FNG [Party, Dustin]

[Dustin]

"Who needs a water morph when you have the body of a former lifeguard?" Dustin joked as he treaded water. Not that he actually though being a good swimmer was an acceptable substitute for an animal morph born to swim. He would definitely have to get a water morph sometime. Maybe an orca. Or even a shark like Adrian. But that might mean he would have to go find an actual shark if they didn't have any shark DNA in their blood bank. Dustin wasn't sure exactly what kinds of stuff they had in there.

"Yeah, so what's this shark morph you got? Is it something cool, like a great white? How cool would that be? That's probably, like, the epitome of water morphs." Dustin ducked his head just under the water and began swimming around with one hand sticking above the surface like a shark fin.

Back at the table he had felt really nervous, but here in the water he was more comfortable. It probably had something to do with his memories of being a lifeguard. When he was at the pool, he was the authority figure and people were supposed to listen to him. And so he was slightly less timid within his natural element.

[Adrian]

Adrian treaded water and then decided he was too cold to do that. He struck out from the little circle of people and began swimming around in circles, almost like a shark except for the fact that he was a clumsy human and felt it while in the water. He'd never been a huge swimmer and he could only really limp his way through the water. He wouldn't sink but he wouldn't be setting any records either. That may change if he went to Miami and they really had to do as much swimming as Suji thought. Maybe he should change it on his own and practice swimming. Surely swimming would be akin to running in any environment that had a lot of water and he'd perfected running a long time ago. It was a vital skill in a yeerk controlled world.

"Yeah, I got a shark, nothing as big and flashy as a great white though. Figured that may draw unwanted attention. Uh, I can see the use of this pool," Adrian said, looking around as he considered demonstrating his water morph and then worried about drowning in the process. They had practiced all types of morphing under some ridiculous situations, but never in water. "Well, sink or swim," he said to himself and the others. "Save me if I'm drowning," he added to Dustin as he pictured his morph.

Gills, gills, gills Adrian thought. Jullian had spent some time with him on piece wise morphing and Adrian had taken to it more than he had anything else. He couldn't control his morphs like Jullian could, or even how Dustin could, but normally he could concentrate on one aspect of the animal and get that first and then the morph spread from there in a random order.

He thought of gills and the slits opened up on the side of his neck and then the change began to spread. His skin turned gray starting from that area while the change also spread internally, beginning to link the gills to his lungs and then his lungs began to change. Adrian had a panicked moment when he couldn't breathe and he sunk below the water. His gills pulled in water and he could breathe but it was like breathing in a smoke filled room and for a second he couldn't figure out why. Then he remembered they were in fresh water. He didn't know how that affected him specifically but his gills weren't designed for it and it hurt his breathing a bit. Not badly enough to stop him though. Maybe if he'd been a fresh water animal in salt water it would have been harder.

His legs melted together and turned into a long, lean tail as his arms shortened and formed fins. His mouth seemed to stretch and stretch and began to fill with more teeth than he thought any mouth should hold as his head flattened out to fit his new mouth. His eyes rotated to the side of his head and a fin poked out on his back as the morph finished.

Below his own mind the shark's mind rose up like an animal coming out of the depths. It wasn't as aggressive as some of the animals he'd morphed. The fly certainly had simple instincts but strong ones. In comparison, the shark was cool and calm and hardly seemed to be thinking at all. Adrian glided through the water around Dustin and Suji's legs. He wasn't a large shark but he was still longer than he was tall as a human.

<<I like it,>> Adrian said "outloud" as he swam. <<Though it doesn't like fresh water too much.>>

[Suji]

Suji laughed at Dustin's shark fin, and then watched as Adrian morphed. As far as sharks went, it was very decorative, "pretty" even. Tiger sharks might have faint stripes, but they were very noticeable on this fish.

"Oh, there are some water morphs about as cool as a great white," Suji said with a half-smile while Adrian continued morphing. When he'd finished and swam between them as they treaded water, she thought about her crocodile. Those things were known to eat bull sharks; this thing wouldn't have stood a chance against the reptile.

Defensive over your morph? Suji asked herself, smiling. Not really. She didn't need any reassurance that the crocodile was incredibly dangerous, a prehistoric monster. Suji reached down, felt the rough shark skin as Adrian passed by again. She remembered the night that a tiger shark had passed under Junayd's boat. Part of her regretted not acquiring it then and there. Sharks were pretty damn cool.

"Want to see mine? Not a shark, but what passes for my water morph." She directed the question mostly at Dustin, unsure if Adrian could make out the words.

[Dustin]

Dustin watched Adrian's morph with awe. It wasn't pretty, but it was still intriguing. Definitely not as bad as some of the shifts into bugs that he had seen. Dustin was ready to rush in and help Adrian at a moments notice if it looked like he was drowning, but luckily that never happened. He wasn't sure how he might resuscitate a half-shark person anyway.

"That is a really cool morph," Dustin commented. He would definitely have to acquire something like it sometime. Adrian seemed to move through the water so effortlessly.

Then Suji asked Dustin if he would like to see her water morph. "Yeah, definitely. Go right ahead. You got me curious now." Dustin attempted to keep up with Adrian as best he could while waiting for Suji's morph to take place.

[Adrian]

<<Sure,>> Adrian said as he circled the group, testing out the morph. It was the first time he'd ever morphed the shark since he'd picked it up. He hadn't known where he would be assigned but they had been told where the new factions would be so when he'd been told he had achieved the rank of Animorph First-Class and was allowed a new morph from the DNA bank he'd thought pretty carefully about what he'd wanted and decided a water morph would be the most useful.

He'd reviewed a lot of choices. When he'd first walked into the DNA bank and began scanning their collection via one of the terminals he'd been thinking something like Alain's otter might come in handy. Eventually he'd discarded that option since it couldn't breathe water and he didn't want to be stuck in the middle of the ocean as a bite sized mammal. He'd automatically ruled out most fish for the same reason. Which had led him to the larger mammals and the sharks. Between a whale and a shark Adrian still gave some consideration to style. Besides, sharks could actually breathe in water and whales still couldn't.

He'd chosen the nicest looking shark and been pretty happy with his choice. This first morph experience wasn't doing anything to make him doubt it either.

<<Are you a whale?>> Adrian asked, wondering what else could hold its own in an ocean environment.

[Suji]

"No whale. A bit smaller than that." Only a bit, though. Suji smirked to herself. Out of courtesy, she swam away from the group. Then she began morphing.

As always, it wasn't the sensation of her skin hardening into the tough, rigid hide, or her teeth getting longer and sharper that was most disconcerting. The weirdest part was the feeling of growing longer. She wasn't getting bigger, the way the lion morph felt, or just smaller, like her owl. It was a stretching feeling, like you were made out of putty and being (thankfully painlessly) pulled thin. The only thing like it was her cobra, but even that couldn't compare to the sheer size of the saltwater crocodile.

At nearly twenty feet long when she finished the morph, the crocodile was a behemoth creature. Turning slowly in the water, Suji was already regretting the decision. People were probably going to want to hop in even less now, whether or not the giant reptile was Animorph.

Cold blooded now, Suji appreciated the water temperature even less. The croc's mind registered both Dustin and Adrian. Adrian's shark form looked more like a typical meal than Dustin's kicking body, but the crocodile wasn't a picky eater at all. In any case, there was nothing here that came across as a threat. <<Some kind of horror movie monster, huh?>>

[Dustin]

Dustin stopped trying to follow Adrian as Suji began her morph. It didn't take Dustin long to figure out what she was becoming, basically. Growing up in Florida made you all too familiar with crocodilians. Although alligators were what lived there, and this wasn't an alligator. At least not like from the everglades.

"That... is huge. I've never seen one so big." He wouldn't admit it, but the huge creature was making him a bet nervous. He knew what those types of creatures could do, and it wouldn't be pleasant if it did it.

She, he corrected himself. If she did it. That's Suji, not a wild animal. For some reason reminding himself of that fact didn't seem to help much.

[Adrian]

As Suji began to change something that couldn't exactly even be called a question began to rise to the surface of the shark's mind. It was more like watching a machine slowly go through simple calculations. To say that the shark wondered if Suji was food would have been inaccurate. But it began the process of determining whether she was food as she began to change.

The bigger she grew the less likely it seemed like he should eat her. It wasn't as if humans were the shark's regular meal anyway but that was like saying black holes did not usually swallow up the sun. It wasn't because they weren't inclined to, the sun just wasn't close enough. The shark didn't fear and it didn't reason. Suji and other humans were too big so it didn't eat them. It would happily eat a human if it were smaller, or cut into little bits.

This simple calculation was even more pertinent as Suji gained mass. Adrian continued to swim in lazy circles and figure eights through the water. If colored lines had appeared along his path he it would have resembled a popular screen saver. The bigger she got the more space he gave her until finally a sea monster was in the water next to him. Even then the shark didn't fear but it did begin swimming away.

<<Nice morph,>> Adrian offered as he began to dive to a lower level of the pool. <<How well does it swim?>>

[Suji]

<<Yeah, it's practically a dinosaur, isn't it? And he didn't come from blood vial in a fridge, either. Acquired it on a trip in Indonesia.>> Suji left out the other details. Maybe they would have served as a good warning that danger was everyone, or some kind of moral lesson about always being aware of your surroundings. In the end, though, it was still a sore subject for her. Suji didn't think it always would be, but with the idea of Drake going off to a different faction heavy on her mind, it somehow didn't seem appropriate.

<<Swims all right,>> she replied to Adrian. Taking a breath of air, she submerged herself, following down to about the same level of the pool. <<Can definitely lunge really well, both in water and on land, or going from one to the other. But it's kind of like driving a battering ram.>> Suji turned it the water, testing the crocodiles flexibility. She hadn't gotten many chances to do so, and she was surprised how much easier the movement came, though she knew she shouldn't have been. <<Turning is all right in the water, but it's a hassle on land. Lots of tail to get in the way.>>

The tail, however, was unbelievably good at propulsion in the water, and to be fair, it could break a Hork Bajir's leg with a good swipe on land. She mentally winced as she remembered what it'd been like to have her tail shot off back in Dallas. That whole sequence of events had been one nightmare after another. <<Very good for lurking, though.>>

[Dustin]

Dustin could hardly imagine the bravery Suji must have. She would have to have nerves of steel to approach something like that in the wild. Dustin knew that he himself would have never been able to do it. Boy, if that thing caught you trying to sneak up on it, there would be nothing left of you.

Since both Adrian and Suji were under the water now, Dustin doubted either would be able to hear him. So instead of talking, he took a deep breath and dove down. He wouldn't be able to stay underwater as long as Suji, and definitely not as long as Adrian, but he could stay down for a minute or two. Maybe long enough to see how far he could dive down into the freezing water.

He waved at the shark and the croc as he made his way downward.

[Adrian]

<<Haha, haven't you had enough lurking in the past few days?>> Adrian asked, teasing her slightly. He had heard some of the gossip going around the Academy about fans and stalkers. In a few ways it had even helped him. As an animorph himself his popularity and mystique had been enhanced by Suji, Drake, Aubrey and Dean's presence. Adrian had considered trading on it and had certainly played it up a little, but not a lot. In the end, he liked the people he went to bed with to go to bed with him, not a legend or an idea.

Adrian resisted the urge to snap as Dustin went by. He wasn't swimming that closely but he wasn't too far off either and it may have been worth it to take a little bite out of him. <<This morph is...>> Adrian tried to think of the right word. The first one that came to mind was ruthless but that was wrong. It assumed the shark was ignoring more ruthful feelings or considerations but it wasn't, it only had one consideration. <<single minded. It's a lesson in focus.>>

[Suji]

Suji twisted the crocodiles body, felt it rolling in the water. She tested different sweeps of her tail, and how much she could drive herself forward with it. <<I don't know what you're talking about,>> she replied to Adrian, and didn't bother to make it sound convincing. Whether he was implying that she'd been lurked out of sight, or had to deal with people lurking around to approach her, either would have been true.

<<I've never morphed a fish. I think the animal are more like that the further back you go in evolutionary history. Except for bugs. Those are neurotic no matter what. Maybe just because they're so small.>> Suji very lazily followed Dustin, and did it in plain view -- even if they clearly knew it was her, there would probably always be something disconcerting about seeing the saltwater crocodile coming after you.

<<Want a lift back to the surface?>> She asked the diving boy, but didn't come any closer before she had an answer.

[Dustin]

Dustin was having fun swimming next to a great big croc and a shark that was big enough too. They were two animals that he doubted he would have ever been able to swim next to in the wild. And he definitely would have never swam next to both of them at the same time. The fact that they were actually people didn't lessen the awesomeness very much either.

Even so, he was getting a bit nervous when Suji started following him. All it would take was a second of her losing control of the instincts and he could be a goner. But she was a faction leader, so that meant she was an expert at controlling her morphs, right?

Just when he was getting ready to go get some more air, Suji asked, <<Want a lift back to the surface?>> Talk about perfect timing.

He almost said no, but how many times do you get a chance to ride a crocodile? He gave a thumbs-up signal, then swam over to find a handhold. He was already imagining the looks on peoples' faces when he would break through the surface of the pool.

[Adrian]

<<Hmm, I never thought of it that way,>> he said as he continued to swim his lazy circles. Most of his morphs were pretty "evolved" if you could use that as a measurement. His fly did have pretty strong instincts but Jullian and Dustin had assured him that was to be expected when Dustin had given his bug morph presentation. He'd never really thought about why or why more "evolved" animals had traded simple instincts for more complicated ones, even the ability to reason in some cases and finally the ability to think in the case of humans.

<<I think I'm going to head to the surface as well, unless we want to try to do a free willy into the salt section. My morph is holding up pretty well in fresh water but I'm starting to feel sick, like I inhaled too much helium or something. I don't think this is good for me.>> Adrian made a turn towards the surface and marveled at the truly three dimensional world in the water. He could definitely get used to this, even as a human. <<Dustin, could you give me swimming lessons sometime?>> He asked on a whim, knowing the other animorph would not be able to answer until they broke the surface.

[Suji]

<<I think I'm going to demorph after this. The croc isn't so happy about how cold the water is.>> That, and she wasn't going to try to propel herself into the saltwater section. It was an interesting idea, but the crocodile's body was just too long for her to feel comfortable doing it. That, and definitely not with Dustin riding along. Even normally-sized alligators and crocodiles could break legs with a good tail swipe... for all she knew, getting caught dead-on with this thing's tail would snap a spine.

As it was, she tried to make the ride quick enough to be enjoyable for Dustin, but not so fast as to lose him. She was very, very mindful of her tail. Overall, the crocodile was irritated with the extra weight clinging on, but didn't feel threatened by it. When she breached the surface it wasn't with all the force she could muster, but they definitely shot up a couple feet, before she slapped back down onto the water. Suji waited for Dustin to disengage before beginning a demorph.