Chapter One
My name is Menderash-Postill-Fostill. I am not an Andalite. Not anymore. I sacrificed my Andalite body, my Andalite identity, to reclaim my lost honor.
Andalites were forbidden from entering the Kelbrid Quarantine Zone. Humans were not.
So I morphed. I morphed into a human. And I never demorphed.
It is a difficult concept for many Andalites to comprehend. To willingly become a nothlit. It is considered shameful in our society. But it would have been equally shameful for me to remain an Andalite while my Prince needed me. So I morphed, and didn't look back.
My human morph is, of course, a Frolis Maneuver. Five humans I encountered on my first day stationed on earth donated the DNA. They were quite friendly. Two males and three females. One of the males even paid for my first Cinnabon. Which was magical. I would always be grateful to those human DNA donors. I doubt they knew what I had done, though. They couldn't possibly know that I had trapped myself in the human form composed of their genetic codes.
I barely even remembered what they looked like. Once a Frolis Maneuver is composed, you no longer need to focus on the DNA donors to morph the body. Focusing on the Frolis form itself will do.
War-Prince Escafil is a genius however. He has constructed a new technology that will allow nothlits such as myself to morph again. But with our templates reset. The bodies we became trapped in are the new default. He experimented with many Taxxons, Yeerks, and even a few humans who had all become nothlits to compose this technology. It was sheer brilliance.
I was recently treated with it. Thus, I am now morph capable once more. But my human body is my default now. I cannot morph my old morphs, from before I became a nothlit. I had a Djabala, Kafit Bird, Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, Leeran, Garatron, and of course, a human morph.
Now those morphs are gone. Replaced, even. Since being treated with the new technology, I acquired an earth bird called a Harris Hawk. And then I was given a second chance at honor. I followed three humans who had gotten wind of Pemalite technology. Technology that could cure, or end a new threat to the Human-Andalite alliance.
The One. A singular entity, in viral form. It absorbs life into itself. It has done so with Prince Aximillli. To reclaim my honor, I must free Aximilli from its clutches. But I cannot. Not at this time, anyway. But I will. I swear by my now non-existent tail-blade.
I was not in human form now. I was in morph. A Deinonychus. The term is quite unfamiliar to Andalites, and even most humans, I would wager. It is a dinosaur. A type of earth-animal that no longer exists. It has gone extinct.
Extinct on Earth, but not on Terra Nova; the planet that I was on now. Terraformed in the past, it was transformed with billions of formerly extinct Earth-Animals. Mostly of the Dinosaur type. So my human friends now called themselves "Dinomorphs". I suppose, that in a way, I too am a Dinomorph.
The deinonychus resembles a brightly-colored Hork-Bajir, but smaller, and with no blades. It has a stiff board-like tail it carries in the air behind it, to act as a balance. It has three-fingered clawed hands, and its feet resemble Hork-Bajir feet, but with one difference. It had a large, sickle-like claw, not dissimilar to an Andalite tail-blade.
It was a predator, that hunted in packs, like Earth-Wolves, or Desbadian Karrablasts. An expert hunter.
Which was good…Because I needed to be an expert hunter to bring down my quarry.
After all…I was hunting Andalites.