Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hello hello hello, tis I the f1sh!

ᔦꙬᔨ (Ꙭ)

Author notes

𖦹 The main premise of this fic is that I wanted the Reader to be an Octoling since most Isekai fan-fiction (the three I found), have an Inkling protagonist which is fine and all but it gets a bit repetitive since they all are bound to the same narrative (no hate all the fics people write are good). Having an Octoling reader in an Isekai fic is a concept that I think has so much potential for character dynamics, plot moments, etc yet no one ever explores it so here we are!

Disclaimers

𖦹 I don't have the best time management skills so my uploads may be extremely inconsistent, I apologise in advance for the long waiting periods.

𖦹 I have written a few short oneshots about some characters in the series and in make my own writing for personal projects BUT this will be my first time doing a long term project of this size (at least properly) so I have no idea what I am doing.

𖦹 PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK!!! I don't have anyone to brainstorm ideas with or look over my drafts, so I REALLY APPRECIATE input or ideas for the story, feel free to message me on my tumblr since I am unfamiliar with the ao3 interface as of right now

𖦹 I'm pretty new to posting on AO3 so things like notes, my formatting, etc may be a bit off

𖦹 (Added) I will be including headcanons for the characters and characterising them based on my own interpretations!

Warnings

𖦹 As you hopefully saw in the tags, there will be death, identity crisis, discrimination (mostly centred around species/race but others forms related to sexuality and ableism will appear), and violence (outside of Multiplayer and Story Mode). If you are sensitive to these topics this fanfic might not be for you (I do put warnings at the top of each chapter incase you still want to read, reader discretion is still advised).

𖦹 Let me know if the topics I cover are portrayed in any way that seems harmful or causes misinformation so that I can rewrite it. Some of the themes in this story I will cover will be unfamiliar with me so the way I interpret them may come out wrong.

Chapter Text

When did breathing get so hard?

Your lungs kept under a subtle pressure as you tried to take as much oxygen into your body as you could feeling the mask strapped to your head press against your face with the increased pressure. Other sensations eased in, a muffled humming outside the liquid you were submerged in, it's warmth tempting you to fall back asleep. Your muscles took an extra moment to respond, twitching your fingers to stimulate some movement. Your joints waking up with you slowly.

Regaining enough control you wave a hand through the liquid, finger tips grazing a wire. You reached out again, grasping the wire this time, trying to follow it with your hand until it reached your bare chest. It was something to monitor you pulse.

Opening your eyes to confront reality, everything was lightly clouded in magenta, but through that you could see the glass walls of the container holding you. Pipes emerged from the metal at the bottom and top, running across the floor and ceiling, converging at a terminal covered in bright vinyl stickers.

An amalgamation of scrap metal, vintage computers, and such formed the main body. From where you were, the controls were out of sight but they likely linked to your pod? chamber? whatever the hell you were inside. Some sort of recovery chamber it seemed if your vitals were being monitored. The whole room was made of concrete from the floor to the ceiling with scrap metal sheets to cover presumably holes or parts of machinery. A few other chambers, matching yours with the same pipes extruding from them lined the room, all empty.

Tracing the cracks around the room quickly got monotonous, redirecting your attention to yourself to finally address everything that felt off. Pointed nailless fingers, larger round ears, tentacles where your hair should be?

Oh

You had tentacles for hair now, tracing the suction cups on the outside for your tentacles it dawned on you that you weren't really...

well,

you anymore.

That explained the weird aesthetic the room had going on.

Well this was, fairly different from the isekai fan fiction you had read. Namely the whole waking up in "sci-fi clone experiment" fashion inside a liquid filled chamber. Whoever put you inside this giant test tube could at least have fitted you some clothing, but sure leave the disoriented octoling butt naked.

At least you weren't prone to dying of boredom as an octoling entered through a rusty pair of metal doors you spied on the far left side of the room through the hazy liquid.

Seaweed adorned her head, waving with her tentacles as she halted past the door, the purple lenses of her goggles boring into your form she had known previously as asleep for who knows how long. The elite went straight for the console, slamming a fist onto a button.

The liquid encasing you drained immediately, gravity pulled you down with the water as your legs gave in, sliding against the tube to settle awkwardly on it's base. You reached to your face, fighting wth the straps to slide the mask of your face as she approached the glass kicking something at the base, the glass loosened as she popped the chamber open. Looking up to her you were met with lips in a firm frown as her goggles obscured any other indications of emotion.

An uncomfortable amount of time was spent staring at each other in silence, the cold spreading against your skin did nothing to help how exposed you felt under her gaze. Finally she rolled up the sleeves of her white coat and held out a hand to you.

"Get up, you look pathetic sitting like that." Her words were clearly Octarian, yet you could understand almost like a second language you had known for ages, a strange innate sense of what the words meant without needing to link them to their english equivalent.

With a firm tug you were pulled to your feet almost stumbling into the console if not for the steady hand which guided you to a nearby stretcher. Walking felt weird, the proportions of this body distinctly different from a human but you managed to reach the gurney. Before you could properly sit on the lumpy mattress she asked,

"Do you know where we are?"

Your throat tightened, painfully parched as you tried to will yourself to speak. Words struggled to come, this body you'd found since exiting the pod didn't quite act with your thoughts, reactions were slow, clanky. Essentially lagging in real life. On top of that understanding what she asked may have translated naturally but speaking to her, was where problems arose.

You reached inside your head for the words you needed, only english came to mind but you couldn't speak a human language. She wouldn't understand obviously, but her foot tapping against the rusted metal startled you into answering, "Octo Valley?", conveniently your thoughts translated into Octarian as they left your lips in that same unnaturally-natural reaction.

Her scowl only worsened, perhaps unsatisfied by the lack of details as she pressed "Which dome?"

Your eyebrows furrowed, trying to find something to say. The silence was enough indication something was off. She took off her goggle to pinch the bridge of her nose, opening her eyes revealed deep green irises, her face softened a touch as a sharp exhale left her mouth. "Damn it, should've known you hit your head pretty hard during the collapse." She paced back to the console, typing into some sort of database. You could hear her talking with someone on a radio attached to her hip, hidden underneath her thick lab coat. You watched her scroll through files, type in code after code, scroll through more files, then abruptly slam her fist hard against the scrap metal.

"WHICH IDIOT-" You heard at least five Octarian curses directed at random Octarians and their mothers as she clenched the radio, the speaker crackled as a nervous voice on the other end of the line explained. "Dome 5-C was the one of the domes holding our servers, we didn't have backups for some of it's citizens after the collapse."

Well you weren't committing Identity theft if there was no identity to steal at least seeing as you stole what might be someone's braindead corpse who had no records left to remember them by. Luckily the doctor didn't leave you time to spiral on the messed up implications of what that meant for you.

Spitefully kicking the console, she made her way back to finally give you some clarity. "Alright kid I'm not gonna sugar coat this for you, you're the only survivor of the Dome 5-C collapse one year ago." Well that was morbid. "A generator went offline at the centre of the block, causing our anti gravity tech to go offline taking the whole place down, luckily a delivery group managed to catch you on their Ufo and brought you here."

"You didn't leave unscathed though." She tapped your head lightly. "You fell pretty hard, must've got hit by some rubble too because we're in Octo Canyon, not the valley, Dome 16 to be specific." Dome 16? That was the bowling ball level in Splatoon 2 right? Assuming there weren't any extra domes you couldn't access in the game. The elite placed a hand to her chin, mumbling under her breath as you sat opposite to her, still naked, in the cold room.

She deflated, her tentacles losing their natural curl as she shrugged off the magenta stained coat, placing it over your shoulders. "Here's how things will go, I can't do much for your memory, it's a miracle you even woke up."

"I'll send you to Zayd, she never has enough misfits anyway. She'll catch you up on all the training you've missed, might even get you ahead of the other squads." She pulled you to your feet as she led you towards the exit door. "It's going to be rough but it's your best shot at surviving this shell hole" It was thankfully warmer outside as you began walking down a metal gangway, "You better thank her for keeping you on life support, my superiors would've given up on you after seeing your chances of survival."