"…What was he doing?" Ayla watched Marie's silver eyebrows furrow as the Inkling sent a confused shrug at the detective.

"My officers report Ares never did anything suspicious, per se." Detective Alex calmly nodded at the many cops stuffed inside Duncan's Deepsea Metro apartment—Ayla had found it a little weird to find a squid living inside a near carbon copy of the Canyon flowerpots. The detective nudged the blue-uniformed Inkling beside him. "Tell her what you told me, rookie."

"He was just…sitting there, ma'am." Officer Esteban spoke up with a shrug. "Sometimes he'd be on his shellphone, other times he'd be watching the sealife pass by; but nobody came up to him so I don't think he was waiting for anyone. He never left the bench outside our window for, what, five hours? The midnight shift said he'd finally left around five in the morning."

"Did anyone go talk to him?" Agent 2 crossed her arms, golden eyes fully engaged in the conversation.

"Yes ma'am, one of us did." Officer Esteban replied with a quick nod. "But Ares said that he was just minding his own business—which, in his defense, he was. It's not against the law to sit in front of fifteen cops, it's just…weird."

"Forensics estimates Duncan's death was sometime between three and three-thirty." Detective Alex chimed back in. "So while we're unsure what Ares was up to, we can confidently confirm he's not the Lightfisher." Agent 1 slid past as if skating across the wood flooring, pausing to lean an arm on her cousin's shoulder.

"He's right, y'know." She raised her other hand to point at the detective before readjusting her sunglasses, beak spread into a gleeful grin. "Having a whole buncha cops vouch for you is kinda sorta the perfect alibi." Callie pushed off her cousin's shoulder with a pat and slid away without another word, leaving Marie to roll her eyes with a groan.

"That means you were wrong, too!" Agent 2 shouted after her cousin, who answered with a middle finger and Marie turned back to her conversation with a long sigh. "Right now the Lightfisher's mopping the floor with our behinds. We're right where he wants us to be: we know nothing about him, and that gives the sucker free reign to do whatever the carp he feels like. I don't like how he's been making us run in circles like lab rats in a manipulative maze."

Ayla had to be honest—that was exactly how it felt to be up against Agent 2. Between spreading rumors of nonexistent Octoling traitors, manipulating outpost reinforcements and fabricating scout reports, the now-infamous Inkling almost had the entire Octarian military wrapped around her finger last year. And the realization that the strategist was the stumped one made Ayla shudder at what this Lightfisher was capable of.

So she quickly decided that if the real profreshionals were struggling, then the refugee couldn't possibly contribute and tuned out of the conversation in search of other stimuli. Gavin was pacing around as he scribbled notes into one of the thickest notebooks Ayla had ever seen, Delta was chatting on the phone near Duncan's bed, and Quinn was taking in the surroundings from his corner near the room's only window.

"What do you think of all this?" Gavin's words startled Ayla from her thoughts, stashing the notebook into his denim jacket.

Ayla blinked at him before pointing at her chest. "What do I think of all this?"

Gavin nodded with a chuckle, red eyes expectantly watching his fellow Octoling.

"I think…" Ayla felt her cheeks warm into a shy blush as she prepared to explain her uselessness in this situation…

…But nobody else was permitted another thought because there was a knock on Duncan's fifth-story window. Ayla turned towards the sound to find a certain horseshoe crab plastered against the glass and excitedly grinning as if he'd just written all the answers to the universe in blood. Quinn silently stared at Sheldon for another several seconds before outstretching a dumbfounded hand and lifting the window open.

"Hey guys!" Sheldon climbed in as if nothing was amiss, still grinning like a maniac. "How's it going?" Given how the outside of the window—and the entire boulder for that matter—was nothing but floating debris with no crab-friendly walkways or access points, Quinn was simply too flabbergasted to answer right away.

Marie had turned from the detective, only to stop short at the sight of the weapons engineer. They stared at each other for a few seconds before the Inkling slowly opened her beak. "…How the fu—"

"Two!" Sheldon shook a finger at her before he crossed his arms. "Did everybody forget you'd recruited me into the NSS, too? I've been left behind while you guys are off doing all this cool Lightfisher stuff!"

Marie blinked back. "Wow. It's almost as if that was intentional."

"I KNEW IT!" Sheldon's finger was back in the air. "You just didn't wanna hear any of my carefully crafted details for your investigative consideration! Well joke's on you, I used the Metro's antigravity to float here so you meanieheads couldn't get away from allllll I have to say about the Lightfisher's weaponry!"

"Sheldon?" Callie reappeared into the room. "How the carp did you get in here?!"

"Funny you should ask!" The horseshoe crab defiantly put his hands on his hips. "We can start there. So you know how all the stuff in these test domes seem to just float around? Well that indicates a lack of gravity—and as everybody knows, the first law of motion states that…"

"All right, screw this." Marie groaned as she grabbed her coat, stopping beside Delta to nudge the agent's shoulder. "I'm gonna go prepare for my radio show, you listen to him and give me the important bits later. That's an order."

Delta replied with her own groan. "Really? Again?"

"…so when I saw this place I was immediately reminded of outer space, where you can travel for eons with a simple hop thanks to the lack of gaseous friction to decelerate you to a stop…"

Marie patted Agent 4's shoulder. "Have fun." The green idol sped out the door.

"Yeah, uh…" Callie slowly began backing away. "…I just realized I should probably be memorizing my lines right now, or…something like that. So—" She opened Duncan's front door. "I'll catch you guys later!" The pink squid slipped out the door before anyone could protest.

"…and so using CQ Cumber as a slingshot, I generated enough velocity to escape the floor's artificial gravitational field and began floating amongst all the debris…" Sheldon was too engrossed in his rant to notice his victims were escaping.

Gavin innocently glanced between Quinn and Ayla, then shrugged. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm enjoying this."

"…And that's how I smushed my face against the window to exact my revenge for being abandoned!" Sheldon finally finished, hands proudly planted on his hips. "Nowhere is safe; not even places you're supposed to Super Jump to!"

"…Great story, Sheldon." Quinn yawned, daring to hop onto the kitchen counter. "Now, you said something 'bout the Lightfisher's weapon?"

The crab's pupils flicked through his goggles as he blinked a few times. "Oh, yeah! As all of you know, on page 493 of Eight's notes, I had concluded that the splatter pattern on Elizabeth's rug was consistent with a brella…"

Delta's hand covered her face in an attempt to muffle a quiet groan.

"…but it looked like he'd only fired once so there wasn't much to go off of." Sheldon rambled on. "Then Valerie's murder comes along and there's splatters all over the place—except this time they look more like bursts from a blaster."

"…Okay." Quinn offered a shrug. "I can kinda see how a blaster might be confused with a brella. They make similar patterns when you shoot them at a wall."

"Yeah," Sheldon nodded eagerly. "Except the distance each burst traveled rivals a Luna Blaster's range. I didn't think much of that until I'd counted all the splatters and used the timestamps in the report to calculate this thing's firing rate. Get this—and yes I checked my math three times already—it's faster than a freaking Clash Blaster! Do you know how much strain that puts on the firing chamber?"

"Yes." Practically everyone save for Gavin nodded with as much enthusiasm as they could muster. "Please spare the details."

"Okay okay, whatever." Sheldon waved them off with a defeated hand. "The point is that you'd need a power source the size of a small Zapfish in order to do that."

"Hmm." Delta brushed a thumb and forefinger against her chin. "Well, I don't think it's actually a Zapfish; I volunteer at their nursery and all the little guys are accounted for."

Ayla blinked to herself. If Agent 4 was the one running their daycare, then she felt sorry for the poor Zapfish.

"…I'll go double check just to make sure," Delta grabbed her custom F-3—though Ayla was surprised at the level of concern scribbled onto the agent's eyebrow. "But we'll need to figure out what this power source is and how he's getting it." And with that, the agent left through the door.

Gavin turned towards Quinn with a sigh. "Add that to our list of things—"

"YOOOOOO!" A tiny but familiar Inkling burst through Duncan's front door. "All you mother flounders stop what you're doing an' pay your respects; MC Princess is in da HHHOOOOOOUUUSSSSSEEEE!"

Exactly one cephalopod clapped. The rest were covering their ears.

"Let's see here..." Pearl's hands went to her hips, scanning her eyes across the room until the rapper pointed a many-ringed finger at the agents. "You, you..." her finger flicked an unsure wave in Ayla's direction, "...and you too I guess—she likes you." MC Princess crossed her arms. "Y'all gotta come with me; 'Rina wants to talk to you guys in private."

Something was wrong.

Delta shot upright, eyes darting around the monorail like a panicked fish sensing a prowling shark. Everything looked normal; passengers were calmly minding their own business, the monorail moved slowly, no suspicious bags—there was zero reason to think anything was amiss.

But Delta could feel it, and the sensation was undeniable. It made her stomach drop faster than an anvil, prickled goosebumps across the back of her neck, injected her legs with an overwhelming urge to sprint for the door. Delta repositioned an antsy hand on the standing bar with a gulp. The untrained might've passed it off as a random anxiety attack, but Delta knew exactly what that feeling meant:

Danger.

Someone somewhere wanted to hurt her. But the problem was…who? Delta's eyes carefully scanned the monorail's car from left to right, but no one looked suspicious. The tall crab to her left was fiddling with his tie, the Octoling in the jacket was on his shellphone, the two Inklings were talking away—no good leads to go on. The young girl was trapped inside a moving vehicle with no idea who or where the potential threat was. She. Hated. That.

The monorail finally slowed to a halt, and Delta was the first one out the moment its doors opened; it wasn't even her stop but that didn't matter anymore. She was originally returning to Duncan's flowerpot from the Zapfish nursery but a potential tail meant a change of plans. She couldn't lead whoever it was straight to the NSS.

An over-the-shoulder glance spotted four passengers that had gotten off with her: the businesscrab, the Octoling, and the Inklings. The young squid pulled out her shellphone and swiped to the left as she kept walking, raising the device and pretending to take a selfie—except her determined blue eyes instead analyzed the crowd in her camera's view.

The businesscrab was gone, but Delta could still see the Octoling and two Inklings in the crowd behind her; she still needed to separate mere chance from true malice. Agent 4 stowed her shellphone and walked another twenty paces before dipping into a clothing store to see who might do the same. The place was a small boutique and not as crowded as she'd like, but Agent 4 thanked the pinkfish when she saw the long clothing rack across from the glass entrance. She wasted no time slipping behind it and pretended to browse its T-shirts as she kept her periphery on the door.

Delta's situational awareness paid off when the two Inklings chatted by, but the Octoling just so happened to pull the door open and step inside. Delta's breath caught in her throat when the octopus sleepily shuffled his way to a circular clothing rack not too far from her—and black shades met blue eyes for a split second. Delta was quick to avert her gaze, but the corner of her eye noticed that the glove on his right hand had tapped a stopwatch on his shellphone.

Starting a timer was an unexpected behavior for a tail, but showing up in three different places—Delta's car on the monorail, the busy sidewalk, and the boutique—was far from coincidence. Target acquired.

She risked another glance at the "customer," spotting an almost kite-like tattoo of a mobula ray just above his shirt's collar—and then it finally clicked.

Male Octoling. Tentacles swept into a mohawk. He had swapped the Octoleet Goggles and gray hoodie for sunglasses and a black jacket—likely to minimize suspicion—but the same grey duffel told Delta that her unwanted companion could very well be the Lightfisher himself. And he was following her just like Elizabeth and Duncan right before they were killed.

But this prey's not going down without a fight. Agent 4 growled inside her head as that familiar indignation flared from her core—but it needed orders. Delta was already typing into the "Boot-Rockin' Variety Squid Crew" group chat before she knew it:

"I've picked up a tail that looks like the Lightfisher." She hit send. "What do I do?"

Ellipses from a number named 2 appeared quickly, erasing themselves a few times before Marie finished her text: "Stay where you are. 1 and I can intercept him there."

"Tracking your phone rn so don't lose it." Callie added. "Save some of the fighting for me, k?"

"Okay." Delta hit send and pocketed the shellphone, turning her eyes back onto her tail. The idea of the Squid Sisters arriving as backup had quieted her instinct's prior roar into an unsettled grumble, but Delta knew fully well that she wasn't out of the woods yet; the Inkling was on her own if this potential Lightfisher decided to attack before Callie and Marie could show up. Agent 4's ears diverted almost all their attention to the cadence of each footstep around her, eager for even the slightest hint of someone quickening their pace. Her hands instinctively raised to grasp at her custom F-3's collar—ready to shoot out and deflect against anything that might come her way at a moment's notice. The agent didn't expect an attack in the middle of a store, but she sure as squit was gonna be ready if her tail was stupid enough to try.

Another couple minutes had passed before a familiar green cap appeared through the glass door. Relief washed over the former Entrenched member as Agent 2 yanked the door open and made a beeline for her protege, protectively placing herself between Delta and the Octoling.

"…You okay?" Marie spoke through her face mask as she calmly touched her back against the clothing rack, keeping both target and tail in her sights.

Delta yanked her focus from the Octoling with a nod.

"Good." Marie replied with a warm pat on Agent 4's head. "As I said, I've got your back. Nobody's murdering my agent—not if I have anything to say about it." A glance at the Octoling told Delta he'd tapped his stopwatch again, then ducked his head and abandoned the clothing rack.

"Um," The octopus was a few paces from the door when Delta decided to speak up. "Shouldn't we…?"

Marie quieted the Inkling with a raised fist. The Octoling managed to open the store's front door and—

"SURPRISE!" A pink-clad, black-tentacled Inkling sang as she exploded from her hiding spot behind the brick wall. The Octoling let out a surprised yelp when Callie grabbed his arm, but his unexpected twist wrenched him free and the suspect took off down the sidewalk.

"Wait, we just wanna sell ya Squid Sisters tickets!" Agent 1 barreled after him. "Don't'cha wanna see Fresh Start performed live?!"

"…Alright, let him have it." Marie flicked two fingers at the door and Delta was off like a dogfish loose from its leash. Callie's brightly-colored garb made it easy to pick her out among the somewhat crowded street, and Delta caught up with them just as the Octoling rounded a corner towards Manta Maria's docks. Agents 1 and 4 quickly turned after him…

…but the suspect had already vanished among the harbor's bustle.

A/N: Here's some old comments for this part of the chapter:

-The image of Sheldon floating through all the Metro debris above each stage popped into my head in the middle of class, and I sit right in the front row. It was a fight to keep a straight face XD

-I think I've mentioned this before, but "Boot-Rockin' Variety Squid Crew" is the team name that Callie, Marie and Delta would've gotten if they participated in a Splatfest together after version 4.0. Callie originally suggested it as their team name in Chapter 3, but Marie said no and Callie instead renamed their group chat as retribution XD

-So about the little motion Delta did as she was waiting for the Squid Sisters to come back her up—most people trained in self-defense tend to assume a nonviolent posture that keeps their hands above the waist so they can launch into a defense much more quickly. Coincidentally, we've also seen Callie do something similar in one of the flashbacks in Caught in a Lie.

-And yes, you can sense danger before you actually see it. It's a very weird sensation; I've felt it a few times after just one look at somebody and it's been eerily right every single time. So pro tip, if you ever get that feeling where something just feels wrong but you can't put a finger on any reason why…run.