Splat X: Scratched Record

A.k.a. "splat x except written in the style of pizza's trash post stories" -anon

The Beginning of the End

Lightning crackled and struck the tip of Inkopolis Tower. As the top was charred from an unrelenting assault of the bolts string of electricity arced and buzzed as it ran down the once pristine light-green architecture down to the ground below. The Great Zapfish wrapped around the tower as always, but with its eyes shut and unmoving. As the electricity rippled across its stagnant flesh, it snored, and wrapped itself tighter around the tower to get comfier. It also happened to be raining by the way which really made it hard to get around without getting soaked.

Immune to the effects of nature, two Inklings standing in the downpour faced one another. The two of them glared at one another with nothing but contempt and hatred in their eyes. Despite the fact that it deluged around the two squids they were unharmed. Unseen to the naked eyes, two layers of flaming auras shined around both of them at once. So much in fact that the rain droplets that fell around them caught fire simply by falling by.

One Inkling, a strong, independent, well-endowed, long and orange tentacled, two-large-tentacles-in-front-of-her-face-having, sweatshirt-wearing, white pants wearing, fresh belt wrapped, white kicks donning woman pierced her opponent with her gaze. "So...looks like you came."

The other Inkling in an ensemble of a Baseball Jersey with shorts and a pair of fresh Red Sea Slugs just blinked back at her. "Uh...yeah." He rubbed his blue tentacles self-consciously.

"You bastard." The woman glared at him and began to circle about the plaza.

"What?" The man backed up. "All I said-"

"Good grief…" The woman muttered and lowered her head. "You really are dense…"

"...Rem, can you cut it out and tell me what's up?" He frowned and gazed at her.

"You." Rem muttered and looked up slowly. "Ix. You've been a thorn in my side since the very beginning."

"Oh boy." Ix muttered back and rolled his eyes.

"Ever since the day we met…" Rem raised her left arm and clenched it. It closed almost robotically slow. Hint hint. "I've always pegged you as my little brother…"

"That's because I am-" Ix interrupted.

A blot of orange ink was lobbed at him. Ix yelped and ducked low to the ground as the orange ink sailed over his head. Crouched low on the ground, Ix shot a cursory glance back and cursed, as the ink steamed and boiled unnaturally in the air. A burst of heat emanated from behind him and slowly cooled as the rain coated the unorthodox fluid and cooled it almost instantly.

"What the hell Rem?!" Ix scowled and rose to his feet.

"Shut up." Rem glowered at him. "I haven't finished."

"Well, once you're done with this whole tantrum thing, can we get back to writing?" Ix asked as he rose up slowly.

"No!" Rem cried out and lobbed another suspiciously hot blob of "ink" at him which Ix manged to dodge again. "This is why I wanted to get out here in the first place! You're IMPOSSIBLE to work with!"

"I'm impossible?!" Ix pushed himself off of the ground.

Suddenly a flash of light illuminated to plaza. For a brief second the two of them thought a lightning bolt struck the floor this time. Instead of electricity they were treated to the sight of several disgruntled sea creatures. A horseshoe crab garbed with goggles wrapped under his shell standing upright stood with his arms sternly at his side. A vibrantly sea anemone wearing glasses stood a few feet across from him with her arms shyly wrapped behind her back.

"Uh, sorry guys, but could you take this argument somewhere else?" The horseshoe crab muttered and rubbed his goggles.

"What?" Rem glared back at the crab.

The particularly fashionable sea anemone in a hoodie twiddled her fingers. "Um...well...you see…"

"SCRAM YA TROGLODYTES!" A clownfish popped out from the nest of tentacles that was her hair. "YOU'RE SCARING AWAY THE CUSTOMERS!"

The sound of rain filled the silence that ensued.

"...Get out of here before I CALL THE COPS." The clownfish threatened and reached into the anemone's hair to retrieve a minuscule mobile phone.

"Really?" Rem muttered as she raised her arm again. "Try me."

"Okay, hold on." Ix muttered and massaged his temples. "You dragged me out of the house all the way to the plaza-"

"In the middle of the rain." Rem added assuredly.

"Just because of the whole 'manga' thing?" Ix complained.

"What thing?" Sheldon frowned.

"This." Rem announced and reached into her pockets.

Ix flinched and turned to Rem. "No, don't show them the-"

Rem raised a small fold of paper from her pockets. She unfolded the paper multiple times, and took care to keep the paper away from the flaming rain drops that began to steam on the ground despite all rules of nature. They left several tiny scorch marks on the already blackened asphalt, undoubtedly to be left there even as the sun would come up the next day.

Rem pushed the scroll towards their direction. "Is it so hard to add?"

"Rem, it's not that." Ix muttered and covered his face bashfully.

The shopkeepers present had varying reactions to the contents of the scroll. The crab's eyes nearly popped out of his goggles. The anemone's face blew up in a scarlet shade. The clownfish...well the clownfish hardly changed from his usual bug-eyed expression but if he had more than just an agape mouth and two dinner plates for eyes maybe he would have arched an eyebrow.

"HM?!" The clown fish's tail fluttered back in forth in the air. "WOULD YOU LOOK AT THOSE NICE ROUND-"

"See Ix?" Rem lowered the indecent scroll. "Moe's cool with it. Why can't you be?"

"Rem, we've been over this, I'm not sketching that." Ix shook his head in irritation. "The point of this story is to make an adventure with protagonists the characters can relate to. Not...satisfy someone's kinks."

"I know I'm satisfied!" Moe shouted over the rain.

"You see what I have to deal with?" Rem shouted back at the shopkeepers angrily. "He's hopeless!"

"I, er, um, well, eh…" The horseshoe crab began to twiddle his own fingers at lightspeed.

"T-That's too lewd!~~~~~" The anemone gushed as her face looked as if it could explode.

"Eugh!" Moe 'muttered' at maximum volume. "You got Annie FLUSTERED. SHE'LL BE LIKE THIS FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT FEW HOURS! NICE WORK BATTER-BOY."

"Me?!" Ix pressed his hands to his chest.

"Ix, you have two choices." Rem grimaced as dark as she could. "Either you just draw it and that's it or else I'll kick your ass from seven to six."

Ix bit his lip and glanced at Rem and mulled over the options. After a quick second of thinking, he simply shook his head, and gazed at her straight in the eyes.

"No." He replied.

Rem's hands lit ablaze and despite common sense would have told anyone her hands were completely fine. "So be it."

"Hang on, I'm not finished." Ix interrupted quickly. "Listen, Rem, I get that you want to make the characters as appealing as you would want to." The fire in her eyes (and on her arms) dimmed slightly. "But I'm trying to put as much effort as I can in making these characters relatable."

Moe scoffed. "What's more relatable than liking a chick with HUGE-"

"Shut up Moe!" Those present in the plaza (except for Annie still practically dying of embarrassment) yelled over the rain as another lightning bolt struck the tower. The Zapfish hardly blinked.

Ix cleared his throat. "The point is that I get it. You want the readers to like your characters. But making them as physically attractive as you can possibly make them won't make the readers respect them more." Ix glanced to the side. "Although it does seem to get you a bunch of fan-art." He stared back at Rem and frowned. "Does that make sense?"

Rem stared at Ix for a while. The rain pattered down and appeared to lessen into a light sprinkling. Most of the bystanders, except for the beet red Annie, stood and watched in silence as the two continued to stare at each other menacingly.

Finally, after what felt like a decade and a half, Rem's shoulders hung low. "I just...I just thought it would be nice, y'know? I don't see anything wrong with it."

"I know, Rem." Ix sighed in frustration. "But, for the sake of the story, can we please just stick with a normal character that doesn't rely on sticking out constantly?"

"..." Rem glared at Ix. "Are you preaching to me?"

"...Yes." Ix frowned at her.

Rem scowled at Ix for a solid minute. Basically a whole minute of nothing but staring at the other. The rain drops around them did start to boil through the ground and sink into the earth after the thirty seconds though so I suppose that is at least something to tide one over with.

Eventually after a stale minute of causing water to burn through the Earth's crust through sheer willpower Rem simply shook her head and turned around with her arms crossed.

"...Sis?" Ix inquired gently.

A barrage of flaming ink blasted out. The sudden deluge of fire most definitely caught Ix by surprise. The burning ink stuck to his clothes in an instant.

"...You're an ass, Rem." Ix muttered as he melted into nothingness.

As soon as her brother pretty much died Rem began to giggle. Then her giggles exploded into uncontrollable laughter. The shopkeepers gazed on in horror at the remnants of where Ix once stood and the puddle of glorified lava sank into the ground with the rest of the rain that caught on fire due to reasons.

"Yes! I WON!" Rem cried out in glee. "Now I can finally-"

"Sis!"

"WHAGH!" Rem's head jolted up suddenly. "Oough…"

"Keep your eyes open for once!" Ix snapped and turned back to his desk. "If we're going to make the deadline then I need you to focus!"

Rem pushed up from her resting spot on the desk sat up groggily and stared Ix straight in the eyes. "...I thought I killed you?"

Ix stared at Rem incredulously for a solid real-time minute again. Rem stared back tiredly with a clear indication that she gave no hoots about the stack of papers she had smothered with her face. With all the grace of a rock Rem smacked back down face first onto the stack of papers and began to snore.

He scowled and waved her off and turned back to a sheet of paper spared from the wrath of Rem. "Why bother? Of course she had to go pubbing the night before. Probably would've just told me to draw a bigger bosom- AAGH!"

"Do it." Rem gripped her brother around his jersey's collar. "Do it now!"

"...No!" Ix exclaimed. "I thought we were over this!"

Rem glared up at him. A smile ran across her face suspiciously. "Alright then."

As Rem went back to sleep Ix blinked down in confusion. "Is that it?"


Five days later Inkopolis was reduced to a rubble of charred stones and cinders. The once great city was leveled in but a few days. Among the burnt building fragments were three creatures.

Ix sat in between Sheldon and Annie as they gazed up at the sky. The imposing figure of Rem flying because…loomed over them with a ginormous blob of flaming fire orbiting just above her head.

"Oh no oh no oh no." Annie shivered.

"What did we do to deserve this?!" Sheldon asked as the two shopkeepers huddled closer to Ix.

"...I pissed her off." Ix sighed as the gigantic blot of ink started to fall.

From space the Earth was a wonderful planet with its life ahead of it. Then all of a sudden its dreams were shattered, as was itself, and the planet came apart with a mighty explosion which ripped itself across the cosmos embarrassingly early for its life time. Aliens viewing this phenomenon would then come to know the incident as the "Nuclear Summer" incident for the planet.


DISAGREEMENT END: SIBLING ARGUMENTS ARE ROUGH. DON'T HAVE THEM.


AN: Never did have any aspirations to become a serious writer. Thanks to Dread Angel for giving me permission to essentially ruin his universe.

Thanks for reading. This is ThePizzaLovingTurtle and I'll see you next time on Sea Squid Splat X.