《My Shapeshifting Life》Chapter 9
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"Heya, Robby. You find anything on your phone?" His friend asked. Rob scowled ineffectually, turning to glare at the annoyance that dared approach him.
"Fuck off, Tom. Weren't you down by the storage chopping the fish?" He asked scathingly, trying his best to murder the man with his eyes. He'd been interrupted so many times before, and somehow, Tom had a way to always appear at the worst of times.
Like right now. Sighing, he shut off the phone, knowing that the high-stakes card game he'd been in had just been lost due to his lapse in attention. Damn mobile games, he'd have to spend hours grinding to get back to his previous point.
"Yeah, well, we finished prepping the fish. How long until we reach back to port, anyways?" Tom asked, leaning over Rob as his hands came to rest upon the other man's shoulders, tracing small, gentle circles.
"Get off of me, will ya? It's only an hour and a half away. Why do you even ask, anyways? You're supposed to be the vice-captain, not me." Rob, again, tried to scowl, slapping the hand away. Tom let out an awkward chuckle, rubbing the back of his head.
"I guess. I'm probably gonna resign from that post, though. The pay isn't that much better, and I prefer doing grunt work more than all the leader-y stuff." He said. Rob rolled his eyes, about to retort something scathing when the boat suddenly rocked. Violently.
"HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" Someone above shouted, and soon enough, everyone was screaming. Tom and Rob shared a somber look, their previous banter draining away. Tom took off for the staircase, with Rob hot on his heels.
"What's happening? Where's Captain Mark?" Tom asked the closest person once they were up and out of the ship's interior. The man was deadly pale, a haunted look on his face, and Rob had difficulty associating him with the jovial, always ready to joke around man he'd come to know during his time on the ship.
It was hard to hear a response over all the screaming, so instead of speaking, the man just pointed over to the side of the ship, just in time for another massive wave to rock the ship.
The captain had obviously maneuvered them so that they wouldn't flip over, but it was still a close thing, and as Rob, panicking, threw himself at one of the bars, he noticed quite a few of his crewmates being flung around quite dangerously.
He had to crawl his way over to the side of the ship, idly noticing Tom doing the same thing beside him. Once there, he had to fight to keep the food down in his belly, suddenly very thankful he was overboard, or it would have been much, much worse. He pitied the poor cooks down there for a moment before his attention was drawn away by the cause of this whole mess.
His eyes bulged out like crazy, as did Tom's beside him. Only a few hundred meters from them was a... massive... something. It was at least four times longer than their already respectable ship, and worse, it was alive.
The sea rippled around the massive back currently breaking the water, producing the massive waves currently rocking their ship. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, a serpentine/draconic head that looked to be taken straight out of a fantasy fiction arose from the water. The head alone was around the same size as the ship, with massive, sharp teeth lining its mouth.
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"What the hell is... that?" Rob whispered, not knowing whether what he was currently feeling was awe, or terror. Probably both.
"I... don't know..." Tom whispered beside him, clutching onto the railing as though it was the only thing capable of saving them at the moment.
"Shit! It's looking at us!" Someone shouted, and Rob abruptly realized they hadn't been the only ones gawking at the monster. No, instead, basically everyone in the crew had come up to stare at it.
"I knew that the government was hiding monsters from us! I knew it!" Someone abruptly began to laugh, and Rob's scowl returned in full force. He really didn't need to be hearing god damn conspiracy theories right now, for fuck's sake!
"Silence!" The loudspeakers boomed, the voice of their captain coming through. "Hold on tight, men. I'm engaging the motors at full throttle!"
Immediately, people threw themselves at whatever was attached enough to the ship to guarantee they wouldn't go flying off of it, which considering this ship was made for anything but going fast, combined with the eight-meter waves currently rocking them, would be very much possible.
"Fuck!" Tom screamed as the ship abruptly lurched, and Rob only had a split second to harshly grab the other man's foot before he was thrown all the way across the ship as his grip slipped from the rail.
"Thanks, love..." He murmured. Rob didn't have the energy nor time to scowl as he noticed that the god-damned titan was following them, and if he could tell, he had no doubts the others could too.
"We're so fucking dead..." Rob whispered, lips curling up. Dying by an impossibly big monster that no one had a clue existed... it didn't actually sound all that bad. Better than some mundane way to pass away, at least.
He'd suspected that strange events might happen, after all, following the Siren's Whisper, there had been many unexplainable events happening. Sometimes, people would survive things that they had no right to living through, other times, strange, mutated animals would appear. He'd seen the photos and videos, and hell, there was even that one time that a fridge had begun to levitate for no apparent reason.
Still... This trumped it all by quite a bit. He could see a few of the men clutching tightly to whatever lifeline they were holding onto with one hand while holding their phones in the other, obviously taking videos of pictures.
He hopes they'd be able to upload that shit before they all died. At least, then, they wouldn't have died for nothing.
Abruptly, the ship stopped moving. There was a moment of silence across the ship as it was lifted into the air by... something. Then, the loudspeakers turned on again, the tired and resigned voice of their captain coming through.
"Well, men, we've had a good run." Rob didn't even have time to bother with the crew's screaming response as he turned, staring directly into the eyes of the massive monster that hadn't actually killed them yet for some reason.
He could see it now. A massive arm held their boat up, while another lifted its head high above the water. Rob knew the ocean floor in this area was at least a hundred meters deep, and just thinking about how long its arms had to be to actually reach all the way down the floor... It made bile rise through his throat.
"Robby, just so you know, I LOVE YOU!" Tom screamed from his side, trying to make his voice heard amongst the somehow even louder screams than before. "WHY ARE YOU SAYING THAT NOW, YOU BASTARD!?" Rob screamed back.
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Then, a voice louder than any human could hope to achieve spoke. "You're an interesting bunch, but please shut up, you're hurting my ears."
She'll be the first to admit that, perhaps, she was having a bit too much fun scaring the hell out of these poor fishermen. However, she would also be the first to argue that she was bored. Sure, the first two or so days of freedom had been a lot of fun, just swimming along the depths of the ocean, observing as literally everything fled before her massive form.
Still, after a while, even that got boring. She'd wanted to go back on land, but she had no idea where to even begin heading towards. Hence, for an entire four days, she'd been searching for some fellow to ask for directions towards the mainland, hopefully not the U.S though. She had a feeling she wouldn't exactly be welcomed back with open arms.
Perhaps China might have agreed to take her in, she mused. Although, knowing their current authoritarian tendencies, she had a feeling she wouldn't fare much better over there than she did in the U.S.
Still, there wasn't exactly any unclaimed land left, and even if there was, Lilith didn't really want to go and be a colonizer. She mostly just wanted to go back and have fun back with normal people that weren't the same three or four people she'd been restricted to back at the prison.
Anyways, back at the matter at hand, Lilith stared down at the fishing ship currently in her hand. Despite it weighing several tons, she barely felt the weight at all, and she knew that she could crush the ship with the same ease she could crush an ant. Well, at least, this body could.
Not that it mattered much. She was mostly just spooking them for dramatic effect, and because she wanted to make an... impact, might be the right word. Knowing the internet, the moment the video they'd taken were to be uploaded, the government would be getting a lot of questions, and after she was done telling her story to these people, she knew the questions would only increase, and faith in the government would surely fall.
She didn't think herself a petty person, but some nice, harmless revenge never hurt anybody, did it?
The ship was in complete and utter chaos after she'd spoke. It felt weird to do so with this body, but whatever. She patiently waited for them to get their act together, which took a grand total of ten minutes. Finally, their captain stepped up, holding a megaphone in hand.
"You can speak?" He asked nervously. Lilith rolled her eyes, deciding that enough was enough. She opened her jaws, the serpentine tongue she'd carefully designed rolling out. It stopped a bit above the ship before a small, cubed-meter sized piece of flesh detached from it, falling down onto the ship/
It writhed and shifted for a bit before assuming the form she wished, and if it garnered some spooked looks from the people around her and got them to back away quite a bit... Well, all the better for it.
She stretched her newly-formed human body, very much the same as the one she'd always held except for a few... differences. She'd been debating this for a while, but remaining completely human just felt so... boring.
She was a shapeshifter, and while she was still trying to get used to that fact, that didn't mean she wasn't proud of it. She wanted people to know she was one, hence, her body reflected this.
She'd gone for the whole 'devil' look while trying to keep it as close to a human as possible. A long, scaled tail sprouted from her new body's tailbone, a pair of relatively small wings that could easily grow to allow flight rested on her shoulders, while a crimson pair of small, sharp horns rested upon her temples. As a finishing touch, she'd also given herself glowing red eyes, because why not?
Combined with some old-styled clothing choice that she felt fit the look, she was fairly satisfied. She used her serpentine body's eyes to examine the finished product, not having had the chance nor wish to test it out beforehand. She ignored the people gawking at her, and instead twirled around a bit, checking for any flaw.
"Not bad, not bad. Anyways, I'm Lilith, and I'm one of the metahumans that disappeared a while ago. Also, that cute little chubby-chub up there also happens to be me. Don't worry, she won't eat you..." She laughed, finally turning to fully face the music that was these poor fishermen.
"... I see." The captain coughed, awkwardly, still looking a bit weirded out. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He opened it again, tried to say something, then closed it again.
Lilith chuckled in amusement. "Don't worry, I don't plan to stick around for long. If you don't mind, just point me to where... Hm... Europe might work. Point me towards Europe, I don't care about which country. No maps, please, as those don't tend to hold up in water well, and it's tough keeping fragile stuff inside me without crushing it."
They all collectively chuckled, although Lilith could easily pick up the undercurrent of nervousness. There were a few people shifting about, some clutching weapons tightly in their grip, and some were even trying to hide away. Hell, she could even spot one brave man holding his phone with trembling hands, pointing it towards her. She graced him with a smile and a wave for his efforts.
"Ah, yes. Europe..." The captain coughed awkwardly, Lilith turning to face him again. "It's over there, I believe. Just north-east." He pointed.
"Thanks. Been real nice to meet you... Oh, by the way, where are we right now? I've just escaped from the U.S.A's metahuman prison, so I kind of have no idea. It wasn't a very fun place, I gotta say, but could have been worse." She asked, specifically looking at the guy with the camera when she said the last part, a slight smirk appearing on her lips.
Aah, the shitstorm that would come out of this... She couldn't wait to get her hands on a nice, succulent phone.
"We're in the South Atlantic Ocean. Are you... Are you sure you can reach Europe by yourself?" The captain asked after a short pause, some hesitation in his voice.
Her eyebrows unconsciously raised. "Don't worry about it. Anyways, cya! Eat me up, big girl!" She called out, purely for dramatic effect. She opened her larger body's mouth and picked up her smaller body with her tongue, gulping her down. Again, purely for drama. She could easily just melt back into a single body through touch alone anywhere.
She gently deposited the boat back onto the water, having taken great care not to damage anything. After that, she turned towards the direction she was pointed and began to swim... Or rather, crawl. The ocean floor wasn't exactly that deep over here, after all.
Oh well. She could live with this, and hopefully, so could whatever fish she accidentally crushed.
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