Disclaimer: I don't own Beauty and the Beast, Pirates of the Caribbean, or Assassin's Creed. Wow, that's a lot of stuff I don't own.

Vanessa, 1767

The agony was intense. Vanessa was expelling seawater before she was even fully conscious. Only when she could take a breath without pain did she start to become aware of other things.

The first was that she was still soaked, and cold. Her feet in particular were icy, and occasionally slaps of cold crept up her ankles as well. There was sand under her hands, but it seemed to be heaving and subsiding as the ship had done. Dizzy and exhausted beyond belief, Vanessa fainted again.

The next time she awoke, she felt much better. The sand no longer rocked under her, and she had coughed and vomited out any remaining seawater. There were also new details to grasp: the things that lapped cold around her feet were waves. That and the sand under her hands and cheek (she was lying facedown with her head turned sideways) told her she was on a beach. She could also feel rain falling against her upturned cheek; the storm was not yet completely over. She felt beaten, scraped, and bruised in a thousand places, but she was still alive, and somehow had made it to a shore. And there was something sharp digging into one hip.

Papa! Vanessa's muscles gained new life at the thought. She managed to push herself to her hands and knees, then to a kneeling position. Enough to draw completely out of the ocean's touch, and look around.

To her relief, Edward lay beside her, in much the same state as she'd been. He didn't appear to be ready to come around soon, though his breathing was steady. He also didn't seem hurt beyond some minor scrapes. Vanessa heaved a sigh. She would have liked to drag him out of the water completely, but at the moment lacked the strength.

She surveyed the beach. The sand was soft and pale, the slope to the water was gentle, and in the distance she could see some tall trees. The storm appeared to finally be blowing its way out. The rain still fell, but there was very little wind, and the sky was a light gray instead of the foreboding slate color it had been in the last moments on the ship. The ship…

Vanessa glanced around again, more urgently. The Lady Swan was nowhere to be seen. The beach was deserted, and there was no sign that any human had been there recently, in any direction that she looked.

Now what? she thought. O Lord, did you bring us here only to have us die slowly?

She shifted again, and the thing digging into her leg throbbed. Frowning, she reached into her twisted skirts, realizing with dismay that most of them were so torn they were barely decent. Her fingers touched wood, and she froze. Delicately, she drew out her flute. She didn't even remember putting it in her pocket. Yet here it was, perfect, unbroken.

It had to be a good sign.

First she slid the flute back into her pocket. Then, shakily, she forced herself to her feet. The world spun and her muscles screamed. She staggered and collapsed back to the sand with a gasp. More slowly this time, she moved to a standing position, hoping in a childish way that perhaps she could fool her body upright without it noticing. This attempt was more successful, and she wobbled only a little.

A bit at a time, she turned in a slow circle, confirming once and for all that she and Edward were alone. There was nothing; no spot on the horizon that might be rescue, or even one of the boats that had escaped the Lady Swan's destruction. The rain had lessened into barely more than a mist, but though the visibility was better there was nothing to see.

Or was there? Abruptly something broke the water line off shore. It was an odd thing: a pale white-gray…something…in the shape of a triangular flag or sail. Vanessa couldn't begin to imagine what it might be. Curious, she splashed a few inches into the shallows to get a better look.

It wasn't a boat, or anything remotely resembling one. As it drew closer, she saw that it was attached to something of the same gray-white color that lurked under the water. It had to be a living animal of some sort, then, a fish perhaps. The thing drew even closer, and it hit Vanessa like a slap how large this triangular appendage was: it stood taller than she was high out of the water.

As if sensing that she was staring, the creature under the waves suddenly came closer to the surface, enough that she got a much better impression of what she was looking at.

Vanessa screamed and backed out of the water. Frantically, she bent and dragged her father as far from the waves as her tired muscles could manage before she collapsed again to the sand with a thump.

It was monstrous, terrible. She had never seen a fish like this. The fishes she knew were flat and shiny, with large, stupid eyes that stared sideways like innocent sheep. This fish had a pointed face like an anvil, a mouth full of razor teeth that each had to be larger than her hand, and a pair of forward-facing black eyes that observed her with a kind of cold interest. There was a predator's calculation behind those eyes. Worse yet, there came with that gaze a sense of awareness: this was clearly a creature that could think. Somehow this made it all the more horrible.

Her scream and the motion had roused Edward. He stirred and mumbled "Nessie?"

"Shhh, Papa," she whispered.

His eyes popped open, and focused on her face. "Nessie?" he said, louder.

"Papa, I don't—"

He tried to sit up, forcing her to put an arm around his shoulders and help him or risk watching him collapse. He looked around slowly. In a rough voice, he asked, "Where…are we?"

"I'm not sure, Papa. But there's—" She looked back at the ocean and stopped. The monster fish had vanished. Come to think of it, it had been in much shallower water than a creature of its apparent size could have managed without getting caught on the sand. It must have been a hallucination, then, perhaps resulting from too much seawater. She put a hand to her head.

"Are you well, daughter?" Edward asked, clearly concerned.

"I think so," she answered. "I thought I saw something out there just before you awoke. It's not there now. I must have imagined it."

"Perhaps you hit your head," Edward suggested. Moving slowly, he ran his fingers through her knotted hair, gently probing her skull. "No bumps. Do you have a headache?"

"I ache everywhere. My head no worse than anyplace else."

"I feel the same." He frowned, and rubbed his own head. "What was this thing like? A ship?"

"A creature. A great monstrous fish with enormous sharp teeth and…and terrible eyes."

Edward stroked his chin, peering out at the rippling water along with her. "How close did you say it was?"

"Just there." She pointed.

"I see nothing."

"It disappeared when you…" She trailed off. Something was coming out of the water. Something grayish-white.

"What—" Edward also stopped mid-sentence when he saw the direction she was looking. Vanessa couldn't keep her eyes off the water, but out of the corner of her vision she saw her father stiffen and his mouth drop open. Unconsciously she reached out and clutched him tight, and felt his arms slide protectively around her.

The thing now rising out of the low breakers was not, could not be a thing of this world. It bore a marked resemblance to the enormous fish-creature, if it had attempted to transform into a human but failed three-quarters through the process. It was roughly human in shape, and the correct size, but the skin was the same ghastly shade of gray as the giant fish. It wore nothing like clothes and was thus clearly male. Vanessa had to force herself not to stare too long at that. But looking at its face was somehow worse. It had the same eyes as the fish-creature: black, and predatory, and glittering with intelligence. And it was this that gave her a sense of absolute certainty that that creature and this were one and the same.

She covered her eyes; couldn't bear to meet its gaze for one more second.

"Angels and ministers of Grace defend us…" she heard Edward whisper.

A voice, the creature's, answered. It was not at all what Vanessa had expected given its appearance: a pleasant mid-range tenor, perfectly normal for a man if she didn't know to what it belonged. There was even a slight trace of a French accent.

It said: "Quoting Hamlet will do you no good at all, I assure you, monsieur."

-0-0-

Robin, 2017

Robin blinked furiously. The moment the dome was out of the way, she demanded, "What the hell was that?"

Kyle didn't answer; he was tapping intensely on his keyboard. His eyes were narrowed to slits.

"I said, what the hell was that?" Robin strode over to stand next to him.

"Hold on!" he snapped. She scowled and waited a few irritated seconds while Kyle's fingers flew. At last, he looked up at her, and for a moment she was taken aback. His face was as white as she felt hers must be.

"I have no idea," he whispered. He looked over her shoulder, where an image of the half-shark half-man was frozen on the screen. "I thought somehow there might be data corruption, or maybe something had happened to alter Vanessa's memories, but…" He trailed off. "I just checked. There's nothing wrong with the memory, or the recording. This is what she saw."

"But…" Robin walked up to the screen, studying it intently. Separated from her as the image was, behind the glass, the raw horror she'd felt as Vanessa seeing it was also neatly tucked away. "But things like that don't exist. They don't. Not in real life."

"I wish I had another explanation," said Kyle. "And what about this?" She heard his fingers move, and the image of the man-shark was replaced by one of the enormous shark from earlier. Robin couldn't help taking a step back as she finally comprehended the sheer size of the thing. It had to be at least sixty feet long, with a mouth big enough to swallow a human whole.

She swallowed. "What about it?"

"I find it really suspicious that there were two strange shark-creatures here at the same time. I have no idea about the second one, but this one is clearly a Megalodon, according to the Google search I just ran. Or something very like it."

"A what?"

"A giant prehistoric shark. Sharks used to be that big, did you know?"

"I wish I didn't, now," said Robin with a shudder.

Kyle grimaced in sympathy. "The problem is, Megalodons went extinct over a million years ago. They're not supposed to exist, either. Not now, and not during Vanessa's time."

"At least they once existed," Robin pointed out.

"True." More tapping on keys. "But my point is, this is an odd coincidence."

Robin drew a deep breath. "It's not a coincidence."

Kyle stopped typing. She could feel his gaze on the back of her neck. "You sound certain."

"Can you bring up side-by-side images of the two…creatures?"

"Sure. But not on that screen. I've got it directly hooked to the Animus. It can freeze frame, rewind and fast forward, but that's all unless I want to reset everything afterwards. Come over here."

By the time she reached him, he had two blown-up images of shark and shark-man next to each other on his own computer screen. As soon as she saw them both, she knew, just as Vanessa had once known. "They're the same."

"What?"

"They're the same…I don't know. Being. Entity. The giant shark changed into this half-shark guy. Look. They have the same eyes."

Kyle opened his mouth, clearly about to argue. He glanced at the pictures, and shut it again. He leaned forward, studying the two closely. Then he sat back. "I guess you're right." Pause. "But what does it mean? Neither of these things are supposed to exist, even separately."

"You're asking me?" Robin demanded. "I'm as confused as you are. Probably more."

Kyle sighed, and reached back to play with the ends of the hair tied at the nape of his neck. "I never expected to see anything like this when I signed on to this project."

"Do you think your dad knew?"

He looked at her sharply. "Wouldn't he have warned us if he knew about something as unusual as this?"

"Would he?"

"Of course he would. This sort of thing isn't easy to conceal. And I know him too well. I'd have noticed if he was lying."

"Did you ask?" Robin muttered under her breath, too low to hear. But she didn't pursue the issue. Kyle trusted his father far more than she did, and with good reason. Russell hadn't kidnapped him.

Kyle replayed some of the footage from the last minutes of Vanessa's memories. They watched as the shark-man came out of the water, and Vanessa hid her eyes. They heard the voice, with its faint French accent, say, "Quoting Hamlet will do you no good at all, I assure you, monsieur."

"This just gets weirder and weirder," said Robin, "Not only does this thing sound completely human, he knows Shakespeare when he hears it."

"I was never that into literature."

"That's Hamlet. Her father's quoting from Act 1," said Robin, pleased to find something Kyle didn't know more than her about. "That's the part where they're seeing the ghost of Hamlet's father."

"Hmmm." Kyle regarded her with what Robin might have sworn was a pinch of respect. "Well, this is a puzzle. With only one way to start solving it. Are you up for another round?"

Author's Note: Do I even need to say I don't own Hamlet?

So, what do you think of this latest version of the Beast? We'll start getting explanations for all this weird stuff I've been introducing pretty soon.

SamoaPhoenix9