26 KiB
[WIP][RT][FF] r!Animorphs: the Reckoning ch.33 (Rachel)
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Author: u/TK17Studios Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning*
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URL: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5627803/chapters/29831667
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Score: 46
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Created: 2017-12-17T10:00:45
Post:
Comments:
u/CouteauBleu [+11] We are the Empire. (an hour later)
I am so confused right now.
In positive new, the Marco/Rachel shipping intensifies.
‹Relax,› I said. ‹He doesn’t look like it’s bad news.›
That... seems like a really, really dumb comment from her. The characters have been pretty good at questioning everything so far, and going "maybe everyone is secretly a robot / an alien / someone else morphed", and now seems like a pretty obvious time to apply it.
Stargate rule n°1: if they've missed a check-in and their team is missing, they're a Goa'uld.
Shut up. Focus. You have gold hair. You have strong arms, strong hands, long legs. Your smile—when you smile, it looks like you have too many teeth. Focus, think about it, see yourself in the mirror—
Okay, this is at least the second time that happens (don't remember when the first was). Is there some sort of emulated Marco in Rachel's brain? Because this is starting to sound like way more than an imaginary voice and like something with an actual personality.
u/TK17Studios [+10] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (7 hours later)
Re: "relax," your comment was persuasive and convincing and I have added a nod to sanity after the "I said." I will note that they haven't missed a check-in yet, though—they were still within the one-hour window. Also, all of that happened very fast.
You—your imaginary voices don't have an actual personality?
^(Am I just weird?)
u/CouteauBleu [+7] We are the Empire. (15 hours later)
... I dunno? I mean, sometimes I talk to myself in my head, and I might say "Okay, now do this", but it doesn't feel as "independent-y" as Rachel in this chapter. The way imaginary!Marco comments on her smile then Rachel switches to her own body image and Marco goes "fine, go with that" in particular sounds pretty external.
u/TK17Studios [+8] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
Huh. Not too far off for my own personal experience with shoulder voices. Typical mind fallacy, I guess. Chalk it up to "this is what happens to your shoulder voices when you frequently literally spend time inside that person's head"?
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+3] Champion of Justice and Reason (2 days later)
It's kind of weird none of my internal imaginary voices are based on ANYONE but myself. Maybe it's because I don't trust anyone else enough to let them have a say in my own head. When I was a kid I had a lot of internal imaginary voices, and most of them from people who were very critical of me and didn't provide useful advice. Even my close friends don't get an imaginary voice representing them in my head.
My imaginary voices seem to fall along a continuum of left/right and forward/back, which seems to correspond somewhat to my intentional system and automatic system, but I don't know why it's split in two different axes. Furthermore wall I can tell when the interaction is going left/right and front/back, it's hard to tell in retrospect which thoughts are "left" and which are "right" and same for front/back.
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (a month later)
Chalk me up for the "way less interesting and developed internal voices" camp, I'd thought this was due to spending so much time in Marco's mind, never imagined our author thought that was normal.
u/TK17Studios [+12] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
Bear with me, guys. I'm spending some of the credit I've stored up; I hope that in the end you will agree I did not overdraw.
u/TK17Studios [+8] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (23 hours later)
For people who really, really don't mind spoilers (I'm not actually spoiling any information, but I'm hella clarifying below in a way that some might find distasteful since the work should stand on its own, and also maybe tipping the hand to some authorial intent that might make the near future transparent):
u/CouteauBleu [+7] We are the Empire. (a day later)
there's really - I claim - only one set of 'next things' that make sense.
I... don't really see it? Anything could happen, depending on which characters survived this chapter and the previous one (which is a little unclear), which decisions they and V3 make, which resources V3 has access to, and what he's done in his free time so far.
More than that, this last encounter could have gone in any number of ways based on purely random (that is, non-chekov's-gun-ish) factors:
The Visser-Bot could have opened with his Andalite blaster and basically sliced every protagonist into carpaccio in 10 seconds, before getting within stabbing distance of Rachel.
The Visser-Bot could have opened with an antimatter paintball (seriously, how comes nobody ever uses that thing?) and blown every protagonist into meat soup in 3 seconds.
Rachel could have decided to hang back, keep their ship invisibility on, and blown up the VB from above once he was identified.
Rachel could have double-tapped the VB before trying to rescue the others.
Rachel could have decided to set up Garett or Ax as a backup sniper just in case.
My point isn't that any character behaved really incompetently (although they kind of did) but that there's a million different ways things could have gone down and could still go down. Maybe the gods can anticipate all those things, but as a reader I object to the idea that the events are flowing logically from one to the next.
If you think of this result as having been orchestrated, not by me but by a character in the story
I... don't really like that idea? I'm probably not alone, there's like a billion different "Why Contessa and Shards and Jack's power suck in Worm" threads to be found; given that we don't understand the gods' motivations, that their intelligence is too vast for us to comprehend, and that their interventions are mostly off-screen, there's not much visible difference between "this was orchestrated by gods" and "this is railroading".
u/TK17Studios [+6] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
That's fair. And I'm definitely doing some illusion-of-transparency bias on myself, here, when thinking about how the next chapter I have planned "makes intuitive sense."
But when I sit in the shoes of the characters that are clearly still alive, and I look at the resources they are known to have, the next actions that will be written into the story feel, to me, like the things I would do myself in that situation (and it doesn't feel like there's a wide open space of possibility).
u/TK17Studios [+7] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
There have been chapters where it felt like I was making up the story, and there have been chapters where it felt like I was running a simulation, and some of the previous four or five have felt like I was in charge as the author, and the next one feels like a sim.
Edit: I will note that you will understand the gods' motivations in the end, and they should be back-compatible and consistent throughout.
u/CCC_037 [+6] (a day later)
Characters that are clearly still alive:
- Visser Three
- Most of the Chee
- Ummmm... everyone else is looking kind of ambiguous at this point, to be honest. Any of the Animorphs could do a dying morph into any of the Animorphs...
u/CoolGuy54 [+2] (a month later)
I think we know Tom is alive, Garret and Ax and Rachel might be alive, but I thought there was no easy way to fix damage to your real body so they're probably in a bad way at best.
Jake and Marco and Tobias I would have said are clearly dead and aren't coming back unless Tom or someone sacrifices themselves by perma-morphing.
u/Alphanos [+8] The Bright Powers (a day later)
u/LieGroupE8 [+7] ** (a day later)
Bear with me, guys
I trust you as an author, and I'll be with this fic until the end. A lot of the problem is the the time between updates, which can't really be helped given that you are not a full time author. It's like watching an intense action scene, except that every few seconds, the stream pauses to buffer.
I am definitely not going to read any of the spoilered text in your comments or the ensuing discussions.
u/FeluriansCloak [+9] (5 hours later)
"The timer. The green one was a timer, a delay, like taking a picture—
TSEWWWWW!
I spun the knob, pressed the button, and—with the last of my strength—threw it toward the almost-invisible shape."
Please be a "go back in time a chapter and a half" dues ex machina....
It may not be rational, but I don't want to be rational about what appears to have happened to our heroes lately, hahaha.
Also, Garrett is the best.
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
Garrett = best, yes. Not sure about your use of the present tense.
u/FeluriansCloak [+7] (a day later)
I think I was still in denial.
Edit: Actually, I have a better explanation for it: The thought scream heard at the end of the chapter is Garrett's "secret weapon", and only possible if he's in morph. Since it's being made, and assuming he's the only one who can make it (at least; he was the only one who succeeded in doing so on-screen), it means that maybe he was wearing morph armor, and still will have a chance to demorph back to being fine.
Please say he's fine.
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
You are correct that he's in morph at the end of the scene.
u/royishere [+5] (a day later)
...as Tobias, yeah? Just put that together. So we have Rachel as Marco, Garrett as Tobias, Tom as Jake (?), and... Cassie 2.0 when?
u/infomaton [+10] (13 hours later)
Prediction: Rachel accidentally morphs into Marco as she passes out. 20% confident.
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
Kudos for making clear predictions with clear credences.
u/CCC_037 [+8] (15 hours later)
Wait, there's something wrong here. Didn't Visser Three just decide, back in the last chapter, that the possibility of having his memories edited in morph made being in morph too dangerous to do? What's he doing in morph here?
Something is not as it appears.
u/None [+10] (16 hours later)
It was David in morph, not Visser 3.
u/CCC_037 [+9] (19 hours later)
I don't know - Garrett strikes me as being the sort of person who's really precise about what he means. If he didn't have good reason to think that that was Visser Three, he would have called out "That's not Jake" instead of positively identifying the Visser. (Possibly using thought-speech shenanigans?)
Mind you, it clearly is David's body here, and I suspect that it's probably under control of one of the Visser's remote Yeerk-clones, not the Visser himself...
u/TK17Studios [+13] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
I doubt this will ever have a chance to be further clarified in text (it was in the previous chapter, but in a blink-and-you-might-miss-it sort of way), so ...
A V3 clone Yeerk (as opposed to a blank copy that he controls directly) controlling the body of David, and that clone V3 wasn't part of the Leeran hypersight conversation and thus doesn't know that morphing is dangerous (and V3 didn't tell it; just said "Go, kill").
Note that V3 is the type to cooperate with clones of himself, for the most part, even though he's often not kind to them in the end.
Also: Garrett has had a chance to hear Visser Three's spoken word inflection/cadences via the recordings of his landing and speech (in the prettylite body).
u/CCC_037 [+7] (23 hours later)
and that clone V3 wasn't part of the Leeran hypersight conversation and thus doesn't know that morphing is dangerous
Ah. Hmmmm. That makes sense... it still allows for the clone to be manipulated like anything by Crayak/Ellimist, but if the Visser isn't worried about the fate of the clone then I doubt he particularly cares. Thank you for that clarification.
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (a month later)
Note that V3 is the type to cooperate with clones of himself, for the most part, even though he's often not kind to them in the end.
If there's a chance for this to come up in an interlude chapter, it'd be interesting the hear you write one of V3's clones that knows/ strongly suspects it is going to be sacrificed for the greater good. It's not obvious to me that the Visser's absolute drive to survive wouldn't be present in a mind-continuity sense in his clones, I'm surprised they aren't more interested in their own personal survival instead of the wider V3.
u/360Saturn [+9] (6 hours later)
Ohhh shit.
Rachel for new leader
u/Quibbloboy [+14] (18 hours later)
Lmao who she leadin
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
X'D
u/mavant [+7] (15 hours later)
I confess that I couldn't really keep track of what was going on in this chapter. It does a good job of conveying the chaos and rapid changes of circumstance as Rachel is experiencing them, but I fear I am as lost as she.
u/LieGroupE8 [+7] ** (10 hours later)
Well. So the bracelet is paying off.
My prediction seems to have not come true: no time-stopping intervention happened in this chapter. On the other hand, could Tobias be alive? I thought he was dead at the end of last chapter, but now that I think about it, I don't recall him being part of the Leeran hypersight.
I don't get why Visser 3 doesn't just nuke everyone from space, or just come in shooting with the blade ship, since he knows exactly where they are.
They had at least three hyperdrives now
They should use a hyperdrive to blow up Visser Three's Mars operation.
I spun the knob, pressed the button, and—with the last of my strength—threw it toward the almost-invisible shape.
TSEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW—
The shimmering crystal shape froze in place
So this part was confusing. The word "shape" is used twice, but is it referring to the same thing in both cases? And what is it referring to? (I read back over this and couldn't figure it out). In general, the ending of this chapter was much harder to understand than the ending of the last chapter (perhaps that's by design).
Oh, god. Ax.
I shoved myself to my feet, my body still fluid and unstable. I looked down at the shape of—
Dead.
Definitely dead.
This is also confusing, because it sounds like Ax is dead ... but then later, Ax is referred to as "unconscious." So was Rachel looking at someone else? Are we supposed to know who it was?
So I'm really sad that everyone seems to be dying, including all my favorite goddamn characters. Sure, having the good guys always win in stories is less realistic, but on the other hand, that's not necessarily a bad thing, as stories are specifically for fun among other things. You've clearly been planning these events for a long time though, so I'm just going to ride this out.
u/Alphanos [+8] The Bright Powers (12 hours later)
So this part was confusing. The word "shape" is used twice, but is it referring to the same thing in both cases? And what is it referring to? (I read back over this and couldn't figure it out). In general, the ending of this chapter was much harder to understand than the ending of the last chapter (perhaps that's by design).
This is also confusing, because it sounds like Ax is dead ... but then later, Ax is referred to as "unconscious." So was Rachel looking at someone else? Are we supposed to know who it was?
u/TK17Studios [+5] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
Alphanos' interpretations below are the intended ones.
As to your other questions, V3 didn't strike from space because a) politics and b) he is now aware of Telor's mutinous wavering and doesn't trust them to carry out operations like that. He didn't go himself because he's super prioritizing the Chee and can only kind of be in two places at once.
As for using a hyperdrive to blow up Mars ... that's ambitious, and I don't blame them for having not quite thought of it yet. Remember that despite my slow update schedule, the in-story timing of all of these events is RUSHRUSHRUSHRUSHRUSH, and hopefully they can be forgiven for small mistakes and an inability to completely think everything through.
Re: Tobias, no comment. The pieces are there; if it's too hard or not interesting to put them together, they'll be explained in later chapters. He was definitely part of the hypersight scene, though less prominent than Jake and Marco.
u/LieGroupE8 [+2] ** (a day later)
He didn't go himself because he's super prioritizing the Chee
I thought he was super-prioritizing killing Ax, given what he said in the last chapter ("that possibility must be ended at once").
u/LieGroupE8 [+3] ** (a day later)
Oh wait, I just reread that part (I was trying to avoid rereading...) and it's pretty clear that he's sending David while taking the cube for himself in the meantime. Not sure if that was a retroactive edit or not, but OK.
u/TK17Studios [+6] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a minute later)
Pls to be leaving some thoughts and/or reviews.
u/Kodix [+4] (39 minutes later)
I've not caught up on your story in a long while because I like to binge, but I thought it was easily some of the best-written fiction I have ever read.
Just thought you'd like to know, since you're asking for thoughts :)
u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
<3 <3 <3
u/absolute-black [+5] (9 hours later)
I’m annoyingly invested in Rachel at this point, and I very much enjoyed her internal thoughts at the start of this chapter. I’m vaguely confused that there was no verification or even suspicion of David-as-Jake, but I can believe that “people who can morph are allies” just became one of those cached thoughts that you don’t question in time.
u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
Your comment (and Couteau's) caused me to put in a tiny update that has her being somewhat more suspicious, but things still happen quickly enough that there's little to be done about it.
u/CCC_037 [+5] (23 hours later)
A thought has recently occurred to me.
u/TK17Studios [+6] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (23 hours later)
u/CopperZirconium [+3] (a day later)
Going with the long con, I see.
u/skadefryd [+3] (18 hours later)
Between this, the previous chapter, and how monstrous Visser Three is, I'm... impressed and slightly depressed.
u/TK17Studios [+7] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (22 hours later)
The next chapter should come within the next twenty days, and hopefully within the next ten.
u/royishere [+3] (23 hours later)
[Prediction based on meta knowledge previously given by author:] (#s "Rachel is not dead, at least not permanently. TK promised us a scene where she gets to Rachel it up, and stabbing "Jake" doesn't really qualify. There is definitely more Rachel to come... which means maybe more other characters as well, depending on the circumstances of Rachel's survival.")
u/FireNexus [+3] (a day later)
You added my learning by morph osmosis bit!
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+3] Death of Crabs (3 days later)
ROYALTIES
u/FireNexus [+3] (3 days later)
What percentage of residuals do they pay on nothing these days?
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+2] Death of Crabs (3 days later)
An arbitrarily generous one.
u/FireNexus [+3] (3 days later)
/u/TK17Studios you heard the man. I demand 99% residuals on any income you make from a story you are legally disallowed to make income from!
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (3 days later)
Uh. What's your PayPal, home address, work schedule, and physical description?
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
<3
u/Brain_Blasted [+2] (a month later)
m8 you better not have killed everyone. Especially not Rachel or Garret. Especially not Rachel. Nuh uh. She was my favourite character in the originals as a kid, and you've written her so well that she can actually be my favourite as an adult. She thinks in a clear, focused way. She's also more reasonable about things, while also having the same determination that she had in the original series.
pls