Prologue

Something had changed.

The highest branches of the trees over my head undulated, provoked by some massive quantity of energy. A searing mirage disturbed the image of the full moon. Moments later, a rush of heat followed a rumble of impact. My stalk eyes registered a subtle change in lighting about half a mile away. A bluish, unearthly explosion. Tremors rippled from the northeast. Instinct turned me in that direction.

Combat instructors stress deep concentration on the natural world. Note the taste of air, they say, the soft, transient hum that radiates from the living, the incessant microcosmic changes caused by infinite influences. That rush of heat had changed the world. I hadn't felt that rush of heat since my brother had come home to visit for the first time. It was heat that did not dissipate or spread, heat that stabbed and penetrated. Heat you could feel in your gut. In your brain. In your hearts.

It was an Andalite vessel.

I started running. My hooves pounded into the damp, living Earth and I tore across the forest. Heat enveloped my body, and sweat poured from my glands to counteract it. I ran as fast as I could, and soon there was a bright light, a hissing noise, and the smell of industrial fire.

A tunnel of flame had been cut through the trees, a thick half-pipe of smoke and fire descending through the forest at a shallow angle to the ground. A long, tilled mess of tree trunks, earth, branches, and smoke led a path straight to the ovoid, stunningly bright ship, obvious against the inky night. Its cloak must have been disabled upon impact. A curved shredder emerged from the back, torn and hanging by a single sheath of hull. Volatile, blue ammunition fuel oozed out, like from a wound. It was fatter than most fighters I had seen, unfamiliar and scorched but still mine.

I approached quickly over the lumpy, jagged earth, bounding gracelessly over shredded trees and smoldering branches. I touched the ship's white surface—cool despite the atmospheric entry—and ran my hand along the smooth hull until a thin, bright door line appeared. My hand sunk into the surface, an engineered alloy which felt soft like polyurethane foam. The ship scanned me, verifying my species identity. The plane of the door began to sink into the ship, receding into the bright outline in microscopic layers as thin as liquid. A moment before I could enter, the door appeared as a tissue-thin, translucent membrane within which steam and sparks churned.

I peered inside the ship, but scorching exhaust blinded me and forced me to shield my eyes. I pressed my hoof into the inclined ground, tasting Andalite grass for the first time in months. It was singed, and too warm to taste right, but it was soft and moist. The perpetual indigestion I had earned from fibrous Earth grass melted away, and for just a moment, I was home.

Lost in nostalgia, I almost forgot where I was and what I was doing, but then I heard something. A warm, living picture emerged in my mind. (Die...) It said. The picture was fuzzy at first, but sharpened as I focused, like I was turning some psychic knob on an invisible television set. It was the homeworld. A faceless man stood, holding a young girl's hand at sunset, while they watched someone burn in a pagan Andalite funeral. It was an antiquated ritual that was supposed to clear away all the poisonous emotions, but it never worked, and sadness still permeated the air, as thick as the steam. It submerged me, strangled me, and the grass tasted bland.

I climbed in further. The steam began to clear, and I started to piece together the layout of the ship. It was tipped at a frightening angle, a pool of blood collecting at the base of the door. I closed my hooves and proceeded, approaching its origin, trying to avoid it, but it was everywhere. I brushed my hand in front of my face, impatient with the atmosphere, and then I saw him.

A man. A grown warrior, thrown hooves over eyes, arm lodged behind his head, flank hanging over his broken body, crippled at the waist. His tail had snapped off, like the shredder of the ship, twitching with overloaded neurons, the source of most of the blood. He was smiling.

He was like light interrupted by a prism, bent and shattered. It was clear, even though his eyes were open, that he was dead.

I walked over to his body to investigate, to see if I could ascertain his time of death. It must have been recent, which meant perhaps he died upon impact—not before, suffocated by space or undone by weapon. Though the ship was designed for a single occupant, I could not abandon the hope that—

Then I saw it. Out of the corner of a stalk eye, a glimpse of something alive.

A hand.

I ducked beneath the billowing steam, realizing only now that it had cloaked a doorway to a second room. I hurried over, gripped the door frame, and peered behind the corner.

There was a girl.

She wasn't dead.

Her clumped fur was dark and shiny with blood, and she heaved in tainted air with broken lungs, splayed on the ground, edges of shattered bones ripping up through her flesh. But she wasn't dead. Her eyes were open, and they turned to me.

We made eye contact, but it didn't last long. She looked away, up at the holographic ceiling, still blanketed by smoke. I stepped closer to her, realizing that the closer I got, the stronger the images in my mind became. Now that she had noticed me, they were changing.

She was drinking water, and caught her reflection in the small pool. This was a memory from long ago; she was no more than a child. She inspected the face that shivered on the meniscus, and stroked the curves of flesh and bone that comprised her visage. She hadn't seen herself in a while, hadn't noticed that her face had lost its childish softness, hadn't noticed the sharp, frightening power that flashed behind her eyes. She ran her finger along the length of her jaw. Something made her smile. Suddenly, a large, masculine hand descended from behind her and grasped her shoulder. She turned a stalk eye to view his face. He was tall and powerful, and his dark eyes were displeased. She shrank beneath him.

The image faded, and I knelt over her body, overcome enough by our connection to ignore custom and touch her, investigate the curves that she had in her memory. Her face was sheathed in sweat and blood, and her body was mangled, but beneath all of that physical horror, a faint beauty shone through. I looked into her desperate, roving eyes. Her breath was ragged and panicking, sending sparks of blood from her nostrils, but then she acknowledged me, and she calmed down.

Her eyes focused on mine without roving or flinching. They fastened, and she held my gaze firmly in hers, without shame. I fell right through it, into her pain and terror and confusion, into her mind. I saw past the irises, past the pupils, past all of the sparkling flesh. Something significant and frightening happened. I lost myself in her, in that labyrinthine web of chaotic thought, and I was her again, looking into the face of an old man with a stern, scarred face. I wanted him to love me, but he was too angry with what I had done.

She was supposed to call him Sir, but as she reached toward me, eyes honest and terrified, I heard the gentle, trembling voice say, (Father...)

Then they slipped, rolling away, and she lost consciousness.

I wrapped my arms around her, hoisted her onto my back, and pulled her as carefully as I could from the wreckage. I realized I could not help her with the limited tools I had back at the scoop, so I grabbed a few things from the ship before disembarking. I found a thermal blanket, a Z-Space communicator, and most importantly, a first-aid kit with medical technology thousands of years more advanced than the primitive tools of Earth. As soon as we were far enough away, I grabbed the Shredder out of the girl's utility belt, set the dial to maximum, and destroyed the ship.

The blast was more contained than I predicted, which was an unexpected serendipity. I decided to risk exposing the crash site immediately rather than allowing the Yeerks to stumble upon it during some random sweep of the forest. I did my best to cover my trail as I carried her, but I realized that with this new information, the Yeerks would probably find my home within the week.

But I would worry about that later.

For now I had to save the girl.

A/N:

Here we go.

I don't like author's notes, and I only plan on making one (but plans were made to be foiled), so I want to say everything that I think needs to be said. If I think of anything I want to add, I'll add it here with an ETA date.

First of all, this is going to be a long haul. This is a very long story that's going to take some serious time to post. However, if you decide to invest the time and energy into reading it, I'm not going to leave you hanging three-quarters of the way through. I'm going to finish this. That is a promise. I'm not giving up on it. That's happened enough times with it already, and I've decided since then that I hate leaving projects unfinished.

Second of all, I guess, a little history: the premise of this story comes from when I was but a wee proto-nerd, about ten years ago, and made up characters online with a bunch of other proto-nerd friends, including an author on this very site, Terenia. Incidentally, this fic is dedicated to her, since she gave me the kick in the pants to write it. If you've read her fic, Playing War: The Traitor, you will notice some similarities. If you haven't read it, you should. There isn't any real continuity between the two—we both took our characters and created our own back-stories, but they are definitely related. I don't want to confuse anyone, so don't expect that this will answer completely to her fic, or that hers will answer to mine. They're both independent stories.

I plan on updating about once a week. Of course, real life has a nasty tendency to interfere with our favorite hobbies, so I'm not promising anything as far as time frame. To reiterate, however, I do promise to finish it. It may take upwards of a year, or maybe more, but I will post the whole thing in its entirety before I move on to whatever is next.

I think that's it. If you have any questions, shoot me a PM. As always, I love reviews, even if you just want to insult me. I'm a sucker for any kind of feedback, but I think everyone would agree that well thought-out concrit gets the most bang for its buck. But don't feel obligated or anything. At the very least, I hope you enjoy!

ETA 11/8/10: lol wow. I tried to take care of some dividers that ffnet deleted a few months ago, partly because they make later chapters clearer and partly just to see if I could, and I mistakenly added one of the edited chapters as an additional chapter, sending out an e-mail to everyone on alert and bumping this back up to the top of the archive. As trollishly good a way that is to get additional readers/interest, I DID NOT MEAN TO DO IT and I'm sorry if I got your hopes up for nothing.

I guess I should take this as an opportunity to update you all on what's going on with this-I haven't started writing the sequel yet. I'm kind of being eaten alive by the last chapter of Earth Diary right now, and once I finish that I want to focus a little more on screenwriting, so I'm not sure when/if it's going to happen. I have been putting some thought into how the plot would work, though, so there's a better-than-not chance I'll just need to fumigate the plot bunnies and write the damn thing at some point in the future.

If this is your first time clicking this link, I do hope you enjoy it, and for everyone else...I feel like an idiot. Mea culpa.