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Eight panted heavily, body tense. She waited for Agent 3 to get back up and continue their assault. They lay motionless on the ink-covered floor of the platform they were fighting on. Eight felt paranoia rise in them, fearing that it was a stunt; an act to get her while her guard was down. But they had been absolutely vicious so far during the fight, suddenly changing their strategy made no sense.
They were out cold.
Eight walked closer to them, letting out a sigh of relief when she saw that the sickly green goop had fallen off, only leaving behind some green scarring where it was previously stuck.
The platform started to move again with a soft humming noise. She glanced at Cuttlefish, still tied up upside down and hanging from the floating platform Agent 3 had used during their fight. Eight felt no urgency to untie him as he seemed completely calm and… surprisingly used to it.
Suddenly, the platform stopped. With a hydraulic hiss, the barriers around it slid down. A massive ladder now laid before her, the last obstacle she had to overcome before finally, finally seeing the surface with her own two eyes.
Slowly, carefully, Eight hoisted herself up from the hole on the platform beneath her. She felt her heels make contact with a click against the hard metal, and stood upright. The wind whipped all around her, stronger than she had ever felt it. She took a deep breath and almost laughed at the fact that it smelled like something… a maritime, refreshing scent that could only be described as the smell of the sea. She looked around with wide eyes, raising her hand to prevent her tentacles from getting in her face.
The surface. She finally made it to the surface.
Inkopolis lay before her, so close yet so far away, kilometers of sea dividing her and her final destination. The lights glittering all over the city were captivating, but even more so was the beautiful sunrise beginning to peek over the buildings and bathing the sky, sea, and clouds in a lovely orange-pinkish color.
She didn’t have time to dwell on the massive cloud of emotions beginning to overtake her nor on committing the image before her to memory. A completely different sound began approaching, and it was only a matter of seconds before Eight saw it and felt a huge grin form on her face.
A fleet of helicopters had arrived to pick her up, and at the forefront of the convoy were Pearl and Marina, blasting some of Off The Hook’s music to announce their arrival.
“EIGHT!” she heard Pearl’s loud, unmistakable voice say, and she couldn’t help but start waving at the fleet. “WE GOT YOU!”
Eight stood on the platform hanging underneath the helicopter, an unconscious Agent 3 just behind and a now-untied Captain Cuttlefish sitting next to her. “Phew… we can breathe easy now,” Marina said softly, moving a tentacle away from her face. Before anyone could formulate any kind of response, Pearl surged forward and started an impromptu rap battle with the Captain, which ended up being endearingly entertaining. Eight quietly giggled behind her hand at their antics and at Marina’s exasperated “Here we go again…”, but before she could say anything, she suddenly heard a massive crash underneath them.
Looking down, she could only watch in horror as the platform that she had just been rescued from began to rise from the sea. She wasn’t the only one to notice it.
“Um… are you guys seeing this?” Marina’s voice rang out from above her as they stared down at the giant moving object.
As it slowly rose from the ocean, it became apparent that it was a statue. The subject of said statue, however, was utterly alien to her. It had a strangely shaped head, extremely small round ears, a big nose, and no tentacles, instead some strange circles sitting upon its head. She heard Captain Cuttlefish call it a “human” but she didn’t know what that meant, and she had no time to think about it either, as she finally noticed it.
That cursed phone sat in the statue’s eye, covered in the same goop that had taken control of Agent 3. Its voice came out warbled as it spoke, but its words were clearer than they’d ever been.
"My plan was to create a perfect new world," the phone—Tartar—said, rage tangible in its voice. "To make a primordial ooze from the remains of my most promising test subjects, and to use that to create the ultimate life form! It was- IT WAS A GENIUS PLAN!!" Tartar seemed to become more unhinged by the second, Eight's curling tentacles betraying the pang of fear that went through her. All she could think about was the nightmarish whirring of the blender as its blades were about to descend upon her and the Captain, sharp and lethal and-
"AND YOU!" the phone continued, and if it had had any hands, Eight was sure it'd be pointing at her. "YOU HAD TO COME IN, AND MEDDLE, AND RUIN EVERYTHING! YOUrkzhhhzhzh-" warbled static began to burst from Tartar's mouth as it began yelling. Soon enough, though, it seemed to calm down, and it looked up and regarded the group with an eerie sense of calm. "But, my dear test subject 10.008," a strange tint of sick fondness colored its voice, "it wasn't all for naught. Soon you'll see the perfect world I was striving for. Very soon..."
Eight could only watch in both anger and horror as the meaning of its words dawned on her. It wanted to destroy the world! This wonderful, bright, colorful world that she hadn’t even had the time to explore yet! This wonderful world with these incredible people that had helped her escape from the horrors of the Deepsea Metro and had given her something she’d never had before; a family !
She couldn’t allow this to happen.
As the mouth of the statue opened and it began to charge its deadly beam, Eight looked up at Pearl and Marina, who had already begun to try and figure out what to do about this immense threat. As Marina explained how the statue was charging up its energy from the sun and that by covering it in ink with her hyperbombs they should be able to stop the destruction of the world that Eight so sorely wanted to explore, she could feel some hope bubbling deep in her hearts.
She nodded when Marina said that she’d have to manually detonate each bomb, fiddling with her octoshot in her hands and preparing herself to jump down to the statue, ignoring the fact that they only had 3 minutes to stop the world from ending and how insanely nervous that made her.
But she could do this. She could do this! It was just like that Turf War game that the Inklings had invented! It’d be a piece of cake! And as Marina told her where and when she’d be dropping the hyperbombs, she could only think of one thing: she had to do this. Not only for the Inkfish peacefully living on the surface, but also for the ones that were fighting to make their way up too.
With one superjump, she landed on the statue and began shooting.
Eight looked at the statue as it sank back into the sea, completely covered in ink and destroyed beyond repair. She looked back at her companions on the platform, almost laughing out loud at how energetically Marina tackled Pearl to the ground in a hug, nuzzling into her and peppering her face with kisses. At that exact moment, Agent 3 began to stir, looking dazed and confused and probably concussed, but like they would be okay.
Eight could only look at the scene in front of her with a smile, crouching down on her heels and leaning her head on her elbow.
And as everyone on the platform shuffled over to the edge to watch the sun rising over the city Eight couldn’t stop the excitement and pride from swelling in her chest.
She was out. She’d made it. And now, she had all the time in the world to take it in, without any weird-looking giant statues interrupting it.
A whole new life lay sprawled out in the city in front of her, and she could not wait to experience everything it had in store for her.