“A-Arrre you sure it’s going to be okay, Marrri?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Meg. It’ll be totally fine.”

  “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”

  “What, and ruin the surprise? That’s no fun, now come on!”

  An eted Mari leads a very timid Meg up the boulevard towards the heart of the nightlife district, barely able to contain herself as all manner of illuminations light up the streets. They’re both dressed in the outfits they wore to the charity concert, or in Meg’s case, the closest recreation they could put together with what they had on hand. While the jeans they brought yesterday still fit, albeit much less baggy than before, the same can’t be said for the crop top. Luckily, Mari had a few spares of the top for her own outfit, and while they’re designed for someone shorter and wider than Meg, it does the job well enough after a couple alterations. Meg has a huge fin jutting out of her back now, after all, so anything she wears will need to accommodate that. It’s a good thing Mari has some experience in this sort of thing after helping out a local tailor a few weeks back.

  Meg was concerned that Mari wouldn’t be happy about the fact that they’re both wearing the same shirt for this outing, wherever it is they’re going tonight, but it turns out she’s eted about the fact that they’re matching even more than they did on the day of the concert. The fact that the Erune’s wearing a skirt also goes a long way to make sure both of their outfits still look unique enough.

  “Arrren’t you going to get cold wearing that?” Meg asks, looking up at the dark, cloudy sky above. This is the worst the weather has been since they arrived, with the chill hitting especially hard during the nighttime hours.

  Mari turns back to her with a huge smile. “Don’t worry, we can just huddle up together if that becomes a problem. Besides, we won’t need to worry about getting cold with what I’ve got pnned for us tonight!”

  “W-We won’t?”

  “Hehehe~” Mari giggles as she continues pulling Meg along.

  The streets are fairly busy, despite the cold weather, and Meg finds herself filled with dread whenever they pass someone, out of fear of how they’re going to act when they see how monstrous she’s become. However, the passers-by that do call out to the two of them don’t quite have the reactions she expected.

  “Looking good, you two!”

  “That’s a striking new look for you, Meg!”

  “Woah, have you been working out? More than usual, I mean.”

  They… don’t seem all that bothered by it. They’re still surprised to see her like this, but it’s shock, not disgust. Awe, not fear. But… why?

  “I don’t get it…” She mutters to herself.

  “Don’t get what?” Mari asks as she waves to another couple walking in the other direction.

  “Why they’re treating me like this. Everyone in Auguste knows to call the guarrrd if they see a monster, so why arrre they letting me just walk the streets looking like this?”

  “Silly Meg.” Mari giggles. “Monsters, like, show up out of nowhere and then start destroying things and hurting people. Even if you were a monster, you’re not exactly acting like one. We’re just two regur girls spending the night out like anyone else, who cares if you’re all big and grey, and talk a little weird?”

  “...Regurrr girls, huh…?” A nervous smile appears on Meg’s face. In all of her worrying, she never stopped to think about how looking like a monster and acting like one are actually two different things, and while she’s certainly wracked up her fair share of property damage over the past few days, it was all accidental, and she definitely hasn’t hurt anyone. Yeah, maybe it’ll all be fine as long as I’m still acting like myself. Who says I can’t still have a chance to be a normal girl, even when I look like this? “Okay. Whatever you’ve got pnned, Marrri, I’ll try my best to give it a shot.” Meg says with a nod.

  “I just knew you had it in you, Meg! Now come on, you’re about to see something suuuper cool!”

  The two of them reach the top of the hill and walk into the main square, the sight of which stops Meg in her tracks.

  “Wow… you were right, it really does look even better at night!” She says with a look of wonder, not even sure where to focus her gaze.

  “Hehe, I’m sooo gd you like it Meg! I’ve wanted to see your reaction to this pce for weeks.”

  “I love it! Everything’s so bright, I can barely describe it!” Meg starts to walk around, taking everything in.

  Indeed, the square they’ve visited multiple times during this trip almost seems to transform into a different pce entirely at night. The water feature they sat near on the first day now appears to be shooting out multi-coloured streams of water that astound everyone walking past thanks to the illuminations installed within, and while the stage on the opposite side isn’t being used at the moment, the powerful spotlights casting away the darkness are just as impressive.

  Meg’s wonder extends beyond the middle of the square, though. The businesses surrounding it have all received a simir treatment. Whether it’s bright, multicoloured signs, glowing decorations within storefront windows, or illuminations running along the walls themselves, each and every building is bright and colourful in a way that she never could have imagined before seeing it for herself.

  Every building except for one, that is. The one building that Meg dreaded seeing again, for reasons she’s not quite sure she can expin. Maybe it’s just her, but it feels like it sticks out even more now, being the only part of the square that’s still shrouded in some sembnce of darkness. She does her best to simply ignore it, they aren’t going in there after all, and she’s very gd for that, but still, for quite a while now it’s almost felt like something has been… calling out to her, telling her to come here, to enter the cave, to see Ukupanipo again.

  Meg’s been doing her best to pay these thoughts no mind, especially since they don’t entirely seem to be her own, but now that she’s right here, with the church in view, she’s feeling the pull all that much more. She stays strong, however, because Meg’s priority is keeping Auguste safe above all, and while she can’t say for sure, the seething anger she can somehow feel pouring out from the cave below tells her that whatever would happen if she went down there, it would no doubt be disastrous.

  No, more than anything else, Meg cannot allow herself to enter that building under any circumstances, lest the worst come to pass.

  “Oh neat, you got it open.” Mari says. “We’ll have to let the excavation team know tomorrow.”

  “...H-Huh?” Meg mumbles, Mari’s words pulling her out of a daze as she realises where she is, shaking off a headache that she could swear she didn’t have just a moment before.

  She’s… inside the church… Why? Not only that, but the shrine-like object has moved, revealing the stairway leading down into the cave.

  “Marrri, why arrre we here?” She asks, her trepidation showing in her expression.

  “I dunno, you’re the one who led us here. You had a pretty serious look on your face, so I thought it must’ve been important.”

  “I… did?” Meg looks around, something doesn’t add up. One moment they were wandering around outside, and the next she suddenly finds herself here, with no memories to connect these two events. “And you said I opened up the passageway down?”

  “Yeah. I don’t really know how, but you touched that statue thing and then it just moved on its own. Kinda like what happened when Ursu tried to push it.”

  “But… why did I…” Meg looks at her hand, and then to the cave with a grim expression, the call to descend only feeling stronger now. Her one soce is that the tunnel now only extends a short distance before being blocked by rocks, thanks to the cave in from their previous visit. Even if she wanted to go down there, it would be far from possible without some way of getting through those rocks.

  “Are… you okay?” Mari asks after a while.

  Meg shakes her head, refocusing herself. “Y-Yeah, let’s just get going. Is the pce you wanted to bring me nearby?”

  “Yeah! We’re almost there, come on!” Mari practically pushes Meg out the door, and leads her to one of the rger buildings in the square, outfitted with some of the brightest lights and fshiest signs of all. So bright, in fact, that Meg almost has to shield her eyes when she looks at them. What’s strange is that no one else seems to have a problem with it, but she doesn’t remember having any issues with bright lights in the past. “This here’s the biggest club in town!” Mari proudly announces.

  “Wow! Looks like we’ll have to wait a while to get in, though.” Meg says, looking at the line of people waiting to get in that wraps around the corner.

  “Don’t you worry about that, Meg. Tonight, we’re both VIPs!” Mari walks them right up to the entrance, where the Draph bouncer takes one look at them before nodding, and opening the door. Mari thanks the man as they walk in, while Meg simply does her best to ignore the fact that she’s the same height as him, thanks to her recent changes.

  The thought doesn’t get to linger in her mind for long, though, as the club’s interior does more than enough to divert her attention. It’s just as fshy and colourful as it looks on the outside, with multicoloured illuminations piercing through the deep blue ambience of the venue, moving and pulsing in time with music that seems to be pying from everywhere at once. The music seems to have plenty of fans as well, as no matter where Meg looks she can see plenty of people dancing, both on the main dance floor in the centre of the club, partially illuminated by the cloudy moonlight thanks to the rge gss window in the ceiling, as well as a number of smaller stage like structures around the outer edges of the multi-storey establishment.

  What really sticks out to her is how the pce is decorated, however. Some of the art painted on the walls is of her, which is just something she’s learnt to expect when she visits Auguste these days, it’s everything else that’s unexpected. The rest of the wall art, the statues lining the corners of the dance floor, decorations hanging down from both the ceiling and the undersides of the higher levels. All of these things, plus the club's colour scheme that almost makes Meg feel like she’s back in the ocean again, portray one common theme…

  “Why arrre there so many sharrrks…?” Meg wonders out loud as Mari leads them to the back of the club, where a booth in the vip section awaits them.

  “I mean, it is Club Shark, after all. Didn’t you see the sign out front?”

  “I… might have been a bit distracted by all the lights and colours…”

  “Guess I can’t bme you for being a little blown away. But yeah, this pce is the heart of our nightlife district, it’s not just the biggest club in town, but in all of Phantagrade!” Mari takes a seat on one side of the booth. “And, you know, probably the other skydoms too, but the other committee members said that legally I can’t go around saying that since we don’t know for sure…”

  “Well…” Meg takes a moment to figure out how to sit down herself, as both her size and the fin jutting out of her back pose logistical issues she’s not used to dealing with, eventually opting to simply sit sideways at the end of the booth. “...it’s definitely the biggest one I’ve ever seen! You really just keep going above and beyond when it comes to Auguste, Marrri!”

  “Hehehe, I have to make sure this pce is thriving so that you always have somewhere to come back to, after all!” Mari grins at Meg as a sharply dressed Erune brings a bottle of non-alcoholic wine to the table and begins to pour them a couple of gsses. Under any other circumstances, Mari would’ve opted for the good stuff, but with how much furniture Meg has already broken over the st couple of days, she figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to get her tipsy right now.

  “And just between us, Meg…” Mari leans in a bit after sipping from her gss. “I’d originally wanted this pce to be themed after you, but was told we needed to go with something a bit easier to sell to the masses for our main attraction. The whole shark theme and the art of you on the wall is a bit of a compromise. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn into a bad omen, what with the whole ‘giant shark monster sleeping underneath the square’ thing, hahaha…”

  “Yeah, hopefully we can sort that whole thing out soon.” Meg says as she picks up her gss. “I can only imagine how Ukupanipo feels arrfter being stuck down there for so long, missing a parrrt of its core, without any other sharrrks, all while Auguste moves on without him, changing into something else, something totally unfamiliarrr, something that makes him feel-”

  A cracking sound rings out from Meg’s hand as she looks down in surprise, apparently gripping the stem of her wine gss so hard that it snaps right in half, causing the upper half of the gss, and the liquid inside, to fall and smash on the table. She immediately stands up in a panic, realising her headache has started acting up again and that she’s feeling unexpectedly agitated after her rant.

  “Oh, no! I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I-”

  “It’s okay Meg, it’s just one gss. It happens alllll the time in these kinds of pces. Someone will be over to clean it up right away” Mari says as she puts a hand on Meg’s shoulder, having gotten up herself, which immediately helps Meg calm back down again. “Besides, at least it only spilled on the table and not your clothes.”

  “But I’ve made a huge mess of the table… I’ve been messing up your pns all week, Marrri.” Meg says, downtrodden.

  “Not this time you didn’t! We were only gonna sit down here for a few minutes anyway.”

  “We… were?”

  Mari ughs. “Meg, you didn’t think I brought you out to this fancy night club just so we could sit there and watch other people dance, did you? We gotta get out there and dance ourselves, really show them how it’s done!”

  “D-D-Dance? But I’m… When I’m like this?” Meg motions towards her body

  “Yeah! There’s nothing about this whole shark thing that stops you from being able to dance now, is there?”

  “But, I’m so big, and weird looking. I’m going to stand out...”

  “Hey, you know what’d really stand out in a pce like this, Meg?” Mari gently grabs both of Meg’s hands and smiles, looking deep into her eyes. “If someone as beautiful as you got all dressed up, and came all the way out here, only to sit at her booth the whole time and not get out onto the dance floor.”

  “I… I…” Meg is at a loss for words, although Mari discovers that even with the sharky skin on the bottom half of her face, Meg is still able to blush just as much as she was before. Eventually, Meg meets her gaze, putting on the bravest face she can. “Fine, I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Yay!” Mari practically leaps into the air with glee before leading her out to the dancefloor. True to her words, the man who served the drinks comes to clean up the table as they leave, a smile on his face despite the mess. “Now come on, let’s boogie!”

  Meg’s still quite apprehensive to start dancing as she begins swaying side to side, feeling very self conscious about being surrounded by this many people, but she slowly starts to come out of her shell thanks to Mari’s sheer enthusiasm, even if a number of people seem surprised to see her out on the dancefloor like this. The Erune doesn’t hesitate a bit, jumping right into dancing with such a huge smile on her face, and Meg can’t help but feel motivated to try and match her pace when taking in such a sight. It’s not long before Meg stops worrying about everyone else in the club, getting lost in the thumping music, and the person she’s dancing with.

  It’s a somewhat different sight for everyone watching the two of them, however. The way the two of them wildly fil around in a manner that could only somewhat be considered on time with the music is a far cry from the carefully choreographed dance routine the couple spent so much time practicing for the charity concert. That being said, they’re clearly having so much fun that nobody minds their dancing all that much. If anything, their infectious energy only serves to lift the mood of the clubgoers even further as they start to cheer them on.

  Mari’s been putting on a smile for most of this vacation, but Meg hasn’t seen it shine this brightly until tonight. She feels like this is the happiest she’s been herself throughout this entire trip as well, in fact. She can’t believe a little dancing was all she needed to stop her from worrying about what everyone else thought about what was happening to her. The two of them ugh together as they dance their hearts out, and Meg feels connected to her in a way she’s not sure she’s ever felt before.

  She truly wishes there was a way to make sure this moment would never end. Just living in the moment with… the woman she loves…

  Right… I might’ve had a chance with her before… all of this happened. But now… Meg thinks to herself as her eyes wander to the art of herself on the wall again, the art where she still looks human, with regur coloured skin and normal, non-pointy teeth. Now I don’t have a chance of being anything more than a friend…

  Meg’s mind becomes clouded with pessimistic thoughts, the woman not having realised that taking one anxiety away only made room for another, much deeper fear to grab her attention once more. Even if she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks about her transformation, there will always be one person whose opinion will matter to her, to the point that she can’t bring herself to ask out of fear of what the answer will be, especially after she failed to tell her how she felt before all of this started.

  She still continues to dance, doing her best to keep up appearances, but with every passing moment she can only find herself thinking more and more about how she wants things to be different, how she wants more from her retionship with Mari than what they currently share, and how that dream only seems to become more impossible by the day as this curse continues to take hold of her, turning her into something she’s not, something she doesn’t want to be, something that Mari could never love.

  It’s then that Mari notices a tear roll down Meg’s cheek, and she immediately puts a stop to her dancing to check she’s okay, only to be interrupted by some uninvited guests crashing in through the gss ceiling above them before she even gets a chance to ask what’s wrong.

  “SHAAAAAAARK!”

  SyntaxSpeedway