Snapshots from an Unlived Life

by EikaPrime

"It's funny because we're all living in a simulation and free will is a lie." -Marina, before the Chicken VS Egg Splatfest. This was not a fourth-wall break. Marina wore hypno-goggles since she graduated school, until they broke during the Calamari Inkantation. Who's to say she's not wearing new ones now? For all she knows, this is all a hallucination... one she wishes were real.

2. Design

Design

We are Octos,

Proud and True!

Mess with us,

And we'll splat you!

Marina sits at her drafting table, one in a line of tables. Sushi in front of her, two Splatoon members behind her, another splatoon on either side. Sketches of the broken octostomp, in its original, finished form, are clipped to the edges. All sides. All angles. She examines it all from the glow of her tentacles.

Designed as a crushing weapon, of course, and the inking is almost secondary, but what if it wasn't? The control tentacle had to stick out to be any good, of course, so that left them with two problems: the lack of ink and how easy it was to climb.

Marina loses herself in the project, piano tinkling in her ears, urging her to calm controlled lines and thoughts. Flooders, miniature ones, tethered to the tentacle's side; they could be shot out as it ran, to glaze the area around it in ink, and nothing could get near the tentacle with them circling it.

Footsteps beside her. Marina can't see her side, not with the goggles, so she turns to look. Head engineer Sashimi reaches out a pink-tinged tentacle and taps her drawing. "Another fine idea, Ida," she says, and ink rushes to Marina's cheeks. "Youngest member of the engineers, but you'll be leading your own splatoon as soon as there's an opening, I swear it. Are the goggles bothering you?"

Marina nods. "They feel tight, today," she explains. "And I can't see everything."

Sashimi hums and runs her finger between Marina's head and the straps. "Must be another growth spurt. I'll get you a bigger pair. Try some other ideas."

Other ideas? Marina stares at Sashimi's pink back. Why would she-

The piano changes to a single flute, holding long, quiet notes, and Marina's mind quiets as well. Of course. The flooder design is too complicated, requires too much effort. Can't just be run off ink and tentacles, it'd almost need its own zapfish. They can't do that.

Marina's next drawing doesn't add anything, doesn't change anything. Just a simple, unclimbable surface held on with a strap. Only vulnerable part was the strap itself, and anyone who shot it would be crushed. Impenetrable. Invincible.