I pushed the hatch open with my right hand, squinting as the smallest sliver of light hit me right in the eye. It was a little painful, but absolutely bearable. Though, more than that, it was… what was it?

What… was this? Why was it so… bright?

"You're right there," said a voice. Marina. She sounded happy.

I almost lost my grip on the ladder but managed to stay on. Was this the surface? It had to be, right?

I shoved the rest of the hatch off. It swung back as momentum did the rest.

More light hit me, on the rest of my face this time. It was so bright. And so warm.

I shielded my eyes now that my hand was free. Why was it so bright?

"I can see you! Up here!"

She can… see me?

Did I really make it?

I heaved myself outside. It was so warm here. The ground, there was something about it that made it warm to the touch. This was a new feeling, too. Nothing like anything underground. Everything was either dangerously hot or dull and lukewarm. Or just plain cold.

This… this was comforting.

I crawled a short distance before I built the confidence to stand. My eyes were adjusting to the absurd brightness. I blinked at the floor.

"Look up! Up here!"

I blinked again. Then I looked up, like she had asked me to.

And at that moment, any concern I had with the helicopters vanished.

I like to think that was the moment that made me who I am.

There was something about what I was seeing that I just couldn't seem to understand. The amount of space—no screen to mark the end, no overhead ceiling. I stumbled backwards, forgetting what I was standing on.

What was this called? What was I looking at?

In the corner of my vision, I saw Cuttlefish poking his head out of the hatch. Agent 3 lay nearby, on the floor. The platform must have brought them up after me.

The colors. There was something blindingly bright where yellow blue met another yellow, encroaching on the darker side with hues of blue and darker blue.

What was I looking at? Why was it so clear?

Underground, I'd noticed that most of the "new" things I'd been experiencing were usually tied to some other experience. That warmth from earlier? I knew it was temperature, but it was a new way of feeling temperature. And that helicopter overhead was just a large version of some other contraption I could think of but couldn't name. But this, the colors and the light? This wasn't like that.

This, I could tell, was completely new. There was something so unutterably foreign about it.

I realized I was holding my breath, out of fear that the slightest touch would shatter the image forever. Reality rebuilt itself around me. I was still standing on the platform, the helicopter blades were still spinning, Cuttlefish was next to me. I slowly exhaled, then inhaled.

Whoa…

The air had a different feeling up here. It was clear, didn't feel musty or old. I almost felt a bit guilty that I was bringing air from the underground to this place.

One of the helicopters was descending, towards me and the captain and Agent 3. They would expect me to step on, so I could go somewhere else.

I had to pry myself away from the scene, but I could still feel the light, and I could still feel the colors.

I didn't mind leaving my questions unanswered right then, because I was content just appreciating the unfiltered, natural light for the first time. But there was one question at the forefront of my mind that stayed there until I found an answer.

What was it called?

"Sky. My name is Sky."

Nothing else felt right.

A name uncommon among Inklings and even more so among Octolings. I took a normal word in the Inkling language and decided to make that my name. Since I had no attachment to any old name I might have had, I had the freedom to decide what my it would be. Though calling it freedom would be more than a little weird.

Six months ago, when I first awoke in Deepsea Metro, it took me about three seconds to realize that something was wrong with my memory.

Somehow, it seemed to be erased.

Despite that, many things still had a sense of familiarity to them. I knew that I wasn't somewhere that I recognized, and I knew that the man nearly drooling in my face was my enemy. As for why… I didn't know.

The fact that I was alive meant he had spared me. I was unarmed, and neither of us knew the way out of the dimly lit tunnels. Over time, we found a sort of mutual respect, though I kept anything I said to a minimum. I stopped caring about why he was my enemy, because he wasn't anymore.

As I stood up from the cold floor, I noticed I was, undoubtedly, a girl. The realization shocked me; not that I was a girl, but more the fact that I needed to rediscover my own sex.

This memory loss had proven to be a huge hassle. Though the things around me still held a place in my mind, my perception of myself was hit much harder than anything else. I didn't even know what I looked like until I found a shard of a broken mirror.

Yep. Girl. Light blue eyes. Sixteen, maybe? My hair was quite long, grown to my waistline. Did I let that happen, or was I just unconscious for a really long time?

The obvious thing to do was to tie it up, at least so it wouldn't fly in my face, but I seemed to like it that way, so I let it flow. As the old man proceeded without me, I dropped the shard and focused, trying to remember something, anything about who I was. Iypt was a fruitless endeavor.

I could remember what things were. That was a vending machine. A traffic cone. A train. I could remember what they were used for, their names, I could describe them. But I couldn't remember the names of anyone or anywhere. Including anything about me.

Proper nouns, that's it. I couldn't remember any proper nouns.

The old man, or so he said, was named Cuttlefish. In light of my inconvenient lack of name, he dubbed me "Agent 8." An odd choice, but I didn't care. Apparently it was a code name trend among something called the New Squidbeak Splatoon. That, too, had a tinge of familiarity, but that, too, had nothing beyond that.

I would go on to seriously decide on a name almost five and a half months later.

Despite the title, I was never actually a part of this… Splatoon. I'd only met two of their members, those being the ones unlucky enough to be in the subway with me.

Then came the actual obstacles, which took the form of small trials where I had to shoot things, among other odd tasks. I breezed through them. Even though the little eraser things I got from each one sparked some kind of memory flash, nothing substantial came out of it. Like a book, but with only every tenth word. And even then, it was only, like, three of them that did that.

Indecipherable.

It wasn't anything considerable, but it wasn't nothing. Which led me to believe that this memory loss was more of a memory suppression. It was all locked away in a corner of my mind.

Problem is, I didn't know where the key was.

Shortly after I escaped, I quietly had a hand in sparing the planet from a disturbing mass of blended flesh. Nobody would recognize me as a hero, but I wouldn't mind. I was relieved, even. After seeing the endless expanse I chose as a name, I didn't want to be pulled back underground. If nobody knew I had escaped—or that I was alive—they'd give up eventually.

I was dropped off near the shore, and Cuttlefish insisted I gave him the Octo Shot I found underground, on the fact that the weapon was highly illegal. It didn't have anything to do with the "Octo" in its name; it was because the weapon was compatible with the condensed ink used in serious conflicts, outside of… sports.

It seemed people shot each other for fun up here.

I handed the weapon in, and he gave me a weaker replica for use in said sports. This was followed up with a box full of the eraser things I collected, which proved to be near useless, and a valid ID. I have no clue where he got it, but it had the name "Eight" on it. A bit presumptuous, but at the time, I hadn't chosen my new name, so it worked.

The last of the odd gifts was a tiny, rectangle-shaped device, which he called a communicator. "Just in case," he said as he dropped it into my palm. It was, apparently, used to communicate with the Splatoon, or the NSS as an abbreviation.

I asked them to act as if this incident in Deepsea Metro never happened. I had to lead a quiet life if I was to stay on the surface, and I couldn't have the rumors hailing me as a hero.

Agent 3 up and gave me a bit of his small fortune, but he didn't expect a repayment. Though I had no sense of the value of the city's currency yet, Cuttlefish's reaction suggested it was a lot. I asked him where he got this much.

"This," he'd said, holding up his Hero Shot. "Well, another replica, but still."

I hoped that meant the sports and not assassination. It seemed I was right, since there were regeneration pads everywhere in this city.

I could have easily mimicked him, but decided against it. The sport drew a lot of attention, and attention was the one thing I wanted to avoid. It didn't help that I was one of the two Octolings in the city.

I spent my days hiding away, mostly in my apartment. Sometimes I went out, if only for some fresh air, and a look at the… sky. It was mostly at night, when the last amount of people were out.

That was my routine for… what, four, five months?

And then the attack on Inkopolis happened. Somebody underground, again. His name was Akash Octrope, and he had staged and succeeded in a direct attack on the whole city.

I was in Inkopolis at the time. He got me. Like he did everyone else.

That was and still is the worst memory I have in my remembered life. I won't spend too much time recounting it. There's really no point.

Someone explained to me the situation with Akash—a name that, at the time, I was unfamiliar with—and I reluctantly agreed to cooperate.

I was put under the command of someone named Rose, then ended up having to… train a whole group of people on how to shoot a gun and how to do it well.

It was... less than easy. It wasn't the most trivial thing to keep my composure after six straight months of isolation.

Moving on.

A few days later, I was brought before the two Octolings heading the training process. They said it was because of my skills with each weapon they had. "A master of all weapon classes," they called me.

One of them, the one that talked, I was pretty sure I had never seen him before.

But the other one, I wasn't sure. His image was unfamiliar, but I couldn't make out what about him made me uncomfortable. He didn't speak at all, but he still gave off a threatening aura.

The younger one asked me for my name, so I racked my mind for… anything. "Eight" came to mind, but I stopped myself before the word left my lips.

I glanced up, looked in the older one's eyes in some mimic of defiance, and said,

"Sky. My name is Sky."

Nothing else felt right.

I didn't know why they called me up only to ask me my name, but I was done with "Eight." Sky was my name now.

The older man, the one who didn't speak, decided to drop a few words on the train to Sharktown, which is where the whole Octrope business ended.

It was then that I found one of the keys to my memory suppression. But it only unlocked a snippet of info that scared me more than anything else.

That man was Octavio. And now, he knew my name.

If I didn't have a reason to pretend I didn't exist, I sure did then.

I wondered if my new title of "master of all weapons classes" sparked any new expectations. There had to be somebody that wanted to see me in a mock battle. Though, right then, I swore to myself that I would never appear in front of Deca Tower, holding a weapon, with the intent to participate in this sport of theirs.

Much later, at the end of the battle of Sharktown Octrope fell. And by fell, I mean he was killed. The death count of the whole situation amounted to one. Akash Octrope was the only death. Killed by Octavio. It happened right in front of me. I didn't get a clear angle, so I couldn't see his face, but I didn't like watching it. Especially since it was Octavio in the executioner's seat.

There was no point in worrying about it, so I took a deep breath and moved on.

A total of two weeks had passed since Sharktown. Inkopolis was still, for the most part, recovering. They set up the ink battle things really quickly. A bit too soon, in my opinion. But shooting things was some people's form of coping, I guess. Watching it on a screen, too.

Octavio was completely absent after the merger between Inkopolis and the Underground that happened four or five days after Sharktown, but I didn't trust him to stay off the radar.

And yet, here I was. In front of Deca Tower, holding a weapon, with the intent to participate in this sport of theirs.