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Previous Shark Story
🕑 Added 2018-11-13 20:16:01 +0000 UTC Before there was orb harbor, there was this story. Basically an origin for the giant shark monster character Jack; this story went through several rewrites before being scrapped entirely. It just wasn't possible to write a story involving a character gaining intelligence as it progresses to my satisfaction... AND have it be readable and entertaining. Or at least, it wasn't worth it. I might revisit it someday, but until then, here's 2000 extra words. Nighttime.
The coast.
Blood.
The hunt.
Prey gone.
Too many others.
Blood strange.
Metal skin.
Taste painful.
The situation has changed.
Too many sharks came for too little reward.
Some are mating.
Some are competing.
The chaos consumes everything.
“I need to be careful.” It was my very first thought. I didn't know what I was, I only barely knew where I was, but I knew that. I was so small. The vicious predators around me could eat me easily and I had little idea why they hadn't already.
“How did I get here?” It was my first question. Somehow, I was a mind who existed where there was nothing mere moments before. I had no name, I had no notions of identity, only the capacity to recognize myself as an entity... and instincts screaming in anguish at their loss of control.
I came here for a reason. Before “I” existed, something drew me here. I'm near the walls, the shallows where my kind rarely goes except to pursue valuable prey. Something drew me here smelling like prey, something more tempting than anything I'd ever smelled, and I was not the only one. I must be the same as the kind of creature swarming around me now.
Powerfully muscular bodies, constant movement, razor sharp teeth, carefully placed fins... Am I so frightening? I struggled to get a look at myself, I seemed to have the same body shape. I could feel the teeth in my mouth, if I tried. The only difference I could tell was that they were all so much bigger than I was... and that I had small stripes running across me.
My new mind told me to flee, to sneak away... but something deeper told me to stay. There had to be a reason for all of this, this swarm was searching for some prize, and the only entity who had changed seemed to be me. I must be close to something...
I searched around, hoping to find some hint. There was a gap in the rocks behind me, just large enough for me to squeeze through. There was a tunnel inside, dangerously narrow but it led to a small hollow. A shape was embedded in the floor of the hollow, slowly emitting a thin red stream. The walls of the place shook, larger specimens trying to break in through the top, but I didn't care. My prize was right there. I slowly forgot my questions again as I approached it, mind consumed with want as I dove forward in a frenzy.
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“Looks like a fight.” The hollow had broken open when I came to again, the top sheared off by a horde of angry giants. I had bitten open the drum on the floor and downed every bit of its glorious contents, and clearly the swarm surrounding me wasn't a bit happy on missing out. Idly, I wondered if they were planning to share it; pack hunters who lacked my species self-reliance might make such a deal, but anything that was mine would be mine alone.
Unfortunately it meant I wouldn't be getting any help in the fight. All at once, they dived at me; the uncoordinated attack provided exactly the opening I needed to swim up and over while they started getting in each others way. A limb I didn't recognize responded to my commands, and I dove back down into the gills of one of my attackers, severely messing with their breathing and sending them slowly off to recover.
I expected a better attempt from the next attack, but no such improvement occurred. Whether learning was my unique purview or I simply induced a blind frenzy, I still don't know. They simply repeated their move, and I repeated mine. Again and again they attacked, but I was so much smaller and more maneuverable that the lips of the hollow were enough to let me outflank them. One by one I took them down, by bite or rock or strange appendage, I kept control of my hole and was alone again.
As they wandered off, they didn't look so big at all.
“I have an opportunity.” It was a much more enjoyable thought than those before. I was a shark, but I had the opportunity to be so much more now. This whole swarm had been attracted by something in the water, and I had taken more than my fair share already.
My prizes were already evident. Despite my youth, despite what something told me should have been, I was as big as any other shark present. Despite the body of every creature around me, my shape had already changed. Long and thin, like another tail, they emerged from under my head. Unlike my tail, however, they bent in only a few spots; each piece after the joint being smaller than the last. At the end, they curled together, creating a second mouth with which I could manipulate things... or destroy them.
The other sharks around me no longer seemed as interested in a fight. Instead, they all gravitated to a point further ahead, even closer to the shore. I no longer felt the pull, but my newly developed curiosity called out to me in a similar way. I followed the pack.
There, at the shore, I found giants again. Sharks so much larger than I stood at the edge of a channel, four titans eyed the sharks who arrived to take from them and cowed them with presence alone. Each one had changes of their own extending from their body, making them twisted lumps of flesh. A part of me wondered if I too looked so horrid, but it was drowned out by mounting worry again. I did not know how I could defeat any one of those monsters.
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It turned out I didn't have to know, I just had to do it. The instant one of them saw my arms, he attacked. The instant he attacked, I struck back. A simple dodge, and my claws went through his sides. A simple strike, and his blood joined all the others in the water. As the fluid tickled my nose, I had to wonder if I should eat him despite our similarities, but it turned out I didn't have to.
Before my eyes, all the red inside him flooded out and towards me. With full consciousness, I could see and feel it as the changes began again.
My body grew. Before I had been as large as the largest species of shark, now I was approaching the size or long forgotten ones. Even as I grew proportionally, other changes went through. My head elevated off the rest of me, extending out piece by piece and distancing itself from my arms. My front bent, the upper half of my body set itself at right angle from my lower half. Every part of me became stretched and slender.
I readied myself to fight off attacks from the other titans, but they just looked at me approvingly. They could have opposed me, but instead they wanted me to be one of them.
“Okay, stop.”
I heard the first words in hours, words that I never expected to hear...
“No seriously, stop. I can see where this is going but getting there is absolutely painful,” the blond cat boy sat cross legged on the beach, watching the monster from the depths with rapidly decreasing patience.
“...I could have sworn you said you wanted my story,” the beast in question said.
“Yeah, I do, but your narrative is kind of a mess. You're kind of halfway between just telling me outright and trying to do weird shit with your recitation.”
“Define weird shit.”
“Were you, or were you not going to portray your increasing intelligence by making the language ever more pretentious and full of clauses?”
“Ah, but I was going to~” the beast interrupted.
“You were then going to portray growing OUT of that by switching to much more natural language,” the cat concluded.
“Maybe.”
“Well, don't. Personal policy as a professional: either make it quick and easy to explain, or make it fun and easy to option for films later.”
“You know it's a goddamn miracle I can even speak English already, right?” the beast cocked an eyebrow.
“If you can't add PIZZAZZ, you might as well not be speaking English.”
“I was sure. I was SO sure the surface world would be at least slightly more impressed than this,” the beast buried her head in her hands.
“I am easily the most desensitized person you could have run into. Besides, you're going to get a film eventually, you're a real life kaiju,” the cat continued.
“I don't know what most of those words mean... fuck it, if you're so snooty about it, you tell the story! Oh wait, you don't KNOW the story and can't.”
“Oh, can't I?”
Our heroine grinned to herself, and multiple rows of teeth made it a grin for the ages. She wanted more, and here she was, being invited to a court with the resources to get her everything. The concept of nobility, of the few with more power than the many, needs no background to occur, and whenever it does the GAMES of nobility are sure to follow. These lords and ladies of the deep would have her company... just long enough for her to be queen instead.
In the meantime, she had the populous to deal with. The 'normal' sharks had long since given up their attack, their tiny brains not so foolish that they were incapable of learning that they couldn't win this battle. Despite their unnatural bodies, the lords and ladies very presence demanded that the other sharks gather round... and pay their tribute.
The great whites gathered round the largest of them. A former great white himself, now he was half shark and half man. His tail was mostly the same, but instead of the traditional head he had grown an entire humanoid torso. His face was just as brutal as ever, but now it was alien to two worlds. His gorgeous abs occasionally caught moonbeams, and there was no stomach more evocative of the exclamation “You could grind meat on those!”
His two genitals had developed into proper cocks, far to large to ever hide; and his petitioners were already lining up for their turn with him. With his superior power, he turned his back to the other nobles, willing to enjoy the perks of his position...
“The hell are you doing?” the supposed protagonist interrupted the new story.
“Sex sells! Did he not actually look like that? Did he only sort of look like that? It's close enough and now the ladies will love it,” the cat defended.
“I am the only actual lady here and also the complainer.”
“The gay guys will love it!”
“Just... just continue.”
With the largest of them occupied by his own games, the remaining three all gave each other a long look. Each of them had been a different kind of shark, but the swarm of various selachians seemed unsure how to organize themselves.
The whale shark was easily the second-largest, but had grown into a pudgy and unintimidating humanoid form. His fellow whale sharks gathered around, but seemed to have no idea of what to do in supplication... or even if they should stay.
The most intense rivalry was between tiger and nurse. Two smaller giants each with their own stake in the game. The nurse had a
[The unwritten body of the story went here. Lament its absence, but enjoy the epilogue]
The queen of the ocean looked over her desolation, and saw that it was lacking. She had other worlds to conquer and could find better ways to conquer them. With all her might, she pressed her body into the most presentable shape she could. With all her confidence, she went to the coast and strode out of the water that was the eternal home for her and all her people... until now.
“Great. Fantastic. Story over?”
On the coast she met a clever and might I say STRIKINGLY handsome kitten of...
“Yes. Story over. Less inaccurate than it could have been, but that was still unnecessary and painful. Speaking of things unnecessary and painful, give me one good reason why I shouldn't eat you.”
“I could give you a job as a security guard?”
“Exactly what part of your story or mine suggested I have a boss?”
“You'd basically be asked to defend an entryway people are constantly trying to get into. If anybody tries to enter without having been requested, you get to do whatever you want to them until they submit and leave.”
“Now THAT sounds more like it.”
“I aim to please. Hop on the reinforced truck, I'll bring you in for... orientation.”
