[Okay, quickly now.] I looked back at the Andalite and panted. [Pick something and morph it.]
[Grab a rat,] Tobias suggested. [You can hide under something and we could carry you out with us, later.]
[Good idea.] I looked down at Tobias. I already had a snake morph, so I could hide like Cassie was. I started demorphing.
[Which ones are a 'rat?']
[The big brown things in the back.] I made sure my back was turned to Cassie and Tobias, even though they were hiding under the shelves. We've all accepted that we can't morph clothes, but that didn't mean I was giving Tobias a free show.
I looked over at the Andalite. He was standing by the rat cages. But he wasn't acquiring a rat. He had pulled a rabbit from one of the cages underneath them.
[No, not that one!]
[Oh.] But he kept holding the rabbit. Instead of putting it down, the Andalite cocked his head and turned his stalk eyes towards the front of the store. [Listen. What is that?]
I motioned for him to put the rabbit back. But I had heard it, too. The sound of heavy footsteps echoing through the mall.
Lots of footsteps.
[What's going on?] Cassie asked in a panicky voice. [I'm feeling vibrations.]
[SWAT team's here,] I told her. I took the rabbit from the Andalite, locked it back up, and reached around him to grab a rat cage. But I tripped on one of his hooves and dropped it. It landed with a loud crash. The lid flew off, and the rat inside bolted.
Great. SWAT definitely heard that.
[Oh, that,] the Andalite said. [I acquired such a creature before coming to this place.]
At this point, I was tempted to leave him for the SWAT team. Instead I said, [Great! Morph it,] and closed my eyes to focus on my own morph.
Rattlesnake.
I felt the changes happening and opened my eyes to watch. My arms just shriveled up and disappeared. Like when you set a leaf or a piece of paper on fire. Nails, fingers, hands, elbows, all of it just collapsed and pulled themselves inside of my body.
But as gross as that was, my legs were worse. They twisted together like spaghetti noodles and turned into a thrashing tail. I fell forward on my stomach and crushed the rat cage underneath myself.
I had enough presence of mind to twist around to look back at the Andalite, to make sure he was morphing. His body was melting away into something that vaguely resembled a rat. But I realized I had turned around too easily. My neck had grown longer.
My body was nothing more than a four-foot tube of skin, bone, and organs.
Then, scales rippled into existence across my body, like water running over rocks. They ended at my tail and formed into the large, flaky bumps that comprised my morph's signature rattle.
My body shrank and thinned into that of the snake's. I felt my teeth suddenly turn mushy. They became puffy, like gangrenous gums.
And then I felt something growing inside my mouth. My fangs. They grew and curled back up against the roof of my mouth.
Rattlesnake fangs aren't like those of other venomous snakes. They are too long to stay locked into place, so they fold up when the snake closes its mouth. They spring forward when the snake strikes, and then fold back along the snakes' lower jaw.
Above those fangs, up in my mouth, grew my venom sacs. My fangs worked like hypodermic needles. They were sharp enough to pierce clothing and flesh, and my venom sacs sent a nerve poison through them that could kill a mouse in seconds. A cat within minutes. A grown man within hours.
From between those fangs, a forked tongue whipped out. It tasted the air, then shot back into my mouth.
It was like smelling things as a dog, only...not. When you smell something, you're actually inhaling small bits of it. Very small. And I could taste what I smelled. I was tasting the individual molecules that made up all the odors of my environment.
Think about that the next time you're in a public restroom.
My sight was okay. It showed more color than my dog eyes had. But the snake eyes focused more on movement than anything.
In addition, I felt a new sense. Something I hadn't experienced before. It's difficult to describe it, exactly. But in that moment, I registered that the floor was cooler than the rest of the room. And that the Andalite, now completely rat, was warmer than the floor.
I could sense heat. But not like I could as a human, just by standing near a hot stove. It was more like smelling heat. I guess the best comparison would be like how it feels to smell water drying on hot asphalt. I knew that the Andalite, the rat in front of me, was warmer than Tobias in his rattlesnake morph, behind me.
It was very cool.
My hearing was shot, though. Snakes don't have external ears. But I could feel fine. And I could feel the same vibrations Cassie must have felt. The SWAT team was getting closer.
And that's when the snake's own mind appeared within my consciousness.
Wow.
When I was Chance, I was emotional. When I morphed a bird, a crow, I was calculating. Mischievous, even.
The rattlesnake wasn't anywhere near those. This thing was...calm. But the kind of calm where you know that you're the baddest, most powerful thing in the room.
I felt like a superhero. Batman on patrol through Gotham. Tony Stark wearing his best suit. An 80s action-movie protagonist. I had fucking plot armor. Nothing in existence could hurt me.
Rachel felt the footsteps and grew worried and anxious. The snake felt the footsteps, acknowledged them, and decided it would be best to get under cover. Not because it was scared. It just seemed like the appropriate course of action. There was nothing to worry about. Just an inconvenience that could be dealt with if the snake had to.
But nobody in their right mind screwed with the snake. If they did, it would warn them off with the rattle. If they kept bothering me, well, that's what the fangs were for. Problems were just things that got bit in the face until they solved themselves.
I looked over the rattlesnake's fields of fucks, and saw that they were barren.
[Time to motor,] Tobias told us. [We need to get out of sight.]
[Yes,] the Andalite said. [Some of those humans might be Controllers. They will know to be on the lookout for out-of-place morphs, if they're aware they are hunting an Andalite.]
The Andalite scurried towards a shelf. He intended to hide underneath it.
He was a rat. Rats are food.
I struck him in the side.
