Animorphs No.76: The Design
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Contents |
[edit] Chapter Guide
[edit] Chapter 1
[edit] My Head Hurts
My name is Ronnie. And my head really freaking hurts!
I suppose it all started with Cassie.
Oh, my chrystler, Cassie.
To get through this as fast as I can, she was a veteran of a war that spanned three years. The enemy, believe it or not, were alien slug creatures called Yeerks and she along with four of her friends, Rachel, Jake, Marco and Tobias, all had the ability to morph into whatever animal they damn well please... In other words, its as if Manimal became real. I probably should mention that, at the time, she was thirteen.
But that particular war was over with, Now I was among them as the latest member of the Alphamorph Squadron. One of two teams Led by either Jake or Tobias, To be honest, I can't really recall much of the major details now. We're fighting on two separate fronts with an alien conglomerate funneling war machines to a new army of Yeerks and prove to these god-being things that humans can be trusted with being a capable species to trust the aliens among us.
But when you look at modern kids TV, find that Sesame Street's on HBO, Networks like Cartoon Nutpack and Knuckle-odeon (See what I did there.) spewing garbage programs, and the entertainment deliberately hiding their gems to focus on these glorified Toy Commercials... You can see why Donald Trump's going to end up getting the edge he needs to run this nation into the ground.
I hate to get all political here, but when you hear about what I had to watch, of course you'd be driven mad by the very real possibility that a global isolationist would end up in charge of the free damn world. With Yeerk rebellions fueled by money and resources from this freaking Pythagor Conglomerate and gods of destiny using us to test the waters for all of humanity when clearly one of our major leaders works as a bodyguard for a Russian Mafia, it is painfully easy to get lost in all the hectic chaos that is my new life.
'Well at least you have a loving supporting wife to fall back on.' I hear you cheer. And to that comment, I point you towards Gurraf 427.
See, there's a blatant risk of lives with the job, Melissa's dad was one of the major controllers in the earliest parts of the first war, Tobias was stuck in a hawk morph for most of his adolescence, Marco doesn't really remember much of either war these days, and I can name the four that died on the Job off the top of my head. There's Rachel, who died at the end of the first war with the Yeerks. Santorelli, who died chucking a Time Matrix into the sun, if only I had one of those. Jake who traded his life to The One so he could ressurect Rachel who then helped the team strike down a top general of the Yeerks to return the metaphysical favor.
And now, we... I lost Cassie.
And you can thank Guraff for that as well.
All it took for him to seize this one moment was some re-enforced steel doors and a Russian Chestbeater who was afraid of his own shadow. Now I aim to strike him down as quickly as I could.
The problem here was figuring out just where I was.
[edit] Satellite of Love
I was on a spaceship, that was certain. But the look of it wasn't really Yeerk or Pythagi to me. Though, to be fair, I never really stepped into any spaceship of theirs, being that I'm so new to the whole mess. It looked as if it was straight out of Doctor Who, not the big budget NuWho that Cassie would tear apart for being a mess of plot (Tanks for nuthin, Moff, why don't you squeeze in a reference to 90s Adventure Bear while you're at it) but the handmade Who that dated all the way back to 1963, cobbled together out of junk and spare parts, same could be said for the two robots that were sleeping in the rooms attached to the hallway I woke up in.
I glanced at the Door behind me and it had a Number Three on it, I stepped a bit closer to open it and it did so automatically. "raaah... *snort* ...movie sign... awww..." One of the Robots was naturally stirred by the noise so I had to morph into something small.
I remember a Snake that I acquired when me and Cassie were dating. We both ate a hard-boiled egg in our snake morph and the feeling of it passing through my gullock was enough to begin the change.
My legs came together and merged into a fine, scaled tail with the familiar rattle shape at the tip. I clutched my chest so my arms would seep into my body and my head became pretty much all neck, ProJared's worst nightmare.
I slithered through the air ducts and went to check the rooms through the shafts, 3...2...1... I saw an empty movie theater with at least dozens upon dozens of empty seats. Probably for the Pythagi's Cinematic tests. 1...2...3... Back through the hallway, probably to the bridge... 4...5...6... A desk greets me as I slither my way out of the ventilation shaft and demorph. I walk up to it and find a mess of foreign objects both underneath the desk and across the room. The items that got my mind wandering were a purple sweater with the word 'Joike' sewn onto it, a diagram of an anatomically correct giant turtle monster, the shed hyde of many a native species (at least, I hope it's a native species.) and the thing that attracted the most attention: A panel with three distinct buttons, the red one on the left was flashing like mad.
I was curious enough to want to know just what it did, but smart enough to know that it wouldn't really be any good. I reluctantly pressed the flashing button to reveal a man on the hexfield with a messy brown hair styled outward to emphasise the white streak in his hair, trailing all the way down towards his moustache. He jumped with shock which would come naturally if you saw a twenty-something year old black dude in the nude.
[edit] Chapter 2
[edit] Are You Mr Hexton?
"Erm... I take it you're Mr. Hexton..." I didn't really know what I necessarily had to do to diffuse a situation like this so I panicked and said "No, sir." This made him crack a frown of pity.
"Oh, yes... Of course you're not. See, the test subject I am referring to - The one that my daughter picked out for the experiments, - he's a bit more... caucasian than you appear to be." I didn't really care if this was a race thing or not. All that mattered was that this guy did not really have the world's best interests in mind, with individually packaged action figure parts on one side, car engines plugged into the place of human organs on the other, an NES cartridge with what appeared to be the complete works of LJN on the table. This guy was Mad with a Capital M
"But enough about me, Let's Kill You!" My heart literally sank as he pulled the lever, cutting oxygen to the bridge with me trapped inside. Is this really how it ends? Gasping for air and begging for mercy? No... Cassie wouldn't give up like this. She'd keep fighting through the pain. I know she would.
"Wha-What do you want with me!?" I gasped.
"Why, a living specimen to show off my latest experiment, of course!" smiled the Madman as he restored the oxygen on the bridge and made life sustainable again. I sighed with relief before I continued: "What do you mean by 'latest experiment'?!"
"Why, I am, of course, talking about my many secret experiments on the Seaux to keep the human race in line when I take over the world." chuckled the madman as he held up a strange crystal in the shape of a glowing heart. "The Seaux, of course, is the heart of any organic Phlehk-zoh, you might call them monsters, but the meaning is the same..."
The 'Seaux' starts to crack in his hand as he continues: "It also tends to act as a very versatile tool in advancing the growth of related life-forms like the Seaux'Maär if not creating said life-forms outright such as the Seaux'Kye."
And that was when I saw the crystal shatter into little pieces in a snap. "Of course, the basic Seaux cannot sustain its form beyond a sort of containment field. But not to worry! There's plenty more where that ol' girl came from, Just ask the Seaux'nuh!"
[edit] Shugo! Shugo!
And with that, the room lit up so brightly that it cast a green glow on fifteen cucoon-like pods, each housing a transparent easter egg with varying patterns. I could even make out a few sets out of eight of the eggs I saw, but what really amazed me were the creatures within the eggs...
They resembled a sort of chibi-like anime cast in those things.
"Don't let the cute and cuddly anime look fool you, my friend. For it is during the Spryteling phase of their life cycle that they act just as paracitic as the Yeerks that Andilites everywhere often fought back in the day..." the madman paced the room and between the pods. "It starts to feed the minute it is born from the lowest emotional depths of a human child, at first growing the bond it has with the human host, but it's when a spryteling comes into contact with a drop of their host's blood under a full moon: that's when the fun really starts."
Tubes begin to make their way towards each egg to penetrate the shell and plug into the sprytelings inside, causing seering pain for all of them. And then an electrical current flowed into their tiny bodies as red fluid flowed into their stomachs.
Blood.
"So, naturally, I hosted a false blood drive to get their human hosts' blood types and bought some matching blood for each one at my local blood bank." The Madman explained as he activated the X-Ray function on the pod housing the sporty girl with the vizor. "Now watch as the Seaux'nuh body makes its inevitable metamorphosis!"
I watched as blood began to flow throughout the body of the Sprytling and a small white shape of a Heart and three crystals began growing and growing from the back of the neck outward into the head and upper back, The diamonds divided themselves, the bottom one dividing endlessly as the other two molded itself and their trios of offshoots into shoulderblades, arms, hands and fingers.
[edit] Finer Details
- Cover: Marco's head glancing down, An Image of Ronnie morphing into a Cobra
- Opening Blurb: "We can't tell you who we are. Or where we live. It's too risky, and we've got to be careful. Really careful. So we don't trust anyone. Because if they find us... well, we just won't let them find us.
- The thing you've got to know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you."
- Book Summary:
