Fly
So, Pearl and Marina...
For the last time, THEY ARE NOT TOGETHER.
But their chemistry slaps, yo.
And have you SEEN the way Pearl looks at her?
I have, okay.
I don't think anyone in Inkopolis hasn't.
But they're not together.
They'd be so cute, though!
There's about eighteen thousand posts that agree with you.
People are writing fucking realperson fic about them.
But maybe Marina's not into it?
Or maybe Pearl's just shy.
Shy? Pearl?
You're joking, right?
"Okay, I'm willing to call this song completely, totally, unchangeably finished," Pearl says, bouncing on her toes.
Marina laughs. "Well, maybe not unchangably," she says. She digs out her phone and glances at it, checking on Eight, then shoves it away again. "Guess I didn't need the keytar after all."
"And I know what we should call it," Pearl says. She keeps bouncing, keeps grinning.
Marina tilts her head towards Pearl and raises an eyebrow.
Pearl grins. "Fly, Octo, Fly."
Marina takes a step back. "Pearl, no," she says, wrapping her arms around herself and letting the keytar dangle by its strap. "I don't... I don't want everyone to know yet."
"They won't know," Pearl promises. "They won't. But that's what we need to call this." She drums on the keyboard with her fingers.
"I don't know, Pearl," Marina says, looking away. "I mean, you know, and that's okay, but..."
"Yeah, we don't have to tell everyone." Pearl gets it, she does, but Marina's not getting her here. "But we've had songs before about things that weren't real, right? Nasty Majesty was totally about terrible people in power when, wait." Marina's told Pearl some things, about her life before. They live in massive underground domes you can access by technology controlled by kettles, and they're falling apart. People are assigned jobs based on need and aptitude, and no one is allowed to refuse. You eat what you're given or you don't eat. So... "Are your lyrics about a real person?"
Marina blushes and looks at her keytar. "Kinda."
With the little Pearl knows about how Octarian society is run, and the way Marina acts all the time—like she'll be splatted if she isn't perfect, her absolute terror at being unable to leave somewhere... fuck. "No wonder you left." Pearl lets out a breath. Inkopolis isn't perfect, there are always disagreements among people and some shady stuff going on in the back alleys, but it's nothing compared to this. "Eight'll hear that shit and stay in Inkopolis for sure."
Marina nods without looking at her. Pearl sighs and drags a hand down her face. Where was she...? "But, anyway, a lot of our stuff is either hypothetical or just has a good beat, ya know? Ebb and Flow's about life's ups and downs, Color Pulse the pumping of a turf war, people'll just think it's a cool fantasy. 'Fly, Octo, Fly.' What we'd say to an Octoling who came to Inkopolis now, if there were any left." Pearl crosses her arms, because she's thought long and hard about this and she wants Marina to listen. "All that stuff about jumping to where you're wanted, about taking risks and being rewarded, you said your part's basically what you wanted to tell Eight, right? Things will be better if Eight gets here, so Eight has to keep going."
Marina keeps looking at her keytar, not at Pearl. "Yeah, it is."
She's not getting it, is she? Fuck it, maybe Pearl shouldn't wait any longer. "And my part is what I want to say to the smartest, bravest, kindest person I know."
Marina stares at the floor. "Uh, who?"
Uggggh. "I'm sick of this. You, Rina."
Now Marina looks at her. "I'm not—not brave. Or particularly kind, or,"
"Stop it." Pearl needs to tell her, and Pearl's gonna tell her today. Screw waiting for Eight to get out. Pearl steps around the turntables and takes off Rina's keytar. "You left a toxic situation and gave up everything to come to a place you knew nothing about. You decided to try to make me your band member off nothing but one meeting and a hunch." Pearl reaches up one hand to cup Marina's cheek; Marina leans into it. You were willing to support yourself playing on the streets. And you still don't want to hurt anyone, even those you left behind, so much that you don't even like turf war."
Marina nuzzles her cheek against Pearl's hand for a moment, then blinks and pulls away, her cheeks shading teal. "It's not that," she says, twisting her hands together and looking pointedly at the turntables instead of at Pearl. "It's-you don't know some of the things I did."
We're at this again. Pearl's heard more and less about Marina's life before she ran away than she ever wanted to-more because, cod, no one should be stuck with that sort of shit, and less because she wants to know everything about Marina. "Don't care. You're not that person now. Besides," and this is the part that Pearl's gonna pound through Marina's skull forever, "did you have a choice?"
Other days, Marina would argue, say how she could've refused... but then she wouldn't eat, or have a place to sleep (once she finished school and they took her from her parents), or they'd even execute her. Pearl almost anticipates it, because it always ends with Rina looking less guilty than when they started. Today, though, Marina drops to the floor and wraps her arms around her legs. "You don't understand."
Pearl plops on the floor right by Rina and hugs her. This has been happening a lot, too, and Pearl braces herself. "So tell me." Whatever comes next, Pearl's not gonna like it. But it's part of Marina-and she's not gonna stop feeling guilty, or feel like Inkopolis will accept her, until Pearl's heard all of it.
"I don't know where to start," Marina says, her voice cracking, and Pearl hugs her just a bit tighter. Here we go. "Cod, Pearl, I spent years thinking this wasn't real. I was hallucinating, it was-"
"Why the fuck would you think you were dreaming this?!" That part is new, and Pearl has to take a deep breath herself. "That would be so fucked up."
Normally, this'd be where Marina'd snuggle closer, or at least look at Pearl, but she stays rigid. "The domes are—were, probably still are—falling apart. Needed more power. I helped steal the zapfish; it didn't just go missing."
Cod. No wonder this bit hasn't come out before; Marina knows what Pearl's family does, that Pearl's personally spent a lot of money and time trying to make up for the Great Zapfish's absence. But she definitely didn't kidnap it the second time it went missing, and besides, Marina didn't know any better. "So?"
"My specialty, as a combat engineer, was designing weapons to hopefully splat inklings. Permanently."
Pearl frees one hand to squeeze her shoulder. "You were barely turf war age, Rina, it's okay." She'd guessed as much, after some things Rina told her.
"It's—my goggles broke." Pearl's brain nearly breaks at that statement. Wha? "There's a group, I guess they're secret agents or something, that went in and dealt with it, and they played Calamari Inkantation during it, and my goggles broke."
Why the fuck does that matter. "New Squidbeak Splatoon, according to that file the captain showed us," Pearl says; she knows this, and Rina knows she knows this, so she must be rattled still. "Why does it matter that your goggles broke?"
A strangled noise escapes Marina. "My hypno goggles." What. "Designed to keep me a productive member of society." The fuck. "Everyone wears them." Marina raises her head to look at Pearl at last, trying to smile through her resignation and tears.
That is fucked up. That is SO fucked up. Does Marina even know how fucked that is? Maybe not-she lived it for so long, she just..
"I could see both—walking around Mount Nantai with my family and marching to the next outpost to orders, buildings that collapsed with people in them and buildings being sealed for repairs, like two movies playing on top of each other"
Holy fucking fuck it got worse. How could this even get worse. Marina-until right before she ran away, she didn't even know what she was doing, and she still blames herself. Of course she wasn't sure it was fucking real, when she got here! What the actual fuck.
"I was supposed to get a pair of hypnoshades, better quality, you can't even tell you're wearing them even if you touch your face, but the building I was in started breaking apart when—I couldn't tell if they'd managed it and it was some elaborate illusion, or if I'd actually escaped."
Pearl shakes her head once, hard, not denying it, just... holy. Okay, is there anything Pearl can do to convince Marina otherwise?
Well... there is one thing, and it's something Pearl's wanted to do for a very long time.
"I'm still not sure, some days, but," Fuck it.
Pearl grabs Marina's face in both hands, leans forward, and kisses her. She takes her time, savoring the feeling of Marina's lips, a little chapped, the way their beaks bump together, feeling how Marina leans into it, like it's okay. When she breaks the kiss and opens her eyes at last, lets go of Marina's face, Marina has her eyes closed, a grin pressing her lips in at the corners."I'm not a fucking illusion, Rina," she says, when Marina opens her eyes. Pearl moves one hand to brush Marina's longest tentacle out of her eyes, a motion she's wanted to make for months. "I'm here. And you are the absolute best , most amazing person I know, and you can be an Octoling, or hell, you could be a salmonid and I'd still love you."
There. She said it. And Marina-Marina's not recoiling. She presses one hand to her mouth, still with wide eyes, a few tears remaining, and she sounds almost giddy as she asks, "Did you mean that?"
Pearl doesn't have any words to respond, and Marina isn't running away-she's even smiling-so Pearl pulls her in again. This time, Marina kisses back, tilting her head so their beaks just brush, her hands going to Pearl's shoulders, and when Pearl pulls away to catch her breath all she can think is holy shit Marina likes her, too.
Then Marina's the one pulling Pearl close, and this time they let their beaks touch deliberately, poking at each other in such a right way shivers fly down Pearl's neck and it's perfect. It's perfect. It's perfect.
But she has to breathe, so Pearl pulls away at last, and gazes at Marina-her friend, her musical partner, maybe more. Marina looks flushed, and rumpled, still some tear stains on her cheeks, but she also looks more satisfied than Little Judd with a bowl of cream, and that warms Pearl inside and out. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that." She takes a deep breath, staring at Marina's grin. Little backwards, but fuck it. "Marina Ida, Octoling, hypnotized bad-ass, awesome musician and whatever the fuck else you wanna talk about, wanna be my girlfriend? I mean, I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but, ya know."
Marina starts to laugh. "We-our contracts," she gasps out, holding her stomach; Pearl starts to giggle as well. "We can't be in a relationship, right? And, and we're supposed to be—be getting rid of, of those rumors, of, oh cod." Marina doubles over clutching her sides.
Pearl cant stop laughing, either. Finally. "I would've worked up the courage a lot sooner if it weren't for that damn contract," Pearl confesses. Fuck, Marina-they could've done this years ago. "I'd been rehearsing what to say in my head for weeks when Marie dropped that on us, and then you were so fucking insistent... fine. Marina Ida, will you be my secret girlfriend? And I fucking love your last name, have I told you that yet, you could've told me it years ago."
Marina's still laughing, but she nods. "Yes, Pearl, I will be."
And finally, finally, something's going right.
