Chapter Text
“We’ve got something important for you Agent 3, when you finish this mission we need you back at camp.”
MS tapped her earpiece, “Roger.”
Little Buddy seemed intrigued at the request, “What do you think they want?”
“Probably something stupid, knowing them.” The octoling grumbled as she raced forward to the goal, “If it’s some kinda paperwork you owe me a geso.”
“It’s not going to be paperwork.”
—-----------------------------------------------------—
“Due to your new status as an Agent of the New New Squidbeak Splatoon,” Marie held out a small stack of papers and a pen to MS. “Inkadian law requires you to sign an NDA, as you are technically now an agent of the government.”
“Damn it.” Buddy grumbled.
“Deal’s a deal.” MS snickered as Buddy groaned,
“Like you could care any less.”
MS cackled at that as Marie gave the two a flat look, “Look, all the Agents have had to sign this, even our associates, so we really need this signed by you…” She shifted her focus to Little Buddy, “...Both.”
The octoling’s laughter died down as she took the papers and pen, seeming to skim them at a rapid pace. Her mood seemed to sour the longer she looked at it, finally sighing on the last page. “Can I get one with less words?”
Marie rolled her eyes. Callie and the Captain both chuckled as the Captain handed Marie another paper. “‘Course you can, nobody reads papers that long anyways!” Captain paused for a moment, “Except Four, apparently. She’d swim across the sea before she accepted ANY kind of terms without reading the whole dang thing first!”
MS took the paper, though she didn’t look any happier. “Verbal summary?”
Marie scoffed, “You can’t seriously think that’s still too long. It’s a thirty second read at most!”
The octoling gave her a hard glare back, “I can’t read inklish. Verbal summary.”
The camp fell silent.
The Captain seemed sort of curious, tilting their head at her. Marie was absolutely baffled, the look on her face drawing laughter from Little Buddy. Callie’s reaction was the strangest, grin falling flat as she joined in on the glaring at Marie. “I told you we needed one in octarian!”
“All the octolings have been on the surface for years! How was I supposed to know we’d recruit the one that never learned!?”
MS cut in before the conversation could derail further, “Ignoring the amount of shit you just got disgustingly wrong in that sentence, have you seen fuckin’ anything in Splatsville? Half the damn people in this city can’t read inklish! Everything’s written in multiple languages around here, dipshit! Why in the hell should I know!?”
“FINE! It’s a basic NDA, your signatures just mean that you’re legally bound never to speak a word of anything that happens down here or anything that could count as ‘related’ to your work here. The only exception is other people that have signed the agreement, essentially just other Agents, associates, or a select few government officials. Happy now?”
MS did not look any happier. “Sure. What happens if I don’t sign it, or break it?”
Marie had probably expected that question, but she didn’t seem happy about that. “It’s a breach of international law. Even in the Splatlands, you’re liable to be arrested on sight by any and all police, military, or other government officers. Including us.”
The octoling finally seemed satisfied with the explanation, flipping to the back of the first paper stack and clicking the pen. “Line at the bottom?” She questioned, receiving a trio of nods in response. She signed her name, handed the pen and paper to the smallfry that had just scurried up to her shoulder, before finally giving the double-signed document back to Marie. The packet was folded and pocketed as MS asked “So everyone here’s signed one of these?”
This time, Callie was the one to chirp an answer, “Yeah! It gets kinda lame having to go through this song ‘n dance every time we get a new recruit, but it’s fun seeing everyone’s different reactions!” She chuckled before speaking again, “I remember way back when we brought Cap on as the original Three! The face they made was priceless when Mar told them what would happen if they broke it!”
Before Captain could mumble a reply from beneath the hat they’d pulled down in embarrassment, MS voiced another question. “So not only am I ‘not allowed’ to talk about ANYTHING that happens down here, but none of you are either?”
Marie squinted at her in a way that very clearly said “I do not trust you, what are you planning.”
The octoling raised her hands ‘innocently’ as she said “I’m just makin’ sure!”
“You are hilariously bad at being subtle.”
“Shaddup, Bud.”
It was pretty obvious Marie still didn’t trust her in the slightest, but she answered anyways. “...Yes, that is correct. Short of straight up war crimes, whatever you do down here is a secret the NNSS takes to the grave.”
“Sweet. Sheldon’s a part of this too, isn’t he?” She responded, the apparently related question throwing the rest of the group for a loop. Callie was the one to confusedly respond,
“Y-yeah? What do you-”
“Get him down here sometime tomorrow morning at like,” MS took a second to think, “... Ten, maybe? It’ll probably take an hour or two, if he asks.” Her voice fell to a mumble “Not like he does anything other than run his shop, nobody’s buying weapons at 10 in the morning anyways.”
The inklings before her looked very baffled, though the Captain eventually pulled out their phone and hesitantly nodded to her. “Fresh, thanks.” She spun on her heel and started walking to the exit “Call me or something with ‘is answer when you get it, We got shit to do. Don’t text, still can’t read it. Bye.”
Little Buddy spoke when they made it to the grate, “I could have just read the thing for you, Mizzy.”
“Wanted to see their faces. It was totally worth it, yeah?”
Buddy huffed and gave a small smile, “Sure.” before MS dropped into the grate, shuttling back to Splatsville Square.
“...She’s going to do something horrendously illegal, isn’t she.” Marie droned after a minute of silence.
Callie and the Captain just laughed.
—-----------------------------------------------------—
The next morning, a certain deep blue octoling emerged from the grate in Alterna. Marie looked up from her watch at the sound, “Ten sharp. You must actually want to be here for once.”
MS hustled over to the main camp, “Damn right. What happened to Captain and One?” She lowered the duffel bag (?) she was carrying as Marie grumbled,
“Sleeping. Cod forbid they get out of bed before noon on a thursday.”
MS gave a short laugh as she stood tall without the extra weight, Buddy dropping with the bag and opening it. “Not surprised. Though wasn’t One on team early bird?”
Marie looked surprised at the question, but had an answer lined up after (probably) being asked that same thing by people before. “We swapped sometime after Chaos vs Order from some accidental scheduling blunders, and ended up just not going back.”
MS rolled her eyes and grumbled “It’s always the managers.” before bending down to help grab some… disc-y things from the bag? They were all yellow, 8 pointed stars with a dip and hole on one side. “Sheldon coming? Y’all never called, by the way. Would have been nice.” She shot Marie a pointed look at the last part, who looked away awkwardly.
“...We forgot your number, and hadn’t put it in as a contact. He’s coming, but said he’d likely be a few minutes late.”
The octoling rolled her eyes as she fully sat down in the snow, Little Buddy grabbing a couple of the discs in a stack and dashing off to somewhere else on the site. “I feel so appreciated.”
There was a few minutes of silence, neither inkfish caring for conversation. Little Buddy had made 2 more disc runs in that time, and after he left with the third stack MS reached into the duffel. Out came an excessively heavy duty ink tank, seeming to also be a good bit larger than the average ink tank.
To her credit, Marie was not (outwardly) surprised at all. “I’m not even going to ask.”
“Good, ‘cause you sure as hell will be once that crab gets here.” She grabbed the rest of the discs, before standing back up and stretching. “I’m gonna help Bud set these up. Look in the bag and you’re joining Captain and One.” Was the last thing she said before walking off to wherever Buddy had been moving them to. Eventually, they both made it back to the central camp, MS pulling a remote from the bag as Sheldon finally arrived through the grate*.
“Sorry, sorry I’m late! There was just this amazing customer that wanted to know all about most of our stock and it just takes time to run through all that information!” The horseshoe crab rambled as he jogged over to Marie and MS. “I’m here now though! And you must be the new Agent 3! It’s a pleasure to meet you!”
MS actually smiled as she regarded the man, bending a bit to give him a fist bump. “Re-meet, actually. Been a while, man!”
Sheldon went silent for a moment, visually running through his memory to try and recognize the supposedly significant octoling before him. It didn’t take long, a specific memory coming to him very clearly. “MS! I haven’t seen you in years, I was worried for weeks when you first vanished from Inkopolis! So this is where you went?”
MS nodded as Buddy dropped from her shoulder to shake Sheldon’s hand. “Been in Splatsville since then, yeah. Fits m’style a lot better here than that old place, and I think leaving behind THAT as my last impact to the city was the best thing I could have done.” She started laughing at the old memory as Sheldon gained an unreadable look to his face.
“It was something, all right.” He suddenly perked up and clapped his hands together. “To business though! I’m sure you know how busy I am with the shop and-”
“Yeah yeah, I get it. Another time.” MS pulled out a notepad and pen from her belt and lightly tossed it to Sheldon, “I need a proper weaponsmith to observe things I won’t be able to see while testing things. You’re arguably the best one in either city, you can write in octarian, AND you’ve got your name on that NDA whatchamacallit! No better pick than you!” She slyly grinned, turning to grab one last thing from the duffel bag.
“I’m flattered, but why would the NNSS’s NDA be relevant here? And what kind of testing for what kind of things?”
Marie (who had surprisingly stayed silent for that entire discussion) opened her mouth to answer, but before she could she was rendered speechless looking at MS.
The octoling pulled out the most illegal thing either of those present had ever seen (not counting Octavio’s everything). Sheldon’s jaw had full-on dropped, and Marie was visibly struggling to formulate any kind of response to the charger MS had just pulled from the bag.
It almost looked a bit like a scoped e-liter, at least if there was 2 much larger tanks, a visibly reinforced barrel and stock, a more complicated scope, and some kind of exhaust vents on the tanks and body. Said body had an actual engine stuck into it, and the barrel was tipped with a block of metal. Whether or not that was actually for anything is anyone’s guess. MS grunted as she hoisted the thing up to her shoulder and slowly thumped off to the trio of moai heads by the pipe to Site 2.
“Hope you’re not using that orange-box-house-thing for anything, Two!” She called back, startling both of them into following her. When they made it to the moai heads, MS dropped into standard (albeit sloppy) heavy charger position and brought the scope up to her face. “Sheldon and Bud, stand clear and preferably behind a head. Two, I don’t really care where you go but you sure as hell don’t want to be here.”
The three scrambled to position (Marie going double the distance of Sheldon) , Sheldon and Marie being visibly afraid while Little Buddy was only internally scared. Sheldon called out to her from the cover, “Are you sure this is safe!?”
“Not in the slightest! Get your notepad ready, charging on ready confirmation.”
Sheldon scrambled to flip to an empty page of the notepad as Little Buddy pulled out a stopwatch. “I- We’re ready? This really doesn’t seem-”
“Start! Charging now!”
They waited. As the weapon very slowly charged, it became readily apparent why she’d brought such a large tank. It was currently a third of the way empty, and almost seemed to be draining faster as the engine’s cylinders started firing. The exhaust ports began sputtering, joining the hum of the charge and growl of the engine as the ink tank neared two-thirds empty. There was suddenly a loud ping as the charge was completed, MS shouting “TIME!” the instant it hit. Buddy checked the watch,
“Eight second charge? That’s longer than it should have been…”
Before he could ponder further, MS shouted back to Sheldon “Awaiting confirmation to fire!” Though when the exhaust ports began spitting flames she tacked on “Pretty soon would be nice!”
Sheldon was terrified. Intrigued, but utterly terrified. Regardless, he shouted “FIRE!” before he could talk himself out of it.
“Roger!”
MS pulled the trigger, and a lot of things happened in a very short amount of time. First, a deafening BANG! echoed through all of Alterna. Second, though only by milliseconds, a concussive blast went out and knocked both Sheldon and Marie to the ground. Third, MS was flung backwards, impacting the moai behind her as the shot hit the orange habitat with another loud bang. Slowly, everyone got to their feet; Marie first, then Sheldon, and finally MS.
Now they could see the aftermath of the shot: a thick line of blue trailing to the habitat, a full coating of ink on its side, and a sizable hole punched through where the shot impacted. Second to those observations were the already-swelling black eye on MS and all-but-obliterated barrel of the charger, now more reminiscent of a banana peel than a charger barrel. The block on the end was nowhere to be found, though the shrapnel scattered through the ink line was telling enough as to where it went. The four of them were silent for a minute, until MS spoke up through rapidly rising manic giggles.
“That was so fuckin’ cool. We overtuned the shit out of it, but it was still fresh as fuck.” She gave the widest grin Marie had seen from her and jogged over to sheldon. “What’s the story li’l man? What’d ya get from that?”
Sheldon was still in shock, but he at least tried to give an answer. “...The barrel exploded.”
Hey, never said it was a good one.
MS immediately doubled over laughing, Little Buddy moving to lower Sheldon to the floor and ease him out of it. “I timed 8 seconds on that charge, Thought something was up from that alone, but it’s not like you could have dropped the charge without hurting yourself.” He gave the octoling a side-eye “...Any more than you did already, at least.”
MS let her laughter peter out before answering, “If you’re really that worried we can check with Iris, but I don’t feel anything past the eye.” She then turned to Marie, “So! What’d ya think, Two? That’s what a REAL weapon looks like!”
“...I think I need to lie down.” She swept off to the grate and dropped through without another word.
MS started laughing again as the shock on Sheldon finally wore off. “I see now how you managed to get that ban. Impressive artistry, but it’s fairly obvious what needs improvement there, I think.” He handed her the notepad, page covered in messy octarian scribbles. “To summarize, you really need to drop the power, figure out a way to remove the violent recoil, and add a cooling system. A heavy charger that can only hold a shot for a few seconds before killing the user isn’t particularly helpful.”
The octoling nodded, “I got that much, any ideas? Got some myself but a second opinion-”
“Third opinion.” Buddy cut in,
“Third opinion on weaponsmithing is always helpful.”
Sheldon seemed to think for a few seconds, before he asked “Do you have anything to draw on? I have some ideas that don’t lend themselves to words particularly smoothly.”
MS looked over her shoulder, “Anything back there Bud?” She paused for a moment, “I swear I left like, a regular piece of paper or something in there.”
A few seconds of rustling, and the smallfry came up empty, shaking his head as he popped out of the bag.
“Worth a shot.” She turned back to Sheldon, “Can you draw small? We got nothin’, but there’s probably a few blank pages left on the notepad.” She held said notepad out to the crab, who took it and clicked the pen open once more.
“I can certainly try! How have you been faring in Splatsville since you arrived?” He began some small talk while scratching some things down, it looked like a redesigned barrel from the poor angle she had.
MS sighed, “Not too terrible, but as much as I like it over Inkopolis it’s a lil’ harder to make a living over here. Barely any time to do anything with having to take shifts at Grizzco, workin’ on weapons, kettle busting down here, and some… other stuff.”
Sheldon paused his sketching to raise an eyebrow at her. “Curious as I am, if you’re anything like the same octoling I brought on at the shop those few years ago I know full well you’ll just avoid it.” He looked back down at the paper, scowled, and quickly erased something. “I wouldn’t mind having you back there, but I really can’t have you knock out another customer. Policy dictates that-”
“‘The customer is always right!’, I know.” The octoling finished for him. “Policy can go fuck itself, you know full well he deserved that. Talk shit, get hit.” She growled.
“I don’t, actually. You didn’t tell me anything past, and I quote, ‘some racist shit’ and then walked out of the shop. You even made me deal with the unconscious guy on the floor!”
She paused, blinked, and then started laughing. “I totally fuckin’ forgot I did that! Great day, honestly.” Her laughter died out as Sheldon gave her an unimpressed look. “Really, he was one of those nuts goin’ on and on about how ‘Octolings don’t belong in Inkopolis!’ and ‘All you brainless brutes should do us a favor and go right back to those coffins!’.”
“I see why you punched him at least.” He paused, “Why, though? It seems like you’d just be validating that second comment.”
MS started chuckling, “I told him that not all octolings were like that, it was just me.” Her laughing escalated, “He kinda gave me this look, and then I socked him in the face. Went down like a sack a’ rocks!”
Sheldon joined her with a light chuckle of his own. “Never change, MS. Never change.” He handed the notepad back to her. “I put down a few ideas to reinforce that barrel further and keep some of the power behind the shot without completely obliterating the barrel again. Improved cooling system, too, assuming it already had one.”
MS smiled one last time as she waved Sheldon off to the grate. “Thanks for the help man, same time next week?”
Sheldon looked some odd combination of fearful and excited as he nodded. “I look forward to it, Agent.”