The Phantom Thief quietly pried open the air vent, and dropped down into the server room. So far so good.
Despite multiple corporations amping up their security measures ever since she started making waves, they were simply not prepared for her methods of infiltration. And the dark blue layer of ink that covered her entire body and formed the ‘mask’ over her face not only made it easier for her to sneak around in the dark, but also obscured her identity.
Her first objective was getting as much data from the servers as she could get her hands on. To that end, she pulled out a small tablet-like portable device, plugging it in to one of the servers, and got to work. The device began auto-cracking the security systems. These companies didn’t typically provide a lot of budget towards network security, and even less to preventing an enterprising thief from just downloading directly from their servers.
It took some time, but she got everything she wanted. Now it was time for the second objective for tonight’s heist.
She used her special multi-tool to open the lock on the server room door, slipping out and heading for the research labs. She wanted to steal at least one in-development project before departing. It didn’t matter what it was, the important thing was that it had to be something it could be used to help people in need. Saizo Medical was known for focusing on ‘long-term treatments’ rather than cures to get more money out of people.
Most of the security measures here were electronic, and even then not particular fancy, just security cameras and doors with card key locks, she simply needed to avoid camera sight-lines and hack the locks.
There were a few guards, but slipping past them was elementary for her. Sure, she was generally really good at stealth and had footwear specifically for silent movement, but the reality was that she had climbing gear that allowed her to stick to ceilings and silently go right over their heads. People generally just did not look up, because who would expect someone to stick to the ceiling?
The labs themselves were immaculately clean and well-organised, which meant it was fairly easy for her to find what she was looking for - a locked freezer with dozens of vials immaculately organised and labelled. She pulled small box out of her satchel - the box itself had a a dozen slots and was effectively a miniature freezer.
She reached for one of the vials, only to stop immediately as she noticed the rack looked a little more high-tech than it should be. She tapped a button on her visor, which scanned the vial racks.
They had pressure sensors. It was a more high-tech version of that sort of thing from the movies, but it was functionally similar. It was so cliche that she almost laughed.
But now she had something of a conundrum - the old ‘quick-swap’ trick never worked even in the movies, and this likely was set to instantly trigger the moment the vials were removed. But she couldn’t walk away empty-handed. So she picked the vials she needed to grab, held the cube, and prepared for what came next.
She grabbed the vials with expertly dexterous finger movements, slotting them into the cube and closing it as she shut the box, locked it and stuffed it in her satchel. As predicted, the alarm immediately went off, and she dashed out of the labs before they locked down. Saizo really didn’t want any of this stuff to be stolen. Well, too bad.
Naturally an Inkling guard came running with a flashlight and a taser, and spotted her as she left the labs. “HEY! STOP!”
Yeah, not a chance. She dodged the taser and bolted in the opposite direction from him, forcing the guy to give chase. He wasn’t slow, but she was too fast for him to keep pace with, and that was before she started zigging and zagging around the corridors.
She broke into an office space with windows leading outside. Time to use her special trick.
Her inky suit was in fact a prototype ‘Zipcaster’ special, and was a huge part of why she was so successful in her heists, being able to scale walls and ceilings effortlessly and quickly, being able to go where Inkings and Octolings couldn’t normally go even in swim form. In an instant, her arm extended outwards, latching onto a window and pulling her rapidly towards it, and she detached it right before she collided, closing her eyes and smashing through. Her inky suit and mask were enough to protect her from the glass.
She then zipped again onto the building just across, and started quickly zipping her way around the corner and out of sight. By the time the guard reached the window, there was no way he’d know where she went.
Once she was well in the clear, standing on a rooftop some distance away, she smiled to herself as the inky suit dissipated, and she took a look at her spoils. A dozen medical vials perfectly intact, and a ton of data.
Sure, that had been more challenging than she had initially anticipated, but to her, it was still just another evening’s work.
Ciel’s jaw dropped. “Sorry, can you repeat that? You want to hire me, X?!”
She had been taken out to a cafe by X for what she assumed was just a friendly chat. And while that had been indeed true at first, what ostensibly was a casual coffee chat had suddenly turned into an unexpected job interview.
“Yeah, I imagine this is rather unexpected, but hear me out,” X said. “Now that there’s no outstanding problems with my takeover of Kamabo Corp and its re-branding to Arcadia Corporation, I’ve been looking at the company’s resources and facilities. And there is a significant void left behind by Dr. Wily, who was secretly running the Robotics Division and answerable only to the CEO and the board of directors, aka Commander Tartar.”
“And you want me to run the Robotics Division, then…” Ciel said. “Wait, Tartar was running the company all by himself?”
X nodded. “Which is why the company fell into chaos for a bit and why it was so easy for me to take over. And frankly, it seems my existing employees don’t particularly mind that I’m in charge now. Apparently Tartar was more like some distant figure nobody ever talked to, he just gave directives from on high, so for the new CEO to be talking to them face to face is something of a pleasant whiplash for them.”
He leaned forward. “Anyway, back on topic - nobody in Inkadia is really doing robotics for the most part. Meaning your talents are rather undervalued right now, hence why you’re stuck doing freelance jobs. But under my employ, you will have full access to Dr. Light and Dr. Wily’s research and the latter’s facilities when he was working with Tartar.”
“And my energy source project?”
“I’ll approve it. In fact, that’ll be an easy source of government grants, I’d say, so funding probably isn’t a huge problem. The only thing I’d like you to do specifically is to work on a project for a new Hero Armour set, but I don’t think you’d mind doing that.”
Ciel couldn’t believe it. It was everything she ever wanted - the ability to work on her own projects, a really nice boss who understood her, stable employment… “I’ll do it.”
“Awesome, you’re hired, then,” X smiled as they shook hands.
Now that was sorted, Ciel had a bunch of questions on her mind. “So what’s going to happen with the company and the Metro?”
X crossed his arms, looking down at his coffee. “That’s still going to be a process. We’ve set up a teleportation system between the Central Station and the surface, so we don’t need to use the tunnels under Inkopolis to get to and from the Metro. The Metro itself is still generally useful for the people still living down there, but having a quick and easy way to get to the surface makes it a lot easier for them to commute and migrate.”
“There’s still a ton of test chambers that are basically useless now, though.”
X looked back up at her with a nod. “I’m actually thinking of opening them to the public as part of the whole publicity surrounding those upcoming movies, once the one starring Iris and Axl comes out - considering the chambers themselves are safe and have reliable respawn systems, it’d be easy to pass them off as just being repurposed movie sets, and would be a good source of revenue from people wanting to try them out themselves. Of course, we can’t use the sanitised Octarians, it would be inhumane and also would make people suspicious. I’d like you to work on creating robotic duplicates that can serve the same purpose.”
Ciel took a sip of her coffee as she thought about it. “Yes, that’s a good idea. It would be a good test bed for my robotics research anyway, I’m looking at trying to create reasonably lifelike robots based on Inklings and Octarians, complete with swim forms. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but it’s worth a shot.”
“That’s good to hear. They’ll also be useful for the training facilities the Splatoon are using. Right now the best we can do is holographic projections.”
“I could do more with more time, but just a week is a little bit much. I think they opened today?”
X smiled, “yep. Once school’s out for the day, Ethan and Ayane are taking the gang there for their first training session.”
Ciel giggled at the thought. “Oh dear, those two are going to put them through the wringer!”
Iris’ jaw dropped as she saw the training chamber from the observation room. Her first thought was that it resembled one of the Octarian domes, and similar in size to boot. The room itself had fake sky background.
“Holy carp it’s huge,” Artemis gawked.
“It’s like the Shifty Stations Marina designs for Splatfests!” Hinata said gleefully.
“That’s right, it uses similar tech,” Ayane nodded. “We can reconfigure the stage to anything we need, whether it be a regular ink battle arena or something like in Octo Valley, Octo Canyon or the Metro. Unfortunately there’s no simulated enemies to fight just yet, but that’s fine. What I’ve got in mind is going to push you to the next level.”
Karlene pointed out, “I remember this layout. This is Saltspray Rig, isn’t it?”
“Yup. Doesn’t have the aesthetics but the layout is almost identical,” said Ayane. “We’ll use it for our first big training session. The four of you against me, three lives for each of us.”
That immediately raised red flags in Iris’ head. “Ayane, that sounds way too easy. I was able to defeat you one-on-one back in the Metro.”
“You’re softer than I thought,” Artemis grinned. “This’ll be a cakewalk.”
“Firstly, that time was when Tartar was in control. I wasn’t fighting at my best,” Ayane smirked, sending shivers down Iris’ spine. “Did I mention I’ll have access to every special without my limiters turned on? So I’ll definitely have the advantage.”
“That’s still doable, with team coordination,” Karlene said. “You’re on. Girls, let’s show her what we can do!”
“HECK YEAH!” Hinata grinned, “you’re on, sister! Don’t underestimate us!”
Artemis cracked her knuckles, “I think you’ve still bitten off more than you can chew.”
“I think that might be us, actually…” Iris saw Ayane’s widening smirk, and knew this would be more than they’d bargained for…
“Ugh, we got stomped,” Artemis groaned, face-down on the table. “We only splatted her once!”
They were resting back in the observation room, which was also basically their break room.
“I did warn you it would be harder than it seems, Artemis. Ayane’s really good,” Iris laughed sheepishly. “Between her Charger and her specials, she had us panicking half the time…”
“I wasn’t panicking, you lot were,” Karlene sighed, arms crossed. “I was trying to keep our plan together but she kept forcing you out of position.”
“Easy for you to say when you’re not being surrounded by autobombs,” Artemis said.
“That was fun! But way too stressful,” Hinata laughed sheepishly as well.
“I warned you. I warned you I had the advantage,” Ayane said, leaning against a wall, arms crossed. “But you did pretty well for your first attempt. No shame in failing a training exercise that was stacked against you. I’ve got some pointers for what you should be doing next time, at least.”
Iris was now wondering how the boys were doing, as she noticed Marie enter the room. “Oh, hello, Marie.”
“There you are. I guess today’s session went… Well,” Marie chuckled. “Well, nevermind that. I’ve got some news you girls might be interested in.”
“SON OF A FISH! We had the middle of the stage locked down! HOW DID HE FLANK US?!” Liam screamed as he kicked his chair out of frustration. The boys were in the observation room of the other building.
“Liam, you’re losing your temper again, chill,” Koji said, putting his hands on Liam’s shoulders. “But yeah, geez, we got creamed there…”
“I thought I could keep my distance and snipe him, but he just kept flushing me out of position with specials,” Orion sighed despondently.
Axl couldn’t really blame his teammates for feeling bad about what happened. Ethan had just utterly rolled them, for the most part, pun not intended. Despite his best efforts, Axl had found that Ethan with his full faculties intact was on another level from when he was under Tartar’s mind control.
“You came in overconfident and not ready for what I could pull with basically unlimited specials,” Ethan chuckled, shaking his head. “You gotta be ready for anything, including all kinds of unfair stuff. The Octarians don’t fight fairly, you know that, and neither did Wily’s robots.”
Liam sighed, pulling his chair upright again and sitting down, “I know, but geez you could’ve gone easy on us for our first training session.”
Ethan blinked. “And what would the point of that be? You wouldn’t have learned nearly as much from that.”
“You’re more hardcore than I would’ve given you credit for, Ethan,” Koji said. “You and Ayane are quite the pair…”
“Ooof, I had a feeling you guys would get roughed up,” Callie said as she came in, “heeeeeeeeyyyy~!”
Axl smiled, “roughed up pretty sums it up. Hey, Callie. What is up?”
“Got some exciting news! First things first, the Inkadia government are interested in actually funding us!” Callie grinned.
“Oh, good, we might actually be getting paid,” Orion said. “Right? Please tell me we’re actually getting paid.”
“Probably? Just don’t get your hopes up, it might just be for funding our equipment,” Callie laughed sheepishly.
“Honestly, we’ll take it,” Koji said.
“Secondly, they want us to investigate the ‘phantom thief’ that’s been causing trouble lately,” Callie said, showing a news article on her phone to them about a break-in at Saizo Medical.
“Tell ‘em to pay us first, then we’ll consider it,” Koji grunted.
“Yeah, I’m not sure why we should be going after some thief who’s leaking medical secrets from greedy companies,” Orion agreed. “That should be the police’s job.”
“This thief must really be flummoxing the police if they’re desperate enough to ask for our help,” Axl said. The article didn’t have a clear picture of the thief, just blurry images of them from security camera footage from them escaping from Saizo Medical. “They just jumped out a window and disappeared, huh? Not even any evidence of them super-jumping…”
“And with that inky coating you can’t make out any distinguishing details,” Koji said. “No wonder they’re a phantom thief.”
Ethan seemed to mull it over for a while, before he finally spoke. “We’ll consider it, but only if we uncover any leads. Right now we’re pretty much entirely lacking in ideas on where to even start.”
“Fair enough,” Callie giggled.
Then Ethan spoke the words that filled Axl with dread. “Alright, fellas, break time’s over, let’s get back into it! I’m gonna be going over some pointers and then you’ll try again. You better try for splatting be twice this time!”
Today was going to be rough.
When the girls got back to their dorm, the first thing Iris noticed was that Artemis collapsed onto the couch and immediately passed out.
“That girl definitely expended more energy than us,” Karlene said, as she and Hinata got started with cooking. “Not the first time she’s passed out on that couch after a strenuous day.”
“Artemis sure is a handful, isn’t she?” Iris giggled.
“Oh, you bet. Between her shenanigans and doing study sessions with her, she’s wild,” Hinata said. “She’s a great friend, though.”
“She must not be doing great at school if she needs study sessions,” Iris said, looking over towards the couch.
“Actually, she’s got better grades than either of us,” Karlene sighed.
Iris blinked, turning to them, “excuse me?! She’s, well… How do I put it…”
“A ditz?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Hinata giggled, “oh, yeah, she definitely is that, but her main problem is that she has trouble staying focused on one singular thing. You know she goes with the flow of things, which is both a good and a bad thing, she gets distracted easily. But when she’s able to focus? Oh boy she is a low-key genius.”
Iris was having trouble trying to reconcile this with the girl sleeping on the couch. Artemis wasn’t stupid, but calling her a ‘genius’ seemed rather far-fetched considering the dumb and silly things she was known to do on impulse. Including rolling right off Moray Towers at least twice so far from Iris’ count. “A… Genius?!”
“Get her talking about something academic and chances are she might surprise you,” Karlene chuckled. “Go keep her company. We’ll handle dinner.”
Iris recalled Artemis looking over Kalinka’s hand, and had a good idea of what might be a topic to bring up as she walked over to the couch.
Artemis groaned as she woke up. How long had she been out cold? Weird, her head was propped up on something, but she still was on the couch on her side. Her head felt like it was on fabric, and-
She noticed skin right in front of her face, and realised someone’s hand was on her hair.
Artemis immediately froze. Her head was on someone’s thighs. And judging by the skin tone, she knew exactly whose thighs these were.
She shifted onto her back slowly, turning her head upwards. Panic set in as she found herself staring right at Iris’ rather substantial chest.
I’ve died. I’ve died and gone to Heaven. This is the only reasonable explanation for why this is happening to me right now, she thought to herself.
“Wakey wakey, sleepyhead,” Iris giggled. “Did you have a good nap?”
OH NO SHE NOTICED. Artemis was internally screaming. “Y-Yeah, I guess so… How long was I out?”
Iris stroked Artemis’ hair, “a good twenty minutes. I’ve been sitting here for most of that.”
“Um… Thanks for keeping me company,” Artemis said, now beet red. She knew she shouldn’t be staring at her friend’s chest, but she couldn’t help it.
“You’re welcome. By the way, Artemis… Why were you looking at Kalinka’s hand the other day?” Iris asked.
That question rather startled her. Would the answer come off as creepy? “Um… It was the least creepy way to check out her skin and bones, I guess? She was a human, it was possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity!”
“Her… Skin and bones?”
“Well, more than just that, but yeah. The unique texture of the skin, the hairs, the bones, seeing her veins just barely visible under her skin… It was just so fascinating! The only human remains left are bones, and you don’t even get to feel them when you visit the museum!”
That caused Iris to pause for a bit. “Do you know what you want to do when you graduate high school?”
The question confused her. “I guess maybe follow in Dad’s footsteps, maybe? I dunno. Still thinking about it.”
“Have you considered becoming a biologist?”
That left Artemis completely at a loss for words. In fact, she hadn’t. Somehow, up until now, the thought simply hadn’t crossed her mind.
“Hey, dinner’s ready!” Hinata called out, interrupting the conversation.
For the rest of the evening, Iris’ question was burned into Artemis’ thoughts.
