From the times Rose had mentioned Agent 2 of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, few as they were, it sounded like she was a captain of sorts for the core members. Even though I knew their actual captain, and he was nowhere to be found.

Her position, I guessed, would have made her the more blunt, serious kind—Rose's polar opposite. But with something as unofficial as the NSS, she could've been anyone. I didn't know what to expect from her. Taking me to the empty back of an otherwise packed mall, for starters, was an odd choice.

There wasn't a lot of sunlight here, with the building to my left and a patch of trees to my right. She was across from me, a few paces away, and her teammate—Agent 1—was behind her.

"I knew she was hiding something from me," said Agent 2. Two… or so they seemed to refer to her. She pulled her sunglasses off of her face. "Sky, huh? I remember you. Rose hasn't mentioned you, but the way she was staring…"

"Where's the captain?" I said. If he were here, he could have cleared up a lot. Not that I thought Rose was any bad, but… Well, it didn't look like she was the highest up in the chain of command.

"Oh, him?" said Two. She put a hand on her hip. "…Actually, I don't know. He doesn't do a lot of captaining nowadays. He's looking to hand off the position soon."

"Really?" I didn't get to find that out the last time I saw him. But that aside, Two had a rather casual tone. I wasn't going to relax just yet, but that at least was a good sign.

"Yeah. I think Three's next in line for the title." She looked over her shoulder at One, then leaned in to give me the loudest whisper I'd ever heard. "But we all know I'm the more qualified one."

I blinked. "Okay…"

"That's beside the point." She waved her hand. "First, um… You're not in trouble. I hope."

"Good…" I said. "I did come to you, and all…"

"Just to make sure," she said, "those three you were with were all Octropes, correct?"

"Um." Okay, good start… "Yeah."

"And you were with them of your own will?"

Much better question. "I was."

Two narrowed her eyes. "Four trusts you," she said. "I've seen it myself. You and her—you didn't leave each other's sides in Sharktown." She glanced at One. "But you get that the Octropes showing up again doesn't look good to me, right?"

"I'm not surprised," I sighed. "I wasn't with them in Skarktown, if that means anything. Only met Eileen a week and a half ago."

"Does Four know about this— Oh, who am I kidding, of course she does." She rubbed her eyes and groaned. "So. Speak. Why were you with them?"

Why was I with them. I wasn't sure where to begin. The core of the answer had far too many layers.

"I didn't know she was Eileen at first," I said. "She told me her name was Annie." I wanted to get that part out of the way. Quite possibly the most important thing to mention.

"Annie?" Two said. "Like, her sister?"

I nodded. "She tells me Annie's dead now, though."

Two paused, eyes focused not on me but on something to the side. She had the same thought everyone had after hearing about that. Why? Of all the names to hide behind, why Annie? I waited for an answer, or anything that would shed some light on it, but it seemed the NSS was as in the dark about it as I was. One wasn't chiming in, either.

But with that name mixup being said, it didn't entirely clear me of suspicion. All it did was tell her why I started spending any amount of time with Eileen.

Now that I knew her name, I had to justify why I was still associating with her. Recounting the Deepsea rescue was an option again, but that was what Rose knew, and Two was absolutely going to ask Rose about this. That would've been redundant. I had to take a different angle.

"Underground, we didn't know it was possible to coexist." I had no idea if I'd actually thought that way pre-memory wipe, but I was just echoing what Eileen had told me.

"So I've heard," Two said. "Really is a shame."

"And recently, Eileen told me…" I took a breath. I wasn't sure if I wanted to say this. It wasn't the most private thing ever, but Eileen hadn't given me the ok. But, since I was standing in front of the NSS, hiding anything wouldn't have been good.

Sorry, Eileen.

"At Sharktown, someone told her—" No turning back now. "'I and my team will not allow any barrier between the surface and underground to exist.' And that's when she… uh, switched sides."

"Oh—"

Two turned around. "One, you know something?"

"Ah… yeah." She locked her fingers behind her back and tapped her toes on the ground. "That was me."

"…Huh?"

What? That was her?

I stared at her, sunglasses and mask and all. This was the person to win Eileen over? The one that was once Octavio's prisoner?

It was the NSS the whole time?

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Nobody else would say something like that to Eileen's face. And nobody else was the kind of person Eileen would have approached in Sharktown.

"Sorry. Heh." I could tell One was trying to pull off a cute, innocent look, but it wasn't working with the mask on.

"What is it with people not telling me things—" Two pinched the bridge of her nose. "Ugh, I can't say that, can I?"

"You hiding something too?" One said, hand on her hip.

"Four's instincts have never failed her. Or us," Two said. "I don't know how she does it. It's kind of unsettling sometimes. Having her in your favor is better than you think."

Was it? I scanned the area around me, and nobody was there. Only the mall and the rustling of the highest leaves. Was Two trying to lower my guard?

She lowered her voice. "But I'd be a shabby acting captain if that was all." She checked behind her, and One was still listening. "Do you remember when everyone under Octrope's— Akash Octrope's control, sorry. Remember when they threw their shades off?"

"I… I guess I do?" That… did happen. Made the whole battle screech to a halt. I didn't think much of it at the time. There was a lot that happened at Sharktown I didn't understand. Actually, a lot of the NSS-related stuff, I didn't really understand.

Agent 2 looked at the floor. "'This is your commander. Take hold of your eyewear and cast it to the ground.'"

I stared at her, surprised. All that, what she'd just said… It was in perfect Octarian.

She looked back at me. "Word-for-word, that's what she said. One and Three know her face better, but I know her voice, too. That was Eileen saying that."

One removed her own sunglasses and stared dumbly at her. Two repeated the phrase in Inkling.

"That's why that happened?" One exclaimed.

I held a wide-eyed gaze at the pavement by my feet. That was Eileen? To think, that the reason Sharktown went so well—

"I wasn't sure what to think of it," she said, "because up until then, she was staunchly against us. But then… she freed everyone. Walked back on everything she had been working for."

"She also told me," I said, "that she never knew there was another way to get to the surface. And that she always knew something was wrong with her father's plan."

"Maybe that is the case," Two remarked. "To find out a world you hoped was true was the world you lived in all along. Must have been freeing, huh? That's why she was so quick to turn around and—" She jerked her head back to look at me. "Sorry, that's my songwriting brain doing its thing again."

I stared at her. "Songwriting?"

"I never told anyone in the team what I heard. I knew if I did, they'd jump to some conclusion and start trusting her a little too much." She sighed and shook her head. "No, I'm just talking about Four. But she's gone and done it anyway."

"Because of me…" One muttered.

"Oh yeah, speaking of," Two said. "You're NightFall, right? I assume you've brought Eileen with you to the tower?"

"It's usually the other way around."

"And somehow," she said, rolling her eyes. "Four's the first one to have noticed her. That's what happened, isn't it?"

"When she went alone to Deepsea," I said. I shuddered at the thought of that night. The outcome was fine. Great, even. It just… it wasn't very pleasant in the moment.

She turned to stare at the other one—Agent 1.

"Hey, don't blame me…" One raised a hand in defense. "The teams with her in it are really good. They're always moving. It's hard to see their faces when they're moving."

"She did start wearing a face mask to battle recently," I said.

"And the different hairstyle," One added.

Things were going a lot better than I'd expected. I was sure Agent 2 could get far harsher, but I was glad she was being merciful with me.

Again, Two sighed. "Sky, you're really lucky Four knows you."

I stared at her. "What does that mean?"

"I mean if you didn't, I'd be chasing after Octrope. Myself if I had to." She stretched her arms above her head. "I owe a lot to Four, that's all. Me and One. Oh yeah, and she's the reason Skydive is a thing. Plus she's even better than me in combat."

"Wait, really?" said One.

"Come on, I just sit back and snipe people. She's always out there."

Two was greatly understating the value of an annoying Charger, all to praise Rose. Forget the captain—If Two really thought that highly of her, then it turned out that Rose was the best advocate I could have had.

"This was supposed to be an interrogation," Two laughed. "But here we are. Okay, last question." She looked at me, dead in the eyes. "Do you think Eileen Octrope deserves a chance?"

I wasn't expecting her to ask me that so directly. I thought I had nowhere near the kind of authority to be the judge of that. But, other than the Octropes themselves, I was the person that knew her best.

Up until then, I'd thought of that as a given—that Eileen deserved a chance. But I'd never had to confront everything Eileen had done. I'd never had to decide for myself that Eileen was still deserving of our trust. I was glad that she'd never betrayed it, and I never considered that she would.

The attack on Inkopolis and the battle at Sharktown had a combined death count of one, and it was only Akash Octrope, killed by Octavio. The effects of Hypno-Shades made anyone under their influence effectively unconscious, so nobody was really aware of what they were doing. But the fact remained that Eileen was part of a plan to enslave every able Inkling and, at least for a small time, every able Octoling. Though they were not aware, they still were forced to fight their own kind. The rest of Inkopolis' citizens and even those Inklings too young or too old or otherwise unable to fight were jailed. They were a small part of the population, but that didn't make it any less real.

None of it would disappear. This would be a part of history forever. Eileen had a lot to answer for.

But every time I had spoken to her, even after learning her real name, I had heard nothing from her but sincerity. Every time she joked with me, every time she told me about her past, it was all genuine. She cried for me in Deepsea. She fought for the denizens of the deep. She went all the way to the other side of Inkopolis for her brother.

But most of all, she had given me a family when I had none. I was not an Octrope, but Eileen always embraced me with the same love she would have if I were. And that was real too.

Perhaps I was biased. But the Eileen I knew was not the Eileen of the past.

"I believe that Eileen does not have the means to do it again," I said. "And if she did—if the opportunity found her—she would turn it down."

Two squinted. She waited, but I said all I had to. "Sky." She crossed her arms. "Let me tell you something."

Oh shoot, was that the wrong answer? But that was what I really—

"A person's actions are determined by their past. But saying that alone is pretty broad."

I relaxed my shoulders and let her continue.

"Those experiences can shape beliefs, change a personality, whatever. If those past experiences are removed, all someone is left with is their instincts and their innate personality."

She raised her arm to brush her hair and winked at me.

"I got the update from Three on your… circumstances. Or actually, I overheard it when he was telling Four about it. You're a good person, Sky. Four— No, she told you her name, didn't she? Rose. Rose is sure of that. There's a lot we don't know, but if you say she deserves a chance…" Two turned her back and waved. "I will trust you."

Wow, this one definitely reads like a chapter that's been stewing in my head for years.

There's been a lot of dialogue recently, huh? I just hope it all sounds natural…