Orange felt a sensation he could only relate to being a piece of taffy, stretched and pulled. Then, in only a couple seconds, it was gone, and blurs of speed gave way to an abandoned city, buildings poking through the cloud line to the level where Pink and Orange had been deposited by the kettle. They were on a small platform, floating completely independently from any others. I wonder how we'll get to the main area. There won't be any major clues on such a small area as this, Orange figured.
Cap'n Cuttlefish's voice came from the headset built into the head gear Orange was wearing. "Ya see that swirling pool of ink in front of you?" Orange looked forward, down a slight ramp, to another platform. Pink did too. "That there's a Launchpad. You can use it to fly to another area. What ya need to do is just like the kettles: get on it and go into squid form. It'll launch you onwards!"
Orange used his charger to shoot a path of lime green ink to the Launchpad, determined to find anything there might be before Pink. He swam through the trail and jumped in the Launchpad, any fear pushed aside by his competitive spirit. The Launchpad sucked in a little bit, then shot Orange skyward, depositing him on in a new area. This one was multi-leveled, with a rough metal ramp leading down to a large area with several puddles of purple ink and some wooden crates sitting around. Leading to another area was a steep, curved ramp, nearly vertical. I don't think I could walk up that. I'll need to swim, Orange decided.
"Orange, boy, can you hear me? I can talk to just one of you at a time," Cap'n Cuttlefish's voice echoed in Orange's ears.
"Yep," Orange replied.
"Good. Now, when Agent 3 was fighting the Octarians, purple ink was the signature of 'em. That's what they shot. Could you walk over to some?" Orange approached the nearest puddle. Nearby, Pink was knocking on some of the boxes. Orange started hustling, not wanting her to go through all of the crates before he could and find something. "Ah, ok. Looks pretty dried out. Not too fresh." Cap'n Cuttlefish returned to Orange's headset. "They haven't been here too lately. Ya know much about Octarians, boy?"
Orange shook his head, not remembering Cap'n Cuttlefish couldn't see him, the quickly responded, "No, nothing. Haven't even seen one."
"I would hope not. They can be right nasty, if ya aren't prepared. Now, Octarians have little tiny legs, then a big body. It looks like one big tentacle, pale on one side with a face, and red-ish purple on the other. The regular ones ride on little machines with a big tube leading to a dish on the front. They shoot out of that. But on the back, there's a little spout. They shoot ink out of that spout when they don't see a threat. If they were here recently, they would've been spraying ink all over the place, so this ink would still be wet, but it's kinda dried out now."
"Ah," was the only thing Orange could say. From Cap'n Cuttlefish's definition, the Octarians certainly sounded frightening, and Orange didn't want to run into any soon. Remembering his job, Orange started checking boxes, peering around the outsides. Some were poorly made out of pale wood. He could clearly see they were empty from peering through some of the cracks. Others, however, were sturdier, made of an orange wood and bore a squid-like shape painted on the side with white paint. Orange tried to look into them but couldn't see anything. Backing up, he prepared to shoot it. He launched a stream of bright paint at the box, and it broke open, sending several bright orange spheres at Orange!
"AHH! Get them off me!" Orange yelled, jumping around.
He heard his headset crackle. "Ha ha ha! Boy, there's no need to be afraid of those. They're helpful! Bring enough to me, and I can upgrade your stuff!"
"Oh," Orange responded, his face reddening in embarrassment. "Ok. So I should try to collect as many of these as I can?"
"Absolutely! Then you can be ready for confronting some actual Octarians!"
Orange returned to inspecting the boxes, shooting any of the orange ones when he came to them. They all seemed to contain some of the orbs. One box even contained a whole bunch! Eventually, between the two of them, Pink and Orange had examined the whole area without finding anything. Up the up the steep ramp was another large, open space, but this one without ink or wooden boxes. Another Launchpad was at the end of the space. "Launchpad ahoy! Let's move on!" Cap'n Cuttlefish yelled. This flight took Pink and Orange to another large platform, this one separated with stone walls. Orange walked to the right, while Pink took the left. A few orbs sat on the ground, which Orange walked over to collect, but nothing else of interest was there. Pink's face upon them meeting in the center of the platform revealed she encountered the same situation.
One more Launchpad ride took the two inklings to a new type of platform. The landing zone led down a path with two short walls, one on each side with a path down the middle. Then, about 15 feet above that, another concrete platform hung off of the side of a billboard. It looked like there was some object sitting on it!
"How can we get up there?" Orange heard Pink say into her mic. "I don't see a ladder or anything."
Cap'n Cuttlefish responded to both of them. "You're right, there isn't a ladder or anything, nor are there boxes. It's too high for ya to jump, and that Launchpad leads to another area."
Orange looked down in front of him, where there was a Launchpad, then up at the billboard and platform in front of them. If I jump just right… Orange quickly made a plan in his head. Using his Splatterscore's full power, he aimed right at the surface of the billboard where he could faintly, using his scope, see some metal scaffolding on the other side. Releasing the ink from the charger, Orange shot a hole through the billboard, then jumped through that, landing on a small metal platform built on the back of the structure. Another blast of ink made a path up the back of the billboard to the height of the platform, and one more created an access to the front.
Orange swam up the trail of ink he created and ducked through the hole, onto the concrete platform. The object they had seen earlier seemed to be some type of shield. It was a dark, curved metal, with a glass window in the center. Orange tried picking it up, but it was far too heavy for him to even move. "What do you thing, Cap'n Cuttlefish?" he asked.
"Well, I think I've seen this before," Cap'n Cuttlefish responded. "It looks like the shield on a shielded Octarian. Some of them had shields on the front that resisted ink, and this looks like one of those."
"So is it anything we can use?"
"I fear not. It just looks like any other. How 'bout you jump down from there and keep looking."
Disappointed at not having found a big clue, Orange leaped down from the platform, dejected. Another Launchpad trip led Pink and Orange to an empty platform, from which they blasted off to yet another area. This one featured three tall, concrete towers. "Here, I'll climb these ones. You got the last one," Pink said to Orange.
"No, I've got this," replied Orange.
"Please. I want a chance to check somewhere out."
"Just let her," Cap'n Cuttlefish said to Orange, a hint of anger in his voice.
"Fine," Orange snapped at Pink. She smiled sweetly at him, only throwing him into a worse mood, then started making her way up.
"Look, Orange," Cap'n Cuttlefish radioed through Orange's headset. "She's part of the team. You're going to have to work with her. You'll never get anything done if you just constantly fight with her."
"I'm not going to work with her," Orange said sullenly. "She always gets in the way of my being the best. Just yesterday, I was going to get a 16 game win streak, but she just had to burst in and ruin it all. I was really hoping that this would be a great opportunity for me to achieve something huge and be the freshest squid in the neighborhood, but now I'm just going to get shown up by her, AGAIN. I can't stand it!" Orange's voice grew louder and more intense as he went on, until he nearly was yelling the last couple of words. Pink's voice broke through his brooding.
"I think I found something!" she yelled happily from the top of the tallest tower. "It's some sort of paper!"
"Cap'n Cuttlefish talked to both of them now. "Wow, very good!" At these words, Orange crossed his arms, furrowed his brow, and turned away from Pink. "This appears to be some sort of scroll," Cap'n Cuttlefish continued. "Agent 3 uncovered a couple of these. They're called sunken scrolls: long lost records of history that end up in strange places. This one seems to be a record of the old Great Turf Wars between the Inklings and Octarians. Bravo!"
"So what can we do with it?" Pink asked.
"Well," responded Cap'n Cuttlefish, "though it is a nice part of history, it can't help us right now. Just hold on to it."
Orange felt mildly reassured at these words. At least she didn't find anything about what's going on right now. It's just some useless old scrap of paper. He turned back around with this thought, and approached the Launchpad just beyond the towers. The Launchpad led to a somewhat strange area. It seemed to be the roof of one of the buildings, lending a bumpy, multi-leveled shape. A few orange crates were quickly dispatched by Pink and Orange, each receiving a couple of the glowing orbs, but other than that, the landscape was largely bare. The Launchpad sat right next to the landing zone, making the rest of the large section useless. Orange considered the new place, contemplating its layout. I wonder why the Octarians would design their base like that. All the previous places we've been, you've had to go across the whole zone to get to the Launchpad, but here it's right next to where we got to this zone.
Seemingly having read Orange's mind, Cap'n Cuttlefish remarked, "This Launchpad used to be in a vault that required a key to open. When Agent 3 came through here, he opened it up, and the Octarians must have just not closed it. That certainly makes it easier for you."
"I'm going to look through this place anyways. There could be a clue here," Orange spoke into his mic.
"Yeah, me too!" Pink followed Orange up a ramp to a strange area with a small, steep hill in the middle. Two short walls stood between the ramp and the flat ground with the hill. Orange passed between them, while Pink went next to the left one and started examining the back of it. He, however, immediately made his way to the hill, walking up, down, and around it. Despite his best tries, though, the bumpy metal revealed no secrets. Both he and Pink made their way back to the Launchpad, starting to doubt that they'd find anything here. This flight took them to seemingly the final area. It was made of a wide, flat platform without any boxes but a few small ramps on it and a smaller platform held up by a glass tower. Off to the left side of the entrance from the landing zone was one last Launchpad.
"I'd be willing to bet that if there's anything here, it's up there," Orange muttered.
"Probably. Launchpad up there is off to the port side, so how about you take that?" Cap'n Cuttlefish responded.
Orange and Pink both turned to the Launchpad, eager to see what was on the final, small platform. Orange flew up there first, quickly followed by Pink. Much of the surface was taken up by a broken down contraption. A metal base with a short ramp and several tubes coming out of it led up to strangely shaped hunk of metal. A dome had a space carved out inside with a spiral dug out, like the socket for a giant lightbulb. Coming out of that was a jumble of stripped, sparking and hissing wires. Orange decided to ask Cap'n Cuttlefish, "What is this?"
Cap'n Cuttlefish responded after a slight pause. His voice sounded a bit sad. "The last time we fought the Octarians, it was because they stole all of the zapfish from Inktopolis, which provide the whole town with electrical power. This was an energy harvesting machine. The zapfish would be placed in here, and it powered this city. Now it's abandoned and falling apart without any power since the zapfish is gone. Agent 3 and I had to decide if we wanted to put this city at risk, or let the Octarians take over. It would seem like we made the right decision, but to the former residents of this town, we will be forever hated."
"I thought you had said this was an Octarian base?" Pink queried.
"It was, but before that, it was an inkling city. They asked for our help regaining their homes and businesses, and we did that, but gave them back a useless city."
Everyone was quiet for a second, reflecting on how bad of a situation it was. Then something caught Orange's eye. Fluttering around inside the machine, was a paper. It wasn't an ancient one like the paper Pink had found, but instead looked rather new. Careful to avoid the wires and electrocution, Orange reached inside and grabbed the paper. It was covered in squiggly writing that Orange couldn't read. "Orange, what do ya have there?" Cap'n Cuttlefish asked.
"I don't know," Orange replied. He held it up to where he figured the camera must have been in the head piece. "Can you read that?"
"Sink me, ya did it! That writing is Octarian writing! You found our first clue!"
Hi! I wrote this chapter longer that the previous ones, and I want to know if you like the longer format, like this chapter, or the shorter chapters, like the previous ones. The last few ones have been between 1,000-1,500 words, while this one is right around 2,500. Please message me or leave a review so I can write the best story for you guys! Thanks!