Against

Thank you for your time, Mr. Cuttlefish, Mr. Cuttlefish, Mrs. Cuttlefish
About your request for your daughters, Marie and Callie...
They have been in the same class for four years now.
They're old enough to be apart; in fact, it's past time.
Now, I'm not suggesting they be separated in all their classes.
There are eight blocks. We've drawn up a schedule so they'll share four.
And, of course, they can still be on the same side during field day.

"So, if we've cleared Marina, how the squit did a single by DJ Octavio get released?" Marie drops the top 40 list on the table between them.

Callie grabs one of the nearby pillows and punches it. "I wish I knew. Honestly, rescuing gramps was kinda loud, and he introduced himself, like, five times over the course of his song. Maybe some campers on Mount Nantai recorded it?"

"At this point, that's all I've got, too," Marie says; Callie pushes the pillow across the table, and she rests her head on it. "Gramps is not gonna be happy this is all we've got."

Someone pushes open the door to their studio. Marie lifts her head; Callie looks over. "We've got, like, an hour until prep," she says. "What's up?"

"Your final splatfest has been decided on," says the intern, two folders under his arm, one pink one green. "The two of you need to look through these and learn about your—"

"Our respective teams, and then come up with our stage dialogue for the announcement, I know, I know," Callie interrupts, putting out her hand. "Give."

The crab passes her the pink folder, then lowers his eyeballs. "I've been told to hand each of you your folders personally."

Callie shoots Marie a look, and Marie gets to her feet, sighing. "This had better be some splatfest," she says, stomping over and tearing the folder from his claw. "Okay? Now go."

The intern scuttles off. Callie closes the door and looks reproachfully at Marie. "You could've been nicer."

"I don't do nice," Marie retorts. "That's supposed to be your thing." She stomps back to her seat and drops the folder on the table. "Cod, all this stress with the agent crud is giving me a headache. These are early, too."

"Hasn't even been a week since Night Owl won over Early Bird," Callie agrees. "Usually we get two weeks before we have to deal with this." She grabs a lollipop and kicks up her feet. Since the studio already chose their sides for them, their preferences must be known, like it was in Pizza VS Burgers. If it was like the pokemon splatfest, they'd've handed Callie identical folders. Sunrises VS Sunsets, maybe? They don't have much preference, but after early bird/night owl—no, no, final splatfests are always big. The last group's Final Fest is half the reason there's a committee lobbying for all the specials to be redone to be 'less dangerous'.

Callie can't think of anything, so she cracks open her folder.

Staring at her is her own picture, smiling for the camera, the one they took of her when she got the job at Inkopolis News two years ago, and below it Team Callie vs Team Marie

"Fuck," Callie mutters.

Marie's chair scrapes, and Callie looks up just in time to see her knock her chair over, almost going on the floor herself. Marie leans over the table. "Did you just swear? About a splatfest team?"

"Open your folder," Callie says, slapping hers on the table. She shoves the lollipop in her mouth and tries to focus on it, and not on the idea of going against Marie. Like, against against.

Marie glares at her, but grabs her own folder off the table and opens it. Her mouth drops. "Shit."

"This isn't some game," Callie snaps. She jerks open her folder again. "This isn't—we aren't foods. We're living, breathing inklings, they shouldn't be—"

"But they do, all the time, anyway."

Callie looks up from her folder, at Marie. She's still standing there, folder in hand, staring at it. Callie scowls. "I told you not to read the comments."

"I don't need to," Marie says. "I have ears. Besides, it's everywhere. Would Supersquid or Batsquid win in a fight? Would Harry and the Finsters be able to outrace the Speeding Ink if it was a relay, so they wouldn't get tired?" Marie shrugs, her eyes still on the folder, and her voice drops, clearly imitating someone. "Omicod, Callie and Marie are so different, you ever wonder if they're gonna break up! Their solo careers would be so fresh!" Then, higher pitched, "Yeah, but you know Marie wouldn't be able to hack it without—"

"That's not true," Callie interrupts, pushing back from the table so hard her chair falls over as well. On some level, she's aware of the inklings gathered at the window, pointing and watching with their phones pointed at them, but right now, it doesn't matter. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Mar. Probably—" Callie laughs, though it's anything but happy, "probably go crazy. I've never had to be by myself before."

Marie smiles then, just a little, though her eyes glisten as she looks at Callie. "We have been together for basically, everything, haven't we?"

"Yeah," Callie says, and goes around the table to hug her.

Marie drops her folder on the table to hug back. "Maybe... we've talked, often enough, about after this job. About how you wanna go into TV and Movies and I wanna go into education and maybe radio, so even though we'll both keep singing we'll be apart. Maybe we should look at this as..."

"It sucks," Callie says, not letting go. "It royally sucks. I have half a mind to just march in there right now and tell them we won't do it."

Marie rolls her eyes. "You do that, per our contracts, we owe them half the money they paid us here for the last year."

Callie winces. "We'd have to pay back the orphanage donations?"

"And the food bank. Not to mention everything we spent on the splatoon, because I really don't think both our savings combined could cut it." Marie hugs Callie harder, just for a moment, then steps away. "Let's make a promise, now, not to take this splatfest seriously. Got it? Glorified popularity contest, the winner gets a 'Splatfest Voted Best!' sticker on her first movie—"

"Or tv show," Callie interrupts.

Marie flashes Callie a real smile this time, though her cheeks are wet. "Or tv show. And other than that, we never speak of it again. This changes nothing." She turns to pick up her chair and sit down. "As for our dialogue... let's change it up. Why don't I try to join your team?"

"You can't," Callie says. "That sort of thing is my shtick. Besides, we can't be running the teams for each other." She picks up her own chair as they both snicker. "Just think how that'd confuse the fans about which team is whos!"

Callie feels better now, because yeah, it's just a splatfest. Just a splatfest. Then she flips past her picture, looking for any more information—special music for final fest, dates—and her stomach drops. "Squit. They want us to take our meals at different times. We need to write and perform solo pieces."

Marie rests her head on the table and groans. "As if we don't release enough music."

Author's Note:

Canonically, during Final Fest announcements, Marie says she'd rather give DJ Octavio a sponge bath than be on Team Callie; what she says varies by language/region, but it looks like she references DJ Octavio in a lot of them. Since, ya know, no one knows about the Octarian threat except them and 3, that's a major slip in cover. However, the liner notes for the Splatune 1 CD features the song, with notes about his 'bold new entry' and other details I'm too lazy to look up right now, indicating that, canonically, at least ONE song of his got published in inkopolis.

Which also means, if he's a complete unknown, for all anysquid knows DJ Octavio is a hunk.