Splatoon Report: Spyke

Splatoon Report: Spyke

The Urchinite merchant sitting near the vending machine is harmless to other citizens of Inkopolis; he has no known criminal record and his associates are not involved with any known gangs.

However, amongst young Inklings he has a reputation of being a 'shady' guy. This is actually a facade that he maintains in a bid to appeal to the plaza's visitors. Spyke is aware that a lot of kids like skirting around the law, but at the same time does not want teenagers to get in trouble.

On the surface, it looks as if Spyke is a smuggler or a bootlegger. His primary service is procuring clothes that look similar to another product on the market, though with different attributes in Turf War matches and at a much higher price.

Surprisingly, Spyke's method of getting these items is completely legal. Spyke has a network of other Urchinites who work in the garbage disposal and second hand goods industries, and through them he is able to find the 'ordered' products. The price is proportional to the difficulty of finding a discarded item of acceptable quality as well as the time and materials required to clean it.

Spyke is not a bootlegger or a smuggler, but rather a second-hand retailer. Understandably, he keeps this a secret as one can expect that his customers may not react favorably to being sold someone else's trash.

Spyke is also a member of the Inkopolis City Council, though his face is never seen in any news media regarding the council. In fact, he was the one who made Super Sea Snails as the prize for Splatfest events.

The prizes are completely sponsored by clothing giants, and so the council itself doesn't spend a single coin.

At first it was believed that he was doing it for purely selfish reasons, but he has actually been distributing the snails given  to him to other Urchinites who are homeless and unemployed. Urchinite culture does not look favorably upon the concept of government-funded welfare, so Spyke has decided to use this as a loophole of sorts.

It is worth noting that no one else is able to use Super Sea Snails to modify clothing. Spyke has no engineering qualifications but investigations reveal that he was quite an inquisitive child and discovered his technique by accident, which was later perfected in his teens.

Spyke also has ties to Captain Cuttlefish, a veteran of the Great Turf Wars. It is unclear how they met, but Spyke has some knowledge of the Octarians’ attempt at taking and keeping the Great Zapfish as he referred to Agent 3 as a ‘veteran’ after DJ Octavio was incarcerated.

After the the end of every round of a Turf War match, Spyke or one of his friends can be seen checking the arena for signs of discarded equipment. We assumed that he was going to sell the items off, but he actually delivers the lost items to the owners’ mailboxes.

Spyke DOES have a dark side, however. He is very hostile towards those sympathetic to snails, and considers them to be narrow-minded at best and genocidal at worst, as his species can only eat snails (therefore, they must want Urchinites to starve). Though he has no crime record, there are often rumors that he’s responsible for the massive amounts of garbage that shows up at the homes of pro-snail activists.