Of Sentience and Predator

A6: The Krakken

"What are we going to tell Vilgax?" Kraab asked, leaning on the side of the ship.

Tetrax shrugged, taking out a small, green crystal. "If you want my option, we should keep tailing them, get an idea of their forms before we try attacking them again," Tetrax said. "Made that mistake before, when we lost SixSix. We can tell Vilgy that he abandoned the mission."

As Tetrax bit into the crystal, Kraab replied, "We don't know if he's dead or not, but saying that will probably be fine."

"Besides, remember that bounty we heard for a cryptid on Earth?" Tetrax started. Kraab nodded, his larger pincer clicking. "When you were checking your systems, I hacked into a cryptid watcher group- Secret Saturdays, or something like that- and the files said that the cryptid we call the Cascareaun Lizard is in this area."

"Really? What does it say?" Kraab questioned.

"According to the files I hacked into, it's called the Kraken to humans. Normally, some drones working for those Saturdays guys would check on it, but they're been dealing with an illegal fishing operation lately, so they aren't able to do it," Tetrax answered. He went over to the ship's computer and pressed something, what could best be described as a webscreen popping up. "Here's the file on said cryptid if you want to read more about it. Still strange to thing that cryptids are just dark magic mixed with an hellish amount of different DNA samples."

Kraab looked at it, quiet. He then asked, "Can you bring up the bounty for the Cascareaun Lizard?" Tetrax nodded, taking another bite of the crystal as he did so. A good few seconds passed before it popped up.

"Any knowledge of it was also requested, but if we can either snag it or pass along with what we hacked from that Saturdays guys," Tetrax said. Kraab looked over the bounty as Tetrax commented, "Why do we call it the Cascareaun Lizard when most of the DNA that makes it up comes from the many different Manzard species?"

"Because the ritual to make it was performed on Cascareau, but the Cascans and Polymera wanted nothing to do with it, so captured it and shipped it off planet," Kraab answered. "Didn't keep them from still making fools of themselves."

"Yea, the Cascans keep on flopping on that front. Like, if you don't want to make fools of yourself, don't try to do anything major! At least admit you need help," Tetrax ranted. Kraab scoffed at his partner's words.

"What do you suggest?" Kraab asked.

Tetrax shrugged before answering, "Knowing Vilgy, he'll probably go after the Omnitrix himself or hire someone like Khyber. I say we take this bounty and deal with him later." He took a bite of the crystal. Kraab nodded.

"Let's contact them, then we go after it," Kraab said. Tetrax nodded.

...

"Are you ok from yesterday, Sister EightEight?" Ben asked, looking at her. Gwen did the same while Kevin just stared into the distance. After hearing of what happened, Dragua had told them to take a different route. It would take longer to get to Sparksville, but apparently someone had looked around for some help and the Dragoon took it. It was a good excuse, anyways. It would give them more practice before reaching Sparksville.

EightEight nodded. She then added, "We will be meeting up with a human who studies and records cryptids. There, the researcher will tell us where to patrol until they can get their priorities sorted out."

"Cryptids? Those things exist?" Ben blinked.

"Wait, so like Bigfoot is real?" Kevin asked.

EightEight looked at Kevin and shrugged. She had no idea what a 'Bigfoot' was. She looked towards Ben and answered, "That is what Dragua told me. I don't know for sure."