#7 - Sanitized

Unauthorized

Waaaaugh!

Why had I been so stupid!?

I had friends, a place to live, a new life, and now...

I threw it all away. 

I fell and fell. I quickly shifted to my Octo form and entered the superjump state. Holding my Smallfry tightly, I shot myself down faster, and I landed. Luckily, I was alive. But how would I get out of here?

The last thing I remembered was...

Was...

...

~~~~~~~

I had gone back to the Crater. My original plan was to go back to the city in hopes of finding more information on who was making the fuzzy ooze, but I got distracted. I was too easily distracted.

I decided to go into the kettles.

But before I could enter the first one, a Smallfry came up to me. My Smallfry.

"How did you get here?" I asked him. Of course, he didn't respond, but it was a rhetorical question. I picked him up and pulled the lid off the kettle. "Here, you can come with me if you want," I said.

And so we entered. The kettles were easy, and I found something interesting: Salmonids could eat the fuzz! I was afraid to even touch the strange ink, so I steered clear of it. But suddenly, the Smallfry jumped out of my bag, taking some Power Eggs from my egg stash. He jumped forward and bit a giant fuzzball. "Noooo!" I cried.

 I would have stopped him if I had the chance, but it was too late. I covered my eyes.

Then I realized that it wouldn't hurt him. I peeked through my fingers to see that he had eaten the giant blob and used the strange power inside the eggs to dissolve the rest. I held my hand up to a small patch of the ink and hesitantly touched it. No effect.

Hmm. This was interesting. I guess whoever made this stuff didn't take into account that a Sanitized could just walk right through the stuff. But then again, I guess that wouldn't normally be something you'd have to think about. I ran through the goop as fast as I could, not wanting to know if the stuff needed time to take effect...

Eventually, I reached a strange arena. It was filled to the brim with Fuzzy Ooze, but that didn't affect me, of course. I walked right through it and reached the center. Suddenly, a giant robot jumped down. It looked...like...

DJ Octavio?!

"W-what are you doing here!?"I asked. He didn't reply. He just looked at me.

"You're...the ooze doesn't bother you?"

"Well, only because I'm not fully alive, and what are you doing here?"

He was silent.

"I...do not wish to fight."

I looked at him intensely. But I couldn't see any dishonesty in his eyes.

"You saved me. You saved an Octoling. You saved those few Zapfish. You are an Agent now, and I..." he scowled. "I do not wish to fight because-"

"Because you know you'll lose since you don't have the Great Zapfish," I said. "How did you know?" he asked.

"I knew you wouldn't waste the Zapfish power to freakin' alter our DNA just to mind-control us if you already had the Hypnoshades," I said. "And I can see that your current Octobot has many flaws that would not allow the Great Zapfish to enter safely."

"Well...I don't want to...be the 'bad guy' anymore. I can't stand you Agents, but I also can't stand how miserable it is underground. I know there's been lower tide for a while, and now there's room for Octarians on the surface again. So-"

"You want to move to the Splatlands. To start over."

"...maybe."

This was it. Octavio would join us. We would work together and quickly achieve our goal with the small Octarian army we had working with us. We would finally get our happy ending.

But then the ground disappeared.

Author's note: AAAAAAAAAAAA I'm sorry! I love giving up on stuff in the middle of projects...

This book is a project!!!!!!! Don't worry though, I'm not really giving up! I'll, uh, try to update this...sometime...in the future...maybe not the near future, but...