My name is Emiko.
I can't tell you my last name, because then they could find us. And I'll just say that that would be a very bad thing.
It was about a week after I got my cat, Ting, that he started acting weird. I would only see her in two-hour periods. No, I guess it was less than two hours. It would have to be, if I think about it now. Anyway, I was going to find out what was going on. I locked myself, and my kitty, or at least what I thought was my cat, into my room.
A couple minutes to the two-hour mark, is when I first saw the bird. It was a bald eagle, a beautiful bird. But then it started talking.
<Tobias! MORPH OUT!!! Now!> I was a little concerned. A little concerned, as in screaming my head off, and running around like an idiot. I mean, jeez, there was a bald eagle going like, 100 miles an hour right at my window, and not only that, it was a talking bald eagle. And it wasn't regular talk; it was in my head, like telepathy.
<I so do not care! MORPH! NOW!> And that's when I just plain went nuts. You think I was freaking out earlier? Ha, well now I was just going insane. Partly because Ting was starting to mutate, and she was growing feathers. Yes. Feathers. She was turning into a bird with a red tail. A red-tailed Hawk. We studied birds in school. Not that I could have remembered that then.
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" That would be me, screaming. The bird was now turning into a human boy. He looked almost familiar, I guess he used to go to my school.
"Uh, hi. You might not want to scream that loud. Someone might hear you," he said.
"How did you do that?! You're a bird!!" I started to yell. I wasn't worried about anyone hearing me. Everyone else in the foster house was out.
"Rachel, I guess we don't have to worry about her being a Controller. Obviously she doesn't know about morphing," the boy/bird named Tobias said.
"Are you talking to the bird?" I demanded. " Can it 'morph' too?"
<Yes, it can,> said the eagle. <Its name is Rachel.> Then the eagle started to change too. Tobias clamped his hand around my mouth, so I couldn't scream. It surprised me because he had always used to get beat up at school, and was never very aggressive.
"Okay, then go of me. Thank you," I said. "There's nobody else here but me." He nodded.
"Well, we have to be careful. Very careful."
"I, um, can't really tell you that," he said, hesitantly. "We have some enemies."
" 'Some' enemies?" The eagle had turned into a tall, blonde, girl. She also went to my school. "How about 'a lot of enemies'?"
"Hey, you're Rachel," I said, surprised. "My foster brother has a crush on you. So do half the boys in our school." It was true. She was very beautiful.
She smiled at Tobias. He looked at the floor. Hmmm, I thought. It seems that Tobias does, too. But I kept quiet. It wasn't a surprise.
"Um, look, we don't really know your name-"
"Emiko."
"Yeah. We're Rachel and Tobias, you probably figured out," Tobias said. "And it wouldn't be a very good idea to tell anyone about this, because, um, because you could get in serious trouble."
"Trouble?" I laughed. "Yeah, right. For telling a story no one would believe? "What kind of trouble?"
"Maybe you should come with us," Rachel sighed. "It's kind of a long story, and it'd be better if we talked to someone first, before telling you."
So that's how I found out about the Animorphs. (Cool word, huh?)
After that, we walked over to a barn. (I couldn't fly, and they needed to show me the way.) Inside were four people. There was a tall, serious-looking boy, another shorter, Hispanic boy who was laughing, and a short, black girl with a raccoon in one hand, and some kind of shot in the other.
Then I saw the fourth person.
Or maybe I shouldn't say person. He looked like a mythological centaur, with a scorpion's tail. His eyes were large and a deep green, with two on his head, like a human, and two on stalks that came off the top of his head. His body was covered in blue-green fur, and he had hooves. All in all, a pretty weird sight. Which is why I sat down hard on one of the bales of hay in the barn, and my usually slanted eyes (I'm Japanese) grew very round. I'm sure I got pale.
"Rachel? Tobias?" said the tall boy. "I want this explained right now." He was talking in a low, silky, voice. I guess I wasn't sopposed to see the centaur creature, or whatever that thing was.
"It's OK, Jake, she's not a Controller," said Rachel. "This is the girl whose sister we're supposed to watch." My sister? Did they mean Kiachi, who shared the room with me? She was Japanese, too, so they might have thought she was my sister. And what was a Controller?
"Uh, excuse me," I spoke up. "But what's a Controller?" They all looked at Jake and he sighed.
"Well, we might as well tell her everything. She could help us."
"'Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight, never running from a real fight, she is the one named Sailor Moon, "' I sang. Then I sighed. "I love Sailor Moon."
"Yeah, she's cool," my friend Akiko, said. She loves Sailor Moon, too, although her favorite senshi is Jupiter. "You are so lucky, having the same name as Serena, and all." When Sailor Moon turns back into a human, her name is Serena. "It's also cool that you know how to draw like that," she went on. I can draw japainmation almost perfectly. "I wish I was a good drawer."
"How about this. You write me a script, I draw the pictures. We can make a comic book." I was just kidding, even though I do like to draw manga, and as usual, Akiko took it seriously.
"Yeah," she started, jumping up. "I'll start working on it, right now!"
"Oh, man, I was just kidding."
"But it was a great idea!"
"This will be a ton of work. And for what?" This made her think. I could see the wheels turning in her head. So that's why I started to talk before she said anything.
"Look, it's-"
"We could have a comic book sale! We-" That's when it happened. The entire room just lit up, like we were inside a star. I couldn't see anything but light. It was everywhere, filling the room. And then I blanked out.
When I woke up I was lying on a blue and green blanket. No, it was grass. Blue grass?
"Huh?" was my brilliant answer. Where the heck was I? And what about Akiko?
I sat up and rubbed my head. ("Owww!") Then I looked around, at the tree, the waterfall, and the scoop in the ground, at my right. The tree didn't seem to belong, even in this strange world. The branches started out green, like the trunk, and then turned gold, and into a pinkish color. The waterfall was very beautiful, and it didn't look so different from an Earth waterfall. The scoop was, well, a scoop. Like a giant had come along with his spoon, and decided he was hungry for this weird grass-stuff. The thing I didn't see was my friend, Akiko. Had she been left behind? Was I the only one taken?
But that was not my biggest problem. My biggest problem was that three centaur-looking creatures were galloping toward me, and they didn't look nice….
Beats me.
But onto the story. Me and Serena (excuse me, Serena and I) had just been watching Sailor Moon in her living room, when we were transported through time and space into the unknown.
Do you believe me? No?
Good. Now I know you're sane. We were transported somewhere, though, and I suppose it could have been through time and space, and it was definitly the unkown.
~~~~~~
I woke up lying on a hard, slick floor. It looked like some kind of Alien ship. That's when I turned around and saw the Aliens. The first kind looked like a giant centipede with four eyes, and millions of legs. It had the kind of look in it's eye that made you think, Hmmm, he doesn't look like one of the good guys.
But the other kind was really weird. And scary. I almost fainted right there. Which would not have been a good thing. They were over seven feet tall, with blades coming out of their head, wrists, feet, and tail. You could tell without looking in their eye that these guys were trouble.
"Uh-oh," I muttered. They were both staring at me. So I stood up, and put my hands up.
"Uh, hi," I said. The pair looked very confused. "Would either of you know the way to Earth?" Obviously they didn't. This was getting easier; they weren't very bright.
"Can you understand me? Here, I'm just gonna take this…." I reached for a little machine that looked like a weapon. I guess it was, because their reaction was pretty immediate. 'Immediate' as in there was zero time between when I said "this", and they jumped.
I landed four feet away from where I first started, probably a good thing, because both the creatures came crashing down onto the control panels, and where I had stood. I ducked behind a stand of some other weird controls.
And then he came.
'He' was a blue centaur thing, with stalks coming out of his head, and no mouth. He also had a 'look' in his eye. Only it was much, worse.
<Fools!> he snapped to the other two. <What are you doing on the floor?! I told you to go and get me a Dracon Beam! Is that too difficult for you?> And he stormed out of the room.
To be continued....