Chapter Text
The battle over which chocolate was the best was a fun one. I joined Milk Chocolate this time. It was my favorite, a good even ground that could be enjoyed by a lot of people and used in a lot of different snacks. Plus, I ended up on Duskwave’s team again, though their own team had more people choose milk chocolate, so they had to balance tricolor with me and with the other people on their team. Firewave and Vaporwave were nice, and together we made a full team. We won a 10x battle doing that, and celebrated together afterward with food despite Milk (and Dark) Chocolate’s devastating loss.
I read as much as I could find, worked a lot at Grizzco, and played a lot of ink sports. There were even a few times when some of my friends from the Splatoon would join me for battles in Alterna, or even regular octolings from the domes. Despite always trying to stay busy and learning, there were some times when I allowed myself stagnance. I enjoyed those times especially when they were with the team.
Today was one rare instance where the whole team was willing to play battles together. There wasn’t some special occasion for it, it just seemed to happen. Everyone was free on this random Friday, and Pon-Pon proposed that we all go out for some battles.
With only six members on our team, we didn’t have enough people to make whole teams. We had to switch out each match. I wasn’t on the first team- Beacon, Pon-Pon, Bandit, and Arrow were. Bite and I cheered them on from the sidelines.
While everyone waited for the next match, we discussed who was going to battle with who over the next few matches. Bite switched out with Arrow during the next battle. The available stages were Brinewater Springs and Sturgeon Shipyard. We were at Sturgeon Shipyard at that point.
I switched out with Beacon after the game, when we took the train to brinewater for the next one. It took half an hour for the train to reach Brinewater Spring, but it was a nice ride. It went from one side of the city to the other, so we got to travel over Eeltail along the way.
“You know, I remember the first time we met,” Bandit was telling me as the train took off.
“It was at Sturgeon Shipyard. The first SquidForce-endorsed Splatfest in the Splatlands was being held, and it was only half a day long. All of us, plus Flan- entered a tricolor battle together. Apparently, Beacon had met half of us already by coincidence, but he and Arrow hated each other’s guts.”
Arrow shrugged. “Flan kept going off on the worst topics. Still not a fan,” she said. Beacon glared.
“I guess things aren’t too different these days, huh,” Bandit commented, seeing this.
“Yeah. That was a terrible battle,” Beacon hissed. “You all had to go and ruin things.”
“You’re saying I ruined things?” Bite huffed.
“Well it was kinda your fault!” Arrow exclaimed.
“No, we’ve been over this-” Bandit said, trying to dampen the argument.
Everyone started accusing each other, stating who attacked who first and that if a few certain people hadn’t forgotten the rules…
The other passengers seemed to get annoyed. Pon-Pon basically had to shout to get everyone to listen and quiet down so we wouldn’t get in trouble- again, he said, like they did during that fateful match.
“Well, despite everything, we’re still happy to be a team. With you, too,” Bandit said.
Pon-Pon and Bite agreed enthusiastically. Arrow less so. Beacon didn’t even voice disapproval, though he didn’t say anything the other way either.
I didn’t know what to say. I felt weird thinking about people thinking about me. But it wasn’t a bad weird, just a sort of weird that I didn’t know what to do with.
Our train pulled into the station at Brinewater. We grabbed our weapons from the train’s storage and readied for the match.
I looked down at the jellies in the water. Every time I went to a stage with some sort of water, I wondered what it was like to not splat when exposed to a lot of it. It was far more slippery and less cooperative than ink when it came to doing stuff with it. It would really be fascinating to understand.
There were still a couple minutes until the battle would start. I flexed my fingers and ignored the random thoughts clouding the back of my mind. I was so fortunate to have met the team. I wondered how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t met them. I was so grateful.
The match began. Between my roller, Pon-Pon’s octobrush, Bandit’s e-liter, and Bite’s splattershot, we had a solid defense. Bandit covered our base as Bite held the center. Pon-Pon and I would back Bite up if enemies approached the middle and team up to splat anyone who tried to sneak up on anyone. We smoothly moved forward. Bandit leapt from the edge of our side and swam up to the cube in the center. With her range, she was able to defeat all the enemy players Pon-Pon lured to the side, while Bite and I plunged further into their base.
Success. It was an easy victory, really. Soon enough, we had won. It was fun to fight in challenging battles, but this unity was even better. Whatever I did, I knew I could rely on my team, and it was the same in reverse. We cleared battle after battle, switching out teammates every few games. Eventually, the matchmaking system recognized our win streak and started matching us up against stronger opponents, which only served to make the time even more thrilling.
At the stage change, Beacon switched back on. I had been off the battle party a couple times now, but I had never been in a turf war with Beacon yet today. Due to his condition, he couldn’t fight as many battles in sequence as the rest of us could. But when he did fight, his skill was clear. Out of everyone, Bandit and Beacon were by far the strongest. I knew that Bandit was a part of a legendary secret splatoon. Beacon, on the other hand, I had absolutely no idea how he became this strong, and concurrently how he ended up like he was today. There had to be a reason, yet I saw none. He didn’t go out much, but both he and Bandit had the most solid grasp on where to put themselves in order to splat enemies and not get splatted themselves. It wasn’t just a virtue of them playing chargers. Whenever anyone else was in a sticky situation, Blam! A blast of their ink strikes at just the right time.
I wouldn’t discount everyone else’s skill either. Pon-Pon had an amazing grasp of where everyone was going and where ink was needed on the map. Bite was unpredictable in just the right way that enemies wouldn’t know where she was coming from. Arrow, even with her aerospray, could get the enemy’s space like nobody’s business.
Where did I sit? I think I got splatted the most out of anyone on the team. I still had a lot to learn. I couldn’t really analyze my own gameplay as well as I did watching the others. I just hoped that studying everyone else like I did would help.
After a while, we had to stop and rest. The entire team was tired, but smiling. Bite and Arrow made a beeline for Crab-n-Go. Beacon stared at the Shell-Out machine as if his intense look would make a gold or silver capsule pop out.
We went back out, this time to Anarchy Open battles. The current mode was Splat Zones on the stages Mincemeat Metalworks and Makomart. Beacon, Arrow, Pon-Pon and I were playing.
I let my guard down halfway through my first match. In Makomart, I was knocked down by an enemy ink mine. I didn’t have my Big Bubbler, and I was almost out of ink. I was stuck right beside the Splat Zone on the enemy side and I couldn’t swim back since the mine had inked around my feet. The rest of my team were busy trying to keep control of their side of the Zone so that the enemy team wouldn’t score and give us a penalty. There was nowhere to run.
I crawled weakly around the barrier in the middle to our side. I didn’t see the enemy approaching from behind me as I tried to swing and ink a path for me to escape.
I caught Beacon’s eye. He had the high ground here, safe and far out of range of anyone on the enemy team. There was no hostility in his eyes toward me this time, just focus. A shot whizzed past my head, immediately followed by another. I heard someone splat behind me. Beacon had saved me.
No time to think. I finished my swing and retreated safely onto our side of the stage to recharge my ink. It looked like the others were doing the same. Beacon was the only one holding the Zone right now, and the enemy team would go after him soon enough. If I didn’t get back into the fray and get the Zone back, I wouldn’t have repaid Beacon.
I saw Pon-Pon pull out of the ink with his octobrush in front of him and run around the side to sneak into the enemy base. I followed, swimming through the trail his brush left as he ran.
I heard the whistle of the Zone changing color. We had just incurred a penalty for letting it change hands. We were still in the lead so far, and we couldn’t afford to let it stay with the enemy team. There was maybe one minute and a half left in the game.
Pon-Pon turned left into the enemy base, and I popped out of the ink to see the enemy luna blaster, supposedly the one who Beacon saved me from, respawn. They launched towards my teammate. I dashed toward them and jumped, swinging my roller with the intent to splat them again. I wasn’t too late. I wasn’t able to keep the zone before, but with Pon-Pon sneaking behind the enemy front and splatting one of them while pushing the other into Arrow’s path, we were able to splat almost the whole enemy team. Arrow quickly inked the zone.
We held onto it for the next minute and caught the win, with a knockout bonus.
It was getting to be evening pretty quickly after that match. It was hard to tell from inside MakoMart, but the windows were darkening. A couple matches later and we called it a day and retired to the apartment.
Bandit offered to teach me how to cook beans and rice for dinner that night, but Arrow swiftly interrupted and saved me from Bandit’s cooking. Even though Arrow had the inclination to burn things, she was actually a decent cook and I occasionally was able to cook for the team under her instruction.
The TV was on. Arrow was flipping through the channels, and eventually stopped to see what was going on in one of them. Apparently, there was a tournament being held in Inkopolis. I caught sight of a team with an octoling who was… green, somehow. I didn’t have time to dwell on it, since Beacon seemed displeased by the channel and got up, walked to Arrow and stole the remote from her. He promptly turned the TV off and went back to his seat at the dining table. Arrow put on Chirpy Chips music instead.
While I was waiting for the food to cook, I sat down at the table, across from Beacon.
“What do you want?” he asked, bored.
“I wanted to say thank you,” I said.
The inkling raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“You protected me in the battle earlier.”
He shifted his gaze away. “It was nothing. I wanted to win.”
My lips curled up slightly. I nodded, and turned away from him too. He wasn’t outright hostile towards me anymore. It was probably one-sided, but I’d like to think that we were friends now. He wanted to win, but he battled with me even through his condition. I wish there was a way I could really show how much I was grateful.
It wasn’t just Beacon I should be thanking. It was everyone. They were so wonderful and colorful and fun and I wanted to stay like this forever.
Yeah… It’s nice like this.
-------- BONUS! --------
It's the team! to celebrate the final chapter!
