An orange inkling backed up against a wall, three blue ones threatening him with their guns. The orange one held his paintbrush up in a one handed grip, pointing it back at the blues. The blues ignored his weapon and kept walking towards him, spreading their ink on the ground around him.
"And it looks like Ray from the Flying Brushes is in trouble." The announcer, Callie, said excitedly through the TV set that Jace was watching. Callie's cousin, and partner, agreed with her, "I don't think he'll make it out of there to continue the fight."
Jace stared transfixed at the screen; he didn't dare blink as his favorite turf war team: The Flying Brushes, took on the currently reigning champs. He held a Flying Brushes hat between his hands and was wringing it as he watched the dangerous situation. Ray's back was against a wall of his orange ink, but was surrounded by an ocean of blue as the three enemies advanced.
"He's got no backup," Marie said, "As you can see on the map to the side of the screen his teammates are on the other side of the map trying to chase down blue team's final inkling, Jordin. And according to this tournament's rules, there's no reinsertion."
The famous squid sisters then let anybody (which is most of inkopolis right there) who was watching focus back in on the action taking place in the stage.
"Let's see how much fun we can have with this guy before splatting him," one of the blue inklings, presumably the leader, said.
"Maybe we should finish him off quickly and get back to inking their base before they splat Jordin," another inkling said, "There's only so long Jordin can run around with his paintbrush and not get shot."
The blue leader glared at the inkling who said that, lowering his gun to glower at the guy. "We're fine," he hissed, "Jordin's running distraction so we can pick them off when we want. He always does it, he won't get caught by them that easily."
At that moment the inklings heard splattershots being fired and ink being sprayed. An alert showed up at the top of the stage, saying 'Rena splattered Jordin'.
"Oh... crap." The blue inklings looked up at the alert in shock, then back down to Ray just to see that- "WHERE'D HE GO?" The leader yelled at his team; they'd let Ray sink away but there could be only one way he could go, "PAINT THE WALL BOYS!" They opened fire on the orange wall, marking it up with their personal team shade of cyan.
Ray jumped out of the top of the wall before the ink hit it and returned to inkling form in mid-air. His paintbrush cut arcs of orange through the blue inklings, and they dissolved into ink. Ray watched the ink splatter on his face, then wiped it off calmly, stowing his paintbrush away as the alerts blared on the stage's ceiling and cheers were heard from the crowd watching the match.
Jace jumped off his couch and cheered, pumping a fist in the air. The game was all over with none of the Flying Brushes being splattered, Judd declared the Flying Brushes champions and Callie and Marie spent the next ten minutes talking about Ray's risky manuver.
"If he missed, he would've been splattered in less than a second." Marie was reminding Callie. "His move was the riskiest paintbrush skill shot that I've ever seen, if not for the speed he wields it with then he'd be an ink stain on the ground."
"But that just shows how much skill he really has!" Callie yelled, "The SplatterSquidz must really be feeling that right now, they couldn't even splatter one of them!" The SplatterSquids were the now ex-champs.
Jace thought that Callie was right; it's the risky moves that win, not the safe ones. But the risks didn't matter as the Flying Brushes had won, and like any other teen inkling Jace wanted to celebrate.
He grabbed his .52 Gal from in his room, put on his Flying Brushes hat, and ran outside to a lovely day in Inkopolis. The sun was high in the sky, and the Inkopolis tower was in the west with its great zapfish resting on it. The great zapfish had been returned by mysterious ways a month earlier, prompting the inklings to celebrate by holding the tournament that had finished minutes ago. And now there's even more reason for the inklings to cheer as the fan favorite team had won the tournament, and fireworks were being set off over the arena where they had fought. No doubt at this moment the teams were shaking hands and the trophy was handed over to the Flying Brushes.
Jace met up with his friend Celine on his way to the Inkopolis plaza and they instantly started talking about the exciting match. While Jace was a fan of the Flying Brushes, Celine fangirled over their rivals and the ex-champs: SplatterSquidz.
"If not for one lucky move by the Brushes, the Squidz would have won in a fresh second, the Flying Brushes just aren't on their level yet." Celine told Jace while settling her hand on a splattershot holstered on her belt.
"Well it happened, and the Flying Brushes are the champions." Jace countered with a friendly smile, noticing her hands resting on a weapon and waiting for it to come.
SPLAT!
The side of Jace's face was now looking like the green color of brocoli.
"Hey!" he pulled around his .52 and painted Celine's shirt a lovely shade of purple.
The two friends got into a fun splat war in their neighborhood in the suburbs of Inkopolis. And as any squids with ink in their veins, Jace and Celine's neighbors showed up when they heard the shots being fired and started spraying them down. Jace and Celine returned fire on them, but were overwhelmed and forced to retreat. They did so into an adjacent neighborhood, and those residents joined in to help them out. Very soon after, the entire eastern portion of inkopolis was in a friendly free-for-all, with no inkling going unsplattered. Neighbors and friends now painted all colors of the rainbow.
In the pandemonium of the friendly battle, Celine shot Jace in his side and ran down into an alleyway to her left. Jace followed her, eager to even up the ink.
The alleyway ranked of dead fish and octopus, with garbage cans everywhere. Jace walked forward cautiously and quietly, Celine could be hiding anywhere.
Jace was completely silent, but as he passed by a can with graffiti splattered on it, a hand clamped over his mouth.
"Shhhh", Celine whispered, "stay quiet," she giggled and pointed upwards. Jace felt her hand slide off of his face and following where she pointed he saw a pair of legs hang over the roof above them.
"He must've not wanted to get inked by everybody." Celine whispered.
"Then let's dissapoint him."
The duo tiptoed to the end of the alleyway, then painted the whole wall upwards. Both slowly slipped into squid form and started swimming up the wall. They returned to inklings behind some AC units on the roof. Crouched behind the units, they had a clear view of the inkling who apparently didn't want to be hit with ink.
Average height and build for an male teen inkling, but his clothes were much different. Instead of the fresh shoes, shirt, and shorts that most male inklings wear, he wore a sturdy suit of electronic power armor.
"No wonder he doesn't want to be inked," Celine whispered to Jace with a devilish grin, "That armor looks really fancy. Make sure you aim for his face so we don't... mess up the armor."
They pulled out their ink blasters and loaded them up to the max amount of ink.
One, Jace mouthed to Celine, two, three, "GO!" He yelled.
Jace jumped onto the AC units and blasted at the armored inkling.
Despite being surprised, the inkling reacted faster than anyone Jace had seen before. He rolled out of Jace's range and slid himself behind a container, completely unmarked.
Celine ran around the side of the inkling's container and sprayed the area he should've been, but as Jace watched Celine apparently tripped and fell face first towards the inkling. Celine shrieked in surprise and then was silent, the inkling showed his face above the container and Jace fired at him.
The inkling simply swayed to the side and the ink flew harmlessly by. The inkling then pulled out his own weapon, a yellow and black gun with a slick design.
Jace dove to the side and rolled away, anticipating the inkling to fire, but no shots came his way. Jace looked up and fired back, but before he could pull the trigger a blast of ink flew out of nowhere to land on the right side of his head.
He looked to where the ink flew from to see the inkling standing there, his gun dripping with ink.
"Aw come on." Jace said, turning his body to fire on the inkling again.
The ink spattered against the armor on the inkling's body, but did nothing to the inkling himself. The inkling held out his blaster again in a one handed grip and shot a blast of ink.
The inkling's own yellow blast split Jace's own ink to hit him squarely in the face. Jace flew back with what looked like the contents of a bathroom on his face.
"Crap."
"Don't take this personally."
The inkling spoke to Jace.
Jace wiped the ink off his face and looked up at the inkling, the inkling smiled. "You're good, almost got me a few times."
"Is my friend okay?" Jace said, remembering when Celine fell.
The inkling looked over at the area she fell at, "Oh she's fine. I swept her legs out from under her and then blasted her in the back while she was down. She shouldn't be hurt at all."
As if marking his words, Celine sat up with her face covered in the yellow goo. "Wow, what in the world was that?"
She stood up and wiped the ink off of her face as well, walking over to rejoin Jace.
"What's your name?"
The inkling looked at the Jace and Celine, "I no longer need a name, but I'm called agent 3. And your names are?" His look was now expectant of the other two.
Jace and Celine looked at each other, Celine nodded to Jace. "I'm Celine, and this is Jace, we live over here."
"Oh, you are some of the people that live here?" Agent 3 sounded instantly interested.
Jace nodded, "Yeah, I'm a few neighborhoods down, and she lives right next to me."
Agent 3 motioned for the two inklings to follow him, "You guys have a lot of potential for the turf wars, I want you two to follow me, there's something I want to show you." He started walking towards the edge of the roof and Celine shrugged and followed him. Jace groaned, what were they getting into, and ran to catch up with Celine.