The Generation
Chapter 4- Max
~notes~
Every so often, in order to keep them organized, I will post morph lists for the blade breakers, because I need something to keep track of them all.
Kai: Peregrine Falcon, Doberman Pinscher
Rei: Golden Eagle, Doberman Pinscher
Tyson: Golden Eagle, Red Tailed Hawk, Doberman Pinscher
Max: Red-tailed Hawk, Doberman Pinscher
Kenny: Harris Hawk, Doberman Pinscher
Hillary: Cooper's Hawk, Doberman Pinscer
~Max~
I came into the house that night, with about five minutes to spare before dinner. I was exhausted, tired, and dirty, but oddly enough, I felt satisfied. It was almost as if some part of me had come back. I know that seems crazy.
When I had demorphed, we had learned another embarrassing side to morphing technology...
"A THONG Max?" The other boys drew back in horror.
"Its called a G-string!" The girls shouted at them.
I had blushed and dashed for my overalls. The next day Cassie would help us choose other morphs to practice, since it was Saturday. She also had said that we needed some form of tight clothing to wear under our normal clothes to prevent such embarrassing moments.
"Hi!" Emily grinned, looking way too cheerful. "Where were you all? You're filthy!"
"Went over to a friend's house." Tyson grunted. "She lives on a farm. When we finished teaching her beyblading we got dragged into farm chores."
Michael shook his head. "She huh? Gotta look out for them feminine wiles Tyson."
We were sharing a house with the All-Stars for a few months, since my mother was their coach. It was a three-story condominium. The ground floor had my mother and father's room, the living room, and the kitchen. There were bathrooms in the upper two floors and in the basement. The second floor was ours. I shared a room with Tyson and Kai and Rei shared their room. Hillary and Emily shared a room upstairs. Poor Kenny was rooming with Steve, and the Michael and Eddy shared a room together.
Tyson glared at Michael. "That's not funny."
"I know it is." Michael chuckled. "To be honest Tyson, I can't really picture you in American Gothic, you know, the dour farmer."
Tyson glared at him, but fortunately for Michael, his glare cannot match that of an angry golden eagle. Tyson had had to test both of his morphs. Unlike Rei, he had a much harder time controlling the golden eagle morph. It was odd, I could have sworn I'd had an easier time with morphing than the others. I'll have to ask Cassie tomorrow.
"Max you're filthy!" Mother fussed. "Go wash up, there's dinner in five minutes."
The others went up to wash. Then down we went.
Dinner was delicious, baked chicken, green beans, rice, and something called orzo that mom had picked up at the nearest Safeway. I practically dove into the food, eating with twice my appetite.
"Max are you alright?" Mom asked worriedly.
"Huh?" I asked with my mouth full. I swallowed. "Why do you ask?"
"Because you're eating the way Steve eats Twinkies." Emily said bluntly.
"Hey, you are what you eat." Michael joked.
"I resemble that!" Steve protested. "I'm no Twinkie!"
"You just said that you are, stupid!" Eddy elbowed Steve cheerfully in the ribs.
It was then that I began to wonder. It was like a tiny worm knawing at my insides. My mother, my friends, the All Starz were they... taken? I looked into Emily's eyes, trying to see if there was a yeerk slug behind them. I looked at my mother, trying to see if she were really cowering at the back of her mind, slave to a yeerk in her head. I couldn't trust anybody, my mother, my friends.
But there were people I could trust, my team, still... it was pretty sad. "I'm fine," I said, considerately subdued. "I just worked up an appetite, that's all."
That night, I lay awake in the bed I shared with Tyson. "Hey Tyson?"
"Hmm?" He asked.
"Doesn't it feel... odd to you?" I asked.
"Doesn't what feel odd?" Tyson asked.
"Well, at dinner, I looked at the others, my mother and the All Starz, and I realized that I couldn't trust them, I couldn't trust any of them, because any of them might be a yeerk."
"I suppose we can't. I guess the older Animorphs might have developed ways to tell, why don't we ask them in the morning?" Tyson yawned. I snuggled closer to him, Tyson planted a tender kiss on my lips.
"I suppose." I said softly. I snuggled against Tyson and fell asleep.
I didn't remember much of my dreams that night. But what I did remember scared me.
I dreamed that I was in morph, some indefinable creature. I had claws, I had fangs, I was probably some kind of cat. The All Starz were around me, each one had a gun. The fierce, evil look on their faces told me all I needed to know, they were controllers. Emily raised her hand gun, removed the safety, raised it to my head.
Suddenly... FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! My mother stood before me, only... only she wasn't my mother, she was changing, shifting, growing blue fur, extra eyes, a scorpion-like tail.
My mother was becoming an andilite. She hit the All Starz in the side of the head with the flat of the tail blade.
"Mother?" I demanded.
//MAX! I torfed them! They're merely unconscious! Run for it!//
I stood, frozen on the spot. Then suddenly, my mother, the All Starz, all of them dissolved in a wave of shimmering butterflies.
From the depths of the darkness, I heard a deep, rolling laugh. It was a laugh that rolled through my very being, through the very depths of the universe, and the being that laughed reached his/her/its tendrils deep into the fabric of space and time.
MAX! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR! It bellowed, in a voice so deep and rich that it echoed through me, through the darkness, through the entire universe.
I sat up straight in bed on a Saturday morning, sweating and shaking. "Just... just a dream..." I panted.
I stood up and went to the window, opening it on the early summer sunshine. I didn't notice that I'd startled a single butterfly, which flew out into the beautiful summer morning. The butterfly flew up into the sky, up to the morning sun, and was gone.
I was careful to don a morph outfit under my clothes before going downstairs. I figured since I'd been able to morph my t-shirt, then I should just put some bike shorts or leggings under it.
We wolfed breakfast in record time and took the bus to Cassie's farm. "Hi." Jake met us. "We've got a morphing exercise for you." He led us into the barn. A Doberman pinscher was tied on a leash to the nearest cage.
"One of us is a morphed yeerk." He explained, "That infested another one of us. Your job is to morph the pinscher and find it by smell."
I gulped. Well, here was the answer to my question. Tyson nodded, looking suspiciously from one of them to the other. Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Rachel were there. Tobias was perched above. Ax was missing, Ax was probably the morphed Yeerk, where had they gotten the yeerk morph?
I looked over at Kai. His eyes were moving from one of them, to the other, to the next, calculating. "Where did you get the yeerk morph?"
"From me." A kid I didn't know, with brown hair and eyes, stepped forward. "I'm Erek, a chee." He explained. Then Erek's form flickered. Before me stood what looked like a two legged dog made of metal and white plastic. "I spy for the Animorphs, I took on a yeerk to fool the yeerks, but because I am an android, no yeerk can control me."
I took a deep breath, "Is this how you identify a controller?" I asked.
"One of the ways." Jake shrugged. "Tobias uses his spare time to track controllers, yeerk pool entrances, and to find new controllers, and sometimes Erek tips us off. We managed to build up a network of contacts and allies over the past two years of fighting." He explained.
"Right." Kenny was already acquiring the dog. Hillary moved in next. One by one, we acquired the dog.
I closed my eyes, focusing on the dog DNA.
I felt my fingers begin to shrink. My fingernails turned black and hard. My ears became pointed, sliding up the side of my head. I looked in the mirror to see my hair turning black, shortening into fur, and spreading in waves of brown and tan down my body. A tail sprouted out of my butt like a weed. I felt my joints reverse position with a crunching sound. I fell to my hands and knees, which weren't really hands and knees anymore.
I had become a Doberman. Everybody says that Dobermen are vicious dogs. But this Doberman was different. It didn't want to bite anybody. It wanted to play!
Play? But I couldn't waste my time. I had work to do. I took a deep breath... AH THE SMELLS! I realized exactly why Jake had chosen a dog. They had pretty good senses of smell. Hearing was stronger than a human, but not too stronger. There were, however, no colors, which I found disappointing. The hawk had been able to see colors. It was very sensitive to colors. After the dazzling array of hawk eyesight, the dog was kind of disappointing.
Around me, the others were busy getting used to the dog's instincts and senses. Tyson barked happily. //WOW! This is so cool!//
//So its true what they say about dogs being colorblind.// Hillary said sadly, too bad.
//I can even hear the cars out on the road!// Kenny exclaimed.
//Cool!// Rei commented. //I can smell bacon.//
//We're supposed to be sniffing for yeerks, not food.// Kai reminded us.
//Right, down to business.// I agreed.
I walked up to Jake, sniffing. Jake bent down, extending a hand for me to sniff. "So far so good huh?" He asked.
I sniffed. I smelled bacon, and toast, and a half a dozen other dogs, nothing that smelled alien to the dog's nose.
Okay, on to Rachel. "You know I'm not the yeerk right?" She asked. I sniffed her legs, until Rachel bent down on eye level for me to smell better. She reached out and scratched me behind the ears.
I took a deep whiff. Rachel was chewing some kind of mint chewing gum, and I smelled some kind of perfume, heavily worn. I snorted, then sniffed at her face, licking it playfully.
Then I caught the smell. It was faint, very faint beneath the smells of mint and jasmine, but it was there. The dog couldn't identify it, but he could smell it.
Rachel pulled back, turning back to pet Tyson, or I think it was Tyson, who rolled lazily over on his back, paws in the air, to have his stomach scratched.
I moved on to Cassie. "Hey there fella. Whatcha doin here?" I realized what they were doing now. They were pretending that we were ordinary dogs, trying to get us to understand the kind of reactions that we would get from potential human controllers trying to pass as normal.
I yipped in response, jumping up on my hind legs to sniff and lick Cassie's face.
//Knock it off Max.// Kai growled from somewhere in the group.
Cassie smelled faintly of lavender and hay and animal smells, but I checked her smell against Rachel's in my memory. Yup, Rachel was the one.
Marco bent down to scratch my back. "Hiya boy, what are you doing all the way out here?" He asked. I sniffed. Marco had eaten pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast, and he hadn't brushed his teeth either. "You should mind your manners, you might have knocked Cassie down and created a disturbance." He whispered.
I was about to say, 'Okay, I won't,' but I realized that this was part of the test. Not only did we have to find the human controller, but we also had to act like normal dogs. Instead of answering Marco, I let out a soft yip noise.
When we'd finished, we gathered in a circle in front of the group. //Its Rachel.// I stated.
//How can you tell?// Tyson asked.
//I smelled it. And she smelled too strongly too. She must have been chewing Orbit her breath was so strong. And knowing Rachel, she wouldn't normally put on such heavy perfume. You're supposed to wear it light, a spritz on the wrists, or on both sides of your neck, not so much that you reek of it!// I snorted. //But beneath all that perfume, I smelled something alien. The dog couldn't identify it, but I'm almost sure that it's a yeerk.//
Kai nodded. //I smelled it too, it was faint, but it was there.//
Kenny stayed quiet. //I kinda got that impression too, Rachel seemed to be rather energetic yesterday when we met her, but now she seems kind of... subdued.//
//I agree with Max, Rachel's perfume is too strong, but it doesn't hide the yeerk.//
Rei licked his paw daintily. //I did smell something, but to be perfectly honest, I wasn't quite sure what it was.//
//Okay.// Kai said calmly. //So we all agree that it was Rachel?//
We nodded, a strange gesture coming from a group of identical dogs. //Great.// Kai told us. //Demorph, and well answer them.//
I focused on my human form, first the legs, then the arms, then my body. I turned to look in the mirror, pausing the process to see how I looked. I had to chuckle, because while I had the body of a human, I had the head, fur, and tail of a Doberman. I looked kind of like that dog Blitz in a cartoon that I used to watch on TV when I was eight. I focused on the tail sucking into my body, then the fur rolling away to reveal the t-shirt and shorts. Finally, I focused on the snout slowly shrinking inward, melting into a human head and meeting the fur at my nose. I stood in my morph outfit, fully human.
The others were still finishing their morph. Tyson's hair was slowly changing back into fur. Rei still had the front paws and eyes of a dog. Kai's spine was sort of hunched over as his bones crunched back into place. Kenny was retrieving his glasses. Hillary carefully shook her hair back into place.
When we were all human, we turned to face the older Animorphs. "We've figured it out." Kai said, looking at all of us for agreement.
Kai nodded for me to speak. "Its Rachel." I said, my heart seemed to be hammering in nervousness. "Rachel is the controller."
Rachel smiled a wane smile, before holding her hand up to her ear. "You got it." She grinned as she set the morphed slug on the ground. Only the slug was twisting, changing. Then the scorpion tail sprouted, and I knew my hunch had been right, Ax had morphed yeerk in order to test us.
"What made you think it was Rachel?" Jake asked.
"She used too much perfume." Hillary grinned. "That alone was suspicious. But Max smelled the yeerk morph under Rachel's gum and perfume."
"And you managed to stay quiet." Marco nodded. "Did you realize that I was testing that?"
"I did." I answered.
Jake gestured for us to sit. "We tried to mimic the things that we thought controllers would use to cover themselves up. When trying to identify a controller, the only way to tell is by surveillance. Tobias usually tracks any given controller for three days. If they enter a known yeerk pool entrance, then we know they are a real controller, but there are other signs; a yeerk trying to imitate a family or social setting doesn't quite feel right. They don't seem genuine. Then too, there's the smell, that was also how we found Erek, by the lack of smell. If you smell a supposed controller and there's no smell, then its probably one of his people."
Erek nodded. He had taken his human form again. "Yes, holograms cannot mimic smell, so you can identify us easily in dog morph." He explained. Erek took up the dog's leash. "Thanks for everything Jake. Great coffee Cassie. I'll see you around!" He waved goodbye, before leading the Doberman out at a jog. The last of him I heard was, "Come on Doby!"
"Doby?" I asked. "Wasn't there a beanie baby named Doby?"
"Um... can we stay on topic?" Kai asked.
"Right." Jake led us over to a cage. "We're going to take you on a training mission. Tobias has found some kind of secret passageway underground, one that he can't get into. So we'll need two morphs for this. One of them is very similar to the morph you just did actually."
I looked into the cage. A wolf's amber eyes glared back at us. "A wolf?" Tyson asked skeptically.
"Yup," Cassie said proudly. "This is a she-wolf that had been shot. She was pregnant when we found her, but as you can see she's already given birth. We're going to wait until the pups can move around on their own before we let them go."
"A GIRL wolf?" Tyson asked.
"It's the only wolf morph we have available." Rachel explained. "And Jake already has a male wolf morph, if we were to have another male wolf, then they'd fight each other."
"Okay, this is waaaay different." Cassie explained, her hand on the door to the cage. "Wolves are classified as dangerous animals, so when Ax goes in with Tobias, they'll acquire the morph first. When Tobias finishes, you need to go in one by one. When you finish acquiring the wolf, don't break contact until the next person has contact with it. That prolongs the acquiring trance."
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and got ready to acquire the wolf.
~tbc~
Notes: whhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In case you can't guess, the Elemist was giving Max just the reassurance that he needed! I thought that Max would be the one most affected by the war with the yeerks. He needs to be strong, but he won't be alone!
I hope that you've guessed who Judin is by now, but if you haven't, I'm not going to give it away!
Chapter 4- Max
~notes~
Every so often, in order to keep them organized, I will post morph lists for the blade breakers, because I need something to keep track of them all.
Kai: Peregrine Falcon, Doberman Pinscher
Rei: Golden Eagle, Doberman Pinscher
Tyson: Golden Eagle, Red Tailed Hawk, Doberman Pinscher
Max: Red-tailed Hawk, Doberman Pinscher
Kenny: Harris Hawk, Doberman Pinscher
Hillary: Cooper's Hawk, Doberman Pinscer
~Max~
I came into the house that night, with about five minutes to spare before dinner. I was exhausted, tired, and dirty, but oddly enough, I felt satisfied. It was almost as if some part of me had come back. I know that seems crazy.
When I had demorphed, we had learned another embarrassing side to morphing technology...
"A THONG Max?" The other boys drew back in horror.
"Its called a G-string!" The girls shouted at them.
I had blushed and dashed for my overalls. The next day Cassie would help us choose other morphs to practice, since it was Saturday. She also had said that we needed some form of tight clothing to wear under our normal clothes to prevent such embarrassing moments.
"Hi!" Emily grinned, looking way too cheerful. "Where were you all? You're filthy!"
"Went over to a friend's house." Tyson grunted. "She lives on a farm. When we finished teaching her beyblading we got dragged into farm chores."
Michael shook his head. "She huh? Gotta look out for them feminine wiles Tyson."
We were sharing a house with the All-Stars for a few months, since my mother was their coach. It was a three-story condominium. The ground floor had my mother and father's room, the living room, and the kitchen. There were bathrooms in the upper two floors and in the basement. The second floor was ours. I shared a room with Tyson and Kai and Rei shared their room. Hillary and Emily shared a room upstairs. Poor Kenny was rooming with Steve, and the Michael and Eddy shared a room together.
Tyson glared at Michael. "That's not funny."
"I know it is." Michael chuckled. "To be honest Tyson, I can't really picture you in American Gothic, you know, the dour farmer."
Tyson glared at him, but fortunately for Michael, his glare cannot match that of an angry golden eagle. Tyson had had to test both of his morphs. Unlike Rei, he had a much harder time controlling the golden eagle morph. It was odd, I could have sworn I'd had an easier time with morphing than the others. I'll have to ask Cassie tomorrow.
"Max you're filthy!" Mother fussed. "Go wash up, there's dinner in five minutes."
The others went up to wash. Then down we went.
Dinner was delicious, baked chicken, green beans, rice, and something called orzo that mom had picked up at the nearest Safeway. I practically dove into the food, eating with twice my appetite.
"Max are you alright?" Mom asked worriedly.
"Huh?" I asked with my mouth full. I swallowed. "Why do you ask?"
"Because you're eating the way Steve eats Twinkies." Emily said bluntly.
"Hey, you are what you eat." Michael joked.
"I resemble that!" Steve protested. "I'm no Twinkie!"
"You just said that you are, stupid!" Eddy elbowed Steve cheerfully in the ribs.
It was then that I began to wonder. It was like a tiny worm knawing at my insides. My mother, my friends, the All Starz were they... taken? I looked into Emily's eyes, trying to see if there was a yeerk slug behind them. I looked at my mother, trying to see if she were really cowering at the back of her mind, slave to a yeerk in her head. I couldn't trust anybody, my mother, my friends.
But there were people I could trust, my team, still... it was pretty sad. "I'm fine," I said, considerately subdued. "I just worked up an appetite, that's all."
That night, I lay awake in the bed I shared with Tyson. "Hey Tyson?"
"Hmm?" He asked.
"Doesn't it feel... odd to you?" I asked.
"Doesn't what feel odd?" Tyson asked.
"Well, at dinner, I looked at the others, my mother and the All Starz, and I realized that I couldn't trust them, I couldn't trust any of them, because any of them might be a yeerk."
"I suppose we can't. I guess the older Animorphs might have developed ways to tell, why don't we ask them in the morning?" Tyson yawned. I snuggled closer to him, Tyson planted a tender kiss on my lips.
"I suppose." I said softly. I snuggled against Tyson and fell asleep.
I didn't remember much of my dreams that night. But what I did remember scared me.
I dreamed that I was in morph, some indefinable creature. I had claws, I had fangs, I was probably some kind of cat. The All Starz were around me, each one had a gun. The fierce, evil look on their faces told me all I needed to know, they were controllers. Emily raised her hand gun, removed the safety, raised it to my head.
Suddenly... FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! My mother stood before me, only... only she wasn't my mother, she was changing, shifting, growing blue fur, extra eyes, a scorpion-like tail.
My mother was becoming an andilite. She hit the All Starz in the side of the head with the flat of the tail blade.
"Mother?" I demanded.
//MAX! I torfed them! They're merely unconscious! Run for it!//
I stood, frozen on the spot. Then suddenly, my mother, the All Starz, all of them dissolved in a wave of shimmering butterflies.
From the depths of the darkness, I heard a deep, rolling laugh. It was a laugh that rolled through my very being, through the very depths of the universe, and the being that laughed reached his/her/its tendrils deep into the fabric of space and time.
MAX! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR! It bellowed, in a voice so deep and rich that it echoed through me, through the darkness, through the entire universe.
I sat up straight in bed on a Saturday morning, sweating and shaking. "Just... just a dream..." I panted.
I stood up and went to the window, opening it on the early summer sunshine. I didn't notice that I'd startled a single butterfly, which flew out into the beautiful summer morning. The butterfly flew up into the sky, up to the morning sun, and was gone.
I was careful to don a morph outfit under my clothes before going downstairs. I figured since I'd been able to morph my t-shirt, then I should just put some bike shorts or leggings under it.
We wolfed breakfast in record time and took the bus to Cassie's farm. "Hi." Jake met us. "We've got a morphing exercise for you." He led us into the barn. A Doberman pinscher was tied on a leash to the nearest cage.
"One of us is a morphed yeerk." He explained, "That infested another one of us. Your job is to morph the pinscher and find it by smell."
I gulped. Well, here was the answer to my question. Tyson nodded, looking suspiciously from one of them to the other. Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Rachel were there. Tobias was perched above. Ax was missing, Ax was probably the morphed Yeerk, where had they gotten the yeerk morph?
I looked over at Kai. His eyes were moving from one of them, to the other, to the next, calculating. "Where did you get the yeerk morph?"
"From me." A kid I didn't know, with brown hair and eyes, stepped forward. "I'm Erek, a chee." He explained. Then Erek's form flickered. Before me stood what looked like a two legged dog made of metal and white plastic. "I spy for the Animorphs, I took on a yeerk to fool the yeerks, but because I am an android, no yeerk can control me."
I took a deep breath, "Is this how you identify a controller?" I asked.
"One of the ways." Jake shrugged. "Tobias uses his spare time to track controllers, yeerk pool entrances, and to find new controllers, and sometimes Erek tips us off. We managed to build up a network of contacts and allies over the past two years of fighting." He explained.
"Right." Kenny was already acquiring the dog. Hillary moved in next. One by one, we acquired the dog.
I closed my eyes, focusing on the dog DNA.
I felt my fingers begin to shrink. My fingernails turned black and hard. My ears became pointed, sliding up the side of my head. I looked in the mirror to see my hair turning black, shortening into fur, and spreading in waves of brown and tan down my body. A tail sprouted out of my butt like a weed. I felt my joints reverse position with a crunching sound. I fell to my hands and knees, which weren't really hands and knees anymore.
I had become a Doberman. Everybody says that Dobermen are vicious dogs. But this Doberman was different. It didn't want to bite anybody. It wanted to play!
Play? But I couldn't waste my time. I had work to do. I took a deep breath... AH THE SMELLS! I realized exactly why Jake had chosen a dog. They had pretty good senses of smell. Hearing was stronger than a human, but not too stronger. There were, however, no colors, which I found disappointing. The hawk had been able to see colors. It was very sensitive to colors. After the dazzling array of hawk eyesight, the dog was kind of disappointing.
Around me, the others were busy getting used to the dog's instincts and senses. Tyson barked happily. //WOW! This is so cool!//
//So its true what they say about dogs being colorblind.// Hillary said sadly, too bad.
//I can even hear the cars out on the road!// Kenny exclaimed.
//Cool!// Rei commented. //I can smell bacon.//
//We're supposed to be sniffing for yeerks, not food.// Kai reminded us.
//Right, down to business.// I agreed.
I walked up to Jake, sniffing. Jake bent down, extending a hand for me to sniff. "So far so good huh?" He asked.
I sniffed. I smelled bacon, and toast, and a half a dozen other dogs, nothing that smelled alien to the dog's nose.
Okay, on to Rachel. "You know I'm not the yeerk right?" She asked. I sniffed her legs, until Rachel bent down on eye level for me to smell better. She reached out and scratched me behind the ears.
I took a deep whiff. Rachel was chewing some kind of mint chewing gum, and I smelled some kind of perfume, heavily worn. I snorted, then sniffed at her face, licking it playfully.
Then I caught the smell. It was faint, very faint beneath the smells of mint and jasmine, but it was there. The dog couldn't identify it, but he could smell it.
Rachel pulled back, turning back to pet Tyson, or I think it was Tyson, who rolled lazily over on his back, paws in the air, to have his stomach scratched.
I moved on to Cassie. "Hey there fella. Whatcha doin here?" I realized what they were doing now. They were pretending that we were ordinary dogs, trying to get us to understand the kind of reactions that we would get from potential human controllers trying to pass as normal.
I yipped in response, jumping up on my hind legs to sniff and lick Cassie's face.
//Knock it off Max.// Kai growled from somewhere in the group.
Cassie smelled faintly of lavender and hay and animal smells, but I checked her smell against Rachel's in my memory. Yup, Rachel was the one.
Marco bent down to scratch my back. "Hiya boy, what are you doing all the way out here?" He asked. I sniffed. Marco had eaten pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast, and he hadn't brushed his teeth either. "You should mind your manners, you might have knocked Cassie down and created a disturbance." He whispered.
I was about to say, 'Okay, I won't,' but I realized that this was part of the test. Not only did we have to find the human controller, but we also had to act like normal dogs. Instead of answering Marco, I let out a soft yip noise.
When we'd finished, we gathered in a circle in front of the group. //Its Rachel.// I stated.
//How can you tell?// Tyson asked.
//I smelled it. And she smelled too strongly too. She must have been chewing Orbit her breath was so strong. And knowing Rachel, she wouldn't normally put on such heavy perfume. You're supposed to wear it light, a spritz on the wrists, or on both sides of your neck, not so much that you reek of it!// I snorted. //But beneath all that perfume, I smelled something alien. The dog couldn't identify it, but I'm almost sure that it's a yeerk.//
Kai nodded. //I smelled it too, it was faint, but it was there.//
Kenny stayed quiet. //I kinda got that impression too, Rachel seemed to be rather energetic yesterday when we met her, but now she seems kind of... subdued.//
//I agree with Max, Rachel's perfume is too strong, but it doesn't hide the yeerk.//
Rei licked his paw daintily. //I did smell something, but to be perfectly honest, I wasn't quite sure what it was.//
//Okay.// Kai said calmly. //So we all agree that it was Rachel?//
We nodded, a strange gesture coming from a group of identical dogs. //Great.// Kai told us. //Demorph, and well answer them.//
I focused on my human form, first the legs, then the arms, then my body. I turned to look in the mirror, pausing the process to see how I looked. I had to chuckle, because while I had the body of a human, I had the head, fur, and tail of a Doberman. I looked kind of like that dog Blitz in a cartoon that I used to watch on TV when I was eight. I focused on the tail sucking into my body, then the fur rolling away to reveal the t-shirt and shorts. Finally, I focused on the snout slowly shrinking inward, melting into a human head and meeting the fur at my nose. I stood in my morph outfit, fully human.
The others were still finishing their morph. Tyson's hair was slowly changing back into fur. Rei still had the front paws and eyes of a dog. Kai's spine was sort of hunched over as his bones crunched back into place. Kenny was retrieving his glasses. Hillary carefully shook her hair back into place.
When we were all human, we turned to face the older Animorphs. "We've figured it out." Kai said, looking at all of us for agreement.
Kai nodded for me to speak. "Its Rachel." I said, my heart seemed to be hammering in nervousness. "Rachel is the controller."
Rachel smiled a wane smile, before holding her hand up to her ear. "You got it." She grinned as she set the morphed slug on the ground. Only the slug was twisting, changing. Then the scorpion tail sprouted, and I knew my hunch had been right, Ax had morphed yeerk in order to test us.
"What made you think it was Rachel?" Jake asked.
"She used too much perfume." Hillary grinned. "That alone was suspicious. But Max smelled the yeerk morph under Rachel's gum and perfume."
"And you managed to stay quiet." Marco nodded. "Did you realize that I was testing that?"
"I did." I answered.
Jake gestured for us to sit. "We tried to mimic the things that we thought controllers would use to cover themselves up. When trying to identify a controller, the only way to tell is by surveillance. Tobias usually tracks any given controller for three days. If they enter a known yeerk pool entrance, then we know they are a real controller, but there are other signs; a yeerk trying to imitate a family or social setting doesn't quite feel right. They don't seem genuine. Then too, there's the smell, that was also how we found Erek, by the lack of smell. If you smell a supposed controller and there's no smell, then its probably one of his people."
Erek nodded. He had taken his human form again. "Yes, holograms cannot mimic smell, so you can identify us easily in dog morph." He explained. Erek took up the dog's leash. "Thanks for everything Jake. Great coffee Cassie. I'll see you around!" He waved goodbye, before leading the Doberman out at a jog. The last of him I heard was, "Come on Doby!"
"Doby?" I asked. "Wasn't there a beanie baby named Doby?"
"Um... can we stay on topic?" Kai asked.
"Right." Jake led us over to a cage. "We're going to take you on a training mission. Tobias has found some kind of secret passageway underground, one that he can't get into. So we'll need two morphs for this. One of them is very similar to the morph you just did actually."
I looked into the cage. A wolf's amber eyes glared back at us. "A wolf?" Tyson asked skeptically.
"Yup," Cassie said proudly. "This is a she-wolf that had been shot. She was pregnant when we found her, but as you can see she's already given birth. We're going to wait until the pups can move around on their own before we let them go."
"A GIRL wolf?" Tyson asked.
"It's the only wolf morph we have available." Rachel explained. "And Jake already has a male wolf morph, if we were to have another male wolf, then they'd fight each other."
"Okay, this is waaaay different." Cassie explained, her hand on the door to the cage. "Wolves are classified as dangerous animals, so when Ax goes in with Tobias, they'll acquire the morph first. When Tobias finishes, you need to go in one by one. When you finish acquiring the wolf, don't break contact until the next person has contact with it. That prolongs the acquiring trance."
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and got ready to acquire the wolf.
~tbc~
Notes: whhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In case you can't guess, the Elemist was giving Max just the reassurance that he needed! I thought that Max would be the one most affected by the war with the yeerks. He needs to be strong, but he won't be alone!
I hope that you've guessed who Judin is by now, but if you haven't, I'm not going to give it away!