Tobias approaches the end of his recruitment campaign, filled with exasperation he leaves the penthouse to fulfil a favor for its owner, a mission that was of deep importance to the billionare inventor. Jake and his friends react to the newfound weakness brought on by the morphing tech, meanwhile the Animorphs begin noticing signs of an unknown threat on the prowl.
Sick Ways
Day 7, Morning
((This is the most absurdly roundabout recruiting mission I have ever been on)) I commented in a neutral as I glided.
((How many recruiting missions have you actually been on?)) Alice asked.
((Fair point,)) I conceded. ((Of all the people I have met, nobody is more genuinely impossible to read than you!))
((Well, what's my job description?)) Alice commented as she made a move to land.
((You're suppsoed to be impossible to read to your enemies!)) I insited. ((Not your friends.))
((Get literate.))
((Get. Literate?!))
((Tobias, that's enough!)) Rafael interjected, a bald eagle. ((You need to make a better account of yourself. How do you hope to take out this threat if you're so eager to squabble like this?))
That third voice belonged to the owner of the penthouse Alice had us attempt to rob. After a surprisingly brief discussion I not only was told the reason why this guy was so improtant to Alice, but that he needed our help. Not only was Alice close friends with Rafael, the billionare inventor who was seemingly destined to propel humanity into the future, but he was already on our side by default!
However, next came the worst part of the recruiting process: breaking the news. When I told Rafael the energy he exhibited lost all signs of positivity to morph from ambiguous markedly dour.
I put my wings even closer to my body when I saw the clearing, right where he said it was, conveniently surrounded by trees and with a ravine between it and the place we were coming from.
When the ground was close enough I snapped my wings out, landing my talons on hard packed dirt littered with forest debris. When I landed I immedaitely began demorphing just like Rafael instructed, although I was done long before the others finished their transformations.
"Oh dear," Alive muttered. "I'm out of practice."
"Which way?" I quietly asked.
"Here," Rafael said and he walked past, wearing a black and white body suit. Much more barebones than my morphing clothes. Gripped tightly in his right hand was a dufflebag containing the supplies, and so we followed him on the trail. Insects alive with chatter, and birds fluttered in the branches above as we hiked up the trail. After a short while of twists and turns we came across a cave.
"Ubalu," Rafael uttered, his right hand raised in the air as if about to wave a friend.
All of a sudden they appeared, guards, human guards emerged from the cave, in the trees, and over the edges, all of them heavily armed with alien tech, a few even wore Nartec Seeker Masks!
"Interesting pass word," I commented. "What happens if you raise the other arm?"
"They kill us all, or just you, or specific members of the group, depending on which fingers I hold up in which positions," Rafael casually explained.
"Whatever you have stashed here," Alive interjected. "It has to be worth more than literally your entire fortune, judging by how better equipped these guards are."
"It's worth everything," Rafael quietly admitted as we entered the cave.
"Hey Boss, I see you got some new friends, same?" One of the guards, maybe the leader, spoke up.
"Is there any change since the last time you reported?" Rafael asked.
"No sir," the guard said, shaking his head. "But it's not getting any better either. Do you..."
"Yes," Rafael interjected. "I do."
Then the guards let us in, soon after we ran into the back of the cave, but this disappeared, giving way to a gate, a heavily armored gate made of alien metal.
"Hold on, that gate!" I noted, shocked into a wide eyed stare. "Did you take us to a-?"
"Yes, it is," Alice explained as the gate began opening, isntead of parting the metal shifted until a hole big enough for them to walk through single file. And so they entered, I was the last one in, I stayed behind to check the mouth of the cave before entering, prompting the hologram to flicker back on and the gate to turn back into a solid cave wall.
((Are you absolutely sure these people can be trusted? Especially with something this valuable?)) I asked him in private as we walked through a hallway of smooth carved stone corridors and walked a floor made of alien panels. Lights were hung up on the walls of the corridor, none of them were man-made, and they flickered on in front of us and off as we passed them, only illuminating the hall in our immediate area. On the cieling were biege panels covered in etchings, the lines were carved in a rainbow of colors, green, red, blue, purple, yellow, and white were drawn chaotically, overlapping and intersecting with eachother.
At the middle of each panel, however, the lines converged towards the center, all running straight, and coalesced to depict vivid images, many of the lines were so intricately drawn that millimeters seaprated them, but after a certain point they never met again. They were portraits of both the head and body depicting the same being, an avian-like creature, the talons of which were disproportionately long, but the outer parts of the toes folded back to lie flat against the foot. The legs were slightly bent, not as straight as a human's but no less sturdy. The midsection was strangely broad for a flying creature, as wide as a human's. Sprouting like trees out of its lower back were a pair of long wings, they were long and narrow things, meant for speed and manueverability, but not enough to give the winged being the power of flight. At the chest the torso widened and led to an even broader set of shoulders that split into two pairs of limbs. In front of the being the arms reaching straight out, gangly fingers spread, holding the threads taut as if he could pluck and move them at any given point of time, and behind this first pair of limps were the second set of wings. These were broad, gigantic appendages with thick plumage, designed to soar and carry the creature's weight, and the weight of something significantly heavier than himself held in his long fully extended talons.
The face of the being was narrow and long, at the end of the face was a long and straight beak at the end of which was a thick and long beard of whispy white hair, billowing in an unseen gentle breeze. There were no feathers upon his head, but the pale skin around his eyes and blue beak was wrinkled with age, and the eyes of this entity were every color in the tile. The dark parts of the eyes were pure white, but the sclera were a swirl of every rainbow color on the panel. In those eyes were kindness and mirth barely managing to conceal the secrets to the most unimaginably mind boggling mysteries of the universe, the answer to every question, every secret, and every horror that ever is, was, will, and never will be.
"They have no reason to betray me. They can't be bribed, their lives literally depend on my success, and my prosperity is benefitted by their ability to keep trouble out, as you witnissed."
"But they can be infested," I tersely pointed out. "The Cube may have equipped us with failsafes against mind control, but those failsafes can be bypassed if The Controllers are allowed to experiment long enough, or get lucky. Your men don't even have that protection! We need to learn how these things control people so we can create human-safe protection against it yesterday! As you know it can only create so many Animorphs before it needs to be recharged, and who knows how much energy it has left as of now!"
"Then this thing you're doing for me is even more important," Rafael confessed as the lights began to reveal a change in the path. "This place can be used to carry out exactly that kind of research, as soon as the room is available."
What? I thought as we encountered the door, and two human guards were standing at attention, their alien weaponry pointed at us at all times.
The door just looked like the end of a wall, but then a hole melted into the wall as we approached, their weapons lowered as we entered the door and they diverted their attention back to the entrance.
The room was dark, but I activated my night and I saw its contents, right at the sides were two colossal statues depicting humanoid dogs that appeared very obese, holding spears with giant curved sickle like blades at their ends. But given the nature of all decoration in this facility and others like it, those statues are likely guardians in a less metaphorical and more literal sense.
And have a penchant for either instantaeneously crushing intruders, or incarcerating them and waiting for their masters to visit with them...a wait that would last so long that the prisoner would die of old age. I don't know which was worse. Further inside the room was a selection of three doors, all of which were red and covered with a strange fabric that was hung limply over the door like a curtain. Raphael led us to the door in the center, where two more of his lackeys waited, this time wearing doctor's uniforms with a few additions of extraterrestrial origin.
Now I understand.
They nodded towards us and opened the door in the middle, letting us in.
"This place," I remarked. "You took it over due to its ability to act as a place of healing."
"Exactly," Raphael remarked as we entered the room proper. "And the patient is running out of time."
There was a table in the center of the room, it was surrounded by so many machines and life support systems that nothing on top of it could be seen. However when we went through a gap between the medical devices. When I got closer I saw the person on the table, his skin was such a grotesque black that at first I couldn't tell the gender of the person. He was wearing a hospital gown perforated by wires and tubs connecting to his body, he was twisted in body shape to the ponit that it was difficult to tell whether or not he was even human.
"Hemovorvoros," I said the name of the same affliction that wracked Ellen. Although clearly this one had progressed much much farther, this boy person should be dead. But the life alien support machines prevented that.
"If Raphael ever dared admit him to a human hospital..." Alice spoke up.
"They'd notify ETCS, and everyone related to the boy...your son," I realized, my hand returning to my satchel where The Cube was hidden.
Hemovorvoros was the human name for a disorder where the blood would grow thicker until the poor victim went comatose and inevitably perishes from to cell death.
Due to their impure genetic structure. It's entirely unique to Old Bloods, Pure humans cannot suffer it because they're pure. It's caused when the alien DNA conflicts with the native DNA in the bones, the genetic conflict making the blood cells start changing,
But if the genetic flaw is identified and corrected, the Hemovorvoros would stop and reverse.
"So that's why Zavezz leaked your location to me. He knew that by doing so, you'd lead me here...how many of the others aside from Dad knew Raphael's true nature?"
"Just us," Alive admitted.
"He is everything," Raphael stated, his voice breaking as he walked past us to the boy to rest his hand on his blackened forehead. "He's all I have left, please...is it too late?"
I looked to the wreck, smaller than me, far closer to death than anyone else I had ever treated, and swallowed my bile.
"I'll do everything I can," I said, pulling out the cube. "But if we can't wake him up, then thgere's nothing I can do, it's his only chance."
"Wait, he never told you?" Alice remarked in surprise.
"Told me what?"
She held her hand out in front of you.
"The Cube has a little secret, hand it over."
"Tobias, do it," Raphael ordered.
I gave the Cube to Alice who then began walking over to the ruined wreck of a child.
"The trick is simple," Alice said, holding the Cube over the boy's bare chest, the paste oozed up, the Cube sticking to Alice's hand ensuring she no lnoger needed to grip it. She straightened her fingers.
"I have no clue-"
Then Alice slammed the box down into the boy, where it disappeared inside his chest.
"GH-WHAT?!" I made a nosie betweena shriek,a shout,a nd a choke.
I was flying with my friends, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, and Cassie. We were in the woods, chasing something that was fleeing, a Controller. It fluttered through the skies depserately trying to flee. It was slightly faster than us, but the alien couldn't beat all five of us in a fight, so it was fleeing.
((There, he took a left!)) Tobias reported and we turned. The trees broke up and turned into a small meadow. I rushed forward and caught the flying alien in my talons.
((Ha ha!)) I crowed as it emitted a pitiful noise of surprise.
When I turned to the others, my prize still alive in my talons, its own wings binded, I saw that everyone was gone.
((Guys? Cassie? Tobias? Where are you?))
((Jake! RUN!)) Cassie's voice shouted from beyond the trees. Before I got the chance to move my wings they were suddenly pinned against my side.
((Ah!)) I cried out in surprise as I fell. I tried to flap, to catch the air, but my wings wouldn't move, they were bound by fishing line. There was nothing I could do to stop myself from falling to the ground, the shock of the fall caused me to release the tiny flying creature from my talons. The little dragonfly-bird thing flapped away, zipping out of there, sqwuaking like crazy in fear. Only it flew around the edges of the treeline, and as it flew I noticed the others, Them. Their eyes appeared first, glinting in the night, glowing orbs of predatory happiness. Then as they emerged from the trees into the clearing their bodies were visible. Some crawled, others leapt, more lumbered holding brutal weapons like a violinist's stick but rounded and covered in long tassles that I knew somehow would make being hit with it more painful.
Eight legged pale orange things crawled, knives strapped to their hands and elbows, four eyed gazes green with a hungry curiosity. Giant colossal worms lumbered imperiously, carried by giant jagged centipede legs. From the trees what looked like giant lizard people covered in blades leapt down to the ground, there were only a few of these things in the crowd, but they were the most formidable looking, marked with tattoos that signified their importance among the crowd. Covered in a green armored hide, tall and narrow, their feet like a dinosaur's and their beaked heads was barely wide open, grinning, the red eyes penetrated my feathers with a sinister blood red glow as a low predatory laugh that was made entirely in the throat left its beak.
Above them all were more the fluttering creatures, they zipped above. And even larger winged aliens started flying over the clearing, comparable in size to eagles, but they looked more like giant black flags that had been torn off their poles, thrown to the wind, and then turned into birds.
There were a multitude of huamns there as well, boys and girls, men and women, they all smiled and glared at me like I was a problem child who kept escaping punishment, and they had just recorded me in the act and I was about to go down. That was what their expressions looked like. None of them were wearing clothes, somehow in the entire crowd not a single one of them was covering anything.
But one stood out among them all, there was a long creature, unique in the crowd. It was standing between two of the blade dragons, it had no mouth, but a narrow face with five slits for a nose, and its body was that of a human. The lower half was shaped like a horse, turning it into a blue furred centaur, and at the end of it was a long muscular tail covered in hard armored rings wrapped around it like stripes, at the end of this tail was a bud that looked like an artichoke. This creature...it was wrong, it looked and felt more wrong than anything else in the field.
It's eyes were the worst, they were two green emeralds that were narrow and angled downward making them look evil. But they were expressive, and jsut wide enough that I could see laughter in them. The creature was laughing as if I was his jester, bumbling about and getting into accidents, a joke made only for him. He moved the end of his tail close by to his head, the atrichoke unfolded, revealing a giant wicked looking tail blade, glinting purple in the night.
And the pale blue centaur thing motioned the blade over its own throat. It began laughing as the horde moved forward, a gloating laughter made only worse by the condescending softness of it.
((Behind us!)) Tobias warned.
((I can't see anything!)) Marco shouted, scared.
((What have you done?!)) Rachel roared.
They closed in, their hands, mandibles, talons and claws reaching for me as Cassie's bloodcurdling scream echoed in my head.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I jolted awake, my eyes wide open. I was covered in cold sweat.
What was that? Was what ran through my head.
Then I noticed something peculiar
I put my hands all over my body, I felt my forehead.
Normal.
I'm not sick? But how? I explicitly remember struggling to not puke as we flew away!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
"Midget, open up!" Tom shouted from the other side of the door. I find that I tossed and turned in my sleep to the point that my shirt was on the floor. I got it on and hurried to the door, where Tom was waiting.
"Yeah?" I asked.
"Not even a good morning?" He remarked. "Marco's here, he's been waiting for over ten minutes!"
"Ah, okay, let me get dressed," I said before closing my door. I accessed my dressers and got a shirt and a pair of shorts. After that I got my shoes on and headed out the door.
"Hey Marco, has anything happened?" I asked.
"Has anything happened?" He sputtered. "Rachel's called a meeting, it has everything to do with..."
"The eat out last night," Marco ended with a whisper.
My eyes widened, of course! Is Rachel still sick?
"They're waiting for us in the barn, let's go."
"But I haven't even eaten any breakfast!" I protested.
"Don't keep us waiting long. That skate park's really fun," Marco said before walking out. "Sort of like Tony Hawk!"
I didn't need long to reach Cassie's barn, as a matter of fact it took me less time than usual. I was riding my bike, still afraid of what had happened last night. When I got there everyone else's bikes were leaning on the side of the barn, I parked my bike, kicked its stand and walked in to where everyone was waiting. Marco was lounging on some haybales, a blanket between him and the straw. Rachel was pacing back and forth, apparently completely fine...while Cassie looked miserable.
I frly do bad, I wanted to put my hand on her shoulder and tell her it's okay, but I knew she was sick and didn't want to risk catching anything, if I don't already have something.
"Okay, everyone's here," Marco said, sitting up. "What went kablooey, Rachel?"
"Is Cassie okay?" I said.
"Her fever's gone down," Marco said. "All that's left is a clogged nose, really."
"So, what happened?" Cassie asked, her nose clearly stuffed.
"Okay, we spent the night out collecting biomass, but we ran into a hitch."
"Figures, what happened?"
Rachel and I both spoke at the same time.
"We encountered a robot!"
"We got sick!"
We looked at each-other.
"You tell it," Rachel conceded.
"While out acquiring biomass, we acquired our battle morphs, a Tiger and a Grizzly bear. Then we flew around the town looking for...dead things, at the end of it we had the idea to search the feet of the windmills."
Cassie shuddered, curling deeper into herself.
Marco's face darkened. "And this is where the robot comes in?"
"Yeah," Rachel said. "One minute we were cleaning up roadkill, the next there was this mutilated looking robot thing that just appeared! We didn't see it come in, it was just there. We were in the middle of the wind turbine farm, naked, and then this robot appears. We barely get out of sight in time before it goes crazy, shooting out a bunch of green lazers and it just took out a bunch of wind turbines. Toppled them like trees?"
"More like all of them," Marco remarked, he got a newspaper from the blanket he was lying down on and threw it to the floor. We walked forward to look at the headline.
Wind Turbine Farm suffers total extinction! Right Wing terrorists wielding alien technology to blame!
"Commentary on the bullcrap coming in 3, 2-"
"I can't believe they're running with that!" Rachel exclaimed. "I get they'd need a cover story to hide the alien presence, but this? This is bull! There hasn't been an investigation or anything, that didn't even happen 12 hours ago!"
"Bad cover story aside, the robot doesn't matter right now," I said, picking up the newspaper and giving it back to Marco. "What we should be concerned about is how we got sick and almost threw up at the windmills."
"You think it has something to do with the morphing?" Marco asked.
"I am."
"Tell me what happened?" Marco asked.
After recounting the events of the night, and how much...meat we had gorged on, Marco's eyes lit up.
"That's it. It's only been a week since you got the power, and the secondary abilities aren't ready to come out of the oven yet. I think I know why you guys got sick. You absorbed too much! You just absorbed biomass to the point that your bodies just reached their limit, and so all you needed was a good night's rest to recover!"
"I still feel slightly nauseas, though," I pointed out. "Give it time, it'll work itself out."
"Then tomorrow, I give the biomass I've accumulated to Rachel so she can morph an elephant."
I clapped my hands, "Alright! Now that's taken care of, let's get an idea of how to check out The Sharing."
"I don't think battle morphs would be necessary for that," Cassie croaked.
"Agreed."
Day 7, Evening
It was eventually decided that we would wait for Tobias to come back and my fever to clear up before we did anything, after the gathering the rest of the day went on as normal. We discussed battle morphs, an event that The Sharing was holding, and the strange dream that Jake had. Despite staying up all night, Jake and Rachel acted normally.
I went back to my house and watched TV for a while and read some books, after a while the sun had gone down, and after dinner I was feeling a lot closer to normal.
"Hey," I told Mom and Dad. "Mind if I check the mail?"
Between this bug keeping me from doing farmwork, and from helping with the mission I was starting to feel useless.
"Sure, just don't take too long."
"Thanks," I said. After I was done with dinner I slipped my shoes on and walked out the door to the mailbox at the end of the road. I walked past the barn and looked up at the sky, the clouds were orange and pink on one side and dark on the other, rays of light shone across the sky as it began darkening. I felt the dirt under my bare feet, still slightly funny, it's been a while since I starrted walking barefoot outdoors. If I'm not going to be wearing anything for this, then my skin will need to get toughened up. The air was starting to cool down, I heard the crickets and birds singing away, the crickets already chirping for night-time and the bird song beginning to go down as they prepared to rest for the night. I took in the smell of the grass and wind, it seems my sinuses finally cleared up.
I smiled as I breathed deep through my nose, nothing like forest air to give you peace of mind.
Still grinning as I took it all in, the mailbox grew bigger in the dying light, the trees were already covered in shadows, the level of light being too low to read with already. Good thing I came to check the mail when I did.
I reached the lone post sticking out like a sore thumb, the metallic mailbox attached. Before I turned around to check inside it, however, I froze up.
I was being watched.
I looked all around, only noticing the black treeline, the darkening sky with the fading rays of light. The sound of the insects began to die down. I turned around, desperately looking for it, I scanned the barn and saw nothing, there wasn't anything close by my house either. Nor was there anything stalking around in the prairie where the horses grazed during the day. I still looked, spinning slowly around like a crazy person.
Then I saw it. It was almost imperceptible, at first I thought they were fireflies. But no, all of the animals in that direction had gone quiet, and they didn't blink,t hey were a constant glow.
It was hiding in the tree line, laying low to the ground, low enough to the ground to have been mistaken for belonging an oppossum or Bobcat. Once I caught the two orange globes in my sight, the rest of the creature became slightly clearer. But I could see it, at least aprtly, it was big, way too big to be a raccoon or skunk, way too big for evena deer, and with its long spindly legs it shouldn't be laying this close to the ground...unless it was stalking.
The lights, the eyes were still staring at me, drilling holes into the very fiber of my being. It was stalking me.
My mouth went dry, and my heart started pounding in my chest, smashing against my ribs, I felt the blood drain from my face as the moisture from my mouth seemed to migrate to my armpits and back. My mind raced a million miles a minute.
Was this a Controller? Did they spot Jake and Rachel last night? Do they suspect Marco? Did they scan us? Did they notice our morphing? Oh God, what did we do? What did I do? Is it looking for me?" Does it want me? Is it a Contreoller? Is it an alien or a mutant? Are they gonig to kidnap me? What are they gonig to do to my parents? The others aren't here. I have to deal with this alone. What am I going to do? Oh God what am I going to do?
The orbs narrowed ever so slightly, focusing in. Tilting its head ever so slightly.
Is it going to pounce? Oh God, is it going to attack? What does it want? Why is it here? Why is it after us? Did it get to the others? Jake, oh God, is Jake safe? Please god, let Jake be safe! We haven't even gotten our battle morphs! What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I gonig to do? What am I going to do? Fight or flight? Fight or flgiht? Fight or flight?
The creature untilted its head, and its orange glowing eyes blinked...slowly. A chill ran down my back, because when the eyes opened up they were more predatory. It reached its arm forward, a spindly thin arm that just unfolded and stepped forward.
All of a sudden I heard a loud sound rattle off behind me. I turned behind and saw the mailboxes, something was clinging to it. A tiny hand rose and slapped the top of the mailbox, then another and the creature lifte ditself up. It was a large lizard the size of a squirrel. Its most obvious feature were its comically bulbous and large bug eyes.
"Eyelizard?!" I exclaimed, remembering the creature's appearing on Fact or Freaky.
Before I could think of anything else the Eyelizard ran up to the other side of the mailbox and jumped at me!
"Ah!" I screamed as I landed on my rear. The creature had jumped so high that it wouldn't have landed on me even if I stood tall. The strange creature landed behind my head. When I looked behind me I saw that the Thing had begun sprinting towards me, rearing to its full height. It was somewhat shaped like a human, but it was shaped wrong. The strange lizard was standing between it and me, it had opened its mouth and let out a surprisingly loud and intimidating buzzing call that was a mix between a clown horn, a trumpet, and a kazoo.
The creature stopped midsprint and slowly began to back into the trees, keepings its eyes on me at all times. As suddenly as it appeared it disappeared into the woods before I heard an explosion of sounds as it sprinted through the foiliage, the sounds faded, and in time the chirping of the birds and insects returned. It was gone.
"Did you do that?" I asked the creature, getting up. It turned around to look at me with its colossally huge bug eyes. "Thank you!"
Then it jumped up at me.
"Wait!" I cried again, landing on ym rear again, this time the eye lizard was standing on me, grabbing onto my shirt. I froze as the creature walked up to my face, then it opened its mouth and the hole in the creature's face widened. I had no thoughts as the creature ejected a hard white surface from its mouth. The lizard's giant mouth closed, and more and more of the white object came out until the entirety off it flew out and landed on my chest.
I blinked as I realized what it was.
A letter?
The animal that clearly wasn't then grabbed the edge of the letter and began licking it, its tongue shooting out like a chameleon's like a machine gun. Then the creature turned the letter around and handed it to me before jumping off of my chest and scurrying into the grass faster than anything should be able to move. I sat there, con fused, holding the envelope until I remembered that I was there to check the mailboxes. After unlocking it I found some mail in there, taking the envelopes out of the box I immedaitely began tor eturn home. My mind o the encounter and what it meant.
When I got back inside I explained away my long wait out there by saying I encountered a few coyotes. I gave my parents the envelopes, keeping the letter from the strange creature hidden on my own person.
When I got to my room I looked at the letter, turning on my light, my eyes widened when as I read it.
"Priority Notification from Tobias, delivered by: Eyelizard."
And that's Chapter 17! Hoo boy, let me tell you I am hiding a crapton of plot twists and recontextualizing moments. This chapter I found was particularly difficult to conceal them, honestly the lore for this AU fic is really nuts, but as you know I am obligated to not show plot twists. I also made another change, and edited Warlike's 2nd appearance to take place 5 weeks before Elfangor instead of 2. Hope you enjoyed the next step in this saga!