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Post by Nineteen on Sept 6, 2010 2:10:43 GMT -5
Nineteen practically flew down the halls as she raced for Jullian's room. Luckily it didn't seem to be too crowded, or she probably would have knocked someone off of their feet. She sprinted straight there from where she'd been hanging out with Dimitra in the belly of the ship.
Skidding to a stop in front of his door, Nineteen hopped the Morphing 101 teacher happened to be in. If he wasn't, she'd have to scour the rest of the Academy, because she sure wasn't going to wait to give him the good news. He'd be just as excited as she was -- probably more -- and she wanted to make sure he heard it from her.
"Jullian! It's Nineteen, open up!"
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Post by Jullian on Sept 6, 2010 2:27:26 GMT -5
Jullian stood in front of one of the only full length mirrors still in existence. Or at least it had seemed that way, considering how long it had taken him to find it. He hadn't found it himself of course. He'd asked his friends who actually went places to find it in return for taking over their chores when they were ship side.
He tried on another one of his scavenged t-shirts and checked himself out in the mirror. It seemed to hang off him but it was meant to do that and it didn't do it in an unattractive way. He was trying to figure out if he liked it when he heard Nineteen on the other side of this door.
Confused by her urgency and hoping this was not another emergency, he palmed the door open and looked at the teacher on the other side. "What's up?" he asked as he stepped aside to let her in. "Also, what do you think of this shirt?" he asked, holding out his arms and spinning around in place a little.
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Post by Nineteen on Sept 6, 2010 2:35:28 GMT -5
Nineteen rushed inside, before looking over at Jullian. "Uh, it looks fine," she said in a hurry, dismissing the question. It was a tee-shirt. There wasn't anything special about it that she could see. Besides, there was more important things to discuss.
"It's happened," Nineteen said, after looking around Jullian's room a bit. Even with as few material things as Nineteen possessed, everything in her room always seemed messy. Jullian, on the other hand, had at least twice as much stuff, and it was all put together in a way that seemed to make sense. "They just finished the pool. Dimitra told me -- they're filling it up now. It'll be done by like, the end of the night. Apparently the water will be cold as hell, but-" Nineteen waved her hand, as if to show how little that mattered.
"It's done!" Her voice was filled with an almost uncharacteristic glee, and she grinned widely.
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Post by Jullian on Sept 6, 2010 2:52:55 GMT -5
Jullian put his hands on his hips, a little put out about Nineteen's brush off. It wasn't unexpected but it just underscored his need for a more cultured eye, or even a place to go to wear nice clothing. What was even the point of wearing nice things if there was no one to see them. Jullian felt a pang of self pity that he was used to suppressing and fingered the shirt as Nineteen went on.
It was unusual to see Nineteen so excited about something but the pool was her brainchild. Even if the engineers had been the one to figure out how to make it work, she had been the one to suggest it and Jullian smiled more because of how happy she was than about the pool itself. A pool would be nice enough and it would give him a chance to throw trainees into their water morphs.
"That'll be awesome to use," Jullian said, thinking about some exercises he could work out for water morphs with a pool at his disposal. "Do you know how big it is? Can we look at it?" He asked, starting to get a bit more into the idea.
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Post by Nineteen on Sept 6, 2010 2:56:36 GMT -5
"I don't know, Dimitra wouldn't tell me. She said she wanted me to be surprised, but she smiled when she said it." Nineteen's eyes widened. "Do you think they made it really deep, so we can test out water morphs? Man, I can't wait to see someone go shark in the pool. That's like, a childhood nightmare come to life."
Nineteen's grin turned even more mischievous, and she began to pace. "I mean, I don't know if we're supposed to look at it." Probably not, because they weren't even supposed to know about it yet. "But, I mean, that's never stopped me in the past. You in?"
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Post by Jullian on Sept 6, 2010 3:02:08 GMT -5
"Um, would I be an animorph if I weren't up for some spying?" Jullian asked, pulling off the t-shirt. He could probably morph it but he didn't want to risk it. He had his morphing suit on under the t-shirt of course. It was like a second skin.
"I mean, I guess we wouldn't need to morph unless they were keeping people out for safety reasons or something," Jullian said, looking over at Nineteen with a question in his eyes. "Human or animal? Or mineral, he asked after a moment."
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Post by Nineteen on Sept 6, 2010 3:15:59 GMT -5
Nineteen licked her lips, thinking. "I don't know, animals will draw a lot of attention if they're seen." People on the Bladeship didn't react the same way to even seemingly "normal" animals like flies or moths. When people noticed any kind of animal, it was automatically assumed to be an Animorph until proven otherwise. Part of it was because of safety protocol. Seiya stressed it often enough: no smashing any bugs unless you were 100% positive it wasn't some lost recruit. Of course, given their location and the cleanliness of the ship, almost all bugs were Animorphs.
"Maybe we should scout the area as humans first. How well do you know the folks downstairs? If you could sweet talk us in, maybe I'll just hitch a ride."
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Post by Jullian on Sept 6, 2010 3:23:20 GMT -5
"I know tons of the people downstairs," Jullian said but his voice didn't hold the usual pleasure. "I'm like the mascot of the ship," which was exactly how he felt. Everyone knew he was the youngest person here but his reputation as being a good morpher and good teacher had combined with his age in an unusual and unexpected way. He was given all the deference due his status and all the caring due his age but none of the comradeship that usually came along with either.
The few people that were close to his age were his students and the few people that were close to his peers were not close to his age at all. He shrugged, refusing to feel sorry for himself in front of Nineteen and ruin the mood. "Let's go give it a try. Though, you know, you're pretty popular with the crew yourself. I'm sure they would let you in."
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Post by Nineteen on Sept 6, 2010 3:33:48 GMT -5
"Don't think so," Nineteen said with a sigh. "Dimitra already told me that she told them not to let me see it. She wants it to be a surprise, thinks it'll be ruined if I see it half finished." Having friends who were clued into new things on the ship could have its drawbacks, as counter-intuitive as that was. "But I don't think I can wait." Nineteen stepped back, and began going moth. Thankfully, her size was the first thing to change, as Jullian's room began to look bigger and bigger. She tried not to think about morphing in front of Jullian: it was his job to teach people to do it, but she knew very well how good he was at it. At least morphing in front of other people left you feeling like a freak amongst freaks. Morphing with Jullian made you feel like a kid with fingerpaints next to someone that had at least progressed to canvas. At last, her antennas sprouted, and Nineteen fought down the moth's innate sense of terror. She absolutely despised the bug morph, even though people went on and on about their usefulness. Nineteen was not accustomed to feeling afraid of anything, and the bug's fear didn't sit well with her. When she had herself under control, she fluttered over to Jullian, and landed on his wrist. <<All right, let's hide me and get going. I hate this thing.>> |
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Post by Jullian on Sept 6, 2010 3:41:34 GMT -5
"You too?" he asked the bug on his wrist. He'd have to do a survey sometime to see just how many people hated the bug morphs. The fact that he did was an open secret. He had gotten used to it after a while. It actually wasn't that terrible for him to be a bug, but becoming one was still disturbing.
It was only with his lady bug morph that his morphs still looked very disturbing. He'd realized the connection between thought and morphing when he was a new animorph because every time he'd imagined something terrible about how his morph could go it went that way. Once he'd thought it would be terrible to grow a tail before the skin and flesh grew on it. A second later a bone tail had spurted out of his tail bone. It had been disgusting and it was an odd way to discover a talent for something.
But he'd learned to control his morphing after that and because of that. But with his lady bug morph he still kept thinking awful things and had to watch them happen. "Alright, hold on."
Jullian rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a hair band. It was a simple black hair band that he had no real use for since his hair wasn't long enough to use it. But he had always believed in holding onto things to see when they'd come in handy later.
He put the hair band around his wrist. "Alright, hold onto that so that you don't fall and we'll just say you're a recruit and I'm doing some type of class or something," he said looking down at the moth he'd been careful not to displace while he'd looked for the hair band.
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Post by Nineteen on Sept 6, 2010 3:52:39 GMT -5
It was hard to make out what Jullian was saying, but Nineteen had morphed enough times that she could. <<Yeah. Bugs are terrible. You feel like you're about to die of fright every time a shadow passes you. Very much not my style.>>
Carefully, Nineteen clambered onto the hair band. Why Jullian had a hair-band was beyond Nineteen, but she made note of it. She liked to tie hers back for a lot of their classes, and always managed to lose them. She was lucky if she held on to one for more than four days at a time. <<Onward then, I can't wait to see this thing!>> And be out of this morph.
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Post by Jullian on Sept 6, 2010 4:20:27 GMT -5
Jullian looked at the t-shirt on his bed. He didn't want it to get wrinkled...but Nineteen was a moth and she probably wouldn't appreciate being swished around while he neatened his room. He could do it later he supposed.
He left the room and headed toward the pool. He knew where it was because the area had been closed off for what seemed like ages. As he walked through the hall he tried to think of what he'd say to the people once he got down there. His attention was caught for a moment by two young women who were lurking around the corner in the crew quarters. It wasn't that they were there that was odd, it was how they were loitering...
But they waved at him amiably enough when he walked by so he didn't give it much thought. When he finally reached the area roped off for the pool he palmed the door open and stepped through into the cacophony of cascading water. There was some sort of large pump set up and it was filling an absolutely massive pool. Jullian stopped and stared for a moment before an engineer came up to him.
"Hey Jules, what are you doing here?" he asked. Jullian couldn't see the pool itself from where he was, only the pump and the waterfall of water but he was starting to think "pool" was an inadequate term. Then he remembered that this was a Bladeship. No one had had to build a large pool, there would have been one here already for the yeerks. It had probably just been a challenge to remove the cages and tiers and to fill it with water.
"I was hoping to get a jump start on my lesson plans," Jullian said, looking past Gary. He remembered the guy's name as he spoke to him. "Is Raphael here?" Jullian asked, knowing the engineer was on duty somewhere in the ship.
"Nope," Gary said, looking at the clipboard in his hands. "And we can't really let anyone past until we finish the filling process," Gary said, motioning towards the waterfall. "Don't want anyone to get caught in that."
"Yeah, really," Jullian said looking at the pump. "Mind if I zip around as something other than human though?" Jullian asked. "Won't be a risk of falling in that way?" Gary looked unsure but Jullian smiled at him. It probably wouldn't have worked if there had been a real safety concern but it seemed like they were almost done.
"Alright," Gary said. "You don't have to morph, just be careful."
"Thanks," Jullian said with real gratitude and excitement. He rushed past Gerry and forced himself down to a walk after a yelled, 'be careful!' Jullian waited until he was out of sight of Gary before holding up his wrist. "Alright, you can demorph after I put you down." Jullian put Nineteen down on a clear spot on the floor.
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Post by Nineteen on Sept 6, 2010 22:17:37 GMT -5
<<All right, hold on.>> Nineteen waited until the shadow pulled away from her before she began to demorph. It was only slightly less disgusting to go from moth to human than human to moth, and she tried to get it over with as quickly as possible. Eventually she was standing next to Jullian in her biker shorts and tank top.
She quickly looked around to make sure they were alone, and then jogged over to the edge of where the pool dropped off. Leaning forward, her eyes were wide when she looked back to Jullian. The pool was huge, and it wasn't just one. There was a split down the middle, which effectively created two pools, which seemed to have been renovated to go from shallow to at least 20 feet. "I wonder what that barrier is." Nineteen moved down closer to the water, so she could dip a foot it. It was freezing.
"Do you smell that?" She asked. It wasn't a normal chlorine smell. It took her a moment, before a long buried memory came up. Well, just a fragment. The smell of the ocean. "It's salt water. Hey! I bet that means the other size is fresh water. I bet it's so we can practice different morphs!"
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Post by Jullian on Sept 7, 2010 23:17:00 GMT -5
"This is more than I thought there would be," Jullian said, watching the pool slowly fill up despite the ridiculous amounts of water being dumped into it. "I thought we'd just get, like, you know, a pool," Jullian said, his eyes wide as he began to understand the scope of this project. No wonder Nineteen's friends had wanted it to be a surprise. It was awe inspiring now and it wasn't even finished. He couldn't imagine walking in here to what was basically an indoor lake.
"This is...we can do so many classes with this!" Jullian said, thinking of some of the implications. "I haven't been able to use my water morph in such a long time. It can't handle the temperatures down here but with this," Jullian said, waving a hand.
"Do you have a good one yet?" Jullian asked, looking over at Nineteen.
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Post by Nineteen on Sept 7, 2010 23:54:38 GMT -5
Nineteen had become walking the perimeter of the pool, but it would have taken her a while to go completely around it. She could tell that some areas were shallow, but it wasn't just a steady decline. There were deeper areas built into pools, and she thought she could even make out some underwater tunnels, though it was hard to tell from the surface. When Jullian asked her about her water morph, Nineteen shook her head. "Nothing great, no. A betta fish. Purely ornamental," Nineteen scoffed.
Sure, it was nice to have something that could breathe underwater, but she doubted she'd ever sign up to test that thing out anywhere where their might be actual wildlife. That thing was way too fragile to be any good. Something she didn't say aloud, since Nineteen imagined that Jullian already had a lecture prepped about how small, unassuming morphs had their uses. Gag.
"Look at that." Nineteen had been staring upwards, and pointed towards the ceiling. It was laced with catwalks that had certain sections where small platforms extended. She thought she could see some ropes, maybe rope ladders, too. It was pretty high off the water. "Bet you Seiya wants us to drop some kids from up there."
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