(Man and Woman to Female Tiger Sharks, Woman to Hammerhead Shark)


Victoria Marcus glanced across the table, staring with undisguised disgust at her companion’s choice in dinner.  She fidgeted with her hair, her blonde locks now in a neat bun for the outing.  She nervously glanced to the side, taking some comfort that at least his assistant seemed just as perturbed as she.
“So...  Mark.”  She began, wincing slightly as he took another large bite of the shark fin soup.  She’d never know how he had such a talent for predicting the changes she’d be requesting, but it was always a little nauseating.
He looked up, chewing the meat vigorously.  “Mn?”  He said, before swallowing the mouthful with a relieved sigh.
His assistant, a brown-haired girl who went by ‘Mira’, slapped his arm.  “Mark, manners!  We’re with a client!”
The magician rubbed his arm, chuckling slightly.  “Yeah, but I know her!  She’s not going to judge me anymore than she already has, right Tori?”  He looked to their client with a smile.
Victoria frowned.  “It’s Victoria, and loathe though I may be to admit it, I hate to judge anyone who’s seen me naked.”
Mira gawked, and slapped Mark harder.  Victoria chuckled, having gotten the reaction she was expecting.
“Easy!  It was for business!”  Mark rubbed his arm again.  “Ow, you hit me in the same spot...”
“Anyways.”  Mira rolled her eyes, leaning over the table to look at Victoria.  “You wanted to hire us again?”
“Absolutely!”  Victoria nodded vigorously.  “Well, I know someone who wants to hire you.  You guys heard of Ferris Mall?”
Mira nodded enthusiastically.  Before she’d started working with Mark, she’d spent a good deal of her free time there.  “Isn’t it closed, though?”  Last she’d heard, they were shutting down for renovations.
“Not anymore!  It’s opening up again!”  Victoria beamed as Mira’s eyes lit up.  She looked back to Mark expectantly, and he grinned.
“Tell you what, Mira.  We’ll take a few days off and visit every shop they have.  Deal?”  He said, patting his assistant on the back as she nodded enthusiastically.  “Anyways, Victoria—” he put extra emphasis on her name, “—I’m guessing they’re going to be the ones paying us?”
Victoria nodded.  “They were supposed to get some sharks for their new aquarium, but the shipment’s been delayed.”
“How does a shipment of sharks get delayed?”  Mira asked.
Mark answered for Victoria.  “I dunno, but it sounds fishy.”  He paused, almost physically feeling the glares the two women were giving him.  “Please go on.”  The magician added meekly.
Victoria sighed, kneading her temples.  “Well, they asked me if I knew a way to get sharks, and I told them I knew a way...  If they could provide me with a trio of volunteers.  Enter Clark, Betty, and Han.  The mall approached them, offering them each a handsome salary if they’d be willing to spend a week or two as sharks.”  Victoria pulled photographs of the volunteers from her purse, and Mark and Mira leaned in.
Clark looked like the textbook image of a ‘surfer’.  He had long hair, was well-muscled, and even a trophy girl in one arm, a redhead with a kind smile.  The next image revealed that the trophy girl was actually Betty.  The last picture was of a small Asian-American, the image capturing her taking care of a baby turtle.
“The three of them have worked in wildlife conservation, so they’re perfect for the role.  Right now, they’re waiting for us in the mall.”
Mark grinned, raising his hand to teleport them.
Victoria hurriedly waved him off.  “It’s within walking distance!”  She said quickly.  Mark lowered his hand, an inquisitive frown on his face.  Victoria smiled sheepishly.  “Sorry, whenever you teleport me, I get a little nauseous.”
Mark smiled, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.  “Well then, lead the way.”  He paused to leave a generous tip for the waitress, then followed the two women out.

Despite his reservations about visiting the shopping center, Mark had to admit that it was an impressive sight, large clear tanks flanking the entryway, filled with faux coral and smaller fish.  They were much too small to hold sharks, though.  No, the right of carrying the large animals was reserved for a massive, intricate tank in the center of the mall.
Mark had to give the designers their credit, it had a split about 1/3 of the way in that spiraled along the tank to make it seem more natural, allowing a good look at the inhabitants.  Right now, it looked like there were a pair of people in one tank, and a lone woman treading water in the other.
“There you are!”  The lone woman shouted, waving her arm.  “We’ve been waiting, you know!”
Victoria smiled as she walked closer.  “Hey, not my fault Mark decided to grab a quick bite beforehand!”
“Mm-hm.”  By now they were close enough that the woman—Han—didn’t need to shout.  “So, where’s the camera crew?”
“Camera crew?”  Mark grinned, arching an eyebrow at her.
“Yeah, I’ve seen one or two of your shows online; you can’t blame me for being a little skeptical.”  She shrugged, shaking out her wet hair a little.
Mark looked to Mira with a sidelong grin, and she sighed, undoing the glamour that was hiding her animal bits.  Han gasped as she looked at the woman’s bunny ears and tail.
In the tank beside her, Betty and Clark sniggered.  “I told you that you should believe in magic.”  Betty said matter-of-factly.  She looked back down to Mark.  “I’m a huge fan, Mr. Amazing.”
Mark stood a little straighter at that, a broad grin on his features.  “Well then, I think I’ve found my first volunteer!”  He clapped his hands, vanishing from the volunteer’s startled gazes.
“Up here.”  He said from above them, already atop the handler’s cage.
“Okay, there has to be an explanation for this.”  Han held up one of her hands warily.
Mark leaned over the railing.  “It’s not too much of a tall tail, dear.  If you need more proof, just look at your friend.”
Betty gasped as her legs tingled.  Before her eyes, the skin between them joined, and she saw, rather than felt, her bones reshaping to better match her lower half, multiple joints appearing along the single limb that used to be her legs.  Her ankles twisted, forcing her feet apart to ninety-degree angles.  Then, they flattened out, forming a caudal fin.
“Oh my God, I’m just like a mermaid!”  Betty grinned, twitching her tail happily.  The volunteer turned a little, seeing that the back of her tail was a pretty shade of orange, a nice contrast to the white front of the appendage.  She opened her mouth to say something else, but her jaw clacked shut.  She watched as her mouth was forced open, her teeth growing longer, wider, pointed.
Betty grinned at Han, who had paled an impressive amount.  “Okay, so maybe this is actually happening.”  She admitted hesistantly.
Betty nodded, her face pushing out into a snout.  She yawned to stretch out her jaw, running her tongue along her new teeth.  “That’s better—oh!  I can still talk?”  She marveled at how clear her voice sounded through her jaws, flicking her tail to keep her above water.
“In a way.”  Mark grinned.  “I’ve made it so that only the people here today will be able to hear you, so you won’t be bored during your time as a shark.”
Betty opened her mouth to say something, but she gagged slightly as gills opened along her thickening neck.  Her head forced itself upward, her eyes sliding to the side of her skull, and the changing woman quickly dipped underwater to breathe.  Her hair pulled back into her head as she did so, leaving smooth ichthyoid skin.
“This is so cool!  And weird.”  She added the last bit as a concession, patting her face with her still-human arms.  She was a shark from the waist down and neck-up, a funny sight for sure.  “What sort of shark am I going to be?”
“A tiger shark, dear.”  Mark grinned, as he spoke.  Then, he looked off the balcony to his assistant.  “I’ve got her started.  You care to help her along, Mira?”
“Oh, right!”  Mira blinked, teleporting herself to the top of the tank.  She waved her hands, and Betty’s arms started to recede into her shoulders, an orange tint to the backs of her limbs.  Beside her, Clark’s legs underwent a similar change to Betty’s.
“I figure it’d be best if you changed at around the same time your girlfriend did.  Get a nice little bond that way.”  Mark said to the surfer with a grin.
Clark looked down, running a hand along his new tail.  It was smooth, just like the rest of his body below the waist.  A thought stuck him, and he looked up to the magician.  “Um...  Not to sound weird or anything, but aren’t I supposed to have a penis still?”
“Two, actually.”  Mark said with a smile.  “But sharks kept in tanks are supposed to be the same gender, no?”  He paused, then smiled devilishy.  “That said, if you’d still want a pair of claspers, I could definitely accommodate that, but Betty would have to grow a pair as well.”
Secretly, Mark prayed that the surfer wouldn’t ask for that—he’d been able to get used to changing men into women, but making women into men was just... wrong.  Mark sighed with relief as Clark blanched.
“You know, on second thought, I think I can get used to this for a few weeks.”  He said, feeling his smooth lower half.
Betty glared at her boyfriend, tossing her head.  Somehow even as a shark she was able to convey the phrase ‘And what the hell do you mean by that?’.
Clark stammered nervously, his—her tail having to tread more water even as her hands moved to touch their respective shoulders, a thick webbing forming between them.  “It—it’s just more natural for someone to lose something than for someone to grow something else, you know?  Like how you accept someone who’s lost an arm, but someone with a third arm is...  Um...”  Her new fins slapped at the water as she struggled to think up a way to phrase that that didn’t make her sound like a total bastard.  Finding none, she looked pleadingly to Mark, who chuckled and waved his hand.
“Oh no, I’m losing the ability to talk.”  Clark said in a forced monotone, shrugging her neck from side to side as her gills game in.  She swam down to kiss Betty on her nose, giving her an increasingly wide-toothed grin.
Betty rolled her eyes, but swam up beside her significant other, nuzzling the changing girl.  Just as her hair had, Clark’s retreated back into her expanding head.  The pair of sharks watched each other’s backs arch as their dorsal fins bloomed in unison; their tails twitch three smaller fins grew in, two on the bottom, one on the top.
Just like that, two tiger sharks were swimming in the tank where a pair of people had been.  Han gasped, her hand fluttering to her mouth.
“I hope that you’re still all right with becoming a shark now that you know it’s for real.”  Mark said with a gentle smile, walking along the railing to be closer to her.
“Um.  Yeah, I think?”  Han said, a nervous grin on her face.
“Thank God, I was worried I’d have to hand you some bad news.”  Mark replied.
Han frowned at his odd choice of words, then she gasped as she looked at her fingers, finding them conjoined.
“But then again,” he continued, “I guess seeing is believing.”
Han whimpered as she felt her eyes slide to either side of her head, and she found herself needing to turn her head to either side in order to look at the man standing before her.  To her surprise, she felt the area around her eyes continue to tingle, and her hands flew to the sides of her head just in time to feel it stretch out, a long flat edge at its center.
“Don’t tell me I’m becoming a hammer—ah!”  She gasped as her eyes continued to pull away from her head.  Suddenly she could see everywhere around her at once, the man before her, sharks behind her, even the ceiling and floor.
Han’s head swam, and she momentarily forgot how to swim herself, sinking below the water.  As her neck dipped below the surface, gills flared up, small ridges ripe for oxygen intake.  As her head sank fully below the water, her jet-black hair vanished, as though it had never been there to begin with.  Han didn’t notice either of these, too preoccupied with running her fin-like hands along her shout as it changed in texture from that of human flesh to the rubbery texture of a fish.
She stopped the action, not by choice, but because her arms were sliding back into her body.  Han noticed that the other sharks were watching her with interest in the next tank, and she kicked her legs, turning to face them and offer them a friendly wave.  Then her feet started to ache, and Han tilted her head to get a better look at these changes.  
Han’s legs didn’t change the same way as Betty and Clark’s had, and she watched as they seemed to become boneless, somewhat ironic given that the exact opposite was happening: a multitude of joints giving her incredible flexibility.  She twitched her right foot, watching it stretch out into a tailfin.
Then, as though she had magnets under her skin, her legs pulled inexorably together.  The skin where they met fused, and Han could imagine the changes that were happening to her muscles, the new bones in her tail.  She found it was much easier to sway her tail from side to side, experimenting with this for a few moments before the changes gripped her back and neck.
Slowly her head was pulled up into its new position, her skull aching as it reshaped to better suit her, her fangs jutting from a wide jaw.  She could feel her body stretching out, losing all semblance of being human.  This didn’t bother her nearly as much as it should have, her friends’ company proving there was nothing to fear, the magician’s presence a comforting reminder that she’d be returned to her original form.
“You still with us, Han?”  Mark dipped his hand below the surface to pet her nose.
Han bobbed her head in a nod, then remembered she could speak.  “Yeah, still here.  Wow, this is... something else.”
“I hope that’s a good thing!  We’ll be like this for a few days, you know.”  Betty chimed in, swimming closer to the glass wall that divided them.
Han nodded, swimming in a gentle circle.  “Hey, a few days of swimming, being pampered.  Us girls could get used to this.  Right, Clark?  Or should we call you Clara?”
“I prefer Clark.  Goes nice with ‘shark’, don’t you think?”
Victoria sighed with relief as Han and Betty sighed with exasperation.  That was good; it looked like they were fine with the changes.  She remembered how back Mark made her a squid, it was more than a little overwhelming.  Maybe having the extra limbs had something to do with that.
It was good to see that the volunteers were getting used to their new position.  In fact, they really seemed to enjoy it.  Maybe Victoria would have to ask Mark for another commission...  Later.  For now, the mall needed her expertise for feeding the sharks, and it looked like Mark could use a friend when Mira took him out shopping.