#the tocsin

Thank you, nonny friend!

Genuine 21st-century etiquette question: is it rude to read or advertise a fic after the author has taken it down?

Like, is the consensus that publishing a work online is a form of permanent permission for others to view it, even as tech changes?  Or would it be going against the wishes of the author to read that work, because they’ve withdrawn consent to have it read?

[Initial premise borrowed with permission from tptigger’s The Tocisn.]

• Aftran 942 lurches her Gedd body along the perimeter of the Yeerk Pool, trying to keep the host’s simple mind from detecting any of her near-panic.  She knows a test when she sees one, and this — an offer of a new host, an involuntary human one, so soon after she gave up Karen as allegedly too brain damaged to be of use — is a test with a trap concealed on the other side.  The vissers want to know if she’s become too sympathetic to the humans, if she even wants a new host at all.  (Of course she wants a new host.  Wants one the way a taxxon wants meat.  The way a junkie wants heroin.  Her promise with Cassie — life as a worm for life as a worm — has been the sole fraying cord of willpower keeping her craving for eyes and hands in check.)

And so here she is, drawing to a stop outside the cage with the currently-unclaimed human hosts, choosing one under Derane 731’s watchful gaze.  Aftran’s just going to have to break her promise if she doesn’t want to end up betraying the whole Peace Movement.

Even with these weak eyes, Aftran spares him a second glance.  Whereas the other hosts cower in fear or slump in resigned apathy, he sits near the front, whispering some comforting lie to the little girl (too much like Karen, entirely too much) who cries and clings to his shirt sleeve.  But then he lifts his head up, and the weary defiance in his eyes shifts the resemblance to his brother from faint to unmistakable.

Aftran’s never seen Tom Berenson before, but Cassie has.  From Cassie’s secondhand memories, she knows: the Animorphs’ own prince has a controller living inside his house.

“The-rrrrr male in-rr frrrront,” Aftran growls with the Gedd’s voice.  Here’s her chance to get close to the Animorphs, to help out in this fight.

“You.  Up.”  Derane 731 kicks the bars.  The boy ignores her at first — until she reaches for the shock prod that rests at the ready next to the cage.  Then he scrambles to his feet.

Well-trained, Aftran thinks with a new surge of old anger.

Derane glances down at her comm screen.  “Male, 17 years old, student, otherwise unemployed.  Two previous owners in the past 18 months.  Temrash 114 had to deal with the usual adjustment struggles at first, but assured us that he’s been thoroughly broken since then.  Good physical condition. Mostly used in recruitment.”

Throughout this recitation, the piece of meat in question stares at the far wall of the Yeerk Pool, arms loose at his sides, legs braced apart, expression blank — mostly.  Aftran can see that his jaw is clenched slightly as his back teeth grind together, that his right hand is curled into a fist at his side.  Maybe not so broken, then.  Good.  She’ll need all the fight she can get out of him.

“…moderate amount of combat experience.” Derane is still reading. “Enough athletic muscle memory that the body can easily be taught new skills.  Has few commitments outside of the occasional appearance at high school and nights spent with the family.  Family itself’s no concern, two parents, one sibling, none of them our people.”

Aftran pretends to consider for a minute.  “This-rrr one,” she says.  “I’ll take hrrrim.”

• “Hey midget, we need to talk.”

Jake bends his head a little further over his page of Algebra problems, shoulders tensing.  “Really not in the mood to hear about the utter wonderfulness of the Sharing, Tom—”

Thunk.

Slowly Jake looks up at the object Tom has set on the kitchen table.  It’s a mason jar, filled most of the way with water.  Swimming through the fluid inside is a single live yeerk.  Jake stares at it in shock for several seconds, and then he lifts his head the rest of the way to make eye contact with Tom.

“Like I said.”  Tom raises his eyebrows.  “We need to talk.”

• And talk they do.  For over an hour.  Eventually Tom puts Aftran back in his brain, and she answers Jake’s questions as well: about the Peace Movement, about Visser Three’s suspicion toward her, about Illim and the others.

Jake recognizes that this is all too much for him to wrap his head around.  He summons Cassie (who enthusiastically vouches for Aftran after pointing out that she is herself no longer a caterpillar), Ax (who is openly skeptical of Cassie’s vouching), Rachel (who glares suspiciously at Tom but then suddenly pulls him into a rough hug with a muttered comment about how he’s a jerk and she didn’t miss him at all), Tobias (who asks Aftran a ton more about the structure of the Yeerk Pool), and Marco (who spends over an hour asking leading questions in an effort to prove that Tom has gone voluntary and ganged up with a yeerk only pretending to be Aftran as part of some grand conspiracy to kill them all).

Already by the end of that meeting, they’ve worked out a system of sorts where Aftran speaks in a voice that is higher, rapider, more clipped than Tom’s natural inflection.  It makes it much easier to tell the two of them apart, and also that much weirder when they both use Tom’s voice to converse out loud with each other.

• Over the next several weeks, the two of them work out a complex but mutually beneficial system.  Aftran lets Tom take the wheel the overwhelming majority of the time, lurking in the back of his mind as a presence that would be beyond notice if not for her nearly-constant commentary on his life (some of it helpful, most of it snarky).  Tom will let Aftran have control for up to a few hours at a time if she wants to try something new — shooting hoops, playing Sega, drinking Diet Coke with pop-rocks — but normally he’s the one who does almost everything.  She’s only had to take control by force once or twice in emergency situations, and it’s never a pleasant experience: Tom tends to panic and start fighting back on instinct, whereas Aftran herself cannot stand the skin-crawling experience of playing puppeteer to an unwilling body.  Whenever possible, they give way to each other as the need arises.

• They start stockpiling shoes.  Not just shoes; jackets, loose jeans, water bottles and snacks.  Feeder mice.  Organic planter grass.  Blankets.  Cash, for unforeseen needs.

And then they keep an ear to the ground.  They wait for the yeerks’ signals and code words and calls for help that indicate the andalite bandits have attacked another facility, another kandrona shipment, another meeting.  They jump in the car and rush out to whichever location, ready to tell anyone that tries to intercept them that they’re there to help the Sharing Relief Services.

• Another mission, another half-garbled radio report, and now Tom is driving slow, scanning the outer walls of the basement parking garage, until…  «There!» Aftran says, and he throws the minivan into reverse.

The sweep of their headlights catches five huddled figures, dwarfed by the pair of dumpsters they crouch between.  It’s a clear January night, chilly by Southern California standards, but none of them seem to notice the cold.  Rachel and Marco are glaring in two different directions, Jake and Ax peering warily at the headlights.  Cassie just stares into space, seeing nothing.  There’s no sign of Tobias.

Shit, Tom thinks.  Aftran wordlessly agrees.  He hits the button to slide the van’s back door open.  “Tobias?” Tom says out loud, voice gruff.

«I can go after him,» Ax offers.  So at least none of them are dead.

The others slouch into the back seat.  Aftran nudges Tom until he digs out a packet of tissues and hands it to Cassie, for the tears running down her face.  Tom cranks the heat up all on his own, even though he’s pretty sure that neither the trembling in Rachel’s clenched fists nor the tight huddle where Jake hugs himself come from the cold.

Tom and Aftran have this tendency to build each other’s moods; they’re both angry, passionate people, prone to throwing themselves at righteous-seeming causes as common sense drags behind.  Right now they’re in a feedback loop of silent rage: at the Yeerk Empire, at this crappy world, at the violence of it all.  They want to dig Tom’s fingers into Visser Three’s body and rip its antennae and fins off one by one.  They want to grow enormous and dangerous a the others do and smash the very foundations of the Yeerk Pool cages in an insatiable rampage.

Instead, Tom guides the car back toward the highway.  Instead, Aftran accesses his voice with their usual may-I?—go-ahead ritual, and says “We’re stopping at McDonald’s.  My treat.  You all need a hot meal, and then I’ll get you home.”

• They have other concerns as well.  Building the movement is a careful process, cautious by necessity.  They always start by dropping hints, feeling out, testing the waters, well before they make any kind of open move.  Tom will usually direct all his attention to maintaining the conversation, Aftran to observing every shift of expression or tone.  They become very good at detecting deception, detecting discontent, among their fellow controllers.  They work, and ever-so-slowly the Peace Movement grows.

It’s one of those probes, one of those hints, that lands them something they never expected: Odret 177 explaining with near-fanatical excitement that Aftran, who clearly doesn’t like Visser Three either, can get in on the ground floor of Visser One’s coming coup d’état.  The overthrow is coming, Odret assures them, and Aftran should join now while the groundwork’s still being laid.

Aftran recognizes the opportunity for what it is, of course.  The only trick is convincing the others to let her use it.

“We expose Visser One’s treachery once we’re close enough,” she explains to the Animorphs, Tom drumming his fingers on one knee as he waits for her to finish.  “By then we’ll have dirt on Visser Three as well.  We expose them both to the Council of Thirteen for the self-serving backstabbers they are, and…”

“And people die,” Cassie says flatly.  “Yeerks.  Hosts.  Dozens of conspirators, and the bodies they’re using.  Marco’s mom.”

Tom and Aftran remain outwardly silent, arguing internally over how much to tell the others.  A different debate forms around them, voices rising as Jake cautions that they need to think this through and Rachel announces that kicking visser butt is their reason for existence and Ax speculates about how the Empire’s structure would change if they succeed and Tobias wryly comments that it’ll be moot if they fail and Cassie reminds them to think of the hosts and Marco insists that he doesn’t give a damn about the cost, none of them should, this is a war and war means sacrifice, and they need to be honest with themselves that none of them would be hesitating if Visser One wasn’t… if she wasn’t… if she…

May-I?—go-ahead.  “We do this, I’d make visser,” Aftran says in Tom’s voice, cutting through the hullabaloo.  “The Council rewards this kind of behavior lavishly.  With that kind of power…”  A shrug.  “Point being, it’d be huge.”

It’s Jake who’s shrewd enough to ask: “And what if you don’t do it?”

A shift; now it’s definitely Tom speaking.  “Not clear, but we can’t go on indefinitely.  Aftran’s supposed to be recruiting eight new Sharing members a month — we brought in two this last quarter.  And the yeerks don’t tolerate incompetence for long.  It’ll be a different yeerk slipped inside me next feeding to look through my memories, or a visser given the chance to question Aftran until she cracks, or just a dracon beam to the head.”  He takes a breath. “We die no matter what, but we might end up giving up all of you along the way.”

There’s a long silence, and then Marco snaps, “That decides it.  Just tell us what to do.”

• Infiltration within infiltration proves brain-twisting.  Aftran’s pretending to be a Visser One sycophant pretending to be a loyal Empire supporter as she pretends not to care about any non-yeerk on the planet; Tom mostly just pretends to be involuntary but sometimes he has to pretend to be Aftran.  Over time, the framework emerges: Visser One, still angry at Visser Three (mis)managing what was supposed to be her pet planet, has dozens of agents in place recording his every short-sighted decision and fit of temper.  The database, and its source, incriminate both vissers.

From there, they just need to wait until the next off-planet inspection, and to catch the Council of Thirteen agent alone.  When their chance comes, it’s Aftran who bites on Tom’s lip in a performance of nerves, Tom who lets an obsequious whine slip into his voice as he hands over the lovingly-documented drive and claims that as a loyal servant of the Empire one just couldn’t live with the guilt anymore.

They expected the shouting and recrimination from Visser Three and the Garatron inspector both.  They expected the dozens of arrests, and the sharp resistance.  They were the only ones who knew to expect the Animorphs’ attack on the Yeerk Pool in the immediate aftermath.

They didn’t really expect the moment when Visser Three sends the inspector’s head rolling across the floor and is himself shot dead by dozens of Council security members.  They definitely weren’t expecting Visser One to accept arrest calmly, only to announce to everyone within earshot that the “andalite bandits” are not andalites at all, but rather—

There was no plan for the moment Eva’s body stiffened, her neck snapping back and her right hand coming halfway up toward the hole in her chest before she collapsed.  Nothing on the books for the clatter of the dracon beam hitting the ground as Rachel released it from her delicate elephant’s trunk, having just saved all their lives, nor yet Marco’s human scream and gorilla bellow overlapping.  (Once again, Aftran reacts, saving them: she scoops a shredder into Tom’s hands and fires at the Animorphs, missing by a safe margin but providing the cover they need to make a messy retreat.)

Most surprising of all, however, is the Council of Thirteen member — an enormous taxxon-controller in a billowing crimson robe — who steps delicately from the Blade ship perched at the entrance of the Yeerk Pool, seconds after the Animorphs have disappeared and the danger is gone.

Aftran knew what to expect, or thought she did.  She expected a promotion.  Not for the council-member to literally wave a two-fingered hand as he casually announces that Aftran 942 shall be the new Visser One, that she should appoint a new Visser Three at her discretion, and that he trusts she’ll make cleaning up this mess her first priority.

• Aftran’s outward stunned silence lasts as long as it takes the Council and their myriad security forces to retreat.  Inwardly, she and Tom are a swirling chaos of overlapping thoughts: did-they-just?—what-do-we-do—fuck,Eva,that’s—how-do-we—Visser-One?—VISSER-ONE?

There are close to four thousand controllers in the Yeerk Pool, all looking at them.  Waiting.  “Visser…?” Derane 731 says at last.

“What if we didn’t have to be enslavers?”  Aftran whispers it, but Tom takes a huge breath, sending her oxygen, sending her strength.  As one, they step up onto the deinfestation pier.  “My fellow warriors!  What if we didn’t have to be enslavers?”  This time, Tom’s voice echoes off the surface of the pool, reflecting to the concave ceiling.

The cavern falls silent around them.  Even the caged hosts watch and wait.

“You heard the Council: I’m in charge around here,” Aftran announces.  “And it’s high time for a change, for an end to the fighting,” Tom adds.  “So I say, as Visser One: we need to find another way.”  Aftran.  “It is possible to ask rather than demand.  To borrow rather than steal.”  Tom.  “To morph, and to stop using hosts at all.”  Aftran, catching Tom by surprise with that one.  “We’re a part of the movement that seeks an end to the violence, and soon so will every other visser on this planet.”  Tom again.  “You can join us, or you can surrender.  Those are really the only options.”  Aftran.

They’re both breathing hard by the end, fear-sweat prickling Tom’s arms.  Now is the moment.  There are about two dozen Peace Movement members in the crowd around them.  Two dozen… against four thousand.

“You could get us all voluntary hosts?”  It’s Iniss 226 who speaks, clearly suspicious.

“Every single yeerk would have the chance either to use a voluntary host or to morph.”  Aftran’s making promises wildly, brashly.  So it begins, Tom thinks at her; they’re politicians now, whether they like it or not.  “The involuntaries would be released, or asked to stay on with a re-negotiation of autonomy.  It would require change, but we will make it happen.”

The crowd is murmuring, controllers nudging one another.  Voluntary hosts are desperately valuable, because the honest truth is that almost none of them want involuntary control if they have another way.  The only thing better than a voluntary host is the desperate hope to change one’s body entirely, permanently, to become another being…

They negotiate, and continue negotiating, until Tom’s voice runs out.  They give orders — to bury the dead, to free the involuntary hosts, to communicate the policy to the rest of the Earth invasion force — and share in their shock at being obeyed.  Finally, at long last, they get the chance to leave Illim and Mr. Tidwell (now sharing the title of Visser Three) to continue working on the details, and to retreat back to Cassie’s barn to make their most audacious move yet.

After all, they need a morphing cube.

• The next three hours are an exercise in exhaustion.  Marco, irate and bereaved, reverts back to mistrusting Aftran; Ax accuses them both of letting the power go to their head.  Jake wearily calls a vote, and then shrugs helplessly when it ends in a tie.  Finally it’s Cassie who stands up, walks to her father’s refrigerator, pulls out the cube, and slaps it into Tom’s hand.  She spins around, chin up, silently daring the others to challenge her.  No one does.

• The next three weeks are a chore.  Tobias later compares the process of getting the yeerks’ Earth forces aligned under the Peace Movement to trying to stuff an octopus into a boot: every time they get one tentacle inside, they discover two more have untied the laces and leaked out through the side.  The wily, many-armed resistance evades in a thousand ways… but Aftran and her allies have the simple majority on their side.  The shift comes, and the yeerks shift with it.

• “Of all the insane things we’ve done in this whole insane war,” Marco says, “this is the most insane of them all.  There’s no topping this insanity.  None.”

«There better not be, anyway,» Tobias drawls.

Jake offers them both a small, tight smile.  It’s good to hear them blowing off steam.  Tobias seems in and out at times since Taylor, whereas Marco’s just been quieter overall since they lost Eva.  Everything’s about to change, and he needs them both on board.

“You’re up, midget,” Tom says, and gestures to where Ax hovers one delicate finger over the button that will switch on the broadcast.

Jake straightens up, runs a hand through his hair, glances at where Rachel and Cassie stand on either side of him.  “Okay,” he whispers.

«Prince Jake, you’ll be live, as they say, in five… four… three…»  There’s a click, and a faint whirrrrrrr.  It doesn’t look that impressive from this end, but every television on the planet has just been forcibly switched to the view of three adolescent kids in spandex standing in front of a studio wall.

“Hello.  My name is Jake Berenson.  And I’m here to tell you all that this is no prank or stunt: aliens are, in fact, invading the planet.”  Jake beckons slightly, and Ax steps forward until he is within view of the camera.  “There are enough of us to fight back and even to win,” Jake says, “but we need your help to do it.  There are two forces coming for Earth.  One is sent by the Yeerk Empire.”  He gestures, and Tom gently places Aftran into his hands.  Jake holds her out to the camera.  “The yeerks are a parasitic species, and they are coming to take this planet back from their own rebel faction.  The other…”  He steps back, ceding the floor to Ax.

«The other force is sent by the Andalite Electorate,» Ax says sadly.  «They do not believe that the rebel yeerks want only to live here in peace.  They are coming to annihilate this planet if they can.»

This sounds like a really interesting AU idea, and also as though you have this fic half-written.