A/N

Okay, peeps, sorry for starting a chapter like this, but we're officially past Final Fest so I need to update you. Particularly anyone who's reading this as their first snapshots fic (Hi! Glad you're enjoying it!)

Anyone who's played Splatoon 2's Hero mode knows what happens to Callie. Here's a rundown, though: Callie is missing for the vast majority of it, and is eventually found assisting DJ Octavio in the final boss, wearing something called Hypnoshades; when they come off it's strongly implied there's at least a few minutes where she doesn't realize where she is or what's going on.

Seeing it from the outside is horrible. But this is Callie's story. We're gonna see that—at least some of it—from the inside. In the interest of not spoiling things too much, I'm not going to tell you exactly what, or when, or how. I do NOT think anything that happens will be enough to alter this fic's rating. But, if you read Unlived Life, you should have some idea of exactly how the hypnoshades mess with you, and it can probably qualify as... 'mental abuse' seems far too harsh a phrase, I'm not sure if 'gaslighting' is exactly right either, but they're both in the right neighborhood.

If you're reading this on ffnet, and something gets to be too much, message me with 'Snapshots Unplanned Ch.' whatever chapter it is and I'll give you a summary of the events. I haven't even written any of it, at the time of writing this note—June 14, FYI, though I got distracted after typing the date and am finishing it now on June 23—but boy do I have plans.

With that dealt with...

Subterfuge

What were you thinking?
Sneaking in the school after hours,
Graffittiing the walls,
I don't care if they were welcome messages!
It doesn't matter how sad the new kids looked!
I blame your grandfather for this.
Maybe we need to limit your time with him.

The Octoslob looks left and right, frowning, its single tentacle wobbling as it goes. It shrugs at last, turns, and begins patrolling the other way again.

Callie rises from her ink without a sound and shadows it, careful not to be seen, until she can turn off, down a tunnel.

"You okay, Cal?" asks Marie in her ear.

Callie gives a thumbs up where Marie can see it from the hero suit's camera, and glances behind her. Three is making their own careful way through, following Callie's lead. Neither of them want to get caught down here.

Going along the roofs is one thing, and useful for patrols. Exploring Octarian war factories, production facilities, and boss enclosures is closer to what Agent Three did when rescuing the zapfish, and something no agent would ever do without someone on coms.

Sneaking through Octarian patrols to get an up-close look at what, exactly, is going on in Octarian forts and cities requires on-hand back-up, and Callie's glad it's Three. If something goes wrong here, they're gonna have to fight it out up close, and Marie—Mar's amazing, no question, but only from a distance.

The tunnel opens up into a wide clifftop, and Callie squids down and wiggles until she can look over the edge. Just like expected, not ten feet below them are buildings and walkways, directional signs in determined Octarian, and Callie eases back and takes a deep breath. "Go time."

"You'll be careful, right?" asks Marie.

Callie waves a hand in dismissal as Three comes up beside her and peels the pack off their back. Off comes Callie's hero suit; on goes Octarian armor. She undoes her hair bow and does it differently, a 3/4 twist forcing her tentacles upside-down so the suckers on them can pass for Octarian suckers, and they hang in roughly the right spots for the average Octarian. She clips the camera to one, then dons the goggles they searched eighteen shops for, the closest match to Octarian goggles they could find.

She examines herself in her make-up mirror. She looks more like an Octoling than Marina does an inkling, that's for sure. It'll have to do. "All right," Callie says, handing Three her roller; she receives an octoshot in return. "If I need help—"

"I'll be there," Three says.

Callie nods at them, then climbs down the cliff, waits for a gap, and puts herself in among the Octarians. Three steps, and she realizes they're all marching in rhythm, no matter where they go; she matches it. Music, too soft to hear from the cliff, is being piped through the streets, a steady drum that matches the march.

Callie looks straight ahead, official, but her eyes are busy behind the goggles. It may not be necessary; every octoling around her has on an identical pair of goggles. Every now and then, she sees a bit of light in an octoling's goggles, so some must be active. Maybe they all are. But everyone agreed, as long as she looked close enough and acted the way they all did, she shouldn't come to much trouble.

Though she can't go around tearing the goggles off their faces, either. This makes... Callie doesn't wanna splat them. Not if they don't know they're fighting her, if they think it's just a game. Even if they respawn. But there are too many. If they wanna go around freeing Octarians from brainwashing, they need to outnumber the Octarians first. A plan for where they'll go, how they'll live (will they all emigrate to Inkopolis?). And... they can't all be brainwashed. They can't.

Focus, Callie, she tells herself.

The only buildings nearby are houses, but in the center of them all, surrounded by a ditch (bridged on two sides, with crumbling bridge remains on the other two) is a walled military compound. There are soldiers standing at attention at each wall, octoshots ready, tentacles still, which is a little unnerving: Octoling tentacles are never still. Callie marches towards it without hesitation.

"Cal, are you sure that's a good idea?" asks Marie.

Callie doesn't answer, she can't without giving herself away, but she doesn't stop marching, which is answer enough. She's gotta get inside.

Three questions:
Why is the amount of activity in the different kettles changing?
Are the Octarians planning anything against Inkopolis?
Who is Marina to the Octarians?

There has to be answers to at least one of those in there, and it's why they came. And so far, no one's even looked at her twice. Callie's hearts thump hard, and her mouth is too dry to speak, as she approaches... and realizes half the people going in are wheeling wheelbarrows full of salmonid eggs, and half the octolings leaving are wheeling out empty wheelbarrows.

Without breaking pace, Callie veers to follow the Octarians with empty wheelbarrows. "Good plan," says Marie. "If you can knock one out and take that, then you can get in unnoticed."

Or, two streets away, at the edge of town, is a larger-than-average building with extra wheelbarrows outside it and bins of power eggs inside. Callie retrieves a wheelbarrow and is very grateful for her gloves as she piles a dozen eggs inside, then begins the trek back to the compound.

The guards don't pay her any attention as she trudges inside, and she doesn't turn her head, but her eyes are busy. Not everyone in here has goggles on. Most do, but the octolings entering and leaving two rooms are wearing shades instead, and some elites don't have anything covering their eyes. Marie is whispering in her ears, making notes of all this, as Callie continues with her wheelbarrow into a storage room.

Only people with wheelbarrows go in, tip out their stuff, and walk out; this whole room must be supplying energy to the rest of the base. Good to know. But there's an air vent in the ceiling, and Callie dumps her wheelbarrow, inks a quick path to it, and squids through.

Even in squid form, the inside of the vent is a tight fit. There's another vent, maybe ten feet away, that she wiggles towards. Voices float towards her from it, speaking Octarian: "Another collapse. That's six this week."

"I don't care how upset our king will be on his return," says another voice, "we need to abandon some settlements. We don't have the capability of doing repairs on all of them, and the longer this goes on, the thinner we're stretched."

The first voice hisses angrily. Callie stops swimming when she can see in the room, but before she falls in.

Eight octolings are standing around a table with... she can't read what's on it, not from here. Another leans forward. "We need to completely abandon the canyon, not just the most damaged locations. It's the site of the worst damage, particularly after that filthy inklinggot through with it. We'll figure out the overcrowding somehow."

The other Octarians murmur agreement. Callie mentally checks one question off her list: that's why there's different levels of activity. They're moving.

But where? They need to find that location, or else they won't be able to keep Inkopolis safe if there's another threat.

"How many more missing personnel files do we have to go through? Eight?"

"Eight," confirms another.

That sounds promising. Callie stays where she is, being patient not lazy or scared, thank you Marie, while the Octarians determine that the six of the eight missing Octarians were likely splatted when various parts of the domes collapsed; that sounds... very unpleasant. But the other two, who were stationed in areas near the ocean or deepest underground, they have no idea. And eventually, one of them picks up those two files and puts them in a cabinet in the corner of the room.

All the lights in the room turn off when they file out, but Callie doesn't care. She drops through the air vent, using her tentacles to see by, and makes her way to that file cabinet.

Organized by date filed, and alphabetically in that. "Agent 2, can you take pictures?" Callie whispers. "If more octolings come to Inkopolis..."

"The vid's recording, we can screenshot it later, just scan the names," Marie says.

Callie does, holding each file before her just long enough to read the name and let the camera get a shot, then continuing. Ebb and Flow was released in December, which means Marina was in Inkopolis at least a couple months before then; getting to December doesn't take long, even though it was a full eight months ago. No month has more than three names. Marina isn't in November, or October, or September...

August. Marina Ida. Callie pulls it out, flicks it open, and whistles despite herself: Marina's impressive. Mother, father, brother. Skipped several grades. Unfortunate disability, one tentacle didn't grow right, affecting her swim speed and marking her as a non-combatant.

But she designed flooders, and was a key member on the team for the Octonozzle and the one who figured out how to get the Octobot King to fly. She was in charge of the speakers for that fight, and heard Calamari Inkantation, and...

Callie's eyes widen, because she didn't know Octarians did therapy, but it didn't work. One song, and Marina went from a model Octoling to a rebellious independent person and they don't know where she went. They decided that, since she was a prodigy pushed to design things since she was nine, they pushed her too hard and are reviewing policies not to put octolings into adult work until they've learned how to shift. And they want her back. They've got a plan for—Callie shivers—reprogramming.

She doesn't know what that involves, but she doesn't want to find out.

"Agent One," Three says in her ear, "You're gonna want to get out of there. Looks like a dozen Octolings with seaweed are heading towards your building."

Callie winces. "Gimme five," she mutters, puts everything back where she found it, inks the wall, and swims back to the vent. Her wheelbarrow's waiting where she left it; no one's given it, or her, a second glance.

Much as Callie'd like to stay, she knows better than to mess with anything else. It doesn't matter who's watching her, she gives Gramps and Mar heart attacks with the risks she takes. She won't do that today.