Everyone followed the leaders into the hole. Pomegranate, being the snatcher he is, was the last to enter, quickly doing the snatcher thing and looking around before covering the hole back up and following the others.

"Don't ask how we dug this hole," Cap'n Cuttlefish said to everyone.

Eventually they all came to a small room lit by lanterns. The room had seventeen carpet squares (like the ones you sit on in pre school) organized in rows in the back, a long table to the side, a chalkboard on opposite wall, and a mini refrigerator next to the table. Agent 8 got curious what was in the fridge and opened it, revealing several microwave dinners, a few containers of vegan butter, two milk cartons, and what seemed to be marijuana. He quickly closed the fridge and sat down on a carpet square next to Agent 4.

"Uh, Owen?", she whispered to him. "You good?"

"Do NOT look inside that fridge," he whispered back.

"Riiight."

Lieutenant Bobtail cleared his throat to catch everyone's attention after they had all seated themselves. "As you may have noticed, Captain Cuttlefish and I are both carrying boxes. The reason for that being we wanted to give you guys Squidmas presents, as it is next week and you have been such good agents. You too, New Squidbeak Splatoon, at least that's what Craig says."

Much to the surprise of the NSS, everyone front hat group was given some sort of condiment. Callie got peanut butter, Marie got cheese whiz, Three and his brother received matching jars of relish, Four got soy sauce, Pearl and Marina obviously got mayo and ketchup, and Eight got Russian dressing, a fusion of what his parents got. However, Four didn't seem as excited when the Captain gave her an expensive bottle of soy sauce you only find at the farmers' market.

"Is something wrong with the soy sauce, Agent 4?", Cuttlefish asked.

"I'm very excited to be getting such a rare and valuable brand! Thank you very much. Nothing is wrong."

"Are you sure about that?"

Marie decided to take responding to that into her own hands. "What she isn't telling you is that she doesn't celebrate Squidmas."

"There are cephalopods who don't celebrate Squidmas?"

"Boomer," Three muttered.

By now the Bio-Luminati were staring at them, especially Four and Cuttlefish.

"C-can we change the subject now?"

"Not until you get your justice, Four," Marie replied sternly.

"No seriously, we can discuss this later," Four added.

"Great," muttered Bobtail. "As I was going to say, Cuttlefish would like to make an announcement."

"There's three, actually. The first one is that I'm going to attempt to take on the role of a mall Santa for a week. The second one is much more important and interesting. We're merging to create a larger team! And finally, the third thing. Do you want to hear it?"

"Yeah!", everyone cheered.

"Yessss…", Eight murmured. He still couldn't get his mind off of the drugs he found in the refrigerator.

"We're opening a school!"

Everyone fell dead silent.

"That's right, a school! The youngsters could benefit from extra training. Learning at a young age can be very beneficial."

"Adding on to what he said," Bobtail added. "We built an entire building in a secret location. No school districts know about it, and it's not a private school. We have also sent letters to your parents about it, but we made it seem like it's a normal school. The letters should arrive any time now. Any questions?"

Marina raised her hand. "My son is part of this select group, right?"

"Correct!"

"You are providing my son with free education in being a secret agent, but will he also be taught essential things like mathematics and literacy?"

"Yes," said Bobtail. "Imagine the secret agent stuff as cool gym class. Anything else you want to ask before we let you go?"

No one replied.

"Great!", said Cuttlefish. "We'll be seeing you later!"

On the way back, Marie was able to think fast and prevent Four from driving again by duct taping her to the back seat. Four was not amused. The drive was pleasant. No one complained, no one sang weird road trip songs, and no one got carsick. Everyone was able to get home by three in the morning.

When morning came, Four was in too much of a deep sleep to notice her older brother shouting her name, relatively loudly.

"Ashira! Get up."

When she didn't get up, he grumbled and began shaking her until one of her eyes opened and she morphed into humanoid form.

"What time is it?"

"One PM."

"Heh heh.."

Gideon ran his fingers over his mush-cut tentacles. "Mom and dad called asking if we could visit them today."

"Okay."

The two siblings got on a train and headed for one of the rural areas outside Inkopolis. Their family was waiting for them at the train station. After some greetings and hugs and stuff, their parents drove them home. When they got there, their mother instructed Gideon to leave the room as she sat down on a chair in the living room and instructed Four to do the same.

"I received a letter saying you were accepted to a school called Cuttlefish Academy. The letter says you excel at Turf War, Clam Blitz, and Splat Zones and this school is for children who are also good at ink sports."

Four tried not to get too excited at this, knowing what it was. "That's cool."

"It is. I would like you to go." She paused. "Oh, and one more thing."

"Hm?"

"Do you have a boyfriend yet?"

The next monday at 6:30 AM, Three, Four, Eight, and Neo Seven all met by the Squid Sisters' apartment for carpool for the first day of school. Four had to be duct taped to the back seat again to stop her from driving the car.

After an hour or so, the car came to a stop in the middle of a large forest. The kids got out of the car (Four was un-taped) and it drove away. In front of them was a building the size of a house owned by someone in the upper middle class with a field full of obstacles next to it. They eventually found the door and entered.

The second they entered, they instantly noticed a large banner in the main hallway with the words "WeLCOM BUKOS" written on it.

"This should be great," Three muttered.

"We're just as weirded out as you guys are," said Wifi. The NSS kids noticed the Bio-Luminati kids on the other side of the hallway. Four awkwardly waved.

"Do you three understand what is happening?", Eight asked them.

"I just said that we're weirded out," scoffed Wifi.

"Sorry."

"No need to worry," said Cello. "You're… Eight, right?"

"Yes, that I am."

"This whole nickname thing is dumb," Saber muttered.

"Yeah," replied Wifi. "If we're going to school together, we should be allowed to call each other by own real names. I'm Quin, 'Saber' is named Jonah, and 'Cello' is named Keilani. You guys?"

Four awkwardly began to talk. "Uh, I'm Ashira, Three is named Toby, Eight is named Owen, and Neo Seven is named Jay."

"So, do we just wait here like idiots or something until we find someone to give us instructions on what the hell we're supposed to do right now?", Three asked.

"Or maybe this is a test of our secret agent abilities and we have to find them," Eight considered.

"That makes sense," said Neo Seven. "Should we, like, split into groups or something?"

"Yeah, that would work," Wifi replied. "I can go with Jonah and Kei, and you guys can divide amongst yourselves."

Saber and Cello nodded and began searching the rest of the first floor with Wifi. Three went with his brother to search the second floor, and Four and Eight searched the third floor. As they got to the top of the steps, Four saw something out the corner of her eye, but ignored it and kept walking. The two friends looked through the hallway to find nothing. However when they entered a classroom…

"Hey, you found me buckos!" Cuttlefish jumped up from under a desk.

"HOLY CRAP." Eight ran out the the room and hid inside of a locker reciting a religious book in panic.

"Captain, I think you scared him," Four mumbled, slowly leaving the room to get her friend out of the locker.

Eight began to calm down. He opened his eyes and tried to open the locker's door, only to remember that lockers can only open from the outside. Lucky for him, Four had just found which locker he was in.

Four went to open the locker. However, as the name "locker" suggests, it was, well, locked.

"Hey, Owen?"

"Uh.. I'm guessing it won't open, right?"

"Yeah… Should I get help?"

"Probably." Eight sighed.

"Got it." Four ran back into the room, only to find Cuttlefish wasn't there anymore. She headed down stairs, and the second floor was empty, too. On the first floor, she caught Cuttlefish taking the rest of the kids into a room on that floor. Four ran after them and eventually caught up.

"There you are, Agent 4! Where-"

"Eight'sstuckinalocker."

"Huh?"

Four let out a deep breath and fell onto the floor in squid-form. "Agent 8 is trapped inside of a locker on the third floor."

"He… what?" Three was confused.

"DO I NEED TO REPEAT MYSELF? HE'S STUCK IN A LOCKER."

"Well, you should probably open the door," Cello recommended.

"It's locked."

"This is going great for a first day of school," Neo Seven nervously laughed.

"How the hell did did he trap himself in a locker?" Three was starting to get frustrated.

"Cuttlefish jump scared us and Owen ran into a locker and accidentally locked himself in it."

"Well of course he did," Three grumbled. "We all probably know how to pick locks, let's not make a big deal about this."

"It's a number lock thingy," Four explained. "You can't pick those."

Three closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "So... he's just gonna die in there?"

"I mean, we could break it open," smirked Wifi.

"With what, a chicken nugget?" Four replied.

Wifi rolled his eyes. "You know that's not what I was thinking."

"Honestly, even I don't know what you were thinking," Saber muttered.

"Fine, I'll explain. Pomegranate infiltrates the Salmonid army all the time, but he's only a snatcher. Maybe he could get a cohock to break the door down."

"Great idea!", chimed Cuttlefish, to everyone's surprise, despite the fact that Wifi had only brought up the idea as a joke. "I'll contact Lieutenant Bobtail and ask him to give the little fish a command."

After around an hour, Eight had fallen asleep in his octopus form waiting to be freed from the evil locker. However, he was suddenly woken by a loud roar that sounded something like "I smell an octoling boy!", followed by loud pounding of some sort of metal object on the locker's door.

"Huh? Wha!?" Eight screamed. "What's going on?"

There was no response, other than more pounding. "Octoling boys kill salmon. Octoling boy must die!"

"Holy sh*t. GUYS THIS ISN'T FUNNY."

Eight heard something smash, followed by cohock getting splatted noises. The door to the locker slowly fell open. Three was standing in front of him holding a Hydra Splatling.

"Hi Toby. Can you explain to me what just happened?"

"It's better if you don't know."