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Entry tags:

rachel

OPEN;

who. Rachel (

shutupmarco) and you!
what. wandering around Zeta District in confusion
where. anywhere in Zeta District
when. right now
warnings. does Rachel count as a warning

The freaky thing is that Rachel doesn't even remember getting on the shuttle. She remembers coming home to dinner late for the third time that week because of a meeting with the other Animorphs, worried she'd get chewed out or worse, grounded, but then her mother had apparently barely noticed the time and just apologized for ordering without her. She remembers the whoosh of relief, and then a bit of a pang realizing that her cousin Jake probably wasn't getting off so easily with his mom, and -- then what? She can't remember.

They're ushered off the shuttle before she really has a chance to take any of it in. Rachel falls into step with everyone else as the offload into the seething crowds of Omega, realizes with a flutter of panic all at once that she doesn't see any of the others and also they're in space. This is some kind of space station, or maybe a giant ship. What the hell.

For a moment, she thinks it's the Yeerks. That this is some kind of Controller base ship she's somehow gotten stuck on. But while she sees plenty of humans, she doesn't see any Taxxons or Hork-Bajir, just a whole host of different alien-looking creatures she's never seen anything like before. The place doesn't seem very Yeerk-like, either. Is it an Ellimist trick? Maybe. It's too hard to tell.

She thinks all of this in the space of a few seconds, before she realizes all of the people off the shuttle are being directed one way by a group of nasty thug-looking aliens in armor, a couple of equally unpleasant-looking humans among them. "All new arrivals to Zeta District," they snarl, over and over again. Rachel brushes her hair from her face and puts on a neutral smile, walking as she's directed like she belongs there. On the inside, she's trying not to puke from panic. She's got no idea what this place is, or what all of these aliens are, or why she's here, but she's going to find out.

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The batarians, for their part, look unconvinced. The apparent leader of this little group just sneers at the both of them, waving his gun. "You're bigger than pyjaks and varren. Just barely, but still worth shooting at." He leans forward a little, smirking down the barrel of his gun. "No, you'll make good target practice. And from the sound of it, nobody's going to miss two scrawny little humans."

"Scrawny?" Rachel repeats, her voice rising half an octave.

"Yeah, okay, things are definitely not going my way tonight," Stiles says to no one in particular, his voice also raising an octave as well. After a moment, though, he does two things: the first is to reach back and grab a hold of Rachel's wrist, and the second is to whip the grocery bag off his shoulder and toss it at the batarians.

Once the bag is in the air he's turning and push-pulling at Rachel, nearly yelping out the word "Run!" as if he's in a bad action comedy. But it does work, a little - in the sense that they're able to get a good few feet on the batarians before the shooting starts.

Edited 2013-04-16 03:47 (UTC)

Things aren't going well for him? All of a sudden, Rachel finds herself running like mad from a group of angry batarians. Luckily, she's used to tight situations and she falls into step with Stiles without too much difficulty, but how long can they run?

"Can we even outrun those things?" Rachel demands in between huffed breaths. "I mean, do you have a plan here?"

"We might be able to if we're lucky or they're lazy!" Stiles huffs out, taking a quick turn - it's vaguely in the direction of the apartments, he thinks - and heading down, though he can hear the batarians taking the same turn a moment later.

"A plan?" He stumbles over his own feet but keeps going, "Running away was the plan!" He takes another few feet of running to consider. "Our apartment has a lock, I think."

Edited 2013-04-16 04:06 (UTC)

"Some plan! How far is your apartment?" Rachel says breathlessly, rolling her eyes, and she chances a backwards glance over her shoulder. Uh oh. Definitely not a good look. The batarians are gaining on them, and fast. Even if his apartment is only another few blocks away, they'll never make it.

So Rachel thinks quick. She grabs Stiles roughly by the wrist and jerks him into an alley ripe with the smell of decomposing food and waste, on account of the fact that most of the alley is packed with dumpsters. Sanitation really needs to come by here and do something about all the trash, Rachel thinks as she practically skids behind a dumpster, dragging Stiles with her.

"They're gonna catch up to us," she informs him, keeping her voice low, and she swallows down a deep breath. Their options are limited, here. If Stiles had a weapon, he'd have used it, and even so, he threw his bag at the batarians already. God, what a dumb move. Of course, the one she's considering is dumber. But if she doesn't do anything, they're going to wind up as a couple of smears on the ground here.

"All right," she says after a moment, tugging off her cardigan. "I'm gonna save our butts, okay? But you have to promise me something."

Stiles nearly smacks his shoulder into the wall of the alley, but keeps from making any noise and sinks down behind the dumpster with her. He wrinkles his nose at the scents but, it's not the first time he's been near (or in) one, so he doesn't say anything.

"No duh, especially here," Stiles tells her, rubbing hs shoulder a little, nervous. He can hear the voices of the batarians, shouting about how they went this way. Then he pauses when she pulls off her cardigan.

"Why are you taking your clothes off?" He asks, voice going high again, and wondering how the hell stripping is supposed to save their butts. But when he looks at her face she seems serious so he nods once. "If it actually helps us, you got it, bucko."

"Because this is the only outfit I have, and I'm not going to ruin it knocking around a couple of thugs," Rachel says matter-of-factly, her voice muffled briefly as she tugs her shirt over her head. She's glad she arrived here with her morphing suit on under her clothes, although morphing suit is a little bit too glorified a name for a plain black leotard. Rachel drops her shirt and cardigan unceremoniously in Stiles' lap as she scrambles to her feet to shimmy out of her jeans with practiced ease.

"Hold onto these for me, will you?" she says, crumpling up her jeans and shoving them at him. It's a little chilly in the alley with only a leotard on, but in a minute, she won't be so cold. Grizzly bears are adequately protected with all that fur. But wait -- no. Grizzly might be too conspicuous on a space station. Elephant even more so, and not exactly great for a relatively confined space. There aren't any Hork-Bajir on this station, but it'd fit in a lot better with all the aliens here.

She draws in a breath through her nose and focuses on the Hork-Bajir DNA she acquired not too long ago. Morphing is rarely pretty and never predictable, and this time the first change is Rachel's face shooting suddenly forward to form the snakelike head of the Hork-Bajir. Her toes and fingers fuse together, then split apart and harden to form talons and claws. The rest of her is still all fleshy and pink, even as she starts to grow taller and her bones rearrange themselves to Hork-Bajir physiology, and a long, bladed tail shoots out from her back. Finally, her skin starts to toughen and thicken into leather, turning a dark, dark green, and the assorted blades, natural and deadly, begin to grow from her wrists, elbows, knees, even her head. It only takes a minute or two from start to finish, and when it's complete, it isn't a fourteen year old girl looking at Stiles -- it's a seven-foot-tall lizard-like alien with a snakelike beak and a bunch of deadly-looking blades sprouting from its body. And when Rachel speaks to him, it's not with her mouth, but with thought-speak, targeting the words directly to Stiles' mind.

<Do me a favor, okay? Don't freak out.>

Stiles' eyes bug out a little, but he's secretly relieved that she has something on under her clothes. He gets clothes thrown at him and he bundles them all into a tight ball in his lap, clutching them. He's equal parts confused and intrigued, because what the hell is she doing.

If she could knock thugs around, why wait until now to do it?

He gets his answer when her face shoots out, and Stiles can't help it - he backs up against the dumpster a little, completely shocked even after all he's seen. Then his mind runs into overdrive, of course.

Is she something like Derek, Scott and the others? She doesn't look like a wolf, though, very quickly, and he wonders if it's something else. If she's something like a changeling from Star Trek, like Odo.

The batarians are shouting about them being in the alley but Stiles' saucer-sized eyes are focused on the morphed Rachel.

He hears her voice in his head and that makes his jaw, which dropped when she started, snap back up.

"I'm not freaking out," he says, but his voice cracks once. Then he shakes his head and gives her a tight grin. "Knock 'em out, tiger."

Rachel can't help but laugh in private thought-speak, flexing her Hork-Bajir arm. Those guys had guns, but she could be pretty fast with these blades. Get them in the weak spots in their armor, and they'd go down in no time.

<You're not as much of a wimp as I thought you were,> she says, a smirk to her thought-speak voice. <Stay put. I'll take care of these goons.>

And she takes off, aiming to cut the batarians off before they can reach the alley and see Stiles. They're not expecting her to come at them, blades swinging. She manages to take one of them down before any of them can think to shoot, and he goes down with a snarling groan, and then they open fire. Hot bullets pierce the Hork-Bajir's leathery skin, but Rachel ignores the pain like she always does, knowing it'll be gone when she demorphs. She isn't even aiming to kill, just to knock them down, but if she lets herself get carried away, well, who would blame her? They would've killed her and Stiles for sure if she hadn't done anything.

Maybe it's that street brawls are pretty common here, or maybe everyone else is just too weirded out by the strange new alien who fights without a gun, or maybe it's just because the odds were against her begin with, but nobody comes rushing forward to help the batarians. When the last of them goes down, most of them are still breathing, but all of them are pretty bloodied up.

"What the hell is that thing," one of them manages to groan, straining for his gun, but it's too far out of reach. Rachel just tosses her snakelike head, glaring down at all of them.

<Next time, you really ought to think twice about picking on a couple of kids,> she advises them, maybe a little smugly. <Because if there's a next time, you won't get off so easily.>

She'd linger and taunt them some more, maybe add some more insult to injury, but the Hork-Bajir body is wounded, badly enough that she's limping when she gets back to the alley. Nobody follows her, thankfully. She has a feeling that people on Omega don't get too curious unless they're willing to to face the consequences of their curiosity with a gun. Rachel lets out a low groan in her Hork-Bajir voice as she sags down against the dumpster next to Stiles, her breathing ragged, but she's already demorphing as rapidly as she can, human features overtaking Hork-Bajir ones, and when it's done she's back in her black leotard, crouching on the ground next to Stiles.

"Well, that was fun," she says brightly, still a little out of breath.

Stiles may not actually get spotted, but you can bet for damn sure that he leans his head out to see what's going on. And all he can mostly see are flying bodies, blood, and whatever it is that girl turned into getting hit and trucking on.

It's frightening, and puts his opinion of her in a whole different perspective. His jaw is back to hanging open by the time she sags back against the dumpster and starts changing back.

"Are you okay?" is the first thing he ends up saying to her, because it looked like she had a lot of bullet holes in her before and now? Not so much, although she does look a little pale.

However, it's quickly followed up with, "How the hell did you do that?"

"I'm fine," Rachel says, almost primly, brushing off her shoulders. She slips her feet back into the shoes she'd left behind, giving Stiles an expectant look. If she were Marco, she'd give him some sort of smart remark -- if I told you, I'd have to kill you -- but she just gives him a serious look, her eyes intent.

"Remember the part where you have to keep this a secret? The less you know, the better. I still don't know how safe this place is."

Safe from whom, that's the real question, of course. Rachel's almost certain that the Yeerks aren't involved here, but at the same time, she doesn't know if she can risk publicly showcasing her morphing ability. It seems like this universe is totally separate from her own, but...she hasn't been here that long, still.

"Can I have my clothes back now?"

Stiles almost visibly gets a frustrated expression, mostly because he wants to know what the hell she did, if she's anything like the shapeshifters he knows back home.

"I can keep a secret, dude. Consider it locked and the key thrown away," he tells her. "Though, you can't blame a dude for asking, because seriously, that was awesome."

Her next question makes him turn a little red, and he fumbles handing over her clothes.

"Do you want your pants - or shirt - god here, just have it all."

He pushes them into her hands, waiting for her to redress. Once she is, he clears his throat.

"So, did you just get here?"

Edited 2013-04-18 12:29 (UTC)

Rachel gets dressed pretty quickly, something she's gotten pretty good at lately. And somehow, when she shakes out her hair and tugs her cardigan back on, she looks like she just stepped off the pages of Teen Vogue. For somebody who was kicking serious ass not even five minutes ago, she looks almost suspiciously well-groomed. It's practically her other superpower.

She flashes him a quick grin, a little tight, eyebrows raised. At least he's dropping the subject, which...is a little weird, but she'll find out about him soon enough. "Is it that obvious?"

Well, that's more than Stiles can say about himself. He didn't even turn into a creature, and his clothes are messed up, and he probably looks like he's been spending time hugging a dumpster.

Still, this place is as safe as any right now, so he stays crouched while he talks to her.

"Well, no offense, most of us don't go around picking fights with Batarians," he says, and then, to clairify, "Those dudes you just beat up. They don't really like humans."

He raises his hands, waving them a little. "Welcome to Omega, and all that jazz." It's a sarcasm-laden statement. "It's a station on an asteroid in space, full of aliens and criminals and oh, us."

"I'm used to aliens that hate humans," Rachel says airily, and in a way, it's true. The Yeerks might not be enslaving humans out of hatred, but they sure aren't full of compassion, either. "Yeah, I've been given the run-down on this place. Not exactly a five-star resort. I don't suppose they've got a JC Penney here, either."

Okay, okay, so making jokes is really Marco's thing, but bravado is Rachel's. She refuses to show she's scared -- especially to some other kid like her, even if he is a couple of years older -- so she'll play it cool.

"Sorry, you won't find any name brands here. It hurts my room mate too," he says as lightly as he can manage.

"They do have normal clothes, but armor is all the rage right now," he continues. "Also, aliens, wow, that makes whatever you turned into earlier make sense."

He glances at her, and while he can't see that she's scared, he remembers how he felt when he first arrived.

"Do you have anywhere to stay yet?" He asks, and then awkwardly continues, "I mean, we've got room in our apartment. And wow, that probably sounds creepy, but it's legit, we can call my room mate if you want. You can just crash for the night or however long you need."

Rachel gives Stiles a long, level stare, her eyebrows creeping up to dangerous new heights on her forehead. Either he's just dumb, or he's...well, really dumb. What on earth would possess him to make that offer?

"Let me get this straight," Rachel says slowly, every word dripping with the subtle suggestion that Stiles has more than one head. "You just watched me turn into a seven-foot-tall lizard alien covered in blades, rip apart a bunch of aliens, and now you're inviting me to couch surf?"

Without the ability to say I've seen weirder, and it is on the tip of his tongue to say it, he shrugs.

"Consider it guaranteed security. And if you were planning on killing me, I doubt you'd have stopped to argue with some Batarians," he adds. He's dying to know more about what she is, and he knows she's probably confused as to why he's not freaking out, but, well, he's been through a lot that makes this shit seem tame.

Okay, there has to be something this guy isn't saying, something he's not letting her onto. Of course, everyone has secrets, but what makes this guy so willing to take her in? Rachel can't help be paranoid.

"Okay, so what, you let me crash with you, and that's it? Seriously, what's the catch?"

"There's no catch," Stiles says, and then rubs his hands over his eyes. "I mean, there's the catch that applies to everyone - you wanna live in Zeta, you pay Aria, and to pay Aria you help with repairs. But that's not my catch, I promise, that's just hers. So you can avoid that until you get a job or whatever."

Stiles is silent, and then, "Also, my room mate is kind of a diva, so, there's that - aww man, the groceries..."

Diva? Whatever, Rachel can deal with diva. Probably better than most. Marco would say that that's because she is a diva, but then -- well, the Marco here wouldn't say anything at all. Because she basically doesn't exist to him.

Ugh, whatever. Forget about him. If this guy is really offering her a place to stay, she can't exactly refuse, can she? And she's confident that if this is some kind of trap, whatever it is, she can handle it. The guy just watched her go Hork-Bajir. Not exactly a pretty sight.

"All right, fine," Rachel says, smoothing her hands over her jeans. "I could use a place to crash. But you know you haven't even told me your name, right?"

"Cool." Stiles is already nodding his head, but then she points out he hasn't told her his name and he's already scrambling, standing up at the same time she does.

"Sorry. Running for my life, watching you, kind of slipped my mind," Stiles says with a dry undercurrent, offering a hand. "Stiles Stilinski. Just Stiles is fine. And uh, you are?"

"Rachel. Just Rachel." She takes his hand to shake it, her grip surprisingly firm, and she grins at him, showing teeth. All right, all right, it's probably a little too cruel of her, but the fact that Stiles seems to be kind of afraid of her, or at least nervous around her, tickles her a little. "Nice to meet you, Stiles. I guess we're going to be roommates now."

He shakes her hand with that feeling he's had before, usually around his dad. That feeling of getting in over your head but you won't know until it's too late.

He's gotten good at ignoring that feeling.

So he gives her his best daredevil grin back (which isn't very good). "As long as you pay the rent, sounds good to me."

(It's okay, Stiles. That's the feeling that most people get around Rachel.)

"Guess I'll have to find a job," she says with an almost careless laugh, tossing her hair. Yeah, okay, this could work out. Maybe. If this Stiles guy isn't a creep. But even if he is, she can handle him. And he's already seen what she can do. "So where do you live, anyway? And are you sure your diva roommate is cool with me crashing?"

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god dammit i dont have any hork-bajir icons oops

screeches more

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