Zero

Headphones collapsed into her bed with a sigh, her muscles aching after a long day of training. She allowed her eyes to drift shut, welcoming the feeling of the soft mattress beneath her before opening them again. Unfortunately, her Splat Charger just had to be the first thing her gaze fell upon. Cod, she couldn't even look at the thing without her stomach twisting itself into knots. Her sniping skills had recently fallen into a downward spiral, and nothing she did seemed to help. She practiced almost all day, and had barely managed to land a single hit on any of the training dummies, not even the stationary ones!

The blue Inkling sighed heavily. It had been this way for a while now. Ever since Team Blue's, or rather, Team Blue-per's brutal loss to the X-Blood Team in the Square King Ranked Cup, she'd barely been able to think, let alone aim straight.

She hardly even remembered the match; it had all seemed to speed by in a blind haze of adrenaline, but she certainly remembered the loss. The cheers and boos exploding from the crowd, the insults being slung at them by the X-Blood supporters, the disappointed faces of Team Blue-per's supporters, the dangerous red flash in Vintage's eyes as he looked down at them like they were scum... it had all been dizzying, but not nearly as much as it had to look up at the scoreboard and see how she'd performed.

Zero. Splats.

She doubted she had ever been so humiliated in her entire life. In that moment, she'd seriously thought she was going to vomit, which she guessed was the only thing that could have possibly embarrassed her more. The match had been over a week ago, and it still made her sick to her stomach just thinking about it. She dug her nails into the mattress, both out of anger and in an attempt to distract from the nausea stirring in her gut. She could barely live with herself; knowing that she'd made a fool of not only herself, but of her teammates as well. They'd all worked so hard to get to the finals, only for her to flush their efforts down the drain along with any previous respect they may have had for her.

There was no way they didn't despise her now, even if they didn't act the part. They claimed that they didn't care about the loss, and that it had all been worthwhile because they'd had fun, but their faces told a different story. Their smiles always seemed forced, and their eyes carried a quiet disappointment that wore away at her self-esteem every time she saw it. She simply couldn't stand to be around them when she knew how badly she'd failed them.

Even more than her teammates, she'd let down all of the teams they'd previously beaten, most notably the S4 and Rider, who had taken Army's place on the team when the orange Inkling had been too injured to participate. It hadn't mattered any; the S4 Team was much stronger than them regardless of who their fourth player was. It was honestly nothing short of a miracle that Team Blue-per had somehow managed to defeat them. She scoffed to herself at the sheer absurdity of it.

Cod, just imagine losing to a team much weaker than you that goes on to lose by knockout victory AND have one of their members get zero splats in the very next match.

But even among them, there was one person she'd failed more than any other.

Then imagine that match was with your old rival who you've been looking to defeat for years, but then didn't get to because some group of jackasses came along and not only stole your deserved victory from you, but then wasted it by getting absolutely crushed by that rival and making you look pathetic.

After their miraculous victory against the S4 Team, she'd made a silent promise to herself that she would defeat Vintage in Skull's place and preserve his honor, but had instead ended up doing the exact opposite and crushing any hopes he may have had. She couldn't help chuckling to herself derisively. It was ironic; funny, almost, that she'd let him down so horribly right when the two of them had just been starting to become friends.