Several sharks with superior intelligence had rushed into the ocean—if left to breed generation after generation, no one knew what consequences would result.
Dr. Erik Selvig advocated capture, immediately retrieving the escaped sharks.
"Recapture them? Ha! Will you go? If you go, I'll go with you!" Frank Castle said in a hoarse voice.
He had zero goodwill toward these scientists. All talk, no action—recapture them? Easy to say! In the end, wouldn't it still be him going?
You try swimming fifty meters in the ocean. Go catch sharks in the sea? Dream on.
As the employer, Victoria Hand spoke up. "We must recapture the escaped sharks, by whatever means necessary."
Frank Castle snorted and said nothing more.
Director Fury called up S.H.I.E.L.D.'s surveillance satellites, tracking the positioning devices on the sharks.
Five sharks had escaped in total. Two were now in Baja California's coastal waters, while the other three had entered the Pacific. Among those three was the shark Bella had given Victoria Hand recently—it had also bitten through the wire netting.
Could sharks remove the positioning devices from their bodies? It was previously considered impossible. Now that shark intelligence had greatly increased, several people didn't dare guarantee it.
"I'll contact people to capture those two in coastal waters. We can't let them harm anyone." Director Fury said.
Baja California had many beaches and even more tourists. If injuries occurred, handling it would be troublesome.
"Then we..." Victoria Hand hesitated, then glanced quickly at Bella. She knew Bella possessed some special abilities—had always known. This was also why she'd spent effort investing in the relationship early on. But exactly what abilities and how strong, she wasn't clear. Now she spoke somewhat obliquely. "Don't worry, my swimming skills are excellent."
"Alright, let's depart immediately!"
Victoria Hand was quite decisive. Plus, the matter was serious. She decided to go personally and turned to prepare weapons and diving suits.
Bella appreciated this. Their relationship had always been harmonious. You say you're in trouble and need my help—of course that's fine. But you can't just hide in the back like nothing's wrong.
Considering they'd be going underwater, she went along to change into a diving suit too.
Five minutes later, a speedboat departed the experimental base.
Frank Castle piloted the boat. Victoria Hand constantly communicated with personnel at the base, arranging various follow-up measures. Bella idly observed.
All three wore diving suits. Despite his continued dissatisfaction, seeing Victoria Hand, the employer, personally take the field, Frank Castle abandoned complaining. While driving, he imparted his experience subduing sharks.
Of course, he mainly addressed Bella. He really couldn't see what made this woman so formidable, though fortunately he knew this world contained many mutants and ability users. In his heart, he didn't regard her as an ordinary person.
"Sharks won't easily attack humans. They have fixed food categories, and humans aren't within that range. Sharks actually fear humans. Their simple brains have difficulty distinguishing what humans actually are. Biting people is just taste-testing. If it's not tasty, they'll spit it out. It's only because their teeth are sharp that it creates the illusion of eating people. Actually, more people die from dog bites annually than shark bites..."
The soldier king eloquently introduced various facts. Bella wasn't a biology major—she genuinely didn't know some things. She listened like hearing a story.
Her mind wandered freely, even producing a cartoon image: a shark holding a person in its mouth, facing four trash bins—green, blue, gray, and red. Green was for delicious food, blue for edible but not very tasty food, gray for other food, red for toxic and harmful food!
The shark tossed the human into the toxic and harmful bin. A big red X floated down from the sky, and a giant wooden hammer struck the shark's head, raising a lump. Tears filled its eyes as it hurriedly retrieved the human and tossed them into the other food bin, this time earning a green checkmark...
Frank Castle didn't know Bella's thoughts had drifted five hundred miles away. He continued patiently and meticulously explaining.
"Mm-hmm, got it."
"Oh, okay."
She responded perfunctorily.
She didn't care at all how to subdue sharks. What anesthetic gun? This was just a matter of a few punches and kicks.
The diving suit Victoria Hand provided was decent, and the diving goggles were sturdy and durable, but she didn't wear the flippers—unnecessary! They'd interfere with kicking during underwater combat!
Less than ten nautical miles from the experimental base, they caught up with the first escaped shark.
"Strange, why did this thing stop here?" Both Victoria Hand and the crazy doctor back at the lab were puzzled. It couldn't have died, could it?
"Leave it to me. Wait for good news." Bella spoke with extreme confidence. She executed a graceful flip into the water, but after searching for ten minutes, she couldn't find any trace of the escaped shark. The positioning device could only narrow it down to a general range...
At this moment, she realized a problem: defeating sharks and finding sharks were two completely different matters. Seawater severely hindered her perception. The shark hadn't provoked or antagonized her, so no hostile signals existed in her sixth sense either. Finding one shark in the vast ocean was completely like finding a needle in a haystack.
Figuring a little embarrassment didn't matter much, she surfaced again and called Frank Castle over. The two divided the search area and looked together. Anxious and concerned, after waiting another five minutes, even Victoria Hand joined the search team.
The three periodically regrouped, exchanging hand signals. No one had seen any trace of the shark, yet the positioning device showed it was in this vicinity. This stumped all three.
Surfacing, Victoria Hand repeatedly confirmed the tracker's position.
"This bastard must have removed the tracker!" Frank Castle was quite annoyed. On land, he feared no challenge.
But in the sea, his combat ability dropped significantly. Though his swimming skills could reach professional athlete levels, underwater ultimately wasn't humanity's living space. Everything was very passive.
Bella's divination-type spells still showed no progress, but her sixth sense told her something about this incident felt off. This matter wasn't simple.
She carefully recalled her previous search route and suddenly pointed north. "That area has a huge coral reef. I didn't think sharks would hide inside coral, so I didn't go in. Did you two search there?"