Chapter Text
“Training?” Meagan raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what our practices are for?”
Four shrugged. They were sitting in a small cafe in the Square, having just finished another practice session. Eight had needed to go to Pearl and Marina’s right afterwards—something about the upcoming wedding—and so Four had taken the opportunity to invite Meagan and Leo out to coffee. “I mean, yeah, but those aren’t as great for building up fine technical skills. You wanna get better, don’t you? Well, this is how you’re gonna do that.”
Leo rubbed his chin. “So, what does this really entail? One-on-one matches against you and Eight?”
“Nah, not us. I’ve got the perfect person to train you. She’s a good friend of mine. You’ll love her.” Four paused. “Well, no, you probably won’t, but trust me—she’s the best trainer you’ll ever have.”
Meagan and Leo exchanged a glance, and then Meagan tentatively asked, “Who… is it, exactly?”
Four smirked. “You’ll find out.”
Three eyed the two inklings before her: a girl wearing sunglasses on her forehead who was lugging around a slosher and a bad attitude, and a boy with that stupid-looking bowl tentacle cut who couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting with his charger. She decided to call them Slosher and Charger. They both looked to be in their early twenties, which made things slightly awkward for Three, since she was only eighteen, but she was just gonna look past that. These were presumably Four’s former classmates, and she had skipped a grade, so it made sense that they would be a bit older.
“This is who Lynn set up to train us?” the girl whispered (poorly) to her friend. “She barely looks sixteen.”
Three could feel a blood vessel swelling.
The boy whispered something back to her, but he was actually a halfway decent whisperer, so Three didn’t manage to catch it.
“Alright, chucklefucks, listen up,” Three barked, injecting as much authority into her voice as possible. “Just because Four’s paying me by the hour doesn’t mean that I wanna waste more time here than I have to.”
“Why do you call Lynn ‘Four?’” Slosher asked. “Eight does it too. It’s weird, and neither of them will give me a straight answer.”
“Okay, rule one,” Three said, “no asking me any personal questions.”
Slosher frowned. “I don’t think that qualifies as a—”
“Shut up,” Three interrupted. “So anyway. In order to assess your skill levels, I’m going to have to fight each of you separately to start things off. If you’re not already synced to that spawn point”—she gestured at the spawn at the other side of the practice arena—“then go do that right now.” Neither of them moved. “Great. So which one of you wants to go first?”
They looked at each other, then back to Three, before Charger said, “U-uh…”
“Thanks for volunteering. You stay here. Slosher, go to the sidelines and watch. This shouldn’t take long.”
Slosher gave her a nasty look. “My name is Meagan, you know.”
“Cool,” Three said. “Want a medal or something? We’re not here to chat.”
“How on Earth is Lynn your friend?” Charger asked, looking slightly uncomfortable.
“What did I say about personal questions? Please, just go to your spawn. We’ll start in ten seconds.”
The seconds passed agonizingly slowly; Three really just wanted to get into things. She actually enjoyed talking about battle techniques and stuff, so she thought this could be fun, but so far she’d just been… conversing. Uegh.
Eventually, the tenth second ticked by. Three shouted out to start, and took off across the battlefield, alternating between swimming through her ink and jumping out to shoot more before falling right back in again. Her feet never touched the ground. She quickly caught sight of Charger, who was on one of the practice arena’s tall tower-like battlements. He knew he didn’t need to push any ground, so he was just camping the best strategic position on the map; smart. Not enough, obviously, but smart.
He was using the Firefin, which meant he’d probably put up a splash wall once he figured out which way she was coming from. A feint, then. She hadn’t caught if he was using a scope or not—likely, he was proficient with both, and switched as a counter pick—but it honestly probably wouldn’t matter.
Three instinctually leaned to the side as his first shot flew over her shoulder, then lobbed a burst bomb up at him to get the sights off of her long enough to ink up the side of the platform and begin climbing. Just as she’d expected, Charger placed a splash wall right in front of where Three would emerge, so instead of swimming straight up, she jumped left off of the wall at the last moment, twisting around in the air to fire at him from her unexpected angle as she fell. To his credit, he reacted quickly enough to fire off a shot that was at least in Three’s vicinity, but she didn’t even have to dodge as she nailed him with three perfectly-placed shots. He exploded into ink, and Three stuck the landing.
“What the fuck was that,” Slosher said from the sidelines.
Three shrugged. “Air control.”
A few seconds later, Charger respawned. “Okay. I think I understand why Lynn picked you.”
“Great. Slosher, you’re up. Ten seconds.”
She blinked. “I—okay.”
They took their positions at opposite ends of the field, and then Three was off, taking a different route than previously. But either Slosher expected her to change things up, or hadn’t bothered paying attention, because she was just charging down the middle, inking her way along. Her movement, at least, was fairly robust, but she didn’t seem to be very situationally aware. Three easily maneuvered around behind her and began firing.
But when her first glob of ink splashed against the back of Slosher’s head, she immediately reacted with a 180 spin, throwing a wave of ink towards Three. It managed to absorb the remainder of Three’s shots, and she was forced to hop back a bit to dodge the fringe of the spray. Slosher immediately began a fierce assault, flinging her ink with a lot of strength and significantly less accuracy. She seemed to be focused on hindering Three’s visibility more than anything else, but, to her credit, it was working; it was hard to pinpoint her exact position through the hail of ink, much less track her with her heroshot.
So instead, Three began throwing burst bombs through gaps in her assault. She danced through her ink to avoid the slosher’s spray, and popped up to lob a bomb whenever it was a good time, and after about four, she had apparently clipped Slosher enough that she splatted, the remaining ink from her last swing pattering posthumously to the ground.
She respawned shortly, shaking out her head. “How on Earth do you dodge like that? And was that four fucking burst bombs in a row?” she asked indignantly. “The hell’s your ink capacity?!”
Three smirked. “First tip of the day: you never know how much ink your opponent’s got in the tank.”
“Jeez,” Charger mumbled. “I thought Lynn had an abnormal capacity, but yours is insane.”
“The inc sac’s just a muscle,” Three said. “Train it enough, and you can start dishing out a ton of ink with minimal recovery time. Don’t they teach you that at Inkblot?”
“Yeah, but the amount of time you would have to spend battling for that kind of output…” Slosher trailed off, narrowing her eyes at Three. “Who are you?”
Three glared at her. “This is the last time I’m gonna say it: No. Personal. Questions. Okay?”
Slosher rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything.
“Alright. First, Charger: you’re positioning’s pretty good, and you seem to be a good strategizer, but you’re aiming wrong.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been doing some target practice in my free time, but—
“Not what I’m talking about,” Three interrupted. “I mean, yeah, your technical aim and reflexes could use some work too, but I’m talking theoretical aim. In our match, you were aiming at the splash wall, expecting me to come up from there. Most opponents probably will, but you should be aiming off to the side.”
“I seriously doubt that anyone would pull a stunt like you did in a tournament setting,” Slosher argued. “Even if it works out, it puts you way out of position.”
Three shook her head. “You’re thinking too small. Consider my feint to be someone coming at you from a side path, or climbing over cover instead of going around it. If you were already aiming at the unexpected path, not only would you have had a better chance of hitting me, but if I really had come up the way you expected, you would have had plenty of time to quickly switch your aim to me and take me out, since the splash wall gives you extra leeway. That way, you cover both options instead of just one. Get it?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so?”
“Great. And now Slosher.”
“Meagan.”
“Slosher. Your fighting style is super fucking weird, which is a point in your favor; you’ll definitely be able to catch people off guard with it. But if they can adapt to it, you’re sunk. As soon as I landed that first burst bomb, you should have dropped a suction down and retreated to a better position. Not just keep at it and hope I fuck up.”
“Suctions are so slow, though,” Slosher countered. “You would’ve just shot me as I swam away.”
“That whole hallway was covered in your ink,” Three said. “You had escape options fucking everywhere—one of them would’ve worked. Maybe it’s zigzag behind you, maybe it’s climb a wall; hell, maybe you just swim towards them and slosher them in the face, I don’t know. Combine that with a bomb that forces your opponent to move, and the worst you’ll get is a trade, as long as you move around right. You can’t play as aggressively as you do without knowing how to escape the shitty situations that ends up putting you in.”
She crossed her arms. “I suppose. So, what now? More of that?”
“Nah. We’re just going to move into an infinite time skirmish, two on one. I’ll switch weapons every so often to keep things fresh. It’ll build your teamwork as well as your individual skills.” She threw her hero shot into her bag and took out the hero roller, flicking it a couple times as a test. It’d been forever since she’d used this thing. She’d had to strip all the mods off, too, so that it functioned like the replicas, and the extra lightness would take a few moments to get used to. “Hey, how about a game. For each time you two can splat me, I’ll let you ask me one personal question.”
“What kind of incentive is that?” Slosher asked.
“I don’t know, Meg,” Charger said. “I’ve got a few in mind I’d like to ask.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Three quipped, already walking off to her spawn. “I don’t plan to go easy on you.”
Meagan and Leo left their first training session with sore muscles, respawn nausea, and no new information about the girl training them, not even a name.
The week went by frighteningly fast from Eight’s perspective—before she knew it, she and the rest of Fresh Ink were waiting in their locker room in the stadium.
“Nervous?” Four asked, taking a seat on the bench next to her.
Eight shrugged, fiddling with the gas mask that covered the lower half of her face. “A little. It’s silly, though. I know I’m plenty good enough.”
“It’s weird like that,” Four said. “I don’t think there’s a squid on this planet that doesn’t get nervous at times like these.”
“Yeah.” Eight sighed. “I just hope the crowds don’t get to me. I don’t want to do worse because of stage fright. Arena fright?”
“Stadium fright?” Four offered.
“That’s a good one.”
“Well.” Four smiled. “I think you’ll do great.”
Eight smiled back. “I hope so.”
Eight jumped over a roller, dropped a splat bomb, fell into her ink, wove between shots, and popped up to shoot the N-Zap she was fighting right in the face. The roller behind her managed to evade her bomb, but she heard the sound of Leo’s gun go off, no doubt catching him out of his dodge. Meanwhile, Eight handsprung over an enemy charger shot, threading her movements in and out of cover until she was on top of the E-Liter. She splatted him, too, and then turned around as Four clobbered the remaining enemy to death with her brush.
Meagan, with the Rainmaker on her back, inked the podium with one powerful hurl of her slosher and climbed up, slamming the Rainmaker down hard. The buzzer rang out.
“And that’s game!” called one of the commentators.
“A decisive victory for team Fresh Ink,” said the other. “They really chose their new member well! We’ll see how she and the rest of them hold up further down the bracket, but that was one bold entrance into the quarterfinals.”
Eight wiped some stray ink off her cheek and waved up at the stands. Three was up there somewhere, but who knew where—there were so many people! And, to be honest, she was loving the attention. Utterly destroying her opponents was a lot more fun with an audience! She had no idea why she’d been so nervous before; this was gonna be fun!
Four cursed as she respawned, rubbing at her side where she’d just gotten obliterated by a blaster. The phantom pains from one-hit kills were always the worst.
They’d made it to the finals—Tower Control on Manta Maria—without too much trouble, but the team they were up against, the Splat Dragons, weren’t fooling around. The score had been going back and forth all game, the tower changing hands constantly and each team just barely managing to make it further than the other each time they seized control. The enemy had managed to push the tower to eight points remaining, but Meagan had pulled off a double kill and reclaimed the tower just before the clock ran out, and now they were pushing overtime to its limit. Four checked the map for a potential superjump, but cursed as she saw Meagan’s icon get x-ed out right as she did. Too dangerous; she’d just have to swim for it.
She took off down the center of the map as quickly as she could, chasing after the tower. The announcers’ voices were muffled through the ink, but she thought she heard something about Leo taking out the blaster that had just splatted her. So that was good. There he was now, actually, up on the raised drawbridge. Oh, and there was the enemy jet squelcher on the bridge behind him, and—oof. Goodbye, Leo.
So that just left Eight on the tower, and Four back here. And they needed to get to seven points remaining before Eight got splatted if they wanted to win. Hoo. Okay. They could pull this off.
The jet squelcher had crept around a flank route in order to get behind Leo, which put her, conveniently, right in Four’s path. She popped out of her ink, and just as the squelcher noticed her, she hurled an autobomb as hard as she could right at the girl’s head. It smashed into her nose with a satisfying clonk, and she let out a curse, clutching her free hand to her bruised face. Four took advantage of the opportunity to run up and sweep out her legs with the head of her brush, just like Three had done to her back in that grocery store a week ago. The girl collapsed to the ground just as the autobomb began vibrating, and a second later, she went up in ink.
“Lynn coming out of spawn hot, downing Shawna with a ingenuitive combo. She’s really showing off her improvisational style today,” called one of the commentators.
“Indeed, indeed,” said the other. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone use an autobomb as a blunt projectile before, but that metal casing has gotta hurt.”
Four took off towards the cart. Two more enemies to deal with, and they were home free.
“Oh! And the mysterious newcomer Eight seems to have gotten out of the slump she found herself in during the fist half of the match, splatting Lucas without a scratch.”
Sorry—one more enemy to deal with.
Another few seconds, and the cart was in sight. Eight was standing on the front, head trained on the various platforms newly-spawned enemies could use to attack. Unfortunately, this meant she couldn’t see the roller that was creeping up behind her.
“Eight!” Four shouted, running forward. No way she’d make it in time, though. “Behind you!”
Eight turned, but the roller was already on its way down. It was over. They’d been so close, too!
And then Eight dropped her gun, reached out, and grabbed the roller by the shaft, inches from her face. She looked her opponent right in the eye, and spread her mouth into a devious smirk. Ink droplets dripped down onto her tentacles from the roller’s head, but she ignored them, forming a splat bomb in her hand. The enemy could only watch, futilely trying to wrench his weapon out of Eight’s iron grip, as the bomb fell to the ground, pulsated for a brief second, and exploded. The tower crawled forward the few remaining feet, and the buzzer sounded.
“And with that astounding play, Fresh Ink just barely takes it over the Splat Dragons! What an intense match!”
“Wow! Talk about a finale, people!”
As the commentators kept on commentating, Four just smiled, leaning on her inkbrush and breathing heavily. God, her hearts felt like they were about to explode.
She needed some ice cream.
“FUCK yeah!” Three screeched, jumping up in her chair and throwing her fist in the air. “Get it, Eight! That’s how ya fucking do it! Suck my DICK, Splat Dragons!”
The manta ray sitting next to her, who happened to be wearing a Splat Dragons t-shirt, gave her a nasty look. “Uh, do you mind?”
Three stared at him for a second with a completely blank expression before grabbing her empty popcorn tub, tossing it in the air, and kicking the everloving shit out of it in a jumping round-house. “FUCK ‘EM UP, EIGHT! YEAAAAAH!! GET DUNKED ON, BITCHES!”
The popcorn tub sailed through the air and smacked a security squid in the back of the head, prompting him to turn around and glare up at her. Shit. Well, this was awkward. Not really knowing what else to do, Three flipped him off with both hands.
She met up with Four and Eight outside, ten minutes later, after being escorted out of the stadium.
Four was sitting at a table in the Square, enjoying some nice, refreshing ice cream with Eight and Three, who were holding hands under the table and thinking they were being sneaky about it, which they weren’t. Losers.
“Tell you what, Eight,” Four said, taking a lick out of her delicious rocky road ice cream. “I sure am glad we’ve got you now instead of Ricky.”
“Who’s Ricky?” Three asked.
“The teammate I replaced,” Eight explained. “Never met him, actually.”
“Ricky Danalov. We were friends in high school. He was kind of a jerk, but it took me a while to realize that.”
“Wait.” Three froze. “Danalov?”
“Yeah,” Four said. “Do you know him?”
“I know his brother,” Three mumbled. “From work.”
“You’re kidding,” Four said.
“I wish. His brother’s an even bigger jerk, just so you know.”
Eight giggled into her hand, looking up at Three. “Hold on, do you mean Danny?”
“Unfortunately.” Three slumped against the table and licked at her ice cream.
“Woah, woah, wait up,” Four said, putting up a hand. “This guy’s name is Danny Danalov?”
“Yup,” Three said, in a voice that sounded like she wanted to die. “And that’s the least stupid thing about him.”
“Huh,” Four said. “And he also gives tours at the, uh… Darn, what was it again? The…” Four waited expectantly, but Three only looked at her flatly.
“That’s not going to work, asshole.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Four said, rolling her eyes and once more digging into her ice cream.
“Um… excuse me? Eight, right?”
All three of them turned to the new voice; to Four’s surprise, it was an Octoling. He looked to be about seventeen, if Four had to guess, and he was nervously staring at Eight. Four noticed that Three had unwound her hand from Eight’s, and had moved ever-so-slightly in her chair so that she would be able to jump up at a moment’s notice.
Four doubted it would come to that.
“Uh, yes, hi,” Eight said. “Do I know you?”
“Oh, no, not really,” he said. “My name’s Marcus, and I watched your tournament just now. You were amazing!”
“Oh.” Eight blinked. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, I don’t know, it’s just—” He let out a breath. “How do I say this, uh… it’s nice to see someone who’s more, uh, personally relatable, I guess, playing out on the big stage, you know? I really like turf wars, and it makes me feel like less of an outsider, I guess, and I wanted to thank you…?”
Eight stared at him for a second in silence, and then took a bite out of her ice cream. (A bite. An actual bite. This had to be Pearl’s fault.) “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” she said finally.
“He’s talking about the fact that you’re an Octoling,” Three said.
Marcus jumped. “That’s—I don’t—”
“Oh!” Eight smiled. “I hadn’t noticed!”
Four and Three exchanged a look, but Eight remained oblivious.
“Nice to meet you, Marcus! I’m Eight! I don’t know any other Octolings besides Marina. This is exciting!”
But Marcus didn’t seem to hear her, and was instead staring at Three. “How do you know about—wait, are—” He stopped dead and turned chalk-white. “Oh my god, you’re Agent 3. You look just like the wanted posters. Oh, nyuze-jaskenei, I am so dead, oh my god, please don’t kill me! I swear I don’t taste good!”
Four frowned. How come she didn’t have any wanted posters? They must’ve not been printed by the time he escaped or something.
“Dude, chill, I—” Three looked vaguely disgusted. “They told you guys I eat Octolings? Ew, no! Anyway, you guys were mind controlled. No hard feelings.”
“Also, like, they’re dating,” Four said, wagging a finger between the two of them. “So you know she likes some Octoling.”
Three gave her an impossibly tired glare.
“Really?” Marcus raised an eyebrow. “How does that… work?”
“Socially or anatomically?” Eight asked.
“Okay!” Three said, her face flushing orange. “Well, nice to meet you and all, but we’ve gotta get going, I think—”
“Wait, one sec, Three,” Eight said, reaching out and grabbing her girlfriend by the arm. Amazingly, Three shut up and stopped. Four was jealous; she could never get Three to shut up, or to stop! God, she didn’t know dating had so many benefits that she was missing out on. (Eh, still probably not worth it, though. Kissing was disgusting.)
“Marcus, did you…” Eight awkwardly brushed a tentacle behind one ear. “Did you know me at all? Back underground?”
“Uh, no, you don’t look familiar. What was your assignment number?”
“02-A,” Eight said.
Wait, what? Four turned to Three, who just mouthed, ‘later.’
“I’m assuming that’s front-ops, right?” Marcus asked.
“Yes,” Three confirmed. “F-02-A.”
“Damn. Well, yeah, then we definitely wouldn’t have seen each other,” Marcus said. “I was S-07-C. A low ranking sci-ops would have no reason to meet with the second squad leader. Why, do you recognize me?”
“Uh, no,” Eight said. “Sorry. Nevermind. Uh, nice meeting you, though!”
“Yeah, you too,” Marcus said before walking off.
Four immediately turned to Three. “What was that all about? How do you know her… ranking, or whatever?”
“I talked with DJ Octavio last month, and he kept calling me ‘02-A,’” Eight said.
“Before you joined the Splatoon, right when Off the Hook was just getting popular, we took Marina in for questioning,” Three explained. “She gave us a lot of information about how the Octarians run things. Each Octoling is part of a division, like front-ops, a squad, like squad two, and then they have a ranking within that squad, which is a letter. So Eight’s code is ‘F-02-A,’ based on the assumption that she was front-ops and the info Octavio gave us.”
“Wait. Octavio knew Eight? Can’t he tell you about your past and stuff?”
“I… tried that already,” Eight said. “I don’t… he said…”
“We can’t trust what he said,” Three shot out, interrupting Eight. “He’s the furthest thing from a reliable source I can think of.”
Okay, so, touchy subject. Got it. Time for a diversion. “…Hey Eight, you want seconds?”
Eight looked at Four, looked at her ice cream, looked back at Four, and shoved the remainder of her ice cream in her mouth all at once. “Yes.”
Marcus lived in a run-down apartment complex way out on the fringes of the city. He didn’t typically like to walk home after dark, but the tournament was in the evening, and he didn’t like trains, so… here he was. His sneakers felt frighteningly loud on the concrete as he left the pretty parts of the city and moved into the less-cared-for part he had the honor of calling home.
Thud.
It had come from behind him. He spun around to see a form lying on the pavement that hadn’t been there before. Had it fallen? He looked up reflexively, only to see the dilapidated high-rises looming above. Had whoever this was… jumped? He looked down at the prone body. Oh, he was going to be sick.
And then it moved.
Marcus yelped as the body jolted upwards and rushed towards him. Within a second, he felt the barrel of an octoshot pressed up against his chest, and found himself staring into the opaque lenses of octo-goggles.
“Don’t move,” the Octoling spoke, in carefully articulated Octarian. It wasn’t a threat—just an order.
“Uh, yeah, wasn’t—wasn’t planning on it,” Marcus choked out.
“Are you living with anyone?”
“No, just… just me.” That was a lie. He had escaped with his friend Shianne, who should be sleeping in their apartment right about now. He hoped she didn’t go looking for him or anything dumb like that.
“Come with me,” the Octoling commanded. “Don’t make any noise, and don’t resist, or I will be forced to use violent—”
The Octoling got cut off as it exploded into teal ink, which Marcus only just managed to jump away from. He turned to see a hunchbacked old inkling with a puffy white beard standing off to the side, holding a modified bamboozler. He lowered it back down to the ground, and used it as a walking stick as he approached Marcus.
“Howdy there, kid! You alright?”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” This day just kept getting weirder.
“Well, see you around! And maybe think about carrying a weapon with ya.” He winked. “Oh, and one more thing.” The inkling leaned in and lowered his voice. “If you ever need help, just give me a call.”
“What?” Marcus asked.
But the old man just smiled, and pressed something into Marcus’s hand before wandering off. Marcus squinted in the dark light at the presented object; was that a business card?
Craig Cuttlefish
Inkopolis Military Captain
New Squidbeak Splatoon
And then it had a phone number, an email, and… a message board handle?
Marcus shook his head and resumed his walk towards his apartment. He needed to go to bed.