TITLE: "I Am Jake"

AUTHOR: Doctor Strangelove (strangelove317@yahoo.com)
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: No real spoilers for the series. Visser Three is still Visser Three. Spoilers for the fic "Adventures In Clubbing". This takes place the same time as that fic.
FEEDBACK: I love it.
DISCLAIMER: K.A. Applegate owns the Animorphs stuff, everything else is mine.
A/N: Ladies and gentleman, I am back. Sorry for the six month delay, but the fic is now here. Due to an even more unfortunate turn of events than losing the internet, my computer crashed and I lost all progress I'd made on this story and others. So, updates will take a while (not six months, but maybe once or twice every two weeks), but I will be updating. Hope you enjoy. Just for reference, this fic and "Adventures In Clubbing" take place in January of 2003. And this chapter is kinda short, as it's setting up the fic, the others will be longer.

"I Am Jake"

Written by: Doctor Strangelove

            My name is Jake. I can't tell you my last name because… oh, screw it. I am way to sick to give you people the back story of me and the Animorphs. You probably know it all anyway. So let's just save ourselves so time and skip it, okay? Good.

All right, on to a different story. One that doesn't involve lots of morphing and fighting aliens. Yes, we Animorphs do do things besides saving the Earth. We have social lives. We go see movies, play video games, have torrid love affairs (wait, that's someone else's story), get sick, have disturbing visits from otherworldly beings… oops, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me begin, you see, I had contracted the flu. I was in no position to be running the Animorphs so I left Cassie in charge. Rachel would've made a better choice, but Cassie was mad at me (never mind why, let's just say it's not my fault) so I gave her the job.

There was some thing going on with a Yeerk club, I didn't really know too much about it, and she was handling that. I was at home playing Metroid Prime. Fun game. Anyway, I was kinda getting my ass kicked by Meta-Ridley when the game paused.

Now, that was kinda weird because I didn't push pause. I dropped the controller in confusion and then proceeded to get much more confused. The controller didn't fall, it just floated in the air where it had been resting in my hands.

At first I figured this was all 'cause of the flu, like maybe I was hallucinating. Then I realized I couldn't move. My clothes were frozen in place.

            "What the…?" I exclaimed in shock.

"Oh, sorry about that," a voice echoed in my head. "Better?"

I stretched my arms out and was relieved to see that my clothing had become much less frozen.

"That was weird." I muttered.

"Yeah, I can imagine." The voice echoed again. "But you're okay now."

"Yeah, thanks," I said slowly. "Hey, uh, no offense, but what are you?"

"What? Oh, where are my manners? I forgot to introduce myself. I didn't think about, you know, since I know so much about you."

"Yeah, that's not very reassuring."

The air in front of my bed turned dark and started to swirl around. The air became thicker and started forming into a humanoid shape. Pretty soon it had actually turned into a human. "I'm Osiris," he said.

            I stared at Osiris for a minute. Then I threw up. Now this was really disturbing because the vomit just stayed in the air. "Oh, that's gross." Then it unfroze and fell to the floor. "That's not much better."

            I turned to get a good look at Osiris. He looked like a man. He was a little taller than me, with black hair, black pants, a black shirt, and black boots. The guy had a thing for black. Yet somehow he managed to pull it off without looking like a goth. Oh, yeah, and his eyes? They were black too. Entirely black. The whole eye. It was weird. The only thing that set him apart was a gold medallion around his neck.

            "So, uh, Mr. Osiris," I began.

            "Oh, please, just Osiris, Jake. We're about to become very familiar with each other. Well, I'm already familiar with you. But you'll certainly be getting to know me."

            "…Okay. So, what are you. You can apparently freeze time. Are you like the Ellimist?"

            Osiris laughed, "No, I don't have that kind of power. I'm just… a messenger."

            "Okay, so what's the message?"

            Osiris sat down next to me on the bed. "The message, Jake, is that something is coming. Something much bigger than the Yeerks. Something you and the rest of the Animorphs won't be able to fight. Which is why I'm here. With help, you can fight this thing. You can win. If you know who to trust."

            "And that's you?" I asked, more than a little skeptical. "How do I know I can trust you?"

            Osiris smiled at me. "You can't. You just have to have faith that I'm on your side in this.

            I stared at this guy for a long time. He had frozen time and materialized in my room to warn me about a something that was coming. Not a lot about him looked trustworthy, but what choice did I have. "Okay, what's this help?"

            Osiris stood up and walked across my bedroom to the door. "We're going on a little journey, my friend." I got up and followed him. "So hop a tornado, swallow the red pill, and jump down the rabbit hole, Jakey. You're in for one hell of a ride."

            He opened the door.