I recently had a thought I can’t get out of my head, and I love your au fics more than I love breathing, so here’s this: what would happen if Ax (or any other Animorph) had managed to acquire Alloran during the events of book 8?
Interesting thought. It’d take a little wrangling, and I think it’d have to be Ax — any of the others would have to demorph to human — but it would be doable. The question then becomes: what do they do with his DNA once they’ve got it?
Plan A: Be Emperor for a Day The most obvious solution: pretend to be Visser Three long enough to infiltrate a yeerk base. This would probably work exactly once before the real Visser Three caught on to what was happening and implemented a password system or a Gleet Biofilter scan that could tell the difference between an andalite and an andalite-controller. But once might be enough. On one mission, Ax-as-Alloran could do a mass download of every one of the yeerks’ computer files on the invasion. He could bring the rest of the Animorphs with him and drop them off where they could wreak the most havoc, in a sensitive base or near another ground-based kandrona generator. He could steal a Blade ship through just ordering a bunch of controllers to pilot it, and then bring the Blade ship to a crowded human area before turning off its cloaking technology and announcing the invasion.
Plan B: Become a Chaos Demon Instead, pretend to be Visser Three several times, in small subtle ways. This idea would require more finesse, and a lot more intel, but Ax could infiltrate yeerk communications this way. He could give vague or contradictory orders, always in such a way as to have plausible deniability. They’d have to rely on the real Visser Three to just yell «I NEVER SAID THAT!» and then behead whoever followed Ax’s orders to keep the ruse going, but it might work for a while. The whole idea would be for Ax to pop in to a vissers’ Webex meeting long enough to go «That’s a stupid idea, cancel that!» in response to whatever was said last, and assume that everyone would either A) actually cancel the plan or B) not know how Visser Three feels about the plan long enough to make it hard to do anything. I’m not sure how Ax would get the vissers’ Webex password, but he could be massively powerful if he did figure out how to get in.
Plan C: Fuck with the Biometrics This plan might not work until later on in the series, when Tom’s yeerk apparently gets budget-happy with invasion security. But assuming that at least some of the tech we see in #52 - #54 (life form scanners, DNA readers, rotating passwords with select overrides) is already in use, then Alloran’s DNA could be useful from a whole different perspective. Presumably, all of the yeerk tech that relies on biometrics relies on hosts’ biometrics — it’s stolen from andalites, and it’d be damn inconvenient to have to pop out of one’s host long enough to do a cheek swab. Ergo, Alloran’s biometrics could be the hypothetical keys to the kingdom. All six kids could sneak into various yeerk-owned spaces, and then Ax could morph Alloran long enough to use his fingerprints/DNA/retina to perform all kinds of fuckery. He could reprogram all of the hunter ‘bots on the planet to refuse to attack morphers. He could set all of the dracon beams in storage to fire on each other and destroy a few weapons’ depots. He could make the Gleet Biofilters refuse to let yeerks into the yeerk pool. He could leave viruses throughout the communication system that only get triggered by certain conditions. Etcetera.
Plan D: Get Visser Three Fired This one would be a little more feasible to pull off than some of the others; it’d just involve figuring out how to put in a call to the Council of Thirteen. Sure, Ax would still have to do a lot of hacking, and he’d probably need Erek’s and/or Peter’s help along the way, but if he could pull it off, then it could be over with in 30 seconds flat. This plan would also require a lot less acting than Plan A or B, because Ax would just have to act bizarre or bad-mouth the Yeerk Empire in some way. The real Visser Three could claim it was an imposter all he wanted, but the Council doesn’t forgive that kind of nonsense, especially not when we know that he’s already on thin ice after the events of #7. Without Visser Three, leadership of the Earth invasion would probably default to Visser One, so long-term this one would probably be worse for the Animorphs. But they wouldn’t know that going into this plan.
Plan E: Jujutsu In other words: the Animorphs don’t do a damn thing with Alloran’s DNA... outside of letting the yeerks know that they’ve got Alloran’s DNA. This might be the plan most in line with the Animorphs’ usual tactics. A lot of their biggest successes come about from wasting the Yeerk Empire’s resources, be that water (#3), kandrona (#7), land (#9), host bodies (#23), time (#35), or good ol’ fashioned money (MM1, #12, #17, #28, #53). If the Animorphs can simply make it known that they have Alloran’s DNA and they’re not afraid to use it, then the Yeerk Empire will be forced to make a response. Probably an expensive one. Probably even one that costs them more than the Animorphs attacking directly ever would. The yeerks might end up having to implement a whole new security system (Plan A), might decide to fire Visser Three just to be sure (Plan D), might have to reprogram their tech (Plan C). They might even straight-up murder Alloran to make any imposter easy to spot. If they did that, then they’ve lost their biggest single-controller weapon against the Animorphs, and they’ve also lost their figurehead.
Most of these have a high probability of the real Alloran dying along the way. I think Ax would be uncomfortable with that, but not necessarily uncomfortable enough to call a halt to the whole thing. A lot of these have a high probability of Ax dying along the way, which I think Tobias would be NOT AT ALL okay with, but if Tobias was outvoted then the kids might try it anyway. I also think there’s still a big risk of Visser One ending up in charge, which is a fucking terrifying possibility, but the kids don’t know enough about her to know that as of #8. So, could work out, could crash and burn. All depends on how quickly and well the yeerks manage to respond.
