Authors Note: Hi all! I hope you like my new fic, please review and let me know what you think about it. And yes, this is a sequel to one of my prior one shots.
The sun was dangling in the sky. Soon, it would be sundown. Autumn had only started a week ago. The air was beginning to cool, and mother nature had been quick to work. The trees were being stripped of their leaves so fast, not that the inhabitants minded. The inklings in the city of Inkopolis were enjoying the leaves, another fun thing to them. Some were using piles of leaves to their advantage in turf wars for sneak attacks, and others would just play with them outright and ignore their turf wars.
In one apartment, light metal music was playing loudly from the back room. A young fourteen-year-old squid with big blue tentacles with an orange tinge was in the kitchen, sporting a domino mask around his bright blue eyes, a bright red shirt that had a stripes on it to make it look like a turtle shell, and a necklace on that had three sharp jagged triangular shaped teeth, two of them were chipped and brittle and the other between the two had been damaged by age drastically.
"Can't believe I got dunked in the bath again…" he sighed while staring at a small cage that had various twigs, rocks, leaves and dirt in it. Cambridge he had the misfortune of losing his father at a very young age. The teeth on the necklace were all he had left to remember him by, along with the pictures the family had. All inklings had two sets of teeth, three sharp ones in the front of their mouth and a set of normal ones behind them that were way weaker in contrast. The young blue squid was staring at his pet leaf bugs that were housed in the tiny container, and they blended in really well with the small environment. The blue inkling was a little annoyed because his mother woke him up today by dropping him in a bath tub full of cold water. Squids melted in salt water until they were splattered, but fresh water was perfectly fine to them.
Cambridge left his pets in the kitchen and made his way down the hall. The walls were covered in photographs and pictures that depicted the young boy and his mother. A few were photos of his orange tentacled father, and all of his photos had a bright and happy feeling emit from each of them. He was a great man, and he had been told that it was hard not to be happy around him before his untimely death.
"Mom?" he spoke as he entered his mother's bedroom, he cut off the music from the nearby stereo. There was a queen sized bed in the center. A set of weights lay along the left wall, arranged in size, the biggest going up to a hundred pounds. On the floor doing push ups, was an older woman with five dark blue tentacles that were slightly puffed up and running down her back. Each set of tentacles was longer than the next, the middle one being the longest. She sported an orange shirt top and several earrings in only her left pointy ear, each one different.
"Oh, hey honey," Zaffre greeted her son. For her age of thirty-two, she was very strong. She preferred to stay fit and exercise regularly, though she still acted in a way that made her look odd. Zaffre had motherly instincts, but she was a lot straighter forward in her parenting. So far her methods were working perfectly. Her son was the only one she had left in her life, but she did not want to spoil him.
"Umm… mom you're doing a lot more training lately. did something happen?" Cambridge nervously wondered. His mother liked to exercise, but she also did it when angry to take out her frustration. She did have some issues with controlling her rage, but she managed.
"No, honey. Nothing has happened. Well… look, how about you sit on my back?" Zaffre then requested.
"Oh? Okay," Cambridge nodded. He was quite short for his age compared to most teenagers. He sat down on his mother's back while she continued her push ups.
"I'm not going to be working from home anymore," Zaffre simply stated, having spent the last few years working away from the comfort of her own apartment. Sadly, the pay was not enough, and she had to get another job.
"Really? What are you going to be doing?" Cambridge asked, quite happy for his mother.
"I'll surprise you later. I ran into an old friend and he hooked me up," Zaffre hummed. As she then stood up, she tossed her son off her back onto the bed. She stretched, having finished her push ups. She grabbed a towel off the nearby dresser and began to wipe the sweat off her head.
"What about you, squiddo? You got anything planned for today?" she asked, sitting down on the bed beside him. She always was worried for her son. He did not really have much confidence or self-esteem, thereby he could be pushed around easily. He only had one real friend in this world.
"Uhh… I-I was going to go with Alizarin to check out the new mall across town," Cambridge exclaimed. He had only met his best friend Alizarin a few months ago, and it was far from a good start between them and the blue squid's mom. His mother pulled out her wallet from her pocket.
"Gimme your coin card," Zaffre ordered, pulling a coin card out of her wallet that was a shade of gold. On the front of it was an older photo of her, a barcode, a list of digits that showed the amount, and a tiny device on the bottom of the card. Everyone in Inkopolis had a coin card. They were easy to replace, and they were the best way to carry the currency around Inkopolis. After all, no one wanted to carry bags overstuffed with coins.
"Oh? Uhh, alright," Cambridge put his coin card in her hand. She attached the coin cards together by the devices at the bottom and slid her fingers across the numbers on her coin card, transferring 2,000 coins onto her son's card. The transfer complete, she gave it back to him. He smiled, seeing a great amount of 10,158 coins.
"Thanks mom!" he quickly hugged her waist, before he quickly made his way out. Zaffre had a small smirk, wanting to surprise her son with the new job position she had that she would be starting soon.
"Oh, and be back before eight, or I'll hunt you down!" she called out to him as she heard the apartment door slam shut. She huffed, going off to take a shower with the towel slung over her shoulders. She just hoped her son would have a fun time at this new mall. She had not heard much about it other than its recently completed construction.
Cambridge walked towards the subway with a smile on his face. Around him, the variously colored leaves were being played with by many squids diving into piles or having squid parties in them. Some were gathering leaves in bags just to dump on their friends. The light blue squid absentmindedly wandered underneath a tree during his travels. A young squirt, a child inkling, still was in the tree above him. The squid child, laughed shaking the branch.
"Huh?" Cambridge looked up. Suddenly he was buried in leaves and could hear some other squirts and other inklings diving into the pile. He popped his head up out of the leaves like a hesitant turtle before climbing out and continuing on his way to the subway, the leaves crinkling beneath his shoes.
"Hey! Cambridge!" he heard, looking over to his left to see someone running his direction to meet up with him. The blue eyed squid smiled recognizing his familiar friend, Alizarin. His bright red tentacles were tied up behind his head with a crown shaped hair band holding them together, and he was wearing a blue coat that had a happy jellyfish decal on the front of it. He was the only friend to the blue inkling, the two had an odd start to their friendship. Alizarin had once bullied and assaulted Cambridge, but after a fight with his mother Zaffre, the two became good friends and have grown closer each passing day. The red squid had his own fair share of issues. He had been adopted by a foster parent since his only living family was now serving time in jail.
"Hey, Ali," Cambridge greeted as his friend fixed the crown shaped hair band on his head, the two beginning to wander down the steps into the subway.
"You're late you know," Alizarin commented as they pulled out their subway pass cards and swiped them so they could go through the turnstiles. It was a confusing statement to the blue inkling, as he was there before his dear friend was.
"Um… I'm sorry?" Cambridge replied as they stepped into the crowded boarding platform and waited, seeing the rails on the ground with the tunnels that were hard to see down at all.
"Come on man. You need to get a back bone," Alizarin insisted. He only had said that in hopes of his friend to argue. That lack of confidence or self-esteem was irritating. Alizarin had seen others trying to bully his friend, though thankfully the blue squid had his friend to watch out for him. Normally they could defuse any situation before it escalated to a violent manner.
"I'm sorry. I just don't like to fight," Cambridge apologized as they saw the subway train pull up to the boarding platform. The doors opened widely, allowing all the passengers to begin boarding and piling inside. The two young squid boys took seats next to one another that was close to the doors they had entered through. After a few seconds, they watched the subway train doors close as it began to slowly move.
"Yeah, but you have to fight, Cambridge. Otherwise, you just look weird. You have to have an actual opinion," Alizarin continued his argument. Cambridge sighed, falling silent and staring at the floor with no idea what to say to that. His friend was not wrong. He really was a bland blue squid. The subway train was a little filled, but he shook it off, trying to enjoy the ride and look forward to the mall. They had missed the grand opening, but they were more thankful for that, not wanting to imagine what it would have been like on opening day with the Squid Sisters promoting their newest album, which meant a giant horde to fight through for little to no gain at all. That was just the norm for the Squid Sisters' popularity.
"We are now arriving to western Inkopolis," a bored voice announced over the speaker. Cambridge and Alizarin felt the train beginning to slow down before it came to a halt, the doors sliding open. The two of them disembarked from the train, and they made their way up to get above ground.
"Wow. I haven't been here in years," Cambridge commented, looking over the western part of Inkopolis. This area was a lot more of a shopping center, barely lacking any housing. They could not go five feet without seeing a bunch of different stores. Being the biggest shopping area around, it meant anyone who came through had to be careful with con artists and fake merchandise being everywhere, though they normally gave themselves away with deals that were too good to be true.
"Mall shouldn't be far," Alizarin pointed ahead, continuing forward with his friend. They could see the mall in the distance the sign on the front, which had a nice shell symbol on the front. It was called the Pearlymussel Mall, and a vast number of squids were making their way into the new mall. Anyone who witnessed it would. It was popular, and good word about it had spread across the city fast. The two friends came to a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change so they could walk across.
"Wuh?" Cambridge looked to his right. He noticed someone crossing the road already, who had three big green tentacles tied together on the back of her head, the middle one separated from the other two. Strangely though, spines were running around the edges of her tentacles, and parts of her tentacles and her own skin had green colored scales on parts of them. She was wearing a red leather coat, with matching red jeans.
"Cambridge?" Alizarin quirked, as his friend suddenly rushed toward the random squid girl. The red inkling could see a car speeding right towards them. The red squid was too slow to follow or react, as Cambridge tackled her from behind in an attempt to save her from getting hit by the car, the tires screeching loudly to a halt.
"Cambridge!"