Travis slowly strutted over the scattered teammates. Electricity danced between his fingers as he walked past the fallen team.

"Heh… what a load of stupid, weak, worthless-"

A nearby door kicked in.

"THERE YOU ARE." A steamed 3 growled, "I've been waiting for this!"

Travis turned to see Alph and one other agent standing behind her.

"Oh. I see the little guys let you out." He sighed, "Great."

4, a shorter, yellow-headed inkling, reached for his weapon.

"You're the scamp that stranded us in space for two weeks! You're gonna pay for that!"

4 didn't charge in with 3, but instead drew a flamethrower.

"How about you burn?!" He laughed as he shot flames toward them.

3 cleverly dodged the fire. Travis, not so much.

"Thank goodness my outfit is fireproof-" Travis's relief was quickly interrupted by 3's fist.

"I see you've learned new tricks… but can you handle THIS?!" 3 readied a star punch.

"Handle what?" Travis's eyes went wide.

He hit the floor before he properly comprehended what happened.

4 and Alph sat in the back, eyes widened.

"I missed everything." 4 muttered, shamefully. "But THAT? That was something else!"

A throwing knife planting itself into the wall right beside 4's face shut him up rather quickly.

"There are too many inklings in this story." Marco complained, "It's getting repetitive."

Shallows, who stood beside her, nodded slowly.

"Imagine your favorite game was raided by sword fighters. Like some dude who made this world just decided, "Oh, I don't know what the new character should be so I'm going to make them a sword fighter"... but with inklings. That's a horrible comparison. So, we might have to kill some off… starting with Muscles!"

The two drew their weapons.
"Masky, step back." Marco demanded.

"...what? ME? The most evil villain? Nuh-uh! I'm not going anywhere-"

Marco grabbed Shallows' head and pushed him downward. His legs sunk into the flooring like it was wet cement.

"H-HEY!" He cried, "Get me outta this!"

"I'm not letting MVPs take away MORE teammates from me. I've lost quite enough. Now, YOU." Marco pointed to 3, "We're going to 1v1. You and me."

The rest of the teams stepped back as 3 motioned for them to.

"Alright. You and me. Even though I KNOW I'm gonna win." 3 trash-talked, "So you might as well get on some protective gear-"

Marco stomped. A new realm-sort of place began to form over the old, dark base. They now stood on an Earthbound-esque void with only crystal flooring.

The team sat on the edges.

4 blushed a little.

"Please don't die." He mumbled to himself.

Travis and Shallows sat on the other side.

"You think she's gonna win?" Travis asked.

"I've seen Marco's true potential. It's lethal. I don't think that team stands a chance, much less the 'ling." Shallows started with a chuckle, "She actually destroyed a planet once. She could tear Omega's suit in half by only putting five percent of energy into it. I'm scared if it turns on us."

"It?"

Shallows sighed.

"Oops. SHE."

Marco and 3 slowly circled the arena.

3 attempted the first move. Marco seemingly saw it from a mile away and caught 3's fist in the act. 3 suffered a painful knee to the face.

Marco repeated the cycle of dodging a punch and hitting harder.

Finally, 3 landed a hook to Marco's jaw. Marco didn't react. She just stood there. 3 went to hit her again, but Marco intercepted the punch with her own. Marco dealt back the hook 3 gave her.

3 slowly stumbled around for a bit, before going to attack again. But Marco knew the deal.

Everybody winced.

3 flew back and hit some sort of forcefield that held back the teams from intervening.

Marco slowly walked up to 3.

"Listen. You had all the chances to beat it. You had every chance to deny it. WHY? WHY NOT? If you weren't so stupid, maybe you would have at least landed a successful hit!"

"B-but she DID!" 4 protested.

"Because I let her." Marco taunted, "Pity strikes the best of us. Now she has to die for her impudence. So say your goodbyes before you-"

"STOP RIGHT THERE." A voice boomed.

A purple-outfitted samurai landed in the middle of the ring.

"M...Mick?!"

Mick drew his blade.

"You're not going to do that. Not today." He commanded.

"I know what I have to do, you're no longer involved."

"Oh, really?" Mick scoffed, "Because Arris's weak as heck trying to get me here! And I'm going to make sure YOU know what you're doing. Now get into stance, Marco."

Marco smirked. "You have weapons. That's cheating."

"Having your own pocket dimension is cheating." Mick countered.

Marco rolled her eyes and slowly strolled to the middle.

"Pfft. Nothing can even hurt me. What are you gonna do, stab me- HOLY-"

Mick drew her own battleaxe on her.

"Oh. Bet you wonder how I got THIS!"

Marco and Mick fought for at least two minutes, before Marco just dropped to the floor.

"Heh. I hope this altercation has knocked some kinda sense into that big, egotistical head of yours."

The pocket dimension vanished and everyone found themselves back in the real world.

Shallows yanked his feet out of the floor, scooped Marco up, and ran off. Travis followed promptly.

"Guess we scared them off, huh?" The captain bragged, clearly not noticing 3's limp body being carried to the ship.

2 hours later…

The personnel already gave their thanks, the new team had already set off on their own standalone adventure… It was time for the crew to go home.

As they set off, they saw another unidentified ship driving away as well.

Nobody stirred during the ride home. The only sound most of them heard were the beeps of 3's heart monitor.

···· · ·-· ··· -· - -· -· ·- -·· - - ···· · ··· ·- - · - - -·- - ··-

Alpha answered the new call as soon as he could.

"MICHAEL. How come that your little pets are strolling back to your base? IN ONE PIECE?!"

Alpha sighed.
"I know what I'm doing, it took care of the one I wanted out first! I'll just have to kill them off carefully-"

Billy didn't accept that.

"NO. You've messed up my plan. You're dead to me! When I see you again, I'm messing ALL OF YOU UP."

Alpha sighed, defeated.

"Then there goes our compromise. You'd best be ready for a cruel ass whooping."

Billy slammed off the phone.

Alpha turned and his eyes grew wide as he caught Amber staring.

"M-Michael…"

He threw on his most excited face.

"Amber!"

"...what was that you were doing?" She asked, skeptical.

"That's a side project, I'll deal with that later. For today, you get to tell me what happened in those exciting nine hours of adventure!"

Amber shook off the literal sinking feeling and sat down near Alpha's desk.

"Well, it all began when…"

01001101 01101001 01100011 01101000 01100001 01100101 01101100 00101110 00100000 01001000 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110010 01100001 01111001 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110101 01110011 00101110

Travis threw the ship on autopilot and stepped out of the seat.

"So, I get to finally escape this void hell… finally… Oh, how fun it'll be to-"

"I wouldn't be so cock-sure, tentacles." Shallows threatened, "The future has other plans."

Marco batted an eye at that line.

"What?"

"You stay in here." Shallows stated.

"No, no, nonono." Travis chuckled, "I'm not leaving this ship until it's OUT of the void."

"Or you don't leave the ship at all."

Shallows whipped out one of Billy's portal bombs and grabbed Marco.

"Like I said, the future has other plans."

As Travis lunged for them, the portal shut.

Travis looked around. The ship spontaneously cut off.

"No… th-this can't be happening!"

He tried turning on the ship, it replied with sputters.

Travis dropped to the floor.

"Damn you." He cursed.

·- · ·- ·-· · -· ·-· - · ···- · -· - ···· · ··-· ·· ·-· ··· - - -· · ··· - - -··· · -··· · - ·-· ·- -·- · -··

So, sad as it is, Travis wasn't in season 2 for long. BUT HE IS IN SEASON 3!11!1!

He's the main antagonist of season 3. But that's neither here nor there. We still need to deal with Billy!

We saw Marco put some effort into a fight. It's scary thinking, she never gave it her all in that battle either.

I guess I'll see you in chapter 37 out of 39...