Chapter 1:
(Wassup?! My name's Doze, and welcome to my Side Order Novelization! I will basically be writing Eight's personality and some floors as he goes throughout this game! Spoiler warning for Splatoon 3: Side Order! I hope you guys have fun! I'll post a head canon cast at the end of the chapter! Enjoy the first chapter!)
(Splatoon belongs to Nintendo, all rights for characters and story belong to them)
Eight was riding the train back to Inkopolis Square, he ran into someone before he waited for his stop. "So, Splatville? What is it like?" He asked the Inkling Girl. "Oh, it's incredible! You wouldn't believe half the stuff people use for weapons." She explained to him, holding onto her Salmonid buddy while sitting down. "I suppose. It would do me some wellness to better acquaint myself with the current weapons." Eight had said. "Wellness?" The Inkling looked confused. "Ah…My apologies. I…I have troubling with speaking, so…my grammar might be improper." Eight explained, looking stoically sheepish. "Oh, I see. Well, it's nice to meet you, uh…"
"Eight, my name is…" From the corner of Eight's eye, he could see a pale yellow light glistening from the station. "W-What is that…" Eight thought to himself, seeing that the light was coming closer.
When he stepped back, he saw that the train had completely turned to black, yellow numbers and what looked to be computer code. No sign of any other passengers on board save for himself. Eight could hear a noise, it sounded like…music? He could hear it, "Why am I hearing Off The Hook's music?" Eight asked himself. Haunting darkness soon became an intense white light. Before Eight could register this abnormality, he could feel himself fading into repose...
"Heeey!"
(There are better places to take a nap than on the ground, u know?)
"Heeey! HELLOOOOOOOOO?! Up and at 'em, Eight!" Eight could hear a voice calling out to him, telling him to awaken. Eight stood up and dusted himself off. The Octoling looked and surveyed the area around him, "What on earth…" Eight said to himself, playing with his tentacle hair, "My hair's gone pale…" There was dead coral everywhere, so it ruled out the possibility that he was in snow. "Nice. If you hadn't come around. I wouldn't have a plan B." A voice said, slightly startling the Octoling. Some strange automatic drone was right next to him!
"What's up? I got something on my face?" It asked, the voice sounding female.
Eight looked at her, the drone looked to her side and realized what was happening. "Oh, right! You wouldn't recognize me like this." She said, before spinning around and making what looked like a dramatic pose. "I'm Pearl! You know, your bestie!" She introduced herself.
Eight's looked at the drone in disbelief, Pearl didn't know what to say. "Well…you DO resemble Pearl's liking—ah…Pardon, uh, likeness." He said to the drone. "No, Eight, for serious! I'm legit Pearl! Not sure how I got this way, but here I am!" She explained, "Not sure where Marina went either. She's supposed to be with me." Eight looked a little confused, "M-Marina…?" Eight asked, "Eight…don't tell me you don't remember Marina, either." Pearl said to him, shocked. "S-Sorry…my head is…fuzzy…" Eight said.
"It's cool. You just woke up. Might take some time for your head to clear." Pearl spun around to her side and showed a holographic projection of an Inkling and an Octoling.
"That's regular me on the left, OK? And the one on the right is Marina! You got any ideas on where we should go from here? Marina's usually around to help me with that."
Eight thought about it for a second, "Oh! Duh! We should go find Marina. She'll know what to do! C'mon, Eight! Let's get going!"
Eight let the memories of Off The Hook come back to him. Meeting them in the Deepsea Metro with Grampa, preventing a rogue artificial intelligence from sanitizing the world of Inklings and now Octolings. The last thing Eight remembers was…he was going to be a roadie for Off The Hook's tour, but…everything else becomes a blur upon further investigation.
Eight looked at himself, and realized: He was wearing some sort of white sleeveless straitjacket? With a Velcro strapped wrist band and white combat boots. "W-Who put me in THIS?!" Eight asked himself, trying to maintain his level head while he sorted these stressful situations out. "It looks a lot like…my gear back in Deepsea Metro." The Octoling surveyed the area, how foolish he felt for not reconning the area before running in.
He observed the structure of the buildings surrounding him. He could see schools of fish flying in the air, as if they were underwater. "This looks like Inkopolis Square, but…the main lobby's building has undergone renovations." Eight brushed his hair into place, and started walking toward where Pearl was hovering over.
"Krssshhh…bzzt…Pe…arl…" Pearl could hear something. Like a transmission of some sort, and when she looked up, she could see a green light emitting from the top of the tower. "Marina?! Are you up there?!" She asked, "Pearl, what's the matter?"
Eight looked up at where she was staring. "Skrrrzzz….zzzrrr…elp m…CLICK." Eight could hear a strange noise coming from the top of the ascended building. "Hold on! We're coming up to you now!" Pearl said, "Shake a leg, Eight! Marina's at the top of the tower!"
"Right!" Eight said, running into the building, staying as cautious as necessary.
When Pearl and Eight walked into the building, they found it to NOTHING like Inkopolis Tower is. "I'm getting the heebie-jeebies. Keep your eyes open!" Pearl said. "It's an open area, but there's no desks or chairmans—err—chairs." Eight said, messing up his words. The Octoling had taken a few small steps and noticed two little reservoirs up ahead. "What are those for…?" He asked, but he received his answer immediately. "Heads up, Eight!" Pearl said, the reservoirs pushed out some black tentacles and ink.
From the ink emerged a strange fish like being. It was transparent enough to see its skeletal structure. "Trouble's coming for us. Use these!" Pearl emitted a light and out of thin air, came some Dualies for Eight to shoot with. "You remember your way around a weapon, right?" Pearl asked, Eight spun one of the pistols around and got into the proper fighting stance with Dualies.
"We're fortunate that our ink seems to affect this foe." Eight said, shooting the enemy until it vanished, when its reinforcements showed themselves. Eight dodged to get a clear shot on the creatures, once he dealt with four smaller ones, a rather large one made itself known. "That one's huge! What did we get ourselves into?!" Pearl asked, "I'm not sure, but this one has greater defensive…oh…dang it, it's defense!" Eight said, dodging again to boost his firing rate for a moment, when that one was defeated, the reservoirs stopped and dispersed the black ink. "Whew. I think that's the last of 'em." Pearl said, "Pearl, where did you…?" Eight asked, signaling toward his weapons.
"Where'd I get the weapon from? I'unno. Your guess is as good as mine." Pearl said, bluntly. "Just felt like…something I had in me, y'know?"
Eight thought about it, that dream he had was the start of it all for him. Pearl is a drone now, and apparently could materialize her weapons. None of this made sense to Eight. "Let's press on…that…is the right way to say that, right?" Eight asked. "Eh, it was until you asked, but I'd still give you the street cred." Eight looked more confused, learning a new language was hard for him, but whenever Pearl tries to introduce slang to him makes it all the more baffling. The two turned back to the elevator door that light above it turned green.
"But never mind that, the elevator's running again!" Pearl said, "We can sit here and scratch our heads all we want, but why bother when the answers are up there?" Eight thought about it, "Those creatures…Ah! We need to hurry. Whoever is in charge of here may have detected us already." Eight said, believing whatever those creatures were could possibly be security. "Oh yeah, good call! Let's get going, Eight." Pearl said.
The two ran ahead toward the elevator and the door opened. Eight and Pearl stood on guard when they saw a passenger already in the elevator. Eight's eyes widened in realization, "I-Is that…" he muttered.
"You with those fish we busted up?! Sic 'em, Eight!" Pearl said.
The passenger was an Octoling, they had pale green skin, with blue and red hair. They wore all black and had a hat backed up by headphones. "Cool it. I'm not your enemy." The Octoling said, "Just another bystander who got sucked in. I take it you guys Marina's voice here?" Eight was surprised by how spot on the assumption was, "Say what? You know Marina too?!" Pearl asked, before looking at Eight. "Not only that you're…" Eight said, before seeing Pearl head into the elevator. The Octoling followed behind, "First things first: I'm Acht. As for Marina and me…we go way back." The Octoling introduced themself, "For real?! Yo, lead with that next time!" Pearl said, before introducing herself and Eight to Acht. "It's a pleasing to…Ah…It's a pleasure to meet you." Eight corrected himself, while still needed to ask some questions to Acht.
"Cool to meet you, Eight. Would you stop staring at me like that?" Eight's sweat dropped, "I-I'm sorry." He apologized, "Anyways, I've been in the area since I came to. I heard Marina's voice from up the Spire, so I came to find her." Acht explained, waving their hand.
"But those bony fish found me first, I call them Jelletons. They're why I'm trapped in the elevator. The Spire is crammed with Jelletons. This wound they gave me hasn't healed. So I'm stuck." Acht put their wounded arm up, showing a bandage wrapped around it. "Yikes. Things aren't looking up for the home team, huh?" Pearl said, feeling a little doubtful. "We can't necessarily count ourselves out yet. We've survived worse." Eight said, "I've been waiting for an Octoling with a drone. You're the one I needed to see, Eight." Acht pulled out weird red chip out of thin air. "Ok, Pearl. Now check out what happens when you set this color chip into that Palette." Pearl tilted her head to the side, "Palette? Am I supposed to know what that is?" She asked, before flying above the two Octolings, "Oh, are you talking about this thing?" Pearl pulled a strange looking display with a few open slots. "You got it. Now set this color chip into it." Pearl looked a little cautious, she didn't necessarily know what this thing did. "Okay, but whatever happens is on you. Here goes nothing, Eight! Slap that chip on in there!" Pearl said, "I cannot simply slash—urgh—slap it in there, Pearl. I need to be careful." Eight said, taking that sentence TOO seriously. Pearl rolled her eyes a little, "Dude, it's an expression." Pearl said, "R-Right. My apologies." Eight placed the red colored chip in the Palette. Pearl and Eight then noticed something. Light surrounded Pearl for a moment, and Eight looked at his hair. "Whoa! Is it me, or did your weapon get stronger?" Pearl asked. "Whoa, your hair turned a little red there, too!"
"Huh…so if hypothetically, we had enough of these color chips…" Eight began to theorize, "We could set them up in this Palette thing and you could walk all over those fishy freaks!" Pearl said, clearly excited. Acht chuckled, "No doubt. Play your chips right and you could make it all the way to the top." Acht said, "Whatever's going on in this city, Marina's in the thick of it. Or so I'm assuming." Eight took a moment to think about if this were Inkopolis Square.
"My memory's fine when it comes to this place. I would've remembered if the city were overtaken by something. Then there's the issue of why everything seems so…dead and colorless here." Eight had a few theories in mind, but thought it was not best to discuss without further evidence. "But this injury has left me sidelined. Our strike team will be limited to you two." Acht had said, Eight nodded. "We're on it, Acht! Deep breaths, Eight! It's time to go find Marina!" Pearl said. Agent 8 of the New Squidbeak Splatoon braced himself for whatever would await him and Pearl behind the elevator door.
(Okay, we're at the end! I hope u guys enjoyed the chapter and especially Eight's personality. I and my sisters have our own opinions on how he would act, so I think I compromised pretty well with our images. Basically, I have him pegged as this stoic former soldier, who thanks to his past and Deepsea Metro, acts more tactical than the other members. My sister's have that added with the trait that he's having a hard time learning how to speak properly, and that'll probably make for some good dialogue with him and Pearl.
Anyways, here's my headcanon cast for the characters that were used today:
Zach Aguilar(Byleth from Fire Emblem Three Houses) as Agent 8
Jessie Flower(Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender) as Pearl
Hailee Steinfeld(Spider-Gwen) as Acht
Hope u enjoyed! Stay strong and awesome!)
Colossians 1:13-14 KJV
who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: