#marco's ''yeah. now what DAD?'' in response to cassie asking jake what to do in 25 is one of my obscure favorite lines ever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sage-nebula · 6 years

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It's making me really happy to see you posting about Animorphs... I love that series.

Well, I’m happy that you’re happy, because Animorphs is incredible and I feel that it’s terribly underrated! So many people dismiss it as a joke because of the covers, but honestly, re-reading the series as an adult (or at least as an older teenager; I remember picking up one of my books when I was fifteen and being amazed at the amount of violence and gore that I just did not notice as a child) is such an experience, because there is so much depth to it that a child-aged reader just might not pick up on. I could get into an entire essay about how deep and wonderful Animorphs is in the way that it forces its protagonists to constantly examine the choices and decisions they have to make in this war in terms of moral justification, and in fact I originally did have a really long essay typed up about it in this response before deleting it, but I’ll spare you. All I’ll say is, despite being a children’s sci-fi series from the late ‘90s - early ‘00s, it actually addresses the heavier, more gruesome aspects of war better than many of its modern day contemporaries, and it makes its protagonists acknowledge and own up to the fact that they come against moral lines (and sometimes cross them) without letting them off the hook for it. The Animorphs reach many points, over and over again, where they’re forced into morally gray (or even dark) territory. And each and every time this is acknowledged. Each and every time they actually discuss it, argue about it, fight about it, both with themselves and with each other. There are times when they’re called out by the enemy and allies alike. There are times when they have to acknowledge that though the Yeerk Empire itself is evil, there are individuals within the Empire who aren’t—and that even though they were led to believe that the andalites were the Big Good, in all actuality, the andalites are not nearly as pure as they were led to believe, even if there are (again) individual andalites who are on their side. Animorphs exists in a perpetual shade of grey, has social commentary all over its pages, and while it’s not perfect (because nothing is), it’s damn well excellent and I really wish that it wasn’t as underrated as it is. It deserves so much more.

So, that said! I’m happy that you’re happy that I’m posting about it. I’ve actually just started a re-read myself, and even though I’m just in the first book, I’m already enjoying it. I really recommend a re-read (and a first read to anyone who hasn’t read them), because they’re certainly worth it.

But with that said, to actually answer your question … actually, I have in a couple different ways.

The first type of crossover I imagined was a more direct sort of crossover. Something-something happens that results in the Animorphs being transported to the Castle of Lions at some point during VLD’s canon. This isn’t out of the question, to be honest; maybe the Ellimist sent them there (as he does), or maybe there was a sario rip (as happens), or maybe it was something else. This wouldn’t be the first time the Animorphs have been transported across space-time, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be the last. The main thought behind a scenario like this would be seeing how these two teams react to one another. On the one hand, I don’t think the Animorphs woudl be fazed very much at all; they’re well-versed in aliens by this point (particularly Ax, who is, you know, an andalite), and their main concern would be how they’re going to get back to Earth in order to continue fighting the yeerks, considering the fact that … well … the yeerks are taking over Earth. Marco might acknowledge that Allura is gorgeous (and would probably acknowledge the same about Keith and/or Shiro, tbh), but that would be one acknowledgment before he started working with the others to focus on a way to get home. Cassie and Jake would probably be open to hearing what’s going on, and I think that if there was any attempt to recruit the Animorphs into the war against the Galra Empire, Rachel would be super interested, particularly if it meant that she got to pilot a Lion (although, she might think it would have been cooler if the Lions were bears instead, and not just because a lion was David’s battle morph). Tobias would be interested in seeing the Castle and this new alien culture, although I think the lack of forestation would bug him (particularly since the hologram forests in some of the Castle’s rooms would be easy for him, as a hawk, to see through). Ax, too, would be disturbed at the lack of grass, though I could also see him regarding alteans as being just as primative as he views humans, both because we know that (canonically) the technology in the Castle of Lions is 10,000 years out of date, and because alteans walk around on just two legs, which we all know that andalites view as being very clumsy and silly.

Ax would say, looking at their clothing.

“Yeah, but that also means that they have mouths like we humans do,” Marco would point out. “Meaning that they can also sample the pleasures of the Cinnabon like we can.”

Ax would admit, with a pang of regret in his voice.

“Actually,” Hunk would say, “all we currently have in the Castle is food goo.”

“Food … goo?” Jake would ask, wrinkling his nose. Whether he wrinkled it in disgust or confusion wouldn’t be clear.

Ax would say,

So overall, I think that the Animorphs would be mostly focused on how to get back to Earth to continue fighting the yeerks, though they’d probably recognize that they need to help out with whatever situation sent them here to begin with before the Ellimist will send them back. (Conversely, if it was a sario rip, they might be more focused on recreating that so that they can get back home.)

On the other hand, I think that Team Voltron’s reactions would be quite different. Remember that the Animorphs are only thirteen when the series starts. We don’t know exactly how old Ax is, given that he’s an andalite, but we do know that he is about the same age as them, in andalite years. He’s young. They’re all young. They’re kids and this is routinely acknowledged in the books. Despite this, they’re fighting guerilla warfare against an alien invasion. They can’t trust anyone, because the yeerks have infested everyone from their family members to high-ranking politicians and police officers. They can morph into any animal they touch, but this just means that when they fight, they’re literally ripping out throats with their own teeth, clawing through bodies with their own claws, and they have been disembowled and eviscerated more times than any of them cares to remember. They’re kids and they’re already deeply traumatized by fighting a war up close and personal. Now, Pidge was fifteen when she joined up with Voltron. Lance, Hunk, and Keith were 17-18. Allura is somewhere between 17-19, and Shiro is in his mid-twenties. They’re not old, but they’re also not as young (as tiny) as the Animorphs. And moreover, they don’t have to fight as up close and personal as the Animorphs do. Yes, sometimes they do get into hand-to-hand, but they’re always wearing armor and wielding their bayards. They’ve never had to literally bite down on another living being’s arm and taste blood and flesh in their mouths. They’ve never had to slice through a stomach and see everything pour out. They’ve never had that happen to them. And none of them have had to experience the horrors of being an ant in an ant colony. There’s a reason why the Animorphs have sworn off ever morphing ant again. It was horrifying.

And I think that, knowing this—well, first of all, the human members of Team Voltron would be beyond horrified to learn that Earth is currently under invasion, not by the galra, but by the yeerks, which is … kind of worse? At least the galra are waging open warfare. The yeerks will do that later, when Visser Three (after being promoted to Visser One) gets his way, but at the moment they’re not. At the moment it’s a silent invasion, which means that the Animorphs—these children—are the only ones fighting against it, and they have to do so secretly, while also juggling middle school and other responsibilities. That’s bad enough, especially when they recognize what it could mean for their loved ones back home:

“Wait. Do you mean to say that—that my mom could be one of these … controllers?” Hunk asks.

“Yeah,” Marco says flatly. “Probably.”

Hunk goes pale.

But it’s even worse when they look at how young the kids are. Yeah, again, Team Voltron is nowhere near old. But Lance would suddenly feel a whole lot older when he looks at Marco, who’s about four or five years younger than him, who is tiny (because remember, Marco is canonically short), and who should be worrying about things like which girl to ask to the school dance or what video game to play rather than whether he’s going to make it home to his dad in one piece. Of course, god forbid Lance actually express this Marco, because Marco hates being pitied and would counter with something sarcastic (“Gee, why didn’t I ever think that it might be easier and more pleasant to not fight against the Yeerk Empire? If only I’d had the foresight!”), but nonetheless, that’s how he’d feel. I think that Team Voltron would want to immediately put a stop to what they’re currently doing to go help against the yeerks, which might cause some strife with the rest of the coalition (they can’t just abandon the war against the Galra Empire, but at the same time, they’re currently losing their home planet of Earth), but it would also raise an entirely new set of issues, such as … how can Voltron help against the yeerks, when the yeerks are currently waging a silent invasion? Do they get the Galaxy Garrison involved? And what are the odds that the Galaxy Garrison has already been infested—that someone like Iverson might already be a controller?

So that’s one idea I had, particularly with a few different comparisons in mind. (e.g. Marco is what you could imagine ending up with if you combined Lance and Pidge, and Keith and Tobias have so much in common: They’re both orphans, they both have one alien parent, they both feel ostracized from their respective teams in different ways, they both tend to be isolated whether by choice or by force, they both discover their destiny later on, they both have abandonment issues, they’re both regarded as “emo” by their respective fandoms even though they really aren’t, they’re both quite clever, they’re both … well, Tobias is an unwilling dropout due to being trapped in morph, and Keith was booted from the Garrison, et cetera …)

But I also have considered role swap crossovers, to imagine what that would be like as well.

For instance, perhaps the Animorphs (sans Ax this time—sorry, Ax, but the kids just can’t get you from the bottom of the ocean if they don’t have morphing ability) were the ones who, despite being thirteen-year-olds, found the Blue Lion and had it take them to space, and to the Castle of Lions, instead. So they’re the ones who awaken Allura and Coran from cryostasis, and they’re the ones that Allura tries to recruit into the war against the Galra Empire.

I don’t think it would go very well.

To begin with, Marco would be a hard no right away, for the exact same reason that he tried to give a hard no to fighting the yeerks. To quote from the first book:

Marco shook his head. In a quiet voice he said, “Look, I think these controllers are jerks. But if something happened to me … my dad. He wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

Two years ago, Marco’s mom died. She drowned. They never even found her body. Marco’s dad lost it big time. He totally fell apart. He quit his job as an industrial engineer because he couldn’t handle being around other people. Now he was working as a night janitor, making barely enough to support Marco. He spent his days sleeping or watching TV with the sound off.

“You can all think I’m a weasel if you want,” Marco said. “I don’t care. But if I get killed or something, my dad will flat-out die. He’s only hanging in there because of me.”

Marco, aged thirteen, would not be cool with staying in space to fight some evil alien empire. He flat out wouldn’t be. He would want to go home, to go back to his dad, because in all honesty he’d probably already be panicking about being way out in space (how much time has passed on Earth?), would already be flipping out at the possibility of his dad thinking he was dead and committing suicide as a result.

And in all honesty, I’m not sure the rest would be on board, either. I mean, Tobias would be. Tobias was the one most eager to fight the yeerks, the one who felt that he found something worth fighting for, as he tells to Marco early on in the first book. Rachel would be at first, particularly since (again) I think the Lions would excite her, but even she realizes after the police officer controller visits them at the barn that they’re just kids, that this is beyond them, that they should tell someone (even though there’s no one they can trust). She does side with Tobias quickly after that, but she has a moment of hesitation. Cassie would similarly feel hesitant, although at the same time hearing that the galra are oppressing entire civilizations would move her to want to take action. And Jake would be torn, because his family is back on Earth, and he sees both sides. In the books, his motivation for fighting the yeerks was to save Tom. Here, he doesn’t have that, so I’m inclined to think that he, too, would want to go home.

Which would, of course, impossibly frustrate Allura and Coran, but …

In any case, if they did end up staying, then I think the Lion distribution would be:

Black Lion: “The Black Lion forms the decisive head of Voltron. It will take a pilot who is a born leader and in control at all times—someone whose men will follow without question.”

Paladin: Jake Berenson.

Reasoning: I mean, obviously. Jake is the leader of the Animorphs. He was elected as leader with no contest outside of his own. All of the Animorphs have looked to him for leadership and guidance since day one, and even when he calls for votes (which is often), the final decision is still usually his. Ax recognizes him as Prince Jake (even though he’s not a prince) for a reason. So yeah, Jake would be the Black Paladin, for sure.

–

Red Lion: “The Red Lion is temperamental, and the most difficult to master. It’s faster and more agile than the others, but also more unstable. Its pilot needs to be someone who relies more on instincts than skill alone.”

Paladin: Tobias.

Reasoning: This one is difficult, because certain aspects of the Red Lion (temperamental, relies on instincts, difficult to master, unstable) sound like Rachel. Rachel would also really appreciate the Red Lion’s arsenal. She would like the fire power, as well as the sword. However, I’m not sure that Rachel is best suited for the finesse that it takes to fly Red. Rachel tends to barrel through her enemies, not weave and dodge around them like the swift and agile Red Lion requires. Additionally, Rachel is not a natural flier … but Tobias is. Tobias relies on instincts rather than skill alone, given all the time he spends as a hawk in his own series, and he’s definitely used to being swift and agile. Plus, it’s not like he doesn’t have experience with ihs own issues of being unstable, and it’s not as if he doesn’t know how to handle those that are temperamental. So ultimately, I think that the Red Lion would have to go to Tobias.

–

Green Lion: “The Green Lion has an inquisitive personality and requires a pilot of intellect and daring.”

Paladin: Marco.

Reasoning: Marco doesn’t do the best in school, but he’s incredibly intelligent, cunning, and resourceful. He’s the best at strategy, and later in his own series he hacks a CIA database because he’s bored. Now who does that sound like, hm?

–

Blue Lion: “The Blue Lion is the friendliest of the Lions and the most accepting of new pilots. It requires a pilot who (appears to have) confidence to spare, who is willing to keep going no matter the obstacles they face.”

Paladin: Rachel Berenson.

Reasoning: Again, this one was hard, because we don’t actually have criteria for the Blue Lion (thanks, Lance), so I’ve had to piece this together based on the website and what we see in the show. The Blue Lion, according to the website, accepts new pilots the easiest, and has confidence like Lance. But we know that Lance’s (and Allura’s, for that matter) confidence is mostly for show. They hide their insecurities and fears in order to appear strong for others. Rachel does this as well, particularly early on, as she herself thinks in book seventeen when she volunteers for the mole mission first despite being afraid. But the Blue Lion also appreciates that its Paladins ask it for help sometimes, that they keep trying even after they’ve failed, and Rachel is characterized as one who can fall off the balance beam eight teams and get up on it a ninth. So yes, I think she could work as the Blue Paladin, though again, this one can kind of lean toward Tobias as well.

–

Yellow Lion: “The Yellow Lion is caring and kind. Its pilot is one who puts the needs of others above their own. Their heart must be mighty.”

Paladin: Cassie.

Reasoning: I mean, obviously. Cassie is the heart of the Animorphs, and often acts as emotional support (or a morality checkpoint, even if she herself isn’t perfect). She’s pretty clearly a fit for Yellow Paladin.

–

So I think that, if the kids agreed to stay in space and fight this war, that’s how the Lion distribution would be. But I think it’d be hardpressed to keep them there, particularly with regards to Marco, who would be incredibly worried about his dad and wouldn’t want any part of this war that, in his mind, would have nothing to do with him (as he would tell Allura in no uncertain terms—straight up, “And that’s my problem because? Sorry, lady, but you have to sort this mess out for yourself”).

On the other hand, there’s also the other role swap scenario. One where the Voltron cast never ends up getting in the Blue Lion to go to space, but instead encounters a dying andalite, receives morphing power from him, and then watches as he is eaten alive by a morphed Visser Three.

I’ve imagined a lot of different aspects to this particular role swap AU. The one I struggle with the most is wondering whether Shiro is involved or not, since I’ve kind of already decided that high-ranking officials within the Galaxy Garrison (e.g. Iverson, Sam Holt) are most definitely controllers. Is Shiro also a controller? Was he sent off-planet because he was one, such as Sam Holt, and the Yeerk Empire wanted his yeerk doing things in space? Or was he spared that fate, thankfully, and is instead an Animorph?

Well, we know what the more pleasant scenario is. We’ll imagine that for now.

Just as the Animorphs are all thirteen when they’re sent to the Castle of Lions, our former Paladins are all the same ages they are in canon when they encounter Elfangor. I’m imagining that this would still take place around the Garrison; Shiro, if he wasn’t infested and sent off to space, is an instructor. If he’s still around (Kerberos never having happened), then Keith would still be a student, as would Lance and Hunk. We’ll say Pidge is one, too, because that makes things more convenient (and maybe she’s not concealing her gender this time—maybe she’s open about who she is from the start). Since the Garrison is already infested, the yeerks having hit it up first thing, I imagine that there would definitely be a push around the Garrison to get others infested as well. The Sharing is perhaps an organization already in a nearby town that claims to specialize in reaching out to those “at risk,” whether they’re at risk because they’re orphans (Keith) or because of the stress of academia. Infested Garrison instructors and officials really push others to go. It’s a fun group, they say. Everyone belongs there, they say. It’s good to take the stress off studies, they say. Iverson continuously badgers Keith into going, and Shiro (who in this scenario is not infested, remember, though he could be) says that maybe it’d be fine to attend once just to get Iverson off his back. So Keith does, and he finds it pointless and a little degrading (he doesn’t need pity or to be babied), and so he stops. He’s not much of a follower, he says. Iverson’s yeerk is pissed off by this and says that he’d do well to get in line, honestly, or else maybe his future at the Garrison will be cut short.

So anyway, that’s the set-up. At some point they encounter Elfangor. Instead of an abandoned construction site, maybe it’s just somewhere out in the desert. Who knows why they’re out there. Or maybe it still is a construction site, who knows. But they meet Elfangor, and he’s dying, and he gives them morphing power, and tells them about the yeerks, and then they see him get eaten alive by Visser Three. They hear his dying scream in their heads.

(And really, just think about that … aside from Shiro, who spent a year as a prisoner of war, Team Voltron’s introduction to the war against the Galra Empire was to meet a pretty princess in a pretty castle and be told about it. The Animorphs’ introduction to the war against the Yeerk Empire was to meet a gentle alien who was eaten alive not fifteen minutes later right in front of them. And the Animorphs were thirteen. Jesus Christ.)

Of course, they’re now faced with a decision. Shiro, perhaps, will want to tell those at the Garrison about what’s going on, and Lance and Hunk would be on his side, but both Keith and Pidge would be wary, because … how do they know that people at the Garrison aren’t infested? That’s a good point, Shiro concedes, and so they decide to wait it out and see. And lo and behold, they realize that the suspicion was warranted, because people at the Garrison are infested. High-ranking people are infested. They can’t go to the Garrison for help. They’re on their own with this one.

They learn that The Sharing is a front for the yeerks. They learn that Pidge’s brother, Matt (who is still around in this AU), is a controller. Pidge, who previously didn’t really want to fight in this war, is now gung-ho about fighting it to save her brother (and her father, who is a controller off-planet). Lance suggests just knocking Matt out and holding him for three days so that his yeerk dies, but Keith points out that’s not feasible because the yeerks would link it back to Pidge, and then to the rest of them. They’d be captured and infested. Their families would be captured and infested. They can’t do it.

It all hits Pidge even harder when she learns that the reason why Matt is a controller is because … well, he was taken involuntarily, but since then he has made a deal with the yeerks that they can have him so long as they leave her alone.

They all acquire different flying / battle morphs. So far I’ve thought:

Keith: Red-tailed hawk / black panther.

Shiro: Golden eagle / wolf.

Lance: Osprey / male lion.

Hunk: Black kite / rhino

Pidge: Peregrine falcon / king cobra

I feel like Pidge would really want an owl morph, but the problem is that owls are nocturnal. For the day she would need a diurnal bird, and so the peregrine falcon fits that. Additionally, I recognize that there is a risk at giving her a king cobra for a battle morph due to the fact that snakes can be, well, stepped on, but she might have a grizzly bear as backup. If nothing else, king cobras are extremely venomous; their venom is a neurotoxin and can kill in ten minutes if left untreated. So I mean, it’s not as if Pidge having a king cobra morph is entirely a bad choice, especially if the enemies they’re fighting are focused on the other, much larger, opponents.

I’ve thought of a few other things with this, too, like maybe the reason why Keith’s dad disappeared is because he was taken by the yeerks. Maybe he’s an involuntary host to a Visser by this point? The yeerks wanted to hunt down Keith after capturing his dad, because thanks to his dad’s memories they know that Keith is part-galra, but Keith was already put into foster care and hidden away by the time they could get to him. His dad stalled for that long, at least. So Keith doesn’t know his heritage, and doesn’t know that the yeerks have special interest in him, even if they haven’t put the pieces together yet.

So yeah, I’ve definitely thought of a few different crossover scenarios, and I kind of want to write them, haha. We’ll see what (if anything) comes of it.

Thanks for asking! :)

#pidge-eon #animorphs #voltron #animorphs voltron au #voltron animorphs au

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uniformbravo · 5 years

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animorphs liveblogs, this time a marco book so u already know it’s gonna be a party am i Right boys,,,,,

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i read so much goddamn animorphs today and update: marco is, once again, ruining my life,

this is actually one of the very few books i personally own (out of two to be precise) so i am. Somewhat familiar. vaguely. let’s fuckin.,.., Do this

[from the back cover of the book]

But Marco's personal stress is causing him to morph into creatures that don't exist.

“marco’s personal stress” this should be...... fun

My name is Marco. But you can call me "Marco the Mighty." Or "Most Exalted Destroyer of My Pride." You can cower before my mighty thumbs and beg for mercy, but you'll be crushed just the same. For I am the lord of the PlayStation. Pick a game. Any game. Tekken. Duke Nukem. NFL Blitz. Whatever. Practice all you want. I'll still beat you. I'll crush you like Doc Martens crush ants. I'll -

i hate him. ia hhate him so mugjfn

"I was just watching his show -" Rachel cut me off. "You were watching William Roger Tennant? Marco looking for advice? On what? Coping with shortness?" "I was just channel surfing," I yelled. "That's not the point!

hklJKDJ GOD

Confirmed

<You know why you're here,> Cassie replied. <You switched with Jake so you could watch the South Park marathon last night.> <Yeah, but that was before I knew about The Powerpuff Girls marathon,> I grumbled.

SUPER CONFIRMED

<Something bothering you, Marco?> Cassie asked. <No, absolutely not.>

jdkdjdsf the avoidance tactics

And then there’s Euclid.> <Her toy poodle.> <Satan with a perm. Simple commands like "sit," "stay," "heel" all mean the same thing to this dog: Bark at Marco. Jump on Marco. Bite Marco's ankle.>

ffuckign Good Dog

For forty-five minutes we followed William Roger Tennant up the beach and then back to the compound. For forty-five minutes I vented. Cassie may or may not have listened. Every once in a while, she said <”uh-huh”> or <”bummer.”> By the time Tennant walked back through the gate of the compound, I felt a little better.

ok but i just love this so much like. ive mentioned before how i love cassie and marco and this is just so Good this is a Good Scene

The first thing to change was my head. It began to shrink. From normal size to the size of a cantaloupe. To grapefruit. To orange. To just slightly bigger than a cherry tomato. <Oh, that's a nice look,> Rachel said. <Now your head finally matches the size of your brain.>

all i want is an animorphs spin off series thats just 100% rachel’s burns on marco they give me so much life

also all i can think about is this pic gkdjlfksdlfkdj

ok so this book is rly fun, basically it’s like everyone is super fucked up from this war but marco in particular is so super duper fucked rn he’s reached another plane of fucked he’s on a higher tier of emotional distress and it’s messing with his ability to morph, he’s so spectacularly damaged that he’s experiencing it in new and unprecedented ways he’s fucking evolving he’s ascending

"Cassie?" "Hi. Can I come in?" She didn't wait for me to answer but just sort of pushed her way past me. I followed her back to the living room. She turned off the TV and looked expectantly at me. - "You have something to tell me?" "No." "So why are you here?" "I'm here to listen to you." I laughed. "What, are you a shrink now?" She shrugged. "You said it yourself: We can't exactly go to see counselors, can we?" "Look, I'm fine." "No, you're not," she said. "Jake bought it, Rachel bought it, but I didn't. Something went wrong. I heard it in your thought-speak. You blew another morph." I sat down. I was sure I'd covered. I was sure. But of course this was Cassie. Cassie who knows what people are feeling about five minutes before they do. "Did you tell Jake?" "No. And I won't." "Why not? What happened to it being everyone's concern?" "Because I want you to know you can trust me. You know, enough to talk to."

god like??? their relationship is just So Good i love that cassie is the one to reach out to marco so consistently and genuinely, the only one to offer that kind of support, because he shoves all his pain away and hides it from everyone else but she sees his truth, insightful cassie, and then actually sets out to do something about it

because let’s not forget jake, who knows every member of his team inside out and Absolutely knows when marco is having problems, but isn’t the same person as cassie. cassie, who worries for her friends. cassie, who wants to help in any way she can. jake sees an issue like this and analyzes its contribution or detriment in relation to a mission, decides whether it’s worth looking into, and acts accordingly. he simply does whatever is necessary to reach the goal. he doesn’t have the time or energy to go chasing after every member of his team every time they break down, because they’re all broken and they all deal with it differently, and that’s really what it comes down to for him: they deal with it. get it done, and deal with it. no time for anything else, just let everyone fix themselves as they do, and move on to the next thing.

which is such an interesting parallel to cassie’s way of dealing with these things. cassie the empathetic healer, who speaks her mind and confronts the issues everyone else glosses over. it’s such a breath of fresh air to see her enter into the situation with pure intention, to fix, to help. these books give such a feeling of loneliness sometimes, spinning tales of personal conflict and avoidance and silent suffering, especially in the case of marco, who deliberately masks his pain with laughter, pain’s polar opposite. cassie is a force of companionship, of understanding in a place where it’s desperately needed, and i think it’s really refreshing, given everything else that happens constantly around her. it’s just really nice, is all i’m saying

She ignored my weak attempt at a joke. "And then we found out your mom was still alive. Only she wasn't your mom anymore. Her body had been taken over by a Yeerk. And she was the enemy. Marco, in the space of a few awful months you've gone from believing your mother is dead to almost literally having to try and destroy her." "And you think maybe that's stressful?" I deadpanned. "I think it would have crushed most people," she said. "That mission against her and Visser Three, you were setting her up to take a fall. You were intimately involved with leading Visser One, your mother, into a trap that -" "Shut up! Shut up!" I jerked up off the couch. I had my hands over my ears. Stupid. I took my hands down. They were trembling. "Look, Cassie ..." I started to say with exaggerated calm. But then I forgot what I wanted to say. I could see her. On that mountaintop. Her sudden realization that it was me who had brought her there. Marco. Me. Her son. Her host's son. Not some ruthless Andalite warrior but her own son . . . Visser Three's troops and ships closing in. The cliff giving way. Falling. And later, Rachel had come to me and said that her body could not be found. That maybe she was still alive. And Rachel had understood that she wasn't doing me any favors because it was so much better to know, to know for sure anything, even to know something terrible as long as the torture of uncertainty was over. . . . "What did I do?" I whispered.

im in immediate pain i dont want this get this away from me remove this from my life in the present year of 2016*

he didnt even realize until now, he didn’t even put this together until now he was so focused on every other aspect of the situation that he didn’t even think about anything other than the fact that it was entirely his fault that his mother was possibly dead, he just had too many other things clouding his mind to realize that oh shit if she’s still alive we’re all kind of fucked

he’s usually so conscious of things like that at all times but this particular event fucked him up so good it blocked his perceptiveness, he probably didn’t want to think about it he probably pushed it out of his mind as much as possible so whenever it did manage to surface the only thing he felt was guilt and pain, as in the emotional response rather than the tactical thinking

he doesn’t realize until right now, when cassie confronts him and forces him to think about it, what the facts strung together actually mean for them, five books later this is happening i’m gone knock me tf out

"Nora and I have been talking about getting married, Marco. But we won't do it without your okay." "Yeah? And what if it's not okay?" I said. I could hardly hear my own voice. He sighed. His eyes turned vacant, distant. The way they'd looked for a large part of the past two years. I hadn't missed that look. I hadn't missed it at all. "Marco, we're a team, you and I. We've been through a lot together. If you say no, I'll accept that." Fine. So it was on me. Great. Typical. Yeah, why not? I'll decide if my dad is happy or not, if my mom is still my mom. I'll decide if she lives or if she dies so that I, the Great Marco, the great cold-blooded Marco can prove how tough I am by leading her into a trap, setting her up ... I felt pain. I was digging my fingernails into the side of my head. I was going to explode. Some artery in my head was going to blow apart. It was too much. Way too much. "I'm out of here," I said. I got up and ran for the door.

re: those last few lines: live footage of me reacting to this entire passage,

[context: marco messed up a morph in the middle of a mission & is now lost in a half poodle half polar bear morph]

<Come on, Marco,> Cassie encouraged. <It's going to be okay. Remember the mission?> The mission? I poked Tennant's huddled body with my paw. Watched him shrink and shudder. <What's going on, Marco?> Cassie said soothingly. <Talk to me. We're your friends. Talk to us, talk to me and-> <Talk my butt,> Jake snapped. <Marco. Cope. Now. That's an order.> It was like a bucket of ice water dumped on my head. It was like waking up from an intense dream. Fast. Painful. Slowly my mind grasped control. <Jake, he's going through some bad stuff in his life,> Cassie said. <He's stressed. His dad is-> <Cassie, you know I love you and admire you, but be quiet,> Jake said. <You listen to me, Marco. We have zero time for your self-pity. I don't care what your problems are. You deal with this, right now.> I started to shrink. My body deflated like a balloon with a pin-hole. My head, shrinking. Becoming a normal poodle head. <That's not exactly enlightened behavior, Jake,> Cassie shot back, obviously angry. <lf he's having stress-> <Cassie, he's not you, he's not Rachel, he's not even me. He's Marco,> Jake said. <What he needs is to pull his head out of his rear end and remember what he always says.> What I always say? What was he talking about? Jake said, <Life is either tragedy or comedy. Usually it's your choice. You can whine or you can laugh.> I laughed. Laughed in recognition. Oh, yeah. I do say that. I was completely poodle.

Oh How The Turntables Holy Shit

like is it just me or is this super fucked up for jake to do oh my god?? humor is marco’s defense mechanism he uses to ignore his terrible realities and bottle everything up and hide it all away and it’s super unhealthy and cassie recognizes that, so she tries to help him by showing empathy and encouraging him to open up

jake also knows this about marco and and instead uses it to put him back on track on a mission like instead of saying “you can’t bottle up your emotions like this it’s not healthy and it’s obviously causing major problems” he’s like “you better bottle that shit up right this fucking instant or so help me god”

and the thing is it fucking works, marco snaps right out of it like “oh yeah bottling up my emotions why didn’t i think of that lol” and the whole thing just kind of strikes me as Super Fucked Up???? wow

i absolutely love it tho like dont get me wrong im not trying to demonize jake or w/e- it’s just another example of that brutal realism you get with this series because it feels like there should have been some kind of moral lesson about friendship and emotional support at the end of this, like it should have been cassie who managed to get through to marco by being there for him in such a critical moment, but it’s not. the thing that puts him back on track is literally the opposite of that, it’s jake basically telling him that his emotions are a waste of everyone’s time and that he needs to shove them aside just like he always does because it’s worked in the past and it needs to work Right The Fuck Now- it’s the invalidation of marco’s emotions that finally manages to pull him back to where he can essentially “function” properly again, as far as morphing goes

god and this is the shit that always gets me, why i love these books so much, like not to get all Edgy or anything but it’s that brutal reality of a fucked up situation, where there is no moral at the end, the serious issues aren’t getting resolved, the characters are fighting amongst themselves and damaging each other in the process it’s just?? so???? it’s so fucking Good like God i just

i cannot even describe how much i love this series, i just

i really love animorphs, okay,

god

I was coming home from school when I heard the phone ring. It rings more often now with Nora around because she gets calls from parents asking why their kids are flunking math. I decided not to answer. Let the machine get it. And then, I heard her voice. "Marco, if you're there, pick up." My mother.

wHAT KIND OF ENDING IS THIS IM SCREECHING IN THE MOONLIGHT GOOOODDDDDD Hhe was about to move on, this book was ending in all this acceptance and starting anew shit and now ur pulling a fast one on me like this ummMMMMM??? UMMMMMMMMMMM?M???? BY E

((lmao retroactive 2 years later bullet point add, @ visser one what the fuck this was so risky what if marco’s dad was home??? what if the three of them were all sitting around the dinner table having a meal and ur damn Mom Voice starts projecting across the entire living room uhh??? hello?????? i kno ur deal is that ur literally in space jail abt to be convicted for space crimes or w/e but i stg at least do a batman????? or pull an accent or S ometh ign jesus christ. smh))

---

*lol

#ya sorry like a solid 60% of this is book excerpts i stopped giving a fuck #i want to include everything relevant instead of constantly cutting it down for the sake of a shorter post lollll #retag later #animorphs blogging #(also that part where i mention it's 2016 lmfao yea this post is rly old)#god ive been having so much fun w/ tobias lately in back to before that i almost forgot how much marco absolutely destroys me #thanks @ this post for reminding me. i love it

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words-writ-in-starlight · 7 years

Text

The Great Animorphs Reread, Part 8

Book 8: The Alien

AKA “Ax is not to be trusted in public, the PTSD squad learn how Andalites eat, and we meet Alloran-Semitur-Corrass”

We’ll get the lighthearted stuff out of the way first: Ax in his human morph is a delight, oh my God, it’s so funny. Someone help them, they are trying to manage this shit ALL THE TIME, it’s such a good thing they never teach Ax to drive or they’d never keep him out of the mall. I didn't talk much in the fifth book about Ax in human morph because...well, beyond the fact that overall that's a pretty grim book (goddamn ants, goddamn Visser One), I was just having a shitty day when I wrote the recap. I was cranky. So now we're talking about Ax's human morph and how much I love it and how, even though cinnamon bunzuh aren't really my particular thing (they're SO MUCH FOOD, I can't finish a whole cinnamon bun), I get really excited whenever I see a Cinnabon. Because I am a seven-year-old and still low-key convinced that humanity's great gifts to the galaxy will be the cinnamon bun and the M&M. Like. Just saying. Also, it's hilarious to me that it apparently never occurs to Marco's dad—having raised Marco, of all people—that 'No' might be fucking with him.

Relatedly, these books are so serious, so heavy, but they’re never grimdark the way, say, the Dark Knight or (hissing) Supernatural are. They have these moments where it’s like Yes, these are children, so they are going to act like GODDAMN CHILDREN and smuggle their new alien buddy into a movie because that’s what they’re going to do. And I love it, I live for these moments where the Animorphs get to be kids, where they get to complain about the fact that Ax tried to eat cigarette butts rather than about the fact that they almost die on a regular basis. Jake even calls it out explicitly, says that they almost died against the Visser's Veleek (and yes, I will eventually do a recap of the Megamorphs, and probably the various Chronicles) and they deserve a damn break. YOU ARE CORRECT, JAKE, perhaps you should do a movie night? I'm committed to the movie night thing. Like. They do a movie night. When Cassie's parents are out or something. Otherwise I can't live with this.

My third and final light-hearted note: the dinner with Cassie’s parents. Like. Oh God. RIP Cassie’s parents’ respect for Jake. I mean, on the one hand, hard same, speaking as someone who believes that hot sauce is a blessing to us all, I too would probably blow through three bowls of Cassie’s dad’s chili with total enthusiasm. But on the other hand…like…can you imagine the conversation between Cassie and Jake where she goes, “hey, heads up, next time you see my parents you might be expected to eat a whole bunch of five-alarm chili” while Jake, who I imagine does not so much live for spicy food, winces in advance. Also, I’m convinced that the reason Cassie’s parents are convinced by Ax’s shaky Jake impression is because Jake is usually so stressed about being around his girlfriend’s parents that he doesn’t even speak. They have no comparison point whatsoever.

Well. Now that we've done the fun stuff. This book is very depressing. Because, first of all, AX GODDAMNIT I LOVE YOU BUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING. And yeah, yeah, the Prime Directive, less-evolved species, blah-blah-blah, but THIS IS A WAR. Like, I love him, he is my blue alien son, but he also needs to pick a goddamn side. Through the whole course of this book, when you really get a look at his thought processes and the sheer amount that he's hiding from them and the way that he almost...disregards the lives of the Controllers who will die as the price of 'striking a great blow against the Yeerks', I really want to smack him.

Now that I’ve gotten THAT off my chest, let me clarify again that I would die for Ax in a heartbeat. Like, he is a small baby alien who’s lightyears away from his home and his family and his entire life and like I just want to hug him and let him talk sadly about his moons and his brother and his family. But also. See above. And then of course this is the book where he DOES pick a goddamn side and that's even MORE distressing because Andalites are dicks and basically excommunicate him for fighting to save Earth. This poor kid. I don't think Andalites hug, do we ever cover that? Regardless, this kid needs a hug. Maybe the lot of them can cuddle at that movie night. I am 100% sure that Jake gives great hugs. And Cassie can probably cuddle like a motherfucker.

Ax tells the Andalites that it was him and not Elfangor who shared the morphing tech because he can’t stand the thought of Elfangor’s name being disgraced. If you, dear reader, want a quick peek into my reaction every time I read that part, picture a dark-haired woman clutching her phone to her chest and going Nooooo my blue boy my poor loyal baby you’re too good for them. In other news, I am a shell of a person.

Sooooo. Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, War Prince of the Andalite fleet and unwilling host of Visser Three. This is where we first meet Alloran, and it is terrible. Like, yes, I get it, Alloran was high-key a war criminal before the whole...possessed by the battle-leader of the Worst Aliens Ever™ thing, but then again none of the Andalites are exactly clean-of-hand in this whole thing, and Alloran at least acted with good intentions—although, good intentions, road to hell, et cetera. (Oh also buckle up for when I talk about the goddamn Hork-Bajir and spend, like, All My Time kicking Alloran around like a soccer ball). And being infested by a Yeerk is a punishment worse than death as it is, never mind being infested by a Yeerk who habitually gloats about killing and infesting your whole planet by using you as a weapon. Like, no one deserves that. No matter what he’s done. Alloran is such a damn tragedy. It always kind of breaks my heart that he asks Aximili to kill him (speaking of LOOK AT YOUR LIFE moments for Ax, because...like...I get why he doesn't, but it would be a mercy to kill Alloran, and Ax's whole voiced logic is 'but you're an Andalite' and that's...not the issue here, kid, although to be fair Ax is alone on Earth and Alloran is the only other one of his kind, I’m so sad). And it always REALLY breaks my heart when Alloran tries to bring his tail blade to his throat and he's too weak to manage it. So, basically, TL;DR: I am perpetually fucking distraught about Alloran-Semitur-Corrass.

Fuck the Andalite home world. All of them are dumbasses. That's all I have to say.

Seerow's Kindness. So, the law of Seerow’s Kindness is the Prime Directive, its text goes something like “thou shalt not share technology with [insert culture here]”. The Prime Directive focuses on noninterference generally, whereas Seerow’s Kindness is about technology, but that’s just semantics. The critical difference here is in how the culture views breaches of the edict. The Prime Directive is treated more like a suggestion, to the effect of “hey, maybe don’t hand a warp core to a species that’s still figuring out the internal combustion engine or that shows some megalomaniacal tendencies.” EVERY Fleet captain breaks the Prime Directive at least once, and many of them more than once, when it seems necessary to save lives—as long as a case can be made for their actions being intended to help people, Starfleet tends to let it slide. On the other hand, you break Seerow’s Kindness? You get fucking excommunicated, and the Andalites have used it as an excuse to be totally hands off the galaxy. And I get it, the logic behind both of them is pretty sound and based around situations exactly like the Yeerks. But…look. Out of all the species in the universe, none of them are without violence and war—even the Pemalites doubtlessly had a messy history before they evolved past it. Seerow just had the tremendous misfortune and ill-thinking to offer his great kindness to parasites—not symbiotes, parasites. The host gets little to nothing out of being infested. And those are the creatures that Seerow just…handed faster-than-light travel. My point is a lot like Marco’s, in the end. It’s a failing of the Yeerks that they’re inclined toward empire, not of the generosity that Seerow offered them. “Your boy Seerow wasn’t wrong. He just helped out the wrong species.”

Finally: fuck the whole bullshit superiority trip that this whole race is on. My precious blue boy Ax too. He kind of gets it beaten out of him by prolonged exposure to a bunch of angry young human soldiers, but the other Andalites are just. A bunch of dicks. They believe that they’re the commanding center of the universe, that of course they have to keep their technology out of the hands of other races too primitive and foolish to handle it. There is a level of astounding narcissism inherent in the belief that they are singularly responsible for the Yeerk threat. Are they responsible for Yeerks spreading like a virus through the galaxy? Um, yes. Are they so universally powerful that it’s their responsibility to protect the galaxy from itself, and their right to judge who lives and who dies for the greater good? Um, no they are not. And that’s the thing. The Andalites, when informed that the Yeerks are on Earth and threatening an unprepared population, throw humanity to the teeth of the Yeerk Empire as a stopgap, because they are so married to their grand plan and their law of Seerow’s Kindess. So just fuck that arrogance straight to hell.

OKAY BUT ON A STILL-EMOTIONALLY-RUINOUS BUT SOMEWHAT LIGHTER NOTE, that last call between Ax and the Andalite homeworld is so fucking upsetting, oh my God, bury me. He tells Head Councillor Lirem about Alloran’s message to his family (wreck me) and he talks about how the Hork-Bajir might have been saved if the Andalite forces (including Lirem) had fought for them, and honestly kind of gives him a very stiff and polite dressing down (MY SON I AM SO PROUD). And Lirem goes <You’re just like your brother> and of course Ax is very proud of that and anyway, I’m dead, just put me off to the side where I won’t get in the way.

#the great animorphs reread #aximili-esgarrouth-isthill #animorphs #the alien #*croons fondly* my boooooooy #i love him #let the animorphs have a movie night 2kforever #honestly my feelings about the andalites are a little complicated but they are well summed up by #andalites would probably have much more success against the yeerks if they weren't so histrionically xenophobic #but like tbqh ax/tobias friendship is my j a m i love them so much #give me all of the weird outcast friendship #my shit #idiot teenagers with a queue

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 2 years

Note

have you talked at all about the animorphs going through a groundhog day/new game plus kind of time loop before? it's one of my favorite tropes / aus.

• Jake wakes up. It’s a Southern California day like any other: sunny, 70, chance of aliens. He showers, slumps downstairs, pours himself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Does his best to ignore the controller sitting across the table and staring at him. Brushes his teeth. Catches the bus.

Jake goes to Homeroom. Jake goes to Algebra. Jake goes to French. Jake goes to U.S. History. Jake goes to lunch. Jake goes to Remedial English. Jake goes to Biology. Jake goes home.

“Remember,” Marco says, as they’re heading out. “Tonight. The usual place.”

Jake sighs, nodding. It seems like that’s all they do these days, meet and try to talk their way up to going on the next mission.

He’s tired. They’re all tired.

Maybe none of them more than Rachel, who is already grinding her teeth when she walks through the door. “I can’t tonight,” she says. “My mom needs me to babysit Jordan and Sara again.”

“Seriously?” Marco asks.

Jake knows why — this has been happening a lot lately. It’s unlike Rachel to put off a mission, and yet. It’s the yeerk pool. None of them want to go back, even her. Even if it means destroying an entire kandrona shipment Erek has pointed them toward.

But Jake’s in charge. It’s Jake’s job to say “Fine. We’ll try again tomorrow.” And so he does.

• Jake wakes up. He showers, he eats his sugar-covered corn, he does his best to hope he hasn’t caught the wrong kind of attention from the thing that looks like Tom. He leaves for school.

Algebra seems like it’s been getting easier lately. In French, he finishes a sentence correctly the first time the teacher prompts him. Maybe he’s been getting better at balancing it all.

Or maybe it’s just been forever since they’ve been on a real mission.

“I can’t tonight,” Rachel says, when they’ve barely started the meeting. “My mom needs me to babysit Jordan and Sara again.”

Marco’s response is sharp and sarcastic. Jake curls his head forward, pressing it against his knees. He gets why Marco’s annoyed. This keeps happening.

“Jake?” Cassie asks softly.

He lifts his head. “If this happens again tomorrow, we might need to plan to go without you,” he tells Rachel.

«That makes no sense,» Tobias says sharply. «We can’t go without our strongest fighter.»

“Tomorrow.” Jake can hear the tiredness in his own voice. “We’ll make a decision tomorrow.”

• Jake wakes up. He goes to school. He sits through classes, through lunch. He confirms with Marco that they’re still just meeting in Cassie’s barn for tonight.

“I can’t tonight,” Rachel says. “My mom—”

“We know.” Jake speaks more sharply than he means to. He’s just. He’s tired. It feels like he hasn’t slept in weeks.

“She’s just really busy right now,” Rachel mutters.

«Yeah, dude.» Tobias glares, or maybe he just looks Jake’s way. «Chill.»

“We go tomorrow,” Jake says. “No matter what. Tomorrow.”

Marco salutes. “Tomorrow it is!”

• Only they don’t go the following day. Jake suggests it, and the others all shout him down. It’s just one night, Rachel and Tobias keep telling him, it’s just for now. The kandrona shipment can wait one more night, Ax says. Cassie suggests they all just take a breath, take a break.

• Jake messes up. They don’t go the next day either, and this time it’s Jake’s fault; he fell asleep during what felt like the world’s most repetitive History class, and got detention.

“You doing all right?” his dad asks, picking him up after school that day.

“Yeah.” Jake stares dully out the car window. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“And...”

Jake can tell, by the change in tone, that they’ve gotten to the real reason his dad started this conversation.

“And Tom.” Steve clears his throat. “Has he seemed... off to you, lately?”

Yeah, Dad, he seems like he’s been replaced by a fucking alien, thanks for asking. Jake wants to slide off his seat and onto the floor. He wants to curl up in the footwell of the car and cry himself to sleep, right there on the spot. “I don’t know,” he says. “He seems fine to me.”

• The following day, Jake gets to the barn early. He doesn’t like going on this mission without Rachel, but there’s a difference between waiting for a day and waiting for... he doesn’t know how long. Several. It’s been forever.

“Hey.” It’s Cassie, standing in the door. “You ready to go tonight?”

“Yes.” Jake pushes to his feet. “Yes. Even if Rachel’s busy, we need to get this over with.”

Cassie frowns. “Rachel didn’t mention being busy. I know she’s had to babysit a lot lately, but she shouldn’t need to tonight.”

Jake snorts. “No kidding, she’s had to babysit a lot.”

The doors of the barn swing open. Rachel’s there, Marco trailing behind. Two raptors land in the rafters, one after the other.

“Okay,” Jake says. “I talked with Cassie, and we go ahead no matter what.”

“I can’t tonight,” Rachel says.

“Wow,” Jake mutters, “how did I know that was coming.”

Everyone stares at him.

He stares back. “No one else is getting frustrated with this?”

“My mom’s just really busy right now.” Rachel crosses her arms.

“When is she going to get un-busy?” Jake knows he sounds mean. He knows it. But it feels like they’ve been having this conversation since... Since... He doesn’t know when.

“Definitely by this weekend she’ll be fine,” Rachel says.

“Weekends.” Marco sighs, flopping his wrist against his forehead. “I remember what those were like, back in the days of yore.” He’s overdoing it, trying to break the tension.

“What...” Jake frowns, a sudden uneasiness saturating his stomach. “What day is it today?”

“It’s Thursday,” Rachel says. “So the weekend starts tomorrow. I promise, it’ll be fine.”

“Thursday.” Jake looks at his watch, not that that’s any help. “I could’ve sworn it was...” He trails off, looking into space. He’s never sure what day it is anymore. And yet, that answer doesn’t sound right — this whole thing doesn’t feel right — for some reason he can’t put his finger on.

«Let’s just go tomorrow, yeah?» Tobias says. «We can’t go without our strongest fighter.»

“Yeah,” Jake mutters. “You keep saying that.”

Still, they go home.

• Jake wakes up. He doesn’t feel rested, but at least he doesn’t remember dreaming.

“Jake?” his mom asks over breakfast. “Have you seen Tom this morning?”

Jake shakes his head, hoping that’s not a bad sign. He leaves for school.

“Remember,” Marco says, as they’re heading out. “Tonight. The usual place.”

It’s not like Jake was at any risk of forgetting. This is their third? fourth? meeting in a row.

He goes to Cassie’s barn. “I can’t tonight,” Rachel says. “My mom needs me to babysit Jordan and Sara again.”

“I thought you said she’d be free by Friday,” Jake points out.

“Yeah, and today’s Thursday.” Rachel crosses her arms.

“It can’t be Thursday, yesterday was Thursday,” Jake snaps. “We’re already at the weekend.”

“Weekends.” Marco sighs, flopping his wrist against his forehead. “I remember what those were like, back in the days of yore.”

Jake stares at Marco. His whole brain is tilting, spinning, horizon losing its contours. It’s not unease he’s feeling. It’s dread. Panic.

“Hey Ax?” Jake says, voice very small.

«Yes, Prince Jake?»

“N...” He takes a breath. “Never mind.”

• Jake wakes up. He checks the level of the Frosted Flakes. He should’ve gone through the box, and yet...

“Hey Mom,” he calls, still inside the pantry. “Did you replace these lately?”

A shadow falls over the door. Tom is blocking the opening, staring hard at Jake. “Why are you asking that?”

Jake tries for a natural smile. “Just wondering. Did Mom ever find you? She was looking for you yesterday.”

“Wait.” Tom’s eyes narrow. “What?”

The shelf impacts Jake’s lower back, which is how he knows he stepped back. “Just wanted to make sure that...”

“Jake?” his mom calls. “You said my name?”

He grabs the cereal box and runs.

When he gets to school, they’re still on integer-valued polynomials. And conjugating “tournoyer.” And Chumash-Mexican alliances. And split infinitives. And the krebs cycle.

“Remember,” Marco says, as they’re heading out. “Tonight. The usual place.”

And for the first time in his life, Jake doesn’t even bother to go.

• Jake wakes up. Jake stays in bed. He’s tired. He’s tired, and he’s starting to understand what’s happening here. If his mom asks, he’ll fake sick. But either way, fuck school.

• Staying in bed gets old fast. Jake spends an entire day actually teaching himself the one-hour lesson on polynomials. And then another day on regular conjugation of multipart verbs. And then two more, one each for the Chumash and Mexicans. And then skips another school day, because he doesn’t give a damn about infinitives, and then finally the krebs cycle.

• He hasn’t been on an Animorphs mission in...

A while. It’s been a while.

And he’s feeling fine.

• “I’m telling you, if you even tried kidnapping Spider-Man and adding him as a Robin,” Marco says over lunch, “then Aunt May would just go out, buy a shotgun, and cap Bruce Wayne’s ass.”

Jake stares at him. He’s been letting this conversation wash over him, but now... “Don’t you ever get sick of talking about this stuff?” he asks.

Marco’s face does something complicated. It takes less than a second, before his smile is back in place. It has an edge now. “It’s not like we can talk about anything real here, you absolute gravy stain,” he says through his teeth.

Jake nods. He pushes to his feet. And then he stands up on the table.

“Marco!” Jake says, and the cafeteria falls silent. “Marco Sant-Alonso Grant Dominguez, will you marry me?”

There’s laughter, and then there’s whispering, and then there’s booing.

And then there’s detention, for breaking the school’s policy against homosexual conduct.

It’s something different, anyway.

• Jake lives.

• Some days he walks out of the house before anyone else is up. He goes flying, and spends the day with Tobias and Ax. He morphs wolf, runs out to find Toby, and spends the day there instead. He attends a Sharing meeting, walking uninvited to its back room and noting as many faces as he can before they drag him back out.

• Maybe it’s not fair to everyone else, Jake thinks on some days. Maybe they deserve to live and grow. But maybe they deserve to not be at war, and maybe they’re not, not really, not while they’re in this holding pattern.

• Jake thrives.

• “Detention, young man,” Chapman says, because Jake hasn’t bothered to go to English class for quite a while now.

Jake whirls around, staring him down. “Did you just try to put my host in detention, Iniss 226?” he demands.

Chapman’s face freezes. His whole body is caught between one motion and the next, mouth hanging halfway open.

“That’s what I thought,” Jake says. And then he spins back around and walks out the door. He’s laughing by the time he reaches the sidewalk. Laughing uncontrollably, laughing with stupid little snorts mixed in. Laughing like he hasn’t since...

A while. It’s been a while.

• Jake goes joyriding in his mom’s car. Jake goes joyriding in a stolen Bug fighter. Jake’s lonely, but Jake’s been lonely for a long time.

• “My name is Jake!” he announces, the next time he feels like standing on a cafeteria table. “And I’m an Animorph!”

• Jake messes up.

“Hey Jake?” Jake’s mom says over dinner one night, the way she often does. “Cassie called a few times. She sounded worried about you.”

Jake stirs his food (he’s so so sick of stuffed cabbage), not looking up. “Don’t worry,” he tells his mom. “She’s annoyed because I’m not planning our ten thousandth attempt to bring down the Yeerk Empire. But it started to feel pointless after a while, you know?”

His dad asks if this is something to do with a video game. His mom asks if he and Cassie are dating. His brother’s face is blank, twisting into horror.

Jake throws Tom a wink, and waits for the explosion.

It never comes, to his surprise. Instead Tom stares at him in silence for the rest of dinner, not eating, not talking.

The yeerk must be — and Jake laughs aloud at the thought — planning on doing something about it tomorrow.

• Jake wakes up. He wakes up, because he can’t breathe.

There’s a hand pressed over his nose and mouth. There’s a two-hundred-pound human body pinning him to his bed. There’s a knee jammed into his diaphragm. Any one of these could account for Jake’s drowning-man struggle, clawing at Tom’s wrist as his body starves for air.

“Don’t worry.” Tom’s voice is silky-low in his ear, and Jake doesn’t care because THERE’S NO AIR. “I’m not going to kill you, you little shit. Then I’d be alone in this loop.”

He lets go, sitting back. Jake sucks in a breath so violently his whole chest arcs off the bed.

Jake sits up. They stare at each other.

Yeah, Jake fucked up.

“Hi,” Jake says at last, hoarse. “My name's Jake. You are?”

The yeerk doesn’t try anything cute, like claiming to be Tom. “Ardek 5851. Sub-Visser Two-Oh-Nine.”

Jake nods. “You’ve been in the loop... how long?”

“For me, this is the eighty-sixth time it’s been Thursday, May tenth,” Ardek 5851 says. “What about you?”

Jake has no freaking clue how many days it’s been since he noticed, and he has a nasty suspicion it took him at least a week to notice at all. He settles for shrugging.

“Fine.” Ardek sits Tom upright, cross-legged on the end of Jake’s bed. “On to the elephant in the room. You’re helping the andalite bandits. And so is Cassie Moises.”

Jake is aware that he’s the stupidest person ever to live, thanks. There’s no need to point it out.

“Well?” Ardek raises Tom’s eyebrows. “I gave you my name and rank, midget.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jake snaps. He shoves to his feet, fists clenched, chest aching. “And yeah, I’m helping them.”

Ardek snorts loudly. “Clearly they’re not helping you, or else you wouldn’t still be here. What, no Time Matrix on loan for their lowly human ally?”

Jake shrugs. He has to play this carefully. The variables have changed overnight: now his survival is likely to hinge on that of this creature. This is bad. “Maybe I like it here. Maybe I haven’t bothered telling my andalite contact, because I don't think it's worth the trouble."

Ardek squints at him. “If I didn’t know you, I’d think you were telling the truth. Since I do know you, midget, I know you’re telling the truth. Damn.” He laughs, shaking his head. “I mean, I knew you were fucked up, because Tom knows you’re fucked up. But this...” He shakes his head again.

“So. Guess we’ll go back to how it was, then.” Jake shrugs again. “You do your thing, and I’ll do mine.”

“Jake.” The name seems like a deliberate choice. “Jake, you know we can’t go on like this forever. Work with me, kid. If you don’t want out, what do you want?”

Jake lets his gaze flick to Tom’s body, and then back up to his eyes. “I think you know.”

Ardek grimaces. “Fine,” he says. “Agreed. He sucks as a host anyway. But you can’t let him go blabbing the truth after I give him back. And you let me go my own way."

"Fine."

"There’s this bod I’ve had my eye on anyway, this local cop who’s also a ranked weight-lifter. Shouldn’t be too hard to grab.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” Jake murmurs.

“Hey, you get Tom, I get Officer Jenna Richards. Everyone wins.”

“Just...” Jake presses his index finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. “Tell me what you've already tried, to end the loop."

• When they part ways, Jake doesn’t go to Ax. The part about not wanting to trouble him was true. And after their little trip to the Cretaceous, Jake is pretty sure Ax has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to sario rips. Instead, Jake finds Erek.

He doesn’t start by asking about time loops, but with “You remember when we helped you guys fix the pemalite ship?”

Erek nods, because of course Erek remembers.

“Okay,” Jake says. “So this is going to be one hell of a return favor, but...” He smiles weakly. “How do you feel about breaking the space-time continuum?”

• Jake wakes. Ardek is sitting on the end of his bed again.

“Rise and shine, little bro!” he says. “Who’s ready for some breakfast?”

Jake groans, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m not your brother.”

“And I’m guessing Tom got better sleep on the last-ever May ninth than you did.” Ardek grins at him. “So?”

“My contact didn’t get an answer right away. I’m supposed to come back.”

“So Prince Whoeverthefuck can start running the calculations again? From the top?” Tom’s fists are tight on the bedspread.

“Yep.” It’s Jake’s turn to grin obnoxiously at him. “So I’d better get over there, don’t you think?”

Ardek flips him off, and stalks out of the room.

• Erek starts from the top, every morning. Usually after an hour’s worth of exhausting the same suggestions he made yesterday, with Jake shooting down each one at ever-increasing speed. Erek hits a dead end, every evening. And he gives Jake something to memorize and recite back to him the following morning.

• Jake comes home to find Tom splayed out on the floor, the whole room stinking of strawberry schnapps. Ardek is vague-eyed, loll-headed.

“What are you doing?” Jake says slowly.

“Livin’...” Ardek hiccups. “Livin’ like there’s no tomorrow.”

Jake considers. And then he sits on the floor next to Tom. “Strawberry schnapps, huh?”

“Yep. Dad’s got shit taste.”

“He’s not your dad.”

“Thank god for that.” Ardek hands over the bottle.

Jake takes it. “No tomorrow, right?”

Ardek fumbles behind himself in the pantry, comes up with cooking sherry this time. “No tomorrow.” He toasts with it.

Jake sips the schnapps. Yep, even more awful than it smells. He sets the bottle on the floor, grateful when Ardek doesn’t push the issue.

“So how’s the world’s slowest war-prince doing for you?” Ardek asks.

“‘Slow’ is about it.” Jake doesn’t sip again. “Why can’t you ask any of your fellow sub-vissers for help, while we’re waiting?”

Ardek snorts. “I wish. Cooperation within the Empire isn’t...” He trails off. “It isn’t. Period.”

“Sounds like a pain.”

“Okay, so. You got Visser Three, stomping around on his itty-bitty hooves like he hung the stars and we should all be kissing his ass. You got Visser One, whose deal is...” Ardek blows a raspberry. “I don’t even know. Scary-ass lady. And you gotta pick one or the other or else your ass is grass. But you’re stuck either minioning for Visser Three, or betting everything on some alleged revolution that inn’t even going to come through ‘cause...” He hiccups again.

Jake chuckles. “Sounds like politics.”

“Y’know, every time I try to tell people my host used to live next door to Visser One’s host, they think I’m making it up?” Ardek says. “That I’m trying for, like, the position of kissass-in-chief.”

“Would you take it, if you could?” Jake asks. He takes another wincing sip.

“What, a vissership?” Ardek slurs the word, stopping to work Tom’s mouth when he’s finally got it out. “In an instant. An instant. It means being safe, being visser. It means not having to kiss up anymore. It’d mean no longer having to deal with this...” He flicks Tom’s finger against his temple, like getting rid of a bug. “And getting a nice, quiet, voluntary host instead. I’ll kiss all the ass in the world for that.”

“I guess I never thought about it that way before,” Jake says quietly.

Ardek snorts. “Like you’re not kissing the ass of some war-prince, just to be allowed to be in the war at all?”

Jake hums noncommittally. Sips again. Wonders if he should try to hide the bottles before his parents get home.

Let them ground Tom. It’s not like it matters.

• Erek makes little progress. Ardek comments on it constantly, but Jake still won’t let him come along to meet this contact.

• Jake wakes. This time, it’s because he’s been dumped out of bed and onto the floor.

“Hey.” Ardek crouches next to him, straightens up, bounces on the spot. “Hey, hey, asshole. I tried your idea, man. I tried your brilliant damn idea of, of, asking our technician about time loops.”

Jake sits up slowly. “And?”

“I died, man!” Tom’s voice rises into a screech.

Now Jake scrambles to his feet. “You died. Yesterday. Last loop. You—”

“Those utter grass-munchers reported me, said I was losing the plot, and of course they didn’t want to deal with me, we’re already over budget and understaffed, yadda yadda, so they shot me!” Ardek is still bouncing, wide-eyed, manic.

“They shot Tom,” Jake says. “And you both died.”

“Yes, you stupid human, he died too!” Ardek makes a dismissive gesture. “I’ve done the drills, we’ve all done the drills, on how to get out of the skull in an emergency, but all the blood was coming out everywhere, and all the circuits were shutting down, and the stupid host was screaming, and...” He wraps both arms around himself, shuddering.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Jake says slowly.

Ardek punches him in the arm. “Damn straight you’re sorry. ‘Why don’t you try asking your people’s technicians?’” he says in a truly awful imitation of Jake’s voice. “‘See if they can help.’”

Jake gets a hand around Tom’s bicep. Gently pulls Ardek down to sit on the edge of the bed. Ardek curls forward, both hands pressed over his face.

“You people aren’t even worth it, you know that?” Ardek speaks through Tom’s fingers. “You don’t have blades, you fall over all the time, and pretending to be you involves wasting so much time on the most inane crap...” He lifts his head. “You know, if you’d take one tenth the time and resources and brainpower you people spend on this shit—” He plucks at his shirt hem — "and ditch the clothes, you’d be shuttling to deep space and outgunning the andalites by now.”

“Probably,” Jake says. “Why are you here, then? If we’re such a crappy species.”

“No choice,” Ardek says dully. He flops back onto Jake’s bed. “If you try to not go to whatever shitty backwater planet they assign you and recruit the locals, you end up...” He shudders again. “Like me, yesterday.”

Jake never expected to feel this much sympathy for a yeerk. Much less the one currently puppeting his brother. “You could stay,” he offers. “In the loop. Just... hold.”

Ardek rolls onto his side. “I,” he says slowly, “have not eaten—” He pokes Jake’s leg. “A single drop of kandrona. In one-hundred forty-three fucking days. I was scheduled to go first thing, the morning of May eleventh, but nooo. I haven’t talked to my friends in that long either, because I can’t exactly pick up the phone and do a check-in, now can I?”

Another angle Jake has never considered before. “Do you even... want a host at all?” he asks slowly.

“Beats being stuck in the kandrona tank twenty-four-seven,” Ardek says. “I don’t like eating that much.”

There’s something in there, something about all the yeerks feeling like there are only two choices and both suck, that... Jake has a half an idea. Less than. He has to run it by Cassie, and then...

And then have Cassie forget the whole thing, over and over again.

“Why is this happening to us?” he asks Ardek, flopping next to him on the bed. “I mean, why us?”

“Extremely localized sario rip went off in the basement,” Ardek says immediately. “Caught us both sleeping, sent us into a loop that’s spiraling slowly down until we both die. Like that... Jacob’s Ladder movie.”

Jake hums. He’s already lived that one out, in Brazil, and he’s pretty sure this isn’t it. “Wouldn’t it have collapsed when you died, then?”

“Yeah.” Ardek sighs. “For the longest time I thought it was something you andalites did to us, but that doesn’t explain why you’re here. What about you? Any thoughts?”

“Crayak.” It slips out almost before Jake means to say it.

“What’s that?”

“Cosmic being.” Jake stares at the ceiling. “Doesn’t like me. Would pull crap like this, most likely.”

“Then why am I here?” Ardek whines.

Jake doesn’t answer. And then he figures there’s no harm in answering. “I think... he wants me to make a choice. The same one he’s been pushing me toward for a long time now.”

“And that is?”

Jake rolls over enough to look Ardek in the eye. Enough to look into Tom’s eyes. “I’m working with the andalites. You’re a controller. Figure it out.”

Then he stands up, and starts getting dressed for school. One more round of infinitives won’t kill him, and if his suspicion about how to get out of the loop is correct then it beats the alternative.

• Erek works out a shorthand for himself. Jake teaches it back to him every morning, and memorizes a page of notes written in the shortened code every evening. He deserves extra credit in Algebra for this, even with his new expertise on polynomials.

• Jake’s parents keep catching him to ask about Tom. They’re worried — he’s stayed in his room all day today. All day today. All day today.

“I’m close.” Jake stands in the door of Tom’s room. Ardek is curled in a ball on his bed. “I swear, I’m getting close.”

Ardek lifts Tom’s head. His eyes are dull.

Jake has been there. Jake knows.

He shuts the door when he leaves.

• “Forget all of that,” Erek says, ten seconds after handing Jake today’s notes. “Forget all of it.” His auto-generated voice sounds excited. “How long do we have?”

“The loop resets at midnight,” Jake says.

Erek nods. He’s grinning. “We’ll be cutting it fine, but I think you can do this. Because it all fits, if you just add in the Neuguyn Equation and drop the exponential term—”

“—over lambda,” Jake finishes. “Because then it’s symmetrical, and simplifying it takes half the time.”

Erek raises his eyebrows. “Dude, how many Thursdays have you had?”

Jake shakes his head. “Neuguyn Equation. Teach it to me.”

• Jake wakes up. Jake throws himself out the window, hitting the ground hard. But he’s up, morphing to Homer even as he goes at a mad sprint for Erek’s house. Neuguyn Equation, in place of the exponent. Neuguyn Equation, in place of the exponent.

• Jake throws open his front door, three hours later. “Ardek!” he yells. “Ardek, we’ve got it!”

“Jake?” His mom’s straightening up from where she was working in the living room. “Shouldn’t you be at school? Tom’s home sick, are you also...?”

Jake ignores her. He’ll apologize tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow. “Ardek!” He pounds on Tom’s bedroom door.

Ardek yanks it open. “You have an answer?”

Jake nods. “We got it.”

Ducking back into the room, Ardek yanks on shoes and socks. “Yes, yes, yes!” He leans down the stairs. “Mom! We’re borrowing the car!”

Jake’s mom says something in response, and it doesn’t sound like an affirmative. Ardek’s already grabbing the keys.

Jake gives directions to the Kings’ house. His own heart is pounding, his fingertips tingling. Please let this work. Please.

• Erek answers the door, smiling pleasantly. “Please do not be fooled by my human morph,” he tells Ardek. “This is just a temporary means of avoiding suspicion by the neighbors.”

Ardek takes this with a nod.

“You’re ready?” Erek asks Jake.

Jake takes a breath, and rattles off the math. It’s a ten-minute process.

Erek nods. Then he reaches out, grabbing Tom by the wrist. “I need you to stay here, as you risk getting hurt if you stand too close to the collapse when Jake sets it off.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ardek says. “Fine with me.”

Jake walks over to the sphere of what looks like ball lightning, floating in the middle of the Kings’ living room. It’s hard even to look at, eating light and energy from the world around it.

He grabs the first of the metal rods from the floor, and plunges it into the current. The power jolts up his arm, throwing off the rhythm of his heart, making his hair stand on end. He grabs the other rod, closing the circuit.

He shifts them apart, then brings them together, building up the flow. Does it again. Does it again. His body is burning, stuttering. He’s falling apart.

There’s a pop of displaced air, and the world goes into reverse.

The sun plunges down to the east, the sky going dark. Ghostly shapes, echoes of past possibilities, shoot past in reverse. Jake feels those universes collapsing into his chest, thousands of possibilities yanked back into his body in a single brain-exploding instant. The air sucks out of the room, drops back in. Shutting his eyes does nothing to help, because he can still feel those branches being pulled back into him.

And then it’s done. He’s standing in the living room, the ball lightning absent, just Erek and Ardek and Tom.

“Did it work?” Ardek asks.

Erek frowns. “Did what work?”

Jake’s head snaps around. “Emergency override: six. I’m sorry, friend, but we cannot play today. You require maintenance.”

The pemalite code, despite being translated, despite not having been spoken in forty thousand years, works perfectly. Erek goes blank and dead, hologram shutting off entirely, body freezing in position.

“Uh.” Ardek tries to yank Tom’s wrist away, makes no progress at all against that relentless thousand-pound grip. “What the hell?”

“Mr. King’s in the other room,” Jake says levelly. “He’ll get you food and water, and he’ll make sure Tom doesn’t die. But he can’t hurt Erek, or Tom, trying to get you loose. And he doesn’t have any kandrona.”

Jake doesn’t know if the math suddenly fitting helped him to make a decision, or if it suddenly fit because he finally decided. But he does know that one thing is always true about Crayak’s traps: that the Ellimist is very good at leaving the Animorphs a third way out.

“Please,” Ardek is begging. He’s yanking harder now, but Erek doesn’t move. Can’t move, until Jake turns him back on. “Please, please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” he screams, in Tom’s voice. Straining Tom’s throat.

“I know,” Jake says. And then he walks out the front door.

It’s Thursday. It’s Thursday, but he’s pretty sure tomorrow will be Friday.

• Jake wakes up. He wakes because his mom is shaking him. “Honey, we need your help.” She sounds frantic. This is new.

“What day is it?” Jake asks.

“Friday,” she says dismissively, not noticing his sharp inhale. “Honey, nobody’s seen Tom since yesterday morning, your dad and I have called everyone we know, and —”

Jake rolls out of bed. “I’ll go looking for him. I know which friend he might be with.”

His mom rushes out of the room. It’s Friday. It’s Friday.

• When he gets to Erek’s place, Tom is slumped against Erek’s unmoving legs. His wrist is swollen black within Erek’s grip. Ardek lies dead on the floor. It’s Friday.

• The cops knock on Jake’s front door, less than an hour after they get home. This, even though Jake’s mom called to cancel the missing-persons report 30 minutes ago.

Tom answers, right arm tucked into the pocket of his coat. Tom tells the officers, his voice hoarse and ragged, that it was just a stupid bender and that he’s very sorry for going out drinking underage. Tom assures them both it won’t happen again. Tom sees them on their way.

Jake shuts the door, locks it. “Those were...”

“Controllers, yeah.” Tom coughs, winces. Ardek must have screamed all night. “And they’ll be back within the hour.”

Jake nods. “Pack your stuff, then. We’re running.” He knew this might happen. He knew.

“They’re going to find us,” Tom rasps.

“Only way out was through.” Jake thinks. He hopes. “Don’t know about you, but I was getting pretty sick of Thursdays.”

Tom nods. “Should contact your war-prince first, though.”

“Yeah,” Jake says. “About that.”

#animorphs #animorphs au #jake berenson #tom berenson #long post #groundhog day au #suffocation #violence #time loop #depression

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years

Note

The gang on their wedding days

[Been meaning to post this one for a while — since I’m applying to get married today, now seems like the time.]

Jake steps into the room like a child wandering into his parents’ dinner party. His bow tie is askew, seams of his jacket misaligned for all that it’s a custom-tailored tuxedo. If the buttons of his shirt aren’t one hole off from their intended placement, they still manage to convey that impression from across the room.

Rachel feels a rush of affection for him, her first best friend. The boy who’d run and fought and splashed through mud with her, back before adults started telling her to be careful of her dress and him to be careful of her. Only he could show up to his own wedding looking like he’s ready to be expelled at any moment. Only Jake.

And yes, she gets mushy at weddings. Sue her.

Tom steps up next to Jake, far more elegant in an off-the-rack suit. Some people actually got the fashionable genes in this family.

Rachel surges across the room. Tom gets a quick hug, and then she turns all her attention on Jake.

“You only have to look nice for the next three hours,” she tells him briskly.

“Three. Hours,” Jake repeats.

With expert motions she realigns his… everything, until at the very least the clothes are sitting the way the tailor intended. She tries to finger-comb his hair, thankful for the heels that put her at an inch above his height, but it’s obvious that he has also been running his hands through it and the style is hopelessly deformed.

“You can survive anything for three hours,” Rachel says as she does all this. “I’ve seen you do it.”

“But if I mess it up—”

“Then stop, go back, and do whatever it is over. We’re not exactly on a time pressure, here. Nobody’s gonna die if you trip at the altar or forget your lines.”

“Okay.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets, deforming his jacket again. “Okay.”

She can see him starting to relax as he glances around, shoulders coming down. Cassie’s place isn’t quite like they remember — it’s been repaired since the war, the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic expanded to nearly five times its original size — but it still feels as close to home as any place does.

“Have a glass of water,” Rachel says.

“But what if I have to pee during the ceremony?”

She rolls her eyes. “Babysit him,” she mouths at Tom.

Tom gives her a gesture in response that approximates What do you think I’ve BEEN doing? Whether he means the last four hours or the last twenty-six years is, really, a moot point.

Rachel leaves him to it, and charges off to go check on the others.

************

Marco leans against a tent pole, trying to roll one of the rings across his fingers the way Vegas poker players do with chips. So far it’s not going well.

“Canapé,” Ax is saying carefully. He attempts to lean next to Marco, nearly going all the way over. “Can-nap-peee?”

“Uh, no.” Marco catches the ring as it makes its third or fourth bid for freedom, stuffing it back into his pocket. “That…” He tilts his champagne flute to point. “…is a canopy. Or a chuppah, I guess. Canopee. Canapay is the little pastry thing you’ve already filched in bulk, don’t think I didn’t notice.”

“Ah,” Ax says. And then, “This temperature and rate of precipitation is within optimal survival parameters for humans, is it not?”

“Nuh-uh, Ax-Man, I will not be pulled in by your smooth small-talk skills.”

“Did you not wish to make conversation?” Ax frowns. And then he stuffs another canapé in his mouth. “This is making conversation,” he adds through the mouthful.

Marco squints. “Is it, though?”

��It is indeed. Did you know that the rotating-wheel can opener was patented in 1870?”

Marco’s response to that one gets cut off when Rachel comes charging across the open tent space like a small freight train. Tobias is balanced on her shoulder, flaring slightly as she runs. She yanks the champagne flute out of his hand. Marco makes a squeak of protest, but Rachel just sets it firmly on a bussing tray and turns back to glare at him.

“What did we agree?” she asks sternly.

Marco rolls his eyes. “That I’d stay sober-ish for the toast, and not do anything too embarrassing.”

“You’re the best man. You have one job, Marco.”

“Excuse you, the best man’s one job was that banger of a bachelor-slash-ette party we did Wednesday night. Did you like the part where we all dived out of a helicopter and flew clear through the lower atmosphere to that rooftop bar? Because—”

“So you got the drinking out of your system. You promised.”

“Sober-ish, come on, it’s just one wine-spritzer-thing!”

Rachel turns away from him, looking Ax over. “You realize you’re going to have to demorph and remorph at some point before the ceremony, right?” she asks. “And that when you do, someone’s going to have to go through the whole kit and caboodle of getting you into that tux all over again?”

“Yes,” Ax says. “Yes, I do.”

She stares at him. He stares back, looking as innocent as it is possible to look while also chewing three jalapeño pastries at the same time.

«You should probably just listen to her,» Tobias suggests. «By the way, where’s your date? Not that I quake in fear for the wedding cake or anything, but, uh…»

“Menderash has been instructed not to eat anything on a human plate without seeking my opinion first,” Ax says, somewhat stiffly.

“Yeah,” Marco says. “So far he’s only eaten two earthworms, a candle, some decorative sand, and part of Collette’s bouquet. You two have nothing to worry about.”

“Part of Collette’s bouquet?” Rachel demands. “We can’t send a bridesmaid up the aisle without—”

“Already replaced it, I am on top of this.” Marco flips his hair back from his face. “I am a flower master.”

«So where is Menderash now?» Tobias asks.

“Helping Cassie’s mom,” Marco explains.

«And Cassie’s mom is…?»

“Delivering a baby cow.”

Rachel makes a noise like she’s choking on air. “Doesn’t Michelle have vet techs for that kind of thing? She’s supposed to be getting ready, not, not…”

“It’s cool,” Marco says. “She’s got her makeup on, her hair is done perfectly, she’s got an apron-thing to keep her dress nice and gloves over her nails, it was a breech birth so they needed a real doctor and Walter was busy supervising the caterers, she’s got Menderash and Steve helping her out—”

“She kidnapped Jake’s dad?” Rachel demands overtop the continuing babble.

“He said he had never delivered an offspring outside of his own species before, and expressed deep curiosity on the subject,” Ax offers. “Menderash is a certified medic with andalite training, so they should be well-equipped to assist.”

Marco makes jazz hands in the air. “It’s a free pre-dinner show! Cow birth. Better than icebreakers.”

There’s a very long pause. Rather than dignify that with a response, Rachel turns and stalks away.

Marco watches her go, halfway awed at her ability to navigate an open yard so well while not only wearing six-inch heels and a multi-layer floor-length dress, but also balancing an enormous updo on top of her head and a red-tailed hawk on her left shoulder.

“Is it just me, or did Jake and Cassie make a monster when they asked her to be maid of honor?” Marco says.

«You wanna take over her responsibilities, then?»

Of course Tobias heard that. Stupid hawk hearing.

“No thank you!” Marco yells after them.

Cassie, meanwhile, is currently picking her way across the open space under the tent, bunches of dress hiked up to above her knees. This last is, of course, the source of Rachel’s consternation.

“Here.” Rachel attempts to pull the wads of skirt out of Cassie’s hands and drop them back to the ground. “You’re going to wrinkle it.”

Cassie stubbornly refuses to let go. “You told me not to let it drag on the ground. If I let it down, it’ll drag.”

“Cassie, Cassie. That is a hand-tailored Christian Dior gown that I commissioned to be custom-fitted to your measurements. There is no way that it is too long if you let it…”

Cassie drops the bunches of tulle. The end of the skirt falls all the way down, where the bottom two inches rest, unmistakably, on the muddy ground.

Rachel somehow manages to wince with her entire body while also not moving at all.

«It’s a look,» Tobias suggests, by way of consolation. «Kind of.»

“How…?” Rachel peers closer at Cassie. “Wait, where are your shoes?”

Cassie shrugs, embarrassed. “Uh, inside somewhere. I was having trouble balancing in them.”

“Well that’s why!” Rachel’s emphatic gesture almost dislodges Tobias. With years’ experience, he dodges her waving arm and retains his perch. “The dress was tailored to fit you with shoes on.”

“They were getting stuck in the grass—”

“They’re kitten heels!”

“Yeah, and they’re still heels.” Cassie looks stuck somewhere between amusement and embarrassment. “I don’t really do heels. Sorry.”

“Hey Tobias?” Rachel says, as if to thin air.

«Nuh-uh, leave me out, I want no part in—»

“Remember me telling Cassie that we should really try the whole outfit on before the wedding?”

«Uh. Yes?»

“Do you also remember Cassie agreeing to it, and then the day of, haring off to go try and save a bunch of vultures instead? Remember how we tried to reschedule, and there was that ALF mission on the same day so she never showed? Remember that?”

Cassie clears her throat loudly. “I think it’s a very nice dress. It’s fluffy and also comfortable, and look!” She tucks her hands away. “It has pockets.”

«Vultures are actually fundamental for waste disposal in ecosystems all over the world, and the poisons used on livestock—»

“Do you think you could at least wear the shoes long enough to go up the aisle?” Rachel asks. “And maybe even for a few photos as well?”

“Uh. I’ll try.” Cassie hikes her skirt back up (Rachel full-body winces again) and starts picking her way across the lawn back toward the house.

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to un-wrinkle it in time,” Rachel mutters.

«Yep. So you’re just going to have to live with it.»

“I hate living with it.”

«Wanna go check on whatever monstrosity of a replacement bouquet Marco probably inflicted on Collette?»

“Fine, fine.”

**************

Cassie walks up the aisle in a custom-tailored gown, an edelweiss and valerian flower crown, and slightly muddy Timberland work boots. The sole on the boots is apparently tall enough that the skirt does, not, in fact, drag on the ground or get tangled in her feet.

«Somewhere out there,» Tobias comments, «Christian Dior is crying into an overpriced silk handkerchief and doesn’t even know why.»

Marco has never more deeply felt the utter unfairness of Tobias being able to use thought-speak while human, because they’re currently standing at the front of the aisle and he can’t even respond.

But Rachel should still count this one as a win. The gown looks stunning on Cassie, lacy and princess-ruffled while also having the kind of practical cut that allows her freedom of movement. And, Marco notes with a smirk, freedom to wear her morphing leotard underneath; the purple spandex is just visible peeking out from underneath the white silk neckline. He’s got morphing clothes under his own tux — never leaves home without ‘em — so really, he can’t judge.

Plus, Michelle’s got her dress and just her dress on by now, and her locs are still tucked into their silver-beaded updo. Really, the cow birth was just a momentary inconvenience.

“Hi,” Jake whispers, when Cassie reaches him.

She grabs his hand. Then she stuffs her bouquet into one of his jacket pockets, and grabs his other hand. “Hi,” she whispers back.

“This is pretty exciting, huh?”

“Yep.”

Ax clears his throat delicately, and they stop talking.

“There is an Earth tradition,” Ax says to the entire assembly, “that the captain of any ship may perform a wedding ceremony at will.”

In the front row of seats, Michelle laces her fingers through Walter’s.

“Although there is no legal precedent for this custom,” Ax continues, “it is nevertheless possible to become ordained as a wedding officiant if one just completes the proper applications.”

One of Jake’s great-aunts mutters something loudly about the lack of rabbi. Sarah leans over and kicks her in the ankle. Rachel beams her approval.

“Therefore, I am here to make official through human custom that which has already been forged through affection and respect.” Ax looks from Jake to Cassie and back. “The bond between warriors who have fought and faced death together can be neither lessened nor improved upon by mere ceremony. The honor shared between two such beings who have chosen to risk loving each other in spite of knowing the reality of loss is one that we recognize today. We can recognize it, but not sanctify it beyond the sanctity of what these two humans have already shared.”

Rachel lets out an audible sniffle. Marco does his best not to smirk at her. It’s not that sappy a speech.

“I have been assured that the bond between two humans who like each other far exceeds the bond between those who merely enjoy each other’s company,” Ax says.

And now Marco has to fight the urge to bang his head against the nearest support pole.

“I have witnessed this myself.” Ax stares around the room. “I have witnessed compromise and forgiveness, compassion and challenge between these two. I therefore believe it is correct and proper that this bond be formally recognized by the State of California. Is there anything you would wish to add?” he says to Jake and Cassie.

Cassie leans up on tip-toe. Jake bends to meet her.

She whispers her vows into his ear, not bothering to share with the rest of the gathering. After a moment, tears on his face, he leans in and whispers back.

Recognizing his cue, Marco grabs the rings and passes them over. They’re boring-looking, in his opinion, plain silicon bands without anything shiny. But they’re also easy to morph, easy to shovel manure while wearing, easy to wear without catching on anything. Very Cassie. Very Jake.

Speaking of which, the Timberlands prove to be a good call. When the time comes, Cassie stomps the shit out of that ceremonial glass.

**********

In a slight break with tradition, Rachel and Tobias are actually the first ones to go back down the aisle. Then Marco wheels Collette out, followed by Tom and Melissa, then Jake and Cassie go. That way, Rachel’s got time to sprint back over to the main tent and check on the banquet.

Most of the tables are arranged correctly, the centerpieces in place and the cards arrayed. Rachel does a mad sprint of the room, straightening decorations and confirming with the caterers that they got all the instructions about who needs what in their diet. Between the number of kosher eaters on Jake’s side and the number of vegetarians on Cassie’s, Rachel made the call to go all the way to a fully vegan buffet. That’s probably going to get some of the relatives complaining about kids these days and rabbit food, but there’s no pleasing everyone.

Rachel deftly switches a few of the placecards, thereby putting Jordan on point to deal with their great-aunt and grandmother who have both already overindulged at the open bar, muttering an apology as she does. She puts Tobias to work making sure the bows on the backs of chairs are straight, and rushes up to the long table at the front to confirm that the armless chair meant to accommodate Cassie’s bulky skirt is in the correct place.

D.J. is here, playlist at the ready. Dance floor is clear of grass. Weather’s holding, but tent covers are on standby.

Slightly sweaty, she rushes back out with a chair under each arm just in time to catch the guests coming across the lawn.

“Everyone except the parents, head off to the cocktail hour!” she calls. “Jake, Cassie, moms and dads, with me.”

While Marco’s date (a photographer named Dakota) sets up the camera, Rachel goes into a flurry of motion straightening bowties, adjusting hairdos, and touching up makeup. Steve’s got a spot of cow blood on his forehead, she discovers to her horror, and by the time she’s done scrubbing that off Jake’s managed to get his tuxedo jacket misaligned again. Finally she steps back, breathing hard, and nods to Dakota.

Everyone smiles. The camera goes off.

“Okay.” Rachel claps her hands loudly, because Jake and Cassie are looking ready to stand up and go join the reception. “That’s one down, just twenty-three to go.”

********

Rather than tossing her whole bouquet all at once, Cassie picks it apart and gives a single flower to every single guest she can find. When the bouquet itself runs out, she disassembles her flower crown and hands that out piece by piece until everyone’s got at least one blossom. It just seems fairer that way, she says when Rachel asks.

Several of the traditions, Rachel reflects, seem to be lost on Jake and Cassie. They cut the first piece of cake… and immediately hand it to Ax. And then they cut the second piece, and the third piece, and keep right on cutting slices of cake and handing them out to people until Rachel has to step in and wrest the knife away. She’s grateful that they refrain from any of the food-fighting nonsense, since both their wedding outfits are headed to a charity auction first thing tomorrow morning, but honestly. They’re supposed to eat the first two slices, not drop half a tier of cake into the black hole of hungry andalite.

Cake served, Marco clinks a fork against a glass. “Ladies, gentlemen, and proletariats!”

There’s a general murmur as people look around, trying to spot who’s speaking.

With a hand from Jake, Marco climbs bodily onto the banquet table. “Everyone!” he shouts, and now they’re all looking at him. At him, and at the champagne flute in his hand. “Jake and Cassie!”

It gets a polite round of applause.

“Gotta start at the beginning, right?” Marco looks around the room, grinning. “So there I am, some snot-nosed three-year-old, minding my own business. And this chubby, dorky-looking little white kid comes running up to me and is like…” He leans in. “‘You wanna be my best friend?’”

He grins at Jake, who is flushing bright red.

“I shit you not, that was his opening line. ‘You wanna be my best friend?’ So I’m like…” Marco pantomimes reeling back in shock. “I dunno man, seems like a lot of commitment to make to a total stranger. You want explore our options first, maybe get a prenup, see if we’re compatible? I mean, for all I know five years from now you’re gonna find some younger, hotter best friend and then there I’ll be out on my ear with nothing to show for it.”

There’s a smattering of laughter throughout the room. Marco visibly draws strength from it.

“But you know what?” Marco leans down to look around, smiling like he’s got a secret. “Little dork kept right on showing up to my house and letting me use his television and getting his mom to give me fluffer nutters, and next thing I know it turns out he really is my best friend. I think he was onto something.

“Anyway, you think that one was bad…” He raises his eyebrows. “Couple years later, there we are in first grade, and this girl in teeny-tiny first-grader overalls comes into the room like…”

Marco claps one hand over the top of his champagne flute and clamps the other under the base, and actually walks a few steps down the table with the determined air of a very small and klutzy version of Cassie.

“And her opening line is…” Marco raises the flute to his mouth like it’s a microphone, dropping his voice. “‘You wanna see my moth?’”

Again, there’s a smattering of laughter. Cassie has a hand over her mouth, halfway doubled over in giggles at the memory.

“Now, us being minuscule and all, I’m like ninety-nine percent sure that there was no double entendre going on here,” Marco says. “And I have to admit, no one has used that line on me since. So I say ‘sure,’ because I’m like six years old and this seems like a reasonable question. She lifts her hand up…”

Marco accompanies this with a pantomime of peering through his own fingers into his champagne.

He looks up. “And it’s not even a freaking moth!” he cries out. “Turns out, it’s just some little worm thing. So I tell her.” He puts on a snotty voice, mocking his younger self. “‘That’s not a moth, that’s just some little worm thing.’”

There’s a pause. Marco glances around the room. “See if you can tell where this story’s going.”

Marco and Cassie glance at each other. Cassie’s grinning smugly.

“She puts it in the classroom’s terrarium,” Marco drawls. “It turns into a rock. Two weeks later, rock cracks open and out pops a moth.”

The room cracks up again.

“So fast forward another few years, and she’s standing there holding this eight-eyed, venom-fanged thing. And she’s all like ‘just touch the spider, Marco. Don’t you want to be a spider, Marco? Isn’t it cute and fuzzy?’ As if she is completely unaware that she’s holding a giant-ass eight-legged freak.” Marco takes a sip for strength. “And right then, I look at Jake. And I’m thinking Jake, don’t ever let this girl go. Because if she doesn’t even think wolf spiders are ugly, then she’s got no idea about you. So here’s to Jake and Cassie. Made for each other, because no one else will have ‘em.”

Jake pokes Marco in the ankle, but he’s laughing as he does it.

“All right,” Marco says, “brace yourselves, and someone get some more tissues for my second mama, because I’m about to get sappy. I love you, Jean!” he calls. “I know we all gotta cry it out sometimes.”

She laughs and flaps a dismissive hand at him, but she’s also misty-eyed already.

“Dudes, I gotta be honest.” Marco is looking at Jake and Cassie. “I didn’t think we’d get here. I honestly did not believe, for a good long while there, that there were gonna be any weddings or graduations or driver’s licenses in any of our futures. Just seemed like a good idea not to bet on any of us having any futures, you know? Seemed like it might be the surest option.”

Cassie laces her fingers through Jake’s. Silently, her mouth pressed into a line, she nods.

“So, uh.” Marco sniffs, spinning back around and thrusting his champagne flute into the air. “Here’s to me being wrong, yeah?”

“To Marco being wrong!” Jake echoes, and tosses back his glass.

“To Marco being wrong!” the entire room calls back.

Marco jumps back down, Cassie and Jake catching him as he lands.

**********

After everyone but Menderash and Ax has finished eating, it’s Tom who becomes the next one to tink a fork against a glass for attention.

“In the spirit of full disclosure,” he tells the room, strolling slowly toward the head table. “I promised my brother there wouldn’t be a horah.” Tom stops, directly next to Cassie. “But what he didn’t know is that I’d already made a promise to my new sister-in-law that there would be. So what’s a guy to do?”

He snaps his fingers.

At this cue, several things happen at once. The DJ switches to “Hava Nagila.” Several people mob Jake at once. Tom grabs Cassie and lifts her bodily over his head, carrying her chair and all to the middle of the dance floor.

With a squeak of laughter, Cassie grabs the top of Tom’s head for balance. Jake is being hauled out next to her on a chair of his own, supported by Tobias and Menderash and Rachel and James. Marco and Ax are herding the rest of the gathering, shoving people into a circle and linking arms together as they go.

“I hate you!” Jake calls over the sound of the music and his own fit of giggles.

“Gotta keep the in-laws happy!” Tom yells back, unrepentant.

*********

“You sure you’ve got everything you need?” Rachel asks.

Cheyenne, the head caterer, gives her a double thumbs-up. The staff are tipped and most are ready to go, having divvied up the several extra schaeffers’ worth of falafel and butternut squash puree and other entrees that Rachel’d set aside for them. Melissa is set to take over tending bar from here, as planned, and she’s going to keep the groomsmen after for a few minutes for cleanup duty.

“Okay.” Rachel glances around at where the last of the countertops are getting a quick once-over with disinfectant. “Okay. If anything comes up…”

“I have your number.” Cheyenne smiles and nods.

Pushing back out of the room, Rachel heads for the gift table. Everything looks like it’s in good order, but she wants to make sure it all gets packed up properly and that none of the cards get lost in the kerfuffle. It’s mostly donation receipts, at Jake and Cassie’s request, but some of the traditionalists on both sides came with soup tureens or the like —

“Hey.” Jake catches her by the arm.

Rachel turns to look at him. “What’s wrong? Is it the great-aunts?”

“Nothing’s wrong. It’s all perfect.” He’s smiling shyly. “Thanks.”

“I need to check on the gifts,” Rachel says, because she’s a coward who doesn’t know how to do mushy conversations, especially not with Jake.

“The gifts are fine,” he says. “It’s all fine. Because you made it that way. So… thanks.”

When he pulls her into a hug, Rachel can’t resist straightening his hair one last time even as she returns the embrace. “You realize I do this for fun, right?” she asks, holding him at arm’s length and looking him in the eye. “Like, I could’ve hired a wedding planner, but honestly why bother?”

He shrugs. “Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate everything. All of it. Without you, Cassie and I wouldn’t even…”

Then, because this is all getting too honest, Rachel links her arm through his and drags him onto the dance floor for, he’s about to realize, their middle school gym class’s favorite godawful square dance.

*********

When she has do-si-doed Jake within an inch of his life, Rachel tosses him at Cassie. She pivots around and gives Tobias a flourishing courtesy; he returns it with an equally ridiculous bow.

“It is marvelous, how well they have adapted their balance to compensate for their lack of legs,” Menderash comments to Ax.

“Very true.” Ax leans next to him against the bar. They are currently sharing a delicious beverage Melissa has made for them, simply by unscrewing the lid from a nearly-empty jar of olives and handing over the remaining liquid.

It is true, some of the dancers are more talented than others. Michelle and Walter are synchronized with each other and the beat of the music, even if their choice of moves is not nearly as audacious as the spinning thing Marco and Dakota are doing. The bride and groom, meanwhile, are looking at their own feet and keep bumping into each other as they move. Between their relative unconcern with anyone but each other and the broad hem of Cassie’s dress, the other couples are giving them a wide berth.

“Do you wish to attempt such feats?” Ax asks, glancing at Menderash.

Menderash gives a full-body shudder. He flaps one hand in an andalite gesture that, if translated to English, would approximate fuck that.

Ax grins, drinking more olive juice.

“Have you done such a thing?” Menderash asks.

“Never for very long,” Ax says.

Jake and Cassie have given up on dancing entirely, descending into a giggle fit in the middle of the dance floor as they both attempt to disentangle Jake’s cuff link from the lace of Cassie’s hem. Rachel swirls by, briefly blocking their view. She’s switched partners. Dakota is doing their best to teach Tobias how to waltz while Marco and Rachel are now swing-dancing their way across the dance floor.

As both andalites watch in awe, Rachel spins Marco in a circle, swinging him out and then drawing him back close to her body. Marco pirouettes, throwing his head back so that his hair flares around his face, and then throws himself backwards. Rachel catches him neatly around the waist, dipping him nearly to the floor. Marco braces on her shoulders and she flings him upward with her whole body so that she actually lifts him off the floor for a second before gracefully sweeping him back down. They separate until just the tips of their fingers are touching, and then spin back together until Marco suddenly swoops under Rachel’s arm, coming up on the far side as she pivots around in time fro him to fall back against her.

Ax is reminded of the way they fight. There’s something almost joyful in their ferocity on the battlefield. There’s something almost frightening in their enthusiasm on the dancefloor. Neither of them seems to know how to do anything by half measure.

One by one the other clusters of dancers have stopped to watch as well. Jake and Cassie, now sitting hopelessly tangled up in each other, seem quite happy to have the spotlight stolen.

Rachel swoops an arm around Marco’s waist and slides into a back-and-forth tango step. Within two beats he’s caught on, falling into the same rhythm as her. When the tempo of the song changes he grabs her shoulder and nudges her into a circular waltz. They’re unrehearsed, and inexpert, but moving with such force and communicating so rapidly that it doesn’t really matter.

“Yes,” Menderash says softly, “I very much do not wish to attempt to dance.”

Ax smiles at him over the rim of the olive jar. It’s empty, and in the time it takes him to set it back on the bar and catch her eye, Melissa has replaced it with maraschino cherry liquid.

The song crescendos; Marco leans his full weight back as Rachel flings him into a long spiraling turn that ends with him sliding on his knees clear between her legs, popping up behind her just in time to brace as she tips backward into him. She spins once, twice, four times, then swings him into a dip so low that his hair brushes the floor.

As the song ends they freeze like that, chests heaving, hair damp with sweat.

They both seem to become aware at once that the whole room’s watching them. Marco opens his mouth to say something, when Rachel’s smile turns wicked. That’s the only warning he gets before she opens her arms and lets him drop. Marco squawks indignantly, throwing out both elbows to catch himself. He gets ahold of Rachel’s arm and tries to yank her down as well, but ends up pulling himself to his feet as well.

The whole room breaks out into clapping. Marco sweeps into a low bow. Rachel visibly considers pushing him over again before deciding against it. Instead she runs to try and rescue Cassie’s hand-sewn lace hem and Jake’s antique silver cufflinks from their respective owners’ incompetence.

*********

“Hey Tobias?” Rachel says around a yawn.

«Uh-huh?»

Idly they watch as Tom waltzes Cassie’s grandmother around the dance floor. She’s 4’11” to his 6’4”, so it’s pretty hilarious to witness. But at least they’re not totally mismatched: each has a single sprig of valerian from Cassie’s bouquet tucked behind one ear.

She and Tobias are sitting on the ground at one corner of the dance floor. Rachel’s got her shoes off to massage her aching ankles, and Tobias is perched back on her shoulder. With clever motions of his beak he’s fishing the pins out of her hair one by one, dropping them into her hand as he slowly disassembles her updo.

“How do you feel about never, ever getting married?” Rachel asks.

Tobias drops another bobby pin into her hand. «Best idea you’ve had all year.»

#animorphs #animorphs ficlet #animorphs au #(sadly)#long post #weddings #jake/cassie #cake #alcohol mention #rachel berenson #is the canonically biggest cassie/jake shipper on the planet #do it for her #anonymous #asks

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