Probably may as well be speaking German as far as the Hork-Bajir Controllers on the homeworld are concerned
It is weird that we never hear human controllers speak alien languages when in private. You'd think that the scientists and engineers would, at least, since humans probably don't have words for the components they're using. Even Ax does it a few times when he raids a Radio Shack for parts.
I was fully Hork-Bajir now. I was done for. Tired inside and out.
<Take over, Aldrea,> I said.
Couldn't fight her. Needed her. My mind was going fuzzy, confused. Not sure what body I was in. Bits of unmorphed data, stray instincts, body images, echoes of fins and wings, all jumbled together.
Tseeeew! Tseeeew!
The battle above us on the battlements was joined again. Aldrea propelled us down, crawling, Hork-Bajir style, down the dike wall, down into the water that no longer rang with the cries of dying Taxxons.
Two hammerhead sharks swam up beside us. There were bits of Taxxon flesh trailing from their rows of razor teeth.
Aldrea was running short of air. We were. She was searching in the murk for some sign on the vast tree trunk before us. Searching ... the wood was swollen and discolored ... gasping for breath.
<We're coming in!> Tobias yelled.
Pah-loosh! Pah-loosh! Pah-loosh!
Aldrea said, <Marco! Sink your blades into the wood, don't try to swim! Slow your heartbeats, it will preserve oxygen.>
There! The faint, almost invisible line. It was on the underside of the log, almost where it joined the tree beneath it.
Aldrea slashed with expert ease. Then she pulled.
Nothing!
<The water pressure!> she cried. <Too much. Can't do it!>
Marco crawled down beside us and added his strength.
Slowly the crack widened.
Tseeeeew! Tseeeew! Tseeeeew!
The troops on the battlement were firing into the water. They wouldn't be able to hit us, they couldn't even see us, but they'd soon parboil us.
WOOOOOSH!
The tree opened! Water rushed in, dragging us with it. A tangled mass of sharks, Andalites, and Hork-Bajir was swept inside and bobbed up, to my utter amazement, into air. There was no light, but there was definitely air.
It was silent inside the tree. All the sounds of battle were muffled.
Aldrea gasped, choked, breathed. Then, "Computer, identification: Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan.
Code: ..." She hesitated, then said, "Code: Mother loves Seerow. Ship, acknowledge by turning on exterior lights."
The sudden illumination seemed blinding after the total darkness.
We were floating in a placid pool at the bottom of what looked like an upturned, smooth, wooden bowl. We were inside the tree. Lying half-submerged in water was a stubby Yeerk ship, maybe forty feet long and almost as wide.
We paddled toward the ship and then I felt wood beneath my feet. We stood up.
Jake and Rachel were demorphing as fast as they could, and when they had feet and legs, they, too, stood up in waist-deep water.
"There it is," Aldrea said.
<You have no memory of this ship,> Ax pointed out. <How did you know the identification code?>
"The number represents a logarithm of Seerow's birth date. I always used it."
Jake clapped his hands briskly. "Okay, we have minutes before the Yeerks figure out we're in this tree. Let's get this over with."
We slogged over to the ship and hauled our wet, exhausted selves up inside. I lay on my back on the deck, unable to get up for a while.
"You okay, Cassie?" Rachel asked.
"Aldrea, actually. Cassie is exhausted," Aldrea said.
"Why are you in charge? Get Cassie back!"
Aldrea laughed. "You don't need to worry about Cassie. She takes care of herself quite well."
We stood up and went to the ship's controls. "I need someone on weapons," Aldrea said.
Ax appeared beside her. <We burn our way out?>
"We burn our way out."
<Once we create a hole, the water will rush in and through. It will create a vast drain that will empty much of the pool and suck many of the Yeerks to their doom.>
"Yes," Aldrea said. "Do you object, brother Andalite?"
<No, sister Hork-Bajir. I do not.>
"Then power up the Dracon beams."
The engines began to whine. The Dracon beams began to hum.
<You know, that says something that you can bury one of these things in a tree for years and then just crank her up like this,> Marco said. <Two points for Yeerk technology.>
<"Andalite technology,"> Ax and Aldrea said at the same instant.
"They stole it. That doesn't make it theirs," Aldrea added.
<Everyone should brace themselves,> Ax suggested. <There may be some instability.>
"Ready?"
<Ready.>
"Fire!"
The Dracon beams fired, a blinding blast. And kept firing. A hole burned through the outer side of the tree, out into the air. The water began to rise. The hole grew larger. Now the water was rushing in, gurgling up around the ship. The escaping air howled. Then, all at once, the wooden wall was gone.
WHAM!
Aldrea hit the engines just as a wall of water caught us, slammed into us, and spit us out into the night.
The ship rolled, spun, bucked then ...
Whooooom!
<Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!> Marco yelled. <Take that, George Lucas!>
The ship blew out of the log, down the valley, and turned to take a look back. A Bug fighter had come up, saw we were a Yeerk ship, and hesitated.
TSEEEEW! TSEEEEEW!
The Bug fighter blew apart and veered down into the draining Yeerk pool. Water rushed out of the rapidly widening hole. I could not see the Yeerks, of course, but I knew they were being dragged along in the irresistible current. Hundreds. Thousands. We might never know.
I didn't want to know.
<I sense regret,> Aldrea said. <But this is a great victory. And it is because of you, Cassie. Without you, none of this would have been possible. You've just done the most impossible, incredible, and heroic thing I've ever seen.>
The water continued to drain. The Yeerks in host bodies might be able to save some of their brothers and sisters. Not many. Not all. Thousands of Yeerks would lie there, dying a slow death of dehydration as the water left them stranded, or asphyxiation as they sank, helpless, into the mud.
Because of me.
We delivered the weapons to Quafijinivon. We were reunited with my great-granddaughter, Toby.
The humans, and the one Andalite, had done the impossible, the absurd! But there was no celebration. Instead there were awkward silences and stilted conversations and eyes averted.
I still had charge of Cassie's now-human body. She was doing something very much like sleeping. She had withdrawn, exhausted, depressed.
I drew Aximili aside. "You have lived with these humans. They seem troubled by their victory."
<Yes. They regret doing what they know they must. They have an almost Andalite sensibility.>
I smiled. "I was going to say that they remind me of our Hork-Bajir warriors, who never forgave themselves for learning to kill."
<Let us agree, then, that all civilized species must share a hatred of war,> Aximili said.
"It may be the definition of true civilization," I said. "And yet, we are here to promote another
war. The Arn will spawn his new generation of Hork-Bajir, and, thanks to us, they will be armed."
<Young Toby will lead them,> the Andalite said, turning his stalk eyes toward my greatgranddaughter. Toby had her back to us. She had been working with the Arn, learning from him. A strange couple: the last remnant of the race that had made the Hork-Bajir to serve in simplicity and ignorance, and the living example of the Arns' failure.
She was so like Dak when I first met him. Before the battles. Before I had led Dak to serve the Andalite will.
"No," I said suddenly. "No, Toby will not lead them. Her place is with her people, on Earth. Someone, some part of Dak and Seerow and me, will survive to do something besides fighting a war."
<I do not believe she will go voluntarily,> Ax said. <She believes this is her duty.>
"No, I suppose that's true. But with your help, Aximili. And with Cassie's, I think I can convince her." I explained to Aximili. Cassie, of course, heard. And now, at last, she came up out of her haze of regret and guilt.
<You know what this means,> Cassie said.
<Yes. Yes, I know. But my life ended long ago. I tried to pretend otherwise. But with Dak gone, and my little Seerow, and even this planet that I loved so much ... all that's left now is Toby.>
<No, Aldrea, that's not all that's left,> Cassie said. <You didn't stop the Yeerks. But you slowe them. And that gave humans time. Now we may not stop them, but we, too, will fight, and delay, and weaken them. And someday, somewhere, they will be stopped.>
<And one thing more,> she said. She turned our gaze to Toby. A young Hork-Bajir seer who would, at least in my last dreams, guide her people to freedom.
I almost weakened. It was so hard to say good-bye.
<Let's get it over with,> I said.
<It has been an honor, Aldrea. I still don't know why your Ixcila came to me, but it was an honor.>
<Don't you know? Even now? The Ixcila is drawn to a mind that reflects it. And I like to think even that inchoate, nonconscious version of me was honorable enough to know I might be tempted. That I might be tempted to cling to life. And that I might need someone strong enough to return me to the path of my own fate.>
Cassie didn't say anything more. There wasn't anything to say, not to each other.
"Jake!" Cassie cried. "Aldrea is struggling to seize control of me!"
Jake and all the others jerked around, bristling, ready to fight.
Aximili moved quickly to get behind Toby. He whipped his tail forward and held the blade against the young Hork-Bajir's throat.
<Release your hold, Aldrea. You will leave Cassie's body or your great-granddaughter will leave her own.>
"Ax!" Jake cried.
"I'll kill you, Andalite!" I cried through Cassie's mouth. "The Arn will give me a new body and I will come after you!"
<I doubt that, Aldrea, daughter of Seerow the Fool. Toby will go with us as a hostage to ensure your good behavior in the future. Now. Leave our friend Cassie.>
I did. I left Cassie behind, lifted up out of her body, her mind, and was drawn back to the bottle.
I could no longer touch. No longer hear. No longer see.
For a while I could remember.
It wouldn't take Toby long to realize she'd been tricked. But by then Toby and the others would be on their way back to Earth.
My thoughts, my consciousness, my memory, were all fading. I still saw my son. Still saw Dak.
Still saw ...
If you're looking for an in-universe reason, it might that human mouths have trouble with non-human languages, just like Hork-Bajir mouths have problems speaking things other than Hork-Bajir.. It also might just have become a custom among the Yeerks that if two controllers share hosts of the same species, the polite thing to do is speak in the host language. This doesn't mean they don't drop into Galard or Yeerk for a word that humans don't have, and we do hear some Yeerk language throughout the series. "Kandrona", for instance, seems to be the Yeerk word for sun. Visser One has been declared "Gashad" by the Council of Thirteen, which is the Yeerk word for outlaw/kill on sight. In the first Megamorphs book, Visser Three names his morph hunting beast "Veelek", which is the word for pet.
Before we're done, though, I have another moral question for you....is what they did to Toby at the end right?
Chapter 24
Two things. First, we know that Aldrea and Ax are wrong....the Yeerks invented Dracon beams themselves based off Andalite shreeders and Ongarchic particle waves. But in a bigger way, they're right, since all of Yeerk society is based of theft. That's what they do....steal resources, technology, bodies.
Also, we have another mass death of Yeerks in a Yeerk pool, which we've talked about before, and the general consensus of the thread is that most people aren't bothered by it, but it bothers Cassie, and, honestly, bothers me also.
Chapter 25-Aldrea
So that's the book. Tomorrow, we start Book 35-The Proposal, by Jeffrey Zeuhlke, who wrote the earlier book where the Animorphs went to the arctic. Before we're done, though, I have another moral question for you....is what they did to Toby at the end right? On the one hand, she's her community's seer and the leader of the Free Hork-Bajir, and without her, who knows what will happen to them? On the other, though, the Hork-Bajir are fighting for freedom, and the Animorphs at least claim to support that. But part of freedom is being allowed to make your own choices, even if they might be bad or wrong. Also, consider the way the Hork-Bajir have been treated by....pretty much everybody. They're tools of the Arm, who created them to maintain the forest (and who, if anything, made them too intelligent...if the Hork-Bajir were just unintelligent animals, that would be one thing, but they're intelligent enough to think, to ask questions, to have a language, a religion, etc.) Then the Yeerk come along, enslave them and take away their free will. After that, the Andalites come along, and in the name of fighting the Yeerks, unleash a biological agent that kills almost all of them. Now Cassie comes along and, alongside Ax and Aldrea, decide that, one way or another, Toby's going back to Earth. So, is this right?
Chapter 24
Also, we have another mass death of Yeerks in a Yeerk pool, which we've talked about before, and the general consensus of the thread is that most people aren't bothered by it, but it bothers Cassie, and, honestly, bothers me also.
Chapter 25-Aldrea
So that's the book. Tomorrow, we start Book 35-The Proposal, by Jeffrey Zeuhlke, who wrote the earlier book where the Animorphs went to the arctic. Before we're done, though, I have another moral question for you....is what they did to Toby at the end right? On the one hand, she's her community's seer and the leader of the Free Hork-Bajir, and without her, who knows what will happen to them? On the other, though, the Hork-Bajir are fighting for freedom, and the Animorphs at least claim to support that. But part of freedom is being allowed to make your own choices, even if they might be bad or wrong. Also, consider the way the Hork-Bajir have been treated by....pretty much everybody. They're tools of the Arm, who created them to maintain the forest (and who, if anything, made them too intelligent...if the Hork-Bajir were just unintelligent animals, that would be one thing, but they're intelligent enough to think, to ask questions, to have a language, a religion, etc.) Then the Yeerk come along, enslave them and take away their free will. After that, the Andalites come along, and in the name of fighting the Yeerks, unleash a biological agent that kills almost all of them. Now Cassie comes along and, alongside Ax and Aldrea, decide that, one way or another, Toby's going back to Earth. So, is this right?
Second, yeah, it's super shitty the way Ax and Company handle Toby here, but there is something to be said for the fact that Toby is basically a child entrusted to them. Children don't get to stay behind on road trips, especially when their parents are waiting for them at home. It does get weirder with the nature of Hork Bajir intelligence, but ultimately, I think they were right to force her hand, even if they did it in a very shitty way that should definitely have long term consequences with Toby and the Free Hork Bajir.
"Yes," Aldrea said. "Do you object, brother Andalite?"
<No, sister Hork-Bajir. I do not.>
I really enjoyed this book. I remembered it very vaguely and I have no idea if I read it as a kid or just a summary in a drunken haze seerowpedia binge in college. But it is pretty emotionally evocative and well done. I seem to remember the next two being uh something, guess we'll see.
Did I miss some bit where Toby said she'd want to remain on the Hork Bajir world, or are they assuming that? It's not what I would've thought she would want, both the Hork Bajir here and the ones back on Earth need her equally, but Earth is where she was born and raised and where her parents are.
Also I totally misremembered the end of this book as being much darker: Aldrea genuinely refusing to leave Cassie and Ax genuinely threatening to kill Toby if she didn't.
Does it change the fact at all that Cassie and Ax are kids themselves (and that Aldrea is dead)? I mean, they're physically older than she is (no idea about maturity....I don't know how fast Hork-Bajir mature), but we've seen Toby on an equal level with the rest of them, and probably the Animorph's parents wouldn't approve of what they were doing either.
My name is Marco.
But you can call me "Marco the Mighty." Or "Most Exalted Destroyer of My Pride." You can cower before my mighty thumbs and beg for mercy, but you'll be crushed just the same.
For I am the lord of the PlayStation.
Pick a game. Any game. Tekken. Duke Nukem. NFL Blitz. Whatever. Practice all you want. I'll still beat you. I'll crush you like Doc Martens crush ants. I'll -
"The phone's ringing," my dad said, setting down his controller.
"You can't stop now," I cried. "I was gonna score on this next play!"
"It's fifty-six to nothing," he muttered. "I'll forfeit this one."
"But -"
But he'd already picked up the phone.
"Hello? Oh, hi! How are you?" His voice was so sweet and sticky you could have poured it over pancakes.
"Oh, brother," I mumbled.
"I'm doing great," he continued, a big dopey smile on his face. "Marco and I were just playing video games. Uh-huh. Sure." He looked at me. "Nora says hi."
I nodded. I grabbed the remote control. Switched the TV back to cable mode and turned the volume up loud enough to drown out his voice.
My dad has a girlfriend. And I think it's serious. I'm used to this quiet, low-key, unexpressive guy. But ever since he started dating this woman, he's been Mr. Personality. Smiling for no reason. Singing in the shower. Laughing at all my lame jokes like I was Chris Rock. He's even developed this annoying habit of hugging me for no good reason.
I mean, I'm happy for him. Really. When my mom disappeared over two years ago, my dad lost it. For a long time, he was little more than a zombie. Sometimes I thought he'd never recover. A few months back he pulled himself out of it. Things went back to normal. Or as normal as my life could be - until he met this woman.
Your dad being in love with someone who isn't your mother is a pretty normal problem, I guess. I mean, he's old, but he's not exactly using a walker and getting seniors' discounts at the Steak and Ale. Maybe you've dealt with the same thing yourself. Maybe you're dealing with it right now. Maybe this problem makes you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.
Yeah, well, boo hoo. Sorry, kids. But you have no idea about the weight of the world. 'Cause it's on my shoulders.
See, not only do I live with a lovesick father. I'm also trying to save the world from being enslaved by evil, parasitic aliens.
To which you respond, "Ooooookay, dude forgot his medication."
I'm not crazy. And not lying. I'm telling the truth.
They're called Yeerks. They're from another galaxy. Gray, sluglike creatures that slide into your ear, flatten out inside your brain, and take control of your mind and body. Forcing you to do anything they want. Anything.
Right now, their invasion is a secret. Very few people know about it. Most of the people who do are their slaves. We call them Controllers. I don't know how many people the Yeerks have turned into Controllers. I don't think I want to know.
There are a handful of us fighting the Yeerks. A handful. As in four kids, an alien, and a redtailed hawk.
Come to think of it, maybe I did forget my meds.
We call ourselves Animorphs. We have the ability to turn into any animal we touch. It may not sound like much of a weapon, but you'd be surprised. We've done plenty to hurt the Yeerks, and we're not through yet.
The Yeerks would love to get us. They'd love to make me and my friends their slaves so they could use our morphing powers to conquer the rest of the world.
That's why I don't tell you my last name. And that's why I won't tell you where I live. City or state. I want to stay anonymous.
Anonymous equals alive. Maybe.
"Well, I really had a great time, too," my dad gushed into the phone.
As if the Yeerks aren't enough for me to deal with - this woman my dad has gone all Sweet'n Low for? She just happens to be a teacher at my school. My math teacher. Ms. Robbinette.
It's enough to make you want to ban parent/teacher conferences.
I turned the TV up a little more, hoping my dad would get the hint and leave the room. He didn't.
There was nothing on TV worth watching. Lousy game shows. Corny old movies. Boring murder mysteries. Prime-time soap operas. But I continued to flip channels like a robot stuck on the same mindless function.
I stopped on a talk show I'd seen a few times before. Contact Point. It was hosted by some guy with a three-word name. William Roger Tennant.
Not your typical talk show. No audience. No guests. No comedy monologue. Just this Tennant guy, sitting cross-legged in a big comfy chair, surrounded by six-foot-tall Lava lamps, a bottle of designer water at his side.
People called in with problems, and he gave them helpful advice. There was something about the guy that made you want to like him. He was so relaxed. Like nothing could possibly bother him. And he seemed to be actually interested in what people had to say. Every caller was the most fascinating person he'd ever spoken to.
I don't know why I kept watching. I'm not a talk show kind of person. Maybe it was because I was hoping William Roger Tennant would say something to make me feel better. See, there's another complication to my dad's having a girlfriend. A serious one.
But William Roger Tennant didn't say anything that made me feel better. He said something that made me even sicker than my dad's middle-aged Romeo impersonation.
A woman caller was complaining about being lonely. She was retired. Many of her friends had passed away in recent years. She was having a hard time meeting people.
William Roger Tennant listened intently to her complaint. Looked thoughtfully at the camera.
"Marie" he said, "I know a great place where you can make friends. It's called The Sharing."
"The Sharing?" I said, feeling a chill run up my spine.
"The Sharing?" the woman replied.
"Yes, The Sharing." William Roger Tennant leaned forward in his chair. Smiled hypnotically at the camera. "It's a wonderful organization," he said. "The Sharing is all about meeting people. Having fun together. Making the world a better place. It's changed so many people's lives for the better. I'm sure it could help you."
I stared hard at the screen.
The Sharing. Yeah, it was a place for people to get together and have fun. Go to barbecues. Sing songs. But William Roger Tennant had left out a key detail.
The Sharing is a front organization for the Yeerks. They use it to recruit humans. They get people to join, earn their trust, then turn them into Controllers.
My best friend Jake, the leader of our group? His brother Tom joined The Sharing a while ago. He's a Controller now. Mr. Chapman, our assistant principal, is also a member and a Controller. And you thought your assistant principal was evil.
And now this William Roger Tennant guy was on TV, recruiting innocent people for slavery.
William Roger Tennant. A smiling, bearded face. Light brown hair pulled back into a pony-tail. Faded jeans and a casual button-down shirt. Everything about him was laid-back. Easygoing. Cool.
But behind it all, behind those warm, smiling blue eyes, was an evil alien slug, bent on making every single human being on the face of the earth a helpless slave.
That's the scariest thing of all about the Yeerks. You can't tell just by looking who's a Controller and who's not.
"Why don't you tell me where you live, Marie?" William Roger Tennant said to the caller. "I'll give you the number of a Sharing group near you."
I had to call Jake. Didn't want to, but had to.
Didn't I?
Let it go, Marco, I told myself. You know how this ends up: all of us screaming and running and maybe this time not making it out alive. Let it go.
My dad hung up the phone, that goofy smile still stuck on his face. He sat down on the couch next to me and picked up his PlayStation gamepad.
"So, you ready to humiliate me some more?" he said.
I sighed. "I have to call Jake."
"Why?"
"Good question."
I used the phone in the kitchen to set up a meeting with the rest of the gang. In the carefully nonspecific way we set up meetings.
Now I had to think up an excuse to leave the house. It was eight o'clock on a school night. My dad had specifically set aside some time to hang out with me. I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
"So what do you want to do now?" he asked when I walked back into the living room. "Yo need help with your homework? Maybe we could watch a movie or something?"
"Uh, well," I said, "I have to go over to Jake's house. I left something there."
His smile faded. "Oh. Well, couldn't he just give it to you at school tomorrow? It's eight o'clock already."
"I need it tonight." I prayed he wouldn't ask what was so important. When you lie, it's always a good idea to have the details figured out beforehand.
"Well, okay," he replied, frowning.
"I'll be back in a little while," I mumbled.
I was about to walk out the door when he called to me. "Say, Marco?"
"Yeah?" I looked back at him, sitting on the couch, a very sad look on his face. It was a look I hadn't seen in a long time. It was the same look he'd worn for two whole years after my mom disappeared.
"Are you mad at me?"
I shrugged. "No, Dad. Why would I be mad at you?"
"I know you still think about your mom a lot," he began. "I just want you to know I do, too."
"I know," I said.
"It's just that it's been a long time," my dad continued. "I can't grieve forever. I - we - need to move on. I hope you can understand that. I mean, Nora's a nice person, isn't she?"
Maybe if I was a better son, I could have said something to cheer him up. But I'm not and I couldn't.
"Yeah. She's okay," I said. "It's just weird, that's all."
I shut the door behind me and tried to control the guilt.
Yeah, I wanted my dad to be happy. But there was a really big problem with the whole Nora situation.
My mom may not really be dead.
Epi when we get to the end make sure to show them the cover.
Cover-cover or inside cover?
Maybe if I was a better son, I could have said something to cheer him up. But I'm not and I couldn't.
Now I had to think up an excuse to leave the house. It was eight o'clock on a school night. My dad had specifically set aside some time to hang out with me. I didn't want to hurt his feelings.
This one is mostly good IMO, which actually makes it kind of mediocre for a Marco book. Its biggest problem is that it's a whole-plot retread of book 12, just swapping Rachel for Marco.
Wait seriously? If so I have completely forgotten that.
Also lol that they're still going with the timeframe that his mum died "two years ago" and his dad came out of his grief funk "a few months ago," by that metric each book between 5 and now has occurred across the space of about three days and launched straight into the next one. I feel like the ghostwriters have been given some hard rule on this.
It's probably not worthwhile to think too deeply about the book timeline, otherwise you realize this is a bunch of teens having the most stressful week of their lives.
They're called Yeerks. They're from another galaxy. Gray, sluglike creatures that slide into your ear, flatten out inside your brain, and take control of your mind and body. Forcing you to do anything they want. Anything.
Speaking of discrepancies...
I think the question of whether the Yeerk-Andalite war is confined to one shared galaxy, or is wider in scope, has come up a few times in the thread and been inconclusive. This suggests a wider scope, but is it consistent? Or is it not clearly defined, with this author just using "another galaxy" as shorthand for "far, far away?"
I'm pretty sure this is just a mistake. This book and the last book have so far been the only books that talked about planets/races we know about being from another galaxy, and every time either Ax or Yeerks have talked about the war in a larger sense, they've talked about "the galaxy". So I think it's just sloppy writing (or Marco is failing astronomy).
Yeah that was my thought too: Marco and/or the ghostwriter sucks at astronomy. There's been no sign what-so-ever so far that any of the places we've visited besides Earth have been outside the Milky Way. There's one book that doesn't fit that pattern, but it is so batshit insane on its head already I legit wonder if Applegate and Grant were hotboxing their whole house when they wrote it. Yes, I'm talking about the Ellimist book
I took off my jeans, sweater, and shoes and stuffed them in a little cubbyhole I'd made in the corner of my garage. We never have figured out how to morph clothing, other than skin-tight stuff. Besides, a big bird of prey would look kind of conspicuous flying around in a pair of Levi's.
I tried to relax and focus on my morph. It was tough. I'd made my dad feel bad. I didn't like that. It wasn't his fault, any of it. How was he supposed to know his wife wasn't really dead?
Or at least, not for sure.
My mom, her body anyway, was Visser One. The original leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth.
My mom was a Controller.
She'd faked her own death when her assignment on Earth was up. She didn't want to leave any open questions as to what happened to my mother. So there was a boating accident. And for two years my dad and I thought she was gone.
Then I learned the truth. No way I could tell my dad. And the truth was, she was as good as dead. Probably.
I'd seen her last on a blasted mountaintop. I'd led her there, me, her son, as part of a plan to take down Vissers One and Three.
The last I'd seen her she went off a cliff. No body had turned up, but that may have just been the Yeerks cleaning up their own mess.
For two years, dead. Then alive. And now?
It was a totally impossible situation.
I was almost glad to have this mission. As dangerous as it was bound to be. It would keep my mind off Dad and Nora and all the hopeless conflicts I was feeling over it. I concentrated on the animal I wanted to morph. Osprey. Fish-eating bird of prey. Eyes like
lasers. Six-foot wingspan.
And I felt the changes begin.
Morphing is totally bizarre. It makes even the wildest and creepiest movie effects seem ordinary. There's something about watching your entire body completely change its shape that never ceases to freak you out.
ZWOOOOP!
I was shrinking. Rapidly. From five feet to four. To three. To two. The garbage cans my dad had bought at Home Depot were as big as three-story buildings now. The push broom leaning against the wall was as tall as a tree.
My bare feet quivered. My toes began to merge, to melt together, the way cookies melt into each other in the oven when you put them too close together on the pan.
Five stubby toes became three long slender ones. A fourth toe sprouted out of each of my ankles. Then a long, sharp talon slithered out of each toe. Next, my skin started to itch.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
The hairs on my arms started growing like superfast-growing grass. Then each long hair blossomed into a feather. Black feathers along my back. White feathers on my front. Now my arms would transform themselves into wings. I would be able to fly. And as soon as the morph was complete, I could lose myself in the simple, straightforward mind of the osprey. At least for the time it took to fly to Cassie's.
Come on, come on, I urged myself. Osprey.
My eyes were supposed to go telescopic. Allowing me to spot glittering fish through reflective water. They didn't. Instead, they began to grow darker. Blurrier. Until I could see only dim shapes around me. A hazy combination of black, white, and gray.
My arms! They weren't becoming wings! What was happening? I felt them stretching out in front of me. The skin on my hands turning brittle, like armor. Fingers merging, becoming two barbed claws.
Something was wrong!
My face ...
A pinprick on each cheek! Two long whisker-like hairs sprouted outward. Instinctively, I swept them in front of me, gauging the wind, the temperature, sensing my surroundings.
Antennae? Birds don't have antennae!
Dim eyes. Pincers. Antennae.
Lobster?
I was half-osprey, half-lobster?
A useless combination of mismatched parts.
I struggled to stand on the osprey's narrow legs. Dragged the lobster's heavy claws along the dirty garage floor. My antennae swept back and forth, faster and faster, desperately searching. For what?
Suddenly, the lobster's mind took over.
Panic! Fear!
Water! Where was the water!
I had lobster lungs and gills. But I was nowhere near water.
No. NO! This couldn't be happening.
The lobster's panic was intense. Desperately I tried to fight it.
Come on, Marco. Settle down. Just morph out and everything will be fine.
Morph out!
It took half an hour to ride my bike to Cassie's parents' barn, aka the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. A place where Cassie and her dad nurse sick and injured animals back to health.
Its walls are lined with cages. Pens and stalls house the larger guests. At any given time the barn is filled with all sorts of animals, from bald eagles to beavers to llamas. And like any barn, it's short on comfort and quiet, long on the aroma of sweet hay and animal feces.
But it is private.
I was still shaking when I went inside.
"It's about time you got here," Rachel growled. "I'm missing Felicity."
Rachel is tall, blond, and beautiful. At first glance, she seems like a perfectly typical selfcentered, spoiled teenage girl.
Here's some advice, kids: Don't judge a book by its cover. If the Animorphs were a hockey team, Rachel would be our goon. She's always the first one to start a fight. Always the last one to surrender.
<You mean we're missing Felicity,> Tobias added from his perch in the rafters. Tobias is what the Andalites call a nothlit. He stayed in his red-tailed hawk morph for longer than two hours. Stay in a morph for longer than two hours, and it's not a morph anymore. It's yours to keep.
Now red-tailed hawk is his normal form. Although thanks to the Ellimist, he can morph like the rest of us.
"Isn't that romantic?" I said mockingly. "Blondie and Bird-boy watching TV together. So Rachel munches popcorn and Tobias eats road-kill? Romance! Must be something in the air."
"What's your problem, Marco, not enough fiber?" Rachel snapped.
Cassie shot me a look of disapproval that made me wince.
Okay, maybe I'd been a little harsh. I'd make it up to Tobias later.
"We were getting a little worried," Jake added with a tad more diplomacy. "We were about to fly out to your house to see if something was wrong."
Jake's the leader of our group. He's also been my best friend for as long as I can remember, despite the fact that we're very different people. Jake's the responsible, serious, leader-type. I'm the devil-may-care comedian.
At least that's what I often find it useful for people to think.
I shrugged. "I decided to ride my bike."
"You what?"Cassie said.
Cassie and Rachel are best friends. Like me and Jake, they're almost complete opposites. While Rachel's well dressed and prone to violence, Cassie's a slob and good and caring and strong - and usually right.
"I rode my bike," I repeated impatiently. "Weren't you the one giving me grief about never exercising? So I exercised."
No way was I going to tell the others about my morph freakout. That I'd barely managed to demorph before suffocating. That I had been too freaked to try morphing again.
A fluke, that's all it was. I'd been distracted, preoccupied. I must have lost focus. I was just going to put it out of my mind. Just forget that something that was already terrifying had gone to total nightmare.
<Ah, yes. Physical fitness,> Ax said in thought-speak. <But surely a special array of artificial skins are necessary. From "These Messages" on television, I have learned that fitness requires particular shoes and particular clothing. It is not possible to become physically fit dressed as you are,
Marco Ax, also known as Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, is our resident alien.
He's an Andalite. Think deer. Except with blue fur. And a humanoid torso growing out of the front of his body. A torso with skinny arms and seven-fingered hands.
Weird enough for you yet? But wait! There's more!
Andalites have human-shaped heads. With deerlike ears. No mouth. Eyes inside their skull, just like you and me. But on top of their heads they have an auxiliary pair attached to stalks that can twist and turn degrees. Making it virtually impossible to sneak up behind them.
Ax also has a long tail with a blade on the end that could lop your head off before you even saw it twitch.
The Andalites invented morphing technology. It was Ax's brother Elfangor who gave us our powers. Shortly before he was murdered by Visser Three.
At this moment Ax was in his human morph, a strangely attractive DNA combination of me, Jake, Rachel, and Cassie.
"Anyway," Rachel interrupted. "Was that the only reason we called this meeting? So Marco could work off some of his leftover baby fat?"
"I hope not," Jake said tightly. "I've got tons of homework."
"Anyone ever hear of a guy named William Roger Tennant?" I asked.
"Sure," Rachel answered. "The hippie guy. The one with that weird touchy-feely talk show with the Lava lamps. Contact Point."
"Didn't he write all those Men Are from Jupiter, Women Are from Venus books?" Jake asked.
<I do not believe either Jupiter or Venus are inhabitable, certainly not by humans,> Ax said.
"Mars, not Jupiter," Cassie corrected.
<Mars may be marginally habitable.>
"Actually, some guys are from Uranus," Rachel said. Then she made a face. "Did I just say that? I'm spending too much time around you, Marco."
"I'm rubbing off on you."
"Different guy anyway," Rachel said. "But Tennant has written a lot of self-help books. My mom reads them. Reads 'em and for, like, two days she's all mellow, then it wears off."
<Self-help books?> Ax asked. <Are they similar to instruction manuals?>
<Not exactly, Ax-man,> Tobias said. <Self-help books are like instruction books for living.> <Indeed? Instructions for living? Such as "Consume necessary nutrients"? "Breathe sufficient air"?>"
Hey! Ax just made a joke."
<I did?>
"Self-help as in wise advice," Cassie explained. "Chicken Soup for Whatever. I'm Okay, You're Messed Up. You know. They give you advice on how to live your life."
<Ah, yes. Like Oprah,> Ax replied. <She, too, enjoys chicken soup. But it must be low-fat and heart healthy.>
Ax has been a bit unusual - if that's possible - since he got a TV in his little woodsy hide-out.
"Okay. Now, if we can slowly back out of the lunatic asylum and rejoin reality," Jake said impatiently. "Marco? You were saying?"
"I was just watching his show -"
Rachel cut me off. "You were watching William Roger Tennant? Marco looking for advice? On what? Coping with shortness?"
"I was just channel surfing," I yelled. "That's not the point! He's a Yeerk! He's using the show to recruit people for The Sharing."
<Uh-oh,> Tobias said.
"What exactly did Tennant say?" Jake asked.
I repeated Tennant's pitch to the elderly caller named Marie.
"We have to stop him," Cassie said simply.
"How?" Rachel asked, only half-joking. "Trash the studio?"
Like I said. If we were a hockey team -
"We could launch a direct attack," Jake said thoughtfully. "But what's to stop the Yeerks from moving Tennant to another studio? He'd be back on the air in a few days."
<The real problem is William Roger Tennant himself,> Tobias said. <We've got to find a way to get him off the air. Permanently.>
"Yeah, but how?" I said.
"We dig up some dirt on him," Rachel said. "Major smear campaign. That's how you take down a celebrity. Unless he's like a politician. Or an athlete. They're immune."
Jake frowned. "This means surveillance. We watch him, starting now. When we have the info we need, we take him down. Marco? Take Ax and see what you can find online. An address would be a good start."
"You know, I can surf the Web without Ax holding my hand."
"Yeah, but he can do it without wasting three hours cruising Baywatch Web sites."
"Oooh. Through the heart," I said, miming a knife in the chest.
"Then, given the time of day, Ax and Tollies? You take the first shifts. Marco and I will relieve you after school tomorrow. Probably bird morphs, as usual. Okay, Marco?"
I swallowed hard. Morphing. No big deal. Unless ...
"Okay, Jake. No problemo."
now that I think about it, the animorphs would have made for a good anime series
instead of the disaster that was the live-action series, I watched that as a kid and even back then I knew it was bad
now that I recall the series ending it was pretty fucked up
-Jake uses explosive-laden train to blow up hardened enemy target (The Yeerk pool), and destroying downtown San Francisco and killing everyone there as collateral damage
-recruits a whole bunch of disabled kids to be child-soldiers only to knowingly sacrifice them as a distraction for the final boss battle
-Ordering his cousin Rachel on a suicide mission to execute his controller brother
-War crimes against unarmed Yeerk civilians
-Gets PTSD/depression after the war
-go out on one last battle and kamikazes the enemy ship (which is controlled by the mind controlled version of his friend) at the end