I think one of the reasons it doesn't really work is what the two types are like. One part of Rachel being an incredibly hostile, borderline psychotic adrenaline junkie - 100%, totally buy that. The other part being incredibly timid and easily upset... it just isn't believable that this is a significant part of her personality.
But then, what is the other significant part of her personality and how do you write that into a flesh and blood character? I'm not sure there is one (besides "just being a regular person who's not a psycho") and I'm not sure you can.
Chapter 7
quote:
Cassie's barn. I'd been there a hundred times. But now it seemed different. Scary.
I mean it's like, full of, like, animals. Wild animals. Geese. Raccoons. Foxes. Squirrels. Okay, I know squirrels aren't scary, but sometimes they have rabies.
It's kind of dark inside. There are lights on, but there are shadows, too. Deep shadows.
Especially at night. Which it wasn't. It was day. Late afternoon. Or is it evening? When does afternoon end and evening begin? I mean, is there like a certain time when ...
Anyway, it was like day, okay? But inside it was still dark and all. I could see the animals in their cages. Mostly sick or injured because after all it is the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. So, duh, they would be sick or injured to be in a clinic, right?
Duh, Rachel.
What was I saying?
Oh, yes, the animals. Well, there were a lot of them, in cages.
But just as scary was the fact that the others were there, too. The Animorphs.
I mean, I am an Animorph, right? I have the morphing power that Elfangor gave us all. And I have turned into, like, lots of animals. Although now I can't believe I ever did that.
Jake was there. He's my cousin. He's cute. Kind of big. I mean, if we weren't cousins ...
And Marco was there, too. He's cute, too, in a different way. I would probably go out with him if he asked me.
And Tobias, of course. He was up in the rafters fluffing up his wings. He's cute when he's human.
And Ax.
Ax is not cute. Ax is very, very strange. I mean he's, like, not human? He's, like, an alien. Imagine if you had this big, mostly blue deer, and you grafted a long scorpion tail on one end and a human-looking upper body on the other end. Only the head didn't have a mouth at all and it had an extra set of eyes on stalks? Stalks that can, like, move? So his eyes can look in any direction? Major creepy.
"We have a problem," Cassie said, looking at me.
"We do?" I said.
"Jake, we were at the mall," Cassie said. "Some girl shoved Rachel and -"
"Oh, man, what did you do, Rachel?" Jake asked. "You have to learn to restrain your -"
"She cried," Cassie said.
"What?"
"She cried. And ran away. And cried."
Everyone stared at me.
"Who cried?" Marco demanded, looking confused.
"Rachel."
"Rachel cried?" Marco asked. "You mean a little wetness, like maybe something was in her eye?"
"I mean like 'Boo hoo, that girl was so mean,'" Cassie clarified.
"No," Marco said.
"Yes."
"No. No. The sun does not rise in the west, the Chicago Cubs don't win the World Series, Scully never, ever believes Mulder, and Rachel does not cry. These are the things I know."
"Boo. Hoo."
"You're jerking us around, Cassie," Marco said.
"I have proof," Cassie said.
"Okay," Jake said skeptically.
Cassie looked at me. "Rachel? Tell me what you said to me about Marco on our way over here."
"What?"
"What you said to me on the bus about Marco."
"You mean that he was like, funny?"
"Oh my ..." Jake whispered.
"Rachel," Cassie pressed, "what do you think of Marco's looks?"
I shrugged. I smiled. "He's, like, cute, all right?"
Marco sat down very suddenly. On the hay-strewn floor.
Jake looked pale.
<This is unusual,> Ax said in thought-speak.
"She's uptalking," Marco said, shaken. "She said I was cute. She ... she smiled. At me."
"Ax," Jake said and shot the Andalite a look.
FWAPP!
Faster than the human eye could see, Ax's tail whipped forward, over his head. The long, scythe blade stopped a millimeter from my throat.
"Yeerk," Marco said. "Has to be. They've infested her."
"No, no, no," Cassie said. "If she was a Controller she'd sound exactly like Rachel. This is something different. A breakdown, maybe."
<She was weird with me, too,> Tobias said. <But in a different way. She was brutal, violent. In eagle morph she killed and ate a fish. She ate it while it was still living.>
Ax kept his blade against my throat. I would have fainted except that falling down could have been, like, fatal.
So I kept my quivering knees as firm as I could. But nothing would stop the tears rolling down my cheeks.
"Look!" Marco cried, like he'd just spotted the Holy Grail sitting on top of the Golden Fleece.
"Tears!"
"What on Earth is -" Jake started to say.
But then the door of the barn burst open.
"All right! What's the mission, when do we start, and how many Yeerks do we get to kill today? I am hungry for some wild butt-kicking! Hah HAH!"
I'm going to start all of my entrances by shouting "I am hungry for some wild butt kicking!"
But there's a lot I like in this chapter. The team realizing something is wrong when Rachel says that Marco is cute, Nice Rachel's Arrested Development's attraction to her cousin. The fact that Ax is not cute (I think he's cute in that alien deer-man way) Mean Rachel's complete inability to be subtle. The confession that squirrels, after all, are not scary, the phrase "like he'd just spotted the Holy Grail sitting on top of the Golden Fleece." I don't know. There's a lot to like about this book
Chapter 8-Nice Rachel
quote:
I stared.
She stared.
She was me. I was her.
"There're two of them!" Jake said.
<They appear to be identical,> Ax said.
"Cool!" Marco said, climbing to his feet. "Now Tobias can have one and I can have the oth -AAAAHHHH!"
I ... I mean she ... somersaulted.
She leaped, landed on her hands, flew through the air, and landed, feetfirst, against Marco's chest.
Marco landed very hard on his back. Rachel was astride him, squatting on his chest. Her knees pinned his arms. She reached behind his head and grabbed a handful of his dark hair.
The other hand was balled into a fist, quivering, about a foot away from Marco's face.
"What did you say?" Rachel whispered.
"Not one single thing," Marco said. "Me? I said nothing."
Rachel ... I mean, the other Rachel, of course, rolled off him and laughed. It was a big, hearty, HAH HAH HAH laugh.
Ax withdrew the blade from my throat. I collapsed in a heap.
She stood over me. "Hey. You look like me."
I nodded, lip quivering.
"What's going on here?" she demanded loudly.
<That seems to be the question at hand,> Ax said mildly.
"The Drode? One of his tricks?" Jake demanded.
Cassie shrugged.
They kept staring. At me. At her. Back at me. It was like being an animal in a zoo.
And I kept staring, too. At her. For one thing, she was dressed totally differently from me. She was so, like, L.L. Bean meets Timberland by way of a Harley-Davidson rally. Not at all my look. Although, when I thought about it, my look could use some freshening up. I mean, what was with all the pants and jeans? Why shouldn't I wear dresses? I have great legs. I can wear dresses and look good. The shorter lengths, the longer lengths, like, you know, with a slit or whatever? Why shouldn't I try the waif look, I mean I can be a waif. I can do the slinky dresses with, like, the big - "Ow!"
Someone was knocking on my head. It was her.
She rapped my skull with her knuckles. "Hey! Hey! You awake in there? I asked you a question. Who are you? And what are you doing with my body?"
Marco fidgeted. "Um, I have a body joke here, but I can't tell it unless Ax promises to protect me."
"Shut up," Mean Rachel snapped. "Don't make me kill you. Now, you, little pansy girl, you have about three seconds to tell us -"
"Don't threaten," Jake said with unmistakable authority.
Mean Rachel forgot me in a flash. She rounded on Jake. "Don't get in my way, Jake."
"Don't push it, Rachel."
"Are you threatening me?" she nearly screamed. "Come on! You think you can tell me what to do? Let's go, right now. You and me. Just keep our pet Andalite here out of the fight. You and me, we'll see who's giving orders around here after I give you the butt-kicking you're begging for."
The possible fight was interrupted at this point by the arrival of Erek King. He's a Chee. Meaning that he's, like, this Android? Only he uses holograms to look like this normal boy. I don't think he's cute because, you know, it's bad enough being attracted to a guy who's a bird of prey, right? Getting into androids is maybe going a little far.
Although, when you realize Erek is really like thousands of years old, so he's totally mature and all -
Anyway.
Erek walked in. Looking like a boy. Looking like a boy with a very odd expression on his face.
"Um ..." he said. "Um ... is it just me, or are there really two Rachels here?"
"We're filming a Doublemint gum commercial later," Marco said, then cringed lest Mean Rachel go all psycho-gymnast on him again.
"Yeah, we have two Rachels," Jake said.
"Okay. Any particular reason?" Erek asked.
"It wasn't exactly deliberate," Cassie explained.
<They appear to be identical,> Ax said. <Except that one is passive and easily frightened, and the other is ->
"Excitable?" Marco suggested.
<- violent and aggressive,> Ax concluded.
Erek nodded. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"
"Well, it's sure not Mary Kate and Ashley," Marco said.
<So it was you who went flying with me, today,> Tobias said.
"Who? Me?" I asked.
<No. The other one,> Tobias said.
"Mean Rachel," Marco suggested. "Mean Rachel and Nice Rachel?"
"Mighty Rachel, hah HAH!" Mean Rachel said. "Mighty Rachel, and ... and ... Wimp Rachel! Yeah, that's it, blondie."
I didn't exactly want to be known as "Wimp Rachel." But I didn't want Mean Rachel to try and pound my face in, either.
"This is nuts," Cassie said.
"I can't stay long," Erek said, unable to stop looking from me to Mean Rachel and back again. "I just came to update you guys on the mission."
"To the Yeerk pool!" Mean Rachel crowed. "Let's get some flamethrowers!"
"I gotta stop hanging around with you people," Erek said. "You people are just plain strange."
I agree with Erek. They're a bad influence on him.
I think one of the reasons it doesn't really work is what the two types are like. One part of Rachel being an incredibly hostile, borderline psychotic adrenaline junkie - 100%, totally buy that. The other part being incredibly timid and easily upset... it just isn't believable that this is a significant part of her personality.
But then, what is the other significant part of her personality and how do you write that into a flesh and blood character? I'm not sure there is one (besides "just being a regular person who's not a psycho") and I'm not sure you can.
I think the concept is its literally a clean break in half instead of "there are the two key aspects of Rachel." So "Mean Rachael" has all of the confidence, agression, emotional resilience etc and has no fear or empathy. Normal Rachel isn't inherently timid underneath her bravado/bloodlust but "Nice Rachel" has no emotional barriers so she feels everything more keenly (except anger which she literally can't feel) and "Mean Rachel" has all the self confidence so she has literally none.
But in my eyes that's still a personality aspects split - the real body horror would be more underlined if the two Rachels were totally identical copies of one another with all the same memories and attributes and were therefore both the "real" one. Though I guess it could still be solved by the most Star Trek deus ex science ending in the whole series.
Cassie would've actually been my go-to choice for a character who is more clearly split along two halves, and more interesting halves, though I think that probably would've taken us to darker places and been a more serious book than this sort of sitcom one. Speaking of, all of Marco's lines in the above chapter are gold.
Huh. I didn't think that was referred to, or at least not with that name, this early.
Huh. I didn't think that was referred to, or at least not with that name, this early.
So, "uptalk" was coined in an article in New York Times Magazine on, like, Aug. 15, 1993?
If you have access behind the NYT paywall, you can read it here:
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/15/magazine/on-language-like-uptalk.html
It's not a bad article. It mentions that you've found it in Ireland, Scotland and parts of the American South since the 1700s, but it also being picked up by teens and 20somethings, largely women, and talked to linguists who've studied it.
quote:
That doesn't mean rises have no function. They can be used as a signal that "more is coming," says Mark Aronoff of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. An adolescent might be signaling "I have more to say; don't interrupt me." McLemore says an early study of telephone conversation suggested that rises may be used as a probe of sorts, to see if the hearer is getting what you are saying.
A friend of mine (of no formal linguistic expertise) likes this latter interpretation. He insists that the spread of uptalk indicates the lack of shared knowledge in our society. Our society, he contends, has become so fragmented that no one knows anymore whether another person will have a clue as to what he's saying. We need to test the hearer's level of understanding.
Like, suppose I want to talk about Sabicas? Or Charles Barkley? Or nitric oxide? The molecule of the year? For 1992?
By using the questioning tone, I'm trying to see if my conversational partner knows anything at all about flamenco guitar, professional basketball or neurochemistry.
McLemore studied intonation in one very particular context. She observed uses of intonation in a Texas sorority, where uptalk was not at all about uncertainty or deference. It was used most commonly by the leaders, the senior officers. Uptalk was a kind of accent, or tag, to highlight new information for listeners: "We're having a bake sale? On the west mall? On Sunday?" When saying something like "Everyone should know that your dues should be in," they used a falling intonation at the end of the sentence.
The sorority members' own interpretation of uptalk was that it was a way of being inclusive. McLemore's conclusions are somewhat similar. She says the rises are used to connect phrases, and to connect the speaker to the listener, as a means of "getting the other person involved."
I think one of the reasons it doesn't really work is what the two types are like. One part of Rachel being an incredibly hostile, borderline psychotic adrenaline junkie - 100%, totally buy that. The other part being incredibly timid and easily upset... it just isn't believable that this is a significant part of her personality.
But then, what is the other significant part of her personality and how do you write that into a flesh and blood character? I'm not sure there is one (besides "just being a regular person who's not a psycho") and I'm not sure you can.
I think this could be a really good Marco book. A ruthless marco who is a sociopath - more like David than any of us want to admit. And a marco who really just wants his family back maybe? Just looking for a normal life. Nice rachel is so pathetic I want to put her in a locker while reading this. I think I would have a lot more empathy for a nice, soft Marco.
I think this could be a really good Marco book. A ruthless marco who is a sociopath - more like David than any of us want to admit. And a marco who really just wants his family back maybe? Just looking for a normal life. Nice rachel is so pathetic I want to put her in a locker while reading this. I think I would have a lot more empathy for a nice, soft Marco.
Yeah, same. The writing style doesn't really do it for me, either.
Though mean Rachel is pretty good. Pinning someone to a table
Chapter 9-Mean Rachel
quote:
"It's called the Buyers Research Institute. They test consumer products and have a magazine," Erek explained.
"The Yeerks just recently bought it to use as a front. Also, they hope to use the BRI's consumer ratings to help some of their other companies. So we -"
"We go in, hard and fast," I said. "Forget subtlety and concealment, we go in, all guns blazing, battle morphs, maximum shock value. Anything gets in our way we kill it!"
"Rachel?" Jake said.
"What?"
"What?"
" Mean Rachel," he clarified.
"What?" I asked.
"Why don't we let Erek finish before we decide how to deal with this. Erek?"
The android nodded his human head. It was such a pity. The Chee were powerful beyond human imagining, but programmed for nonviolence. We'd freed Erek from that programing once and man, he had carried out gross and total mayhem! It was beautiful! Of course, now he was back in his old Gandhi-Martin-Luther-King-Give-Peace-a-Chance mode.
Pity.
"Well, as you know," Erek continued, "we believe the Anti-Morphing Ray is a real threat to all of you. If it works it would destroy the morphing field and cause a person in morph to demorph."
"If it works," Wuss Rachel said. "Probably it won't even work, so we have nothing to worry about."
"Shut up," I snapped.
"The problem you have is that preliminary testing is about to begin tonight," Erek said. "Just computer simulations and so on, but it may encourage the Yeerks. You should stop them before it gets that far. Which means moving right away. Tonight."
"Okay, Erek, thanks. We'll take it from here," Jake said.
Erek left. Gratefully, I think.
<I think we need to figure this situation out,> Tobias said. <I mean, we need to go after this Anti- Morphing Ray but first we need to figure out what the deal is with two Rachels.>
I leered at him. "You're as bad as Marco. You want us both. Hah HAH! I'll be more than enough for you, Tobias; you won't be needing the wimp, here."
<That wasn't exactly what ->
"Okay, Rachel ... both of you ... tell us what you did today," Jake said.
"School, field trip, here, big deal, let's go squash some slugs!" I said.
"Well, first I woke up, then I took a shower, then -"
"Field trip," Cassie interrupted. "What happened on the field trip?"
"You were there," I said. "Don't waste my time with stupid questions."
"I was there, but not with you," Cassie said.
"I remember it was chilly," my idiot twin said. "I had, like, goose bumps?"
"I used to read those books," Marco said.
<Rachel had books in response to cold?> Ax asked.
"Focus, can we please focus, here?" Jake said.
"I dropped my earring in a tidal pool!" Nitwit Rachel said suddenly, sounding as excited as if she'd just answered correctly to Final Jeopardy.
"Stupid earring," I said.
"My favorite earrings! My dad gave them to me."
"Guilt gift," I sneered.
"It was sweet."
"It was a payoff for missing our visit that weekend."
"He was busy!"
"Right."
"You are horrible!"
"And you're a pinhead."
"Dr. Jekyll? Ms. Hyde?" Cassie interrupted. "Can we move on?"
"I couldn't reach the earring, it fell down in this, like, crack?"
"In this, like, crack? Crack, question mark? Was it a crack or wasn't it? If it was a crack then say 'it fell in a crack!' No 'like.' No question mark. Crack, crack, CRACK!"
I couldn't believe this bimbo.
"I wanted it back because I thought my dad would be sad if he thought -"
"Oh, someone just gag me," I snapped. "The earring was in a crack. I morphed this starfish to go in after it."
<You morphed a starfish?> Tobias asked.
"Did you go deaf?" I asked him. Sweetly. "Pay attention, this is tough enough with her babbling."
"And then, oooh, it was horrible! Horrible!"
"Huh?" I asked.
"Someone, something ... the pain! I was so scared! I was, like, cut in, like, half?"
"Some rotten little monster of a kid," I yelled, renewed in my rage at the memory. "I should have killed him! I should have morphed to grizzly and gone after him!"
"Back up," Cassie said. "You morphed to starfish and some kid chopped you in half."
I grabbed Cassie's arm. "Hey, why are you talking to the wimp? Talk to me. Talk to ME!"
"Nice Rachel? Did you demorph right away?" Cassie pressed.
"No, I was too scared! I mean, like -"
"Mean Rachel, how about you?"
"Of course I demorphed right away. What was I going to do, try and destroy Bailey as a freaking starfish?"
<Bailey?> Ax asked.
Jake shrugged. "Don't ask me."
"Oh, man," Cassie said.
<What?> Tobias asked her.
"Starfish. I mean, at one level it was lucky. She could have been killed."
"Cassie," Jake said in his I'm-losing-patience-but-still-trying-to-be-polite voice. "Tell us what you know."
"Starfish. They regenerate. You can chop off a leg and they can grow a new one. Somehow when that starfish was chopped in half, the starfish's regenerative powers created the possibility of two separate Rachels. One in each half."
<But, somehow the two halves were unequal, subtly different,> Ax said. <This is a very interesting phenomenon.>
"Interesting?" Marco shrilled. "It's bizarre! It's weird. It's wacko, creepy, horrific, incredible, absurd, and totally, totally, I mean totally insane. But also, kind of cool."
"Wait a minute!" I cried. "The shrimp-boy is right! I should have seen the possibilities, but I'm getting confused. The wimp here can attend school and keep the 'rents happy and I can spend a hundred percent of my time in fierce battle against the Yeerks! I'll annihilate them! I'll crush them! They won't know what hit 'em. It will be full-time Rachel, on the loose!"
"Good grief," Jake muttered. "Okay, here's the deal: Nice Rachel, you sit this mission out. Go home. Stay home. And Mean Rachel?"
"Yes?" I asked, filled with excitement.
"You do the same. Home. Quiet. Don't hurt anyone. We'll handle BRI and the AMR without you. Either of you."
Naturally, I objected. But Jake wouldn't give.
"I'll kill you!" I screamed at him. "I'll kill you all!"
They left me anyway.
So the Yeerks own Consumer Reports. "We've tested ten different species of alien slugs you should hold up to your ear....."
Also, I like the Goosebumps reference. Goosebumps was the other, more popular young adult series put out by Scholastic at the same time, and also got a TV show first.
Also, more interesting, are the two Rachels' characterization of the earring and why Rachel's dad got it for her, which really encompasses their personalities.
Chapter 10
quote:
Mean Rachel snuck in the house morphed as a cockroach, then demorphed right in front of me. I couldn't watch. I pressed my hands over my eyes. It was so awful!
I mean, okay, I know that I have morphed roaches myself. It's not like I'm dumb or anything. I have the same memories as Mean Rachel. So, like, I know all the stuff I've done in the past, right?
But now it just seems so far away. Like some old nightmare. It's still scary, right, but it's like, far away. Besides, that wasn't my real problem now.
"GET OFF MY BED!"
I jumped. I jumped and slipped off the edge of the bed and landed on my butt on the floor. I almost dropped Bobo Bear.
"But." I said.
"Two of us and only one bed, you do the math," Mean Rachel said.
"W-w-we could sh-sh-share."
"We c-c-could sh-sha-share?" she mocked me. "You were never a part of me. Never! I can't believe you and I were ever inside the same person. You make me want to vomit! I should ..."
She didn't say what she should do. I didn't want to think about it.
"Rachel?"
A voice through the door. My little sister, Jordan.
"What!?" Mean Rachel roared.
"What?" I asked.
"Are you ... are you talking to yourself in there?" Jordan asked.
"Yeah, you got a problem with that?" Mean Rachel yelled.
"No," came the muffled response. "I just like to keep track of your level of insanity."
Mean Rachel lay there quivering with suppressed energy. "I need to do something!"
"W-w-what?"
She shot a suspicious look at me. "Something. I'll think of something. Just have to focus."
"I ... I mean, I, you know, I'm kind of having a hard time focusing, too," I said.
"I'm not having trouble focusing, you moron. I can focus. I'm not like you. It's just ... I mean, you can't know the future, right? Put a Yeerk here, put a bunch of Hork-Bajir in front of me, I'll focus! I'll focus them to death!"
I started to say something to her, only, what was it? Something. Or not. Things just seemed to evaporate right out of my brain.
So I said, "The others are probably starting on the mission. I hope they're -"
"That's it!" Mean Rachel cried.
"What's it?"
"The mission! I'm going on the mission!" Mean Rachel glared at me with hatred in her eyes. "Don't look at me, I don't want you busting out in tears. I'm going to morph and then I'm outta here."
"But Jake said -"
"Hey, Jake isn't the boss of me," Mean Rachel snapped. "He may not be the boss of anything much longer. The powerful rule over the weak. The strong survive, honey pie. And I am the strong!"
I turned my back on her and hugged Bobo Bear. I heard the window slide up. Then, I put my hands over my ears to block out the faint sounds of grinding bones and liquefying flesh.
<And don't get back up on that bed,> she said. <I'll know! If you get back on that bed I'll put you in the hospital! I'll break both your arms. Then see how well you can hug B-B-Bobo B-B-Bear.>
I didn't look up until I was totally, totally sure she was gone.
I had a plan. I was going to call my dad. But when should I call him? Now? Later? Now? What? What was I thinking about?
Dad! Call Dad! I had to write it down fast before I forgot again. "Call Daddy," I said as I carefully wrote it down. I went to the phone. I picked it up, trembling, careful not to touch the bed.
I was trapped in a nightmare. And it wasn't just this being split-in-two thing. I had been trapped in a nightmare since that awful night when we first ran into Elfangor and he, like, messed up our lives and all.
Secrets! Nothing but secrets!
Nightmares and horrors!
And the worst horror of all was seeing what had grown inside of me like some kind of cancerous tumor. Mean Rachel was getting stronger with each passing month of my life as an Animorph. Pretty soon she would have become all of me and there'd have been nothing left of me!
It had to end! I didn't care if the strong survived and the weak perished, I wanted to survive anyway!
I blinked away the tears. What was I doing? Something. I saw the note. Oh yeah.
I dialed my dad's phone number.
Probably a bad idea for Jake to send both Rachels home together as Rachel has a mother and sisters who all have a pretty good idea of how many Rachels there should be. Fortunately, Mean Rachel isn't listening anyway.
So some people have said earlier that they don't like Nice Rachel, and that's fair enough. Nice Rachel is annoying. But they've also said that they don't see Nice Rachel in real Rachel, and I think that's unfair. I think what we've seen about Rachel in previous books is that, while she's an adrenaline junkie, she feels guilty about it and the escalating levels of violence,. The whole "And the worst horror of all was seeing what had grown inside of me like some kind of cancerous tumor. Mean Rachel was getting stronger with each passing month of my life as an Animorph. Pretty soon she would have become all of me and there'd have been nothing left of me!
" is a fear we've seen Rachel express in the other books.
And Rachel, we've seen, has this desire to be like, and she can be compassionate. She's empathetic even if she's not great at expressing that empathy. But look at her, say, two books ago, when she just sat with a grieving Marco, or all the times she's been willing to sacrifice herself. The whole Nice Rachel thing is inside her as much as Mean Rachel is.
I'm fucking dying at YES IM TALKING TO MYSELF. This is better than I remember
I think this would work better if the contrast was between a smart, competent Rachel and the aggressive, adrenaline-junkie Rachel. I believe her characterization in the earliest books includes not only that she's a great athlete (gymnast) but that she is intelligent to boot and effortlessly popular. Pre-Elfangor Rachel was that kid in school who was just good at everything. That bit of her characterization seems to get lost in the later books as her murderousness turns up, but it might create a more interesting tension. Smart Rachel could still be stuck with analysis paralysis without her decision-making half, but she wouldn't be so clearly a wimp.
I love Ax's response to Marco's Goosebumps joke - "<Rachel had books in response to cold?> Ax asked." It's always fun when he's confused by pop culture and other human stuff he doesn't get.
I think this would work better if the contrast was between a smart, competent Rachel and the aggressive, adrenaline-junkie Rachel. I believe her characterization in the earliest books includes not only that she's a great athlete (gymnast) but that she is intelligent to boot and effortlessly popular. Pre-Elfangor Rachel was that kid in school who was just good at everything. That bit of her characterization seems to get lost in the later books as her murderousness turns up, but it might create a more interesting tension. Smart Rachel could still be stuck with analysis paralysis without her decision-making half, but she wouldn't be so clearly a wimp.
A good analysis.
There are plenty of interesting dualities in Rachel's personality; mean vs nice isn't one of them.
Nice Rachel is the smart one kinda, she just has literally zero self-esteem or confidence. This is a semi reveal later but Mean Rachel is wholly instinctual, has no capacity for long term planning and can't really conceptualise the future or the consequences of her actions, Nice Rachel can make plans but struggles to maintain focus on the present which is partly why she seems like scatterbrained airhead
Nice Rachel is the smart one kinda, she just has literally zero self-esteem or confidence. This is a semi reveal later but Mean Rachel is wholly instinctual, has no capacity for long term planning and can't really conceptualise the future or the consequences of her actions, Nice Rachel can make plans but struggles to maintain focus on the present which is partly why she seems like scatterbrained airhead
This is the idea I thought was so close to being brilliant. From what I recall of the ending of this book,
Nice Rachel basically just faffs around and calls Daddy until it's time to put them back together again. For example, Nice Rachel should have been the one having the anxiety over whether the present from her dad was because he felt guilty about missing their day, that should be above the comprehension of Mean Rachel. A fun twist would have the gang trying to keep Mean Rachel in check, then being blindsided by a plot from the other Rachel who uses her wits to put the others in peril (while trying to escape some dangerous situation, not out of malice). Having BOTH Rachels be the dangerous one would go a long way towards saving this book.
Chapter 11-Mean Rachel
quote:
The night and owl morph.
It was like being some kind of a god!
I could see what no one else saw. I could hear what no one else heard. I flew, silent as the grave, through early night.
Over the rooftops! Skimming the chimney tops. Flitting through the highest branches of the highest trees. The bright, square windows below me, the pale streetlights, the searching headlights of the cars were all unnecessary. I needed nothing but the faintest glimmer of light to see clearly. I could read a book from a hundred feet away by the light of a single, flickering candle.
Great horned owl. The night killer of the skies.
I saw it all from up there. The worker-drones getting home late from their pathetic jobs; the mommies making din-din for their yowling, savage little children; the TV screens flickering with the news of the world.
Hah! News? I had news for the world: Rachel was on the loose! Rachel was unrestrained! Look out, world, Rachel was on the wing, talons ready!
Ah HAH!
Buyers Research Institute. Yeah. Had to go there, that's where the mission was. And when I got there? I'd ... I'd ... I'd figure something out. That's what I'd do. Just get there. That's all that mattered.
You don't need a plan, Rachel, I told myself. The Great and Powerful Rachel does not need a stupid plan. No, no. The Mighty Rachel would arrive and then, that would be it! Let the battle begin.
Let those fools - my friends - see how weak they were without me.
Maybe if one of them were torn apart by Hork-Bajir that would teach them a lesson!
Then I spotted the cat. The silent predator was stalking a mouse in its own backyard.
Ah, yes, friend cat. A worthy adversary. He would give me a fight to tune me up and get my blood boiling for the wild massacre ahead!
I tilted my tail and reconfigured my wings.
Friend Tabby would not even hear my approach. Kitty Kitty wouldn't know what hit him!
Down, down, with talons spread wide. I would hit the cat in the neck from behind. One talon would close over his head and I would squeeze, squeeze till the talon broke through the skull and -
The cat jumped sideways, quick as lightning.
I saw my error too late! It was the mouse. He'd been facing me. He'd seen my shadow as I passed beneath the streetlight. His shocked, upward gaze had alerted the cat!
I swished helplessly by.
Oh! The unfairness of it! The cat was mine, mine. MINE!
Rage boiled up within me. I wanted that kill! I wanted that kill! I needed that kill! I needed to feel my talons breaking bone and squishing brain and.
I couldn't think. Couldn't focus. Madness. Like blood in my eyes. The rage, it was like someone had exploded a hand grenade in my stomach. Like the explosion couldn't get out but was all contained inside me.
My wings ... they wouldn't work. I ... couldn't focus... . Mine, mine, MINE! My kill! My kill! My kill!
I landed hard on a patch of grass beside the road. Cars zipped by, swirling me with their backwash.
I lay there, on my back, feathers dampened by the grass, and kicked my bird legs and flapped my bird wings and threw my head back and forth and screamed.
Screamed and screamed and screamed and still the volcano inside me would not die down.
It seemed like forever. It was a fever. An illness. A tidal wave of emotion that had rolled over me. How long it lasted, I don't know. A long time, it seemed to me. Then, at last, it ebbed.
It ebbed, leaving behind a shaky, uncertain feeling.
Fear?
Yes. Fear.
Fear of myself.
And yet, the hunger was not lessened in any way. I had missed this kill. I wouldn't miss the next.
I flew toward the Buyers Research Institute.
So, what do you think she means when she's saying she feels fear of herself.
Chapter 12-Mean Rachel
quote:
Buyers Research Institute. The people who tell you which vacuum cleaner to buy and which coffee tastes best.
You are one sad, tired, burned-out specimen of humanity if you need someone to tell you which vacuum to buy. I mean, buy the vacuum, if it doesn't work go back and get the salesman and kick his butt! Where's the big mystery there?
That's how I'd do it, anyway.
It was three stories high. Rectangular. One of those big, modern, nothing buildings you see in industrial parks or by the side of the highway.
Lights were on in only a small handful of the offices, and no one was in those. I could see that clearly. The building looked empty. And with my predator's eyes I realized something else: There was a missing floor.
They supposedly did all kinds of testing and stuff, but all I was seeing were offices with cluttered desks and computer monitors endlessly playing their Mystify Your Mind screen savers.
Below ground. That must be where the testing was done. Yeah, now that I looked I could see a large truck bay cut deep enough to open into a sublevel.
I floated almost effortlessly past the top floor of windows. Jake and the others must already be inside. Fine. When the stuff hit the fan I'd be -
BBBBBRRRRRRRRIIIINNNNNGGGGG!
The sound was magnified to my sensitive owl ears. An alarm!
BBBBBRRRRRRRRIIIINNNNNGGGGG!
It was like the class bell times ten. Definite alarm!
My friends needed help. Yeerks needed killing.
<Cool!>
But how to get into the building? No time for slow infiltration. I needed something direct.
The truck bay.
I whipped my wings and swung around above the truck bay. It was a long, fairly steep ramp that went from the rear parking area of the building straight down to a loading dock.
The loading dock was a concrete pier protected by two big rubber buffers. The opening itself was a retractable steel door.
The door was too much even for my grizzly morph. No other way in, not that I could see.
Then, I spotted the truck. It was a car carrier. You know, one of those trucks where they precariously pile five or six new cars on the ramped trailer?
Must be new car models coming to be tested, I thought.
The truck was parked at the edge of the parking lot. There was a faint light from inside the cab.
The driver was probably inside catching a nap. Maybe he showed up too late for his scheduled dropoff;
I didn't know, didn't care. I just cared that the key was probably in that truck.
BBBBBRRRRRRRRIIIINNNNNGGGGG!
The ringing wasn't stopping! I was probably missing half the slaughter!
I landed behind the truck. I demorphed as fast as I could, then morphed again.
A few seconds later the driver was awakened when I removed the door of his truck.
"Aaaaahhhhh! Aaaahhhhh!" he said.
He was scared, good and scared, and it made me laugh. So I let him live. I reached in with massive grizzly paws and yanked him out, kicking and screaming and wetting himself.
Then, I climbed into the cab.
"Hey! Hey! You can't steal my rig!" he yelled.
I stomped on the clutch. I rammed the gearshift forward. I didn't exactly know how to drive a truck, but to my surprise it lurched forward when I let go of the clutch.
WHAM!
I hit some stupid Volkswagen. It didn't slow me down too much.
The truck steered badly. And holding the wheel wasn't easy with my ham-sized paws. But the
big rig turned and slowly, slowly gained speed.
Turned ... turned ... and now, straightened out as I aimed the tons of steel down the ramp!
<Ah HAAAAHHHHH!> I screamed in pure joy as the truck plunged forward and down.
Faster ... faster ...
WHAAAAMMMMM!
The truck stopped very suddenly against the concrete pier.
TWANNNG!
The safety chain holding the foremost car in place snapped.
The car flew off the front end of the truck, right over the cab, into the steel door, through the steel door, wrapping the hinged metal around itself and veering off to one side.
A second car flew right behind it but no longer found a door in its way.
The steering wheel had sledgehammered my chest on impact. My weight shattered the wheel and without remembering how, exactly, I found myself head and shoulders through the windshield.
I was winded, bruised, and cut. But it takes more than a little truck accident to kill a grizzly bear. The door of the truck bay was open.
I snatched up the key chain, worked my way through the rest of the windshield, and climbed clumsily over the big Peterbilt engine.
I landed hard on a concrete floor. But I was inside! I was a grizzly bear!
And I had the second car that had flown off the end of the truck. A Mercedes convertible.
Silver metallic.
Very cool.
It's official. The winner of this book is the truck driver who complains to the bear that she's stealing his truck. How do you think he explains that to his supervisor, anyway? "Sorry, boss. Bear stole the truck."
"Eh, it happens."
Pray for security footage.
At this point the FBI surely has a taskforce assigned to this town to try to crack down on its apparently thriving illegal wildlife black market and the regular escapes thereof.
The task force was dismantled because the report said "nothing to see here, please come to company bbq c/o The Sharing"
I'm really liking this book, and the conceit is good, but the scattered stream of consciousness is a little annoying to read.
OTOH, any of the Animorphs driving a car while in morph is and always will be incredibly funny.
Unfortunately, a bear stole my truck, so I won't be able to get the next two chapters out today. Expect them tomorrow, though.
Pray for security footage.
I'm pretty sure Animorphs takes place in an alternate reality where security cameras were never invented.
Elfangor's final act with the Time Matrix was to eliminate all security cameras just in case.
Looking at something random on twitter, and I think twitter knows I read this thread because this popped up on the page totally unrelated to the tweet I was actually looking at:
https://twitter.com/byelacey/status/1462818293513961476
Chapter 13-Nice Rachel
quote:
"Daddy?"
"Hi, honey!"
I clutched the phone with one hand and Bobo Bear with the other.
"Daddy?"
"Of course, who else would it be? Is something the matter?"
"Oh, Daddy, everything is the matter!"
"That sounds serious."
"It is, it is!"
"Are you okay?"
"Can you tell?" My dad's a TV reporter. He has very good instincts.
"Tell what?"
"Rachel, I'm asking if you're okay. You don't sound like yourself."
"I don't? But I am. Me, I mean. I am me. Maybe ... I mean maybe I'm a little different or, like, you know, not a hundred percent the same."
"Is it drugs? Sweetheart, you know you can tell me. Are you on drugs?"
"Um, I took two Motrin for my headache ... Oh! You mean like drug drugs? No, of course not!"
He sounded relieved. "Thank God! That's all I need. I mean, all you need. You know what I mean. Just did a three-part story on drug use among young teens, I mean, very in-depth with some great interviews and some killer footage. Great stuff! And they make me chop it down to a minute thirty. A minute thirty!"
"Um, Daddy? This is, like, about me, okay?"
"Of course, of course. How are you?"
I felt my lip quiver. "Not very good."
"Have you talked to your mom? She's pretty good with this kind of stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Oh. well. I guess, boy stuff? Does it involve boys?"
"Yes, yes, it does! How did you guess? Actually three boys. I mean, four if you count this one guy who is like, you know, okay, not exactly a boy, if you know what I mean."
"A man!" he shrieked in my ear. "A man? You're going out with a man? Are you seeing a college kid?"
"No, Daddy. Duh! That's not what I meant, it's just that he's ... foreign."
"An alien?"
I almost choked Bobo Bear. I lowered my voice to a whisper. "How did you know?"
"Well, honey, it's not that big a deal. I mean, my cleaning lady is an alien and she does a great job."
I had to think about that for a minute.
"She's from Ukraine," he said.
"Oh! That kind of alien!"
"Yeah. Ukraine. It used to be part of the old Soviet Union."
I nodded. "We learned about that in school. The old Soviet Union. Although I don't know why anyone would name their country 'the Old' anything. I mean, did it used to be the new Soviet Union and then, after a long time they figured, 'Well, we can't exactly call it "new" anymore, can we?'"
"Uh-huh. Look, Rachel? You said something was bothering you. A boy?"
"Who?"
"I don't know who." He sounded annoyed.
"I just can't keep it all bottled up inside anymore!"
"Keep what bottled up inside?"
"Shh! I can't say over the phone. They could be listening and Jake would go totally, totally nuts!"
"Jake? You're going out with Jake? As in Jake, your cousin?" I laughed.
"Silly! You always make me feel better."
"Ooookay."
"Come soon, okay? Can you come tomorrow? I have to talk to you. It's about ... about what you said before."
"Drugs?"
"No, your." I searched for a way to tell him without committing the unpardonable sin of blurting it over the phone. "Your cleaning lady," I said, trying to say it in a way so he'd know it wasn't really, exactly about his cleaning lady. "It's about, you know. What you said about her."
"That she's from Ukraine?"
He got it! The code was working. "Exactly. It's about Ukraine."
Long pause. "I'll be there tomorrow."
He hung up. I hung up. I felt better. Tomorrow I would tell him everything. The Yeerks, the Animorphs, the whole thing about Tobias being a hawk and also me kind of liking him. And about there being two of me.
He would know what to do.
I heard the phone ring but by then I was already heading downstairs. My mom picked it up. I could hear her voice, sounding icy.
"No, she is not on drugs. I would know! Unlike certain people, I see her every day."
I have to imagine Rachel's father is extremely confused. I don't blame him. Also, Rachel spilling the beans...not good.
Chapter 14-Mean Rachel
quote:
I couldn't find the right key to start the silver Mercedes. But I made a cool discovery: If you jab about six inches of bear claw into the key slot, it'll work!
I flattened the driver's seat. I jammed one big foot down on the accelerator, and I was off!
Vrrrrooom!
It was just what I thought: The basement level was one big, huge testing facility. It was like a warehouse, kind of. A cement floor with broad aisles, with clusters of machinery to the left and the right. The basement level extended much farther in every direction than the upper levels had.
Some of the tests seemed to be automated. Machines were busily carrying them out without human supervision. Or at least there were no humans around that I could see.
Then again, your average cowardly human would tend to run away if he saw a grizzly bear driving a convertible toward him. I wouldn't run away, of course, but then I'm not exactly average.
I roared along past machines that were automatically twisting the knobs of stereos; past a table that held twenty or thirty hair dryers in place as they blew; past twin lines of La-Z-Boys being jerked out and back, out and back, like they were inhabited by a brigade of invisible, hyperactive fathers.
One of the recliners was already broken. A steel shank kept jerking out through the footstool with each movement.
The first alarm had stopped now. A second, different alarm had taken over.
Brr-REEEET! Brr-REEEET! Brr-REEEET!
I could hear it quite well over the gentle hum of the Mercedes engine.
To my left I spotted a test involving blue jeans. About two dozen pairs were mounted on leg shaped steel prongs that appeared to be stretching them. Two dozen pairs, all of them feet upward.
I slammed on the brakes and the car squealed down the slick cement.
I peered, looking for my favorite brand. But my grizzly bear eyes were too weak to make out labels.
I took off again and suddenly a troop of Hork-Bajir trotted right across my path. There were eight. Obviously in a hurry. No doubt in pursuit of my friends.
I kept my foot on the accelerator. The last Hork-Bajir spotted me bearing down on him. He yelled something and leaped aside.
Hah! Not likely!
I twisted the wheel. I was on two wheels! I was so far over on one side I could have reached out and raked my nails along the floor!
The last Hork-Bajir heard my wheels screeching. He looked back over his shoulder.
WHAM!
Flying Hork-Bajir! I caught him in the tail and legs. He went flying. Up, a cartwheel, over the top of me as I raced beneath. I saw him hit the ground in my rearview mirror.
Cool?
Way cool!
WHAM!
Another Hork-Bajir. This one sprawled into a small mountain of bags of Doritos, Fritos, and Tostitos.
Now the others had realized I was on their tail. They scattered. Left and right. Left, through an automated test of coffee machines. Right, through a quiet, turned-off test of canned cheese.
The bright glitter of the silverware drew me. I yanked the wheel, spun completely around, yelling with glee as I did, straightened out, fishtailed, and roared after one big Hork-Bajir.
WHAM! Bu-Bump!
I caught him a glancing blow. He fell and managed to get his arm under my back wheels as I rolled on. It was the most fun I've ever had. I mean, if there's a heaven it must be a lot like this.
Ahead, a new target! No, wait, a knot of targets, all with their backs to me.
Hork-Bajir! Human-Controllers! And three big, ugly Taxxons, all surging into one corner. I hit the brakes. The car fishtailed to a stop.
I heard the bellowed, harsh language of the Hork-Bajir. I heard the cries of humans. I heard the slithery speech of the Taxxons. And above it all, the roar that made grown men wet themselves: the roar of the tiger.
I had found Jake and the others.
I climbed out of the car. The upholstery was seriously damaged. Maybe the BRI should test that.
I surveyed the scene, not wanting to miss a single, glorious detail.
Perhaps as many as fifteen Hork-Bajir. Four humans. Three Taxxons. Versus a tiger, a gorilla, a wolf, a young Andalite warrior, and a Hork-Bajir that had to be Tobias.
I was fiercely glad for Tobias. He'd managed to get into a seriously dangerous morph in time for battle.
It was a scene of perfect beauty. Blood slicked the concrete. Taxxon guts lay in steaming piles. There were bellows and cries of pain.
Battle! Desperate and deadly!
I almost cried at the sheer loveliness of it.
Then I plowed in.
So in these two chapters, we're sort of seeing the uselessness of both Rachels, and also, I dunno, how dangerous they are to the group.
Rachel's dad seems like a genuinely good dad.
The battle scene makes me wonder what the point of developing the anti-morphing ray is. Like, most of the time when they encounter the "Andalite bandits" they're in battle morph, and if you're still operating on the assumption that they're Andalites, then... you've just turned a wolf and gorilla etc into Andalites which aren't exactly less dangerous.
Anti-morphing ray disables them for the 30 seconds it takes to demorph, and would be very useful to sweep a room or area where you want to avoid being spied on.
Chapter 15-Nice Rachel
quote:
I woke up. Someone had kicked me in the ribs. I didn't have to guess who it was. She snapped on the light and glared down at me.
She reached down, yanked Bobo Bear out of my arms, and ripped his arms out, sending stuffing flying everywhere.
"Leave Bobo Bear alone!" I cried.
She knelt down over me, menacing. "Don't make me mad. I'm already as mad as I need to be. If you make me any madder I won't be responsible for what happens next. Get me?"
I nodded.
She twisted away and threw herself on her back on the bed.
"S-s-s-so, did you have fun?" I asked.
"Fun?!" she shrieked. "FUN?! Did I have FUN?!"
"Hey, get off the phone, Rachel, and stop yelling. Sara's asleep!"
This was from my mom, outside in the hallway.
"Okay, Mom!" I said.
"Your cousin," Mean Rachel whispered, her face twisted with rage.
"Jake?"
"Jake! I should have killed him. What he said to me! To ME!"
"What? What happened?"
"I saved their sorry butts. Oh, man, you would not believe this battle! This one Hork-Bajir caught me with his blade and chopped my left arm off, right? I mean, I'm in grizzly morph, we're totally outnumbered, and this Hork-Bajir gets behind me and SLASH! This sudden pain! Then, thud, and I realize my arm is on the ground. Hah HAH! On the ground. So you know what I do? I reach down, pick it up, and use it like a club to beat him over the head."
I felt like I was going to throw up. "That's awful!"
She looked puzzled. "What's awful?"
"Never mind."
"So we kick butt, right? I mean, we rock and rolled! And we escape! And then Jake goes off on me. On ME! Jake! On ME!"
"Didn't he, you know, didn't he think it was cool when you hit the Hork-Bajir with your arm?"
"He goes off on me with 'You screwed up the plan. You come barreling in here looking for trouble while we're trying to sneak around and find the stupid Anti-Morphing Ray.'"
"Uh-huh."
"I'm trying to be nice. I'm like 'You stupid moron, you were getting your weak little butts kicked. I heard the alarm go off and I saved you. I am a hero.' But he's, like, 'Rachel, we set off the fire alarm to draw the Hork-Bajir away. You show up busting in doors and they realize they're under attack.'"
"Well, I guess I can kind of see his."
Her look stopped me dead.
"I mean, Jake is such a moron!"
"Exactly! We kicked Yeerk butt! That's what we do. Forget the stupid Anti-Morphing Ray, who cares? We kicked Yeerk butt!" She shook her head. "Jake has to go."
"Well, I -" I started to say.
"Shut up, I'm tired."
She snapped the light off and within seconds she was breathing deeply.
I lay there on the floor, in the dark, holding my armless Bobo Bear. What was I going to do? How was I going to live with her?
Not that it mattered what I thought, or what I wanted. I mean, I was, like, helpless. She was the one who ...
I stopped breathing.
Yeah. Yeah. She was the one who would decide what was done.
So, what if she decided she didn't like sharing her life with me?
Would she ...
Oh my God, I realized. Yes. She would.
She would.
Also, just keep in mind, in that fight, Mean Rachel exercised her 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
Chapter 16-Nice Rachel
quote:
I went to school. It was comforting, you know? It was familiar. It was safe.
I don't know where Mean Rachel spent the day. I was just glad she wasn't in school. I mean, there are some teachers I don't like, but that doesn't mean I want Mean Rachel throwing them out of the second-floor windows.
Cassie came up to me after English.
"Meeting," she said.
"What?"
"Meeting. After school. You know."
Yes, I did know. The Barn. The Animorphs. Tobias.
Her.
"Or we could go shopping," Cassie said with a bland smile.
I'm sure my face lit up. But then I realized: Cassie hated shopping. And meetings weren't exactly optional.
She was testing me.
"No, we'd better go to the meeting. Right?" I asked anxiously. "I mean, that's what we should do, isn't it?"
"Why?" Cassie asked.
I shrugged. "Everyone will be expecting us. I mean, we have to, right?"
"Yeah. You're right. See you."
Couldn't I just, like, quit? That was the thing to do. That way Mean Rachel wouldn't be all, like, mad?
Besides, I had to meet my dad. He was flying in for just an hour on his way to an assignment in Argentina, and I had to take the bus out to the airport.
Of course I could have just morphed and flown out there. That would be quicker and easier and less expensive.
I imagined that. Imagined flying. Flying was fun. If you didn't think about it too much. But if you want to fly you have to morph. And the idea of my skin turning into feathers and my bones shrinking and my organs going off into Zero-space to be a big blob of blood and skin and assorted body goos, well, that was so totally gross.
A bell rang and I jumped.
"Switch to decaf," Marco said. He was standing right by me. Waiting to go to our next period, which we had together.
"Oh, hi," I said.
"So. Purely hypothetical, here," he whispered. "Mean Rachel goes with Tobias, right? And you think I'm cute, right?"
"What?"
"Come on, we have to get to class. I'm just saying Tobias and Mean Rachel. I mean, that's the way it'll happen, don't you think?"
"Don't you think Tobias likes me?'"
He shrugged. "How can he like both of you? I mean, you look alike. Very alike. Identical. And may I say I approve of the mini. It's the look for you. I guess what I'm getting at here is, how are you and Mean Rachel going to divide up your lives?"
We were walking down the hall, jostled by kids running past in both directions.
"I don't know," I admitted.
"She's a little intense, huh?"
"Duh!"
"Kind of creepy, really. I guess you wish you had someone you could talk to about it."
"Uh-huh."
"I mean, wow, the psychodrama of it all. It's the ultimate Jerry Springer. 'Meet a girl who has been split into two halves, good and evil.' Man, I'd watch."
"Uh-huh."
"But it has to creep you out, right? I mean, no offense, but now you're Rachel but without all the psycho-killer parts of your personality. So you have to be wondering what's going on with your life, right?"
"I guess so. She made me sleep on the floor." I don't know why I told him that. I shouldn't have told him that. It was embarrassing.
I saw his gaze flicker. I saw the smile fade for just a moment.
I stopped walking. "You know I'm not, like, this total moron now, okay? I know you're testing me."
"Testing?" he asked with a mocking laugh.
"Jake told you to check on me. See if I seemed like I was maybe losing it. Right?"
Marco laughed. "We're there."
"Where?"
"Class."
I shouldn't have told him. Marco would tell Jake I was unreliable. He'd tell Jake that I'd probably blurt out anything. And I didn't know if I had fooled Cassie, either. Of course I hadn't fooled Cassie. No one fooled Cassie.
I fought down the panic that welled up inside me, threatening to choke me!
Had to get out! I had to get away from all this. My ... my other half was probably already thinking of how to get rid of me. And my friends? Would they try and stop her?
No. I was useless to them.
Useless to the Animorphs, maybe even a danger. Suddenly school wasn't so comforting.
That's the thing. For all that Nice Rachel is a little ditzy, she's not stupid. It can be easy to forget that in this book if you just read it casually.
Nice Rachel is the experience of planning out what you are going to say to someone then instantly forgetting what you were going to say, your own name and what you normally do with your hands but winging it anyway despite having a panic attack.
Also, just keep in mind, in that fight, Mean Rachel exercised her 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
5
Also, just keep in mind, in that fight, Mean Rachel exercised her 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
In fact, she exercised her right to bear bear arm arms.
Nice Rachel is the experience of planning out what you are going to say to someone then instantly forgetting what you were going to say, your own name and what you normally do with your hands but winging it anyway despite having a panic attack.
This comment is perfect.
Also, hi, binged the thread, read some of the books entirely out of order as a kid. This was one of them! I didn't love it, but I didn't think it was bad either.
Chapter 17-Mean Rachel
quote:
I was early to the barn. Suddenly it occurred to me: I could spy it out! I should have thought about that earlier. Only why bother to load up your brain with a bunch of "what if?" stuff? The future is not my problem. Live for today, fight for today.
I morphed to fly. Not as cool as a big raptor, maybe, but with its own weird powers.
I did it in the barn itself. Why not? No one else was there. They'd just be getting out of the yawn factory.
I stood there, surrounded by creatures of the wild: fierce raccoons, aggressive geese, and rabbits that ... well, there wasn't much good to say about rabbits.
I focused my mind on the morph.
My skin blackened and crisped. You know, like I'd been burned to overdone marshmallow consistency? Only instead of mushy marshmallow consistency, this was like fingernail.
My body squeezed into three portions. My head was a BB resting atop a muscular abdomen. Below that my waist pinched tight above a growing, swelling thorax.
My arms became sticks. My legs extended out and out, thinner, thinner and yet incredibly strong. Two new arms burst from my chest.
<Hah HAH!> I laughed gaily. <Let my wimpy twin try this some time. She'd go insane!>
All the while I shrank and shriveled and seemed to fall toward grains of sand that became boulders and pieces of straw the size of felled telephone poles.
Suddenly my blue eyes inflated like balloons. The blue iris turned glittery black. My eyeball itself was shattered into thousands of tiny facets, each a sort of separate eye.
Very cool.
My weak human mouth, pale lips, and blunt, tiny teeth, became the long sucking-tube of the housefly.
I tested my wings. I was airborne in an instant. A totally different type of flying than an eagle, of course. An eagle is a killer. A fly? A fly eats dog poop.
Ah well. A hunter, a killer; a soldier must do what a soldier must do.
I flew, wild and bobbly and blown by any stray air current, but I made it to one of the crossbars of a cage. I rested there, waiting.
I didn't have to wait long. But it wasn't my friends who arrived first. It was a boy who seemed, to my fly senses, to be a blurry explosion of weirdly colored light.
Erek. His hologram was not designed to fool the fly's compound eye.
The android looked around, switched off his hologram, and now seemed to be nothing but a pile of steel and ivory. The colors were still off - the fly eye sees the color spectrum differently.
If the Chee was here waiting, he had news. Important news. Pathetic creature. He had deliberately chosen to resume his pacifist programming. We had freed him to be a warrior of such great power that not even I would ever have challenged him.
And yet, in his moment of glory, having done more destruction in two or three minutes than we had done in months of missions. Having littered the floor and smeared the walls and ceilings with his vanquished foes, he had deliberately chosen to reintegrate the programming that would force him to die rather than cause harm to a living creature.
It bothered me. It was a waste. And ... and it just bothered me, that's all.
Maybe I'd ask him. Later, not now. Why? Why would he do it?
The Chee's hologram snapped on. The door of the barn opened. Jake led the way. They were all there, huge, blurry, purple-hued beings, shattered into hundreds of images. They spoke in confused vibrations that rattled the spiky hairs on my back. Ax demorphed from human to Andalite. It was like watching a slow-motion explosion at a paint factory, so colorful and weird to my compound eyes.
Tobias flew in through the open loft and rested on a high perch. Time for me to start acting like a fly. Tobias was a hunter! A predator! I had to treat him with respect.
"Erek," Jake said.
"Yes. Trouble. Your raid failed."
"We noticed," Marco said grumpily.
"The Yeerks are moving the Anti-Morphing Ray."
"Where?"
Erek caused his hologram to shake its head. "Don't know. There's a level of secrecy that even we cannot penetrate. All we've learned is that they're moving it. And that they are being very, very careful about keeping it hidden. They'll load the AMR aboard a truck. Three trucks will leave Buyers Research Institute. They'll go three different ways. Only one will have the AMR."
"Three trucks?"
"Three trucks. Three routes," Erek said. He looked around. "Where's Rachel. Or should I say Rachels, plural?"
"I don't know if Crazy Rachel even got the word," Cassie said. "She wasn't in school today."
"Yeah, the total lack of ambulances was proof that she didn't go to class today," Marco said dryly.
"I have to go," Erek said.
"Erek" - it was Cassie - "is something bothering you?"
The android hesitated. "No." Then, "Yeah, I guess so. It's stupid, really, but it's like I'm jealous."
"Of who?" Cassie pressed.
"Of Rachel. The nice one. She's done it, hasn't she? She's found the way to fight a war and suffer none of the pain. She takes all the evil inside her and sends it off on its own to do ... to do what has to be done. I guess there are times I wish. well, forget it."
He shrugged. No one said anything. The Chee left.
<Okay, look,> Tobias said, speaking for the first time. <Before either of the Rachels gets here, we need to talk. We need to figure out what we're going to do about them. I've been talking to Ax. He says maybe - only maybe - we can put her back together again.>
Poor Erek Also, poor Rachels.
Chapter 18-Mean Rachel
quote:
<We would require enormous amounts of power,> Ax said. <And the two Rachels would have to agree. And there would be a definite possibility that both halves of Rachel would die in the process.>
"Unacceptable," Cassie snapped.
"What is acceptable?" Marco asked. "The present arrangement? A pathetic whiner who's made up of all the fear and self-doubt and indecisiveness and airheadedness that hide way down inside of Rachel? Or the psychotic killer, the rage machine that Rachel has managed to keep under control for so long?"
Psychotic? Was Marco saying I was crazy? Crazy? Why? For wanting to annihilate my enemies? For standing up for myself? For taking no bull?
He was going to regret saying that.
"That's not all there is to it," Cassie said. "I think the split goes beyond that. I don't think Mean Rachel is capable of long-term thinking. Nice Rachel is, but she's not capable of short-term focus.
Rachel busted in last night with no idea what to do. No plan. She was just reacting. But Nice Rachel laid out a shopping trip yesterday that was like a general planning an invasion."
Marco said, "Strategy and tactics. Long-term, short-term."
"We can't use either of the Rachels we have," Jake said.
I began to demorph. I was just beginning to grow when I realized what Jake had said.
Couldn't use me?
Couldn't use me?
I'd use them! I'd use them till they cried for mercy!
I was growing fast now. I was sitting atop a gate. The rough-textured wood was receding beneath me.
<She's here!> Tobias snapped.
At that moment I lost my balance and fell from the gate edge. I fired my wings, but they were already melting. I hit the floor. I was too small to be hurt by the fall and I kept demorphing.
<You're MEAT, Marco!> I shrieked.
"She's out of control," Cassie said sadly.
<Shut up you tree-hugging moron!> I screamed. <I'll take you down, too!>
I was growing, growing! Bigger and bigger. Human first, then I'd morph to ... but wait. No! I'd made a mistake! In my human form I would be vulnerable.
I was vulnerable!
NOOOOO!
"Ax?" Jake said quietly.
I saw huge hooves moving swiftly closer. I knew what would happen! They would kill me while I was weak. They had to! It's what I would do, they had no choice!
<Don't kill me, I didn't mean it!> I wailed.
"No one is going to kill you," Jake said.
<Yes you will. Let me live! I want to live! You can't hurt me. You can't kill me. Weaklings! Fools!>
All the while I was demorphing, growing, becoming more and more human. Although I was still
mostly fly when the wimp showed up.
"Aaaaahhhhhhhhh!"
She screamed.
I lunged for Marco.
That's the problem. It's entirely fight or flight with her.
"I'm not crazy, I just want to annihilate my enemies. Looks like you have some growing up to do"
Nice Rachel is the experience of planning out what you are going to say to someone then instantly forgetting what you were going to say, your own name and what you normally do with your hands but winging it anyway despite having a panic attack.
So she's the living incarnation of ADHD
You know what... I'm just gonna assume V3/Alloran did this same sort of split and that's why the difference between Hork-bajir chronicles and main series
You know what... I'm just gonna assume V3/Alloran did this same sort of split and that's why the difference between Hork-bajir chronicles and main series
Somewhere in the back offices of a backwater planet there's a morph-capable Yeerk who's too timid to ever lead but is an absolute gun at administrative organisation
Chapter 19-Nice Rachel
quote:
Hideous!
Foul!
It was me. Me! My face with that long, spittle-dripping proboscis where my mouth and nose should be. My body with dwindling stick legs sticking out of my chest. She had grown to nearly human size, but with enlarged fly features still lingering.
I couldn't stop screaming.
"Aaaaahhhhh! Aaaaahhhh! Aaaaahhhhh!"
She ... it ... I ... had her hands around Marco's throat. Ax was trying to swat her with the flat of his tail but she'd gotten Marco between her and the Andalite.
Mean Rachel struck Marco's face with the open tube end of her proboscis. She used it to cover his mouth and nose, shutting off his air, muffling his own cries of outrage and disgust.
"Aaaaahhhhh! Aaaaahhhhh!" I screamed.
"Rachel, shut up!" Cassie snapped at me. "My parents could come home any minute!"
Marco punched Rachel in the stomach. She swatted him with one of her brittle, stick arms. But she was still becoming more human and there was no great force behind the blow.
Her proboscis shriveled away, clearing Marco to breathe. And allowing her to talk.
"I'm taking over! Who's with me?!" she cried.
Jake took a running jump at her, but Mean Rachel released Marco and dodged aside. Jake hit the floor hard. A flutter of wings and Tobias was dropping from above. He maneuvered in the still air, looking to grab a talonful of blond hair and distract her long enough for -
But Mean Rachel was too quick. She shot an arm straight up, grabbed Tobias by the feathery leg above the talon, yanked him down, and wrapped her free arm around his body.
Then, with perfect malice on her face, she closed her fist around Tobias's neck.
"Mess with me and Bird-boy here is a dead chicken."
Everyone froze.
"Hah HAH!" she crowed. "Too easy! I don't even need to morph!"
<Rachel, what are you doing?!> Tobias yelled, more mad than scared.
"Sorry, my love," she sneered, "but as a predator, you'll understand."
"Okay, everyone chill," Marco said.
"Chill?" Mean Rachel screeched. "You called me 'psychotic'! How can a 'psychotic' person chill?"
"I meant 'psychotic' in a nice way," Marco said.
"I am in charge now!" she cried. "I'm running the Animorphs! I am the boss! You'll all obey me. ME!"
"Whatever you say," Jake said placatingly. He moved gradually closer to her. "You want to be in
charge, fine. I'm tired of the responsibility anyway." "Yeah? Then here's my first order: I want Marco killed! No! Wait. Not killed. He may still be useful."
"Glad to hear that," Marco muttered.
"Don't kill him. Just ... just ..." She looked around wildly, frantic, her eyes blazing. "Just punish him. That's it! We'll whip him! Tie him down to that stall door and we'll whip him! Whip him till he screams!"
"Okay," Jake said. Then he shot his right fist out, past a squirming Tobias, to connect with Mean Rachel's left cheekbone. "Ax!"
Before Rachel could recover from the shock of the sudden attack, an Andalite tail blade was at her throat. Marco grabbed one arm. Cassie grabbed the other. Tobias fluttered to the ground, picked himself up, and flew back to the top of the barn.
Mean Rachel began to thrash. To scream.
"Aaarrrgghh! Aaaarrggghh!"
Out of control!
She fell to the floor, writhing, spit flying as she screamed curses and threats which soon were nothing but incoherent roars of rage.
Cassie, Jake, and Ax held her down. To protect themselves. And to protect this mad, rabid beast from injuring herself.
I was crying. Face in my hands, crying.
"She's not me! She's not me!" I wailed. "She was never in me!"
But I knew the truth. My memories were all intact. I knew that this Rachel, this tortured, wild, vicious thing had been a part of me.
She had made me brave. She had made me strong.
Poor, sick, twisted thing, she had made me ... me.
I mean, they're both dependent on each other....each one individually is useless, basically.
Chapter 20-Mean Rachel
quote:
Man, you never saw a bunch of kids so upset over nothing. I mean, I was mad. So what? Who wouldn't be?
Anyway, they let me up after a while, and then Jake decided the meeting was over. And I decided I'd put off any action on the Marco problem till later.
The list was growing: Bailey still had to die. And now Marco. Probably Jake.
But that was okay, there would still be me and Tobias and Cassie and Ax.
Of course Ax was kind of devoted to Jake. And Cassie ...
I headed home, feeling a little confused. A little weird. Like I kind of didn't know what to do next.
The others would probably never accept me as long as my simpy twin was around. They pretended to like her better.
Of course, in a fight who were they going to turn to? Me. I was a natural leader: strong, violent, determined. I could figure out what to do about the truck convoy.
I could. If I really wanted to.
But when I tried, I realized to my shock that I couldn't. It was strange. Like. like when I tried to use that part of my brain, the planning part? No one home.
Was Cassie right?
I tried again. Nothing. Not just like I couldn't come up with a great plan. It was like I couldn't come up with any plan. Couldn't really think ahead like that. Like the future wasn't real, or possible, or ... it just wasn't there.
I'd done okay at the BRI, hadn't I?
Of course that wasn't planning. That was spur-of-the-moment reacting. Yeah. I could do that. I could react.
Her.
She had that part of me! The rotten little weasel! Wussy Rachel had part of my brain. A part I needed!
I'd have to take it from her! I'd have to ... How?
It was too complicated. I felt like my brain was going to explode. I got home, shoved past my little sister, and stormed up to my room.
Up till then I'd been okay with the split. I mean, it was like finding out you have this tumor, this tumor of weakness, sickening weakness, growing inside of you. That was Rachel. Wussy Rachel, I mean. A tumor full of fear and indecision, and getting all that out of me was great, great, GREAT! Liberated, man! Free! Yah HAH!
Only ... she had the part of me that could plan. That was wrapped up in all that fear.
I needed it back. I needed to figure out how to get it back and all I could come up with was: Kill her! But, no. That wouldn't work. Would it?
I stormed around my room ripping the covers from my bed and kicking whatever I found to kick. Where was she?
I jerked my head left, right, left. Not here. Why not? Where was my other half, the half with part of my brain?
Not here.
I felt suspicion tickle the adrenaline into my bloodstream. Not here. Plotting against me with my own brain!
My eyes blurred with rage. But then focused again. In purple ink, purple! A new note on our desk calendar. I leaped to the desk.
"Call Daddy." Then, separate, "Daddy. Flight 545. Gate 17."
This information worked its way into my feverish brain. I knew instantly that she was going to betray me. Of course! Yeah, if I thought about it, if I strained to remember, I could recall what I'd been before. I had to think about what the old me, the two-sided me, would have thought of doing when she, I, we, were depressed or worried.
Daddy. Of course. Without me to give the stupid fool some backbone ...I was morphed in two minutes. I was going to the airport. Yes! That was clear.
And then?
Kill! Yes, kill! Kill!
I wasn't sure who, but I was sure of that much.
Long as she kills someone. Also, it's interesting they're both jealous of what the other one has.