Tobias (Animorphs) - Biography

Biography

Tobias is one of the original five Animorphs. Before the war with the Yeerks, Tobias considered himself a loser. He had few if any friends, and often the target of bullies. To a degree, he hero-worships Jake, because Jake once stopped some bullies from beating him up.

In Megamorphs #4: Back to Before, an alternate reality scenario, Tobias' low self-esteem leads to him joining The Sharing and becoming a Controller. Besides the fact that The Sharing stops him from being bullied, one of his main reasons for doing so was the fact that he saw Jake attending a meeting at Tom's insistence and figured that if they both got involved in The Sharing, then he could become a "winner" like Jake.

Before the war, Tobias lived variously with an uncle in the other Animorphs' home town and with an aunt on the other coast. His parents were believed to be dead, so neither ever really cared about the boy, often not paying attention to him or just using him as free labor, and they never tried to find him after his "disappearance".

Tobias had a pet cat named Dude, which was his first morph and the very first morph of the Animorphs. He morphed the cat in front of Jake to prove that morphing technology was real. It was Tobias who convinced Jake to lead the Animorphs.

In the first book, Tobias is trapped in the Yeerk pool and becomes a red-tailed hawk nothlit (a morph-trapped creature) as a result of staying in morph for longer than the two-hour time limit in order to keep the Animorphs' identities as humans secret. Initially, the other Animorphs perceive Tobias' actions to be a selfless sacrifice. It is implied, and later suspected by the other Animorphs, that Tobias trapped himself as a hawk deliberately (In the first book, he makes no effort to keep track of time while in morph and seemingly does not care about the two hour limit, only demorphing when pressured to by the other Animorphs).

Because of Tobias' dual existence as both a hawk and a human, his friends sometimes call him "bird-boy". Tobias' narrations contain many thoughts on his internal conflict between his human and hawk sides. In the third book, Tobias begins to fear that he is losing his humanity when he begins to forget how he looked as a human and finds himself attracted to a female hawk. When morphing to human, Tobias does at times encounter problems; in The Pretender, for example, he briefly forgets how to make facial expressions. Among the group, Tobias is closest to Rachel and Ax. After becoming a nothlit, he lived in the forest as a hawk along with Ax. He has a crush on Rachel during the early books, but they become romantically involved later on in the series and fall in love, going to the occasional school dance together, with Rachel often being implied to be the one thing that Tobias would become permanently human for once the war was over.

In the book The Change, the Ellimist restores his power to morph. However, as the Ellimist does not also restore Tobias' human form as his normal body, Tobias' normal form remains that of the hawk, from which he is able to morph to any other animal, including his original human form. This has, however, given the Animorphs an advantage when dealing with the Yeerks in cases where demorphing in 'public' might be required, most notable when the Yeerks attempted to develop an Anti-Morphing Ray that could force them to demorph; by ensuring that Tobias was the ray's test subject, the project was scrapped as it completely failed to do anything to Tobias given that his hawk-form was his regular form.

The Ellimist makes the human morph possible by sending Tobias, still in his red-tailed hawk form, into an illusion in which he encountered his human form the day before the Animorphs gained their morphing ability. This occurs at the end of The Change. The Ellimist's intervention gives Tobias the chance to return to life as a human, but he chooses to continue living as a morph-capable hawk, explained by the others as a need to stay in the fight. However, as the series progresses, it becomes apparent that in many ways Tobias prefers his life as a hawk to his life as a human.

Towards the end of the series it was revealed that Tobias's mother, Loren, was still alive and blind. Tobias's true father was Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, the Andalite who gave the Animorphs their powers. Because the Ellimist had wiped out all evidence of Elfangor's time on Earth, Tobias and the Animorphs were unaware of Tobias' lineage, until Visser Three got his hands on Elfangor's will in The Pretender.

Loren and Tobias were reunited towards the end of the series, though Loren never quite remembered her son or Elfangor, due to a case of amnesia. Tobias' surname is often assumed by fans to be Fangor, but it's quite likely that he had his mother's maiden name instead, due to the Ellimist altering the timeline to remove Elfangor from Earth.

In The Familiar, narrated by Jake, Tobias appears ten years in the supposed future in Aximili's body; once again becoming a nothlit in an effort to preserve his lifespan. Jake at first confuses Tobias as Elfangor (because it is a supposed future, many things are distorted and confusing) and blames Elfangor (Tobias) for throwing the Animorphs into a war they could not possibly win. Tobias then reveals himself as Aximili in morph; having aged ten years, he now looks remarkably like Elfangor. He then gives Jake a pep-talk involving saving Earth from being permanently taken over by the Yeerks at the sacrifice of Cassie. In the end, Jake saves Cassie's life instead and the timeline is restored. No other Animorph remembers this event and Tobias is returned to his hawk-form.

After the war, Tobias is distraught by Rachel's death, and unable to forgive Jake for his role in her death. He only rejoins the other Animorphs (minus Cassie) after finding out about Ax's capture by The One.