To Make Amends

The last person Octavio would have expected to show up in Octo Canyon alone is Callie.

It is an uneventful day as any, if he can even think of any day as being its own contained amount of passed time. It's all blurring together, sunny days bleeding into cloudless nights into days into nights into boring. He's kept under sharp supervision in the glass globe he's gotten trapped into after his defeat, too; not strange, since the Squid Sisters and Agent 4 basically seem to live at this little hideaway they're keeping him trapped at. He's gotten quite adept at ignoring their staring. But right now Agent 4 and Marie are away on a mission with some little dweeb occasionally meandering around here with weapons and never, ever shutting his mouth, which is also the reason he heard of their departure in the first place, and thus he has been left unattended...

Until now.

Callie's footsteps are far too recognisable for him as they near his prison.

Though, he's not planning to give his unwanted visitor what she wants. And he knows what she wants: to brag, to jeer. To rub his loss into his face even more, to taunt him about how he's further from winning the war between Inklings and Octarians than ever, to mock him from being trapped here again...

Even if all that does not sound like the Callie he's slowly come to know after his first defeat.

"Hi," the girl smiles up at his glass prison, a tad awkwardly. "Uh... How ya doin'? Staying fresh?"

Octavio's honour does not allow him to respond. Merely staying quiet he keeps his arms crossed, eyes burning a hole into the distance above Callie's head. "It's, you know, been a while. Since we could talk uninterrupted," the Inkling continues, hands meticulously fussing with the pink beanie on her head. "Marie and Agent 4 are gone for the day, so I thought... why not come over? Like old times, you know?"

Allowing himself the slightest narrowing of his eyes Octavio purses his beak. 'Old times', or what he would call the agonising stretch of time immediately after his first defeat. He'd been captured too then, locked away in a similar structure compared to now...

And Callie had visited him often.

And he'd been unable to resist her chatting and cheerful nature the more she badgered him, and they'd begun talking.

The first rule of warfare, and he had completely neglected it, the Octoling scolds himself in deep displeasure. Do not grow fond of the enemy, because they will use such a weakness to strike you where it hurts the moment they can use it to their benefit.

"Why are you here?" he breaks the long silence stretching out between him and Callie, voice gruff and somewhat itchy from lack of use. "Aren't you scaaaaaaared I'll capture you again?"

"Not much you can do now from there, big bad spooky Octavio," Callie dryly huffs back, own eyes leering back at him. Which is comparable to the first few conversations they'd had, before the girl had grown more cheerful and welcoming. Already a smile is blossoming on her face once more. "And I knew you hadn't lost your voice!"

"I wish I had so you would leave me alone."

"You know I will not, even in that case."

"Unfortunately." Tentacles crossed Octavio glares down at the smaller Inkling; he might as well just get this over with so he can go back to brooding in private. "Very well, girlie! Mock me for my loss! Express your hatred for me because I captured you, taunt me with your happy society that's got all the things it needs. Your words do nothing to me," he spits at her.

Callie has the gall to look surprised.

Hands half-held up before her chest the girl swallows. "I, uh, won't do any of those things," she pipes up, voice small in a way Octavio does recall hearing before; when she'd told him of her fears of losing her cousin and best friend, simply because life was tearing them apart without either being able to help it.