Eren cursed. "Take the helm!" he shouted at Lucy, leaping out of the pilot's seat.
"What?!" Lucy protested.
As soon as Eren took his hands off the controls, the boat started to sweep sideways into the rocks. Lucy cried out, grabbed the wheel, and straightened it out again.
"What do I do?" she cried, risking a quick look over her shoulder. The tiger loomed in the doorway. It swiped at Eren with its claws. Eren hastily shed his jacket on the deck.
"Just get us out to sea and don't hit anything!"
Easier said than done. The boat was all over the place, its nose smacking repeatedly into waves rolling in from the sea. Lucy's arms started to hurt from fighting against the wheel to keep the boat pointed straight.
She recalled that it had been easier when they were going faster, and pushed the throttle lever forward. The engines kicked up, and the boat's wallowing motion turned into a shuddering but less wobbly straight-line glide.
"I think I'm getting the hang of—" Lucy began over her shoulder.
She stopped mid-sentence as Eren, now naked to the waist, erupted into a polar bear.
It was explosive. One minute he was hastily unbuckling his jeans; the next moment the pilothouse was almost full of a vast muscular bulk covered in yellow-white fur. Some part of the bear, its hip or shoulder, whacked the back of the pilot's seat and spun Lucy halfway around. The boat veered wildly. She cried out and wrenched the wheel as they came within inches of hitting a rock.
Then they were out onto the open sea. Lucy gave a gasping half-sob of relief. Now that there was nothing to hit, or at least much less danger of hitting anything, she looked over her shoulder again to see what was happening.
The tiger, realizing that it had made a very large, bear-sized mistake, was backpedaling hastily across the deck. Meanwhile, Eren had discovered that he was too big as a bear to fit through the door—but he was trying anyway, scrabbling at the deck with his claws while pushing his massive shoulders through the doorway. A growl rumbled out of him, audible even over the engine.
Hendricks gave up. He leaped from the deck and smacked into the water. Lucy gasped, but an instant later the tiger's head bobbed to the surface and he could be seen swimming powerfully for shore.
Eren backed out of the doorway, shook his massive head, and shifted back to a man again.
A very naked man, with his very naked backside pointed at Lucy.
Lucy forgot to steer the boat.
"Rocks!" Eren said over his shoulder, reaching for his pants.
Right! As soon as she stopped paying attention, the waves had begun sweeping them back toward the shore, where surf boomed against the cliffs. Lucy pointed the boat's nose out to sea again.
She kept taking half-guilty glances over her shoulder at Eren getting back into his jeans.
"I can take over now." Barefoot and bare-chested, leaving the rest of his clothes scattered on the floor, he came over to reclaim the wheel. Lucy gave it up and slithered under his naked arm to let him back into the pilot's seat. His chest wasright there...
Somehow she managed to avoid the temptation to lick it. But just barely.
"You did great," Eren added. "Really great. I'm just going to put in somewhere we can stop for a few minutes and—" He broke off, looking up through the forward windows. "What the heck was that?"
"What was what?" Lucy asked. She had been far too fascinated by the interplay of muscles on Eren's bare shoulders to pay attention to much of anything else happening around her.
"Something just flew over us. Something big. I saw its shadow, but I didn't see what it was."
"How big is big? Like a seagull?"
"Way bigger than a seagull. Big like the shadow of an airplane."
"They're following us in an airplane?" Lucy cried in despair.
"Maybe? Or a hang glider, or something like that. I don't hear anything, but we might not be able to over the engine."
"I can go look," Lucy said. She went to the door.
"Be careful!" Eren warned her. "If it's something like a hang glider, they might try to grab you off the deck."