Richard's Animorphs Forum

Dekket listens to Samantha's story and sips his redin, nodding grimly. In many ways it reminded him a bit of the stories of the old Yeerks he knew. Most of them had been peacefully minding their own business before they, too, had been effectively handed a Dracon on a foreign world and told they were at war. They got more training than that, but the feeling seemed to rhyme. She downplayed it with humor but that's what it came out to.

When she asks about the "wrong man" comment, he says, "Oh, no, wrong idea. See, for some reason...I'm pretty sure this isn't my van." He pronounced the word like the name "Vaughn." "That is, my host. The host I was assigned. But I..." Dekket frowns, running a hand through Andrew's blonde hair. "...can't remember who my van was. Which does not make any sense. Yeerks have a near-photographic memory..."

Suddenly, Puck chirps cheerfully at him, likely in response to his "magic" comment, and he turns, since she's clearly trying to get his attention. She plays a little ditty, and that's when the universe itself seems to turn sideways in Dekket's stomach. He nearly stumbles out of his chair, his eyes wide, upon seeing the potted plant appear out of thin air. It looked absolutely real. Puck said it wasn't real, but he could practically see the moisture on the tips of the leaves. Puck goes on about someone using magic to turn invisible like it was the most normal thing in the world. Dekket is still staring at where the potted plant was, reaching his hand over the bar in a grasping motion towards the empty space.

He shakes his head and immediately turns toward Puck. "How did you do it?" he blurts out. "Holograms? High-end stuff, like Gravestone's hologram? But it looked so real! Incredible technology. Can I see the pipes? How do they work?" He was asking questions faster than he could think, but he did want to know. He was a gunner. New, exciting technology sent a thrill through his spine! She said "magic," but that must have just been the local term for a unique mechanism and method. He had to know how it worked!

Pluck's head twitches from left to right, listening to the conversation between Samantha and Dekket, but clearly far from understanding it. She didn't have any idea what a "Spotify playlist" or "r-selected prey species" were, nor what was meant by these hand gestures that Samantha made. And being "abducted by aliens" couldn't have been that common, if she'd never heard of it. Whatever Dekket was drinking, she wasn't familiar with either. She quietly observes the two, poking her beak back into her cup to drink more of her blackberry juice. She was starting to feel a little foolish again, as whatever they were talking about was going completely "over her head," as Norren put it. Finally, though, Dekket asked something that Pluck was pretty confident in answering.

"Magic? There's nothing unnatural about that!" She immediately perks up and starts fishing around in the bag strapped to her hip. "Watch this!" She retrieves a set of birdpipes from her bag and holds it up to her beak, gently playing a note while gesticulating with her free wing-hand over the bartop. Suddenly, a small potted plant seems to appear under her hand, and Pluck stops playing rather suddenly as she talks again. "See?" she says excitedly, gesturing at the plant that had just appeared, as if it wasn't very conspicuous. "It's not real, but if it were a real plant, I'd be able to talk to it too! So could Mama, she could even talk to the animals at home!" Pluck starts talking faster as her excitement builds, and her feet start bouncing as they dangle from her barstool. "Del - that's my brother's husband - can even turn invisible, which is SO cool! He even showed me that if I use the glowing spell on him while he's invisible, I can see him again!" Pluck excitedly snaps her head back toward Dekket and Samantha, eager to see their reactions.

"I might actually know a Yeerk who could be in the running for 'galaxy's most raging dickhead,'" Dekket jokes. He looks towards the Bartender in an aside and says, "Redin karlitt, top shelf," smiling a little. The bartender nods in response and says nothing, taking a container of almost mud-black liquid down from the shelf. Dekket blinks. It didn't make sense. It was almost more of a quip at the establishment than a real request, but he still seems to be filling it, mixing the black liquid with water as required. The bartender slides the liquor across to Dekket within minutes.

"Right, pleased to make your acquaintance Samantha," Dekket says, a bit weirded out but otherwise slipping right back into pleasant conversation. "My people were in a way all child soldiers. Largely because we're an r-selected prey species that reaches adulthood in barely a year, who were designed to thrive in nutrient-rich muddy pools we no longer have access to in the same way. So it's not really the same. But..." Dekket's face softens. "...for a human, that must be the most wretched thing in the world. I am truly sorry."

Dekket smiles at Pluck. "And that's why I have nine hundred siblings! No one knows nine hundred people. And yes, I live in this man's head and control his body. Although..." Dekket drums his fingers on the wooden table. "...I am fairly sure he is the wrong man. Which bothers me." He looks at Pluck. "Do you come from a place with...unnatural phenomena? Magic? Something we could judge? Something is queer about this place."

Pluck blinks at Dekket, stunned speechless for a moment. "Wow," she eventually starts, clearly amazed. "You live in the Human's head and control his body? And you have nine hundred brothers and sisters!?" She moves her hat and starts scratching at a pin feather underneath it, not breaking eye contact with Dekket. "That's... sorry, I've never heard of anything like that. That's really cool!" She leans a little closer, while still making sure to respect Dekket's personal space. "How do you even have that many siblings!? I only have one brother, and I've met some people with, like, fifteen brothers and sisters, but nine hundred? That's incredible, no wonder you don't know most of them, I don't know nine hundred people!" The crow girl was so impressed with the large number, that she seemed to miss the implications of Dekket controlling the human's body.

She blinks and turns to Sam. "Samantha-Lee, you said? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you. You were... a child soldier?" She sits back in her stool for a moment as this information seems to sink in, and she calms down quite a bit. "Jeez, that sounds really crazy. How does something like that even happen?" She shakes her head, clearly finding this a little hard to process. "I can't even imagine being a soldier, and as a kid? I just grew up on a farm."

Dekket smiles a bit at the bird. Wherever she was from, she clearly wasn't familiar with his own species at all. He'd definitely never heard of this "Everfen" place, nor of any species called a Kenku, so that most likely meant they had not yet been contacted. He muses on what that might mean internally. <If that's the case then how is it that she knows what a human is, I wonder...Maybe it's just a coincidence? A similar word for a similar species, convergent evolution and linguistics?>

<Beats me, ****. And it ain't my problem either way. Seeing as I can't talk to her or anyone else for that matter. It's fun feeling you guess though. You're not usually at a loss, are you?>

<Palps from the bottom reaches aren't appreciated,> Dekket snipes back.

"I'm actually not human," he says casually. "I'm a Yeerk."

Dekket points a finger at his skull. "My host is called a human, but I'm a small creature inside here, on top of the brain. That allows me to control this body." He didn't really have any idea how much Pluck knew about how the brain worked, so he had to add that. "The numbers indicate our birth order. I have nine hundred siblings. I don't know most of them."