ㅤThe soft clink of glass on glass for their improvised, yet very suitable, toast melded together with Itachi's snickering at the cheeky remark about still having both of his legs. Thankfully for them and for the rest of the event goers as well, he was too comfortable in his current position and too lazy to shift — or else bet that he would nonchalantly roll up his sleeves and pants to show off a few marks and tiny scars that marine fauna and flora alike had gifted to him already. Nothing as terrible as a limb lost to the jaws of a shark, but there was a scar on his ankle from a stingray whip, that one time he'd been collecting samples and accidentally stepped on one buried in the sand. And what about that one time he'd been minding his business and carefully placing an underwater camera trap, only for a grumpy moray eel to snap out of the rocky crevice and have a chomp at his arm for invading its home? Just to name a couple of examples. With the way the chat was flowing so freely and so nicely, Shark Stranger might end up hearing the tales before the night was over anyway.
ㅤ«Wrooooong,» no need to drawl out the word so much, either, and in such dramatic tone, like a child teasing the other, but again he was in far too much of a good mood to care for it; only one more silly thing added to the shame list, come morning and sobriety, «Actually, it was one of my best gigs so far! Two years ago, I was with this big team in New Zealand — we were doing SPOT tagging. Like, um—» explaining technical terms and apparatus while being this tipsy would be more of a challenge, though, but hopefully he'd still make it make sense, «Tagging, right? Basically, we put a satellite tag on the shark's dorsal fin to gather migration data. As they travel from the Chatham Islands to the Great Barrier Reef and then back again.» Okay, so it hadn't exactly been swimming with the sharks? But there had been plenty of sharks, and it had been the coolest thing ever, and so Itachi definitely felt like he had bragging rights.
ㅤ«Hammerheads, though» and that made his smile even wider, if possible, «love them as well, they're adorable! Haven't had a chance to work with them yet, but they are definitely on my bucket list. Lemme see—» pause to sip his drink and get his brain working, searching for interesting facts to share; to think that his eidetic memory would ever come so in handy in making new friends, probably the first time this had ever worked out for him, «Okay, so! The cephalofoil, right? That grants them 360-degree vision, pretty much, but! They do have a blind spot and it's right in front of their snout. Like, if you're a tiny fish, you can theoretically swim right up to the center of a hammerhead's face and the poor thing won't see you. Which... as someone who's blind as a mole, myself, they have my sympathy. Like—» cue more snickering and pulling his glasses away this time, to leave them on top of the counter as he then pointed to the menus hanging on the wall, «If you ask me what's written there, I've no clue. All I can see from here is blurs and colors.»
ㅤPerhaps not the thing to brag about, unlike poking with satellite tags at dorsal fins, but again the current vibe was so nice and lighthearted. Itachi really didn't care that Shark Stranger learned of how embarrassingly terrible his eyesight was. «Oh, and also! Did you know there is a species that LOVES veggies? Like, everyone knows sharks are strict carnivores, right? Why else would they even bother with us otherwise, our single redeeming quality as humans is that we make for yummy snacks,» and he also clearly did not mind that Shark Stranger learned of his penchant for the occasional dark humor, «The bonnethead shark, though, they love seagrass and their bodies can actually digest and absorb nutrients from the grass, which makes them the only known omnivorous shark species in the world. Which, honestly, as a vegetarian myself, they slay. Wish I was that iconic!»
