Author's Note - I didn't try and fix KAA's ending. I ignored it. Now you
know!
Another Author's Note - This story, although it's still in development, takes a backseat to my primary project, "The Heretic." So, all you "Family" enthusiasts, go and review "Heretic" and this will be moved up to the top of my list sooner!
Disclaimer - The Animorphs were originally conceived by KA Applegate for her series "Animorphs" and should not be interpreted as belonging to me in any way shape or form. Now sit back, adjust your seat, dim the lights and enjoy the show.
======== The Family ========
Chapter One:
"Freedom!" Mom called.
Yo. I lifted my head off my paws lazily, bringing my ears forward.
"Have you seen Marco?"
The famous one or the super-famous one?
"Your brother," she sighed.
I stretched, and stood. Licking my chops, I followed the scent of brown paper and groceries to the kitchen. Oh, the famous one. Nope, not since breakfast. What did he do?
She peered at me over a supermarket bag. "Nothing. I bought him something, that's all."
I circled the island in the middle of our huge kitchen, looking up at her as she lifted eggs from the bag. A muzzle, I hope.
"Freedom," she chided.
Actually, never mind. A muzzle can't stop thoughtspeech. But the boy howls.
"Just because he's more in touch with the inner wolf than you are . . . " she began, a twinkle in her eye. It was an old joke of ours.
Yeah, well, my outer wolf wants a scratch on the left shoulder.
Obligingly, she dug her fingers into my fur and began itching.
Oh, sorry. Do I need to back up?
My name is Freedom. Yeah, that's right. You guessed it. My dad is Jake. *The* Jake. Jake, leader of the Animorphs, hero of Earth. Jake, voted into the presidency without even running. Jake, who refused the title, or anything to do with national leadership. Jake, with about nine hundred high schools and art galleries and monuments named after him and his friends.
For all that, he still moves a pretty fast driftball.
Obviously, my mom - the, short, cute woman who was scratching my back - is Cassie. The one who's pretty much single-handedly saving the bald eagle, humpback whale, the Bengal tiger, the gorilla, and the wolf. Cassie, who is the best and brightest spokesperson for all of the Animorphs. I don't know how she did during the war, but she sure shone in the aftermath. My mom is Cassie, who's heading up the expedition to revive the dodo while running an insane household.
That's enough to go on for now. If you've been living under a rock somewhere and don't know everything about my family, you'll pick it up as I go.
Tom wandered in, glanced at Mom and me, grunted, and began rooting through the groceries.
"Hello to you too," Mom said, abandoning my spine to its own devices. She straightened.
"Did you buy me any army men?" Tom asked, scrambling up onto the counter. Tom is my youngest brother, and he has almost as much of an attitude as I do. He's a little more bent on destruction, though. "I still need more bazooka guys!"
"You've got plenty of bazooka guys," Mom said, pulling him off the counter. "You have a zillion army men, you don't need any more."
"But I want to make a big battle! Like when the Andalites came to Earth when you were a soldier!" He lifted a banana and used it to fire at imaginary enemies. "Take that, crummy Yeerks! Badabadabadabadaba-ba-BAM!"
I saw Mom's eyes grow old, the way they do whenever the war is mentioned. I put my ears back in a frown. Hey, Tom, I barked, interrupting his fantasy.
He blinked, and focused on me. "Yeah?"
There's something you've got to see in the East Attic.
"What?"
Something cool, I said. In private thoughtspeech, I whispered, A sparrow died up there.
"Wow!" he said, and began running to the far corner of the house. One of the perks of being the son of a war hero is a ridiculously huge house. It would be a full twenty minutes before he came back and accused me of lying.
"Did you tell him about the sparrow?" Mom asked.
I looked at her, surprised. You knew about that?
"I know about everything that goes on in this house. You didn't kill it, did you?"
Of course not.
"But you did clean it up."
Of course.
Rachel loped in. She's the second of the litter. She, Marco and I were all born at the same time. The doctors are still speculating as to whether we were originally triplets or whether the cell morphed to wolf and then split.
Oh, and for those who haven't heard, children of morph-capable people are morph-capable themselves. And the womb is like a constant state of morph. In theory, Marco, Rachel, and I started human, but morphed to wolf at some point in the pregnancy. We liked it there and stayed. When we were born, the fact that we were wolves and still in a state of morph meant that our wolf bodies were our natural bodies. Interesting, huh?
Rachel is smaller than me, and darker. She's also got all the energy of a sloth with sleeping sickness. Why was Tom running towards the East corner? she yawned.
To see a dead sparrow that I cleaned up.
Ah.
"Rachel, have you seen Marco?"
She nodded. All three of we wolves nodded, shrugged, and affected all sorts of human gestures. Sure. He's out chasing his tail on the Southwest Lawn.
Our own little genius, I sniggered.
"Can you call him for me? I got him something."
Sure. MARCO! her thoughtspeech reverberated painfully in our heads. MOM WANTS YOU TO COME TO THE UPSTAIRS KITCHEN!
"*Private* thoughtspeech!" Mom winced.
Oh. Sorry.
On the edge of our minds, I heard Marco's faint thoughtspeech. Did you say the upstairs kitchen?
I assumed Rachel responded in private thoughtspeech.
Shortly thereafter, I heard the pounding and scrabbling of Marco racing through the halls. Time! he cried.
Two minutes, forty-one seconds, Rachel reported. She has the best internal clock of all of us, and made a habit of timing everything and everyone. Not bad, coming from the Southwest Lawn.
Better than you could do, he puffed.
What did you break coming in? I asked.
Nothing, he said.
"Nothing?" Mom raised her eyes skeptically.
Nothing important, he amended. That ugly pink vase from Japan.
Oh, that's all right, Rachel said. It wasn't a present from anybody.
"Freedom, would you mind cleaning that up?"
I'm not sure why, but cleaning up messes has always been my job. It's just the way our family runs.
Sure. I wandered out, down the hallway. Behind me, I could hear Marco's enthusiastic cheers as Mom gave him whatever it was she had gotten him. I had a good idea what it was. Marco and Mom share a love for these cutesy little ceramic mice, and always buy them for each other at every opportunity.
I pawed open a door, and tugged one of my vacuum cleaners out of it. Our whole house was made wolf-friendly a few weeks after we were born. When I was ten, there had been a national contest for middle-schoolers for conveniences designed for wolves. As a result, I think we, the litter, were the most spoiled people in the house.
Hey, fame definitely has its perks.
I scooted the machine down the hall, to where shattered pottery littered the floor. Some of the pieces were too big to be vacuumed.
I had collected a good number of the bigger pieces when my thoughts were interrupted by Tobax.
"Freedom, when I morph cat, which do you like better? When I grow the fur first, then start the body changes, or if I just let my head go cat, and then the rest from the top down?"
I looked up. My very blond, very blue-eyed, slightly loopy sister was eyeing me earnestly. As usual, she was obsessing about the finer points of a morph.
Tobax is the spitting image of my Aunt Rachel. She's also an absolute, total genius when it comes to morphing. She can transform into a tick, and make the change something people would pay to see. I've even seen her go directly from one morph to another, when she was really well rested and concentrating incredibly hard. She's overstayed the two-hour morph limit before, then morphed back.
Every college on Earth would pay to have one of us attend. But Tobax had received invitations from the Andalite Morphing Academies. She's actually that good.
Carefully, I dropped the shattered pottery into a trash bin. I don't know. Which do you like better?
"They both have their strengths," she sighed. "I can't decide!"
Have you considered letting your ears change first, then having the fur spread down from there?
She paused, considering. "Hey, that'd be good!" she chirped. "I'll have to try that! Thanks!" She darted off, presumably to practice the morph.
I grunted, and finished separating out the large shards out from the pile. I pawed the switch, and sucked the rest of the vase up. Eyeing my handiwork critically, I wagged my tail and nudged the vacuum back into the closet.
Tom rounded the corner and glared at me. "There wasn't *either* a dead sparrow up there!"
Another Author's Note - This story, although it's still in development, takes a backseat to my primary project, "The Heretic." So, all you "Family" enthusiasts, go and review "Heretic" and this will be moved up to the top of my list sooner!
Disclaimer - The Animorphs were originally conceived by KA Applegate for her series "Animorphs" and should not be interpreted as belonging to me in any way shape or form. Now sit back, adjust your seat, dim the lights and enjoy the show.
======== The Family ========
Chapter One:
"Freedom!" Mom called.
Yo. I lifted my head off my paws lazily, bringing my ears forward.
"Have you seen Marco?"
The famous one or the super-famous one?
"Your brother," she sighed.
I stretched, and stood. Licking my chops, I followed the scent of brown paper and groceries to the kitchen. Oh, the famous one. Nope, not since breakfast. What did he do?
She peered at me over a supermarket bag. "Nothing. I bought him something, that's all."
I circled the island in the middle of our huge kitchen, looking up at her as she lifted eggs from the bag. A muzzle, I hope.
"Freedom," she chided.
Actually, never mind. A muzzle can't stop thoughtspeech. But the boy howls.
"Just because he's more in touch with the inner wolf than you are . . . " she began, a twinkle in her eye. It was an old joke of ours.
Yeah, well, my outer wolf wants a scratch on the left shoulder.
Obligingly, she dug her fingers into my fur and began itching.
Oh, sorry. Do I need to back up?
My name is Freedom. Yeah, that's right. You guessed it. My dad is Jake. *The* Jake. Jake, leader of the Animorphs, hero of Earth. Jake, voted into the presidency without even running. Jake, who refused the title, or anything to do with national leadership. Jake, with about nine hundred high schools and art galleries and monuments named after him and his friends.
For all that, he still moves a pretty fast driftball.
Obviously, my mom - the, short, cute woman who was scratching my back - is Cassie. The one who's pretty much single-handedly saving the bald eagle, humpback whale, the Bengal tiger, the gorilla, and the wolf. Cassie, who is the best and brightest spokesperson for all of the Animorphs. I don't know how she did during the war, but she sure shone in the aftermath. My mom is Cassie, who's heading up the expedition to revive the dodo while running an insane household.
That's enough to go on for now. If you've been living under a rock somewhere and don't know everything about my family, you'll pick it up as I go.
Tom wandered in, glanced at Mom and me, grunted, and began rooting through the groceries.
"Hello to you too," Mom said, abandoning my spine to its own devices. She straightened.
"Did you buy me any army men?" Tom asked, scrambling up onto the counter. Tom is my youngest brother, and he has almost as much of an attitude as I do. He's a little more bent on destruction, though. "I still need more bazooka guys!"
"You've got plenty of bazooka guys," Mom said, pulling him off the counter. "You have a zillion army men, you don't need any more."
"But I want to make a big battle! Like when the Andalites came to Earth when you were a soldier!" He lifted a banana and used it to fire at imaginary enemies. "Take that, crummy Yeerks! Badabadabadabadaba-ba-BAM!"
I saw Mom's eyes grow old, the way they do whenever the war is mentioned. I put my ears back in a frown. Hey, Tom, I barked, interrupting his fantasy.
He blinked, and focused on me. "Yeah?"
There's something you've got to see in the East Attic.
"What?"
Something cool, I said. In private thoughtspeech, I whispered, A sparrow died up there.
"Wow!" he said, and began running to the far corner of the house. One of the perks of being the son of a war hero is a ridiculously huge house. It would be a full twenty minutes before he came back and accused me of lying.
"Did you tell him about the sparrow?" Mom asked.
I looked at her, surprised. You knew about that?
"I know about everything that goes on in this house. You didn't kill it, did you?"
Of course not.
"But you did clean it up."
Of course.
Rachel loped in. She's the second of the litter. She, Marco and I were all born at the same time. The doctors are still speculating as to whether we were originally triplets or whether the cell morphed to wolf and then split.
Oh, and for those who haven't heard, children of morph-capable people are morph-capable themselves. And the womb is like a constant state of morph. In theory, Marco, Rachel, and I started human, but morphed to wolf at some point in the pregnancy. We liked it there and stayed. When we were born, the fact that we were wolves and still in a state of morph meant that our wolf bodies were our natural bodies. Interesting, huh?
Rachel is smaller than me, and darker. She's also got all the energy of a sloth with sleeping sickness. Why was Tom running towards the East corner? she yawned.
To see a dead sparrow that I cleaned up.
Ah.
"Rachel, have you seen Marco?"
She nodded. All three of we wolves nodded, shrugged, and affected all sorts of human gestures. Sure. He's out chasing his tail on the Southwest Lawn.
Our own little genius, I sniggered.
"Can you call him for me? I got him something."
Sure. MARCO! her thoughtspeech reverberated painfully in our heads. MOM WANTS YOU TO COME TO THE UPSTAIRS KITCHEN!
"*Private* thoughtspeech!" Mom winced.
Oh. Sorry.
On the edge of our minds, I heard Marco's faint thoughtspeech. Did you say the upstairs kitchen?
I assumed Rachel responded in private thoughtspeech.
Shortly thereafter, I heard the pounding and scrabbling of Marco racing through the halls. Time! he cried.
Two minutes, forty-one seconds, Rachel reported. She has the best internal clock of all of us, and made a habit of timing everything and everyone. Not bad, coming from the Southwest Lawn.
Better than you could do, he puffed.
What did you break coming in? I asked.
Nothing, he said.
"Nothing?" Mom raised her eyes skeptically.
Nothing important, he amended. That ugly pink vase from Japan.
Oh, that's all right, Rachel said. It wasn't a present from anybody.
"Freedom, would you mind cleaning that up?"
I'm not sure why, but cleaning up messes has always been my job. It's just the way our family runs.
Sure. I wandered out, down the hallway. Behind me, I could hear Marco's enthusiastic cheers as Mom gave him whatever it was she had gotten him. I had a good idea what it was. Marco and Mom share a love for these cutesy little ceramic mice, and always buy them for each other at every opportunity.
I pawed open a door, and tugged one of my vacuum cleaners out of it. Our whole house was made wolf-friendly a few weeks after we were born. When I was ten, there had been a national contest for middle-schoolers for conveniences designed for wolves. As a result, I think we, the litter, were the most spoiled people in the house.
Hey, fame definitely has its perks.
I scooted the machine down the hall, to where shattered pottery littered the floor. Some of the pieces were too big to be vacuumed.
I had collected a good number of the bigger pieces when my thoughts were interrupted by Tobax.
"Freedom, when I morph cat, which do you like better? When I grow the fur first, then start the body changes, or if I just let my head go cat, and then the rest from the top down?"
I looked up. My very blond, very blue-eyed, slightly loopy sister was eyeing me earnestly. As usual, she was obsessing about the finer points of a morph.
Tobax is the spitting image of my Aunt Rachel. She's also an absolute, total genius when it comes to morphing. She can transform into a tick, and make the change something people would pay to see. I've even seen her go directly from one morph to another, when she was really well rested and concentrating incredibly hard. She's overstayed the two-hour morph limit before, then morphed back.
Every college on Earth would pay to have one of us attend. But Tobax had received invitations from the Andalite Morphing Academies. She's actually that good.
Carefully, I dropped the shattered pottery into a trash bin. I don't know. Which do you like better?
"They both have their strengths," she sighed. "I can't decide!"
Have you considered letting your ears change first, then having the fur spread down from there?
She paused, considering. "Hey, that'd be good!" she chirped. "I'll have to try that! Thanks!" She darted off, presumably to practice the morph.
I grunted, and finished separating out the large shards out from the pile. I pawed the switch, and sucked the rest of the vase up. Eyeing my handiwork critically, I wagged my tail and nudged the vacuum back into the closet.
Tom rounded the corner and glared at me. "There wasn't *either* a dead sparrow up there!"