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]

"Have you decided," Bella inquires delicately, "what to break first?"

[palmofyourhand]

"Mm, not quite."

[instar]

"Okay. Can you break things with your bare hands or should I go scrounging for instruments of blunt trauma?"

[palmofyourhand]

Ethan giggles. "Oh, scrounge for instruments, by all means, I can't imagine that making it any less fun."

[aeskhyne]

Trouble laughs and keeps drinking his iced tea, slowly.

[instar]

"I think we have a hammer."

[aeskhyne]

"Ooh," says Trouble. "Yeah, bring the hammer."

[instar]

Bella goes looking for the hammer. It takes her three minutes to find; the garage is kind of a mess.

[aeskhyne]

When she comes back, Trouble has finished his iced tea and is kissing Ethan again.

[instar]

Bella coughs politely.

[aeskhyne]

He disengages. "Hi, Bella!"

[palmofyourhand]

"I'll take that, thanks," says Ethan, reaching for the hammer.

[instar]

She hands it over, and sits down, and flips her notebook open again.

[palmofyourhand]

Ethan eyes Trouble some more.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble grins back at him.

[palmofyourhand]

Ethan runs a hand thoughtfully down Trouble's left arm, most recently broken of his limbs.

Then, smirking, he takes the hammer to it.

[aeskhyne]

Trouble is exquisitely cooperative.

[palmofyourhand]

It makes some lovely sounds. Well, lovely to Ethan.

He glances at Bella and asks, "How much damage should I do before he morphs again?"

[instar]

"Morphing's tiring and we don't want him stuck - see if this makes it any harder, I think, then work up from there?"

[aeskhyne]

"It's sure as hell distracting," says Trouble, beginning to morph. "Not that much harder, though..."

[instar]

Bella watches his arm as he changes. "Note when during the morph it stops hurting, and if there are intermediate stages."

[aeskhyne]

"Still hurts," he observes, although in fact the morph has yet to touch his damaged arm; it's going for the hair first, and Robin's brilliant green eyes. Then he shrinks, all of the barely-an-inch height difference, and his face begins to shift...

[hold_infinity]

...and paleness spreads patchily over his skin, and the broken arm fixes itself all at once— "Stopped hurting now," he reports wryly— and his chest grows and his waist shrinks and certain other details rearrange themselves.

Trouble - to all appearances Robin - shrugs.

[instar]

Bella writes this down, checks her timer, writes that down. "Takes longer than me morphing Andi. Seems relatively proportional to how big the changes you're making are."

[hold_infinity]

<And I can thought-speak now,> he (or she) says cheerfully.