In the spaceship, the crew gathers in the mess hall for a new exciting and profitable hunt in the moon before heading somewhere else in the future.
Yu: 13, you know you made history here, right? The chaos you created is like a holiday now!
“That’s my brother! A man of culture!” Dokie announces, with toy guns shooting confetti.
Yu: Vi! Permission to turn THIS MACHINE into a vacuum cleaner!
“Nope,” Sylvia chuckles.
Yu: …
“They worship me through chaos and ordeal!” K-13 loudly declares as he hits his chest like a gorilla and looks at the window.
°That’s good to know!°
“It’s a beautiful place, but this ‘lovey-dovey’, every day? No, thank you,” Sylvia lets out and continues, “Kay is a blessing to the locals!”
“CURSES!” K-13 shouts.
°Thank you, you’ll blessing to me°
The lights dim in the room, and the holographic faces in the center shuffle with their bounty fixed above their head like shopping online. Dying from boredom, the crew decide to pick their favorite to show and tell to the group since there’s nothing better they can do at the moment. With the money they can earn from bounty hunting alone, it’s enough for them to retire on a planet of their choosing and if they run into problems, Yu can hack to almost anything and enjoy the infinite money glitch.
Yu: I’ll go first, missing tech, but multiple hunters are currently looking for the thief.
“This one sounds fun, missing octopus pet,” Dokie suggests while checking on the octopus’s hologram.
Yu: You know how hard to look for pets? An octopus who can camouflage? Like, and the last known location is in the market. You know the tracker is destroyed, and you also know that the octopus did it.
Dokie looks at Yu and explains, “You see, octopi are smart and cute and we can see a lot of them if we take this job!”
“You just want to play with octopi, don’t you?” Sylvia smiles and scrolls, looking for a perfect prey, “Oh, who did you pick, Kay?”
“Monkey,” K-13 answers for the first time with deep and dignified voice.
°Dead or alive: The gluttonous man-eating monkey°
“Monke,” Dokie lets out with a serious face, trying not to laugh.
“Monkey?” Sylvia laughs.
Yu: …
“Oh, what about hunting ‘Slark?’ Lowest level of the city. The rewards will last us for a year,” Sylvia suggests, reading at the description, “And newly posted. By ahh… A rich, entitled kid.”
“Vi, you can’t assume people on the web like that,” Dokie sounds his opinion.
“Listen. The description shows how this little fucker is a piece of shit. He said, ‘I was playing my AR games and ruined my chicken dinner. I don’t like his kind.’ That’s the first sentence, but the reward money is 50,000 Units.”
“Offering for the God of Blood!” K-13 loudly declares.
°That’s not bad°
Yu: Not bad, plus a few bounties related to Slark, adding up to 150,000 Units.
“Oh mama! That’s fucking amazing! But you guys not telling us about that ‘Slark guy,” Dokie lets out his concern.
Yu: He’s a Waquala who breeds many types of sharks. The sharks are very obedient to Slark, and they can identify him from the pheromones he releases. Be advice that the sharks can equip weaponry or device that can make our lives difficult.
“Slave master!” K-13 shouts.
°I wanna pet them!°
Yu: Yup, he basically leading an army of deadly sea dogs!
“Frenzy!” K-13 cries.
°Sea dogs?°
“A lot of planning needed to take this guy out,” Dokie let out and read, “Doesn’t like the Government, extortion, killed an official, possible trafficking, terrorism, etc.”
“A very dangerous person,” Sylvia comments.
“A perfect fucking knight!” K-13 declares.
°Better find a fast way to take the guy out!°
Yu: No, 13. A real scum.
While Yu investigates Slark’s whereabouts and looks for information that could help them capture him, the rest formulates a plan to capture their him, perhaps a trap he’ll never see coming or a direct confrontation with his pet sharks? A painless assassination or a long hunting game where they tire and make him surrender? A quick dynamite fishing or a relaxing therapeutic shock with a deadly kick? What it takes to hunt a “Sea Master” in his own territory?
The lower level they visit, the darker it gets, with fewer dry sides, like they’re traveling to the abyss where there’s no escape. Even with the feeling of the impending death, there’s beauty from the distant building with small lights like staring at the midnight stars—a familiar feeling of the vacuum of space. Coming from all directions, everyone gathers in the center like a river of Waqualas to shop for daily necessity and uses sign language to communicate while noises came from the marine life and shop advertising their products echoes the 7th level like music unique to the to the surface dwellers.
The ancestors made sure the future generation stay true to their whole being by promoting less light and technology but promotes free higher education and mandatory history class to learn from the past and not repeat it. With the power of AI, unnecessary noise gets canceled, temperature and pressure are maintained—a paradise to all aquatic life.
Slark with grocery on both hands, swimming back home to feed his pet sharks. With no one around, the crew slowly approach him with weaponry that shoots nets to capture him alive. Little thing did they know, two great white sharks are a swim not far away to protect their master with body attachments for offence and defence.
Yu: Oh shit! Two sharks coming your way!
“Okie dokie! Thanks Love,” Dokie responded.
“BAAABYYYY! SHARK DOO, DOO, DOO!” K-13 loudly starts singing.
°What the fuck! I’m done with that song! Why body!? Why!°
“Ha, ha, ha, ha. Who showed that video to Kay?” Sylvia asks the crew.
Yu: I blame the internet!
“I could have taken you three down the moment I noticed you guys’ annoying presence!” Slark announces as he pulls two daggers out and lets out, “This place’s empty… No one’s around to bother us!”
“A MAN OF CULTURE!” K-13 shouts, charging with a dagger and net capsules around his waist.
°This is great! No one to worry like that market full of people!°
When Sylvia and Dokie try to help K-13, the sharks charge with their mouth open, ready to devour their prey whole. Sylvia evades the first shark through instinct while Dokie grabs the second shark but is propelled by the shark shield generator.
Yu: I hate that there’s only a few electronics I can connect in the area and not know about the sharks protecting our target. I couldn’t help more than this…
“I knew you’ll be worried as soon as I got hit!” Dokie happily declares.
Yu: Shut up! Promise that you’re not a dead weight.
Sylvia throws a capsule and immediately releases a net to capture the shark but blades come out of the attachments, destroying the net that’s supposed to catch it.
K-13 looks at Slark swimming around him like an Apex predator while humming like he already knows the outcome, like the previous bounty hunter’s fate after they took the job to take him out. With an arm crossed stance while charging K-13, Slark can easily land a fatal attack with his speed, but K-13 parried his attack and punch his stomach.
“SEA KING! I am Poison! Your End!” K-13 declares, using sign language and activating the capsule to completely capture Slark and finish the job.
°Easy!°
With Slark’s conditions, the two great white sharks realized their situation and immediately escape. The first shark grabs their master, Slark, while the second shark grabs the grocery.
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“WHY DON’T YOU HIT ME IN THE FACE ONE! ONE! MORE! TIME! PAPA SHARK! I’LL FIND YOU!” K-13 angrily shouts as soon as he gets back on his feet after the first and second sharks bodied him left and right to rescue their master. (Only the crew can hear him)
°What the fuck! They’re smart°
“You guys saw the second shark? It’s so cute grabbing the grocery,” Dokie lets out.
Yu: What’s wrong with you? It’s the enemy!
“Calm down now. Dokie is Dokie and the enemy will be harder to catch after this!” Sylvia announces with a faint smile, like she’s enjoying their situation.
“I! AM! VENGENCE!” K-13 shouts as he swims next to Sylvia and Dokie.
°She’s not wrong… Slark will be prepared!°
“I would assume that we’ll be dealing with more sharks,” Sylvia lets out.
“Don’t worry guys, I once called by my friends the ‘Sea Princess.’ Imagine swimming with many types of fishes, and feeding them shrimp meat! They’ll swim around you like you’re a princess! I feel one like that one movie!” Dokie declares.
Yu: …
Back in the ship, the crew stay in their quarters to rest or relax before they go back underwater to hunt Slark and survive a frenzy. Thanks to Slark’s dedication and hard work, the sharks develop a sense of kinship and made him a part of the school—their family.
Yu: Playing “Lofi.”
“Relaxing, not bad. Reminds me of home,” Sylvia lets out as she sharpens her spear.
Yu: What do you think about this hunt?
“Well, this time… It’s different,” Sylvia stops sharpening her spear and looks at Yu, “We have someone we can trust!”
Yu: It feels… Different and weird, in a good way!
“That’s good,” Sylvia smiles and closes her eyes.
When everyone clears their head and is ready to get back hunting after the quick break, they gather in the galley to find a way to capture Slark alive to receive the maximum rewards. The only thing that made this job difficult is the sharks that, in this era, developed to be smarter and stronger compare to their ancestors on planet Earth.
“Sleep, it sounds peaceful,” Dokie lets out and continues, “We just replay good memories.”
“Eternal Torture!” K-13 shouts.
°I just meditate. I know it’s crazy knowing me!°
“That’s good,” Sylvia smiles, “Slark should know that we’re coming or at least prepared to face us.”
Yu: I know you want a good hunt! Should be fine as long as you guys play it safe.
“You guys actually doing bounty hunting for fun, huh?” Dokie spoke up what’s in his mind.
“APEX! WE’RE APEX!” K-13 shouts on top of his lungs while hitting his chest with his fists.
°Adventure!°
Yu: Yup! To prove that we’re at the top, top!
“My lovely Goddess of all Machines! Let me worship Yu!” Dokie answers and voice, “Yu don’t need to prove yourself. Deep inside, my cold metallic body knows that by heart!”
Yu: Vi! We need to junk this broken ass machine! Or call a mechanic!
“You have a sharp tongue! I like it!” Sylvia replies and smiles, “You two are perfect!”
“FORCEFUL!” K-13 jumps to celebrate.
°Agreed!°
Yu: You two stop need with this nonsense!
Yu’s holographic body shows changes like blushing and murderous aura, like effect showing her emotion visually and riling K-13 up to dance like a tribal person and raising his spear parallel to the deck. Defeated and humiliated by her friend Sylvia along with K-13, Yu give a deep sigh and smile as she projected all the information she gathered about Slark.
Yu: You guys done? Anyway, this is the real time 3d mapping of the lowest level of the city.
“Baby sharks! Mommy Shark! Daddy Sharks! SHARKS! SEA DOGGO!” K-13 loudly sings and starts pointing at the smallest to the largest sharks.
“That’s a lot of them!” Dokie said with a surprised tone.
“Can we electrocute them?” Sylvia asks.
“ZUES!” K-13 shouts.
°Is it legal?°
Yu: Too much work and expensive; illegal, someone tried it before and failed. I also noticed that they’re equipped with a device that absorbs energy or electricity.
The crew chat for an hour, planning and coming out of new and creative ideas to capture Slark. They don’t stress it so much that they joke in between; K-13 utters complete nonsense, Dokie announcing his love to Yu and Sylvia enjoys the moment while Yu tries her best to keep everything in order. Prepared and ready to go; Sylvia, Dokie and K-13 heads to the lowest level of the city for round two.
The light rarely reached the lowest level, making it a dark and bluish while the silhouette of the sharks swimming around the only building in the area creates a sense of beauty while feeling haunted. With two noticeable whale sharks with four flood lights like limbs that make them look like they’re walking underwater, searching for intruders makes anyone cower in fear. This might be a place of horror for most, but a home for Slark.
“BABY SHARK! FACE ME, YOU COWARD!” K-13 shouts even though it’s only the crew that can hear him.
°Better to show ourselves and take them out as planned°
“I guess we can’t make this mission easy?” Dokie sounds, holding two batons with needles that administer power anesthetic agent to the sharks, “I mean, there’s nothing we can do about and the sharks will eventually notice us.”
“Here they come!” Sylvia announces as soon as the sharks charge towards them.
With sharks coming from all directions, they put them to sleep one by one while K-13 punches their nose and redirecting or disabling them. Slark gets out of the building and starts using sign language after getting close enough to converse with the crew, asking why they’re hunting him, but Sylvia only replies with “Bounty Hunters.”
Slark watches the three struggles and notices K-13 starts charging after they meet eyes even though there’s more shark protecting and swimming around him. What perplexes Slark is that the previous bounty hunters killed a few of his sharks while this group actively incapacitates them. Learning from previous experience, his only mistake that could have caused his head is getting too close to the enemies, prompting him to send more sharks and keeping his distance.
Like the unstoppable force of nature, K-13 learns how to disable the shark by lightly touching the snout and guiding them into a tonic immobility as he sign language “FIGHT ME! COWARD! SENDING DOGS, WILL NOT STOP ME!”
Thanks to Sylvia and Dokie’s efforts to limit the sharks protecting Slark, K-13 can quickly finish the job but when he’s arm reach and can finally fight one on one, a whale sharks comes out of nowhere sending him back to the two.
Yu to the crew: I’m not risking you guys!
“I knew you care and love me!” Dokie announces as he continues to put any shark that comes to sleep.
“Well, we tried. We didn’t want this to happen in the first place,” Sylvia let out and looks at Slark.
Slark smiles thinking he won and making the three an example will keep bounty hunters away but notices Sylvia sign language “You ask for this.” He looks around and notices small drones attached to the sharks’ dorsal fin as the drones releases something strong that mimics the smell of fish blood and chemicals, reactivating the sharks’ primal instincts he never thought possible after the sharks evolved to their liking and domesticated by Waquala.
“My kingdom comes! You are done!” K-13 shouts and sign language for Slark to see and understand.
°I’m sorry…°
Slark did not understand what K-13 is saying and never will.
In the dark, where the only thing you’ll notice are the sharks’ disappearing figure and reappearing to eat another shark with red glowing eyes, not knowing what’s going to happen to them. Slark tries his best to command them, only to put them into confusion and into an uncontrollable frenzy where they try to eat each other even more aggressively.
Slark quickly swims to the closest shark, grabbing its tail while the shark tries its best to take a bite of the whale shark. Without him knowing, a great white shark launched itself to take a champ, but a tiger shark bit on the shark he’s holding and get thrown to the side and watch the carnage right in front of him—A family to a mindless beast eating each other. A nightmare he wants to wake up from.
“PURGE!” K-13 swims happily while redirecting the sharks away from them.
°We need to find the right moment to take Slark away!°
Slark looks at Sylvia with bared teeth and narrowed eyes, blaming her for the chaos that Yu caused while angrily opening and closing he’s mouth like he’s shouting all the profanities in the galaxy and launching himself to take revenge on the increasingly sharks deaths.
“I’m sorry to make your family this way...” Sylvia lets out in sign language.
Like taking candy from a baby, K-13 appears next to Slark and hit him on the side while Dokie their bounty by putting the shark to sleep before reaching the Slark. Sylvia tries to kick Slark but her speed is reduced and didn’t hurt him that much and caught her leg. With rage that cannot be compared fuels his every move, Slark can hold himself fighting with Sylvia and K-13 simultaneously but luck is not on his side and fist size ball drones attached themselves to his body, slowing him down while receiving constant strikes from the two.
“Please stop! I’ll go with you BOUNTY HUNTERS! Please stop this madness... My family... I want. Wish them to survive this insanity,” Slark sign language, begging until a controlled current run through his body coming from the drones Yu controls.
Yu: We don’t have time to listen to his back story! Looks like he’s about to share his story.
Yu releases a frequency to let all sharks to swim away and stop the senseless frenzy.
“Bye bye, good boys and girls... Terrible day to drown,” K-13 calmly lets out.
°To consider them his family...°
“I feel you, brother,” Dokie replies, “Not an Okie Dokie.”
“Better leave this place before the sharks get back!” Sylvia suggests.
“Right,” Dokie answers while K-13 nods.
Yu: Could have done this job way faster.
“Agreed, but where’s the fun on that?” Sylvia lets out and leads the way.
-=- Slark’s past -=-
The lower level is like any other level, with lights to illuminate the citizens’ way, buildings and houses everywhere, Waquala and marine life living in harmony. Clark is just a little boy playing hide and seek with his friends, but the Mayor of the lower levels and friends are visiting the “Life Support Building”.
Life Support Building- Structures in between level that control the pressure, temperature, oxygen and any parameters to keep everyone alive within the city walls.
“Good day Mr. Mayor, Visitors,” the engineer on watch greets everyone and continues, “Pleassse. Don’t touch anything. Please.”
Little did that the engineer on watch knows is that the Mayor and his friends are actively taking drugs during the tour in a form of a childish game of dare. Everything is going well until the engineer needs to go use the restroom, leaving everyone unsupervised. They start fighting after a few minutes over nothing and accidentally destroyed a console and a server, overloading the system and shutting down the entire building and its purpose.
“Clark, why are you so good at playing hide and seek?” His friend asks while the rest looks at him.
“My parents taught me, of course!” Clark happily answers.
“We’ll find you eventually!” His friends declare.
“Right!” Clark said with a bright smile, “Better start counting so we can hide!”
Clark wants his friend to find him since they never found him and decided to hide in his father’s heavy duty explosive transport case. A commonplace that children used to hide, and he wants to surprise his friend whenever he opens the case.
With the tapping sound getting closer, Clark knows his friend is closing in and can’t hold his excitement and when his friend’s about to open the case, the whole level’s pressure suddenly increases to where the heavy duty case where Clark is hiding slowly getting crushed by the immense force and eventually stops where he cannot move or breathe properly.
Not knowing what happened outside, Clark tries his best to get out of the case but when he did, blood, entrails and organs of the dead welcomes him; collapsed buildings and broken houses look like in a war-torn country from Tv and the remaining lights turning off while shadows swiftly appear from every direction.
Clark didn’t know what to do or think as he froze in place looking up while the sharks eats what remains. During this time, he releases something from his body that keeps him alive and when the sharks finally finish eating all the remains; they swim around him and witness the birth of Slark.
-=- Present-=-
Yu: I have information about the latest AI body in the famous AI world!
“The place we tried to avoid?” Sylvia lets out.
Yu: Yup.
“I want to visit that place! My fellow Machine recommended it!” Dokie cheerfully announces.
“MIND FUCK!” K-13 shouts.
°Don’t mind it! I heard everyone can go visit the visual world!°
“Looks like we know where we’re going next!” Sylvia declares with a smile.
No one knows Slark’s history nor the lowest level’s tragedy, but Yu after she investigated everything. She found a clip of the previous mayor blaming the engineer after the accident, stating that the engineer had enough with everyone and killed everyone in the lowest level, then killed himself. One of the Mayor’s friends had a recording of the event just in case, but no one can escape Yu’s grasp. Knowing what happened, Yu made sure the proper authorities were notified and used her ability to lessen Slark’s sentence and made sure someone’s feeding his family.
Fin.