A/N: Took longer than I expected to write this. Due to the nature of my work I've not had a project, have not been commuting to work and thus haven't been writing as much (tend to prefer drawing over writing when at home), and this chapter was all in all tougher to write than any of the previous ones.
This chapter is probably going to be very scuffed and disjointed, but right now I'm just glad it's written and I can get the ball rolling again plot-wise without being stuck. Trying to write a match is harder than the day-to-day life stuff, funny that.
Anyway, onto Chapter 6!
Chapter 6
Adelaide's hype was reaching fever pitch.
This was it. This is what she and the team had waited three months for, what she'd been practicing for, what they were all together for. Ever since the week had started, this felt ever more and more real, and now here they were, four mismatched friends ready to take on the world.
Every step through the tournament hinged on one chaotic battle. No series of battles, no pairing up with strangers, this was her and her friends against any team that stood in their way.
If games were won by how much she believed in her team, then she intended to win every game in a knockout victory. And she showed her enthusiasm in the way she re-formed atop, or rather underneath, her spawner drone.
Most participants elected to stand atop their floating spawns at the start of the map, everyone doing their own poses based on their weapons and personalities, with charger wielders typically being the only ones who'd hang one-handed from their drones, legs in the air, like Surf and Turf's Squiffer was.
Adelaide could top her rival though. She dangled from her own drone, suspended upside down by her feet, N-ZAP gripped firmly between her teeth.
There was no benefit to showing off like that, it didn't intimidate anyone. But she liked letting everyone know that she was going to be a problem.
Dallas' hands were already shaking. How the other three either had the confidence or the ability to mask their lack of confidence was beyond him.
He tried to calm down, stick to the game plan. Trying not to die sounded easy enough, even if still bitterly stung that Geneva didn't believe he was good enough to help the team. He couldn't understand why she was always so hard on him in particular.
But if she wanted him to stay alive then he'd do his best. He trained his eyes on the ledge leading into the midpoint, where the zone would be situated. In the middle of the zone was a large platform, looking shorter from far away than it actually was since it rose from a pit in the stage, connected to either team's side by two bridges made from repurposed metal grates, built like factory catwalks. The perfect control point of the map.
He just had to get there, fire from a safe distance, and pop the Ink Vacuum if anyone snuck forward and tried to climb up after him. No pressure.
He took a deep breath, but all that did was give his brain the extra capacity to be flooded by images of Geneva's death glare, Adelaide's disappointment, and the jeers of everyone who'd long since wrote him off as a failure and a cheater in the making.
He gulped. Okay, maybe it was a lot of pressure.
For Geneva, this was going to be a love-hate kind of match. Love the playstyle of Zones. Hate the layout of the Gorge. Love the sense of competition. Hate playing against a charger. Loving to carry. Hating to carry.
Her weapon also was meant for getting splats, not for painting. Her goal was to get into enemy range and either poke or splat them all.
She gnashed her teeth together, Splattershot Pro at the ready. Going full aggression and mostly ignoring the objective was just the way she liked to play.
Rome felt only two things; his usual sense of duty and a faint twinge of nostalgia. Arid, mountainous climates always reminded him of a previous life, with a very different group of people he was once close to. In the back of his mind, he wondered how they had been over the past years.
He briefly glanced at the rest of his team, and put the memories to bed. The past was in the past, his current duty was to his current friends. Adelaide wanted him to be there, and this was more important to his other teammates than they let on.
And he was determined not to let any of them down.
A brief toot of a horn was heard, signaling the start of the match was imminent. Both teams transformed into swim forms, sticking to the base of their spawners and pointing to their selected landing spots on their side of the stage.
Everyone held their breath. This was it. It was go time.
The sound of a Blaster, firing the loudest blank it could possibly make, was immediately followed by all eight players firing themselves onto the closest platform, a flurry of shots and flings ensuing to a loud racket as each side threw ink and charged forward. The match was on.
"Drop down and paint, I'll take top!" Geneva ordered, her Octoling teammates diligently following the command. The N-ZAP and Flingza trained their aim on the outlined zone, plastering it with ink as fast as they could, while Geneva leapt for the central platform, surging up as a squid, popping up the top as a kid, and blasting an angle shot at the Squiffer perched on the other side. A weak shot, but a strong warning, keeping the closest thing the opponent team had to a backline marked.
"Let's dance, charger." She said, dodging a counter and rushing forward as the Squiffer slipped back into the ink.
The zone flashed, its surface transforming into a uniformly even rectangle of purple ink.
"We're in control!" Adelaide shouted, bouncing off the wall of the central platform to avoid a counter attack from Sandy, the tri-slosher player with a messy tentacle cut. Tide, the Brella user, was following in to offer support, which Adelaide saw coming and lobbied a suction bomb towards her with an emphatic "yeet!".
That got Tide dislodged, and Adelaide darted forward to finish the deal. Four shots were needed, she got three in before everything went up in a splatter of yellow ink.
Adelaide never felt a thing, but she had that out of body experience after being splatted. For something that supposed to be akin to death, it sure didn't feel like it, especially since she kept consciousness for the 10 seconds it would take to respawn back at her drone. But she could somehow see how she'd met her demise. And it was just as simple and embarrassing as she thought.
Sandy had simply turned around and got her with a counter attack while she was fixated on Tide. Oops.
But at least she got to see Rome get them both with a clean vertical flick. Three to two wasn't bad, it was an advantage.
With enough ink to re-form, she shot out of the spawner and rushed back into the battle.
Dallas hadn't been splatted yet, which was good. But he didn't feel he was doing much of anything, which wasn't good.
His weapon was not a painter, and the rest of his team was off fighting on the other side of the central platform. He couldn't even see the ongoing battle because of it.
Yet he hesitated about climbing the large obstruction. What if the Squiffer was waiting on the opponent's side, ready to snipe him the moment he claimed atop? What if the Tri-Slosher climbed up at the time and splatted him with that close range advantage? And where were the Brella and the Splattershot?
He was getting so stuck in his head he almost didn't hear the Suction Bomb land behind him. That explained where the Splattershot was, they were coming for him. With a terrified yelp, he made a desperate dive the easiest way away from the imminent explosion, which was right into the central pit. He didn't even reach the bottom before the Splattershot got him and popped an easy splat on him. Well, he'd finally been splatted.
Dallas spent the entire respawn period cursing the most amateur of mistake, yelling everything from 'I can't believe I did that!' to 'How have I already started choking this?! Embarrassing!'.
He forced himself to get back out there. He had to do something.
Rome was the first on the team to pop his special attack.
Every kit came with one, and every equipment setup had a gauge that tracked when one could be generated. With the gauge tied to the wearer, a surge could be felt every time a charge was full.
He swam behind the corner of the central platform, taking cover as he dissolved his Roller and popped the canned special, which instantaneously produced two limegreen, rectangular missile launchers mounted on his shoulders, with a scope pointing out targets. Geneva was still fixated on the Squiffer, the two of them in a drawn-out slugfest with neither able to press an advantage.
"Finish them off." He muttered, locking onto the opponent and firing a volley of missiles. If that didn't help them directly, the displacing would be enough of a distraction or cover for Geneva to go for the kill.
With no one in front of him, he immediately turned around, chucking the depleted launchers and re-forming his Flingza, covering his back from any advances, just in time for the zone to flash as the amount of enemy paint broke his team's control.
"Oh no you don't." He frowned, giving chase to the perpetrator. Time to fight the Splattershot.
"Oh, we are NOT blowing this already." Geneva growled, making a beeline for the zone. Rome's missile cover had been enough to get the Squiffer, who'd thrown themself off the map rather than get missiled or shot. Cowardly, but very funny.
She could see Adelaide just dropping back into the pit, rapidly trying to paint the zone, and Rome fighting that pesky Splattershot. No sign of Dallas, which infuriated her.
"I gave him ONE task. ONE!" She shouted to no one, firing into enemy territory to cover her retreat back to mid. If she had to paint the zone with a weapon that was not meant to paint, she was going to beat more than just her opponents.
Adelaide found herself outgunned. Wave, the Splattershot user, was on fire, and Adelaide was in her firing range.
Perhaps if she was more skilled, she'd be able to face her one in one. But the Octoling knew her limits and did her best to fight indirectly. But despite the rapid exchange of bombs, the constant swapping between kid and squid to try and juke around each other, and three near misses with that powerful Trizooka, Adelaide was no closer to helping take back the objective. And if she kept up the tango, there was no telling if her teammates or the opposing team would arrive on the scene first.
Then she heard the blaster shots and got well out of the way. Dallas could divert the attention, she could focus on painting the objective, like the N-ZAP was better equipped to do.
Rome didn't have the right weapon to skirmish, but he made do.
His Roller was lethal enough to not be left unattended, and whenever anyone got in the zone or too close, he'd fling at them until he could draw them out. Whoever he couldn't go toe to toe with directly, he made them trip over his mines.
"Be smart." He'd constantly remind himself, tracking his ink usage every step of the battle, always having enough in reserve if things got desperate.
He couldn't keep this up forever, there was an objective to claim. Yet every time he tried to push in, someone else pushed him back. However he tried to best the Surf n Turf fighters, they were persistent and kept coming back, and kept him separated from his his own most of the time, preventing any coordinated push.
In this stalemate, all he could do was keep up the fight, and wait for an opportunity.
Dallas was beginning to wonder if he would be more useful staying in the spawner. Every hit was missing, his weapon's lacklustre output kept him from painting the zone, and he kept getting jumped by frontliners who got him long before he could even turn and miss his shot.
"What am I even doing this for?" He asked as he waited to respawn, desperately wishing he hadn't shoehorned himself into playing this weapon for this match. The extra range was NOT helping.
Geneva was already losing her temper.
2 minutes in and neither team seemed able to hold the zone, hold an advantage, or mount a halfway decent offense.
With a frustrated yell, she popped her special, spawning the rideable Crab Tank and putting the mechanical Crustacean to good use by launching a barrage of rapid-fire ink at any target she could see.
"I am NOT losing this game, you hear me?!" She screamed, her threat likely lost over the sound of her crab's guns and the general chaos of the battlefield.
The Crab Tank, in its overturned glory, soon started to overheat, and she had no choice but to leap off, immediately pushing back into enemy territory as her special disintegrated behind her.
"I will wipe out your whole team if I have to!" She shouted with malicious intent, charging into another fight she had questionable odds of winning, if the fight had been proposed to anyone but herself.
Rome didn't mind getting cornered. He didn't mind being kept from the objective. He didn't even mind losing fights.
But when his opponents started going after Adelaide, he started taking it personally. A grimly accurate vertical swing put paid to her latest opponent, the Tri-Slosher wielder's ghost meekly floating back to its respawner.
"Double back. I'll push forward." He told her, his fellow Octoling nodding and covering his tracks as he flung ink into the enemy's side of the zone. They'd take the zone, but he'd get picked off by the Squiffer, who he could see was in turn picked off by a murderous-looking Geneva.
If he could sigh in his ghostly state, he would have. She was already on probation, she did not need to repeat the instance that had gotten her into such a dire position again.
"Surely, this can't be that important." He thought aloud as he rematerialized, setting his coordinates to Adelaide before she could get cornered in another fight. Instantly, his respwaner titled up sharply, and blasted him high into the air, ready to drop him back into the thick of the action.
Halfway through the match, Adelaide's optimism was tested.
She still fully believed her team could win, but they were disjointed, and on a map with a zone as wide and hard to effectively paint as Scorch Gorge, it kept her team from taking and maintaining the advantage. The saving grace was that Surf and Turf seemed to have similar struggles, with no team holding the zone long enough to break out of their accured penalty points.
Her team still held a slim lead, 32 to 28, largely due to the eight participants spending more time splatting each other than the objective zone, except maybe her, but after that first loss she'd been actively avoiding any fights she could. Somehow, even with a zone as big as that of Scorch Gorge, no one could seem score more than around 10 points at a time.
"We can still do this, I believe!" She said to herself, trying to think on her feet. Don't get pinned. Don't get cornered. If your shots miss, keep moving. Use your suction bombs. Circle the zone if it's safe.
And then Rip, the Squiffer user, nearly sniped her from their side of the map, causing her to yelp and backtrack, right into the path of Wave, who was ready to pick her off again.
But Adelaide was quick on the uptake this time, and with some quick footwork and quicker reflexes, strafed around her opponent and got the shots in to take her down.
"Yay, I did it!" She exclaimed.
"Adelaide! Get moving!" Geneva barked furiously from some distance away, which got the Octoling to realize she had stopped moving after the fight, long enough that the zone had changed back to the enemy team's colour. And nothing got her snapped back to the moment like a lost objective.
At the very least, Dallas could serve as a safe super jump spot for teammates jumping back in, provided he could stay alive long enough to be jumped to.
The backline was supposed to be an anchor, but he felt like he wasn't so much stabilizing the team as he was sinking them. He'd only gotten his aim on for one splat, and even that was a set of lucky indirect hits. The Tri-Slosher, Splattershot and Squiffer seemed perfectly capable of hitting him even from his vantage point atop the ledge.
He just wanted to give up, but giving up would be forfeiting the match and taking the team with him. They may not have had much of a chance with him on the field, but there was zero chance if he wasn't.
"Please just run the timer down." He begged to no one in particular as he tried to keep the map's absurdly large zone from flipping to enemy control. "Please?"
The final 60 seconds. Geneva had gone from impatient to angry to livid in a matter of moments.
Bad enough her team wasn't holding the zones long enough to build enough of an advantage, she'd been spending so much time chasing opponents that she'd run out of ink, been splatted, jumped back to Dallas believing she was safe, watched him get splatted, and then get splatted after the Squiffer camped her and got the second splat immediately.
And Adelaide thought Squiffer players were cool. Disgusting.
The second Super Jump was a more successful endeavour, landing behind the other Octoling teammate, but unlike the other two who kept getting splatted and forced to respawn, he'd been avoiding that by not playing the objective.
"Why aren't you putting paint on the zone?!" She yelled at him as she immediately engaged in battle once again.
Rome nudged her aside and set his roller down, instantly splatting the Tri-Slosher that had been trying to sneak up on both of them.
"That's why." He responded matter-of-factly, which just infuriated Geneva even more. This was no time to not be playing the objective, but that applied to her as well.
"Just paint the zone!" She barked before rushing back into the thick of things. The remaining score of 50 to 64 was still much to close to call.
The last 60 seconds were an absolute rollercoaster for Adelaide. A trade with Rip. A flip of zone control. Then another. Then another. Then she got splatted again, respawning as the match timer hit its last 10 seconds.
Her team had the lead, but they did not have zone possession, and with one teammate skirmishing and two down, she'd have to go the long way back to the objective.
The loud, repetitive alarm of overtime only hastened her run back to the zone, but she saw the firing of ink onto the middle ledge and ducked left instead. Everyone was at the middle, but would anyone see her coming from the side? She threw a suction bomb to their side of the zone, behind the central platform, and hoped they couldn't.
Dallas felt like a lost piece of fried shrimp that had been tossed to a crowd of seagulls, because all four opponents were trying to fire at him, and the feeling of being 1 versus four was making him scream internally...if not externally.
He was so focused on throwing everything he had, from the Toxic Mist to every shot in his blaster, but he did not have a weapon for crowd control and he panicked, jumping off to the side in a desperate attempt to get away from the firing.
Geneva had fallen once again to the opponents and was angry enough to want to break the rules and punch someone in the face. Surf n Turf still had zone control, and the penalty points had been depleted, eating into her team's lead with every second.
Super Jumping back in, she could see Dallas being swarmed, but no one was watching the other two, Adelaide pouring paint into the zone as fast as her weapon allowed.
'About time someone did something clever!' She thought to herself, but she was still concerned with how little time was left to hold the lead. The gap shrunk to 5 points, then 4, then 3, 2, 1...
Just when the scores drew even and just before Geneva could explode in frustration, the zone control broke, and the opponents seemed to realize it, all too late. They'd all spent so much time focused on Dallas and had paid dearly for the bafflingly bad strategy. With Adelaide still painting and Rome finally appearing out of nowhere with a last-second fling of ink into the zone, Geneva's teammates took control of the zone once again, and a referee whistle blew long and loud, echoing across the arena.
Adelaide had believed from the start that her team could win. She just didn't think she'd be the one to tip the scales. But it didn't matter, any win was a win, and they had most definitely won.
"GAME!" Adelaide shouted in delight, raising both hands in the air in cheer.
Surf and Turf seemed to register their defeat simultaneously, all in a sense of disbelief. Rip slapped her forehead in frustration. Wave dropped to her knees and groaned. Sandy just stared at her shoes in shame. Tide just fell to the ground and laid on her back, hands to her face.
"Good job." Rome congratulated, patting Adelaide on the shoulder while observing the losing team's dramatics. His affirmation only made her happier still, and returned the favour with a hug that would have knocked any lesser cephalopod to the ground.
"Hey, I couldn't have done it without you, Rome!" She replied with the biggest grin. "We did it! Round 2, here we come!"
Everything seemed right in the world. She wanted to do a happy little dance on the ink-strewn battlefield. She wanted to booyah at the top of her lungs until the sun set. Heck, she even wanted to skip straight ahead to the next week and do it all over again. The weather didn't feel so hot and dry. The match she'd just had was actively feeling less and less scruffy in her memory. The optimism to do even better next week was bubbling up in her. Everything was great.
And then Dallas dropped into the center of the arena, looking deflated despite the win.
"Dallas, we did it!" She cheered, releasing Rome to face her other, more beleagured-looking friend. "We're going to the second roun-"
She was stopped by Geneva pushing her aside as she stormed towards her fellow Inkling. Adelaide stumbled, but caught herself just before Rome grabbed her side, instinctively reaching to catch her in case she didn't catch herself.
"What the #$ %*, Dallas?!" Geneva yelled at him. "Were you TRYING to throw the game?"
The shouting and the prior shove had brought Adelaide down from the high of victory. Everything seemed to go silent now that a new tension was filling the arena, and she could only watch as Dallas flinched and began backing up to the wall, dropping his weapon and defensively raising his open hands.
"I wasn't..." Dallas began, fearfully pressing against the wall as Geneva approached, with her murderous expression and balled fists.
Adelaide didn't like the look of that. Geneva was often rough with her with post-match criticism, but she knew the Inkling was usuallyjust blowing off steam, she wouldn't get violent with her teammates, but this felt different, and she started approaching as well.
"No, you were!" She cut him off, grabbing him by the shirt collar and ending Adelaide's hopes for a more peaceful confrontation. "You spent the entire game in the same place! You missed every shot you took!"
Seeing what was going down, the Surf n Turf quartet all collected their kits, nodded at Adelaide and Rome, gave their 'good game' graces, and hastily made for their arriving respawners. They were not going to hang around for this, and Adelaide completely understood.
"Geneva, be nice to him!" She piped up, stepping forward.
"I thought you were supposed to at least be somewhat competent with that weapon!" Geneva continued yelling, shoving Dallas against the ledge wall. "Yet you couldn't have been more useless if you tried!"
That was enough for Adelaide, and Rome had the same idea.
"Geneva!" They both said in unison, rushing forward and pulling the two Inklings apart, Rome holding Geneva back while Adelaide took to Dallas' side, seeing that the berating had left him looking like he was on the verge of tears.
"You're the one who wanted me to play the Rapid Pro!" He spluttered out shakily, both in body and tone. "I tried! I didn't want to be bad, I didn't want to be here anyway!"
"Well maybe next time you can stay home and cry about how terrible you are!" Geneva retorted, pointing at him accusingly and stomping on Rome's foot until the Octoling relented and let her go, seemingly more out of annoyance than pain. "We'll probably do better next week without you!"
And with that, she stormed off back to her respawner, leaving her three teammates behind.
Adelaide couldn't believe it. Geneva had not gotten this mad the last time they'd try to qualify and failed, and they'd all won this time, regardless of how they did. She'd never even gotten this mad when she and Adelaide went numerous Rainmaker games with Adelaide repeatedly walking into explosions of the Rainmaker's shield.
What made it worse was that there had been nothing in the previous days to suggest Geneva was going to blow a fuse. Nothing came up during texts or movie night. This felt like it had come out of nowhere, but she was more worried about Dallas in that moment, who was still trembling and breathing shakily.
"Dallas, it's okay." She tried to reassure him, wanting to put a hand on his shoulder. But the Inkling wouldn't look at her when he bat her hand away.
"No...no it's not." He whimpered, wiping his eyes. "I don't want to compete anymore. I just wanna go home..."
Before Adelaide could protest, or try to offer any more comfort, he too ran off for his respawner, melting back into ink before the shiny floating device sucked him in and started flying back to Splatsville.
That just left her and Rome in Scorch Gorge, and she half-expected him to silently vanish without a trace while she stood there, not quite believing her Inkling teammates had fallen out like that.
"But...we won." She said to him. "Even if we played badly, we can learn from it! We've got another opportunity, right?"
Rome nodded sagely, looking off at the respawner disappearing into the distance. He and her were usually on the same page when it came to taking losses or bad games on the chin. Adelaide tried to recall if he'd ever taken losing badly, but she couldn't think of an instance.
The most he ever did was let out a quiet sigh, like he did now. But he also looked tired, like he'd seen a fight among teammates like this before.
"Give them time." He simply put it, stepping towards the two remaining respawners. "Come on, snack's on me."
Usually the thought of a celebration snack cheered Adelaide up. And it did this time, a little bit. But she couldn't let go of what she'd just seen. She didn't want conflict on her team, especially not something she couldn't explain and felt so uncharacteristic of her friends.
It bothered her, but it gave her a goal for the upcoming week. If her teammates had some ongoing fight, she was going to break it up and get them all back on the same page. A tournament wasn't going to break up her team, friendship was more important than the honours and prizes.
With a plan in mind, a snack sounded better, and she followed Rome to the respawner.