It was a nice and calm morning in Inkopolis. Today was a very normal kind of day for the citizens of this fine little city. In this town resides one of the humblest creatures known to its kind, the Inklings. These squid kids liked to play games with eachother! Their main game? A little game called Turf War! A game where inklings form teams of two to fight against eachother to see who can cover the most of the battlefield's floor in their team colored ink. It's all in good fun, and it even pays all participants for their time, whether they win or lose! To these inklings, this was perfect!

Well, to most of them, anyway. There we some inklings who didn't appreciate the way Turf Wars worked.

Many of these inklings became outcasts because of this fact alone. It's easy to see why, since Turf Wars are so rooted in inkling culture. For the longest time, these squid kids kept to themselves, finding other ways to pass the time, never really finding anyone to hang out with due to the way inklings like them were looked down upon.

Beat was one of those inklings. He was never one to enjoy Turf Wars, mainly because he felt it restricted his artistic form. He tried to avoid it as much as possible, instead staying at home by himself to work on remixing popular songs for his own enjoyment. Beat was doing this very thing today, before he sighed out of boredom. "This sucks..." He said, bored slightly as he spun his headset's cord around. There was only so many times you could remix a song from the squid sisters before you ran out of material to work with. Why did they have to be so popular anyway?

He sighed, as he leaned back in his chair, and stared at a nearby mirror. Beat was a rather normal looking inkling boy, by most people's standards. Even if he didn't put his tentacles in that old fashioned ponytail. His green eyes stared back at him through his reflection, before moving over to the mop that was his reddish orange tentacles. He poked it absentmindedly, feeling the familiar shiver it sent through him. He smiled despite himself, as he got up and grabbed his freshest clothes. Not fresh in style, just fresh as in 'clean enough to wear outside'. He took his headphones with him as he walked down the street to a nearby resturaunt. Lunchtime would help clear up the boredom...

He sat down at a table by himself, and ordered himself a meal, before hanging out, waiting for his meal to be delivered. He listened to his music as he waited. He couldn't help but notice some squids sitting together at a table nearby. They couldn't help but notice him, either.

There was a blue inkboy enioying a fairly simple crabby cake, which he was sharing with his lime haired inkgirl friend. They were caught in the act of staring at Beat's rather strange choice of clothing. Not that they were any better. Beat may not have had the most conventional of clothing, having taken a liking to a certain yellow T-Shirt with black sleeves, but at least it was his own, and no one else's. No other shirt like that existed, as far as most inklings were aware. The lime colored inkling and her blue companion were as equally strange in clothing. The light green one wearing a rather plain light green skirt with some interesting blue highlights at the hems, which was unique, but still rather normal. What was strange was the helmet she wore. It was definitely unique, seeing as no one else could have owned something like it, or would have dared to try and wear something as gaudy as it, and yet somehow, this inkgirl was able to pull it off rather well.

The blue one was probably the most interesting of them all, because he wore a jumpsuit of all things. In Inkling society, it was considered frowned upon to wear pants, sticking instead to simple black shorts instead. It was the kind of clothing all inklings wore, as a matter of fact. The only kind... Which made what this blue inkling was wearing borderline sacrilegious. He wore a beanie of some sort that tried to hide his eyes from the world, and it worked rather well when he himself wasn't making eye contact with someone, which he was with beat right now. The lime and blue squiddies exchanged a look, before heading over to Beat, with a smile on their face.

"Well hello there, fellow outcast!" The lime one said, as she sat down at his table. "I heard you order a full meal just now. What was that about?" It was generally accepted that if you didn't play Turf Wars, it was because you had a whole retirement plan to go through with. Or it was because you were an outsider, and didn't play it. The difference between the two is that one has had a whole career, where they've made enough money to even retire in the first place, and the other one has really limited options in how to make money at all because of their avoidance of a certain sport...

Beat chuckled, as he shrugged. "I sell off remixes of songs for people to enjoy. It pays the pills, and then some." He smiled a toothy smile, while he welcomed his fellow outsiders, simply relishing in the moment that someone, even another outsider, was willing to hang out with him. "Name's Beat, by the way. What's yours?"

"I'm Gum. It's a pleasure to meet you!" The lime inkling beamed, as she held out her hand to shake Beat's. She nodded in the direction of the blue one, who had yet to take a seat with them. "That one over there is Tab. He doesn't speak much to strangers."

Tab chuckled, as he sat down. "Aren't we supposed to be the 'strangers' here, Gum?" He shook Beat's hand as well. "Pleasure to meet someone who's got their lives in order, what with the not playing Turf Wars and all that."

"You two are probably the strangest, as far as I know. Wasn't it an unspoken rule to keep us outsiders separated from eachother?" Beat said, with a smirk, as he hung his headphones from his head to place them around his neck.

They all had a good laugh with eachother for a while. They exchanged small talk, talking about what they like to do instead of turf wars.

"You guys ever hear of rollerskating?" Beat asked, as he dug into his meal which had been served just a minute ago.

"Rollerskating? What's that?" Gum's interest was piqued, as Tab gave Beat a quizzical look.

"It's this really cool thing!" Beat said enthusiastically, after having gulped down half his food already. "Like, imagine you guys swimming around in ink puddles, right? You know how fast that is, right?"

Tab nodded. "Yeah. Fastest way to get around without super jumping, as far as I know. You still gotta get up to make a new trail everywhere you go, though..." he said, drinking a nice refreshing can of 'Dr. Squidder'.

Beat smiled wide. "Right. Imagine going faster than that! And without the ink either!"

Gum's eyebrow raised. "You're joking, right? And how do you manage that? Did you put wheels on your shoes or something?" She laughed at Beat's expense, only to see that Beat's smile never faltered.

"Actually..." Gum went silent, before laughing again. Beat waited patiently for her to stop, and she did. "It's pretty cool too! I'm tellin' ya, you haven't had fun until you've skated down the sidewalk on a downward slope, alright?"

Tab and Gum shared another glance, before they laughed again. "Tell ya what, why don't ya prove it, Beat?" Tab challenged. "Show me and Gum what those wheel shoes can do, if they're as cool as you say they are."

Beat's toothy smirk lit up his features, as he finished up his food and licked off his fingers. "You might wanna borrow a spare helmet from Gum, Tab, because it'll make it easier to keep everything inside after I blow your minds..."


-=Chapter 0: Funky Up-Starts=-


Gum and Tab hung around an empty lot, with many natural dips and curves. It was an abandoned project of some sort that the people of Inkopolis had planned on working on at one point, but they seemed to have given up on it in favor of working more inland, since this place was more out of the way from town than most other places. No one came around here, save for the occasional wanderer.

Beat told them that he would be here to show off his 'Roller Skates' to them. And he was late...

"You think he's gonna show up?" Tab asked, adjusting the zipper on his jumpsuit to reveal the yellow shirt underneath. "I told my friend I'd meet up with him to work on his 'project' today..."

"He might just be full of it, Tab, but I wanna at least give him the benefit of the doubt." Gum said, twiddling her thumbs as she leaned on a wall nearby.

They suddenly heard a strange sound coming at them. Skrit, Skrit, Skrit, Skrrrriiiiiit! Beat suddenly slid into view on his roller skates, turning them to their side to stop them from moving, and to face both Tab and Gum, who were raising their eyebrows at the strange design of these wheeled shoes. "Heya guys!" He said, giving them a two finger salute. "How's it hangin'?"

Gum grinned at him. "Took you long enough. So, is it alright if you go easy on us? I don't have a spare helmet for Tab."

Tab chuckled. "Don't worry about it dude. I just wanna see if what you said is true or not. You good with those things?"

Beat smirked, as he did a little twirl on his skates. "Am I good? More like I'm the best!" He did a pose on his skates in an attempt to look cool.

"Well it's easy to say you're the best when you're the only one, right?" Gum remarked, twirling her tentacle hair in her hand a bit.

Beat started to slide back slowly, and precariously towards a steep little hill. "Why don't you guys check it for yourself?" He smiled at the two inklings, watching them as he slid backwards down the hill at quick speeds. The two inklings were almost horrified. What if the crazy bastard splatted himself against a wall going that fast?! They ran to the edge to see him about to go up a quarter-pipe that had deteriorated from a half pipe. As soon as he flew into the sky, Beat did a little flip, before fluidly sticking the landing down the pipe, and skating quickly to the other side of the area, and then as quickly as he got there, he came back to his spectators, his eyes wide with expectation.

Gum and Tab were indeed a little impressed. "Alright," Gum started, putting her hands on her hips as her eyes looked Beat over. "I admit, that was pretty cool, but is that all you can do on those things?"

Beat scoffed. "Of course. I can totally do way more with these bad boys. Wanna see?"

Gum thought for a moment, her finger and thumb grabbing onto her chin, she looked around, then nodded at a little clearing, with some rails set up around it. "What can you do on those things?"

Beat looked at the railings, then back to Gum with a knowing smile. "Those railings? Lemme show ya." He tightened up the laces on his roller skate a bit, before he sped off to the railings. Gum thought he was going to ram himself straight into the end of it at one point, but then he did a short hop and grinded across the railing instead. He did another hop as he transitioned to the next railing, and he continued to do that, doing a small little stunt at the end, after having done a full circle back to Gum.

Gum nodded, a smile on her face. "Not bad at all. That actually looks pretty fun!"

Tab patted Beat on the shoulder before he could accept his praise, and held out a small can of some sort, with a strange nozzle at the top. "Hey man, you ever seen one of these things before?"

Beat investigated the little can in his hand. It was green in color, and made a rattling noise when he shook it. The RollerSkating squid looked at his friend with a quizzical kind of look.

"It's a spray can," Tab said, answering Beat's unsaid question. "You can use them to paint the walls and stuff."

Gum gave Tab a knowing smile. "Ah, trying to teach him the ways of Vandalism, are you Tab?" Tab laughed it off, as Gum turned to Beat. "You press down on the nozzle at the top, and it sprays out some thin ink."

Beat looked at the can's nozzle, and did as instructed, spraying himself in the face with some green ink. He sputtered and coughed, with Gum and Tab laughing at his expense. "Note to self, aim the can at the opposite direction of my face..." Beat muttered to himself, wiping off the ink. He noticed something strange though when he did so. "Hey wait, are you sure this is ink? It doesn't hurt at all..."

"It's been watered down." Tab explained. "It's thin, too, so if you were gonna hurt anything with that, you're gonna need like, ten cans, and that's if you're aiming for exposed skin."

Beat chuckled. "Guess I'm not splatting anyone anytime soon with this thing. Think they got anything like this for their little Turf Wars?"

Gum and Tab shrugged. "How would we know?" Gum remarked.

Tab patted Beat on the shoulder for his attention. "Listen kid, you got some cool moves, I admit, but this place looks a little clean, don't ya think? It's a little too..."

The group looked around at the blandness of this area. The only color for a mile or so was a bland and tasteless gray. "Boring..." Tab finished saying. He nodded at the spray can in Beat's hand, and smiled knowingly at him. "Wanna fix that? I can help out." Tab pulled out some spray cans, and walked up to a nearby wall, before going to work, spraying a rather nice little mural of his name in blue letters. He looked over at Beat and Gum.

Beat looked kinda confused, while Gum was looking rather proud of Tab. "Hey, simple is good, right?" She remarked. Beat looked at her and Tab like they had grown a second head, or fused the ones they already had with each other.

He chuckled. "Alright. Cool. So you want me to spray up 'Squid Hole' with some of this spray ink, huh?"

"Is that what this dump is called?" Tab scoffed at Beat.

Gum shrugged plainly. "I think it's represents this place pretty well."

Beat gave Gum a thumbs up, with a nice little toothy smile to accompany it. "Good to hear someone agrees with me on that." He turned his backs to them as he took in the dull scenery before him. "It's about time this place got a little ink over, don't you think?" Gum and Tab smiled at their new friend, as he turned around to them. "But, how are you guys gonna keep up with me if you keep wasting your ink trying to superjump after me?"

Tab and Gum shared a look of confusion, before realization dawned on them. They looked at Beat with a surprised look as he pulled out two pairs of roller skates. "Come on, guys! I'll teach ya how it's done!"

Beat skated off excitedly, while Tab and Gum looked at their new roller skates in wonder. Tab's was an interesting yellow color, while Gum's was a cool light blue. They smiled at eachother, before putting on their new skates, as they got ready to skate up the dull and colorless land that was the 'Squid Hole'...


-=Cleared!=-
Rank: PeDal


DJ Mushoo's Author's Note (The important part)
Hey guys. So I've written a lot of strange stories before I deleted them because I just didn't like them, or they didn't get enough attention, and so I've had a bit of practice, however, I don't want to believe I am at my best when it comes to writing. I just want people to write up their constructive criticisms in the reviews and tell me how I did. What should I add? What should I remove? Do you think the way I wrote these characters are 'In Character' or not? It's hard to say what's 'In Character' for the Jet Set Radio characters, considering the fact that they only get one or two lines of dialogue that isn't the same as everyone else, and I like to believe the majority of their personality comes from how they dress up, since that's pretty much the only thing (and most unique thing) that everyone in JSR has.

(The not important part.)
So yeah. I just wanna start off by saying that Jet Set Radio is an amazing game that needs more sequels, because this is a classic game that I believe everyone should play. I also wanna bring to people's attention that even if people should know who these characters are based on their likeness, you should always pretend you're introducing a new character that nobody knows about, and that was the kind of approach I tried to take here, actually. As somebody who isn't up to date on a lot of things, I like to read crossovers of stories involving my favorite things (TF2, Splatoon, Comix Zo- Oh wait...) and I find it personally annoying when a character is introduced and you're supposed to know every little thing about this character, like their favorite food, or their secret ability Sacred Blossom Storm or something, and try to understand the significance of these moves. I dunno, it's just a personal gripe that might not make any sense.

I'm also going to never redo anything done in this story, mainly to keep it as a kind of time capsule, and because I expect to make this a pretty extended story. I don't have an exact number of chapters, but my goal is to have at least 40 something chapters. So yeah, thanks for sticking by guys, and I'll see you in the next chapter! Keep on rebellin', rudies.