Wandering around the plaza was a young inkling called Nick. There was a small pep in his step as he walked around on the dull concrete. His bright yellow tentacles bounced in time to his steps, kept together in a sky blue hair tie. He wore a green shirt with yellow dots, as well as black shorts with white stripes on both sides of it. His large feet were wearing brown boots, the tiny belts on it jingling with every step.

A pair of earphones were in his ears, playing his favorite singer, or should I say, singers, song. The Squid sisters. A large grin was upon Nick's face, his eyes closed in happiness and his cheeks yellow with a light blush. Nothing could ruin his mood.

Suddenly, he heard a loud BANG. Startled, he pulled out one of his earbuds and strained his hearing to see what was going on. Hearing nothing after that, Nick shrugged and went to put the earbud back in his ear.

CRASH!

This time he heard it. Turning his head in the direction the sound, Nick found an alley. It was the same ally he would usually find Spyke in to use his Sea Snails, but he was out doing something else that day. So it couldn't have been him, Nick noted. Looking around for anybody watching, Nick crept up to a wall and peered around the corner into the alley.

Two inklings were kicking something. One had a large body with dark green tentacles, bandages were all over his arms and legs and his face had a nasty sneer upon it with his green eyes in an intimating glare.

The other had dark blue tentacles and a skinny body, but he was rather tall. His back was to Nick, but he could see that he had piercings in his left ear, and a tattoo on his arm.

They both were laughing, not in pure joy, but clearly it was malicious. The one with the green tentacles even bit on whatever they were kicking, a large grin was upon his face with something dripping down from his mouth. They both had stopped kicking.

The one with blue tentacles crossed his arms, "You're so pathetic, y'know? My little bro is a wimp and you're a hundred times wimpier! Do us a favor and die or something."

Mr. Bandage (Nick decided quickly to give them nicknames) snorted, "Yeah! You're nothing but a bother and a mistake. Nobody likes you, even your family must hate you! You're lucky we don't go ahead and kill you now, and that's only because losers like you don't deserve to be killed by our hands!"

Mr. Tattoo nodded in agreement, and turned around to walk out of the alley. Mr. Bandage followed suit, not before giving one last kick to whatever they were talking to. Nick panicked, before slipping his headphones back into his ears and leaning against the wall he was on, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. They passed him without a second glance.

Checking if the coast was clear, Nick sneakily went down into the alley. It wasn't as dirty or messy as many stereotypical alley's were, but it was still pretty bad. He spotted a dark blue lump at the end of the alley, huddled in the corner. Walking closer to it, he realized it was a non-mature inkling. More squid than kid, basically.

They had noticeable bruises and cuts all around their body, their knees were to their chest and their arms were wrapped tight around them. Their head was buried in their knees, probably thinking about what those horrible inklings did to them.

Then, Nick noticed a hair band holding their dark blue tentacles behind their head, in the inkling society, that would make them a male. Nick slowly walked over to the boy, trying not to scare him and cause him to run.

Too late, the child looked up sharply with a small gasp. His yellow eyes were slightly watery with blue tears, glistening in the light. The kid went to stand up, but winced and sat back down almost immediately after. He glared at Nick.

"W-Who are you?! Are you another one of those guys?" he questioned, trying to back against the wall as much as possible.

Nick shook his head, "Nope. I was just walking by and happened to notice those guys over here. And my name is Nick. Are you okay, lil dude? I noticed them kicking you earlier."

The kid looked down at the ground for a moment, before looking back up with strained smile, "Could be better."

Nick winced, obviously he was in pain. "Well...Lemme help you up at least. We'll get you home to your mom and dad and I'm sure they absolutely love you, lil dude." He reached out a hand in an offer to help him.

The yellow eye'd boy took his hand without question, slowly managing to stand up on his own two feet. He was tall, taller than most non-humanoid inklings. He looked down at Nick with amusement in his eyes.

Nick looked up with wide eyes, "Wow, for a lil dude you sure are pretty tall."

The boy snickered, "How old are you?"

"Fourteen, almost fifteen!" He cheered, proudly crossing his arms with a smug smile on his face.

"Sixteen. I'm sixteen years old, lil dude." The not so young non-humanoid inkling mocked, a smug grin now upon his face.

Nick gapped, "Wait, really?! B-but...You're not humanoid." He raised a brow.

The sixteen year old scratched behind his head, "It's a long story. My name's Ian. How about we go over to the nearby cafe and I'll explain it to you there?" he pointed his thumb in the direction of the cafe.

"I thought you were injured? They were kicking you pretty hard not to leave a couple of bruises, dude." Nick stated with a worried look.

Ian shrugged, "I'll manage. Let's go."

With a sugar filled coffee in Nick's hand and half a dozen of donuts in Ian's, they sat down at a table and began to talk.

"So, care to share the details of whatever was going on back there?" Nick asked, munching on one of the donuts.

Ian tapped one of his fingers against the table, "Well, where do you want me to start? There's a whole bunch to go over after all."

Nick whined, "I dunno! Maybe with whoever those guys kicking you were?" he questioned, chewing his donut a little slower with a frown on his face.

Ian's mood quickly dropped, "Oh. Those guys. They've been picking on me ever since I found out why I'm like this. Today's wasn't even the worse they've done, y'know. John and Ben, my worst nightmare."

Nick huffed, "Why are you like that anyway? Did something happen when you were young or...?"

Ian crossed his arms. "I don't really know why I'm like this. From every doctor I've ever been to, they've all said that it was some sort of defect or something. I am physically incapable of becoming humanoid. I can only become half humanoid and half of the second to last stage of an inkling's life."

The younger inkling grunted in surprise, too busy munching on another donut to form actual words. He gulped down what was in his mouth, "Can you go in turf or ranked battles? They said that the age you had to be was fourteen and up but..." he trailed off.

The deformed inkling shook his head, "I never found out. My parents said not to take a risk and just avoid doing it for as long as I can. Fourteen is the age limit because usually all inklings can become humanoid when they're that age. But for me... I'm a special case."

"I say you should try and participate in a turf war! You never know, maybe you won't risk any weird health stuff and have a great time!" Nick said, happily slurping his coffee as soon as he finished.

Ian glanced off to the side, trying to not make any eye contact, "I don't really know if I should do that. Humanoid and Non-Humanoid inklings have very different bodies, what if getting splatted by ink not by my color hurts me severely?"

Nick leaned over the table, "Lemme spit on you then." He rolled his tongue in his mouth, trying to gather as much saliva as possible.

Ian made a disgusted noise, "Blegh! Why would you do that? That seems pretty gross, dude."

The yellow tentacled inkling shook his head, "My spit has a little bit of my ink in it, so if I put some on your body we can test your reaction to it. It kinda hurts, but it's not all that bad, I promise."

Ian warily glanced at him with wide yellow eyes, looking down at his arm before holding it out, "Fine. Do it on my hand and make it quick. I'd rather not be sitting here in this cafe looking stupid for a while." He looked away with his eyes tightly shut.

Nick nodded, proceeding with what he was doing, before spitting out a small glob of ink filled saliva onto Ian's hand. He wiped his mouth and sat back in his seat, waiting for Ian's reaction.

...

...

...

"Did you do it yet?" Ian asked, turning and looking over with one squinting eye.

Nick made a shocked noise, "I-I did it thirty seconds ago! How could've you not noticed it?"

Ian put his arm down, "Wait, really? I didn't feel a thing..." he looked down at his hand to search for anything. Finding nothing, he looked up at Nick with equal shock.

Nick pressed a finger to his chin, "Maybe if I...?" He reached back behind his head and undid the hair tie, his two tentacles swinging down to his shoulders. Picking up a fork with one hand, he covered his mouth with the other and quickly stabbed one of his tentacles with no hesitation.

The older inkling gasped, "Why'd you do that!? Doesn't that hurt?" He stared at Nick with wide eyes and his mouth was covered with his two blue hands.

The younger inkling nodded, tears welling up in his eyes. He shook his head to get rid of the tears and removed the fork from his tentacle, yellow ink dripping from it.

"H-Here." He sniffled, holding out one of his tentacles, "This has more concentrated ink in it than my spit, so maybe it'll have more of an effect. It's the same ink that I would use in a turf war."

Ian shook his head in exasperation, "You're nuts." He held out his hand again anyway.

Nick laughed, "I'm told that a bunch." He carefully held his tentacle over the older inkling's hand, squeezing it slightly to get a nice amount of ink onto his hand. Once he finished he nabbed a couple of napkins from the dispenser and gently pressed them to his tentacle, trying to stop it from leaking out anymore ink.

This time Ian felt it. Pulling back his hand sharply, he hissed, "Wow, holy frick that burns! Is this really what it's like in turf?"

Nick nodded, a lazy smile on his face. "Yep. You get used to it, though. Soon that burning sensation will just be like an itch that needs to be scratched."

The not quite humanoid inkling nodded in understanding, "How long does it take for the burning to go away?"

The younger inkling glanced upwards in thought before looking back down at him, "When you're in your humanoid form and get hit with one shot of another inklings ink of another color, it usually takes five seconds for it to go away. Ten with two, and so on. If you shift to squid form and go in your own ink color, it takes half that time."

Ian hummed, "Then how come it only took maybe one second for it to stop burning for me?"

...

...

...

"Wait, what?"

"What? Is that not supposed to happen?"

"No it's just... How?" Nick wondered.

"Here, do it again. Maybe we can see why this time."

"Are you sure? It might just be nothing..."

Ian shook his head, "Nah. Now I'm curious, and no matter how dangerous it is, I'm wanting to find out."

Nick shrugged, "Mmkay..." he murmured, slipping off the napkins from his tentacle he stabbed and tossing them to the trash. He again grabbed his tentacle and squeezed it over Ian's hand once more, yellow ink dripping onto it.

The ink burned Ian's hand, and he was tempted to bring it to his chest and blow on it, but he held it still, eager to see what would happen. The ink sat on his hand for a moment, before being covered by Ian's blue ink that constantly ran over his body.

. . .

"Huh." Ian said, "So that's what happened."

Nick was amazed, his eyes sparkling with excitement, "Woah! That was so cool! So did your body like, completely absorb my ink or something? Whatever it did, it was awesome!"

"I guess so. And you said it usually takes five seconds for an inkling in humanoid form to heal from getting hit?"

"Yeah! But yours only took two seconds! So it's faster for you to heal! That's so cool! I'm sorta jealous now."

Ian blushed, though it wasn't really noticeable with most of his face being nothing but blue. He tried to pretend not to be embarrassed by grabbing a donut and munching on it silently.

After a nice long chat with Ian, Nick got up and stretched, his tentacles swinging slightly. "I gotta go now, my mom doesn't like me being out too late and I gotta catch the train back to my area."

Ian nodded, a warm smile on his face. "I getcha, even though I live here in Inkopolis. My house isn't too far from here."

Nick pulled out a slightly crumpled piece of paper, "Here's my number, text me sometime, okay?" he handed it to Ian, a grin spreading across his cheeks.

The older inkling made a noise in affirmative, pocketing the paper without question. "I'll see you later!" he cheered, waving at the younger inkling that was heading out the door.

...

Nick sprinted back in, "MY TENTACLE IS STILL DRIPPING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH." He quickly grabbed some napkins and wrapped them around his tentacle messily, stuffing more into his pockets before running back outside, "SEE YOU LATER, IAN!"

Ian snickered.

Decided to put more effort into these and add some more description! What do you guys think of this one?

Over 2,000 words... I think it's great.

Review why don't you? They motivate me. No really, they do.

...

I'm not kidding.

Next Chapter: Who fucking knows

Also, Nick covered his mouth in case he ended up screaming from the pain. Okay? Okay.