Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Four had always felt like the weakest link in the New Squidbeak Splatoon. She wasn't a specialist in any areas or had a popstar carrier to fall back on or ran through dangerous tests in an underground subway. Jack of all trades, master of none, she's used to being the backup of most missions. Not like she didn't prided herself on her position as an agent of the New Squidbeak Splatoon! Before that, she was just some lame kid with even lamer clothes to boot. (Her combo of headband and tank top got her laughed out of every clothing store.) Her parents nagged her about studying all the time back home and shipped her off to Inkopolis Square when she was old enough because of the “prime learning opportunities”.

She had wandered the streets aimlessly, yet another face in a crowd of freshless newbies who hardly knew how the different bomb types worked. When Four first arrived she was doomed to a vicious cycle of studying all night, being too tired to perform well in Turf War due to all of the studying, barely scraping by due to her low scores, and studying even harder to enter a “good school”, which her parents thought would never happen if she didn’t have perfect grades. Blech. The only thing that had lifted her out of it was joining the NSS, and now that too was starting to slip from her grasp.

She remembers her first meeting with Marie well. The days had all blurred together in a hazy mix of failed Turf Wars and angry phone calls about dropping below a (Zapfish forbid!) eighty score. As she trudged back to her apartment to confront the piles of homework that awaited her, a voice called out. “Pssst! You in the unfresh headband!” Four’s head snapped up from her Seanwich and darted around. There, on top of a… sewer grate was a strange squid. She held a green umbrella and clenched the side of her gray kimono decorated with gold triangles, eyes darting around the square as if worried someone else might spot her. Four could swear that she had seen the stranger somewhere before.

When Gray Squid Lady locked eyes with Four she turned squid and slipped into the grates. Four, like most squidkids, had been given the “don’t talk to suspicious strangers” lecture a thousand times over by their parents. A nervous squid with weird clothes hiding in a grate was about as suspicious as one could get. Unfortunately for her parents, Four was tired. She had spent the last two years in a neverending routine that didn’t let her make new friends or check out the latest trends, and in a lapse of judgment she decided to follow Gray Squid Lady down into the sewers. If she got her arm ripped off like in that horror movie about the demon clownfish she wasn’t allowed to watch, at least it would be an interesting way to go. After an awkward interaction with the apparent pop star (Four knew she looked familiar!), she was recruited to be Agent Four of the New Squidbeak Splatoon. The first mission was where her worldview was shattered.

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“Hm. Not bad.” Marie’s voice crackled through the hero gear’s headphones.

Four had made it through the kettle unscathed so far, save for accidentally walking on enemy ink a couple times. A shielded octarian was the next enemy. Despite Marie’s advice, Four couldn’t get the aiming on the bomb right, always throwing it a bit too far. The footsoldier’s shots were slow and Four was getting impatient, waiting just a bit too long to throw and-

Pain shot through her leg, sickly magenta ink connecting with the suit’s built in armor. Getting hit by ink didn’t cause pain! In Turf War hits were minor at worst and dull thuds at best. Getting splatted was quick and usually over fast enough that you didn’t feel anything aside from annoyance. Four shifts into squid form (falls to the ground and cowers in her ink being a better description) and sneaks away to behind a box to tend to her injury.

"Four? You alright?” Marie’s voice asks. Four hisses from the pain and nods. Can Marie see her nod? “If you say so. Don’t be afraid to hide if you’re hurt. I wouldn’t want you to get splatted on your first mission. Three managed to last until at least the second.” The joke falls flat. Marie coughs. "Sorry. Gramps was always better at the crochety old mentor thing."

The pain in her leg is fading fast, but it was a harsh wake-up slap to Four's blissfully ignorant face. This wasn’t Turf War, where the worst punishment is lowering your rank or disappointed looks from your teammates. She waits until the footsoldier turns away to sneak up and splat them from behind. The rest of the level goes on with more shots grazing her body, each of them bringing a jolt of fear when they drawn near and pain when they hit. Four feels a bit dazed when she finally grabs the zapfish, staggering back to Cuttlefish Cabin.

"I’m sorry about that, Four. I’m used to working with Three or Callie. They have more experience. Not that you're useless! You're really great at finding dusty scraps of paper." Marie winces at the failed compliment. 

"It’s fine. You told me it was dangerous, right?” Four cracks a weak smile at her boss/mentor, trying to ignore the shaking of her hands and how messy her breathing is. Marie sits her down on the bench before folding her umbrella and walking into the cabin.

"Still, I should have remembered to warn you about the pressure and power levels. I'll be as forgetful as Gramps if this keeps up. I understand if you want to back out now, just as long as you-” Marie’s voice is muffled slightly by the shed, cut off by a loud clatter of pots and pans falling. Four sticks her head indoors to see the Squid Sister sifting through fallen cooking utensils. “Sorry, Four. Mind lending me a hand..?”

Four bent down to help pick up the cutlery and place it back on the shelf. “I wanted to make you some tea to help calm you down but ah…” Marie picked up a stack of pots and moved it to a lower shelf. “Might as well give you the lowdown while we clean. Weapons like the Hero Shot-” Marie gestured to the gun hanging on Four’s side. “-and Octotrooper vehicles don’t have any safety limits like the ones back in Inkopolis. They’re made for blasting through enemies, modified to have higher pressure and bigger damage.” Marie emerged victorious from the small pile, pulling out a slightly dented tea kettle before beconing Four to follow her outside.

“So does that mean that getting splatted is extra painful?” Four hoped that Marie would say no and reassure her that everything was going to be fine if she was careful. Marie did not

“...Octo Canyon is barely sustained by the power of the zapfish. It gets the troops and checkpoints running, but it takes a lot of juice to do so. Our respawns are even harder to wire up without energy from the Great Zapfish.” Marie grabbed the whistling kettle from the stove and handed her a mug that said Number Two Agent.

"Four, if you get splatted three times in a kettle, you die. For good. There’s no way to get you back after that.” The hot mug of tea in her hands doesn’t get rid of the cold fear in her heart.

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Four had been more cautious after that speech, running around the kettle she had already completed to get a feel for combat. She wasn’t gonna lie, it felt good to clear through damage less on her third try, splatting the shielded octotrooper before they even had the chance to fire. She had also found a weird hunk of metal and a dusty piece of paper that Marie called a “sunken scroll” on her second clearing. Four had discovered a newfound passion, looking through kettles for any bits and bobs that were interesting. Over the headset, Marie mentioned that they were more investigative than whoever Agent Three was.

Four's current theories were that Three was:

1. A war hardened veteran from some sort of secret operation to rescue the Great Zapfish when it went missing in Inkopolis Square.
2. Another idol, maybe from the new bands that popped up if being a singer was a recurring theme for recruitment. This one was shakey at best, because Four wasn't a popstar.
3. Sheldon.

She had finished blowing up an oven that tried to kill her with oversized donut glazers (who designed these things?) when Marie called her back to the cabin to take a break for a couple of days.

Four couldn’t agree more. Sure, saving the Great Zapfish was important, but you could only get almost killed by a sentient toaster oven so many times before you needed to take a moment and reflect back on how you went from studying 24/7 to fistfighting the world’s weirdest war machines so you can rescue the city’s power source.

As it turned out, being a secret agent made you really good at turf war. Four’s rank went up at least 4 levels (ha) during the break, and it was then that the city truly came to life. Finally, actual clothes instead of the world’s lamest tank top! Competitive games unlocked! An even sketchier job opportunity than Octo Canyon! The world was finally beginning to smile on Four, and she wasn’t going back to her tiny apartment to study anytime soon.

Her parents would have to drag her kicking and screaming if they wanted her to return to the countryside.

Two days later, a significantly happier and richer Four returned to the canyon. She liked the grind rail kettles the best. There wasn’t a lot to do in her hometown aside from practice in the tiny training area. It was lower quality than the ones in the city, balloons more patch than plastic from how many times they had been accidentally pierced. A small grind rail circle that hovered one foot above the ground lapped the tiny training zone, briefly rising in (gasp!) three feet so youngsters could learn how to dismount. A lot of her youth had been spent there, hurling herself off the end in many failed attempts at front flips, so she made sure that Marie got to see her freshest tricks that had resulted in many bruises and firm lectures about the dangers of grind rails.

This became her routine for many days, taking classes, dropping the extra tutoring sessions, her grades were already pretty good!, running to Octo Canyon to do kettles, occasion Grizzco shifts or Ranked battles, ignore her parent's angry phone calls, and taking the weekend off for some R&R. Four was living her best life. Things only picked up once Marie confirmed that the signals had been coming from Callie and the pair stormed this old DJ guy's stadium. It was truly squidtastic, lights flying everywhere, music blaring, and getting to ride the grind rails around while firing the Rainmaker ranked number one in her list of coolest things to do in life.

Even if no one knew it was her who had helped rescue Callie, Four could die happy with the knowlege that she had a wonderful life filled with friends, fresh beats, and the moral implications of grabbing small children off the streets to make them to fight a two-squid-and-a-horseshoe-crab war to rescue a kidnapped idol who got brainwashed.Marie made her come back to the canyon, to check over the now empty kettles and assist newly freed Octolings to the surface. Four did all that she was asked, watching as the city grew bigger and bigger with new weapons, styles and songs. Truly, life in the city was better than ever, and she for one couldn't wait to watch what it would become.

Chapter Text

Silver and gold confetti littered the streets of Inkopolis for weeks, massive banners boasting the perks of Chaos or Order still fluttering in the breeze. The Order banners graffitied over with golden spray paint "LOSER HAHA" slogans while the Chaos banners were decked out with enough glitter to make a kid go permanently blind if the sun flashed on them.

Four’s boots stomped fallen confetti into the slushy snow as she made her way into the sewers. As she swam out of the grate, the moving van greeted her, chipped painting of the Squid Sisters on the side mocking her. A few boxes remained on the ground, still revealing their contents. Four was glad to see that the light green scarf she knitted herself and gifted Marie last Splatmas was neatly folded up in a box labeled, “TO KEEP”.

“So… you’re really leaving?” She tilted her head to the side, expectant gaze locked onto Marie, who had stepped out of the cabin to put a few last minute items into the boxes.

"We discussed this last meeting, Four. I know it’s sudden, but a major city popping up without anyone to monitor it is trouble begging to happen. It’s like that time Crusty Shawn announced a sale on seanwiches right before the Final Fest.” Marie shot her a grin before ripping off a piece of tape and applying it to the top of the cardboard box. She remembered that time well. Callie had almost gotten trampled by the hordes of hungry battles when going incognito by the cart, and Marie cracked jokes about it for the next two days at her expense. Callie responded to this by poking fun at Marie’s role in mentoring Four, saying that she was “acting as old as Gramps!”, which caused the pair to spiral into a playfight. Four smiled at the memory.

“It’s just, I can’t really imagine Octo Canyon without you guys.” It felt a little silly to say that. They were pop stars! Of course they would be moving all over the place. Still, they had been constants in her life, and going to the canyon when no one was there felt… strange. Marie put the box into the van and ruffled Four’s tentacles.

“Trust me, I’m sad that I won’t get to see your dorky face every week, but I wouldn’t be leaving if I didn’t have complete faith in you! Well. Mostly complete faith.” Four jabbed Marie in the side playfully.

“The bus is fully packed!” Marie yelled, cupping her hands together so she could be heard over the clattering of machinery. Shelldon popped his head out the side, sending her a thumbs up before slamming the front of the truck shut. We’re all ready to go, ma’m! This truck is safer than the hood of a Tentabrella with weapons attack up! Speaking of Tentabrellas, did you know that when you…”

Four tuned out the weapons enthusiast's voice. Due to her reruns of Kettles being overseen by Marie or Sheildon, she now knew more about the Rapid Blaster and Splatterscope than she ever needed. The hermit crab had a tendency to ramble on, as did Four when something really interested her. Four snaps out of her thoughts when she hears the engine rumble to life, ready to drive off into the sunset in the direction of Splatsville.

"Goodbye, Foursie! I’ll make sure to write! Or send video calls!” Callie yells from somewhere inside the van, hopefully bucked down.

“Stay safe! Remember to feed Octavio!” Marie adds on as the truck lurches forward with a groan, before continuing the path forward.

“Bye Marie! Bye Callie! Bye Shelldon! I’ll keep Inkopolis safe!” Four yells at the truck, trying to make sure her voice is heard before it is completely out of range.

“I know you will!” Four can’t make out who said that, but the soft glow of pride fills her chest as she sits down to watch it drive away. Four sits there for roughly twenty minutes, watching the Squid Sisters Tour Bus slowly become a speck on the horizon. She stands up when the speck disappears and decides to check inside Cuttlefish Cabin. The normally homey space is devoid of most objects, leaving the room empty and uncomfortable. The remaining objects are mostly Four’s gear and some spare knicknacks that wouldn’t have made any sense to take. (She spots the zapfish plushies used for Kettle reruns and an old, deflated target practice balloon that popped when Callie threw a rock at it.) 

Cuttlefish Cabin is all hers now. 

Four doesn't linger long, stepping out of the cabin to leave and head to her apartment-

"HEY! HIPSTER!" The loud voice of DJ Octavio calls out to her from his snowglobe prison. Four wasn't sure why that was what they relied on to keep him trapped, especially considering he had broken out of it before.

"Your little friends just packed up and left, eh? How about you let me outta here and I chase them down? I know you have the key inside your pathetic shack!" He's tried this a couple times, whenever one of the members of the NSS are alone. Make promises or threats to let him out. Callie's fallen for it once before, claiming that she put on the shades because they were "so fresh!" (Four didn't really get why. They looked uncomfy and too rectangular to be fasionable.) 

Four walks inside the cabin, takes out the deflated balloon, and dumps it on top of the snowglobe to muffle his words before leaving for the day.

Chapter Text

Murch was the first to go. Four wasn’t that surprised. With no more Splatfests being held after the Ketuchup V Mayo rerun, Super Sea Snails were too hard to come by, and some kids were beginning to leave to go check out Splatsville. Supposedly a new hit idol trio had popped up and were making three-way Splatfests. Four was kinda curious about that. Three-way Splatfests was a cool idea, and a couple of their tracks were head boppers. Alas, she had a job. Stay behind and watch Octo Canyon, and there was no way in shell that she was going to disappoint Marie.

“I’m gonna miss you, little man.” Four moved her hand in for a fistbump. Murch had grown taller since their first encounter by Deco Tower and his spikes began to grow longer. Nothing lasts forever, Four reasoned. Murch was a pretty good gear supplier over the years, but once the Sea Snails run out there isn’t anything to do for someone in his trade.

“See ya, chum. Tell you what? If you ever poke your head in Splatsville, make sure to check for good ol’ Murch. I wouldn’t want one of my top customers leaving empty handed.” Murch completed the fistbump and went back to packing.

Four scooped up the gear that Murch had acquired through… completely legal means and dumped it in her bag before walking over to the Grizzco building. The shady side-attachment to Deco Tower had become near and dear to her heart, a good way to get some quick cash or kill time. Plus, as long as you were Level Four, they never asked any questions about parental permission! Sure, it was a little morally dubious, but it beat working 9-5 or trying to become a professional Turfer. (She would never understand why people would make it their job to do the same paint-the-floor routine over and over again. Four much prefered the thrill of Competitive,  Grizzco, or even agent work to that.)

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The crackley radio that Mr. Grizz spoke through had informed her that the “salmonids were restless” when she stepped onto her least favorite map, Spawning Grounds. As she mentioned to her coworkers on the boat ride there, Four thought it was much too closed off during high tides and was hard to recover ink. Still. She needed something to do while she waited for the first video call from Marie and Clam Blitz wasn’t going to cut it. 

Slamming into the center of the stage, Four watched as the sky dimmed. She hoped it wasn’t Glowflies. Four was pretty sure everyone hated Glowflies. A Mothership was manageable, if a bit hectic. Or Goldie Seeking. Those rounds are always fun.

A coworker nudged her in the arm, trying to get her to start covering ground. Right. Ink the walls and all that jazz. Hefting her Splatterscope (really? Why couldn’t she have gotten something else?) to spray a nearby wall when a cry of “This way!” ran through her headset, accompanied by the warning siren of Boss Salmonids. Please don’t be Glowflies. Please don’t be Glowflies. 

It was not Glowflies.

Four’s relief was temporary as a dripping, melting mess in the vague form of a Chum sprung out of the sea and howled, hacking out lesser Salmonids with a sickening gurgle. Old tires and tin cans occasionally surfaced in its sides before getting absorbed into the churning mass that was the creature. While most Salmonids only had the expression range of “angry” and “happy that they splatted you”, this one looked downright miserable. It reminded her of when she would fake being sick to avoid going to school but the long suffering Salmonid didn’t appear to be faking anything.

Four was, by no means, a newbie. The title of Eggecutive wasn’t handed out to any teenager who signed up to fistfight the world’s most homicidal fish. She had clawed her way up the ranks of Grizzco, spending many a night shaking ink out of her boots or cleaning up her slopsuit after a crew wipe. She had slain thousands of Boss Salmonids, millions of lessers. The “grizzco grind” was cruel and unforgiving, and had molded her to be the same in combat. And yet, in the five years she had been working, Four had never seen anything quite like this.

The same coworker who had tugged on her arm earlier was swinging at the slime covered Chums with a Roller, cutting the numbers down as the teammates with Blasters tried to find out how to damage it, firing away at its sides and face, looking for a weak point. Another howl was heard, and Four whipped her head around to see another oozing Salmonid pop up halfway across the map, this one spewing Smallfries instead.

“This is your boss, Mr. Grizz. We are currently experiencing a never-seen-before event in Salmonid history. Aren’t you kids lucky?” The shoddy radio reported from her earpiece. These weren't the same prerecorded messages that usually accompanied a wave. If the real-time signal was being used, things were bad. 

A cry of alarm came from the Roller, yelping as she was overwhelmed, orange rescue buoy popping out of the stain of ink where she used to be. Four hefted her Splatterscope and gazed through the lens, fluorescent orange standing out from dull green. A single shot took care of her. Roller Girl, now revived, left to higher ground, presumably to deal with the Smallfries. Four was considering doing the same, the aformentioned Smallfries running under her feet and whacking her boots with their suprisingly sharp spoons. They could rack up a lot of damage if you weren't careful.

One of the Blasters activated their special, the Baller, rolling around the terrain, trying to jump into the the Salmonid's mouth. Four decided to lend them and Other Blaster a hand, firing at any Chums that got too close. As she dipped into her ink to recover, a triumphant "Booyah!" let her know that the goal had been completed. Four fired another shot at a Chum that had gotten too close for comfort, and watched as the Baller detonated. 

The Boss Salmonid howled, convulsing as Baller-Blaster hit the floor with a wet thud. It shuddered before spitting out a Golden Egg. Other Blaster snagged it as they scurried back to the basket. Squit. What does the Baller do that normal weapons don't? Explode?

Before she could test her theory, the headpiece's radio spoke again.

“I can’t blame you for your apprehension. Those things look nasty. Even worse, a single Golden Egg! Retreat to the boat for now. The second we figure out how to splat those Salmonids, you're getting back out there.” Four could hardly believe her ears. It looked like her coworkers couldn’t believe it either. Mr. Grizz was a man (squid? octopus? bear?) who bit hard and never let go.

Before she could call out to anyone and ask them if they knew what was going on, the antenna on her life vest started beeping, signaling to the boat and locking her into a Superjump. Falling into squid form, she and the rest of her teammates hurled into the sky and slammed onto the deck of the ship.

The sudden rest was a welcome addition from all members, the Blaster teammates stretching their limbs and whispering among themselves about what could have happened, did you think it was the start of the Splatpocolypse, we better not lose our rank for this.

Roller Girl took off her helmet before placing it on a bench and gazed out at the churning sea. Waves crashed against the small fishing boat, and not for the first time Four wondered if there were proper safety protocols put in place. Probably not, knowing Mr. Grizz.

“Alright, kids. Looks like we’ll be heading back to the shore. We don’t know enough about those Salmonids back there to risk getting an investigation for your untimely demise by the authorities, so why don’t we compromise? I don’t send you there to get splatted, you don’t tell anyone about what we saw!” Mr. Grizz was not a subtle bear statue. 

The Blaster teammates grumbled a bit, but in the end all of them swore to keep it under the wraps until the news was relayed to a proper research lab. After all, you don’t become an Eggecutive without breaking a few laws!

Four was definitely going to mention it to Marie in the call this evening. A new type of Salmonid appearing out of nowhere? That was exactly the type of news the NSS would want to hear. Marie might be in a new location, but Four was still her best agent! No amount of distance was ever going to be able to change that (she hoped).

Chapter Text

Four was already having a bad day, so saying that an intruder in Cuttlefish Cabin made it worse was an understatement. She had woken up late because her alarm clock was out of battery, had to wait thirty minutes due to a delayed train, missed the memo that Ammo Knights was closing due to relocation to That Place (Four refused to say it’s name out of disrespect), still wasn’t allowed to work a Grizzco shift due to the creature from last time, and got trounced in Tower Control as a result.

As she popped out of the grate, the sound of something clattering greeted her ears. Four shot a glance towards the snowglobe where the DJ resided. No movement. He appeared to be asleep, so Four decided to ignore him… for now. She had worked out an uneasy truce with Octavio: He would stop badgering her about the hypnoshades, and she would stop blasting the Squid Sisters on max volume in response. Stickers and fairy lights decorated his prison’s sides, a parting “gift” from Callie.

Four tore her eyes away from the eyesore that was the snowglobe and towards the cabin. She readied her best weapons, the Hero Dualies. The mobility the Dualies granted her easily made it her favorite. Marie might favor the Charger due to its power and aiming while Callie would boast the turf coverage and raw power of the Roller, but the small shooters would always have a place near and dear to her heart. Four took one last deep breath and kicked open the door of Cuttlefish Cabin.

“Who are you and what do you want?” She yelled, Dualies at the ready if the person inside was armed. She didn’t want to fight, especially if it was just someone who got lost in the sewer system or another ex-soldier leaving the kettles. 

The intruder, who upon inspection was a rather small Octoling, raised her hands high in the air. She appeared to be unarmed aside from a crumpled ball of paper clutched tight in one of her hands, eyes darting around the cabin before latching on to her. Four relaxed a tiny bit, lowering the Hero Dualies. 

Once she says that she’s come from the kettles, I’ll drop the tough guy act and let her through the sewers to the surface. She had met plenty of Octarian army deserters after the Squid Sisters reunited and she whacked DJ Octavio in the face with the Rainmaker. A couple had even come up through this creepy subway that Marie warned her not to enter. Apparently Three, the Captain, and some new agent, Eight, had gotten trapped down there and almost blended into a fine goo by a some old timey telephone. She never got the full story, but assumed they were all taking a break from NSS duties after that. She wouldn’t blame them. The Octoshower gave her very creative nightmares for weeks.

“I’m looking for the Captain? And Agent Three?” Huh. Never mind. The octoling’s eyes darted nervously around the cabin, as if Four was the Ghost of Inkblot Academy here to drag her to a watery grave. Four jammed her Dualies into their holster, opting to place her hands on her hips instead. 

“You missed em’ by…” Four paused to count in her head. “...Three weeks. I’m pretty sure they went with the rest of the NSS.” She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side, studying the intruder. 

“Hey… what do you want with Three and the Captain, anyway?” The skittish octoling didn’t strike her as a vengeful-soldier sort, but there was something about her that made Four wonder if she was underestimating her. Her small size didn’t distract from the old inkblot-shaped scars caused by weapons designed for combat instead of competition. Four had some pretty cool scars of her own, a splotch at her lower neck from an octosniper’s well aimed shot when her armor was down, a massive stain on her left leg caused when she stepped on a splat bomb from a Rocket Octocopter (not one of her finer moments), and the largest one on her back from when the took a spinning fist directly to her spine from the Octobot King II. 

“I, uh, I’m Agent Eight… Of the New Squidbeak Splatoon?” It took a lot of Four’s mental power to stop her from yelling, “The blender guy?” Eight’s hands lowered and she held the hand that wasn't clutching the wad of paper out to Four. She shook it slowly, waiting for Eight to continue. When she didn’t, Four took the natural next step.

“I’m Agent Four. Also of the New Squidbeak Splatoon.” The pair looked at each other, waiting for the other to stop first. Four coughed. Eight flushed. They did not stop shaking hands.

“So… uh… what brings you here?” Up until this point, Four had never noticed that awkwardly long periods of silence always seemed longer than they really are, or that the air smelled slightly saltier than normal, or that there were seventeen lanterns hung outside of Cuttlefish Cabin when she always thought there were fifteen.

“The Captain said that I could find him and Agent Three here. We were taking some time off of Agent duty to recover from the Deepsea Metro.” Eight looked as petrified as Four felt. She was getting the full course of the Bad First Impression Buffet, staring expectantly at Four, who was praying to all the stars in the sky that there was a convenient Inkstrike misfire on its way now to take her out of her misery. They did not stop shaking hands.

“Haven’t you heard? Inkopolis is apparently too good for them, so they’ve packed it up to this new place called Splatsville.” Four spat the last word out as if it left a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt kinda bad for Eight. Apparently the old man and Three didn’t even bother to tell her that they were moving. Eight didn’t look that hurt, just nodding as she took in the new facts.

“Splatsville? What a strange name…” She mused, trying to recall any information on the place. They did not stop shaking hands.

Four snorts. “Tell me about it. I mean, you’d think a city that's all about chaos would have a cooler name. Like… Explosiontown or… Anarctopia. Actually, those are really bad names. Forget I said anything.” Eight giggles. That's good! Laughing is great!

“How’d you even find this place? Last time I checked people didn't like poking their beaks in the sewer system.” Four tried to play it cool, like she wasn’t dying to know how anyone found the… admittedly very low security hideout.

Eight merely uncrumpled the ball of paper, hand still locked together with Four’s.  Upon closer inspection, it was a poorly drawn map, with stick figures labeled “Eight” “Three” and “Me” following an arrow pointing into a sewer grate where the equally low quality “My Lovely Granddaughters Callie And Marie” waited for them alongside “Loserface Octavio”, a sad looking octopus in a circle and “Four (???)”, a stick figure with question marks instead of features.

“The Captain is… not the best at drawing.” Eight confessed. Four had seen this messy scrawl on many of Marie’s maps or journals. The Captain had a very... unique writing style, capitalizing every word. The handwriting seemed legit as well, and it would have been convoluted to fake it for the sole purpose of getting Four to trust her. At least, that’s what Four would have thought if she had to infiltrate someone’s secret base.

“Neato. Well, sorry to disappoint, but they’re not here right now. Marie said that they might come visit sometime, but no plans were discussed. It’s just me and the snowglobe.” Four used her other hand to point to Octavio’s prison. 

“Is there any way to communicate with them? I would want to tell them that I am doing fine.” Eight finally ( finally! ) stops shaking her hand, tilting her head in a manner that reminded her of this old animal called a "dog".

“Yeah! Every two weeks we get a video call from the new base. Unless it’s an emergency. Then we can call whenever. It’s actually a really interesting story, why we have to go to the cabin if we want to talk to the Splatsville division.” Four was proud of herself for memorizing the entire instruction manual for a radio antenna. It’s a shame that in order for anyone to grasp why that was an impressive feat she had to give them a two hour long breakdown on the history of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, and since it was a secret organization she couldn’t bring it up to anyone. 

“I actually have to run some kettles today, but if you don’t have anything on your plate today you’re welcome to join me! My mentor always said that the best way to get to know someone is to train with them. Do you have any weapon preferences? Because my favorite are the Dualies. Not just because of their dodge roll…”

Chapter Text

Four was beginning to resent Splatsville.

Well. 

Resent might be too strong a word. 

Resent was for saturday morning cartoon villains and old warlord DJs who use the word hipster too much and whackadoo phones who want to cover the world in goop because they have no friends. She definitely didn’t harbor any positive feelings towards Splatsville, which felt a bit silly. Four hadn’t even seen the city! And yet, as she tried to enjoy her meal with Eight after a long day of patrolling, the coddammed place kept showing up everywhere.

All the buzz on the streets was about the new fashion trends from Splatsville or the new single made by the new idol group from Splatsville or how Splatsville hung the sun and the moon and all the stars in the sky . She’s not bitter. Really! She’s not.

“Four? You’re holding your cup extremely tight.” Eight nudged Four’s foot from underneath the cafe table, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“All good here!” Four released her grip on the empty cup, the plastic not bending out of its awkward shape. “Hey, Eight? Do you ever miss...” Squit. I can’t say Pearl And Marina From Hit Idol Duo Off The Hook in public. “...your radio pals?”

“Yes. Ever since I woke up, they were my constant companions alongside the Captain. It was strange, getting used to living without them. Sometimes I’ll still expect to hear a comment or advice. Is that strange?” Eight said.

“No! Not to me at least. For the first week of patrols on my own I kept expecting to hear Boss through my headset, telling me to get back on track.” Four took off the top of her cup and squished the sides back into shape before reattaching the top.

“But like, do you talk to them in person?” Please say that they’re too busy with idol work and the news station. It was a bit cruel for her to wish that on a friend. Please say that they visit you, but only via screen once every two weeks.

“Whenever there’s a break in their schedule they’ll invite me over to their house. I always feel a bit out of place among the halls, but they always make me feel comfortable when I’m there.” Eight did that pretty half-grin of hers, the one she got whenever she talked to Four about the Captain or Pearl and Marina.

“Right, yeah.” Four kicked her legs. Would it be weird to ask Eight about her time in the Deepsea Metro? Four would like to think that they’re good enough friends with Eight to ask her questions like that. Do you get nightmares about Flooders crushing your fragile, armorless body as well? Do you always double check alleyways to make sure there was nothing there to take you by surprise? Was normal life hard for you once it had all ended? Nope. Nevermind. Save that for another person, one who makes you tea when you’re down or reassures you that it’ll all be alright once we find Callie.

With Four’s poor excuse of a response, the conversation dwindled out. Dang it. She really thought they had gotten past this phase in their relationship. Threeish weeks was enough to learn more about each other, right? Alas, Eight had memory loss and Four really didn’t like her parents, so the awkward silence returned with a vengeance. 

“Hey, what’s that?” Four’s eyes locked onto the scrap of napkin that Eight was writing on, seizing the opportunity for conversation the same way a drowning squid would seize a buoy tossed to them.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just like writing.” Eight’s cheeks colored a light shade of pink. “Poetry. I know it might be a strange habit but ever since the Metro whenever bits of my memories would come back I wrote them down like this.” 

“That’s pretty neat! I was never any good at writing, better at drawing.” Poetry made Four’s head spin with all of its weird rules about lines and flowery metaphors, but if Eight liked it, it was cool with her.

Eight picked up the napkin and folded it into a square before dropping it into her small bag. Four caught a glimpse of assorted ticket stubs, post-it notes, and scrap paper. “Other poems?”

Eight nodded. “There was nothing to write on in the metro. I had to make do with what I had.” Four could hear the faint note of pride in her voice, the same type that was usually accompanied with brags about Splatfest teams or completed egg quotas.

“Cool. Not that there’s a problem with that but wouldn’t it be easier to keep them all in a notebook or something?” Eight frowned.

“I suppose I just haven't had time to find a notebook. It would also be very time consuming to apply all of my scraps to the pages.” Eight seemed embarrassed about the lack of resources. Huh. Four was making a good living off of Grizzco and Ranked. Maybe Eight didn’t want to fight anymore?

“I could help with that! Both the applying thing and the notebook thing. Guess who has an S rank in Rainmaker and used to go to Inkblot Academy!” Four made a pair of finger guns and shot them at Eight, who asked her a followup question.

“Used to go to Inkblot Academy?” She raised her eyebrow. Four looked around to make sure no one was listening in on their conversation before continuing.

“Sure, I might have ‘dropped out’ or whatever, but I legally am allowed to get supplies. Just because I haven’t shown up for a year or two doesn’t mean that I won’t be allowed inside. We’ll just have to.. be a little bit stealthy!” Four shot her one of her best reassuring grins. Eight was not convinced.

“It would be less complicated to just grab a notebook from a department store.” 

“That would cost money-”

“It would cost twently five dollars.”

“That would cost money and the quality of department store notebooks are super bad . Ergo-” That was one of Marie’s Scrabble words, one that Four liked saying because it made her feel super smart for using it. “-we should go to Inkblot.”

“I don’t like the idea of breaking into a school, Four.” Eight crossed her arms.

“It’s not breaking in if I have a key! Besides, it won’t be an inconvenience. I had to pick up some stuff anyway. Better we hit two balloons with one burst bomb and grab you some art supplies while we’re at it.” Four could see Eight’s conviction wavering. Time to deliver the final blow.

“Besides, Inkblot has storerooms apon storerooms of random junk. No one’s going to miss a single notebook and maybe some colored pencils. People walk in and take stuff out alllllllllll the time. We’re not the first and we’re not the last.” 

“...Fine. As long as we leave the second we get what we need.” Eight crossed her arms.

“YES! You won’t regret this, I swear!”

“I better not...”

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Despite all the time they’ve spent here, Alterna’s artificial snow was still a mystery to Marie.

It was still powdery and crunched beneath her feet but there was no chill and no matter how much they shoveled away, more would always appear. Callie had tried to chat to O.R.C.A about where it came from and Marie had looked for dispensers in the ceiling or floors, but no results had been found as of late. As far as she cared, that could remain a mystery. The New Squidbeak Splatoon’s Splatsville chapter (known colloquially as the New New Squidbeak Splatoon) had hunted down enough human secrets for years to come. Even then, Marie has one last question.

The decision to pick “snow” baffled her. Wouldn’t the humans want grass instead? Or sand? The text logs that Neo Three had managed to piece together had sparse details about a sustainable ecosystem they had created, but what was sustainable about the lack of non-oozed creatures? Or maybe the snow wasn’t planned at all. Maybe it was ash or glass fragments. Given everything they’ve discovered, it doesn’t seem impossible.

Despite there being no cold from the snow, there is still a chill in the air. Cryogenic Hopetown seems to have been intentionally designed to replicate the cold, so Four’s teal scarf is currently wrapped around her neck. Sure, she’s switched to gold and black for now, but her old student’s gift is both practical and a nice reminder of what she left behind.

Speaking of what she left behind… Marie was starting to worry, which is why she swam all the way to the second sector. There had been news stories floating around about a massive Salmonoid attack, ones Marie had verified as true a few hours ago. There had been no response from the radio connecting them despite the fact that something of that magnitude definitely warranted a call. She really hoped this wasn’t a repeat situation.

Four reminded her a bit too much of Callie and her own stubborn insistence when it came to agent work. They both had a strong will, one that allowed them to think fast and make unconventional solutions on the battlefield. They also favored a more frontline based weapon, Callie with her Roller and Four with her Dualies. Marie was more like her granduncle, for better or for worse. The sharp precision of a Charger was soothing and predictable, unlike the danger that came with using a Roller. Sure, they were powerful and excelled at turf control, but you were putting yourself in very close quarters to the enemy when using them. That’s what had made them such an effective duo before Agent Three came along; Callie was the offense and she was the support. There were talks about working as one unit once Three became a part of the NSS, but they quickly died out when they realized that the Lesser Zapfishes could only power up a Kettle for three respawns. None of them were willing to take that risk.

They also couldn’t stay in Octo Valley for very long. The Squid Sisters was Inkopolis’s freshest band, and their schedule was a routine designed to keep them as that. Business lunches, PR photos, working on their latest album, Inkopolis News, and much more. A life of fame requires a heavy cost, and she’s not sure if she wants to pay it sometimes. Her relationship with stardom had always been a constant rise and fall.

Somedays Marie would be dancing on a stage with millions of kids cheering her and Callie’s names and she would think, this is what makes it all worth it. It was hard not to think that when people buzzed about how much their music meant to them, how it snapped them out of a deep depression, how it helped them make a friend, how they were amazing. The money was also pretty great. Somedays Marie would skip rehearsal lessons because the pain from the injuries from the long hours of practice would be too much. She would throw her phone to the ground and avoid it when all of the negative remarks from critics and fans alike became too much, and regret it in the morning when she had to buy another. She had to look at the life of wealth and think, I don’t want this anymore , like a child bored of their shiny toy. She was in no condition to complain with a secure job and all the houses she could want, but some nights she felt like her life was being sapped away, bit by bit.

She couldn’t really have bad days in public. She had to be snarky and a tad bit awkward because that part of her brand, but she couldn’t be mean because that wouldn’t jell with the persona that people had become familiar with. Callie suffered the same fate, having to be sweet and bubbly but not airheaded. Their emotions couldn’t be too raw because then they might turn away younger or more casual listeners, but they couldn’t be too flat or no one would listen. Given all of that, it’s no wonder that Callie left for Octo Canyon, and when she disappeared Marie got to tell the public that she was taking a mental health break and became Agent Two.

Agent Two was someone else. Agent Two was a cold, battle hardened warrior who could snipe the weak point of an Octarian war machine from miles away and still have enough ink left over to take out the reinforcements that were coming. Agent Two didn’t have to worry about frivolous things like if the Squid Sisters merch was doing well or if their concert was going to have to take a rain check. All she needed to do was patrol the Kettles and ensure that the Octarian menace would stay underground.

The month and a half it took to reunite with Callie was the worst of her life. Before, when only the Great Zapfish had been stolen, it was impersonal. Sure, it was cute but aside from powering the city, there wasn’t a big driving force to get it back. Great Zapfishes could produce so much energy it would linger for weeks after if they were removed and there were other power sources kept on standby just in case something happened. Callie was her closest confidant, her dearest friend, and even though they were actually cousins, her sister-in-arms. Their disguises when they were Agent One and Agent Two were easy to see through when in a non-combative setting, and if the Octarians had found out that Inkopolis’s idols there was no telling what they’d do. The corpse of an icon would be an incredible way to stir up fear.

The one thing that had stopped her from storming through the Kettles was Captain Cuttlefish, who seemed to be fighting the urge to do the same thing himself. She had complicated feelings towards him. He loved them, the countless hours spent taking care of them and cheering them on during their idol career (even if he didn’t understand some of it) spoke to that. He was their oldest and most devoted fan, and would have taken on the sea herself if it meant keeping her and Callie safe.

He also enlisted them as child soldiers. When she was fourteen and Callie had whispered to her about what she was doing on her weekends, Marie was able to dismiss it as an elaborate game of pretend or Callie humoring an old man’s delusions. When Callie had insisted that Marie come look, she followed, ready to give Gramps his meds and talk to her parents about moving him to a nursing home. She didn’t expect it to be real. At first it was thrilling, like one of her spy books come to life. A secret world beneath the surface, filled with strange places and things to discover! Sure, they were here under the pretense of a potential attack from a lost, vengeful species but the fact that almost no one had noticed still shocked her nonetheless.

Despite the fact that an old war friend of his with a clothing company called Cuttlegear was willing to supply them with some equipment, their supplies left much to be desired. Because of this, most of their training was the standard type like how to use different weapons effectively even if they weren’t your main, how to survive if you don’t have food or water on hand, equipment used on the battlefield, so on and so forth. As the novelty wore off, Marie still stayed. Maybe because it would have been to hard to go back to normal. Maybe because she didn’t want to leave Callie in case something did go bad. Maybe it was because some part of her genuinely wanted to keep learning how to become better. Whatever the reason, it was still only training drills and situational things until they reached fifteen years old.

When Marie was fifteen years old she got handed the Hero Charger. It was a gorgeous weapon, braces circling the muzzle to prevent it from shattering when releasing high-pressure shots and smooth handle to allow for a variety of different attacks and the latest in new technology allowing it to “store” charged shots for a brief amount of time. It was made on behalf of the now-retired Ammoses Shellendorf, who’s weapons made for the Great Turf War had slowly seeped into the greater world when it had ended. The breed of Rollers known as “Dynamos” and the shooter class Aerosprays were among the more famous ones, past history blissfully oblivious to the civilian population. If anyone saw Marie with the Hero Charger, she would be able to handwave it away as an old family heirloom.

Callie got the Hero Roller which was equally high quality, and that was their official initiation into the New Squidbeak Splatoon. From now on whenever they entered the underground they were Agents One and Two, with a duty to preserve the normal that had kept them safe for so long. This meant looking into the Kettles near the surface to make sure nothing fishy was going on and patrolling the sectors. There were also a few missions before the kidnapping of the Great Zapfish. Thanks to their efforts, none of them ever saw the light of day, but there were times in the field when it looked like it was. One of those times was when they were sixteen and got a mission to destroy a Seeker manufacturing plant.

“Alright, girls. This is going to be your toughest mission yet.” Gramps said, proud and pointing at a makeshift map of Octo Valley.

“I didn’t know he could stand that straight without his back cracking into a million pieces.” Callie whispers to her. Marie bites her tongue to stop her from laughing.

“Our weeks of scouting have allowed us to uncover a secret Octarian plot! They’re planning on mass deploying Seekers into the streets of Inkopolis, splatting anyone and everyone without even having to leave the comfort of their Kettles.” He jabbed a finger at the map to a circled Kettle that hadn’t been there before, nestled in Area 5’s shadows. “This is the entrance to their manufacturing plant. If it’s collapsed before their mission is a go, we’ll deal a massive blow to not only their progress but their morale as well!”

“Alrighty then! Let’s go, Marie.” Callie trills, picking up the Hero Roller.

“Not yet. It can’t be this easy. It’s never this easy.” Seekers were also the next target of the Special Protests due to their history as war weapons and potential damage if used outside of Turf Wars. She really couldn’t blame them, especially considering what would be happening if they failed.

“Right you are, Marie. They’ve swapped out the original patrolling Octarians for Octolings, which was the main thing that tipped me off. Yer old man hasn’t lost his eyes just yet! Anyway… if those octojerks are bringing in the big guns, it’s safe to say that it’ll be harder than the average Kettle. Be on the look out for traps and patrols, and make your way to the core of the facility.” Gramps gives a friendly pat on the shoulder that turns into a grip; something that says stay safe.

“We won’t let you down!” Callie’s beanie and sunglasses are already on, and a vertical swing from her Roller paint the way forwards. They’ve both switched their ink color to a lime green for this mission, due to that being the prevalent Inkling color in Area Five. They hop from inkrails to clusters of concrete cubes, Marie occasionally shooting a sponge or propeller to allow progression. The Seeker factory is nestled between a collective of platforms, rim of the Kettle barely above sea level with the dark waves camouflaging the silver metal. If Marie hadn’t known about it from their debriefing, she would have missed it entirely.

“I don’t think there’s any more platforms from this point.” Marie settles on a filled sponge, watching as Callie takes up post on a nearby cube.

“Hey, Two? I want to talk to you about something.” Callie asks, agent names present due to their close proximity to the Kettle. Marie was fairly sure no one was by the entrance, but better to be safe than sorry.

“Shoot.”

Callie looks towards the shack, now a distant speck. “Do you think we’re really doing good here?”

The question catches her off guard. “We’re stopping a potential invasion that could destroy the city. It’s hard to get any gooder than that.”

“I mean like, as a whole. The Kettles are so drabby and all we seem to do around here is kick our way in and blow stuff up. If I was stuck somewhere here, I would want to leave to go to the surface too.”

“Doesn’t mean they get to blow us up.”

“Yeah. Yeah. But like, what if we didn’t have to fight at all? The Captain keeps mentioning a king and the seas receded a long time ago. There’s probably some land that no one’s using.”

“One.” Callie’s eyes snap up to hers. “We have to finish the mission. We’re agents, not-“

“Agents, not diplomats. I know.” Callie groans back. It’s one of the many saying that Gramps has repeated when training them. It was usually followed up by a line about how if an enemy surrendered, respect that because if they turned their back on their morals, they were no better than Salmonoids. It had became a bit of an in-joke between the two of them in their civilian lives. It wasn’t funny now. “Sometimes I think we should be.”

“Slot that in amongside news anchor, secret agent, and pop star. It’s no wonder we have no free time.” The joke falls flat, as most of hers do. It’s why she’s glad there’s a teleprompter for Inkopolis News; Marie can’t crack a joke to save her life. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Let’s just go.” Callie’s tone is muted as she picks up her roller. “How do we get down there?”

“I think we’re going to have to take a running leap and hope it ejects us on the return trip.” Marie fires a shot at her sponge just to make sure it’s at maximum capacity before she walks to one end, drops into squid form, and hurls herself forwards, slipping into the Kettle’s mesh and into it’s insides. When she morphs back into kid form, she’s standing on a small floating island, one launchpad leading out and one leading in. Callie lands shortly after her, staring down at the main island at the very bottom that holds rows and rows of conveyer belts and machinery. It’s surrounded by three blocky rings floating above each other, grates and propeller platforms allowing for transportation between each of them.

“Can you see anything on the other rings?” Callie asks.

“No. Looks like we’ll have to do them one by one, which won’t be an issue considering how few of them there are. Besides, we have unlimited respawns and they don’t. If worse comes to worse…” Marie trails off. That’s always been an unpleasant caveat of their role as agents, the deaths. Fatalities were avoided as much as possible and the pair took extreme measures to make sure that they didn’t knock out respawn points but there were a few times when they’d have to collapse a particularly dangerous Kettle without knowing if the Octarians inside were synced up to an emergency respawn point or if they had one at all. “You first, One.”

One is always first. It’s intentional. Rollers are frontline weapons and are great at getting an early hold on important turf. Callie casts another look down at the rings before sighing and dropping into swim form. The launch pad sends them flying onto the first ring. The bright green speck that is Callie waves her hands over her head. The signal for safety. Marie swims into the launchpad.

Octarian hover technology was still a mystery to Inkopolis. Pre-Great Turf War relics or photos show that it was once common knowledge or at least shared freely between the two races, but when the fighting started blueprints were destroyed at best and people were killed permanently at worst, so the secret remains below the earth’s crust and in small groups of refugee Octolings that fled to other areas of the world. Some place out in the Splatlands look in those refugees and a small town had been built in the wake of the war. Marie couldn’t lie, she was a bit curious about the idea of talking to a society outside of the history Inkopolis was seeped in. Unfortunately, the large desert between the two locations not only made travel hard but harsh sandstorms would cut the average radio signals in half. There were some higher powered ones in case of emergency, but even one of the Squid Sisters couldn’t get casual access to that. Until technology advanced, it was just a happy pipe dream.

Marie slams down onto the first ring, bright green roller trail leading forwards. The discarded shells of Octarian machines litter the halls alongside tiny puddles of magenta ink that the Hero Roller hadn’t been able to wipe away in one clean swoop. They weren’t big enough to matter, but they were a reminder of who was inside the factory they were traversing. Marie follows the trail, shot charged up in case anyone unfriendly shows up. Eventually it leads behind a metal crate, Callie leaning against the wall.

“One, wha-“ Marie opened her mouth to speak before Callie shushed her and pointed to something on the ceiling at the point between the crate and the rest of the hallway. An undeployed Splash Wall. The second someone of an unfriendly ink color walked under it would activate, shutting them out. Rollers had to be more aware of traps like that and Ink Mines, and Callie’s expertise saved them from walking into a potential ambush. The Splash Wall was probably tied to an alarm and the second it was triggered they would be facing down a squadron of Octolings.

“Good eye.” Marie whispered, turning the muzzle of her Charger to face the Splash Wall. A shot from point blank would shatter it before it could even hope to deploy, but that would trip the alarm as well. “Get ready. This room’s going to be crawling with Octarians in a few seconds.”

“Right. Riptide maneuver?”

“I was leaning more towards nautilus strike, but that’d probably work better.” The riptide maneuver was a relic from the first Squidbeak Splatoon and usually required at least three people to pull off. Like it’s namesake, one central path would lead to a soldier posing as bait. When the  enemy would rush forwards to take them out, the two other soldiers would pop out of the ink at the entrance of the enemy and fire on them. It was an ambush tactic and was highly situational due to the fact that in the Great Turf War most battles were fought in more open areas, causing it to fade into obscurity. They were banking on that obscurity now as Marie shattered the Splash Wall and Callie fired off a vertical swing that painted the floor in front of them.

Marie swam into one of the splotches that had been flung into the corner. Small enough that any squid that hadn’t been trained to minimize the space they took up when swimming in ink wouldn’t have been able to make. Small enough to avoid detection. As the Octolings rush into the room their gamble is rewarded with three clean splats, two from Marie’s charged shot piercing clean through the soldiers that overlapped and one from Callie’s follow up vertical swing.

“We should speed things up. There’s more on their way and this is gonna be the first place they go.” Callie says, starting to roam the hallway up ahead, ignoring the splotches of enemy in that remain even after her attack. Before Marie would have seen it as a sign of a determined agent. After their conversation, she sees it as the sign of a fighter pushing it down until they get out.

“There’s a grate at the end somewhere. Watch out for traps.” As they sift through the first ring, there aren’t anymore Octoling squadrons even though Marie shatters multiple Splash Wall traps and Callie lobs Burst Bombs to trip Ink Mines. Was that all they had? Surely not. For something as important as this, they’d fill it to the brim with their forces. There’s probably a respawn point somewhere. Maybe on the lower levels. That could explain why it was taking so long.

True to her word, a grate awaits them at the other end of the ring. What would normally be a loop is blocked off by a wall, probably leading back to where they first started. It doesn’t look like they could break it without something stronger, but they’ll sooner be able to find a perfectly intact human city than get a wrecking ball down here. Callie slips through the grate while Marie’s still staring. “Don’t fire any shots, Two. There’s gushers down here.”

“Guess that’s plan B if there’s no launchpad.” While the ink used by gushers depended on who deployed them, technically not being harmful, if they were activated it would be like lighting up a giant sign to their location due to the color contrast.

“Ugh. Sprinklers. You think you can shred em’?” Like Callie said, sprinklers line the hallway, constantly spewing out enemy ink. It’s annoying, but can easily be taken care of.

“Yeah. I’m a bit confused on why no one’s jumped out of the ink and shot us. Were the sprinklers meant to deal chip damage to intruders while a bigger threat attacked?“

“Probably. You get the ones further down, I’ll get the ones on the floor and sides. We wanna have some space to swim to when that bigger threat does come.”

Marie starts with the ones on top as Callie gets to the front. They clear out the hallway and walk down it, weapons at the ready in case anything jumps out at them. What they see is far more confusing than a fight. The end of the hallway branches off into two paths, each lined with sprinklers of their own. Through the churning haze made by said sprinklers, Marie can see more paths sporting the same things the rest of the ring had.

“What’s this, DJ Octavio’s sprinkler maze of laziness?” Marie snarks.

“No way in shell is this what they’re using as a defense. There’s gotta be something more. An enemy we haven’t seen. I can feel it in my membrane.” Callie responds, eyes searching every little corner available.

“If there were soldiers then we would have been attacked by now. Unless this is a horribly thought out ploy to get us to waste ink and then get us, but that’s pretty far fetched.”

“Keep an eye out. I don’t like this place at all.”

Marie and Callie begin to creep down one of the hallways, beginning the tedious process of removing sprinklers. Callie was right. The more this goes on the more suspicion builds up and by the time they clear the second hallway Marie feels like a taut wire about to snap. The second hallway also leads to two more, each lined with sprinklers. A loud groan from Callie sums up how Marie feels.

“Is this his plan? To break us with torture? I hate to say it but I think it’s working.” Callie sighs, leaning on her roller. Marie’s about to say something in response when a distant rattling reaches her ears.

“Do you… hear that?”

“What, the sprinklers whirring? I think it’s stuck in my head forever.”

“Not that. It’s like a train but smaller.” Marie turns around to look down the hallway they just came from. It’s dark, but the floor is coated with the same teal ink they’ve been using this entire time.

“Maybe it’s the machines that make the searchers? We are in a factory, after all.” Callie picks up her roller and starts to work on one of the passages.

“We were quiet before on this level and we didn’t hear whatever this is before.” Marie’s eyes stay locked on the darkness ahead of her. Something in her body is screaming at her to keep watch. It wasn’t a bad idea. Even if the rattling was just paranoia or old groans from unstable metal it was smart to have a lookout in case something came up from behind. As Marie keeps staring, the noise gets louder. She charges up a shot. Two pinpricks of light fade in. So does recognition. Marie knows that sound very well. A Flooder.

“Run!” She screams, whirling around and firing the charged shot. With the hallway almost clean of any sprinklers it coats the floor in enough ink to give them a clean getaway. Marie drops into swim form and takes off, chasing the end of the hallway. Callie turns around to see what she’s looking at, eyes widening once the tracking laser of the Flooder locks onto her.

The next hallway was also lined with sprinklers because of course it was. The two of them don’t have the time to methodically clear it out, so Marie just shoots a charged shot to make as much headway as possible before they’re forced to re-ink it. Something confuses her. Why is this hallway open and not split into paths like the rest of them? Why have the walls switched from inkable stone to a thick plastic material? Marie can see a grate now that they’re closer but there’s no relief because the roar of gushers activating is followed by an overkill amount of Octolings rising out of said grate, weapons locked and loaded and suddenly everything makes sense. The Flooder can’t kill things that are the same ink as the ones it produce.

Many old human sayings found their way into seafolk languages whether that be Inkish, Octarian, Manta, or anything else with slight tweaks to better fit their frame of reference. They took a lot of things from humans, from inventions to form. Sometimes she wondered why that was the case and she was far from the only one. Human research teams were abundant and the closest thing they could come up with was that when evolving seafolk were influenced by the culture around them and grew to replicate that. Regardless of how it got there, the saying rattling in Marie’s head was “like shooting Salmonoids in a barrel”. She was the Salmonid. This place was her and Callie’s barrel.

Before the shots can pierce her body, Callie hurls the whole Hero Roller in a Hail Mary River Cod that works . The massive weapon slams into the first two rows of Octoling soldiers, splatting them instantly as the piercing properties of the Hero Charger’s shots take care of the overlapped soldiers in the third and fourth row. All of them seem stunned for a few seconds, so much changing in the blink of an eye. Marie pounces on the opportunity and plunged through the grate as the exhausted gushers retreat. Callie comes crashing down next, damaged Hero Roller falling beside her as Marie activates the gushers with her ink, buying them some time as long as she keeps activating them.

“Stealth’s gone out the window.” Callie groans, pushing herself into a sitting position.

“Yeah. I think they’ve pulled out all the stops for the second ring, so we might have an easier time down here.” Marie responds, periodically hurling Burst Bombs to make sure the gushers keep their color of ink.

“Might.”

“All of our missions have mights in them.”

“I wish we could get a straightforward answer for once. You’ll either pass with flying colors or die miserably.”

“If only.” Marie looks upwards. The gushers prevent anyone from getting down as long as they’re active, but little purple drops are starting to sneak their way through the tiny areas that aren’t protected. “How’s the Hero Roller holding up? It looks like it’s seen better days.”

“It’s functional. Not as good as it used to be, but it still works and we can get it fixed up when we leave.”

“By who? Ammoses is on the other side of the globe in retirement.”

“Didn’t he have a grandkid who ran some store in Inkopolis? Ammo Knights? If he’s anything like his grandfather then he’ll be too excited at the chance to mess with it he wouldn’t even care where I got it from. I’ve been poking around that place and it has some good stuff. If things don’t work out then it’s good to have another option.”

“We can sort it out later. If I set up some sprinklers of my own then I think I can keep the Octarians out for a bit.” Marie said, placing them strategically to make sure they activate all the gushers. The hero ones were modified to last longer, but that didn’t mean they were forever.

“The next time I see a sprinkler I’m going to barf.”

With that set up, Marie and Callie wandered deeper into the final ring. Usually these were the most guarded and given everything she’s seen in ring two she’s really hoping that’s all. In a word twist of faith, she gets her wish.

Ring three’s a lot more homey than any of the others, which is a very weird thing to say about an enemy bomb factory. It’s still got the harshness that applies to every Kettle, but there’s bulletin boards with notes reminding someone to clean the Flooder’s fuel valve and smaller crates gathered around a makeshift table with a half finished game of cards on them. The only remotely evil thing is a massive security screen on the wall with four different tiers, fizzing whenever Marie switches to another tier. They’re the layout   of the factory, and the Octolings are marked with pink dots while they’re a deep  green, harsh and unfriendly like the spill of toxic wastes in cartoons.

“Two. Look at this.” Callie calls from behind a corner. She’s bracing herself for torture machines or dried out corpses or something equally horrifying. She isn’t expecting a massive scrawl of paper written in Octarian pinned to the wall.

“You know I can’t read this fluently.”

“Then look at the drawings.” Callie’s tone is blunt. Marie doesn’t get why she can’t just translate it for her, but she’s indulged some of Callie’s crazier requests before.

“Fine.” Puzzling out the answer with whatever words she can detect alongside the various blueprints also pinned up, Inkopolis isn’t mentioned once. This wasn’t a secret plan to invade Inkopolis. It was a plan to replenish their depleted searcher stock because they didn’t have any backups.

“So? We still have to destroy this place.”

“So? The entire reason we were sent here was a lie!”

“The Captain didn’t know that. Besides, this doesn’t mean they won’t invade Inkopolis later. Better get it out of the way now than risk them having seekers in the future.” Marie muttered.

“You’re not getting the point I’m trying to make-“

“No, Callie, you need to let this idea you’ve got in your head go. Were the Octolings back there going to spare us? No! They were fully prepared to shoot us and didn’t care if we could respawn or not. This isn’t some stupid playground dispute, this is war. They’re still making weaponry. What we need to do is snuff this entire place out before one of us ends up dead. For good. If you’re too confused to do that, then at least keep the sprinklers active.”

Callie stares back at her, like she’s trying to determine if a stranger has taken her membrane and is wearing it instead. They stand there for a tense couple of seconds before she utters a quiet. “Fine. Go off and play soldier. I hope one day you’ll understand what you’re doing.”

That was the moment where the rift in their relationship formed. Outside of Octo Valley they were still the same rising pop stars they once were, but things hadn’t seemed the same after that. Callie requested a break from agent work and while she came back, so peppy about doing their duty it was definitely fake, Marie was foolish enough to let it slip her thoughts. It had faded to a dark corner of her mind that would only rear its head on bad nights, and she would get the bad nights over with and try to never think about them again.

And then Callie had disappeared and all those thoughts came rushing back.

Marie couldn’t remember much individual days. They all swept together in a chaotic haze of searching Octo Vally for something, anything that would clue her in to where Callie had been taken. Three, still a fresh face back then, was all too eager to assist. Marie worked them hard. In hindsight, too hard. All of that had culminated in a huge fight with Gramps.

“You’re working Three too hard. They’re rerunning kettles every day, sometimes clearing through the same one ten times. I know you’re worried, squiddo. I am too, but causing Three to pass out due to exhaustion isn’t going to help anyone”

He was right. Marie was too angry, too worried, too stubborn to let it go.

Maybe, she had spat through gritted teeth, if she wasn’t juggling a performing job and his insane demands she would still be here.

Both of them had stormed off, resulting in a rather bewildered Three being dragged off for a “research trip”. Marie was too worked up to care until the disappearance of both of them caused her to drag another kid off the streets into a world of fighting. Four was good. Incredible, really. While she could be too risky at times and didn’t take criticism well, Four had a determination unmatched and a proficiency in weapons to rival the most experienced people around. She was a one-squid army and managed to claw her way to Callie in a matter of months.

When Marie saw what happened, she brought her sister back with the only way she knew how, music. It was a grueling fight, Four taking the bottom of the Octobot King II while Marie tried to appeal to the top half. With the combination of a well timed shot to the head and a boom box containing the Squid Sister’s greatest hit, Callie returned to her as Four took down Octavio. While it would take some time to fully remove the effects of the brainwashing, she as confident the two of them could get back to a semi-normal life and find the missing members of the NSS. That was until Callie disappeared again.

This time Sector Five was the first place they checked. Marie and Four went through the same song and dance as the first time, her mind racing the entire time. How had Octavio managed to break out and grab Callie on his own? Was this just an elaborate plan that they had played into? The answer was no, Callie had thought that the hypnoshades were “really fresh”. Marie was a little disappointed but was quick to smother that thought out. Of course it would have lingering effects. This was only a brief period of withdrawal, and Marie would make sure that it didn’t happen again, hiding the hypnoshades somewhere deep within the mess of Cuttlefish Cabin. She didn’t want to destroy it just in case they could somehow reverse engineer the technology to prevent it from effecting any of them. Safe within boxes of boxes, she left for the day. It happened again. This time they had a talk about it.

“Why, Callie? Do I have to babysit you to make sure you don’t put these on again?” Marie tried to keep her frustration from leaking into her tone. She failed. It was the third time Callie had put on the hypnoshades and this time was dire enough to warrant a talk.

Callie refuses to make eye contact with her, gaze locked onto the floor and occasionally towards the snowglobe where DJ Octavio resides. “…I just think-“

“No you don’t! There’s something going on here and you’re not telling me! Is someone threatening you? Are the aftershocks just that bad? Maybe you should take some time off of agent work. Even more time off if this keeps happening.” She’s walking now, pacing back and forth while she shoots hypotheticals.

“Marie, listen.”

“I mean, you can’t expect me and Four to be able to bail you out every time. She’s got a life of her own and we really need to keep an eye on the distress signal we heard, it could be from Gramps or Three, maybe both of them. I can’t come back every time you relapse and if this happens in public we’ll both end up in a lot of hot water.”

“I need you to know-“

“This has happened three times! Three! I know you’re more frivolous but-“

“I’m not being brainwashed.” Callie’s next words cause Marie to snap to attention.

“What?”

“I’m not being brainwashed.” Callie repeats. “I left of my own free will to help the Octarian people. They were suffering down there, you didn’t get to see the state of the civilian domes and we’re not making it any better by storming down there and splatting everything that moves! The hypnoshades? Just modified versions of Octarian army visors that monitor things like your ink level and the strength of your armor.”

“This is a trick, isn’t it ? You were programmed to say these things.” Marie said, grasping at straws. The snowglobe wasn’t the sturdiest prison, but there was no way to open it without being on the outside.

“For Cod’s sake Marie, can you just listen to me for a bit? I haven’t been mind controlled this entire time! Do you really think that I’m that stupid? No, I saw the things that were happening and the one person who I thought would always be on my side was willingly ignoring all the signs that something more was wrong. Those people, innocent people were suffering for a battle their ancestors lost, one that doesn’t even matter now because we’ve got so much space for them to live too!”

Marie felt like she had been walking on a frozen lake this entire time and just now it had cracked. She had ignored all the danger and now that the chill was seeping into her membrane she was forced to reap what she had sown. “Then why the kidnapping plot? Everyone was searching for you. You don’t think a tiny note saying that you’re off doing something private would have sufficed?”

“Oh, like you would have accepted it. The kidnapping was the only thing that would have managed to stop everything from being found out. It was Octavio’s idea, and before you jump in with anything he said we should frame it as a kidnapping because then I would have plausible deniability.” Callie’s gaze returns to the snowglobe again. The DJ inside is knocked out due to Four whacking him on the head with the Rainmaker. “He’s really not as maniacal as he presents himself. If you ever looked closer maybe you’d know that.”

Silence falls as Marie puts the last seven years of her life into a new context. “I have to say, I don’t think I understand all of this.”

Callie let out a sad sigh. “Figures”

“But I want to. If you’ll teach me, I’d like to see what I’ve been overlooking this entire time. Just… can we get rid of the hypnoshades this time? I think Four’s going to lose it if she sees it again, real or not.”

In order to avoid any backlash from the other members of the NSS, Marie went along with Callie’s lie. Four, like with most things Marie said, believed it without question.

That blind admiration directed at her was kinda awesome. It was also scary. Four was willing to both kill and die for her at the drop of a hat and took every single word to heart. It was why she was trying to distance herself from Four. The poor kid needed some time to come into her own and learn how to be someone who wasn’t constantly searching for the approval of someone older than her.

Neo Three whizzes around the makeshift ice rink, coating any inkable areas in Alterna’s yellow. Little Buddy coos  excitement from their post on Neo Three’s back. They’ve been trying to get this Sunken Scroll for about twenty minutes now, barely missing the balloon containing it in their last attempts. They’re remarkably similar to Four, same proficiency and high energy spirit, but there was a difference between wildness and recklessness.

Four’s reckless power always needed a guiding force to be effective, and given all of the Captain’s talk about Agent Eight, she seemed like someone who could help her out. The Captain is also similar to her given the inability to ever slow down until it caught up with them, just with one major difference. To put it simply? Three was haunted. Four was not.

Three was forced to go through a baptism by fire, countless mistakes tearing them to shreds. Due to the lack of experience that they had, Three was forced to take heavy damage and while they went on to eventually surpass Callie and Marie in terms of power and retook the Great Zapfish, the experience had left heavy scars on the young agent who had been in  field combat at the same age when she and Callie were learning what spots were the best to place Ink Mines. Gramps and the two of them would try and coach Three through it the best they could, but the end result was a heavily damaged fourteen year old with the knowledge and skills on how to wipe out an entire army.

Things only got worse when they fell into the Deepsea Metro. Marie wasn’t privy to the whole story, just a recap from Gramps while a haggard Three with a massive ink scar across their face clutched tight onto the blanket wrapped around them back in Octo Valley. Eventually Three had recovered, but they were never quite the same again after that. They had taken up the mantle as Captain, and while they technically were still able to do agent duties even with the scar they didn’t unless something major happened. Marie didn’t pry. It was frightening watching the life slowly drain out of a once bubbly and excited kid until they were a battle scarred veteran who only knew fighting.

That was the purpose of the Factoidpedia. While Callie mistakenly thought it was born out of a stress-addled mind trying to control anything it could by listing them down (which, fine, maybe that did play a small part in the creation of the Factoidpedia), it was actually meant to monitor Four’s health, both mentally and physically. Marie couldn’t let something like that happen again to anyone, not when she knew the signs. If she could find a way to help Captain Three while she was at it, then all the better.

Four didn’t separate her agent identity and civilian identity, a dangerous combination of both worlds that could easily come crashing down upon her. Time as an agent could be deadly and dangerous while time as a civilian was meant to be a getaway from all of that. Four, however, viewed her normal life as something getting in the way of her agent work. Marie wanted to grab her by the shoulders and tell her how lucky she was to have a civilian life that was her own. She didn’t before they left, and she’s regretting it now.

A loud howl of frustration that snaps her out of her thoughts tells her that Neo Three failed again. Marie turns to see a heavily ink covered balloon float into the sky, out of reach of any of Neo Three’s weapons. They’re staring resentfully up at it while Little Buddy hops up and down like if they jump high enough they’ll be able to make it up.

“You know, Four used to use burst bombs when chasing balloons. Your upgraded gear will let you throw out five before you need to recharge.” Marie advises.

Neo Three stares at her for a bit before sliding beside her on the shore of the icy lake. “Who’s Four? This is like the third time you’ve mentioned them.”

“Another agent. She got the Great Zapfish back when it disappeared in Inkopolis Square and defeated DJ Octavio the second time he tried to pull a trick like that. She stayed back to keep the space safe.”

“Huh. Thanks for the advice.” Neo Three hefts a burst bomb and takes off, skidding on the ice as they did. Marie watched as they raced through, occasionally throwing burst bombs instead of just trying to shoot the large clusters of balloons that would spawn. The sight of the dashtracks and ice hurling them around reminds her of a pinball machine. Eventually they reach the crowd of balloons that thwarted them from getting one of the sunken scrolls and throw a burst bomb, popping most of them and heavily damaging the rest. Neo Three shoots them down with a howl of triumph, grabbing the sunken scroll and sliding to Marie to show it off.

“Hey, Three.” Marie bares her teeth in the awkward grin she’s always tried to make more photogenic after she looks at it. “I hate to ask this of you so soon after Alterna, but…”

“No prob! Let me guess, more recon duty?” They’re a bit restless, adrenaline from their earlier missions keeping them shifting from one foot to another.”

“Something like that.”

“Oh?”

“There’s trouble in Inkopolis. A massive Salmonid attack hit the city and disrupted the power supply. No one can get any messages in or out. I want you to check in on Four and Eight. They’ve been holding down the fort pretty good so far but this attack has got me worried. Whenever you’re ready I can hook up the old Squid Sisters tour bus. The paint’s chipped off by now so there’s no risk of being recognized.”

“You got it! Gimme some time to grab my stuff and me and Little Buddy’ll be good to go!” Neo Three throws their partner into the air and catches them before taking off to the Kettle that leads back to the city.

“Be careful! We don’t know how badly damaged the city is!” Marie yells back.

“Don’t worry! If we can take down a giant bear in space then we can handle a little wreckage.” Neo Three yells back, slipping into swim form and leaving.

Marie can only hope she hasn’t made a horrible mistake. Again.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

As much as she uses the word, Four doesn’t think she’ll ever have the capacity to truly hate someone. Feel annoyed, sure. Feel angry at their actions, yes. But hate? That was a toxin far thicker than any sludge the Salmonoids produced. Hate was something that drove the Inklings and Octarians to tear themselves into shreds over the few remaining bits of land. Hate caused an ancient A.I. who should have been spreading knowledge to kill thousands of innocent people through tests or reanimate them.

Four does not hate Splatsville. Splatsville was a thing to point at and say, “this is what’s causing my problems”. Splatsville was the straw that broke the camel cowfish’s back in a city that had it’s last hurrah. Splatsville was a place that had gained a frenzy of hype, just like Inkopolis Square. Admitting it to herself feels strange. She spent so much time agonizing over something that didn’t matter in the slightest, and that thought is both relieving and infuriating.

Four does not hate the Salmonoids. They invaded and destroyed Inkopolis, yes, but only after it’s denizens went to their spawning grounds and harvested their eggs for quick profit. It was only reasonable that eventually some kind of retribution would have happened, and she has the sinking suspicion that Mr Grizz had something to do with the frenzies that struck them in the past few years. When she was younger, she alongside all of Inkopolis, was too blinded by the opportunities present to see the shady underbelly.

Four does not hate her parents, either. She feels frustrated towards them for refusing to ever see things her way, she feels guilty for leaving them behind with nothing more than a final conversation for company, she feels sad that a constant in her life had disappeared over the course of one night, and she feels freed now that they’re gone.

The best way to sum it up is that time her birthday party got postponed in favor of a financial literacy camp. For one thing, having a summer birthday meant that it was hard to coordinate and on the week that July 21st took place, most of Four’s friends were away with either their own sleepaway camps or off on family vacations. Of the few that weren’t away, it would be rather hard to have a party with only two people (herself and parents excluded) so they mutually agreed to postpone it until more people were back in town. After receiving this news, her parents told her that an opportunity was presenting itself; a spot had opened up for an overnight trip to a nearby college to learn about financial literacy. It was an incredibly important skill for a young squid to have and it wasn’t like her birthday party was going to happen now, so she could go! It was a small thing to be upset about given the fact that she couldn’t even have a party if she wanted to and her parents would call her on the day of her actual birth, but Four couldn’t stop thinking this camp stole my birthday.

Her parents wanted to give her the best, only their version of the best often took away the small pleasures that a kid her age should have had. What was the point of having a great carrier at the age of twenty five if she’s been slogging through the years before that? They were well meaning but went about it in the worst way, which was why she was worried about what to say next.

Four’s been staring at this message for some time now, trying her hardest to decide the best course of action. She could throw the phone into one of the flooded kettles and wash away one of the last remnants of her old life. She could say that they got the wrong number and that this phone was found intact, so whoever it is that they’re talking to is probably alive. Or… or she could lay in her bed after she’s made it. There’s no reason to chicken out now, especially not after initiating the conversation.

Tetra?

Yeah it’s me.

Four’s fully ready to get an answer an hour, shell, three hours later, but her phone hums with a notification almost immediately. Another pang of guilt diffuses through her membrane. The texting bubble pops up, disappears, pops up again, and disappears again before another message comes through.

Are you alright? I heard that there was something called a Big Run at Inkopolis?

Four paused before replying. “Bad” was probably not a good thing to reply with. “Bad” invited questions, attempts to see her, asks about what she was doing that got her in this position. A few words from Marie come to mind.

“Hey, Four. Trains got you held up?”

“Nope, just my afterschool tutor. I swear I’ve pulled the exact same excuse about being sick three times.”

“The key to getting a good excuse is not giving information. If I tell my manager that I’m going to Arowana Mall for a coffee break, he can still reach me there or try and work out an advertising deal. If I tell him that I need a little me time, he can’t exactly argue with that.”

Alright. Things have been better, though. I’ve got a stable place, food, and water. Electricity’s coming back.

That’s a relief.

Her mother tapers off into silence. The two of them are ignoring the massive, runaway elephant in the room, and frankly Four can’t blame her. There’s no easy way out for either of them.

How have you been making money?

I pick up odd jobs here and there. Work shifts for Grizzco. Play a few ranked battles. Make enough for necessities and some stuff left over. The city’s handing out  food as well.

No stable job?

Four frowned. This was a point in their arguments; Four had to go to college so she could get a good, stable job, one that would lead to a good, stable life. Frustratingly enough, they never explained what that good, stable life was , just that it was something she should want.

It’s worked out well enough for me, hasn’t it?

She pauses. That sounds a little too aggressive. She’s quick to add some more words to tone down the bitterness.

Besides, there’s no real thing as a stable job. Life is crazy. You can be having a perfectly nice day and then a giant Salmonoid attack hits the city.

I suppose so.

Four stiffened. “I suppose so” was never a good thing to hear, especially not from her mom. That usually meant “I don’t agree, but I don’t want deal with this now”. Whatever. She could deal with a bit of disdain from her mother if it meant that she’d finally manage to get a bit of closure on the part of her life she axed off.

What about you? What’s been going on in knitting land?

Unlike you, miss freelancer, we actually have to stay in one place. Shops are expensive to own.

That was a joke.

Ah. Sorry.

Things have been fine. We used to try and find you in Inkopolis, but we gave up after six months and just tried to call you. We were convinced that you weren’t going to contact us again.

So was I.

The little timestamp telling Four that her mother’s read her message appears as she tries to come up with a response that doesn’t boil down to I never wanted to see you again .

What changed?

The Big Run. That, and checking in on my old phone. It was a really big wake-up call when the Horrorbouros came to town. Luckily the Great Zapfish got rid of it, but it was still really scary to go through. I didn’t want you guys to have to wonder about where your daughter went in case something ever did happen to me.

It’s a cleaner version of the story, one that cuts out any arm wounds or emergency scouting missions or fellow agents. Maybe one day she’ll tell her parents about the NSS or at least about her involvement with the Horrorbouros’s death, but until then those are secrets reserved for the people Four holds dear to her heart and at this point in time her parents are no longer there.

Well, I’m glad you’re safe. If you ever need a place to stay, our doors are open. 

I’m fine here.

Are you sure? It would be no problem at all, tons of people are taking temporary refuge in smaller cities. You could take a year to rest before going back to college.

College. Four is about as far from college in her life path as she could possibly be. Did they expect her to still be following their life plan after she left? Apparently yes.

Yes, I’m sure. I thought this decision through before I made it, something you apparently don’t think I’m capable of doing.

Not everything has to be a fight, Tetra. It was just a suggestion.

Ugh. That was another one of her mother’s favorite lines for arguments, which was what this was starting to become. There was a reason she didn’t reach out in person and that was because the wound of her flight, even if it was years ago, was still too fresh for her to risk reopening in a petty spat. It was easier to talk in a format where she could think things out before saying them.

I’m just worried about you.

Tetra?

Yeah?

Could we try again? Forget all of our past arguments and be a family. You could stay in Inkopolis and commute back on holidays or weekends. We could talk regularly or go places together or whatever you want. A fresh start for all of us.

Four thinks long and hard about what to say next. She doesn’t want to come back, but to deny her mother a response would be to shut the door on all future conversations. They care for her. They overworked her. They didn’t understand her. They wanted the best for her. They used her to fulfill their own dreams, even if they didn’t realize it. Her mother is no great evil trying to smother Four’s spark out with her own goals, but she is no innocent parent who’s child fled for reasons entirely selfish.

I can’t forget. You’re the reason why I’m like this. You’re the reason I am where I am in the first place. I don’t think I can forgive you, at least not now. Maybe a few years later. Right now, I’m really busy and I don’t think meeting you will be good for either of us. You know that I’m alive, that I’m doing fine. That’s all you need to know. I’ll talk when I want to.

Four almost puts “thank you for understanding”, but decides against it. That’s basic common courtesy, and she shouldn’t give that to her mother until she shows that she understands. She can’t just give up on Inkopolis, not when Inkopolis didn’t give up on her.

Alright.

Thanks.

Four puts her phone down on the bench she made out of two crates and a piece of plywood. All things considered, that went remarkably well. It’s about time something went her way, and the return of her good luck charm might help with that. It sits in the zipped up pocket of her Hero gear, just as shiny as ever. She’s never considered herself a superstitious squid, but there was something reassuring about proof that she survived following her around.

Tentakeel Outpost has seen better days, but just like everything in this city it’s starting to get a little better with every time Four comes down here. A bench, as barebones as it is has been erected. The shards of Octavio’s snowglobe have been swept away. The more removable parts of the rubble that was once Cuttlefish Cabin have been cleared out. It was little progress, but progress nonetheless. The rattle of the grate causes her head to perk up as Eight reforms and shakes off the spare bits of teal ink.

“Ready to go?”

“Yes. Let’s just hope the cooler hasn’t been found yet.”

“Oh, there’s no need. See?” Four waves a hand towards the object in question, nestled safely by the ramp leading downwards to the kettles, praying that the gesture looked casual and cool.

“Did you go ahead of time to get this?” Eight says, eyes wide as she walks past her and opens the lid. The crinkling of the sealed specials reaches her ears as Four leaves her old phone on the bench and hops off to go meet Eight.

“Nope! Last night.” Pride practically explodes in her chest as Eight throws her head back and laughs, the first proper one she’s heard ever since the scouting mission. They should probably come up with a name for that too. Later.

“You’re full of surprises, Four. I don’t think I would have taken Inkopolis’s destruction half as well as I have if it wasn’t for you.” Eight shuts the cooler and starts to drag it down the ramp. Time to go.

“For eel?” Four follows as Eight makes it to the first launchpad, rooting around for a few specials of her own. They fit snugly in her pockets as Eight does the same.

“Yeah. The surface was all I had wanted to see for so long, even when I was a footsoldier. One of memories that I have… I would find one of the kettles in Octo Valley that had a replica of one of Inkopolis’s battle stages and pretend that I was really there. For a few seconds, I could forget that the sunlight was artificial or the Kelp Dome I was walking was meant for training instead of leisure. Of course, the illusion didn’t last long when the commanders called us for training drills but it was nice when it lasted.”

Eight looks down at the sealed special in her hands, holding it tightly enough to burst. “I wish the people back in the Deepsea Metro got to see what I see now. I keep wondering, why was it me that made it through? The answer was that I was lucky. If it wasn’t for the Captain then I wouldn’t have found the subway at all, and without Pearl and Marina’s help I wouldn’t have managed to get the willpower to get out, not even mentioning the NILS Statue. Agent Three saved me in the blender as well. If any one of those people hadn’t been there alongside me then I would have either died in the test chambers or in the blender. What if someone else, someone better had made it through? Someone who mattered more than a random soldier that-“

“Stop that.” Four didn’t realize that she spoke before her hands were grabbing Eight’s shoulders. “You matter, Eight. You matter so much. You say I made the Big Run easier? That was you for me. I would have just lied down and died if I didn’t have something to keep me moving and that something was you. You’re my friend, and you’re amazing. The reason you made it out was because you’re incredibly talented, and everyone needs a little help sometimes. That doesn’t make you worthless.”

Another laugh as Eight wraps her into a hug. “I can always count on you, can’t I? Thanks. Really, watching you zip across those grind rails was terrifying. I kept thinking that the Horrorbouros was going to knock you off, but you led it across an entire city. If it wasn’t for you, it wouldn’t have made its way to the Square without destroying a lot more. You’re a hero too, Four. Don’t forget that, alright?”

You’re a hero, too. How long has she been waiting for to hear someone else say those words? “Yeah. I won’t. This has been a really crazy month for us. Might as well wrap it up with a successful mission.”

“I forgot we came out here for the Kettles in the first place, if I’m being honest.” Eight confesses, looking down at the slightly crushed sealed special in her hands. “All we have to do is seal off the remaining ones, and then we don’t have to worry about another invasion.”

“Let’s get to it, then.” Four smiles at her partner and swims into the launchpad. Things are finally looking up for her- for the both of them. Knocking down the entrances to the Kettles goes by in a blur full of teamwork, return trips to the cooler not a burden but an opportunity to work in unison after so long of splitting up filled with plenty of talk about anything under the artificial sun. Eventually the topic of Operation Good Night comes up, and Four can stay silent no longer.

“Mr Grizz is dead.” She blurts out, rooting around for one of the specials. Suction Cup Lookout is halfway done by this point and there are still plenty of bomb rush specials waiting for them. Maybe they can save the leftovers for another mission when heavy firepower is needed.

“I thought he was just a mascot?” Eight asks back, stopping to look up at her.

“Nope. He was a real guy who died in a rocket accident, if what Yeller and Desperate were talking about was anything to go off of.” Four pulls out a decent amount, trying to see if she can fit a few more in her pockets so the return trips aren’t as frequent. She would like to be home by sundown, thank you very much.

“Who?” Eight looks at her, bewildered. Right. They probably had real names, didn’t they? Ah well. Too late to figure that out.

“The two Grizzco employees that were in the warehouse. I managed to overhear their conversation when you were getting out, and I have a sneaking suspicion the other half of the New Squidbeak Splatoon has something to do with it.”

“I was wondering where you were. Warn me next time, will you? I want to be able to watch your back if you attempt something like that. You’re far more important than a few packets with jelly in them.”

“Thanks.” A worry Four was carrying disappears suddenly. She was bracing herself for Eight to find out about her break from the plan and get disappointed or angry, but it seemed like their bond was stronger than that. Or Eight didn’t have enough of a sense of normality to determine why that would be anger-inducing. Probably both. “Anyway, I hope we can get the antenna operational after this.  Marie might know more, and even if she doesn’t it’ll be nice to hear from her again.”

“Indeed.” Their conversation ended after that, having all the specials they needed to finish off Suction Cup Lookout and swimming into the launchpad. The manual superjumps went off without a hitch, and for the first time in a long time the type of freedom Four had first felt when she arrived in Inkopolis had returned. Tentakeel Outpost was barely a problem, Kettles much closer to the surface than the others. Time moved as quickly as they did when exiting, and they walked up the ramp with the satisfaction of a job well done hanging in their hearts. There was just one minor hiccup; a strange sound that was coming from the the area that used to house Cuttlefish Cabin. It sounded a bit like someone gargling water and trying to sing at the same time. It could have been a disconnected pipe from the Kettles that ran underneath. It could also be a threat they’ve never faced before.

Four and Eight cautiously crept up the ramp, weapons at the ready. There, standing on top of the wreckage, hopping and trilling out a tune for the whole world to hear. There are no usual streaks of ink that trail behind it which is strange because Four knows for a fact that the Cabin and it’s remains aren’t inkproof. She’s seen a lot of this creature. Killed lots of them, too. Smallfry. Where there’s one Salmonoid, there’s always more.

A couple years worth of instincts kick in, as Four dives forwards and pounces. The Smallfry doesn’t fight back, actually. It looks vaguely delighted by getting scooped up and dangled in front of her face. She can use this little scrap as bait for the rest of the cohort. Or , she thinks as a loud crash reaches her ear, something bigger.

“Hey! Let little buddy go this instant!” A distinctly not-Salmonid voice yells. The speaker makes themselves known in the next second by scrabbling onto the bench.

“This Smallfry? Kid, I’m doing you a favor. Smallfry travel in packs. I know people usually get salty over killsteals, but the situation is far too dire to get petty about things like that.”

“I said, let them go.” They start to reach for something. Ugh. Four’s really not in the mood to fight unless she has to.

“Fine.” She drops the Salmonoid and watched it scurry towards this strange squid. Their clothes are all ripped up, but in a way that highlights the bright yellow undershirt. Braided tentacles cascade down their shoulder, and a curious weapon is slung over their shoulder. “If you need a new change of clothes, go back to one of the aid stands in the Square. Otherwise leave. This isn’t the place for civilians.”

Mystery Squid rolls their eyes, a gesture that immediacy causes annoyance to boil in her belly. “You city squids are all the same, thinking you’re so much better than us and barking orders.”

“Big words for a lost kid.” Four scrutinizes the stranger a bit closer. They’re a few years younger than she is, still carrying the signs of being freshly teenage. Fourteen? Fifteen? “At least I’m supposed to be here.”

“I was sent here! YOU’RE the scavenger!” Mystery Squid stomps their foot, eyeing her up like she’s some sort of target balloon.

Hah. They’ll have a lot coming if they try and take on a team like her and Eight. The two of them can disarm a foe like this in their sleep, and then it’s just a matter of coming up with a convincing enough lie to make sure they don’t find out the truth about being a cleanup crew that stumbled into this weird place. It does feel a little insulting to be called a scavenger in her own home turf. “Just who do you think you are?”

The squid puts both hands on their hips and leans back. “I’m Agent Three of the New Squidbeak Splatoon. And you’re supposed to be..?”

Chapter Text

Agent Neo Three was starting to get annoyed by whoever these people were.

They had told Marie that they didn’t mind going all the way to Inkopolis shortly after they completed the final Kettle in Alterna and that was partly true. They’ve been curious about the other members of the New Squidbeak Splatoon for a while, Four and Eight spoken of as distant heroes battling against a threat long gone instead of people who were one desert apart. While Captain Three was a constant presence in their adventures, Four and Eight were reduced to tricks they used or a fond memory. How were they supposed to pass up an opportunity to meet them?

The one problem was that they didn’t know anything about the two aside from a few assorted facts that really weren’t clear enough to paint them a picture. “Hey, you’re the octopus that got trapped in a blender, and you’re the squid that almost died fighting a shower!” wasn’t exactly the best conversation starter, especially for people they had just met. Would meet? Are meeting?

The two people glaring at them are devoid of the usual Grizzco uniforms they’ve been seeing scattered around Inkopolis like someone’s spilt orange paint all over the bleak grey canvas that is the current state of Inkopolis. It felt weird seeing so many people don their uniform, completely ignorant to what Grizzco’s real motives were. What felt weirder was that the entire place hadn’t collapsed once they took out Mr Grizz, but apparently the corporation had dug its tendrils deep into Inkadia’s world and wasn’t going to leave without further prodding. That does make another question: if these people aren’t Grizzco, then who are they?

“What’s the plan?” An Octoling holding a rather monochromatic shooter said, lurking by a ramp dragging… is that a cooler? … a cooler behind her.

“This trespasser says that they’re Agent Three.” Skepticism leaks off of the first one’s tone, some sort of weird-looking dualies at the ready.

“That is not Agent Three. They’re far too young and they’re lacking the sanitization scar. Considering how much noise they made, I doubt they’re half as talented.” Wow. Rude.

“How do you know that name?” They demand, drawing up their stringer. The familiar tension of a bowstring yearning for release is a comfort, but they keep their shots low in case the strangers sue for peace. The two strangers eye it wearily. Callie had said that Inkopolis doesn’t really have weapons like this, at least not yet. Good. They’ll have the advantage if they come to blows.

“I think the better question is how do you know? This isn’t a place for kids chasing rumors.” Another jolt of indignation shoots through them. No. The squid in the flashy vest was probably trying to rile them up so their shots got sloppy, and then they would strike! Crafty. Well, they weren’t going to fall for it.

“I’ve been sent here by the captain themselves. What about you?”

The strangers exchange a look. The Octoling in black and heels asks, “Cuttlefish?”

“No? Agent Three?” Okay, now they’re confused. These two know who Craig is, but don’t know that Three got promoted?

“Alright, alright, stop. Weapons down, we’re not going to get anywhere by talking in circles.” Vest Inkling interrupts, slowly lowering their equally shiny dualies. Heels Octoling glances at them and then to Neo Three, offering a bit more resistance before lowering their weapon. They must trust Vest Inkling a lot to do so. It’s only fair to do the same. Vest Inkling scrunches their face up in thought. “You’re… Three? New Three?”

“ Neo Three. New Three sounds dumb.” Heels Octoling mumbles something under their breath about how Neo just means new . They’re going to choose to be the bigger kid and ignore that. “I take it you work with the NSS?”

“Yeah. I’m Agent Four.” Vest Inkling, Agent Four, says. Her dualies slip into their holsters, but she doesn’t hold out a hand to greet them or say anything else. In their defense, Marie had said that she was yellow, not teal.

“And I am Agent Eight. As you can see, we have been left out of the loop as of late. Three got promoted?” Agent Eight launches into a question, probably to distill the tension in the air.

“Yup. They’re the boss now, and they’re keeping a watch on Alterna. Not that much is happening there now that we’ve had our way with it.” Neo Three tries to keep their tone cool and confident as they scream internally. They pretty much shot themselves in the foot right there, threatening their senior agents. Cod, this was going to be so awkward.

“Grizzco mentioned Alterna when we were poking around. Did they show up there?” Agent Four asks, eyeing Little Buddy suspiciously.

“It’s a super long story, but I can break it down in a bit. What happened to this place?” They briefly consider adding a little line about how Splatsville managed to make messy and chaotic look good, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to say now.

Agent Four stiffens. “Salmonoid attack. We shut off the Kettles so they can’t return again, but Inkopolis has still taken a lot of damage.”

“So, this is Octo Canyon? Yeesh, I can see why people left. It’s a dump.” Neo Three jokes.

“It was a lot more put together before.” Agent Four snaps, looking weirdly defensive of the place she infiltrated. It wasn’t like she lived there or anything. Strange.

“Calm down, Four.” Agent Eight says, placing a pacifying hand on her shoulder. They can see bandages poking out from underneath one of the vest’s sleeves. They’ll have to get her to tell them the story later. “You’ve caught us at the tail end of a long day, I’m afraid our nerves are a little fried. You showing up so abruptly didn’t help.”

“It’s fine. Not all mission are as fun as the ones in the Alternan Kettles.” Neo Three waves a dismissive hand before hopping off of the bench, Little Buddy jumping into his usual post of their ink tank. That was a thing agents did, right? Brag about their missions to each other? Callie and Marie did it all the time to them.

“You said you were going to tell us about Grizzco. Talk. They somehow knew that the Big Run was going to happen ahead of time, as well as having files on hand of the King Salmonoids. What does any of that have to do with Alterna?” Geez, and Marie said that Four was cheerful. Then again, they also get the same way at the end of a long day. The sun was starting to dip when they came down, and if they were here this whole time that must have been at least three hours of whatever “blocking off the Kettles” entailed.

“In a place this exposed? You’re practically asking for someone to overhear it.”

“No one’s here but us. Any kettles they could have been hiding in are collapsed and we would’ve seen someone if they were in Tentakeel Outpost.”

“You didn’t see me.” Neo Three pointed out.

Agent Four’s hand clenched and hovered over her dualies. What’s her problem? Agent Eight was quick to lower Four’s hand back down. “We have an apartment. Will that work?”

“Yeah, lead the way.”

“You two go up ahead. There’s something I want to check out.” Agent Four turns away from them to the wreckage. Agent Eight looks like she wants to say something to her, briefly raising her hand to reach out, but setting it down. She gestures for Neo Three to follow, and the two of them slip out of Octo Canyon and into Inkopolis.

“I apologize for me and my companion’s earlier harshness. Four is usually much more amicable.” There it is again. No agent in front of her name. They must be pretty close. Not that she minds. The titles kinda dragged at times.

“Eh. I’ve met worse in Anarchy Battles.”

“That’s right; you’re from Splatsville, yes?”

“Born and raised! Both me and Little Buddy have lived in the badlands for all our lives.” Neo Three makes sure to tuck him closer into their hood once they’ve emerged into the square. The exit is annoyingly close to a Grizzco location and even though it’s been hidden with a few strategically placed crates it’s best to not take any chances.

“You’re rather close with such a dangerous creature.” Eight leads them between scaffolding-encrusted buildings and pop up tents, not paying any heed to the wreckage. Probably old news to her.

“Little Buddy wouldn’t hurt a fly! Well, if I told him to, maybe. But he’s harmless to anyone else, cross my heart and hope to die.”

“It’s wise to keep him out of sight, then. Four has a rather large distaste for Salmonoids.”

Neo Three scoffed. “Yeah, I noticed. Practically bit my head off when I asked for him back.”

“You can’t blame her. The Big Run has left us all rattled, some more than others. She’s been sleeping less and staring off into the distance at times. It’s rather worrying for someone who’s usually so alert.” Eight replies. “I hope you’ve come bearing answers. Both of us are in dire need of them.”

Neo Three snickers. “Oh yeah, I’m bearing them, alright.”

Eight gives them a weird look, but continues forwards. “Our apartment would normally be a train ride away, but the Big Run has caused subway flooding and track fires. People aren’t too keen on using them until the repairs are over, so we’ll have to walk further. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all! I believe the best way to get to know someone is take a long walk with them. That reminds me of a story, actually…”

————————

Tetra sat at her desk, flicking a pencil up her desk and catching it before it rolled down. She had been doing this for about five minutes or so, leaning her head on the arm that wasn’t currently in use. The math study book she was supposed to be using was open, and problem sixteen was half finished.

She had to do thirty questions in one week, which didn’t seem like a lot on its own. When you paired it with extracurriculars, study for other subjects, homework, and her own vanishingly few hours of free time it got a lot more problematic. She’s tempted to reach into one of her desk’s drawers and pull out one of the many cheap comics she got from a shop down the road, but if her mom catches her with them when she’s supposed to be studying they’ll probably get taken away.

She liked comics for many reasons. The art was eye catching and easy enough to replicate if she really put her mind to it, the stories could range from a nice slice-of-life about people her age to a superhero battling it out in a futuristic city, and they were affordable. She had a decent allowance, but her filled schedule stopped her from taking any jobs aside from the rare babysitting ones.

Tetra sighs. Tetra flicks the pencil up. Tetra watches the pencil roll back down. Rinse and repeat.

For some reason, she just couldn’t do her work today. She would sit down, pick up her pencil, try and work, but the words would just slide right off of her mind. It was so bad that she had to reread a simple multiple choice question five times in a row in order to absorb what the book was asking her. Moments like these struck randomly, and whenever they did Tetra hated them. The basket full of clean laundry would wait on her floor for days until her father inevitably pointed it out and the shame would follow her around like gum to the bottom of a shoe. She’d try and get a bit of writing for an essay done, but no words would come to her mind and trying to look up the information her teacher had linked felt as impossible as moving mountains.

There was no use crying over spilled milk, so she just picked up her pencil and stared the problem over again. Underline the important facts. Break it down into easier questions. Consult the formulas in the key. Ha. A thousand study tips couldn’t help her now.

As if sensing her anguish, her mother pushes her door open. “Hey, Tetra.”

“Hey, mom.” She’s grateful that she tried again just in time for her mother to see. It gave the impression that she had been working hard the whole time so there was no reason to dwindle in her room at all, just her hardworking daughter doing her best to keep her grades high!

“I talked with your Language Arts teacher today.”

Tetra doesn't really like her Language Arts teacher, which is a shame since it used to be one of her favorite classes. She's just a little too peppy too early in the morning and acts like they're all friends, calling them "children" and "lovelies". It feels uncomfortable at worse and annoying or not. "Uh huh."

"She gave me a brochure for a high school fair a few months later and I want you to take a little look at it before coming down for dinner." Her mom leaves it on the desk and walks out, shutting the door behind her. As much as Tetra wants to shove it into a desk drawer to never look at it again, mom'll probably ask questions about it at dinner and she would rather deal with a quick read than an argument.

A few schools have been marked with a little dot of black marker, but they're all for carriers like doctor or scientist, nothing that intrigues her. One page catches her eye, though. A vibrant splash of color stays behind black text saying Come join us at Inkblot Academy! as various Seafolk loiter around in a lobby. It promises not only typical classes but future carriers in art like animation or graphic design. Their extracurriculars are boasted as well, things like theater and school turf war teams (even one for grind rails!) written neatly in a bulletpoint list. It had dorms on campus that were paid with the money used by lending out their courtyard for matches as well as other such supplies.

A plan appears in her mind, as fragile as a single thread in the moment. Inkopolis was decently far away, requiring a roughy fourty minute ride by train to reach it, but not far enough to be concerning to her parents. It was mainly art focused, but it had decent enough credibility and a high graduation rate. Good for networking and getting your foot in the door for one of Inkopolis’s higher ranking colleges.

She walked down for dinner, not ready to broach the subject just yet. There were still things she needed to work out and it would take a lot of convincing to get them to agree. Her father was fond of jokes about how little art carriers paid, often pointing to their own profits when selling knitted wares as the punchline. That was why he was also trying to get her into a “good college”. He would be the easiest one to appeal to out of her parents.

“Hey, squiddo,” Dad says, pulling out dishes as he piles reheated leftovers onto her plate, “workin’ hard or hardly workin’?”

“The second one.”

He laughs, leaving her plate on the counter. “Good to hear! Your mom did say that you had needed a bit more practice with parabolas.”

“Mmhm.” She takes the plate and sits, but doesn’t move to eat. Mostly because she hasn’t gotten her utensils out, but also because she’s got a few questions. “What if I don’t in a good school, though?”

“They’ll always be another shot, Tetra. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get your first pick.”

“But what if I don’t get my second pick? Or third pick?” Tetra didn’t really care, but this was more about testing the waters than having a conversation.

“You’ve really worked yourself up over this, huh? Your mother and I will always be there to support you, no matter where you end up. Someone as hardworking as you can always find a place. They’d be stupid not to take you in! You’re capable of great things, Tetra. You just need to harness your potential.”

————————

Four stared at the wreckage of Cuttlefish Cabin and did her best to not kick a piece of broken wood as hard as she possibly could. She thought she had gotten over this, coddamnit. She had been doing well recently, shell, she'd even say that she's been getting better, and Neo Three brings it all crashing down.

Agent Three, the first one, had always felt like a creation of myth more than an actual squid. They had managed to take down the original Great Octoweapons with nothing more than an underdeveloped Hero Shot, when the NSS was still reeling from the sudden theft of the Great Zapfish. They had managed to defeat DJ Octavio at full power, back when the Octarian army was still at maximum capacity at the age of fourteen. They had managed to scour Octo Valley for every last secret it held, recovering Sunken Scrolls thought to be lost to time and the ocean forever.

Neo Three was… alright, she guessed. Fine. They had the skills, they had to if they made it this far. It was probably just her being tired after a hectic couple of weeks. Still, the new kid on the block dredged up some unpleasant feelings of inadequacy Four had tried to kick to the curb so many times. She had gotten shot, exploded, crushed, broken, and dissolved all while trying to keep her head high so it didn’t drop into the metaphorical tar below, and Neo Three started talking about how fun their missions were. Was it a her problem, then? Is she the outlier?  No, she reasoned, probably not. Eight was in the same boat as her. Maybe Neo Three just had more support from Marie and the others.

Speaking of Marie, why hadn’t she talked to her? Neo Three had been sent across the desert in cod knows what to check in on them, so she was still thinking of her. It was the destruction of the radio antenna that caused their communications to fall apart, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll be  operational for a while. If it was, then Marie probably would have called, or at least listened if Four initiated it. Still, that’s it? No letter? No note? No “hey Four, I hope you’re ok?”

It wasn’t like her teachings were restricted to Four, anyway. Three was the first to have her guidance alongside Callie and Caprain Cuttlefish, Four was just the runner up. If the position of mentor was able to be passed around so easily then was she even needed anymore? By Marie? By the rest of the NSS? There were people better suited to take her place.

Eight was made to be a hero. Eight deserves to be a hero. Eight deserves parades and awards and all the things that should come with saving the world from a rampaging A.I. trying to wipe out all of seafolk-kind, not a shared apartment and having to keep go on missions. Three defeated the Octarian army and DJ Octavio at full strength while Four just dealt with the falling apart scraps. She sits down on the bench, continuing to look at the pile of rubble. How can Agent Three just do that? Give up such a large part of their identity like it doesn’t even matter?

Inkopolis was known as the city of fresh starts, which probably gave it it’s naming culture in the first place. Originally derived from soldiers in the Great Turf War trying to cover up their identity to keep loved ones safe, code names were common among those fighting. They ranged from random words to number combinations, some even choosing to put symbols and underscores if a name they were eyeing was already taken. When the war was won, many people chose to keep their code names in place of actual names out of fear that the Octarians hadn’t been fully defeated and were merely biding their time.

As the future marched forwards, it became a bit of a tradition to pick another name when entering the city’s database for inksports. There were many people with the same name, so unique ones on their official license helped make each person have a distinct record. Team names were a thing since Turf Wars came into existence. While small games mostly for fun would just have the names reflect the color of the ink, larger tournaments would require specific names. There was no overlap allowed, even if a team disbanded or got blacklisted.

Choosing a code name when you first signed up for inksports was a serious decision. You were allowed to change it, yes, but it would often take a long time and there would be a cooldown period between such things. None of them ever felt right until Four and the thought of having something so precious to her ripped away was rather distressing. That was her new self, the hardworking agent with her own life. Tetra was a runaway kid, no one special in the expanse of Inkopolis.

She doesn’t like that Three’s changed their name. Not at all because it means that one day there might be a Neo Four and everyone, including Marie and Eight, will just call them that and she’ll be a forgotten footnote in the history books because she’s done nothing notable.

A shakey breath leaves her. She’s spent way more time down here than necessary, and Eight might get worried. Or not. She seemed to be getting along rather swimmingly with Neo Three. A pang of guilt slips through her chest. So? She doesn’t own Eight. She can have more than one friend, even if that friend is a tad bit obnoxious. More guilt. She doesn’t even know Neo Three that well yet, and she’s already calling them names. It must just be her exhaustion, that’s all. She’ll get a good dinner, a nice sleep, and apologize in the morning.

Four slips through the grate and through the streets. Inkopolis isn’t that bad anyway! There’s a ton of cool stuff they can show to the latest agent (even if most of it will be under construction or closed) like her favorite haunts and maybe even some agent tricks. Yes, that’s a good plan. If she and Eight could hit it off, then surely Neo Three and her can make it work even if it’s just a mutual toleration of each other.  She walks up the steps to her and Eight’s apartment, puts her key in the door, and-

“And that’s when the whole rocket started rumbling, it was crazy! Steam was flying everywhere, bits of metal were flaking off, and there me and the rest of the NSS were-“ Four tries to ignore the stab of annoyance that shoots through her. First they swaggered into Octo Canyon and now into their apartment? It wasn’t like she was going to kick Neo Three out and make them sleep on the streets, but seeing them splayed out on the couch she and Eight picked out together like they owned the place as they talked irked her.

“Ah, hello Four! Neo Three’s just telling me about their experience.”

Eight has the decency to look a bit ashamed that they started telling the story before she arrived, but Neo Three just shrugs and says, “I’ll give you the abridged version later.”

“Forget it. I’m going to take a shower.”

“This early?” Eight looks confused.

“Long day.”

“Very well. We already ate, but I picked up some food from the tents on the way back for you. It’s on the counter.”

“Thanks.”

Neo Three interrupts. “I can’t believe you guys can stand eating that stuff even when you know what Grizzco’s been doing!”

“We don’t.” Four spits back, slamming the door behind her a bit too hard to be normal. Whoops.

“I do.” Eight pipes up. Both of them turn to look at her. “Neo Three was just explaining what Mr Grizz was doing in Alterna, and given the things we know it’s very possible that-“

“Forget it.” Four stomps past them into her room, catching the view of the packaged lunch on the counter. There’s something that isn’t her that’s currently eating it. The Smallfry. She lets out a loud groan, causing the little pest to look up at her before going right back to eating. “Control your pet, Neo.”

“Sorry!” They call after looking over, but they don’t sound too upset by the whole ordeal. Four turns around and stomps back out the door, throwing it open.

“I thought you said you were going to take a shower?” Eight asks.

“I need to eat something.”

Four slams the door shut again, but it’s  not soon enough to not hear Neo Three mutter, “Someone’s in a bad mood.”

She storms down the stairs, retreating back to the Square. All of the hot food’s been given out, so it’s a cold sandwich and a pack of salteen crackers with a sad bit of carrot sticks on the side. For a brief few impulsive moments she considers going back to the bench in Cuttlefish Cabin’s vicinity and just staying there for the rest of the night, but she’s not going to get run out of her home by a young upstart. She finishes off her depressing meal, turns in they tray, and walks back to her apartment as the sun dips low in the sky.

Four pushes open the door quietly this time, hoping that the two of them will miraculously not notice her getting in. This fails, as Neo Three perks up and says, “Hey, Four!”

“Hey.“ She mumbles, not caring for their sudden enthusiasm.

“Listen, I’m really sorry about Little Buddy eating your meal, but he hadn’t gotten anything in a while and I was going to ask you guys if you had something to give him and then I got so wrapped up in telling Eight my story that I forgot, that was definitely my bad. I cleaned it up, but I’ve got another way I can make it up to you!” Neo Three speaks at a rapid fire pace, looking excited to disclose this idea of theirs.

“I’m all ears.” This should be good, both in the sarcastic way and in the genuine way.

“Fight me!”

Bewilderment hits Four like a bolt of lightning. “What?”

“You heard me! What’s a better way to settle an argument between people than proving your might? Word is that you’re pretty skilled, and I wanna see some of those dualie tricks Marie told me about in action!”

“I’m sorry?” For a couple of seconds Four wonders if they’re really just going to go at it here in the middle of their room, swinging fists and exchanging blows before her mind catches up to her.

“Not here, duh. In the training arena or whatever you city heave have instead. No holds barred, any weapons allowed! I’ll warn you, I’m pretty good myself.” Neo Three places their hands on their hips, trying their best to look like they’re not interested in her answer.

Four mills this over in her mind for a bit. She was a bit rusty when it came to fighting kids, opting to flee Grizzco’s warehouses instead of getting her hands on a weapon and blasting her way out. The Salmonoids weren’t human either, more about brute force than battle strategy. It’s an unbalanced matchup, a rusty agent verses one coming off of the heels of a new one. On the other hand, it was a chance to show Neo Three that they weren’t just going to roll over and die, they intended on sticking around for as long as they possibly could until the New Squidbeak Splatoon begged them to leave.

“Tomorrow. Suction Cup Lookout. Bring your best.”

Chapter Text

Bring your best. Neo Three bounced their leg as they waited for their adversary to appear. After what passed as a hearty breakfast in a city still relying on aid from the stingiest corporation around, Four had disappeared down into Octo Canyon to “check if it’s even fit for fighting”. “It”, they were assuming, was probably Suction-Cup Lookout. Callie and Marie never really went into detail about their previous operations, Deep Cut had never heard of the place to begin with, and the Captain (told through Callie) said if the place was anything like the Valley then it stunk.

“Are you two really going to go through with this plan of yours?” Eight asked, rolling up what appeared to be a shredded green cloth from the pile of rubble.

“Yeah. Look, I know it sounds bad, but a bit of friendly competition is the best way to loosen up by far. Plus, turf war isn’t really my style and it doesn’t seem like any official maps are open.”

“I happen to rather like it. Safe, inconsequential, relaxing…”

“I guess. My personal favorite is getting to toss the fizzbangs around. Nothing better than the hiss and crack of one blowing your enemies to smithereens!” Neo Three punctuates their last word by pumping a fist in the air. Turf War wasn’t their favorite, but still a decent way to kill time.

“What is a fizzbang?” Eight asks, Little Buddy watching her eagerly as she pulls a crumpled box of metal with a funny face on it out, looked at it, grimaced, and promptly tossed it over the edge.

“Oh, they’re these little capsule things that explode when you toss em’ and are Splatfest exclusive. Good way to flush people out of their bases or just get some ink coverage when the round’s almost over.”

“There was something similar to that in a Shifty Station. Mounted ink cannons that allowed you to fire at competitors or the ground. A… friend of mine worked on them; kept talking about how to properly keep the shells pressurized so they wouldn’t do serious property damage.”

“For eel? Looks like you city kids know how to party hard after all.”

A wry smile creeps on Eight’s face as she shuffles some debris around. “Wouldn’t I know it.”

Neo Three looks down at their supplies for what must have been the tenth time. Three types of bombs, the signal to Little Buddy, ink tank, and finally their choice of weapon. The Hero Shot was more rounded and shot faster, but their Tri-Stringer was not only modified (it was a personal one for underground matches, so it wasn’t like she was using it on people just looking for a bit of fun, alright?) but could go further and deal more precise shots if fully charged as well as keep Four at bay if she tried to dodge roll up to them. Like a Charger, but with none of the drawbacks! “Hey, Eight? Can I use a personal weapon?”

“You did say it was a no holds barred fight. Four will likely use her Dualies which are of the hero variety, so whatever you have will be allowed.”

“Likely?” Neo Three cocks their eyebrow. Eight does not notice, too busy trying to drag something out from the pile.

“I cannot disclose anything, but Four’s a… what’s the term? Jack of all trades? Yes, that is her. She does favor the Dualies, however. Hope you know how to counter those.” Little Buddy hops off of the bench and scurries up to Eight, entering the hole she was inspecting with a golden glow. “Does your friend normally do things like this?”

“Oh, Little Buddy can sniff out treasure! There was something in that pile that must’ve caught his attention.” True to their word, he comes scooting out of the tunnel with a dirty but folded piece of paper clutched in his teeth, looking back and forth at Eight and Neo Three as if trying to decide who he should give it to. Eventually he drops it at Eight’s feet and she picks it up.

“Curious. This is the original map that the first Squidbeak Splatoon used. I was certain it was destroyed.”

“Was that what you were looking for?”

“Not entirely, no. Me and Four have been trying to clean this wreckage up for quite some time, but I considered this forfeit to the Salmonoids. It’s a miracle that it managed to survive not only the attack but all of the years being poured over or passed around.”

“You guys should really put this in a museum or something.”

Eight laughed. “Yes, maybe once everything is in order with Inkopolis.”

The metallic thumping of ski boots on a ramp caused both of them to look over to Four, returning from her scouting mission. “Aside from the wrecked Kettles, Suction-Cup Lookout’s ready to go.”

Neo Three grinned. “About time! Ready for the best fight of your life?”

Four snorted. “You wish.”

—————————

When Four first arrived in Inkopolis, she felt as small as a drop of water in an ocean. The sights; towering buildings lit up with dazzling signs, each of them changing into a flashier advertisement every few seconds. The sounds; idle chatter, the faint roar of trains, and music spilling from boomboxes. The people; each with a style so distinct it makes her headband and old t-shirt feel like nothing more than rags on her body in the face of them.

She felt rather small now, slipping into her well-worn gear like a second skin. The highlights on her jacket have started to scratch a bit and the fabric has gone from eye searing neon yellow to a more tame just neon yellow. Even her headpiece was showing the effects of time, a few lights blinking themselves out even when the rest of it shone a prismatic rainbow. She’s not going to let herself become a relic, not like the map Eight’s holding, not like her hand-me-down gear.

“So like, what’s the deal with that pedestal thing in the corner?” Neo Three asked as they walked down the ramp, curious weapon slung over their shoulder.

“It used to be a snowglobe that we kept DJ Octavio in. He’s been missing ever since the Big Run hit.” Four tries to ignore the bit of guilt that wriggles through her; he was going to try and take over Inkopolis if she let him out. That doesn’t change the fact that getting eaten or trampled was a dreadful way to go.

“Really? He’s chilling in Alterna with the rest of us after that. Showed up in this giant mech with an equally giant vacuum. It’s cool now; he helped us take down Mr Grizz and I’m pretty sure him and Cuttlefish are buddies again.”

Four feels a bit of relief that she didn’t doom an old man to die via frenzied Salmonoids. She also feels a bit of annoyance. “You couldn’t have told us earlier?”

“I did! You just weren’t at the apartment when it happened.” Eight laughed. Four tried not to roll her eyes. One scuffle and she would prove that she was worthy of at least a tiny scrap of Neo Three’s- of the whole New Squidbeak Splatoon’s- respect. They could start fresh after that, and maybe their tiny jabs would stop feeling like gaping wounds.

“Get in.” Four pointed at the launchpad with her foot. There was no way to block off these unlike with the Kettles, so Four and Eight just kept them around and tried to keep any power sources away. That had changed for today. Four took a replica Mini Zapfish from her room back here. The things had bristles that managed to store and conduct electricity much like an actual Mini Zapfish which is what kept the Kettles temporarily operational when she took the originals. Poor plushie currently had metal clamps biting it’s whiskers as the three of them filed in. She’d make sure to give it a little extra stuffing when she got home as thanks.

Sector Two’s sturdier materials ensued that it hadn’t taken too much damage. Bricks and metal mesh were far more durable than cracking glass and cheap plywood as well as the fact that most of the area was vertically oriented, so Suction-Cup Lookout was left unscathed aside from a few peeled off stickers. Four picked this as their battleground for a few reasons. First, it was large enough to make sure it didn’t just be an open and shut case of who got shot first. Second, the amount of dashtracks and sponges ensued that the fight would test how well each of them could use their surroundings to their advantages. Third, any of the other sectors were either too small or were too spread out to allow for something that wouldn’t just be the two of them firing charged shots back and forth. A perfect medium.

“Alright, go poke around for a bit,” Four made a shooing motion with one of her hands, “It wouldn’t be a very fair fight if you didn’t know the terrain. Come talk to me when you’re ready to go.”

“You got it!” Neo Three whooped and took off, Little Buddy in hot pursuit. The fella was actually kinda cute when it wasn’t eating her dinner.

“You’re being remarkably sporting for someone who is currently itching to attack.” Eight comments, amusement at the situation leaking through into her voice.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Four’s response is curt, keeping her eyes locked firmly on the horizon. A second and third Mini Zapfish plushie keep the dashtracks and respawn point operational. Sparring matches in Inkopolis typically include fatal attacks due to how inksports worked even though officially regulated weaponry was designed to cause as little pain as possible. Weapons designed for war and ones used in illegal fighting rings might be a bit different, but both of them wouldn’t be here if they couldn’t take some pain.

“Four.” Eight said, tone much more pointed this time.

Four waited a beat before crumbling. Might as well get this over with instead of carrying it for the rest of her life. “Argh, fine. Yes. I want to fight Neo Three, but they put the option on the table in the first place, so blame them.”

“That’s not what I was wondering about.”

“I want to win, Eight.” The words feel freeing after so long. This issue didn’t start at the Big Run, didn’t start at her agent work, maybe didn’t even start when she first entered Inkopolis. “Win at something for once, not just survive. Win at something because of me, and not because I lucked out or had backup. My whole time spent with the New Squidbeak Splatoon has been spent either taking orders or playing support.”

“…I see.” Eight rests a hand on Four’s shoulder. “Know that I will always think fondly of you regardless of the outcome of this match.”

Fondly. That will not stop her from disappearing. Fondness is for bittersweet memories of times long gone and opportunities that never came to pass. “Thanks.”

Neo Three’s on top of the building where Kettle 7 used to sit, peering down the side of the building. Their default ink color is also yellow, but one that’s a bit more dull than Four’s brighter one. Canary, if she had to put a name on it. While the ink color you hatched with was determined by who your parents were, often taking the form of spots on your tentacles, your default ink color was determined by how much time you spent around a certain color. Hardcore Grizzco employees would often have the signature orange as their default color, but it would usually be a shade darker due to the green of Salmonoid ink unintentionally mixing in there as well. She knew this for certain; in between stretches of Octo Canyon Four would don the orange as well.

It was also possible to pick ink merely for aesthetic choices, many inkfish having a small bottle of their preferred color on hand in their house if they were aiming for a specific shade in particular. There was a whole thriving cosmetic industry that Four couldn’t make sense of, just catching snatches of conversation in Inkopolis Square about how amaranth was currently the “in” color while anyone sporting falu red deserved to be shot. In a city where freshness used to be king, what colors you picked were a major part of your identity.

Both her and Neo Three had yellow as their default, similar enough to have the undercurrent of a binding tie. Members of the NSS went with whatever color their sector or Kettle or whatever Alterna was, but they each had a distinct one that was their own. Marie was green and grey. Callie was pink and black. Three was orange. Four was yellow. Eight was magenta. Apparently Neo Three was yellow as well.

Speaking of the Giant Devil Ray, they skid to a halt in front of her, bow-thing slung over their shoulder. Inkfish weaponry had to be portable due to the species’s ability to swim. Older iterations of weapons like the ones used in the Great Turf War were made to be collapsible so soldiers could break them down and rebuild them relatively quickly. This had varying degrees of success, more complicated weapons like Chargers or Splatlings requiring significantly more time to set up than the average shooter or Slosher. In her era, new technology allows for weapons to be registered to someone’s swim form, becoming ink-soluble and reforming alongside the user. 

“Is that the weapon you’ll be using?” Four gestures to the bow-thing.

“My Tri-Stringer’s probably more fair than the Hero Shot, so yup.”

“More fair?”

“Both are modified, but the Hero Shot’s completely upgraded by three levels. Feels a little like cheating.” They shrug at the end, fixing Four with an unreadable look. A challenge? An apology?

“My weapon is modified as well, but only by one level. Is that alright with you?” She doesn’t really have a plan if Neo Three says no. There’s the Hero Dualies Replica but those are in her apartment. It would be rather awkward to scurry back and it would throw a major wrench in her battle plan as well.

“Sounds cool to me!” Neo Three’s combative attitude softens for a moment as they put their hand out for her to shake it. “Win or lose, no hard feelings, okay?”

Four shakes their hand. Neo Three turns their attention to the other person waiting. “Ready to go, Eight?”

“Indeed.” Eight walks in front of the launchpad before clearing her throat. “As a reminder, this fight will allow for any weapon to be used as well as fatalities. You each will have three lives. Once you lose all three, you will be out of the fight and the other will be the victor. Specials are not available to both parties, so the use of any will cause for disqualification. Neo Three, you wait here. Four, walk to the end of the sector. Once both of you are in place, I will count down to ten and the fighting will begin. Are both fighters aware of the rules at hand?”

“Yeah!”

“Yup.”

“Very well. Ten…” How to start? A dash straight across the arena would result in almost instant death if the Tri-Stringer had increased charging speed and Neo Three opted for that right out of the gate.

“Nine…” Then again, if they didn’t Four would be able to kill them cleanly with the speed the Dualie’s dodge rolls provided.

“Eight…” Four thinks of the stories swapped between her and her closest ally, about what sub weapon paired best with whatever task they were trying to tackle and the burn of enemy ink on skin as one of their shakey hands squeezed tight on the trigger. Thinks of the yawning darkness of the Deepsea Metro’s entrance and of ruined statues sinking into the sea and Octolings downplaying their own efforts in a strange attempt to stave off survivor’s guilt. There has to be something she can pull from past experience that’ll help. Like how if such a gambit didn’t work and Neo Three dodged, Four would be a sitting duck for a charged shot.

“Seven…” Best to play it safe and retreat behind one of the many brick and mortar structures dotting Tentakeel Outpost. Then she can either take potshots at Neo Three or switch things up.

“Six…” The ever-faithful Hero Dualies are drawn from their holsters, spots glowing a soft blue as she takes a deep breath in. Focus, Four. This is one of the most important matches in her life.

“Five...” A loss will not cause her connections with the members of the NSS to sever instantly and violently. Instead it will be a slow, creeping alienation like trying to hold a clump of snow in your hands; it melts because of your heat.

“Four...” They will remember how one of their senior agents failed to beat back the hoards of Salmonoids that attacked Inkopolis, but dismiss it. It’s not her fault, they’ll say. There was no way she could have won there. That will not stop them from reconsidering giving her an assignment. They will remember how she was beaten by the newest agent and switch her from something high stakes to a safer, harder to mess up mission. They will then remember how she hasn’t featured on any recent missions of great importance, and wonder about how well she will do if they throw her into the fray. A kindness , they’ll think as they send her on a scouting mission while the more important members wait in the back. They’ll remember the jokes or tricks they did on the mission, the ones that bind them together and shrug with a you just had to be there if she asks why. They’ll remember any potential mentors when a new agent inevitably shows up, and shake their head when it comes to selecting Four. Not her; she doesn’t contribute anything unique worth passing down. They will forget one day, and she will still wait by the sidelines hoping to hear her name called once more.

“Three…” Her adversary waits, staring down the battlefield with their hand on the grip of the bow. They don’t seem to be drawing the string back, unwillingness to telegraph their actions to her keeping Neo Three a mystery. What do they want that they have not already stated? Do they see Four as a relic of the New Squidbeak Splatoon’s most lackluster era when it was staffed by two scared squids and a horseshoe crab that has never affiliated with them again? Do they see her as a fighter who sits in the same lifeboat as them, nursing old battle scars and sharing bits of wisdom? She can never tell; Neo Three is as fickle, playful, and confusing as the tides that lap at the shore.

“Two…” Will news of their duel reach Marie? Maybe not after, maybe not for weeks, but if it does what would she think? Would she be proud of her for choosing to rise to the occasion and grant Neo Three the fight they asked? Would she be disappointed that she indulged their youngest member in a battle against someone in a different weight class, one that will inevitably result in someone getting splatted? Will she recognize how hard Four has fought for the past couple of months or will she see a washed up fool clinging to a label that has been passed on to Neo Three?

“One…” Their eyes connect across the sector. Win or lose, no hard feelings, okay? Four cannot promise anything, not when her previous ones have been broken.

“Go!” Eight yells as the two of them spring into action.

—————————

As Neo Three nocks an ink arrow, Four disappears in two bright yellow flashes. Dodge rolls. She’s probably gone behind one of the buildings as they silently thank their luck. If she had gone on the offensive there was a very high chance of Neo Three disappearing in a flash of yelllw ink. They’ve let Four pick which color she uses for the duel; it’s common courtesy to let the person you’re challenging pick what type of fight you’ll be doing and let them get dibs on their favored ink color. That meant they were stuck with Sector Two’s default ink color: lime.

There were two places she could have gone, either behind a rather short platform on her right or to her left which held another short platform, this one connecting to a taller tower. She might have had the home turf advantage, but they were quicker on the uptake than most people expected. Splatsville was a city of constant change and those who didn’t adapt often got left behind. Alterna was the same way, Kettles hiding challenges that ranged from simple exploration to being left weaponless in an arena full of Octostamps. Four’s a kid just like her. She’s bound to slip up eventually.

Neo Three fires in the direction of the right platform (or would it be the left platform for them?), quickly dipping into swim form. If they can chase down Four, corner her, and then take her out it’ll be an early lead that can hopefully keep going. A vertical grate greets then as well as a dashtrack. Not that, it would be too flashy and Four would be able to see her easily. There’s a bunch of small boxes guarding the grate, but a normal shot is more than enough to break through them and coat the floor in ink. They slip on through, stopping before rounding the corner of the structure, charging up a shot just in case.

A loud popping sound causes their attention to snap up quickly; the Balloon Fish’s been popped in a bright spray of yellow ink. Had Four been trying to reach higher ground? Strange, Dualies were usually a weapon where the user got up close and personal with whoever they were fighting. Neo Three fires up onto the platform next to the structure they’re pressed up against; there was a dashtrack on top of that one which would allow her to reach the bigger pillar to their left and if she got up there Neo Three would be a sitting duck. They angle another shot to try and knock her off of it, but that plan’s quickly dashed when Four comes skidding around the corner, propelled by her Dualies. The Balloon Fish was just a diversion.

They drop into swim form almost immediately after firing their shot, which misses after she activated her second dodge roll. A squid roll around the corner keeps Neo Three safe from a drizzle of shots that fly past her. Four’ll be able to move now, which means that Neo Three has to make a coin flip. If she tries to follow them through the grate it’s best to get the high ground, but if she just goes over they’ll need to retreat fast. Best to use the dashtrack now, they’ll reach the top faster than Four and can defend themselves if she gives chase.

The sound of someone splashing into ink hits their ears as Neo Three shoots to the top. Their eyes grant them a view of Four swimming away from their location and towards the tallest tower in the sector. Was she really aiming for height this whole time? There’s another dashtrack on the roof, this one leading to the uninkable top of the middle structure. From there they scurry up to the rectangular structure that overlooks the tallest tower. Yellow ink is sprayed all around the floor and the beginning half of the wall leading up to the dashtrack; Four might be hiding but any sudden moves will give her away.

Neo Three readies their charged shot, modified Tri-Stringer trembling with the weight of it's payload. There, a flick in the ink as Four swims up the dashtrack. Once she reaches the top she'll be vulnerable and they can snipe her clean out of the air. They watch as her swim form shoots up and-

Four kicks off of the wall and reforms almost immediately after the dashtrack slings her upwards, a new weapon clutched in her hands. A sleek barrel outlined with yellow bracers lights up, revealing the existence of a charged shot as she releases the trigger. A charged shot soars through the air, aimed directly at their skull. Neo Three fires their own but whatever Charger Four's sporting must pressurize it's shots because when their ink arrows connect they hear the distinct sound of ice crystals shattering. If a shot like that connected with their head they would have died instantly.

Their eyes widen as a spray of yellow ink still makes it's way through their arrows, less concentrated but still stinging one it connects. Neo Three keeps their eyes shut tight as they reach a hand up to wipe off the ink trying to creep into their eyes, only for something hard to thunk into their unguarded stomach. They stagger back as they struggle to keep their footing due to the residual ink Four's shot has left. A step back as their eyes are finally able to open and-

Oh.

They’re falling.

An uncomfortable thud rattles through their body as they connect with the ground, still too dazed to switch into swim form as a painful sting explodes through their head as everything goes a dazzling yellow.

—————————

Four darts behind a wall as Neo Three respawns, biting back a hiss of pain as the skin on her palms throbs; she scraped it on the bricks when slowing her momentum. Whatever. What she had to do now was pick her next weapon. The Hero Charger was out of the question; the only way she'd ever be able to land a charged shot that good is if she had the element of surprise, and now that catfish is out of the bag. Once Neo Three's seen it, they'll either dodge or get up close, and by then Four'll be done for. Besides, they've got a contingency plan if Neo Three tries to take the Hero Charger.

“The score is now three to two, with Agent Four in the lead!” Eight announces. The Hero Dualies are snug in their holsters and Four wants to have them on hand in case things get dicey. She was already headed for the high ground. No need to try and switch it up; it would also let her see if Neo Three was trying to set up any traps. She swims up top and pulls out her next weapon. The chromatic barrel of the Hero Splatling roars as the ink sloshes around inside.

There are two weapons that require standing in one place for long periods of time, and those weapons are Chargers and Splatlings. Not her personal favorites due to the lack of movement both of them had barring a few exceptions, but she could respect their users and their craft. More importantly, she could respect unleashing a barrage of ink that covered a wide area and made splatting people a breeze.

There Neo Three was, a small green shape staring defiantly back at them. “Where’s your Charger gone?”

“I don’t like to use the same tricks twice. Besides, it’s fairer this way.” She yells back. A smile was on Neo Three’s face, all thrillseeking, wild joy before they plunged into their ink, tossing a spray of green up before disappearing behind a brick structure. Two can play that game indeed. Four’s still thinking about that roll thing they did, the one that kicked up ink to deflect some of her Dualie’s shots. It doesn’t seem to protect them entirely but it was a new factor she’d have to mull over.

Her target still lurks somewhere below, probably trying to find a way to knock her off of the tower where Kettle Six once resided without getting in the Hero Splatling’s range. A few Autobombs tossed below are sure to flush them out. As Four dips into her ink to recharge, the muffled hiss of her Autobombs greets her ears alongside a shriek and sound of shuffling tells her that they found their mark. She bursts out and reforms, Hero Splatling roaring to life as she charges it up. There, green ink over the splotches the Autobombs made when they blew up. So where was Neo Three..?

Something flying through the air trills, Four wheeling around to shoot it out of the sky. No bomb could travel that fast and that high, at least none in Inkopolis could. Something thumps into the back of her head with a warble, the feeling of wet scales crawling on her tentacles. Of course. Little Buddy is shockingly clingy for such a tiny Salmonid, digging their fins and teeth in with gusto. Four dips into her ink again, loosening his grip on her as she reforms, hurling a Burst Bomb that knocks out her tiny attacker. She’s allowed a small moment to catch her breath before three ink arrows slam into the Hero Splatling with a brass bang, knocking her slightly off balance but not off of the tower.

There Neo Three is, same place as last time they skirmished here. Their bow is held vertically instead of horizontally, another charged shot beginning to form. Four lets her payload deliver, a veritable storm from the hungry mouth of her Splatling. They quickly drop back off of the rectangle to take cover, but that doesn’t answer Four’s question. Why did they hit the the Hero Splatling instead of her head? Did they aim wrong?

No . This weapon was modeled after the Heavy Splatling in both functionality and shape, just with some modifications made to increase the distance and power of the shots. It lacked a strap so she could ditch the Hero Splatling in case of emergencies, which meant the only thing holding onto her weapon of choice was her. Neo Three was trying to kill two parrotfish with one stone; if Four kept holding on to the Hero Splatling she would use up a lot of energy and be too distracted to fire back, but if she ditched it or tried to get closer she would be in range of a headshot. They’ve turned her first trap against her.

Another round fired clears the area behind the structure. Another shot fired, this one barely missing her. Another warble, this one significantly more wet. Four temporarily takes one hand off of the Hero Splatling’s handle to toss another Burst Bomb at Little Buddy so he would continue to stay down when a charged shot connects with her hand instead. Pain lances through it as she releases, weapon falling to the floor as she nails Little Buddy.

“Got the memo. No more Splatling!” Four yells down, searching for a good alternative as Neo Three begins to try and scale the tower. One last Burst Bomb buys her a bit of time as she dips into her ink to recover. No Charger, no Splatling, and it wasn’t the correct time for the Dualies yet. She needs something fast with a wide spread of ink so she can shut down Neo Three’s attempts to either escape or get closer. Four reforms and jumps off of the building as the Hero Blaster takes shape in her hands.

Technically a Blaster would join Chargers and Splatlings in the category of weapons with slow firing rates, but there were two things that set it apart. One, Blasters let you move around even if their shots were slower. Two, the Hero Blaster’s firing speed was a lot faster and a lot further than the average one on the block. The weapon’s signature bursts of ink would both be useful for getting chip damage in and for cutting off retreats. She’s not the best with them; Marie had drilled her heavily in Chargers and the Hero Splatling was one she spent a particularly long time trying to master (key word: trying). This was going to be a bit bumpy.

Neo Three rolls off of the wall in a clean swirl of ink that protected their swim form. That was fine. Four needed to get them to open ground where the Hero Blaster could work it’s magic. All of the brick structures in this half of Suction-Cup Lookout provided way too much cover for them to hide behind. The halfpipes by the entrance however… get Neo Three in one of those and they’ll be easy pickings. A curling bomb makes a clean path forwards as she waits for her adversary. She doesn’t have to wait long as a green Splat Bomb hurdles forwards, quickly followed up by Neo Three themselves.

They aren’t going for charged shots this time, which was a bit weird. Maybe they recognized that it would have allowed for the Hero Blaster’s powerful shots to explode them into ink splatters. They’re playing defensive now, skidding back with that roll and covering the land in their ink instead of trying to shoot her. Four kept up, but was starting to err on the side of caution. Despite the various upgrades the Hero Blaster still guzzled ink and Neo Three seemed to realize this, shooting the ground around her feet so she couldn’t recharge.

Four was the one getting pushed back now, and whatever headway she makes quickly gets erased by the horizontal shots of the Tri-Stringer. Eventually she falls back literally, dropping into the halfpipe she was originally going to try and corral Neo Three into. She’s left it relatively uninked so that the trap wouldn’t be too obvious, now clinging to the sides trying to replenish enough ink to fight back. Four decides to risk tossing an Autobomb over the rim of the halfpipe to try and keep them away for a bit longer. She hears the sound of it’s feet walking on the ground, but the thing just jumps back into the halfpipe which means-

Four realizes her mistake a bit too late.

—————————

Neo Three lets out a relived sigh as Four drifts off to the respawn point. She got tunnel visioned and just wasn’t used to fighting with a Blaster in general, and if the way she stopped using the other weapons after either a kill or disarmament that meant that the Hero Blaster was off of the table. A good thing too, as they weren’t quick enough to avoid the shots entirely. If she hadn’t run out of ink, there’s a pretty good chance that Neo Three would be staring down the barrel of the Hero Blaster pretty soon.

Speaking of, they need to get away before she respawns and brings out her next weapon. What might have once started as a friendly duel was swiftly turning into a gauntlet hellbent on turning them into a inkstain, and Neo Three loved it. Had Four known that they were itching for a challenge and taken it upon herself to give it to them? If so, they’d have to get her a thank-you card after all of this. A high speed battle testing how well they could react against all types of weapons with an experienced member of the NSS who wasn’t afraid of using cool tricks to win? Someone pinch them, they must be dreaming!

More importantly, this was the first glimpse they were getting of the apprentice Marie spoke so fondly of, the one that functioned as a one-squid army and managed to take back not just Callie but the Great Zapfish all while only having two people supporting them, not the sad civilian that couldn’t take a joke. They would fit in perfectly at Splatsville’s battle scene with all of her modified weapons and sneaky tactics. They’d have to extend the invitation sometime when Inkopolis wasn’t a major wreck.

On the right side of the entrance to Sector Two was a small building with a nook to hide in, guarded by a jump from two grates. It’s the perfect spot to scope out what Four’s going to do next; she won’t be able to hide in her ink to make a fast approach and they can duck behind the corner if she has some sort of other long range weapon. They’ll be fair as well and let Little Buddy take a break to recover. If Four wasn’t going to reuse weapons then they wouldn’t use him either. They make it behind just in time to hear Eight say, “The score is now two to two, with an even amount of lives.”

A strange sound reaches their ears as Neo Three battles the urge to peak around and see what’s making it. There was a very high chance that Four had no access to a Splatana and the Hero Splatling had been knocked out, so what was making that strangely wet scraping sound? The sudden clang of ski boots on metal grates causes them to hurl a Curling Bomb around the corner. Apparently it missed, as Four skids around the corner with the Herobrush quickly rising up to douse them.  Right. They are kinda cornered here. The metallic glint of the Herobrush’s hilt keeps catching their eye inbetween Four’s erratic swipes. Now that they’re up close and personal, something about it keeps catching their eye.

“Well, it isn’t a power egg container.” Neo Three squinted cautiously at the hunk of metal that Little Buddy had dug up from the Alternan snow.

“It’s Sardinium; you can use it to upgrade your gear. Four was the first member of the New Squidbeak Splatoon to find it. Crazy squid, always poking her nose into whatever corner she could find.” Marie laughed fondly and tightened the scarf around her neck. Neo Three took their treasure and scampered off, too occupied with the new possibilities to care about whoever Four was.

Alright, definitely no arrows. The Hero Charger (shell, maybe all of her weapons) was probably reinforced with Sardinium which was why it had pierced through their shot. A similar thing would probably happen with the Herobrush considering it was being used as a melee weapon. An idea sparks to life as they shoot a normal shot to the side, hoping to bait Four into trying to cut her off. It doesn’t work. Squit.

Fine, they’ll just get rid of the Herobrush like they did with the Splatling. Neo Three nocks their ink arrows and fires, watching the green trails soar towards her hand. Then they can pick her off and-

Four lets go of the Herobrush’s handle, letting the momentum of their charged shot carry it away as she dedicates her energy to swinging her other hand up to fire a devastating spray of tiny ink globs from the tip of the newly summoned Hero Brella.

“How many of those do you have?” Neo Three howls in frustration, narrowly avoiding the Hero Brella’s rampaging canopy by dipping into their earlier pool of ink. A squid roll lets them barely miss Four’s followup shot, who quickly gives chase as they slip through the grate and reform in the halfpipe. A bad decision, as the shotgunlike blast of the Hero Brella’s ink spray turns them into a fine mist.

They surge back out of the respawn point with a snarl, firing ink arrows instantly to where Four was. They’re not that mad, but competitions get them riled up and they can’t think of a good taunt at the moment. A large splatter of ink is their answer, Four sporting the Hero Slosher now. Just get aggressive towards her. You’ve played it too safe with all these feints and fakeouts.

“The score is now two to one, with Four in the lead!” Eight calls. Neo Three fires quickly, not caring about ink consumption at this point. Four throws just as quickly, walking on top of the higher grate catwalk. Weird; they at least had the option of refilling ink. Was it an accident or cockiness that made them take this action? As Neo Three quickly found out, it was neither of these.

The moment the Hero Slosher runs out of ink, Four hurls it directly at Neo Three’s head before they can snipe her. It’s thankfully empty but taking a Sardinium-reinforced bucket to the head still hurt, and they’re not out of the woods yet as Four pulls out the Hero Roller and comes crashing down in a torrent of yellow ink. They’re not going to let another one of her tricks claim their life this time. They let go of the bowstring. Their shot finds its mark.

—————————

Four shakes out the ink from respawn. She’ll admit, she was getting a little sloppy back there. Overconfidence was a key killer in situations like these, and she had practically begged Neo Three to shoot her by walking on an ink-permeable surface. Should’ve lead with a vertical swing to clear the way first and then jumped down, but if Four lamented every mistake she ever made she would get absolutely nowhere in life. It was time to bring out the big guns.

“The score is now one to one. The next death will be a tiebreaker and determine the winner!” Eight cheers. Four can’t blame her. Against her better judgement, it’s started to become a bit fun seeing how long each of them can last.

The Hero Shot might not be as favored as the other weapon left in her roster, but that didn’t change the fact that it was the only thing she had for all of Sector One, so she was intimately familiar with the way it worked. It was also the only Hero weapon she had that was upgraded to level three, so there was that as well. The rapid fire flies through the air as Neo Three ducks behind the short stairway leading to their spot of previous skirmish. Four switches it up the moment they’re distracted, aiming for the sponges leading up to the only corner of the map they haven’t fought in. They catch on pretty quick, letting a charged shot fly in an attempt to shrink the sponge she’s standing on and either pick her off there or send her falling into the void below. They’re a bit too late, letting Four claim the height advantage once more as she inks the sponge in the back.

“You can’t run away forever!” Neo Three calls up to her, another delivery of ink arrows ready to fly. Four’s only response is a Burst Bomb to break their focus. They practically launch themselves up using some kind of weird momentum jump that kicks up ink as well. Splatsville’s denizens were fond of moves like that, apparently. Four’s shots break the armor but Neo Three tosses up a Splat Bomb to keep her occupied for a bit as they attempt to make the climb as well.

She manages to cover up whatever enemy ink is left, only getting nicked by the explosion. The thumping of shoes on grates is an ironic reversal of her previous kill, but there’s no way she’s going to walk out of this as a loser. She’s so close to winning, to solidifying her place in the great, horrible history of the New Squidbeak Splatoon. She will not let this opportunity slip through her hands.

Four tosses an Autobomb down to stall for time as it hits her how strange this whole situation is. She’s trying to kill them for no other reason than to keep a connection that might have been starting to break while Neo Three’s having fun, because for them this is a playful sparring match. They do not know what it means for Agent Four.

Did she even know who Agent Four was, who Tetra was, who the person stuck halfway inbetween was? Four was a failure who let the city fall to ruin. Four was a hero who did her best in an impossible to win situation. Tetra was a coward who threw herself into a war in order to escape her meaningless problems. Tetra was a child who had been searching for freedom and wasn’t given any outlets aside from combat to explore that. The person stuck inbetween was a constantly shifting identity who never quite knew what she wanted, walking around in an endless circle of choices both good and bad. Didn’t that logic apply to everything else in her life?

The New Squidbeak Splatoon was an organization created to kill in a war that should have never happened in the first place. The New Squidbeak Splatoon gave her a sense of purpose and community when all other doors were shut. Agent Eight was an Octarian defector who happened to luck out into escaping to the surface. Agent Eight was one of the most skilled people she had ever met, fighting not just for herself but for the countless others trying to find their way out because it wasn’t their fault they were never offered a hand. Neo Three was an arrogant brute from Splatsville that had no sense of when to stop poking at an open wound. Neo Three was still too young to see the true brutality of the situation they had gotten wrapped up in, trying to deflect the oncoming storm of events that would haunt them for the rest of their lives with a playful retort. DJ Octavio was a cruel warlord who stole Inkopolis’s power and tried to kill her and others many times. DJ Octavio was the ruler of an oppressed people that were still being subjugated until recently. Sheldon supplied them with the items that lead them to victory and told her all the ways to use them to save herself. Sheldon supplied them with weapons built to harm in the name of science in research that is still kept hidden to this day.

Marie was a wonderful teacher, a concerned sister, and a great friend that stood by Four and gave her a purpose. Marie dragged her into the battlefield in the first place because she was alone and afraid of a world no one should have been made to live in.

Aren’t all of them walking in circles in one way or another?

Neo Three finally claws their way up to her level, but Four’s switched to the Hero Dualies. These faithful shooters have kept her alive despite all of the bombs, explosions, and fangs pointed her way. They allowed her to shred through an entire army. Their yellow barrels stare forwards towards their next target, and Four knows what she must do.

She knows what will happen to herself if she loses this fight, but only now is she considering what will happen to Neo Three. They will carry the scars of this battle into the future, one where their own teammate pushed them to every limit in a competition that was not safe for either of them. They will wonder why that happened, wonder if they did something to deserve it as the hidden effects of their journey comes to rear their head down the line. They will go from a confident kid fresh off of a victory against insurmountable odds to a worried, traumatized teenager turning every option over to make it indicative of their own guilt. They will become like her.

Four will not let that happen.

The Hero Dualie’s dodge roll propels her forwards as Four wraps Neo Three in a tackle, one that sends them both careening over the edge to where the void awaits. They thrash and squirm but it’s too late, wind howling in both of their ears and cutting across their skin as they fall. Death by void wasn’t a real thing, just a name tacked onto the phenomenon caused when an Inkfish’s membrane starts to fall apart due to stress, or at least in theory. While they would quickly respawn afterwards, the whole experience was still a mystery to the general public and those who did research weren’t exactly common. The bottom line was that death by void was a quick way to get splatted, which lead to it being implemented in certain stages where water wasn’t available once people were sure that there was no long term effects. The perfect way to force their duel to a tie.

Four resurfaces to a worried Eight helping her up, Neo Three’s hand clasped in her other one. They let out a little sigh before giving her a friendly pound on the back. “Congrads, Four. You’ve won.”

“No. No, we tied.” A brief skim of the Hero Gear’s assigned weapons allow her to see that everything’s safely back in place.

“I was not able to see what happened. Is this true?” Eight asks, resting her hand on Four’s shoulder.

“Yeah. It’s over now.” Four shakes off both of their arms and begins to walk towards the launchpad. It’s been a long day for all of them, and a conversation in the living room around some food sounds like the perfect remedy. She’ll explain everything a bit later.

“The fight?”

“The circle.”

Chapter Text

It was starting to approach the time of year when Inkopolis got cold.

It hadn’t reached the point where you would need a heavy jacket, but the nights were a little bit longer and the breezes were no longer balmy. Four shuddered a bit, wishing she had brought a sweater with her as she stood in line to pick up food.

Grizzco’s began to recoil back into its usual post, emergency tents getting replaced with more official ones courtesy of Inkopolis’s disaster services. The city’s beginning to get back on its feet, shops slowly starting to open up with the subway tunnels being fully cleared. While it’ll be a while before Turfing or Ranked reopen some semblance of normalcy has returned, even if the city is still under construction. Just in time too; while winter in Inkopolis wasn’t incredibly harsh there was still the occasional squall that left the whole place covered in snow.

“Next!” One of the attendants from the table barks, Four shuffling up to take her tray. The sun is starting to peek over the horizon, beams of light spilling through the holes between the skyscrapers. She takes up residence in the scaffolding from last time, content to actually eat. She’s left a note on the table telling Eight and Neo Three where she’s went, but last time she checked they were still asleep. It was nice to get a little alone time anyway.

From up here Four can see all of Inkopolis Square’s famous billboards. A few of them are smashed, screens black with lack of power. Some of the working ones on the larger side list out the weather for the next week or places to take shelter and receive food from. Deca Tower’s doors have had their glass replaced, inside converted into a shelter for those unable to get housing. No advertisements blare out of respect for the still-recovering Great Zapfish. While it hasn’t gone back to its full power, it’s started to sleep less. The return of the dopey grin seemed to have brought a bit of cheer to Inkopolis’s denizens.

Four polishes off the last of her food before peering a bit closer at Grizzco. She owes a lot of her skills to the place, and just as many scars. It was kind of incredible that the place managed to get as big as it is today. A quick way to make cash that didn’t require prior experience, an energy source to sell to places that didn’t have Great or even Lesser Zapfish, and a location beginning to grow in popularity. A perfect storm of success, one a younger Tetra had been eager to throw herself into.

Grizzco’s unique position had caused a couple more obscure sayings to get a second wind, typically reserved for fishing villages near typical spawning grounds . “You find who your real friends are when the Glowflies come knocking.” It was a phrase that had been rattling around in her head ever since she first heard it from a higher-ranked teammate the night she was the last one standing at the Ruins of Arc Polaris. It was just as logical as it was poetic, which is probably why it had gotten stuck in the first place. It was easier to forget nonsensical or boring statements, not something that was both at the same time.

Grizzco itself was a fair-weather friend. If profits were high then plentiful bonuses would flow from the meter that each worker relied on for pay. If profits were low then you were lucky to get even a scrap of gear and a handful of coins. Plus, the seedy underbelly had shown itself to Four, once with Neo Three’s story and twice with her own experiences. While it would take a long time for the company to crumble, it would do so eventually. Inkopolis was a city of change, after all.

“I thought I would find you here.” Speaking of friends, Eight comes climbing up to Four’s little platform.

“Hey. Neo Three still asleep?”

“Mmh. For someone so boisterous you’d think they’d be able to expend far more energy than that.” For a couple of seconds they’re both quiet, looking down at the square. They aren’t incredibly high up, about as high as a second floor balcony would be.

“I guess they were right in the end. I don’t dislike ‘em anymore.”

“I’m glad. You need more friends.”

“Like you’re the one to talk.”

Eight laughed softly, eyes going up to the screens latched to the buildings. “Occupational hazard, I suppose.”

“Yeah.” Four sighed. “Not like any therapist’ll take me seriously if I tell them that a giant mechanical shower is the source of some of my nightmares.”

“Someone should get on that. There’s a very profitable market to be made.” Eight playfully elbowed her.

“Maybe write a book.” Four said, a small chuckle following shortly afterwards. “Not for the public, though.”

“Oh?”

“I guess I don’t want people getting the wrong impression. Like, no matter which way I write it there’s always going to be someone who takes away that it was a cool adventure and I don’t want to send anyone else down that path, cause I’ve already lived it. I want to say that I understood the gravity of the situation and the implications and all that but I didn’t, I was fourteen and looking for something to do that would make me matter and apparently I picked wrong both times. It’s either being a soldier to put people back underground or an employee that keeps killing Salmonoids, and even if I didn’t have all of the information it wasn’t like there was a grand coverup in place. I mean, Grizzco was pretty adamant on their business plan!” The words spill out of Four before she can put them into something more structured, a couple years worth of doubts tumbling like stones in an avalanche.

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Grizzco much longer.” Eight smiles, eyes still fixed on the screens.

“Huh?”

Before Eight can respond, the introduction to Off The Hook’s news segments bursts to life on the biggest screen. Turntables scratch as Pearl chirps, “We’ve got some big news for y’all today! Hot off the presses, Grizzco’s involvement with the Big Run goes way beyond defensive measures.”

“Right indeed, Pearl. Anonymous sources have provided evidence that shows that Grizzco might have known about potential Big Runs ahead of time. It is unknown at the moment how deep this runs, but it is undeniable proof that the company has kept important information that could have came in handy if broached ahead of time.” Marina’s silent implication has all people below staring up at the screens as well.

“We don’t want to point any fingers ahead of time, but an investigation’s going to happen soon if we don’t get any answers. We’re super thankful to Grizzco for helping provide aid and all that, but it does raise a couple questions.” Pearl says, Marina nodding and picking up shortly afterwards.

“Even if there were only hunches that the Big Run phenomena was a possibility, the disaster services should’ve been notified the moment the magnetic disturbances were detected. In fact, Inkopolis disaster law demands that such a debriefing should’ve taken place. Instead, we received the sighting of the Horrorbouros from a pair of weathermen that wish to remain anonymous. It seems a lawsuit is on the horizon for one of Inkadia’s biggest companies.”

“Hold your seahorses, Marina! Nothing’s set in stone yet. If Grizzco can provide a good reason why, then they might get out of this situation intact.” Maybe, Four realized, but their reputation won’t. Any bit of goodwill they’ve gathered with the tents will be destroyed if they were the ones behind the attacks in the first place.

“That’s all for now. Don’t get cooked and stay off the hook!” The big screen flashes off, but Four can see that one of the smaller ones is playing the message on loop.

“Anonymous weathermen, huh? Sure wonder who those were.” Four grins.

“It’s a mystery to everyone.” Eight returns it, finally turning to face her.

“So, you knew about this ahead of time?”

“Not for long. Pearl and Marina told me so it wouldn’t be a shock when the news aired. I wanted to tell you after I got the call, but you were out of the house. By the time I got up here, the news was about to break.”

Four waved a dismissive hand. “It’s cool. Pretty slick how they spun the whole thing, huh?”

“Yes. The disaster services will be the ones doing the actual lawsuit, but it’s good to get the public on their side. A lot of people who haven’t seen behind the curtain are still loyal to Grizzco, or were before this message.” Eight said.

“Guess it’s good that we’ve got the heat off of our break in.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “What if they doubt the anonymous sources? It’s not like we can just come up there and say that we’ve broken in.”

“No doubt they’ll try and pull the framing card. We’ll just have to see how it plays out.”

“Good. I’ve had enough politics for my whole life.”

“I do not think we’ll be able to leave that easily.”

“A kid can hope, can’t she?”

“I suppose so.” Eight’s barely finished speaking before they hear the thump of feet and the chipper voice of Neo Three coming over.

“Hey, guys! Catch the news?”

“I was here long before you were awake.” Four jabs, but it lacks the venom it might have had a few days ago.

“About time that dilapidated tangerine hut got what’s coming. I was getting sick of it just sitting there pretending that it’s so helpful.”

Four snorts at their choice of words. “It’ll be a long battle. Grizzco isn’t the kind of place to just roll over.”

“Yeah. Still nice that we get to pass the torch for now.” They lean over the railing, looking down. Little Buddy does the same at their feet. “Salmonoids aren’t that bad. A lotta people think that they’re just mindless animals, but that isn’t true at all. I mean, if someone showed up at your home with a gun you’d probably hit them with a frying pan too.”

“Grizzco’s thrown a massive wrench in cross-species relationships, haven’t they?” Eight muses, tone a tad bit wistful as she speaks.

“People in Splatsville are starting to get a bit cool about it, but I guess it’ll take a while to catch on here.” Neo Three mumbled.

“For the city of fresh starts, it’s a bit stuck in the past.” Four speaks up, thinking about the past couple of months. “Maybe it’s a good thing everything got shook up.”

“Only time will tell.” Eight conceded, and for a bit they all just stood there letting the chilly air wash over them.

“I guess I gotta tell Marie that the mission was a success. She’s worried about you, y’know?”

“Contact’s been cut off in the Big Run. We used to have this big antenna back at Cuttlefish Cabin, but you’ve seen the wreckage. I wanted to rebuild it, but we’ve been a bit busy.”

“Why not rebuild it now?”

Four opens her mouth to say something about how there’s still things to be done, how talking to the other chapter of the NSS ranks rather low on the ladder of importance, how she’s worried- worried that maybe the bond she had with Marie might have fizzled out in their radio silence, but none of them come out. “We had to wait to wrap stuff up with Grizzco and the city. I guess we could try tomorrow.”

“There are plenty of construction resources around, and we could always call for help for the more technical side of things.” Eight chimes in, hand giving Four’s a soft squeeze. She squeezes back.

“Alright! What are we waiting for?” Neo Three whoops, causing Little Buddy to squeak excitedly and scurry around underfoot.

“The fact that none of you have had breakfast yet, and I don’t know about you but Eight gets pretty crabby when hungry.” Four avoids a jab to the stomach by starting to climb down the scaffolding to the square below, tray tucked underneath her arm.

“Rather rich coming from you.” Eight scoffs, following without further comment.

Nervous excitement hums through her body as the three of them rejoin the masses, all still chattering about the future  of Inkopolis’s biggest company. They slip into the crowd, just another face in a city of thousands. Maybe that was the way it always should have been, and for a couple of seconds Four wonders if all of them would have met if they were never agents at all. Probably not. The only reason Neo Three came to Inkopolis was because of their mission, and the only reason Eight stood on the surface instead of in the domes was because of the fight that sent her down there in the first place. Rather than devaluing their friendship, it strengthens it. A one-in-a-million chance that all three of them would be here, for better or for worse. If they could get that lucky, surely they could fix a simple antenna.

Problems seem a lot smaller in a group, after all.

Chapter Text

After a week or two of toiling, the antenna is complete.

It takes a bit longer than it did the first time around; metal’s still a bit of a hot commodity and their engineering skills are basic at best and nonexistent at worse. Eight had tried to reach out to an actual engineer, but Off The Hook was busy dealing with the fallout of their accusation so the best they got were a couple hurried emails from Marina that were usually filled with jargon they didn’t understand. The slow creep to completion was doing bad things to Four’s nerves.

She wanted to see Marie. She also wanted to hide under a rock forever. What do you even say to your mentor after they pack up and leave you to protect a place against impossible odds? Was she proud? Was she embarrassed? It feels like she’s thought these a thousand times, but only now does it actually matter. For better or for worst a couple months of worries will get put to rest once they finish.

As the day drew closer and closer, Four began to workshop things to greet Marie with. At first she wanted to lead with a snappy one-liner, something to diffuse tension and say that there were no hard feelings. Then she realized it was too shallow and tried to opt for a more open approach, but coming right out of the gate with a heartfelt speech about her feelings felt like it was rushing it. Four told herself that she would eventually find the right words, but as the deadline to completion loomed closer and closer she was still no better off than when she started.

She pushes herself off of the makeshift bench and walks over to where Eight and Neo Three are trying to start the computer up. They’ve cleaned up Cuttlefish Cabin’s wreckage decently enough. Whatever bits of debris that could be dangerous are gone and the bits that aren’t too badly damaged have been repurposed to help support the antenna’s hefty weight and prop the computer up. The sight of all the wires and clamps latched onto one tiny space reminds her a bit of the Great Zapfish. Maybe she'll pay it a visit later; it's started to return to its normal pattern of sleep.

"...and you're sure this thing isn't going to blow up in our face?" Neo Three peers closer at the laptop.

Eight squints a bit closer and tentatively plugs another wire in. "I'm fairly certain, yes."

“Fairly certain isn’t sure.”

“It’s the closest we’ll get on our own.”

Four makes her way over to them with a sigh. “Here’s to hoping.”

“You worried?” Neo Three asks, pushing up from their crouched position on the ground with a lazy stretch.

“A bit.” She confesses. “It’s been a while since we talked.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’m sure Callie and Marie are gonna be happy to see you. They’re sentimental like that.“

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Four rolled her eyes, but there was no malice behind her actions. If Neo Three still wanted to sass her after their fight she wasn’t going to take it personally. Competition is natural around that kind of age anyway. She would know.

“Are you two ready to start this call up or are you going to keep sniping at each other?” Eight grumbles from in front of them. She looks as if the computer’s going to explode at any second now and given how precarious the whole setup is she can’t be faulted for it.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s all outta my system now.” Neo Three waves a flippant hand around, other holding Little Buddy in place. He’s currently eyeing up one of the shinier pieces of metal, squirming eagerly.

“Ready whenever you are.”

Eight tapped a bit on the keyboard before the screen flickered to life, revealing a rolling wave of static. Occasionally a picture broke through of a snowy landscape. The choppy feed slowly cleared up, revealing two gold and black blurs before jumping back to grey fuzz.

"Hang on, let me-" Eight twists a wire. The computer's speakers let out a harsh squeal of static, screen still flickering. "There! Can you see us now?"

“Loud and clear.” After what felt like a lifetime, there Marie was. Her outfit’s different, but that’s not what catches her eyes. What does is the tattered teal scarf wrapped around her neck. It’s worn out in some places, a few stray strings drifting down and Four knows that she could certainly get better scarves. Her heart swells with fondness.

"Heya, Foursie!" Callie grins from beside her. Agent Three waves in the background.

"Hey, guys." Her voice croaks a bit, but she finds she doesn’t really care.

“How’d you know we were calling?” Neo Three pokes their head in frame, Little Buddy warbling out a greeting to the people on the other side of the screen.

“No hello for us?” Callie teases.

“I saw you guys like two weeks ago!”

“I know, I know. We rigged up this thing up to let us know when a signal came in, courtesy of the DJ. Gotta say, we were pretty sure the antenna was wrecked on your side.”

“It was.” Four said. Might as well get all of the unpleasant bits out of the way first. As if debriefing a mission, Four rattles off information. “There was a Big Run that resulted in no casualties on Inkopolis’s behalf but a large amount of infrastructure was damaged. The Salmonoids had came in from the Octarian Kettles, probably using filtration pipes or some… other thing… anyway, me and Eight disconnected them from any sectors, so they can’t come back. There’s also a law suit against Grizzco for withholding information by Inkopolis’s disaster department. I can’t remember the acronym at the moment.”

“At ease, soldier.” Marie snarked, posture relaxing a bit. “I guess that old saying’s true, huh? If you cut off the head of the sea serpent…”

“C’mon, ‘Tavi! Don’t you wanna say hello to Four and Eight?” Callie yelled from off screen, followed by the sound of something getting dragged.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, kid.” DJ Octavio’s low voice answered back. Even if they had left off on bad terms, Four was glad he was alive.

“I don’t know what you mean!” Callie’s mirth betrayed the fact that she knew damn well what he meant. A few seconds later, Octavio was shoved in front of the camera.

“Turning over a new leaf, huh?” Four leaned a bit closer. She wasn’t exactly sure how that would have happened. Maybe getting trapped in a snowglobe and then almost torn to shreds by Salmonoids and then whatever he did in Alterna (she’s assuming it included Neo Three beating them up) caused him to have a change of heart.

“Splatsville’s less hostile towards Octarians. Apparently a huge group of them fled here when the Great Turf War started.” He grumbled back. “Wish we could’ve avoided the whole one hundred years of imprisonment.”

“Yeah. That must’ve been rough. As long as you aren’t going to try and snag the Great Zapfish again, we’re cool. The domes never should have happened.” Four’s more than willing to let bygones be bygones at this point.

“And you, Eight. I’m sorry about being so flippant towards the Deepsea Metro. I had been trying to look into that place but when the power outages started we had to stop any scouting missions. Still, you can’t blame a guy for being a little snappy when the enemy interrogates him.” Eight looks a little stunned by his apology.

“I- at least you have the decency to apologize.” She mumbles.

Octavio laughs. “Yes indeed. Hey, squiddo! How are you and yer’ little scamp holding up?”

“Good! Me and Four sparred, it was awesome!” Neo Three whoops, tossing Little Buddy up in the air before catching him. He trills excitedly at the action.

“She didn’t pull the Rainmaker out on you, did she? I was sore for weeks afterwards.”

“What? Four, you never told me you had one of those! Like, a real, actual Rainmaker? Oh, you’ve got to let me try it! I’ll only blow up some things, promise!”

“Slow down there. It was a modded version that Sheldon gave me, and it blew up shortly after I used it. If anyone’s got it, it’s him. Second of all, I’m pretty sure it would vaporize anyone that wasn’t in a protective mech.” Four tried to deter Neo Three’s interest, but if anything her words fueled it.

“Marie, you’ve been holding out on me! I didn’t know that was an option!”

“That’s because I knew you would act like this if I did.”

“Ugh. You get to have all of the cool weapons, don’t you?” Neo Three mock-pouted, crossing their arms.

“Don’t get so upset. I promised to let you mess around with my Dualies later. In fact, if you’re so eager then take ‘em now.” Four fished them off of her holsters and passed them to Neo Three gingerly. “Break them and I break you.”

“Got it!” Neo Three scooped up Little Buddy and ran off to go harass Tentakeel Outpost’s training balloons.

“I’m glad to see you two getting along. I was worried you’d butt heads, being so similar and all.” Marie smiled and Callie and Octavio left the frame. Four froze, but was it really so surprising? The bold and slightly cocky attitude, the riskiness in their plans, the bright yellow? Neo Three was like them, yes, but like Four was before everything began to catch up to her. She had changed, and maybe that was why they clashed.

“I guess.” Four replied. Eight gave her a squeeze on the shoulder and gestured with her head to the ramp leading downwards. “Go ahead.”

And then they were alone. She could hear footsteps and shots in the background, but otherwise it was like there was a private bubble between her and the computer and the rest of the world. “How have things been in Splatsville?”

“Excluding the whole fuzzy ooze thing? Pretty tame. Alterna’s still a secret and I think we’re going to keep it that way. A lot of problems have been made for this team by nosing around the past.”

“Good. Good. I’m glad that you’re alright.”

“What about you, Four? Wasn’t it just you and Eight when the attack hit? Did you get wounded?”

“A little, yeah.” Four’s finally managed to slip her bandages off but a patch of fresh, noticeable skin remains behind. It’s going to stick with her forever, but she doesn’t mind as much as she would have. She’s already sporting a couple. “Nothing too severe, though. Nothing debilitating, anyway.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

Four yearns for the conversation to shift in a more serious direction, but at the same time taking the plunge would be terrifying. What if she had put more into their relationship that Marie was willing to give back? She was under no obligation to do so, but it still would have stung if that was the case. Ah, screw it. If she doesn’t bite the bullet now, they’re going to avoid it forever. “It was rough without you, though.”

“I’m sure. If we hadn’t been busy with Alterna then we probably would have came over to help. The treasures that Deep Cut were chasing overpowered our normal radio, so we didn’t know that an attack was underway until Mr Grizz was dealt with.” Marie says, and while they’re still professional they’re edging more towards what she wants to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” Four feels a bit thrown off guard. I’m sorry? Shouldn’t she be saying that?

“We just left you there with a bit of gear and a home base. That isn’t enough to protect a city from a hoard. I should’ve put in a better way to contact us in case of an emergency; I should’ve learned from the Deepsea Metro-” Marie pauses and takes a breath, fading back into the stalwart mentor she was used to seeing. “We should have been more prepared for a threat, and leaving you two with no support was a bad choice.”

“Yeah.” Four mumbles, because what else is she supposed to say when the glimpse of the person behind the star, the mentor, the agent disappears just as quick as she appeared?

Marie’s voice is shakey when she next speaks, but her words reverberate to the core of her very being. “I never should have dragged you into this mess, Tetra.”

“Don’t say that.” Four blurts. “This was the best thing that ever happened to me.” The words feel tacky on her tongue.

“No, kid. No, it wasn’t.”

A sudden rush of anger spikes through her, one that’s been building up with all the recent stress. “You don’t get to decide that, not when you’ve been gone. Not when you encouraged me. Not when you trained me.”

“I did, and I regret it now. I took such a massive part of your life away, one you’re never going to be able to get back. You’re going to be stuck with it all, the memories, the nightmares; I shouldn’t have made you do all of that.”

“You didn’t make me!” She sounds desperate when she says it, like she’s clinging to the side of a cliff.

“Just because I didn’t point a gun to your head doesn’t mean I didn’t give you the orders.” Marie’s voice is infuriatingly smooth and Four wants nothing more for it to be as cracked as it should be.

“I followed those orders. I had doubts, Marie, but I followed them all the same. The missions couldn’t have happened without me. It’s my fault.”

“Tetra, listen-“

“I’m not Tetra.” The words fall exhausted from her mouth, the realization feeling like the cold soak of water in your membrane before you died. “I haven’t been Tetra for years. I don’t think I can ever be her again.”

“I know. Cod, Four, I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world that knows as much as I do. What the title of ‘agent’ does… it strips the civilian away bit by bit until there isn’t much left underneath. It’s gotten to me and Callie. It’s gotten to Three. It got to Gramps long before any of us were around. It got it’s hooks in your friend the moment she woke up without memories. I know you can’t get rid of all of the things you’ve experienced, Four, but I want you to at least not give in. I should’ve told you this earlier, but you, Eight, Neo Three… you’ve all still got a chance. A chance to be free. I want you to take that chance. It’s going to be hard. You’re going to have to fight for it in a thousand tiny ways, but you have to keep fighting for that freedom. Please, Four.”

And with that, all of the anger, all of the rejection, all of the complicated twisting feelings inside of her go slack. “Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I can- I can do that. I’m good at fighting.”

“One of the best.” Marie smiles. It’s a bittersweet thing for both of them. “Do you mind if I bring up a mission of mine when I was fourteen?”

“Shoot.”

—————————

Marie stormed off, clutching the Hero Charger so tight it seemed like it would break. What the shell did Callie know about warfare anyway? She was the type of squid that got a cup and sheet of paper to get rid of a spider instead of just whacking it. She thinks she’s being noble by sitting this one out. By making Marie be the monster, even though she was the one that dragged her into this mess.

She has to remind herself to be gentle when closing doors or walking about. While there would be a petty, teenage satisfaction in exerting her anger like that, it would most certainly draw any enemies to her position and now that she didn’t have Ca- Agent One to back her up, she had to be careful.

The low rumbling of machinery gets a bit louder as she slinks down the abandoned hallways. She braces herself for someone to come out of the emptied rooms, armed to the teeth and ready to kill her before finishing off Callie, but no one’s there. As she draws closer, she can hear a couple muffled words of Octarian. A lazy, conversational tone in contrast to the usual barked orders. She strains her ears but nothing makes sense. Callie, the one who was trying to learn Octarian in the first place, once said that they shared a language before the Great Turf War hit and gradually split apart due to prejudice and time away from each other. No cognates for her.

As Marie nears the lowest level, not a ring at all but a floating square platform, she wonders if the option to turn back is even there if she wanted to. It wasn’t, no matter how long Callie sat there thinking about it. The Octarians weren’t going to just let them go if they explained that they infiltrated this place but then changed their minds. The only way out was through, and if she could knock out a threat to Inkopolis on her way there she’d take it. She can’t believe that anyone would want to harm that shining city, filled to the brim with kids looking to make it somewhere in life no matter how many times they got knocked back down. She couldn’t let them harm that shining city, her city, which is why this place was going down.

Marie slowly slides down the propeller lift to the final level. The murky shadows of the conveyer belts and machines are enough to smother any trace of her as she creeps closer. Their operation is automatic and simple, levers with only one option or large buttons. Probably designed for Octarian footsoldiers that lacked hands to operate anything more complicated. Makes it easier to figure out what’ll make it blow up.

There’s a catwalk high up, manned by Elite Octolings. Eight, to be precise. They chatter idly to each other, occasionally sweeping the area with their goggled eyes. A nasty looking cache of weapons is wielded by each of them, from a Splatling all the way to a Brush. Nestled between them are three tanks of Lesser Zapfish, all producing the energy to power the place. Not for the first time, Marie wishes Callie was with her. Her plan was already risky with two people, but going in alone amped it up to eleven. Her plan, if you could even call it that, was to make the Lesser Zapfish overcharge the factory machines and each other.

Seekers might have been a bit more destructive than the average subweapon, but they were subweapons all the same. Whoever activated them would share their ink color, and Marie’s subtle tagging of the machines had started to shift the ownership to her side. While it was far from a clean wipe, she’d have enough to explode any inactivated Seekers which would trigger a domino effect for the inactive ones, hopefully splatting the Octarians inside and letting them escape back to Inkopolis.

A radio squealed up ahead, Marie having to fight the urge to flinch when it was snatched up by one of the Elite Octolings. They yelled something back to their squadron before storming towards the propeller lift. Callie was still sitting by the Gushers, wasn’t she? With nothing but a broken Roller to protect her from two angry squadrons of Octolings…

Almost without thinking, Marie raised the Hero Charger up. Almost. The second the Octolings were a good distance down the hall, she let a full shot soar through the air and take down one of the back soldier, semi-charged Splatling clattering uselessly to the ground as the rest of the section whirls to attention. One down. Hopefully seven to go.

Marie slammed the activation button on the production machine she was crouching by before breaking off into a crouched sprint. The loud grinding of the machine hopefully covered up her footsteps, but the section wasn’t going to let her leave so easily. Two Splat Bombs were thrown over to where her escape paths would have been, forcing Marie to slip into swim form and maneuver between the dragging wires from the machine. One of them barks a command and the others quickly stomp down the open strips of ground, hoping to catch her before she could slip away.

She decides to take a risk by slipping out of swim form and tossing a Burst Bomb at the rumbling conveyor currently churning out Seekers. A shot from the Octoling wielding a Charger grazes her arm and another hissing Splat Bomb comes careening down to her position but it’s already too late; the Seekers have been activated and won’t stop until their intended purpose is fulfilled.

Marie vaults over one of the inactive conveyer belts, taking the opportunity to whack the on button for that one as well as she ducks behind the control panel for shelter against the Blaster’s shots. A loud cry tells her that they’ve realized what’s happening, but due to the homing properties it’s a bit too late to stop the dominos from tipping. The only one who has a chance is the Charger Octoling, who could reasonably hit a button with a full shot without getting splatted, so she hefts the Hero Charger with its superior charge speeds and fires, a loud bang letting her know that she’s made her mark.

An Octobrush hurdles by her head as another wail sounds off. One of them must have tried to hit the button before getting splatted. The hisses of Seekers being deployed are getting louder and louder as Marie’s Burst Bomb sets another conveyor belt into motion. One of them, the one armed with a simple Octoshot makes a sprint down the hallway to where Callie lies. Oh no you don’t, she thinks, cleanly picking them off with the Hero Charger.

The hissing is drowning out the remaining Octarians at this point, and Marie makes a break for the catwalk. Her colored ink coats the floor in clean trails and messy splatters as she hauls herself up the ladder at breakneck pace. Her stomach briefly lurches as she sees the lack of respawn points down here, instead there’s a launchpad leading somewhere hopefully upwards, but she pushes forwards to the caged trio of Lesser Zapfish. She’s going to have to overcharge them to destroy this place, but there’s no time to think about that. Marie would rather be a monster than get Callie killed.

She yanks down hard on the release switch, causing all production machines to rattle and rumble to life. The Seekers are getting banned, she thinks, probably for reasons exactly like this one.

The Lesser Zapfish shriek and wail at the task demanded of them, sparks flying furiously before bouncing off the protective coating of their glass chambers. All the Elite Octolings are gone now, but she doesn’t know if it’s permanently or not (with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Marie finds that she doesn’t really care if it’s permanently or not). All that matters is getting Callie out before this place collapses into seafoam and scrap.

She tears down the hallway, kicking the enemy Splatling to the side so it can’t hinder them on their way out. “One! Time to go!”

Callie snaps to attention, sprinklers still thankfully keeping the Gushers active. A twinge of relief shoots through her as Callie stumbles up to the ground, slinging the Hero Roller over her shoulder before running to her. Marie pivots and runs back down the hallway once she’s sure Callie’s coming. “I heard yelling and explosions. Are you-“

“No time to explain. We’ve got to get out of her before this place goes sky high!” She practically throws herself up the ladder, Callie briefly pausing to look at the overclocked machinery before scrabbling up after her. They’re almost there, almost home free and relatively unharmed, and all they need are a few more steps.

“The Zapfish- help me get them out before we go.” Callie’s fingers hook into the grooves in the glass, trying to pry open the paneling. Not now, she wants to scream as a loud bang rattles the lowest layer; one of the production machines has just exploded in a dangerous-looking cloud of smoke and fire.

“No time.” Marie grits her teeth for the future version of herself who will have to deal with worried looks or whispers from her closest ally as she shoved Callie towards the launchpad hard. The action paired with the panic they’re both feeling at the moment makes Callie involuntary drop into swim form, sending her to hopefully the exit of this Kettle. Marie spares a little glance back at the Lesser Zapfish. Poor guys. She hopes the ink will douse any fires, but given what she needs to make sure this place doesn’t ever get operational again that’s probably not what’s going to happen.

Marie hurls herself into the launchpad just before the catwalk’s metal groans and splits.

—————————

“Heavy material to drop on a new recruit. I’m starting to get why you never told me this story.” Four mumbled, mind swimming. Sure, she knew that anyone who wound up in the NSS wasn’t exactly a paragon of morality, but her own mentor…

“I used to be a bit more like you. Reckless. Stubborn. Those are good traits to have, but in moderation. We got lucky back in the Seeker factory, but it’s a lot harder to watch when someone else is in the line of fire and all you can do is watch. You going solo… any of our agents going solo has been terrifying to watch. I thought I lost Gramps, Callie, and Three over the course of my carrier. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you as well. I was a bit harsh when I should have been kind, and kind when I should have been harsh. But you’ve made it though. Even when all of the odds were against you, even when you were alone, even when you didn’t have the support that you should’ve had. And I am so, so proud of you.”

“Thanks. I think… I think I’m proud of me too. Despite it all. We saved this city. We stopped more people from getting hurt. We’ve broken down some old walls. I still think I miss you.”

“I still miss you too, Four. Glad that there’s no hard feelings.”

“Not anymore.”

“Hey, Four! Come quickly, you’ve gotta see this trick I’ve found!” Neo Three hollers from the lower area. She looks back towards the computer screen.

“Go. Your friends are waiting.” Marie smiles. “We’ve got time to talk later.

“Alright. See you around.”

“See ya.” The screen blips black and Four trudges down to where her friends are.

“Did everything go well?” Eight asks, watching from a safe distance as Neo Three swishes around with her Dualies.

“Yeah. A bit more complicated than I thought it would have been, but it all worked out in the end.” Four said, leaning beside her. “Thanks for helping me out.”

“With what?”

“A lot of things, if I’m being honest. Thanks for sticking with me through it all.”

“Not a problem at all.” 

Chapter Text

I wasn't really sure on how to start this whole thing. I'm not even sure if this is gonna see the light of day at all, so it might be all over the place. Eight did say that it was best to write from the heart. If you're reading this then I'm just going to assume that you're a member of the New Squidbeak Splatoon. No cyphers or scavenger hunts; I'm best at finding things, not hiding them.

Anyway, if you're here you're probably an agent. Are they still doing numbers for names however far ahead in the future you are? I'm Agent Four, four the record. Heh. You're also probably a kid as well. Most of us were when we first started. This thing's going to have a couple things to help you out. 

First off, you can leave wherever you want. Doesn't matter if you've been here for two days or two years. Doesn't matter if you have a deep reason or just don't want to be here anymore. A life like this can really take a big toll on every single part of you, and if you think that you need time away, take it. If anyone says that you're being selfish by doing this, don't listen to them. There's a difference between having a responsibility and running yourself into the ground.

Second, get something to do outside of this. It could be a little hobby or a turfing job or a friend group. If you already have something, then that's great! Hold onto it. It's a slippery slope to spending all your time down in whatever kettles or test chambers that you're poking through, and having outside obligations is a good way to keep you tethered to a civilian lifestyle. It might seem insignificant when you compare it to what you're doing now, but when the heat dies down you need a place removed from agent work to return to.

Third, try and make nice with your fellow agents. There’s going to be a couple outliers with this point, but usually they’re doing their best in a bad situation. Tensions run high when you’re saving the world, so if someone tugs on your tentacles every once in a while it’s probably nothing personal.

Fourth, keep yourself safe. Risks might pay off sometimes, but you’ll get yourself hurt more often than not. It’s best to play it safe and

It’s best to let others know when you’re going to do something dangerous

It’s best to

Sometimes you need to play it safe, but risk has it’s advantages as well but you still need to be careful and others might stop you from taking risks so you should listen to them but not all the time

"Still trying to finish your introduction?" Eight's voice snapped her out of her funk, shock causing her to scoot back a bit.

"You know it." Four sighed. She had been trying for ages to get something, anything down, but all of it felt hollow. As Eight waited for her, she made a swift strikethrough on her latest draft. A name pun? She could come up with something better than that.

"It is only the introduction. You could come back to it later when we finish the rest."

"Yeah, but if I don't get this part done going into chapter one's going to be weird!"

"Weird how ?"

"It's going to look bad when we try and format it. Besides, an intro is the most important part of the story! That’s how you get your readers hooked. I just need to find the right words…”

“Well, you can do that later. It’s two o’clock.” Eight pulls her out of the seat the second Four takes her outstretched hand.

“Already?” She looks back at the various balls of crumpled paper strewn about their kitchen table.

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

“If only.” Her tone is snarky, but she really has been having fun now that she’s started writing. Sure, she’s frustrated with half of the things that she scribbles, but it’s a nice way to air her feelings and bond with Eight. The book they were writing might have been more of a personal thing than one that would actually get published, but she was enjoying herself.

The golden scale around her neck jingles as she pulls on her vest and bounds out the door, Eight following close behind. It seemed much safer to repurpose it as a necklace than risk it falling out of her pocket. “Are we meeting them at the usual spot?”

“No. They just started construction on the building nearby.”

“Aw. I liked that scaffolding.” With Inkopolis beginning to rebuild, a lot of life was breathed back into the place. Stores had slowly begun to open again, people were creeping back into public spaces, and efforts to rebuild destroyed places had started popping up like weeds. While it would certainly take years to finish, even the start of repairs made her heart swell with pride.

Four and Eight flitted through the streets, pausing to let her yell a hello up to the Great Zapfish. Aside from a couple daily naps, the city’s power source was back in full swing. It placidly stared down at anyone milling in Inkopolis Square, pausing ever-so-often to twitch its whiskers or yawn. The collection of scales below it had expanded to have a couple other nicknacks like stray buttons or coins. Four could spot a couple drawings nestled between glittering piles. One of those was hers.

“We’re going to the outskirts of the city.” Eight looked up from her CQ-80. Four still wasn’t sure how that thing worked or why Eight would use it instead of a normal phone, but if it worked it worked.

“Where Neo Three blew in from?” Four asked. About a month ago, they returned to Splatsville with promises to keep in touch. Stronger technology allowing for communication across the wasteland had been brought up as something to integrate into a rebuilt Inkopolis now that most of the old telephone wires had been knocked down. The opening of a new train line between the two cities helped promote connection, as well as a couple donations to aid in reconstruction. It was all going pretty smoothly, although there had been a couple bumps along the way.

“Yes. We need that privacy given for what’s about to happen.” Eight’s eyes glanced nervously around the streets.

“The great Agent Eight, scared of a little conversation?” Four teased.

“I’ve never gotten to meet the Squid Sisters in person! What will I even say to them? Thank you for changing my life irrevocably?”

“Hey, don’t sweat it. They’re real nice once you get to know them. Kinda dorky, if I’m being honest. Plus, they’re super cool with giving autographs. I’m sure you’ll be fine!” Four gave a reassuring pat on the arm and continued forwards.

Eventually they reached the place where steel spires gave way to sparse hills. When you were in the center of Inkopolis it seemed like the city would stretch on forever. When you were out here it looked like a clusters of silver and wood. “And now we wait.”

Bored, she sat down and pulled out her notepad. Four had picked it up after the whole writing thing started. What if she came up with a really cool line and forgot it before she when home? What if she needed to write down directions for some poor, elderly woman? What if she wanted to doodle something while waiting?

She made a couple scribbles on the paper of stick figures and an assortment of shapes and lines that looked like a Lesser Zapfish if you squinted. She was halfway through a Greater Zapfish when the sudden inspiration to write struck her.

She’ll deal with the introduction later. Right now, she had an idea of what to start her first personal chapter with.

Time flew by as she scribbled away, occasionally stopping for a brief conversation with Eight or to check the horizon for a van with faded paint. As minutes passed, the low rumble of an engine cut across the otherwise noiseless plain.

“Miss us?” Neo Three had a wide smile on their face as they leaned out from the driver’s window, wind blowing their braided tentacles back. Little Buddy trilled from inside. And there, crammed into shotgun with Callie…

“Hey, guys! Hey, Marie!” Four waved back, jamming the notepad back into her pocket. At the moment there were only a few words down but she felt pretty good about them.

Four had always felt like the weakest link in the New Squidbeak Splatoon…