Ahem: I'm not sure if OctoInkling75 is even reading this, but I wanted to write about your character again, and I didn't have permission for my new story, so I decided to write on this one for old time's sake. Consider this a bit of a neat little call-back.
Splatoon: The Bate Bros.
"Turtle, this story is supposed to finished, don't update again."
Also known in the English language as Aquamarine, A Short Story
A folded white cap laid dormant on top of a small rack that stretched out from a white wall by another bright white door that appeared to shine even in the dead of night. Underneath the rack, someone slept gently. In the embrace of white bedsheets, an Inkling stirred somewhat restlessly.
Long pink tentacles sat motionless on top of a pillow. The soft face that the tentacles belonged to on the other hand breathed in and out softly on the comfortable soft fabric. The small Inkling sighed in and out during her sleep constantly. She shivered somewhat as a breeze curled through the room and instinctively hugged the sheets tighter.
She would have gone the entire night shivering, had her sensitive Inkling ears not begun to pick up a noise. Hushed whispers emphasized privacy, but the dull silence of night compelled her to listen regardless.
"...worried about her." A distinctly female voice called out.
Her blue eyes fluttered open gently. She whimpered as she slowly but surely rose from her bed, the blankets draped over her small squid torso. Now garbed in the sheets of white, she slowly shuffled over towards the nearest source of light. As she stood in front of the door and as an orange-yellow light glowed from underneath peeking into her room, she placed one ear up to the door.
"Trust me." A male's voice murmured soft, though Aqua could make it out through the wooden door frame. "Inkopolis is a nice city. It's a little large and busy-"
"That's what I'm afraid of." Another voice huffed in a rushed patience. "Aqua is not a people's person."
The small Inkling draped in the warm embrace of her own bed sheets shivered. Their conversation continued, though the vibrations and tones of their voices thoroughly bothered her. Aqua frowned to herself and retreated away from the door. She fell down gracefully into her bed and rolled back into a sleeping position. Aqua nuzzled her head back down into a pillow and tried to ignore the speech as it echoed past her door. The world began to blur and vanish as sleep overtook her.
"Aqua, you're sure you're going to be okay?" A female voice called from outside her bedroom door cooed in a calm reassurance.
Aqua was wide awake, but she wished she was still fast asleep. She reached up from her bedside as she sat on top of the mattress and bedsheets to the white cap strung on the hook above her cot. She retrieved the white cap and stuck it on top of her bright pink tentacles. The SQUID GIRL ensemble she donned glowed with the added dazzle of innocence.
"Y-Yes." She murmured towards the wooden door with a shy frown.
The door cracked open. Her father responded. "Aqua, what have we told you about your enunciation?"
In turn, Aqua squeaked a "S-Sorry a-about t-that."
"Dear, you're making her stammer again." Her mother chimed in from behind him and added a warm smile to her expression. "You're all set? You have your money?"
Behind the timid's girl back, she brought her hands out cupped together. In between the two palms, several golden coins shimmered bright. She returned her coins into the unknown realm behind her back, presumably in some form of pocket.
"Good." Her father nodded in confirmation. "Do you have your Splat Charger?"
Yet again she pulled out an item from seemingly nowhere. A long sniper rifle with an orange nozzle and green body also shined. Although the bright glint of the rifle barrel was much less charming than the other set of pocket change.
"That's my girl." Her father smiled and reached into the room.
She sheathed the Splat Charger out of sight behind her back and shrunk underneath her father's hand. Slowly as his hand descended upon her, Aqua's form switched into a pink squid until she was low on the floor. His hand continued to hover just above her, out of her head's reach.
He sighed and shook his head. Eventually, Aqua grew back into her own Inkling size. "You're SURE you don't want either of us to go with you?"
Profusely and quickly, Aqua shook her head and started out the door into the hall. The small Inkling passed by the wooden door with her hands folded in front of her body as her parents watched her stride off with all the confidence of a mouse. Her stride led her out through a hallway, out towards yet another closed door. As she approached, she paused, and looked back with crystalline eyes.
She watched them wave back at her with reassuring smiles. With a sigh to herself, she turned around and cracked open the door. "Alright. First day. It's going to be okay."
Aqua glanced out from behind an Inkling boy with blue tentacles, a distinct lack of a pair of Designer Headphones, a Black Anchor Tee, and two Orange Arrow shoes on his feet out at a very tense Blackbelly Skatepark filled to the brim with enemy Inklings in orange aimed at the spawn point they were on.
Also her tentacles were blue now for whatever reason.
One of the opposing players glanced towards her with a grin. "Hey Splin, who's the cutie behind you? Your girlfriend or something?"
She flinched immediately. With a shaky stare, she glanced towards the one in orange with a timid step out from behind her cover Inkling.
"H-Hi." Aqua's lip trembled slightly. "My name's Aqua."
"And she's not my girlfriend." Splin sighed in response with a tinge of embarrassment in the shake of his head that followed.
As the others spoke, slowly and surely the world began to freeze in Aqua's head. She shivered and glanced to and fro at the people who passed by. Weapons aplenty and foreign orange ink covered every nook and cranny of the skatepark battleground. She noticed a female Inkling sniping from the tower with an E-Liter.
Aqua shrunk under her deadly gaze. All of a sudden, the female looked up from her gray metal weapon. The enemy sniper, much to her surprise, smiled and waved. Aqua was tempted to wave back at her until she took aim once again. A glowering glare of anxiety crept up into her chest and brought her down.
She glanced backwards towards the wall behind her and mentally debated, "Maybe I can just leave now… I don't want to let them down...but-"
Her thought train crashed when the tall Inkling woman crouched down in front of her. "Hi!"
Aqua crossed her legs shyly and gazed at her. The much taller Inkling had a long smile on her face as she stared towards her, her tentacles drooped down by her arms. They had a miniature bout of silence until Aqua's face began to glow in a prolonged flush. "H-Hello."
"What's your name?" A voice as soothing as Aqua never thought Inkling possible snapped her out of her doldrums.
"A-Aqua." She murmured as she turned her head away.
The other Inkling continued to smile. "Nice to meet you, Aqua. My name is Maria. What's the matter?"
"I-" Her mouth quivered as she sealed it shut. Her heart(s?) were racing with fear.
Maria tilted her head in confusion. She gave a cursory glance behind her towards the fjords of orange that clouded the skatepark cement. Maria also took note of the Inkling sniper that gazed down at them from across the map. Aqua could not see Maria's face, but she could certainly see the sniper's. For whatever reason, the orange markswoman shoulder's rose in a tense suggestion of fright. They lowered, and while the sniper still gazed at them from her vantage point she did so with a...frightened expression?
Maria turned back with another smile. "Anything else you need?"
To say that Aqua was stunned would be a massive understatement. She simply shook her head as fast as she could for fear that her penance stare would stun her as well. Instead of blasting her face with a glare of epictime proportions, Maria did the unpredictable.
She smiled again, and Aqua grew all the more befuddled with her happy-go-lucky expression. "It's fine if you want to stay back. Splin, Sharq-"
Her eyes darted towards another Inkling who looked near identical to Splin. Except for his Takoroka Mesh, Banana Basics and opposite colored Anchor Tee, the boy who stood and fumbled with his Splat Charger was an almost perfect match with the same tanned skin and brown eyes. She noticed him sneak a glance at her with an almost perpetual smile on his face.
"And I," Aqua turned back to the very nice Maria, "I'll lead. You don't have to go out there and try anything magnificent, okay?"
She nodded so fast she felt like her head would fall off. Her short burst of excitement was reciprocated with a hearty giggle from Maria. Aqua felt bizarre as Maria ruffled the tentacles on her head and stood up, but she felt good. It was a strange feeling, really. A mix.
Aqua felt a small burst of adrenaline as she spoke, "O-Okay. I'll try not to let you down."
"A-At least, I hope so."
Aqua ran back into her home and dropped her Splat Charger by the main front door and made haste for the hall. As the wooden door shut behind her, she dashed down through the hall, past her mother. The woman gawked at her in surprise as Aqua sped past through the hall. She haphazardly slid into her own room as a pink squid at an alarming speed.
Her mother gasped as Aqua quickly stowed away her SQUID GIRL on top of the rack over her bed. "Aqua?"
The Inkling girl had not a word. She stuffed her face into her pillow quickly and hugged it with an excited whimper.
"Aqua, what's wrong?" Her mother reached out for her, one hand at her lips.
"H-Huh?" Aqua chattered and turned back from her pillow. A small smile crossed her face. "O-Oh! Nothing, n-nothing!"
Her mother stepped back, taken completely by surprise. "Why, what's going on?"
"I lost my first T-Turf War!" Aqua cheered, only bewildering her mother more.
Before her mother could ask, Aqua kicked off her round, white boots and wrapped herself up in her blankets contently. Her mother blinked in confusion. She simply reached for the door handle, reached for the light switch, and let the girl rest.
Day after day, Aqua's resolve grew more and more. Each day that passed, the little smile grew larger and larger. With a hop and a skip about Inkopolis, she smiled more and more in the light of day. Each evening she returned home, skepticism was ever prevalent in her parents, and yet the glee was ever contagious.
"B-Bye mom and dad!" She had squeaked one fine day as the sun beat down upon Inkopolis.
Her parents watched her leave the house from the hall with helpful waves and smiles. A batch of coins in her possession, she sped out the door as quick as she could and closed it behind her just as swiftly. As the light dimmed from within the household, both of them glanced at each other with a worried glare and crossed arms.
Her father sighed and gazed at the door hopelessly. "...When did she get so eager?"
"Maybe it's for the best." Her mother suggested with a pat to his shoulder. "She's stammering less and less too."
"She is." He admitted as his stare gravitated to the floorboards. "...I'm concerned. Aqua's changing."
"For the better," Aqua's mother reassured him, "For the better."
"...I hope so." Her father closed his eyes.
Aqua had stepped out of the house into the fresh air of Inkopolis and the sun outside. A chorus of round finches chirped and flocked about the trees that speckled the gray sidewalks about the black asphalt streets. She hummed and stepped about jollily- As jollily shivering and shaking in her own Aqua way was.
That is, until the missile crashed by her feet.
It was to be a simple day, really. She wanted to purchase lunch of some sorts. Maybe even chat with Splin or Sharq. As the days went by, Aqua's respect for her newfound friends grew. Maria, Splin, Sharq, they were all nice people. Although, as she thought about people, she had noticed a distinct lack of them as of late.
Her adventure out into the streets of Inkopolis soon switched into paranoia. She spun around to and fro. The streets appeared to be deserted aside from the advertisement plastered on a billboard or elsewhere. She glanced at what appeared to be the next date for a Squid Sisters' concert when she heard a thump.
Aqua froze at the corner of a street. She turned warily towards the sound. "H-Hello?" Her voice crooned meekly as she cowered from an unseen menace. "Is anyone there?"
She was answered in the form of ammunition. A missile, similar to those used in Turf Wars slammed into the cement nearby and left a crater. It skidded from the sidewalk onto the street and came to rest across the street on the other side. Aqua watched in horror as it started to smoke.
"Eek!" She screamed and retreated.
The young moon peaking over the horizon hardly called for sleep, and yet Aqua remained confined within the small perimeter of her room with a melancholy stare directed at the floor beneath her. As she sat on her bed with a miserable gaze at the floor, she could not ignore the noise any longer. Her cap, removed yet again, hovered just above her head and bed.
Her ears twitched in shame as she heard the unmistakable voice of her mother. "After that rampage? Absolutely not."
"You said it yourself!" Her father exclaimed in irritation. "She's never been happier here! Inkopolis is a great city, and you said she was warming up-"
"I NEVER said anything about robots, and neither did you!" Aqua's mother screeched back incredulously. Aqua shrunk in fear at the sound of her voice. "I- I can't. We can't live here anymore. Robots, malfunctioning equipment- They said that there were Octolings. Can you believe it?"
"I can't. There's no way there are any Octarians here." He protested. "You wanted to give this place a chance!"
Aqua ensnared herself in the confines of her cot and covered her ears with her pillow. She attempted to drown out the noise as her eye leaked pink onto her mattress as the mighty grip of sleep overtook her.
She hurried out the door with a simple, light blue suitcase. It was lightweight and compact. Sagged bags laid underneath Aqua's eyes as she sniffled. Her mother and father were packed as well.
"I'm sorry, Aqua." Her father had announced the night before. "We can't stay here any longer. Your mother and I have decided-"
Aqua tuned out yet again and responded with a melancholy nod of her head. As they departed from their house, she continued to stare forward with a disheartened look in her crystal blue eyes. They ventured across building and street, the wheels on the large flowered suitcase his father slugged around clattered with every line in the sidewalk they walked over. Each and every step became a blur as she let her trembling feeling in her chest and the tears in her eyes cloud her destination.
The unfocused Aqua carried on. In the back of her head she could hear watered down voices in the back and a mild vibration in her steps. She continued to walk along the sidewalk and gazed down at the symmetrical lines engraved in the sidewalk until she felt the vibrations grow.
"...a!"
Her eyes refocused in shock. Her pupils shrunk as she realized that the symmetry ended at a particularly large crack in the cement. The vibrations grew into tremors. The voices into shouts. Aqua gasped in shock and looked up.
A bizarre, metallic octopus thrashed about. A madwoman at the helm with tentacles like that of an octopus laughed maniacally. She pointed in one direction and the octopus followed her lead, although much more violently, by swinging a metal tentacle in the very same direction. The force displaced buildings and shattered the pavement with but a single smack.
Aqua's first instinct was to run, of course. She began to dash although a set of familiar voices shouted for her behind her. She hardly knew where. Unbeknownst to her, a large shard of shrapnel had been launched towards a building close to her. With the loud accompanying cacophony of glass shattering, the building started tilting precariously towards the ground.
She halted and skidded to a stop on the sidewalk. She gazed up at the building in terror. For a moment, her terror remained had her frozen.
"Aqua, no!" Her mother's voice screamed for her.
"Aqua!" Her father exclaimed.
She did not move. The tower began to give way.
"Get out of here, we've got this under control!" Sharq called out.
Aqua stepped back in shock. The building collapsed and smashed into the floor in front of her. Several fragments of debris scattered about and swept past Aqua's feet, such as shards of glass, bricks, uplifted concrete, and other dangerous materials. She felt a few scrape by her ankles and legs. She was unphased.
In front of the building, two scraggly looking brothers blinked back at her. Splin and Sharq, dirty with dust and powder left over by the building shook themselves free of the dirt and grime.
Sharq grinned and waved. "Oh, hi Aqua! We haven't seen you in a while!"
"Sharq, focus." Splin grumbled and turned to her. "Be careful, get to some shelter or something."
"...Yes." Aqua nodded certainly.
Her parents gazed on in a sort of awe. The brothers waved her off, Sharq grinned and said, "We'll see you later, okay?"
She could only nod. The two leapt back into the chaos of the city as panic and people ran amok. Yet Aqua still felt as though her legs were glued to the spot. She fell back towards the ground as the world spun around her.
"Aqua!" Came the concerned calls of her parents as she faded into the depths unconsciousness.
The day had come. Aqua gazed out of the train window out towards Inkopolis with a lonely sense of regret. The city looked picture perfect. There were very little, if any, cracks in the ground or debris scattered about. The train was hardly packed. After all, who wanted to leave a city of Inkopolis' caliber?
Aqua felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. She glanced away from the window for a split second up at her mother's warm, yet saddened smile. "...I'm sorry. We can't stay any longer."
Aqua knelt down on the train seat, making sure that her legs relaxed contently and comfortably. They were bandaged. "...Yes."
"We can always come back for a vacation." Her father suggested to her apathetically. "You can see your friends again-"
"As long as there aren't anymore of...those incidents." Her mother put it simply.
"It's okay." Aqua stated plainly. "Splin and Sharq have it fine. They took down the last ones. It'll be alright."
The two adult Inkling glanced at each other in surprise. Though with uncertain faces, they turned to their daughter and nodded. Aqua could not help but giggle lightly and turn towards the window. She felt the train's movements as it lurched forward, away from Inkopolis Plaza. Her smile quickly dissipated as she watched her home bid adieu.
As the other Inklings in the plaza chattered amongst themselves, geared up for a Turf War, Aqua turned away from the window, slumped down in her seat, and closed her eyes as the train shoved off from the city of squids, robots, and references with a final chime.
AN: Didn't expect that? Neither did I. Enjoy a few minor snippets of Aqua's perspective in Inkopolis, because I doubt I'm ever gonna bring myself to writing about her again. Or for that matter, have the ability to write about her.
I don't really like self-advertising, but if there's anyone out there who liked this story and is still looking for a sequel, there's one by the name of The Brothers and the Others that I think you'll enjoy. It's a Splatoon story that picks up on the loose ends this one leaves out and I think it's much better than this one.
Uh, lemme just thank the reviewers on this story one last time. Thanks Dread Angel, Ultrapyre, qwertyzuiopas701 and the story guys for reviewing at the start of the year! It's been a crazy run, hasn't it?
Also, sorry about that nonsense, Anon360! I hope I didn't confuse you too much.
Thanks for reading again, this is ThePizzaLovingTurtle, see you in another story, or elsewhere.
