FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Written by brazy "birb" seeker

Inspired by K.A. Applegate's "Animorphs"

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CHAPTER 1

I started off as a normal kid, leading a normal boring kid life. I would go to school, go to the mall, explore out in the woods and abandoned places, then head home and be terrified about life and repeat. You know, normal teenager stuff. Don't we all start that way though? How long does it take for one's life to be flipped upside down, be it from school ending, a job, a loss, or anything else? Eventually, everything changes. Everything turns to shit no matter how much you plan ahead. I knew that would happen eventually, but I never could have expected it to go this way.

I found out about the Animorphs like everyone else on this side of the country. I was coming home from school when everything turned to chaos. People were running everywhere, cars speeding down the road and almost hitting me as I walked home, asking each other what they knew. I was very suddenly, very, very, interested.

See, I had a thing for chaos. I would tell myself I was a good kid, that I'm happier when everyone else is happy in their little delusions of perfection, but I wasn't. I really really wasn't. I had a lot of respect for humanity, I thought we could do great things, but at the same time, I wanted it all to burn to the ground. That's why I got so excited seeing people panicking and running around in the streets, it means something interesting is happening.

And boy was I right.

Someone stopped me on the street as I was jogging home by practically running straight into me. He was panicked and his eyes were wide with a mix of fear and excitement. "The world is ending, the aliens are here! The.. the spaceships, the fire, I saw it on the news, it's playing everywhere! I knew it, I knew it was coming, I knew we couldn't all be alone here! It's all BULLSHIT, AHAHAHAHAHA!"

He pushed off me hard and practically sprinted off down the road dodging through traffic, cackling like a maniac. I could respect that. It was safe to say my interest had been very much peaked. I picked up the pace, putting my other backpack strap on and quickly made my way home through the urban streets, watching the chaos of frantic drivers and people knocking on doors, others outside just looking up at the sky as if searching for something to come down on them.

I got home to find my parents already watching the TV, barely acknowledging I came in. That's pretty normal though, even if they weren't distracted by the end of the world. My parents always seemed to enjoy pretending I didn't exist.

I sat down on the other side of the couch away from my father and turned my attention to the screen. The signals had absolutely blown up. I grabbed the remote and switched through and sure enough, every single channel was transmitting the final battle. Most were government broadcasts and others were various duplicates of popular news networks. I picked the most exciting channel and stuck with it. Through the screen I saw the enormous space ships, fighters swarming all around them. It seemed like there were two different types of ships. Some were more elegant and organic looking, almost like they were born out of nature itself, while the others were hardened, made of sharp edges and dark colors. The video was shaky, those poor camera guys were probably scared out of their wits. It was amazing, for a moment I had even thought maybe it was all a prank, but not even the most advanced prankster could pull this off, not on this scale, it was like it was straight out of Star-Wars. My parents looked terrified, but I was ecstatic. I couldn't look away. I always knew stuff like that excited me, but something about this was different.

Within a day the whole world would know about the invasion, everyone would know we were no longer alone in this universe. I wish I could have seen that final epic battle in person, but knowing me I probably would have run straight into the action and gotten myself killed, so its probably better this way. I watched on, glued to the screen, so close I was probably giving myself some sort of eye cancer, but I didn't care.

The news anchor was talking about wild animals being everywhere, it seemed like nature itself was trying to fight the crazy alien dudes, and that's what I thought too until the camera zoomed in. It zoomed in on a huge tiger, its fur vivid orange and deep black, aside from the staining of blood. It had a large gash in its side and stumbled, falling. The camera watched on as the tiger began to shrink, fur thinning, almost like it was melting. I thought the tiger was being killed by some crazy invisible alien weapon, but that made no sense, the fighting was already calming down by the time I started watching. I didn't understand what was happening to the poor creature, I was scared to even watch. I didn't want to see an animal die. I've always felt more connected to animals than humans, after all, they deserve this place more than we do. I was worried, hugging a throw pillow and looking over it, almost ready to look away entirely, that was until the shrinking melting mass, it- this makes no sense, but, it started to look more and more... humanoid.

Then he said it, the news anchor. I'll never forget his words as long as I live.

"Hold on Hold on, this is big," the news anchor stated excitedly while walking cautiously up to the shrinking, disgusting lump of now more skin than fur-covered tiger "We have finally made contact with one of the creatures possibly responsible for the- wait, what the hell? Ahem, sorry. I..."

His voice faltered and broke, sounding stunned by something, watching entranced and speechless as soon the fleshy form turned more and more human right before his eyes, before all of our eyes. In less than a minute, the tiger was gone.

"It...it seems... Jesus, Carl! They're just kids! They aren't aliens at all!"

He paused again, bending away off screen, mumbling something inaudible to someone it seemed, before going completely out of frame. The fully healthy human, a boy who looked almost the same age as me which only a couple minutes prior was a critically injured Siberian tiger, stood up. He looked calm, too calm. He had a look in his eyes that only comes from aging hard and aging fast. I could tell he's seen a lot.

"We aren't the ones you're fighting.." was all the kid said before he started to back away carefully in a crouch, eyes darting from the camera to the anchor off screen, and he started to change again.

"Holy shit" I muttered under my breath, unable to do anything but watch "This isn't happening, this has to be fake..." He shrunk rapidly this time, his skin turning a light grey with complex layered patterns on it, then the feathers sprouted. They sprouted so fast I was startled almost, it was like huge overgrown hairs suddenly appeared on his whole body. His arms stretched out and I could tell they were becoming the wings of a bird of some sort, and no more than two minutes later, the longest two minutes of my life, a falcon looking bird was left in the place of a human. The bird stretched out its wings fully now and flapped hard, taking off into the air, and finally you could hear what seemed to be the cameraman yelling to get the anchor's attention, clearly the cameraman was too distracted by the incredible scene to say a word. The anchor suddenly ran back in frame, a cigarette held in his lips which he promptly spat out. "No no no no NO NO! COME BACK!" he yelled as he sprinted after the bird, jumping up and barely grazing the falcon's tail feathers with his microphone and landing at his knees. "DAMNIT!" he cried, starting to beat on the ground "Damnit damnit DAMNIT! Carl, what the hell just happened?!"

Any sense of professionalism from the anchor seemed to be lost at this point, his frustration was thick in the air. "Carl? You...you saw that too, right? The kid! He... he was a tiger, then a boy, then.. bird! You got all that, right?!" The camera seemed to nod in agreement, and the two of them started to talk about the insanity they just witnessed, but I had seen all I needed to.

I knew, right then and there, this was the start of a new world. I didn't even care about the secret war that was just uncovered. I had just witnessed a human being turn into an animal, a bird, and fly away. That was all I needed to know. God, what I would give to experience that. What was there that I wouldn't I give? I felt something well up inside me, an ecstatic, almost primal feeling of thrill words couldn't even begin to describe. I knew that I needed to find out how to do the same, to morph. At that moment, I didn't care what it took to get there.

I would do anything, I would give up everything to morph. My whole life, my home. I was only 17, but I felt like my whole life had just come into focus. I knew exactly what I wanted, exactly what I needed to do. It was everything I never knew I wanted.

While my parents were distracted by the news buzzing away I grabbed my backpack and ran upstairs, not that they would care anyway, and began dumping all my school stuff out. I filled it with whatever I thought I needed for the day. A change of clothes, my toothbrush, some snacks, and of course my Walkman with a change of batteries and a few of my favorite tapes. I ran over to my dad's office and with the key I knew he kept under his lamp I unlocked a drawer. Inside there was a white envelope labeled "grocery" and I snatched it up. I was ready for anything and I needed to talk to someone NOW, the only person in the world who would understand what I was feeling at that very moment. I snuck out my window and headed for the woods right outside of town. I didn't even bother calling first, I just headed towards the hideout where I knew this person would be, if not already there waiting for me, my mind swimming with thoughts.