"I don't need this!" Hooper shouted after Quint accused him of being soft by way of his hands and his background. "I don't need this working-class hero crap!"
"You're not going to do this on the boat, are you Quint?" Brody asked, coming between them.
"Maybe I should go alone," Quint said quietly.
"No, it's my party," Brody said. "It's my charter."
"Your party, your charter. It's my vessel," Quint said emphasizing the last.
"There are two sharks to watch," Brody said. "You'll have to have another set of eyes."
"Oh, that brown genius," Quint said. "I know that one. Has an old, stretched scar on its left side, bite from another shark it looks like. That one slipped the noose on me once last year. If I get a chance at that one, it'll be no charge, Chief." He shifted his cap back on his head and chuckled a little as he spoke. "But that one knows me, and it won't come back in."
"Sharks don't recognize people, Quint," Hooper said. "They don't keep track of things like that."
"Oh, they don't," Quint said. "Second attack, Hooper, the one that lived, that Jap girl. The brown made an appearance and people stampeded in off the beach. Zig-zagging up and down the water coming in like water-skier doing a swim show. That's no way for a shark to hunt."
"Zig-zags?" Hooper asked, turning to Martin. "On the surface? It did?"
"Well, yeah," Martin said. "Came to the surface out past the first bouy, Is that strange?"
"Sharks approach prey from below," Hooper said. "They don't break surface except on the attack."
"And what we saw today?" Martin asked.
"That was very strange," Hooper said. "A shark that size doesn't just take a nip at another shark that much bigger than it. It COULD have been starting to frenzy, but..."
"It was paying too much attention to be frenzied," Quint said sagely. "No, the brown doesn't like Mr. Whitey, and it wants the white gone. So it's keeping the white away from food until it moves on elsewhere."
"That's giving the shark too much credit," Hooper said. "They don't plan out like that."
"This one does," Quint said. "This one is something different from the usual."
****
Nabiki sat at her rented desk and looked down on the letter sitting there, and sighed deeply. She leaned back in her chair and thought about what she was considering.
She'd heard about Brody going to Quint, and she was set to go out as well, shadow them, find this shark and bring it down. If Quint was about there'd be barrels in it soon enough, and when that happened, it couldn't beat her. She just had to wait for Quint to do his thing.
Still, there was risk involved and she didn't want to just disappear. In case something happened to her, she needed some word to get out to her family, just to give them finality, so they wouldn't wonder. Hence the letter.
The letter could sit on the desk until she came back.
Or it could sit on the desk until someone found it and mailed it.
She vastly preferred the former to the latter.
For now, and she grimaced as she stretched. She had to do a little hunting to get back into shape for the morning. She wasn't worried about the white, she'd smell it before it got close to her.
She stood up, stretched and reached for the hello-kitty suit, her mouth twitching as she did so.
"Maybe Kasumi's touch will grant me some protection," Nabiki muttered. "And maybe I'll grow wings and learn how to breathe fire."
****
Morning came and the Orca set out. Deep in the water, shadowing it, a lithe, brown shape cut through the water, invisible from above and shadowing the boat.
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:55)
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