AN: Just a warning, my occasionally kinda perverted sense of humor made itself known in this chapter. Nothing major, but when you can't morph clothes, a little mortification is inevitable and I find it funny.
Chapter 17: Neville
My name is Neville.
"So you really are made of metal?" Ron asked for the tenth time as we loaded onto the boat, making me roll my eyes and Ginny groan. Most of the others had taken off to the other side of the boat, fed up with the conversation. Only Anthony and Hermione, who were discussing the topic much more deeply with the robot Erek, were still with us as Ron repeated the same question over and over again.
"Yes Ronald, I am made of metal. There isn't a single organic body part in me." To his credit, Max seemed to be taking it pretty easily. Being a metal man must come with infinite patience. He seemed more amused than anything else.
"Then how are you alive?"
"My creators were beyond brilliant." Was Max' simple answer. It was enough for most of us. Since arriving, both groups more or less at the same time, we'd been told the of the Chee and their basic history, including that about their creators from another world, the Pemalites, and about the length of time the Chee had been on Earth. Hermione and Anthony had gone starry eyed at the prospect of living, sentient robots and their technology and had been bombarding Erek with questions ever since. Not that he minded either. On the contrary, he looked like he was having a good time, if the emotions on his glamour's, or hologram's, face was anything to go by.
"So what do you-"
"Ron, if you're about to ask about what he eats again, I'm going to throw you overboard!" Ginny snapped, placing her hands on her hips and giving him a very stern look. Harry once told me that when she got like that, he was scarily reminded of an angry Mrs Weasley.
"What?" Ron sputtered, suddenly losing that dopey look he'd been sporting throughout his whole, repetitive conversation and shrinking under his sister's gaze. "He doesn't-"
"You've asked him the same questions twenty times over and they're not even intelligent ones." Ginny interrupted, her fiery temper flaring and setting off a panic in Ron. "If you ask one more stupid question then tracer or not, I swear I am gonna take my wand and-"
"OK! Ok, I'll stop now." He cried quickly, throwing his hands up in defeat before rushing off, ignorant of Max' chuckling.
"Sorry about him. I think he's missing a chromosome or two." Ginny sighed, calming down instantly as Ron disappeared from sight.
"Aahh, don't worry. It'll take a lot more than a guy with a bit of a slow mind to annoy me." Max shrugged as he finished up his preparations and heading up to the controls. "Now let's get going." With that, he twisted a key, a low growl sounded beneath us and we took off through the water, quickly picking up speed.
Azkaban wasn't very far out to see at all, you could see the island from the mainland, but it wasn't near London, so it was going to take about an hour to reach it. I spent the first half of that time watching the water and talking to Jake and Harry, getting to know the younger leader better while catching up with my friend. The others had formed small groups too as we sat around, though everyone was nearby, so we all heard as the Animorphs talked about their lives and battles and they heard as we'd explain the magical world. I think we were all trying to avoid thinking about what we were doing. Even the Animorphs were iffy about going anywhere near an army of Dementors and we had no idea what fighting the Hork-Bajir would be like. Plus, even though we'd be pretty decent animals, most of us were going into battle without magic. That was completely unheard of in all of wizard history. Strangely enough, the only one that had ever done it before was Harry and he was going in wand blazing.
The nature of our conversations changed when Erek informed us that we were halfway there though. At that point, it was straight down to business.
"Ron, Hermione and I will have to go in first." Harry stated, looking like he'd rather eat cow manure than do what he said. "The tracers will still be on the girls, which means that they'll have to keep a good distance from us anyway, and when we arrive, a huge number of Dementors are going to swarm us, you'll need to give us time to send them running."
"These tracers are going to cause a lot of problems." Marco groaned, rubbing his face exasperatedly. "It's not just our wand wielding trio we have to worry about. Once we start arming the prisoners and they start casting spells..."
"We'll just have to help guard the lower levels and make sure no one uses magic down there." Ginny sighed, not looking to sure. "Which means that we'll have to make sure that there's no need to."
"We'll need a lot of power down there, keep it clear for everyone to escape." Rachel piped up. "And the front door will be the main way the Hork-Bajir will try to enter the place when the Yeerks discover what's going on."
"Neville will be staying down there too." Cassie stated, looking to me as I raised an indignant eyebrow at her before she smiled apologetically. "Unless you demorph, you'll get stuck if you go upstairs. No bison, buffalo or any other breed of cow can go down stairs." Oh yeah. That was my plan anyway.
"We'll have Ax and Rachel stay with you guys too." Jake decided, turning to the aforementioned Animorphs for confirmation. "Ax will need to use his elephant morph, so stairs would be a problem for him too and Rachel's grizzly should be all the backup you should need."
/And we can all stick to the ground floor once prisoners are freed./ Ax commented. /Surely some of the captives will help us fight when we release them. They could be enlisted to the keep the next level up free./
"I think we need to consider another problem." Hermione called, drawing everyone's attention. "The Aurors watching the place from the roof. They need to be dealt with quickly or they'll call for backup and then we'll have an army of Death Eaters on us."
"Not a problem. You and Ron can deal with it with the help of an Animorph and Ernie." I responded, startling everyone so much that I became the focus of everyone's either shocked or frowning faces. I'd already thought about that problem and knew how to deal with it. "One of you guys morph Thestral and fly them up to the tower at the same time Harry blows through the front door. The two attacks will split the Dementors up and Harry can clear the first level on his own easily while the others take out the Aurors before they can alert anyone. Then they can start clearing out the upper levels while Harry moves on with the help of the rest of us. A witch and wizard at your levels, a chimpanzee and a Thestral should be enough to handle the upper levels."
/But the whole point of you guys acquiring normal animals was to prevent the Yeerks and Death Eaters from figuring out that we'd come and given you Andalite power./ Tobias said hesitantly. /Isn't having a Thestral there defying that?/
"Not at all." Luna shook her head softly. "Thestrals are very loyal creatures. They protect whoever they're with. Anyone looking into it would simply think that you are a normal Thestral."
"And we have used them against the Death Eaters before. A couple of times actually." Hermione added.
"Ok then. In that case, the Thestral will be Tobias." Jake stated, turning to the hawk. "If the Yeerks notice a red tailed hawk, they'll know it's us in there instantly. You're like our team's signature animal."
/Yeah, good point. I'll do it./ Tobias agreed.
"So the rest of us will charge up through the lower levels with Harry?" Seamus asked, getting nods from Jake and Harry in return.
"Ok, so how about we now address the problem everyone's missed?" Erek butted in before we could say anything else, earning him a round of raised eyebrows. "The ground group's arrival. Max knows how to get the boat past the rocks hidden below the waves, but if they see an approaching boat, the wizards will sound the alarm and the Yeerks will send down their forces too soon, if they don't just blow the thing up. We can only take you so far by boat."
"No problem, we'll just do what we did for the Presidents' meeting and...travel by underwater morphs that most of you guys don't have." Jake said, groaning at the end of it as realisation struck.
"Then we'll give them a ride, let the waves hide us and morph to battle morphs in the water like we did last time." Marco shrugged.
"Seems like a good idea." Seamus shrugged, clearly fine with getting wet. "Problem solved. Anything else to worry about before we get too close?"
"Um, actually yes. There is one minor detail we've forgotten about." Cassie muttered embarrassedly, her biting her lip as she looked up at my friends and I hesitantly. "The clothes dilemma."
"What clothes dilemma?" I asked warily, not sure I wanted the answer as my friends all tensed, bar Luna, and the Animorphs turned sheepish. "What's wrong with our clothes?"
"Well, why do you think we've piled these up instead of wearing them so much?" Rachel asked, pointing at the fancy shirt and pants covering her form since we'd gotten on the boat. "Do you think we just like walking around with no shoes and in outfits that leave nothing to the imagination? Even after all this time, we still haven't figured out how to morph anything that isn't skin tight and even that took a full week of practice for everyone, with the exclusion of Cassie. Basically you guys are going to have to either leave your clothes on the boat or you're going to lose them."
"WHAT?" Ginny and Anthony shouted, both going quite extraordinary shades of red as she jumped straight up and he threw his hands over his lap and staring down at the floor. Ernie and I had gone bug eyed as well and I could feel a lot of heat gathering in my face as I thought over the implications. Even Luna looked a little embarrassed.
Suddenly I was beyond jealous of the Golden Trio. They weren't going to be morphing at all, so they could keep their clothes on. Hell, even Ernie had it better than most of us. He could morph the chimp in some private place on the boat and just stay that way until he returned. If I knew the implications of this little forgotten piece of information, I would have set myself up for going with Ron and Hermione.
We'd be getting close by the Animorphs' dolphin morphs, which meant that we had to be human. None of our new morphs could hold onto a dolphin so, if we wanted to have clothes to return to, we had to ride them naked. Our bare skin pressed to theirs, letting them feel every detail of our bodies while we're in plain sight of everyone else. Even if we were all guys, that would be disturbing, but with girls there too...I was going to die from the mortification.
"You didn't think to bring this up a little sooner because?" Ginny snapped, falling into a tirade. I just let her. No one else, bar Ernie, who seemed to have registered his good fortune, lucky bastard, was in any condition to respond. Even Harry, Ron and Hermione were blushing and watching awkwardly, especially Ron. I could barely tell the difference between his hair and his face. Then again, we were talking about his younger sister being naked around ten other people, most of which are guys, so it would make sense.
"Because we've been rushing through this and the thought never came up." Marco admitted, turning away embarrassedly. The other Animorphs all bore similar expressions. "We don't usually think about it much anymore, it's become instinctive to have spandex under our clothes and to take off the outer layers before we morph."
"All well, nothing we can do about it now." Seamus shrugged, relaxing back into his and startling everyone who wasn't a Gryffindor.
/You're not troubled by this at all?/ Tobias asked curiously as he shifted his wings.
"Nope. Not even slightly." Seamus smirked.
"Seamus' sense of modesty has always been somewhat...lacking." Harry muttered, unable to find a better word for it. It was true though. From the first night at Hogwarts, our dorm had known that Seamus was in no way bashful about his body. He was quite happy for people to see him naked, regardless of gender and spent a lot of time last year trying to convince people into playing strip games with him. He would be fine with this. In fact, he was no doubt keen for it, the perverted exhibitionist.
"Meh, modesty's overrated." Seamus waved off. "You know clothes were originally intended solely to stay warm in cold months? Originally, people spent at least half the year naked. I don't understand why nudity is such a bad thing or why people ever made clothes such a big deal in the first place. What's so indecent about your natural appearance?"
/A question I have been asking since coming to Earth./ Ax agreed vigorously. /No other race bothers with clothing. It is more of a hindrance and an irritation to have to use it then anything else./
"It's a good question. Maybe you should look up what caused it and get back to us. But in this day and age, people are raised to cover up and grow embarrassed when they aren't and we're going to have to deal with that right now." Luna spoke up with her rarely used, wise and serious voice, making everyone listen. "If we must, we can separate the boys and girls so it isn't as embarrassing for us and it is dark and we'll be in the water, so assuming the dolphins aren't going to echolocate, only the dolphin your riding and maybe one person and dolphin next to you is going see a great deal. With their numbers, the boys might need to be a bit closer, but you can put Seamus in the middle, he wouldn't care how many people see him."
"And Max and I can put up holograms while you...undress." Erek offered, pointing to his fellow Chee. "We can make it so the other gender doesn't see you up here. We can even cover you individually until you're in the water if you want us to."
"I do." Anthony muttered, he was only growing redder the longer this conversation went on and refused to look up. Actually, I think he was trying to make himself shrink and disappear into his seat.
"I guess it could be worse." I conceded with a sigh, calming down just enough to get my voice back. Putting it that way, and if I ignored the fact that the dolphin that would be beneath me was actually a human, then it wasn't that different from using my dorm's showers. Seamus, Harry, Ron and Dean had all seen me with no clothes plenty of times before, so Anthony and the other dolphins wouldn't be much to worry about.
...
It wasn't long after that that the plan came into effect. When we'd reached just close enough to see the rocky island, Max pulled the boat to complete halt.
"End of the line guys. From here it's up to you." He said, moving to one side of the boat. "Girls this way, boys on the other side. And don't worry girls, I won't look." He added before disappearing. Staring at where he'd been, it took me a few seconds to realise that he'd already changed and expanded his hologram.
"We'll start it off." Jake stated, already stripping back down to his skin tight clothes with his team. "It'll be safer."
Nodding in agreement, we opted to lean over the edge and watch as they jumped into the water, blue fur and human skin quickly turning rubbery and growing dorsal thins, while legs turned into tails and arms shrunk, their bodies growing the whole time. A disgusting sight. I was just glad that the waves hitting the ship drowned out the squishy and bone cracking noises this time.
"You know, I just had a thought." Ginny commented, drawing my attention. "There are six people to ride and only five dolphins to be ridden."
"Oh, no problem. I will just morph alligator now. I plan on using it anyway." Luna waved it off. "I'll be slower, but I'll plenty of time to catch up while they change animals. It's only you guys that need to be there as soon as them."
"Fair enough. Problem solved." I shrugged, my eyes being drawn back in time to see five misshapen forms looking more dolphin than man. I was grateful that most of their bodies were underwater, it was horrid to watch. Yet, unless distracted, you couldn't force yourself to look away. Just my luck.
"In that case, I have a thought too." Seamus piped up, instantly making me wary. Beside me, Ernie, Ginny and Hermione looked no different, while Ron and Harry watched on curiously with Erek. Anthony was to engrossed in the disturbing sight below to show any signs of interest or concern. Plus, he didn't know Seamus as well as us yet. Those of us who did though spotted the signs. His voice was far too controlled and he was struggling to keep his body casual. Like he was holding back an uproar of laughter at some inside joke. That wasn't good.
"I'm almost afraid to ask, but what are you on about Seamus?" Ernie sighed, preparing himself for the worst.
"Oh, you're fine Ernie, you'll be in the air." Seamus reassured him, immediately calming down not only him, but Ron and Hermione too. "It's the simple fact that there are still five naked riders and five human/alien dolphins. Three male and two female dolphins and four male and one female humans. Which...which means..." He couldn't hold it anymore and cracked up laughing, holding his sides and bending over the railing as I stared at him in horror. It was bad enough that we were going to do this, but to be a male rider on one of the girls. No way was I being that one, not a chance in bloody-
"You've miscalculated." Anthony commented calmly, cutting off my thoughts and quickly calming Seamus down as we stared at him in surprise. I'd have thought he'd take that little bit of news worse than me, but, while he was still quite red in the face and was refusing to look away from where Jake and the others had almost finished morphing, his voice was pretty calm and steady. "One of those four boys is Harry and while he can morph, he's not doing it tonight, which means his clothes are staying on."
"Oh yeah. Right." Seamus muttered, suddenly looking a little disappointed.
/Perverted pain! Get your head out of the gutter./ Tobias exclaimed, though he seemed just as amused as irritated. Well, a little more irritated, but you get what I mean. /Keep my team mates out of your little fantasies./
"What? NO! No, no, no!" Seamus cried, throwing his hand up defensively as the bird fluttered in front of him. "They're a bit young for me and I'm not into inter-species relationships. I'm turned on by humans, not sea life."
Oh, right. Thank you Anthony. The Ravenclaw managed to stop my panic instantly, which left me free to express my annoyance and hit Seamus upside the head. "Don't do that again. This is embarrassing enough without your input." I snapped as Ernie chuckled beside me. "Don't you start either or you and me can switch assignments!"
That shut him up quite effectively.
/We're ready down here./ Marco called up, drawing us back to the task at hand. /Cassie's heading over the other side for Ginny and Rachel's moved to the front of the boat to take Harry ahead. You guys are up./ He finished, making me a little embarrassed again. That meant that they'd heard our whole conversation down there. Great.
/Then I better morph too./ Tobias added, landing on the front deck and starting his own change, his body already starting to turn invisible to the others. Lucky bird.
"See you on the island." Ginny said confidently, completely unphased as she moved into Max' hologram. She and Luna were completely uncaring about the situation now that they were assured us guys wouldn't see them. I was envious of that trait, I really was.
Not a moment later, Erek's human form disappeared and the world past our half of the ship turned a little fuzzy. It all happened in an instant and, unprepared to find myself staring at an ivory, humanoid dog shaped robot, I jumped back with a cry right into Ernie.
"I assume the hologram is shielding us now?" Anthony muttered bashfully, looking forlorn at the meaning as Erek nodded.
"It is. But if you want more privacy until you hit the water, you're free to wait for the others to get gone." Erek reminded him, getting a shaky nod from Anthony in return. I hoped he'd, hell, we'd all either learn how to morph clothes or get over our modesty soon otherwise you could forget the Yeerks and Voldemort. We'd embarrass ourselves to death.
We needed to be like Seamus. The boy had already lost his robes, shirt, shoes and was shamelessly ditching his pants. Within seconds, he was completely bare.
"Cannon ball!" And jumping overboard with a splash and a cry from Jake about landing on his tail. "Sorry." He muttered, though it didn't sound entirely honest.
Ernie and I stripped at a much more sedated pace before growing hesitant at our underwear. I took a few breaths before sighing and dropping mine and stepping out of them, expecting Ernie to have done the same, but when I turned to him, instead of sharing awkward looks, I found myself jealous and glaring at him. Instead of losing his boxers, he was growing black fur.
His eyes were closed tight as he concentrated and he scratched everywhere hair was growing, like he had the chickenpox or something. Then I cringed, as did he, at the sound of his bones cracking. Anthony looked green behind me as he watched Ernie's face reshaped, stretching, wrinkling and tanning as the lower half bulged out, his ears rounding and expanding.
"I hate you." I muttered, covering myself unconsciously as I continued watching. Ernie merely smiled widely with reshaping teeth as his body shrunk a little. Ernie's about five foot eight, and his body only lost a couple feet before stopping. And the whole time he was shrinking, his muscles were expanding. It wasn't until two and a half minutes after he started that he finally ditched his boxers and by that time fur was covering pretty much everything anyway and it wasn't even his body anymore.
/Guys, hurry up! If you don't, Rachel will grow impatient and start the party without us./ Marco called up, obviously very impatient himself.
"We're coming, keep your fluke on." I shouted back, turning away as Ernie finished his morph. I stopped at the railing as I felt eyes on me and turned to find chimp boy staring curiously right at me. "Did you want something?" I asked heatedly, my cheeks darkening again as I turned so my side was facing him. "Seriously, creepy much Ernie?"
/Huh? Wha..oh, OH! Sorry, I don't...sorry./ He spluttered, shaking himself. Thoroughly embarrassed myself, it was pretty relieving to find Ernie a mortified mess. It even removed the strangeness of hearing his voice in my head. /I don't...I forgot about the instinct thing. The chimp mind was curious as to what a hairless brother was doing./
/Why are you embarrassed?/ Ax asked, only causing both of us to grow even more mortified if that was possible and even both of us glaring at him wasn't stopping Anthony from laughing as he took off his shirt and dumped it with his robes, shoes and socks. Ernie mustn't have been limiting his thoughtspeak, meaning everyone heard him /Did something unusual occur while under your morph's influence?/
/That's my business!/ Ernie snapped quickly, tensing in place and crossing his arms. You know, if I wasn't about to die of embarrassment, I'd probably find all the human reactions on the chimp hilarious.
"Come on Ernie, don't be shy." Seamus called up teasingly, making me gulp as fear flooded me again. I had an idea what was coming and I was tempted to go kill him myself. "Did Neville surprise ya? You were staring weren't you?"
"Seamus shut up!" I yelled as my face somehow grew even darker. Having enough and unable to handle both Seamus and the fit Anthony had been reduced into, I jumped into the water with a splash. I would have been quite happy to sink to the bottom.
/I got you big guy./ I could just imagine the teasing smirk on Marco's face as something firm and rubbery slipped below me and pushed me up to the surface.
"You couldn't just let me drown, could you." I muttered, refusing to look at anyone as we broke through the water, altering myself so my lower body stayed below. Not that I really wanted to be pressed against Marco's body, but at least this way I wasn't out for all to see. Seamus on the other hand was sitting up on Jake's back, smiling slyly down at me.
"You realise that when you next go to sleep I'm making you pay, right?" I muttered, pretending the others were just normal dolphins. If I pretend, I just might get through this with some of my dignity intact.
"Now now Nev, don't walk into another one. We both know full well that I can twist that." He replied, his smile only growing larger. Glaring hard, I so wanted to wipe it off his face, but I let it drop as another splash occurred not far beside me before another dolphin, Ax, gently rose a shivering Anthony just enough so both their heads and Ax' blowhole was above the surface.
"Tobias and Luna have finished morphing." He muttered, holding onto Ax tight and staring at the base of the boat, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. "Luna and Ginny are with Cassie and Luna's in control. The others are loading up on Tobias now."
/Perfect. Seamus, settle back and grab my fin, I want to go./ Jake ordered, getting immediate compliance from my mischievous roommate before we all took off. It looked like Jake was as keen to get past this part of the mission as I was. Though I could understand why. This was humiliating for me and Anthony. Seamus and Ax didn't seem to mind, but I got the feeling that that this wouldn't be the most desirable position for Jake and Marco either. Well good. At least Anthony and I weren't alone in the awkward, uncomfortable area.
Hopefully that meant that we'd get to the part where this ended sooner.