[01] Arrival | Holo

[tailblade.livejournal.com]

Rachel's memorial service has come and gone. Tobias has disappeared into the woods with her ashes. Jake is depressed and speaks to no one, not even his best friend Marco. Aximili's only remaining ties to Earth are Marco, Cassie, and his fondness for his adoptive home. It is not enough to keep him. He hasn't seen his parents or his homeworld in three and a half Earth years. The war is over, and he will return a hero. It's time to go home.

He's made his farewells to Marco, Cassie, and Jake. He even saw Tobias overhead on his way to the ludicrously makeshift spaceport. He boards the Dome ship that will take him home, and -

Confinement. A small room. Not the Dome ship at all.

<Commander Galuit?> Aximili reaches out with his thought-speak. <Captain-Prince Asculan?> Then, after a pause: <Jake? Marco? Cassie? Tobias?>

Those watching on the tablet will see something they've never seen before. Aximili is visibly alien: he stands on four dainty hooved legs, like a deer, except with blue fur. Instead of the delicate neck and head of a deer, however, he has a narrow, blue-furred torso, frail many-fingered arms, and a flat face. He has two pointed, swiveling ears, three slits instead of a nose, two large green eyes, and no mouth. Which explains the telepathy. But that's not all. On top of his head, he has two eyes mounted on stalks, which are now pivoting in all directions, taking in the room where he's found himself. Then, of course, there's the tail.

Take one look at that tail, and you know it's a weapon. It's long and coiled with muscle, ending in a blade the size of a steak knife.

Aximili is thinking fast. It appears that he is now isolated from the Andalite fleet and his human friends. Much as he hates to admit it, teleportation is beyond the reach of Andalite technology. In fact, it's beyond the reach of any species he knows, except -

<The Ellimist? Is this another one of your games?> No response. Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't the Ellimist. He has the infuriating tendency not to appear when directly summoned. In that case, he has no choice but to play along. Aximili first directs his attention to what appears to be a teleportation device over his head. He points his stalk eyes up at it, while his main eyes keep scanning the room. To his annoyance, he cannot even begin to guess at the mechanism behind it. His best guess is that it makes use of Zero-space, but how could it overcome Z-space's inherent temporal anomalies for instantaneous transportation? This avenue of escape is a dead-end.

Aximili steps toward the pedestal with the tablet, his hooves clacking against the metal floor. He inspects it with his main eyes, keeping the stalk eyes scanning. Then, when he reaches for the tablet, he notices the bracelet on his slender wrist, made out of an alloy he doesn't recognize. He reaches for the bracelet with his other hand and pulls. No effect. It appears to have been embedded in his flesh. To Aximili it seems like a vile Yeerk invention, but if he really were captured by the Yeerks, surely he'd have been infested by now. Besides, they didn't have anywhere near this level of technology, let alone enough remaining military strength. In any case, Aximili has a strategy for getting rid of this bracelet and for getting out of this room.

<Surely you do not believe that you can keep your crude tracking device on me for long,> he announces to whoever has abducted him, though it's mostly bravado, since he still suspects that he's in the Ellimist's power, and there is nothing he can say to intimidate the Ellimist. <Disable it now and show yourself, or I will simply rid myself of it.>

No response. Anyone watching now is about to watch a truly weird spectacle, because now Aximili is focusing on an image of something small, brown, and disgusting: a cockroach.

Tough, chitinous armor crawls its way up Aximili's legs as he begins to morph.

001 - [video] / arrival post

[doesntgobang.livejournal.com]

“Okay, I don't know what kind of a sick joke this is, but I can promise you right now that I ain't laughing.”

Thirty seconds ago, Gunn hadn't been in this – weird-ass, mechanical place. He had very much been stepping into the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel, sack of cheeseburgers in hand. The food was, of course, gone ('Fourteen dollars down the drain, dammit,' he thought briefly) and his stomach was oddly twisted, clenched and upset. He didn't like it.

He turned immediately in a full circle, hands curling into tight fists at his sides, looking for something to lunge at. “I swear, if this is some pasty-ass demon's idea of a joke...”

Dammit.

Fred was hungry. He just wanted to bring her the godforsaken cheeseburgers.

He was met with a stunning sort of silence as he turned that served to put him on edge more than at ease, and he lifted his fists to about chest-height, stepping to the side.

“Come on out, whoever – or whatever – you are--” he started, before his hip smacked against the pedestal that the tablet was sitting on, and Gunn nearly yelled out loud out of surprise, and then frustration. He dropped his fists and snatched the tablet up, hastily flipping it open and looking for a way to communicate with the device. “You better be some sort of fancy cellphone, and I better get some sort of reception in here,” he grumbled, tapping on the screen a little harshly and looking for some sort of number pad to dial out with. "Hello? Can anyone hear this thing?"

He was about ready to give up and throw the little device when his eyes cut up and he realized that a door had opened. 'Okay. Liking this place less and less as time goes on,' he thought, and instead of throwing the tablet, squeezed it a little too-tightly in his hands as he started out in the hallway. There was going to be hell to pay if his food was cold by the time he got home.