Center of Everworld #1: The Beginning
Prologue
Tobias
Melissa! Estela! Gary! Jaime! Come here! I cried. Our chosen group of New Animorphs came running over to the hollow beneath the building, away from the danger I'd seen.
TSSEEEEWWWW!!! TSSEEEEWWWW!!!
The low-flying Bug fighter's Dracon beams gouged out the ground where just a second before, our successors had stood.
"Aaah!" Jaime called, a muffled cry of pain. He'd been hit in the leg by the shrapnel.
Jaime! You cannot draw their attention! Do not call out! Ax said urgently.
The New Animorphs rolled into the pit beneath the building where we were.
"Not the best way to start," Marco muttered, "but it'll get worse."
"What," Melissa said shakily, "is that?"
"I don't know and I don't care," Rachel muttered.
No, she's serious, I said. And I think I know what it is, too!
"Well then, what--" Then she looked at the sphere.
"Oh.."
That we'd seen before.
"My.."
And even used.
"God!"
The Time Matrix.
Chapter 1
Tobias
My name is Tobias.
And guess what we just found? Well..
The Time Matrix! Ax yelled.
"What's a Time Matrix?" Estela asked.
Never mind. It's.. well, it's a time machine, I explained.
"A time machine?" Gary asked incredulously.
Wait. Just put your hands on the blue box. We'll give you morphing power, I said. Just touch the box.
I will give these humans the morphing ability, Ax said. It is believed to be me who made you morph-capable anyway. I may as well actually do it.
Ax, I said, before Elfangor died he gave me pictures of the Yeerks. Can I do that?
Yes.
Melissa! I need to do something!
"What is it?" Melissa asked me.
This. I perched on her shoulder and used my thought-speak voice to tell her the basics of what the New Animorphs needed to know.
"What? What did--"
Sort it out later, okay?! Now, run. RUN! We'll use the Matrix to get us the hell out of here!
TSSEEEEWWWW!!! TSSEEW-KAPOW!!!
The building was obliterated above us.
Hide beneath the Time Matrix!! Ax yelled. It is indestructible!
"Cool," Jaime said, wincing at the pain in his leg.
"News! Morph," Jake said. "It's the only way out!"
"We don't have any morphs yet," Estela pointed out.
How's red-tailed hawk sound to you?
"What?"
Acquire me! Fly away!
"Too big," Gary said.
"Bugs," Cassie gasped. "Only way. Here." She held out a roach she'd picked up off the ground.
"Roach?" Jaime demanded. "Eeeww."
"They've done it many times. And the alternative is to be destroyed," Erek pointed out.
One by one, reluctantly, the New Animorphs touched it.
Melissa, I showed you how to morph, tell the others, I said hurriedly. I'll drive the Time-
TSSEEEEWWWW!!! TSSEEEEWWWW!!! TSSEEEEWWWW!!!
The Yeerks discovered they could not incinerate the Matrix. Now they'd heat the air around us and incinerate us. We had to blow.
Morph the roach, morph, morph, JUST DO IT!!
They began morphing. Cassie talked them through it.
I'll drive the Matrix. I'm morphing human. Touch it.
The others laid hands on the Time Matrix as I morphed human at top speed.
But the Yeerks were getting closer to their goal.
So hot. So little air. So..
I concentrated on my territory. Hopefully the Time Matrix would get us there.
The heat.. The airlessness.. Mixed in with memories of my territory were others. Sitting in my room playing dinosaur. Or reading mythology. Greek mythology. Zeus and his many affairs. Cupid and Psyche. And Norse mythology. One-eyed Odin and his Valkries. Loki and Balder.. I was losing consciousness.. I kept memories of Earth, but..
Suddenly, I saw everything as if blown apart. I saw that the New Animorphs had gotten safely into morph. That Rachel was on the point of unconsciousness. Then.. We were moving! I'd done it! But.. wait.. This wasn't my territory!
"Who the hell are you?!" the girl demanded.
And then, the world went black.
Chapter 2
Cassie
"Who do you think they are?"
"I don't know, Jalil, I don't even know what that thing with the scorpion tail is. You tell me."
"Maybe it's some kind of mutated blue centaur."
"Ax," I mumbled. They meant Ax.
"Huh? Yeah, its tail kind of does look like an ax."
"David, that was the black girl. She's waking up."
"Cassie," I groaned.
"Cassie? Your name is Cassie?"
"Uh, yeah. Where am I?"
"Well, it's kind of a really, really long story. Who are the others, what is the four-eyed thing, and what's with that guy's feet?" asked the tall, blond guy.
"Unh.. We're the Animorphs, and Erek, he's a Chee, that's an Andalite, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthil, also known as Ax, and.. Tobias!" I jumped to wake him up. He'd been in mid-morph when he'd succeeded in getting us away from the construction site, and apparently lost consciousness. "Wake UP, Tobias!"
"Unh.. Wheyre ahm Iy?!"
"I don't know. They just said it was a long story. Now demorph, okay? We don't need you trapped. How long were we out?"
"Um, I guess about an hour," the one called David said.
"Good, there's time. Demorph."
"Demorph?" the black guy wondered.
"Oooh, that.. Hey, where are we?"
"I think we should wait to explain until they all wake up," David said.
"Sure."
Unh.. What is this place?!
"Oooggg.. Not fun.."
"Ugg.. Uh, Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Marco, of course.
"Okay, now that we're all awake, we'll tell you what we know."
"Which isn't much," the tall guy interjected.
"Shut up, Christopher. Now, I'm April, this is Jalil, Christopher, and David."
And what is this place?
"This," David said, "is Everworld."
Chapter 3
Marco
"Everworld?"
"Everworld is.. let's see.. it's another universe."
"TOBIAS! You were supposed to take us home!" I griped.
Well, sorry. You didn't even manage to stay conscious!
"Well, at least I didn't bring us into.. what'd you call it? Other-world? Another universe."
"It's 'Everworld'."
Marco, you were rendered unconscious. Had Tobias been unconscious, we'd have been suffocated or incinerated.
"How is it the guy can turn into a bird?"
Actually, the red-tailed hawk can turn into a human and back again. And my name is Tobias.
"Oh, great. This is a completely unnecessary new weirdness. Five schizo kids, an alien, and a telepathic metamorphic bird. As if our lives weren't weird enough."
"I bet they're not as weird as our lives," I said.
"Bet they're weirder."
"Have you ever kidnapped your assistant principal?"
"Say WHAT?!"
"And have you turned into animals?"
"Have you ever met a mythological god?"
"Have you fought brain-stealing aliens in a war to control a planet of psychic yellow frogs?"
"Have you ever met Merlin?"
MERLIN?!
"Have you ever been blown through time? Or been shrunk? Or met a dinosaur?"
"Or died? Twice?" Jake added.
"Um.. I assume you've actually done all these things?"
"Sure have."
"Vikings."
"Rain forest natives."
"Aztecs."
"Ellimist."
"Playing hide-and-seek with Loki."
"Playing tag with a dust monster from Saturn."
"Running like nitwits through an alternate universe."
"Driving a cattle car as a gorilla."
"Met leprechauns."
"Been to Planet of the Salesmen."
"You ever traded anything to Coo-Hatch?"
"Sold your memories to someone named Guide?"
"Giant wolves."
"Brain-stealing aliens."
I imitated a cow and was almost reached by.. what did you call them? Fat boys? Who wished to push me over.
"Cow-tipping?"
"You're an alien, Ax-man. This is a battle of the human weirdness."
"Dragons."
"Dinosaurs. Amazon rain forest."
"Escaping from the freaking Underworld."
"Escaping from Visser Three's Blade ship. Discovering the race of lopsided crabs that imported freaking broccoli to Earth. Mighty Xena over there having amnesia until I plowed into her with a truck. Mutating into surf and turf. Getting called on the phone by my supposedly dead mother, right after my dad remarried my math teacher. Turning into a half-poodle, half-polar bear. Discovering that our mouse-eating Bird-boy over there's dad was an alien. Finding out--"
"You're a half-breed?"
"You could put it that way."
But I'd prefer if you didn't.
"Has a pig ever talked to you?"
"Nope. But a FedEx truck has."
"A llama talked to us. Only it wasn't a llama, it was Marco."
"Marco, that doesn't count. It wasn't a FedEx truck, it was me," Erek pointed out.
"So what? That's even weirder."
"You morphed into a truck?"
"No, I am an--"
"How about if we stop this pointless debate, even though we're sure to win, and explain things to each other. Ax, Erek? Well, just Erek. He at least has a partially human frame of reference. Erek? How about you explain things to them? Then they can explain things to you, and you can tell us."
"Good idea," April said. "Jalil? You can probably explain things a whole lot better than us. Why don't you talk to Erek about this?"
"All right," Jalil said, clearly reluctant to hear about another bizzaroid lifestyle.
Come to think of it, I wasn't exactly looking forward to it, myself.
Chapter 4
April
Jalil and Erek walked a few feet off. I could hear bits of their conversation -- "Yeerk", "Time Matrix", "Visser", and a few other words that meant absolutely nothing to me.
"So, what do you think of these 'Animorphs', Christopher?" David asked.
"Me?" He shrugged. "Wacko."
"They probably think that same thing of us," I pointed out.
"What's with the name?" Christopher wondered. "Animorphs? What's that all about?"
"Let's find out," I said. "Hey! You, Cassie! What's that name all about?"
"What, Cassie?"
"No, Animorphs."
"It means, 'animal morphers'," she explained.
"Morphers?"
"We can change into any animal we touch."
"Oooo-kay."
"What's your situation?"
"Erek will tell you. Wait a -- what's happening to him?"
"He's turned his hologram off."
"Hologram?"
"Jalil will tell you."
The human Erek had shimmered and disappeared. In his place was something that looked strangely like a metal-and-ivory dog on its hind legs. Jalil took a surprised half-step back.
"---- a Chee ------------- android."
"How long has-----"
"I helped ------ -mid. ----- visible body is --------- hologram."
Meaningless.
They talked more and ten minutes later, Jalil came walking back to us with a small smile on his face.
"Okay, spill it, Jalil, what did that weird robot-dog-guy say? Why are you smiling?" Christopher demanded.
Jalil grinned. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "we have another way out of Everworld."
Chapter 5
Jalil
"What?"
"Something called the Time Matrix," I explained. "Erek was kind of sketchy, but I got the impression it's some sort of time machine. It--"
"A time machine? How could we get out of Everworld with that?"
"Just how stupid are you, Christopher? Duh, we rewind time and change history so we never even come here."
"April, we can't do that. It's too complicated. But Erek said it supposedly has the ability to move someone in between universes, or even create new ones."
"Create new universes?"
"Where would it be?" April asked.
"Well, it would either have been with them--"
"The blue box? I put it in my backpack."
"That's the thing they use to give people morphing capability. The Time Matrix would probably be in the center of Everworld."
"Center?"
"Yeah."
"Does Everworld even have boundaries?"
"If it didn't, the Matrix would have been with these Animorphs."
"Okay, so we find the center of Everworld. No biggie," Christopher said.
"We do still have to find Senna."
"Shut up, David."
"We don't know where to find Everworld's center. And besides, we can't have Loki finding her."
Christopher looked at David. "I hate it when you win."
"Get used to it."
"Shut up, Windmill Chaser."
"You're the one--"
"I'm getting sick and tired of the three of you."
"If we did rewrite history Senna might not even be in Everworld."
"Or might not even exist," I said grimly. Erek had explained it to me, all right. "Maybe one of us might not exist, or at least be drastically different. Erek gave me a very clear example of the future changing the past."
"Huh?"
"Let me just put it this way: that bird-boy? Tobias? He's almost single-talonedly responsible for the extinction of the freaking dinosaurs."
"Dinosaurs?"
"Oh, drop it."
"Hey, if someone still alive wiped out the dinosaurs, I want to hear about it."
"He helped make a species of antlike aliens so mad they rerouted a comet. Then he had Ax disable the bomb they stole to make the aliens so mad so the other aliens couldn't blow up the comet."
From a few feet away I heard the Hispanic boy's voice: "Are you INSANE?"
Chapter 6
Erek
"No, Marco, I am not insane. It's what Jalil told me, and he seems mentally stable to me."
"So says the android who's been alive since Moses was wandering around in the desert, and was actually jealous of Rachel when she got split in half. Sometimes I just think we were invented by some sadistic author and we're trapped in a novel right now."
"I doubt that," I said with a laugh. "But, listen, it turns out we have to collect both ways out. We can't let anyone get a hold of this Senna person. They'll make her their gateway and come spilling out into the real world."
"Maybe they won't appreciate the Yeerks trespassing on Earth?" Marco said hopefully.
"Don't think so, Marco," Rachel said tightly.
"There's supposed to be some kind of a god-eating god that's scaring all the other human and alien gods half to death."
"Named?"
"Ka Anor. God of the Hetwan."
Perhaps we will see these Irony Gods you humans seem to believe in so firmly, Ax said.
"Oh, gee, let's hope not," Marco laughed.
"Irony Gods?" April wondered.
April, don't eavesdrop, Tobias reprimanded.
"Sorry. You were nearly yelling."
"This is so insane. We created the New Animorphs, used the freaking Time Matrix to get away from where we were about to be incinerated by Dracon beams, only, oops, Tobias screwed up and we're in an alternate universe looking for a witch to stop a crazy killer god from turning her into some kind of portal and terrorizing our universe. Anything else to add?"
"Jalil's opinion was that this 'witch' is not to be trusted, and neither is David. He had very excellent reasons for this belief. She set them up at least three times."
"Ouch."
"What's this Senna look like?" asked Jake, always the practical one.
I dropped the Erek hologram and used my holographic emitter to show them the rough sketch I'd gotten from Jalil's description. Not too tall, blond, gray eyes, very pretty, but stopping just short of beautiful.
The Time Matrix will be in the very center of Everworld, Aximili announced.
"I already figured that out, Aximili."
Ah.
I reassimilated the Erek holo. "So. Ready to go?"
"I still think this is insane," Marco complained.
Rachel grinned. "Let's do it."
Chapter 7
Jake
This. Was. Crazy.
We were trapped in another universe and couldn't leave without someone who would not hesitate to set us up or cut us down.
My only consolation was that, hey, we'd survived the Amazon, hadn't we?
Oh. Wait. I hadn't. Gee, that was really, really, comforting, Jake, thanks a lot.
Well, we had survived the Cretaceous. And Agincourt. And the others said they'd survived D-Day.
Not the world's biggest comfort.
"So, Ax, any ideas where the center of Everworld might be?" April asked.
No.
"Erek? Any ideas?"
"No."
"Anyone?"
I have a vague recollection that the edges of this universe must be found before the center is found, unless one is to wander haphazardly around the universe until one eventually discovers the center.
"Well, we don't have forever, obviously," Marco announced. "We need to get back home. My dad will be worried sick."
"So will mine, surprisingly enough. He'll think that I was destroyed by the Yeerks." Erek, of course. No one else had parents who knew about the Yeerks. Some of us don't have parents, period.
"Any idea where to find the edges?"
No.
"Better and better," Christopher sighed.
At the edge, the universe will open up into Zero-space. Anything protruding from this universe into the Z-space will be bent back, as-
"Oookay, I think that's enough about the edge."
How do you know so much about the Time Matrix, Ax-man?
Ancient lore. I was intrigued by that aspect of our ancient mythology. I did not think it was real.
"Welcome to Everworld, man."
I am not a "man". I am a young Andalite.
"The guy is pathetically ignorant of human culture. Which is strange, considering that he watches way too much TV."
"Too much TV?"
I merely wish to experience the part of human culture represented by television. And it is actually quite enjoyable. Especially These Messages. Give me a break! Give me a break! Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar!
"Oh, no. We have a TV-watching alien bombarding us with retarded commercial jingles."
"That's not all. He watches soap operas-"
"Oh no! Head for the hills! The apocalypse is coming! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!"
"Switch to decaf, Christopher," David said. "Now let's get going. We've wasted enough time discussing alien TV habits. Let's go. Let's get moving."
"What was that about decaf?"
"Drop. Dead. Christopher."
Chapter 8
Christopher
We finally got moving, after a minor battle over who was in charge, which Jake won.
"Can we possibly go any slower?" David griped.
Nah, I don't think he was a sore loser. Nope, just sulked for an hour after having to relinquish nonexistent leaderdom to a junior-high-schooler who's played General Eisenhower to multi-species shapeshifters for like a year. Nothing going on there. Nope. He couldn't have been more mature about it.
"Where exactly do we think we're going?" I asked.
"The edges of Everworld, duh."
"What if we're heading directly away from the edge?"
"We reach the center sooner," David said. He sounded dubious about the prospect. Well, why not? The center was our way out of Everworld. He was the only one of us who seemed to be enjoying this nuthouse.
"You sound like you don't want that to happen," Cassie said.
"He doesn't. I don't get it. How can anyone not want to go home?"
"Because he thinks his real life stinks worse than this one. If it's possible for anyone to be that deluded."
"That's not quite it. He thinks it's the most pointless thing ever. Again, I don't get it."
"You know, I am capable of speaking for myself, guys.."
"Well, it would help if you actually did it once in a while. You know, participate in the conversations!"
"Well-"
"Let's just shut up," Jake said.
"I don't believe this," David said. "Some junior high kid is-"
"A better leader than you'll ever be?" Rachel suggested.
"Look, Rachel, I know you think-"
"Nobody's going to listen to you anyway, can you get that through your thick skull into your empty head?"
"Rachel? Are you deliberately trying to make him mad? If so, stop it, because it can't be fun if one of the people you need at your side wants to slide a knife in it!"
"Good grief, I don't-"
"Jeez, lighten up a little, okay, Erek?"
"Sorry. Being pulled into another universe doesn't put anyone in the best of moods. Not even an android."
"This is like the weirdest episode of our lives so far. Which is saying something," I said.
"We've seen things as weird," Marco said.
"Like what?" I asked.
"Like Ms. Doolittle over there getting information on the location of an alien. From a whale. After we'd turned into dolphins and saved it from sharks. Or, as you pointed out, a telepathic metamorphic bird. Erek here got frozen up for a while during a highly bizarre episode of our highly bizarre lives. We've met the dinosaurs, the Ellimist, the-"
"What's an Ellimist?" David wanted to know.
The Ellimists are supposed to be the race that constructed the Time Matrix, Ax explained. They built it, thousands upon thousands of years ago, and then they vanished. As far as anyone can tell, the entire species of Ellimists simply disappeared.
"Disappeared?"
The Ellimists are supposedly all-powerful. They can eliminate worlds and all memory of them. They can cross tens of thousands of light-years in an instant. They can freeze time.
"Freeze time?" David asked.
"Hey, is there an echo out here? That's what the horse-boy said. Well, maybe not said, exactly, but you know what I mean," I said.
"Well, excuse me for wanting to make sure I heard him correctly!"
"Infants," Rachel muttered.
"And that's sad," Marco chimed in, "because she's like three years younger than you are!"
This was crazy.
But at least we had a goal now. That helped.
A little. Very little.
And I just wouldn't think about the total craziness of it all. I'd just put all that out of my head.
If I could.
Chapter 9
Rachel
Even I, Mighty Xena: Warrior Princess that I was, thought that this was, in the words of Marco, insane. It's weird, I guess, because me and my friends turning into animals, or fighting Yeerks.. all that stuff is almost normal to me now. But I'm still weirded out by something this strange. I guess that just proves that, despite all Marco's constant insisting to the contrary, I'm sane.
"This is-" I started to say.
"Rachel, don't steal my line," Marco said.
"What, you've stolen mine often enough! So.. this is insane!"
Marco groaned. "Okay, now we're dead. I say it's insane, I say everything's insane. But you know we're in trouble when Xena says it's insane."
"Well,-"
"What's that smell?" Christopher interrupted.
"I think it's you," I said halfheartedly.
"Very funny," Christopher said. "Is anyone going to take me seriously here?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?" April teased.
"I'm serious for once. There's this incredibly bad smell coming from somewhere over there."
"We can make sure of that," Jake offered. "Cassie?"
"Sure thing," Cassie said. She began the morph to wolf.
"Um.. can someone please explain to me exactly why Cassie is growing fur?" David asked.
"I'm morphing," Cassie explained.
"Weird," Jalil remarked.
Just at that moment, Cassie's long wolf muzzle burst out of her human face.
"Yaah!" Christopher yelped.
"Chill, it's just Cassie, you'll get used to it after a while," Marco said.
"I will never get used to a little short black girl turning into a wolf," Christopher said. I looked at him and had to stop myself from laughing. His eyes were as big as dinner plates.
Suddenly, I remembered something that made me stop wanting to laugh. "The blue box. Where is the blue box?"
Chapter 10
Tobias
"Blue box?" April asked. "Would this blue box have little symbols all over it? And would it have been in Ax's hands?
Yes, and yes, I replied.
"Then I have it in my backpack," April said. "What's it for?"
"It's what you use to give people morphing power," Rachel said. "We've had.. God, I don't think I want to know how many battles over it. Wait, how many was it?"
Well, there was that one incident where David tried to kill us, I offered.
"Don't remind me," Marco said.
"I've never seen you before in my life," David objected.
Different David, I explained.
"Then came the Helmacrons," Marco said, and started to laugh.
"Am I missing something here?" Christopher demanded. "What is a Helmacron?"
"Helmacrons are these aliens with the biggest egos known to man, but-"
"Bigger than David's? Wow, I didn't think that was possible!" Christopher teased.
"Oh, shut up."
"-they're small enough to be an ant colony," Marco finished.
"So why'd they want a blue box? To morph into anteaters?"
"Actually, we morphed into anteaters," Marco corrected. "Hey, Ax. I just had a thought."
"That's dangerous. You could hurt yourself," Rachel smirked.
"Ax, since we were shrunk when we-"
"You were WHAT?!"
"Shrunk."
"Um.. do I even want to know?"
Guys, said Cassie, fully morphed by this time, there is a smell. A really, really bad smell. It's coming from over there.
I'll take a look, I volunteered.
I flew up above the tree line. I saw something there that terrified me.
They had human heads, like old women, with a hawklike beak. The rest was pure raptor. They flew like the wind, and their feathers did not ruffle in a chance cross-breeze.
Had I heard of these monsters before? A horrible-smelling hawk with an old woman's head and feathers that-
My rapid-fire bird heart stopped beating.
Harpies! I yelled. Harpies!
Chapter 11
Ax
"He has got to be kidding," moaned the human named Christopher.
"Two choices: stand and fight, or run away," said Prince Jake.
"I'm not running," David asserted.
"April!" Rachel suddenly yelled. "Give me your backpack!"
"All right," April said, giving the large cloth container to Rachel. Rachel opened the place where it was fastened by rows of interlocking plastic teeth and rummaged inside it. She withdrew the Escafil Device.
"Touch this," she ordered. "David, you too."
"Rachel? You're going to give them morphing power?" Marco asked.
"Why not?"
First David, then April, then Jalil and Christopher placed their hands on the cool, flat planes of the Cube. The fourth group of humans ever to be made morph-capable.
"This will feel weird," Rachel warned.
"It tingles," April observed.
"So that's it?" David asked. "Now we can morph?"
Not exactly, Cassie said. First you have to acquire something. You have to touch it. And you can only stay in morph for two hours.
"Why?"
"That's how Tobias is a bird. If you don't demorph inside of two hours, well, you don't demorph."
"Ouch."
"Waitaminnut. We have to touch whatever it is we want to acquire?" Jalil asked.
Yep. That's why technically you can't morph yet. You don't have any morphs yet.
"Well, then that's not very helpful, is it?" Christopher said.
"It might be," Rachel said. "Hey Tobias!"
They're almost here! my "nephew" Tobias replied.
"Yeah, I smelled them," Christopher muttered.
"Tobias, see if you can grab one or something!" Rachel yelled.
All right. Got it. Uh-oh. They're here!
"All right, if we fight, we fight. Into the air, people. Raptor morphs, everyone!" Prince Jake ordered.
I began to focus on the northern harrier I had acquired. Cassie was becoming more human. Marco was sprouting osprey feathers.
Only Rachel stood unchanged.
"Rya-" Prince Jake started to say, then reverted to thought-speak. Rachel, why aren't you morphing?
"I'm waiting," she replied.
For what?
For this! Tobias announced, and came down through the trees, a strange and horrible-smelling not-quite-birdlike creature firmly in his talons, though its humanoid head alone was nearly as big as all of him. Somebody come up and acquire it already, I can't do this forever!
Acquire? Marco wondered. Oh. He began to reverse morph. So did the others. Cassie had just finished demorphing and walked over to the "harpy".
"Oh, thad sbell is worse thad a skug," she announced, pinching her nose between thumb and forefinger for unknown purposes. "I should dow. I've beed od." Nevertheless, she placed her hand against the stiff feathers and began to acquire it. Tobias disengaged and raked the humanoid eyes of another harpy. Rachel was next to acquire the harpy on the ground.
"So how do I do it?" wondered the human David.
"You touch id, ad thed you focus od id," Cassie explained. "Like Marco's doig ride dow."
"Ah."
Marco finished acquiring the harpy. David came up to touch the strange creature. Then Prince Jake. I was attempting to cut the harpies that came at us with my tail. Tobias was raking their faces, seemingly the only vulnerable flesh on their bodies, trying to force them to come at me. Erek held one still, out of the fight. April, then Christopher, then Jalil acquired the harpy. Tobias landed and began morphing his Hork-Bajir, when the harpies decided they'd had enough. They flew away, and I absorbed the DNA of the harpy on the ground. It attempted to attack us, of course, after I was finished, but a tail-slash aimed for its head made it think better of it. It rose above the trees, much the worse for wear, and joined the others.
"Well, there's a lot we still have to tell each other," David began. "But, just to begin.. welcome to Everworld."
THE END
UNLESS, OF COURSE, I WRITE A SEQUEL.
[Author's Note: The concept of an AM/EW crossover is one I just got into my hyper lil' head one day. The reason Erek seems to have been forgotten through half the fic is, well, because he was. It would have been hard to put him back in, so I just gave him a small part in the fight scene for you Erek-lovers. I know the beginning was confusing, don't hurt me. I have an idea for a sequel, two actually, but I won't write them if nobody likes this one. So what are you waiting for? Review it already! What? Still reading? Okay, I give up. REVIEW!]