I demorphed and settled in on an especially large bale of hay as Jake paced, struggling with what to say. I knew he was deep in thought because of the ten-thousand wrinkles on his forehead. He stopped walking and looked up as if seeing me and Tobias for the first time. "All right. The Yeerks are putting on a video game competition at the mall this weekend."
"That's convenient for you boys," Rachel said bitterly. "Why couldn't they be trying to infest people at the Rob Thomas concert?"
Jake cleared his throat. "I'm sure the Yeerks had the male Animorphs enjoyment in mind when they chose to do this, Rachel. Anyway, the point is, they're going to be using this as a cover to single out humans with a natural ability for piloting and strategy."
(This is probably so, Prince Jake. Reaction times and such would make for superior controller-pilots. If a Yeerk could access a brain with an anomylously superior grasp on tactics, it would make an ideal host body for Yeerk Vissers.) I stiffened when Ax said this. My mom was the host body of Visser One. Was she one of these anomalies?
"Right. So how do we stop them?" Jake asked, palms out. "Any ideas?"
"Stomp the competiton? Blow it up?" Rachel suggested.
"In addition to hurting people, they'd just move the competition somewhere else, out of our reach. We need to be subtle," I warned.
"Sabotage the competition in a way the Yeerks wouldn't know they'd been foiled? At least until the competition was over?" Cassie mused.
(Now you're talking,) Tobias said. (Marco's pretty good at video games, and I gotta tell you, I wasn't half-bad before I got myself stuck in a bird's body.)
Rachel glared. "So you want to go in and win this competition? Without anyone noticing that the boy who disappeared just showed up out of nowhere to compete in this big huge contest?"
Tobias flared a little, but his thought-speak voice was calm. (Nobody would be looking for me, but that's not the point. The point is that even if Marco and I could win this thing, the Yeerks would be looking to make a controller out of us two, which wouldn't do at all.)
"Unless…" I said, a ghost of an idea forming in the back of my mind. "Ax, do you think you could reprogram the system to trade scores? The best player the worst and the worst the best and so on?"
Ax scoffed. (That would be childishly simple.)
I bowed to invisible applause. "The Yeerks are giving money and a tour of Activision studios as the prize to the top three gamers. I guarantee you they infest the top three at the studio. So what we'd be doing is giving them the worst three strategists and pilots in the state. The complete opposite of what they set out to do."
Cassie looked troubled. "Yeah, but we'd still be giving them three humans to infest."
Rachel just looked fiercely enthusiastic. "You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. This is a fantastic way to make waste of the Yeerks' time and resources, not to mention get some Yeerk generals into some military-minded cripples."
Cassie looked shocked at Rachel's opinion of the plan. Jake looked disturbed but determined. "I see where both of you are coming from. I don't like it, but it's the only plan we've got for now. Tobias, Marco, get yourselves signed up. Maybe the rest of us can catch a movie or something before we have to deal with the slugs tomorrow."