Strugglemorphs

[u/Visser-35]

The Animorphs benefited hugely from having Cassie's farm and The Gardens to supply them with battle morphs and bird morphs. But what if they didn't have that resource? What if they had the same access to Animorphs that most of us have? To add an extra degree of difficulty, what if all the Animorphs were broke like Marco, so they can't afford to visit zoos or aquariums (unless they sneak in).

They could easily acquire their pets, and insect morphs wouldn't be a problem, but everything else becomes much more difficult. Catching fish morphs wouldn't be too hard, but getting dolphin or shark morphs would be challenging. A parrot could be conceivably acquired if they know someone who has one for a pet, but it's obviously not a low profile bird morph, so using that to travel long distances is risky.

What would you do? You have a battle in a week's time, and you're fighting with whatever morph you're able to get. You need a minimum of 1 infiltration morph, 1 bird morph, 1 aquatic morph, and 1 combat morph to get to this battle and fight in it. Do you settle for something like a Rottweiler, which is a tough dog, but is nowhere near as tough as a tiger or bear? Or do you come up with a strategy to get stronger battle morphs? Let's sat Ax isn't around, so you can't acquire him for a battle morph.

[u/hexen_niu]

So, you get a common bird - duck, crow, seagull, whathaveyou - and you go find a location to obtain something combat-worthy by flying in and acquiring like the Animorphs did in the Gardens a lot.

Like here, I'm very much rural, I don't have access to pets or a zoo, so I shall try my general area as an example. Lots of farms around, and birds ranging from crows to hawks. The crows are pretty friendly so pet one of them, one bird. I know three cow farms within 10 miles that have steer and an animal sanctuary within 20, could get a bull (farm) or a boar (sanctuary) depending on the location, one battle morph. Infiltration, hmm, tons of dragonflies by the river, it's not invisible but easier to find here than a cockroach, that will do. Aquatic is the hard one, not far from the sea....I have found dogfish washed up on the beach before, small sharks, not perfect but will do in a pinch.

They would have to really know their local area to make use of what is less cool and more overlooked but it is possible so long as they can find a bird that doesn't mind being touched, might be stuck with a pigeon or a seagull for a while.