Lol this update took forever. You can thank the guy who asked for it, otherwise this probably would've taken another week.

Anyways, I was looking at the Splatoon Fanfiction Archive, and it's in the top 15 most favorited fics! I'm genuinely surprised. Thank you all for your support, despite my laziness (^^).

It was, Marie reflected much later, the first sign that everything was going to shit. The big giveaway was the five minutes of absolute darkness; primal fear overrode her cognitive functions, forcing her to drop her weapon and fumble around for a hiding spot, eventually giving up the task and just cowering on the platform as screams reverberated off of the area's acoustics. Sparks flew, illuminating shadows until the whole floating machine gave out and crashed down in a pile.

Somehow, the lights turned back on, revealing the deceptively tame scene of Cole panting over the twisted remains of Octavio's ship, gun in hand, while Octavio was –

Marie blinked, and the oppressive atmosphere shattered. She rubbed her eyes to make sure, but the vision didn't go away.

"Dada!"

The baby's voice broke Cole's terrifying trance, and Marie swore he muttered "Fuck, it happened again," before he focused on Octavio. Specifically, a tiny, baby Octavio.

"Uhhhhhh…" Cole uttered, neatly summing up the two inklings reactions.

Octavio, on the other hand, quickly lost interest in his 'Dada' and focused on pushing random buttons on the fried console.

"Ooookaaaaaayyyy…" Marie said as she got up and walked towards the scene. "I think you broke him so bad he turned into a younger, much more adorable version on himself as a self-defense mechanism."

"…Is that how it works?"

"No, I'm just bullshitting because nothing makes sense and I'm in shock and WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!"

Cole winced. "Erm, it's like a kind of PTSD."

"PTSD," Marie repeated, surprised. "How? What happened?" she asked, her own fear forgotten at the revelation.

"It's…complicated." Cole sighed. "I know that we've been friends for a while-" Marie felt a small pang in her chest "-but I just don't like talking about it. Needless to say, it's a bit different than the normal version. I'll explain more when we get Callie and get out of here."

Marie nodded dumbly, the weight of what had just transpired and Cole's condition threatening to overwhelm her. Though, she thought, I wonder what triggered him…

The two inklings sidestepped the crash site, giving the babified Octavio one last look before heading deeper in. The managed to find Callie in a hastily constructed metal shack, bound and gagged.

"Took you two long enough," she muttered once she was freed. "What happened earlier? I swear that I was going to pee in my pants."

"I'll explain later," Cole dismissed. Callie raised an eyebrow at Marie, who shrugged before following their mutual crush.

"OH MY GOD IT'S SO CUTE!" Callie tore off across the platform before diving into the wreckage. She grabbed Octavio in a hug, rubbing her face against his squishy body.

"Gah?" the baby gurgled, confused.

"And that is Octavio," Marie announced. Callie froze her cuddling and turned to her cousin.

"Say what?"

"That's Octavio. Cole…damaged him trying to get to you."

Callie's mind whirled through that laden statement, shifting between what, that's not possible and all of Octavio's sins are forgiven before settling on the latter half of the statement.

"Dwaa, Cole cares about me enough to traumatize a sentient being in his efforts to rescue me." She sighed, letting go of the baby in the process.

Marie facepalmed, muttering, "Of course she focused on that."

Cole fidgeted uncomfortably. "I'm not sure if that's a good thing…"

"Nonsense," she said, ignoring the evil eye her sibling was giving her.

"Maybe we should've left you here," Marie grumbled.

Callie's retort was cut of prematurely as a loud beeping echoed through the area. The trio looked around confusedly before settling on the forgotten individual who had resumed pushing buttons once he had escaped Callie's grasp.

"Um, what did he do?" Marie asked nervously.

Her question was answered when the floor suddenly gave out from underneath them. They seemed to float there for a moment, looking at each other in a dawning panic before plummeting down into the inky blackness.

Marina was having a pretty bad day. She was walking through a deserted cell, a suburb that was abandoned after a large portion of the populace moved to a city cell or above ground.

She would be up there too, if her request to relocate hadn't been denied for the umpteenth time. Sighing, she kicked a stray can and watched it skitter into a pile of filth.

I should stop before I get mugged or something. She reluctantly turned around, heading back towards her monotonous life, her dreams shelved yet again.

One day, she halfheartedly attempted to convince herself, one day I'll head up there, meet the Squid Sisters (and maybe Octavio, wherever he is) and start my own music career.

That's when the high-pitched wailing reached her ears. She froze, goosebumps rising along her dark skin. She looked around frantically, trying to locate the source of the ever-louder noise, before finally looking up.

She was met with a mass of squishiness and purple. Her head snapped back painfully, and she collapsed on her rear. Stars danced across her vision, and she momentarily worried that she damaged something before she was distracted by a movement on her face. It took her a few moments to collect herself and grab at the offending object.

Her fingers dug into yielding flesh before yanking it off, the suckers relinquishing their grip with a stinging pop. Marina blinked blearily for a few moments before looking down at the wriggling mass in her hands. Said mass shifted around until she saw the largest, most adorable pair of eyes attached to the smallest body she had ever seen.

"Okay," she said, still confused, "Why am I holding a baby?"

"Gah?"

He didn't know why it hurt so much. The fall lasted fairly long, but inklings didn't have bones. In fact, the only danger of falling was splattering against the ground so hard that they weren't able to reform from the resulting ink splash.

Yet, he felt like fire was coursing through him as he (quite literally) pulled himself together. In his state, he failed to realize that he hadn't quite splattered on impact, which was what had happened to the Squid Sisters.

Cole collapsed back on the ground in a haze of pain the second he finished reforming. He absently noted that his companions were little more than inkling-like masses of fluid.

With a grunt, Cole forced himself to his feet and took stock of their surroundings. Well-worn houses lined each side of a cracked street, one end closed off while the other curved out of view. The air smelled stale and was cool, and the lighting was poor; a few flickering lamps dimly illuminated the area. The sky-no, ceiling, Cole realized with trepidation-was obscured in shadow, though he could make out a few overlapping panels of metal and screen.

Octarian cell, Cole surmised. But where are the octarians and octolings?

Soon after Octavio's first defeat at the hands of Cole, the octarians and the inklings reached an accord. They agreed to cease fighting between the two sister species, and octolings would be welcome in the bustling, electricity-filled overworld, while inklings were free to traverse into the technologically-advanced subterranean cities. There were some other points, but Cole wasn't one for politics, instead focusing on the fact that while he was technically allowed to be underground, he could count on one hand how many inklings braved hostile atmosphere of the octarian populace. And the icing on the cake was the fact that he was none other than Agent 3, which he was sure would draw attention…as well as the business end of the guns of several octolings. Probably at the same time, too.

He sighed. And it looks like we've all lost our own guns in the fall.

"Gluuuugh," Callie groaned, finished pulling her mass together.

"I hate Octavio," Mare muttered, plopping her newly-reformed self onto a crumbling curb.

Cole perked up at the mention of their longtime nemesis. "Where is he, by the way? I don't see him anywhere."

"Good riddance," Marie grumbled.

"How could you say that?!" Callie yelled, askance. "He was downright adorable!"

"And he kidnapped and threatened to brainwash you over a crabbie cake," Marie retorted.

Callie huffed. "That may be true, but you can't really hold it against the little guy. Babies do dumb things all the time."

"Callie, he was an adult when he did that."

"Technicalities," the inkgirl dismissed.

"Girls, I'd love to discuss Callie's Stockholm Syndrome later," ("Ha!" "Shut up.") "but we have to figure out where we are, where Octavio is, and how to get out of here."

Plan set, the trio set off down the road. Of course, they had just made it to the first junction when Cole crashed directly into an unsuspecting octoling.

"Hello?" Marina shouted, feeling distinctly stupid, "Anyone here?"

Nothing responded, except her faint echo.

Sighing, she looked down at her cargo. The baby had snuggled up comfortably in the cradle of arms, and was looking around blearily.

"You're quite tired, aren't you," she said gently, succumbing to his roundish charms. "Now, if we could just find you parents, everything would be great."

She managed to cross a street and was just turning a corner when something smashed into her for the second time that day. She collapsed on her still-sore back, arms instinctively clutching the baby to her chest.

She laid on the ground for a moment, breathless and aching all over.

"Sorry." A soft, apologetic voice washed over her ears before a hand was proffered. She accepted it, and was pulled up with surprising strength.

"Thanks," she said, taking a moment to dust herself off and look at whoever she bumped into to.

Her gaze was met with the dull orange eyes and hair of an inkling.

"Hold up, is that Octavio?"

She tore her eyes from the unsuspected visitor, only for them to land on the dual forms of her idols, Callie and Marie.

Then the purple inkgirl's words registered, and she looked down at the innocent-looking pile she was holding.

Error, her mind supplied to her helpfully. CPU overload. Commencing restart.

"Dada!"

Warning: combustion imminent. Preparing ejection of higher-order cognitive functions.

Up till that day, if you were to describe the office of the enigmatic Siren, it would certainly not be 'messy.' Nor 'chaotic,' 'disorganized' or any other synonyms within the standard dictionary. Yet, that was the state the room was in as subordinates ran around frantically, ferrying messages and documents through the area. Tech specialists furiously pounded away at computers and several large monitors on the wall, futilely attempting to reconnect the signal lest they receive the ire of their boss.

Of course, to see all of this, you would first have to find the ultra-secretive branch of the government. In fact, it was doubtful that it could even be called part of the government, as only one individual within the country's entire administration could confidently state that he knew about the organization and everything about it. He had expertly balanced the cloak-and-dagger business with his daytime job, threading a thin line as he siphoned off funds from grants, taxes, and several business fronts in order to support the costly yet worthwhile demands of the department.

It was this man, an inkling, who was seated in a high-backed chair behind a large mahogany desk, the private area poorly lit for no real reason other than to bathe everything in shadows. The inkling leaned forward, revealing a rather unusual pair of an unnatural hazel eye combined with a neon green. The underling in front of the shook nervously, though he did his best to hide it.

"So, Jensen, run by me again how we lost track of Subject C." The inkling's voice was smooth and subtle, yet strangely comforting and charismatic; it was where his namesake the Siren had originated from.

"The subject entered Octo Valley at 2046," Jensen managed to get out, maintaining his façade of calmness. "At 2057, there was an abnormal increase in heartrate and muscle movement, as well as irregular brainwaves."

"The trigger."

Jensen relaxed; the inkling would not have been bothering to listen and put forth the effort to interject if he had been intending to…reprimand...him.

"At 2102, the subject subdued Threat O before recovering Fault C. We continued to monitor the situation, but we had hypothesized that outside of Threat O's unusual reaction, everything would have turned out fine. Unfortunately, a trap was triggered, and the entire party fell deep underground. Due to the speed of the event, we were unable to boost the signal for subterranean transmission in time."

The inkling didn't say or do anything, instead electing to steeple his fingers and contemplate.

"Where were agents J and K during this?"

"They had completed First Contact and were analyzing initial behavioral and skill data when we first updated them of the situation. Unfortunately, it appeared that when the electricity short-circuited between 2057 and 2102, the floating kettle leading to the subjects' location was disabled and too far away to safely super jump to, so they were forced to reset the fuses before moving onwards. By the time they were done, it was too late."

Silence followed, and Jensen felt his fear returning prickling the back of his neck. Perhaps he misjudged; he was, after all, of a higher position, so it was feasible that the Siren would entertain him for a bit longer than the norm before disposing of him.

"Very well," the Siren announced. "Continue attempting to patch through. I want a team of three, preferably without the agents, assembled and deployed underground to take stock of the situation. I don't want them to interfere; just observe and prevent fatal injury. I also want you to summon the agents here, and I want you to get the file on Fault B for me. And while you're outside, either send someone or yourself to check on Threat C. I don't know how he's reacting, or what he's planning, and I don't like what I don't know."

Jensen nodded a swift affirmative, relieved that he had left unscathed for the time being.

"And Jensen?"

"Yes sir?"

"I'm docking your pay."

Jensen winced internally. Well, relatively unscathed.

Yeet. Now we're getting into the meat of things. All major characters have been introduced one way or another, no matter how briefly (hint hint wink wink). If there were any grammatical errors that slipped my check, I apologize.

And as always, reviews are appreciated. Thank you!