My name is Tobias. I am the only living child of Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, an Andalite. The Andalites are a race of aliens who possess the power to morph into other creatures for two hours at a time. That's the reason that I am human. Well, most of the time.
A few years ago, some friends and I stumbled across my father dying in an abandoned construction site, though I didn't know he was my father at the time. That was when he gave the five of us the power to morph. There are rules that come along with the morphing powers. The most important being that you never stay in a morph for more than two hours, less you become a nothlit. That is what happened to me. I became trapped as a hawk. However, I somehow made some very powerful friends who helped me regain the power to morph and acquire my own human DNA. Now I can morph into myself again, and I can age, thanks to the help of that same alien friend, but I must go back to hawk every two hours, at least.
For a time we were fighting a war against the Yeerks, a mind-controlling race of alien slugs. But now that war is pretty much over, and we are trying to forget. The five of us, Jake, Rachel, Marco Cassie, Marco and I are all starting college now. We decided on a New York school, because it was the farthest American school, bar going to Hawaii or Alaska. We wanted to forget. I wanted to forget, but I didn't want to forget my father, the only father I had ever known, though I barely knew him at all. My power to morph was a piece of him in me. But before we left for school, the realization that I couldn't very well live in a dorm as a hawk. I became a nothlit. But I was able to regain my morphing power again, which was what really mattered to me. So now I was an "animorph" again. But after spending more than four years as a hawk, human life was confusing. I rarely remembered to make facial expressions, and I squinted constantly, having been used to my hawk eyesight.
So when it was time to start college, I was excited. I had my friends and my girlfriend, Rachel, with me, but at the same time it was a chance for us to start over. Nobody knew us here. When we got to the school from the airport, we registered, and the sat down to look over things. Then we split up.
"Okay," Jake said, "Tobias and Marco and I are all in this building, and then Rachel and Cassie are over there. Why don't we all get settled in, and then meet up at the girls' dorm and hang out over there." We all agreed.
"So," Marco said, "Anybody know anything about their roommate yet?"
"Nope," I said.
"Me neither," Jake answered. I looked at my thick packet of information.
"I'm on the third floor, room 26, what about you guys?" I asked.
"I'm just down the hall from you, number 30," Marco answered.
"And I'm right downstairs." Jake said. We walked in and split up. When I walked into my room, my roommate was already there, unpacked and hanging pictures.
"Hey," he said.
"Hi," I answered.
"I''m Taylor. And you?"
"Tobias."
"Looks like we're roomies, huh?"
"Yeah."
I knew that I probably seemed quiet and anti-social, but in reality I was trying to place where I had seen him before. When his younger brother came in the room, and the two were arguing together I was able to place him. I had seem them on a cd cover at Cassie's house, and on a poster on my girlfriend's wall, one that I was pretty sure she brought with her. My roommate was Taylor Hanson
After Taylor left with his brother, Zac, and I'd finished unpacking and hanging a few pictures, I put my suitcase and backpack in the closet. Freshmen dorms generally suck, it's the upperclassmen that get the nice rooms. After I was thoroughly settled in, I wandered down to Marco's room to see if he was settled in.
"Hey Marco, how's it going?" I looked around to see that his roommate had also settled in and hung some pictures, many of which were surprisingly similar to Taylor's.
"It's going pretty good. Dude, you will never guess who my roommate is!"
"Um, is it a Hanson by any chance?" Marco's mouth dropped open.
"Yeah, it's Isaac Hanson, how did you guess?" I laughed a bit.
"Two points to make here. A) look at the pictures on his wall, and B) Taylor Hanson's my roommate." He laughed.
"Dude, you know what would be totally ironic? If Jake's roommate was Zac Hanson." And on that comment Jake wandered into the room.
"Hey guys, you will not believe who my roommate is. He is absolutely insane!" Marco and I looked at each other and laughed.
"It wouldn't be Zac Hanson by any chance, would it?" Jake gaped.
"Yeah, how on earth did you know?"
"I'm with Isaac and Tobias got Taylor." We laughed at the coincidence.
"Dude, it almost makes me wonder if someone arranged it to happen this way." Jake said, and none of us had anything to say to that, since we all knew that it was totally possible.
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After settling in, we all wandered on down to the girls' dorm to meet up with Cassie and Rachel. We started to walk down the halls and saw all these signs around that said things like "Gentlemen, please announce yourselves before entering" with magazine cutouts of girls. We walked down the hall looking for Rachel's room first. Well, I did, Jake was looking for Cassie first, and Marco went with him. Hey, Jake and I both wanted to find our girlfriends! I found the room and knocked before entering. When I saw her, I gave her a huge hug.
"Hey babe, I'd like you to meet my roommate. Sonya, this is my boyfriend Tobias, Tobias, this is Sonya." I shook the redhead's hand, surprised at how firm her grip was for someone so short.
"Very nice to meet you Sonya," I said.
"Same to you, Tobias." I turned to look at Rachel's wall, not in the least bit surprised to see her Hanson poster firmly in place. I smiled.
"Hey Rach, guess who my roommate is?"
"Who?" She asked, curious. I pointed to the poster.
"Taylor Hanson." He eyes got wide and I was certain she was gonna freak out. "Not only that, but Marco's with Isaac and Jake's rooming with Zac." Rachel sat down on her bed quickly, looking like she was about to pass out. At about the same time, Cassie darted into the room with Jake and Marco in tow.
"Oh my gosh, Rachel, did you hear?" She asked, practically screaming. Rachel nodded, not being able to form words yet.
"Hey Jake, you think our girlfriends are excited by any chance?" I said, a grin on my face.
"Over meeting Hanson? Nah, not our girlfriends," he said, and the three of us started laughing as the two of them freaked out.
"They're getting this freaked out over Hanson?" Sonya asked, astonished. "I wonder what they'd be like around a good band," she teased, and we all laughed again. Soon after, Rachel and Cassie managed to calm down, and we all wandered down to the main common room downstairs. The five of us finally had a bit of time to just talk about everything. It was almost a hasty decision for us to all come to school out here, and was shocking how well it all worked out. Almost as if some higher power was pulling strings and arranging plot-lines for us to go to school together.
Finally, it was time for us to head back to our dorms. Classes started the next day, and we had a lot of work ahead of us. I walked into my room and shut the door. Taylor had set up a keyboard next to his desk, but because of the size of our rooms, it took up almost all the space on his side. He was playing away at some song I'd never heard before as I walked it.
"Hey," I said, and he looked up.
"Hey, Tobias, how's it going?"
"Pretty good, you?"
"Pretty good."
"Hey, I was looking into some other rooms, and a lot of guys bunked their beds, so that they would have more space. If you're going to keep that thing up all year, we might want to do the same." He agreed, and we huffed and puffed as we stacked my bed on top of his, and used the big steel pins they supplied to hook them together. We were pretty tired, so we just decided to go to bed. I brushed my teeth and then hopped up in top of my bed. I could hear Taylor's steady breathing below me and knew he was asleep. Before long, I too was sleeping soundly.