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Post by jonathan on Oct 18, 2009 2:10:01 GMT -5
The morph was noticeably worse this time, the boy's limbs twisting and cracking audibly. Jon stifled another disgusted look, swinging his eyes upward until the minute had passed. Fully human, their instructor started talking about animal instincts and then the animal's mind. The concept made sense, but sounded strange to Jon. Was it the mind, or just purely the instincts?
Jon shifted in his cross-legged position, staring at the blue box Jullian had in his hands. Animorph. Touching that cube meant he would be fighting for them. He would be staking his life on the hope that he could put a dent in the Yeerks, and aid all the humans who were slaves inside their own mind. He was supposed to do this, be part of the heroes, when he hadn't even tried to save himself. It hadn't even been worth trying--he had accepted his slavery with open arms. Willingly. The notion had never bothered him until now.
The teacher called for those with morphing suits to touch the box. Hesitating, Jon watched as Xander did so. Jullian seemed to be waiting for more, and so Jon finally pushed himself off the ground, adjusting the uncomfortable spandex morphing suit. The morphing cube had a gentle glow to it, and tingled warmly when Jon touched the palm of his hand to it. Unsure how long it would take, he waited a good minute as well before retracting his hand.
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Post by berserker09 on Oct 22, 2009 20:20:09 GMT -5
Paul was late to the class. He got lost trying to get there. He ran in just as the teacher was asking for those who were going to morph to come up to the front. He saw that only two people had gotten up, so he just walked to the front.
He put his had on the cube and felt a tingling sensation. He removed his from the cube and moved over to the side. He had no idea what he had just done. He needed to stop doing things off of impulse and start thinking them through.
He had never done that before he was attacked, but now that was all he did. He just did whatever came to him in every situation. It had almost gotten him killed twice now. First, slamming his bike into those Hork-bajir and then the whole incident of trying to box his way out of a controller warehouse. He was becoming to reckless for his own good.
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Post by Jullian on Oct 24, 2009 4:55:37 GMT -5
Jullian put the cube down after the new person walked into the room. He left it where the others would be able to touch it when they were ready. He couldn't force anyone to become comfortable with the morphing technology and the whole process right away. Even though all of the recruits had been here for two weeks, if they hadn't they wouldn't have been allowed access to the morphing technology, that didn't mean they'd prepared themselves for turning into animals.
"Well," Jullian said, smiling, how about picking out some morphs. He was excited. This is what Cassie had asked him to do so many months ago, be a morphing instructor. But so far he'd just been involved with setting up the Academy and he hadn't taught class one. He had been afraid he'd suck at it but he thought the class was going well so far. Even though all of these recruits were much older than he was they seemed to be willing to listen to him.
"I brought you a lot of different stuff to choose from," he continued, turning around and opening the case that held the vials of blood they'd be acquiring their morphs from. "Your first morph is like," Jullian said beaming, "the best experience ever." Jullian displayed the case to them. Each vial was in its own depression in a felt lined case with a small tag above it with the names of the animal it represented on top.
"You get to choose but some things you should think about, your morphs will save your life a lot. Even the seemingly weak ones. My first morph was a monkey and it got me out of a tight situation with some Hork-Bajir once," Jullian said thinking of the construction site and swinging through the scaffolding. "So...yeah, choose well," he said, holding out the box of blood like a Christmas gift.
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Post by berserker09 on Oct 25, 2009 14:11:38 GMT -5
Paul was trying to decide on what he should pick. He liked the idea of small and stealth, but couldn't decide between the mouse or the ferret. He finally picked ferret because it seemed like a better choice. He reached into the box and got the ferret vial.
Now what he thought as he stared at it. Do I drink it or put my finger in it he thought while staring at the vial. He looked back at the teacher and wondered about it. Maybe he should have waited a bit longer before coming up here. It was too late to think of that now. He really needed to stop doing things without thinking.
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Stray
Survivor
[M:0]
So don't you rescue me, I feel the thorn in my side. Save me please..
Posts: 3 
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Post by Stray on Oct 25, 2009 20:08:58 GMT -5
Sable remained seated at the back of the class, watching intently and learning. Once he was sure that he had enough information, and then he’d act on his ideals. Watching the teacher demorph had intimidated him slightly, and making any decision when it wasn’t a confident one could always be a fatal mistake. Bracing legs up, he wrapped his arms to rest on his knees and his chin on his arms.
Sable’s gaze flickered to the door seeing another new recruit walk in even later than he was. Though it didn’t make him feel any better. Jullian revealed a felt-lined case full of vials of animal blood. ‘Choose well.’ Again his thoughts went into hyper-mode, what would be good in a fight, something that was fast or could defend itself well...but also something that could be discreet...
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Post by Jullian on Oct 27, 2009 16:24:05 GMT -5
Jullian smiled and practically had to sit on his hands when the first student picked out a morph. He took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. It was bad enough he was the youngest one here. He didn't have to look immature by displaying too much excitement. Still, it was exciting. He'd always liked seeing new recruits get their first morphs. And now he was going to watch eight of them do so at once.
When Paul looked down at the vial, confused, and then back at him Jullian realized he hadn't explained much about the morphing process. "Right, well once you choose what morph you want you have to acquire it. Acquiring requires that you come in contact with the animal's DNA. Most of the time this DNA has to come from a live source but you can all imagine how troublesome that would be. Where are we to find a live tiger? Not that any of you are getting tigers," he quickly added. "Not yet anyway. We're gonna start with smaller, easier morphs first."
Jullian picked out a vial from the box. It was a seagull, maybe even the DNA of his seagull. He'd acquired his a long time ago and from a different safe of samples than this case. But who knew if the blood came from the same bird. "So we use blood to get the DNA from. To acquire it you put a little on your finger and then picture the animal in your mind. If you don't know what your animal looks like tell me, I have books with pictures and I have everything available today bookmarked for you."
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Post by xander on Oct 27, 2009 21:59:29 GMT -5
After watching the other two walk up Xander actually started to get excited. Not that he wanted to seem like it, but he couldn’t stop fidgeting. All the build up over the past few weeks and now just a step away. Probably still plenty of times to feel like an idiot. Like the blood thing, that was going to be different.
He walked up and glanced through the vials. After reading through the names he picked up the one that appeared to be some sort of cat. Xander slid it out of the box and held it securely in his hand. It’s shape was like that of the test tubes he’d used before, if not a bit smaller. Though he’d yet to have the experience of holding one with blood in it yet.
Xander walked back to his previous spot and looked at the vial in his hands. He couldn’t manage to convince himself to open it yet so he held it up to the light. As he looked at it he muttered, “Wicked”.
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Stray
Survivor
[M:0]
So don't you rescue me, I feel the thorn in my side. Save me please..
Posts: 3
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Post by Stray on Nov 12, 2009 13:13:42 GMT -5
Sable watched when the others went up and touched the ‘blue box’ and then walked to the container of vials full of blood. Jullian said it was animal blood, so that was how they were going to morph… Sable remembered watching the teacher transform and he resisted the urge to grimace. It wasn’t the most attractive thing, to see someone seem to grow out of a bird form.
Standing up quietly he decided that he was ready to do this. Walking around the group he went to the Blue box, reaching out with his fingertips to settle against the side of it. It was oddly smooth and he kept his focus on it as it seemed to hum before he felt some odd sensation seem to travel through his fingertips to his body. Pulling away he stared at the box almost critically, like how a cat would if a toy moved when it wasn’t supposed to. He looked at his fingertips, running his thumb along the pads as the tingle faded, before also looking at the container of vials. Stepping towards it he looked in, seeing that the vials were all labeled.
Not thinking too much on it he reached in and pulled one out, seeing that by the label it was a dog breed. He had liked dogs before everything had happened.
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Post by berserker09 on Nov 12, 2009 20:10:14 GMT -5
Paul dipped his finger into the vial and pictured a ferret in his mind. He didn't know what was suppose to happen when he did this, but Paul was not going to question what the teacher told him so he continued on. After a bit of focusing on the ferret, Paul placed the vial back in the box and moved towards one of the walls. He wondered if he was supposed to practice or not.
Paul looked at the other students that were holding vials to see if any of them were going to try morphing into their choices. He looked at the last kid to walk up there and wondered what morph he picked. Paul was having second doubts on his choice. He probably should have picked something that he could have used to defend himself if necessary, but he thought that he was a pretty good fighter already so he wanted something he sucked at. Stealth was his weakness and that is why he never would have made it as a soldier.
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Post by gabriel on Nov 14, 2009 11:27:53 GMT -5
Gabriel clapped his hands together and bounced to the front of the room. He'd had the morphing power since his second day here due to a mistake but when the mistake had been discovered he hadn't been allowed morphs.
He peered into the box and tried to figure out what he wanted. There was some pretty cool stuff in here and he wanted it all. He could imagine it all being useful but, more than that, he could see it all being fun. He picked up three different vials and put them back down, seeing everyone else was only picking out one at a time. "Uh, how many do we get?"
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Post by jonathan on Nov 16, 2009 4:24:22 GMT -5
Jon scanned the case Jullian presented the small group, eyebrows furrowed with indecision. His first thought had gone to power. If they were fighting for their life, that would make sense wouldn't it? Brute force. The case didn't have much in the vein of lions or tigers, and Jon eventually came to settle on the vial with the opossum label neatly above it. It wasn't the strongest, at all, but he figured something smaller--but with some kick still--would be beneficial. Beyond that, they were common enough to blend in around most places.
Back when he had lived in the near-country as a youth, opossums had sprung up everywhere. He remembered one night when his mother had drawn him and his younger brother into the kitchen, turning out the lights and pointing to the large glass sliding door. It had been pitch-black nighttime, and the only light in the area was the porch light. It spilled a lemon-hued light onto the deck, eerily illuminating the scraggly-looking beast as it scavenged for some leftovers among the trash bags. Being only seven, the surreal sight had fascinated Jon.
He plucked the vial from the case, glancing over at Paul next to him, then to Jullian as he explained. Touching a finger down into the blood, Jon replaced the stopper back on the vial and reached forward to set it back in the case's felt lining. "Can we start morphing now?"
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Post by Jullian on Nov 30, 2009 23:44:28 GMT -5
"You get three total," Jullian said looking at Gabriel. "Though we've decided that one of them has to be a bug morph. But since those are a little harder to handle we'll work on bugs last. By the time you leave here today you'll have all three morphs and you'll be able to practice them outside of class, though I ask that you practice with a friend just for safety."
Jullian next turned to Jonathan. "You can start morphing right away but be careful. Some of these animals don't mix well so Paul seems to be trying out a ferret. Ferrets eat smaller rodents and sometimes birds so I wouldn't try morphing anything that wouldn't mix well with the ferret for example. We don't want animal battle royal on the first day and the instincts are going to be hard to control at first."
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Stray
Survivor
[M:0]
So don't you rescue me, I feel the thorn in my side. Save me please..
Posts: 3
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Post by Stray on Dec 9, 2009 23:52:21 GMT -5
Sable aquired the dog's DNA, looking down at his finger that was barely touching the surface of blood in the vial. He still felt a bit ridiculous but it didn't seem out of place. returning the stopper on the vial he set it back in the box, pausing when Jullian spoke. So three morphs and one had to be a bug morph..right.. Emotionlessly he picked out a bug morph and a bird morph. All three of his choices seemed logical, A canine, an insect and an avian form. A dog could hold it's own in a fight..figuratively speaking. As well as a bird could get away faster and a bug could hide.
He aquired the other two animal DNA before setting the vials back and going to sit down at his previous spot at the back of the room, closest to the door. Though they had permission to morph now Sable thought it would be a better idea to wait. A personal thought really, he still wasn't completely on the bandwagon yet.
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Post by berserker09 on Dec 16, 2009 22:39:59 GMT -5
Paul went back over to the box full of vials and fished out a bird morph and an insect morph. He saw the names were Purple Martin and a moth. He looked at the picture of the bird and focused on it as he acquired the DNA. He repeated the endeavor with the moth DNA and set all the vials back in the box. He thought about morphing the bird first, but though it would be better to wait for someone else to do it.
Paul looked around the room to see if anyone else was going to try morphing. It was going to be a while before he thought about it, since the instructor had probably given a demonstration prior to his entering the classroom. The disadvantages of being late were never getting to see all the cool stuff. Paul walked over to the wall and waited for someone to do something.
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Post by gabriel on Dec 17, 2009 22:59:01 GMT -5
Since no one else seemed to want to go first Gage volunteered himself and why not, he'd had the power the longest, he should go first. He looked back down into the container of vials and picked out a few that he'd thought would be good. He looked at them and put each one back, one by one, narrowing down his choices until he had two. Then he did iny meenie minie moe. Saw whatever you want about how you could tell where it was going to land, that wasn't the point of the exercise. By saying the simple rhyme he was forced to realize which choice he actually wanted to win over the other. No matter where the final rhyme landed he went with the choice he was rooting for. It was a quick way to cut through his own confusion and to tell which one he really liked the best.
The two vials in his hand had been Red Fox and Ferret. He ended up putting Ferret back and he tipped a bit of the fox blood onto his palm and thought of the fox from The Fox and the Hound. That movie had always made him cry when he was a kid. Not that he'd admit it.
He wasn't sure if anything had happened but since the process of morphing was exactly like the process of acquiring he just kept his eyes closed and continued to think of the fox.
"I grrwe amre arooo," he said and his eyes popped open in surprise. He'd been trying to say that he didn't think this was working but he was obviously wrong. Whiskers were poking out from the side of his nose and when he felt it it was furry.
The morph quickly reversed itself when he stopped concentrating on it and he shook his head. "Woah, that was weird. Anyone else want to try?"
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