Title: The Twins
Author: Alexis Steele
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: all the majors
Genre: Alternate Universe, after #23 The Pretender
Series: First story in the "Descendents of the Ellimist" Chronicles
Summary: Tobias is about to find more family than he can deal with
Notes: This fic was my first attempt at fanfiction back in 1999. It has been lying dormant in notebooks and my computer until I pulled it from the Net in 2004. Looking back on the fic about a year ago, I realized that I had a lot of interesting ideas that I wanted to portray in this fic – eventually to become a series – and that I wanted to pick them up again, but I had some major changes that needed to be done to my OC, Shayla. She was a blatant Mary Sue, and now she's become an attempt to see if I can write a competent OC without her becoming a Mary Sue.
And, while I will be following more closely to the events that occurred in the book series, I will always see the characters as their TV counterparts. Let's face it, ladies, the TV series might've deviated a lot away from the books, but it definitely gave us some nice eye candy to glance at. I will also be extending the timeline of the story to five years, instead of three. Therefore, the Animorphs have been fighting the Yeerks for over two years.
Normal speech denoted with "…". Thought-speak denoted in ((italics))
Each chapter heading will tell you who is narrating this part of the story. If you don't see a character's name in the chapter heading, assume that the character from the previous chapter is still narrating.
Disclaimer: With the exception of Shayla and any other minor OCs, all the other characters are the property of K.A. Applegate and Scholastic Books. All feedback is greatly appreciated
Chapter 1: Tobias
My name is Tobias. I can't tell you my last name or where I live because it would place my life, as well as the lives of my friends, in danger. Let me try to explain. Long story short: Earth is being invaded by a race of parasitic space slugs known as the Yeerks. While they look harmless in their ordinary forms, the Yeerks refuse to remain ordinary. Instead, they control hosts. They enter the host's brain through the ear canal. Once in control, the host is incapable of resisting. The Yeerks have already conquered the Gedds, the Hork-Bajir, and the Taxxons. Now they're after humans. Fortunately for us, the Yeerks have a weakness. Every three days a Yeerk must return to a special pool to absorb Kandrona rays--particles from their homeworld's sun.
Now, guess who's responsible for saving mankind from permanent enslavement? Yep, that's right. Us. Five human children, more or less (I'll explain later), and one Andalite cadet against the scum of the universe. Us. Jake, Marco, Rachel, Cassie, Ax, and me.
Jake is the unofficial leader of our group, better known as the Animorphs. I say 'unofficial' because no one really made him the leader, he just sort of fell into the role. Although he says he doesn't want to be the leader, and would gladly switch with any one of us, I think he knows now that he is the leader. Jake is very responsible and out of all of us, in my opinion, has had to do the most growing up in the shortest amount time. Jake is the only one of us who knows what it's like to be a controller, well Cassie does too, but her situation was unique compared to other controllers, but Jake is the only one of us to go through the fugue--the final release of a host from a Yeerk by Kandrona starvation.
He also has a very stressful home life. His older brother, Tom, is one of them - a controller. Jake eats dinner every night right across from the enemy and worries if one day his parents will be next. Jake is very tall, only about an inch taller than I am, with short, dirt-blond hair, blue eyes, and a muscular build. Jake actually saved my life once, prior to the Animorphs I mean. On my first day of school two years ago I was receiving a swirlie, compliments of the school bullies when Jake walked in. He didn't really order them to put me down. He just told them in this stern tone of voice to put me down, and they did. That's the kind of impact Jake has on people. When not trying to save the world, Jake enjoys playing basketball and video games.
Then there's Jake's best friend, Marco. Marco is known as the joker of the group. He tries to find the joke in every situation. He actually came up with the name 'Animorphs', or as he called us "idiot teenagers with a death wish." But Marco's also the one who makes us think about the consequences of our actions before going on missions. His favorite word is 'insane'. But he's really only thinking about the well-being of his father.
Before the invasion, Marco believed his mother had drowned in a boating accident, but then later discovered that she was the host for Visser One, leader of the invasion of Earth. Marco feels that if anything were to happen to him while on a mission, his father would lose it, again. Marco is short, for a guy. He's also Latino-American. He has a darker complexion than Jake, Rachel, Ax, and I, but a lighter complexion than Cassie. Marco has short, jet-black hair that he likes to plaster to his head with way-too-much hair gel, and brown eyes. Marco is also into video games. He and Jake have been best friends since they were in diapers.
After Marco, there's Jake's cousin, Rachel. Rachel is very beautiful -- supermodel beautiful. She's also very tall. Rachel is the kind of person who looks like she's walking around with her own personal spotlight shining on her. She also has a lot to deal with at home. Her parents are divorced. She lives with her mother and two sisters, Jordan and Sara. Her father lives on the other side of the country and comes to visit her every other weekend. At least she gets to see her father once in a while.
Rachel has long, blond hair and blue eyes. She's also very fashionable. One of her favorite pastimes is shopping at the mall. Now you must be thinking, a shopoholic blonde, must not be very smart. Not true. Out of all the Animorphs, Rachel is the fiercest of us all -- the first one to volunteer for a mission. Her favorite saying is 'let's do it', which usually drives Marco crazy. Besides shopping, Rachel is also into gymnastics.
Rachel's best friend, and our fourth Animorph, is Cassie. Some people can't believe Rachel and Cassie are best friends because they are complete opposites of each other. While Rachel loves wearing the latest fashions, Cassie prefers a plain t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. While Rachel is the first to volunteer, Cassie tends to stay uninvolved until she absolutely has to. Cassie is African-American. She's regular height, for a girl, and has long, black hair that's either pulled back in a fashion all her own or lying softly on her shoulders.
Cassie is the best morpher in the group. Ax says she has a natural talent for it. A reason for this may be because of Cassie's love of nature. Her love of nature can be contributed to her parents' professions. Out of all of us, Cassie, and possibly Jake, has the most normal households. Cassie's parents are both veterinarians, a career she wishes to pursue herself. Her mother works at the Gardens, a zoological park, and deals with exotic animals, while her father works out of their farmhouse, more commonly known as the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. Most of our meetings are held at Cassie's because we can get our hands, or in my case claws, on a wide variety of animals when a situation calls for it. Cassie is also the person who will lend you her shoulder to cry on and can read all of our emotions. She can even tell when we're lying or hiding something from the rest of the group, including me.
Our only living Andalite friend in this fight is Ax, short for Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. He was one of the young Andalites on board the Andalite DomeShip that exploded over Earth. I say 'living' because Ax isn't the first Andalite we've encountered. Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul was the first. He was the one who gave us the ability to morph and told us about the Yeerk invasion in the abandoned construction site over two years ago. Elfangor was Ax's older brother. The other Andalite we know is the only Andalite ever to be taken by a Yeerk, and the leader of the invasion of Earth -- Visser Three.
Ax considers me his shorm, someone an Andalite would gladly trade his life for. Since everyone was friends, or at least knew each other before the invasion, Ax and I have become closer than the rest of others. You're probably wondering what an Andalite looks like, since you probably haven't seen one before. Well, picture a blue deer or centaur with a scorpion's tail, and four eyes, two protruding above his head as stalks. That's Ax. In the Andalite military, he's only an aristh; similar to a cadet in our military, but he is a great friend and warrior to all of us.
And finally, there's me. I am the living proof to the downside of morphing. There is one major rule to morphing -- never stay in a morph for more than two hours or become trapped in that morph permanently. During one of our first missions, I forgot about that rule. Now I am trapped forever in the body of a red-tailed hawk. This situation was probably the best thing that could've happened to me. I never knew my parents (Marco thought he had it rough) and was shipped back and forth between an uncle who used me as his personal punching bag and an aunt who used me as her personal slave. When I first disappeared, my aunt and uncle never even bothered to look for me when they discovered I wasn't living with the other relative.
However, after I helped rescue some free Hork-Bajir from the Yeerks, a being known as the Ellimist gave me my morphing powers back, including a human morph of myself. Luckily for me, my human morph seems to grow with me, or maybe it's the Ellimist, I don't really know. It was a year and a half ago that we first encountered the Hork-Bajir, and two years since we met Elfangor. Now I can be human for two hours at a time, unless I want to become a human nothlit, but then I would be out of the fight for Earth. In my human morph, I'm almost the same height as Jake with hazel/brown eyes and shaggy, black/brown hair.
Before the invasion, I was a nobody and an easy pick for bullies. I was very withdrawn in school and didn't bother to make many friends because I was moved around so much. But now, with this war, I have made a complete turn-around. I'm no longer the introvert that I was. I can't afford to be because it would place my life, as well as the lives of my friends, in danger. Now you've met me and my friends and together we fight the Yeerks to protect planet Earth.
Author's Note: Posting schedule for this story will be two chapters every week, posted on Friday night and/or Saturday afternoon, depending on how swamped I am with homework over the weekend. Enjoy!
