massive rectangle, about three stories up, with a T-shaped section along the building's front and into the center being raised up to six stories, rather than three. An enormous glass dome topped the building's center, drawing the eye up along the edges, to the point directly at the top. The entire thing was built from carved stone, with ornate details both big and small chiseled into the entire structure. Delicate patterns were etched into the inset of every window, while large statue figures lined the edge of the roof. The front of the building felt by far the most intimidating. A row of doors twice as tall as she was were shielded by a massive overhang, propped up by pillars bigger than she had ever seen.

A staircase edged the entire structure, which Marina stood at the foot of. Well, I suppose there's nowhere else to go but forward. With a deep breath to steady her resolve, Marina marched up the steps one at a time, and through one of the oversized doors.

Immediately, her attention was dominated by the open space; specifically the millions, yes, millions of books that lined the walls. Bookshelves lined the entire center section, floor to ceiling, only broken by the floors that ringed the edge of the space to provide access to them all. On the ground, countless desks, tables, and chairs circled a central platform, most of which had an occupant hard at work on something or other. On that central platform stood a massive bronze statue of a wizened, older inkling. He stood tall in a billowy coat of some kind, holding an open book in the air and a hopeful look in his eyes. All around, the warmth and light of the sun flooded the space, burning the sight into her mind for good.

There had to be several hundred people in the room alone. At the desks, walking into the many hallways that branched from the main room, or on all of the floors, browsing the shelves for books. The crowd wasn't limited to inklings either, there were just as many octolings among the inkfish crowds, and many dozens of non-inkfish species among them too.

Stars above... I don't even know where to begin with this... She stepped forward slowly, openly gawking at everything around her. There's more books here than the entirety of the domes. They have so much, what could I even find here?

"Amazing, isn't it?" A voice asked from beside her.

Marina could only nod dumbly.

"Nothing else like it in the world." The voice replied.

Her eyes lingered on the books a moment longer, before she finally turned to look at the speaker. An inkling woman stood next to her, only about as tall as Marina's shoulder. Despite the short stature, it was quickly apparent that she was several years Marina's elder, but it was hard to pinpoint by exactly how much. She wore a plain white shirt under a pair of lime green coveralls, with a small metal badge on one of the straps. Her bright yellow tentacles were tied back into a small bun, while a green bandana covered the rest of her head. In her eye was the same sparkle Marina was sure had been in her own just a moment ago, as she was taking in the view.

"Not that I've seen..." Marina reverently agreed, her gaze shifting back to admire the space again.

The woman gave her a side look, and cocked an eyebrow. "Do you wanna, like, take a closer look?"

Marina gasped. "A— am I allowed to?"

The woman laughed, but it wasn't a mocking thing. "Like, of course! That's why we're here!"

Marina followed her forward like a lost pup, her head on a swivel as she tried to take in as much of the sights as she could. She and the woman didn't say anything, mostly on account of the woman slowing to exchange words with many people they passed in Inklish. The pair slowly made their way around the bottom floor, close enough to the book shelves that Marina could have touched them with her shoulder if she swayed any. She silently held her breath as best she could while keeping pace, worried that her mere presence was already enough to damage the books.

After several minutes of silent gawking, the woman finally led her to an elevator, which broke Marina's line of sight long enough to return her to rational thought. "...Wow..." Well, mostly return her rational thought.

"So, like, is this your first time in a library this big?" The woman asked as the elevator doors closed behind them.

"It's my first time in a library," Marina breathlessly answered, still not used to the word.

"Oh wow, this must be like, suuuuper special for you then!" The inkling giggled. "Have you seen anything you want to grab?"

"G-grab!?"

The tone of her voice must have confused the inkling, because she looked up at Marina with questions in her eyes. "Like, yeah! Despite the fancy architecture, we are still, like, a public library you know."

Marina nodded, trying to placate her. She still didn't understand what the distinction of 'public' entailed, or even what specifically a 'library' was for that matter.

"Wait, ohmycod do you like, know what a library even is?"

What!? How did she see right through me like that? Marina hesitantly shook her head as the elevator dinged. They both stepped outside. Marina felt herself withering under the inkling's gaze.

"Oh, wow, ok, so, I don't mean to like, be rude or anything, buuut, are you new to the city?"

A quiet squeak of panic escaped Marina's mouth. "Eep! Ah, y-yes, sorry!" Her hands automatically flew together, wringing quickly as her shoulders hunched inwards.

"Oh sweetie, no, I didn't mean it like that!" The inkling rushed forward and grabbed Marina's hands in her own. "I only ask because my whole, like, thing here is helping people new to the library figure it out, and well, anyone new to the city isn't gonna like, know about the library either." She quickly let out a breath, before taking a step back. Notably, she didn't let go of Marina's hands. "Let's try this thing again, and like, I'll introduce myself properly this time. My name's Pam Amandure, but you can just call me Pam. I'm the library's junior outreach coordinator."

To underscore her point, Pam pointed towards the metal badge she wore, where many words Marina couldn't read were printed. What she did recognize, was the lettering for the Inkopolis Public Library along the bottom, since she spent so long studying Spyke's letter from the previous day.

"Mi—" Marina caught herself. She almost introduced herself as Miss Ida, Head Engineer, as she had become far too used to. Hearing Pam introduce herself with her title prompted her to use her own. But I'm not that anymore. Never again. "Marina. Just Marina."

"Well it's, like, nice to meet ya 'Just' Marina!" Pam gave her a playful chuckle before continuing. "The folk here at the library are glad to have you around! Let us know if we can do anythin to, like, help out k?"

Marina nodded slowly. "You said that I'd be allowed to 'grab' something?"

Pam's eyes narrowed mischievously. "You can grab, like, any book you want."

That seemed too good to be true. "Any book I want?"

"Well, mostly any book. There is a few restrictions. It's less, like, grabbing and more borrowing, you have to bring them back after two weeks. And there's some collections you have to like, get special permissions for, but you won't see them like, out here anyway, so don't worry about them for now."

This time it was Marina who narrowed her eyes, though she did it out of suspicion. "And I can just do this as many times as I want?"

"There is a limit of like, eight or nine books, but you can like, check out new books every time you bring the previous ones back. As for cost, yeah it's like completely free! As long as you have a library card, you've got like, total access! We have a lot more than just books too, movies, CDs, heck we have board games if you want!"

The information was piling up fast. Marina mentally pushed most of what Pam said to the side, and focused on the root of it. "How do I get one of these library cards?"

"Oh that's like, really easy! Trent can help you out down at the front desk. All you need is your ID and a piece of mail with your current address to like, prove you live in the city.

"Oh..." Of course there'd be a catch like that. I should have known.

Pam gasped, hands flying to her mouth. "Oh gosh, I'm like so sorry, I didn't think of—" She stopped, taking a second to lower her arms and clear her throat. "Are you emancipated?"

Another unfamiliar word. Hearing so many Octarian words she didn't know was starting to bother her. Just how much did she not know? "Am I what?"

"It's like, gosh I'm sorry, this is like, sooooo rude of me to just ask like this. Did you like, run away from home to move to the city?"

Marina felt the tensions in the air rise. She weighed her next words very carefully. "Essentially, yes..."

"Do you have, like, an ID you used previously from before you ran away?" Pam looked at her nervously, with an odd flush in her cheeks.

"No..."

"Ah... that's ok! That's ok, it just makes things a bit more complicated. You're not going to be able to get a job or a place to stay without one. Is today your first day in the city then?"

The weight on Marina's shoulders eased slightly as the topic shifted away from the past. "It's my third. A... friend got me a hotel room to stay in."

"Ok, so like—" Pam froze completely for a moment, whatever had her so flustered before completely forgotten as she looked up at Marina in disbelief. "Wait, so like, your 'friend' got you a hotel in the city, but didn't talk to you about getting an ID?"

"...Yes?"

Pam blinked, before a nasty scowl crossed her face. "Did this 'friend' tell you like, to go to City Hall? Or at least to come here?"

"...No?"

Pam's scowl turned dark. "Girl..." Pam fumed for a few moments longer, before she took a deep breath, before letting out a fast mumble of something in Inklish. "Girl, you need to cut that 'friend' of yours out, she set you up to fail! Thank the TIDES you ended up here anyway."

"H-hey! I don't think Pearl did it maliciously! She paid for my hotel room after all!"

With a wave of her hands, Pam dismissed the conversation. "It like, doesn't matter right now. We need to get you a Residential ID. Do you know what that means?"

Marina shook her head.

"Oookk, so like, basically, if you want to like, get an apartment, have a job, or basically live in Inkadia, you have to get one of these IDs. Usually it's pretty easy, since like, the people moving over have documents from their old country, but you don't and that's ok! They'll just have you do a few extra things when you go to do it."

"What exactly do they want me to do?" Marina asked, already feeling like things weren't going to be as simple as Pam was making it out to be.

"Weeelll, gosh, ok, so like, you're going to need to declare your identity, declare your intent to live here, prove you're over 14 AND 16, register with the National Ink Index, take physical and mental capability tests, an eyesight test, be screened for any conditions, and take an oath of commitment to Inkadia."

Marina nodded slowly, tallying the mental list. "Seems mostly like it's a few tests and a medical exam. That doesn't seem too hard."

"Oh no, like, it's really not!" Pam's smile dropped. "If I can be blunt though, it's like, what comes after that's difficult."

Oh, there's that sense of dread again. "...What comes after?"

"Weeeeeelllllll, once you have your ID, there's like, a lot of things you're going to want to get set up. Like, you're going to want to rent an apartment, find a good job that can like, pay for the apartment, open a bank account to hold all that money, and then like, take out a renters and a life insurance policy, work on an education and/or get proof that you have— I recommend getting like, a GED but there's other options if you wanted— and this one's just a suggestion but you should like, try and see a doctor for a full evaluation, just to like, get everything on record to make your life easier down the line. Once you're all like, settled in with stuff like that, you can do more extra things like get a drivers license, or a turf license, or even like a library card if you wanted, wink wink. Oh! And there's like a bunch of certifications out there you could try to get if you have some like, specialized skills or something, as well as a lot of like, general knowledge classes like Inklish language and civics courses to prepare for citizenship. Oh yeah I forgot to mention, if you like, remain a resident for 6 months and don't get into any big trouble, you can apply for citizenship, but it's like a LOT harder bar to clear so it's like, better to start studying early. There's a lot of things on the test like..."

Pam's voice faded into the background as Marina's head started to spin. Things had gone from fairly manageable to overwhelming in under a minute. Wasn't running away supposed to be the easy option? Through the rapidly cluttering list in her mind, everything pointed back to that Residential ID, that was something she could do.

"P-Pam?" She asked.

Pam had been talking nonstop that entire time, but she quieted down as soon as Marina spoke up. "Oh, like, sorry! I was just glad I remembered everything if I'm being honest. What's up?"

Marina steeled herself. "Can you help me get a Residential ID? It seems like the best place to start."

"Sure! Here, let's like, go to my office so I can write things down for you. That way you don't have to like, remember everything I just blabbed."

"That sounds fantastic, thank you!"

6 Days Later

"Ouuhhhhhghhhh... Fuck."

Pearl could only mumble to herself as her consciousness forcefully returned. Try as she might, there wasn't a thing she could do to break the miserable habit that was waking up at 6:30 on the dot every single morning, and Tides had she tried. For one, it didn't matter how little she actually slept, every crash from 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM still saw her up before the birds. The closest she'd ever gotten was half a bottle of vodka and more melatonin than was probably safe, but all that had done was keep her from thinking before 2:00 in the afternoon, not actually stay asleep.

Last night's unsuccessful attempt was... oh it was something. Something she didn't remember, but fuck was she feeling it now. Pearl thrashed in her bed, desperately trying to untie herself from the sweat-soaked sheet that clung to her like a second skin. The first thing to really register in her brain was that she wasn't back in her comfortable, luxurious bed back home, but her ratty, nasty, piece of shit apartment. The second thing to register was that she was sore as all hell, and no matter what position she tried, she could not find any relief.

What the fuck did she even do last night? The only thing she could remember was the absolute disaster of her most recent attempt to make something of herself. There was no shot she could actually cobble something together from nothing like she was supposed to, two weeks of manic attempts put that 'dream' as deep into the grave as possible. There was even less of a chance she could execute a hostile takeover of an existing company, since she by far lacked both the clout and the cash that would take. That left precisely one option when it came to the corporate world. One that, while not inherently shameful, was definitely the least glamorous of her options.

It was a random fuckoff company, the details weren't important anymore. They sold tires or some shit that didn't matter, what did matter was the vacant seat on their executive board. That was her ticket to something. It would have given her a place to work from, to either carry that crappy company to the top, or springboard off of to get somewhere better. There weren't chances like this often, that weren't tech startup scams at least, so she needed to make it count, and Pearl went the full mile: Two full days sober, dry as the Splatlands, yet another notebook crammed with research into the company's history and notes on the current board, hell, she even dry-cleaned her suit to prepare for it.

Fuck, her head hurt. Pearl kicked her sheets to the floor, for once thankful for the paper-thin walls and the cold November air they let through. She couldn't be bothered to peel her head from her pillow yet.

Initially, the meeting went quite well. She put her airs up just fine, shook hands, laughed along with the hollow pleasantries, she did everything just as she'd been taught all her life. It was all fucking PERFECT, until she stepped into that board room and it all went to shit. Pearl couldn't remember the specifics of the conversation when her head hurt like this, nor did she want to, but the feelings persisted in that suffocating way only they could. The grating of her arm against the shitty plastic armrests, the artificial cold of the tabletop against her fingers. The pain in her jaw as she clenched her teeth. The suffocating suit collar around her neck. The walls and ceiling closing in around her, crushing her underneath their impossible weight.

Suffice to say, it was a fucking disaster. She embarrassed herself like nothing else she'd ever done, and completely shot her chances there, and probably everywhere else too. In a single day, she'd destroyed her last real chance at building herself into something better.

Oh, yeah, and the multi-hour raged-induced bender that followed.

With limbs of lead, Pearl finally threw herself out of her bed, clambering to her feet and begging the world to only spin as much as she was used to. The sudden throbbing pain and ringing in her ears from slamming her head into the wall was the unfortunate tell that the world did not heed her call.

Her mouth instinctively fell open, prepared for a string of obscenities that would make a sailor blush, but Pearl's brain could NOT orient itself well enough for that. All she managed to let out was a pathetic, whimpering groan as she tried to steady her feet. Both hands on the wall. Get some water. Both hands on the wall. Get some water. She chanted to herself as she stumbled her way around her room. It only took about a minute to get to the bathroom, and she'd only stabbed her foot on one beer can this time. Small victories, right?

Delicately, Pearl lowered herself onto the edge of the bathtub before her legs decided to fail her again. She aggressively snatched a massive jug of water she left on the bathroom counter for this exact purpose. What does that say about me, that it's a win when I work so well around the consequences of my actions, rather than solving the root problem? The water was frigid on account of the apartment's non-existent heating, and felt damn amazing on her throat. Fuck me, was I screaming last night? Unless I'm getting sick, there's no reason my throat would hurt like this. Fuck... there's no way right? I can't foot that bi— PFFFFFF—

"Oh fuck me." Pearl actually did a genuine spit take as she locked eyes with her reflection. Her head fell into her hands, water bottle briefly forgotten on the edge of the tub beside her, as Pearl realized she was still wearing her suit. The same one she'd had dry cleaned not even 24 hours ago, was now a disheveled, ripped, mess. Several of the buttons were missing entirely, and a massive rip darted down the left sleeve. A look back into her bedroom showed only one shoe on the ground, she could only hope the other was in a different room. It was a damn miracle her tie was still around her neck because it sure as hell wasn't tied. Fuck, it would be cheaper to buy a new suit that try and fix this mess.

It looked so comedically bad, it made her want to laugh. "Ahaha... fuck."

Worst of all had to be the entire front of her jacket, and the undershirt beneath it, which were both thoroughly soaked with a bright, angry red. A sniff revealed that it was rum, thankfully, and not blood, but when her memory managed to stumble its way into the price of a bottle, she wished the opposite were true. There was at least a full bottle down her suit, and tides knew she would not have been satisfied with only one bottle if it had gone to waste like that.

Shit. How much fucking money did she spend last night?

Pearl exhaustedly rubbed her eyes, trying to force her mind back 12 hours. There was rum, I can be sure of that. This fucking headache says there was probably vodka involved. Fuck man, I don't... through the haze, she could vaguely recall a face. Octoling... dark skin, cute face, a real nice pair of— Fuuuuuckkk noo, please don't tell me that was the mountain girl there. Fuckin... ugh... Marina. Tides please don't let it have been her.

She massaged her eyes more aggressively, trying to dig for more details. What else, fuck what else!? She could... the burn of alcohol against her throat, a hand in hers, thrash metal beating on the inside of her skull. Aw fuck I wound up at the fucking Pit again, didn't I? I better not have been screaming, if I broke something there again it's over. She shook her head. Nng, What else, what else? Lips against her own, the taste of iron piercings, Shit ok maybe it can be Marina if we...

With a growl of frustration, Pearl shook her head harder trying to keep things on track. Inklish. She was speaking Inklish last night, so it couldn't have been Marina. The octoling's tattoos and piercings came into her mind's focus soon after, dispelling that particular worry for good.

Well, that answered a few questions at least. What did she do last night? She got so fucking drunk, and got some action on the side. Not bad... not bad... Wait. Why the hell was she praising herself right now? This was horrible! On top of that, one question remained above all the others. HOW THE FUCK DID I AFFORD TO DO THAT?

Water be damned this was not a question that could be left sitting. The flooding sense of panic was enough to fractionally clear her head, and Pearl used that clarity to stumble down the hallway with only one hand on the wall. With a graceless flourish, she managed to catch herself on the chair at her desk, and flung open her laptop to boot while the world stopped spinning around her. When things slowed enough that she could read text again, she signed herself in and quickly dove into her finances.

Pearl had money, in fact, more money than she'd had yesterday. "Oh you dumb piece of shit." She scolded herself, voice completely dead. "You stupid motherfucker." No she didn't invent a new side hustle in her drunken stupor, she dumped one of her biggest stocks purely so she could even afford to go on the damn bender in the first place.

It was actually enough to bring tears of frustration to her eyes. Fucking damn it I can't even keep a fucking INVESTMENT account around. AN INVESTMENT ACCOUNT!

She let her head fall into her hands again, utterly in the throes of despair. It isn't supposed to be this hard. I've spent my entire life preparing for this, I should be able to do this. I don't— I don't—

Tides, I'm fucking useless.

Damn it. Here she went having another fucking breakdown. Her breath hitched in rhythm with the throbbing of her head, each desperate gasp of air a plea to keep it together that fell on deaf ears. Pearl sat like that, head in her hands, until she managed to compose herself enough she could function again.

Not a single tear fell from her eyes.

What was on her to-do list today? An aggressive drunken bender hadn't been in her plans, so she still had responsibilities to attend later in the day, no matter how shit she felt. Maybe that's the silver lining to waking up so early. She let out a hollow laugh.

Fucking thanks, me. Really damn helpful there.

Pearl took a few minutes to get herself a few steps closer to presentable, before grabbing another can of Nac Light, and sitting herself down in front of her laptop. She still had responsibilities, and she wasn't fucking dead yet, so she got to work.

Several hours later, Pearl angrily stomped her way down the street. She went in, gave it her best effort, and yeah, no. Another fucking bust.

This one wasn't even for an executive position, and she still nearly stroked out in the board room. Tides, what the fuck was wrong with her? She couldn't even do a manager's work now? She was doing that shit at eight years old, and now she couldn't!?

It was frustrating, in an exhausting, existential way, but at this point she was too tired to react beyond a defeatist slump. She'd feel this pain in the morning, and for now it was her job to make sure she got there without decimating a fourth of her total savings again.

Pearl trudged to the edge of the business district, her eyes metaphorically glued to her apartment that was a 70 minute walk away. It'd be well and nark out by the time she made it home, but if she wanted any chance at recovering her investments, every coin she could spare counted. Cabs were not cheap in the city. So, she trudged forward, one foot after the other, in a single minded bid to ge—

"Hello!" A bright voice shouted from her left, stopping her dead. "Pearl!" She recognized that voice, even if it was speaking Inklish.

Slowly, Pearl turned to the side, where someone was eagerly waving at her. Someone she knew, but didn't know if she'd ever see again. The newcomer stood, practically vibrating in place as she was waving so frantically. It took Pearl a second to recognize her wearing normal clothes rather than the strange armor she'd worn before. The bright eyes, and excited smile were more than enough to clue her in though, and Pearl found herself blinking rapidly to make sure she wasn't seeing things.

"Marina? What the hell are you doing here?"

Chapter Text

"Marina, what the hell are you doing here?" Pearl was so dumbfounded she forgot to speak Octarian. "And you're speaking Inklish? What's going on?"

Marina giggled at her reaction. "Aha... Not well, but... spke...! Speaking!" She positively beamed at Pearl, face filled with an eager pride.

The headache that was slamming Pearl's temples wasn't particularly pleased with the sudden confusing developments, but Pearl herself was very curious. She rubbed her eyes, both to try in vain to push the headache back, and in disbelief that she was actually seeing Marina again. "No, yeah! That's crazy impressive! It's only been what, a few days? You're insane!"

Honestly, Pearl hadn't know if she was ever going to see Marina again. She'd left her card, back in the hotel room, but never got a call like she'd been hoping for. Such a sudden meeting, while surprising, was not unwelcome. What was something of a problem was the circumstances.

Across from her, Marina's brow knitted in concentration as she tried to string together words. "I am... v-very... uh..."

"Why are you here," Pearl bluntly asked. "Here. In the business district. I thought I told you to avoid this place unless you had a good reason." She knew she had mentioned that while they were riding into the city. There's nothing here worth a fucking thing. Not that Marina wasn't allowed to make her own choices, of course, but still, it twisted a part of her to be so flagrantly ignored for this place.

"Oh!" Marina's lips pursed as her eyes squinted in thought. "I get, uh, gwo... gwh... rust... oh! Job! I get job close!" Marina excitedly shouted in celebration before quickly deflating and letting out a weary sigh. "Was that at least a little understandable?" She gave Pearl a sheepish smile.

Pearl gave her a playful smirk back. "Seems like you forgot a word in there."

For a moment, Marina tensed, distraught, until she saw the smile on Pearl's face and relaxed some. "It-it's not that much harder than Octarian I don't think! The grammar's a bit weird, but I think the only actual hang up is all the different words I have to learn."

"Heh, just wait until you take a look at different dialects. But no, yeah, you're doing really good so far!" Pearl gave her a thumbs up. "When uh... when did you learn all this? ...And get a job?"

How long had it been since she'd seen Marina anyway? It couldn't have been much time, since she just dropped Marina off at the hotel the other day. Despite that, Marina had already done so much. Last time Pearl saw, Marina could hardly speak Octarian properly, wore odd cosplay armor, and gawked in open awe at anything taller than a 3-story building. Now she was out dressed like a normal person, bouncing around the city like it was nothing, and speaking basic Inklish. Ok, let's think this through. I met her five days after my birthday, so the 11th, and today is. Pearl quickly glanced at her phone. FUCK, today's the 19th? It's been eight days?! How the fuck?

Marina opened her mouth to answer, but was cut off by a sudden grumbling in her stomach. It was kinda cute the way she faltered in embarrassment.

Fuck it. "You know what?" Pearl asked before Marina could speak. "Why don't you come with me, and tell me what you've been up to over some food? I don't have anything else to do tonight, and I haven't eaten since this morning. If you want to, of course, no pressure."

A few seconds of silence passed, just long enough to make Pearl doubt herself. "I-is that ok?" Marina asked, slowly wringing her hands in front of her.

"I mean, yeah. I offered, didn't I?" Pearl gave Marina another awkward thumbs up, her second in five minutes. "It's all good!"

"I..." Marina nodded slowly to herself. "I guess so... uh, a-alright then!" A smile equal parts nervous and excited snuck onto Marina's face, but the wringing of her hands didn't stop.

"Ok, cool!" Pearl nodded, meeting Marina's smile with her own. "Cool..."

They stood awkwardly for several seconds, neither one entirely sure what to do next.

"Uh, Pearl? What does 'over food' mean?" The speed of Marina's hand wringing increased tenfold as she shyly asked her question.

Pearl blinked, caught off guard by the question. "Oh, sorry! It's like, you put food down on the table, and then we have our conversation 'over' it because it's below us. On the table. Uh, in a restaurant or something, so we didn't have to stand out here in the streets and talk. Is that... ok?"

Marina nodded eagerly. "Ohes! Ws'lanningoneatinationba — (Oh yes! I was planning on eating some ration ba —)" She cut herself off with a clear of her throat and an embarrassed glance away. "Sorry, uh, yes that sounds great! I'd like to spend the time with you!

Marina gave her another nervous smile. I'm starting to get the feeling 'nervous' is the default option for this girl. I guess that makes sense though, since she's still new to the city. Still, it was a pretty cute trait, and the earnestness of it all made it genuinely endearing.

A sudden warmth flooded Pearl's cheeks, stalling the rest of her thoughts. Without another word, she spun in place and started forward. She gestured over her shoulder for Marina to follow. After a few steps she paused, looking over her shoulder to make sure she was being followed.

With the reassuring sound of footsteps behind her, Pearl's mind turned inward for the moment. She was struggling with the emotional whiplash from this sudden meeting. Why does Marina throw me off so much? Not even five minutes ago, she was ready to dropkick the next person to look at her sideways. Yet now, here she was, turned away and hiding a blush. It's not that she was necessarily upset about the development, more she was utterly dumbfounded at how the hell it even happened in the first place.

Pearl forced herself to slow down so Marina could catch up. "Sorry, I had an idea about where to eat and didn't want to lose it." She lied, silently urging her cheeks to calm the fuck down so she could show her face again.

"Do the other cafeterias have bad lines?" Marina asked as she fell into step beside Pearl. "I don't mind waiting if there's a closer one you'd rather go to."

Cafeteria? Does she mean, like, a food court or something? It was quite an odd choice of words, and it wasn't a language barrier thing either. Doesn't matter, I need to pick a place to drag us. What's nearby? McFlippers, Rabuka King, Wind Around, no no that's all fast food. The Sea Leaf cafe is on the other end of town, plus I don't think they're open this late... uhhhhhhhh fuck I don't know, I think there's a ramen place on the district border? Sure that's good enough.

"No need to worry about a line, the rush should already be close to done." She said. "That's one of the few good things about the Business District. Places clear out fast after most folk get off. C'mon, we're not far from it." Pearl picked up her pace a bit. "You were talking about your job, where you working?"

"It's a place called uhh... Walleye Warehouse? I don't know the first word, but the second is warehouse in Octarian."

Walleye Warehouse... right, that place. Pearl knew about it, but only distantly. It was one of the Houzuki Corp's backup contracts if they needed temporary overflow storage for something. Beyond that though, they were pretty unremarkable as far was warehouses went, just big.

"Oh cool, so you're just like, working the floor there? What's that like?"

Marina chuckled to herself. "It's a mess in there. It's like practically no one had any experience! At least I'm not out there, anymore."

"Well, that does make some sense, warehouse jobs typically have a lot of turnover." Pearl shrugged. "But wait, you're not on the floor?"

"It was all so messy and disorganized, I got turned around on my second day, and wandered into an office. I almost left, but I saw a bunch of papers with numbers on them. When I looked closer, it was kind of like a math problem, and I ended up sitting down to do them and clear my head."

What, what?

"I guess I got a little distracted doing it, because my commander walked in and seemed mad about me being there. Until he saw what I'd done at least, then he seemed a lot more pleased. So long story short, I got promoted to 'accountant' now, and I get to spend all day doing more of it!"

Pearl's mind spun. There was so much absurd and wrong about that story that it just had to be true. What kind of person starts doing balance sheets to RELAX? How mismanaged is that place that she could just do that!? "Huh-wuh?"

Marina giggled at her reaction. "Apparently the previous 'accountant' had quit a few days prior, so it was an open spot. Mr. Heritis had been going back to do it himself, but apparently I did everything a lot faster than even the previous person, so he gave me the job!"

"That's amazing Marina, in a lot of ways." Pearl answered honestly, genuinely bewildered by the tale. "I don't think I've heard anything like it before."

"It took a bit of time to get everything right, especially because he doesn't speak Octarian, but we worked it out! There's apparently very specific ways you're supposed to handle counting money, but once he showed me the right way to do things, everything kinda clicked!"

"That's incredibly lucky. If anyone tried that in the places I've been, they'd be fired on the spot. Anyways, here we go, we're here!"

Marina gave her a confused look before turning to look up at the sign. It was a relatively simple thing, just plastic letters on the front of the shop. A slightly fancier design, printed vinyl depicting a bowl of noodles with the shop's name under it, was stuck to the store window.

"Takeru Ramen" Pearl read out. "Takeru is just a name, and ramen is just ramen in Inklish."

At the clarification, Marina's eyes lit up. "Ramen? Really?" Pearl nodded, and the rest of Marina's face lit up similarly.

"I take it you're pretty hungry then. No wasting time then, let's go!" Pearl stepped towards the doors, and Marina followed right behind. She wasn't entirely sure why ramen was such a big deal, but Marina's boundless excitement was infectious. There was a bit more of a bounce to her step than normal as they walked towards a table.

This is the best day ever!

Marina's day was already a good one. It was the third day of her new routine on the surface and she was loving it. Despite it all still being so new and fresh, there was a rightness about it that she'd never really felt in the domes. A weight was off her shoulders, and while new ones were being added and removed with the chaos of adjusting, nothing could compare to the feeling of living a life away from her former title. At least, that's what she thought until Pearl was suddenly on the road in front of her.

The shorter inkling's presence alone was enough to push this day above all the others thus far, but as if that wasn't enough, Pearl took her to a cafeteria that SPECIALIZED in ramen!! Back underground, Marina rarely ever ate with the soldiers in the central cafeteria, but when she did, she got the ramen every chance she could, regardless of the flavor. The place Pearl brought her to had every flavor she'd ever had before, and so many more she didn't even know existed.

As soon as she was at the table, she could hardly contain herself. Ration bars could go grow lichen, because this stuff was good. In under half an hour, she cleared out three full bowls, each one a different flavor. The creamy ramen was the one she was most excited for, it was her favorite the single time she'd had in the domes, and her memory of it did not disappoint.

Eventually, Marina did come back to her senses and remembered that she was here with Pearl. After an embarrassed recovery, she explained what she'd been up to the past few days.

Back at the library, Pam had helped her get everything in order for applying for residency, and even helped her get to the courthouse where she had to apply. What followed was a crazy whirlwind of days, sending her up and down the streets of Inkopolis and in and out of the library. In the end, she had the critical things Pam said she needed: an apartment, a job, a bank account, and an ID. Everything else could come later, and Marina was already working on planning everything out.

The conversation really started to pick up again when Pearl finished her bowl, sitting back with a satisfied huff. "And you did all of that in three days? And you're not falling over yourself exhausted?!" Pearl asked, her eyes wide.

"Mmhmm!" Marina nodded enthusiastically. "Pam helped me find all the programs meant to help people get here. The hardest part so far was finding an apartment, really."

Pearl tipped her hand, shaking her head in disbelief. "That's crazy. You're crazy. I was so ready to explode after getting myself moved in that I ran to the mountain to cool off, and uh, well, now you're here too."

Marina paused. "Really?"

"Heh, yeah, but I don't really want to talk about that. What do you..." Pearl stopped for a moment, obviously considering her words. "What's the plan from here then?"

The plan? "Umm, I guess I don't really... have a plan. I was mostly focused on getting myself established here, but I guess that's done now." What do I do from here? Is there anything I can do from here? There's not a chain of command to climb, or any major deadlines to meet. There's not even ranks to work up. Well, sorta. "I guess getting citizenship is next? But I can't do that for six months, and I need to spend a lot more time learning Inklish anyway before I can do that. So I guess that's my plan?"

"Hmm..." Pearl gave her a look that Marina couldn't quite read. It was like she was trying to decide something. "So, if you don't have a big plan... does that mean you're free tonight?" Pearl's head immediately ducked, her eyes flicking to the side. "Not as like a date or anything, but to like, you know... hang out? I could show you around the city a little bit?"

"You want to spend more time with me?" Marina asked, slowly.

"Well, yeah! You're nice and cool, and you don't uh..." Pearl's gaze fell to the floor as her voice trailed off, before she cleared her throat. "Yeah anyway I can like, show you all kinds of cool little nooks and crannies if you want to see them."

"That'd be amazing!" A delighted warmth pooled inside Marina, one that only made her more excited for this unexpected night. It was hard for her to even wrap her head around the layers of ideas here. Not only was the entire thing entirely unplanned, but it was because someone wanted to spend time with her. With Marina! And it was Pearl!! Pearl was here! And got her ramen! And wanted to spend MORE time with her!!

Pearl looked shocked for a second, like she was actually surprised about Marina's answer for some reason. "Sick! Cool. Uh yeah. Let me get the tab real quick, and then we can go, how's that sound?"

Why Pearl needed to grab a tab, or even exactly what the tab was, Marina didn't know. It sounded quick though, so she just smiled. "Sounds great! I'm ready when you are!"

It turned out, with a little exploration, the city was even bigger than she thought. A lot denser then she thought, too. They walked the same streets Marina had before her first visit to the library. As they traveled, Pearl explained how each building didn't house a singular entity, but instead several, if not dozens of different groups and practices on their many floors. This was in stark contrast to how buildings in the domes were organized, with only a single entity occupying each building. That alone made the streets feel magnitudes larger, but that was only one aspect of things. Alleyways her eyes had once glossed over were filled with smaller shops. Sub-floors only accessible through obscured stairways hid even more of the city underground. Frequent popup events made the streets themselves a constant, ever-changing attraction. There was so much more crammed into every single space than she ever thought was feasible.

To Marina, this hadn't made things in the city feel more oppressive. In fact, counterintuitively, it made everything feel more alive. The towering buildings suddenly had a purpose; they weren't monoliths of a single entity, but something of a community space, shared by many. The crowds weren't all clamoring to one thing, but to just as many places as there were people. Realizing this density, this grand system both massive and small, made the city make sense to her in a way it hadn't before. Suddenly, life was teeming from every nook and cranny; everything had its place, even if she didn't specifically know it.

With this newfound awe, they wandered through the streets, talking about all the places they saw. As they travelled, Pearl read out signs they passed, and explained what each place did if Marina didn't know. There were so many strange and seemingly pointless places that had crowds of people. The stores made sense, the cafeterias she could understand, but the... bowl ling location didn't quite line up in her mind. Was it really entertaining to just... roll balls at pins? Pearl swore it was more entertaining than it sounded.

Eventually, Pearl was pulling her towards a place called 'Arowana Mall', a place described as "A whole buncha shops all crammed into one building." Which was honestly a pretty confusing description given the revelation Marina just had on the way here, but as she stepped inside, she had to concede that this was, in fact, its own thing. Rather than a street, this was a much narrower, long, climate controlled hallway with much smaller stores densely packed along both walls. There were at least 4 floors to it too, though it was hard for her to tell for certain. Marina couldn't even see the whole first floor, as the stores turned a corner at the end of the hallway.

Once more, Pearl took the lead, explaining what the different shops were called, and what they offered as they walked passed. The stores were different here, much smaller, or in some cases, almost exclusively just a service counter. The first time Marina stopped to look at something that caught her eye, Pearl led her into the store itself, where she got to take a much closer look around. Their adventure through the mall took her through many places: a book store, a tech store, many stores centered around a specific good, like candy or candles, and a large cafeteria. Clothes shops seemed to be the most common, but each one seemed to do something to differentiate themselves from the others.

The store they were currently browsing through was considered a 'high end clothing outlet'. The clothes inside were beautiful, but the first time she saw a price tag, Marina thought she might faint.

"Stars above... I didn't think anything could be this expensive." She set the pair of gloves back on the shelf, rubbing her eyes to try and push the 7-figure price tag from her mind. "It'd take me seventeen days of work to afford those!"

Pearl seemed startled for a moment, before an easy smile covered her face and a hand flew to her neck. "Ha, yeah, I guess I did kinda forget the budget, huh? Can you, uh —" Pearl glanced around before grabbing an oversized, puffy jacket from a nearby rack to hold over her chest — "can you blame me for looking though? When things look this good?"

Visualizing Pearl in that kind of jacket was... not the most appealing look, but there was also something endearing about it. "I guess not, but there's no way I can afford anything here if I want to buy food."

"Oh yeah for sure, I uh, I just wanted to show you what was waiting at the top! Let's go peek at some more affordable stuff." Pearl clumsily threw the jacket back on the hanger before quickly waving her forward.

The next store was a lot less impressive in regards to presentation, but had more than enough inventory to make up for it. And the stuff inside was cheap, cheaper than the clothes she'd already bought, in fact. She was holding up a plain black t-shirt when she remembered what Spyke had said when she first met him. Maybe I should go say hi? Tell him I figured out what a mall was.

They wondered for a while longer, before Pearl pulled her to one final, specific store. "Alright, one more stop before the exit, and I think you'll like it." Pearl gave her a wink before pointing up at the sign. It had something written in incredibly loopy lettering set in front of two discs, one large black one, and a second smaller gray one, both with holes in the center. "It says 'music alley' though it's nearly impossible to read," Pearl explained.

The inside was delightfully bland. Behind the counter, a shark slouched over a bin flipping through small thin boxes. Dozens of the black discs depicted on the sign lined the top edge of the wall. Shelves held boxes of equipment below them, and Marina almost tripped as she walked in, because she actually recognized several of the products. It was all music equipment, like Ahato used; turntables, keyboards, synthesizers, and a lot more she had seen other musicians using.

"See? I knew you'd be interested. C'mon in." Pearl chuckled from a few steps ahead. "Take a look, see if there's anything you like.

Marina slowly stepped inside, somewhat unsure of what exactly it was she should be looking for. Rows of basic folding tables held plastic crates with the same thin plastic boxes as the attendant. There were dozens of these crates, each with a little sign under it with words she still didn't know the meaning of. Each of the little plastic boxes had a picture on the front, with varying amounts of Inklish text. The edges were usually some kind of ridged texture, but it wasn't a universal constant it seemed.

Carefully, she pulled one of the boxes from the closest crate to inspect. The picture showed a group of three people very casually standing out in a field, hands in their pockets. As she shifted it around in her hand, she experimentally squeezed the sides, and let out a small "oh!" in surprised when the front popped up. It's holding something!

Inside was a disc with a similar art to the outside held on a small peg. Not knowing what else to do, Marina gently fished her claw around the edge until it popped free. The underside was an odd reflective silver color. These must be the things on the sign outside. I wonder what they're for?

She held it up to the light, squinting as she watched different bands of colors dance along the tiny ridges she was just noticing. It's... well I doubt it's a weapon. It's probably half decent aerodynamically, but it's too dull to be any real danger. Maybe they're supposed to be decorative, like the larger black ones? The reflection is pretty, but I wouldn't use it like that. And then there's the box they come in... She looked back to the little plastic box. There was the obvious indent where the disc would sit, but there was something else; a little booklet filled with Inklish text. The front of the booklet was also the art the front of the box. Is this like... a memorial of sorts then? Were these three important figures?

Click!

Marina's head shot up as sound poured from the speakers on the ceiling. The roar of a crowd filled the inside of the store to the brim, before suddenly all but vanishing. The sound was so sudden it took her a few seconds to realize that it was a recording someone was adjusting the volume of. She scanned the store, and no one seemed alarmed by the sudden noise. Pearl was still digging through one of the crates a bit further into the store, and the attendant was bent over behind the counter, twisting something with his fins. Is he the one that started the —

"Hi hi hi everyone!! Hello!!"
"Hey everyone, how's it going?"

Marina froze. Those voices. She recognized those voices. Where... Where did she know them from? The recording quickly devolved into a flurry of words she couldn't recognize, but that didn't matter. She was transfixed, her entire focus locked onto the pair of voices, trying to remember where she knew them from. Trying to remember... why she felt a pit open in her stomach as she listened.

Her focus was interrupted when the words suddenly cut out, interrupted by a nearly imperceptible squeaking sound. Less than a half-second later, music was suddenly blaring from the speakers, the sudden jolt enough to make her jump. Is the attendant skipping through the recording? Songs flew by, barely getting through their opening riff before suddenly, everything stopped.

Loud, blaring synths began to echo through the store, pushed on by a punchy drumline. Each beat was like a hammer against her chest, echoing the frantic beating of her hearts. Words in a language she didn't know rang out over the rows of crates, cheerful and upbeat. Marina didn't know how to react —

She knew this song. She knew this song, in a way she didn't know any other.

Standing in the bleachers, her face obscured, a bag of stolen tools at her side. Watching the Octobot King. Agent 3. The Squidbeak Captain. She was there. She was there. The fist arced through the air, back towards its source. It was the one part she hadn't finished, the compromise she'd made to visit her friend. It failed. She failed.

Stars above, darkness hold her, Octavio LOST.

She was there, she was watching the Octobot King spin out of control, its pilot dazed. Agent 3 preparing to finish the job, freeing the Captain. She needed to run. She NEEDED to RUN.

NO
NO
NO
IT DIDN'T MATTER WHAT Responsibility to her people SHE HAD OR the good her work did for them! SHE WAS NOT GOING TO DIE HERE!
She had to GO, it was happening! It was........

It... was a recording. She wasn't in the domes. She wasn't running for her life. She hadn't been for a while. A memory, that was all.

Marina forced her eyes open, and looked around the store. It couldn't have been more than 10 seconds since the music started. No one was looking at her, no one had seen her almost lose it. A loose collection of people started stepping in, obviously drawn in by the music playing overhead.

Visibly shaking, Marina lowered herself to the floor right where she stood. Her hands grasping the edge of the table tightly, desperately anchoring herself to the now. She was on the surface. She was in Inkopolis. She was OK.

As she slowly calmed down, voices continued to sing, and Marina continued to listen. The music had an energy to it, a call to anyone who could hear it to join them and indulge in it. To forget their worries and just enjoy the experience. It didn't DEMAND attention like all the music she'd heard before her time in The Hollows. It made her want to join them, to feel the ecstatic joy of music too. For a moment, she let herself ride with the music, listening closely to the joy and wonder it held within.

The song swelled into its grand chorus, the two singers effortlessly navigating the winding melody. The melody... Marina knew this melody. Not the words, but the contour, the shape it took. For a fleeting second, Marina was standing in a crowd of soldiers again, but it wasn't Octavio's defeat. The ceiling was lower, the lighting dim and dark. Her best and only friend up on the stage, performing her set for the crowd.

"I caught a signal, it wasn't from down here."

"You got music from the surface?"

"Yeah! It was by pure chance, but Marina, it sounded heavenly. I had to- I just worked."

Marina knew this melody. She knew it well, how could she not? It was the first thing she'd heard when she finally admitted she wanted to be free. It was Ahato's melody, the one she'd heard, taken, and transformed into something else. The simple through line she'd built an entire set around, weaving throughout the duration of the show.

A weight settled heavy on her soul as a chill pulled itself down her spine. Things had been so busy for her, moving to the surface, meeting new people, getting an apartment and a job and an ID and a bank account — but she'd forgotten. She forgot about her friend, the whole reason she'd been brave enough to run to the surface in the first place.

How could I do that? What is wrong with me?

"Yo, Marina? You ok?" Pearl was standing beside her, offering a questioning look.

"I'm... fine." Her answer came slowly. "Just remembering something."

Pearl regarded her for a second, before her eyes jumped to the speakers on the roof for a moment. "Was it the song?"

Marina nodded, still listening as close as she could. The music soldiered on, as bouncy and energetic as ever. Even through the sudden shock of emotions, Marina found herself drawn to it. When the song finally drew to a close, Marina felt her entire body suddenly relax. She hadn't realized it in the moment, but she'd been pushing herself higher, towards the speaker in the ceiling, like it'd somehow give her more music if she got close.

"Wow, I take it you like the Inkantation then?" Pearl gave her a playful bump of her elbow.

"I-is that what it's called?"

"It's the name of the song, yeah. It's supposed to be like a folk song or something, I dunno."

New music had come on, but naturally, Marina didn't recognize it. It was still the same voices, and the same style of music though, just a different song. She strained her ears, scanning for... something? A reference, an echo, anything of the 'Inkantation' in this new song.

Pearl cleared her throat. "Do you.... want to hear it again?"

"Huh? Wha?" Marina jerked her head down to look at Pearl. "How'd you know?"

Pearl gave her a flat look, eyes bouncing between Marina's face and the ceiling. "Call it my intuition," she answered flatly. "Ok, hold up, I have a better idea, come to the counter with me."

Pearl caught the attention of the shark behind the counter. "Hey, do you speak Octarian?" When the shark answered "no" in Inklish, Pearl lulled her head for a moment, before shooting a rapid fire burst of questions at the shark. Marina tried her best to pick out what she was saying, but she could only catch a scant few words. After a few more questions, the shark took a step back and started digging for something under the counter.

"What did you ask?" Marina asked, trying vaguely successfully to split her attention between watching the attendant, talking to Pearl, and listening to the music.

"Well, since you liked the Inkantation, and given how you keep staring at the ceiling like you can see the freakin' music notes... I bought you a few CDs, and a thing to play 'em with."

As if he was cued, the attendant returned to the counter with two of the small plastic cases on top of a box with a picture of some round machine printed on it. A pair of headphones sat across one of his fins, which were delicately, if gracelessly, slid onto the counter beside the stack.

"CDs?" Even with her relatively primitive Inklish, Marina could recognize that as an acronym.

Pearl handed the shark a key card and pulled the items closer. "Yeah! They're like — they put the music on the disc, so you put it in the CD player and it plays the music for you!" She opened one of the cases and showed off the disc inside.

"It's a... storage device?" Marina asked tepidly, giving the disc a sideways look.

A very light tinge of red suddenly colored Pearl's cheeks. "Yeah! The whole album is on there. Here, I'll show you how to use it outside, so we're not holding up the line." Behind them, a group of young inklings stood impatiently, each clutching a plastic case in their hands.

"Right..." Marina collected the CDs from the counter as Pearl grabbed the headphones and device. She looked over the artworks as they walked out. The first album had a bright white background, with large shapes drawn with yellow lines. Two silhouettes stood in front of it, each striking poses with their arms held up. The second one was similar, with two inklings, one with long black tentacles and pink ink, the other with short grey tentacles and green ink, were posed on a massive stage, with a roaring crowd in front of them."

"It's just a basic CD player, nothing super fancy." Pearl explained as she picked a bench in the mall's center hallway. "You just slap a CD inside, and plug in the headphones, and boom, music. There's a few buttons to skip songs n' pause n' stuff. Hand me the live performance CD?" After a few beats of silence she quickly added, "The uh, the one with Callie and, ng— and Marie on the stage."

"Oh, here!" Marina quickly passed the case over, watching as Pearl carefully took the disc out, put it in the player, and closed the lid. After she flipped a small switch, the disc immediately began to spin, a quiet whirring sound coming from the device. The headphones plugged into a little port on the side, and Pearl handed them over with a smile.

Marina hesitated a moment, headphones in her hands. Pearl hammered at one of the buttons with two arrows on it as she stared at the back of the CD's container, until she let up with a smirk. A squeaking sound nearly identical to the one she'd heard in the store escaped the device, until it returned to the normal whirring from before.

Slowly, she slipped the headphones over her ears. Marina was thrust into the Inkantation once more, but this time, she was ready for it.

Chapter Text

It was bordering on trite how often Pearl would wake up with a splitting headache. This was what, four days in a row? She wasn't really counting, but technically the only day she'd woken up without a headache was after the night with Marina a bit ago.

As she slogged her way through her morning routine, the only thing that stopped her from doubling down with a can of Nacwin Light was the meeting looming over her later today. As much as she wished she could black out and skip the entire thing, at least mentally, that was a horrible idea in every conceivable way.

Pearl flinched as her phone buzzed. If that was a message from her father, she was going to lose it. The bastard already had her falling over herself about their stupid meeting, she did NOT want to hear a single fucking thing from him until then.

It took a few moments for Pearl to realize that it was Marina texting her. Oh fuck what? She has a phone— well, I guess she just said it right there huh? When did I... Right, I left her one of my stupid business cards that night at the hotel... Something in her felt lighter, knowing Marina kept the card, even though she probably didn't know what it meant at the time.

That only left one question: How the hell do I respond? Her hands hovered over the keyboard, every attempted motion drowned in enough hesitance to kill it completely. 'Hi!'... 'Hey!'... 'What's Up?'... No, not like that... Around and around her mind went, overthinking every single letter she wasn't even typing.

Pearl knew how to talk to people. Text, email, phone calls, video conferences, she had experience with all of it. When it came to matters of business, Pearl could juggle dozens of associates at the same time and not neglect a single one. That was the problem, though, wasn't it? Maybe Pearl was being a bit presumptuous with the thought, but Marina was more than just an associate. She deserved better than the meaningless fluff stapled onto the bookends of every transaction.

This text couldn't just be another client message, no; it had to be something better. It had to be Pearl's best tentacle forward. This was her first message to Marina for Tide's sake, there was no room to mess this up. It needed to be clear, but friendly. She was genuinely excited to know that Marina had a phone now, but it was important not to overwhelm the girl. A measured, but thorough, response.

There. Totally nailed it. Flawless. That's how normal people write, right?

"Pam? Oh, right, she's the library person." Pearl mused aloud, staring down at her phone like it was a puzzle. It took her a few more seconds to realize that her message had been accepted. I did good? It felt fair to assume so, since Marina sent her a new response. Maybe she wasn't as bad at this as she thought. Now, what does she mean by brand new? The phone? That'd make sense. I guess she's at the library, and Pam's helping her with her new phone. Ah, this is easy! I can totally do this.

What the hell brand is that? Pearl quickly tapped over to her browser to look it up. Apparently, they sold a series of low-end flip phones, the ancient kind where you had to hit the buttons several times to get different letters. Damn, I forgot flip phones were even a thing! I haven't seen one since I was like, six or something. Truthfully, the idea that Marina hadn't gotten a smart phone never even occurred to Pearl, but given Marina's finances, it made a good amount of sense. Tides knew if her own phone broke, she'd have to join Marina in the land of relics just to save G.

Pearl blinked a few times, stunned by the deluge of messages. It was quite odd the way Marina broke up her messages. Then again, she does have a flip phone, maybe she has one of those data plans that charges by the letter. SHIT! I should—

Then why does she... eh, doesn't really matter. The conversation stalled momentarily as Pearl struggled to find her words. This is hard man, like, what do I even say?

"Uh. Huh." That was unexpected. This Pam girl was rather forward it seemed, that that Pearl was exactly complaining. She knew exactly where that was from her own apartment search not long ago. Maybe... maybe I can drop by? Say—

Shit.

The jovial air around her quickly dissipated as she thought ahead in her day. "Alright Pops, you fucking prick, let's get this over with."

Stepping into the grand foyer of the Houzuki Manor was something Pearl longed for from the moment she was kicked out, but now that she was here, it only felt bad. As she stared into the majestic features: the grand chandelier, the red rug trailing the twin staircases on either side of the entrance hallway, the golden accents on every frame, pillar, and piece of furniture; there was no way to avoid picturing her own apartment in comparison. The thin walls with their peeling wallpaper, the lumpy, uneven flooring covered in beer cans, and the windows she had to tape closed. How far she'd fallen.

Father stood in the mouth of the entrance hallway, waiting with his hands clasped behind his back. "Pearl, it's nice to see you!" His words were warm and welcoming, but it was impossible not to hear the echoes of formality propping up his tone.

Pearl's stomach twisted itself into knots as she walked forward, both from nausea and tension. She didn't let it show— couldn't let it show— not here, not to him. What's the best move here? Try to match his tone? Rip the bandage off? Take it slow?

Ultimately, old habits died hard. "It's a real fucking pleasure." She drawled, dropping her head to the side to give him a glare.

Father sighed, a deep, tired sound. His chiseled features fell in disappointment. "Still on with the aggressive behavior, I see?"

"I'm still on my bullsquid, yeah? You think a few weeks out of the house was going to fix me or some shit?"

"Well, one could hope."

Pearl's glare darkened. "What the fuck do you want."

"Right, no use in wasting time with formalities." He pulled a notepad from his pocket, briefly flipping over the pages before replacing it. "I've caught wind of your... endeavors... from the past few weeks, and—"

"Oh yeah? You disappointed? Impressed?" Her voice was a growl, each taunting word grating against the inside of her skull. Tides her head hurt. "Aren't you so fucking surprised it's going so damn fantastic?"

Several agonizing seconds passed in silence. "Pearl, you and I both know you aren't going about this properly. Only you know if this is some bizarre lapse in judgement, or a deliberate misstep, but regardless, that's where you are."

Just shove it up your ass already. Pearl barely bit the words back in time. She knew better than to interrupt her father once he got like this. Fucking fantastical guilt trip here. 'Woooahhhh that's crazy! Who would have thought I was fucking this up the entire time!! I sure didn't realize! Thanks for pointing that out daddy! I'll go fix everything now!!' Fucking asshole.

"There is no such thing as an untenable position, not truly. Yet, bearing that in mind, it is still quite the predicament you've gotten yourself into." For once, Father's professional facade cracked open just a sliver. A drop of informal, almost casual air colored his behavior as he shifted to smile at her. "Not many paths are open are they? What's left, a few manufacturing plants? Equity firms? Not exactly the top of the pack, and it's not like you're in much of a position to launch anything of your own either, are you?"

"Who the hell said I was trying to launch anything?" Pearl demanded through gritted teeth.

He was dragging this out, making sure she stewed in every aspect of her failure. It didn't matter that she was privy to the trick, the psychological toll of it was still enough to send her spiraling. Priming her embarrassment to be used as a self perpetuating cudgel, intent to knock her back on course. Even the supposed 'break' in professionalism was as much of a calculated move as the rest of his actions. Her father didn't do unintentional things like that.

Father regarded her for a moment, his eyes clear of any intentions yet still making a show of sizing her up. "Let's take a walk," he said, as he stepped towards the door. Pearl didn't have a choice, so she followed.

Staff members ducked into adjoining hallways, rooms, or otherwise made themselves scarce as Father's footsteps echoed down the hallways. They passed through the suddenly deserted hallways with brutal efficiency, never seeing an obvious trace of another person, but Pearl knew just where to look to catch the edges of shoes, or the flashes of uniforms around corners. She silently wished that she was there beside them, hiding just out of sight like she used to as a kid.

Finally, they ended up in a wing dedicated specifically to business affairs. The grand majority of dealings they ever engaged with were handled by dedicated sales reps and lawyers. Almost all of the deals more important than that were handled in the Houzuki Corporation's Inkopolis headquarters. Only a very scant handful, the most lucrative, the most powerful, and the most secretive ever happened here. National leaders, both foreign and domestic, religious leaders, weapons suppliers, peace coalitions; there was no party truly unwelcome to the table so long as they had cash to pay. And now, Pearl was being led down the same hallway she'd once led others.

Like most practical things, the space served a dual purpose. Rows of hand painted portraits hung from the walls, each of their extravagant golden frames meticulously spaced and lined without so much as a speck of dust. The imposing gaze of her ancestry traced her movements, collective centuries of judgement weighing on her shoulders. It was both an exhibit of family history, and an overt intimidation tactic made exceptionally effective against Pearl specifically.

The meeting room itself was very sparsely furnished, designed to be rapidly customizable to accommodate changing every detail, down to the colors of the wall, at a moment's notice. The Staff would reoutfit the room as demanded, according to the guest they would be seeing. Today, it hadn't been set up in the slightest. A large conference table, easily large enough to seat thirty people, had only two chairs, one at the head, and one beside it. A small stack of paper sat between the seats, with a fountain pen beside them.

"You're not meant to be a mere 'cog in the machine' Pearl." Father finally broke the silence, his tone matter of fact, like he was commenting on the weather. "There isn't a board position, office, or buy-in you could ever find that would truly satisfy you. That's the truth— it's just how things are. You are meant to be a leader, a dominator, a Houzuki. There is no being content with 'good enough!' or satisfaction in merely riding to the end. It's in our blood, our very nature as Houzuki. Anything less is suffocating, is it not?"

Pearl didn't answer. She couldn't. The nerve, the audacity, the GALL to accuse her of these feelings. Of this innate, self-serving obsession with power and control. She was afraid if she let her mouth open, she'd scream so loud the walls would come down...

...because he was right. That's why she was here, after all.

"I know you and I don't exactly see eye to eye on many things these days, but Pearl, I don't want you to fail. Quite the opposite, in fact."

Yeah, sure. What's your angle you bastard? She needed him to say something else, pushing a different thread she could attack, something for her to latch onto that wasn't... that.

"Your siblings are all wonderful, each and every one of them are more than capable of revolutionizing the world if they put their minds to it. But you, Pearl, you have something they all lack. Something very few in the world really have at all."

It took everything Pearl had to not turn away right then. She didn't want to hear this. There was no desire for this unwarranted comparison, or this pedestal she was being forced onto against her will. 'Your siblings don't have the same mojo you do, so stop wasting your talents with this petty rebellion, and take your station.'

Pearl's face darkened. Her voice was low, flat, and utterly devoid of any positive emotion. "What. Do. You. Want."

Father finally took his seat at the end of the table. "I am prepared to offer you a loan for 200,000,000 G. I stand by what I said before, that there is no truly untenable position, but it would be remiss to leave you languishing for years and years to rebuild a base to grow from."

Two hundred million G... The room swirled in the corner of her eyes. That was enough to get any possible idea off the ground, so long as she was smart about it. It was a lifeline, a savior. That much money... was a trap of some kind.

"What's the catch?"

"The single stipulation, is that you must, by three years of your signing, either have paid it back in full, or have a verifiable, business expenditure-related reason you have deferred payment. Otherwise, there is no 'catch' with this deal."

"No interest either?"

"None."

She knew he wasn't lying. They were both equally capable of calling foul on the contract if it played dirty, so it saved them both time to avoid the hassle. The loan itself was absurd, if not downright predatory. The deal demanded she not only pay back two hundred million G in just three years, but that she had to do so while actively financing business operations.

But... it was money. Money she more and more desperately needed with every passing day. There was no launching a corporate endeavor from her current position. Her reputation was utterly shot, and her capital was nonexistent. There was not another option if she wanted to live under the Houzuki name.

"And if I fail to make the payments?"

"Then we rip you apart, piece by piece, to reclaim as much of the value as we're able."

It was coercion. A pity play. A predatory offer in a time of crisis. An olive branch. An intimidation tactic. A deal, same as any other. Pearl could see each and every single one of these angles in full, and many, many more on top of them. It was a bad decision, one that had far, far more disastrous consequences than it did rewards, but it was her only way forward.

Pearl knew it, Father knew it too, from the start. This was his answer.

The world dulled as Pearl took her seat, beside him. She collected the pen, and scanned the contract in full. Everything was as he said. With a steady hand, and void in her stomach, Pearl signed her name on the line.

Chapter Text

Marina was practically giddy with excitement as she ran up to her apartment. Weekends were not something she could have imagined before the surface, but now that she had one it was really easy to see the appeal. It was impossible to maintain any semblance of "a life" when under 24/7 military orders, so to have this kind of thing not only be normal, but required was a really good change of pace.

She'd spent the morning walking through the streets of Inkopolis. Her goal was to have no goal, simply wander around and learn as much as she could. Maybe grab a few groceries in the process. What followed was three hours of shopping, sightseeing, a bit of crowd watching, and even a conversation with a store clerk, albeit in very basic Inklish. Everything was just going so well! It really felt like she was making a place for herself now. The thought put a spring in her step as she approached her apartment building.

Everything in the area was being renovated to varying degrees, and her building was no exception. Her building very recently received an external face lift, refurnished lobby, elevator revamp, and new paint in the hallways, at least that's what the realtor had said. Ultimately it amounted to a fairly nice place, that still had cheap rent due to literally every other nearby building still being under construction for the foreseeable future.

Pearl's text had only made her more excited to get back. The inkling might still be something of a stranger to her, but so far, Marina had enjoyed every minute of time they'd shared. Is Pearl waiting for me there? I hope not, but it's been more than an hour...

With probably a bit too much haste, she blitzed her way through the lobby and into the elevator. Thankfully, (but also unfortunately,) Pearl was not waiting outside of her apartment door. Marina turned her key, and stepped inside her apartment. Her apartment, that she could do whatever she wanted with. That idea alone was still enough to trip her up.

She could do whatever she wanted, but what did she want? The only interior organization she'd ever thought about before was clearing the countertops in her lab. Did she want another lab? Maybe I do want another lab. Can I even make another lab here?

There was still so much to consider, but right now, she wanted to put her groceries away. She barely had time to get everything in the right cabinet before her phone buzzed again.

In the lobby, Pearl stood awkwardly next to the front counter. trying to avoid making eye contact with the crab behind the desk. The moment she saw Marina, she jumped in surprise so hard that it nearly knocked her crown from her head. She awkwardly caught it with one hand while she waved with the other. "Marina, there you are! I was starting to think you forgot about me!"

Marina gasped. "I would never!"

Pearl laughed, easing Marina's nerves just a bit. "I don't doubt it, just giving you a hard time."

They stood for a second, neither one exactly sure what to say next. "Well, uh, follow me, I'm up on the fourth floor." Marina used calling the elevator as an excuse to break eye contact. Pearl wandered in with her, but neither of them spoke as they rode up.

"This one, here." Marina pointed to the third door on the left as she grabbed her key from her pocket. "Pam helped me find this place, and it has so much inside it, I hardly know what to do!"

The door swung open to reveal the apartment's living room. Two cushioned chairs sat atop a beige rug, facing a currently empty entertainment center. Further into the room, a small, but fully functional kitchen was separated by a round table with three chairs at it. A hallway pressed further inward leading to a closet, bathroom, and bedroom.

She still couldn't stop the swell of excitement she felt whenever she saw it. There was so much in here already, more than she'd thought possible for one person to have back in the domes. Honestly it was a bit overwhelming, but in a good way. There were so many things she could do— and she could get more! As long as she didn't damage the building, she could do anything she wanted!

With a happy sigh, Marina stepped on inside, making sure she didn't pause in the doorway this time.

"Wow, nice place. A bit sparse, but I can't really blame you for that."

Marina's smile faltered. "I-I'm sorry?"

"Well, I mean, you just got the place so you can't have put much in it yet."

"You think this isn't a lot?" The question came out softer than Marina meant it too.

"Not really. It's a few chairs and a table. Plus like, a bed and a nightstand. Not much." Pearl shrugged.

"O-oh... I..." Unsure, Marina looked away from the room, and started to wring her hands. "I guess... most of it came with the apartment anyway..."

There was a suffocating lull in conversation. Marina couldn't bring her eyes away from the corner where they were locked. "Is this really... so little?"

Pearl made a startled noise. "Uh, I mean, I guess? Is... Do you think it's a lot?"

Marina wrung her hands faster. "It's the most I've ever had." She mumbled.

There wasn't a response, leaving Marina's mind to spin away in the silence. Is this really nothing? Images of her old apartment flashed through her head, the one she stayed in maybe 4 times a year. A single bed, desk, wardrobe, and chair. A hook on the wall to hang her Octoshot. That was it. No, that was luxury. Soldiers didn't get a wardrobe or desk.

"I... I come from a place with a lot of crap."

The sudden words were enough to draw Marina's eyes back to Pearl.

"A lot of crap. Too much, to be honest. But, uh, sorry. I didn't.." Pearl looked shyly at the floor. "I didn't mean to, uh. Yeah... I... You know, spacious isn't a bad thing, actually. Plenty of rich people pay far too much money just to get empty space!"

"They do?" It sounded odd the way Pearl said it, but the underlying logic made enough sense that Marina could follow.

"Totally! Most hotels have a thing called the penthouse, which is like, the entire top floor dedicated to only them."

"T-that's ridiculous! One person doesn't need that much space!" A breathless chuckle followed the end of her words, the ghost of a grin starting to play at her lips.

Pearl seemed bolstered by Marina's own returning confidence. "Yeah, it's completely crazy the things some people will buy. You're only like, what, a single paycheck into this place, I shouldn't have expected you to have it full already anyway."

Am I supposed to fill it? With what? More furniture? I don't think I need any more of it. "What else do I need?"

There was a pause as Pearl looked around, before she took a confident step forward. "Marina, you can put whatever you want in here!"

"Like a lab?" The question slipped out before she could think about it.

Pearl faltered for just a second, before her smile returned, twice as bright. "Ab-so-lutely! ...Whatever that means. But between you and me, you might want to cover a few more basics first."

"Basics? Like what? I already have everything I need."

"Well... you don't have a TV, or a couch, or really anywhere to lay down at all."

Marina had to give her a side look. "But my bed's in the other room?"

Pearl waved her hand. "Yeah, but like. that's for laying down to sleep, you need a place to lay down and rest."

"Um?"

"You know, like, get back home, hand o-err, throw off your stuff, and then just—" Pearl pretended to jump, before putting her hands on the back of her head and miming a relaxing motion. "Just kick back, you know?"

"A place to lay down and... relax... but not sleep?"

"Yeah, exactly! It's great for watching TV and stuff."

"Pearl, I don't have a TV. We just..."

"Not YET, but you totally should get one. It's worth it, trust me." Pearl turned dramatically, pointing towards the empty entertainment center. "And it'd fit right there!"

Marina couldn't help it. A giggle slipped out before she ever realized. Pearl's antics were just too... silly. How could she not? "A place to lay down and relax... that's not a bad idea."

Two Weeks Later

True to her musing, Marina had got a couch, just not the type Pearl expected... unfortunately. She was expecting a nice couch, maybe a black, beige, or brown, made of waxed canvas. You know, the usual. The kind you'd find in any sensible person's living room.

Instead, Pearl was laid out on the brightest, most neon orange piece of furniture she'd ever seen. It was huge, she could lay down, flip 180 degrees, and still have room to spare. It didn't have arm rests, so there was even more space if you hung limbs over the edges. She did begrudgingly have to admit the damn thing was rather comfy, even if it burned her eyes to look at.

"Where did you get this thing again?" She asked in Inklish.

Marina cleared her throat. "Ah, I was talking with Ezme in warehouse,"

"In the warehouse, don't forget the conjunction." Pearl corrected.

"Right, uh, in the warehouse, and I tell her I am... um, rescuing for a couch?"

"I'm guessing you mean saving, like saving your money. That word is 'saving' what you said is 'rescuing'." Pearl kept her tone light, smiling to herself. Language practice like this had quickly become fairly common, at Marina's insistence. She was practically absorbing the information in real time anyway, so the on-the-spot feedback did a lot to grow her confidence. It took me months to be conversational in Octarian, and that was back when I was a kid! It's been like, a month!

"Grr... stupid words. I said it right when I was talking to her!" Marina shook her fist playfully before letting out a light giggle. "She said I should look for an... a... Oh rust it I forgot the word. It's a store where everything is being resold."

"Hmm... A pawn shop? Flea Market? Thrift store?" Pearl threw the likely unfamiliar terms out to see if Marina recognized any of them.

"Mmm... it was a store... eh, flea?" Marina shook her head. "It was— it started with the letter 'a' I think."

"Oh!" Pearl snapped her fingers. "Antique store."

"Yeah, yeah! I went to one of those!"

"And that's where you got the couch?"

"Mmhmm! It wasn't very expressive either!" There was a pride in Marina's voice that almost made the burning neon couch seem worth it. Almost.

"Expensive," she corrected again. Pearl sluggishly threw herself upright, grunting with a quiet effort. She'd been hanging her head over the edge, so she needed a second to let her ink and blood settle. She had to dip back down for a moment to pick her crown off the floor, since it fell the moment she dipped her head even slightly.

The black plastic was faded, with bends and spiderwebs of cracks dotted around it. "Stupid cheap thing's giving out on me..." she grumbled as she shoved it back onto her head.

Marina occupied the corner of her vision, blocking Pearl from seeing whatever it was she was working on. She was explicitly instructed not to peak, and as much as Pearl wanted to anyway, she had enough restraint to be patient about it. Even if it meant dangling her head off the world's orangest couch for forty minutes.

Now upright, her back was to Marina. The view she had was even less spectacular over here. The kitchen was practically barren. Not even a microwave adorned the counters yet, though Pearl was sure that, much like the couch, it would change with time.

That was when Pearl noticed something odd, tucked into the corner. She'd visited several times in the past weeks, so for something like this to have escaped her for so long was surprising. Though, I guess it's tucked deep into the corner. Still, what the heck is this?

An incomprehensible conglomeration of wires, screens, electrical components, and a small satellite dish were all wired into the bottom of that huge brick of a walkie talkie from the mountain. Where the fuck did she get a satellite dish from? The thing was stupid complicated, like you probably needed tweezers and a magnifying glass to do anything to it. More so, if Pearl had to wage a guess, it wasn't currently functional. There wasn't really any one thing she could point to for that conclusion, it just felt incomplete.

"And... there!" Marina triumphantly called. "It's as good as it's gonna get for now."

There were no blinking lights or beeping sounds from the walkie-talkie-inator, so it was at the very least, turned off right now. Pearl turned away from it, back towards the living room. "Alright, let's see watcha got!" Pearl confidently jumped from her chair. As her eyes fell on what the octoling was working so diligently at, Pearl found herself slowing down, hesitating as she looked over what was done. The entertainment center, the one she pictured snugly holding a TV mere weeks ago, was covered in a staggering amount of merchandise. Squid Sisters merchandise.

"You became a big fan pretty quick, huh?" The teasing question came out more flat than she'd wanted, but Marina didn't seem to notice.

"Of course! Something about their music just..." Marina froze, before continuing more reservedly. "Drew me in, I don't know. It's good music!"

Truly, the only way to describe it accurately was to call it a shrine to them. Albums, posters, figures, charms, keychains, art prints, bookmarks, stickers, and tee-shirts. Already nearly half the entertainment center was gone, and that was only after two weeks! The CD player Pearl bought her sat in the center, slightly askew, like it was set down recently.

"Geez, I know you like their music but this feels like it's a bit much?" Pearl half scolded, half asked.

Unfortunately, no matter how much delight it gave Marina, for Pearl the entire thing would always feel a little... off. It wasn't Marina's fault, or even the merch's fault for that matter, it was purely a Pearl thing. Because, well, she knew Marie, well, she had known Marie. Even through the years of aging, stage makeup, and the dubious quality of the merchandise, there was enough familiarity there that it just felt uncanny. Put plainly, it was just really damn weird seeing her childhood friend's face plastered all around her adult friend's room.

She tried to keep this attitude from showing, but some of it still seeped out as she regarded the shrine. "I mean yeah, they're popular for a reason, but like, don't you think it's a bit... fanatical? Like, they made some songs you like, this seems like a bit much?"

Marina had been toying with her crappy CD player headphones, but the sudden words made her stop. She set them down gently, almost reservedly, as she grabbed an empty case to hold instead. "Their music... changed my life," she said slowly. There was a hesitation in her every move, like she was talking around something rather than saying it. A quiet, almost fearful deliberation behind her eyes confirmed it.

A decade of hard-wired instinct kicked in as Pearl recognized this all-too-familiar situation for what it was: an unspoken negotiation. One party, in this case, Marina, had information she didn't want to share, but the circumstances meant she had to give up some of it. Why? What's going on with this music that would make it resonate with her so much? She thought back to the music store, weeks before.

Pearl looked up from the Ink Theory CD in her hands to see Marina staring, fixated, at the speaker on the ceiling. A song she didn't recognize was playing, but it was sung by a voice she did.

Marie. It had to be the Squid Sisters then. Why is Marina so transfixed on it? She looked back to the octoling, what could she see? Her mouth was open, not in awe but shock. Her posture was straightened, like she was spooked by something, likely the song. Her hands at her sides twitched mildly, and her face flashed through several emotions per second.

There was no doubt, Marina was remembering something when she first heard it.

Whatever it was, Marina was clearly unwilling to share the full details, but something still had to be spilled here. "You'd heard them before the CD shop?" She offered, gently trying to prompt a response.

"I... yeah. I didn't know who they were, I just... heard them. They sang the shock to my system that told me I needed to run. To get away from... where I was."

Oh. Well, that was a fair bit heavier than Pearl was expecting. "I'm glad you heard them, then."

Marina let out a breathless laugh. "I guess in a sense, I owe them my life? I want to support them as best I can in that case."

There was no arguing with that, Tides. Pearl looked back to the wall of merch, and decided that, yeah, she could put up with a few uncanny feelings if it meant that much to Marina. "Well," She shrugged. "I can't really fault you for liking them with a story like that."

She wasn't really sure where to go with things after that, until her eyes landed on one of the posters. It was Callie and Marie posing in front of a large TV. "Though, you really should get a TV you know."

Marina paused, tiling her head in curiosity. "Why's that?"

"The Squid Sisters are the daily news hosts." Pearl sat shifted back, watching the machinations play out behind Marina's eyes in real time. Oh yeah, that'll set a few things in motion alright.

"Oh!" Marina jolted, knocking herself from her thoughts. "I have something else I want to show you!" She scampered from where she was standing and grabbed Pearl's hand, leading her to the bedroom.

Pearl smirked to herself. Rather forward, aren't you girl? I'm not sure how you jumped from the TV to this, but, eh. Let's see where this goes. She suppressed a chuckle at the thought.

"Here! Look!" The room was just about as plain as the rest of the house, but that wasn't the focus. Sitting on Marina's bed was the same dinky little keyboard she'd had back on the mountain. The memory of that song suddenly rang through her ears, though she couldn't remember the words. It made her hear hearts beat a bit faster.

There were more instruments sat on the desk across from the bed. A turntable and a keyboard, and a handful of what Pearl could only assume were synthesizers. She didn't immediately recognize any of them, but it wasn't hard to mentally picture them all in that big ass bag Marina was carrying around with her. Notably, none of the instruments had their batteries... inside them, because they were all distinctly too big to fit within the instrument. Instead they were duct taped to the side rather firmly. Wires ran from the ends of the battery, into the instrument's internals. It was a miniature jerry-rigged synthetic orchestra, produced in a way that felt uniquely Marina.

"Oh, you got all your stuff set up huh?" Pearl's eyes bounced between the different items on the desk, but they ultimately fixed onto the little keyboard. Her mind was stuck on one thing. I wanna hear that song again. Fuck it. "Hey, Marina? You remember that thing you played for me? Back on the mountain?"

"Yeah! Ebb & Flow!" Marina nodded eagerly, sitting down on her bed.

Pearl stalled for a moment by clearing her throat. "Could you, uh, play it again?"