Animorphs #55
The Ending
Authors notes:
Um... hi... 'Tis my first fanfic, so I'm kinda new to this thing.
The end of the animorphs series sucked. How could you kill off Rachel then end with such a cliff hanger!!! Why, Applegate, why!
That was the beginning yet it was the ending, so this is the ending yet it is the beginning. Confusing, eh?
Chapter One- Marco
My name is Marco.
And oh man, did I miss my beach house in Santa Barbara, my apartment in New York, my Maserati, my Humvee, my Viper (car, not snake). I miss being a celebrity, giving interviews and being a movie star. I miss being bored out of my mind. But no, no... i had to through my life away to join Jake on this suicide mission.
I'm glad I did.
"Full emergency power to the engines, ram the Blade ship."
I laughed, then said, "I wonder how tough our buddy, Mr. Da One, really is."
I suppose you might be wondering, why is the cutest kid in the world, who is much cuter than anyone i know, on a space ship? And who is this mysterious being known as "Mr. Da One?"
I would tell you about way back when, as I made the stupidest decision in my life, to walk through an abandoned construction site, and to not run away when or friend Prince Elfangor's ship landed, and to accept the ability to turn into animals to kick slimy brain slug but? Ok, that may have been multiple decisions, but anyway, everybody knows about the Yeerk invasion, and how we kicked those slimy aliens off of good old mother Earth, hence why I'm famous, but what people don't now is this:
1. Cute little me, Fearless leader Jake, Bird boy Tobias, Jake's student's, the military man Santorelli and the lovely french lady Jeanne along with an Andalite-turned-human named Menderash-something-something were in Kelbrid Space, which is pretty much one half of the galaxy controlled by some race nether you nor I know, all i know is no Andalite is allowed here.
2. That I really like pie. Pumpkin pie is the best.
3. That we're all probably gonna die.
4. That we "borrowed" the ship from the Andalites and used it to chase the blade ship to the other side of the galaxy.
5. That our plan is insane.
42. That i like to joke around.
The ship surged forward and connected with the Blade ship. We could hear a sound like nails on a chalk board, magnified times 10.
But then... the Rachel suddenly wasn't ramming the Blade ship, it was back where its was when Jake gave the order.
Ax/The One sneered, with his really creepy mouth, then said, "Now now Jake, the-Yeerk-killer, that's not nice."
Then a single beam of light lanced out from the Ones stolen body.
And stabbed into Jake.
"Jake!" I screamed, rushing to his side, but he just got up, and the giant blood covered wound disappeared.
Before I could ask any questions I heard an all too familiar voice:
"Uh-uh, not fair, the One, so totally not fair." The voice sounded sarcastic and annoyed, the voice was the Drode's.
"Greetings, Drode, send my regards to the weak fool Crayak"
"Just another average day with the Animorphs," I muttered, "wrinkly purple dinosaurs arguing with freaky omnipotent beings..."
"Hey! Don't call me wrinkly!"
The Blade ship fired its Dracon cannon at us, but the beam disappeared halfway to our ship.
"The One, rules make everything much better, don't you agree?" The Drode said, as he pulled a extremely long sheet of paper, covered with writing, "Minimal interferance is the prime directive! And why must we call you The One? It sounds so... weird... From know on you shall be known as... The One!"
"......"
"Oh fine... nobody laugh... the Drodes not funny is he..."
"Ha ha ha" A new voice said. We all turned, and saw the Ellimist, who currently looked like an glowing blue old man. For some odd reason he had a party hat. "I'm sorry for being late, but I was posing as a Wurb during one of their annual festivals, It was quite entertaining."
"Ahhh, Ellimist, you're late," The Drode said, pulling out a giant watch, "My Masters old... acquaintance here isn't obeying our rules!"
"Oh yes, you mean the one who kicked your master out of his home galaxy? I wonder what he's doing here..."
"I'm here too gain more slaves, meddler Ellimist and wild card Drode," The One laughed, "Crayak uses his powers to kill all life, the Ellimist uses it to save life, both are very stupid things to do. I force galaxy's to bow down before my might, and i deserve the entire universes worship."
"Somebody has a giant ego..." I muttered.
"Silence puny human! I shall destroy your race! Along with the Andalite and all other races that oppose me!"
"Now now, The One," The Drode said, "I'll make you a deal: Me, my master and this meddler will not directly interfere with your plans if you don't directly interfere with ours. Minimalism, The One."
"Fine..." Ax's face split open to reveal a giant, red smile, "as your people used to say, Ellimist, Shall we immerse?"
"On the other side."
Chapter Two- Tobias
I had no idea what we were going to do. I didn't know what the One was going to do. I didn't know anything about the situation we had gotten our selves into.
If only I had known.
"Ok then..." Marco said, "What know?"
We all turned to Jake, he shrugged and said, "Um... well.... First we need to find something out about our new friend. Menderash, set a course for the nearest system with spacefaring life."
"Course set in," Menderash said calmly, "The system we are headed for contains 6 planets. 1 is too close to the sun to be habitable, and 2 are too far out. The other 4 are all within what you humans call the Goldilocks zone."
[[Not too hot not too cold?]] I asked.
"Yes, just right. Hopefully the life on one of these planets is space faring."
I took us a day to get their. A day of sitting around a large table playing cards and figuring out what to do. Our plan was to simply go down to the planet, talk to the natives, find out about The One and the Kelbrids, and then gather supplies.
Me and Marco were playing a very violent video game, which involved him killing me 100's of times while i run away, when we were called to the bridge.
"Menderash, any space faring planets?" Jake asked as I flew in. I was still my hawk self while playing video games, because humans have advanced a bit. No more controllers for your play station, brain interfaces are the new thing.
"Um... well... none of them actually..." Menderash blushed, "I means... there was signs of intelligent life... there seems to be some structures on the hot planet... why-"
[[Hey,]] I cut him off, [[Those spaceships I see out the window don't look to friendly.]]
"What spaceships? There's nothing on sensors."
Their was two space ships out the window, I could easily see them with my hawk eyes. The ship was made up of three large spikes lined up in a row, the middle one being larger than the rest. At the end of each spike there was a large engine, spewing fire out into space. In the middle of the spikes there was a large trapezoid that conected them all together. The ships were coloured in different dark colours, but it was mostly red.
[[Um... guys...]] I said as a barrage of missile's were shot from the top of the ship, [[we might have a problem...]]
The ship was violently shaking, throwing me to the ground. I landed in a crumpled mess of feathers and felt a sharp pain in my left wing.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Marco fall on top of Jeanne, "Hey there, I'm Marco." He said before she angrily shoved him off.
"Menderash, whats happening?" Jake said. He had been sitting down, so he didn't fly all over the place like Marco, Jeanne and I.
"Two ships were in an advanced cloaking state next to us." Menderash said calmly, "Santorelli, get to the weapons console and start firing. Attempt to disable them"
The ship maneuvered in a loop, so we were above- or maybe below, its impossible to tell in space- the other ship. Santorelli shot twice at the top of the trapezoid and destroyed the missile launchers. He then shot backwards are we zoomed past and took out two of the engines.
"Now for the other ship." Jake said calmly.
Disabling the other ship was harder than disabling the first. They shot back, but without surprise on their side the Rachel easily avoided the shots. It took only 3 shots to disable them.
"Menderash, open a communications channel." Jake ordered.
A very angry creature appeared on the screen.
It looked like a gorilla at first, except it had reddish brown fur. It had four legs, one pair where a gorillas legs are, and one pair coming off of its mid-section. Its legs ended in large clawed feet. Its hands looked like a bears, except they had 3 fingers and an opposable thumb. It had 2 cat like eyes and ears, and a large curved beak. The creature looked very intimidating.
The creature spoke in a rough, angry voice, "Who are you? Why do you trespass upon our land? We claimed this system to use for mining!"
"We are simple explorers," Jake replied, "we had no intention of stealing this system from you."
"Since you know who we are, can you tell us who you are?" Marco added.
"I am the captain of this mining vessel. We were coming here to gather different ores to bring to our home world. We are of the Kelbrid." He said. Menderash and Marco exchanged worried looks.
"Well then, captain," Jake said, "Can you tell us about a being known as The One?"
Chapter Three- David
I scurried along the tiled floor, and looked at my opponent. The deadly being known as the mousetrap. He had almost taken my tail off during our last encounter, but I always out smarted him. In my mouth I carried a toothpick. I poked the trap, then jumped back as it snapped up the toothpick. As I ate my prize, a piece of cheese, I thought about how much my life seemed like that old movie Mousehunt, where an extremely intelligent mouse outsmarted two people as they tried to kill it. I was too busy eating that I didn't notice the sound of footsteps before it was too late.
"Hi little mouse." I turned, and saw a middle aged man, around 40, holding a broom. "I'm going to crush you, mouse, I will crush you like a bug."
He evidently didn't like mice. Actually i was a rat. A white rat. An impossibly old rat. Maybe that had something to do with the morphing technology?
Who knows.
WHAM! A foot the size of a car slammed down on where I had been standing a moment before. I ran through his legs and down a hallway. Footsteps that sounded like claps of thunder followed me. I turned a corner and ran into the bathroom, narrowly dodging a whack from the broom. I ran over to the wall next to the bathtub and...
I ran into a piece of wood.
Crap, I thought, he covered the entrance... This wasn't good. He had covered the enterance to my rat hole inside of his wall. This was not good. I looked up and saw the man. His name was George or Jeffery or Jeremy or something.
Jim's eye twitched, "I got you now, mouse." Joe said happily, "You won't eat my food again! Ever!"
I would have rolled my eyes if I was a human. While he was busy laughing like a mad man i ran through his legs.
"No! Get back here, mouse!" George yelled. I could hear his foot steps behind me.
You're proably confused. I am, obviously human, yet I'm a rat. Long story short: I found a blue box, had my life ruined by aliens, got taken in by a group of alien fighters, then betrayed them. They tricked me into becoming a mouse permanently after that. I suppose i deserve it. And believe me, i regret what I did. And I've had a long 5 or so years eating cheese to pay for my past wrongs.
I ran and ran and ran, my thoughts focused on running and i didn't realize my mistake. Didn't realize he was herding me, didn't see the cage I ran into because i was too busy dodging giant feet.
I heard laughter and turned. I was in a cage, my thoughts flashed back to the day I was trapped as a rat nothlit, when I was trapped in a cage just like this.
Those two hours will haunt me forever.
Actually, that's a lie. Being a rat is ok. No rules, eat cheese, and nobody makes fun of me. I'm never the new kid, the other rats don't care about new kids.
Suddenly his laughing stopped. He stopped... Everything stopped. Time was Frozen.
[[Hello, David.]] A thought speak voice said, I turned and saw another rat in the cage with me. Except the rat was glowing blue.
[[Um... Hello.]] I said, [[Who are you?]]
I don't know how to describe it, but the rat smiled. It didn't really smile, but it was smiling. I just new it was smiling. [[I am the Ellimist.]]
[[Um... Hi Ellimist]]
[[David, you have made many bad choices in life-]]
[[You got that right...]]
[[But i sense you have repented for your past actions. The past cannot be undone -well... ok it can, but it won't- but you can always try to make up for your actions.]]
[[Um... how?]]
[[David, what would you do if I somehow allowed you to morph again, and I told you about a threat to earth- no, the entire galaxy- what would you do?]]
[[I'd fight]] I replied quickly, truthfully, [[but... I have an odd feeling this guys going to kill me.]]
[[Is he? He cannot do that if you somehow appear somewhere else, now can he?]]
And then I was no longer in a cage.
Chapter Four-Jake
"The One... he is..." The Captain's voice had lost its former aggressiveness. He sounded old and tired. "We, the Kelbrid used to have a vast territory. We often try to hide the fact that we now only control 5 systems." Menderash looked shocked, and was about to speak, but a quick glance silenced him. "The One... He has damaged us greatly. He has an army of loyal slaves from a variety of races. He... he poses as a god and forces them into worship. Half of the Kelbrid population is under his service. We try to defend ourselves... but it is, difficult. We attacked you on site as this is our only mining system, and we need it to build ships and colony's."
"Can you tell us anything about where he came from?"
"He came from another galaxy, bringing with him a race of slaves. They looked like... like..." An image appeared on screen. It looked like a dog, with three crocodile-like heads, three tails and three legs. Its skin was scaly and green, very crocodile like. "We do not know what they are called, but they follow The One everywhere. We assume the One forced the people of his galaxy to fight each other until one was left."
"Interesting. We are sorry for damaging your ships. We have supplies on board and would like to trade. We don't have much food left and it is a long way home."
The Kelbrid captain smiled, "Certainly." And the communication ended.
***
I had assembled everyone at the large table in the mess hall. It wasn't much of a mess hall, but it was fine place to hole meetings.
"O.k," I began, "the Kelbrid have agreed to send a shuttle over to drop off the food, then we give them things to help them repair their ship."
"Should we trust them?" Marco asked?
"The Kelbrid are very trustworthy, but they are also quite aggressive." Menderash said, "I doubt they would do anything to harm us."
[[they sure didn't look very aggressive during the communication.]] Tobias said, [[And what do you think they eat? What if its, oh... i don't know... poisonous to us?]]
"I could analyze what they send us before consumption." Menderash said, "It would be unfortunate if anyone died from something as pleasurable as eating."
I often wonder if Andalites have a sense of humor. "Anyone got any ideas of what to do next?"
[[We'd have to find out more about The One.]] Tobias said.
"Mr. Da One" Marco corrected.
"I'd suggest going back to earth and warn the public." Santorelli said, "If The One's going to send his Cerberus/crocodile/tripod monsters somewhere it would be there."
[[But what if he thinks that's what we're going to do, so he attacks somewhere else? And what if the yeerks attack earth?]] Tobias said, [[Yeerk-Earth war all over again.]]
"And what if he goes and frees the Yeerks from the Yeerk homeworld? Or what if he frees Visser Three/One?" Marco added, "This guys just as powerful, if not more powerful, than the Ellimist and Crayak combined!"
"We'll just have to be careful..." Santorelli said, "In the first war, you only knew what Elfangor told you... know we know nothing!"
"Well..." Marco said, "This guy knows we defeated the Yeerks, and the Andalites couldn't do that, no offense Menderash, he would probably think we're really smart..."
[[So he'd do exactly what we would expect him to do, because he thinks we'd think he'd do the most unexpected think.]] Tobias finished, [[The unexpected is expected.]]
"But..." I said, "What if he expects us to do that?"
"This is confusing!" Marco said, slamming his head on the table, "and insane. Very insane, insaner then the first war-"
[[Insaner is a word?]] Tobias wondered.
"-Just. Plain. Insane!"
"We can't just sit around and wait." Jeanne said, speaking up for the first time, "Maybe the Ellimist could tell us something."
"He can't, but he can hint at it." I said. He had done that in one of our mission near the begining of the war. It allowed us to destroy the Yeerks Kandorona particle generator. Kandorona is given off by the Yeerk planets sun, they need it in order to survive.
"Its not like we have the Ellimists phone number." Marco said, then picked up a banana and held it to his ear, "Hello? Is the Ellimist there?"
"Nope, but I am!" A new voice said happily. The Drode was sitting in the chair next to mine. I pushed my chair away from his. "It's you're friend, the Drode! I'm here to answer all your questions!"
Chapter 5-Tobias
"Friend? I see no friend?" Marco said, "You are not my friend."
"Oh! you've gone and broken my poor little heart!" The Drode whined, "So... you want info or not?"
Sometimes it gets kinda annoying, having omnipotent beings appearing here and there, giving us tidbits of info and what not. Always with their secret agenda's, bending the truth and manipulating their own rules. For once i had a feeling they would tell us the truth. And somehow I didn't like that.
"Hmm... lets see..." the Drode said, "How 'bout this. You all have 3 minutes to ask me questions about The One and his plans, sounds like a plan, eh?"
A giant stopwatch appeared behind the Drode, and began counting down 3 minutes.
"Whats the Ones plan?"
"What do we do first?"
"How large is his army?"
"How powerful is he?"
"What is he going to do next?"
"Woah!" The Drode said, silencing our barrage of questions, "Never mind the questions, I can't go tell you the meaning of the universe here!"
The watch exploded into mist.
"But we already know the secret of the universe." Marco said, "42."
"Yeah yeah... what ever" the Drode said, "I will tell you this: The One kicked my master out of his galaxy, my master had his war with the Ellimist, The One forced the inhabitants of the other galaxy wage war on each other, then came here with the winners."
We all waited a moment for him to continue. He didn't.
[[That's it?]] I asked.
"Yup! Pretty informative, eh?"
[[Um.. no, not really...]]
"See ya later!" The Drode said happily, then disappeared.
"Well... that was a waste of time." Jake said.
"I think the Drode is as insane as the mission we are planning to go on. Stop The One? Insane." We can all guess who said that.
[[In the last war we had the hope of the Andalites coming. Nobody is coming now...]] I said. Then it dawned on me. [[Wait, he told us exactly what we needed to know!]]
"He did?" Marco asked sceptically.
[[Remember how he said, 'The One forced the inhabitants of the other galaxy wage war on each other', He probably wants to do the same here?]]
"But how would he manage to make us all fight each other?" Jeanne asked.
"World wars: Bunch of people started fighting and people joined sides." Santorelli said.
"He could spark an intergalactic war-" Marco began.
"By making a bunch of groups fight each other for one reason or another." Jake finished, "But who?"
[[The Ones forces, Andalites probably, but who else?]]
"Humans, maybe?" Jake wondered.
[[I hope not.]]
"Me too."