Agent 3 was confused when he woke up.

Generally, you were supposed to wake up in the same bed you fell asleep in.

Also, generally, your phone wasn't supposed to turn into the 2 year old model you had replaced, you weren't supposed to have had all your clothes replaced with the ones you owned 2 years ago, the date and time on everything that displayed the date and time wasn't supposed to have been set back to 2 years ago, and your mom wasn't supposed to be calling you down for breakfast when you moved out 2 years ago.

If Agent 3 wasn't a skeptical sort, he might have had to assume he'd gone back in time to 2 years ago.

After a few hours of waiting for the cameras to come out, Agent 3 ran out of skepticism and had to accept-

No wait! He'd found a bit more!

Whipping out his old phone and spending half a minute figuring out how the old interface worked, he called a friend

"Hey, this is Marie of the Squid Sisters, who's this?"

"Is Callie trying to pull a time travel prank on me?"

"… You know if that one guy hadn't asked for my sweat that one time that'd probably be the weirdest thing anyone's ever asked me."

"Is that a no then?"

"How'd you get my number?"

Agent 3 hung up and ran a hand over his face. Marie could be mischievous when she wanted to but she was generally reliable enough to let you know when Callie was up to something if you asked. If this wasn't one of the few times she'd decided to playing along with Callie's antics and she really didn't remember him, that meant he had to accept he was back 2 years in the past. Somehow.

"Oh, my aching tentacles…"

Everyone thought about going back in time, usually to undo that embarrassing thing you did last week. You know what I'm talking about, that thing you did in public, and when you looked around to see if anyone saw you it looked like no one saw but you were never sure. I saw what you did. I saw and I'm judging you.

Anyways the point is no one really appreciates how much of a hassle time travel is.

Every extended talk with the family was a game of "Try to act like you remember what was happening this random day 2 years ago", with an occasional bonus round of "Try to remember what I'm not supposed to know yet". Seeing as he hadn't moved out yet he didn't make any of the house rules and thus couldn't drink milk out of the gallon anymore, something he only remembered after his dad had yelled at him for drinking milk out of the gallon. He had chores again, which were always worse when someone else told you to do them. None of his friends knew who he was, that was annoying. In about two weeks DJ Octavio was going to steal the Great Zapfish, threatening to plunge the Inklings into a power crisis if someone didn't steal it back.

Admittedly that last one was a problem specific to Agent 3 but the point stood.

Still, it wouldn't be wrong to say that Time travel presented a good opportunity to "Set Right What Once Went Wrong" and all that good stuff. Agent 3 was fully planning on taking advantage of the situation to ensure the best-case scenario. Well, the better case scenario anyways, the way things went last time worked out really well all things considered.

But, as Agent 3 stayed up past midnight for the 3rd time in a row trying to figure out how he'd get that better case scenario, he really wished it didn't take so much work.

The first time he'd moved out it'd taken him a while. As cool and confident as he liked to look, he could admit that way back when he was 14 the first time (and boy was it weird having to remember he wasn't 16 anymore) the task had seemed daunting enough that he was so nervous about leaving the nest that'd he dragged his feet for a few days.

Not this time, he'd packed up and left as soon as he'd managed to convinced his parents he had enough money to get an apartment. He didn't, but he could slum it until he did. It's not that he didn't love his parents, he really did, it's just that there was that whole business of fighting the Octarian menace he had to think about. Also, if he wanted to drink milk out of the gallon, he would drink milk out of the gallon, he would not be stopped.

So once more he found himself at Inkopolis Plaza, drinking a coffee in that café he'd always told himself he'd visit but never had. It was surreal seeing the Plaza in its Heyday again. When Inkopolis Square had been renovated a lot of inklings had left the plaza, not enough to tank the place, but enough that the difference had been noticeable.

"Except I didn't notice it, huh?" Agent 3 mused internally. "I never realized how many people left before. Guess Agent 4 wasn't completely wrong about the Square."

light arguments between 3 and 4 was a common occurrence, not that 3 had anything against the squirt, she was just a bit too friendly and his natural instinct towards people like that was to snark at them, and she'd taken to snarking back. Occasionally she'd sing the praises of Inkopolis Square, saying something or other about how it was "the best place in Inkopolis" purely to wind him up. She was wrong of course, but maybe she wasn't 100% wrong. Just like 90% wrong.

(and only 1% went to the population thing, the other 9% came from the fact that Crusty Sean's food was legit.)

Agent 3 went to take a sip of his coffee only to find it empty, and so stood and went for the door. He walked into the plaza, chucked his coffee cup into a nearby trash can, and looked up at the Great Zapfish still coiled around Inkopolis Tower.

"That ain't gonna last much longer…"

He was pretty sure he still had a day or two before DJ Octavio would swipe the Great Zapfish. (and how exactly Octavio managed that without anyone noticing Agent 3 still didn't understand). If he recalled correctly, Once the Zapfish was stolen Cap'n Cuttlefish would spend maybe two days investigating the theft before declaring it the work of the Octarians (He was cracked in an eccentric old guy kinda way, but not quite cracked enough to blame an entire species with no proof). Then it'd take another two before he'd start scouting for an agent, since he'd try to get Callie and Marie to get the Zapfish back first (and they'd do what they could, but it was hard to juggle being pop stars and secret agents).

Best case scenario, he had about 6 days before the point when he'd originally became Agent 3. Doing exactly what you did the last time defeated the purpose of going back in time, so he wasn't waiting the full six days. Joining up with the Splatoon when Cap'n Cuttlefish tried to recruit Callie and Marie was a better option, he joined quicker and didn't mess up the events to badly, which meant less possibility of him causing some kind of paradox, assuming time paradoxes was a real thing. But he still didn't want to wait that long though. Yeah stopping Ocavio's plans out of the goodness of his heart was all well and good, but he kinda had to build up the life he'd had before time traveling and getting the zapfish back took a while. The faster he could get that out of the way the better.

Realistically, the best thing for him to do was to stop the theft from ever happening. He could stake out the tower and intercept DJ Octavio the moment he saw him. Heck he could even try and contact Marina. He probably couldn't convince her to defect early but if he told her he knew about the Octoling's plans she'd probably warn Octavio and that might get him to cancel the whole thing. Issue with that plan was…

He needed to fight DJ Octavio so the Octolings could hear the Calamari Inkantation. Marina needed to hear the Inkantation so she'd defect from the Octarians and meet Pearl. Agent 4 wouldn't become Agent 4 if Octavio didn't break loose and steal the Zapfish again. Furthermore, if he caused Octavio to change his plans, he might not send a group of Octos, including Agent 8, out to fight him and Cap'n Cuttlefish. If Agent 8 didn't fight him and the Cap'n, she wouldn't end up in the DeepSea Metro and she wouldn't defeat Commander Tartar.

And if Agent 8 didn't do that, the whole world was kinda boned wasn't it? So yeah, stopping the theft wasn't an option. That was definitely the main reason he couldn't stop the theft. Actual world destruction definitely wasn't taking a back seat in Agent 3's head to him being worried that he might lose the Cap'n, Callie, Marie, Agent 4, Pearl, and Marina as friends. The fact that Agent 8 was his future girlfriend wasn't coloring his decision to not stop the theft of the Inkling's primary power source at all.

He'd have to find some kind of compromise, something that let him get into the action faster with out risking the future things that needed to happen.

"'till I figure out what to do though, May as well do some turf wars."

Agent 3 wasn't exactly sure what to do about the future, but he was pretty sure it'd be easier to deal with if he actually had money.