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: Rewrite of #23 The Pretender. Tobias is about to find more family than he can deal with. Who is telling the truth, and who is spinning a web of lies?
Author's 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)). From this chapter onwards, there will also be periods of telepathy written. Telepathy will be shown by ((bold-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 11: Cassie
Throughout the day, Rachel and I were trying to convince Jake and Marco that we felt that Shayla was sincere, but only managed to get into a heated argument with them during our third period study hall.
"Rachel, how could you, of all people, trust anyone this soon?" Marco demanded.
"Because, if Shayla is who she says she is, then Tobias will finally have a family member who cares for him," she explained.
"I agree with Rachel," I included, "Besides, during her conversation I didn't sense anything wrong with her. She seemed normal to me."
"Normal being what Cassie?" Marco joked.
"Well, I sensed that she was telling the truth, as was Tobias," I concluded.
"And they're right about Tobias acquiring at least one of these supposed new abilities. Tobias is in my first period chemistry class now. Even though we were on opposite ends of the room, he kept up a one-sided conversation throughout the teacher's lecture," Rachel added.
"Yeah, but he can do that with thought-speak since hawk is now his normal form, just like Ax can," Jake said.
"Yeah, but the way the words sounded in my head, it's a completely different form of communication from thought-speak," she said.
"How so?" Marco asked.
"Well, you know how it seems like thought-speak is heard in the back of your mind, kind of like an after-thought. It sounded like he was standing right beside me and speaking into my ear, except for the fact that he was almost a room apart from me."
"I'm wondering why Tobias accepted Shayla and these abilities so quickly. I would think he would've been a little more skeptical than this," Marco added.
Before anyone could voice their opinions on Marco's train of thought, our conversation was interrupted when the bell rang. Time for math. Geometry was boring as usual. I truly can't understand how the plotting of matrices is going to help me in life. Class was in session for only five minutes when there was a knock on the door. When Mr. Starr answered the door, Tobias and Shayla walked in. They were in our class as well. This is getting interesting. The rest of class seemed to fly by as we anticipated lunch. When the bell rang, Jake and I strolled towards the cafeteria to get our lunches. While we were waiting in line, I struck up an interesting conversation.
"I wish you would stop beating yourself up over David," I said.
"It was my fault," he said.
"It was all our faults, not just yours. Remember, we voted. Therefore, it's on all of our shoulders."
We were soon joined by Rachel and Marco, both of whom had brought their own lunches from home.
"Well, where do we want to eat today, inside or outside?" Marco asked.
"We told Tobias and Shayla to meet us at the picnic table again, we'll go there," Jake explained.
"You know...if we wanted to find out the truth..." Rachel started.
"Don't even think it Rachel. It's too risky," Jake said.
"Tobias knows all the places to hide around school," she continued.
"Last thing we need right now is for the monitors outside to think that we're trying to ditch school," Marco pointed out.
"There's no need to be too hasty here. Everything will figure itself out in its own time," I said as we headed for the picnic bench. Luckily, it was still empty. Since it was such a nice day out, I was hoping the bench wouldn't be filled yet.
"Let's just sit down here," Jake said sternly, ending the argument. With that, we sat down.
Author's Responses: Sorry for the shortness of this chapter, but I needed a good stopping point, otherwise this chapter would've been six pages long. The plot is starting to heat up now, so stay tuned. Please read & review.