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Friday, 9:01 a.m.
Inkopolis

A short girl stepped out of Craig Cuttlefish's office, not bothering to close the door behind her, and she walked away without acknowledging the two women sitting outside. Maybe she just had no idea who they were.

"Finally!" Pearl Enperry shouted, practically jumping out of her chair. "That old geezer sure knows how to keep us waiting!"

Sitting in the chair next to Pearl, Marina Ida winced. The door to the captain's office was wide-open. "Inside voices, Pearl!" she chided. "And didn't anyone teach you to respect your elders?"

Pearl put her hands on her hips and winked at her still-seated friend. Normally, Pearl appreciated having Marina hold her back and be her voice of reason, but not today. Mr. Craig Cuttlefish was at fault, here. He had disrespected them by asking them to make a trip all the way to his office on the south end of the DPC headquarters, only to make them wait for that other girl to show up and talk to him first. That was a blatant waste of everyone's time. Uncool. But the head adviser would have to be able to take some heat if he wanted to dish it out. It wasn't like he owned the place.

"Come in," Craig spoke from within. His voice had a slight accent, as if he was some sort of old-fashioned hick. Pearl heard that the former captain was in his late 120s now, a relic of the past. Ancient history had no place in the very modern Department of Protection and Counterterrorism, she believed.

The women took the chairs across from the DPC's head adviser on intelligence, and he stared at them through squinted eyes. Maybe he was sizing them up or something; Marina wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Her imagination had made the legendary Captain Cuttlefish out to be some kind of big, muscular Inkling with toned biceps and shaved sideburns, but the real deal was this tiny, bearded guy with the shakes. The stories she had heard since childhood were no longer accurate, now that time had taken its heavy toll on the captain. Marina had never seen anyone so old in her life, barring the similarly long-lived Octavio.

"So from what I gather, you lot are the DPC's recon team," the captain noted. "Gatherin' info and all that."

Marina grinned and nodded. Outside of hosting Off the Hook and making music in her spare time, the Octoling was a tech junkie. The DPC had originally hired her for part-time equipment maintenance, but that job proved far beneath her skill set. Marina's real selling point was her affinity with computers, and she was an expert in all things surveillance, to boot. Within weeks, they had her spearheading reconnaissance operations. The DPC contract additionally gave her ample resources to test her homebrew gear, refine her blueprints, and do practical data collection, all on the city's dime. She was building crazy contraptions, and the city was receiving unprecedented amounts of surveillance data. It was a win-win compromise with Inkopolis, she told herself.

"Yes, Mr. Cuttlefish, sir! That we are!" crowed Marina. This was also Marina's chance to impress the world's leader in foreign intelligence—Mr. Cuttlefish wasn't exactly her childhood hero, per se, but his exploits in gathering, processing, and analyzing security information were well known to all Octarians in the military. He was both a role model and a feared enemy. The Octarians, despite all their advanced technology, could never match the old man's wits or suss out his planted contacts. He had always been one step ahead of them in a war that had since gone cold.

The senior officer frowned at her. "That's Yes, Cap'n, to you, Miss Ida," he said.

"Yes, Cap'n, my apologies," Marina replied on instinct. Her habits from the Octarian military had kicked in first, even though the captain had no real right to tell Marina what to call him. Old habits died hard.

Fortunately, Pearl was there to stand up for her. "Uh, excuse me? Who the heck are you?!" Pearl snapped. "We take time out of our day to come to your office, and you stall us out. Now you're demanding respect? Earn it first, dude!"

Anger flashed across Craig's face, but he quelled it within a second. The loud pink brat was everything wrong with kids these days, but this wasn't a fight worth fighting. The captain got back to business and asked, "So, hypothetically, if yer boss knew about some Octojerks stationed near Mount Nantai next week, would he put you on the team to deal with 'em?"

Pearl exchanged a knowing look with her friend, and Marina shrugged. The two of them had actually first met atop Mount Nantai, when Pearl discovered the runaway Octoling engineer during a hiking trip. There really was an abandoned Octarian facility beneath the mountain, according to Marina—a whole network of warehouses and tunnels that she had used to reach the surface. If the Octarians had taken up residence there again, though, that could be bad news.

"Would the DPC putcha' up there with the boys?" the captain asked again.

Pearl's attention went back to the DPC's head adviser. "What?" she sneered. "You don't think a bunch of girls can handle themselves in a fight?"

The old man shook his head. Then, he said, "I'm just making sure of it. If the DPC is sending folks up, they better be people who… well... know the place. People who understand the newfangled machinery over there."

Marina stiffened and crossed her arms. "What are you saying?" she asked.

Cuttlefish met her gaze dead on. "Just that I trust the experts, Miss Ida. And you ladies seem to be experts."

Pearl glared at their adviser. She could tell that Marina was getting uncomfortable—her body language was giving off that guarded vibe that often accompanied talk about her past.

"What do you want from us?!" Pearl demanded, standing up to her admittedly small full height and slamming her right palm on the desk. She wasn't about to let this old fart suggest anything insidious about her Octoling partner. "We're doing our job, and you're supposed to help us do it better. Tell us what we need to know."

The little old man didn't even flinch. "Miss Enperry, we're on the same side, here," he asserted. Despite his small size, Pearl found talking to him rather uncanny. He seemed so composed, so still and unmoving. Craig barely even stopped to breathe between sentences.

"Convince me."

"I want you two to prepare for anything. Given how glacially slow things move around these parts, I'm afraid the DPC is gonna send ya up when they should be sending the cavalry. I have a hunch that the Octarian military is up to no good."

"You've detected activity on Mount Nantai," Marina deduced.

"On it, around it, and in it," Cuttlefish said with a vigorous nod.

"And you think the two of us won't be enough to do anything in time," Marina continued. "Is that correct?"

The former naval officer nodded again.

"Come on," Pearl whined. "You called us in on a hunch? You wasted our time because you got the willies?"

"Not just the willies," he remarked, pushing a manilla folder towards them.

Marina opened the folder and began sifting through the contents. Inside was a slew of aerial photographs and black-and-white Echolocator scans of Mount Nantai. Marina took one for herself, noting the large number of apparent hostiles on the mountain, and passed the rest of the folder to Pearl. She had to admit, even if Old Craig Cuttlefish didn't have any evidence to back up his claims, she still would have readily trusted his hunch. He was an asshole, but Craig wouldn't have made it all the way to one hundred twenty-eight years old if his willies weren't spot-on.

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Friday, 10:15 a.m.
Cephalon HQ

Eight perused the equipment room, examining her options. If she was going to be masquerading as a factory worker, then she wouldn't need any heavy gear, but she wasn't going to dive headfirst into Kamabo Corporation without a gun. Eight had no plans to be a part of the mountaintop facility's next disappearing act.

She ended up selecting a compact plastic pistol that could fit under her belt and pass through metal detectors. She would have felt safer with an Octo Shot strapped to her back—any academy-trained soldier would have preferred the standard-issue assault rifle—but tonight's assignment did not permit a guns blazing approach. Undercover work called for discretion, so Eight would have to make do with the tiny handgun.

On her way out, she passed by a lone soldier. Eight avoided making eye contact with him, but as luck would have it, the other Octoling ended up sighting her anyway.

"What are you doing here, Eight?" the soldier sneered. "Did someone forget to take out the trash?"

Eight whirled around to face him—Shawn, Shane, Shaymus, or whatever his name was—and put a stern expression on her face. "It's Lieutenant Elias, Shawn," she snarled at him. "I work here."

"My name is Shad, not Shawn."

"I don't care what your name is, you smart-mouthing, insubordinate grunt," Eight spat. Actually, she remembered that they were both commissioned officers who had graduated from the academy. She outranked him, though.

"Just because you work for Director Cuttlefish doesn't mean you're still an officer," he jabbed. Eight narrowed her eyes. Well, at least she used to outrank him.

Eight continued glaring at the other Octoling, trying to think of something to shut him up with. "Article 88. A commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against officials, whether elected or appointed, may face dismissal from the military and forfeiture of all pay," Eight recited by memory. "You should stop talking now, Ensign."

But Shad wasn't done. "Is that how you justify working for the person who killed your parents?" he countered.

Eight shook her head. She wouldn't let this overgrown manchild get to her. She couldn't get angry, because it would reflect poorly on her already-spotty reputation. That was probably what Shad wanted, after all. The truth was, Eight didn't know who had killed her parents. Many in the military suspected Callie, but Eight had never asked her directly. It was easier for Eight to answer questions rather than ask them herself, and asking this one could possibly endanger her only remaining family member. Eight valued Cece's safety over solving the mystery of their parents' deaths, even if the latter weighed heavily on her mind.

"We all know you're just a money-grubbing slut, Lieutenant Elias," Shad continued. "You have no sense of honor and the loyalty of a shark. Go ahead and try to court-martial me. Let's see how seriously anyone takes you."

Eight took a deep breath and continued on her way, letting Shad have the last laugh. She had bigger fish to fry.

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Friday, 10:20 a.m.
Director's office

Callie sighed in frustration and massaged her temples. She was stressed, but backing down now would be cowardice. It would be irresponsible. A decade ago, becoming the Octarian military director was the last thing Callie could have seen herself doing. And yet, here she was, the only Inkling for miles around, in charge of a bunch of Octarians who wanted her dead. Well, that wasn't a fair assessment. Only a fraction of the military, which itself was only a part of the general populace, wanted any Inklings dead. Most Octarians didn't care all that much. But the hardliners were a vocal minority, a bunch of old men who admittedly had the experience and connections to back themselves up.

The less angry citizens of Octo Canyon, Callie observed, were diligent but disadvantaged, intelligent but unable to really thrive without the necessary education or pathways to success. Even after the end of the power famine and the start of Inkopolis aid effort, everybody in the Canyon was still poor as dirt. It was Callie's mission, now, to see to their rise. The Octarian people deserved a chance to prove themselves to the world, a chance to pick themselves up after a century of destitution, a chance to share their unique, technologically-inclined minds with the world.

If they could do it without trying to kill anyone, then maybe they would actually succeed. That was a big if, one Callie knew that she could help with.

She was an outsider, though, and her peers never let her forget it. While the Octarians were mostly meritocratic and welcoming of Callie's novel skill set, the hardliners in the government still made every step of her journey as painful as possible. While most of the military seemed to appreciate their new director's focus on domestic problems—a 180-degree reversal from Octavio's warmongering—the old guard still distrusted her. Callie supposed that they had every right to. Nobody in the Canyon could prove it, hopefully, but Callie had betrayed Octavio to the NSS before taking the role of director for herself. Mere months after turning her back on the NSS and breaking the Octarian leader out of prison, Callie handed Octavio back to Marie and Agent 4 on a metaphorical silver platter. The old man was senile and unfit to lead, and Callie, then his trusted aide, had taken it upon herself to fix his mistakes. What happened to Octavio afterward, she didn't know and didn't care.

And then there was the problem of the Elias twins. The same old hardliners who distrusted Callie had heaped accusations upon those two, charging them with treason and espionage and generally blaming them for the whole Octavio fiasco. Those annoying geezers were merely out for blood, eager to blame somebody for their problems, but once again they were half-right. Cece Elias, publicly an accountant in the private sector, had indeed sold secrets to their enemies in Inkopolis. Callie owed her own life, her cousin's life, and her grandfather's life to Cece, and she could not simply throw Cece under the bus and get away scot-free, especially not after Cece's widowed father was shot to death by Agent 3—that had also been Callie's fault. What wasn't her fault at this point, honestly?

So, while juggling her administrative responsibilities and trying to cover her own tracks, Callie also spent much of her time and resources on protecting the Elias sisters. Callie had even hired the disgraced Cameron "Eight" Elias to work for her, which had proved to be a great decision. Eight was both completely in the dark about Cece's connection to the NSS and an incredibly loyal, well-disciplined soldier. Heck, calling the former Octarian Lieutenant a mere soldier was doing her a disservice, Callie thought. Eight was Agent 3 levels of good, capable of getting things done without question in record time.

Callie couldn't afford to tell Eight the whole truth. Not yet. There was no telling how she might react. Callie felt rather guilty about keeping secrets from Eight, especially since Eight was the one risking her neck out there. Callie had been in that position herself before, as an NSS field operative. But currently, the missing persons reports and Kamabo Corporation's apparent involvement with them were more pressing than anything else and needed to be addressed first.

And if Callie was right about who she thought was behind it all, then things were about to get quite messy.

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