wtfanimorphs

[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #40: The Other, Ch. 15-19

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Chapter 15

Okay, the kids *sort of* have a plan, I’ll give them that. Everyone gets a bee morph and everyone but Jake will sneak into the greenhouse that way. Jake will ring the doorbell, Marco will hide in the house as backup, and everyone will else will hide in the greenhouse as backup backup. Sounds good so far! There’s not really anything beyond that though except “see what sketchy shit Scythe Daddy gets up to and then go from there.”

This ends up with Jake and bee!Marco as guests in the secret Andalite room, where Scythe Daddy sets about unsubtly trying to figure out why Jake hasn’t demorphed into what he presumes is an Andalite form, what Andalite tech they might have sitting around, etc.

It’s all very awkward and then it just gets more so when Scythe Daddy sort of flinches and stumbles like he’s in pain, and then grabs his shredder and points it at Jake to demand some answers.

Chapter 16

This standoff lasts about two sentences and then Rachel in grizzly form breaks down the entrance to the secret room, leaving Scythe Daddy surrounded by an array of various species of creature. Including Jake, who is showing absolutely no signs of demorphing into an Andalite warrior anytime soon.

Scythe Daddy’s brain gears turn for a little while and then he figures out that all of them but Ax are human. No adult Andalites in sight for him to take a morph from.

They try to give him a somewhat gentle intervention about how they do understand why he’d be trying to get a morph to cure his deadly chronic disease, and other than Ax’s weird bullshit the rest of them don’t think it would be cowardly or whatever. But Scythe Daddy is unamused - they’ve got it all wrong.

ACTUALLY, what’s happening is that Mertil has been captured by V3 and being held captive. Since he doesn’t have a tail-blade and can’t morph he’s no good to them, so they’re willing to trade him for a morph-capable Andalite. But they won’t accept Scythe Daddy himself in trade since he’s got this whole deadly-disease thing happening and won’t be useful for long.

(Mertil told V3 about Scythe Daddy’s disease for exactly that reason, to stop him from trading his own life away, which is very sweet and very gay.)

So now Scythe Daddy’s just hanging around trying to get his hands on a proper adult Andalite to trade for Mertil because frankly at this point in his limited remaining life he’s more interested in saving his boyfriend than in not being a traitor to the species or whatever.

Aw, buddy. I don’t know how I feel about that but again, it’s very sweet and very gay. Maybe find a better plan B, though.

Chapter 17

Everyone’s more or less agreed that they’re going in to help, although Marco’s agreeing from a very “I still don’t trust any of this so I might as well be part of it so I can keep an eye on things” mode. Which, given these children’s lives, is reasonable enough. 

Ax continues to be a jerk about how worthless Mertil is, but everyone yells at him about it so that’s nice. Even though the terminology is on the outdated side in the year 2021. At least no one refers to Mertil as “handicapable.”

So yeah, everyone’s going to get into bird morphs and go looking for Mertil, who apparently gets moved around regularly to avoid exactly the sort of rescue they’re planning. One bit of good news on their side - Mertil and Scythe Daddy have been “friends” so long that they can partially hear each other’s thought-speak. So they’re just going to fly around hoping to get close enough by accident that Scythe Daddy can get a lock on Mertil’s location.

Sure, I guess, I don’t have a better idea. 

Chapter 18

While they fly around, Marco and Jake have the requisite Moral Dilemma Conversation on the private band.

Marco remains suspicious as hell. Scythe Daddy literally admitted he was hoping to be able to trade a grown Andalite for Mertil. Marco can respect that as someone who’s had to make agonizing and terrible moral choices, but he also thinks it doesn’t bode well for them. Presumably Scythe Daddy would make a new deal and hand over the “Andalite bandits” for Mertil, if he sees the chance to do it.

Jake believes Scythe Daddy will stay on their side, but also he’s just very tired, and they vaguely agree to disagree right around the time Scythe Daddy gets a lock on Mertil’s location.

Apparently Mertil is being held in the abandoned trainyard, my god, I love the worldbuilding of the Mystery Location our children live in. Of COURSE there’s an entire junkyard for abandoned trains. Why wouldn’t there be? Back in my day we had to hang out at the 7-11 or the beach because we didn’t have abandoned trains to loiter in, I feel cheated.

They fly to the trainyard and can’t immediately see Mertil anywhere, but they do see dozens of Hork-Bajir exiting a couple of the train cars. Suspicious! Sus. The youths say sus, I think? Help, I’m so old and tired.

Chapter 19

Trainyard scouting! Lots of sneak sneak sneaking around. They pinpoint a U-Haul that Mertil is being held in, and he sends out a sad little “you should all go away now” telepathy message. Which still doesn’t sound like a terrible idea to Marco given how outnumbered they are.

But Jake’s still intent on going in, and Scythe Daddy is hyperventilating at being this close to his boyfriend, and no one’s going anywhere except to duck into a shadow and get into battle morphs. (Noted: Jake tells Ax to stick close to Scythe Daddy in case he’s in pain and needs help and/or decides to betray them. Seems like that’s gonna be relevant eventually.)

So they try to tiptoe in all sneaky, as sneaky as a gorilla and a bear and etc. can be so they’ll at least have surprise on their side. But nope! They’ve been spotted.

Argh! A cliffhanger!

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #40: The Other, Ch. 11-14

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(We all safe and good here?  I mean, as much as can be? Staying hydrated and taking our meds and shit?  Good.  Keep doing that. <3)

Chapter 11

Okay SO we return to find everyone arranging to casually bump into each other at the mall.  Like you do.  That is completely sincere, I was a teen in New Jersey in the mid-90s, bumping into each other at the mall was all we ever did with our free time except for bumping into each other at 7-11 or bumping into each other at the movie theater.

Predictably, Jake is not thrilled at how far Marco and Tobias and Ax have already taken their encounter with Scythe Daddy without looping him in, but he’s more focused on next steps.  Tobias and Cassie are worried about risks, and Jake is too but he thinks they should go ahead and set up a meeting with appropriate precautions, maybe tomorrow.

I’m a little fuzzy on the timeline here but aren’t they still waiting out the three days to follow him around and make sure he’s not recharging at the Yeerk pool?  I kinda think they should wait.  On the other hand who knows, maybe Scythe Daddy and Mertil’s underground lair has a tunnel to the Yeerk pools, so maybe there’s no point.

Marco isn’t taking much of a side here, mostly because he’s already decided he’s going in with his new bee morph to look around more before Jake can have a chance.  Kids!  Tell each other things!    Have backup!

At any rate, the hangout breaks up, but Rachel lingers to tell Marco that she knows perfectly well he’s got a plan to go back and check out the place, and she wants in on it.  See, Rachel agrees with me!  Backup is good!

Chapter 12

Uh oh, Marco has gone online to do honeybee research and discovered that bees are a colony insect like ants.  He really hates the idea of getting anywhere near another hive mind, and makes a note to try to avoid the colony at all costs.

Unfortunately when they get to the greenhouse it turns out Marco isn’t going to be able to find his way in unless he pairs up with another honeybee like a pair of preschool toddlers going for a walk with their assigned buddy.  So under Rachel’s watchful eye, he gets to bee morphing.  Which is how he finds out he’s a female honeybee, since he has a stinger.  Another mental note for Marco: don’t sting anything lest you die.

But then full honeybee brain kicks and he doesn’t care about his stinger anymore, he just cares about getting to the hive.

Whoops!  Hopefully Rachel’s going to yell at him before he gets too far.

Animorphs #40: The Other, Ch. 11-14

Fortunately Rachel does yell at Marco before he can get too far into the hive, catching him in the midst of some elaborate dance routine with the hive guard about the nearest food sources.  I love bee dances so much!

After a near-miss with some other insect, Marco manages to hook up with a bee buddy and makes it into the greenhouse and  then into Scythe Daddy’s house.  He does a whole bunch of recon all around the house but only sees what they saw before - not many signs of anyone living there, and no sign at all of Mertil.

We’re ending the chapter here like it’s supposed to be a cliffhanger but didn’t we already think Mertil was self-isolating in the sub-secrets sub-basement somewhere?  Unclear why this is news or where it’s going.

Chapter 14

...and I guess we’re not going to find out right now because now we’re back at the barn and Jake is really annoyed at Marco for going off half-cocked AGAIN on a Scythe Daddy quest.  Jake’s also confused about this whole Mertil situation.  They did see him on video so presumably he exists?  Was it a fake somehow?  What does Scythe Daddy even want?

Ax has a flash of inspiration, though, about that Andalite root that Scythe Daddy is growing.  Apparently in addition to being a tasty intoxicant, it’s used medicinally as painkiller for a chronic progressive genetic disease.  They’re working up a theory that maybe Scythe Daddy has the disease and is self-medicating.  If he did, the only cure would be to intentionally become a different morph and overstay the two hours to be trapped in that other body forever.  So maybe he’s looking for a healthy adult Andalite body to morph.

This is of course some sort of terribly shameful thing to do to oneself in Andalite society because Ax is sure giving us the impression that Andalites are not capable of nuanced approaches to disability.

But it’s a theory, anyway.  Maybe Scythe Daddy wants to get his paws on some DNA from Jake, who he still thinks is an adult Andalite.  Maybe he wants Visser Three’s DNA. Maybe he’s using Mertil as bait.  Maybe he killed Mertil ages ago.  Maybe Mertil’s a captive and they need to rescue him. Anything is possible.

I dislike all of these theories.  Maybe Mertil’s the one with the illness!  Maybe no one has a disease and Mertil and Scythe Daddy just like to get high on a Tuesday afternoon occasionally.  Leave them alone!

Who knows.  Theories are flying wildly, no one trusts Scythe Daddy, and Jake’s just like, fuck it, we’re going in to investigate.

BRING A HOST GIFT, JAKE, DON’T BE RUDE TO YOUR NEW GAY NEIGHBORS, I WANT YOU ALL TO BE FRIENDS.

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[wtfanimorphs]

OH MY GOD YOU FINALLY GOT TO THE GAY ANDALITES

The number of comments that are just OMG THE GAY ANDALITES are giving me life.

I do remember what gay characters were like around this time so I have no illusions here, I assume one of them is going to die and the other either is already a villain from touching a dick (or whatever Andalites have going on down there) or will become a villain when the first one dies.  But I’m going to enjoy this queer disabled Andalite rep while I have it.

*throws a tiny one-woman pride parade for two (2) weird blue deer, one of whom i have not actually met yet, both of whom may turn out to be absolutely awful people*

[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #40: The Other, Ch. 6-10

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Chapter 6

Apparently instead of going to talk to Jake, the Marco/Ax/Tobias trio decide to follow Scythe Daddy instead. (Look. I KNOW he has a name now but I keep having to stop and check how to spell it and it’s annoying, so until/unless I wrap my head around Gafinilan he’s gonna be Scythe Daddy, sorry I’m like this, everyone, it’s this or I just change his name to Zach Galifianakis.)

The logic is something like “he had a chance to hurt us and didn’t so we may as well follow him, and also he probably almost definitely saw Marco demorphing and that seems like a problem?”  Fair, but I kind of still think one of them ought to go for backup.

They lose him in the woods pretty quickly though. Fortunately, Marco’s in wolf mode and has great smelling abilities, and he manages to sniff out a hidden entrance to some sort of cave. (Ax points out that it could be a Yeerk pool entrance, and this could still all be a trap. He’s not wrong but also he really doesn’t like Scythe Daddy and his boyfriend/bro/whatever much, does he?)

As they watch, an extremely normal-looking middle-aged dude comes out of the cave and looks around and then walks away quickly through the woods.

The Animorphs jump to “this is definitely a Yeerk pool entrance and this is a Yeerk” but don’t we think this is actually either Scythe Daddy or Mertil in a human morph? Apparently the kids disagree because they go “okay, let that guy go, we gotta focus on getting into that cave and finding our guy” but I *really* think they just let their guy walk away. I’m getting that in now before I keep reading.

And…..yup. They stake out the cave for several minutes and finally venture in, only to find it’s empty and appears to just be where Scythe Daddy hides clothes for his human morph. Whoops!

Tobias saves the day by spotting the very average guy from overhead and they follow him home to an average house in an average neighborhood. This book could not be saying “average” more if it tried. I assume we’re supposed to be getting the message that Scythe Daddy and Mertil really do not want to draw attention to themselves or get involved in shenanigans, they’re just laying low. I have a terrible feeling that’s not going to work out for them.

They watch Human Scythe Daddy let himself into his normal human house, which has “H. McClellan” on the mailbox, and then they finally decide to go find Jake.

Chapter 7

The next day in the barn, everyone has questions. Why did Scythe Daddy not appear to give two fucks about having seen a human morph? Why didn’t he ask about what Ax is doing roaming around on Earth and who his companions are and whatnot? Why did he seem to expect Visser Three?

All solid questions, honestly, but no one really has any good answers, they’re just spitballing. Too occupied with his injured co-pilot? A secret Yeerk collaborator?

Jake thinks it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have some Andalite muscle around if they could trust him, so he decides to set a watch for a few days and figure out what Scythe Daddy does, whether he goes to the Yeerk pool, etc. Meanwhile, Ax and Marco are going to go knock on his door and say hi and try to figure what that whole situation is about, while everyone else hides in the bushes and prepares to jump out and hit things if it turns into a fight. 

Love a good “hide in the bushes, then jump out and yell” plan.

Chapter 8

Later on in the day, Marco catches up in bird form with Tobias, who’s been tailing Scythe Daddy around. Things we have learned:

His human name is Henry

He works in a particle physics lab

He eats doughnuts

He got some sort of important call and raced home and hasn’t left since unless he’s snuck out in a tiny morph

Do we think Scythe Daddy knows about cinnamon buns?

There’s a greenhouse attached to the regular house (oh my god, the DREAM, someone build me a greenhouse!) and they can see Scythe Daddy hanging out in there pruning things. No sign of Mertil, no sign of whatever the big emergency was.

Marco decides to go in closer to check it out over Tobias’ objections and promptly gets himself zapped with a force field, at which point a skylight in the greenhouse roof opens up and Scythe Daddy pops out with a shredder and shoots at Marco’s bird-talons and yells at him to surrender.

Woof. This guy is not messing around, is he?

Marco tells Tobias to go get help, and lands to demorph rather than get shot at some more.

Chapter 9

Okay, *now* Scythe Daddy is interested in Marco. He wants to know, reasonably enough, how a human kid got his hands on morphing abilities.

He and Marco have a little glare-off about whether Marco is going to tell him anything, given that he might be in league with Visser Three, until Ax turns up to tell them to stop yelling at each other if they want to maybe be allies.

Scythe Daddy is so unimpressed that Ax’s prince sent a human kid to talk to him, and he only wants to talk to said prince. But when they threaten to leave he cracks and is like FINE OKAY I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BUT YOU WIN and leads them inside. The other Animorphs apparently have shown up and are getting into hiding-in-bushes position.

Scythe Daddy has a lovely home and they make some awkward banter about that, although Marco points out that it’s obviously completely unlived-in and they should try dirtying a dish or something if they want to make out like there are normal human people living here.

Instead, they get led into a secret hidden room where Scythe Daddy actually lives. It’s very “Andalites stuck indoors” chic - nice nature colors, a grass floor, lots of TV screens. But no sign of Mertil. Is he hiding in a bug form? Does he have another even more secret room? Is it full of junk food wrappers? I have questions!

Chapter 10

Oh! It’s lore drop time. Ax wants to know why Scythe Daddy won’t fight the Yeerks with them and that unlocks his backstory.

Apparently in the battle that destroyed Elfangor’s ship way back at the start of all this, Mertil and Scythe Daddy were both flying fighters. Scythe Daddy’s ship got hit and spiralled out and took Mertil’s ship down with it, and they both crashed and were stranded. Scythe Daddy eventually healed, Mertil lost his tail-blade, Mertil can’t morph, and Scythe Daddy is now dedicated to being his protector and provider because he feels crushing guilt about crashing their ships.

Everyone! Needs! Therapy!

Marco wants to meet Mertil, but the dignity of isolation is a big deal if you’re a disabled Andalite, so that’s a no. Marco thinks that’s nonsense and so do I, has anyone asked Mertil what he wants?  But Scythe Daddy just invites Ax to partake of some sort of fancy Andalite root he grows in his greenhouse. Ax is very into this; apparently *illsipar* roots are some hot shit and Ax is very excited for a taste of his home planet’s vegetation.

The part of me that has seen a lot of TV thinks maybe Ax shouldn’t be taking food from this strange dude who they so far have a really rocky relationship with, but perhaps I’m being overly suspicious. Scythe Daddy also tramples on some roots, so maybe it’s fine.

They’re not interested in Marco when there are roots to eat with their feet, so he goes off and explores the rest of the green house, including some bees. He doesn’t see any hives, so he can only assume that the bees are coming from outside and have some sort of safe way to get in and out. So he catches and acquires the morph of a bee while no one’s looking so that he can come back later and explore. Clever boy, Marco!  Maybe.  Hive insects don’t have a great track record in this series.

And apparently that ends the visit. Scythe Daddy figures since he’s shared some of his fancy Andalite root, that shows his good faith and their prince should come visit him and also eat the roots.

The Animorphs, not pointing out that their prince is a human child too, are just like: “yup sure good fine, we’ll definitely do that, bye!”

Adding a second Andalite to the mix is not doing anything to improve smooth social relations, this is all very awkward!

Also  I would like to meet Mertil soon.  I’m worried about him.  I don’t want this to be a Whatever Happened To Baby Jane situation.  Or a Misery situation.  Or a Flowers in the Attic situation.  Or a Bertha Rochester situation.  Or a - shit, I grew up on a lot of weird media about people being imprisoned in someone else’s house, didn’t I?

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #40: The Other, Ch. 1-5

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It’s January! Welcome back! I have done pretty much fuck-all for two weeks and it’s been glorious, I hope you similarly have had a bit of a break from the grinding horrors of the world. Now let’s...read about the grinding horrors of a different world. <3

Chapter 1

So, the cover of this book indicates that Marco is going to become a bee. That’s fine. I anticipate some body horror around stinging, but sure, that’s fine. What is NOT fine is the “This is your brain with a Yeerk. Any questions?” tagline. I’m pretty sure that was cringeworthy even in 2000. Why are we still doing these taglines. Why didn’t they just quietly retire them after the first 10 or so were all terrible and stupid.

Okay ANYWAY, sorry, I’m a little rusty at this, here we go.

Marco drops a boatload of the usual backstory on us and then explains that he was really excited about having that major rarity, an evening with absolutely no obligations. Dad, stepmom, and dog are out of the house! Jake, Rachel, and Cassie have family stuff! Ax and Tobias are off romping in the woods! 

So Marco settles in for a relaxing evening of mindless TV, reaches for the remote, and promptly gets dropped into an episode of Unsolved Mysteries involving recently-filmed amateur video of legendary creatures. And then Things Went Wrong.

...okay, so someone caught the Animorphs on tape? Or V3 doing a horrifying morph? Oh man, I sort of love the idea that somewhere in his deep stash of morphs, V3 has one that just happens to look exactly like the popular conception of a Sasquatch or a classic little green man alien or something, and accidentally starts a cryptozoology fervor.

Chapter 2

Oh! It’s an Andalite. Or, as the TV host would have it, a centaur or a unicorn.

Marco, bless him, goes straight into PROTECC AX FROM DISCOVERY BY HUMANS WHO MIGHT WANT TO DISSECT HIM mode, stuffs his bed with pillows to make it look like he’s asleep, gets into osprey morph, and goes off in search of Ax to warn him he’s potentially in danger.

Aw, friendship.

Although it would be entertaining if bigfoot hunters came and caught Visser Three, he’d be so ANNOYED.

Chapter 3

Oh, this is one of those really fun “wow, this was written in another time” moments, because when Marco finds Ax and Tobias and fills them in they’re like HOW CAN WE FIND THAT FOOTAGE. They can’t sit around and wait for a rerun! Or MAIL a CHECK to the STATION to ask for a copy!

Luckily for them, Ax has cobbled together some sort of homemade DVR and is taping everything at all times. (Ax, buddy, TiVos existed by this point, just get one. Although I’m projecting here because in 2000 I desperately WANTED a TiVo but didn’t have one yet, DVRs were the provenance of people much cooler than I, I don’t know where I think Ax is going to come up with the money for one.)

So Ax finds the footage and plays it back for them and they inch through freeze-frames like they’re about to start yelling ENHANCE at the footage, but it’s - dubious. It COULD be Ax but Ax doesn’t seem like he’s sure that it is. They toss around other ideas. Is there any way V3 intentionally allowed himself to be seen? Is this all some sort of trap?

But Tobias spots something they don’t - this Andalite only has half a tail. It’s someone new, and someone Ax theorizes can’t morph, or he’d have fixed the tail. 

And then Ax gets real mean and ableist about how useless Andalites without functioning tails are, and I’m skipping it because I don’t need that bullshit in my life and Marco also thinks he’s being a jerk. Which he is. Bite me, Ax.

So now Ax and Tobias and Marco are all in some sort of standoff about what’s up with this other Andalite, whether he could be useful as an ally, whether he might be a spy or a trap, and why is Ax being such a jackass about it, anyway. Fortunately they have Jake to make the decisions so they all sort of agree to grumpily disagree for now, and go off to find this Andalite before anyone else does, and to find Jake to tell them what to do about it.

Chapter 4

Tobias apparently recognized a particular log from 20 seconds of blurry Andalite video - handy to have a bird on the team! So they fly to the clearing and spend a while looking around it for any signs of habitation or struggle. Nothing shows up, but it’s almost time to get out of morph, so Marco lands and starts to demorph.

At which point of course Tobias starts yelling WAIT BACK UP CANCEL THAT NO DEMORPHING but it’s too late, Marco is already halfway out of morph and meanwhile a possum standing near him is blowing up to enormous size. 

What the fuck, when the possum demorphs it’s a big burly Andalite with a SCYTHE TAIL, since when can they have SCYTHE TAILS, what is happening.

Ax and Burly Scythe Daddy have a staring contest and Tobias is like, “well, this seems like a great opportunity to swoop in and startle this new guy because clearly Ax can’t take him in a fair fight, this is like if Dwayne The Rock Johnson had a scythe”. 

Ax starts to say “maybe don’t do that” but it’s too late, Tobias is screeching and swooping in.

Burly Scythe Daddy flinches for a second and then just sort of casually smacks Tobias out of the air with his TAIL SCYTHE.

Kids, maybe you should have gone to find Jake first. This is a shitshow.

Chapter 5

Okay, now this is just hilarious, Ax and Burly Scythe Daddy face off for about ten seconds while Marco tries to figure out how to dart in and rescue Tobias from being trampled. And then Burly Scythe Daddy swats Ax down like a fly and is like, “VISSER THREE, WE FINALLY MEET, WEIRDLY YOU’RE EASIER TO FIGHT THAN I WAS EXPECTING.”

Perfect. Amazing. I’m cackling.

Ax is like “wait, I am an ACTUAL CHILD, I’m AXIMILI.”

They seem to be maybe getting somewhere in the not-fighting direction once it turns out Ax is not V3, except then Ax says more dismissive stuff about the guy with the busted tail, and Burly Scythe Daddy roars up in defense of his bro and is like STOP BEING AN ABLEIST SHIT.

Okay, maybe I like this guy. He gets a name now so I’ll start calling him Gafinilan, and half-tail-dude is Mertil. Apparently Ax has heard of both of them as famous fighter pilots, so he dials it down a few notches, and hostilities de-escalate a little.

(Marco, meanwhile, is exceedingly unnecessary and just stares.)

Ax gets a little hyped up and is like “hey let me tell you about this Yeerk situation and how no help is coming, you have to help us!”

Gafinilan is not super interested. He has one goal in life and that is to take care of Mertil, who got badly injured in a battle that stranded them both on Earth. He just wants to be left alone in peace with his bro, and if the Animorphs let him do that they’ll all get along fine, and if they don’t, they will die.

Friendly!

Also he really thinks they should get going because V3 will probably be along any time now and this incredibly awkward conversation does not need another participant. And with that, he fucks off into the woods, tossing a “...but good luck with your hopeless quest or whatever” over his shoulder.

Well, that was a lot!

I look forward to hearing what Jake is going to have to say about all of this.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #39: The Hidden, Ch. 19-22

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Chapter 19

Ant!Cassie continues to sort of writhe and scream as it morphs back and forth between various ant and human parts, and Cassie is just straight-up frozen in horror for a minute trying to figure out what the FUCK. She vaguely recalls that there had been an ant crawling on the cube and she'd flicked it off. CASSIE. PLEASE. PUT THAT CUBE IN A ZIPLOC BAG OR SOMETHING.STOP LETTING ANIMALS TOUCH IT.

She can't figure out why the ant is screaming since morphing isn't physically painful so much as existentially horrifying, but then she realizes that the ant must be really fucked up about suddenly developing an individual mind instead of being part of the ant hive-mind. Free will, apparently, is painful.

But she snaps out of her horrified daze when the ant attacks her with ant pincers grown GIANT, and tries to fight back. Unfortunately she's having a hard time getting away from the horrible ant-creature, which is threatening to chew off her arm at any moment.

But then a heroic bellow - Chappalo3 has come to save the day! It comes running up and stabs Ant!Cassie with a particularly forceful stab of its horns. I guess Cassie is very lucky the ant was still in its hybrid shape, or Chappalo3 might have gotten confused and gored the wrong one.

But he got the right one, and the half-dead ant starts to shrink. But Cassie can't let it get back to ant form. Unclear whether that's a tactical decision because she can't let it heal itself and then re-form as her, or just the pure sheer horror of needing the awful thing dead. Either way she stomps the shit out of it. Bye, Ant!Cassie, we knew ye briefly and unpleasantly.

She can hear a helicopter coming and knows she has to get moving, so she morphs into an osprey while Chappalo3 meanders around chewing grass, since there's nothing else to fight.

Time to leave, and she doesn't really know what to say, but she thanks Chappalo3 for saving her life and tells it that it was good and then watches as the helicopter bursts over their clearing and blows Chappalo3 up.

Oof. That was abrupt! Bye to you too, Chappalo3. You were in fact good, I guess, as far as crimes against nature go? Honestly it was gonna fare a lot worse at the hands of V3, this was probably the best clean death it could hope for.

Chapter 20

Cassie flies away, maybe a little bit relieved that she no longer has the burden of killing Chappalo3, but also sad that she let down this creature that trusted her.

She gets to the beach, where she can see the other Animorphs are in dolphin form and both a Bug fighter and the helicopter are flying above them shooting at them. The Animorphs are doing their best to create a distraction so Cassie can do whatever it is she's going to do. I've lost track of the cube - does one of them have it in a little dolphin fanny pack? 

She calls out to her friends to stay where they currently are, so she can take her position over the helicopter. She has to move fast because Tobias and Marco have been hit and are bleeding, which is going to draw sharks, and honestly no plan needs Bonus Sharks.

So there she is, flying high up over the helicopter which is in turn high up over her bleeding friends, preparing to demorph to drop the "anvil" on the helicopter.

We still don't know what the anvil is but it has to be the whale, right? They're doing a whale drop again?

Chapter 21

Okay, they ARE doing the whale drop. But Cassie's so tired and frazzled that it doesn't go as smoothly as her last midair bird-to-human-to-whale morph. She's not able to control her mass and therefore her speed, and she's falling too fast toward the helicopter blades. Not great. She would rather not get chopped up, especially if she's not even big enough yet to take out the helicopter as she goes!

But then the helicopter pilot looks up and sees her, freaks out because THERE'S A WHALE FALLING AT HIM, and yanks the helicopter out of the way.

Helicopter: safe

Cassie: still falling, plan's fucked, gonna probably crush her friends to death as she lands on them

A passing seagull: "I CAN FIX IT," and the gull gets sucked into the helicopter's jet engine, causing the helicopter to explode, and sending Cassie tumbling throught the air until she blacks out.

What. WHAT.

You guys, I am so writer's-blocked on my latest fanfic WIP right now and now I'm tempted to try to solve my plot issues with AND THEN A RANDOM SEAGULL SOMEHOW FIXES IT. If it's good enough for Animorphs it's good enough for me.

This book really just solved the whole thing by murdering a seagull. 

Sure. Fine. Chappalo3 died for this, I guess.

Chapter 22

Cassie wakes up in human form, floating in the ocean, surrounded by dolphins who are holding her up One of them is holding the morphing cube. She's not, you know, LOVING how far out to sea she is, supported only by dolphins, and also her lungs are full of water. So she coughs for a while as everyone fils her in on what she missed.

What she missed was a lot of screaming and the helicopter exploding so badly that they're *almost* definitely sure the Helmacron ship sensor must have been destroyed. And then they talked a half-dead Cassie into demorphing, which she has no recollection of, so thanks, survival instinct!

Oh my god, there's a Dharma and Greg reference here about Jake and Cassie communicating privately telepathically. Sometimes these books date themselves so *precisely*! But I didn't watch that show when it was airing and I'm not looking it up now to understand this joke, so we'll just, I guess, assume that Dharma was a telepath? Sure, let's go with that.

Cassie morphs back to a dolphin and everyone swims home and, I hope, they immediately put the morphing cube in A CONTAINER since apparently it no longer requires any sort of intent to transmit morphing capacity, but only any random animal to lumber past.

RIP, Chappalo3, Ant-Cassie, and the human hosts killed in the helicopter explosion. Not that any of the Animorphs have mentioned that. Because human collateral damage is just...a thing we barely blink at anymore, I guess.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE!

....and with that we're done with this book, and it just so happens to be my last day of work before my holiday break. I think I'm going to give myself the gift of absolutely no obligations for the next two weeks including internet obligations, and I don't want to put up one post of the new book and leave you hanging. So we're just going to take a breather and then pick up with the next book in the new year.

If you miss me before then feel free to slide into my inbox and tell me what you're up to, or come hang with me on Twitter where I never shut up about my cats.

Otherwise, everyone have as pleasant an end-of-year as one can with, you know, the world doing the things the world is doing right now. Get some rest, take care of yourselves, snuggle your pets for me if you have them, and we'll reconvene in January to find out what terrible thing will happen to these children next. I did peek at the cover and it looks like Marco is going to turn into a bee, so that’s something to look forward to!

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #39: The Hidden, Ch. 15-18

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Chapter 15

OKAY I had to miss a few days for boring personal-life reasons, so where were we? Ah, yes, the children and the horrifying nightmare that is Chappalo3 were running away from pursuing Hork-Bajir. Let’s see how that’s going for them.

Hm, not great, everyone’s tired and wounded and cranky. But they’re nearly at the beach, so it’s time for someone to stay behind and slow down their pursuit while the rest of the gang takes the cube and runs. Cassie volunteers, hating every second of it, because she knows Chappalo3 will stay and fight with her. Best chance of successfully slowing the Hork-Bajir down; high likelihood of getting Chappalo3 killed.

It sucks but when was the last time they had a choice that didn’t suck, really? So Jake takes the cube and runs off, while Cassie morphs into a buffalo. Chappalo3 will follow suit because he’s a good little crime against nature. She sees a steep drop-off of the ravine nearby and takes note of it as she and Chappalo3 start to fight.

They’re holding their own against the Hork-Bajir pretty well, but soon enough V3 comes along. He’s so pissy about Chappalo3 knocking him out that he’s chosen some sort of morph that appears to have “tentacles, but they shoot acid” as its primary feature. Why does this creature even exist. Where does V3 FIND these things.

Who knows, Cassie does not know or wish to find out, she calls to Chappalo3 and then flings herself off the edge of the drop.

Chapter 16

Both Cassie and Chappalo3 land badly injured, and she talks it through morphing to heal itself. It ends up in its Chapman form, and we’re not discussing whether he’s naked but I think we have to assume he’s naked. Chappalo3 doesn’t know about clothes.

Cassie can hear the Hork-Bajir milling around angrily overhead and V3 yelling, but no one else comes plunging into the canyon after them, so she leads Chappalo3 away, toward where she knows the others will be. She knows Jake expected her to let Chappalo3 die in the fight but she feels responsible for it. If it has to die, she wants it to die humanely.

Oh, Cassie, I don’t think that’s - the most likely scenario?

Also I’m surprised that V3 didn’t launch into one of his flying morphs and hop on down to them. I guess we’re just...ignoring the fact that he could definitely do that if he wanted to.

Chapter 17

Cassie’s rejoined the others and they’re debriefing and trying to ignore how weird it is to have Chappalo3 staring at them. Chappalo3, well, it’s staring. And continuing to make monosyllable noises like it’s trying to learn from them how to talk. 

The Animorphs are not thrilled that Chappalo3 is with them. It’s creepy and also the longer this goes on the clearer it becomes that one of them is going to have to kill it. But they’re a little busy with other things right now. So eventually Cassie tricks it by convincing it to be a buffalo with her, and then wandering into the underbrush and re-emerging as a wolf, leaving poor Chappalo3 perplexed about where his buffalo friend went.

And then she runs off with the other Animorphs, leaving the confused and upset Chappalo3 behind her. The guilt and confusion about, you know, everything related to Chappalo3 is harder to leave behind, though. But she’s trying, bless her little heart.

Chapter 18

Near the beach, there’s a helicopter overhead tracking them, so it’s apparently time for Operation Anvil. Except that before Cassie can demorph, she’s interrupted by the horrible sight of an ant growing up from the ground.

It gets bigger and bigger and then becomes partly human and then becomes - Cassie. Ant-Cassie.

I thought for a second that Chappalo3 had turned up again as an overachiever with two new morphs, but I think this has to be a new morphing animal. Who let an ant touch the cube? Assuming the kids make it out of this book still in possession of this cube, I REALLY need them to start keeping it in a carrying case or something so random animals stop touching it. This is not okay. If I ever saw an Ant-Me I would simply walk into the sea and never return.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #39: The Hidden, Ch. 11-14

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Chapter 11

The Chappalo has imprinted on Cassie, hasn’t it? After the chaos it just sort of...follows all the Animorphs and tries to change form when they do, becoming mostly human and starting to sort of grunt and attempt to make noises like the Animorphs’ talking. It’s not unlike Ax’s playing with sounds, really. They should give the Chappalo a cinnamon bun and see what happens.

Cassie’s sort of into it in a fascinated-horror way, like, it’s terrible but also what if she could communicate with an animal? Marco has SEEN MOVIES and knows this is BAD and he would like to YEET IT INTO THE VOID, and Jake is just like, “the sooner this thing learns to talk the sooner it has to die, so please do not communicate with the Chappalo, Cassie.”

But they don’t have time to deal with it because a helicopter is coming back, so the humans go to wolf morph and the Chappalo goes back to buffalo morph, and everyone goes running. The Chappalo runs after them because Cassie’s its mom now or whatever, which leaves her despairing because it will draw attention to them, but what can she do but run?

They bump into some Taxxons and Cassie drops the blue box from her mouth long enough to fight them off when they threaten Tobias, which earns her a scolding from Jake because it could have been a trap and she is absolutely not to leave the morphing box unattended for any reason. He instructs Rachel to drop behind Cassie so she can do any cleanup on any further attacks.

Cassie’s now feeling guilty and annoyed that Jake doesn’t trust her, but a) she really shouldn’t have dropped the cube and b) the Chappalo is her baby now, she’s BUSY, let Rachel handle the cleanup! Which is more or less what Rachel says, so on they go, racing through the woods toward the sound of Jake howling up ahead.

Chapter 12

Up ahead there’s just a straight-up melee, and Cassie isn’t allowed to fight in it because she has to protect the box, so she just slinks under a shrub to wait it out. Fortunately her awful son the Chappalo is here to wade into the fray. Everyone fights for a while, with helicopters and Bug fighters overhead furiously exploding trees all around them, and finally Jake tells Cassie to run toward the beach and they’ll all follow.

Which they do, and they manage to get out of the helicopters’ searchlights, but it’s not going to last. They have to cross a road up ahead and there’ll probably be loads of patrolling Hork-Bajir up there ready to fight some more. And everyone’s pretty banged-up and not in great shape for more fighting.

Jake apologizes to Cassie for snapping at her, she’s too tired to stay mad, and they get on with trying to figure out how to get past the road crossing in some sort of form that’s stealthy but can also carry a cube. Also what to do about the Chappalo, which seems to have dropped back behind the, but will probably appear again.

What they settle on, and I refuse to believe this is the best plan but I will admit I don’t have a better one given that they’re rushed, is that all but one of them will cross the road in fly morph. Someone will stay behind and just THROW THE CUBE ACROSS THE ROAD when no one’s looking, and then the others will collect it while the pitcher also morphs a fly and comes to meet them. This is the plan. Just CHUCK IT REAL HARD.

I look forward to six “why did the chicken cross the road” jokes from Marco in the next chapter.

Cassie meanwhile, a fan of foreshadowing, tells us that it *seemed* like a simple plan but they should have know better. Girl, that’s what I’m SAYING, “just chuck it” is not an actual plan that you should have confidence in.

Chapter 13

Marco stays behind to throw the cube, and everyone else gets into fly form. Cassie is worn out from all the morphing, but again, this is the best plan they have. So off they go, flying across the road and then hanging out as wolves in the underbrush.

Patrol cars are coming, Tobias reports, but so is the helicopter and they can’t afford to wait for everyone to go away. All that morphing energy is drawing attention. So Marco just fucking chucks the box. It’s all very dramatic, the box just missing the helicopter’s searchlight, patrol cars all around, blah blah, but then Cassie catches it in her mouth. Good job, Cassie! Everything’s probably fine now!

No, wait, it’s not fine, here comes the Chappalo. Just wandering into the road, facing down the humans who just piled out of the control car, ready to face god and walk backwards into hell to fight them all to the death. Except they can’t let that happen; the Yeerks probably think it’s an Andalite, and will definitely not kill it if they think they can torture it for information.

Cassie really does not want to kill the Chappalo, and I guess Jake is attempting to make up for snapping earlier and/or doesn’t know how to kill a buffalo while staying hidden, because everyone sighs and Jake’s like, “Fine, okay, I guess we have to go rescue this Chappalo.”

Chapter 14

Delightful, delightful, the helicopter lands and V3 gets out of it and starts interrogating the Chappalo. But during this he touches the Chappalo and briefly goes sort of slow, and I KNOW what that means. The Chappalo just got a V3 morph, didn’t he? I’m extremely popcorn dot gif about this, please make V3 have to interrogate a buffalo with his face.

The Chappalo does not give up any actionable intel, so V3 turns to yell at the Animorphs, who have come out to be visible in order to rescue the Chappalo. Which, of course, is when the Chappalo starts to morph into V3 and chop arms off nearby Hork-Bajir.

I’m just. Hee hee hee, this is very stupid but I’m having a good time.

Jake tells everyone that when V3 turns around to get a load of Chappalo3 it will be their best chance to escape, and they have to make a break for it. They’ll just have to trust that in possession of an Andalite tail-blade, the Chappalo will be able to fend for itself. Which I’m not sure I would want to put my faith in, but...sure, Jake.

And then it all happens very fast V3 and Chappalo3 get into a fight, the Animorphs start to flee, V3 chops up Chappalo3 pretty good and takes off one of its arms, but Chappalo3 knocks V3 out with its tailblade. None of the Hork-Bajir are doing anything because they’re too stunned at the prospect of two V3s fighting.

And then the Chappalo3 takes off running after the Animorphs, following them toward the beach.

It WANTS its MOM.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #39: The Hidden, Ch. 6-10

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It cracks me up so much when the first post of a new book goes up and my notifications start filling up with “oh NO, not THIS ONE”.  I gather I’m in for an experience.  Let’s do it.

Chapter 6

Well, this is horrifying. Cassie darts off into the woods and eventually demorphs, once Tobias lets her know that she’s safe for the moment. Helicopters are still buzzing around but they don’t seem to have followed her yet.

So she gets into human form and is getting ready to form a next-step plan with Tobias, except that first she wanders into a clearing. And there is the other buffalo, freaking out, with a buffalo body but the head and face of assistant principal Chapman.

Oh, NO.

I...okay, I guess we’re definitely doing a Wacky Shenanigans book then, if this buffalo has learned to morph? Wow, I hate this. (Not like, “this book is bad”, it’s too soon to make a call on that, just in the “I’m picturing a buffalo with a human head and I would like to return this image with extreme prejudice to the void from whence it came” way.)

Chapter 7

Body horror just rolling right on for another chapter, as Cassie and Tobias watch in horror while the Chapman Buffalo - Chappalo? Buffaman? - roams around the clearing awkwardly sprouting and losing bits of human anatomy. At one point it winds up fully human but with fur, trying to chew mouthfuls of grass, and it’s just bad. Cassie hates it. Tobias hates it. I hate it.

They quickly figure out that the Chappalo must have touched the morphing cube in the truck before plowing into Chapman, and now it’s uncontrollably morphing but doesn’t understand what it’s doing or how to stop it. Knowing this doesn’t help anything, though. Cassie doesn’t want to leave the poor scared thing alone, to get caught by the Gardens staff or killed by the Yeerks and/or to end up in some sort of awful permanent semi-morphed state. So she tries morphing into a buffalo to show it how, but that’s not really successful either.

Finally Tobias yells enough to convince her they really do have to leave, even though it means leaving the Chappalo to any one of a number of terrible fates. She morphs into a wolf, picks up the cube again, and is on her way.

Actually I find myself wondering how this never happened before, if she had the cube hidden under a floorboard or something. I guess they’re lucky it hasn’t already happened that like, a worm bumped into it and now there’s a super-worm out there with morphing capacity.

Chapter 8

From there it’s a frantic scramble to stay ahead of the helicopters overhead, and eventually Cassie demorphs in the hope that will make her morphing signal less strong and harder to track. Which means she’s darting around in the woods barefoot in spandex, so it seems like a real mixed blessing. But eventually she does manage to hide long enough for the helicopters to go away.

When the rest of the Animorphs join her it turns out that might be because Erek’s rigged up some sort of fake morphing signal generator that they’re using as a decoy. So that will buy them some time to figure out what to do to get that morphing-signal-tracking tech away from the Yeerks.

Cassie thinks they can hide out nearby in the cave where she hung out with Karen way back when, and that all sounds like a good plan, but there is one other wrinkle. Tobias has filled Ax in on the Chappalo, and they’re worried that if the Yeerks get their hands on it and infest it, they’ll be able to see into its memories and identify Cassie in her human form.

I don’t think the Chappalo’s going to survive this book, folks. I’m a little sad for it. It did not ask for any of this.

Chapter 9

Snuggled up cozily in the cave, the kids have a few minutes to take a breath and figure out what to do next. (Also to have a bit of a moral debate about whether the Chappalo is human now that he has human DNA, which leads Ax to question whether that makes *him* human, and that all ends in a big question mark.)

“Stay on the run with the morphing cube” forever doesn’t seem like a viable option, and they can’t figure out how to infiltrate the Yeerks’ helicopters to find and destroy an extremely tiny device. So obviously the thing to do is to just - take down the helicopters. Jake has some sort of plan that involves using the morphing cube as bait and then ambushing the helicopter

No one quite knows how to ambush a helicopter, but Marco cracks a joke about dropping an anvil on it like Wile E. Coyote squishing the Roadrunner, and somehow that gives both him and Jake an idea. Hmm. We’ve already done “Cassie morphs into a whale mid-air and we drop her on things”, are we going back to that well? It’s a solid maneuver, honestly, I bet a whale could take down a helicopter.

Unfortunately, they have to get moving again because Taxxons are approaching, so I guess we’re going to have to wait to find out whether ‘drop a whale on it’ is actually what we’re going for.

Chapter 10

Everyone gets into fighting morph, except Cassie, who goes back to buffalo rather than her standard wolf. I wonder if buffalo will be her new fighting morph? It certainly seems effective; when they leave the cave and bump into the Taxxons, Cassie promptly takes one down with her horns.

There’s lots of yelling and lots of fighting, but they’re outnumbered and close to having to retreat, when to the rescue comes - THE CHAPPALO. Apparently it hasn’t been captured by anyone yet. So it comes barging in, presumably in full buffalo form right now as they don’t mention that he has a Chapman head or anything, and joins them in terrorizing the Hork-Bajir and Taxxons.

Eventually the remnants of their pursuers break and flee into the forest. Which, I assume, leaves the Animorphs and the Chappalo just staring awkwardly at each other. Or maybe he’ll turn on them next? Who knows! Never a dull moment with the Animorphs and their human-buffalo companion.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #39: The Hidden, Ch. 1-5

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Welcome back, my darlings! I hope everyone who had a long weekend got some solid doing-nothing-productive time in. I had a lovely stretch of days of doing fuck-all and it was all I dreamed of. And the cats were thrilled I could play with them all day instead of doing “work” for a “paycheck” like a boring human.

But here we are, back with a new book, in which Cassie is on the cover morphing into - a yak? A buffalo? Something like that. Because I have been playing too much of the game Hades lately, the middle morph looks a lot like a minotaur to me, but let’s assume that’s not what’s happening here.

Chapter 1

Cassie’s in the barn tending to an injured mouse when there’s a helicopter overhead, followed almost immediately by a visit from Erek. Apparently there’s an emergency - the Yeerks have fixed the Helmacron ship and therefore now have an active sensor to detect morphing energy. I’d forgotten they had a Helmacron ship but we’ll just go with it, I’m too tired to go look back and remind myself how they got it. I vaguely recall some sort of standoff and I suppose it must have ended up with the ship in V3’s hands.

Apparently they’ve still got the blue morphing cube (the Escafil Device) hidden in the barn, and the Yeerks have figured out that it’s somewhere in the area, though they haven’t pinpointed where yet. Hence the helicopter. They’ll figure it out, though, which means Cassie has to hide the cube somewhere else.

Of course, the Yeerks will just find that new location too, which means they have to *keep* the cube moving. Erek’s off to tell the others but meanwhile Cassie asks to tag along with her mom to the Gardens. She’s got the cube just...stuffed under her shirt, very subtle.

I guess this book is going to be some sort of Animorph relay race? Everyone takes turns hiding the cube for a day or whatever? I could be into that.

Chapter 2

This is a fun Tension Chapter! Cassie spends the ride to the Gardens anxiously eyeing both the helicopters overhead and a car that’s all up in her mom’s grill. Random shitty driver or Yeerk Sent To Get The Cube Back? Who knows! 

At the Gardens, she meets up with the rest of the Animorphs who are in bird morph. Which is possibly a terrible idea because the Yeerk morphing sensors are going to pick them up, but apparently none of them thought of that until they got there, so - whoops. They don’t even have a chance to really start talking about what they’re going to do, because suddenly there are more helicopters, a couple of guys in suits moving toward Cassie, and a woman giving her a weird look.

The guys and woman could of course be legit zoo-goers just wondering why this little girl is staring so fiercely at a bunch of seagulls, but who knows, they’ve gotta assume the worst. So as soon as they’re looking the other way, Cassie goes running to look for somewhere to hide. It’s helpful that she has access to the employee areas since everyone knows her through her mom, but one assumes that if the Yeerks really want to get at someone, an “Employees Only” sign isn’t going to be much of a deterrent.

Though I’m now giggling at the notion of Visser Three standing impatiently outside an Employees Only door, tapping his fingers in annoyance, waiting for Cassie to emerge.

Chapter 3

Cassie skedaddles into the truck loading area in an attempt to find a place to hide, but things are still tense. The helicopters are flying overhead and will see her, and she’s hiding on one side of a transport truck while two people with radios are on the other side communication with the helicopters and talking about how much V3 is going to murder them to death if they don’t catch her.

It’s bad! She’s about to get caught, and she can’t morph to escape, or leave the cube to be taken by the Yeerks!

So what else can she do but scramble into the bed of the transport truck. Whereupon she meets a massive and unhappy buffalo, presumably our cover model. Also, according to Cassie, this species is known as “the widow-maker.” I just looked it up and they’re also called “the Black Death” so, you know, generally speaking it seems like it might be bad to be stuck in a truck with one.

Chapter 4

The Yeerks are a little confused by their Helmacron ship readings, I guess, since they can sense all the Animorphs scattering in different directions. But they’re definitely getting a reading from Cassie’s buffalo truck, so Tobias warns from overhead that the truck is about to get pulled over and searched. V3 is on their tail and a bunch of other cars are also nearby.

Short on other options, Cassie puts the cube down on the bed of the truck, desperately reaches out to acquire the buffalo’s morph without getting gored, and starts to become a buffalo. 

While she goes through her awful body-horror of a morph, the truck gets stopped and she can hear the driver attempting to convince Visser Three that he *may* not want to just fling open the door of a truck containing a riled-up buffalo.

But we have met V3 and we know he’s not going to listen to that. He doesn’t stab the driver, though, so I guess he’s in a good mood and/or hampered by being in his human form. Instead he flings open the doors, and stares down Cassie, who is now full buffalo. 

(I’m worried about the cube! How strong is it, can it survive being trampled by a buffalo?)

Chapter 5

Apparently the buffalo instincts are very fighty, so Cassie bursts out of the truck ready to fight God, which is handy in this situation. The real buffalo charges out behind her and between them they start fucking shit up, sending people flying and smashing up cars as everyone screams for help.

Overhead, Tobias yells at Cassie enough to get her back into some semblance of control and warns her that they’ve sent for her mother with the tranq guns and she needs to get the cube and get out of there. Which she does, cube in her buffalo mouth. But not before she’s fucked up V3’s limo, and also watched the other Buffalo wreck Chapman, who ends up unconscious on the ground.

Honestly, I bet it was good for her to work out some anger via trashing cars. I support you, Cassie. Run like the wind.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #38: The Arrival, Ch. 23-28

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(Admin business first - I’m gonna take the rest of the week off to do absolutely fuck-all for Thanksgiving except alternate wildly between watching terrible Christmas movies and watching the new Chinese adaptation of Hikaru No Go, so we’ll hold off on starting the next book until next week. Have a lovely long weekend, American friends, and a lovely normal week everyone else. Stay safe, stay home, don’t lick anyone you wouldn’t normally lick if it weren’t a holiday, remember that Thanksgiving is largely colonizer bullshit anyway, eat some pie.)

Chapter 23

Ax is figuring some shit out. Like that the ship’s real mission is to do a little bit of genocide and not to kill V3 at all; if anything, killing him might have gotten awkward as it would have forced the War Council to acknowledge this weird under-the-radar mission that they’re clearly burying and hoping not to publicize. Fine to DO a little genocide but not to TALK about it, given how badly things went the last time they tried this, on the Hork-Bajir planet.

Worse, he’s figured out that he was a critical pawn in this; they wouldn’t have been able to find the Yeerk pool without him.

Ax: not happy about it

Estrid: not fired up to kill the humans but also not super broken up about it, she’ll try to fix the instability that endangers them, but honestly, if they’re collateral damage, then so be it

Ax: even less happy now

Estrid’s earnest plea for understanding is that this is even bigger than just the Yeerks. Once she fine-tunes the programmable bioweapon they could point it any other species like the Yeerks that might threaten galactic peace in the future. It’ll be great! They’ll stamp out war and evil with just a LITTLE germ warfare here and there!

Ax continues to be Displeased, he thinks this sounds an awful lot like they’ll just become the new Yeerks.

But Estrid is not convinced, and Arbat is here to lay down the law and speed the plot along.

Chapter 24

Estrid apparently did not know that her records have been wiped and everyone else already entered in the records as dead, so she’s a li’l bit surprised to find out from Ax that she’s on a suicide mission. Arbat’s pretty annoyed that Ax let this slip, but he shrugs and confesses that he did lie to Estrid but only to protect her.

Not from getting murdered, obvs, he’s totally going to murder her when this is done. But keeping her name out of it will make sure that if this mission ever does become knowledge, her name won’t be associated with it so it won’t tarnish her nice science legacy. Real big comfort to her ghost, I guess, buddy. (Or whatever. I forget whether we’ve learned anything about Andalite concepts of the afterlife, ghosts, etc.)

He’s sorry about all the shitty stuff he’s done and is yet to do. But he’s still going to do it. A little planet-wide killing to stop the Yeerks from getting their hands on such a good host species is worth it in his calculations, in the long run. And Ax and Estrid have made it very easy for him by standing in a very specific place where he can hit a button and they get trapped in a sudden laser cage, that conveniently leaves both him and the virus on the other side. 

So he fucks off with the virus, and Ax and Estrid are left to bat uselessly at their laser cage. Estrid’s sorry about the whole “betrayal of you and humanity” thing she’s done, and also she thinks it’s time to reveal that Chekhov’s Grackle was Arbat, spying on the humans.

Ax is just: “Yeah, shrug emoji, we kind of figured that. He was very bad at being a grackle.” And then he reveals that when he went off-ship to get Erek, he also smuggled his human friends back in and they’ve been hiding out in the ship ever since. Aww. Friendship! But also how much of the group meltdown was an act and how much was legit?

Estrid works up a very small head of steam about Ax having lied to his own people, but LBR, she does not have a leg to stand on here, she’s going to have to get over it. Ax has decided his people means whoever resists tyranny and fights for freedom, so at the moment that’s humans and not whatever Andalite shitshow has happened on this ship.

Chapter 25

They must have figured out how to undo the laser cage, because now we’re sneaking into the Yeerk pool to find Arbat. They start off in fighting morphs but quickly figure out they’re going to have to go in as humans, which perplexes Estrid greatly because she can’t figure out what kind of fighting human morphs are even good for.

But they spread out and manage to pass as Just Regular Type Humans With Yeerks In Their Heads, to go looking for Arbat. Minor problem, though: they don’t know his human morph and there are a LOT of humans about.

But Ax figures he’ll go straight for the pier to get as many Yeerks at once as possible with the virus, and that he might have some residual weird behavior from someone who’s not used to a human body. Which is how he spots the one human looking around himself weirdly, like someone who’s used to having a 360-degree view from stalk eyes, suddenly reduced to two human eyes.

And there he is! On the pier, about to release the virus, too far away for them to physically stop him.

But Estrid yells Arbat’s name, which makes Arbat grab a Dracon beam from the nearest Hork-Bajir and start firing. So, much for staying under the radar! Apparently the weapon humans have is BEING LOUD.

Chapter 26

Lots of chaos and fighting in this chapter as Arbat goes scrambling to run away, the Animorphs get into battle morphs, and Estrid and Ax hide under a table and have a hurried conference about how she is so scared that she does not care if her virus kills humans as long as it also takes out Yeerks. Besides, it *might* not kill humans! Who knows! 

Ax goes full “I’m not angry, just DISAPPOINTED in you” at Estrid, the very worst thing, and leaves her under the table to go back out and fight some more.

Out in the melee, a bunch of the unwilling human hosts are forming a human shield to protect the Animorphs, which is sweet and also awful. Surprisingly, it seems like they may even survive the experience, as V3 isn’t there and no one else appears to have authority to kill a bunch of hosts at once.

So Ax gets on with finding Arbat, who is of course back at the pier, holding out his uncorked vial of virus over the Yeerk pool for Maximum Drama. Please, books, I beg you, just once, let someone make the Only Moderately Dramatic choice. These children are so tired. Let them rest.

Chapter 27

Oh. Estrid is here and she’s shot off Arbat’s hand, along with the vial, incinerating both. I...have some real concerns about that but I guess she made the virus so she would know whether zapping it with a Dracon beam will destroy it or just set it free.

Arbat, a petty bitch, which I respect, is like “FINE but YOU’RE GOING DOWN WITH ME” and starts calling the nearby Hork-Bajir guards to come attack the Andalites who’ve injured him. Ax is prepared to go down fighting, and Estrid will fight but wants Ax to kill her rather than let her be taken by the Yeerks. Good, normal teen crush stuff.

But instead of any of that we get a surprise rescue. Gonrod has brought the creaky old ship to save them. Apparently he’s been spending the last however many minutes just - determinedly blasting his wa through the roof of the Yeerk pool. Would love to know how he’s managed that without alerting the Yeerks or humans. Let’s assume he has some Chee hologram backup,

Anyway, he IS still a very good pilot if a very bad everything else, and he swoops in and rescues the Animorphs and Estrid. And not Arbat, who Ax makes the executive decision to leave behind to become food for some nearby Taxxons. A cold, but valid, choice.

Chapter 28

Gonrod and Estrid are going home, but they have to lay low for a day to let Yeerk airspace chill the fuck out. I’m giggling wildly at the idea that 24 hours might make a big difference - honestly, if you’re not going to wait days or weeks, going ASAP is probably the better idea, isn’t it? At least get out while there’s chaos before the Yeerks have time to set up regular patrols or monitoring or whatever, because they’re not going to decide at the 24 hour mark “oh, well then, never mind!”

ANYWAY. There’s some time to kill, which Ax spends taking Estrid to get a cinnamon bun. I hope the rest of the series hinges on this moment. I hope Estrid goes back and gets help and brings an army to Earth to save the world because of the power of Cinnabon. I hope there’s an inspirational freeze frame of the bun.

For now, though, we just get Estrid trying one more time to get Ax to come back with her, and Ax refusing. He’s going to stay with his human friends. Which is a big decision! Not that flying around with Estrid and Gonrod on their bioweaponry ship sounds like a great time, but one assumes he isn’t just lightly walking away from returning to his own species. He’s got a prince here, though, and a mission. And a Cinnabon.

The humans walk off, Cassie hanging behind to comfort Ax, who is quietly extremely sad, and in the background Tobias reveals that the McDonald’s entrance to the Yeerk Pool is no more because that’s where Gonrod burned through the pool roof.

Ah, this series. Love that the lighthearted endings have gone from “kickflip down the street to buy candy” to “we destroyed a building and probably some people to prevent a genocide, also one of us just lost his only contact with his species AGAIN, but at least we have some good hamburger jokes.”

Sigh. Poor Ax. I wonder if he got to send back messages or anything? Get on the space phone to any remaining family? At least take some good Andalite snacks from home? I suppose not, the morgue-plus-evil-lab combo probably used up all the space that might otherwise have been taken up with junk food rations.

At least he’ll always have Cinnabon.

See you back here next week, lovelies.  I just downloaded the next ebook from the library and I saw the words “Helmacron ship” in the description in the process, so I’m bracing for An Experience.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #38: The Arrival, Ch. 18-22

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Chapter 18

Estrid and Ax go flying back to the ship, noticing a red-tailed hawk and a grackle flying nearby in the process. Estrid thinks they look familiar and Ax is just, “birds all look like birds,” but I’m suspicious. Tobias? Mystery grackle? WHO ARE THESE SPY BIRDS.

Back on the ship, Ax volunteers to take first watch and is allowed to do so with the proviso that he not touch anything. So of course he goes straight to the computer and starts messing around with it. In fairness to him, it’s not unprovoked - he’s thinking back to something Estrid said when they were at the Gardens, about some particularly high-level biochemical engineering equations. At the time he was too hopped up on chocolate and smooching to think about it, but now that he has some quiet he’s realizing that it’s weird that this supposed role-less rookie is just...real up on advanced biochemistry? He has questions and he thinks he should do some recon.

He gets about two seconds into attempting to access the personnel records, though, and then he gets a great big ENCRYPTED warning and also Aloth’s tailblade at his neck threatening him about being a spy.

Ax dissembles that he’s not SPYING he’s FAMILIARIZING HIMSELF WITH THE SHIP AND HIS COMRADES, which Aloth sort of buys, at least enough to stop threatening an immediate stabbing.

Aloth stares at him for a bit and then goes, “shrug emoji, I knew your brother, he was more down to earth than most Andalite princes, I didn’t hate him, so I will now lore drop at you.”

Aloth explains that before he signed on to this mission, he was serving a lifetime prison sentence for selling organs from people killed on the battlefield. Ax makes a big “ummm...I have ethical concerns” face because Andalite Battle Code prohibits that sort of thing.

Gonrod was in the same prison for cowardice under fire but is a really good pilot despite being a coward, and they both get pardons if they succeed. Arbat, as far as Aloth knows, is who he says he is and really is here to kill V3.

Ax, you’re showing a definite lack of asking for a lore drop on Estrid. 

He does ask who’s really in charge, though, and Aloth sort of shrugs and says, “hell if I know, but there’s like a 50/50 chance it’s your girlfriend.” That tracks. You really ought to ask about her, Ax.

Chapter 19

I guess that’s all the lore we’re getting, because suddenly it’s the next day and they’re planning their attack on the community center where V3 is leading a meeting of The Sharing. There’s a bit of squabbling about who’s going to take the first shot, which Arbat silences with a tricky shot that proves he knows how to handle a weapon, so Aloth backs down and agrees Arbat can make the first attempt at shooting V3.

All the male Andalites are going in, and Estrid is to stay on board the ship. Which she protests, but Arbat yells at her and they do some private telepathy chit-chat very intensely at each other, and she agrees to stay. Aloth is entertained and Ax is still trying to figure out what Estrid’s deal is. But whatever it is, we’re not going to find out right now, because she’s left on the ship when they go in.

There’s a lot of shooting human guards on the way in, and it’s not clear to me that they’re stunning vs. killing so uh, I guess this op is racking up a body count pretty fast?

They get to the meeting room and Ax has a good shot at V3, but he doesn’t take it because they have an agreed-upon order for who gets to shoot, and honestly he’s kind of relieved about it. That would be a lot of pressure.

But as he watches, Arbat takes what should be an easy shot and misses. Ax raises his own shredder but he doesn’t shoot yet, so I guess we’re going to wait and see what Aloth does. This is very stressful! My intuition says Arbat missed on purpose given that we just made a big thing of how he’s a good shot, but I can’t tell whether we’re supposed to think it’s because he’s on V3’s side or that he genuinely wanted to kill him but the whole “V3 is wearing my brother’s body” thing threw him off.

Chapter 20

Aloth fires and misses. Gonrod fires and misses. V3 ducks behind his podium while Hork-Bajir reinforcements come running. 

Ax finally manages to unfreeze enough to shoot, but it’s a few seconds too late and V3’s already moved so he can start to morph. And then everything descends into chaos of yelling and shooting and running. Ax tries to cover an injured Aloth, but Aloth gets shot - by Arbat. Which makes both Ax and me think, nope, missing V3 was NOT a mistake, Arbat is Up To Things.

But what’s Ax going to do, sit down and talk it out while they’re being pursued by a bunch of enemies? Doesn’t seem like a great idea. Arbat and Ax go racing for the ship with Estrid yelling at them all the way; Gonrod got out ahead of them and they’re both on board and ready to pick up and go.

So they fire up and take off and Gonrod says some nonsense about throwing out plexine vapor to throw off the atmospheric conditions so they can’t be tracked, which - sure, whatever, I will accept this technobabble, ~plexine vapor~ it is.

Arbat tells everyone that he killed Aloth because he was too injured to escape and had to be prevented from becoming a Yeerk host body, which Ax fervently disagrees with - there was a chance! They could have tried to help Aloth escape!

Poor baby Ax doesn’t know what to do with himself. All signs point to Arbat being a saboteur of his own mission, but he doesn’t have firm proof, and honestly what’s he supposed to do even if he did? Gonrod and Estrid aren’t the most reliable companions for a mutiny.

He tries to calm himself down, and Arbat says some nonsense about avenging the fallen and then in the next breath demands intel about the Yeerk pool. 

Chapter 21

Gonrod and Arbat are squabbling again, this time about who’s in charge, because they have very different opinions about the Yeerk pool. Arbat wants to attack, Gonrod does not, but ultimately Arbat outranks Gonrod and can pull that rank if he wants to. Which he definitely does want.

So they decide to rest now and attack later that night with Ax leading them to the pool. Ax immediately slips off the ship instead of resting, because he doesn’t have the computer skills to bypass the encrypted material. Since we’ve been shown he’s pretty solid with Earth computers and some Yeerk computers, if I recall correctly, Arbat must have some very sexy encryption. Not so sexy that the Chee can’t hack it, though, so when he returns to the ship, it’s with the Chee playing Erek’s dad as a sidekick.

The Chee hides under a hologram until it’s Ax’s turn at watch, and then settles in to try to hack the security system. Apparently he doesn’t have enough power to both stay hologrammed AND do the hacking quickly. Seems like a problem, but Ax votes for “fast” so the Chee stays unhidden and gets to work.

And what they find after bypassing security is that Aloth, Arbat, and Gonrod are all listed as dead in the Andalites’ files, killed in action years earlier. Estrid isn’t in the files at all.

Ax can do math and that math tells him that the Andalites didn’t send an outdated ship full of condemned misfits on an unpromising mission because they were meant to succeed. Ruh-roh.  (IS that the right conclusion?  Are we not considering that they might have given Ax fake names?)

Chapter 22

Ax goes off to do recon but both Estrid and Gonrod have firmly closed their doors with no noise to be heard. So he’s going to check out THE SECOND FLOOR which frankly I had already forgotten was a thing but yes, Ax, definitely check out the second floor! Probably should have done that already!

The second floor turns out to be a hideous morgue area and then a secret lab where Estrid is doing Dangerous Chemical Things. I love me a dangerous chemical lab so I’m supportive of this turn of events! Could do without the room full of the smells of rotting corpses, though.

Confronted, Estrid does her own backstory drop - she’s NOT from the military academy, she’s actually a student of Arbat’s at his civilian university. She’s a prodigy who was being held back by her age and gender until Arbat found her and was like, “YOU, you are VERY SMART and I’m going to mentor you and give you a lab and free rein to discover whatever you want and let’s hope that what you want to discover is a deadly germ warfare virus!” and sure enough, that’s what she discovered!

I want to know everything about Andalite research funding now.  

So she’s just sort of in the lab carefully decanting vials of bioweapons programmed to target Yeerks. With one messy little side effect - in a human host they might also mutate and become deadly to humanity.

Oops.

(Ax is interested in / concerned about all of this but frankly he is also quite perturbed by having had his ass so roundly kicked by a girl who never went to the academy, so we have to shoehorn in an explanation that her brother is the planet’s best exhibition tail-fighter, so she learned from him.)

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #38: The Arrival, Ch. 12-17

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Chapter 12

Oof, the Animorphs are a mess and they’ve hit one of those “everything falls apart slowly and then all at once” boiling points. Marco challenges Ax to tell him that this sad little band of Andalites is here for Earth’s benefit and not just personal revenge, but Ax can’t do it. He’s not the guy you go to for a diplomatic white lie.

And just like that, Rachel’s done, she doesn’t want to take any more orders or do things the nice minimize-collateral-damage way, if Earth’s doomed she wants to just fucking take out everyone she can as she goes. And she’s out. And then Cassie is also out for opposite reasons, because if they’re in a truly unwinnable war then there’s no justification for collateral damage at all.

Marco’s leaning hard into the nihilism and declares that he is fucking off to enjoy whatever time he has left before the annihilation of the planet.

Which just leaves Jake and Ax. Ax, bless him, is loyal to the end, but Jake’s like “you and I are not taking down the Yeerks alone and I’m not holding you to your oath while your own people are here, go do what you gotta do and if you can hitch a ride home, godspeed.”

And then all the humans are gone and it’s just Ax in the barn, and a rabbit who turns out to be Estrid. Ax scolds her mildly for not actually acting like a very good rabbit, although the humans were all too distraught to notice, and she’s like, “Oops, my bad, but now you’re free and you can teach me things and we’ll go to Alien Prom together and it’s gonna be great.”

In the sitcom version of The Animorphs, the next chapter would be a wacky montage of Estrid trying to learn the habits of various earth animal morphs, with a laugh track and tinkly shenanigans music. I assume that’s not actually what will happen, and it’s a bit of a pity.

Poor children. They’ve been clinging to such a thin hope for so long, it’s hard to blame them for snapping like this. What do we think will pull them back together? Is Ax going to get into a jam and need rescuing, forcing the Animorphs to reunite for One Final Heist?

Chapter 13

The Andalite ship is parked in a field outside the Gardens, which I guess is a solid choice for morph acquisition. But it turns out that it’s a nearly-obsolete “Mobile Science and Technology Lab ship” called the Crusader. Ax is like: “...so there are four of you AND they sent us a lemon of a ship?”

At this point I’d say there’s like a 25% chance these four are just straight-up fugitives on the run and lying about whatever is going on with the rest of the Andalites. Just, for the record, that’s a definite possibility I’m considering.

Ax asks Estrid to keep it a secret that the humans have broken up, and she agrees, which just leaves Ax more confused than before. It’s nice that his new crush will keep secrets for him, but also what the hell kind of warrior keeps important military intel from their leaders? Is she a spy? Is she a bad warrior? Is this a GIRL THING? Unclear.

They go to greet the others, and once again Gonrod is being a bit bumbly and Arbat is acting like the boss. The impression solidifies when Arbat pulls Ax off to the side and lays it on really thick about how glad he is that Ax has joined them and how CLEVER and ADAPTABLE he must be to have survived so long alone here, and surely he will now give them the benefit of his wisdom and do anything to destroy Visser Three?

Ax is just: “I’m sad and in love but I’m not completely stupid, this is weird, you’re being weird, I’m way too low-rank for you to be treating me like this and also I’ve broken eleventy Andalite laws along the way, I’m just gonna...sit quietly and try to figure out what’s going on here.”

Good boy, Ax.

Chapter 14

Aloth breaks up this weird little sketchiness party to offer Ax a tour of the ship, and immediately starts lore-dropping about how Arbat might be a great big deal Apex Level Intelligence Officer but he’s RETIRED and now TEACHES HISTORY at a UNIVERSITY. He has very little use for someone who’s left the academy to go into academia, and Ax continues to think that the composition of this crew is very weird.

Aloth also thinks that having a girl on board is pointless, and vaguely implies that she might have some sort of personal connections to have ended up here. But he declines to explain what he means, except to say that they’re all sort of “not regulation issue.”

He’s not wrong. This is an extremely Off Brand Andalite Mission, like it was purchased from the factory rejects bin.

So he gives Ax a very quick tour which includes “there’s nothing on the second floor, it used to be a lab but now it’s nothing” and “this ship has no firepower so better hope we don’t get attacked.” Very normal stuff, and then they have to go back to Gonrod for debriefing.

WHAT’S ON THE SECOND FLOOR.

Chapter 15

Ax unloads a bunch of intel about Visser Three and The Sharing and the Yeerk pool, and everyone squabbles about what to do with the intel. Arbat thinks they should go after the Yeerk Pool and take out a lot of Yeerks at once, Gonrod is adamant that they have exactly one target and should go after V3 at the next meeting of The Sharing, and Aloth is just pissy about an implication that he might not hit his target on the first try.

Estrid, meanwhile, waltzes up and announces that she’s going on a walk to The Gardens and taking Ax with her to learn about Earth animals. Which is 12000% not what a lowly baby soldier should be doing, but Gonrod lets her go. 

Ax continues to have MANY questions about Estrid including “what is she because she is definitely not a normal soldier” and “why is her fur so lustrous and shiny” and “how can I get her to step on me again.”

Chapter 16

It’s night time so no one’s at the Gardens, and they just break in and go walking around in their Andalite forms. I...but...security cameras? Maybe we’ve already established that the Gardens doesn’t have those. After the amount of weird shit that’s gone down here, though, they really should.

Ax pries for information about the mission, and Estrid prefaces it all with “Arbat says,” and Ax decides that she must be Arbat’s niece and that’s why she has so much license. Seems like a jump to me, but sure, Ax, we’ll go with that for now.

Estrid wants more candy, so Ax breaks into a vending machine for her. It’s very that scene from the Buffy episode “Band Candy,” where regressed Giles breaks into a store to get a jacket that regressed Joyce wants? I’m very entertained.

They morph to human to eat the candy and Ax is very impressed by her morphing skills, which include real clothes and not just spandex. Apparently her mother was a very talented morpher.

They eat a bunch of chocolate and then Ax very smoothly (for Ax) explains that humans do...other things...with their mouthparts. But he’s never tried those things because you need two sets of mouth parts and he’s not going to make out with Jake.

So obviously they kiss and then shrug and are like, “that was kind of fun, but not as good as chocolate.” These are solid priorities and I approve of them. 

Chapter 17

They go flying and Ax muses idly about what if they just stayed in the air for two hours and were birds forever and could be free of humans and Andalites and just fly around together for their natural lives. AX, my GUY, you have known this girl for TWO HOT SECONDS and even you think there’s something very off about her even though she’s hot, please do not GIVE UP YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE to live a short life of pooping on cars.

Ax is, at least, aware that this is not a viable life option. Instead he tells Estrid that he wants to check in on his old friends. She’s like, shrug, seems weird but it’s nice that you’re loyal, sure, let’s go do that.

So they go flying around the town and see Rachel in grizzly bear form terrorizing a McDonald’s owned by Yeerks, and Cassie slipping out of the same McDonald’s and taking off. They follow Cassie back to the barn - leaving Rachel to keep destroying the McRib supply, I guess - and hide out in the barn to observe. The barn also contains Marco, who’s just lounging around reading magazines.

I’m pretty sure that I’m Marco in this despair scenario, but rest assured, I’m judging myself about it.

Cassie tries to get Marco to help her talk Rachel down from killing anyone, but Marco’s not into it. Jake, who turns out to be hiding in a stall, is also not into it. Cassie’s furious because they can’t just STAND BY but they are definitely both going to stand by, and kicks them out of the barn.

Ax and Estrid fuck off away from this because it’s very sad and Ax can’t deal, and Estrid is just sort of pitying and contemptuous.

Meanwhile, there’s a grackle up in the rafters being attacked by two other grackles and I’m just saying, I see you, mysterious recurring Chekhov’s grackle, WHAT ARE YOU ABOUT, ARE YOU EVEN ANYTHING?

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #38: The Arrival, Ch. 7-11

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Chapter 7

Ax and Tobias find a human-seeming girl wearing backwards clothes and yelling in absolute transports of joy about the joys of jelly beans and how each flavor is more rapturously exciting than the last.  So: yeah, they found the Andalites.

Tobias: “...is that your new girlfriend?”

Ax, starry-eyed: “YUP, AND SHE’S PERFECT.”

They spin a very thin story for a mall security guard about how she’s Tobias’ sister who has seizures sometimes and they just need to get her home, which somehow works.  And then they nearly successfully manage to drag her out of the mall, until they run into the actual human from whom Estrid has borrowed her physical form, and also that human’s brother, who is concerned about these two strangers abducting his sister.

This is all going great.  Also how exactly do we think the Andalites managed to get hold of this human girl’s morph while leaving her unbothered enough that she’s just browsing Express in a chill fashion?

Chapter 8

Estrid calms down from her jellybean high enough to arrange a rendezvous, so later on in the day, there’s a Top Secret meetup in a field.  Estrid’s bringing her commander and Ax is bringing his human prince and it’s probably all going to be fine, right?  

Though Estrid would really take it as a personal favor if Ax didn’t mention her little trip into human morph, since she’s not really supposed to be doing that.  Ax is startled but not uninterested by this little display of disobedience and agrees to keep her secret.

Besides, there’s enough other stuff to be getting on with.  Estrid’s little group - Commander Gonrod, Intelligence Commander Arbat, and titleless Aloth - are annoyed that Jake is along for the meeting and deeply unimpressed by Ax’s allegiance to a human.  Both Estrid and one of the other Andalites are being weirdly chill in front of their Commander. Jake doesn’t trust any of them as far as he can throw them and is extremely uninterested in giving out any details of how many people he commands and what their capabilities are.

Also, Jake is unimpressed by the fact that only a single ship’s commander is here to greet them, and Gonrod is not into being treated as backup instead of the main event of a war.  So no one’s happy, and despite Ax’s attempt to broker some sort of diplomatic discussion, Jake calls the meeting off and walks away.  When Ax goes along, Gonrod starts ordering his people to fire on Ax and, well, THAT escalated quickly.

This all seems in-character for everyone except for Jake just up and demorphing in front of the new Andalites which, my guy, if you’re this distrusting (which you probably should be!), maybe don’t tip your hand that far.  You still don’t know if they could be Yeerks setting a trap!

Chapter 9

Aloth and Arbat don’t actually fire because they can’t because they each have a snake wrapped around their leg threatening them - hi, Cassie and Marco!  And Ax gets a tailblade at Estrid’s throat before she can pull her weapon, which is a flirtation journey I love for them. Look, this is who I am as a person, I’m never happier than when one half of a newborn ship is threatening the other with a knife, let’s just acknowledge it and move along.  No thoughts in head, only the Winter Soldier doing the knife flip thing.

The dynamics among the Andalites are getting weirder by the moment.  Gonrod’s taken aback by being trapped, which Arbat is deeply unimpressed by, and Estrid is just sort of rolling her eyes like she’s embarrassed by the whole thing.  Meanwhile Aloth is just stone-facing it out waiting for the whole mess to be over.

Eventually the Andalites concede that they will work with Jake, who starts off by demanding an accounting on what they’re even doing here.

Arbat steps up to report that the Andalite fleet *was* on its way to Earth, but a bunch of it got called away to a different mission.  The humans: NOT impressed by this.  But for now, the human just get this little crew - Unit O, a sabotage and assassination team.  Arbot’s the strategist, Gonrod’s the commander, Aloth’s the assassin.  (Ax didn’t know the Andalites had assassins, and I can’t decide if this should be concerning or if it’s just like, well, no one puts the assassins front and center on their military recruitment brochures.)

Estrid doesn’t have a role.  The military is trying out this new “female warriors on assignments” thing and Gonrod, a jerk, says she’s just assigned by accident.  Which of course means Estrid has to get a jump on Ax and knock him to the ground to prove that she can hold her own.

I recognize this is all going to go badly, and I’m not sure I actually believe any of this anyway, but let me enjoy this dynamic while I have it, folks.

Chapter 10

Oh good, Estrid’s LITERALLY STEPPING ON AX’S THROAT and now they’re going to spar.  BRB, making popcorn for this.

Arbat and Aloth want to take bets on the outcome, and Jake just wants to know if Ax is like, okay? With this?  Ax is fine.  As is so into armwrestling his crush, so to speak, except instead of armwrestling it’s stabbing and a little bit of throat-stepping.

They have a good solid fight about it, and in the end Ax wins by a hair, by pulling out a basic day-one-of-training maneuver that Estrid won’t be expecting.  All the Andalites are having a great time and Jake is just trying not to let his eyes roll ALL the way back into his head at how much he didn’t need Ax to go through Baby’s First Crush right now.

Oh, also, as they debrief afterward, Arbat casually drops that his brother is/was Alloran, V3’s current host body.  So he’s VERY into this mission to assassinate Visser Three.

Great, having big family feelings mixed up in this definitely won’t be a problem!

Chapter 11

And now we’re back at the barn for one of those Big Animorph Moral Talks about the nature of revenge and justice and whether Arbat actually should kill V3.  Or even whether he can, having failed to do so at the newspaper office.

Cassie’s distracted by a stray bird in the rafters that’s acting weird, so let’s just stick a pin in that - Estrid trying out more new morphs?

Back on task, Cassie thinks that war is one thing and murder is a different thing, which, oh, sweetheart, those are NOT the clean lines you want them to be.  Cassie thinks there might still be hope to free Alloran from Visser Three rather than murdering him, and she’s really not into any of this.

Ax has his own family vengeance stuff and while he’s put it aside to focus on the current war, it’s not like he’d be MAD about it if he and Arbat and Aloth together could take out V3.  He knows from that time he was able to talk to Alloran that he - and really any Andalite warrior - would rather be dead than a Yeerk host.  So he’s not as concerned as Cassie is about this.

Marco would like to turn everyone’s attention to the bigger issue, that they’ve been stringing along running a delaying strategy to hold off the Yeerks until the Andalites could come save everyone.  But now the Andalites are here and it’s four of them, at least one of whom appears to be not great at his command, and no one else on the way.  He thinks that it hardly matters what happens to one Visser, the actual issue is what the hell are they going to do now that help isn’t on the way?

Whoops.  That’s enough to get Ax to realize that he’s been so focused on his own stuff that he’s failed to notice that “the Andalite army has better things to do than save you” has sort of devastated his friends, who aren’t jumping to disagree with Marco that they’re fucked.

And then it all goes awful as Marco semi-jokingly touches Rachel, Rachel flips out and yells that he shouldn’t touch her, they start fighting, Tobias flies off with an OH FUCK THIS, and Jake just stands watching with absolutely nothing to say.

No one’s having a good time.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #38: The Arrival, Ch. 1-6

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I feel like I should buckle up for this one, probably, because the cover is Ax morphing into a (hawk?) and the tagline is “Andalites have reached Earth. Will Ax leave the Animorphs?”

I hardly know what to do with this, folks - the cover tagline is USEFUL and PLOT RELATED?  Who knew it was possible?  Anyway what I’m saying is this sounds like potentially a big one.  Let’s dive in.

Chapter 1

Oh, okay, we’re dropping right into a plot, minus the usual backstory lore drop.  The Animorphs minus Tobias are in roach form scuttling around in a pipe inside a building, because Erek went on a spy mission to find out whether the local newspaper had been taken over by Yeerks and got caught.  

From the other side of the wall they can hear him being beaten up by some Yeerks in human bodies, who are trying to get him to admit why he’s snooping around.  And maybe also why they can’t get inside his ear canal.  The Animorphs are hurriedly whispering about whether Erek can survive a Dracon beam if he gets shot, and whether it would turn off his hologram and reveal him to be Chee.

I...hm.  Have questions about how his human body is convincing enough that the Yeerks can lay hands on him without noticing he’s not human, but they CAN tell his EARS are weird, and also he still needs the hologram.  But I’m not going to ask those questions.  Maybe we’ll just assume Erek’s very good at modifying his hologram on the fly and under duress to mimic being beaten up and also can make himself feel like meat.  Or something.

ANYWAY, the Animorphs are on a rescue mission and as far as they can tell it should be easy - there are five of them and two opponents - so they’re about to slip through a crack in the wall and go to Erek’s rescue.  

Chapter 2

Everyone demorphs and I just need to say that even here in book 38, I’m still finding the phrase “human mouthparts” unsettling.  In fairness, Ax, who has no mouth, also finds mouths and their parts unsettling.  I’m too lazy to make this, but you know the meme with like, burly arms clasping hands?  Please picture that one side is “Ax” and the other side is “wtfanimorphs” and the middle is “finding human mouthparts unsettling.”

So, after some unsettling discussion of mouthparts, everyone gets into battle morphs and Tobias reports from his outside flyby that everything looks clear.  And then Rachel and Marco bust a hole into the wall to make a door into the room where Erek’s being held, because the situation is too urgent to go out to the hallway and use the actual door.  I would love to see the insurance claims the Animorphs leave in their wake.

Chapter 3

This chapter starts with “it was a small badly lit room with one glass wall and an empty office behind that.”  I am instantly suspicious.  Ax’s next sentence is “I should have been instantly suspicious.”  So, you know, this is fine, probably.

Ax knocks their two opponents out, Erek thanks everyone for the rescue, Marco gets ready to carry Erek out, and Rachel barely manages to say “that was too easy” before Visser Three and some Hork-Bajir bust through the glass wall.

CHILDREN.  NEVER TRUST A GLASS WALL.

It’s extremely a trap and a bunch more Hork-Bajir pour in, and the only reason the Animorphs aren’t immediately dead is that the Hork-Bajir have to be careful where they shoot since Visser Three is in the mix in his Andalite form.  Presumably if you shoot V3 instead of Ax you are SUPER fucked on your next performance evaluation.

The Animorphs, minus a limb or two, fall back to the room they were in before and get ready to run out into the hallway.  Except, oops, a bunch of Hork-Bajir fall down through the ceiling panels.

Aside time: You know how everyone has one or two things that drive them BONKERS when watching TV/movies, that they just cannot look past?  Mine is people in medical dramas violating HIPAA, but one of Mr. Slippy’s is people crawling around in ceilings.  He is adamant that most ductwork and ceiling tiles cannot take the weight of even a small adult, and it makes him yell.  I cannot IMAGINE what he would think about a bunch of Hork-Bajir hiding in the ceiling.

Yes, THAT is the part of this that I’m having a problem with.

Chapter 4

Oh, oh great, the stairwell’s full of Taxxons.  This leaves them...the freight elevator.  Which leaves us with the entertaining moment of the Animorphs awkwardly standing there, dripping blood, waiting for the elevator to arrive while all the Hork-Bajir aim at them.  But of course V3 has to run his mouth instead of giving the firing order, which gives them exactly enough time for the freight elevator to arrive and...a bunch of other Andalites to pile out? Omg, other Andalites!

Battle kicks in again and while I really think the Animorphs should get in that elevator and go, instead everyone fights until some human cop cars show up. V3 and Jake stare at each other for a while and grumpily agree to break up the fight, like they’re the Jets and the Sharks and the cops are ruining their rumble, and I giggle a lot.

But before everyone parts ways, V3 makes clear that he knows one of the Andalites - an Arbat with whom he apparently has history - and a cute girl Andalite named Estrid tells Ax that they’ll come find him.

Ax seems to be taking this very calmly, all things considered!

Chapter 5

Back at the barn, two things are clear.  One, the newspaper definitely belongs to the Yeerks now.  And two, there are new players in town.

Ax is excited about having his people around again and about how quickly they’re going to crush the Yeerks now, but everyone else needs him to slow his roll.  They have Seen Things now and they want some proof that these are actually Andalites on their side and not some other horrible thing.  Some others Yeerk who’ve gotten hold of Andalite host bodies, or doppelgangers, or god knows what.  They know they don’t get to have nice things all that much.

Ax is so sure this is legit - he felt so much connection to Estrid!  She must be good!

Everyone else is just: “Ax, honey, we need to explain to you about ‘having a gigantic crush that makes you act like an absolute walnut and make poor decisions.’”

He’s pretty cranky about it and about any implication that he’d be disloyal to his oaths to follow Jake, but also he super does have a crush on Estrid, and he ditches the barn meeting to go running around in the fields about his feelings.

Teenage crushes: the ACTUAL worst.  I assume this is all going to end very badly but I hope Ax gets to go to Alien Prom or whatever before it all turns deadly.

Chapter 6

Tobias finds Ax out in the woods doing some extra warrior drilling.  So he can prove himself to still be a good warrior if he gets tested by his fellow Andalites.  Probably-but-not-definitely to impress the cute girl with his sweet stabbing moves.

Tobias, because he is a good bro, greets this with “hey, cool, but also what if we went to the mall and looked for intel and treated ourself to some food court excellence?”

In the match-up between exercise and cinnamon buns, Ax, like all right-thinking people, chooses the cinnamon buns, and they go flying off to the mall.

Where, whoops, there’s a girl running amok in the food court yelling in half-gibberish about beans.

Sounds like the Andalites have found the mall, too.  I applaud their priorities.  I hope Cinnabon has a lot of supplies handy because a delegation of Andalites could mean their sales are about to go through the roof.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #37: The Weakness, Ch. 18-22

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Chapter 18

Okay, yes, the plan is literally “everyone morphs into a bird and jumps out of the plane while it’s high up over the Yeerk building, except the last person driving (Rachel), who has to steer the plane down until a crash with the building is unavoidable, and then bail at the last second.”

As one of you pointed out in the comments on the last post, this book comes from a pre-2001 world, so “let’s just crash a plane in a populated area” doesn’t have quite the particular resonances it does today. But still! Don’t crash planes! Into buildings! Where people live and work! Or ideally, anywhere! 

ANYWAY, this is just a full chapter of everyone yeeting themselves out of the plane one by one, and then Rachel attempting frantically to do bird morph in mid-air while plummeting down through the building’s roof after the jet. You know, relaxing stuff.

Chapter 19

The plane crashes through the Yeerk pool cavern and into the pool itself in a flaming heap of wreckage, probably taking out a ton of Yeerks along the way, so, uh - did Rachel just triple her body count? Maybe! We’re not thinking about that!

The Hork-Bajir guards are panicking and shoving all the hosts into cages while they figure out what the fuck just happened, which provides Rachel with some cover to find polar bear Cassie. With some distraction from Rachel, Cassie manages to use her excellent controlled morphing powers to slip out of her restraints, and the two of them tackle a bunch of guards and decide to make a break for it. 

Rachel’s determined that if it comes down to it, she’ll sacrifice herself so Cassie can get to safety before she runs out of morphing time. Which is very sweet but also where did everyone else go? They all jumped out of the plane! Where are you, other Animorphs?

Unclear. Instead, we get the sudden arrival of Visser Three cheerfully announcing how nice it is for the Inspector that he’s around to watch as they capture another Andalite bandit. Oh man, he’s trying so hard to be chipper about this. I’m reminded of a time at work when we got a surprise inspector from a federal agency on a day when all the people who actually work with [thing that was being inspected] were at a conference or taking the day off, and the rest of us were just left to frantically try to cope with it. Which is the whole point of surprise inspections, I realize, and it worked out fine, but like - I empathize with V3 here trying to put a good face on chaos for the Inspector, is all. 

Chapter 20

V3 poisonously politely suggests that perhaps since the Inspector thinks it’s so easy to kill Andalites, he should take these two down. As a show of inspiration for everyone else. We stan a petty bitch, I’m delighted by this.

They have a little “oh no, I couldn’t possibly, YOU should have the honor” hate-dance while Rachel and Cassie compare notes and confirm that neither of them knows whether the others made it into the cavern, and then finally the Inspector accepts the challenge and attacks.

His strategy of “run in circles so fast around his prey that they can’t fight back, and then dart in and stab them periodically” isn’t elegant but it’s effective. Rachel and Cassie make a solid effort at fighting back, but they’re not getting anywhere. Cassie’s too bulky to maneuver against such a fast opponent, and Rachel gets a lot closer but still doesn’t quite manage it. It’s bad! They get stabbed a bunch! They’re not okay!

But we’re two chapters from the end of the book and Tobias’ screech just appeared, so I think it’s gonna be okay.

Chapter 21

The birds have arrived! Well, the birds and a snake - Marco, in cobra form, is held Tobias and Ax’s claws.

V3: “Oh, great, more Andalite bandites, I can’t wait to see you kill them all since you’re so good at it, Inspector.”

Inspector: “Uh.”

V3: “I’m sure I’ll be so impressed by your capabilities that I’ll resign my post as Visser and devote myself to supporting your ascension to the Council. Since you’re so good at this. Please, go ahead, I’ll make popcorn.”

Animorphs: *continue descending, waving a poisonous snake at the Inspector*

Inspector: “Uh.”

Oh, this is hilarious. Tobias and Ax drop Marco near the Inspector and he kind of looks at him and shrugs like, “I’m gonna handle the BEAR and the SHARP BIRDS and deal with this large worm later.”

And then Tobias and Ax fly circles around the Inspector, keeping him and all the Hork-Bajir guards distracted watching that fight, while Marco casually slithers up close and chomps all his venom into the Gartron’s leg.

Hee!

The Garatron slows and falls over, and the Animorphs use the confusion to start to escape. V3 watches them and because he is SO petty that he will absolutely burn his own chance to capture them in order to dunk on the DYING INSPECTOR, he’s just like, “Oh. Oh, no. They’re escaping. Aren’t you going to get up from your death throes and do something about that? No? But I thought you were very scary?”

Garatron: *dies*

Chapter 22

When all’s said and done, things quiet down but Rachel’s still feeling guilty about the dead old man so she arranges to go and TALK to his GRANDSON under the guise of having been present at the studio that day and feeling sad and wanting to tell him how sorry she is for his loss. Why on earth did his mother go along with this? Very awkward and weird. 

But it seems to make Rachel feel very slightly better, and then she talks to Jake, who’s back and mostly caught up on everything via Cassie, Marco, and local news broadcasts about rampaging wild animals.

Jake reassures her that she did okay - she didn’t get the Animorphs killed, and the other Animorphs told him she did okay. I mean - she did, at solving a problem she helped cause, so….meh? Also unclear if he knows about Dead Old Guy.

She asks him how he lives with making these kinds of decisions all the time, and he attempts to do the casual “I don’t let it bother me, everything’s fine, let’s all kickflip to the mall!” thing. But she can tell, maybe because she’s had a taste of being the leader now, that he’s lying and terrified. Because, you know, they’re all just tightly-wound trauma balls at this point.

The end! Jazz hands! Children’s literature!

I hope Jake enjoyed his vacation because no one’s ever letting him take time off again, I’m pretty sure.

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[wtfanimorphs]

Animorphs #37: The Weakness, Ch. 14-17

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Chapter 14

V3’s chosen a giant oozy mud creature for his morph of the day, and as a bonus it radiates massive quantities of heat. I would LOVE to know how he chooses these morphs. Like, underwater morph, sure, that’s gonna narrow it down right quick, but how did he settle on this particular one to fight polar bears? Is there an app? 

Whatever happened, it’s effective, because their polar bear forms are not great at handling heat, and they can’t make much of a dense in his oozy-mud situation Ax grimly and correctly points out that all-polar-bears actually WAS a bad plan here, because they can’t make up for each other’s weaknesses like this, they’re all susceptible to V3’s new horrible morph. So they go out the window.

Or rather, Rachel orders everyone else out the window while she stalls V3. She holds out against him as long as she can, taking some nasty damage in the meanwhile, and then she looks around to see that everyone else is gone. So out the window she goes with the last of her energy.

On the ground she finds Marco, Ax, and Tobias. No Cassie. And the look on Marco’s face tells her why: Cassie didn’t make it out.

I have to say I love that there is no clarity here about whether the gang are still in polar bear morphs or went back to human. Maybe they went back to human to heal their wounds, but maybe they didn’t want V3 to peek out the window and see them, so you gotta figure there’s a good chance they’re still polar bears. In which case it’s Marco as a Devastated Polar Bear that clues Rachel in, and that’s sadly hilarious to me because I’m a terrible person. Just picture it with me, his li’l polar bear ears drooping.

Chapter 15

Back at the barn, they’re regrouped and Ax is counting down how much time Cassie has left in morph. Marco’s furious, Ax is pragmatic, and Tobias is continuing to be an emotionless blank wall. Rachel’s crying, but only until Marco pokes her one too many times about her failures of leadership, and then she flips into fury.

Ax thinks they should go to the Yeerk pool, and Tobias is chilly as heck, like, “probably, yes, but we’re on this ride to hell with Rachel as our leader so she’s going to have to order it.”

And Rachel’s not prepared to do that. She lost Cassie, she inadvertently killed a bystander, and she doesn’t feel like she has the right to give anyone orders at this point.

Ax gives her the “buck up, little camper” speech about how leaders fuck up but recover and she can do it, and she’s just...done. Nope. She’s going down there alone rather than risk anyone else.

Which is a terrible idea, and everyone tells her that, but she doesn’t really lose it until Tobias says that if she’s going to bail out on them now maybe she really shouldn’t be leader. And then she quits and declares Marco leader and storms out.

So this is going great. I hope Jake’s having a nice relaxing family vacation because he’s going to be coming back to a real mess. (If this were an earlier book I’d speculate that he would come back to everything shiny and fine and everyone else with a pact to NEVER TELL HIM, but we’re past the ha-ha-funny book endings now, I think, so instead it will all be psychic damage.)

Chapter 16

Marco follows Rachel out of the barn and gets her to stop. His argument is that maybe he should have been the leader at the beginning of this and it would have turned out differently, but his style of recon and planning isn’t going to help them *now*, with an hour left to save Cassie. At this point they have no choice *but* to go big and bold and reckless, and they need Rachel for that. So she should get over herself and come back and save Cassie.

Hm. I feel like this discounts both Tobias and Ax as a planning source, but whatever, it gets the job done. Rachel marches back in and demands intel from Tobias about the various Yeerk pool entrances. It turns out he’s been monitoring a new Yeerk construction site over the last couple of months that looks suspiciously like it might harbor a secret entrance to the Yeerk pool. He thinks he saw a Bug fighter coming out of a retractable roof on the building, so it could be how the ships get in and out.

You’re just mentioning this TODAY, Tobias?

There’s not really enough time to get there and infiltrate and rescue Cassie by their normal methods, but Rachel has been commanded to go Full Rachel to get this done, and so her suggestion is “let’s go steal an aircraft and that’ll get us there in plenty of time.”

I...hmm. Okay. I’ll go along with this for now.

Chapter 17

They’re going to infiltrate a private airport. Because their mysterious city has a private airport now along with twelve different ecosystems. Sure. Has anyone ever drawn a map of where they live? I would like to see that map.

They’re going to steal a jet. Probably a Philip Morris jet, which I approve of. And their grand plan is literally just….climb over the barbed-wire fence and run really fast for the jets before the guards and guard dogs can catch up. Well. I guess Marco wanted direct and reckless and that’s what he’s getting!

They race to the nearest jet and vault up the stairway, with a bit of interference from a mechanic working under the plane. Which. I don’t know that I would choose to steal the plane that is ACTIVELY being serviced, who knows what’s going on under there?

But they’re on the plane and manage to shut the door behind them, so now they need Ax to figure out how to fly it before the guards break in. Fortunately he’s Ax, he’s got this. He gets them off the ground with only a minor swerving mishap and they’re off and flying.

Don’t think I didn’t notice that part where he mentioned “throwing himself out at the appropriate time.” Are they going to parachute and/or fly out of the plane? What...what’s going to happen to the plane? Are they just going to crash a jet? Are they going to aim it for a lake or something? Because if they’re worried about one casualty, I’m real concerned about what’s going to happen if they just DROP a JET on a POPULATED AREA, I have SEEN Donnie Darko.

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