She glanced down at her swim suit and sighed, hoping that this one wouldn't be destroyed like the last one. Then again...if this one were destroyed, she'd have more to worry about than just a suit. Not to mention that she'd actually LIKE to see this suit destroyed.
"Of course, then Kasumi would be upset," Nabiki sighed, remembering who gave her the suit.
"At least I'm not bleeding," she muttered to herself.
She swept quickly down to the bottom of the ocean floor and kept her senses peeled for any sign of something approaching her. The trip to the harbor, not a far one, was quickly over and she was quickly climbing up onto the dock.
If anybody had been there, they would have had a tale to tell as Nabiki emerged, rubbery skin, opaque-black eyes, webbed hands and feet and a smile full of sharp teeth. Save for the hello-kitty bathing suit, she would almost have been taken for a monster from the deep, or an alien invader or something.
She found the shark easily enough, the smell tantalizingly filled the air, after all. Cutting it down was a simple affair of a bite for each rope. The same teeth worked just as well on the belly of the shark, though as small as her mouth was it was taking her a good amount of time. It could have been very quick if she were to take it into the water and shift into her other form, but then she could have lost it, and any evidence that it was a man-eater.
This method had some dangers as well, like a normal shark, blood did have a tendency to make her lose contact with what she was doing. Nabiki preferred hot blood and a fresh kill, but this wasn't unappetizing either. So, a number of her bites were aimed more for meat than for getting to the belly, but she did focus on keeping her attention ready for when she did hit the stomach, however, and that was why she heard them coming.
"...so what was I supposed to do? Explain that I knew some nut that was into erotic phone calls?" Hooper was saying. "She drove me nuts. It was great."
Nabiki looked up from her meal, blood covering her mouth, toward the sound and then shortly slipped off the dock and down to the water with only a little scrabbling. She sat under the dock and listened above to what was happening.
"What was that?" Brody asked.
"What was what?" Hooper asked.
"I thought I heard something," Brody said, sweeping a flashlight over the dock.
"You haven't sobered yet," Hooper said dismissively as his feet clacked onto the wooden deck. "That's al...what?"
"Haven't sobered yet?" Brody repeated as he joined Hooper, "What do you call this?"
Hooper, she could tell from the weight of the steps, walked to where she had left the body of the shark and stopped there, kneeling down.
"It looks like something was...eating it," Hooper said examining the dead shark that Nabiki been devouring. "It's torn to pieces."
"There are tracks here," Brody said, and Nabiki saw the flashlight pass over the area where she must have left some wet footprints.
A moment later she saw the flashlight coming down over the edge of the dock and she ducked under water, leaving only a set of ripples about the piling she had been clinging to.
"See anything?" Hooper asked.
"No," Brody said. "Let's get this over with."
Nabiki surfaced to listen again as they cut open the shark, speaking very carefully and quietly as Hooper described what was in the belly, ending with the license plate.
"You still have a hell of fish out there," Hooper said finally. "And maybe something else."
Nabiki slipped under water again, and into her shark form, preparing to head for her rental cottage. She was sixty feet out when she felt it in the distance.
Distress, serious distress, a few minutes of swift swimming away. Maybe ten miles out. She hesitated a moment before pointing in that direction and making the best time she could. There was blood in the water before she was was even a tenth of the distance out.
The shark was well gone by the time she reached the site of the attack and found the boat floating, wrecked in the channel. A second vessel floated quietly into her awareness, but she wasn't finished investigating the first wreck yet. She paused a moment to shift into her hybrid form and looked about the boat, quietly investigating until she found the hole and the tooth there.
She frowned darkly, she recognized that sort of tooth. It was nothing that she'd encountered in the water before, but it was certainly something she knew about.
"A great white," she mouthed, her words coming out distorted under the water.
Then something splashed into the water behind her, she turned to face it as a bright light passed over her.
****
Hooper slipped down into the water and looked to the boat, noticing movement of some type. Quickly he swiped his flashlight around and caught a glimpse of some alien face with black, shark's eyes for just a brief terrifying moment before the visage swept out of the light and he lost sight of it, much to his discomfort.
Up above, Brody saw something vaguely human-shaped break the surface of the water in a hurry, but by the time he could get his light in that direction, he only saw an odd pair of swin fins disappearing into the waters.
"What the hell?" Brody asked nobody in particular. "Hooper, what kind of game are you playing?"
Hooper, for his part remained still a long moment before approaching the boat cautiously again. He recognized the tooth as surely as Nabiki did, and reached out to pry it loose, eyes peeled for the return of whatever that...thing had been. Which was why the sudden appearance of Ben Gardner's body shocked even more than he otherwise would have been.
Brody watched as Hooper frantically broke the surface and climbed up onto the boat as swiftly as he could, Brody helping.
"What happened?" Brody asked.
"I saw something," Hooper said shakily.
"What?" Brody asked. "The shark?"
"No," Hooper said. "A...mermaid?"
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(Posted Sun, 18 Jul 2004 20:34)
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