Animorphs Forever
Disclaimer: Animorphs belongs to K.A.A. and Scholastic. I make no money from this.
Ax was in the mall.
That was hardly a surprise, he seemed to spend a great deal of time there, eating and even thinking about his beloved cinnamon buns.
He had his mouth full, sitting at one of the many benches that lined the halls of the mall, when he realized that he was thirsty. In fact, he wondered if his tongue would become glued to the back of this throat.
He remembered that there was a machine that dispensed drinks at the food court. It would be a longish walk, but that would be worth it to keep on breathing, as he felt was going on.
On the way there, he had to dodge many milling humans, making him think that he was a type of earth fish that he couldn't remember, which would swim up stream. It was then, that his attention was directed to a bright sign of the Sharing, and he wasn't looking in front of him.
"Oomph," he heard, as he was knocked into the wall next to him. The human that he had collided with was taller than he was, female, and her nose was in a book. He also noticed that she had a rather shabby appearance compared to that of the other humans he had met, her hair hacked off with a dull blade, dyed green, with a shiny metal button in her nose and black makeup. She seemed to be the same age as his human friends.
Looking surprised, the human reached out to grab his arm before he could fall over.
"Are you all right?" she asked, looking very surprised.
"I believe that I will b-be fffine," he told her, feeling a little dumbfounded that someone could walk into another, and seem as unaffected as she.
"Oh, that's good. I'm sorry. I get like that sometimes."
"Get like what?" asked Ax, thinking that he one day he would understand humans, but it would be the day that yeerks had wings, he thought the saying was.
"Kind of dazed. I was reading this new book that I bought, and I started to drift out of reality for a bit."
"Oh." Only, it came out a little muffled, because he was still trying to swallow his cinnamon bun. Only, he found that he couldn't quite do so, because of her smell.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked.
"I am fine, thank you."
"Oh, okay."
The girl walked off, and Ax was left thinking that something in his life had just gotten a little stranger.
Later
The girl was walking back to the bus station, which would take her back to where she had been squatting for the past several months. She would need to be moving on soon.
She had been saving up for a while to be able to buy the book she had gotten at the mall that day. Snorting wryly to herself, she thought that if there was any weakness that she might have, it was books.
Crossing the road, she noticed something. The boy that she had literally run into earlier was crossing the road behind her, but it was next to a blind corner. She could see around it, while he couldn't, and there was a car that was speeding towards him.
Ax was trying to get back to the bus that would take him back to Cassie's farm, when he was hit from behind.
He went sprawling on the other side of the road, and there was a squealing of tires, and a loud, bone-breaking crunch as a body rolled up the front of the car, and into the windshield, shattering it.
"That could have been me," Ax said aloud, grateful that he was alive. It was all he could think about for several minutes.
Realizing what his life had cost someone, he ran over. The girl, the one that he had met earlier, had saved his life.
He tried to remember what he had learned of human biology, and find where her vitals were. Only, it was obvious from the angle of her neck, that it was broken.
He still tried to find a pulse, but there was none to be found. She was dead.
The person in the car was shouting, and he knew that he would have to leave, soon. He couldn't afford to be caught out in the open like that.
There wasn't anything he could do for her.
Feeling like he had let her down, whoever she was, he ran into a nearby alley, and morphed into a seagull.
"You just left her there?" Cassie said, incredulously.
I didn't have much choice, Ax said, feeling guilty.
"Lay off, Cassie," interrupted Marco. "What else could he have done? There is no record of Ax anywhere. What would they have done when they found out that? There are Controllers in the police force, you know that."
"But, still, we need to find out who that girl was."
"I agree," said Jake, who was standing next to Cassie.
What do you think we need to do, hack into the city morgue? commented Tobias.
"That would be a good idea. We need to see who her family is, and stuff like that."
"Let's do it," finished Rachel, but her voice was much sadder than it normally would be.
At the Morgue
The body of Morgan lay still, naked and cold, on a metal shelf in the city morgue.
Gasp
Anyone who saw what happened next would have doubted his or her sanity, as Morgan's eyes opened. Eyes wide, not with the open reflex of death, but with someone staring out of them.
"Great, this again,' she muttered. Sitting up, she tossed off the paper blanket that covered her. "Okay, now to find my clothes."
"Of all the stupid ways to die," she snorted as she wrapped the paper blanket around her, sarong fashion. "I wonder if I'll ever be able to find my book again."
Unfortunately, Morgan had been in this situation more than once, and had learned that most morgues had more or less the same layout. Which meant that she wouldn't have much trouble finding her stuff. She only hoped that they hadn't found her weapons.
Morgan was stuck forever at the physical age of fourteen. She had died over six years ago with her parents in a car crash, and had been fortunate to be found by an immortal who would teach her, instead of kill her.
She had trained for three of the past six years since her death, and if she was bigger, she might have been a great swordswoman. While she was tall for her physical age, she was still much smaller than most female immortals, and was thus easy prey.
Duncan had been kind to her, she thought, as she scurried into the evidence rooms. Wrinkling her nose that the astringent smell, she found the bag containing her things. In it, was her clothing, which still had bloodstains, her book, and si, which was what she had been worried about. Morgan dressed quickly, because the room was cold, and tucked her weapons away. She never kept all of them on her body, unless she was traveling, so the rest of her things should still be in her flop.
Shouldering her pack, she started for the door, but ducked behind a set of shelves when she heard the faint scuffing of shoes on tiles.
Her hands darted the places where she kept her si, and she got them ready.
"Visser Three, honestly, we are doing all we can to cover up our latest experiments, but we can't keep that many bodies hidden for long."
Peeking around the shelf, as the two men, one in a lad coat and sounding desperate, the other in a suit, who look barely short of homicidal. Neither where immortal, she sighed with relief.
Wait a minute, she thought, what that guy mean by experiments?
Once they had passed her by, she had a clear path out. Her mind, though, refused to let her go.
It's none of my business!
Oh, yeah, it wasn't Mac's business to help you, either!
Snarling at her conscience, Morgan stood up from her crouch, and padded along behind them.
Ax and Tobias had decided to go say goodbye to the unknown girl. They had hacked into the computer system there, and it turned out that she was a runaway. No one knew her name, and her fingerprints were not on file, anywhere. She was due for cremation, alone.
Do you think that she was abused, or something? Tobias asked. They had been trying to figure out the reason that she would have run away.
I don't know, and I don't think that we ever will.
Pity. Tobias was morphing human to open the window into the freezer.
Ax was also in bird morph, but would be a bit more conspicuous than Tobias if he demorphed to use his hands.
"I can't get it undone," Tobias grunted, when the latches on the window refused to give for him.
I will get it, said Ax, and he began to demorph. Tobias snorted in surprise and demorphed himself, to keep a lookout. Ax used his tail to hack through the screen and they morphed to human to wiggle in.
It was then that they heard a voice that they both hated.
"I will not settle for anymore excuses, Iniss 7890," hissed Visser Three.
"What?" exclaimed Tobias.
"There are so many mutilations on the bodies, sir that I can't keep people from finding out-"
"I told you, no more excuses!"
"If you would only take a look-"
It was a rare moment that the two Animorphs heard. The Visser kept his temper.
"All right, Inis 7890," he hissed. "Show me these… mutilations."
We've got to get out of here, said Tobias.
We don't have time to morph! answered Ax.
The door opened.
Tobias was demorphing as fast as he could, with Ax right at his heels.
There was a loud crash from behind them, and Visser Three whipped his head around to see what it was.
"Damn!" Morgan yelled, using her entire twenty years of experience at swearing to make some very colorful combinations.
They had seen her.
Hopefully they wouldn't recognize her, but that didn't mean squat if they caught her.
The two men looked at her like a wolf at a rabbit, and she hopped out at fast as her feet would move.
Of course, Morgan wouldn't know about the Visser's guards.
"Seize her!" roared Visser Three.
She hadn't seen his two goons, which grabbed at her. Her si were ready, and she slashed at the first one's eyes.
Balancing on one foot, she lashed out with a lunging side kick, and hit the other guard's knee. There was loud crack as it bent in the wrong direction. Landing on her left knee, she spun around with her other leg out, and swept the other man off his feet.
"Ugh!" she groaned, and fell, when a dracon beam hit her back.
She dropped over, her back a piece of scorched meat.
NO! yelled Ax from behind, as he and Tobias ran out, and attacked. Reaching over, Ax pulled Morgan on his back, and they ran out, and back to the forest.
Morgan awoke to the strangest feeling. She was on something warm and furry, but it was heaving oddly. Like a horse, only it couldn't be, there was something wrong with the slope of the back, and the smell was different…
Gasping, her eyes opened, to find that she was clinging to the back of a – a- blue alien?
"What the fraggin' hell?" Morgan screamed, seeing the sleek tail blade that arched up from behind her. That was what scared her. If that thing realized what she was, it could kill her faster than anything anyone else could do.
It was running, and the last thing she remembered were those two men trying to capture her. She could hear the sound of hooves hitting the ground beneath her. It was then that she looked up. Above her, there were little things that looked like bugs, only-
"Look out!" she yelled, diving from the back of whatever it was that she was riding.
It's eyes looked up, and they saw the same thing that she did, as they fired.
"RUN!" Morgan shouted, and they all scattered.
The Animorphs were the ones that the Bug fighters followed, and they left Morgan alone.
Sobbing for air, the immortal fourteen-year-old ran to the place where she had been staying for the last three months.
It was a mausoleum. It kept her dry, and since it was on holy ground, she didn't have to worry about anyone trying for her head when she was asleep. Inside, were several cans of food, her blanket roll, and her other weapons.
Morgan's last job had been delivering papers in the morning. It had given her enough money that she had been able to buy supplies for about a month, and to get a new book.
Her last few books she had had to sell to be able to eat. That was the problem with being fourteen, but really twenty: no one would hire you.
"Okay, Morgan, what did you just see? There was definitely a blue alien, you were definitely hit in the back with some sort of energy beam," she rubbed that back of her neck in remembered pain. "And, there was something mentioned about experiments. So, does this mean that the people that had me were the good guys, or…"
She closed her eyes, and leaned into the cool stone of the walls. Those things were trying to kill them. Not just her, because they hadn't followed her when she had run. That meant that she had an enemy, but whether those people were her friends or not, Morgan didn't know.
Sliding to the floor of her temporary shelter and opening her eyes again, Morgan rummaged through her bags until she came up with some jerky. Chewing it, she thought some more.
"They wouldn't have much trouble finding me if I stay here, anyway," she sighed, and started to pack.
She had been given a long black duster by her teacher Mac, where she kept the two butterfly swords she would use when someone came after her. The pair of si went into her belt, and her bo, which doubled as a walking staff, she kept handy. Her bedroll went into her backpack, along with her one other change of clothing.
"I guess I try to see where that blue guy went, and hope he doesn't realize that I was at the morgue because I was dead. (sigh) I hope I don't wind up there again."
In the Barn
"What happened?" asked Jake, seeing the burns that could only be caused be dracon beams.
We were attacked by Visser Three, Prince Jake, answered Ax.
Stunned silence.
"Was she a Controller?" asked Marco, but he answered his own question. "No, a Controller wouldn't die to save someone."
She wasn't dead, burst out Tobias, who had been freaking out ever since they had seen her wake up, and run off.
"You did check her pulse, didn't you?" asked Cassie.
Not the second time.
"Second time?"
The second time she was killed. We had sneaked in, and where in human morph, when we heard Visser Three. There was a loud crash, which gave us time to demorph, and it was that girl again. But, she was hit by a dracon beam in the back, and there was no way she could have survived it. I tried to get Ax to leave her, but he went and got her body. We ran out, and then, and then-
She woke up after a while, when we were being strafed by some Bug fighters. She yelled for us to get away, and then ran away herself, ended Ax, who was not much more composed than Tobias.
"Uh, how'd she do that?" Marco commented.
"I don't want to tackle that one," said Rachel, who was sprawled out on a hay bale.
"Uh, what are we going to do about it?"
"I have no idea, but I think that we had better ask Erek before we do anything further," suggested Jake.
"Why?"
""Cause he would have some information, hopefully, about what the yeerks know about it, and maybe he has heard about people coming back to life, and what could cause it."
At Ax's Scoop
Man, I don't think I want to go to sleep tonight, groused Tobias, but he was worried. I can still see the dead girl just jumping up, and, man, that was just too weird.
I agree. It was strange. What I am worried about, is what Visser Three would do if he could find an immortal host.
Even though Tobias was a hawk, he tried his best to shudder.
Don't even think about it.
At the Edge of the Woods
Morgan was wondering where to look first.
She had seen the alien go off in a certain direction, and that meant-
There was a forest. He looked like a horse, so it would be at least logical to assume that it would be able to survive there, and it would be obvious cover.
"Okay, I hope it can find me," she sighed, and charged in.
The King Residence
"So, have you heard anything about people coming back from the dead, Erek?" asked Jake, who was sitting on one of the couches in the King house.
"Other than ourselves? Nothing that can be confirmed," said Mr. King, before Erek could answer.
"Confirmed?"
The hologram of Erek sighed, and looked at his 'father' with disgust.
"You aren't going to bring that up again, are you? There are no such thing as humans that only die when someone cuts their head off!"
The Animorphs sat there, wondering what was going on. It sounded like that they had stepped into the middle of an old argument, one that may have been taking place for thousands of years.
"Um, can we get some answers this century?" asked Rachel, who, with the rest, had listened politely to their argument as it went on.
Looking annoyed, Erek sat back, and Mr. King started.
"There are-"
"Supposedly!" shouted Erek, interrupting.
"Okay, supposedly, humans out there that can only die if someone takes off their head. They can't die otherwise. They are all foundlings, and no one knows where they come from. They are usually adopted by someone.
"They don't know that they are immortal until their first death, and if they are lucky, they are found by a teacher, or they are killed without ever knowing what it was that they became. For some reason they fight. I don't know why."
Mr. King had the expression of someone who was telling one of their favorite old stories. Erek looked like he had been sucking on lemons.
"So, um, is there anything else you can say about it?" asked Jake, delicately.
"No. That is all I know, and probably the most you will ever find. The person who told me this died right after he told me, which makes me believe that he might have actually known something."
"Uh-huh, thank you, Mr. King. We will be leaving now," said Marco, in a nice, talking to the crazy person voice.
"Well, that was a waste of time," remarked Rachel as they left the house.
"We could only try," snapped back Cassie. The whole day had been rather unreal for all of them, and that was saying something.
"Whoa, Cassie sounded mean," Marco joked, trying to lighten the mood.
Everybody groaned, even though it worked, and they headed back to the barn to discuss their next move.
"A barn?" said Morgan, feeling a little surprised. It then started to rain.
"Oh, hell," she moaned. Morgan pulled the hood of her duster up, but the shower got harder.
"I hope whoever owns that thing doesn't get in much, and has a hayloft."
A Weird Meeting
No one was there when Morgan walked into the barn, except for a lot of animals. Most were injured.
"Whoa. Nice to see someone with some civic duty, but so much for hoping that no one gets in often. I guess I just lay low."
Climbing into the hayloft, Morgan sighed and unrolled her blankets.
"Well, since it's dark I doubt anyone will be showing up tonight. I hope not, anyway. I get to sleep soft." With that, she wrapped herself up in her blankets, and settled down. She was exhausted.
For a few hours, Morgan was able to doze, listening to the sound of rain tapping on the roof, and the rustle of the animals beneath her.
She started to dream….
I'm at school.
What am I doing here? I haven't been to school since…
Well, maybe that was all a bad dream, and I didn't die. Of course I didn't. People don't die and come back from the dead. To many comics, that's the problem.
Everything is just the way it was before, before that awful dream.
Including, oh no. Not her.
Candace the seventh grade bully is here too. I guess that definitely means I'm not dreaming.
Wait, if I'm dreaming, I'll look in a mirror, and that'll tell me. I would look different, wouldn't I?
I walk into the bathroom, and see…
Myself. The way I was. Round cheeks, glasses, long hair, chubby, and always with a nose in a book.
"Oh, there you are, you little twerp," sneered Candace.
"Will you leave me alone?" I said, shocked that I would speak up like that.
"Look at her clothes! She dresses like she came from a convent!"
"Stayed Puffed Marshmallow Girl!"
"Bulldog!"
"Shut Up!" I screamed at them.
I turned to run, but there was the sound of squealing tires, and-
"What are we going to do about that girl?" asked Cassie.
Morgan had heard them come in, which was what had made her wake up. Rolling onto her stomach, she peeked over the side of the loft. Had Tobias been there, they would have found out about her already, but he wasn't, obviously.
"Girl?" she said under her breath.
"Well, most people don't come back from the dead. In fact, since it is an impossibility anyway, why don't we just get on to finding her anyway."
"This is getting weirder by the minute," Morgan commented.
"I'm going to fly out to tell Ax and Tobias that we're going to go as owls to scout over the town to see if we can spot her. Green hair shouldn't be that hard to find."
Before Morgan's eyes, one of the two girls, the black one, started to change. It was the spookiest things that she had ever seen.
The girl seemed to melt, but only in parts. Yet as the others followed suit, she could tell that the first was the one who did it the most…gracefully, if the word could be applied.
Morgan's leg was going numb. Without thinking about it, she casually stretched it back…
I heard something! exclaimed a voice that was heard only inside her mind.
Hissing, Morgan lurched back from the side, and an osprey flew up in front of her.
She's here!
Scrambling back, Morgan pulled out her si, and tried to defend herself.
She dived down, then, and did a flip from the loft onto the ground.
"Okay, who the heck are you people, what are you, and why are you looking for me?"
Pretty much all the Animorphs were all bird right then, and Marco had taken the opportunity to run to get Ax and Tobias.
We're the Animorphs, said Jake. At that point, everyone was in shock, with no real idea of how to deal with what was going on.
Who're you? said Rachel, not impressed by the Goth in front of her.
"Name's Morgan. Why are you looking for me?"
Uh, cause you were dead, and you saved a friend of ours… trailed off Cassie. It seemed that their strange hero had turned into a rabid cat.
Cassie had started to demorph, and was looking down at Morgan helplessly. They didn't want to hurt her, but there was the question of whether or not she could be hurt.
I was the one that you saved, and I wanted to say thank you, but we thought that you had died in the accident, said a voice that came from another bird of prey that was winging its way inside the barn.
"You were that kid that I ran into?" Morgan said incredulously. She looked over at the bird. Gaining a little of her aplomb back, she stated, "I survived, I was unconscious, but I was alive."
Than how do you explain that we saw you dead from a dracon beam later? said another voice, this time coming from a red-tailed hawk.
"Now, there is another hawk talking to me. Can things get worse?" Morgan said rhetorically.
Yes, responded Ax, as he started to demorph. Soon, standing on four hooves, was an Andalite.
"You're that blue dude!"
Everyone burst out laughing.
"I (giggle) don't think that anyone (gasp) has ever called Ax a 'blue (snort) dude," Rachel announced, doubling over, tears running down her face.
"What was you're first reaction to seeing an alien, might I ask?" responded Morgan acidly. She was keeping a close eye on the tail-blade.
"We," and abruptly, everyone in the room sobered. "We wanted to run, but we didn't. I don't think that I had ever been more scared in my life," answered Jake, quietly. "Well, that came later. First, we met Prince Elfangor, who was Ax's brother. He gave us the power that you've seen us use…"
He went on, describing how he and his friends had come to be made aware of an alien plot to take over all life on earth. If she hadn't seen Ax and the others morphing with her own eyes, Morgan wouldn't have believed it.
"So, you can become any animal, not an inanimate object, or a plant, but any animal, that you can touch?" she said, not as a question, but as an expression of wonder.
"Okay, now, you talk," said Marco.
Turning to face him, Marco abruptly found himself pinned by a pair of gray eyes.
"About what?" she said softly.
"The fact that you came back from the dead, duh," said Rachel. Now that they had obviously found who they were looking for, they had demorphed. They all stood around Morgan, almost like they were trying to keep her from getting away.
"I don't know what you are talking about," was the flat reply.
"Come on, Ax saw you die. We told you what we are, and what is at stake. You could do the same for us."
"Why? Why should I admit anything to you? What makes you think that whatever it is that I'm hiding is less important that what you are doing?"
Because, Ax started, when he whipped his tail-blade around, slashing her arm before she could block, and gently grabbing it, You did die to save me, and maybe we can help you.
There was a neat slice in the sleeve where Ax's blade had cut, and he opened it up so everyone could watch it heal.
Help.
For some reason, the thought made her feel sad. There had been no one, ever since she had left Seacover that had given a damn about her. It made her feel… almost happy.
"How old do I look?" Morgan asked.
The Animorphs looked at each other, and they shrugged. "About thirteen, fourteen?" answered Cassie.
"I'm twenty. I can't die, unless someone cuts off my head, and takes my…life force, I guess you would call it. I died the first time in a car crash, with my parents."
"Well, score one for Mr. King," twitted Marco, trying to be funny, but failing miserably.
"So there really are people out there that run around cutting each other's heads off?" Jake was more than a little spooked.
"That's cool," Rachel said without thinking.
Morgan's eyes became glacial when she spoke. "Cool, huh? Yeah, I guess it would be cool, having to live in the streets, because you can't stay in any one place for too long, because they would realize you aren't what you seem? Being hunted for your head, and knowing that someday, someone will take it, because you weren't mature enough to fight them? Not being to enjoy being a teenager when you actually were one because you were to busy trying to train to stay alive, and not being able to get a job, because you're "too young"?"
She raised a contemptuous eyebrow, and Rachel kind of shrank into herself.
"This isn't getting us anywhere," Cassie commented, stepping between the two. She could tell that there would be a major spat between them eventually, but she wanted to head it off for now.
"It's getting late, and I think that we all need to get home so that we can get some rest. Where are you staying, Morgan?" asked Jake, taking control of the situation.
"Nowhere. I was walking here from where I squatted for the past few months, but the yeerks may have seen where I went. So I decided to leave."
Turning to Cassie, Jake asked, "Cassie, can she spend the night here?"
Cassie nodded.
"You'll need to get some sort of disguise," he went on. "Um…Would you mind re-dying your hair?"
Touching rough shorn, green mess, Morgan grimaced. "This? I only went Goth to get people to leave me alone. Plus, it's easier to keep up than you might think."
"Come on, we can get you some food," Cassie told her, taking her hand to lead her inside.
"Yes, Little Mother," said Morgan, and she did something she rarely ever tried. She smiled.
End Part One