“Really, now. How thoughtful of them, wanting to hear how we’re doing from us, personally instead of just the heads of our divisions…” She removes the weapon from her shoulder, holding it at her side as she walks toward Marina, and closer to the targets mounted on the far platforms. “I did come down here to practice so I hope you don’t mind if I do that while we talk.”
The Heavy Octoshot traded its greater size and weight and its slow rate of fire for better distance and harder-hitting ink shots. Mimi primes it and pulls her goggles up onto her face. “I could complain to you for hours about dealing with Inkling kids and their shitty parents but you want to know the truth? It’s a hell of a lot better than living down here. I’ve got my own apartment, all the food I could ever want, and I get the private satisfaction of stealing things out from under their privileged little noses.”
She aims the Octoshot at one of the far targets and fires, splattering the wall beside it with ink. Still pretty close. “I can’t speak for everybody up there, but I think most of them are doing pretty well, the ones in disguise anyway. Inklings seem to be slowly warming to Octarians in general, though revealing we’ve been taking resources from them for years might not go over well. Personally, I think we need to resupply a little more aggressively when we can get away with it. The situation in some of the lower Domes is atrocious. Friend of mine had hers recently flood, and she was in terrible shape.”
The armour-clad Octoling felt she could concur with Mimi’s attitude in her comment towards the Octarian superiors, and the insecurity-induced envy she’d initially felt began to churn into something a little closer to admiration. Marina had followed the Agent closer to the shooting-range, but remained a reasonable distance away so as not to interfere as she (surprisingly patiently) listened and observed, stock-still, arms folded, hoping to perhaps pick up skill as well as make mental note of the information.
From this account, life on the surface sounded better than she had anticipated, especially when in comparison to life underground. However, the thought of living close to Inklings still didn’t appeal, whether ‘borrowing’ from them or otherwise. If they were warming to Octarians, then, well, Marina wasn’t warming to them. As for the situation in the lower domes . . . though she didn’t show it, she was a little surprised. Marina had known things further down were bad, but she’d usually been sheltered from hearing just how bad. Taking more from the surface seemed to be a good solution.
“I’ll be sure to mention that. It seems important.” She paused for a moment, eyes wandering over to the area where the Heavy Octoshot’s fire had landed, and waited to see if the wielder would try again. “Though I can’t say for sure she’ll actually try changing anything. Mum probably just expected me to come back and tell her everything was fine, so she could glance over it. Still, that’s all the more reason to complain, in my opinion.”
