Disclaimer: "So, why do you feel you need a psychiatrist? Tell me more about that. I see. So, you actually believed that Animorphs and all related characters actually belonged to somebody other than KAA and Scholastic? Hm. This sounds serious. Tell me about your childhood."
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When We Won
by L. Emmist
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It must have been a dream. I opened my eyes, looking almost suspiciously around my meadow. They're still out there. Everywhere. They still want us. It had to have been a dream. The same dream that I had dreamed when I was awake and asleep for the past three years.
Hey. I'm Tobias.
I spread my wings, and swooped off my branch, raking the long grass of my meadow with my talons. It was November, and the cold was moving in for the kill. It wouldn't be a great day for flying. Not too many thermals. But still, it was better than yesterday.
I'm Tobias. I'm a boy, who was transformed into a bird. A red-tailed hawk, to be exact.
Yesterday, it had been raining like it was the end of the world. As the night frightened away the sun, it got even colder, and the rain began to turn into sleet. Sleet hits your wings, weighs you down. It's impossible to fly through it.
{Keep flying, Tobias! You've got to keep flying! We're blind here! Which way are we going?}
Echoes of Jake's voice from my dream. I pumped my wings, fighting for altitude. Once I got high enough, I spread my wings wide, and began a long, slow glide downwards. I was heading towards town. The dream was still vivid in my mind. I had to see. I had to know if . . .
{I can't keep going! I can't! Rachel, it's too heavy!} I screamed, my wings in horrible agony from the strain.
{I love you, Tobias,} Rachel said privately to me. I felt a surge of anger and elation. She was telling me this now? I gave a desperate cry, and lunged forward, still chasing after them.
{Turn left! Left, now!!}
I'm a boy who was transformed into a bird. I can change into animals because a dying Andalite prince gave me and my friends the power to do so.
I was above a big office building. It pumped out a lot of heat. It wasn't quite a real thermal, but I still took the lift. The hot air pushed my up a little, and I climbed again for more altitude. My wings were so sore.
Had it been a dream, or had it happened? I wasn't sure. I told myself it was a dream, it had to be a dream. I wouldn't let myself think it was real, in case it wasn't. I couldn't bear to think that . . .
{You're almost there.} I gasped raggedly. {Almost.}
{Once we're there, Tobias, pull out! Do you hear me? You have to get out of here!}
{I remember the plan, Jake,} I choked, trying to fly through the sleet, trying to see. I had to guide them. If I failed, they would all die. And Earth really would be lost.
Because I couldn't ever go on without them.
The dying Andalite gave us the power because of the threat. The Yeerks. The parasitic aliens that, for the last decade or so, have been secretly, silently, enslaving the population of earth.
{You're almost there.}
I was almost there. And I almost didn't want to look in the water. What if it wasn't there? What if there were a couple of beachcombers walking by the shore? What if this was just another day?
{You're there,} I said, as my wings failed. I plummeted down towards the black Earth. It was like a mouth racing up to swallow me. I shook, I screamed, thinking of the pain when I finally did open my wings.
Then I opened them. And the pain wasn't what I had imagined it would be. It was worse. Worse than being tortured by Taylor. Worse than anything.
I didn't look back or say goodbyes. No goodbye could mean enough. And if I looked back, I would never stop looking. And then I would be consumed by the fire.
I was at the beach. I looked.
Rising out of the water was a huge, twisted, steaming mass of blackened metal. In the sky swarmed news helicopters. The beach was a mass of people, most of them reporters. Behind a barrier reinforced by policemen surged a throng of onlookers. The waves were churned by the wake of dozens of motorboats, going out to the wreck, coming back. In the foam washed debris.
Consoles.
Dracon beams.
And the bodies floated there too. Human. Taxxon. Hork-Bajir.
Far below, in the crowd, I could the President of the United States. He was reading a prepared speech from a teleprompter. I could see the words as they scrolled up the screen.
". . . and last night, the war we never knew was being fought was won. Here, in that most unconquered element of earth - the sea - the alien flagship was brought to destruction."
I felt the explosion behind me. The world in front of me turned red with the light from the fire.
I didn't read any more.
It was true.
All of it.
The war was over.
"And then, gasped Marco, trying to breathe in between laughing, "Jake looks right at the guard. And he says, 'Hi. My name's Jake. I'm a human, not an Andalite.' He started laughing again. "Then he's like, 'I just thought I'd clear that up.'"
The war was over.
{I behaved exactly according to Andalite tradition,} Ax said.
Rachel shook her head. "He stood over him, looked straight in all four eyes, and said, "I now reclaim my brother's honor."
I looked at Ax. He didn't want to talk about it. {But how did you get onto the bridge in the first place?} I asked. Ax gave me a glance of gratitude.
Over.
"I didn't think we were going to make it," Jake said in a small voice. We all fell silent, and looked at him. He looked back at us. And we all finally saw who he really was.
He was just a kid.
Finished.
"The Yeerks aren't all gone," Cassie said soberly. "Imagine all the Controllers who are going to have to go through the fugue. And after that crash, the ocean is going to have to go through a fugue of its own."
She stared silently at space. "But we did win."
After three years of terror, hate, and grief, we had actually done it.
Rachel was falling asleep. We were all exhausted, and it had only been sheer adrenaline that was keeping us going. But now the others had left, and she was drifting off. With one hand, she reached up to touch my feathers. "I love you," she murmured.
We won.