Whale Watching... and Aliens!

On a special cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean, Xia joins her classmates on a special field trip concerning whale conservation. The ship is the Preserver, and it is a modified cruise ship belonging to Wong Enterprises’ Ocean Liners, with a special function to educate the public on the importance of wildlife conservation. As a ship belonging to Wong Enterprises, it featured top of the line communication technology, excellent resources and highly trained personnel.

After a hearty breakfast in the main dining hall, she and thirty other teenage girls from their Prep School were on the viewing decks, joining dozens more passengers in watching the whales and some dolphines from afar in their natural environment, with binoculars. However, the tour had a pleasant surprise- volunteers were called for to go for a swim with the creatures, the whales being brought to the ship when prawns and krill were released from a compartment in the ship. The ship’s engines were turned off and the sonar devices deactivated, as to not startle or cause the majestic animals undue stress.

Eager to get into the water this time, Xia, two of her class mates, and about a dozen other passengers changed into wetsuits and were brought down below to the sea-facing deck, where a whale just passed by, surfacing and spouting water from its blow hole. The crowd recoil in surpise, but Xia take the water in stride, feeling at home here on the open ocean.

Xia happily jumps into the water first, cautiously approaching a big humpback whale underwater. Coming eye to eye with the creature, she gently touched its thick hide, and felt at peace; she had to surface after a few minutes as to not worry the crew, one of whom were definitely keeping an eye on her.

Helia stretched out on the boat as it swayed over the water. The sun rained onto helia with a soothing radiance. Her red hair shinned with a metallic red hue about it. She was one of the large amount of girls who were here to watch whales. Helia personally had no interest in whales but she did like the ocean, and she also got a chance to be away from her dad. As she began to disappear into her thoughts the man said they could go swimming with the whales.

"Ooooo cool." Helia said as she jumped up.

She ran towards the group of girls in her two piece and jumped over the railings, not wanting diving gear. The water instantly chilled her body but she was to focused on seeing a whale up close and personal to care. In seconds a whale swam past her lazily as it made that loud sonar noise thing they always make. Helia began to swim next to it. Her red hair rushed up and down like waves of red as she swam like the whale itself. Her body like one giant wave as she lazily pushed herself through the water.

The whale song had a soothing, peaceful quality to it, some of the tourists whipping out their recorders to obtain a sample track. To normal humans it was a wonderful trick by the whales; to an aquatic creature with enhanced senses, it was simply sublime. Xia braced herself for the intense songs from the males, their songs serving as advertising for their bio-data; age, health, mood and other such information. Apparently a few young adult males were attracted to the females feeding at the other side of the ship.

Eventually the tourists were distracted enough by the novelty, and Xia swam freely down deeper to come face to face with the whales. Though she possessed a sea predator’s presence, her kind demeanour helped to dull this. She paid little mind to Helia or any other of the tourists.

The whales’ song changed abruptly from serene to a brief panic, as Xia could sense their unease. Their built-in sonar had picked up a very large creature from the water below, and it wasn’t long before Xia’s Electroreception picked up on a very familiar signature. She focused on it; it was a sea predator, very large, and not a shark... but something very familiar.

Another dragon?

Xia nimbly swam in the waters as the whales began to scatter from the cruise ship, moving to help
several tourists to the surface, including a classmate.

“Xia, What’s happening? What’s going on?” the blonde Jane asked, a promising player for the school’s swim team. She got into the water as one of the more natural choices... aside from the 'natural' swimmer Xia, who, despite all insistence, did not join the varsity.

“The whales are going away.” Xia said, briefly.

“Should we be worried? Wait, where’s... where’s Tiffany?” Jane asked again, inquiring about their other classmate. The teenager wiped her face as the tourists were talking among themselves. Ship crew were struggling to keep a panic from breaking out, especially in these hard times.

“She must still be below water. I think we should not swim in the water now anymore. Ta Shir- Everyone please, out of the sea please. No swimming.” Xia announced rather loudly in her Engrish accent, and the others comply readily enough.

“Okay...” Xia helps her other classmate out of the water. She turns around to help Xia in return, but the dragon girl was gone. “Xia?”

Returning into the deep water swimming nimbly, Xia’s attention was fixed on the locality of the cruise ship, reaching out with her active electroreception to locate both her classmate and the dragon, out to an impressive two to three hundred feet or so underwater. She may not have been as large or as strong as true dragons, and she definitely did not possess the gift of their breath weapons or magic- but she's slowly making up for it with incredibly honed senses, senses she was slowly growing accustomed to. She grew increasingly paranoid that Tiffany was not anywhere near the ship.

The whales simply move away from the ship, unknowingly heading towards another, unseen danger; in the confusion, Tiffany had been dragged along by the whales. Of course, she had to be the mute one, and was unable to call for help, gesturing feebly, hoping someone would see her when she surfaced.

As helia swam next to the whales their sound became different. More intense and hurried, like they were trying to state something urgent. All the other whales seemed to hear the cries and repeated it in similar tones as they all headed in one direction. They were quickly swimming away from the boat and helia noticed a straggler. It was another girl that came onto the boat with her. She rolled her eyes and began to swim towards the girl. She grabbed the girl and rushed upwards.

"Why are you flailing out here?" Helia asked as they surfaced.

The girl looked waved frantically at helia and continuously pointed down and then towards the boat. It took helia a minute but she finally clicked the pieces together and realized this was the mute girl everyone was talking about. Helia floated there for a minute then grabbed the girl and swam her to the boat. When she got the girl to the boat the others began screaming about how another girl had disappeared. Her name was xia and they said she dispersed after helping a girl onto the boat.

"Okay." Helia said then she dispersed under the water.

She looked around at first and saw nothing but then she noticed a small dot moving lower and lower towards the sea floor. Helia stared for a minute then began to follow the movement. It seemed to be heading towards something.

Helia swimming after the whales took some time well over ten minutes and only managed to when a couple of the whales were oddly idle in the water, making no more sounds. They seemed to hover in the water, unresponsive to Helia or any stimuli, staring in different directions.

Tiffany, the mute student, was also strangely very still, her skin pale but nonetheless alive. There would be no difficulty for Helia for returning her to the ship, and the crew readily help her get the passed out, very pale student to the infirmary. Tourists praise Helia for her bravery, and wish her luck in finding Xia.

Meanwhile Xia swam down, her bio-electric field eventually pinpointing the massive dragon cruising along in the water- he was roughly as big as she was, but bulkier, seeing that he was an adult male and quite moody, though very familiar to Xia. Dragon girl swam as fast as she could to meet Sean eye to eye, her field projecting her own information to those who could interpret electroreception. At the most basic, it would communicate that Xia was there and that Sean had intruded on her ‘personal dragon space’; he’d have to get the rest from his normal senses.

The shadow was larger than normal now.  It had grown while helia was getting closer.  Another shadow had appeared as well and as she moved closer detail started to appear out of the shadow.  She then realized it was a dragon, and a very familiar one at that. There was also a girl whom Helia assumed was xia.  Helia rushed to the surface to gasp for air.

She dropped back under and hummed a sweet tune.  The water around her bubbled as her outfit morphed from the two piece into her hero uniform.  A thick mist grew around her and she began to jet towards the familiar looking dragon.

Xia's face turned red and she turned away from Sean. She was slightly embarrassed she forgot that the dragon could also change. Xia was a bit distracted and was tumbling into Engrish when she spoke.

"Oh... um... hello. I saw you coming towards Ship. Was worried you scare away whales, worry you chase and eat whale. But you did not do that." She explained, with awkward hand gestures, unable to make eye contact with Sean. She floated about chest high in the bubble, the rest of her still in the water.

"So... where are you going? What you doing here in ocean?" She asked, just to be sure Sean was not going to be trouble. Xia also looked around in the water when she felt Helia was getting closer to them.

Back on the Ship, people were now in a relaxed state, except for the crew who were monitoring their sonar for signs of Xia. With the whales far away now, they could safely use their equipment. Right at that moment, the girl in the infirmary was attended to by a civilian nurse and Jane, the blonde swimmer classmate of Xia.

"Poor Tiffany... is she going to be alright?" Jane said, holding Tiffany’s cold, clammy hands. The mute girl remained unconscious.

"All her vitals are stable, and she didn't seem to have taken in seawater. I think we just have to wait." The nurse explained, a hand on Jane’s shoulder.

"Okay then." Jane’s attention was focused on Tiffany, hoping her friend would be alright.
When the first sonar pulse radiated outward, the sonar equipment picked up a trio of the whales heading towards the ship fast. The engines had not yet been turned on; they were on a collision course.

A female sailor quickly grabs the Microphone and announced on the ship. "Brace for impact!"
Mere seconds pass, then the Ship groaned with the unnatural headbutt from the whales. Something came over the animals, and now they were engaged in this unnatural self destructive behaviour. They circled around for another, even as their heads started bleeding.

In the infirmary, Jane and the nurse stood up in a panic, as the lights went off and on from the impact, holding on to the nearest stable thing in the room.

“We... we should get upstairs and-”Jane’s words were cut short when Tiffany had come to life and bit down on the Ship Nurse’s throat, who screamed in pain as blood poured from her wound. The nurse struggled feebly to free herself, but Tiffany was now possessed of unnatural strength. With a bloody mouth, Tiffany slowly shambled towards Jane, breaking into a stiff sprint. Jane’s scream echoed throughout the infirmary deck, signalling the beginning of a terrible, terrible event...

At that point, Xia's attention was quickly taken by the ship reeling from the whale headbutts, and swam up as fast as she could, though the metas would take precious minutes to get up there from this depth. Xia briefly passed by Helia, recognizing her from somewhere and gestures her to the ship, hopefully capable of helping.

Helia was almost to sean when a loud thud reverberated through the water. Helia looked back at the boat to see whales hitting the boat hard. Blood rushed down and dispersed into the ocean coating the sea in a thin sheet of red. Helia pushed with all her might towards the boat and quickly pushed her hand forward shooting three tendrils of fog rushing towards the whales quickly grabbing them and pulling them from the boat.

Helia shot out of the water and went soaring into the sky. She looked down and scanned the chaos on the boat. The mute girl from earlier had gone crazy and was attacking the other girls. Helia landed and her fog rushed past her and blocked the path of the mute girl from the rest of the girls.

It would likely take Helia a few moments before getting back to the ship, especially after trying to also subdue the whales, which were already dead when her fog powers reached them anyway. She moved around corpses, which remained floating in the water.

Once she had made her way through panicking tourists and prep school girls, through the corridors and to the narrow hallways of the Infirmary and Services deck, she would behold the level had been mostly turned into a killing floor, a bloody abattoir as the first infectee had already attacked several tourists and armed crew. Bodies laid half eaten, doors having been clawed at by victims trying to scratch their way out. A window was ripped off from its hinges, a trail of blood leading outside; while six infected tourists eyed Helia hungrily from different directions, baring their teeth at her and immediately charging at her, apparently desiring to consume her flesh.

Sea Alien Zombies Int 1 Str 5 Spd 5 Dur 6 Fs 1; Venom Attack 6 abi

Xia approached the dead whales in the water, the sight of their bloated corpses filling Xia with a deep sadness. She lingered beside one, mourning its death; its whale song snuffed out and its bioelectric signal... it had a signal? Was it alive? She was taken aback, and swam a few feet away, before the whale’s underbellies erupted, three creatures bursting their way out of the creature, defiling the body even in death.

The creatures were slightly visible since the whales were near the surface, but the whale’s blood and entrails were filling the water now and visibility was quickly becoming impaired. Xia compensated with echolocation, and sensing the three new creature’s signals- they were possessed by some unnatural rage and insatiable hunger, as they rushed towards Xia, the nearest living thing. Sonic blasts caused the water- and Xia’s eardrums- to nearly explode, as what could only be described as miniature sea T-Rexes with techno-organic sonic cannons in their mouths attacked Dragon Girl...

The two other dead whales sank a bit before erupting near Sean, enveloping him in a blood cloud, the smell of whale entrails likely filling his nostrils. Six of these unholy dinosaur bioweapons roared to bloody life, their birth cries ripping the water around Sean in consecutive, bombastic, cacophonous explosions of bass, causing the water to explode around the Dragon, filling his ears with pain and attempting to vibrate him into submission or death.

Sea Rexes: Int 2 Str 6 Spd 4 Dur 6 Fs 2 ; Techno-organic Sonic attack 7

"AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!" Helia screamed as she ran away.

Her fog rushed to her aid and blocked the path. Streams branched out behind her as she ran, and impaled the walls and floor creating a forest of sharp poles from which the people had to run through. Helia jumped up the steps then stopped when she remembered the other innocent people below on the upper decks.

"Ugh god this is gonna suck." Helia said to herself as she turned towards the incoming zombies.

"Nerfram forest of thorns." She called and the fog surged forward aiming to impale the remaining zombies.