"Here." She said. "You must be hungry by now. Fortunately, these don't seem to have any negative side effects, and are pretty filling."
Laura's head tilted to the right as she looked at the object in Raye's hand. “What's that?” she asked.
"My OOPA called them food pills. I ate one earlier, and they seem to work as advertised."
Laura shifted her attention to her stomach, partly expecting a response of hunger. It had been some time since she last ate—more so considering that she was unconscious for whoever knows how long—but there was no sensation. No hunger, or thirst…no satisfaction, nor nausea; just…nothingness. There was absolutely no feedback from her own body.
“Hm,” she uttered without a thought… “Strange…”
She stood there pondering her lack of hunger; and rather awkwardly so for Raye.
"Are you okay?" Raye asked.
“Um. Yeah.”
Laura stood up straight again, and moved to take off the helmet she was wearing.
“I guess I might as well…” she said before tucking the helmet under her right arm. Starting to reach for the pill in Raye's hand, Laura suddenly jerked her left hand back towards herself before stuffing it into one of her pockets and pulling out her beloved bobble hat. She scrambled to put it back on.
Raye looked on, confused as to Laura's actions.
Finally getting her hat back on, Laura looked up at Raye and the confused expression on her face. “…ehe…”
She stood there for a second before speaking again. “Uh… Thanks!” she quickly uttered before snatching the pill out of Raye's hand and putting it into her mouth at lighting pace. Laura tried her best to swallow, but the pained expression painted across her face said that it wasn't going all that well. Her head bobbed around slightly as she struggled to get the pill down her throat properly.
"Hang on." Raye said, looking around for something for Laura to drink. She didn't expect her to swallow the pill without chewing it.
Archer let out a weary sigh, reaching for something on his back. He unclasped a case of some kind before he removed a packet, a liquid of some kind sloshing around within. Archer found a cap and twisted it off. He held it towards Laura, offering it to the bluenette, "drink it, and maybe next time don't do that."
Her helmet dropped to the ground as Laura quickly grabbed the packet and guzzled it down, the liquid taking the pill along with it. Relieved of the obstruction in her throat, she ploped herself onto the ground and breathed a heavy sigh.
“…thanks,” she said quietly.
Archer glanced at her, "no problem," he replied quickly.
"Next time, chewing the pill might be better." Raye said, offering another pill to Archer.
Laura stared at Raye with shock. “Chew? But you said it was a pill!” she exclaimed.
"Yeah, but some pills are chewable." Raye pointed out.
Archer stared at the pill being offered to him, glancing upward to Raye after Laura's shock. He took it, pulling off his helmet. A bundle of poofy tentacles decompressed from the interior of the helmet, purple outlines around his eyes. Archer put the pill into his mouth and swallowed it without any difficulty. "Thanks," he mumbled, surprised after the offer.
“Huh.” Laura scoffed before she began to snicker. “Well, what else did you expect, Raye?”
She let out an amused sigh as she slightly shook her head. “I mean, he wasn't particularly interested in rescuing us…”
"Definitely not this." Raye admitted.
"What did you expect then, Pin--Raye?" Archer asked, looking at the two before giving a sharp glare to Laura.
"Honestly, another Inking who was infiltrating to find out what was going on here. With so many Inklings getting kidnapped, it was bound to have caught someone's attention."
Laura returned her own glare of suspicion and contempt towards Archer.
"From what I've found here, it's not just Inklings getting kidnapped. Octolings are getting the same treatment too."
"Why would this place be experimenting on their own kind? I thought they were prepping for an invasion of Inkopolis?"
Archer shrugged, equally confused, "I don't know why Octolings are getting experimented on. I would go find out, but that's not why I'm here."
"Besides," he continued, "you kids are capable fighters," the man stopped to think for a moment, a slight grimace on his face, "I would hope at least."
Laura continued to stare at Archer, in disbelief of what she was hearing.
Turning towards Raye, Laura spoke up about the stop on the way back. "So Raye, what was so interesting about the floor back there?"
"Some weird goop. According to OOPA, it seemed like... ink... but modified somehow."
"Ink, but modified?" Laura had a confused look on her face as her head moved back is disbelief.
"Well, it definitely doesn't spread like normal ink, and it's extremely sticky. Not to mention, it almost seems... alive..."
"W-Wh-Wha-Wait," Laura exclaimed, her eyes now wide open in shock. "Alive?! How?!"
"I can't place the feeling exactly, but I definitely got a bad feeling about that stuff."
“Any idea how it got there? I mean… It had to come from somewhere.”
"None. And frankly, I don't want to even think about where it came from."
Laura frowned at Raye's statement, before her face lit up revealing that she had an idea.
She turned towards Archer. “You wouldn't happen to know anything about this mystery ink, would you?”
Archer quickly shook his head, giving a slight shrug, "I don't know about this ink honestly, it's as new to you as it is to me."
"In my time here, I haven't wanted to touch anything that could potentially kill me. Suspicious things like that tend to kill," he continued, putting his helmet back on, "like I said, I like living."
“I think we can all agree to that ourselves,” Laura added. “Right, Raye?”
"Indeed." Raye said.
“So…what are we going to do now?” Laura asked, at a loss of what to possibly do or where to even go next.
"Keep moving, I suppose. Don't want to get locked down and recaptured." Raye said.
"Good idea, Raye," Archer chimed in, "I know for a fact that they'd probably do a lot worse to me than to you two."
Soon after that, the alarms that had been ringing out around them had suddenly stopped for whatever reason. Along with the the puddle of ink that Raye had referred to wasn’t moving anymore. Perhaps it was the sound that was agitating it? Maybe there truly is something inside of it. But, at least it stopped moving, right?
However, what Archer had said was a fair bit of bad news. It had confirmed that they definitely weren’t going to be picked up by anyone from the outside, not even outside forces like Archer’s group seemed to care, judging by how his response.
What next?
