Ever since she was a little girl, Gillian was fascinated with sharks, starting when she stayed up too late and caught a syndicated rerun of the classic horror movie Jaws. She was enthralled by their power, their tenacity, their ability to overcome the odds and remain as the top dogs of the oceans for untold millions of years with very little change to improve upon their formidable designs. This prompted her to study as hard as she could to get into a marine biology course in college, taking punishment and bullying due to her obsession with her favorite creatures, but persevering more and more due to the desire to harness the strength and might of a shark. In college, she devoted most of her time to her work, spending the prime of her life pursuing her degrees and certifications in both marine biology and genetics, leaving no time for any fun, and further degrading her sanity into now wanting to become a shark herself.

Unfortunately, her pursuit of her goals resulted in a mountain of student debt and very few prospects at employment in a hyper-competitive field that left her barely able to make ends meet in spite of all of her accolades. Being a menial technician at a premier genetics research lab, working day in and day out hoping that someone might finally recognize what she was capable and give her the command of a laboratory to start her own experiments and projects. However, when that time came, she was passed over promotions in favor of less qualified colleagues that had gone the extra step to ingratiate themselves with their superiors and earn their favor.

This ultimately was the final straw. She had been quietly pecking away at her plans to become a human-shark hybrid in the background, and chose to enact a daring plan to hijack some of her workplace's most advanced equipment to achieve her lifelong dream. The process worked, and her co-workers watched in horror as she emerged from the laboratory a changed woman, possessing a newfound predatory confidence. Doctor Gillian Finessey had a new clarity as she felt the superhuman potential coursing through her altered body, that she was put into this world to usher in a new direction for humanity, to share her gift with others, and grabbed some of her co-workers to go back into the lab for more procedures, now that she had it down to a science. She created a retrovirus that she and her new shark-people cohorts could be asymptomatic carriers of, capable of transforming humans into beautiful shark-women like herself, so that a new age would dawn on herself and her sisters as they finally claimed the land for the sharks~

Thanks to  kissiand for drawing this design, and a happy Shark Week to you all!