Disclaimer I do not own Animorphs or Ben 10
Chapter 2: New Kid
Jake's POV
My name is Jake.
I'm just a regular kid. Well on the outside ayway. I do normal things like go to school, hang out with friends, watch tv, all that stuff.
But I have a secret. It's so huge that you would think that I belong in the crazy-house, strapped to a bed or locked in a rubber room with a straitjacket.
The Earth is being invaded by Aliens. Now these aliens aren't little green or gray men from Mars that land on a corn field pointing laser guns and ask you "Take me to your leader."
No, these aliens are worse. They're called Yeerks. In their natural state they look like small gray slugs. Pretty harmless right? Wrong, they're parasites. They crawl into your brain through your ear canal and wrap themselves around your brain, flattening and stretching into every crevice. They don't drink your blood or anything like that. No, it's worse. Once they're in your brain you're like a puppet. They control your every move. They can look into your memories, every embarrassing to proud moment in your life, they can see it as easily as opening a book and reading it. You can't do anything about it, you can't fight them. We call people who have a Yeerk in their head a controller.
The Yeerks have enslaved the Gedds, Hork bajir, Taxxons, and who knows how many humans.
They could be anyone. Your family, friends, classmates. And you wouldn't even know that it was a Yeerk controlling them. That's the scariest part of it. Even I didn't realize it when they got my brother Tom.
How do I know all this? I guess i need to explain a bit more.
It all started a while back when me and a few friends were going through a old construction site where we met Elfangor, and Andelite. He was the one that told us about the invasion and gave us the morphing power. He told us to fight the Yeerks to resist until his people arrive. Andelites are the good guys, they fight the Yeerks doing whatever they can to keep them from enslaving any more races.
Andelites looks like centaurs with a more deer-like body instead of a horse's they have two pairs of eyes one set where they should be and the other are on stalks that can more around freely, letting them look both in front and behind themselves. They have blue fur. They have a long wicked fast tail with a scythe like blade on the end. They speak telepathically since for some reason they don't have mouths
They invented the morphing technology that lets us turn into any animal whose DNA we acquire. Elfangor said that it is the only weapon that he could give us.
When we saw him, his ship had crashed and he was dying and after he told us of the invasion and gave us he ability to morph we saw Visser three. He is a Yeerk, the only Yeerk with an Andelite host and the power to morph. We had watched him morph into some hideous creature from some far off planet and ate Elfangor whole.
Just five kids resisting a empire of parasitic slugs with advanced technology. Me, Marco my best friend, Rachel my cousin, Cassie the girl I care about, and Tobias.
We met Ax an Andelite a while after we had learned of the invasion. We saved him from drowning in a domeship which crashed and sunk in the ocean. He is just a kid like us fighting the Yeerks.
We call ourselves the Animorphs. Funny name right? Marco made it up and it seemed to just stick so we kept it.
Today was a good day for a monday, it was warm and sunny. I actually felt great waking up for school. I showered, brushed my teeth, changed, and simply got ready for school. I grabbed my backpack and went down for some breakfast. I had some toast and eggs just enough to fill me until lunch. I kissed my mom and waved my dad off and headed for the bus stop.
I met Marco at the stop and we chatted about normal stuff. Video games, tv shows, comics, movies. Nothing at all about Yeerks or alien invasions.
"Hey Jake can I look at your math homework?" He asked me.
"Why? Didn't finish it last night?"
"You know me I am too intelligent to finish homework so early before submission." He joked.
Laughing I didn't show him my homework. We bantered a bit until we reached the school. Me and Marco went to class when we heard the bell ring.
We said bye and I walked to my classroom.
I got into my usual chair and waited for the homeroom teacher. It unnerves my sometimes that any of these people talking around me could be a controller. Maybe most of them were, I knew that several of them were members of The Sharing.
The Sharing is a front for the Yeerk invasion here. On the surface they look like they were a boy/girl scouts group. They held sports festivals and barbecues and camping and stuff like that. It really sounds fun, right? Yeah it's fun, until you are a full member. Once you become a full member they take you down into the underground Yeerk pool to infest you with a Yeerk. Whether you like it or not.
That is actually one of out advantages over the Yeerks. They need to return to the Yeerk pool once every three days to soak up nutrients and Kandrona rays before heading back inside the host body. If they don't return every three days they will starve and disintegrate.
Once the homeroom teacher came in. "Settle down class, settle down." He looked at all of us. "We have a new student today." And there was a murmur of conversation and questions as people wondered who the new student would be.
"I wonder if it's a cute boy?" I overheard a girl talking to her friend.
"Hope it's a chick." Said a boy close by.
"Quiet class!" Then the class became quiet. "You can come in kid." Said the teacher in the direction of the door.
Someone came into the classroom. He wore a black t-shirt with a white jacket that was left unzipped in the middle and a pair of jeans and sneakers. He had kinda long brown hair with green eyes and was kinda tanned. I couldn't really guess his physique with the jacket but he seemed pretty average.
"Say Hello."
"Hey." He said raising a hand in a welcoming gesture. And I knew the girls would be after him.
"His name is Benjamin Tennyson. I hope all of you will get along." Then he turned his attention to the new kid. "Go on Benjamin find a seat."
He found a seat near the window and sat there.
Class went surprisingly quickly especially for a monday and in no time at all the lunch bell rang. Everyone stood up and picked up some stuff before heading out to the hallway.
I met up with Marco in the cafeteria got some food and sat on a table. I saw Cassie wave at me a few tables away, I smiled and waved back.
"Have you heard of the new kid?" Marco asked me.
Word travels fast. "Yeah he's in my class."
Marco looked a bit down then asked "What's his name and point him out."
I turned in my seat and quickly found Benjamin. "Benjamin Tennyson I think." Then I pointed. "Over there, lone table, white jacket, longish brown hair." As i looked I saw that he was talking casually with two girls.
He looked over at where I was pointing then his face fell even more. Marco has a thing where he thinks that he is the smartest, cutest guy that every girl should dream of. And when I saw his face when he saw Benjamin I started to laugh. When I looked over again the girls were walking away with disappointed looks on their faces
I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw that is was Cassie and Rachel.
"So, we meeting up at the mall later?" She asked me.
"Sure." I said casually.
I took a glance at Benjamin and saw another couple girls talking to him. They also left with down expressions. Then I looked over at Marco and started laughing again.
The rest of the day passed quickly and the dismissal bell rang. I grabbed my stuff off my table and headed towards my locker.
As i kept some of my stuff while Marco was talking to me, I heard a banging sound. I looked over and saw Benjamin being pushed to the wall of lockers by Drake and Woo.
Drake and Woo were bullies and were both divers on the school swim team. They were talking to Benjamin and pointing at him, Woo's hand was holding on to the front of his shirt. I could guess as to what they were saying. I walked over to them wanting to break it up but then I saw something incredible.
Benjamin did something like out of a kung fu movie. He grabbed onto Woo's hand and twisted it away from his shirt putting it on a odd angle. Drake was startled and aimed a punch at him but with his other hand he grabbed Drake's fist and swept his legs under him and he fell to the floor, he then twisted Drake's wrist in a similar manner to Woo's. Benjamin just stood there, Woo was on his knees grimacing while Drake groaned in pain on the floor.
"Whoa" I heard Marco say behind me. Whoa was right.
The scary part was his face. It wasn't contorted in anger. He didn't smile in glee at his victory. There was no emotion in it. It scared me.
Not a lot of things scare me. I've stared down Visser three both in and out of monstrous morphs, fought gangs of Hork bajir, had barrages of dracon beams shot at me. But his simple impassive expression put me on edge and made the hair at the back of my neck stand on end.
He let go of Woo's and Drakes hand and walked away in my direction. His face wasn't blank anymore.
I relaxed when the impassive look was gone "Hey" I said.
"Hey" He said smiling.
"Benjamin right?"
"You can call me Ben." He said. "And you're. . ."
"Jake." I answered
"That was seriously cool, what you did there!" Said Marco from behind me.
"Who are you?" He asked raising his eyebrow.
"Oh yeah, Ben this is Marco, Marco this is Benjamin Tennyson." I introduced them. They shook hands.
"Please call me Ben." He said.
Marco was ecstatic. "That was really cool! Where did you learn that? You were like Jackie Chan or something!"
Ben just shrugged not meeting our eyes. "Picked it up during summer vacation." Then he walked away.
"Weird guy" Said Marco as we watched him leave.
We headed towards the mall. Me and Marco decided to head to the arcades for a while.
Me and Marco chatted as we played, putting in quarters and earning tickets. We played for about an hour when Marco tapped me on my shoulder after I died in one of the games.
"Hey isn't that Ben?" He said pointing over my shoulder.
I looked and saw that it was Ben. He was playing leaning against one of the machines watching everyone who was playing in the arcade. He was looking over everyone with a quiet intensity. I was surprised that no one noticed. Then i noticed his eyes glaze over as if he was remembering something. I looked away and put in another quarter to continue playing and soon Marco joined me.
We played for about another half hour when we thought that we should go meet up with Cassie and Rachel and get something to eat at the food court. I looked over at the spot where Ben was leaning on and saw that he was gone.
I shrugged the thought away and walked out of the arcade with Marco. We met up with Rachel and Cassie on the way to the food court. Rachel was doing her usual thing of dragging Cassie around the mall either helping her pick out clothes or trying to get Cassie out of her usual clothes.
We got our food and found a free table to sit in and chatted like normal kids. Nothing at all about morphing, Yeerks, Andelites, or Aliens in general. It was one of those rare times where we didn't worry about what the Yeerks were planning. Where we were just normal kids having a normal day.
"Hey Jake?" Said Cassie
"Hm?" I answered.
"Isn't that the new kid from school?" She said pointing behind me. "What's his name?"
"Ben Tennyson." I said distractedly as I turned around to look at where she was pointing at. I saw that she was right. There was Ben sitting in a table at the corner of the food court. He was sipping on a drink from a new kiosk that opened near the food court. It hadn't caught a lot of attention yet but it might turn into a fad eventually.
He was looking over at the mall the same way he was looking over people back in the arcade. There was a quiet intensity that made it seem as if he didn't know how to act with other people. But that didn't seem right. I had spoken to him and he acted just like any other person. He wasn't awkward when he spoke to me and Marco. He was perfectly normal, well normal for a kid that just defended himself easily from two school bullies.
I looked back at Cassie and said. "It's him alright."
"We saw him back in the arcade." Said Marco taking a french fry from the pile we were sharing.
"Did he just move into town or something?" Cassie asked me. "I haven't seen him from around here before."
"Maybe." I said. "I haven't seen him from around here either."
"You know, he's kinda cute. . ." Said Rachel. Marco chuckled it away, not meeting her eye.
Then I felt a prickle in the back of my neck. I have been in enough battles, even though I was morphed to know what that meant. Something was sneaking up behind me, something dangerous. I slowly turned in my seat and saw that Ben was looking over at our group. But something felt odd about it, it wasn't the same as the others before. Then he looked away and the odd feeling passed. I decided that it was nothing and that is was just a coincidence that Ben was looking over at our direction when it happened.
We kept talking until i looked at my watch and saw that I needed to get home soon.
"Hey guys I gotta get home soon." I said and there was a murmur of agreement as the others had to get home too.
We left the food court and we all went our separate ways heading home. I looked over to where Ben sat and saw that he was still there, watching everyone. There were two empty cups and he was sipping on his third.
Weird kid. . .
Authors Notes: Hello! How did i do this chapter? I'm not entirely sure if everyone was IC but i tried my best. As I've said I haven't read the books in a while and not even all of them(I didn't even know who David was until recently). It's hard finding whole sets these days. . .
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