Chapter Text
“And don’t come back until you learn how to do a good job!”
Being thrown out of a company building by a wooden bear was not how Jake expected his day to start, but here he was now, face-down on the pavement outside of Grizzco Industries and wondering how exactly he’d been moved from the inside to here. The shutters slammed to the ground behind him with an almighty crash, shaking the earth.
I tried my best… Shrinking into his squid form, Jake flopped over onto his back, staring up at the overcast sky and the bright screens of Deca Tower where the Great Zapfish resided. At least here the heavens didn’t rain with the green gunk of drizzlers, and there were no missiles homing in on him from a rampant flyfish.
What was he supposed to do when someone shoved a slosher into his hands and told him to fight salmonids? All he could do was pour ink on the smallfry when they snapped at his feet.
“There’s a jet squelcher in the shift’s weapons today, bro, go for it.”
Maybe if he ever actually got to use it he might have done better. The second he had his favourite weapon, the place had filled with thick fog and the grinding of steelhead gears. He could barely even see the muzzle of his weapon in the mist, let alone any of the approaching salmonids.
He didn’t know how Rollo put up with that place, let alone managed to earn enough for them to live on from it. Sometimes it seemed like his brother could just do anything he put his mind to.
He’s going to be so disappointed when he learns Mr. Grizz threw me out after three wave-one losses. Snapping back into inkling form, Jake sat up hurriedly, staring down at the jacket he was wearing. It was his brother’s lucky one, and Rollo had lent it to him for the day for ‘good luck’ at Grizzco, even though he had to change out of it during the actual shifts. It was a white inky rider with a patched-up tear across the left shoulder, which Rollo always claimed happened in a splat zones match. Jake had never heard of anyone’s gear getting damaged in a match with all the equipment to keep them safe. Either way, the jacket hadn’t exactly given him luck this morning.
Sighing heavily, Jake climbed back to his feet, dusted off the grit that’d stuck to his clothes, re-adjusted his black arrowband glasses, and checked the time on his phone. Tower Control was on for the next few hours; maybe if he could manage to win some matches and not go home completely empty-handed, he’d alleviate the shame a little.
His older brother was so cool and level-headed, sneaking around the battle with his fancy splat roller nobody knew where he’d obtained, and then Jake… got picked off by snipers a lot. Or blasters. Or aerosprays if he wasn’t paying enough attention to his nearby surroundings…
Delving his hands into his pockets, Jake only remembered this jacket wasn’t actually his when he did find some spare change. He wondered if his brother would mind if he used some of it for a snack from Crusty Sean. He had been working all morning – he may have overslept – and it was nearly lunchtime… Rollo had said they could get pizza when he was done, but his brother wasn’t here yet, and might not be for a while. He’d probably expected Jake to last longer in there.
“I’ll just… get the cheapest thing on the menu,” he shrugged to himself, pocketing the change once more and starting off on his journey towards the square where Sean’s truck stood.
He didn’t get very far. The large sewer drain burst open. Something grabbed him.
The next thing Jake knew he was falling, and his scream of surprise was only an echo in the tunnels.
Something dragged him out into the daylight, and then he was falling to the ground once more. Jake lay there stunned, wondering where on earth he was. This definitely wasn’t a sewer anymore. It was far too bright, and far too clean-smelling.
Apparently being pushed around was a common occurrence today.
Less than a second passed, no time to catch his breath, before suddenly there was a huge weight on his back. Something shoved his head down against the earth, preventing him from changing form.
“Got you! There’s no escape now!”
“W-wait!” Jake flailed, trying to throw whoever this was off him – judging by the weight, probably an inkling – but it was a fruitless effort. This person was heavy and strong. He was pinned. “Let me go!”
“Oh, don’t even dream about it, blue! You got a lot of questions to answer!”
“I don’t—I d-don’t know what you’re talking about!” He tried desperately to lift his head, only managing to catch a glimpse of familiar colours – the colours of Rollo’s weapon. Was he here? Was his brother here!? As cold as he could appear sometimes, he wouldn’t let anything like this happen! Jake’s voice rose in a wail. “Rollo, help!”
“How do you know that name?” Another voice, a lot more serious-sounding than the first, demanded from nearby. “And where did you get that jacket?”
“I-I…” He managed to move his head at last – and wished he hadn’t, because he was staring straight at the barrel of a charger. A yellow and black charger.
This wasn’t a match. If he was shot here there was nothing to drag him back to a spawn point before a fatal injury.
The inkling threatening the weapon glared at him. The lower half of their face was covered by a white mask, but the piercing look in their eyes was enough alone to show they meant business. “Tell me!”
Jake only whimpered in fear. He didn’t know what to do.
He was going to die. He didn’t know what they wanted and they were going to shoot him and he was going to die—
“Wait, Ma— err, Agent 2.” The force of the hand shoving Jake’s face against the dirt lessened a little. “He’s, uh—he’s crying.”
For a moment, that cold stare remained. Jake was too terrified to think about how uncool he probably looked, pinned to the ground and snivelling as his eyes and nose ran. Agent 2 let out a long sigh, moving the weapon away from his face – it wasn’t even charged. He felt like an idiot now.
“Fine.” Their voice was softer now, although there was still a threatening hint to their gaze as they stood up straight. “What’s your name, kid? And where did you get that jacket?”
“I…” Jake sniffed. “M-my n-name is… Jake.”
“Aaaand?” insisted the inkling sitting on him.
His back was starting to hurt. “M-my brother—i-it’s my brother’s jacket. He let me borrow it this morning.”
The inkling he could see looked at the one pinning him, probably exchanging glances.
“Alright, you’re free from my unescapable super-move, the calamari squish.” The weight vanished as the inkling jumped up, their voice holding a hint of joking unfitting to the situation.
Jake scrambled into a sitting position, too shaky to stand but not wanting this person to sit on him again. “Who are you? A-and what do you want?” And where was this place? His glasses were a little smeared, but it looked like they were on some kind of island… in a canyon?
“Should we tell him?” the paperweight inkling asked. While Agent 2 had a mask covering their face and their white hair mostly stuffed under a cap, this one was dressed more casually, with a pink beanie over their black hair.
And Jake, a young inkling with a love for music, knew exactly who she was the moment he saw her.
“You’re – you are…” He pointed dumbly, jaw dropping. “C-Callie!? F-from the Squid Sisters!?”
“Well…” Callie’s slightly mortified expression quickly gave way to a sheepish grin. “Oops?”
Agent 2 shot her a glare. “This is why you should’ve worn your shades.”
“I didn’t have time to go get them, okay?” Callie huffed, pouting. “I was just going to the mall at quiet hour, I didn’t expect this mess!”
“And—and you’re…!” It didn’t take a genius to work out that if this was Callie, then Agent 2 must be Marie, but all Jake could do for a long moment was gawk. “I… I’m a big fan…!”
“Yeah, that’s… that’s great and all,” Marie sighed, disappointed that her cousin had given away the disguise. “But we have some serious business to… please, don’t start crying again.”
With a squeak of surprise, Jake hurriedly pushed up his glasses to rub his eyes. “S-sorry I’m just – uh – what’s going on?”
“Aw, come on, Mar, he’s just a little kid,” Callie soothed, patting his head. “Do we really want to involve him in this?”
Jake flinched away from her infantilising tone. “A-actually, I’m seventeen…”
Callie withdrew her hand quickly as if she’d been given a static shock. “Really!?” Her incredulous gaze stayed on him for a long moment before she eventually shrugged. “Okay, you can take it. You’re a big boy.”
“What…?”
“Agent 4 sent us an emergency signal roughly half an hour ago,” Marie explained, her voice serious. “We haven’t been able to contact him since. We think he might have been kidnapped by the octarians.”
“Whoa.” Jake didn’t even try to keep the childish amazement out of his expression. This was like… spy stuff. “Is Agent 4 someone important? Why do the octarians want him? Do they do creepy experiments and stuff?”
“Yes, probably revenge, and for his sake I hope they don’t,” Marie answered his questions monotonously.
Callie, meanwhile, pressed her fingers together, biting her lip. “You really don’t know who Agent 4 is?”
Jake shook his head. Was that someone he should know? His brain was a little foggy, after getting beaten up by salmonids and then… well, essentially being kidnapped by the Squid Sisters. He felt like he’d still remember someone with a cool name like Agent 4, though.
“The owner of that jacket,” Marie stated. She dropped her gaze as Jake’s expression turned to one of horror. “His real name is Rollo.”
[10:46] 8
[10:47] 8
[10:47] 8
[10:47] i
[10:47] 8
Her phone going haywire with notifications had been what woke Marie that morning. The first one she’d ignored, figuring it was just Callie trying to get her up before noon – no way, she didn’t have to be anywhere this morning and she’d stayed up reading until 4AM again, which was starting to become a bad habit. The repetitive sound forced her to put in the effort to check her phone, though, even if her plan had initially just been to try and wake her mind up enough to remember how to silence notifications.
It wasn’t Callie messaging her, though. It was Agent 4.
I really hope I’m still dreaming. There could only be one reason he’d send a bunch of ‘8’s – and one ‘i’, which she wondered if was a secret message briefly before realising i was the letter which had to be held down to get an 8 on the phone keyboard. Octarians.
[10:47] Agent 4, is everything okay?
There was no response. Her phone fell back into silence.
She could catch up on sleep later.
“Callie, we’ve got a problem.” She burst into the living room still in her pyjamas and with her hair flopped messily over her shoulders, but there was nobody there to laugh at her ruffled appearance. She raised her voice in case her cousin was in another room. “Callie?”
No reply. That wasn’t too much of a surprise. Callie was an early bird, after all; she was probably out somewhere already. Come to think of it, Marie did have a vague memory that morning of Callie knocking on her bedroom door to say she was going out… where had she said she was going, again?
Octo Canyon. To check everything’s still where it should be.
Oh no…
The second the thought crossed her mind, Marie swiped her phone onto the call screen, tapping Callie’s icon.
“This number is unavailable right now. Please leave a message or try again later.”
“No, no…” A million terrible thoughts rushed through her mind as her heart rate spiked. She tried to block them out. It was time to act.
She threw on her Agent 2 clothes, tying her hair up before stuffing the bow under her cap. As soon as she’d met the bare minimum requirements of “suitable to go out into a public area”, she was racing across the city, and narrowly avoided running into multiple citizens as she blazed a path for the entrance to Octo Canyon.
Marie arrived slightly out of breath, and glanced around a few times to make sure no one was watching before she sank into a sloppy squid form to pass through the grate.
When she reformed on the platform above the canyon, the first place she looked to was the south-east corner, where the globe imprisoning Octavio had stood. Past tense. The glass lay shattered around the base, splashed with purple ink.
It was a painfully familiar sight. Too familiar.
No, no, no, this can’t be happening again, it can’t…
Callie!
With one last desperate grasp for hope, she tried her phone once more. Marie held her breath when the dialling tone actually went through this time.
“Hey, Mar-laz-ie! You’re actually awake before noon!”
The sound of Callie’s cheery voice was such an immense relief that Marie felt for a moment like her legs might give way beneath her. She’s okay. The octarians don’t have her. “Callie, where are you?” No time for banter right now. In hindsight, she did feel a little guilty that all her worry had immediately gone towards whether her cousin had been kidnapped again or not. Agent 4 had been the one frantically messaging her earlier, and there was still no reply from him since.
Suddenly her fear was back. The octarians may not have Callie this time, but all signs pointed to them having kidnapped Agent 4.
“I’m like… down the road from the mall. I just saw the missed call from you and I was about to call back, but you beat me to it! You know the signal in that building is sooo bad. Is something wrong?”
Of course. Of course she was in the mall. That’s like her second home. Marie resisted the urge to slap a hand to her forehead. “I think that’s an understatement,” she groaned, looking at the mess around her. “I’m at the canyon. Octavio’s gone.”
“What!?” Callie’s exclamation was so loud, Marie had to hold the phone away from her ear. There was a nervous laugh on the other end of the line, as if Callie had accidentally attracted the attention of the people around her. Hopefully she’s relatively unrecognisable. A moment later, she spoke again, her voice hushed so people wouldn’t overhear. “Are you kidding me!? I only left half an hour ago!”
Thank goodness you left. Although, given how long it had been since Agent 4’s disappearance, perhaps whoever had freed Octavio had been waiting for the place to be unguarded. Suddenly aware of how potentially dangerous this place might be, if any of the octarians were still here and watching, Marie made her way towards the old shack. She needed a weapon in case she had to defend herself. “That’s not all. Agent 4 sent me a bunch of messages this morning, and they all just had the number eight. He hasn’t responded since. I have a terrible feeling he was ambushed by the octarians and trying to call for help.”
“You think… you think they kidnapped him?” A new hint of distress made its way into Callie’s voice. She knew exactly what that was like; she wouldn’t wish it on anyone, let alone a friend. “But I—I just saw him this morning… oh, Marie, this is awful! What do you think they want with Rollo!?”
Hearing his real name threw her for a second. Marie always called him by his agent name – it was more of a nickname than anything else by now. “I don’t know, but… we have to do something. I just don’t know what yet.” Her gaze travelled around the room; it was an absolute mess in here, and she knew her charger was buried somewhere in it. This was what she got for leaving the place mostly under Callie’s supervision. At least there were still a handful of weapons within reaching distance. “We go look for him, I guess? You saw him last, did you know where he was going?”
“I think he was planning on meeting someone and then going home? I don’t remember exactly, but—oh!”
The line fell silent. Marie frowned, her hand hovering over the black-and-yellow charger Sheldon had left with them. “Callie?”
“Hold on,” her voice was barely audible. There was a muffled sound, as if she’d pocketed her phone, and when she spoke again her voice had a slight echo. “I’m back at the entrance, just below the grate. I can see someone, Marie! They’ve got Rollo’s jacket!”
“What?” Marie lifted the weapon from its careless resting place. Hopefully nobody attacked her while she was on the phone, since she’d need both hands to use a charger. “Who? How!?”
“I don’t know! An inkling, as far as I can tell.”
“You sure it’s his? He isn’t the only one with a white inky rider.”
“It’s definitely his! It’s got the stitches in the shoulder and one of the pins is missing. If it’s not, this is the biggest coincidence in the entire world!” Callie hissed. “Oh, they’re heading this way! Should I grab ‘em?”
Maybe it was too much to hope for an easy clue like this. Perhaps this was nothing. But Callie was right; what were the chances of another inkling having the same jacket with the exact same tear? “Yeah. Bring them here. They have some explaining to do.”