Prologue: Origins

[Kit Cloudkicker]

Kasey follows after Sam and Jas, catching most of what Alice is saying. She hesitates, worried that there's as much chance that the snake could be a bad guy, as there is that he could be a good guy. Finally, she decides to take Alice's advice. <Hey uh...snakey snakey. What's shakin'?> She asks in private thought speak directed toward the snake.

[Myitt]

"No, you wouldn't be fine out there, Jas," Sam murmurs through gritted teeth as she keeps walking away from the girls and their dog.  The dog at least hasn't started jumping all over her yet, maybe it would decide to turn back.  Sam doesn't look back to see Alec and Reece emerge from the woods that border the suburban development. 

She considers the scanner, now jammed into her pocket with her keys once more.  Still not a sound.  Sam makes a mental note that those houses would bear investigation--alien signals were coming from them, from the one 'Cherise' and 'Tammy' had emerged from, and how was she to know those overly friendly girls and their dog weren't the sources?  She was tired.  Too exhausted to think about it, and too scared.  Besides, she thinks, what am I supposed to do, go up to them and ask them if they're aliens?  See if it's okay to search their house?  That'd go over well.

[Breekan1]

"Yeah, most people never expect that they'd wind up buying Tupperware but my mom, she's a heck of a sales lady," Reece laughs. "Though with everyone running around outside like this, I guess things must've dispersed. Torrence, where'd the lady you ran into go? Maybe we can track her down and see if she's someone Alec knows." Reece scans the skylines for other spaceships or his fellow animal morphers. He makes a mental note to come up with a less awkward term than "animal morphers" at some point in the near future.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Jas froze, a foreign voice entering his head.  <Hey, uh snakey snakey...what's shakin?>   Where the hell had that come from?  And worse...the thought had to be addressed to him, what other snake would be around?  What the heck...unless...was that the dog?  Could regular animals speak to him when he was an animal?!  That seemed really outrageous...was he Dr. Doolittle or something now?  He slithered a bit in the clothing pile, making his coils a little more comfortable.  Should he talk back?  He didn't remember Jethsa saying anything about animals talking....

<Uhmm....good doggy....you should go back to your master....uhm....sh e's probably worried about you...I'm not good at playing...>  Jas didn't know what else to do, if the dog WAS talking, maybe that would make him go away, if he wasn't, well no one else would hear it he thought.  Except maybe Sam.

[Kit Cloudkicker]

Frozen in shock, Kasey hesitates before responding. <Snakey snakey, you got a name? I'm, uh. I'm Kit.> She steps closer to the pile, and the snake. Doing her best to look like a curious, happy dog, she wags her tail and sniffs at the snake.

[Seryna]

Christina, in gray fox form, saddled up alongside a near by house where she could watch the goings on.

<What's going on?>  She said to Alice, Reece, Kasey and Torrence. <The space ship totally booked it.>

Torrence made a point of not looking for Cristina- heading after Kasey - Kit.

"Here girl," She said. "Stop bothering the neighbors."  Turning the corner, she crouched next to Kasey - dog. "Hey girl," She scratched Kasey behind the ears as she looked up at the older woman.

"Do you live around here?" She edged, guessing not from her confusion regarding where a bus stop was.  "There's a guy who says he's looking for his friends."

Alec nodded distractedly. "I'm sure your mom is a helluva sales person, but my heart just isn't into food storage right now.  There's been an, uh, accident... and I need to get with some people so we can go to the, uh, hospital."

[Breekan1]

"The hospital?" Reece asks, alarmed. "What kind of accident? Here, let's catch up with the others tracking the dog, maybe we all can help." Reece begins to lead Alec towards Torrence, Alice, Dog-Kasey and Sam.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Jas would've sighed if he'd have been able to as a snake.  What the crap was this?!  This dog...no, something else was going on here...the girl said the dog was a she, but the scent in the air definitely marked it as a male.  Then the difference in names...what the h*ll was all this?!!  Jas froze again, suddenly sorry he'd thought at the dog.  This was not good in any way, shape, or form.  <Sam we have to get OUT of here!>  The thought was a mere whisper... <The dog is thinking at me and I'm way creeped out....it's a male by the way and they keep calling it female...something's up.  Jesus what the h*ll do we do?  D*mn d*mn d*mn!>

[Kit Cloudkicker]

Kasey continues to direct her thought speak privately toward the snake, <You think you're creeped out. Why the he** is a snake, being carried by a woman inside a pile of mens' clothing talking to me. Are you a, a, Anylite?> Kasey takes a stab at the name, hoping she got it right.

[Myitt]

"Hey!  Doggie!  Go away," says Sam, as Kasey-the-dog snuffles at her clothes.  She continues walking away, pausing only when Torrence addresses her again.  "No, I don't live around here," she says snippily, and keeps on walking.  She adds offhandedly, "I'm just looking for the nearest bus stop."

She tenses up when Jas says the dog's thinking at him, and really a male.  Why would they lie?  Besides, dogs do not think at anyone.  Andalites think at things.  Or maybe the bad guys did, too.  The Yeerks.  Jethsa wasn't too clear on that point.  "Sorry," she says loudly to Torrence.  "I really have to go and find a main road with a bus stop.  Thanks, see ya, bye!" 

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Anylite?  So the dog definitely wasn't an animal, wasn't an andalite, and wasn't a Yeerk.  He had to have meant "Andalite."  A dog wouldn't have known anything about andalites even if they could talk, an andalite would've known whether or not there were others on the planet most-likely, and the Yeerks would not mispronounce the name he thought, plus they didn't have the ability to change.  Everything pointed to something else going on here...the human with the leash had to know the dog was a changeling...so the dog was probably a human, a human with the same powers that he and Sam and Alec had gotten that night.

Then Jas figured it out, he was surprised there wasn't a bright flash over his head, the scanner...maybe it could detect other morphers.  They had found that blue cube, that Escafil on Earth...there had to have been an andalite before Jethsa, and perhaps that Andalite had had the same idea as Jethsa, giving morphing powers to other humans to fight the Yeerks.  It was a long shot, but it was the only thing that made sense.  <Sam, the dog...I think he's a changed human.  And the other ones probably know about it too.  Think, that blue box was already here...there must've been another andalite, maybe that andalite gave the morphing powers to these kids too...had the same idea.  The scanner...it might've been detecting these guys, detecting other changelings.  Look, I talked back to the dog...so they know about me...I should change back.  I think we should talk to them...there's no going back.  Are you with me Sammy?>

[Myitt]

Out of normal human earshot from the other girls temporarily, Sam hisses, "Yeah, but Jas, what if they're the evil aliens?  We don't know if they have this power, too.  You saw that facility we took the cube from, it could have been a Yeerk hideout just as easily as an Andalite one.  It took a while for you to change into that snake, I don't know if I'm ready to hold them off with this stupid gun.  I'm scared, alright?  I just want to go home.  Screw the aliens, screw the morphing, screw all of this."

[Kit Cloudkicker]

After hearing Sam's spiel, Kaaey responds in open thought speak so that both her friends and Jas and Sam can hear her, <They? Who's they? If you're talking about my friends, they don't know I can do this. I was given the ability to morph into animals by an...a mighty Andalite. And then today I saw a freaky ship flying outside by my house and it looked like you were running from it lady.  So I asked my friends to walk my dog while I ran to the store, morphed the dog and chased afer you. And now I find out that you're a morpher like me... What the hell s going on here? I think we need to talk about this away from listening ears.> Kasey pointedly looks in the direction of her friends with his last comment. She prays that they got the mesaage to play dumb"  and that these new people believe her hastily made up story.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Jas would've raised his eyebrows if he'd had any.  <Okay, so he's making up stories too.  Actually I think it's a girl from the tone of her thought, who morphed a male dog.  She ran to the store and changed, yet she was being walked on a leash by her friend.  That lie's a slap in the face.  I think Jethsa would've told us if the Yeerks had the cube, so I don't think that's it.  Look Sam, much as I'd like to go home and drink until my liver fails and I die in a happy stupor, we have a responsibility now.  I hate responsibility...bu t I'll be d*mned if I'm gonna go home and give up.  Grandpa would turn tornados in his grave.  They already know your face, and Alec's too, I'm not gonna let you guys go it alone, especially you.  They might as well know mine too.>

Jas slithered out from the clothing and down as far as he could before dropping to the ground in front of Sam.  He slithered a bit away from her and the dog, flicking his tongue one last time before thinking about himself.  Hopefully no one was standing at their windows to see the grotesque display as Jas' snake body elongated and started to puff up like some sort of huge sausage being filled.  Arms and legs sprouted from his body and grew until they were full-sized and Jas looked like some sort of mutated crocodile with human limbs.  Then his scales changed to skin and formed his slim frame, the last thing was his hair, sprouting from his head to achieve it's regular length.

Jas stood up on the sidewalk in the middle of a streetlamp's light and looked at the kids standing around before realizing...he was absolutely and completely nude!  He raised his eyebrows in surprise but made no move to cover himself, just scratching the back of his head and shifting from foot to foot trying not to look embarassed.  "Uhm...hi."  Jas chuckled a bit before remembering his clothes were close at hand.  "Uh, Sam...can I have my underwear back?"  Jas wasn't exactly a modest person, but neither did he regularly go running around naked in public...except that one time...but that was after four beers and ten shots of Jack.  He didn't want to turn his back on the kids for several reasons...one being he still didn't trust them.  Of course that meant a full frontal view and that DID embarass him though he tried to hide it by faking relaxation.  "Sam...?"

[Breekan1]

Reece tried not to give too much away as he saw the girl from the video kneeling and whispering, or when Kasey broadcast her thoughtspeech for all to hear. But when he saw the naked man emerging from what had moments prior been a snake, he figured the jig was up. A morph-capable Yeerk could have turned into a polar bear and just eaten the seemingly-normal teenagers, and no one who knew what they were doing would have transformed in the middle of the street like that. He reckoned he couldn't trust the thieves, but they didn't seem too threatening. He took a deep breath and stepped forward to shake Sam and Jas's hands.

"My name is Reece," he began. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Just Reece, for now." He pulls at his bike shorts and grins. "We can teach you how to take your briefs with you next time, but you're going to have to cooperate first."