Maize and Octoronia had arrived to Arowana Mall after their awkward conversation earlier and the yellow inklings claiming of his theory about who the true killer could be. When they arrived to the mall, they noticed that the outside was just as a buzz as the inside.
"Wow, the stores in here must be really crisp!" Octoronia said in awe, seeing the crowds, though she could not see some of the store windows which was a bit discouraging. She wanted to try some of these 'fresh' clothes. The yellow squid was trying to think on what could be causing a sudden attention in the mall. Suddenly it came to him.
"Oh… right. That new product was being hyped up to now. The new… what do they call it? …Amiibos?" Maize tried to recall. This place was crowded all for these amiibos. They had been hyped up over the course of a year for the best personal customizable toy that will ever hit the shelves, but apparently the appeal of this was something far deeper than he had no idea behind.
"Amiibos? They sound adorable!" Octoronia exclaimed. Now she was easily hyped up to see one as well, if they were able to even get close to the store. They had little chance to find Fulvous in this crowd, either. The yellow squid doubted that orange inkling would be here if she was hunting him down. He doubted that she would not be searching in the biggest crowds after all.
"…hey there," a familiar tone chimed up from the side. The octopus and inkling looked to their right to see Basil, who was sitting at one of the many empty tables of the food court. Everyone was just lining up that store so the other shops were looking a lot more insignificant at the moment, mostly because they had not prepared a huge stock supply of the amiibos.
"Uh… hi, Basil…" Maize awkwardly greeted Bondi's father. It was an unexpected run in, since the last time they crossed paths the yellow squid had almost ripped him apart.
"Oh! Is he a friend of yours?" Octoronia asked. The yellow inkling had no chance to speak up.
"Kind of," Basil claimed, taking off his backwards baseball cap and resting it on the table.
"I am?" Maize quirked confusedly while adjusting his glasses. He wondered if his hearing was going bad now. That would be horrible to have poor eyesight and poor hearing before he was even twenty years old, but he did not expect Basil to consider him a friend even once. The last time they met, Agent 3 had gave him quite the brutal reality check about how Bondi had almost died, just because his father wanted to get higher in ranked turf wars.
"Yeah… sorry about before… y'know…" Basil apologized. He sure had become a lot less arrogant now. The three then saw another familiar inkling approach.
"Ah! Maize! Hey there!" Maize suddenly got tackled into a tight hug. He recognized who it was. It was another blonde squid girl.
"Aureolin! Hey how have you been?" Maize asked, recognizing Aureolin quite easily. Octoronia could tell that her close friend had a bit of a past with the former couple. Aureolin had two shopping bags dangling from her wrist. On the side of the plastic bags were the shop's logo that read 'Amiibos incorporated'.
"We're doing a lot better… thanks to you," Aureolin claimed. She broke the embrace and went over to Basil, leaning down and kissing his cheek. He had a half-hearted smile on his face. Maize was surprised. From what he recalled, she had gained nothing but an undying hatred for what he had done. Suddenly things between them looked different. Both Aureolin and Basil were taking note of his stub of a tentacle, but both were trying to be polite and not gaze at it too much.
"You two are back together?" Maize questioned, doubting that would be a smart decision to attempt another relationship with someone like Basil. The green squid was keeping quiet as his girlfriend handed him one of the shopping bags. He pulled out a small box from it with a smile.
"Yeah! I know what you did to him Maize, but Basil has changed! He really has," Aureolin stated, though was aware of the reasonable skepticism considering all that the green inkling had done. Basil reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, tossing it across the table. The inventor octoling picked it up. This looked like a very complicated wall of legal text on the paper, but she tried her best to summarize it.
"As a result of a direct confession to the turf war officials which has been recorded, Basil Calhoun has been charged with repeated enemy weapon tampering on the third degree, as well as sabotaging teammates for coin bribes. As result, and after a lengthy discussion, we had decided to forbid Mr Calhoun from ranked turf wars for nine months. However, because he has come forward with his confession and had apparently repaid all of the victims and covered repair expenses, we of the officials have decided to shorten his ban to seven months instead. Once these months have passed, Mr Calhoun will receive eight months of monitoring. If he enters ranked turf wars however, he will be reset back to C-," Octoronia gladly read the lengthy letter aloud. After all she was used to looking over long manuals for new tools, so this was common to her.
"Wow… you went and got banned and lost your rank?" Maize asked, a little surprised that this would happen to the formerly ranked obsessed lunatic. Basil nodded at that.
"I got my friends to help back up my lie… I wanted to lose my rank on purpose. You really opened my eyes. I was tainting something that should be fun… but I'm aware I can't be forgiven for all I've done already… 'specially to my girlfriend and child," Basil exclaimed, aware that even if he never actively participated in ranked turf wars again, it would not change what he had done.
"Well… it takes a lot of guts to willingly face the officials," Maize nodded, giving him credit for having the courage and strength to try to change. Basil had to agree there that the officials were horrifying.
"How's Bondi doing? …with his new mom, I mean," Aureolin requested to know how their squishie was doing.
"We saw him on the tele the other day. I did not expect that at all," Basil stated, happy to see his son safe and healthy, and with someone to take care of him, but he did not expect him to be on television anytime soon.
"Well… I guess I can tell you. His new mom's Callie of the Squid Sisters. She took care of him while I looked for you both and after I promised Aure I'd find him a loving family. Simply put, I talked her into adopting him," Maize explained. They were the squishie's original parents, so he saw no harm in telling them about their son's new family. Hearing this surprised them both. They both thought that poor cameraman had been the one to adopt their son.
"Wow… the Squid Sister herself. I never thought a celebrity would be so kind…" Aureolin admitted. Maize could not deny that the Squid Sisters were even greater in comparison to other celebrities. At least those two topped the charts and had a great attitude for it. Then again, Maize was in debt a million coins to Marie, which worried him. If she ever wanted to, all she had to do was call him up and he would have no choice but to do whatever she needed him to do, but Maize just put hope that his friend would not take advantage of this debt too much once things calmed down.
"Is this one of those amiibos?!" Octoronia excitedly asked, having pilfered the box from Basil while he was distracted.
"He-hey! Those things are pricey!" Basil warned her not to break it, understanding her excitement, but coins were coins. They weren't easy to get especially without being able to enter ranked turf wars anymore. The disguised octoling nodded, promising she will be careful. She opened the box and saw a small figurine on a platform inside. It looked like a generic grey tentacle inkling boy figure with a white shirt and wielding only a small Tentatek weapon.
"What's so special about these? …I was expecting something… more advanced," Octoronia had no hesitation to stating her disappointment and confusion. Basil yanked it away from her. Maize had to agree that if a toy that looked like it was for squirts was this popular amongst every squid of all ages, then it had not remotely lived up to the hype.
"You need to know how to work it!" Aureolin retorted, holding it for a second before she gained a nervous look, returning it to her boyfriend.
"Basil, you show them how to work it," she said. The green inkling gained an unamused look, doubting she had any clue how to either. He placed it on the table and faced the amiibo figure toward him.
"You see, it registers the appearance of the squid in front of it. You just gotta push its head in, annnd…" Basil pushed the head of the generic amiibo male squid. With a loud click, it popped back up and a bright flash happened, blinding them momentarily, but it quickly wore off. The four of them saw a completely different amiibo figure. It had turned into a completely miniature version of Basil, and was now idly moving like it was waiting for orders.
"Whoa!" Octoronia gasped, almost wanting to pick up the Basil amiibo and take it apart to figure out how it worked.
"Wow… what can it do?" Maize questioned. These amiibos looked pretty awesome. If that was all they could do, it was pretty impressive.
"Well, they're mainly meant to just be for setting up strategies, but they usually obey voice command," Basil muttered while tapping his chin, thinking on what to do.
"Oh! I know… hey, mini me, go to her," the green inkling pointed to his girlfriend. The amiibo hopped off its small pedestal before going over to the yellow squid girl. She smiled, picking the tiny figure up and stroking it with one of her fingers.
"Well, that's pretty awesome… oh, err… we're looking for an orange squid girl, and she's extremely angry… you haven't happened to have seen one here, have you?" Maize suddenly wanted to question them, having only just realized how far off track he and his octoling friend had unintentionally gotten, and now had to snap out of it.
"Nice description…" Basil sarcastically commented. The yellow squid groaned at her boyfriends snarky retort.
"She has three ponytails and glasses," Agent 3 added. That extra detail seemed to get his partial friend's attention.
"Three ponytails? You think this has something to do with that fountain incident?" Aureolin responded, having some recollection of a squid matching that description.
"Fountain incident?" Octoronia requested her to continue. Basil pointed a thumb toward the very fountain where that dramatic meeting he had with Maize occurred.
"About twenty minutes ago from upstairs, some girl like that tackled another squid off a ledge, and they landed in the fountain. He kind of looked like you with the glasses," Basil continued. The more he looked back on it, the more it seemed like Maize was there. Fulvous was actively out hunting for the squid and mercilessly assaulting anyone that looked like him, until they either got splattered or she realized they weren't the exact blonde squid.
"Where'd she go? Please, it's important…" Maize looked ready to beg if he had to.
"Uhh… well, I think she headed toward Urchin Underpass," Aureolin did her best to recall. Urchin Underpass was another turf war location, but Maize did not like it, mostly because every time he tried to fight at the underpass, it went tragically wrong. The last time he fought there was a year ago, and he wound up fracturing his leg accidentally due to slipping off a high ledge. Ever since then, he actively requested stage updates from Callie and Marie before he went into the plaza battle tower, just to make sure it was not the stage up for battling.
"Come on, we gotta go! You two take care! Congrats on your relationship being back up!" Maize bid Aureolin and Basil farewell before he went onward with Octoronia. The green squid looked at his girlfriend who was still cuddling his amiibo clone.
"Can I have myself back now?" Basil requested.
"Aw, c'mon! He's got your same silly backwards hat," Aureolin giggled, wanting to keep toying with the toy doppelganger of her now slightly annoyed boyfriend.
Only a short bit of the ways outside of Arowana Mall, Agent 3's cellphone began to ring.
"Do you think one of our friends found her?" Octoronia wondered aloud, aware if their friends turned up nothing at their designated locations, they would check out other areas to investigate further for Fulvous. Maize shrugged before putting the phone to his ear.
"Y'ello?" he answered.
"Maize! Hey, has your search turned up anything?" Callie's voice spoke up, wanting to know if he had found anything so far.
"Oh hey, Callie… yeah, I got a lead. I'm going to look into now. What about you? How did your search go?" Maize responded, wondering how Agents 1 and 5 had done.
"Horrible! We tried to walk into Hammerhead Bridge, and they thought ECO was a bomb and that I was trying to prepare her to detonate! We got forced to leave or they'd call the police…" Callie exclaimed. She sounded upset to be practically accused of being a terrorist. The yellow squid knew how she felt about that accusation. He knew sometimes the Squid Sisters wanted to just rip their disguises off in public to get some sort of power back in their occasional struggles.
"Err… lo-look, don't get worked up about it. Why don't you go check out around Flounder Heights," Maize suggested, aware that the opportunity to check up on her son would be all too tempting to Callie, but as a turf war location, Flounder Heights also was not far out of the question for where Fulvous might be, if she was not at Urchin Underpass.
"Alright, I guess… call if you need us, and we'll come over," Callie bid her close friend goodbye before hanging up the phone. Maize rubbed his head, pocketing his phone.
"You know, that's not the first time my sister's been mistaken for a bomb," Octoronia commented while they continued their walk on the streets. They noticed though that the nice day that it was just a little ago was now looking like it was beginning to cloud up with a chance of rain.
"My condolences," Maize joked, being elbowed in the side by the octoling. The two had traveled for a short fifteen minutes before they were nearing Urchin Underpass. They could see a huge bridge up ahead which was quite high in the air, leading to the northern part of Inkopolis as a shortcut.
"Right… here we are," Maize looked around. There were a lot of other squids here, but they seemed more interested in their own self entertainment at the moment. Some had the new amiibo figures and were enjoying playing with them. Others were just relaxing, a nice sight for once to see complete peace in an area. The yellow squid just hated knowing there was a chance it might be interrupted.
"Hey! Have any of you seen an orange squid? Glasses and three ponytails?" Octoronia immediately demanded from the first inkling she saw, who was some fourteen year old green boy who looked like he only recently had become a fully grown inkling.
"Yeah… she saw some squid and ran after him… hey! If you have an amiibo, do you wanna play?" the friendly squid offered another painful reminder to the octoling how badly she wanted one. Sadly she had no coins at the moment, having spent her bit of savings on some important parts recently.
"Sorry, we need to find her," Maize apologized, grabbing his friend's hand before trying to hurry off, aware he had to keep focused at the right direction. The two kept their eyes wide open. They both felt a layer of uncomfortableness. Octoronia was afraid that this Fulvous squid would hurt her blindly. This was a scenario where her higher intelligence was somewhat useless, and she hated those situations the most. Maize was terrified because this was the very inkling who had bit his tentacle off, and this confrontation would perhaps have her biting off his other one if he was not careful.
"Ugh… you're not who I'm looking for!" that familiar voice rung out. Maize made sure his splatterscope and ink tank were ready on his back, but he was going to resist using his weapon if he could. He had warned Octoronia earlier to make sure they did everything they could not to splatter her.
"Fulvous!" Maize called out as they rounded a corner of the underpass. Another yellow inkling was standing before the familiar orange squid. Fulvous turned around, her eyes having those black rings that looked like a domino mask which housed nothing but pure anger. The terrified random yellow squid took the chance to immediately run away.
"Too afraid to face me alone? Figures!" Fulvous spat in anger.
"He-hey! You bit off my tentacle last time I tried that! No judging!" Maize tried to talk, though was seeing two ink tanks on Fulvous's back, which was unusual, until they saw the weapon she was carrying; a splatling gun, a very rapid firing weapon that could do a lot of damage.
"Um… how did it taste?" Octoronia nervously asked to satisfy her own curiosity. She gained the same look from Maize and Fulvous a look that said to her, 'You scare me'.
"…bland, and like raw chicken?" Fulvous unsurely answered, Maize wondered if he should feel complimented, insulted or disturbed.
"Look, I'm not the killer. I did not hurt Cyan at all," Maize stated, the orange squid girl gripping the trigger of her splatling gun and watching it begin charging, the barrel of it spinning in preparation to fire once released. The orange ink in her two ink tanks was bubbling like lava.
"I'm not listening to your lies! I saw you do it!" Fulvous repeated. Maize shook his head.
"I know you saw me do something to him, but I'm telling you! I did not kill him! I promised him I would make sure you would be fine, and I'm definitely not going to be the one to hurt you!" Agent 3 repeated what he had told her the first time before his tentacle had been bitten off. It was kind of scary to see the orange squid somehow angrier than before.
"Shut up! I'll deal with you after I splatter you both!" Fulvous released the trigger, the barrel of the splatling gun spinning faster and unleashing a flurry of orange blasts of ink. Octoronia grabbed, Maize forcing him to move fast. They both kept running, watching the orange ink covering the walls behind them and the ground as they ran by, barely missing them. However, some of the last shots hit the disguised octoling in the legs, making her trip as the orange ink stung.
"Ow, ow, ow!" Octoronia groaned. Maize grabbed his splatterscope off his back, aware how long it would take for the splatling to charge again. He squeezed the trigger, charging his charger to full before letting go. A strong burst of yellow ink erupted out, watching it blast the splatling gun and cover the handles and barrel in yellow ink, getting it onto the orange inkling's hands.
"Grah!" Fulvous grit her teeth. Maize only had done that in hopes of disarming her. Octoronia gulped as his hopes seemed too high. The burning yellow ink did not detour the orange squid whatsoever. Her grip tightened around the handles as the splatling gun was charged.
"Oh, come on!" Maize groaned. His octoling friend pulled out her slather blaster, getting in front of the yellow inkling and hitting a button on the side of it to activate its special ability, watching her shoot out a small block from her weapon that looked quite like a chunk of coral.
"Crazy coral!" Octoronia grinned, watching the coral quickly take root in the ink and begin to grow rapidly and insanely out of control, blocking the blasts of the splatling gun. Each blast knocked off more coral, but the wall of coral between them just kept growing and spreading fast. Once again, octarian technology at its finest.
"Wha?! What kind of special ability is that?" Fulvous angrily asked, continuing to fire. The crazy coral was going to end eventually. The inventor octopus made sure Maize was alright.
"You have to do something! Think fast or else we have to slather her!" Octoronia stated. Maize groaned, hating to be pressured like this. He rubbed his head, trying to think. He suddenly had an idea.
"I got it… you go distract her," he whispered before changing into his squid form and sinking into the ink. It was very hard to move with one tentacle, but he was going to make this spontaneous plan work, no matter what.
"Eek!" Octoronia gulped. The crazy coral reached the end of its duration as it all suddenly changed from its vibrant colors to a dead bland grey. Now it suddenly all fell apart with the simple blasts of the splatling gun, and it crumpled to ash. Fulvous was charging up the next set of blasts. She began firing at the disguised octoling with no hesitation. Octoronia threw herself aside, her legs still hurting from the orange ink. She got shot in the side by a burst of the orange ink, being forced over to her side in pain.
"Oh no!" Octoronia saw the splatling gun charging once more. Suddenly, Maize jumped out from the ink from Fulvous's side and tackled her, grabbing the splatling gun and forcing her to aim upward. The orange bursts of ink splashed harmlessly around the ground from being shot into the air.
"Let go!" Fulvous snapped at him, trying to bite him once more. He thankfully dodged it, making sure his other tentacle was far away from this insane squid's mouth.
"No! I'm not stopping until we can talk! Even if you splatter me a thousand times!" Maize informed her. Finally he got the advantage, forcing her splatling gun upwards. The heavy weight of it caught her off guard. She spun around, the weapon falling onto the ground and getting a small dent.
"Sasha!" Fulvous gasped. She called her splatling gun that for some reason. Maize took advantage of her from her back being exposed, and smashed both of her ink tanks. The orange ink began pouring out fast. It was when Fulvous realized that she had been defeated. Octoronia stood up, trying to clean the ink off her side. They had her trapped now in a two on one standoff.
"Now… let's talk," Maize sighed in relief, glad everything was done. He watched Fulvous drop her splatling gun before she plopped onto the ground, leaning onto one of the many walls. Maize looked over to his octarian friend. Both Special Squid Services members were aware of one thing. This was going to be one confusing and annoying conversation, one that Agent 3 himself would most likely be left to handle out of some desperate hope to find his father, the only one who could well be the real murderer of Cyan's.