Chance
People will come at you in strange ways, Pearl.
Everyone wants something, make no mistake.
But it's not as your parents say.
Some people only want attention.
Or love.
Or a chance to prove their worth.
These are the people you can form a bond with.
But if they want your money? Forgetaboutit.
They're the ones your parents warn you about.
And believe you me, there are a LOT of those.
A week later, Pearl is ready with another snowboard, motor already attached. She needs to scream-or to sing. There may not be much difference.
NO ONE wants to be in a band with her. Not in all Inkopolis. Squit, Pearl's good, but she doesn't have the skills to be her own group. Not by herself. Besides, there's something about being in a band, a good band, with relying on each other and the voices and instruments blending into something greater... Pearl wants that. She aches for it.
She wants to stand out, needs to stand out, but that's all she does. And there's a big fucking difference between standing out and standing alone.
So even though it's cold enough that Pearl's got on a sweatshirt and long pants, she takes the trail and makes her way up to her secret spot, drops the modified snowboard on the ground, and lets loose.
Pearl screams with every bit of frustration, and anger, and despair that's built up. Her parents are gone again, and much as they annoy her, she misses them. There's not a musician in the city who wants to work with her. She'll never be anything but Houzuki, Houzuki, Houzuki. She can't have friends beneath her and no one on 'her level' wants to deal with, well, her.
But when Pearl's all screamed out, when her throat's scratchy and her eyes are scratchy, when she's swiped at her face with her sleeve until it's dry and taken a long drink and just breathed, when she's done with rage and left with nothing but stubbornness and a determination to show the world how wrong they are, she sings.
Some of what she sings is more like sing-screaming, the chorus from Fucking Dudes are Fucking Sleeping and her old band's other songs. Some of it is old, melodies her mother sung her to sleep with before she could use her kid form. Some of it's the songs she likes now, bits from the Chirpy Chips and Squid Squad and more than one piece from the Squid Sisters.
She tries to come up with things of her own. She tries, but all that comes out is more swearing, and emo crap and she swore she'd never cross that line, so she just keeps circling back around to pop songs. And that's okay. No one's around to hear, and it's good practice. Staying on pitch, keeping a melody...
Except she's just finished Calamari Inkantation when someone claps.
Pearl whirls around. Someone's standing there—tall, dark skinned, shadowed among the trees. "You sing good," says a voice in an accent like garbled rocks, and Pearl frowns; where has she heard that before? She knows it was recent...
Then the girl steps out from under the trees, and Pearl's brain whirs to a stop. There's Marina, hallucination girl from last week. Must not be a hallucination, then. She's in an old splatfest t-shirt, supporting team art, which is just wrong; all of Pearl's t-shirts are hung in her closet and protected in plastic, like proper historical artifacts. The shirt is big on her, somehow, hanging down low enough to cover what Pearl hopes is actual clothing underneath, though it couldn't cover more than last time.
Still, even the shirt is more than last time. And her tentacles are wiggling—Pearl can't take her eyes off them. Most squids' tentacles move, sure, but not like that, like she's just barely containing herself—
"We should form a band."
Pearl's brain derails. She shakes her head twice, hard, and looks back at Marina. She has her hands clasped behind her like a soldier, but she's bouncing on her toes, and maybe her tentacles are wiggling because she's nervous? "I'm sorry?"
Marina opens her mouth, closes it again, and coughs. When she speaks, it's quieter. "W-we should form a band. You said, last week, that you liked my voice, and I play keyboard and turntables and guitar and know some of other instruments, and I could hear your singing all the way by the falls and—and—would you?"
Pearl stares at her hallucination, who's now fiddling with her broken goggles one-handed, shifting from foot to foot like Pearl used to when she was waiting to be punished. Her hallucination, who wants to be in a band with her, when no one else in the whole fucking world will even give her a chance.
Marina.
Pearl keeps her voice harsh. "If you really wanna be in a band with me—you know Bettafish Park? Down the street from Makomart?"
"With the circle river and four bridges over it?" Marina asks. "And the weird rock hill thing in the center inklings keep going up with ropes instead of swimming?"
"It's a climbing mountain," Pearl says. "It's fun. You've never tried?"
Marina shakes her head. Now she's fiddling with her shortest tentacle, the one that's just above her eye—and that's strange, most inklings' tentacles are all about the same length, even if they're styled all sorts of ways. "Even if we had one back home, I wouldn't be allowed," she says, breaking eye contact to look at her feet.
Huh. "Meet me there," Pearl says. "The benches by the cotton-candy stall. If you're serious about being in a band. Now get outta here, I've got stuff to do."
Pearl just sees Marina's relieved smile before she turns and flees, her tentacles trailing behind her—three of them. Three, plus the short fourth one, not the normal six. Did they not grow properly? Whatever the case, it's probably a sensitive subject. Pearl won't mention it.
She won't risk scaring off a chance.