Fishy Business

"Dr. Westcott! Over here!"

Norman turned around to face the source of the voice and smiled when he realized who it was. "Ah, Michelle. Good to see you. You've brought the car?"

Michelle nodded. "We just have to leave your jet in the hangar, and it's just outside the fence."

"Excellent." Norman replied. Michelle handed him the keys and he made his way towards the fenced area. "Ah. She brought the blue one." he murmured as he examined his vehicle. It was one of Norman's many cars, this one was a Koenigsegg Agera RS. They were made exclusively by a company in Sweden. Many people said that buying an expensive car was a waste of money, but Norman believed that self-indulgence was good in amounts, and so he indulged himself in cars. Lots and lots of cars.

He hopped in and began the drive, the portable GPS guiding him. He had been called over by an old friend, she had asked him to help with some sort of fish she had found. Of course, Norman was more than happy to help. After all, it would also help him in the end too. Reuniting with an old friend was just a bonus to it all.

After half an hour of driving, he had arrived at the building she had told him to come to. He parked the car and hopped out, knocking on the front door.

No answer. Silent for a few seconds, a text message was sent through Norman's phone. Displaying the message "3 knocks if it's you." Interestingly, it was followed with 2 knocks from the door Norman had previously knocked on. It stood silent, awaiting an answer.

Norman rolled his eyes, knocking three times. "Corey, it's me."

From the door, a rather tall woman in a lab coat unveiled herself. Energetically and frantically wailed her arms about. "Shhhh Norm." She pulled him into the building, the door closing shortly afterwards. She locked the series of locks. The inside of the building was bland, no decoration, simple grey concrete for the floor, walls, and ceiling. A few assortments of research tools lay scattered on a group of tables located in the middle of the room. Cordelia finished locking the door, which was an astonishing 13 locks. "Be quiet! You never know who's listening!" Cordelia quickly scurried over to the table, ushering Norman to follow.

"Someone's being secretive." Norman joked as Cordelia yanked him into the room. "Still as paranoid as you were in university, eh? Although, I think that's definitely two more locks than back then." he said. He turned and noticed Cordelia gesturing the man to follow her to the a table, with some...object on it. He made his way over and gasped. It had to be that new species Cordelia had mentioned to him. It looked relatively simply; an angular shape, coloured red and white. The most surprising thing was the strange spikes emerging by its gills and fins.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

"You can never be too safe!" Cordelia picked up class container storing the fish. "I call it the Cordelius Aquaticis, granted that's not a real scientific name, but I'll go down in history for this little guy." Two other individuals came from a neighboring room, carrying more equipment, possibly to test the new creature. These were Cordelia's colleagues, the other two members of Team Cordelia; Amber and Nathaniel.

"She's been acting like this all day." Nathaniel stated as he sat down some of the items.

"She thinks someone's trying to steal her discovery." Amber dully replied as she sat down her stack of items, heading towards her desk and pulling up her chair, kicking her feet up and reading a magazine.

"Oh yeah, because it's not like we're the only people that know about it." Norman joked. "It's good to see you guys."

"Tell me about it. Makes it easier for when I break it down."

Cordelia was once more lost in the beauty of the gracious creature. "I call him Neddy." She replied in a complete daze, seemingly forgetting the other occupants in the room.

Nathaniel instead took the mantel to tell what they've known about the creature so far. "It-" He was cut off by the clearing of Cordelia's throat, he sighed as a response. "'Neddy' displays the ability to generate electric organ discharges similar to an electric eel. As you can see, it has a small size. However it shows the strange ability to elongate itself when threatened."

Amber continued reading her magazine, simultaneously going the conversation. "We found that part out when Cordelia tried to pet it."

"Alright...so Neddy's something special." Norman noted. The man looked around and spotted an eraser. He grabbed onto it, and the lines beneath his eye turned a rubber pink. He set the eraser aside. "Just so I don't get shocked by ol' Neddy here." he said to the room. He had just used his Quirk, Genetic Pathway, to essentially give himself the properties of hard rubber.

He placed his hand on Neddy and closed his eye. After a bit, he opened his eye and stumbled back. "That is...very interesting..."

Norman opened his briefcase, pulling out his laptop and got to work; typing up something.

Cordelia's daze at Neddy finally stopped, being broken by the sound of Norman typing on his laptop. "You better not be stealing my credit Normy." She stood to her full height and walked next to Norman, observing what he was typing up. "What did you figure out?"

"I wouldn't dare." Norman murmured, most of his attention on his screen. He scoured through hundreds of files, searching for something. "Hah!" he suddenly exclaimed. "I knew it."

He turned his screen towards Cordelia. "Alright, so check this out. I was looking through Neddy's genetic code, and noticed this. The class should be the Actinopterygii; like the Muraenidae. The Moray Eel. But that doesn't explain some of the things I noticed. Then I realized, the genomes that made no sense in the DNA belonged to the Synanceia verrucosa; the Red Scorpionfish."

"This guy is a strange genetic combination of the two. Not a hybrid, that's impossible. But some sort of organism has been slowly evolving into this guy for centuries, taking on the qualities of what would most likely be its predators if it didn't hold its own. I reckon there are more Neddy's and we could find them over the course of this week."

Cordelia wrote down the information on her clipboard, the clicking of her pen and the sound of it meeting paper rang throughout the room. She finished writing and set the clipboard down, bending down so her eyes could meet Neddy's. "Hear that buddy? We'll get you some friends real soon!" Cordelia looked up at Norman from her current position, her face distorted from the water in the tank. "When do you wanna start?"

"We can start whenever, Corey." Norman responded, closing his laptop. "Just tell me where we're going."

Cordelia walked to the back of the room, pushing against the back door. It opened, revealing the ocean & a boat not too far away. "I make excellent property purchases."

Amber got up and walked towards the door, walking out and already venturing towards the boat. "Nate, you're stuck with Neddy." Nathaniel groaned in reponse, followed with him obviously beginning to research even further on Neddy.

"Wonderful." Norman responded, making his way towards the boat. As he hopped on board, he took off his suit vest, placing it into his briefcase. "How far out are we going?"

Amber had started the boat, already having checked if it was ready for the journey ahead of time. "We're going about 30 miles out, suggesting where we found Neddy is about where the rest of his kind are."

Norman nodded, and looked out to see the view. The smell of churning water salt was surprisingly soothing. He could see why Cordelia enjoyed her job so much. Once the boat had stopped, he opened his briefcase yet again and began unbuttoning his shirt. He folded it and tossed it into his briefcase before closing it again.

Then, the pink lines beneath his eyes became gold and scaly, and flaps on his neck reminiscent to gills appeared. Webbing developed between his fingers, and his toes, although they were concealed by his shoes. He kicked them off, and stood by Cordelia. "Ready when you are."

Amber stood along with the duo, sneakingly taking a picture of Norman before whispering to Cordelia. "We should invite him more often."

Cordelia ignored the comment, the smell of salt water carried by the sea breezes always made her forget about everything but the ocean. "Woohoo!" Cordelia shouted as she jumped into the water, upon impact with the surface, she kicked up a mass of water. Now Cordelia, in her Behemoth State, floated in the water. "Come on Normy!" Her voice was rapsy and slightly deeper, likely caused by the transformation.

Norman waved at Amber before diving into the water. He smiled as he opened his eyes, able to see every detail of the area. The fish swimming, the coral everywhere. It was beautiful. Norman turned to the woman. "So Corey," he began. "Where'd you guys find Neddy?"

"This way." Her voice now changed even further, remaining raspy & deeper, but now somewhat muffled by the water. She swam at an angle, being rather quick thanks to her transformed capabilities. She entered somewhat of a den, blocked from all sides except the one she'd entered. "This is where we found him, but doesn't seem like there's anything else."

Norman followed behind, slower than Cordelia as he was nowhere as fast as she was in the water. As he stopped next to her, he looked around the den. "Corey. See that boulder in the bottom left corner? Move it near us. That should clear up a path."

Cordelia did as Norman suggested, pulling the boulder from it's current position. To her surprise, it indeed revealed a path further into the den. While any other person would probably slap themself for not looking around, Cordelia was too excited to get her hands on some more specimens. She swam in, yet slowing her pace as to not startle any fish the duo may encounter.

As they reached another clearing, much larger than the previous one, Cordelia found herself gazing at a creature. A fish appearing almost exactly like Neddy. This time there were 2, it seemed as if the two were getting to closer to something. "Norman look."

"I can see them." Norman responded, looking on at awe. "What are they doing?"

"No clue." Cordelia continued to watch, wanting to see what would happen before taking the two for research. "Maybe we should see if there are more?"

"Lead the way."

Cordelia nodded, looking around for any alternative routes. She swam around a column of rocks, almost like pillars to a castle. She looked off onto the otherside, which she previously couldn't see. Astonished was all that came to mind, over hundreds of fish just like Neddy were present, seemingly watching the other two fish. "Norman, we found a colony."

Norman looked around in awe. "There are...a lot of these bad boys." he murmured. He swam a bit closer, and noticed something. "Hey, Corey. Check it out." he said, pointing towards one of the fish. It looked like Neddy, except it had two of those spikes. Something would spark between them, and the fish would follow the bigger one around. "It looks like this colony has a sort of pack system. That one's the boss; the Alpha. Gotta say, I was not expecting this from a bunch of fish."

"I've never seen anything like this before." Cordelia was just as surprised as Norman, a discovery like this one doesn't come along everyday. "But now this raises the question, why would they need to generate electricity and be able to elongate?" A new species meant a lot of questions, many couldn't be answered within the span of one day. "Maybe we should return to the boat for now? We know they're here at least." As much as it pained her to go now, Cordelia knew they weren't prepared to do much researching at the moment.

"Might have migrated here years ago from another place. Like I said before, they evolved to content against Scorpionfish and Moray Eels." Norman responded. "They're here for now, they could move again soon...what if I got them to follow us back to the base? You guys have that funnel under water that you open to transport fish or aquatic life into those isolated tanks, right?"

Cordelia produced a muffled gasp, almost forgetting about the funnel. "Normy can you really do that?" She was excited, but tried to keep her voice down not to startle the fish. "If you can do that, I could kiss you!" Still keeping her excitement to a minimum, but still couldn't shake the desire to have these amazing creatures to research.

"If you're gonna kiss me, I'd rather you not do it while you're in Behemoth form." Norman joked. "But yeah, I probably can. Just gotta get close to the Alpha and take on his properties."

He gestured for Cordelia to swim back a bit, while he steadily moved closer. The fish swam about, collecting rocks for...some reason; Norman didn't know why. As he approached them, the fish kept swimming, but they simply blazed past him as if he just another rock. He got closer and closer to the Alpha Fish, which just stayed steady in the water as it caused sparks to move about. As soon as he was close enough, he gently placed his palm on it. The golden scaly lines under his eyes simply changed colour to red and white. The gills and others remained, but two large spikes shot out of Norman's back, and he let out a curse.

"Oh...that hurts..." he murmured. But he had a job to do, so he decided to try it out. Norman willed for the fish to surround him, and a large spark appeared between the two spikes before fading. The fish actually surrounded him, and Norman laughed in joy. Even the Alpha was around him, which most likely meant that whatever Alpha had a larger electrical signal would lead the colony.

He turned towards Cordelia and the fish moved behind him. "Show me the way to the funnel, Corey."

Flowing with excitement, Cordelia let out a soft shriek along with energetic movement. She quickly turned away and swam out the den, "This way!" She continued to say it until they eventually reached the funnel, even alerting Amber to follow Norman, the mass of fish, and herself. She directed Norman through the funnel, and as he got the fish into the tank, she gave him the sign to come out so they can observe the tank of fish. "Beautiful, aren't they?" She gazed in awe, having deactivated her quirk and now being in her natural form.

Norman had hopped out of the water, soaking wet. The spikes on his back faded away, and the lines under his eye returned to their normal colour. "Yeah, they look great. I also got some new info on them for you."

"And what may that be?" Cordelia had placed Neddy into the tank so he could be with the rest of the fish, and she could easily tell him from the rest since Nathaniel had placed a small tag on his left fin.

"I'll send it to you in a document, too much to say right now." Norman responded. "Becoming part of them was...enlightening about their species to say the least."

"You're so lucky!" Cordelia replied, "Maybe at least give us information on their diet and appropriate temperature, we wouldn't want anything happening to these little guys."

"The temperature's fine right now." Norman responded. "You should probably give them some shrimp and krill. They'll even eat small coloured rocks."

Cordelia wrote down the information on her clipboard again, setting it down as she approached Norman. She kissed him on the cheeks, a thank you for bringing the fish here. "I really appreciate the help Norman. If you ever need anything, please call me."