As it turned out asking their islander guide for assistance would have to wait for a bit, (assuming they survived the upcoming ordeal, which was in this situation a pretty big if.) As before too long it was time for the teams to split up, Mibbet was heading with the Mer to get The Quacken’s attention (she really hoped the Mer were as fast as they believed they were, or at the very least fast enough to deal with the tub toy from hell. As out-swimming that was rather essential to the plan, oh and not getting devoured of course, but that bit really does go without saying.)

She climbed aboard the Jolly boat, as it was carefully lowered into the water. Then her Mer companions bound themselves in, as Mibbet did her best to make herself comfortable for what she was pretty sure was going to be a hell of a bumpy ride, and they were off.

As you would expect from a titchy little boat being towed along by several adult aquatic creatures who prided themselves on their strength and speed, it moved a tiny bit faster than the ship, and on more than one occasion skipped over the waves like Mibbet had seen done with stones by humans, and she had to say, despite how terrifying it was that was fun. She hung tightly to the sides as she skipped from wave to wave, heading towards The Academy ruins, it was time to hunt a Quacken.

It didn’t take long at all before they drew close. The gutted academy tower standing up from the water to an impressive height. Looking for all the world like a lighthouse, and Mibbet came to the realisation of what she was facing. It floated there so tall it practically matched the top of the tower. Now, as a frog she was used to seeing ducks as a creature big enough to easily swallow a frog, without even the need to chew. (Luckily for the duck, as they did not usually come equipped with chewing apparatus, it seldom made a difference to the frog of course, because Gulp, or CHOMP gulp both achieve the same result, and neither is favourable for the unfortunate amphibian in question.) Now The Quacken, they put the human’s in that scale, and they had a slight upgrade from their pond dwelling counterparts. They DID have teeth, many, many teeth. Not to mention tentacles, what kind of sick, twisted mind puts tentacles on a duck? it was like the Owl-bear all over again, and Mibbet was decidedly unhappy. But if she was going to deal with this problem then she needed to deal with this. She took up position at the arc of the range of the weaponry, so as to avoid being destroyed by her own rebound, then, lined up a shot, and fired.

To nobodies surprise The Quacken was not particularly impressed at being shot at, and opened its beak (and other orifices that appeared out of nowhere, usually full of big, bitey looking things,) and emitted a terrifying screeching quack that should never be emitted by any duck, or even goose ever. Making a beeline in their direction.

“It’s coming, swim, swim, swim, get to the meeting point” Mibbet squealed, trying her best not to think too hard about the horrifying abomination in front of her. The Mer took off swimming, heading back the way they came, with The Quacken in pursuit as Mibbet fired the occasional harpoon back to keep the damn creatures attention. She would of course have been more than happy not to be subject to the creatures focus. But this menace had to be stopped.

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The Wellerman meanwhile, was in the process of matching The Princesses actions with The Don. A somewhat challenging situation given that there was no way to use the same approach, as outrunning a massive shark seldom goes well in the long term. So in preparation for this plan they had loaded up a whole mess of meat, and a siege weapon geared towards throwing. Addy had spent the entire trip carefully bolting the damn thing to the deck, and if they were lucky it would be good for a few shots before it started to rip up the deck. The device in question was carefully loaded up with oversized chunks of raw meat. Which they would fire a decent distance away from themselves, hoping half a cow at a time would prove more tempting bait for The Don than the ship itself.

The first shot was fired, and judging from the gigantic splash that followed it landing it was working to an extent. Now they just had to keep it up, leading a trail, while being careful not to leave it too long between shots in case The Don figured out what was going on, and decided to cut out the middle man.

They kept going, keeping up a full three sheets to the wind in a desperate attempt to get to their target location on time, really, really hoping that they didn’t run out of bait along the way, but judging from the size of the shark in question, not to mention how many shots they’d already fired, this was going to be a close run thing.

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The Don was a shark, they didn’t think much, but he did know one thing, he was hungry, he was ALWAYS hungry, and there was the smell of blood in the water. The prey was delivering itself to him, and he definitely didn’t mind that one little bit. With each splash more meat landed. Had he been a tad more intelligent maybe he would have considered where the hell the meat was coming from, and gone after the source, but HUNGRY, FOOD, FEED, SPLASH, HUNGRY, FOOD, FEED, SPLASH, there wasn’t really much room for thought in there beyond that, and if there had been he would have filled it with thoughts of more food.

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The Quacken was PISSED, that weird floaty thing kept hitting it. They followed, going as fast as they could, then there was another floaty thing, and something else behind it. A big swimmy thing. Ducks ate little swimmy things, big swimmy things ate ducks. Something in The Quacken’s mind went snap, as it let out a terrifying battle quack, and waded into the fray.