A Morphing of Reality

[beachbeagle]

Okay. I really needed to transfer this over. Minus the reviews I had here's the first few chapters I'd written. I'll work on the next one ASAP.

Original Description: This is something I tried a while ago. It sort of fell apart at one point and I lost interest in it. Now I'm going to attempt writing it again and see what happens. Will mention when I need ideas, hopefully people will help.

The main idea behind this story was something my friends and I invented. What if the books were a warning and the threat really was real?... We used to pretend that, and this kind of evolved off of it.

Chapter 1:
Marcus's POV

My name is Marcus. I can't tell you more. Not my last name, my town, not the school I go to, not even if this is my real name. Sounds familiar doesn't it? You probably know what I'm going to say. The Yeerks are out there! No one is safe! You may think I'm crazy, and maybe I am. Maybe one day my friends and I will just wake up and find everything that has happened was just a weird dream.

I wish that were true, but it's probably not. Part of me wishes I could go back to before this happened, before we learned the truth. It wouldn't change anything though. The threat would still be real, only we wouldn't know it existed. We all saw how well that worked in Megamorphs 4, and I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others.

You probably want the truth, here it is. The Yeerks are real. We aren't sure if the books were written as a warning about the threat or as a way of making people even less willing to believe the truth, because something from a fictional book couldn't possibly be real. All we do know is the threat exists, and we're the only thing standing in the way.

Who are we? My best friend Daryn, my twin sister Shannon, our friends Mikaela and Nathan, and myself. Sounds kind of similar to the fictional group, doesn't it? We can't help that. Coincidences happen. We were a band of outcasts before this started. Maybe that's why it's been so easy to keep it a secret up until now, we didn't have friends we couldn't trust.

So this is our story. This is how it all began:

"Did you bring the next book?" Daryn asked me. I had my head in my locker, but managed a glance at him. Daryn has dark red hair that honestly looks like he stuck his finger in an electrical socket. I sometimes think I can't do anything with my hair, but I'm betting he can do even less with his.

The book he was referring to was the next in the Animorphs series, he was on number 8, and I'd brought 9 and 10 for him.

"Yes," I said, setting my backpack on the ground and digging the two particular books out. He quickly replaced them with books 7 and 8 which I put in my backpack and shut in my locker.

I grabbed my binder off the floor and my violin from on top of the locker bay, then turned towards him.

"Dude, you do realize those things aren't going to suddenly vanish right?" He was clinging to the books like they were a life raft, or he could have been hugging them. Either way it was just the way he was. It's not like people were going to stare any more than they usually did.

All around us people were talking about the dance tonight. Our school held them fairly frequently. Getting in was cheap, the music was okay, and they sold pop for refreshments. Our grade was in charge of handling the table and I was signed up to work a time slot tonight with a few of our other friends.

My mind was preoccupied with these thoughts when Daryn said something that brought me back to earth with a jolt.

"What did you just say?" I honestly couldn't believe what I'd heard.

"I said the Yeerks are real," said Daryn. He was keeping his voice low, and sounded completely serious.

Part of my mind started thinking he was just a crazy as everyone in school accused him of being, maybe being called crazy had gone to his head. The other part noted how serious he was being. Daryn tended to joke around, but if something was a joke he couldn't keep a straight face for this long after saying it.

I really didn't know what to say. This was as wild as when Mikaela had thought we were all witches and warlocks earlier this year. She'd never really convinced the rest of us that she or any of us had magic powers of any sort.

Now Daryn had come up with this. Something just as insane and just as unlikely. It unsettled me how my friends could believe something so stupid. I decided to react as anyone would, not believing him.

"Yeah right," I said, "and pigs can fly."

"Marcus, I'm being serious here."

"As serious as Mikaela was when she wanted to convince us we had magic powers. None of us believed her."

"This is different."

"How? How is this any more believable?"

He never got a chance to answer because just then the bell rang signifying that we only had a few minutes left to get to homeroom.

"Look," I said over the noise of other students coming this way, breaking the silence the hallway once had, "we'll talk about this at lunch, but right now we both need to go."

With that I turned and headed to the music room, which was my assigned homeroom. I didn't look back to see where Daryn had gone, but I assume he took off pretty fast. His homeroom was the art room, on the other end of the school and downstairs on the first floor.

I really was going to talk to him about it later, because maybe then I’d be able to talk to the others and see what they thought we should do about this.

[beachbeagle]

Chapter 2
Marcus's POV

five... four... three... two... one. The bell rang and I was free. I'd always hated fourth period social studies. Social studies was not my best subject and then there was the fact that it ran a little longer than normal classes because fourth period was ran parallel to the lunch periods. Our grade had lunch after class.

In the hallway I caught Mikaela to try and talk to her. Shannon, Daryn, and I were a year older than her and Nathan, or Nate as most called him, so we didn't see each other except outside of classes.

For a while we talked and I debated whether to tell her about what Daryn had said. Mikaela was on of those people who believed some of the weirdest things were real, and I had to wonder if maybe she thought the books were real too. All five of us had read them, and it sounded a lot more like something she'd say than Daryn.

I finally decided to tell her. As we stood by my locker I started spinning the combination lock and glanced at her. Her brunette hair was extremely curly, so much so that it almost stood out from her head like an afro.

"Mikaela, Daryn said something weird to me today. He said he the Animorphs books were real."

I'd just just finished with the com and was about to open my locker when she slammed her hand against it. I looked at her. She was giving me one of her fierce stares that made you shut up and listen to her.

"They are real Marcus. The yeerks are real. Don't you believe it?" She was being just as serious as Daryn had been earlier.

"Not really," I said, "it's a fictional series, normally those aren't real."

"That's just the point," she said, "the books were written to throw people off so that they wouldn't believe until it was too late."

She glanced around to see if anyone was listening then started talking again softer, "If he says anything to anyone who's a controller we could be in serious trouble."

"Okay, I'll help you shut him up. Not because I believe you, but because I don't want anyone thinking he's crazy."

"You'll believe, Marcus. The threat is real, and you'll see it."

That weirded me out even more than the conversation with Daryn had. At lunch the topic wasn’t discussed. In fact I didn’t hear anything about yeerks and the threat until much later that night.

Dances were held at night, usually starting at 6:00. They were always on Fridays. The dance it was the same as any other. The music was too loud and all our group of friends really did was sit up as high as we were allowed in the bleachers and talk. That night after my shift at the drinks table we cornered Daryn in the bleachers. We included Mikaela, Nate, Shannon, and myself.

“Daryn, we’re here to help,” said Mikaela.

“Right,” said Daryn, “Marcus didn’t believe me. For all I know he’s a yeerk and you all are to. You think I know too much so you’re going to get me.

“Believe me,” said Mikaela, “I’m no controller. Nate and I believe you. Marcus and Shannon just need proof.”

“Guys, look over there,” said Nate.

I looked at him first, a boy of average height with buzz-cut light brown hair. Then I looked in the direction he was pointing.

One of the bathrooms in the gym was always roped off. It was broken so we weren’t supposed to go in there. One of the chaperoning teachers, however, was staring right at a group of students who were walking through the door.

“Why isn’t she saying anything,” asked Shannon, “students aren’t supposed to go into that bathroom. Normally teachers just tell you to wait until someone comes out of the restroom.”

“We’ve just found a yeerk pool entrance,” said Mikaela, “the dances must be a cover up for feeding.”

“We don’t have dances every three days, Mikaela. We only have them on Fridays,” I said. “It’s not nearly frequently enough.”

“So they’re a cover up for when the three day period ends on a Friday,” said Nate, “we have them often enough for that.”

That was Nate, the brains of our group. He once could have been bumped ahead two grades, but his parents didn’t want to let him.

“If we move over there we can hear what you need to say to go down,” said Mikaela.

“Let’s go,” said Daryn.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Shannon.

Personally I did too, but we weren't going to convince the others to drop this and I didn't want to get left out. I just hoped for the sakes of Daryn, Mikaela, and Nate that they were right. I didn't want to know what they would say to cover up for this if it was fake and we got caught.

[beachbeagle]

Chapter 3
Mikaela's POV

I was the first one down to the gym floor. I focused the whole time on getting to the other side of the gym, where the roped off bathroom was. There were three bathrooms in the gym. One in each locker room and one on the side the boys locker room was on. That was the roped off one. It’s supposedly broken, but I felt sure it was a yeerk pool entrance and if we could get in there we could prove to Marcus and Shannon that the threat was real.

I’d known it was from the day I’d entered the school. The dances were too frequent, and most of the other teachers and students just acted weird. People started changing, which is normal for teenagers, but sometimes the changes didn’t seem so normal. Like someone who was dumb and ditzy suddenly acting as smart as Nate. No one else really noticed these changes, except for me.

When Daryn started reading the Animorphs books I put two and two together. I hadn’t read one of the books in a while, but reading just one put everything into perspective. I told him and we both agreed we had to be careful. It took a long time to decide to tell the others, and we knew to expect them to not believe us. Nate said he does, but I think he might just be playing along. Marcus and Shannon are being more open about the disbelief.

The one thing I had to wonder was if the fight was real, who were the Animorphs? They obviously didn’t exist as the kids from the book series, or if so the ending was fake and they’d all been enslaved. I had to hope that wasn’t true because then we’d have a serious issue on our hands.

The only other option was they didn’t exist. Maybe there was no one fighting the yeerks yet. If so the human race was defenseless against a threat they’d never seen coming.

I climbed into the bleachers and sat as close to the door as possible. Nate was right behind me and Daryn behind him. Marcus and Shannon were still a short ways away and whispering back and forth. The twins were so logical minded that they couldn’t take something on face value, but if you could prove something to them they’d believe you.

We sat there for a while, no one going in or coming out of the bathroom. It seemed like Marcus was starting to question things, and he finally broke our silent vigil by saying, “Those kids we saw go in. They’re taking way too long coming out. Normally a teacher would go in and see what they were doing.”

Nate held a finger to his mouth, signaling for Marcus to be quiet. I was glad he’d spoken though. He sounded like some part of him was starting to believe us.

Finally someone walked up to one of the chaperones at the entrance to the bathrooms. I didn’t recognize the student, but that didn’t mean they weren’t from my grade. I didn’t know everyone.

The teacher and student talked, but it was obvious the student wasn’t getting anywhere. I only wished the music wasn’t so loud because then we could have heard them. The DJ and speakers were on this end though, so it was even louder than the other side.

The student finally gave up and turned to leave and the teacher stopped them. She said something which the student responded to. Glancing around quick she ushered the student into the roped off bathroom.

“Okay,” said Marcus, “what the heck was that?”

“The password to the entrance was whatever the kid said to Ms Trenton, right after she stopped him from leaving,” said Nate.

“Guys, this is crazy. We’re not going to get close enough to hear what they’re saying,” said Shannon.

“We aren’t,” said Marcus, “but I think Daryn is.”

We all turned to where Marcus was looking. Daryn had climbed down the bleachers and moved over to the front of the group on the dance floor.

“At least he’s blending in,” Nate pointed out.

That was true. The song that was playing was the Macarena so all Daryn had to do was follow what everyone else was doing. It was actually really creepy to see because it was almost as if he was one of them. It almost felt like a premonition.

Another student came up to Ms Trenton and the same ritual was performed. When the student was ushered inside we expected Daryn to come tell us what was up, but he kept dancing until the song ended.

“What was that?” asked Nate.

“I was trying to keep up the act. I went down at the start of the song, I waited until the end to return. Nothing looked unusual.”

He had a point.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked, hoping he’d heard the password.

“It seemed normal. Someone was in the bathroom for their gender so they asked to use the roped off one. Ms Trenton said no and the student turned to leave. Then she asked them what time it was…”

“Okay, a little odd,” I heard Nate mutter.

“No, the students answer was odder. They didn’t look at their watch, all they said was, ‘The time is now.’”

The time is now. The phrase seemed a little cliché, but the yeerks probably didn’t care. All I knew was now we had access to the pool, at least for the night.

“We have to try this now,” I said, “for all we know they change the password each time.”

“This is nuts,” said Shannon. She turned to leave and Marcus followed her.

“You three can try it if you want,” he said, “but I’m not doing something crazy like this just to prove that you’re right."

[beachbeagle]

Chapter 4
Mikaela's POV

A scream tore through my mind, causing me to bolt awake. I glanced quickly around the room I shared with my sisters for anything that could have made the sound. There was nothing there.

Mentally I told myself to calm down. The dance was over. I was home. I was safe. We had decided not to go down to the yeerk pool without Marcus and Shannon. Besides not being able to prove anything to them if we had gone, we didn’t want to risk getting caught. At this point we had no way of defending ourselves.

That was an issue though. It would be too easy for an Elfangor to come along and give us the power to morph. We couldn’t wait for that sort of coincidence to take place. There had to be a way to act and act now.

I kept thinking about that scream. It couldn’t have been me, because I would have woken my sisters. I couldn’t even remember what I’d been dreaming about, but I doubted I would have woken up screaming from it.

With not much reason as to why, I got out of bed and slipped on my clothes. I was going to take a look outside and see if anything out there could have caused it. The field in the back of the house was huge and held all sorts of strange mysteries. I thought I’d begin my search out there.

The tall grass and ups and downs of the trail through it took me further and further from the house. After a while I realized the flashlight I had could run out of batteries at any moment and leave me stranded in the darkness, and more than once I felt the darkness closing in and I contemplated turning around and going to bed. None of the others would have heard the scream. None of them would know I was too scared to investigate it in the dark. I could wait until morning, tomorrow was a Saturday after all. Something kept pushing me, I wasn’t sure what. All I know is I kept going.

At some point the trail started getting lighter. At first I thought I was going insane, but then I heard voices too and almost ran out shouting before I realized that whoever was out there could be controllers. It seemed crazy to think they’d be after something in our field though.

I finally got into range where I could hear something of what they were saying, bits and pieces, and stopped cold.

“….drivers dead…”

“….Escafil Device… missing….”

“…. Keep looking…. Somewhere…. Has to be…”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I chanced a peek through the grass and saw about five guys in black searching around a smoking hunk of metal. The metal looked like it could have once resembled some sort of aircraft.

At this point I realized the bitterness of irony. I though it would be too great of a coincidence for an andilite to crash land give us the morphing power, so as fate willed it one did. Admittedly he didn’t survive, but he left us the way to get the power. Now all I had to do was find the blue cube before the controllers did.

I turned off my flashlight so I didn’t risk attracting attention to myself. That left me feeling blindly around in the dark for the box. Did it glow? I couldn’t remember from the description in the books if it did or not.

As chance had it something was glowing a few feet to my right, barely visible through the grass that remained. Most of it was charred, which I assumed had something to do with the spaceship crash landing. I crawled over to it and picked up a blue box. Not very big, but the books had never said it was. I stuck it in my jacket pocket. Now all I had to do was get back home and get the other four over here tomorrow.

As it turned out this was easier said than done. I turned to leave and found myself confronted by a pair of black shoes. I followed up black jean, clad legs, to a black sweatshirt, to a hooded face. Then I was blinded as a flashlight beam shined right into my eyes.

“Hey, look here. We’ve got ourselves a little spy.”

He seemed amused. Another figure ran over immediately, and he didn’t.

“What are you doing out here kid?”

“Nothing…”

“Were you spying on us?”

“No, I just…”

“Are you lying to me?”

“NO!”

The interrogation seemed to be getting no where. It seemed like this yeerks host had watched a few too many bad cop movies because he was barely giving me the time to say anything.

“Where do you live?”

“Just over that way,” I said, pointing back the way I’d come. “I only came out for a walk.”

“Right, right,” he said, “we believe you.” He obviously thought I couldn’t recognize sarcasm.

Just then a rustle to one side of me caused me to glance around. The interrogation had all been a set up to ambush me. I had to get out of her and fast. I only hoped the advantage of knowing the trails out here would help me outrun them.

I bolted. Someone tried to grab me and I almost considered shedding my jacket before I remembered what it held. I couldn’t risk losing the morphing cube, it was our only hope of gaining an advantage in this fight. Yes, they’d be expecting it, but at least morphing would give us a chance.

I was getting nowhere fast and they were either gaining on me or surrounding me so I had no way out. It seemed like every direction I turned in on of them showed up to block my path. Finally, when I had a moment when someone wasn’t following me I dove into the tall grass. I grabbed out the cube and held it for a while. I tried to remember how it was used to get morphing abilities. Maybe if I could morph I could stash the cube and come back for it tomorrow.

A tingling sensation suddenly crept across my hand, the one holding the box. However I had done it I must have gotten the abilities. Now if I could find something to change into. A firefly darted by my head and I caught it in my hands, cupping them around it. I could feel it crawl around on the inside of my hand and I focused on absorbing the DNA.

I wasn’t sure if it worked or not, but I let the firefly go. Then I crept out of the grass and down the trail. I saw a light to my left and dove into the grass again. Two of the creeps from earlier came into my vision, what I had through the grass anyways.

“You see her?” I recognized this as the voice of my interrogator.

“No,” answered a voice I didn’t recognize.

“She can’t have just vanished.”

“Damn, what if she found the cube.”

“Then we’d better hope she hasn’t read that silly book series hadn’t we?”

As they left part of me felt like breathing a sigh of relief, another part felt successful, and a third part grinned as my memories of the books dashed the hope I hadn’t read them.

I crept to a spot on the trail I recognized and stashed my jacket there. Then I walked a ways back into the grass and focused on the firefly DNA I had tried to absorb. Imagining the sights, sounds, and feelings of morphing is nothing compared to feeling it. It’s so weird and creepy the first time. Crunching, sloshing, strange feelings as my bone structure rearranged, and all this while the blades of grass around me got bigger and bigger.

Once the morphing was done it took a while to get everything under control and figure out how to let the firefly mind get me flying. It also took a bit to get oriented in the direction of my house since I was seeing things so differently.

Eventually I got home and dressed in my pajamas. The clothes I’d worn outside were in the same place my jacket was and I was going to retrieve all of them tomorrow morning. Hopefully I’d hidden them well enough that the controllers wouldn’t find them.

[beachbeagle]

Chapter 5
Daryn's POV

It was a grey Saturday morning and we all stood around in the shed Mikaela’s yard. It wasn’t really much of a shed. The wind came through the cracked walls, which there were only really three of. The fourth wasn’t much there and then had a doorway, but no door. Mentally I though of it as our version of Cassie’s barn, but truth was it compared to the barn like cardboard box compares to a house. Not worth much.

She had managed to get us all here, though. Marcus and Shannon’s parents took longer to convince. They hate last minute things, so usually you have to plan getting together with the twins a day in advance.

Mikaela had said she had something important to show us. She waited until she knew no one was going to bother us before she said, “Last night an andilite ship landed in my back field…”

Marcus snorted. He and Shannon still didn’t believe the threat was real. I think Nate maybe didn’t either, and he was just playing along.

Mikaela continued, “I knew some of us wouldn’t believe me, so I figured a way to prove it.” At this she took of her jacket to reveal that she was wearing a swimsuit underneath. She shed her jeans too and stood there in the cold with her eyes closed.

At first nothing happened, and then she began to get smaller. Fur sprouted out of her body. Her ears shifted to the top of her head. Her spin extended out into a tail. Everything about her changed until, before too long, she was her cat Margery, whom she had not so lovingly nicknamed Satan.

<So what do you think?> came her voice in my head. <I acquired Satan’s DNA this morning since the only morph I had prior to her was a lightning bug.>

“This is way too weird,” said Marcus. Mikaela had finally provided him with some evidence he couldn’t ignore.

“Wasn’t the andilite space craft crash landing a little too much of a coincidence?” asked Nate.

<I thought so too> said Mikaela <but the guy was dead so I figured at least something didn’t follow the plotline.>


“Why a lightning bug?” I asked. Considering she could be anything she wanted to be, why had she chosen that form?

<I had some controllers on my tail! It was the first thing that came along!>

“There were controllers?” said Nate. “Did they get the cube?”

<Relax.> said Mikaela. She morphed back to human and reached into her jacket pocket. She pulled out a small, blue box that seemed to glow internally. “It took a little bit of effort, but we got the cube.”

“Who cares about the cube? This would have been all over if they’d gotten you, Kay,” said Marcus.

He had a point. If they’d gotten Mikaela they would have only had to get me and Nate and no one would have ever known. Marcus and Shannon hadn’t believed, but probably still would been controllers too just for safety’s sake.

“So,” said Mikaela, “who wants to be an Animorph?” She held the cube in her palm and held it out to us.

One by one we reached a hand out to the cube. When the tingling had stopped we pulled our hands away.

“First morphs should be handled on our own time,” said Nate.

“Right,” agreed Marcus, “none of us came prepared for morphing so it would be a little embarrassing.”

“One major issue,” said Shannon. She hadn’t spoken yet, which was usually more like Marcus. It almost seemed like she was a lot less enthusiastic about this than the rest of us were. We were Animorph addicts, whereas she wasn’t quite as bad.

We stood there in silence for a bit before she continued, “Fighting the yeerks is all well and good, but we have no way of getting battle morphs. There isn’t an animal clinic run by our parents like with Cassie. Yes, Daryn’s parents run a pet shop, but the yeerks aren’t going to be afraid of dogs, cats, and parrots. We’ll need forms that can do some damage before we can do anything.”

Suddenly reality came crashing back. She was right. We had no way of getting battle morphs, at least none that made any logical sense. Some Animorphs we were. We couldn’t do more than horribly scratch up a controller.

Mentally I had an image of a Visser Three character running from a little cat. Yes, it was comical, but not realistic.

“We’ll need to find a way that works,” said Mikaela. “We know the animal needs to be alive and we know that anything that would work for a battle morph is more than likely going to attack us. What we need is a way around that.”

“No ideas yet,” said Nate, “but I’ll get to work on that.”

Nate was the smartest person in the group, so part of me had high hopes he’d find a way. The other part realized that we were completely and utterly screwed. If we were the only thing standing between the yeerks and world domination, then the world was in serious trouble.

[beachbeagle]

Chapter 6:
Daryn’s POV

I stopped by Marcus’s locker on Monday as usual. That was the one thing that bothered me. The fact that other than Saturday at Mikaela’s house and trying out morphs some on Sunday things had been normal. I guess I should have expected it, but all the same it came as a surprise.

“Did you and Shannon try out morphing on Saturday or Sunday?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “we don’t have any animals in our house besides goldfish and I don’t have a very good place for attempting that morph.”

I’d forgotten about that. I had it the easiest of all of us to try different morphs because my parents owned a pet store. Nate and Mikaela both had cats and could use them, but the twins mom was allergic to animal dander so they couldn’t have them around the house.

“We were going to try and get some animals from the farm at the end of the road today after school,” he continued. The twins lived on a road with three other houses, theirs was at the end. The bus dropped them at the beginning of the road where a farm house with a rundown barn was. The owners had recently gotten some horses and donkeys, so it looked like those would be the options for the twin’s first morphs.

It was now that Marcus took of his jacket and I noticed the necklace he wore. Marcus owned a few necklaces, but never wore them much. They weren’t really the style that was popular and he didn’t care much about appearance. This pendant was one I didn’t remember having seen before.

“Dude,” I said, “do you really think you should be wearing that?”

His glasses-framed, dark brown eyes drifted down to the necklace, A simple black cord with a boxy pendant. Embossed into the pendant was an Animorphs logo.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with it. It’s my necklace from the Animorphs Sanctuary, an Animorphs club my cousin and I joined. I’ve worn it a few times before so I think it would look weirder if I stopped wearing it all together.”

“I’m just scared Mikaela is going to use it as a sign for getting together or days when were going to invade the pool and….”

“What’s this about a pool?” asked a familiar voice.

Mentally I swore as Aaron came into my view. He was in my Boy Scout troop and loved swimming so the word pool attracted him like bugs to a light bulb. Normally I thought he was a pretty cool dude, but now I didn’t know if this was really Aaron or a controller.

I glanced at Marcus and he gave me one of his looks. When Marcus gives a look, it’s like he’s speaking with his eyes. This look said, ‘You handle this.’ I blinked and looked at him again, but the look was gone and he was brushing some of his dark brown bangs out of his eyes.

I glanced at Aaron again. All this happened in the course of a few seconds.

After some quick thinking on my part I said, “I was just telling Marcus about my weekend.”

“Oh, really?” said Aaron. “You went swimming?”

“Yeah, over at the YMCA.”

“Hmmm….,” he said, “I don’t remember seeing you there.” Oh crap, I thought. Just my luck he was at the YMCA pool that weekend. I just about said something else as a cover up when he said, “That doesn’t mean you weren’t there when I was though, or maybe you were there at a different time.”

Mentally I breathed a sigh of relief. After talking about pools with Aaron for a bit he walked off saying, “Don’t want to be late for homeroom.”

I turned around and saw Marcus was watching Aaron walk down the hallway.

“Hello. Earth to Marcus.”

“How much to you think he heard?”

“What?”

Part of my reaction was due to shock that Marcus would think Aaron was a controller already and part of it was because he’d spoken so quietly I had to be sure I’d heard him right.

“How much of what we were talking about do you think he heard?” He waited for a response before saying, “I’m not saying Aaron is or isn’t a controller, but I am saying that if he heard anything suspicious either way we’re in trouble. If he is a controller he’s on his way to Visser 3, or whatever the real world equivalent is. If he isn’t the yeerks could infest him and the result is the same.”

Brazul 942’s POV

Foolish Animorphs. Yes, that’s what they were. They were humans, not andalites. We would have known that merely from the girl stealing the cube. However, these two boys not being very careful about who was around when they were talking also helped. If I could verify that what they had been saying wasn’t merely to do with the book series and deliver them to Visser 5 the reward would be quite a promotion. I couldn’t control my laughter as my thoughts of their possible fates made my host scream at me to leave them alone. My host cared for these two as friends, which made it all the easier to gain their trust.

[beachbeagle]

Chapter 7:
Shannon's POV

Marcus started talking as soon as we got off the bus. Thing about my twin is, when he knows you well and he’s excited he talks a lot. Otherwise he seems really quiet like me. That’s why most people don’t believe he enjoys theater as a hobby, he seems too quiet.

“So it turns out Daryn was right, Mikaela wants to use my Animorphs Sanctuary pendant as a reminder for nights when we’re going to attack the pool,” He said.

“Isn’t that going to get too coincidental? You wearing the necklace every day the yeerk pool gets attacked?” I asked. I had to worry about Mikaela’s ideas. She was trying to be a leader, but she wasn’t born for it. If you compared us to the original Animorphs, the ones from the series, she was like our Rachel. She was more action oriented.

The thing was, we didn’t really have a leader. I fit more like Tobias, I was more of the outsider of the group. The others were absolutely crazy about the series. I thought it was okay, but would never have believed this if I hadn’t seen Mikaea morph.

Marcus was our Cassie. I know he wouldn’t say it, but he’s got a big heart. Every person, every creature, matters to him. They’re all unique and irreplaceable especially his friends, and even more so me. I worry about what a war like the one in the books could do to him.

Nate is our Ax. He’s our intelligence and the one with the best memory of the books.

Daryn is our Marco. He’s the guy who’s a little wackier and most often there for comic relief.

Yes, we weren’t exactly the same, but this was the path my mind took. That left us with a problem. No Jake. No leader. So Mikaela was trying to fill a role she didn’t fit.

We walked up to the fence and I turned to Marcus, “Do you still have the apples?” They’d given us apples as part of the hot lunch program. We’d saved them as a way to get the donkeys and horses over to the electric fence where we could touch them.

We rolled one of the apples on the ground over to the two donkeys. One was dark grey and the other had a rusty colored coat. They saw it and started eating it. Next we held the second one out, trying to get them to come over to us.

Apparently free food speaks all languages because I was soon petting the rust colored one and Marcus was petting the grey one. We stopped for a bit and lay our hands flat on their backs. I concentrated on absorbing the DNA, just like in the books, but when we pulled our hands away I wasn’t entirely sure anything had happened.

“Let’s go,” said Marcus as I left the rest of the apple for the two donkeys, “we can get home while mom and dad are still out, grab some morphing suits, and try these forms in the backyard.”

I followed his lead up to the house, the separated when we got to our rooms. I looked through my closet for anything tight-fitting, finally settling on a tank-top and jeans. Maybe Mikaela could do a swimsuit, but I wasn’t that brave. I changed and walked out to the backyard. Marcuse was there already in a tight fitting, long sleeved t-shirt and some shorts. The combinations looked odd, but I doubt he was trying to make a fashion statement.

One the count of three we both focused on the DNA. I watched as rusty, coarse hair sprouted from my arms and legs. My feet and hands hardened into hooves. I looked over and found that Marcus was morphing identically, minus that his hair was now grey.

In all the books I’d read the characters had never managed to morph exactly the same as someone else. Why us? My mind suddenly pointed out that none of the original character had been twins. Maybe the connection between the two of us affected more than we thought.

When we were done morphing Marcus said <That was interesting.>

<Yeah…> I said. The main thing I noticed was the donkey’s mind. It was easy to control. The domesticated donkeys were lazy and didn’t want to do anything.

<They’re so easy to control> I said, pointing it out to Marcus.

<I know> he said <better not expect that from every animal though. These were just good starting ones.>

<We should morph out now. Mom and Dad can’t see us this way.>

Shortly later we were back inside and back in normal clothes. I had now morphed, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted to fight. I hadn’t told anyone this, not even Marcus. I didn’t know if they would understand. For now, it didn’t matter. We still didn’t have a plan or battle morphs, but I couldn’t put it off forever. I had to decide if I was in or out.

[Essam 293]

I'm really loving this fic so far. Aside from the coincidental andalite ship crash, you've created something quite realistic for what the Animorphs would've had to go through. And yeah, this reminds me quite a lot of when I was younger and me and my best friend used to wonder if the Animorph books were real as well .

I'm looking forward to new chapters