Chapter Three

"Lucy! I'm Home!" Marco called cheerfully into the somewhat grimy but obviously well lived in little house. Jake and Rachel followed in behind him, each carrying two shopping bags from the grocery store. Jake just rolled his eyes and set his load down on the table in the dinning alcove while Rachel shoved past the still grinning boy, his eyes sparkling with mirth and amusement, and stomped into the kitchen where Ax's head, thankfully human, had appeared from around the corner, a damp frying pan held in the dishtowel in his hands as he finished drying it.

"I fail to understand why you insist on greeting me as such," Ax said with more than a hint of confusion in his normally neutral voice. "My name is not Lucy, and I am fully aware when you return to the domicile- you are not the most subtle individual."

"House, Ax," Marco groaned with a role of his eyes as he perched himself onto the back of the living room couch in order to still talk to his friends. The recliner in the corner of the room, though facing in the right direction, sat silent and unused, as it had for over a year now. "It's called a house. And I know you watch enough daytime TV to get an I Love Lucy reference."

"He get's it," Rachel commented shortly from the kitchen, where she was finishing putting away the things from her bags into Marco's cupboards. Hading back into the alcove to grab the bags Jake had put down, she tossed her blond hair over her shoulder huffily before striding back into the kitchen. "It's just that it's not funny."

"Oh! How you wound me so!" Marco cried out in badly dramatized mock agony, clutching at his chest before slumping loudly over the back of the couch and landing heavily into the soft cushions.

"Anyone know where Cassie is?" Jake asked, choosing not to comment on Marco's performance. Though his friends actions would have once had him laughing and joining in on the fun, now it went largely unnoticed and ignored.

"She is still tending to an injured raccoon," Ax informed him succinctly as he finished drying the pan and put it away in the cupboards. "She has informed me that she will be along shortly, and that Erek shall most likely be accompanying her."

"Great, maybe now we can finally get some freaking answers!" Marco's voice called out, muffled as it carried over the back of the couch. He hadn't bothered to move from where he'd landed, sprawled out on the comfortable cushions.

"Answers to what?" Cassie asked innocently as she stepped through the unlocked front door, Erek following shortly behind her. Her mass of curly black hair was pulled back by a red kerchief, bits of straw sticking out her hair here and there and stuck onto her dusty overalls, worn at the knees and stained suspiciously with what looked like it could have, at one point in time, been blood. Erek was standing nonchalantly behind her, mop of curly blond hair settled on a reasonably attractive, if somewhat awkward looking, face. His clothes were non descript, and if you passed him on the sidewalk you wouldn't even give it a second though- just like he liked it. It was hard to remember sometimes what the blank human projection covered up beneath it. If you passed a giant metal wolf on two legs on the sidewalk- that you would most definitely notice.

"Hi," Jakes shy greeting and small smile were returned by a faint blush coloring Cassie's cocoa colored skin.

"Hi." The two of them were smiling faintly, each blushing as they just looked at one another.

"Much as I love watching you two make goo-goo eyes at each other, can we move this along please?" Marco had sat up on the couch now, and had draped his arms over the backside of it so that he could be facing them all when he talked. Cassie and Jakes respective blushes only deepened and the two moved to sit down at the tiny little dinning table in the alcove, their hands linking none too subtly beneath the flimsy wood. Marco just rolled his eyes and turned back to the only lightly interested holographic face of their resident android. "So Cyborg, you want to tell us what's up with you tin heads lately?"

Erek didn't sigh, but it looked as though he would have- if he actually needed to breath. "I've explained this to you before Marco- we are androids, not cyborgs."

"Androids, Cyborgs, what the difference?" Marco grumped with a shrug, throwing in an eye roll for good measure.

"Cyborgs were originally organic in nature, with mechanical and technological advancements," Erek explained with tone of one who doesn't actually expect for their words to be remembered, or even really listened to. "But as for your previous question, the Council is growing increasingly concerned on the lack of chatter we've been intercepting from the Yeerks lately."

"Isn't that a good thing though?" Cassie asked hopefully. "Maybe they've decided we're too much trouble or something."

Jake squeezed his sort-of girlfriends hand supportively under the table before offering her a small, wry smile. "Somehow, I just don't think that's going to happen."

"They've invested way too much in this war," Rachel put in from where she was leaning against the wall outside the kitchen. Ax was standing silently behind her, arms wrapped around his thin frame protectively as he stared introspectively at a small spec of dirt on the floor some two feet away from where he stood, uncharacteristically silent. "There's no way they'd just pull out after all this. No, if their going quiet then it means they've already got something in the works. Don't want to risk screwing it up by getting anything intercepted."

"Rachel is right," Erek confirmed solidly. "Six billion potential human hosts is too much of a prize for them to ever just walk away from. I'm afraid the only way they would ever give up is if they were faced with complete and total destruction. Whatever they have planned- it has to be big. End game proportions even."

Everyone paused at that definition. They always knew it was a possibility, that they wouldn't win this war. But to have it brought up so suddenly… it felt an awful lot like if they had just been walking down the sidewalk only to have a clown come up behind them and hit them in the face really hard with a really cold fish.

"Yeah, well could this plan have anything to do with Yeerks raining down out of a tree?" Marco's voice brought everyone out of their ruminations, and though his words were light and spoken in their usual sarcastic tone, his expression brokered none of that same amusement. For once, Marco was deadly serious.

"I beg your pardon?" was Ereks politely confused and befuddled response.

"When the boys picked me up from gymnastics we were nearly caught in a slug storm. They literally rained down from the trees as we were walking under them," Rachel recounted sternly, searching the projection of Erek's face vainly for any sign of a visceral emotional reaction.

"Yeah," Jake concurred, hesitantly, before looking back to Rachel for conformation. "But they didn't start until after you and I had already gone by, remember? They only got Marco and Cassie."

The Cassie present looked to Jake in obvious confusion, while Marco shivered dramatically at the memory.

"Don't remind me man," he snapped, discomfort and fear obvious below the mask of annoyance and sarcastic bravado. "I nearly got one of those suckers in my ear!"

"What do you mean 'Cassie'? I wasn't anywhere near the gymnastics center today," this Cassie asked, sounding very slightly hurt. Uncertain as to how Jake could misinterpret her actual presence.

"No, not you babe," Rachel cut in, soothing her friends vague and unfounded worries. "One of the girls from gymnastics. Her name's Cassie, too."

"Well that won't get confusing," Marco quipped with a roll of his eyes. He was, as per usual, ignored. Jake was soothing Cassie's idle worries as Rachel was about to ask Erek something, when Ax finally spoke up. His words cut through the air, quiet and innocent enough as they were, as everyone else fell silent at their impact.

"So who was their intended target? Cassie? Or us?"