Exharks #6 - Saliloquies

The Sky Shark had been parked a few miles away from yet another city, hovering over a blue grassland dotted with purple and yellow leafed shrubs and sparse clumps of trees. To the east, past the sharp divide of another World Shard border, a city made of large gray domes, lined with elaborate patterns of windows, served as their current sojourn settlement.

Exharks #5 - Drifters

 

Dogoro brought the Sky Shark to a halt about five hundred miles away from where Sustra was held captive. He could feel her now, sense her on the very edges of his mystical detection. Dogoro wasn’t tired, exactly, even after a several day binge of piloting the ship, but he still wished to gather his energies and make sure he was in top form. Meanwhile, they were still banking on finding some city where they could exchange Bobbi’s gems for credits or cash, and see if the Drifter Network was active out here. Fortunately, the Shard they were currently in, a large region of woods broken up by spots of farmland, looked familiar to Dogoro. He and Sustra had passed through it before taking the Drifter assignment to battle the very vampire they were hunting.

Exharks #4 - Ex-Positions

“Jeez, so he not only made his video game avatar a character, he made his own pennames into characters to do more stupid little adventures with? Jeez, what kinda cringe narco dweeb is this guy?”

Bobbi, Miner and Crafter Extraordinaire, was sitting on the edge of the bed, rolling her eyes after hearing Sharkerbob’s story of their quite similar origins. Sharkerbob came over with two bottles of water, handing her one as he sat down on the bed next to her. It was the only refreshment he could provide, and even the bottles had to come from Bobbi’s own inventory. For that matter, the bed was the only furniture to sit on.

He gave her a flat look. “We might not be him, but we’re what he’d be in our circumstances, and he’s what we’d be in his. So lay off him a little, won’t ya?”

Exharks #3 - Hat Tricks

He flew in a straight line from Brixity for an hour, heading Northwest, approximate to the sun’s path, carefully avoiding the three towns he spotted. He didn’t get close enough to see the details, but none of them had the same reddish hue to the buildings, so he had to wonder if the largely brick construction was unique to Brixity, and what the cultural or economic factors were to cause that.

Exharks #2 - Unequivalent Exchange

When Old Jaim had mentioned he’d been spotted a few days ago by “sentries”, Sharkerbob could have guessed they’d been spying on him the entire time since. He’d probably had a few tails following him or keeping track from a distance as soon as he entered the city. So he wasn’t too surprised to see two of the dark-skinned humans standing where he’d initially dropped down from his base. What did mildly surprise him was the fact they were dressed in somewhat outlandish costumes, distinct from the rest of the civilians.

Exharks #1 - New Horizons

Author’s Note: Exharks directly follows the short story Eprologue, which itself is a follow-up to the short story Imaginator.

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The dawn saw Sharkerbob leaning against the metal rail that surrounded the garden balcony off the stern of his hovering base. He stared down into the valley below, wondering if this would be the day he’d finally work up the nerve to actually leave his vessel. One would think three months of complete isolation would have made him eager to run towards civilization at the first opportunity, but when the moment of truth came, he’d found himself freezing up at the thought.