Chapter Nine- The Defeat
As told by Jake
Marco, quick! Behind you!
See him, Jake.
Cassie!
Don't worry, Jake I got him.
TSERRRRR! A red-tailed hawk came tearing out of the sky on top of a hideously disgusting alien's compound eyes. He reared back in rage, then started swiping his body with hunger and devout zeal towards the red-tailed hawk, which missed by one inch.
Prince Jake, I do not believe we can hold them off forever.
Two bladed, 2 meter tall creatures that looked very differant from what you normally see on the street came crashing forward recklessly. They would pay for that in a gruesome way later on; by me tackling them and goreing their bellies. Gross.
I know, Ax, I know! We gotta get Joe back here before we can go! The mission was a sucess, so be gotta bail!
He's caught! The red-tailed hawk screeched words into my mind.
What?! A bear telepathically yelled out to all of us.
Oh man, about 100 hork-bajir are on him, and he's being infested!
Oh shit, OK, stay calm everyone! I yelled.
Prince Jake, we are loosing!
Cuz, we can't hold out forever! We gotta bail soon!
Oh, and in case your wondering, my name is Jake.
Yep, that's my name and that is where it'll stay. Can't tell you much more about me, except that I'm fighting a war. You probably already know about it, so I'll spare you the trouble of listening to me babble about the invasion. However, there are some new twists to the story that I know that you are dying to hear about.
There is this kid at our school named Joe. He's pretty normal, in fact, his appearence is too uncannily normal that everyone notices him. He is of average hieght, he wieghs the average wieght, he has blueish-green eyes and has a dark brown hair. This makes him somewhat of a bully target.
Now you might be asking, why the hell would bullies spend time picking on Joe instead of some weak, skinny kid. Well, it's because of how inviting he is. I swear, one day I actually heard him say, "So, Mike, you seemed to be off Weight Watchers, eh? Oh, and you can kiss that CD you lent to George goodbye, it's all scratched up and history." See what I mean?
Now, the reason he does this is only to gain popularity. The bullies immidiatly begin swearing and making threats, but Joe still stands there making taunts. Eventually, a fight breaks out and everyone around starts to watch. Actually, the only reason anybody watches anymore is that they love seeing the bully's face when he is down on the floor, bruised, cut and pummeled while Joe simply smiles shyly and walks away. It is kinda funny, to tell you the truth.
This wouldn't be that interesting if Joe hadn't beaten up and humiliated 30 bullies and adversaries to date. All without ever getting on the bad end of a punch. It's like he is immune to loosing a fight, and I have no clue where he gets his power. He's like my cousin, Rachel, but he is never reckless. He always thinks before he leaps, then leaps farther than anyone could ever possibly can.
Joe's also one of my friends, however he is not that close. I can't tell you anything else about him, except that he absolutly loves to ride roller coasters. I have to admit, riding the latest ride called "SSXL" at The Gardens was better even then most of my perigrine falcon times.
What made him a part of our crew, however, did not involve his ability to win almost every time. It actually involved some impossible coincidences and surprises that brought him and the Animorphs together. Essentially, he recieved an alternate personality, which was the mind and soul of a Jedi knight. OK, maybe it is a bit on the corny side, but he really can do what the Jedi knights did in Star Wars, you know, levitate objects, use lightsabers, that sort of thing.
To test these new skills, we set out on a mission to assasinate a powerful yeerk warlord named Visser 12 to slow down a counter-andalite bandit operation. Joe sucessfully did his job in killing the Visser, but Visser 3, the main leader of the invasion of earth, stopped us dead in our tracks with a bunch of hork-bajir and taxxon warriors. From what I just had heard, Joe had been captured by 100 hork-bajir and was being infested by the Visser's orders.
Prince Jake! I saw Ax madly throwing his tail at a bunch of attacking hork-bajir.
Enough! We gotta tail it out of here! Finish off all that you can, and then bail! We all know Joe, he'll get the hell out of this hell. Now move! It was a stupid desicion, mainly because my clouded brain simply could not think rationally enough to find a way to get Joe out of there. Not that there really was a way.
But-
No buts about it, Cassie. We gotta get out of here!
With that, I took off like a bullet straight towards the stairs of the un-finished yeerk pool. Making a mad dash to the exit, I started demorphing as I went. Why couldn't have I saved him? What are the concequences of NOT saving him? I shuddered at the thought while finishing the change between tiger and human.
We slowly came out of bathroom 2 of Bob's electronics one at a time so we wouldn't be noticed. And I'm sure that we all were thinking at that moment...
Why?
Chapter 10- Return of the Jedi
As told by Joe
Wow, quite a treasure mine of information for the Visser, eh? A voice taunted inside my head. He was practically opening my mind and reading it like a picture book. I could not describe how embarressing and terrifying the experience really was. A yeerk. Die you little green scum.
I'm afraid I can't do such a thing for you. You see, I can't die now. You simply can't overthrow a yeerk. But, I geuss you already knew about that. Hahaha!
You can't do anything to me.
Well, shall we prove you wrong?
It was so humiliating and hopeless. The little slug inside my brain was controlling my every action. When I needed to sneeze, I couldn't until the piece of sewage water that called itself a yeerk did so. He moved my eyes, my legs, and even my arms, but I simply could not! It was a life I could never stand to live, and I would seriously would want to die before any of the information ever got out to the yeerks.
As I was about to watch and listen in horror as the yeerk would reveal the secrets of the Animorphs, I began to realize a very desicive principle. Nothing was impossible at this point of the game, so I decided to do what they said couldn't be done. Since they can only control my physical actions and not my thoughts, well... You are going to regret every entering my mind, yeerk.
Am I really? Right. Ha.
For some strange reason, the Jedi persona of my brain could not be penetrated by the yeerk and he couldn't see it. I began thinking about the Jedi and my persona change began to occur.
Why the movies, host? You havn't seen Star Wars for 4 months!
True, but by the time I get rid of you, you will never exist ever.
Foolish host, so arrogant, yet brave.
Die.
Odd litle conversation there, but that didn't change my persona switch. And that'ts when all of the Jedi's thoughts bubbled to the top of my brain. They were all completly secretive, unlike all of my regular memories, and that gave me a decisive advantage against him. Since I couldn't say a word that the yeerk wouldn't hear, I let the Jedi take over control of my brain and boy did he speak.
What is this, a yeerk? So arogant, bold and over confident are those with the least moral strength. I cannot fight wars, but this is beyond a war. Entire sentinent races have been destroyed. The yeerks must pay for their ignorence.
What are you talking about!? Who is this?!
The Jedi chuckled telpathically. I am a Jedi, but of course.
The yeerk gasped. A spawn of this human's imaginative mind?
He again laughed. No, I am this human. You just can't control me. But I can control you.
With that, I took control of the Jedi's mind and started focusing in on the yeerk in my brain. So weak this mind is, so pitifully weak. I easily succommed it to my powers and that was when the fun started. Since the yeerk was still in my brain, I could not move on my own free will, but the Jedi could tell the yeerk to move any way I pleased. It was such a wierd feeling, it was like I was the puppet and I was the puppeteir as well. It wasn't a neccesarily a bad feeling, but I really wasn't in that much of a mood to let it sit for a while.
I started then to assume that the Visser wanted answers, and fast. He didn't know that I was being controlled by my own power, mostly anyway, so the big coulder that consisted of holes looked kinda P.O.ed and wanted answers, fast.
Well, so?
I thought for a moment for the correct answer. I tried to make myself look like I was in deep thought, even though I wasn't thinking what he thought I was thinking. "This host is worthless. All he knows about is the andalites which he found out through some person he knew as 'Condor'. The weapon he used was actually an old piece of human technology that he had stolen from a top seacret humans weapons lab in California."
Well, for such a brat, he must have uses. See what you can do with him, Sub-visser 28, and make sure the operation works. The assasination of Visser 12 was most unfourtunate to our plans.
"Yes, Visser."
With that, the boulder started to demorph into his andalite's form. Even in his true form, the Visser looked purely evil and full of sheer hatred. I stepped away towards the exit, looking as normal as I could while the busy work on the pool continued, although quite a bit further behind than it previously had been before.
My exhaustions started to come out when I was climbing the stairs back up to Bob's electronics. The Jedi's mind control would not last forever. I had to get someway to have the animorphs tie me up before the Jedi lost his grip and I would become the betrayer of the human cause. I would not let that happen, no matter what the case may be.
I started to feel my tired alternate persona when I was almost to the top of the steps. He was desparate and fighting an uphill battle with the yeerk who would eventually force the Jedi off.
Run! Go tell Jake to tie ourself up! We must not let the yeerk win!
I am trying, wise Jedi, but the exhaustion is beyond what normal humans can take!
You are not a normal human, Joe, but one blessed with more than my existence.
He did have a point there, there was something about me that practically everybody talked about which I rarely cared about. It was the uncanny ability to win and cross the barriers no matter what got in my way. I can do this, for the both of us.
You can, Joe, you can.
With a paroxysm of strength and speed, I burst up the stairs telling myself that it could be done, after all, anything was possible by the laws of the fabric of time. I will do it, I will.
I staggered out of the secret door into bathroom 2 of Bob's electronics with sweat dripping down my face. I was going to faint soon. But a new voice made me fight even harder.
Try as you might, human, but you won't escape me!
Oh yes I will!
I began to have sudden spasms of superhuman strength pushing through the crowd at the mall looking like a phsycotic wierdo. It looked like I was using the normal amount of energy to walk, but I was using the energy of a rampaging male silverback gorilla. BTW, this is a lot of engergy for those idiots who don't know.
"Jake!" I called out as I arrived at a corner that was pretty much secluded from outsiders from seeing us.
"JOE! What the-"
"N-no ti-ime t-t-o-oo talk, tie me u-up! I managed to g-get the y-yeerk's grasp off, but it is wearing me d-down to the-"
"I hear you, hold on, I'll get some rope, oh God, oh God, oh God."
"Jake-" I began, but then started to fall. Oxygen failed to go to my starved brain. It made for a peaceful and narcotic state of being. Honostley, it felt like a better Nirvana to me than the previous time at The Gardens.
Before this could continue, I suddenly collapsed onto the ground, suddenly seeing the world turning and turning like an unending vortex before turning black.
Sweet dreams, human. When you wake up, the party is over.
A long and hollow laughter echoed through my brain. Please let it stop, please end the pain. Let me live my life the way all beings should have. Make it stop. Make it s-. I never finished that thought.
Chapter 11- Personification of Evil
As told by Tobias:
Man, I can't believe I let Joe down! Now we all are doomed and one of my best friends is practically dead! I complained while haning in the rafters of Cassie's barn. We had all gone back after failing to save Joe from hell's grasp after our last mission.
"Tobias, it isn't your fault! If anybody's, it would be M2's fault!" Cassie snapped back.
"Why him?" Marco inquired.
"Because he was the one who brought Joe as an innocent into this war that has claimed so many lives!"
"What differance does that make? I hate to break it to you Cas, but we were innocents also, and are you crying for us? Noooooo," Marco said.
"But he hasn't been fighting for nearly as long as we have!"
Cassie, he doesn't even have the morphing power, but he still has a weapon that none of us could ever imagine how powerful and destructive it could be. He has an alternate personality, and essentially it is another being living inside his brain.
"Your point is?" Cassie accused me. She was obviously distraught with the abduction of Joe. Jake had stayed behind at the mall to see if by some miracle Joe got out of the pool, he'd be there. I told him that it was hopeless, but he didn't listen.
My point is that you don't know how powerful he can be! He might not need the battle experience that we have to fight the war because the Jedi has enough. We won't know and we will probably never know weather or not he really is ready for this war. I stated.
"He's ready, believe me. I've known him all my life, and even if he didn't have any weapon, he'd fight the yeerks for all he is worth." Rachel said.
"OK, I don't know exactly where this conversation is headed, but there is the added problem of what will the yeerks get out of him? By now, they know everything and are marching to kill or infest us. What do we do?" Marco interrupted.
"Run away and cry like babies?" Rachel suggested while scoffing at the idea the instant it came out of her mouth.
"For once, Xena has thought rationally!"
"Shut up."
"Wait, nevermind, scratch that thought."
"I'll kill you."
Guys! Jake is coming with Joe in his hands. Joe's out cold.
"What!?" Rachel exclaimed.
Joe looks like he's died, but he's twitching slightly on his left hand, what do you think happened?"
"I don't know, but how the heck could he have gotten away?"
As I said to Cassie, we don't know enough about what this 'gift' really is.
"Well, let's hope for the best."
I saw Jake come bursting into the room holding Joe who looked like he had suffered a heart attack or something. Joe was covering in sweat and breathing very heavily. But it didn't look like he still was concious and Jake looked very worried.
"Guys! Joe barely escaped the pool using the Jedi's power, but it exhausted him and now the yeerk is in control. We got to tie him up befo-"
Jake never finished that sentence. Joe quickly shoved his way past Jake and stood ready to fight in the middle of the barn.
"Andalites! Or should I say, Animorphs!"
"No!" Cassie cried.
"Shit," Marco swore.
"What do you think I would do, just let that 'Jedi' take control of me? No, a yeerk is far too smart for any human to evade my control. Even this character called a Jedi can't stop me, besides, he is fictitious in every way. Surrender or die, humans!"
"You!" Jake said as if it was the dirtiest word a person could say.
"Yes, it's me. Joe. Or Klin 9956. Either way, you are dead."
Not if I could help it. Or any of us that we in the room. Ax wasn't here to stop the yeerk from getting away, so all we could do was an old fashioned fist fight, with the obvious exception of me in the air with talons. It was simply impossible for him to win. Or was it? I knew Joe better than most people, and even if it was 5 against 1, the odds were in favor of Joe. No, wait, I mean the yeerk that was controlling Joe's body, Joe would never betray anyone willfully.
TSSSEEEERRRR! I dove down from the sky attacking Joe's eyes while the rest of the Animorphs came running into attack and get a rope around him. Please let him forgive me, I'm doing this for all humans, not just us. I knew he would, but still I felt queazy about all of it.
And yet, even throwing myself at full force at him, he used what seemed like a superhumanly accurate punch to knock me to the ground in a clump of feathers worthless to anybody. Jake ran towards him and aimed a kick straight at his head, surely a blow that would knock even a normal adult down to the ground, but Joe literally executed a flip backwards, making Jake fall completly unbalanced to the floor. Joe came over and executed a blow that even Jake could never stay concious through.
Even though Cassie is the non-violent type of person most of the time in her human form, she came at Joe with a huge lead bar. Even though at this point I was crumpled on the ground next to a cage with an iguana in it, I could see the hatred in her eyes after Jake got knocked down to the ground. Her hand with the large, lead bar came pummeling down onto Joe's stomach, but he deftly moved out of the way so it just glanced off, leaving Cassie vulnerable for a direct hit which he performed. His hand came down onto her back, throwing her back down with a cry of pain. Oh god, he is going to get it. Wait, no, it's that yeerk that will pay. He is doing this completly against his own will. I thought. But was he really doing it against his own will?
Not being stupid like Jake, Cassie and I had been, Marco and Rachel came running at Joe with nothing but their fists, trying to outflank him. Joe wasn't ready for this, so he simply jumped back giving him time to prepare. Marco got to him first swinging his large fists at Joe as his went. The hands were noticibly larger, not to mention harier, which meant that he had been morphing slowly during all of this. Joe also could see it, no, I mean the yeerk, so he turned it into a weakness and dove out of the way. Marco's momentum made him slam into the wall, knocking him unconcious without have demophing. Rachel, however, would not be that easy to disarm and knock senseless.
Rachel had been a gymnist for longer than I knew her, so I knew that she would have thought of something while this all was going on. The instant Joe had dove out of the way, she timed a jump so perfectly that she landed her feet straight on top of his head.
"Oh, man. I knew I should not have done that. He's going to kill me when this is through," She thought out loud. It seemed kind of obvious that she thought I was unconcious.
No, I wasn't unconcious because I'm telling you what happened, but I couldn't move without every muscle in my body aching. I thought of morphing human numerous times to take a shot at the yeerk, but I couldn't find the strength to. I just lay there motionless staring at the battle.
Even while landing right on top of his head, Joe used once again his superhuman presicion desicion to tilt his head at a percise angle that sent Rachel flying back and landing on her stomach. She quickly got up while Joe was storming at her, with a look of pure fear. It looked like he was yelling "Please, knock me out. Kill me if you have to, but don't let me betray you all. Please."
Rachel somehow got the message, and aimed a kick straight for his head that would have killed a kid 3 years younger than him. But all it did was make him stumble back because of his wierd ability to make powerful blows useless, buying Rachel some more time to take blows at him. She took up the crowbar from Cassie's unconcious body and literaly threw it at him with incredible strength. It hit him square in the gut, forcing him to keel over, but not before throwing several sticks with direct and precise angles straight at Rachel's face. Blood started trickling down her face because of the impact, and almost immidiately, she fell down unconcious.
Must morph human, must morph human! But I couldn't. Almost all my friends were risking the danger of dying, and all I could do was lie there like a dead bird which I was going to be if I did not get the heck out of there A.S.A.P.
But it was impossible. The Animorphs, much less the galaxy's existence was dependent on keeping the yeerk away from the Visser and me getting up to stop them.
It wasn't going to happen.
Chapter 12- The Arena
As told by Joe:
Yeerk, you have lost. Rachel has finally deprived me of your torcher in seeing my own self fighting and destroying my own friends and allies.
She has gotten harmed herself, and now is lying in a low coma now on the ground. This is not your victory.
Oh, but it is, my little piece of scum. Wise Jedi, can you finally dispose of the filth?
Not when we are in a thin struggle between life and death. Remember, focus your thoughts on living now, then freedom.
Yes, listen to your pathetic friend, the Jedi.
The Jedi ignored this remark which gave me time to contemplate on what I could do.
Anhor caronia bjor Eirik freid Thor kala qin.
What was that? A voice suddenly appeared into my head that sounded strangely like a Norwiegian dialect. The mind of the Jedi and I felt the yeerk's utter confusion at the sound of the husk and deep voice booming in my head.
The same voice boomed again, but this time it was in English.
Sworn by the sea of worms, and guided by Thor, this piece of horse dung shall be erased by the Boar.
Who are you!? The yeerk demanded impatiently.
I shall not answer.
Who are you, wise man from the north? The Jedi inquired.
I am known as Bear Skin. I only answer to those who are worthy.
Bear Skin? That phrase seemed somewhat familiar. I thought a while in my near lifeless state looking back on all these things I used to be interested in. That's it! Bear Skin was a name for a berserk warrior who went into battle with nothing but a bear skin to cover their bodies in the ancient Norse culture. But why was this man, or persona possibly like the Jedi, named Bear Skin? Perhaps it was because of his wild nature, or maybe something else and I was determined to find out what it was.
I never really got time to figure what it meant because all of a sudden, the black world that I resided in suddenly became the familiar silver and bronze combination that made up what seemed to be the lair of...
M2!
SO, YOU SEEM TO HAVE MET YOUR INNER PERSONA, HAVE YOU NOT?
"Excuse me, wait, that's Bear Skin, right?"
HAH! SO, YOU ARE NOT AS DUMB AS I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE. YOU LEARN QUICKLY, HUMAN. THE FIGURE KNOWN NOW TO YOU AS BEAR SKIN IS WHO YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE TIME OF REDEMPTION.
"Even if you think I'm smart, I do not know what you are talking about, M2."
ITS A LONG STORY, BUT IT BASICALLY GOES LIKE THIS. A SECT OF OUR RACE WAS FANATICAL ABOUT A SPORT CALLED THE ARENA WHERE TWO SENTINENT SPECIES DUKED IT OUT WITH NO WEAPONS, JUST THEIR NATURAL BODIES. AN ENVOY WAS SENT TO EARTH 1034 YEARS AGO WHEN THE SPORT BECAME OFFICIALLY LEGAL, AND CHOOSE 2 HUMANS TO JOIN.
"Let me guess here, one of them was Bear Skin and the other was probably some Jihad driven muslim zealeot."
EXACTLY! HUMANS DO LEARN FAST HOWEVER HOPELESSLY PRIMITIVE THEY ARE. THIS ENVOY SAVED THEIR PERSONA WHILE SENDING THE REAL HUMANS TO FIGHT. BEAR SKIN GETTING THERE BY WINNING MANY POINTS, HOWEVER, ON MANY OCCASIONS HE BARELY ESCAPED DEATH.
NOW, HERE IS WHERE YOU COME IN. AS WITH ALL PERSONA STORAGE, ONE DAY ONE OF THE SAME SPECIES WILL RECIEVE THAT PERSONA. SINCE YOU ALREADY CAN SWITCH TO ANOTHER PERSONALITY, YOU CAN BECOME THE BERSERK, BEAR SKIN.
"Interesting," I said without becoming overexcited.
THIS TIME IT IS DIFFERANT. THE ENVOY ALSO STORED HIS DNA AND HIS PERSONA IN THE SAME BIO-DATA STORAGE, SO INSTEAD OF JUST CHANGING PERSONALITY, YOU CHANGE PHYSICAL SHAPE AS WELL. YOU'VE ALWAYS HAD TRACES OF HIM IN YOU, BUT NOW YOU CAN BE HIM AS WELL.
"What, you mean like the Animorphs?"
NOT EXACTLY, BUT YES.
"Cool!"
WAIT, THERE IS MORE. SINCE YOU TECHNICALLY ARE STILL TRAPPED BY THE YEERK, YOU CAN'T BECOME BEAR SKIN YET. BUT, IN CASES AS EXITING AS THESE FOR YOU AND ME, I SHALL PROVIDE SOME ENTERTAINMENT FOR ME AND POSSIBLE FREEDOM FOR YOU BY THE ARENA.
"What, you are going to stick me into an arena and make me fight the yeerk?"
ESSENTIALLY, YES.
"Well, I'll cream him!"
NOT NECCESARILY. HE HAS TAKEN A HOST WHICH IS MOST DANGEROUS TO YOU, AND HAS A CHANCE OF WINNING.
"What, an Andalite?"
NO, BUT A SPECIES THAT YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH. THEY CALL THEMSELVES THE GORGONS, OR AT LEAST THAT IS THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
"The Gorgans," I repeated.
YES.
The Gorgans. Now that didn't seem that inviting or favorable to me. But since I did now have a Jedi and a war-crazed Norseguy on my side, things seemed a tad more optomistic. Now, if I was to combine the two into one I'd get a virtuous and honarable Jedi war-crazed, bloodthirsty Norse giant on shrooms with a lightsaber. I'm not kidding when I'm saying that the Bear Skins took shrooms and Hallucinogens before running into battle. The effects made them feel almost no pain, and therefore gave them enourmously enhanced strength. Their enimies feared them and once according to legend, a berserk killed 40 men with nothing but his-, wait, I'm ranting, arn't I? OK, I'll stop.
NOW, I SHALL TAKE YOU TO THE ARENA.
In a dazzeling flash, I was brought into a room consisting of blue, blue, blue, blue, blue and for a change of pace, blue. The Arena's ceiling was blue, the ground was blue, the obstacles were blue and the walls were blue. Heck, even I was tinted a light shade of blue. And the two people who were next to me were also blue. Wait, two people next to me? Who-
I turned to my right to see what looked like a boy my age and my height dressed in thick, brown robes carrying a metal stick. Wait a second, underneath the robe's hood the boy looked exactly like me, except with a touch of refinment. He looked so peaceful and virtuous, unlike me who also wanted to fight and go on the offensive.
"Hello," the Jedi said smiling at me. "Surprised, are you not?"
I gulped. "Yes, I am."
"Don't be. I am you and a living part of you. Why be scared when you can be happy and at peace?" These words comforted me, but not by much.
"Why are you here, outside of my body?" I asked inquisitivly.
"What a better time to show you the true nature of reality. You are caught inbetween life, death and insanity, so one must show you the path to life, and one must take you there."
"You are the one who will show me the way to life by defeating the yeerk, but who will guide my victory to it?"
A smile broadened across the Jedi's face. "Why, but of course! It is Bear Skin that you seek."
The Jedi gestured for me to turn around with the smile still on his face. I did so to come face to face with on of the largest men I had ever seen. He had legs like huge logs that stood as firm as trees and almost rooted to the ground. His body reminded me of a tank, only far more erect and stable, while his enourmously broad shoulders were longer than a baseball bat. The giant's huge head lay on top of his shoulders, half covered with black hair and a huge smile. Also, he carried a huge ax in his left hand that was almost 7 feet long. I'm now geussing that he was almost 8 feet tall and 400 pounds.
Despite the fearsome looks and the enourmous halberd that he carried, I felt very calm and at ease when I stood next to him. The huge head stared down at my puny body and he let out a very merry and happy laughter.
"Yes, I am the one who will take you to the path of life, as the Jedi says, but I also am a bigger part of you than he his. Essentially, I am you, and you are me, at least in spirit. To explain the entire story would be harder than destroying 50 suns with your fist, but I will tell you this. You have enough celtic and norse blood in you to be the successor to me. You have the dire need of the help of othrs in a war so desparate that alone have no chance of winning. But, with me and him," He said gesturing to the Jedi, "you will defeat the evil that lays from beyond and win the greatest honor of all among our people, protector of the human race."
I just stood there stunned at the giant's words. They were so powerful, yet so kind, caring and inviting. It was just impossible that I could be the one to rise above the yeerk menace and save Earth, much less the galaxy and trillions of other sentinent beings. He obviously saw my confusion and fear.
"Do not be afraid, for victory is at hand." He said kindly. I was comforted by that, slightly anyway, so I just relaxed and waited for whatever came next.
And now I'm glad that I was ready.
From out of nowhere, a beam of red light struck me square in the heart. The pain! The utter pain! I fell to the ground, writhing in what has got to have been the greatest amount of pain I had ever felt to that point. I was barely able to breath, and my heart nearly ceased to function. I thought, what the hell was that? All of a sudden, the pain was simply gone, and nowhere to be found, and then...
Another beam of light hit me right at my head, but this time it was a bright and pleasent green. A sudden wave of incredible euphoria and ecstacy hit me out of nowhere. The Joy! The sheer Joy! (BTW, I have no idea why I capitalized 'joy', but it seemed appropriate for the description.) I could rant on forever on how great it felt and how much I wanted it to continue on forever and ever, never ceasing to exist. Unfourtunatly, the Joy only lasted a few moment, and then the green light disappeared. And then...
ZZZZZZzzzzzziiiiinnnnnggggg! An echoing sound burst throught the stadium which I was currently standing. Then, an amazing thing happened. The Jedi and Bear Skin suddenly turned into what seemed like shadows, while slowly but surely intermingling with my own body. They pulsed back and forth throught my body, now tiny little figures, and soon stopped.
We are at your service, the Jedi said simply in my brain.
With that, a humming sound ensued and a huge creature appeared in the arena. It was about the size of a school bus, and was an awfully sickining colour of olive green. It basically was just a huge worm with no feet, except when you looked at the mouth.
The mouth looked like a huge and ready-to-destroy meat grinder. There were 3 rows of 1 foot long teeth on both the front and the top of his 5 foot diameter mouth. And at the center of the hideously large and disgusting mouth there was a hovering ball. A ball which spirt out some sort of acid whenever something or someone got close enough to touch any of the teeth. Not like anyone would want to.
NOW, THE FUN BEGINS. GOOD LUCK, HUMAN.
The huge creature came lumbering at me at a slow, but steady pace. I decided to "go viking" just then to see really how powerful Beark Skin was. Thinking back on all the things which I learned in the past, I concentrated on what the vikings stood for, what they did, the enourmous power that they used in battle, and, oh yes, the shrooms. All of a sudden, I felt a jolt go down my spine and vibrate throughout my entire body. And then, the unexpected happened.
I felt my physical structure begin to change. Yes, I began to change into the body of a 8 foot tall giant with one huge ax. My body began to rise upwards, gaining wieght and strength by the second. A beard began to sprout straight out of my face, and let me tell you, was it a really weird feeling looking at my own body changing before my very eyes. My arms began to bulge out into huge, piledriving machines, and my legs gained about 20 pounds of muscle as I was changing into the giant.
Before I could flex my muscles and get used to being inside the humoungous body, a feeling that I could not describe hit me hard. It was the feeling of being invincible and never to feel pain or suffering. There was no fear in me, I was a god, no one on the planet could stop my rage. Nothing could stop me! Nothing was in my path, nothing! (This is an obvious effect of the shrooms, mind you, that somehow got stored in the bio-data file containing Bear Skin.)
There was still a bit of rationality left in me because not all of me was a raging berserk that would run into battle with nothing to fight with but his hands. I concentrated on the ax, like I did with the lightsaber, and it came flying out of the sky straight into my huge hands. I felt power beyond believe, almost too much power to be dubbed sane. I charged.
At first, the Gorgan had no idea what to do. Or maybe it was the yeerk controling it. But none the less, I let out a huge yell and ran straight for it, with ax in hand. The yeerk hastily attacked with the Gorgan's mouth, but it missed it's mark because I was running too fast for it to aim correctly.
I threw my ax with all my might at the Gorgan's mouth, destroying the acid sack in the center of it. It let out a howl of anger, which gave me, or the Viking berserk, a chance to kill it once and for all. We jumped on top of it, prepared to literally punch it to death.
It wriggled helplessly with me on it's back, trying in vane to throw me to the ground. I started to punch it repeatedly in the head, while it writhed in shock from the constant blows I was giving it. I could feel that it was weakening, so it gave me more reason to hit harder and harder.
After about 10 minutes of constant blows from above, the Gorgan fell lifeless to the ground. Pleased with what I had done, I jumped off the Gorgan and laughed the same large, deep and meery laughter that Bear Skin laughed when I first saw him. "Hah! That was easy! Why was it so easy, may I ask M2?
A huge, menacing laughter filled the arena and shook the room violently. I shuddered in fear. WHO SAYS THAT IS WAS EASY? I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE A LOT MORE CAUTIOUS ABOUT YOUR ACTIONS AND MORE WATCHFUL, HUMAN. YOU SHOWED PROGRESS. IT WON'T MATTER IF YOU ARE LUCKY, BUT THIS BATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET MORE, HOW SHOULD I SAY IT, INTERESTING.
At one time about 2 days ago, I thought that M2 was really a cool character. But this was crossing the line. His unbelievably terrifying laughter almost made me want to scream out in fear, and the way he talked just sent chills up my enormous spine.
I can sense the fear, young one. Do not be afraid, for evil feeds off of fear, the Jedi said as I pried out the ax from the Gorgan's mouth ready to battle again.
Taking these words seriously, I took my ax and stepped back before the enourmous carcas of the dead Gorgan. "I am not afraid, yeerk. Send me your worst," I said, regretting the words I had said the instant they had come out of my mouth for two reasons. One is that I was afraid and two was that I really didn't want him to do his worst.
Soon after, I REALLY didn't have wanted him to do his worst.
A microsecond after I had spoken those words, the gorgan started to disentergrate into dust. Wait, no, that was way too big to be dust, they looked exactly like the Gorgan than had died, but thousends of times smaller. And there were millions of them! Millions of billions of acid-spitting grubs lay all around the arena, wriggling and squirming. But the harmless squirming didn't last more than 2 seconds, and before you knew it, there were billions of pencil-sized acid-spitting worms headed in my direction. Note the "Acid-spitting" part of that, when I say that, it doesn't mean spit out green water. It's pure, heart-stopping acid.
I could literally feel Bear Skin's rage go on full throttle. Insanity would be the only word good enough to describe it, but that wouldn't be quite enough. It would the epitome of insanity, the coup-de-insanity, the insane raging warrior's greatest dream. I literally lost control of my body and my actions just then, because the incredible urge to fight and kill these tiny worms, Bear Skin's persona sent me in a raging battle frenzy into fight them.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! Several worms let loose some of the acid when I was nearly upon them. But one of the horrifically powerful effects of the shrooms was the abscence of pain, at least for the time being. I could literally see my skin peeling off my body, but I could not feel it. It was not a pretty sight.
Strike at the tails, if you can, Joe. They loose their ability to regenerate if you do so and your victory will be quicker, the Jedi suggested.
Even though my body was currently out of my control, I did manage to relay the message over to Bear Skin, who started madly chopping at the ends of these worms as I went through the thousends of worms
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! More acid came straight for my eyes, but it was poorly aimed and accidentally hit one of his comrades. It literally went up in smoke, and some of the acid deflected off onto other worms which also disentergrated.
I knew that this was a battle that I could not win, not in the body of Bear Skin anyway. With incredible strength and determination, I slowly grasped control of my body to change to the Jedi's persona and become a bit more rational about the matter. Sure, being an 8 foot tall berserk helps against most enemies, but I'll use the Jedi anyday to whip these mutant worms into shape. Focusing in on the Jedi, I slowly began to change my body and my personality to a more familiar stage.
First came the physical changes. I suddenly began shrinking, slowly but surely down to my normal height. Jake later described it as falling, but never hitting the ground when morphing tiny insects and animals. I wasn't exactly doing that, but I shrank quite a bit down to my normal size which felt small after being Bear Skin.
My arms seemed to deflate as my normal characteristics began to appear. My legs became less and less log-like. My huge head shrank and my beard suddenly became non-existent. It's a wierd process when you morph, or change persona at any rate. I couldn't quite morph to the ability of the Animorphs yet, but I could come close.
Even in my seemingly frail body, Bear Skin's violent rage continued on however feeble I was. It reminded me of the time in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the killer rabbit attacked the knights; a mammoth rage and potential in a small body. Hey, I just noticed something! I make a lot of comparisons of things in my crazy life to Monty Python movies. Strange, very strange indeed. Yet another piece of evidence to go to the side proving that I have the queerest life on the planet.
Before Bear Skin could send me raging into the frenzy and to my grave, the Jedi started slowly becoming a part of me. The rage slowly became peace, the fealing of zealous warfare became zealous wisedom. Every part of my body seemed to be refreshed, and a blanket of black cloth suddenly spread over my body from nowhere. Assuming it was stored in the bio-data file thingy, I didn't pay much attention. The ax dessolved into nothingness, and replacing it was the familiar metal bar that had severl knobs on it.
Switching on the blade of blazing blue, I charged into the battle between life, death and sheer insanity with the rage of the Berserk and the precision of the Jedi.
Chapter 13- The Message
As told by Erek the Chee
Closing my eyes on my holographic projection and my link to stable stasis type 3, I ran through the latest Chee-net general briefings and conections on a speed named Supra-statis unstable type 9.5, nicknamed "Meltdown" by some of my fellow Chee. You probably could guess why. :-)
Because of the practically time-stopping speed that I had engaged, I spent my time pouring over various reports, complaints and messages that were spread across the system. Most of it was junk, but a few caught my eye, such as the report where one Chee named Ian had accidently accented his hologram at a human buissness meeting, giving the appearence that he was calmly walking in being burned to a crisp.
Thinking that there were no really important matters that were at hand, I started to shift back to stable statis type 3 when something rather obscure appeared on the net. Opening it, I found some very startling things that lay within the file.
One was that it was anonymous. That was impossible, because to send anything, you had to be an identified Chee, and there were none on Earth at the time. Or at least, I think there were no unidentified Chee on Earth at the time.
Two, it's content. It was so incredibly simple and plain, probably no more than 10 G3K0's, but what it said stunned me:
~|Erek|~
~|Please tell them I need their help|~
~|I'm fighting a battle of no survival!|~
~|Tell Jake I need him!|~
~|JSJBS|~
I ran a scan for any Chee who had a codename of "JSJBS" quickly to make sure that my programming hadn't become suddenly faulty. No, there was no trace of any possible Chee having any such name. Was it a trick of the creature that called himself the Ellimist? Something told me it had something to do with him, but I had no clue as to what.
My return to "normal speed" continued after the message had been saved. Hmmm, why would this figure "JSJBS" want to reach Jake? Perhaps it was simply a trick? Or was all this hard truth? I was determined to find out.
"Bye dad, I'm going to Cassie's barn!" I called to my 'father' that was downstairs in our human house. Really it was another Chee posing as my father, my true one would be one of the Pelamites.
"See you, Erek!"
I headed out the human door and started walking down the street. A couple of questions raced through my chrome, what was this about and why did he want to reach Jake? Was it a trick or reality? Nothing in our several million year history has ever stopped a Chee on a mission, and this time would not be an exception.
Chapter 14- Portal
As told by Marco
I woke up. I couldn't tell which way was up or down, neither could I feel any part of my body, but I was at least conscious. For the moment anyway.
"Ugggghhh," I moaned as I tried to get up.
Marco? I heard a voice in my head vibrate. It seemed like Tobias's.
I grunted in acknowledgment. Demorph back to human quickly! You still have massive fists, and have only two minutes to get back! Quickly!
What? Oh, ya', that's right. Right, a human. Humananity. I needed to get back to human. Ahhhhh. No, actually I was kinda happy. Oblivious. I smiled.
Marco!
Demorph to human. Now.
Demorph!
I slowly started to concentrate on my human form. From what I could gather in my rather subconscious state, I was mostly human with way to big fists. Must have been the reason why I crazed into the wall loosing balance in the battle against Joe.
Fourtunatly, the subconscious state I was sort of in didn't last long the instant I completly demorphed. I moaned, then saw what would haunt my dreams for the next 3.292747 days. Round that to forever.
Jake looked like he was torchered by an invisible force and thrown against the straw in a heap of flesh and bones. Rachel's face was covered in blood and her body was seemingly diliberatly perched on a cage with iron bars sticking out of the top. Cassie's body lay in a lifeless, or so I thought, heap next to a bale of hay. The controller Joe lay motionless with parts of his skin peeling of and showing bone at certain places, and other very gruesome things that I will not go into. And Tobias, well, he was sitting mornfully up in the rafters. It' s kinda hard to tell if a hawk is mournful, but this was the time.
"M-m-m-my G-god!" I stammered as I stared at their bodies laying helplessly around the barn.
Tobias burst out crying. I felt his pain. It looked like the Animorphs had been reduced by 3 great friends and fellow warriors, plus the freedom and life of our latest recruit.
"Tobias, I-"
No! We all failed, not just you! We knew that if he got into this war that it would fail. And it has.
"No it hasn't, yet," I said adding the "yet" to make it a bit more true.
Yes it has!!! We've lost Jake, Cassie and Rachel, and we might loose more! We need help!
As if his wish were someone else's command, Erek the Chee choose that time to come to the barn with some interesting and (of course) dangerous news.
"Erek!" I stammered.
"I have news for Jake, what happened?" He said using his hologram to express great concern.
More than you'll ever really want to know, Tobias said.
We told him alll about Joe and what happened on the fateful first mission that we set off on to test out his "powers" in an assasination attempt to kill Visser 12. It was a success, but the cost was Joe's freedom. Erek nodded from time to time, but didn't show that much emotion.
"And here is the result of a badly timed dumb blond joke with 3 gallons of vodka and a half dozen screaming N-Sync fans at a sold-out concert," I joked finishing up the summery. I know, it was poorly timed, but I always joke when times are tense.
"Hmmm," Erek replied. He nodded.
"So, know what?" I asked.
Well, I'll go get Ax, better tell him what has happened, Tobias sighed. He was obviously distraught by his tone of voice.
"Ya'," I agreed, "Hold on..."
"What?"
"I'm getting that feeling that I get every time when Rachel says 'let's do it!'. And it's not a good feeling."
Out of nowhere, a young girl around 9 years old appeared on the other side of the barn. She looked like a clone of Rachel, except the obvious fact that she was about 5 years younger and that she had a slightly darker skin.
"Hello," she said.
I guessed for no particular reason that this was the, "Ellimist!"
"Yes, I am. And I have grave news for you."
I thought to myself, like when is there anything else?
"My brother, though not technically my biological brother, M2, is playing a game with Joe."
I was about to make a sick comment, but then he continued, "What I mean by not biological brother is that he was an independant part of me that slowly became another being over a thousend years.
"About the fact that he is playing a game with Joe, M2 has only one thing on his agenda 24/7/365; to be entertained. He isn't neccesarily sadistic, but some of his games, like the arena, are borderline. Joe is now fighting a force that alone he is not likely to win. But if he does win by a miracle, he will be freed from the yeerk and your friends will be restored immediately. But if not..."
"...something really bad will happen," I finished off.
"Like what?" inquired Erek.
"Actually, things will resume to normal, except that Joe will awake instantly still being a controller within 500 feet of the nearest yeerk pool," The Ellimist warned.
Ouch.
"Something deep down tells me that we don't want that to happen," I sighed, "So, there must be another reason that you came here other than to tell us about Joe, right?"
All of a sudden, the young girl vanished and a head boomed from up above.
RIGHT, IT IS A BIT MORE HOPEFUL HOWEVER. M2 LIKES FAIR FIGHTS, AS DO I, SO WE HAVE AGREED TO CREATE A PORTAL TO THE ARENA FOR 2 PEOPLE TO HELP OUT JOE IN THE FIGHT. OTHERWISE, IT WILL MOST LIKELY BE A MASSACRE.
"And we DONT want that to happen. OK, Tobias and I will go save Joe's ass."
When did he turn into Jake? Tobias wondered.
"Shut up. Okay, Ellimist? Let's go."
AS YOU WISH!
With that, a huge, spinning circle appeared before us in the barn. It looked like something straight out of the movies, because you could see the other side and it seemed that all you had to do was just step through and go.
"Battle morphs, Tobias," I said while my physical structure began to change into that of a male silver back gorilla's. Despite the fact that I had morphed about 1,000 times before, it never ceases to amaze me how many differant ways you can change into animals.
This time it was beyond weird. Instead of semi-gradually becoming more gorilla-like, I grew about 9 feet tall into the air. I mean, I was super Marco! It was a bit weird, but then my body became more and more rubbery as the feature of the gorilla appeared. I fell down on all fours and assumed the appearence of a gorrila.
I looked to my left to see Tobias in an hork-bajir's body. Shall we fight? He asked with a sinister "smile" on his hork-bajir face.
Chapter 15- Berserkergang
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! More acid came flying my direction. I jumped deftly out of the way as the acid sizzled one of the worm's comrades.
AAAAASsssPUT! SssssZZZzzzz! My lightsaber absorbed one of the ridiculously powerful acid explosions from the mouth of the Gorgans', and cames swiping down to kill my assailent. He split into two, wriggling halves.
HMMM, JUST TO MAKE IT A BIT MORE INTERESTING, LETS ADD SOME MORE PEOPLE TO THIS FIGHT.
"What?! Why?" I demanded.
BECAUSE I SAID SO. ANYWAY, A GORRILA AND A HORK-BAJIR WILL BE ADDED AS WELL ON YOUR SIDE.
This was pissing me off. So what if I was getting two monster creatures for support, they'd be eaten alive by the acid! It would just be pain for me to see 2 of my friends die, I didn't need them. I could probably handle another wave of Gorgans, probably.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! Acid came hailing down on me as I barely dove down in time.
AAAAASsssPUT! NOOOOOOO!!!!! A blast of acid hit me in my right arm, so powerful and so unbelievably accurate. And the pain! Pain beyond words! My arm literaly started burning off, and revealed the white, blood stained bone of my arm. I howled with pain.
But, with the Jedi's soul came the years and years of his training in the moral code of the Jedi. Or, well, in some other universe parallel to ours, maybe, but not here. He believes that one should accept pain and not to fight it, but to fight to the death andd never, ever giving in. And that was what I intended to do.
With one arm out of commision, I only could use the other to control the lightsaber. But I didn't think it was a problem, because it seemed that the lightsaber was animated by itself. I began swingng quickly and precisly to destroy my enemy.
The cavalry is-, whoa! What the- I heard a familiar "voice" say. I saw two creatures rampaging in from an unseen portal; one was a gorilla and the other was a hork-bajir.
"What about the cavalry?" I asked, trying not to wince at the pain and at the sight of my half-severed arm.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!
AHHHHHHH! Marco yelled. The worms started to turn away from the familiar scent, and try out the new one. Acid starting flying straight toward the unsuspecting couple.
My arm! Tobias cried as acid started chewing through his bulky arm. No real blood showed, but you could kinda tell it was hurting like crazy.
"It's worse when you are human, I'm afraid," I sighed trying to put a smile on my face as I showed them my twisted arm. Trying would be a good word for it.
God! Tobias stammered, How, wha-
"Just kill them! Forget pain! Destroy what you fear, and the suffering will cease to exist!" I yelled, getting a littled anxious. I'm guessing that I sounded like a mixture between Qui-Gon Jin and a devout, Buddhist monk. Odd combination, no?
Yessir, Mr. Jedi sir! Marco said. Mockingly.
"Shut up!!!"
God, you don't have to get Xena on me, AAAHHHH! Marco mumbled as yet another "AAAAASsssPUT" hit him square in the chest.
I backed off from the main fight, just to prepare for the second wave. But there was something in M2's voice that told me that bigger was better, and something about gr-
Oh Shit.
All of a sudden, all the worms stopped spitting, chanting (yes, chanting), and swaying. Then, they started to "hook up" with each other and forming small balls. The balls started to turn rapidly and grow to three times the length of the original ball. The balls all changed , like someone playing around with silly putty, and slowly formed into a bigger version of the tiny worms. Much bigger. They were not the size of a small-medium sized dog, and they were not looking happy.
"Umm, I'd strongly advise you to be careful, because-"
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!
The air was filled with venomous acid within seconds. And do I mean filled! I put my Jedi reflexes to the test evading all the acid that came raining down. Left, right, jump, left, forward, back, NO! forward, right, left. Phew.
But I wasn't so sure if Marco and Tobias survived. It was physically improbable that they could have survived, but knowing them, odds mean nothing. Nothing.
"Marco! Tobias! Can you hear me?" I called out for them. Hopefully they could. "Listen, Tobias? Demorph. Marco? Demorph and go osprey. Your bodies as way to big to fight all the acid, so at least you can strike from the air which they have trouble aiming for. Hurry!"
Ugh, I heard a grunt of approval from both of them.
"Good, now go!"
I stood ready to face the next attack. It came as hard as ever raining down on me.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!
The venomn sprayed over like a flower basket bomb. Keeping my Jedi reflexes in mind, I started to evade. Right, left, right, back, forward, duck, jump. Phew.
You know that this cannot go on forever, Joe, Bear skin said with a laugh.
He is right, Joe. I can only evade. I cannot win, now.
"Let's go Viking!" I yelled to no one in particular. Oh, drat, Marco and Tobias were in the room.
What? I heard an anguished voice from somewhere.
"You'll see if you watch," I said, then started the all too familiar persona switch yet again. Legs to trees, arms to piledrivers, face to bush, lightsaber to ax. But, fourtunatly for me, the DNA transfer succesfully canceled out the injury, and I wa left with the largest arms that a man had possesed for over a millinia.
Then, the hallucinogenic feeling raged throughout my body and overcame my senses. POWER! POWER! POWER! There isn't a word in existence that could describe the sheer vigor and might that I then possesed. Bloodlust! The craving for the carnage of battle! Even through 1000 years, the ancestral power lay within the persona of the giant. I was ready.
What the-
"ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH" I screeched as I charged into battle with the battle ax raised above my head. No stopping me, not even the force of 20 men could stop my unrelented fury. All that passed in my way felt the pain. Which I could feel none.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! Acid came hailing down on me from all directions at once. But, there was no evading it this time, nor was there pain or fear involved. You could have dumped a gallon of the stuff on me and I wouldn't care. Actually, it would burn my head off, but I wouldn't feel it.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! More acid came straight for me, but I felt nothing, except nasuea after seeing my sking peeling away.
Before, the worms were too small to fight for the berserk. But now I was going against something more powerful and larger. It satisfied my rage, my berserkergang. The nordic word for the rage. I like it, don't you? Whatever.
Whoosh! Blade hitting flesh all over the place! Dead bodies piled up, if you could call them bodies, but more were still coming strong.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!Acid, who gave a darn? I couldn't even feel it, so why worry? The blade was damp with blood and the gored bellies of the Gorgans, but I kept on whacking it into the foe's body.
The worms were getting uneasy. They started to wiggle away, but where could they run to? I'm serious when I tell you what happened next. They disentergrated. Literally. Into dust. Dust that meant nothing. You could tell that it wasn't more of the monsters, only tinier, because they didn't spit acid.
Or move.
Victory was sweet, and I tasted it then. I let out a howl and cleaned my blade on my tunic that came in the bio-data file. I stared at the carnage, then depersonaswitched. I think that's a good name for it, anyway.
"And that, little boys and girls, is why you should never play with Joe. He just might kill you. In fact, he will kill you. AHHHHH!" I ranted after just standing there a second.
Then, I saw a guy and a hawk come before me. Odd, Marco looked a bit, well, how should be say this, serious?
"No, there is no way..." He didn't need to finish the sentence.
"Yes, because I just did it."
Joe? Might you consider a career in insanity? Tobias kidded. We let out a forced laugh.
"Man, you can morph as well?" Marco asked.
"Not really, I can't just acquire things like you people can."
WHO SAYS?
What the-, oh, M2 again.
"You mean I can now aquire people's personality?"
SOMETHING LIKE THAT, YES. YOU CAN NOW ACQUIRE PEOPLE'S PERSONALITIES AND STORE THEM IN THEIR RESPECTED BIO-DATA FILE.
"A what?" Marco asked.
A FILES USED FOR PERSONA STORGAE AND CHANGES. BASICALLY, YOU CONTACT THAT PERSON'S INNER SELF TELEPATHICALLY. CHOOSE WHICH CHARACTERISTICS YOU WANT, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL, THEN CLOSE THE TELPATHIC CONNECTION. WARNING FOR YOU, ONLY USE THIS TO CHANGE TO DIFFERANT PEOPLE FOR IMPORTANT MANNERS, LIKE FIGHTING THE WAR. OTHERWISE, BROTHER ELLIMIST MIGHT HAVE A FURY...
"OK, well, we all know that the Ellimist is one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, so, let's play who wants to piss off the Ellimist?" Marco joked.
Shut up, Bird boy Tobias said.
YOU WILL ALSO BE ABLE TO CONTACT BACK IN A TIME WARP TO AQUIRE DEAD PEOPLE'S PERSONA. YOU MUST BE AT THE SITE OF THEIR REMAINS, HOWEVER, THE AQUIRE THEIR DNA AND CLOTHES.
"Wait, something just occured to me, won't all of these guys be in my head with Bear Skin and the Jedi? 2 other people inside my head is enough for me, but like 8? No way."
THATS AN INTERESTING QUESTION YOU POSE. THE ANSWER IS IN YOUR FAVOR, THE JEDI AND THE BERSERK ARE SEMI-INDEPENDENT BEINGS WHO COULD SURVIVE ALONE WITH A DIFFERENT HOST BODY. THE NEW PERSONA FILES WILL JUST BE GENETICAL AND MENTAL INFORMATION.
"Kwel! Well, it's been swell, M2, thanks for the powers! Now, can we go back?"
HAH! WHOEVER SAID THAT? YOU HAVN'T QUITE MET THE CHALLENGE, YET...
Vortex of Fire
Tunnel of Death
The Eternal Plague
Maelstrom
Broken mirrors
A twisted thought
The end of all ends
And a war not yet fought
Dieties and disciples
The Almighty
The Holy Messiah
I have one question to ask
Why me? Why me? WHY ME?
Stuck in the many forms
Of these shattered realities
As told by Jake
Marco, quick! Behind you!
See him, Jake.
Cassie!
Don't worry, Jake I got him.
TSERRRRR! A red-tailed hawk came tearing out of the sky on top of a hideously disgusting alien's compound eyes. He reared back in rage, then started swiping his body with hunger and devout zeal towards the red-tailed hawk, which missed by one inch.
Prince Jake, I do not believe we can hold them off forever.
Two bladed, 2 meter tall creatures that looked very differant from what you normally see on the street came crashing forward recklessly. They would pay for that in a gruesome way later on; by me tackling them and goreing their bellies. Gross.
I know, Ax, I know! We gotta get Joe back here before we can go! The mission was a sucess, so be gotta bail!
He's caught! The red-tailed hawk screeched words into my mind.
What?! A bear telepathically yelled out to all of us.
Oh man, about 100 hork-bajir are on him, and he's being infested!
Oh shit, OK, stay calm everyone! I yelled.
Prince Jake, we are loosing!
Cuz, we can't hold out forever! We gotta bail soon!
Oh, and in case your wondering, my name is Jake.
Yep, that's my name and that is where it'll stay. Can't tell you much more about me, except that I'm fighting a war. You probably already know about it, so I'll spare you the trouble of listening to me babble about the invasion. However, there are some new twists to the story that I know that you are dying to hear about.
There is this kid at our school named Joe. He's pretty normal, in fact, his appearence is too uncannily normal that everyone notices him. He is of average hieght, he wieghs the average wieght, he has blueish-green eyes and has a dark brown hair. This makes him somewhat of a bully target.
Now you might be asking, why the hell would bullies spend time picking on Joe instead of some weak, skinny kid. Well, it's because of how inviting he is. I swear, one day I actually heard him say, "So, Mike, you seemed to be off Weight Watchers, eh? Oh, and you can kiss that CD you lent to George goodbye, it's all scratched up and history." See what I mean?
Now, the reason he does this is only to gain popularity. The bullies immidiatly begin swearing and making threats, but Joe still stands there making taunts. Eventually, a fight breaks out and everyone around starts to watch. Actually, the only reason anybody watches anymore is that they love seeing the bully's face when he is down on the floor, bruised, cut and pummeled while Joe simply smiles shyly and walks away. It is kinda funny, to tell you the truth.
This wouldn't be that interesting if Joe hadn't beaten up and humiliated 30 bullies and adversaries to date. All without ever getting on the bad end of a punch. It's like he is immune to loosing a fight, and I have no clue where he gets his power. He's like my cousin, Rachel, but he is never reckless. He always thinks before he leaps, then leaps farther than anyone could ever possibly can.
Joe's also one of my friends, however he is not that close. I can't tell you anything else about him, except that he absolutly loves to ride roller coasters. I have to admit, riding the latest ride called "SSXL" at The Gardens was better even then most of my perigrine falcon times.
What made him a part of our crew, however, did not involve his ability to win almost every time. It actually involved some impossible coincidences and surprises that brought him and the Animorphs together. Essentially, he recieved an alternate personality, which was the mind and soul of a Jedi knight. OK, maybe it is a bit on the corny side, but he really can do what the Jedi knights did in Star Wars, you know, levitate objects, use lightsabers, that sort of thing.
To test these new skills, we set out on a mission to assasinate a powerful yeerk warlord named Visser 12 to slow down a counter-andalite bandit operation. Joe sucessfully did his job in killing the Visser, but Visser 3, the main leader of the invasion of earth, stopped us dead in our tracks with a bunch of hork-bajir and taxxon warriors. From what I just had heard, Joe had been captured by 100 hork-bajir and was being infested by the Visser's orders.
Prince Jake! I saw Ax madly throwing his tail at a bunch of attacking hork-bajir.
Enough! We gotta tail it out of here! Finish off all that you can, and then bail! We all know Joe, he'll get the hell out of this hell. Now move! It was a stupid desicion, mainly because my clouded brain simply could not think rationally enough to find a way to get Joe out of there. Not that there really was a way.
But-
No buts about it, Cassie. We gotta get out of here!
With that, I took off like a bullet straight towards the stairs of the un-finished yeerk pool. Making a mad dash to the exit, I started demorphing as I went. Why couldn't have I saved him? What are the concequences of NOT saving him? I shuddered at the thought while finishing the change between tiger and human.
We slowly came out of bathroom 2 of Bob's electronics one at a time so we wouldn't be noticed. And I'm sure that we all were thinking at that moment...
Why?
Chapter 10- Return of the Jedi
As told by Joe
Wow, quite a treasure mine of information for the Visser, eh? A voice taunted inside my head. He was practically opening my mind and reading it like a picture book. I could not describe how embarressing and terrifying the experience really was. A yeerk. Die you little green scum.
I'm afraid I can't do such a thing for you. You see, I can't die now. You simply can't overthrow a yeerk. But, I geuss you already knew about that. Hahaha!
You can't do anything to me.
Well, shall we prove you wrong?
It was so humiliating and hopeless. The little slug inside my brain was controlling my every action. When I needed to sneeze, I couldn't until the piece of sewage water that called itself a yeerk did so. He moved my eyes, my legs, and even my arms, but I simply could not! It was a life I could never stand to live, and I would seriously would want to die before any of the information ever got out to the yeerks.
As I was about to watch and listen in horror as the yeerk would reveal the secrets of the Animorphs, I began to realize a very desicive principle. Nothing was impossible at this point of the game, so I decided to do what they said couldn't be done. Since they can only control my physical actions and not my thoughts, well... You are going to regret every entering my mind, yeerk.
Am I really? Right. Ha.
For some strange reason, the Jedi persona of my brain could not be penetrated by the yeerk and he couldn't see it. I began thinking about the Jedi and my persona change began to occur.
Why the movies, host? You havn't seen Star Wars for 4 months!
True, but by the time I get rid of you, you will never exist ever.
Foolish host, so arrogant, yet brave.
Die.
Odd litle conversation there, but that didn't change my persona switch. And that'ts when all of the Jedi's thoughts bubbled to the top of my brain. They were all completly secretive, unlike all of my regular memories, and that gave me a decisive advantage against him. Since I couldn't say a word that the yeerk wouldn't hear, I let the Jedi take over control of my brain and boy did he speak.
What is this, a yeerk? So arogant, bold and over confident are those with the least moral strength. I cannot fight wars, but this is beyond a war. Entire sentinent races have been destroyed. The yeerks must pay for their ignorence.
What are you talking about!? Who is this?!
The Jedi chuckled telpathically. I am a Jedi, but of course.
The yeerk gasped. A spawn of this human's imaginative mind?
He again laughed. No, I am this human. You just can't control me. But I can control you.
With that, I took control of the Jedi's mind and started focusing in on the yeerk in my brain. So weak this mind is, so pitifully weak. I easily succommed it to my powers and that was when the fun started. Since the yeerk was still in my brain, I could not move on my own free will, but the Jedi could tell the yeerk to move any way I pleased. It was such a wierd feeling, it was like I was the puppet and I was the puppeteir as well. It wasn't a neccesarily a bad feeling, but I really wasn't in that much of a mood to let it sit for a while.
I started then to assume that the Visser wanted answers, and fast. He didn't know that I was being controlled by my own power, mostly anyway, so the big coulder that consisted of holes looked kinda P.O.ed and wanted answers, fast.
Well, so?
I thought for a moment for the correct answer. I tried to make myself look like I was in deep thought, even though I wasn't thinking what he thought I was thinking. "This host is worthless. All he knows about is the andalites which he found out through some person he knew as 'Condor'. The weapon he used was actually an old piece of human technology that he had stolen from a top seacret humans weapons lab in California."
Well, for such a brat, he must have uses. See what you can do with him, Sub-visser 28, and make sure the operation works. The assasination of Visser 12 was most unfourtunate to our plans.
"Yes, Visser."
With that, the boulder started to demorph into his andalite's form. Even in his true form, the Visser looked purely evil and full of sheer hatred. I stepped away towards the exit, looking as normal as I could while the busy work on the pool continued, although quite a bit further behind than it previously had been before.
My exhaustions started to come out when I was climbing the stairs back up to Bob's electronics. The Jedi's mind control would not last forever. I had to get someway to have the animorphs tie me up before the Jedi lost his grip and I would become the betrayer of the human cause. I would not let that happen, no matter what the case may be.
I started to feel my tired alternate persona when I was almost to the top of the steps. He was desparate and fighting an uphill battle with the yeerk who would eventually force the Jedi off.
Run! Go tell Jake to tie ourself up! We must not let the yeerk win!
I am trying, wise Jedi, but the exhaustion is beyond what normal humans can take!
You are not a normal human, Joe, but one blessed with more than my existence.
He did have a point there, there was something about me that practically everybody talked about which I rarely cared about. It was the uncanny ability to win and cross the barriers no matter what got in my way. I can do this, for the both of us.
You can, Joe, you can.
With a paroxysm of strength and speed, I burst up the stairs telling myself that it could be done, after all, anything was possible by the laws of the fabric of time. I will do it, I will.
I staggered out of the secret door into bathroom 2 of Bob's electronics with sweat dripping down my face. I was going to faint soon. But a new voice made me fight even harder.
Try as you might, human, but you won't escape me!
Oh yes I will!
I began to have sudden spasms of superhuman strength pushing through the crowd at the mall looking like a phsycotic wierdo. It looked like I was using the normal amount of energy to walk, but I was using the energy of a rampaging male silverback gorilla. BTW, this is a lot of engergy for those idiots who don't know.
"Jake!" I called out as I arrived at a corner that was pretty much secluded from outsiders from seeing us.
"JOE! What the-"
"N-no ti-ime t-t-o-oo talk, tie me u-up! I managed to g-get the y-yeerk's grasp off, but it is wearing me d-down to the-"
"I hear you, hold on, I'll get some rope, oh God, oh God, oh God."
"Jake-" I began, but then started to fall. Oxygen failed to go to my starved brain. It made for a peaceful and narcotic state of being. Honostley, it felt like a better Nirvana to me than the previous time at The Gardens.
Before this could continue, I suddenly collapsed onto the ground, suddenly seeing the world turning and turning like an unending vortex before turning black.
Sweet dreams, human. When you wake up, the party is over.
A long and hollow laughter echoed through my brain. Please let it stop, please end the pain. Let me live my life the way all beings should have. Make it stop. Make it s-. I never finished that thought.
Chapter 11- Personification of Evil
As told by Tobias:
Man, I can't believe I let Joe down! Now we all are doomed and one of my best friends is practically dead! I complained while haning in the rafters of Cassie's barn. We had all gone back after failing to save Joe from hell's grasp after our last mission.
"Tobias, it isn't your fault! If anybody's, it would be M2's fault!" Cassie snapped back.
"Why him?" Marco inquired.
"Because he was the one who brought Joe as an innocent into this war that has claimed so many lives!"
"What differance does that make? I hate to break it to you Cas, but we were innocents also, and are you crying for us? Noooooo," Marco said.
"But he hasn't been fighting for nearly as long as we have!"
Cassie, he doesn't even have the morphing power, but he still has a weapon that none of us could ever imagine how powerful and destructive it could be. He has an alternate personality, and essentially it is another being living inside his brain.
"Your point is?" Cassie accused me. She was obviously distraught with the abduction of Joe. Jake had stayed behind at the mall to see if by some miracle Joe got out of the pool, he'd be there. I told him that it was hopeless, but he didn't listen.
My point is that you don't know how powerful he can be! He might not need the battle experience that we have to fight the war because the Jedi has enough. We won't know and we will probably never know weather or not he really is ready for this war. I stated.
"He's ready, believe me. I've known him all my life, and even if he didn't have any weapon, he'd fight the yeerks for all he is worth." Rachel said.
"OK, I don't know exactly where this conversation is headed, but there is the added problem of what will the yeerks get out of him? By now, they know everything and are marching to kill or infest us. What do we do?" Marco interrupted.
"Run away and cry like babies?" Rachel suggested while scoffing at the idea the instant it came out of her mouth.
"For once, Xena has thought rationally!"
"Shut up."
"Wait, nevermind, scratch that thought."
"I'll kill you."
Guys! Jake is coming with Joe in his hands. Joe's out cold.
"What!?" Rachel exclaimed.
Joe looks like he's died, but he's twitching slightly on his left hand, what do you think happened?"
"I don't know, but how the heck could he have gotten away?"
As I said to Cassie, we don't know enough about what this 'gift' really is.
"Well, let's hope for the best."
I saw Jake come bursting into the room holding Joe who looked like he had suffered a heart attack or something. Joe was covering in sweat and breathing very heavily. But it didn't look like he still was concious and Jake looked very worried.
"Guys! Joe barely escaped the pool using the Jedi's power, but it exhausted him and now the yeerk is in control. We got to tie him up befo-"
Jake never finished that sentence. Joe quickly shoved his way past Jake and stood ready to fight in the middle of the barn.
"Andalites! Or should I say, Animorphs!"
"No!" Cassie cried.
"Shit," Marco swore.
"What do you think I would do, just let that 'Jedi' take control of me? No, a yeerk is far too smart for any human to evade my control. Even this character called a Jedi can't stop me, besides, he is fictitious in every way. Surrender or die, humans!"
"You!" Jake said as if it was the dirtiest word a person could say.
"Yes, it's me. Joe. Or Klin 9956. Either way, you are dead."
Not if I could help it. Or any of us that we in the room. Ax wasn't here to stop the yeerk from getting away, so all we could do was an old fashioned fist fight, with the obvious exception of me in the air with talons. It was simply impossible for him to win. Or was it? I knew Joe better than most people, and even if it was 5 against 1, the odds were in favor of Joe. No, wait, I mean the yeerk that was controlling Joe's body, Joe would never betray anyone willfully.
TSSSEEEERRRR! I dove down from the sky attacking Joe's eyes while the rest of the Animorphs came running into attack and get a rope around him. Please let him forgive me, I'm doing this for all humans, not just us. I knew he would, but still I felt queazy about all of it.
And yet, even throwing myself at full force at him, he used what seemed like a superhumanly accurate punch to knock me to the ground in a clump of feathers worthless to anybody. Jake ran towards him and aimed a kick straight at his head, surely a blow that would knock even a normal adult down to the ground, but Joe literally executed a flip backwards, making Jake fall completly unbalanced to the floor. Joe came over and executed a blow that even Jake could never stay concious through.
Even though Cassie is the non-violent type of person most of the time in her human form, she came at Joe with a huge lead bar. Even though at this point I was crumpled on the ground next to a cage with an iguana in it, I could see the hatred in her eyes after Jake got knocked down to the ground. Her hand with the large, lead bar came pummeling down onto Joe's stomach, but he deftly moved out of the way so it just glanced off, leaving Cassie vulnerable for a direct hit which he performed. His hand came down onto her back, throwing her back down with a cry of pain. Oh god, he is going to get it. Wait, no, it's that yeerk that will pay. He is doing this completly against his own will. I thought. But was he really doing it against his own will?
Not being stupid like Jake, Cassie and I had been, Marco and Rachel came running at Joe with nothing but their fists, trying to outflank him. Joe wasn't ready for this, so he simply jumped back giving him time to prepare. Marco got to him first swinging his large fists at Joe as his went. The hands were noticibly larger, not to mention harier, which meant that he had been morphing slowly during all of this. Joe also could see it, no, I mean the yeerk, so he turned it into a weakness and dove out of the way. Marco's momentum made him slam into the wall, knocking him unconcious without have demophing. Rachel, however, would not be that easy to disarm and knock senseless.
Rachel had been a gymnist for longer than I knew her, so I knew that she would have thought of something while this all was going on. The instant Joe had dove out of the way, she timed a jump so perfectly that she landed her feet straight on top of his head.
"Oh, man. I knew I should not have done that. He's going to kill me when this is through," She thought out loud. It seemed kind of obvious that she thought I was unconcious.
No, I wasn't unconcious because I'm telling you what happened, but I couldn't move without every muscle in my body aching. I thought of morphing human numerous times to take a shot at the yeerk, but I couldn't find the strength to. I just lay there motionless staring at the battle.
Even while landing right on top of his head, Joe used once again his superhuman presicion desicion to tilt his head at a percise angle that sent Rachel flying back and landing on her stomach. She quickly got up while Joe was storming at her, with a look of pure fear. It looked like he was yelling "Please, knock me out. Kill me if you have to, but don't let me betray you all. Please."
Rachel somehow got the message, and aimed a kick straight for his head that would have killed a kid 3 years younger than him. But all it did was make him stumble back because of his wierd ability to make powerful blows useless, buying Rachel some more time to take blows at him. She took up the crowbar from Cassie's unconcious body and literaly threw it at him with incredible strength. It hit him square in the gut, forcing him to keel over, but not before throwing several sticks with direct and precise angles straight at Rachel's face. Blood started trickling down her face because of the impact, and almost immidiately, she fell down unconcious.
Must morph human, must morph human! But I couldn't. Almost all my friends were risking the danger of dying, and all I could do was lie there like a dead bird which I was going to be if I did not get the heck out of there A.S.A.P.
But it was impossible. The Animorphs, much less the galaxy's existence was dependent on keeping the yeerk away from the Visser and me getting up to stop them.
It wasn't going to happen.
Chapter 12- The Arena
As told by Joe:
Yeerk, you have lost. Rachel has finally deprived me of your torcher in seeing my own self fighting and destroying my own friends and allies.
She has gotten harmed herself, and now is lying in a low coma now on the ground. This is not your victory.
Oh, but it is, my little piece of scum. Wise Jedi, can you finally dispose of the filth?
Not when we are in a thin struggle between life and death. Remember, focus your thoughts on living now, then freedom.
Yes, listen to your pathetic friend, the Jedi.
The Jedi ignored this remark which gave me time to contemplate on what I could do.
Anhor caronia bjor Eirik freid Thor kala qin.
What was that? A voice suddenly appeared into my head that sounded strangely like a Norwiegian dialect. The mind of the Jedi and I felt the yeerk's utter confusion at the sound of the husk and deep voice booming in my head.
The same voice boomed again, but this time it was in English.
Sworn by the sea of worms, and guided by Thor, this piece of horse dung shall be erased by the Boar.
Who are you!? The yeerk demanded impatiently.
I shall not answer.
Who are you, wise man from the north? The Jedi inquired.
I am known as Bear Skin. I only answer to those who are worthy.
Bear Skin? That phrase seemed somewhat familiar. I thought a while in my near lifeless state looking back on all these things I used to be interested in. That's it! Bear Skin was a name for a berserk warrior who went into battle with nothing but a bear skin to cover their bodies in the ancient Norse culture. But why was this man, or persona possibly like the Jedi, named Bear Skin? Perhaps it was because of his wild nature, or maybe something else and I was determined to find out what it was.
I never really got time to figure what it meant because all of a sudden, the black world that I resided in suddenly became the familiar silver and bronze combination that made up what seemed to be the lair of...
M2!
SO, YOU SEEM TO HAVE MET YOUR INNER PERSONA, HAVE YOU NOT?
"Excuse me, wait, that's Bear Skin, right?"
HAH! SO, YOU ARE NOT AS DUMB AS I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE. YOU LEARN QUICKLY, HUMAN. THE FIGURE KNOWN NOW TO YOU AS BEAR SKIN IS WHO YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE TIME OF REDEMPTION.
"Even if you think I'm smart, I do not know what you are talking about, M2."
ITS A LONG STORY, BUT IT BASICALLY GOES LIKE THIS. A SECT OF OUR RACE WAS FANATICAL ABOUT A SPORT CALLED THE ARENA WHERE TWO SENTINENT SPECIES DUKED IT OUT WITH NO WEAPONS, JUST THEIR NATURAL BODIES. AN ENVOY WAS SENT TO EARTH 1034 YEARS AGO WHEN THE SPORT BECAME OFFICIALLY LEGAL, AND CHOOSE 2 HUMANS TO JOIN.
"Let me guess here, one of them was Bear Skin and the other was probably some Jihad driven muslim zealeot."
EXACTLY! HUMANS DO LEARN FAST HOWEVER HOPELESSLY PRIMITIVE THEY ARE. THIS ENVOY SAVED THEIR PERSONA WHILE SENDING THE REAL HUMANS TO FIGHT. BEAR SKIN GETTING THERE BY WINNING MANY POINTS, HOWEVER, ON MANY OCCASIONS HE BARELY ESCAPED DEATH.
NOW, HERE IS WHERE YOU COME IN. AS WITH ALL PERSONA STORAGE, ONE DAY ONE OF THE SAME SPECIES WILL RECIEVE THAT PERSONA. SINCE YOU ALREADY CAN SWITCH TO ANOTHER PERSONALITY, YOU CAN BECOME THE BERSERK, BEAR SKIN.
"Interesting," I said without becoming overexcited.
THIS TIME IT IS DIFFERANT. THE ENVOY ALSO STORED HIS DNA AND HIS PERSONA IN THE SAME BIO-DATA STORAGE, SO INSTEAD OF JUST CHANGING PERSONALITY, YOU CHANGE PHYSICAL SHAPE AS WELL. YOU'VE ALWAYS HAD TRACES OF HIM IN YOU, BUT NOW YOU CAN BE HIM AS WELL.
"What, you mean like the Animorphs?"
NOT EXACTLY, BUT YES.
"Cool!"
WAIT, THERE IS MORE. SINCE YOU TECHNICALLY ARE STILL TRAPPED BY THE YEERK, YOU CAN'T BECOME BEAR SKIN YET. BUT, IN CASES AS EXITING AS THESE FOR YOU AND ME, I SHALL PROVIDE SOME ENTERTAINMENT FOR ME AND POSSIBLE FREEDOM FOR YOU BY THE ARENA.
"What, you are going to stick me into an arena and make me fight the yeerk?"
ESSENTIALLY, YES.
"Well, I'll cream him!"
NOT NECCESARILY. HE HAS TAKEN A HOST WHICH IS MOST DANGEROUS TO YOU, AND HAS A CHANCE OF WINNING.
"What, an Andalite?"
NO, BUT A SPECIES THAT YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH. THEY CALL THEMSELVES THE GORGONS, OR AT LEAST THAT IS THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
"The Gorgans," I repeated.
YES.
The Gorgans. Now that didn't seem that inviting or favorable to me. But since I did now have a Jedi and a war-crazed Norseguy on my side, things seemed a tad more optomistic. Now, if I was to combine the two into one I'd get a virtuous and honarable Jedi war-crazed, bloodthirsty Norse giant on shrooms with a lightsaber. I'm not kidding when I'm saying that the Bear Skins took shrooms and Hallucinogens before running into battle. The effects made them feel almost no pain, and therefore gave them enourmously enhanced strength. Their enimies feared them and once according to legend, a berserk killed 40 men with nothing but his-, wait, I'm ranting, arn't I? OK, I'll stop.
NOW, I SHALL TAKE YOU TO THE ARENA.
In a dazzeling flash, I was brought into a room consisting of blue, blue, blue, blue, blue and for a change of pace, blue. The Arena's ceiling was blue, the ground was blue, the obstacles were blue and the walls were blue. Heck, even I was tinted a light shade of blue. And the two people who were next to me were also blue. Wait, two people next to me? Who-
I turned to my right to see what looked like a boy my age and my height dressed in thick, brown robes carrying a metal stick. Wait a second, underneath the robe's hood the boy looked exactly like me, except with a touch of refinment. He looked so peaceful and virtuous, unlike me who also wanted to fight and go on the offensive.
"Hello," the Jedi said smiling at me. "Surprised, are you not?"
I gulped. "Yes, I am."
"Don't be. I am you and a living part of you. Why be scared when you can be happy and at peace?" These words comforted me, but not by much.
"Why are you here, outside of my body?" I asked inquisitivly.
"What a better time to show you the true nature of reality. You are caught inbetween life, death and insanity, so one must show you the path to life, and one must take you there."
"You are the one who will show me the way to life by defeating the yeerk, but who will guide my victory to it?"
A smile broadened across the Jedi's face. "Why, but of course! It is Bear Skin that you seek."
The Jedi gestured for me to turn around with the smile still on his face. I did so to come face to face with on of the largest men I had ever seen. He had legs like huge logs that stood as firm as trees and almost rooted to the ground. His body reminded me of a tank, only far more erect and stable, while his enourmously broad shoulders were longer than a baseball bat. The giant's huge head lay on top of his shoulders, half covered with black hair and a huge smile. Also, he carried a huge ax in his left hand that was almost 7 feet long. I'm now geussing that he was almost 8 feet tall and 400 pounds.
Despite the fearsome looks and the enourmous halberd that he carried, I felt very calm and at ease when I stood next to him. The huge head stared down at my puny body and he let out a very merry and happy laughter.
"Yes, I am the one who will take you to the path of life, as the Jedi says, but I also am a bigger part of you than he his. Essentially, I am you, and you are me, at least in spirit. To explain the entire story would be harder than destroying 50 suns with your fist, but I will tell you this. You have enough celtic and norse blood in you to be the successor to me. You have the dire need of the help of othrs in a war so desparate that alone have no chance of winning. But, with me and him," He said gesturing to the Jedi, "you will defeat the evil that lays from beyond and win the greatest honor of all among our people, protector of the human race."
I just stood there stunned at the giant's words. They were so powerful, yet so kind, caring and inviting. It was just impossible that I could be the one to rise above the yeerk menace and save Earth, much less the galaxy and trillions of other sentinent beings. He obviously saw my confusion and fear.
"Do not be afraid, for victory is at hand." He said kindly. I was comforted by that, slightly anyway, so I just relaxed and waited for whatever came next.
And now I'm glad that I was ready.
From out of nowhere, a beam of red light struck me square in the heart. The pain! The utter pain! I fell to the ground, writhing in what has got to have been the greatest amount of pain I had ever felt to that point. I was barely able to breath, and my heart nearly ceased to function. I thought, what the hell was that? All of a sudden, the pain was simply gone, and nowhere to be found, and then...
Another beam of light hit me right at my head, but this time it was a bright and pleasent green. A sudden wave of incredible euphoria and ecstacy hit me out of nowhere. The Joy! The sheer Joy! (BTW, I have no idea why I capitalized 'joy', but it seemed appropriate for the description.) I could rant on forever on how great it felt and how much I wanted it to continue on forever and ever, never ceasing to exist. Unfourtunatly, the Joy only lasted a few moment, and then the green light disappeared. And then...
ZZZZZZzzzzzziiiiinnnnnggggg! An echoing sound burst throught the stadium which I was currently standing. Then, an amazing thing happened. The Jedi and Bear Skin suddenly turned into what seemed like shadows, while slowly but surely intermingling with my own body. They pulsed back and forth throught my body, now tiny little figures, and soon stopped.
We are at your service, the Jedi said simply in my brain.
With that, a humming sound ensued and a huge creature appeared in the arena. It was about the size of a school bus, and was an awfully sickining colour of olive green. It basically was just a huge worm with no feet, except when you looked at the mouth.
The mouth looked like a huge and ready-to-destroy meat grinder. There were 3 rows of 1 foot long teeth on both the front and the top of his 5 foot diameter mouth. And at the center of the hideously large and disgusting mouth there was a hovering ball. A ball which spirt out some sort of acid whenever something or someone got close enough to touch any of the teeth. Not like anyone would want to.
NOW, THE FUN BEGINS. GOOD LUCK, HUMAN.
The huge creature came lumbering at me at a slow, but steady pace. I decided to "go viking" just then to see really how powerful Beark Skin was. Thinking back on all the things which I learned in the past, I concentrated on what the vikings stood for, what they did, the enourmous power that they used in battle, and, oh yes, the shrooms. All of a sudden, I felt a jolt go down my spine and vibrate throughout my entire body. And then, the unexpected happened.
I felt my physical structure begin to change. Yes, I began to change into the body of a 8 foot tall giant with one huge ax. My body began to rise upwards, gaining wieght and strength by the second. A beard began to sprout straight out of my face, and let me tell you, was it a really weird feeling looking at my own body changing before my very eyes. My arms began to bulge out into huge, piledriving machines, and my legs gained about 20 pounds of muscle as I was changing into the giant.
Before I could flex my muscles and get used to being inside the humoungous body, a feeling that I could not describe hit me hard. It was the feeling of being invincible and never to feel pain or suffering. There was no fear in me, I was a god, no one on the planet could stop my rage. Nothing could stop me! Nothing was in my path, nothing! (This is an obvious effect of the shrooms, mind you, that somehow got stored in the bio-data file containing Bear Skin.)
There was still a bit of rationality left in me because not all of me was a raging berserk that would run into battle with nothing to fight with but his hands. I concentrated on the ax, like I did with the lightsaber, and it came flying out of the sky straight into my huge hands. I felt power beyond believe, almost too much power to be dubbed sane. I charged.
At first, the Gorgan had no idea what to do. Or maybe it was the yeerk controling it. But none the less, I let out a huge yell and ran straight for it, with ax in hand. The yeerk hastily attacked with the Gorgan's mouth, but it missed it's mark because I was running too fast for it to aim correctly.
I threw my ax with all my might at the Gorgan's mouth, destroying the acid sack in the center of it. It let out a howl of anger, which gave me, or the Viking berserk, a chance to kill it once and for all. We jumped on top of it, prepared to literally punch it to death.
It wriggled helplessly with me on it's back, trying in vane to throw me to the ground. I started to punch it repeatedly in the head, while it writhed in shock from the constant blows I was giving it. I could feel that it was weakening, so it gave me more reason to hit harder and harder.
After about 10 minutes of constant blows from above, the Gorgan fell lifeless to the ground. Pleased with what I had done, I jumped off the Gorgan and laughed the same large, deep and meery laughter that Bear Skin laughed when I first saw him. "Hah! That was easy! Why was it so easy, may I ask M2?
A huge, menacing laughter filled the arena and shook the room violently. I shuddered in fear. WHO SAYS THAT IS WAS EASY? I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE A LOT MORE CAUTIOUS ABOUT YOUR ACTIONS AND MORE WATCHFUL, HUMAN. YOU SHOWED PROGRESS. IT WON'T MATTER IF YOU ARE LUCKY, BUT THIS BATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET MORE, HOW SHOULD I SAY IT, INTERESTING.
At one time about 2 days ago, I thought that M2 was really a cool character. But this was crossing the line. His unbelievably terrifying laughter almost made me want to scream out in fear, and the way he talked just sent chills up my enormous spine.
I can sense the fear, young one. Do not be afraid, for evil feeds off of fear, the Jedi said as I pried out the ax from the Gorgan's mouth ready to battle again.
Taking these words seriously, I took my ax and stepped back before the enourmous carcas of the dead Gorgan. "I am not afraid, yeerk. Send me your worst," I said, regretting the words I had said the instant they had come out of my mouth for two reasons. One is that I was afraid and two was that I really didn't want him to do his worst.
Soon after, I REALLY didn't have wanted him to do his worst.
A microsecond after I had spoken those words, the gorgan started to disentergrate into dust. Wait, no, that was way too big to be dust, they looked exactly like the Gorgan than had died, but thousends of times smaller. And there were millions of them! Millions of billions of acid-spitting grubs lay all around the arena, wriggling and squirming. But the harmless squirming didn't last more than 2 seconds, and before you knew it, there were billions of pencil-sized acid-spitting worms headed in my direction. Note the "Acid-spitting" part of that, when I say that, it doesn't mean spit out green water. It's pure, heart-stopping acid.
I could literally feel Bear Skin's rage go on full throttle. Insanity would be the only word good enough to describe it, but that wouldn't be quite enough. It would the epitome of insanity, the coup-de-insanity, the insane raging warrior's greatest dream. I literally lost control of my body and my actions just then, because the incredible urge to fight and kill these tiny worms, Bear Skin's persona sent me in a raging battle frenzy into fight them.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! Several worms let loose some of the acid when I was nearly upon them. But one of the horrifically powerful effects of the shrooms was the abscence of pain, at least for the time being. I could literally see my skin peeling off my body, but I could not feel it. It was not a pretty sight.
Strike at the tails, if you can, Joe. They loose their ability to regenerate if you do so and your victory will be quicker, the Jedi suggested.
Even though my body was currently out of my control, I did manage to relay the message over to Bear Skin, who started madly chopping at the ends of these worms as I went through the thousends of worms
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! More acid came straight for my eyes, but it was poorly aimed and accidentally hit one of his comrades. It literally went up in smoke, and some of the acid deflected off onto other worms which also disentergrated.
I knew that this was a battle that I could not win, not in the body of Bear Skin anyway. With incredible strength and determination, I slowly grasped control of my body to change to the Jedi's persona and become a bit more rational about the matter. Sure, being an 8 foot tall berserk helps against most enemies, but I'll use the Jedi anyday to whip these mutant worms into shape. Focusing in on the Jedi, I slowly began to change my body and my personality to a more familiar stage.
First came the physical changes. I suddenly began shrinking, slowly but surely down to my normal height. Jake later described it as falling, but never hitting the ground when morphing tiny insects and animals. I wasn't exactly doing that, but I shrank quite a bit down to my normal size which felt small after being Bear Skin.
My arms seemed to deflate as my normal characteristics began to appear. My legs became less and less log-like. My huge head shrank and my beard suddenly became non-existent. It's a wierd process when you morph, or change persona at any rate. I couldn't quite morph to the ability of the Animorphs yet, but I could come close.
Even in my seemingly frail body, Bear Skin's violent rage continued on however feeble I was. It reminded me of the time in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the killer rabbit attacked the knights; a mammoth rage and potential in a small body. Hey, I just noticed something! I make a lot of comparisons of things in my crazy life to Monty Python movies. Strange, very strange indeed. Yet another piece of evidence to go to the side proving that I have the queerest life on the planet.
Before Bear Skin could send me raging into the frenzy and to my grave, the Jedi started slowly becoming a part of me. The rage slowly became peace, the fealing of zealous warfare became zealous wisedom. Every part of my body seemed to be refreshed, and a blanket of black cloth suddenly spread over my body from nowhere. Assuming it was stored in the bio-data file thingy, I didn't pay much attention. The ax dessolved into nothingness, and replacing it was the familiar metal bar that had severl knobs on it.
Switching on the blade of blazing blue, I charged into the battle between life, death and sheer insanity with the rage of the Berserk and the precision of the Jedi.
Chapter 13- The Message
As told by Erek the Chee
Closing my eyes on my holographic projection and my link to stable stasis type 3, I ran through the latest Chee-net general briefings and conections on a speed named Supra-statis unstable type 9.5, nicknamed "Meltdown" by some of my fellow Chee. You probably could guess why. :-)
Because of the practically time-stopping speed that I had engaged, I spent my time pouring over various reports, complaints and messages that were spread across the system. Most of it was junk, but a few caught my eye, such as the report where one Chee named Ian had accidently accented his hologram at a human buissness meeting, giving the appearence that he was calmly walking in being burned to a crisp.
Thinking that there were no really important matters that were at hand, I started to shift back to stable statis type 3 when something rather obscure appeared on the net. Opening it, I found some very startling things that lay within the file.
One was that it was anonymous. That was impossible, because to send anything, you had to be an identified Chee, and there were none on Earth at the time. Or at least, I think there were no unidentified Chee on Earth at the time.
Two, it's content. It was so incredibly simple and plain, probably no more than 10 G3K0's, but what it said stunned me:
~|Erek|~
~|Please tell them I need their help|~
~|I'm fighting a battle of no survival!|~
~|Tell Jake I need him!|~
~|JSJBS|~
I ran a scan for any Chee who had a codename of "JSJBS" quickly to make sure that my programming hadn't become suddenly faulty. No, there was no trace of any possible Chee having any such name. Was it a trick of the creature that called himself the Ellimist? Something told me it had something to do with him, but I had no clue as to what.
My return to "normal speed" continued after the message had been saved. Hmmm, why would this figure "JSJBS" want to reach Jake? Perhaps it was simply a trick? Or was all this hard truth? I was determined to find out.
"Bye dad, I'm going to Cassie's barn!" I called to my 'father' that was downstairs in our human house. Really it was another Chee posing as my father, my true one would be one of the Pelamites.
"See you, Erek!"
I headed out the human door and started walking down the street. A couple of questions raced through my chrome, what was this about and why did he want to reach Jake? Was it a trick or reality? Nothing in our several million year history has ever stopped a Chee on a mission, and this time would not be an exception.
Chapter 14- Portal
As told by Marco
I woke up. I couldn't tell which way was up or down, neither could I feel any part of my body, but I was at least conscious. For the moment anyway.
"Ugggghhh," I moaned as I tried to get up.
Marco? I heard a voice in my head vibrate. It seemed like Tobias's.
I grunted in acknowledgment. Demorph back to human quickly! You still have massive fists, and have only two minutes to get back! Quickly!
What? Oh, ya', that's right. Right, a human. Humananity. I needed to get back to human. Ahhhhh. No, actually I was kinda happy. Oblivious. I smiled.
Marco!
Demorph to human. Now.
Demorph!
I slowly started to concentrate on my human form. From what I could gather in my rather subconscious state, I was mostly human with way to big fists. Must have been the reason why I crazed into the wall loosing balance in the battle against Joe.
Fourtunatly, the subconscious state I was sort of in didn't last long the instant I completly demorphed. I moaned, then saw what would haunt my dreams for the next 3.292747 days. Round that to forever.
Jake looked like he was torchered by an invisible force and thrown against the straw in a heap of flesh and bones. Rachel's face was covered in blood and her body was seemingly diliberatly perched on a cage with iron bars sticking out of the top. Cassie's body lay in a lifeless, or so I thought, heap next to a bale of hay. The controller Joe lay motionless with parts of his skin peeling of and showing bone at certain places, and other very gruesome things that I will not go into. And Tobias, well, he was sitting mornfully up in the rafters. It' s kinda hard to tell if a hawk is mournful, but this was the time.
"M-m-m-my G-god!" I stammered as I stared at their bodies laying helplessly around the barn.
Tobias burst out crying. I felt his pain. It looked like the Animorphs had been reduced by 3 great friends and fellow warriors, plus the freedom and life of our latest recruit.
"Tobias, I-"
No! We all failed, not just you! We knew that if he got into this war that it would fail. And it has.
"No it hasn't, yet," I said adding the "yet" to make it a bit more true.
Yes it has!!! We've lost Jake, Cassie and Rachel, and we might loose more! We need help!
As if his wish were someone else's command, Erek the Chee choose that time to come to the barn with some interesting and (of course) dangerous news.
"Erek!" I stammered.
"I have news for Jake, what happened?" He said using his hologram to express great concern.
More than you'll ever really want to know, Tobias said.
We told him alll about Joe and what happened on the fateful first mission that we set off on to test out his "powers" in an assasination attempt to kill Visser 12. It was a success, but the cost was Joe's freedom. Erek nodded from time to time, but didn't show that much emotion.
"And here is the result of a badly timed dumb blond joke with 3 gallons of vodka and a half dozen screaming N-Sync fans at a sold-out concert," I joked finishing up the summery. I know, it was poorly timed, but I always joke when times are tense.
"Hmmm," Erek replied. He nodded.
"So, know what?" I asked.
Well, I'll go get Ax, better tell him what has happened, Tobias sighed. He was obviously distraught by his tone of voice.
"Ya'," I agreed, "Hold on..."
"What?"
"I'm getting that feeling that I get every time when Rachel says 'let's do it!'. And it's not a good feeling."
Out of nowhere, a young girl around 9 years old appeared on the other side of the barn. She looked like a clone of Rachel, except the obvious fact that she was about 5 years younger and that she had a slightly darker skin.
"Hello," she said.
I guessed for no particular reason that this was the, "Ellimist!"
"Yes, I am. And I have grave news for you."
I thought to myself, like when is there anything else?
"My brother, though not technically my biological brother, M2, is playing a game with Joe."
I was about to make a sick comment, but then he continued, "What I mean by not biological brother is that he was an independant part of me that slowly became another being over a thousend years.
"About the fact that he is playing a game with Joe, M2 has only one thing on his agenda 24/7/365; to be entertained. He isn't neccesarily sadistic, but some of his games, like the arena, are borderline. Joe is now fighting a force that alone he is not likely to win. But if he does win by a miracle, he will be freed from the yeerk and your friends will be restored immediately. But if not..."
"...something really bad will happen," I finished off.
"Like what?" inquired Erek.
"Actually, things will resume to normal, except that Joe will awake instantly still being a controller within 500 feet of the nearest yeerk pool," The Ellimist warned.
Ouch.
"Something deep down tells me that we don't want that to happen," I sighed, "So, there must be another reason that you came here other than to tell us about Joe, right?"
All of a sudden, the young girl vanished and a head boomed from up above.
RIGHT, IT IS A BIT MORE HOPEFUL HOWEVER. M2 LIKES FAIR FIGHTS, AS DO I, SO WE HAVE AGREED TO CREATE A PORTAL TO THE ARENA FOR 2 PEOPLE TO HELP OUT JOE IN THE FIGHT. OTHERWISE, IT WILL MOST LIKELY BE A MASSACRE.
"And we DONT want that to happen. OK, Tobias and I will go save Joe's ass."
When did he turn into Jake? Tobias wondered.
"Shut up. Okay, Ellimist? Let's go."
AS YOU WISH!
With that, a huge, spinning circle appeared before us in the barn. It looked like something straight out of the movies, because you could see the other side and it seemed that all you had to do was just step through and go.
"Battle morphs, Tobias," I said while my physical structure began to change into that of a male silver back gorilla's. Despite the fact that I had morphed about 1,000 times before, it never ceases to amaze me how many differant ways you can change into animals.
This time it was beyond weird. Instead of semi-gradually becoming more gorilla-like, I grew about 9 feet tall into the air. I mean, I was super Marco! It was a bit weird, but then my body became more and more rubbery as the feature of the gorilla appeared. I fell down on all fours and assumed the appearence of a gorrila.
I looked to my left to see Tobias in an hork-bajir's body. Shall we fight? He asked with a sinister "smile" on his hork-bajir face.
Chapter 15- Berserkergang
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! More acid came flying my direction. I jumped deftly out of the way as the acid sizzled one of the worm's comrades.
AAAAASsssPUT! SssssZZZzzzz! My lightsaber absorbed one of the ridiculously powerful acid explosions from the mouth of the Gorgans', and cames swiping down to kill my assailent. He split into two, wriggling halves.
HMMM, JUST TO MAKE IT A BIT MORE INTERESTING, LETS ADD SOME MORE PEOPLE TO THIS FIGHT.
"What?! Why?" I demanded.
BECAUSE I SAID SO. ANYWAY, A GORRILA AND A HORK-BAJIR WILL BE ADDED AS WELL ON YOUR SIDE.
This was pissing me off. So what if I was getting two monster creatures for support, they'd be eaten alive by the acid! It would just be pain for me to see 2 of my friends die, I didn't need them. I could probably handle another wave of Gorgans, probably.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! Acid came hailing down on me as I barely dove down in time.
AAAAASsssPUT! NOOOOOOO!!!!! A blast of acid hit me in my right arm, so powerful and so unbelievably accurate. And the pain! Pain beyond words! My arm literaly started burning off, and revealed the white, blood stained bone of my arm. I howled with pain.
But, with the Jedi's soul came the years and years of his training in the moral code of the Jedi. Or, well, in some other universe parallel to ours, maybe, but not here. He believes that one should accept pain and not to fight it, but to fight to the death andd never, ever giving in. And that was what I intended to do.
With one arm out of commision, I only could use the other to control the lightsaber. But I didn't think it was a problem, because it seemed that the lightsaber was animated by itself. I began swingng quickly and precisly to destroy my enemy.
The cavalry is-, whoa! What the- I heard a familiar "voice" say. I saw two creatures rampaging in from an unseen portal; one was a gorilla and the other was a hork-bajir.
"What about the cavalry?" I asked, trying not to wince at the pain and at the sight of my half-severed arm.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!
AHHHHHHH! Marco yelled. The worms started to turn away from the familiar scent, and try out the new one. Acid starting flying straight toward the unsuspecting couple.
My arm! Tobias cried as acid started chewing through his bulky arm. No real blood showed, but you could kinda tell it was hurting like crazy.
"It's worse when you are human, I'm afraid," I sighed trying to put a smile on my face as I showed them my twisted arm. Trying would be a good word for it.
God! Tobias stammered, How, wha-
"Just kill them! Forget pain! Destroy what you fear, and the suffering will cease to exist!" I yelled, getting a littled anxious. I'm guessing that I sounded like a mixture between Qui-Gon Jin and a devout, Buddhist monk. Odd combination, no?
Yessir, Mr. Jedi sir! Marco said. Mockingly.
"Shut up!!!"
God, you don't have to get Xena on me, AAAHHHH! Marco mumbled as yet another "AAAAASsssPUT" hit him square in the chest.
I backed off from the main fight, just to prepare for the second wave. But there was something in M2's voice that told me that bigger was better, and something about gr-
Oh Shit.
All of a sudden, all the worms stopped spitting, chanting (yes, chanting), and swaying. Then, they started to "hook up" with each other and forming small balls. The balls started to turn rapidly and grow to three times the length of the original ball. The balls all changed , like someone playing around with silly putty, and slowly formed into a bigger version of the tiny worms. Much bigger. They were not the size of a small-medium sized dog, and they were not looking happy.
"Umm, I'd strongly advise you to be careful, because-"
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!
The air was filled with venomous acid within seconds. And do I mean filled! I put my Jedi reflexes to the test evading all the acid that came raining down. Left, right, jump, left, forward, back, NO! forward, right, left. Phew.
But I wasn't so sure if Marco and Tobias survived. It was physically improbable that they could have survived, but knowing them, odds mean nothing. Nothing.
"Marco! Tobias! Can you hear me?" I called out for them. Hopefully they could. "Listen, Tobias? Demorph. Marco? Demorph and go osprey. Your bodies as way to big to fight all the acid, so at least you can strike from the air which they have trouble aiming for. Hurry!"
Ugh, I heard a grunt of approval from both of them.
"Good, now go!"
I stood ready to face the next attack. It came as hard as ever raining down on me.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!
The venomn sprayed over like a flower basket bomb. Keeping my Jedi reflexes in mind, I started to evade. Right, left, right, back, forward, duck, jump. Phew.
You know that this cannot go on forever, Joe, Bear skin said with a laugh.
He is right, Joe. I can only evade. I cannot win, now.
"Let's go Viking!" I yelled to no one in particular. Oh, drat, Marco and Tobias were in the room.
What? I heard an anguished voice from somewhere.
"You'll see if you watch," I said, then started the all too familiar persona switch yet again. Legs to trees, arms to piledrivers, face to bush, lightsaber to ax. But, fourtunatly for me, the DNA transfer succesfully canceled out the injury, and I wa left with the largest arms that a man had possesed for over a millinia.
Then, the hallucinogenic feeling raged throughout my body and overcame my senses. POWER! POWER! POWER! There isn't a word in existence that could describe the sheer vigor and might that I then possesed. Bloodlust! The craving for the carnage of battle! Even through 1000 years, the ancestral power lay within the persona of the giant. I was ready.
What the-
"ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH" I screeched as I charged into battle with the battle ax raised above my head. No stopping me, not even the force of 20 men could stop my unrelented fury. All that passed in my way felt the pain. Which I could feel none.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! Acid came hailing down on me from all directions at once. But, there was no evading it this time, nor was there pain or fear involved. You could have dumped a gallon of the stuff on me and I wouldn't care. Actually, it would burn my head off, but I wouldn't feel it.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT! More acid came straight for me, but I felt nothing, except nasuea after seeing my sking peeling away.
Before, the worms were too small to fight for the berserk. But now I was going against something more powerful and larger. It satisfied my rage, my berserkergang. The nordic word for the rage. I like it, don't you? Whatever.
Whoosh! Blade hitting flesh all over the place! Dead bodies piled up, if you could call them bodies, but more were still coming strong.
AAAAASsssPUT! AAAAASsssPUT!Acid, who gave a darn? I couldn't even feel it, so why worry? The blade was damp with blood and the gored bellies of the Gorgans, but I kept on whacking it into the foe's body.
The worms were getting uneasy. They started to wiggle away, but where could they run to? I'm serious when I tell you what happened next. They disentergrated. Literally. Into dust. Dust that meant nothing. You could tell that it wasn't more of the monsters, only tinier, because they didn't spit acid.
Or move.
Victory was sweet, and I tasted it then. I let out a howl and cleaned my blade on my tunic that came in the bio-data file. I stared at the carnage, then depersonaswitched. I think that's a good name for it, anyway.
"And that, little boys and girls, is why you should never play with Joe. He just might kill you. In fact, he will kill you. AHHHHH!" I ranted after just standing there a second.
Then, I saw a guy and a hawk come before me. Odd, Marco looked a bit, well, how should be say this, serious?
"No, there is no way..." He didn't need to finish the sentence.
"Yes, because I just did it."
Joe? Might you consider a career in insanity? Tobias kidded. We let out a forced laugh.
"Man, you can morph as well?" Marco asked.
"Not really, I can't just acquire things like you people can."
WHO SAYS?
What the-, oh, M2 again.
"You mean I can now aquire people's personality?"
SOMETHING LIKE THAT, YES. YOU CAN NOW ACQUIRE PEOPLE'S PERSONALITIES AND STORE THEM IN THEIR RESPECTED BIO-DATA FILE.
"A what?" Marco asked.
A FILES USED FOR PERSONA STORGAE AND CHANGES. BASICALLY, YOU CONTACT THAT PERSON'S INNER SELF TELEPATHICALLY. CHOOSE WHICH CHARACTERISTICS YOU WANT, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL, THEN CLOSE THE TELPATHIC CONNECTION. WARNING FOR YOU, ONLY USE THIS TO CHANGE TO DIFFERANT PEOPLE FOR IMPORTANT MANNERS, LIKE FIGHTING THE WAR. OTHERWISE, BROTHER ELLIMIST MIGHT HAVE A FURY...
"OK, well, we all know that the Ellimist is one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, so, let's play who wants to piss off the Ellimist?" Marco joked.
Shut up, Bird boy Tobias said.
YOU WILL ALSO BE ABLE TO CONTACT BACK IN A TIME WARP TO AQUIRE DEAD PEOPLE'S PERSONA. YOU MUST BE AT THE SITE OF THEIR REMAINS, HOWEVER, THE AQUIRE THEIR DNA AND CLOTHES.
"Wait, something just occured to me, won't all of these guys be in my head with Bear Skin and the Jedi? 2 other people inside my head is enough for me, but like 8? No way."
THATS AN INTERESTING QUESTION YOU POSE. THE ANSWER IS IN YOUR FAVOR, THE JEDI AND THE BERSERK ARE SEMI-INDEPENDENT BEINGS WHO COULD SURVIVE ALONE WITH A DIFFERENT HOST BODY. THE NEW PERSONA FILES WILL JUST BE GENETICAL AND MENTAL INFORMATION.
"Kwel! Well, it's been swell, M2, thanks for the powers! Now, can we go back?"
HAH! WHOEVER SAID THAT? YOU HAVN'T QUITE MET THE CHALLENGE, YET...
Vortex of Fire
Tunnel of Death
The Eternal Plague
Maelstrom
Broken mirrors
A twisted thought
The end of all ends
And a war not yet fought
Dieties and disciples
The Almighty
The Holy Messiah
I have one question to ask
Why me? Why me? WHY ME?
Stuck in the many forms
Of these shattered realities