Recap: Nothing much has happened, besides their getting the power to morph and the Anis searching for them. How much of this are you predicting? I'm just wondering, because I said they would have a lot in common with the Anis, but could you say in the review whether it was too predictable that you knew it'd happen, or it was so predictable you didn't expect it, or did it just surprise you? Please tell me. Curiosity has beaten me again.
centerChapter 5/center
The next day at school, I was kind of out of it. I wasn't sure if all of the Controllers had followed me. Maybe some Controllers had gone after the others. Thanks to Alexis, who got us to school late, I didn't find out about Cameron until second period.
I was in history class, nodding away as I listened -more or less- to a lecture about how we shouldn't flush toilet paper down the toilets. Then a crumpled up paper ball hit me in the arm.
I looked around. Cameron sits right next to me in history. I had just been too sleepy to notice him sitting there. I don't know why he chose to throw a paper ball at me when he could have just thumped me, though.
He looked at me for a second. I guess he was trying to see if I was okay. I looked at him, nodded, and then fell asleep, feeling a bit better.
After class, he waited for me by the door.
"Hey, you okay?"
"Yeah. Did they chase you last night?"
"They? No, they didn't. But they did put this in the morning paper."
He handed me a crumpled piece of newspaper. I uncrumpled it. Some of the ink in the creases had been rubbed off a bit, but not enough that I couldn't tell what it said. "'City police are looking for children who were in the parking lot behind the abandoned Will Sikes Broadcasting station.' Why would they be looking for us?" I asked Cameron.
"Duh. Think about what we saw last night, Chris. And if what that thing said is true, they probably want to annihilate anyone who saw something."
"And tell someone else about it." I read the rest of the article. "'The children set up a bonfire without adult supervision. People reported they had seen a UFO. The police believe that what they saw was actually the smoke from the fire, possibly with bits of debris. When police arrived on the scene, the children ran away.'"
I crumpled on the piece of paper. I felt like punching somebody. Instead, I threw my books in my locker. "But that isn't true." I still couldn't believe it. "We could have come up with better lies."
Cameron nodded in agreement. Then shook his head to get to thinking straight again. I could tell he hadn't gotten much sleep either. "Of course it isn't true. Don't you get it? They're saying that we did something wrong. That way, ordinary people will help them search for us without even knowing it."
"Man. You know what the worst part of this is? The cops could have told the truth, and if that was the case, people at the newspaper would have to be Con-" I lowered my voice and looked around "-trollers. No, because then the cops could raise an uproar. So the cops must be Controllers."
Cameron nodded. "Or both."
I felt my stomach tighten. I had a feeling about this. And it wasn't good.
What to do next? What was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to do anything? Could I just walk away? Could we?
I sighed. I was having second thoughts. Maybe the others were, too. The only thing I could see fit to do was to take a vote. It was only fair.
"Okay, after school, we get together, go someplace we think will be quiet enough, and we can talk there. We need to take a vote. Decide what we're going to do about all this."
Cameron just nodded. "Yeah. The others can vote, but Chris, my vote's no. I can't do it."
For a second I just stood there. What if the others voted no? What if one person didn't? And why and how had Cameron decided so quickly? Oh, well. That was his decision.
"Okay. I guess we can talk to the others after school."
Then we went to our own classes.
Chapter 6
"So, let me get this straight. We have to go to the mall, where no one would notice a bunch of kids talking and hanging out, and then vote on whether we want to fight to save the world. Is that it?"
"Basically." Samantha and I looked at each other. Hardy and Laurel were behind us, listening as I tried to fill in Samantha. Cameron wasn't coming. He had already made his decision.
"Oh."
I started talking again. About absolutely nothing. It was kind of weird. I didn't want to say anything, but like an idiot, words just gushed out and I couldn't stop them. "Originally it was supposed to be in a quiet, isolated place, kind of. But I thought about it and decided that people were less likely to notice a bunch of kids at the mall or something."
"Smart."
Laurel spoke up from behind us. "Can we go shopping while we're there?"
We ignored her. I took a few steps to get us started in the direction of the mall. Wait a sec. "Which mall?" I asked.
Samantha answered first. "The Falls was cool."
"They might be looking for us there," Laurel pointed out.
Hardy said, "Lightning never strikes the same place twice."
"Huh?"
Hardy made a face. "Or is it 'Cats never return to the scene of the crime?' No, that isn't it. Is it? How about 'Lightning never returns to the scene of the crime."
Poor kid, I thought. I wasn't really in the mood for "What was it again?" so I said, "Whatever."
That put an end to that.
"Out of curiosity," Laurel said softly. "But has anybody tried it out yet?"
"Tried what out?" I knew what she meant, I was just hoping she didn't mean what I thought she meant.
"Well, the alien said we could morph, didn't she? Has anyone tried out morphing?"
Samantha shrugged. Hardy muttered something that sounded like a no. I said. "Not yet."
Not yet. Man, that sounded like everything was real. It couldn't be real though. Not a chance.
But then the vision of the Taxxon came drifting back. Of the guy in the jeep. Of Visser Three jeering, mocking, and then screaming.
Suddenly, I shivered. I was pretty sure that maybe this was real.
"So, what do we do?" Samantha asked.
Hardy added, "Yeah, I know. I mean, we're just kids. Up against some advanced aliens, who are far more advanced than any human being that ever walked the earth."
"Preposterous," Laurel muttered.
"Thank you, Ms. Optimism," I muttered.
It was then that Hardy got this idea. Personally, I wasn't too wild about it. "Hey," he said. "I have an idea." Right about then I felt like I would punch him. Because deep down, I think I knew what his idea was. "Why don't we try this whole morphing thing, and if it works, we go and crash the Yeerks' little invasion plans?"
"And how do you propose that," I asked dryly.
"Oh, come on. It'll be fun. Like 'Independence Day'."
"I see," Samantha said. "So you think we should get some high-tech computer virus and just mess us the Yeerks computers. Right?"
"Right."
"We don't even know if they have real computers."
"All aliens have computers," Hardy argued. "It's practically a law. Correction. It is a law. All aliens must have computers."
Behind us, I heard Laurel mutter "Preposterous," again. A second later, I heard her clear her throat. "Doesn't it make more sense to just go on a spy mission first?"
We stopped and just stood there for a few seconds.
"You know," Hardy said slowly. "She actually has a point. Then we would know how strong they are. Maybe."
I couldn't help noticing the "Maybe."
"And I think we should try this morphing thing out first, too."
Hardy and Samantha looked at each other. I swear they had some sort of telepathic connection or something. "Okay, we try this thing out first," Samantha said. "Then- if it works, we go on the spy mission."
Hardy waited for an instant after she finished. "And then could we blow them up?"
I smiled. "So I guess we're getting into this, huh?"
Hardy and Samantha smiled and gave each other a high-five. "Getting into this?" Hardy echoed. "Hey, man, we just want to kick some alien butt."
I laughed. We all did. It was kind of like we didn't care that we knew about something no one else knew about. And that we were the only ones left to fight.
"Since the schedule has been changed," Laurel said slowly, "and since we are on our way to the mall..."
"So, what?" I asked. "We're just going to blow this whole thing and hang out."
Laurel shook her head. "Not that, just, put it off a bit. Enjoy being kids one last little, itsy-bitsy day." She looked at me with the big, puppy dog eyes. "Please? Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeassssse?"
I rolled my eyes. "I guess." Besides, saving the world could wait till tomorrow. After all, we were still kids.
Chapter 7
The next morning, at four o'clock in the morning, I woke up. I didn't want to wake up, since it was Wednesday and I seriously doubted the school week would ever end.
Chris. Hey, Chris! Wake up.
No problem, Chris. You're dreaming. Go back to sleep.
The scratching sounds got louder. Chris. Wake up!
I blinked. It was still dark. My house is two stories. I'm in a corner room on the second story. My bed is shoved into the outside corner; the door is on the inside corner; the closet is on the wall next to it, and by the wall next to my bed are some shelves. Windows are on both walls.
I closed my eyes and opened them again. There were two cats on my windowsill.
Chris. Come on. Let us in. The cats started pawing again at the window screen. I rolled over. It was just a dream. The alien was the only one who could speak through their thoughts like that.
All of a sudden, I was back in the parking lot. I hated it there. I saw Visser Three in his huge, threatening morph. I saw him stumble. I saw Celestia just sit there- or maybe she just stood there. Two hours...
I sat up and forced myself to wake up enough that I wouldn't have to think about it.
Chris. Come on, man. Let us- Let me in. It's Hardy.
Jerk, the other cat told Hardy. Come on, Chris. Don't listen to him. Let us both in. Or just me.
No way. Why don't you go someplace and cough up a hair ball?
"Oh, brother," I muttered. I got out of bed. I wasn't conscious enough to realize that the idea of Hardy and Laurel sitting on my windowsill at four o'clock in the morning in cat shapes and talking to me telepathically was strange. So, without really knowing what the heck I was doing, I went over to the window and opened it. Then I collapsed into my bed.
Oh, that helps. Chris? Man, there's a screen.
Come on, Chris. It took us almost an hour to find out how to morph. And we finally did, too. Then it took us about twenty minutes to get over here. Five minutes for us to figure out how to get in. Seven minutes to climb the stupid tree. And now we've been up here for about a gazillion years.
In short, we've been in morph about fifty minutes. Hey, Chris. Hello-o-o. Earth to Chris. This is Hardy. Please let us come in. Oh, forget it. OPEN THE WINDOW SCREEN!!
I was awake now. With a slight headache from Hardy yelling in head, of course. "All right, all right." I went to the window again, with a faint memory of opening the window already.
I walked- okay, if you must know, it was more like I stumbled- over to the window. As soon as I got there, I told the two cats, "You know, I already thought I was nuts when that alien ship or whatever crashed. And you are not helping."
Whatever. Chris, you had better let us in, or I'll... I'll... It was the cat on the right whining. No doubt it was the Laurel cat.
"You'll what?" I taunted. "Tell your mommy on me?"
That isn't funny, she muttered.
Hardy, the cat on the left, shook his head. Come on, Chris. Do you wanna know why you don't see sensible cats walking around really, really early in the morning? It's because their butts get soaked by the dew. And I'm telling you, the dew this morning is cold. As in freezing.
I rolled my eyes. So why did he want to come into my room? To warm his butt by the fire? I had the upper hand in a great prank, and I was probably abusing the privilege.
Come on, man. Almost an hour, now.
I frowned. Half of the limit. No more joking. "The screen will push outward." Then, after what I considered a warning, I unhooked the latches at the bottom of the screen and shoved it towards the cats. They jumped on the tree limb. I hadn't noticed before that the tree next to my window was strong enough to support a cat's weight. Apparently it was.
I jumped myself when Laurel and Hardy hissed and tried to claw me. The screen thudded against the wood of the window, and I made a grab for it, hoping it hadn't woken anybody up.
The cats seemed to regain themselves and crawled between the half open window screen and window frame.
Sorry about that, man, Hardy apologized. I guess it makes sense.
I stretched my arms. "At this point, nothing makes sense." I sat on my bed.
Then before my eyes, one of the cats started to change. First it grew until it reached the size of maybe a lioness. I had seen a photo of them a while ago on the discovery channel. Sorry to stray from the subject.
It's kind of gross to describe, so if you don't like gross stuff, you might want to skip the next paragraph.
Like I said, the cat grew to the size of a lioness. Next this dark blond hair grew out. I mean, it was like a cross between Marilyn Manson after a bleaching problem and Simba, the little Disney character. The arms and legs got really fat, and the skin started shriveling up. Then, they shot out. As simple as that. Where there had previously been these fat wrinkled things that had little stubby fingers and toes, there were suddenly long pieces of spaghetti chopped in five ways at the ends. Just a suddenly, they shrank to normal size. The head started to change. The eyes grew bigger and rounder, but they stayed blue. The fur on the face shrank and pink skin took its place. As a matter of fact, the fur everywhere pretty much disappeared. The half cat/half human got skinnier and the tail disappeared with a little Shi-WOPP. And then Laurel stood up in front of me wearing a white-silver skin tight gymnastics suit with dashes of hot pink, bright blue, purple, and sea-green on it.
"I think what Hardy means," she said, as if she were perfectly normal, "is that it makes sense that when you become the cat, you are the cat."
"Huh?" That did not make sense. Because if they were cats, how were the cats smart enough to talk back?
Behind Laurel, I saw another cat growing. This one had dark curly hair and dark brown eyes. "Okay. Chris, it isn't like you are the cat exactly. I mean, you are, its just that you're in the cat's body, and the cat's mind is there, but yours is, too. Kind of like half and half."
"Oh, well, that makes a lot more sense," I said sarcastically.
Hardy shrugged. "When you try it you'll understand."
I smiled. No way was he going to get me to do that.
Hardy went on. "It's really cool. Acquiring is like pulling the DNA out of the animal." For a second, he looked like he was going to go on. Instead, he asked "What time is it?"
I looked at my clock. "Twenty past four."
Laurel groaned. Hardy smiled.
"I guess we have to get going."
"So soon?" I asked, intending for it to be a joke. They didn't laugh.
"Well, Laurel and I are in the habit of waking up at five in the morning. We're on a schedule."
"Five? In the morning? Seriously? When do you sleep?" I groaned.
"Between nine o'clock at night and five in the morning, of course."
"Whatever. You know what? Just go. Get your butts out of here and go to sleep."
Laurel did a little bow to me. "Yes, great leader."
Huh? Apparently I was missing something. "What do you mean, 'Great leader'? Oh, I get it." It had just then dawned on me. "That was sarcasm."
Laurel looked at me. "I nominated you for leader of our little group." Then she began to morph. I turned away when her ears and eyes changed. This was just a little bit too weird.
"We don't even know if we're fighting yet."
Laurel spoke in the thought-speak again. I'm in. Hardy's in. I'm pretty sure Sam is in. That makes three. I don't know about Cameron. Either way, the majority is fighting.
"Whatever." I heard two soft thumps on my windowsill.
AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
I ran to the window and looked down. One of the cats was struggling to sit up on the grass below.
HARDY! You moved the branch, you jerk! I'll GET YOU!!!!! Then Laurel was up and running.
Who? Me? Little, innocent Hardy? No way. And in my head alone, he said, Well, maybe a little way.
I smiled. How did I know the thought-speak was to me alone? How could they use it? What was it like to be an animal? Like a cat. Or a dog. My dog Presley?
Why not? After all, Hardy and Laurel weren't the only ones who had the power.
Coming up: You guessed it, Chris is going to try and morph. We still have yet to find out why the Ellimist is doing this, and I'm hoping it'll surprise you. There will be varying degrees of predictability, hopefully, with the lowest point being non-existent. As you may have guessed, the Anis didn't show up here. They will show, though. And the newbies have their first fight ahead of them still. *tsk tsk* I wrote about these guys and I don't like how they can be so STUPID! Don't tell them I said that- these are kind of real people. Oh, yeah. Before I forget: Copyright 2001
Oh, and Hardy and Laurel will soon be getting their names changed although they don't know it yet. If anyone would like to email me or leave name suggestions in the review, I'd be grateful. Thanks.
centerChapter 5/center
The next day at school, I was kind of out of it. I wasn't sure if all of the Controllers had followed me. Maybe some Controllers had gone after the others. Thanks to Alexis, who got us to school late, I didn't find out about Cameron until second period.
I was in history class, nodding away as I listened -more or less- to a lecture about how we shouldn't flush toilet paper down the toilets. Then a crumpled up paper ball hit me in the arm.
I looked around. Cameron sits right next to me in history. I had just been too sleepy to notice him sitting there. I don't know why he chose to throw a paper ball at me when he could have just thumped me, though.
He looked at me for a second. I guess he was trying to see if I was okay. I looked at him, nodded, and then fell asleep, feeling a bit better.
After class, he waited for me by the door.
"Hey, you okay?"
"Yeah. Did they chase you last night?"
"They? No, they didn't. But they did put this in the morning paper."
He handed me a crumpled piece of newspaper. I uncrumpled it. Some of the ink in the creases had been rubbed off a bit, but not enough that I couldn't tell what it said. "'City police are looking for children who were in the parking lot behind the abandoned Will Sikes Broadcasting station.' Why would they be looking for us?" I asked Cameron.
"Duh. Think about what we saw last night, Chris. And if what that thing said is true, they probably want to annihilate anyone who saw something."
"And tell someone else about it." I read the rest of the article. "'The children set up a bonfire without adult supervision. People reported they had seen a UFO. The police believe that what they saw was actually the smoke from the fire, possibly with bits of debris. When police arrived on the scene, the children ran away.'"
I crumpled on the piece of paper. I felt like punching somebody. Instead, I threw my books in my locker. "But that isn't true." I still couldn't believe it. "We could have come up with better lies."
Cameron nodded in agreement. Then shook his head to get to thinking straight again. I could tell he hadn't gotten much sleep either. "Of course it isn't true. Don't you get it? They're saying that we did something wrong. That way, ordinary people will help them search for us without even knowing it."
"Man. You know what the worst part of this is? The cops could have told the truth, and if that was the case, people at the newspaper would have to be Con-" I lowered my voice and looked around "-trollers. No, because then the cops could raise an uproar. So the cops must be Controllers."
Cameron nodded. "Or both."
I felt my stomach tighten. I had a feeling about this. And it wasn't good.
What to do next? What was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to do anything? Could I just walk away? Could we?
I sighed. I was having second thoughts. Maybe the others were, too. The only thing I could see fit to do was to take a vote. It was only fair.
"Okay, after school, we get together, go someplace we think will be quiet enough, and we can talk there. We need to take a vote. Decide what we're going to do about all this."
Cameron just nodded. "Yeah. The others can vote, but Chris, my vote's no. I can't do it."
For a second I just stood there. What if the others voted no? What if one person didn't? And why and how had Cameron decided so quickly? Oh, well. That was his decision.
"Okay. I guess we can talk to the others after school."
Then we went to our own classes.
Chapter 6
"So, let me get this straight. We have to go to the mall, where no one would notice a bunch of kids talking and hanging out, and then vote on whether we want to fight to save the world. Is that it?"
"Basically." Samantha and I looked at each other. Hardy and Laurel were behind us, listening as I tried to fill in Samantha. Cameron wasn't coming. He had already made his decision.
"Oh."
I started talking again. About absolutely nothing. It was kind of weird. I didn't want to say anything, but like an idiot, words just gushed out and I couldn't stop them. "Originally it was supposed to be in a quiet, isolated place, kind of. But I thought about it and decided that people were less likely to notice a bunch of kids at the mall or something."
"Smart."
Laurel spoke up from behind us. "Can we go shopping while we're there?"
We ignored her. I took a few steps to get us started in the direction of the mall. Wait a sec. "Which mall?" I asked.
Samantha answered first. "The Falls was cool."
"They might be looking for us there," Laurel pointed out.
Hardy said, "Lightning never strikes the same place twice."
"Huh?"
Hardy made a face. "Or is it 'Cats never return to the scene of the crime?' No, that isn't it. Is it? How about 'Lightning never returns to the scene of the crime."
Poor kid, I thought. I wasn't really in the mood for "What was it again?" so I said, "Whatever."
That put an end to that.
"Out of curiosity," Laurel said softly. "But has anybody tried it out yet?"
"Tried what out?" I knew what she meant, I was just hoping she didn't mean what I thought she meant.
"Well, the alien said we could morph, didn't she? Has anyone tried out morphing?"
Samantha shrugged. Hardy muttered something that sounded like a no. I said. "Not yet."
Not yet. Man, that sounded like everything was real. It couldn't be real though. Not a chance.
But then the vision of the Taxxon came drifting back. Of the guy in the jeep. Of Visser Three jeering, mocking, and then screaming.
Suddenly, I shivered. I was pretty sure that maybe this was real.
"So, what do we do?" Samantha asked.
Hardy added, "Yeah, I know. I mean, we're just kids. Up against some advanced aliens, who are far more advanced than any human being that ever walked the earth."
"Preposterous," Laurel muttered.
"Thank you, Ms. Optimism," I muttered.
It was then that Hardy got this idea. Personally, I wasn't too wild about it. "Hey," he said. "I have an idea." Right about then I felt like I would punch him. Because deep down, I think I knew what his idea was. "Why don't we try this whole morphing thing, and if it works, we go and crash the Yeerks' little invasion plans?"
"And how do you propose that," I asked dryly.
"Oh, come on. It'll be fun. Like 'Independence Day'."
"I see," Samantha said. "So you think we should get some high-tech computer virus and just mess us the Yeerks computers. Right?"
"Right."
"We don't even know if they have real computers."
"All aliens have computers," Hardy argued. "It's practically a law. Correction. It is a law. All aliens must have computers."
Behind us, I heard Laurel mutter "Preposterous," again. A second later, I heard her clear her throat. "Doesn't it make more sense to just go on a spy mission first?"
We stopped and just stood there for a few seconds.
"You know," Hardy said slowly. "She actually has a point. Then we would know how strong they are. Maybe."
I couldn't help noticing the "Maybe."
"And I think we should try this morphing thing out first, too."
Hardy and Samantha looked at each other. I swear they had some sort of telepathic connection or something. "Okay, we try this thing out first," Samantha said. "Then- if it works, we go on the spy mission."
Hardy waited for an instant after she finished. "And then could we blow them up?"
I smiled. "So I guess we're getting into this, huh?"
Hardy and Samantha smiled and gave each other a high-five. "Getting into this?" Hardy echoed. "Hey, man, we just want to kick some alien butt."
I laughed. We all did. It was kind of like we didn't care that we knew about something no one else knew about. And that we were the only ones left to fight.
"Since the schedule has been changed," Laurel said slowly, "and since we are on our way to the mall..."
"So, what?" I asked. "We're just going to blow this whole thing and hang out."
Laurel shook her head. "Not that, just, put it off a bit. Enjoy being kids one last little, itsy-bitsy day." She looked at me with the big, puppy dog eyes. "Please? Pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeassssse?"
I rolled my eyes. "I guess." Besides, saving the world could wait till tomorrow. After all, we were still kids.
Chapter 7
The next morning, at four o'clock in the morning, I woke up. I didn't want to wake up, since it was Wednesday and I seriously doubted the school week would ever end.
Chris. Hey, Chris! Wake up.
No problem, Chris. You're dreaming. Go back to sleep.
The scratching sounds got louder. Chris. Wake up!
I blinked. It was still dark. My house is two stories. I'm in a corner room on the second story. My bed is shoved into the outside corner; the door is on the inside corner; the closet is on the wall next to it, and by the wall next to my bed are some shelves. Windows are on both walls.
I closed my eyes and opened them again. There were two cats on my windowsill.
Chris. Come on. Let us in. The cats started pawing again at the window screen. I rolled over. It was just a dream. The alien was the only one who could speak through their thoughts like that.
All of a sudden, I was back in the parking lot. I hated it there. I saw Visser Three in his huge, threatening morph. I saw him stumble. I saw Celestia just sit there- or maybe she just stood there. Two hours...
I sat up and forced myself to wake up enough that I wouldn't have to think about it.
Chris. Come on, man. Let us- Let me in. It's Hardy.
Jerk, the other cat told Hardy. Come on, Chris. Don't listen to him. Let us both in. Or just me.
No way. Why don't you go someplace and cough up a hair ball?
"Oh, brother," I muttered. I got out of bed. I wasn't conscious enough to realize that the idea of Hardy and Laurel sitting on my windowsill at four o'clock in the morning in cat shapes and talking to me telepathically was strange. So, without really knowing what the heck I was doing, I went over to the window and opened it. Then I collapsed into my bed.
Oh, that helps. Chris? Man, there's a screen.
Come on, Chris. It took us almost an hour to find out how to morph. And we finally did, too. Then it took us about twenty minutes to get over here. Five minutes for us to figure out how to get in. Seven minutes to climb the stupid tree. And now we've been up here for about a gazillion years.
In short, we've been in morph about fifty minutes. Hey, Chris. Hello-o-o. Earth to Chris. This is Hardy. Please let us come in. Oh, forget it. OPEN THE WINDOW SCREEN!!
I was awake now. With a slight headache from Hardy yelling in head, of course. "All right, all right." I went to the window again, with a faint memory of opening the window already.
I walked- okay, if you must know, it was more like I stumbled- over to the window. As soon as I got there, I told the two cats, "You know, I already thought I was nuts when that alien ship or whatever crashed. And you are not helping."
Whatever. Chris, you had better let us in, or I'll... I'll... It was the cat on the right whining. No doubt it was the Laurel cat.
"You'll what?" I taunted. "Tell your mommy on me?"
That isn't funny, she muttered.
Hardy, the cat on the left, shook his head. Come on, Chris. Do you wanna know why you don't see sensible cats walking around really, really early in the morning? It's because their butts get soaked by the dew. And I'm telling you, the dew this morning is cold. As in freezing.
I rolled my eyes. So why did he want to come into my room? To warm his butt by the fire? I had the upper hand in a great prank, and I was probably abusing the privilege.
Come on, man. Almost an hour, now.
I frowned. Half of the limit. No more joking. "The screen will push outward." Then, after what I considered a warning, I unhooked the latches at the bottom of the screen and shoved it towards the cats. They jumped on the tree limb. I hadn't noticed before that the tree next to my window was strong enough to support a cat's weight. Apparently it was.
I jumped myself when Laurel and Hardy hissed and tried to claw me. The screen thudded against the wood of the window, and I made a grab for it, hoping it hadn't woken anybody up.
The cats seemed to regain themselves and crawled between the half open window screen and window frame.
Sorry about that, man, Hardy apologized. I guess it makes sense.
I stretched my arms. "At this point, nothing makes sense." I sat on my bed.
Then before my eyes, one of the cats started to change. First it grew until it reached the size of maybe a lioness. I had seen a photo of them a while ago on the discovery channel. Sorry to stray from the subject.
It's kind of gross to describe, so if you don't like gross stuff, you might want to skip the next paragraph.
Like I said, the cat grew to the size of a lioness. Next this dark blond hair grew out. I mean, it was like a cross between Marilyn Manson after a bleaching problem and Simba, the little Disney character. The arms and legs got really fat, and the skin started shriveling up. Then, they shot out. As simple as that. Where there had previously been these fat wrinkled things that had little stubby fingers and toes, there were suddenly long pieces of spaghetti chopped in five ways at the ends. Just a suddenly, they shrank to normal size. The head started to change. The eyes grew bigger and rounder, but they stayed blue. The fur on the face shrank and pink skin took its place. As a matter of fact, the fur everywhere pretty much disappeared. The half cat/half human got skinnier and the tail disappeared with a little Shi-WOPP. And then Laurel stood up in front of me wearing a white-silver skin tight gymnastics suit with dashes of hot pink, bright blue, purple, and sea-green on it.
"I think what Hardy means," she said, as if she were perfectly normal, "is that it makes sense that when you become the cat, you are the cat."
"Huh?" That did not make sense. Because if they were cats, how were the cats smart enough to talk back?
Behind Laurel, I saw another cat growing. This one had dark curly hair and dark brown eyes. "Okay. Chris, it isn't like you are the cat exactly. I mean, you are, its just that you're in the cat's body, and the cat's mind is there, but yours is, too. Kind of like half and half."
"Oh, well, that makes a lot more sense," I said sarcastically.
Hardy shrugged. "When you try it you'll understand."
I smiled. No way was he going to get me to do that.
Hardy went on. "It's really cool. Acquiring is like pulling the DNA out of the animal." For a second, he looked like he was going to go on. Instead, he asked "What time is it?"
I looked at my clock. "Twenty past four."
Laurel groaned. Hardy smiled.
"I guess we have to get going."
"So soon?" I asked, intending for it to be a joke. They didn't laugh.
"Well, Laurel and I are in the habit of waking up at five in the morning. We're on a schedule."
"Five? In the morning? Seriously? When do you sleep?" I groaned.
"Between nine o'clock at night and five in the morning, of course."
"Whatever. You know what? Just go. Get your butts out of here and go to sleep."
Laurel did a little bow to me. "Yes, great leader."
Huh? Apparently I was missing something. "What do you mean, 'Great leader'? Oh, I get it." It had just then dawned on me. "That was sarcasm."
Laurel looked at me. "I nominated you for leader of our little group." Then she began to morph. I turned away when her ears and eyes changed. This was just a little bit too weird.
"We don't even know if we're fighting yet."
Laurel spoke in the thought-speak again. I'm in. Hardy's in. I'm pretty sure Sam is in. That makes three. I don't know about Cameron. Either way, the majority is fighting.
"Whatever." I heard two soft thumps on my windowsill.
AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
I ran to the window and looked down. One of the cats was struggling to sit up on the grass below.
HARDY! You moved the branch, you jerk! I'll GET YOU!!!!! Then Laurel was up and running.
Who? Me? Little, innocent Hardy? No way. And in my head alone, he said, Well, maybe a little way.
I smiled. How did I know the thought-speak was to me alone? How could they use it? What was it like to be an animal? Like a cat. Or a dog. My dog Presley?
Why not? After all, Hardy and Laurel weren't the only ones who had the power.
Coming up: You guessed it, Chris is going to try and morph. We still have yet to find out why the Ellimist is doing this, and I'm hoping it'll surprise you. There will be varying degrees of predictability, hopefully, with the lowest point being non-existent. As you may have guessed, the Anis didn't show up here. They will show, though. And the newbies have their first fight ahead of them still. *tsk tsk* I wrote about these guys and I don't like how they can be so STUPID! Don't tell them I said that- these are kind of real people. Oh, yeah. Before I forget: Copyright 2001
Oh, and Hardy and Laurel will soon be getting their names changed although they don't know it yet. If anyone would like to email me or leave name suggestions in the review, I'd be grateful. Thanks.