Rachel

"You know, for as stiff and humorless as Andalites are, they do have this whole 'natural wonder' thing down," I mused. "I think I might need to buy a sweater in that color there. Or a dress. Whole new wardrobe even."

I pointed to the flowers that covered the trunks of the strange, slender, alien trees that spread out in a wide grove around us. They were large, but delicate, and were a shade of color that somehow managed silver, blue, green, and pink all at once.

"We can check the gift shop on the way out," Marco suggested sarcastically.

{I do not believe there are gift shops here, Marco,} Ax said. {The enjoyment is meant to come the natural environment, not the purchase of goods.}

"Sarcasm, Ax-man, sarcasm."

Ahead of us, I could see a clearing. Several small streams wove through each other, into the woods and then back out into the field again. But they flowed in unnatural, perfectly curved loops. Occasionally, one crisscrossed over the others. They looked like rings on a tree or maybe a spider web.

My name is Rachel, by the way. And of everything alien I had seen, this place was definitely the most beautiful.

"They probably don't even have my size," I muttered."Finding stuff that fits just right is hard enough on Earth. And human isn't the standard fit in this part of the universe."

"I swear, sometimes that's the worst part of space travel," joked Rose. "All the best outfits end up on the least human-shaped species, you know?"

"So tragic," I heard Cassie call out from behind us.

Cassie was my best friend, but she was more comfortable mucking out a horse stable than she was shopping at the mall. She wore stained overalls most days. I was Miss Fashion, or at least I used to be. Before the war, nothing made me happier than scoring major deals on clothes. Now, well… things had changed. I was a soldier, fighting against the Yeerks. I was going to make sure that my side won, no matter what it took. Fashion wasn't quite as important anymore.

Cassie was still lingering in the thickest part of the forest, watching some silver bat-like creatures flying agilely through the trees branches. They drank the nectar from the flowers like hummingbirds, then landed on all four limbs to scurry around on the moss-covered, woven branches. Where the moss ended, large silver leaves grew, and the bats hid there when not flying. Cassie tried to coax one down, but to no avail. I thought I saw Tobias watching them as he flew overhead. For different reasons, obviously.

{You guys need to check this place out from up here,} called out Tobias.

I could see occasional flashes of red and brown between the silver leaves overhead.

{It seriously looks like a painting. You know that one with all the stars and curls? By that guy who cut his ear off or something.}

"Oh, Vincent Van Gogh!" exclaimed the Doctor, smiling, "You know, I've always wanted to meet him. We should go, Rose, once we get back!"

Rose laughed. As we walked, she told us how she had pretty much run away from home to join the Doctor on his adventures. I couldn't say I blamed her for it. The ordinary, normal world that most people knew was boring compared to this. And well, for all the weirdness and science fiction, the Doctor was hot. The messy hair, gorgeous smile… an older guy too. I mean, okay, yeah, he was an alien. But an alien with a gorgeous accent…

Plus, I was pretty much dating a guy who spent most of his time as a hawk. I couldn't judge.

And his ship, the TARDIS or whatever, had instantly brought us to a planet so far away that Ax insisted it should have taken weeks. He was pretty bitter sounding about it, too. It was impressive. Really impressive.

Cassie had said that the Doctor scared the crap out of Visser Three down in the Yeerk Pool. Anyone who could do that was someone I wanted on our team. We could definitely use that advantage in a fight. Which gave me an idea…

"Hey Ax," I said, "Are there any animals here that would be useful for a fight? Like some kind of big super-predator or something?"

"You would ask that, Xena," Marco groaned. "Can't we just relax for five minutes without talking about tactical advantages?"

"Hey, I'm just being prepared," I retorted, "Any extra firepower helps."

"Well," said Cassie. "If there's something here that can eat us, I'd kind of like to know about it."

"I would also prefer not to eaten, please," said Rose.

"Frankly, it'd be a touch embarrassing after all the things we've survived," added the Doctor. "Completely ruin my reputation and everything."

Marco sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes. He picked up a small round rock and skipped it up one of the streams. It made perfect, literally perfect ripples before it struck another rock and sank.

"Ax?" Jake asked.

{Most of the species here are either herbivores or insectivores, Prince Jake," Ax answered.

Even though he wasn't happy about the Doctor or Rose or the TARDIS or any of it- he was having a hard time focusing on being suspicious. His eyes were practically glowing with excitement.

{The only predators are too small to be of much concern, at least for creatures of our size, Prince Jake. However, Tobias should keep a look out for any larger kalitrir birds. They are orange, and quite large. I hear their beaks are quite long.}

{Gotcha,} said Tobias.

I heard Jake sigh. "Ax, don't call me Prince in front of the new people. They're going to get the wrong idea."

"I assume from your tone that you are not actually a member of a royal family, yeah?"

The Doctor and Rose were both smirking at Jake. The rest of just laughed as he sighed even louder now.

"It's an Andalite thing. The equivalent of a general or a captain or whatever. Since I sort of ended up in charge of this crazy train-"

"Emphasis on crazy," added Marco.

"Right. It's a term of respect, but I'd really, really prefer if you didn't use it Ax."

{Yes, Prince Jake.} He definitely said that one on purpose.

Everyone laughed, especially Rose and the Doctor. I guess 'Prince' wasn't any weirder than just going by'the Doctor'.

The forest had completely given way to an open field. The spirals of water grew smaller and smaller, then formed a small pool where they all met up. Instead of grass, the ground was covered in greenish-purple broad leaved plants, with an occasional yellow flower poking out. Ax ran ahead of us some, looking the happiest I've ever seen him, if you didn't count the times at the mall food court where he ate everything in sight. He practically skipped over a small circle of boulders.

"Seriously, how is this place even real?" Jake marveled, lingering back a so he could keep an eye on Cassie. "Isn't nature supposed to be like, random or whatever?"

"It's always surprising," chuckled the Doctor. "With all that infinite randomness in the universe, there's got to be stuff that's well... not-random."

"It's incredible though. You'd be amazed at some of the things we've seen, Your Highness," Rose added with a sly grin.

Marco snorted as Rose giggled and winked at Jake. He sighed and shook his head.

We walked further into the fields. The Doctor bent down and plucked one of the yellow flowers, twirling it between his fingers before handing it to Rose. They were so adorable. It'd be annoying if it weren't so sincere.

"I can see why the Andalites like it though," Marco said. "Nature and order, it's a humorless tree-hugger's dream."

{It just keeps going like this, too, so far as I can see,} said Tobias. He swooped down to land on a rock that had formed into a narrow arch. His talons wrapped around perfectly, like it was put there for that specific purpose.

{Not an ugly thing anywhere,} he continued. {I'd almost feel bad eating one of the little critters running around here.}

"Almost," I grinned.

{Hey, a hawk's gotta eat,} Tobias chuckled.

"Did that take some getting used to? I mean, space food was tricky enough, yeah?" Rose asked. "But I didn't have to go out and well… kill it myself."

{Well, the hawk part of me never got the hang of eating hamburgers, so I adjusted. No big deal. Having wings makes up for it.}

"Speaking of, I think I'm coming up to join you," I said.

I pulled off my outer layer of clothes, until all I was wearing was my morphing suit. The outlines of bald eagle feathers began to spread out in a pattern over my skin.

"Oh! That is just brilliant! I had been hoping to get a better look at how the process worked…"

The Doctor pulled out a pair of glasses. He was engrossed by it, watching as the bones in my arms shrank and hollowed. Rose came over to take a closer look just as my legs shrank down to tiny, eagle-sized ones. Her face was a mixture of fascination and horrified concern. I knew why- morphing was almost never pretty or predictable. Cassie was the only one who could manage to do it well.

"Does it feel as bad as it looks?" asked Rose as my eyes swelled and shifted in my skull.

"Naah-aaawghk!" My lips stretched forward to form a hard, curved yellow beak before I could respond.

"You can't feel anything, it just looks gross. You should see when we do the fly," laughed Marco. He shuddered at the memory.

Rose bit her lip, still worried, and watched as I finished the morph.

I spread my wings out as wide as they could go, showing off just a little. With a just few flaps, all seven feet of my wingspan caught the air and I took off. The air was warm and that helped me power higher and higher.

"That's amazing. She's an eagle, yeah?" I heard Rose asking below me and chuckled internally.

{A bald eagle,} I clarified, {It's very American.}

{Hey, there are a lot more red-tailed hawks running around the good old USA than there are bald eagles. I think I'm gonna vote for a change of our national animal.}

Tobias had taken off to follow me. Compared to me, he looked like a pigeon- but he had a lot more flight experience than I did. He was able to catch up in moments.

{Whatever hawk-boy! Don't be jealous that I'm the one they put on the stationary!}

I could hear the Doctor nearly choke from laughing. Soon, they all began to look like ants. But with an eagle's eyes, I could still see every hair on their heads. I scanned the wide alien landscape. Everything was brightly colored and laid out in artistic swirls. Even the mountains in the distance curved upwards in strange and unnatural curls.

{See,} said Tobias, speaking only to me now, {Just like that van Gogh guy. Artwork, as far as the hawk eyes can see.}

A herd of animals ran through the fields and across another set of spider web streams, almost a mile away. They looked like darker, shorter giraffes. I saw the TARDIS, parked where the Doctor had left it and just as out of place here as it was in the woods near Cassie's barn.

{Does he really think that counts as camouflage? I bet it doesn't even look normal in England or Great Britain or where ever.}

{I mean it is a pretty decent cloaking system. It doesn't look like a space ship,} said Tobias, flying in a lazy circle above me now. {Ax was impressed, at least. He thought it was idiotic, but he was impressed.}

{Ax just doesn't like it when Andalite technology gets shown up,} I laughed.

{Yeah, well, that too. He's nervous about all this, but I think the road trip is good for him.}

Tobias chuckled. Below us, I saw that Ax had finished circling the field below, and returned to the others. The Doctor was now staring at his hooves and had pulled out his glasses again. He bent down to take a closer look.

{I think he just found how Andalites managed to eat without mouths,} I said, and Tobias laughed.

I couldn't blame him. The hoof-absorption thing was kind of weird for us too. The Doctor didn't look weirded out though. He was… giddy. Like a little kid. He claimed to have seen the whole universe, but here he was acting like... well, me at a 50% sale. Rose just watched him. I'm sure she was just as curious, but at least she acted respectful. Calmer. I don't know. Maybe she actually understood that as nice as things were now, we were still in the middle of a war. Or she just understood personal space.

{Do you think we can trust them?} I asked Tobias.

{Well, it's not like we have much of choice at this point,} he replied. That didn't answer my question.

{Grizzly is always an option…} I pressed on.

{Yeah, well, let's maybe save that for a last resort.} Tobias sighed wearily before he continued. {I don't know. Cassie trusts them. And I trust Cassie's instincts for this kind of thing. But they're not from our world. Not even our universe, if what they said is true. That makes things a lot harder to predict.}

{Yeah. I'm not exactly in a hurry to have a repeat of… you know.}

I didn't want to say it, but I knew Tobias understood. David, the last person we had trusted with our secret. The boy we had given the morphing ability to a while back. We tried to help him after his parents were turned into Controllers. Made him an Animorph. It hadn't ended well. Before he could betray us to the Yeerks. we… I had to do some horrible things, in the end.

I still hear him screaming sometimes, in my nightmares.

{Yeah… none of us are,} Tobias reassured me.

We flew over top of what looked like a hot spring, and Tobias caught a thermal. He rose higher and higher, the the warm air pushing him up. Even the temperature here was perfect. It was starting to feel unsettling.

{I guess we keep an eye on the situation. Wait and see, for now,} he said.

{Pretty sure that's our only option at this point,} I replied, laughing.

I looked down and saw everyone staring up at us across the open purple-green field. The Doctor and Rose looked particularly in awe. Jealous even. Suddenly, I had an idea. I shifted my wings to soar up level with Tobias. I knew how to make them even more jealous.

{You know, since we've got a captive audience… I'll race you back down!}

I didn't bother to wait for his response. I turned down into a sharp dive, and the air blowing past became a rush of noise and pressure.

{HA!} yelled Tobias, wooshing past me like a red and brown bullet.

Bald eagles may be some of the largest birds of prey, but they weren't the fastest by the long shot. Still it was easy to forget that as I rocketed towards the ground at over 70 mph.

"TSEEEEER!"

Tobias screamed before turning to coast inches over the top of our audience's heads. There wasn't a person or bird alive that could fly better than him. I didn't trust myself to get that close, but the bald eagle's huge wingspan was impressive enough. I slowed down and leveled out, flying well above the group before swerving back around to land. Rose and the Doctor were actually clapping.

"Molto Bene! Bravo!"

"You make it look so effortless," said Rose. She did look jealous.

{The eagle brain does most of the work,} I admitted. {But yeah, we're pretty much coolest things on Planet Earth.}

{I'm the best though. Lots of practice,} Tobias bragged, now circling above us again.

"Whatever, Bird-boy," said Marco, "Just try not to scalp us next time."

{Marco, you had the least to worry about that,} Tobias countered. {I'd have to plow through the Doctor's skull to even get close to your height.}

"Ha ha. Very original."

I began to demorph. My flesh expanded and distorted as the feathers melted back into my skin. This time, the Doctor didn't come as close, but he still stared, just a curious as before. He was fiddling with a metal, alien-looking tube in his hands.

"Oh gross!" said Rose, "I mean, it's not as bad the second time, yeah? But all the same…"

I couldn't blame her. With the feathers gone, I looked like some sort of freakish, bald half-human.

"Sorry," she added, "It's just rather unsettling."

{No problem. It freaks us all out.}

The Doctor stepped a bit forward, holding the metal tool up purposefully now. He looked around.

"Do you mind if I get a quick scan? I am rather curious about the technical aspects of the mor-"

{I would prefer that you do not. My people have laws forbidding the sharing of our technology with other species.} Ax interrupted before anyone had time to even think of a response.{ These humans… my friends are an exception only due to extreme circumstances.}

The Andalites were stubborn, almost stupidly so, about their technology. At least we knew why now. The Yeerks had been stuck on their own planet until an Andalite took pity on them. He gave them the technology to travel the stars. Now they were conquering the galaxies, destroying as they went. It was something the Andalites were ashamed of, so they tended to overreact to keep it from ever happening again. No matter what species. Humans included.

I mean, normally, I would have been a little mad that Ax just jumped in without asking any of us. But I kind of agreed with him for now. As nice as the Doctor and Rose had been so far, we couldn't afford to take unnecessary risks. The morphing power was the only advantage we had. If we lost that, we were screwed.

"Right, well, I suppose I can understand that," the Doctor said, "Every species has its secrets."

I finished demorphing, and stood in my leotard amongst the others now. A small gust of wind blew. There was some sort of beautiful smell in the air, and I swore I heard flutes or something in the distance.

"Its beautiful here," said Cassie wistfully, "I almost don't want to leave."

"Best thing about the TARDIS- We can always come back," assured the Doctor. "Or see even more places. The whole universe."

"Yeah, well, we need to kick some Yeerk butt before we plan too many vacations," I said.

"I thought kicking Yeerk butt was your idea of a vacation?" Marco smirked. He sat down in the plants and leaned back against a tree that, well, looked like it had been put there specifically to be leaned on.

I rolled my eyes, ignoring him. I wanted ask about something that, well… I had been wondering about since we first met these guys.

"So- your ship, the TARDIS, you said it's time machine, too, right? It's just not working right because of getting throw into our dimension or whatever?"

"Well, yes…" said the Doctor, suddenly interested in a bush with red and gold thorns growing near the boulder ring.

That wasn't exactly reassuring.

"Once you get it back up and running- we can go back in time, too, right?" I pressed on, "So, like, say a specific event- we can visit it? Change it?"

{Rachel,} Tobias warned.

"Actually, I'm curious," Jake said, "Because how does that work? I mean, what can we change? Are there ways that we could-"

"No, you can't," said the Doctor, cutting Jake off before he could even finish.

Okay, that was rude.

"You didn't even let him finish!" I said, taking a step forward.

"I don't have to," said the Doctor, "It's not possible, what you want."

I glared, clenching my fist. Rose had stopped smiling and gotten quiet.

"How do you know what we're even trying to ask you?" I demanded, "You haven't even heard-"

"You don't think- I mean, there's no way to even try?" Cassie interrupted me this time. She had come to stand next to Jake, and put a hand on his shoulder.

From his place on the ground, Marco took a deep breath, then sighed loudly. He closed his eyes. "Can't this wait?" he said, "We were having such a nice time."

"Wait?! Marco, have you been paying attention at all?" I snarled, pointing at the Doctor. "If he has a time machine, a real time machine, this means we can fix it all, right? Go back before the war even started. Stop the Yeerks from ever even coming to Earth. Stop them from ever even leaving their own planet!"

Marco just kept his eyes shut and sighed again. It was starting to make me angry.

"No fighting. No death. No more nightmares from morphing ants or getting stuck as a hawk," I continued. "Your mom. Tom. All of it."

"I mean- is there anyway? Even if it's risky," asked Jake, looking hard at the Doctor even as he avoided his gaze. "We're willing to take a chance, if it might-"

"Of course there's a way!" I snapped, walking over to the Doctor. I'd make him look at us, tell us how, if that's what it took.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Rose protested.

She moved to cut me off from the Doctor, but I got to him first. He stood, facing away from us, and that just made me even angrier.

"I'm sorry, so sorry, I really am but-"

"Don't give me that crap!" I shouted.

"Rachel, enough!" yelled Jake, but I ignored him. I concentrated on the grizzly bear DNA flowing through my body. Brown fur rippled across my skin as I reached towards the Doctor. I was going make him fix everything, all of it, right now.

Suddenly, the Doctor whirled around to face me. Without thinking, I took a step back. I instantly understood how it was that the Doctor frightened Visser Three.

There was this… something about him had become terrifying. He didn't even flinch as I continued to morph. I didn't want to be afraid of him. I kept morphing, getting taller, stronger, growing teeth and claws and trying to pretend like his sudden rage didn't make me want to run away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marco and Cassie holding Rose back. She didn't scare me- and the Doctor wouldn't either, not as soon as I finished the morph.

A grizzly isn't afraid of anything.