Sharktavia 12: Shark Out of Hell
“This day went from bad—”
“Wakey-wakey!” A deep, bellowing voice shattered her sleep, and nearly her eardrums.
“—to worse,” Octavia mumbled upon opening her eyes. She had a splitting headache, which meant she wasn’t in the mood for this crap. It was too damn hot, it was too damn bright, she was too damn tired, and her head hurt too damn much. Not to mention, she felt like the main course sandwiched in a grill press from whatever was holding her. She tried to move her limbs, but couldn’t. The low roar of raging flames made it hard to concentrate. The smell of spent fireworks filled the already stifling air. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say she was in—
Now that her vision was coming back to her, it was no wonder she felt like her skin was being cooked. “Good morning, Octavia—or should I say, Sharktavia.” A huge, ghastly creature stood in front of her. Its skin was jet black but reflected the red fire’s glow around her, almost like it was made of pure obsidian. The hulking figure looked like it was cut by God himself, with perfectly chiseled muscles showing just under its smooth shell. Piercing orange and white light blazed forth from zig-zagging cracks in its skin, as if magma flowed through its veins.
Her eyes trailed up the ripped beast’s body to its hideous face. It wasn’t like a pony. It had a flat face, like a chimp’s, but boney and grotesque in appearance. Jets of flame streamed from its nostrils with every breath, and its teeth looked nearly as sharp as her own. The creature’s eyes were a piercing yellow that somehow shone brighter than anything else in the fiery pit. Atop its head were a pair of misshapen horns, longer than its head was tall that curled back in a hook shape.
“Well, ain’t you a barrel of sunshine,” she remarked. If she had a free fin, she’d have straightened her trademark pink bowtie and black wig. “And the name’s Octavia, ya daft bastard.”
“Silence, whelp!” The beast’s voice shook her down to her core. But, where most ponies would crap the pants they weren’t wearing, she only put on a bored expression. “Do you know where you are?”
“Hell?”
It spread its free arm out, gesturing to their surroundings—a dark pit filled with lava flows, pillars and lakes of flame, and legions of demons cheering for their dark master. “You’re in—” It stopped itself as Octavia’s answer registered. After a second, it opened its mouth and let out a fiery sigh. Then, it raised an eyebrow as it looked back at her, which she could only tell from the reflection off its skin. “Seriously? You’re going to go there? You just had to ruin it. That’s one of my favorite parts of the job, you know?”
“You might’ve gave it away with the fire and demons, mate.” She shrugged her nonexistent shoulders.
“Usually ponies are freaking the fuck out right about now.”
“Well, I ain’t no bloody pony, am I? I’m a fuckin’ shark. You think a bit of fire scares me? You ever seen an angler fish or a giant squid? I’ve seen scarier stuff in my mum’s closet.”
The beast smirked. “Yes, I'm sure her extensive collection of dildos is terrifying.”
“Oi, you startin’ a fight?” She puffed out her chest and flashed her row of razor sharp teeth.
The beast laughed. “No, Sharktavia.” She rolled her eyes at the name. “I have a proposition for you. I’ve seen what you’re capable of.” A devilish smirk crossed its lips, and its grip loosened around her body. “So, join me! Lead my demons in the end times!”
“And if I refuse?”
“You can lead my armies, or suffer for all eternity!” It threw its head back and laughed maniacally.
She managed to pull a fin loose from the demon’s grip and rub her chin. “Let me get this straight. Some random bloke falls down ‘ere, and you want to make ’er your general or somethin'’?” She raised an eyebrow. “You gone soft in the head, ain’t ya? Mate, I’m just a shark. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of bad-ass blokes dropped on your lap through the ages, and you want me?”
Using its free claw, it reached into a nearby lake of magma and pulled forth something from its depths. “You are the strongest soul I’ve ever seen, Sharktavia. You’ve conquered all who stood in your path. The ponies above will tremble in fear when they see you—” Just then, it opened its claw to show her. A twisting black mass formed into a pair of black spandex, a mask with white markings around the eyes, and a flowing, almost living red cape. “—wearing this! You will house my unholy power and become my hellspawn!”
Octavia visibly cringed. “You’ve lost your goddamn mind! I ain’t squeezing into that, ya perv!” She glanced off to the side and added, “Besides, I don’t need a clown sidekick. I already got one.” The image of a white mare with huge purple sunglasses and an electric-blue mane flashed through her mind.
“So, you won’t join me?”
“Ain’t happenin’, mate.” She narrowed her eyes, growling as she did.
“If you won’t join me…” The beast swung her over his head. When it released, she was launched down into a swirling vortex of fire and pain—as if pain was a tangible thing she could be flung into. As she flew down, the vortex itself shot up to pull her down inside it. “Then you’ll spend eternity suffering for your sins!” The demon’s voice seemed to echo into eternity as she fell.
“So, this is it?” she thought as the flames spun around her, moving slower and slower until they were in an almost standstill. The deafening roar of the fires had vanished into a calming silence. “After all I’ve done, this is how it ends?” But just as she was getting used to the silence, she thought she could hear music. It almost sounded like the opening to Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ playing in her head, but that didn’t make sense. She quickly dismissed it as her imagination. After all, there wasn’t enough for the license in the budget.
“To think today started out so great…”
After months of tracking down the source of the black tar heroin flooding into Ponyville’s one-school school district, she was here. Standing on her tailfins with her dorsal pressed back against the wall of the warehouse, Octavia peaked around the corner. She had her bullet proof vest on, a fingun at her waist, and a purple treble clef painted on her sandpaper-y grey skin right next to her butt.
She took a deep breath and reached for the gun. “You can do this, Tavi,” she said, just loud enough for herself to hear. “After months of trackin’ the bastards down, you’ve got ‘em by the balls! The kingpin’s in there…” The ponies inside the warehouse were all packing heat—machine guns—but that wasn’t what worried her.
Suddenly, her stomach rumbled. Her eyes narrowed in on the juicy leg on a stallion patrolling the warehouse. His muscles readjusted just below his skin as he shifted his weight. It was so enticing, she couldn’t help but lick her razor-sharp teeth. Octavia glanced down at her pistol before looking back to the stallion’s delicious leg. She shoved the gun back into her holster. “Right, just going to have the chief a bit cross wif me, that’s all.”
She took a deep breath and pushed off the wall. “This one’s for you, Channing!” She charged into the warehouse, tackling the stallion standing guard. In an instant, she sunk her choppers into the criminal’s neck, shaking him back and forth violently before chucking his carcass at a few of his partners, knocking them over.
Mouth spattered with the unlucky stallion’s blood, she whipped out her pistol and unloaded on the unsuspecting criminals pinned under their comrade’s dead body. “Quit resisting arrest!” she yelled.
After her clip was empty, she cleared it and reloaded. “If only I could’ve done this off a helicopter.” She glanced to the side just in time to see a criminal charging with a gun pointed right at her. With a powerful kick of her tailfin, she lunged at him and took a chunk out of his neck. Safely securing her to go meal, she rolled for a recover, landing safely on the tips of her fins once more.
A whistle drew her attention. Standing there, on a crate of heroin was the kingpin of the whole operation. A small white rabbit in a suit jacket. “Angel.” Octavia nodded. “You turnin’ yourself in, mate?” She narrowed her eyes and smirked as she pointed a gun at the bunny.
He shook his head. After a second, he threw his paw out wide, leading her gaze to the side. Octavia’s eyes shot open. Tied up in a chair with two guards holding her at gunpoint was a white-coated mare with a vibrant blue mane and a bitchin’ pair of sunglasses—Vinyl Scratch, Octavia’s girlfriend.
She grit her rows of teeth together.. “Oi, you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”
Angel shook his head again, then narrowed his eyes and smirked. With another motion of his head he pointed to her gun and then to the ground.
“You had me figured out all along, eh?” She tossed her gun down as he nodded. “What gave me up? Was it because one of your crew was askin’ too many questions?”
He pointed to his mouth.
“The accent. Right.” She laughed. “The chief always told me I should watch my mouth.” She glanced down at the floor for a second. When she looked back up, she smirked. “After all, it always was the better of my assets.” Without warning, she gave another powerful push with her tail, launching her towards Vinyl and her captors. With a two ton shark lunging at him through the air, jaws first, her target froze in place, screaming like a filly. The other guard raised his gun, but was too slow. Her teeth sank into the first guard collar, crushing his bones in her powerful jaws. Once she was clear of Vinyl she violently jerked her head, tossing her prey’s limp body at his counterpart.
Once the other guard was pinned under his friend’s corpse, Octavia pushed herself over to him and took a bite out of his tender flank. When she got up, Vinyl opened her mouth, but Octavia placed her fin on the mare’s supple lips. “Hush now, love. We got time for this later, yeah?” With a swift chop of her fin, the ropes came loose. Now that her lover was finally safe, she turned her attention to Angel. Octavia grinned as she strutted confidently up to him. After taking out all of his men, it was just the two of them. And she was ready to finish this.
Angel didn’t have any options left. The rabbit fell back the inches onto his fluffy tail and cowered before her, holding up his tiny arms in defense.
“Oi, Angel. You know what my favorite movie is?”
The question caught him off guard. He lowered his arms for a second and shook his head. The terror still screaming from his beady, black, soulless eyes, despite the odd inquiry.
She smiled, flashing as many of her sharp teeth as she could. “Jaws, mate.” And with that, she opened her mouth, engulfed the rabbit, and swallowed him whole.
But something wasn’t right. The little rat had somehow managed to lodge himself in her throat, cutting off her air supply. He was hell-bent on taking her with him. She slapped at her neck, trying to push the rodent down, but to no avail. Slowly, everything grew dim. The last thing she remembered was hitting the floor.
“Damn. There goes my promotion.”
“If only that’s all I lost.” As she came back to the present, the song in her head wrapped up. The swirling fire vortex sped back up until it was churning like a tornado around her. Most normal people would have given up and accept their fate at this point. Their final moments would have flashed before their eyes as they’re about to endure an eternity of torment. But Octavia wasn’t most people. She wasn’t even people at all.
She was, in fact, a shark.
“Well, I ain’t one to take this load of bollocks lyin’ down.” She rolled mid air so she was diving into the fiery hellhole head first. Just up ahead, she saw the torment that awaited her. Swimming in the torrent of flames were sharks, two or three times larger than herself, made of molten, glowing magma with rows upon rows of obsidian teeth. As soon as one of the sharks noticed her, it opened its gaping jaws, waiting for her to land inside.
“Sorry, I don’t like blokes who come on too strong.” She narrowed her eyes. She pulled her fins close to her body and sped downwards towards the burning monstrosity. Her mouth opened wide. If she was going down, she was going down with a fight. Bite for bite if she had to. Unfortunately for the other shark, she was smaller. She zoomed right into its jaws, just barely threading between the sharp pillars that were its teeth. The lava-shark closed its mouth, pleased by its recent meal. But its relief lasted only a fleeting second. A literal gut-wrenching pain shot through the monster. It bellowed out a desperate roar as Octavia burst out of the other side of the monster’s tail with a mouth full of searing hot magma.
Normally, gurgling molten lava would leave a nasty mark on her gums, but, Octavia wasn’t in the mood for that. No, she was pissed. She heard a blood-curdling scream from behind her as the lava-shark exploded in a gooey eruption. She spat out the magma from her mouth, and set her eyes on the next target. The lake of fire had become viscous this far down, and now she was in her element. The sharks all swarmed her, furious that she had killed one of their brothers.
But Octavia wouldn’t go down without a fight. If fire could run red with blood, she’d have put The Nile to shame with the carcasses of her foes. Even when one bit her, she sunk her teeth into it, shredding the larger shark like paper. Being in hell meant she couldn’t die, so what was a bit of burnt teeth and immolated innards? But just as Octavia had started to thin the school, the survivors scattered, fleeing to whatever dark holes they called home.
“Oi, that’s right!” she crowed. “You’d better run, you pansies!” She raised a triumphant fin in the air. Her victory was short-lived however; a low, deep roar came from behind her. Octavia looked over her non-existent shoulder to see a true monster lumbering into the scene.
“You must be the big fish in the pond, eh?” A shark that’d put any other to shame was slowly swimming its way towards her. It was easily ten or fifteen times her size, but that didn’t bother her. No, Octavia was pissed. And when she was pissed, things either died or pleasured her sexually. “So, what’s it gonna be?”
“That’s what I thought.”
Suddenly from the surface of the lake of fire she’d been thrown into, burst the monstrous lava-shark in a pillar of flame. Atop its back, surfing on the creature, was Octavia. Her ride arced, and her eyes narrowed as the son of a bitch who threw her in that literal hellhole came into view. The sleek bastard was lumbering away in the distance. No doubt it was off to torture some other soul, but Octavia would have to cancel its plans. It had prior business to attend to.
She was gaining on it at this speed. Her lava-shark was on a direct course for the demon, soaring over countless other lakes of fire along its path. More lava-sharks jumped up from the lakes, trying to take a bite out of her new bottom bitch, but they couldn’t reach. He was too big and they were too high up for anyone to touch them.
The devil looked over its shoulder. Its eyes went wide in disbelief. Soaring at it was one of its largest lava-sharks, jumping over lakes of fire, with smaller lava-sharks jumping out to grab a bite of the big one. And on its back was the biggest shock of all: a pissed off Octavia.
“Sharktavia?” the demon bellowed. Hearing that name made her blood boil even more. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” The devil pointed a clawed finger at the lava-shark zooming towards it. From the tip of its finger fired a red bolt of lightning, hitting the giant lava-shark in the face. The beast’s body rippled uncontrollably from the blast surging through it.
Octavia sprung off the shark once the beam hit, launching herself towards the demon. Then, the lava-shark behind her exploded, giving her the extra push she needed. She flew right towards the devil’s neck, sinking her teeth into its jet-black skin, shattering the obsidian like a thin piece of glass.
The devil screamed at the top of its lungs. All of hell shook from its thunderous voice. Frantically, it grabbed Octavia with its hand and yanked her away. Magma started to ooze free from the wound. “You dare bite the hand that tried to feed you?”
“Don’t mind if I do!” She sank her teeth into the devil’s thumb, ripping what would be flesh and muscle from bone. The lava pouring from its hand lubricated her skin and allowed her to wiggle free. She slipped out of the devil’s grasp and charged up the demon’s arm. She lunged at his face, but instead of baring her fangs once more, she readied her fin.
The blow connected, toppling the freakishly huge figure down to the ground, crushing mountains, lava flows, and demons alike. Octavia landed on the beast’s chest, slowly walking up its perfect, muscular pecs casually. Just when she got to its head, the devil looked down its body at her. Without any hesitation, she punched it again. A whole network of new cracks shattered throughout its obsidian skin along its face.
“What’s that you were sayin’?”
“You…What are you?” it managed to say in a weak voice.
“Oh, don’t be like that. You know what I am.” She jumped up onto its face and looked at it squarely in the eyes. “After all, that’s not the part you’ve been strugglin’ with, was it, mate? Why don’t you tell me, what’s my name?”
The devil clenched his jaw. “Shark—”
He was cut off by another swift jab from Octavia’s fin, cracking its face even further. “What’s my name?”
It groaned, closing its eyes. “O-Octavia…”
“Damn right.” She hacked up a loogie and spit it onto the demon’s face. The devil collapsed, falling unconscious after being thoroughly humiliated. Once it was out cold, she hopped down from its face and straightened her bowtie.
Next, she motioned to one of the stunned onlooking demons to come over to her. “Take me up. It’s too bloody hot down ‘ere.”
“Friends and family, we are here today to mourn the loss of a dear friend to us all,” the mayor said to a congregation of ponies. Behind her was a picture on an easel of Octavia and her marefriend hugging. In the front row sat Vinyl herself, glasses still on, but tears running down her cheeks. “Octavia was a great pony…er—shark. She saved this town with reasonable levels of destruction more times than even Twilight Sparkle has managed, saving us tax dollars in the long run.”
“Hey!” Twilight yelled from the back of the funeral home.
“And, she shall be missed for not just that, but everything. Her most recent heroics will forever be her last as she passed in the line of duty, slaughtering one of the most ruthless drug cartels to ever plague our small town.”
“I just don’t know where he got that behavior,” Fluttershy muttered to her friends.
“Admittedly, it was only one of the most ruthless because Octavia kept eating ponies while undercover, but ruthless none the less,” the mayor continued. But, before the service went on further, the funeral home shook violently. It was a sudden earthquake, which made Twilight and her friends stand ready for some action. Everyone else looked around in a panic, some even fleeing for the exit. But, before the place was evacuated, an explosion came from just in front of the casket.
Vinyl stood up, her mouth agape. She couldn’t even manage to speak. Climbing out of the new hole in the ground was her tall, fat, grey-skinned shark femme fatale she fell in love with.
“I’m back, love,” Octavia said once the dust cleared. The light caught her fang just right to twinkle.
Vinyl galloped to Octavia, jumping into her waiting fins. She pressed her lips to her lovers and the two made out passionately in front of the crowd of confused and terrified onlookers. When they finally broke, Octavia looked out into the crowd. “Oi, how about some privacy ‘ere? Unless you all want to watch a shark and pony shag on the floor, that is.”
The funeral home cleared out almost immediately, leaving the two alone and in each others forelegs and fins. “Let me tell you, I’ve had one hell of a day.”
The End
