#11
Yeah, so there's not much to say about this one.
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"E-Eagle!" One exclaimed as she thrust a finger at the departing mass of metal. "That thing... It's called the Eagle!" She lost her balance. Four caught her, wrapping her arms around One's chest before she could fall off of the truck.
Again. She remembered something again, Four thought.
More importantly, her mentor was, effectively, kidnapped. Two went on her own accord, but that didn't mean much when it was a giant, flying bird that she hopped on.
"H-how's she getting back?" Four said, a hint of fear creeping into her voice. She never went anywhere in Octo Canyon without her voice pushing her on, but now?
All she had was a talkative shop owner and her mentor's cousin, who just recovered from hypnosis. Which wasn't the best team ever.
One raised a hand to her headset and twisted the ear. "Ma-Two? You there?" No response.
Two's headset lay on the ground, broken, crushed under the front left wheel. It was snapped in half, discarded like a broken toy.
"Ooh... that's bad..." Four shuddered. She let go of One and jumped off of the truck. Picking up the remains of Two's headset, she saw that all of the multi-colored wires inside of it were completely severed, ripped from the pressure. "Yeah, this thing isn't getting fixed ever. Sheldon, what's the plan with this?" She held up the half she had, leaving the other half under the wheel.
"Hmm..." He snatched out of her hand like he was stealing it. "I cannot fix this. The best course of action is to get her a new headset, but... well... she's not here."
"Not here. Not here!" One panicked. She dropped down, uncomfortably close to Four. "She'll come back, right? She'll just take over the Eagle and fly it back here, right?"
Wishful thinking... Four thought. But I hope so, too...
"We... uh... we're also out of fuel..." Sheldon interrupted. He adjusted his goggles. "H-how about you two go and find that power source? I'll wait here... uh... to guard the truck! We don't know what might happen out here!"
Area 1 of Octo Valley was not the place it was two years ago. The wooden message board that used to stand on one side was torn down, with only two protruding planks of wood suggesting it was once there. Every sign of plant life was gone. The tufts of grass, plucked, and the trees, reduced to stumps.
Every kettle was sealed with cement, presumably with other entrances and exits elsewhere, far off somewhere they couldn't access.
"We're down one," Four admitted through clenched teeth. It was frustrating, but there was work to do. "We... let's go."
One leaned on Four's shoulder. Despite being older, they were the same height. "O-okay."
She'll come back, One hoped.
Was this what it was like for Marie when she went missing long ago? Suddenly gone? One moment, there, the other, not there.
Marie had time to let it sink in, though, with the gradual realization that she was missing. But this time, it was certain, right off the bat, that the other was in the mercy of whoever ran the Octarian society now.
But Callie came back, right? Just like Marie will, right?
No, she wasn't Callie right now. She was Agent 1. One. Worry about that later.
One was panicking and Sheldon wasn't going anywhere, so Four had to act as the temporary leader.
She strained to see through the thin layer of fog that draped the area. The power source, presumably filled with Salmonid eggs, wasn't anywhere in sight.
Next to what was left of the wooden board, there was single piece of... something. It was black and cylindrical, shaped like a regular flashlight, but there wasn't any bulb inside of it. Four bent over to look at it, leaving One to sullenly get her Roller from the back of the truck, and examined the curious object. Its entire base seemed to act as a button.
She cautiously picked it up and twisted it in her hand, squinting to see the fine details, of which there were none.
"Sheldon, what's this?" Four called. After bringing it back to him, she dropped it in his outstretched palm.
This guy has really small hands.
He pressed the button with the tip of his finger, and it emitted a sound like that of a laser. A long stream of white-purplish ink was released from it, but it wasn't a regular weapon.
"What the..." said Four upon witnessing the stream,
Said stream was the same diameter as the base of the cylinder, but it didn't shoot ink. Instead, the stream abruptly ended where it hit the floor of the truck.
"What... is this!?" Sheldon almost dropped the thing in his uncontained excitement. He held it at various heights, and the stream seemed to extend and retract to always end at the truck's floor. "Four, take this outside and hold it off the edge! A-and don't touch the purple ink!"
"Uh? Alright?" She didn't understand a thing about the apparatus, but Sheldon was the expert, so she followed, taking it in the tips of her fingers and letting it hang off the cliff next to the manhole.
The stream ended at about two Inkling heights in length, and completely faded away after that. Four shook it, and it moved like a whip, but the stream was weightless.
The goggles on Sheldon's eyes somehow glinted as he obsessively leaned out of the window. "I see! This appears to be a prototype of a new class of weapon that combines light and ink! It wouldn't do well at covering ground, but I imagine it would work best as a secondary weapon as an offensive method!"
"Y'know," said Four, "I could never understand how you got into a fighting... thing... that you couldn't even do yourself."
"Can I have that back?" said Sheldon, completely ignoring her notion. "I must research it!"
Four hit the button on the bottom with her thumb, making the stream disappear, then threw it back to him. "Alright, go ahead," she insisted. "That was a waste of time for me."
It hit her again that Two was gone. She winced, then forced herself to march forward. She clenched her teeth again to stop herself from lashing out at the nearest remotely Octarian-shaped shadow. "One, let's actually go this time!"
"Mm-hmm..." One was leaning on the back side of the vehicle, supposedly taking watch to warn them if anything approached. Her Roller sat like a lifeless doll on the ground. "Any... uh, wires?"
"Not that I see... Where to? Up there?" Four answered her own question when she caught a glimpse of light right where she was pointing, another area in Octo Valley that was more forward than up. "Yeah, up."
An Inkrail source was bolted to the ground, pointing at the place with the light, so Four shot it. The device clicked and fired off a rope of ink that connected to a series of other floating Inkrail corners.
Four gestured. She hopped on the Inkrail and swam over to the next area. Then she jumped out of it and landed on the ground.
Like Area 1, the second was swept clean of plant life other than stumps. It looked like a skatepark, though it appeared to not follow any safety standards. There was no sound there except for the blowing of the wind and the rattle of Four's Dualies as they clicked together.
One dropped next to Four, her Roller perched on her shoulder. "That's... it, right?"
In the dead center of the skatepark was a basket, made out of a net held open with hoops of plastic. The brim was metal, and there was a pole on one corner holding a flag emblazoned with the Grizzco logo.
Several wires extended from the top of the basket, spreading apart and leading to places they couldn't see due to the fog. It looked like a large flower, thriving even without any sunlight.
Inside the basket, there were several large orbs, each holding an unmoving, unborn Salmonid that looked suspiciously like a fish's skeleton.
Each egg gave off a faint glow, so with their combined luminosity, they created a beacon of light in the fog
Four approached the basket and tugged on the net, but it wouldn't break. "The net's too tough. Should we break the wires... Uh, somehow?"
They looked more like tubes of liquid than wires, giving off faint bursts of light every now and then. One jumped, hooking her Roller on three low-hanging wires all leading to the same place in the fog. She weighed them down, allowing Four to grab them and pull.
"These things a-aren't breaking," Four said. She tried to pull them, tried to get whatever it was hooked up to closer to them, and somehow, it worked.
With a little bit of a pull, something creaked in the fog. It sounded like metal, groaning under the sudden strain.
"Move!" said One. She pulled Four, who let go of the wires, with her, leaping into the Inkrail just as something came breaking through the fog and crashing down to destroy the basket.
The eggs in it all popped, leaving a puddle of whatever liquid that was and a bunch of melting Salmonid offspring flopping in it. The booming sound echoed in the valley, resonating as it bounded between the mountains.
Four almost got hit in the head with a piece of shrapnel. It whizzed by her ear as she made it back to Area 1. "I... I didn't pull that hard..." Her ears were still ringing from the deafening crash.
"Because we were still building that, genius," rumbled a voice from directly above. It sounded exactly like Mr. Grizz, low and demeaning, but without the accent. His voice was amplified by some sort of speaker, and the only other indication that he was there was a single foglight, seemingly floating in the air.
As the light drew closer to where they were standing, they stepped backwards, out of the way and staring carefully at it. It came closer, revealing that's it was hanging from the UFO that floated around Octo Valley.
The UFO was made of many pieces of metal stitched together like a quilt and designed to be a perfect circle. There was somebody on it, but a purple cloak was draped across him, face hidden by the shadow of its hood. His eyes were narrow and barely reflective, revealing only blackness.
"You know my name, right?" He looked down at his feet, hiding his face even more. "Octrope. I suppose there's no point in hiding it."
Four tensed. She drew her Dualies, pointing them at his figure. This is the voice of Mr. Grizzco, the guy that supposedly founded Grizzco. And the one that took Octavio's position.
Her fingers twitched on the triggers, but she knew they wouldn't reach. He was too high.
Akash sighed, a raspy and strained sound. "Go," he said, to unknown shadows in the fog, "fire at will."
