B30C26/28 - Stagger Crab

<You all will only hinder my progress,> Visser Three spat. <I will proceed alone from here. The Hork-Bajir and Taxxons will join us soon. And the fleet stands ready. Catch up when your frail bodies allow. I have a morph that will do very nicely for this challenge.>

With his entourage watching, Visser Three began to morph.

Squeeeesh!

His Andalite head flattened to the shape of a B-movie flying saucer. His main eyes closed and sealed. His stalk eyes remained but thickened. The eyeballs bulged and reddened.

Multijointed legs sprouted from his sides. One, two, three - six, total, replacing his quick-disappearing Andalite legs and hooves.

His blue-and-tan Andalite fur seemed to be absorbed into him, as though it had been sucked in.

What remained was a translucent skin or shell of no particular color.

The legs lengthened, becoming spindly, almost like a spider's. The two front legs ended in claws. The back four legs ended in sharp, barbed spikes.

And then, before my startled gaze, the shell began to change. From a translucence that revealed vague, distorted blue, red, and orange shadows of his internal organs, it became green and brown.

It became the precise green of the trees overhead. The exact brown of the trail.

<A chameleon!> I whispered.

The Visser's bizarre, spindly land crab was nearly invisible, even to my eyes. The colors and patterns of its shell shifted as rapidly as it walked.

Okay, Marco, you knew he'd morph something dangerous. That still fits the plan.

Of course, I hadn't known he'd be nearly invisible.

(...)

Visser One fired.

Visser Three sliced.

<Aaaarrgghh!>

A sizzling hole appeared in Visser Three's color-shifting shell.

My mother screamed. She staggered and fell. Her clothes were stained red.

<NOOOO!> I cried. I leaped. Leaped at Visser Three, head down, horns ready.

<Marco! Stop!> Rachel cried. <It's the plan! It has to happen! It has to happen! She has to->

<NOOOOOO!> I slammed into the chameleon morph. It jerked back. Visser Three staggered. Three legs crumpled.

Visser One fired.

The shot missed Visser Three. It hit me.

Searing pain. There was a neat semicircle of flesh gone from my haunch. I staggered, blinded and disoriented by the pain.

"Destroy the colony! The colony!" my mother screamed into her communicator. "Don't fire on Visser Three's ships! The colony! Kill them all! Kill them all!"

<Pathetic attempt. You can't hope to conceal your treason,> Visser Three said.

TSEEEEEEW! TSEEEEEEW!