Into The Light is a series of Splatoon fanfiction stories written by Gale_Breeze
, chronicling the events that follow Splatoon 2's Story Mode as well as the Octo Expansion. Each installment is done from one character's point of view.
The installments are Inkopolis In The Morning (Agent Three's point of view), The Surface Is Weird And Confusing And Generally A Place Of Little Logic (Agent Eight's point of view), Night In At The Idol's Apartment (Agent Three's point of view), and Pale Summer Moonlight (Agent Four's point of view).
As of August 27, 2022, it is currently on hiatus due to author burnout.
Into The Light contains examples of the following tropes:
- The Ace: Three and Eight. They're the two best fighters of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, and Eight is estimated to be on about the same level as Three.
- As good as Three and Eight are, Granny Burns didn't live to 120 without being just as dangerous, and with experience to back her up. It's outright stated by Three that fighting her is like fighting Eight, but better.
- Aroused by Their Voice: Eight thinks that Three and Callie's voices both sound really good and has some Blatant Lies in her narration trying to convince the audience that it's just a completely normal thing for friends to really like each others' voices.
- Awesome McCoolname: Eight thinks Three's real name, Trina Morgue, is cool.
- Bad Liar: Three is normally good at keeping secrets, with one major exception. When told that she and Eight are dying of a currently unknown cause, she decides not to tell Eight yet. She hasn't even rejoined the group for a minute before her apprehension is noticed and the secret is pulled out of her. Justified, as anyone who's been told such Earth-shattering news probably wouldn't be able to keep it a secret for long.
- Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Three's team from the IWTA bemoans that Three's replacing them with Eight, Pearl, and Marina, with the same roles of the Short Sexy One (Mable), Tall Brainy One (Zoe), and Mysterious and Buff One (Granny Burns).
- Berserk Button: Everybody's got a few.
- Three (oh boy): The Acolytes of the Eternal Reef, Salmonids, people who violate OSHA regulations, Splatterangs, her mother
- Eight: Hipsters, idiots, not telling her important things, anything related to Kamabo.
- Marina: Three
- Big Eater: Eight and Three, though Marina was supposedly this when she first got out of the Underground. It's later revealed that Eight and Three's massive appetites are caused by the Kamabo goo giving them a Healing Factor.
- Blatant Lies: Eight claims to not know what flirting is when Marie calls out her and Three's innuendo-ridden conversation. Callie calls her out on this by dropping the fact that Eight had sixty-seven counts of fraternization on her record.
- Octolings haven't existed for eighty years! That's a Granny Burns fact right there! The lie is only highlighted by how Granny Burns draws attention to her lack of Inkling mask and the presence of Octoling rings around her eyes.
- Blood Knight: It's generally a requirement to join the New Squidbeak Splatoon, though Three is the biggest example of this.
- Butt-Monkey: Three, enough that her being made fun of is supposedly the natural state of the world, and compounded by the fact that she considers herself to be Born Unlucky. She's able to get her own back, of course, with Pearl, Marina, and Four being her normal targets for jokes.
- Caper Crew: A non-villainous example in the New Squidbeak Splatoon. Captain Cuttlefish is the mastermind, Callie is the infiltrator, Marie is the information gatherer, Three, Four, and Eight as the muscle, Marina as the hacker, and Pearl as The Team Benefactor.
- The Casanova: Eight before Kamabo, if her sixty-seven counts of fraternization are anything to go by.
- Celebrity Masquerade: All of the members of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, bar Eight and the Captain, have a job that had some degree of visibility. Callie, Marie, Pearl, and Marina are, of course, celebrity musicians, Three is a weapons tester for the IWTA, and Four is a high-level Ranked player as well as a professional model.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Three has this reputation due to accusing Granny Burns of being an Octarian repeatedly.
- Covert Pervert: Eight has multiple occasions where she needs to put in effort to get her mind out of the gutter.
- Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Eight has a tendency to vastly underestimate how strong she is compared to how durable Inklings are, with Three being her most common victim.
- The Dreaded: Three, to the point where Octolings have generally considered fighting her to be suicide. Most Inklings don't fear having a weapon to their face, since they can just respawn, but Three's able to instill actual terror by doing the same thing.
- Eight's able to turn on the fear factor as well, with it even working on Three.
- Everyone Can See It: The only people oblivious to Three and Eights' mutual crushes are the two of them.
- Freudian Trio: The Squid Sisters plus Three, with Callie as the impulsive and energetic Id, Three as the grumpy and tired Superego, and Marie as the sensible and calm Ego.
- The Gadfly: Just about everybody aside from Captain Cuttlefish. Three ends up the usual target of this, enough so that Eight says that Pearl and Marina making fun of Three's tacky taste in furniture was a sign that the universe had returned to its normal state.
- Healing Factor: After some cluing-in by Judd, Three and Eight realize that their exposure to Kamabo's sanitization goo gave them extremely rapid regeneration, at the cost of forcing them to eat their weight in food each day.
- Hidden Depths: Her rough exterior and ace fighting skills definitely distract you from Three's skill as a cook.
- It's All About Me: The new member of the GrizzCo team, Lance, acts like this, accusing everyone of cheating when he loses. He gets kicked off the team in short order, until he gets an attitude adjustment.
- Land Down Under: Three's from Nemonia, the Splatoon world version of Australia.
- Mirror Character: Three and Eight are both agents for the New Squidbeak Splatoon who prefer to go by their agent number. Both are also The Ace and The Dreaded, and are by far the most militaristic agents. They're extremely similar, with the big different being that Eight is a Genki Girl and Three is a grump.
- Mood Whiplash: A confrontation between Three and Marina leaves an awkward silence between the two of them, Eight, and Pearl... up until Zoe appears and tackles Three out of her seat, with the appearance of Three's IWTA crew immediately lightning the mood.
- Mundane Utility: Eight derives a lot of joy from seeing how Marina used Kettle technology - the most important and restricted technology of the entire Octarian army - to expand her car's trunk space.
- Oblivious to Love: Eight's only question about Three repeatedly blushing around her is to wonder if she has a health condition.
- Old Soldier: Granny Burns, who lived through the Great War.
- The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: The importance of safety regulations is the one thing Three and Marina agree on, much to Eight's dismay.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Three sometimes slips back into her Australian/Nemonian accent when distracted.
- Papa Wolf: Captain Cuttlefish was not pleased when he found out what Octavio did to Callie.
- Pocket Dimension: Inkshifting, an Octarian technique, which allows them to store objects inside of their ink, based on how their clothes disappear when in squid form.
- Retcon: Inkopolis In The Morning has Three mention that she eats microwave meals because cooking sucks, but the very next story retcons that and has cooking skills be one of Three's Hidden Depths, with her despising instant meals for being a disgrace to cooking.
- Rite-of-Passage Name Change: After doing some investigating into Eight, Granny Burns leaves a package in her and Three's apartment with two sets of the legal documents needed to say she's a person - one with her real name, which she can't consciously remember, and one with her instead being known as Eight Astra.
- Ship Tease: There's so much between Three and Eight.
- Shout-Out:
- The Jasmine Bass movies are the Splatoon World's version of James Bond.
- Justin Flounder is a clear reference to Justin Bieber.
- The Squid Sisters were apparently contracted to be the singers for the Demons Mustn't Cry series.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Three tends to take this opinion about just about every couple around her. Marina and Pearl know this, and tend to push that button as much as possible.
- Super-Soldier: Eight, having been grown in a vat, is this. She's extremely tall and extremely buff, is certified to use the entire basic series of weapons, and has a set of extremely sharp claws. She mostly utilizes her strength to carry the Rainmaker in one hand whenever she gets it in Ranked.
- The Team Benefactor: Pearl. So much so that, when their location is compromised by Granny Burns, she gives them an entire spare house that she was using for storage, because it was gifted to her by an aunt she didn't particularly like.
- Tranquil Fury: Eight, whenever she turns her scary mode on.
- You Are Number 6: While Three and Four have identities outside of their codenames, Eight exclusively goes by her number because she can't remember her real name. Even when it's directly told to her, her brain is so messed up that she can't perceive it.
