"Kiku… This is how we lay the nets. Just like this," the man stated, moving to lay the large sheets of weaved rope along the beach before him.
Kiku wasn't listening, his eyes focused on the wonders of the sea before him. It was all so interesting! Crabs and little fish and corals and anemones all lived in harmony under the waves. It looked so much more peaceful than the land.
"Kiku, are you paying attention to me?" The gruff voice commanded, and the boy looked up, face wide with surprise.
"Uhh…"
"It is important you learn this, Kiku… it will be your duty to do this one day."
"Okay…" The small boy nodded, his face uncertain.
"What's wrong?" The older of the two asked.
"Oto-san… Why do we set the nets out like this every year? Why trap the sea creatures when they look so much like us?"
A sad smile graced the lips of the father, before he frowned deeply, eyes set in a rage.
"My son… It is a matter of revenge."
"Kiku-nii, are you awake yet? We need to set the nets out today…" Came a voice through the door of Kiku's room. Opening his eyes from where he had had them closed, leaning on the windowsill, the young man looked to the other end of his room, crossing it and opening the door to reveal his sister Mei-Mei.
"Ah, you heard me," she smiled sweetly. "Come on, let's get Li and go already." Kiku nodded, and took his younger sibling downstairs, where the youngest of his brothers was leaning against the counter of the kitchen, looking totally indifferent.
"Hey, Kiku, let's like, go now, okay?" The pre-teen stated without a greeting, moving towards the door before Kiku had a chance to say anything.
"Okay, we're coming, right, Kiku?" Mei grinned, pulling Kiku along with them.
"Ah, yes, of course…" He confirmed, to which the younger two grinned wider, yelling back into the house.
"Yao! We're going now!"
"Okay, fine! Just be back by sunset, or I'll send Kasem out after you!" Their eldest brother shouted back, as the three youths headed out into the light of the day.
"Kasem? What's he gonna do, attack us with smiles?" Li snorted cynically, walking down towards the beach with his siblings. "Anyway, let's like, get these nets down and then be out of here. Everyone else in town gets nuts around this time of year anyway."
A few kilometres out to sea, an entirely different family began their day, nestled beneath the rough ocean. Light from the surface seeped down to a system of caves, built into the coral, which a group of intelligent sea creatures called home. Merpeople were more than just a myth; they lived and breathed, existed in the flesh, and had been at war with the people of the nearby land for over a generation. Nobody knew how it had started. Had it been that the sirens had taken one too many humans for prey? Had the humans begun to exterminate the creatures they saw as a threat? It no longer mattered. All that anybody, land or sea dwelling, could care about now was that their side won the war. At least, this was the mentality of the female swimming through the undersea complex, searching for her sons.
"Herakles? Loukas?"
"Good morning mama," greeted Herakles, the older of the two, emerging from where he had been napping against a rock.
"Is everything alright?" Asked the younger, Loukas, entering the coral with a fish in his hands, freshly killed. Helene, the mother of the two, sighed in relief.
"I just wanted to be sure that the two of you weren't planning to go near any beaches anytime in the next week," she explained.
"No, I wasn't… Why?" Loukas replied, looking to his brother to back him up. Herakles merely nodded.
"The humans have set nets out to trap us again. It looks like they intend to destroy our numbers… We must stay away from the beach until they give up with their strategy. Then we counter-attack," she detailed. "Can you manage that?" The two mermen nodded.
"Good…" She smiled. "Now… if anything happens, come and see me. I'll be hunting the other side of the reef."
Herakles waved after her as she left.
"Bye mama…"
Unknown to Herakles, the masked eyes of his rival watched him from the seaweed.
'Whenever did Mei get so tall?' Kiku wondered in his head, watching his sister and brother set out the large, gaping nets along the seafront. The girl, roughly 13, with long brown hair and shining dark eyes, held up the end of the net with ease, while Li pinned it to the beach with large wooden stakes, his darker eyes betraying no emotion. Just like Kiku's own. Just like their father's…
"Hey, Kiku, we like, need more stakes over here," Li complained, causing the older sibling to be spurred from his thoughts, heading towards his siblings with the bag of stakes.
"Thank you nii-san," Mei smiled, while Li only nodded, picking up the stakes and getting back to work.
"They'll like, be in for it this year…" He mused, and Kiku's eyes widened. That was exactly what their father would have said!
Kiku wasn't even sure whether he agreed with this yearly 'cull'. In his opinion, the Merpeople only attacked humans because humans attacked them. He had seen how peaceful and kind the sea could be. He believed that it was humans who were destroying that. But his father had never agreed. And now the same warped ideas that everyone else followed were imprinted on his siblings.
"Hey, like, how about this?" Li asked, standing up and looking over the progress they had made.
"It looks great!" Mei assured "We'll be safe again this year…"
'Safe?' Kiku thought, 'why would she think that we need the nets just to be safe?'
"Hey!" Came a voice from the head of the beach, and Kiku looked around to see his cousin Yong Soo heading towards them, with what looked like a bear trap in his arms. Kiku sighed: the 17 year old could be eccentric sometimes.
"Like, what do you have there?" Li asked, which set Yong Soo off into a torrent of speaking.
"Well, me and Kyung Soo were over at the edge of town, and we saw a hunter with these trap like things, and I thought that they would be a perfect way of keeping us safe! If, like, the Merpeople miss the nets," he explained, and was about to speak again before Mei spoke up.
"That's cruel! You can't do that!" She exclaimed, but the teen wasn't listening, instead wading into the water, setting the trap in the deeper water, up to about his waist.
"Yong Soo! Maiming a creature does not make you a hero! I know we have to cull these things, but we should be humane!" Mei protested.
"Nah, it'll be fine… Right, Kiku?" Yong Soo turned to the oldest for support.
"Yeah, like, Kiku, tell her," Li seconded.
"…I agree with Mei," Kiku answered, making the two boys' mouths drop, and Mei's smile light up.
"Whatever. Only because she's your favourite," Yong Soo dismissed. "Anyway, I'm going to get more of those traps, so see ya around!" He exclaimed, running off back up the beach.
"Like, bye," Li called after him.
"As for us…" Kiku turned to his siblings, "we should return home. It's beginning to get a little dark; I didn't notice we'd been out all day."
"Nah, I'm going to like, stay and help Yong Soo with his trap-setting," Li replied, and Mei didn't seem to like that answer.
"Yao-ge is going to give you hell," she frowned.
"Let him. I'd like to see what he would do." He shrugged.
"You're not putting out any more traps," Kiku decided, not wanting such a cruel method to be used. "The two of you need to clear up Yong Soo's mess and come home." And with that, he took Mei and left.
Herakles swam further away from the coral, heading towards the dolphins he saw in the distance, certain that they were his friends. Before he could reach them though, the creatures took flight, disappearing from the scene as fast as they could. Herakles was confused; why would they flee like that? Something must have scared them.
"Hehehe… Hey, Jerkules! Hope you don't mind that I frightened off your pets," came a voice from the rocks nearby, and Herakles turned around to see Sadik, his greatest rival, relaxing against the formation, sneering at the other.
"They're not pets, Sadik… they're my friends," Herakles replied, defiant.
"Yeah, right. Only weak little merlings do things like count dumb sea creatures as their friends and obey every single word their precious mama tells 'em," Sadik retorted.
"Shut up…" Herakles growled lowly, "you don't even know what you're talking about…Jerk."
"Oh yeah?" Sadik snarled, "well, real mermen take risks! For example, they ain't afraid to swim close to the shoreline, even when the humans have nets out!"
"Mermen who swim close to the shore end up dead," Herakles replied, his face stony.
"Too bad," Sadik shrugged. "I guess yer content to just stay home and listen to mama. How lame, Herakles…"
He swam a little away from Herakles before speaking again. "I was going to make a wager with you, but if you're this lame, then I really shouldn't bother, I suppose."
"What kind of wager would a jerk like you make anyway?" Herakles asked, suspicious.
"Well, I was by the shore earlier, and I just so happened to notice yer brother's dagger lying in the sediment…" Sadik started.
"You stole it!" Herakles accused.
"I didn't take anything!" Sadik placed his hands up in defence. "I swear, I just found tha thing! Although… I do have it now…" He took the tool out from the bag he had been holding it in.
"Give it back. Now," Herakles threatened.
"Heh… Here's my wager, brat. Ya want it, ya gotta get me first," Sadik laughed, swimming off as fast as he could.
"Come back here!" Herakles yelled after him, giving chase.
"Hey, like, Kasem, this is completely out of order. Seriously, like, put me down already," Li complained, being carried back through the threshold of the house.
"Too bad, you should have just come home when you were told," the young man with the omnipresent smile chucked, placing Li down in the dining room, where Mei looked over at him with a smirk on her face.
"Welcome back Li."
"Aiyah, you should have been home ages ago! I told you to be back by sunset!" Yao scolded, dishing food out for the siblings.
"Yong Soo didn't get back by sunset…" Li complained.
"Oh, he did. I made sure he did," Yong Soo's twin ominously declared from his place in the doorway.
"Ow! Yao! Hue hit me with her paddle again!" Yong Soo shouted from upstairs. "This is turning into the worst day ever! Why does everyone want to beat me up?"
"Jerk…" 16-year old Hue complained, walking into the room from where she had been beating Yong Soo up.
In the kitchen, Kiku, as the second eldest sibling, was already washing up the utensils he and Yao had used to make the dinner, the two men having eaten earlier. Yao was 21 and split his time between looking after his younger siblings, teaching other people in the town to cook, and babysitting other people's children. Kiku, at 19, was already his second in command, and the one everyone turned to when Yao wasn't around. His decisions were always final though, and it was impossible to try to ask Kiku to overturn anything Yao had decreed.
As he moved to place the pans away within the cupboard of the modest kitchen space, Kiku's ears picked up on shouting from upstairs, and seconds later, Kasem entered the kitchen, his face looking slightly pale.
"Kiku… Did Yong Soo really try to catch the Merpeople with bear traps?" He asked.
"He wanted to… But I told him to give up on that plan," the older stated, and Kasem seemed to relax a little at this.
"Good… I mean… I know we need them dead, but that doesn't mean we have to be cruel about it," he discussed, returning to his usual smiley self as he progressed through his sentence.
"Kiku!" Yao called from the dining room at that point, and Kasem slipped away as Kiku returned to his older brother.
"Kiku, it's time to go," Yao told him once he reached him, "you know what you need to do."
Kiku nodded mutely, taking one of the daggers the family owned, and heading towards the door. He always hated this time of year, because he was expected to take life. As years went by, people were becoming more and more nonchalant about it, and he hated that too. He had never actually killed before, due to the zealous nature of his neighbours, but he had to be prepared to. And so, Kiku headed into the night.
Herakles swam faster and faster through the ocean, trying his hardest to catch up to Sadik. His rival was constantly in his vision, and he seemed to be gaining on him. As he caught up to the other though, he failed to notice how close he was getting to the shore nearby. Sadik sneered as he got ever closer, leading Herakles right into the danger zone, where the humans had set up various traps and nets. Sadik avoided them all with ease, having already taken the time to watch a lot of the more sophisticated traps being set up, and being too smart to just fall into the cruder ones. Herakles on the other hand, had no idea of what was waiting for him, and unknowingly found his way right into danger. As he swam, he hit against a wire so thin that it was practically invisible, floating in the water. The wire broke, triggering a pulley which fired an arrow towards the merman. Herakles heard the sound of the arrow firing, and swerved away from the danger, but this action caused him to brush against the seabed, triggering another of the traps laid out for him. Herakles winced as the bear trap sliced at the skin on his arm, causing blood to diffuse from the wound and out into the sea in a wisp of red. Wincing at the seawater irritating the gash and trying to remove the device before it could do more damage, Herakles floundered, one of his tail fins getting caught in netting laid out nearby. Herakles eventually managed to get his arm free but by this point, he was completely snared in the net, and the more he struggled, the more the rope tangled into his tail, cutting into the flesh. Eventually, Herakles stopped trying to escape, and lay exhausted in the water as the tide began to flow out around him. Over the other side of the area, Sadik swam home, with guilt in his heart, believing that he had gone too far.