A/N- Sorry I was late at updating…I've been busy with school and stuff…yeah. But here's the next chapter!
Review Responses
DH-Thanks! And yeah, there were connections between the Animorphs, but, 'why would Zak be connected to Cassie?' was really my question. Anyway, next chapter…sorry so late!
Chessrook44- I did read that book, but had forgotten most of it. thanks for reminding me.
KP-You'll have to wait to find out about the DNA thing, but I do mention it later. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
There is hope- What will they do? Read to find out!
Traycon3- I meant the Rachel, the one from Animorphs, except no one else noticed! Good job at spotting that.
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Chapter 7- Zak
Blue. Blue all around. I was underneath the water. (Help!) A thought-speak cry, in my head. Strange blue-green grass, and alien trees. An Andalite face.
(Aaaaah!) I woke up sweating. It was another one of those weird dreams. I kept having them, night after night. Before, they had been very blurry. I wasn't quite sure what the dream was about before, but now I knew. I had seen a face, an Andalite face, underneath the water. An Andalite was crying for help!
I wasn't sure what to do, but I knew I had to talk to Bri.
Once at school, I had to wait for three periods before it was lunch and I had a chance to talk to her. I walked over to her table, where she sat with her friend Rachel and some girl named Cassie.
"Uh, Sandy?" I asked, calling her by her false identity.
"Yeah?"
"Can I talk to you? Its kind of important." Rachel and Cassie gave me some weird looks, but Bri got up. We walked to a table at the far end of the room.
"This better be important. Rachel is going to think you have a crush on me, and we're supposed to be pretending we don't know each other well."
"Yeah, I think this qualifies as important. Look, remember those dreams I've been having?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, I had another one last night. And now I know what it means."
Bri raised her eyes skeptically. "Your dream meant something?"
"Well, I saw- I saw an Andalite. Under the water. And he was crying for help. I think an Andalite is in trouble."
She pursed her lips. "You're sure?"
"How can I be sure? But it felt so real. And I heard the thought-speak."
"Okay, so there's an Andalite in trouble in the ocean. What can we do about it?"
I got frustrated. "Bri- I mean Sandy- we have to do something! Maybe the Andalites lost the battle. Maybe this one knows something."
"Maybe he does. Burt what can we do?"
"We can morph. We can morph something and rescue him."
"Zak…" We hadn't morphed often this year, other than our regular human morphs. Bri morphed Andalite sometimes. And we each had sparrow morphs- the only kind of bird we could catch to touch. But we hadn't planned on fighting Yeerks or rescuing Andalites. We had no morph for this.
"We can morph dolphins and look for the Andalite. In fact, we should. We can't stand around and do nothing anymore."
Bri sighed. "Okay, then. Where can we get dolphin morphs?"
"At the local zoo- the Gardens."
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(You know this is crazy, right? It's a horrible plan. Land and demorph in the dolphin pool? Won't someone notice us?)
We were flying toward the Gardens in sparrow morph. Our plan was simple, yet as Bri said, it had a lot of holes in it.
(You could just have asked your friend Cassie if we could pet the dolphins. Doesn't her mom work here or something?)
(Yeah, but don't you have to be in your own form to acquire a morph? Cassie would freak if she saw me suddenly turn Asian and you become an alien. And there's no way she'd let us be alone with the dolphins.)
(Oh. Yeah.)
Which is why, ten minutes later, two sparrows sat on the edge of the dolphin pool, waiting for a group of kids to leave. If we had looked closer, we might have recognized the group, but we weren't paying attention at the time. We were anxious to acquire and get out of here.
Once the kids were gone, Bri and I demorphed. The dolphins watched us with clicks of interest, wondering how two birds could become human, and something they'd never seen before. Two came close enough for us to tough.
"How do you tell if they're male or female?" Bri wondered.
(I have no idea. It doesn't really matter, does it?)
"I guess not," Bri grumped. "I'd rather know what gender I am though."
Done with the acquiring, Bri and I speed-morphed to sparrow before some trainer could come in and see an alien petting the dolphins. And we quickly got out of there.
It was a few days later before we tried out the dolphin morph. It was new, and different from anything we'd ever morphed. We had never morphed a water animal. And Bri was not very happy about the plan.
The dreams were more intense every night. I got flashes of the seabed around the alien, who seemed to be in a clear, glass dome. And a few flashes of falling toward the surface of the water, which was about 20 miles out from land. But I really didn't have a good idea of where the Andalite would be. Bri wanted to be sure of where we were going.
"I mean, what are we going to do, swim around until we see something? Demorph in the middle of the ocean?"
(Yes.)
"I don't like this idea. What if we never find him and we get too tired to swim back to shore?"
(That won't happen,) I said confidently, although I really wasn't sure of this plan myself. I just knew that if an Andalite was in trouble, I had to try and help. And Bri wouldn't let me go alone.
We were at the edge of a river that led to the sea, where no one could watch us morph. And we were getting ready to swim without any idea where our goal was. Our outer clothing was stashed by the river in a tree, where hopefully no birds would make a nest in it or anything.
"You know, this reminds me of that super hero movie- Spider-man. He rips off his outer clothing and goes swinging off to save the day. Except we're taking off our outer clothing and going swimming off to save the day. We're going to turn into dolphins, which would be cool, except we have no idea where to go once we are dolphins. And, oh yeah, Spider-man had a great costume. I have a black leotard that is very drab. I should have let Rachel help me pick out the leotard."
(You didn't know her when you got it. Besides, what you're wearing won't matter in dolphin morph.)
"I know. I'm just talking aloud. Okay, lets do this."
We waded into the water of the river and began to change.
The first thing I noticed is that my fur turned into gray blubber, while Bri's face stretched out and out into a dolphin grin. My tail twined with my back legs to become a dolphin fluke, while my arms shrunk into dolphin flippers. My front legs disappeared all together. When my face finally stretched out into a dolphin grin and a blowhole appeared in the back of my neck, I knew I was done. I looked at Bri out of a dolphin eye.
(Well, Flipper, lets go look for our lost Andalite.)
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Being a dolphin is incredibly fun. That is, once you're in the open ocean. In the river, it was too shallow to flip and jump and race like I wanted to. But once we reached the sea, we let loose.
(Yeee-haaa!) Bri shouted, jumping out of the water. (This dolphin sure knows how to have fun!)
(Let's jump at the same time!) We did. Then we did some flips, and finally began to play tag. It must have been an hour later that Bri suggested that maybe we should concentrate on swimming hard to reach the distance I suspected the Andalite was. So we did. It wasn't as fun, but it paid off in the end.
We did end up demorphing in the middle of the water, which was not very fun. But Bri is a good swimmer, and with four legs I can certainly keep myself afloat, so we were okay, but it wasn't pleasant. I was relieved to be a dolphin again.
In that second morph, I learned to push sound waves out through my forehead and receive a picture back. (Whoa!)
(What?)
I'm, I'm seeing things underwater. I'm seeing sound wave patterns. Watch! I did it again.
(Wow! I think that's called echolocating. Cassie told me about it when I asked her about dolphins.)
(You asked Cassie about dolphins?)
(Yeah, I wanted to be prepared for the morph. I guess I just forgot about the sonar part.)
(Oh.) That's when I picked up a new image on the sonar. A huge sort of dome thing, underneath the water. My dolphin brain wasn't interested in it. It wasn't anything the dolphin could eat or play with. But my Andalite brain was definitely interested. See, huge domes don't just appear naturally underneath the ocean. It had to drop from somewhere, and I was pretty sure that this dome was not a human creation. It was alien.
(Bri!)
(What?)
(There it is!)
There what is?
(The Andalite. Or, well, part of an Andalite ship, I think. See…well, not see, but sense the huge dome in the water? I think that's what we're looking for.)
Bri echolocated. (Oh!)
(Come on. We should hurry.)
I took in a lot of air. We might not reach the surface for a while. Then I signaled to Bri, and we dived.
Down, down. As we got closer to the dome, I could see inside. Not with sonar, but with dolphin eyes- there was no mistaking this thing for human now. It was like a park at the bottom of the sea, a park in a glass dome. Or whatever Andalites use for glass, because this was very strong. Glass would have shattered upon hitting the water. Inside the dome was blue-green grass and weird asparagus trees. In the center of the park was a clear blue pond that had crystals growing out of it. Yeah, this was definitely not something from planet Earth.
(Look at the side. I think that's a hatch or something,) Bri said.
(Yeah. We should try and get inside.)
We swam down to the hatch, and stared.
(It doesn't have any handles,) Bri observed.
(I think Andalites are more sophisticated than that. I think they've advanced technologically beyond handles.)
(Stop it.)
(Stop what?)
(Stop acting so smart-alecky. If there aren't any handles, how do we get inside?)
(Bri. See the red panel by the door? That would be the doorbell,)I said.
(Oh.)
(Besides, if the door did have handles on it, we'd be stuck out here. Dolphins can't open doors with handles.)
(Shut up!) Exasperated and annoyed, Bri jammed her snout against the panel. (Ouch!)
We swam into a little room, probably the airlock, with me laughing all the way. I made a big deal of pressing the second red panel ever so gently, closing the outer-door and starting to drain the water. I was still laughing as we began demorphing.
(Shut up you little…) Bri lost her ability to thought-speak as she made the transition from mostly dolphin to mostly human. I went from mostly dolphin to mostly Andalite.
Finally we were both demorphed. Bri glared at me. "You know, you think you're so smart don't you, just because you come from an advanced alien race that has developed panels instead of doorknobs…" She couldn't get any farther without cracking up.
When we finished laughing, I turned to Bri, more serious now. (I think you should morph to Andalite. The Andalite in there isn't going to expect a human, and you remember what happened the last time you caught an Andalite unawares. We can explain the whole thing later.)
"Okay, fine. I don't want to be knocked out again, anyway."
When Bri was fully morphed, I pressed my hand to the final panel, opening the door, and we stepped onto alien grass.
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A/N- Yay! I finally found a page-breaker that doesn't erase!