Who woulda thought that Fanfiction had a Splatoon section?

Splatoon © Nintendo.

Original characters, Brill and Mack are characters that I made based on Nintendo's creation, the Inklings.

You know, being a waiter was never really as easy as it looked when you thought about it.

Or saw it.

Or actually did it.

Brill was young. He had just gotten straight out of the Silvertip Academy of Inklings, with his degree in "Athletics and Turf War Professional Sport" bearing the mark of a Valedictorian. He was free of his parent's strict guidance and was moving forward in life. Sure, that started with mopping the floors of an Anchor Albecore's, "The best in Inkopolis!" inside of Arowana Mall, but that wasn't so bad, was it? He had his own house, his own rules, and he was only doing the job until he got the letter back from the ITWL, the International Turf War League, telling him which team he'd be playing for. He was a prodigy, and when he turned in his record to the League, they told him that no matter how full the rosters were, they were gonna find a place for him. So in between getting that one baby's vomit off the floor at his and seeing if a co-worker needed help unclogging the toilet again, he knew that it was all gonna turn out well in time.

But until then, he just had to remember if he turned his stove off as he walked back home.

He had landed a good home, a compact, two story modern box near the city. It wasn't uncommon for there to be a few reckless kids running around town, accidentally knocking over a few things in the process of having their own miniature ink fights in the street. The adults never really minded, there were so many simple ways to remove the ink left over that you didn't have to reprimand anyone, the kids cleaned up on their own most of the time. They miffed Brill a couple of times, such as the one incident where their inking went a little over the boundaries and Brill walked right into an Ink Mine off the side of a particularly heated match, but he held his temper, and for a young adult who was only about 19 (He was quite the advanced student, he graduated three years early!) he had quite a good control over his temper.

What did drive him nuts though, were the kids that would ink up other people's property on purpose.

He didn't understand why those kids did it. It didn't benefit them other than getting a few giggles from their friends, and getting ink off of homes was simple, but an inconvenience that was troublesome to handle if you weren't able to handle a roller properly. Granted, Brill mostly just used his Splattershot that was made for him by Tentatek after winning a competition for aspiring Turf War athletes, but it was most commonly the people with roller experience who would help with community tasks like painting and reconstruction, as they had the most control over their weapons compared to the wild, rapid shots you'd see on guns.

But to the main point, it was just a bothersome issue. Brill wasn't a perfect angel in any way, he had pulled his fair share of Inkings as a kid, but that didn't mean he thought it wasn't wrong. The list went on about problems within Inkopolis regarding vandalism, but that was the one he most targeted, as he was actually able to help stop it. He had experience being on a neighborhood watch when he was about fifteen, during which he almost stopped a burglary, if some sniper hadn't been there to knock him out cold before he made it ten feet to the house. After which, he had joined martial arts and gymnastics, to better cope with any oncoming threats, and retained those skills to this day.

But even without using anything but a gun, he was still an extremely well trained Turf War athlete.

An extremely well trained Turf War athlete who didn't even realize he had sat down on a bench some distance from his house to think about that stuff until the sun was all the way down.

One look at his watch and he surprised himself. He had sat there going over his life from 7 PM to midnight. It wasn't a completely late time for him to sleep, sure, but this was around the time when there were some pretty shady people about. He'd seen that one strange guy wearing the sailor outfit shuffling through garbage cans once or twice around here, and he didn't even know what to expect from the Spyke character he'd heard about who sits in the back alley near the Inkopolis Tower. Out of instinct, his Splattershot's familiar grip was brushing along his fingers, he took the thing with him in a backpack wherever he went.

The walk home wasn't so terrible. He had anticipated a few possible problems, but there was nothing to be seen. In fact, it was pretty nice. The stars had come out, and there were no clouds to block the shine of the lights over in the city that never turned off. He unlocked his house and flipped on the light switch. He was happy to see that he actually had cleaned up before he left, which was a common slip of his mind. He was more tired than usual to add on to that, so it was nice knowing that he only needed to go straight to bed. His house's metal floor make a click-clack as he went up the stairs, each room illuminating and fading to black as he entered and exited each one.

The bedroom light was switched on, and Brill only stopped to greet his pet fish, (Oh, the irony.) plop his headphones on his desk, and kick off his shoes, leaving him to sleep in his down vest, his shorts, and a pair of black socks. He was tired, and sleep was just so close to hitting him…

A pang on the window jolted Brill awake in full alertness. He sat up quickly, unsettled by the sudden noise. He checked the watch that he forgot to take off and found himself reading 3 AM on the face. The window, covered by a shutter, was, judging by the breeze now entering the room, broken from the impact whose cause was still undetermined. Upon lifting the blind, Brill found himself seeing the night sky… tainted by stains of orange ink.

Brill took heavy breaths in a faint attempt to control his temper, reminding himself that it could have been an accident. But the sound of more shots landing on only his house and a near collision of the ink and his face convinced him otherwise very, very quickly. He looked out the window, trying to locate what, or who, was drenching his house in the middle of the night. He looked straight down, and found the nozzle of an Aerospray staring back at him from two stories down.

...

SPLAT!

…

If Brill had been a second slower than he just was, he would have been as orange as that hat shop girl's fish. Brill was on the floor on his room, panting from the sudden movement of pushing himself back and away from the onslaught of gunfire that still rained down on his home. His senses slowly kicked back into gear and he was on his feet in just a matter of seconds after. He let his instinct take over as he immediately got a hold of his Splattershot. Only stopping to make sure that his Ink tank was full, he was down the stairs in a hot second, not caring that he had left his sub-weapons behind, or that he didn't put shoes on. He was going to get this done, right now.

The Inkling outside was so busy trying to shatter every window in the home that he almost didn't notice the older teen running straight at him with a gun in hand. He wanted to move right there, and retreat at full speed, but he was petrified. Brill, on the other hand, took every detail of his attacker in, and immediately located weak points on the gas mask, hoodie, and boots that covered the opposing Inkling. He opened fire at full force, and the masked one was caught in a flurry of green Ink surrounding him. The apparent boy frantically searched for an escape, shooting at the ground to keep from getting caught in the other ink and trapping himself. He took a risk and shot behind him, in the direction of the trail that he'd left on his way here. In a flash, he took to squid form and retreated, not caring that he was clearly noticeable by the splashes he left while swimming.

Brill took this moment to stop for a bit to refill his ink tank, before going in hot pursuit, covering his vandal's ink in his own to halt the Inkling's escape.

...

"God, this kid went a long way!" That and many, many other thoughts shifted through Brill's head as he sprinted along this kid's ink trail. But most importantly pounding in his head, why was… whoever this kid is, breaking all his windows and inking up his house? Was he robbing him? Some kind of a prank? Four broken windows and all for what?

He… once again… got so caught up in his thoughts he didn't realize where he was.

And he was in an alley in the back of the city.

Alone.

At 3 AM.

To his own surprise, he quivered, just slightly. Not enough to see it, but enough to feel it. His more nurtured, protective mind told him that he should just give up now, there wasn't any ink trail to follow anymore. But his mind that was raised on adamancy, and shaped by Turf Wars, his prodigy mind, told him to stay and wait. He was so close, he wasn't going to let this guy get away.

But as his eyes wandered around, trying to find his target, he started to have doubts. Again.

Where is he gonna be?

Are you gonna be ready for him?

Is he just watching you now?

Does he know you're here?

Are you gonna fight back, now that he's sneaking up behind you?

Bam. There was the shot of adrenaline that Brill needed. Orange ink went across every inch of the ground and the walls, Brill only dodging it from sheer agility and luck. But mostly luck. His blood pounded as he somersaulted and handsprung with somewhat flawed technique in his panic, relentlessly moving in an effort to not get hit by the onslaught.

"Curse Aerosprays and their efficiency!" Brill barely had time to think of anything at all, and was so caught up in evading the assailant's ink he didn't realize that he was flipping straight into a full trash can until he was sprawled on top of it, motionless and somewhat dizzy. But he had more fight than that. He recovered far faster than the boy in the mask thought as he charged up to his target, only to find himself grabbed by the arm and flung into the brick wall on the left of his now attacker. Unlike this guy he was getting spontaneously beaten by, he had no training and was positively wimpy in comparison to the training of this guy. First moment, he had him shaking in fear, and now he was on the ground, dazed and completely immobile.

Brill took no time in continuing his assault and decided to make it an interrogation, as he stomped his foot onto the now wheezing boy's sternum, holding it there as the one under him feebly struggled, just to barely comprehend at that point that there was no hope of escaping this one. The dominant Inkling proceeded to rip off the boy's mask and began the…

"This guy is like, a kid."

Taking a look at the boy's face, Brill now saw that he wasn't fighting a dangerous criminal with a good weapon, he was fighting a young, reckless teenager with a weapon.

"Kid, how old are you?"

It slipped out of his mouth. He was aware of his situation enough now to realize that he might have to let up a little bit. But until he got some real answers about why all of his windows were broken and why he nearly got splatted completely, he wasn't gonna be letting up his foot, which he knew was causing discomfort.

"I-I-I-"

"You what? Answer the question!"

"I-I'm 16."

Wow. Brill honestly predicted a bit younger.

"What were you trying to do back there?"

"Kid, you're not leaving until you answer me."

Brill only continued to press his foot harder and harder into the kid's chest, but the only thing that the one held down could think about was how much more this would hurt if this dude was wearing shoes.

"Answer me!"

"I was trying to… to get…"

"5. 4. 3."

"I was tryna' rob ya, okay?!"

"...Excuse me?"

"I just wanted to get some money on ma' hands. That's all it was."

"And to get some money, you needed to try and kill me? Kid, what's your name?"

"M-Mack."

"And Mack, you tried to do this all for what? What did you need money for?"

Brill had lost all patience at this point. This kid clearly wasn't poor or homeless, and his tone signified not desperation, but rather snobbiness.

"I wanted to get some new gear. I gotta get fresh, dude."

"Of all the things to steal for! Of all the things to steal for!"

"Look, dude, can't we just tal-"

SPLAT!

…

Brill and Mack both turned to see that a land mine Mack set earlier had just burst. The sudden silence between the two was near deafening. Their thoughts simply stopped in that moment. But Mack was a kid of opportunity.

He took the risk that he had been contemplating while Brill droned on with his questions, and he finally had the opportunity to put it into action (which he never thought he would.) Both of his hands gripped onto the top Inkling's ankle, breaking Brill's silent trance, and threw the leg out to his left, thinking he had just made a clear path to escape.

Well, he was wrong.

The only advantage went to his opponent.

Brill was now in complete control. His right foot now held Mack's left arm down while his other knee was grinding into Mack's opposite arm. And his gun? Straight on top of the kid's forehead.

"No, wait, dude, don't-"

"Stop talking. Now go home."

Mack wildly struggled to escape as the flailed under Brill, actually getting his left up arm up a few times before the older boy stomped it back down. Brill honestly started to feel legitimately bad for his victim as he started to tear up slightly as the inescapable inkfire pounded on his head. But he brushed aside his feelings and sealed the deal. The Inkling found himself now on the ground in a puddle of his own ink, as Mack's primal squid instinct turned him into squid mode and involuntarily forced him to swim home.

Brill took a deep breath. The task was done. You just stopped a criminal. But what did he really do? Did he do that, or did he just leave a bad mark on a kid that could become an actual criminal and ruin his life so young?

No. He did the right thing. He taught him a lesson. He went back home and grabbed his landline phone off of it's cradle, dialing for the Inkopolis police department.

"Hello? Yeah, I'd like to report an attempted robbery."

Oy, I did it. I actually wrote something.

Yay.

Let me know if you guys want more of this.

Rate and Review if you'd like. Anything you'd like to say is much appreciated.

I'm tired.

-SWA