## [R][FF] r!Animorphs: the Reckoning (ch.34, Jake)

* Author: u/TK17Studios  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning**
* URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627803/chapters/33993797
* Score: 91

* Created: 2018-05-20T01:27:34

### Post:

[Link to content](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627803/chapters/33993797)

### Comments:

> **u/TK17Studios** [+24]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a minute later)
> 
> Also available on [fanfiction](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/45/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning)
> 
> Will try to release 4-6 chapters in the next 2mo.

>> **u/GrecklePrime** [+20]  (45 minutes later)
>> 
>> I appreciate any effort you give, but seriously don't worry if you can't. Quality is always better than quantity in my opinion. Hope life is treating you well.

>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+20]  *We are the Empire.* (4 hours later)
>> 
>> Seriously, don't worry too much. I think you've established yourself as a "quality over quantity" writer by now. :P
>> 
>> And I think we can all see that parts of the chapter would have clearly suffered if you'd rushed it. You're basically writing the ultimate Animorphs fic (I mean, the fandom is kind of dying overall); so personally speaking, I'm absolutely okay with you taking your time, as long as it gets completed eventually.
>> 
>> (please don't die)

>> **u/eroticas** [+4]  (14 hours later)
>> 
>> It is an amazingly written fanfic and you're a great writer

>> **u/Meriipu** [+3]  (3 months later)
>> 
>> did you perhaps mean 2 chapters in the next 4-6 months c:

>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+3]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (3 months later)
>>> 
>>> No, I'm just a failure.
>>> 
>>> But Tobias is almost done.  I'm at 12,000 words of an estimated 17,000.

>>>> **u/Meriipu** [+1]  (3 months later)
>>>> 
>>>> perhapss in estimating time but hardly in other regards
>>>> 
>>>> previous chapters have been worth the wait so far either way

>>>> **u/copenhagen_bram** [+1]  (5 months later)
>>>> 
>>>> I love R!Animorphs! Keep up the good work!

>>>> **u/trin456** [+1]  (5 months later)
>>>> 
>>>> 2 chapters in the next 4-6 months is starting to look overly optimistic

>> **u/liehon** [+1]  (23 days later)
>> 
>> Came here from fanfiction because your last chapter mentioned you appreciate feedback.
>> 
>> So here it is: soglad to have a new chapter. Think I read the previous ones in a week (work week that is).
>> 
>> Really love how you manage to give your spin yet still have it feel like Animorphs.
>> 
>> Obviously I liked the events that mirror chapters/books (cause pure nostalgia) but the exploration of new paths is very interesting & enjoyable as well.
>> 
>> Edit: /r/HFY has a bot that messages us when an author we subscribed to post. That’s not a thing here?
>> 
>> Come to think of it. Your story would fit /r/HFY (even if it doesn’t use the traditional tropes)

>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+2]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (23 days later)
>>> 
>>> <3 Thanks so much for taking the time to drop a line.  I'm glad the story rings true ... my love for Animorphs knows no bounds.  =)
>>> 
>>> I hadn't come across r/HFY before—looks like the sort of sub I'm likely to lurk in for a while.  Thanks for that, too!
>>> 
>>>  - Duncan

> **u/Badewell** [+20]  (56 minutes later)
> 
> Very glad to see this updating again.
> 
> Previous couple of chapters might have been a better time to mention this, but I haven't been this unsettled by a villain since HPMOR!Voldemort. "Blade that falls without warning" (even though its Elfangor's title) is a great way to describe the feeling, the constant worry that even if things seem alright it might already be too late to even survive, let alone stop him.
> 
> I really enjoy seeing antagonists that are menacing for better reasons than kicking puppies (Esplin gets bonus points for being menacing while working to guarantee the health and security of all puppies).

> **u/CouteauBleu** [+17]  *We are the Empire.* (6 hours later)
> 
> While I'm flooding this thread with posts, one remark: have you thought about updating the story's Summary? The current one worked when you had a few chapters and you needed to attract a r/rational audience, but by now I think everyone in that demographic knows of your story whether they read it or not. You should probably think about attracting general Animorphs fan and mainstream SF fans; the "fix/sanitize/rational agents" parts might put them off.
> 
> Instead of the current summary, I would suggest the one I posted on TV tropes:
> 
> > "You know who does have brains, though?” I continued. “The Yeerks. Maybe a thousand of them already. A thousand human brains, a thousand slaves, except those slaves can’t even think without their masters knowing about it. There is nothing standing in their way except us—did you get that? This isn’t some movie, where humanity’s going to rise up and pull some bullshit trick out of its ass. The Yeerks are *winning*. Did you not see Elfangor get eaten? Do you not understand the stakes? He was coming to *destroy the planet* because he thought that might be the only way to stop them."
> 
> (I really, really love this rant)
> 
> I think it establishes most of what you need in a few sentences:
> 
> - This an Animorphs story. The main beats of the premise (the kids met Elfangor and got powers, Elfangor died, the Yeerks control brains) are explained or implied.
> 
> - There's a first-person narrator.
> 
> - This is a retelling (as opposed to a cross-over or a fix-fic or a shipping fic) that starts around the time Elfangor gets eaten. 
> 
> - The characters are really angry and terrified, and the Yeerks are freaking dangerous. They might actually win if the heroes don't pull their weight.
> 
> - The characters are rational, not because they're smarter, but because they take the time to think through the implications of their situation and their actions, and discuss them out loud. (which is something canon did really well when the author bothered)
> 
> It doesn't include the "morphing animals" part, but I think that's okay; because it's better to keep the blurb short, and because morphing animals is kind of secondary in the fic anyway.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+8]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (6 hours later)
>> 
>> Convinced (although I changed the first-person part to "Marco" to avoid intimations of self-insert; people will get the first-person narrator fine without it being flagged, I hope).

>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+4]  *We are the Empire.* (7 hours later)
>>> 
>>> I didn't even think of that, but that makes sense.
>>> 
>>> (if you want to be really cheeky, you can replace it with "Marco continued, looking at each one of us")

> **u/reaper7876** [+17]  (an hour later)
> 
> Delighted to see this story back.
> 
> Not entirely sure what the implications are of the opening segment. At first, I thought it was a metaphorical passage describing Jake's slow rise from his comatose state. However, the second half (from the first *shift*) are clearly memories of Crayak. Rereading it, I strongly suspect the first half was as well.
> 
> The following passage, I think, is key:
> 
> >The bottom of the ladder, the first of a string of pearls. An oasis in the dying deep, a careless bounty of matter and energy a thousand times brighter than anything I had ever before experienced. Delirious, I drank, and drank, and drank, and then, rejuvenated, I turned my eye toward the pair of rocky planets—
> 
> Matter and energy? Rocky planets? If there was any chance of all this being metaphorical, that chance is now blown out of the water, in my eyes. Especially with the second half of the segment, which is clearly about Crayak, and which also refers to something which consumes stars and planets.
> 
> With that in mind, this is what we learn of Crayak:
> 
> Crayak is stranded on a planet (the bottom of a deep, black gravity well), as stars are born and die and are born again, though fewer and lesser with each iteration. Desperate, they use up the planet's resources to escape the gravity well and launch themselves towards a nearby star. At one point, a rock drifts past, and Crayak is forced to eject half of themself to stabilize their course. Eventually, Crayak reaches the star, filled with energy and matter, and eats it all, before turning towards a pair of rocky planets.
> 
> There we reach the first *shift*. The narrative fractures from there, but some details can be picked up. A planet wrapping itself around a star. A scarlet shadow spreading throughout the galaxy, stars dimming and dying in its wake. Strange creatures howling as their skies go dark. Each of these, I think, are signs of Crayak consuming all they can reach. A monstrous eye atop a throne of metal: the canonical appearance of Crayak. And various other details, which I'm not sure how to interpret, other than to consider them Bad News (the thing in the lake, the nightmare in the web).
> 
> My Anticipated Percentages:
> 
> Odds that the first scene here describes part of Crayak's past: 90%
> 
> Odds that the first scene here describes the past of another, non-Crayak entity: 8%
> 
> Odds that the first scene here is nothing more than Jake recovering from his coma: 2%
> 
> Odds that the half shed by the Crayak turns out to be the Ellimist: 15%
> 
> ~~Odds that I'm sad about Garrett's fate: 100%~~ Misread the chapter, thought that Tom hadn't had his morph to bring back.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+9]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (an hour later)
>> 
>> There's also the fact that the *last* time Jake had a "Yeerk" die in his head (the morph controller getting burned away) he had a vision of Crayak, mirroring what happened to him at the end of book 6.

>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+8]  *We are the Empire.* (10 hours later)
>>> 
>>> ... because the yeerks are all directly descendant from Crayak-matter?

>>>> **u/CoolGuy54** [+5]  (2 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> Because the morph brain-emulation computer is Crayak/Ellimist technology isn't it?

>>>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+3]  *We are the Empire.* (2 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Oh yeah, that makes more sense. I was thinking more of "Crayak dropped a single cell which created all yeerks", but maybe it's just the morph-yeerks who give out visions when they die.

>>> **u/reaper7876** [+4]  (2 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Ah, yep. That's definitely relevant. I'll have to do a reread, I've forgotten some of the details like that.

>>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+4]  *We are the Empire.* (6 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Man, you're making me feel self-conscious, because I *never ever* forget this stuff.

>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+24]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (6 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Confession: I have done zero rereading of the Animorphs series the entire time I've been working on this fanfic, because I just copy-pasted the entire series directly onto my soul fifteen or twenty 
>>>>> years ago.

>>>>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+5]  *We are the Empire.* (6 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Damn, you scared me with that first part :(

>>>>>> **u/FenrirW0lf** [+7]  (18 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> >because I just copy-pasted the entire series directly onto my soul fifteen or twenty years ago.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I did this too.

> **u/CouteauBleu** [+17]  *We are the Empire.* (4 hours later)
> 
> You know, it's funny, with how far apart the chapters are, I keep forgetting how much I like this series.
> 
> Like, if you'd asked me two days ago, I would have said that *The Reckoning* is maybe my 3rd favorite ongoing serial, after *Worth the Candle* and *Ward* and ex-aequo with *Practical Guide* and, you know, *Girl Genius* is pretty good too, etc.
> 
> Now? *Holy shit* this is good and I've missed it! My ever-unsatisfied thirst for more Animorph stories is quenched for a few weeks yet again.
> 
> I think this is one of the "all the dominoes have been set up, now we push the first one" situations ("except the first one was two weeks ago and meanwhile you've been in a coma"). I really like that the fic goes into details of the logistics of setting up an open worldwide invasion. And that it's avoiding really hard the trap of Americano-centrism, and being very international instead. The parts about blackouts, confiscating nukes and oversight deals felt very real in particular.
> 
> I do hope we get a chapter or an interlude showing either the international politics or the street-level chaos from up close. This something I think Wildbow does really well in his stories, for instance: connecting the big events (Leviathan attacks) to the small-scale chaos (gangs take over, people need help everywhere, field hospitals are set up, food convoys are raided, vigilante justice becomes prevalent, etc).
> 
> It's also nice to get all our protagonists back in a way that doesn't really take away from the last two cliffhangers. The answer to "How did the group get out of this jam, how did Tobias get away, and how will Rachel survive?" is "Nope, they all died and had to be resurrected (out of cancer patients, no less) from old back-ups who don't remember the last 10 chapters of the story."
> 
> In a way, this is positive! Tom could pass along all the information they forgot (while getting back to side character status), and since they're fresh out of Ventura, they're not *too* worn out and demotivated by weeks of mostly doing nothing while the world went crazy!
> 
> I wonder if they'll make another broadcast. "Screw you, Esplin, we're *still fucking* alive!" (probably not)

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+7]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (4 hours later)
>> 
>> > "Screw you, Esplin, we're *still fucking* alive!"
>> 
>> I literally laughed out loud.

>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+15]  *We are the Empire.* (5 hours later)
>>> 
>>> He's going to be so pissed at the end of the story.
>>> 
>>> "I shot them, I set up ambushes for them, I threw an asteroid at them, I sent a clone of me against them. I threw every single nuclear device I stole from Earth's nations at them. But nooooo, for some reasons the gods working against me have decided not only that I should be defeated, but that I should be defeated by *immortal prepubescent children*. I should have set the whole damn planet on fire when I had the chance."

>>>> **u/DaystarEld** [+4]  *Pokémon Professor* (13 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Hey now, they're all in their late teens, not prepubescent. I don't know if Yeerks have an equivalent stage of the life cycle to add that extra sting, but villains shouting some version of "Those damn teenagers!" is always delightful.

>>>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+5]  *We are the Empire.* (14 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> They're around thirteen, actually, as per canon. (yes, I do know that off the top of my head)

>>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+12]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (15 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> CouteauBleu is correct (I bumped them up from eighth graders to ninth graders, so some are 14).  I constantly get the criticism that my characters seem older than they are, and I constantly ignore it because of something like "just because thirteen-year-olds don't let *you* see that they're capable of this kind of depth and maturity doesn't mean they aren't capable of it, period."

>>>>>>> **u/thestarsallfall** [+5]  (18 hours later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The fact that they've lived a whole lot of other lives through acquiring other's memories lends a lot to this as well. Makes sense that they'd be pretty rational with having that many more varied experiences and points-of-view to draw off of.

>>>>>>> **u/DaystarEld** [+4]  *Pokémon Professor* (17 hours later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Oh yeah, that's the top question on my story's FAQ for a reason.

>>>>>> **u/DaystarEld** [+3]  *Pokémon Professor* (17 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Huh, for some reason I thought they were in high school when the story started. Still, not prepubescent :)

>>>>> **u/cae_jones** [+2]  (3 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Well, Garret *is* a year or two younger than the others, right?

>>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (3 days later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Correct.  Garrett's twelve by now; the others are fourteen.

>>>>>>> **u/daytodave** [+1]  *an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons* (2 months later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Physiologically, aren't they pretty close to their starting ages, since they spend almost all their time in morph?

>>>>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (2 months later)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Marco's aged the least; he's the most diligent about staying in morph.  Garrett hasn't spent all that much time in morph, except for the brief stint while he and Tobias were recruiting people.

> **u/None** [+10]  (a day later)
> 
> nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
> 
> We're probably not going to find out the exact details, but I assume Congress is now pretty thoroughly infested and I would be interested to know if the Secretary of State got them infested before or after that plan got approved. Probably before. Also it looks like whatever they are using for brain scans is not entirely trustworthy, since the Secretary of State was revealed as a controller in one of the Visser 3 chapters, right?

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+9]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a day later)
>> 
>> *whistles innocently

> **u/absolute-black** [+8]  (5 hours later)
> 
> God, I really do need to do a reread to give any real critique. I will say that the writing quality continues to be just top notch - the entire opening sequence is just fantastically well written on a technical level.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+4]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (6 hours later)
>> 
>> <3 <3 <3

>>> **u/absolute-black** [+2]  (6 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Seriously man, I’m infamously picky on this stuff, but you always nail it. Always impressed.

> **u/LucidityWaver** [+9]  (8 hours later)
> 
> Yes yes yes yes! So happy to see this again!
> Thank you so much for writing this.
> 
> Like you, TK17Studios -- as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, -- I stamped Animorphs onto my soul about 15-20 years ago. Not only is this amongst my top three favourite works of fiction; it’s the one I’m the most attached to for sure.
> 
> I’m super keen to see what happens next and I’ve been immensely worried about how dire the situation has been. Especially the whole time the ticking-David-shaped-time-bomb was right there. Now, as dire as things are, it seems like there’s the possibility of hope.
> 
> What I don’t get, probably because I don’t have CouteauBleu‘s memory related super-powers, is why they didn’t keep doing the morph circle thing. Even if some of them had to mark themselves off-limits at times for information security (e.g Garret and the blue box) — in which case update-acquire-only. Is it seen as too close to killing & death of an intelligent mind?

>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+7]  *We are the Empire.* (14 hours later)
>> 
>> I think they were just too busy and distracted after the Andalite threat came up.

> **u/KnickersInAKnit** [+8]  (12 hours later)
> 
> Holy crap, welcome back!
> 
> The biggest question on my mind right now is whether captured Jake and pals got killed or infested. I know that most of them had earplugs, but Jake didn't.

>> **u/liehon** [+1]  (23 days later)
>> 
>> And nownone of them have

> **u/sparkc** [+8]  (10 hours later)
> 
> While I wouldn’t say that quality prose is one of the key features I look for in fiction I can say that this story raises that bar for other webserials and it is one of the reasons it is such a pleasure to read. That opening scene was magnificent.

> **u/aidirector** [+8]  (12 hours later)
> 
> Great to see another chapter! I loved the geopolitical fallout and the differing responses from governments. Control over the internet is terrifying--our heroes have no ability to really know if there is any dissent anywhere, other than publicly visible attacks, and it's no surprise that all of the ones we know about so far have failed.

> **u/None** [+7]  (16 hours later)
> 
> Does the information given in this chapter (insofar as Marco/Ax are reliable/able to understand the blue box tech) that morphing doesn't operate "just" off DNA (scars copied, stored morphs' most recent states (i.e. wounds) constantly updated) confirm that there's some sort of Miracleman shenanigans going on? Are they copying/uploading entire bodies to the Z-space cloud, and swapping them while maintaining continuity of consciousness via the inherent Yeerkiness of the blue box tech? It seems so, since morphing into a human puts you in control of a sapient entity with a "consciousness switch" you can toggle. 
> 
> Wouldn't this imply that morphing into a human, allowing the human to be conscious for the two hours, demorphing, and then remorphing into that same human would maintain the new state of the brain, since the morph's memory of those two hours and the associated physical changes to the brain would be maintained across morphs? Or does the tech disallow this for some reason (inherently treats sapient creatures differently, maybe via mandatory memory wipes)? 
> 
> (I've yet to do a reread of this fic, so forgive me if this has been asked/answered or if I'm way off base due to already established info I missed/forgot.) 
> 
> Also, did Jake's (wonderfully confusing, well done!) Crayak pseudo-premonition confirm that the Yeerk race has some sort of extra-dimensional properties due to it being an offshoot of the greater Crayak entity (as another poster interpreted the "course correction" to be)? That would make a lot of sense, if true: Yeerk matter is part of the blue box tech because it's necessary to interact across dimensions. Visser Three is able to operate remote bodies because he's exploiting the dimensional stuff to bypass the "real" dimension's restrictions re space and time. And maybe Visser Three is freaked out about the Varynx (sp) because it's some sort of Crayak-based recovery process/error correction that's working to reconstitute his lost mass via "killing off" the Yeerk race. 
> 
> Perhaps Crayak is soon to make an appearance on Earth, since it's about to be the biggest concentration of Yeerk in the universe? I could see that as a way to throw out a common enemy that'd dig the Animorphs out of the hole they're in, plus it'd make them relevant beyond the whole "power of the human spirit" trope since they've got some kind of Ellimist-given ability to directly gather info on space Satan. 
> 
> (Also, Howlers confirmed! I hope they make an appearance because I'd love to see TK17's take on a race of uplifted, genetically-engineered murderhobos. They're basically space sharks, IIRC.)

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+8]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (21 hours later)
>> 
>> They're not stashing copies of acquired bodies in Z-space.  They acquire a body (including perfect brain state) and then stash their *own* body in Z-space, but the morphed body is regenerated afresh every time from the same original template, so there's no storage or saving of new state.

> **u/kleind305** [+6]  (17 hours later)
> 
> Question: 
> 
> Since Jake has Cassie morph DNA, what's stopping them from putting her in another one of the patients? Aside from the fact that she'd hate it.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+12]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (21 hours later)
>> 
>> He doesn't.  This isn't Jake, it's a Jake clone that doesn't have morphing power or earplugs and has never acquired anybody.
>> 
>> (He can *get* the morphing power, now, using the blue box.)

>>> **u/None** [+5]  (a day later)
>>> 
>>> This comment has been overwritten in protest of the Reddit API changes. Wipe your account with: https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit

>>> **u/skadefryd** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>> 
>>> Wouldn't he have the earplugs? Or do those not get copied during the acquiring process?

>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+4]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (2 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> They don't get copied, no.  They're not actually biological, so the scanner skips over them just like it would skip over braces or underwear.

>>>>> **u/kleind305** [+2]  (4 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Presumably they're close enough to the body and small enough to be picked up, no? They morph clothes.

>>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+2]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (4 days later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> They morph clothes away. They don't *acquire* clothes, and can't *produce* clothes through morphing.

>>> **u/daytodave** [+1]  *an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons* (2 months later)
>>> 
>>> Did Tom or Ax have an Elfangor morph?

>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (2 months later)
>>>> 
>>>> Nope.  Neither.  Elfangor is now gone.

> **u/StickeeHands** [+7]  (a day later)
> 
> oh god this is back now?
> 
>  fuuuuck now I need to re-read it *again*
> 
> why u do this

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+8]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a day later)
>> 
>> bcuz i lov u

>>> **u/StickeeHands** [+8]  (a day later)
>>> 
>>> <3
>>> 
>>> seriously though I really appreciate your work

> **u/None** [+6]  (4 hours later)
> 
> This comment has been overwritten in protest of the Reddit API changes. Wipe your account with: https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+10]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (4 hours later)
>> 
>> From the beginning, I've said that I wasn't precommitting to a happy ending; that I'd do what I could, but that I couldn't *promise* I'd find a way out.
>> 
>> That being said, I think there are some things in the future you'll find happier than the past three chapters.

> **u/kahb** [+6]  (19 hours later)
> 
> >Right. Somehow, he just never got the memo, or maybe Tyagi never figured that part out. I don’t really see how, it’s right there in Tobias’s memories, but there’s been a lot going on. Maybe he got busy. Maybe there was a breakdown of communication. Whatever it was—I guess it was just one of those days where everybody fucked up in the same direction.”
> 
> Crayak/Ellimist's hand?

>> **u/daytodave** [+1]  *an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons* (2 months later)
>> 
>> Hopefully Crayak. That would mean that it's currently the Ellimist's turn. And holy frick do the kids ever need an Ellimist turn right now.

> **u/KnickersInAKnit** [+6]  (22 hours later)
> 
> So now that I've thought about this a little more here's one thing that I don't think has been considered yet - what if Temrash tries to morph himself, imports everything he knows to the new coalescion, recreates a shard that mimics him as closely as possible for Ax, then stays past the limit? They'd then have a pool of their own to use.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+7]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a day later)
>> 
>> There's no canonical answer as of yet as to whether the Yeerks can even use morphing tech (though I've previously speculated that they probably should be able to).  The main issues seem to be:
>> 
>> 1. A given Yeerk dissolves entirely into the coalescion, and so any nanotech that was trying to hang onto brain matter will have a hard time reassembling.
>> 
>> 2. The control tissue *is* Yeerk tissue, so if you're morphing into a Yeerk in particular ... can Yeerk control Yeerk?  I think the control structure would just break down entirely, which might be catastrophic if you're then getting basically randomized inputs into bits and spots of a larger Yeerk mass.
>> 
>> Still might be worth trying compared to dying.

>>> **u/KnickersInAKnit** [+6]  (a day later)
>>> 
>>> "no canonical answer as of yet", says the author.
>>> 
>>> Well, get on it then :P
>>> 
>>> In all seriousness you make some good points. For your #2 point wouldn't that apply to anyone trying to morph Yeerk though?

>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+6]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a day later)
>>>> 
>>>> Yeah, it would.
>>>> 
>>>> Edit: More seriously, I don't feel like I have the freedom to just *decide* whether it works or not; I feel constrained to obey some kind of sensible realism, and so by 'get on it' what I hear is more 'start thinking through all the details and finding the true answer that already existed.'"

>>>>> **u/KnickersInAKnit** [+3]  (a day later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Ahh, I'm sorry then. It was a lighthearted comment, please don't feel pressured or anything like that by it.

>>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+9]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a day later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Relaaaaaaax, don't walk on eggshells.  =)  I recently wrote a 14000 word post against a social standard of feeling responsible for small shifts in other people's mood.  I was just trying to explain my process a bit.

>>>>> **u/infomaton** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> And so the eerie effectiveness of Platonism as scaffolding for useful thought extends its domain into the realm of fiction.

>>>>> **u/Silver_Swift** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> > Start thinking through all the details and finding the true answer that already existed.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So, get on with that! :)

>>> **u/daytodave** [+1]  *an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons* (2 months later)
>>> 
>>> But the control tissue isn't exactly the same as a straight-up yeerk. If it was, how could it survive past three days?

>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (2 months later)
>>>> 
>>>> It can't.  It dies almost immediately once the time limit is passed.

> **u/ScoopTherapy** [+6]  (a day later)
> 
> Long time reader, then r/rational lurker, and now Patreon supporter, here.  I just wanted to leave some comments and thank you for such an enjoyable story!  Animorphs has always been close to my heart and, after HPMOR, so is rational writing.  You're seriously killing it with this series.
> 
> I'm continuously impressed by how consistent the quality of your writing is and how consistently engaging the plot is.  Talking about this chapter specifically, I think many rational narratives fall prey to long and tedious internal/external conversations, but yours flow naturally and are very well\-paced.  There is enough subtext within the conversations to keep me engaged and thinking, but not so much that I have to pause, go back and re\-read, or try to decipher cryptic comments.  It makes the characters feel more real.
> 
> The plot/tone shift in this chapter is really refreshing.  So much has changed for the characters seemingly overnight \(or between chapters, to us readers\) and they've essentially been given a second chance after losing badly.  It feels like an Act 2 ending, and I think that helps the overall flow of the story arc \- we needed some sense of where we are at in the story, and to know that it's progressing.  We've been lacking some of that in the past 10 chapters or so.
> 
> One change that you might consider: \[ "The meteor\-" I began. \] made me think Jake was referencing the Ventura asteroid, which made me confused for a bit.  It's been easy to forget the "threat" of the Andalite meteor since we, as readers, know it's not actually a threat, and the fact that Jake's been reset caused some dissonance.  Maybe changing to \["The Andalite meteor\-" I began.\] might help?  Or maybe I'm just singularly slow on the uptake regarding that part.

> **u/Eat_math_poop_words** [+6]  (4 days later)
> 
> Every time you update this book I want to print it out, finely grind the pages and snort it.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+3]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (4 days later)
>> 
>> D'awwwww, shucks.

> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+5]  *Champion of Justice and Reason* (58 minutes later)
> 
> Is there any reason why they can't just get one of the Yerk pools on their side? Like what was starting to happen in Ventura before Visser 3 interfered? Also I could have sworn that Visser three was not on the best terms with the other yerks. Maybe the animorphs need to get Axe to contact the andalites again and ask them to help get them in contact with one of the yerk pools outside visser 3's control? Perhaps one which had close relations with the pool that was killed in ventura. Maybe they could get the yerks in that pool(s) to agree to cooperative symbiosis with humans instead of enslavement in exchange for helping to take down visser 3?

>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+7]  *We are the Empire.* (4 hours later)
>> 
>> Yeah, we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop on the "Yeerks hate Visser 3's guts" situation.
>> 
>> I think that might change soon: Telor should now have access to large numbers of hosts with an internet connection. They should be able to communicate pretty directly with anyone on Earth without being monitored by now.

>>> **u/CoolGuy54** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>> 
>>> V3 probably still does regular Leeran-melds with shards of Telor before eating them. I don't think it's possible for Telor to plot without the Visser knowing. And they know he has the means and mentality to wipe them out. 
>>> 
>>> I don't see the Yeerks taking the lead here.

>> **u/infomaton** [+6]  (an hour later)
>> 
>> I'm curious why the Yeerks had never engaged in major experimentation with putting different aspects or amounts of themselves into hosts prior to the Visser. It's also curious why the pool finds it to be in its interest to recreate the same individual slugs each time, rather than create new slugs with different personalities to meet some optimal specific purpose.

>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+10]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (an hour later)
>>> 
>>> They don't recreate the exact same slugs each time, actually.  They do keep a *majority* of the slug the same, but as we saw in the first Aftran interlude, there's debate and tinkering and reassignment each time the pool reforms a shard.  Generally, I'd expect the first shard S to be random, and its "fitness" similarly random (expected fitness 50%), and S' to be a much better fit (like 85%), and S'' still better (like 95%) and then for there to be less and less likelihood of major change after that.
>>> 
>>> As for major experimentation, they were in a stone-age mentality despite having plenty of spare compute lying around.  They just hadn't really gotten around to thinking of it, yet (and didn't have a wide variety of native species to try it on).

>>>> **u/infomaton** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> I've forgotten most of the details of the story, if I ever picked up on them in the first place, but greatly appreciate getting reminders like this, thanks for your presence in these threads.

> **u/CouteauBleu** [+4]  *We are the Empire.* (4 hours later)
> 
> Also, couldn't one of them morph into a yeerk, cut a chunk of it out, demorph, and feed the chunk to TemrAx?

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+3]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (5 hours later)
>> 
>> It's something they might try if they get desperate enough.  But I think I'm going to go with that-would-fail ... I'm assuming V3 either has to do some processing before the *kandrona* is absorbable, or that he's had the Arn do some retroviral editing to his own physiology to make it possible to pass it through his digestive system and into the brain.

>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+3]  *We are the Empire.* (6 hours later)
>>> 
>>> You might add a sentence about this after "people had already tried kidnapping Controllers, and nobody had gotten away with it yet". Something like, "also, according to Marco, they'd already tried having Ax eat parts of a yeerk morph, and it hadn't seem to work".
>>> 
>>> (although, while I'm overthinking things, whatever process Visser 3 used would need to have been available and known to him when he infested Alloran, and workable with Andalite technology at most; it could have been deduced by Seerow, but not by the Arn)

>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+5]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (6 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Agree re: it needs to be feasible with Andalite technology; that bumps me back toward some kind of preparative process.  Don't forget, though—even though Seerow was the expert on Yeerks, Alloran is a genius in his own right, and might've made the necessary connection on his own.

> **u/None** [+5]  (a day later)
> 
> [deleted]

>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+5]  *We are the Empire.* (16 days later)
>> 
>> > which could make things a bit odd if Marco learns about Visser One and immediately dies several times.
>> 
>> Visser 3: "That never gets old."

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+3]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a day later)
>> 
>> Not sure about Hork-Bajir seers; if there's an appropriate place then yes but it may fall into the category of never-gets-confirmed-*or*-denied, like morphing allergies.

> **u/infomaton** [+5]  (19 minutes later)
> 
> Can Yeerks use the blue box in this fic? The morph-stasis would extend their time limit.

>> **u/reaper7876** [+4]  (an hour later)
>> 
>> It sounds like Temrash is already benefiting from the morph-stasis, having gone for nine weeks without Kandrona so far by virtue of being inside of Ax while he morphs. There could be a layering trick they could use, where Temrash morphs into themself and then Ax morphs with morph-Temrash in his brain, but I'm not sure whether that would have multiplicative effects on Temrash's remaining time, or if it would provide no benefit whatsoever.

>>> **u/KnickersInAKnit** [+3]  (a day later)
>>> 
>>> Ax is spending all that quality time with E/C, lovely.

> **u/infomaton** [+5]  (13 hours later)
> 
> > “What if we tried morphing a Yeerk again?”
> 
> > Marco had finally come up with a theory for what had happened, the one time that Garrett had attempted it.
> 
> > The morphing tech scans, he’d said. It doesn’t just run off DNA. Look at your scar, or how long our hair and fingernails are. But I think—I think if the scan gets interrupted for some reason, the morphing tech tries its best anyway. Tries to extrapolate from DNA alone. And if a single Yeerk is like a finger—
> 
> > ‹We considered it. But the danger is too great. The body would be large enough to produce kandrona, but there is no guarantee that Temrash would be able to reemerge after the sharing. We do not know how a—a feral coalescion, a primal one, would behave. We could be lost forever within it—›
> 
> Found a probable solution: they could always have someone morph a feral Yeerk pool/sludge ball and then *eat* them. Of course, the Andalite's warrior culture combined with the communal nature of the Yeerks makes this an unethical solution, but it would likely work if these characters were willing to get their hands dirty.

>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+3]  *We are the Empire.* (14 hours later)
>> 
>> [Way ahead of you](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/8kpm1f/rff_ranimorphs_the_reckoning_ch34_jake/dz9tyqy/).

> **u/Eat_math_poop_words** [+4]  (4 days later)
> 
> This is the chapterly reminder:  
> Whoever it was that simulated the "time pause" during the Yeerk pool attack, thought it was worthwhile to teleport Erek, Tom, Ax, and Peter Levy \*physically\* multiple miles from the impact site, for what had to be a massive cost, but only transported Garrett, Marco, Jake, and Rachel's morph gates on the cheap.  
> 
> It \*really\* wanted those first four, much more so than it wanted Cassie.  
> 
> We can easily see Tom's, Ax's, and Eric's importance, but what about Marco's dad's?

>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+1]  *We are the Empire.* (16 days later)
>> 
>> It was stated a few chapters ago that Marco's dad was going back to Telor. Maybe he'll be able to teach them the power of love and friendship!

>> **u/daytodave** [+1]  *an altruistic conversion of calories to hedons* (2 months later)
>> 
>> But the game is more about manipulating and predicting sentient minds than it is about multiplying mass times distance in clever ways. And the player (I'm acting as though it was Ellimist because thinking it was Crayak leads to too many levels of meta for me) spent a lot of time in the simulator making sure that conversation went exactly the way it did. My guess is that he was allowed to teleport one or more of them for free or cheap because Cassie "chose" to sacrifice herself for them.

> **u/GrecklePrime** [+3]  (43 minutes later)
> 
> Yes!! I'm glad to see this story back. Also, damn do they have an uphill battle ahead of them to fix all this.

> **u/u_PM_me_nihilism** [+3]  (13 hours later)
> 
> Whew. That was a hell of a chapter. It's kind of cool that because the reader is getting all the exposition post-facto like Jake is, they can share a small part of his feelings. 
> 
> Waking up to a world where everything has spiraled out of control is devastating, but of course one of the most important parts of Jake's character is that he always endures and soldiers on.

> **u/skadefryd** [+3]  (19 hours later)
> 
> At last! I've been waiting with bated breath for this, obsessively checking every few days. I haven't read the chapter yet but will furnish some thoughts once I do.

>> **u/skadefryd** [+6]  (20 hours later)
>> 
>> I'll say that, after the last two chapters, I was a little apprehensive about what might come next. Maybe we'd get a cheap method of undoing the loss of several major characters, restoring the status quo. Maybe we'd have to reckon with a reduced cast of two-ish still-living characters, with the full weight of the last two chapters hanging heavy over us. Neither extreme was desirable.
>> 
>> Somehow you managed to find a solution that avoids *both* problems, flows naturally from the existing state of things, and even reckons with the extended hiatus of the series. There's still hope, but the chips are further stacked against the main cast. I'm more eager to see how (and if!) they can eke a victory out of this.
>> 
>> Thanks so much for putting this together. You've taken a world rife with nostalgia and not just injected life into it but supercharged it, pushing it far beyond the series it echoes.

> **u/Zephyr1011** [+3]  *Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity* (4 days later)
> 
> Thanks for starting updating again! I'd forgotten how much I loved this story.
> 
> I've reread a few recent chapters, and I think that Rachel's monologue last chapter about not pursuing vengeance and being able to let go may be one of the more moving and heroic things I can remember reading. Since it's not about the traditional image of heroism, of fighting against adversity from without and sustaining yourself with the innate knowledge that your cause is just and righteous, that in the end you'll know you made the right choice. It's about knowing what the right thing to do is, and making that choice, accepting that there's no answer that will make you truly satisfied within yourself.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+2]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (4 days later)
>> 
>> <3
>> 
>> I've tried *so hard* not to do Rachel badly; I've never before written a character like her and it brings an actual tear to my eye to hear that you found it moving.

> **u/kinosupremo** [+3]  (30 days later)
> 
> Finally checking in after binge reading through this whole series. I'm so glad I found this fic.  You are doing great work and you're a Goddamn saint for keeping it going for this long already. This is the version of Animorphs that most fans never knew they wanted. This is what the story should have been, but wasn't allowed to be. 
> Again, Thank you.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+3]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (30 days later)
>> 
>> <3  Next chapter should be up within a week (Tobias).

>>> **u/CouteauBleu** [+2]  *We are the Empire.* (a month later)
>>> 
>>> You really should know better by now.

>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a month later)
>>>> 
>>>> Shhhhhh, it's part of the fun.

>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a month later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Oh, god, I winced just typing that.  Like, could not keep a "straight face."

>>>>>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a month later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> But let's be real.  It really "should've."

> **u/charliequine** [+2]  (8 minutes later)
> 
> Hey, thanks! I saw the AO3 subscription edit and squeaked a bit. This is one of the best things I have read and I am off to enjoy the new chapter

> **u/LieGroupE8** [+2]  ** (13 hours later)
> 
> Whaaaa \- it's back! I … don't really have much to say right now, since the story has been out of my mind for so long. Great chapter. I'm happy the characters were all resurrected, and in a way that makes complete sense and doesn't diminish the impact of what happened in the past two chapters. This is still my favorite rationalist story.

> **u/largegiantsquid** [+2]  (14 hours later)
> 
> So glad to see this return

> **u/Mowtom_** [+2]  (14 hours later)
> 
> It's back!  Hooray!  Thank you so much for not abandoning this!

> **u/Krossfireo** [+2]  (18 hours later)
> 
> Just chiming in that I am excited to see this back!

> **u/chaos-engine** [+2]  (4 days later)
> 
> Woohoo! This story is still alive!

> **u/formergophers** [+2]  (4 days later)
> 
> I stumbled upon this a couple of months ago and am very glad to see a new update :) thanks for all the hard work, looking forward to seeing where this goes!!

> **u/NatsuDragnee1** [+2]  (8 days later)
> 
> Wow, this is amazing. I'm so glad to see an update!

> **u/noggin-scratcher** [+2]  *I am a happy tree* (a month later)
> 
> I'm very back-logged on my reading, and just got to this... but you said comments help so I guess I just want to confirm that I'm reading and enjoying and this is always _so good_
> 
> Intricate plot and the passage of time mean I'm almost certainly missing things and forgetting things, so I'm going to have to read it all again at some point... I'm sure I'll enjoy it even more when read clean through at a pace that allows me to make all the connections.

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a month later)
>> 
>> Comments always help.  Thanks so much for taking a minute to leave your thoughts.  <3

> **u/trin123** [+2]  (a month later)
> 
> OMG, now Cassie is truly gone? No one even has her as morph?  That  makes no sense with the Ellimist's involvement. He would have predicted exactly what would happen to her when he manipulates her choice and she stays. Why would the Ellimist go out of his way to get Cassie killed? 
> 
> Perhaps her mind is still floating around somewhere? When the minds run on some kind of Ellimist-Crayak-network, they should be protected from damage to the original and morph body.
> 
> Who still has an Elfangor morph? Has  Ax one?
> 
> This David fucked them even more than canon David. Why would Marco want a psychopath to join  the team? That is not very rational. 
> 
> How can Earth have a Z-space monitoring system like Serenity when the Yeerks or Andalites do not have it? There Z-space tech should be better in any way
> 
> I just read it all in three days, skipped some work. Thought it was a finished story. Fanfiction said published in 2012 :/

>> **u/TK17Studios** [+1]  *Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning* (a month later)
>> 
>> Cryptic responses:
>> - No one has Cassie's morph.
>> - No one has Elfangor's morph (Ax learned to tolerate it, but he still had essentially religious objections to morphing Elfangor himself).
>> - Marco's mind was interfered with.  ctrl+f "fleeting disorientation"
>> - The Serenity system wouldn't work anywhere else in the universe; it only works because of the rift around the system reflecting signals back.
>> 
>> Sorry; it's definitely actually gonna get finished, but I don't know precisely when.

>>> **u/trin123** [+2]  (a month later)
>>> 
>>> >No one has Cassie's morph. 
>>> 
>>> That is so sad
>>> 
>>> Cassie was my favorite Animorph in the originals
>>> 
>>> >Marco's mind was interfered with. ctrl+f "fleeting disorientation" 
>>> 
>>> Then that is what someone (Visser 3?) meant with manipulated memories and never morph again during the hypersight?
>>> 
>>> >The Serenity system wouldn't work anywhere else in the universe; it only works because of the rift around the system reflecting signals back.
>>> 
>>> But what if they get multiple Serenities and place them around the system like GPS satelites around Earth?
>>> 
>>> Also, Rachel never says she is Xena anymore?
>>> 
>>> Will you write about The One?

---