Start of Something... Tedious [Party, Nineteen]

[Drake]

Drake smiled at the friendly banter between Nineteen and Alain. They were definitely friends, even if it may have only been a recent development. He wasn't surprised to find out that Alain was Nineteen's only friend who was going to Rio, either. The only other two people were himself and Aubrey. He figured she hadn't spent any more time talking to Aubrey than she had spent talking to him. But that would change soon enough.

"Well, we'll al be spending a lot of time together before too long. Hopefully we can get along well enough together so that we don't end up becoming our own worst enemies." Drake gave a wink to show that he didn't think that would happen. "And hopefully we will get new members to join us before too long, too. Then you two will be the experienced faction members who can show them the ropes. You know, assuming the academy doesn't teach them everything."

[Alain]

"Actually the Academy teaches us everything we need to know." Alain said in a quite serious tone. "I'm pretty sure we are better animorphs than you are," he said, motioning to Nineteen and himself. "Just letting you know," he said, a little bit of humor slipping into his tone despite himself, "so you aren't embarrassed when we out-morph you."

If there was anyone capable of out-morphing Drake at the Academy Alain wasn't him. It had taken him forever to get the trick of morphing down and Jullian had been nice about it but had often looked at him with poorly concealed pity in his eyes. It was obvious to his instructor that he was just as studious about learning morphing as he was about the rest of his studies but maybe that was why he did so poorly. He couldn't count the number of times Jullian had given him lectures about being intuitive and allowing things to flow. Alain over thought everything, it was just in his nature, and thinking through a morph apparently made it take longer and less smooth. He'd finally gained some level of proficiency though, if only from practice.

[Nineteen]

"God save me from training any more recruits," Nineteen said with a laugh. "And Alain, stop provoking our Faction Leader. He'll give us crappy jobs. That, or turn into a Bison and gore us." She looked over at Alain, mockingly serious. "They give all the best toys to the big boys and girls."

Nineteen glanced back to the water, and her eyebrows raised minimally. There weren't two people swimming anymore but two, and she spotted a fin passing between them. Must have been Adrian, seeing as Dustin and Suji were left. So they'd started morphing in the pool? Well, that was what it was there for, but it kind of seemed like bring your job into the party, right?

Maybe, but it's not like we're accountants for a living. Nah, when your job came with these kinds of perks, maybe you were allowed. Like if you were a professional juggler or something.

[Drake]

Drake actually believed Alain at first, but figured it out by the end of his explanation. Nineteen's reaction confirmed his suspicions and a wide smile crossed his face. Drake was glad that his faction members weren't afraid to joke around with him. He didn't know what he would do if they acted around him like he had around Rian. Probably get really, really bored or something.

"You're right about me having the best toys," he joked. "So you better behave. The crappy job thing is right too. Unfortunately you don't have to provoke me to get them though. Everyone will have their fair share. Although the troublemakers will probably score themselves an extra fair share."

[Alain]

"Well hopefully we won't have to worry about it for a while," Alain said. "I only know of one new recruit so far and everyone who's going isn't a trouble maker." He glanced at Nineteen and decided the statement was true enough. Between them they may have broken a rule or two but it was nothing compared to her former classmates to here her tell it. Besides, it wasn't the type of malevolent trouble that resulted in extra chores.

"So Aubrey is the other person going with us right?" Alain asked, changing the subject again. He hadn't met the higher ranking animorph and he figured Drake would have pointed her out if she were at the party. Fin's stories had just painted her as the same hero he'd painted them all as but it didn't really tell them what she was like at all. "What is she like? Are we going to get to meet her?"

[Nineteen]

Had her reputation really degraded that much? Nineteen sighed. Well, she could do what she always did when she felt like she didn't get up to as much well-needed pranking and havoc-wreaking: blame Seiya. What he hadn't been able to leech out of her as a recruit had been pretty thoroughly squashed when she'd been given responsibility. Damn him.

Drake, on the other hand, didn't seem very much like Seiya at all. He didn't seem like he'd really be upset by a little mischief. Then again, he also didn't strike her as the type of leader that she'd feel a particularly strong need to rebel against. He wasn't uptight, didn't seem to take himself too seriously. Probably better for everyone involved that way: Nineteen sometimes (often) had issues with authority, sure, but not as a matter of principle. Under the right supervision, she fell into line fairly well. It'd even surprised her.

Nineteen listened for Drake's response about Aubrey. She definitely didn't have a problem working with other young women, and it'd be a welcome change after running with guys for the majority of her time as an Animorph -- both recruit and professor. "Yeah, like is she cool?" Nineteen smirked to show that it wasn't a real question. Nineteen hadn't actually met any severely "uncool" Animorphs. No one with huge attitude problems... or at least, none worse than hers had been when she started. Maybe something about the job ironed that out of a person.

[Drake]

"Yeah, Aubrey is our other faction member. And she is very cool. At least I think so. I've been through almost as much with her as I have been with Suji, even though I didn't meet her until I moved to Dallas. I don't know if you will meet her before we leave though..." Drake scanned the room quickly. "That is really up to her, and I don't see her right now. If she is here, she isn't in my line of sight."

"But yeah, Aubrey is pretty cool. And she has a buffalo morph, like me, even though it is a different kind of buffalo. So as a team we can create all kinds of destruction." Drake wasn't sure where he was going with this so he turned the conversation back to Alain and Nineteen. "Do you two have any animals in particular you would hope to morph some day? Big or small, it doesn't matter. Maybe I could pull some strings or something and make sure it is an option for you." Drake shrugged. He had no idea if that was within his powers as a faction leader, but there was no harm in trying.

[Alain]

Alain tried to think of something he may want to become some day but nothing immediately sprung to mind. He'd never thought of morphs that way. He'd always seen them as weapons that he would be issued when he needed them and not before that. But, now that he thought about it, he'd always been given a choice about what morphs to pick up. He'd been given the impression that picking your own morphs was a pretty standard practice. Jullian had only suggested general types but hundreds, sometimes thousands of animals fit that type and he'd been allowed to choose which one he wanted. He'd assumed it was because Jullian really seemed to believe in the animorph-morph connection. But looking at Drake made him realize the practice had to pre-date Jullian so it must just be a common thing.

"A tiger shark," Alain answered after a moment of staring off in the direction of the pool. He could no longer see Suji or any of the others. He assumed they were in the water somewhere though because their towels were still by the side of the pool. "I want a tiger shark," he said with more certainty, looking back at Nineteen and Drake. "I saw one once and I was pretty impressed."

[Nineteen]

"A rhino, totally." Nineteen grinned; it was hard to tell how serious she was. "I mean, can you imagine that sucker coming for you?" There were probably more practical morphs to wish for, and she wasn't really sure it was her ideal morph anyway, but it seemed like a fun idea. That, and this was just make-believe, anyway, wasn't it? She'd asked Seiya before to let her morph an elephant, and he wasn't having any of it.

"A shark would be cool too though," Nineteen added. "Like a Great White or something. I don't know, the bigger the better, right?" She knew it wasn't really true: bigger generally meant less maneuverable, and harder to get in and out of places, which was the bread and butter to surviving as an Animorph. "I don't know, maybe a bear."

Nineteen twisted her fork on her plate before looking up again, giving Drake and Alain each a lopsided smile. "So what would you never want to morph?"

[Drake]

"So a couple sharks, a rhino and a bear? I'll keep it in mind, but no promises. I'm still not sure what the exact protocol is for handing out new morphs to academy students." Drake took another sip of his red stuff. "And yeah, bigger isn't always better. Just try walking through a doorway in a giraffe morph. But that doesn't mean size doesn't have its advantages either. It is a plusses and minuses sort of thing."

"But hmm, what would I never want to morph?" Drake asked, getting back to Nineteen's newest question. "That is a tough one because I have already been a lot of the gross stuff. I guess I wouldn't want to morph something like an earthworm if I didn't have to. Oh, or a taxxon. I think I would rather morph an earthworm than a taxxon."

[Alain]

"Hmm, tough question. I suppose there isn't something I wouldn't morph if I didn't have to. But what would I never want to morph?"

Alain's mind immediately started running through all the animals he knew but he kept returning to the image of a Taxxon and all of the horror stories he'd heard and witnessed involving the things. Added to that, Diya had once trained in a Taxxon body and had once leaked a bit of the memory to Alain in an unguarded moment. The alien's hunger was, no pun intended, all consuming and Alain never wanted to have to feel it.

"I agree with Drake on that one. I never want to be a Taxxon. But," his expression darkened for a moment as he realized what would be worse than a taxxon, "more, I would never want to be a yeerk." He glanced at Drake and he hoped Drake would not take his distaste for their enemy as a sign that Alain wasn't willing to do what needed to be done. "What about you?" he asked, turning back to Nineteen.

[Nineteen]

"No love for the killer pus-bag centipedes, eh?" Nineteen smirked at the two of them. Taxxons weren't pretty to look at, but she'd never been squeamish. There was the overwhelming, insatiable hunger that apparently dominated their lives. Maybe Nineteen just didn't have a strong enough imagination to be properly terrified of that, but the thought didn't strike her as particularly repulsive. Maybe it had something to do with an intimate knowledge of dangerous and distasteful impulses of her own. "I don't know. It'd be an interesting ride at least. They're too easy to pop though."

Nineteen considered for a moment. She could see why Alain wouldn't want to be a Yeerk: they were pretty helpless in their natural form. Though... no, he wasn't just talking about that. Well, Alain had been a Controller. Then again, she had too, in the beginning. And she couldn't say that she'd hesitate to test drive a Yeerk. Which was really saying she wouldn't pause if given the opportunity to infest a human, wasn't it?

...yeah there was some kind of morality-problem caught up in that. Was she supposed to have some inherent disgust at the idea of doing to another person what the Yeerks were doing to humans? Probably. Did she? Not particularly.

"I think I'd have to go with just a slug. They're totally useless, defenseless. You can't even pass yourself off behind enemy lines," she added with a smirk. "I'll take big and armored any day, over that."

[Drake]

Drake didn't want to morph a yeerk either. However, for him it was more that he never wanted to be in a situation where he would have to morph a yeerk rather than not wanting to become the creature itself. Although it didn't sound all that glamorous. It was about the same as Nineteen's choice of slug. "Taxxon, yeerk, slug. None of them a good choice."

"Alright, how about this," Drake said after contemplating for a moment on what to ask next. "If you could have only one morph to use against the yeerks, what would it be? Oh, and to make it interesting, it can't be a mammal and it has to be from earth." Drake waited for a response while trying to come up with his own answer.

[Alain]

Alain grimaced when he heard the question, though it was not an expression of actual pain or discomfort. Instead it was just a comical exaggeration of the difficulty the question posed. He wanted to answer tiger shark but he'd already told Drake he wanted one of those and Drake had asked him to make his answer interesting. Repeating a previous answer probably did not meet that qualification.

He glanced around the party and then at Nineteen and smiled as the answer came to him. "A human," he answered, looking at Drake. "We're not the most dangerous animals as far as natural weapons go but there is a reason we're on the top of the food chain, at least before they showed up. At the end of the day I'd rather be able to operate a gun or a ship or a truck than be able to rip something apart with my teeth. If it were just tigers that were left to defend Earth we'd be in a pretty sorry state. They couldn't defend it from us after all. But humans who can become tigers? Suddenly we're a thorn in the yeerk's side."