I know, I know. I don't write enough. I'll make an effort to put in more time so the story progresses faster. I will say, reading the new reviews people left really helped in pushing me to continue, and those of you who did have my thanks. And thanks to all of you who are currently reading, as well!

Important Story Stuff

Sabre heard the door open and instinctively jerked her head over to see who entered the house. It was Quilla.

"Hey, sis." She said, turning back to her computer screen. She said nothing about the message she knew they had both recieved; it was going to be brought up anyway. Might as well let someone else start the conversation.

"Three days." Quilla responded as expected.

"Yup." Was Sabre's only reply.

"Are we taking the inkling?" Quilla sat down on the couch, the old cushions squeaking under her weight.

"Of course." Sabre looked back at her. "We're counting on him. No way the two of us alone could take on Allister's guards."

"I'm sure we're good enough."

"You almost died last time."

"..."

"The kid is coming." Sabre said, standing up. "As long as he agrees, that is."

"I don't like this." Quilla crossed her arms.

"You don't have to."

She said nothing in reply.

"Alright then." Sabre said, stretching her arms and walking towards the stairs. "For our sake, let's hope he agrees to help. "

Shark sat at his desk, typing up a rough draft for a project. He had faith in this one. He really did. A few sample chapters would probably be enough to sell the idea, he reasoned. Sometimes he had to write more for the work to develop enough, but not here.

In the middle of his writing session, someone knocked on the door. "Yeah?" He responded, not looking up.

The door opened to reveal Sabre. She smiled at him. "Alright kid, listen up. This is important."

Shark gulped, wondering if this had anything to do with what Quilla had told him just a few days before.

The sun shone through the windows into the lobby, golden beams of light revealing some dust particles in the air. Zephel walked toward the main desk, the sound sound of his footsteps contrasting greatly with the silence.

"ID?" The cuttling woman behind the counter asked.

He pulled out a strange looking card.

The woman nodded, pulling out a strange-looking scanning device.

He put his hand to it, and after a few seconds pulled away again.

"Alright, you've been confirmed for entry." The woman said, before putting a complex code into her computer.

Zephel walked toward a door that was pretty out of the way, and looked very plain. It made of metal, and was polished neatly just like everything else in the room.

It opened up for him, and as he stepped inside, it closed behind him.

Shark couldn't believe he was getting dragged into this.

And willingly, too. He needed the money, it's true, but to stoop this low... He wasn't exactly proud of it. And the way Quilla had warned him not to trust Sabre didn't exactly help him relax.

Of course, he didn't recognize any of the names thrown at him. Clan McMarlin, The Parade, Stingweld Ray... All these organizations were very good at remaining under the radar, obviously, considering he didn't know of them. He knew the metaphorical underground of the city had its own woven lace of politics, but what he'd heard from Sabre was completely new.

'Organized crime', she had called it. It didn't have the same chaos as the street gangs and thugs that were easily taken care of by Inkopolis's police force. Everything had a reason behind it, some alterior motive. It wasn't exactly something he wanted to get deeply involved in.

Yet here he was, getting ready to train for a job.

They were at the Dojo in the main plaza; Shark had prepared for some sort of fight because of the Octolings he was with, but he found no such thing. Even the glares they got before were few and far between. The center of the city seemed to be a lot more laid back than the outer edges, which was a bit strange. If only the housing around here wasn't so expensive.

After Sabre finished renting out a training room, the three of them walked down the hallway to the correctly numbered door. Sabre inserted they key they had just received and they went inside.

"Alright, kid, this is where you'll be spending the majority of your time for the next three days." Sabre told him. "You definitely need to train. You wouldn't be much of a help to us like this, now would you? Although, I do kind of like how helpless you are..."

Shark simply nodded, choosing to ignore the last comment.

"Alright, put this on." She said, then reached into her bag and pulled out a standard ink tank. She tossed it to him.

He proceeded to stare at it blankly in his hands.

Quilla buried her face in her hands, and Sabre sighed. "Looks like we have a lot of work to do."

Verde was anxious.

She was anxious a lot of the time, really, but the short period before games of turf war was always the worst.

Last time, she had let her team down, and she had paid for it. She was only saved by the kindness of others. How pathetic.

Of course, this time she intended for things to be different. This time, she would be more ready. She kept telling herself this, but even then, she had a growing bubble of anxiety inside of her. Being an optimist was not her strong suit.

As she stood up to leave for the location of the match, she felt her phone buzzing in her pocket. She took it out and unlocked it, to see a notification for a new message. She opened it up.

She stared for a good minute before hurriedly putting her phone away, grabbing her bag, and walking out the door.

Aiming ranged weapons was hard, as Shark found out.

Not only ink weapons, but spine launchers as well. These were weapons he knew existed, but had not seen very often. Sabre had explained to him that, while ink weapons were messy and loud, a spine launcher could be easily concealed. It fired a set of two small metal needles connected by a metal wire, with an electrical current running through them. It was usually nonlethal, but enough of them would stun inklings and octolings alike, as well as prevent them from changing form. A lot of the time, they were illegally modified to have stronger electrical currents that have the potential to kill. And as he found out, he would be wielding one of the said modified weapons. He didn't quite like the idea of using them against living things, but he couldn't really back out now.

He had been training against moving targets for about an hour now. He hadn't gotten very good, but compared to how he was when he started, even Quilla agreed he was learning at a quick pace. They had also been teaching him how to use an ink weapon to maneuver quickly, which he was much worse at.

"You need to start leading your shots more." Sabre said. "When I said that before, I really meant it. You need to be predicting their movements better, too."

"That's the only thing you've been saying for a while." Shark commented, growing tired of the repeating pattern.

"Yeah, well, maybe you should take it to heart and start doing what I'm telling you to do. Advice doesn't work if you don't follow it."

"There has to be more I'm doing wrong. At least tell me one other thing." He replied.

"Just be better."

Shark exhaled loudly, then focused his attention on the targets. As he fell into a steady rhythm, he began to think.

Sabre had told him they were hired on by the Clan McMarlin. She used to have ties with them, apparently, but neither she nor Quilla were actually members. He didn't know much about them, but from what he gathered, they weren't really any sort of 'good guys'. None of the crime organizations he had heard about from Sabre were, of course, but he had hoped that the one he had ended up working for was better.

The plan was pretty simple. But with no real experience, and no way to know exactly what was going to happen, Shark didn't know if he could pull through.

He'd just have to wait and see.