"So... now what?"
The food was gone, the small talk was exhausted, and the awkward silence had decidedly fell over the table. It had been long enough since their color had been force-changed that it was slowly fading back to what they were originally. (It was almost exactly what Mari had woken up as, and the pink-to-purple and pink-to-yellow gradients looked rather nice on their respective bearers, but Umi just looked… really odd.)
The four squids kept glancing out the window in the direction of the growing gaggle of pedestrians gathering outside the tower, but it only served to worsen their moods. Fin had finally spoke up, punctuating her words with rapid taps on the table. "We've been silent for, like, ever and ever. And ever."
"I was gonna say we could go shopping again, but I don't think any of us would be able to focus, would we?" Mari half-laughed, shrugging. "I'd just wanna get back here…"
"Weird. A few days ago, none of us would even think of taking up sports, now here we are, bummed out over being forced to stay away…" Umi looked in the direction of the crowd again, gaze lingering for longer this time. "You think you know yourself."
"Maybe we should just blow this popsicle stand. Get the forms signed, get ready for tomorrow…" Fin replied, leaning back in her chair.
"I'll be strong-armed into more packing." The green(ish) inkling shrugged. "But I guess it's better than hanging around here with nothing to do."
"I dunno when the next train back home is…" Aleena frowned.
"I'll look it up for ya'." Mari offered, whipping out her phone. "Where do you live?"
"Shell City." Fin wasn't the biggest fan of geography, but she thought she knew where that was- in the complete opposite direction from Moray Gulf.
"Are lotsa' people from over there here, too?" She leaned her elbows on the table, hands under her chin.
"Yeah… The train last night was packed with people. It would have been this morning, too, if it hadn't been so early…"
"How early did you have to get up?"
"Like, five in the morning."
"You serious?! Man, I can barely stand getting up at six." Mari laughed. "Oh, and your next train's at two, by the way."
"Then I'll be home by four… But that still leaves an hour and a half to kill." She pondered over her situation, drumming a hand on the table.
"…Mari?" Umi suddenly broke her silence, straightening up but not taking her eyes off the window. "There's something I think you wanna see…"
"What? What is it?" The other girl turned to look at the window, eyes searching for a moment or two before freezing in place, then narrowing. "Oh."
"Don't leave me hanging! What's going on?" Fin tried to see over Umi's head, but it was futile as Mari quickly stood up in her chair, marching out of the café. The other three scrambled to follow her, half of them still clueless, but soon they could see what had gotten her so riled up.
Jyugo, Kurt, and Ray were standing in the middle of Inkopolis square, looking as nonchalant as ever, the older checking his shell phone while the younger two ran in circles around his legs.
"What the shell are you doing here?" Mari put her hands on her hips, glaring up at him. "I thought you said you'd let me go on my own."
"Yeah. We did. And then we also came. On our own." He looked away from his phone, a smug smile spreading across his face.
"Liars! You came to spy on me!"
"I did not. I wanted to play Turf War, just like everyone and their grandma today."
His sister puffed out her cheeks. "Well, you can't! The front desk gives you a whole bunch of safety forms, and you have to get Mom 'n Dad to sign them before they let you in! So there."
"Hm? That? Aw, I was wondering what you were doing out here. Guess you forgot to do your homework…" He fished around in his bag for a moment or two, then pulled out three stacks of stapled papers. "You could have just printed them, y'know. They're on the website."
"They have a website?!" Fin's mouth fell open. "Why didn't you tell us?"
"I thought you'd have thought ahead." The tall boy shrugged, brushing one dark green tentacle out of his face. "Guess you weren't as good at all this as you thought, huh?"
"If they didn't let you in, what've y'all been doin'?" Ray (Kurt?) stopped in front of Fin, bobbing on his heels. "An' why're y'all all half pink?"
"There's this training class they have for kids who can't play yet. It was okay, I guess… until someone started a fight…" Umi shot a glare in Fin's direction.
"Excuse me! I was defending the innocent!" She gasped in mock offense, putting a hand over her heart. "How dare you try to blacken my name!"
Aleena giggled, but suddely squeaked in surprise as Kurt (Ray?) bounced up to her. "Who's this chick?"
"Kurt! We do not talk to strangers that way." Mari frowned.
"What? She is a chick, ain't she?.. Ain't she?"
"This is Aleena, we met her in the beginners' class." Umi explained, rolling her eyes.
"Aw, so she can't play either? Shame. We needed a fourth member." Jyugo laughed. "Guess we'll just have to find someone else inside, then. Catch you back home?"
"Why, you little…" Fin spoke through her teeth as the three boys walked away, the tallest waving near-sarcastically.
"Let's just go home, guys." Umi shook her head. "Hanging around here's just gonna make our mood worse."
"Yeah, you've got a point… I should get those safety forms signed before I forget."
"The quicker I get home, the less Persimmon will want to come along next time."
"My dad'll be worried about me…"
With those disappointed murmurs, the group set off across the plaza back towards the train station.
"Are you sure you'll be okay on your own?" Mari asked Aleena for the umpteenth time as the train to Moray Gulf pulled into the station.
"It's not that long of a wait, it's fine." She reiterated.
"But- I could always-"
"Like I said, you'd have to be waiting even longer if you stayed behind… just go home. I'll occupy myself." She pushed the taller inkling towards the train doors her friends had already gone through.
"Fiiiine… but message me on Wave if you get lonely, okay?"
"Mari!" Fin called from the door of the train car. "Hurry up!"
"I'm coming!" She rolled her eyes, waving at Aleena one last time before boarding.
"Honestly, it's like you're leaving your grandma in another country." Umi laughed, taking her bag off the saved seat. "You met her three hours ago!"
"Yeah, but she's just so little, and fragile-looking, and-"
"She's our age, Mari." Fin nudged her with her elbow. "She can handle herself fine."
"I know, I know. I'm probably being paranoid… little girl alone in a train station… big, crowded city…" The last two parts were more muttered to herself, before she frantically pulled out her phone.
"If you're messaging Aleena, I swear-"
"Oh my god, she is." Umi laughed, smacking Mari upside the head. "Seriously, you're acting like your brothers."
"Am not!" She stuck out her tongue.
"Are too."
"They're really rubbing off on you."
Mari pouted, sticking her shell phone back in her bag. "Meanies."
"I wonder if she'll be here tomorrow…" Fin mused. "I dunno if she liked the game that much."
"Aw, she'll warm up to it." Mari rolled her eyes. "She was doing really great until the first time she got popped."
"Really? I didn't know someone'd splatted her." Perhaps that was what triggered the breakdown, then… "Was it Sydney?"
"Nah. It was their bucket guy. I saw it happen, it was pretty sweet… Dove from above. She never saw it coming." Umi nodded, almost as if in approval.
"I wanna do that." Mari bounced in her seat. "I wanna be cool like that."
"Same here." Finley laughed. "It's almost like it's contagious."
"Ooh! Ooh! I'm gonna ask some of my internet friends if they're in the area. They can tell us what it's like." Mari took her phone out once again, and her friends were unable to find a good enough reason to keep her from getting lost in the internet.
"And there she goes." Umi sighed. "Hopeless."
"We're no better." Fin pulled out her own phone, shrugging off a disappointed look from the girl in the aisle seat. "We've got a whole train ride ahead of us, let her indulge herself."
"Whatever- hey, Fin, you got a pen?" Umi'd been fishing around in her bag for a while, and had pulled out a small stack of papers, but seemed to be lacking a writing instrument.
"Always. Why'd'ya ask?" She grabbed a pen from a pocket in her bag and tossed it over- the other girl fumbled with it for a moment before being unable to save it from hitting the floor. She picked it up, turning the papers in Fin's direction.
"Still gotta do these things for Camp Triggerfish. I told my dad I'd pick yesterday, but I forgot until after the festival… and then I decided to wait until I tried Turf War to sign up for stuff."
"Like camp activities?"
"Yeah. Turf War is the biggest program- I think I tried it once, when I was really little, but I barely remember it. They've got normal camp stuff, too, archery, crafts, boating…"
"Boats? Damn. That's hardcore."
"It's not hardcore, the lake barely goes up to your shoulders and all the water's treated, even the river." She rolled her eyes. "Kayaking is full of little boys who think they're all that and canoeing is full of little girls who screech every time they so much at look at water."
Finley looked over the options- looked pretty standard, like Umi'd said, and a lot of it looked pretty boring- the various Turf War activities were in their own category, as were water-related activities ('recommended for older inklings'). "What about that one?" Finley pointed at 'river rafting'.
"Oh, yeah, that one's pretty hardcore. They throw you down a river on a life raft."
"They do not." The mostly-yellow girl gasped. "Like- a proper one? That goes down a mountain and everything?"
"Yup. The things are pretty bouyant, and you're tied down real well, but the river's super fast. Sprays in your face and everything."
"…has anyone ever died?"
"Not officially, but if you hang around for the ghost stories…" She shrugged.
"Geez." Fin grimaced as Umi put a big circle around river rafting, and a smaller one around her age group's Turf War listing, as well as a few other activities. "Don't be the first to officially die, please."
"I'll try my best." She laughed. "As long as you don't get yourself killed in Turf War."
"Killed? I doubt it." Fin rolled her eyes.
"I'm serious. People get hurt at camp playing it all the time."
"Little kids. I ain't a little kid."
"Whatever you say." She sighed. "Just be careful…"
"I will, I will." Fin waved a hand, laughing dismissively as Umi went back to whatever she'd been doing. With no one else to talk to, Fin leaned out the window, boredom quickly taking over as she absentmindedly flicked through songs. The train sped along, through relatively-uncharted-looking wilderness and along a coastline, before gradually sloping upward- soon, they were in the air, cruising along the bridge built over the bay. If her eyes followed the coast they were driving away from, she could see the edge of Inkopolis, the very train station they'd departed from, and every last skyscraping building. Beyond that was a beautiful expanse of land, trees and cities and plains and everything and a big mountain ridge and she'd never seen it before in her life and it was all so gosh darn beautiful. She leaned her elbows on the bottom of the glass pane, pressing her small nose up to the glass to try and get a better view.
After a few minutes of stunned observation, she caught sight of something strange. It was only for a brief moment, a flash of something between two slowly-passing mountains, but Finley thought she saw what looked like a giant stone tentacle, stretching out from somewhere beyond her field of vision… but it vanished before she could blink, one mountain suddenly being in front of the other as the bridge slowly curved to the left.
Disconcerted, she decided that was enough mountain-watching for one day, and spent the rest of the train ride uncertainly gazing at the beautiful, terrifying ocean.
Has it really been a year since chapter one?.. yep. It's been a year. I'm trash.