Calamari

Some say the defining difference between inklings and octolings is our number of limbs, but those are only the surface. In truth, what divides us are our values.
An octoling will do anything and everything for the good of their splatoon, their division, and all of Octarian society.
Whether it's in a fight, among strangers, or with their closest family, an inkling will only act for their own benefit.
THAT is the difference. That is what divides us.
And you must never be like them.

"That was fun, but it's almost time for our break, Cal." Marie's voice can be heard echoing across the plaza.

"Yeah! I can't wait to snack on some of those delicious chips!" Callie dances in a circle and poses. Marie giggles.

Pearl elbows her. "We're almost at the front. What do you want?"

"Are the crabcakes here good? I haven't tried-oh, they're doing Calamari Inkantation!" She bounces on her toes and leans out into the plaza. "Um..."

"You won the last match, I'm buying, get us a table. I'm gonna bring the food over and stack it high and stable."

"That one needs work, Pearlie."

Pearl sticks out her tongue and flaps a hand, and Marina, grinning, heads back out to the plaza. She can almost do the dance along with them, she's seen it so many times, but there's something magical about the two of them, their tentacles in splatfest colors, performing for all to see and Marina claps her hands and closes her eyes and pulls off her headphones so she can listen with every part of herself.

It's over far too soon, and when Marina opens her eyes, she's only half-surprised not to be seeing double. But she cheers with everyone else as the Squid Sisters leave their stages. Marina knows what comes next: they'll reappear in a few minutes, each holding a tray of food, and glide off in opposite directions to sit with people on their splatfest side.

"Yo!" Pearl almost drops their food as she saunters up. "You ready to eat or what?"

Marina ducks her head. "So I'm eating with the enemy, now?" she asks, half teasing, half letting the octolings behind the glasses know she knows.

"It's just a splatfest, Rina." Pearl drops in the seat across from her at the small, square table and sets down both trays, full to bursting and taking up nearly all the room. Pearl's has a soda and shwaffles covered in whipped cream and sprinkles cake the size of the dessert plate it sits on; Marina has enough crabcakes for three people and her favorite smoothie and a bowl of ice cream the size of her head. Every spare inch of both trays is covered in fries and chips. "Nothing but an excuse for some fun!"

Marina stares at all the food. "We're going to make ourselves sick," she says.

"Worth it." Pearl pops a fry in her mouth. "Dig in."

Marina knows there is absolutely no reason to eat ice cream, it has little to no nutritional value for all the fat and calories and things she's supposed to avoid, it would never be permitted in the domes even if they knew about it. Crabcakes are a bit better, protein and carbohydrates but still with a lot of fat that she'll burn off with the exercise of the splatfest, and the smoothie is best with all the fruits and vitamins and everything else in it. She should drink the smoothie and have one, maybe two crabcakes (not seventeen) and avoid the ice cream entirely, which is precisely why Marina goes for the ice cream first.

If she waits, she may not have enough room to eat it all, and that can't be permitted.

Marina's eaten half the ice cream and abandoned it to apply herself to the crabcakes and chips when someone plops in the seat on Marina's right. Marina looks up and chokes on her crabcake, because Callie is right there. "Whew," says Callie, a large bowl of fries in her hands. "Looks like you two know how to party!"

Marina struggles to regain the ability to breathe as someone on Marina's left clears her throat. "Is this seat taken?" asks Marie-Marie, the other member of the squid sisters, dear Cod. "We don't see squids from different teams eating together that often, and we'd love to spend our break chatting with you."

They think she's a squid. Callie and Marie, The Squid Sisters, think she's a squid. They think she's a squid, and they're eating with her, and she has too much food in her mouth to answer and ahhhhhh it's the squid sisters! Marina chews frantically, swallows once, twice.

Pearl lets out a little squeak of excitement, coughs, and says, "C'mon, siddown! You can totally eat with us! We're in a band too, ya know, and we're gonne be even better than you soon, so you'd better!"

"Pearl!" Marina cries.

"What?"

Marina reaches to pull down her goggles and hide her face before remembering they're gone. "You can't just-"

"Just did," says Pearly. "Face it, Rina, we're awesome."

Marina buries her face in her hands. But Marie takes the open seat, and her laughter sounds like grace. "Fellow musicians, even. This is going to be a good meal. Callie, stop stealing their chips."

Marina picks her head up, fast, a scowl on her face before she remembers she's in Inkopolis and these are the Squid Sisters and eating each others' food or even playing with it is permitted here. She clears her throat. "I, uh, it's, uh," she can't think of anything to say, anything worthwhile or useful.

"So, you might know already, but I'm Callie!" The dark-haired inkling takes another chip off Marina's tray.

"And I am Marie," says Marie, folding her napkin on her lap. Her plate, not tray, contains two slices of pizza. "You?"

"M-Marina," Marina stutters out.

"And I'm Pearl," Pearl says. She takes a huge bite of shwaffle and adds, her mouth full, "Marina's your biggest fan."

"Pearl!" Marina can't believe Pearl's saying this. Not because it isn't true, not because she's ashamed, but because you don't just-you don't-it isn't right. She pulls her headphones back on, tries to use them to hide, but they're not as good as her goggles were.

"You can sing Calamari Inkantation backwards," Pearl says, and swallows. "You told me it changed your life."

"Because it did," Marina snaps.

And then Marie puts down her pizza and leans forward and puts her hand over Marina's. "It's always nice to hear we've made a difference in someone's life," Marie says.

"And that's seriously high praise!" Callie almost shouts it, waving her arms. She spears a piece of shwaffle from Pearl's tray. "How'd it do that?"

This has to be a test, this has to be the hypnoshades, they're trying to get her to say just what went wrong, see if they can figure out how to fix, her, make her useful again, because she designed the flooders and worked on the octobots and accomplished more by sixteen than most combat engineers have by twenty-five. Shell, most combat engineers don't even earn the title until eighteen or twenty. Is that why they're being so lenient with her now? Trying to write this all off as growing pains, what happens when you push a young octoling too far, too fast?

But it's the Squid Sisters, and they're talking to her, and Marina's cheeks are warm and she pulls her hands to her chest, twisting them together. "It was-it was the first time I heard anything that-that-it was just so happy, and determined, and hopeful and-and-it's how music should be, not just praising someone or about doing what you're told or-I ran away," she confesses, words she hasn't really spoken aloud, even to Pearl. "I don't know if I-no, I wouldn't have even thought of it without-but..." She covers her face with her hands again.

How do you tell your heroes how much they mean to you? Even if it isn't real...

"Well, you're here now, and that's what matters," says Callie. "And you're in a band! Have you put out any singles yet?"

"Two of 'em!" Pearl kicks Marina under the table, and Marina takes a beep breath, pulls her hands away from her face. "Ebb and Flow was our first, it came out in January, and Acid Hues came out in early April. We're working on another. I wanna call it Dusty Splatterhouse, but Marina keeps saying there's nothing dusty about turf war, and we keep going back and forth on the lyrics anyway."

Marie smiles. "I've heard Ebb and Flow a few times. The different languages are marvelous. However did you come up with that?"

"I spoke it at home," Marina admits, and then they have more questions, and more, and more, and Marina never comes out and says 'I'm an octoling, I'm your enemy, please don't splat me' because she's speaking with the Squid Sisters and she needs to pretend this is real, just for a few minutes. And they ask Pearl just as much, talking over and around each other in ways that are so like how they act on stage (it's not an act it's real they're really just that good of friends) that they've got half of Marina's life story by the time they've eaten all the crabcakes and have to go back on stage.

Marina feels a bit woozy, so she doesn't stand up when they do. And when they're back on stage, Pearl groans. "I can't believe I told them about the time I tried to snowboard down a waterfall," she mutters.

Marina laughs. "I can't believe I told them about wearing seaweed in my hair. They just-they were actually interested!"

"You had a really strange squidhood, Rina." Pearl looks at her tray and groans. "I don't think I can finish my cake."

"It's going to go stale," Marina teases, and gestures to her bowl. "See, now that it's warmed up my ice cream's become a drink. There's always room for that."

"Cake's still better."

"Liar."