Heyyo, PokeDopes Author 1 here for a new fanfic. Splatoon fever has hit me hard with the release of Splatoon 3 not too long ago as of writing this and I've had this fanfic idea for a bit of time. I really like how this first chapter came out, but before you dive in, the last thing I need to say is this story may get upgraded to a "M" rating due to some of the things I'm planning further on down the line. Enough rambling, hope you enjoy!
Pain Amidst Darkness
Inside of a shallow, moist, nearly pitch-black cave with sunlight shining in through the entrance in an attempt to displace the darkness, a creature slams their fast into the damp, slightly glistening, water-stained rock, cracking it a bit from the force held behind the impact. This isn't the first time the rocky walls have withstood this kind of abuse; months of this aggressive outburst happening on a near daily basis had left cracks and chips of rock and mineral all over the place. This impressive feat would be an impossible task for any humanoid creature in this world to accomplish through their current strength alone no matter how much training they undertook, but this humanoid creature is not any ordinary one for he had managed to reclaim a strength that was long lost due to the passage of time; a prowess that once allowed his species to lift boulders, crush hardened steel, and mangle the hardest minerals on planet earth with ease. His fist shakes as it's held in place and between his knuckles and the ragged, water glazed minerals, a deep maroon liquid slowly oozes forth while a sharp, intense stinging sensation swamps over it. This deep red liquid slowly dribbles its way down his incredibly pale, olive and peach toned skin before coming to a suicidal fate of falling onto the ground from the pull of gravity dragging it off the underside of his wrist, allowing it to spread its viscous rage across the land.
A deep breathing comes out of the open mouth of this creature, a sharp, stifled one at that; a struggle to coerce the freely floating atoms of oxygen into his body to sustain his torturous and gloomy life like all land-dwelling specimens on earth do today. The air, however, is unwilling to cooperate. The high humidity thickens the oxygen into a dense, harsh, difficult to digest soup that his lungs nearly choke on in their attempt to savor it. This kind of climate is ironic because while this cave is connected to an underground grotto with a misty waterfall spraying tons of water into the air which is the source of the high humidity level, the cave is also connected to the outside world of the vast, arid, hellishly infernal Splatlands. Few lifeforms can call this area their home due to its extremely brutal climate and rather unfriendly locals who'll tear the unwary traveler limb from limb, pillaging and looting them afterward in a savage, uncivilized manner and leaving them to die a slow death.
If the thieves and savages don't kill or seriously hurt the victim, the skin melting heat will most definitely take on the murderous role and finish it for them. On the surface, water is insanely rare and cannot be safely obtained due to its scarcity. Said precious life source is highly treasured by these same hostile denizens who will do whatever it takes to keep what's rightfully theirs, making sure that not a single drop gets into the mouth of a dehydrated, nearly dead traveler who thought they were finally saved from dehydration. Hundreds of miles of steel melting, hot sand, wind battered rock, and rough orange clay unphased by the heat set the stage for what one would need to traverse through if they're brave enough to do so and in their travels, find out that these two will work together to burn and halt any and all potential progress.
As dangerous as this place is, it has become the home of the aforementioned creature whose fist has fallen to the floor, palm pressed against it flat holding him up while his legs do their best to withstand the crushing weight of his body, still gasping violently in the process. Whatever happened to him is enough to warrant his current locale and life of solitude far removed from any form of dense civilization. The closest place? A steamy glimmer far off towards the east known as Splatsville; Metropolitan in its nature, far from being a village and a town in size and complexity. Built upon the land left behind after the rising seas had receded, chaos, delinquency, and rebellion reign supreme as the way of life there with few rules and many dangerous faces prancing about.
Countless gasps of pained breaths give way to an easing of the suffering this creature had been dealing with and he's finally able to open his eyes and see the border of dark and light not far away from him. The sunlight shining in illuminates them a bit, showing off the color of his irises; his left eye colored dark chocolate brown with a normal black pupil caught between dilating and shrinking as he looks around his surroundings, his right eye a completely different color; a clean green faintly glowing with a darker green pupil to accompany it unaffected by the quickly changing light levels with each direction they dart in. His eyes stop shifting around and squint with a painful expression writing itself on his face, the sunlight is too bright for him and with his right hand, aimlessly reaches for something on the ground nearby, not able to see it due to being nearly blinded by the strength of the light outside. Four tries of reaching for this object and he gets hold of it, lifting it up and bringing it to his face where he struggles to put it on but manages to do so after a few seconds. Now, with a pair of Black Arrowband glasses on his face filtering out the bright light and darkening it a fair shade thanks to their polarized lenses, he's able to fully open his eyes to look outside at the entrance of his cave without having his retinas burn and scream in response.
Standing on his kneecaps next to the rocky wall, he fixes his posture to sit on his legs in crisscross style and sighs in a way that signifies that this is just an annoyance he's dealt with multiple times in the past. Before he had punched the wall, he was simply minding his own business when it happened without warning… a parasitic eruption in his veins that aggravated every biological system in his body, causing an extreme amount of pain and distress but it didn't just stop there, it has devoured most of his emotions and left him with next to nothing in sanity. While he still retains a few shivering embers of emotion, all of it is typically overshadowed by the constant pain and insanity created by this horrible condition of his. The joys of life he once used to know, love, and experience are gone with no hopes of ever fully recovering them back, remaining nothing more than fuzzy memories slowly burning away with each passing day. For him, all he knows and feels now is torture, psychosis, and a constant fight for survival; life is simply death without the peace in his world.
The worst of his physical pain rapidly subsides but to replace it is another form of pain in the form of a nasty headache, shaky hands and feet, and cold flashes, all of which are amplified to painful levels thanks to his nervous system constantly being shocked by the parasite. His entire body quivers and his teeth press themselves firmly together behind his closed lips, staring outside at a gentle sandstorm passing by, another filter that blocks out some of the sun, although it might as well not do anything since it simply reduces visibility and doesn't completely block out the sun in a way that makes it possible for him to not need polarized lenses while outside. It wouldn't be much different without them though, for his eyesight is also quite shot by the parasite; nearly blind unless something is three feet in front of his face, he needs these glasses to see the world around him, especially in such a hostile and life-threatening environment. He looks down at the back of his left hand, the one he used to punch the wall; a couple of nasty, fresh gashes were inflicted on him because of this, slightly oozing with that maroon-colored liquid. He simply brushes it away with his other hand and breathes through his teeth, making sort of a slurping sound in reaction to his wound. Speaking of wounds, on his back, arms, and elbows are some real horrid scars, inflamed and almost fresh looking. It isn't from self-harm as some may think, it's from something far worse, a fate that nobody else on this planet should ever have to face lest they'll forever be left as a mindless husk with no free will and capacity to think.
He sits like this for the equivalent of eight minutes, unmoving, waiting for the chills and shakes to stop, which they do and he can finally relax… well, relax as much as one can when even slight movements are painful thanks to an overly sensitive nervous system. Despite that, he leans back and puffs out his chest and ribcage to stretch out his back, lifting both of his arms and hands up as high above his head as he can. His hands knock into his hair in the process, which is long, overgrown, and unusually squid-like. Months of living in the Splatlands had made him neglect certain aspects of himself, such as hair growth. One of his longest tentacles freely hangs down on the left side of his head while the right one he twisted up into half the length in a questionably cute braid held together by a torn piece of black cloth tied into a decently tight knot near the end about seven inches away from the suction cups. As for the rest of it, he has long bangs on the front that nearly cover his eyebrows, which are thin, semi-long, and cute, and the back of his hair cuts off just above his shoulders. As for the color, it's a cool shade of green known as screamin' green, which so happens to be his natural color for the ink he produces inside of his body.
Yes, this creature is a specimen of Inkling, and he does have a name, though even his own name is somewhat of a mystery to him because with fading, fuzzy memories of every aspect of his life floating around, he isn't sure that he's even who he thinks he is at times. His hands slowly drop to the ground, but his right one doesn't stay idle forever as it comes up to adjust one of the straps of a bra-like piece of clothing covering the front of his chest, grabbing the soft straps in his fingers to do so. No, this isn't because he's not what he seems, this strange article of clothing being worn by this male inkling is due to the hypersensitivity his body has in certain areas that's a product of the effects of his condition. His fingers release the elastic strap and it sits nicely in the middle between his collarbone and left shoulder, properly protecting his chest from anything that may rub up against or hit him there, which is one of the few spots that has any sort of physical sensation get massively amplified to the point it can make him fall to his hands and knees. Satisfied with how it's positioned, he sits up slightly, unfolds his legs, and rotates his entire body around to look at the deeper, darker end of the cave, more specifically at the ground where a torn, old black hoodie lies along with a torn-up pair of black shorts with a vertical green stripe on both sides, a green Golf Visor, and a pair of Gray Sea-Slug Hi-top shoes. He slowly and carefully stands himself up and though his footsteps are filled with a painful limp and fatigue from restless, sleepless nights a-many, he makes his way over to his clothes and begins slowly putting them on. He starts with his shorts first, putting one leg inside and then the other, pulling them up over his legs, knees, and thighs; these shorts are truly short, stopping at about a quarter of the way down his thighs. Next, he grabs the torn hoodie and slips the bottom over his head, making sure he gets it through the top to see what he's doing and then his arms push themselves through the sleeves and come out at the opposite ends. Finally, he grabs the visor off the ground and fits it on his head, making sure the brim covers his eyes to provide further protection from the sun should he go outside.
Almost all of his clothes have a dull, dirty tint to them making it plainly obvious that all of them are pretty old. His hoodie is especially the worst offender of this, being torn up quite a bit at the bottom to the point that it reveals a little of his flat, pale tummy; there's also a piece on the chest that's torn off, allowing one the ability to see the bra-like cloth he wears underneath. To finish up the look, he grabs an empty hydration pack off the ground that was hidden under his hoodie that's about a quarter of his height and puts both of his arms through the straps on it, strapping it to his back. He tightens them up to make sure it won't go anywhere and an intensely sharp, brief moment of pain makes him flinch and grind his teeth together; the hydration pack is actually his ink tank and it had stuck a thin but long needle deep into his back to extract the ink that's naturally produced from inside of his highly concentrated ink sac located deep in his body for him to use with his weapons, and the pack begins to slowly fill up with his the ink his sac is feeding it.
In the corner of the deepest part of the cave near a hole that can be dropped down into that leads to the aforementioned underground grotto where the misty waterfall flows lie three weapons leaning up against the wall, a paintbrush with a green stick and two black handle grips on it, a black and green sniper-type gun, and a gun with a fancy blue wrap all over it that looks close to a champagne bottle with a brand sticker on it. Next to all of these weapons is a black duffel bag big enough to hold all of them and more, and he walks over to all of these items and reaches with his left hand to grab the paintbrush weapon. This one is called the Inkbrush and it just so happens to be the deadliest part of his arsenal, perfectly designed and fit to his disciplined, pinpoint perfect style of fighting. The inkbrush was custom made a long time ago and is more rigid and durable than the regular version while being twice as fast at what it does. The bristles are as thick as an Octobrush's, but still light enough to be flicked faster than lightning, the paint tube has double the ink capacity compared to normal, allowing him to store extra ink in there in the event he runs out, and the grips on the weapon's stick are worn down from all the use it had although still quite grabby despite this. As he picks it up, the bristles flop down and he simply looks at it for a few seconds before grabbing a small little tab near the paint tube with his other hand and pulling it, revealing a neatly tucked away strap that he attaches to one of the straps keeping his ink pack on his back and as one might guess, let him easily transport it on his back.
Inkbrush on his back now, he reaches for the blue champagne bottle gun this time, also known as the Squeezer, a weapon with two firing modes: one for claiming turf, the other for hitting hard and attacking far-away foes. Normally this weapon has a red and white striped wrap on it, but this Squeezer model is special, being a limited-edition model endorsed by a now defunct brand that he had bought it from many years ago featuring a blue and white striped wrap, a unique spray nozzle, and a golden weapon frame. He turns it over and around a couple of times, noticing that time had not been friendly to it with some fading colors and oxidation of areas on the weapon. He shakes his head back and forth and slides the duffel bag over to him with his right hand to put it in there. He's down to the final weapon, one that he used to enjoy using but now, seems to collect dust just like the rest of his arsenal, but when he goes to pick it up, he stops, and his mouth slightly drops open.
He almost hesitates to grab it as if it was cursed or had a bad omen written all over it, but alas he forces himself to grab it and upon doing so, the fuzzy memories come forth. He brings the weapon up to his chest, holding it with both of his hands, seeing every last event that had happened to bring him to where he is today. Every foe he had splatted, every power source he had collected, the one battle he never finished, but most importantly, the monsters who had taken everything away from him and left him like this. The weapon in question that he's holding is the oldest one in his arsenal, the Hero Splat Charger MK3, although technically it's the MK2 model, he had modified and customized it himself to be better in every aspect and it no longer resembles the original model, so he dubbed it the MK3. Looking at its black body, green highlights, and black pressure tank with pulsing lights makes him close his eyes, bringing him back to his glory days, although remembering these memories makes him wish he never accepted that old squid's request to help him battle the Octarian menace seven years ago. "Octarian menace my ass. If I was wise with the knowledge I knew now back then, I never would have agreed to help that out of touch geezer." He says through clenched teeth as he tries to fully recall the memory, an attempt to reclaim a small part of who he was before it was all ripped away from him…
Feel free to review this, but please don't be a jerk or insultingly criticize my work. I want positive, constructive criticism if you choose to review, otherwise I'll seeya in the next chapter!