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cxptainthree · 2 months

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Mancando Doloroso

It was his fifth, maybe sixth attempt at climbing the Spire.

The shooter in his hands felt weighty and unwieldy; he knew his way around a splattershot, sure, but this one was hard to manage. Every shot left him feeling drained.

"It's a part of their soul," Marina had supplied so helpfully when Sen confided the heaviness the weapon provided.

He didn't think Delta had had so much to weigh on them to make this sleek white shooter feel like lead in his hands. It made him feel...actually, he wasn't sure how to feel. So, he doubled down and didn't let himself dwell on it.

The floor ahead loomed, cast in harsh flourescent light; even from behind the bars of a silver cage, Sen could see his opponent waited on the opposite side of the room.

There were two to start, this time. The twentieth floor was never kind, the fragmentation more severe. It made Sen's chest ache. The cage dropped out from under him, and Pearl caught him without hesitation.

She rambled off something he wasn't listening to and must have realized his attention lie elsewhere because she fell silent halfway through her sentence. The unusual stop almost jerked Sen back to the present, but he was determined.

The first of the masked inklings dropped in, wielding a brush. Its shiny metal face flashed as it swung at Sen, red eyes faulting for a moment as they searched for where he'd dropped into his own ink.

Swiftly, Sen lunged up from the muted orange ink, grappling one-handedly with the opposing inkling. He stuck his foot out; they tripped over it, stumbling, and it gave Sen purchase to wrench the brush out of their hands.

"Delta," he said firmly, pulling the inkling out of the sickly black ink they were standing in and into his own. The masked inkling tilted their head, trying to shove him away.

"Stop," Sen pleaded, low voice insistent. "Delta, I want to help you."

The inkling shook their head, voice warped by the smooth metal mask on their face. The heavy ink coating their body wavered, damaged by Sen's own. The octoling squeezed their wrist, mouth ajar to say something else, when they fell apart into a puddle of ink that stuck to his palm and oozed between his fingers, into the white of his shoes.

Sen jolted back, returning his grip to the shooter in his hands. The weight of it made him want to cringe, as the second of his opponents finally caught up to him. The ex-agent didn't hesitate to strike the roller down; the expression on his face easily read as disturbed.

Pearl whizzed close to his ear, making Sen tilt his head to avoid the blades of the drone's propeller.

"Hey!" She bumped into his shoulder purposefully. "Eight, c'mon. Get your head in the game!"

Sen opened his mouth and shut it again, widening his stand. The next wave was starting. He had to get through to at least one of them.

A blaster-wielding copy of the inklings from before rushed him, it's shots popping in the space between them and spattering slick black ink across the empty ground. Sen had neglected to claim any turf between waves; he was paying for it now.

The blaster gave him no room to get in close, and Sen shot them down without a second thought. It didn't get any easier to watch them succumb to the onslaught and their body liquefy into an unrecognizable stain on the floor.

Sen peppered off a few shots, hiding the evidence of the kill. He rounded on the next - a slosher insistent on trying to cover as much ground as possible. The octoling gritted his beak, grinding his fangs together. He threw caution to the wind and rushed the slosher.

The cloying black ink sprayed over him, seeping through his armor and shattering some pieces of the holographic tech. Regardless, Sen got what he wanted; he raised his knee quickly, jostling the slosher out of his adversary's hands. It clattered uselessly to the ground.

The inkling paused and drew their hands to their chest. They ran.

"No!" Sen lunged after them, giving chase, but the inkling pitched over the side of the platform and into the endless abyss below. Sen went off the side after them.

His hand caught in the deployed handle Pearl had to offer, and with some difficulty, she righted him on the platform of the room again. The drone deployed a bomb, which bounced to the feet of an approaching brella. It got caught in the brella's shield and exploded, spraying orange ink into the face of another masked inkling.

That one pitched backward, sinking unceremoniously into a puddle of ink.

"Eight," Pearl's projected eyes narrowed. "What's going on? Come on, take care of this!"

Sen waved the drone off. He was running out of chances.

"I have to get one of them alone," he looked up at Pearl, who wavered in midair; she was unsure of where he was going with this.

Pearl tilted up in the direction of the enemy cage, already bringing along another brush. "You got it."

Sen nodded. The octoling was glad to have her support.

The brush was another bust; this one never even made it to him, caught in his ink. Briefly, Sen wished he hadn't invested in those poison ink chips, wanting to tear them right out of the palette if it meant he could get his hands on one of these masked inklings.

The roller gave him more trouble than he'd admit, tracking wide swaths of black ink across the floor that had Sen frustrated. He gunned them down out of impulse and moved on.

Pearl, to her credit, tried to get the blaster in a corner. Unfortunately, she lost track of them under a swarm of jelletons that the enemy drone deployed. Occupying herself as a sprinkler to try and cover ground, Pearl didn't notice the blaster until it had already fallen prey under a poorly-placed bomb. Sen watched the altercation out of the corner of his eye and resolved to forgive her botched effort.

He was down to the dualies and the shooter; the latter seemed to have perched at the top platform, watching Sen's desperate display from the safety of its ledge. He had no doubt they'd come down and face him when they were good and ready.

The dualies certainly were eager to take a shot at him, and their mobility gave Sen a real run for his money. He struggled to keep up.

The octoling frowned to himself, sidestepping as the inkling came rolling right past him. He lunged at them, knocking one dualie out of their hand and pushing them down on uninked ground.

Pearl hovered nearby, spinning nervous circles. The shooter-wielding inkling watched from above.

Sen pinned his target's chest under his hips, knee dug painfully into their wrist.

"Delta," he pleaded for what felt the dozenth time since he started this endeavor. "Please, I don't want to fight you."

He dropped his shooter aside. The absence of weight as it left his hands had Sen feeling more confident. His fingertips traced the edge of the inkling's mask, and they stopped struggling.

Sen's hearts sank in his chest. The seam of the mask was completely smooth, as if the shiny metal had been fused into their face.

"No," he mumbled, trying to dig his claws down. The inkling under him writhed as thin beads of black ink pushed up around his sharp nails. "No, no, no. Delta, please."

The inkling tried to kick him off, and Sen nearly let them. He tried again to pry up the mask, and it was starting to give. The octoling slid his fingertips under the edge as it rose. His mouth watered unpleasantly as more black ink oozed out from under the mask, frighteningly warm. It stuck to the inside of the mask as he pried it off.

There was nothing underneath. The inkling splattered into a puddle under his knees.

"Eight!" Pearl warned, deploying a suction bomb.

Instantly, Sen grabbed his shooter and rolled to the side. The enemy shooter had joined the fight with a massive splashdown.

Sen's vision blurred. He wanted to be sick. He didn't have time.

"Looking for me?" The inkling's voice warbled.

Sen got to his feet. The shooter was approaching casually; unsure, Sen's body tensed as he waited for the inevitable attack. It didn't come. Pearl puttered nervously nearby.

"Sen," the voice went on, as the inkling toed the line of Sen's orange ink. "Come here."

He shook his head and gripped tight on his shooter so much that he nearly squeezed the trigger on accident. A part of him wasn't sure if he was refusing the order or warning them not to step into his ink in its poisoned state.

The inkling pressed on, beginning to struggle through the ink towards Sen. It was clear they were taking damage.

"Delta," he breathed as the inkling adversary suddenly dropped their weapon. This had never happened before. Why now? "Please, let me - let me help you."

"Sen," Delta's voice skipped and pitched in weird ways, "Sen it hurts, please - make it stop - where's Gamma?"

Then sharp static cut through their voice, and Delta's head rolled to the side limply. They fell to their knees, silvery mask beginning to slide off their face. Tarlike ink oozed against it as the metal clattered to the floor, still connected by thick ropes of viscous ink.

Delta's body dropped limply to the floor. Sen sank to their side, weapon discarded; his hands pulled fistfuls of their blackened jacket into his grasp.

He begged, quietly, for them not to disappear; even if he knew that they'd fight again. He wouldn't be able to explain it to Gamma: that he'd failed, that he was going to fail again and again and again.

Over, and over, and over and over again.

Delta's body was quickly liquefying under his touch, a thin veneer of semi-transparent ink floating atop the thick black. Sen's stomach churned as he recognized it as blood.

#mine #splatoon #writing #sen #delta #gamma mentioned 🗣#side order #agent 8 #agent 4 #parallel canon #my ocs #body horror tw #headcanon heavy. probably not canon to their verse unless it is #i dont know yet. still playing with how side order fits into their verse since its so grounded in at least some realism #and the souls bit gets iffy for me

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