Let There Be Light

[Suji]

Down in the basement, Suji had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a penlight stuck in her mouth. She began clearing a path towards the fusebox on the wall; there were lots of dusty crates to step around. While upstairs had been well-cleaned, it was clear that the basement hadn't gotten much love.

"Thhar e'e go," Suji mumbled around the penlight as she reached the panel and pulled the door back. Opening it, she could see that the circuit with the basement light had been blown some time ago. She flicked the switch back, and closed the panel. Hopefully that would do it.

She pushed past the boxes again, then tried to turn on the light. Nothing. With a groan, Suji hung her head. Probably needs a new bulb. She sighed, and went back upstairs to find one.

[Dustin]

The changes were a lot less drastic than his other morphs, but they were disturbing nonetheless. The thick fur, the long snout, the rat tail. Dustin felt like a corny version of the wolfman as he shrank next to the basement steps.

He didn't know why he was morphing, really. He saw Suji go down into the basement, but for all he knew she would be right back up before he was even half finished with his morph. He should have just gone down as a human and asked if there was anything he could help with.

But it was dark down there. And now that he could turn into something with nature's equivalent to night-vision goggles, he felt he should take advantage of it. So as the last of his opossum morph was completed, he headed down the basement steps.

Except someone was already headed up them.

Before he could reign in the instincts, Dustin jumped backward, barred his teeth, and hissed like a cat.

<<You almost gave me a heart attack!>> Not the best way to apologize to his faction leader, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

[Suji]

Suji didn't exactly scream when she saw the large, rat-like thing jump and hiss at her. She did, however, make a strangled yelping sound, and jumped back herself. The thoughtspeech was reassuring, in a way, but her heart was thudding even after she realized it was Dustin.

"You would have deserved it!" Suji replied, though she didn't sound angry. She shone the penlight on him. "What are you even doing?" She looked puzzled, before glancing back down to the darkness of the basement. "Exploring or something?" After a few experiences in Dallas Suji couldn't say that it was a condemnable desire, but it was still bizarre -- okay, maybe just a little weird for them -- to find a possum sitting on the basement step.

[Dustin]

Dustin squinted into the light of the flashlight. It wasn't overly bright, but with the opossum's eyes it was like staring into the sun.

<<I was... seeing if you needed any help,>> he admitted sheepishly. <<I thought maybe you could use some night vision or something. Plus, I haven't done anything useful with this morph yet. I'm sorry. That's kind of a stupid reason. I should have asked you first before I went ahead and morphed.>>

Dustin turned around and went up the few steps back to the top. <<Should I change back, or do you actually need help with something? Or both?>> Dustin would have shrugged if he wasn't busy using his arms for standing.

[Suji]

Suji laughed, then scratched her head. "Oh. Thanks for the thought." It was her turn to be sheepish. "No way," she said gently. "Testing out your morphs is good enough reason in itself, anyway. Though a heads up might be in order next time." Suji smiled at the (fairly hideous) creature. "I mean, if you're going to pleasantly surprise someone with help, maybe a rodent isn't the preferred morph."

She looked back towards the broken lightbulb. "Well, I've got to hunt down a spare bulb first. There are supposed to be some tunnels down here that I wanted to check out." She tilted her head, considering something. "Then again, if you are in the exploring mood, I suppose we could search for them Animorph-style. I've got a morph that could fit the occasion that I haven't test-drived much. Sound good to you?"

[Dustin]

<<Hehe, yeah, I suppose I should have told you there was an animal coming down to meet you. Especially since it is so dark. I'm lucky you didn't try to hit me over the head with a broom or something. That's what my aunt used to do with animals in the house.>> Truthfully, Dustin was just relieved that Suji was okay with him morphing without a mission or specific training in mind.

<<But you say there are tunnels down here?>> Dustin scanned around the room quickly, but nothing popped to his attention immediately. <<Where? I mean, yeah, sure, I'll explore the tunnels with you. What is the morph you "test-driving?">> There were so many possibilities that Dustin didn't even bother speculating.

[Suji]

Suji laughed lightly about Dustin's story about his aunt. Her parents would have called an exterminator and animal control before handling anything like that themselves. That said, living in the suburbs in New York state meant they hadn't really had that much wildlife trying to colonize their living room.

"Yeah, there are a few. A least one is human sized, and leads up under a shed. Then there are supposed to be some that are smaller, and go to different areas of the grove. Escape routes," Suji added, though she wasn't sure if the clarification was necessary. Hopefully they'd never need to be used as such, but Suji couldn't say that it was an unfathomable situation. And neither had Cassie, which was why someone had been given the chore of digging a few of them for the new faction.

"A mongoose," she answered his question about his morph. She turned off the flashlight, and suddenly the basement got a lot darker. She set it on the step next to her, and then (holding the railing) went down to the basement floor. Suji probably could have morphed on the steps without falling down them, but no need to take the chance. Once at the bottom, Suji focused on what a mongoose would look like. The morph had come from a blood vault, so she didn't have the actual animal's image to go on.

There was a familiar shrinking feeling, and Suji felt her face push outwards into a snout. Sharp claws grew over her fingertails, and a tail stretched from the base of her spine. Falling forward, she caught herself on short forearms as her back legs slurped up into her body. At some point the night vision flicked on, and Suji realized she could hear things she hadn't as a human: bugs crawling nearby, mice.

The mongoose wasn't very bothered right now, but she could sense that it was an irritable creature. <<All right. What do you think -- split up or stick together? We could follow a wall and do a perimeter check.>>

[Adrian]

Adrian walked into the living room dressed only in running shorts. The only thing they had over bike shorts were that they didn't give everyone around the measure of your manhood. There had to be some mystery after all.

He was chewing on a granola bar that had to be at least two years old. He hoped these things didn't have shelf life but he wondered if he would get sick even if they did. If he morphed after eating did that get rid of food poisoning? He looked down at the bar, his cheeks full of granola goodness, as he thought about it.

His ears picked up a small conversation and he turned to see the door to the basement open just as some sort of light went off. He walked in that direction, still taking bites of his granola (he'd decided to risk it). When he reached the top of the stairs he couldn't see much except a rat tail that fell in the light cast by the doorway. He forced down is automatic knee jerk reaction to the unexpected sight of rodents and went to shut the door. If there were rats in the basement he didn't want them coming into the house. But then he had a better idea.

He took a step down the stairs as carefully as he could and was surprised when the rat didn't move. It should have been disappearing into the darkness by now but it wasn't. If Adrian could just get a hand on it he could acquire it and he was sure a rat morph would come in handy.

He checked his balance and then jumped at the tail before the rat could move away, fully expecting to miss so when his hand fell on the tail in question and he yanked on it he was pretty surprised.

[Dustin]

Even though he hadn't made any guesses, Dustin was still a little surprised that Suji's morph was a mongoose. It was a furry woodland creature, just like Dustin's opossum morph, but her furry woodland creature could dodge cobra strikes. <<Mongoose is cool. We'll have to find someone with a cobra morph so you can practice your dodging. As for splitting up or sticking together, I think splitting up would help us cover- Ahh!>>

Something grabbed his tail and caught Dustin off-guard. His first instinct was to turn around and fight off whatever was attacking, but the opossum's instinct overruled his own. He stiffened up and barred his teeth. Saliva foamed up inside his mouth and a smell not unlike death seeped out from... somewhere. He was playing possum.

<<I... I can't move. Suji, help!>>

[Suji]

Suji was listening to Dustin and wondering if she should mention that she had a cobra morph. It wouldn't really help her practice snake-dodging if she could only one creature at a time, though. He was in the middle of suggesting splitting up when he shouted. Immediately, Suji sprung forward, baring her tiny of razor sharp teeth at the attacker. Which, she now saw, was definitely human.

Also, Dustin began to reek. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if she wasn't a fellow rodent, but there was definitely a smell of death, and for a second she thought that he might have actually been killed. But no, something wouldn't start smelling like that immediately. And then he told her he couldn't move, which was a pretty clear sign of not-being-dead.

<<Who is that?>> Suji asked the intruder. With the light at his back from up the stairs, it was hard to tell. <<Adrian?>> Just a guess; if she had to pick between him and Richard who was more likely to spring out and pull a possum's tail... well, he just seemed more likely. <<Is your back broken?>> Suji asked Dustin. Suji wasn't sure how to would have been; the attack hadn't been particularly vicious. <<Maybe you should demorph.>>

[Adrian]

Adrian pulled on the tail and realized pretty quickly it was not a rat. First off, moving had unblocked the light behind him and allowed it to fall on the creature that was not a rat. But if he couldn't see it the weight of it would have told him that. He withdrew his hand as if he'd been burned, this time giving in to the instinct to shrink away from unknown rodents. He may have let out an undignified grunt as he pulled back but he wasn't thinking about it, especially as it began to stink.

To make it worse a second rodent type animal bared it's teeth at him and Adrian had decided he'd had enough. He was quickly back pedaling up the stairs, already composing how he'd tell Suji about the rodent hot spot being run out of their basement when her thoughtspeak intruded on his thoughts.

"Jesus, what is that-God. Chief, is that you? The smell of that morph would rise to heaven's door and make God hold his nose."

[Dustin]

<<<Adrian?>> Dustin asked after Suji said his name and Adrian himself had spoken. Suddenly he felt a little foolish for getting scared, but it was hardly noticeable since he was currently still paralyzed. He wasn't afraid any more, but he was still worried.

<<I don't think anything is broken,>> he reported to Suji in public thought speech, nervously. <<But I still can't move. I don't know wh- Oh, there we go.>> Dustin found his motor skills to suddenly be under his own control again.

<<I... don't like that. What was that? And the smell...>> Right now Dustin was none too fond of his morph's super sense of smell. <<Whatever that was, I'm sorry.>> He was still debating wether he should demorph or force himself to practice with this morph some more. It could be dangerous if the same thing were to happen on a mission.

[Suji]

Dustin seemed to be moving all right now, and Suji realized it likely had something to do with the morph's penchant for playing dead. God, no one had ever mentioned that part of the act was smelling dead too. <<It's... okay.>> Suji answered, though she smoothly moved the mongoose's body further away from the now active possum. Privately, she added: <<If you're shaken up, feel free to demorph and take a breather, okay?>> She tried to make her voice gentle -- this wasn't a critical mission, and they'd all been startled. It was probably worse for him.

<<We're scouting the tunnels that are supposed to be down here and driving our morphs around a bit,>> she broadcasted for Adrian's benefit. <<Care to join?>> She rolled over, testing her reflexes, the flexibility of her long body.

[Adrian]

Adrian stepped away from what he realized was Dustin. His body wasn't in panic mode anymore but it still wasn't exactly happy about the two large rodents moving around in the semi-darkness of the stairwell. "Sorry Dustin," Adrian said, gingerly taking a seat on the top stair, waiting for his own nerves to get back under control. "Didn't realize it was you." He'd never heard of opossums before seeing Dustin's morph but he was now pretty sure he didn't want one. A rat, maybe, a opossum, no. The morph was probably useful but the smell was terrible. He only hoped there weren't any skunks around here, another animal he had never run into and didn't want to.

"Maybe," Adrian said in response to Suji's offer. He hadn't had any big plans and it didn't sound like a terrible idea to test out his morphs. He had two that would probably work. The fox had decent night vision and a great sense of smell. But there were already two of them on the ground and he didn't want to find out what his fox thought of a opossum and a mongoose. "I'll go bat if you don't mind."

Without waiting for permission he backed up until he was on the landing itself to avoid tumbling down the stairs and concentrated on the bat morph. He wasn't in a rush so it took him the full three minutes of twisted, random morphing to get into the bat's body but once he was there he noticed how good the bat's sense of smell was. He didn't comment though, just flipped into the air and landed on the wooden banister, digging his small claws into the soft wood. <<Ready?>>

[Dustin]

While Adrian morphed, Dustin took that time to recollect himself. He had opted to stay in morph. He wouldn't be doing anyone any favors by freaking out and demorphing. If this had been a more serious situation he wouldn't have had the option to demorph, and so he didn't give himself the option right now. It was for reasons like this that they practiced. It was just unfortunate that he had never been startled, and therefore had his "play dead" reflex activated, during practice before.

<<I'm not going to lie Adrian. That morph of yours looks pretty ugly.>> Dustin was trying to lighten the mood a bit for his own sake, but he was afraid his "voice" still sounded a bit shaky. And he was embarrassed that he was letting something so minor shake him up so much. With more confidence he said, << Should we look for those tunnels then?>> He headed toward a wall to help begin their search.