Narrator's POV:

Due to Mikel being the oldest, even by just one or two years, he sometimes felt out of place during the matches in the Inkopolis Tower. He wanted to find a nice job as a Mechanic, since he finished his apprenticeship earlier than expected and wanted a place to work where he could also let off some steam while working.

Grizzlo offered Mikel and his friends a job at his new salmon run gig as the first Testing crew, to earn some pocket money and to see if Mikel was up for the job, since he was still young. They gladly accepted, especially Mikel due to him being the oldest of the group and wanted to have a substantial income in the future. Also, he was like the big brother figure to the three other ones, so he wanted to show off a bit.

Their start was quite slow, due to their inexperience, but soon they were making progress every day. They even got a small lexicon for the larger Salmons, which contained a lot of information about then and they even took their fun to name them. But the problem was that they were not able to create spawn pads so far outside of inkopolis during the energy limitations, which made this job pretty dangerous.

Mikel even worked as a full-time job in fixing the boats and helping to prepare the boats for the upcoming Salmon shifts.

Then one day Grizzlo came in with an actual Octoling! The whole crew was shocked that their boss hired one of their enemies back in the great turf war. His name was Vulkan, he was in need of cash so he volunteered here and Grizzlo thought he could do something about the spawning problems since this guy looked like a scientist and probably had some knowledge about the octarian technology. He then invented the "Lifebelt Respawn" which we know today.

With this the groups work went much smoother and Grizzlo's business could be opened to the public. Vulkan was just outstanding, he always brought back far more golden eggs as the whole team together and Mikel began looking up onto him, since he wanted to be one of the best workers to show Grizzlo his appreciation for the job.

Then the problems started happening. Vulkan literary ignored the team every morning when he came in, worked just for himself and got pissed if anyone got too close to him. He didn't even stop from threatening his co-workers or Grizzlo himself, which happened when Mikel tried to sneak on his boat to watch him working. This caused Mikel's admiration to turn into pure contempt since his team was also his family and they were his two brothers and his sister.

During that time Grizzlo started to develop SUPER ABILITY CANS, which each contained a single use turf war special, to help his workers catching up with Vulkan and making their job a little bit easier.

But one fateful night Mikel was still working on the motor of a boat which had suffered some severe damage from one of those steelheads, he saw that a boat was missing, while he was searching for it in Grizzlo's harbor it came back and none other than Vulkan jumped out of it holding some sort of metal suitcase in his hands.

Mikel confronted him what he was doing but Vulkan just told him he had some official business from Grizzlo he needed to take care of. Mikel would've liked to follow him but the boat was loaded with salmon eggs so he had to take them into the company before they got damaged.

The next day Mikel came earlier than normal and told Grizzlo what happened during the night. As great as the haul was, both of them were concerned about what happened with Vulkan, while the rest of his team arrived.

Then Vulkan arrived. He had a white trench coat and some strange glasses. Grizzlo didn't want our talk to get interrupted and told Vulkan "Get to work!". He then just stared at Grizzlo for a while.

After a short time of silence, the team started wondering what's wrong with Vulkan but then it happened so fast they couldn't even react. He grabbed Grizzlo with ease and threw him into the direction of Mikel and his team, which laid on the floor to avoid colliding with Grizzlo.

As they got up the saw Vulkan coming out of Grizzlo's personal quarters, carrying all of the SUPER ABILITY CANS. Mikel wanted to shout at Vulkan for his behavior, but he just opened a BOMB RUSH CAN and started throwing bombs at his co-workers.

Basti couldn't react fast enough and got splatted by two bombs, Marco grabbed the shocked Isa and threw her away while another bomb exploded near his head knocking him out and taking away his right eye. After seeing Basti killed and Marco wounded, Mikel ran to Vulkan in full rage, knocking away a bomb with his right hand which in return exploded a little delayed taking the two last fingers away from his right hand. As he reached Vulkan, Mikel took a full swing with his left hand at him, but Vulkan simply kicked Mikel off to the other end of the room and ran off, while Grizzlo had been watching the whole disaster in fear.

After the shocking events Grizzlo's company got temporarily closed, but reopened after the problems with the police were over. Isa barely spoke a word with anyone even when Marco tried to help her. But over time it she opened up more to him again and slowly regained her cheerful self.

Mikel instead was plagued by guilt due to not checking more into Vulkan's activities the day before. He could't look into the eyes of his Uncle or his Aunt let alone seeing Marco or even Isa. It felt for him like he murdered Basti by himself. He felt weak, he felt like he was responsible for letting this happen to his family.

When such a tragedy happens, then rumors are not far away. Even though the articles went down in the news people were telling that Basti got murdered and since there was no trail of Vulkan, people often put Mikel into the role of the murderer. The rumor became so persistent, that Mikel couldn't even go shopping without being feared. But with no trace of Vulkan there was nothing there to proof his innocence.

Due to the help of his friend Spyke, which Mikel knew from the old inkopolis plaza back in the day, he found a small shack outside at the outskirts of Inkopolis near the Octo Canyon. It even had elextricity and water. Also the people that lived there were mostly workers from Inkopolis that didn't give much about rumours.

Besides a bar named "Tired Harbor" and a grocery store there weren't any major buildings there so I was mostly quiet. On the downside everything else someone wants to buy needs to be bought in Inkopolis.

Since this proved to be a problem for Mikel he bought some necessities through Marco and clothes etc. from Spyke. As for money Grizzlo switched his working hours as a mechanic to nightshift so he could travel to his workplace during the night.

But to keep himself busy, being prepared for his next encounter with Vulkan and to let out his anger on the salmons that took one of his former best friends, and later little brother Mikel began to do "Nigtshift Salmon Runs".

More than once Grizzlo had to revive Mikel during his first few runs. But then he got better and even stronger. He began using his Roller only in the right hand so he could use his splattershot on the left to be prepared for all out fights. Since he was not much of a sharp shooter he often missed some shots, but on the contrary he could take in nearly three times more hits than normal inklings, due to being under constant attack from all those salmons. Later in his career Grizzlo ordered him a rare custom weapon, the "Dual Blaster Shotgun" or for short the "GS Grizzlo-Shotter", which took down even Griller with a double-shot, he also gave him a grappling hook for fly fishes and a sledgehammer for the smaller armored Salmons. As time went by he even did Mothership Runs solo, started taking out Chohoks with his bare hands and even giving Steel Heads a stomach ache when he kicked into their belly with full force. But that wasn't enough, he didn't train to get as good as Vulkan, no he trained to obliterate Vulkan and Grizzlo needed the extra Golden eggs to keep his business running, since the new employees only got two SUPER ABILITY CANS for their shift while Mikel used none. There was also the problem that Salmons were overpopulating, so there was always work.

Every weekend he went into the "Tired Harbor" with Grizzlo and sometimes Marco joined them for a few glasses.

This went on for 10 years, until..................