Work Text:
Squidkid
Three years of dreaming, three months of traveling, and now, the only thing standing between her and Inkopolis is one short obstacle course.
If 'obstacle course' is even accurate! Mitsi laughs and tosses her new splattershot from hand to hand. She has this in the inksack! All that stands before her and fame are some balloons.
Well then, balloons, feel her wrath!
Mitsi pops one balloon, then another, giggles, and races forwards. Down the stairs. Around a corner. Down more stairs... and when she goes to shoot the next balloon, her splattershot beeps! at her.
Well, carp. She's out of ink.
Um... how's it go again...
Right! She just has to turn squid in an ink puddle to get her ink back. Well, there are plenty of ink puddles around here.
Mitsi sits in the ink and waits to turn squid.
And waits.
And waits.
And
waits.
This... isn't working.
New plan! If Mitsi focuses really hard on being a squid, then she'll be a squid. She hasn't bothered with squid form since she learned to be a kid, being able to walk and jump and reach everywhere without leaving an ink trail was just the thing she needed to get away from home, but she's an inkling . This comes naturally.
She's sinking. It's working! It's working! It...
When Mitsi opens her eyes, she finds herself eyes-down, still with feet at the ends of two tentacles. Uh, no. Cod, she can't go to Inkopolis like this!
Also, the sensation of feet at the ends of her tentacles is the freakiest thing she's ever felt make it stop MAKE IT STOP!
Mitsi flails her tentacles, kicking up and back and sideways and shoves herself right out of her ink and against a wall, where she kicks herself in the head and yelps. But then she's got tentacles, just tentacles, and she takes a deep breath and slides down the wall, eyeballs down.
Oh. This is gonna be a problem, huh. She can't move without dragging dirt into her eyes, and she can't... manage... to.... oh! She can stick her tentacle to the wall, duh. That'll let her flip over.
That accomplished, Mitsi... is stuck to the wall.
Mitsi closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and prays to Cthulhu no one finds her like this. She pulls on her tentacle. And again.
On the third try it detaches with a snap, sending her gill over tentacle four or five times, and thank cod she lands with her eyes up. She swims back to her ink puddle and submerges with a sigh of relief.
Okay. She's got the hang of it now, right?
Sure she does. Turning back into kid form is no sweat, and she shoots down more balloons, and this time, when she goes to swim form at the bottom of a wall, she slips into it like a pro . Like a champ . Like a tournament champion, a turf war queen, a—
when Mitsi changes back, she's running on her arms, her splattershot hooked around one foot, and falls flat on her face.
Ow.
Mitsi pushes herself upright, finds her splattershot—not broken, phew—and checks that no one saw her. She's fine. She's fresh . She'll get the hang of it.
Still, when Mitsi has to jump across a gap, she doesn't change into kid form until after she's landed. And when she swims through the grate, she stops after, to make sure all her tentacles are still attached.
Mitsi has some work to do.
But, when she reaches the superjump pad, it's all worth it.
And the landing makes her gape .
Inkopolis is amazing.
She's gonna be just as great. Someday. Soon.