After a good night's rest, the Animorphs' homes are safeguarded from anti-morph poisoning, and they have accepted the knowledge of The Sharing's true nature, and of Tom's deception, the next morning's meeting was very eventful, Ellen has completed the first batch of Animorph clothing, Alice presents the results of her research and a plan is drawn from it to attack the poison and destroy it at its source, meanwhile, after weeks of monitering, the tracker Elfangor's people had placed on one of their parasitic assailants has shown a number of promising leads...to the location of The Controller stronghold.
Intro Intel
Day 10, Morning
"WOW-WOW-WOW-WOW-WOW!"
"Ah!" I catapulted from by bed, screaming at the top of my lungs, throwing my covers off, looking around frantically...only to find Marco and Tom, bent over laughing their brains out. Only Tom had anough of his senses to turn off the car alarm
"That's priceless!" Marco said.
"You got me," I admitted as I smiled, I reached down to pull my blanket off before realizing.
"Dude! Your cover's hanging from the cieling fan!" Tom spat out before doubling down over from laughter, I looked up, and lo and behold, my cieling fan was still spinning...with my blanket hanging from the blades.
It was 6:40, I realized, making my smile grow wider. I looked at my alarm clock and confirmed it to be true. I was only off by a few minutes. When I focused a little bit more, I noticed a little funny feeling in my head, not bad, or impairment, I was feeling something entirely new, not an emotion, but something similar to my sense of balance.
Is that supposed to be my compass? It's kicking in so fast! I thought. I had no clue that spiked water was affecting me that much!
I closed my eyes and rested my head back on my pillow.
"He got you good!" Tom's words brought out a strange feeling in me, he literally acted not a glimmer different from how he's always been, and yet in the next instant when nobody was looking, he walked into a secret meeting where the topic was human organ harvesting. When I remembered his words, my smile grew smaller and disappeared, and everything felt colder.
((Hey, guys?)) Cassie said, causing me to flinch.
Oh, yeah, I realized. We can talk anytime anywhere.
((Ben's installed the filters to every faucet in our houses last night, and he wanted me to pass the news when you woke up, he says that you shouldn't drink water from any source other than your home's tap from now on.))
"Let's go, man!" Marco said, not reacting to Cassie's words, but in his eyes I saw that he heard it as well. "We gotta meet-up at The Disco Den!"
Huh?
As it turned out, the Old Bloods called a meeting, they had been busy last night and wanted to update us about what they found. Talk about work ethic.
When we met up at the barn, Ellen was with them, they said we should return to the fort, with little arguement we agreed.
"Ah," I said as we exited that long stairwell again. "Is the first batch of Animorph clothes ready?"
((Yep,)) Harry said, placing his hand on the wall to open the gate again. The eyes of the giant statues flashed again, reminding me of their eternal vigilance. ((I helped Ellen all throughout last night.))
"Surely, that's not all you have to tell us."
"Yeah," Ben said, holding his fingers up so close it looked like he was pinching the air. "There's a tiny bit more."
"I have a lead on the water poisoning," Alice said, her voice ecchoing in the giant cavernous space. "After a night of research at the library, I discovered the places where this region gets its water from, there are three sources, if we investigate those areas, we'll find the source of the poison there."
"That's awesome!" Rachel said as we walked through the opening in the hole. Moving into the miniature city, why was this place called a bunker? If this is a Pemalite bunker, then I wonder what kind of experience walking in one of their fortresses would be?
"Wait, Ben said you studied it all night," Cassie pointed out. "How did you stay past closing time?"
"Well, let's just say that I bugged in," Alice said with a smile.
"Breaking and entering a library when its closed in the dead of night," I commented. "Sounds dangerous."
On my second walkthrough, I noticed more details, the placing of pathways, lines on the road and floor where barricades and walls would erect themselves, tiny outcroppings on the balconies where defenders would fire on the intruders. And of course, that central stone pillar had irregularities in the design that might've been where alien technolgoy would've been placed.
"But there are three sources of water, and there are multiple steps for the water to be treated before it goes into the pipes, right? How do we know all of them aren't tainted?" Marco asked.
"We don't," Tobias said.
"Even if they are," Harry pointed out. "We'll remove the contamination in all of them. No matter how long it takes!"
"Is it worth it, though?" Marco asked.
"Are you saying we should skip eliminating a genuine threat to our survival?" Ben intensely accused as Rachel opened the door in the giant column.
Marco, realizing his mistake, put his hands between him and the aggressive mechanic as the doorway appeared, Harry skipped in, followed by Tobias who.
"A-ah, no, no, of course not. I'm sorry for not considering," Marco said.
I hope Ben cools down in the future.
"Even if the Anti-morph serum doesn't affect humanity," Alice pointed out. "It will affect everyone who drank that poison before touching the morphing cube, and even outside of that, whatever's injecting the poison into the water would definitely be able to administer something that would harm everything that drinks from it, and not just us."
"Real question," Rachel asked as the door closed behind us. "You said that the morphing tech is derived from Pemalite technology, right? What did you...sorry, the Andalites reverse engineer it from? Did the Pemalites already have a morphing tech of their own?"
"Exactly," Alice said.
"So the Pemalites might have a place in this facility where we can train our morphing power?" I asked eagerly.
"They do," Tobias said. "Hmm...so how exactly did you plan to gain control over your battle morphs?"
"Well, first up, Rachel would've morphed into an elephant," I explained as we continued down the dark spiraling hallway that started growing lighter. "And after she got control of that, we would morph our own battle morphs and she would forcibly wake us up."
"Speaking of, what kind of battle morphs do you intend to use?" Rachel asked.
Ben stopped as he heard the question.
"What kind of...battle morph...will I use?" Ben asked in bewilderment before shaking his head. "No. No I do not know. I'll pick something after seeing your team composition so as to benefit the entire group in the best way."
"Funny, that's my position as well," Marco pointed out as Ben continued walking. It wasn't long until we reached the lounge, Ellen and Harry were already seated, with a box in front of the elderly woman.
"Welcome back!" Ellen greeted us with a warm smile. "How was your journey?"
"It was nice," Marco said. "Not as much of a workout as last time."
"The others want to know what battle morphs we're choosing," Alice piped up, taking her seat at the table.
We all sat down at the table, ready to discuss more, my eyes were drawn to the box that Ellen had in front of herself on the table. And I also noticed that the wood this table was made from actually was made of something not of this world. The surface of the table had a few subtle difference in color that were hard to spot, unless you were looking for them, it actually had a greenish tint, with splotches of pink that looked vaguely like cough syrup.
"I figured I'd wait until I saw first-hand what they had to throw at us," Harry said, shrugging his shoulders. "In any case, I'm not going to choose right now, I'm still pretty not used to moving around, especially in a body that isn't my own."
"I'm going to be a Grizzly," Rachel said.
"Red Tailed Hawk," Tobias said. "The freedom of movement appeals to me, and we're going to need eyes in the sky."
"Hyena," Alice said. "Their bite force is scary."
"I have a wolf," Cassie quietly said.
"And I'm The Tiger," I clarified.
"That's a lotta hurt," Harry commented.
"Hm, a solid team, but lacking in the dexterity department," Ben muttered.
"I call Gorilla, then," Marco declared, raising his hand at his seat. "If they have alien armor, then what better way to get through it then with alien guns?"
"How do you know how to operate alien guns?" Harry asked.
"I was curious, ETCS let my Dad take me to one of their shooting ranges," Marco clarified. "A lot of interesting stuff over there."
"What kind of stuff?" Alice eagerly asked, leaning forward.
"I never got to fire their prototypes," Marco said. "But I got to shoot a lot of what the alien invasions the public are aware of used."
"But how different would Their weapons be?" Cassie asked. "How much more deadly? Insidious?"
We fell silent after that, imagining what kind of atrocious killing tools The Controllers would have at their disposal.
Thankfully Ellen broke the silence before our imaginations ran too far.
"The first article of clothing has been completed," Ellen said, sliding the box to Harry, who was closer to me.
"Cool!" Marco said. "Uh, whose is it?"
"Jake's," Harry said, pushing the box, making it slide across the table. I caught the cardboard container before it stopped, excited to see what she had made.
"Remember the tracker my Dad placed on that worm-like creature?" Tobias said before my fingers could remove the tabs that kept the box shut. He pulled out a piece of paper from his satchel, gently unfolded it, and laid it on the table for all of us to see.
"What's that?" Marco asked.
"Ew, it stinks!" Harry commented.
"A map," Tobias stated quietly, but with that dead coldness of his that I knew too well.
"A map," Alice said, all of her positive energy gone. "Of the State of California, marking all sites of significance...including the potential locations of the Controller's strongholds."
I leaned over and looked at the map in detail, it was a satelite image, one that depicted the state in photorealistic detail, pockmarked with changes that Tobias added. In tiny white print were the names of every town and city on the map, there were blue triangles (all of which were crossed out), green triangles, purple circles, blue circles, and purple circles, with red triangles all with multiple red lines connecting them, and with small numbers written down on the smallest sticky notes I've ever seen planted next to them.
"What do those symbols mean?" I asked.
"Blue triangles are the locations of Andalite outposts," Tobias clarified. "They've been crossed out because they've been abandoned, the locations scuttled by the inhabitants themselves, or assaulted and destroyed. The Green triangles are ETCS bases, blue circles are Pemalite installations like this one, purple are the known locations of Pemalite relics."
"The red triangles are Them," Alice finished. "That's likely not all of their locations, just the ones that the fiend we're tracking has stopped at multiple times."
"These red triangles are too close for my tastes," I noted quietly.
"It's clear cut," Marco said. "Who else is betting that their main stronghold is under our city?"
"We don't know that for certain," I pointed out.
"Do we?" Marco asked. "Take a look at the data! We're practically surrounded by alien hotels!"
"I agree," Rachel said. "What we have definitely seems to indicate that."
"That current point of data is not the priority right now. There's more," Tobias said, pointing to a specific spot of California's coast, one with a couple of red triangles marked down next to it, and four green triangles. "Take a look here."
"That's way too close to the ETCS," Marco observed, shaking his head.
"That's not it," Alice said. "After research, I've found that town actually holds the location of the desalination plant that hydrates half the state."
"And what town is that?" I asked.
Alice looked at me.
((Petrolia,)) She thoughtspoke to us all.
"Oh my God, there it is!" Marco said, throwing his hands into the air. "The name of that town just sounds like someplace where an oil spill occured, now there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that's where the poison's coming from!"
"But what does it mean?" Cassie asked. "Why would they poison the entire water supply this way?"
"It means they're gunning for morphers," Ben said. "Even a month after they destroyed the Andalites, they're still on the hunt."
"But why would they still be doing that?" I asked. "Didn't they kill almost all of them in the ambush?"
"You won't believe how hard to kill the morphing power makes you," Alice pointed out. "Once it's had a couple of years to work its magic on your body, it's unbelievable how slippery you can be...and disturbing how much you can survive."
"All of this is moot," Tobias pointed out, waving his hand.
"We're still not ready to undertake any mission outside of town, first up, you," Tobias pointed at us, Cassie, Marco, Rachel and me. "We're all going to need get battle morphs and get a handle on them, Marco especially needs to be given ample opportunity to catch up."
"Speaking of clothes," I said with a smile. "Is there any place I can try mine on?"
We left the lounge and turned into birds, it was a slightly difficult flight to the top of the cavern, however once we were up there we discovered that there were actually currents of air that propelled us across the facility into a network of tunnels. After a short time (in which I carried my clothes by a small string held by my peregrine talons) we took a left and found ourselves to be inside a massive room that was far better lit than the rest of the fortress.
The floor's main roads and plazas were covered in what looked like cracks and crevices that radiated an orange light, making it look like some sort of alien volcanic wasteland with a massive fire burning underneath. The entire place was lit up almost as bright as day,a llowing us to appreciate the entire place in its full glory.
((Whoah,)) I let out, and it was indeed huge. There were multiple gigantic pools lines in a row, there were squat looking towers whose bottoms were far deeper than the floor, tiny little aviaries, and a massive number of sheds, and hangars. Attached to the containment areas there were obstacle courses, which had hoops, hurdle bars, walls, gaps, and even what might've been a few traps alongside a multitude of other things I didn't know the purpose of.
((How big are those pools?)) Rachel asked.
((Big enough to safely morph a blue whale in them,)) Ben said.
((I can believe it,)) Cassie said.
((Olympic swimming pools have nothing on these things!)) Marco said.
((This facility was built by the Pemalites,)) Alice said. ((In order for their warriors to hone their morphing capabilities, and learn how to use the bodies that they intend to morph into.))
((And that includes changing rooms!)) Ellen said in a singsongy voice.
((Oh, thank God,)) Marco said.
((We'll set down over here!)) Tobias said, folding his wings and diving down into a very specific area that was right next to the containment towers. It had a raised platform with a lot of large black squares on them.
((Wait! Tobias! Slow-))
He hit one of the black squares on the raised platform that was in between a collection of buildings, the black square gave, dipping far down before it slowly reverted to its original flat shape. Tobias, in the form of a red-tailed hawk, ran off the the green and orange platform in the strange and almost comical hopping/skipping that is the running of a bird of prey, he walked down the the tiny set of stairs, perfect for birds like him to use, if the size of the steps are any indication.
((...down,)) I finished.
((Okay, that looks fun!)) Marco said.
((Too slow, bro!)) Harry said as he dived down, beating the next people to us.
We joined the others, each aiming for a single black square.
((Make sure to designate which square you'll be landing on!)) Ben warned as we fell to the earth.
I looked to my left and right and saw that nobody else would be landing on the particular square that I was aiming for.
The landing went perfectly smooth, I was suddenly surrounded by a black and soft wall enveloping me. The peregrine falcon in me panicked, I extended my wings briefly, trying to flap away before I got a grip on the animal. In a few seconds I was at ground level on the paltform, staring at the other birds of prey, the peregrine falcon inherently distrustful of the other's morphs.
((Welcome to Central Square!)) Marco said in his best imitation of an intercomm voice (which when translated into thought speech, was terrifyingly accurate), hopping his Osprey legs to the same ladder that Tobias used, I followed him. I alo caught Rachel walked to the edge of the platform, dragging the bag containing all of our clothes off the ledge after peering over it, first. ((Please leave your packages in a safe area before you engage with the ungodly gigantic swimming pools and unreasonably numerous changing rooms! Have a nice day!))
((Hm,)) Ben chuckled, his golden eagle face not showing any emotions. ((I like your sense of humor.))
I admit, it was somewhat funny to see Marco walk down the steps as a bird, and me following very closely in his footsteps doing the same, and the others were right behind me. I waddled down, one foot after the next.
((So, these Pemalite guys are pretty advanced, right?)) Marco asked.
((Yes,)) Ben said.
((Do you think they still live?)) Rachel asked.
((Oh, lemme check in with them,)) Ben said in a bitingly sarcastic tone. ((I'm sure I'll get a response ina couple hours!))
((If they were still alive, they wouldn't leave a buttload of relics behind, wouldn't they?)) I said.
((The remnants of their race congregated here, as evidenced by the colossal number of relics on this planet. They must've tried to bounce back, but obviously, it didn't work,)) Alice said.
((So, this is whole mountain fort is a bunker according to who?)) Marco asked as we began reaching the bottom of the stairs, our talons falling on cold hard stone.
((The Pemalites themselves classified this as a "Light Operator Class Fort,")) Tobias clarified.
((Light as in "small," Operator as in this place can carry out all basic military functions, including training,)) Ben specified.
((If this is a small fort,)) I asked as Tobias walked into view, in human form, holding the bag with our clothes in it. ((Then what would their maximum tier ground strongholds be like?))
((They used Extuaries,)) Ben curtly said.
((Or, rather, it was theorized they did,)) Harry pointed out. ((Extuaries are fortresses that were created from pocket dimensions, the gates to which are small and very well hidden, the only part of it that was in the real world was the gate, and that's the only part of it vulnerable to attack, they could be as big as you wanted them to be.))
((Really?)) Marco said.
((It's purely hypothetical,)) Alice said hastily as Tobias leaned down. ((Creating pocket dimensions was something that certain sources said the Pemalites could do, however, this was never confirmed to have been possible, nor have we ever found evidence that the Pemalites ever created Extuaries.))
"Alright," Tobias said. "Here are the rooms dedicated to training your morphing powers involving smaller creatures, they're also good changing rooms, I'll give you your clothes, since you will be using separate towers."
((Why not just leave it on the middle of the floor inside the building?)) Ellen said.
"Oh, good point," Tobias said, he turned around and walked up to the wall, touched it, and another doorway opened up. He walked inside the building but before the walls sealed the hole closed he turned around.
"There are doors placed so that even if you're morphed, you'll be able to go through, just do what you did to open Pemalite walls be-"
And it was a wall again.
I looked lower down, at ground level, and indeed I saw a series of golden squares, there were a multitude of squares, each one bigger than the last, and all of them inside each other. At some point multiple squares were surrounded by rectangles, and the rectangles themselves were inside a square the size of the entire side of the building. Thinking back on the landing pad, there was definitely a black square that was almost the same size as the pad itself.
((What were the Pemalites morphing that were that huge?)) I wondered as I walked forward.
Clawed feet tapping one after the other, I chose a square and walked towards it, right before going through the doorway I reflexively stopped. I blinked, and continued my march through.
At first the side of the wall was hard, but as I continued to walk it softened and eventually slid apart, giving way to my desire to enter.
The room was spacious, but not as bright as the massive chamber outside, there was one wall that had a lot of doors on it, the normal 'open with your hand' kind that also had the golden bordered morphing doors on them, the rest of the room was filled with what looked like strange raised platforms that looked like wrestling rings the edges of which were green, of course they had no borders and on each side of them a set of stairs led up to the platform. There was even some workout equipment in here!
((The stalls in which your clothes are in are marked,)) Tobias said, motioning towards the row of doors, in particular the ones that had sticky notes on them, The roomw as well lit enough that I could see the names that were written on them.
I started doing that skipping hop raptors do, man, walking as a bird sure is awkward.
"We're using this space in particular," Ben said, surprising me as he walked in, his footsteps so quiet that I couldn't notice. "Because it's the one I actually worked on, many parts of this place are old, dusty, and worn down, the entire base is in desperate need of maintenance, but I can only do so much to refurbish the surroundings and make the equipment we're no doubt going to need."
((If you're so pressed about your workload, why not recruit someone, train them to help you, use The Cube-)) Rachel suggested.
"NO!" Ben shouted, his voice in particular was loud, and echoed in the room, we all stopped in our tracks and stared at him in shock.
Ben blinked his eyes shut and started taking deep breaths.
"What Ben means," Ellen clarified, wearing that long and pale dress of hers. "Is that now is not the time."
"We haven't had time to sort ourselves out," Harry said. "We're walking in these training rooms for the first time ever, and you're already talking about bringing more people in."
((But don't we want as much help as possible?)) Cassie questioned, her Osprey feet hopping to the stall with an almost comical gait.
"Extra help does no good when we have to teach them what to do, while learning those lessons ourselves at the same time," Tobias said. "We'd be just as big as novices as they are, and that would hurt us all."
((Agreed,)) Marco said as we started entering the stalls marked with our names.
It was well lit in here, but not glaring, or particularly bright, there were those same glowing lava looking patterns on the floor here as on the main paths and plaza outside of this building. When I stepped on one of said cracks I actually felt warmth rising up from it. But in the stall there was a bench on the back, made of the same green and pink alien wood the table was made of, and my clothes were on there, neatly folded. The box containing my morphing outfit was present as well.
Nice, I thought as I began demorphing.
My falcon talons shortening into human toenails, knees reversing, my body straightening into a human's posture, feathers receding into my skin, which once again changed from a gray to the very pale pinkish color I knew for my entire life.
((I think it's for the best that before we recruit an army,)) I pointed out as my vision went dark temporarily, before I blinked and saw the world as a human once again. ((We learn how to be an army first.))
((You think we'll need an army?)) Cassie asked.
((Of course,)) I said quietly. ((Especially if we want to defeat Them.))
((They took out hundreds, maybe thousands of Andalite warriors in an ambush!)) Rachel said. ((These guys are more powerful than anything else we've ever seen!))
"Rachel's right," Tobias agreed as my hands and human hair returned. "These lesser invasions would be difficult enough, as for them others, they're not the first to invade Earth, but they're the first with the power to end it."
I walked to the bench and eagerly opened the box, only to stare inside of it for a few seconds and slowly raise what was inside up.
"Hey, can you guys hear me?" I asked.
"Is it about your clothes?" Ellen responded.
"Yeah," I said, looking at the underwear. "Is that all there is?"
"Take a look at what I'm wearing," Harry said. "That's what Ellen can make in the span of a single day. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to deal with it."
I shouldn't have felt betrayed, looking at that pair of briefs, it was the same shape as harry's underwear thing he was wearing, only it was definitely a different coloration. It had a red waistline with red squares jutting down into the dark blue middle, the leg holes were green, and the bottom portion of the underwear was black. I should've expected this to be what she could have after a day.
"So, how does it work?" I asked.
"Once you put it on, it bonds to your genetic code, it'll give a little zap," Ellen explained. "When you morph with it on, it will dissappear with the part of your body its attached to, and will reappear as you demorph."
I took the thing and squeezed it, the alien material gave a surprising amount of resistance, and yet it was really soft.
"It's...thick," I noted.
"Of course it's thick," Ben said. "It's not a piece of glorified underwear, it's morpher friendly clothing, and the first piece of legitimate armor you're gonna use."
"And it'll grow with you as you age," Ellen pointed out. "So you won't need to get a new one."
"What if its in the wash?" Rachel said. "Would we need to just wear that same dirty underwear all the time?"
"No, multiple articles will be made for each of you precisely to avoid that situation," Ellen clarified. "So you'll be able to wear them all the time without worrying about not washing it for too long."
I sighed as I lifted my foot, and lowered my hands to put this thing on.
No point in stalling.
When I put my leg through the hole, I did feel a tingly zap, but it was just like the cube, but didn't even have any alsting effects.
Not that different from putting on regular clothes. When my hands left and had fully put on the underwear, I looked at it for a few seconds.
Huh, not bad.
I reached forward for the rest of my clothes, but I stopped. What's the point of putting them back on just to take them off just a minute later?
I turned around and walked out of the door, pushing it open, allowing everyone to see me in all my glory.
Everyone else was out, fully clothes, Tobias was standing right at the wall.
"Wow, that looks nice!" Rachel complimented as Cassie turned away.
"Hey, Cassie," Marco pointed out, smiling from the second he saw me. "Haven't you been naked around eachother too much to be embarassed about what looks like a swimsuit?"
Cassie just blushed harder.
"Alright," Tobias said, touching the wall, causing it to give way into a door to the outside. From here I could see that it was a room somewhat better lit than this one, but not as well as the changing rooms. Wait.
"Is that the room dedicated to morph training?" Rachel asked.
"Yep," Harry said.
"And we'll be using it ourselves soon enough," Alice said, walking through the door.
"Wait a second, Alice," Marco asked, following her through the door, cutting in line. "Since when did you acquire a battle morph? The Gardens doesn't even have Hyenas!"
"At another zoo," She admitted.
"Hey, Marco," I asked, holding my hand out. "You coming with?"
"Nah, I'll stay here," he said. "I need to practice the ones I already have. The fly in particular."
"You caught a fly?" Rachel and Cassie asked, Cassie more impressed compared to Rachel's dry tone.
Those things are pretty hard to catch without squishing!
"Don't go swallowing horses," Rachel warned as the doorway closed, reverting to its state of being just another wall.
"We'll supervise your mastering of your chosen battle morphs, from here" Tobias said. "To awaken you from its mind, after that learning the various intricacies of your battle morph's body is a simple matter. If you need us to get you out of there, then make sure to call to us in thought speech."
And then I turned around to see the room in its full glory.
It was quite dusty, especially on the cieling, which had a number of bulbs dangling down from the cielings like lanterns, the main feature of the room itself was that it had a number of squat towers that somewhat resembled the old wooden forts that were built in the wild west days. The towers had multiple ridges, making it look like one piece was stacked one on top of the other, and then a staircase spiraling up said towers leading up to the top.
"That looks really high security," Cassie said.
"Of course," Alice said. "They morphed living weapons here."
"Dibs!" Rachel said while rushing to the closest tower, she jumped on the first step on its staircase, the little platform creaked before a small shower of dust floated down, another reminder of how old this place really was. "Whoah."
I took the next closest tower while Alice moved on, Cassie took a left to find her own dedicated morphing place. Then something occured to me.
((Hey. Since the Pemalites used the morphing technology,)) I asked everyone, stopping my descent on the stairs. ((Then did they leave behind any repositories of biomass for their warriors to use?))
((Maybe,)) Tobias said. ((Though we haven't found any, there's a lot of places we haven't looked yet.))
At that I continued my ascent, the metal clanking as my feet landed, I could hear the little sound of the dust being dislodged from the bottoms of the little platforms as I moved, the cold metal chilling the soles of my bare feet. My walk brought my around the corners of the square tower, I walked until I finally reached the rim of the little tower. I looked around in the direction where Cassie went and saw her conquer the last of her steps, rising to join me at the top. I looked out over the room to see Rachel already peering into her own tower, a good distance away from me, she waved at me and I waved back.
((Question,)) Rachel asked, letting the everyone hear. ((What are we supposed to do about our clothes?))
I raised my eyebrows and looked down into the pit, there was another spiraling walkway made out of some crystalline material that almost glowed a milk white, carved beside the this trail were cavities big enough to comfortably contain five people with stools placed inside them, however the floor of these were so dusty that placing anything inside them would not be a good idea, the chambers ran all the way down alongside the path, I could see its end, the floor stopped over a circular hole in the center so dark that I could not see anything in there, a pitch black abyss that I was completely sure was an even longer drop down than it looks. At the end of the crystaline path was an ooblong pod, most likely the way to get to and from the bottom of the pit.
When I ran Rachel's question through my head again, suddenly I didn't feel self-conscious about wearing only a strangely thick speedo.
((I think the only thing you can do is turn away when you start undressing,)) I said, taking a few steps forward, walking on the rim of the tower before moving to the crystalline trail leading into the pit, leaving the light of the larger chamber behind. ((I'm going to go down and start my training.))
As I continued, my soft feet gently falling on the warm and oddly soft crystal, the lights from above grew further and further away as I went deeper into the containment chamber. Down and down I walked into the spiraling staircase, which goes further down even than the foot of the stairs I took to get here, a lot deeper.
The only sound in this little tower was the falling of my feet, I looked around at the pods on the inside and as I walkied I brushed my hand on it, and beyond that layer of dust I felt little scratch marks and tiny indents. I stopped and looked at the cavity proper, the mark my hand left on it visible even in this dimmer lighting, I looked down to see tiny little particles floating above the gently glowing path my bare feet were planted on, and the layer of dust I had brushed off was there as well. The dust I had brushed away was caked so hard that it was not the fine particles that would gather on something you left in the closet for too long, but they were more akin to rocks, broken by the gentlest touch of the first person who happened to finally enter this tower after so long.
How long ago was this place built? I wondered, my feelings of wonder giving way to a respect, reveration for this place, whose builders and occupants had long passed. How long ago was it since the last Pemalite who used this tower walked here? And likely touched this exact wall in the way I just did?
All of a sudden, I felt sad. The last inhabitants of this place likely didn't abandon this place all at once, when this mountain bunker was finally deserted, it must have looked the exact same way it did when we had entered this place for the first time, dark, silent, and empty as a tomb, the last lone young Pemalite Warrior who trained in these chambers must have felt lonely, knowing that this proving ground would've hosted thousands of them in its hayday, and yet they were the last one to graduate from this boot camp, ever.
With nothing else to do I looked down back at the path and continued onward, onlyt accompanied by the reverbe of my footsteps in the small cavernous silence, down and down I went further, circling like some falcon looking for his next meal, hiding in the meadow grass.
((We're in the control center,)) Ben spoke up. ((We can see into the pits themselves, everyone is good to begin.))
I only blinked in response to the words, I had almost reached the pod. When I finally got there the ambient light from above was drowned out by the white gentle glow of the crystal path, when I looked up I could only see a dim bluish sky from down here, it looked like I was at the bottom of a cave. The final hole marking the entrance to the pit where I would morph was a large circular hole with flickering holographic lines crossing over it, saying words in an indescribable alien alphabet. The pod I would use to descend was bigger than it looked from so high up, large enough to safely hold a grizzly bear comfortably, it was a pure white and had a good number of cables connected to it, they anchored the ooblong shape to the floor, the wall, and the cieling above me.
I put my hand to the pod, it felt smooth yet a little rough at the same time, but touching it was freezing cold. I was unsure of how to proceed, then I remembered Tobias' instructions on how to operate this technology.
Just put your hand on it, and command it to interface with you. And from then on keep touching it until you're done giving it order.
Taking a deep breath, I sent the out the order.
Activate.
Suddenly, my hanbd melted into the pod, for a second I panicked, thinking that the device was trying to eat me, and yanked my limb out of the device. The white outer shell of the pod rippled before a blue light flashed and faded, and the surface of the object was still.
Blinking in embarassment, I reached my hand forward again, felt the smooth and rough surface again, and repeated the activation process. My hand melted through the pod's white skin, and I pushed deeper, submerging my arm up to my elbow before it resolidified. I looked over the ledge, which was quite a distance down, and tried yanking y arm out of the pod, it was stuck in there good.
Realizing how this would help me enter and exit, I walked up to the edge of the white glowing path, curled my toes over the edge, took a deep breath, bent my knees and kicked off of the ledge.
I hung over the pit for a second, dangling like some sort of cat toy before whatever mechanism keeping the cables in place gave out, dropping me into the darkness.
And that's that! We see the Proving Grounds of the Mountain Bunker. I particularly like the Mountain Bunker explicitly because it's a fortress created with morph capable occupants in mind. Also, wow, was posting the 2nd chapter of the month not even a week after the 1st a mistake! Needless to say this time there will be more consistency in when the chapters are uploaded, this one is slated for December 1st, expect the next one to come out by the 17th, and from then on my upload times will be more consistent.