The Gulf War

[belnoah]

Jeremy clawed his way out of his seat belt and leaped out of the van. He hated long drives and would have much rather flown, but he wasn't sure he could have made it in two hours. His stomach grumbled; once he'd found out that SPECTER wasn't paying for it, he'd opted out of getting lunch.

He glanced up and down the wide-open beach. There didn't seem to be anyone around. Good. They didn't need gawkers watching them morph.

"The coast is clear," he said.

[Leroy]

"Literally," Leroy mumbled in response to Jeremy's statement. He got out of the vehicle and looked out at the horizon. "So out there somewhere is some sort of device we are supposed to go find? That... is a big place to search." Leroy suddenly felt a bit uneasy just swimming out into the ocean. There seemed to be a good chance that they would get lost.

He shrugged the feeling off and kicked off his shoes, setting them inside the vehicle's door. He then did the same with his shirt and shorts. Underneath was the speed skating suit he had picked up at a garage sale. He was regretting wearing it since it had gotten almost unbearably hot and uncomfortable to wear during their mini road trip. But now he was ready to test out the new morph they had acquired for this mission. The killer whale.

"About time this trip got interesting," Leroy said as he grabbed one of the SPECTER gadgets and headed toward the surf. He took the elastic loop on the end of it and slid it over his arm and pushed it all the way up to his shoulder. During the drive he decided it was probably the best spot to put it so that he wouldn't loose it after he morphed.

Leroy was about knee deep in water by the time his legs felt like they were icicles. The water here was chilly! But he figured he would need to be at least waist deep before trying to morph the orca. As soon as he managed to will himself out that far, he focused on the form of the whale.

Immediately Leroy felt any amount of give that his outfit have disappear. He began to bulk up like body builder who just drank a barrel of steroids. And then some. Leroy quickly lost balance and fell face forward into the cold waves.

Instinctively Leroy tried to hold his breath, but was surprised to find that he was now breathing through a hole at the back of his neck. A massive neck. So massive that it was still sticking out of the water despite Leroy having his stomach on the sandy bottom.

Next Leroy's face bulged out and his mouth became impossibly big. He used his oversized tongue to feel his teeth all become the pointed teeth of a predator. His eyes also began migrating more to the sides of his skull.

As his eyes finished up their trip around his head, Leroy's arms came into view. Only by now they were more like paddles with fingers at the end. And by now his semi-pale skin was almost pure black and white.

The final changes Leroy felt were his legs fusing together into a powerful tail, and a dorsal fin sprouting from his spine. He was now bigger than the vehicle he rode in to get here. He was now a whale.

[Allie]

Olive Garden had been a big flop. The SPECTER agent had bought them chocolate milk and barely given them time to eat that. Hell hath no fury like a woman deprived of her lunch, Allie thought, mentally twisting the old saying to fit her current situation. Still, they made it to the beach in relatively one piece. Their sanity may have been slightly missing by that time, but she had never assumed the trip would go perfectly.

Jeremy was one of the first ones out, calling to the others that the coast was clear. Allie climbed out and stared at the beach. Leroy was already ditching the clothing he couldn't morph, and Allie decided morphing the orca was something one just had to do and get out of the way. The water would only be cold while she was human anyways.

Boots, skirt, and shirt were removed - albeit carefully so the few nice things she had stayed nice - and Allie was left standing in her leotard. She grabbed one of the tracking devices and slid the strap onto her arm. She'd seen how Leroy - who was now part way into the water - had done it and figured that it was probably the best method of keeping track of it.

As Allie waded out into the water she saw Leroy fall face first in. She could only assume he didn't really have legs to hold himself up anymore. She wouldn't either after too much longer. Not that I can feel them now anyways. She'd reached thigh height and her lower legs had long ago gone kind of numb to the cold water. She still had a way to go though, because Leroy had gone in to his waist and his bulk as a whale was rising above the water. She had to get at least as far as he had.

Step by freezing step she got out into the water, which was even more interesting seeing as she tried to stay slightly away from the bulk of Leroy, not sure what kind of control he had over the massive creature. When she finally was deep enough she took a shuddering breath and tried hard to focus more on the DNA of the whale than the temperature of the water.

A black and white pattern spread over her skin, which was gaining a rubbery texture. Even as this happened she began to inflate like some teenage version of Harry Potter's Aunt Marge, although Allie didn't look quite as much like a grotesque balloon. She eventually became top heavy and took a deep breath as she fell forward into the water. Shortly after a blowhole appeared in the back of her now massive neck and she could breath. She could feel her legs melding and her feet flattening into the whale's tail. Her arms were becoming fins and a dorsal fin sprouted from her back. Somewhere in the whole process her hair had sucked its way into her head, though she couldn't remember where. All she focused on was the final changes.

Her teeth sharpened and her eyes spread slowly apart until they'd shifted to the sides of her head. She felt strong in this form. The whale was a powerful beast, and yet she didn't have the same sense of power and the hunter feelings that always came to her when she morphed lion. <<We'll definitely have an interesting time demorphing this unless we become beached whales.>> She sent to the others, but demorphing probably wouldn't be an issue unless their little voyage took more than two hours.

[belnoah]

Jeremy splashed into the water with the others and began to swim. He was a decent swimmer; he'd gone on lots of beach vacations with his family. When he was out in deep water he started to morph while trying to continue swimming. Unfortunately, the first change was that his legs melted together. His powerful kicks turned to weak flops. He desperately tried treading water, but his arms were getting shorter and turning into fins. He felt as though someone was boring a hole into the back of his neck, and he started to get large.

He gave in and slipped underwater.

He found that his eyes still worked just fine. Before long he was an orca like the others.

<<OK, which way?>>

[Leroy]

<<OK, which way?>> Leroy heard Jeremy ask.

<<Good question,>> Leroy said in response. <<Maybe we should split up? But stay within thought speech range, of course. That way we can tell if these tracker things are pinging more in one direction than another. Since half of us are staying behind as emergency backup we can't really be very efficient, but three orcas should be able to cover a lot of area, right? So we should be fine.>>

<<But I am definitely open to suggestions. I've never done anything like this before so I'm just making it up as we go along.>> It was the truth.

<<Either way, we should at least head out to deeper water.>> Leroy pumped his tail and felt the cool (but no longer cold) water rush over his blubbery skin. It was an amazing feeling. Leroy had never felt so at home in the water, but as a killer whale, this was his kingdom.

[belnoah]

Jeremy shot through the water. He felt powerful, he felt like he was on to of the world, he felt-

He felt like something was telling him to go somewhere off to his left. He shrugged it off at first, but it kept getting more and more insistent as he swam on. Before long, he would find himself drifting in the direction of the call, and immediately adjust his course, only to find that he was drifting again.

<Hey, everyone, does anyone else feel that?> he asked. <I feel like I'm being pulled away... Like something's calling me!>

[Leroy]

<<Feel what? Oh yeah, now that you mention it...>> What was that feeling that Jeremy had brought to Leroy's attention? Whatever it was, Leroy had been drifting towards it without even realizing it.

<<What the heck is that? Do you think it is the thing we are looking for? I mean, what else could possibly be doing something like this?>> Leroy was confused, but also very intrigued. <<I suppose we should try heading towards it and see if these tracker things react. But even if they don't, for whatever reason, I have a feeling we are on the right track.>>

[belnoah]

Leroy had a point. This could be the thing they were looking for. After all, one of the strange things the agent had mentioned was sea creatures congregating in one spot. Besides, Jeremy was having enough trouble resisting both the pull of whatever it was and the instincts of the whale. <<I'm on it,>> he said, flipping in the direction of the call.

At first the call was pulling him forward, but then it started to drift downward. Jeremy wasn't worried yet; the whale could handle quite a bit of depth, however... <<This thing's probably deep. How positive are we that we'll be able to reach it with these morphs?>> He wouldn't say it outright, but he didn't know that much about orcas.

[Allie]

Allie followed Jeremy and Leroy out into the deeper ocean, pumping her tail as she pushed herself along. She kept silent though, because she knew as long as she could hear the others that things were okay and usually one boy or the other would say any response that she could think of. She was worried though about following the thing that was calling them. She could feel its pull too, and it definitely didn't feel natural to her.

<Guys, we want to be careful. It could be one of those things that get harder to resist the closer we get to it. If the pull starts getting stronger, I suggest turning around and rethinking a little.> If they could turn around that was. She wasn't sure if that would be possible.

When Jeremy started commenting about going downward though, Allie had to wonder too. <If we can't reach it we acquire something that can go deeper. Though that might mean going back and starting this over, and I don't know if we can afford it. We may want to hope that it's not beyond the depth we can reach.> What would SPECTER do if the Animorphs came back unsuccessful because of the morphs they were using? Allie figured they'd be disappointed, but really they couldn't do much else becuase none of the Animorphs had a life outside of hiding and being government agents. They were "dead" after all.

[Leroy]

Both Jeremy and Allie brought up good points. They really had no idea what they were swimming into. Whatever object they were looking for might be more than they could handle. Or at the very least be too big or too deep for the three of them to retrieve. The more Leroy thought about it, the more he realized just how little they knew about their situation.

<<Stupid SPECTER,>> Leroy muttered to nobody in particular. Then to Jeremy and Allie he said, <<I suppose if the lure becomes too strong we could always demorph.>> Leroy didn't like the thought of demorphing out in the middle of the ocean though. <<And if it is too deep, maybe we can catch and acquire something that can swim deeper. We are currently some of the top predators in the ocean after all.>>

Leroy continued to swim in the direction he was being pulled in. He hoped they would be there soon, but he had no idea just how far they would need to go. But one thing was for sure. The closer they got, the more 'neighbors' they had joining them.

[belnoah]

Glancing around, Jeremy saw more underwater life than he'd ever seen in one spot before. It was like a reef without the coral. Jeremy started to swim deeper, trying to keep the signal level. Finally, it stopped leading him deeper into the water. He would have breathed a sigh of relief if he'd been able.

Looking down he saw mammalian carcasses, floating through the water. They must have been so focused on the signal that they forgot to-

ACK! HIS LUNGS WERE BURNING FROM THE NEED TO BREATH! He flipped his tail and shot towards the surface, focusing on the pain in his lungs to keep the signal out of his mind. He felt wonderful when he broke the surface and gulped in air through his blow hole.

<Don't forget to breath, everyone.>

[Allie]

Breathe? What was that? Oh wait. Allie shot to the surface after Jeremy, beginning to feel a similar burning sensation in her lungs. After she'd surfaced and taken a breath she paused. She could still hear the signal, but she wasn't going to follow it right now. She was at least capable of not doing so, even if her orca morph had a lot of trouble with that.

<<Ok. So apparently this signal is not easy for real animals to ignore. The only reason we're not drawn as strongly is that we're actually human. I'm starting to really not like whatever it is out there.>> What was it they were supposed to do again? They were following this, but why? Something about this was just fishy, and no it was not just that they were surrounded by fish.

[belnoah]

<But we are human, so we can decide how far into this we want to go,> said Jeremy. <Why don't we just start by finding where it is from the surface? That way, we have the option of at least marking what this thing's coordinates are, so SPECTER can send in a better team. Or maybe we can decide we want to find out what it is ourselves.> Jeremy wouldn't admit it, but he was very curious. He wanted to see this thing for himself.

Without waiting for an answer, he swam towards the signal again, this time staying very close to the surface. He counted in his head, and every time he reached thirty, he would take another breath. He knew the orca could go longer than that, but he wanted to be prepared in case he lost control closer to the source of the signal.