((Author's Note: This is the first installment of the "Replies to Reviews" that will appear in the ANs of future chapters and interludes. I will (more or less) put up the answers to reviews from oldest to newest (IE doing those replies that came first). However, if a more recent review sparks a very interesting, important, or noteworthy reply from me, I may put that up first. Not all replies will be put up here. Now, to the info. This one focuses on the changes I've made in the "Animorphs: The Alternative" universe, as well as why I started this fic in the first place.
Very roughly speaking, this story is set sometime after #26 "The Attack," and sometime before #32 "The Separation." My idea is that, with the exception of having Zeke in tow, all Animorph books prior to #32 are accurate (for missions/events and the like). I've sort of deviated from the "middle school" idea because I think that the characters are more versatile if they're a little older (ie around 14 years old, about to graduate from middle school, etc.).
I have a variety of reasons for why I considered (and obviously started) writing this Animorphs fic. One of the biggies is that I didn't like some of the character changes that occurred in Rachel and Marco, and some of the later plot developments (partially because I stopped buying the books around #30.). This is my attempt to "retcon" the story to (a) something I'd enjoy reading as an older teen/young adult and (b) something I personally like better.
One of the reasons that I'm including the Marco/Ax is that this gives me a personal underlying plot. Because I plan for this alternative universe to encompass more than one work (translation: because there will be sequels to "The Alternative") I kind of wanted to have a continuing story other than the war agains the Yeerks, that I could call my own. On top of that, I really think that Marco and Ax make a cute couple. (Marco's sarcasm and humor coupled with Ax's total inability to understand human jokes? Priceless.) However, this Author's Note is dragging on a little long, so I'll shut up and you can read the thing you actually came here to read.))
Chapter 4: Rachel
Hi. My name's Rachel.
If you're expecting a phone number, or even a last name, tough luck. It's not that I'm afraid you'll stalk me or something. It isn't even that my mom doesn't like me telling other people the family name. If only it were that easy, I'd probably tell you anyway.
But it's not about those things. See, I'm trying to stay alive, and I'm trying to make sure that my friends stay alive too. We can't be too careful, so we trust nobody at all. Because if they found us…well…we just won't let them find us. The Yeerks know how to do things, and frequently do do things, that are so much worse than death.
Long story short: Earth is being invaded. But it's not by little green men from Mars with gigantic machines and huge laser beams. It isn't even like those things from "Independence Day" that only wanted the Earth for its resources. If it were, we'd probably all be dead by now anyway.
It's much more subtle than that. The Yeerks don't care about land—they've got plenty of planets already. They don't care about resources, except maybe for whatever they build their ships out of. I'm pretty sure they don't need a much in that department, either, considering all the stuff they have. This is a secret war for something much, much more valuable than that. This is a war over the human race.
In their natural state, Yeerks are greyish slugs, a little more than six inches long. They're pretty much helpless—totally blind, deaf, and mute. I don't know how they 'see' like that, and honestly I really don't care to. But they're only in their natural state for a little while, to bathe in the Kandrona rays they need in order to survive, to gather some nutrients and things they can't get any other way.
The thing is, the Yeerks are parasites. They slip through your ear, squeezing past muscle and bone and tissue, until they reach your brain. Then they stretch out, becoming a big grey sheet, and they wrap around the outside of their host's brain. They fill all the little crevices, all the dips and troughs in the grey matter, and then they take over.
Of course, once this happens, you'd still be fully aware and conscious. You would still see through your eyes, smell with your nose, feel everything you should feel. It's just that you wouldn't have any control anymore. It's like being in the back seat of a car. You can still look out the windows and everything, but you aren't driving anymore.
They've already infested a lot of people, people we call Human-Controllers. They're everywhere—government, military, science, religion, even famous people. So we have to keep a low profile, when we aren't on a mission. We can't let anyone suspect who we are or what we can do. If we get caught, it's the end for the human race, and we just won't accept that option.
The reason we're fighting this war, the reason that we know about the invasion at all, is because we did something stupid one night. We were at the mall, and needed to get home soon, so we cut through an abandoned construction site instead of taking the long way around. We thought it would save a lot of time and wouldn't cause any trouble. I don't think we've been more wrong.
In the middle of the construction site, an alien ship landed, and its Andalite pilot told us about the war. Elfangor told us that we had to fight these Yeerks, because his people wouldn't be coming to help us for a long time. He also gave us a powerful weapon: the ability to morph into any animal we've touched.
Morphing is a very powerful weapon, and we've used it time and again to defeat the Yeerks, but it can destroy the people who use it too. If you stay in a morph longer than two hours, you can never go back. You're trapped in whatever shape you took, and you can never morph again. The Andalites call anyone trapped in morph a "nothlit."
The Yeerks think that we're a group of Andalites that survived the crash of the Dome Ship. Of course, them thinking that doesn't hurt us at all, so we try to keep them thinking that. If they ever suspected that we're human, at least most of us…I wouldn't want to even think about the things they would do to us.
I bet you're wondering who "we" are. As I said earlier, I'm Rachel. Everybody seems to think I'm this fearless Amazon warrior that can't wait for the next battle. In truth, I'm scared just as much as they are. With the kind of things we've seen, I'd have to be literally insane to have no fear. I'm afraid almost all the time, but I don't let it bug me. It's like that one movie where they talk about fear being the 'mind killer.' I face my fears and confront them, instead of suppressing them and dealing with them later.
Then there's my cousin, Jake. I know he never asked to be leader, but he is. It just seems…right. Whenever we have big decisions to make, we always turn to him. Marco calls him sensible, I just say that he's good at making decisions and getting people to agree with him. Sort of charismatic, in the "wow I should respect this guy" kind of way.
Marco is Jake's best friend. His incredibly annoying best friend. They've been friends since before they were toddlers, so of course I've gotten used to Marco. He's somewhat cute, and fairly smart, though he has a really excessive ego at times. And even if I wouldn't admit it to him face to face, he can be very funny. Of course, his jokes are stupid as often as not, but nobody's perfect.
My best friend, Cassie, is one of those sweet, non-confrontational types. She and I are as different as night and day, but it's never hurt our friendship. I swear, though, you'd think she was colorblind or something. It takes me half an hour of poking and prodding just to get her one outfit. Then again, she spends so much time working with her father in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic (AKA her barn) and doing volunteer work at The Gardens that I'm surprised that she has any free time at all, especially for things like clothes. She's a great listener, though, and she knows just the right things to say to make you feel better or to diffuse an argument peacefully.
Zeke, the next member of our group, and the last completely human one, is sort of our group 'nerd.' He's really nice, and he can look oddly cute when he gets the right outfit together. He can be even worse than Cassie about fashion, though the geeky look kind of suits him. To his credit, Zeke is certainly one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, which has really helped us out with school.
Tobias was our first casualty, trapped in a red-tailed hawk body. He used to be a dopey, sweet guy with out-of-control sandy hair and a dreamy look in his eyes. Now, he always looks fierce and angry, but that's just the way hawks look. Because of a "gift" that the Ellimist gave him, he can morph again, and he can even morph back into his old body for two hours at a time.
And then there's Ax, definitely the weirdest member of our little ragtag army. He is Elfangor's younger brother, so obviously he's an Andalite, with the stalk eyes, the wicked scythe-like tail, blue fur, and everything. Sometimes he can be a pain, like all Andalites who have that nerve-grating pride. Usually, though, he's very helpful, and he's always very brave. More than once, we've pulled out of tight situations because of that lightning-fast tail of his.
The fact that we've survived at all, let alone the tough times, is amazing. When I'm not trying to manage a personal life, on top of school stuff, on top of growing up, on top of saving the world (in other words, whenever I catch a few minutes of free time), sometimes I think about how lucky we are to even be alive. Ax could've died when the Andalite ship was blown up by the Yeerks; we all could've kicked the bucket at the construction site, or literally dozens of times afterward, every single time we've gone up against the Yeerk invasion here on Earth. And that doesn't even include the times that we've traveled through time, been snapped into X-space or whatever Ax calls it, gone to alien planets to fight wars, and had to make choices for the entire human race.
To be honest, we should be dead. Maybe it's against the rules of engagement in the insane game that the Ellimist and the Crayak play. Maybe we can never really win, but neither can the Yeerks. Or maybe it's God, or karma, or sheer dumb luck. I don't know. Really, you'd have to talk with Zeke about that one, he's sort of the only member of the group that's seriously thought about religious things. Or maybe Jake, since his family still practices Jewish tradition, even if they're not heavily into it. Whatever it is that's kept us alive this long, I hope it stays around, because I know that the Yeerks aren't giving up any time soon.
It was lunchtime, the Monday after we'd had our little study group. My first finals were coming up in the next couple days, but since we hadn't had any do-or-die missions in almost a month, I was beginning to feel well rested. I actually hadn't snuck a cup of coffee this morning, which surprised me. I brought my lunch tray over to where Cassie was sitting, noticing that she seemed more upbeat and energized than usual, too.
"Hey Cassie," I said, smiling. "What's up?"
She smiled and answered, "Well, I just took my biology final. My class was taking it early this year because we had a couple of seniors that'll be graduating soon."
"How do you think you did?"
"Pretty good, I think," she said, sighing slightly. "That study night really helped. Zeke sure knows his stuff about this sort of thing, and having Erek there definitely didn't hurt either."
"Didn't he say he was like, an assistant to some famous chemist, Avogadro or something?"
Suddenly, I noticed that very android with the corner of my eye, and my stomach flip-flopped. I had really started to enjoy the small-talk banter when he asked if he could sit with us. Of course, we let him, but I couldn't help the sense of dread as he sat down. I regarded his smile cautiously, worried that it was going to be another of his false fronts put up to fool our classmates.
"How are you two doing?" he asked, sounding unusually cheerful.
"I'm good," Cassie said, frowning slightly.
I'm sure my face looked very much the same when I said, "Me too. What's up, Erek? Cassie just mentioned you."
He lowered his voice slightly. "Yes, I heard. My hearing is much better than a human's. And I was an assistant to Newton, not Avogadro. He was very eccentric, but his lectures on religion, science, and philosophy were superb for his time."
"I don't mean to be really blunt," I said, "but I hope you have something more for us than reminiscing about famous people you knew. And I hope even more that it's not something bad."
"For once, Rachel, I'm not the bearer of bad news," Erek replied, holographically smiling. "That…physics project that I told you guys about? The ones our…friends…are building? They're having trouble finding something to power it. In fact, it may be a little more than a month before they'll be able to use it."
Cassie looked overjoyed. "Perfect! That'll give Rachel time to go to gymnastics camp. Oh, and…it'll give Jake's family and mine the chance to stay at the cabins up on the mountain the week after that."
"Good. It sounds like you guys might be getting a reprieve for a little while. Our friends are throwing everything they've got into finding a big enough generator, and it's keeping the Vissers quite busy."
"Thank goodness," I said, sighing heavily as I continued to eat. "About freaking time that we get cut some slack. I'm sick of the constant fighting, having one or two or three missions every month…it's just frustrating and draining."
Erek responded in a good-natured, jesting voice, "Try pretending to be an alien for ten thousand years. Believe me, I've been there, even if it doesn't seem like it. And I know that all of you deserve the break."
A few days later, Jake called a meeting together at the mall. Of course, it wasn't going to be a normal kind of meeting, like it would be at Cassie's barn, where we'd all drop by at about the same time and talk for a while. We had to plan this kind of meeting very delicately, so the Yeerks would never suspect that we met a little too much or got together a little too often. We split into three groups, Marco and Jake, Tobias and Ax, and Cassie, Zeke, and I.
According to what I'd told my parents (and, I assume, what Zeke had told his) I was taking Zeke shopping for new clothes as a thank-you for the homework help. Of course, getting a perfect score on my chem. final didn't hurt our cover story at all. As it was, Cassie and I had picked out a set of clothes for Zeke to try on, though we'd spent the better part of half an hour doing it.
"Cassie, those pants completely clash with that sweater," I said, exasperated. I don't know how matching a shirt to a pair of pants could be THIS hard, but that's just me.
"Rachel, I know that you want him to look his absolute best," she replied, smiling, "but this sweater is something I know he'll wear. It's comfortable, it fits him, and most of all it doesn't look ultra-trendy. You know that he doesn't care for clothing that's too…formal-looking."
I sighed. "Yeah, I suppose you're right."
Marco chose that moment, of all the possible times he could choose, to walk in. "Did I just hear Her Majesty, the Fashion Queen, concede defeat to Mrs. "I wear overalls that are six inches too short"? I am shocked and dismayed, Rachel. You wound me."
"If you keep this up, Marco, you WILL be wounded."
Cassie, who was behind Marco and Jake, looked at me. She looked at me with the look, the sorrowful one, like I was doing something that made her heart bleed. I hate it when she gives me that…look, I thought. I stopped gesturing threateningly at Marco.
Marco smiled widely, that goofy grin that occasionally gets on my nerves. He also slipped around behind Jake, maybe hoping to use his friend as a human shield. "Aw, c'mon Rachel. Lighten up a little. It was just a joke."
"I know," I said, laughing. "And I wasn't exactly serious either." Cassie smiled, and I hid my relief in a small sigh. However, in order to make sure I kept our cover story up, I continued, "What brings you two out here? I thought you didn't like shopping?" As much as I said it for cover, it was also kind of nice to be the one poking fun at Marco for a change.
"We don't," Jake added, filling his voice with believable, but false, annoyance. "Your jokester here ripped my favorite shirt, so we're getting a replacement."
Marco gave Jake a sidelong look. "To be fair, I ripped it because he attacked me."
"And I attacked you because you asked for it!"
"That's totally beside the point," Marco countered haughtily. "Just because I said that Spiderman could kick Batman's behind while blindfolded…and that Batman was a wuss, doesn't mean you had to attack me."
Cassie and I both rolled our eyes, sighed, and simultaneously said, "Boys."
Winding his way through the racks of clothes, Zeke came forward, carrying an armload of different outfits. He leaned against the nearest rack, smiling. "Firstly, Marco, you should remember that Nightcrawler could take out both Batman and Spiderman at the same time." This earned him playful scowls from the other two boys. "And secondly, Rachel, you've got excellent taste in clothes. However, I'm a little tired of shopping, maybe we could catch a bite to eat?"
Jake turned serious and said, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I saw Tobias and cousin Philip heading that direction, maybe we could meet up with them."
"Oh, no," I said with a groan. "A—I mean, Philip…around food?"
"Dangerous combination," Marco agreed. "Perhaps we should save the both of them before he tries to eat an entire tray of cinnamon buns…again."
We laughed as we made our way to the food court, continuing to make idle chitchat. For some reason, I had started feeling uneasy, like we were missing something, but I shrugged it off as paranoia. I mean, after all, it's not like the Yeerks could watch us all the time or anything. To them we're just a bunch of kids—at least, we hope we're just a bunch of kids to them. If they suspected even the slightest issue, they could easily infest Jake through his brother and we'd all be dead. Or worse…the Yeerks know of many things much worse than death.
We finally hooked up with Tobias and Ax. They were lounging at a table outside of Cinnabon, as Marco had rightly guessed. It looked like Ax had tried to break the world record for the number of cinnamon rolls eaten in one sitting, because his face was just covered with icing and cinnamon powder. Tobias was trying to help him get it off of his face, but it was mostly just smearing it around.
Cassie, being the most motherly of the group, took a moment to help him with the mess on his face. As she dipped a napkin in water and dabbed the stuff off, she said, "Has Erek talked to any of you guys recently? He had some very…interesting news about our friends and their science project."
Marco shook his head, saying, "I haven't seen Erek all week, except in Paulsen's class, and we didn't talk. How about you, Jake?"
"I haven't talked to him either. He passed me in the hall yesterday, smiling, and I think he was going to talk to me, but then the bell rang and we had to get to class. What did he have to say?"
"That their "science project" needs more power than they can put out. A lot more. It's going to be at least a month before they can find or build something big enough to support it. "
"That means, eens," said Ax, playing with words again, "that they will almost surely, be too preoccupied, awk, to do anything else. It is even possible, though unlikely, that they will reduce the number of people here in order to increase their forces elsewhere. If what Erek says is true, we are very lucky. Ucky. Kee. Uck-kee."
I saw relief wash through Jake's expression. "It couldn't come at a better time. I was really worried that Cassie and I would have to skip out of the stay at the cabin, which would look really bad to our parents. Even better, Rachel and Zeke are going off to camps soon, so we won't have to worry about that, either."
"We shouldn't get too relaxed, though," I said. "It's still possible that they've got another plan up their sleeve. Maybe they'll try connecting it to the city's power plant…I know there's supposed to be a nuclear reactor off on the other side of the mountain."
Zeke, who had been unusually silent up to that point, said, "I really doubt that they'd do that, Rachel. The kind of energy use we're talking about is insane. I doubt if all the nuclear reactors on Earth could power that thing."
"Your concerns are spoken like a true warrior," Ax agreed. "However, it would take at least an antimatter reactor, possibly a quantum-level magnetohydrodynamic generator to power this device. Such systems are extremely large and expensive."
"Whoa there, Ax-man!" Marco said, holding up his hands. "English, please."
Zeke chuckled. "He was speaking English, Marco. Perhaps not necessarily ways that we'll be speaking it any time in the next hundred years, but that was English."
"Sounded like technobabble to me," Marco grumbled.
"Well, whatever the reason and technology, we've got a break," I said, trying to keep things somewhat on-task. "Personally, I'm glad. I know you all think of me as the Amazon princess of the group, but sometimes I just want to relax."
Jake raised an eyebrow, looking at me strangely. "You feeling alright, Rachel?"
Marco gave a look of mock horror. "Oh, no. Xena doesn't want to fight anymore. Jake, we're in very, very big trouble. Who's gonna volunteer for all the insane stuff we have to do now?"
"Marco, stop." Remarkably, Cassie had said that. "I don't know about you guys, but with all the intensity and length of the missions we've had lately—especially the one up north, I've gotten sick of constantly fighting too. I'm really glad that we'll be getting this break, even if it's only for a month. We're actually going to live semi-normal lives for a little while, and I think everybody, including Rachel, can appreciate that."
After hearing that, I really didn't have much to add. We continued to talk for a while, about a variety of things, but then Tobias and Ax had to go demorph, so Jake and Marco decided to head out too. Zeke, Cassie, and I headed back to the clothing areas, where we quickly picked out a nice, trendy outfit for him.
"Now, Zeke, promise me you'll wear this more often than every once in a while, okay? It looks really good on you."
Zeke smiled that odd, kind of gentle smile of his. He looked both amused and serious, happy and chastised. It was kind of funny, and almost cute. "Alright, alright. I promise I'll wear it. It's really comfortable, anyway, which is nice. Thanks, Rachel."
After I paid for the clothes, we split up; Cassie would be catching a ride back to my house, because she was, for the first time in several months, actually spending the night, instead of telling her parents that that was where she would be and secretly going on a mission instead. Zeke was apparently hopping on a bus that passes fairly close to his house. Once he'd passed out of sight, Cassie turned and smiled to me.
"You weren't joking about it looking good on him, Rachel. That was a really cute outfit for him."
I smiled back with a devilish grin. "I do what I can."