Dark Life

[Knight]

When it all began, no one expected things to happen like this. Not that things have been bad, not really. We have it a hell of a lot better than the Topsiders do. They're crammed whole families into rooms. Each person gets hundred of acres here. Riches up there are measured in the amount of space that you have. Down here, in the Dark Life, everyone has elbow room. Their sun burns skin. Walk outside for five minutes and you can get third degree burns without the protection of the ozone layer. And we live in the ocean, far away from that harsh light. They live in skyscrapers that truly do stretch for the heavens. We inhabit the sea, where the east coast used to lay. They say that just behind the dropoff, you can still find the Statue of Liberty. But no one who doesn't have the Dark Gift of sonar can explore that place safely. And even then, it's dangerous.

But we make do. We farm plankton and kelp and we grow fish, keeping them in place with bubble fences. Every structure ebbs and flows with the tide, moving with the sea. We travel by means of subs and 'mantaboards,' which move like manta rays and carry us on their backs. And the Liquigen that we inhale lets us swim underwater without worrying about silly little things like oxygen.

Life down here might be dangerous, but at least it's a life. Unlike life Above. And though our numbers are small (maybe a hundred pioneers at the most), we are happy down here. The ocean is our home. We may be different from the people Above, but here, we are happy.

It was weird to think that this was her home again. She had been born here, had lived here for the first few years of her life. But then research on Dark Gifts had come to light and her parents, fearing for the health of her children, had fled Topside. Sumana had endured years of life there, never entirely at home, always knowing that she was missing something. She knew something was different about her. She had something no one else did. It took her years to realize what it was, but once Sumi figured it out, she knew what she was going to do the day that she turned eighteen. Get her land back.

All she had had to do was promise to pay the government back over a period of five years, during which she would donate something like half of her profit earned from farming fish, plankton, and kelp. To be quite honest she hadn't paid that much attention to the paperwork she'd been signing. She had just been ready to cry because she was finally leaving the cramped spaces of Above behind and was returning to her home. There, she wouldn't be judged for her . . . strange abilities. She wouldn't have to hide anymore. Finally, she could be herself, complete with her ability to sense, in the manner of a shark, the electrical impulses that every living thing generated. She could locate things over miles of space in this manner. Or, she'd been able to anyways.

But living Above had frequently overwhelmed her power, leaving Sumana with debilitating headaches and a desperate need for space. Space that her family, having risked and lost it all to live Below, didn't have. So Sumana had spent years waiting for the chance for freedom, and now that she hadn't, she wasn't going to let go of it any time soon.

And this house, shaped almost like a jellyfish, reminded her of her childhood home. Of course, all houses were built like this, with structures that moved with the ocean and retained the blessed air that they needed to breathe. But it was furnished like her home as well, with tanks upon tanks that were filled with fish. Some were bright and flashy, but most were local fish, that had been raised by and tended to by Sumana in the past few months since her arrival.

The fish were all fed, however, and Sumana examined them all carefully, making sure they were all all right. Once she had been satisfied of that, the black haired girl nodded and stretched lazily, wandering towards the equipment room. She had learned recently that she did, in fact, have a neighbor. And that meant she wanted to meet him. Sumana hadn't had any human interaction since her arrival, and she was starting to grow rather lonely. Sure, exploring had been great at first. But now it was starting to get rather . . . lonely. So Sumana was going to talk to her neighbor. Luckily, only a few acres separated herself and her closest neighbor, so Sumana grabbed the Liquigen and her mantaboard. A deep inhalation filled her lungs with the liquid that would allow her to breathe and would protect her from being crushed by the pressure of the depths she would be traveling at, and the board, which looked like a manta ray, twitched beneath her hands as she awakened it.

Exiting her house, Sumi kicked it into gear and the board almost leaped forward, moving smoothly through the water like the creature for which it was named. She handled it easily as it surged through the water, eating away at the distance, and before too long, she could sense another human in the distance. The impulses he was sending out were far larger than that of any fish in the area, so it was safe to assume that it was a person. Directing her board towards it, Sumana found herself arriving at her neighbor's house before too long.

She slowed to a stop and began to look around curiously. Maybe she could learn something about her neighbor from the outside of their house? But nothing seemed too distinctive just yet.

Sumana -- observant, curious, flashy temper, tends to care little for personal safety, energetic, loves to explore new places, fearless

[Matsi]

Grim was born and raised in the depths. He was one of three children, and the middle aged. His older brother, Siegfried, now worked with the government, trying to keep peace and balance between the surface world and the depth world. His sister, Alicia, was either back in the labs, or off with that surface-world man that he didn't like. Truthfully, he wasn't even sure if his two siblings were still alive. Not that there was anything he could do about it anyways, so it didn't really bother him in the least.

He had inherited this land, and his job. A job that his father carved out with pride. Sure, he was still a "farmer" in a sense, but he farmed much different things than the common people of the underwater world. The dangerous and precious were under his care. The creatures that were used so often, but were hard to harvest. Tiger sharks, Dog fish, and great whites, who's teeth and meat were used and were the expensive products. Man-of-War jellyfish and Blue Ringed Octopus, who were used for antibiotics and antivenom in the case of emergencies. These were his main creatures, though of course, he did have a few common creatures. His favorites were the Pajama fish, who were simple, yet eyecatching and just plain silly looking.

His "job" didn't get much business, but when it did, it payed well, and that was just enough to get him by. He could get by, so why worry otherwise.

His ability was a slight bit different than some of the others, but it helped him keep control of those feisty sharks. Like both of his parents, he could morph his form. Yet, only his mother's morphing would actually help in this water world, for she morphed into a large, sandy colored shark. His father, and his brother for that matter, both were cursed to morph into a surface animal called a lion. A species that was long gone from the heat and sun.

But he was different. He was... Special to say the least. He was a nice little combination of the two.

Grim morphed his form into the lion-fish form that he held and flexed the gills just behind the fin-mane. It was harder to breath air in this form, but with his lungs still there, it was doable, but he didn't hesitate to push himself out into the water world that he called home. It was, afterall, time to check and taunt the Tiger sharks.

His front paws, which were part of the lion-morphing that he inherited from his father, paddled slightly for a moment, then stopped, and his tail curved forward under his body to stop his motion as he looked at the shadowy form approching. Who was this??? He wasn't used to seeing anyone, really. He had never been that social. It wasn't that he didn't like people... People just didn't typically like him.