A.N.I.M.O.R.P.H.
Prologue
Year Zero
February 18, 2057
The room was filled with babies. There were more than fifty incubators in the room, all with newborns. A man in a white lab coat scrutinized over the details of the chart. The children had to perfect, otherwise they wouldn't be given to The Government training center. He checked the z-space radiation emitters, making sure that each was set to the right frequency.
When on specimen 7-4, he frowned and put a the number five on the edge of the incubator. He moved on, and the attendant quickly scooped the baby up.
While carrying the newborn child, the attendant felt no compassion for the creature she held in her hands, they were just another piece of paperwork to deal with. When she approached the left wing incinerator, she removed the small blanket that served as the child's only protection from the elements. With a air of indifference she dropped the child down the shoot. It looked up at her with startled eyes as it slid down the chute. She heard a brief cry and the child was no more.
Year Four
July 25, 2061
Forty children in crisp uniforms sat unflinchingly as they listened to the monotonous voice over the com system. "An Animorph does not feel pain. An Animorph always will follow orders. An Animorph will fight until he is dead or all enemies have been defeated. A Animorph only thinks when he is instructed. An Animorph always fights, and never will emotion get in the way.
One of the children slowly nodded, and then the rest followed. The voice continued.
Year Five
December 25, 2062
Thirty-six children in crisp uniforms sat in a room full of Intelligence testing machines. Several of them were testing a multilevel rubix cube, one of the children, with the tattoo designating him Tom finished the cube in seconds and went on to the next puzzle, twenty blue pieces of razor sharp glass that could be fitted together. While he assembled the pieces effortlessly, his hands began to bleed profusely. He neither flinched nor ever hesitated. When the star shaped three dimensional puzzle was finished he went on to the next test.
Year Six
June 18, 2063
Thirty-five children sat on stiff-backed chairs in their crisp uniforms while Colonel Zac led a terrified gedd into the a glass display room set into the wall. The colonel left the room and hit his remote.
A fence opened at one side of the display room and the children didn't even have enough time to flinch as three starving taxxons, foaming at the mouth, rushed out. They had been deprived of food and tied down for a week, so that the hunger was so great, they would do anything at all for food.
The gedd screamed as the first taxxon started to eat it alive. The other joined in and their was a spray of green blood against the glass. One child, Sil, tried to look away but she was forced back by an electrical shock. The most talented of all the children of his group, Tom, was looking at the scene with udder fascination. When the gedd was gone, the taxxons attacked eachother, throwing their slime across the glass as they were ripped apart. He smiled, but quickly hid his emotion.
Year Twelve
March 11, 2069
Thirty children in crisp, full uniforms stood in line to receive The Power. Tom, like always, was at the front of the line. He put his hand outward and touched the small green box. When the man holding the cube out nodded and Tommy walked to the designated place and awaited orders as still as stone.
Year Thirteen
February 21, 2070
Twenty-nine children in crisp morphing uniforms were lined up on the training course access port awaiting orders. General Dacross and Colonel Zac stood by and watched as Major Sharp shot off a chemical projectile device, a gun, and the children began. Tom, as always, was in the lead. He ran to the concrete wall, and began to concentrate, within seconds he was in the form of the Carfa bird, a native of Carfan Prime, and flew over the wall. When to the other side he immediately demorphed and began to run again.
Sil was still demorphing on the other side of the first wall when Tom finished. The General sighed and gave the signal to Major Sharp and she abruptly got in the jeep and drove to the other side of the wall.
Sil looked up from her fetal position to see the major getting out of the jeep. She immediately stood up and saluted, when the major pulled out her gun. Sil was still saluting when Sharp's bullet entered her brain.
Year Fourteen
Day of Accession
Twenty-five young men and women in crisp uniforms lined up in front of General Dacross as he handed out their swords that would hang on their belts for the rest of their lives to symbolize power. Tom, of course, received his first with the designation E-1. He would be know only as E-1 the rest of his dispensable life.
"You are all now ready for war. You will go proudly into battles and always come out victorious, is that understood?" The General said.
"Yes sir!" They said.
"Now, Animorphs, go into battle proudly, and if you must, die only for The Government," He said unfocused, he had given this speech before, and not many of the attendees ever made it past the age of sixteen, so he just would brief them and that was the rest was up to The Government. He didn't care what happened past that. "Now go!" He yelled and the new batch of Animorphs rushed out of the room in an orderly fashion.
Chapter One
Tom stood silently with a group of ten other troops that had survived the War of Ten Moons. Of the ten only one of them was a class D Animorph. The D's, who were the fourth generation of Animorphs, had bee chosen at five for physical and mental prowess. Though Class E, like Tom and the rest of the survivors, was bread in a test tube. They were exposed to z-space radiation to make them more capable morphers, and all of their strengths were controlled from birth. But instead of foolishly getting rid of the D's, like The Government had done with the C's, they learned that if they were still alive, they had to be good. So, the remaining D was just as much part of the group as the E's.
General Dacross looked across the room at his survivors objectively. "You soldiers have destroyed the enemies base on Selka four, and Duri Luna. The rest of the moon bases you took with ease in one day. But that is not good enough! You lost twenty-six of your fellow animorphs! That is not acceptable!"
The Animorphs stood silently, taking the reprimand for itself, what the general says, goes, was the attitude, if they had any free thought at all.
Dacross pointed to D-5, "Soldier! Why did the enemy stronghold withstand the first attack run?" He screamed.
The soldier stood forward, her hand at her head in salute, "They had proton shields, sir!" She said, holding her place until ordered to stand down.
The general motioned for D-5 to get back, then pointed to E-1 "Why did you not realize this before using proton bombardment weapons, E-1"