Fanfic / Inky Future

X awakens in a strange future. From left to right: Marie, Artemis, X, Orion. ^note Image by VCampan.

Marie: Why are you like this? We’re strangers. You haven’t even met Callie. You’re in a completely alien world, and yet you still try to see the good in everyone and help people.

X: Maybe it’s the ethics testing I went through, even if I barely remember any of it. Or maybe it’s the promise I made to Dr. Light before he sealed me away. But either way, I want to do right by everyone. I still don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I guess the least I can do is show some compassion. Be a solid rock for others to hold onto, even in the middle of stormy seas.

Inky Future is a crossover fanfiction between Mega Man X (also Mega Man (Classic) by extension) and Splatoon, written by Candescence. It begins in the middle of Splatoon 2's Hero Mode story.

Artemis and Orion, siblings who also happen to be Agents 5 & 6 of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, stumble upon an ancient human laboratory in Octo Canyon excavated by the Octarians, during their quest to rescue Callie and the Great Zapfish. Inside they find the last known surviving human-made robot - X, the masterpiece of the late Dr. Thomas Light. Marie (aka Agent 2) makes the call to activate X, deciding that it would be better to take the risk in hopes he would be an ally, rather than risk letting him fall into Octarian hands.

X, for his part, finds himself waking up in a world almost completely alien compared to what he expected. He quickly finds himself involved in the conflict between the New Squidbeak Splatoon and the Octarians, ultimately concluding that he needs to fight to prevent all-out war from erupting...

It's split into multiple arcs (with future arcs after the first three being separate works on Archive of Our Own):

• Inky Future:
  • Octo Canyon/Hero Mode: X joins Artemis, Orion and Marie in their quest to rescue Callie and the Great Zapfish.
  • Octo Expansion: After learning of a robot wandering around Inkopolis, Off The Hook find and inform X of the Deepsea Metro, including the plight of two Octolings and the captain of the New Squidbeak Splatoon. And on top of that, Kamabo Corp has somehow gotten its hands on some of Dr. Wily's old robots, including Robot Masters...
  • Hostile Takeover: The first original arc. Agent 3 & 4 are determined to ensure that their juniors aren't going to rest on their laurels, and X is running himself ragged trying to figure out what to do with the Deepsea Metro and its denizens now that Kamabo Corp is a borderline defunct entity. And Commander Tartar is Not Quite Dead, having backed himself up and taken over the body of Quint, commanding the Mega Man Killers and the Genesis Unit to exact revenge.
• The Pleasant Phantom Thief: The second original arc. A phantom thief has been going around stealing corporate secrets, and the government has asked the New Squidbeak Splatoon to investigate, if possible. The trouble is, how does one even begin to investigate when the thief has virtually no trail to follow? On top of that, the Agents have their own personal issues to deal with, including Ethan getting romantically involved with Marino, Marina's sister, who nearly killed him two years prior in Octo Valley...
• Unswimmingly: The third original arc. During a slightly less routine mission infiltrating an Octarian base, the New Squidbeak Splatoon find themselves in hot water when their target, an Octarian scientist named Gate, unleashes some kind of experiment that forces the team into their swim forms, unable to change back. The team, now split up, have to avoid being captured or splatted while X and Zero stage a rescue mission...

Also available on Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity. Currently an ongoing series, it has hit roughly 150,000 words and counting.

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Inky Future contains examples of:

• Adaptation Amalgamation: Shadow Man's backstory is taken from the comics where he served as a Kupier Droid under the Stardroids and Ra Moon.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • The Robot Masters all now pack the Double Gear system. Doesn't help 'em much against X, though.
  • Dr. Light turns out to be a master of the Ansetsuken fighting style, which is how he passed the knowledge of the Hadouken to X.
  • OVER-1 gains time manipulation powers strong enough to overpower Quint's Time Skimmer.
• Adaptational Explanation:
  • How the Dr. Light AI keeps getting four to eight capsules to X in the games goes without explanation. Here, X hypothesizes that the capsules use teleportation technology to arrive at where he's going, which is later proven correct in the Deep Sea Metro.
  • The ability of test subjects to survive in the Deep Sea Metro is explained by the station providing free food and drink for its passengers with the central station having a side area for sleeping. Seven and Eight not dying from any injuries they incur has healing sprays used for post-test patching up.
• Adaptational Wimp: Sigma-3 goes from requiring Super Sonic, Super Mega Man and a power drain to stop him to getting bumped off by a backstab from Quint, albeit using Sakugarne's greatsword mode combined with Mirror Buster to drain his power completely and attacking Sigma-3 when he was completely self-assured of his victory and had his guard down, not expecting Quint to show up out of nowhere, prepared in advance with a purpose-built counter to Sigma-3.
• Adaptation Species Change: Pretty much every single post-Classic Mega Man character aside from X and Zero who appears so far is an Inkling, an Octoling or some other aquatic species instead of a robot. Professor Gaudile in particular becomes an actual platypus.
• Amicable Exes: Ethan and Ayane dated for a bit, but found they didn't have any chemistry. They're still great friends and work together well as agents.
• And I Must Scream: Tartar's ooze mixture as described by Prof. Gaudile.
  Gaudile: My hypothesis is that the blender technology forces victims into a half-transformed inky state, keeping them alive but scrambling their consciousness, and when mixed with other victims, their minds partially meld, preventing them from properly regaining their senses, nevermind their sense of individuality and self.
  X: You’re saying the ooze is still alive.
  Gaudile: That’s correct. I’ve confirmed this by detecting multiple distinct sets of neural signals in the ooze, along with what I believe are rudimentary nanomachines used to control the signals. Tartar was able to control those affected by the ooze directly, influencing their minds to think in an intended manner, and suppressing memories, using the neural signals to do so.
• As You Know: Marino uses the phrase to point out how she used to be in special ops when explaining how she escaped the Octarian army to Marina.
• Attack the Mouth: When the Cohozuna splats Artemis during the Salmon Run (she gets better), Orion shoves a Sting Ray into its mouth, locks it into its jaw and pulls the trigger, which splats it outright.
• The Atoner: Ciel regrets designing and creating war machines while she was in the Octarian Army, seeking to create a new renewable power source in hopes that Inklings and Octarians won't need to fight over the Zapfish anymore and to resolve the Octarian energy crisis.
• Ax-Crazy: As one would expect, Zero when he still has The Virus, making him more powerful but driving him insane, which forced Wily to try and create control programs to fix the problem. Dr. Light notes that this was one of Wily's more hare-brained ideas, and that he wasn't as competent with AI as he thought he was.
• Bang, Bang, BANG: Explicitly averted when human-era firearms appear, with firearm noise being treated realistically - even a single shot from a revolver actively hurts the ears of the Inklings and Octolings present, and Artemis notes that firearms shouldn't be used without ear protection.
• Beware the Nice Ones: X snapping is the one thing nobody wants. Tartar finds this out the hard way after he blends Artemis, Orion, Iris, Axl, Ayane and Ethan and then gloated about it to X to cause him the most emotional agony possible. X overclocks his systems and proceeds to take apart the Mega Man Killers and Genesis Unit singlehandedly, and then basically tortures Tartar in retaliation, with the only thing stopping him from killing Tartar outright is the overclocking causing his body to give out.
• Back from the Dead: The Stardroids sans Sunstar were glued back together after the Black Hole Empire found their remains. It took a long time due to Duo being more active after the Evil Robot died.
• Berserk Button: One of X's is brainwashing, or removing someone's free will in general. The problem is, both DJ Octavio and Commander Tartar employ the use of brainwashing methods, which frustrates him to no end.
  • For Orion, don't hurt his sister. The Cohozuna finds this out the hard way.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Callie, of course and she still is a sleeper agent for Octavio even after regaining her senses, Ethan and Ayane/Agents 3 & 4 when the Telephone partially sanitizes them, and Zero twice over from both partial sanitization and the "Robot Destruction Program" that would've become the Maverick Virus.
  • At the end of the "Hostile Takeover" arc, Callie successfully tricks Marie into letting her put a pair of hypnoshades on her, enabling her to use it and a hypnotic tape to begin brainwashing Marie into another of Octavio's sleeper agents as preparation for a long-term plot.
• Breather Episode: "The Pleasant Phantom Thief" is this after the first three arcs kept building to world-threatening situations. The hunt for the titular thief is mostly in the background with the main focus being on character exploration and some setting expansion.
• Bridal Carry: X carries Dedf1sh out of the Deepsea Metro in this manner.
• Bound and Gagged: The Splatoon ties and gags a trio of guards when they first infiltrate Gate's laboratory.
• Call-Back:
  • As Dr. Light and Cuttlefish discuss their relationships with their archenemies, Light recalls the alternate timeline where Wily turned good.
  • In this story's version of Mega Man 8, Mega Man again attempted to kill Wily for the greater good. Wily points they've done this once before.
• Call-Forward:
  • A popular rumor going around proven in Splatoon 3 is Mr. Grizz being a bear.
  • As well, Leviathan briefly ends up in Alterna during their jaunt through time, briefly meeting an Inkling and an Octoling who are implied to both have the role of Neo Agent 3 and are also implied to be Ashe and Grey.
  • The Phantom Thief uses a Zipcaster, one of the third game's special weapons.
• Calling Your Attacks:
  • The Robot Masters do this when activating Double Gear.
  • X does this when using the Hadouken, as does anyone else using it.
• Canon Welding:
  • It's revealed that the reason Dr. Light practices Ansatsuken is because he was taught by a previous practitioner who set up their own dojo. That person in question was implied to be Ken after he retired from running the Masters Foundation, later confirmed by the author in the postmortem author's notes for Hostile Takeover, who also noted that Ryu occasionally would come in to provide instruction as well.
  • The story also starts including elements of other Capcom series as part of the setting pre-apocalypse - in Part 7 of The Pleasant Phantom Thief, the New Squidbeak Splatoon raid an Octarian lab housing weapons and items from Devil May Cry, Strider and Bionic Commando which they add to their weaponry. Gate's mode-lock weapon incorporates supernatural elements, specifically the Devil Sword Dante, which draws the attention of Morrigan Aensland (with some implied assistance by none other than Sissel). The weapons later cause Ethan and Iris to be possessed by the spirits of Dante and Vergil while High Max is built out of the body of Mundus, who turns out to be Not Quite Dead.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: The agents shoot the breeze while painting down the NILS statue. This is lampshaded hard during said breeze-shooting, and they're doing it mostly because all twelve agents are involved and this makes the job of painting the statue comically easy. This is immediately dropped when Dr. Wily and Gamma appear, the latter of which is much more challenging.
• Chick Magnet: Zero is quick to attract the attention of Callie, Ciel and Iris, though he does gently avoid pursuing the latter after noting Artemis' interest. It's also noted that he seemed to garner a lot of female attention when out and about.
• Closet Key:
  • Seven turns out to be this for Orion.
  • Marina ended up being this for Pearl when they first met, though not in a sense of "I like girls now" and more "Here's someone I would settle down with".
• Composite Character:
  • Iris is a fusion of her original version, Colonel and Iris -Another-.
  • Commander Tartar takes elements from both his original Japanese characterization and the English localization of Octo Expansion.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Dr. Light's AI adapts the Armour Parts to account for Inkling technology and ink in general.
  • Sheldon made multiple Hero Suits on the off chance they needed a few spares, which comes in handy when Artemis and Orion's teammates suddenly arrive to aid in recovering the Great Zapfish.
  • Dr. Light came up with a plan to kill Mundus and kept it for thousands of years on the off chance he would need it.
• Crossover Finale: Hostile Takeover not only has Quint and Leviathan traveling across multiple timelines and time periods, Quint also ends up resorting to not only taking control of Andromeda from Mega Man Star Force, then he steals the power Sigma gained in the Worlds Unite crossover to merge with Andromeda and become a god of time, resulting in OVER-1 gathering heroes from across the time stream to stop him, including characters from Mega Man Zero, Mega Man Legends, Mega Man Battle Network, Mega Man Star Force, Rockman X Over, Mega Man X DiVE and even the Archie Sonic comic series - most of the cast end up keeping Andromeda busy while Leviathan and Sonic manage to get into Quint's 'cockpit' to fight him two-on-one.
• Curse Cut Short: Punk nearly says "fuck" just before Ethan starts blasting him in Chapter 16.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Zero is defeated in battle by X, Axl and Iris and repaired by Ciel, who purges his systems of Wily's virus and control programs. She convinces him to join the side of good immediately afterwards.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The Evil Robot was accidentally revived by Wily and finished off by Mega Man instead of being left dead upon colliding with Earth.
• Easily Forgiven: Ethan has no problems with forgiving Marino for nearly killing him back during the first rescue of the Great Zapfish. It turns out later that the main hurdle is Marino forgiving herself for the act.
• Easy Sex Change: Koji and Karlene are both trans and have already begun transitioning while still teens. Orion later undergoes an experimental treatment to transition into a non-binary sexual identity via a necklace that alters his physiology gradually by tweaking how his body "remembers" his shape. This is handwaved by the natural Inkling ability to transform easing the process for certain physical aspects and using the data from the fusions to find a way to even tweak sex organs, though normally proper surgery is still required for the change in sexual organs. Any psychological aspects such as counseling go unmentioned and the relevant medical documentation is quickly brushed over.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Wily robots under Tartar's command find his plan to blend the Agents together to be unnerving.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Gate learns the hard way that making High Max out of the corpse of devil prince Mundus was a bad idea when it comes back to life and nearly kills Gate for the mere temerity of trying to control him.
• The Evils of Free Will: This was the reasoning behind Kamabo Corp's sanitization process was thinking that free will was the root cause of humans dying out. X vehemently disagrees with this notion.
• Exotic Extended Marriage: Multiple partner relationships are an acceptable practice in Octoling culture. The Octo versions of the navigators are in a four-way with the interest of integrating Callie and Zero, as is Ciel.
• Expy: Ethan and Hinata are, in many ways, Goggles and Bobble Hat from the Splatoon manga, except Ethan isn't quite as much of an Idiot Hero and Hinata's Genki Girl tendencies are a mental condition.
• Faking the Dead: Shadow Man does this to escape the heroes after they trounce the other Robot Masters. He was planning to potentially ambush them again, but by the time he came back around to potentially do so they got reinforcements and blew up both the NILS Statue and Gamma (along with Tartar and Wily), leaving him at a loss until Terra showed up.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: X makes it clear to Octavio after their battle that as terrible as the Octoling's conditions are, Octavio's desire to restart the war and brainwashing his own subjects crossed the line.
• Fusion Dance: Starting with the third arc, the Splatoon discovers it's possible for Inklings and Octolings to fuse together in their ink forms. Unlike most fusions in media, the combined forms have the mass of all participants, making them very tall and with a lot of muscle.
  • Artemis, Orion, Iris, Axl, Ayane and Ethan perform a Gem-style fusion after being blended to save X from Tartar. The end result is named "Leviathan".
  • Later, the squad uses their experience to find a way to fuse willingly. The experience ends up quite literally using dancing to get the respective fusion partners in sync, even explicitly referencing how animated works tend to do so with dance.
• Genki Girl: Artemis and Hinata, in different ways.
• Happiness in Slavery: Played with. Ahato Mizuta (aka DJ Dedf1sh) willingly underwent sanitization not only to erase her doubts about music production, but also so she could dedicate herself to working for Kamabo Corp, which she was utterly miserable doing beforehand. When X (who has managed to hack himself into taking over the company since Tartar is gone) tells he intends to fix her, she freaks out, misconstruing his intentions and believing she'll go back to being miserable again. When he tries to clarify, her "programming" renders her completely incapable of comprehending the idea of being actually free and being able to live a happy life. X is mortified by this.
• Heel Realization: After being defeated by Leviathan and Sonic, Quint realizes how foolish his intentions ultimately were, and how much harm he enabled by not stopping Tartar earlier. Unfortunately, he's also infected by an alternate timeline version of the Sigma Virus, forcing him to self-destruct to prevent the virus from spreading and to destroy all trace of the Time Skimmer.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Quint self-destructs after realizing his error, due to being infected with the Sigma Virus and to prevent the Time Skimmer from potentially falling into the wrong hands.
• Hidden Depths: Zero has a knack for playing the guitar. He figures it was a holdover from Wily liked to give his robots quirky personalities.
• High-Pressure Emotion: Pearl is described as having steam coming out of her ears when she finds out about Marina and Marino being sisters.
• Hijacked by Ganon:
  • Dr. Wily's digital ghost pulls it just as well as his human self did, taking out Tartar at the end of Octo Expansion after the latter fails and attempting to destroy Inkopolis himself.
  • The Stardroids are threatening to do so behind the scenes as of Intermission 3, with Terra plotting to enslave the entire Inkling and Octarian species to serve as soldiers for the Black Hole Empire.
  • Tartar hijacks Quint's body, only for Quint to be Not Quite Dead and hijacks him back near the end of the Hostile Takeover arc, claiming the role of the arc's final antagonist. He then proceeds to hijack Sigma's role of main antagonist in Worlds Unite to steal his power, only for Sigma to try and steal it back, forcing Quint to self-destruct at the end of the arc to stop him from doing so.
• Has a Type: Artemis discovers that she apparently has a thing for Octoling girls - especially cute ones, which makes things awkward when she meets Marina and Eight/Iris.
• Humongous Mecha: Two have shown up thus far - specifically, the Wily Robo Iron Golem as used by DJ Octavio in combination with the Octobot King and the rebuilt Gamma courtesy of the Dr. Wily AI.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: When traditional firearms are introduced into the story, Artemis takes gun safety very seriously. The reason? When she was younger, she accidentally shot her dad in the leg while he was teaching her how to use one.
• I'll Kill You!: X shouts this just as he starts taking on Tartar, the Mega Man Killers and the Genesis Unit all at once. He almost succeeds too.
• In Spite of a Nail: Even though X isn't used to conceptualize and create Reploids like he was in the Mega Man X series, many of the characters that resulted from the invention of Reploids are still around, just in different circumstances. For one example, Axl is still a shapeshifter that dual-wields guns, only his pistols are Dualies, and his shapeshifting isn't from being a New-Generation Reploid, but being a Mimic Octopus.
• Instant Expert: Downplayed. Orion manages to pull off a Hadouken shortly after seeing X perform it. A dinky, Dan Hibiki level Hadouken, but one nonetheless.
• Jaw Drop: The reaction most of the Splatoon has to Ethan recognizing Marino as nearly having killed him.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • Dr. Wily's AI copy is destroyed along with Gamma due to AI degradation, which also caused him to neglect backing himself up.
  • Tartar is deleted when Quint's consciousness emerges and takes back his body.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: ViA wonders if he's in "some kind of weird fanfic universe" when he and the others OVER-1 gathered meet up with the Splatoon.
• Meaningful Name: Discussed by X and Artemis - the former brings up the mythological connections to Artemis and Orion's names, which were mostly lost to time, with the only surviving details being that they were the names of legendary hunters.
• Mind Hive: Leviathan has this, much like Gem fusions. The main reason that Agents 3 through 8 manage to make it work is because they have close bonds and learned to link their minds to coordinate while still maintaining their individuality. Learning that this is the case triggers a Villainous Breakdown in Commander Tartar, who was expecting their minds to be merged and in fact detests the concept of individuality and free will, and Leviathan gleefully rubs this fact in in their face and insinuates that Tartar's desired "ultimate life form" would never work with melded minds without senses of self and individuality.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Dr. Light's warning on the capsule is a mixture of the dialogue used in Mega Man X and Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X. The Armour Parts capsules also have their lines modeled after the latter.
  • During an impromptu interview with Off the Hook, X quotes Mega Man's "everlasting peace" ending line.
  • Ciel's dialogue to Zero after repairing him is modeled after the speech to him at the end of Mega Man Zero 3.
  • After taking over Kamabo Corp, X considers renaming it "Arcadia Corporation", referencing Neo Arcadia and the city of Arcadia from X's time period in the comics.
  • Leviathan's pursuit of Quint through the time stream results in them not only ending up in the time period of the Great Turf War (confusing the heck of a much younger Cap'n Cuttlefish and DJ Octavio who were about to fight) but also ending up in Tron Bonne's accidental nudity scene, the Deep Log, Zero Vs. Omega and Zero Vs. Weil on Ragnarok, and the battle against ClockMan.EXE.
  • Quint remarks after backstabbing Sigma-3 and stealing his power, "Now I've got your power, Sigma."
• Not Quite Dead: Commander Tartar, via data backup and the use of Quint's body. It doesn't last, however.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Discussed. After dealing with Commander Tartar, X takes note that building the Deepsea Metro would have cost a lot of time, money and resources. One of his new goals is following the paper trail to see how they got it all, which also makes him realize that just dismantling the company itself isn't so simple, and there are actual people who rely on it for their livelihoods, leading to him running the company himself to steer it in a new direction.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Poor Artemis continuously gets reminded of how she accidentally exposed the existence of the New Squidbeak Splatoon to Karlene and Hinata by not being careful with operational security.
• One-Man Army: X in the full set of First Armour can wipe the floor with a small army of Robot Masters with little effort.
• The Pollyanna: Hinata, caused by a mental condition specific to Inklings and Octolings.
• Punch Catch:
  • When Octavio admits to brainwashing his troops, an enraged X taps into his limitless potential and catches the Octobot King's flying fist attack before knocking it back.
  • A restored Zero intercepts Gamma's punch before it can take out Off the Hook's helicopter.
• Ragnarök Proofing:
  • X can teleport since the satellite network for teleportation is still operative. The issue of power is explained as using solar energy.
  • Averted with Dr. Wily's AI. It apparently degraded too much over the years to save.
• Related in the Adaptation: Marina and this timeline's version of Marino are sisters.
• Robosexual: Marie and Callie soon end up crushing on X and Zero respectively.
• Self-Deprecation: Hinata calls the climax of the "Hostile Takeover" arc stupid, but still fun.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Gate develops a device that can force Inklings and Octolings into swim mode and leave them there. When the New Squidbeak Splatoon infiltrate his lab, he unleashes it on them, severely complicating the mission.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Ethan and Ayane's experiences rescuing the Great Zapfish and two years of fighting Octarians in general have made them a bit more hard-ass and far more blase to danger than someone should be of their age. Ethan even admits that the two "grew up a bit too fast" as a result.
• Shout-Out:
  • Quick Man's Symbol Swearing is a direct reference to ULTRAKILL, specifically Gabriel's iconic rant at the end of his first fight.
  • "Crapbaskets" (or its Splatoon-based alternative "carpbaskets") has been said a couple of times.
  • After saving Seven and Eight from getting pureed, Ethan attempts to do the trope-naming quote for Big Damn Heroes from Firefly. Ayane wasn't in the mood to finish it.
  • Upon hearing of his death, Punk insists that Wily doesn’t die, even when he’s killed.
  • Leviathan is by the author's own admission inspired by Steven Universe, specifically being a Gem-style Fusion Dance.
  • Ciel's robot Hydro Dragoon goes by the name Merga after the character from Freedom Planet 2, and is effectively a Composite Character.
• Staircase Tumble: Artemis trips going down the school stairs to greet X when she sees him in Inkopolis for the first time.
• The Stations of the Canon: This fic does generally adhere to the general beats of the two story modes of Splatoon 2, but with some notable changes in worldbuilding and cast:
  • There was an Agent 4 before Artemis and Orion came along, specifically Ayane, who teamed up with Ethan/Agent 3 to defeat DJ Octavio the first time around. There also ends up being five more agents than normal by the end of the Octo Expansion arc, with Karlene, Hinata, Liam and Koji joining up, and there being two Octolings, Seven and Eight also known as Axl and Iris, resulting in a total of a dozen agents in the Splatoon in total.
  • Inklings and Octolings don't immediately splat when exposed to water.
  • Unlike the normal Splatoon canon, not all mammals went extinct, though only a select number of species survived the apocalypse that wiped out all the others, and even fewer evolved to sapience like the sea creatures did.
  • A King Salmonid shows up in a Salmon Run long before Splatoon 3. This is treated as an exceptional and completely unexpected occurrence, however.
  • The entire Mega Man X canon aside from the creation of both X and Zero is just straight up thrown out due to Dr. Cain never finding and activating X, nor creating Reploids.
  • The epilogue of "Hostile Takeover" features a flashback that essentially re-writes the conclusion of Mega Man 8. Specifically, the Evil Robot/Trio was revived by Dr. Wily's meddling with Evil Energy, and the resulting Evil Energy exposure Mega Man experienced from fighting said robot caused him to nearly kill Wily using the Zeroth Law Override as a justification due to putting all of humanity in danger, only to be stopped by Duo, Proto Man and Bass.
• Split Personality: Eight/Iris has a separate "warrior persona" personality, due to having to deal with expectations to become an exceptional soldier while growing up. The split personality is this timeline's version of Colonel.
• Symbol Swearing: Done by Quick Man in Chapter 7.
• Take That!: RiCO turns mouthpiece when she calls OVER-1's game "crappy" and doesn't care that Mega Man: Fully Charged didn't get included.
• Tempting Fate: Marie makes the mistake of doing this in Chapter 16 when she comments there isn't much world-saving left to do. Callie even tells her not to jinx it. Sure enough, things start going bad shortly after.
• Time Police: OVER-1 is a time guardian (specifically part of the "Chronos Corps"), which is why he stops Quint from going back in time, starts assembling Mega Men from multiple timelines for the final battle of Hostile Takeover and helps the heroes get Leviathan back to the present.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Despite looking like a deceased species and a robot, nobody seems to be wigging out over X too much when he's in Inkopolis. Then again, considering most Inklings in Inkopolis seem to have mistaken Octolings as "Inklings with odd hairstyles"... Still, it's noteworthy enough for Inkopolis News to do a news report on it.
• Victory by Endurance: Octavio attempts this in his fight with the New Squidbeak Splatoon by hovering out of range while shielded and bombarding them from above. It fails when the team discovers the shield generator can only output so much and was breakable, as well as creative ways to get up to his location.
• Villainous Breakdown: Tartar suffers this in Chapter 18 when Leviathan tells him to his face that they're a Mind Hive, not a single merged mind, deliberately using the pronouns "we" and "us" to drive the point home. Then after suffering a nasty Curb-Stomp Battle, it only gets worse, followed by Quint finally taking back control and erasing Tartar.
• Villain Has a Point: Orion finds himself admitting in Chapter 12 that Tartar's remarks about the Inkling lifestyle and Octarian grudges were somewhat true.
• Villains Want Mercy: Like his flesh-and-blood version, the Dr. Wily AI starts begging for mercy when he's about to be deleted. This time, the heroes are much less willing to provide it, with Dr. Light's AI saying both of them are just digital ghosts who shouldn't belong in the world.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: While this still applies to Inklings and Octolings in general, Seven is a Mimic Octopus subspecies of Octoling, meaning he can manipulate ink to modify his own body to a degree and create extensions of himself to take on various guises and forms. It's a hint that he is this timeline's version of Axl.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Quint turns out to be this - immediately after exposing himself and erasing Tartar, he reveals that he wants to go back in time and stop the apocalypse that caused the entire setting of Splatoon to exist in order to save humankind, forcing Leviathan to chase him through time to try and stop him. When OVER-1 stops him, he decides he's thinking too small and aims to take control of the entire time stream to give every single timeline a happy ending. The fact that he's an alternate version of the original Mega Man makes this all the more tragic.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Marino pulls out what are implied to be a packet of condoms from her cleavage when she propositions Ethan for sex at the end of the Pleasant Phantom Thief arc.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: A common lament is that Dr. Wily wasted his talents and intelligence on a goal as unrealistic as world domination.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: Mega Man once invoked this as reason to try and kill Dr. Wily. Proto Man poked some holes in this trope by pointing out the populace wouldn't be comfortable with a robot that would kill anyone regardless of the reasoning.