Splatoon: Unnamed [AU]

Chapter Eleven

He felt like he had been falling for a while in total darkness. The wind whooshed past his ear and the dusty air blew directly into his face as he fell. His eyes stung from the wind. He could faintly see light near the bottom of the cavern, just barely. Shock ran through him as he finally hit a railing, nearly losing his balance and falling into the thin layer of water below. Eight was nowhere in sight, they'd probably progressed much faster than he did. This was to be expected, Eight was great at everything they did, unlike Rain who felt like dead weight on this mission. He was just following them through the area, he had a feeling that the outcome of this mission would be the same if he was present or not.

The rails came to a sudden stop and he jumped onto a platform that floated a little above the ground. These tunnels looked like an elongated version of the domes he'd encountered in the canyon, with panels on the sides of the walls portraying starry black pictures. A few small floating objects like giant mason jars with multicolored lights and glowing lava lamps lit up the dark tunnels with a faint neon glow. It reminded him of a specific mission, octoseeker shakedown. He hoped he wouldn't encounter any octoseekers! The inky stamp faces on the bottom of the rectangular, flying objects gave him the heebie jeebies. He could see some octotroopers up ahead, and he could faintly make out the shapes of salmonids swimming in the dark waters below. They both seemed the guard this area, down deep underneath the ocean floor. Riot had told him these tunnels were mostly abandoned, though with Rain and Eight's previous successful rescue operations, they must've upped the catacomb's defenses. There were purple ink splatters throughout the paths ahead, suggesting that Eight had run through here in a hurry. It made sense, they were here to rescue captives, not methodically splat every single enemy. Rain dashed forward and splatted an octotrooper with a swing of his roller. It came down and the octotrooper was no more than a magenta puddle of ink on the ground. He advanced quickly, cleaning up the mess of enemies that still remained. He was sure Eight could handle it on their own. He went after a pair of twintacle octotroopers, they were too stupid to see him coming. He quickly splatted them without remorse and advanced onwards. Eight must've taken care of any large enemies, because the ones he was facing were extremely non-threatening. There were trails of green ink here and there, but no big splatters to indicate defeat. He wondered what these lines across the platforms were about.. As he came close to investigate, a salmonid popped out from the waters below the platform. It wielded a rather large pan with sharp spikes seemingly welded on the bottom. This would've amused Rain if he hadn't realized only after he'd splatted the thing. He shrugged it off and continued. These enemies were nothing to him anyways. That made him think of the salmonid dwellings he had spotted as they made it through salmonid territory. Did the salmonid, or even some of these octarians, have families? Friends? Did they struggle in the same ways he did? Surely not. They came from vastly different cultures, but did that mean they didn't struggle in similar ways? Ugh, this was all fogging his mind. He didn't want to fall down that hole of thinking until he wasn't in his own head anymore. He needed to focus, FOCUS, he told himself. He continued onward, splatting salmonids and octarians alike and painting the darkened pathways blue with his ink. He came upon a vault, this entire area was all too familiar.. He looked around, where was he supposed to go now? He was surrounded by water and this was the end of the platform. He could faintly see another platform deeper down the tunnel. The thing hidden in the locked vault had to be a launchpad, he was sure of it. He had splatted what he thought was every enemy thus far, so where was he to go to find this key? He didn't see any boxes nearby that he could bust apart. He was ultimately stumped, how did Eight get past this without unlocking the vault? What if they had been splatted or something? Surely if they had been splatted, he'd see an ink puddle about their size, but he hadn't. Agh! What to do?!

A salmonid coming from the waters nearby alerted him to something strange. It jumped out of the water and onto the nothingness ahead of him, leaving an ink trail that exposed an invisible platform ahead, leading to the visible platform in the distance. He remembered these! He remembered nearly vomiting on them every single time he had to cross one in the canyon. He would end up looking down and falling to his knees in terror, even though he acted as if he wasn't horribly terrified of heights. He watched the ink instantly disappear on the platform, too. This would be rough.. Disappearing ink on an invisible platform? How would he get across without falling in? He took a deep breath, splatted the enemy ahead of him, and went forward on shaky legs. He reminded himself to look up, and not down at his murky demise in the waters below. He took cautious steps, carefully walking across.. A hoard of smallfry suddenly jumped out from the waters to beat him from the knees down. He let out an eep! Of surprise as they began to chase with alarming speed. This made him race across the invisible platform with no sense of caution. Before he knew it, though, he was on the other side, where the ground was visible. He turned around and WHACKED the little things with his roller, breathing heavily. They all went KERSPLAT and Rain was shaking. He turned around as he heard footsteps? An enemy octoling? A salmonling? He raised his roller, full of adrenaline and ready to bring it down on whatever unfortunate fool came close to him. Purple octo hair, dualies, and warm amber eyes. He suddenly put his roller down, "..Oh, h-hey Eight!" He said nervously, trying to pretend like he hadn't just tried to splat them.

Eight was holding a key, "Um.. Hey. I'm going to go unlock the vault now." They said rather bluntly before walking off, back across the invisible platform.. Rain shivered at the thought of having to go across it again. He took a deep breath and slowly followed Eight as they sped across the invisible platform. His knees were wobbling and he crouched onto the floor as he made the mistake of looking down. He slowly began to crawl across. Eight didn't slow down for him, or even look back to see he was struggling. Rain felt like he was slowing them down. Eight dissapeared to the other side, and Rain saw a trail of ink in the sky as they were launched elsewhere. Rain let out a heavy sigh and relaxed, shutting his eyes and trying not to think about the water below the invisible platform. He continued to crawl across, but he wasn't in much of a hurry, besides, Eight didn't need him.

Rain finally got to normal ground again, crawling off the invisible platform and shakily getting to his feet. He saw the opened vault, and the launchpad swirling in front of him. He took a moment to steady himself. He grounded himself, literally, and stepped towards the launchpad. He wondered if Eight had already finished the rescue mission, and if they'd be waiting for him at the end. He stepped onto the swirling launchpad and felt himself be flung high into the air.

He did a few spins midair, before he looked down towards his destination. It was pitch darkness, like a wound in the earth. It was a gaping hole, ready to swallow him up and engulf him in darkness. He squirmed and thrashed midair as if it'd do something, but it was inevitable. He was plunged into darkness.

He fell for a while, until he hit what he thought was a rail. He couldn't see a thing, but could faintly see the dark, starry displays of the tunnel panels above. The ear-grating sound of the rail was all Rain could hear as he felt himself going down.. And down.. And down. He heard the faint noise of rushing water below him, where was he heading? There was light from below, a very very ill-defined purplish pink light, the color of octarian ink. It was so dark down here, that tiny bit of light was all he could focus on. As he went further down, he saw how the magenta hue lit up everything around it. It was coming from pipes on something's body, whatever it was that Eight was facing, it looked huge and gnarly. Speaking of Eight, where were they? Rain surveyed the area, finally spotting them on a corner of the platform. Rain felt his veins turn to ice, any hope he had immediately diminished. He quickly realized, thanks to the huge patches of magenta, glowing on on their body and the way they were heaving, hunched over and terrified, that Eight was losing.