Okay so their story is still much in development but. Soap is a young version of a Stinger-type salmonid who wandered far away during a run (such as in the sunken scrolls) find Cricket in the process (I don't know what they would be doing at this time but highly likely rummaging through scraps). Being interested in Soap they decide to follow it but not before taking the form of a smallfry themselves to better fit in with the salmonids.

They end up living with them for quite sometime (this specific group of salmonids is quite far away, undiscovered by grizzco. It will be important later) before coming across a different character I have (you probably have seen him but I've just never talked about him within the SolarSparky agent lore. Basically he's a repairman of sorts, part of a group with each member specializing in different types of things; they run a repair shop!) This inkling does trades with the salmonids in exchange for well. Repairs; he gets power eggs/rarely Golden eggs and some scraps of salmonid tech, in exchange for repairs of their tools/equipment!

So basically Neo sees him (kinda like a oh this guy is like me sorta deal) doesn't really think too much about him. We'll come back to him later though.

Here's where the lore gets little funky. Idk how, when, or why Cricket would leave the salmonids but they do. Something something, they end up working for grizzco, they end up being a very highly praised employee for how well they work (being that they lived with the salmonids for a while), they get a volunteer opportunity from grizzco and decide to take it, but this ends up with them being taken to just above alterna (I thinkkk if I'm remembering correctly there is another layer above Alterna, I'm imaging it as some sort of a lab or similary facility.). Since Cricket was a very skilled employee, the volunteer opportunity was being a test subject for the fuzzy ooze. Nothing happens to them though, they get out before anything happens, but they end up down in alterna (I'm still thinking about when; my first thought was that they fall a little bit after a different Neo (suprise I have two Neos :) falls into Alterna. But now I'm thinking they fall down a little while before everyone else comes down.)

Remember that guy Cricket saw trading with the salmonids? That's the other Neo :)