When your lifeline leaves, what are you to do?

The very thing you clung onto so tight, like a jellyfish polyp to its stem.

And then it just goes.

The logo of an underground artist is scattered all across your 8ed and the adjacent wall, though you've 8een making sure to send some merch 8ack home to indoctrinate your new8orn 8rother into them, too. There's not much space for personalization in the 8arracks. 8ut you make do; personalization is what you live for, whether people like it or not (They tend not to like it).

You ru8 your eyes, groggy, slapping your hand around the rim of your 8ed, searching for your glasses. You always liked 8eing on the top 8unk. No one can hurt you on the highground, if you're 8eing smart. Not that you've ever cared a8out physical 8attles, no. Just mental ones.

Your claws finally find the glasses, and you slip them on your face, head still cushioned 8y the pillow underneath. The smudges on them make the artifical light of the 8arrack hall reflect awfully, 8ut you've never cared enough to properly wash them. It always takes you a moment to adjust to a red world.

Your name is Acht Mizuta. You pretend to 8e cool, often. You're not. One octarian knows this intimately, and that would 8e your 8est friend, Iida. Or Marina, in private. Let's use that one for now.

Actually, now that you think a8out it, that girl's 8een yapping recently a8out how she's done a lot of studying and practical assessments for an upcoming assignment. You know she works for the deej, 8ut Marina is smart and actually follows his NDAs. So that's a8out all the info you have on her actual jo8. You know you'd snitch immediately if you ever "had" to follow one of those things.

You peer over your 8unk, to the one across, down and to the left, where you'd usually see your friend sleeping. Today, she's not there. Always up early, always so hard at work. So very successful. A twinge of 8itterness makes your usually limp tentacles curl at the ends, 8ut you shake it off. Academics don't matter, only art does. Keep saying that, Acht!

Rolling your eyes, you ready yourself for another ordinary day of school, 8ut instead of the usual 8ooting-up of octatronica signalling the start of the day, it's a short radio 8roadcast sent from the PA system. A few girls jolt awake from the noise 8eneath you, and you try not to giggle.

"The Inkling Menace has breached The General's Concert Hall Battlefield --- Tickets selling out! --- Watch him turn it into calamari, live!"
You huff. That sounds fucking awful. You don't hate the DJ's sound, 8ut it's just not your vi8e. Octatronica has always... offput you. You've 8een hard at work developing your own style alongside Marina, though her music is a lot more contemporary. The difference is that it has soul.

Also, your General is kind of a dum8ass. Even coated in layers of ro8ot, there's no way he's winning against that powerhouse of an inkling. They call it a menace for a reason.

∞

You're fiddling with one of your few MIDI pads, even though it's not set up to anything. Why go to 8attle studies when you can hang outside against a fence, click on 8uttons, look super mysterious and downcast, and kick a pe88le every 20 minutes? It'd 8e 8etter if Marina were around---on a good day, you could convince her to skip, too. She already has like, 8000 credits in every class or whatever. Missing one period wouldn't hurt her.

8ut you know she's pro8a8ly still on the scene, working her ass off. She's a year younger than you, and a genius. People love her for that. They hate her for it, too. You don't want to 8e like those jealous pricks, 8ut you are a very jealous person. It's okay, just click on the silly square 8uttons. Click, click.

∞ She's still not 8ack. It's lights out. You weren't worried 8efore---Marina is crafty, she doesn't get herself into trou8le easily. 8ut now it wracks at you. If she's dead, you're fucked. Just a day without seeing her has got you antsy. No one to rely on.

You fold your glasses over the rim of your 8ed. The fight ended hours ago. In second period. May8e they're holding her 8ack for repairs? That must 8e it. Ignore how most of the televisions in the sky have 8een 8roadcasting missing persons alerts for the past... however long. You're inside now. You don't hear it.

In the wall next to every 8ed is a small compartment for personal 8elongings. 8arely enough to fit shit. You can fit a MIDI pad, the smallest laptop in the universe, your WalePod and its ear8uds. There was this song she showed you just a few days 8efore she went to go work directly in the DJ's personal 8u88le, and you just had to snatch the .mp8 off of her computer and onto your pod.

You try to go to 8ed to the demo of E88 and Flow. It's fire. Marina's fine.

∞

The third day of waking up without your 8est friend and you're already losing it. If your grades were 8ad 8efore, they're in the negatives. Even though you don't want to admit it, she is very important to your survival. You did not realize this until now. You need to know if they found a 8ody or not.

Octarians are intelligent. They write complicated code, encrypted very well. Some octarians are just 8uilt different, though. Marina's always 8een a little 8it of a teacher's pet, 8ut she has that anarchism, just one layer under her shiny surface, that always shines through at the 8est of times.

Anyway, o8viously she gave you the passkey to the octarian military dossier data8ase at some point. Why wouldn't she? You get warm thinking a8out her, and that is quickly replaced 8y sinking, ice cold 8lack sludge in your hearts.

After clacking in a fucked up URL, you get where you need to 8e. A part of you doesn't want to know what happened to her. Was she taken away? Did she really die? Is she just really 8usy at work...?

Typing her name into the rudimentary search engine of classified documents, you pull up hers. Oh, you're so fucked for not masking your IP. For some reason, you don't care.

The first line says she's AWOL. Not confirmed dead. You can 8reathe easier. Your eyes glaze over the rest of her profile until the last 8ullet point.

Went AWOL after coming within audible range of the Calamari Inkantation sung by the New Squidbeak Splatoon. According to witness interviews, she said "This changes everything," before vanishing.

Your fingers freeze on the key8oard. Okay, calm down. Is that like, the inkling version of octatronica? Must... have just gotten her into that inkling mindset. She wasn't thinking straight. 8ut she's pro8a8ly not dead, and that's all that matters. That is all that matters.

She left you, Acht.

She just went.

∞

You didn't 8other to go all the way 8ack home to say good8ye to your 8rother, or your parents if they were even there. They're never home, 8ut whose are? Octarians are 8usy people.

You're 8usy leaving. Where? Down. You're not anything. It was o8vious from the 8eginning. She was everything. You were negligi8le. You were an idiot for thinking otherwise.

It would have 8een easier on your mind if she were dead, you think. At least then you wouldn't feel discarded. Your hearts want to flatline, 8ut you don't let them. Not yet. Hold out for a little while. Find something. If she got to leave, so do you. 8ut in the other fucking direction. 8ecause spite. It was always spite.

You're so delirious you're surprised you don't 8ash your head in with a rock 8y the time you get someplace weird. A part of the domes in 8uttfuck nowhere you've never seen 8efore. You wanted to go out with a 8ang, so you dressed hot. Got the hat with the Ghost 8r8k logo and everything. You swear your headphones don't keep playing Marina's music. Why would they?

Seriously, what sector is this dome even in...?

∞

You are presented with two choices.

Die, or live.

You say you don't care either way.

Your choice didn't matter anyway.

∞

In the end, she wanted me 8ack. Yet, directly 8ecause of that, I remem8er how she made me feel.

A part of me knows she shouldn't feel guilty. How could she know her friend was so dependant on her? Not her fault.

The other part of me?

It wants to disappear again, just to make her feel half the pain I felt. After all, they just go.