There's more than one reason the title's Alias.

The captain caught me before I could bury my face in the concrete. I hadn't realized that I'd started to fall. I mumbled something, but it was only gibberish in both of our languages.

"Sky? Sky!" Rose grabbed my shoulders and lightly shook me, which wasn't very pleasant when I was already dizzy. "Are you alright?"

I didn't say anything. I don't think I could have. Rose carried me to the wall, dragging my feet across the ground, then gently set me down next to it.

"Ooh," she said, peering at my face, "you do not look alright…"

I couldn't see myself at that moment, but I imagine I looked like I'd seen the eldritch horrors of the deep ocean.

Slowly, Rose sat down next to me and lolled her head back, the same way I had. I didn't know why she stayed with me, but I was glad she did. It seemed to ease the… whatever it was I was feeling.

Eileen. Annie. Eileen. Annie.

In my mind, the two names were on repeat, each one fighting for dominance.

But it was just a name, I thought. A name meant nothing by itself.

But she staged the attack on Inkopolis… What was she doing up here, on the surface? In Inkopolis?

"I… uh…" Rose started. "How long have you known her?" She was at least talking with me instead of chasing after Annie. N— No, Eileen. No, Annie—

"Just a few days," I said, after what felt like an eternity.

"Oh— Uh, only?" I didn't turn to her, but I could feel her panicked expression burning into the ceiling.

"You don't get it…" I droned. "I knew her before… before the memory wipe…"

Rose didn't respond. She wasn't in my field of vision, and she made no noise I could hear.

"W— Wait!" I yelled. "You don't know that!" I heard myself echoing through the room, up the corridor, and forced myself to quiet. I didn't want to scare her off.

"Sky?" Rose squeaked. She turned to me, again gripping me by the shoulders. "J— Just calm down, rest your voice. And everything else."

In that memory… that moment… her hair was tied up, in a ponytail, but it fell around her shoulder. And I couldn't see even a fraction of her eyes—the shades were covering them entirely.

But everything else about them—about her—was exactly the same. I'd thought they were sisters. Not for a moment did I consider that they were the same person.

There was no doubt about it anymore, was there? I was someone—not just a stranger—to the Octropes. It wasn't a one-time encounter, it was… so much more. But I didn't know what it was. I didn't know. I knew nothing. Who was I?

"The reason I was down here," Rose said, "was because I'm a part of the NSS. Agent 4. New Squidbeak Splatoon, I mean… I don't want you thinking I'm some delinquent."

I understood the statement, but it didn't really sink in. NSS, too, I thought. How amusing…

I coughed. "…This is the second time I've come here. Since I escaped." I took a breath and tried to relax my eyes. "She wanted us to go back. For my memories… again."

"Second? What happened the first time?"

"We broke everyone out of there," I laughed. A grin slowly spread across my face. "She… She fought more than a dozen of them. At the same time! All for that crowd of random people…"

"She—" Rose shot up. "She did what? Why?"

The captain I knew was pretty much yelling into the abyss. I was right next to her, but I was too disconnected from the subway, lying like a corpse against that wall.

Rose started pacing back and forth, crossing half the length of the room. "So she didn't, like, try to recruit you or anything, right?"

I shook my head. Once to the left, once to the right, then back to being still.

"Didn't say anything about her dad?"

I clenched my eyes shut. "No."

"Anything about her life underground?"

"…No." I'd never wanted to bring it up. It was a touchy subject for what I assumed was everyone. "But she never wanted to."

"O— Okay," she said. "This could mean one of two things. One, she's hiding until she can make a move against the city again."

That didn't make me feel any better. I sank into the corner even more. "A— And two?" I heaved myself into a sitting position.

"She's trying to throw away her old life and start again."

And start again.

I found that one to be much more believable. Inkopolis was in one of its most vulnerable states ever—second only to the period between the attack on Inkopolis and Sharktown, when it was deserted. If there were any time to attack the city, it would be now.

I had never thrown away my old life. It was ripped from my hands. But she… she was making a choice. A conscious effort. I wanted to trust her. In the days I'd spent with her, I knew she was a good person.

"Ooh, Two's gonna scold me hard for this," Rose said. "Follow me." She sped to me, not looking back once. "I have an idea."

I pushed myself off the floor, stumbling into a stand. Rose held me steady, then led me by the hand up the corridor. "What…" I murmured to her. "What is it?"

"I'm sending you to talk to her," she declared, turning back to look at me. There was a kind of fire in her eyes, one that I'd seen before, but this passion of hers… I'd never seen it like this. "She wouldn't raise her guard around you. You know where she is, right?"

I ran my fingers across my hair. "Vague idea." Her apartment, likely. I was quite used to using one of those to hide.

"Eileen would have no reason to do that much for a bunch of strangers." She seemed to speed up and tug my hand a bit harder. "Or hang around you if she wasn't trying to recruit you for anything. Or not mention her past. Or use her missing sister's name!" Her attitude towards this was oddly inspiring. "Unless she's really, really trying to live here."

It was still night when we ran out and into the square.

I slipped in through the window and landed in the bland hallway. Room 418—Eileen's—had its door ajar, with a sliver of light pouring out of it and onto the carpet. No other door was open. There wasn't even a sound coming from them.

I stuck my head out of the window. Rose stood behind the dumpster with her hood up. She waved. I couldn't see her face but could tell she was smiling at me.

A part of me felt guilty doing this. I didn't know what side I was on, and "both" felt like the wrong answer. I hated that there were two sides to begin with. Were there?

There better not have been.

But even if there weren't, it felt wrong to talk to her after being sent by the NSS, or at least one part of it. I wanted to walk in as Sky. I wasn't Agent 8. I'd thrown that title away ages ago.

I grit my teeth and pushed her door open. It soundlessly swung back.

Every single cardboard box was still in the exact same place. The rope she'd pulled out for me was still hanging lazily out of one sitting by the wall. What was in those things?

The computer in the corner was on, but the monitor was off. The drive sat on the desk, collecting dust.

She was nowhere I could see. I needed to address her somehow, get her to come out, but I didn't know which name to use.

"Why? Are you here?" echoed a voice from behind a large stack of boxes. It was her. I snuck up to the pile and peeked through a crack.

The whole time, her bed had been hidden behind a makeshift wall of cardboard. It was dark in there—I could barely tell what it was I was looking at.

And then, suddenly, she moved into view and stared right at me, a lifeless glare in her eyes. I jumped back.

"See? You're scared of me. Gonna call in the backup now?"

I shot a glance at the door. Rose wasn't there. I didn't want her to be. Even though she couldn't have understood us, I didn't need—or want—her to be anywhere within earshot.

"No, no!" I stammered. "I… I— I…" I stopped to take a breath. "There's no backup."

"Fine," she sighed. She sounded exhausted. I heard her fall onto her bed. "Tell me," she said, slowly but clearly. I wandered to the wall and let her speak. I didn't want to look through that crack in the boxes again. "What's worse, knowing everything about your past, or nothing at all?"

"What…" I whispered to myself. Where did this come from? She was comparing us? I didn't know what was going on in her head. What she was thinking about. What did this have to do with anything?

I shut my eyes. Regardless, I couldn't leave her unanswered.

The girl I was talking to was Eileen Octrope. For a typical person, knowing nothing would be much, much worse.

But for her…

I came to a conclusion, not knowing if I believed it myself. "Nothing," I said. That was what I thought my honest answer was, but I wasn't so sure it was the one she wanted to hear. "If you know everything," I continued, "you know exactly what to do to somehow make up for it. Or reverse it."

"Really."

"B— But worse than that." I strained to get that out. Why was this so hard for me to say? "Worse than that is knowing only a little. Having only a tiny link to the past. You… I. I don't know what kind of person I was. I don't know anything else. And there're so many things it could mean. I can't let go of it. Th— that link could lead to something good. Or bad. Or nothing! It could mean nothing… for all I know."

But she knew. Eileen knew exactly what that memory meant. And, clearly, she wasn't going to tell me.

The room fell into silence. If she had done things she regrets, then what about me? It was so easy to ignore it all when it didn't exist in my mind, but the… the concept of me doing something like what she did was… It was horrible to even imagine it.

Behind the boxes, the bed creaked. "I really thought it would work," she said. "They call it the attack on Inkopolis, right? Just do that, everywhere, and we'd all be back on the surface again. But here we are. Both of us. I guess… it did work. Octavio, he wouldn't have merged us with Inkopolis if it wasn't for the NSS. If it were just some random Inkling that killed my father, I don't think I'd be up here living with them. Really… Sometimes, I wish I could forget it all anyway."

"Even if you did," I said, "Nobody else would. Everyone I meet, I don't know what they think of me, or even if I knew them before."

She made some noise, partially disguised as a cough. "O— Oh," she said, her voice wavering. That hit her. Why, I have no idea.

I shuffled closer to the boxes. "There's a… phrase I go by. 'Who I was isn't who I am.' I wasn't the person I was before the memory wipe." I closed my eyes again. "And you're not the person you were before coming to Inkopolis."

I stopped and listened. There was only the sound of her breathing. I stood there, next to the boxes, trying to keep my own breath steady. Did I make it better? Worse?

Finally, she spoke again. "You know a lot more about this than I do," she whispered. "Fine. I trust you. I can't change the past, but I'll… I'll try to live with myself." The bed creaked again, and I heard the rustling of fabric. "'Who I was isn't who I am.'" She laughed. "Thank you. You can… you can leave now. Please, don't worry about me." She began to laugh again. "I really am! Not… who I was…"

That got through to her! I almost squealed, but then stopped myself. I sped to the door and closed it behind me.

This was a kind of feeling I had never felt before. Not after a Turf War, not after Deepsea. I had helped someone I cared about.

I pressed my hands on my cheeks and shook with excitement. This moment made six months really worth it.

I swung myself over the windowsill, fell to the ground, and looked up to find Captain Rose standing there and squinting at me. When I looked at her, she averted her gaze. "I— I take it by your face that it went well?"

I covered my mouth with my hand. I was smiling and hadn't realized it. "Uh."

"Come on," Rose said, almost laughing at me. "Let's talk about this somewhere else."

Hmm, now that I think about it, I'm really exploring the amnesia plot point a lot, huh?

Jeez, this is a Nintendo game about anthropomorphic sea life, and this is what I write. It's fun.