~Fishy, Fishy, Fishy~

The tank ceiling-skylight of the Shark Suite was an innovation, of sorts. How soothing, to lie in bed and watch the bodies circling overhead, against the clouded sky. How soporific and snug and conducive to night horrors with crashing glass and water and snapping jaws.

You have a morbid imagination, said MacLeod.

Memory is not imagination, said Methos.

Fish is fish, said Amanda. Look at the bed.

The great gray aquabed of the Shark Suite was an innovation, of sorts. How soothing, to lie on the undulating heated waves in silver shagreen patterned silk. How convenient, to roll from the thick gunmetal carpet onto the bed, set flush with the floor. How rocking like a lullabye and bouncily aquatic and slippery, sinkingly, sick-making.

This is the only room left, said MacLeod.

It's the last time you make reservations, said Methos.

There's plenty of room for three, said Amanda. Look at the gift baskets.

The accoutrements of the Shark Suite were an innovation, of sorts. How soothing to wrap oneself in a satin brocade robe, dappled and shadowed like scales. How decadent to slather on the body oils and seaweed masks and pearlized cremes. How luxurious the long raw bar of sashimi and oysters and crustaceans over ice, spiked with bottles of Grey Goose and Veuve Cliquot. How intriguing, the happy playtime basket in its mylar wrapper, topped by a cerulean Dolphin super delightful jelly buzzer with joy-joy beads. How enticing and lubricious and still somehow slithery, snakily cold...

Ah. They're certainly thoughtful? said MacLeod.

Where exactly are we? said Methos.

Are we going to stand here all night? said Amanda. Dibs on the Dolphin.

***

Hong Kong wasn't the first place Amanda had in mind when she hit the airport. She was in a hurry though, and MacLeod's AmEx card carried enough miles for the trip. She wanted someplace unlikely and crowded and confusing, and a flight leaving before she was caught up. "Eeny, meeny, miney, oh, my, that's attractive." The young man behind the Dragon Airlines desk was lovely as a petal, but what caught Amanda's eye was a poster behind him for Splendors of the Imperial Age. A flat cup of some antiquity floated in a gilt enameled mount. The design was odd, for a Chinese piece. Three sharks circled round the bowl, indigo against a lucent agate sea. A sign, a portent pointing out the way? MacLeod was after her, Methos after MacLeod, and she'd be happy to take a bite of the Old Man's tail for ratting her out. (I'm not a shark, I'm The Little Mermaid, hummed Amanda to herself. "You're bait," she imagined Methos saying.) "Hong Kong, next flight." She smiled at the pretty man.

Hong Kong was the last fucking place Methos wanted to go. It was inconvenient and mobbed and annoying, but would anyone listen to him? Airport security was miserably inconvenient, reducing him to weapons of plastic and cord and a vigilant edgy eye for useful objects at hand. Medvedev was after Amanda, MacLeod after Medvedev, and Methos would gladly take a bite out of Mac's tail for getting himself involved. He thought that alerting Mac to Amanda's latest caper would be a warning and diversion combined, a pourparler to prickly compensation sex, but here he was at the airport instead, watching Mac palaver with an effeminate counter clerk, surrounded by posters of Ming era kitsch. Fake, fake, fake, he brooded at one of an ugly fish-ridden cup. Spittoon for a Eunuch. Mongolian cufflink bowl. Bloody airport art. "What?" asked Mac. Methos glared at the tickets in his hands. "Sharks and jets: now there's an ominous combination."

Hong Kong was someplace MacLeod always meant to visit. It was exotic and rich and complex and a pleasure he'd looked forward to exploring. Not in such a hurry, of course, and not leading a grousing, misdirected Methos by the nose. Cassandra was after Medvedev, Medvedev after Marcus, and with any luck, Marcus would be distracted until Mac could snap Amanda by the tail and retrieve the curator's jewels. He could have reported his missing card and had Amanda held, but he'd rather sweep Methos out of Cassandra's way and leave the inept Medvedev to the others' swords. Good cess to his greasy quickening, if they wanted it. He booked their flight with the same clerk she had used, it seemed; he recognized the name from two hours before. With a story and a smile at the pleasant man, Mac managed to get them all on the same connecting flight out of Honolulu. He glanced at the poster behind the desk, and made a mental note to brush up on Liangzhu jades. Not Liangzhu, though, now that he looked at it, and never with that motif, and he'd have to remember to find it in the exhibition.... He found himself humming "Mack the Knife" as he collected their tickets and turned to face Methos's scowl.

***

Medvedev didn't die, amazingly. Cassandra cold-cocked their fight with some vocal hoodoo that had Marcus fishtailing on the bridge and Medvedev flopping over the railing into the water. As soon as Marcus realized he had lungs, not gills, he grabbed his sword and sent Cassandra after Medvedev into the drink.

Sadly, Marcus never recovered his jewels from Amanda. He did have the satisfaction of having his assistant blackmail the Hotel Chrysanthemum's under-director to alter MacLeod's reservations and his webmaster to add the feed for the Naughty Shark Spicy Cave webcam to several judiciously chosen educational and naturalist sites.

Amanda and Methos and MacLeod drank all the vodka and champagne and ordered in some hot food, rather ruining the chilly raw seafood motif. They felt it was incumbent on them to try all the sex toys and the water bed, but ultimately had lots more sex on the carpet and up against the walls than they did on the heaving bed under the shark tank. Ah, I almost forgot: Methos used sea urchin roe to grease up Duncan's love baton.

-FIN-