taxonomites | [01] Arrival

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[01] Arrival | Holo

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.

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«Yes, I can hear you.» That's not entirely true; Aximili's Andalite ears have disappeared by now, but he's accustomed enough to the cockroach's strange senses that he can decipher human speech anyway. «I assume you can hear me, which means that this communication device is capable of transmitting thought-speech.» He pauses. This is a strange new fact. It cements his certainty that this is not the work of the Yeerks, but does nothing for his fear that the Ellimist - or worse, Crayak - may have abducted him here.

«Is Taxon a city on Earth? I do not recognize the name.» He doesn't bother explaining who or what he is, because of course by now everyone on Earth knows about Andalites and their role in averting the Yeerk invasion. And all the while, he's shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

Since she didn't understand Aximili's biology, it had been a reasonable question to ask, but the affirmative answer made everything a lot easier. At some point, she'd have to ask exactly what thought speech was. Telepathy? That made sense. If he had the ability to change forms, he couldn't afford to rely on vocal chords that might not be present from one shape to the next.

"No, we're not on Earth. No one knows where we are. I'm Martha. Martha Jones. I'm being held prisoner here too."

Aximili is finally completely cockroach. The room seems vast and strange to his senses. He scuttles toward a wall and crawls along it, searching for miniscule cracks that will allow him to escape. Not on Earth. The people here may have been entirely sheltered from the war on Earth, if they have been sequestered far enough away. Yet Martha does not seem surprised that he is not of her species. Perhaps there are other non-humans here as well.

«I am Prince Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, official Andalite liaison to Earth. I would assume you have heard of me, but since you have not been on Earth... I fought in the resistance that defeated the Yeerk invasion of Earth. I am sorry to tell you that there was great loss of human life. I hope that by the time you return, the situation will be much better.»

He pauses in his search along the wall. He's just noticed the infinitesimally tiny bracelet clenched around his many-jointed insect leg, a perfect miniature of the one he was wearing before he began the morph. «The bracelet appears to have stayed with me through the morph. Do you have one as well? I have been unable to see you on the screen due to my currently limited senses.»

Although she'd been watching him transform, the fact that she was suddenly having a conversation with a cockroach was a bit strange. Once, it would have seemed impossible to Martha.

She wondered, distantly, if she should bow or curtsy or something.

"I was on Earth a few weeks ago," she said, frowning slightly. There was a chance that he was from some sort of parallel universe, but there was also a chance that he was from a point in her future. Her family - and Mickey, who hadn't even had a chance to join her family - were still there!

"I do," she said, "We all do. There's no trace of the surgery that was used to attach it, but there's no way to get it off."

«The amount of time that has passed in your personal timestream may not be relevant,» Aximili points out. «If this is the Ellimist's work, and I suspect it may be, then we may have been transported in time as well as space.»

He searches throughout the edges of the room, but finds no means of escape - not even a crack a few millimeters wide, which is all his cockroach morph needs. «The technology required to create a device that stays in place throughout a morph is beyond any I know. I have a few more ideas about how to remove it, but I suspect that now may not be the best time. Is there another means of escape from this cell, or are you imprisoned as well?»

His theories aren't particularly pleasant. One of them involves morphing back to cockroach and having someone sever the limb bearing the bracelet. Still, he will follow through with the plan, since he strongly suspects that the bracelet is a tracking device. One thing Aximili knows for sure: he will escape. No one, not even the Ellimist, can trap an Animorph for long.

"I don't like the sound of this Ellimist," she said, though she didn't necessarily believe that ... he? she? it? ... was responsible. They all had their own theories. They all had enemies that they blamed automatically. She'd searched for Sontaran technology and traces of the races that UNIT had been fighting. So far, the prisoners had all drawn a blank. "You'll have to tell me more about them."

"You need to pick up your tablet - that's the device I'm using to talk to you - to unlock the door. We've got the run of the city, but we can't get out."

«I don't like the sound of the Ellimist either,» says Aximili, with about as much humor in his voice as he's able to muster at any one time.

Upon hearing Martha's instructions, Aximili demorphs. Nothing happens in the same order as when he first morphed; the changes are just as erratic as before, though they are equally swift, and the change is done within the span of a minute. «This "tablet" is not human technology,» he remarks as he picks it up in one delicate, many-fingered hand. «I do not recognize the design.» Gratefully, he walks out into the sunlight, his tail cocked and ready in case of trouble, his stalk eyes scanning in every direction. «The architecture here is an amalgamation of many styles,» he notes. «It reminds me of a Skrit Na collection. Skrit Na enjoy gathering artifacts and live specimens from different worlds and putting them on display.»

"Definitely not," confirmed Martha. At the moment, that was the only thing in Taxon that she could be certain of. The human race had made a lot of progress - they'd taken so many steps forward, both before and during her lifetime, that it was impossible to keep count of them - but this sort of technology was still beyond them.

(She hoped that the behaviour was beyond them as well.)

"That's just what it's like," she exclaimed, unable to hide her excitement. At last, someone knew who might have been responsible for this. "We've been trapped and tagged and organised like exhibits in a zoo."

«The technology required to abduct us and tag us with these tracking devices - » Aximili gestures at his bracelet. «is beyond the capability of the Skrit Na. If this is indeed a Skrit Na collection, they would need outside help. I have yet to discount the Ellimist's influence. The Ellimist is a being of extraordinary power, able to manipulate the space-time continuum at will, and he - or it, or they - has spoken of keeping humans in a sort of zoo before. That time, he said it was to prevent humans from extinction.» He waves his stalk eyes back and forth in a "who knows" gesture, not that Martha can read Andalite body language. «I wonder...»

She couldn't hide her disappointment, either. They were going to end up clutching at straws again, she could tell. Everything they knew - or thought that they knew - was based on guesswork.

"They've taken other species, not just humans. And we're all from different universes."

If you wanted to prevent the extinction of a species, you didn't want to mix genetic lines like that. She couldn't begin to guess at the differences that had evolved over time and across space.

«Alternate timelines? I have experienced them before.» None of them were pleasant. There was the world the Ellimist showed them in which the Yeerks succeeded in conquering the Earth, and all the Animorphs were infested or killed. Then there was the alternate timeline of the Earth that occurred due to Visser Four's meddling in history. «I still cannot discount the Ellimist's influence. The Ellimist is a being of such extraordinary power that beings like you and I are nothing more than pieces in his cosmic game. And I have no doubt that this is a game for powers greater than our own.»

"Oh, it's definitely a game," said Martha, who couldn't conceal the anger and frustration in her tone. It was one of the most inhuman and ridiculous games she'd ever heard of. A scientific experiment without a point. "But we're still trying to work out the rules."

Or, indeed, if there were any rules.

«We will only learn them at such time as our masters decree it so,» says Aximili, not without bitterness. «My people believe in free will, but higher beings such as these seem to have little respect for it.»

Recalling what the other human female had told him over the tablet, Aximili heads south toward the forest. «I will find a place to make a home here. But I swear upon my honor that it will only be a temporary one.»

She almost believed him. A few years ago - before she'd met the Master as well as the Doctor - she probably would have believed him.

"Do you need any help?"

(She didn't intend to insult him - he seemed perfectly capable and a little proud - but, at the same time, she had to ask.)

«I will.» Before he met the Animorphs, Aximili believed that being a hero meant that he could defeat the foe all on his own. Now he knows that the independent hero is a myth. Heroes only ever come in the plural. «It is not my place to lead humans, but it is only with the concerted efforts of the people here that we will find a way.»

"I meant finding somewhere to stay," said Martha, with a slight smile. "But I'll help with the rest as well. I'll do whatever I can."

He returns the smile with an Andalite smile, which doesn't involve a mouth, just an upward crinkling of the eyes. «Anywhere there is a forest or meadow or field, I can make my home.»

It might be very different to a human smile, but the meaning of the gesture is clear and Martha returned it in kind.

"There are two forests here," she said, helpfully, "One in Osten and one in Wilde."

«Osten? Wilde? Are these place-names? It would be simpler if you gave me the cardinal direction. I have a instinctual sense of which way is north.» He takes this for granted, of course, but he's seen for himself how eternally lost humans seem to be.

"Yeah, sorry. Wilde is the district in the west. Osten is in the south." Then, as an afterthought, she added: "You can find them both on the tablet map."

Aximili had been so preoccupied that he hadn't noticed this function of the communication device. How careless of him. Within moments he finds the map and eyes it closely. There's a dot on the southern edge that draws his eye.

«My scoop!» he exclaims, with surprise, joy, and fear. Not only had he been transported, but also his home on Earth. The idea of his stay here becoming so permanent makes him uncomfortable, however much of a relief it might be to have familiar surroundings. «My scoop - my home - is in the southern forest. I will stay there.»

"Your scoop? Is that your ship?"

Maybe he would be able to help with the escape. They needed all the technology they could get.

Aximili shakes his head, a gesture he learned from humans. «A scoop is an Andalite's home, like one of your houses. Andalites prefer to live in the open, so we would not live in an enclosed space as humans do. It is a welcome discovery. I have a mixture of human and Andalite technology I used to intercept enemy transmissions and break into encrypted databases. It may be of use here.»

The gesture was so familiar and so human that it was actually a little strange. But at least it wasn't a cockroach that was doing it. That would have been a bit too weird, even for Martha.

"You might be here for a while," she said, as much as she hated that particular fact. "It'll be good for you to feel at home. Maybe you'll be able to get into whatever encrypts the bracelets."

«I will try,» Aximili says gamely, though he has his doubts about hacking into a technology so advanced that the bracelet stays on even in morph.

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allthatlife.livejournal.com - 2010-07-14 19:29 (UTC) - Expand

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[01] Arrival | Holo

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