Animorphs Re-Read: #5 The Predator (Chapters 17-19)

 Chapter 17

Marco wants to yell at his mother, host of Visser One, to show that he's there. He has gone years thinking his mother is dead and this scene is just heartbreaking.

Jake privately thought-speaks to Marco to remind him not to do something stupid. Jake has to remind Marco, multiple times, to keep control and not make the other Controllers suspicious. Marco is so lost in the moment that he can't fully recognize the dangers of calling out to his mother.

Visser Three notices that Marco seems frightened. That starts a short bitching contest between Visser One and Visser Three. Visser One defends her choice for a human body as her learning about the planet and that Visser Three has jeopardized the invasion. I wish I was there and had a bowl of popcorn to watch this.

Marco realizes that only Jake and himself know who the host of Visser One is.

Visser Three says he's better than Visser One because he destroyed the Andalite fleet and killed Prince Elfangor personally. Visser One counters by saying that he has still made mistakes and the Council of Thirteen doesn't like Vissers that make mistakes.

It fully hits Marco that his mother is a Controller and he feels weak. As Visser One leaves the room, Jake tells Marco that he can't do anything for his mother now. Marco wishes he was in another morph so he could get lost in an animal's instincts. But the gorilla's instincts are too similar to a human's.

Marco tells Jake not to tell anyone else about the identity of Visser One's human hosts. I like that Marco singles out Cassie as everyone knows who Jake is crushing on. I am so glad the pair end up together at the end with Rachel as the maid of honor.

Jake agrees with Marco's demand.

Visser Three comes in and taunts the Animorphs. Ax responds and Visser Three comments that Ax is right in that he doesn't want any other Yeerk to get the morphing power. Does this mean that the Visser plans to kill them all? Or will he fear that will get him into too much trouble?

Visser Three also seems to consider the fact that the Animorphs might be humans, at least some of them, but he brushes that assumption off. I'm assuming the idea doesn't make sense to him so he decides to brush it off. In his mind humans are worthless, not as good as Andalites, so why bother?

Visser Three then commands the Controllers to take the Animorphs to a holding cell and if they cause any trouble, to kill them.


Chapter 18

Marco and the others are lead to their holding cell. It's creepy that he uses some imagery from the dreadful ant morph to describe the cramped conditions. And Tobias is on his shoulder cause he can't fly. Aw!

This time when they're caged up no window appears.

The majority of the Animorphs have thirty-six minutes until they're trapped in morph. I would not want to be Tobias right now. He's probably looking at the group imagining how horrid their lives will be if they manage to escape while becoming nothlits. Hell, he's probably hoping that they'll die instead of becoming nothlits like him.

As Marco waits for his own death he wonders when his mother was taken. How much of his memories of his mother had been Visser One controlling his mother's body. All the moments he describes are so sweet but when he basically says 'what if it was a Yeerk during those moments' it becomes very creepy.

Marco ends his thinking on the fact that his mother never really died and that Visser One left the invasion of Earth in Visser Three's hands.

Ax basically says that they should give up while Marco says no. This is a huge transformation as he's always been the reluctant Animorph. He has always been the one saying that they shouldn't fight. And instead of harassing his friends that he was right, he is the one saying that they should still fight. That's some great character development there!

All the other Animorphs stare at Marco, of course.

Marco even suggests morphing ants to hopefully make one final strike against the Yeerks. Cassie is shocked but the rest of the group agrees. However, Tobias can't morph so they know they'll have to leave him on his own. Tobias says it's okay since he would feel better knowing that the others are out there causing the Yeerks problems.

My baby!

And then a door just appears. Hork-Bajir wearing gold uniforms have killed Hork-Bajir wearing red uniforms. The lead Hork-Bajir, that is detailed as being extremely deadly even for one of its species, says how to escape. Of course the group expects this to be a trap.

The Animorphs then decide to go for it since, as Marco points out, the Yeerks could've easily killed them but didn't.

Oh, and why are the Hork-Bajir doing this? Politics. While Animorphs is mature for its intended audience...this is just fucking stupid. I mean...really, Visser One, you're risking the invasion of Earth for the sake of one upping Visser Three? Really?

As they go to find the exit, Rachel is really excited. Of course she would be. The fighting here is tense. Ax says BATTLE! like he found the best party ever. I think Ax's excitement comes because he's finally going into a real battle and that, maybe, it's more honorable for an Andalite to die in battle. Plus he won't have to fight Visser Three one on one if he does die.

Marco feels good because he doesn't feel helpless anymore. As Marco continues to fight he starts to form a bond with Ax. I don't believe it's romantic, at least not at this point, I think it's the bond between one fighter to another. A bond that can last during battle, but doesn't always exist outside of it. The Eternal Heart (my Terminator fanfic) talks about this at least once or twice.

After Jake takes down a Hork-Bajir, Marco compares the hallways in the alien ship to the ant tunnels. God, I don't need that memory being brought up every two seconds!

Soon they find the dropshaft which is basically an elevator without a floor. Imagine the leap of faith scene from the third Indiana Jones movie but with an elevator. Ax says that the dropshaft should understand simple thought-speak and spoken words because that's how it works on Andalite ships.

I'm just confused as why Andalites would need something that takes voice commands when they don't have mouths. I'll just shut up now...

They reach the fifteenth level after two minor incidents, including Tobias taking on a Hork-Bajir, and Marco reminds Rachel to demorph. As she stumbles, Marco picks her up in his gorilla arms to save time getting to the pod.

As the pod goes towards Earth, Marco looks at the Yeerk mother ship and thinks it's funny that his mother is on there. Of course it's the sad type of funny. Before Marco finishes demorphing he tells Jake to keep Visser One's human host's identity a secret. Jake agrees.

Marco then thinks that one day the war with the Yeerks will be over and all humans will be free. And there we have Marco's reason for fighting!

Chapter 19

It is Sunday and both Marco and his Dad are at his mother's grave. He remarks that there is no thing as a nice graveyard, but his mother still has a good one. I'll admit I have never lost someone that I have cried over. So Marco getting sad like this is foreign to me. I have lost both grandparents on my father's side, but I never felt sad over their deaths.

Marco comments that it is better to joke and laugh. You especially need to do those things when life gets you down.

Marco's Dad makes an announcement saying that he's finally going to go back to his old line of work. That he hasn't been a good father for his son and Eva, his wife and Marco's mother, wouldn't be happy about that. Marco, of course, has to make a wisecrack about this.

This causes the two to get into a joking fight and decide to have a rematch on the game DOOM.

The book ends with Marco remembering what he knows about his mother now and how he will save her. One day.

This book is the last book that covers the Animorphs' reasons for fighting. You could say Ax never got a book of his own in the first five and so we still need to get to his reason for fighting. Thing is...he's an Andalite and needs to fight the Yeerks.

So you could say this book is also Ax's reason for fighting as it explains why he doesn't fly away to his people.

I can't remember how I felt when I first found out about the identity of Visser One but now...ouch. I am very glad the book ends with Marco's father deciding to move on, though.

The next book in the Animorphs series I will be Re-Reading will be

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Animorphs Re-Read

The Eternal Heart: Fragile Package 2

The silence in the chopper was deafening. I didn’t much care for Katherine, but I had no idea beforehand of the hate she harbored for me. I could understand, although very vaguely, of why she wouldn’t like me. I was the person that John was attracted to and had talked of leaving her for.

To distract myself from the silence I looked at the radar and the scenery. Though the scenery really just consisted of decaying buildings and some movements on the ground. But I couldn’t tell if the movements were from Resistance fighters, nomads, or Skynet. It wasn’t my place to determine that and Katherine didn’t speak.

Her silence might be her way of discrediting me later. While that wasn’t comforting on its own, it was comforting to know that it must not be that bad for her to hide it from me. Katherine might loathe me, but she would never put her hatred of me above the protection of the Resistance. In that way John had chosen a good wife.

I had let the silence go on for so long since I had failed to get a conversation started with her earlier. If she wasn’t going to make the effort to reply, I wasn’t going to make the effort to talk.

“So how do you keep your hair like that?” I heard Barnes ask by way of the headsets.

“I don’t think Kyle would like you asking questions about his girlfriend’s hair.” I joked as I needed to say something. The silence was getting really bad.

“Is that really how you think pick-up lines work?”

“Hey, it’s not my fault if I’m a little uneducated in certain areas.”

“Just certain areas?” Barnes replied and I could see a smile briefly on Katherine’s face.

“What, you acting like you’re better than me?”

“I’m human.”

“Well, you’re not a very good example.” Star said dryly.

I grinned as she had just ended a silence that could’ve gone on a long time.

“Barnes is an excellent example. John trusts him.” Katherine said, defending the man.

“So you’ve decided to talk?” I asked Katherine.

She became silent. Smooth, Jash, very smooth.

“Well, you got one defender.” I said after the silence went on for a few minutes.

“That’s more than you have.” Barnes tried to counter.

“I’ve got the leader of the Resistance on my side. Other people have seemed to act kinder to me as of late.”

“But you’re never going to fu-“

“You keeping track of those movements?” Katherine asked and I could tell that her reason for interrupting wasn’t to check on anything.

Not even Barnes could bring up my obsession with John while she was around.

“My job is to look at the radar and your job is to look at the ground.” I replied dryly. “Tracking movements on the ground isn’t important in this point in time. We’re still a little bit away from the area we’re supposed to scout. But tracking movements on the ground for now could give us some hints for future missions.”

“You like commanding me, don’t you.” Katherine said.

“No, I’m just doing my job. Besides, dealing with you means dealing with John later. It isn’t always the best thing when you have something negative to say about me.”

Katherine formed a small smile on her lips and I sighed. She liked causing me pain and I’d like to cause her some pain at this moment. But she could get away with any jabs at me while I couldn’t. Sort of sucked to be me at the moment.

“What are the movements on the ground like?” Star asked.

“Nothing threatening.” Katherine replied. “No movements that would signal that they’ll be involved with our scouting mission later on.”

“That’s good.” I said and then noticed something strange on the radar.

Skynet wasn’t human and could move ahead of what us humans were capable of. Luckily that had proved not to be such a big advantage in the war so humans could still have victories. One thing Skynet had done was tamper with how radar saw their different Terminators. Depending how important a Terminator was, such as one going to infiltrate a Resistance base would have higher priority over one fighting in the battlefield, they could get it so that radar would pick them up as something else.

Luckily the Resistance had a decent percentage of spotting when this trick was being used. From the radar reading it seemed like Skynet was trying this trick again.

“Katherine, John mention to you any other Resistance choppers being in the area?” I asked.

“No,” Katherine said. “Wouldn’t he have mentioned something to you?”

“We have a friendship, not a relationship. Besides, sometimes a leader has to hide facts to get a victory.” I paused a moment. “Star and Barnes, get prepared for some action. Shit is about to hit the fan.”

I watched where the ‘Resistance’ choppers were and turned just as the first shot was fired.

“Get ready to shoot back!” I shouted and tried to get in a good position for Katherine.

But she was pregnant and getting a good shot was hard. I wasn’t going to be the one to have John lose his children. However, I still had to make sure we all didn’t die.

I spent a few minutes just dodging and cursing the fact that this was just supposed to be a simple mission. Katherine wasn’t supposed to be in danger and if something happened John would kill me.

Thoughts of John killing me were cut short as Katherine was finally able to get a shot out, but that victory was cut short when Skynet’s HKs finally landed some hits on the chopper. Due to me having to dodge, Katherine wasn’t able to land another hit.

Then I dodged some more, Skynet shot the chopper down, and darkness.

I opened my eyes slowly and the sight of burning wreckage greeted me.

“Katherine!” I shouted as I looked at her.

I quickly pulled her away from the wreckage and tried not to look at the metal that was now showing through my burnt skin.

“Star! Barnes!” I yelled, but there was no reply.

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 All of The Eternal Heart
The Eternal Heart tumblr
The Eternal Trilogy Blog
The Eternal Heart on a03

ALSO: MARTIN HAS WRITTEN A BRIEF Q AND A SO CHECK IT OUT AND TELL HIM WHAT YOU THINK OF IT

Vesnali in the Cash Shop

Info From HERE

Vesnali is fresh in the air on Subeta and the Cash Shop is celebrating it.

Besides brand new items for this month including these:

There are also some old items that are being sold again. Best part is items like these:

Are 25% off until May 4, 2014 at which time they will be re-retired.

Hope everyone is having a great Vesnali so far!

Sayings Sundays (April 20, 2014)

I love the tv series Hannibal. It is my favorite show airing right now and more than deserves to run its intended number of seasons. The main character is Will Graham. I have talked about the series in a previous Sayings Sundays so I won't waste your time now.

I chose this quote from the show because it reminded me of Bruce Banner/The Hulk. Yeah, that's really the sole reason I decided to make this graphic.

Plus I don't like therapists either.

Here is yet another song that I have become obsessed with. I randomly found it and have grown to love it.

The theme of the song is basically renewal. Something bad has happened and the narrator is coming clean.

For this week, I have related it to Will Graham as in the current season of the show he is going through a period of renewal. He is going through a period of finding out who he really is and that's not easy. Especially when you have to watch out for a cannibal and making sure the cannibal is finally put in his place.

Vesnali 2014 Begins

Info From HERE

Today is Easter. I'm not a Catholic, or any form of Christian, and so I don't celebrate Jesus rising from the dead. Since, you know, I don't believe Jesus was the son of God or that he rose from the dead.

HOWEVER, even if you aren't a Christian there are still delicious chocolate bunnies and other delicious chocolate things to eat. After I'm done writing this blog post I'm going to get some more ham because it's to die for.

On Subeta there is an event called Vensali that happens around Easter time. For it you find flowers that appear randomly when you go around the site, click on the flower, visit someone's profile, give them a flower, you get a coin, and then you spend it in Esther's Shop to buy stuff with the coins.

So have fun this Vensali!

Mean Green Shagging Machine 8

-This is a Mature Story (if in content if not plot)
-It's a The Avengers/Aliens fanfic
-It's a Bruce Banner/The Hulk fanfic

You can read it HERE

Derek and Kyle Reese

Terminator: The Sarah Chronicles expanded on Kyle Reese's family tree. Now I admit this is a little strange that Derek (Kyle's older brother) was never mentioned and so comes out of nowhere. It's just like: Hi, I'm here!

But the character more than makes up for that fact. Derek is interesting and seeing him struggle with being in the present and having lost his brother provides interesting sub-plots is good story telling.

The big thing with Derek is that he has a strong connection to his brother. Hell, one of the reasons he decided to go back in time was to make sure his brother didn't die. That takes some strength to leave the world you know behind for something unknown.

I really think I love strong family bonds in fiction because I never felt I had a strong family bond with any of my family, really. So when I see a story where a sibling goes through a lot to rescue another sibling it is really nice to behold.

Kyle is the more pure of the brothers. He's the one that Derek looks after. Sarah Connor even remarks that even when Kyle got angry he still had some brightness to his eyes.

However, Derek is at the opposite end of the spectrum and it's probably one of the big reasons why I prefer him. He can go dark and is the more protective of the pair. He feels like it is his duty to look after Kyle.

I really wish that we got to see more of Kyle and Derek working together at brothers. All we have to go on about the brothers' relationship is flashbacks from Derek and what Derek said about Kyle. What if the reality was different? What if their relationship was strained? What if...

Hell, a Season 3 would've given us answers since John Connor and Catherine Weaver traveled to the future. The cancellation of TSCC robbed me of more Kyle/Derek moments!