5 years earlier...

While the Inklings had begun to uncover many relics of the past, there were still some left untouched. One in particular was an underground bunker some miles from Inkopolis. The halls were empty and silent; it had been that way for thousands of years. However, that silence was now finally broken. In one of the labs, a still active pod began beeping before slowly hissing open, revealing its human inhabitant, still in cryostasis.

She was a young girl, probably 16, with a pink shirt, blue jacket, pink gloves and shoes, and black tights. She had light skin and brown hair that stuck out from both side behind her head. As the cryo-pod deactivated, the girl woke up, slowly sitting up and stretching.

"Welcome back, Tron Bonne" the machine spoke in a robotic voice.

"About time..." she yawned. She managed to get out of the pod with ease, though she found herself stumbling around quite a bit as she got used to walking again. Looking around, she observed that a the place looked rather dirty, and she groaned in disgust.

"You think the Servbots would do their job for however long I was asleep..." She muttered to herself, "Come to think of it, how long was I out?"

Tron then went over to the panel on her pod and read the data before gasping in utter shock. She had been in cryo-sleep for almost 12,000 years!

"What?" she gasped as she slowly began to process the new information. After a few silent moments, she bolted from the room. As she ran down the hall, she noticed the walls looked incredibly worn and covered in plants, further proving her discovery of waking in the far future. Finally, she reached another room, this one filled with robot and machine parts, many of which looked rusted and neglected; she even recognized a few as her old Servbots, now lifeless metal husks. Tron felt a twinge of sadness at seeing her old robots in such a poor state, but she didn't let that bother her too much as she dug around the parts, finally pulling out a few parts as well as a small drone.

"Time to find out what I missed out on" she said to herself, dumping the parts on an empty table. She then spent the next few hours using the parts to repair the drone and fit it with a new camera before constructing a new remote. Once that was done, all that was left was to send the drone out and search the surface above. It didn't take long for her to navigate her way through the halls, and she quickly stepped out onto the roof of the old lab. She then gazed out to the horizon; the water hadn't seemed to completely recede, but it was clear that the only spot of land wasn't a tiny island anymore. As she watched the sunset, she then noticed a flashing of lights in the distance, which she immediately recognized as a city skyline and felt a glimmer of hope.

The rest of humanity must have survived she thought to herself. However, she still wanted to be completely sure, and activated the drone before sending it towards the city, watching the camera feed through a screen on her remote. There wasn't much that was new with the terrain; it hadn't changed over the years. However, when the drone finally reached the city, Tron looked confused; the signs and billboards were in a language she had never seen before. With her curiosity growing, she guided the drone deeper into the city for a closer look at things. It was small and quiet enough to remain unseen; Tron had seen to that. As she watched, she suddenly let out a gasp of shock to see the city's inhabitants. Most looked like sea creatures, but walking around and actually smart. But then there were the actual people, if Tron could even call them that; humanoids that had octopus or squid-like features.

"A mutation?" Tron guessed. But, the drone then came to a section of a building where the squid people were fighting each other with ink guns. What startled her the most was that they all turned into squids before swimming around in the ink they had sprayed. She also heard. them speak, and it was in a language she never knew. Tron's breathing became ragged as a new revelation dawned on her; she must be the only human left, and these squids had taken the planet.

She sat down on the roof as this new discovery began to sink in.

"The last one..." she whimpered, "but...what do I do now?"

Tron sat there in silence, overwhelmed by the gravity of her new situation. She was the only human left and now Earth was inhabited by these...squid people. Humans had been replaced...

It was this thought that crept into her head as she slowly looked back to the video feed from the drone. The more she watched, the angrier she became. Finally, something snapped in her mind, and she stood up.

"No one is replacing me." she growled before recalling the drone and storming back inside to the room filled with her old robots. As she walked through the lab, she began grabbing whatever parts she could, immediately setting to work on the machines. As she worked, only one thing went through her mind; those squids may look like people, but they were far from it. They had to go, and Tron was going to do just that...

...

Present Day

It was only a few minutes before the helicopter landed on one of the taller towers in the city. Once it was on the ground, Agent 8 powered it down before she and Zero climbed out and walked inside. As they walked in, Zero noticed various posters showing an Inkling with a white outfit standing next to a dark skinned Octoling with black and green tentacle hair. The words below them read "Off the Hook, LIVE!" in the Inkling language.

"Who are they?" he asked 8.

"The two we're going to go meet." 8 replied, "Pearl and Marina. I've worked with them in the past when we took down a living phone."

Zero looked confused. "A what?"

8 simply waved it aside. "I'll explain later. This way."

She led him into a larger room that resembled a sort of living room. There was a couch in the center as well as a beanbag seat and a few end tables. A DJ booth sat in the far corner. A set of stairs in the back led up to a loft platform that had the entrance to another room. More posters decorated the area. It looked nice enough, but where was Pearl and Marina?

8 then called out, "Anyone home?!"

There was silence for a few moments, and Zero was beginning to wonder if there really was no one there. Suddenly a door opened in the upper room as the light skinned Inkling ran out, vaulted over the railing of the platform, and tackled 8 in a massive hug.

"Eight!" she happily said, standing back up and letting Agent 8 recover, "What's good?"

Eight slowly got up and brushed herself off, "Well, Pearl, I need you and Marina's help. It's about him."

She then pointed to Zero, who simply nodded in greeting. Pearl, however, immediately got wide-eyed in wonder before zipping up to him and proceeding to look him up and down, making Zero rather uneasy.

"Uuuhh" Zero stammered, "Is something wrong?"

"Is something wrong?!" Pearl shot back, "What even are you!?"

At this point, Marina had also appeared and stood next to 8.

"Pearl!" she told her friend, "You're making him uncomfortable!"

"But he's so cool!" Pearl protested, "I mean, look at this design!"

Zero smirked. "I appreciate the compliment, but I am actually the one who needs your help."

8 took the chance to explain things to Marina. "Zero's apparently from thousands of years ago, long before us. We found him and revived him, but he knows practically nothing about us."

Marina stroked her chin. "So, you want me and Pearl to catch him up to speed."

"More or less. I'd like to stay and. help, if that's ok with you."

Pearl gave a thumbs up. "For sho'! Let's do this!"

With that, Marina turned to Zero. "Well, Zero, what would you like to know?"