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Disclaimer: I do not own any of the original characters or species or worlds that K.A. created, or anything that I specifically state as not being mine, as in I quote it from somewhere legitimate.
Claimer: I own everything else. The universe that is going to be created here, the cultures, the people, the dialect, everything. Therefore: do not take anything, because it is possible to track people. IP addresses can be logged.
:grins to not scare everybody away but nods emphatically to make people realize that she is serious:
A-cat and DH
The only two reviewers
Who started with me in The Elemaki Chronicles
And stayed with me
Through it all.
“I have been to another world, and come back. Listen to me.” - Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Tom. Couldn’t you get a shorter address? I know it’s very business-like and all, none of that bballing243325 at wherever dot com, but it’s still rather annoying to have to type it all in.
Anyway, whatever. I hope that you get this email soon, because I’m having issues with Alexa. She’s mad because I conscripted everyone into our temporary army except John, who is going to be the only civilian in this group. People are already calling him “the first Kyan,” isn’t that funny?
Anyway, I need you to work your charm on her, okay? Remind her what a nice guy you are, and maybe she’ll give. Although probably not. She’s a tough little nyasha. Ssintha slang for creature, in case you haven’t picked up the fact that all the Ssintha on board are calling us nyasha.
You’re probably rolling your eyes right now, Tom, but seriously. We’re going to need everybody we can get in our army wherever we land, and I’m going to depend on you heavily. And I know you’re guilt-tripping yourself for owning the hand that tortured me, but really, forget about it. You didn’t do anything.
Okay, ttyl,
Maya
My name is Maya.
Princess Maya.
On Earth, I had been Maya Lancing, the seventh Animorph, after I had taken the last name of my adoptive mother. And on the Andalite Home World, I had been Mayanmar-Semitur-Aventa, daughter of Alloran-Semitur-Corass and Saranai, an Elemaki.
But now, I was War-Princess Maya of the Nadar, Princess of a bloodthirsty people who loved - lived - to fight and kill.
I had been with Rachel when she went on the Blade Ship to kill Tom, but I had survived only to be killed a little bit everyday in torture by Tom’s hand, Tom and his Yeerk who I had saved.
A sudden attack on the Blade Ship had allowed me and a number of hosts and three changed Yeerks to flee on a small transport ship. We had escaped into the night sky, and then we met the people who had attacked the Blade Ship. The people who had, in a sense, freed us.
I looked at my clear skin, marveling at the lack of blood and wounds and cuts. I had morphed and demorphed, and was wearing a simple white dress type of clothing that I could tie a belt around and then leave alone.
I was talking to Keav, a Cambodian woman whose expertise in piloting had her in the cockpit at almost all hours. Jeremy, the young Briton who had led us all out of the Blade Ship, was at the tactical station, running his hands happily over the controls of the ship’s Dracon cannon.
“Guns,” Jeremy had explained to me during the short time after we were first freed, when we were getting to know each other. “I’ve always loved them. Not for the idea of killing, or the ‘feeling of power’ some loonies say they get. A gun as a gun, a simple, perfect instrument of death. I came to the States because… there are a lot of reasons, but the one I like to tell people is because you can buy weapons far more easily here. I kept a little shop open, selling firepower to anyone with money. Ironic that by giving those around me the power to kill, I could make enough money to live. In my spare time, I just tinkered with the guns and perfected my aim. I got into the Sharing at a time when people were acting rationally and not trying to kill each other – i.e., I was skint. This organisation of random smiling people offered to help me out. Heh… help indeed. My little arsenal was converted into an infesting centre, and I began to shoot Dracons instead of bullets.”
Keav’s story was harrowing. “I was about seven years old during the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot and the Angkar."
“Who for those who don’t know their history were a bunch of psychotic loons who’d put you to death for wearing glasses,” put in Jeremy for the benefit of the surrounding Nadar.
"They massacred my entire family," Keav continued, with a nod. "Either by starving them or through disease or by shooting them when they found out we weren’t originally of peasant origin. Only my brother, Kim, and I survived. My brother and I became Nadar when we tried to kill a drunken soldier when I was around ten, and Kim was around eight.”
I never asked her whether she succeeded, or asked Jeremy the exact moment that hebecame a Nadar. They didn’t ask me about my past either. We only asked each other enough to know that we were Nadar, bound by our same rage and hatred.
“A ship is hailing us,” Keav said suddenly, and I felt the tension rise in the cockpit as Jeremy turned towards the control panel, priming and arming every weapon he could find. I felt instinctively for my Dracon beam. I had taken it off of Tom, Tom who was still a Controller because his Yeerk refused to leave.
The screen flickered on and for a moment I went into shock as I looked into Jenny the Chee’s concerned eyes. Jenny? What was she doing here? Eric had told me that she had been destroyed during the raids that the Yeerks had made on Earth during the Animorph War…
“Maya!” she cried out, her hologram’s eyes somehow conveying feelings of relief. “You’re alive!”
I stared back at her, Jeremy and Keav looking at me curiously. “Who the hell’s this?” asked Jeremy in a reasonable voice.
“Eric told me you were destroyed,” I said to the Chee that I had met in middle school when I had first gone to school on Earth.
Jenny shook her head and laughed. “We escaped. Remember? The five of us, us five Chee that wanted to do more than just surveillance? We left before the Chee were trapped underground and we stole an Andalite ship that the Yeerks had captured and we wandered around until we found -”
She was cut off as a familiar Andalite face filled the screen.
Solethi. The Andalite who had helped me, a half-Elemaki, a member of an inferior race on the Andalite Home World, escape the Andalites who would take me to be a factory slave on an undefended moon. He had shown me how to get to the Island, a place of relative safety for escaped Elemaki.
I had ended up on a factory in the end, but I never forgot how Solethi, the first 3rd generation Nadar I had ever met, was the only Andalite to have shown me kindness. A 3rd gen Nadar, like Rachel, who had loved to fight from an inborn desire rather than a love that was an environmental and circumstantial product like the 1st and 2nd gen Nadar.
I was a first generation Nadar. After my life, it was rather difficult not to be.
(Come onboard the Liberty,) Solethi told me. (We have plenty of room.)
I nodded, giving permission to Keav, as I smiled back at him, having no words to say. Yes, liberty always had plenty of room.
We docked into the larger ship, and I rushed to embrace both Solethi and Jenny, words gushing from my lips as I told them everything that had happened to me. Their love and awe was real as they saw my thirty some freed hosts come into the new ship.
And then I told them about Tom, and how his Yeerk wouldn’t leave him, and Jenny’s eyes flashed. “I have an idea.”
I watched as the holograph of me, still chained up as I had been on the Blade Ship during my month of torture, struggled uselessly against the shackles. Another holograph of the One was placed opposite of my image, and then Jenny, who was creating the images, waited for Tom and his Yeerk to wake up.
I saw Tom slowly get up, and then look around as if dazed. I knew his eyes were seeing the feeding room in the Blade ship, effectively simulated by Jenny.
“I am very displeased with you,” a voice said quietly from the amorphous black shape of the One who was shifting and turning.
Tom cowered, which I could certainly understand. The One held power over Tom, over anyone near him, really, by her ability to absorb creatures and keep them within herself. I had spent the last week or so cowering from the same black form, and even now I almost trembled even though I knew that it was Jenny who was generating the sound waves to replicate one of the many voices of the One.
“I apologize,” Tom’s mouth said, his head bent to the ground. “The rebels…” he started, and then corrected himself. “The girl attacked me…”
“She almost escaped.” The One’s voice echoed throughout the ship. “I recaptured her, with no help from you!”
I was taking a risk by having the One assume a position of command over Tom. They had maintained a tricky balance of sharing power back in Blade Ship, and I knew that now that Tom was gone from the Blade Ship, the One would take the lead.
Tom prostrated himself further, and I could see his body start to shake. Hah, I sneered to the Yeerk who inhabited Tom’s head. Let’s see you withstand the torture that you gave me for the past month.
“You have failed,” the One said quietly. “Return to the feeding pool.”
Tom’s Yeerk hesitated, which was to be expected. Who knew what would happen to him once he left the safety of his human host? But I wasn’t going to leave freeing Tom up to chance or to the probability that Tom’s Yeerk would obey the One.
Two Hork-Bajir who had escaped with the rest of us came forward at my signal and grabbed Tom roughly and forced his head above what appeared to be the Yeerk pool, but what was really a simple human bucket filled with the sludge that contained nutrients for the Yeerk to live on.
The rest of us tensed up, waiting for the Yeerk’s next move, hoping and praying that he wouldn’t morph. I saw Tom’s eyes flick to the holograph of me, seemingly exhausted and hopeless, before a gray slug pushed its way out of Tom’s ear.
I held my breath, waiting for the plop that would tell me that the Yeerk had dropped into the bucket, and when it came, I released it, and with that sigh of relief, the holographs dropped and the One and the image of my tortured self was gone.
“NO!” I heard Tom shout, as he instantly began fighting the Hork-Bajir who looked at me, unsure of what to do with him. I indicated that they should set him on his feet, and then told them to leave him.
At the sound of my voice, Tom turned his now tearstained face towards me in dumbfounded awe. “But I thought…” he whispered. “I thought…”
I knew how I appeared to him. For the first time in a month I was clean, not covered in blood or wounds. My hair was neatly braided and bound back with a force field band and I was wearing a rough, simple outfit made of white, fluffy leaves that had been found by one of the ex-Controllers in the grazing area of the Andalite ship that Jenny, the other Chee, Solethi and another Andalite who I didn’t know, had come on.
I was healthy and whole.
I rushed towards Tom who opened his arms to embrace me. I clung to his warm, strong body and breathed into his chest, holding him as tightly as I could.
He stepped back after a long long moment, and asked with wonder and joy at the same time, “What happened?”
“We escaped,” I told him simply. “I knocked you out after the Blade ship was hit by the ship that Jenny came on, and then with Jeremy’s help we went into the feeding area and freed as many hosts in the cages as we could before escaping on one of the transporting shuttles.”
“Jeremy?” he asked. “How could he help you… oh… wait… he was one of the Yeerks that was helping you? My Yeerk knew that there was at least one who had ‘turned traitor’ as he called it, but he didn’t know who it was.”
I didn’t respond, but continued to look at him, watching his face grow brighter as his hope returned. Tom then took his hand and placed it gently, tenderly on my face, holding it up.
I felt a flash of fear when he raised his hand, remembering too many times when it had come down with force, and so was almost surprised when he lifted my face to his so gently. We stood a few inches apart, and then he moved down, and I felt him kissing me, and felt me kissing him back.
I heard the cheers and the mock scolding as we kissed, but it didn’t enter into my brain. Only Tom did, with his gentle touches, so different from what I was used to receiving from his hands.
We stopped, and I almost grabbed at his hand that was leaving my face.
“Promise me,” I whispered to him, “That this hand will never hurt me again.”
His eyes spoke to me of his regret and sorrow, as he nodded, and said, “I promise,” before coming down for another kiss.
Relief flooded through my body, and I almost collapsed onto the floor. Tom held me up, as my body and legs gave way, and I leaned into him, letting myself willingly depend on someone else for once in my life.
All the stress and tension of the last month had built up to this moment, and the adrenaline which had been keeping me going before faded away. I felt others gather around me, and heard Alexa, one of the humanoid like creatures who had come on the ship with Jenny, say, “We need to get her to someplace where she can sleep.”
Yes, I thought dimly as Tom picked me up as if I weighed almost nothing, carrying me to someplace where I could rest. Sleep sounds good.
The world faded away as I relaxed in Tom’s arms.
Or to be more accurate, I slept and was fed food.
I was treated like a princess, Earthling style, and if I hadn’t been so weak I would have probably protested it. My body didn’t need it, I had morphed the wounds away, but the others insisted that my mind needed it. I didn’t fight back too hard; I was willing to wait and relax and rest.
Tom visited almost everyday, with reports of what was happening. Apparently the former Controllers had mixed in with the newcomers and were all living communally, although Tom told me that they would need more formal government if anything beyond just plain living was to be done.
So I got up.
I wandered outside my bedroom, and the People greeted me.
“Greetings, Princess,” a girl said shyly, as I first stepped out. I smiled and touched her hair lightly.
I meandered slowly through the crowd, stopping to touch a face here, shake a hand there. Some embraced me, and I hugged these strangers back, knowing that I would probably be spending the rest of my life with them.
“Hey, Maya,” a voice called, and I turned to see Jeremy waving. I walked through the milling people to grab his hand to shake it, but our grasp quickly turned into an embrace.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “We would have never made it out if it weren’t for you.”
He didn’t say anything, simply held me until our embrace ended. Then he turned around and I saw that five others who all came up to me.
No one said anything for a few minutes. We simply looked at each other, and I drank in the presence of six other beings who through odd connections and random meetings, I would be working more closely with than the others.
“Let’s get to know each other a little. Our names, our ages, dreams and hopes for the future, that kind of thing,” I suggested lightly, and the others laughed. Of course. Of course.
“I’m Jeremy, and I’m twenty-two. I can never remember my dreams when I wake up, and I’d rather leave the future to itself.”
“I’m Keav, and I’m twenty-four. My dreams and hopes are not really worth mentioning.”
Each Nadar answered, each in their own way – some jokingly, like Jeremy, some deadly serious – like Keav.
“I’m Tom. I’m eighteen. I... hope that I can undo everything that my Yeerk did,” he said, looking at me. I smiled at him.
“I’m Maya,” I said, with the same smile. “I’m sixteen. And you should all be able to guess the rest.”
“I am Alexa,” the girl who had been with Jenny said. She looked about seventeen or so. “I’m twenty-six - ”
Everyone looked up in surprise. “Twenty-six?”
She laughed, showing her teeth. “It’s a long story. First, I know I look like a human, but I’m not – I’m a Biolex. An Arn created me, at first just for fun, and then specifically for you.”
“For me?” I said uncertainly. She nodded. “Yes. He created all of us, actually.” Alexa waved out at the crowd. “There are more Biolex out there. He created me first, which is why I’m older, but he crafted me to be a seventeen year old human girl. So mentally, I’m twenty-six, but physically, I’m seventeen.”
We took this in, and then I asked, “So… what’s the difference between you and a human?”
Alexa answered by closing her eyes. Suddenly, an enormous pair of white, feathery wings shot out of her back, startling us.
“I can fly,” the Biolex told us. “And I can’t die.”
We stared at her. “Um... you can’t die?” asked Jeremy uncertainly.
“That’s correct. I’m biologically immortal. If you chop off my head, it’ll regenerate. I’m seventeen forever, basically.”
“Hyperfast cell regeneration?” asked someone. “The Yeerks were trying to create a regeneration technology using what they knew about the Andalite morphing techniques…”
“Exactly,” smiled Alexa.
“There would be weaknesses,” said Jeremy thoughtfully. “If you could destroy the whole body at once there would be nothing to regenerate from, and antimatter or subatomic disintegration would probably stop you… Can you survive being starved of oxygen? Frozen?”
Alexa’s tilted her head to one side. “I'm actually not quite sure. I've experimented with a few scenarios - I do know that I can survive being frozen, for example. My body shuts down but it keeps doing the minimum I need to survive. And I don't need oxygen to survive.”
We swallowed and nodded. “Anything else?” I asked.
Alexa arched her back and the wings pulled back in. “Yes. It’s a little difficult to explain, though. See… the Arn programmed a certain character into me. A certain nature. And I can’t go against that nature.”
“What is that nature?” Keav asked quietly.
“I must always act in the best interests of the People that I serve, and next in the best interest of mortals at large.”
“Good for us mortals, then,” Jeremy joked half-heartedly. He was clearly worried by the idea of someone proof against all weapons.
(It is good to meet you,) Solethi said politely. (I am Solethi,) the Andalite said. (And I am much too old for you youngsters.)
We laughed, and then turned towards the last Andalite, who had been standing quietly, listening to our banter.
“And you are…?” asked Jeremy.
(I am Xelaman.)
Review Responses
For those of you who don’t remember or those of you who don’t know, here’s the clip about Xelaman. The background: Maya was Mayanamar on the Andalite Home World, with her twin brother Osgaron. They are currently slaves to an Andalite family.
We knelt side by side in the darkness, eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. I could feel my brother’s trembling flank against mine.
I thought to him, (If he touches you again, I’ll kill him.)
I heard his mental sigh, and knew that he would be smiling if he had his eyes open.
Oh, my beloved twin.
He shifted slightly, (It isn’t so bad.)
(Yes, it is,) I responded fiercely.
(If you kill him,) my brother started carefully, (Then they will kill you. Besides, you don’t have it that easy, either.)
(The mother doesn’t bother me that much. She virtually ignores my existence until she wants a chore done. She’s only hit me once.) I paused, and then continued. (The daughter must be really insecure because she feels the need to remind me that I am a half-breed Elemaki every other second.)
(That doesn’t sound very easy,) my brother said softly. (And you know you couldn’t kill anyone anyway.)
I knew. But if that sneering Andalite filth – the only son, the youngest, the pride of the family that had enslaved us – beat my brother with his tail blade again, I would do something.
I just didn’t know what.
(You know, it’s odd,) my brother mused.
(What?)
(Why does this family have two children? I don’t know any other family that does.)
(The population reduction laws requiring only one child per family weren’t passed until eleven years ago. The Andalites don’t expect the laws to really limit the population growth until about twenty years later, although most Andalites already just had one child because of custom,) I reminded him. This family must have kept trying to get kids until they finally had a son, right after the population laws were passed.)
(Why didn’t they just alter the chromosomes to get a son the first time?)
(Well, the mother is kind of old fashioned, so I guess she didn’t want to bother.)
My brother was silent for a while, taking this in, and then continued asking his questions. (What about the Elemaki elimination laws?)
(I’m not sure,) I answered honestly. (But I think that those are expected to take a lot longer. The Andalite custom of having as few children as possible doesn’t exist among the Elemaki, so the Elemaki have a much larger population. Also, the Elemaki elimination is predicted to take much longer than at first expected because not all the Andalites hate us as fervently anymore. From what I’ve gathered, most Andalites view us as an unnecessary annoyance, but not the filth of the universe. The Yeerks stole that title.)
(And they’re welcome to it,) my brother answered. (It must be convenient to get all this news,) he continued, changing the subject.
(Yes,) I agreed, (It is. I generally listen to it whenever I’m trimming the grass around the scoop.)
We fell silent for a while, and then I spoke up. (We’ve seen it with our own eyes.)
Startled, my brother said, (What?)
(Remember? Every Elemaki village we went to was smaller than the previous one. There are less and less babies because of the slow sterilization of all Elemaki. The Andalite government is also deporting all Elemaki eight years to forty years old to the second moon with all the factories on it. The very moon that was declared unfit for Andalite civilians to live and too unprotected for an official military base. So of course the Elemaki get the privilege of living there. I hear that they hope to have us completely wiped out within a century,) I finished.
(That’ll be hard,) my brother remarked. (Since there have been no real population laws on the Elemaki until the most recent one, they have had the most children. These new, stricter population laws affect both the Elemaki and Andalites at the same time, but the punishment for breaking the law is just harsher on the Elemaki.)
The punishment for the Andalites: absorption of the second child into the military
The punishment for the Elemaki: death of the entire family
An effective way to reduce the Elemaki population.
The Andalites want to wipe out all Elemaki with the next hundred years. At the rate they are killing them off; they’ll make their deadline – barely. There are still a lot of Elemaki out there.
Will they kill or deport us too? Or will we be allowed to remain “happy slaves” for the rest of our miserable lives.
My brother broke into my thoughts. (Mayanamar, I want you to promise me something.)
(What?)
(If I die, leave.)
I immediately countered his statement with, (Then if I die, you leave.)
(I can’t,) he said. (I’m bound here. I chose to come. You didn’t.)
(I chose to come, Osgaron,) I answered seriously.
(There was no choice. He forced you.)
(Osgaron,) I said, silently begging him to listen to me. (Osgaron, I made a conscious choice.)
I didn’t bother to tell him the choice, but he knew anyway.
(Yeah, between death at that moment and death later,) he scoffed.
(But I’m not dead!) I cried. (Maybe if he had physically grabbed me and dragged me over the border, but he didn’t! I made a choice!)
(Why do you insist on condemning yourself when you can get out of here by claiming that death is not a choice?)
I stayed quiet for what seemed like a long time, but what was probably only ten minutes. Finally, with the sun just rising over the edge of the pasture lands, I answered. (Mamai made a choice. She chose between her life and ours. Her death and our death. She made a choice because she loved us.) And I’m making a choice because I love you.
The sun rose, and we rose with it, going to the garden to work. We worked silently, falling into our usual rhythm. We had only been slaves for a month, and yet we already knew how to keep silent, be obedient and remain alive.
(Elemaki!) a young male’s voice called out. The brat, Xelaman. (Where are you, half-breed?)
My brother turned to go, but the Andalite saw him and came over.
(Where were you?) Xelaman asked arrogantly. (I needed something to practice on.)
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lift his tail blade and hit my brother, who didn’t say a word. The second time Osgaron staggered a few steps backward, but kept quiet. Xelaman continued beating him and I continued to do nothing.
No.
I stood up, my back straight. (Stop,) I ordered, then marched over, ignoring my brother’s warnings in my head. The Andalite filth sneered at me,
(Why? Do you get mad when I hit your brother?)
What was I supposed to do? Osgaron was right. I couldn’t kill him. But my brother…
My eyes drifted to my brother, whose desperate pleas of (STOP!) were louder in my head. To his tail, that wasn’t there. That would have been there if it weren’t for the Andalites. That should have been there. Xelaman had a tail. Why? What was so different about us? Why should he have a tail when my brother didn’t?
Maybe I could give the Andalite’s tail to my brother.
The thought was so ludicrous that I almost laughed. All this was so meaningless!
I don’t exactly remember what made me do what I did, but I do remember lifting my tail, up, and up, and over, the cursed half-curved blade shining in the sun and flashing downward right into the base that connected his tail to his body.
I didn’t hear the boy’s cry of pain, because my brother’s shouts of horror drowned him out.
(Mayanamar!) Osgaron shouted, jerking me out of my terror-struck reverie. I tried to pull my tail bade out of the Andalite boy’s tail, but it wouldn’t come. I used all the muscle in my tail to pull it up, but my curved tail blade was firmly embedded. The Andalite was still screaming about his tail, and so I decided to remove it for him. I applied pressure, and with one sudden push his tail was lying on the floor.
My tail blade was covered in blood. I stared at it, at the still screaming boy, at his unattached tail, and lastly at my brother.
I fell forward as my knees buckled, right into my brother’s arms. He held me tightly for as long as we dared. Then,
(You need to leave. Don’t argue with me.)
I knew he was right, but I couldn’t resist asking, (What about you?)
He answered, (I don’t have a tail, remember? They’ll know it wasn’t me. I can lead them off. Go.)
As I left his arms and bounded towards Elemaki lands, my brother echoed my mother’s last words. (I love you. Do not fear. I will always love you.)
I had an awful, awful feeling. Don’t say those words! I almost cried out. But I couldn’t leave my brother with that.
(I love you too.)
I swiftly ran, forcing my legs to carry me away.
As you may or may not recall, Osgaron was killed.
Real Review Responses
Okay… I think people were a little confused by the juxtaposition of the italics at the start of the last chapter of The Princess. I realize now that it probably confused people about the timing of the story, so I’ll edit that now.
As you now know, it was not the Animorphs who hit the ship which freed Maya. It has only been one month since Maya was first taken by the Blade Ship – there are still two years to go before Ax is taken by the One. Sorry if that was confusing.
The Really Real Review Responses
Note: The chapter is a re-written version - thanks, Wraithlord!
DH – Yay! You’re back! Glad you liked the scene with Tom. And yes, Jeremy is going to be very fun to write. Your character is coming up soon, as well. She doesn’t have as big of a part in Nadar Chronicles 3 as she does in Mayanites: Nadar and Kyan, but she is definitely there. And thank you so much! I’m actually hoping to go to Japan for a year after high school (I plan to go into International Studies, with an Asian base) so I’m going there to become fluent in Japanese. I won’t have as much school work to do, so I’ll have more time to write, and during that time I hope to really get moving. :grins:
Ah, that makes sense. Actually, I wrote the ending of that scene before I wrote the rest of the Princess, which is maybe why the two don’t seem to fit. I think also another thing I have to clear up is the nature of a Nadar. So far we’ve only been getting what Maya thinks about Nadar, how she feels what a Nadar should be and act. In fact, other than briefly meeting Solethi and Rachel (who doesn’t know the history of the Nadar) we only have Maya’s perception, which may or may not be right. But in this chronicle, we have other Nadar who can add their two cents in about what being a Nadar is. I tend to view the term Nadar as undergoing metamorphosis, and actually by the end of all my writing, we’ll see what Nadar has come to mean from what Maya originally thought it meant. I hope this chapter helps capture some of that – when she starts off right away with declaring herself Princess of “a bloodthirsty army.”
And yeah, a lot of people seemed to enjoy her knocking out Tom right away. This chapter should provide some more interaction between them – hope you enjoy! And the other questions about timing I hope I cleared up earlier. And glad you liked the One. Becky and I were tossing ideas back and forth while I was supposed to be studying for the Chem SAT II, actually. :grins:
Toby – Glad you liked the history of the One. My sister and I had fun with that. And also, I think you confusion might stem from the confusing timing… I explained that above, did it help? And thanks for your review!
Sci-fi raptor – I’m so glad you weren’t disappointed. :grins: And as to the review response lengths, I’ll have to direct you to the reviewers. The longer reviews they leave, the longer the responses I give in return. :smiles: Also, I’m going to leave your reviews to chapter 1 and 3 (they accidentally printed twice) unanswered, since I think they were more directed towards the random dude. And I’m glad you liked the Crayak/Ellimist interaction! As to Crayak being part machine, I think that when the Animorphs went to the Iskoort Home World they ran into Crayak, and Jake dictated that Crayak was part machine. I may be wrong though, so thanks for pointing that out.
I’m not sure what you mean by the rate that the time flows at though… Maya is only 16 years old in this story, so far. But anyway, thanks for your review and here’s the next post!
Elwing – Oh, I didn’t notice that connection. Yeah, you’re right. And I’m glad you found the ending poignant – hopefully that theme will continue through the next installment, which I too hope is just as good. :grins: And aw, thanks. I hope I don’t disappoint.
Birdie – Of course. I’m sure you’ll love Keav. :grins: And yeah, that scene with Tom a lot of people seemed to like. And here’s the update – I hope it fills your appetite!
HFN – I think the explanation I have above might help with the confusion. The juxtaposition of the italics and the story confused a lot of people, I think. And this series has been going for a while, and I hope it will go on for a while longer! And thanks for your review!
Kaz – Me, too. :laughs: I’m glad you liked the ending – this new chapter doesn’t really continue on that theme, but hopefully the next few will. And just out of curiosity, you have read my other fics, haven’t you? They make more sense together, and I wasn’t sure which ones you had or hadn’t read. And yes, about Tobias… that’ll come at the end of Nadar Chronicles 3, so don’t worry! And thanks again – for your reviews and for the congratulations.
A-cat - :hugs impulsively: Your character showed up in this chapter, I hope you like her! And yeah, I cut off that scene – never intended to write it through, although my reviewers didn’t know that until then. And I’ll talk about Jeremy and his history more as we go through – he has a very interesting history and will have a very interesting future. And about Taylor… she’s pretty messed up. I’ll let the story tell that, since it’ll be more fun to read it than hear me go on and on about it here. :smiles:
And yup, they are all Nadar. I had her be able to tell by looking more for the drama, I have to admit, but at the very least they’ll all be willing to fight for her and with her. Some are more Nadarish than others, and some retire or drop out, but for now, every one of them (except for John, who is only four, but even him in emergencies) will be willing to fight.
And sorry about the confusion – I hope I cleared it up with my announcement. And glad you liked how she dealt with Tom: here’s more Tom/Maya in this chapter. And of course not – I’m excited to write everyone’s characters. Just the addition of your character added so much more plot to my story, into Mayanites: Nadar and Kyan, and beyond. And although we didn’t make it to Somolonania in this chapter, I hope to see you there in the next. Cheers!
FOL – Thanks! Glad you liked it. And here’s the next chapter!
Tabatha - :hugs: I hope everything turns out okay. I’m really glad to have you back, as well. :hugs again:
REVIEW!