Agent 4 felt betrayed. Marie… What had Marie done to her? If it was anyone else, she would be a little scared and power through, but no. It was the person she trusted the most. She lost all inner strength. Marie had sold her… No. No! That's not how things are supposed to work. It is NOT. No. No way. As all cliche characters say, "THIS IS JUST A DREAM, RIGHT?!", but no. No it was not.
Of course, Four was worried about her family being worried about her. She was missing dinner. Gideon must be terrified for her saftey. Sure, she was quite terrified herself, but she still worried about her brothers and her parents. What… what would they think if they learned what had happened. She couldn't help but cry just a little. She tried hard to avoid it, but it couldn't be avoided. The person she had trusted probably the most had just went onto an illegal forum and straight up sold her. For money. Illegally. The strong steel around her limbs wasn't getting any looser, so why not just relax.
Meanwhile, the rest of the NSS was horrified after hearing Callie's story. Agents 8 and 3 were *again* hiding under chairs reciting that religious book. Boys were weird. REALLY weird. Especially those two. Callie felt a rush of depression, a feeling she hadn't felt since she was a child. MArina was crying and Pearl just looked angry for some unknown reason. While everyone else was looking horrified, Peal just sat there with that same old angry expression on her face. Pearl hated Agent 4 and no one knew why. But… Why the hell was she angry? Sorry back to the story this isn't important.
The team needed to find a way to save Agent 4, but they also needed to make sure Marie didn't go to jail, cause that would also be pretty bad. The cousins were depressed enough from being separated, so anything to make it worse would be quite bad. Their story could've practically come out of Mother 3 it was so sad, wait, no. Actually, the whole idea of "There's a friendly kid and a chill kid. Friendly kid gets kidnaped by a villain from the previous game by trying to fix a family struggle so chill kid teams up with new friends to save them, turns out friendly kid was brainwashed by old villain and now they're the final boss." seems awfully familiar. Damn, Shigesato Itoi started a trope?!
First off, they needed a strategy. Since Pearl hated Four for no good reason, they decided to use echolocation from Pearl's loud screaming and attach the scream to a cool new machine thing Marina was working on to figure out where the kid was. Next, they had to decide who would go to save her. With only thinking for a few seconds, everyone agreed on sending Three and Eight, under the condition of "please don;t do anything weird, boys". Their real names were Tobias and Tommy, just to be clear and whatnot.
While the two boys had been assigned to complete the mission and Pearl and Marina were assigned to find out where everything was, it was Callie's job to look after her cousin. What a depressing job. It would would probably just result in the two of them staring at each other looking sad and not talking. Uhg.
Three and Eight had been told to wear casual clothes to lower suspicion. It only took Marina five minutes to build the thingy. Everyone put on noise-cancelers, and Pearl started screaming really loudly. The echolocation-thing started glowing and showed a red dot on a map. Cool. It worked ;p
According to the machine's map, Four was somewhere nearby the ocean. Oh carp. After doing fourteen seconds worth of research, Marina was able to calculate that Four was on a boat that would leave in exactly one hour, so she built a teleportation machine in another five minutes. That's octo-tech for you.
"I have way too much money and no use for it, so here's $3,000 each." Callie gave the boys money. A lot. "You can probably use it to buy a ticket for the boat."
Agents 3 and 8 looked at eachother. It's not very common for someone to just give you $3,000 and simply walk away without you doing anything to earn the money. They nodded and took the cash. Then, they closed their eyes and were teleported somewhere else. Swoosh.
Damn, that was a short line. All the other passengers were driving onto the fairey by car, so they didn't have to wait long. And the ride WITH rooms was only $2,000, so they had an entire $1,000 EACH on them for meals and other stuff. In their everyday wear, they simply looked like a young couple enjoying an overnight boat ride, and no one could tell they were actually secret agents.
Now, it was time to investigate. Agent 8 got out his sketch book and started taking notes about other people on the boat, while Agent 3 kinda just watched over his shoulder. Three didn't really have anything to do, but he loved boats. They were super edgy, like him. Anyway, Eight got some nice notes. One thing he noticed was an inkling woman carrying an unusually large duffle bag with a few small holes in it and the zipper left open a little, and he swore he saw the bag move. Hmm. That's pretty damn suspicious. He pointed at the woman and whispered to Three, who nodded and took mental note. Eight quickly sketched the woman to remember, just in case they forgot somehow.
"Toby, should we follow her?", Eight asked.
"Actually, maybe. Let's just try to make sure she doesn't get suspicious of us."
"Right. O-of course."
Now that Eight thought about it, a kid constantly looking at you and writing something down and whispering to another kid over and over again might be a little suspicious, so he tried to avoid eye contact with the weird lady and only take notes when her head was turned. Three reported all of the info Eight got back to Cuttlefish and the rest. Everything was going smoothly so far. Still hadn't been caught, yet.
The boys decided to find out what room the weird lady was staying in. Turns out, her room was right down the hallway from their's. They noticed that she started acting less suspicious after she dropped her duffle bag off in her room. Okay, now that's just obvious that something weird was going on, duh. They heard her mumble that she was hungry, and then she left. Using their super secret agent lock-picking skills, they opened the door of the room. Dun, dun, DUUUUUUUUUHN!
Sure enough, Four was right there sitting on a bed reading FullWoomy Alchemist, her favorite manga. As long as she had manga, she was chill, so, because she had a manga, she was chill. Hmm. That was not what the boys expected how the boys were expecting her to be like, but… okay.
"Toby? What the… oh. And Tommy… Why are your names so damn confusing?"
"Aren't you gonna thank us or something?", Toby grumbled. "Gee, thanks Ash."
"Oh, right. Thanks I guess. So, what are you trying to accomplish here?"
"Uh, saving you?", Tommy responded. "By the way… Toby, you should probably tell Cuttlefish that we found her."
"On it. Hey, Cap'n Cuttlefish? Yeah it's me, Agent 3. Yeah, she's right here. Oh, right. She's fine. Hey, wanna talk?"
"Sure." Ashira picked up the phone. "Hello, this is Agent 4." She could here cheering in the background. "I'm good I guess? No, what?! Uh… No… No. Nothing like that! I said I'm fine. Huh? Oh. Okay. Thanks."
Toby took back the phone. "We'll be back shortly. Can you teleport us some more money or something to get back? Uh, wow... Thanks Callie? Why are you giving us so much flippin money?! Er, sorry. Bye." Toby put the phone back in his pocket.
The three of them went to the room with Eight and Three's stuff in it. Four settled in quite casually, despite her situation. Intentionally, the boys had ordered a room with three beds rather than two, knowing what they were assigned to do. Just to be on the safe side, Three gave Four a change of clothes so the woman would be less likely to reconize her. Nice goin there, Toby. After a bit, they realized it was probably time for breakfast. Toby/ Three, being the oldest, made it his responsibility to get food. He took "orders" from the other two, and then left.
He didn't look suspicious, right? Just a sixteen-year-old kid named Toby with a manbun wearing edgyboi attire. Normal. The line for breakfast was somewhat long. He tried to remember the others' orders. That's it. Exactly 1 ½ cups of steel cut oats and a slice of bread with a cup of plain almond milk for Tommy and waffles and pineapple juice for Ashira. When he finally got to the buffet, he learned that sadly, they didn't have his favorite drink, Kool-Aid. All they had was ripoff brands. Whatever, practically the same thing.
Toby got everything he needed and headed back to the cabin. He hadn't seen the duffle bag lady, so that was good. Or was it? He didn't know. He realized that he could go into squid mode and still could carry the tray. Sweet. Just like Clam Blitz.
Eventually he got back to the cabin. He changed out of squid, put the tray on the ground so he could open the door, and then opened the door. After opening it, he gasped like any other fictional character after being surprised.
Duffle bag lady had found her way into the room and was holding Four and Eight hostage.
