A fishing boat pulled in to a harbor that was left in ruins. It had no wood and the ground was cracked and in disrepair. Fish, who decided to keep her name simple, stepped out of the boat.
"Hey Terra, I have finally found a good spot for Haseo to collect water. Has he finally stabilized his new car yet?"
Terra, the last of the 5 elemental lords, was wiping sand onto a 2-hand sword. "If by stabilize you mean fill out his vehicle roster, then he has developed the most stable foundation."
Fish walked past Terra and into the small hut they were living out of. See saw Haseo sleeping on the single bed and jumped onto him.
"Hey bud, you get enough model cars today? I hope you got some aquatic MechaCars to help you out in the job I got you."
Haseo blow air out of his mouth. Opening his eyes for a split second, he yawned. "Hmm, super parking lot too big. I need to spend another day or two to claim all the MechCars. I will have them all."
Fish rubbed Haseo's chest. "Good boy, if you can move it you can take it! Though I am surprised you could take all the MechCars in under a month."
Haseo sat up, as he couldn't fall asleep despite trying. "It is just a weird parking puzzle. So I just kept walking around, whenever I found a MechCar that could leave the parking space I just drove it down and walked back up."
Fish also sat up and pulled out a folder, she seemed she had something to say but was letting Haseo speak a little more.
"The top floor was the breaking point of the puzzle. The parking garage was only tall enough to make someone not to want to jump down in a MechaCar. But I like taking short cuts when I drive, so I just had the MechCar go into Mech mode and sorta just jumped down. Sure it gave a warning but no permanent damage was done."
Fish slid the folder in front of Haseo. "Well I hear most people have rules during it as it is an advance driving test. As a Pet Citizen, it is cute that a dog is driving, what are rules?"
Haseo looked down at the folder. Reading the first page caused his head to spin. "Wow you plan ahead. What's this over 200 key items thing right here? Hmm, I see there is a number of years for the timeline of this.. and I gotta say you are good at time management."
Fish smiled and flipped a few pages over. "Okay since you are being hunted down still, I got you these identification paperwork. As a citizen you should be able to apply the paperwork and it turns you into a witness protection type of situation or so says the description."
The piece of paper flew into the air and then to dust and collected into a small ball. With a poof, it exploded like fireworks.
Haseo flipped through his system. "It seems this is only good for a year. But the job you got for me as a trainee lifeguard is set to 3 years?"
Fish looked over the work contract and shrug her shoulders. "You will be leaving around the 10th month to work on Terra's thing. Her gift for you is more of 'here, use this whenever.' Once you go, you will understand."
…
Haseo had gotten everything ready, going under a new name, he arrived at the water he would be working out of.
"Alright I should have the space right, but what about the time and dimension right?" Messing with his system, he found a gps function. Scanning the code on the paper, Haseo had to climb into his MechCar with a boat function. Many times he crossed the same area but from a different direction. After many back trackings, a building appeared in the spot he first started at.
It was a small shack with a life guard tower on top. Climbing into it, he found it also functioned as a lighthouse. Pressing a button, the light came down and started making rounds. However the light suddenly exploded and went dark.
"Wow that was fun, I guess I should check for spare bulbs. Am I supposed to be fixing this place up to advance? Everything else has been fast but I can't guess what I need to do here."
Looking through the shack, he found nothing of use. "I guess in theory I could scoop up all the pieces of the light bulb. As a Metal Elemental, my ArkShip Cells should be able to produce something on the same level as what is collected."
After carefully collecting the entire broken light bulb, Haseo payed attention to the quality of the ArcShip Cells. Just because every cell was now a small dimension in itself, it didn't mean that was always a good thing.
Every individual ArkShip Cell started off with 10,000 people living inside. These were the bare minimum required to cover the 3 shifts of the day.
3,333 people in either Day, Evening, and night shift. While the last person is a stand in for the leader. It could be either the born leader, someone who comes along later when it is abandoned and they claim the leadership, lastly it is the clone of the current owner of the ArkShip Cell who only comes and checks on things.
"This thing is pretty old. Well, no that isn't right all of the cells in this place isn't right. They seem to be fluctuating between brand new and death."
Staring at one of the cells,which was a grain of sand he found in the corner of the shack, he found a 5 star resort on a beautiful beach island.
There are thousands and thousands of tourist. They were happy and on vacation. Then when it hit night, a tsunami came in. Many things were taken out by the waves and many lives lost to drowning.
The water came from outside of the cell. Truth be told, Haseo notice many pulses of water going through everything.
Feeling sick to his stomach, he tried getting to his MechCar. But his legs gave out and he fell to the ground.
The feeling of knees slamming into the wooden creaky boards never occurred to Haseo. What happened was a splash, not of falling through but in.
It was suddenly loud and crowded with people outside of the shack. Haseo tried to go look out of the window, but it was tiring to move.
"Water? Is this place under the water?! But I can breath right now. I also really can't see it as water. It is as clear as air, can I swim up?"
After swinging around his arms and legs, Haseo would himself floating in the air. He checked out the window and noticed all the beings present had water theme races and clothing. "The swimsuits are because of the beach resort, but having a towel being your floating cape makes it obvious this is underwater."
The door to the shack opened up. "Oh you are here. Fish told me you would have trouble finding this place, seeing as you were just some poor kid borned in a thought realm. But it seems maybe you understand higher travel better than her."
Haseo cleared his throat. "I only found this place thanks to Fish giving me an address. The rest was just following the system directions. Oh, I should introduce myself. My name is Mike O- are you shitting me?!"
The man broke out into laughter. "Captain sure still loves playing tricks on people. She always loved to force us to be on high alert, a serious mission where our lives on the line. One mess up and half the crew would be gone."
Looking down at his peg leg, the man bitterly chuckled. "Being hunted down by waves of ships and just as you have drawn your religious symbol in the air, boom. All the people hunting you explode into water."
"She seems to.. not understand what lines are? I mean Jesus dude, that sounds horrifying and no laughing matter. How was it a joke of prank? She sent you to your deaths and chose to step in after most of you were either dead or maimed?"
The man cleared his throat. "Ah, that is because she be standing behind you." Haseo quickly spun his head around. "Ha, made you look! Don't be so uptight, I was born with this peg leg."
"…"
Checking his fingernails the man stepped his peg leg on the ground at different patterns. He was trying to play songs with just the step of his peg leg.
Haseo focused in, wondering with song he was trying for. He thought he had it at times, but just as soon as he was certain, the cadence changed.
"Oh, a pebble be stuck on my peg leg. Let me kick it off, ah much better." Haseo slammed the man's face into a wall.