Chapter 5

Geneva hated waiting. And yet she'd shown up early, hours before the Battle Lobby was even open, never mind the extra time it would take for the tournament to start.

Not like she was going to spend any of that extra time asleep at home. The constant on-call Salmon Run shifts had broken her internal clock to where she just slept when she could. And if her body woke her up at 4am, she'd start her day at 4am. Besides, it was nice to be out of that stupid, run-down shoebox of an apartment anyway. For all the talk about inkfish prosperity and how easy it was to make a fresh start in Splatsville, she was certainly not included in that discussion.

At least the early morning was pleasant. Everything had that grayish-blue tint while the sun was still deciding if it wanted to rise, and the slight bit of natural light blunted the harshness of all the lamps and neon that dotted the plaza. It was relaxing, just like the crisp morning air that got her to relax just a little bit.

Relaxing was good. It got the mind focused, and it kept her from snapping and having to face the consequences of rash actions. She could write a whole book on all those consequences.

But for now, she was content to loiter around, perched on the guardrail right in front of the panoramic window that peered into Deep Cut's Splatcast studio. She could see the low desk, the giant monitor, the background props and all the camera and lighting equipment, all not in use this early in the morning. Practically nothing but the metro was in use this early, as the occasional train would rumble by on the tracks high overhead or far underground.

Geneva would probably hear them as they stopped and pulled away from the station, had she not been wearing those large studio headphones made by Forge, blasting out the heavy riffs and stadium-like chants of C-Side, the Splatlands rock group that had popped out of nowhere, taken the city by storm and had practically become the face of its hard rock scene music was loud, heavy and catchy, and she had gotten instantly hooked. It was a great tool to get her in the mood for the upcoming match, it killed time until then, and the noise leak from her headphones kept others away.

Loud music, an angry look, a penchant for loitering and a permanent record full of black marks. She really did fit all the characteristics of a delinquent.

With the music still blasting, she opened up her phone and took one more look at the tournament regulations, reminding herself of laundry list of rules she had to adhere to. Especially since she didn't have Dallas around to do it for her.

1. All contestants much be between the ages of 14 and 19.

Easy enough, she was the only one who was older than 16, and even then only by two years. Still eligible.

2. All weapons must be declared 1 hour before the start of a match. All weapons must comply to the regulations and carry the kits registered in their specifications. Only one weapon per participant per round.

Geneva turned to her side, where old reliable was standing by, perched on a railing. The perpetually scoffed-at Splattershot Pro, in its stock variant, the tank attached to it carrying an angle shooter and a canned Crab Tank. As per specification.
Adelaide always said the choice of Splat Pro reminded her of her other Inkling friend, Isabella, and she always asked if she and Geneva had met when they were both turfing in Inkopolis.
"Never heard of her." Geneva would have to explain flatly. "No one cares for our weapon, Pro mains are rarer than cats and never encounter each other."

3. Participants are allowed 3 pieces of gear (headwear, topwear and footwear), each with a maximum of one primary perk and three secondary perks. Legwear must not have perks. Minor aesthetic modifications are permitted.

She tucked the bill of her custom Squidvader Cap, the iconic Squidvader replaced with an equally pixelated, undetermined creature in a red spacesuit. She had as little idea as anyone else as to what it actually was, but it made her laugh so onto the cap it went.
Freshness and brandit was hardly something she cared about with clothes, but she did have matching Barazushi articles, including the comfy and breathable Wrap and the thick and sturdy Arctic Boots. And all three main perks were reserved for Ink Saver, exclusively compensating for her weapon's unquenchable thirst. She once again rued the fact that better weapons weren't more comfortable to play.

4. The tournament takes place across eight rounds with a 1 match knockout format. Only the winning teams advance. Each match will have one of four objectives at one of five regional stages, revealed to the teams the night before.

Geneva groaned re-reading that rule. The rulebook writers could explain how the uncertainty kept teams on their toes and lead to more exciting outcomes, but she still wanted to grab the rulebook and hit them over the head with it.

5. Each team must consist of no more than 4 players, with at least one S+ player. Any withdrawal of a team member before a match must be declared by their teams and find a replacement before match commencement. Any withdrawals during a match will count as an immediate forfeiture by the team.

Geneva felt that was fine, it was no different from matchmaking in open battles, where dropouts also almost always guaranteed a loss anyway. Better to yank off the bandage immediately and accept the inevitable loss.

6. The match ends upon hearing the final whistle, blown after time elapses, overtime scenarios are resolves, or in the event of a knockout victory. The judge's decision is final, and is uncontestable. For more information on objective-specific overtime scenarios, please consult the respective rulesets.

She was absolutely not going to read those when Dallas wasn't around to do it for her and, more importantly, because she already had 4 years of experience to lean on, and it only took a few weeks to learn the various objectives by heart.

She shut the phone screen and huffed. All that experience would count for nothing if her team didn't hold up their end of the deal, and as much as she trusted her own abilities and wanted to punch anyone who made fun of them, she did have to silently concede that they had a point.

Her team was a mess. The only good shot exclusively played a weapon that was outclassed in so many fields it was mockingly nicknamed the Splattershot Throw. The rest of the team consisted of someone who had all the accuracy of a sprayer, someone who always aimed too far upwards and got even worse when he panicked (and he panicked all the time), and someone who refused to pick up anything but melee-oriented weapons and boxed himself in because of it.

She was also the only reason the team was eligible, being the one member with an S+ license. Making everything harder was that the license was otherwise useless, meaning she had to clock in countless shifts with the only company that would employ someone with her status, which kept her from ever practicing with the team.
And she wasn't even paid as well as her other co-workers because of her stupid license.

"#\$ %\* probation." She growled, wanting to yank out her ID card and tear it to shreds, which would only prolong the situation it kept track of. It was wonderful how one mistake would hang over her head and wreck her life for so long.

She needed to win today and get her team as far into the tournament as she could, even if she had to put the whole team on her back to do so. She needed the prize money and this was the only avenue she was eligible to receive it from, and that was far more pressing a concern than any sense of teamwork or making her teammates happy. It wasn't just a fun tournament for her, there were much higher stakes involved.

She didn't realize how much she had been slumping forward while stewing in her own thoughts, and as she straightened up she noticed she was being watched. A tall, shirt-wearing jellyfish was silently staring just a few feet away, their only real movement being a slow blink of the eyes.

"And what are you looking at, punk?" She barked, taking off her headphones for an explanation. Of course, there was no response. There was only like three jellyfish in all of Inkadia that spoke, and two of them were all the way in Inkopolis. This jellyfish, on the other hand, was just quietly standing there, waiting for something, probably hoping for the best. Just like her.

"Yeah, me too." She grumbled. "So get in line, pal."

Shortly after the sun came out in force, Geneva found herself no longer alone.

Slowly, more people started to funnel into the plaza. First the shopkeepers opening up for the day, followed by the usual ensemble of customers, loiterers and bystanders, some with more urgency than others.

Inkfish around or below her age, both Inklings and Octolings, made their presence known as well. Usually they were the biggest demographic hanging out in this spot of town, what with all the shops and the Battle Tower, and there was always a plethora of fashions, in-groups and methods of hanging out. Many of the early teens were carrying weapons, signaling that they too were here to compete, and the variety of arms was quite the site to behold.

Geneva's finger darted in the air in front of her, pointing out the various weapons of turf she could recognize, many of which did not make her happy. Standard shooters, from the in-vogue Splash-o-Matic to the insufferable Aerospray RG, stuck out to her the most, but she saw an assortment of Splatlings, Rollers, Brushes, Bows, Brellas, Buckets -including the dreaded Sloshing Machine-, Splatanas, and the two classes she hated with violent displeasure: Blasters and Chargers. She didn't see too many of the former, but the latter was far too represented for her liking, especially those disgusting E-liters. E standing for excrement as far as she cared.

"If we get matched against one of them so help me I will spend the entire match making them miserable." She swore, grinding her teeth in a way that would have put off anyone near to her.

Her teammates were among the folks filing in, Rome and Adelaide arriving together as they usually did. That boy had a punctuality she respected, and he kept the other Octoling to a schedule as well.

"Geneva!" Adelaide greeted with cheer and waved arms.

"Yo." Rome raised his hand, his face hidden behind the Firefin facemask he wore in competitive rounds.

The Inkling nodded back at them. That made three present, just one more left to show up. If he was late, so help her she was going to take his blaster and throw it off the highest building she could find.

"Did you see Dallas anywhere?" She asked.

The shaking of heads told her enough to whip her phone back out and furiously type a message to their absent member.

'Get over here, u dum # %!\*' was all she wrote.

The subheader of the messaging window changed, letting her know Dallas was typing a response, and probably having a panic attack at the same time.

'Don't wanna hear it. Just hurry up.' she followed up, a split moment before he responded with a 'ON MY WAY, I HAD TO DROP OFF SOMETHING I FORGOT I'M LITERALLY ON THE TRAIN NOW BE THERE IN 5, SORRY'

"Yeah, he's coming." She told the others, which seemed to excite an Adelaide that already had a hard time standing still with so much energy.

"Woo!" The Octoling cheered, both fists punching the air.

Geneva envied her friend's enthusiasm. Suppose it was easier to be excited when they weren't the one who'd be doing the heavy lifting.

Not taking anywhere close to 5 minutes, Dallas finally arrived to complete the team, scrambling off the metro's escalator and nearly knocking over a crowd of jellyfish like the world's skinniest bowling ball. She could hear him apologizing to them from twenty feet away. And then he kept doing so when he finally ran up to her and the rest of the group.

"I said I don't wanna hear it." Geneva reminded him. "We don't have much time to prep, we've been all together for about 5 minutes in the past three weeks.

Dallas wheezed, out of breath, but nodded and dropped to the pavement, seated for game plan discussion.

She looked them over, assessing their weapon and gear choices. Her with the Splattershot Pro. Rome with the Flingza Roller. Adelaide with the N-ZAP. Dallas with that gross Rapid Blaster Pro. A complete mismatch of weapons and kits.

"Alright. Whatever the mode, everyone knows their role." She began, pointing at herself, then the others. "I'm the frontline. Adelaide's support. Dallas, play backline. Rome...you just keep the other two safe."

Rome nodded. Adelaide nodded with vigour. Dallas nodded but swallowed nervously.

"Cool." She continued. "And pick your fights smartly. I do NOT need you all wiping and giving them a big advantage."

She glared explicitly at Adelaide and Dallas. The Inkling stared at his shoes in embarrassment and the Octoling put her hands on her head and stuck her tongue out innocently.

"Can do." They say together, with differing levels of enthusiasm.

That was good enough for now, despite wanting to pick a fight with Dallas about his lack of self-esteem. The plaza was getting crowded now as more and more folks showed up, and she knew it was time to go in, even if their match-up wasn't announced, let alone commencing.

"Come on, let's get our stuff in order."

Registration went smoothly, which she considered a good start.

The lobby always had extra terminals set up during tournaments for quicker registration, especially for the youth events, where there was always a good number of first timers among the 256 registered teams.

Each of the four declared their weapons, kits and gear, and were checked for compliance. Adelaide's choice of Retro Frames as headgear did surprise her a little, and she briefly wondered the Lo-Vis Visor she'd earned at Grizzco had gone to.

The compliance check always felt odd. They were visited by an elderly goldfish lady, one of many look-alike staff in and around the Battle Tower that everyone just referred to as Marigold, and had their weapons manually reviewed. Geneva never had any worries about her own weapon, for all the faults of the Splattershot Pro, it was the most durable weapon she'd ever known. Even the paint and decals refused to chip or peel.

She did always hold her breath just a little but when the others were checked over, though not as much as Dallas did, the boy looking on the verge of a panic attack. His disparity between knowledge and skill infuriated her, but she could sympathize with how much a bad reputation could warp your own judgement, or in his case, be absolutely paranoid that any excuse would be used to paint him as thing everyone suspected he was. However, both his and Rome's weapons were handed back with no comment, and Dallas looked so relieved, Geneva thought he'd pass out.

The only person who got odd looks was Adelaide, with all the bite marks in the plastic frame of her N-ZAP. It was a miracle that thing was still functional, let alone legal, but Marigold handed back with a hesitant, somewhat concerned nod.

Adelaide just grinned as she took her pride and joy back.

Now all that was left for was the matchup schedule. Not that they had to wait long, when the two giant screens hanging over the curved staircase suddenly cut away to a live broadcast straight from the Deep Cut studio. The idol trio gave their usual introduction, which Geneva had heard so many times she had them tuned out until it was done and they got to the part she was interested in.

"Ay! Ay!" Big Man called out, vigorously waving his fins.

Geneva watched as Shiver and Frye turned expectantly to their hype manta, the big screen he was holding flashing with an announcement message.

"You're right, Big Man." Shiver agreed, her eyes turning back to the camera like she was staring right at the viewer. "Time to show our contestants their matchups."

"Don't keep us waiting, show us!" Frye agreed as well.

Geneva crossed her fingers as the big screen on the broadcast swapped over to the first round matchups, and the right screen in the lobby followed suit.

"Anyone but those Kensa-wearing punks." She muttered.

She got her wish, as her team's name -with its asterisk and all- was in the first batch of matches, up against a team named Surf n' Turf. The four names of each member under the team titles, along with the match type and its location, only confirmed it.

"Zones at Scorch Gorge." Geneva read with displeasure. "Bleck, lousy map for the best objective."

"We really didn't change our name from 'Provisional Team #12', did we?" Dallas sighed.

Smartest person on the team and that was his first observation. Geneva rolled her eyes. No wonder he couldn't aim straight if his focus was that far off.

The others turned to Adelaide, who had registered the team. The Octoling just quietly laughed and shrugged.

"I forgot." She answered, with a complete lack of shame.

"Ah." Dallas responded.

Geneva shook her head, snapping her fingers to get her team's attention. "Look, it doesn't matter. No one's gonna care about our name if we don't get through the qualifying rounds. If we make it through, we can think of a better name."

"Let's focus on the match." Rome nodded in agreement. Geneva was pleased someone on the team agreed with her. He was the only other member that didn't get distracted and could hold his own battle, usually.

"Right, Surf and Turf." She continued. "They've got a Tri-Slosher, a Squiffer, a Splattershot and a Splat Brella."

"Interesting loadout." Dallas noted. "Looks more thematic than synergized, they're probably gonna compensate for it with skill."

"Or they might just suck." Geneva quipped.

"I wouldn't bet on it."

"Of course you wouldn't."

"Inklings, please." Rome interrupted, addressing Geneva in particular.

"Right." She muttered, already getting into that combative, competitive mindset of hers, which always extended to her own team. "Missile spam that Squiffer, keep them off that central tower. I'll take care of the other three."

She turned to the other two. "Adelaide. Paint the zone. Charge the cooler. Dallas, just don't die."

Dallas looked kinda hurt, lowering his blaster. "Wait, you suggested I play this weapon, and now you're basically telling me to do nothing?"

"I'm saying to stay alive. You choke in every close encounter."

"So you don't trust me?"

"Do you?"

He didn't protest that, but he started to look increasingly deflated. Geneva realized her glaring and mean comments might be exacerbating that, but she didn't relent.

'Come on, nerd. Stop moping and prove me wrong.' She thought. How could other people's negativity push the team to do better except when it came to him?

"Stop it." Rome interjected again, this time even more sternly.

Geneva was reconsidering how much she and Rome actually agreed on things, but she held her tongue for that one moment. The itch to actually get onto the arena and start turfing was becoming overpowering, all this waiting around and talking to people was just aggravating her.

"Just be ready." She snapped back at the two guys, then turned to remind Adelaide what to do, only to see her biting the stock of her N-ZAP, as if it needed more bite marks. Then she followed the sight lines of her friend's eyes and saw why she was doing so.

It was those Throwing Shade punks from two days back; Clash, Flash, Slash and Jet, all making rude and obnoxious taunts at other teams like the pompous, overconfident bullies that they were, including at Adelaide, once again mocking her lack of accuracy and her penchant for biting things. She was very tempted to tell her friend to let loose and bite them again, it would do less damage than what she had in mind.

'Please, just let me get a few shots in and do society a favour.'

She must have taken a step forward, because a firm hand clamped down on her shoulder and held her in place.

"Geneva Inkpen." Rome admonished, with a deadly serious tone. "You are already on probation, you do not need to get into even more trouble."

She wanted to brush the Octoling off and shove him out of the way. She wanted to walk right up to that other quartet and punch their lights out. Most of all, she wanted to take out her anger in the most noisy, destructive way she could, regardless of who or what ended up facing her wrath. But that license started to feel a lot heavier, like it was burning a hole in her pocket, and with furious low growl, she lowered her hands and accepted that he was right.

Why did battles make her feel like this?

"Fine." She snarled. "Adelaide, stop looking at them. Let's go prepare."

Just as she said that, a loud two-note chime of a bell echoed through the lobby, signaling for the first 10 teams to prepare to leave, two at a time. No time to prepare, it was time to just go for broke.

Geneva, her team, and their opponents were fourth to leave, all eight stepping into the coffee kettle-shaped terminal and each stepping up to an interface with a hand scanner. Ink-Synk tech or something, was its name, or so it was in her mind.

Each screen read the team's name, and Geneva put her hand to the scanner, watching her ink colour get reassigned from her usual orange to a pleasant shade of purple, along with her friends, while Surf and Turf's four female inklings, all decked out like they were hitting the beach, became a bright yellow. Easily contrasting colours, as all battles liked to have.

"Registered." The interface said to her, the top of the kettle opening and allowing eight metallic spawner drones to descend inside, each above their respective player.
Geneva grabbed the two handles of the floating squarish device, and felt her body dissolve into raw ink, gear, weapon and all, with the funny tingle that always came along with the experience, never losing consciousness throughout.

It was time. The next time she'd re-form, it would be above the battlefield. And that was what mattered to her. That, and winning.

"Let's do this."