Oscar? Come in, Oscar.

< static >

We’re sure this thing is working?

…?

Maybe? Don’t tell me, maybe! Does nothing on this blasted station— Ugh… Pick up the comms, Oscar. I know you can hear me.

< crackling static, possibly a garbled reply >

Ah ha! Now look, Oscar. What happened with Ms. Mange was undeniably tragic, but you are hardly going to accomplish anything by—

< more static followed by a distinctive click >

Blast. He’s switched off. Idiotic buffoon. The last thing we need is some love-sick popinjay running amok down there with a loaded gun. I’d almost call it romantic if it wasn’t doomed to failure from the start.

I just wish the fool hadn’t taken our only Personnel Transport.

…?

Don’t be ridiculous. It would take an idiot of colossal proportions to get anywhere close to the subjects. No, no. Far more likely the boy’ll fumble about for a while, looking for his missing sweetheart, then come hobbling back once he inevitably runs afoul of the local fauna. This isn’t exactly a civilized planet.

But even if the worst were to happen, and he were to perish, the subjects would need a massive stroke of luck to stumble upon our Transport. Even then, they would be hard-pressed to ever make use of it. Setting aside the access codes, the language barrier, and the basic physiological requirements to actually pilot the thing, have you seen the two of them lately? They’re enormous! How would they even fit inside?

What I’m worried about is the state of our pantry. You still haven’t made that supply run, and I’m running short on brandy. Heaven knows I’ve been needing it. Our little hero could have at least done us the courtesy of using the Local Object Transferal System.

…

Broken? Again? What do you—ugh. Why am I even bothering to ask? Of course, the bloody LOTS is broken again. At this point, I’d be more surprised if it wasn’t. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost believe it was cursed.

What am I paying you people for, anyway? Is no one here capable of using our equipment without breaking it in the process? That tears it! Who is responsible for maintenance? I am this close to marching down there and—

…

Samantha. Samantha the intern? Samantha, the girl who got herself eaten? That Samantha? For the entire station?!

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Ah, well. I suppose you get what you pay for, don’t you?

< uncomfortable laughter >

I say… hang on. With the Transport planet-side and the LOTS on the blink, doesn’t that mean we’re, um…? Well, how are we going to, er…?

… … …

< sharp squeal from the comms >

Oscar! You bring that Transport back at once, do you hear me?!

*

For a long while, Mark tumbled and rolled, swept along by the current to who-knew-where. He was pretty sure there had been a waterfall at some point, but after crashing into whatever pool had been waiting at its bottom, he had been left completely disoriented. He could scarcely tell left from right, never mind up from down. So finding the surface again was an exercise in futility.

His thermal vision was not helping over much, either. The water made a wash of any kind of heat signature almost immediately, making everything a semi-uniform pastiche of blues and blacks. He had to hold his hand practically to his nose before he could even see it, and even then, it was just a blob of red being swept away by the current. Which… was helpful for seeing where the current was going, he had to suppose. Not that that was any great mystery.

Here, the current dominated pretty much everything, and it had quickly swept him into some kind of tunnel. At the present moment, he had his arms and legs spread-eagled, the newly-sprouted claws at the tips of his fingers and toes idly dragging away along the vast expanse of its smooth walls. He had no idea how long or far he had been carried, but he had at least been hoping to discover a turn or an outcropping. But the tunnel seemed never-ending.

There was a distant corner of his mind that puzzled over how so remarkable a natural feature as this could have formed and, if he had studied geology or spent any time at all actually paying attention in science classes, he might have some theories. As it was, all he could do was make observations and hope to use them.

For all their glass-like uniformity, the walls did vary a bit in width, but the gap between them rarely narrowed so much as to be uncomfortable. There had only been the one spot he had needed to squeeze through, however there was no going back. The current made certain of that. So he had forced himself past and kept on.

Wherever he was, there was no air to be found. Just rock and the constant flow of water. Of which he could not breathe. He knew that of a certainty. It had only taken the one attempt to realize his lungs were perfectly content to hold on to every last scrap of air they possibly could, thank you very much. Nor had he sprouted gills… to his knowledge.

Now that he thought about it, that was a distinct possibility. By that point, he should have long since succumbed to oxygen deprivation, but… he felt fine. A tad lethargic, maybe. Whether that was a good sign or not was another matter. But he was not panicking. Nor did he feel any particular urge to seek out an air pocket beyond the dictates of simple, good sense.

Curious, he began feeling at his neck then, finding nothing, he ran his hands along his arms, legs and everywhere else he could reach, searching for some new organ that might explain why he had not yet drowned. But all his fingers met was his own smooth skin. Ultimately, he could only conclude that whatever he had done to his lungs, it had resulted in an ability to hold his breath for insane amounts of time.

Which was fortunate, but did little to help him out of his predicament. If he could just find Naomi. She would know what to do. And if she did not, she would certainly make a show of pretending. Which would make him feel better… if only to know she was still alive.

After their shared mishap and subsequent tumble into the water, he had lost track of her, but with the way the current dominated everything, there was a good chance she was somewhere in this tube with him—maybe even as near as a few yards away. It was not as if he could actually see anything.

Their shared mishap…

Inevitably, his mind was once again drawn to that intensely embarrassing… and strangely beautiful moment. The profound pleasure of their metamorphosis. Her writhing around on top of him. The wondrous softness of her skin. Her tongue helplessly lapping at him, as though questing… inches from his—

He swallowed reflexively.

That alone had nearly caused to him to blow his load right into her face. It had only been by the slimmest of margins that he had avoided irrevocable humiliation, but he had just managed to turn away in the nick of time. Then after… ugh. He had tried to hide his shame, but to no avail. And that ridiculous cover story he had concocted…

A jellyfish? Really? She might have gone along with his stupid lie, but she had not been fooled. He had seen that smile on her face. She knew.

Still… the smile had contained no traces of mockery. Oh, there had been plenty of teasing going on. But it had not been malicious. More… playful. If he did not know better, he almost might have thought she was pleased to have discovered his premature eruption.

And that made no sense. As a man, he was supposed to be able to control himself better than that—preferably up until that perfect moment when she herself met her climax. To instead lose it before she had even really touched him? He would be tarred and feathered! Driven out on the rails! A worthless man, cast out and derided forever.

Or that was what everyone said, anyway.

If only he could have met some… experienced and endlessly patient, older woman to show him the ropes first. Someone who would not mind his clumsiness.

He nodded decisively. A MILF. Or maybe a prostitute? Just somebody who would not judge him too harshly. But that was life for you. One minute you’re working the night-shift at a gas station, well aware that no woman in her right mind would ever glance at you twice and… at least content to live out the remainder of your days jerking off to whatever porn happens to strike your fancy. The next, you’re stuck on an alien planet with an increasingly attractive young lady who seemed to enjoy batting you around like a cat with its favorite toy.

And whatever he could make of her actual behavior—which was little—she had definitely gotten more attractive. Something had happened to that girl when they had been struck by their transformation. Something more than just a few changes to their hands and lungs could explain. He would need to see her in some actual, proper light to make a catalog of them, though—preferably while upright and at least an arm’s length away. Her actual face might have been obscured by the amorphous blobs his thermal vision made of her, but he had gotten a pretty good look at her breasts while she had been pinned beneath him. They had practically been spilling out from that old T-shirt he had given her!

He swallowed reflexively again, trying and failing to dismiss the mental image.

However, it was about then that his claws came away from the smooth rock they had been dragging along, and his ears gave a distinctive pop. The sudden change pulled his thoughts irrevocably into the here and now.

He felt… pressure. As though from being deep underwater. Did that mean he had finally been jettisoned out and into the ocean? He could detect no hints of the cave walls anymore, no matter how far he stretched, so it was possible. But then he shook his head. They had been on an island. Unless those tubes had dragged him miles out to sea, there was no way he could be so deep under the ocean that even light could not penetrate.

Curious, he allowed a bit of water into his mouth anyway and, grimacing, quickly shot it back out again. There was a faint hint of salt there. But it was not ocean salty—even by this world’s standards. So perhaps… an underground cavern of some kind? With the salt, it could have been a reservoir where fresh water met oceanic.

What he was supposed to do with that information was another matter. He still could not tell up from down or see so much as a passing whale. And to this point, his sonar had remained frustratingly dormant.

The thought gave him a moment’s pause. If he were honest, it was less sonar and more the occasional blip giving him an auditory clue for how to find whatever it was Naomi needed, whether that was just a supply of fresh water—which had been the start of this whole debacle—or because she was literally in danger. He was getting no such warnings now, so he assumed she was fine. Probably… hopefully. But surely finding her again would be of some priority to the computer that controlled it.

How to trigger it, though? It had never responded to his own his voice commands, but… well, if it was anything like real sonar, he should be able to get at least a vague sense of his surroundings through reflected sound. It was pretty quiet around here. Maybe if he made some kind of bat noises?

He shrugged. It was worth a try.

His first thought was to try for a high-pitched screech. That was what bats did, after all. But the experiment only succeeded in letting some of his precious air escape. It had not been his intended goal, but the mistake did at least help orient him. The bubbles foaming past his lips had little choice but to swirl upwards and, while that was not helping him get any closer to Naomi, it was at least a direction worth going. He did not feel as if he really needed air, per se, but there was a certain staleness settling into his lungs. So he suspected the need to surface would eventually come.

With a languid swish of his webbed fingers, he propelled himself upwards, following the tickle of bubbles toward the surface. It took quite a while. Long enough for him to descend into his thoughts again. How was he supposed to make a sound underwater without letting air escape?

Maybe clapping?

No. After the first attempt, he realized there was too much resistance from the water to make a sound.

A finger snap?

Slightly better, but the sound was still too muted to be of any use.

Perhaps clicking his tongue?

That one seemed at least viable and, after a few seconds of experimentation, he eventually discovered he could puff a bit of air into his cheeks and create a decent tocking sort of noise. For a moment after, he listened in anticipation, but the returning echoes were incredibly faint, only just audible over even the sound of his own beating heart. Still, it was a success!

But what to make of them? It was just sound, after all. It took him several attempts to even discern their basic directionality. Distance or remote pipe-dreams like shape were laughable impossibilities. The computer might well have improved his hearing to the point where developing real sonar abilities might be possible, but he was no Matt Murdock.

Still, he kept at it, ticking and listening, whilst he floated ever closer to whatever passed for the surface around here. It was a gradual sort of thing, like learning to ride a bike or walk for the first time, but eventually, he decided that certain… directions were slightly closer than others.

Up, for sure. That was getting closer with every passing moment—even as its opposite moved away. Meanwhile, behind him, presumably the tube and whatever rock that had housed it, was much closer than whatever was out in the water before him. Then, to his left and right, there was a more-or-less uniform… middley sort of feeling? The sound waves were hitting his ears after the wall behind him, but well before those from his front.

Put together, he decided his initial assumption was correct. He must have been in a cavern of some kind… or perhaps a cul-de-sac at the bottom of the island? It was possible that if he swam out into the distance, he might eventually find some light. Or another tunnel.

However, as he kept at his newfound hobby, he discovered a kind of anomaly. There was a… well, he was not entirely sure how to describe it—just a distortion in the reflected sound he was getting. Like a… fwut? It kind of reminded him of a hill, actually—or the auditory equivalent—though he could not say why. But it was definitely down and to the right. Whether that meant anything significant was an entirely separate matter. It could have as easily been a peculiarity to the local rock formation as it was some sleeping… leviathan. And that possibility firmly stifled any urge he might have had to go check it out.

There were other things as well. It took him quite a while to even notice they were there, but there were these vague blips all around. Faint. Small. Never in the same place twice. Debris, perhaps? Or fish?

That thought sent a shiver of excitement running through him, and his belly tightened in anticipation. Some remnant of his earlier mixed feelings about his situation flared at the instinctual response, but he cast them firmly aside. Naomi was right. There was no point in bemoaning something he could do nothing about. As long as he remained in control and properly guided himself toward the next sunrise, he would remain human enough. He had to believe that. What other choice did he have?

Besides, it was not as if he had any real hope of catching anything. For them to be living down here, they had to have far better senses than he did. But if he could manage it… even just the once… perhaps then he could take some of those senses for himself. Maybe even more than a few. Eventually. If he caught enough of them.

But he would need Naomi for that. She was always the one who got the cool stuff like… flippers and claws. If the pattern for the kinds of choices he was given remained consistent, he could really only affect his body’s internal structure—organs and the like. But the ability to hold his breath like a whale was pretty cool. Or a sea turtle, as it happened.

Now if he could just discover some critter down there with excellent hearing… then he could really get his sonar going.

About then, he was beginning to detect Up as rapidly approaching, so he slowed his ascent and raised his hands. A moment later, his fingers met the cavern roof. Disappointingly, there was no end to the water in the immediate vicinity. However, the ceiling had a bit of a slope to it, so he redirected his path to follow it. With luck, he might find an exit or, barring that, an exploitable air pocket. With his current abilities, even a sliver of air would be enough to allow him to explore his environs at his leisure.

Sure enough, before too much longer, his questing fingers eventually found the water’s surface, and his head emerged into a shallow but fairly wide space at the apex of the cavern’s ceiling. There was only about a foot of breathable space between roof and water, and unfortunately, this time there were no convenient ledges to rest on.

It would have to do. And at least he could kind of see again. Admittedly, there was not much to see. Just the faint contours of rock above and the ripples of water below.

However, as he slowly turned, his examination soon revealed a rather immediate exception.

“Naomi?”

The blob of orange on the far side of the cavern whirled. “Mike!”

He winced. After concentrating so long on even the faintest of sounds, her sudden shout left him reeling and disoriented. So he was not at all prepared for the mass of semi-hysterical woman-flesh to jet through the water straight for him. Before he had so much as gotten his eyes to refocus, she was on him, raining kisses and clutching at him like mad, and they went tumbling under the water again.

For several moments, there was only confused sensation. Softness. Questing lips. Grasping hands. The occasional prick from a slightly-too-eager claw. Fingers catching in hair.

The smooth contours of her back.

The smooth… uninterrupted contours…

Realization came quickly, and he almost choked in his haste to separate from her. A scant few seconds later, he again breeched the surface of their shared air pocket, bumping his head in the process, and commenced to hacking up the unintentional breath of water.

“Mike?” Naomi called, resurfacing mid-wheeze. “Mike, are you alright? What’s the matter?”

“Sorry… sorry…” he coughed and pointed at his throat. “Wrong pipe.” He hesitated to explain the rest, but it was not the kind of thing that could be left unsaid. Not if he hoped to survive once she figured out her situation. “Naomi… your shirt.”

“What about it?” Her hands began to immediately seek out the edges of the garment, perhaps thinking it had become misaligned in the confusion. However, from the colors at her cheeks rapidly scaling from their typical dull oranges and reds all the way up to white hot, it was clear she had discovered what he already had.

Because, of course, there was no shirt. She was… unsupported, as it were.

With a gasp, her arms slapped around her chest, and for a tense handful of moments, they simply stared at one another. He had not actually seen anything, of course—the water dispersing the heat below her neck made sure of that—and he had been too distracted during their little underwater wrestling bout than to have gotten anything more than a little chest-to-chest action. But he was hardly going to say that.

His first thought was to assure her of her continued modesty, but he hesitated. Every time he had attempted to be nice or polite with her, she had either scolded him or outright assaulted him. And he knew any attempt at a compliment that was not appropriately framed with wit or satire would be met with similar derision.

So he decided to go a completely different direction.

“I’m not giving you my shorts.”

There was a prolonged moment of silence. But then, the beginnings of a smile quirked at her lips. And as she relaxed, her arms slowly unwound about her torso—no doubt realizing he would not be able to see one way or the other—and she began to wade closer. The look on her face was somewhere between flirtatious… and menacing.

“Oh… I think you are.”

“Naomi…” He backed away nervously, already regretting his choice. “Naomi, I’m not wearing anything under my shorts. I’ll be naked!”

“So, you’d prefer me to stay naked?”

“You’re not naked!” he squeaked.

“I’m half-naked,” she corrected. “For a girl, there’s no difference.”

“But… but…” he stammered. “I’ll be all-naked! You don’t want to see my dingus flopping around, do you?!”

She tilted her chin challengingly. “So you’re saying you want to see my breasts flopping around?”

“No!” He caught the beginnings of a dangerous flash in her eyes, and he quickly reversed course. “I—I mean, yes. Or… n-no, I…” He grimaced, trying to think of any combination of words that might get him out of this. “Y-your boobs don’t… flop around! I—I mean, I’m sure they would if… if you were to… sh-shake… They’re perky!”

He closed his eyes in disgust. Why was he such an idiot? Someone should just put him out of his misery.

Her next words, though, were not at all the epic browbeating he had been expecting. “Perky?” She chuckled. “I suppose there are worse things to be called. Oh, well. If a girl has to be half-naked, she should at least be appreciated.”

His eyes jerked up. He was still cautious, but that she was willing to let this go gave him a glimmer of hope. And… she had been kissing him a moment ago. He had assumed that was just because she was happy to be reunited, but maybe… maybe she actually liked him?

“Naomi, do you—” He cut himself off instantly. She would not appreciate the direct approach, so he decided to send out a delicate probe. “That is… well, I suppose I… I could take my shorts off. Just to be fair.”

She snorted and poked him once in the chest—which hurt. Her claws seemed to be way sharper than his own. “Let’s put a pin in that idea, big boy. A ‘dingus’ is not a man’s most attractive feature,” she swam a bit closer so as to purr her next words directly into his face, “when it’s flopping.”

He swallowed. That was flirting! It had to be! Unless… unless she was meaning to just be informative?! She had rejected his offer, after all.

He cleared his throat gruffly. Best to play it safe. “Well… it’s not like either of us can see anything right now, anyway. So what are we even talking about?” He tittered weakly, trying to force down the remainder of his nerves. He really needed to change the subject. “Uh… I think… there might be some fish around here we can hunt.”

A toothy sort of grin stole over her features as her claw doodled lightly over his chest. “Oh, Mike… you know just what to say to get a girl’s engine running.”

Engine? What engine? What’s an engine? Did that mean she was hungry, too? Probably. If her gut was reacting anything like his own, just the mention of food would have been enough to make her ravenous. Was this air pocket getting hotter?

“So… how do you expect us to hunt anything down here?” she continued. “I don’t know about you, but my heat vision is useless underwater. I only managed to find this place by following the bubbles up.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed in relief at the familiar and much safer topic. “Did you try making bat noises, too?”

She stared at him. “Why would I make bat noises, Mike?”

“Well… because…” He deflated slightly. Right. Of course. That was… an idiotic thing to have said. He should explain. “I’ve… been trying to get my sonar to work. Buh—not… with bat noises. I mean… I did… once but… Anyway, I can kind of—”

She placed a finger over his lips. “Yeah, alright, Mike. I get the idea. You were playing with your sonar, and that’s how you discovered the fish?”

He wasn’t playing… “More or less. But I’m not very good at it yet. I’m not even sure it was fish I was hearing. They could have been almost anything. Anyway, I was hoping you’d have some ideas.”

She snorted once with laughter. “Ideas on how to catch fish? Me? I dunno. Present the bagel and hope it smears itself over it? How do you normally catch fish?”

“Well…”

It had been a while, but when his grandpa was still alive, the two of them had gone fishing a few times out on his lake. And even if he had not, the rod and reel method was a well-known—and equally well-hated—staple of video games. So he was not a complete novice.

But bare-handed?

“What about your computer?” he suggested. “You said it gives you survival tips sometimes, right?”

“Yeah, when it feels like it,” she affirmed. “Can’t hurt to check. Give me a second. The heat vision screws with my readout.”

Something visibly passed over her eyes, exposing them to the air. From his point of view, it had looked like she had just switched on a pair of spotlights on either side of her nose.

“Hey, you!” She tapped at her wrist and, out of curiosity, he allowed his vision to slip back to normal as well. The air pocket was pitch black, of course. “There’s fish down here. How do we catch them?”

The light at her wrist gave a few flashes in response. It had been quite dull—certainly not bright enough to see by—but the sudden presence of any light at all in such a dark place was startling.

“It’s just highlighting my claws,” she reported with a sour grunt.

“What do you mean? Does it expect you to catch them like a bear?” His lip screwed up in thought. His own claws were comparatively dull, no doubt meant more for digging than anything else. That made them quite sturdy, but it would take a considerable amount of force to draw blood with them. But in the daylight and shallow water, he could see some merit to the strategy. He could easily imagine swatting a few to shore where Naomi waited to finish them off. None of which did them much good in the here and now. “I… guess you could spear one… if you could get close enough.”

“Yeah, if I could see them. As it is, I wouldn’t know if there was one swimming around my ankles.”

That was the rub. Their eyesight had improved dramatically in recent days, but it remained situational. Seeing into the ultraviolet was useless without the sun to provide it, and thermal vision did not work at all underwater. Meanwhile, his sonar was only sensitive enough to give him a basic idea of his surroundings.

How were they supposed to catch fish in a dark cave?

Unconsciously, his eyes once again found themselves drawn to the occasional blink coming from Naomi’s wrist. And again, he had to wonder why it did that. What was the purpose of having a light bulb installed in your wrist? Did it serve some function? Perhaps as a means of projecting her readouts? Or a sensor? Either way, it was kind of nice to have even so weak a light to relieve the otherwise stifling darkness.

A relief… in the darkness…

“Hey, Naomi…” he began thoughtfully. “Have you ever seen ‘Finding Nemo?’”

*

Okay… okay… slow the descent. Careful now. We only have one shot at this. If it burns up in the atmosphere… Damn it all, Oscar. There is no reason we should be having to do this the hard—

Okay, good! We’re into the cloud layer. Speed… within tolerance levels. Jettison the heat collar… now.

Good… Activate passive air thrusters.

…and we’re stable! Excellent.

Alright… to business. Sensors indicate he should have landed somewhere near where the first pod was disabled. Let’s start there.

…?

If we see him, sure. But our primary goal is retrieving the Personnel Transport. We need to get it back up to the station and out on a supply run within the day, or none of you will be getting paid this week.

< several voices raised in uproar >

I’m sorry. Is it my fault our only engineer was… uh… suicidal? Is it my fault she was so completely incomp—

No. I’ll not speak ill of the dead. Regardless, not only is the damned LOTS broken again, for some reason, our long range communication array has decided to start acting up. I can’t very well wire you all your pay if I can’t communicate with the bank, now can I?

Oh, and never mind how you were planning on actually spending the money with no way of getting off-station.

< grumbling >

Alright, alright, yes. I acknowledge that, in hindsight, perhaps opting for the Abductor rental was not the best option, but you should have seen the state of the used ones. Besides, we only needed it for the one scene. How was I supposed to know we might need a backup ship?

…!

Well, then, you’re welcome to pay for one the next time you decide to produce, direct, and star in a series. Until then, kindly stay on task. I’d like to eat something besides mashed pardo this week, and you could not force me to break into that tub of gnarkle pudding at gunpoint.

Not after last time…

…?

< tense silence >

Timothy, that’s… We do not discuss the gnarkle pudding incident.