Slow and Steady (Open)

[Alain]

Alain laid on the floor of the practice room Jullian had told him he could use. It was nothing compared to the gym. In fact it was just another class room really. But all of the chairs had been and desks had been cleared away to give people space.

Alain's cheek was pressed against the hull of the ship and he just allowed himself to breathe for a second. He'd read his morphing text book and he'd been a bit caught at the idea that morphing could tire you. It made sense that most activities wore you out after a while but wasn't one of the main tenants of morphing that it was DNA based?

And you had to experiment right? he chided himself. He'd only been in the room for fifteen minutes but that was long enough to prove that Jullian had been right. He'd morphed his meerkat and demorphed and remoprhed and demorphed and a mere two full morphs later he was beat.

"I'm going to have to do better than that," he said to no one in particular.

[Richard]

Richard had decided to practice controlling a morph that he figured would be the most difficult. The Alaskan Klee Kai was probably his favorite morph as he liked the happy feeling that he got from it. It was hard to tell how long ago he had morphed, but he figured it had been at least half an hour. He had been following various scents around the ship to see if he came across anyone he knew. At the moment, Richard was following a scent that reminded him of cinnamon for some reason that alluded him.

He rounded a corner when his ears picked up someone talking. "I'm going to have to do better than that," It was coming from a door up ahead, so he decided to check it out. Richard went up to the door and debated on whether he should demorph or not. In the end, Richard decided that he would have to demorph just in case it was someone he didn't know.

Richard focused on the picture of himself in his mind and hoped that no one would mess up his concentration. His bones started to crack as the process began, and he found himself getting bigger. At the same time, the black and white fur began to melt away on his body showing the colors from his morphing suit. The process was slow, but at least it wasn't as painful as it could have been. He was almost back to his normal size, when his tail started to shrink back into his body. The final change was his ears returning to their normal position, while the dog's muzzle became his face again.

Richard looked himself over to make sure that everything was back to its original self. When he was sure that he was completely okay, he knocked on the door to see who was in there. "Hello. Is anyone in there?"

[Alain]

Alain picked his head up and turned it towards the door when he heard Richard's voice. He was pretty comfortable with all the recruits now after having been here for a while but he hadn't exactly befriended any of them so he hadn't invited anyone to practice with him. Even if he had befriended them he would still have preferred to practice alone to avoid distractions.

"Yeah, I'm in here," Alain said as he levered himself up into a sitting position. "Sorry. I don't normally talk to myself," he said as he saw Richard standing in the open door. "What's up?"

[Richard]

Richard heard the voice reply to his first inquiry, but could not tell who it was just from the voice. He really need to take the time to match the sound of someone's voice to an image of their face. It would make it easier to know if it was a good idea to interrupt them while they were doing something. The door opened to reveal Alain standing there.

"I was practicing my dog morph when I heard you say something, so I decided to see if you needed any help with something." Actually, Richard was just curious to who was in the room and what they were doing, but he decided it might be better to be a little more conspicuous about what he was doing.

[Alain]

"Oh, sorry if I interrupted you," Alain said, running a hand through his hair and pushing it out of his eyes. "I was just practicing myself with all this morphing stuff." Alain pushed himself off the floor and walked over to the wall where there was a small keyboard. The symbols on the keys didn't come from any human alphabet but the keyboard was designed for human hands, a sign that the yeerk technology had adapted to its latest host species.

Alain easily manipulated the keyboard to open the file Jullian had made available to them all. He didn't worry about how his familiarity with yeerk technology might look to Richard. He hadn't told anyone here he'd been a controller once but it wasn't exactly the most uncommon background in a world that had been under yeerk rule for the past eleven years.

"I was just testing out this section," Alain said, pointing to the paragraph about morph fatigue. "I wanted to see if it were true that morphing made you tired."

[Richard]

"Oh, you didn't interrupt me. I was actually afraid that I might be interrupting you when I knocked on the door." Richard didn't even notice how easily Alain handled the weird keyboard, but he did notice how weird the keyboard looked. He was not sure if that was the way it was supposed to look, but Richard only cared about the big picture of things like how he was going to pass the history class.

The section that Alain had mentioned was not one that Richard had read, so he was glad that he had came into the room. His next little idea was to see how long it would take him to morph from human to dog to back to human to magpie. It was probably a better idea to get a better grasp on the course material before trying a stunt like that.

"And what did your little test tell you about morphing and its effects on your body?" Richard assumed that Alain had found that section to be accurate as he had said that he needed to do better, but it was never nice to assume things that you really didn't know.

[Alain]

"That I should listen to my elders, even when they are only sixteen," Alain said with a smile. If being around people like Richard and Dustin made Alain feel like he'd gotten left back, Jullian made him feel almost like a parent. But looks were apparently deceiving. So far Jullian hadn't told him anything that hadn't turned out to be true about morphing and his book seemed pretty accurate so far. Alain just supposed he'd have to get over the fact that he was almost a decade older than the guy.

"I don't know why but it does make you tired." Alain shrugged. "I figure it's better to find that out now and to try to get slightly prepared for it before our loving teachers throw us to the wolves. Nineteen made it sound like we'd have to do a lot of morph healing in her class and Jullian's made it clear he's going to do an entire section on Endurance Morphing. Plus all those 'combat situations' they were talking about. So I think I'm going to practice some more."

[Richard]

Richard had a similar problem with taking instructions from someone younger than he was, but Jullian seemed to know his stuff when it came to morphing. It was actually weird to have instructors that weren't like ten to fifteen years older than him, but that was how it was during this war. This probably meant that everything in Jullian's book was probably important, so Richard made a mental note to look at again.

Richard didn't have a clue why morphing continuously was so exhausting, but it might have something to do with that energy thing that was mentioned in the book. He couldn't really remember what it had said, but Richard could have sworn that fast morphing would use up too much of the energy. "I am not so sure how bad of a combat situation we can be put in with the morphs we have. My dog morph is not really large enough to take on anything but a weaponless child to a small rodent, but I agree with you on the whole need to practice again."

[Alain]

"Yeah, and I don't think my meerkat can stand up to a Hork Bajir," Alain said with frank honesty. "But somehow I don't think that means they are going to go easy on us. They've had a long time to devise ways to teach us and they seem pretty serious about it."

He walked back towards Richard but ended up sitting on the ground. He easily folded his long legs into an crossed position and leaned back on his arms. "Well I'm morphed out for a while. Do you want to try your morphs instead? I'm not sure how wise it would be to put some of these animals together."

[Richard]

"I agree, and I bet they are going to make us do something like scouting or something." Richard could picture Nineteen saying that the use of ankle bites and crawling up human controllers' pant legs were the way to win this war. Everyone knew that those two things were the most annoying things that a person could experience. At least, that was Richard's opinion on the subject.

Alain asked him if he wanted to practice one of his morphs, and Richard thought it was a good idea as he was probably one of those people who could not really get control of certain morphs like the dog right off the bat. He usually ended up trying to play fetch with the closest person to him, which always got him a few weird facial expressions. "Do you got a request for a specific type of morph? Bug, Land or Air?"

[Alain]

"I'm not the teacher," Alain said quickly. He didn't want anyone to feel like he was bossing them around. He didn't know any more about morphing or being an animorph than anyone here. He was here to learn and he was serious about that. But he didn't think he was better than anyone else or even more knowledgeable. They were all starting at square one with their chosen career and he wasn't arrogant enough to assume he was the only one with a past.

"Morph whatever you want though if you're gonna morph a bug give me some warning so I can look away," he said with a smile. "And not step on you. You may not appreciate that much." He stood up and moved back a bit. Whatever Richard ended up morphing he'd probably want some space. There were no desks to sit on so he ended up just sitting back against the wall.

[Richard]

"Alright then, but I think I will go something that doesn't get stepped on." Richard closed his eyes and focused on the image of a magpie in his head. His lips began to become hard as they formed a beak. It was his least favorite part of morphing this particular animal as it always seemed weird. His arms shortened as his fingers became covered in feathers. The rest of his body began to shrink down because his bones were shortening.

His started shaping up to look like a bird's when his feet started to look like chicken legs. Richard couldn't wait until he got a bird morph with some actual talons on it. He would look so much more awesome with talons regardless of whatever bird it was. It took a couple more minutes for the changes to finish but he was soon standing there as a magpie looking at Alain.

Richard's bird brain began looking around for food, but seeing none began to flap his new wings to start looking around the place. He caught himself when his bird eyes got a view of his surroundings, so he landed on Alain's head. <<How's it hanging dude?>>

[Alain]

Alain watched Richard morph with interest. He didn't have a bird morph of his own yet. Jullian had insisted they get a bug morph but had left the other two choices up to them. Alain had decided something that could run around would probably be helpful and had chosen a ferret and he'd been torn between a bird and something that could swim for the last one. In the end he'd chosen something that could swim. The Earth was %70 covered in water and he'd imagine he'd end up in it eventually. Besides, he had his own reasons for wanting to know what it was like to swim when water was your natural element. So he'd chosen an otter.

But a bird would probably be really useful as well and he decided he'd get one for his final morph before leaving the Academy. Maybe something that could see in the dark. That was the one thing he minded about all of his current morphs.

Alain instinctual ducked when Richard headed his way but it didn't stop the other animorph from landing on his head. "Fine I guess," Alain answered, his eyes looking up even though he couldn't see Richard. "How's the weather up there?"

[Richard]

Richard felt like he was in a similar situation that the small bird on a rhino's back was except there was more hair in this one. He felt like he should be pointing out that there was some sort of danger nearby, but alas there wasn't any. He wasn't sure what good this morph would do in a fight, but Richard could see it's uses during scouting missions as it was hardly noticeable in the dark.

<<The weather could use a small breeze or something.>> Richard refrained from walking around on Alain's head as he really couldn't be sure how level it was for a bird. He didn't want to fall off and hurt himself for some dumb reason. It was the hair that really threw him for a loop as it was long enough to cover the forehead, so it was thick enough to provided the illusion that it was something that a small bird could walk on. <<Has your hair always been this long?>>

[Alain]

Alain just sighed. He'd never gotten this many comments on his hair before coming here. And it wasn't like he had the longest hair here. Nineteen's hair was pretty long and even most of the guys had hair you could run a hand through. His didn't bother him that much. Only rarely did it fall into his eyes and, after all this time, he hardly noticed the tickling feeling on his eyebrows.

"No it hasn't," Alain answered honestly. "But it has for the past few years, yeah. Why? When was the last time you got a hair cut?" Barbers weren't exactly in business anymore and it had always seemed wiser to just let his hair grown than to try to cut it himself. But maybe that was because one of his brothers had once tried to cut his own hair and Alain had been able to make fun of him for weeks.