Disclaimer: I do not own the Animorphs or any of the other characters in this fic.

Noorlin's POV

--Forlay, I do not wish for you to get hurt. I also need someone to cover for me while I am gone. Will you please just stay here on the home world.-- I said to my wife. I was planning to use the ship that I had repaired to go to earth and bring Aximili back to the home world. Of course Forlay, being the typical mother that she is, wanted to come with me.

While I generally didn't mind her worrying, this was not the time for her to be having a fit. I didn't have the time. There was only a two minute window for which I could leave the surface of the planet in relative ambiguity, after that I would have to get a permit from the military telling them where I was going. Those two minutes were one of the few holes in our security, and one that had taken me months to find.

This was not a chance that I was going to pass up. I needed to save my youngest son from the same fate as his brother. Aximili was the last chance that I had for raising a son. A child.

Forlay and I had been very strict on Elfangor, nearly ordering him into the military. We had raised him to be a honorable warrior. We thought that we had raised him right, then he disappeared for five years.

Those were the hardest five years of our lives. Both Forlay and I were afraid that he had died. Then one day he reappeared, or at least his body had. His mind, his personality was not the same ever since that time. He went from being a happy eager to please child to a bitter, pessimistic adult. Yet he never wanted to talk about it.

During the time that he was missing, Forlay had conceived again, this time it was with Aximili. The stress of Elfangor's disappearance made the pregnancy nearly unbearable, and she nearly lost Aximili several time in the course of it. After Aximili's birth, the doctors told her that she would never be able to carry another child.

--Noorlin, please. I am just as worried about him as you are.-- Forlay said.

--Forlay I wish that I could bring you, but I do not want you going into a potentially dangerous situation.--

--If it is dangerous, then why are you going and I not.-- She replied, even though she knew exactly why.

--Forlay. I am a trained warrior. You are not. I might be retired but I can still tail fight better than you. Therefore you are staying here and I am going.-- I said as I got into the repaired fighter.

Just before I lifted off, I heard her whisper, --I cannot lose another child, please be safe.--

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Though we had said the ritual of parting, knowing that we wouldn't be seeing each other in a very long time, I still couldn't bring myself to believe that I had truly left the homeworld, and my wife, behind.

The journey to the planet "Earth" was very long, very boring, and very stressful. I couldn't help but imagine what the planet would be like, how well the Yeerks had set up defences, or whether or not my son, my Aximili-kala, would still be alive.

By the time that I had arrived, I was terrified. I could only hope that my cloaking device would hold up as I exited Z-Space. I could only hope that Aximili wasn't dead, or worse.

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Once I had landed on the planet's surface, in a wooded area for cover, I used the computer to search for Aximili's DNA. I had heard the reports of the morphing humans while I had been searching for a time to leave the planet, but I was skeptical.

As the computer began to run its search, I was startled to find that there were two people running around with my son's DNA. I could only hope that this was one of the morphing humans and not The Abomination. The only question that I could think of was why Aximili would allow someone to do that. Acquiring an Andalite was against our culture's traditions.

After looking at the location of the two sets of DNA, I found that one was nearest to my current location. There was no way to truly decipher which of the two signatures was the correct one, so I decided that simply following at least one of the signatures for long enough would have to suffice.

As I began to follow closest signature, I came across a hard flat surface with lines painted down the center. I initially wondered as to what its purpose was and if it had any true function during the day, for it was night when I landed. While I would've liked to have stayed and pondered the use of this, what I assumed was a primitive transport corridor; I had more important things to do. Such as find my son, who at that moment was moving away from me.

Without realizing the danger of my actions, I trotted across the primitive trans. cor.

All of a sudden there was yelling and screaming and a squealing sound. A large vehicle had rounded the corner and was coming right at me!