He's going to drown. I have to do this.
Then her eyes opened wide as she saw that, far from being left behind, Eren was now swimming strongly after the boat. She lost sight of him on the cabin cruiser's other side.
It seemed that the men below had begun to realize they had a problem. Lucy wondered why they didn't just take off and leave him behind, but then she saw that they couldn't with the two boats grappled together. They were now working hard to untie the boats. One of them drew a knife and began slashing at the ropes.
Meanwhile, there was a loud splash from the other side of the cabin cruiser. Lucy, fascinated, scrambled across the deck, her four legs working together perfectly now that she was distracted enough to stop thinking so hard about the walking process.
She saw Eren, as a bear, clambering up onto the narrow walkway that ran along the cabin cruiser's side. It was a difficult climb with nothing to stand on, and he slid back into the water a couple of times before he managed to pull himself out with sheer strength and rage. She could hear him growling.
He thinks I'm dead,she thought, alarmed. He must not even have seen her shift. From his perspective, she had fallen into the water and drowned. No wonder he was going out of his mind with anger. She screeched again, but without being able to shift back, she had no way to tell him she was all right.
There was a loud thump from the other side, and the cabin cruiser rocked wildly. Lucy hurried back over to see what was going on. The two boats were now cut loose from each other, and with no one at the controls, theCodfatherhad swung around and its stern end slammed into the side of the cruiser. The men at the railing scattered in panic.
But at that point whoever was piloting the cabin cruiser got it together, and it began to pull away from theCodfather, which was left behind to bob alone on the waves.
Oh no, not Eren's family's fishing boat!Lucy had a moment when she thought about taking off and trying to land on the smaller boat, but came to her senses. Her wings ached just from the small amount of flying she had done, and with the rain and the way that theCodfatherwas pitching and rolling on the waves, there was every chance she would miss entirely and go into the water like everyone thought she had already.
The way that theCodfatherwas rolling around in their wake, it was probably going to tip over and sink anyway. Her grief surprised her. So much of her relationship with Eren had happened on the boat that it felt like losing a friend.
And then, to her delight, before the boat vanished behind them in the storm, she glimpsed a flash of black and white in the waves, and then a lithe, naked figure pulling itself up onto the stern.
Dane!
Well, the boat was going to be all right, then. Relieved, Lucy turned her attention back to her more immediate problems.
The cabin cruiser was picking up speed. Icy needles of rain buffeted her. Lucy dug in her claws, discovering in the process that she had somehow failed to notice that her claws were retractable. She was caught up for a moment in the delight of making her claws go in and out, and then she heard a loud snarl from below.
Eren was on the deck beneath her, fighting with two of her uncle's men who had shifted into a tiger and a bear. Savage with fury, Eren tore at them with teeth and claws. There was blood on his white pelt.
Looking beyond him, Lucy saw Hendricks holding a gun and jockeying around the fighting animals, trying to find a position where he could aim at Eren without hitting one of his comrades.
Lucy shrieked in rage, but yet again, no one below seemed to notice her. It was starting to get infuriating. She felt like she was invisible up here.
Wait a minute ...
They cannot hear us because we are Doing The Thing.
This time, the voice was very clear and distinct. As before, it was her but also not-her, more serene and wiser and older than the usual unclear inner voice of her conscience or her second thoughts.
Lucy paused with a paw on the railing.
Are you my griffin?she thought at it.
I am. We are.
And I'm ... invisible? But it's never been that easy for me before,Lucy thought at the elusive voice inside herself.How am I doing it now?
You are who you were always meant to be.
Well ... if she was now an invisible griffin, they wouldn't see her coming. Lucy felt the fur along her spine prickle as she clambered up onto the railing. She spread her wings.
I'm coming, Eren.
This time, it was with perfect confidence that she launched herself off the railing at Hendricks, just as he managed to line up a shot at Eren's back.
Her griffin was right. He had no idea she was there. She slammed into him and he smacked into the deck under her with an extremely satisfying and very solid thump. The gun skittered across the deck.
But on the tossing deck of the cruiser, with momentum carrying her forward, she realized that she hadn't given much thought to how to stop. She tumbled into the railing and, to her shock and horror, found that her wings made her a lot more top-heavy than her human version; she didn't know how to compensate for them. Instead she began to tumble over.