By August Hudson-Vadnais

This is an excerpt from a longer story that is a modern-day superhero Alternative Universe (AU) fan fiction of Nintendo’s video game Splatoon. This story takes place in our world, where humans acquire powers suggested by Nintendo’s squidlike characters, but the world-building is based on superhero tropes, with bosses reimagined as corporate villains.

Chapter 1

You exhale a long-held breath as you leave the building. Things have been getting more stressful, and at this point it’s practically unbearable.

Absentmindedly scratching at your left ear under your headphones, you make a beeline for your dorm building. Once you have privacy, you take the headphones off and stare at your ear in the mirror. It looks like it’s coated in yellow-orange paint, or maybe ink. But nothing will wash it off. Closer inspection reveals that it seems to be the skin, not anything on it, that has this new sheen. 

Also, you swear it glows in the dark.

And that’s only the beginning. The yellow-orange, itchy ear has been happening on and off for three years, but a week ago, something even weirder happened. Now, when you get overly stressed, you seem to start leaking a yellow-orange…slime? It runs like water but it sticks to anything it contacts.

Even stranger, when you tried to clean it off your floor—cursing it out and wishing it would be less sticky—it…seemed to comply. 

Just as you think of this, a droplet of the stuff falls from your elbow. You sigh and look at it, wishing it would just…you don’t know, evaporate?

And then it does.

It smoothly transforms into yellow-orange mist before disappearing altogether.

You jump back. What IS this stuff?

You push your bangs off your forehead and find your hand slick with the gunk. Holding your hand in front of you, you experimentally attempt to will it to change color. Before your eyes, it does, shifting from that hideous yellow to a dark crimson.

A glance at the mirror reveals that your ear has changed as well. You will the ooze to disappear, then will your ear to match your skin tone. It works, but it still looks weird. Shiny, almost. Like it’s covered in some sort of film. Ugh.

Suddenly, in a flash of inspiration, you try to ooze the stuff from your finger, willing it to be a black sheen. You swipe a streak across your arm. You then stripe a purple streak, followed by a yellow and a white one. You will the stuff to dry on and stain your skin.

Wait. Here you were, thinking only about the practical applications of having a more comfortable substance on your skin that was more under your control, but if you can control it . . . could you will it from one area of your body to another? What if it was sticky, but not too sticky?

The possibilities are mind-blowing.

You place your palms against your wall, and, in your delight, climb up the wall like some kind of unhinged Spider-Man! You climb down and disappear the stuff off of you. The inklike substance— could you . . . jet a stream of it from your finger?

You point your index finger at the wall.

Wait. Let’s submit to drama for this experiment.

You flip off the wall and successfully squirt a stream of ink at it.

You evaporate it, thinking. Okay, this is the most useless superpower ever, but cool.

Wait! What about a semisolid stream and… oh, god! You are flipping Spider-Man! You’re laughing, hanging upside down from the ceiling, feeling amazing. It’s true you aren’t a spider or a man, but “I’m Sludge-Enby!” doesn’t really roll off the tongue. 

You ooze the goo from your whole body, and suddenly you are the goo.

Okay, this is something. You can turn into ink at will and sludge about. You form back into a human, run to the mirror hanging from your closet door, and watch to see what happens if you stop hiding what’s happening.

Three years, and this is the first time you’ve really let yourself look.

It’s incredible. You can change your appearance with the same force of will—or energy?—that you use to control the substance. You make your eyes red and swipe on cool black eyeshadows. Turning your head, you extend your ears to a point. Looking down at your bare feet, you make your toes into little flesh blocks, laughing. You sharpen your teeth and pose. 

Well. You look savage as a lightning storm. That’s satisfying.

You can also inkify your clothes, and in a sudden flash of inspiration, you change your shirt into a yellow and black overcoat, summon slick black LED headphones like ones you’ve been eyeing online, and, of course, black combat boots. 

Hell, yeah.

You crack your knuckles and strike a few more poses in the mirror. You shift your hair to a yellow coloration and twirl.

Yeah, this is good. You realize you could probably use your newfound skills to be some kind of IRL superhero …

Nah. You know exactly what you’re going to do with this skill set.