Kite was furious. "Aniya?! But you challenged him to a fight! Why is he still here?!"
"Listen, Kite. I've had enough of you always treating people like trash."
"And why do you think your opinion matters? At least my friends are normal!"
"Normal?" Ivory started bravely. "Or are they just pushovers? I know Jack is too nice to be like you, and Roxxanne is your cousin." He folded his arms. "And you know what? I like being different. It works well for us."
"Yeah," Hiro exclaimed excitedly. "We're the Outcasts, and we'll take you down!"
Tartar walked around the group to Kite. "Oh? Those lines all over your face...Seems like you've gotten the virus that destroyed much of the human's technology. You'll be killed too, if it's gotten strong enough to corrupt a being of flesh and ink."
"Wh-what?! You're saying I'm going to die?! Hold up now...I'll make a deal with you!"
"I'm listening..." He pulled on some latex gloves.
"I'll stop messing with you, Flug, and the rest of you, if you promise to get this virus thing off of me."
"Sounds reasonable..." He put a doctor's mask over his nose and mouth. "And you have to promise not to be mean to anyone else in Splatopia too; or is that too difficult for you?"
"Okay! Fine! I just don't want to go down like this!" His anger turned to fear. "W-wait...What are you doing with that protection?"
"Would you hold still for a minute? I need to extract it from your body." He held up a syringe.
"N-no way! I'm not letting you get anywhere closer to me with that! Where did that even come from?!"
"C. Q.? Would you mind holding him down for me? I know he's going to try to run."
"Commander," Moxxie said in a suspicious tone," what are you doing?"
"I need to extract it now, or it'll kill him. If it's already starting to affect his outer body then...The syringe will be able to get it out. I just need you all to trust me on this one. Can you do that?"
The team all shared a look, but Aniya nodded.
"I didn't trust him to save me in time," Ivory admitted, "but he managed to beat the clock and get me my new dose of meds. I think I can trust you to do again."
Moxxie crossed her arms. "I don't really know you, but if Hiro trusts you then-"
"Please save Kite!" Hiro interrupted.
"-I think I can trust you."
Tartar smiled behind the mask. "Thank you. Apologies for trying to kill you all, by the way." He faced back to Kite, who was being restrained by C. Q. Cucumber.
"Sir, he's biting my arm. Please hurry this up." He smacked Kite's forehead. "Stop that. I will use my strength against you."
Kite tried to kick him.
Tartar crouched down to his level. "This'll only hurt a little. Hold still, and it'll hurt a lot less."
Aniya winched when Kite stopped moving when the needle went into his arm. It was over as quickly as it started, and C. Q. let Kite go. He scrambled to his feet and hurried off. The inside of the glass tube was lime green. Tartar stuck it into his own arm and ejected it. Aniya saw the small tentacle on his head's color get a little more lifelike.
"Hah...That explains why I felt awful. I was missing some of myself."
Aniya noticed the tips of his hair matched the Sanitized Octoling's hair and the tentacle on his head. It had a yellow tip and a blue base, with a thin layer of green between them.
"Nobody told me my bangs were uneven...No wonder you all care for your looks so much."
He grabbed the shorter side of his bangs and pulled at it.
"Tartar, our tentacles don't stretch! You're going to rip it off!"
"That's because you are ink, Aniya. I'm slime, or a texture as such, so your restrictions do not apply to me. Also, my hair won't grow out."
He let go of it, the force snapping his head back a bit. When he shook the pain off, Aniya saw a telephones' earpiece reveal itself from the right side of his bangs.
"Uh..." Hiro said, pointing at it and making eye contact with Aniya.
Tartar made the back of his hair, which had ended a little past his head, down to shoulder level like the rest of his hair. That snapped a few cords, a small red and blue light, the end of a plug, and the phone handle loose. He flicked the sides of his bangs and smiled.
"There we go! It looks kind of like your friend's hair now, Aniya. I thought that since Hiro's hair looked like that then-"
"What are those?!" Hiro yelled suddenly, startling everyone.
Tartar held up the phone. "That...must have been taken with me when I nearly died...The rest of the cords must still be with me too, huh? Where are the phone's eyes?"
Aniya pointed at his headphones. "They kind of look like..."
He removed them, and Aniya saw that his ears were a bit on the pointed side for an Octoling, like rounded Inkling ears. He examined them.
"Based off the design...These are the telephone's eyes." He snapped them back onto his ears.
"Yo! You over there! The guy with green hair!"
Tartar jolted, the headphones messing up their position very slightly. He shoved his hat back onto his head. Aniya assumed he found it after he'd lost it, or C. Q. had returned it. He quickly tucked his hair into his hat and turned around.
The person who called him, he recognized immediately as Pearl, with Marina following next to her. Pearl now had a golden dress with a white down jacket over it, the boots matching but with a gold accent on the soles. Her crown was also gold, and her tights now black, and the pink in her hair was now pale. A pair of orange see-through sunglasses were added to her outfit.
Marina's teal was now a deep blue, and her half shirt-that was now just black rather than being a zip-up like before-had an orange suit added to it. Her black heels added a slight difference to her height. She was holding a chocolate mint ice cream cone, the chocolate pieces looking like tentacles. It was a special menu item called a "Kraken Mint."
Pearl was also still wearing her gloves from the Off the Hook uniform.
Tartar couldn't stop staring at Marina.
Pearl snapped at him. "Hey, you! Hello! Earth to Octoling!"
"Huh?!" He flinched away from her. "Oh! H-hello there..."
"M-me?" He pointed at himself.
"Yeah! I've never seen you around before? Are you new?"
He nodded, and his gaze went back to Marina.
"Fresh! It's not often you see some...body...new...Wait a second..."
He froze. He hoped she didn't recognise him. Pearl was the last person he wanted to deal with right now. "Are y-you alright?"
"You're a Sanitized Octoling! You must have broken out of Tartar's hypnosis or something when he died, right? It's so cool seeing one of you in Splatopia!"
"He looks familiar," Marina said. "Don't you notice it too, Pearlie?"
"Yeah," she playfully elbowed Marina's arm, "he looks like your ice cream! What's your name, new Octo on the block?"
He couldn't tell her his real name! He had to stay undercover for just a bit longer. "It's uh...I-I don't know?" He lied. "Everything's all fuzzy since I was Sanitized."
"Aww, that's too bad," Marina sighed. "We do have to be heading somewhere though. It was nice to meet you!"
"Y-you too..." He watched them walk off.
C. Q. came over when they left. "Sir, your temperature is succeeding what you can handle. Are you alright? You'll melt if you don't change something."
"I need to grab some supplies..."
Marina looked back as her and Pearl left, then looked down at her ice cream cone. One of the tentacles was poking out of the top, like the Octoling's hair that had decided to show through the bottom of his hat. The green color was even the same as his hair.
"He does look like my ice cream..."
Author note: Two more days until Side Order! (I can't wait aaaaa-) I did update the information to have "Side Order spoilers" instead of theories and predictions because I added a second story arc to this story. It will go on a lot of hiatuses as I play Sider Order (when it releases of course) so i can try to get the story right. However, since this AU is in a universe that Order won (you can tell what team I would've been on lol), the theme will be changed to Chaos (so expect a different story. I'll still try to keep the general story down though.)
We still have a bit more story before the Side Order Arc though, so Stay Off the Hook!
Tartar's voice actor: Eric Bauza