Hey Ya'llst.. So guess who's back?
I'm sure that people that are reading this from the alert if they followed this account they are super confused. No this isn't supernatural and I'm super sorry.. (no pun intended just super sorry.)
So tbh I haven't looked at my old stories since I have published for them and I don't really intend to look at them anymore really. I'm not proud of them and I'm the person that has to get things done ASAP or I can never return. Also I'm graduating school and just finished all my work so.. time to write?
The inspiration for this fic is from the octo expansion.
So obviously WARNING: THERE WILL BE MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE STORY THAT TAKES PLACE IN OCTO EXPANSION. I WILL NOT TOLERATE PEOPLE BASHING ME FOR SPOILING THEM!
Anyway angry caps are over. Hopefully it doesn't take too long to write this story. I'm feeling pretty motivated~
Hope you all enjoy!
Prologue:
The night was one that Marina wasn't expecting. She wanted to stay home and tinker with a radio that has been driving her crazy lately. It randomly showed up on her doorstep and she hasn't been able to connect it to any frequency so far and her and Pearl have found no one that has ever even seen the small device.
Sighing in frustration Marina put her screwdriver down as she stared at the motherboard that sat in the box. It was unlike any she had seen yet so familiar.
Her annoyance was cut off when she heard her phone sing out Ebb and Flow from her bed. She took a moment to stretch her long arms before jumping onto her bed and snatching her phone. Her pink headed friend was calling and who was she to avoid her?
"Hey Pearlie." She greeted in her normal cheerful way as she brushed a tentacle from her eye.
"Yo Marina we should totally hit up a gig tonight." Pearl's enthusiastic voice came from the other end and Marina frowned. She was so incredibly tempted to say no and come up with some dumb excuse but..
"Yeah sure what'd you have in mind?" Marina asked her friend as she stood up and went to her closet to pick out an outfit. Even though she's required to wear the same black and blue clothes at work every day, she has a wide range of clothes to choose from for outings.
"I was thinking somewhere like Sloppy Fred's or something." Pearl told the octoling who paused.
"You better drive me there then. I live further away remember?" She reminded the other sharply and wasn't in the mood for walking the streets alone at night.
"Yeah yeah I'll pick you up. Also don't bring that stupid radio I don't want to see it tonight!" Pearl added before promptly hanging up.
Marina smiled softly and tossed her phone back to her bed before she proceeded to change into a white shirt and light mint green pants. She took a look at herself in the mirror and frowned. She wasn't sure if this was too "normal" for clubbing but she then spotted her bandana that would match her shirt well. Tying it up with little trouble and looking at herself again, she hummed appreciatively and then continued to get ready.
When she was packing her bags she heard something small for a second and paused in her actions. She slowly approached her bed from where she heard it and checked her phone but saw no new notifications.
"Weird.." She murmured before a hissing sound came, louder this time and more pronounced. She immediately recognized the noise and her heart skipped a beat as she raced over to the desk where the radio sat. She knew it came from the radio.. It had to!
She waited a few minutes but there was only silence in the apartment.
Breathing out, she thought of telling Pearl that she wasn't feeling well to continue experimenting on the device. She also recalled the last time she tried that however and had to deal with a sour Pearl for the next three shows they had together.
Swiftly she put the radio into her bag and made sure it was buried in case she had to pull out something.
A car horn startled her from her thoughts and she looked out the window to see Pearl in her wonderful pink jeep outside with music blaring loudly from her large stereos taking up the back seats.
Rolling her eyes playfully, Marina super jumped from her window and straight into the passenger seat next to Pearl. They greeted each other with light heart jabs and took off into the night.
Marina knew she shouldn't have come tonight. After all she only wanted to stay home tonight but since she didn't, she's feeling impatient and Pearl can tell something is up. The two started off strong in the night until somebody bumped into Marina and spilled her drink all over her white shirt. Pearl had laughed and in normal circumstances Marina would have waved it off or at least gone to the bathroom to wash up. Instead she got angry at the patron and pushed him away angrily when he offered to help her.
Enough was enough after a while for Pearl so she departed from the crowd she had made and went over to Marina.
"Hey you okay?" The shorter asked the octoling who looked over.
"Yeah I'm just tired. I think I'm going to go stand outside for a little bit to get some fresh air." She called over the music and proceeded to walk out and leave the shorter inkling to herself.
When Marina got out she gasped in relief. She knows she is an ambivert and can normally work well in social places but tonight was not in her favor. Something was feeling off lately and she wasn't sure what.
"Get out of here octoling!"
"Yeah we hate your kind!"
Audible jabs came from nearby and Marina lifted her head to spot three figures in the alleyway that's the back of the club. She recognized two of them to be inkling boys but the other she noticed with horror was an octoling girl.
'What in the world is an octoling doing here?!' She thought as she rushed over and stopped one inkling from harming the cephalopod.
"Stop!" She cried out as she held his arm back and he looked to Marina in surprise.
"M-Marina?!" He exclaimed and had that doey eyed fanboy look in his eyes. She used that chance to urge them away from the defenseless octoling who stood there the entire time with wide eyes.
When the two disappeared from sight Marina turned to the octoling to introduce herself when she noticed she was about to talk to open air.
"Hey wait!" She called as she spotted the octoling desperately tearing away from the scene. Wanting to know why an octoling showed up in Inkopolis all of a sudden, she raced after the other to spot her heading for the abandoned metro system that ran under the streets.
She had no clue that anyone could get down there still. She walked by it close to every day since the studio where Pearl and her work is next to an entrance but she's never heard or seen anyone down there.
She stopped at the guard rail at the closed entrance and watched the octoling disappear from sight.
Suddenly a crackling noise filled the air again but this time greeted with a voice.
"Hello? Is this thing working yet?"
Marina froze before she blindly ran back into the club and dragged her pink haired friend out and to the entrance from where she stood before.
"Yo chill Marina! What's got you- hey I thought I told you to ditch that thing?" Pearl snapped, obviously not happy with Marina interrupting her social time.
"Shut up Pearl and listened!" She begged before holding the device in between them. A hush fell until the same voice from before came up.
"Agent three? Agent three do you copy?"
"MIC CHECK, ONE-TWO! Who the heck are you?"
Marina wasn't sure when Pearl had taken the radio from her but she had and screamed into it. Silence came from the other end for a second or two and Marina was terrified they scared off the other recipient.
"Excuse me?" A baffled voice came from the other end and Marina rose an eyebrow in surprise. She instantly recognized it was an elderly man so she scolded the other quickly who was still holding the talk button.
"Pearl didn't anyone teach you to respect your elders?!" She exclaimed before the voice from the other end came through again.
"Who am I talking to? State your names immediately!" He demanded and Pearl narrowed her gaze.
"Uh I think I asked you first dude. Anyway I'm Pearl but you can call me !" Marina immediately stole the device from her friend and stared at her incredulously.
"What are you doing? We don't know this guy and where did come from?" She asked and Pearl shrugged lazily.
"I think it's a cool name and chill we're just talking through a device he can't touch us." She began to rap and Marina realized she had pressed the talk button again in the middle of Pearl rapping.
"Oho? Are you challenging me to a rap battle?" The man's voice sparked challenge and Pearl instantly got excited.
"MC Craig in the house!" He exclaimed and he began to rap back. Pearl was listening closely while Marina was trying to process what was happening to their night. They were in front of the creepy old train system where they were talking to a stranger through a radio, no rapping to a stranger through a radio. Pearl immediately began to rap back and the two went like that for a few more seconds before Marina interrupted them.
"Okay that's enough you two!" She exclaimed before taking a sigh.
"Alright.. Mr. Cuttlefish was it? We found a radio before and discovered your transmission."
"Where are you currently?" Mr Cuttlefish asked and Marina glanced to Pearl.
"Inkopolis square near the old underground train system." She explained and there was silence for a few beats.
"That's kind of near octo valley… Agent 8 and I were there before somebody seemingly took us here." The man explained and Marina felt two things at once. Sympathy and mistrust.
"Ah I see so you have no idea where you are?" She asked calmly before an idea came to her mind. She quickly told Pearl to drive her back to her place. While doing so she told to the male to hold on as Pearl drove them. They arrived there soon after and Marina immediately began to do tech stuff that Pearl couldn't even begin to understand. There were graphs and numbers that Pearl couldn't keep up with until a signal began to glow somewhere on a map that Marina had pulled up.
"Got it! I managed to find your surroundings. I'll try to support you guys in any way I can!" She said in excitement. Pearl only shrugged and walked up next to Marina.
"I don't really know what's going on but don't worry, we got you."
"Alright well… Anyone that's a fan of rapping is a friend of mine. We're off to pass some sorta tests and make our way to the promised land." Marina was about to ask what he meant when he began to speak to someone further away.
"And by "we" I mean you, Agent 8! Time to get after it!" He exclaimed and now Marina knew that there were at least two of them and Agent 8 was different than Agent 3. Or at least she assumes that much. Marina was about to say something more before the frequency cut off.
"Well then.. That was weird but it kind of feels like we're secret agents or something to save the world!" Pearl said as she danced around Marina's room a little. The octoling smiled before she continued to hack into the system of the underground train system. They must have old cameras or something. She soon stumbled upon what she was looking for and selected it.
"Alright Mr. Cuttlefish and Agent 8.. Let's see who you really are." She murmured before opening up a window to see an older inkling and an octoling on a moving train. She noticed immediately the octoling was different from the one she saw in Inkopolis before.
She promptly dropped her laptop and tears flooded her eyes as she gazed at the octoling sitting innocently beside Mr. Cuttlefish.
"Oh my-" She broke off short of a sob and Pearl stopped and noticed her best friend tearing up.
"Marina? Yo you okay?" Her golden eyes widened at her friend since she had never seen Marina cry before but there was a first for everything. The other stood up quickly and excused herself in a rush to super jump from her window to god knows where.
"Marina!" Pearl shouted after her retreating friend but to no avail.
Marina landed roughly on a rooftop in the city and laid there and stared at the sky in shock for a few seconds.
"It… It can't be him can it?"
So end of prologue. It's kinda chapter one though since agent 8 has already done one test (the introduction with the octoling girls attacking the player.) I hope this makes sense though? I tried to bend the story around a little. I know that Pearl and Marina are on Mount Nantai at this point but I just couldn't fit that in especially with how I wrote it. Perhaps I'll try to rewrite it again in the future?
Anyway the octoling that's being used in this story is the boy octoling with the first hairstyle (no not the afro even though the afro is cool.)
I hope you all enjoyed this? Thoughts? Suggestions? Tell them to me :)
Much luv ya'll 3