Teeth and Jaws [WWC]

Spoiler

(Hey! For those of you who know me, it's probably no surprise that I'm back and deciding to get back to writing right away. So here's a piece of junk that I managed to write I a couple days after Smiles told me I should enter WWC <3)
Target Pokémon: Carvanha
Rank: Medium
Target CC: 10-20K
CC: 12085 (I think)

It was easy to sense.
An almost imperceptible shift in temperature, a slight shudder in a perfectly regular current, the beginnings of a faint shadow. It was child's play for the creatures of the ocean to realize that something was in the water. How delicious.
Carvanha was small, a runt really. He was reminded of this every feeding frenzy, when he was shoved unceremoniously to the back of the school. He was just close enough to taste the enticingly warm iron of the blood in the water, but too far to even reach the scraps that floated away from the bodies. Those, too, were quickly snatched by some larger Carvanha or Sharpedo, one that was already bloated with food, that didn't need the scraps but ate them to ensure that the runt wouldn't get them.
Some days, and most nights, as he floated on the fringe of his school in a semi-meditative state, he thought he might go mad with hunger. Occasionally he considered the possibility that he already had, and that was why they ostracized him. He could hear their mocking voices even when they weren't speaking, rasping against his tortured mind like knives against a steel cord. Slowly but steadily, he was being worn away, a rock beaten down by wave after wave until it's only a soft and shapeless mound.
"Find your own food, runt. You have the whole ocean to search. You can't find anything other then the fresh meat we kill for ourselves? Then why do you deserve it? Why do you deserve our food? Why do you deserve anything?"
The painful part, the part that cut his heart like a razor-blade when stars shone off the surface like ghostly diamonds and there was nothing to distract him from his thoughts, was that they were right. Absolutely right. He couldn't leave the school, not forever. Even the thought of wandering alone and unprotected through the dark, fathomless depths made him feel sick and cold inside. They were right. He knew it and they knew it.
So he hovered on the edge, never really belonging but not a perfect outcast either, still hiding under the umbrella of protection that comes when a group gathers together. He had nothing to offer the group, and they offered him nothing in return. It made sense, in a twisted but darkly logical way.
Not today, though. He was going hunting. Another disturbance, stronger this time, reached him. The spiked yellow fins mounted on the crest of his skull twitched back and forth, tracing the vibrations through the water, finding the origin point.
He would have glanced nervously over his shoulder at this point if he had been a human, but he didn't, because he had neither shoulders nor a neck. He wanted to know if his school was still in sight, if they were watching him, if they were following him. Did they approve or disapprove? Did they find his desperate attempt to feed himself and prove himself was funny? It would be to them. He was nothing but comic relief in their eyes, a sad little thing that couldn't even keep himself fed, as much of a wasted skeleton as the remains of their feasts. He'd show, them, though. He'd show them all.
His plan was simple. It had its holes, of course- suppose he was simply too weak from hunger to kill, and therefore unable to fell the feast for his school as he had hoped? Of course, he wouldn't have to kill. All he needed to sustain him for a while longer was mere nibble of succulent flesh. Saliva and stomach acid mixed together behind his throat at the thought, forming a gruesome sort of blender, preparing him for a potential feast.
The shape came into focus in front of him and above him, gently blurred by the perpetual currents. A blurry gray shadow, casting a darkness underneath it that seemed to extend all the way down into the depths of the ocean. Carvanha felt doubt stab through him. It was so big! Too big for a runt like him to even consider tackling. He'd expected a human, preferably a small one, the same size as the skeletons that floated gently to the sea floor when his school was done feeding. Was this what humans looked like when they still had all of their skin? He wouldn't know.
Hunger rumbled through his stomach and his mind, disrupting his thoughts. His logic, already animalistic and primitive, flew out the window. He needed to eat. He was desperate.
His tail twitched, sending him gliding slowly through the water, upward towards his prey. The closer he got, the more the logical part of his brain shrieked in alarm. It really was big, bigger then the fat Carvanha he envied so much.
The shape loomed before him now, presenting itself almost like a gift, if he would only be brave enough to accept it. It didn't see him. He was a silent shadow, a camouflaged predator. Food would be his one way or another.

On the deck of the boat, a family was enjoying an unusually hot day, letting the warmth soak into their skin. There were five of them. The father was a scientist who spent most of his time at work, or traveling to study specimens in their natural habitats. He specialized in water type Pokémon and enjoyed fishing. His name was Dale, and he wished he could be at home more often. At the moment, they were celebrating one of those rare occurrences.
The mother didn't mind the fact that her husband was often away. She was usually too preoccupied raising the rambunctious twins, named Dolly and Daisy. They were only four years old and they were manipulative menaces. Only their mother and older brother were immune to their charms.
The mother herself was named Carmela, and although she enjoyed spending time with her children and her husband more then anything in the world, she quietly longed for the vagabond existence she had once led as a Pokémon trainer. That existence had ended abruptly when she had fallen in love. She thought that adventure was a fair sacrifice to make for love.
The eldest child and only son was Sam, a curious boy who immensely enjoyed the advantage that his extra few years gave him over his obnoxious identical siblings. He idolized his father, and wished to be a researcher when he grew up. As a result, he could usually seen with his nose buried in a scientific textbook far beyond his reading level.

Directly beneath this family, a Carvanha bit down hard on the hull of their boat. Hard metal grated against its teeth as it's eyes widened in surprise. A fang snapped off on impact and drifted alone through the water, leaving its owner to flounder in shock and confusion. How? He knew humans usually burst like balloons filled with blood when shark jaws closed around their fragile bodies. Maybe his simply weren't strong enough. Maybe the muscles had atrophied from hunger or disuse or both.
With something would amount to a resigned sigh coming to a human, he went to fetch his school. He wouldn't get any food today.

Sam looked up from the book he was reading. It was a well-worn edition of "A Pocket Guide to Water Pokémon." He was certain he had heard a painful grating noise, if only for a second, as though the boat had struck a rock.
"Did anyone hear that?" he asked.
But he was a soft-spoken boy and his family was preoccupied, his father with preparing the fishing rods, his mother lathering sunscreen on the twins and the twins trying their hardest to escape her grasp, so no one answered his question.

Sharpedo and Carvanha communicate by setting their fins to vibrate at a high speed, using pauses and breaks in a pattern similar to Morse code. These vibrations travel through the water and are received by other Sharpedo and Carvanha, which use their own hypersensitive fins to catch them.
Carvanha made use of this ability now, sending a very rudimentary message he was certain his school would receive, follow, and trace back to him. Food. Maybe he would get a few scraps for having found it. He made a chuffing noise akin to laughter at that thought. Of course he wouldn't.

Dolly escaped from her mother's grasp and ran toward her father, squealing with laughter, white blotches of sunscreen standing out on her skin like rashes. She pounced on him, knocking the fishing rod from his hands. He smiled and lifted her bodily off of the ground, raising mock-skeptical eyebrow.
"Now, honey, you know your mother tries very hard to take care of you, so you should respect her. Just because this is a fun day doesn't mean there aren't any rules, you know?"
Dolly's face collapsed into a mask of disappointment and sorrow at these words. At least, that's what it looked like to her father, who was paying more attention to his fishing rod then his daughter. He has a bite, and the pole was jumping erratically in his hands.
The look on Dolly's face as she stared into the ocean over her father's shoulder was really more like fear.

They had come quickly, transforming the small patch of sea into a roiling mass of anticipation and hunger. As expected, Carvanha had been pushed out of his prime position under the boat, but it didn't matter. Nothing really did, any more. This had been his last chance. He was going to die.
One of the Carvanha, a young but relatively large specimen, hadn't been content with waiting until the Sharpedo tipped the boat and had bitten down on Dale's bait. It gave a keening wail of anguish when the hook ripped through its mouth and lodged firmly in its gills. None of the other Carvanha cared enough to free it.
There was blood in the water now, and it was driving them to frenzy.

Dale smiled proudly as he hauled his catch up out of the water. "A Carvanha. Lookit that. I never liked them as battlers- nasty little underhanded beasts- but the meat is pretty good if you can stop 'em from taking a bite out of you long enough to fillet 'em," he explained to his largely disinterested family. Only Sam was listening, taking notes in the margins of his Water Pokémon book.
The boat shook suddenly. Dale grabbed desperately at the railing, while Carmela snatched Dolly and Daisy and pulled them close to her. They were too frightened to protest, and instead curled up against her body.
Sam braced himself against the floor of the boat, wide eyes magnified by his glasses. Ocean spray sloshed over the side of the boat as it violently rocked the other way.
My book is ruined now, Sam thought with a sort of detached self-interest. And then: Too bad, whatever's rocking the boat would probably be in there. Sam had a tendency to not worry enough when his life was in danger, an instead try to dissect the situation in an almost analytical way. This was a dangerous habit.
Another Sharpedo slapped the water with its powerful tail, propelling itself forward at a frankly ridiculous speed, trailing a stream of bubbles behind it on its short journey towards the hull of the boat. To the water Pokémon, it was akin to an alien spacecraft, if aliens were delicacies and we broke their ships open in order to eat them.
Carvanha felt a little sick watching the buildup to the inevitable feeding frenzy, knowing that when it came, he would get none of the food that would be oh so tantalizingly close. He wished the human would just appear and die already.
The Sharpedo slammed itself against the boat, causing it to list drunkenly to one side. A little crack, thin as a single strand of human hair, appeared in the hull.
Carvanha was too far away to see when the boat's hull gave way in the form of a single, deadly crack, but he saw the signs. The mass of Sharpedo, whose glowing red eyes provided razor-sharp vision, picked it out immediately and targeted that spot, eager for the victorious moment when it would widen enough to break its seal and water would gush in in an endless fountain.

On deck, the family of five had migrated together into a single knot and huddled together, heads down, tears coming quickly. Dale and Carmela were trying to stay strong for their children, but they were less then successful. A puddle was growing by their feet.
For just a moment they thought it was their accumulated tears.
Then the boat made a strange bubbling, gurgling sound and sank like a rock.

Carvanha was happy for the first time since he could remember. Not one human, not even two, but five. This frenzy, there would be food for everyone.

 

also claiming n~n heuheu

 

Story

Ah, thanks for writing such a neat little story. The overall plot of the story is quite simple but you easily raised interesting ethical questions: should I feel sad for the Carvanha because what he does is out of survival and shane, or should I feel bad for people of my own kind who are voraciously consumed? You write in a way that allows you to hover over character's perspectives, and I really enjoyed getting a glimpse into what was happening in Carvanha's head. The switching of this perspective to the exposition about the habits behind their species to the perspective of the human beings really defined omniscient for me. I think you use this technique wonderfully and can only improve using this method of storytelling by getting that much more into your character's heads.

For example, I would have loved to see the moment before the humans' deaths to be expanded. Give us a moment of their confusion, dread, and ultimate agony as they realize they're about to die. On this note, I think you did an awesome job on the characterization of these humans by giving them realistic hobbies and attributes; I think this could have benefited a little more with unique traits that would make us as readers identify with them that much more as they died. Or perhaps we could have seen more into the other Carvanha's mindsets; we get that quote of what they're thinking, but it's a bit awkwardly implemented because it stands alone and comes off as more Carvanha's inner thinking that that of his peers. Expanding that moment, spending more time about what they specifically think of him from their perspective, would have been neat and added to his emotional turmoil.

These are all just suggestions for future stories off a short sample; what you had here was neat, fascinating, and intriguing to read!

Description

You strike an excellent balance between story-telling and description. Particularly, you do a great job of balancing intrinsic details (details about the characters' lives, their thoughts, intangible objects) with very powerful sensory lines. I really liked:

Boom! Sprinkling in details like that really make a big impression on your readers, so kudos!

This being said, I would have liked to see more physical details on the humans and Carvaha himself. The details on the humans is one way we can make them more relatable to the audience and overall, make their final death more of a satisfying read. You spaced out a few good physical details on Carvanha, but perhaps something slightly more specific, like the bones visibly ridging nearly through his skin to show just how hungry he is, would have been cool too. But overall you have a great flow for description and can only get better! Spoil us with more of those powerful details and more physical details in general.

Grammar

We always want to add spaces between the paragraphs when we post our stories. So for every time you press enter, just make sure you press it twice instead of once. We do this just because it makes it easier for the readers to read; not lying, you got some playful shade from readers for the WWC for this LOL. Obviously, the spacing doesn't change the content of your story or anything, but there's just something about a big block of text that really scares us.

As for the rest of the grammar here, you're so solid! There were a maximum of maybe two typos outside of what I will discuss here that may be a recurring problem.

We always want to put a hyphen between a specific type and the word "type". These are called compound hyphens because you have two words acting as one adjective. You know when you need to use these when you use this test: can you take out one of the two words and have it stand alone and make sense? If so, then you don't need the hyphen! If not, go ahead and tack that hyphen onto there.

Also, the hyphen between the word and the "type" of the Pokemon is a huge URPG thing same as spacing stories. Just something we do.

In the latter example, just remember that "it's" stands for "it is" whereas "its" is a pronoun for something that belongs to something else. Really minor errors here, but helpful to know for the future.

Length

Yeah, we're in a smooth place on this spectrum! I felt that length could have been added by giving us more physical description of Carvanha and the humans, or by expanding perspectives, but it's also not too big of a deal. Length makes its biggest impact on borderline stories, which this definitely was not, so no worries here!

Outcome

Carvanha Captured! Enjoy your new Pokemon! (= Sorry for the immense wait!