The Galactic War: Rogue Element ~The Beginning

[KitsuneMarie]

Daniel's eyes narrow protectively as he turns with Terenia. "No," he puts up a hand to halt her from saying more, and then fixes his gaze on Claxter. "**** off," he growls. "You've got no right to say that kind of thing to her. You have no idea what she's endured."


Tess squeezes Chris's hand tightly, looking to Ossanlin for his answer regarding Keslin. "Alright," she whispers to Chris, her forehead wrinkled with her residual worry.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

<Several Yeerks were rescued.  I'm afraid I didn't look closely enough at the files to see the names each claimed, I know only that each one rescued had an apprehension date that matched the date of attack upon the Rebellion.  If you were infested when caught, it is a safe assumption that your controller is swimming around in that pool.>  He indicates the large metallic bowl floating at a slightly lower level than Tess herself.

Ossanlin fixes Claxter with a stern look.  <Stop backbiting...I wouldn't have left her there in any case.  We, none of us, gain nothing by being hostile.  Her threats are empty at this point in any case.  If I must confiscate weapons...>  He nods to Chris and walks back out into the main room, favoring the whole group with his main eyes.  <...I will.  I understand that all of you are in pain.  I'm sure you've all lost someone important to you, perhaps many that were important to you.  Use this time to grieve, not to be hostile.  Like it or not, we're your way out of here, and I refuse to dispatch anyone...so we're all going to have to get along.  I realize there's not much room in the Mirage...there will be more once we rendezvous with the Tyrennian.  None of us,> he gestures around the room, indicating the Andalites, <have any home to go back to either.  As far as the Electorate is concerned, we're all dead and the Tyrennian along with us.  If they found out we're still alive, we'd all be regarded as traitors.>

<So everyone just calm down.>  He glances at Efaen.  <You won't be going anywhere.  You're stuck with us whether you like it or not.  You already have too much knowledge to be sent back.  Besides which, you disappeared with the Yeerks who assaulted the facility.  Combine that with our inside knowledge of the facility, your known sympathies, and your access to said information about the facility, and the blame for the traitorous act of releasing confidential information to Yeerks will be laid solidly at your hooves.  You won't be considered dead, you'll be considered a traitor despite your unknown status.>

<We're all going to have to live together for some time at least...so you all need to put aside your animosities, and we'll do the same.>

[Chad32]

<I know enough-> Claxter started to say before Ossanlin interrupted him. <Yes sir.> He said.

<So I take it you enjoyed your time with the rebels? Make any friends?> He asked Efaen genuinely. It had been a year or more for her, and if she still didn't want to return to the Andalites, she must have had some positive experiences at the base. Now that he was with her again, doing what he did was worth it.

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Ossanlin glances back at Claxter with a stalk eye.  <<She won't remember you, or anything about herself before the base.  They wiped her memory after she released Barium into their pool and killed several un-hosted rebels.  She's a different person than she once was.>>

[Chad32]

Claxter didn't know what to say to that. Oh he knew what he'd like to do, but it wouldn't really matter. She didn't remember him? How he saved her? Their time together? <<She remembers you. What does she know, exactly?>> It didn't really change his feelings for her. He could still be there for her. Fill in the blanks.

[Terenia]

Chris' fingers tighten a little during Ossanlin's speech to the group of them, though he keeps his expression relatively impassive. He has spent enough years in a leadership role to know when someone is putting themselves in charge. He knows he owes them his life, as well as Tess' and his unborn children, but the idea of putting his full faith behind an Andalite makes him incredibly uncomfortable.

"Keslin," he murmurs. He pulls away from Tess ever so slightly, looking over at the pool. The Yeerks are almost identical to his human eye, but just knowing that his oldest friend might be mere feet away makes things better.


Terenia stops talking at Daniel's request. She turns away, dropping her gaze. "I need to sit down," she whispers to him in a flat, dull voice.


Efaen stares at Claxter. <I'm sorry, do I know you?> she asks, her thought-speak sounding a little petulant. Her main eyes shift around the room once more and, uncomfortable, she begins to morph again. It becomes quickly apparent that the morph is human, though it is not the form of Mike. This morph is slighter, more feminine. It has the same dark hair that Mike has, though it is frizzy and curly. Her eyes are gray and her stature in this morph is quite short.

As she morphs she keeps her gaze on Claxter, head tilted curiously.

[Chad32]

<I heard you got your memories erased because you did something you shouldn't have. I don't know how much you know anymore, but we met at a bar. I got you away from Terenia when she was still a Yeerk who enslaved you. It was at a place called the Galaxy's Edge Space Bar, and we had some nice moments together. Then she convinced you to go with her in an effort to keep you as her host, though you convinced Reven to allow you to join the rebellion without becoming a controller.>

<My name is Claxter, and I'm your friend. I followed Ossanlin mainly to come find you, and now that I have I'd like to continue being your friend. If you don't mind.>

[Terenia]

Efaen shakes her head, the onslaught of information overwhelming her. "You are an Andalite," she says aloud, preferring the spoken word to thought-speak. "What's more, you say you were her friend -- the me that I once was. Anyone who befriended that person is not someone I wish to be friends with now." She scoots, almost unconsciously, towards Tara and the other rebels. "These are my friends. Ossanlin took me away from them."

[Luke Skywalker (Ossanlin)]

Ossanlin glances back at Claxter again.  <<Her memories of me are only those that post-date her time with the Rebellion.  I removed her to avoid her death at the hands of rebels, and to attempt to preserve the careful balance of peace between the Rebellion and the Electorate.>>  He directs the private thought to both Claxter and Efaen.

[Chad32]

She really was a different person now. <I don't know what happened with you after you left. It was a year at the base, but one days at the bar, due to the strangeness of the place. I hope I haven't put you off too much. As long as you're happy, I'm happy.> He thought perhaps he should leave, but he didn't really have anything else to do. <I promise I won't harm you, or bother you if you don't want to be bothered. It's good you don't still think of all Yeerks as evil people. You seemed so convinced before. I guess I could have turned out the same way if I hadn't run off.>

<<So she doesn't even know you took her away to keep her from being killed? If she's all buddies with them now, why does Terenia still want to kill her? Besides Terenia just being insane?>>

[Shenmue654]

Joanne listens as Ossanlin makes his speech about friendship and togetherness. After speaking with the Hork-Bajir, that's about what she expected. I get 'is point, but this whole thing's a problem. The rebels an' me don' exactly get along. I'll help 'em, but who knows if they'll help me. I was wanted already--as soon as I find out where Kess is, we'll stick around until we get a ship and then blow this sorry boat. Joanne stands watching until Ossanlin finishes, and then continues to wade through the crowd of rebels uneasily. ....oh, mother. One of them's the chick she tried to kill at the Space Bar. Hard to forget that face, too. This day was just getting better and better. The only rational one's been dragged off to the med bay and the others she knows were at one point lined up in the sight of her Dracon.

Joanne finally locates the only person she stands a chance of talking to in the crowd: Tara herself. Terrified, exhausted, breathing with some difficulty after the sprint. Joanne wasn't even winded from the effort, and none of her friends are dead. Joanne glances off, her posture wavering. ...what could she possibly say, now that she'd spotted the human? She couldn't really relate to how Tara was feeling. More than two-thirds of the rebellion was gone. Myitt was in a tank somewhere, probably. Their rescuer was Ossanlin.

"Um...hey," states Joanne in an awkward, timid voice very much unlike her usual tone. "Do...d'ya know if they got Kess out? ........dammit...."

Well that came out exactly as wrong as she thought it would.   

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Keshin feels a peculiar falling sensation and tumbles into....Kandrona. Keshin swims around in glee, no words for the pleasure of being submerged in the warm water he travels in now. He ecolocates into the pool and senses the presence of other Yeerks falling into it. His kin! ...he still has no idea what is happening, but events are exactly as the previous voice some time earlier had promised. They are allowed to feed.

Keshin sends a quick ping into the water. <This is Keshin, the turelek. I was captured with the rebellion. Who else is here? Myitt? Corliss?>

[Terenia]

"The Yeerks here attempted to give me a home. They gave me a second chance, despite the atrocities I committed," Efaen says levelly. "That is a chance no Andalite ever gave me. Ossanlin ripped me from my people. The Electorate shuttled me to some remote place on the Homeworld, calling me a vecol. The Electorate separated me from my Yeerk. If there is any people that can be considered evil, it is the Andalites, not the Yeerks."


Terenia's progression is again halted, but this time it isn't by Claxter's words. Her eyes land on a familiar face she had never expected to see. "Daniel," she says in a whisper, eyes widening, then narrowing as she eyes the host of the turelek that nearly killed her. "Daniel, it's Joanne. Joanne and Keshin." She shakes her head. "I need to go. I can't be in here."

[Chad32]

<Why did they call you a vecol? It was my understanding that the military wouldn't let you advance as far as you should because you were female. What made you decide to take a Yeerk voluntarily, and what is their name?> He wasn't really angered or anything that she had been infested. Though it sounded like they had messed with her mind and brainwashed her. He just needed more information to know how to react to such a thing. It was becoming clear that this Efaen was not his Efaen, but he couldn't just turn off his feelings. she had been wronged, but the more serious wrong was from Terenia.

<Given recent events, I won't deny your accusations that the electorate is bad. They are racist, and a lot of what our people touch goes wrong. There is no black and white in this war. Both sides are stained by atrocities. We just have to judge people by what they do. Not what they are.>

[Terenia]

"What does his name matter?" Efaen asks, scoffing. "Are you going to go and retrieve him for me?"

Scowling, she stays nearer to the rebels than the Andalites, more comfortable in their human company than that of her own kind. "I don't know anything about my time in the military before," she continues. "All I know is that when Prince Ossanlin forced me to return to your Homeworld I asked them to allow me to rejoin the military. They refused. The wipe of my memories was enough for them to consider me a vecol -- handicapped mentally to the point that they did not believe I could function in Andalite society."

[Chad32]

<No, I'm not going to go rescue your friend. I merely asked because I'd like to know more about you and your friends. I'm sorry that you lost people you cared about. I don't know if your friends are mainly your friends because they wiped your memory and turned you into a new person. It may not really matter, as long as you manage to live a productive and happy life of your own free will. I do hope that we can be friends, and that you won't go from considering one whole race of being evil to just believing another whole race of being evil. That's still the same racist generalizing problem as before.>

<You know, you kind of remind me of an Andalite named Aliciania. She felt more Human than Andalite too, and liked to hang out with Myitt.>