Sorry for the short chapter. If this seems familiar, that's because I have this up on another site as well.

Onwards!

I hadn't wanted to be the one to go to the mall, especially not with Ax in human morph, but when you draw straws and end up with the shortest one, you have no choice in the matter.

My name is Jake. No last name, at least, not one I'm willing to give you. We have to be careful, us Animorphs.

Who are we? Our team is made up of four humans, a bird-boy, and an alien. We fight the Yeerks, grey slugs without eyes, noses, mouths, ears, and limbs. They crawl inside living creatures' heads and wrap their slimy bodies around brains. This gives them absolute control of said being. You can't fight them no matter how strong you may be. Controllers, our group likes to call them. They've enslaved various races over the years on distant planets no one on Earth could ever imagine. The Hork-Bajir and Taxxons had all been turned into Controllers, except for a small settlement of Hork-Bajir we had managed to free.

The Yeerks are trying to conquer yet another species, one that will give them the numbers to defeat all those who opposed them throughout the rest of space: humans.

Why haven't you heard of this war before? That's because the leader presiding over their mission, Visser Three, is making the process slow so that they could have taken over a large enough population without us setting off bombs that will kill our planet, and their potential hosts. They need us alive, after all.

And I'll tell you who's been foiling their progress. Rachael, Cassie, Marco, Tobias, Ax, and me. Remember when I said an alien and bird kid? Ax's actual name is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, and he's an Andalite. Tobias is a nothlit, someone who stayed over two hours in a morph. He's permanently stuck in a red-tailed hawk's body. But that's a conversation for another time.

Ax and I were walking around the local mall together. The others were also there, but we made sure not to gather together often. If people started thinking of us as a group, Yeerks might piece together that six kids and six Andalite bandits sounded a little too convenient. Call us paranoid if you like, but I'm not going to get turned into a slave over details like that.

"Cinnabon," the alien said with his human mouth, playing with how the letters felt. "Ciin-ah-buhn. Bunzah."

"We're not here to eat," I reminded him. "We're here to investigate."

"Yes, Prince Jake. Ake. Yez, princcce."

The pair of us casually strolled through the mall, looking for the cause of the spontaneous black-out that lasted a minute or so. It wasn't the sudden lack of power that had us Animorphs investigating. It was the Yeerks' reactions to it. They were scrambling around frantically, practically foaming at the mouths, and the Visser was killing off more and more of his subordinates than normal. Whatever the source was, it had to be worth finding it first.

After so long, though, my enthusiasm and patience were nearing their ends with Ax and his practicing 'mouth sounds' as he often called it. I got the word out to my companions that it was time to shut down for the time being.

Seeing as most of us were still in school, we had homework, projects, assignments due, and chores to complete as it was, but I promised we'd continue looking later on.