Turquoise ink whizzed past the long orange tentacles of an opposing female inkling, splattering on her red vector tee and getting into her slate-grey eyes. The girl gritted her teeth before swiftly abandoning her humanoid form and diving mantle-first into the orange ink that her opponent had carelessly left wide open. She popped out a second later before her turquoise enemy had even turned around, and with a few pumps of her splattershot the threat was gone.
"C'mon!" the orange inkling's map pinged at her. She pressed herself against one of Bluefin Depot's central crates, sparing the turquoise ink-spirit a quick glance as it floated away, and then she gave her own team a moment of her attention. The others were all in the opposite central area, freely turning the concrete orange. The girl rolled her eyes, knowing full well that they were only managing to do so as she was distracting the opposing team in this area all by herself.
BANG. A spray of turquoise ink catapulted to the girl's right. She tucked the map away and cursed quietly as she readied herself to tackle a charger.
"C'mon! C'mon!" A male voice replaced the pinging, realizing he was being ignored. "Sepha, come over here, it's totally cleared up!"
"Shut it," the girl hissed through her receiver. "Kind of busy holding up the team over here. And spread out, all of you. You're wasting time being clumped together like that." Honestly, why was she always stuck with the idiotic newbies? She'd had a terrible losing streak in ranked the previous day, losing her A rank and nearly dropping out of her A- to boot. Turf wars were proving to be a refreshing, if still frustrating, substitute. She wore a sporty bobble hat purely for the tenacity ability, and it was sadly paying off. Fortunately wins or losses here didn't matter terribly in the end, especially as she desperately needed the guaranteed coins.
Sepha could hear a roller approaching on her left. She zipped backwards in squid form, praying that the charger wouldn't notice her. She leapt out of her ink and shot down the roller, getting a clean splat before the opposing inkling could do anything to stop her.
BANG. BANG. Sepha stifled a laugh as the charger's ink line fell short twice as its owner failed to fully charge it. She was in a better position now, so she could recognize the weapon as a splatterscope. The dark-skinned boy holding it on top of the overlooking wall (as if that wasn't a predictable location) was visibly shaky in his aim, and Sepha confidently sprayed a neat path in front of herself and zigzagged her way to the edge of the wall. The boy struggled to adjust his aim downward. Sepha smirked. "Go back to the splattershot jr., kid," she teased, locking her aim perfectly onto his shrimp-pink polo –
Her finger froze on the trigger, her entire body paralyzed. A ripple ran through the area, and a second later she gasped in surprise as the world returned back to normal. Sepha had nearly forgotten about the splatterscope, and turned her weapon toward him again. It was hard to read where the boy was looking as he was wearing a pair of tinted shades, but he certainly wasn't looking at her…
Sepha hesitated, then followed his gaze to the other side of the pit divide between the central areas. Two of her team members were still frozen in place, with the third member prodding them with the end of his splat charger. Sepha slipped into her squid form to find safer ground – now wasn't the time to be initiating a fight, but she felt exposed looking at her map so openly. She hid back behind the central crates and pulled out her map. "Hey, come in over there," she hissed. "What's going on?"
"I-I dunno…" the boy muttered. "They're gone from the map, but they're just frozen in place – wait, they're fading out!"
Sepha peered over in time to see her two frozen teammates vanish into a puff of orange smoke. She groaned and tucked her map away, knowing this was going to be a hopeless fight. As much as she hated to admit it, even she couldn't pull off a turf war victory by herself against a full team of opponents. She would have to delegate some responsibility to the only other orange inkling. "Alright whatever-your-name-is, listen up - "
Her teammate's location was replaced with a large X, and Sepha sighed as she looked over and saw a turquoise girl neatly replacing their hard-earned orange ink with her slosher. Sepha peered out from behind the crates to gauge if it was safe to take the slosher out herself – the opposing inkling boy with the splatterscope was still loitering on top of the wall, simply watching his teammate work without lifting a tentacle to help. Sepha swam through the ink and straight up the wall – the boy simply turned to her, as if mildly surprised. "W-wait," he pleaded, dropping his weapon. Sepha quirked an eyebrow – she'd never seen anybody do that before. "Something's wrong, I've never seen the server drop only half of the players in the middle of a match without dropping all of them. We should wait until time runs out!" He had a raspy voice that Sepha found annoying. She huffed and took aim.
"Let this be a lesson: never drop your weapon." The boy turned desperately into a squid to evade her, but Sepha easily splatted him back to his base. She took a moment to check her map again – her one teammate had respawned and was heading back to where he was splatted in the first place. As the splatterscope owner had mentioned before, the squid count along the top of the map was indicating each side only had two players. Maybe they still had a shot.
Figuring she should take a few seconds to save her teammate, she inked a path across the edge to the other side. The orange boy was at least keeping a safe distance back as the slosher hunted him down, giving Sepha the perfect opportunity to attack from behind. She sprayed orange ink confidently as she ran over, then turned her weapon on the turquoise girl –
She froze again for a moment, then snapped back to normal. The two inklings in front of her both hesitated, and she focused her aim carefully –
"Wait! Stop!" the voice of the splatterscope boy called from behind her. He had apparently already respawned, to Sepha's annoyance.
Sepha ignored the opposing inkling, figuring she'd take him out immediately after, and fired onto the slosher. Her shots rang out slowly, the entire field lagging horribly. The turquoise girl didn't vanish immediately, so Sepha continued to fire, figuring the game was just being unusually slow. The girl let out a strangled cry, and Sepha finally hesitated.
"You're hurting her!" the boy with the splatterscope argued, leaping down next to Sepha and furrowing his brow. Sepha ceased her fire, worried he might be correct. Getting splatted usually felt uncomfortable and suffocating, but it happened too quickly to be painful. The two of them watched wordlessly as the girl jerked oddly beneath her coating of orange ink, her form fading in and out of transparency and sparks running down her side.
The other orange inkling ran over, his eyes flicking between his teammate and her victim. "What's going - ?!" He froze and vanished in a puff of orange smoke like the others had. Sepha was acutely aware that she was the sole remaining player on the orange side, and took a few uncertain steps backwards. The boy had run to the aid of his teammate, and unsteadily tried to fire some turquoise ink onto her helpless form, but it made no difference.
Sepha pressed herself against the far wall and tried to steady her breathing. Something like this had never happened to her before. She desperately looked at her map and found it was black with a white line of text running across it: "Connection Error". The salty sea breeze had stilled, and Sepha was shocked to see a flock of seagulls enter the battle area only to freeze in place, electricity dancing off of them just as they were the turquoise girl. Sparks began to pop up from the ground as well, and the world trembled beneath her feet.
Sepha ran and grabbed the arm of the turquoise boy. "Come on, we need to get out of here!"
He resisted, his focus still on his teammate. "What about Molly?!"
Sepha sighed and tried to pull her as well, but a sharp jolt of electricity shot up her arm and she recoiled away. She shook her head and took the boy's arm again. "I-it's no good…!" She fired her weapon against the wall leading to the turquoise base, attempting to leave half of it orange and half turquoise for the boy, but her orange ink wasn't sticking over the turquoise that was already there.
She peered around for an alternate route, but the boy swam easily up the wall and then leaned over the side, his arm extended. "Get as far up as you can, then grab my hand!"
Sepha nodded. She had some ink resistance up thanks to her red high tops, but was doubtful it would do her much good on a wall. Still, she leapt in squid form and struggled as hard as she could to swim up. The enemy ink was getting into her eyes and impairing her breathing – she leapt out and grabbed the boy's arm. He grunted and yanked her up; they both fell backwards, panting. "Thanks, I guess." Sepha stood up, looking skeptically down at the boy as he struggled to regain his breath. "My name's Sepha," she offered.
"Mine's Logan…" he breathed, regaining his stance just as the world froze again. The sparks dancing along the ground increased in intensity. A couple of them bounced high enough to sting them in the side, and the boy gave a sharp cry. Sepha gestured onward. "Hurry up!"
"Okay, okay!" Logan replied, his voice high with fear. The ground shook more violently, and both of them were knocked to the ground. Sepha groaned, disoriented from the fall. She could hear Logan whimpering: "oh no… oh gods, no…"
Sepha looked over. He was covering his head with his hands and hadn't stood up, his splatterscope splayed uselessly beside him. Sepha wasn't sure if she could stand either; the ground had started shaking continuously. Frightened, she looked off the edge of the wall and her stomach plummeted. The floor of the stage had started to collapse, leaving behind nothing but darkness. Sepha half dove, half crawled toward Logan, the shaking and turquoise ink making it impossible to walk. "Get up kid, get up!"
He shook his head rapidly, his eyes tightly closed. The surrounding area was falling apart, leaving them nowhere to run regardless. Sepha took one last pained look at the destroyed landscape before bowing her head, accepting her fate.
Her world went black.