Another Weapon for the Arsenal

[Nineteen]

Nineteen tried to keep her head clear as she walked towards the classroom door, though her body felt stiff and uncomfortable. Inwardly she felt panicky. This was going to be her first time with the morphing instructor, Jullian. She didn't know if that meant she was cleared to become an Animorph, or what. It seemed that she'd spent longer at the Academy without actually being given the morphing power than a few of the other recruits, but she figured that that was likely because they were hand selected to come here from pockets of free humans. She'd been sent up here not really on a whim -- obviously someone thought she had potential -- but she hadn't really been sought out and chosen, either.

Nineteen thought back to her last fight in Vegas, the one that had ended with her braining a Controller to death with a piece of pipe and ripping the Yeerk from his brain. She remembered that horrible voice in her head, that told her that when she was saved, when they came, she had to go with them. And she had been saved, even when it seemed like all that was in store was another tenure of slavery in an unknown part of the world.

Maybe she shouldn't be doing this. Was she crazy? She'd have been the first to admit that she wasn't the perfect case for mental stability, but she'd felt much better since coming to the Academy. It was as if the years of slavery and fighting had rolled off of her, and she put as much distance between her and those memories as possible.

But now, with time and space between her and that voice, it was hard to justify not doing something because of it. Part of her would never, ever deny that it was real -- you couldn't even forget the feeling of hopelessness and despair in your gut -- but on the other hand, how could she explain that to anyone, especially anyone in charge? Then they would really think she was crazy.

And she owed it to them, didn't she? To fight? They had saved her.

There was no point in pretending she didn't want to fight, either. She did. Maybe it was an admission of defeat in some way. Maybe it was giving in... that she'd never be more than whatever the Yeerks had trained her to be: some pawn or tool or toy for other people to move around as they saw fit.

But really, what were her other options? She was damned if she was going to be sent to some free human colony to wait out the days when the Yeerks finally found a way to round up everyone that had slipped through the cracks. No fucking way.

Taking a breath, she knocked on the door, and then poked her head inside. "Hello?"

[Jullian]

Jullian sat in his classroom, completely engrossed in the task he'd set himself. Since becoming the morph instructor and actually beginning the morph classes Jullian had been trying to teach the recruits every trick about morphing that he'd ever learned. The problem was they were all very smart and very fast. Even the students that didn't pick it up right away picked up the concepts easily.

He was extremely proud of them and he had found he absolutely loved what he did now. He loved to help create things instead of destroy them and to see his students get better every day, well actually every other day, cheered him up like almost nothing else could. He acknowledged in a serious part of his heart that he was training them to fight, to become weapons, maybe to die or to kill others, definitely to do one or the other. He didn't forget but sometimes he liked to see them do well for morphing's sake alone. It drove him to become better at his own morphing so that he would have more to teach them. So he'd set himself to learning some new tricks so that he'd have something to pass on.

He looked down at his hand and thought of scales. He had a rattlesnake morph and he'd been trying to isolate it all morning but he hadn't had much luck so far. He, more than anyone, realized that the only thing controlling the morphing process was your mind. If you could visualize the change you wanted clear enough then you could do it. All he had to do was see himself with scales...or at least that is what he'd thought when he'd started this. But he was starting to develop some new theories about morphing.

It was times like these that he wished some of the andalites had stayed around. He felt like they would know more about this than he did. He wanted a teacher to teach him more, not to clumsily cast around, hoping to catch a new technique in his net by trial and error. But one made do he supposed.

Now he was starting to think that there was something about thinking about becoming the animal that triggered the morphing process. He couldn't just think scales or wings, he had to think snake or seagull. But when he did the whole morph started to happen and then he was back at square one.

So now he was trying to think snake and scales at the same time. It was like trying to split his mind in half. In one he firmly held the image of a rattlesnake and in the other he tried to hold just as firmly to the image of scales forming on his hand and replacing his skin.

So when Nineteen knocked Jullian didn't really hear her. He was too busy staring at his hand, sitting in the middle of the multi-color carpets he'd stitched together from old uniforms. The floor looked like the fashion police had dropped their reject clothing off inside and then some had shredded it and this was the confetti that was left. A year ago it would have offended his eyes. Now he valued the comfort of the carpets more than the how close he colors matched.

A bead of sweat broke out on Jullian's forehead and slowly creeped down between his eyebrows, his young face contorted into a look of deep concentration rarely seen on his face. His dark eyes almost glittered in the soft lighting of the room as scales started to spread down his fingers and covered the back and palm of his hand. He smiled a little and they quickly went away.

He sighed and sat back and only then did he see Nineteen standing in the door. "Oh," he said wiping his forehead and smiling up at the newest recruit. "I'm sorry about that. Got a little lost. Come in, come in," Jullian said waving her in and motioning for her to sit down on the carpets. There were no chairs in this room.

"So you're Nineteen right?" he asked as he stood up and walked over to the shelf he'd put in the room. The shelves held every book about animals he'd managed to bring with him from the Barnes and Noble they'd lived in in Boston. After he'd been assigned to this job he'd had the Camerons take him back to Boston first because he knew how helpful these could be.

But he didn't pick out any of the books, instead he hunched down and went to unlock the locker that was set into the base of the bookshelf. He quickly entered the combination and the locker swung open to reveal the soft, glowing blue box.

He picked it up and turned around. "Glad you could make it. I know that today is not the day for morphing classes but I thought maybe we could practice so that you could join the regular class and not feel behind," he said has he came back over to her.

[Nineteen]

Nineteen nodded as she watched the boy. She had a couple inches on him easily, and though she knew it wasn't the case, part of her was certain she had at least twice the muscle mass. Could be he can turn into a fuckin' bear or something, she thought to herself, trying to keep from eyeing him skeptically. Still, she watched closely as he went and retrieved some blue box.

Of course she'd overheard a few of the other recruits talking about it. So she sort of knew what it was -- or at least, she knew what it did. Apparently you just touched the thing, and it gave you the morphing power. No needles, no pills, no science experiments... no pain.

"Um, sure." Nineteen couldn't help it, she knew she was standing defensively, her arms tensed over her body. She had to physically make herself unwind. But the idea that you just touched something and somehow your life was radically different... Well that didn't sit so well with her. At least when she'd been first taken as a host it was a stark difference between her life as it was and what her life became. She hated insidious little events that didn't seem so important but really were. "Should I sit down or something?"

[Jullian]

"Yeah, sit," Jullian said before taking his own advice. "We're probably going to be here for a while. I mean," he said putting down the cube next to him, "not to take up too much of your time but I just wanted to give you what I've given everyone else and that will take maybe two hours or so, which is a good number to remember," he added as an afterthought though he didn't explain why Nineteen may want to keep that number in mind because he'd gotten a little lost in his own thoughts and trying to put what he had to teach in an order that would work best.

He had come up with a lot of different theories about how to teach morphing. He'd finally settled on trying to strike a balance between teaching theory before practice and rushing students into morphing. He had never been an advocate of meditation but since he'd found the best tool in controlling the morphing process was a clear mind he'd worked on meditation with every student for at least half an hour during the two weeks or week they'd had to wait to get their morphing powers. He wasn't sure if he'd force Nineteen to wait that long but he wanted her to at least try it before morphing. Then again, maybe she was a meditation master. He really didn't know. He didn't know her at all. So that was the place to start. Learn something about what his student knew about the subject matter.

"Well, first thing first, lets see where you are. What do you know about morphing?"

[Nineteen]

Nineteen sat down on the... interesting carpet, and looked back up at him. She listened more intently than she usually let on: as much as the animals that all the other recruits seemed to have in their morph pool were harmless, Nineteen wasn't stupid. She understood that that little glowing box, that bit of technology, gave you a weapon. It could be pretty dangerous, but it gave you a power that no one could take away from you -- and you couldn't give it away if you tried. Which was why it they were so selective in picking their soldiers.

"I know that you guys save the lions and tigers and bears for later on -- that it's mostly bunnies and birdies on the menu," she started with, chuckling good-naturedly. Nineteen hadn't been able to morph, but she had spent plenty of time with the other recruits, and they seemed fairly eager to share whatever information they had. "I know that it isn't instantaneous, and you can only turn into somethin' you can touch, or touch its blood or whatever. I know that you can't go from animal to animal -- gotta pass back through human first."

Nineteen pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and absently rubbed one arm. "I know that you can only stay in morph for two hours or whatever, or you're stuck."

[Jullian]

Jullian nodded along as Nineteen began to talk. The tips she had been given were useful but they were just tips right now. Well, they were important it just seemed unorganized to him.

"That's all good and its all correct." He stared into space for a moment and tapped a fingernail against the front of his teeth. He didn't know when he'd picked up the habit but he seemed to do it all the time now whenever he was thinking about something.

"Ok, that's good and I want you to keep it all in mind for later when we get into the rules about morphing. But lets start with morphing itself. Have any of the others described what morphing is like to you? Do you know why we start with small animals?"

[Nineteen]

Nineteen shrugged. "They say it doesn't hurt, even though it looks like it does. No one really explained the small animals thing. I figured you all -- leaders or whatever -- just didn't trust folks with the big guns to start off with."

Rubbing the back of her neck, Nineteen watched the boy a little skeptically. She didn't like the feeling of being tested, and this felt a lot like that. Well, just about any time someone with more authority than you started asking you questions it seemed like a test. And though she doubted this kid was going to be much like her "old" authorities, the penalties for answering incorrectly had been pretty steep for her in the past.

[Jullian]

Jullian was looking for a place to start and she'd given him one. "Right, ok, well I suppose that's true, about trusting green recruits with big guns. But its for the same reason as guns actually. Bigger animals are harder to control." That wasn't exactly true. Some of the strongest instincts he'd ever come up against were in the smallest creatures. But if you lost control of your monkey morph no one was going to get more than scratched. Lose control of a bear and they had a problem.

"I don't know if anyone told you but when you morph an animal you morph everything, including their brains. We are not exactly sure where our own minds go, Z-Space or something like that but only Cassie has a clear idea of what that is. Apparently its like a non-space area thingy but that's not important. What is is that your mind maintains a link to the animal body you have morphed so you can control it but you're working through the own animal's brain which means you have to control its natural instincts. If a cockroach wants to run from the light but you need to spy on a meeting you have to know how to overcome that instinct. And that takes pure mental will and clarity of purpose. So that is what we are going to work on first."

Jullian stopped and settled into a more comfortable position, a little shy about what he was going to say next. "So everyone else did this too," he opened and realized he may sound a little weak because he felt the need to justify his lessons. He took a breath and started again. "I don't know if you've practiced meditation before. I can tell you I haven't, at least not before teaching this class. So don't take this away as the best way to meditate and if you know something more about it please share. I'm always looking to improve. But we're gonna just close our eyes and breath in slowly to the count of eight, hold your breath to the count of eight, and then breath out to the count of eight. That ok with you?"

[Nineteen]

Nineteen felt her eyes started to glaze over about when he said Z-space. She hadn't heard the term before, and it sounded complicated: worse yet, complicated in a scientific way. By "non-space area thingy" she was about ready to completely shut off. Luckily he got back to morphing, which, despite whatever alien technology went into it, seemed like it mostly made sense.

When you became something else, you had to share your mind with whatever you were becoming. That wasn't totally unlike fighting, especially not where she'd come from. If you didn't become someone more vicious and bloodthirsty when you stepped into the ring, you might never step out of it again.

Nineteen arched an eyebrow at the kid-teacher when he started talking about meditation. Her facial expression was otherwise neutral. It wasn't that she didn't know about it. She'd even known a few other gladiators that had practiced it regularly, swore by it -- but she'd still mopped the floor with them. The idea of being quiet and still for an extended period of time, unless you were planning on sleeping, seemed bogus to her.

But hell, if the guy wanted her to breathe, she'd breathe. "Sure."

So she closed her eyes, and breathed on his count. Her heart wasn't really in it, but she figured she faked the slow-breathy-mumbo-jumbo or whatever pretty well. She had pretty good control physical control over her body, even if she couldn't really get her mind to clear.

[Jullian]

Jullian nodded when he saw Nineteen close her eyes and he closed his own, letting the quiet sounds of breathing be the only ones in the room. He'd come to enjoy times like this, when he was just sitting, when he could just try to clear his head. He had never really understood the idea of emptying your mind before starting to do this and he still couldn't do it now, he always found himself thinking about something. But he'd started to try to think about abstract things. He would try to imagine as vividly as possible a multi colored scarf blowing back and forth on an imaginary wind. He'd try to see every twist and turn, every color change. It reminded him of computer screensavers except the act of creating his own was much more enjoyable than watching one bounce around a black screen.

But most of his students didn't feel the same and probably wouldn't unless they really got into meditation. Which was fine with Jullian, he wasn't asking anyone to become a meditation master overnight or ever, he just wanted them to have some sort of process to fall back on in the moments of stress when they'd need to picture their morphs clearly. When they were seriously hurt or when they were falling through the air or when the ocean was pounding around their ears and threatening to drown them and they had to concentrate and get into morph, he wanted to prepare them for times like those since he knew they'd come.

Jullian opened his eyes and watched her breath. "Count along in your head please," he asked in a quiet voice before beginning to count out loud when she started to inhale. "I want you to try to imagine the blue cube and then make it spin if you can. Use the image to focus for now. If you have another that works better try using that," he went on after a few counts.

[Nineteen]

Nineteen cracked an eye back open and made a face at him when he talked about imagining the blue box spinning. Realizing he was perfectly serious, she settled back into her position, letting her face relax again, with her eyes closed.

Just get this over with, Nineteen thought to herself, and began counting in her head. Only instead of imaging the blue box spinning, which sounded totally lame, she imagined herself boxing. Not really fighting anyone else, but shadow boxing...

Which mentally turned into fighting her own shadow. Despite the quick cuts and kicks, she couldn't quite ever make contact, and neither could her opponent. It was kind of like dancing, though she sort of hated when people related fighting to dancing. Nobody was ever trying to punch your face in when you were doing the twist or whatever.

[Jullian]

Jullian watched her. She seemed more relaxed though he didn't know her well enough to tell. Maybe he was just imagining it to make himself feel better. Getting recruits to do this part of the training was harder than he'd thought it would be. He had thought they would freak out about literally making their bodies change into something different. But they all seemed to jump at the chance to do that. Looking back on it now he shouldn't have been surprised. Each of them had requested to come here to become animorphs. They had probably been looking forward to it or at least mentally prepared themselves for it in the days before they had been given the power. But no one had told them they'd have to sit around and meditate for a while which probably sounded like a boring concept.

Jullian could only console himself by believing they'd thank him one day. That didn't really work most times since he wasn't sure if it was true but it was a nice belief to hold onto.

"Good," he said softly, trying not to break her concentration. He didn't know what image she'd found to use but he only cared that she was imaging something.

"Your best tool for controlling your morphs is going to be your ability to visualize," he continued in a calm and even tone, speaking slowly instead of in any sort of lecture voice that might make her pay more attention to him than to whatever she was seeing. He wanted her to take in his words but he wanted them to fade into the background for now and maybe she'd remember them later and really think about them then. "Whatever you are seeing, if you can, try to double it." He kept his language vague since he wasn't sure what image she was using. He just hoped she'd interpret it in a way that would make sense.

[Nineteen]

Nineteen's face twitched when he started talking again, and for a moment she almost lost the shadow-boxing image. But she was good at tuning people out -- you had to tune out a lot of things when you spent any time as a Controller or whatever -- and the kid didn't seem to be trying to really get a response out of her or anything. So she went on with the shadow boxing, trying to keep herself from stopping to think about how dumb this was.

Then he asked her to double what she was seeing. Nineteen felt her brow furrow. Double it? Whatever. Just do it. So she did. Only it came out wrong. Instead of being two hers fighting two opponents, it was two-on-one, shadows against her. Suddenly she had to work overtime to block and dodge them all. Offensive tactics weren't really an option any more.

Though it took more concentration, she held on the to image. It was a lot less like some controlled dance now, and a lot more frenzied. More like real fighting was, in a way. And like in those fights, she was waiting for the whistle to blow.

[Jullian]

Jullian watched Nineteen's face furrow in concentration after he asked her to double her image. He wasn't sure what she was seeing but now he was at least sure she was seeing something instead of just pretending to concentrate. He smiled a little to himself and closed his own eyes and went back to his own meditation, leaving her to hers.

He was not sure how many times the scarf he'd been seeing had changed colors and there was really no way to tell how many times it had changed its shape, moving to his own internal music, before he let out a louder and longer breath than usual and opened his eyes.

"Alright," he said softly, trying to call Nineteen back from where ever she had gone.

((Hopefully you don't mind the time mod. Will modify if you do.))