Current location, Saltspray Rig. His team rose up, their ink color blue. His opponents rose as well, their ink color orange.

They watched the timer go down.

3...

2...

1...

GO!

The horns went off, each team quickly lunged forward, ready to use their weapons. One certain inkling leaped with all his might, ready to unleash hell...

Until he tripped.

"FUCK!" he screeched, landing straight on his face with a large BANG. He could almost feel his teeth cracking from the harsh impact. Better check for any missing...

"Hey! No swearing on the battlefield!" A supervisor of the Turf War yelled, "We gotta keep this place clean and cursing free! Otherwise the parents are gonna lash out at us again..." she muttered bitterly, before walking back into the booth, which held all the monitors showing scenes from the cameras placed around the stage.

The kid grumbled before slowly picking himself back up. He was already so far behind, as his teammates were already racking up points above three hundred while he was only at a measly two. Quickly glaring at his hurt foot, he limped off to join the others in their huge battle.

The supervisor looked worriedly at the boy, noticing the limp. She had a quick debate in her mind, announce to the kid to get out and heal his foot to not risk further injury, or just let him be and probably get fired?

...

Eh, she wasn't getting paid enough for this job. With a nonchalant shrug, she sat back in her chair and watched the monitors, idly slurping on her drink.

His name was Tucker, and he was not having a nice time right now.

As soon as he tripped he knew he was not going to have fun in this match. He attempted to walk off the pain in his foot- no, his ankle. He attempted to walk off the pain in his ankle. That backfired almost immediately, as he almost tripped yet again. An inkling from the other team saw him stumble, and held his fire.

"Hey, dude! Are you okay? I saw you almost fall there and-"

"I'm. FINE." Tucker growled, slapping away the hand that was reaching over to help him up. He shakily stood up on his two feet, faking a grin at the suspicious inkling. "See? I'm fine!"

That did little to convince the other inkling.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tucker noticed orange ink coming in his direction. On instinct, he tried to run and duck for cover to come up with a plan, but the pain intensified greatly, causing him to crash down on the ground face first yet again. He hissed sharply, holding his ankle in hopes of soothing the pain but to no avail.

The other inkling looked over at his teammate, shaking his head and holding up a hand, signaling her not to shoot. He received a confused nod in return, before she lowered her aerospray. The orange boy turned back to Tucker.

"Where's your contact pad? 'names Daniel by the way."

Tucker momentarily glanced up at Daniel, "Why would you need it? I said I'm fine."

"No, you're not. Don't think I didn't see you holding your ankle ten seconds ago. Hand it over."

Tucker sighed, slowly sitting upright before searching his pockets for the communication device. He felt a slight bump in his back pocket before pulling out the contact pad, handing it to Daniel. On the contact pad was a map of where Tucker's teammates were, and three buttons. C'mon, Booyah, and Help. Help was highlighted in red, to show that you would press it only if a teammate was injured and needed assistance. Daniel wordlessly pressed it without hesitation before handing it back to Tucker. The contact pad rang an alarm to signal any nearby inklings to head their way.

Seconds later, they hear a yell of a female inkling super jumping to their position. Right beside Tucker was a circling hologram, which said the name Angie. Moments later she landed, a concerned look upon her face.

"Tucker! I saw that you needed help, are you okay?" she asked, before looking at the other inklings, "I guess you must've been discovered by these guys, eh?"

Tucker gave a bitter laugh, "Yeah, sucks to have to be so helpless when your opponent is right at your tail. Thank god I didn't get splatted by...what's your name?" he paused, looking at the female orange inkling.

"The name's Cat!" she chirped, her eyes sparkling with excitement. She wore an ice blue t-shirt with a green hat, while hoping happily from side to side in her purple shoes.

Tucker rolled his eyes, "Yeah. Cat. Listen, my ankle is messed up. I don't know how it got that way but-"

"Is it because you tripped and fell? Yeah, don't even think about it." Angie interrupted, folding her arms in trying to look as unimpressed as possible.

Tucker groaned, "Then why didn't you help me up?!"

"I thought you would've been okay! This is a turf war, we don't have much time to lose y'know." Angie shrugged.

Daniel stepped in. "Guys, we don't have time for this. There's at least a minute and thirty seconds left on the clock, we can get Tucker out of here in a minute if we cooperate. I'll carry his arms, and you two can get his legs, got it?"

Angie rolled her eyes before going to grab Tucker's foot. "Whatever."

Cat had went to grab his other foot, with the injured ankle.

He cried out hastily, "EASY EASY! Holy frick that hurts." he then squirmed in their arms, "Is this really necessary? My pride is going down to three percent."

"Well, it's either you deal with this and have your pride completely erased, oooor have to deal with the pain and become a squid in the end to transport back to Inkopolis, where it'll hurt even worse. Which will it be, eh?" Angie stated sarcastically.

Tucker gulped, "Judging by the fact that it hurts so much already, I'm gonna have to go with the first option. Ehehehe..."

On their (very slow) walk to the supervising booth, they noticed other inklings on both teams looking over worriedly, but not heading over. They all decided to hold up on the Turf War, sitting and talking to each other about the situation, most likely.

Seems they all heard about me...Wait, why aren't they helping?! Tucker thought, squinting at his other teammates in anger. Such great teammates.

"Hey! Lady! We have an injured guy over here! So why don't you do your job and get him out of here, eh?" Angie shouted at the supervisor in the booth, dropping Tucker's foot and marching over to her.

"You're lucky I'm hurt! Otherwise one of us would have purple and blue all over their skin, and it wouldn't be ink!" Tucker threatened, receiving an eye roll in return.

"Oh my god... Guys come look at this!" Angie said in awe, walking into the booth.

"Woah..." both Daniel and Cat gasped as they walked inside the booth as well, dragging in a grumpy Tucker with them.

Shiny buttons and monitors were all around in the booth, some of the buttons were flashing different colors, and the monitors were showing places around the stage, including the other inklings still chatting with each other. And the supervisor was fast asleep in the chair, snoring loudly with an arm drooped over her face.

"Alright, where's the button to get Tucker out of here? We only have forty seconds left so search fast!" Daniel ordered, quickly moving to scan the different buttons in hopes of finding the correct one.

Not long after he said that Cat exclaimed, "Found it! It says 'Use only when an inkling has to leave in the middle of the turf war, and when it's urgent'. Sounds legit to me!"

"Press it! The sooner the better!" Angie commanded, dragging Tucker to where she assumed was the transportation pod.

Tucker sighed in relief, "Finally! This stupid ankle has been getting on my nerves and it hasn't even been five minutes!"

"Yeah yeah quit your whining. You're gonna get outta here in just a moment..." she looked up to where the button was, "Cat. Help give me a boost up there, must've been placed really high so only the grown ups could get it."

Horns started blaring as a countdown appeared on all the monitors.

10...

"Ten seconds left on the clock! PRESS THE STUPID BUTTON BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!"

9...

"CHILL! I ALMOST GOT IT!"

8...

"WELL YOU BETTER GET IT SOON, OTHERWISE I'M GONNA BREAK YOUR JAW!"

"SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH! I'M TRYING MY BEST, TUCKER!"

7...

"HOW IS IT EVEN THAT HARD? IT'S JUST A BUTTON!"

"WELL YEAH BUT IT'S ON A PLATFORM, AND I'M SHORT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT, EH?"

"I DUNNO, MAYBE I EXPECTED DANIEL- THE TALL ONE, TO PRESS IT?"

6...

"I MAY BE SHORT BUT WHEN WE GET OUT OF HERE I AM GOING TO KICK YOUR STUPID ASS-"

"JUST PRESS THE FUCKING BUTTON!"

5...

4...

Daniel and Cat sat in awkward silence as the two aggressive blue inklings bickered loudly. It was an amazement that the supervisor hadn't awoken yet.

3...

2...

"...Okay it's pressed! Are you happy no-" Angie then noticed Tucker had already disappeared, "Wow this thing acts fast."

1...

GAME!

Days later, Tucker was put on crutches and kept from doing Turf Wars until his ankle healed. He was suspended for swearing after the warning either way, so now he just looked longingly at the matches from the sidelines.

He heard footsteps behind him, though they were very quiet to his ears, as the jellyfish next to him were wooting and hollering as their favorite teams battled against each other.

"Hey, how's your ankle?" Daniel asked, sitting next to Tucker and glancing down at the match going on below them.

"Hurts like a bitch, but I'll live." Tucker replied, giving his ankle a light pat which he instantly regretted.

After the event the other day, they had both met up after and immediately clicked. They were buddies in no time, learning that they both shared a favorite sport, skateboarding. Unfortunately, they couldn't do it together just yet, though Tucker was willing to risk it. Daniel had laughed at that.

"Heard Angie went on a rampage after being suspended." Daniel chuckled.

"Yeah, she was so pissed! You should've seen the look on her face when she found out!" Tucker laughed happily, holding his sides.

"So, how long did the doctor say you'll be out of commission?"

"Uh...I think two weeks? I don't really care, because I'm suspended from matches for three! That's just fucking stupid."

The orange inkling pat his friend on the back, "Three weeks will pass by fast, don't worry. Want to come over to my place and play some video games?"

Tucker's eyes sparkled in delight, "Hell yes! You recently got that one game right? Where you gotta spray ink everywhere and defeat that ugly guy with the water hose?"

"Yeah! It's called 'Super Ink Splat!' or something. I think there's a multiplayer option... First game we play?"

"First game we play."

How was that? These are just gonna be different drabbles with different inklings doing different stuff.

This one is titled, "Ankle Pain".

That's it.

Just.

Ankle Pain.

Best title amiright?

Next Chapter: who knows, i don't plan these.

Edit: Okay so I forgot to add this.

My interpretation of inklings is that, while they don't have bones, they gotta have some form of structure in their bodies to hold up their limbs, right?

So I asked my followers on tumblr what they thought would've been a good idea as something to replace "bones".

Many different responses, and i have next to no idea how anatomy works, so i went with Cartilage after I searched it on google.

Cartilage is sorta like, a softer bone. Not exactly a bone, but it holds structure, so why not?

And there's a certain kind of Cartilage for the inklings, one that can change shape, but to only two different shapes: Humanoid, and Squid

Humanoid is when it's mostly hardened, having to hold all the limbs in place and stuffs, that would explain how Tucker messed up his ankle, by messing up the Cartilage there.

In squid form, the cartilage has softened, and sorta liquified. but only to the point where it can go through bars and grates and stuff, not to where it can become a puddle. And when the Cartilage softens, it sorta, sloshes, inside the squid. hence why Tucker didn't want to turn into a squid, because it would hurt even more if he moved just a tiny bit in squid form

so yeah

hope that cleared some stuff up