A/N: This is a bit of a nostalgia thing for me. Before I'd heard of the Prime Directive, I knew Seerow's Law. Before I learned any K'duk, I knew how to spell several Andalite terms. Before I'd read Tolkien's appendices, I owned the companion guide to the TV show. Before I read any of the EU, I read the Chronicles. I owe my tastes in mood-whiplash-causing optimistic black humor, complex world- and character-building, and AU fanfiction to K.A.A.'s Animorphs. I certainly don't own the rights to the series that started me down the path that warped my young brain into the crazy thing it is today.

These one-shots, incidentally, don't follow from canon or necessarily fit in the same alternate universe(s) as one another. To start us out, the inevitable "Rachel lives" scenario, to be taken with as much romantic salt as you wish. As the Greek "xeno" translates as "strange" or "alien," Xena's nickname may be more apt that we give Marco credit for.


She Adjusts


She's a hero.

She's a coward.

She's a spy for her people.

She's a traitor to her species.

She's fostering connections between two worlds.

She's only doing it for herself.

She's mourning everyone she's lost.

She's running away from everyone she killed.

She's Captain Aximili's charity case.

She's blackmailing someone on the Homeworld.

She's sleeping with one of those four-eyed blue aliens.

She's sleeping with a bird.

She's too bloodthirsty and psychotic to sleep with anybody.

She's bringing peace.

She couldn't give up the war.

She's heard the rumors, and if any of them hurt her, if any of them are true, it's the last one that gets to Rachel, every time.

They'd won. Earth was free, and with so many of the higher level Vissers knocked out, it would be a short time before the Andalites mopped up what Yeerks that still dared to resist the oncoming tide on other worlds. They'd helped assure the freedom of the Hork-Bajir and Leerans, offered the Taxxons and Yeerk peace movement another way out. It should be over.

For Marco, it was over. Rachel had joined him, initially, at the rounds of fame and glory, making appearances at parties and television shows and grand public gatherings, even after most of the rest of the group had moved on and tried to go back to something approaching normal. The accolades were nice, Rachel had decided, as was the money, but she'd been an "Andalite bandit" for far too long to ever truly feel comfortable as her life was dissected beneath a spotlight. Besides, the whole charade struck her as rather pointless… hollow… too much like her.

For Cassie, it was over. Her best friend still crusaded, but it was for the sake of the environment. There were no bloody fights here, just words, just planning. At most, the blonde would get to go and dig around in the dirt for a few hours each day and maybe wrestle a couple pills down a skunk's throat at her best friend's side. Rachel admired that Cassie could put so much effort into her cause, but the blonde could never really see the results. That wasn't a part of the war she'd ever enjoyed.

For Tobias, it was over… mostly, though life certainly would never be what it once had been. He'd kept in contact with his mother and Ax, even contacted his paternal grandparents once he escaped media attention. He'd wanted a normal life, or as normal of one as a half-human hawk nothlit could find. Rachel still thought it sounded good, in theory, but in practice… It was the reporters. It was the researchers. It was where they were living. It was their families. It was school and work and other activities. It was bad timing. It was too many sacrifices, even if Tobias didn't think it would be that much of a sacrifice, at all, or at least said he didn't. It was to her. It was her. Tobias was all for grand romantic gestures, but for Rachel, there was always that "but," that fear, that excuse that kept her from opening herself as fully to them as she should. She'd fought such selfish urges during the war for so long that she couldn't convince herself that he was making the choice on his own anymore, not while she was there. She just wasn't as ready for normal life as she thought she was, and after several tries, he'd finally flown off into his sunset without her. It wasn't bitter between them, at least not anymore. The war had made them who they were, and if it pulled them apart, it had also pushed them close enough together to understand why.

For Aximili, that one was over, but another would soon take its place. He'd gone back to where he'd belonged, the Andalite military, and finally gotten to where he deserved. They had promoted him straight to War-Prince, and Ax had threatened to pick them all up personally in his new ship when he received command of the Intrepid but two years later. The Homeworld was beginning to demilitarize, turning its concern to establishing relations with their demanding, technologically-backward but culinarily-gifted new allies, but there would always be a few pockets of rebel Yeeks, always something lurking at the edge of explored space. Marco had teasingly asked if Ax was going to end up being Spock or Picard, because their resident celebrity had claimed the role of Kirk as soon as he'd been let onto the bridge. Although Cassie laughed off the Uhura role as quickly as Rachel had that of Seven of Nine, a part of Rachel found the overall comparison fitting: Ax would ever stand on his final frontier, an eternal guardian and explorer who might yet find himself in another fight.

For Jake, well, Jake was her cousin. He'd been their leader, their Prince, and still was, even with Captain Ax-man and Xena: Warrior Princess. Cassie and Marco had tried to steady him. They'd done a better job than Tobias had with Rachel, in the latter's opinion. Jake had at least settled down enough that he could join the human military. (Rachel never could; she was too paranoid, too undisciplined.) He was the only one who had never dated outside their group, and although Rachel wished her best friend nothing but happiness, if things didn't work out with Ronnie, she was pretty sure her cousin would welcome Cassie back in a heartbeat. For what that was worth. He still kept the others at arm's length, afraid of how he would use them if they came too close. A part of Rachel had agreed with Marco as he had sarcastically wondered how Jake could subvert saving the whales and kittens and Taxxons to dark ends; the rest of her was already slapping together rough scenarios for how the caper would play out. She was sure Jake's - or even Marco's, for that matter, - ideas were already much more carefully plotted.

For Rachel… She tried to move on. She fought with media hounds instead of Yeerks and found them almost painfully easy to shake. She took up extreme sports and drove her car too fast; she spent far more than she should, though the latter didn't matter - Marco was savvy enough to insure that not only was he stinking rich, none of the rest of the survivors would need to worry about money, either. There was at least a short-term rush there - perhaps it wasn't flying, and it certainly wasn't fighting for one's life and freedom, but it wasn't flying, either. The air (and part of her heart) would always belong to Tobias. Swimming was good. She spent more time in dolphin morph than she was willing to admit. (And more time as a shark than she would admit even to herself. The dolphin was cheerful and happy, but the hammerhead was simple. Efficient.) Rachel was also more than willing to let Cassie drag her along on environmental quests and chase after lofty political goals, especially if it meant shopping for kickass business suits and letting Cassie plan the attack. Still…

They had been celebrating Ax's ship and playing tourist on the Homeworld when she had first witnessed what would become her latest fix, the next closest thing an old war junkie could find to the ended war. All five had earned stares, even Tobias in Andalite morph, since said morph bared more than uncanny family resemblance to the new captain. It wasn't anything they hadn't experienced at home, but that was about the end of the similarities. On earth, there were aliens, usually remaining in small clusters outside the larger human populations. Here, they were the aliens, and the only small cluster of their kind on the world.

Jake had been aloof and polite, although somewhat ill at ease with the warriors who saw Prince Jake, The Professor, President of Earth, their hero's hero, stepping onto the Homeworld from the distant legends of their own generation. Cassie and Tobias had made an effort into learning at least some of the local customs along their journey, fitting in about as well as Ax did in the old mall food court. Still, they were trying, and Rachel had to respect them for it, even if she followed Marco's example and said what she thought and went where she pleased first and apologized to Ax later. It wasn't like she'd joined in the first time she'd seen it.

Here it was easier, in some ways. Here, they expected a barbarian warrior princess who couldn't fit in with the rest of society to try to carve her own place. If Rachel was fascinated by the tail-fighting demonstrations rather than the estreens, no one expected her to understand the details behind the process of the morph or the specific tactics of the duel; they expected a fighter to be drawn to the fighting, not to the beauty. If she had more morphs under her belt than several professional estreens combined, if she had been one of the first to be able to include non-biological elements in her morph, it was of no concern. If she had driven a Blade Ship but wrecked her first car, it was of no significance. All that mattered were the tails moving faster than the eye could see and her eyes, trying to follow anyway. Jake and Ax had to corral her away, but she made note of the place and came back, watching all the harder through sharp cat's eyes.

Jake and Marco and Cassie had afforded an earth year's stay for the long journey; even that was clearly too much for their tastes. They had careers waiting for them back on earth, causes, people. Doubtlessly there were some of the latter awaiting Rachel's return, as well, but the governments of Earth and the Homeworld alike had argued themselves voiceless and blue in the face about what to do with morph-capable humans, the American military had their hidden ace in Jake, the environmental groups their guiding light in Cassie, and the adoring fans could fixate on Marco as easily as Rachel. When Ax rotated out on the Intrepid's maiden voyage, the rest saw him off. Tobias stayed the remaining months at his grandparents' scoop; the others caught an early ride back on a merchant vessel; Rachel found temporary housing in the city.

Forlay-Esgarrouth-Maheen and Noorlin-Sirinial-Cooraf had been icily distant but kind enough to their son's visitors, a poster couple for the unique Andalite mix of arrogance, optimism, honor, and curiosity. They had been in contact with Tobias, and if they were still surprised at his form, they were desperately clinging to any last trace of Elfangor, any history of their Aximili's hidden years that brought him home a war-prince with a weapon of a nickname and hundreds of new forms for weapons. Besides, if the battle for earth had silenced much of the quiet poet and hardened that gentle soul into a hunter, "Tobias-kala" was still so easy to love.

Rachel avoided the scoop, preferring the bustle of the city that had inevitably sprung up around the spaceport and its tail-fighting demonstrations. By the time Ax called her, she had acquired a female Andalite morph from a variety of sources. It had taken some trial and error to perfect; she'd focused primarily on the tail-blade, without sacrificing balance. Her joy in its effeciency could rival the dolphin morph's. "Haven't started any more interstellar wars without me, have you?" she asked him, offering the monitor her best defiant grin.

He laughed, and for all the hundreds of thousands of light-years between them, between their current locations and earth, for a moment, they're back at the barn, waiting for the others to catch up. {No, not yet. Please do not start one without me, either, Rachel. My mother is quite a formidable opponent.}

"No promises," she said, and punched the holographic tail blade, wishing she could actually throw a companionable arm about his shoulders and feel the knuckles he passed against her cheek. Even if he might feel a little dampness that she's been happy to hide, he could read the human body language that gave her such an advantage in the ring.

They didn't talk long. He couldn't give details about his mission and she hid her hobbies from him, not sure who else a captain might have to confide in. Afterwards, she morphed a kafit bird, rising on six rainbow wings into a blood-red sky.

She wondered when her enlistment into the academy would go through. Her mother and best friend would disapprove, and even her sisters and cousin would call her rash. But Warrior-Princess Rachel had a nice ring to it. For now, Aristh Xeria-Baransol-Rolchid would do, until they discovered the truth and learned to adjust.