prompt post: round six
ROUND SIX IS CLOSED
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damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
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<< ROUND
FIVE | ALL
ROUNDS | ROUND SEVEN>>
RULES POST
POSTING GUIDELINES
Updates Post (WIPs only)
Fills Post (completed Fills only)
damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
There is a delay on comments appearing when there is a URL in the message body. This is due to an LJ anti-spam feature that can't ( Read more... )
Something happens, and Erik is transformed into a human. However, he still keeps the single-minded predator mentality, and he's entirely consumed by the idea of finding and killing the man (Shaw) who captured him and put him in the aquarium in the first place.
Charles is in charge of Erik and doesn't stop being in charge just because of a little thing like him magically changing species, and winds up having to introduce Erik to human inventions like clothing, and also the concept of non-meat food.
Somewhere along the line, Erik starts to change from being an impossibly focused killer into someone with the full range of human emotions. Would love to see fluff and Erik trying to court Charles and not being very good at it, but if authoranon prefers they can just remain friends.
Also up to authoranon whether Erik stays human or returns to being a shark (or gains the ability to switch between both forms at will).
Bonus for Charles introducing Erik to ice-cream.
Bonus for Erik being incredibly freaked-out by the fact that humans sleep, because IIRC sharks don't sleep, they just switch different parts of their brains off but never the whole thing at once. All of the bonuses and my first-born child if Erik is so terrified by losing a huge chunk of his life to empty blackness that he begs Charles to sit with him while he sleeps and make sure that nothing tries to attack him while he's unconscious.
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I really hope someone fills this!
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...because Erik totally does that when Charles sleeps, and Charles doesn't know whether he finds it touching or creepy.
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Like body exploration or something because his human body would be totally alien to him.
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Posts forthcoming, I promise.
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The first and most important rule of working at Sea World is to respect the animals at all times, but looking back on the past thirty minutes, Charles hypothesized that “protect the animals from the visitors” might be somewhat more vital in practice. Thanks to one scantily clad blonde patron who was apparently something more than human, he was sitting in the Employee’s Only room of the Sea World Aquarium Complex in San Diego, trying to keep a level head as he attempted communication with a damp and extremely pissed off man who had, until very recently, been a shark.
‘He’s grumpy now as he ever was,’ Charles mused as he observed the man-shark pulling roughly at his fingers and toes, exploring his new (and strikingly naked) mammalian body. ‘Just getting a feel for things, I suppose.’ Throughout his time at Sea World, Charles had always been in charge of the “Shark Encounter”, a 280,000 gallon tunnel-tank through which visitors could stroll at their leisure or, if they wanted the full experience, follow Charles as he gave what he felt to be a truly riveting lesson in ichthyology. The man before him was, or rather, had been, a vital part of this “Encounter”.
“This one here’s a Great White,” he would say. “His name is Erik! Hello, Erik!” A jaunty wave, to keep the kids engaged. “He’s a cranky fellow, you know, and that actually makes him very good at finding food for himself. Now, Erik here consumes a diet primarily composed of…”
The job had given him some time to get to know Erik-the-shark, and he found that Erik-the-man was not much different. The two incarnations were similarly temperamental and somewhat intimidating.
‘Alas,’ he reflected, ‘I sense that my duties concerning Erik are about to get much more complicated than they have been in the past.’ Erik paused in his spirited attack on his knee and looked at Charles. He scowled, baring a bizarrely full set of teeth. Charles met his gaze squarely and kindly.
“Hello, Erik,” he said, attempting to strike a chord of familiarity. The scowl on Erik’s face, improbably, widened. The human mouth was not generally capable of an expression so overwhelmingly, well, shark-like. He was opening and closing his mouth, knocking his teeth together, and something about his stance suggested hunger to Charles. He slowly rose from his seat, and, maintaining eye contact, moved to the cooler against the wall. Opening it, he withdrew the bucket of mackerel from which he normally fed the sharks.
“Do you speak English?” he paused, feeling a little silly as he waited for a response from what was, effectively, a fish. “…Español?” He tossed a fish in Erik’s direction, flinching as he caught it with his teeth. To see a shark do it was a wonder, a testament to the strength of nature and the Selachimorphic jaw, but when the jaw belonged to a man… it was a little gross. It was very gross. Erik apparently thought so, too, as he began to cough out the raw, bony fish as soon as it touched his tongue. His taste buds had become human, too. Charles remembered the carton of goldfish crackers in the cupboard, and promptly retrieved them. He threw a small handful in Erik’s direction, being careful not to hit him.
“Parlez vous Française? Deutsch?” Nothing. He tossed another couple crackers. His attempt at bribing Erik into exhibiting linguistic skills having proved fruitless, Charles leaned against the wall and began trying to think of a way to even begin sorting out the mess that the blonde woman had gotten them into. Watching placidly as Erik stuffed his cheeks with crackers in a manner more befitting a squirrel than a shark, Charles let himself slip into a waking trance, calming his mind so as to create a blank slate from which he could begin to rationalize the insane series of events that was his life at that moment.
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He wasn’t sure what he thought had happened when he began to run around the bend. A rupture in the tank? Gunfire? He was even less sure when he arrived at the scene to find the retreating backs of the strange guests and a very much naked, and very much drowning, man thrashing around behind the glass of the tank.
Abandoning reason and running on sheer adrenaline, Charles had sprinted to the feeding deck atop the tanks and dove in, clothes and all. He swam as fast as he could to the man and hooked his arms around his shoulders, pulling him up to the surface. He dragged the naked man out of the water and, pinning his struggling form to the feeding platform by his shoulders, begged him to be still.
“Calm yourself, friend! What’s happened?” he gasped, pushing his sodden hair from his face. His vision cleared of hair, Charles’ gaze snapped immediately to a piece of red plastic on the other man’s shoulder. It was a tag. A shark tag.
Charles’ first assumption would have been that this man had killed Erik, the only tagged shark in the tank, had it not been for the fact that the tag was most definitely embedded into the skin of his shoulder. He was completely baffled, unable to even begin to process what was happening, until he remembered something he had heard on the news last week about a gang of super-humans called ‘The Hellfire Club’.
Supposedly, this club was the first foray into the public eye of a group of mutants who had for so long managed to keep their powers secret. The reporter said that these mutants could be capable of any number of almost supernatural abilities: summoning, flight, alchemy, transfiguration.
And, Charles figured, why the hell not? Although it made next to no sense, it worked more than any other theory. The man’s scars matched up with the ones Erik had gotten before being caught and placed in captivity. He placed a hand on the head of the man (shark?) beneath him and tried to focus all of his energies on calming him down. He had always had a knack for soothing the agitated.
Erik (or the man who was most likely Erik) calmed almost immediately, and Charles pulled him to his feet and led him to the back room where he wouldn’t be seen.
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“Charles, I-It’s Moira-she’s, um…!” he gestured wildly at Erik, who was bristling from the shock of Hank’s sudden appearance. “This fish!” He thrust the bucket towards Charles.
Charles pushed himself off the wall, casting a curious gaze on Hank. “What seems to be the problem, my friend? Where’s Moira?”
“This fish! This fish is Moira! I mean, I, I don’t-ah…” Hank passed the bucket to Charles, resigned to the fact that he was unable to communicate through his panic.
‘Oh,’ Charles thought. ‘Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.’ Moira McTaggart, security guard and, more importantly, Charles’ girlfriend, was swimming in a bucket. Because she was a fish. Because of the same two who had transformed Erik, no doubt. He looked down into the bucket at his beloved-turned-beta-fish. ‘Shitshitshitshitshit.’
“Moira was patrolling the Shark Encounter. She must have gotten hit with a rebound when that…” Hank gestured to Erik, who was attempting to stand by pulling himself up against a table. “That happened. Everybody’s heard. And it must have had the opposite effect on her.” He looked desperately at Charles. “I’ve been looking for you since it happened.”
Charles was still staring into the bucket. His body wasn’t keeping up with the frantic pace of his mind, and he found himself unable to move. He realized with a jolt that he must have completely overlooked fish-Moira flopping wildly on the floor as he focused on saving Erik. He tried to project his guilt towards Moira’s small, fishy prison of a body. His thoughts were a chorus of expletives and the desire for this to be some failed joke of Hank’s (Hank was not very funny but often made awkward attempts at humor, so it was a semi-probably theory).
Moira looked about as distressed as a beta fish could. Charles dipped a finger into the water in what he hoped was a reassuring fashion in spite of his own horror and watched as she circled it and butted it with her head.
“Moira…? Can you understand me, darling?” he ventured, swishing his finger beneath the surface. Moira flicked him with her tailfin three times in what he took to be an affirmative response.
“I think she can still understand language. That’s… promising.” Hank met the older scientist’s gaze. Charles nodded earnestly, looking a little faint.
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Hank gave Charles a few minutes of silence to collect himself before attempting to make some progress.“Why is this even happening?”
“I don’t know, Hank. But perhaps ‘why’ is not as important as ‘how’.” Charles took a deep breath, finalizing his attempt at level-headedness. “If we know how this happened, we might be able to reverse it.” Charles looked back down at Moira and placed his finger back in the water. “Okay, Moira, let’s do it this way: hit my finger with your head when you mean to say yes, and your tail when you mean no. I need to be able to ask you some questions.” She responded with a gentle tap of her head.
“Ask her if-”
“GAH.”
Charles whipped his head around and looked at Erik, leaned against a table with his mouth open.
“GAH,” he yelled again, apparently having found his voice. “AGH, ACK, GRAH, BUH, BUH, BUH.”
“…Erik?” Charles ventured, unsure of how to proceed. “Is everything oka-”
“NGH! GRAH, TCH TCH TCH!” He sounded like a cat choking on a hairball.
“Ssh, my friend, it’s alright,” Charles cooed, unsure of what else to do. “Use your inside voice. Quiet. Quiet like this.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We talk like this, Erik. Quiet, quiet.”
“Kuh,” Erik breathed. “Kuh kuh kuh kuh buh buh buh buh.”
“Mm.” Confident that Erik would behave until he could tackle the somewhat more important problem concerning his ectothermic girlfriend. Charles turned back to Moira.
“Ask her if the people who did this said anything,” Hank offered from the door.
“Ip ip ip,” Erik whispered.
“You heard him, darling. Did she say anything at all?” Moira flicked her tail against his finger. “No,” he supplied to Hank.
“Just as well, I guess. She wouldn’t be able to tell us what she said anyway.” Hank sighed. “This is ridiculous.”
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Erik, still leaning against the table, was slowly annunciating vowels. “Aay, ee, eye, oh, yoo… aay, ee, eye, oh, yoo…”
“Language,” Charles breathed, incredulous. “Hank, this is speech! This is letters in alphabetical order! Keep going, Erik!” Moira swished angrily in her bucket, unused to being ignored. Charles didn’t notice.
“Aay, ee, eye, oh, yoo, if, a- and, and, and, me, me.” He looked at Charles, confusion coloring his expression. “Me, if, and. Why, why, can.” He continued to look at the other men expectantly, but both scientists had been rendered speechless. The shark spoke English. The shark was speaking English. Sort of.
“Why me can, if gah ngh. Why if, what?”
“Erik, do you understand English?” Charles spoke slowly, maintaining eye contact.
“Aay, bee, cee, dee, ee, eff, gee…” It was like watching evolution on fast forward. As confused, scared, and overwhelmed as he was, the scientist in Charles couldn’t help but marvel at the growth.
“Aitch, eye, jay, kay, Emma Emma,” Erik uttered. “Chaw?”
“Well, he’s definitely trying to say something,” Hank shrugged, watching Erik curiously. “I have a hypothesis, if you’re interested.”
“Do tell,” Charles said somewhat more breathlessly than he intended. This was all a little much.
“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of The Hellfire Club by now?”
“I believe we’re thinking the exact same thing, my friend.”
“And as for the… linguistic developments: based on what I’ve heard about the, er… mutants’ ability to transform life,” he paused considering his words. “Their memories and knowledge may have integrated with Erik’s own when the blast hit him. Maybe.” He sighed. “It’s all still rather unbelievable.”
“Chaw. Tch… tch… Shh. Shh.” Erik paused, concentrating. “Shh… aw.”
That's all for tonight, folks. I've got a lot more planned for this, so stay tuned.
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