And here we are, chapter 3! Since the last update I got 28 views in a single day, a new record! And this fic is at 361 views total. We are finally here, it's in this chapter that it finally happens; they meet the people who were talking in the interlude. Nasty business abounds though. As was clear in the prologue, the Andalite hero clearly didn't escape the battle in one piece.
The Dying Star, I
We entered the ghost town. It seemed like a pretty small place at first, but would probably have housed several hundred people when it was first built. Which would have been a long time ago. A good part of the roofs had collapsed, and some walls had holes rotted through them that were big enough to step through.
It didn't look like anybody had been there for a while. There were some signs of vandalism, but even that looked ancient.
"Well, we're here. We saw the ghost town, I had fun, let's go home!" Marco said when we reached the first building.
"What?" Rachel said, raising an eyebrow at him. "Are you scared already?"
"No," Marco said, bursting into nervous laughter immediately after. "We just got here. I was just joking!"
Rachel just shook her head at him and continued walking.
We found what looked to have been the main road a few minutes later. There were two-story buildings on either side, with those characteristic wild-west signs mounted on the front walls. Most of them weren't readable anymore, but I could make out a dentist, a stable, and even a saloon.
The road itself looked more like an overgrown garden though.
"Add some more desert and less mountain and this place wouldn't look out of place in a Western," Marco whistled.
"So, guys, wanna explore the mineshaft?" Rachel suggested.
"Oooooh, count me in," Marco said, raising his hand.
"Su-" I agreed, or rather, tried to agree.
"No, we're fine here," Cassie said, speaking for both of us.
Did Rachel and Cassie plan this?
"Awesome! Let's go!" Rachel said, then my best friend and my cousin were off.
"Are we there yet?" Marco asked Rachel less than a second after walking away.
"No," she responded.
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"How about now?"
"No."
I took Cassie's hand again. She looked down at it and blushed a little.
"Hey Cassie?" I said.
"Yeah?"
"Nobody else is here, right?"
"Not recently. We're the first people here in a while."
"NO!" Rachel shouted at the top of her lungs in the distance.
"Uuuh, do you think we should keep my best friend from mauling yours?" Cassie asked.
I didn't need to think it over. My answer was brief; the judgment of an expert.
"Nah, they'll be fine."
We explored some more. Besides more abandoned buildings, we also met some local wildlife.
First, we came face to face with a deer and her fawn. Cassie slowly knelt down to try not to scare them, wearing this ridiculously cute smile. She was so focused on the deer that I don't think she'd even realized that she'd knelt down into mud specifically until they eventually ran off. She looked a little embarrassed about that afterward, as she failed to brush the mud off her pants.
A little later, she suddenly looked up and pointed at the sky. She said that she saw some sort of bird of prey fly over us, but I was too late for me to see it.
Finally, while we were going to where Cassie said the farmer's market was, we were blocked by a hornet's nest.
"Uh, we should probably leave those guys alone…" Cassie said.
"Yeah. So… should we turn back or head into that barn?"
"Actually, that's a granary."
"A granary?" I asked, in need of a vocabulary lesson. "That's the same thing right?"
"Almost. A granary is sort of like a storage barn, but for grains, like wheat or barley," Cassie explained.
As she talked, I was distracted by something oddly purple in the overgrowth a few yards behind her. "Wait, what's that?"
Cassie looked to see what I was looking at. "Huh. I don't know."
We walked over to get a closer look. It looked like a pile of broken purple crystals, with very sharp, jagged edges, spikes, and even some hooks. It might have actually been pretty, if it hadn't been covered with rotting flesh and a sickly red liquid. The stench it emitted was horrible.
"Ugh, is that blood?" I asked as I put my hand to my face.
"Yeah, it is."
"What kind of crystal is that, amethyst?" I asked nervously.
"I don't think so…" Cassie said with a strange voice, as if she had been possessed by curiosity. "What's strange is how this meat looks untouched… It had to have been out for several days already. Scavengers should have eaten it all by now, and it should be more decomposed…"
The crystals gave me a really bad feeling, even ignoring the rotting meat around it. A sense of wrongness, like they weren't natural.
"I… think we should get out of here," I decided, gently pulling Cassie away from the crystals. "Let's go back to the others."
((Dad!)) Tobias said as he walked down a flight of stairs, leading into a room where a man soaked with dried blood lied on a table, recovering from his wounds and cradling a walking stick.
((What happened?)) the man said.
((A group of people entered the town. Two of them.))
((What species?))
((They're just regular humans from what I've seen. I don't think they're under a Controller's dominion, but I can't be too sure…)) Tobias said.
The man squinted at him for a second. ((You're hiding something, aren't you?))
((One of them's a friend I made a while back. He lives a few towns away from here, last I checked. His name's Jake. It looks like he's got a date with him.))
((I think they'll both work,)) the man said after another pause.
((What? Are you serious?)) Tobias said with exasperation. ((We're going to use that on them? This soon after we got it back?))
((It sounds like he's a worthy candidate, and we have to start somewhere. Besides, you've already used the box on yourself.))
((We have no base, and they're on the other side of the town!)) Tobias insisted. ((We have no weapons, no supplies, we can't even give them properly functioning armor! How are we supposed to handle this?))
((We'll start from scratch. It's not like we've never done that before. Besides, we're already in a better position than we were. Nobody even knows we're here, much less –))
Both froze as they heard people walk up to the house.
((Oh clarjiatz,)) Tobias's father cursed in his own language. ((That's not your friend is it?))
((No, it can't be them!)) Tobias said desperately with gritted teeth as they opened the door. ((They must have been hiding in the mines when I came back!))
Tobias's father then held out a blue cube. Tobias' eyes widened, before he nodded bitterly. He took the cube and soundlessly stepped behind the open door. Once he was positioned so that he would be hidden, Tobias turned on his hologram to make himself invisible.
"Okay, those crystals are definitely dangerous," I noted as we walked past the body of a crow on our way back to the others.
It must have eaten some of the flesh around the pile of crystals we'd found, and swallowed some of the crystals as well. It looked like they'd spontaneously erupted from the bird's stomach soon after. They looked less colorful and more translucent than the ones in the pile, but they had the same… wrong feel to them. And they smelled just as horrible.
"Hey Jake, look!" Cassie said as we passed through an alley a little later. She was pointing between two porches, at a pile of tree branches and dead leaves.
"Huh?"
Cassie walked over to the pile of dead plants and moved it to the side, revealing a patch of barren land with a scorch mark around it.
"Oh great," I said. "So someone was here."
"By how long the plants have been here they're probably long gone, so it's nothing to worry abo-"
"Aaaaaaiiiiiii!" I heard a feminine scream in the distance.
"RACHEL!" Cassie shouted.
"MARCO!" I corrected, and just like that we broke into a sprint. We crossed the main road quickly and headed toward where the scream was.
"They're not too far off from the mines!" Cassie said as we sprinted.
We sprinted all the way over there, but stopped at the entrance to look around. The entrance was a square-shaped hole in the side of the mountain, with a cart track running out of it. There was a tree growing in front of the entrance, blocking our view inside.
"What on Earth are you doing here?!" we then heard Rachel ask someone from inside a building to the right of the mine entrance.
We sprinted inside, and quickly found Rachel and Marco in a room to our left.
"Rachel! Marco!" Cassie yelled worriedly. "Are you oka-AAaaaiii!"
I froze when I saw what scared her.
An adult man in a trench coat, covered in blankets, lying prone on a table, cradling a walking stick covered in ornate patterns. He was hurt, bad. Every inch of him that was visible was covered in blood. The only proof that he was alive was that his chest was moving.
"Jake?" a voice called out from behind us. I looked for its source; the space behind the door we'd entered through. There was nothing there at first, but then there was this shimmer, which quickly turned into a person.
"Tobias?"
I was startled by coughing from the man on the table. So he wasn't just alive, he was very much awake.
"Tobias?" Cassie asked, very confused. "What's going on? How did you just… appear?"
"Okay, I know you're freaking out," Tobias said in a soft voice. "But I can explain. I'll tell you everything."
"Ah, I see," the man spoke up in a weak voice, and smiled. His teeth were seemingly the only part of his body that wasn't covered in blood. "Are these the friends you told me about, son?"
"Wait, son?" I asked Tobias in shock. "This is your dad?"
Tobias' dad squinted at us. "Clearly there's a lot more about our family that you don't know about. I say it's time we get to know each other a little better. Sit down, there's much to discuss."
"I know you have a lot of questions," Tobias said as he stood leaning against the wall. "But please let me try to explain first, or the answers aren't going to make a lot of sense."
He looked way too casual. Like, he was uncomfortable, concerned, sure, but… He has his dad lying on a table in a ghost town in the middle of nowhere, looking like he should have died days ago, and just appeared out of thin air. He looked like this was normal for him.
It wasn't even 2 minutes since we saw Tobias' dad, and already this day had gotten so strange. A lot of questions didn't even begin to cover it.
"So you were an alien the whole time?" Marco asked in a hostile tone of voice.
"Yes, er, no, it's… complicated," Tobias said, struggling to explain. "You see, I'm a-"
"You're half right about us being aliens," Tobias' dad interrupted. "I am a member of an extraterrestrial race known as Andalites. We come in peace."
At first I thought he was joking, even despite Tobias materializing out of thin air. But he looked dead serious.
Tobias looked at his dad with a blatant 'are you kidding me?' face.
"What? Dad, are you ser-"
"Yes, Tobias, I am," he replied, looking at Tobias with a knowing stare. "We have to tell them."
Tobias looked back and forth between his dad and us a few times. Then he sighed, nodded, and seemed to relax a little.
"As I said, I am an Andalite. My name is Elfangor. I may look human right now, but we Andalites have an ability unique amongst our species, one that allows us to travel most places unnoticed. We have the power to morph into other organisms."
"Morph?" Rachel asked incredulously. "As in transform? Shapeshift?"
"Yes, exactly," Elfangor continued. "We also use this power to fight our mortal enemies. Extraterrestrial nations of great power, using their might to seize what never belonged to them, growing fat off the suffering of others… of innocents."
"Like all those other aliens that are on Earth?" I asked, eyeing the door.
"Yes. All of them came here to claim this planet as their own, but humanity has put up an amazing resistance. All of those invasions have ground to a halt," Elfangor looked up to the ceiling and in a wistful voice remarked. "If left alone long enough, I have no doubt you would have removed or pacified all of the invaders in less than six years."
He coughed, holding his hand in front of his mouth.
"We Andalites also use the ability to morph to… take sanctioned vacations from the war, whether to recover from our injuries or the stress and trauma of battle. Once upon a time, Earth was quite a popular place for Andalites to rest, particularly America. Most of us spend years at a time in morph on this world."
Tobias held his left arm at the elbow and looked down, like he was recalling a memory that he clearly wanted to forget.
"I was on one such vacation for five years when I met Tobias' mother, Loren." Elfangor continued, closing his eyes as he recalled fond memories. "I basically fell in love and… well, Andalites marrying other species while in morph while isn't stigmatized, it is rather frowned upon due to our monogamous nature. An Andalite's heart will only ever belong to one, and mine was owned by a human. Because of Loren, it will never belong to another Andalite."
"Me, my brother, and my Mom worked together with them for a while," Tobias said, turning away from us. "I… had many Andalite friends, a number of them Elfangor's relatives. They all… accepted me. Even after my mom and… brother passed on, and the rest of the Andalites that were on Earth were… Dad's the only one left."
"Okay, I'm sorry for your loss," Marco said. He was clearly only talking to Tobias, because he seemed to make a point of turning to Elfangor before he continued. "Don't you Andalites have your own resorts or something to go to? In case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly in need of any more aliens to come here acting like they own the place."
"I'm pretty sure he noticed, Marco," Rachel said irritably. "Just look at him!"
"Y-yeah, shouldn't we go get help or something…?" Cassie tried. "He looks pretty bad…"
"Our enemies are many, widespread, and relentless," mostly ignoring Cassie. "They constantly send assassins to take us while we sleep and when we're young. They've grown in number to the point that not even our homeworld is safe. The safest place for us is inside our Dome Ships, but there are not enough to house us all, and they take a lot of resources to build. Andalites are also naturally claustrophobic, so even if we would have enough of them, they would not be a permanent solution. As such, using our morphing technology to pretend to be a member of an alien society has become very common."
"So… what?" Marco asked. "You're saying you took a vacation on a planet that has half a dozen alien invasions going on last time we checked? You really expect us to believe that?"
He looked ready to bolt back to the camp and call in an airstrike on Elfangor or something the minute he'd get to a phone. Rachel seemed to be taking his side.
I felt Cassie take my hand from behind me. She was shivering. I'm not sure whether she believed Elfangor or not, but either way, she didn't like where the conversation was going.
To be honest, I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time, either. But I was definitely ready to run if it came down to it.
Tobias blocked the door before anyone moved, though, gesturing for us to calm down. "Th-this planet was far safer when w- they first started coming here. They were blindsided, just like we were. But they're helping us. Humanity doesn't even know about some of the invasions. Last time we checked, there are ei- no, seven invasions going on right now."
"There were two hidden invasion forces attacking your nation," Elfangor said. "The first were the Mercora. A race of giant crab-like creatures that had an army of machines that they were going to deploy. These war machines would have been controlled from deep within their secret stronghold in the wilds of the US. We crushed their fortress just four weeks ago."
Elfangor took some time to catch his breath, then he looked at my best friend. "Marco, Tobias told me your father works at the ETS. Four weeks ago, did he speak of any unexplained explosions in Wyoming?"
Marco glanced down as he recalled, then his eyes widened. "That was you?"
Elfangor nodded. "Yes. But very shortly after we eliminated the Mercora, we discovered the presence of the second secret invasion."
"Most of the aliens invading are actually low on the galactic food chain. They're basically six schools of small fish surrounded by even smaller fish in an isolated pond," Tobias said. "The Mercora, Helmacrons, Nartec, and others were minor threats, but these guys? Not minor… not minor at all."
"We had six invasions left to deal with, taking down the biggest threats first," Elfangor said. "After the Mercora were gone, we were discussing how to deal with the Nartec, an ever-controversial topic. We were on our way to their stronghold when we were ambushed."
He let out a shuddering sigh and put his hand to his gut, grimacing.
"We had not encountered their species before. But they're dangerous, several orders of magnitude more dangerous and powerful than anything mankind has encountered so far. I only barely managed to rally my people for a counterattack. They were led by another Andalite, by the name of Alloran. He had disappeared some sixty years ago, along with his warship, the Ascalin. We found the wreckage sixteen years later, and the Ascalin was declared lost with all hands. However, Alloran was never seen again… until the ambush. We were whittled down until I was all that remained. The battle was close, but Visser Three gained the upper hand, and I had no choice but to flee."
Rachel shook her head in confusion. "Visser Three? I thought you were talking about Alloran, who's Visser Three?"
"Visser Three is the identity of the one who led the attack," Elfangor elaborated cryptically. "It seems that Alloran had been taken over by a sentient alien parasite, who called himself Visser Three. It was ultimately this parasite which led the ambush. The rest of his forces consisted of a number of other species, likely all being controlled by these parasites. There were centipede-like creatures that operated their artillery and vehicles, and seven-foot tall bipedal lizard-like creatures covered in blades. But above all, under their command they had humans, scores and scores of humans, outnumbering the other species ten to one."
I was shocked, so shocked I couldn't speak for a few seconds. I assume the same went for the others, because they were also quiet. I was the first to speak up again.
"S-so… these things are invading and nobody even knows about it?" I asked.
"Nobody but us," Elfangor said. "We do not know what they call themselves, but the rest of us Andalites do not even know they exist, much less that they're here."
"Visser Three…" I thought to myself out loud. "What does that number mean?"
"It could mean anything," Tobias said, tapping his foot on the floor. "He could be the third highest ranking warlord. Vissers could be candidates for an even higher title. Hell, the three in his name might be like Casimir the Third and he's a prince, or king, or whatever. We have no idea."
"Whatever these parasites are, they're a serious threat," Tobias' dad said.
"If they could take out the Andalites on Earth, when nothing else could prevail against them..." Tobias said, leaving it hanging.
"If not even the ETCS can take them out, then what are we supposed to do?" I said.
Tobias shifted on his feet and elected to move away from the door and look out the window. So he was still hiding something? Great.
"Andalites are not born with our morphing ability," Elfangor continued a few seconds later. "Instead, it is given to our children at a very young age. Before we were ambushed by the Controllers, we had finished a device that would be able to give the power to humans."
"What?" I asked. "You're giving us the power?"
"Yes. It comes with other benefits as well. You will be able to sense your planet's magnetic field, and tell time without a watch. You also get some small-scale regeneration in your true forms, and you will be able to morph faster than any Andalite could hope to. You will not go into shock as easily and will be given a superhuman tolerance to pain, and every time you morph you will be fully healed."
"Fully healed? Really?" Marco asked skeptically. "Then why didn't you do that to recover?"
"When Alloran disappeared, he was transporting a weapon discovered in the ruins of an unknown alien civilization. Dubbed The Crystallizer, the weapon was being moved to be studied and to keep it from falling into enemy hands. This weapon was one that…" Elfangor held his hand over his gut and grimaced. "… that inserted jagged purple crystals into you. They latch on to your flesh, and then grow until they burst out and make air contact, often causing lethal damage. Morphing does not heal it, because they grow from my own flesh."
He looked at us with a jaded stare, "I'm sure you must have found some of these crystals that my son removed from me."
Those crystals came from him? I gagged at the thought of that sickly flesh having been part of the person I was talking to.
"And in case you don't believe us about the pain tolerance, some of those crystals are still inside my dad's gut. He would be screaming and flailing uncontrollably right now if he were a normal human," Tobias said while grasping and ungrasping his fingers.
"Before I fled the battle, the weapon was destroyed," Elfangor said. "However, there was more than one on the Ascalin, and I do not know how many more the Controllers made operational. But on top of morphing, getting the morphing power will also allow you to use any of our technology."
Elfangor then turned to face his son.
"My son, little featherhead. The Cube, if you will."
"Of course," he said, then he put his hand to his left pocket and pulled out a blue cube and started walking towards us.
"Now, it is here and now that you decide," Elfangor said. "If you touch the cube, you will have the power to morph, and many others besides that, and with it the strength to take down the Controllers. But if you choose not to take the power, then Tobias will erase your memories of this encounter, and you will return to whence you came, completely unaware of all that I have divulged to you."
"H-hang on, when you said you were giving 'us' the power you were talking about the four of us specifically?" Cassie asked, with a tone that seemed equally scared and excited. "I thought you meant humanity as a whole…!"
"Tobias has already received the power, and others besides yourself will, but not all," Elfangor said in a soft whisper as Tobias held out the cube in front of him. "What is your decision?"
I was stunned into silence, it was just so… real. You know; crazy, but not the impossible crazy.
The ability to morph into animals? That would be the thrill of a lifetime! But on the other hand, if we were to accept, we'd have to fend off those parasites.
No matter what I and anyone else around me chose that day, our fate had been forever changed. It seemed so simple back then, looking at our situation. Even what Tobias' father told us was straightforward compared to the convoluted mess we're in right now. No matter what we would answer, yes or no, it was clear that we could not go back from this decision. On that day, we took our path, made our choice, and forever changed the fate of our world, and that of many countless other worlds unknown.