Sitting in a locked toilet stall, Artemis groaned as she lost consciousness.
When she woke up, she noticed that she had somehow changed into squid form. Odd. She didn’t remember transforming.
The fact that she couldn’t change back was what immediately caused her to realise why, however. “Oh, squit.”
“You stuck in squid form?” Koji asked from the adjacent stall.
“Yep.”
“Yeah, me too. This ain’t good.”
There was a moment of awkward silence as Artemis tried to think. She managed to pop one of her Hero Dualies out of her body, but she knew she was never gonna be able to properly manipulate two of these with her tentacles. “Please tell me you can use your Blaster in squid form.”
“Lemme try.” She heard the weapon pop out of Koji, followed by a the stall door. “Gonna be a bit tricky, obviously these weapons are built for hands and fingers, not tentacles. What about your Dualies?”
“Only can use one at a time, so I’m basically-” Artemis noticed that Red Queen was right next to her, without its sheath. “-hold that thought. Looks like Red Queen didn’t integrate with my squid form properly. Looks like I’ll have to use that instead, can’t just leave it behind.” Much to her satisfaction, she was able to reintegrate the Dualie back into her body. Felt super weird now that she thought about it, but modern ink weapons and clothes were explicitly designed for Inklings and Octolings to transform along with their bodies.
She unlocked the stall, coming out with Red Queen, as Koji emerged in squid form as well, holding his Hero Blaster. They both sat upright, looking at each other. Koji spoke first. “Well, the mission went pear-shaped real fast. Any idea how Gate managed to pull this off?”
“That’s tricky,” Artemis admitted, wracking her brain for any kind of plausible explanation. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. Must’ve activated some kind of biological ‘trigger’ for transforming and, well… I guess the best analogy I can come up with is like, you know, you press a button that does a thing, but it can’t do that thing again or stop it if the button is held down, you know? It’s like he’s put a rock on the button or something.”
Koji just gave her a blank stare, but then he shook his head… Or, well, body, as it were. When it came to swim forms, it was hard to tell where the head ended and the body began. “Eh, I’ll roll with it, I guess. If only we could somehow get our headsets working fully with these forms, then we’d be able to contact the others…”
“What am I, chopped liver?”
“Oh, Cap’n!” Artemis said, instinctively reaching for the side of her head, only to realise that wouldn’t really do anything. “Guess you can still hear us, huh?”
“That’s right, and it looks like I’m gettin’ through to you too. This ain’t ideal, but it’ll work for now. X and Zero are headed your way, so you should probably sit tight. That bathroom should be pretty defensible.”
Koji, however, didn’t look so sure. “Gate mentioned he ‘hadn’t forgotten about our robotic friends’. He’s got something up his sleeve for X and Zero. They’re probably walking right into a trap.”
Artemis blinked, and then recalled what Gate said - she hadn’t properly processed it at the time due to the sheer panic caused by the situation at the time. “Oh, squit, you’re right. We can’t just sit around and wait for them.”
“I’ll warn them that Gate might have something up his sleeve. I don’t envy your situation, though, so the most I can say is… Follow your gut, and do your best. Things look bad, but I’m sure you’ll make the best of it somehow!”
“Thanks, Cap’n. We won’t let you down.”
Koji’s tentacles started trembling, “still… What can we do? Even if we can use our weapons, we’re at a huge disadvantage!”
“Doesn’t matter,” Artemis said, as she gripped Red Queen with her suckers, “we came here on a mission. It’s our job to see it through. Come on, let’s show those Octarian jerks we’re not just a bunch of helpless squids.”
Orion was in complete panic mode.
He and Liam had stumbled into a random break room (which was thankfully empty) and right now, Orion had no idea how to deal with the situation they had been dealt. Being forced into squid form recalled nightmares that he didn’t want to deal with ever again, and while it was a very different situation, the parallels were undeniable, what with being forced into a state he didn’t want.
Liam, however, was dealing with this in his usual way - getting mad about it. He sliced a pool table in half with a swing with a vertical his Cypher, with a firm grip on the handle - that at least seemed to be cathartic enough for him to cool off somewhat. “Damn, that felt good. Ori, stop panicking and see how well you can handle your charger.”
Orion, despite his panic, let the weapon pop out of his body and he immediately took a hold of it, trying to test his aim. There was no way he’d be able to use it properly without being basically stationary and upright, but he was at least able to hold it and had access to the trigger. Thank goodness for the laser sight, otherwise aiming would be much, much harder. “I… I think I should be okay.”
Then he heard footsteps, and spun towards the door, taking aim. A random Octotrooper came through the door, clearly looking for intruders, but Orion pulled the trigger, splatting him instantly. “We need to move, they’ll know we’re here, now…”
Liam nodded. “Right, stay close to me. I’ll handle enemies as we move, you find good spots to set up sight-lines and ink the floors.”
Orion could take comfort in Liam’s ability to take charge - he had a temper, but it couldn’t be denied that he had a good initiative and could think on his feet, as long as he wasn’t angry. He took a deep breath, holding his weapon tightly. And the fact that Liam was using a weapon that wasn’t reliant on ink was helpful, he just hoped it wasn’t too short-ranged. “Just be careful, okay? We need to avoid direct fights if we can help it. You’re gonna get splatted if you try to rush enemies with that thing.”
“Think I don’t know that?” Liam performed a few practice swings with the Cypher. “It’s a bit awkward to use like this, but I’ll make it work somehow. Enough chatter, we need to go.”
Orion nodded, and started inking a path for them out of the room. “Meeting up with the others is gonna be tricky with the blast doors… And we don’t have any kind of map…”
Liam went over to Orion, putting a tentacle where his shoulder probably would be. “Ori, it’s okay. We’ll get through this. You heard the Cap’n, X and Zero are on their way. We just need to hold out and avoid being splatted or captured until then.”
Orion took deep breaths. Part of him just wanted to hole up in a corner, but he couldn’t do that alone, so going with Liam was the best choice. “Okay. Lead the way, Boss.”
Axl was fumbling with his Hero Dualies. Sure, he had enough dexterity with his tentacles to potentially hold and fire them, but it was very awkward, and he felt like he’d likely drop them easily.
“Yeah I’m not gonna be able to easily hold and fire this thing,” Hinata groaned as she tried her best to heft around her Hero Splatling with just her tentacles. “Nevermind aim it properly…”
The pair had slipped into an empty side-lab and hidden under the tables. Not great, but it seemed they had gone undetected during the short time they had been unconscious. They now had a better idea of their situation and that help was on the way, but that wasn’t going to be of much comfort if the enemy came storming in.
Axl was pondering his own issues with the Dualies when he hit upon an idea. He had never actually considered using his advanced shapeshifting abilities when it came to his octopus form - he recalled using it to emulate the Kraken special while being part of Leviathan, but not on a more granular level. But if he could normally, why not like this?
He focused on recreating his normal set of hands on his two main tentacles. The ink flowed around the tips, until they formed two normal-looking hands, which he found himself using to grip the Dualies normally. He tried aiming and firing, and got some rather satisfactory results.
“DUDE!” Hinata rushed over to him, dragging the Splatling behind her, “THAT IS SO COOL! You gotta teach me how to do that!”
“Sorry, I don’t think you can. I can do it because I’m a Mimic Octopus,” he said, spinning the Dualies in his makeshift hands, “besides, I think hands are the least of your concerns right now.”
Hinata pouted, but as she continued trying to find the best way to handle the Splatling, she sighed, “yeah, you gotta good point. UGH, so lame!”
Axl realised that he didn’t interact with Hinata all that much, but she was clearly a mood-swinger. She was usually quite cheerful and positive, but her emotions never seemed to be moderate. Whenever she couldn’t really be cheerful, she was either super downbeat or pretty mad.
“Sorry I can’t help much with that,” Axl sighed. “I’ll handle most of the fighting, you just try your best to back me up, alright? We’ll get through this-”
And then Hinata hugged him with her tentacles immediately, sniffing, “Axxxxllll, you know just the right thing to say to cheer up a girl!”
“Maybe we should do this later?!” Axl winced, and heard the sounds of incoming footsteps approaching the door. He slipped out of Hinata’s ‘grip’, and rushed right over to the door, which opened up to reveal an Octoling soldier coming in. He leaped into the air, firing off his Hero Dualies, surprising the guy and splatting him. “Okay, that was too close!”
“Heeeeyy… Why wasn’t that guy forced into swim mode? I swear the energy wave covered the whole base,” Hinata said.
Now that Axl thought about it, that was a very good question. But still… “We don’t have time to think about it. Let’s get moving.”
“Roger that! Lead the way~!” Hinata giggled, as she began dragging her Splatling behind her.
That was not going to be very conducive to stealth, Axl concluded. Maybe using her as a distraction would work, though…
They had already splatted a few Octarians on the way back, including an Octoling trooper. Ayane was immediately alarmed by the fact that the enemy Octolings didn’t seem to have been forced into their octopus forms. This was doubly confirmed by the fact that, when they managed to get back to the security room, the Octoling they had tied up there hadn’t transformed either. (Thankfully they had tied her up enough that transforming wouldn’t do a lot of good either.)
Ethan looked her over. “How is she still in bipedal form?”
Then Ayane noticed the black neck-band. It was something she had noticed on the enemy Octolings earlier, but now it was especially relevant. “Damn it, I should known something was up with those neck-bands. I’ve got a theory. Ethan, help me get that band off her. I want to see what happens if either of us starts wearing it…”
Unfortunately, the reinforcements called in to do said capturing, who arrived through a secret entrance as they made their way into his lab, were a bunch he was not eager to meet. Especially their leader.
General Ferham Walters cracked her ink whip against the floor with a fury that was only mildly restrained. “UNBELIEVABLE! You just let them GET AWAY?!”
She was certainly one shell of a woman - a well-fitted Octarian officer’s uniform over her curvy figure (he was pretty sure the chest window was quite deliberate), green eyes and long hair that started red but transitioned to purple. And of course, she wore the traditional elite seaweed in her hair, but straightened out to almost look like wings.
“I tried to close the blast doors immediately, but they were not as debilitated as I expected. The Agents are quite formidable,” said Gate, straightening his tie. “I won’t make the mistake of underestimating them again.”
“You won’t, because you won’t get another chance to. Search the facility, find them and bring them to me!” Ferham snapped to her subordinates, who all saluted and immediately got moving.
“Before you do that, any Octolings should grab the resistor neck-bands, they’re in that box over there,” Gate said, pointing to the box in question, stashed in a corner of the lab. “Otherwise the device will force you into swim form when I activate it again.”
Ferham turned back to Gate, “how long till you’re able to fire that thing again, anyway?”
“Not too long - X and Zero should be at the front entrance soon, and I want to fire it again before they get here,” Gate said. “Again, make sure to wear one of those bands around your neck, otherwise you’ll be stuck in octopus form for a while when it does fire.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you,” Ferham said as she grabbed one and put it around her neck. “I hope your little experiment works as well as you claim it does, because if it doesn’t and those robots are still in top form by the time my people deal with them, this whole operation is toast.”
“Trust me, I am quite aware,” Gate said. “I wouldn’t be risking this if I wasn’t sure of the results.”
“Yes, because that intuition of your has always been right in the past,” Ferham said dryly. “Whatever, I’ll deal with whatever happens. Just do your damn job and try not to screw it up. I want you to start dropping as many of those blast doors as possible to funnel them into a choke point, and drop them at full speed.”
“They’re not designed to be closed that quickly-”
“-I don’t care, just drop them!”
As she walked out, Gate sighed, arms crossed. There was a good reason he didn’t like working with that woman…
Zero whistled. “Man, they really did not waste any time.”
Dozens of Octoling troops of various types, establishing a unified set of fortifications. Normally this would be a daunting task for any group of attackers.
X and Zero were not any ordinary attacking force, however.
And immediately teleporting in behind them were Punk, Ballade, Mega Water S and Hyper Storm W. Punk laughed, as he saw the defending force. “Oh, man, this is gonna be fun. These poor guys have no idea what they’re up against.”
“Thanks for coming, but… Where are Enker and Buster Rod G?” X blinked.
“They’ll be here soon, they’ve got another assignment,” Mega Water S said. “Let’s just focus on the task at hand.”
“Right, let’s do this!” Zero grinned, rushing the enemy, slashing at Octarian troops left and right.
X readied his buster, and started opening fire. Hang in there, guys, we’re coming!
Callie grinned, gripping her Hero Roller, “cool, we can slip in undetected! Thanks for the teleport, you two!”
“It’s just what Dr. Ciel requested of us,” Enker said, waving it off. Callie thought he really should loosen up one of these days. “We shouldn’t keep you. You have your mission, after all.”
“Just make sure those new Hero Suits are properly calibrated, you’ll need the energy resistance on full if you want to have a hope of not being affected by whatever Gate’s cooked up,” said Buster Rod G, twirling his staff in his hand idly. “Well, that’s what the doc said, anyway.”
Callie and Marie were adorned in two of the brand new prototype Hero Suits created by Ciel - the ones they wore still vaguely resembled the older Hero Jacket and Runners, but with a much higher-tech look, with protective plating worn on the arms and legs as well as woven into the jacket itself. Callie couldn’t deny these were pretty stylish and fresh. The headset was now basically more of a helmet, covering a much larger amount of the head. The whole set was a lot more functional and protective, while still feeling flexible.
Also, Marie was carrying a whole bag of cans for the rest of the agents to get fully equipped as well, assuming they could actually wear them. Either way, their task was to get to the other agents and try to get them to safety until the forced transformation either wore of or the others could figure out a cure.
Marie nodded, “right. Agent 1, let’s go.” She then dived into the shaft in squid form.
“Right behind you!” Callie grinned, as she dived in.
She had no idea she was going to run into someone who would make this a lot more complicated.
