DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN SPLATOON!
I don't even know what happened, but then this happened. I really hope you enjoy this quick little story I created after I stared at the Octoling's design for a bit.
Read on!
Note: I apologize for any missed spelling and grammatical errors! I hope you enjoy this story!
"You were made to fight."
"Your only purpose is to fight."
That had been what my mother said to my sisters and I when we begun to shift into our humanoid forms.
"You are a warrior."
Living underground was horrible.
The world around us was falling apart and it was a struggle to live without the need to always be armed. My mother could no longer walk onto the battle fields and was unfit to even work in the weapons factory. She had lost feeling in her legs and was forced to steer around in the metallic platforms our people created for the much lower ranked Octarians of our army that could not handle running without falling flat upon their faces.
She still had the seaweed still braided into her tentacles, the only symbol of pride for our family for her services to our people.
We could not say the same to our father who had died instantly for his carelessness. He had been patrolling upon a weak metal beam and had forgotten to look where he had been going, falling off the edge of the beam all the while screaming as he fell.
He was always a clumsy octopus...It was a shame that he did not live long enough to at least see all of us grow up to take our place in our people's military.
My elder sister had lost her left arm after her very first mission that required her and many others to search up above where those squids lived.
The Inklings were savages, having blasted ink on sight as soon as my sister and her squad emerged out of the sewers. Only three of them had made it back underground and my sister had been the lucky one to have only lost one of her limbs. She now spends her days as a training instructor with her missing arm forever a sign-or warning-to us all of the savage Inklings who reside above us.
Another sister of mine could not handle the combat training all female Octarians were required to participate in when we reached the age of recruitment and had been forced to work in the factory for her sign of weakness.
We had no use to those who hesitated or stumbled in this war we were preparing for, so it was her own fault to have failed.
The weapon factories had been placed in the lowest sector of our home and I cannot remember a time she did not return home from her shifts with her head hanging in shame. Her once bright red tentacles becoming an ugly green from being exposed to the harsh work environment of our factories. The smell of our ink wasn't the most pleasant and our testing to make stronger ink sometimes harmed those who worked in the factories. Her beautiful tentacles once a vibrant red would forever now continue to slowly turn green until it would perhaps fall out.
If she had only pulled the trigger and aimed at the target just right...She would still have her pride.
My sister oldest yet closest to me in age was sent out to a special sector far from our home. This sector was said to mimic a structure the Inklings were quite familiar with and would provide a battle ground that would even out our odds against them should they attempt to invade us. It has been rumored that the Octolings sent there never return and I fear that perhaps that very last hug she gave all of us was her only way to say farewell.
I am the very last of my family that still has all of her limbs and still resides in our home as a soldier.
Yet I cannot say I am not curious about those Inklings.
I blame my father for having given me this vast amount of curiosity for everything, he never was a soldier and was more of a scholar who would spend hours marveling about those above us instead of thinking of how to fire them with blobs and blobs of ink. We had no use of wondering about those squids and we had to focus on how to get the Zapfish from their grimy tentacles.
It was our last hope for us...
Yet I was always thinking about them and the world they had banished us from many centuries ago.
I remember the stories of the past, a time when we did actually get along with those vile Inklings from above. It had been some age of peace, but it had not been meant to be. They threw us underground, away from the light and the only way we could survive was to fight. To fight for our survival to live another day even as our home became engulfed in more darkness and the screams of dying Octarians echoed all day and night...
How could they live with the idea that they had banished us and left us to walk slowly towards our graves? Surely they knew.
Yet even as I grew up with that hate we all had, I always wondered if perhaps...Maybe, just maybe we could find that peace again. To reach out to them and beg to coexist with each other like our ancestors those many years ago. However whenever I looked at my sister's missing arm, my other sister's decaying green hair and worried over my sister so far away...That stupid dream and wish of mine was too far gone...
My wish should have disappeared upon this realization yet it did not.
One day on one of my patrols I came across a piece of parchment that was shoved underneath a metal crate and my blasted curiosity got the best of me to take it.
I will never know who had stuffed that parchment there and wondered if one of the other officers who had been stationed at the higher sectors was the creator of this paper I kept hidden in my armor.
It had been a drawing of some unknown place I have never came across in our history scrolls and during my lectures.
It depicted a large tower of some sort...That did not look aged or even breaking compared to our towers underground. All around where buildings that even with our technology we could never duplicate with our lessening materials. In each building sketched I could see and make out clothing that made me wish to discard my armor. Writings on these buildings' signs had things like 'Jelly Fresh' and 'Shrimp Kicks' written above each building to which I wondered just what sort of meaning these titles had.
However what got my attention the most in this crude drawing, was the color of blue.
Beyond the tower on this picture was the color blue in every space that was left empty by the artist.
Blue had been a rare color for us to see...Only through faded images could we even comprehend this color.
But in this picture, blue was everywhere.
A sky.
The color was more beautiful than the sight of seaweed in ones hair that I almost cried when I first laid eyes on this piece of paper I had found out of luck.
This was some world far beyond my own that did not see decay or darkness. A wonderful place I could never know as I was forever stationed in our last true home sector where darkness was our sky.
Every time I stare at this image...I close my eyes and try to find myself standing in front of this tower. To feel true light upon my skin and to hear instead the sounds of happy laughter and chatter. No more screaming, no more darkness...
This piece of paper is a dream I may never know.
A fantasy that I, an Octoling, will never come to see as a reality.
"You are a warrior."
"Your only purpose is to fight."
Yet I continue to hold onto this small piece of a dream I may never see in my future.
To pray that maybe I will see this wonderful sky and never will be known as a warrior...
Just an Octoling...
I hope you all enjoyed the musings of our darling Octoling! Thank you so much for reading!