Callie and Marie had spent the next few hours with their loved ones, discussing all that had been going on over the course of the year since they had all last seen each other. Iris was rocking the blobbie in her arms, looking quite happy. All the stories being shared however sounded either silly or scary.

"But back when things started, me and cappy here were noticing tons of octolings fleeing Octo Valley and abandoning their home town of Coralic City. The rest brought us to this village that apparently was built five years ago by some paranoid guy who was preparing for the end of the world. Needless to say, he was not disappointed," Iris explained what had become of her and Captain Cuttlefish. The elder inkling looked annoyed at the nickname cappy, but he accepted it, since it was not the worst out of the hundreds of nicknames he had over the years.

"I won't deny, girls, if it hadn't been for Iris, I'd have been out there searching for ya, even if I was a grey monster," Captain Cuttlefish smiled, remembering the fight between them that ended when Agent 3 tied him up and forcibly carried him off to safety. They were confused by that statement. Iris was their best friend, yet it was odd of her to not volunteer with Captain Cuttlefish to join in that search in a zombie infested Inkopolis.

"Why didn't you try and come after us?" Marie requested, still wondering why the purple squid had a blobbie seemingly in her care.

"Oh… sorry. I was scared and every octarian was panicking, so I thought me and cappy could lead them to a better life. So far, we've done exactly that. But zombies still sneak into the valley on accident a lot, so we have guards set up at each entrance to Octo Valley," Iris described what they had been up to over the course of the year. The winter weather at least slowed down the zombies and made everyone's works easier.

"Well, at least you kept grandpa safe… we owe you a lot for just that," Callie happily said, just glad to be with her completed family again, even if it was quite small in size compared to most families. Iris nodded, thankful to be acknowledged in that sense, though she still had one thing to surprise her best friends with.

"Oh, which reminds me… I need to introduce you guys to my son. Meet… Oczito!" Iris said, presenting the blobbie in her arms. The little guy was half awake, looking ready to take a nap and then another good few hours of sleep after that. The Squid Sisters were very surprised to hear that Iris, of all people, had a child. She was the last person they expected to be a mother anytime soon.

"Wo-wow! When did you…?" Marie stuttered. The blobbie did not look more than a few months old at most.

"Congratulations! Oh, if I could I'd be planning a celebration already!" Callie exclaimed, hugging Iris. The little blobbie Oczito got a little squished between them, though he paid it no mind and tried to get some more rest while being held.

"Hehe… that's why I love you two. You always know what I'm thinking!" Iris gleefully responded. The only thing the two could not read her mind about was those riddles she made up or when her brain went off track with thought processes. She tended to ramble quite often. The captain decided to explain for them to make sense of things.

"Well, squiddos… y'see, that little guy's mother laid his egg about a week after zombies started popping up. I think everything happening at once overwhelmed her, and she kind of lost her mind," Captain Cuttlefish remembered Oczito's real parent. They had no clue who his father was, so they could not just go requesting his help, and since there was no more child protective services to be called in. Iris stepped up to take responsibility, unsure with all others whether or not his real mothers' mental state would recover.

"Well… congrats, anyway. I feel a lot more comfortable knowing you can be so responsible," Marie claimed, having not expected this from Iris. She did feel bad for the tiny blobbie's mom, though the white inkling could not imagine what it was like to be under such stress and laying an egg during the chaos of it all. It must have destroyed her mind a lot worse than anyone could describe.

"Thanks! He'll be a riddle master too when he grows up. Just you watch" Iris grinned, the Squid Sisters trying to ignore the statement as they had solved tons of riddles from her as well. Marie pulled one of the four rainbow elixir bottles they had with them from her pocket. She rested it on the table, allowing the captain and Iris to notice it, confused.

"That bottle of soda looks like it'd poison whoever drinks it... Can I have a sip?" Iris requested, though Oczito was sucking on the pacifier that was dangling around his adoptive mother's neck by the chain. Iris though did not care about sharing it, so she often didn't notice.

"You don't have to worry about poisoning," Marie groaned, dismissing any worries for this to be poison in a bottle.

"It's actually the cure for the zombie infection. It tastes nasty, though it is nutritious. Marie and I have been leading what was left of Inkopolis and the octolings who came into it. We take back one area at a time while curing any infected within that area," Callie added, explaining how they had become leaders, just like their beloved grandfather and best friend had become themselves. It also explained how so many octarians wound up in Inkopolis fleeing from Coralic City for any hope of safety when they were starting to become infected, and the infection was carried to the city of squids.

"I'll be… the cure?! …wow… my little grandsquids have made me proud…" Captain Cuttlefish lifted his glasses up, wiping a nonexistent tear out of his eye.

"That's a relief. I was kinda getting bored of Octo Valley," Iris smiled. Octo Valley was a lovely place with many sights to behold, but with zombies roaming around, she could not enjoy them.

"We've cured at least a couple thousand squids. Sadly, Inkopolis is the most populated city around, so we've kind of been forced to take it slow. But at the rate things are going, in a year, we should have half of the city back," Marie elaborated. Still, no one was happy, and she knew how many survivors the Squid Sisters had at their base who wanted to just charge around the city blindly and blast the cure at anything grey, but they were always able to convince those squids and octopi that it was best to handle this great turf war smartly.

"So our biggest problem now is not the grey monsters running around in two cities. It's time that's in our way?" Iris questioned, the others nodding.

"Yes. I know how that feels like. Time is the only way to win a battle. Waiting for backup to come with no way to rest, and always having to be careful… I've been in that situation all too often," Captain Cuttlefish said. He had many stories he had from the great turf wars in his youthful days, that he tried to turn the war experience into a positive thing by using them as examples to teach his grandsquid's life lessons.

"Well, we do our best with the help of our friends… but truth be told, grandpa, we snuck here without alerting anyone," Marie admitted truthfully, feeling guilt in her heart for having not just brought a small splatoon of troops with them in secret. Thankfully, seeing their grandfather again seemed to have suppressed that sarcastic voice in Callie's head quite drastically. She was happy to know this, and that the Squid Sisters personal mission was a huge success.

"I had a hunch you two were not exactly planning to come to the survivor reef," Captain Cuttlefish was proud of them nonetheless. To him, there was no such thing as great leaders without great mistakes.

"Is there anything we can do with this cure?" Iris asked. When Callie looked at her to answer, she had a bright smile. The blobbie in her arms had finally fallen asleep and was snug against her chest. This was a sight the Squid Sisters would have to get used to.

"So far, we've just been producing as much of it we can. Fall and winter have made it harder to get all the ingredients for it, but we still manage. Just pour a bottle in the ink tank, and you got enough to cure a lot of infected before needing to refill," Marie explained. She had watched this cure be created time and time again as one of the leaders of the biggest survivor group. It was her and Callie's duty to at least learn the recipe, but they took it a step further and memorized it. Well Marie memorized most of it, yet barely recalled that her cousin might have been half awake during those cure making sessions.

"No, no… I said is there anything WE can do with it?" Iris grinned, almost assuring she wanted to do something insane to solve their problems. Agent 3's heart was in the right place, yet her mind wasn't up to speed with her heart.

"Oh, dear Iris, we do the same thing my grandsquids have been doing. We just help them with the cure efforts. Once we get Inkopolis back, we will help the octarians get Coralic City back," Captain Cuttlefish said. Agent 3 was full of determination to go through with this idea, and that made Agent 1 and Agent 2 feel concerned. Something was brewing in that purple girl's brain, and it was either really good or really bad.

"Cappy! Come on! We can do so much more with this cure to speed up this whole slow deal! Who knows what could happen if we keep going so slow," Agent 3 stated, her adopted son fully asleep in her arms. Captain Cuttlefish wondered where she was going with this.

"What do you mean? The zombies are slow and dumb, and they can only really bite you if you aren't paying attention. The only real threat is if you get caught in corners or dead ends. Even then you can splatter dozens of them easily," Marie argued.

"Marie is right. What are you trying to say, Iris?" Callie requested. Iris however had almost begun sucking on her pacifier again like it was going to help her think better. She just let it dangle around her neck once more.

"What do diseases do? They evolve with time. Every day we're running the risk of it changing. What if his infection turns some poor grey squid into a huge raging kraken and it becomes resistant to the cure?!" Iris exclaimed in her variously changing tones of excitement. That was a dreadful thought that had crossed their minds. However, the Squid Sisters already had discussed this again that they had a plan for it.

"Look, I doubt there will ever be such a thing as an infection that improves your physical health. But all the survivors agreed that if the cure begins to become ineffective, we just will trap all infected until the cure can be improved," Callie explained. It would be another easy job, considering how slow and dumb the grey monsters were.

"I do understand your impatience, Iris, but I assure you my grandsquids have it under control, but if there was a way to do it any faster and safer, they would have done it already… although…" Captain Cuttlefish tried to talk, agreeing with his grandchildren when he had an idea hit him. Thinking about it, there may just be a very way to cure all of Inkopolis, but it was going to be far from easy.

"What is it, grandpa?" Callie asked, recognizing that thinking face very easily.

"Well… I believe there may actually be a way to save Inkopolis lickety-split. However, squiddos, we'll need quite a lot of the cure and even more help than that," Captain Cuttlefish said with a bright smile. Iris had a great grin, fully on board with whatever he had in mind, and just like that, he was discussing the entire plan with them. Callie and Marie were not really believing what they were hearing, but it steadily started to sound like a great idea. It seemed like they might be able to cure all of Inkopolis even quicker, and once they did that, they will help cure Coralic City as well so that everyone could return back to their normal lives.