Exotic Tastes

by mikeanthony321

Aurora, a socially inept octoling stumbling through an inkling's world, grapples with a dilemma when she falls head-over-tentacles for a stylish and apathetic inkling boy...just days before her very first Splatfest. She is prepared to go to any length to win his interest, despite the phrase that she can't seem to stop hearing. "Octolings aren't supposed to date inklings."

4. Chapter 4: The Rematch

The next morning, Aurora dragged herself out of the sleeping bag as early as she could, before the sun had a chance to show its rays through the bedroom window. It was still two hours before she would normally get up, but obviously, today was an exception. She had struggled to get any sleep last night as it was, so she figured those two hours wouldn't make a difference to her. There were some things she needed to do before her friends woke up, and they needed to be done quietly.

The first thing she did after picking herself up and setting aside her Wah-Wah was shuffle clumsily to the dresser to grab her day clothes, and then to the bathroom to shower herself off. She did so with stiff, awkward steps, since everything from her waist down was still rather damp with musky ink. As such, emerging from the sleeping bag made her cold and uncomfortable, and she knew from looking down at herself that the mess she had made was excessively noticeable. She was afraid of what she would later find inside the sleeping bag.

It had not been her intention to spend last night the way that she had, though…it wasn't exactly like she could control what happened in her dreams. Hell, she couldn't even control what happened in her mind while she was awake! With such a large part of her mind, and her body, apparently, focused on Midas, her unfortunate little accident was probably nothing short of an inevitability. She thought about these things while she took her shower, feeling stupid, nonetheless, for putting herself in the situation she was in that morning.

Aurora remembered Bella's suggestion to Ula the night before, which was to try showering with a lighter shade of ink than normal. It would supposedly lift her mood and help improve her outlook on things. However, while Aurora loved her usual choice of pastel purple for her hair, she felt like tipping the shade any closer to white would make her look like an albino. And, after all, who'd want to date an albino octoling? Not Midas, the way she figured.

In consideration of how last night had gone for her, she kept her shower as short as possible to avoid letting her mind open to more dirty thoughts. Once she was back out in the bustling public of the city, she imagined, she wouldn't have as much of an issue keeping her libidinous side in check. Therefore, she cut off the showerhead after just five minutes and stepped around the curtain to dry herself off. She reached up with one hand to grab the towel from the rack, and…

…she found nothing there. Confused, she proceeded to grasp at thin air for another moment before taking a look at the empty rack. It was at that moment that the realization hit her. Ula had used their only towel to shower the night before. Aurora put a hand on her forehead in exasperation as she began frantically searching the tiny bathroom for the towel, intending to use it anyway in spite of the fact. Unfortunately, the item was simply not in the bathroom. Ula must've tossed it somewhere near the bed before going to sleep, and she had just failed to notice it before stepping into the shower.

Well…she did have one alternative. Since she was already planning to wash her bedtime clothes to begin with, she decided on using her top to dry herself off before throwing on her day clothes. It was obviously not as effective as the towel would've been, but it was her preferred choice over trying to streak through the bedroom in search of it. If only she and her friends lived in a more organized manner, then…such decisions wouldn't be necessary.

Some areas of Aurora's body were still dripping when she was forced to discard her top. Despite that, she slid into her day clothes after shaking as much ink as she could out of her hair. The imperfect job she had done resulted in a few damp spots on her shirt and her shorts, but there was nothing she could do about that. After everything, she grabbed her glasses off the counter and pushed them against her face, staring at herself blankly in the mirror with the clear sight they provided. She hoped that, today, the face staring back at her would be the face of a winner. The face that would win over Midas's hearts after her battle efforts win over his attention.

Her next order of business was to clean up. Now that she had used her bedtime top in place of her towel, her entire set of night clothes was too soggy to simply toss on the floor and come back for later. She had to wash everything, including her Wah-Wah, and especially the sleeping bag, which was technically a shared item. She had absolutely no idea how she was going to wash the sleeping bag, but…she had to try, at least. Otherwise, the poor octo knew that it was going to come back to haunt her.

After making sure she looked presentable, Aurora scooped her inky night clothes off the bathroom floor and cautiously opened the door. Ula was easily the heaviest sleeper in their apartment, so she wasn't too worried about waking her up with her antics. Her real concern was Bella. When she stepped up to the sleeping bag and dropped her clothes on top of it, she bent forward and attempted to pick everything up at once: the clothes, the sleeping bag, and Wah-Wah. She wanted to get all of it into the kitchen in one trip if she could, since multiple trips through the living room would only increase her chances of waking the others with her noises and her passing shadows.

While the stuff wasn't very hard to carry, it certainly made her feel a bit…top-heavy. With both arms under the pile, Aurora waddled towards the door on her way to the kitchen. She bumped into the doorframe a couple times, thanks to her obstructed vision, but it didn't seem to make too much noise. After that, she made a left and snuck past the couch and the loveseat, where she could partially see the splayed-out bodies of Ophelia and Bella during their sound sleep. She held her breath as she passed them.

Overall, getting to the kitchen didn't prove to be much of a hassle. However, it was only the first step. Once Aurora tottered up to the kitchen sink with her bundle of soiled fabrics, she dumped them on the tile floor next to her and got to work, starting with her night clothes. She turned on the faucet after placing the plug over the drain, and she lowered her top and her shorts into the sink. Then, she leaned over and swiped the small bottle of detergent that they kept near the windowsill, popped the cap, and squirted a subtle amount of it onto the items. Already, as the sink slowly began to fill with water from the faucet, Aurora could see the light purple ink that was staining her clothes begin to dissolve into the cleaning mixture.

While the girls' shower ran distilled, low-tide ink, their toilet and sinks used water. As long as it was restricted to just their hands or feet, water never posed an issue to inklings and octolings like themselves. The kitchen sink was their only option for doing laundry, since they weren't exactly wealthy enough to treat themselves to a washing machine. Aurora wasn't too experienced using the sink to wash clothes, so she became rather pleased with herself when she saw the difference emerge in her top and shorts. Ula, who did all her friends' laundry the majority of the time, was the undisputed expert, but she obviously couldn't be allowed to know why the stuff needed cleaning.

Next up, then, was Wah-Wah. Aurora left her night clothes in the sink while it continued to fill up, just to make sure she got every last bit of the ink out, and she leaned over to grab her favorite plushie from the floor. Holding him in front of her face for a moment, she grinned back at his innocent, all-forgiving smile. She felt bad for having to wash him again, so soon after Ophelia had already done it for her. At least he was getting the care she felt he deserved. Before lowering him into the sink and grabbing the detergent again, she silently promised him that she would be gentle, and that she would try not to suffocate him with her tongue ever again.

With the plush still in her hand, she drizzled an extremely small amount of detergent over the top of his head and began to lather it around. Unlike with her night clothes, Aurora opted to scrub her plush by hand. She found it to be a more intimate gesture, and she figured it would help her wash out the stains more thoroughly. She was also as careful as could be, making sure to preserve his colors and his beady eyes to the best of her ability. During it all, she kept whispering apologies to him for everything she had done to him, even if her only crime had been a slobbery display of love.

When she was done, and Wah-Wah was feeling sufficiently heavy with water from the sink, Aurora planted a small kiss between his eyes and set him on the counter to dry. He was quite absorbent, even for a plush, so she expected it to take all day. Seeing as she would be spending the day back out in the city, though, she didn't mind it. She followed up with Wah-Wah's treatment by extracting her night clothes from the sink and holding them out at full arm's length to wring them out, doing so cautiously to avoid getting too much water on herself. Then, she laid them next to him on the counter.

The next part was the part she had been dreading. The last thing still sitting on the floor…was the sleeping bag. Aurora was reluctant to even look inside the thing, for fear of yielding shamefully to the magnitude of what she had done to it. The sheer size and bulkiness of the item was enough to daunt her as it was. She simply could not see how it was going to fit into the sink. On top of that, it seemed nearly impossible for her to wash all of her ink out of it without making it obvious to her friends that she had inked it in the first place. Her only hope was to sleep in it every night until it could properly dry off. After all, she had marked her territory in it…technically.

She let out a deep sigh as she bent over one more time and mangled the sleeping bag into her grasp with both of her arms. Indeed, there was no way it was going to fit into the sink. Her only course of action, in that case, was to turn it inside out and try to manually scrub the stains out over the sink without splashing too much water everywhere. She was still rather groggy from how early in the morning it was, so the thought of doing that did not fill her with much joy.

Before going through with it, Aurora unzipped the bag as far as it would go and peered into it nervously. Sure enough, as she had figured, the damage was extensive. The entire lower half of the inside of the bag was stained purple, with additional, various-sized splotches dotting the upper edge of the mess. It was also damp, still, as Aurora found by lightly touching the stains with her fingers. And, of course, it smelled a little off. Most varieties of ink, including the ink she had just showered with, was odorless, but this, well…this was far from it. Her nose turned up a bit at the fact.

The water in the sink was still running, so Aurora knew it was time to get down to business. She let out another pained sigh and pushed her fist through the back side of the sleeping bag, forcing the inside of it out through the opening she had created with the zipper. In doing so, the stains became a lot more visible under the light of the kitchen. Then, she stepped forward, leaned herself against the counter in front of the sink, and stood on her toes to broaden her access to the running water. She just hoped she would be able to complete her task without messing up the kitchen.

Just as she was beginning to place the sleeping bag under the faucet, however, her hearts jumped out of her chest when she heard a voice from behind her.

"…Aurora? What are you doing in here?"

Aurora immediately cut the faucet and whipped her head around, startled greatly by the unexpected intrusion. She dropped from her toes and gave her visitor a helpless, deer-in-the-headlights glance. It was Ophelia, standing in the doorway to the kitchen in her night clothes. Aurora thought she had been careful in preserving her friends' sleep, but…luck didn't seem to be on her side.

"Oh…'Lia…" She babbled. "I…um…what are you doing in here?"

Ophelia cracked a grin. "I'm checking on you, Aurora, because I know that you're usually up to something when you answer your friends like that. I heard the shower running earlier, and then the kitchen faucet, so I decided to come see what's got you running around so early in the morning."

"I…I guess I just…couldn't sleep. Decided to be productive to…you know…clear my head a little?" She winced internally, knowing how incredibly obvious her lie was.

"Mhm…I see." Ophelia acknowledged, though she didn't look like she was buying it. She looked at the counter next to Aurora and saw the items she had left there to dry. "So…you decided to do your laundry, then, huh?"

"Uh…yeah. I wanted to get it done before we all took off later. To make sure it got done."

"Well…Ula was already planning to do that tonight, so you didn't really have to." Ophelia stated, crossing her arms. "And, uh…I see you also washed your plush again. Did I not do a good job yesterday morning?"

"No, no, it's not that, it's just…" Aurora paused to try and formulate a good response, but she simply couldn't come up with anything. She knew how incriminating she must've looked, with both her plush and the giant sleeping bag in the kitchen before anyone else had woken up. A few moments passed like that, in silence, until the pressure of her friend's expectant glare made her suddenly crack. "Please, 'Lia, it's not what it looks like! I swear!"

Ophelia smirked again, eventually breaking into a light chuckle. Aurora kept expecting Ophelia to scold her in times like this, but she'd always end up laughing it off and taking it easy. "'Not what it looks like?' Girl, I found you in here at the nick of dawn with the sleeping bag in your hands, dunkin' yourself over the sink. I don't even know what this looks like."

Aurora had no response to give as she bashfully watched her friend walk over to her from the doorway. Even with all the precautions she had taken…she had never prepared for one of her friends to actually catch her. She was at least glad it was Ophelia and not one of the others.

"…You weren't supposed to see this…" She whimpered.

"Yeah, I had a feeling." Ophelia replied with a patient look on her face. "You don't normally start stirring like this until well after sunrise. What's been going on lately?"

Aurora just shrugged. She repeatedly avoided making eye contact with Ophelia, as she often did when facing embarrassment. "…Just…stuff…"

When Ophelia arrived at the counter and leaned herself against it by Aurora's side, she glanced down at the inside-out sleeping bag that was still resting in her friend's arms. She was not blind to the discoloration of its fabric, as evidenced by her intrigued facial expression.

"So…I take it you had a bit of an accident last night?"

Aurora immediately hid her face from view as her cheeks began to boil purple again. A few seconds went by before she silently nodded her head, confirming her dastardly deed to the sympathetic octo. Ophelia did not give a discernible reaction, though Aurora chose not to observe her response anyway. Her morning was not getting off to a good start.

Without saying anything at first, Ophelia reached forward with both hands and kindly took the sleeping bag from Aurora, setting it in the sink thereafter to soak. The bulky item displaced a lot of water, but she didn't seem to have any trouble forcing it into the tub so that every bit of it was submerged. Aurora continued to cover her face with her elbow, determined to hide her shame from her friend without an object to help her. Ophelia was used to seeing such things from her, and the sight never failed to make her feel sorry for the fragile octo.

"Aww, Aurora, it happens to the best of us. I don't think any of us here have lasted since our move without doing it at least once." She assured.

Aurora was suddenly very confused by that statement. She unhid her face and glimpsed up at Ophelia, trying faithfully to maintain an expression that didn't seem too skeptical. "Wh…huh?"

"Didn't you hear Bella yesterday at the canal? She totally lost control of herself laughing at something Ula did. It was pretty funny, but…you seemed to be a bit distracted even then." Ophelia explained. "It's not your fault, trust me. No one will think any less of you."

At that moment, Aurora realized that Ophelia had gotten the wrong idea. She apparently thought that something completely different had happened in the sleeping bag last night. In all honesty, Aurora did not want to correct her. It was a lot easier for her to stomach the aftermath of her friend thinking she had pissed herself, rather than…what had actually happened. Therefore, she decided to keep her mouth shut and respond with another emotionless shrug. Ophelia seemed ready to offer her friend some support.

"Do you think that maybe you're just nervous for the rematch this afternoon?" She asked. "Could that be what caused it?"

Aurora was glad that she had avoided spilling the truth again, but now, she was operating on a misconception. She shrugged a third time. "…I guess."

"Well, perish the thought." Ophelia declared with a corny grin. "Those guys look easier to splat than a toddler holding an ice cream cone. If you ask me, I think we're going to kick their asses."

"You really think so?" Aurora babbled.

"Of course. I may be a humble, seaweed-loving octoling from the bottom-feeders' district, but I know how to handle a Hydra Splatling. You also got Bella, who knows her way around her dualies as if she were born holding them. And Eight, well…we all know Eight." She paused to chuckle for a moment, which Aurora did not do herself. "What have you got to worry about?"

The answer to that question was Midas, Aurora thought to herself. She usually had a lot of fun in turf wars and other ink-splatting shenanigans, so they were never a very concerning matter to her. The stakes were just so high this time, though, and she just couldn't bring herself to confess those stakes to her friends. With Ophelia standing alone in the kitchen with her, giving her nothing but full, undivided attention, she considered surrendering and just telling her friend what was really going on, but she still couldn't overcome the resistive forces tugging within herself. She didn't want any of her friends knowing what they were going to be battling for, since she didn't want it to affect the amount of effort they would put forth.

The sad thing was, she knew how selfish that choice was. She just didn't know how else to approach it. Therefore, her response did not directly answer Ophelia's question.

"…I trust you guys."

"There you go. That's the spirit." Ophelia concluded, shooting Aurora an assuring wink. "And hey, for all we know, maybe we'll get lucky today and find ourselves a date for the Splatfest. The more time spent on the town, the better our chances!"

As her friend stood up from against the counter and strolled over to the pantry to grab herself an early breakfast, Aurora just stood in place and stared blankly at the wall. If they went out there and won that rematch today, she would have to tell them about Midas, right? She couldn't possibly keep the charade going forever, especially if doing so would mean keeping her distance from her friends during the Splatfest. On the flip side, however, spilling the beans would come at the price of also revealing the truth about her deceitfulness. What would her friends think about being tricked into fighting for a love interest? An inkling love interest? One that came with the risk of pissing off said inkling's friends and starting a conflict that they didn't ask for?

Aurora really wished that finding love was as easy for her as it was for Bella. After all, out of her entire friend group, she knew damn well that the only one who was likely going to receive any dating invitations was Bella. Though, to be honest, Aurora knew that her chances of getting with an octo boy for the Splatfest became zero the moment she had laid eyes on Midas. No one she would try to court, kiss, nor fool around with was going to hit the same mark as long as Midas was still in her head. She had said it to herself several times already, but she felt like she needed to say it again.

Nothing was more important than winning that rematch.

---

Throughout the morning, Aurora remained untalkative. Her first instinct after finishing her heart-to-heart with Ophelia and quietly leaving the kitchen was to go sit on the couch, leaving her bedtime items by the sink. Bella was still asleep on the loveseat when Aurora returned to the living room, so she was reluctant to shuffle too much or turn on the TV. However, when Ophelia came strutting back in with a bowl of cereal and plopped down next to Aurora, she immediately grabbed the remote and turned it on herself, blatantly disregarding her friend's slumber. At that point, Bella was awake within the next five minutes, whether she liked it or not. After all, half the house was already awake, and when that was the case, the other half was expected to deal with whatever disturbances would ensue.

For the next hour or so, while Bella begrudgingly dragged herself through her morning routine, and Ula continued to sleep noisily in the bedroom, Aurora and Ophelia passed the time with the pointless, early-morning drabble on the TV. Their real interest was in the morning news, which didn't come on until a little after sunrise, since they needed to know what venues would be in rotation for the day. Yesterday's battle with the inkling boys had been just after lunchtime, so, according to their agreement, they needed to show up to whatever venue and mode would be active at that time. Aurora naturally started to get nervous as the announcement grew closer and closer.

When the time did finally come, Bella had gotten dressed and was in the kitchen fixing up breakfast, and Ula was still in the bedroom showing no signs of life. No one bothered to go in there and say anything, since they knew she wasn't going to be participating in the rematch anyway. Bella called to Aurora while she was in the kitchen, asking what the deal was with her little setup by the sink, but Ophelia stepped in and saved her by deflecting the question with an undetailed rebuttal. She gave Aurora a trustworthy smile, which Aurora returned thankfully.

The three of them were rather fond of most of the day's venues, which included hotspots like The Reef, Albacore Hotel, Mako Mart, and Humpback Pump Track for the morning, and less-booming, outskirts venues, like Port Mackerel, Piranha Pit, Camp Triggerfish, and Sturgeon Shipyard for the evening. However, it was the afternoon's venues that they were really interested in, and the options they were given stuck out to them…for opposite reasons.

As always, the mode was stated before the venues themselves, so as soon as the afternoon rotation was announced, the girls knew what type of battle they were going to be fighting. To their excitement, it turned out to be splat zones. Aurora and Bella loved splat zones for its simplicity, while Ophelia preferred it for its static objective, which made guarding from the backlines with a Hydra Splatling much easier on her. Aurora's nerves were slightly sated by this announcement, knowing that she and her friends were going to be fighting a battle in which they were a lot more versed. More than rainmaker, that was for sure.

The thing that didn't look so appealing to them, however, was the venue selection. The only venues that were scheduled to host splat zone battles after lunch were Moray Towers…and Blackbelly Skatepark. First of all, the overbearing verticality on Moray Towers made it a nightmare battleground for Aurora and Bella, whose weapons were better suited for flat, midrange combat. Also, luck did not tend to favor the bold on Moray Towers, where reckless moves often led to cornered situations where the only options were trying to super-jump to someone else…or surrendering shamefully to the opponents.

Blackbelly Skatepark, in addition, boasted many tight engagements that encouraged surprise attacks, and the massive, cylindrical tower in the center of the arena always caused a multitude of hyper-tense fights in order to gain a pivotal vantage point over both zones. Aurora figured the close encounters on Blackbelly Skatepark would service Bella very well, considering her remarkable agility with the Enperry Dualies, but the issue with the central tower made her a bit wary. If she and Bella could succeed in keeping that tower cleared for Ophelia and Eight, their powerful, back-line weapons could help them use the high ground to its ultimate potential. The problem was in making sure that the inkling boys didn't accomplish the same task, since yielding the tower to the Splatling guy and the Dynamo Roller would certainly spell disaster for them. Blackbelly Skatepark was the undisputable pinnacle of high-risk, high-reward athleticism.

As far as choosing between the two options, Aurora and her friends were split down the middle. She and Bella were both in favor of Blackbelly Skatepark, while Ophelia and Eight both preferred Moray Towers. Though Aurora hadn't actually contacted Eight to ask about her preference, the three of them already knew that Moray Towers was their friend's favorite venue. Her E-Liter made that obvious. Therefore, it seemed as if the venue they would be playing on would, once again, be up to the inkling boys.

Unsurprisingly, the news about the battle they would be having, and where it would be, had the effect of raising the girls' anticipation. Speculation about their rematch, as well as their battle strategy, brewed fiercely in their heads from the moment the venues were announced. Then, as the morning wore on, and Ula finally began stirring around their living space, the three battlers couldn't keep their minds off the upcoming afternoon. Eventually, their itch to round up their weapons and head out for the square became too strong to ignore. When the time finally came for them to grab their stuff and depart for their critical reunion with the inkling boys, they left Ula on her own in the apartment, per her request, to "weather the storm" and make herself breakfast for lunch.

Aurora was also instructed to contact Eight as they were descending the stairwell, which she promptly did as soon as they reached the sidewalk. She tried to stay close to her friends while she had her phone out in order to avoid bumping into any passing octolings. And, considering the time of day, there were quite a few. A fair share of them even had their weapons with them, just like Aurora and her friends. The weather was pristine, and, thanks to the upcoming Splatfest, everyone in the city was amped to get their valuable practice in.

Even through text message, Eight was definitely not outgoing. Aurora's first message to her was, "Leaving now, u ready?" After an impatient wait of about thirty seconds, she received her peculiar friend's response, which was simply…"Ye."

Aurora tried again, hastily typing out another message while occasionally glancing up ahead for direction. Despite knowing the answer already, she wanted to see what Eight's venue preference was.

"What ven is ur fav?" She messaged.

Sure enough, after another strangely long pause, she received her answer. "MT."

Eight's texts never explained much about her, except that she must've had arthritis in both of her thumbs. It would've been nice to at least see her use emojis, but even those seemed to convey too much personality for her liking. Aurora felt guilty for not keeping up with her the previous evening after parting ways, but it's not like anyone could blame her. Eight rarely had much to say. That was precisely why Aurora's time with her in the square yesterday had felt so memorable.

She wanted to give it one more shot, though…she didn't really know what to say. So…she improvised. "U excited?"

She waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty. A minute. Eventually, she frowned and slid her phone back into her shorts pocket. She had to accept when Eight didn't feel like talking. Yesterday had been quite a wild ride for her, after all, with both the seaweed and the inkling boys' ridicule buttering up her mind since the battle. It seemed like Aurora had already been too quick to take her openness that day for granted.

However, just as the Deepsea Metro station was coming into view about a block and a half away, Aurora felt her phone vibrate. She quickly pulled it out of her pocket, checked the display, and observed Eight's response.

"Idk. R u?"

---

The walk did not take long after that. Within about ten minutes, the girls came to a stop by the staircase of the metro station to wait for Eight. It was quite a busy spot, with inklings and octolings constantly traversing the staircase on their way in and out of the station, as well as the two crosswalks that joined at the corner of the block. Almost everywhere the girls looked, their eyes would fall on a sea of ink weapons moving around the scattered crowds on the backs of their various owners. Clearly, the announcement of the Splatfest yesterday was responsible for it. They had a feeling the venues were going to be pretty packed with onlookers that afternoon, depending on where their battle was going to take place.

Aurora stayed distracted during their wait, as usual. This time, though, her distraction came from her phone, which she couldn't seem to stop checking after giving Eight her latest response. She had answered her friend's question with, "Idk either," typed rather lazily, and she was hoping to see some reassurance come from her in return. Unfortunately, it never did. Even when Eight finally appeared across the street with her E-Liter and approached her and the girls on the crosswalk, she said nothing about their conversation. Aurora saw something in Eight that she couldn't describe, and she still wanted to connect with her a bit to find out more about that something, so her introversion over the phone was rather disappointing. As Eight met up with the group and reciprocated their greeting with another kind wave, Aurora pocketed her phone again and remained quiet.

With the whole team now together, the time had come for the girls to make their way to Inkopolis Square, where the inkling boys would be waiting. They were already standing right next to the metro station, where they had gotten off last evening on their way home, but they did not plan on making their trip back in the same manner. Instead, they opted to save oodles of time by utilizing the square's landing point and super-jumping there as a group. That's what most denizens of the city did, after all. If one looked up at the sky on any given morning or afternoon, the most prominent thing in their sight was usually the dozens of squids and octos that were regularly jumping around the city on daily errands.

Thanks to that very convenience, Aurora and her friends arrived at the square less than half a minute after meeting with Eight. Even Ophelia, who was lugging her oversized Hydra Splatling with her, stuck the landing perfectly. They were there with the specific intent to initiate a battle through the battle tower, knowing that such an intent would grant them the exception they needed to traverse the famous hotspot with their weapons visible.

The girls surveyed the square and took in the sights around them as they dispersed from the landing marker and began walking towards said battle tower. The streets in the area were still quite crowded, which was understandable. After all, the Splatfest had just been announced yesterday, and it wasn't like every inkling and octoling in the city had had the time to come vote simultaneously. Aurora and the others gawked at the Splatfest kiosk, which, amazingly, still had a line stretching about fifty feet in the direction of the shoe shop. It seemed like the voting was going to continue like that, on tap, until the moment of the big night. They just hoped there would be enough t-shirts for everybody.

Aurora fixed her gaze forward as the battle tower loomed before them. She felt like that structure represented the collective sum of all her upcoming tribulations, considering its reputation as the central hub of all ink-splatting skirmishes. Her feeling was further cemented, in fact, by the shocking sight of the inkling boys standing under it already, in the shade of its awning, with their weapons poised. A nervous tingle erupted down her back and exploded into a body-wide maelstrom of anxious tension when she spotted Midas among them. He didn't have his phone with him this time, and as she approached the tower with her friends, he appeared to be staring at her.

"Well, well, the octos actually decided to show up. I'm impressed." The Splatling guy greeted as the girls joined them under the awning. He stood leaning against his Splatling with a look in his eye that truly exemplified his cockiness.

Bella scoffed. "Duh! What the hell made you clowns think we were going to back down from you? The intimidating snare of your splash walls?"

"Nah, I just didn't think you had the courage. If it weren't for your four-eyed friend over there hitting us up after you disappeared yesterday, you wouldn't even be standing here right now." He jeered.

Aurora self-consciously pushed her glasses closer to her face. She hated the kind of attention they sometimes earned her, especially while Midas seemed to be aware of her as his admirer. Fashion was an integral part of inkling culture, as the girls had learned shortly after immigrating, and glasses like hers didn't exactly fit the description of "fresh." Her gaze trailed away from Midas and the Splatling guy and fell onto the ground as she attempted to deflect the eyes that she felt settling on her. Though she'd normally try to strut her stuff in the presence of her inkling crush, her crush's snarky friends had a way of keeping her from feeling like her sexiest self.

As she retreated away, Ophelia claimed the spotlight by addressing the boys. "Look, none of that matters. The point now is that we're here, and we're hoping to finally put this carp behind us today. Does that sound good to everyone?"

The Splatling guy smirked. "I mean…I thought it was already behind us yesterday, but sure. We're at least gonna get more warm-up for the Splatfest off you octos today, so thank you for that."

The Dynamo Roller then spoke up from behind his friend. He glared at the girls with an unreadable expression, thanks to the skull bandana that covered his mouth. "And when we win, we expect you to hold up your end of the agreement. Wherever we decide to hang out during the Splatfest, you are not to."

No one on Aurora's team reacted to the spiteful inkling's decree except Bella, who rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Yeah, yeah, we've heard your edgy garbage before. When we win, we expect you to take back the shit you said about us yesterday and respect us like actual cephalopods. How does that sound?"

Just then, literally everyone on the Splatling guy's team, including Midas, looked directly at Aurora. If she wasn't sure that the entire party's eyes had been on her just a moment ago, she certainly was now. Their undiscernible glares punctured through every layer of resolve she had within herself and reduced her to an apprehensive wreck, resulting in her composure falling completely apart. Her knees buckled, and she began frantically stroking one of her curly, suction-cupped locks of hair.

"Sure…among other things." The Splatling guy declared calmly, keeping perfect eye contact with the quivering octo. Only Eight seemed to notice what was going on.

Next, the only remaining thing to be done before the two teams could super-jump to the venue was decide what venue they were actually going to be fighting on. Both sides already knew that they were going to be fighting a splat zone battle, and they also knew what their venue options were. Additionally, it was assumed that both sides had already premeditated on their selections, removing the need to discuss them under the tower awning. Aurora was aware that her team had not been able to settle on a venue together, so she found the upcoming resolution to be the most nerve-wracking part of the whole exchange.

Last time, Aurora and her friends were forced to give in to the inkling boys' preferred venue, which had been Snapper Canal, by the simple fact that they were desperate for someone to play against. The boys had leveraged the fact that the girls were more interested in playing than they were in a specific venue, so they had essentially refused to fight unless the venue was of their choice. This time, the girls were stuck in a similar position, but, unlike last time, their trap was the fact that they did not collectively share a venue preference at all. Therefore, just as the Splatling guy began fishing around in his pocket for a coin with which to do the coin-toss, Ophelia spoke up to stop him.

"Wait. There's…no point in doing that." She mentioned gloomily. "We're…undecided."

Grins quickly formed on all the inkling boys' faces, except Midas's. The Splatling guy retracted his hand from his pocket and returned it to his hip, delighted by the unexpected outcome. He snickered.

"Alright, awesome. In that case, we're taking you octos to Blackbelly Skatepark. We decided this morning that we didn't feel like dealing with your back-line shit on Moray Towers, and we also thought it would be fitting to humiliate you in front of a larger crowd. Makes it more dramatic."

Aurora saw herself performing better on Blackbelly Skatepark, but the tradeoff was in that very point that the Splatling guy just made. She wasn't sure she'd be able to ignore the sheer volume of spectators that would likely be watching her battle. She understood the importance of channeling her focus while she fought, however difficult it would be, even when her audience didn't seem to be in her favor. She glanced at her friends to see what their reactions were, expecting them to be mixed, though…she instead observed a levelheaded acknowledgement from each of them. Once again, Bella looked the most confident out of the four of them.

"Whatever you say. If it's BS you want, it's BS you're gonna get!" Bella retorted, feeling rather clever from her pun. She removed her dualies from her hips and started twirling them in front of the boys. "Are we just gonna stand around now? Maybe ask each other out to the Splatfest? Or are we gonna get you guys' defeat out of the way?"

The inklings promptly hoisted their weapons into their grip to signal their readiness, which Aurora and her other friends did as well. Then, they watched the Splatling guy and his lackeys step to the side a bit, clearing a path to the tower's interior, where they would be super-jumping to the venue. He gestured regally with one of his hands, encouraging the girls to do the honors. In doing so, his gaze returned to Aurora.

"Ladies first."

Another chill blitzed down the perturbed octo's back as she fell under the inklings' scrutiny once again, completely under the noses of Bella and Ophelia. Meanwhile, her friends took the Splatling guy's invitation at face value and began marching towards the tower's sliding doors, leaving Aurora behind them to pass by the malicious group at the peak of their intimidation. She began walking after them without hesitation, though the pressure she felt standing so close to Midas and his hostile friends translated into a physical feeling of weight that prevented her from moving at more than a snail's pace. She held her Kensa Splattershot close to her chest as if it were her only guardian against their unforgiving glares.

Despite her fear, however, Aurora still managed to snag a glimpse at Midas while she was passing in front of him. As she expected, he was already looking straight back at her, and as their eyes met, they studied each other viciously. His glossy, blue eyes and well-groomed hair appendage worked absolute witchcraft on her pheromones, forcing another breakdown of her resolve beneath the resilient impression she was trying to maintain. However, she continued to power through her overloaded psyche, even going as far as to use her state of mind to her advantage. She craned her head to the side as she passed to extend their exposure to each other, and, when she was sure she still had his attention, she gave him a provocative wink. Additionally, she began swaying her hips more with each step, hoping to present to him the aspects of her physique that she thought were most enticing. After being forced into a retractive position by having her glasses insulted, Aurora wanted to regain control of her situation by eliciting a lustful response from Midas. The more he checked her out, the more validated she felt.

Unfortunately, that was all yanked out from under her rather quickly when the Splatling guy discreetly stuck out his heel, tripping her in the midst of her flirtatious flair. She gave a small cry as she stumbled forward and threw her arms out in front of her, causing her to drop her Splattershot and falter to her knees. The inklings, now standing directly over her, proceeded to laugh heartily at her expense. Aurora's friends turned when they heard the sound, stopping just short of the jump platform on the other side of the door.

The Splatling guy had a special sort of underhanded kick to his laughter that made it sound more directed at her. On top of that, the remarks he made were just atrocious.

"Damn, octo, if you wanted to please him that badly, maybe you should just stay on your knees like this. I think it suits you better."

His statement was punctuated with more supporting laughter from his friends. Even Midas cracked a small grin, which Aurora noticed when she glimpsed up at her oppressors and adjusted her crooked glasses. She hated having to look up at the inklings like this. The humiliation it made her feel was practically insurmountable.

Luckily for her, Bella was nearby, and she wasn't going to stand for it. After hearing the events unfold and turning to see her friend on the ground, she took a few steps in the inklings' direction.

"Did you seriously just trip our friend? You're really going to descend to cheap-shots like that?" She scolded.

The Splatling guy stood his ground. He kept his disinterested stance. "You call it a cheap-shot. Little Four-Eyes here just needed another reminder of where she belongs. Caught her trying to whore over our Squiffer behind your backs."

"Oh, get over yourselves. It pains me to think about how lonely you kids must be to call it 'whoring' whenever a girl so much as looks at you. Aurora wouldn't hurt a fly, and it's sad that you think you can just push her around like that because of it." Bella rebutted strongly. She did not break eye contact with the boys, nor did she even blink.

"What are you going to do about it?" He sneered.

"Step through that fucking door, and you'll find out." She declared coldly, pointing in the direction of the sliding door as she did so. Both groups recognized her response from the similar one given by the Splatling guy the day before, in the line for the Splatfest kiosk. "Go ahead, kiddos."

The manner in which her dualie-wielding friend steadfastly prolonged against the inkling boys in her defense had a way of propping up Aurora's spirits where they were otherwise collapsing into tears. She had suffered a lot of abuse the last twenty-four hours, whether at the tentacles of the inkling boys, or…in her own head. Her chance to pick herself up off the ground and grab her Splattershot while Bella faced the adversaries on her behalf was more imperative than she could ever communicate to her. It granted her the confidence to stand by her friends and face Midas again after the blow that had essentially sealed off the remainder of her self-esteem.

Likewise, the Splatling guy irritably lifted his weapon into its primed position after being told off by Bella with his own words, and he motioned for his friends to begin following him to the sliding doors. Meanwhile, Bella and the rest of the octo girls stood adamantly in place, waiting for them to make their departure before doing so themselves. As the boys passed, each member of their team locked eyes fiercely with a respective member of Aurora's team. It was the last show of rivalry that would occur between the bickering sides before the battle that would determine everything. They all understood the gravity of the upcoming rematch, and their motivations to win were ever strong, even if they were for different reasons. Only as Midas's eyes once again met with Aurora's did she finally realize, in full clarity, how intense this battle was about to be.

The Splatling guy turned to them when the last of his team stepped onto the jump platform.

"I'm going to make you eat those words."

The four of them then morphed into squids, and before the girls knew it, they were off. Bella led her friends onto the platform shortly after their disappearance, neglecting to say anything until the seconds leading up to their own exit. A very solemn mood dwelled over the group as they prepared to launch themselves into the most consequential battle of their citizenship thus far.

"He must be scared of me." She huffed. "He didn't even give me a chance to respond."

---

Blackbelly Skatepark never failed to attract some of the youngest, freshest sets of tentacles in the city. Inklings and octolings of all backgrounds flocked to the halfpipes of the booming hangout whenever the sun was present in the sky, sometimes remaining there even after the streetlights came on at night. Compared to the sprawling high-rise environment of Moray Towers, it was a land of ever-burning, excitable youth, and it was currently prepped for a splat zone skirmish that would rock the park visitors' afternoons.

As with all the venues, the battle arena was barred from entry on all sides while battles were being hosted, preventing the patrons of the park from disrupting the events. The only way to access the arena was to super-jump from the tower in the square, which is how Aurora, her friends, and the inkling boys had made it to their spawn platforms. Aurora had gotten a brief look at the arena from the sky a split second before landing forcefully in the fuchsia ink pool that filled her team's spawn platform. Her and her friends' hair was instantly dyed the same color as soon as they touched down in the stuff, solidifying, visually, their opposition to the sky-blue color of the inkling boys' ink.

Sitting against the guard rail behind the girls' spawn platform was a set of four ink-tanks, each filled to capacity with the corresponding, pinkish ink with which they would be fighting. Their weapons were already equipped with the means to store ink, but everyone in the city who had ever participated in an ink-splatting battle knew that victory was dependent on the harness-mounted ink-tanks' ability to refill while submerged in the battlefield. The girls wasted no time in fastening the devices to each other's backs as soon as they arrived at the arena, assuming the boys to be doing the same thing over on the other spawn platform.

The first thing Aurora noticed in the ticking moments before their battle was…exactly what she had feared. All around the arena, in the unrestricted regions of the skatepark surrounding the guard rails, were swathes of cheering onlookers. Inklings, octolings, jellyfish, urchins…it was an absolute freakshow. Judd was probably hanging out somewhere within the crowd as well, though he obviously wasn't visible from their position. Never, in all the battles she had fought, had Aurora seen such an audience. She figured the packs of viewers had to be a result of the Splatfest announcement. It seemed to have the effect of livening up the entire city in ways she couldn't fathom, considering her and her friends' humble upbringing in the pits. The poor octo could recall her most dreadful experiences of harassment after losing in front of big audiences, so the presence of such an overwhelming quantity of spectators opened a hollow pit in her stomach.

"Alright, girls, here we go." Bella rallied, gesturing her friends together with the dualies in her two hands. "We've been here before, so we know how this goes. That tower in the center is our number one priority. Protecting it should be just as important as protecting the zones. Eight, do you think you could start us off by keeping your laser on that so 'Lia can sneak on top of it?"

Eight showed absolutely no sign of interest in anything that was happening, but regardless, she answered Bella in her classic, minimalist manner.

"I can."

Bella nodded. "Cool. In that case…here's our game plan, y'all. Eight's gonna hold the tower from the ground long enough for 'Lia to stake her claim up there with the Hydra, while Aurora and I rush the middle and split up. I'll take the zone on their side, since I'm expecting them to cover it with the Splatling and the Squiffer, and I can dodge that shit fairly easily. Aurora, you take the zone closer to us, with 'Lia and Eight as your backup pairs of eyes. Once we have a foothold on the tower, Eight can push up there after 'Lia, and we'll have the two of them cover us from above while we defend the zones from the ground. How does that sound to everyone?"

"Sounds horrible." Ophelia joked. "I'm totally down."

"Aurora, what about you?"

Aurora stopped nervously adjusting her ink-tank after realizing that she had been doing so rather compulsively. She mustered up the courage to stop shivering in place and nodded her head once. "…Okay."

She and her friends got no more than a few seconds after Bella's explanation before the crowds enveloping the arena began to count down with loud voices. The sound of it caught Aurora off guard, prompting another dizzying wave of nervous energy to careen through her body. Her friends, on the other hand, responded to it by shifting into their prepared, starting stances. It was game time. The splat zones, the crowds, and most importantly, the inkling boys, were waiting. In the next five, short minutes…she'd be able to score Midas. She and her friends just had to play their cards right.

The audience projected their synchronous countdown euphorically, getting louder with each decreasing number. "…five…four…three…two…one…SPLAT!"

Immediately, Aurora and Bella opened fire with their weapons, covering the ground in front of the spawn platform with shiny, magenta ink. Ophelia and Eight could not fire their weapons without first building up a charge, so to save time, they withheld from their triggers until they could get a little closer to the center of the arena. Instead, they morphed right into their octo forms the instant the battle began, and they proceeded to move forward through their teammates' ink paths. Aurora and Bella were both quick to go octo as well, sliding in and out of the puddles in rapid alternation in order to quickly move to the edge of their turf and continue claiming more. Such was their classic rollout procedure, designed to carry them toward the objectives as quickly and efficiently as possible. The focus that filled their minds as soon as their fingers hit their triggers ultimately prevented them from hearing the overpowering roar of cheering from the observing crowds.

A small ledge of grating, a mere few feet off the ground, existed just left of what was considered the "main" area of the arena, overlooking the zone that sat by the girls' side of the tower. Eight pursued this ledge as soon as she was within shooting distance of it, climbing the resulting ink splat on the wall in order to position herself. The spot gave her a decent overview of the entire valley in which Aurora would be defending, while also providing her with an adequate angle to snipe perpetrators on top of the tower. In accordance with Bella's plan, she chose to do the latter first.

Meanwhile, Ophelia opted to cover the resulting weak spot over Aurora's jurisdiction from behind a small panel of cover that jutted out from the edge of the drop-off, near the stairway that descended into the valley on the inkling boys' side. She did so with the intent of quickly repositioning to the tower the moment she got the all-clear from Eight. She patiently generated a charge with the Hydra Splatling and aimed its spinning barrel down-sights along Aurora's lane, waiting just long enough for Aurora to swim past her toward the zone before releasing the charge in a spectacular barrage of long-range ink shots that coated the entire valley in thick sheets of turf for her friend to use. Combined with Aurora's firepower down in the valley itself, their splat zone was fully claimed within seconds' time.

Finally, once Bella passed the drop-off into mid next to Aurora, she split off to the left in pursuit of the boys' zone, exactly as she had described before the battle. She focused on covering as much turf as possible, aiming each of her dualies in random, haphazard directions with the hopes of quickly obtaining her special Ink Jet. Out of the four of them, she knew her job was going to be the most difficult. As such, she remained on high alert the entire time, checking every corner around her as she rounded the tower to make sure there were no looming signs of blue ink in her vicinity.

And those signs certainly didn't take long to appear. The boys arrived at the drop-off on their side of the tower a little later than Aurora's team, thanks to their bulky weapons slowing their swim speed considerably. When they did arrive, however, they announced their presence with displays of powerful, aggressive might. Bella was only just beginning to cover the edge of their splat zone with the first few droplets of ink when the Dynamo Roller emerged from a stream of turf along the edge of their drop-off, reeling his massive, destructive weapon backwards for a strike that would not take prisoners. Bella, after eliciting a surprised gasp, retreated backwards through her turf in time to avoid a blanket of blue ink that propelled across the entire lane with the Roller's flick. She planned to maneuver her way back and fight valiantly for the zone, but when the .96 Gal appeared on top of their ledge of grating to dispense supporting fire upon their valley, she was forced to keep her distance and resort to tossing curling bombs for deterrence. The boys' zone was claimed by the Roller's greedy ink globs without so much as a hint of resistance from Bella.

At the same time, Aurora started receiving some pressure from the Splatling guy over on her side. His arrival in the valley on the girls' side of the tower came at quite the opportune moment, freshly after she had used her Splattershot ink to cap the zone. The first thing she saw was a splash wall over by the ramp leading to the top of the tower, which immediately alerted her of his incoming attack. Ophelia noticed it too, luckily, and by the time he emerged behind it to begin flinging ink in Aurora's direction, both she and her timid companion were ready to retaliate with overwhelming force. Aurora cracked into his wall considerably with a quick suction bomb, taking a second to refill her tank in the ink a second thereafter, while Ophelia ripped the petty barrier to shreds from her spot on the drop-off using the titanic range and ferocity of her Hydra shots. She was able to overtake the Splatling guy's position without having to move herself, thanks to the glaring superiority of her Splatling's range over his. The Splatling guy retreated rapidly before his splash wall could be destroyed, knowing that he had picked the wrong battle.

However, he didn't seem to be content with cutting his losses so easily. Instead of swimming back within the safe embrace of his teammates' lineup, he slithered around the tower to a spot he had already inked, and he climbed up the side of the mighty cylinder to shoot down at Aurora and Ophelia from a better angle. It was an unusually aggressive move for him, and as he flopped forward at the apex of his climb, he became the first combatant in the arena to claim the tower for his team.

Eight spotted him against the sky like a sore thumb, though, and within a second of his arrival there, she dispatched him instantly. The sound of her E-Liter atop the grating thundered across Aurora's lane as the compressed ink shot it released nailed the Splatling guy perfectly. He went down in spectacular fashion, showering both the top of the tower and the adjacent ramps in sheets of magenta ink. The crowd reacted excitedly to the opening splat, though it wasn't yet clear whether their uproarious feedback was positive or negative.

"It is clear." She declared to Ophelia. "Climb it now."

"Cool, just keep me covered!" Ophelia replied from behind her friend. She promptly submerged in the ink and swam the short distance to the tower, using the trail left by the E-Liter to ascend to its peak. In the meantime, Eight kept her crosshair where it had been, prepared to shoot down any inklings that got the same idea.

The shaded octo was greeted with a sprawling pool of Eight's turf at the top of the tower, thanks to the splat that had just occurred there. It didn't seem to her like anyone was going to try following in the Splatling guy's footsteps, so when she emerged from the ink in the most focal location of the arena, she immediately got to work. She first got the barrel of her Hydra Splatling spinning in the few seconds it took her to walk to the tower's opposite ledge. Then, when she got close enough to peer down upon the boys' lane and spot Bella fighting a losing battle, she released the trigger and discharged a catastrophic rain of ink at the .96 Gal and the Dynamo Roller, who were both too slow to notice the attack against them. The .96 Gal barely had time to toss a sprinkler up at her before succumbing to her barrage, but aside from that, neither of them were able to put up a fight. The sprinkler was easily destroyed with a few stray shots, and just like that, the girls had control of both lanes. More intense reactions came from the crowd as Bella cleaned up the mess and took the second zone, giving full map control to the octo girls. Their score began increasing rapidly, with a KO victory waiting for them if they could hold the zones, uninterrupted, for sixty seconds.

"Good shit, 'Lia!" Bella called up to her from below. "You really saved me from that pinch!"

Ophelia smiled, satisfied with her and Eight's collaboration. "All in a day's work! Now, Eight, come join me up here before those guys come back. We can cook these clowns in less than a minute if we stay vigilant. Has anyone seen their Squiffer yet?"

Bella and Eight both admitted to the contrary, as did Aurora. While Aurora hadn't yet seen Midas since starting the battle, her thoughts never deviated from him. Every moment that passed, she stayed constantly on edge, expecting his smoking hot figure to emerge from any splotch of blue ink that entered her sight. She heavily doubted her ability to fight against him if he were to appear, for reasons reminiscent of her last such experience at Snapper Canal. His mere presence was tough enough on her mind and body while resting, but in battle, he was her kryptonite.

She absently continued to cover more turf in her lane as she pondered this, building gradually towards her Tenta Missiles while there weren't any enemies to oppose her. Then, as she was beginning to reach the end of the side lane back to her spawn, it happened. By pure coincidence, considering what had been on her mind, she noticed a blue laser closing onto her chest from an unknown direction. Her thoughts shattered, and her panic response took over.

"Girls, girls! I found him, I think he's over—"

It happened while Eight was climbing the tower to meet with Ophelia. By the time any of them could turn and address her call, however, she had already fallen mercy to him again. She emitted a weak exclamation when the shot hit her, and the splash of blue ink that resulted from her demise caked the surrounding surfaces, including part of the ramp leading to the top of the tower. One by one, the inkling boys were respawning at their platform and preparing to super-jump to their stealthy Squiffer, and meanwhile, the girls were now one defender short. Ophelia and Eight frantically scanned Aurora's lane in search of the missing assailant, knowing that the entire group of boys was going to be spilling from his location at any moment. They needed to buy some time.

The only one in the arena who had inked enough turf to earn their first special weapon was Bella. Bella's special was an Ink Jet, a devastating combination of back-mounted jetpack and oversized bazooka. It was her favorite feature of the Enperry Dualies. Her aim with it was impeccable, and every time it coughed out its last drop and sent her flying into the air before landing back in the ink, she felt an adrenaline rush that was nothing short of addicting. No weapon was worth using to her if it didn't come with an Ink Jet.

Once she realized that Aurora had been splatted on the other side of the tower, she inked her way up its side and deployed the Jet at the highest elevation she could achieve, ensuring that her field of vision encompassed half the arena before exposing herself. Her transition from ground to sky was met with more applause from the audience, but it wasn't until the violent exchange afterward that their reactions reached their peak intensity.

First, Bella strafed towards the ramp on the right, where Aurora's slip-up had been, as soon as she noticed an expanse of blue ink growing around the corner. The inkling boys were obviously returning from that location, having jumped to their one surviving teammate, and she was determined to stop their resurgence before they could retake the zones. Midas, Aurora's two-time assassin, was at the front of his team's new attacking point. They noticed each other at the same time.

"Come here, you sneaky bastard! Have a taste of what this feels like!" Bella exclaimed through her wicked smile. She fired off her first ink blast, which rocketed through the air and exploded right where Midas was standing.

Midas was quick with his squid form, though, and he dodged the blast effortlessly by slithering to the side and emerging just out of Bella's sight, behind the cover that was nearby. Bella quickly fired off another blast, and then another, all while hovering a strategic path towards their safe spot. She did not plan to yield until she saw the detonation of at least one inkling. After all, even just one splat would even the tides until Aurora's return.

Suddenly, however, Bella was caught off guard when Midas leapt back out at her from around the corner with a charge stored in his Squiffer. He had built it up in the brief moment he was behind cover, and with its crippling delay now mitigated, he flicked his aim up at her from below and released the trigger, ending her ambitious push prematurely. Blue ink rained down upon the halfpipe after her jetpack thudded onto the ground. With her out of the way, he and the rest of his hidden team began rapidly swimming forward to close the point gap that had been opened in the girls' favor.

Ophelia and Eight saw the direness of their situation. At first, they considered super-jumping back to their spawn platform to preserve themselves over allowing their deaths to contribute to the boys' territory, but their minds changed when Eight gained a tactical triumph over Midas. The agile Squiffer's only mistake was his decision to lead his team's push back out to the zones…for when Eight saw his ripples in the ink, she reacted almost robotically with her aim. From atop the tower, at too far a distance for Midas to challenge her, she fired off another colossal shot from the E-Liter and pinned him while he was still swimming through his turf, turning his small, blueish figure into a giant stain of pink ink. It was a shot of justice on her part, after his guileful antics had resulted in the splatting of half her team. His swift elimination was enough to keep the two of them fighting with renewed confidence, even while their odds at defending the zones were stacked well against their favor.

Meanwhile, Aurora had respawned by then, and the desperation that was slowly building within her compelled her to super-jump to her friends on top of the tower for a faster resurgence. A marker appeared next to Ophelia and Eight as she morphed into her octo form, indicating the spot at which she would be landing. The defenders upped the ante when they saw it, knowing that her survival would depend on their support until she could regain her bearings and begin shooting. They continued to ink as much as they could off the sides of the tower, hoping to restrict the boys' movement while their influence on the center of the arena began to spread out.

Ophelia tried to throw an auto bomb at a blue ink splotch that seemed to be coming from the .96 Gal, but she was stopped by the lack of ink in her tank. She instinctively submerged in the ink to refill as soon as she noticed, leaving Eight to weather their containment breach for just a few brief moments. Unfortunately, those few moments were undercut by a ruthless ambush by none other than…the Splatling guy. Unbeknownst to the girls trying tirelessly to defend the zones from the edges of the tower, the Splatling guy had snuck around to the girls' side of the structure after Midas's slip-up, inked over their pink trail with a blue one of his own, and scaled the surface behind them without being detected. They didn't last another second after he reached the top, once he got his barrel spinning again, and Aurora was immediately forced to suffer the same fate as soon as she landed next to him on the tower. She didn't even have the time to chuck a suction bomb at her feet before his onslaught of firepower tore through her, leaving only him atop the blue-coated tower, laughing arrogantly at his triple-splat.

"A Hydra Splatling on top of a charger perch? And you losers said we were the ones with the lack of balls!" He scoffed.

The inklings capped both zones very shortly after that, halting the octo girls' score at fifty-seven points remaining. It was not a bad opening streak, by any means, but getting kicked off the zones never came with a satisfying feeling. They now had to push their way back into control, and they had to do it completely from scratch…a task often seen as the most difficult of any splat zone battle. In the end, none of them had survived the inkling boys' first resurgence. And that was about to come with a price.

Bella had already respawned since the massacre. While waiting for her friends to appear back at the spawn platform, she made use of her time by scouting the territory nearby, inking everything in sight to build her way towards another Ink Jet. She knew she wouldn't stand a chance pushing against them alone, and the rest of her team wouldn't stand a chance without at least one special weapon to boost their upcoming attempt. The girls had spread a lot of pink throughout the arena during their control, so it was likely that the boys were going to have some specials of their own waiting for them when they returned.

It only took a couple seconds. Before she knew it, a pair of wispy, pink essences floated down into the respawn platform behind her, and like magic, Ophelia and Eight emerged from the ink therein like nothing had happened. A third essence scurried through the air right after them, merging in the ink next to them and forming into Aurora, who looked a little…frazzled, to say the least. The group was back together again, after the tides had turned against them.

That was, at least, until Aurora decided to sink into the ink and take off towards the zones without waiting to touch base with the others.

"Wait, Aurora, hold up!" Bella shouted at her. "Don't leave us behind again!"

"There's no time! They're going to take the lead!" Aurora cried back. She staunchly kept swimming after giving that answer, leaving her friends in the dust.

Eight was the first to start swimming after her, and once she did, Bella and Ophelia were not far behind. If one of them was going to throw themselves into the mosh pit, they all had to, or they were never going to make any progress. They were somewhat confused by their friend's sudden need to throw herself recklessly at the enemies, though…when they thought about it…that did seem to be what Aurora did best. Clearly, something must've been motivating her. Perhaps she just really wanted to reclaim her honor, they figured.

The center of the arena was crisply visible to them as they approached in a single-file line, with Aurora leading the charge. Even from a distance, the state of the arena was no mystery to them. The boys had converged upon the hotspot of the battlefield, holding various positions among the sea of blue ink that was now covering everything. The Splatling guy was the one holding the tower, and even as the girls were still getting there, he could be seen distributing gallons of ink around the arena from the height advantage he enjoyed.

Aurora's victory was in jeopardy as long as the boys were in control, and she felt irrepressibly obsessed with turning that fact around. All chances of her performing with a strategic mindset were gone already, despite them only losing control to the boys a single time. As she slithered rapidly towards the lane she had previously been watching, she prepared to blitzkrieg her way through the blue turf…and her opponents…with all the blind, emotional strength she could muster. Her friends tried to keep up with her, but they simply couldn't match her determination when her engines got running. And now, after twice getting pushed away from her prize, they were certainly running hard.

Just as the girls reached the ledge from which they'd be mounting their resurgence, an unknown projectile came flying at them from somewhere to their left. It landed right next to Ophelia, causing her to reflexively flinch sideways in the ink. Instead of exploding on her, however, the object instantly enveloped the girls in a mysterious, blue aura, revealing their locations to the inkling boys through all surfaces. It was a point sensor, and judging from their lack of certainty about where it came from, they assumed it belonged to Midas. Already, they seemed to be plagued with a serious disadvantage.

"Shit…should we retreat?" Ophelia asked skittishly upon emerging from their ink. With all four of them now stripped of their ability to hide from the opponents, she did not find an immediate push to be worth the effort.

"No! We have to get them off the zones!" Aurora hollered in reply, surprising her friends with her sudden defiance. She hurled a suction bomb in the direction of the closest zone, without aiming first, and took off in a frenzy towards the hostile turf.

Bella swam forward a couple feet and attempted to grab her friend, but she did not react quickly enough. "Aurora, slow down! This isn't like rainmaker! You can't cap the zones by yourself!"

Her desperate warning was met with a cold shoulder. Therefore, she and the others had no choice but to watch hopelessly as Aurora's crazed maneuver took a predictable turn. Their friend dropped into the valley from the ledge around the same time her suction bomb exploded, and she began wildly shooting everything around her in a vain attempt to cap the zone and reveal opponents that may have been hiding in it. The aura from the point sensor was still showing off her location, though, and the inkling defenders knew how to take advantage of that with unforgiving efficiency. The .96 Gal emerged from a pool of his ink on the other side of the lane and began shooting at her from a distance, causing puddles of restrictive turf to land by her feet. She tried to defend herself by shooting him back, but the range of her Splattershot was pitifully outclassed by that of his weapon, ensuring that none of her shots landed anywhere near his location. While she was doing that, the Splatling guy stepped up to the edge of the tower overlooking her position and proceeded to fire down at her himself. Before long, with her movement choked by the overpowering amounts of blue ink around her, Aurora fell victim to the coordinated defense without drawing a sweat from her opponents. Her own body became the bomb that ultimately painted the zone blue again, as it had been just seconds prior.

Bella closed her eyes and shook her head, disappointed with Aurora's latest failed display of showmanship. Whatever was motivating her recklessness this time, it was going to be her and her friends' undoing. Someone needed to talk to her about that at some point.

First, though, they had to deal with the situation her foolishness had given them. The girls' positions were still being broadcast from the point sensor, and they were now missing Aurora again. Their only option was to retreat and wait for her to respawn. However, the inkling boys were not going to let them escape that easily. Right as they were beginning to turn around, the Dynamo Roller deployed his sinister Sting Ray, a pressurized beam with the ability to fire through solid surfaces, from somewhere else in the arena. The sound of the Ray produced an immediate survival response from Aurora's friends, which was to scatter in three different directions and swim as evasively as possible.

Escaping would've been a manageable task under normal circumstances, but the girls were not, in fact, under normal circumstances. The point sensor aura still clinging to their bodies gave the Dynamo Roller a perfect visual of their locations from the other side of the arena, ensuring that their scrambled attempts at avoidance were utterly useless. Ophelia's swim speed was limited by her heavy weapon, so when the beam converged on her first, it eviscerated her within seconds. It then started to sweep to the side and focus on Eight, who struggled against the deadly vector for a bit longer than Ophelia. Regardless of her efforts, however, her E-Liter made her too slow as well, and she succumbed to the relentless force of the Ray's penetrative ink blast. Bella was next, but her lightweight prowess and chaotic patterns of movement were enough to evade the torrential beam until it shrank and dissipated. Immediately thereafter, the aura around her also vanished.

The damage done to the girls' progress was becoming extensive. While the boys had managed to retake the arena and cap the zones after just one resurgence attempt, Aurora and her friends had failed in theirs…after taking too much time to initiate it in the first place. Therefore, around the same time Aurora, Eight, and Ophelia respawned to join Bella for another try, the boys' score surpassed their own, making them the new leaders. The octos' chances of victory were dependent on how rapid and decisive their next move would be.

Aurora was focused on rapidity, at least, but her mindless pushes were not exactly decisive. The second she appeared back on the respawn platform, she sunk into the ink and darted forward again, her mind locked on taking the objectives without any sort of planning. No matter how many times they would splat her, she was going to continue getting back up and rushing at them until the moment the buzzer sounded.

The thing was…Bella was anticipating her this time. When Aurora breezed in front of her during her frantic journey back to the zones, she stowed her dualies, bent over quickly, and snatched her bespectacled friend by her motor tentacles, gripping firmly onto them with each hand to prevent her from swimming any farther. Aurora was startled by the sudden whiplash, and she began resisting by wriggling feverishly in her friend's grasp. Despite her efforts, though, Bella managed to pull her right out of the ink and hold her in the air at arm's length, letting her dangle upside down by her appendages. Aurora didn't like being seen in her octo form, so when she glanced up and saw Bella holding her prisoner, she writhed even harder.

"No use trying to break free, Aurora. This isn't the first time I've held someone like this." Bella said sternly. "You need to stop rushing past us and let us fight this battle together. We won't stand a chance if you keep trying to do it all yourself. Understand?" She waited a moment for her friend to answer, but then she remembered that Aurora couldn't respond while she was in her octo form. So, she improvised. "Flop towards me if you understand."

Aurora did not flop in any direction, but rather, she expressed her opinion a little more bluntly. When Bella seemed to have her guard down, she swung herself the other way so that her appendages were directed at her face. She then produced a sharp contraction and ejected a spurt of ink into Bella's eyes, causing her to flinch backwards and pinch her eyes shut.

"Ack, son of a bitch!" She exclaimed as she brought her hands to her face, dropping Aurora in the process. As soon as Aurora was submerged back in her turf, she resumed swimming towards the zones.

A moment later, Eight and Ophelia swam up to Bella from the respawn platform. Ophelia looked confused, having only partially seen the event unfold.

"What just happened? Did Aurora take off without us again?" She asked.

"Fuck yeah, she did!" Bella replied irritably. She reoriented herself after finally getting the slimy fluid out of her eyes. "She won't fight normally! I don't know what's gotten into her!"

Eight spoke up suddenly, giving a reply that neither of them saw coming. "I will join her."

"You'll what?" Bella retorted. She watched with skepticism as Eight submerged and departed hastily for the zones, stopping only briefly to answer her friend from a distance away.

"We must join her! It is the only way!" Eight reiterated, using a voice that was only slightly above her usual quiet tone. Bella and Ophelia barely heard her, but upon seeing the second of their friends scurry off towards the enemies, they reluctantly followed suit.

They pretty much only had time for that final push, anyway. If they failed again, the boys were almost certainly going to KO them.

On that note, Aurora reached the ledge within a couple seconds, with Eight slithering close behind her. Her plan, or lack thereof, rather, was to dissuade the Splatling guy atop the tower from shooting down at her by tossing her suction bomb upwards, hoping it would land next to him and force him to jump off the edge. Unfortunately, her execution was once again sloppy, resulting in her explosive projectile landing near the far edge of the tower instead of the center. She then dropped into the valley to try capping the zone as before. By landing her suction bomb inaccurately, though, she unwittingly drove the Splatling guy towards the edge overlooking her side. Before she could finish clearing out the blue ink in her lane, he aimed over the side and began spinning up his barrel again.

Luckily, Eight was watching. She had approached the ledge with her attention fixed on the tower's summit, expecting the Splatling guy to peek from there when Aurora got close. When she saw her prediction come true, she emerged at her current location and built a charge up against the side of his head, releasing it just in time for his weapon to begin shooting. Aurora heard the sound of her friend's shot, and she felt the droplets of pink ink from the Splatling guy's death land in her hair, but she didn't realize that her life had just been saved. She was too busy acting on the goal that was completely consuming her mind.

Normally, Eight was a passive fighter that preferred to give value to her team by picking off targets from a distance. However, she also wanted to help her team win…for Aurora's sake, if no one else's. The only way that could happen, with Aurora acting so uncontrollable, was for the rest of them to act uncontrollable with her. Careful strategies took too much time, and if a member of the team wasn't following them, what was the point? The way Eight figured, only persistent, team-wide unity was the key to victory.

After sniping the Splatling guy off the tower, Eight got to work following in Aurora's footsteps. Using the trail left by her E-Liter shot, she rushed forward and rapidly scaled the tower, ignoring the potential risk of getting splatted by one of the three inkling boys still roaming the arena. Protecting Aurora was her top priority, so once she emerged and built up another shot in her weapon, she slithered to the edge overlooking Aurora's lane and peered down steadily with her laser. A hidden ink mine, left by the Dynamo Roller to protect the Splatling guy, detonated on her as she did this, dousing her in hostile ink and revealing her location a second time. She survived the explosion and continued to keep her vigilant watch despite the damage she had taken.

Down below, Aurora finally halted the boys' advancing score by capping the first zone with her Splattershot ink. It was only a minor feat, but it still bought some more time for her team. She then turned her aim back upwards when she started taking fire from the .96 Gal again, who was careful about keeping his distance advantage over her. Even so, Aurora refused to give up. She pushed forward as much as she could against his shots, hoping to clear him out before his powerful weapon could do the same to her.

Eight had a clear visual of the exchange from her perch. She knew, as well as any other cephalopod with experience on the battlefield, that Aurora didn't have a prayer of surviving a push like that, directly into the line of fire of a .96 Gal, whose range and damage put her wimpy Kensa Splattershot to shame. Only a few weapons could contend with a .96 Gal in such conditions, for that matter. Thankfully, she was holding one of them, and without hesitation, she built up a charge with it and used it to obliterate her friend's opponent before he could send her back to the respawn platform. After that, as far as she and Aurora could tell, their lane was clear of enemies.

Meanwhile, Bella and Ophelia banked a left upon reaching the ledge, their sights focused on the zone in the boys' lane. Ophelia had a healthy amount of cover to utilize from that side, and the range of her Hydra was sure to allow her some flexibility with her risk. She got right to spinning up her barrel the moment she emerged in her ideal spot, but when Bella emerged next to her, she did not immediately push forward.

"How are we doing this? You cover from back here while I head in?" She queried.

"I don't know about you, Bella, but I'm just gonna start shooting when I see an inkling." Ophelia replied candidly. "Just do what you did with your Ink Jet earlier. Go by instinct, not by planning!"

It took Bella quite a bit of time to find her bearings after the hard splat she had taken from Midas earlier. She always presented herself as a free-flowing spirit that loved to take life by each stroke of her tentacles, but whenever hardships stared her in the face, she needed to feel in control of everything. Yesterday's rainmaker battle at the canal had been little more than a fun exercise for her, in which the outcome of her efforts did not affect her enjoyment. This time, though, her and her friends' honor was hanging in the balance. She wanted the inkling boys to shut up and fuck off with every fiber of her being, and because of that frustration, she tended to take her team's battle tactics too seriously.

"Um…right. Got it." She murmured.

Ophelia held her position with the Hydra Splatling while Bella reluctantly pressed forward with her dualies, using a curling bomb to paint a convenient trail to the zone. Eight had even transitioned to the side of the tower overlooking their region after eliminating the competition on Aurora's side, and Aurora herself was quickly inking her way there as well. As Bella surged forward to begin capping the second zone and setting their team's score back on track, the rest of her team was converging on said zone to provide maximum support.

The boys' defense was left in the hands of Midas and the Dynamo Roller, at least until their teammates could return to the front lines. Midas was nowhere to be seen again, of course, so rather, the pressure fell entirely on the latter. He emerged from the ledge on their side, as he had done the last time Bella approached his zone, and he took a defiant stance against her when the ink started firing from her dualies. Before he could finish winding up his giant weapon for a flick, however, Aurora swam up behind him and clocked him in the back with her Splattershot, marking her first splat in the entire battle. Bella expressed her approval with a light grin, but Aurora didn't return the favor.

"Nice splat, Aurora. Your timing was perfect." She acknowledged.

Aurora ignored her friendly remark. "Where's Midas?"

"…Who?"

"Midas! I already told you who he was! Where is he?"

Bella, who was trying to relax and open her mind up after her tense encounter with Aurora at the respawn platform earlier, was taken aback by her bluntness. Granted, she had been the one to grab her shy friend by the tentacles and hold her against her will for a few seconds, so she understood if Aurora was still kind of salty about that. That's what she assumed was going on, at least.

"Oh, the Squiffer? Yeah, uh…good question. I haven't seen him since he fucked up my Ink Jet earlier." She confessed.

Without another word, Aurora submerged in the ink next to her and began swimming away from the zone, towards the halfpipe on the left side of the arena. It was the symmetric equivalent of the halfpipe in which Midas had hidden during their first team-wipe, but it was the one leading towards the inkling boys' spawn, not the other way around. Some blue ink was still visible around that corner, leading Aurora to believe that she'd find Midas there. Bella capped the second zone in the meantime, which caused the girls' score to begin counting down again. They were only down by twenty-two points to the inkling boys after taking the zones back from them, so once they overcame their small penalty, they'd only be about fifteen seconds away from reclaiming the lead. Aurora was determined to keep them from losing the zones again, and if that meant facing Midas directly to prevent his team from jumping to him a second time, then so be it.

---

She emerged by the corner when she reached the end of her turf and immediately began inking every drop of blue in her sight. Since she knew she wouldn't be able to spot Midas hiding among the turf in front of her, she decided to simply rid the halfpipe of it altogether. The time to play passively had ended for her. Whether he liked it or not, she was going to savor that damn inkling's juicy lips if it was the last thing she'd ever do.

Luckily for her, she had predicted correctly. Within seconds of turning the corner, she ran into his hiding spot by covering over it with an ink shot on her way by, forcing him to emerge and defend himself. Aurora reacted joltingly to his appearance after seeing his figure rise out of the ink, having failed to expect him from that particular location. Her head turned quickly to the side, and she reflexively tossed a suction bomb in his direction.

Midas dodged the projectile with little to no effort. Before it could stick to the wall behind him and explode, he jumped a few feet to the side, where he still had some ink to maneuver in, and he turned to face Aurora. Aurora prepared to bite back her hormones and fight him with every ounce of willpower she could scrape together. However, before she could squeeze the trigger on her Splattershot, something unusual happened. Midas lowered his Squiffer, and…for the first time ever…he spoke to her.

"Just who are you, anyway?" He asked plainly.

His voice. Oh cod, his voice. Aurora had never heard it before, and all she could think was…wow. He sounded even better than in her dream. All of a sudden, her psychotic maelstrom of goal-driven ink-flinging came to a screeching halt. Her unplanned meeting with him was about to go very differently than she had expected.

Her hearts started skipping beats again. A tingle crept up her back. "Wh…What?"

"Who are you?" He repeated. "I know you're the octo chick from yesterday, but like…who are you really?"

At that point, Aurora lowered her weapon as well. She kept trying to make eye contact with her crush, but now that he was engaged in direct conversation with her, she couldn't do so without looking away each time. The closest thing on which she could get her eyes to stay focused was his Squiffer.

"You mean…you…you don't know? Your friends didn't…tell you?" She stuttered sheepishly, reaching up with her free hand to start playing with one of her hair curls.

"My friends told me to look out for 'the pit-dweller with the geeky glasses.'" He explained, caring little for his accidental use of the anti-octoling slur. "They told me my 'sanity was at stake' if we didn't win this battle. What the hell am I supposed to make of that? I'm assuming they weren't talking about your Hydra Splatling chick."

Aurora ignored his use of the slur. Rather, she focused on how hot she thought it was that he kept calling her and her friends "chicks." Though…she didn't know how her friends would've felt about it. It wasn't exactly the most respectful term.

She continued stroking her hair curl while struggling to speak concisely. Hearing him talk to her made it considerably more difficult to resist the feelings rushing back into her. "Yes…my glasses are the geeky ones. M…My name's Aurora."

"…Okay." He replied blandly. "Do I…know you from somewhere? Any explanation for that weird show you put on for me back at the battle tower?"

Aurora blushed extremely hard when he mentioned that. This whole time, she had been assuming that he already knew everything. She wasn't prepared to have to explain the terms of the battle to him, nor the fact that she secretly wanted him to mount her like a bull shark. She juggled a few different ways to implicitly answer his question, but nothing clever came to mind. The response she did end up giving was not exactly that subtle, though.

"Listen, do…do you…think I'm cute?"

"Do I what? What do you mea…" He paused suddenly. As his expression shifted to convey his understanding, so did his stance. His hands dropped to his sides, and he glanced away from her awkwardly. "…Oh. Um…uhh…cool. How nice. This is about the Splatfest, then, I'm assuming?"

"Sooorta…" She murmured. She couldn't stop stroking her hair. She felt like it probably looked annoying to him. "…I was hoping we could…I d'know…go for a drink first? Then the Splatfest the day after?"

"You are aware of how many stares I would get if I'm seen with you, right?" He prompted, looking somewhat off tilt. "Octolings aren't viewed as very fresh in my social sphere, you know."

"I can be fresh! I promise!" She exclaimed suddenly, making undivided eye contact with him for the first time since their encounter. Her face felt so overheated…she figured her blush must've made her entire head look the same color as her hair.

"I don't know, octo. You're trying to cross some strange boundaries here." He stated frankly. "Octolings aren't supposed to date inklings."

Aurora felt something rise in her gut. A certain…fire. It was there every time she heard that phrase, and every time, it got stronger. Perhaps it was some kind of defiance. Or a gentle rage. She didn't know. All she knew was that the city's status quo was a bullshit waste of everyone's time. She wanted him. She needed to feel his intimate touch. And he was going to be hers. She'd like to see them try to stop her.

"Oh yeah? Well…if you're too afraid to cross those boundaries with me, then…" She flashed him her version of a seductive glare, and she aimed her Splattershot at him. "…you got about thirty seconds to go cap those zones."

She then squeezed the trigger, and Midas's shocked face was gone within a second. Ink from his explosion splattered across her face and her clothes while blanketing the blue turf around her in pink. Damn…did it feel good. Before retreating back to the center of the arena with her friends, Aurora threw a suction bomb onto the ground, where his death had been, to deal with the super-jump marker that had appeared there just prior. She wasn't going to let his team recover. They weren't going to like her very much later, but that wasn't important now. She was doing it for him.

---

By the time Aurora returned to the tower at the center of the arena, her team had an iron grip on a vast amount of territory. No one was able to get near the two valleys from the inklings' main drop-off, thanks to the all-encompassing range of Eight's E-Liter atop the tower. Their side lane was shot as well, with Aurora's suction bomb having terminated one of Midas's teammates right after he went down himself. The boys' options for reaching the front-lines were pretty much nonexistent, especially with Bella and Ophelia having moved up to their drop-off to snuff out their breathing room. They were left with little territory, little time to regroup, and little time to resurge. On top of that, all the girls except Aurora had their specials ready to deploy. The tides of battle were not only back on the girls' side, they were overwhelmingly signaling the girls' victory, to the point where the boys would've been better off just cutting their losses and accepting the defeat.

Regardless, they pushed on until the bitter end. The Splatling guy and the .96 Gal were the only remaining attackers after Aurora's ruthless double-execution in their side lane, and their efforts to approach the zones from their drop-off were met with unmatchable force by Bella and Ophelia on the front-lines. Ophelia once again asserted the dominance of the Hydra Splatling by obliterating the Splatling guy's splash wall without having to get within throwing distance of it. Then, right after it was destroyed, Bella rolled up with her dualies and laid waste to both of them. It was utterly impossible for them to contend with her at such close range. With the segmented timing of their respawns, between Aurora's and Bella's kills, coupled with the lack of time they had to stop the girls' rapidly climbing score, the boys were suddenly facing an unfathomably steep uphill battle. And that wasn't even considering the Splashdown, Ink Jet, and Ink Storm that the girls were hiding up their sleeves.

They weren't even able to push forward again until they had their entire team together. That delay alone was enough to close out the girls' penalty time. Before they even had the group stability to mount a final resurgence attempt, the girls took the lead back from them and carried on towards the KO. The boys gave everything in their last push, even going as far as to split their push in two different directions to undermine their opponents' unwavering foothold on the main drop-off. Unfortunately for them, the girls' special weapons were not going to stand for it. Eight's Ink Storm over the main drop-off kept the Splatling guy buttered up for an easy elimination by Aurora. Ophelia climbed to the top of the tower before using her Splashdown off its edge, smearing the walls below with the remains of the Dynamo Roller and the .96 Gal. Then, lastly, Bella deployed her Ink Jet and sought out Midas one more time, exacting her vengeance against him in a satisfyingly violent manner after finding him stuck in a corner by his side lane.

They never recovered. There was only time for one more resurgence after that, and the boys could not find an angle that wasn't already under watch from a better position by one of the girls. Unable to anchor themselves effectively, and without the time to wrench control of the zones from the inside like they had done before, the inklings' goose was officially cooked. In the next few seconds, the girls' remaining score counted down past ten…then seven…then five…three…one…zero.

Cheering. Prodigious amounts of cheering. It was the first thing the girls heard upon achieving their victory on Blackbelly Skatepark. Aurora realized just then, in fact, that she had completely forgotten about the crowd's presence around the arena during the heat of their battle. All the ambient noise accompanying their pivotal moments, like their clean sweep of the inkling boys during their successful resurgence, their retaking of the zones, and their usage of specials to defend those zones, had fallen into the background while it was all going on. Now that they had attained their knockout victory, the audience's excitement and approval filled the moment with exhilarating energy. The girls wondered how many octolings were in that crowd, screaming and applauding their fellow underdogs as if this splat zone battle had been the decider of a great race war.

Despite the apparent gusto in the crowd's cheering, their ovation was completely overshadowed by Aurora, who reacted to the victory with an insatiable display of triumph and joy. She jumped around in her spot by the drop-off, shouting her pleasures to the clouds above.

"Yes! Yes yes yes yes YES! Veemo!" She cried exuberantly.

Bella and Ophelia watched her with delight. Eight also saw her emotional outpouring from the tower behind her, but her face did not reflect the spirit of the occasion. While Aurora made her ecstasy known to the entire venue, Eight stood in the shade, reactionless…taking the win as nothing more than the completion of another chore. Not the last one they'd be dealing with, either.

A satisfied smile appeared on Bella's face during Aurora's episode. "Damn, Aurora, I've never seen you react to a win like this. Looked like you were really pushing for this one!"

"I agree!" Ophelia chuckled. "Glad to see you feeling better. Pity I left the seaweed back at home, 'cause now seems like it'd be the best time for it!"

Within the next minute, shortly after Judd appeared through the crowd to officiate the octo girls' superiority and generate more hype in the audience, the inkling boys approached the center of the arena. They seemed to have removed their ink tanks and left them back at the respawn platform before arriving. None of them looked very pleased, especially the Splatling guy. They didn't look angry, though, just…inconvenienced.

"How do you like us now, assholes?" Bella jeered at them through her smug grin. "Looks like you're the ones facing the embarrassment today!"

"Yeah, cocky of you to talk such a big game and then get your tentacles plucked by a gang of lowly octolings!" Ophelia added.

The Splatling guy stared at each of them for a moment without saying anything. The girls tried to deduce something about his opinion on the matter by reading his expression, but they couldn't quite figure him out. His feelings about the loss seemed…mixed.

"You octos are reeeally patting yourselves on the back right now, aren't you?" He snarled. "You think you're some hot shit?"

"Hot shit, indeed, kiddos! Hot shit that you'd better start respecting!" Bella ordered with an authoritative flair. "You squids lost, and the conditions of the rematch say you have to take back your bullshit from yesterday. We're equals now!"

There was a moment of silence after her declaration, until suddenly, the Splatling guy started to laugh, along with the .96 Gal and the Dynamo Roller. Bella and Ophelia became greatly confused by it, as evidenced by the disappearance of their smiles and the raising of their eyebrows. Why were they laughing? What the hell was so funny about getting their smug rug of supremacy pulled out from under them?

"You're fucking adorable, you know that?" The Splatling guy cackled. "Those weren't the conditions of the rematch at all!"

Wait a minute. What did he just say? Bella and Ophelia answered to that twist by staring at the boys in dumbfounded silence. Their inflated body language vanished in an instant, as did the cocky resolve that they had built up in the wake of their epic triumph. The longer they stared, the more the inkling boys began to get back on their high horses.

"Those…weren't the conditions? What the hell are you talking about?" Bella stammered.

The boys didn't answer verbally. Instead, they all stood back and allowed Midas to step forward from their lineup and face the befuddled octo girls alone. They all studied him with the same shaken looks on their faces, including Eight from the tower in the background, as he walked up to Aurora and gave her another quiet once-over. Aurora looked back at him with a display of true, unbridled admiration in her eyes, the likes of which Bella and Ophelia caught from their spots next to her. Their gazes shifted rapidly between their lifelong, lovestruck friend…and the mysterious inkling boy with the Squiffer. Neither of them had the slightest clue what to think.

He spoke with a level head, whisking Aurora's hearts away with his every word. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow. Meet me in the first floor lobby of Albacore Hotel before lunch, and…" He paused. "…try to look fresh, please."

"I'll be there." She stated in reply, flashing him a suggestive wink. "I'll be radiating freshness for you."

Midas simply nodded once, then he turned back around and began walking away. The rest of the inklings proceeded to follow him off the battlefield. Before the Splatling guy joined them, though, he stopped and addressed the octo girls one more time.

"Try to keep Four-Eyes under control. I'd better not see her pit-dweller lips all over Midas at the Splatfest, because if I do, you'll be dealing with all of us. Write it down."

He picked up his Heavy Splatling and, after giving Aurora an intensely threatening glare, proceeded with his departure. His intimidation did nothing to quench her spirits, though. She was so over the moon about her scored date with Midas that she wasn't fully aware of her situation. Her friends' shocked stares fell on her after his disappearance, growing more resentful with each passing moment. It took Aurora another several seconds to notice the state they were in, and when she did, her smile faded quickly.

None of them shared her excitement. Aurora glanced at Bella, then at Ophelia, and finally Eight, realizing with each of their faces that reality was beginning to set in for them. Everything from the last twenty-four hours was officially out in the open now.

Uh oh.