Prologue: Origins

[Myitt]

Sam sighs in exasperation.  "Come on, Jas, let's see what these guys are all about." She follows the strangers into their house, dodging a grey fox as it jumps in ahead of her.  Nothing should surprise her, by now...

She stands in the kitchen, looking down at the device, which has started to beep.  "What is this thing signaling, anyway?  Is it that ship, or something else?  No...it was coming from your house, before."

[Breekan1]

Reece nods to Sam. "We do. And you're right- we need to get our heads together at Kasey's so we can figure things out a bit." He heads to Kasey's, holding the door open for everyone who comes after him. He peers in as Sam's doohickey bleeps. "We were in here earlier when we saw the ship- maybe it let off some sort of, I dunno, space-radiation or something?"

[Kit Cloudkicker]

Kasey stares at the small grouph of morphers standing in her kitchen and glances nervously at the door. Wothout intrpducong herself she informs the others "We'll talk in my room. It'll give us an easy escape if my parents come home and a good view of the woods to watch for the ship and the Andalite." She turns and leaves the kitchen, leading the way to her room. She sits on the floor and looks at the three newcomers.  "How did you get the morphing power?" she asks, confused.

[Myitt]

Sam follows Kasey into her room.  "We acquired the morphing power, oh, less than an hour ago, thanks to an Andalite named Jethsa," she says, still just a little bit incredulous.  "She was hurt, and the power healed her, but if that ship is after her she could be hurt again.  Hey, you seem familiar somehow...have we met before?  I'm Sam."

[Seryna]

"We know who you are." Torrence told Sam. "We looked you up in the year book.  I guess were all trusting each other, so-"

Torrence began to demorph the half - morph she'd done to mask her facial features. The slight shortening of her arms and legs reversed, transforming her back into her normal self.

"Hey, I'm Torrence. Sam-" She nods to Sam. "- and Jas and Alec." She nods to the others.
"There are some others, too- Eddie, Damien, Brit, Autumn and a girl we rescued from becoming a Controller."

"Hey," Christina walked in, wearing the skin tight outfit that Kasey had lent her. "Fox girl reporting in.  What are we going to do?"

[Myitt]

Sam takes a step back as Torrence changes ever-so-slightly.  "Oh, my God, I still can't get used to this," she says breathlessly.  She nods at everyone.  "Hi, I'm...I'm Sam.  Nice to meet all of you."  She watches Christina walk in.  "You're the fox?  Alright, that's it, nothing can surprise me anymore.  For real."  She shakes her head.  "I still haven't even tried this morphing thing.  I haven't touched any animals and...and thought about them, or whatever it is.  I'm still confused about the whole thing."  She eyes Jas, jerking a thumb at him.  "He's old hat at it, I guess."  She smiles a little, elbowing her friend. 

"Wait, how did you look me up in the yearbook, if you just met me?" she adds suspiciously.

[Kit Cloudkicker]

Kasey sizes Sam up for a moment before respondong,"You probably dated my brother Matt. You were in the same grade as him. So you left a wounded Andalite out in the woods by itself?" Kasey asks incredulously, raising an eyebrow, and intentionally avoiding Sam's question.

[Myitt]

"Matt?  Doesn't ring a bell," Sam says flatly.  "And no, we didn't leave her in the woods, she was healed by the morphing power and then that ship appeared.  We ran for our lives, Jas had just enough time to find a snake and morph into it, to try and hide.  I wouldn't let him hide in the woods as a slimy reptile.  Alec was there, too, he hid the cube somewhere, and Jethsa...I don't know where she is. So here we are."

[SigardTormel]

Vincent's heart jumped into his throat as the alien- Jethas fell to the ground.  He ran over to see if she was even alive, but stopped half way as he realized he couldn't be sure no matter what as he had no idea what the normal heart beat or breathing rythme of what Jethas was.  It was only as he thought of this, that the true insanity of this situation dawned on him.

God this is insane!  Hre I am in the middle of the woods standing over an alien trying to think of how I can be sure she is alive.  Not to mention that this alien is a blue seven fingered stalk eyed scorpion tailed telepathic centaur.  Then there is the strange ship that's flying around looking for her and I'm guessing caused a large burn on her side.  I have GOT to be dreaming.  If not I'm INSANE! Vincent thought as he looked down on Jethas' body.  But even so I can't just leave her like this.  Even if I'm dreaming.  Even if, God forbid, she is actually dead.

The last few thoughts made him decide his next actions.  He would take a quick look in the space ship, if that was infact what it was, to get his bearings then he would drag Jethas inside.

Vincent then turned towards the beautiful ship and walked towards the ramp and open door.

[Seryna]

Jethsa was quite heavy to drag but still felt warm to the touch.  That was reassuring- it meant that she was alive, didn't it?

As Vincent dragged the heavy alien on board, the ramp slowly closed after him with a pressurized sound. Jethsa - whoever she was- remained immobile and unconscious.


Glancing around the ship, he found that it was much smaller than it appeared from the outside. There was an area to stand by the controls where he'd deposited Jethsa and a chair, both areas faced out of the dome **** pit.  The chair, he realized, did not look like it was supposed to be here.  No, in fact it looked weathered, as though someone had lifted it off of a porch somewhere.

As he studied the chair, he became aware that there was a walkway leading to another area of the ship.  An odd smell was coming from back there.

[FuBar]

I followed everyone else into Kasey's room, but didn't 'demorph' yet. - I wasn't sure how these 3 20-something strangers would react if they thought they were dealing with just a bunch of teenagers, even if there were a lot of us.

"Would you like to see the yearbook we found you in, Sam?" I asked, adopting the name she'd addressed herself by rather than 'Samantha' in full as I had previously been doing.

"If Jethsa was being chased by that Bug-Fighter, she may have sustained a serious injury by now, or maybe worse... Rescuing Jethsa is obviously fairly urgent; If the Blue-Box is well-hidden we may be able to save her before we retrieve it, or we could split up? Go for both simultaneously?... I know, I'll call Jenny! She'll be relieved that the Escafil device has been located and she can come collect it and return it to it's home in the underground complex, where Yeerk scanners will never find it. - Incidentally, how did you manage to not only find its hiding place, but get in and take it too? Perhaps we can find a way to secure it against a repeat performance by somebody more... Unsavoury, shall we say?"

As I finished talking, I realised I'd given the 'weird space-ship' a name they'd be unfamiliar with;
"Yes, I recognised that space-ship. It's of Yeerk design, and the Andalites call them Bug-Fighters, for understandable reasons given their shape."

As it started to beep, I turned my attention (and my sensors) to the Andalite technology Sam had in her hands, trying to determine what it was designed to detect...

I secretly contacted 'Jenny' via Chee-Net and brought her up-to-speed on meeting the 3 strangers and them having buried the Blue-Box somewhere nearby. I also mentioned that there appeared to be a female Andalite here on Earth that was somewhere nearby, probably injured by the Bug-Fighter chasing her. Hopefully she'd make good use of this information.

If my idea to 'call' Jenny was accepted, I'd fake the call. If not, at least she'd still know.

[Breekan1]

Reece crosses his arms. "If the ship was chasing her while we were tailing it, then it didn't have her yet. Which means we've got to track down a startled alien that can change into anything it wants, rather than having to fight a spaceship." He looks at the kitchen clock. "Unless she's been captured in the past few minutes..."

He closed his eyes, tried to clear his head. He was beginning to feel tired again. "So she can morph like us, meaning that it's gonna be about twelve pains trying to find her, since she could be a squirrel for all we know. But if we do anything to call her attention to us, we're bound to end up with a back yard full of angry Yeerks..." He shook his head, thinking about the lost ship- wondering if he'd have seen her if he'd just looked down while going after that damn ship.

His eyes snapped open. He turned his head to Sam. "Ship! Did she have a ship that you guys saw?"

[SigardTormel]

The odd smell made Vincent feel uneasy He couldn't figure out what it was and from the way it had "sounded" when Jethsa spoke there shouldn't have been any one on the ship.  Then again the smell could merely be something that was from the ship or a pet and was supposed to be there.

But why was a chair in here it wasn't like Jethsa could use it?  And if she could have and wanted to why not just have it installed in the first place?  All this ran through his head quickly as he looked between the chair the hallway and Jethsa's unconscious body.

Taking a deep breath he started down the walkway towards the smell.

[Seryna]

GM

As Alice evaluated the device, she could pick up nothing besides it was clearly transmitting and receiving some sort of signal.  Exactly what the signal was she could not comprehend.

I secretly contacted 'Jenny' via Chee-Net and brought her up-to-speed on meeting the 3 strangers and them having buried the Blue-Box somewhere nearby. I also mentioned that there appeared to be a female Andalite here on Earth that was somewhere nearby, probably injured by the Bug-Fighter chasing her. Hopefully she'd make good use of this information.

'Alice', we need you here immediately.  A terse reply came back immediately.  Extricate yourself from the others and return here alone at once.

Andalite Ship
As Vincent walked around the short hallway that he approximated was about five feet long, he immediately came to a stop.  A small barricade of sorts had been constructed from ripped fabric, barring him from walking into the second open space on the ship.

Glancing in he could see two more stations similiar to the ones at the front of the ship, minus the odd chair. There was also a long table covered with flashing indicator lights and various alien script.  

His eyes were drawn lower where he noted three long, black sheets stretched across the floor.  Underneath the farthest two, he received a shock in that two bodies lay immobile beneath the sheet.  From his position, he could see that the sheets had been arranged to mask all aspects of the deceased bodies, from their legs to the long scorpion tail, for there could be no doubt that he was staring at dead aliens.

The third sheet lay rumpled upon the ground.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Jas accepted the leather harness and slung it over his shoulders, careful of the gun as he tucked it under his left shoulder.  He picked up his over-shirt and slipped that on too.  He unconsciously stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a piece of gum, sticking it in his mouth.  After biting down on that belt he noted that his jaw was still sore.  Strange.

He followed the others to the house and then to the girl's bedroom, c0cking his head and raising an eyebrow.  "This is all very strange..."  He looked over at the girl whose house this was.  "Don't suppose you guys have any vodka?  Wine?  Ugh I need to get drunk."  He smiled a bit to show it was a joke, but it was only half-hearted.  There was nothing more he wanted to do right now than go straight home, get smashed, and watch some Gravitation.  Hell, he'd even sit still for Paranoia Agent or Furi Kuri if that's all there was.  He thought those particular animes would seem normal now that all this had happened to him.

"I'm not old anything Sam...I just thought about it and it worked...it's still really weird, not to mention being completely naked when you turn back.  God why did all this happen to me?  Why couldn't I just be joyfully ignorant of the situation like the rest of the humans on this planet?  Ugh."  Jas shook his head.  "Jethsa needs help.  Much as I don't trust new people..."  Jas favors the entire room with a glance, excepting Sam quite obviously from it, "We saw the ship land, we went to investigate...that's when we met her.  And when she asked us to get that cube for her.  We might be able to find the ship again, but there's no guarantee that the other ship hasn't already.  I suppose it's the best place to start though.  All I can do is turn into a bloody bull-snake...I'd sure like to know how you managed to touch an adult rhino...where you even found one to touch in the first place..."