What's Left Behind (Splatoon 3 post-canon AU/fanfic)

First Impressions

... One year. That's how long has gone by since Grizz was defeated. He'd spent his time in space, thinking... and thinking... reflecting. Not like there was anything better for him to do. He sighed, looking around and thinking to himself, How am I ever going to get out of this situation? Will I really just have to let myself die, out here...? Can I even die? These thoughts bounced around in his head. He was so lost in these thoughts, he... didn't notice, at first, that he was suddenly moving faster. After a few minutes, he snapped out of it, and realized... He was finally being pulled back to Earth.

He realized, as big as he was, he'd likely cause damage, and make himself known, also possibly severely hurting himself, upon impact. He took a moment, and began to shrink down. He couldn't go too small, but he became just small enough to where he'd go unnoticed and hopefully survive the fall. After what felt like hours, he finally landed, and he landed pretty hard. He grumbled, a little, as he looked around, getting a bit of a concussion. He looked up at the sky... It looked as though the sun was setting, so getting some sleep so he can recover wouldn't be an awful idea. He found what looked like a cave, went in, curled up, and passed out...

. . .

About 14 hours went by, when Grizz finally awoke. He looked around, before finally realizing... this wasn't a cave. It was covered in ink, and there were drawings on the walls... What is this place? He got up, and started looking around some more, before finding... a phone...? It looked strangely familiar... he just couldn't seem to think of where he'd seen it. He began to look around a bit more, before deciding to do anything with it. He went out of the "cave", only to realize, it wasn't even a building. He was on a statue! A weaponized statue... that looked human... He realized it was half-sunken, in the middle of the ocean, a bit too far from land for him to swim for it, so there was no way he was getting off of it.

Finally, after quite a while of thinking, and realizing he had truly nothing better to do, he went back to the phone, preparing to fix it. It was slightly more complex than he'd thought, but thanks to his time in Alterna, he had some knowledge on repairing and running more high-tech machinery. He worked endlessly, spending hours just working to fix this phone, until he was done. There was nothing else to do, here, so... why shouldn't he? It was sometime around midnight the next night, when he'd finished. He had no idea if it'd work right away, so he decided to try to take a nap, having nothing else to do, and still feeling weak from the impact...

As he was drifting off to sleep, he heard some strange noises. Perhaps it was just some smaller creatures moving around... At least, that's what he'd thought until he felt something on his head. A... hand...? He freaked out from the suddenness of the contact, looking up, and- ... huh... The phone was alive. It freaked out, almost as much as he did, flinching, slipping and falling backwards, thanks to the ink. It had a... body... Grizz had no part in that. It was made of this strange blue-green ooze. There were octarian-like tentacles, one large one sticking out of its back like a tail, and two smaller ones, one on its head, and one on the back of its left shoulder. The phone, itself, looked at him, slight panic in its eyes. Eyes...? It had eyes... that was slightly disconcerting...

Well, no matter. Whatever this thing is... it's awake now. At least Grizz knew all the effort he put into fixing it wasn't for nothing. He stood and slowly approached it, trying not to startle it, any more. "Hey," he spoke, softly, "I'm not going to hurt you. You just caught me off guard, is all..." The creature looked at him, still obviously a little nervous, not saying a word. Grizz sighed, looked around, as if making sure nobody would see him being even remotely gentle towards another being, and lied down next to this phone person. It stared at him, for a moment, before finally reaching out and doing what it'd been trying to do, before they startled each other - patting him on the head.