Chapter One

My name is Emiline Wu. My friends call me Emily. Or Emmy. Or Em. I'm not really picky.

My name is Emiline Wu…And I have a very serious problem with saying 'no' to my best friend.

His name is Jason Grant. He's been my best friend since we were seven. My dad's a pastor, and his family goes to our church. It was a church picnic, and Jason was pretending to be a dinosaur. He tried to 'attack' me. I backhanded him and broke his nose.

The next day he came up to me. He didn't apologize. He just said "I'm gonna be your best friend now."

And frankly…He was. Best friend I ever had. Better at keeping secrets than any of my girlfriends. Better listener, better friend than I'd ever had before. Which is exactly why my faith in God is pretty much unshakable. The night before, I had prayed to Him for a best friend. The next day at the picnic, and met Jason.

We were pretty much inseparable after that. I would hang out at his house. He would hang out at mine. He helped me get over Josh Levine when the jerk broke my heart in junior high. He stuck by me all through high school, when I took a love 'em and leave 'em approached to dating.

And then, a little over a month ago, we met an Andalite. A crazy eccentric Andalite. Not like those normal Andalites you meet. More like…If Santa Claus was an Andalite.

He gave us morphing powers. And my life turned upsidedown. Before I understood what was happening, I learned that the peaceful part of the galaxy was now under attack from a sapient virus that wanted to absorb all life into it, and that Jason's next door neighbor was really an alien robot dog.

Yeah…Still trying to comprehend that part. She told us that her alien builders had build a medical facility on an out-of-the-way planet that had a cure for anything.

And she offered to take us there.

I wasn't keen. No sir. MY hopes and dreams had been dashed when Jason had met Escafil though. Because nothing would be the same. We could morph now. We could become any animal we could touch…But it wasn't enough for Jason.

Jason had always wanted an adventure. Something AMAZING that he could do. And now, Erica, the alien robot dog, had just offered him the adventure of a lifetime.

Me, I wanted to stay home. Graduate high school. Become a private investigator (I felt certain my newfound morphing abilities would make me a damn good one, too.) But Jason had a chance to Adventure. And I couldn't take that from him. So I went with him on his insane plan to go to the Pemalite research facility.

We dragged along with us, Menderash, an Andalite nothlit in human morph, and Melissa. A professional morph-hunter (like those guys you see on the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, who go around the world and acquire rare animals to morph?)

But when we got there, we found the planet hat been terraformed. Terraformed, and filled with Dinosaurs. Yeah. Freaking dinosaurs.

Remember how I told you how I met Jason? Yeah…This was his idea of paradise. A planet full of dinosaurs, just WAITING for him to morph. I was so unbelievably screwed. How does one compete with that?

Because…The reason I'm stuck on Jurassic Planet with Jason, Mederash, Erica, and Melissa…The reason I cannot say no to Jason…Is because I am so, desperately, deeply, head-over-heels in love with him.

Thinking back on it, it was inevitable. After Josh broke my heart, I was determined, DETERMINED, to find the perfect guy. So I dated. I dated a lot. But none of the guys I went out with were right. There was always something about them that I just didn't like. Something that wasn't…Well…Wasn't Jason enough about them.

It slowly began to dawn on me, as I dated, and dated, and dated…That I wasn't just looking for a guy. I was looking for a guy like Jason. A guy exactly like my best friend. Maybe I was just too dense to see it at first. But…What I wanted, was Jason. I was in love with him. Don't know when it started, don't know how. But it happened.

After having a long, LOOOONG conversation with Jason's next door neighbor (BEFORE I found out she was a robot dog) I had determined to tell Jason how I felt. Even if he rejected me, or laughed in my face, at least he would know.

We were going to meet at my favorite bookstore. I figured if I was surrounded by my favorite thing, then maybe it wouldn't be so hard. Then that damned Yeerk assassin tried to kill Escafil's daughter, Jason saved her life, and that's how we met SantAndalite.

Since then, my life has been a series of frustrations. I still can't tell him how I feel. Oh, and we're fighting an alien disease that eats souls. By turning into dinosaurs.

Yep. I don't envy me. Do you envy me?

Anyway, I wasn't a dinosaur right now…I was a wolf. I had acquired the wolf back on earth, before we had left for Jurassic Planet. It was a good morph. Good in the forest. Good sense of smell. Good night vision.

It was also freaking terrifying. Wolves are wolves, and a wolf can take on a lot of things…On earth. But here, on Jurassic Planet…I was sure I was dinosaur chow.

But it was the dead of night, and we needed a nocturnal morph that could track the Kelbrid survivor. His ship had crashed, and he had wandered off from the ship. My wolf morph was the only thing we had that could possibly fit the bill.

There was only one problem.

(I can't smell him,) I snarled in frustration. (It's like he has no scent!)

(Are you sure you're just not recognizing the scent?) Jason asked helpfully.

(Jason, aliens still have scents,) I said. (I was expecting a scent that the wolf mind wouldn't recognize…The only problem with that is that I AM ON A FREAKING DINOSAUR PLANET AND THE WOLF MIND DOESN'T RECOGNIZE ANY SCENTS!)

(Okay, okay,) Jason said. (Sorry.)

(Why don't you do your T-rex morph?) I asked. (You said it has a really good sense of smell.)

(Second best in the fossil record, actually,) Jason said. (But…It's also diurnal. It can't see all that well at night. I know, I've tried.)

(Well you can at least identify the Kelbrid scent,) I said. (Because I have sniffed this whole ship and I can't friggin' find it.)

(Okay,) Jason conceded. He folded his wings, and landed next to me. His Quetzalcoatlus was a huge flying creature. Like a giraffe with a beak and wings.

It began to shrink. His wings collapsing in on themselves. His beak began to shrink and sucked into his mouth. The folds of his wings shrank into his sides, the elongated finger suddenly split in half, transforming into his pinky and ring fingers.

I watched him demorph to human. Did I mention that Jason is cute? Like…Really cute. He's skinny, but not too skinny. Well built. He has brown hair and these blue eyes that change color depending on what he's wearing. As he was wearing a white t-shirt and jean-shorts, his eyes were strikingly blue, from the blue shorts.

I've never told him that I thought he was cute, even though I noticed it before I realized I was in love with him. I didn't want it to go to his head. I knew a lot of girls at school were interested in him. He had taken a girl named Angela to Junior Prom, but that was the extent of it. Jason didn't really do a lot of dating. Some girls wondered if he was gay, but I'd seen him check out hot girls at the mall enough times to know that he wasn't. He just wasn't into the dating scene.

He began to triple in size, as he took on his Tyrannosaurus morph. I backed away towards a bush. There was a rustle of leaves behind me.

Jason morphed quickly, and began sniffing the cockpit of the downed manta-ship.

(Hey,) he said. (I can't smell the pilot.)

(HA!) I said. (I told you! I told you there was no sc—)

My moment of triumph was rudely interrupted by a rattling hissing sound, and something sharp biting my forepaw.

(Ouch!) I said. I snapped at the bush. Lunging with all my wolfish senses, I clamped down on something furry. That something immediately began squirming and hissing and fighting me.

(Jason!) I yelled. (This thing bit me!)

Jason politely stepped forward and gently put his foot down on "my prey". Only then did I get a decent look at it.

It was furry. A furry dinosaur. Well, Jason called them feathers, but they didn't look feathery to me. They looked like fur. This one had pale gray fur all along it's back, and bright red fur along it's chest. It had a long neck and two glowing orbs for eyes. The feet reminded me of my Deinonychus morph's feet, though the claw was smaller.

It's mouth was full of razor sharp teeth.

(What is it?) I asked.

(Troodon, I think,) Jason said. (Related to the Deinonychus. These guys were suspected to be scavengers, like jackals or Tasmanian devils.)

He paused.

(Emily, I think you should demorph,) he said. (Tasmanian Devils have so many diseases in their mouths that their bite can kill a man, or at least put them in the hospital. If this guy bit you…He might have been trying to infect you with a disease. Diseased animals are easier to kill. You might look like easy dinner.)

Jason was right…My head was starting to get woozy. I began to demorph.

(It's funny,) I said. (I don't think we've even SEEN a sick dinosaur since we arrived on Jurassic Planet. Everyone is so robust and…And…)

Suddenly…Overcome with fatigue, and still less than half-morphed…I collapsed.