Yeah, um... this one took ages. I even had this one prewritten from over the hiatus, but I had finals, so...
In any case, I also have the next one ready (which was not prewritten from the hiatus). Should be out soon. I hope.

I parted from Rose that day with a relatively good idea of how to navigate that section of the city. A section which, honestly, I didn't have much of a reason to go to in the first place. Though I couldn't think of it as a waste. Really, there was just something about her…

And then about a week passed in relative monotony.

"Monotony" would have meant "boring" in most contexts, but after everything else, I welcomed it. Nobody unveiled any new names they had, and… Actually, that was it. Everything of note that had happened had something to do with a name. Annie was Eileen, Jacob was an Octrope, the captain was Agent 4 was Rose was Scorpio…

Sheesh.

Not once in that entire week did I know what Jacob was up to. Sure, he'd show up for our Ranked matches and Turf Wars, but after meeting up with Eileen, he'd stopped showing up to my apartment. Which, it seemed, confirmed that Eileen really was the family member he was looking for. I wouldn't have thought much of it if he'd at least told me, but he never mentioned it, even in passing.

When the week ended, things started to get weird again. Alas, a life like mine couldn't have been normal for too long.

On that seventh day, I was in bed, wearing nothing but one of those baggy t-shirts. As I do.

The dim, blue light filtering through the curtain told me it was the limbo between night and day. Twilight, they called it? About the time Eileen would have been up.

A week's worth of time had already gotten me used to using the name. Eileen, not Annie. No, not even a week. Just a day at most. Was it because I hadn't gotten used to Annie? Or was it because Eileen was what the past me was familiar with?

To my side, the phone rang. A lot better than hearing a voice out of nowhere. I swung my hand over to the table and swiped it. Eileen.

"Hey," I said.

"How's it going on your end?"

Her tone told me she was setting up the conversation to go to something like "Join me, I'm the one crashing the protest this time!"

…or something. But no. That wasn't going to happen at this time of night. "I'm fine," I said. "Cut to it. Where are you taking me now?"

She stopped, and I smirked.

"Did I get it right?"

"Can you meet me by Hammerhead Bridge?"

Rose had mentioned Hammerhead on our day out, but I didn't make the connection that it was that place I'd met with her, with that bench and the probably-fake grass.

I was finding myself here pretty often.

"Don't panic, 'kay?" Eileen said from my pocket. It was a little muffled, with my hand competing with the phone for pocket space. "Just… something's gonna come out of the water near you. Uh. Stand back." Oh boy. What could it have been this time?

I hunched over and stepped away until there was a whole road and the small pseudo-pasture between me and the dropoff into the sea. I picked a wall to lean on and waited there. I glanced at my pocket. She hadn't hung up, but there was nothing to hear.

The bridge was empty, and so were the roads around it. Exactly how it was the night Rose had first dragged me here. The place was quite secluded in the evenings, it seemed.

I heard water crash against the wall. The sea in front of me formed a mound, sticking out like a hill in a field, then the surface tension broke and the water fell.

And I found myself nonchalantly staring at the head of a large, gray, mechanical fish.

This thing, which was absolutely a submarine, looked abnormally polished for something that I assumed never left the salt water. It had rounded… lips… that were a bit off-colored. For some reason. There were no eyes to speak of, or at least from what I could see. The only part visible from where I was was relatively small, about the size of the Grizzco boat Rose had used, but it suggested a lot more below sea level. A bit smaller than a typical Turf War stage, I estimated.

But that was still huge.

I scanned the area for any nightly wanderers, but, in the most literal sense, the coast was clear. Eileen climbed out of a hole in its mouth and onto a platform that resembled a tongue. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and looked surprised when she saw me. "Uh… Ta… da?"

Ah, duality.

Without taking my eyes off her, I reached into my pocket and ended the call. "So," I said, breaking into another grin, "what is it this time?"

Her hands moved just as robotically as the rest of the submarine. Quickly, in patterns, and I understood none of it. A lever here, a button there, then she'd lean back until the next move.

Again, I was the seat warmer while the other party did all of the piloting, or whatever the equivalent was for a boat. Or a submarine. I didn't really mind taking the back seat, but I did feel a bit unproductive.

"This machine's called the Piranha," Eileen said, not looking up for even a moment. "It's pretty big, and…" She lowered her voice. "We used it to… trap the NSS a while back."

"Mm," I hummed. I waited for more, but she said nothing else.

Huh. That ended quickly.

And so the burden fell on me to keep some talk going. Weather was obviously off the table—we were underwater. Her family? Well, if I were to bring that up, I'd have to make sure to keep her parents out of it. Jacob was fine, Rocky… probably was, and—

I looked up. "Eileen?" I said, as the Piranha slowed its descent. Yeah, this was a very risky topic. "Wh… What happened to Annie—"

"She's dead," she blurted, without skipping a beat. Her hands kept working away at the controls. She didn't even slow down.

"…Oh." I was not good at starting conversations.

"Yeah, but don't worry about me," she said, "it's been like this for a long time now. You get used to it after a while…"

I pressed my back against the wall. It was cold. "Sorry," I muttered.

"Please, it's fine. You did nothing wrong."

My gaze dropped to the floor. I couldn't leave it with that. "Where…" I said, "are you taking me now?"

And then she stopped. Her hand was on a lever, frozen.

Damn it. I'd hit another weak spot. Why was this— I would've figured it out after getting there, why—

She pulled it the rest of the way, and, for the first time since stepping in here, turned around. I kept my eyes on the floor. "Ever heard of the Salmonid Research Center?"

I hadn't. The sting of familiarity I was used to wasn't there, either.

Before I could answer, she did. "No, of course you haven't," she muttered to herself. "It was built before… not until recently."

I glanced at her. She gently fell into the captain's seat, though it was more of a stool bolted into the floor.

"We let them take the Piranha, the NSS," she said, looking at the ceiling. "They get to the SRC, the Salmonid Research Center, then… Akash Octrope ambushes them with the Hypno-Shades. You know the rest."

I did.

"No, wait, you know that too…" She stared out of one of the Piranha's thick windows. "My father. It was my father."

"Yeah…"

I felt the Piranha decelerate. My hand crept to the armrest and grasped it. Then, when it stopped, it started to rise. Out of the same window Eileen was looking at, the water level fell.

"It's a moon pool," Eileen said. "Don't worry, we kept the pressure down."

There wasn't much else to see outside. Just drops of water rolling down the hull, and past them, a blank, white wall.

"I don't know why I'm taking you with me," Eileen said. "I'm trying to come to terms with what happened back then, I guess. It's not like I can change it, so this is the second-best option." She shrugged and forced a smile, but her eyes sparkled like the faces of a jewel. "I felt like I needed to see it again myself. But, still, you have nothing to do with any of this."

I felt like I had to say something, but I couldn't think of anything to say.

"But, you know…" she said. "It's nice having you around. Thank you. For coming with me. The exit's in the same place on the other side." She stood up. "If you want to back out, now's the time."

Not much happened in this research center, really.

Eileen kept her mouth shut, for the first part. I shadowed her path—which was down one short hallway—until we came to some tall, cylindrical chamber.

I stepped onto a short bridge connecting the hallway we'd come from to the platform in the center. I peered over the railing. The way the lighting was, I couldn't see the bottom. Minus the bridge, it was donut-shaped, with a pit surrounding it. It always baffled me to see a platform like this. Like, what was the structural advantage of a giant hole in the building? Underwater? This wasn't the first time Octarian architecture had done something like this, and I doubted it was the last.

"This place…" Eileen began.

I froze in place. Just like with the night sky, any noise would have shattered the scene.

"This is where he— My father… This is where he captured them. The NSS, all four."

I nodded, but she was facing away.

Eileen sluggishly lifted her finger at the small, almost unnoticeable balcony jutting into the room near the ceiling. "That's where he stood."

I stared at it. There was nothing noteworthy about it. She dropped her finger, but her eyes were locked onto it.

"'Eileen, you did well.'"

I shot my gaze to the back of her head. Was she quoting someone?

"'They will be here soon. I will brainwash them, and we can take Inkopolis together.'"

Akash, almost definitely. I shut up and waited for her to go on. For some reason, I was a lot more intrigued than I really should have been.

"'Your brothers look up to you. Annabelle did, too.'"

Annabelle.

Her full name. Annabelle. I knew that. I'd heard it out of Akash's mouth in Sharktown. But hearing it again, what with everything that had happened…

"'I will prepare for them. The New Squidbeak Splatoon will attack here soon. Thank you.'"

There I was, again, obsessing over Eileen's words. She continued, though this time, it was from her own mouth and not Akash's.

"I wonder, Father. What was I to you?"

Eileen stood, as unmoving as the rest of the underwater stronghold. And with her voice gone, there was nothing here. There was nothing but her and me behind her. There was no noise—even the familiar gusts of wind were gone. There was nothing to see—this place was abandoned long ago.

And then, she said one more thing.

"'I'm glad you will live to see the surface.'"

I took my corner in the Piranha's control center, unsettled, shifting in my seat as Eileen took hers.

"This spark anything?" Eileen said. She was grasping at straws there. She'd already told me I'd never heard of this place.

"Nothing," I said. I crossed my arms, if only to feel a bit warmer. "Hey, are you…"

"Don't worry about me," she said, laughing. She spun around in her seat, hands on her knees, smiling warmly at me. But I knew enough about her to tell she was faking it. "Sorry you had to see that. He was always saying stuff like that. That he'd get them underground… He always thought that trapping them below the surface was, uh… 'fitting'." She took a breath. "He could get poetic sometimes. I guess I got it from him."

"Ah…" I slumped and took a glance at the ceiling. Must have been close to midnight.

I blinked, gasping. I hadn't seen any clouds when I was by the bridge earlier.

"Hm?" Eileen looked at me. "Did you…"

"C— Can you go straight up for a moment?" I sat up. "I want— I want to show you something."

And when Eileen looked up, the sky seemed to look back.

I had to hold my fist against my mouth to keep from laughing. It wasn't funny at all, I just… It was nice. It was nice to see. I looked away to keep myself in check.

"I see," she said in a robotic, mindless tone. "Why your name is… that."

Yup. That was exactly it. I wondered, how many Octolings in Inkopolis had seen this? No, how many Inklings in Inkopolis had seen this? Not many people had the means to be out here this late at night.

Eileen understood me, and I was happy.

I didn't know why I felt that way. I'd never felt the need to be understood. Nobody was like me, because the rest of them were all dead. All liquified or starved in Deepsea. Eileen was almost the opposite of me. She knew everything, and I… nothing. There was a kind of kinship I had with her there. Between the Turf Wars and memories, this was the first thing unique to us, and nobody else on or under the surface of this planet.

Eileen coughed. "Hey. Uh," she choked. She looked back up and took a few breaths. "How do I… Take this." She spun her hand around, and in it, she had something cupped in her palm. "This is the remote that opens up the Piranha. T— Take it."

What.

"You're giving me—" I tried to see her face, but it was too dark. "I— I can't—"

"Just take it!" she barked.

I snatched the remote away from her and clutched it near my chest. What… What was that?

Eileen let out a shaky sigh, relaxing her shoulders and turning back to the sky. "Sorry… just… sorry," she said between breaths. "I don't need this anymore. You take it."

I let one of my hands drop, the one without the remote. "Thank you."

What… Why…

"What is it that Inklings say up here?" she whispered. "Happy…" her smile fell, and she looked to the ocean. "N— Never mind."