Chapter Text
The feeling of being linked to a different respawn point wasn't new, it's practically a daily thing for most inklings and octolings. What was strange was being linked remotely without the faintest idea why, especially in the middle of the rougher parts of Splatsville.
When Frye felt the tether of a new respawn, she went to investigate. Without telling anybody. Again.
Dorse Street was pretty standard as far as Splatsville was concerned—apartment buildings towering high and corners being dotted with all kinds of different shops, the railway above making its daily rounds as the crowds move and shuffle throughout.
Frye's mind started working overtime, fitting pieces together to determine how or why.
Inklings confused, tether not targeted. Octolings unaffected? Blanket targeting, range is... Frye kept walking, looking for the other end of inklings starting to get confused. Finding it at the end of the block, she starts backtracking to about the middle of the range, one side being under construction and the other a tall apartment building flanked by... more apartment buildings.
Ruling out the construction site, as all of the staff weren't inklings or octolings, she turned to the apartment buildings. There were thin alleys between them, just barely large enough to fit a dumpster.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
The alleys were blocked off by wire fencing with a padlocked gate, but a quick pass through in squid form and Frye was already through and over the dumpster of one of the alleys.
The closer she got to the back, the more of a commotion she could hear. A crowd cheering in Inkish and Octarian, a jumbled mess of jeers at one point. The sounds of weapons being used, but the weapons didn't sound like any that she knew of. As she got to the source, Frye could see what was happening.
The clearing between all of the buildings was surprisingly large, with a very wide circular pit that looked like it used to be for skating acting as an arena of sorts. Along the edge was a cobbled together mess of chairs and stools acting as seats for the spectators that were watching the match intently. Behind the chairs along one of the walls was the respawn point Frye had gotten tethered to. In the pit itself was an illegal duel, using modified weapons. Judging by the ink in the arena, this wasn't the first of the day—Frye could count at least six different colors. It was hard to tell what anybody looked like at her distance, but she could at least tell the current fighters were red and yellow.
Red was using a Splattershot that's had its piping broken into and had its motor replaced with a much heavier duty, much higher pressure pump that was firing faster and harder. While the thing looked held together by dreams and black electrical tape, it was surprisingly sturdy in their hands.
Yellow's weapon looked like a brella made out of metal, an incredibly crude mess of rivets and welds adorning the canopy. The telltale can on the barrel pointed to the fact that this was actually a modified Aerospray, which showed in that its firepower wasn't anything impressive.
Red was focusing on painting around Yellow, constantly shifting their position in an attempt to get behind the canopy. It was a tense battle at the moment, Yellow keeping track of Red's position as they move forward, keeping their canopy in front of them but saving their ink for moving or getting closer, not daring to shift forms and bring the weapon down with them.
"Oh, you're new." A voice caught Frye off guard, coming from an orange octoling wearing a set of Air Gills looking back from one of the seats in an area full of metal folding chairs. "Gonna stand there forever or si'down and watch?" They waved her over to the seats, a couple taken up by cheering inklings.
Frye decided to blend in, taking up the offer. Taking a seat, she let her eyes focus on the fight while her ears and mouth were doing something else.
"So what's this place, anyway?" Frye asked the octoling. "Some kinda battle club?"
As they were trying to move in, Red took a few stray hits getting close, and reeled back into their ink.
"Pretty much. We're calling it Splat Alley." The octoling held out a closed glass bottle full of red liquid. "Cherry. Not like the drink stand ones but damn close."
Yellow stood stalwart and moved forward, taking advantage of the stray hits to close the gap and reduce Red's options.
"Uh, thanks!" Frye grabbed the bottle but didn't open it. "Judging by... everything, this isn't legal, right?"
Red kept backpedaling, shifting into squid form to make a hasty escape from the incoming ink.
"Yeah, but a lot of us have reasons to be here." They absentmindedly leveled a Stamper model splatana at Frye. "Also, if you call the cops on us I will bite you... or stab you, whatever ends up working better."
Yellow took the second of reprieve to quickly twist, inking the area around them.
"Wasn't even thinking about it, was just wondering why I got tethered." The splatana got lowered and set next to a second near-identical one, leaning against their chair.
Red quickly popped up at the opportunity, but missed as Yellow delved into their ink for a refill.
"Oh—shit. Sorry, hang on." They shouted over across the arena, hands cupped around the mask to make it clear they were the one shouting. "HEY, JUNKSHELL! RESPAWN RADIUS GOT FUCKED AGAIN!"
Yellow swam along the area they made and performed a squid roll towards Red, tanking a couple of shots as their shield came back up.
"AFTER THE MATCH, SHITLIPS!" The voice came from the other side of the arena. Judging by their tones, the insult was as an affectionate joke. Frye laughed as the two taunted each other, the octoling next to her pulling down an eyelid and a cyan inkling across the arena sticking out their tongue.
Red swept the area around Yellow in ink, leaving Yellow without any more escape routes, bringing the two back to square one. But Red had an idea behind their eyes.
"So, anything I should know about my new watcher buddy? Or buddies?" Frye glanced at them, getting a better look. The octoling was kind of short, had their tentacles done up in a long topknot, and their style came off entirely as a city brawler, what with the padded gloves and heavy looking boots.
As Red launched themself into a new attack Yellow responded in kind with return fire, the inaccuracy of the modded Aerospray making itself clear as ink shots went nearly a whole fourty five degrees from the barrel.
"Oh—yeah, I'm Azure, that guy I was yelling at is J, aaand we basically run the place. He's the brains of this whole thing, actually. I just, uh, make sure people aren't breaking either rule." Azure fiddled with one of the splatanas at their side.
Red crouched down for a split second before taking a massive leap over the stream of ink and getting a clear sightline to Yellow.
"'Either rule'? There's only two?" Frye decided not to mention how their name and color did not match.
Both fighters brought their weapons up to meet each other, but Red was faster. Getting a single shot off before being blocked by the canopy, it grazed Yellow at the cheek as their momentum brought them into the canopy.
"Oh yeah, the only two hard rules are 'don't get spectators involved' and 'don't get bad attention'. Y'know, like—cops or whatever. Everything else is kind of whatever we feel like." They reach down on the other side of their chair to pull out another bottle. "End of the day, we're here to fight or watch fights, and that's all we need."
As Red fell onto the canopy they kicked off it horizontally, forcing the metal above and behind Yellow as they fell into yellow ink.
"Hardcore, but I like the style." Frye nodded to herself, tuning slightly into the fight. "Oh shit, did they just—"
Red landed half submerged in yellow ink. They brought their modded Splattershot up and took the final shots of the match, bursting Yellow in a spray of red ink.
"PARA TAKES THE MATCH!" J called, standing up. Next to Frye, Azure stands up too with another bottle of soda in hand.
"Where you goin'?" Frye looks up from watching Red, now in her mind as Para, attempt to ink their way up and out of the arena.
"Checking in on Rev. Respawns in that machine are... a little painful. Lotsa colors it has to go through." Azure walked off as Frye nodded, letting Frye soak in the area in more detail. (Plus, now that she's confident the soda is fine, she pops it open and takes a swig. They were not joking when they said it was pretty close to the stuff at Crab-N-Go.)
The arena relative to the actual area is off center towards one of the walls, leaving a pretty significant amount of space on the other side. The respawn machine in the corner is massive, probably an old model, and Frye could just barely see the multiple colors swirling around inside of it. Beyond the main features, the open space at the other end looks like it's being used as a makeshift buffet, a bunch of foods laying out and people taking as they please. In the corners of the arena are a bunch of lights, though they're turned off at the moment. There's also an old vending machine that's still functional, though people are comparing what they got out of it. Looking up at the surrounding buildings, they reach pretty high and it looks like someone attached a tarp across them, probably to shield from any rain.
After a little while, Azure came back and plopped into their chair.
"Radius problem's fixed, so... Sorry if that spooked you. Or anyone else out there." Azure looked genuine about it. "So if you don't wanna stick, we won't mind if you bounce. Just no cops. Please. (this is the best spot we've had in years...)"
"Don't know what you've gotten into you 'cause this ROCKS! Never really cared for all those 'objectives' in turf wars anyway." Frye leaned back, subtly listening to the community around them. "Looks like everyone here's pretty friendly when they're not in the pit."
"Oh, yeah. Everybody understands everybody else is here for their own reason, y'know? Er, I could probably explain that better..."
"Nah, I get it. And hey, this looks pretty fun! Is there like, a schedule or something, 'cause I feel like I just got lucky here."
"Every day at noon...-ish, whenever enough people are here really. Everybody's favorite event usually starts at eight though."
"Favorite event?"
"We get a couple of Squee-Gs and have them clean the arena. Their points are tallied and which one cleaned more wins."
"People get the most hype over that?"
"Yeah. People started giving us their Squee-Gs to compete. I've seen brawls start because of it. There's money on it."
"Oh."
"I don't remember at this point how many I've had to drop for trying to get into the arena."
"Oh." Frye was trying to stop herself from laughing.
"Nah you can laugh, it's as stupid as it sounds and I love it."
"Ill— Illegal Squee-G fight!" Frye let out her laugh, barely getting the next sentence in. "Wh— ha— what's next, taping a— pff— knife to them?"
"We tried that, but then we had to deal with getting them out." Azure suddenly looks like they're witnessing a flashback.
Frye just laughed harder.
"By the way, you look kinda familiar." Quickly snapping out of it, Azure looked more intently at Frye. "Kinda like— wait a fucking second. You're— You— I— The— Frye!? Like, Deep Cut-Anarchy Splatcast Frye?"
"That's me!" Frye casually did part of her pose in the trio. Mostly just the hand part.
"Oh my cod. Okay. So I can now officially say I've met and casually threatened Frye without lying. Great. Holy shit I casually threatened Frye."
"Not the first time! Probably not the last!" Frye giggled as she sat up straighter. "Good thing it's just me, though. Shiver would probably tear into you instantly and Big Man would, uh... stare at you with anger? (what would big man do actually?)"
"(do i want to find out?)"
"(no)"
"A— Anyway, I'm gonna go get the next match set up. Sorry if this whole thing kinda derailed whatever you were doing. Um, before waltzing in here." Azure started to stand up out of their chair.
"It's whatever, I only have—" Frye pulled out and looked at her phone's clock and stood up almost instantly. "—oh. I'm already late now. Eh, I can come up with something on the way there."
"Thanks. Good luck with wherever you're going, see ya!" They waved goodbye as Frye left the same way she came in.
Frye almost kicked the apartment door open when she got home, startling Shiver and Big Man. Both of them wondered if the sponsorship fell through.
"We're getting paid but you would not believe what I found today."