Alternate Ending #2: Herteromania (for our straight folks out there)

[midorisakura]

 

 

A few months later (after another blackout episode), GW meets a lovely blue shark who’s visiting from the warm shores of Hawaii. Her name’s Blue Jean. It’s love at first sight (GW falls in love with her large black eyes - like pools of oil - and she falls in love with his gentle nature (which is a rather unusual trait for a great white shark to have)).

GW moves to the beautiful waters of Hawaii, and they make sweet, sweet love (which for sharks is a rather painful process (a quick Google search will tell you that) and the blood and pain does call forth Jaws for a few hot minutes, but Blue Jean’s love overcomes that perpetual grouch, and GW is able to take the reigns once again, and for good this time). 

Blue Jean has a litter of 135 shark babies, though because of GW’s contribution to the process, only half of them survive (his pups are Ovoviviparous (it’s a shark-eat-shark world from the start for great whites) and those that take after their mother are  viviparous (content to eat their mother’s placenta rather than each other)). 

They are the spitting image of their parents (or so everyone who sees them says). Mindful of his rough beginning to life (having to survive on his own from the very beginning, and being traumatized by it...aka the blackouts (which we know really means that Jaws was in control at the time of the blackouts)), GW refuses to leave them to fend for themselves, and Blue Jean, BJ for short, having grown up in Hawaiian waters, the land of ‘ohana (no one gets left behind), agrees. 

They sing the lullaby that Doc Hammerhead taught to GW at the end of that chapter of his life (well, the chapter of this alternative story of his life), to their offspring. The rest of the sharks in the area start singing it, too. It becomes wildly popular with sharks all around the Hawaiian waters, dancing and bopping about to the tune of, “Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo.”

This causes quite a stir in the marine life community. Humans (those poor, dumb, well-meaning (most of the time) creatures) are confounded by the phenomenon of a great white and a blue shark creating their own community, and raising their kids (like any upstanding citizen (shark or otherwise) of the sea would do) within that larger community of sharks (it takes a village, or so the saying goes).

There’s research, and tagging, and conservation efforts. The family becomes protected by the Hawaiian people. 

Everything is looking up for the Blue-White family when little Bonnie Blue White gets caught up in a net when they make a trip to Japan, which leads to a one time resurgence of Jaws, and the death of several simpleminded humans (there’s blood in the water for days). There are news reports, and helicopters, and there’s a shark hunt that lasts for months. It all has GW confused, because he doesn’t remember a darned thing.

“It’s okay, honey,” Blue Jean says when he expresses concern over the incident (well after they’ve returned to the warm waters of Hawaii). “That evil shark will never haunt these waters, our pups are safe. I’ll make sure of it.”

GW frowns at her. “How?”

“Don’t you worry yourself about that,” she says, patting him with her fin. “Why don’t you help Bonnie Blue with her hunting skills. She’s the slowest of the litter.”

“I love you,” GW says. 

“I love you more,” Blue Jean says. 

“Daddy, can I go squid hunting with Billy Ray?” their son, Tommy White, asks (he’s the second slowest of their pups). “He says that I’m too little, and that I’ll only get in the way, but he’s big and dumb, and it’s not fair.”

GW shakes his head, and chuckles. “Why don’t you come hunting with Bonnie Blue and I?”

“Really?” Tommy swims a few lazy circles around his father, which leaves him out of breath (his gills are working double time). 

“Go find your sister,” GW says, pointing him toward the rest of the litter. 

“We’ve got a great family,” Blue Jean says. 

“We most certainly do,” GW agrees. 

And it really is happily ever after for this family of 80 (or so) sharks. They are protected by the Hawaiian people, Jaws doesn’t have to come out to play, and everyone lives happily ever after. 

(If you believe in such sappy endings, and are not a realist (blue sharks are one of the most hunted sharks in the world, with 10- 20 million being killed each year for things like shark fin soup; they’re also aggressive, so the narrator thinks that, in reality. Blue Jean would have embraced Jaws’ temperament and joined him in his killing spree, they would have become the Bonnie and Clyde of the sea world, and gone out, much like Jaws did in the movies, in a blaze of glory.) then this is the ending for you.)

“It’s the end, doo doo doo doo doo doo, it’s the end doo doo doo doo doo doo...”

(You’re welcome for that earworm. (Sorry, not sorry.))