Parasite

That Worked Well

The battle went on for a while, they still hadn't been able to so much as tap him. Some of them were convinced it was true-- Vian would win this time. They wouldn't help him at all, they had done so awful that he himself was the thing proving it. That was, until...
"Hey!" They spun to look at Vian, who was holding the side of his head and trying to keep his balance. Another bomb dropped beside him, the comic-like face on it giving it an unassumed title of a hyperbomb. It exploded into ink as Marina appeared over the side of a wall, Pearl jumped up to her side. Fyrus took advantage of Vian's curse, dodging around frozen spikes to get to him. He got to his side and went to strike at his parasite, finding that it was only visible in a thin layer on his arm, another on his head. In a moment of panic and confusion, Fyrus whacked him in the head with his hand, avoiding his claws. The spikes clattered to the ground, following Vian. After a moment, they vanished into mist.
Pearl jumped down beside him, bending over to look into his face. "Out cold." She told Marina, who followed her down at the news.
"Thanks for the help!" Dan exclaimed while making his way over.
Marina smiled, "You helped us first."
"Come on, Callie and Marie are waiting for you!" Pearl motioned for them to trail her, then turned and walked out.
...
Etce had taken it upon himself to carry Vian, so he was the one to freak out when he woke up just before they got to the Squid Sisters. In other words... All Vian had to do was shift before Etce screamed and dropped him on the ground. Timo had a bored expression when he stopped beside Etce and helped Vian to his feet. "Ow..."
Callie didn't hear him, though, and her knowledge didn't get far enough to take her the full way to understanding. She jumped down from a wall and landed next to them, pointing a hero shot in Vian's face. Pearl stole it from her hands and simply said, "He's good."
"You guys have really been working hard, huh?" She lowered her hands and looked around at all the faces.
Vian had clearly recovered already because he quickly asked, "What about Gab? Why aren't we getting him now--Why are we just standing here?"
"We're standing here because we don't know where he went." Fyrus stated simply.
"I don't either, I just told him to run when I gave him the opening!" Vian defended himself.
"Why didn't we chase after him?" Dan asked before Sagaci answered,
"There's no way we could have. It was either follow him and leave everyone else to get crushed or stay behind and stand a chance."
"If Timo could speak English we would have had no problem," Etce decided.
Mentioned octoling reeled back instantly, "Vey-?"
Jay sighed, "Maybe if you learned how to use your parasite--"
"You gave us the parasites!" Dan argued.
Fyrus crossed his arms, "You act as if you knew it would happen all along."
"I did!" Sagaci interrupted.
"You didn't do anything about it!" Etce continued.
"How could I?"
"All of you, STOP!" Pearl shouted.
Vian asked, "So how long have you guys been stuck together?"
Fyrus sighed, "Long enough."
Marie had come up behind them while they were arguing, so they jumped when she said, "Split up into groups, you'll cover more ground."
"We don't even know where to start--" Dan began.
Sagaci cut him off, "I do. Follow me." Her request didn't need to be fulfilled, Sagaci already grabbed his arm and dragged him away. Vian had already started walking, so Timo waved Etce to follow him. Fyrus and Jay just glanced at each other before turning around and padding away.
"You think we're going to find him?" Fyrus asked.
"If one of us has a really bright idea, maybe."
"So, no."
"Wait, I have an idea."
"Didn't expect an idea that fast."
"Me neither."
"What is it?"
"Maybe his ink left something behind. I mean, mine leaves black on me, so it can't be too much of a stretch."
"Worth a shot."
They soon arrived back at the building and, sure enough, on the ceiling near the exit was a white smear. After walking out the door, there were a few small droplets here and there, leading off a ledge. Against Fyrus' suggestion, Jay leapt off it, closely followed by him. The pair landed on a new platform. However, this was larger and seemed to have a small, threatening civilization on it. Their surroundings were pure black, making it easy to spot the ink. They cautiously followed the trail until they came to an area where white had splattered all over the walls and floor, even on a helmet that was somehow still slowly teetering back and forth. To their disappointment, this was where the ink stopped. Fyrus walked over to the helmet while Jay swam up to a nearby rooftop. Fyrus picked up the helmet and analyzed it, finding that there was a small trail of ink where the glass had shattered.
"Hey, come look at this!" Despite being quite audible, Jay was very quiet. Fyrus walked over to the wall and dug his claws into it, swinging himself up. On the other side of it, inklings were milling around silently, supervised by a clear container. In the container was Gab, gloomily holding a capsule that trapped his ink. For once, though, Gab didn't look disappointed. His expression was a mix of distress and anger, it was strange.
Then Vian appeared and that changed.

(Two parts today... Happy birthday XMidnight_SkyeditzX ! Hope you enjoyed it! Besides that, wanted to say that I'll try to not have a gap like that between chapters again, it will be either every Thursday or if I'm not prepared every other Thursday! That's all, thank you so much for reading!)