A/N: this is in a different universe than Extinction Mystery

A yellow inkling girl has just reached some ancient ruins that were located in a heavily forested area. She wiped her forehead and let out a sigh, before groaning "You said it would take an hour to reach this place, not four! Do you have any idea how hungry I am right now?" into her hero headset. "Not to mention how tired too..." she muttered after a moment. She had her preffered weapons, hero duelies, holstered by her sides with a belt that wasn't part of her hero gear, a full ink tank and a small bag slung over behind her back.

"It would take only an hour. If you didn't fall unconscious every few minutes, Agent Snore." a voice replied in an annoyed tone. "Do you have a sleeping disorder or something?"

"No I don't, Stinky! And it's Pumi, not snore!" Pumi spat, kicking a nearby rock.

"You're Agent Snore until you stop falling asleep! Also stop calling me stinky, or-"

"Or what? We've already found out I'm the stronger one."

"And that you'll fall asleep EVEN DURING A FIGHT!"

"WELL I'M SORRY, I GUESS YOU WERE TOO BORING TO KEEP ME AWAKE!"

"OH REALL- hey! It's still my turn!" Stinky was interrupted by the microphone being taken away from her.

"Shut it! Both of you!" a commanding voice ordered, followed by a long moment of silence. "Thank you. Ahem. Agent Three, your turn is now over. No buts! And you agent Four-"

"My name's Pumi and not a number, thank you very much!"

"Don't interrupt me again." the voice said in a chilling tone.

"I won't, Miss Marie." Pumi replied quietly.

"We'll have a talk after you come back. But for now, focus on the mission."

"Uh, what were the objectives again?" Pumi asked with embarassment. A sigh could be heard over the headset.

"You have to check the ruins for any octarian activity and bring back a zapfish if you find one there." Marie reminded.

"Oh... cool. And if I find nothing I can go back, right?"

"Obviously!" Three replied.

"Don't shout Three... my ears would really appreciate that... actually, why don't you go help Gramps?" Marie said, her voice quieter because she wasn't talking into the microphone.

A groaned "Fine." could be heard, followed by footsteps and a loud crash and sound of furniture falling over, accompanied by a barrage of smaller thuds, clings and clangs.

"Holy Zapfish, Three!" Marie yelled.

"It's not my fault!" Three yelled back.

Pumi tried to not laugh, which failed spectacularly. Soon she was on the ground holding her sides, her eyes watered from her uproarious laughter. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be able to answer Marie, who was demanding an explanation for Pumi's sudden fit of laughter. Minutes passed before Pumi finally stopped. She wiped a few tears away from her eyes asked "Did Stinky REALLY fall for one my prank traps?" still chuckling a bit.

"So, your prank is the reason why the cabin is now a junkyard?!" Marie demanded, raising her tone.

Pumi remained silent. After a moment she chuckled nervously and replied "Mmmmaaaybe...? Uh, I seem to be losing signal, uh, cya after the mission."

"Don't you even da-" Marie began, but Pumi shut off her headset before she could finish. Pumi sighed and looked around. She was in the middle of a small clearing, surrounded from all sides by an army of trees and bushes, behind which she could an entrance to some kind of ancient structure. The sky was cloudless and the sun was on its journey to set behind the horizon.

"Guess I'll be coming back at night... Cod damnit..." Pumi thought to herself and sighed before continuing to move forward at a moderate speed, heading for the entrance. Upon entering she focused for a moment, her tentacles starting to emit a bright yellow luminescent light that was reaching about two meters ahead of her. Her tentacles glowed nearly two times brighter than tentacles of an average inkling, being in the upper limits possible for inklings, but not as brightly tentacles of an average octoling or octarian.

The ruins seemed to be built out of a mix of stone, metals and something similar to concrete, with visible rib-like arches supporting the walls and ceiling at even distances apart, with something in the middle of each gap between the 'ribs', which reminded Pumi of lights she saw at Walleye Warehouse so many times. Pumi was amazed at how well preserved the ruins were, showing very little signs of damage and even having inscriptions in language unknown to her appearing to be still in a readable condition. The ruins were rumoured to have been built by a long dead civilisation, older than even the oldest known oceanic civilisation. A popular theory states that the ruins predate the mollusc era, which is often swept under the rug by scientific community. Pumi shook off her desire to explore a bit and pressed forward, determined to finish her mission, but a part of her wondered about the purpose of these ruins and who could've built them.

She went deeper into the ruins, following the corridor for almost ten minutes before she stumbled upon a set of open airlocks, behind which the corridor split into three more. "Weren't these supposed to be closed?" Pumi pondered, remembering a documentary which ended with the ruins being sealed off again. And yet, the airlocks were open. Instinctively, Pumi unholstered her dualies and aimed down the corridor, slowly advancing forward a moment later. Around the middle of the airlocks she saw a skeleton lying against a wall, wearing few remains of some kind of clothing. "Sup! Glad I can finally meet you in person my grinning friend." Pumi said out loud to the skeleton, chuckling lightly. "Hmm. This probably is the only time I'll have a chance like this..." she muttered to herself. She set her dualies aside, whipped out her phone from the bag she was carrying and snapped a few photos of the skeleton. She was about to put her phone away, but stopped at a sudden idea. She crouched by the skeleton and took a selfie with it, grinning widely. "Me and my Skelly, the grinning duo." Pumi chuckled to herself, put away her phone, grabbed her dualies and continued her advance forward.

She ignored any and all turns as the last thing she wanted was getting lost, however fighting off the curiosity was a difficult task. After about ten minutes of walking she found an entrance to a large room, from which a faint glow could be seen. Pumi's tentacles stopped glowing as she carefully inched to the entrance and peeked inside. Aside from some skeletons and what looked like rusted ink guns without ink containers, she could see a pair of octotroopers and an octoling crouching over something. "Octo explorers? That's a first." Pumi thought to herself. "I wonder what they're looking at... wait wha- why is it getting brighter?!" she realised and looked around. Some of the things on the ceiling were brought to life, just enough to brighten the corridors. "Those really were lamps!" she quickly ran out of the entrance and hid behind the wall. She sighed, thinking that she wasn't heard or spotted, but a moment later she could hear footsteps, which seemed to be getting closer. "Crap." The steps echoed through the corridor, making it hard to tell which way they were coming from. With her dualies at the ready, Pumi checked her surroundings.

She was confused after spotting nothing and no-one, deciding to peek back into the room after a short moment. She walked back over to the entrance and peeked in, just to have the octoling she saw earlier to walk into her. "Fuck!" her mind shouted. Without a second thought she kicked the octoling in the stomach and jumped back. The octoling stumbled backwards, almost falling over. He looked at Pumi with an expression of shock on his face. "He doesn't have a weapon? No need to splat him then. Knockout should be enough." Pumi though as she quickly holstered her dualies and took a boxing stance, getting a confused look from the octoling. Pumi faked an attack, making the octoling back away in haste, tripping over. He reached out for anything to use as a weapon, managing to grab one of the rusted weapons. Getting up, he raised the weapon like a bat and anticipated Pumi's next move.

Neither of them moved for a few moments. The octoling had a height advantage over Pumi, but she didn't care - she took on beaten bigger and tougher opponents before. She faked another attack, and another, closer one, then another one, aiming to confuse the octoling, who swung the weapon like a bat at her last fake attack, exposing himself for a moment. "Bingo!" Pumi though and closed the distance. She peppered the octoling with punches, gut, face, jaw, stomach, while keeping her guard up and blocking his any attempts at retaliation. Pumi backed off before kicking the octoling again, much harder, causing him to drop the weapon and fall over. Pumi was about to continue her boxing training session, but she finally noticed that something was off. Alongside not having any sort of weapon, the octoling was wearing casual clothes instead of octarian uniform.

"What is thi-" her thought was interrupted by a heavy blow from behind. To shock of the attacker, she shrugged it off as if it was nothing. Pumi quickly turned around on her heel and immediately went into another boxing stance, but didn't do anything beyond that, shocked at what she saw. The attacker was an inkling, holding one of the rusted weapons like a bat and wearing what could be described as stereotypical archaeologist clothes. The inkling wore an expression that was a mishmash of shock, fear and anger on their face. "Oh shit. Oh fuck ,fuck, fuck, FUCK! They're researchers!" Pumi's mind screamed.

"Who the fuck are you?!" the inkling demanded, shifting the weapon for another swing.

"Uh, no one! Wrong number, ehehe... sorry!" Pumi replied and pushed the inkling aside, bolting for the exit. The inkling remained in the room, dropping the weapon and crouching down by the beaten octoling. 

"Why didn't you two help him?!" the inkling shouted at the two octotroopers that were shaking in a corner.

"W-we didn't w-want her to p-p-pull out her g-guns." one of the octotroopers replied.

Three days later

"Sooo, you're still mad about the prank?" Pumi asked, chuckling slightly.

"You literally ruined the cabin! Gramps almost had a heart attack when saw the aftermath of your prank!" Marie exclaimed, her tone full of anger.

"Ok, ok, I overdid the prank. Maybe over engineered it a bit too... but hey! Now I'm building a practice course for everyone, so it's all good, right?" Pumi said, grinning widely at her last words.

"Agent 4 you're..." Marie began, but just then Pumi fell asleep. "...you're unbelievable..." she sighed.