September 3, 1967 11:31 AM
Rachel
Time-travel sucks ass. I'm not being bitchy or PMS-ing, despite what Marco or David would say. I'm stating the cold-hard fact: Time travel sucks ass.
I've been called a witch, near trampled, near molested by horny British sailors, blown apart by cannon, lived through D-day and faced the man who tried to wipe out half of my ancestry.
Oh yeah, and my cousin died.
Now to prevent all that, I have to rub out of existence one man. Not because he's the cause of this. But because he's the host of the person who caused all this. He has to die by never-been-born because he was forced to have a sentient, evil slug inserted in his ear.
So, yes, time travel sucks ass. We were just discussing that point.
"Visser Four changed history." Tobias said. He was in his real body, which is a morph. Long story. "Maybe for the worse, but maybe not. Hitler was just a lowly nobody. No Holocaust! We want to change it back so there was one?"
"You saw the way our future was." Cassie argued. "We still had slavery. We had no freedom. The Drode said homeless people were rounded up and shot."
"He wasn't lying." David said as he seemed to shudder. No one asked what became of David in that altered future, and David never volunteered information. But it doesn't take a Cassie to know that something about that timeline shook David.
Hardly anything shook him. He bitched, yelled, pissed, moaned over the slightest thing, but he never got shaken about huge things. Colossal things maybe, but huge he could handle with ample bitching. Something shook him.
"We can't let that happen." Cassie summed up.
"But we can let the Holocaust happen?" I demanded. "Tobias is right. That future we saw that Future we were in, that's back when Visser Four had done all he did, but without us getting in his face. That was the result without our intervention. Maybe in that timeline he did ten more things. We don't know what the result is with our intervention. Maybe the future is better now. Maybe us saving Henry, and even taking out that Hessian officer, I don't know! Maybe . . ."
"We could use the Time Matrix, travel back to our own time, see what's happened. See if things are good." Tobias agreed.
"Does that not seem foolish now that we see how complex that history is?" Cassie wondered.
"We're already taking a gamble erasing an entire person from existence." David brought up. David has a habit of picking at some little detail until it becomes a big detail that often gets us near-killed.
"I'm just saying we go take a look." Tobias repeated. "See how it all played out."
"Hey, history is never 'played out'" Marco disputed. "We start fucking with the past, we fuck with the future. Maybe we like the way things look to us back in our time, but maybe we've screwed something else up down the line."
"Ooof!" said a long haired man behind us. He crashed in a woman with equally-long hair. It was this woman who was ogling the Time Matrix along with several others, with Ax trying desperately to keep them all at bay. I could tell he missed his tail at that point.
"Are you Theresa Knowlton?" said the man. "Wow. . . . Yeah, you must be. 'Cause you're real pretty."
The woman smiled half-vacantly. "Wow. Thanks, man. You look groovy yourself."
"Groovy? God, help me." Marco said.
"Did he say 'Theresa Knowlton'? That's John's mother. That's who we're trying to stop!" Cassie said.
"I'm John." said the man. "John Berryman." He said as he laughed for no apparent reason.
"I'm Theresa. Oh, wait. You knew that already."
John giggled some more.
"Shit! We failed!" Marco cursed.
"Dude," Theresa said to John, "are you high?"
John giggled. "Yeah. A talking rat just said you were my soulmate." he said as he burst out laughing and held out his hand to take Theresa's. The two of them walked off together like the happy hippie couple they were.
"I hope my parents didn't meet this way." I said.
The other hippies followed Theresa and John and Ax no longer had to defend the Time Matrix.
"Did he say a talking rat?" Ax asked.
"Was his name 'Splinter'?" David asked.
I joke to damn much. said a voice. The thought-speech voice sounded like David's.
A lot like David's.
"Did everybody else hear that?" I asked.
That's when we saw another Time Matrix. Yes, ANOTHER Time Matrix floating toward us. It had a rider. His off-white fur blended with the off-whiteness of the Time Matrix. I almost didn't see him, but we all heard him.
David Hunting!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! the rat said as it came, floating speedily toward us in the sky.
Who was this guy? Was it David in morph? From the future? No, David's rat morph is black, not white.
The Rat aimed right for the Time Matrix. As they were about to hit, the Rat jumped off and hit David's chest.
He went through David's chest! And didn't come out the other side. David instinctively grabbed at his chest, but then clutched his head like a psychopath and collapsed.
The second Time Matrix disappeared after hitting our Time Matrix.
"Ax! What's going on?!" Tobias demanded.
"I believe the two Time Matrices . . . merged. Trices. Tra-seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees."
"What about David?" Cassie asked.
David looked up with a combination of exasperation and horror. Like he was getting profoundly tired of being scared to death.
I never liked David. There were times when I liked him. I even tolerated him. I respected him as a warrior, but I never liked him. He's obnoxious, rude, crass, know-it-all, all a round prick.
And I caught him macking on Melissa Chapman two weeks ago. Again, I had wished my relationship with Melissa was better. Then she'd tell me these things.
David, on the other hand, he well, couldn't be controlled. From his haphazard initiation into the group, David has always acted like the loner. The one hornet among so many bees. Acquiring morphs just for the hell of it, working on weird computer programs and devices without telling anyone about them, not even his roomate, Ax, going as far north as New York City and far south as Atlanta just because he can.
And now, I'm convinced he has something going on with Melissa. I just don't know what.
When he first arrived, we were all worried he would turn on us. He didn't. But he always seems to be working toward his own agenda. Like he has something better to do.
But he remains loyal to us, the Animorphs. So I guess I can't ask much more from him.
David staggered toward a park bench. It was only then did I notice we were in a park. David sat up.
"I was a rat. Why do I remember everything? Why do your minds change with the flow of time and mine does not?"
"David, are you ok?" Ax asked.
"We have to stop Visser Four. And this time, we stop the him. The real Yeerk."
"No. No. No. No! No! No! NO! NO! NO!" said a familiar voice. "I can't take this anymore!!!" said the voice as the source appeared.
The Drode.
"You'll screw everything up!!!!" He shrieked again.
"David does that a lot. You learn to live with it." Marco said.
"It wouldn't be a problem if he didn't remember everything!!!"
"Why is that?" David asked. "Why do their minds change and mine just becomes more compound?"
"You foul-bastard son!" Drode shrieked at David. "Despite the joint efforts of my master Crayak and his sniveling opponent the Ellimist to keep my master's brood away from our little gameboard, that despicable Quinz still managed to bond some stupid human mortal with a piece of the essence of his doomed halfling progeny."
"What the hell are you babbling about?" David yelled.
"'What the hell'? Not far off, Beast-rat!!!" The Drode yelled. He then turned his rage on Cassie. "You. You soft-hearted little bitch! This is your fault!!!!"
David and I both started to rush toward the Drode, but he disappeared and reappeared farther away. "You'll destroy your universe, yet, Hunting. You'd think we'd be safe. This dimension has no shield or stone, but NO! You have this hunk of ex-ketran flesh/machine!" The Drode kicked the Time Matrix as if it were a car that was giving it trouble. "Fuck Dracen artifacts. Let's destroy the world with the corporeal leftovers of the very person who's trying to save it. That would be deliciously ironic and wonderful, if only such a possibility didn't mean certain doom for my master."
"Certain Doom for Crayak?" I repeated flabbergasted. Something could hurt Crayak! Did I really want to know what that was?
Could David hurt Crayak? Did I want to know how?
The Drode turned to me. "David is dangerous. You know it. He is a pox. He shouldn't be here. Do the universe a favor. Use that Time Matrix and erase him from existence!"
"Don't do it, Rachel." Tobias said instantly. Why did Tobias want to save David?
"Ask David." The Drode said. "Ask David who was supposed to defeat him."
I just turned to David. "You were." He said without waiting for me to ask. "You were the one who was supposed to defeat me."
I didn't understand. Defeat him? When? He yelled at Cassie for saving him, but she looked just as confused as I felt. She didn't understand either.
"Could just explain to me what the fuck is going on?" Marco shouted.
I shook my head, hoping to shake out all the confusion. No success. "Look, the Drode is just babbling. We need to find a new way to get the time line back to how it was. Forget what I said before; we can't stop the Holocaust. We can't kill off John Berryman Jr. We can't live in any alternate time line." I said.
"What if we already are?" Tobias said suddenly. "What if something someone did with the Time Matrix is affecting us right now. Changing how it was."
A weird mix of fascination and fear contorted the Drode's raisin-like face.
"I changed it." Cassie realized. "That's why you're yelling at me. I must have gone back and changed something, but don't remember changing anything."
"Maybe a future version of you changed it." Ax suggested.
"What did I change?"
"David." Marco said. "The Drode's temper tantrum revolves around David." Marco looked right at David who's head was facing the ground. "He was going to betray us, in which we would have defeated him. Killed him."
"And I saved him."
"Such children. Such dangerously smart children." The Drode. "Puck chose the species well."
"Robin Goodfellow?" David asked stupidly.
"What is so special about David?" Ax asked the Drode. "What is the significance of him. What mystery are you, Crayak, and the Ellimist covering up?"
The Drode laughed. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Andalite. More things than in mine, too. Now matter how deep you go, there is always another level. What fools we mortals be."
"You're a mortal?" David asked.
"Once upon a dream." The Drode answered. "I have said too much. The deal is off now! I will restore your precious Jake to life. And the seven of you will be sent back to your own time, as it has been altered from when you stymied Visser Four at Agincourt."
"You can't do that!" Cassie shouted.
"I don't think the Ellimist would . . ." Tobias said.
"The Ellimist has, Tobias." Drode said. "He, too, sees no other way. He, too, sees the threat that David represents."
David could destroy us all. He has, essentially. If I live a different life with different experiences, am I the same person? No. I was half-tempted to take up the Drode's offer, but then I would just be another of Crayak's toadies.
No, David had to be stopped. Even he could see that now. Couldn't he? Or will he just be stubborn and fight fate?
I had to stop David Hunting.
I had to save David Hunting.
The Disruption Field we created to bring down the Yeerks' Bug Fighters was working. Another of David's brainstorms that the Andalites made into reality. That's when the Morph-Slayers came. Hunter-killer androids sent to hunt and kill those with morph energy. The first designs were laughable. We defeated them easily, but the Yeerks have made use of their human hosts. The use the minds of their human slaves to cook up hellish designs of nightmarish terror that no Yeerk could ever conceive. I guess Humans really do have a monopoly on terror.
I guess that's why the universe hates us so.
It was two of these hellish machines that had ganged-up on Captain Hunting. He had the morph of particularly massive Hork-Bajir. The kind that could snap other Hork-Bajir like twigs, but he was getting overrun by two Morph-Slayers.
Lt. McCabe came to me. Marco. My love.
Berenson! The Captain is getting creamed! We must save him! he said. He was in leopard morph.
How? I asked. I was in Golden Eagle morph.
I don't know, Lieutenant, McCabe said, but if we lose David Hunting, we lose the war.
McCabe was right. Captain Hunting had to be saved. He turned the tide of the War here in North America, after Tobias was killed and Jake was put in charge of a Battalion in England. The Imperial Royalty was the Yeerk's number one priority. The Yeerks must never take Emperor John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
But what about us? Cassie and I tried to raise an army in Jake's absence, but we were not ready for the Capture squads. Hork-Bajir, Humans, Taxxons, even a few S-s-s-strams, Maks, and Naharans.
When we recruited David, things changed. He had ideas, and when Andalite reinforcements came, despite the small number, David showed them what was what and made them follow his lead. We became united, unlike any Yeerk Seizure Prevention Campaign ever before. The Andalites may have built them, but it was David who truly brought us the Disruption fields, the Anti-Yeerk Earplugs, and K-gas.
It was Captain Hunting who turned the tide. I would do anything for Captain Hunting.
I would die for David Hunting.