Post by Admin on Sept 23, 2009 20:31:30 GMT -5
Fin:
Fin winged into the Lodge, flying through a window instead of demorphing and taking a door. <<Yo, Matty! Are you here? Big news. We get to do fun things like risk getting ourselves killed.>>
Fin flapped around the Lodge, the dead air inside not bothering him as much as it would have bothered a raptor. Finally he found Matthias in the kitchen and landed on the counter.
<<Matthias I have news to report.>> He cleared his throat dramatically. <<I think I've found a new ship, a sea going one. It flies the same route everyday so I've been able to track it as far as the ocean, then it dives in and is gone. I tried following it as an otter but it goes much too fast. I'm thinking we need Free Willy. If we leave now we can beat it to the water.>>
Matthias:
Man, a guy never gets to eat around here. Slightly irked at the use of the nickname - Matthias HATED being called Matt or Matty, it made people think his name was Matthew, and he liked his name - Matthias bit down on a half-eaten sandwich and turned around when Fin showed up. Talking around it, he headed for the door, "No time to get anyone else. Fine, just us then, let's go." Matthias honestly couldn't remember if anyone had a better sea morph than his killer whale, but this wasn't time to worry about that.
Managing to finish the sandwich as he started to morph, Matthias was fully gyrfalcon two minutes after Fin had flown in the door. <<They've got to be transporting something if it's moving daily...but you've never seen it fly BACK from the lake?>> A series of one-way trips didn't seem efficient, Matthias thought as he took wing. It was quite the flight to the ocean and the gyrfalcon wasn't going to be happy with him, but that was just the way it was.
Fin:
Fin winged his way into the sky after the gyrfalcon. <<The ship never comes back. In fact I don't even know if it is one ship or a lot of copies of the same ship. One of my theories was that they're building these things somewhere and then sending the finished product out to get tested. But if they are finishing a ship a day that's a scary production rate. So personally I hope that I'm just unobservant and have missed it going back or something.>>
As always the cool Vancouver air cut through his fur and chilled the thin skin of his wings. Fin loved his bat morph and it had gotten him out of a lot of bad scrapes but he was starting to think that maybe another air morph, one that could handle the weather a bit better was in order. Maybe when they got back he would ask for one, right now they had to get to the water before the ship did or they would miss their shot to follow it.
Fin:
<<Well, that's weird.>> Matthias replied slowly. The air was cool, which didn't mean for a good time for his gyrfalcon. One of the biggest birds around - disregarding the obscene size of the albatross and relations - it wasn't easy to stay airborne in chilly weather, but that was just the way things went.
Fin's comment made him wonder, however. How could they be sending a ship every day to something in the ocean and never having it return? If it came back some other way, then why did it go to the ocean the way it did. The Yeerks were nothing if not efficient, and THAT wasn't efficient. There had to be some explanation for it. What if it was coming back, but Fin just had never seen it? Was it invisible? Moving really, really fast? Well then why didn't it do that on the way there? This just didn't add up at all.
It did not elude Matthias' thought process that it could just be a Yeerk trap, some suspicious activity to get Animorph attention. Still, they could hardly not investigate it, and for the moment they were at least minimizing rest. Everyone at the lodge knew to get out of Dodge if they didn't come back in three days.
Fin:
<<Ah, here we are Birdman. Hot girls in bathing suits, or you know, hot boys, whatever. Sunny weather, everyone enjoying themselves. Oh wait, that was before the yeerks got here. Nevermind, welcome to hell instead.>> The beach actually wasn't that bad, it hadn't suffered much from being neglected. In fact, without the beach goers here to throw their trash in the sand, the beach actually looked a bit better than it might have. But, still, there was something about seeing that great expanse of empty sand on a nice day that didn't quiet one's mind. There should be people out here enjoying themselves. There should be hot girls in bathing suits for Fin to ludely comment on, all a defense mechanism of course, of course, but nope. The beach was abandoned, or seemingly abandoned. But a yeerk ship did pass this way everyday so it probably shouldn't be considered safe.
<<So what we doing boss? I don't think that whale of yours is going to like it too close to the shore but it's going to be even harder to fly over water. If you get small enough my bat can take us out there. It doesn't mind all the flapping that's going to be needed though it doesn't like the winds over the ocean much either, but I'll survive.>>
Matthias:
<<Do you see anyone around?>> Matthias replied, settling in for a landing on the shore. <<I don't, and for that reason, I'm just going to do this the old fashioned way.>> Demorphing to human, Matthias waded into the water a short distance before striking out and swimming until he judged the water deep enough to morph orca. It was cold, yes, but not as cold as it could have been, and the killer whale in him wouldn't mind a bit.
When he was fully killer whale, and under control of the beast's instincts, Matthias swam around a bit as he waited for Fin to catch up. <<Hang around close to the shore. I'm going to follow the ship when it shows up. I'll come back for you when I find out where it went. No sense losing you in the ocean.>>
Fin:
<<Pish posh Matthias. We never loose the things we truly care about.>>
He circled back the way he had come but didn't go very far. He settled into a tree underneath the path that the ship would take and waited for it to go by. And he didn't have to wait long. He had been right, they had gotten here just in time.
Fin had seen the bladeship once, or maybe a bladeship, who knows how many of the things there were now. This ship looked like it was the bladeship's evil twin or maybe just twin since they both gave you the same sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Instead of jet black this ship's black had a bluish tint to it in the reflections it gave off, like the coat of an oversized beetle. And instead of being shaped like a battle-ax, it was shaped like a manta ray. It looked like the yeerks had been inspired by some of the earth animals they had destroyed. Though if they were going for dangerous maybe the thing should have been shaped like a shark, but that wouldn't have been a very aerodynamic choice.
<<Head's up Matthias, ships on it's way.>>
Matthias:
Why do you think I'm worried about losing you, Fin? Matthias retorted to himself, keeping it in his head as he circled, coming up for a big breath of air when Fin gave him the heads-up. He had no doubts that this thing would be fast, probably very fast, but he didn't have to race it, he just had to not lose it.
<<Watch your morphing time, Fin. I'll be back as soon as I can.>> With that, Matthias was gone, off like a shot as fast as his tail could propel him, chasing after this ridiculously fast ship that had just broken the surface ahead of him. He prayed the journey was a short one; he wanted to be able to go there and back without demorphing.
After following the ship for ten minutes, Matthias saw that he was gaining a little ground, which was nice as the orca was tired, and he soon saw why the ship was slowing down. A massive underwater base was rearing its ugly head ahead of them. It looked like a palace, Matthias thought, but what a place for it. Time for a little Animorphs recon.
Breaking the surface, Matthias took a look around. They were in the middle of nowhere; if you didn't know where you were going, the odds of finding even something that massive were slim to none. He had to take this journey slow and remember anything he could see that would help lead them back there. Just over an hour passed before Matthias walked out of the water, human, to see where Fin had gotten to.
Fin:
Fin was hanging from a branch, head down, watching the wet and bedraggled Matthias come up the beach. <<So it has been, what? And hour? What took ya so long? Did it really go that far out?>> Fin was wondering if his river otter morph would be up to it. The distance to the place didn't matter much, it was a pretty swift morph and he could always fly part of the way. And once out there the river otter could stay afloat easily enough...on the surface. But what if this thing was deep? He wouldn't be able to get down there and he wouldn't even be able to provide back up.
After his little run in with the controllers in the woods Fin had decided that safety was in numbers. Before he had believed that you leave the people who think safety was in numbers to get eaten by the dinosaur or killed by the flood or whatever other dangerous catastrophe was heading your way. The people that survived were the ones that took their lives into their own hands.
But maybe sharing is caring.
So Matthias shouldn't really go in without back up and yet he might not be able to provide any. A problem.
Matthias:
"Took me ten minutes going at top speed to get there. Had to be careful coming back; I didn't want to lose the path. It's a base all right, a massive underwater base. Deep enough that you can't even see it from the surface. I'm not sure if your otter can handle that, but at least now we have a good idea of where the damn thing is. The problem is going to be getting inside. I'm pretty sure their air locks won't let an orca in and demorphing at that depth is suicide." He scratched his head. "This is going to be a tough one. We can go scope it out some more, but our best bet might end up being trying to hitch a ride on the ship."
Mel had a sea lion, Matthias knew, but even so, by and large they were not well equipped for aquatic adventures. Not to mention, the Yeerks were more than willing to fry an innocent whale or three if it meant Animorph protection. This was going to require more planning, and maybe more than just the two of them.
Fin:
<<Mmm. Well that should be easy enough.>> He dropped down from the branch and snapped his wings open. <<We'll just catch one tomorrow.>> He started flying around in the air, the cool sea breeze easily cutting through his fur and chilling him faster than his flying could keep him warm.
<<Tracing it back to where it comes from was the easy part. There is a base up in the mountains. Or more of a landing strip really because it is not that heavily guarded. I found that a while ago. It was the ship I couldn't follow. If we go up there tomorrow we can sneak into the ship as humans. They load up a bunch of humans everyday.>>
Then Fin thought about what he had said and what Matthias had suggested earlier. <<But why would they be transporting a bunch of humans to the bottom of the ocean and just leaving them there?>> He asked no one in particular.
Then he snapped out of it. <<If we are gonna go into the mountains tomorrow can I get a new air morph? There is no way my bat is going to stand up to that kind of cold.>>
Matthias:
Matthias tuned out the bulk of what Fin was saying; the boy's sporadic sentences were rarely actually linked to one another, and trying to follow them usually resulted in a headache. Matthias did, however, pick up on the important things. Tomorrow they could go, perhaps more of them, and see if they couldn't get on this ship before it took off. Fin's questions could be answered then.
Well, most of them anyway, "Yeah, we'll get you something new when we get back to the lodge." He began shrinking rapidly, turning into a gyrfalcon for the trip back, "I'm sure we can find something that'll suit you for this mountain journey. Reminds me though, what else do you know about that transport site? I may have to just scope it out for myself. Regardless of whether they load humans on, we need to know more before we go rushing in."
Finishing the morph and immediately flapping his wings to get some altitude, Matthias felt the strain of fatigue tugging at him. He'd been the late guard the previous night and that always left him absolutely wiped the next day. He intended to get a good night's sleep tonight.
Fin:
<<No problemo boss,>> Fin said and then proceeded to recite every detail he could remember about what the base looked like which was quite a bit since he had an almost photographic memory and no prohibition against lengthy monologues. He told Matthias about the mountains and how long it had taken him to fly there, what the mountain pass where the base was located looked like from the air, what the base looked like from the air, his guesses at the purpose of all the buildings there, the schedule of ships leaving and how many people were loaded in each shipment.
He dredged up every detail he knew about the place and by the time he was done they were nearly back at the Lodge. <<And I remember the place had this really odd smell to it. To my bat senses it smelled like a mixture of chocolate and new leather but to my fox senses it smelled like burned rubber and caramel. And then my cat thought it smelled like old gum. I didn't bother testing out my river otter after that. I just figured that my morphs would have to agree to disagree on the subject.>>
Mathias:
<<Agree to disagree indeed.>> Matthias affirmed. <<Good work.>> That was one thing he could count on Fin on, if nothing else. the boy did good recon work. That just left it to him to decide exactly who should be coming along the next day. Maybe just the two of them? Well, maybe not. Two might be easier to sneak on board than more...especially if they were still using those Biofilters at the entrances. Fin would have to come; this was his mission. The two of them could probably handle this alone.
<<Get someone else to cover your shift.>> Matthias instructed as he settled in for a landing and demorphed. When he had lips he finished the thought. "We both need a full night tonight if possible." Matthias already felt a little weak on his feet, and it surprised him. He knew he was tired but this was more of an effect than normal. Oh I better not be getting sick. That would complicate matters considerably.
Fin winged into the Lodge, flying through a window instead of demorphing and taking a door. <<Yo, Matty! Are you here? Big news. We get to do fun things like risk getting ourselves killed.>>
Fin flapped around the Lodge, the dead air inside not bothering him as much as it would have bothered a raptor. Finally he found Matthias in the kitchen and landed on the counter.
<<Matthias I have news to report.>> He cleared his throat dramatically. <<I think I've found a new ship, a sea going one. It flies the same route everyday so I've been able to track it as far as the ocean, then it dives in and is gone. I tried following it as an otter but it goes much too fast. I'm thinking we need Free Willy. If we leave now we can beat it to the water.>>
Matthias:
Man, a guy never gets to eat around here. Slightly irked at the use of the nickname - Matthias HATED being called Matt or Matty, it made people think his name was Matthew, and he liked his name - Matthias bit down on a half-eaten sandwich and turned around when Fin showed up. Talking around it, he headed for the door, "No time to get anyone else. Fine, just us then, let's go." Matthias honestly couldn't remember if anyone had a better sea morph than his killer whale, but this wasn't time to worry about that.
Managing to finish the sandwich as he started to morph, Matthias was fully gyrfalcon two minutes after Fin had flown in the door. <<They've got to be transporting something if it's moving daily...but you've never seen it fly BACK from the lake?>> A series of one-way trips didn't seem efficient, Matthias thought as he took wing. It was quite the flight to the ocean and the gyrfalcon wasn't going to be happy with him, but that was just the way it was.
Fin:
Fin winged his way into the sky after the gyrfalcon. <<The ship never comes back. In fact I don't even know if it is one ship or a lot of copies of the same ship. One of my theories was that they're building these things somewhere and then sending the finished product out to get tested. But if they are finishing a ship a day that's a scary production rate. So personally I hope that I'm just unobservant and have missed it going back or something.>>
As always the cool Vancouver air cut through his fur and chilled the thin skin of his wings. Fin loved his bat morph and it had gotten him out of a lot of bad scrapes but he was starting to think that maybe another air morph, one that could handle the weather a bit better was in order. Maybe when they got back he would ask for one, right now they had to get to the water before the ship did or they would miss their shot to follow it.
Fin:
<<Well, that's weird.>> Matthias replied slowly. The air was cool, which didn't mean for a good time for his gyrfalcon. One of the biggest birds around - disregarding the obscene size of the albatross and relations - it wasn't easy to stay airborne in chilly weather, but that was just the way things went.
Fin's comment made him wonder, however. How could they be sending a ship every day to something in the ocean and never having it return? If it came back some other way, then why did it go to the ocean the way it did. The Yeerks were nothing if not efficient, and THAT wasn't efficient. There had to be some explanation for it. What if it was coming back, but Fin just had never seen it? Was it invisible? Moving really, really fast? Well then why didn't it do that on the way there? This just didn't add up at all.
It did not elude Matthias' thought process that it could just be a Yeerk trap, some suspicious activity to get Animorph attention. Still, they could hardly not investigate it, and for the moment they were at least minimizing rest. Everyone at the lodge knew to get out of Dodge if they didn't come back in three days.
Fin:
<<Ah, here we are Birdman. Hot girls in bathing suits, or you know, hot boys, whatever. Sunny weather, everyone enjoying themselves. Oh wait, that was before the yeerks got here. Nevermind, welcome to hell instead.>> The beach actually wasn't that bad, it hadn't suffered much from being neglected. In fact, without the beach goers here to throw their trash in the sand, the beach actually looked a bit better than it might have. But, still, there was something about seeing that great expanse of empty sand on a nice day that didn't quiet one's mind. There should be people out here enjoying themselves. There should be hot girls in bathing suits for Fin to ludely comment on, all a defense mechanism of course, of course, but nope. The beach was abandoned, or seemingly abandoned. But a yeerk ship did pass this way everyday so it probably shouldn't be considered safe.
<<So what we doing boss? I don't think that whale of yours is going to like it too close to the shore but it's going to be even harder to fly over water. If you get small enough my bat can take us out there. It doesn't mind all the flapping that's going to be needed though it doesn't like the winds over the ocean much either, but I'll survive.>>
Matthias:
<<Do you see anyone around?>> Matthias replied, settling in for a landing on the shore. <<I don't, and for that reason, I'm just going to do this the old fashioned way.>> Demorphing to human, Matthias waded into the water a short distance before striking out and swimming until he judged the water deep enough to morph orca. It was cold, yes, but not as cold as it could have been, and the killer whale in him wouldn't mind a bit.
When he was fully killer whale, and under control of the beast's instincts, Matthias swam around a bit as he waited for Fin to catch up. <<Hang around close to the shore. I'm going to follow the ship when it shows up. I'll come back for you when I find out where it went. No sense losing you in the ocean.>>
Fin:
<<Pish posh Matthias. We never loose the things we truly care about.>>
He circled back the way he had come but didn't go very far. He settled into a tree underneath the path that the ship would take and waited for it to go by. And he didn't have to wait long. He had been right, they had gotten here just in time.
Fin had seen the bladeship once, or maybe a bladeship, who knows how many of the things there were now. This ship looked like it was the bladeship's evil twin or maybe just twin since they both gave you the same sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Instead of jet black this ship's black had a bluish tint to it in the reflections it gave off, like the coat of an oversized beetle. And instead of being shaped like a battle-ax, it was shaped like a manta ray. It looked like the yeerks had been inspired by some of the earth animals they had destroyed. Though if they were going for dangerous maybe the thing should have been shaped like a shark, but that wouldn't have been a very aerodynamic choice.
<<Head's up Matthias, ships on it's way.>>
Matthias:
Why do you think I'm worried about losing you, Fin? Matthias retorted to himself, keeping it in his head as he circled, coming up for a big breath of air when Fin gave him the heads-up. He had no doubts that this thing would be fast, probably very fast, but he didn't have to race it, he just had to not lose it.
<<Watch your morphing time, Fin. I'll be back as soon as I can.>> With that, Matthias was gone, off like a shot as fast as his tail could propel him, chasing after this ridiculously fast ship that had just broken the surface ahead of him. He prayed the journey was a short one; he wanted to be able to go there and back without demorphing.
After following the ship for ten minutes, Matthias saw that he was gaining a little ground, which was nice as the orca was tired, and he soon saw why the ship was slowing down. A massive underwater base was rearing its ugly head ahead of them. It looked like a palace, Matthias thought, but what a place for it. Time for a little Animorphs recon.
Breaking the surface, Matthias took a look around. They were in the middle of nowhere; if you didn't know where you were going, the odds of finding even something that massive were slim to none. He had to take this journey slow and remember anything he could see that would help lead them back there. Just over an hour passed before Matthias walked out of the water, human, to see where Fin had gotten to.
Fin:
Fin was hanging from a branch, head down, watching the wet and bedraggled Matthias come up the beach. <<So it has been, what? And hour? What took ya so long? Did it really go that far out?>> Fin was wondering if his river otter morph would be up to it. The distance to the place didn't matter much, it was a pretty swift morph and he could always fly part of the way. And once out there the river otter could stay afloat easily enough...on the surface. But what if this thing was deep? He wouldn't be able to get down there and he wouldn't even be able to provide back up.
After his little run in with the controllers in the woods Fin had decided that safety was in numbers. Before he had believed that you leave the people who think safety was in numbers to get eaten by the dinosaur or killed by the flood or whatever other dangerous catastrophe was heading your way. The people that survived were the ones that took their lives into their own hands.
But maybe sharing is caring.
So Matthias shouldn't really go in without back up and yet he might not be able to provide any. A problem.
Matthias:
"Took me ten minutes going at top speed to get there. Had to be careful coming back; I didn't want to lose the path. It's a base all right, a massive underwater base. Deep enough that you can't even see it from the surface. I'm not sure if your otter can handle that, but at least now we have a good idea of where the damn thing is. The problem is going to be getting inside. I'm pretty sure their air locks won't let an orca in and demorphing at that depth is suicide." He scratched his head. "This is going to be a tough one. We can go scope it out some more, but our best bet might end up being trying to hitch a ride on the ship."
Mel had a sea lion, Matthias knew, but even so, by and large they were not well equipped for aquatic adventures. Not to mention, the Yeerks were more than willing to fry an innocent whale or three if it meant Animorph protection. This was going to require more planning, and maybe more than just the two of them.
Fin:
<<Mmm. Well that should be easy enough.>> He dropped down from the branch and snapped his wings open. <<We'll just catch one tomorrow.>> He started flying around in the air, the cool sea breeze easily cutting through his fur and chilling him faster than his flying could keep him warm.
<<Tracing it back to where it comes from was the easy part. There is a base up in the mountains. Or more of a landing strip really because it is not that heavily guarded. I found that a while ago. It was the ship I couldn't follow. If we go up there tomorrow we can sneak into the ship as humans. They load up a bunch of humans everyday.>>
Then Fin thought about what he had said and what Matthias had suggested earlier. <<But why would they be transporting a bunch of humans to the bottom of the ocean and just leaving them there?>> He asked no one in particular.
Then he snapped out of it. <<If we are gonna go into the mountains tomorrow can I get a new air morph? There is no way my bat is going to stand up to that kind of cold.>>
Matthias:
Matthias tuned out the bulk of what Fin was saying; the boy's sporadic sentences were rarely actually linked to one another, and trying to follow them usually resulted in a headache. Matthias did, however, pick up on the important things. Tomorrow they could go, perhaps more of them, and see if they couldn't get on this ship before it took off. Fin's questions could be answered then.
Well, most of them anyway, "Yeah, we'll get you something new when we get back to the lodge." He began shrinking rapidly, turning into a gyrfalcon for the trip back, "I'm sure we can find something that'll suit you for this mountain journey. Reminds me though, what else do you know about that transport site? I may have to just scope it out for myself. Regardless of whether they load humans on, we need to know more before we go rushing in."
Finishing the morph and immediately flapping his wings to get some altitude, Matthias felt the strain of fatigue tugging at him. He'd been the late guard the previous night and that always left him absolutely wiped the next day. He intended to get a good night's sleep tonight.
Fin:
<<No problemo boss,>> Fin said and then proceeded to recite every detail he could remember about what the base looked like which was quite a bit since he had an almost photographic memory and no prohibition against lengthy monologues. He told Matthias about the mountains and how long it had taken him to fly there, what the mountain pass where the base was located looked like from the air, what the base looked like from the air, his guesses at the purpose of all the buildings there, the schedule of ships leaving and how many people were loaded in each shipment.
He dredged up every detail he knew about the place and by the time he was done they were nearly back at the Lodge. <<And I remember the place had this really odd smell to it. To my bat senses it smelled like a mixture of chocolate and new leather but to my fox senses it smelled like burned rubber and caramel. And then my cat thought it smelled like old gum. I didn't bother testing out my river otter after that. I just figured that my morphs would have to agree to disagree on the subject.>>
Mathias:
<<Agree to disagree indeed.>> Matthias affirmed. <<Good work.>> That was one thing he could count on Fin on, if nothing else. the boy did good recon work. That just left it to him to decide exactly who should be coming along the next day. Maybe just the two of them? Well, maybe not. Two might be easier to sneak on board than more...especially if they were still using those Biofilters at the entrances. Fin would have to come; this was his mission. The two of them could probably handle this alone.
<<Get someone else to cover your shift.>> Matthias instructed as he settled in for a landing and demorphed. When he had lips he finished the thought. "We both need a full night tonight if possible." Matthias already felt a little weak on his feet, and it surprised him. He knew he was tired but this was more of an effect than normal. Oh I better not be getting sick. That would complicate matters considerably.