Mano's eyes desperately scanned the auditorium. He was confused by the lack of noise and the lack of Vai's presence on the stage. He took a seat closer to the doors near the exit just in case Vai wanted to find him or at least so she could see him in the stands without her having to make much of an effort to look, but Vai was nowhere in sight. Yet, strangely enough, he can hardly recall having heard a loud thud.
He twiddled his thumbs nervously, becoming frustrated with himself for not following her to the Hivemind. A large jellyfish wearing a varsity jacket sat next to him, his bulky arms draped over his lap. "Excuse me," Mano said, turning his head toward the jock. The jelly swung his head around to face the much smaller creature before him, looking down at him expectantly.
"Have you seen a young female octoling with yellow eyes and long tentacurls, most likely wearing a mask?" he asked, his hands folded neatly in his lap. The large creature stared at him for a while longer. "No," he answered slowly, turning his head back around to face the front. Mano sighed through his nose quietly. "Thank you," he said, standing up and brushing off his legs. "Good luck finding girl," the jelly said, turning back to Mano once again. Mano smiled at him, crossing his arms as he made his way out of the stands. "Thank you."
He exited the stands and walked back into the corridor where he last saw Vai, his eyes scanning every possible place she could be. His frustration level grew when there was no sign of Vai anywhere in his peripheral vision. He quickly grabbed the metal handle of the door Vai walked through earlier and swung it open violently, stomping down to where the Hivemind dwelled.
He knocked harshly on the steel door, causing the walls to rattle. An octoling with extremely pale skin and gray eyes hidden behind the infamous Hivemind antenna frantically opened the door, only to see a perturbed Mano towering over him. The peachy tentacles of the octoling in the room atop his head frayed about over the shades, slightly obstructing his vision.
"Where the hell is Vai, you creepy little scoundrel?" Mano snarled, his lack of patience allowing his blood to boil. "She left my office a few minutes ago," he began carefully, straightening his back and standing up taller to face Mano. "I would appreciate it if you spoke to me in a calm and professional way, Kijanoka," Loma growled, glaring at Mano through his shades. "Shut up Loma! I know you did something to her!" Mano shouted, his crimson eyes blazing.
"I did nothing to my student. I understand that I am not the minister of your district, but you will still treat me with respect and you shall refer to me as the Hivemind, which is the title I've worked hard to earn and deserve. I expect that you'll acknowledge that, just like every other student has. Are we clear?" Loma hissed, clearly not pleased with Mano's outwardly aggressive behavior.
Mano relaxed his facial muscles to the best of his ability and nodded curtly, still glaring daggers at Loma. "Please exit my office Kijanoka, and I wish you the best of luck in finding Vai," he concluded, bowing to Mano slightly; a traditional sign of respect. Mano stayed silent, and simply walked out of the room, shutting the cumbersome door behind him.
He slammed his back into the concrete wall that housed Loma's office and threw his head back, his hands clasping his face as he slid down the wall and curled up at the bottom. He held his head in his hands, contemplating continuing his search for Vai. Shame burned through his mind at his lack of respect for authority figures.
"So this is where emotions get you in the real world," he mumbled, his voice quivering. He went silent for a moment, rethinking his sentence. His mind immediately cleared, all feeling draining from his body as quickly as it had come. "Tch," he huffed, glaring around as the tears that dared to well in his serious gaze quickly dissipated.
He quickly stood up and straightened his back, standing erect and tall to mirror his usual demeanor. He stayed silent as he made his way out of the tunnel in between the bleachers, his mind blank and a ringing noise echoing in his head and blocking out the ever so faint sound of voices being carried up from the corner of the hall prior while he made his way back to the duplexes to inform Krahn and Nora of Vai's missing presence.
. . .
"W-what?" Vai squeaked, slightly backing away from the intimidating octoling before her out of fear. He chuckled deeply, amused by her reaction at his presence alone. "I assume you've heard of me before, judging by your adorable response," he grinned sheepishly, his sharp teeth glimmering against the dim lights lining the wide corridor. "The Octarian Menace, yes?" He openly pondered, narrowing his eyes at her while his smile widened, but no true eagerness or curiosity was there. It was as if he was a porcelain doll; an expression painted onto his face, but it of course had no meaning or significance. It was only a facade. He felt nothing.
"C-correct, we learned about you when we were much younger," Vai trailed off, starting to step away from him. "Ah," he hummed, his smile faltering slightly as he straightened his back and stood up from his strange throne-like chair, looking down on Vai in a condescending manner. "I-Iso Dunar, The Lord of Betrayal, The Untrusted," Vai stammered, spitting out random names that other young octolings said about the immensely powerful warrior, misjudged by all, but for good reason.
Vai stared up at him, absolutely horrified that the most notoriously villainous Octarian to exist was towering over her at this very moment. "The Deception Savant, right?" he mentioned, a slight smirk creeping onto his face. Vai's pupils shrank, her lower lip quivering at the sight of the man in every scary story to exist in her fryhood. "Maybe you need a recap, yes? Not everyone has heard my side, but you're a fair young octoling, right Vai?" He asked, almost appearing to have puppy eyes, but Vai was too mortified at the fact that he knew her name to be swayed by such a thing. He let out a little laugh, smirking and staring into Vai's shaky yellow gaze. "Well," he leaned down to where Vai cowered, starting to shake from the fear. "Allow me to begin where it ended," he started, leaning back to stand up.
His eyes flashed, a dim red light emitting from them. Vai was confused and afraid, her eyes analyzing her surroundings as quickly as her panicked mind would allow in order for her to find some sort of escape. He stared at her for another moment and blinked slowly, sighing quietly. "Relax, I can't hurt you down here. You're not allowed to be down here anyway, and I don't want the Octarians above to know that I'm not dead," he grinned devilishly and turned around, taking an elegant seat on his dark throne. His hands folded and allowed his chin to rest on them once more. His back was pressed against one of the carefully sculpted arms of his junk throne and his legs were crossed and resting over the opposite arm of his unsightly creation. His boots swung back and forth in the air as they hung down from the left side of the throne.
"Not long before you were born I believe, since you appear to be 16 years old, I escaped from the Deepsea Metro, just like one of your peers desires deeply, despite his constant mask of optimism and effervescence," his voice quieted during the latter fragment of his statement, startling Vai slightly as her mind worked to figure out his rather cryptic remark.
"Krahn," she murmured, lifting her gaze to meet Iso's glowing crimson one. Iso's lips pursed for a second and he exhaled through his nose briefly, staring into Vai's shaken yellow eyes for a few heartbeats. Vai stared back, unsure of what to do or how to respond, captivated by his intense gaze. Iso grunted, shaking his head and blinking away his mental fogginess. "Sorry," Vai mumbled, nervously rubbing her upper arm. He gave her his signature slight grin, his half-lidded eyes sparkling in the dark. He leaned back further in his throne and raised his arms, his fingers spread apart yet oddly relaxed as his palms faced the ceiling.
While Vai's eyes scanned the vicinity, she noticed the dark ink puddles scattered all around the unusual room begin to rise, as if slowly falling in reverse. "W-what the hell?" Vai sputtered, scared out of her mind and on the brink of hyperventilation. Iso didn't respond to her panicked rambling. He seemed too absorbed in whatever the hell he was doing with his hands.
"Allow us to travel further into the past, yes? And why I escaped this hellish place," Iso said, a menacing look on his face when he mentioned his former home. He twisted his hands to a 180 degree angle and his palms faced the floor now. His fingers still twitched as if he was puppeteering something unseen to Vai, who just watched him wordlessly.
The deep violet ink rose up next to his fingers, creating little shapes reminiscent of infant octolings. "This is me," he started, eyeing the blob of ink that was further away from the other blobs. "I was cast out just because of how I looked," he went on, the red glow emitting from his eyes glinting brighter now, seemingly with malice or anger. "How you looked?" Vai echoed, confused by this statement, considering the fact that he seemed quite normal to her in the dark at least.
"My eyes, sweetheart," Iso replied, turning his head to face her and staring into her piercing gaze as she scanned his face. "The mask?" she suggested, assuming that was the issue. "Yes, the eye mask. Only females have points on the ends of their eye mask. Mine dragged down to my chin, and I still have no idea why," he explained. He turned his head back to face forward and his gaze dropped to the blobs of ink in between him and Vai. "That's.. Simply how I came into the world. That's all I was told," he continued.
The blobs seemed to melt and his fingers relaxed slightly then stiffened back up, almost in a claw-like way to create new shapes with the ink. This time he recreated himself and the group, but Iso appeared to be on his knees in front of the group, while the other young octopi circled him and laughed at him for being a "man-girl".
"Shortly after though," Iso continued, "I proved to them that they were weak little bags of slime; that they had no right to speak to someone as strong as myself in such a manner as they had," Iso growled, his right hand clenched into a tight fist and the other octopi exploded and splattered on the stone ground below, leaving Iso alone in the center.
There was a moment of silence and Iso relaxed his balled fist, spreading out his fingers once more to bring up yet another blob of ink from the floor. This time, it looked quite similar to a splat roller, but much heavier and more complex. "But, eventually," The miniature Iso crawled pathetically to the roller, its small hands gripping the handle and barely managing to lift it off the ground, but eventually it heaved the weapon over its shoulder. "I found where my power lies," he said, an almost evil looking smirk spreading across his face.
"I trained for days upon weeks upon months upon years with this weapon, and rumor has it, this weapon originated from the surface," he added with a wink, his smirk growing wider. "Hours? Days? Months?" Vai emulated, confused by the strange words he used. "That's right, you don't have 'time'. At least governed by the sun, that is," he mumbled. "The sun? Didn't Krahn talk about that?" Vai asked herself, even more confused. She decided it would be wise to avoid asking any more pesky questions and listen to Iso's origin story he generously provided while she was stuck down there with him. At least he was harmless and offered to entertain her, she thought. She'd rather listen to the most powerful villain in Octarian history tell her his life story then be stuck down there all by herself without knowing a way to escape.
"The question is where did my power lay, exactly?" He asked. It was obviously a rhetorical question, so Vai was silent. The ink fell and then rose back up yet again to recreate the large splat roller, but at a larger and more detailed scale. It was certainly complex, with much larger indentions in the roller and the gears being much larger as well. It was without a doubt much heavier than an ordinary splat roller as well, judging by its anatomy alone.
With its strange design, Vai was brought to even more concern. She had no idea what this was.
Lastly, the roller appeared to have what seemed to be a clothespin clipped on to it, giving it an even quirkier appearance. "The Kensa dynamo roller," he said, grinning maniacally. "The Ken-sa what now?" Vai responded, her fear mostly gone, replaced with confusion and curiosity. "Dynamo roller," he answered calmly, his smile faltering slightly into a simple small smirk. Vai gave him a look and he sighed in annoyance, his smile now faltering completely.
"The most powerful roller out of every roller that has ever been manufactured. The heaviest and the strongest, but also the slowest," he explained, almost sounding like Krahn for a second, making Vai long for Nora and her other friends. Out of the blue, a worrying thought suddenly crossed her mind. "What if Mano is looking for me?" Vai twiddled her thumbs as the ink before her melted onto the floor and Iso started to explain another part of his story. He harnessed no ink this time though and he allowed his arms to lazily slink over his stomach.
"I hated the oppression I received for how I looked and the fact that my parents were viewed as mongrels for voicing their opinion on not being proud of the traditional system Octarians operated on so far into the future. As a result of that, they were killed off," his voice fell away, almost sounding sad, but almost immediately, his mood changed back to serious and focused.
"Tch," he grumbled, shaking his head. The glow in his eyes faltered and his fingers relaxed. "He acts a lot like Mano," Vai thought to herself, the thought of her close friend making her smile slightly despite the situation she was in. "The society that everyone around me contributed to destroyed me from the inside out, making me feel like a worthless chum, and for no good reason," he suddenly snarled, clenching his fists. He eventually relaxed and exhaled slowly.
"So," he started again. "I overthrew everyone," he said simply, his menacing smile returning to his smug face. Vai's eyes widened, the vague yet foreboding claim frightening her. "H-how?" Vai asked carefully, her fear starting to re enter her head. He chuckled, allowing the moments of silence to paralyze Vai as possibility after possibility crossed her mind, every single one being about how powerful Iso could possibly be, and on his own at that.
"My dynamo, of course. Its kit, its strength and general raw power was everything that I alone could harness; that I needed to harness. See, those other kids were belittling me, of course, you know that. But now, after I trained with my precious weapon, I had the confidence to fight back," he went on as he indulged in his own story once more. "So, they challenged me to a 4v1," Vai grimaced, not wanting to picture something so cruel and unfair. "The team with the most kills was considered the winner," Iso added, starting to smirk a little bit at his own words, which worried Vai slightly.
"We went to a small clearing away from other adults and we fought it out, but it certainly didn't last long," he said. Vai's heart rate started to quicken. "I crushed every single one," he said flatly, malevolence lining his gaze. "Every single one?" she breathed, almost refusing to believe it was possible. "Of course," he answered, a blank expression plastered on his face. "After more people found out about the incident, I became more well known. Of course, usually people didn't believe an outcast like me actually had power, or perhaps, they didn't want to believe it. That was considered ridiculous, taboo even. So, more people came along and lost. Victory after victory after victory for me while the inferior ones cowered underneath me and gave me the perfect opportunity to overthrow the disgusting hierarchy of worth determined by looks or popularity," he sneered, now crossing his arms and glancing off to the side smugly.
"Wow," Vai murmured. She was astonished by his rather inspiring message, despite the reputation he built up for himself. There were a few moments of silence shared between them, which once again provoked the thought of a certain octoling she was worried about at that moment.
"So," he started once more, "I became the king," he said, his voice now laced with pride. "But the metro has never been a monarchy," Vai interjected pointedly, crossing her arms while her voice fell away slightly, a bit unsure of his claim. "Yes, of course. It was never officially a monarchy, my dear," Iso answered, almost with a hint of malice. "I was their Lord, the all powerful one. The one that no Octarian could dare to speak to without caution," he told her, his voice nearly sounding evil.
"But, I then remembered the only reason why I wanted to gain power in the first place," he continued. "To make sure no one gets in my way so I can execute my escape flawlessly, and I did exactly that. I left, and along with that, I left the Deepsea Metro's entire societal structure in smithereens, absolutely destroyed by my raw power," he declared, almost as if his story was scripted. "Of course I escaped, but I had nowhere to go, and that's when I found a little valley quite close to the mountain I escaped from, where I found quite a few cute little things there. I met two inklings with no weapon, who appeared to be guarding an outpost of some sort. They didn't like me very much at first since they thought I was hostile, but it's quite alright. We eventually got along. If you call getting along getting shooed away and not killed," he said sheepishly, grinning at Vai in an almost childlike manner.
"I still lingered though, and that's where I met my wife; at the DJ Octavio boss fight. Fast forward a bit, we had two beautiful children after getting married a few years after entering a relationship. She's a loaded splattershot, that one," he trailed off, seemingly getting lost in the memories of his wife on the surface, who was awaiting his return.
"Your wife is Agent 4?!" Vai interrupted, shock freezing her worried mind as she stared at the taller octoling before her. "Why yes, how'd you know?" He asked, smiling a little more as thoughts of his inkling lover crossed his mind. "Krahn's stupid little books he reads. He talks about her all the time!" Vai answered. "I feel honored," Iso laughed, re-adjusting his unusually large hat.
"But the only reason why I came back here," Iso redirected his train of thought, his tone darkening again. "Was to retrieve my eldest son," "What? Why?" Vai pried, slightly worried that it would seem like an obvious or unnecessary question. "They took him from me. Octotroopers stole my son. I know it was them. They left a note on my counter, written in Octarian script. I woke up to a strange noise, almost like an ambient motor, and found my eldest son gone," his red gaze dropped, refusing to display any emotions. "What did the note say?" Vai pressed again, curiosity seizing her mind and all regard for common sense and respect of privacy leaving her. "I remember it like it was yesterday," he murmured, his gaze dropping to the floor.
"I have your eldest, Iso Dunar. I shall spare your wife and youngest. If you wish to see your son again, you must reclaim your throne," He spoke with an Octarian accent, and the words sent chills down Vai's spine. Silence rained, before Vai finally decided to speak up again. "Do you remember his name?"
At the sound of this highly anticipated question, Iso's gaze shot up to meet Vai's, its intensity startling her for a moment. He sighed quietly and gently shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I've been trying so hard to remember what he was like, that I completely forgot who he was as a result," Iso murmured. Sadness edged his tone, which Vai certainly wasn't used to hearing then. She could never really get used to hearing Iso fucking Dunar sound depressed.
"That's aside from the point, anyway. Talk to your friend about all he knows about inkling culture and bring him to me so we may talk. I will help you get out of this little area, since I know a way," Iso mentioned, changing the subject. "If you know a way out, why don't you just get out?" Vai asked, tipping her head. "I said why earlier. I don't want everyone else to know I'm alive so I can eventually escape whenever I see fit," he concluded.
There were some more moments of silence, before a voice was heard in the midst of the quiet. "Oh, and Vai," Iso started again, his gaze dragging back up to hers. "Yes?" Vai responded, turning around to walk back to where she fell. "I will always search for my son."