Uniform Stealing Board

For those unfamiliar, Animorphs is a popular series of kids' sci-fi novels from the 1990s. This is book 17 in the series, taking place from the point of view of Rachel.



Chapter 23


A storeroom. There were boxes piled all around me. They seemed to be made of blue plastic. I leaned against one as I finished returning to my own body.

Human again! I looked around. My eyes had had plenty of time to adjust to the gloom. There was writing on some of the boxes. But not any alphabet I’d ever seen.

There was a square pad outlined in red, just an inch on each side.

“Well, why not?” I muttered. I pressed the pad. Instantly the top of the box came loose with a sound like a vacuum seal breaking. It sounded like when someone opens a can of coffee.

I looked inside. Then I smiled. I reached in and lifted out a hand-size Dracon beam.

“Cool.”

The grip was weird. Designed for Hork-Bajir hands. But that was okay. Right by my thumb there was a slide. It went up and down. “Power settings,” I decided. I had to use my middle finger to reach the trigger.

Sudden light! A door opened. A Hork-Bajir warrior was framed there. He blinked once in the darkness.

I raised my hand and squeezed the trigger.

TSEEEWWW!

The Hork-Bajir dropped like a sack of dirty laundry.

I stepped over to him. He was still breathing. I was breathing, too, in ragged gasps.

“So, that was the low-power setting,” I said.

Then, “What’s keeping you?”

A human voice! Female. I ducked back into the darkness.

She stopped when she saw the Hork-Bajir stretched out on the floor. She was just about to yell when...

TSEEEWWWW!

Down she went, sprawling right across the Hork-Bajir. She groaned once, then passed out.

I looked at the Dracon beam in my hand. “Cool. Phasers on stun, Captain.”

I took the woman’s shoes. As always, you can’t morph shoes or bulky clothing. I took her blazer, too. It wasn’t a bad blazer. I checked the label. "DKNY." Excellent. A little big for me, but okay.

I pulled my hair back into a ponytail . The blazer was large, the shoes were half a size too small, and the glasses I took from her face made the world seem a little distorted around the edges. But all in all, it wasn’t a bad look. And I wanted to look good for my first trip around the Yeerk pool as a human.

I stepped out of the storeroom into the office outside. No one there. A second office outside that one. A man sat there. He was wearing a cotton shirt with a collar. He’d been my ride. Before he could turn around, I fired.

TSEEEEWWWW!

He crumpled in his chair and looked like he was asleep. Which, of course, he was.

I slid the Dracon beam into the pocket of the blazer. And then I stepped out into the world of the Yeerk pool.

Thanks for posting this, Tp3.
I actually just learned of this book series about five years back. My mother and I recently started watching the Animorphs TV show based on the novels.
If the series follows the story line from the novels, hopefully this stealing will pop up in the show. Fingers crossed.

So this book was adapted into an episode of the Animorphs TV show, called "The Escape." Unfortunately, the episode does not feature any USB scenes. It's only 25 minutes long, and presumably they had to cut out a lot of the book's details to fit the runtime.