Title: The Twins
Author: Alexis Steele
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: all the majors
Genre: Alternate Universe, after #23 The Pretender
Series: First story in the "Descendents of the Ellimist" Chronicles
Summary: Tobias is about to find more family than he can deal with
Notes: This fic was my first attempt at fanfiction back in 1999. It has been lying dormant in notebooks and my computer until I pulled it from the Net in 2004. Looking back on the fic about a year ago, I realized that I had a lot of interesting ideas that I wanted to portray in this fic – eventually to become a series – and that I wanted to pick them up again, but I had some major changes that needed to be done to my OC, Shayla. She was a blatant Mary Sue, and now she's become an attempt to see if I can write a competent OC without her becoming a Mary Sue.
And, while I will be following more closely to the events that occurred in the book series, I will always see the characters as their TV counterparts. Let's face it, ladies, the TV series might've deviated a lot away from the books, but it definitely gave us some nice eye candy to glance at. I will also be extending the timeline of the story to five years, instead of three. Therefore, the Animorphs have been fighting the Yeerks for over two years.
Normal speech denoted with "…". Thought-speak denoted in ((italics))
Each chapter heading will tell you who is narrating this part of the story. If you don't see a character's name in the chapter heading, assume that the character from the previous chapter is still narrating.
Disclaimer: With the exception of Shayla and any other minor OCs, all the other characters are the property of K.A. Applegate and Scholastic Books. All feedback is greatly appreciated
Chapter 2:
On this particular night, we weren't fighting any Yeerks. No, we were sitting in the school gymnasium. Rachel thought it would be a good idea to take a night off from trying to save the world, especially after our recent encounter with David. David was once an Animorph. He found Elfangor's blue box, the morphing cube. After broadcasting over the Internet that he wanted to sell it, Visser Three destroyed his house and made his parents into controllers.
As a result, and for his own safety, we made him one of us. Big mistake. It worked out well, for a while. But since we knew very little about him, we were unsure about his reactions to being face to face with a near-death situation. And that almost proved to be our downfall. David was ready to turn us all over to Visser Three in order to save his own life. Then he turned on us. He almost killed Jake, Ax, Marco, and I, and made life miserable for one of Jake and Rachel's relatives. In the end, we decided to trap David as a nothlit, in the literal form of what he signified to us Animorphs, a rat.
Now I was sitting in the gymnasium, in my human morph. I had just returned from the bathroom where I had demorphed and remorphed into my human form. I had another two hours left. We started out the night at the mall with pizza and Italian food at Sbarros. It's nice to have human food once in a while, especially if your diet usually consists of mice and other rodents, and if Rachel ever discovered the black-outs I've been experiencing lately as I hunt, we'd get into another discussion on how she thinks I should stay human for two hours and leave the fight behind, and that's not what I needed right now. From there we went to the high school, and took our seats in the school's auditorium. We were sitting in the front row, right at center stage.
We were at the high school's annual spring talent show. Rachel wanted to see Melissa Chapman perform her latest gymnastics routine, and be able to give her some moral support. We watched Melissa's performance. I thought it was good, but since I don't know much about gymnastics, I couldn't really give an honest account on the technicality or perfection of the performance. If only Melissa realized that her father was one of the most important controllers in the Yeerk organization — Vice-Principal Chapman.
Then we heard some bands and saw some dance routines. We also saw a magic show. Boy could my friends and I show them a magic trick. The emcee was just about to end the program when a stagehand gave him a note.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have one last minute entry. Please give a warm round of applause for Shayla Cooper who will be singing Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All"," he announced.
Everyone in the audience waited for newcomer to make her appearance on stage. When she finally did, I immediately felt a strange connection to her. It was as if I knew her from somewhere. I shoved the feeling aside. The girl walked up to the stool situated at center stage and sat down. She had soft brown hair lying just above her shoulders and was about Marco's height. Then she started to sing. Whoa. Her voice was so captivating. It was so sweet and comforting to listen to. And, in a strange way, I felt as if she was singing the song directly to me.
As Shayla was finishing her song, I took a moment to look above her. And the moment I did, I watched as the cable holding a lighting fixture broke away and started to fall towards the stage.
"Watch out." I shouted.
Thanks to my early warning, Shayla was able to leap out of the way just in time. That got everyone's attention.
"Whoa. How did that happen?" Jake interjected.
"I don't know," Cassie responded.
"That girl was amazing," Marco exclaimed.
"Only you would think about that now," Rachel interjected.
"If it hadn't been for Tobias, Shayla would've been killed," Jake pointed out. "What made you look up?"
"I don't know," I answered.
I took that moment to look back up at the stage and discovered that Shayla was gone.
"Where'd she go?" I asked.
"She was probably rushed off-stage," Rachel said nonchalantly.
"I'll be right back," I told them.
I made my way up to the stage. I looked everywhere backstage, but she wasn't there. That was strange. I made my way back to the group.
"Did anyone else find it strange that she just sort of appeared? She wasn't even scheduled to perform," I inquired.
"Not really. This happens every year. Last minute acts are always being added to the talent show. Everyone usually expects at least one or two," Rachel explained.
"Tobias, how much time do you have left?" Cassie asked.
I looked down at the watch Rachel had given me the previous Christmas.
"About an hour. I demorphed in the bathroom when we got here," I responded.
Jake looked at me like I had just committed a mortal sin.
"Tobias, you know you're not supposed to do that. What if someone had walked in while you were morphing?" Jake lectured to me.
"They didn't. I locked the door," I told him.
Just then, the emcee came back out and asked that all audience members leave the gym. We followed along with the other people. As we left the gymnasium, I was really perplexed. Who was this girl?