Sunday, 8:30 a.m.
Capitol Building, Inkopolis
Commander Cuttlefish—no, it was Captain Cuttlefish, now, scanned her eyes over the rogues' gallery gathered in front of her. She would have preferred to have her unwaveringly loyal soldiers instead of this ragtag bunch, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Mere soldiers would not be enough for the job.
"Are we ready, Marie?" the captain's assistant whispered. Captain Marie Cuttlefish nodded and took her seat at the back of the room while her assistant dimmed the ceiling lights. The projector flared to life, and the wall at the head of the conference room lit up. On it was a slideshow picturing the details of their upcoming mission. What a way to celebrate her promotion, Cuttlefish thought to herself, getting thrown back out into the wild with the deadliest people in the world.
The captain took a chance to examine her team. To her immediate right was Rin Cho Hyalus, sniper for hire. The girl purportedly had mirrors behind her eyes and 360-degree vision. Cuttlefish doubted it, but the sniper's claim to fame was her one-in-a-million shot that had taken out a corrupt Octarian businessman, ricocheted through his head and into all four of his bodyguards, and then flown right back through the window to where Hyalus had taken the shot from. An impossibly clean kill with no living witnesses and no bullet to find. Cuttlefish had studied the surveillance footage, the only remaining evidence of Hyalus's involvement in the assassination, for hours before concluding that the girl was the real deal. Rin Cho Hyalus was the best shooter in the business. She would do the team's spotting.
Next to Hyalus was Tim Ingila, a twice-convicted hacker extraordinaire who could clean out banks without leaving a trace. When the Inkopolis Department of Protection and Counterterrorism finally caught wind of him, they decided to give him a job, which Cuttlefish herself found incredibly risky and stupid. She couldn't deny Ingila's skills, however. Few were better with technology than this portly DPC scumbag, despite Ingila's relatively old age, so he was chosen to direct logistics for this particular operation.
Further down the table sat Cameron "Eight" Elias, the only Octoling present. Eight was something of a wildcard. The captain knew next to nothing about the redhead, except that she was trained by the Octarian military and that she had killed the terrorist Commander Tartar over a decade ago. When the captain's cousin Callie Cuttlefish and the DPC agent Natalie Tilus had both vouched for Eight, Cuttlefish immediately put her on the team. Eight seemed agreeable enough, and Cuttlefish was curious to find out what made this Octoling enforcer so special.
And sitting in the least tactically sound position was Natalie Tilus, the unassumingly short woman in her late twenties. Cuttlefish had worked with her for a brief few years in the NSS, but she had never been able to get a good read on the orange-haired operative. Cuttlefish was pretty sure that the former Agent 3 was simply insane. And invincible. Since her early years in the NSS, Tilus had shown a knack for ruthless efficiency. She was a fast, reckless, and daring operative who did everything without getting any credit or public recognition. One time, she broke out of a holding cell by herself and killed a dozen armed guards, then hiked across Octo Canyon killing several terrorists before finally passing out from exhaustion. Nothing ever fazed her. Tilus clearly demonstrated no fear at the moment, sitting in her current spot near the head of the table, back turned to the people that Cuttlefish herself barely trusted. The captain wondered what even motivated the tiny DPC woman. Nothing about Tilus made any sense. And she always insisted on using her old, cruddy pistol, too. How she managed to get anything done with that piece of shit gun was beyond Cuttlefish.
Finally, there was Cole Leoidea, Marie Cuttlefish's protege and the one person she had a handle on. Leoidea—or Agent 4, as Cuttlefish knew him by, had taken Cuttlefish's position as head of the clandestine service after she had departed for a career in the navy. The thirty-year-old national hero had gotten his feet wet in operations, logistics, oyster farming, administration, and even politics before finally settling back into what he did best: fieldwork. Leoidea was a natural—a brilliant, tactical mind backed by a body with the physical strength of ten regular men. Cuttlefish could count on the big guy to both follow her orders and keep Tilus in check. Leoidea and Tilus had grown up in the same town, and the two of them had some history together. If they wouldn't fight for the captain, then at least they would fight for each other.
The mission overview went by without incident. The captain tried to cover as many details as possible, barring how much everyone was getting paid. The team members, for their part, had kept their eyes forward and mouths shut. She hoped that they were as serious about this as they looked.
"With all due respect, ma'am, why are you in charge of this?" Leoidea asked after several seconds of silence. "A naval commander like yerself needn't worry 'bout something deep as this mess."
Cuttlefish smiled at her old friend, staying in her chair. This was a question she had prepared for, one that she had needed to answer for herself, first. "Because I asked for it. It's about time I do something that actually makes a difference."
Cole Leoidea squinted his eyes at her, seemingly understanding what she said but not really happy with the answer. He scoffed to himself and crossed his arms, looking away from his former mentor.
Cuttlefish would not tolerate any insubordination. Not from Leoidea, and especially not on day one. "And that's Captain Cuttlefish, to you, Leoidea," she spoke.
Leoidea and Tilus both stiffened. Hyalus stifled a giggle, but the rest of the room remained quiet.
"No more questions? Then you're dismissed. Meet at the designated area, ten hundred on the dot."
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Puns explained, if anyone cares:
Rin Cho Hyalus: "Rhynchohyalus natalensis, the Glasshead barreleye, is a species of barreleye found in oceans around the world at depths from 247 to 549 metres (810 to 1,801 ft). This species grows to a length of 16 centimetres (6.3 in) SL. It and the brownsnout spookfish are the only vertebrates known to employ mirrors, in addition to lenses, to focus the images in its eyes." —Wikipedia
Tim Ingila: "The Timingilam is a huge aquatic creature that can swallow whole whales in one bite, as written about in the ancient historical text, Mahabharata (Vana Parva 168.3). It is also mentioned in Srimad Bhagavatam (12.9.16), Ramayana (Yuddha-kanda 4.114), Susruta Samhita (Ch.45), and Caitanya-caritamrta (Madhya-lila 13.142)." —Wikipedia
Cammy Elias: "Camellia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae. They are found in eastern and southern Asia, from the Himalayas east to Japan and Indonesia. White camellias became a symbol of New Zealand women's right to vote and feature on the country's ten-dollar note." —Wikipedia
Nat Tilus: "The nautilus (from the Latin form of the original Ancient Greek: ναυτίλος, 'sailor') is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae, the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina." —Wikipedia
Cole Leoidea: "Subclass Coleoidea, or Dibranchiata, is the grouping of cephalopods containing all the various taxa popularly thought of as 'soft-bodied' or 'shell-less,' i.e., octopus, squid and cuttlefish." —Wikipedia