Playing Fetch
An apex predator is brought low.
Playing Fetch
For Sandy
She hit the water and the cool of the water hit her. No noise, barely a ripple. Sandy's webbed paws grabbed at the ocean and pushed her down, leaving her boat as an increasingly distant silhouette framed by the sun. She left it behind. The boat, the world, the surface, the people, the problems. On some level, deeply distant from her conscious mind, the thought that most of the items on that list would drown if they tried to follow her gave her great comfort.
Two things kept her warm: her fur and her muscles. The dense, sleek looking fur that covered her upper half trapped air between the water and her skin, insulating her. Meanwhile, her muscles generated heat as she swam. Her eyes gathered the scraps of light left to her at this depth, letting her see perfectly in the darkness.
The apex predator.
As she dove deeper and deeper, her webbed paws stopped being enough to keep her light frame sinking. No surprise. She found a rock outcropping and delicately swam backwards to push herself against it. She coiled her tail and, with a slight wince, shoved it against the rock, propelling herself down, down, down, until she found the ocean floor, and her prize.
The *Amitie*, a French frigate, had rested at the bottom of the sea since the Napoleonic war, until Sandy had managed to find a passing reference to it in the diaries of an English captain, the entry having been written a month or so before the *Amitie* was sunk. Sandy had to do some stunningly complicated math and make a few educated guesses to figure out where the writer would have seen a 36-gun frigate, then to figure out where it would have disappeared with all hands.
What had sunk the vessel was not Sandy's job. She was here to, as her colleague Sefris invariably put it (no matter how much Sandy barked at Sefris angrily in reply) play fetch. First, she would grab anything shiny or beautiful or particularly well suited to her jaws. (She was, after all, part puppy.) She would then scan the ship for whatever seemed, in her very practical historical knowledge, like she could pawn it to a museum.
Still, as she neared the wreck, she couldn't help but wonder what brought the monster low. The ship was nearly intact. She saw none of the damage she would associate with a fire. Possible that mutineers had sunk the vessel and escaped on lifeboats for some reason.
The sun was a distant flicker now, far, far above, barely visible. She could not even locate the boat by sight, though she had taken careful note of whatever landmarks she would need to find her way back.
Some divers insisted on ropes or harnesses, even those who could breathe underwater, but Sandy had always thought of that as an unnecessary precaution. For a pupshark with an iron brain like herself, it was sufficient to take careful note of some oddly shaped rocks. At the worst case, she would surface a few miles away from the boat and inconvenience Sefris. She liked inconveniencing Sefris.
So she approached the ship completely bare, and dug her claws into the hold for purchase as her cartilaginous body tugged her upwards. She carefully crawled down the side of the massive ship, idly curious. Sure enough, she found a massive hole at the bottom of the ship. Too massive, she thought, to have been made accidentally. It looked, Sandy thought, like someone had deliberately detonated the ship's supply of something flammable, possibly alcohol, in the lowest cargo hold of the ship, sinking the ship before it could catch fire.
She crawled into the hole, curiosity getting the better of her, and wondered if she had some feline somewhere in her ancestry. She rose into the ship, and swam through, delighted to get the worst spoils out of the way first. She scanned for any fancy looking bottles or crates in the hold, and saw nothing. In all likelihood the good spoils would be up in the officer's quarters.
She didn't notice that the ship had gotten slightly brighter (a slight pink hue to the light) until she was rising from the water on the second level, where an oxygen bubble had formed. Here, a pink layer of goo coated the ceiling, completely still. Sandy felt her survival instincts kick in suddenly and powerfully. She advanced carefully, sniffing, then gagging as the overwhelming scent of cotton candy filled her nose.
She eyed the goo. It wasn't moving. It just sat there, not even dripping, shining like a new penny. It didn't smell alive. It didn't smell dead, either. It just smelled like candy. Her nose twitched as she paid special attention to her ampullae, electroreceptors inherited from her shark side. No tingle, so no nervous system in the goo. She forced herself to breath through the cotton candy. Her body was sending fear signals. She ignored them.
After all, she was the apex predator.
She stood beneath it, and scanned the second level of the ship. There were two rooms on the farthest end of the ship from her. Several hammocks lined the walls. She began to move forward, watching the slime carefully for any movement. Likely some form of marine life, either new to science or new to her. She cracked a glowstick. The pink slime glistened, perfectly smooth, but full of depressions and hills that made the topography fascinating, even as the texture defied interest. Maybe they would name it after her. Sandy's slime.
Sandy approached the two cabins, looking in one door, then the other, carefully scanning for anything strange. She caught herself looking for monsters. Her heart was pounding. She was being silly, of c-
Her nose tingled. A nervous system nearby. She reacted before she processed, spinning to see that the pink goo had filled the floor, nearly touching her foot-paws. It continued to advance, slow but steady, suddenly full of intelligence. She backed into the nearest cabin, and the pink good advanced quicker, suddenly, and she recognized it, as a predator recognizes another predator.
The Pink was hungry. Sandy was food.
She turned to look for escape, and in that fatal error, felt something close around her legs.
Sandy returned a little late, but none the worse for wear. Sefris, pure vixen, smiled at her and said little as Sandy dumped a bag on the deck, and began reciting a list of spoils that was, to be honest, a little disappointing for them both, though the trip would ultimately pay for itself and for their next few months of plundering. They began making their way back to land as the sun began to set, and Sandy poured them each a bottle of red wine with a mysterious little smile.
Sef had not had a bottle of wine since drinking an entire bottle during a failed attempt to be cool in high school, and was a little mystified to receive wine now. But she drank, out of a mix of politeness and curiosity.
It was sweet. Shockingly sweet. It made her think of cotton candy. She swirled and sniffed the wine, and gagged a little at the strength of the smell. She felt Sandy's paws on her shoulders, suddenly, and Sandy's breath on her ear.
"We're prey now." Sandy murmured.
Sefris jumped away from the pupshark with a yip of surprise. "What?" Sef muttered, trying to stand. "Sandy, what the fuck?"
"It told me we're prey now." Sandy's smile was too wide, too happy.
Her eyes were... Sef gulped, suddenly shivering. Her eyes were a pure and perfect pink. Behind her a blue shape rose from the ocean. Sef was pinned against the wall, unable to do anything but watch as it approached the ship.
As it set foot on the deck of the ship, the gleam of its pink eyes became visible first. The dark blue of its form and the black of its horns and fangs barely visible in the setting sun. Four pink tendrils carried it, and its claws clicked on the boat's floor as it set itself down just behind Sandy. It looked lagomorphic, save for its horns and the sharp fangs.
Sandy was blocking the only door out of the cabin. One of the pink tendrils, moving quicker than Sefris could have imagined, slammed itself against Sandy's ear. The sharpness of the Tendril had made Sef think they were merely weapons, but Sandy did not cry out from pain, only pleasure, as the tendril began to pulse, like a creature trying to wriggle its way deeper into shelter. Sandy's new, pink eyes began to glow bright.
As Sefris watched helplessly, Sandy began walking towards Sefris, each step mirrored by a step of the rabbit-creature. As though Sandy were merely a puppet. Sandy's eyes got brighter with each step, each pulse of the monster crawling into her ear, doing god knows what to her brain.
Sef was shaking.
"See?" Sandy's voice sounded different. Like someone else was speaking with her mouth. "You're trembling. That's not what a predator does. That's what prey does." The thing behind Sandy betrayed no change in expression, but Sefris was somehow sure it was smiling. Sandy bit the air, inches from Sef's face, and Sef flinched back against the wall.
"Please..." Sef said, and something changed. She saw Sandy return to herself, her eyes that beautiful blue purple again. Sandy breathed, full of effort. "I'm sorry hon." She said, with real sympathy in her voice. "But its seen me. My brain. And I'm so sure it's right." She gasped with pleasure as she said that. "We're prey, Sef." Another gasp, as the tendril in her ear, in her brain, gave a fresh pulse. "We're. Its. Its. I'm. Property. Fuuuuuuuckkkk." She moaned, eyelids fluttering as the creature rewarded her. "I'm prey." Another blissful sound. "I'm. I'm. I'm."
Suddenly the pink was back, brighter than ever, all thought gone from the pupshark's eyes.
"Sandy. Please" Sefris said, with a curious calmness.
Sandy just barked and barked, smiling wider than ever, as tendrils began to crawl up Sefris' legs.