Seas Of Passion

“Alan, there’s a great white up ahead, but I can’t sense it. Do you think it could be…Lara, or maybe Jacob?”

Shanice felt Alan’s attention shift instantly and he thought to the great white.

“Who are you? Are you a shifter? Answer me.”

The shark circled twice more, and then lazily swam away as if the thought messages bothered it somehow. Alan thought about following it, but then returned to Shanice and asked her if she wanted to, knowing it could lead to trouble. Before she could answer, the unknown shark put on a burst of speed and stopped hiding its signal. Alan felt a brief twinge as he recognized Jacob and was off at him like an arrow, though he quickly caught himself and returned to Shanice.

“Shanice, I have to do this, just me. Please understand, it is not allowed for anyone to interfere with a mission. If you want to follow that is fine, but it would be best if you went back to the cave, the carcass might become a feeding frenzy anytime since those hammerheads have come. I have to go.”

Shanice was feeling a barrage of emotions from all directions. Her shark instincts wanted nothing more than to continue dominating the feeding session. Her human mind worried for Alan and tracked him, thinking about him until she found herself pulling away from the carcass to swim in angry circles as she tried to make sense of all the feelings vying for supremacy in her brain. In all of her confusion, she didn’t notice that the sharks at the carcass-all of the sharks at the carcass-were leaving as a group as Lara entered the water and began shifting to her shark form.

Alan was as close as he had ever come to being in a frenzied state upon seeing Jacob and had closed some of the distance between them, but still found himself unable to catch up to the fleeing shifter. His shark mind felt exhilaration at the chase and the anticipation of combat, but his human mind was angry and confused; no shifter could refuse combat, it went against what they were, yet Jacob was fleeing further and further, marking himself as the worst of cowards. Alan had almost felt bad about his mission to kill the traitorous fellow, but as he fled and ignored his calls, he grew enraged and pushed his body for all the speed he could.  Jacob began turning rapidly, dashing deeper into the ocean to escape, his mind blank save the commands imprinted in it by Lara as he ran until he could run no longer. Alan pushed the cold shark mind back and watched the pattern Jacob moved in, memorized it, and intercepted him in the middle of a figure eight turn, hitting him in the side at 30 miles per hour. Before he struck he hyper-extended his jaw and rolled his eyes back to avoid any damage.  When he struck, his teeth sliced through Jacobs’ entire left gill, rendering it useless and doing heavy damage to his respiratory system. Alan did something a normal shark wouldn’t be able to and began swimming backwards, tearing a gaping wound in his opponent. Jacob, turned and bit weakly at Alan, then swam upwards while shifting back to his human form, calling for mercy to Alan mentally as he did so, asking for a chance to talk. Alan knew the rules; that an opponent could call for mercy one time if the intention was to talk, but he also knew that most that did so merely used the time to heal and get another chance to fight. He wasn’t worried about fighting Jacob, just that he would heal and then escape again, but he allowed him to and swam beside him, shifting back to human as he did. Soon both men got out of the water and stood on the shore, Jacob breathing heavily from the effort it took to heal himself.

“What is it you have to say, Dervhal? I already know why you left; there isn’t anything you can say there that will change things. You should just give up, you’ve had plenty of time to leave if you really wanted to, but you’ve stayed.” Alan said.

“I will…give up my shark form and stay a human…you must drown me…as a shark. Hold me…underwater…ten minutes…then take me to shore. I will become…human once and for all.”

Alan thought about the offer, assuming Jacobs strange speech was due to the injury.

“I suppose that will be alright, but if you try to escape again I’ll tear you apart, even if you’re a human. Don’t shift until I tell you to and stay near the surface, no going deep,” Alan said as he walked into the surf and began shifting, waiting to call Jacob until he was fully in his shark form.

“Alright Jacob, come and shift now.”

Jacob did so, then Alan gripped his gills again, the same one he had injured before. He swam away from shore a bit and then stopped moving, holding Jacob still and causing the water to stop circulating through his gills, the equivalent of drowning for a shark. Alan felt nervous as he was barely moving, but he realized he would last much longer than Jacob, who was already slowing as his gills were being held on one side. Alan thought back to Shanice and hoped she was doing well and had listened to him, not knowing that she was fighting for her life at that very second as he counted off the seconds in his mind.