"Breaking news! A very strange... kid? Yeah, kid, was seen in Inkopolis Plaza earlier today. Here right now, we have someone who not only saw the whole thing, but got to talk to the boy himself. Yeah, that's right, Carl's here in the studio!" The camera zoomed out, revealing an inkling boy sitting on a chair next to Pearl and Marina. "Take it away!" Pearl finished her introduction.

"Yeah, so, I was in the plaza, minding my own business, you know, right? And then, all of a sudden, this squi- kid, comes out of nowhere, threatening to attack me. And then my bud starts recording, you know, in case he actually does something. He calls us kids, and then tries to go after me, so I just sorta do what I have to do with my splatling. But here's the crazy part-" He paused for dramatic effect. "- he didn't get splatted. So I don't know what this kid is, but he's sure as f- heck not one of us. He didn't even look like an inkling. Or- or an octoling. He had, like, fur on his arms, and so, so many teeth! He actually looked more like a bear than a person!"

"But Carl, here's the million dollar question. If you've already heard the rumours, you know what it is." Pearl said, trying to draw it out for the sake of television. "You ready? Do you think there's a chance that he ISN'T actually an octoling or inkling?"

"Yes. Yes. I can't say it enough, yes. Since you're asking me, I think there's no way this kid is a person like you or me. I don't know what he- no, it is, but I wouldn't go near it."

"That's a little much, don't you think?" Marina finally broke her uncomfortable silence. "Like, he was able to talk. Isn't that worth something?"

"Look, there's no way he's one of us. He looks nothing like us, you can see it in the video. So either he's some kind of monster, or a human, and last I checked, he was too alive to be killed in a flood like a thousand years ago."

- A Different World -

"So he went on live TV, made a fool of himself, and still managed to turn the world against me, someone they didn't even know existed." Matthew growled. "I just wanted to help that octoling, dammit!"

"I tried to play damage control, okay? But Pearl wouldn't take a hint, and Carl was trying crazy hard to squeeze as much drama out of this as possible!" Marina said, defensively.

"Well excuse me for having no idea about this at all!" The white-pink-tentacled squid, who Matthew now new as Pearl, said. "You couldn't have once said 'yo, Pearl, I'm going to meet a real, live, human?' to your best friend?"

"Calm down! FIghting isn't going to get us anywhere!" Skye said. "Are you listening to yourselves? It doesn't matter who did what, right now we need to figure out what to do about it!"

There were a lot of people sitting in Skye's living room, most of which Matthew hadn't ever seen before. Apparently, this was the 'Splatoon' that she mentioned earlier.

Agents 1 and 2, Callie and Marie, were cousins, and just so happened to be the two most well known faces in Inkopolis, to the point that you'd be hard pressed to find a single person that didn't immediately recognize them. Agent 3 was an inkling girl named Lexi, with long, yellow-green hair. Well, tentacles. Then there was agent four, Skye, the only person in the room Matthew was comfortable around. 5 and 6 were Pearl and Marina, famous pop stars and current hosts of Inkopolis' most popular news broadcast, Inkopolis News. There was no agent 7, strangely enough, and agent 8 was an octoling gone rogue, with his tentacles held in what looked like a mohawk. Oh, and their captain was an older inkling named Cuttlefish, who, in his own words, 'had the heart of a young'un.' Together, they made up the New Squidbeak Splatoon.

He almost wished he hadn't asked that stupid question.

"We do have an idea, that's why we're here. It might be a good time to reveal you're human. Before this goes too far. We can have you on Inkopolis News, and for proof, we can show the X-Ray." Marina told him.

"And that's my only option?"

"Unless you want to be public enemy number one for life, more or less."

"We can have you up there tomorrow." Pearl chimed in. "At least give it a chance, okay? Now Marina and I have a GrizzCo shift in half an hour, we gotta go." Pearl turned to the door, with Marina following right behind. "PEACE, Y'ALL!"

"That's the best you could come up with? Really?" Matthew wasn't even trying to hide his anger now.

"What else can we do? We can't do anything to prove you aren't different. Everyone knows you're not a cephalopod. All we can do now is stop them from antagonizing you. Please, think about it." Marie begged. She then looked at the rest of the guests "Callie and I need to interrogate the DJ with gramps again." she repeated, looking back at Matthew.

The rest of the Splatoon left with Marie, leaving just Skye and Matthew in the apartment.

"You can stay here!" Skye said before he had a chance to say anything stupid.

Of course, he did anyway.

"Why? I can go home- OH" The realization hit him like a sucker punch to the face, except somehow he was the one who punched himself. "Do you mind if- if I sleep on the couch?"

"Not at all. I'll get a pillow and blanket for you. Oh, and the bathroom's near the door if you want to change or brush your teeth."

Matthew took the opportunity to finally unpack his bag. He had scrambled it together quickly before getting on the jet to Inkopolis by more or less shoving everything from the 'emergency essentials' bin in his room into it. So he had almost no idea what was in it.

Opening it up, he found a change of clothes, a toothbrush with toothpaste, soap, and some millenia old mouldy food. In a separate section, he found his laptop, mouse, phone, Nintendo Switch, and chargers for all of them, which he assumed he must have packed before going under. And right at the bottom, alongside an old USB flash drive, there was Judd's necklace, which he refused to take out.

In hindsight, absolutely none of these would have been useful in an actual doomsday situation. He silently thanked his lucky stars that wasn't the case.

Going to the bathroom, he noticed how similar it looked to human washrooms. In fact, Matthew hadn't really had a chance to think about it before, but the whole house seemed eerily human. The living room had a sofa and a few chairs in front of a wall-mounted TV with what looked like a WiFi router and game console right below it, which themselves were on top of a table with drawers. From what he saw of the kitchen, it had cupboards all around the side, with a microwave, stove, sink, and fridge. And here, in the washroom, there was a sink with a cupboard underneath and mirror above, and a toilet to the side. Hell, somehow the concepts of brushing teeth and wearing blankets made their way to inkling society, which didn't really make sense given that they were cold blooded creatures with 2 large plates in the place of teeth.

There were too many similarities for it to just be a coincidence.

Meh, this seems like a tomorrow problem, he thought. RIght now, he was tired, and needed to worry about the whole Carl thing right now. He decided to throw away his toiletries, because they'd been unfrozen for who knew how long, and all sorts of bacteria could be living on them right now. He just washed his mouth with water and walked out, to see a blanket and pillow set up on the sofa.

"Thanks, Skye!" He yelled at her bedroom door, and got back a muffled "You're welcome! From the other side. He took off his glasses and watch - which wasn't even working, he just put it on when he woke up, out of habit - and instinctively reached for his phone. Issue is, it was dead, and he couldn't exactly plug it in to charge. So he just lay down, alone with his thoughts, until he eventually fell asleep.

Matthew was sitting in a car, with no idea why he was there or where he was going.

"They're all locked in. This is it for them." a male voice said.

Now he was sitting at a launch site, waiting to board.

"Ark Polaris fell. Lucky we came here, right?" it was the same voice.

He was now on board the ship, lying in his pod, ready for take-off.

"We'll wake you up once you're needed for work, there's no point in unnecessary aging." The same voice spoke again, but now there was a sense of urgency to it. It almost sounded familiar, but he couldn't remember who exactly it was.

Time passed, but he was still lying in his pod.

"Matt, I'm sorry. But it's too dangerous. You know what happened with Ark Polaris! You have to stay on Earth. I'm putting you under." Then it hit him. The voice was his dad.

"No, dad! DAD!" He tried yelling, but nobody heard him.

He shot out of bed, waking up from his nightmare with tears in his eyes. He reached for his Switch, before remembering his current predicament.

It's been 12000 years. My Switch is dead, and I can't charge it. Just remembering that it had been so long made it worse. His dad was dead. Judd was gone. And he was stuck by himself.

Matthew buried his face in his pillow and just cried. Thinking of everyone in his life before, his friends, his family, his world. It was all gone now. His entire race was gone! Billions of people, wiped off the planet by their own stupidity! Why was he the unlucky one that got to live? Why, why, why, why him?

He wished he had just died with the other humans. He didn't need to, didn't want to be alive now, so why was he?

"Nobody here cares what the fuck happens to you."

He was slowly drifting back into a nightmare again, and his dark thoughts only sped it up. It felt like he was losing control of his own mind, and it wasn't good.

They're all dead. You aren't. You should have died with them.

It was a cycle. A positive feedback loop. He'd have dark thoughts, then lose a bit of control, which caused him to have darker thoughts, which-

"Matthew?" This voice grounded him back in reality. I'm still just sitting on a couch, trying to sleep.

He looked up from his pillow. Skye was there, in her pyjamas, sitting next to him on the couch.

"Did I wake you?"

"Are you okay? And please, please, tell me the truth this time." Skye pleaded.

"Did I just experience a 'greatest hits' cut of the last few moments of my life? Yes. Am I absolutely terrified out of my mind of going up on TV tomorrow? Obviously I am. How does telling you any of that help either of us?" He sighed. "I don't wanna bother you with this stuff."

"You don't need to reveal you're human if you don't want to." She chose to ignore what he said about bothering her.

"I do, though! Everyone's eventually gonna find out, and right now I have a chance to at least control how that happens. I have to take this. It's not as simple as just not doing it because I don't want to."

They fell into a silence. It wasn't uncomfortable, they just both went quiet.

"You know you can talk to me about this stuff, right?"

"I really don't want to weigh you down with my problems."

"Don't worry about that! What else are friends for?"

"We're… friends?" Matthew's face shifted from sadness to one of hope."Really? You've only known me for, like, two days."

"I mean, yeah. You're sleeping in my house right now, You trusted me enough to follow me through two squidholes. I think it's safe to call us friends, don't you?"

"Y- yeah. I would." He sat up, and the Switch that he had placed on his chest under the blanket fell to the floor.

"Where'd you get that?"

"Oh, this?" Matthew picked up the Switch. "It's just mine from before. I tried using it but it's dead."

"That's strange." Skye took out her phone and started searching for something. "Look, it looks exactly like a Nintendo Squitch. I always wanted one of those."

"You know what? Do you have a power outlet nearby? I wanna see if I can actually plug in my charger. We might actually be able to play. Who's to say that if you have a Nintendo that made this exact device, I can't just plug my old one in and use it."

"Yeah, I have a power strip behind the TV." Skye turned on the living room light and moved the TV stand out of the way.

They used the same damn outlets.

"It was supposed to be a joke!" Matthew broke out into laughter.

As it turned out, everything about inkling technology was almost the exact same, save for the names. Matthew was quite literally able to plug his Switch into power and connect the dock to Skye's TV with one of her HDMI cables, and it just worked.

"It's working!" Matthew said, his excitement finally completely taking over his previous misery. "Controllers are charged. Come on, pick a game!" If the console's the same, there's no reason the games shouldn't be, he reasoned.

"O- okay!" His mood was contagious! "Do you have Mario Kart? I tried it with my friends once, and actually don't suck."

"Trust me, there's no such thing as not sucking at Mario Kart."

As they played, Matthew reflected on what had happened in the last 2 days. He had woken up in his bed in the strange room, thinking he was alone. Then he was saved by Skye, the amazing kind, beautiful - Beautiful? Where'd that come from? Eh, I'm 14, it's probably just hormones or something - short tentacled girl (who was somehow good at Mario Kart!) that he was more than happy to call a friend. And for all he knew, there were thousands of humans still left in floating rooms like himself who would wake up soon, he wasn't necessarily alone. I don't deserve any of this. I just got lucky.

Eventually, after playing for hours, they drifted asleep together on the couch.

Matthew didn't have another bad dream that night.

Going to Inkopolis Square was a nightmare. Even with a full professional security detail (courtesy of Pearl and Marina), seemingly everyone knew exactly who was walking by. It was a miracle that he managed to make it to the studio at all, let alone safely.

"Here's the itinerary: first, we have you on, you answer the big question, we show the X-Ray, and then there's a viewer question and answer session." Marina informed Matthew.

"Alright, question, X-Ray, QnA. Got it."

"Are you done back there? We're going live in 3 minutes!" One of the crew members yelled from the broadcast room.

Matthew, Pearl, and Marina all got into position, ready for the broadcast to start.

"Aaaannnd… live!" a crewmate said.

"Y'all know what time it is!"

"It's Off the Hook, coming at you LIVE from Inkopolis Square!" Matthew immediately noticed the kind of energy Pearl and Marina were going for on the news. He made a mental note to at least try and keep it up when he was talking.

"Now, we've all heard the rumours about the fresh kid on the block," Pearl stated.

"But those are just rumours, right?" Marina continued, setting up the reveal.

"I guess we'll see, because today, we have the kid, the myth, the legend himself, MATTHEW!"

"Wow, it sounds so weird when you introduce someone like that without their last name." Marina deadpanned.

"Hey!" Pearl said, unable to think of a proper retort.

Matthew walked onto the set, a smile plastered on his face. He may not have felt excited for the interview, but at least he could look the part. "Hi!"

"Matthew, we don't want to beat around the bush so we're just going to ask: what are you?" Marina asked.

This was it. He was about to tell everyone.

Come on, just rip off the bandage already.

"I'm… human." He could hear the scoffs and laughter of the people outside the studio.

"No, really. Bring up the X-ray." Oh no. He'd gone off script, and now everyone else had to cover for him. God, he could hear the behind the scenes crew scrambling to get the X-Ray on the TV behind them.

"That's the picture. I don't know about you, but that looks a heck of a lot like the human diagrams in Shellendorf Institute, right Marina?" Pearl said.

"Yeah, look at them." A second image appeared on screen, which Matthew assumed was the Shellendorf Institute diagram. "See? I believe him."

"But what do you think? Vote in the poll online. But that's not all! Do you have a question you want to ask our guest? Drop by the studio window for a QnA with an actual human!" The three of them turned to face the window, where a massive crowd of inklings and octolings had already gathered.

That's a lot of people, Matthew thought, forcing himself to keep the increasingly fake smile on his face and wave at the crowd with Pearl and Marina.

"You, short purple side tentacle." Pearl pointed at one of the boys in the crowd.

"If you're human, why do you speak inkling?"

"I don't know, as far as I can tell, Inkling is the same as English but with more fish puns." His voice was cracking up already just by looking at the audience.

None of them are human. Humans are gone.

"Next?" Marina asked their audience.

"Why are you only here now?" A girl with short, curled tentacles asked.

"The thing that was keeping me asleep and alive ran out of battery, so it just woke me up." Calm down, take deep breaths. I can do this. Since when we're my hands clammy?

"Hi, uh, Matthew, was it?" An older female holding a microphone asked. "Why should we believe you're what you say you are? The only evidence you've given us is coincidental at best, and for the most part borderline unbelievable."

"Why would I lie about this? Why would anyone lie about this? What do I have to gain from it?"

They don't believe you, and they shouldn't. You ARE a monster. Your race destroyed itself, even if you're a human, they're not wrong.

"How are you still alive?"

"What really happened to the humans?"

"Where are you from?"

"How long have you been around Inkopolis?"

The questions were starting to overwhelm him, to the point where he was now hyperventilating, and doing a pretty terrible job of hiding it from the audience. It was like last night again, he was having another panic attack.

"Okay! Whaddaya know, we're out of time!" Pearl looked at her watch for a split second to make her statement believable. "Marina, weren't we gonna play some league battles now?"

"Uh, yeah, that's all the time we've got, so until next-" Marina was interrupted by an inkling boy with spiked tentacles who had quite rudely shoved his way to the front of the crowd, with a smirk on his face. Matthew didn't know what it was about this kid, but he looked familiar.

"I've got a question. If you really are a human from forever ago, where are your parents? What, did they really hate you so much they decided they'd rather die than use whatever technology you did to stay alive?" The kid chuckled.

The smile had been completely wiped off Matthew's face. He just couldn't keep the false happy persona anymore, not after that. In fact, he was sure he felt tears welling in his eyes.

"That's all the time we've got today, so until next time…"

"Don't get cooked, stay Off the Hook!" Pearl and Marina exclaimed in unison.

Well that just happened. Matthew just had a panic attack live, not only in front of an audience, but broadcast on TV for the whole world to see. He may not have been seen as a public threat anymore, but having millions of people watch him slowly break down to the point of tears surely couldn't have made him look much better in the public eye. But he didn't have time to worry about that right now. He needed to get out of the studio, out of Inkopolis square before it got worse.

The public may have been terrified of him before, but playing damage control might just have made it worse.

Whoa, almost 3500 words? That's the most I've ever written for, like, anything. I think I might start doing longer, more spaced out chapters. They're less fun to write, but I'm much more satisfied with the final product. I can use a proper 3 act structure in longer chapters, which just isn't possible with 1k-2k words.

Anyways, stay with me here, I swear I'm building up to an actual plot, just be a little patient.

Please review. More than follows, favourites, views, or visitors, reviews are what encourage me to keep going.

Until next time, Mikeyy OUT!