He tunes back into reality with half a heart, leaving his eyes shut and letting the world filter back in slowly, one sense at a time. The sea breeze is cold and familiar coming into the wharf’s narrow strait, carrying the sound of chatter and seagulls and the ocean looping its gentle hands around the decking in a lazy rhythm. The stink of fish in the hot sun, the barnacles and kelp knotted against the shore; an overheated scent, beaten plastic left too long in the sun mingled with sweat and metal that would burn to the touch.

He’d dozed off in the back of his dad’s stall, and his voice filters back to him, loud and quick as he negotiates with a customer. He’ll most likely have Two-tone run a box or two or something or other down the road in a minute, lightheartedly scorn Eight for lazing around and taking up space, but for now Two-tone just follows along with the strange cadence he’s known all his life. He’s temperate under the shade, slumped down on the battered ledge technically meant for storage.

It used to gaze out to sea from here, but now he’s got a great view of the new wing. SquidForce’s installation of an ink-battle stage had done nothing to slow the place down; it was an obvious choice, actually—the wharf was in the old part of town, and dealt with an enormous amount of foot traffic despite its age and demographic. It wasn’t hip and new, but it had potential. With the construction came new sounds, distant hollering punctuated with the rush of respawn machinery and beat of ink-fire. He isn’t really sure what to think about it yet.

He blinks both eyes open.

It’s on the roster right now, and he watches a kid fling themself into the air and open fire before they even land, solid, steady, hit the ground running. He’d walked the stage in the morning once before its open hours, on the pale new concrete, the awnings yet unbeaten by weather, almost clean of bird shit. All he could think was the word uncanny.

Eight notices, sitting next to him alert and straight-backed. He points to the stage across the strait, and signs, “I have been watching them.”

“What ‘chou thinking?” Two-tone responds, his voice still drowsy.

“They’re not very good,” Eight answers. “Very untidy. I could have beaten them many times over.”

“You’re an outlier, handsome,” Two-tone says, affection clear in his voice. His own arms are a warm and welcome weight over his chest and he doesn’t want to unfold them, or sit up, but he smiles at Eight sidelong. His boyfriend’s in her favorite combination of black turtleneck and skinny jeans, capped off with the big spiked boots and red gradient claws, never having given up on wearing her tentas in a long neat braid.

Eight sniffs. “I know. But it’s a disgrace.”

Neither of them say anything for a minute, listening to Two-tone’s dad bustle packing up an order and the constant uneven hammer of footsteps on the dock. Gradually the orange team gains ground against the blue, though the blue has better synergy, fluid and attentive to their own teammates’ movements, the ritual motion of giving and taking turf.

“It’s strange… hard to watch my own kind like this,” Eight admits. “The picture of us, I remember what they gave. I didn’t think we had it in us… to lose.”

Beneath them the waves continue to lap, a soft and practiced rhythm. Two-tone doesn’t respond, but they both let the lapse run long and comfortable, the wind rustling Two-tone’s oversize jeans and an old paper bag over the water-stained planks.

He doesn’t really want to think about it. He’s never liked it.

He stares at the stage—the newest enactment in a long, long line of an old familiar tradition—and the future stares back.