A/N: Greetings. It has been a long time since I last attempted to work on a fanfiction.
I have been keeping myself busy with various activities. Between playing my own games, college work, etc.
Recently, I have been on a Splatoon 2 kick, and I absolutely love the game. So much charm. And I've had an idea brewing at the back of my mind for the last several days. So I'm going to get it out, as see how far it gets.
Now, I've seen several instances of 'Human in inkopolis' stories. But to my surprise, I have not seen many of the opposite - where one of the inklings is thrust into our world. This is the idea that this story will revolve around.
I don't know how to end off this author's note exactly, so I will simply get into the story I suppose. I hope you enjoy it.
1. Uninkpected Visitor
I woke up with a start, my digital alarm clock blaring it's damned noise. I flailed about for a few seconds before looking over to the clock, and lunging to turn it off. 10:25. I sighed, knowing that I had to get up to feed my dog. I closed my eyes for a moment, stretching and yawning. Next moment, when I opened them again, the clock read 10:43. I silently cursed as I forced myself out of bed, and quickly walked downstairs to the kitchen, and was about to start making his breakfast when I realized his bowl wasn't in it's usual spot. It didn't take me long to remember that mom had taken him up with her to the cabin for the week. I'll need to remember to not set my alarm when I go to bed tonight.
I looked around, trying to decide on what I would do, before looking myself over. I guess the first thing I should've done was put on some basic clothing in case some random person comes knocking at the door. So I lazily climbed back up the stairs to my room, and grabbed one of my old favorite T-shirts, and some shorts. I looked at my bed, briefly considering going back to sleep, but with the sun shining through the window, the odds of me actually managing that were zilch. I sighed before traipsing down the stairs again, and immediately heading to the back room. I grabbed my laptop out of the corner, sat down on my favorite couch, and roused it from sleep mode. I opened discord, and checked to see if anything was happening - nope. Not so much as a single everyone mention on any of the servers I'm on. Then again I'm not really complaining about that. I'm just too lazy to turn off half of the everyone and here mentions on various servers that I lurk on.
I looked over my Steam library, but nothing seemed particularly interesting at the moment. I sighed as I forced myself up from the couch, and moved over to the TV against the north wall. One of our cats was sitting right next to my controller. She looked up and meowed at me before yawning herself. I greeted her with a meow, and gave her some gentle head rubs before I grabbed my switch's Pro Controller, moving back to the couch. A press of the home button, and 10 seconds later the TV had turned itself on, the switch showing Splatoon 2 as the game that I had last played. I grinned slightly at the memories of last night. Me and 2 other friends had been doing some late Salmon run, and had managed to get a 100 egg shift. A serious achievement for all of us, the more experienced person of our group having gotten 99 eggs once before.
I pressed the A button, and was greeted by the typical 'Maps and Modes updated' message. Another press, and what happened next took me slightly by surprise. Off the Hook was playing, oddly enough. I tilted my head in confusion. Off the Hook played nowadays when you either had just opened the software, or when Grizzco reopened their doors for Salmon Run. Pearl and Marina both appeared as the title card disappeared.
"Y'all know what time it is!" Pearl's voice came from the speakers.
"It's Off the Hook, coming at you LIVE from Inkopolis Square!" Marina continued. I looked back and forth between them, wondering what had prompted this. I pressed A again, curious about what they would have to say. However, there was nothing out of the ordinary that was mentioned by either of them. I read through all their dialog. Nothing was out of place, aside from the fact that Off the Hook happened.
"And that's all the time we've got!" Pearl stated, looking shocked. I always wondered why she looked shocked after realizing the show was over, and chuckled to myself. Surely she had been doing this long enough that she would know when the show would end. "Until next time," she continued, standing up alongside Marina, "Don't get cooked - stay Off the Hook!" they recited simultaneously, doing their pose. Once the broadcast ended, the camera zoomed out to the plaza's 'spawn point.' I shrugged the random broadcast off, deciding it was likely just a small glitch or something along those lines, I looked around the plaza, trying to decide what to do.
I ultimately decided that it would be fun to try to unlock a new Hero Replica weapon, so I headed over to Octo Canyon, following Marie down the grate near Grizzco. My inkling popped out of the grate in their typical Hero hand-me-down attire. I looked over the list of weapons I had already unlocked. So far, I had only the Hero Shot and Hero Blaster replicas unlocked, but I had been playing with rollers a little bit recently. So I decided to grab the Hero Roller, and went about the first few missions easily clearing all of the Tentakeel Outpost missions.
Rather than opening the map to head over to Suction-Cup Lookout, I just took the launch pad that you normally unlock after defeating base game bread puns. This is where the next weird thing happened. Normally my switch worked fine and didn't have... hiccups, for lack of a better term. But when I pressed ZL to enter the launch pad, the game began to experience severe frame drops. I sighed with irritation, and tried to see if I could fix it by just pressing the home button... only to be greeted by a message saying that I could not use the home button right now at the top left of the screen. One raised eyebrow later, and I noticed something extremely odd about the angle that my Inkling was jumping. Instead of jumping towards the Suction-Cup lookout, he was jumping... straight up. I just watched this happen, and with a slight grin, I pressed and held the 'screenshot' button, attempting to record this 'ascending to the next dimension' glitch I had just witnessed.
Denied. Of course it wouldn't let me record at this time. I sighed in mild irritation, but I was still too amused by watching the inkling keep going upwards into the sky. The framerate was slowly improving, and instead of being jerky movements, it just looked like slow motion. And it was still slowly speeding back up to normal speed. I watched as Agent 4 hit the Apex of the super jump, before slowly beginning to fall back down. I watched as the frame rate increased, and Agent 4 kept falling straight down. The camera slowly panned below them, as the inkling slowly turned back into it's humanoid form... flailing as it kept falling, a look of shock in it's eyes. I suddenly felt my adrenaline rush as I flung myself off the couch, looking back just in time to watch reality spit in my face as the Inkling quite literally flew out of my TV, and crash landed right where I had been sitting just moments ago, with a force strong enough to cause one of the cushions to fold in on itself - they're thick cushions by the way, they aren't supposed to do anything close to that. My cat freaked out at the intruder, and ran off into one of the other rooms with a hiss.
I would be lying if I said that I haven't fantasized about the idea of having a fictional character break reality and exist in our world. I'm sure everyone has at some point. But you have to understand, actually having this happen... yeah you get the idea. I sat bewildered on the floor as I watched the Inkling struggle and groan as he tried to free himself from where his head was trapped between the cushions, only to give up a few seconds later, with a moan of pain, as if he had been splatted. I slowly stood up, and approached the by all definitions alien lifeform. I looked over him, observing how detailed everything looked. It all looked just like it did in the actual game... if not perhaps a bit higher poly due to it being the real world and such. I just stared for a few moments before hearing him moan again. I couldn't understand what he said, but the tone made it sound like a request for assistance. I stared for a few more moments, and hardly aware of what I was doing, I moved over and pulled the cushions off the couch, and gently pulled his head from between a crevasse where it should not have fit what-so-ever considering how big it was. He took a deep breath, and muttered something that I couldn't understand, but once again I was able to recognize the tone as being grateful. All I gave in response was a quiet grunt of acknowledgement, knowing that he would not understand my tongue. He looked over at me a few moments later. His eyes widened in shock, as he tried to push me away, and recoiled and flung himself onto the ground, falling over. Before I could even react properly, he had grabbed his Roller, and started flinging ink at me. I stepped back out of shock, but my reflexes were nowhere near close enough to save me this time, and I took the full brunt of the attack. Naturally though, not being made of Ink, I could not be splatted.
The inkling took a step back in shock after seeing me effectively be fine despite having taken a point blank fling that would've splatted any normal inkling or octarian. Then he let out a low growl, and attempted to use a vertical swing to damage me. And while he did not manage to cause any significant damage with this method no matter how hard he tried, it still wasn't the most pleasant feeling getting smacked by a roller.
"Ow! That hurts, you ass!" I properly vocalized for the first time since reality had decided it had better things to do. He didn't stop attempting to hit me over the head, so on his next swing, I grabbed the roller away from him, and after a brief tug-of-war, I was able to pull the ink weapon from his grip. Having no weapon now, his eyes quickly went from aggressive to fearful. He immediately attempted to run away, and I immediately ran after him. He was actually stupidly fast despite only being about half my height, but even so, I was able to catch up to him fairly quickly - at least before he was able to get to any of the doors. When I grabbed him, he immediately turned to his squid form, making him much more slippery and difficult to hold, but I managed to get a solid grip on one of his tentacles, and was able to finally restrain him. For a few moments, we both had to breathe heavily after what we'd both done. Him out of breath from attempting to attack and flee, me from being attacked and having to wrestle this little devil into submission. After several seconds, I stood up, still holding him firmly, now by both tentacles. He squeaked indignantly, but I was already too tired to care. I took him back to the backroom, and placed him down on the couch after fixing the cushions. He immediately tried to escape again, but I was able to catch him right before he attempted to hide under the couch.
"Stay here." *I said in as much authority as my voice could muster. Thankfully, he seemed to have gotten the message as I slowly moved away, keeping as watchful an eye on him as he did on me. I looked away for a brief moment, and he did not attempt to escape. I quickly left the room, and went upstairs to my room to grab my art supplies. When I came back, he was looking around the room apprehensively. The moment he realized I was there, his gaze snapped to me. I tried to give a friendly wave, but he didn't react. I sighed to myself, and took my seat next to him.
"This is going to be a challenge." I said aloud in a resigned tone as I put my art supplies to my other side, and started drawing something. Despite his nervousness, the Inkling was none the less curious about what I was drawing. He slowly moved closer, and watched as I made a rough sketch of something simple.
It was just 2 simplistic figures. One of them practically a stick figure, the other a poorly drawn squid. I added a few panels with these two characters attempting to interact - the stick man having a speech bubble with squares, the squid with circles. The other panels showed them not being able to understand each other. I showed the small comic that I had created to the Inkling, and attempted to explain the language barrier to establish a starting point, providing speech for examples. Thankfully, I knew basic inkling speech like 'Ngyes' and such, so I was able to explain what I meant... to some extent. The inkling looked at the small comic I had made, and listened to my explanation with a solemn look on his face, nodding when I was done. Good, at least we'd gotten something established.
"Well, this is going to be fun trying to communicate, hm?" I asked in a wry tone. "Well, we'll figure out something. For now..." I cut myself off, and made an even quicker sketch - depicting food, drink, a toilet, and a speech bubble. "If you need anything, just point to what you need. Alright?" I asked. Thankfully, it seems that he was very perceptive. He nodded, and then seemed to deflate slightly. I hummed in sympathy, as I started making further illustrations to assist with getting details across. Mainly I worked on an extra illustration for if he would choose the speech bubble - if we were going to make this work, we would need to be able to communicate properly. I made another series of panels, similar to the first comic I'd made, this one depicting the squid learning to speak 'squares.' Once it was complete, I turned back to the inkling, and tapped him gently on the shoulder. He looked up and I pointed at the crudely drawn picture of the squid learning to speak so we could communicate.
"Eventually we're gonna need to be able to talk to each other in order to communicate properly. Drawings won't work forever." I told him, with various gestures to assist me. Thankfully, it seems like my communication skills are proving to be on point currently. He nodded in reply. Feeling satisfied, I realized there was one more thing that needed to be addressed.
"One last thing. We need to know each other's names." I tried to explain, but even with my gestures, it seemed my words were lost on him. My luck with easy explanations had run out. "Names." I reiterated, pointing at both of us. Met with further confusion, I exaggeratedly pointed at myself. "Matteo. Ma-tte-o." I repeated my name twice to try to indicate what I meant. A few seconds later, and the inkling's eyes filled with comprehension, and he let out an odd sound, before repeating my name back to me. Or at least trying. The way he pronounced it, it came out more as 'Wah-tweh-oh.' I shook my head, and repeated the three syllables of my name again, attempting to correct him. The second time he got significantly closer.
"Wa-tteh-oh." He attempted to repeat. Gotta give him credit, he got much closer that time. I gave the inkling a grin. "Close enough. I can roll with that... anyways, what's your name?" I asked, pointing directly at him - specifically his chest. He tilted his head, and presumably said his name. But to my ears, it came out as typical inkling gibberish. I scratched my head, trying to figure out what to do about this issue. But my mind was not currently filled with creativity. So I just went with what I tended to name my main characters in any game where naming is an option.
"Topaz." I said, poking him gently in the chest. "I'm going to call you Topaz. Is that fine?" I asked, hoping that he would be fine with this. He blinked slowly, before attempting to repeat me.
"Tow-paz...?" He asked, pointing at himself. I nodded. His face switched from neutral to a small smile, as he repeated the name I had given him. "Tow-paz... squi-engsh-wesh..." He seemed satisfied with that name, from his tone and expression. I nodded, and looked over to my computer, and pulled it over to me. I had to figure out what to do in the meantime. I suppose the first thing to do is check to see if I'd be able to find anything that would be edible for my new friend. I started searching google for the types of foods that inklings would eat. In retrospect, I probably should've looked for foods that squids eat. But it seems like searching for inkling's food worked just as well, because they actually had an official diet. They're omnivores like humans. Their diets consist of primarily vegetables, birds, fish, and bread. Having an abundance of bread in storage, and plenty of fish and chicken out in the freezer, I was able to breathe easy, knowing that the inkling wouldn't be starving any time soon. I looked over to him, and watched him grab some blank paper, and one of the colored pencils. A blue one, specifically. He started making a few drawings himself, and I must say, the finished pieces were impressive. He made some good looking pictures - one of Callie, one of Marie, one of Pearl, one of Marina, and one of an inkling girl that I wasn't as familiar with. She had the cut tentacles hairstyle, but that was the only notable detail I could make out since he was only working with one color. When he finished, I was still looking up various information about inklings on my computer, I turned the screen away, and looked at the art he presented me with. Needless to say, I gave him a few claps for such good work. I hope he understood from my voice that I thought he was very good at drawing.
Aside from the obvious issues of having an alien guest around the house, the rest of the day went by as normally as it could. Thankfully, despite Topaz being in our world, the game was not softlocked. I could still play with the character in the game without issues. As I went through the game, Topaz kept an eye on the TV, mostly keeping silent. Except for when I would miss a jump, resulting in our untimely demise. Whenever this happened, he would flinch slightly before making a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter. I stopped playing halfway through Beaker's Depot. The game had become too tedious for me to want to continue for the moment. I backed out of Octo Canyon, and decided to head over to turf war. Topaz watched intently as I waited to join a- never mind then, I guess I'm not playing a game of turf war, because I just got a communication error. Fuuuun. Topaz looked confused at this, and said something in inkling. "You want a go at this?" I asked, offering him my controller. He tilted his head, appearing curious. He muttered something else before gingerly taking the controller from my hand, and testing it out. It didn't take long for him to get used to the controller. Perhaps an hour or so? And within that hour, he had already begun playing in turf wars as well as I could. Seems like my skill in the game basically translated into his skill. Good to know. As he enjoyed playing his game, I went back onto my computer, and tabbed over to discord. I decided that while he was enjoying the sport of his people, I would enjoy some Terraria.
... Turns out something else we also share is being bad at keeping track of the time. By the time I looked up at my laptop's clock, it was already past 6. I felt my stomach growl at the realization that I hadn't made anything for breakfast or lunch. I looked over at Topaz, who was still playing his heart out. I waited for one of the moments between matches before attempting to disturb him.
"Topaz." I called his name, he didn't respond. "Topaz." I tried again, to no avail. I thought to myself for a few moments, before an idea struck.
"This way!" I exclaimed. Topaz immediately looked around, before looking at me. I waved, then pointed at the picture of food I had drawn earlier, then his stomach. "You hungry?" I asked. His stomach answered for him with a growl to rival mine. He looked away with slight embarrassment, before nodding. "Aight, stay here. I'll get us something to eat." I told him.
"Ngyes!" He replied. I smiled, then headed to the kitchen to attempt to prepare something to satisfy the both of us.
A/N: It's been a long time since I wrote anything. I hope that this is satisfactory for at least the majority that read it. If you have any critiques for my writing/pacing, please leave a review to let me know. I hope you all have a good day.