Futuristic Freaks 'n ships [RP]

[Puhon]

Aximili Elfangor Isthill

Name: Aximili Elfangor Isthill
Alias: "Ax", "Elf", "Moose"
Age: 97 years old (25 Andalite years)
Gender: Male
Species: Andalite

Physique:
Elf is about as tall as a tall moose. As an Andalite, his preferred way of locomotion is quatrupedal, with his elongated second set of arms serving as front legs. Thanks to an unusually flexible spine and pelvis, he is able to stand up and walk on two legs and use his long, secondary arms as actual arms.
While the pair of eyes that's positioned similar to humans in his skull ppsesses an eagle-like precise vision, another set of additional eyes, sitting on short antennae, provide a rather blurry 360° view.
Protruding from his back are four tail-like growths, each baring a razor sharp spike.

 

[Eye of Nowhere]

Name: Michael Simmons

Nicknames: “Mike”, “Toolbox”

Age: 34

Gender: Male

Species: Human

Physique:

A rather tall human male at 189cm, hair not included when it sticks up in ‘bedhead’ mode. Average build coherent with labour intensive work and a regular workout routine. Dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. Usually unshaven.

 

[Eye of Nowhere]

In a different time and place, a hazy dream more so than a distant memory, Michael stood at the open door to his barn. Dancing wisps of light had drawn him from the sanctum of half-finished projects and broken things he still needed to fix. He remembered the weight of the wrench in his hand and the pearls of sweat rolling down his brow. He remembered the cool of the night, stark against the swelter that remained in the buildings after the summer sun seared them in the long dry heat of the day. He remembered the dancing lights most of all. How they darted across the sky at night before it all turned black. And that was where he found himself now. In a place dark a cold, where he had been for so long that time started to lose meaning. He felt neither living nor dead. Floating in a silent night, confined to eternity. It was hard to think, to feel. As much as he tried, he could not breath. As much as he focussed, he could not feel the beating of his heart. Had he dropped dead on the floor? Was this life after death? He could not tell.

A bright white light pierced his eyes and the sudden hiss of a decompression tore him from his waking dream. With a thud, he fell onto a cold floor and gasped for air. He coughed and wheezed for what felt like another eternity before his lungs evacuated the remnants of fluid. As his eyes adjusted, he found himself in a rather sterile white room. He was alone, save for the machine he had apparently fallen out of. It was a strange device, but he could guess what it was from the myriad of movie he had seen. Was that a cryogenic stasis pod? Was he frozen? Impossible. That sort of thing only happened in movies. Was this some sort of prank? Did someone knock him out and stick him into this contraption? Naked, no less.

He got up and walked around the room. He tried to, at least. He struggled to stay upright, dizzy and disoriented. He clung to the walls but found no clear exit. The room didn’t seem to have a door. He sat down in the middle of the room and looked around for a bit, before he felt the familiar churn of a rumbling tummy. Just then, a small slot opened in the wall and a tray with foodstuff slid into the room. He crawled closer, inspecting the contents. It looked strange. A compressed nutrient bar, which looked like the cheap ones you buy at any random supermarket. He poked it gently. It was mushy, almost spongy. Definitely not made out of nuts and seeds. He picked it up and smelled it. Funky was the best way to describe it. He dropped the thing back onto the tray and picked up the silvery packet next to it. The contents smelled like applesauce. He was hungry, but didn’t trust the food. He put the packet down and went over to sit in a corner where he counted the hours until he fell asleep out of sheer boredom.

He woke with a start some time later. How long he had slept, he couldn’t tell. It felt like mere minutes as he snapped awake but the sluggish feeling in his arms and legs told him it had been much longer. He squatted in his corner. Alarmed, yet curious. The cryopod was gone. One would assume it would be very hard to move such a big device without waking him. He spotted a pile of what looked like clothing on the opposite side of the room. Bent down on all fours, he crawled over and unfolded the pile. It looked like a set of scrubs nurses wear, yet the material was different. It felt durable, but stretched a bit. It should feel rubbery, but was closer to wool in texture. He dressed himself quickly, before sitting back down in his corner. Not long after, another tray of food slid into the room. He examined the hole as it opened and closed. It looked seamless, but surely it wasn’t. He didn’t approach the tray this time. He just stared at it, sitting cross-legged in his corner. After a while, the hole reopened and the tray slid out again. He found it curious.

A while later, another tray came into the room. This time the bar and packet were replaced by an odd-looking fruit and what he assumed to be raw meat. The fruit resembled a blue pomegranate and the meat. Well, it looked like meat. It resembled a nice juicy sirloin steak, but he had no way of cooking it. Did someone expect him to eat it raw?

He fiddled with the fruit for a bit, trying to peel it open. Having little to no luck with the hard shell, he slammed it on the tray, cracking it like a nut. The contents felt gooey like an overly ripe banana someone smashed into pulp. The taste wasn’t all bad, though.

Several days went by. The food he was given rotated each time. Items he left aside would be replaced, while things he had eaten reappeared. He felt like a lab rat subjected to testing. After about a week’s worth of meals, one of the trays included a form of cutlery. A two-pronged stick that served as a fork. He took the fork and retreated to his corner. A simple, yet effective plan hatched in his brain. With the sharp little tool, he poked and prodded at the walls until a soft click was heard. Out popped a panel, which led to a crawlspace. Wires and piping running along a narrow tunnel. He barely fit through it, but he’d have to make due.

He shimmied along for about a hundred meters before the tunnel widened a bit. It looked like some sort of maintenance closet. Panels, wires and switches. He wouldn’t touch them, yet. He didn’t want to trip any alarms. From there, he found another crawlspace to open. This time, he had to get on his hands and knees to fit through. He considered his options, choosing to close the panel behind him. Whoever locked him up would notice his disappearance soon enough. After a few more tunnels, he was well and truly lost. Had he gone left two tunnels ago or was it three? Just how big was this place? He hoped he wasn’t running in circles.

He came across a small alcove in a tunnel that was dirtier than the others. This was a good sign. It might have gone unused for a while, so nobody would come looking here right away. At least he hoped not. Like a beast, he crawled into a dark little hole, waiting for sleep to overtake his weary mind. He woke to the sound of an alarm going off, ringing through the maintenance shafts. Seems someone noticed their captive gone wandering. He waited in the dark, listening for footsteps or other sounds of someone approaching. There was nothing.

After a bit, he crawled out of the alcove and resumed exploration. To find his way back, he left tiny scratch marks on panels he opened. No choice, other than getting lost again. His foray into the tunnels led him to what looked like an outdoor area. It was big. There was a sort of long grass with a bluish tint and a weird looking tree that bore the blue pomegranates. He looked around, spotting no one in sight. He darted through the grass, towards the tree, hoping to grab a bunch of the fruit before slipping back into the tunnels. Hopefully, before anyone were to catch him.

 

[Puhon]

Aximili Elfangor Isthill, or just Ax for short, named after King Aximili Esgarrouth Isthill and Prince Elfangor Sirinial Shamtul, his grandfather and great uncle, was casually strolling through the hilly, blue meadows of his home planet, which his people just called 'homeworld'. It was early morning, the sun just rising above the forests of spirally-trunked, silver-leafed trees.
The young Andalite lifted his left secondary arm above his head to pick a blue fruit from a branch a few feet above his head and broke it in two with one hand. Their main hands were nimble, but weak, while their long secondary arms were less skillful, but strong. He switched, now holding one half in every main hand. His main eyes closed joyfully as he slurped the gooey pulp from the hard shells.

At the sound of wings flapping, his telescope eyes turned to see who was approaching. "Nerefir", he greeted his older brother, a bird looking a lot like a mix of a peacock and a hawk with claw-armed wings, as it landed in front of him and morphed into an Andalite.
He'd been the youngest Andalite in history to be given the morphing technology, which allowed him to extract and copy a being's DNA to, well, morph into a clone of it. He'd only been 36 years old. The standard age to receive this technology was 80 years.

"The Therant trees are beautiful in summer", Nerefir remarked, to which Ax nodded. He however seemed quite distracted. "When are you going to leave?"
The older one slightly lifted his shoulders as he thoughtfully watched the blue grass swaying in the breeze. "Soon. The Yeerks are spreading quickly."
Ax felt a cold shiver running down his back at the mention of those slug-like, parasitic aliens. They'd made it their mission to take over the universe and spread Kandrona everywhere. To them, Kandrona was the essence of their life, but its radiation was deadly for most other species.
And though they only were about an inch big, they'd proven to be powerful enemies when entering other species' brains to control them.

He was just thinking of how his great uncle had been killed by those little bastards and his grandfather had spent most of his life fighting them, when a white stripe cut through the purple sky in lightning speed. That definitely was no Andalite ship. The two Andalites looked at each other in confusion.
"Have you heard about outsiders landing here today?"
Nerefir shook his head, frowning. "No. Father would have told us. You know him, he wouldn't skip an opportunity to teach us a lesson on interplanetary businesses.... come, we should go look."

Upon arriving at their home village, it was clear that something was wrong. Andalites were running, screaming, mothers trying to get their kids to safety while warriors were fighting to make a stand against the rows of Hork Bajirs and Taxxons pushing out of the ship.
Controllers.
Yeerks, taking over the minds and bodies of other creatures to escape their own pitiful state of living without any limbs or sensory organs.
The ship that had landed however only was a small jet, one of the smallest ships they used. The mothership was still hovering somewhere near, waiting to spawn more of those dirty parasites.
"Nerefir, Aximili!", their father's voice boomed across the battlefield while he stabbed a Taxxon with his tail blades. "To the ship! We need to take on the mothership!"
The brothers ran, accompanied by four dozen soldiers, to board the royal battleship. It was his first battle; his hands were trembling as the ship entered the stratosphere. "Ax", his brother said, holding out his hand. He took it, fingers intertwined in the typical way Andalites promised their loyalty. "I'll raise my blade for you", Nerefir said. "I'll raise my blade for you", Ax replied.
And that was when everything went too quick- with a loud boom, an energy beam ripped a hole into ship's hull and everything went black.

White was the first thing Ax saw when he woke up again.
"Nerefir?", he'd mumbled, but there was nothing but silence where his brothers voice had been what seemed like just seconds ago.
Nerefir?, she asked again, this time using the telepathic way.
Nothing.
That had been sixteen years ago.
Later, Ax had found out that he'd been found by an intergalactic zoo shortly after the Yeerk mothership had destroyed the Andalite battleship. He had no idea what had happened to his brother, father and the soldiers.
And while he missed them and still sent out his thought voice every night, hoping to once get an answer, he'd also gotten to know many interesting beings.
He was one of the more lucky residents of the zoo, calling a meadow with a tree and a cave much like the ones his kind lived in on their home planet his 'home'. It was no comparison, of course, but it was better than the blank, white rooms some others were locked in...

The past few days had been more interesting though- the residents talked, well, at least the ones able to use a thought- voice like he himself, and apparently, the creature the zookeepers had abducted long ago had finally been released from its cryostasis. They did that relatively often, 'store' some creatures until they'd figured what to do with them. As far as he knew, the creature they'd awoken this time was a human. Some mammal race from a small planet about 80 light years away from his own home world. A close neighbor, so to say, and the origin of a very basic language the zookeepers taught their residents to test their intelligence, along with about a dozen other, more complicated, languages.

He'd just been laying in his cave, performing his evening ritual of sending his thought voice out into space, still hoping to once be answered by his folk, when a blaring alarm cut through the silence.
It wasn't the first time someone had tried to escape; he already knew the process- the alarms would stop as soon as they'd catch it and return it to its shelter. Nothing special, really.
What he hadn't expected was that suddenly a panel in the wall of his own shelter would open and a... creature he lacked the words to describe in all its weirdness darted across the meadow.
He blinked surprised while the beating of his three hearts picked up. The first company in sixteen years.
at the same time he could hear the keepers approaching. No, his company!
He raced out of his cave, towards the creature. "Hide, they're coming!", he called in English, hoping it would understand this basic language. "To my cave, come!"

 

[Eye of Nowhere]

Michael was picking the fruits rather hastily when suddenly, someone spoke behind him. He dropped some of the blue pomegranates and turned on his heel, ready to yell at the person for startling him. “Now listen here, you…” his voice trailed off as he came face to face with the alien creature. It looked kind of odd, walking on two legs and two arms. Either that, or its front feet were really weird. Michael wasted not a second before bolting off with his haul, heading directly for the hole in the wall. “Like hell I’ll go to your cave!” he shouted whilst running off. Sadly, the panel he knocked out was being pulled back in by another alien in what looked like a hazmat suit. “Oh, come on!”

More of the hazmat wearing aliens had entered the enclosure and came running through the blue grass. The shouted in a langue he couldn’t understand and carried long rods. Their leader pointed at him. Obviously, this was a security team of sorts coming to haul him back to his cell.

“Fuck off, you freaks!” Michael shouted back at them, throwing a pomegranate at the aliens. The fruit hit the approaching alien square in the head, crumpling, the suit. The alien recoiled and stumbled back retreating a few paces.

Meanwhile, three of them approached the Andalite. They kept their rods aimed at him warily, knowing well enough that they shouldn’t stray too close.

Michael , meanwhile, kept throwing fruit at the guards and shouting profane insults. It must have been quite the spectacle. A weird primate throwing blue fruit at the confused guards, whom had little recourse but to retreat from the barrage of hard-shelled fruit being weaponized against them. Michael took the opportunity to close in on one of the guards and grabbed the alien by the suit. They felt surprisingly light.

Now, being out of fruity ammunition, he wrested the rod from the caught alien and started swinging the large flexible rob wildly as he started chasing them around one after the other. He forgot about the fact that he was onboard of an alien ship, possibly in the depths of space. He was the hunter now, and they the hunted!

His luck was about to turn, however, as more guards were called in. Some had rods, while a few of them came equipped with rifles. Damn! How was he going to get out of this? He suddenly remembered the big blue alien thing. Rod in hand, he looked over at the Andalite. “Hey weirdo! Are you a prisoner too?! Start throwing rocks at them or something!”

 

[Puhon]

Ax watched in surprise when suddenly the odd alien started bombarding the guards with the Therant fruit in an attempt to... what exactly? It wasn't like he wasn't outnumbered by far- and even if he would manage to take every single guard on the ship down- what would he do then? Just hijack the ship and set off on a journey into the unknown across the endless expanse of space with way over a dozen creatures on board that may or may not end up killing each other sooner or later if left to roam freely? He wasn't saying they deserved to stay locked up, but some were predators... And he liked to live.
"Uh-", he would stammer a little cluelessy while he watched the weird alien with his main and the guards around him with his his stalk eyes.
"I don't think that's a very well thought pla-"
That's when he saw it- this human was fighting like his people bad been fighting- for his freedom.

his eyes narrowed and he reared up like a very alien horse, grabbed two guards by their heads with his secondary arms to crush their skulls into a pulp while he stabbed four others with his tail blades.
His left main hand slammed into the face of guard num er seven as he attacked with a rod, before he wrenched two guards' rods from their hands and raised them like a pair of katanas, stabbing, slamming and whipping rods left and right.

"Hald-wurra!", he screamed the ancient Andalite battle cry, a furious tornado of limbs and rods.
soon enough he found himself back to back with the weird creature, narrowing his eyes at the guards approaching. The sight of their dead comrades, crushed bodies and skulls smashed into a pulp apparently made them weary to attempt another attack.

Ax raised his tail blades threateningly, from which green blood was dripping a d staining the blue grass, while a small trail of Ax' own, black-ish blue blood was trickling down his side.
That was when one of the guards started to talk in a weird, high-pitched voice he would have compared to an Oompa Loompa if he had known Charlie and the chocolate factory.

"MiWa.AH.Ad.1", the guard squeaked, aiming a rifle at Ax, wo narrowed his eyes and stood up straight and proud, crossing his main arms, the fingers of his secondary arms drumming on the ground impatiently. "Don't you dare number me", he snarled. "I am Prince Aximili Elfangor Isthill. This is the only name you will address me with."
"We have been getting a.ong so well. Why are you siding with a primate?"
"I am siding with freedom", he hissed- stabbing the guard with all four tail blades at an impressive speed.
"Please tell me you have some kind of plan", he muttered as he turned his head to look at the primate over his shoulder while his stalk eyes still fixated the remaining guards like a tiger ready to jump. Man this thing looked funny....

 

[Eye of Nowhere]

Michael watched, with a measure of disbelief, as the English-speaking alien stabbed a few guards with tentacles. He didn’t know what was more disturbing to begin with. The fact that these were, in fact, aliens. Or, the fact that they were all speaking English. He considered the possibility that they’d somehow managed to give everyone translators that basically transformed language, but that would have to wait. The big blue thing was giving a bit of a speech and suddenly turned its head towards him asking about a plan. “Plan?” Michael tilted his head slowly. “Right, plan. Plan.”



Michael’s voice trailed off for a moment before he nodded to himself. “I have it! We fight the guards, take over the controls and hijack the ship for ourselves! Hey, are there more prisoners on this thing? Maybe if we open all the doors simultaneously…” Michael nodded some more, quite pleased with his cliché plan.

That was, until he noticed that the guards were retreating and closed the doors behind them. “Hey, they’re retreating. What gives?”

The momentary lull in fighting gave him the time to take a good look at his new ally. Was this thing even an ally. “So, uh. What’re you supposed to be, then? And what are those guys running this place?”

 

[Puhon]

The expression on Ax' face was one of utter disbelief mixed with a hint of exasperation.
Great, I've sided with a maniac!
He didn't answer at first, just kept looking at the primate, a human, if he recalled his grandfather's stories correctly, who had encountered them during the Andalite war quite a few times, wondering how small their brain mass had to be.
"Are... You sure you want to... You know... Leave dozens of different creatures from all over space to roam freely? Just saying. They might try to eat you."
He really didn't want to imagine the pure chaos that would follow the execution of that plan. Sure, he did get where he was coming from, but the plan was stupid nonetheless.

He was distracted from his slight shock when the human asked him what he was. Oh, yes, he remembered a mention of his grandfather saying that humans weren't very involved in interplanetary businesses. Well, granted, they still were a very young species. Maybe they'd evolve. Maybe they already had, after all this Specimen was one taken from a time long ago. He probably wasn't exactly up to date.
"I am Aximili Elfangor Isthill", he answered his question, but continued to offer him a shorter alternative to his name, knowing that some species had difficulties pronouncing the Andalite language. "Or just... Ax, for short. I'm an Andalite. Our home planets are basically neighbors, only 80 light years apart. Those guys however-" he waved a main hand towards one of the crushed guards, shrugging slightly afterwards "I have no idea. I've settled for calling them Hereth. Means 'vomit' in my language."

His main eyes widened when a thought crossed Ax' mind and he looked around a little hectically. "I need to get to the lowest deck. If my suspicion is right they might have gotten their hands on a device that could cause pure chaos across the universe."