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

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effervescible: Jun 29, 2012; i will eat your soul

A little late, but rereading the last book it's kind of wild to me that they stressed so much giving people in the pool time to escape and then cut to the downtown crater with collapsed skyscrapers, no doubt filled with the corpses of people who had no warning whatsoever.

Epicurius posted:

My name is Jake.

My name is Jake Berenson. The days of secrecy, of lurking in the shadows are over.

This always stuck with me over the years. I knew the series was nearly at an end, but when he gave his last name I was like oooh poo poo, here we go. I misremembered it as coming in the last book though.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 19:09

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# ? May 23, 2024 19:02

Strategic Tea: Sep 1, 2012

Can't believe the Emillist edited time to change his name, which used to be Jake Berenstein

# ? Jan 4, 2023 20:01

Saros: Dec 29, 2009; Its almost like we're a Bureaucracy, in space!

I set sail for the Planet of Lab Requisitions!!

effervescible posted:

A little late, but rereading the last book it's kind of wild to me that they stressed so much giving people in the pool time to escape and then cut to the downtown crater with collapsed skyscrapers, no doubt filled with the corpses of people who had no warning whatsoever.

I think this can be put down to a bunch of teenagers not really understanding the probable effect of detonating 12kt of explosives underground in the middle of a city.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 20:11

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

Strategic Tea posted:

Can't believe the Emillist edited time to change his name, which used to be Jake Berenstein

# ? Jan 4, 2023 20:15

effervescible: Jun 29, 2012; i will eat your soul

Saros posted:

I think this can be put down to a bunch of teenagers not really understanding the probable effect of detonating 12kt of explosives underground in the middle of a city.

Yeah that is a good point.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 21:18

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

It looks dark now but it lightens up in the next book when Marco single handedly ends the war by throwing a Baby Ruth bar in the Yeerk pool.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 22:28

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Chapter 4

quote:

I pulled Tobias and Marco aside after the council of war.

�Tobias? Did you notice that pillar of smoke off to the south of where we were?�

Tobias glared at me. <What you did to Cassie was beyond wrong.>

I squirmed. �I don�t have time for that, Tobias.�

<Cassie is one of us,> he said.

�Did you see the smoke or not?!� I demanded.

<Yeah.>
�Then I need you to go find out exactly where it� s coming from. Now. I mean, if you can spare the time from busting me.�

Tobias didn�t answer. He just spread his wings and flapped till he cleared the trees and then caught a tailwind out of sight.

Marco gave me a fish-eyed look, but he didn�t say anything.

�Marco, we need to know who is currently in charge of military forces in this area.�

Marco thought that over. �It�s not going to be just one guy. You�ll have an air force general, a marine, an army guy.�

I nodded. �Yeah. But the Pentagon will have given someone the weight, you know? Someone is going to be in overall command. I mean, if they haven�t done that at least � they can�t be that sorry, can they? I want you to get me a name and a location. Grab Ax. Use him to creep Pentagon computers or whatever it takes. I need the person who can give orders and have them followed in this area.�

�How about the Chee? They�d be able to help us out.�

I shrugged. �Where are the Chee? That�s the problem. Those Bug fighters smoked the King house. I don�t think it would have damaged their underground complex, but with the house gone how do we make contact?�

�Guess that�s two problems for me and Ax,� Marco said.

�Yeah.� I hung my head. �I didn�t mean to do that with Cassie. It was � stuff happens sometimes.�

�Uh-huh. I better get going.�

In twenty-four hours I had two of the three answers I was looking for. Marco did not find the Chee. He did find what he hoped and believed was the man in charge of military forces arrayed against the Yeerks.

�He�s an army general. Three star. His name is Sam Doubleday. He�s fifty-four years old. His headquarters is fifty miles from here, though. In the hills, some kind of nuclear shelter in a hollowed out mountain.�

�Good. At least he�s not dumb enough to be right here where the Yeerks can�t help but kill him.�

The second piece of information was more intriguing.

<They�re building a new Yeerk pool,> Tobias reported. <Not so much a cave like the old one. More like they�re digging a small lake and going to let it be open. Taxxons are all over the place, like maggots on a piece of roadkill.>

I could see that Marco was preparing some witty remark on the fact that Tobias was unusually familiar with roadkill. I shot him a look and he sighed, letting it go.

A second Yeerk pool being built at a frantic pace. That made sense. Once it was finished the Yeerks would remove the Pool ship back to safety in orbit. Taxxons were natural tunnelers, faster and more effective than anything Caterpillar made. It was like having a few hundred giant sentient
earthworms at work.

�Okay,� I said. �Let�s go see this general.�

<Who goes?> Tobias asked pointedly.

�Animorphs,� I said. But of course I knew what he was asking. �All of us. I�ll have James�s people come in to watch the camp here. The rest of us, the six of us, we go to see the general. Wait, ask James to come, too. He can use the experience.�

<Well, you�ll need to go ask Cassie yourself,> Tobias said primly.

�Marco: Let everyone know. Everyone.� I avoided looking at Tobias. Not often do I feel like a coward, but I felt like one right then.

I know the Taxxon-Catepillar thing isn't am intentional joke, but still...

Also, the Jake-Cassie thing is bad.

Chapter 5

quote:

They called it ATF-1. Alien Task Force One.

Their headquarters was a concrete-and-steel pit carved into a mountain. It was a sort of minor league version of the big nuclear war fighting facility in Colorado. It had the look of a place that has just been brought out of mothballs. There were cobwebs hiding in the upper corners of the rooms. Dust was still being wiped from the sort of clunky computers and monochrome monitors you�d see in a video about the early days of the space race.

Inside the mountain were hundreds of soldiers and airmen, but mostly armed, it seemed, with clipboards and Palm Pilots. They wore the exactly ironed uniforms of bureaucrat-soldiers.

Outside the gaping mouth of The Hole, it was a different picture. Men were in firing positions on the tumbled, rocky slopes. Coming in as birds of prey again, we spotted machine-gun nests, tank emplacements, an artillery park well-camouflaged in the trees down the valley. Helicopters flew
constant patrols.

Razor wire was going up everywhere. Soldiers were laying minefields on both sides of the only road.

Security was very tight - it took us no time at all to penetrate it. The general�s men were looking for giant bug-eyed monsters from outer space. Not dragonflies.

We zoomed around the underground headquarters, locating storage vaults, some fairly impressive underground barracks, food-and-water storage, electronics, so on.

I located the general by watching the flow of uniforms. Lieutenants talked to captains, captains to majors, majors to colonels. My dragonfly eyes were good enough for me to spot colonels� bars. In time, the various colonels led me to the general.

He was in a map-walled conference room. I�d have smiled if I had a mouth. It was like something right out of a war movie: maps and phones and guys chomping cigars.

I landed on the conference table, right in the middle of a large map of the city. The map showed a circle surrounding the former Yeerk pool. I guessed it was derived from satellite photos of what was left of my home town.

I demorphed.

�What the ��

�General!� someone yelped.

�MP�s! MP�s, on the double.�

�Draw your weapons!�

�Don�t shoot!�

There was a flurry of running men and cocking weapons and lots of shouting. I�d had quite an impact. Not a surprise. I was changing from a two-inch-long insect to a nearly six-foot-tall teenager. My compound eyes grew huge, larger by far than my dragonfly body, before they bubbled up like overcooked marshmallows, melted, shrank, and finally re-formed into my own human eyes. Of course they were human eyes staring out of a dragonfly�s face. The morphing process has never been the kind of neat, smooth, fluid thing you see in a computer animated special effect. It�s messier and weirder. Things grow or shrink at different speeds. Parts of one form linger long after the others have morphed. Ax could explain it, if you had an hour to listen.

What the general saw was a creature with human eyes and a twitching insect proboscis and gossamer wings and a largely human body.

I was probably lucky he didn�t just order me to be shot. There were a dozen rifles and pistols aimed at me by the time I completed my demorph.

�General Doubleday,� I said. �My name is Jake.�

�Get him!�

Three big, burly MP�s were on me before I could yell. They knocked me onto my back, twisted me over on my face, and slapped handcuffs on me.

�General, this is a mistake,� I yelled.

�Mistake, is it? Sure as death you�re one of them,� he said.

�No, sir, I�m not,� I grated with my cheek pressed hard onto a pencil and a crumpled map. �But chances are some of the people in this room are.�
�
Let me shoot him,� a major cried. Either a Controller or an idiot.
�
Shoot him? Have you lost your senses, Major? This is a potentially valuable prisoner. Get my G-2 down here! Take him away, lock him up.�
I sighed. The MP�s hustled me from the room, down a hallway to a bare, overlit room furnished with a chair and a sink and a cot and a steel door with a feeding slot in it.

They threw me in, not at all gently.

I was a prisoner.

Three minutes later, I demorphed in front of General Doubleday again.

He had me tackled once more, handcuffed, shackled, my mouth duct-taped. I was carried, hogtied, from the room and thrown back in the cell. In the cell I was chained to the cot.

Three minutes later, I demorphed in front of General Doubleday.

�General, why don�t you stop being stupid and listen?� I said.

He stopped being stupid. But not until the fourth time I demorphed in front of him. And then, at last, he narrowed his eyes and looked at me and said, �All right, Mr. Alien, what have you got to say to me?�

�First: I�m not an alien. I�m a human with access to alien morphing technology. Second: I know how to hurt the Yeerks in a way that they won�t be able to brush off, but I�ll need your help to provide a diversion.�

The general looked amused. �My help, huh? You need my help? See the stars on my shoulder there, son? I�m a major general, U.S. Army. You�re a kid who can turn into a bug. I take my orders from the chain of command, and that ain�t you.�

It was a nice try, but I�ve been intimidated by the best. After you stand up to the likes of Andalites, Visser One, and Crayak, you don�t quiver just because some guy has stars on his shoulders.

�The chain of command is almost certainly infiltrated by Yeerks,� I said. �So is this base. Probably even this room. You don�t know if the orders you get are legitimate or not. You don�t know if the orders you give out are going to be obeyed. Your power extends only as far as the first Controller in your staff.�

The general�s face was growing redder the more I talked. But, like I say, you want scary? Visser One has a tendency to morph into huge, murdering alien beasts. Red face? Not even in the game.

�Get out of my headquarters,� Doubleday said.

�He can�t leave here alive,� said a middle-aged colonel who looked strangely like a Baldwin brother.

The Baldwin colonel nodded to one of the MP�s. The MP drew his sidearm and chambered a round.

�Holster that weapon, soldier,� the general snapped.

The MP leveled the gun at me.

�I said holster that weapon!� the general roared.

The MP ignored him and looked instead to the colonel. Two other officers drew weapons. One drew a bead on the general. The other stood ready, covering the rest of the room.

�I�d rather take him alive - the visser would be sure to reward us,� the colonel mused. �On the other hand, if we let him escape, we�re dead.� He gave me a hard look. �Better safe than dead of Kandrona starvation. Shoot him.�

�Now,� I said.

From beneath the conference table a great, shaggy, gray-coated wolf exploded out and upward.

Cassie�s jaw closed around the MP�s throat and carried him down to the ground.

A wolf�s jaws are made for breaking the marrow out of bones. Those long, yellowed teeth digging into your throat, ready with a twitch to sever at least two major arteries, definitely get your attention.

Then the entire table went flying. It was a big, thick, mahogany thing, must have weighed five hundred pounds. But a gorilla is a strong animal.

Marco gave one of the Controllers a gorilla love tap that slammed him against the wall. But perhaps most surprising to everyone were two low-ranking soldiers who calmly drew concealed weapons and pointed them at the Controllers. Continuing to hold the weapons Rachel and
Ax demorphed.

The three Controllers were handcuffed and led away.

�You see my point, General,� I said.

He nodded. He smoothed his ruffled hair. He pulled a cigar out of his pocket. �All right, son. Let�s talk.�

BOOM!

The concussion shook the room and threw me into the wall. There was blood pouring from my nose and ears and mouth.

BOOM!

Marco grabbed me before I could fall over again.

�Thanks, man.�

<It�s just never easy, is it?> he said.

i wonder if any of those controllers would be dead from kandrona starvation anyway.

# ? Jan 5, 2023 03:24

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

quote:

The morphing process has never been the kind of neat, smooth, fluid thing you see in a computer animated special effect.

Poking fun at their own book covers?

# ? Jan 5, 2023 05:45

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

OctaviusBeaver posted:

Poking fun at their own book covers?

The TV show, actually. They very vocally hated how quite and effortlessly AniTV made the morphing process look. Applegate and Grant have nothing but praise and respect for David Mattingly and his work.

# ? Jan 5, 2023 06:09

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

Epicurius posted:

i wonder if any of those controllers would be dead from kandrona starvation anyway.

Another case of the compressed timeline of these last books for sure. There's a lot of dramatic tension that could have been wrung out of the premise.

Also enjoying the "bitch please I've been to space" moment with Jake and the General. Getting Tom Holland's Spider-Man vibes in the good way.

# ? Jan 5, 2023 07:29

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

I can't help but to edit Jake's dialogue there out of YA mode, my boy is frustrated enough with this bullshit to drop an f bomb

# ? Jan 5, 2023 13:52

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Sorry. Sleeping tonight. Posts tomorrow.

# ? Jan 6, 2023 04:38

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Chapter 6

quote:

BOOM! BOOM!

Explosion followed explosion in rapid sequence. Every time I tried to get organized the concussion would knock me silly again.

�Marco! Take care of the general!� I managed to yell.

I started to morph. Tiger. �We�re gonna be up to our butts in Hork-Bajir!� I warned everyone.

They knew what to do.

I heard gunfire. Lots of it.

Should have seen this coming. Should have known the Yeerks would be wired into this headquarters. Someone, some Controller, had put in the call to Visser One: They�re here. The Animorphs are here.

No, wait. Maybe not. Maybe they were just assaulting the base without knowing we were here.

In which case it was just a typically crude Visser-One move.

Ax had demorphed. In his Andalite form he was a blue-furred centaur with a pair of extra eyes on movable stalks and a tail like a chef�s knife tied to the end of a bullwhip. Rachel and Tobias were both well into morphing Hork-Bajir. When fighting Hork-Bajir-Controllers there is nothing quite asuseful as having a few of our own to confuse things.

�Let me up,� General Doubleday raged at Marco. �I have to go to my men.�

<Let him up, Marco. General: Do you have any kind of surveillance cameras set up in this place?>

�What? Is that you? Are you some kind of a tiger now?�

<Yeah, some kind. General, if you have security cameras, turn them on. We can use the tape later to spot the safe guys. Anyone who shoots a Controller is someone we can trust.>

The general nodded. �The cameras are always on. Now get out of my way.�

He motioned a sergeant to open the door leading out into the main chamber of the underground redoubt. The sergeant took up a firing position half in and half out of the doorway. A Dracon beam annihilated the half of him that was exposed.

The general caught his gun as it dropped. �We have to get out of here. This room is a trap.�

I agreed. <Rachel. Go.>

Rachel leaned her bladed, goblin head gingerly out of the doorway and yelled, <Stop shooting, you fools.>

The firing continued, but it was no longer directed at our doorway. Rachel and Tobias stalked angrily out and berated the lead elements of the Hork-Bajir assault force.

�We have the gafrash human general, you loglafach. The visser wants him alive, and if you kill him it�ll be you the visser eats for breakfast!�
Even less firing now.

Then a suspicious human voice, a human-Controller, demanding, �Which unit are you two with?�

<Ax then me then Marco and Cassie with the general,> I said tersely.

Ax leaped through the doorway. I was a millisecond behind him. There were forty or so Hork- Bajir and half a dozen obvious human-Controllers waiting for us. Some kept up fire down one hallway and upward at a catwalk lined with soldiers.

There was a full second of stunned immobility as they absorbed the sudden appearance of an Andalite.

�Andalite!� someone yelled.

<Surprise,> Ax said. He�s almost developed a sense of humor. Almost. But by then Ax was in the midst of them, slashing with his deadly tail. I came in after him. Thebigger the crowd, the better: hard to use Dracon beams when your own people are all around.

Hork-Bajir slashed at me. I felt cuts on my flanks, my back. My tail was suddenly gone. My tiger�s brain registered every wound but dismissed them, set aside the pain. This was a dominance fight. Tiger instinct and human will combined in me to press the attack forward.

I roared back, launched into my nearest tormentor, and smacked his horned head with a blow that could stun an elephant. I spun and gut-slashed another. I closed my teeth on a flailing arm and worried it savagely like a mad dog with his last bone.

I was in the tiger and the tiger was in me. No time to think, only act and react. Cat speed. Cat accuracy. But the sheer weight of the attackers would defeat Ax and me, and even in the battle frenzy,

I knew it.

Rachel and Tobias had joined the fight, but now, Hork-Bajir themselves, their abilities were no greater than those of their opponents.

<The general�s clear!> Marco yelled in thought-speak. <We�re coming.>

<No! Stay with him!> I ordered.

BamBamBam!

The volume of firing increased suddenly. I caught a wild, distorted vision of troops lined up on the catwalk pouring automatic fire down on us.

I heard Doubleday�s foghorn voice bellowing, �Don�t hit the tiger or the blue thing!�

<Rachel! Tobias! Back off, get outta here and morph something else. You�ll get shot>

A Hork-Bajir nailed me with a sudden, unexpected blow. No pain, just a shocking numbness. My hind legs collapsed. He had severed my spine. The bottom half of the tiger�s body might as well be gone.

I would be dead in seconds. Had to demorph. No other choice.

BamBamBamBamBamBam!

Demorph, Jake, I told myself, already loopy, drifting. Demorph.

A huge Hork-Bajir stood tall above me. The tiger�s blood dripped from his wrist blade. He raised his T. Rex foot. He was going to gut me, make sure I was dead. Couldn�t move my body. My front paws batted feebly at the air. Helpless.

Half a dozen rounds caught him in the chest. He fell straight back.

I lay there, twisted halfway around, a tiger pretzel. Ax was now astride me, whipping like a mad thing, a Cuisinart making Hork-Bajir puree.
I heard a thud. Bullet in my hindquarters. I looked up, confused, unable to focus clearly. Then my vision cleared enough to see a soldier drawing careful, deliberate aim at me. A Controller. He looked ,ust like his fellow soldiers, but he wasn�t shooting at the Hork-Bajir, he was going for a head shot on
me, that�s what he was going for.

He fired. I saw the muzzle flash.

I felt the bullet hit the right side of my head. But I wasn�t dead.

Something big and brown came barreling through, sweeping Hork-Bajir before it. Ax was no longer above me, but was shoulder-to-shoulder with a grizzly bear. Cassie ran, bounded up, bounced off Rachel�s massive shoulders and took a wild, flying leap straight into the Hork-Bajir.

The Hork-Bajir were falling back.

And still, I could see that single soldier biting his lip and taking aim at me again. This time he wouldn�t miss. I was isolated, alone, defenseless. No one saw. No one could possibly see that he was aiming at me, not at the Hork-Bajir.

I could see his finger tighten on the trigger.

He was too focused to notice the gray-and-white blur as the falcon raked his face, leaving great gashes across his nose and forehead.

I was wrong: A falcon could see a man�s eyes and know where they were aimed.

<Thanks, James,> I said, loopy and fading fast. <That was very nice of you.>

Marco was over me, shaking me with big gorilla hands and yelling, <Demorph! Demorph!>

Demorph?

Oh � okay.

;

We missed the opportunity to make "What? Are you some sort of tiger?" the thread title

Chapter 7

quote:

Doubleday listened after that. He evacuated his headquarters at top speed. The Yeerks would be back, especially now that they knew we were there. Fortunately, like a good general, he had a fallback position.
I explained about the three days, how no Yeerk can survive for more than three days without consuming Kandrona rays in a Yeerk pool.

�You need to lock down yourself and your officers and as many men as you can for three days. Whoever is left after that will be reliable.�

�I�ve got two regular army divisions and half a dozen guard units under my command. I can�t lock down and watch anything like that number of men.�

�General, better a hundred men you can trust than ten thousand you can�t.�

He agreed. Unfortunately, this meant a three-day delay before he could provide the diversion we needed to take the Pool ship. In that time the Yeerks, with all their Taxxons, might well get the new Yeerk pool up and running. It wouldn�t be finished, most likely, but if it was at all functional, if it could be used to feed the Earth-based Yeerks, I was certain that Visser One would fly his precious Pool ship back up into the safety of orbit.

So we had to make sure the new Yeerk pool wasn�t ready. Which meant two impossible missions instead of just one.
Better and better.

�At least it�ll be mostly Taxxons,� Marco said when we were all back at camp and eating a meal of dry cold cereal. �They�re easy to take down. Once they�re injured at all, they�re dead: Their brother Taxxons make sure of that.�

Taxxons are like big, nasty caterpillars or centipedes. As big around as an old oak tree. They walk on rows of needle legs, carrying the upper third of their bulk erect. They have a ring of red-jelly eyes and a lamprey mouth. And they are hungry as shrews: always hungry. Always. It�s a madness, a
raging, insatiable need.

The Yeerks had bought them off and made them allies by the simple expedient of promising to feed them. Some Taxxons carried the Yeerk slug in their feverish brains, but many did not. The Yeerks hated them as host bodies, hated living with the hunger that not even a Yeerk could control. And then, there was the danger that Marco had alluded to: Taxxons are cannibals. A wounded Taxxon is almost always set upon by his brothers, even in the middle of battle. It�s like watching sharks react to blood in the water.

�Yeah, they�re easy to kill,� I said, feeling the dark, bitter gloom that always came over me after a battle. �But they�ll be protected by Hork-Bajir and by Bug fighters. And by human-Controllers, of course.�

�We blew up one Yeerk pool,� Rachel said cockily. �So we blow up another. Badda-boom. Nothing to it.�

She knew better, of course. She was just playing her part. Not for the first time I wondered what on Earth would happen to her if this war ever ended. Off to college to study prelaw or whatever? She was the goddess of war, my cousin was. Sixteen years old and a veteran of more battles than a World War II veteran. So was I, but Rachel loved it in a way I didn�t. She needed it.

�Anyone have any useful suggestions?� I asked. It was just us, just the Animorphs. I�d had it with councils of war. �Tobias? You�ve seen the place,�

<It�s a big hole in the ground. Looks like a strip mine or something. It�s sort of terraced: a series of shelves stepping down to what will be the pool itself. The �shore,� I guess you�d call it, is maybe a hundred feet wide. The pool is going to be three hundred feet across, give or take. Not deep: maybe eight feet, almost flat on the bottom, but graded so it can be drained for repair. The terraces higher up, two of them, as I recall, are more like twenty feet wide.>

<Those will eventually be weapons emplacements,> Ax suggested. <It was the central flaw of the old pool: They never had a serious set of internal defenses. They will ring the pool with Dracon cannons able to reach up, across, or down.>

�Just for us,� Rachel said with a laugh. �It�s kind of flattering.�

�How do you hurt a hole in the ground?� Marco wondered.

<Cave in the sides?> Tobias suggested dubiously.

�With what?� Marco said.

Cassie started to say something, stopped herself. Then, gathering her courage, she blurted, �You can�t worry about the hole, you have to destroy the digging equipment.�

I raised an eyebrow. �The equipment is Taxxons.�

She looked away.

Marco whistled softly. �Yep,� he agreed, nodding respectfully at Cassie.

Was Cassie just stating the obvious, or was she trying to reestablish herself by being as ruthless as any of us?

Either way, she was right: Forget the dirt, focus on the shovels. There was not an endless supply of Taxxons. I wished I knew how many there were, altogether. Once again I mourned the loss of access to the Chee, our most valuable sources of information.
�
Okay,� I said. �So we go after the Taxxons. I better go see Toby. Cassie? Go see James and his people. We�ll need everyone we can get. We go tonight.�

�Oh, man, I�m just getting over this morning�s fun,� Marco complained.

�Eat your dry, stale granola,� Rachel said with a laugh. �You need to keep up your strength.�

Poor Taxxons. Also, even if you were in touch with the Chee, they won't give you info to let you kill Tsxxons.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 04:54

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

Animorphs: There was not an endless supply of Taxxons.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 05:06

Vandar: Sep 14, 2007; Isn't That Right, Chairman?

Someone remind me: when was the last appearance of the Chee?

# ? Jan 7, 2023 07:47

disaster pastor: May 1, 2007

Vandar posted:

Someone remind me: when was the last appearance of the Chee?

They helped get the families out.

# ? Jan 7, 2023 15:15

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

chapter 8

quote:

At the beginning of the American Civil War both sides thought the war was about taking or holding cities and ports and rivers and mountain passes. They thought it was a chess game.

By the end of the war they�d figured out that they weren�t playing chess. Cities didn�t matter much. Ports and rivers and mountain passes, while useful, were secondary to the real game. The real game was destruction.

Lincoln had figured it out earlier than most and his generals; Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan made it happen. They burned enemy homes and farms. They burned crops in the field and slaughtered farm animals and wrapped railroad tracks around trees. They starved the enemy.

They realized that warfare was no longer about chivalry and honor, but about killing the enemy.

Find the enemy, kill the enemy. Kill so many of them that those who are left alive lose their will to fight on. Do whatever it takes.
That�s the way war has been ever since.

For a long time we had fought the Yeerks reactively. We were always ten steps behind, trying to foil this plan or that plan. We�d tried to fight the war with at least some vestige of decency. And maybe that had been okay when we were fighting to stop an infiltration. Now things were different.

We were down to the final stages. Either the Yeerks would prevail, or we would. So I gave simple orders to my people, the original Animorphs, and the auxiliary Animorphs, and Toby�s free Hork-Bajir. Orders I had never given before: Kill the enemy. Kill the Taxxons. Dress it up however you want, that�s what war is about. If there�s glory in there somewhere, I must have missed it.

We Animorphs went in first, the six of us, in bat morph. Tobias had reported that real bats were in the area during the evening hours, which would allow us to blend in naturally.

Flying as a bat is very different from flying as a bird. You never feel that the air is your natural home. You always feel that you�re airborne only by virtue of hard work, and if you let up for an instant you�ll drop like a rock. It�s not actually quite that bad, but that�s how it feels.

Bats can see just fine, contrary to what some people think. They�re not owls or hawks, but they see. But it�s the echolocation that sets them apart.
It�s like a sort of Etch-A-Sketch picture of the world. You fire off a series of ultrasonic clicks.

The sound waves bounce off objects, are picked up by your ears, and are translated in your bat brain into a sort of alternate reality picture of the world around you.

You �see� things you don�t see with your eyes. You see insects in flight as tiny pinpoint meteorites. And you overlook other things. But working together, regular sight and echolocation, once you relax into it and let the bat�s brain work it out, you get a very complete picture.

We had approached within a quarter mile of the site before morphing. Then we split up and moved in from different angles, flying wild and jerky, flapping our skin wings, blasting our unheard radar sounds all around.

The Bug fighters swooped overhead, oblivious to us. Huge spotlights shone down from the lip of the hole. Heavily armed men and Hork-Bajir patrolled. They were very much on guard. No one was napping.

And down inside, just like Tobias had said, like worms after a heavy rain, the Taxxons worked.

There were pieces of heavy equipment down there as well: earthmovers, cranes, graders, and soon. But the Taxxons were digging up the dirt, squirming their way into walls of gravel and dirt and rock with amazing speed.

As we watched a large section of slope collapsed inward. The Taxxons had tunneled beneath it, loosened the structure and allowed it to fall in on them. They seemed to suffer no permanent damage as they wormed free. Taxxons are easy to cut, not easy to squash, perfectly adapted to their own ecological niche.

<There are more Taxxons than meet the eye,> I warned everyone. <No way to know how many are belowground in tunnels. Be on guard for that: They may come swarming up from underneath us.>

<I�m more worried about those Bug fighters,> Marco said. <What if they decide the Taxxons are expendable? What if they decide to start shooting?>

<Unlikely, but they may if they figure the Taxxons are toast anyway,> I agreed. <If they do, take cover in the Taxxon holes. Any other questions?>

No one said anything. I was braced for something from Cassie. Surely she would raise some sort of moral objection to this straightforward slaughter. But she remained silent. Hard to know what she would object to. It was always a question of balance for her, I guess. She was committed to winning, believed in our cause, understood that there would be terrible things to be done. But she found some things, and not other things, to be over the line. Me, I barely knew where the line was anymore. I�d come to depend on Cassie to keep me from going too far.

Nothing from Cassie.

<Okay. See that vertical rift over on the right there? Looks deep and dark enough for us. We go in. Then, battle morphs, and come out hot and mean. Soon as we�re engaged I�ll signal James. Then, Toby.> We swooped silently down, down through the hazy lights and into the deep cleft that, to our bat
senses, was well defined and perfectly clear.

<Ax first,> I ordered. Ax had only to demorph to be dangerous. The rest of us had to demorph, then morph again.

With Ax ready I began to demorph. As my weight returned I had to grab exposed roots with unformed hands to keep from sliding down the cleft. Then, morphing to tiger, I lost my hold and slid, tumbling down,

I rolled to a stop by Ax who waited calmly just within the shadow. A pair of Taxxons toiled not ten feet away, out in the hazy light. They hadn�t seen or smelled us.
My acute tiger senses told me even without looking that the others were morphed behind me.

<Three count,> I said more calmly than I felt. <Three, two, GO!>

It must have been a terrifying sight for the Taxxons. An Andalite warrior and five wild beasts suddenly roaring out of a crack in the dirt wall. The nearest Taxxons had no chance to react. We hit them, slashed, cut, and moved on, knowing that a wounded Taxxon is a dead Taxxon.

I moved at breakneck speed. Slashed the nearest Taxxon, leaped atop him, propelled myself away, digging my hind claws into him for good measure.
I hit the ground, took two loping steps, and was ripping the next Taxxon before he could scream.

But now the Taxxon voices were crying out in their shrill, sibilant language.

�Sreeeeya! Ansacaleees!�

I caught a glimpse of a wild African elephant burying ivory tusks in a Taxxon�s raised chest.

Rachel tossed her head and the tusks nearly removed the top third of her victim.

Marco in cheetah morph and Ax fought most logically. They each understood that a mere wound was enough, as long as live Taxxons were left undamaged to take care of the finishing off. Marco would accelerate to forty mph, dig his less-than-deadly claws into a victim, leave bloody scratches
behind, and prance away far too quickly for a Taxxon to respond.

Ax wielded his tail with the precision of a surgeon. Tobias wheeled and dove at the red jelly eyes. And Cassie was there, too, in wolf morph, tearing into sausage-casing flesh, ripping and jumping back.

It was a sheer, one-sided massacre.

Now the security forces, human-Controller and Hork-Bajir, were getting into the game. They came running around the lip of the crater to get close enough to fire down into us without hitting the Taxxons.

<Here they come,> I warned.

But we were faster than the Taxxons, and, with the exception of Rachel, smaller. Excited Hork- Bajir firing wildly were doing almost as much damage as we were.

�Don�t stand up here shooting, get down there!� a human voice bawled. �Get down there, you cowards!�

<James!> I yelled. <Now!>

Clear across the crater, James and seven of his people in morph erupted amid the Taxxons. That would keep the security forces from concentrating.
Taxxons were running away, turning and running, confused, terrified. Others lacked even that much self-control: They fell upon their wounded brothers and slammed their teeth-lined round mouths

down again and again, reared up high, and with a �Sreee!� of delight tore chunks from their stillliving fellow Taxxons.

I saw two wounded Taxxons devouring each other. Both screamed in rage and hate; both must have known, somewhere, deep in their fevered minds, that this was madness, but neither could stop.

<Ax! Hork-Bajir behind you!> I yelled.

Unnecessary, of course: An Andalite sees in all directions at once.

But now the easy part was definitely over: Hork-Bajir were piling into the melee. It was the difference between fighting big, nasty but vulnerable worms and fighting walking razor blades.

A Hork-Bajir leaped over a fallen Taxxon and landed right in front of me. Just that morning I�d let a Hork-Bajir cut me down.
<Not this time,> I said, and launched myself straight at him, straight for his face. At arm�s length a Hork-Bajir is almost the equal of a tiger. At close range the tiger is king.

I broke free and yelled, <Okay, Toby, your turn! Now!>

The battle had drawn every Yeerk eye down to the pit. The swift, running approach of sixty free Hork-Bajir warriors had gone unnoticed, even by the buzzing, frustrated Bug fighters overhead.

The Yeerks were uncoordinated, thrown off by our successive waves. Our plan was working.

But sooner or later someone was going to take charge of the shocked and off-balance Yeerks.

Two minutes more, I told myself, and we bail.

It was one minute too many. The Bug fighters opened fire without warning. They fired on Taxxon and human-Controller and Hork-Bajir alike.
More Bug fighters were maneuvering to get into firing position. They were going to kill everyone, friend and foe alike. They were doing our work for us. But we would surely die as well.

Hork-Bajir-Controllers were running for it, scrambling up out of the pit.

<Toby! Mix your people in with them and run! James! Fall back. We�ll distract them for another few seconds.>

<We get all the fun jobs,> Marco muttered.

And then, what I had warned against, had foreseen � and forgotten. The ground opened beneath me and I fell.

Jake has lost Cassie as an advisor, which pretty much means he's lost any moral restraint.

Chapter 9

quote:

<Aaahhh!>
I fell a long way. My tiger speed and balance turned me around, aimed my feet down, tail twirling to maintain this attitude.

I hit the dirt, took the shock in all four paws, rolled sideways, and came up snarling. Snarling at nothing. I was in an empty tunnel. Dark. Too dark for even my cat�s eyes. But I smelled plenty, a smell I knew: Taxxon.

I stayed on guard, not too worried, but definitely ready. I heard a sound � shuffling, grinding � digging!

The ground opened beneath me again and I fell in a cascade of dirt, down, and this time no hard landing on a flat surface. I was in a chute, rolling, trying to grab on with my spike claws. But the surface was smooth, almost like glass. And now I was getting worried.

I fell for only thirty seconds or so, but that�s a long way to go underground. Finally the chute ended and I was once more rolled across a dirt floor.

<Marco! Rachel!> No answer. Was I that far underground? Out of thought-speak range? I took a chance. <Marco, get everyone home, that�s an order. Don�t argue.>

There was light. Dim, but more than enough for me.

And there were Taxxons: three of them. Each carried a Dracon beam in one set of upper legs. I could get one, maybe two of them. But three? Before they could shoot me?

<Please do not attack, we mean you no harm.>

It was thought-speak! Not the impossible-to-decipher hissing and spitting of spoken Taxxon. Thought-speak, and impossible as it seemed, I had the strangest impression that it was an Andalite thought-speak �voice.�

I froze.

<What do you want?> I demanded.

<To speak to you, Jake.>

He knew my name. Of course the Yeerks did know my name now, but still it was a shock.

<Okay, so speak. You�ve got the Dracon beams, I guess I�ll listen.>

The Taxxon who was speaking opened his pincers and let the Dracon weapon drop. The other two did the same. <Now we are at your mercy, Animorph. That morph is more than capable of killing the three of us.>

I took a deep breath. <Okay, let�s talk. You know me. Who are you?>

<My name is Arbron. I am - was an Andalite aristh.>

<You�re a Taxxon.>

<Your friend Tobias is a hawk,> he countered.

<You�re stuck in morph? You�re a morphed Andalite stuck as a Taxxon? A nothlit?> I couldn�t keep the horror out of my voice. One thing to be trapped as a hawk. But to be trapped as a Taxxon?

 Arbron said almost proudly. 

<Visser One?>

<Not then. But, yes, Alloran became the unwilling host body for the Yeerk now ranked Visser One. He commanded our mission. Alloran was an Andalite prince with the smallest possible command: two lowly arisths. Me, and Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul.>

I stopped breathing. Could it be possible? Elfangor, Ax�s brother? Elfangor, who gave us the morphing power to begin with? This � this whatever he was had been a friend of Elfangor�s?

<What do you want?> I asked him.

He shuffled closer and I had to resist the normal reaction of disgust.



<You�re a Controller?>

<No. I have no Yeerk within me. We want to be free � we all want to be free � of the curse of being Taxxons.>

 I said, although I was beginning to guess.

<The morphing power,> Arbron said, now sounding almost desperate. <The morphing power! Don�t you see? If the Taxxons could morph, acquire some more benign shape and find a safe haven on your planet � become something other than what they are, escape the hunger. You cannot imagine the
hunger � they�ve seen that there could be a better way. The virus of knowledge is in their bloodstreams now, they realize that they could change forever!>

<You�re telling me the Taxxons want to � to stop being Taxxons?>

<Yes. Yes. My people have seen a better way � a way out of this life of eternal, excruciating pain and hunger, a hunger that has made us slaves of the Yeerks.>

I didn�t know what to say. Too much to absorb. An entire species wanting to morph? And surely Arbron knew that we no longer had the morphing cube, that Visser One had it. And in any event, Arbron must know that it wouldn�t work on him. Not on a nothlit.

As if he was reading my mind, Arbron said, <Listen to me, Jake the Animorph. I have been a leader of these, my new people, for many years. We have fought the hunger, resisted as well as we could the murderous cannibalistic urges. I�ve tried to show them a better way. But the need is too
powerful. Resistance always breaks down, and we fall again under Yeerk sway. They feed us, you see. It�s as simple as that.


No choice but to be honest, I thought. I can�t sustain a lie. I can�t trick them. I said.

<We know. Visser One has it, and he will never free us, never. No Taxxon or even Taxxon- Controller has been allowed to acquire the morphing power. We can only have it, only be free, if you and not the Yeerks are victorious.>
<And you would �> I began, not daring even to complete the sentence, it was too amazing, the
possibilities too incredible.
<Yes. We would fight with you. There are one thousand seven hundred and nine non-Controller Taxxons on the surface of this planet and aboard the Pool ship. And we Taxxons would fight with you.>

It's our friend Arbron! This is also wjhat the Yeerks get for having allies instead of slaves.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 05:33

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

Second mention of Saint Sherman.

Embrace it, Jake.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 05:47

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

While I don't think it's intentional, it's interesting that an Andalite nothlit is the voice of the Taxxons' plea to basically be soft genocided. They sure love genocide.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 06:40

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

QuickbreathFinisher posted:

While I don't think it's intentional, it's interesting that an Andalite nothlit is the voice of the Taxxons' plea to basically be soft genocided. They sure love genocide.

He's a student of Alloran-"Sweet Space Jesus I Fukkin LOOOOOOOVE Genocide"-Semitur-Corrass. Of course Arbron lusts for racial extinction. The old man taught him well.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 07:13

JesusSinfulHands: Oct 24, 2007; Sartre and Russell are my heroes

Well, there did seem to be an abnormally few number of species on the Andalite homeworld....

# ? Jan 8, 2023 07:21

Acebuckeye13: Nov 2, 2010; Ultra Carp

In fairness, being a Taxxon seems to really fuckin' suck

# ? Jan 8, 2023 08:50

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

So the Yeerks have kept the Taxxons in line all these years by either infestation, or by promising them more stuff to eat right?

# ? Jan 8, 2023 09:02

Capfalcon: Apr 6, 2012; No Boots on the Ground,
Puny Mortals!

There's something really cold about helping decide the fate of a species with a (psudeo) member of a species that you were just openly headhunting moments ago.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 09:32

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

mind the walrus posted:

So the Yeerks have kept the Taxxons in line all these years by either infestation, or by promising them more stuff to eat right?

So he says.

I don't think we've heard that there are a lot of voluntary Taxxon controllers, or uninfested collaborators, in past books, have we?

Fuschia tude fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Jan 8, 2023

# ? Jan 8, 2023 09:36

Kazzah: Jul 15, 2011; Formerly known as
Krazyface; Hair Elf

Yeah it seems like a punishment detail more than anything.

Though if I remember right there's a Taxxon-controller on the Council, so maybe there's a sort of charm to it.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 09:46

Remalle: Feb 12, 2020

Taxxon-Controllers apparently make great pilots, so they've got that going for them at least. I guess.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 10:06

dungeon cousin: Nov 26, 2012; woop woop
loop loop

Maybe having a Yeerk lessens the hunger a bit for the Taxxon. Though if so then probably not by much since hosts can still feel pain and such while a Yeerk is in control.

Or maybe it relieves the Taxxon of the mental strain that comes with stopping itself from eating everyone around it. The Yeerk is now in charge of restraining the instinct while the Taxxon can relax so to speak.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 11:36

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

dungeon cousin posted:

Maybe having a Yeerk lessens the hunger a bit for the Taxxon. Though if so then probably not by much since hosts can still feel pain and such while a Yeerk is in control.

Or maybe it relieves the Taxxon of the mental strain that comes with stopping itself from eating everyone around it. The Yeerk is now in charge of restraining the instinct while the Taxxon can relax so to speak.

I believe this was explicitly stated, as was the non-Controlled collaboraters thing. I can't for the life of me remember when, though.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 13:27

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

It was mentioned early on that the Taxxons allied with the Yeerks because it helped control their hunger.

# ? Jan 8, 2023 19:17

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

A species whose existence sucks utilising technology to become a species (or multiple species) whose existence doesn't suck isn't genocide. :colbert:

The non-Taxxons of the future will sing songs about their Taxxon ancestors who fought for their freedom from hunger! Paternalistic humans need to respect Taxxon agency! But please ignore the Avatar-esque Andalite Saviour narrative going on with Arbron. (Jokes aside, I do really love that they managed to work Arbron back into the story.)

Also, you can really tell this book is written by the Applegates again. The ghostwriters have often done a sterling job back when the series was treading water, but the cracks were starting to show over the past few books when the story was coming to a head in less space than it deserved even under a more talented hand. But there's just something more naturally talented about the Applegates' writing, both overall and on a sentence by sentence level, that makes this book feel more solid. I'm glad they're back and it's a shame it didn't happen sooner.

# ? Jan 11, 2023 16:02

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Just wanted to give my apologies. I've been in the hospital with what looks to be a blood. Stuff is on hold until I get medical stuff straightedge out, which I hope to happen soon

# ? Jan 12, 2023 20:09

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

Look you can just admit that the Kandora rays are harder to come by in this economy, we won't judge

(feel better, stay safe, all that jazz)

# ? Jan 12, 2023 23:46

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Also, the problem with the non-taxxons is that, assume they don't turn into andalites or human or whatever, the offspring of nothlits. So there won't be a second generation.

# ? Jan 13, 2023 01:49

Zonko_T.M.: Jul 1, 2007; I'm not here to fuck spiders!

The only other options Taxxons have is finding someone who is able and willing to genetically modify them- which raises a Ship of Theseus style question about 'are these really still Taxxons?', if it's even possible for them- or to just keep going as is, which they hate SO MUCH they willingly let parasites mind-control them. Maybe they could develop some kind of medicine instead of straight up genetic modification, but the Taxxon idea of medical science is a buffet, so.
Maybe the guy who explained what was up with the Hork-bajir could help them out, but he was a dick so I doubt it.

# ? Jan 13, 2023 02:30

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Zonko_T.M. posted:

The only other options Taxxons have is finding someone who is able and willing to genetically modify them- which raises a Ship of Theseus style question about 'are these really still Taxxons?', if it's even possible for them- or to just keep going as is, which they hate SO MUCH they willingly let parasites mind-control them. Maybe they could develop some kind of medicine instead of straight up genetic modification, but the Taxxon idea of medical science is a buffet, so.
Maybe the guy who explained what was up with the Hork-bajir could help them out, but he was a dick so I doubt it.

Yeah, I don't think the Arn would be in any real hurry to try and help out any lingering vestige of the Yeerk Empire, regardless of their actual culpability. But they're all basically dead now, so that one's kind of moot.

nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jan 13, 2023

# ? Jan 13, 2023 02:35

Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Epicurius posted:

Just wanted to give my apologies. I've been in the hospital with what looks to be a blood.

Don't feel bad, that's understandable. We know you're new to the experience of having Earth blood.

# ? Jan 13, 2023 03:58

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

Rest up and get well, friend, the war can wait.

# ? Jan 13, 2023 04:11

Tunzie: Aug 9, 2008

Fuschia tude posted:

Don't feel bad, that's understandable. We know you're new to the experience of having Earth blood.

They�re everyone�s blood, A- oh. I guess it technically isn�t.

Carry on.

# ? Jan 13, 2023 11:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 23, 2024 19:02

Acebuckeye13: Nov 2, 2010; Ultra Carp

Epicurius posted:

Just wanted to give my apologies. I've been in the hospital with what looks to be a blood. Stuff is on hold until I get medical stuff straightedge out, which I hope to happen soon

Hope you're doing okay, man.

# ? Jan 18, 2023 21:53

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