Missing Agent

Chapter 8

" Eight?", she replied softly. The captain frowned. 

" Wait...no. Why, why are you here?", she said, gripping the wall. The ooze had returned and burned her fingers immediately. Eight frowned.

" Captin', you don't look so good, come on, sit back down.", Three said, rushing to her aid. Four followed.

"Who's that?", Eight asked.

"What's wrong with Three?", she questioned, worried. The captain bit back the pain of the ooze, but it overpowered her tremendously. She cried out in agony and crumpled to the ground. 

" THREE!", Eight yelled, rushing over. Three panicked and dropped to her knees. 

" I-I can't fight i-it...", the captain cried out helplessly and lost consciousness. 

Right.

Into.

Eight's.

Arms. 

Eight steamed and turned bright pink. But she shoved all thoughts aside and couldn't help but ask the question.

" What just happened?"

Four and Three looked at each other. Lily frowned and sat on the floor, petting Lupa. Ilyzia bit her lip. Four broke the silence.

" You have a lot to catch up on.", she replied. 

A While Later...

" And she didn't bother to tell us? For four years?! Oh, dear.", Eight said, shaking her head. 

" You know you're gonna have to tell her what SHE'S been missing out on. No?", Ilyzia said. Eight tensed up. That was going to be hard.

" She's got a point you know.", Three said, backing her up. 

" Well, all I know is that it's getting late. I'm getting tired, we should probably rest up...Goodnight yall'. ", Lily yawned, her hair in a messy bun. She walked across her lab into her bedroom, Lupa following in her footsteps. Four chuckled. 

"We still have no idea who she is, or what she is for that matter. But she is right. I'm getting tired...", she said, leaning her head on Three's shoulder. Ilyzia was already sleeping, and soon Three and Four were asleep too. But only Eight stayed up. She couldn't stop thinking about her Three, or I guess, Captain. ( She was never gonna get used to that.) She sighed and decided to check on her. Captain did at one point wake up all sleepy, and they had all urged her to get into better clothes to sleep in. She did get into her sleepwear, and she did immediately fall back asleep when her head hit the couch cushions. But back to the present, Eight carefully stood up and walked around her friends to make sure they didn't wake up.  Agent Three and Four were sleeping on each other on the bean bag, and Ilyzia was asleep on the floor with some nicely placed pillows and blankets. But she was trying to get to the couch where the captain was. She sat down on the carpet and leaned back on the couch. 

" Hey, Three? Are you awake?", she asked. Hey! It didn't hurt to try.

" I'd rather be asleep if that's what you meant.", Three replied, her back turned to Eight. Eight was startled and had to take hold of herself. She shook her head. 

" I want to..."

" Stop, don't say it. I have a good guess on what happened."

"...you do?"

" You got taken in by Lily, didn't you."

"..."

" I know I'm not wrong."

" No, you're right."

" So...so when she took you in, you decided to stay with her, and lose all contact with me?"

" I...yes. That's what happened."

"...so for a whole month, you forgot about me."

" I-I need to explain. You don't have the full picture."

" Go ahead."

" Well, one day, an alarm started to blare throughout the town. I started to panic, and I followed everyone outside of the town. I realized that Ilyzia was still inside, and I went back in to help her. I got her outside, but then something grabbed my leg and tugged me away. I saw everything in color, and then everything was dark. That alarm was 3 months ago as a drill. When I woke up, I was in a glass room. Nothing but an empty white room surrounded me, and I was like that for about two months. Who captured me? Lily."

" She captured you?!", Captain Three exclaimed, sitting up.

" Hold on! Let me finish! At the time, Lily had just woken up from a very long sleep with her pet wolf named Lupa. She can explain more tomorrow. She didn't understand our language and didn't know who octolings or inklings were. But because she didn't know, and she's a professor, she decided to kidnap someone as a test subject. And hey, look who that turned out to be! So she studied our kind and others and learned a lot in two months. She started to understand what I was saying and eventually realized her mistake. She let me go and apologized. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. She offered me a place to stay until I was ready to go and..."

" You got carried away and didn't realize a month had passed. But that didn't explain why you stopped contact with me about a month ago and not three."

" I found out a way to get messages across secretly, but I was caught by Lily and that's when she realized that she had made the big mistake of keeping me, prisoner. At least now she's trying to figure out a way to cure the fuzzy octarians for good.", Eight finished. Silence hung in the air for a while. 

" So you didn't decide to tell me that you were captured, or that you needed help or anything in those secret letters?"

" I didn't want to worry you!"

" I have every right to be worried! I'm supposed to look after you! You have no idea how much you mean to me! And then you just outright get carried away and lose track of time, and before you knew it, you were missing for a month!", Three exclaimed. Eight was stunned. She frowned and huddled to herself.

" I know, I'm a horrible person.", she said, tears bubbling up in her eyes. Three sighed.

" No, no you're not."

" W-What?", Eight asked, then silence once again.

" Yes, I might be mad at you, but that doesn't make you a horrible person. Let me remind you that I didn't tell you about my reactions for four years.", Three said reassuringly. Eight wiped away her tears. 

" That's true.", she sniffled and smiled a bit. Arms wrapped around her neck, and her face turned pink as she realized Three was hugging her. 

" You're far from a horrible person, you're amazing.", Three whispered to Eight. Eight should've burned her face off with the amount of blushing she was doing. But she smiled warmly and tilted her head back, to see Three face-to-face. Three looked away as she normally did. Eight giggled. She unhinged herself from Three and crawled onto the couch, wrapping her arms around Three's shoulders and leaning onto her. She started to feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, and Three's face turned light orange. But she smiled and pulled Eight in closer. Only a few seconds later had she realized that Eight had fallen asleep on her before she fell asleep as well. And for once, she didn't worry about anything at all.