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#5
APR 12 |
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“Back to the Ocean: Reefing”
To the casual observer, the dolphin which currently tore through the glistening surface was simply reflecting the algal bloom that was developing in the wide, warm ocean before it. Rising through the water and slicing through the waves, the dolphin exploded through the surface and dove back down into the depths.
As a group of tourists, glued to their binoculars, stared and peered over the edge of the cruise ship, they noticed something more unusual about the dolphin – it wasn't just stained green with the algal bloom…it was a bright, vibrant green. It was almost moving solo, something which the resident armchair Cetacean enthusiast on bound pointed out to the others, was practically impossible and unheard of. Dolphins live in social groups, never independently.
In fact, the creature diving through the waves was Garfield Logan, former Beast Boy and the newly minted Animal Man, chosen by the Animal Gods from the Parliament of Beasts to fulfil their plans on Earth and act as a mediator for the Animals of the World in the upcoming War of the Elements.
Gar had no idea at which location he’d entered the ocean and it was obvious he had exited the swamp miles from its original location in Botswana, but how exactly could he begin to process the ‘mystical’ situation in which he’d been placed; fruits which transported him through living animals and allowed him to commune, ever so briefly, with the Animal Gods themselves. He still had no idea how or why animals worshipped Gods, but he supposed it was something to do with the mystical nature of Nature herself. He found it odd that religion and mysticism would be a part of nature, when nature was revered by many humans as a sort of mysticism in itself.
As he dove threw the waves, he made one more final spout of breath and snot before he descended through the surface, immediately transforming himself into a marlin to pierce the ocean depths. Further down, as he changed his form yet again to something which would and could sustain itself in the immense pressures of the ocean, his giant squid-form’s giant eye noticed something unusual in the murk. Usually things in the ocean didn’t shine to much as they would give themselves away to predators. Huge creatures lurked the oceans depths looking for anything they could feed upon, but this shining light below him appeared to be little more than a bioluminscent sac. Trailing his tentacles behind him, he filtered and pushed the water through his spout, sending him shooting down toward the glowing item.
However, one of the elements of being Beast Boy was that he never needed to understand nature itself or the animals that existed within it. Whilst Gar had a number of varied forms he liked to inhabit, he rarely looked outside of his comfort zone, nor did he look beyond what he could casually see on television.
Descending slowly, Garfield found himself surrounded by thousands of dangling tendrils. Quickly, they latched onto his skin, embedding themselves and injecting thousands of tiny doses of the same neuron-toxin. Immediately the new Animal Man began to find the effects of this devastating. A giant squid could easily ignore and shrug off the attacks of a few dozen jellyfish, as their bodies and nervous systems never complex enough to fully take in the pain. Moreover, squids of his current size never hunted in the waters which would be full of stinging jellies.
The glowing sac undulated and unfurled itself, revealing thousands of needle sharp, glowing teeth. None were thicker than a pencil and most barely made it to that size. The gnashing maw before him began to extend itself, as though it were a tongue poked through gelatinous lips. Teeth grazed the edge of Gar’s now flailing and fatigued tentacles.
Horror began to crawl into the expanse of Gars mind as he tried desperately to rationalize what he was seeing. He didn’t think it was natural, but he had no idea what actually lived at the bottom of the ocean. He had no idea whether or not this was a creature he should be trying to defend rather than escape from.
He really needed to learn a way to communicate with animals.
With a final, defiant clenching of muscles, Gar filled the already dark water with ink. Attempting to use his siphon to propel himself away from the monsters grip, he found that he was unable too. He quickly reached out into the recesses of his mind and latched onto the nearest, smallest animal he could think of that would survive in the ocean at this depth.
Immediately, his form shrank and hardened, transforming himself into a tiny clown fish, his body taking on the markings but not the distinctive red and white colouration. Quickly, he pointed his body upwards, already feeling the immense pressure on his swim bladder and powered himself toward the surface above. The creature’s tentacles, while numbering in the thousands, were simply too large and allowed too much room for him to move around, providing him with an adequate escape route. Switching his form back to the marlin, as soon as he was certain he was clear of the creature below him, he hurtled toward the surface again, stopping only once to look behind him to see if the creature was following.
Unfortunately, it was. The beast was moving slowly toward him, or rather it could have been moving quickly, as it was far larger than Garfield would have guessed. The creature had a huge, hook-shaped shell attached to its back. Far larger than a house, the animal must have been nearly thirty feet across and almost as deep. The tendril netting which had ensnared Garfield early had been retracted into the shell housing around the closed and folded mouth, almost giving the impression of fur. It tore through the water, propelled by a number of siphons underneath the twisting, hook part of the shell. Huge milky and dull eyes searched through the water for the green fish, which hung, almost as though it were suspended in the air, with fear.
Twisting almost a hundred and sixty degrees, Gar decided to try and meet the threat head on, and play chicken with it…whether or not sea creatures had such a thing as chickens remained to be seen. He’d be finding out soon enough. Shooting through the water, powered by his massive, muscled tail, Garfield aimed his sword-like nose towards the creatures head.
However, the colossal monster continued its collision course with the former Titan. At the last possible moment, Garfield changed his course and shot past the monster, just passing over the top of its head and into the deep below. He’d have to stay small and stay fast to avoid the monster. Skipping in and out of the darkness, this time Gar didn’t stop to see if the monster was pursuing him. He simply pushed forward.
After nearly twenty minutes of sustained swimming, Gar finally tapered off, allowing himself a glance behind him. He found that the monster was long gone, nowhere to be seen even on the horizon of the ocean. There were no huge shadows or looming figures in the distance, just dark, blue sea.
Allowing himself a brief moment to rest his eyes and his mind, Gar transformed himself into a giant emerald humpback, floating ever closer to the surface of the ocean. His breathing slowing and his mind, exhausted from the lack of adrenaline, rested and he closed his eyes and concentrated on relaxation. Whatever that beast was, it was no longer pursuing him. Or at least didn’t appear to be.
After nearly half an hour of idling and semi-slumber, Garfield roused as his senses picked something up. His sensitive whale apparatus, a reason for choosing this form to rest, began to detect the clicks and chirps that sounded like old friends. Almost with excitement, the young man opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by small dolphins. However, on closer inspection, they were no longer any dolphins he recognized. In fact, while he was unsure about the monster he’d escaped before, Garfield was sure these creatures were not natural. Nothing about them seemed to be.
Whilst in a dolphin-like shape, he noticed all the fins were razor sharp, lined with hooks and barbs and suckers. The underside of one of these beasts, as it passed over him, also appeared to be armed with suckers, as well as a series of sunken beaks which snipped and chirped excitedly at Garfields skin. He twisted as quickly as possible, with two of the beasts ramming their unicorn-like horns into his side, piercing his blubber.
The jade whale practically wept in pain in the vast ocean expanse as the pod of killer Dolphins manifested something even more disturbing from their genital areas. To remain streamlined in their hunt, they had sucked their trailing fins into their bodies but now, as they neared the end of their hunt, the razor sharp, cross shaped fins slowly slipped out of the genital pouch of the dolphin.
Gar winced as a second, then a third torpedo shaped animal passed over his body, scouring marks into his skin and his flesh. He let loose a burst of bubbles from his mouth in an attempt to distract and dissuade the dolphins from attacking him. Immediately switching from his whale form to something a bit smaller and nippier, Gar found himself hemmed in and surrounded. It seemed these creatures were more than a little bit concerned with attacking him but they weren't going for kill shots.
He dove downwards, his body having already taken on the form of a green thresher shark, his huge tail lashing out violently behind him as he shot through the water. He knew he couldn't hold this form long; sharks like the thresher weren't designed to be deep divers and the dolphins were more than able to handle whatever he could dish out.
His teeth gnashed against themselves as the dolphins appeared to pull away, their forms lingering in the background but attempting to move no further. Gar silently congratulated himself while also worrying what could cause such viscous-looking creatures to move away from their flagging prey.
Maybe that's what they were attempting to do…they were trying to wear him out.
As he dove deeper he switched his form to an elephant seal, creatures known for being able to survive the crushing weight of the ocean on their bodies and even sleeping on the bottom of the ocean to gain some kind of peace and quiet for proper rest. It was at that moment Garfield noticed the cave before him. He powered himself toward the opening, astonished to find that it was more than a simply cave he could hold himself in. It was something much more than that. It had air inside of it, presumably fed from an above ocean source, that was breathable.
He broke the surface of the pool that had gathered in the cave and transformed for what felt like the first time in years into his natural, humanoid form. His fur soaking wet and clinging to his increasingly slender and less muscular body, he pulled himself from the water.
Shaking himself slowly, he sucked the air in deeply and let his chest rise and fall a few times. He needed to try and relax, to try and work out exactly what was going on. Sitting down by the side of the pool of sea water, he stared down into its surface.
At least the Dolphins couldn't hurt him from here.
He closed his eyes, listening to the rhythmic beating of the ocean, almost as though it were a heartbeat. Until it changed.
Immediately rolling backwards, Gar was struck suddenly and with a lot of force from a scaled, webbed hand. He flew through the air and struck the other side of the cave wall.
He landed on his side, only to look up and see two water drenched monsters. One appeared to be similar to the creature from the black lagoon, with a more humanoid face, tendrils of scales and hair hanging from its sideburns, whilst the other had an ornate three-pronged helmet, and held himself as though he were an under water ape.
“This is the one, Jaffar?” the second creature asked.
“He is, Slig,” Jaffer responded, charging toward Garfield.
Feeling his body tense and his instincts call to him, Gar twisted on his feet and threw his fist upwards into Jaffar’s neck, knocking the monster off balance. “I'm sick of this! Why can't you just leave me alone?!” Gar screamed as Slig charged forwards, the back of his hand catching Gar across the face and sending him to his knees. Jaffar was quick to recover, lifting the green man from his knees by the shoulders and slinging him into the cave wall repeatedly.
“He should not wake now,” Slig said, looking down at Jaffar and the bleeding hero.
“I would hope not,” Jaffar agreed. “He is too formidable to face at full strength. I recommend we drug him.”
“You can recommend as much as you wish, Jaffar. We're not doing that. He is too valuable uncontaminated. Is the machine active?”
Jaffar nodded slowly.
“Feast for the machine then,” Slig nodded slowly, touching Garfield with his foot. “For once Darkseid would be pleased.”
“Hrm…I doubt that, Slig. We do not work for him any longer,” Jaffar reminded, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “We work for ourselves and such a creature...such a vessel…will allow us to truly become the Gods we deserve to be, and tip the balance toward Anti-Life.”
“The only way to achieve this, Jaffar...”
“I know, we must have a link to the Flesh, to the Red, to this planet’s Parliament of Animals Elemental. This is the closest we have to that,” Jaffar explained, before gesturing toward the water before them.
“Pontificating is not the way forward, Slig. We must continue with our plans quickly and quietly. Come...” he gathered Garfield up in his sticky, scaled arms as Slig pressed an indentation in the wall, a section of cave sliding open. The pair stepped through into their laboratory beyond, ready to feed Garfield to their machines...
“I'm not sure exactly how comfortable I am with this.” Samuel Register stood in silence, naked aside from a pair of very, very tight shorts while the extremely attractive form of Satanna stood before him. Slight in frame and covered in animal tattoos, it did nothing to detract from the fact she was completely naked aside from a leopard print lab coat that hung loosely from her shoulders.
“Well, that only makes one of us. I am very comfortable, Samuel,” she whispered, licking her lips gently and sauntering towards him. “You understand why I ask this of you?”
“Not especially,” he responded, eyes transfixed on her body.
“I work for a higher power. No, no, before you give that that look…I'm not under the disillusion that I work for some deity or whatever. God doesn't exist. Neither does anything in any bloody religion. Religion is for people who can't think for themselves,” she scolded, rubbing his upper arms gently as she leaned on tip-toes over him. She was, after all, a near foot taller than him.
“I am sure there are thousands of people who would disagree with...what is that?” he asked, fearfully.
“Oh, this?” she responded, cocking her head to the side playfully, revealing the huge hypodermic needle in her hand. “This is the method of your transformation. Your life’s work, all condensed down into a single drop of liquid, mixed with some...other things, of course.”
“I can't say I am...terribly happy about this...” Samuel said, taking a few steps back only to find his progress halted by a huge gorilla with beautifully painted and ornate fingernails.
“Sorry, Sweetums,” the Gorilla said with a deeper, if a little girly voice, “but Mistress wants you to be my new Beast Boy!”
The gorilla practically squealed with glee as the needle dove into his arm. Samuel could feel its contents being pumped into his body and his eyes growing increasingly heavy.
“Hrm. I should probably have mentioned this before,” Satanna said, as the man fell to his knees and straight onto his face, fracturing his nose.
“What is...?” he offered, before he found his mouth paralysed.
“Oh, it’s the same virus that nearly killed Beast Boy. For you to become him, you're going to need to go through the same process only, well, a little further along.”
Samuel looked up from the corner of his eye at Satanna as she smiled widely putting her arm around the Gorilla woman.
“Don't Worry! We've got the paddles all charged up and everything!”
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Next Issue: In Animal Man #6: The Deep Six? Satanna and Sam Register and a familiar glowing entity from the Mera Crisis tie-in Special...
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