Meanwhile a certain black-and-white fish was just coming to. He blinked a
few times, his brain was trying very hard to concentrate on not letting his
head twist off.
"'ere, the lil mate's comin to." A strongly accented Australian voice
declared.
Gill opened his eyes fully, only to see row after row of teeth staring back
at him, reflecting his terrified face over and over again.
"Daun warry lil fella! I daun't bite." The voice sounded oddly friendly.
Gill let his gaze slip from the teeth to the other features on the face of
his rescuer.
It was a great white Shark, flanked by a hammerhead, a smaller Australian
shark with a hook through his nose and the leopard shark that tried to eat
him.
Gill gave a cry of terror and snapped his eyes back shut, hoping that they
might give up and go away.
Instead he heard a laugh. "Poor mate's scared ta death. Naut surprising
after what you almost did to him Spot." The white shark scolded the leopard
shark.
"Ah didn't eat 'im though! I did good, right Bruce?" Spot protested.
Gill opened his eyes slightly, watching the four sharks argue was quite
entertaining.
"No you didn't do good numskull, our pledge says to make friends with fish,
not make them wet themselves in terror!" the hammerhead snapped.
"I didn't mean to! I had a relapse! But I'm back on the wagon now, and I'm
on it to stay!"
Gill waved one fin, trying to catch their attention. They fell into
silence, waiting for him to speak.
"1. What the heck happened? 2. Where the heck am I? And 3. What the heck
are you talking about?"
Bruce laughed, showing off even more of those terrible teeth. "We're Fish-
eaters anonymous. We're a society of sharks who don't eat fish, we want to
change the image that sharks are mindless eating machines."
Gill relaxed, at least they weren't going to eat him, which was one major
worry crossed off the growing list.
Spot piped up suddenly, "I really didn't mean to go for you and your
friends, I was just so hungry and."
Gill stopped relaxing, he swam up so he was level with the shark's nose,
suddenly not caring about the fact that he was trying to take on four
sharks. "If you harmed one scale on my Dorleen's head I'll stuff so much
coral up your ass you'll be coughing up sponges for a month!"
"I'd like to see you try angel-boy!"
"Don't tempt me zit-face!"
"Okay, Now I'm eating him!"
Bruce let one fin swing between the two. "Calm down you two, Ah daun't want
to have to separate you."
Gill and spot reluctantly went into the sullen silence of ignoring each
other. Bruce nodded. "that's better, now then, 'ave you got a name lil'
mate?"
"Gill."
"Good, I'm Bruce, this is Spot and these two are Anchor and Chum. Now ah
think you better tell us who Dorleen is so we can make sure she'd not had
an. unfortunate accident." Bruce tried to word it as nicely as possible.
"She's a blue tang, she's got these gorgeous red eyes and." Gill remembered
what that clownfish had said. If fish had teeth, Gill would have gritted
his. "She hangs around with a ugly-ass clownfish, oh and she's calling
herself Dory."
Bruce laughed, "Dory? The lil' Sheila with the missing memory?! She comes
here every other day!"

As day dawned Marlin opened his eyes and glanced around the pink anemone,
letting his eyes get used to the light. Slowly he remember the events of
the night, fighting with a moorish idol, declaring his love for Dory,
spending the night. well he needn't go into that.
"MORNIN!"
"ARGH!" Marlin screamed, before realising it was only Dory. "Dory what did
I tell you yesterday?"
Dory's brow creased with thought, everything kinda became blurry if she
tried to think back to more than three minutes ago.
"Um. don't breathe yellow water?" she guessed. Marlin rolled his eyes then
put his fin over her back.
"Close enough." Marlin said, not really caring in any case, he was just
happy that last night hadn't been a really great dream. "What d'ya want to
do today?" he asked, watching Dory think really hard. He laughed a little.
"What's so funny?" Dory asked, frowning.
Marlin smiled gently. "You look so cute when you're trying to think."
"What do you mean, 'trying'?" Dory asked with fake anger, she turned away
and pretended to sulk.
"If you're going to be angry then I'll have to do something drastic, like.
TICKLE YOU!" Marlin lunged at her, soon the pair were both laughing as they
fought to pin each other down. Dory eventually won, slamming Marlin into
the centre of the anemone and landing on top of him.
"Pinned ya!" Dory squealed happily.
"Cute, really cute Dory, now let me up."
Dory remained floating on Marlin, smiling at him with one of her lights-are-
on-but-no-one's-home smiles.
"Won't let me up now, will ya?" Marlin asked playfully.
"Nope, now you're my prisoner!" Dory said brightly.
"That's sweet, but aren't you late for going to socialise with a bunch of
sharks?" Marlin asked, a wicked smile appearing on his face.
Dory looked surprised then realised that to leave meant losing her prisoner
and she was having fun pinning Marlin down and watching him struggle.
She sighed and got off him, allowing the Clownfish to swim around the
anemone a few times and stretch his fins. She was about to zoom off but
Marlin grabbed her tail.
"Hold on a minute, What have you forgotten to do?"
Dory promptly fell into silence.
"I'll give you a hint." Marlin kissed her.

Dory swam along towards the fish-eaters anonymous submarine, humming the
'Just keep swimming' song to herself. Thing couldn't be going better, She
and Marlin were in love, Keeco would be back in a few days, and after that,
she didn't know nor care.
Although at the back of her head something kept waving a red flag and
telling her she was forgetting something super-important, but she dismissed
the nag as something silly like Forgetting to bring a fish friend to the
meeting.
"Hi guys!" she called into the sub, waving clumsily with the damaged fin.
Bruce swam up to Dory, "'ello shiela, we've got a surprise for you." he put
his fin behind her a pushed her along.
"Really? Neat!" Dory replied, happily swimming along with Bruce, they
entered the main meeting room, where the newest member, Spot was giving his
pledge.
"Hi, I'm Spot."
"Hello Spot."
"I haven't eaten a fish for." he paused, thinking for a moment. "Three- no,
four hours!" he said it like it was a major achievement.
Bruce tried to smile warmly, but any passing telepathic would have read
disapproval in mile-high neon letters from that grimace.
"Chum, go fetch the lil' mate would you?" he asked, then winked, "tell him
Dorleen's here."
Chum obediently swam deeper into the bowels of the sub, leaving Dory to
listen to the pledges and try not to meet Spot's hunger-crazed eyes. Dory
didn't realise just how lucky she was that Bruce was swimming protectively
between her and the leopard shark.
Chum returned a few minutes later; a moorish idol was following him with a
strange look on his face. When he saw dory he seemed to light up from the
inside, he seemed to glow. Suddenly he shot forwards to her.
"Dorleen!"
Dory blinked hard, the second he'd said that name she'd felt the little nag
at the back of her head grow stronger.
"Dorleen, it's me, Gill." He said gently, swimming closer, as if he was
afraid she might run away.

Back at the reef Marlin too had found himself humming the 'Just keep
swimming' song, he just felt so ridiculously happy. Even hearing
Mr.Johanson scream at some lobster kids couldn't annoy him today.
"Hey Marlin," Bob the seahorse called, Marlin swam down to the seahorse,
which was attached to a clump of seaweed by the tail. "Have you seen the
newcomers yet?"
"Newcomers?"
"Weird bunch of fish, they say they've escaped from a tank," Bob pointed
his tail at a small group of assorted fish who were floating nervously near
a lump of coral, "They certainly act like it, they've been floating there
for ages, the humbug keeps bursting into tears."
Marlin glanced at the funny group, "Has anyone bothered to ask what's
wrong?" Bob fell silent. "I thought not." Marlin said and began swimming
over.
"Hello, I'm Marlin, are you new around here?" He asked politely.
The group looked nervously at one another, then the starfish spoke. "Yeah,
listen, have you seen a moorish idol around here with one scarred fin? Only
he's our sort-of leader and he's gone missing."
Marlin gulped, knowing at once whom the pink creature was describing. "Well
um."
Suddenly the yellow angelfish yelled out "SHARKBAIT!" and jumped on Marlin,
who cried out in terror and tried to swim backwards, a very interesting
thing to see, seeing as he smacked straight into a sponge behind him and
spent a few very frustrating minutes trying to free himself.
When he looked up the pufferfish and the shrimp were restraining the
seemingly insane fish and the starfish was trying to explain something to
him.
"Listen Bubbles, he isn't Nemo, he just looks one heck of a lot like Nemo,
calm down before we have to feed you to a seagull!"
Marlin looked confused. "Nemo? Little clownfish with a weak fin on one
side?" he questioned.
The shrimp seemed to be the only one listening, so he replied "Oui, he waz
in our tank feur a while."
Marlin laughed, "No wonder your friend recognised me, Nemo's my son!"
There was a gaggle of greetings and telling of what had happened to the
gang after Nemo's escape, then to his horror Marlin realised he may well
have seen the fish who saved his son's life get eaten by a leopard shark.
"Umm, your leader, he wasn't called. Gill, was he?" Marlin asked nervously.
"Yes!" they all said at once.
"Have you seen him?" the humbug who'd introduced herself as Dab questioned
eagerly.
Marlin smiled, trying to look innocent, "No, Nemo just mentioned him a few
times, that's all."