001 - Kannagara Application
PLAYER INFO
Name/Nickname: Kate. For chat’s sake, call me Devi.
Age: 23 ;____;
Journal: devimelete
AIM/MSN/IM: devimelete (AIM)
Email: thamnopsis@hotmail.com
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Marco
Canon: Animorphs
Point taken from canon: In BOOK 45, where he has gone into hiding in the free Hork-Bajir valley and his parents reunited.
Age: His age was never specified during the series, but he has mention at the end of the series he is around seventeen years old
Gender: Male
Preferred Village: Hisato. However, it should be noted that Marco can and will jump from village to village if he finds it more beneficial to him.
Appearance:
Due to the secret nature of the books themselves (nearly all of them started out with the phrase, “I can’t tell you my last name or where I live. . . “), not much detail goes into Marco’s appearance, other than be short, sly, and cute, with dark short hair. His mother is said to be an immigrant from another country, and if we should consider the illustrations as canon, then his appearance is that of Hispanic descent. (This is later confirmed when Marco admits that he can speak a little of Spanish, thanks to his grandmother, presumably from his mother’s side.) We can only assume that he gestures with his hands and exaggerated body language, considering he is the “class clown” of the group, giving him an animated feel to his appearance. He can be charming, in a rather boyish, teenager way.
However, to those who have experience the trauma and the strain of war can easily look in Marco’s eyes and know that he has the eyes of somebody being worn down by warfare; but good luck trying to admit that to him when he thinks you are nothing more than a stranger, and a potential enemy.
Background:
Marco is the son of two proud parents Peter and Eva. On one stormy night, Eva went out to the dock and sailed out to sea on the family’s sailboat, with the storm still raging. The next day, the remains of the shattered boat was washed up. Eva’s body was never found, and was presumed to be dead. This completely breaks Peter to a severe depression. He quits his job and worked in various night-shift jobs, such as being a custodian in various faculties, and on nights he merely sits in front of the TV, not interacting with anyone else, not even his son. This forces Marco to grow up far more quickly than he should have been and starts to take care for himself and to his dad. The two of them managed to stay together and survived, but they are still broken from the loss and financial strain.
One day, Marco tagged along with his best friend Jake to the local mall arcade where they usually hang out after school. As they ran out of quarters to spend, they ran into Jake’s cousin Rachel, and her best friend Cassie, and eventually Tobias, a lonely outsider with a pendant to attract bullies. They all decided to head back to their homes, but took a short cut through an abandoned construction site. As they passed through, they noticed a light passing through the starry night quickly. At first they thought it was a plane or a shooting star, but as the light comes closer toward them . . . it eventually becomes an alien spacecraft.
The spacecraft crash landed in front of them, and the door opened to a dying alien stumbling weakly from its wounds. The five teenagers were frightened and kept their distance until Tobias and Cassie step up and try to heal its wounds. However, the alien dismiss their attempts and introduced himself as Elfangor, a warrior of the Andalite homeworld. He warns them of the Earth invasion of the Yeerk Empire: alien parasites that enter their hosts’ brains and control their motor functions and can access their memories. Already they have conquered three races and destroyed many more, and so far only the Andalites have the technology and power to resist the Yeerks, who begun their slow and secretive invasion of Earth. No one can tell between a normal human being nor an infested one; and if the teenagers went to nearest human and tell them about Elfangor, the chances of them being silenced and infested themselves are very high, not to mentioned that no one would have believed them anyway.
However, Elfangor has one more trick up on his sleeve. With Andalite technology, he gave them the power to morph: to touch and acquire any living creature’s DNA and become that creature. However, there’s one drawback: they have to return back to their human forms less than two hours, or otherwise they will be stuck in that form forever. At that moment, the Yeerks responsible for shooting down Elfangor ship, have arrived. The gang of teenagers quickly went into hiding as they witnessed a variety of Controllers (infested beings): Hork-Bajir, a fierce- looking but peaceful race enslaved by the Yeerks; and Taxxons, large, cannibalistic worms that allied with the Yeerks in exchange for fresh meat; along with a group of human Controllers, securing the Andalite and his ship. Soon, another Andalite appeared as well, but Marco and the others realize it is not a normal Andalite, but another infested Controller. This Yeerk is named as his rank: Visser Three, the third most powerful in the Yeerk Empire, as a result of being the first Yeerk to ever obtain an Andalite body, and consequently, has the ability to morph as well. As Visser Three walked up to Elfangor and begins to taunt him, he inconsequently reveals more information to the teenagers: that Elfangor is a war-hero, a known enemy to the Yeerks, and that humans are the perfect hosts for the Yeerks with their mass numbers and their vulnerability with their lesser and primitive technology. As Visser Three taunts Elfangor with threats of infesting Elfangor’s family, Visser Three began to morph a massive monster he acquired its DNA from a corner of the galaxy. He grabbed Elfangor and ate him alive.
This caused Marco, of course, to become violently ill and started to throw up. This caught the attention on one of the Hork-Bajir guards, and in a moment of panic, the teenagers took off and fled.
The next day, everyone was shaken up. Marco was more so, realizing that if he decides to do anything about the situation, there’s a strong chance that he might be killed, and then his father will have no one. Tobias, on the other hand, insisted that they should take a chance and fight for not just for humanity’s survival, but for the Andalite’s sacrifice as well. Marco, knowing that Tobias just as well fight because he has nothing else to lose, is still insistent, thinking only for his dad. But despite his own protests, he went along with Jake and others, specifically to find out more of their given ability and about the Yeerks. As they infiltrated their local zoo for more suitable animals capable of fighting and defending themselves against the Yeerks, they also found out the location of the Yeerk Pool - an underground city where the human hosts go down every three days, their Yeerks temporarily leaving their minds in order to soak up ‘Kandrona’ rays as a source of nourishment for their own slug-like bodies.
In the process of gathering information about the Yeerks, they also find out that Jake’s older brother is also infested, and is part of the front organization called “The Sharing” where the Yeerks drawn other unsuspecting humans to their club - a mixture of a Rotary Club and a Boys and Girls Club - and infest them easily. So the Animorphs decided to attack the base, and cause some damage to them, along with the plan of rescuing Jake’s brother Tom.
They failed. They barely made out alive, and already they had a casualty: Tobias went pass the two hour limit and was stuck in the body of a red-tail hawk forever. Tom was still a Controller.
The Animorphs continue on with their fight and despite Marco’s own protests, he went along with them, as his intelligence and his way of tactics started to become invaluable to them. They continue on missions gathering more information, and eventually they found another Andalite - Aximili, a young military cadet and little brother to Elfangor. He joined the group, as well.
Marco’s opposition to the war ended when he discovered that his mother is not dead, but alive as the host of Visser One, the spearhead of Yeerk invasion of the entire galaxy. While initially he never told anyone about this fact, fearing they will just pity them, he then eventually admits that his mother is a Controller as well.
Animorphs continue fighting their own guerilla war for three years, occasionally going in to space a few times (and some alternate dimensions once or twice), and encountering many races. They have their low points, but they also gained victories. Marco’s father started to go back to work again. They have freed two Hork-Bajir and hidden them in a valley that eventually grew into a colony. They also discovered that through of unimaginable means, Elfangor is Tobias’ father. They have discovered a race of pacifist androids called the Chee, and with their powerful holograms, they become spies for the Animorphs, giving them wealth of information. But they also had to deal with the crisis of David, the seventh Animorph and traitor, the war itself wearing them down, battle after battle. They discovered the powerful dimensional being called The Ellimist, who gave back Tobais’ ability to morph (but not his human form), and manipulates the Animorphs into being part of some long range plan for peace and liberty for the universe. Marco and Jake also had to put up with the fear that they might have to kill their own mother and brother respectively.
(They almost did.)
Marco was also drawn again to Visser One’s schemes. He once tried to kill Visser One in a bid to kill off both her and Visser Three, but failed. Somehow Visser One realized that one of the “Andalite bandits” (The Yeerks, and Visser Three in particular, assumed the resistance fighters were Andalites, as they were the only ones apart from Visser Three to have the ability to morph) is actually her own host’s son. However, she kept it secret in case she needs him for help. During a trial for her life in front of the Council of Thirteen (the governmental Yeerks of the Empire), in an attempt to discredit Visser Three, set loose a starved tiger and bear as the “Andalite bandits”, and he successfully killed the bear and the tiger. Realizing her standing has become weakened because of this, Visser One called Marco, to tell him that his mother is in danger in execution. And so, Marco and the rest of the Animorphs interrupted trial with a battle on their own. They retreated, taking an unconscious Visser One with them.
Later on, they realize the reason why Visser One had taken a silent, non-warfare tactic to the invasion of Earth: as being one of the two Yeerks who had discovered Earth, Visser One had become lost within humanity and became “human” herself by having two human children with her own host’s and her partner’s, and developed feelings for them. If the Yeerks decided to go open warfare on the humans, then the chances of them being killed are high. There is another reason as well: Visser One has developed a healthy respect for humans as well, as witnessing them constantly killing themselves in countless wars, she realized that many Yeerks will be killed by them, limited technology or not, because if they are so ruthless to each other, anything is possible toward for her own Yeerk race, as she said to Visser Three, who is proposing an open warfare tactic on Earth:
“There are more than five billion of them, Visser, and you may deride their
projectile weapons, but a nine-millimeter bullet will kill a Hork-Bajir host body quite
effectively. And Taxxons or Gedds? A Taxxon can be killed with a can opener! . . . Humans have fought thousands of wars. Thousands! We as a race have fought a mere handful. They run straight into the bullets, Visser Three, again and again. Did you know that? They attack against insane odds. They defend what can’t be defended.
Outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, hopeless, they will still fight, fight, fight till they are
each and every one dead. Something you might know if you stopped posturing long enough
to learn something!” ”
Marco and the rest of the Animorphs realize that even if that’s the case, open warfare will still not be the best as they rely on underhanded and no confrontational tactics to subvert and slow down the invasion. They are still six of them, and are used to tightly controlled missions. If the Yeerks started to expose their appearance and started an all out war, then the humans are still doomed anyway. So Marco allowed Visser One to live and continue infesting his mother for now.
Recently, Marco’s father remarried to another woman, much to Marco’s dismay and then later acceptance. However, it didn’t last long - Peter had discovered in his work of science that weren’t supposed to be available to humans for centuries, and the Yeerks can’t afford humans discovering technology that could be a problem to their own invasion. So they plan to infest Peter. Realizing this, Marco called Rachel for back up and went after them and they saved Peter. Unfortunately, his father saw too much and it became too dangerous for him to go back and live normally. So Marco told him everything about the invasion, and about Eva’s fake death and infestation.
Marco arranged the Chee for them to masquerade as Marco and Peter themselves respectively the next day, as he knew that the next time the Yeerks will come back and won’t bother infestation and go to simply killing the two. True to his word, the Yeerks did come back and “killed” Marco and Peter, even though in reality they simply injured the two androids in disguise. Then Marco and Peter fled to the free Hork-Bajir valley, where they are to given shelter by other ex-Controlled Hork-Bajir. Later on, the Animorphs discovered that Visser One is slated for execution for failures for various sectors of the galaxy by the Council of Thirteen. The Animorphs decided that they really have no choice but not to rescue Visser One, but rather his mother. So they invaded the Yeerk Pool once more (as they have repeating done in the past) and began the mission of rescuing Eva. They killed Visser One, rescued Eva and escaped.
Marco was witnessing the long-awaited reunion of Peter and Eva when he was spirited away to Kanagara.
Personality:
At a glance, Marco appears to be archetype of a class clown. He cracks jokes at everything and everyone, including himself. He’ll pull pranks once in a while, but he prefers wait and let people give him an opening before he attacks. However, he describes himself as someone who is “allergic to pity”. He’ll confuse this with sympathy, but really, he just hates when people get up into personal boundaries and start asking him deep questions that he rather not have the answer for. He doesn’t like going back to the pain and grief of his mother’s “death”, and his father’s downward spiral to depression. He much rather locked that all away, so he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore, so when somebody asks him some deep and meaningful and really none of their business, he cracks a joke and laughs. He hides behind his laughter because that’s the only shield he has. He’ll flirt and annoy girls and act immature and just be a teenage brat all around.
Behind the jokes and the grief, however, is a sharp calculating mind. In the first book, it was he who correctly deduced that Tom is a Controller with very little evidence. His wariness of people in general makes him more aware of his surroundings, and he also comes to the conclusion that the Sharing is actually a Yeerk front. He reads people, and he uses it to his advantage. He is also good at tactics as well. He can see the clear bright line almost to the point of obsession. While he can see some moral objects to his plans and can act according to them, he just finds it easier to get it done with minimal fuss. After all, it was he who proposed the plan to manipulate Visser One and Visser Three into killing each other, despite the fact that he is also planning to kill his mother as well. The Animorphs knew this and became concerned and tried to talk him out of it, but he refused and they reluctantly followed the plan. Once he sees the bright line, there’s no stopping him.
However, only the Animorphs will ever see this side of him, as they work in a secretive war, and this war brings out the worst in them all. To the rest of the world, he’s just a kid who managed to put tragedy behind him with a joke and a grin. The worse the situation is, the goofier he’ll become.
But despite his jokes and his ruthless nature, the kid is also just one big dork underneath. Pop culture is his lifeline, along with video games and comics and television. To those who are not aware of who is the Brady Brunch or Xena is and has never watched Baywatch or read Spider-man or know the ways of the Internet, prepared to be taken wrong-footed, because he lives for that.
Abilities/Strengths: First and foremost, it is his ability to change to any creature. He can touch an animal and acquire its DNA in his system. Then he’ll change into that form. It doesn’t matter how large or small - if it is alive and has DNA, he can turn into that form. He has several morphs that he has used on a regular basis: for battle, a male silverback gorilla; a harrier for flight; cockroach or fly for infiltration; and a hammerhead shark or a bottlenose dolphin for underwater missions. However, he has a variety of morphs at his command. He can also communicate telepathically when in morph, but not in his human form. If he’s injured in his human body or in a morph, all he has to do is to morph/demorph until the injuries are gone.
He has also had a mindset for tactics and subversion. He is very calculating and very meticulous, and his plans generally have a high percentage of succession. He also can be very humorous and charming, and often use it to get out of socially awkward situations the Animorphs find themselves in when they are flubbing around with their morphing prowess or when Ax went a little too overwhelmed with his human form and start causing trouble.
However, one of the most dangerous aspects of Marco’s personality is that when he is angered, he can focused it to the point of complete and utter ruthlessness. He can direct his anger with such cold clarity, it made him to be quite frightening, particularly when somebody tries to get something out of his father or mother or any of the Animorphs. He is loyal to his friends and family, and will use everything in his power to make sure they will be okay. In addition, his talent for comedy is often taken for granted; it becomes a great stress reliever for extreme situations.
Weaknesses:
Emotionally, because he pushes his emotions back with a smile and a joke, he doesn’t really deal with the grief and the anger he has over the years. So when he snaps, he will shut down and be focused on whatever it was that been giving him grief with out mercy or remorse. He doesn’t like pity because he doesn’t allow it for himself, so when people are tying to lend him a sympathetic ear, he pushes away, mistaken it for pity. While most of the time he doesn’t do it rudely, it is pretty obvious he pushes people away. He doesn’t confine with people’s feelings that much, let alone strangers.
While his paranoia served him well with avoiding detection by the Yeerks, and he can be friendly on a casual way, don’t expect him to open up to him. After all, if he does that to the wrong person in the world he lives in, he’d be dead or worse, and he will not jeopardize that.
His ruthless tactics can also clash with others who have some moral grounds to uphold to, and he is stubborn with his ways. He understands the significance morality, but during times of war where he nearly lost everything, he sometimes sees morality as something to be considered as a leisure and privilege to be sacrificed in terms of survival of the human race.
Physically, he’s just a young American teenager, so he can’t really pull his punches. His primary strengths are in his shapeshifting abilities and his mind. However, the morph can only last for two hours, and he has to morph back to human or otherwise he will be stuck in his morphed form forever. There is a range of telepathy while he’s in morph, so he can’t broadcast his thought-speak in a miles radius. He also cannot morph his clothing into his animal form - the only type of clothing that he can wear while morphing is skin-tight closing, like leotards or bike shorts. Awkwardness and misery abound when he’s hot or cold or out on public property during midday. He cannot morph plants or any other kind of vegetation.
Defining Quote(s):
Book Quotes:
Marco’s Motto: This is insane!
Jake: I think we have to head to The Gardens. We need to get some help from Mother Earth's toughest children. (to Cassie) Can you get us in?
Cassie: I can get in free. You guys will have to pay, but I can use my mom's employee discount, so it'll be cheaper.
Marco: Oh, I'm sure we could talk them into letting us in for nothing. Just tell them we're Animorphs.
Rachel: Tell them we're what?
Marco: Idiot teenagers with a death wish.
Marco: Now do you see why it's crazy to think we can beat the Yeerks? I mean, come on: We can barely beat zoo security.
-Book 1, The Invasion
Marco: This was always insane, right from the start. A handful of kids fighting an alien invasion? Look what's happening. Tobias is trapped in a morph. Rachel is starting to use morphing to get away from her problems. The other night I woke up in bed, and I didn't know what I was. I didn't know if I had hands or fins or claws or talons. Maybe you and Cassie are immune, Jake. But I doubt it.
Jake: We can't give up.
Marco: All we ever do is lose. We annoy the Yeerks. Maybe we blow up a ship, or have some little success. But the invasion marches on. And all we ever do is barely escape with our lives.
-Book 7, The Stranger
Jake: Erek (the Chee) didn't mean anything bad. You know that. He just meant--
Marco: I know what he meant. He meant if it came to crunch time, would I destroy my own mother to protect the mission? That's what he meant.
Jake: And?
Marco: I don't know, Jake. I don't know.
-Book 15, The Escape
Me explaining to my mom, as my mom, as my real mom, why I had to do it. Me explaining to my mom as Visser One. Laughing, chortling, savoring my victory over her.
This is how I defeated you! I crowed.
This is how I saved you! I explained.
No choice. No choice. I had to do it, Dad, you understand, right? What else was I going to do? . . . . she was already dead to you. You'd already grieved, remember? You spent years just sitting in your chair, staring blankly, your life falling apart. . . See, Jake? Don't ever doubt me again. I did it, okay? I put the mission first. I saw the big picture. So just don't ever doubt me again, because I did what had to be done. . . . Mom, what was I supposed to do? I saw all the plays. I saw all the pieces on the chessboard. There was no solution that freed you. There were only solutions that destroyed you. . . .
Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we'd be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They'd be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee. Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably. And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I'd be a part of history. What I was about to do. Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, "Cold, man. That was really cold." I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It's the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don't you get it? It was the whole point. We hurt the innocent in order to stop the evil. Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers. How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win? No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do.
"Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold."
-Book 30, The Reunion.
Jake: What are we, anymore, Marco? What has happened to us?
-Book 31, The Conspiracy
Jake: (on Marco’s lack of driving skills) DO YOU HATE TRASH CANS?!
-Megamorphs 1, The Andalite’s Gift
Songs Quotes:
The Scar buried within mankind
The will that defines all of right from wrong
Now fight unless you're willing to die
- Broken Iris, “The Scar”
Other: In terms of sexuality, I identify Marco as straight. While I don’t think he has a problem with homosexuality or genderqueer per se, I don’t think he will be very appreciative if say, when asked he’s gay or not or some guy making some moves toward him. (Look, I’ve never said he was a considerate guy!) …But in the long run, I don’t think sexuality mattered to him. He’s all about fighting a war, and if you are happen to be gay and can give him a way to defeat the Yeerks, then that’s all that matters to him.
Also, he has a total crush on Rachel, even though he can only show it through the snark-o-lympics he exchanges with her. In fact, he’ll try to do this a lot with other people, just testing their mettle.
Marco will curse. In the books, the swearing was reduced to “crap”, “hell”, “damn”, and “a few choice words that I can’t repeat,”, but you know, I get the feeling that Marco may not have a filthy mouth as Rachel might have, but he has his moments. Not a lot, but still.
In my headcanon, Marco is at least half Hispanic, specifically Mexican from his mother’s side. While he doesn’t embrace his Mexican side as his main cultural identity, he is somewhat knowledgeable of the culture and history, and knows some Spanish.
Action Writing Sample:
[Marco has no idea where he is. All he sees is just empty woods where he is supposed to be in an open peaceful valley, filled with freed Hork-Bajir and his parents - both and in hiding and could never have a normal life again but alive and free and that’s all that matters.
The woods seemed to be too close, too encompassing, too much like a prison (like the hell he came from recently to save Mom), and he can’t stand around in his tight clothing, without shoes, in the middle of the woods like some idiot.]
Alright, then.
[Hands crumble and wither until feathers come bursting out. His skull collapse on itself and shrank, becoming more streamline as his teeth smoothes over and pushes outward in a form of a beak. His legs twists, chest crumbles, and his organs disappear as he sheds his heavy, flightless human body for the light, speedy form of the harrier.
As the last of the feathers emerge, Marco opens his wings and took flight, not noticing a tiny device suddenly appearing on one his harrier legs. And too his surprise, it didn’t take long for him to find buildings, or other humans for that matter. Except . . . they are all wrong. The houses look like something out of one of those Zen gardens he would see from his stepmother’s Martha Stewart magazines. And the people look off as well. Some of them are dressed in some uniform, some in some kind of garb that people from Asia wore, and . . . wait, was that an actual ninja?
Where in God’s name has the Ellimist taken him to this time? Japan?]
Name/Nickname: Kate. For chat’s sake, call me Devi.
Age: 23 ;____;
Journal: devimelete
AIM/MSN/IM: devimelete (AIM)
Email: thamnopsis@hotmail.com
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Marco
Canon: Animorphs
Point taken from canon: In BOOK 45, where he has gone into hiding in the free Hork-Bajir valley and his parents reunited.
Age: His age was never specified during the series, but he has mention at the end of the series he is around seventeen years old
Gender: Male
Preferred Village: Hisato. However, it should be noted that Marco can and will jump from village to village if he finds it more beneficial to him.
Appearance:
Due to the secret nature of the books themselves (nearly all of them started out with the phrase, “I can’t tell you my last name or where I live. . . “), not much detail goes into Marco’s appearance, other than be short, sly, and cute, with dark short hair. His mother is said to be an immigrant from another country, and if we should consider the illustrations as canon, then his appearance is that of Hispanic descent. (This is later confirmed when Marco admits that he can speak a little of Spanish, thanks to his grandmother, presumably from his mother’s side.) We can only assume that he gestures with his hands and exaggerated body language, considering he is the “class clown” of the group, giving him an animated feel to his appearance. He can be charming, in a rather boyish, teenager way.
However, to those who have experience the trauma and the strain of war can easily look in Marco’s eyes and know that he has the eyes of somebody being worn down by warfare; but good luck trying to admit that to him when he thinks you are nothing more than a stranger, and a potential enemy.
Background:
Marco is the son of two proud parents Peter and Eva. On one stormy night, Eva went out to the dock and sailed out to sea on the family’s sailboat, with the storm still raging. The next day, the remains of the shattered boat was washed up. Eva’s body was never found, and was presumed to be dead. This completely breaks Peter to a severe depression. He quits his job and worked in various night-shift jobs, such as being a custodian in various faculties, and on nights he merely sits in front of the TV, not interacting with anyone else, not even his son. This forces Marco to grow up far more quickly than he should have been and starts to take care for himself and to his dad. The two of them managed to stay together and survived, but they are still broken from the loss and financial strain.
One day, Marco tagged along with his best friend Jake to the local mall arcade where they usually hang out after school. As they ran out of quarters to spend, they ran into Jake’s cousin Rachel, and her best friend Cassie, and eventually Tobias, a lonely outsider with a pendant to attract bullies. They all decided to head back to their homes, but took a short cut through an abandoned construction site. As they passed through, they noticed a light passing through the starry night quickly. At first they thought it was a plane or a shooting star, but as the light comes closer toward them . . . it eventually becomes an alien spacecraft.
The spacecraft crash landed in front of them, and the door opened to a dying alien stumbling weakly from its wounds. The five teenagers were frightened and kept their distance until Tobias and Cassie step up and try to heal its wounds. However, the alien dismiss their attempts and introduced himself as Elfangor, a warrior of the Andalite homeworld. He warns them of the Earth invasion of the Yeerk Empire: alien parasites that enter their hosts’ brains and control their motor functions and can access their memories. Already they have conquered three races and destroyed many more, and so far only the Andalites have the technology and power to resist the Yeerks, who begun their slow and secretive invasion of Earth. No one can tell between a normal human being nor an infested one; and if the teenagers went to nearest human and tell them about Elfangor, the chances of them being silenced and infested themselves are very high, not to mentioned that no one would have believed them anyway.
However, Elfangor has one more trick up on his sleeve. With Andalite technology, he gave them the power to morph: to touch and acquire any living creature’s DNA and become that creature. However, there’s one drawback: they have to return back to their human forms less than two hours, or otherwise they will be stuck in that form forever. At that moment, the Yeerks responsible for shooting down Elfangor ship, have arrived. The gang of teenagers quickly went into hiding as they witnessed a variety of Controllers (infested beings): Hork-Bajir, a fierce- looking but peaceful race enslaved by the Yeerks; and Taxxons, large, cannibalistic worms that allied with the Yeerks in exchange for fresh meat; along with a group of human Controllers, securing the Andalite and his ship. Soon, another Andalite appeared as well, but Marco and the others realize it is not a normal Andalite, but another infested Controller. This Yeerk is named as his rank: Visser Three, the third most powerful in the Yeerk Empire, as a result of being the first Yeerk to ever obtain an Andalite body, and consequently, has the ability to morph as well. As Visser Three walked up to Elfangor and begins to taunt him, he inconsequently reveals more information to the teenagers: that Elfangor is a war-hero, a known enemy to the Yeerks, and that humans are the perfect hosts for the Yeerks with their mass numbers and their vulnerability with their lesser and primitive technology. As Visser Three taunts Elfangor with threats of infesting Elfangor’s family, Visser Three began to morph a massive monster he acquired its DNA from a corner of the galaxy. He grabbed Elfangor and ate him alive.
This caused Marco, of course, to become violently ill and started to throw up. This caught the attention on one of the Hork-Bajir guards, and in a moment of panic, the teenagers took off and fled.
The next day, everyone was shaken up. Marco was more so, realizing that if he decides to do anything about the situation, there’s a strong chance that he might be killed, and then his father will have no one. Tobias, on the other hand, insisted that they should take a chance and fight for not just for humanity’s survival, but for the Andalite’s sacrifice as well. Marco, knowing that Tobias just as well fight because he has nothing else to lose, is still insistent, thinking only for his dad. But despite his own protests, he went along with Jake and others, specifically to find out more of their given ability and about the Yeerks. As they infiltrated their local zoo for more suitable animals capable of fighting and defending themselves against the Yeerks, they also found out the location of the Yeerk Pool - an underground city where the human hosts go down every three days, their Yeerks temporarily leaving their minds in order to soak up ‘Kandrona’ rays as a source of nourishment for their own slug-like bodies.
In the process of gathering information about the Yeerks, they also find out that Jake’s older brother is also infested, and is part of the front organization called “The Sharing” where the Yeerks drawn other unsuspecting humans to their club - a mixture of a Rotary Club and a Boys and Girls Club - and infest them easily. So the Animorphs decided to attack the base, and cause some damage to them, along with the plan of rescuing Jake’s brother Tom.
They failed. They barely made out alive, and already they had a casualty: Tobias went pass the two hour limit and was stuck in the body of a red-tail hawk forever. Tom was still a Controller.
The Animorphs continue on with their fight and despite Marco’s own protests, he went along with them, as his intelligence and his way of tactics started to become invaluable to them. They continue on missions gathering more information, and eventually they found another Andalite - Aximili, a young military cadet and little brother to Elfangor. He joined the group, as well.
Marco’s opposition to the war ended when he discovered that his mother is not dead, but alive as the host of Visser One, the spearhead of Yeerk invasion of the entire galaxy. While initially he never told anyone about this fact, fearing they will just pity them, he then eventually admits that his mother is a Controller as well.
Animorphs continue fighting their own guerilla war for three years, occasionally going in to space a few times (and some alternate dimensions once or twice), and encountering many races. They have their low points, but they also gained victories. Marco’s father started to go back to work again. They have freed two Hork-Bajir and hidden them in a valley that eventually grew into a colony. They also discovered that through of unimaginable means, Elfangor is Tobias’ father. They have discovered a race of pacifist androids called the Chee, and with their powerful holograms, they become spies for the Animorphs, giving them wealth of information. But they also had to deal with the crisis of David, the seventh Animorph and traitor, the war itself wearing them down, battle after battle. They discovered the powerful dimensional being called The Ellimist, who gave back Tobais’ ability to morph (but not his human form), and manipulates the Animorphs into being part of some long range plan for peace and liberty for the universe. Marco and Jake also had to put up with the fear that they might have to kill their own mother and brother respectively.
(They almost did.)
Marco was also drawn again to Visser One’s schemes. He once tried to kill Visser One in a bid to kill off both her and Visser Three, but failed. Somehow Visser One realized that one of the “Andalite bandits” (The Yeerks, and Visser Three in particular, assumed the resistance fighters were Andalites, as they were the only ones apart from Visser Three to have the ability to morph) is actually her own host’s son. However, she kept it secret in case she needs him for help. During a trial for her life in front of the Council of Thirteen (the governmental Yeerks of the Empire), in an attempt to discredit Visser Three, set loose a starved tiger and bear as the “Andalite bandits”, and he successfully killed the bear and the tiger. Realizing her standing has become weakened because of this, Visser One called Marco, to tell him that his mother is in danger in execution. And so, Marco and the rest of the Animorphs interrupted trial with a battle on their own. They retreated, taking an unconscious Visser One with them.
Later on, they realize the reason why Visser One had taken a silent, non-warfare tactic to the invasion of Earth: as being one of the two Yeerks who had discovered Earth, Visser One had become lost within humanity and became “human” herself by having two human children with her own host’s and her partner’s, and developed feelings for them. If the Yeerks decided to go open warfare on the humans, then the chances of them being killed are high. There is another reason as well: Visser One has developed a healthy respect for humans as well, as witnessing them constantly killing themselves in countless wars, she realized that many Yeerks will be killed by them, limited technology or not, because if they are so ruthless to each other, anything is possible toward for her own Yeerk race, as she said to Visser Three, who is proposing an open warfare tactic on Earth:
“There are more than five billion of them, Visser, and you may deride their
projectile weapons, but a nine-millimeter bullet will kill a Hork-Bajir host body quite
effectively. And Taxxons or Gedds? A Taxxon can be killed with a can opener! . . . Humans have fought thousands of wars. Thousands! We as a race have fought a mere handful. They run straight into the bullets, Visser Three, again and again. Did you know that? They attack against insane odds. They defend what can’t be defended.
Outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, hopeless, they will still fight, fight, fight till they are
each and every one dead. Something you might know if you stopped posturing long enough
to learn something!” ”
Marco and the rest of the Animorphs realize that even if that’s the case, open warfare will still not be the best as they rely on underhanded and no confrontational tactics to subvert and slow down the invasion. They are still six of them, and are used to tightly controlled missions. If the Yeerks started to expose their appearance and started an all out war, then the humans are still doomed anyway. So Marco allowed Visser One to live and continue infesting his mother for now.
Recently, Marco’s father remarried to another woman, much to Marco’s dismay and then later acceptance. However, it didn’t last long - Peter had discovered in his work of science that weren’t supposed to be available to humans for centuries, and the Yeerks can’t afford humans discovering technology that could be a problem to their own invasion. So they plan to infest Peter. Realizing this, Marco called Rachel for back up and went after them and they saved Peter. Unfortunately, his father saw too much and it became too dangerous for him to go back and live normally. So Marco told him everything about the invasion, and about Eva’s fake death and infestation.
Marco arranged the Chee for them to masquerade as Marco and Peter themselves respectively the next day, as he knew that the next time the Yeerks will come back and won’t bother infestation and go to simply killing the two. True to his word, the Yeerks did come back and “killed” Marco and Peter, even though in reality they simply injured the two androids in disguise. Then Marco and Peter fled to the free Hork-Bajir valley, where they are to given shelter by other ex-Controlled Hork-Bajir. Later on, the Animorphs discovered that Visser One is slated for execution for failures for various sectors of the galaxy by the Council of Thirteen. The Animorphs decided that they really have no choice but not to rescue Visser One, but rather his mother. So they invaded the Yeerk Pool once more (as they have repeating done in the past) and began the mission of rescuing Eva. They killed Visser One, rescued Eva and escaped.
Marco was witnessing the long-awaited reunion of Peter and Eva when he was spirited away to Kanagara.
Personality:
At a glance, Marco appears to be archetype of a class clown. He cracks jokes at everything and everyone, including himself. He’ll pull pranks once in a while, but he prefers wait and let people give him an opening before he attacks. However, he describes himself as someone who is “allergic to pity”. He’ll confuse this with sympathy, but really, he just hates when people get up into personal boundaries and start asking him deep questions that he rather not have the answer for. He doesn’t like going back to the pain and grief of his mother’s “death”, and his father’s downward spiral to depression. He much rather locked that all away, so he wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore, so when somebody asks him some deep and meaningful and really none of their business, he cracks a joke and laughs. He hides behind his laughter because that’s the only shield he has. He’ll flirt and annoy girls and act immature and just be a teenage brat all around.
Behind the jokes and the grief, however, is a sharp calculating mind. In the first book, it was he who correctly deduced that Tom is a Controller with very little evidence. His wariness of people in general makes him more aware of his surroundings, and he also comes to the conclusion that the Sharing is actually a Yeerk front. He reads people, and he uses it to his advantage. He is also good at tactics as well. He can see the clear bright line almost to the point of obsession. While he can see some moral objects to his plans and can act according to them, he just finds it easier to get it done with minimal fuss. After all, it was he who proposed the plan to manipulate Visser One and Visser Three into killing each other, despite the fact that he is also planning to kill his mother as well. The Animorphs knew this and became concerned and tried to talk him out of it, but he refused and they reluctantly followed the plan. Once he sees the bright line, there’s no stopping him.
However, only the Animorphs will ever see this side of him, as they work in a secretive war, and this war brings out the worst in them all. To the rest of the world, he’s just a kid who managed to put tragedy behind him with a joke and a grin. The worse the situation is, the goofier he’ll become.
But despite his jokes and his ruthless nature, the kid is also just one big dork underneath. Pop culture is his lifeline, along with video games and comics and television. To those who are not aware of who is the Brady Brunch or Xena is and has never watched Baywatch or read Spider-man or know the ways of the Internet, prepared to be taken wrong-footed, because he lives for that.
Abilities/Strengths: First and foremost, it is his ability to change to any creature. He can touch an animal and acquire its DNA in his system. Then he’ll change into that form. It doesn’t matter how large or small - if it is alive and has DNA, he can turn into that form. He has several morphs that he has used on a regular basis: for battle, a male silverback gorilla; a harrier for flight; cockroach or fly for infiltration; and a hammerhead shark or a bottlenose dolphin for underwater missions. However, he has a variety of morphs at his command. He can also communicate telepathically when in morph, but not in his human form. If he’s injured in his human body or in a morph, all he has to do is to morph/demorph until the injuries are gone.
He has also had a mindset for tactics and subversion. He is very calculating and very meticulous, and his plans generally have a high percentage of succession. He also can be very humorous and charming, and often use it to get out of socially awkward situations the Animorphs find themselves in when they are flubbing around with their morphing prowess or when Ax went a little too overwhelmed with his human form and start causing trouble.
However, one of the most dangerous aspects of Marco’s personality is that when he is angered, he can focused it to the point of complete and utter ruthlessness. He can direct his anger with such cold clarity, it made him to be quite frightening, particularly when somebody tries to get something out of his father or mother or any of the Animorphs. He is loyal to his friends and family, and will use everything in his power to make sure they will be okay. In addition, his talent for comedy is often taken for granted; it becomes a great stress reliever for extreme situations.
Weaknesses:
Emotionally, because he pushes his emotions back with a smile and a joke, he doesn’t really deal with the grief and the anger he has over the years. So when he snaps, he will shut down and be focused on whatever it was that been giving him grief with out mercy or remorse. He doesn’t like pity because he doesn’t allow it for himself, so when people are tying to lend him a sympathetic ear, he pushes away, mistaken it for pity. While most of the time he doesn’t do it rudely, it is pretty obvious he pushes people away. He doesn’t confine with people’s feelings that much, let alone strangers.
While his paranoia served him well with avoiding detection by the Yeerks, and he can be friendly on a casual way, don’t expect him to open up to him. After all, if he does that to the wrong person in the world he lives in, he’d be dead or worse, and he will not jeopardize that.
His ruthless tactics can also clash with others who have some moral grounds to uphold to, and he is stubborn with his ways. He understands the significance morality, but during times of war where he nearly lost everything, he sometimes sees morality as something to be considered as a leisure and privilege to be sacrificed in terms of survival of the human race.
Physically, he’s just a young American teenager, so he can’t really pull his punches. His primary strengths are in his shapeshifting abilities and his mind. However, the morph can only last for two hours, and he has to morph back to human or otherwise he will be stuck in his morphed form forever. There is a range of telepathy while he’s in morph, so he can’t broadcast his thought-speak in a miles radius. He also cannot morph his clothing into his animal form - the only type of clothing that he can wear while morphing is skin-tight closing, like leotards or bike shorts. Awkwardness and misery abound when he’s hot or cold or out on public property during midday. He cannot morph plants or any other kind of vegetation.
Defining Quote(s):
Book Quotes:
Marco’s Motto: This is insane!
Jake: I think we have to head to The Gardens. We need to get some help from Mother Earth's toughest children. (to Cassie) Can you get us in?
Cassie: I can get in free. You guys will have to pay, but I can use my mom's employee discount, so it'll be cheaper.
Marco: Oh, I'm sure we could talk them into letting us in for nothing. Just tell them we're Animorphs.
Rachel: Tell them we're what?
Marco: Idiot teenagers with a death wish.
Marco: Now do you see why it's crazy to think we can beat the Yeerks? I mean, come on: We can barely beat zoo security.
-Book 1, The Invasion
Marco: This was always insane, right from the start. A handful of kids fighting an alien invasion? Look what's happening. Tobias is trapped in a morph. Rachel is starting to use morphing to get away from her problems. The other night I woke up in bed, and I didn't know what I was. I didn't know if I had hands or fins or claws or talons. Maybe you and Cassie are immune, Jake. But I doubt it.
Jake: We can't give up.
Marco: All we ever do is lose. We annoy the Yeerks. Maybe we blow up a ship, or have some little success. But the invasion marches on. And all we ever do is barely escape with our lives.
-Book 7, The Stranger
Jake: Erek (the Chee) didn't mean anything bad. You know that. He just meant--
Marco: I know what he meant. He meant if it came to crunch time, would I destroy my own mother to protect the mission? That's what he meant.
Jake: And?
Marco: I don't know, Jake. I don't know.
-Book 15, The Escape
Me explaining to my mom, as my mom, as my real mom, why I had to do it. Me explaining to my mom as Visser One. Laughing, chortling, savoring my victory over her.
This is how I defeated you! I crowed.
This is how I saved you! I explained.
No choice. No choice. I had to do it, Dad, you understand, right? What else was I going to do? . . . . she was already dead to you. You'd already grieved, remember? You spent years just sitting in your chair, staring blankly, your life falling apart. . . See, Jake? Don't ever doubt me again. I did it, okay? I put the mission first. I saw the big picture. So just don't ever doubt me again, because I did what had to be done. . . . Mom, what was I supposed to do? I saw all the plays. I saw all the pieces on the chessboard. There was no solution that freed you. There were only solutions that destroyed you. . . .
Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we'd be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They'd be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee. Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably. And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I'd be a part of history. What I was about to do. Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, "Cold, man. That was really cold." I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It's the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don't you get it? It was the whole point. We hurt the innocent in order to stop the evil. Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers. How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win? No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do.
"Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold."
-Book 30, The Reunion.
Jake: What are we, anymore, Marco? What has happened to us?
-Book 31, The Conspiracy
Jake: (on Marco’s lack of driving skills) DO YOU HATE TRASH CANS?!
-Megamorphs 1, The Andalite’s Gift
Songs Quotes:
The Scar buried within mankind
The will that defines all of right from wrong
Now fight unless you're willing to die
- Broken Iris, “The Scar”
Other: In terms of sexuality, I identify Marco as straight. While I don’t think he has a problem with homosexuality or genderqueer per se, I don’t think he will be very appreciative if say, when asked he’s gay or not or some guy making some moves toward him. (Look, I’ve never said he was a considerate guy!) …But in the long run, I don’t think sexuality mattered to him. He’s all about fighting a war, and if you are happen to be gay and can give him a way to defeat the Yeerks, then that’s all that matters to him.
Also, he has a total crush on Rachel, even though he can only show it through the snark-o-lympics he exchanges with her. In fact, he’ll try to do this a lot with other people, just testing their mettle.
Marco will curse. In the books, the swearing was reduced to “crap”, “hell”, “damn”, and “a few choice words that I can’t repeat,”, but you know, I get the feeling that Marco may not have a filthy mouth as Rachel might have, but he has his moments. Not a lot, but still.
In my headcanon, Marco is at least half Hispanic, specifically Mexican from his mother’s side. While he doesn’t embrace his Mexican side as his main cultural identity, he is somewhat knowledgeable of the culture and history, and knows some Spanish.
Action Writing Sample:
[Marco has no idea where he is. All he sees is just empty woods where he is supposed to be in an open peaceful valley, filled with freed Hork-Bajir and his parents - both and in hiding and could never have a normal life again but alive and free and that’s all that matters.
The woods seemed to be too close, too encompassing, too much like a prison (like the hell he came from recently to save Mom), and he can’t stand around in his tight clothing, without shoes, in the middle of the woods like some idiot.]
Alright, then.
[Hands crumble and wither until feathers come bursting out. His skull collapse on itself and shrank, becoming more streamline as his teeth smoothes over and pushes outward in a form of a beak. His legs twists, chest crumbles, and his organs disappear as he sheds his heavy, flightless human body for the light, speedy form of the harrier.
As the last of the feathers emerge, Marco opens his wings and took flight, not noticing a tiny device suddenly appearing on one his harrier legs. And too his surprise, it didn’t take long for him to find buildings, or other humans for that matter. Except . . . they are all wrong. The houses look like something out of one of those Zen gardens he would see from his stepmother’s Martha Stewart magazines. And the people look off as well. Some of them are dressed in some uniform, some in some kind of garb that people from Asia wore, and . . . wait, was that an actual ninja?
Where in God’s name has the Ellimist taken him to this time? Japan?]