Chapter 2

Note: All right, enough background information. Now to get to the actual story, finally!

James was the first one to demorph and everybody wasted no time in asking him questions. He just held up his hands and waited until the others demorphed and we were quiet before he started to speak.

"I know you must be wondering what took us so long," he began, "but Jake had lots of people he needed to talk to. You see, Jake believes that he's come up with his final plan; a plan that would finally destroy the Yeerks once and for all."

A small mumbling from the group was enough to get James to stop and wait until everyone was quiet again.

"If this plan works," he continued, "the Yeerk occupation of Earth will be over and the human race will finally be free. That being said, it won't be an easy thing to accomplish. The Animorphs have been trying to do just that for more than three years and only now in completely desperate times do they think that they could pull it off."

"What do we do?" shouted someone in the back of the group.

James just gave a sigh before he continued. "Jake's plan isn't anything simple. To take down an entire army when you only have a handful of people to do it is never simple. His plan requires a lot of things to go right while any one of them could go horribly wrong. He didn't tell me all the details, but from what he told me I could see that he needed everyone to do their part and to do it well. If even one of us fails then the whole mission could be jeopardized. And if that happens, with the places everyone's supposed to be in, there's a good chance that no one will survive and the Yeerks will win."

"Get to it already!" someone else shouted, "what are we supposed to do?" After waiting for almost five hours for them to get back we were all more than a bit antsy. But James just gave another sigh, looked back at his lieutenants for support, and then began again.

"We have a job to do that's just as important as any other job out there. If we don't get our job done properly then the rest of the Animorphs will be as good as dead."

He gave a small pause and I swear I thought that someone was going to yell something else. But everyone stayed quiet as James continued. "We're going to be the distraction."

Instantly there were moans and groans from all of us, including me.

"A distraction?" someone yelled, "That's it?"

"We could do better than that!"

"We've proved ourselves battle worthy!"

"Let us take on Visser One!"

But James wasn't fazed at all. He kept the same almost blank look on his face that he had ever since he demorphed. He waited until everyone had shouted what they wanted to shout before he began to speak again. "I haven't even told you the best part yet," he said sarcastically and almost emotionlessly, "just wait until you hear the details."

Everyone instantly got quiet as James began again. "We're going to team up with General Doubleday and lead a false attack again the Yeerk pool ship. We're supposed to meet him early tomorrow morning so we can go over our plan and how to react in a whole bunch of situations. Then, General Doubleday will gather up all his men and we'll begin to form our formation, to be discussed when we get there. Once we're in formation we'll essentially begin to "march" toward the Yeerk pool ship in our battle morphs with the army all around us. The hope is that they Yeerks will see us as enough of a threat so that they take the pool ship back up into orbit to protect it from us. That's our main objective; to get the pool ship to go back into orbit."

There was a dead silence in the room once James finished telling everyone the plan. I knew what I thought of it, and I was pretty sure that everyone else thought the same, but no one said anything for a long time.

But finally someone was brave enough to speak up. And no one was surprised that it was Liam. "That's the stupidest idea ever!" he said loudly. "How the hell does Jake think that this is going to work? The Yeerks are going to see us and send a single ship to fry us all. You've all seen what one of those things can do to a building let alone a group of people! A few shots and we'll all be dead. And as for getting the pool ship to leave you can forget about it. There's no way they'll feel threatened by us walking out in the open like that. They'll just think that we're target practice. This is suicide! We'll be walking on a death march!"

Leave it to Liam to be loud, blunt, and right. He summed everything up perfectly and afterwards he opened up a torrent of other responses from just about everyone other than James and his lieutenants. I even threw in an "Is Jake crazy?" as well. But James stood unfazed and just waited for the shouts and arguing to calm down. He had probably expected our response and I'd be shocked if he didn't feel the same way when he first heard Jake's plan for us. But after the shouting died down a bit it was obvious that he still had more to say.

"I know what it sounds like," James continued in his leaderly voice that I loved so much, "and I want all of you to know that I feel the same way about it as you do. You were probably wondering what was taking us so long, huh? Well, part of it was because Jake was busy talking to other people, but it took more time for me to understand his decision than anything else. If we get attacked from the ground then we'll have tanks and rockets and all that other stuff to protect us, but I know as well as all of you do that they're most likely going to attack from the sky. And the truth is that there's nothing we can do to stop them."

"But we all knew this would be dangerous when we signed up," he continued after a short break. "Jake told us what we might be in for and we all accepted it when we got the power to morph, like it or not. And you can see for yourself right outside the window what the war has turned into over the last few weeks. You've seen just how useless our normal weapons are against the Yeerk fighters. You've seen just how hopeless most of the people are and you can also see why they've lost all their hope. But now we just might have a way to end it; all of it. If Jake's plan works then it'll all be over. The Yeerks will be defeated and all the humans they've enslaved will go free. Isn't that worth taking the risk? Isn't that worth dying for?"

I had to admit that James certainly had a point; he always seemed to. We'd been only fighting in this war for a few weeks, but Jake and all the original Animorphs had been fighting it for years. I could only imagine what it felt like to them to finally see an end in sight because it even felt really good to me. But, there was still the whole issue of our dangerous diversion to be considered…

There was a whole bunch of mumbling after James finished his speech. Some of it was good, and some of it was bad, but it was clear that James was getting us all closer to joining him. But there was still one thing on my mind and on everybody's mind really. And leave it to Liam to bring it up.

"Isn't there any other way we could create a diversion?" he said quietly. Well, quietly for Liam anyway.

"That was my first thought too," James replied, "but neither Jake nor I could think of anything better. To stop them from attacking us from the sky we'd need to be really close to something of importance to them; like say their pool ship. But getting close to something like that would be more dangerous than just simulating an attack on it. You can see the death zone they've created around it out the window, so nothing on the ground or in the air will make it close enough. The only other option left would be underground. And after what happened to the Yeerk pool involving the subway before all the subway tracks would be heavily guarded. We could always make our own tunnel but that'd take forever and we wouldn't have the machinery or morphs to do it."

There was an eerie silence that fell over the room after James said that. I think that everyone finally realized that we needed to do this but no one really wanted to. Almost as if James could read our minds he continued on.

"I know what the plan sounds like and I'm fully aware of all the risks. That's why I'm not going to force any one of you to come along."

Everybody's head went from trying to avoid eye contact with James to instantly staring at him after that comment.

"It's a very dangerous mission and if you don't want to go for whatever reason then you don't have to. But think about this for a second. We're supposed to be the diversion. The idea is that Visser One is supposed to see all of the Animorphs marching towards the pool ship and think that all of us are trying to mount one last desperate attempt to win the war. He's not supposed to suspect that the original Animorphs are actually on the pool ship when it takes off and not marching with us. Now, I don't think he ever got a correct head count the last time we all met up, but if us four are the only ones there he's going to get suspicious. And if he doesn't take the pool ship back into orbit then we failed our mission and almost everyone is sure to die. If enough of you don't volunteer to come then the entire mission might be doomed from the start."

He took a break to look around at all of us who were back to staring at the floor. Then, he asked the most important question I've ever heard. "So, who's coming with us?"

There was silence. Other than a few machines beeping and the people next to me breathing there was no sound. I knew what I needed to do, but I also knew what I wanted to do. It was a tough choice to make and I definitely wasn't going to be the first one to speak up.

We all stood there in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Everyone knew they had to go along but no one was willing to say anything. When I looked over to James I could see that his emotionless face had turned into something else. I'm not sure we have an emotion to describe it, but it was a mix of fear, anger, and most of all disappointment. He looked as if he was about to walk away with his lieutenants and go sit in some isolated corner or something. But just as he was about to turn away we all heard a shuffling noise behind us. We all turned to look and were shocked by what we saw. It was Pedro.

I'd never seen him move at all in all the years he's been here, but to mine and everyone else's surprise he had managed to lift his arm up, albeit only a foot or so. But it was more than enough.

I turned back to James to see a great big smile on his face. "Thanks Pedro." was all he said and was all he really needed to say. "Anyone else?"

There was a short silence before words finally broke through. "I…I…I..I……I'm…I'm in!" Timmy said with a whole lot of effort put in. And then the floodgates opened up.

One by one just about everybody raised their hands up and told James that they were in. His smile turned into an "I knew it" grin as just about everyone said that they were in. I say just about everyone because by the end Judy and I still hadn't raised our hands.

I know that I really wanted to, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It wasn't because I was THAT incredibly shy or anything, it was just the fact that, well, our mission still sounded like a suicide mission to me. Like Pickett's charge at the battle of Gettysburg. We had a small chance of succeeding and a very large chance of dying.

I shouldn't have been all that scared about dying really since I had been dealing with it for the past few years. The doctors that originally tested me and gave me my prognosis said that I only had a few months to live, but here I stood a few years later. But now I was starting to feel a few of my symptoms start to kick back in even with all the medicine I was taking. I knew that death wasn't all that far away from me, but it was harder to face it now than I thought it would be. Thinking about having to face it was one thing, but actually having to face it was completely different.

But I was thinking too negatively. What if Jake's plan worked flawlessly and he was able to protect us from any Yeerk fighters firing on us? Death wasn't guaranteed. We could all easily survive this without even having to raise a finger in combat. We just had to march and get the pool ship to go back into orbit. This could turn out to be one of the most boring things we'd ever done.

I wanted to raise my hand and I was just about to before James said, "Alright, that's what I was hoping to hear. For those of you who haven't decided on what to do yet you'll have until tomorrow morning to do so. But right now we need to give everyone their medicine and get to sleep. We're going to have a long day tomorrow."

And with that the group started to break up and go their separate ways leaving me standing still in my original spot. But I quickly gathered myself up and went to get the medicine I needed to get. I had gotten what I really wanted; more time to decide. And I was going to use it as best I could.