I'm not going to make promises I can't keep about this fic, but if I have time I will continue it. The updates will be slow however. In the mean time, I present Chapter 7 in hour of my 10,000th post on RAF. LONG LIVE ANIMORPHS!!!
As always, please post all comments in the
http://animorphsforum.com/forum/index.php?topic=460.0 thread, thank you.
CHAPTER 7: Unexpected Visitors and Rats with Wings. (MIKE’S POV)It was the next day. I’d taken a break from trying to beat my brother’s gaming scores to have some real fun; I was currently small, feathery and riding a thermal a kilometre above my house. Screw Halo, flying is way more fun than any computer game!
As fun as it was I had no intention of being trapped as a Harris Hawk for life, so I dropped lower in the air until I could look in through my bedroom window and see the digital alarm clock on my bedside table. I was happy to see that I still had another half hour or so, but that’s when I spotted Cassie walking through the trees towards my place. Considering that in the books she had visited Marco after he was attacked by a Shark, I wasn’t really surprised to see her. In fact, I’d pretty much been expecting it.
<Hey Cassie,> I announced my presence as I came in for a landing on the large oak tree next to my bedroom window. <What’s up?>
“Nothing really, I was just hoping that we could talk for a while,” Cassie told me.
<Sure, just give me a second to get changed,> I joked. I hopped onto the grassy floor and focused on my regular old Human self. My beak softened into lips, my eyesight dimmed and my feathers got sucked back into my skin (trust me, that never stops being creepy). A couple of minutes later I was myself again.
“Alright then, let’s go inside,” I said, gesturing for her to go in.
“You don’t lock your house?” Cassie asked as she opened the front door to my place.
“Didn’t seem to be much point when only you guys can actually find my house,” I admitted. The Ellimist installed something that I call a perception filter. Anyone who comes near my house is subconsciously drawn away from it. “Not to mention the fact that my Harris Hawk body could spot a burglar coming from a mile away!”
“That’s true,” Cassie smiled.
“You want something to eat?” I offered as we entered the house. “I’m not much of a cook, but I’m great at making those microwave mini pizzas.”
“Haven’t you got any real food in yet?” Cassie asked me.
“I’m a thirteen year old guy living on his own in the middle of the woods,” I pointed out. “I don’t really know how to cook, so I’ve basically been living off cereal and microwave meals for the past month.”
“Well in that case, I can teach you how to cook sometime.” Cassie suggested.
“You can cook?” I gave her a surprised look.
“I live on a farm and both my parents work,” she said. “I picked up a few things about looking after myself.”
“Cool,” I replied. “And thanks, I wouldn’t mind a cooking lesson or two. As long as I’m making something with meat in; I respect the fact that you’re a vegetarian, but I like my meat.”
“How did you…” Cassie trailed off.
“I’m psychic, don’t tell anyone!” I winked. She laughed.
“I keep forgetting that you already know so much about us,” she said.
“Not much really,” I admitted. “I didn’t know you could cook after all.”
“Good point,” she acknowledged.
“Anyway, I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way out here to talk about cooking?”
“Not exactly, I wanted to talk to you about what happened yesterday,” she told me.
“Yeah I thought you might,” I nodded. “You did the same thing for Marco in the book when he got bitten by the Shark.”
“You mean Marco was the one who was supposed to be attacked?” Her eyes widened in surprise.
“Yeah, I managed to warn him just in time yesterday, another split second and Marco would have almost died, not me.”
“That was really brave of you.”
“Thanks,” I blushed slightly at the compliment. “But it’s not like I knew I was going to get attacked instead. If I did, I might have been a bit more hesitant in helping.”
“I’m sorry,” Cassie apologised.
“For what? It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my decision to go out there looking for the Andalite,” she said. “That makes it my responsibility if my friends get killed.”
“Listen to me; it was
not your fault,” I insisted. “It was my decision to come to this universe to help you guys out. I could have stayed at home where it was safe, doing homework and reading all about you guys, but I made the choice to join this fight. I don’t want to die believe me, but if something does happen to me, it will be my responsibility. Not your’s or Jake’s or anyone else’s.”
“Were you scared yesterday?” Cassie asked me.
“Yes,” I confessed. “I’ve been scared a lot since I first came here and it’s only been a month. I’ve been scared by giant cannibalistic worms, I’ve been scared by walking lawnmowers and now I’ve been scared by a freaking Shark. I’ve even been scared by Visser Three, and he’s one of the deadliest beings in the universe. But those aren’t the things I’m really afraid of. The things I’m really terrified of are things like getting trapped in morph or screwing up so badly that one of you ends up dead or worse. And I’m also worried that I’ll never see my family again…”
“You must really miss them.”
“They’re a pain in the arse sometimes, but they’re my family.” I sighed. “The worst part is that even if I survive all this, I can never tell them about any of it. Even if I could tell them, they’d just think I was crazy.”
“You chose to come here and risk your life to save our planet. I think your family would be really proud of you Mike.”
“Yeah, I guess they would,” I smiled sadly. “Thanks Cassie.”
“Anytime,” she smiled back.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door so I went to answer it. Unlike with Cassie, this visitor was definitely unexpected. It was Marco.
“Hey,” Marco greeted me as I welcomed him inside. “Am I interrupting something?” He wondered aloud as he spotted Cassie.
“No, I was just leaving anyway,” Cassie replied.
“I talked to Jake and we’re having another meeting at Rachel’s place tonight,” Marco explained.
“Alright, I’ll see you both there.” Cassie left.
“You do know that Jake has a thing for her right?” Marco asked me.
“There are blind mice in the woods that know about that,” I rolled my eyes. “She just came to talk to me about yesterday. She felt guilty because it was her decision to go out there and she thinks it was her fault that Shark tried to make me its lunch.”
“That’s dumb, we all decided to go out there.”
“Yeah that’s pretty much what I told her,” I agreed.
“Speaking of what happened yesterday, I just wanted to say thanks,” Marco said. “For saving my butt from that Shark.”
“No problem,” I replied. “I know you guys don’t always think you can trust me, but I’ve always got your backs. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to help you guys.”
“Yeah I get that, and we do trust you,” Marco said firmly. “We just don’t know you very well that’s all.”
“You’re all welcome round here anytime if you want to hang out,” I offered. “I have mini pizzas and a whole bunch of games consoles that need play testing.”
“Sounds good!” Marco laughed. “Hey, is that Halo 3?”
“Yep, you want to play? I must warn you, I’ve been getting a lot of practice lately.”
“Well some of us still have school to go to,” Marco pouted.
“You’re never going to let that go are you?” I asked rhetorically.
“Let’s play then,” Marco picked up an Xbox 360 pad. “Unless you’re afraid to lose?”
“You’re on school boy!” I laughed as I grabbed my own pad.
*
After Marco and I had played some Halo 3 for a while, we went to the meeting at Rachel’s place. After laughing at the ridiculously weird concept of following directions to a crashed alien space ship given to us by a Whale who we’d saved from Sharks by turning into Dolphins, we came up with a plan. And that’s how we all ended up at Cassie’s barn the next day, getting ready to morph Seagulls so that we could fly out to a boat heading towards Ax’s ship and hitch a ride.
<Seagulls,> Tobias sneered. <Almost as bad as Pigeons. They’re just Rats with wings!>
“As long as you don’t try to eat us, I’m fine with that,” I replied. Marco s****ed.
I stuck my hand inside a cage that contained a Seagull with a broken wing. The poor thing was still too weak to put up much of a fight, but it still managed to struggle for a few seconds before I started the acquiring process and the Gull fell silent and stopped moving, almost as if it were hypnotised by my touch.
As soon as I’d finished acquiring its DNA, it started squawking again so I moved away so that the others could acquire it. Once they had, we all got ready to morph. I wasn’t at all nervous about this particular morph, as I knew there wouldn’t be any nasty surprises. Even so, as far as this morph was concerned, I was glad I’d eaten a decent breakfast that morning.
The first change that happened as I focused on my newly acquired Seagull DNA was my skin turning white. Not white as in Caucasian white, more like the pure white of untouched snow on a Winter’s day morning. Then the feathery pattern started to emerge like a thousand tattoos appearing across my skin before the feathers suddenly became three-dimensional. For that brief moment, I must have looked a guy who’d covered himself with glue and then dived into a pile of feathers.
My eyesight became subtly stronger. It was nowhere near as powerful as my vision was as a Harris Hawk, but it was better than my normal eyes. Seagulls don’t float up on thermals several kilometres up like birds of prey do; they prefer to stay closer to the ground so that they can spot food that has been abandoned by people on the streets below.
I got the strange falling sensation that comes from morphing any animal smaller than my natural form. Of course the Seagull was smaller than a Harris Hawk, so the shrinking time took slightly longer than usual. The strangest part is that by that point I still looked mostly Human, albeit an extremely small and very feathery Human.
It was only then that I felt my bones and organs rearranging themselves. Those squishing and crunching sounds always made me feel a little nervous. If I didn’t know that it was going to be completely safe, then it would have scared the hell out of me. It’s one of the many things I’ve had to get used to as an Animorph.
After that I grew wings, my lips melded into a small beak and my feet became tiny little Gull feet. The transformation was complete. I had become the scavenger lord of the civilised world, the king of the rubbish bins. I was a Seagull.
<Everyone okay?> Jake asked us all as we each finished morphing. We all replied telling him we were fine. <Then let’s fly!>
I flapped my wings manically as we rose up off the ground and took to the skies. It was a bright, sunny day, perfect weather for flying. Of course being a Seagull I didn’t have to rely so much on thermals like Tobias did; Seagulls do a lot more flapping and a lot less soaring than birds of prey.
There was something else different about this morph too. My Harris Hawk instincts were always telling me to be on the lookout for mice, rats and other small prey animals. My Seagull instincts were telling me to look for something to eat too, but the Seagull brain was much more open-minded when it came to the definition of food. If it even remotely looked like it might be food, the Seagull part of me noticed it. And since we were flying over a large town in a developed country, that meant spotting every single piece of litter that people had dropped, regardless of if not still contained food or not.
One thing’s for sure; Seagulls must really love the fast food industry.
<Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! I think it even has a stuffed crust too!>
<Man that sandwich looks tasty…>
<Oh! Look! French fries next to that bin outside McDonalds!>
<Is that fried chicken on the ground behind KFC? Who just throws fried chicken away like that?>
<It should be illegal to throw meatball subs in the trash...>
Sometimes an animal’s mind can be so strong and overwhelming that they become difficult to control. The predator’s urge to kill, the prey animal’s urge to flee, but the Seagull’s instincts weren’t like that. The part of me that wanted to check out every crisp packet and orange peel wasn’t over-powering the logical part of me; it was just so insistent that it was easier to go along with it instead of fighting it.
As we finally reached the beach and continued flying out over the open sea water, the nagging instinct to dive bomb discarded junk food pretty much went away. There weren’t many old sandwiches or pizza crusts floating on the waves, so the Seagull’s mind became easier to keep under control.
At was at this point that I finally felt relieved that we’d come in Seagull morph instead of our usual assorted birds of prey. We were flapping hard, only ten metres or so above the surface of the water, but Tobias wasn’t much higher than we were now. There weren't any thermals to ride now that we were flying over the ocean and Tobias would soon be starting to struggle. Most birds of prey are designed for floating on warm thermals, not power flapping over waves of sea water.
<There’s a container ship dead ahead,> Tobias reported.
<
Dead ahead?> Marco asked with his usual ‘we’re about to do something stupidly dangerous so let’s joke about it’ type humour. <Oh that’s it, we’re doomed!>