"...Why's nobody saying anything?" Rose said, a giggle breaking her sentence. "We're done with this!" She jumped up, a huge grin covering her face.

"I know, I know," Marie said, leaning back and using her arms to rest her head. "Just tired, that's all."

Callie stood up as well. "Stop trying to downplay this! We did the impossibe!"

A bird flying by swerved to avoid the platform's velocity. The tracks rushed by below. Rose set the remote to make the arena zoom to Inkopolis as fast as possible without making it too difficult to stay on.

"There are still some loose ends, though," Simon remarked, choosing to maintain his cross-legged position. "Here's one: where's the Piranha? The Eagle's gone, the Widow's fried, and the one I was driving a while back is in pieces at the bottom of a pit, but the Piranha is still missing.

"And where is this 'Annabelle' person?" Marie joined in while still lying on the concrete. "Clearly she was Akash's fourth child, but where is she, what is her stance on all of this, and why is she hiding? She must know how important she is by now."

"The other three children are out there," Simon interjected.

"There's still the matter of disabling the Hypno-Shades," Marie continued.

"The training camp past the forest outside of Inkopolis."

"Any remaining people loyal to Akash."

"Grizzco."

"Deca Tower."

"We get it, please stop." Rose said flatly. "But don't you think we deserve a rest?

Marie yawned. "What do you think I'm doing? We're ages away, might as well fast forward, right?"

"You go do that," Callie said. "Anyway, Rose, was Skydive always that satisfyingly good?"

"Duh, it was. I've used it so many times, and then,"

Simon turned out the girls' talking. Those two would go on forever.

He stared ahead; there was nothing else he felt like doing. Marie was right: They were hours away and moving about half as fast as the train.

He let his eyelids droop and fell asleep, the wind's call oddly calming in stark contrast to the chaos that raged just a while ago.

Inkopolis recovered in a matter of weeks.

At least the infrastructure did.

Deca Tower was one of the first buildings to be repaired. Most of the screens that ornamented its sides were still gone. The only one that was replaced was the center screen that regularly played the news.

The Widow's remains were taken apart and moved off of the tracks so the train could enter the station.

The handful of homes that were impaled by the Widow was a simple task when compared to the disassembly of the giant on the tracks that caused the damage.

The community, on the other hand, took a long time to cope with the attack on Inkopolis, now called the Flash referencing the speed of the attack. Once the Hypno-Shades were deactivated by Marina from a large computer in the facility, the wearers were mostly confused. Many citizens — mostly Inklings, a few Octolings — had breakdowns that began shorty after they were told the hard truth about what happened to them by Off the Hook. A while after, they slowly faded away as they learned to live with it and realized that pretty much nothing would be changed except for one massive thing.

Inkopolis merged with the faction of Octarians living around the area.

Octavio's agreement with the mayor of Inkopolis was entirely televised, but Ocatavio elected to stay in octopus form the whole time. He was intimidating, so nobody dared to mention it. The underground was still populated, but the metaphorical wall separating the two areas was taken down.

This sparked a change in the world, as more and more cities followed Inkopolis' lead. Their own nearby factions of Octarians also emerged from the depths. Octavio was busy in the days that's followed.

And then Turf Wars had a grand reopening two weeks after everyone was returned. Grizzco remained closed for the time being.

On another note, the coolers were mostly destroyed, but a few were kept for research. The film inside the cooler could only be deactivated when a large amount of ink hit it at once. Like anything involving ink, it wore off as the airborne bacteria consumed it.

Every cooler was part of a pair. One led to the other. In the case of Sharktown's attack, it led to several separate rooms inside of the facility in the forest that Marina and Pearl explored.

As for the war, as people were calling it, lasted no longer than a couple of months and had only two battles, but it was pivotal in history.

The death count? One. Akash was the only casualty. Even the Widow was remotely controlled. Akash was understood as the only problem by many, so most forgived the controlled Octolings. Nobody found the man who dealt the finishing blow or Akash's body.

Nor did anyone find the four Inklings that courageously confronted him in the sky. Two looked extremely generic, and the other two were constantly masked. Little was seen of the high-altitude battle as well.

They were like shadows, disappearing once the light of a new day touched them.

But a new day it was, and so the sun pierced the sky.

Well.

That was short, wasn't it?

I've had this next part planned for a long time.

I'm gonna tell you all what it was like to write this story, but if you don't want to read that, just scroll to the bottom, there's an announcement there.

Honestly, the reason I even started was because Splatoon 2's main adventure mode was such a disappointment story-wise. I honestly liked 1's better.

And so, as a complete novice, the first fiveish chapters were some of the worst things I've ever written! I was wavy too heavy on the quotes and didn't give enough detail or description.

When it was in its earliest stages, I planned for Cap'n Cuttlefish to be the secret behind-the-scenes master of Grizzco, but I completely scrapped that when I realized there was no story potential.

Anyway, I still loved writing Liberation and the chapters before it. It had many story elements I repeatedly came back to (The Eagle, Lab, Morgan)

But then came the chapters between that one and Four. I can say definitively that story-wise, they're the worst parts. It was a horrible idea to "just write whatever as I go." I kinda just bs'ed my way through those areas. It picks up in the chapters leading up to Four, but that was because I actually started planning again.

It felt amazing to realize that I could combine pretty much everything and compile it into the attack on Inkopolis.

One of my favorite paragraphs of the story was toward the end of Four, where Rose was staring at the rest. It sounded really good for the most part, but it was here that I realized I should be proofreading more carefully. "Wane don't" was supposed to be "wanted," but autocorrect didn't want that.

Another mistake I made after that was to completely change the premise of the story. I was risking a lot by just shifting everything. If people came for what was beforehand, then they would want stuff more like that, right?

ANNOUNCEMENT HERE LOOK AT THIS please

The sequel is confirmed! It's been confirmed for a while now, and you'd know if you saw my profile or the reply to that one reviewer a while ago, but I'll explain more of it here.

The main character will not be any of the first four Agents. It will be a character that appeared in this one, but now, they'll take the spotlight.

The action will be toned down a lot. Some will still be in there, but it's focus would be more lore-centric.

And for the rest, you'll have to wait!

One more thing. If you're planning to review, please answer these questions.

1. What was your favorite/least favorite part of the story and why? It can be as large or little as you want.

2. Same thing as above, but with characters. What was your favorive/least favorite character and why?

Thanks again, I love you all. I'll be taking a bit of a break before I begin work on The Alias, so be on the lookout for that.