Chronicles of Sean: The Infection (Megamorphs Style)

[NateSean]

This is a Megamorphs style fanfiction, written in the spirit of Halloween. It takes place at later point in the Chronicles if Sean series, so I will be doing a rather level best not to betray too much of what I'm planning. Suffice it to say that in the context of this story, Sean is with the Animorphs in California.

Prologue

Far, far above the Earth, a semi-spherical object hung free and silent in the blackness of space. Three long leg-like constructions powered the vessel, keeping it in sync with the path of the moon, so as to remain invisible to earth based telescopes while using minimal power to avoid detection from primitive artificial satellites in orbit. Along with the tendrils, which extended from the flattened bottom of the object, the engines gave it an eerie and unsettling quality to those who were unfamiliar (or too familiar) with what it represented.

Beneath the airtight shell of this strange and terrifying vessel was a complex network of corridors, laboratories, living areas and tactical stations. It was from one of the laboraties that a man, a human, stumbled from.

Persperiation drenched his face, hair and the upper half of the button down shirt that had been very sloppily done. The pants were baggy and didn't appear to fit the man's gangly form and his feet were bare. But the stranger and more noticable sight was the blood that tricked from a gash in his right arm, while he clutched another bleeding wound in his stomach.

The man stumbled as he ran. His breath was deep and pained. He was desperate to escape, but seemingly unaware that no one was chasing him. Even less aware of the fact that no one had orders to stop him.

"Very impressive."

Visser Seven, a slug-like being known as a Yeerk, and one of a small number of generals in charge of their own personal army stood there in posession of a human body and watched with hungry eyes as the holographic projectors followed the man closely. Beside him was another Yeerk Visser, the one in charge of Earth's invasion and the only Yeerk to possess an Andalite body.

<You seem easily impressed, Visser.> Visser Three replied. His tone was somewhere between friendly chiding and derision. <But you realize he will be cured rather easily?>

Visser Seven grinned. He loved the emotive capabilities of this human body. Gestures and facial expressions had a subtle quality to them and he understood why Visser One kept her own human host body for so long.

"You underestimate my efforts, Esplin," he said, returning the tone but remaining firm in his conviction. "I have been studying this unique specimen for the last two hundred cycles. That we discovered it on Earth of all places is what the humans might call a miricale. It is even more amazing that so few specimens have survived as to have been relegated to their mythology."

Visser Three adjusted his stalk-eyes in the way that Andalites did to express their range of emotions. Visser Seven would have guessed it to be a cynical sidelong glance.

<The only aspect of human history that is even remotely entertaining is their capacity for torture and slow, painful deaths. Perhaps you would like to sample the iron maiden which hangs upon my wall, you'll find it a far more exhilarating experience than a few human ghost stories.>

Visser Seven chuckled. He turned to the quarantine unit, which was seperated by a ramonite wall.

"Transparent," he said in Galard.

The Ramonite went from opaque to clear, revealing the humanoid creature, who was now locked to the far wall and struggling to break free. Only four feet and seven inches with dark hair and dressed in second hand clothing, it looked no different from any human adolescent. But the palor of its skin and the glaring black eyes were unlike any human the Yeerks had infested. And the lifeless Hork-Bajir controller, with it's throat torn out and it's blood mixing with the blood of the other controllers who had underestimated this creature, were mute testiment to it's unusual strength and ferocity.

Neither Visser could instill enough fear into their subordinates to make them go in and retrieve the corpse even though the restraints were doing a passable job at keeping the creature in place.
Not even the Taxxons were hungry enough to go near it, which was impressive in and of itself.

<The Yeerk lasted only half an hour,> Visser Three pointed out with the heartless practicalilty of a Yeerk that new sacrifices were essential on the road to victory. <It's proven useless as a host and too dangerous to be an effective ally.>

"Kullan was right," Visser Seven said, shaking his head. "For as many eyes as you posess, you are remarkably short-sighted."

He gestured to the hologram. The man had made it to a cargo bay where a bug fighter lay waiting. A few of Visser Seven's gray clad Hork-Bajir soldiers held their weapons at the ready, but watched on without interefering as the man began to change.

"In just half an hour the Yeerk was able to sniff out the Andalite spy who had been hiding on your own Pool Ship for the last year."

A tail grew from the man's spine as his shifting form tore the clothes loose from his body. His feet became hooves and the legs bend backwards at the knees and shrank, until the resembled the legs of an Earth horse. A seconf set of hooves sprouted from his waist as his torso became narrow and almost lanky. His arms grew smaller and extra fingers grew from his hands. An extra set of eyes grew from stalks like Visser Three's and swept the area nervously. When a sharp, curved blade appeared at the end of his tail, he took a warning swipe at the air.

But although he was surrounded by Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, humans and Gedds, none of them were making a move to stop him. In fact, they were making a very obvious path to the hatch of the Bug Fighter.

In a better state of mind, the Andalite would have questioned the convenience of all of this. But it was clear to both Vissers that although the injuries to his human form were healed when he de-morphed, the sickness that gripped their prisoner was slowly spreading in the Andalite's blood stream.

"The bacteria is highly adaptive. You notice it seems to be effecting him even after he returned to his true form." Visser Seven seemed to be narrating as the Andalite climbed aboard the Bug Fighter and activated it's engines. "I was able to simulate the Tria Gland with tissue samples from your host body and the brains of other Andalite warriors we have captured. The conversion and the rate of decay was swift. On a larger specimen like this Andalite it may take slightly longer to take control, but not much more."

Visser Three seemed to contemplate the new information. With one stalk-eye on the creature and the remaining eyes on the hologram, he came to a conclusion.  Originally the plan was to keep the infection from spreading further by getting the Andalite spy off the pool ship and cutting their losses to a handful of Yeerks and one bug fighter. Now things were different.

<Be sure he it makes it to Earth,> Visser Three ordered the Bug Fighter pilots who had been told to escort the Andalite. <He'll soon make contact with the Andalite bandits and give them far more problems than they could anticipate.>

"At last you are thinking clearly."

Visser Seven turned off the hologram and returned his attention to the quarantine room. The creature had stopped fighting and was now fixing him with a menacing glare. It seemed to growl or hiss, revealing the long sharp fangs that were stained with a mosaic of alien blood.

[goom]

(i removed your other thread, since i see you made another. looks good so far! )

[NateSean]

Chapter 1 - Sean

My name is Sean. A year ago I was a...well, maybe not an ordinary teenager. I certainly wasn't popular and I wasn't into sports or any of the things that kids are supposed to be into if they want to fit in.

Mostly a loner, I was a kid who could read Romeo and Juliet and understand it. My teachers liked me for the most part because I paid attention and put a lot of effort into special projects. Even though my homework sometimes fell behind, I still passed with maybe a B average. But it was enough that was also a target for bullies. And bullies were the only people who ever paid attention to me.

If being good at school wasn't isolating enough, some of my other quirks were sure to get attention. I was lousy at gym but I liked reading. Sometimes I sang out loud, on key, to songs that were popular when my dad was in school.

So, I guess I never was an ordinary kid. But I definitely didn't know about an army of alien slugs called the Yeerks were slowly invading the Earth. I didn't know that the one person in the whole school I considered my friend was a billion year old android called a Chee, created by a long dead race of dog-like Buddhists. I also didn't know those androids were Effing liars, but I'll get to that in a moment. Most of all what I wasn't was a kid who could become any alien or earthbound person or animal I touch for two hours at a time.

It turns out there's a species called the Andalites, who accidentally gave Yeerks the secret of spaceflight. Those same Andalites developed the morphing technology as an infiltration tool to get into the most secure areas of the Yeerk Empire. One Yeerk gained the power to morph when he took an Andalite host body and for the longest time he was the only other species to have the ability thanks to a law called Seerow's Kindness, which prevents the Andalites from sharing their technology with another species.

Seems like a "no-duh" law to me. But unfortunately one Andalite was left with no choice. After a failed attempt to remove the Yeerks from Earth, an Andalite prince named Elfangor landed in a construction sight on Earth and told five kids about the Yeerks and gave them the power to morph before he was killed by Visser Three, the sole aformentioned Andalite controller.

The very next day, my Dad was following a lead that took us to California, where Elfangor landed. I went with him and left to my own devices, I wandered into a construction site and got chased by controllers who were making sure there was no evidence of Elfangor's ship anywhere. That's when I tripped and fell on the cube that gave me the power to morph.

Erek King, another Chee, revealed himself to me. He told me about the Yeerks and about how my Dad was one of them and about the morphing power. He showed me how to morph and told me to lay low when I went back home. That's when Bryce revealed himself to be a Chee as well.

And do you remember the part about the Chee being liars? Erek, Bryce and all of the Chee told me I was the only one who could fight the invasion. That's right. Somehow it was a good idea to tell me about their super advanced, non-violent android race with technology that would make the Yeerks salivate, but it wasn't a good idea to tell me that I wasn't alone in this desperate battle. The bottom line is, they lied. And it cost me a lot.

Sorry, I really I don't want to go into it right now.

At the moment, I was too focused on another important mission. One that I had been focused on for a very long time. The others thought I was nuts. Well, they say genius a stone's throw away from insanity. And besides, if we were all parts of the body, I'd essentially be the hands. Which meant it was my job to grab for the impossible goals, even if they seemed out of reach.

While I waited at the edge of the forest that marked the end of Cassie's family's property, the part of the body I was waiting for was the mouth, followed by the eyes. Er...okay, to clarify let me just expand on the metaphor.

Jake is the leader. It makes him the brain of the group, since he considers all of the information presented to him before making a decision.

When we meet up at Cassie's barn to decide what to do about the Yeerks, Tobias keeps watch. Because he is trapped in the body of a hawk his excellent eyesight comes in handy, thus he is the eyes.

Cassie is the heart. I don't just mean she's nice, which she is. But like a heart, without her, the other Animorphs wouldn't have lasted this long. Without her, I don't know how I manged to survive. But because her mother is vet who works at the wildlife portion of The Gardens and her father is also a vet who runs a clinic out of his barn, she has easy access to animals. She can also find the simplest solution to problems when the rest of us are overcomplicating it.

Rachel, Jake's cousin, is the legs. Definitely the legs. And not because she's attractive, which she definitely is. But more or less because like Cassie, Rachel is the one that seems to move everyone to action. I've known her a total of a few months and she's always the first to volunteer for something dangerous. Like the legs, she's ready to kick butt.

Marco is the...well, you don't want to know what part of the body I think he his.

A flash of blue fur appeared between the trees and I smiled as the mouth of the group approached. Mouth, stomach, or whatever part of the digestive system you prefer, fits Ax perfectly.

Axilimili-Esgarrouth-Isthill to be precise. The others shortened his name to Ax since it's easier on the tongue. He doesn't seem to mind the nickname so that's what I've been calling him.

In addition to no mouth, he has three slits where a human nose would be. And at the top of his head were two long stalks that resembled horns, only they ended with an extra set of eyes. So while he was looking at you with a pair of almond shaped eyes that were positioned roughly in the same plaec you would find a human's, he was looking in all other directions with this stalk-eyes. His upper body resembles a human torso and he has two arms that are pretty weak in comparrison to our own and his hands have extra fingers. And if you weren't convinced that this was not a poorly concieved Star Trek alien, the rest of his body would probably do the trick.

While his upper body was vaguely humanoid, the lower half of him resembled a horse or a deer. Four long legs ended in hooves, which he used to eat and drink. And at the end of his slender body was a long tail that usually caught your eye before anything else did. Mainly because that tail ended in a curved bone that was as sharp as it was intimidating. The only thing that kept me from worrying about it when I first met Ax was knowing that if he wanted to hurt me, I wouldn't have much time to think about it. As is, I've seen Visser Three in action and we're all pretty familiar with what that tail can do.

"Hello Ax," I called out as I met him halfway.

<Greetings Sean,> Ax replied, in the same thoughtspeak we use when we're in morph. Since Andalites have no mouths, they communicate that way all the time. <You've brought cinnamon buns?>

Smiling, I held up the box and he stopped by a tree and began his human morph. Somewhere down the line, Ax acquired Jake, Rachel, Cassie and Marco and combined their DNA into one morph. His skin tone had elements of Cassie's dark brown and Marco's olive skin with a lighter shade that must have from Rachel and Jake. As his facial features and hair formed he had an oddly androgynous look to him that would have drawn attention where I come from.

A pair of bike shorts were also part of his morph. Since Andalites don't wear clothes they didn't think to leave anything to the imagination in the event that a species with modesty ever got ahold of the morphing power. Skin tight clothes like shorts and leotards were the only things we could morph without either getting caught in them or tearing them up completely. Shoes and socks were right out.

Ax had some clothes in a hole in the ground with a collapsable roof that he called his scoop. Since his scoop was someways into the forest, Cassie also gave him an old trunk to keep near the edge of the forest. During my first few weeks with the Animorphs, I was borrowing clothes from Ax, which technically meant I was borrowing from Marco and Jake. Now that I've been making some semblence of my own money, I've tried to help with Ax's laundry and with replacing the clothes I had to borrow.

"May I have the cinnamon buns now?"  Ax asked after he was fully dressed. "Bunzzz. Bunnz-uh."

"You may have one," I said, opening the box. "I got another one for Tobias."

Ax eagerly took the bun I offered him. Cinnabun wasn't the cheapest place to buy cinnamon buns from. But the look on Ax's face as he digs into it, enjoying it as much as he does makes the hours of collecting bottles and cans for recycling worth it.

"Slowly," I said. "Remember, you enjoy it more when you take your time with it."

"But I enjoy it now," Ax protested, with his mouth half full.

"Right. But then you get a stomach ache. Or it freaks out the clerk at the counter."

Ax frowned. "You mean the lady with the ice cream was upset? Up-set. Uppp, set. T."

I shook my head. "Let's just say I think we'd both better avoid the Mister Ice Cream van for a while."

<Are you still trying to get him to eat normally?>

I looked up. A blur of brown flew over the tops of the trees. I followed it as it banked and dived, keeping one eye on the box with the remaining cinnamon bun. That would be the aformentioned eyes of the group. Tobias.

Remember when I said I could become any animal I wanted for two hours at a time? Well, I wasn't just saying that because I get bored being a hawk, or a shark, or some other animal. When someone stays in a morph for over the two hour time limit, they become permanently trapped in that morph. Tobias was stuck in the form of a red-tailed hawk and thanks to the interference of an alien who is even more infuriating than the Chee, he not only got the power to morph again, but he was able to acquire a past version of himself.

"I'm just trying to help him blend in a bit more," I reminded him.

<And you've been doing that how long?> Tobias asked, pointedly. He landed on a low branch of a close tree.

"Three months." I said, feigning a sigh. "But I got him to use a knife and fork properly so that's progress."

"Tobias, Sean has brought you a Cinnamon bun." Ax said. His eyes were wide in that borderline psychotic glare that he was known for when he ate in this morph. "May I have it, please."

Tobias chucked. <Of course Ax. I appreciate the thought though, Sean.>

I shrugged. "It's no big."

We chatted about unimportant stuff while Ax crammed his cinnamon bun. When I was able to get him to use a napkin, we finally started the walk to Cassie's barn. Cassie was busy feeding an injured fawn.

She's always busy doing something around the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. I think she and I could have gotten along well if we had met before the whole war thing. Jake and Marco were talking about basketball, which I immediately tuned out and Rachel was reading a book for some class.

They all greeted me with varying levels of enthusiasm. Cassie was at least distracted with work. Jake always had that polite, professional tone that a boss might speak to a lower level employee with. Marco gave me the barest ghost of a suspicious glance, along with mild annoyance when he saw Ax a few steps behind me licking his fingers. At first I thought the attitude came from some unspoken barrier I had crossed when I first started hanging out with Ax without consulting the others. As if he was their dog and I wasn't allowed to socialize with him without their permission.

Now I know that inspite of the fact that I met them before the incident, and the fact that I had partially earned Jake's trust during said incident, there was an unspoken elephant in the room. The elephant was now a rat living on an island somewhere off the coast. Whatever I did, however I behaved, I would be in David's shadow for a while.

Story of my life.

"Hey guys," I returned the greeting.

Tobias took up his usual place in the rafters.

"All right," Jake said, calling the meeting together. "Since we're all here lets get this out of the way. Sean, Erek has something he needs to tell us."

Jake read my expression. The one that said I'd rather morph a deer and go into the cage with the injured wolf than deal with the Chee ever again. "He said it was urgent. I know you're still upset with him, but the Chee are our only real allies and we need whatever help they can give us."

"Boy, like I haven't in that boat." I said, rolling my eyes. Off of everyone's looks, a mixture of scowls and one sympathetic glance (Ax's face was generally neutral in human morph, but as long as I kept the food coming, I was sure to get sympathy at least. ) I straightened up. "But I'll behave. When does he get here?"

"I'm here all ready."