** In this story the Animorphs are in their early 20s (21-23) only recruited 2 years prior. Ax has already joined them, and Tobias was never caught in a morph. It's been a long while since I've read the books, so a lot of it will be AU as I make things more how I would want them to go. Please review!**
MONDAY
Rachel sat on the bench with her eyes closed outside the university waiting for Cassie to get out class, enjoying the sun. She didn't notice as Marco and Jake snuck up on her.
"Hey pretty lady..." Marco whispered in a faux deep voice. She jumped and swung at him, Jake grabbed her arm to prevent Marco from getting a bloody nose. "Geez Rachel, violent much?" He asked her, backing away quickly.
"I was just defending myself from a potential attacker..." She said innocently, brushing her hair back behind her shoulders.
Tobias and Cassie walked up to the group. "Hey what's going on?" Tobias asked.
"Your girlfriend is trying to assault me again!" Marco said loudly.
Tobias gave Rachel a disappointed look. "Rachel, what did we agree on about assaulting Marco?"
Rachel sighed, "only when you're around to laugh about it." She recited.
"You guys need to respect me, one day you'll be real sorry you beat old Marco around." Marco said, in mock martyrdom.
"Is this the correct time for us to go consume nourishment?" Ax said approaching the group. "Nourish-ment. Nouu-rish." He tested his human mouth, always amused at the sounds it produced.
"Ax we're in public!" Jake said with a grin. The alien looked sheepishly at him.
"I'm sorry Prin... Jake." Ax said, remembering how much Jake disliked being called prince.
"It's alright Ax man, and yes it's lunch time." Jake said. The group didn't notice the small auburn haired girl watching them carefully. She picked up a class schedule, focusing on it intently, and walked towards the quad, bumping into Marco.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" the girl said, widening her blue eyes as she threw her hand up to her mouth.
"I'm fine, I should really look where I'm standing..." Marco said, trying to check the girl out without her noticing.
"You look lost..." Rachel said to the girl suspiciously. Rachel never took well to strangers.
"I kind of am, I just transferred here, and this campus is so much bigger than my last university. Do you have any idea where the Chem lab is?"
"It's just past this building, take a right at the next intersection and you'll see it on the left." Jake explained. "Are you a chemistry major?"
"Oh, no I'm an archeology major, but for some God awful reason I guess I need another science to graduate, something about being well rounded." She said with a lazy flip of her hand.
"Well, I'm Jake, this is Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias and Ax." Jake said pointing to each one in turn.
She smiled and waved, "I'm Lindsay."
Tobias noticed a flyer for 'The Sharing' sticking out of her notebook. "Are you looking into joining?" He asked, pointing at it.
"Oh, no... some guy handed it to me. They had a chapter on my old campus too. I'm not into the whole sorority/fraternity thing, and that's what it seemed to be." she said with a glance at her watch. "Oh dang, I'm late, thank you for the help!" Lindsay said with a wave as she walked away.
"Well, I'll be the pig. She was a babe." Marco said. Rachel snorted and punched Marco in the arm. "I'm just speaking the truth!"
"She might be the only girl on campus shorter than you, maybe you should go after her." Cassie said with a smile. The group talked happily as they headed to lunch.
Lindsay sat in the chemistry class unable to focus. They were the ones she was looking for. She could just feel it. But they were so... carefree, so happy. Their minds were clearly not on the mission. She would have to do more recon before revealing herself to them. She looked at the paper she had been doodling on. It was the flyer for The Sharing. She laughed to herself. The last time she went to a meeting of The Sharing was the last time she had seen her team alive.
WEDNESDAY
Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Ax, and Tobias sat in Cassie's Mother's barn discussing the next meeting of The Sharing. Even though the Animorphs lived in a small apartment complex close to the university, they enjoyed meeting in the barn, they often found animals to acquire for recon missions, and it was a comforting place for them.
"I think it's too dangerous to go on an all out assault. IF we go, it's recon only, and even then we have no idea what kind of technology they've developed recently, they could find us." Jake said.
"We need to send them a message, they think that we're scared, that we're hiding. Every day they're getting more and more controllers. It's disgusting." Rachel said with disdain.
"I'll be the first one to vote for 'continue hiding'" Marco said.
"Shut up Marco." Rachel and Jake said, going back to their argument.
"Guys, we need to figure something out, the meeting is tomorrow. If we can't come to an agreement, then we won't do shit." Tobias said, tired of hearing them.
"Did I mention I like the hiding option?" Marco said again.
"We could use the fly morph to do recon, get in get out." Cassie suggested.
"I hate the fly, I can't control it well enough, and I'm always trying to land in garbage or shit." Rachel whined. "Now my grizzly could take out some Yeerks..."
"Right Xena, and the human controllers holding those Yeerks too right?" Marco said sarcastically. The group continued arguing over each other, when Ax, in Andalite form, looked up at the rafters with his stalk eyes. **Oh my... hello.**
The group turned their gazes upward to follow Ax's. Up on a high rafter, sat Lindsay wearing a skin tight leotard and bike shorts. She smiled slightly at them. "Well aren't you all one big happy family?"
"...the fuck?" Marco said, jumping up, looking at the others. They were all wearing the same confused expressions.
"Hold on, I'll be right there." Lindsay said, she focused her concentration, and morphed into a small sparrow. She flew down to the ground and morphed back to herself. She looked at the silent group. "Tada?" she said, giving a half hearted set of jazz hands.
"... the fuck?" Marco repeated, looking at Jake.
"Oh come on, you guys aren't the only ones that touched that god forsaken box." Lindsay said, slightly frustrated at their lack of comprehension.
"There's more of us?" Jake asked.
"Well, not anymore..." Lindsay said, her bright eyes darkening.
"I think you owe us a little more of an explanation than that." Rachel said, fuming that the girl had gotten in. Clearly their security was seriously lacking.
"Well boys and girls one day there were 5 ordinary people walking back from a particularly brutal game of softball. They were barely more than teenagers really, probably the same age as you when you got your powers. They saw a flash of light in an empty parking lot, and then a giant spaceship, an honest to God, close encounters of the third kind spaceship. Being curious, they wandered over to it, and they see a... well a you."
She said motioning to Ax, "named Prince Elfangor walk out holding an innocent looking box. He tells them that he's recruiting two teams to help stop an alien invasion, at which point the group is wondering if they smoked something and forgot about it, because they're really tripping out. Prince Elfangor then drops another load of knowledge on them, telling them that they'll be given the abilities to morph into animals so they can battle this intergalactic evil. And the cherry on this fucked up sundae was when he told the group that the smallest, youngest, LEAST interested member of their little ragtag team was going to be their leader, and lead them proudly into victory. Spoiler alert, that would be me." Lindsay said, pointing at herself.
"For some reason I still haven't quite figured out, we all agreed to help this space man and took the powers. Things went wonderfully for a while, we were kicking ass, taking names, we even took out a low ranking Vissor. The best part was the Yeerks thought that it was Andalites causing all this trouble for them. They didn't even suspect that there were two teams, they thought the 'bandits' were just traveling around the country to screw with them. Then, one fateful day, the team decided to do a little recon and a meeting for 'the sharing'. You know, the special VIP underground party, with complimentary hot tub access. Well during this recon, the fearless leader saw her boyfriend, the nad she was certain she was going to marry, down waiting in line for his Yeerk drop. Now that stung, but then once the Yeerk dropped, he laughed, smiled, joked, and was generally just loving life. The scum voluntarily took a Yeerk. Well, fearless leader saw red, and the recon mission turned into an attack, which turned into a massacre. Everyone on the team was injured or killed and our two hour limit was close. I knew we couldn't morph out and into something quick enough to fly away before they got us, so we tried to provoke them to go for a kill shot. Unfortunately they were smarter than that, realizing capturing us would be much more useful. Somehow the three of us that were left managed to get out after tearing through a couple Hork-Bajir, and out of the area, I managed to morph out, but the other two... there was just so much blood... they couldn't concentrate, they couldn't get out, and they ended up dying as a fucking lion and a panther. There weren't even any bodies for their families to mourn..."
Lindsay trailed off staring past the others as she recalled her last night with her team. "Anyway, after a couple months of feeling like a complete piece of shit, and wallowing in self pity, I decided to do something useful, and see if I could help you guys out." She looked to them for a response.
They all felt as if she was telling them their stories, instead of hers. Only her's had the ending they all dreaded. "Give us a minute..." Jake said, pulling the group away.
"Ok seriously? What the fuck?" Marco said again.
**I believe you've asked that... twice** Ax said.
"Well no one's answering me!" Marco protested.
"Prince Elfangor never told us about this other team..." Rachel said.
"He was pretty preoccupied at the time." Tobias said.
"If she's an Animorph, we can't turn her away. She's one of us." Cassie said.
**I agree we could use the assistance.** Ax provided his own opinion.
"Someone has to watch her for the next three days, just in case." Jake said.
"Oh I volunteer!" Marco said eagerly.
"We'll take shifts, perv." Rachel said rolling her eyes. The group walked back over to Lindsay who was looking at a raccoon in a cage. She turned and looked at them hopefully.
"Welcome to the Animorphs." Jake said, holding out his hand smiling. Lindsay shook it, and smiled hesitantly. "Not to be a downer, but we're going to have to watch you the next three days to make sure nothing slimy comes out of your head."
"Eh I understand." She said with a shrug. She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Animorphs?"
"What did you call yourselves?" Jake asked.
"Nothing really... family I guess." She said poignantly.
*Let me know what you think so far, I love reviews!*