We went to a men's room to morph. Cassie and Rachel went to a ladies' room. I guess there are times when we Animorphs just can't work as a team.
"We could all fit together in the handicapped stall," Marco suggested.
"You're not supposed to do that," I said. "Let's just each get our own stall."
But that was easier said than done. There were a lot of flights coming and going. The men's room was busy. The best we could do was get two stalls.
"Oh, this doesn't look too weird," Tobias muttered as he and I entered a stall together.
"Wait a few seconds. Things will be quite a bit weirder," I told him.
We closed and latched the door. We stripped off our outer clothing and shoes and stuffed it all into a backpack we'd brought along. We set the bag behind the toilet. You can't morph street clothes or shoes, just something form-fitting. Like the bike shorts and T-shirt I was wearing. If we were lucky we'd get our clothes back later at the lost and found. If not . . . well, we lose a lot of clothing.
"Fly morph, huh?" Tobias whispered.
"Yep."
"Is it as gross as I think it will be?"
"No. It's much, much grosser."
Tobias made a face. Then he started morphing. But not into a fly. See, when you morph you can only do it from your natural shape. Strange as it may seem, Tobias's natural shape is now that of a red-tailed hawk.
So as I waited nervously, Tobias grew feathers and wings and talons and a beak. And in the next stall Ax grew a scorpion tail, two stalk eyes, and four hooved legs.
"Ready?" I whispered to Marco.
"Yeah. Let's do it. It's crowded in here."
I looked at Tobias. Funny how even I was used to the idea that the real Tobias was the Tobias with the fierce gold-and-brown eyes and the beak designed to tear apart flesh.
"Ready?"
<Yeah. I'm as ready as I'll ever be.>
"You might like it," I said. "You should see how well flies fly."
<I fly better than anything else with wings already,> he said. <Okay. Let's get this over with.>
I closed my eyes and began to focus on the fly morph. The truth is, it made me feel better to have Tobias nervous. It distracted me from the fact that morphing a fly made me sick.
There may be something more disgusting than a fly, but I sure haven't become it yet.
The first change was that I began to shrink.
The steel walls of the bathroom stall seemed to rise up and up and up. They grew to be the size of skyscrapers. Graffiti that had been in inch-high letters was now big enough to fill a billboard.
When I looked down I got a real scare. It looked exactly as if I were falling into the toilet bowl. That toilet bowl got bigger and bigger and seemed to be sprouting up from the floor like it was a big mouth trying to swallow me whole.
I saw the toilet paper dispenser go zipping by. One minute it was below waist level, the next minute it took off, straight up. It was an odd thing to see.
The linoleum squares grew vast. The scraps of tissue on the floor became bedsheets. A piece of chewed gum became a big, pink boulder.
But shrinking was the easy part. The other changes were infinitely worse. For one thing, there's the fact that your nose and mouth sort of melt together and grow into this insanely long, hairy, sticky, spit-dribbling thing the books call "mouth parts."
<AAAAAHHHH! Jeez!> Tobias yelled in thought-speak.
His own beak had just sprouted into the long, spring-loaded, utterly nasty-looking mouth parts. It was not a pretty thing to watch.
Sprooot! Two big legs sort of burst out of my chest. You know how in the movie Alien the alien baby exploded out of that guy's chest? It was a little like that. Only instead of some fake-looking puppet, these were two long, black, jointed legs, each bristling with daggerlike hairs.
Morphing is never totally logical. It isn't a smooth transition. It's not like each part of you gets gradually more flylike. Things happen suddenly, and in unexpected sequences. I was still about a foot tall when the legs pushed out through my ribs. I still had human eyes and a mostly human body. Aside from the monstrous mouth parts.
"Hey, anyone in there?"
I heard the voice. And I heard the way the door of the stall rattled. But I couldn't answer. I didn't have a mouth.
<Someone's trying to get in!> Tobias said.
<I know!>
<What do we do?>
<Keep morphing. It's too late to back out now.>
"Hey, is anyone in there? I gotta go bad."
My hands had become the appendages of a fly. There were two hooked, talonlike claws and small, hairy pads that oozed a kind of glue. I could hear my internal organs going soft and squishy as entire things like a liver and spleen and kidneys were re-formed to make the infinitely more primitive guts of a fly.
My bones were weakening so that my still-mostly-human legs were getting wobbly, turning to overcooked spaghetti.
At this point I was about the size of a small dog. I had fly legs but no wings. I had human eyes and massive fly mouth parts. Tobias was a similar mess. And that's when the guy who had to go bad reached over the stall door and undid the lock.
The door opened. There wasn't anything I could do.
"Oh. Ohhh. OOHHH! Oh, No! NOOOO! NOOOOOO! AAAAAHHHH!"
The man stood there and stared.
I waved one dagger-haired, clawed leg at him.
"AAAAHHHHH! Help! Help! Help!"
The door slammed shut again.
<Quick! We better be flies before he brings help!>
"Help me! Police! Someone!"
I continued shrinking, and now I noticed my gossamer fly wings coming in, attached to big springlike muscles in my back.
"There are monsters in the toilets!"
<What's going on over there?> Marco demanded from the next stall over.
<We're busted,> I said. <Make it quick.>
My human eyes dimmed, then went dark. Seconds passed in total blindness as my compound fly eyes grew. Then, all at once, I saw a world of shattered images, like a thousand tiny television sets all tuned to a slightly different picture.
<By the way, Tobias, watch out for the fly instincts,> I warned.
In my weird field of vision I saw something black and blurry go zipping by. Another fly. Tobias?
<Tobias, is that you flying?>
Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble, RUMBLE, RUMBLE.
Thunderous pounding vibrations distracted me. Many heavy feet were running toward me.
WHAM! The door of the stall opened. I felt the wind whoosh past overhead. It excited the hairs on my back. My antennae quivered madly.
Danger!
I pushed off with my six legs, turned on my fly wings, and blasted up off the dirty linoleum.
<We're airborne over here,> Marco reported.
"They were here, I'm telling you. Monsters! Like . . . like weird, mutated things!"
"Sir, just how many drinks did you have on your flight?"
<Tobias,> I called. <Are you okay? Tobias!>
There was no answer.
I zoomed crazily around, zipping past the Statue-of-Liberty-sized humans. My senses were picking up about a hundred interesting smells: rot, sweat, filth, garbage. All of which were fascinating to my fly brain.
But I still did not see Tobias
