And she was tempted to eat that damn dog.
That and someone probably would have seen her before she wanted to be seen. Still, as it was now, she'd have to put on a bit of a show for people to notice her.
But the water was clear, the sun was bright and the water was shallow enough that it was quite easy to see a distance. And the tide was coming in, bringing with it a tantalizing scent of blood, bluefin she thought. And if circumstances were otherwise, she'd be tracking that scent to its source and having herself a feast.
As it was, she had to ignore it. And it was driving her crazy. Something else out there was hunting and she had to play watch...hold on a moment.
Nabiki turned a tight loop and swam further out to see, towards that blood. With the tide coming in, it could be quite far out there, and it could just be nothing, but, she had a feeling.
She hadn't gone far when she saw the siloheutte in distance. A shiver rolled down her spine as she saw it. Everything she sensed told her it was big.
She turned a quick circle underwater, trying to be speedy without drawing attention from the monster and made back for the beach, drawing closer to the surface.
"I hope somebody sees me before I have to do some real acrobatics," she thought to herself as she felt her dorsal break the surface and she started toward the beach in a zig-zagging to present her profile to the beach.
****
Somebody was talking to Martin about garbage trucks or something, but he was only barely hearing it. His attention was on the water and the people in it, hoping and fearing that his decision to go with the flow from city hall wouldn't prove disasterous.
A girl screamed and he stood bolt upright, but it was nothing but a boy lifting her up on his shoulders. The false alarm, like the others before it, wore down another layer of nerves but in standing up, he saw something else, further out, but coming in swiftly.
A distinctly shaped swim running horizontally, diving in, driving ever close towards the beach. If he had known much about sharks he would have known that this was damn peculiar behavior for a shark, but at the moment he was concerned with other things.
Brody wasn't the only one to notice it, but he was the first to react.
"Out of the water!" he shouted. "Get out of the water! Everybody out of the water now!"
****
Nabiki was relieved as she saw and felt the stampede of human life out of the water. That still left her out alone in the water, with that monster of a fish. And in her hurry she'd been stupid enough to lose track of it.
She dived under the water, submerging out of sight, not aware of the people pointing at her. She needed to head for some shallows out of sight of the beach and get to land where no one could...
Her train of thought was derailed with one realization.
"I guess I found it," she thought meekly as the behemoth came from beneath her.
Her sleeker form saved her from serious injury as she turned a tight evasive circle around the thing's head and swam down the side of its body. The massive tail slapped her to the side, sending a shock of pain through her and rattling her senses, but she couldn't afford to stop and wait.
Already, the other shark had to be making a turn to come back after her. And she was bleeding and hurt. Hiding was going to be difficult to say the least. She had one chance at this, the shallows and all the speed that she could muster.
She couldn't turn about to look for it, had to go simply on her sense of motion and guts to keep aware of it as she broke ever closer to the beach.
"If I'm really lucky it'll drown itself chasing me," Nabiki thought.
She swam well in close to the shore, staying shallow and close to the ground so that it couldn't see her well. And she couldn't just come up onto the beach either, people were bound to be watching for her. Or at least, watching for a shark.
However, she could do something that shark couldn't compete with. As she grew closer to the shore, with the water's surface closing down on her, she shifted forms, shrinking down to her near human form. She lost speed, but now she could look back and see her position compared to the rogue shark.
It was turned away, its tail fading away into the deeps. Nabiki watched it clutching the ground beneath her in less than four feet of water. The adrenaline hadn't faded yet, she wasn't feeling the scrape along her side yet. And the smell of her own blood was keeping her emotions flared.
She hesitantly broke the surface and glanced around, she was well off to the side of the beach, fortunately, and most eyes seemed to be pointed further out to sea. Nabiki ducked underwater again and swam further inland before letting all her scales sink back in and the webs recede from her fingers and toes before walking out of the water, onto the beach.
Turning to human form, she started to calm down and she half lurched as reached for her side. She looked down and grimaced, her swim suit was in tatters and the skin underneath looked as if someone had scoured it off. There were spots of blood trailing from the water to where she was standing.
"It doesn't do much for my modesty either," Nabiki thought, noting the way the lower half of her breast was visible.
She gritted her teeth as she sat down and lay back on her side, turning the injury away from the sand and catching her breath.
"Hey!" someone shouted. "There's a girl over there!"
Nabiki groaned as people started to crowd around her, this was just what she didn't want. She tried to sit up but found herself getting to tired as the light faded.
"I should have stayed in the water a little longer," Nabiki thought as she fainted.
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(Posted Sat, 08 Nov 2003 15:13)
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