It whirled on her swiftly, ruining her attempted charge on its pectoral fins and making her dodge swiftly aside.
****
"There it is," Quint said, fitting another harpoon to his speargun. "I thought it'd be out here, waiting for us and the white to tangle."
"What are you talking about?" Martin asked. "Are you saying that little shark knew what was going to happen?"
"That's impossible," Hooper said. "It just followed the same trail of blood the white did. This is coincidence." He didn't sound to convinced of his statement.
"Well," Quint said. "Coincidence or not, it's here. Fix up another barrel!"
"If it's fighting the big shark, too," Brody suggested. "Shouldn't we wait for the white to die before attacking the other shark?"
"I'm not risking it getting away again," Quint insisted. "Come on, Hooper, give you a nice new specimen to toy around with in the lab."
Hooper frowned but tied up the next barrel as Quint readied his aim for the small shark as it passed by in one of its frenzied attempts to escape the white's path.
Quint frowned as the harpoon struck, but failed to hit the solid head where he was aiming.
****
Nabiki winced as something solid struck her above the base of the tail and felt sure that the shark had caught up to her The dragging sensation that followed was immediately familiar and called up memories of something else however.
"He STUCK me!" Nabiki snapped irritably. "He stuck me with a harpoon again!"
Her irritation had to be placed on hold, however, as the white shark swooped in and she had to swiftly circle out of the path. She was about to circle about and cut the line to the harpoon, but changed her mind as another, more useful but more dangerous plan came to mind.
Shifting into the rather odd and alien-seeming hybrid form, she leaned down and took hold of the spear jabbed into what was now her leg. Gritting her teeth, she pulled at the barbed instrument, breaking free of the much thinner flesh of leg in almost an instant.
The water colored with blood as the wound was allowed to open and spilled into the water. With the white successfully cutting her off from retreat below, she was going to have trouble taking care of that wound, but that was the least of her concerns for the moment.
The white was circling in to attack her again, and she couldn't simply move out of the way, not to do what she wanted to do.
The shark charged in and, in the last instant, its eyes rolled up white and Nabiki shoved herself out of its path, passing along the side of the body and gripping for an instant onto the great, back dorsal with her webbed fingers.
****
"Well, now we're down to one shark," Quint said as the second barrel pulled in alongside the first, both moving with the same impetus.
The old sailor smirked in superiority for a moment as he watched the barrels move about, but quickly he started to frown.
"There's not enough blood in the water," Hooper commented mirroring his thoughts.
A thump on the deck in the stern of the boat caught everyone's attention, and Brody, on the bridge, turned about to see Nabiki Tendo sprawled on the floor of the boat, bleeding freely from a nastily turn wound in her leg.
"What the hell?" the police chief demanded. "Where'd you come from?"
"The water," Nabiki said wearily, clutching her leg closed.
Quint and Hooper weren't far behind in investigating the sound either and stared in shock and surprise at her.
Nabiki turned a solid glare at the shark hunter and practically growled.
There was dead silence for a long moment.
"Is anyone going to offer me a bandage?" Nabiki snapped, leaning against the boat side and breathing heavily. "Or do I just sit her and bleed until I pass out and die?"
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(Posted Thu, 22 Jul 2004 04:03)
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