K is for Kamabo (Splatoon)

Chapter 2

Friday, 9:01 a.m.
Inkopolis

A short girl stepped out of Craig Cuttlefish's office, not bothering to close the door behind her, and she walked away without acknowledging the two women sitting outside. Maybe she just had no idea who they were.

"Finally!" Pearl Enperry shouted, practically jumping out of her chair. "That old geezer sure knows how to keep us waiting!"

Sitting in the chair next to Pearl, Marina Ida winced. The door to the captain's office was wide-open. "Inside voices, Pearl!" she chided. "And didn't anyone teach you to respect your elders?"

Pearl put her hands on her hips and winked at her still-seated friend. Normally, Pearl appreciated having Marina hold her back and be her voice of reason, but not today. Mr. Craig Cuttlefish was at fault, here. He had disrespected them by asking them to make a trip all the way to his office on the south end of the DPC headquarters, only to make them wait for that other girl to show up and talk to him first. That was a blatant waste of everyone's time. Uncool. But the head adviser would have to be able to take some heat if he wanted to dish it out. It wasn't like he owned the place.

"Come in," Craig spoke from within. His voice had a slight accent, as if he was some sort of old-fashioned hick. Pearl heard that the former captain was in his late 120s now, a relic of the past. Ancient history had no place in the very modern Department of Protection and Counterterrorism, she believed.

The women took the chairs across from the DPC's head adviser on intelligence, and he stared at them through squinted eyes. Maybe he was sizing them up or something; Marina wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Her imagination had made the legendary Captain Cuttlefish out to be some kind of big, muscular Inkling with toned biceps and shaved sideburns, but the real deal was this tiny, bearded guy with the shakes. The stories she had heard since childhood were no longer accurate, now that time had taken its heavy toll on the captain. Marina had never seen anyone so old in her life, barring the similarly long-lived Octavio.

"So from what I gather, you lot are the DPC's recon team," the captain noted. "Gatherin' info and all that."

Marina grinned and nodded. Outside of hosting Off the Hook and making music in her spare time, the Octoling was a tech junkie. The DPC had originally hired her for part-time equipment maintenance, but that job proved far beneath her skill set. Marina's real selling point was her affinity with computers, and she was an expert in all things surveillance, to boot. Within weeks, they had her spearheading reconnaissance operations. The DPC contract additionally gave her ample resources to test her homebrew gear, refine her blueprints, and do practical data collection, all on the city's dime. She was building crazy contraptions, and the city was receiving unprecedented amounts of surveillance data. It was a win-win compromise with Inkopolis, she told herself.

"Yes, Mr. Cuttlefish, sir! That we are!" crowed Marina. This was also Marina's chance to impress the world's leader in foreign intelligence—Mr. Cuttlefish wasn't exactly her childhood hero, per se, but his exploits in gathering, processing, and analyzing security information were well known to all Octarians in the military. He was both a role model and a feared enemy. The Octarians, despite all their advanced technology, could never match the old man's wits or suss out his planted contacts. He had always been one step ahead of them in a war that had since gone cold.

The senior officer frowned at her. "That's Yes, Cap'n, to you, Miss Ida," he said.

"Yes, Cap'n, my apologies," Marina replied on instinct. Her habits from the Octarian military had kicked in first, even though the captain had no real right to tell Marina what to call him. Old habits died hard.

Fortunately, Pearl was there to stand up for her. "Uh, excuse me? Who the heck are you?!" Pearl snapped. "We take time out of our day to come to your office, and you stall us out. Now you're demanding respect? Earn it first, dude!"