A Strong First Impression (All of Cape Town)

[Clara]

((The action is going to meet a YPM official, unfortunately, so is Clara.))

Clara sat lounging in her chair. On her finger she spun a chakram, fascinated by the way the light bounced off of the shining metal as it spun. She brought it close to her tongue, and let it spin. It cut a thin red line into the soft pink flesh, but Clara didn't wince. Instead she closed her mouth in pure satisfaction as the tasted the bold copper flavor. The City had been quiet since she had gotten there, offering no excitement. Not exactly how she wanted to spend her days, waiting for missions and watching "1,000 ways to die"

As if in answer to her boredom, a screen flicked on with the Visser's face on it. Her head perked up, finally a mission? The Visser spoke in a calm confident voice "Stosha751, we have an assignment for you." The Yeerk inside her stirred getting ready to answer, Clara pushed her back down. "Let's get one thing straight Visser, you may have a Yeerk inside of me, but I'm running this show, not Stosha, or any other slug you decide to put inside of me. The Visser raised his brow, but smiled.

"Very well, Clara is it? We have an assignment for you." She smiled "Better, tell me about it." "We have discovered a YPM headquarters of sorts, and identified one of their main leaders. I'm sure you can figure out what to do." She flashed her cocky-powerful smile and said "Of course I can, I just need a picture and a map." He returned the smile, "Very Well" A picture came up on screen, a young man, not over 30, with pierced ears and a well muscled body, then a map showing the location of the building, not very big, but not a hole in the wall, piece of cake

[Dean]

---

Several Hours Later

---

A reluctant groan came from the battered truck's clutch as Dean shifted down, attempting to navigate the ramshackle streets of downtown. They roads were packed and cramped even before the invasion. Now, it was just ridiculous. He shot a look at the man riding shotgun, his old friend Darell.

A strong man with a good heart, Darell had been a friend to Dean when no one else had. Granted, no one had a reason to trust him at the time, but none-the-less, Darell had taken Dean in. The man had a family, a strong faith, wisdom and morels well beyond his years, and (most importantly) the power of conviction to follow through with them. Dean respected him more than any man he had ever known.

He was about two seconds from shooting him.

Darell gave him another curious look. "I'm just saying, the way you've gone on- from the time I've known you at least- It doesn't seem like you have ever been close to anyone."

Dean kept his eyes on the road, mostly because if he didn't he might hit some random bit of debris scattered on the road. "What do you mean?" He said through clenched teeth. He did not like where this conversation was heading.

"Have you ever been in love?"

Dean felt his fists tighten on the steering wheel. Old pains and memories came flooding back into his mind. With them, red hot fury. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?" The words came out harsher than he intended, but he was already frustrated as hell trying to guide the junker through the dirt roads of Cape Town.

If Darell was hurt by the tone, he didn't show it. "More than you might think. I trust you Dean-and in times such as this those words mean more than ever. But the reason I came with you was for my family. So that they could live. Perhaps long enough for them to see the end of this war." The freedom fighter looked at Dean intently, his eyes still on the road. "It is my love for them that reminds me to keep fighting, what I'm fighting for."

Dean was still ticked, shooting out. "Is there a question in there?"

Darell just shook his head, staring out the windshield like his friend, "I just hope with the loss of your city that you don't lose sight of what's important."

The silence stretched on for a while, Dean pondering Darell's words in between hard banks and turns. But it was Darell who broke the silence first.

"Which brings me to my next question, have you ever had sexual relations?"

At that Dean shot him a shocked look, "Christ Darell! Why the blue blazes would you want to know that?!" The truck fishtailed on a rather sharp turn.

Darell shrugged, "Just trying to get a look at whats going on inside you Dean." He gave the faction leader an oblique glance," There's nothing wrong with being homosexual."

"Now hold on a second-"

"Dean, cow."

"I"

"Dean"

"Am. Not"

"Dean!"

"Ga-WHAT!"

Darell pointed out the windshield, shouting "COW!"

Dean looked up in time to see the rotting corpse of a heifer lying in the middle of the road. Dean lurched the wheel to one side, warranting a shriek of disapproval from the truck. They lurched up onto the curb, over some bales of hay, and back onto the street with a start.

Dean hit the breaks, squealing to a stop. Both men sat in their seats as the truck heaved a sigh of relief, letting them selfs catch their breath.

They sat there until Dean caught an odd smell coming from somewhere nearby. he turned to Darell to see him sniffing the air too. They both got out of the car to find black smoke curling up form the road a couple blocks ahead.

"What the..." Darell started.

Dean started to get back in the car, coaxing the junker back to life. "Don't ask me, I'm gay now remember?"

[Drake]

((OOC: Hope this fits. If any or all of it needs to be deleted or changed, just let me know.))

Drake sat stiffly and uncomfortably in an unpadded folding chair next to a card table with a bent leg. Across from him sat a woman. She was leaning back in her chair in a relaxed position. Her arms were folded over her chest and her legs crossed. The only thing making Drake more nervous than the uzi sitting in her lap was the fact that she kept staring at him in silence. Her less than beautiful face could stare daggers through a wall.

"You're sure this is the right place? The right time?" Drake asked for about the tenth time in the past three hours. The lady just squinted her eyes, threateningly. He looked over at the guy standing by the one-room shack's only window. The moment Drake's eyes locked with his, he stiffened up and quickly averted his gaze out the window. He also tightened his grip on his own firearm, an AK-47.

Drake picked up and looked into the mug in front of him that had been drained of its contents quite some time ago. One thing was for sure. These yeerk peace movement controllers seemed to be anything but peaceful. And as far as Drake could tell, their numbers weren't too great either. He had only met/heard of five since first speaking with them the day before. It was possible that there were a lot more, but Drake kind of doubted it.

As Drake sat and waited for something to happen, he though back on how he had arrived all the way over in Africa. It was probably the last place on Earth he figured this invasion would take him. But alas, here he was.

It all started with a phone call. They needed someone who had experience, but wasn't closely connected to anyone in the faction in Cape Town or the base in Antarctica. Drake fit that description. He barely even knew of either place. And the fact that he already had some morphs that would fit in at Cape Town sealed the deal. Drake was moving to South Africa.

He was picked up in a remote location a few hundred miles east of Las Vegas. It was actually while he was waiting for his ride that he found and acquired his woodchuck morph.

After being dropped off a couple hundred miles north of Cape Town, Drake flew into the city so that he could attempt to complete his mission. And complete it he did. But not without some difficulty.

Some how, some way, someone had gotten a tip to someone that there was a yeerk peace movement group starting up in Cape Town. But apparently the intelligence was shaky. They couldn't ask someone from Cape Town to investigate because if they got caught, it would put the whole faction at risk. And as Drake understood it, they were still getting settled into the area. And they couldn't send someone from the academy because besides the inexpendable teachers, the people they could send were too inexperienced for such a dangerous mission.

So lucky Drake. He got the job. He got to find out if the yeerk peace movement in Cape Town was the real deal, a trap, or just poor information. And if it was real, then he also had to find out if they would be willing to ally with the local animorphs. Which, by the way, Drake would also have to somehow miraculously get in touch with.

It took Drake a week to find the right yeerks. He first had to locate people who spent time where an ordinary controller probably wouldn't spend a lot of time. After narrowing down the large selection to a few he thought seemed most promising, Drake spent a lot of time trailing them as an insect.

He lucked out and stumbled upon the right person at the right time. It was during one of the movement's meetings that he first contacted them. He was a preying mantis at the time, watching the group of seven from above, in the rafters. He really freaked them out when he first spoke, but after they calmed down and listened to his proposition they agreed that they could benefit from an alliance with the animorphs.

But it wasn't quite so simple. Drake still hadn't revealed himself at that point and said that he wouldn't unless controllers could prove that they were really peace movement controllers. He asked them to do something a normal controller would never do. Literally put their lives in the hands of their host.

Six of them willingly crawled out of their host's ear. The seventh panicked and started shooting at the other members. He was taken down quickly by one of the momentarily free humans, but not before killing one of the others and wounding another one.

And so, after getting into contact with "animorphs HQ" who in turn said they would contact the Cape Town animorphs, Drake was now waiting with two of the year peace movement members at a makeshift guard post. The actual peace movement headquarters was still a little ways down the road.

Just as Drake was about to ask if this was the right place for an eleventh time, the guy at the window said, "Someone is coming."

Drake tensed up. After over three hours of waiting, he suddenly felt like he needed more time. It was up to him to make contact with the member of the Cape Town animorphs. But there was one problem. He didn't know any of the Cape town animorphs. Whoever was outside may or may not be a friendly face.

He would just have to improvise. Drake looked out the window to check out the situation, then stepped out the door. He began walking toward the truck just up the block, but didn't make it two steps before stopping and looking to his right. There was a big plume of smoke rising into the air not far away.

That couldn't be good...

[Dean]

Dean continued to squint at the smoke, and as he did, it grew. It grew a lot. Suddently there were two. Then four. all around him smoke began drifting listlessly into the grey sky. He saw a brief shimmer in the air. A Blade Ship, cloaked.

"Oh no" Dean all but whispered.

He turned to Darell, pointing at the rendezvous point with the YPM and Animprohs Representative. "Move now!. They're torching the city!" Dean didn't know why, or how long this would last, but he had heard stories from refugees. Ever since Dallas had been blown up, The Yeerks were paranoid as ever. If they even thought the virus was present, the touched the whole city. Boom. Done. On with their day.

Now they had decided that Cape Town was just too much a risk apparently.

Dean's whole faction would probably be killed in the next few minutes.

[Clara]

Clara smiled. This was too easy. She held the weapon in her hands, a prototype that shot out five incediary rockets. A good way to scatter the rats. The lames licked the buildings around her, if the YPM were smart they would have figured out where she was by now, a solid building in the middle of a ring of burning ones, but they weren't that smart, weren't that quick on their feet. She walked out of the building smiling.

Her car was waiting down the block, a sleek black vehicle with autopilot, and an even more advanced feature, the extra large cup holder. She climbed in and drove down the street calmly. The YPM were swaring the building she occupied not moments before. A bit too late she thought to herself. She drove toward the YPM HQ and picked up her phone.

She had a lookout waiting near the building "Are they gone?" she asked, is a cold, sharp voice. "All the guards have scattered." Was the hoarse response. "Excellent." She said, hanging up the phone. She pressed down on the gas. With the fires and the Blade ship, no one would notice as she slipped in the building. She saw a group of people heading toward the YPM building. "Oh goody." she laughed "someone I need to kill." She drove toward the building, going insanely fast

[Drake]

Drake squinted as more plumes of smoke became visible, one by one. But when he noticed the outline of a blade ship shimmering in the smoke, wide-eyed was the only way to describe his expression.

"Move now!. They're torching the city!" Drake heard someone yell in the near distance. It was the guy who was coming to meet them at the rendezvous point. Drake wasn't sure if the message was intended for him, but he didn't really care. It was a good idea all the same.

"Come on," Drake said to the two Yeerk Peace Movement controllers he had spent the last few hors with. They didn't seem to be paying much attention to him. The guy with the AK-47 was running toward the flames, mumbling something about "helping the others," and the lady with the uzi just stood in the doorway and stared as the destruction slowly got closer.

"We gotta go!" he said as he began running toward the two guys with the truck stopped behind a dead cow.

This was not the way Drake had hoped to introduce himself.

[Dean]

Dean ran.

The earth shook below him, the sky began to fill with smoke, fire and screams. Dean saw other shimmers flit around the dilapidated buildings followed by more thunderous explosions-

And Dean ran.

He hated himself for it, and even though there was nothing he could do for anyone else in the city, Yeerk or Human, he cursed himself for not seeing it coming. This town was his to free. In the end, it seemed that it would be. After the Yeerks were through with it, there wouldn't be anyone left to hurt or control. But there wouldn't be anyone left to same either.

Dean shook his head violently, there would be time for self pity later-maybe. He had to get out before it was too late. There was no way he was going to let himself get killed this easily. No Fucking Way. So with a gritty stubbornness that had carried him this far in the war, Dean ground his teeth and kept moving, dodging fire as it fell from above.

He saw Darell run in the opposite direction, shouting something about his family, but Dean didn't have the time to try and stop him. The Faction leader had his gun out and he was sprinting toward someone. He didn't know if he was a friend or a foe, but did it really matter now? Anyone that was on the ground right now was fair game. He caught the man's eye and thrust a finger to a hill that Dean knew lead to a small rock quarry. Hoping that there would be less of a chance that they would get hit by any debris or flame, Dean sprinted forward, not looking to see if anyone followed him.

((OCC: Sorry again for the LOOOOONG delay))

[Drake]

Drake paused just long enough to see where the guy was pointing and quickly changed course. Drake didn't know where he was running too, but he hadn't known where he was running before, either.

Cinders and ashes were starting to make it difficult to see, and breathing was becoming a problem too. Just when Drake figured they would probably die from asphyxiation rather than dracon fire, the destination came into view. Abruptly.

Drake skidded to a stop and windmilled his arms to avoid falling into an old overgrown quarry. Down below it looked like half of it was covered in loose rubble, the other half submerged in sludgy water. Drake looked over his shoulder and, through the clouds of ash, smoke, and fire, saw that they were running out of time.

"Man I hate this job," Drake said a second before leaping into the water end.

Drake fell like a rock and sank like one too. The water wasn't as deep as he had expected, only about six or seven feet, and he hit the bottom hard. A blinding pain resonated throughout his body as one of his legs snapped from the pressure. "Glahhhhag!" he tried to scream, but got a mouth full of polluted water instead.

He broke the surface coughing and hacking, but quickly sank below the surface again. However, his morph was already underway. His broken leg began to fuse with his healthy one, his skin was growing scales, and a colorful fin was sprouting from his back. He was becoming a koi fish.

[Dean]

Dean looked behind him as Drake started to morph. While he was relieved that it was a fellow Animorph, he felt a wave of frustration hit him.

"Dammit!" He shouted, more at the situation than at Drake. The ground shook violently beneath the pair, and Dean had to grab onto the side of the quarry to avoid falling into the sewer water. "Hurry up! We need to move!"

Dean took a smoke laced breath, covering his face with his hands. He needed to think, find a way out of this exponentially increasing FUBAR situation. He felt his mind wander to Xander and Antonie--his other Faction members, and to Darell and his family, but reined himself in. There was nothing he could do for them now. His first priority needed to be getting out of downtown alive. Maybe finding some way clear of this mess. Then, maybe then he could get back into the city and help his friends and charges.

So although he hated himself for doing it, and knew that he may be very well signing the other's death warrants, Dean fought down the urge to run to his Faction-mates and focused.

Think Archer! There is always a way out. There is no such thing as an inescapable situation. You just have to be smarter than your enemy and have the open mind to use what resources you have.

He counted his tools:

Two Animorphs, one in mid morph to heal a wound

His gun.

Two of the Flashbang grenades that Dean preferred

And then Dean remembered the most important asset: The chaos that the firebombing was creating. The Yeerks wouldn't be paying attention to who was an enemy or not, not now. With this humongous distraction (granted a completely unexpected, suicidal, earth-shattering distraction), Dean could do the one thing that seemed incredibly stupid:

He was going to fly out of this hell whole.

[Drake]

Drake was half fish when he heard Dean say that they needed to move. Luckily his ears hadn't gone fish yet. Drake's instinct was to finish his morph and hide, but he figured this other guy probably had something else in mind. And Drake was still new to the area, so he wasn't sure if there were better options or not.

Drake ultimately decided to trust him, and began to demorph again as he made his way over to the water's edge.

"We need to get to safety," Drake finally said between labored breaths. It was more of a statement of the obvious than a suggestion of what to do. "Do you have any plans?" Drake asked. "If I have a morph that will help us get out of this mess, I'll use it." What else was he supposed to say right now?

[Dean]

Dean turned to Drake, shouting over the ever growing explosions. "The shipyards are about four blocks away, at the docks. Our best way out of here is flying." Another tremor shook rocks loose from the quarry walls, dust clouding in their wake.

"What is your fastest morph?" Dean's Black Fox was the best he had, both in terms of speed and agility. If they had to fight though, he wouldn't last long. He began taking his coat off, stuffing his gun-belt and pistol inside, then tying it closed. There was no way he was leaving them behind.

[Drake]

"Fastest morph?" Drake asked, already part of the way into one of his two bird morphs. He stopped morphing. Did he mean fastest flier or just the fastest in general? Either way, Drake decided he would keep morphing. What he was turning into was probably good enough.

"I'm morphing a secretary bird," Drake said as the skin around his eyes changed color. "It flies and is decently fast, I think. Why? What are wraww-" Drake's neck had thinned and his vocal cords no longer supported human speech.

Drake wasn't sure why they needed to go to the docks, but whatever this guy's plan was, Drake would just roll with it.

[Dean]

Dean gave Drake a flat look.

Well, that was immensely unhelpful

Dean saw the feather patterns write themselves onto Drake's skin, sighing. "Just follow me and try not to get blown up, alright?" Just in case his point wasn't clear enough, a dilapidated hotel above them came crashing down in a shower of dust, smoke and flame.

Dean didn't wait for a response, finding the DNA of the fox in his head and focusing.

He never did like the whole morphing process. All the shifting bones and growing hair and teeth and other things that shouldn't be on a human body, it didn't feel right. Dean tripped over his boots and pants as he shot to the ground, falling back into the muddy muk that was the water. He shimmied out of his clothes just as the morph began to finish, a Black Fox were Dean Archer had been four minuets before. The Fox's cool confidence slipped into Dean's mind, only to be out fought by the more prominent Fox instinct for survival. In the past he would have been overwhelmed by the fear and paranoia that was the Fox under attack, but this was Dean's best (and favorite) morph.

So without spazing out in morph and running away like the Fox--and Dean--wanted, he picked up his coat containing his weapon in the Fox's jaws, calling back to Drake:

<Time to move>

Or die, whichever comes first

[Drake]

Drake wasn't sure about the logic of bringing a coat and gun with them, but he figured the weapon may be useful. The only thing was, one of them would need to demorph to use it. And Drake hoped he wasn't that one. The last time he had fired a gun, it was not a pleasant experience.

But he shoved all of that out of his mind now. He had a fox to follow. Drake ran on his scrawny bird legs, and flew where the terrain allowed. He didn't have much trouble keeping up with the fox speed-wise, but it was a bit difficult to keep track of him visually at times. All of the soot and debris floating through the air was really disorienting. The screams and explosions weren't helping much either.

<<Is that the place up ahead?>> Drake finally asked after what seemed like four miles instead of four blocks. <<I think I saw a bug fighter, but I can't be sure. Here, I'll give you some air cover.>> Without waiting for an answer, Drake spread his wings and rose thirty feet into the air.

If Drake wasn't able to provide any intelligence, then at least maybe he could be a distraction so Dean could get closer. On land or in the air, one way or another Drake would be a big, white, ash-covered bird headed toward a yeerk shipyard.

[Dean]

Dean took off out of the rock and muck as debris fell from the sky in a unsteady cadence. The bombing hadn't stopped yet either, the ground shook every other second. It was all too much for a human to lumber through, especially with ash and soot joining the cacophony.

But a for a fox, it was just another obstacle course. The only difference was that if Dean didn't make it to the finish line in time, there wouldn't be a medal for second place.

It was an awkward going, what with the weight from the pistol and coat slowing him down. But Dean refused to drop them, apart from the logical reasons for keeping them, they were his. That was all the reason he needed.

Dean worked with the foxes instincts, steering this way and that towards the docks. After some near misses--one of which a whole wall fell over Dean-- He heard Drake call that he could see the docks, and with them the hangars containing the best hope for a way out of Cape Town.

He took off as fast as his fox legs could carry him, jetting under a chain link fence and hoping that Drake could keep track of him.