Chapter Two – Pru

Okay. So, weird. Halfway through English this morning I fell asleep. Why is that weird? I don't fall asleep in English. My English class rocks. As a matter of fact, I don't fall asleep in any of my classes, not even Spanish. Gah, Spanish. I shudder at the thought of my Spanish teacher.

Oh, wait. You're probably wondering who I am, right? Hi, I'm Pru. Nice to meet you. Yes, Pru. No, I'm not telling you what it's short for. If it's even really short for anything. I like Pru, so just leave it at that. At least, I'm Pru now. Once I was someone else. It was that person who went to English class that morning and fell asleep. But it was Pru who woke up. They're both me. Sort of. But, anyway, back to the story. I'll explain as I go.

So, I fell asleep. And I woke up to my English teacher standing over me. A few people in the class were snickering. Some just looked worried. Those that looked worried were my friends. Like I said, I never fall asleep in class. Which was lucky for me. My English teacher just told me to get more sleep tonight.

It was then that I looked down and realized how dark I was. And realized that none of the people in my class were the same. Except for my English teacher, strangely enough. She was still Mrs. Ferdinanson. Uh-huh. Well, that was strange. Very strange. So, as I pretended to be reading this story, I thought about this. I was in a strange class that I knew perfectly. I was me, but I wasn't me. I looked down at the name I had written on my paper and saw Pru. And my last name, of course, but I can't tell you that. You know why, by now.

I couldn't keep myself from grinning widely. I wasn't the old me anymore. I was Pru. And ya know what? At that point, I didn't even care how. In fact, I sorta decided I should ignore most of my old memories. Otherwise, it would be kinda confusing, right? Yeah, I thought so, too. It was actually easy. I think it was because I was Pru now, after all, and Pru didn't really have any use for the memories of my old life. Just thinking about it was a bit weird, so I stopped. No need to think about that right now.

I thought about my parents and felt sadness. My mother had died when I was little, but my father had only been dead for a year or so. I wrote about that happening all the time, but it was different when I was actually there and actually felt it. I lived with my older brother now. After our parents died, he took me in. And then he started a foster home, taking in other people whose parents either sucked or were dead.

I was getting slightly depressed, so I turned my thoughts to something different, and remembered conversations between my wolf and cat. Of course. I could always talk to animals, no matter what story I was in. I could usually shape-shift, too, but here, I had only memories of speaking. Huh. I suppose that should have given me a clue as to what world I was in, but I was too distracted with the fact that I had woken up in a different universe, so it didn't ring a bell.

I was sorta tired of thinking it through by then, so I began to actually read the story. Should get my schoolwork done, despite the fact that I had suddenly switched universes. I was now in…Well, actually I wasn't sure what universe I was in. Oh, well. I'd figure it out later, because the bell announcing the end of first period had just rung. I filed out of class with the rest of the students, intent on getting to my next class. I walked down the hall, mainly ignoring people, although I did wave every now and then to the people who would expect one from me. Didn't need anyone to think I was acting weird.

And then, up ahead, I saw her. Light brown hair streaked with red, tan skin, blue backpack tossed over her shoulder, yeah it was her. Piper. My foster sister and one of my best friends. Kinda funny, right, that Piper was one of my foster sisters? Wanna hear something even more amusing? Our other two fosters sisters are Pheobe and Paige. Yes, we all have special powers. No, we're not the Charmed ones.

But, anyway, Piper. This was the real test. She and my other two fosters sisters knew me better than anyone, except maybe my brother. Piper'd definitely notice if I wasn't acting normal. So I had to make sure I was Pru. Which wasn't really difficult, since Pru was more or less me. Still, though, the other memories might confuse that a bit. I didn't exactly push them away, I sort of mixed them with Pru's. And then I blinked. I still remembered some of my old life, but Pru was predominating. But that doesn't describe it. I wasn't really thinking like two people anymore. So. That was cool. I had solved my problem without even meaning to. Neat.

"Hey, Piper." I greeted.

She stopped and waited a moment before turning around, greeting me back.

"I beat you this time." I told her. She usually waited for me at the drinking fountain a bit down the hall so we could walk to our classrooms together.

"First and last time." She informed me as we started walking again.

"Yeah, right. You're scared. Admit it." I said.

"Yes. I am terrified that you'll beat me again. Oh, somebody help me calm the fear leaping through my body." She replied.

"Was that sarcasm?" I asked.

"Sarcasm? Me? Never." She said, smiling innocently.

I rolled my eyes. "Right. And I'm the Queen of Portugal."

"You are? Then why, why, why are we still doing our homework? Use your royal powers and order our teachers to stop giving us work to do!" She shook her head at me as if I was committing a horrible crime.

I sighed and patted her on the shoulder. "It's okay, Piper. We will find you help."

She stuck her tongue out at me and made a motion as if to hit me, but, fortunately, we had just reached her classroom. Really. Or else I would have had to kick her butt, and that can be very tiring. You know how it is. So, I laughed and let it slide. I'm just nice like that. She disappeared into her classroom, but I kept walking. My next class was a few doors down.

Then I paused. I had just realized I was in an alternate dimension, with powers that I had never used before. Okay, well, I remembered using them, but that wasn't the same thing. Did I really want to go and sit through six more hours of class before I got to try it out? No, no I didn't. Besides, I had perfect attendance. It could suffer one day of me ditching to go to the forest.

With that, I turned around and left school all sneaky like. Meaning no one caught me. I did have to hide behind the bike racks for a few minutes when a security guard decided to walk by while I was unlocking my bike, but after that I was gone. The forest was a ways away from the school, but I didn't mind. It was a nice day, and I was in a really, really good mood. Yay for dimension hopping.

When the ground started getting rough, I hopped off my bike and walked it the rest of the way, weaving through the trees. I walked for awhile before I found a nice little clearing, so I parked my bike and stood for a moment, considering. Then I tentatively thought, Hello?

Pru! A mental voice greeted, and I smiled. I recognized her. She was a red-tailed hawk, one of my close animal friends.

Good morning, Kala. I replied. What's up?

Not much. She said, swooping down to land on a near-by branch. The forest is crowded today.

Crowded? I asked. What do you mean?

Lots of people here today. She answered. There's a couple of people having picnics, there's some people your age over talking to some blue thing, and now there's you.

I blinked. Wait. Some blue thing? Could it be Nightcrawler? Was I in the X-men world? I didn't recall anything about mutants, but maybe they weren't known yet…

Yeah. He looks kind of like one of those centaur things you told me about, except his tail is weird. There's a hawk there, too. Another red-tail. Her mental voice lightened, which was the equivalent of smiling. He's actually rather handsome. Maybe we could go talk to him.

You've spent too long with me, love, you're not thinking like a hawk about the mating thing. You don't need me to… I trailed off as I realized what she had said. Yes, it took me that look to put it together. I blame temporary mind-fogging due to the shock of switching dimensions. Yes, that's it.

But it was fairly obvious where I was now. I had to be in the Animorphs world. A group of people my age, talking to a blue centaur with a weird tail and a red-tailed hawk…Yeah, that could only be them.

You okay, Pru? Kala asked.

I nodded. Fine. Um, Kala, can you show me where they are?

Sure. Follow me. She took off again, flying low so I could keep up with her. She landed in a tree not too far away. They're behind this tree.

Thanks love. I told her, then quietly moved over to peak through the bushes next to the tree. Sure enough, I could see them. Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, Ax, and Tobias. They were all there, the four humans in what must be morphing outfits. And they all looked exhausted.

What are they saying, Kala? I asked.

Are we spying? You're a bad influence on me, Pru. Kala commented. Umm…the taller male is saying something about not worrying about school. How they're late, anyway, so everyone should go home and get some sleep. The blonde female wants to know what they're going to tell their parents. The other female says to call them at work and tell them that last night while they were staying at a friend's house they started not feeling well, so they just walked home. And now the shorter male says that people might get suspicious if they all don't go to school, so they should draw straws to see who gets to go and who gets to stay. Except he's not going first, because the last time he ended up as a spider and…Sorry, missed that last part.

That's okay, Kala, that's good. I told her. I was starting to feel bad about eavesdropping, and my brain was a bit over loaded. I think I'm gonna go wander around a bit. See who's out and about.

Okay. I'll see you later, then. Kala said, taking to the air again.

I hung around the forest for a bit, trying to figure out what I was going to do about this. Because, well, obviously I couldn't just pretend I didn't know about the Animorphs. I mean, the Yeerks were here. Which was just really creepy. What if one of my friends was a Yeerk? What if my brother, or one of my foster sisters was? Okay, yeah, not thinking about that. Not thinking about that. But I had to go talk to the Animorphs. I just had to figure out how to do it without making them think I was crazy. Or a Controller.

Hey, maybe I could just ask them if you still got a toy when you ordered the Happy Meal with extra happy. Yeah, that would not do either of things I was worried about.

After a while, I realized school was going to be getting out, soon. I should probably head back into town, since Paige, Pheobe and I usually met after school and hung around while we waited for Piper to finish her gymnastics practice. Except Mondays and Wednesdays, when I had my archery club meeting. But today was Thursday, so it was a gymnastics day. I hopped on my bike and rode back to school, arriving a few minutes after the last class ended.

There was a half an hour before gymnastics practice started, but we all met in front of the classroom it took place in, so I made a bee-line for it and waited.

Before long, Piper showed up. She was alone, surprisingly, so I asked, "Where's Pheobe and Paige?"

"They got detention." Piper replied. "For talking too much in their biology class. Which you would have known, if you hadn't ditched most of your classes today. Where were you? We were freaked."

"Sorry." I said, feeling a bit guilty. "I went out to the forest."

"You suck." Piper said. "You should have told us you were leaving. Paige is going to kill you."

I grinned a bit. "Hey, Paige should have known where I was. Didn't her power tell her?"

Remember how I said we all have special powers? Yeah, Paige can see the future. Not on command, it just sort of comes to her, and her power has this weird way of covering for itself so that she can't tell anyone what it is. Fortunately, the three of us managed to figure it out awhile ago, so we know that when she gives us advice, we should probably take it.

"Very funny." Piper replied. "You're still dead. You…"

She trailed off as Rachel walked up to us. That's right, Rachel was in the gymnastics club. I had forgotten that. Rachel knew us well enough to say hi, so she paused.

"Hey, guys." Rachel greeted, sounding tired.

Guess Rachel must have been one of the ones to draw a short straw. "Hi Rachel." I greeted, trying not to sound too excited. Because, seriously, I was talking to Rachel. Animorph Rachel.

"Rachel?" Piper asked, her eyes widening in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"Umm…Piper, Rachel's in your class, remember?" I said, then glanced at Rachel. "Sorry, she's been big on the not sleeping lately. Tennis has been on."

"Yeah, I know how that is. I didn't get much sleep last night myself. Let's hope we don't kill ourselves in practice today." Rachel said, shrugging off Piper's weirdness. She did send a strange glance at Piper before entering the classroom.

"Animorphs." Piper whispered. "Of course."

"What?" I asked, startled. How did Piper know about the Animorphs?

"Nothing." Piper said hurriedly.

I stared at her. "You just said Animorphs."

"Um. No I didn't." Piper offered lamely.

Okay. So…Piper knew about the Animorphs. And since no one in this universe knew they existed, that meant that she had to be from another universe, too. Maybe even mine. "Did you read the book series, too?"

Piper's eyes widened. "Did you do the whole dimension hopping thing? I thought it was only me."

"Oh, no." I said. "I'm right there with you." I then paused. Wow. This was really crazy. Here I was standing there with one of my foster sisters, talking about how we had both apparently switched dimensions. And we both knew about things that we really had no right knowing. At least not here, anyway. So. Yay us? "And we thought our life was weird before this."

"Well, yeah. Having unexplained special powers was just not enough. We so have to be from another dimension, too." Piper agreed, then asked, "So. Any idea what we're going to do about this Animorph thing?"