Smoke and Ashes

A/N: I realized that everything I write is shippy, so I wanted to try writing something without any romance.

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The night sky stretched overhead as far as the eye could see, its pristine navy blue interrupted only by the slight bit of orange that remained on the horizon. The crescent moon was just beginning to crest the mountains that overlooked Inkopolis, casting a pale light that traveled miles to grace the surface of Snapper Canal's waters with its silver dance.

With the sun having gone down and Turf Wars having ended for the day, the normally busy canal had become submerged in an almost eerie lull. Aside from the distant noise of the city and the whistle of the wind as it passed under the train bridge that passed overhead, all was quiet and calm. However, the one Inkling who remained at the abandoned stage was anything but.

Grumbling to himself, Glasses halted his slow trudge along the canal and kicked a stray pebble into the water. He watched the ripples dissipate with anger burning in his eyes before continuing on, his scowl deepening as he recalled the series of unfortunate events that his life had recently become.

Having been unlucky enough to become a landing pad for a falling beehive mere weeks after the events of the Deepsea Metro, he'd been forced to miss out on participating in the Square King Ranked Cup with his teammates. He'd managed to keep his mouth shut for several days, struggling not to pester his teammates with complaints about how much pain he was in or how much the hospital sucked or how much he hated having Emperor take his place on the team.

His patience had at last been rewarded with his release from the hospital the previous night, and he'd woken up that morning on a high he'd thought nothing could drag him down from. After all, he was feeling better, the tournament had been won, and Emperor had returned to his own team. Things had at last gone back to normal, and now he could finally be with his closest friends again and not have to worry about the threat that "the King" was suddenly posing to his place on Blue Team.

Or so he'd thought. Half-Rim, Aviators, and Full Moon, three Inklings he'd formed a secondary team with a while back; who he'd thought had been his friends, had made sure that wasn't the case. His first day back with Blue Team was supposed to have been a good one, but instead his day had started with the discovery that the "Glasses Gang" had replaced him during his week in the hospital. Claiming that he'd been gone for too long (a fucking week), they'd apparently decided that some random kid they'd come across would be of more use to them.

To add insult to injury, he hadn't even been told that they were replacing him. While he and his teammates had been waiting for their weapons to come out of repair at Ammo Knights, the three of them had shown up with their new teammate and challenged Blue Team to a Turf War at that very stage. Half-Rim, the self-proclaimed leader of the group, had claimed that they would "cheer him on with a battle" because "his skills had degraded."

I suppose mocking someone for an entire match is one way of cheering them on...

He could handle being insulted and laughed at; Blue Team had a class-clown reputation around the Square so he was actually pretty used to it. But today it had been different. The jeers had been targeted at him and him alone, and while he of course didn't consider it a problem that his teammates hadn't been insulted with him, he couldn't deny that there was at least still a sense of togetherness in it when they were targeted as a whole. He couldn't pretend that "You guys suck" wasn't far easier to hear than "Your teammates are good but you suck."

His gaze darkened. Being called an idiot countless times that day had annoyed him, but what had infuriated him was how Half-Rim had looked him dead in the eye and referred to him as Blue Team's second-in-command despite having been told time-and-time again and knowing damn well that he was actually the leader. He was supposed to be, at least.