My name is Marco. I'd tell you my last name, but I'm far too attached to living. See, if I told you my last name, it would make it easier for them to find us, and that's something we definitely don't want. By we I mean us and you, because you're in this too, buddy.

If you don't know why we're fighting, or why we can't give you our last names, or even swear that these are our first names, I'll give you the quick version. You'll have to look at an earlier book if you're still confused. Earth is being invaded by mind controlling slugs from outer space, and its only defense is me, three other human kids, a bird that used to be a boy, and an alien military cadet.

Wait, before you go running for the guys with the rubber room, at least let me tell you the part where we can change into any animal we touch. It was a gift, from the Andalite prince who told us about the invasion. The Andalites are the good guys, the Earth's only hope. So we fight to delay the Yeerk invasion long enough for the Andalite fleet to arrive. We are my best bud Jake, his cousin Rachel the warrior princess, her friend Cassie the animal lover and earth hugger, Tobias, our first casualty, who became stuck in morph after staying longer than two hours and is now more bird than human, Ax the stranded Andalite cadet, and myself. Marco, the cutest boy in any given school at any given time.

Sometimes being incredibly cute has its disadvantages. Like, hypothetically, when said adorable boy happens to make a perfectly innocent remark to one Jennifer Belle, about the lovely state of her hair in relation to the autumn leaves, and one Jennifer Belle's rather large boyfriend happens to hear said innocent remark. Then, in such hypothetical situations, one might end up in an awkward location such as... oh... a locker.

God it was cramped in there. I'm a tad on the short side. It's barely noticiable, but I blame the hole in the ozone layer. So I fit, barely, in the confined space. I wasn't going to be throwing any dance parties in there, but I fit.

There are times when being an animorph, that's animal morpher for the uninitiated, come in handy in ways that don't involve aliens or screaming at all. This was one of them. My cheek was already pressed fairly tightly against the vent in the locker, so all I had to do was twist my head slightly to look around. The hall seemed empty, so I closed my eyes and focused.

It was a morph that all of us truly hated doing, but somehow it always ended up being necessary. I could feel the changes start almost immediately, and for once I was glad to be in a nearly pitch black tiny space. First my back hardened and seperated into two dark wings that weren't really for flying. Then I felt the odd somewhat falling sensation of drastic shrinking, and the rest of my skin hardened. Then came the part I really wasn't ready for. Extra legs splooched out of my chest, one after another, while my vision inside the cramped compartment got even worse as it became compounded into hundreds of tiny television set images.

I was nearly finished shrinking into full cockroach, only a half foot tall, when vibrations moved down the antennae that had just sprouted from my head. Someone was coming! They were rattling the lock on the outside, twisting it around. I had to hurry. I focused and prayed to get small enough to be unnoticable. The lock rattled and tumblers clicked and I morphed as fast as possible.

Then bright light hit me as the door was yanked open, and the roach mind screamed in terror. RUN! It cried. RUN RUN RUN RUN!! The animal mind and me were in utter agreement about the running part, but we stalled on where to. The roach wanted to get to the far left corner of the locker, where it was still dark and some moldy cheese from a sandwich was sitting, but I wanted to go out into the light of the hall where I could find a safe place to demorph. The roach mind wasn't having any of it, but luckily I had more control than it did, so we motored out of there, with the bug brain screaming the entire way. If you've ever been strapped to the bottom of a race car while it does laps around the track, that's what it's like to be a running roach. It may be small, but for its size that thing rockets.

Thankfully whoever was at that locker hadn't seen me. Now I could find a quiet spot and--Then a voice stopped me. I knew that voice. It was assistant principal Chapman. He was a known yeerk, a high level controller. That's what we call people who have yeerks in their brains, controllers. I froze at the sound of one of our most dangerous enemies literally inches away, then quickly shot past the giant brown shoe that had landed just in front of me and hid out under the base of the lockers on the other side of the hall.

Carefully, I motored down the hall toward what I thought was a supply closet. While I moved, I could hear Chapman talking. His voice boomed over me. He had to be talking to a new student, because he said. "I'm sure you'll do fine here, David. Your father spoke very highly of you when he came in yesterday. I trust that you'll be as hard working and honest a student as you were at your last school."

The boy mumbled something that I didn't quite catch, and Chapman laughed before moving off. His long legs carried him past where I was huddled just at the crack that led into the closet, and I let out a sigh of relief. At least I think I did, but I'm not sure roach lungs work. Anyway, he was gone and I scooted under the door and into the dark confines to become my adorable self again.

Minutes later, I carefully opened the door of the closet and stepped out. There were some students in the halls, but no one gave me much of a second glance. I gave a look up and down the hall before starting off for my next class. There were a couple girls ahead, talking to a kid I didn't recognize. I figured he was David, mostly through the deductive reasoning of one of the girl's calling him that. He was holding something in his right hand that I couldn't quite see, and obviously flirting.

There were two girls, and only one of him, so it was only fair that I step up to fill in the obvious gap. I mean, that's what guys do, right? Right. Besides, one of the girl's, Danielle, was in my first period class, so I had dibs. Of a sort. But someone hadn't told David that part, because the look he sent me when I sidled up beside him and said hey to Danielle, could have come from Visser 3 himself. So the new kid wasn't exactly friendly, but I could deal with that. I turned to smile and give him a great welcoming speech that would make him feel right at home, and that coincidentally the girls would love me for when I finally saw what he had in his hand. At that moment, every single thought I had in my head vanished. The only thing in my mind from the moment my eyes took in that sight was 'Duuuuuuurrrr'. It was like I was suddenly some big guy who went around stuffing smaller, smarter, cuter boys into lockers for no good reason. There literaly was no intelligent thought in my brain for about three seconds.

He had the box! The blue box, the device that Elfangor had used to give the rest of us our morphing powers. The one we thought was destroyed all this time. This kid had it. I realized I was staring finally, and dumbly raised my hand to point. "A... box." Yeah, not my most elequent moment, but it was all I could think of to say.

David looked at the box in his hand and shrugged. "Yeah, it's cool. It shines and stuff. I'm not sure what it's for though." His anger at my interrupting seemed to have been abated when he saw how hard it was for me to throw a complete sentence together. Maybe he thought he looked better by comparison. Jerk.

"Where.. did you find it?" I had to stop myself from reaching out to snatch the box from his hand. It was equally hard to avoid looking up and down the hall to see just who was paying attention to this. Desperately I wished for Cassie to show up. She'd know what to say. Or even Rachel. The kid would probably end up in the same locker I'd just vacated, but we'd have the box at least.

Then David shook his head. He raised his hand with the box in it, and my eyes followed the cube. "Me? Nah. I didn't find it, I just thought I could figure out what it was. It's hers." He passed the box to the other girl, the one next to Danielle that I hadn't paid much attention to. The girl took it and stuffed it back into her pack, and after watching the blue box disappear from sight, I finally looked up, and had my second heart attack of the last two minutes.

The girl who had the blue box, the key to the Andalite morphing technology, was the assistant principal's daughter. Melissa Chapman had the Andalite cube.

We were so screwed.