Reanimation (ALL)

[Alain]

Alain's door was not the thickest thing in the world. None of the internal walls in the Bladeship were. And they weren't completely sound proof either. If he'd been awake he would have heard the extremely dulled sounds of people out in the hallway. And Simplicity's banging would have been very noticeable even if her words would have been hard to make out.

But the walls were sound proof enough that he could easily ignore Sim, especially because the alarm was still blaring. It was starting to eat its way through his dreams toward consciousness but it wasn't quite there yet.

[Adrian]

Adrian lifted off the ground an automatically flew towards the shadow where the wall met the floor. A moment later his fly buzzed away and landed on some other spot. He wasn't exactly lost in morph but he was letting it have its way while he tried to figure out how he was going to follow Jullian's instructions. They made sense and he now wished he hadn't rushed into bug morph. He probably would be harder to kill this way but it was almost like hiding. Not that he could do much else. He didn't have a morph powerful enough to fight. But that didn't mean he couldn't fight. They were trained with other weapons after all. He thought about demorphing but it would probably just confuse the issue further. He settled for adding "alarm drills" to his make believe suggestion box.

His fly was decent at smelling out sources of food and the dogs actually smelled pretty good to him. He didn't question why, he just headed toward the strongest smell. He wasn't sure which dog he'd landed on but he was pretty sure he was somewhere on someone's head.

[Dustin]

Dustin completed the remainder of his morph, then proceeded to follow Jullian's instructions. After he gained controll of the grasshopper's instinct, that was. Apparently grasshoppers don't like to knowingly move toward canines.

But it didn't take Dustin long to assert full control. That's what practice had been for. Soon he was rocketing through the air at breakneck speed toward a humongous wall of fur. His aim was a little off, so he used his wings to readjust himself mid-jump. He landed and quickly latched onto the hair. It wasn't as desirable as grass, but he would make it work.

<<Alright, I'm on someone. Not sure who though. Ready when you are.>>

[Drake]

Drake reluctantly regained his human form, even as he walked. He was in no rush despite the urgency of his situation. Every one of his bones that reformed was just one more reminder of a painful break. Every patch of purple skin that appeared, a reminder of another cut.

Yes, purple skin. It was cold. Very cold. And biker shorts and a tight t-shirt didn't exactly provide a lot of warmth. Not to mention he had grown up accustomed to Las Vegas heat. Drake was pretty sure his nose and ears were going to fall off by the time he started transforming into is turkey vulture form.

The feathers helped quite a bit, and this type of bird wasn't entirely unfamiliar with cold weather, but Antarctica was a little extreme all the same. But he would survive.

The newly morphed animorph took to the air and continued toward where he had seen the dracon fire. He had to hope he wouldn't get shot down himself, but figured a bird would be given a little leeway around an animorph encampment. Although that was assuming it was the animorph encampment that had fired...

With that thought and the sight of what appeared to be some wreckage looming in his mind, Drake tried to stay near the ground. Which was easier said than done with the air so cold.

[Richard]

Richard watched as Dustin finished his morph even though he wished that he hadn't. He wasn't sure if there was any food in his dog's stomach to barf, but he was sure that he didn't want to find out any time soon if there was. His dog ears started to twitch at the buzzing sound that he assumed was Adrian. The one thing that Richard knew about dogs was that they liked to try and catch flies in their mouths, or at least the ones that he had been around.

His dog mind was becoming very irritable about the fact that Richard was telling it to leave the fly alone. By now, Adrian had landed on his head and was getting himself comfortable. <<I would be careful up there. Dog's are known to eat flies like little kids eat candy.>> It was a joke that probably shouldn't have been said, but Richard needed some comic relief in this tense situation that they were in. He was waiting on Jullian to give them an order of sometime to keep his mind occupied from the possibility of certain doom.

[Dean]

Seiya

---

It seemed as if the whole south pole shook as the Dracon cannons fired. Technical officers were jostled out of their chairs, improvised keyboards clattering to the ground. One of the ever present mechanics that always seemed to be repairing something on the wrecked ship stumbled on his descent down the shallow stairs leading away from the bridge. His toolbox clattered and crashed along with him, adding more noise to the almost chaotic sounds coming form all across the Academy. Even the pair of weapons techs firing the twin bow cannons were shook from their consoles, only barely managing to stay seated.

but Seiya Yoshirou remained standing.

The aptly named "Headmaster" of the Academy kept his near trademark calm and collected demeanor, even as most of his staff was knocked to the ground. He coolly turned his head towards the communications staff, simply asking: "Has there been any contact made?"

The Communications Officer, a young girl around sixteen, shakily responded. "N-No, sir." Seiya realized then just how green some of his staff were. He looked around the bridge, the screeching alarm wailing overhead. People were still doing their jobs, but there was a jitteryness to their actions. Seiya had been fighting the war for a long while, so he knew the look well. His people were afraid. He looked back to one of the several screens showing the now rapidly descending fighter, focusing one the crisis at hand.

Seiya's brow furrowed, his mind racing. This didn't make any since. One ship? And a wrecked one at that. It could be a diversion, but there were no other troops or ships to be seen and radar hadn't picked up anything. It just didn't add up.

"Sir?" It was the young Communications Officer, her tone was as if she had asked the question multiple times.

"Yes?"

"The ship was already damaged when we opened fire. It only took a few rounds of Dracon canon-fire to bring it down. This is where the projected crash point is." The screen switched to a low res image showing the assumed trajectory. In the next couple of seconds the ship would break ground. Considering the state it was currently in, there wouldn't be much left after it hit.

Seiya fought to remain calm, although inside he was confused and short-tempered. "This isn't good enough. It doesn't make sense. If the Empire knew we were here, they wouldn't send one damaged bug fighter. We need eyes out there."

He shot a look to the young girl one more time.

"And open communications with New York. We need to let Cassie know of our status."

---

---

It was Suji and Aubry that were in the room when the message came in. She had dropped the papers she was holding- Specs on a new yeerk device- and was staring at the screen. It was-of course- an emergency only channel, the Yeerks could track long range transmissions to quickly for regular use, but for short messages they were only mostly dangerous. Cassie knew right away that something was wrong. She got the feeling the the other veteran Animorphs felt the same almost instantly.

Seiya briefed Cassie in not so many words, but the panicked looks and the ever sounding alarm was enough of a message in itself-

Cassie looked at Suji and Aubry intensely after the small screen turned back to its usual lifeless state.

"We are leaving. Now

---

Fire and screaming. Unbearable pain.

And then...nothing. Just empty space.

He fell as the fighter did: in flames and pieces.

The concussive manner in which Dean had been thrown from the dieing ship had tipped the already unbalanced scale between consciousness and unconsciousness. He fell limply and without realizing what was happening. A small stream of cooling blood trailed in his wake. He hit with a soft thud, a tiny cloud of light snow fogging the area of his impact. Then...nothing. The unconscious man lay, waiting. Waiting to live. Waiting to die. He would find his way to one soon enough even if he couldn't realize it...

[Drake]

((OOC: Let me know if anything needs to be changed))

<<Not good, not good, oh man, oh man, oh man.>> Drake was rambling to himself as he got closer to the crash sight and the view of the disaster became clearer.

<<Dean, where are you! Dean! Dean, answer me!>> Drake circled the crash sight, with no response to guide him. No response meant that Dean was either still human, too far away, or... Drake didn't want to think of the last thing that it meant, but the fires and ship wreckage weren't making it an easy option to ignore.

He was about to fly away to see if he had passed Dean by on the way here, but then Drake spotted something. Having the eyes of a scavenger was morbidly useful at the moment. Because what he spotted was part of a hand.

Luckily Drake's instinct for revulsion was much more powerful than the turkey vulture's instinct for hunger at the moment. He averted his gaze for a second, then changed his mind. That... body part, probably meant the rest of Dean was near by. And Drake had to find him.

It didn't take Drake long to find him after that. He behind a snow drift, a little ways from the majority of the wreckage. He looked dead to Drake, but he wasn't ready to give up yet. Drake flew down close and began to demorph.

Even before all his feathers had disappeared, Drake was checking Dean's pulse. It was hard to tell if there was one between Drake's shivering and near hystericalness, but he was pretty sure there was one. And the red spittle bubbling from Dean's mouth seemed to reinforce the likelihood.

"Wake up Dean, you gotta get up and demorph. Wake up. If I could do it, you can too." Drake slapped his face a couple times, but he remained unconscious. If he didn't wake up soon, he would bleed out. "Come on. I just met you and you are already going to die?"

Drake looked at Dean's wounds. Drake was far from any sort of medical expert, but he could see that a lot of Dean's wounds were on his limbs, and Drake could fix those. Sort of.

Drake quickly pulled the shirt from his back and ripped it apart. It was colder now, but that was the least of his worries. Drake focussed all his attention on forming tourniquets. One for each limb. Drake couldn't fix the wounds, but he could stop them from bleeding. Hopefully it would buy Dean enough time to regain consciousness before his other wounds took care of him.

"Hang in there."

[Alain]

((Let me know if anything needs to be changed. Figured this would give some people something to do.))



Seiya ran through his options and turned to Nineteen. He had noticed her arrival a moment before but he'd had other things to see about. In the back of his mind he wondered why she was here, on the bridge, until he realized that she didn't have any other place to be. All of the crew knew where they were meant to be in an emergency but the recruits and the teachers did not and he hadn't included them in his planning. Which, he now realized, was foolish. Not only were they they only movable assets he had, it would be left to them to defend the ship itself if it were ever boarded. Well, that would be an oversight he'd fix in the after action meeting he planned on having. Right now, he still had a situation on his hands.

"Ms. Nineteen," he said, using the proper from of address even if it jarred a bit with her name, "I need someone to take a look at what is out there." He began, knowing she had a powerful horse morph that would hopefully get her there quickly and without freezing. He would have sent a bug fighter but Zachery had reported in already and told him it was not operational. They had come to the Bladeship for upgrades and repairs and their ship was currently in too many pieces to be put back together quickly. They were working on it but it would take a few more hours that he didn't have.

"I trust you'll go out suitably armed and take backup. Mr. Smith has a suitable morph I believe," he said, taking a moment to remember the recruit's name. His Alaskan dog would certainly survive the external temperatures for a while, long enough to see what was left of the bug fighter anyway.

He turned to the internal communications officer. "Please send a ship wide announcement Mr. Lagner. Have all Professors and Recruits assemble in the hangar bay where they will meet Nineteen." He struggled with his next choice. Nineteen had never shown a desire to lead, not a talent for strategy. But neither had Jullian and while he was the superior officer, he would not be able to go outside of the ship, most of his morphs only suitable for warm weather. He would have to really give the internal defenses of the ship more thought but for the moment he would work with what he had. He turned back to Nineteen, "you're acting officer of the animorphs aboard until further notice. Find that bug fighter."

[Nineteen]

Nineteen pulled on the windbreaker pants and the heavy parka, zipping it all the way up her throat. Next she tugged the drawstring of the fake-fur hood, which tightened around her face, limiting her visibility. That was, limiting it in addition to the bulky goggles on her face. It was strange to be wearing so many articles of clothing, and the boots were probably the weirdest. A lot of people on the ship probably hadn't tied shoelaces in a few weeks. They would be the hardest to get out of if she needed to morph on the spot, so she left them relatively loose as instructed.

All in all, it was a pretty cool assignment. Nineteen didn't exactly bubble up with joy or giddiness, but the adrenaline in her system felt great. "All right, c'mon Richard." She gestured for the recruit to follow her, and lead the way down to where a snowmobile was prepped and waiting for them. A hatch to the tundra outside was open, and the chilly air was a stark contrast to the normally climate-controlled Bladeship temperatures. "No time for the crash course, just make sure you hang on." Richard was an athletic enough guy, she figured he could handle it.

There were more snowmobiles on the Bladeship -- you had to have some way to travel over land without needing morphs to do it -- but it seemed prudent to only send a couple Animorphs as scouts for this round. After all, if it was a trap, they weren't investing all of their forces. And if something went wrong, Animorphs had a greater chance of surviving than anyone else. Nineteen jogged down to where the snowmobile was idling, the icy ground crunching underfoot. Swinging one leg over, she gripped the handle bars. "Hop on!" She shouted back to Richard.

[Richard]

After the announcement for certain people to assemble in the hangar, Richard had been given some Arctic clothing to wear, so that he wouldn't freeze. He was apparently supposed to be going with Nineteen to investigate the crash, but he wasn't sure why him. Richard figured that this was the sort of thing that Jullian would do, but he didn't try to object. The choice of having something to do was just to appealing to him. He looked around at the group of people that were assembled in the hanger and wondered if this was going to turn into a battle for them. Richard wasn't sure if he was really ready for combat, so he hoped not.

Nineteen showed up and gave hi his marching orders so to speak. He figured that they were going to have to morph as some point, so he made sure the shoes weren't tied. His body did not like the fact that he was wearing so much as it had never gotten used to living in a cold environment. Even before becoming joining up, Richard had lived in a location with a pretty consistent weather pattern, so the cold conditions never factored into his mind in the slightest. He figured that being an Animorph brought about all types of experiences that he never thought he would encounter before.

Richard followed her down to the snowmobile as quickly as he could, but the fact that it was actually cold outside was making him a little worried. His morph list was not that large, and only his dog morph seemed suitable for this environment. Richard hoped that this would be a very quick little trip as it would be very uncomfortable to morph in this weather. He climbed on to the back of the snowmobile and hoped that he didn't fall off of it. That would be extremely uncomfortable for him if he did. "And away we go?"

[Drake]

Drake turned his big furry brown ears toward the distant sound of an engine starting up. A gas powered engine. They were sending something man made, which meant there was a decent chance they weren't going to outright vaporize him.

Drake snorted and stayed where he was. He had morphed into an american bison this time. Its thick coat helped to shield Drake from the cold, but it wasn't himself that he had morphed it for. It was for Dean.

While he had stood over Dean's unconscious body, shirtless, Drake had realized that the guy might freeze to death before he came to. Sure, Dean had a coat, but it wasn't made for this kind of weather. And so Drake morphed buffalo and laid down as close as he could manage without crushing the poor faction leader.

Drake waited for the vehicle that he heard to come into view. He wasn't going anywhere at least until then. Afterward, who knew. He may have to run, he may have to fight. But hopefully all he would have to do is help.

[Nineteen]

"Away we go," Nineteen confirmed, and gave the snowmobile a hard start. It was probably over eager, but she had a job to do and she was going to do it. The fact that a lot of the job was based on riding the equivalent of a snow motorcycle didn't hurt, either. Luckily, Richard didn't go tumbling off. Seiya wouldn't be happy if she ended up losing a recruit out here.

After about half an hour of riding, they were approaching the crash site. They'd been able to see the smoke rising into the air for a while, and then the fires. At last, Nineteen could make out the odd shape that was standing up and facing them. It took her a few moments, but then she realized it was some kind of cow. No, a buffalo. Which meant one thing: there was an Animorph out here.

Her teeth clenched and her hands gripped the handlebars tighter. Was this a trap? Why would Animorphs fly in on a Bug Fighter? And why wouldn't they answer the CIC hails as Animorphs, if that's what they were? But these were questions that she couldn't answer without probing around some more. And she would have rushed right in, too, if it wasn't for Richard sitting behind her. She couldn't afford to be too reckless.

Nineteen slowed the snowmobile down some fifty feet from the crash. There was a bloody hunk of what might have been a human near the thing's hooves. Pulling the hood of her jack away from her mouth, she shouted out: "Who are you? What happened?"

[Richard]

The snowmobile almost tossed him off at the start, but Richard kept his hold on the vehicle as they headed out. He was glad that Nineteen had given him some signal before she started the snowmobile. He kept his eyes on the icy area in front of them just in case whoever had crashed had started moving towards them because Richard figured that no one comes down to this place without a real reason.

About an hour after they started out, they came across the crash site which did not look like a pleasant situation for the person who had been piloting the craft. It was an odd sight to see a buffalo standing near the crash, which meant that either someone was illegally transporting bovines or that buffalo was something else entirely.

The next odd sight was when Nineteen moved closer. There was what appeared to be a body next to the buffalo that was standing there, which brought up more questions in his mind that probably had already came across Nineteen's so he didn't ask them. He wasn't sure what he should be doing when Nineteen yelled out her questions to the buffalo.

Richard was half tempted to make a smart remark afterward, but this was not a good time to make such a comment. He looked around the crash site for some sign of anyone else, but the wreckage plus the icy environment weren't helping his vision. "So what exactly is the plan here? Do we go and help, or do we report back in?" He figured the former was the right answer since the guy on the ground did not look like he was doing to good.

[Drake]

These people didn't seem overly hostile. For now he would have to assume they were from the academy.

<<I'm Drake Blear. I'm an animorph. We... crashed, I guess. I'm not entirely sure.>> Drake had definitely seen some dracon beams being shot through the air, but he still wasn't positive if they were the reason for the crash, or just coincided with it. At the very least, he was pretty sure the dracon beams weren't responsible for the initial explosion.

<<Please help,>> Drake continued, having heard most of the boy's words as well. Buffalo had amazing hearing compared to humans. <<Dean, he... well, he needs help. Bad. He has burns and cuts and broken bones I'm sure...>>

<<Please help,>> he repeated.