Let's Read Animorphs! The Whole Series! Ch-ch-ch-chaaanges

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MrNemo: Aug 26, 2010; "I just love beeting off"

Pretty sure a book back Ax made a remark that he can't use thought speak in human morph because they have a mouth or something. Which makes no sense but I kind of understand the narrative convenience of it.

# ? Sep 8, 2020 08:10

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# ? May 24, 2024 14:21

Fritzler: Sep 5, 2007

MrNemo posted:

Pretty sure a book back Ax made a remark that he can't use thought speak in human morph because they have a mouth or something. Which makes no sense but I kind of understand the narrative convenience of it.

Same, but related to this book 15 spoilers: I know they transform into parrots to harrass the rainforest cafe. Can they thoughtspeak as parrots?

# ? Sep 8, 2020 15:19

Piell: Sep 3, 2006; Grey Worm's Ken doll-like groin throbbed with the anticipatory pleasure that only a slightly warm and moist piece of lemoncake could offer; Young Orc

Fritzler posted:

Same, but related to this book 15 spoilers: I know they transform into parrots to harrass the rainforest cafe. Can they thoughtspeak as parrots?

Yes.

# ? Sep 8, 2020 15:24

Silver2195: Apr 4, 2012

quote:

I felt my hearts stop. It was more than I could stand. After years of being controlled by Visser Three, the mind of the Andalite host was still alive. Still aware.

That makes it sound like Ax believes that someone who's been a Controller for a few years would normally undergo irreversible ego-death. I don't remember this coming up in later books. I'm tempted to speculate that this is Andalite military propaganda to make them feel less bad about killing Controllers. But maybe I'm just reading too much into it?

# ? Sep 8, 2020 18:38

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

Chapman could barely stand after... however long, and V3 is a particularly vicious Yeerk. I'd probably be every bit as surprised.

# ? Sep 8, 2020 18:49

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Silver2195 posted:

That makes it sound like Ax believes that someone who's been a Controller for a few years would normally undergo irreversible ego-death. I don't remember this coming up in later books. I'm tempted to speculate that this is Andalite military propaganda to make them feel less bad about killing Controllers. But maybe I'm just reading too much into it?

Maybe, but we've seen from the memories of Jake's Yeerk that Tom has been reduced to a quivering mess, his only resistance desperate begging his Yeerik to leave Jake alone, and the woman Rachel ran into in the Megamorphs book who was a former Yeerk host is completely mentally broken and emotionally destroyed.

So complete ego death sounds like a pretty good description of long term Yeerk infestation.

# ? Sep 8, 2020 18:53

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Book 9: The Secret-Chapter 5

quote:

Wolves can run. Wolves can run all through the night, without stopping or slowing or taking a break. We ran, Marco and I, jumping fallen logs, swerving through trees, and skirting patches of thorns.

Across sunset-lit meadows, and through dark stands of tall pines. We splashed happily through streams and skittered across rocks.

We were running on sensation, our heads swimming with smell and sound and sight. There was nothing within a thousand yards that we didn�t know about. We were plugged into the data stream of nature itself.

We smelled the logging camp long before we reached it. Then we heard the sounds of machines. And we heard the murmurs of conversation. Human voices.

Then we got a reminder that we were not the only hyper-alert predators in the forest.

<Is that you guys?> a thought-speak voice asked. Jake�s voice.

<Yes. Where are you?> I asked.

<Way up above you,> Jake said with a laugh. I stopped running and craned my head back like I was going to howl at the moon. Through a break in the trees I saw a patch of sky. And way, way up in that sky, I saw three tiny black dots.

Tobias and Jake, floating a quarter-mile up. Even in the weakening light they had seen us from clear up in the bellies of the clouds.

She forgot about....Rachel probably?

quote:

<The place is just ahead. Lots of heavy equipment. Guards. But go take a look. Just be careful.>

<We�d hang out, but the sun�s going down and we won�t be able to see much more anyway,> Tobias remarked.

<You saw us,> I said, a bit grumpily.

Tobias laughed. <Yeah, but you�re a pair of great big wolves. That�s not much of a challenge. Now, that flea crawling by your ear �>

<You can�t see a flea,> I said.

<Heh, heh, heh,> Tobias answered. <Can�t I?>

Marco and I started moving forward again, but slower than before. More cautiously. Through the trees we began to see light. Artificial light.

We crept slowly nearer, shoulders hunched, heads low, ears aimed forward, sniffing the wind for clues. The command center building was bigger than it had looked at first. It was made of logs, like some kind of rustic ranger station. It was two stories tall, with a porch on the front.

On the back-and-side ground levels there were no windows. None at all. There were windows on the upper level, but they were dark. Too dark for me to see into.

There were blindingly bright spotlights mounted atop the building. The forest had been cut back a hundred feet or so on all sides of the building, and the bare, scarred earth all around was lit as bright as the sunniest day.

A dozen or so huge pieces of equipment were parked neatly side by side. Earthmovers, oddly shaped cranes, trucks, and some monstrous thing that looked like a huge kid�s toy. I guessed that it was used to cut trees.

My heightened wolf senses noticed several men walking around the perimeter of the clearing. They were spaced about fifty yards apart and seemed very alert.

The nearest one was walking just in front of us. Marco and I crouched low behind tree trunks and stood perfectly still.

The man wore a tan uniform. The legs of his pants were tucked into high leather boots. He was carrying an automatic rifle.

<Okay, this does look just slightly extreme for a logging camp. That guy is no lumberjack,> I said.

I aimed my ears at the building, but no sounds came from inside. Either there was no one in there or they had soundproofed the place really well.

<Are you getting anything?> Marco asked me.

<Not from inside the building. But I�m smelling stuff that I can�t recognize. Weird smells.>

<Yeah. Me, too. Animal smells, but weird, you know?>

<Hork-Bajir?>

<Could be,> Marco said.

<The guards are all human,> I pointed out. <You know, this may have nothing to do with the Yeerks. Maybe whoever these guys are, they�re up to something totally different. I mean, normal humans do act strange sometimes. Not every weird person is a Controller.>

<No. But don�t forget - the force field. Even if these guys were like drug dealers or something, I don�t think they�d have a force field.>

You really think she would have remembered that.

quote:

<Good point.> I fell silent. I had heard a noise. Several noises. Movement. Careful, stealthy movement.

I glanced at Marco. I saw that his ears were pricked up, too. <Yeah, I heard it,> Marco said.

<Behind us. Someone circling around.>

I felt the knife edge of fear. The human part of me was afraid. The wolf me was not. But I trusted the human instinct more on this.

<Where are the guards?> I asked.

<Uh-oh,> Marco said.

Blinding light!

Light everywhere. Everywhere! The whole world was a brilliant white.

I felt like the whole universe could see me.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

The sound of sharp, cracking explosions in the trees above us. I glanced up. Something falling. A net!

Big steel nets were exploding from the trees above us, falling toward us. There were heavy weights at the edges.

<RUN!>

We bolted. The net above me fell. I was racing the falling edge, racing, racing �

Free!

The net scraped my back. But I was out from under!

TSEWWW! TSEWWW!

A brilliant stab of red light shot from the dark upper windows of the log building. The beam hit the base of a tree not six inches from me. The wood was vaporized. A six-inch hole was blown right through its trunk.

Dracon beams!

I started to run. But something felt wrong. Marco! Where was he?

I turned and looked back. He was under the net! He was weighed down and crawling on his belly to get free of it.

I ran back.

TSEWWW! TSEWWW!

The Dracon beams, almost pale in the brilliant floodlit woods, fired again and again. I grabbed the edge of the net in my jaws and lifted it up. It was shockingly heavy. No wonder Marco was crawling.

<Get out of here!> Marco yelled. <Don�t get killed for me.>

<Shut up and come on!> I cried.

TSEWWW! TSEWWW!

I couldn�t hold the net. My jaws were aching. My neck was dragging down. Marco was barely inching forward. The Dracon beams were getting more and more accurate.

And now I saw where the guards had disappeared to. They were running through the woods toward us. Half a dozen men carrying automatic weapons. It was an eerie and terrifying sight, as the men cast gigantic shadows up into the treetops.

Then � something fast. Faster than a wolf. Faster than a human.

Like a deer. Like a horse. A mouthless face, eyes on stalks, a tail like a scorpion. A creature like nothing that lived on Earth. It raced straight for us.

<Ax!> I cried.

His tail struck, faster than a human eye could follow.

The tail blade made sparks as it sliced through the net, leaving a long gash just in front of Marco�s nose.

So Andalite tail blades can actually cut through steel. And remember, Ax is still young and not fully grown.

quote:

<Yikes! That was a little close!> Marco said. But he surged through the hole in the net and took off. I was right behind him. Wolves are already fast. But when you get a scared wolf with a scared human mind inside it, you�d be amazed how that animal can move.

We hauled our butts out of there, with Ax right beside us.

BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!

Gunfire! Good, old-fashioned, human, very deadly gunfire.

It�s much louder in reality than it is in movies. And it�s much scarier to have it aimed at you than it is to see it in a movie. Basically, getting shot at is absolutely nothing like a movie.

<Aaaaahhh!> I yelled.

<Aaaaahhh!> Marco yelled.

<Aaaaahhh!> Ax agreed.

Two wolves and an Andalite set a new record speeding away from that place.

It's true. Guns are loud. Fun little trivia thing. When the game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory came out, the Allied and Axis weapons were identical, but game testers thought that the Allied submachine gun, the Thompson, was a stronger weapon that the Axis submachine gun, the MP40. The only reason for this was because the sound of the weapon was louder and deeper. Mechanically, they were identical. The game designers actually had to change the sound file to make the Thompson quieter.

Book 9: The Secret-Chapter 6

quote:

�Okay, I think we�ve answered the question about whether that�s just an ordinary logging camp,� Marco said.

We had reached the far edge of the forest, back close to my farm. Marco and I had demorphed.

Rachel and Jake flew down and joined us. Tobias took up a perch on a low branch.

Ax stood nearby. His two stalk eyes moved continuously, side to side, peering into the dark woods around us. His two main eyes met my gaze.

�By the way, thanks, Ax,� I said.

�Yeah, no kidding,� Marco added. �I was Spam back there. That tail blade of yours is something.�

 Ax berated himself. 

Ax, like all Andalites, has no spoken speech. Probably because they have no mouths. Thoughtspeak is his natural language.

Up close he looks like a cross between a deer or a horse, and a human and a scorpion. Sort of like a mythical centaur. His upper body is like a boy�s. He has weak-looking arms and a head with two movable stalks on top, kind of like antlers. Each stalk has an eye. The eyes are constantly looking left and right and back.

Andalites are very hard to sneak up on.

His body is covered in blue and tan fur, very short on his humanoid torso, a bit longer on his deerlike body. His four hooves are sharp and black.

But it�s the tail that grabs your attention. It�s long enough that he can whip it up over his head and hit someone standing in front of him. It ends in a curved blade.

�None of us saw the nets,� Jake pointed out. �They must have been well concealed.�

�The point is, they were waiting for us,� Marco said. �This is definitely a Yeerk operation. I don�t think they really want to go into the lumberjack business, which means this whole thing is about getting us.�

�Agreed,� Rachel said tersely. �They think we�re Andalites. They know we�ve been hurting them all around this area. They�ve decided we must be hiding in these woods.�

�They�re almost right,� Jake pointed out. �Ax and Tobias both do live in the forest. And we do use the forest.�

�You know, we�re not the only thing going on here,� I said.

They all looked puzzled.

I took a deep breath. �I mean, you know, this forest is important even if Tobias and Ax weren�t here. It makes me sick to think of people chopping down all these trees.�

�Oh, puh-leeze, not the Earth-Mother thing, okay?� Marco said. �I almost got myself fried by a Dracon beam. That wasn�t to save Bambi, all right?�

�Look, Marco, we are not the only animals around. We, of all people, ought to understand that.�

�Cassie, who cares? We�re fighting to save the world from the Yeerks. Who cares about some ecology, tree-hugging, recycle-your-cans stuff?�

�I do,� I said.

�Well, that�s you,� Marco said. �Personally, what I care about is the fact that a bunch of Yeerks have that, that fortress back there, and they�re going to use it to tear up these woods looking for us.�

I started to say something back, when Jake held up his hand. �It seems to me it doesn�t matter whether we have slightly different ideas about why we care. I mean, either way, we want to stop this from going on. Right?�

He looked at Marco, then at me. I was annoyed with Jake right then. I mean, I understand that he has to consider everyone�s ideas equally. But still, it was like he was agreeing with Marco that it didn�t matter if the forest was wiped out, as long as we survived.

I turned to Rachel for support, but she found something to look at down on the ground.

Oh, great, I thought. Even Rachel thinks I�m wrong.

So, Jake leadership tip. Focus on shared goals, not different motivations.

quote:

<The important thing is we have to stop them,> Tobias said.

�And how exactly do we do that?� Marco asked. �That place is the Fortress of Doom.�

�Knock it down? Blow it up?� Rachel mused.

�Grab some of that heavy equipment they have and run it into the place?� Marco suggested. �We don�t have the benefit of surprise. They know we�re coming. They know sooner or later we�re gonna go after them.�

<The heavy equipment would be useless,> Ax said. <That building is surrounded by a force field. The equipment would not penetrate it. Neither would we. We would be stopped by the force field and then cut to pieces by the Dracon beams.>

Rachel�s lips pressed into a thin line. �So we just give up? That�s the plan? We let them go
chopping through the woods till they find you, Ax, or Tobias?�

Ax didn�t have an answer.

�You know, I wouldn�t want to sound like some stupid ecology nut or anything,� I said sarcastically. �But the question is: How did the Yeerks ever get permission to start logging in a national forest?�

�Why is that helpful?� Marco asked, even more sarcastically.

�Because sometimes, Marco, there are more subtle ways of doing things. The Yeerks don�t control the entire government. Not yet, anyway. So they had to get legal permission. If they didn�t have permission they�d have cops and federal agents and TV newspeople all over them. They don�t want that.�

Marco looked like he had some smart reply to make. Then he said, �Oh.�

Jake cocked an eyebrow at his best friend. �See, Marco, this is why Cassie is a nicer person than you. She could have said, �They don�t want that, duh.��

Marco grinned, despite himself.

Jake winked at me, and I forgave him for acting like Marco was right before. �What do you think we should do?�

I shrugged. I hate having to think of things that might end up getting people hurt or killed. �I guess � I mean, okay, um � Okay, look, the Yeerks must have gotten to someone. They must have one of their Controllers in some kind of high position. We need to find out who.�

<And how do we do that?> Tobias asked.

�I guess �� I looked at Jake for help. I knew the answer. I just didn�t want to say it. See, when we make plans, we tend to end up in terrible danger later on.

�We have to get inside that building,� Jake said for me.

I nodded. The least I could do was agree.

Rachel shook her head. �I don�t know any animal big enough to force a way inside that place.�

�Not big,� I said. �Small. Very small.�

Please not an ant again.

Anyway, the Animorphs plan to use both morphing and the power of bureaucracy to stop the Yeerks.

# ? Sep 9, 2020 01:39

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

This one feels like a needless risk, just move Ax and Tobias to a different forest and let them waste their time while focusing on more important things.

# ? Sep 9, 2020 02:58

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

......where do you live that there are multiple forests in close proximity?

# ? Sep 9, 2020 03:13

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Also, isn't that the forest that backs right up against Cassie's place?

# ? Sep 9, 2020 03:24

HisMajestyBOB: Oct 21, 2010; College Slice

Even if the Yeerks lose, couldn't they just monitor the forest for blue deer with Bug Fighters?

Or set it on fire during the dry season?

# ? Sep 9, 2020 03:29

disaster pastor: May 1, 2007

HisMajestyBOB posted:

Even if the Yeerks lose, couldn't they just monitor the forest for blue deer with Bug Fighters?

Or set it on fire during the dry season?

Gender reveal parties: secretly a Yeerk plot to eliminate any potential Andalite habitats.

# ? Sep 9, 2020 03:45

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

disaster pastor posted:

Gender reveal parties: secretly a Yeerk plot to eliminate any potential Andalite habitats.

Only in this case because the Yeerks are agendered there's no colour, it's just a straight ball of fire.

# ? Sep 9, 2020 03:54

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

Pink for girl, blue for boy, grey for photosynthesising omnicidal neural parasite

# ? Sep 9, 2020 04:02

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

This does raise the amusing point of location. "I can't tell you where I live... except it's the United States, on the coast, with mountains and forest in close proximity..."

edit - did they mention it was state forest? I was never really clear on what that means, but I would assume it can't be national park if they're logging. I remember when I first drove across Australia being perplexed by the huge swathes of bushland in Western Australia which weren't marked on my roadmap as anything in particular. They weren't national parks, they weren't state forest, they were just... wilderness? Which I guess is national land by default? But I wouldn't think there's much of that going around in California.

freebooter fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Sep 9, 2020

# ? Sep 9, 2020 08:47

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

freebooter posted:

But I wouldn't think there's much of that going around in California.

You'd be surprised. Huge swathes of the western US are owned by the government because there's no useful resources there and they're lovely places to live.

# ? Sep 9, 2020 12:42

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Cythereal posted:

You'd be surprised. Huge swathes of the western US are owned by the government because there's no useful resources there and they're lovely places to live.

Extremely large amounts of land. 85% of Nevada, for instance, is Federal land, 65% of Utah, and 45% of California. Some of the land is actually pretty commercially valuable with a bunch of resources too, which means that federal leases are big business. It's become a major political issue out there and has been for a whole, The whole Ammon Bundy/Bundy Ranch standoff started, for instance, because of Bundy not paying federal grazing fees for his cattle.

# ? Sep 9, 2020 13:13

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Cythereal posted:

You'd be surprised. Huge swathes of the western US are owned by the government because there's no useful resources there and they're lovely places to live.

Imagine the Yeerks taking over the Bundy clan.

# ? Sep 9, 2020 13:19

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Cythereal posted:

You'd be surprised. Huge swathes of the western US are owned by the government because there's no useful resources there and they're lovely places to live.

And yet I could hardly ever find anywhere to pull off the road and camp because it was always fenced off!

# ? Sep 9, 2020 14:42

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Book 9:The Secret-Chapter 7

quote:

�Where have you been?� my dad asked me when I finally got back home later that evening. He was in the kitchen, searching the refrigerator.
It kind of took me by surprise. My parents don�t usually ask me a lot of questions. Mostly they trust me. And it used to be they could trust me. I don�t think I�d lied to my parents before becoming an Animorph. Now it�s like I�m lying all the time. It�s a rotten feeling.

It's kind of interesting here. Cassie is basically an honest person, and now she's forced to be deceitful. I'd assume it is a rotten feeling.

quote:

�Oh � um, I was just out walking,� I said. �Why? Did you need me for something?�

�Oh, yes,� my dad said. He was sounding way too solemn, so I knew he wasn�t actually serious.

That�s the way he is. I guess he has a dry sense of humor. That�s what Jake says, anyway. He thinks my dad is the funniest man on the planet.

�What is it?�

�Just got a call from the highway patrol. They said this � this certain animal � is out by the side of the highway, where it cuts through the forest. They say this certain animal seems to have a bad burn.�I didn�t like the way he kept saying �certain animal.�

�We have to drive out and get it,� my dad said. Then he grinned. �Actually, I�ll drive. You have to get it.�

I groaned. There was only one animal in all the world my dad was afraid of. He handled foxes and wolves and even bears. But he would not handle this �certain animal.�

�Are you telling me it�s a skunk?� I asked.

He nodded. �You have such a way with skunks,� he said. �They like you. Besides, I have to go meet with the board of the Dudette Cat Food Corporation tomorrow. I can�t show up smelling like skunk.�

My mom appeared, climbing up from the basement. She was carrying a six-pack of V-8 juice.

�This is all I could find in the pantry,� she said.

You see, tomato juice is one of the few things that helps get rid of skunk smell. �Mom, shouldn�t you be the one to help dad with this? I � I have very important homework to do.�

�Yeah, right,� my mom said.

�This is pathetic. You guys are both highly trained veterinarians,� I pointed out. �How can you be scared of skunks?�

�I didn�t used to be,� my father said darkly. �Back before � before the incident.�

�Just because one skunk sprayed you -�

�In the face,� he said.

�Just because you had one bad experience -�

�He sprayed me six times in about three seconds,� he said. �I smelled for a week. Your mother made me sleep in the barn. Except the other animals there all became agitated, so I had to set up a tent in the yard.�

�Then we had to burn the tent,� my mother added. She giggled.

�You do have a way with skunks,� my father said. �Actually, you have a way with all animals. Come on, you know skunks love you.�

�A burned skunk by the side of a highway loves no one,� I said.

Ten minutes later, we were on the highway. We were driving in our new pickup truck. My father�s old, beloved pickup truck had been stolen and totally destroyed.

At least that�s what my dad believed. Actually, we�d sort of had to borrow it in this terrible battle. Marco had been driving, and Marco cannot drive. The truck had ended up a total wreck in a ditch.

Anti-Marco slander. He's a great driver. He's so good, he's evolved beyond the need for roads.

quote:

On the way, we listened to the CD player. That was the only thing my dad liked about the new truck. He was playing some old jazz or something.
We reached the spot the highway patrol had told my dad about. We pulled over and put on the hazard lights.

�Careful. People drive like maniacs through here,� he warned me as we climbed out.

Cars were blowing past at seventy miles an hour with their high beams on. The black forest pressed in around the road on both sides. I shone a flashlight around the edge of the trees.

Normally, the forest doesn�t bother me. But I knew that we were actually within a quarter mile of the Yeerk logging camp. It was beyond strange to be practically going back to the place where, just an hour before, I�d nearly been killed.

It took us at least twenty minutes, walking up and down the grassy shoulder of the road, before my flashlight beam landed on a shock of black and white.

�Dad! Here!�

He came trotting over and added his light to mine.

�Yep,� he commented. �I�ll get the cage. Don�t forget your gloves. You know skunks are a major vector for rabies.�

�Dad, I have had the shot.�

�No vaccine is a hundred percent,� he said.

I walked toward the skunk. It saw me and turned tiny, glittering black eyes on me.

�Don�t be afraid,� I said, pitching my voice high. �It�s okay. We�re here to help you. It�s going to be just fine.�

Here�s the thing about skunks: They are the sweetest animals alive. They don�t have a mean bone in their bodies. But that�s because they don�t have to be mean. They possess the ultimate weapon. Even so, they will always warn you. If they turn their backs on you, that�s a warning. If they raise
their tails with the tips down, that�s a very serious warning. If they raise the tips of their tails � you are in a very bad situation.

If you�re dealing with a skunk who has turned buttward and raised its tail all the way, you would want to freeze. Trust me. Every wild animal knows this. Dogs, unfortunately, don�t understand about skunks, but bears, raccoons, wolves, and most birds of prey know that you just don�t mess with that
skunk tail.

Maybe you think you know how bad skunk musk is because you�ve driven by skunk roadkill.

That�s nothing. Up close and personal, it�s a whole different level of stench. If you imagine the most horrible smell possible, then multiply it by a thousand, you still won�t be close.

�It�s okay, sweetie,� I cooed. �Don�t spray me. I�m your friend, so please don�t spray me.�

I moved closer and crouched lower, making myself small. I wanted to look nonthreatening. I moved very slowly, a step at a time, always cooing and baby-talking like I was going to grab a little kid armed with a shotgun.

The skunk moved! I froze.

The skunk settled back down. I breathed again.

�Please don�t spray me,� I said. I reached into my pocket and took out a bit of mouse meat. We keep frozen mice for the raptors we handle. Skunks also enjoy a nice mouse or grasshopper as part of their diets.

�Here you go. Dinner.�

I held the meat out for the skunk. The skunk didn�t seem to be hungry, but it did accept the fact that I must be okay if I was offering dinner.

I crouched beside the skunk and set my flashlight on the ground. Carefully, with my gloved hand, I reached out to touch the animal.

It was shaking. Shivering. And, at that very moment, I could see why.

There was a burn right across the skunk�s back. A perfectly semicircular burn, as if someone had simply sliced a scoop out of it.

�Dracon beam,� I whispered. �You were there, weren�t you? Poor baby.�

Aiming at me and Marco, the Yeerks had hit this skunk instead. A completely innocent animal caught in the cross fire of the war between Yeerks and humans.

The Yeerks would destroy all the forest and all its animals to get at us.

�Sorry,� I whispered to the skunk.

I lifted it slowly, carefully, up into my arms.

I think the difference between Cassie and myself is that I feel bad for the skunk in abstract, but I'm not tearing my hair out over it. She's not good with emotional distance.

Book 9:The Secret-Chapter 8

quote:

We met at the mall. It was a Saturday, so it was a normal place we might be. When you live in a world where you�re surrounded by possible enemies, it�s important not to do anything too unusual. You don�t want to draw attention.

Not even from your own family and school friends. You just never know who can be trusted and who can�t.

The Yeerks believed we were Andalites. We wanted them to go on believing that. If they ever figured out we were humans, let alone kids, we were toast.

So we left no clues. We tried not to act like we were a group. We didn�t want some Controller teacher or whatever thinking, �Hey, you know what? Those same kids are always hanging out together, acting like they�re planning something.�

We had to look and act and seem normal. Rachel still went to gymnastics classes and shopped. Jake and Marco still shot hoops in Jake�s driveway or played video games. I took care of animals at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic.

There was nothing we could do to make Tobias seem normal. He was way past being normal.

But Tobias came from a terrible, messed-up background, shuttling from one indifferent aunt or uncle to another. He�d never really been part of a family or a structure, and sadly, no one seemed to notice when he simply disappeared.

I spent an hour wandering along behind Rachel as she moved like a professional through the racks at The Limited and Banana Republic and The Gap and the various department stores. Rachel has some bizarre, supernatural instinct for when and where sales will happen. She doesn�t need the advertising. She just �knows.�

We were cruising through a series of tables piled with sweaters at Express. Rachel was looking for a particular shade of green that probably didn�t exist.

�What do you think we�re going to do?� I asked her.

She looked up from fondling a sweater. �What? Oh. I guess we�ll probably go in. If we can find a way.�
�That�s what I was wondering. What way? How do we get inside that place? I mean, I know we�re thinking insect morph. But if anyone is planning on doing ants again, I�ll tell you right now, I�m not doing it.�
Rachel gave a little shudder. �I�m sure no one wants to do ants again.�

We�d had some really bad experiences morphing. But morphing ants was the worst. We ended up being the wrong species and tribe of ants in the middle of enemy ant territory.

You would not believe the nightmares that came out of that one. The tunnels pressing in all around, and then hundreds of vicious ant soldiers exploded all around us, attacking, attacking �

�No ants,� I said. I looked at Rachel, trying to catch her eye. �Right?�

Rachel shrugged. Then she glanced at her watch. �It�s time. Ax is coming with them, so let�s not keep them waiting.�

�Ax? Uh-oh.�

Jake, Marco, and a strikingly handsome boy were all sitting in the food court. They seemed to be arguing loudly about who had won some video game in the arcade.

�Hey! Rachel!� Marco called out as we passed by. �What are you guys doing here?�

I really didn�t like this kind of acting. It seemed silly to me. But it had to look like an accident that we all ended up together in the same place at the same time.

�We�re shopping,� I muttered. �You know how I love shopping.�

�Why don�t you guys hang out with us. Have some of our nachos,� Jake said, smiling brightly.

I looked at the paper plate of nachos. They were completely gone. There was nothing left but a paper plate with a slight orange stain from the cheese. There was a matching orange stain on the chin of the very handsome boy between Marco and Jake.

Jake saw what I was looking at and rolled his eyes. �At least he didn�t eat the plate this time.�

�Hello,� Ax said to me. �I am Jake�s cousin, Phillip. Jake�s cousin. Scousin. Scuzzin. I am from out of town.�

I couldn�t help but laugh. Ax had long ago created a human morph out of DNA he�d acquired from the four of us. He was a weird blending of each of us. He was male, but sort of pretty in a weird way.

He looked like a human. He basically was a human. But he still had a lot of problems adjusting to the human morph. For one thing, since Andalites have no mouth, he found his human mouth utterly fascinating. He couldn�t help but play with the sounds of words.

And the boy was dangerous around food.

�Were the nachos good?� I asked him.

�They tasted of grease and salt. Plus, there was another flavor that reminds me of some delicious engine oil I tried once. Oil. Oil-luh.�

�Engine oil?� Jake asked. �Ax � I mean, Phillip � You know how I mentioned you can�t eat cigarette butts or dryer lint? Add engine oil to the list.�

Ax nodded. �Yes. There are many rules for eating.�

So many eating rules.

quote:

Marco pushed out a chair for me to sit in. �Okay, if we�re done with the little side trip into the bizarre-o zone, let�s deal with business.�

�Tobias came by this morning,� Jake said, keeping his voice low. �He watched the place from high up. He thinks the Controllers at the site have little transponders on their belts that let them pass through the force field.�

�So we just have to grab a transponder,� Rachel said.

�No,� Ax said. �The transponder would be keyed to the biochemical signature of the wearer. The Yeerks are not as -�

�Don�t say that word,� Jake hissed.

I saw Marco�s eyes dart quickly, looking to see if anyone was close enough to have overheard.

�Sorry. Ree. Saw-ree,� Ax said. �Rachel�s plan would not work.�

Jake sighed. �Tobias also saw something else. Inside the force field. There are tiny holes in the wood foundation of the building. He thinks it�s termites at work.�

�Termites?� I asked.

Jake nodded. �Yep.�

I swallowed. �Jake, termites are awfully close to being ants.�

�They aren�t as vicious,� Jake said. �I looked up some information on the Internet. Besides, if we make sure we morph a termite from that very colony, we�d fit right in.�

I was having trouble breathing. I noticed Marco�s face turning gray. Even Ax looked grim.

�You�re not serious, right?� I asked Jake. �I mean, termites? Termites?�

I probably sounded slightly hysterical. I know I felt slightly hysterical.

�I don�t know how else to do it,� Jake said. He was looking down at the table and biting his lip.

�Cassie, you were right when you said the real question is how these guys got permission to start logging. That�s their weakness. We have to know how they pulled this off. To know that we have to get inside that building.�

�Through termite tunnels?� Marco asked. �Look, how do we even get a termite to acquire? They�re all inside that force field, right?�

I wanted that to be the truth. But when I looked at Jake, he just shook his head a little.

�Tobias says they were working on the building a little today. Putting in extra Dracon beams. They had to cut away some of the logs.�

Jake reached into the pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a small, glass vial. The top had tiny holes in it to let air through.

Inside the vial was a tiny, tan-and-white bug. It was about the size of an ant. It had an enlarged brown head.

�Same colony,� Jake said. �From the same building.�

I stared at the termite. It tried to climb up the side of the glass, but it slipped back down.

It was helpless. It was trapped in what must have seemed like a huge glass cell held by a creature so gigantic that the termite could never even begin to imagine it.

Jake took the top off the vial.

�We don�t do this unless everyone agrees,� he said. �But we can�t let the � them � start tearing through the forest.�

Rachel held out her hand. Jake tapped the vial till the insect landed in her palm.

I saw it crawl across Rachel�s lifeline. And I saw it become still, as Rachel acquired the termite DNA.

I imagined being that termite. Crawling across the gigantic hand. Thinking every crease in Rachel�s palm was as deep as a ditch.

When Rachel was done, I held out my own hand. It was shaking. It was shaking and I couldn�t stop it from shaking.

The brightly lit mall food court suddenly seemed dark.

Lord, that tiny insect scared me.

Deep down inside, it truly scared me.

Because things went so well the last time they became eusocial insects.

# ? Sep 10, 2020 00:27

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

"Looking for a shade of green that probably didn't exist" is a good line. And Philip being from "out of town" never gets old, either!

# ? Sep 10, 2020 05:43

feetnotes: Jan 29, 2008

Always kind of bugged me that Ax likes eating cigarette butts and oil and stuff. His sense of tase and associated instincts come from the human morph, and we don�t avoid eating those things because of like, social conditioning. It�s because they are poisonous and therefore taste really bad to us.

I mean, obviously the real answer is Because Jokes. Just chalk it up to another little element of weirdness with Ax�s human morph not quite working like other morphs do for storytelling sake.

# ? Sep 10, 2020 16:20

Bobulus: Jan 28, 2007

feetnotes posted:

Always kind of bugged me that Ax likes eating cigarette butts and oil and stuff. His sense of tase and associated instincts come from the human morph, and we don�t avoid eating those things because of like, social conditioning. It�s because they are poisonous and therefore taste really bad to us.

I mean, obviously the real answer is Because Jokes. Just chalk it up to another little element of weirdness with Ax�s human morph not quite working like other morphs do for storytelling sake.

My take was that Ax hasn't shown much discrimination in tastes that are good from tastes that are bad. He's overwhelmed by even having the sense, so strong reactions are appealing to him, either way. Same reason he found the hot sauce absolutely fascinating.

We haven't really covered what happens to food you eat in a morph, huh? Hopefully there are safeguards in place for something like this. Something something Z-space...

# ? Sep 10, 2020 16:57

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Bobulus posted:

My take was that Ax hasn't shown much discrimination in tastes that are good from tastes that are bad. He's overwhelmed by even having the sense, so strong reactions are appealing to him, either way. Same reason he found the hot sauce absolutely fascinating.

Ax is just a prototype of the Cenobites at this point.

# ? Sep 10, 2020 19:22

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Sorry I'm late with this. I got busy..

Book 9: The Secret-Chapter 9

quote:

We would go that night. That very night.

We were supposed to use the afternoon to deal with chores and family stuff and homework.

Try it sometime. Try doing homework when you think you may be going to your doom in a few hours. Try concentrating on math when you�re thinking you have to turn into a termite and sneak into a heavily defended building.

Good luck.

Universal experience, really.

quote:

I went out to the barn. My dad was out there, making his rounds. He didn�t need my help, but he didn�t say no, either.

�Did you finish your homework?�

�Mostly.� I added another lie to the pile I�d already had to tell.

�I was going to take a closer look at your skunk from last night. She was very agitated so I had to give her a mild sedative.�

�It�s a female?�

�Yep.�

My father carried the cage into the little side room he uses to examine the patients. I eased the skunk from her cage and cradled her out to the examination table. She seemed very calm now, but it was an unnatural, drugged calm.

The night before, my dad had bandaged the wound and now he carefully removed the gauze. The sight of the burn made me wince, even though I�ve seen hundreds of injured animals.

�Hmm. Hmm. Pah. Pah. Pah. Hmmm.�

That�s the sound my dad makes when he�s examining something interesting. �Pah.� I don�t know why, he just does.

�Weird. Very unusual. I cannot for the life of me guess what caused this burn. It�s too neat. Too clean. The only good thing is, whatever caused it was so hot it partially cauterized the tissue.�

�Muscle damage, or is it just superficial?� I asked.

My dad glanced at me and smiled. �It�s mostly fur and skin that were burned. But I see some moderately severe damage in the shoulder here. Much deeper and the spine would have been burned. But she�ll live. I wish I could say as much for her kits.�

�Her what? She has babies?�

�Yeah. I�d say probably about six, seven weeks old.�

�She has babies? Out there somewhere in the woods?�

My dad started applying a new bandage. �Cassie, you know nature plays rough.�

�But they�re too young to survive on their own, aren�t they?�

�I can�t be sure,� he said, not looking at me.

It occurred to me then that sometimes maybe he lied to me, too. For my own good. Or because of what he thought was my own good.

�They�re sitting in some den wondering where their mother is,� I said. �They�ll starve to death. Or be eaten by predators.�

�Hand me the scissors,� my father said.

�Yeah. Okay. Um, look. I meant to ask you, is it okay if I spend the night at Rachel�s tonight?�

�Sure, honey. You know, if your mom says it�s okay. Hey. You never asked how my meeting went with the cat food people this morning. We got some additional funding!�

We talked for a while as we made rounds together. But my heart wasn�t in it. I was thinking about some baby skunks somewhere, mewing and crying for their mother.

And I was thinking I wished my dad wasn�t so quick to let me go to Rachel�s. Because, of course, we weren�t really having a sleepover. Rachel was going to tell her mom she was spending the night at my house. And Jake would tell his parents a lie, and Marco would tell his father a lie, and
we�d all be going into a situation that none of us wanted to be in.

I was going to face death, that very night. And the last thing I would have said to my father was a lie.

I remembered the tunnels of the ants. I remembered them the way I saw them in my nightmares. I never had seen them in reality. Ants don�t see very well, and there�s no light underground.

But in my dreams I saw everything. I saw the huge, metallic-looking heads of the enemy ants as they crashed through sand walls and locked their massive pincers on me and tried to slice me into pieces.

Do you know what it�s like to think that you�re going to die, and never even get back to human form? To believe that you�re going to die as an ant, trapped in a hell that no human had ever been to?

And now I also saw those little skunk kits. Starving. Crying out, and with each cry, signaling to some predator.

�Sweetheart, are you okay?�

I realized my dad was staring at me. I had been breathing hard, almost crying. There were beads of sweat on my forehead.

�Yeah. Fine. Fine,� I said quietly.

He finished his rounds and left.

I stayed behind. I went back to the skunk in her cage.

I opened the cage door and put my hand in. I was not wearing a glove.

See, you can�t acquire DNA if you�re wearing gloves.

The thing with Cassie is that she takes stuff personally, even when it might be better not to.

Chapter 10

quote:

�Well, what a surprise seeing you all here,� Marco said in a low whisper.

�Everyone still up for this?� Jake asked.

�Sure,� Marco answered. �We�re looking forward to it. Who needs sleep when you can run off on a suicide mission instead?�

It was pitch-black. It was three in the morning. We were at the edge of the forest. Jake, Rachel, Marco, and me. Tobias was in the tree above us.

The same five kids who had wandered stupidly through a construction site at night on our way home from the mall. The same kids who had seen the Andalite fighter land. The same five kids whose lives had been changed forever.

We had been made into soldiers that night. Soldiers in a terrible war we could not really hope to win.

Tobias had paid a terrible price. But so had the rest of us. There we were, in the dark, ready to do things that would make us scream if we ever stopped to think about them for too long.

Ax was there, too. Poor Ax, who was even more alone than the rest of us. He was in his own body, his stalk eyes restlessly peering in every direction.

�I thought we�d morph owls,� Jake suggested. �They�re fast, and they fly well at night. Till we get close.�

I was relieved. Owl was a good choice for what I had in mind. Owls are the only natural predators of adult skunks. See, some species of owls don�t have a sense of smell. If you�re going to eat skunks, that�s a good thing.

I wasn�t going to eat adult skunks, of course. I was going to try to find some skunk babies.

So she's got her own secret agenda here.

quote:

<Wish I could go with you guys,> Tobias said. <But I�m not much use at night.>

�You found us the way to get into this place,� Jake said. �And you got us the termite to morph.�

�And we�re just so amazingly grateful,� Marco said sarcastically.

We all laughed nervously. It was good to know that the others were all as scared as I was. We all started to remove our outer clothing. We wore our morphing suits underneath - a collection of bike shorts, leotards, and T-shirts. We can morph skintight clothing, but not things like sweaters or shoes or watches.

Jake wore a pair of bike shorts and a sort of spandex top. Marco snickered.

�What?� Jake demanded.

Marco put on an innocent face. �Nothing. Nothing. I�m just saying if we�re going to be superheroes we need to do something about these stupid outfits. We look like refugees from a Bulgarian gymnastics competition. That�s all I�m saying.�

�Except for Rachel, of course,� I pointed out. Naturally, Rachel had found a way to coordinate her outfit. She looked great.

�Here�s the plan,� Jake said. �We morph owls to get close. We demorph at least two hundredyards away from the compound. Then we crawl close, morph termites, dig under the force field, and enter the termite holes in the outside of the building.�

�As long as it�s nice and simple,� Rachel said darkly. She looked at me, and I realized that even fearless Rachel was afraid.

That scared me.

I tried to focus entirely on assuming the owl morph. But my brain was buzzing away. You know how sometimes you can�t stop your brain from just racing around? It�s like a computer that�s playing a dozen programs at once.

I was worrying about too many things - my science project, lying to my parents, whether Ax really tried drinking engine oil, whether the baby skunks had already been killed �

Maybe it was self-defense. I didn�t want to start worrying about the thing that really worried me.

Somehow my life had turned very, very weird.

Little bit of an understatement there.

quote:

I saw Ax was morphing quickly. His tail went limp, like an empty sock. Feathers were growing to replace his fur.

I looked down at my own arm and saw the feather patterns being drawn on my skin. They were beautiful, really, if you didn�t stop to think about them being on you. You could see the quill, a gently curved shaft. From it the thousands of individual vanes spread.

Then, quite suddenly, the feather-drawing became three-dimensional. They seemed to simply pop out of my skin. It itched a little as the feathers grew out, all across my body.

I was shrinking all the while. Getting smaller and smaller. The dirt and pine needles and leaves and twigs all came rushing up at me.

My bare feet grew rough, as if they were one big callous. Toes melted together, then formed into talons. Long, curved, sharp, tearing claws grew.

The talons were the main killing weapon of the great horned owl. An owl would fly along, silent in the night. Then it would strike, grabbing the prey - a rabbit, a squirrel, a rat, a skunk - by the head�

The bones all through my body were rearranging themselves. Many disappeared altogether.

Others became twisted and misshapen. My breast bone grew deeper. My various finger bones grew longer first, then shorter. All of this made a grinding noise that resonated up through my body.

My internal organs were radically redesigned. And my eyes seemed to swell and swell till they filled my entire head. My eyes were so huge compared to my body that they practically rubbed together inside my skull.

Suddenly, it was no longer night. It was as bright as day.

The amount of light that was a dim, flickering candle to my human eyes was a spotlight to my owl�s eyes.

<Whoa!> I heard Rachel cry.

 Ax commented. <They are wonderful.>

I spread my arms wide and opened my wings. The change was complete. I felt the cold edge of the owl�s instincts. The instincts of a predator.

I had morphed the owl before, so I knew what to expect. I had used the eyes and the wings and felt the brain. It wasn�t exactly second nature, but at least it wasn�t a surprise.

<Ready?> Jake asked.

I flapped my wings and drew up my feet and rose easily into the tree branches that, in the darkness, were invisible to humans, but clear as blazing neon to me.

I saw Tobias sitting perched on his branch. I felt his instinctive hawk�s caution as a flight of five horned owls flew past.

The day belonged to the hawks. But night was ours.

<Good luck,> Tobias said. <Don�t eat anything I wouldn�t eat.>

<Hah-hah,> Marco laughed. He was high on the thrill of a good morph. So was I, I guess. There is a rush of power that comes from being an animal in its natural element. Particularly a predator.

In the air at night, nothing could touch us. We reigned supreme in the forest.

We flew in a loose formation, not soaring above the trees, but flitting through them. Our wings didn�t make a sound. An owl�s wings are as carefully designed as the wings of the most advanced stealth fighter. More, really. The feathers are designed not to flutter or ruffle as the owl glides through
the still night air.

Frightened mice, listening for any possible danger, hear nothing at all as the owl swoops down for the kill.

As well as I could see, I could also hear everything. I could hear as well as the wolves.

As we flew to what might be our destruction, I tried to focus on my other goal - listening for the cries of skunk kits. Watching the ground below for the waddling, shuffling walk of a lost baby skunk.

<This is so weird,> Marco said. 

<It�ll be okay,> Jake said.

<Yeah, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?> Rachel asked dryly.

I swooped and zoomed through the trees. All the while I watched the ground below me and focused my hearing, and in that way I reached the Yeerk compound without having to think too much about what was coming next.

What could possibly go wrong?

# ? Sep 11, 2020 01:28

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

I don't know why but I always loved the juxtaposition of normal life, homework etc, juxtaposed against going out into the woods in the middle of the night for some crazy mission. I guess it's the appeal to a child that your apparently boring life might actually have something much more exciting below the surface. And it's weird because I was never, ever interested in superhero stories, but it's basically the same dynamic of leading a double life.

# ? Sep 11, 2020 10:42

wizzardstaff: Apr 6, 2018; Zorch! Splat! Pow!

Epicurius posted:

Cassie posted:
We would go that night. That very night.

We were supposed to use the afternoon to deal with chores and family stuff and homework.

Try it sometime. Try doing homework when you think you may be going to your doom in a few hours. Try concentrating on math when you�re thinking you have to turn into a termite and sneak into a heavily defended building.

Good luck.

Universal experience, really.

freebooter posted:

I don't know why but I always loved the juxtaposition of normal life, homework etc, juxtaposed against going out into the woods in the middle of the night for some crazy mission. I guess it's the appeal to a child that your apparently boring life might actually have something much more exciting below the surface. And it's weird because I was never, ever interested in superhero stories, but it's basically the same dynamic of leading a double life.

This is actually surprisingly relatable to how protesting in Portland has felt for the last few months. By day you might be an unassuming computer-toucher but at night you're going out to get tear-gassed by the police. You read a bedtime story to your toddler and then suit up in your respirator to go stare down the police state. The message of Animorphs as everyday folks thrust into guerrilla resistance is relevant.

# ? Sep 11, 2020 16:40

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Secret-Chapter 11

quote:

<Almost there,> Jake said. <Another couple of minutes.>

Even in thought-speak I could hear the tension in his voice. I felt something like a cold hand squeezing my heart.

Then �

A noise. A noise against a background of noises. But this noise was one that the owl�s brain wanted to hear. A noise the owl�s brain had evolved to notice. The sound of helplessness. The sound of a weak creature. Weak, tiny, helpless babies.

There! It was coming from a hole that no other animal would have seen in the pitch-black of

night. A hole dug beneath the roots of a thorn-bush.

Four � no, five separate voices. were they the skunk kits? Maybe. I couldn�t be sure. But it was night, and they sounded like they were alone. It could be.
I looked around, swiveling my owl�s neck. I tried to form a picture of the place. The trees. The outcropping of rocks just twenty feet away. I wanted to be able to find the place again.

If I was still around to find anything.

The mewling sound of the babies reached something inside me. Inside the human Cassie. But to the owl it was the sound of a meal.

It�s strange to have those two feelings in your head at the same time - human compassion and the cold ruthlessness of the predator. Strange.
<Okay,> Jake said, a few seconds later. <Here.>

We swooped low and landed. I started to demorph quickly. I didn�t want to feel that predator in my mind anymore. Not right then.

The world went dark as my human eyes reemerged. The forest was a darker, quieter place to Homo sapiens.

I looked around and couldn�t see any of the landmarks I�d tried to spot. I would never find those skunk kits in the dark. Not with human eyes, anyway. Maybe by the light of day. I could come back in the morning.

If �

�Okay, we have to get as close to the edge of that compound as we can,� Jake whispered. �We can�t be spotted as humans. But we can�t morph termites too far from the building. Termites don�t exactly move fast.�

 Ax said.

Ax is under the impression that Jake is the equivalent of an Andalite prince.

i mean, he sort of is, isn't he?

quote:

<A distraction,> he continued. <We could give the Yeerks something to chase.>

I knew instantly what he had in mind. �An Andalite?� I asked him.

<The Yeerks would not be able to resist,> he said.

�You could end up very dead that way,� Marco said.

�No, Ax,� Jake said. �We need you inside. There may be Yeerk computers in there. We need you. But a distraction isn�t a bad idea.� Jake looked at me. �Anyone want to volunteer? It would probably be safer than going inside.�

He was offering me a way out. A way to avoid having to become a termite. I should have said yes. I wanted to say yes. But I couldn�t do it. I couldn�t take the easier way out.

�Okay, we draw straws. All except Ax. He goes in, regardless.�

Jake pulled up four strands of tall grass. He shortened them all to about six inches. Then, he took one and shortened it further. �Short straw plays tag with the Yeerks.�

He concealed the bottoms of the straws in his fist.

�Next time let�s play some other game,� Marco said as he drew a straw. �Yahtzee, maybe. I don�t like games that involve life and death.�

One after the other, we each drew a straw. A long straw. I looked carefully at the straw in my hand. Yes, it was a long one.

Jake looked shocked. He held the short straw.

We were all shocked. Somehow it just seemed automatic that Jake would be there with us.

Marco grinned. �Sooner or later we had to try a mission without you, oh great and fearless leader.�

Marco could joke about it. But none of us felt right going in without Jake. Now it was too late to change that.

�Okay,� Jake said briskly. �You guys know what to do. I�ll use the wolf morph. The Yeerks will be on the lookout for wolves.�

He started to walk away. Then he stopped and looked back. �Be careful, all right?�

�Go ahead, Mom,� Rachel said. �We can handle this.�

�At least we hope we can,� I muttered.

Jake walked away and was quickly out of sight.

�Okay, we have to be ready as soon as Jake starts making trouble,� Rachel said. �We hear something go down, we run toward the perimeter of the compound, staying just back in the trees, morph, and hope we can find the way to the building.�

<What do you know about these termites we are morphing?> Ax wondered.

�They�re like ants,� Marco said.

�Actually, they�re related to cockroaches,� I said. �I looked them up in one of my mom�s books. They have a society like ants, but roaches are closer relatives. They eat cellulose - the stuff in wood. Bacteria in their guts digest the wood. The worker termites � they, um, they eliminate their waste.
And the soldier termites kind of eat it. I think, judging from the termite Tobias brought us, that we are going to be morphing soldier termites.�

This is true. Termites are most closely related to the wood roach, which is, like it sounds, a kind of roach that eats wood. They evolved to be eusocial

quote:

The three of them were staring at me, looking a little sick.

�Well, Ax wanted to know,� I said.

A light!

�Look!� I hissed. �Way off through the woods. That must be on the far side of the compound. The spotlights just went on.�

We could hear the sounds of human voices yelling. And then, the wild, defiant howl of a wolf.

�That�s it. Let�s rock,� Rachel said.

We ran toward the compound. We ran, hunched low, scurrying from tree to bush. Then, as we got still closer, we dropped down and crawled on all fours.

I heard shouting and the eerie zap of Dracon beams being fired.

�I hope he�s okay,� I whispered. I didn�t think anyone could hear me.

But Ax said, <Prince Jake is very smart. He will be fine.>

�Do you guys think we�re close enough now?� Marco wondered.

We were closer than we had been the day before. Just a few feet from the edge of the clearing.

All of us hunched down behind one large tree trunk. Even Ax, which, in his normal state, is awkward for him.

We huddled close, like some big group hug. When we morphed we would become tiny. And even a few feet between us would seem like a mile.

�Time to go termite,� Rachel said. She had her arm around my back.

I was already sick with fear. Afraid for Jake. Afraid for my friends. Afraid of the very thing I was about to become.

�Can I just say that this sucks?� I muttered.

�Amen,� Marco agreed. We were shoulder to shoulder. My head touched his.

And then, as my very bones rattled and my teeth chattered from fear, I began the process that would dissolve my bones, and melt away my teeth.

Down, down, down.

Falling � falling forever. It was like I had jumped off the Empire State Building and was falling. Yet even though I fell, I never quite hit the ground.

I was going from a girl of less than five feet to an insect less than a quarter of an inch long. I was becoming something that could have crawled inside my own ear.

Already the others who had been so close seemed to be a long way off. With my eyes still mostly human, I could see Rachel�s face lose its features, and bulge out. I saw the monstrously big mandibles spring like black, sideways tusks from her mouth.

And then, my eyes went dark.

I was blind.

And I was glad.

Again, not really seeing how this is much better than ants.

Chapter 12

quote:

I couldn�t see, but I could feel the antennae as they extruded from my forehead.

I couldn�t see, but I could feel the extra set of legs growing from my sides.

I could sense, rather than see, that my head was huge compared to the rest of my body.

I could sense that I had a swollen abdomen.

I could feel the massive pincers where my mouth had been.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream so badly, but I no longer had a voice. I no longer had a tongue.

I was less than a quarter of an inch long. I was as long as any two or three letters on this page.

Grains of sand were the size of bowling balls to me. With my wildly waving feelers I could sense a huge, long shaft, like a fallen log. It was over my head. I slowly realized that it was a single pine needle.

I waited for the termite�s instincts and mind to suddenly surge within my own. But the termite brain - such as it was - wasn�t saying anything. It was totally silent.

My senses brought me almost nothing. I was blind. I could feel vibrations from sound, but they were vague. The termite�s sense of �hearing� was not as good as its relative, the cockroach. I knew. I had been a cockroach.

All I had was a sense of smell. Or something like smell that came from my antennae waving in the air.

<Everyone okay?> I asked shakily. I desperately wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. I needed to know the others were alive.

<Yeah,> Rachel answered. 

<Termites are blind, except for the queens and kings,> I said. I must have sounded much calmer than I felt.

<These are very strange creatures,> Ax commented. 

<Well, let�s get these bodies outta here,> Marco said. <Sooner or later the Yeerks are going to get tired of chasing Jake around the woods.>

<Which way?> Rachel asked. <Slight problem - we�re totally blind.>

 I explained.

<Okay, maybe,> Marco said. 

<Let�s follow that. Whatever it is,> Rachel said. <It�s as good a direction as any.>

I set out toward the vague, distant voice. I had no idea if the others were going in the samedirection. I guess they were all within a few inches of me, but I couldn�t tell.

The termite legs were not very strong or very fast. Not as fast as an ant�s. I could feel the rocks I was climbing over. Or the grains of dirt, I guess they were. They felt like rocks, anyway. Jagged, sharp-edged crystals, seemingly as big as a human head.

I motored on all six legs, trying hard not to think about anything but moving forward. Just keep moving, I told myself. Don�t think about how small and defenseless you are.

<Hey. I feel something,> Rachel said. <It�s � I guess it must be the edge of the force field.> At the same time I reached the force field myself. I felt it as a tingling hum that vibrated my tiny body. I could feel the rocks around me vibrating. I could feel the very air around me dancing.

<At least we�re going in the right direction,> Marco pointed out.

I moved closer to the invisible wall of snapping, humming power. Suddenly I realized my legs were just motoring away but I wasn�t going anywhere.

<We will have to dig under it,> Ax said. <It will stop at the top layer of dirt.>

<Does someone know how to make these pathetic bodies dig?> Rachel asked snappishly.

I flattened myself down and tried wiggling between two big grains of dirt. It didn�t work. Then I sensed one of those hugely long logs suspended in the air not far away. A pine needle.

I shuffled over toward it. The pine needle was close to the ground, but there was still plenty of room for me beneath it.

<Hey!> I yelled, genuinely excited. <Find a pine needle or something that crosses the line. I think maybe there�s no force field directly beneath them.>

<Yes,> Ax agreed. <The pine needle may cast a shadow in the force field.>

I reached up for the pine needle with my antennae and felt my way along beneath it. I could feel the tingly edges of the force field on either side of me. But the pine needle did cast a sort of shadow.

And within that shadow, I could squeeze through.

<I�m through!> I said. At the same time, I became aware that the vague, far-off �voice� I�d heard calling to me was much stronger.

For a weird moment I actually thought it was my mother�s voice. And I wanted to go toward it.

I moved my six legs and headed across the landscape of dirt boulders. I was sure where I was going now. I could hear the voice in my head. I could hear the call.

My termite body seemed to be moving on its own now. It was like I was a passenger in a car that someone else was driving.

<Is everyone through?> I asked.

<Yes,> Rachel said.

She sounded distracted to me. Like she was listening to someone else and didn�t want me interrupting. But that was okay, because I didn�t really want to talk to her, either.

I quickly covered the ground to the building. I didn�t see that it was the building, you understand.

I just knew. And the terrible thing is, I never even paused to wonder how I knew.

<What are we �> Marco�s voice. He didn�t finish his thought. I didn�t care.

<Guys?> Rachel asked. <Um �>

The opening was just ahead. I knew it was there. I knew that other soldier termites would be guarding the entrance.

I felt no fear.

I clambered up from the dirt into the tunnel opening. Familiar smells. Smells I knew. Home.

Home. My place. Where I was from, and where I belonged.

I smelled the other soldiers with my antennae. They touched me with their antennae, as I did to them.

We were of the colony.

The colony.

I raced swiftly down the tunnel. It headed upward at a sharp angle, but the angle meant little to me. I weighed practically nothing. A worker was ahead of me. It extruded a pellet of digested cellulose. Wood pulp. I quickly gobbled it up.

Within the wood pulp food there were messages. Hormones passing through the colony, containing information. Vague orders. Indistinct yet powerful instructions.

I was now caught up in a rush of workers off to obey the voiceless voice in their heads. Some were off to chew a new tunnel. Others were off to the egg chamber to rotate the eggs.

And I had my orders, too.

I raced along tunnels lined with chewed and digested wood pulp. Tunnels cut through the dried wood that supported the building.

I felt side tunnels open on one side, then the next. A tunnel above. Air flowed faint - but fresh - actually creating a tiny breeze.

There was no light. None. But it didn�t matter because I was blind. I was blind, but I was not lost.

What am I doing? an alien voice asked.

I ignored it.

NO! the voice cried.

I had heard the voice before. But it came from far away and it spoke a language I didn�t understand.

NO! NO! NO! Let me go!

I felt a queasy, sickening feeling inside me.

But still I powered down the tunnel, turning here, turning there. Always moving toward a goal. There was a powerful smell. It was growing stronger and stronger.

I went to it. I had to go to it.

NO! Let me go! Let me go!

Down the black tunnels. Over and through the packed rush-hour streams of workers. To the center. To the core. To the heart.

Help me! Help me! the voice screamed.

The voice � my voice.

The faint, failing voice of the human named Cassie.

Me.

Me!

Ahhhhhhhhh!

Suddenly, I was Cassie again. I knew my name. I knew who I was.

But it no longer mattered. The termite body was out of my control. A stronger will than mine was guiding it.

The termite suddenly emerged into a vast, open space. A space that in reality was no more than two or three inches across. And yet it felt like an auditorium to me.

Suddenly I knew who had seized control of the termite brain.

I knew who had brushed my human mind aside.

She was vast. Huge beyond belief. At one end I sensed the termite head and useless, waving termite arms. From that small head and body there extended a monstrous, pulsating sack. As big as a blimp. At the far end was a double row of sticky, slimy eggs, to be picked up and carried away by
worker termites.

The queen.

I was in the chamber of the termite queen.

Whiie this is spooky, lets talk about termite queens (and queen bees and ant queens, and so on) and eusociality. So, as far back as ancient Greece, Aristotle identified the queen bee (which he called the "king bee", because he thought it was male, because it had a stinger), as the ruler of the hive, like a human ruler, telling their subjects what to do. In the 17th century, Charles Butler, an English priest and beekeeper, in his guide to beekeeping, "The Feminine Monarchie", correctly identified the queen as female, but still thought the queen was in charge. We know now that that's not true, but since we still use the term "queen" for bees, ants and termites, there's still that idea in popular culture.

In reality, of course, it's not true. The queen isn't in charge of the colony. The queen is just the fertille female. The only thing she does is lay eggs until she dies (usually of exhaustion from laying eggs). There is no real organizer in a colony like that. It's all pheremones, the entire thing, as far as we can tell. Pheremones and instincts.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 01:59

Soup du Jour: Sep 8, 2011; I always knew I'd die with a headache.

i warned you about eusocial insects bro!!!

i told you dog!!!

# ? Sep 12, 2020 02:33

QuickbreathFinisher: Sep 28, 2008; by reading this post you have agreed to form a gay socialist micronation.
`

These teens really love ego death at the hands of eusocial insects

# ? Sep 12, 2020 04:33

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Epicurius posted:

In reality, of course, it's not true. The queen isn't in charge of the colony. The queen is just the fertille female. The only thing she does is lay eggs until she dies (usually of exhaustion from laying eggs). There is no real organizer in a colony like that. It's all pheremones, the entire thing, as far as we can tell. Pheremones and instincts.

Yeah, for some reason pop culture makes eusocial insects into some kind of collective hive mind, adding science fiction even in ostensibly realistic settings, because that would require telepathy at a minimum. In reality, their behavior can be explained as basic rules being followed by each individual without requiring knowledge from any of the others, akin to very simple robots.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 06:36

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Fuschia tude posted:

Yeah, for some reason pop culture makes eusocial insects into some kind of collective hive mind, adding science fiction even in ostensibly realistic settings, because that would require telepathy at a minimum. In reality, their behavior can be explained as basic rules being followed by each individual without requiring knowledge from any of the others, akin to very simple robots.

The way my high school biology teacher put it was that it's like a really good, well trained sports team that knows each other well: they can hit the field and play a perfectly good game without anyone barking orders or coming up with a plan because they all know how the game is played and how to work together.

# ? Sep 12, 2020 13:24

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Secret-Chapter 13

quote:

The queen!
I could feel her power. This was her world. These were all her slaves. More than slaves - they had no will of their own.

I knew who I was again. But I felt weak and pathetic. I was unable to control the termite body I was in. That body belonged to her.

She had orders for me - protect the egg-carrying worker termites. The orders came in smells and vague feelings, but they were impossible to refuse.

<Rachel,> I called. <Marco. Ax.>

 It was Rachel�s thought-speak voice. 

<Rachel! It�s the queen. She�s controlling you,> I said.



<Marco! Marco can you hear me? Marco!>

<She�s got me. I can�t say no. I can�t stop!> he cried in anguished response.

Again, the queen is as much a slave as any other termite in the hive.

quote:

My own body motored away on its six legs. I fell in step behind two workers. Each was carrying one of the gooey, precious eggs. I had to protect them. There might be enemies. We walked along the grotesque length of the queen. Toward her head.

Ants. They were the enemy. Sometimes they came. Sometimes they poured down the tunnels, looking for the eggs, to carry them off for food.

Sometimes they attacked the queen herself. The soldiers fought them. The soldiers sometimes died fighting them.

<The queen!> Rachel�s voice said. <The only way � destroy the queen.>

She must kill the queen.

quote:

It was like an electric jolt in my mind! Get rid of the queen! Yes. The only way. They wouldn�t be expecting that. There would be no one to stop me!

But my body was not my own. I could not make it �

The two workers plodded along before me. I could feel their hind ends with my feelers. And I knew the queen�s head was just to my right. Just a half inch. Less.

The queen�s head � feelers � eyes � like an ant!

One chance � focus � focus � I had to trick the termite mind. I had to draw on every ounce of my strength.

If I failed, I would live out the rest of my life as a mindless slave of the termite queen.

Now! Do it now!

I swerved right. It was like moving through molasses. The queen had ordered me to go after the workers, and I was disobeying.

Ant! Ant! I screamed the word in my own head. Ant! Destroy! Destroy! Destroy the ant!

I clambered over a half dozen termites who were tending the queen. I could feel my will weakening. I couldn�t get rid of the queen. I had to kill an ant. That was my purpose - to keep ants away from the queen.

I scampered toward the queen�s head. I felt my antennae touch her. I opened my massive pincer jaws �

Termites ran around insanely. They were racing, out of control, lost, confused. For a moment I did the same. The queen was gone.

I think in some way I wanted to forget who I was. What I had done. I wanted to become one of the lost, panicked termites.

<We�re free! We�re out! Cassie, where are you? Get out of there!> I heard a far-off voice cry. Was it Ax? Marco? Rachel?

<Demorph!> I cried with my last shred of control.

<No! Cassie, no!> a voice screamed in my head. <You�re inside a piece of wood!>

<Demorph!> I screamed again. Human. I wanted to be human again. Let me be human! Let me out of this place. Out of this body.

I grew. Walls pressed in around me. I filled the tunnel. I couldn�t grow anymore!

Trapped! Pain. Nothing but pain! I was a swollen, vast termite. Larger than any queen. Huge.

I couldn�t grow anymore. And I couldn�t stop. I was trying to become human again, to fit a human body into a space no bigger than the inside of a walnut.

Then � explosion!

The walls opened up. Splinters! Fresh air rushed across my hard termite skin. My head was free of the wood and growing. But my body was still trapped. Squeezing with terrible pain.

I had eyes now. They could see, but only dimly. I was still tiny, and in the air above me a huge blade as long as a passenger jet slashed downward. The wood splintered again and my body was free.

I grew and grew. Arms � legs � my own head.

I was on my knees on a wooden floor. Marco and Rachel stood over me. Ax had used his tail to slice open the wood. They had all escaped the colony. They had demorphed.

It was dark in the room, but there were glowing red-and-green indicator lights. And there was a computer monitor showing neat screen-saver triangles floating and reforming.

�Are you okay?� Rachel asked. She bent down and put her hand on my shoulder.

I gave her a hug. Then, just as suddenly, I pushed her away. �Let me go! Don�t touch me! Don�t touch me! DON�T TOUCH ME!�

Rachel was on me in a flash. She clamped her hand over my mouth. Marco grabbed my ankles and held them still.

�Cassie!� Rachel hissed. �Shut up. We�re inside the Yeerk building. We�re in a side room, but we can hear people in the next room!�

I was beyond caring. I struggled and fought and tried to scream.

�Ax, whatever you can do with that computer, do it!� Marco whispered urgently.

Rachel and Marco held me pinned against the floor. And slowly � very slowly � my bunched muscles relaxed. I stopped fighting.

�Are you okay now?� Rachel asked.

Okay? I would never be okay again. But I nodded my head anyway. Rachel took her hand away from my mouth.

�It�s over, Cassie,� Marco said. �You saved us. It�s over. And we have other problems now.�

�I�m good,� I said. �I�m fine.� But my skin was crawling. Evil, terrible memories were crowding in on me.

 Ax said. <Accessing. Um � Marco or Rachel, I need a human to help me understand the meaning of what I am seeing here.>

Marco climbed up off the floor. Rachel stayed with me. She was stroking my hair, like my mom would have done if I�d had a nightmare.

It was hard to think of Rachel as being nurturing. But she did the right thing.

I heard sounds in the next room. Human voices. And Hork-Bajir, speaking their weird mix of their own native tongue and human speech they�d learned for duty on Earth.

�Some kind of commission,� Marco mused, looking at the computer screen. �Three members. They vote on what happens to the forest. They decide if the logging can go forward.�

<Dapsen Lumber Company,> Ax said. <That�s what the Yeerks call this logging company. Very funny.>

�What�s funny?� Marco asked.

<Dapsen. It�s a Yeerkish word that means � well. Never mind what it means. It isn�t polite.>

Ha!

quote:

�Look at this document,� Marco whispered. �Preliminary permission to examine feasibility of � � Hey. The Yeerks don�t have final permission to begin logging. There�s this commission that still has to decide. Three people. One has already said yes. Probably a Controller. One has voted definitely no. There�s one guy left. Some guy named Farrand. Yikes!�

�What yikes?� Rachel asked.

�Yikes, as in he�s coming for a visit to check the scene,� Marco said. �End of the week. Then he�ll vote. If that guy votes yes, the Yeerks are in business and we�re in trouble.�

�He�ll vote yes,� Rachel said darkly.

<I�m afraid that is true,> Ax agreed. <The Yeerks will make him a Controller.>

�Not if we stop them,� Marco said.

�One thing at a time. We need to get out of here,� Rachel said. �And we�re not going back out the way we came in.�

No one argued with that.

 Ax said.

<But there are still guards outside. And Hork-Bajir in the next room.>

�Yeah. We�ll have to move fast,� Rachel said. �Cassie, can you morph? Can you morph the wolf? I�ll stay right beside you the whole time.�

Could I morph? The very idea made me sick. But even in my quaking fear I knew anything was better than going back down into that termite colony.

Five minutes later, Ax turned off the outer defenses, and we ran from that building.

I guess the Yeerks counted on their high-tech defenses too much. Without them, no one even shouted an alarm. By sheer, dumb luck we raced between the paths of two Controller guards.

No one yelled. No one fired a shot. We ran into the woods where Jake joined up with us.

No one said much on the way home.

I kind of like it when the Yeerks figure out human politics. I guess I appreciate it.

The Secret-Chapter 14

quote:

My parents expected me to be at Rachel�s house. Her parents expected her to sleep over at my house. My house was easier to sneak into, so that�s where we went.

It was almost dawn by the time we demorphed. We crept through my dark living room and up to my room, trying not to make the stairs squeak.

I loaned Rachel a big flannel shirt. She grabbed a blanket and a pillow and simply fell down on the floor beside my bed. I think she was asleep before she landed.

I crawled into my bed. My own, familiar bed. The sheets were cool. The comforter was my comforter. I belonged here. This was my place.

And yet nothing seemed familiar. The shadows cast by dim starlight on the walls � the shapes of shirts and overalls hung from big hooks on the walls � the bindings of books I�d read, right here in this room � none of it seemed real.

I closed my eyes, then opened them quickly.

How could it be? How could I remember what that chamber looked like, what the termite queen looked like when I�d had no eyes? But still, I remembered it all. I saw the chamber dug from the rotted wood by hundreds of workers. And I saw the huge queen.
I felt my pincers.

I hadn�t just destroyed her. I had destroyed the entire colony. I had done it to save myself and my friends.

I wanted to throw up. But I would have had to get out of bed to run to the bathroom. And I felt like I never wanted to leave that bed again.

So, here's the thing for me. And you can disagree. Obviously Cassie has the right to feel whatever she feels. So, if she feels guilty, she feels guilty. That being said, I don't think I'd feel that guilty (and I say this as somebody who puts spiders outside rather than smushing them) Termites, first of all, aren't endangered, so its not like the destruction of that one termite colony is going to wipe out the species. Additionally, termites aren't, say, chimps. We know, for instance, that chimps are emotionally complex and intelligent animals. Termites are not. They're not conscious, or even preconcious. They're not intelligent. They're barely sentient. The jury is out on whether termites can even feel pain. I think she's...more sensitive about this than I would be.

quote:

I love animals. I�ve been raised all my life around them. I love nature. But what did I really know about it?

I have been more animals than many people ever see in a lifetime. I have flown with the wings of an osprey. I�ve raced through the ocean in the body of a dolphin. I�ve seen the world through the eyes of an owl at night, and smelled the wind with all the keen senses of a wolf. I�ve flown upside down and backward in the body of a fly. Sometimes I go out into the far fields at night and become a horse and run through the grass.

And everything I�ve been, every animal, is either killer or killed.

In a million, million battles all around the world, on every continent, in every square inch of space, there was killing. From the great cats in Africa that cold-bloodedly search out the young and weak gazelles, to the terrible wars that are fought out in anthills and termite colonies.
All of nature was at war.

And, at the top of all that destruction, humans killed each other as well as other species, and now those same people have been enslaved and destroyed by the Yeerks.

Nature at its finest. Cute, cuddly animals who slaughtered to live. The color of nature wasn�t green. It was red. Bloodred.

I realized tears were running down my cheeks and soaking my pillow. I would have cried out loud, but I didn�t want Rachel to wake up. I would have screamed but my parents would have come running. And what could I have told them? Lies. More lies. Because in my world, I, too, was prey.
The Yeerks were hunting me.

I was scared. I was alone. I didn�t know what was going to happen to me.

And then I thought of the lost skunk kits. Unlovable little creatures, to most people. But they were scared and alone, too. If they were still alive.

In other words, this, I guess. And her guilt is going to drive her to try to save the kits.

# ? Sep 13, 2020 01:51

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

It's not that I disagree with your thoughts on her feelings, but thats a great loving horrified inner monologue

# ? Sep 13, 2020 02:37

pastor of muppets: Aug 21, 2007; We were somewhere around the Living Hive, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

I agree with you about Cassie beating herself up way too much. I think it�s more of a manifestation of the trauma she�s just experienced in the colony. Like if she hadn�t just gone through that near-complete ego death and trying so desperately to cling to something, anything like a hard principle she can confidently say �yes, this is who I am and what�s important to me.� It feels like the....maybe not hypocrisy, but contradiction?....of her agonizing so much about a litter of four or five skunk kits dying as a result oof her indirect actions versus essentially wiping out thousands of life forms wouldn�t consume her emotionally if she hadn�t just lived through that.

I don�t remember anything from this book and haven�t read ahead, but it definitely feels like she�s gonna do something really loving stupid as a result of her guilt to try to tip the cosmic scales back in balance like she did in the first Megamorphs book.

pastor of muppets fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Sep 13, 2020

# ? Sep 13, 2020 02:45

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

I like how Cassie's a nature lover who has a very clear view of what nature is actually like. She doesn't think it's a bunch of cute fluffballs running around like Bambi.

# ? Sep 13, 2020 04:45

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Cassie was always my least favourite Animorph because as a kid I found her ethics and moralising to be a drag. As an adult I appreciate her much more as a very important viewpoint - though, yeah, less so with this stuff. But I think it's kind of laying the groundwork for some conflicts that come down the track later on. She's basically hyper-empathetic, and with the ethical dilemmas the series eventually throws up (not that it hasn't already) that's really important.

And IIRC the other Animorphs end up helping her and taking shifts in her personal mission to save the kits. Even though they don't personally give a poo poo - but they give a poo poo about her. Which is rather sweet group dynamic development.

Also, in 2020, Ax just casually linking that computer up to "Marco's home computer" screams terrible infosec policy on his part.

# ? Sep 13, 2020 11:23

pastor of muppets: Aug 21, 2007; We were somewhere around the Living Hive, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

I guess I�m the opposite, Cassie was always my favorite of the core team as a kid because I identified pretty hard with the �awkward tomboy who loves animals� characterization. I do get frustrated with her now as an adult reading it and her ethical ennui but hey, she�s a literal child soldier.

Let�s face it tho if your fav is not the best cinnaboi Ax then why are you even reading this series

# ? Sep 13, 2020 17:36

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

The Secret-Chapter 15

quote:

I guess I fell asleep eventually, because I dreamed. It wasn�t a nightmare, though. It wasn�t even about the termite world.

I was a mother. In my dream I was a mother, looking for her babies. I searched everywhere, even though I was hurt and in pain.

At last I found them. And, in my dream, they snuggled next to me.

When I woke up, the dream quickly evaporated. But it left behind a feeling of peace.

The sun was high in the sky. It was ten-fifteen in the morning. Late. Rachel had already showered and dressed.

�I can�t believe you slept so well,� Rachel grumbled. �I had a seriously bad nightmare. Look, I gotta get home. Are you okay?�

�Sure,� I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. �I mean � you know, last night and all � it wasn�t like I was having some kind of breakdown or anything. It�s just, you know. It creeped me out.�

�Tell me about it,� Rachel agreed. �But it�s really no big deal if you think about it, Cassie.Termites get killed all the time. They were just termites. Bugs.�

�Yeah.�

She left. I don�t know if she just had to get home, or if I made her uncomfortable. Rachel isn�t usually a huggy kind of person. Having to treat me like a baby probably gave her the willies.

My mom was at work. My dad was off somewhere, I guess, because his truck was gone. I made some toast and drank some orange juice. Then I ate a piece of leftover veggie pizza.

I felt restless and weird. Like I was on the edge of something. Like life had gotten unbalanced since the day before.

�Rachel�s right,� I said out loud, just to hear a voice. �They�re bugs. Termites. And besides, I got away in the end.�

I walked outside to feel the sun on my skin. My human skin.

Without really thinking much about it, I went into the barn to the refrigerator we use to store perishable food for the animals. I took out a frozen grasshopper and stuck it in my pocket. And then I headed toward the edge of the forest.

<Hey, Cassie,> a thought-speak voice said as I crunched noisily through the woods. <What�s going on?>

I looked up and saw Tobias go skimming by. He flared, turned on a dime, and landed on a branch. He dug his ripping talons into the soft bark.

�Not much,� I said.



�Yeah? Who did you talk to?�

<Ax. Who else? He was definitely weirded out by the whole thing.>

I stopped walking. It was something in the way he said �weirded out.� �Tobias, who else did you talk to?�

<Maybe Marco,> he said.

�And Marco told you I went nuts, right?�

<Actually, the word he used was �insane.� Also �Looney Tunes.� And �wacko.� But he meant it all in the nicest possible way.>

I laughed bitterly. �Well, I guess I did go a bit wacko,� I said.

<Welcome to the club,> Tobias said. <None of us is going to come through all this completely normal. You know that. Too much fear.>

�Well, I�m pretty sick of it,� I said. �I had to destroy the termite queen. I know, she was just a bug. But you know, who am I to decide that it�s okay to kill one animal and not another? Here I am, the big Earth Mother, tree-hugger, animal-lover, as Marco would say, and when it gets down to it, I�m
just like ��

<Just like me?> Tobias asked.

�Just like any predator,� I said lamely.

<You feel bad because you had to kill the queen in order to survive.>

�I shouldn�t have been there. It�s their world, not mine. Those little tunnels in a rotten piece of wood - that�s their whole universe. I invaded it. And when they got in my way, I reacted. Who does that remind you of?�

<Look, you are not a Yeerk, and termites are not human beings,> Tobias said. <There�s no comparison.>

I didn�t bother arguing. �Look, I have to morph. There�s something I need to do.�

<What?>

I sighed. �It�s something stupid, all right? There�s this mother skunk we have who�s injured. She has a litter of kits who are going to die. I think I know where they are, more or less, but I can�t get there walking like a human.�

For a moment Tobias said nothing. <Skunk kits? Near the edge of the Yeerk logging compound?>

�Yes.�



For a frozen moment of time I refused to understand what he�d just said. I didn�t want to think of why Tobias � why a red-tailed hawk would know the exact location of a litter of skunk babies.

I took a couple of deep breaths. I tried to keep my voice level. �Are they still alive?�

<There are four still alive,> Tobias said.

Honestly, my favorite line.

quote:

I felt an emotion I don�t feel very often. I felt it boiling up inside me. I glared furiously at him. At the ripping talons. At the nastily curved beak.

I could picture the scene in my mind. The way he would have swooped down, raked those talons forward, snatched the defenseless kit off the ground and �

I was shaking. I laced my fingers together, just to stop them from trembling.

�I�m going to save what�s left of them,� I said. My voice didn�t sound like my voice.

<I�ll help you,> Tobias said.

See, Tobias is a good sport.

This is more of Cassie being Cassie. It's well written, and I agree with what other people on here have said, but this still gets on my nerves a bit.

Just the one chapter today. The next two chapters fit together well, and I want to pair them up.

# ? Sep 14, 2020 01:21

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# ? May 24, 2024 14:21

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

He's a good sport and a smart cookie. I really think Applegate does a good job of giving him an important role to play in every book - even if it's just character-wise, rather than contributing to missions etc - despite being inevitably sidelined to some degree because he's stuck in morph.

# ? Sep 14, 2020 02:29

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Let's Read Animorphs! The Whole Series! Ch-ch-ch-chaaanges

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