Arco let loose a volley of cover fire from his Splattershot, blind, over his shoulder. He wasn’t trying to hit anything… Really, all he wanted to do was disincentivize his pursuers from chasing him. But the odds were long and not in his favor; despite Arco’s best efforts taking out snipers, lobbing Splat Bombs, cutting off the enemy’s ink-paths and shortcuts, and basically being an all-around nuisance, Arco was the last man standing on his team, and it would be too long of a wait for his friends to return.

Arco heard their footstep, their inkshots, their increasingly frustrated yells come nearer and nearer as they began to catch up. He bobbed and weaved. He saw an opportunity, an unfinished yellow trail of ink leading around a corner. Once he rounded the bend, he’d be back in friendly territory to regroup and launch the counter offensive.

Arco leapt atop a crate, blasting a spray of yellow on the ramp. He landed into a slide, shifting seamlessly into his hydrodynamic squid form and jetting his way out of there when –

BOOM!

A well-timed Splat Bomb cut off his escape route. With nowhere to go, the little squid was now alone in a single patch of yellow, cornered by a moat of indigo ink. He shifted back into kid form just as his enemies simultaneously shifted themselves, a group of punk-rock styled Octolings, each brandishing a blaster, roller, or paintbrush, all aimed at the bashful little Inkling. The only way out was down: over the balcony of the massive Moray Towers, onto the streets below. It was official; Arco had gotten got. He raised his hands in surrender, and he gulped.

Before him, an Octoling wearing an eyepatch brushed her tentacled hair out of her face before glaring at Arco. “Last words or not, I don’t really care,” she said, unsheathing her three-volleyed Tri-Stringer and drawing it, aiming directly at Arco’s face. “But, I mean, it could be funny. So go on.” She gave a shark-toothed smile.

Arco grit his teeth as he inched toward the balcony. From the corner of his eye, he gleaned his teammates, finally rising from the Spawnpoint, wide-eyed and ready to take back the map. The enemy were sitting ducks. All Arco needed to do was stall them for just a bit longer. When…

“I… do you hear that?”

The blue haired Octoling grimaced. “Hear what?”

“That,” Arco said, pointing out vaguely to the skyline. “That booming? It’s faint… but it’s getting…” Arco stepped closer to the ledge, much to the enemy team’s chagrin. “You can’t tell me you can’t hear it by now!”

Their leader squinted in confusion, then shook her head. “Enough of this!” She beckoned to her teammates. “C’mon, splat ‘em already so we can – whoa!!”

Boom…

Boom!

The Towers were vibrating. Arco’s team had paused in their assault, forcing themselves to stabilize lest they trip and fall off the map. The enemies were looking perturbed. But their leader wouldn’t be swayed.

“It’s nothing, just a trick,” she said, stealing their attention back to her. “Anyway… since you’re all too chicken, I’ll do it myself,” she said. And she aimed her Tri-Stringer once again.

And once again, Moray Towers shook. But this time it swayed, and quaked, and rumbled.

BOOM!!

Then silence. Everybody was on edge. Everyone was paying attention. Everyone was still. Arco wasn’t even thinking about escape, even though it would be trivial at this point to sidle on out of there.

The booms ceased, but the sways returned as the structure began to tilt. Arco was trying his best to remain standing, but with so little room to maneuver he was having a hard time of it.

“Whoa, whoa!” cried their leader, skidding on her inky platform. The consequence of having the maneuverability of her color floor meant that she was more prone to slide when things went wrong, such as now. And when she tripped, the rumbling sent the eyepatched Octoling over the declined edge. She shrieked in terror before suddenly being silenced.

Both Inkling and Octoling were aghast, trotting carefully to the balcony and looking downward… it took only a single glance for the group to e where they wouldn’t believe their eyes.

“A~aaaahhhhhhh… mmmmhhhh!!”

That was the joyful moan uttered by the international music Marina Ida, one half of renowned hip-hop/pop fusion group Off the Hook. Everyone on the towers had seen them countless times whether on the net or live in concert. But none of them – none – had ever seen Marina at hundreds of feet tall, able to scale Moray Towers like a mere jungle gym.

As Marina sighed, the ghostly afterimage of the Octoling floated up and out of her mouth accompanied by a burp, confirming the kids’ fears. The pop idol had eaten and swallowed her like a Deep Fried Shwaffle. And she was coming up for seconds.

“I’m sorry, guys… I think one of my inventions… backfired…”

Each word came with another rumble, as her lithe fingers scaled yet another level of Moray Towers. She already looked massive from this distance, but the thought of her reaching the apex and being a truly unfathomable force… could the Towers even withstand the weight of a creature that size?

Arco didn’t want to find out. The enemy was already beginning to scatter, and he decided to follow their example. His team had yet to truly glean what was happening, and they were still coming down to meet with Arco, if only to figure out what all the rumbling was about.

Arco shouted in Inkling for them to “Go back! Abort! Abort!” He lowered his weapons and flailed out a wild string of improvised hand signals, hoping that might get the message across a bit better. All he got were confused stares and a renewed effort on the part of his team to reunite with their comrade, an effort that would’ve warmed Arco’s heart had he not known such a course of action would likely lead to their subsequent devourment.

“But I can’t deny… that girl tasted pretty good…”

Arco sought refuge, but the floor was still covered in ink, much of which was not his, and resultantly impossible to traverse. As the Octolings fled, Arco was searching in vain for a path off the catwalk, even as his balance nearly crumpled from fear, confusion, and the continuous shaking of the structure, until –

“Oh? Another one…~”

Arco didn’t want to turn around. He heard a slick, sickening shlurp that shivered up and down his. With a turn that seemed almost supernaturally slow, Arco saw out the corner of his eye, the pop idol herself. She was propped, her torso visible and confirming something Arco hadn’t quite caught when he first glimpsed her. Aside from being just shy of two-hundred feet tall, she was also nude. Her chocolatey brown skin pulsed with the beating of her heart, and each gigantic breast was big enough to be a bouncy castle as they hung down against her tastefully pudgy stomach and torso. Despite how dire the situation was, Arco couldn’t help blushing.  He took a step back against a wall he could not scale, and Marina angled her sea-green eyes down at the last morsel on the platform.

Arco sent a glance to his two o’clock – his team were close. They now knew exactly why Arco told them not to come. But in the deadening silence, it would be trivial for the deft radio star to hear their footsteps on the metal grates.

Arco gulped and raised his hands up in surrender. His frustration at being in the exact same place as he was a few minutes ago wasn’t lost on him.

“Coming willingly? How generous of you! I haven’t actually tried Inkling yet… are you really as savory as they say?”

And Marina let her chest fall, their gelatinous masses booming as they spread out along the grates and railings like plump dough, almost absorbing the creaking metal in their softness. Her hulking, pulsating tentacle tendrils of hair spread out among the platforms as well, their suckers suckling gently at the constructed surfaces wherever they met. Arco was completely surrounded, whether by impassable building structures or the organic structure that was Marina Ida. Marina scooted further and reached her arms up over Arco’s head to drag her body up on the platform, and Arco shrank slightly from the claustrophobic position he was being put in. From over her shoulder, Arco could just begin to see the hill that formed Marina’s rear end make its signature swoop shape. It was a butt that had earned enough fans when she was fully clothed… and now, seeing it quite literally in the flesh, it filled Arco with unimaginable dread.

Soon, Arco’s view of Marina’s butt was obscured – her face demanded his full attention, jutting into his sphere and casting the young Inkling in shadow. Arco loosened his grip on his blaster, and it clattered to the ground. “Would you be willing to let me go if I tell you I’ve listened to all your albums?”

At this, Marina giggled. Her laughs rumbled, sending dull impact fractures into the metal scaffolding. She pulled her legs up onto the catwalk, now looking more like a massive tunnel of inky Octoling flesh. Arco could practically hear the tritone beating of her three hearts, each thump, thump, thump reinforcing just how unreal it was to be face to face with this enormous creature.

And then, as Marina opened her mouth, her breath coating Arco in a warm haze of saliva and Shwaffles, and got closer, and closer, and closer to Arco, saliva dripping in globules around Arco’s feet… a collection of high-pitched whistles pierced Arco’s ears.

Marina too grimaced, disturbed from her snacking. She looked over to her side and blinked twice upon noticing a peppered volley of blue ink drawn in a smiley face pattern on her hip. Marina almost wouldn’t have taken notice of the squadron of Octolings further up the ramp, reloading their weapons before sending yet another fusillade of inkvolts.

“This is for eating our leader!”

“I don’t care if you are a superstar!”

“If we beat you, can we get free tickets to your next show?”

Far from being annoyed or, gosh forbid, concerned, Marina let a sly smile flash across her shy visage. She removed her attention from a very relieved Arco and sat on her haunches as she observed the arrival of the Octolings, led by a rightly woozy eyepatched captain, clearly fazed from her respawning. Arco squinted and realized that she must’ve been splatted from digesting in Marina’s stomach acid… she looked well enough out of the Spawnpoint, but that couldn’t have been a painless process.

“Everyone attack!” shouted the Octoling captain, and her troops sent out hurtle after hurtle of indigo ink, coating much of Marina’s body in the slimy slick substance. Yet, for her size, it did nothing but offer a tickle. She simply waited, patient and pliant, as the Octoling team’s reserves of ink dwindled down to scarcely a thimble, and eventually nothing at all.

Marina was covered in paint, but she was no worse for wear. Alternately, the Octolings were out of ammo, out of energy, and as Marina crawled on all fours closer and closer to their Spawnpoint… they were increasingly running out of options.

“…my turn…!”

And with a mighty thrash of her fist, Marina smashed down on the railing. In a row, each Octoling aligned in their battle formation was squashed, bursting into an indigo splatter along Marina’s forearm. Her other hand lunged, fast, too fast, and grabbed more of the struggling young Octolings in her neon-tinted fingertips. She popped them one by one in her mouth like candy, swishing them all around her puffed-up cheeks before swallowing them whole. Marina let out another joyful exultation as yet more ghostly spirits of the Octolings floated out from the tomb that was her stomach.

"Arco!"

Arco turned – his lieutenant and best friend, Kem, had rolled into the scene while Marina’s back was turned. The popstar was unintentionally mooning half the match’s player base, but this was the perfect moment to exercise their escape plan. From the nigh-wrecked catwalk, Kem aimed, cocked her N-ZAP, and… fired! Her shot splattered into a stain behind Arco’s head. With sustained fire, Kem had created a vertical path of golden yellow. Arco nodded, and he seamlessly shifted into his marine squid form before melding with the yellow paint and swimming upstream like a salmon. From there it was only a few more staircases and relatively untouched crates and obstacles before both Arco and Kem could reconvene at the Spawnpoint, where their team was waiting nervously.

“What the heck was that?”

“Is this some sort of promotion for their new album or something?”

“I feel like I would’ve heard about this on the net.”

“Marina… she’s even prettier up close… and giant-sized.”

“Quiet!” Kem spat. Her team stood at attention. “Okay, I’ve got no idea what that is, why Marina is so big, or why she’s eating the enemy team. But for as long as she’s distracted by them, we have an opportunity.”

An inkling leaning on his roller raised his hand. “To turn the tables on the match?”

Kem shook her head. “To get the out of here. Right, Arco?”

Arco was gazing at the other half of Moray Towers. The Octolings were fighting an impressive battle – some had taken advantage of the trails of ink that peppered the sextuple-sized celebrity and were swimming up her body to reach her weak points. Others had planted ink grenades around her bare feet and ankles, detonating them in the hopes that doing so could disrupt her balance. But neither of these strategies bore much fruit – Marina was still as poised as ever, and as hellbent on stuffing as many of the respawning Octolings in her mouth, crushing the rest beneath her feet. Even now, she seemed to be expanding as more and more of the screaming Octo-kids were stuffed between her smacking lips. If she seemed like a living tunnel when Arco was face to face with her, he would’ve been more than terrified to face her now. Even as she stood to height, the pressure her weight placed on the building’s struts and foundation sent vibrations that nearly drove the Inklings to their knees. Though their efforts were unexpectedly inspiring… even Arco could see that on their own, it would be futile for the Blue team to grab victory or survival.

Crrrreeeeaaaak…!

The building shuddered.

“Arco!”

“Wha-huh?!”

Kem slapped her own face with her empty hand. “Were you listening? I said we have to leave! Now? ASAP? You do know how to speak Inkling, don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course! It’s just… well…”

Kem saw that look in Arco’s eye. “No. You’re not going to recommend what I think you are… are you?”

“I mean… well…” Arco scratched behind his head.

“They are the enemy! And you want to risk our necks to help them? They almost had you splatted!” Kem seethed.

“Yeah, of course… but, I mean, leaving right when they need help, just doesn’t feel very sportsmanlike. Besides, if we do, they will owe us for life.”

“But, but, but –”

“Need I remind you, Kem, that I was voted leader?”

Kem rolled her eyes. “It was a tie breaker. If I’d called heads, I’d be the one calling the shots.”

“Red herring. Anyway guys, I need every last splatbomb, torpedo, and missile aimed at her heels. We’ve only got one shot at this, so we’re going to have to go in close.”

Another inkling raised his hand. “How close are we talking, really? Like, because, she’s pretty big, I’m sure I could make a shot even from here if I tried –”

“Closer!”