the animorphs

[instar]

Renée is gone in the morning, a pot of maple oatmeal for the girls and Trouble cooling on the stove and a note on the fridge, she's going to be gone all day on a day trip to Tucson with her friends.

Andi wakes up first. Bella's not far behind.

Comments

[instar]

"Does this not actually matter to you? I can be, you know, experimentally detached if you don't care and neither of you are going to be juvenile about it."

[aeskhyne]

"I'm perpetually juvenile," says Trouble. "And I'm gonna be perpetually something else if Ethan's gonna be mauling me for hours. It doesn't bother me, but it'd bother me to bother you, you know?"

[palmofyourhand]

"I don't give a damn at all," Ethan contributes.

[instar]

"I'd rather skip the juvenile part, so until we're checking something less objective, I guess you go behind a box, and I suppose at some point when you are sufficiently 'something else' I leave you two alone and hope you have the presence of mind to write anything down."

[aeskhyne]

"Okay."

Trouble goes behind a box.

[palmofyourhand]

Ethan follows him.

One or both of them proceeds to take Trouble's pants off.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble morphs. It takes a few minutes.

[palmofyourhand]

"Which part, I wonder..." murmurs Ethan.

If Trouble makes a suggestion, Ethan is the only one who hears it. He laughs. A few moments later, he comes back around the boxes, holding a knife and a severed stalk eye, both objects dripping blue-black fluid.

"What are we going to do with this, do you suppose?"

[instar]

"If it doesn't disappear when he demorphs? We have a little campfire and when Renée gets home 'we decided to roast marshmallows'."

[palmofyourhand]

"Tasty," snorts Ethan. "Well, he's demorphing, and it doesn't seem inclined to disappear."

[instar]

"It does not." Bella gets a box, lines the bottom with bubble wrap to contain the spread of ichor, and offers it.

[palmofyourhand]

Ethan puts the severed eye into the box.

"Should've brought a towel," he remarks, looking at his blood-smeared hands. "Several towels."

[instar]

"I'll get you a roll of paper ones."

Bella goes up, and comes down with a roll of paper towels.

[palmofyourhand]

Ethan wipes his hands and the knife. Then he makes the knife disappear.

[aeskhyne]

"I'm all demorphed," says Trouble, from behind his box. "No missing pieces. Should I try morphing back to see what happens?"

[instar]

"Yes, please." (Write, write.)

[aeskhyne]

Quiet morphing noises ensue.

[palmofyourhand]

"Recording the results?" inquires Ethan.

[instar]

"What else?"

[palmofyourhand]

He shrugs. "Further insights, unrelated thoughts, your favourite apple pie recipe? It's not as though I can read it."

[instar]

"I am taking notes on the experiment and what it might mean about future experiments and the uses of non-experimental type morphing in extremis."

[palmofyourhand]

"Aha."

[instar]

"The fact that the stalk eye is persisting, in particular, is interesting - that and the fact that Visser Three was able to eat Elfangor and then turn into a creature the same size as Elfangor without apparent discomfort suggests that it's possible to cheat at food, basically. Morph fleas or something, bite each other, persist indefinitely. I'd rather never have to, but it's good to know."

[aeskhyne]

<Got my eye back,> says Trouble, poking his indeed pristine Elfangor-shaped head up over the boxes. <Should we cut something else off before I turn back? Maybe better not, the fewer Andalite parts we have to dispose of the better, right?>

[instar]

"Yeah, I don't even know how well it'll burn. And we're going to have to get all the blood off the floor, too, but -" She dabs a paper towel on the end of the eye. "It should come up okay."