CHOSEN ANSWER: Poor Agent 4...

"All I can think is Agent 4 suffering from making that kind of choice... It's horrible..." I grimaced at the thought of her being torn and heartbroken from what she had done. Between Agent 3 and Agent 4, the younger inkling was warmer and kinder to me when I first arrived at Inkopolis Square. After our first meeting, I soon discovered that her enthusiasm and joy were contagious even to the ever-stiff Agent 3, and that her smile sparkled like the stars.

To think that she was so distraught that she ran off without another word... I shuddered at the thought of how she must be feeling right now.

Meanwhile, everyone else was surveying the room, with my eyes catching sight of a black cabinet near the wall that had many dangerous weapons, all concealed behind a glass door. The spectacle sent chills down my spine, and yet I felt a strange nostalgia around it. Was it because these looked like the octarian weapons?

Or... at least how I remembered them?

"What the hell are all these papers for...?" VicVillon's voice echoed down the hall as she shuffled through them on the table. "Jay... Queen... Daniel... Skul too??"

"There's more over here," CallieMacN pointed out next to her, holding a bundle of papers in the air. "But they're about us instead. And some of these guys aren't even in the clubhouse..."

Viantastic bit his bottom lip. "Yeah, I saw a bunch of familiar names in there. Eppy, FishyFisher, ChocolateMilkGamer, even OctoBoy's in there. Almost everyone we know on team Chaos and Order were on those papers. It's like... they were keeping tabs on all of us,"

"Keeping tabs?!" Etcesona shrieked, hands to his head. "Why in the Great Zapfish's name would they need to keep tabs on us?"

In contrast to Etcesona's outburst, Sagaci was thinking carefully. "I can guess that they wanted to know who was on which team for the FinalFest, but that's all I can think of... What do you agents think?"

Agent 3's blue eyes closed as she indulged in deep thought. "If they wanted to know which teams we were in, they could've seen us during the festival itself, since we're all wearing out splatfest tees. But to explain why they know about our history..."

Her lips curled into a frown. "I got nothing except for the fact that our enemies are stalkers," She concluded with a disappointed sigh.

"Hold on a minute," GabrielGaming interrupted our discussion with a grave tone of voice. "I just noticed this now after looking through everything, but I realised something,"

"What is it, Gabriel?" I asked in concern. His lowered voice was enough to make me concerned of what he had discovered.

Gabriel Gaming gestured to the table of white sheets. "We have papers here about ourselves and our lives, but I haven't seen any paper with your names on them..."

"What?" Agent 3's eyes were aghast and so were mine. "GG, are you sure that we're not in there?"

The pink inkling shook his head. "There was nothing about the three of you, even though you're here in the mansion..."

Agent 3 and I exchanged worrisome glances before she quickly stepped in front of the workbench, pilfering through every information sheet she could see. "That can't be right, why aren't we in here?"

In the midst of her searching, she held up a piece of paper and spoke its words out aloud. "'Leave him alone when spying the target, invite them both to the party at the traphouse'... Wait, traphouse?"

"Traphouse? What?" Sagaci echoed her words as I stood up, alert and cautious. "So this..." She began slowly. "This place is called a 'traphouse' ... to the stalkers-slash-killers?"

"Truthfully, there have been a number of traps in this whole house," I noted, thinking back to the previous events of the night as Agent 3 walked back to my side, her back facing the doorway. "Daniel was caught in a trap, Callie and Skul were caught in a trap too... And judging by that big hole..." As I glanced wistfully at the darkness of the hole in the ground, my heart was sinking too. "That pit was the trap that Agent 4 fell through, right?"

Viantastic and Gabriel Gaming could only nod sadly. "We did find her Hero Headphones on the ground, but that was it..."

"I still don't understand why we don't have an information sheet, though..." I continued, searching for a possible reason after all the things that we've been through tonight. "I mean, we got an invite to this place 'at the edge of Inkopolis' and so did you all... So why haven't they been keeping tabs on us?"

"Mayyyybbbbeeeee you were lucky?" VicVillon suggested, though she was unsure. "We splatubers have quite a social life, so maybe they wanted to watch us and every move, but..."

I tilted my head. "That kind of makes sense... The three of us usually don't socialise a lot, so we're not out and about for long periods of time throughout the day..." I considered, internally hoping that it was the real reason why.

Agent 3 looked eager to provide an explanation. "I think it's because-"

SHINKK!!!

"What the-!?"

In a split second, a thick silver chain wrapped itself around Agent 3's waist, tightening on its own without any hands touching it whatsoever. Before any of us could react, a backward yank of the chain forced Agent 3 to fall onto her back, though she managed to recover quickly.

"Agent 3!" I called out to her as my hands reached out to the chain on her waist. In all of my time in the Octarian army, I hoped that I would be able to disassemble it without any weapons, but the structure of this metal... it was nothing that I've ever seen before...

"8, let me help you!" Etcesona hurried to my side, trying to work on the chain the same way I was, though he also soon discovered that it was completely unbreakable.

Viantastic stepped towards the doorway while the other splatubers began to panic. "What's going on, who's doing this?!"

"Out of my way."

"OW!" A hard punch to the purple inkling's face sent him to the ground, his hands massaging his left cheek as Gabriel Gaming rushed to his side. "Vian, are you okay?! How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Who the hell was that?" CallieMacN wondered aloud as everyone's attention were aimed at the darkness spooling from the doorway. In the midst of the panic, the torches in the tunnel had gone out completely, leaving behind nothing but void staring back at us.

Emerging from its blackness was a figure of average stature with pointy ears and a sailor's hat on their head. They had long wavy hair in a yellowish shade that looked sickening, and their eyes glowed scarlet red in the dark...

They... they looked like... FailBoat?

"DANIEL?!" VicVillon screamed, her eyes widened in shock. "You-we-I thought you-WHAT?!"

"Out of my way, you scum." He repeated robotically, ignoring VicVillon completely while yanking on the chain in his hand which was connected to Agent 3. "NO!" I retaliated, holding tightly to my mentor's arm, even though I figured that my efforts were useless.

'FailBoat's red eyes sharpened in anger. "Fine, I'll do it myself then." He uttered in absolute disdain as he pulled on the chain once more, quicker and stronger this time. He was fast enough for me to loosen my grip on Agent 3's arm in a single moment, and powerful enough to force Agent 3 to tumble into the black tunnel. The force exerted on the chain was executed a second time for the extra chain to whack me in the face, forcing me to fall back into Etcesona's hands.

Agent 3... Agent 3!!

Without another word, 'Daniel' walked back into the darkness, the aura surrounding him feeling so malevolent and sinister that none of us dared to move. Once his figure had disappeared, the torches in the tunnel mysteriously lit up one by one, reigniting the tunnel to reveal absolutely nothing.

The air felt so still for that moment that a single cough could break the silence like glass.

And then, it was shattered into a million pieces by the force of screams.

"WHAT THE F*CK WAS THAT?!" CallieMacN screeched, her pink eyes larger than usual. "Was that Daniel, or hell, was it really him?! What the HELL is going on?!"

"Okay, I don't care what's going on, we NEED to get out of here before we lose our minds!!" VicVillon began jogging on the spot as her hands covered her mouth. "That couldn't be... But Daniel... he died! So how-"

"I don't know but the thing is, they're EVERYWHERE!" Viantastic tried to explain things to them, though his eyes still sparked fear. "Clones, or-or doppelgangers of ourselves are all over the place! Fyrus, me, Gab too!"

Meanwhile, Sagaci was still panicking "What are we supposed to do?! Agent 3 just got squidnapped by them!!"

"We chase."

Everyone turned to my rising figure as I stood up again, staring at the tunnel before me. I could not help but keep my eyes on the darkness, where 'Daniel' had disappeared off to.

They took Agent 3... they killed Agent 4...

I was still trying to get a grasp of my emotions ever since coming aboveground, but at the beginning, I already knew one thing was for certain.

No one messes with my inkling family.

"They took my friends," I spoke shakily, clenching my fists. "They're not getting away with this!!"

Without hesitation, I sped into the tunnel, even though the other splatubers were telling me to stop. I didn't care what they said. I didn't care if they followed me or not. I didn't care if they called me insane.

No one messes with Agent 3 and Agent 4. No matter what happens, I wasn't leaving this place without them.

I didn't even care if I had to brave through hell to get them back.

No more...

No one else was going to die on me tonight.

No one .

- E N D of C h a p t e r 4 -