This is my first fanfic. Constructive criticism is welcome. Nonconstructive criticism is not. Thank you.
DISCLAIMER: Animorphs, Yeerks, Andalites, and related characters are the property of K. A. Applegate and Scholastic, Inc. The Yeerk name "Arete" is from somebody else's story that I read at Fanfiction.net. Coyote the Trickster is part of Native American Mythology, and more recently a character in the novel _Coyote Blue_ by Christopher Moore, as well as various other works. Raymond Talking Water is my own invention, sort of. And now, without further ado:
Coyote's Yeerk Trap: Part I
By Good Boy Likes Medicine
A little while ago, at noontime in the summer, Coyote the Trickster was going swimming in his favorite waterhole. He had just gotten in the water and was splashing around happily, when he heard a little voice down by his belly. "Help me!" said the voice.
Coyote looked down and saw a little creature floating by his belly button. It looked kind of like a slug, but it was bigger and more brownish-black, like a piece of poop. Coyote didn't think it looked very nice, but he was curious. "Who are you?" he said.
"My name is Arete 9320. I'm a Yeerk," said the creature.
"A what?" said Coyote.
"A Yeerk. A member of the Yeerk Empire. There's millions of us."
"A tribe of millions, huh?" said Coyote. "Lucky you." ("Especially since you're so easy to kill off," he thought to himself.) "I'm Coyote."
"Coyote?" said the Yeerk. "You don't look like a coyote. You look like a man."
"Oh, I can look like whatever I want," said Coyote proudly. "I'm a shapeshifter."
"You can morph? Are you an Andalite?"
"Am I a what?"
"Never mind," said the Yeerk. "Now will you please help me out of this water?"
"Why should I?" said Coyote. "You're slimy and ugly and not very interesting, come to think of it. And you ask stupid questions. Besides, how do I know you can't swim? You're probably just lazy and don't want to make the effort."
"No! The other Yeerks dropped me here!"
"How can Yucks drop something when they don't have any hands?" asked Coyote.
"Not Yucks, Yeerks!" said the Yeerk. "And I… oh, never mind. Okay, look. I'll make you a deal. Did you know that we Yeerks come from the stars? No, of course you didn't."
"The Stars? But only the Great Spirit and some of the other Spirits can walk among the Stars," said Coyote, puzzled. "You're not a Spirit."
"I tell you we live among the stars. And if you help me out of here, I'll tell you secrets that only the people of the stars know."
Now Coyote loved secrets, particularly if they helped him to get food or prank someone. "All right, Eat 90210. I'll help you out."
Coyote reached down and picked up the Yeerk. "Now start talking," he said.
"Hold me up to your ear. I don't want to be overheard."
Coyote did so, and the Yeerk promptly leapt from his palm and slithered into his ear! Coyote could feel the creature shoving its way to the base of his brain. He shook his head and dug his fingers into his ears, but it didn't help. The Yeerk settled down around Coyote's brainstem and latched on with its tiny sucker-things.
"Ha! I tricked you!" said the Yeerk in his head. "Now I rule your brain, and you have to do what I say."
"Wrong!" said Coyote. "I don't even have a real brain unless I want to, which at the moment I don't. But I can read _your_ brain like spoor on a deer-trail. And guess what! When I read your brain, I learned all about black holes!" Whereupon Coyote became a black hole and sucked the Yeerk into his spinning, crushing void. He didn't suck up anything else around, but that's Coyote for you.
Coyote turned back to his man-shape and began to contemplate the new problem posed by the Yeerk.
You see, Coyote had learned about more than black holes when he connected with the Yeerk's brain. He had learned that Yeerks needed other people's bodies to live in, and that the world was already full of Yeerk-people who were gobbling up Mother Earth's gifts to serve their Empire. Most importantly to Coyote, the Yeerk-people told no stories.
Coyote drew a great deal of his strength from the stories people told about him. You might say he lived on stories. But the Yeerks had no use for stories; they cared only for the spread of the Empire. If people stopped telling stories about Coyote, he would become very weak. He might even die. Permanently. Coyote didn't like that idea.
Coyote went among his favorite tribe of the human beings, the Absarokee people (whom the pink-skinned people from over the water called the Crow). There he found a young shaman, 25 years old, who was his friend. The man had met Coyote on a vision quest 10 years earlier. The man's name was Raymond Talking Water, because of the way he laughed.
Raymond Talking Water was sitting on his porch steps, smoking a cigarette. Coyote sat down next to him, invisible to all eyes but his. "Hello, Ray."
"Coyote! My friend, I haven't seen you for months. Have you been sleeping all this time?"
"Yeah. Good to see you too, Ray. Now listen, I have a very important job for you. Mother Earth's enemies are trying to take over the world, but we're going to prank them. And kill as many of them as we can. There's millions."
"Do you mean the real estate agents?" said Ray. "I don't think we should kill them. I think perhaps the Great Spirit would object."
"Nope," said Coyote. "You're way off base. Now listen carefully; I'm going to turn into a big brown slug, and I want you to pick me up and put me in your ear. Okay?"
"Um, all right," said Ray hesitantly. "I'll play along."
He picked up Coyote The Slug and placed him gingerly on his earlobe.
"…Hey! Hey! What are you doing?! Ow! Ugh! Stop that! Hey!"
"Sorry about that, Ray," said the mock-Yeerk in Ray's head. "But it was necessary." And he explained all about the Yeerks.
"Okay, here's the plan. The chief of the Yeerks is named Visser 3, he's our prime target. He's hunting for a war party from an enemy tribe, the Andalites. They come from the Stars, too. They're shapeshifters, like me.
"Now, I don't know any Andalites, but I know plenty of shapeshifters. And if Visser 3 wants shapeshifters, we'll give him shapeshifters."
***
A few weeks later, at the Yeerk base of operations in Los Angeles, Visser 3 was interrupted from trying out his crocodile morph on a litter of helpless puppies by a jittery knock at the door.
"Enter!" he barked, resuming his vibrant, handsome young businessman-morph.
A thin, pasty-faced lackey-Controller shuffled in. "Sir," he squeaked, "reports have just been confirmed of a major Andalite base on an Indian reservation in southern Montana. Arete 9320, the local unit leader, reports at least ten morph sightings in the past week. Further evidence of non-Terran technology, including hovercraft, cloaking devices, and molecular restructuring, has also been confirmed."
"Well, well. We may have hit the motherload at last, to use an Americanism." He chuckled slyly. "Arete 9320's current host?"
"Raymond Talking Water, a member of the Tribal Council and a shaman of some repute."
"How quaint. Inform Arete 9320 that I will join him at the reservation directly. Assemble ten elite fighting craft and five hundred Hork-Bajir to accompany me. I'm looking forward to this, and I don't want any accidents. Dismissed."
The lackey shuffled out.
"Interesting. Years of false trails and narrow escapes, and now they pop up for all to see in Montana. Quite a distance from the last sighting. This is almost too easy. Perhaps they have something up their proverbial sleeves?" Another chuckle.
"Well. We shall see."
-To Be Continued-
Well, what do you think? Please review and suggest so I don't get writer's block. Thanks, everybody.
G. B. L. M.