ANIMORPHS #18.5 / MEGAMORPHS #2: IN THE TIME OF DINOSAURS

i have not heard any wet humor, so it is difficult for me to tell the difference.

hi hello everyone and welcome back to my tight five, animorphs weekly. how are we feeling this week? can you believe we’re already halfway through february? the years start coming and folks, they really don’t stop coming. back to the rules and i? i’m gonna hit the ground running.

wanna read a book?

no tagline!!!!! the title says it all!!!! in the time of dinosaurs, motherfucker! what more do you want applegate to say?? i love this for so many reasons. it’s really ramping up the tension as we draw closer and closer to book twenty, our self-imposed deadline for both a love triangle and a character death. the assortment of eyes gives us a glimpse into each of the animorphs soul. and the textures!! this is a work of art. kudos to whoever designed it.

it’s a megamorphs!!!!!!!

SUMMARY

as per the last megamorph book, we’re going to be jumping around between characters perspectives, and i’ll do my best to convey that to you. this is also thirty pages longer than a normal animorph book, hence the mega. bear with me. we can do this together.

we open with a marco chapter. (by now you all know he’s my favorite.) he’s like hey, i’m marco, and i am the idiot with the painted face who decided to watch the news. been there! there’s a story about a nuclear submarine goin’ down, and you just know the animorphs are gonna have to get to the bottom of that. he gives us a brief rundown of the situation: yeerks, mind control, aliens, andalites, morphing. he also gives brief descriptions of the others, which you know is also my favorite, so i am going to list them here:

• jake: our prematurely middle-aged, fearless more-or-less leader

• cassie: our animal expert and tree-hugging environmental wacko

• rachel: jake’s fabulously beautiful but totally insane cousin

• tobias: mouse-eating bird

• ax: cinnabon-chomping andalite scorpion boy

• marco: the sensitive, sensible, smart, good-looking, honest, modest, cute one

tag urself

anyway, marco watches the breaking news story on the nuclear sub which is sinking. there’s a big storm making it difficult for rescue ships and divers to find the crew, and on top of that the sub could just be leaking radiation. marco sighs. his dad’s like, are you going to the kitchen? marco’s like no, i gotta go to jake’s house. for. homework.

thirty minutes later, the animorphs are assembled on the beach. it’s fucking pouring and everyone is covered in dirt and mud, except rachel, who is perfect. they discuss their terrible morphing outfits (if they get coordinated outfits at any point in this series, i will be So Excited), marco calls ax’s human morph disturbingly attractive, and then they’re all morphin’ dolphins and diving into the water.

we switch to cassie’s perspective. she loves being a dolphin! the horses of the sea. the animorphs swim out to where helicopters are hovering and navy ships are patrolling back and forth. they start searching, but it’s hard work, and they’re running out of time. finally, cassie picks something up on her echolocation, and dives down. it’s a periscope. she’s found the sub.

jake wastes no time. how do they get the divers to see the sub? rachel’s like, let’s just push one of them over there. jake’s like, okay! i get it. the dolphins drag a diver over (could you imagine) and show her the location of the sub. running short on time, they swim out a ways, demorph, and then remorph into dolphins. nice! they observe the rescue sub reaching the sunk sub, and have to explain to ax what nuclear missiles are and why the sub has them.

here’s what i love about ya: so many things. but one of the things is that good ya is always like, you know what’s stupid? war. it’s dumb and it’s dangerous and it ruins everything. an oversimplification, but. applegate doesn’t hesitate to be like, yeah, it is pointless for us to have nuclear weapons, isn’t it?

suddenly, all the ships in the area start booking it out of there. the helicopters are pulling away. the animorphs are like, o, shit, we should probably follow suit. they start to swim as fast as they can away from the submarine, but they’re not fast enough.

flash! a light so bright it seemed to burn right through me.

WHAAAAAAAAM! the shock wave hit us.

i tumbled through a world that was being torn apart at the seams. and then that world went black.

damn

rachel comes to an undetermined amount of time later. she calls out for cassie, tobias, and jake (in that order, which, [eyes emoji]), dives underwater. it’s clearer than it was before. she then calls for marco and ax. marco’s like bout time you called for me. the two of them go searching for their friends, nudging them all awake. cassie’s last, and she wakes up screaming.

that’s when we noticed the blood leaking from her eyes and blowhole.

[nervously laughing] what the fuck

she demorphs, rachel gives her a dorsal fin to hang onto, and then cassie’s like, i’m…not dreaming, right? everyone confirms. she’s like, ok, so…why is there a volcano over there? in unison, all the dolphins dive underwater and leap into the air. confirmed: volcano. jake thinks it’s a side effect of the explosion, but rachel’s watched the magic school bus (not a bit, that is canonically what is written) and she knows that volcanos take hundreds of years to build up. before they can really freak out about that, ax is like, excuse me, but there are very large creatures coming towards us. the animorphs turn.

it rose ten feet from the water. a very long neck. like a gray-green giraffe. on the end of that neck was a sculpted, streamlined head about two feet long. and coming up, right behind it, was another tall neck and head.

listen

we switch to tobias. he’s got an idea of what these creatures are, but he’s not gonna say it out loud, in case he’s wrong and marco holds that over his head forever and ever amen. instead, he decides it’s time to just get the fuck out of there. they all start swimming, but these creatures just keep coming. jake’s like we can’t outrun them: split up or fight? rachel, of course, is all for fighting, but tobias knows there’s no way they’ll win. before he can make his case: SWOOOOSH! a giant creature, fifty feet long, comes up from beneath them. teeth clench down on tobias, and then he gets flung into the air and swallowed

and then applegate proceeds to describe in detail what it’s like to get dissolved by stomach acid

NOT A BIT

then, something else beside me. my dolphin sense knew. it was another dolphin. who is that?

it’s me! an enraged voice cried.

rachel!

who did you expect? jonah?

my girl’s got jokes!

she decides that today is not the day she gets digested, so she starts to morph. tobias, ever the romantic, wants to help her, but once he’s in bird form he’s so small and fragile he just gets knocked around. oh and they’re suffocating! not to mention the stomach acid! tobias fades fast. his final thought is an image of him as a child, playing with a plastic dinosaur. and then his mind shuts down.

we are on page fifteen

we cut to jake. cassie is screaming, the other two creatures are coming in close, and he has three people he needs to keep safe before he can even consider rescuing rachel and tobias. cassie puts up a fight: she’s not going to leave rachel behind. jake tells marco and ax to drag her away, and as they do, she just keeps screaming for rachel. the three predators start to fight each other, giving the animorphs the opportunity to escape. they swim towards shore, demorph, and get absolutely rekt once again.

“something is very wrong, prince jake,” ax said.

i didn’t answer. of course something was wrong. rachel and tobias were probably dead. so something would always be wrong now. forever

damn son that is sad

but, seriously, jake, look. he does. the boardwalk on the beach is gone. the beach itself is different, and quiet, filled with different trees and no seagulls and no sounds of humans. jake’s having a hard time wrapping his mind around all of this, because most of his thought-power is going towards running over all the mistakes he made that led to rachel and tobias dying. they trudge towards the trees, and then jake stumbles and falls into a small pit. except it’s not a pit. it’s a footprint. six inches deep, four feet across. clawed toes. fuckin’ huge.

jake jumps out of the footprint and we switch to cassie’s perspective. he asks her if she knows of any animal that has a footprint this big. she shakes her head.

look i know everyone’s traumatized

but y’all have been sent through time via biblical angels and literally last week were getting shot through space

is it really so hard to believe you’re looking at what is so clearly dinosaur tracks??

they still haven’t said the word!!

cassie starts crying again, the thought of never being able to see rachel almost too much to bear. jake’s like, hey, if anyone can survive being swallowed by a giant sea beast, it’s rachel, right? they decide to keep moving. they find a stream and go to drink out of it when FWOOOSH! SNAP! a giant crocodile head lunges out of the water. the animorphs waste no time in turning tail and getting the fuck out of there. they come together underneath a tree and discuss: what the fuck is going on? cassie doesn’t know where they are. ax confirms that an explosion couldn’t have blown them across the world. they’re like, well, i guess we’ll just have to keep looking for people! surely there are people, right?

they find a clearing. hoping to discover some people, cassie pushes aside some ferns. no people in this clearing, just a little creature, twenty feet long, with bumpy bony things along its back.

“i think it’s a baby,” i said.

“a baby?” marco said. “cassie, it’s a dinosaur.”

TWENTY-ONE PAGES AND WE’RE FINALLY HERE

before they can really digest the information of a baby dinosaur, there’s a loud noise from behind them. something leaps over them, like they’re not even there, and lands right by the baby dinosaur.

the tyrannosaurus opened its massive jaws and closed them at the base of the baby dinosaur’s neck.

i didn’t know what was happening. my mind was gone. gone in out-of-control terror.

we ran.

good!!! get out of there!!!!

as a person who firmly believes they were born in the right time, and perhaps even too early, i cannot imagine what this would be like. the size of the bugs alone would be enough to do me in. if i saw a t-rex rip off a baby dino’s head, i wouldn’t survive.

we smashcut to rachel. she’s, como se dice, going through it. she can’t breathe, her skin’s burning, she’s getting tossed around a tum. she’s actively dying, but rachel is nothing if not a fighter, so she’s pushing, trying so hard to morph. she needs air. and then, in a flash of insight, she realizes that the creature’s lungs are right above her. lungs full of air. so she rips open the lungs and breathes in the air

m e t a l

she finishes morphing grizzly, tears a hole in the dinosaur’s side, grabs tobias, and gets the fuck out of there. she lays tobias gently in the sand. he’s alive. a little worse for wear, with an intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be dissolved by stomach acid, but alive. she looks around. something’s not right. the air smells too clean. tobias is like, almost as if all the smells of human civilization aren’t present? she’s like ,,, yeah. what do you know? he, thankfully, is quicker on the uptake than the others.

yeah. dinosaurs.

oh, man. tobias, we are gonna need some better morphs.

amen sister!

here’s the thing: i don’t know if they’re going to get close enough to a dinosaur to acquire a morph. i also don’t know if this is gonna be like that jungle book, where it technically didn’t happen so the monkey and jaguar morphs were lost. but the yeerks better buckle the fuck up if rachel gets her hand on a dino morph.

tobias is in a lot of pain. fair. his little hawk body is half digested. he tries to morph to human and back to hawk to see if that fixes it: it doesn’t. rachel’s like, that doesn’t make any sense!! tobias laughs. NOTHING makes sense!!! but he is gonna need rachel to set his broken wing. she’s like ?? i’m not cassie ?? he’s like ok well that doesn’t change the fact that i need you to snap my bone back in place, champ

it’s…rough. she tears a piece of her morphing suit and grabs some twigs and sets the wing, but applegate does not hold back in her description of how painful it is. finally, the wing is set, and it’s time to get a move on. turns out tobias was really into dinosaurs as a kid, which comes in handy. he identifies which period they’re in (cretaceous, for you nerds at home) by the flowers. the flowers! little nerd. he also takes the time to point out to rachel that the cretaceous period was the last age of dinosaurs, and also the age of the t-rex.

sick

we cut to marco running for his absolute life. the t-rex wasn’t satisfied with the baby dinosaur, so now it’s chasing our sweet little animorphs. there’s a lot of panic in this chapter, understandably. marco tries to morph osprey to get away from the t-rex, gets trapped in its mouth, flies out through its teeth, and runs headfirst into a tree. applegate literally uses the word “bonk.” bonk! marco falls to the ground. he’s seconds away from becoming t-rex chow when FWAPP FWAPP, ax comes in with the assist! he slices at the t-rex with his tail and gets absolutely tossed. but it’s enough. the t-rex goes down, and human hands snatch marco out of the way.

ax is fine. he acknowledges that he got lucky, and if he ever has to face a t-rex in one-on-one combat, the t-rex will win ninety percent of the time. the animorphs have a come to jesus moment: clearly, they’re experiencing another sario rip (the same incident that happened during the jungle book) and they’ve traveled millions of years back in time. there’s no way to recreate the incident that caused this sario rip (you know, the submarine explosion), so for now. they’re. trapped.

woof

cassie is the first to respond. they’re going to have to adapt. they’ve got a big dead t-rex here, and they shouldn’t let it go to waste. use the hide to make shoes, ligaments for laces, and take the muscle for meat. marco, jake, and ax, are like…holy shit, cassie, what the fuck. she’s like what? we have to survive. rachel and tobias are dead. no one else is going to die. the boys are like …ok. cool. jake and marco start gathering twigs for firewood, and cassie starts directing ax on which pieces of the t-rex to slice up with his tail. time to adapt.

speaking of, rachel is carrying tobias through the woods. she’s shoeless, her uniform is in tatters, and she’s on high alert for dinosaurs. tobias isn’t faring much better. there’s a brief moment where rachel is like, maybe you should morph into human, and then you won’t be in pain. tobias points out that he can only be in morph for two hours, and rachel’s like, unless you…stayed human. tobias doesn’t respond. yikes! tense! instead, he asks if she can lift him up; he spots something in the distance. smoke! from a campfire! it has to be the others!

they start the trek. along the way, rachel has to stop and pick bugs off her feet, which are attracted to the blood oozing out of them. cool! as they stop, tobias hears something on the wind. there’s a pack of triceratops nearby, chillin’ and grazin’. the triceratops might be plant-eaters, but the deinonychus moving in to attack them certainly aren’t. rachel turns, very slowly, and makes direct eye contact with one of these dein-dinos. suddenly, the deinonychus have much easier prey to chase after.

meanwhile, cassie and the boys are making history’s first fire. they roast t-rex meat (turns out it tastes like fish) as the sun begins to set. jake turns to cassie: what are they gonna do while it’s dark? cassie worries for a moment that maybe jake is resentful that she’s taking a more active role, but if i know anything about these animorphs, i’m sure jake is relieved that someone else is in charge (and that the someone else is cassie). they decide to take shifts. if a t-rex does show up, their best bet is jake’s tiger morph and ax’s tail - cassie and marco get strict orders to morph into something that will help them escape.

they’re thirteen

cassie and ax take the first watch. cassie sees a comet streak across the sky, and she and ax have a brief discussion about how beautiful it is. also, a portent. of something bad to come.

i felt the stick in my hand. i felt the fire at my back. little, weak, defenseless homo sapiens; i faced a night full of terrors.

the night is dark and full of terrors

tobias and rachel are running from the deino-dinos. there are two packs, working in tandem. tobias guides rachel to the woods. if the two packs can’t see each other, it might buy them some time. rachel moves quickly - still bleeding from the feet, by the way - and stops underneath a tree. she barfs. honestly she’s earned it. tobias has a plan. he tells rachel to toss him up into the tree - he can’t fly!! - and even though she protests, he’s like, we don’t really have another choice. throw me up there, morph into grizzly, and run.

besides, i added silently, you don’t want to die as helpless prey. as a human, you’ll simply be ripped apart. you’ll be eaten alive. as a bear, they’ll at least have to fight you first.

look i know i say this every week but every week it bears (ha) repeating: jesus christ

rachel tosses tobias up into the tree. it takes two tries, but he lands in a branch and tells her to run. she does, disappearing from view. the deinoi-dinos approach the vomit, sniffing carefully. tobias waits for the perfect opportunity, and then, he leaps from his branch and sinks his talons into one of the deino-dinos.

it may have been sixty-five or seventy or eighty million years BC, but dna was still dna.

NICE

immediately, he starts to morph. he can hear rachel’s grizzly roaring in the distance, and he tries to remind himself to keep it together. the deino-dino is a new morph. it’s also fuckin’ rad. he’s a killing machine. and, unfortunately, he is a part of the pack. once the morph is done, he can smell something delicious. the hunt is on, and he’s a part of it.

jake wakes up from a dream about eating dinosaur shaped cereal. he looks up in the sky and sees the comet that ax and cassie have been admiring, and he’s like uh, look, i’m not the one holding the brain cell here, but,,,,didn’t the dinosaurs,,,,die,,,,,,,,,,because of one of those? ax is like, according to my calculations, it should miss.

ok!

jake goes to take a pee, and sees a flash of something in the distance. is it light? more comets? no! it’s a stampede.

“stampede? what is this, a cowboy movie?” marco demanded incredulously.

with the frizz? no way!

jake, cassie, marco, and ax start booking it. there’s a large group of huge fucking dinosaurs running from a - you guessed it - t-rex. jake tries to lead them towards the stream (they’re dinos, not vampires, but he’s panicking so he gets a pass) when he TRIPS and BIFFS it. he rolls right underneath a dinosaur as the t-rex makes its approach. they’re battling it out over him, and he has a small existential crisis. the t-rex wins, and hte long-necked dinosaur starts to fall. right. on. jake.

rachel is dealing with her own problems. the deino-dinos have her surrounded. being a grizzly fuckin’ rocks in our time, but here, the deino-dinos have seen much bigger predators. one lunges at her and she knocks it out with a swipe of her paw. but the deino-dinos are not afraid. the leader of the pack starts to circle her, when suddenly, a new deino-dino appears, slicing a two-foot-long line down rachel’s bear chest. immediately, this new deino-dino and the leader deino-dino start circling each other. rachel’s like, what the fuck?

and then she realizes: it’s tobias

she tries to reach out in thought-speak to pull him back to himself. but he’s a little busy fighting a deino-dino for dominance over the pack! tobias wins (cool) and turns on rachel (uncool). she’s like, tobias!! remember who you are!! you’re a human!! he advances. she’s like uh uh you’re a birdboy!!! remember flying???

that, unfortunately, works

meanwhile, jake is about to get flattened by a long-neck dinosaur. no worries, everyone, he rolls out of the way just in time — just in time to get chomped by the t-rex. the third animorph to land inside a dino’s mouth!!! he clings to the tongue, trying to acquire dna, trying to morph, trying not to die. he starts morphing - into what, he doesn’t know - and slashes at the inside of the t-rex’s throat. the t-rex barfs him out (been there) and backs off. the t-rex stumbles and falls on its side, moaning in pain, but not dead yet. marco, cassie, and ax run over to jake, and after confirming he’s okay (a relative term here) decide that this injured t-rex is their best bet. one by one, they approach its tail and acquire t-rex dna.

fucking rad

and then jake faints

marco lets jake sleep for awhile, and then they start walking. where? doesn’t really matter. they just don’t want to hang out near a dead dino and a near dead t-rex, morph acquired or no. cassie wishes rachel was here, marco does a good rachel impression, and then he tries to comfort cassie. they’ve survived all of their encounters - he doesn’t really believe that xena: warrior princess and a birdboy who has to hunt his breakfast every morning couldn’t also survive, right? it might be bullshit, but it sounds nice, and at this point, they’ll take anything.

they wander until sunrise (marco does call the sun “good old mommy sun” which,,,is objectively funny) and everyone is relieved. it’s nice to be able to see! plus, the comet was really bugging marco.

the comet bothered you? but not the flash of light?

“lightning. so what?”

no, no. not lightning. i assumed you knew. it was artificial in origin, not natural.

everyone’s like, hey, ax? pal? maybe say something next time instead of waiting til sunrise to tell us you identified artificial light that looked like a too-blue dracon beam striking a target???

he’s like, yes prince jake

still, they’re not sure what the source is. they don’t think there were any yeerks near the submarine when it blew up, so it’s probably not them. (i wouldn’t rule them out so quickly, but i’m just the historian.) marco’s like, ax, are you sure the lights were artificial?

me? wrong? it is possible, ax said dubiously.

me

ax starts talking science and marco tunes out, choosing instead to watch some triceratops graze in the field before them. they keep walking until they come across a large gorge in the field. the steep rocks lead down, down, down into a valley below.

…the valley wasn’t empty. down there, spread across a mile of valley floor, were glittering, shining buildings.

buildings.

and hovering protectively above those buildings was something that looked an awful lot like a flying saucer.

god bless us everyone

tobias is currently riding on rachel’s shoulder. she isn’t letting him live down the fact that he sliced her open while in deino-dino morph, and she’s also starving, so there are like, two full paragraphs where she just lists all the food items he cut her up like. fish, pepperoni pizza, hunk of cheese, loaf of bread. she daydreams about a denny’s grand slam breakfast. tobias is like, you know, she hasn’t slept, she hasn’t brushed her hair, she’s in a bad mood, and she’s still the most beautiful girl i’ve ever seen.

gay

jk

they come across a clump of trees with some fruit, and rachel gets a coconut. very nice. what’s not nice is the dinosaur hiding behind this clump of trees. tobias can’t see enough of it to tell what it is, but that’s never stopped rachel before. it turns out that tobias was able to control the deino-dino pack long enough for rachel to acquire the morph (you know she’s gonna be so jealous when she finds out marco has a t-rex and she has a deino-dino), and she’s like, well let’s take this motherfucker down. as they’re morphing, tobias is trying to remember his dino facts.

i pictured my toy dinosaurs. tyrannosaurus rex, brachiosaurus, stegosaurus, allosaurus, spinosaurus.

spinosaurus?

yep!

the spinosaurus stands to its full height, staring down at the puny deino-dinos. tobias and rachel are like, uhhh never mind bye!!!!

we turned. we ran.

we ran right into the spinosaurus’s mate.

these kids just can’t catch a break!!

rachel tries to charge forward and slice at the spinosaurus. it’s about as effective as you imagine it. but before she can get her ass handed to her, another creature steps out from the bushes. eight feet tall, reddish in color, rough-textured, two-legged, holding a weapon. it raises the weapon and points it at the spinosaurus rachel attacked, and it just,,,falls over. the new creature then turns the weapon onto rachel and tobias and is like, what are you?

they’re like, what are you?

the creature calls itself a nesk, tells them to change to their original forms, or else it will bring them death. rachel doesn’t like him, nor his smell. something about it is off. i get that. you know when you meet someone and it’s not like they smell bad it’s just that they smell wrong? or are you normal? instead of charging him like a dinosaur, she spins on one foot and uses her tail to knock him down.

instead of knocking him down, she just knocks him in half

he just breaks in half! the lower half of his body starts to dissolve into tens of thousands tiny squirming pieces and the upper half of his body raises the gun and she lunges, biting the hand. it dissolves, she can feel squirming in her mouth, everyone feels icky!!! she can feel the squirming creatures crawl out of her mouth onto her nose and towards her eyes.

then i remembered that smell. the acrid smell of a tunnel, the stink of deadly automatons racing to tear me apart.

ants!

the nesk was made up of millions and millions of ants.

N I G H T M A R E

rachel doesn’t remember this because i’m pretty sure it happens in the jungle book, but once she was a grizzly bear getting devoured alive by ants. the trauma!!!!

cassie is still staring at the city in the valley below. it doesn’t make any sense. it’s not humans, it’s not andalites, it’s not taxxons, hork-bajir, or yeerks. it’s not pemalites, either, because wolves haven’t been made yet. cassie wants to go check it out in bird morph. jake’s like, cool, we’ll all morph bird and go check it out. cassie’s hesitant. only one of them has to go, and she’s volunteered, shouldn’t they take the minimum risk? jake’s like ?…?? cassie cracks: she’s already lost rachel. she doesn’t want to lose anyone else. jake’s like, i understand, but it’s safest if we all go together anyway. no more splitting up. he’s right!

they all morph bird and take off towards the shining city in the valley. the buildings are well crafted, there are fields planted, and creatures that look like very large crabs equipped with both pincers and hands. awesome. before they can get too close, WHAM! something slams into cassie. she whirls around: large, monstrous bat like creatures are dropping from the caves in the valley wall. six total. and they’re coming for the animorphs.

tobias starts stomping on the ants! stomping like crazy! smush smush like they’re grapes and he’s at the winery! the nesk retreats, and tobias and rachel regroup. they only get a moment before ch-ch-ch-CHEEEEEEEW! they’re getting shot at! a silver craft, twice the size of a bug fighter and the shape of a pyramid, is flying towards them. tobias and rachel start running. the ship keeps firing at them, and tobias realizes its missing on purpose. it’s trying to herd them. tobias and rachel run across a field, dodging some triceratops, and come across a huge gorge in the ground. no time to waste, they leap into it and start falling. tobias catches sight of a peregrine falcon, and then a large, monstrous bat like creature.

pteranodon! i thought. i used to play with you.

not now, tobias

jake is struggling. he tries to lead the animorphs back to the cliff wall, hoping to catch some sick thermals and outrun them. as they do so, they see two deino-dinos falling over the edge. one of the deino-dinos manages to latch on to one of the pteranodons, and calls out in thought-speak, rachel, get ready to grab something!

it was as if someone had stuck a thousand volt wire in my ear.

tobias?

jake?

reunion!!

rachel gets caught in a tangle of the flying dinosaurs, but it’s enough to get her to land. not on the ground, mind you, but on the force field hovering above the city in the valley, because of course there’s a force field. everyone swoops down and lands near rachel, and cassie wraps her little osprey wings around rachel’s dino neck. it’s very sweet. there’s a brief exchange of information, and when rachel tells the others about the nesk, everyone turns towards ax. he’s like, i’m sorry i can’t know every species of alien considering we’re billions of miles in the past!!! rachel’s like, well, we’re on top of a force field over a city. are the nesks the same people who live down there?

no, a voice said. the nesk and the mercora are not the same.

out of the force field come a few shimmering images: the mercora have arrived.

ax is like, these are the weirdest fucking things i’ve ever seen in my entire life. the mercora are the bright shiny crabs they spotted earlier, except up close, they also realize that they have many many eyes. gross! the animorphs all return to their natural form and are like, we’re humans (+one birdboy +one andalite) and we’re trapped here. we come from the future. the mercora are like, literally as long as you come in peace and don’t serve the nesk we’ll let you in. the mercora are from a different planet that was sucked into a black hole (yoinks) and they love being on this planet! they’ll never let the nesk take over. then they’re like, what planet in the future are you from??

cassie starts to explain that they’re from earth and then shuts up real fast. tobias reaches out to everyone in private thought-speak. he’s like do not tell them that this is earth. slowly, it dawns on ax. the mercora and the nesk have the same fate as the dinosaurs.

we jump ahead a day and switch to marco’s perspective. the mercora have taken the animorphs in, made them a little house, speed-healed tobias’s wing, and fed them a lot of vegetables. (applegate takes the time to insert more creation myths, saying here that the mercora brought broccoli from their home planet.) ax has just finished talking with the mercora. they don’t have any technology that could recreate the explosion that could repair the sario rip.

but the nesk might! they’ve got guns and ships. they’ve been trying to wipe out the mercora with them, but they might have what the animorphs need to create a large explosion.

ding ding ding!! it’s time for another MORAAAL DILEMMAAAA

cassie doesn’t want to take sides in the mercora/nesk war! even if the mercora are harmless farmers and the nesk are Mean Ants, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they should get involved. marco points out that it would be easy - they could all use their dinosaur morphs. the nesk seem to like dinosaurs. rachel’s like, that’s a great idea. we’ll just run in and stomp some shit and cause an explosion.

cassie’s like, do i need to remind you that we could be altering the timeline of history???? butterfly effect anyone??? everyone turns to jake. he’s like why do I have to decide the things that could potentially wipe out the human race??? ax is like, well, we are already here. that could mean that whatever we do now is vital to the advancement of the human race. jake’s like oh cool that makes things much clearer!!!!

this decision may not be clear, tobias said quietly. but another decision may be so obvious we can’t ignore it.

no one asked what he meant because at that point some mercora showed up with more food. but i filed away his words. i filed them away in my head and i had the definite feeling i’d be double-clicking on that file again.

if the animorphs become responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs

i will simply lie prone on the ground

ax waxes poetic about how cool prince jake is, being so responsible and impressive for a youth. in the end, jake decides that they should go for it. they’ll get an explosive from the nesks, drop it in the ocean and attempt to repair the sario rip or die trying. at dawn, the mercora take the animorphs as close as they can to the nesk home base. as they’re speeding along, ax is like, hey just so you know, i don’t know exactly how to recreate the sario rip. it’s something i learned in school but it’s been a minute and i am just a child. everyone’s like you D o n’ t KNOW /??? but like

yeah i don’t remember half the things i learned in school either give him a break

it’s too late to back out now, though. the mercora drop them off five miles out from the nesk base. as they’re leaving, ax looks up and sees the comet has gotten much closer. hm! hope that doesn’t come up! the mercora give ax a thought-speak communicator. they’re like, you can use this to let us know how the mission goes. he’s like, are you going to help us? they’re like, nah. good luck!

well

they’ve dealt with worse

cassie doesn’t really want to be doing this, but she’s not gonna sit it out if her friends are going to be in danger. rachel, of course, cannot BELIEVE that everyone got a t-rex morph except for her (and tobias) but now’s not the time for arguing. they’re about to t-rex for the first time, and they’re gonna need rachel and tobias’s help keeping them in charge of the instincts. i’ll tell you this: turning into a t-rex is gross. all the morphs are gross, but there’s a distinct step in which cassie’s skin is too big for her body and it’s rough and reptilian and it doesn’t get any better from there.

of course, once the change is complete, marco and the others totally lose themselves. they chase rachel and tobias for a bit, and then charge towards a group of triceratops and start an absolutely unnecessary fight. marco snaps back into himself right around the time a triceratops shoves its little horns between his ribs. one of the t-rexes comes over, yanks the triceratops off of marco, and starts to just shake it in its mouth until it dies. the t-rex chucks the now dead triceratops and roars in triumph. marco’s like, jake, is that you?

jake’s like, no, it’s cassie. peaceful, reluctant cassie, trapped in the mind of the ultimate killer. everyone’s afraid. but jake is like, i know she won’t hurt me. everyone’s like you’re crazy!! she’ll kill you!!

no. she might annihilate this tyrannosaurus morph, i said. but she would never hurt me.

true love

he starts to demorph into human, which is, So Risky, but it works! once jake looks like jake again, she comes back to her senses. and immediately starts to panic. everyone’s like, it’s not your fault! you were lost in the morph it happens! she doesn’t want to stay in the t-rex morph, it feels gross and wrong and bad. even in the face of survival, she has standards, and to kill a creature senselessly goes against everything she is. marco tries to be like, that really doesn’t matter here! we’re trying to survive!

cassie stopped morphing. for awhile, no one said anything. then, at last, cassie said, you know something, marco? you’re my friend. i’d do almost anything for you. but you’re wrong. yeah, we’re just animals ourselves. but we’re the animals who can think. we’re the animals who can imagine something better than kill or be killed. i don’t think predators are immoral. i’m not an idiot, whatever you may think. but i’m a human, okay? and i have to think and care, and i have to feel things. otherwise i might as well be some gang banger, or a nazi, or or -

a yeerk, ax supplied.

i gotta say, this is a Golden character moment. applegate said fuck nazis!!! jake braces himself for marco’s comeback, but none comes. instead, as they head towards the nesk camp, marco privately thought-speaks to jake.

you know, jake? i see why you like that girl.

they reach the nesk base. it looks like a military base, with a handful of ships, a few storage buildings, and in the center, a mound of dirt where their ant queen lives. jake lays out the plan: rachel and ax will go to the warehouse to get a nuke, marco and tobias will flank to the left, cassie and jake will go to the right. grab the missile and get the fuck out. seems simple enough. what could possibly go wrong?

they step onto the base and start heading towards the warehouse. as they approach, ax starts to make a comment in thought-speech, and an alarm goes off. turns out the nesk have figured out how to make a thought-speak detector! ants start pouring out of the mound and the ground nearby. time is running out. marco and ax start pounding on the walls of the storeroom to knock it down. rachel starts digging through, looking for a nuclear weapon. and the rest of the animorphs turn towards the ships, ready to see what kind of punch these dinos are packin’.

tobias is ready to get in the fight. he and cassie take out one of the ships before it can even get off the ground. ax confirms that he and rachel have found an explosive weapon and jake tells them to start running. cassie and tobias head for another ship trying to take it out. tobias gets shot in the foot! there’s a lot of shooting going on, both from ships and from control towers. the dinos are doing what they can, but tobias gets shot a second time, and he collapses to the ground. cassie reaches out and plucks him up, carrying tobias in her mouth, and they start fucking booking it out of there. but they’re moving too slow. even as they take out another control tower, more ships start closing in.

rachel is learning how scary it is to run while carrying a nuclear weapon in her dinosaur hands. she catches a glimpse of her friends behind her. the nesk ships are directly above them. ax tells her he’s trying to get in contact with the mercora, but rachel has never been one to wait around. she turns just in time to see jake’s lower half get absolutely obliterated. gross! she charges forward just as another blast goes off.

but jake doesn’t die!

he’s protected by a force field! the mercora showed up to help after all! the nesk fire, the mercora fire, both ships explode. now there’s just one nesk ship and one mercora ship. the nesk ship decides to retreat, and the animorphs quickly demorph so they can board the mercora ship. as they step inside, rachel notices that each of the mercora is missing a leg. the cut-off legs have been lined up on a ceremonial cloth, and the mercora explain: it’s ritual to honor those lost, both the mercora and the nesk.

to be killed is a sadness. to kill is a sin.

damn

we cut to tobias taking a nice flight over the mercora valley city. he thinks about how kind they are, and how strange it is that there were alien wars over earth long before humans even existed. he spots his friends below, speaking with a clump of excited mercora. he swoops down to join them. turns out the nesk have left earth! their orbital ships came down and removed everything from the base. the animorphs think it’s because the nesk realized the mercora have new allies, but i - it’s probably the comet, right? the nesk probably learned about the comet? chekov’s comet???

turns out i’m kind of right

later that night, after the celebration of the nesk’s departure from earth, all the kids are sitting in their room, watching the comet streak across the sky. suddenly, there’s a bright light from the head of the comet. sirens start to go off. the mercora burst into the room. the nesk, it turns out, have diverted the comet’s trajectory so it will crash into the earth. the mercora could use the nuke the animorphs picked up, drop it on the comet head, and hope that that’s enough to fragment it enough to lessen its destructive impact.

ding ding ding it’s time for another moral dilemma!!!

can the animorphs give up their only ticket home to help preserve the mercora?? cassie, of course, is like we are only six people and they’re a whole civilization! marco’s like, we’re gonna give up our only ticket out of here?? no way?? jake tries to ask ax how much damage the comet will do if it hits earth. ax is distracted.

he was distracted by what i was telling him in private thought-speak. distracted by what i was asking him to do.

i love when ya novels do this shit

keep your secrets!! reveal them to me later!! i love it

cassie is surprised. when the mercora return, the animorphs hand over the nuke. it was a four to two vote - rachel and marco against, jake, cassie, tobias, and ax for. as soon as the mercora are out of the room, tobias tells everyone they need to morph bird and get out of there. they need to be far away when the comet hits. cassie’s like what?? the mercora are dropping our nuke on it. tobias is like, no. they’re not. i asked ax to fix the nuke so it won’t explode, and the mercora won’t know until it’s too late.

everyone just stares at him

tobias is like no time to explain. morph bird. we gotta go! cassie’s like WHAT DID YOU DO

i did what had to be done, all right?! tobias yelled in a sudden blaze of anger. i did what had to be done. i made the call, so that none of you would have to feel bad about it.

this episode is going to win us more emmys, i can feel it

they all start morphing. tobias has never really yelled at them before, and that carries a certain kind of power. he explains: it’s the cretaceous age. the last age of the dinosaurs. if there’s a comet coming towards earth, they can’t stop it. it’s like, The One Thing they know happens for sure. cassie is devastated, but she can’t really argue with his logic. everyone is really torn, but tobias is right. they have to get out of there. he made the call, and they can’t turn back on it now.

jake is angry, and his anger is proof that tobias made the right decision. jake understands what it’s like to be the one to have to make all the tough calls, and the relief he feels at not having to make this one makes him only angrier. ax explains what the comet will do, and it’s not gonna be pretty. their best bet is the ocean — regardless of the destruction, the comet’s impact will have the same amount of energy as the sub explosion did. it’s their only hope at recreating the sario rip. they fly, stopping every two hours to demorph and remorph, and head towards the ocean.

remember when these books were like, a ha price cut polly!!

but i guess even she died a brutal death so maybe these books have never been light

anyway

we veered out to sea. we landed in the water, hoping that we could avoid being eaten in the few minutes that remained. we morphed to dolphin, and waited for the world to end.

jesus

just like

they’re never gonna be able to talk about this with someone, you know?

don’t worry, it does get worse!

cassie decides to watch the comet impact the earth. the animorphs get ripped into space-time and watch the progression of the earth. like a videotape set to fast forward, they witness the death of the dinosaurs and the evolution of humans. applegate said darwin was right. and then, the animorphs are back in the ocean, back where they started. they trudge to the beach, demorph, and go home. that night, jake comes over. he tells her he tried to morph the t-rex and couldn’t, which is devastating news for me!!! he and cassie contemplate whether they made the right choice or not, and then sit, arms looped together, staring up at the stars.

the book ends with a little afterword from tobias. he’s like, i looked up dinosaurs when we got back, and some paleontologists believe that spinosaurus were extinct by the middle cretaceous age, and not the late cretaceous age, where we were. but i was almost eaten by a spinosaurus, so who are you going to believe?? scientists??? or your favorite bird-boy???

well

i think we all know the answer to that

REVIEW

3.5/5. lots of moral dilemmas in this one. pretty jam packed with some juicy bits for our two hour special, some great content for those tobachel/robias shippers, and the ever-haunting knowledge that the animorphs are responsible for dinosaurs.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• were you a dinosaur kid?

PREDICTIONS

• charlie’s prediction of an animorph death before book 20

• matt’s prediction of an animorph love triangle before book 20

that’s all i have for you this week, folks! boy howdy was it a doozy. dinosaurs!!! here’s a plug for my patreon - if you like the blog and you wanna support me, you can give me $5 a month. this blog will always remain free, of course, but you can help me buy coffee and give catelyn treats. til next time!!!