ANIMORPHS #25: THE EXTREME
"are you developing a sense of humor? if so, stop it, okay?"
hi hello everyone and welcome back to animorphs weekly, something something something something. look, they can’t all be hits, okay?
wanna read a book?
SO MANY YEERKS, SO LITTLE TIME. . . .
if i was really good at this blogging thing, i’d do some research to see what exactly was happening in pop culture at the time these books were released. i’m just so curious as to why it took us 25 books to get “so many yeerks so little time” because that, my friends, is a goldmine tagline. i also have questions about the cover photoshoots: do you think they had these kids just take all 54 book cover photos in one go? just like “ok now stand as if you know you’re going to turn into a polar bear, okay great, good, now turn a little to the left and think rattlesnake. excellent awesome i think we got it.”
these are all hypothetical questions obviously i don’t want to know anything about the process i’d like to keep my belief that these books simply appeared out of the sky
it’s a marco book!
SUMMARY
big news everyone: marco got a date. and not just any date, but a date with the most beautiful girl in the whole school. her name is marian, she likes classical music, and she asked marco out. they were leaving their music appreciation class together (aw) and marian revealed she had tickets to symphony hall this sunday afternoon to listen to beethoven’s third! she asks marco if he’d like to accompany her, and of course he says yes. she gives him her number, touches him on the shoulder, and walks away before he can completely dissolve.
she’s also,,,probably not totally human,,,right?
not to rain on marco’s parade but like,,,the odds are against him here
of course, marco recognizes this, too. after explaining how his life is so totally not normal because he’s an animorph, he starts to think about the possibility of marian being one of them. smart! stay paranoid!
we cut to the monday after The Big Date. cassie and marco are in the gym for study hall (“they’d closed our usual classroom. something about asbestos and lawsuits.” public school!) and cassie asks marco how it went. well! pretty bad. he hates classical music and he fell asleep halfway through. cassie laughs (same) and tells marco it’s probably for the best. and then cassie reveals to marco that they did keep tabs on marian, just in case. according to ax and tobias, marian never went to the entrance of a yeerk pool! so that’s good!
before marco can really unpack how he feels about his friends spying on his potential-girlfriend, a shadow falls over them.
it was a kid my age. he was a little bit taller than i am - which, i’ll admit, is how it is with most people. his warm, confident smile made you want to like him immediately.
but i knew better. see, this particular likeable-looking kid wasn’t a kid, and his smile wasn’t a smile. erek didn’t attend our school. erek didn’t attend the human race.
A N C I E N T E R E K R E T U R N S
i love when ancient erek shows up because you know some absolute batshit bananas events are about to go down.
and they are!
ancient erek extends his hologram to cover cassie and marco, and then he gets down to business. according to the chee’s sources, the yeerks are trying to develop a way to broadcast kandrona rays using human satellite technology. if they manage to do this, they can turn every backyard swimming pool in the world into a yeerk pool, which would be bad news bears. (he also reveals that he and the chee helped the animorphs on their “spy on marian” mission, and concurs with cassie: marian was not marco’s type. there’s a joke made about how ancient erek loves beethoven - because he knew him! so ancient!)
that afternoon, everyone meets in the barn to discuss what they know. there’s another comment about how weirdly hot ax’s human morph is, but the majority of the scene is focused on ancient erek divulging what the chee know about the location of the large satellite the yeerks are building. it is, unfortunately, not much. but! they do know the location of visser three’s feeding field, and they know a bug fighter is set to come pick him up and take him to the large satellite’s location. all the animorphs have to do is sneak aboard the blade ship. easy pease. sort of.
tobias points out that the animorphs can’t just disappear for a few days. the satellite could be on the other side of the world. but ancient erek might have a solution. he and three of the chee will just reprogram their holograms to appear like the human animorphs! what could go wrong!
the next morning, the animorphs fly towards the visser’s feeding field. he’s there, alright, galloping around, protected by a half-dozen human controllers and a pair of hork-bajir. one by one, the animorphs land in the trees surrounding the field. marco hops from tree to tree until he’s about a hundred feet from the visser, and then he demorphs and remorphs from osprey to human to fly. lots of use of the word “SCHLOOP” and fingers protruding from shoulders here.
once all the animorphs have turned into flies, they regroup in the field and begin phase two of the plan: hitch a ride on visser three’s underbelly. after a little chase sequence, everyone is secure on visser three! the blade ship arrives, and visser three and a taxxon have a brief conversation about estimated departure and arrival times. as the visser boards the ship, ax translates. the ride is going to be three and a half hours long! everyone bursts into groans and complaints.
the reason we weren’t happy to hear this news, of course, is that it meant we were going to have to demorph at some point in flight. somewhere aboard a ship occupied by taxxons and hork-bajir and visser three.
yoinks, scoob!
tobias is immediately like, three and a half hours?? where are we going??? the moon???? not the moon. the taxxon didn’t say exactly where they were going, but ax will try to suss it out as they move. visser three is greeted by a taxxon, and he asks if all the venber are on board. with twice as many venber, the project can be completed in half the time! what’s a venber? nothing, what’s a venber with you
you knew what you signed up for
visser three moves into the captain’s quarters, a room that consists of one (1) computer console and some instruments of torture. no joke! time ticks on. the animorphs come up with two plans. plan a involves visser three leaving the captain’s room voluntarily, giving them time to demorph and remorph. that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon, so the animorphs resort to plan b. (before they do this, marco tries to tell a blonde joke at rachel’s expense, and tobias chimes in to remind everyone that he’s technically a blonde, too. “yeah, for a couple hours a week,” marco says. will someone please ask tobias about his dad)
ax does his best visser three impression and summons a guard to the visser’s chambers. they do this three times until the visser grows so annoyed with the interruptions that he charges at the hork-bajir and out of the room, giving the animorphs just enough time to demorph. the first part goes just fine. everyone returns to their normal state, takes a few deep breaths, and then starts to go back to fly. marco and ax take the longest, which is why they’re the two that get caught by a wandering taxxon. ax tries to pretend to be visser three, but the taxxon isn’t fooled. so ax resorts to murder.
that’s what it is!
he slices the taxxon in half. this is definitely going to lead to some questions, so jake tells ax to morph to fly. (also, one half of the taxxon begins to eat the other half. they are dedicated cannibals, which is a terrifying phrase applegate strung together, probably with a content smile on her face.) the animorphs buzz out of the control room. there are strips of light on the ceiling, leading to different parts of the ship. they each have a distinct color, but flies aren’t great with color. there’s no time to think, though, because visser three is back and he’s pissed. the andalite bandits are on board, and the yeerks are now under strict orders to find them. ax picks a strip of light and the animorphs fly!
they end up in a storage bay, which is the safest part of the ship. for now. they start to demorph — since the yeerks know about insect morphs, or at least suspect that the andalite bandits have them, nobody wants to die by the hands of insecticide. as they’re demorphing, marco notices what’s in the storage bay. ten glass cylinders, each ten feet tall, containing a vague, silver body. ax thinks they look like the venbers visser three mentioned earlier — but that would be impossible, ax says, because the venber have been extinct for thousands of years.
yeah, and you are all responsible for the evolution of the human race, so impossible went out the window a long time ago
the venber are a race from a frozen moon, and didn’t live long enough to evolve past primitive tool use (according to the andalites). they lived in incredibly cold conditions, which might be relevant to whatever the visser is planning on using them for. but there’s no time to hypothesize about that. the ship is landing, and the animorphs need to get battle ready. three doors into the storage bay open, revealing a metric fuckton of hork-bajir and one very pleased visser three.
the animorphs don’t have a lot of time. marco realizes there must be a fourth door in the room, and ax confirms. it leads to the exterior of the ship, but it’s locked with a control pad, and ax doesn’t have time to decode the key. no problem. marco’s got giant fists as a gorilla. jake gives the order: the next time visser three speaks, rachel will slam into one of the canisters, marco will go for the door, and the rest will dive straight for visser three.
of course, visser three immediately opens his big ol mouth, and everything gets hectic. marco punches out the keypad and rips the door open. jake, cassie, ax, and tobias head for the visser, getting caught in a whirlwind of hork-bajir blades. rachel slams her grizzly body over and over into one of the cylinders until it cracks, releasing the mist that’s inside. it’s a cold mist. like, freezing cold. like, hork-bajir limbs get frozen solid and shattered. rachel’s fur freezes and snaps off. one by one, the animorphs escape through the door. (rachel loses a foot along the way, so tally that up on the Lost Limb Whiteboard.)
the animorphs tumble out of the bladeship and onto frozen ground. so cold! marco’s skin tears as he pulls away from the ice! tobias can see a town about a mile away, but that’s all he can deliver before the cold makes him go unconscious. they think they might be in alaska, which is horrifying, but also, get a moose morph!!
the animorphs start to stagger towards the town. it is Not Looking Good. tobias and ax have to morph to flea to hide among rachel’s grizzly. (she demorphs and remorphs to get that foot back, of course.) it’s brutal. everyone’s bloody, the wind is tearing at them, and marco slowly starts to lose consciousness. he sinks into the snow and starts to fall asleep, but then rachel smacks him in the face with her grizzly paw. it’s enough to get him back, at least long enough to morph to wolf. it’s not ideal, but it’s the best cold weather morph they have. now that everyone’s a wolf (except tobias and ax, who are still fleas), they’re a little more stable. they know time is not on their side. they need to reach the base and hope that the yeerks don’t get them first.
a new scent on the wind catches their attention. they can see two humanoid creatures about eight feet tall with heads the same shape as a hammerhead’s. their arms split into two forearms at the elbows. grody! they have ski-like feet and they’re shimmering.
i do not believe it, ax cried. a perfect description of a venber!
for sure
they’re skating right towards the wolves, with huge guns in their hands. ax reveals that the venbers have sophisticated echolocation, so hiding is futile. one of their weaknesses is temperatures above freezing, which would be helpful if they weren’t all stuck in the snow. once the venbers are about fifty feet away, they hoist their big tubes into the air and aim them at the animorphs. they shoot — turning the rocks above the animorphs into gravel.
holy! jake yelled. what are those things?
dracon assault cannons, ax replied. they are used for attacking hardened ground facilities from orbit.
sick!
a chase begins! the animorphs run along a nearby slushy shoreline, with the venbers close behind. every so often, the venber take aim, decimating the scenery. ax says that it would be impossible for a yeerk to control a venber - they’d freeze to death inside the venber’s body - so they must be controlling them by some other means. after an hour, the animorphs seem to lose the venbers.
no way they gave up, tobias said. we have to keep moving.
so says the flea all nice and warm in his honey’s back fur, i muttered.
what did you say? rachel demanded. i guess she was shocked that i’d dare to make any remark suggesting she and tobias were more than just friends and animorphs. like that was some big secret.
seriously rachel he flies into your room every night and does your homework we all know
ax points out that they only have twenty minutes left in morph. they find an alcove, and one by one, demorph and remorph. they have to huddle together for warmth, and marco waxes poetic about the animal instinct and need for human touch. remember touch? soon….soon…….
once they’ve all remorphed, replacing their frostbitten flesh with new, ready to be frostbitten flesh, jake makes a plan. the venber are probably still tracking them, but they’ll need to find somewhere to hide for the night. they won’t be able to stay out in the open, especially since the sun is starting to go down. it’s only going to get colder.
they move along the shoreline. in the distance, they can still smell the venber hunting. the sun starts to disappear beyond the horizon. the animorphs come across a polar bear, chilling on the ice. confirmed: they’re in the arctic! so, so far away from home. they observe the polar bear, and then the polar bear starts to observe them. well! polar bears would obviously win in a fight against wolves, so the animorphs start to trot away!
cassie’s fun animal facts: polar bears are the largest land predator in the world. (grizzlies aren’t true predators, no matter how tough rachel feels, because they eat berries.) the more you know!
the animorphs dig a little lair in a snowdrift. (lair here is a fancy word for wet hole.) they spend the night huddled together, taking the time every two hours to demorph and remorph. eventually, marco asks ax to tell them what he knows about the venber.
venber facts, as described by ax:
primitive species with no need for radiant energy
not carbon-based (obviously)
discovered by The Five
the click five? just the venber i’ve been looking for?
anyway
The Five was a race way back in the dawn of andalite space travel
no one knows what The Five means, that’s just what they called themselves
The Five found the venber, trapped them, and exported them. like, harvested.
venbers become liquid at temperatures above freezing, and The Five used this liquid to create superconductors for their primitive computers
yoinks
even more horrifying? ax speculates that the yeerks were able to to retrieve venber genetic material (since their home planet is a frozen moon) and combined the venber DNA with another species to create a hybrid.
what else? cassie asked.
ax hesitated. you would want to use a species with the most complex dna structure available. it would make it easier to attach new dna.
and what creature would that be? tobias asked.
of the species available to the yeerks? ax said. humans. those venber may be a hybrid of venber… and humans.
WE GOT OURSELVES A HORROR MOVIE, FOLKS
there really is something primal and terrifying about the cold, you know?
the rest of the night passes slowly. it’s pretty freaky. at some point, ax and tobias have to demorph and stay human because they’re really starting to lose it as fleas. which….feels like a good time to remember that they’re all like, 13.
do you think tobias is going to start calling him uncle ax?
the sun rises and marco peers out of their little lair. the venbers are still on the wind, and so is their polar bear friend. they watch him seal hunt in the ice. it is Truly horrifying. he like, slams into the ice to make a hole and catches a seal, and the animorphs are like there’s simply no way that seal is going to fit through that hole!!!
he pulled it out anyway. the process made for instant, shredded seal.
it’s Rough. the polar bear leaves the carcass behind. everyone’s like…well….we haven’t eaten in…so long….and then everyone turns to look at cassie. she’s like ???? what ???? everyone’s like well we are So Hungry
i noticed that, cassie said, a little annoyed. it’s obvious what we have to do. and not just to the bear’s leftovers, but to any live seal we can find. what i don’t understand is why you’re asking me for permission. do you guys think i’d put an animal’s life over yours? or mine, come to think of it? … here’s a clue. don’t kill a sentient creature except in absolute self-defense, try not to wipe out endangered species, and if you’re going to raise animals for food, treat them as well as you possibly can. but when you’re a wolf, a starving wolf wandering around the frozen arctic, and you see a meal, eat it.
anyone who has spoken to me while i was hungry has experienced anger on this level first-hand and i would like to issue a formal apology: My Bad
the wolves (and the fleas) approach the carcass and go to town. i’m sure there will be no psychological ramifications! once they’ve finished eating, they take a minute to talk. they still need to destroy that satellite — right, remember, the satellite that could effectively render the yeerk pool needless and make it impossible for the animorphs to Know who is a yeerk and who is not. more importantly, they need to acquire some cold-weather morphs. there are some arctic foxes chilling behind them, and then, in the water, two little baby seals poke their heads up.
they’re looking for their mother, cassie said.
their mother? their mother was…
breakfast!
using their dolphin morphs, cassie and marco manage to wrangle one of the baby seals onto the ice. everyone takes a turn acquiring the dna, and then they roll that fat little chonker back into the ocean. it’s morphin’ time! lots of cracking bones. and then they’re warm! it’s awesome! but not for long!
TSEEEEEEEEEEW!
the venber are back, baby! the animorphs waddle to the edge of the water. cassie points out that the venber must have seen them morphing, which is bad news bears. if the venber know they’re humans, they def can’t be allowed to reach the yeerks again. the animorphs slip into the water and start swimming towards the yeerk base. if they can destroy the base, they won’t have to worry about the venber snitching on them to the yeerks OR the satellite.
jake reasoned, kill two birds with one stone, as they say. sorry, tobias.
he’s fine
but this is an animorphs book so peace is a short-lived gasp for air. suddenly, the seals are being attacked by two orcas! there’s a lot of frantic swimming and hopping back onto the ice. cassie tells everyone to demorph - orcas hunt seals, not humans - so everyone rolls onto the ice and demorphs. marco says a Lot of bad words and then discovers that the animorphs are not alone.
in a little fishing boat along the water sits a boy, absolutely bewildered at the sight of four kids, one bird, and an andalite emerging from the bodies of seals. after a moment of silence, he asks if they’re spirits.
honestly, a reasonable guess
he offers marco a sealskin blanket, and then the others as they approach. the kid’s got jokes, too: tobias explains that he’s a red-tailed hawk (a common species) and then the boy turns to ax and asks, “you a common species too?” funny! and good news. if the boy was a controller, he’d absolutely know what an andalite was. unless…
he introduces himself as derek (a name neither marco nor i was expecting). he asks if they have anything to do with the station that’s being built. jake tries to explain. if the station folk are the bad guys, then they’re the good guys who have come to destroy it. derek’s pretty chill with that. he’s like, hell yeah. hope you do it soon before nanook sticks his nose in there and gets it shot off. everyone’s like who’s nanook? derek’s like i’m sure you’ve seen him. he’s an old friend of mine. big, white fur, huge paws?
the laugh track goes off
“well, here’s a really insane question,” i said brightly. “do you think we could pet him?”
the laugh track goes off again, harder this time
derek leads the animorphs to nanook. rachel and marco morph grizzly and gorilla, respectively, and then do their best to wrestle nanook to the ground. it’s tough, but they’re tougher! once they’ve got him pinned, everyone acquires the polar bear. derek says there’s a storm coming, so he and the animorphs part ways. bye derek!
being a polar bear is fucking awesome. they’re tall, they’re warm, and they’re strong as hell. the animorphs lumber towards the base, demorphing when necessary, until they’re about a half-mile out. derek’s promised storm (which is also a sick band name) starts to howl. jake suggests they attack from the water. cassie wants to know what they’re going to do about the venbers. marco wants to know how they’re going to destroy the base. all good questions.
they march in a single file line towards the base. once inside, the venber pay no attention to them. they’re just swinging their little tools, bending metal with their venber hands. neat. and then a human controller steps out. she sees six polar bears, and she does the normal thing: scream. jake gives the order: run for the hangar! someone else gives an order: program the vender!
that explains much, ax said.
the polar bears book it towards the hangar. the venber book it towards the polar bears. one of them knocks jake flat on his ass, and another sends tobias spinning. one runs towards marco, and he digs his claws in, coming to an abrupt stop. the venber, clumsy, goes flying through the side of the hangar, opening a hole in the wall. cassie and marco haul ass after him.
and he is melting
it’s, like everything else in the book series, tragically horrifying. even in death, the venber can’t ignore its programming, so as it melts it reaches towards cassie and marco, dutiful til the bitter end. cassie and marco are frozen, watching their friends run in through the hole in the wall and watching the venber run in after them, each one melting, unable to avoid its death. rachel yells for them to come on. the other animorphs have boarded one of the bug ships parked in the hangar, and marco and cassie follow suit. everyone demorphs. ax takes pilot, marco takes weapons, and they slowly destroy the base. they shoot the satellite, the other bug fighter, the buildings, the vehicles. (they give the human controllers time to run from building to building, so they’re just left in the cold, but not dead. yet.)
and then they’re out of there. the blade ship tries to intercept them, but the animorphs destroy the bug ship they’re on and fly away. it takes them two days to get home, hiding out on trains and trucks, flying when they can. they talk about the two venber who might still be alive, but not every loose end can be tied up. they make it home, relieving the chee of their holographic duties, and marco compartmentalizes his experience, because, as he says, “you can’t be in a war and think about all the stuff that happens.”
amen, brother
REVIEW
4/5. better than the last book. some of these middle books sort of feel like weird filler—i guess introducing the weird DNA mishmash of the venber sort of shows what horrors the yeerks are capable of. and we learned about the five, that ancient alien race that will probably come back. and they all got polar bear morphs. not all was lost.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
do you think The Five will have a hand in the yeerks’ destruction?
will tobias ever call ax uncle ax?
what cold weather morph would you prefer?
PREDICTIONS
marco’s mom will Return
also tobias’s mom
Mom v Mom
that’s all i have for you this week, folks. i’m tired. it’s been a long week. lemon it’s only tuesday. i said what i said. be kind to yourself, drink some water, and if you live in chicago, reach out to your alderman and make sure they support ecps. ok. love u all. bye.