Chapter Two

"Emily!"

"EMILY!"

My eyes flickered open.

(I…I can't move!) I said, panicking.

(I think that the toxin is a paralytic,) Menderash said. (You should be able to purge it by completing the morph though…)

"Please be okay," Jason said, worry lines all over his face. "Please be okay…"

He's cute when he worries.

I focused my mind, picturing my human self in my head. My fur began to shrink, vanishing into my body. My hair began to extend out of my head. My snout began to vanish in front of me, retreating into my face.

And sensation began to return to my body. It kinda felt like when you go to the dentist, and you get a filling…When the Novocain starts to wear off a few hours later.

I wiggled my fingers as they formed from my wolf paws. And then my toes. I felt my tail retract into my body.

I groaned and sat up. My body was still slightly numb, which I attributed to the partial demorph I had done before the toxin had set in. There were still trace amounts in my system. But for the moment, I was in better shape than before.

"Oh thank God," Jason said, grabbing me and hugging me tight. My heart did backflips in my chest.

"Where is the troodon?" I asked, frowning.

"Oh," Jason said, rather sheepishly. "Well, when you collapsed I sort of…Stepped on it."

I glanced over to where Jason has been standing before…The troodon was lying in the impression of a Tyrannosaur footprint. It moaned rather pathetically.

"You were supposed to just be holding it down," I said. "Poor thing."

"Poor thing?!" Jason asked incredulously. "It almost killed you just now."

I shrugged. "It was just doing its thing. An animal can't help being what it is."

"But we can," Menderash pointed out. "We need a nocturnal morph, and that creature is still alive. But it won't be for much longer. We should acquire its DNA while we still can."

Jason took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said. "Guess so."

The three of us quietly approached the dinosaur. It looked up at us almost pathetically, letting out a sort of moan in pain.

It didn't seem all that threatening now. It's tail and legs were clearly broken, having been more or less smashed in when Jason as a T-rex had shifted his weight.

I bent down and placed my hand on the smashed legs. Jason placed his on it's chest, and Menderash touched its tail. It became calm and quiet as it was hit with a triple dose of the acquisition trance.

"Hey how come we can only acquire from living animals?" I asked. "Dead things have DNA too."

"Safety protocols in the morphing process," Menderash said. "Acquiring picks up DNA, primarily, but it also scans other things, more subtle things. Things it would require to maintain the morph, such as beneficial bacteria and the like. Most animals have certain bacteria in their digestive tracts that help with the process. Morphing would be fairly useless if those things were not taken into account. You could end up with a set of failing organs if the microbes are not in place."

"Oh," I said.

"If you acquired from a dead animal," Menderash said. "The process might end up confusing a beneficial bacterium, with one designed to break down organic matter. Which could be devastating. In addition to which, entropy sets in, so the DNA itself could be compromised, or at least could be in the process of breaking down, which could be damaging to the morph."

"Basically," Jason said. "It was safer to acquire from living animals, so Escafil made it impossible to acquire from dead ones."

"Pretty much," Menderash said. "He is a rather brilliant scientist, after all. He couldn't take everything into account, but he did take much into account."

Menderash seemed to be dating Estreen, Escafil's daughter, before he went all human-nothlit. Or, whatever the Andalite version of dating is. He has a huge amount of admiration for the guy. Some of it is pretty justified. Escafil is a lot like your crazy awesome uncle, who does all sorts of zany things, but there is no doubt when you meet him, that he is a bonified genius. He gets human concepts far more easily than your typical Andalite does. Which alone is amazing. I think that he may be the one Andalite you wouldn't be able to spot in a human morph.

"Um…," Jason said. "Guys?"

We looked up, and saw dozens of glowing orbs in the jungle. Eyes, staring out at us.

(More Troodons?) Menderash wondered.

"I think so," Jason whispered. "And I think that they think we're lunch."

"We have the DNA," I said calmly. "Let's morph. They won't attack their own kind, right?"

Jason said nothing.

"Right?"

"Probably not," he said. "Coelophysis was the only confirmed cannibalistic dinosaur…But…There's a lot of unknown factors when it comes to the fossil record."

"I hate you," I lied to Jason.

I focused my mind on the dinosaur. Grey fur sprouted all over my back, and red fur all over my chest. It was hollow and light. Not really fur…protofeathers, Jason had called them. I frankly didn't see the difference. If it looks like your dinosaur is furry, then it should be called fur, not feathers. Feathers don't look like fur.

My fingers and toes began melting together, and my spine shot out into a thick tail. My torso began to shrink. I'm already a fairly skinny girl, but now it was getting to ridiculous proportions. My neck began to stretch, and elongate, and my teeth began to sharpen and shrink. Each smaller than a dime, but razor sharp. My mouth began to fill with a toxic cocktail that I really didn't like the taste of. My tongue morphed a few seconds later, but it was too late, the toxins in my mouth had left a very nasty aftertaste that I couldn't shake.

My face bulged out into the troodon snout, and my weight shifted forward. My sense of smell came online, and my hearing improved slightly. But troodon did not hunt by scent or hearing.

He hunted by sight. The dark jungle was suddenly flooded with light. It was high noon, as far as the troodon was concerned. The mind bubbling up underneath my own consciousness had really only one concern.

Food. And everything was food. Eggs. Insects. Plants. Anything that the troodon could get it's three-clawed hands on was food. It was more like a raccoon than a jackal. It was omnivorous and it wanted to eat everything. All it had to do, was bite something that wandered to close. And from then on, it was a waiting game. The toxins in my mouth would paralyze the creature, and then I could eat it!

Dead meat was good too though. The troodon was just as eager to eat the corpse of a dead dinosaur as it was to hunt a living creature. This guy was an opportunistic little critter. It ate everything, and it was not picky at all.

It was intelligent too. Very intelligent. It saw two other troodons nearby, and sensed even more in the forest. But it wasn't territorial, or seeking dominance, like other dinosaurs, such as the Deinonychus morph that I had done before. The troodon was like ah cool. More of me. That's great, there's plenty of food for everyone, and together, we can get even more food. FOOD!

(Dang,) Jason said, snapping me out of my funk. (One-Track minds, ain't they?)

(Highly intelligent, though,) Menderash said.

(Yeah,) Jason said. (Troodon's have big brains compared to the size of their bodies. Some people thought that they might have eventually become the dominant species on earth, if the K-T extinction event had not happened.)

(Believable,) Menderash said. (It's hard to recognize sentience in a morph, because sentience is not instinct, and your own mind fills in the gaps left by the DNA…But this animal is definitely intelligent enough to have potential. In a few million years, who knows?)

Without thinking, I snapped at a large dragonfly that was buzzing past. I gobbled it up and swallowed it without thinking, before I'd realized what I'd done.

(Ewwwww,) I said.

(They are hungry little critters, aren't they?) Jason commented again.

(Let's just…Find the Kelbrid, okay?) I said. (We have a morph that can work in the dark now.)

(Sense of smell isn't that great,) Jason said sniffing.

(And Kelbrids don't smell, anyway,) I said.

(Despite how little sense that makes,) Jason said. (I am inclined to agree. Even the big Rex couldn't smell it. When you eliminate the impossible…)

Jason winked at me…Which was weird because he was a troodon.

(Then whatever remains, no matter how improbable,) I said, grinning inwardly. (Must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes.)

I love Sherlock Holmes. Heck, I love a good mystery, period. But Holmes and Poirot are my heroes. Jason was pandering to me, but I didn't care because I loved it.

(But there are tracks in the dirt,) I said, bending down and observing the large, two-toed tracks.

(So,) Jason said. (Assuming that we can follow these tracks…)

(Come Watson,) I said. (The game is a foot.)

(Then we should be able to find our Kelbrid friend,) Jason said, pointedly ignoring my bad pun.