Panic! At The (Pool) Party
If she hadnât been stuck with a proboscis, Rachel would have ground her teeth. Granted fly-hearing wasnât the best, but she had enough practice with this morph to get the gist of what was going on, and that was enough to make her little fly wings buzz with impatience. She wished sheâd morphed something with stingers or pincers instead so she could bite Marco. <Get a move on,> she grumbled in private thought-speak, knowing that Marco wasnât about to listen when he was clearly having such a good time shooting the breeze with Tidwell. If she hadnât been stuck as a fly waiting to go back down to the last place on earth she ever wanted to go, Rachel might have been amused herselfâbut under the circumstances, she just wanted to get this over with.
After what felt like a million years Marco made his exit. <Finally,> Rachel grumbled, not-exactly-silently. She figured â hoped â the others would just think she was suffering from her usual case of pre-battle impatience, and not from nerves or anxiety over what they were about to do, and where they were about to go. She didnât want them to think she was afraid, even though this mission gave her the willies as none before ever had.
As usual, they were starting in the toilets. Ah, the glamorous life of an Andalite Bandit, she thought wryly, and buzzed out of the concealing sleeve toward what she hoped was a stall none of the others were heading for. It wasnât for modestyâs sake â they had all seen each other morph in way weirder situations after all â but just because toilet stalls were cramped enough already, and two human-sized flies were really too much for one stall to handle.
<Thanks for the advice,> she drawled to Marco as she settled on the rim of the toilet bowl. It loomed around her like a polished lunar landscape, stretching out as far as her fractured eyes could see, but it abruptly started to shrink as she demorphed. As usual, it was totally gross. There was no way to deal with the fly-morph without it being disgusting, even for Cassie, and Rachel did not have her best friendâs flair for changing species. Her wings sucked in first, plastering down her back as her long blonde hair shot out of her scalp â a dog-sized flightless fly with a wig. Awesome. She grew hands and feet before her legs changed back to human, and her organs made an especially gross schlumphing sound as the re-grew within her exoskeleton. The compound eyes lingered until almost the end, fading back to her usual blue orbs just in time to give her a great view of the human-sized proboscis sucking back into her lips.
"Gross," she muttered as the hard shell melted back into soft flesh.
Rachel took a quick look to make sure she was fully back to human, then stuck her head out into the restroom-proper. It wasnât like the door of the stall was shut, after all; flies didnât exactly have opposable thumbs, nor the arm-strength to pull the door shut even if they could grasp it. She looked around, blinking as she got used to regular vision again, and spotted Marco. âTell me you remembered our clothes?â she asked without preamble, one eyebrow arched. âAll the frolis-whatchacallit in the world isnât going to be much help if we have to walk out there in our bike-shorts and leotards. Might attract a bit of attentionâŚâ
Aximili said nothing as he flew into his own stall and focused on his own body. Normally, there was something relaxing about returning to his native form, like a stress being lifted, and it was not just the worry of staying too long, of becomingâŚ
The humans did not seem to have so much of a problem. They put forms on and took them off almost as easily as they changed their artificial skin coverings, and never seemed to worry that it might have an effect on them. Aximili was a soldier, and he knew a real risk from his own ingrained reluctance, so he never showed any reluctance to obey an order to morph, but he always preferred being himself to wearing borrowed skin.
Well, usually. As his exoskeleton softened, as his legs thickened, as his fur appeared in a carpet of blue like the fast-growing moss-like grass of the Khathul mountains, he had to fight the urge to stay a fly. To delay. And it wasnât the way the space around him became more and more cramped that bothered him. It was what was coming next.Â
Down into the Yeerk Pool. Down there with his shorm's life in his hands, living a nightmare.Â
Aximili was no coward. He knew a fight, a war. He just wished it had not come to this. Although it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse.Â
Fully Andalite, Aximili reluctantly concentrated on his new frolis form. Young, female, short with dark hair and skin darker than Prince Jakeâs. He finished the maneuvre and stepped out of the stall, belatedly realising that he had forgotten to acquire the skintight artificial skins that the humans insisted on while morphing. It would not matter; he would be wearing proper artificial skins soon enough.
"Arrrr we ready? Dee-dee-dee?" he asked.
Tobias choose his own stall to morph in, managing to land on the floor with hopefully enough space to demorph easily. <Have I mentioned that I really hate flies?> Tobias grumbled as he started demorphing, the fractured eyes going first. As he continued to focus on his true form, the red tailed hawk, the fly wings shriveled against his back, and the legs sucked back into his body, leaving his as a fly meat loaf.
As the exoskeleton softened and the familiar itch of his feathers returning combined with the familiar feeling of the ground getting father and farther away as he grew and thickened into his hawk body, Tobias let out an internal sigh. He really really hates fly morph.
<See Rachel, you say that, but if you did that, it;d just be the newest fashion trend for the school.> Tobias joked, trying to keep the tone light before sending a private message just to Rachel. <We're gonna be fine.We've totally done stupider stuff than this before, walk in the park right?> Tobias said, trying to reassure Rachel just as much as himself.
<Marco do you have baggies for us slug folks?> Tobias asked. <I already have these scabby legs, no way am I letting myself dry out as a yeerk too. There's not enough lotion in the world to remoisturize that.> Tobias joked. <And I think the fact that I just made a joke about dry skin means we need to start watching different commercials Ax-Man.>
Tobias fluttered out of the stall, coming to land on Rachels shoulder. <Just tell me when I need to morph again.>
