Time is a Valuable Thing (Open)

[Richard]

Richard was in one of the empty classrooms doing a little fine tuning before they were all shipped out to their respective factions. He was trying to cut the time that it took for him to morph down by a minute or so, which he knew would be difficult because he was still a beginner. He figured that he would probably only shave off ten to fifteen seconds by the time he was done. Richard started the stopwatch so that he could tell how long it took him to morph. He knew that he wouldn't be able to stop the watch, but his dog eyes were more than capable of reading the numbers.

The image of a dog formed in his mind and the changes began to occur. Fur appeared over his body at the same time that his fingers became fused together to start off where his forepaws would be. He hit the floor as his knees popped backwards to form his back set of legs. His ears moved up the side of his head and reshaped themselves to be triangular instead of oval-ish.

His bones began to shrink as his spine elongated to produce his tail. A dog's muzzle pushes out of his face to complete the image. He turned his head toward the watch and read the time. <<Three minutes and fifteen seconds. That is not a good time at all>> Richard demorphed back to his normal form and decided to try again. He reset the watch and started the process over again.

The morph began again with the same changes in their usual random order of occurring with the muzzle forming first. When it was done, Richard checked the stopwatch. <<I cut the time by six seconds.>> He didn't see it as much of an improvement, but the guide that they had been given had talked about the fact that morphing even when done by someone with years of experience took at least a minute to be completed so Richard figured that he should be happy with it.

He demorphed again and sat there for a minute thinking about how he could improve the time. There was something that he had read about why certain people were able to morph at a greater speed than others. Richard just couldn't think of what it was. It would probably come to him when he least suspected that it would, so he didn't dwell on it too much.

[Drake]

Drake was wandering the blade ship's halls once again, thinking. It had become a habit of his during his short time on the ship. It helped him to clear his mind.

Right now he was going over what he would do in Rio de Janeiro after arriving. First they would need to check over their headquarters to make sure everything was in order. Then they would need to scout out the nearby area and check for danger. Or maybe they should do that first. Should they have a security schedule before they landed? And what time of day would it be when they arrived?

"Oh, man, I'm going to have a non-stop headache, aren't I?" he said to himself. Judging by the work load his other faction leaders always seemed to have, he wouldn't doubt it. "Alright, break time."

Drake observed his surroundings and tried to figure out where he was. He wasn't too far from the classrooms. "I wonder if any are in session." He had yet to observe one while it was taking place. So far he had only seen the rooms while they were empty, but he wanted to find out what they were all about if he could.

"Morphing 101 sounds like a good choice," he said as he reached the door. He knocked lightly before opening it. "Hello? I hope I'm not interrupting." There was a guy in the room abou the same age as Drake. One of the new animorphs, but from Suji's faction.

[Richard]

Richard looked up to see who had asked him a question. It was the guy from the Bug Fighter wreckage. He should have remembered the guy's name because he was sure that someone had said it during that whole incident, but Richard's memory was not really working that well at the moment with all the things that had been going on. It was a very confusing time at the Academy with the outgoing graduates and the incoming trainees that would be taking their place.

"You aren't interrupting anything that vital. Just some last minute training before we get shipped out of here for parts that are sort of known." Richard didn't mind the company anyway because that meant that someone would be watching him just in case he passed out from morphing too much. It was never good to over-exert yourself while morphing because you might get stuck in a bad situation, where you are too tired to morph and that would be very bad.

Richard tried to size up the man that was in front of him, but he wasn't sure what how to categorize him. In his personal opinion, Richard did not see this guy as a real threat, but there was always something hidden beneath the surface about people who became Animorphs so he figured that this guy had some special skill that set him apart from the rest of them. "So my name is Richard. And you are?"

[Drake]

"Oh, I'm sorry. The name's Drake. Drake Blear." Drake had gotten so used to people here who he had never met before knowing his name, that it had caught him off guard when someone actually didn't know it. It was kind of refreshing, actually.

Drake stepped the rest of the way into the classroom and leaned against the wall next to the door, arms crossed. "So you are doing some training, huh? What kind of training? Anything I could help with?"

Drake himself had never really done any thorough training in his early days. And not much in his later days either. Most of his "training" had come from real-world experiences. Which, as it turns out, was probably not a very responsible way to go about it. But he was naive. Probably still was, to some extent.

[Richard]

"Well it is nice to meet you, Drake Blear." The name clicked in his head after he heard it for some reason. It was someone that random people had talked about in the mess hall during meals or something. He had never really paid attention to what they were saying as he was more interested in the food in front of him. Richard was not really a person that was very talkative around meal time. It was a common trait in his family he thought.

What was the training that he was doing called again? Richard really didn't keep up with specific names as they weren't really helpful when performing the task that the training required. "I think it is called speed morphing. You know where you try to cut your time down by using your thoughts or energy to speed up a morph, so that it doesn't take as long as it normally would. It seemed like a good trick to have in the field."

Richard was not sure how the man could really help with that type of training unless he had some tips on how to make a morph to happen at a faster pace. It was a little weird to think about the fact that he was sitting there talking with someone that could be considered a veteran like they were two normal people. "Do you know anything about that?"

[Drake]

"It depends on what you mean by knowing about it." Drake stopped leaning against the wall and took a step forward. "I have definitely experienced a shortening of the amount of time it takes for me to morph since I became an animorph. I think I'm down to about just over two minutes now. Maybe less if it's a really tense situation. So in that sense, yes, I know a thing or two about it."

"However," Drake raised his eyebrows lazily. "If you are wondering if I know a way to teach you how to morph faster, then the answer is no. I have no idea. It is something that sort of just happens." Drake wanted to try and express what he meant better, but it took him a moment to think of a way to do it.

"Morphing is kind of like learning to walk, I guess. Everyone is pretty wobbly at first, but you get better with time. And once you get good at it, then it's kind of hard to get much better. I guess learning to morph faster is kind of like learning to speed walk faster?" Drake shrugged. He wasn't sure if he was even making sense any more. No wonder he hadn't been asked to be a teacher here.

[Richard]

Richard listened as Drake answered his question about how to morph faster. The answer was just like he figured it would be. There were definitely no shortcuts when it came to morphing, so that meant Richard was in for a long road ahead of him with that particular area. He sighed at that thought about this being a process that could take years to get perfected, and even at its peak he would still be vulnerable.

"So the only way to lower the time is to practice at it? Well I guess it could be worse." At least he didn't have to like exercise or eat right in order to decrease his morphing time. It wasn't that he didn't like keeping in shape, but Richard really did not want to bar himself from some of his favorite foods once he could get a hold of them again.

"So which faction are you going too?" Richard figured that it was a good idea to find out who was going where ahead of time, so that he could get used to seeing certain people everyday and others only when the situation suited them all to be together. His faction choice was Miami, since it was a place that he knew quite well so he figured that it was where he would be most useful.

[Drake]

"Me? I'm headed to Rio de Janeiro. I'm the new faction leader there." Saying that out loud still didn't sound right to him. Faction leaders were other people, not himself. He was being sent to Brazil and he didn't even know how to speak Spanish! Er, Portuguese, Drake thought as he corrected himself. However, both languages were equally unknown to him.

Drake tried to push the troublesome thoughts out of his head. He was supposed to be taking a break from all that. "And you are going to Suji's faction, right? To Miami? She'll be a good faction leader, I bet. I've known her for a while now and if there is one person who is faction leader material, it is Suji."

[Richard]

Richard had not really counted on hearing that this guy was a faction leader. It made him wonder what the leader of his particular faction was going to be like. Would this Suji be similar to Drake or the complete opposite? He didn't know, but Richard figured that this was going to take a little getting used to. At least he was going to somewhere that wouldn't make him feel to out of place.

"Yeah, Miami is my place of origin so it seemed like an ideal place for me. It is going to feel a little weird going there and trying to set the place free though. Not sure if the possibility of facing a friend or family member on the field of battle will be a problem." Richard's greatest fear was having to come face to face with one of his parents because he was deeply terrified of what would happen to one of them.

[Drake]

Drake could admire that Richard was worried about running into his parents. In fact, Drake felt a little ashamed that the thought hadn't crossed his own mind more often when he was a member of the Las Vegas Faction. Drake knew next to nothing about the fate of his parents. He didn't even know if they were actually controllers, to be honest. He had run away from home before he had any real proof. It seemed a bit foolish in hindsight.

"Well, at least you will have the home field advantage. I was fortunate enough to start out in my home town as an animorph as well. It is definitely handy to know where places are. When I moved to Dallas I had no clue where to go. And I suspect Rio de Janeiro will be the same. I just hope that a lot of their street signs and storefronts are in English."

"So, do you have morphs that are well suited for Miami too? It certainly helps if you don't stand out too much. I learned that the hard way."

[Richard]

"I think that most countries would have the signs in their own language so that tour guides can make some money, which probably means that you are going to have to learn the language." Richard was only assuming that it would be like this unless the town was run by Yeerks then it would probably be in a language that most anyone could under stand, but that was a big if.

Richard was a newbie, so his morph list was a little small and not that rare in nature. He figured that most of his morphs would be okay for Miami as most all sorts of dogs, birds, and bugs ran all across the city with a higher portion of them being dogs. "I have a couple that would fit in no problem, but they are also not anything that I would like to use in a fight."

He knew that there was more to this life than fighting, but Richard was a brawler by nature so that was the main thing on his mind. It was how he sorted things out in his head by whether or not he could hit it until it went away. It was a simple method of organizing his problems, but Richard found that it had been an effective one when he was in school. Now it seemed to be a little out of date. "What do you mean by finding out the hard way?"

[Drake]

"What do you mean by finding out the hard way?" Richard asked.

"Heh, it's kind of embarrassing, actually. And dfinitely not one of my favorite experiences." Drake had to consciously stop himself from wincing when he recalled the whole situation. It was an entirely needlessly dangerous situation that he had created.

"It was back in Dallas, before it was destroyed. I don't even remember why, but for some reason I was flying around in my secretary bird morph. A secretary bird looks kind of like a white eagle on stilts, in case you are wondering. It is definitely not native to anywhere in Texas. Or the western hemisphere, for that matter."

"Anyway, some controllers spotted me and started chasing me. I took cover in an old warehouse and pretty much got cornered. The whole thing resulted in me morphing giraffe and fighting my way out. Luckily Suji was nearby and heard my thought speech cries for help. If it wasn't for her and her mega-croc morph, which is a whole other story, I would probably be a goner."

Drake took a step back and leaned against the wall again. "So, yeah, blending in can be important."

[Richard]

Richard listened intently while Drake told him the story of his mis-chosen morph episode as it might be useful to remember later on in life. It was a good thing that Drake had explained what a secretary bird was as Richard kept thinking back to the old Flintstones movie that his parents used to make him watch as a kid. It was one of his favorite memories to fall back on in times of extreme danger or stress as it reminded him why he was doing this.

After Drake was done with his story, Richard was a little less concerned with how Suji was going to be as a leader and more concerned with how he was not going to allow himself to be caught in a situation like that as it did not sound pleasant. He also did not want to be rescued by a teammate because of his reckless behavior. It was a matter of his pride not allowing him to admit that he might need help once in a while.

There was only one thing that really bothering Richard about Drake's story as he couldn't see it really happening, so he figured that he should ask about it since he wanted to be accurate if he ever repeated the tale to anyone else. "How exactly does one fight with a giraffe? I am trying to picture it in my head, but there is no real image that forms to give me a good idea what it would be like."

[Drake]

"Very carefully," Drake replied. "A giraffe is definitely a dangerous opponent. They have feet the size of dinner plates that can crush a person's skull with a single kick. They can give some nasty headbutts too. But at the same time, there is the very real danger of falling over. You do not want to be caught on the ground when you are surrounded by taxxons or hork-bajir. Or even humans with guns, for that matter."

"I didn't get into many sticky situations where I had to use my giraffe morph, thankfully. And I have a buffalo morph now, which is just as dangerous, but not as fragile. Not to mention smaller." Drake hadn't really used his buffalo morph in many battles yet either, but he was a lot more confident in that form when he did.

"So what about you? You said you didn't have any morphs you would like to use in a fight, so I guess they still don't let you start out with anything too dangerous, huh? But since you couldn't really imagine fighting with a giraffe morph, what sort of morph could you see yourself fighting with?"

[Richard]

Richard listened as Drake explained how he fought with a giraffe, which actually sounded sort of cool with the way he described it. It was like fighting using a modified version of a knife's lance that would make it a little easier to use when surrounded by enemies. One would be able to stay alive, but only long enough to where one could switch to a more suitable weapon. Lances were meant as preliminary weapons that a rider would use until he or she got knocked off his or her horse.

Drake mentioned upgrading his battle choice to a buffalo, which did sound like a better choice for using in a fight than a giraffe. Richard could see the advantages to a smaller and more compact animal as it would probably be less vulnerable to getting slashed by a Hork-Bajir.

"Nope. We start out with small things, so that we don't end up becoming anything that we aren't really able to control." At least that was what Richard thought was the reason he had been given when he started at the academy. "If I could choose any animal to be in a fight, then I would probably pick a bull as it seems like something that can handle its own in a fight. My second choice would be a bear."