Note: Inspired by Animorphs: The Invasion and The Stranger, as well as Young Avengers Presents Issue 1: Patriot
The sun is shining in my eyes.
I squint and turn my head. I have to blink a couple times before my vision clears up.
"What happened?" Teddy asks.
I don't know. We're standing on the sidewalk downtown, about a ten minute walk from my grandma's apartment. I don't know how we got here, or what's going on.
I glance around. Along with Teddy, Cassie and Noh-Varr are within eyesight.
Something weird just happened. We've been teleported or kidnapped or blacked-out or something.
I knew I shouldn't have put the runaway and the Kree soldier on the same team.
"You can't be out here," I tell Cassie urgently. How did they talk me into this in the first place? If a yeerk sees her-! If they see her with us, they'll know we had something to do with her disappearance.
We all look at each other, and as one we duck into the small frozen yogurt place across the street.
We take a booth toward the back, Cassie sandwiched in between Teddy and Noh-Varr to shield her from sight through the large glass windows.
"So did anyone see a teleporter, or-?" Cassie asks, hunched over and trying to appear small.
I shake my head. "Nothing. No flash of light, no strange machines. Just there, then here."
"And if we're here, where are Billy and the others?" Teddy asks nervously.
We all look at Noh-Varr, who's been entirely silent. To my surprise, he's just sitting there in the plastic booth looking glazed and blissful.
"You ok there, Noh?" Teddy asks gently.
This is it. Noh-Varr's lost it.
"He's back," Noh-Varr says, in a daze. "Plex is back online."
"You've lost me," Cassie sighs. "What's Plex?"
"It's his ship," I explain. "But it's at the bottom of the ocean, isn't it? Do alien computers not need air to reboot?"
Noh-Varr's joy has dimmed a bit, and now he looks less like he just found out his best friend is alive, and more like he's looking through a photo album full of dead friends.
"Plex was destroyed when the ship crashed down to Earth," he answers. "But I can feel him up there in orbit." He looks up, as if to see the spaceship through the ceiling and several miles of stratosphere.
"Feel him-?" Cassie asks.
"Kree technology operates via telepathy," Teddy explains. "It's also how we can talk to eachother while we're in morph."
"I thought the morphing technology was from the Skrulls, not the Kree." Cassie has only really gotten the spark-notes version of the Animorphs' origin, so it's not surprising that the specifics are tripping her up.
"It's complicated." Teddy wasn't there at the start either, and he shrugs helplessly.
"Hey, speak a little louder, I think the cashier can't hear you yelling about aliens." I lean heavily on the plastic table and stare out of the front window. Something's not right about all this. Something's familiar…
A couple with a stroller walks past the window. On the other side of the street, a group of middle-schoolers walks home together.
Two white teenagers jog past, one heavy-set and wearing a baseball cap, one taller and wearing a hoodie. They high-five each other and quickly disappear from view.
Hey, was that-?
A third boy walks past the window. He's shorter than they are, a little bald black boy wearing an over-large blue sweatshirt.
It's me.
I nudge Teddy, but he looks at me (the me at the booth, not the me at the window) instead of where my finger is pointing. By the time he turns, the pedestrian is gone.
"What?"
"We have to go." I get up and stand by the door, trying to find the boy in my line of sight.
"Yeerks?" Cassie asks behind me. I glance back at her. She looks cautious, but not scared.
"I'm not sure," I admit. Did I really see myself, sixteen years old and hiding from the world under a hand-me-down hoodie? How? Why? The Yeerks don't have any Skrull hosts (they're notoriously difficult to infest, according to Noh-Varr; they can use their shape-shifting to move their ear canal whenever a yeerk manages to get close.), and even if they did have morph-capable hosts, they don't know who I am, right? They wouldn't have any reason to impersonate me.
Unless they do know who I am.
"You guys stay here, I have to check something out." I open the shop door slowly, trying to keep the bell from chiming.
"It might be yeerks and you want to go out on your own?" Teddy scoffs. "Yeah. Like we're going to let you do that."
"Cassie can't be seen," I insist.
"Give me ten minutes."
It actually only takes three minutes for Teddy to duck into the tourist trap on the other street corner and buy a stupid knit beanie and a loud orange scarf for Cassie to wear.
Then he grabs an empty Starbucks cup from the sidewalk and shoves it into her hands.
"No one wants to look too closely at hipsters," he explains. "You've seen one, you've seen them all."
The hat does disguise Cassie's blonde hair, but I'm still bitter that we've lost so much time trailing the imposter. To make up for the delay, I morph Condor and take to the skies.
Before all this started, I was shit at reading maps. It just didn't seem intuitive to me. Instead, I navigated mostly by landmarks: the school, the comic shop, the other comic shop, my grandparents' apartment, my mom's old apartment, Billy's house, Nate's place, the park, whichever places I spent the most time.
After soaring over the city on my very own wings, maps began to make a lot more sense. Birds see the streets from that angle, after all (even if they're usually more interested in dumpsters).
I get a couple false-positives before I find the right bald black head in the crowded street. I'm four blocks away from the others now, so I send a message in thought-speak. We haven't tested the range much, so I'm not sure how far away they can hear me.
We're on our way, Teddy sends back. He must've morphed something, too.
My doppelgänger settles down on a bench and fiddles nervously with his phone.
I settle comfortably on an awning and prepare to wait him out.
Every so often, a pedestrian passes the bench, and the not-Eli looks up as each stranger approaches.
There's an older woman with a walker, a McDonald's employee on break, an angry businessman on a cellphone, and a teenage girl in purple who-
Kate? I call to her.
She stops and looks around. I get a good look at her face- it's definitely her. But she's wearing her hair in a ponytail, up and out of her face. Kate has blunt dark bangs that fall just about at her eyebrows. She did it on impulse about four months ago, and her group of friends at school didn't stop talking about it for a week. I don't know a lot about hair, but I know this: you can go from long hair to bangs, but you can't go back. You have to wait for it to grow out.
"Hello?" she asks suspiciously, her eyes quickly passing over me in her search for the speaker.
When no one answers, she gives up and walks away.
Kate knows my thought-voice. She knows my Condor morph.
What's going on?
Was that Kate? the harrier asks as he lands beside me on the awning.
I don't know.
I'm sensing a pattern, he teases.
I do, too.
A couple of teenagers walk up to the bench. It takes me a minute to recognize Cassie and Noh-Varr. I know what they say about Clark Kent and Superman, but just by changing her style and slouching over an empty cup of coffee, Cassie manages to look like a subtly different person. Noh-Varr has apparently inherited Teddy's heavy black jacket, and looks like an extra from The Matrix. Together, they look like a couple of kids who are trying too hard to be noticed, which paradoxically makes them fade into the crowd of other kids trying to be noticed.
Cassie glances toward my clone, then looks at me and Teddy, raising her eyebrows in a silent question.
We found a Kate-clone, too. Maybe there are others. We'll follow him, I decide.
Cassie nods, and starts up a conversation with Noh-Varr about whether to buy a radio for the clubhouse.
Before my doppelganger finally gets bored of his phone, the bus comes. Cassie and Noh-Varr follow him on, and Teddy and I take flight in pursuit. Two stops later, fake-Eli gets off. The other two stay on the bus, and Teddy reassures them that we'll keep an eye on the fake while they walk from the next stop.
I know this place, too. I take that same bus every two weeks to this block, then walk over to the post office to check my PO Box.
Um, like this fake-me is doing right now.
I flap my wings nervously, and pace a few feet in either direction from my perch on a neighboring rooftop.
What's he doing? Teddy asks.
Checking my PO Box I realize. Like I do. Like I've done for the last two years. Like I did when I used to wear that hoodie, when Kate wore her hair like that, back before we got the morphing power.
In bird morphs, we're unable to follow my clone or imposter or past self or whoever inside the building. Instead, we fluff up our feathers and wait him out.
Eli comes out of the post office before Cassie and Noh-Varr catch up. He's holding a small package under his arm. It's about the size of a football, just a brown cardboard box with a packaging label stuck to the top.
Do we follow him or wait for the others? Teddy asks.
I flutter my wings.
We wait. I know where he's going.
It doesn't take long for Noh-Varr and Cassie to catch up, and then we're off again. Teddy and I fly lazy circles high above our friends as we tail this person who looks like me, who is re-tracing my steps.
I was right, of course. He's walking home.
Past the old gas station, around the corner, down three blocks.
Cassie and Noh-Varr are getting too close, barely fifteen feet behind him now. He never looks back. I wonder if I was that oblivious when I was his age. It seems like I'm on a hair-trigger these days, hyper-aware that anyone on the street could be trying to kill me.
Part of me wishes I could be that carefree again. Another part thinks it's stupid; even without yeerks, this kid is asking for trouble being this unconcerned about his surroundings.
I circle around again, angling my wings so I swoop a bit lower this time.
Two guys approach my doppelganger…
Oh shit. I know these guys: Jason and Zack. They hang out on that street corner selling weed. Zack's younger brother is in my grade. A couple years ago, we got in a fight because he said my grandfather was lying about being a victim of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. He said it was all a plot to discredit the US government. I gave him a black eye and got suspended for a week.
Ever since then, Zack gets all up in my face every time he sees me.
I circle back around before the roofs obscure my view of the confrontation.
There's Zack, leaning over the kid who looks like me. There's Jason, standing behind him, trapping him and backing up Zack.
There's Cassie, marching over to them, yelling.
It's like the moment after you put on 3D glasses at a movie theater. The blue and red images merge together and suddenly everything looks more real and immediate.
I remember this.
I remember being down there, trapped between Jason and Zack, when some blonde-haired freshman comes screaming out of nowhere, trying to defend my grandfather.
I remember telling her to butt out. I remember pushing her away. I remember Jason's laughter and I remember almost losing that cardboard box tucked under my arm.
As I watch, the familiar scene plays out below.
Shit shit shit I send to Teddy. I can't interrupt Cassie's diatribe; I have to let it play out like before. That's how time travel works, right? Right? Shit shit shit holy fuck
I wouldn't worry about it, Teddy tells me, his thought-voice calm and reassuring, Cassie can handle herself. And if she needed help, Noh-Varr is as strong as like, five guys.
He's not an imposter, I tell Teddy, unable to find the words to describe what I have just realized. This has happened before.
What?
He's not an imposter- he's me, this time I expand the radius of my thought-speak to include Noh-Varr and Cassie.
Far below us, Noh-Varr tilts his head and looks at the retreating back of my doppelganger past self. He places a pacifying hand on Cassie's shoulder.
We have to talk. Regroup. This changes… everything.
Noh-Varr and Cassie loiter next to my grandparents' apartment building like a pair of the most conspicuous spies ever.
Maybe they look less obvious to people who aren't me. Maybe a passing Controller will take them for awkward suburban teens trying to covertly buy weed instead of rogue time travelers trying to sabotage the Yeerk Empire.
The boy who used to be me walked inside the faded blue door several minutes ago, but I know exactly what's happening inside: My grandmother asks what I'm doing home so early. I readjust my backpack nervously, trying to hide how heavy and bulky it's become with the package I'm smuggling into my room. She sends me to bring grandpa a snack. He's awake when I come in. We talk. He calls me Hannah. I don't correct him- it happens too often for me to bother. He's not doing it maliciously- he has trouble with words sometimes, and the name change wasn't so long ago. I sit with him awhile, then retreat to my room with my backpack and the box I just picked up from the mail.
Teddy and I are silent as we sit on the branch, watching through the bedroom window as the boy I used to be empties a syringe into his thigh.
I thought you said your mom's insurance was going to cover hormones, Teddy says. This would be easier to handle if he sounded accusing or angry. Instead there's a note of innocent confusion in his voice, like he's just putting the pieces together and thinks he might have remembered something wrong.
I lied.
I wish you'd told us. Now his voice sounds empty, somehow. Maybe he's feeling betrayed. Maybe he's kicking himself for not seeing what was going on in my life. The thing Teddy gets, what I'm not going to explain to him, is that this wasn't about him. This was about me, about making a decision about my own life, about deciding that my health was more important than someone else's ideas about how my life should go.
The universe is big and broad. Somewhere out there, there might be an Eli who didn't buy street hormones and inject them in secret, behind a locked door.
Maybe things turned out okay for that Eli, but I sure as hell don't think he would have joined the fight against the yeerks.
"So are either of you going to tell us what's going on, or are we just going to hang out under the tree until sunset?" Cassie asks, turning toward Noh-Varr as if she's having a casual conversation with him, and not actually talking to two birds perched in the tree above her.
We'll be leaving again soon. After this, Billy texted me and we went to hang out at the mall. It's not a day I'm likely to forget.
"So we're really in the past," Cassie says quietly, as if saying the words aloud will make this feel more real.
Noh-Varr seems unconcerned. I guess time-travel is less impressive when you've lived for several months on an alien planet.
"I'm up there with Plex," he tells us to fill the time. "A dozen Kree warriors are waiting in orbit, one last-ditch effort to free our kinsmen from the yeerks. They don't know what's ahead."
We can't change things, Teddy warns. We'd make a paradox or erase ourselves from existence or something, wouldn't we?
"It seemed fine when I intervened with those jackasses earlier," Cassie points out, for the sake of argument.
It's Noh-Varr who shakes his head this time. He casts one last yearning glance toward the sky and says "There's no point. Someone else would die, some other tragedy would seem just as painful. If we tried to prevent this, we might lose ourselves trying to prevent everything."
Are you sure-? I ask . These are his people. I might be hesitant to fuck with time, but Noh-Varr has so much less to lose, and so much more to gain.
"You have to keep going. You can't live in the past," he says. It sounds final, like a gavel pounding a desk or an ancient clock striking twelve.
The younger Eli comes strolling down the steps exactly on time, and Teddy and I watch in amusement as Cassie and Noh-Varr scramble to remain unseen.
Teddy and I demorph and remorph behind a dumpster. I wish I could say that this is the grossest thing I have done for the cause, but after we morphed ants last month, nothing can compare.
Cassie has ditched her hipster disguise. She obviously doesn't need it, because the yeerks aren't looking for her here in the past, and also it makes my past-self less likely to figure out that we're following him.
The non-morphers walk casually through the mall, silently shadowing the younger Eli, as well as Billy and Tommy, after the twins arrive several minutes later.
Teddy and I watch intermittently through sky-lights, scrambling for a clear view and unable to hear a thing.
Hey look, it's Kate! Teddy exclaims, his beady hawk-eyes locked onto the figure of a slim brunette Korean girl animatedly trying to engage her friend in shopping, while a Latina teen- clearly America- looks on, bored and indulgent.
The gang's all here. The weird thing about thought-speech is that it's directed at others by its nature. My words are quiet and ironic, but no one can imagine I didn't mean for them to hear it.
The white head of Noh-Varr and the golden waves of Cassie pass underneath us, dogging the steps of yet another familiar face: Serrure. He's tiny, almost mouse-like from my vantage point. I didn't realize how much he's grown since last summer.
Yet unseen, I know that Nate is somewhere under the roof of the mall as well. Minus Noh-Varr, Teddy is the only one of us who was absent that day- spending the day with his mother on her rare day off. As the familiar events play out on mute below us, memories emerge from dusty corners of my mind and become sharper:
Billy, his voice nervous, asking if we think Teddy likes him. Billy, antsy and self-conscious, asking me and Tommy for a distraction. Tommy's rapid-fire text messages suggesting a list of increasingly-bizarre activities. Me, ever the mediator between the twins, deciding on the mall.
I see Nate, Teddy reports. He's two skylights over, near something that I hope was once a squirrel nest.
This rooftop is gross, FYI.
I hop over, fluttering my huge black wings a bit to quicken the motion.
There's Nate, our old friend, chatting casually with his new friends while my past-self and the twins look on in confusion.
We used to be tight. Me, Nate, and Billy were best friends since middle school. We spent hours upon hours browsing comic book shops, watching terrible dollar movies, and playing on Billy's old Playstation in the years before Tommy and Teddy came along.
Then, something changed, and Nate stopped having time for us. This is probably the last conversation any of us had with him. I watch it unfold for the second time through a dusty window, trying to decode the exchange from gestures and facial expressions.
Billy makes the first overture, waving and calling out across the food court. Nate looks up from his conversation, and an odd expression flashed across his face: smug satisfaction? It doesn't seem right, but my morph has great eyes. It's only there for a minute, before Nate's face melts into the more appropriate fondness he's always exhibited toward the brunette twin.
Billy catches up to Nate easily, gestures with his hand back to the younger Eli and Tommy. Nate shrugs off the invitation, nodding his head to his own companions. The message is clear, even without sound: Nate's busy, but he appreciates the invite. He leans in closer to Billy, places a hand on his arm, and smiles. I don't remember Nate being this touchy-feely when we hung out. It almost makes me think that the budding relationship between Billy and Teddy was what chased Nate off, but that seems wrong, somehow. The gesture doesn't seem longing, but possessive, somehow. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it could even be threatening.
Nate pulls away, finally, after what felt like several minutes but was probably much less. He makes his apologies to Billy, nods to his friend, and leaves the food court. Billy walks back to his brother and the boy I used to be, dejected.
Nate and his friend, a blonde girl in the grade below me, make a bee-line for the door, and I take flight to beat them there. Something is up with Nate. If I can just hear him speak, maybe I can figure out what it is.
I sit, a twenty-pound bird trying to unobtrusively perch on a trashcan, and wait for him to come to me.
"-really, what's with the hangers- on, Kang?" the blonde (Amy something?) asks Nate as he holds the door open for her.
My old friend shrugs casually. "It was a warning," he says, as if that explains anything.
"Yeah? Well I don't think he got it." Maybe-Amy replies, doubtful.
"It wasn't for the kid."
They pass my perch without a glance, and I finally notice something on the back of Nate's shirt: big, friendly bubble letters spelling out two words: THE SHARING.
There's a whirlpool where my heart should be, so many revelations in one day having completely overcome my ability to emotionally react.
People are starting to stop and stare. Usually, if I keep my distance, my condor morph can be mistaken for the turkey vulture that's actually native to the area. As several middle-schoolers take out their phones and try to sneak closer to me, I am uncomfortably aware that the California Condor has been extinct on this coast for decades.
I take flight before they can get any clear photos.
Everything happens so fast: little Serrure, who must already have Loki 645 curled around his brain, who watched the exchange between Billy and Nate with shiny, clever eyes, bounces up to my younger self and the twins. I remember thinking he seemed immature, much more child-like than the mere three years between our ages would suggest. I was annoyed, and I see it reflected in the curl of my younger self's lips as he regards Serrue/Loki. Tommy shrugged- is shrugging, I see through plate-glass windows. He wants to leave, having exhausted his attention span for this trip. He doesn't care if some freshman tags along on the walk home.
America and Kate join next, in a move that always confused me. Kate and Billy were sort-of friends, the kind of classmates who sat together and made jokes during class, but didn't hang out or text outside of school. We didn't know America at all, yet, but it was she who strolled up and told us bluntly that they were coming along. My condor eyes see her suspicious glares aimed at Serrure, and I find another mystery solved before my eyes.
Without fanfare, without formal agreement, the whole ratty group disembarks.
Just like that, the journey that changed my life begins.
I don't know how to tell Teddy that Nate is a Controller. Cassie and Noh-Varr wouldn't understand the significance of it. To them, he's just another classmate, just another human with a yeerk in his head. To me, to Teddy and Tommy and Billy, he was one of us. To find out that he's been the enemy for longer than we knew there was an enemy?
I can't even find the words to express how that feels. How am I supposed to tell Teddy?
Instead, we fly in silence, guiding Cassie and Noh-Varr to the Stark's abandoned mansion by another route.
So this is when it all started, Teddy says. It sounds almost reverent. My stomach churns at the thought of what I'll witness, for the second time.
It started when the yeerks began the invasion, I correct him. This is just the night we find out.
"I got infested three months before this," Cassie tells us, speaking to the cool Spring air unselfconsciously.
"It's been…" Noh-Varr trails off, trying to do the math in his head. "Years. Kree children are conscripted into the army when they're about as old as a human nine-year old."
When I was nine, I was playing Pokemon, Teddy says.
You still play Pokemon, I point out.
Not so much, anymore.
We're silent for a bit. None of us have a lot of time for games, and when we do have time, it's still hard to relax.
"I didn't realize you guys knew Nate," Cassie says, trying to revitalize the conversation as we trek down side streets in the dying light of evening.
Maybe I won't have to tell Teddy. Maybe I won't get the chance.
He was… Teddy trails off. Me, Eli, the twins and Nate, we were a group before all of this started. It sounds dumb now, but we were nerds, right? It kinds felt like us against the world. Then Nate drifted apart, and now-
"Now it really is us against the world," Cassie says, her smile more ironic than amused.
Yeah, Teddy says lamely.
We're here, I announce, eager to put off this conversation.
The Stark mansion tonight is an image that's burned into my mind. Even at the time it seemed ominous, dangerous. I was convinced that something terrible was going to happen, although, granted, my fears were more like Tommy breaking his leg or Billy getting gay-bashed than witnessing an alien spacecraft landing.
The building is still mostly standing, here in the past. It's falling apart, and it bares the burns and structural damage from the frat party that finally got the place condemned, but it looks recognizably like a house. In the dark, it might even be a nice house, the summer home of the Stark family who famously left this place to rot after they filed for bankruptcy.
Gravel shuffles in the darkness, footsteps on grass and rubble. Cassie freezes, but Noh-Varr has the presence of mind to pull her behind a wall, effectively hiding both of them. White and blonde are distinctive hair colors, even in the dim light.
"Pretty sure this isn't a short cut. Pretty sure this is trespassing," Billy's voice pierces the darkness.
"Do you ever get tired of being a spoil-sport?" Tommy replies. I can't see any better than a human in the dark, but Tommy's bleached hair makes him easy to spot, creeping through the overgrown lawn.
"You are, indeed, the sworn enemy of all that is fun," Loki 645 says with Serrure's voice. It's distinctly a Loki-sentence, not a Serrure-sentence. Sometimes I wonder how anyone who knew Serrure before could mistake Loki for him- not that we knew Serrure before, either.
"I do need to be home at some point," my own voice points out from somewhere in the darkness. "Grandma is already on me about going out on a school night."
"Relax," Tommy replies. He's probably waving a hand around, trying to placate them, he does that a lot- "This'll only take a minute."
"What's that?" America asks. No one asks what she means, because a moment later, we all know. For a single instant, like lightning, the lot is brightly lit, before the darkness rolls in again. The sound of the crash has all the kids scrambling, Noh-Varr and Cassie included. Walls topple over, part of the roof caves in, and a deep furrow is gouged into the lawn where the space cruiser skidded to a stop.
I shake dust out of my feathers and check to make sure Cassie, Noh-Varr, and Teddy remain unseen. The non-morphers were thrown off their feet, but seem alright. Cassie is brushing dirt from her jeans, and seems unhurt. Teddy is circling above.
"What the hell is that?" Kate asks.
"Omg my god," Tommy breathes.
"This can't be happening," Billy repeats to himself. "This can't be happening."
It is happening. It's happening again.
The spaceship opens. From inside comes first a voice, then a form.
"Don't be afraid," she calls to us.
Then, a green creature limps out of the twisted metal pod. She's tall and muscular, covered in green scaly skin and purple fabric. It's funny to think that she's not the first alien we ever met. She's just the first alien we knew we'd met. After all, we already knew Teddy.
I feel like I should do something, Teddy tells me. She's the Skrull princess. She's my people's ruler, right?
We're not changing things, I remind him.
"My name is Princess Anelle," she tells the gathered kids. "And you are all in danger."
I let her words wash over me. I already know the content: the yeerk invasion, her fleet's demise, her own impending death, our one hope: the blue cube she holds in her arms. Instead, I focus on details I missed before: her face, focused and direct. Her voice: pushing away grief to help this tiny band of human kids resist complete annihilation. The yellow of her eyes. The smooth muscles under shining scales, so similar to Teddy's Skrull form.
The looks on our faces, the future Animorphs: Billy, listening in horror. Tommy, growing angrier with every detail. Kate, thoughtful and solemn. America, confusion, her competent, badass persona finally slipping in the face of the unthinkable. Serrure, uncomfortable and uncertain, his eyes darting from Anelle to the other kids, to the darkness around them. I wouldn't have guessed it then, but now I know that he knew better than any of us what waited for us out in the darkness. He knew exactly how much the yeerks didn't want this information getting out. He knew exactly the shape and size targets Anelle was painting on our backs by telling us about the yeerks, by giving us the power to morph.
Anelle holds out the blue box, and the six kids obediently step forward. They each place a hand on the box, and it gently begins to light up, flooding the area with blue light. The kids look strange in the light, as if they are all aliens themselves.
I catch a glimpse of Noh-Varr and Cassie standing maybe twenty feet back, their faces also illuminated by the appearance of blue light.
She only has time to give them one final warning before someone else notices the light coming from the old Stark place: never stay in morph for more than two hours, lest you be stuck forever.
Then the first blast hits. Anelle's spaceship explodes behind her, and the six kids freeze.
"Run," she demands, not looking at them, and not moving her lips. They do. They scatter, jumping over rocks and crumbling statues, disappearing into the night.
The Bug Fighter hovers overhead without lights, a huge mass of black in the darkness, visible only by the lack of stars.
It fires no shots after the first. Maybe the first was a warning shot. Maybe it's a futile attempt to remain low-key.
Several shapes drop from the yeerk ship. They're humanoid, but that's all I can tell until they come closer. I heard voices from my hiding place the first time around, but not clearly enough to make out the conversation. This is new to me. This, I will remember.
The leader of the yeerk invasion of Earth strolls up to the downed Skrull as if meeting an old friend in the park.
"Princess Anelle," he says in greeting. "It's been too long." He smiles, his bright white teeth shining. With his Kree host's blond hair, broad jaw and movie-star looks, you'd never know a grimy slug lurks behind blue eyes.
"Visser Three," she spits back. "It hasn't been long enough."
"No need to be rude when we know each other so-" he pauses for effect- "intimately."
"You are not Captain Mar-Vell," she tells him. "You are a parasite, a vermin. And one day, my people will exterminate you all." She looks away from him, as if dismissing his existence as unimportant.
Visser Three talks a good game, but he's arrogant and impatient, and Anelle must have known that, too. Visser Three trembles in anger, pulls and arm back and punches her in the face. Anelle barely reacts, and actually smiles a bit. Not many things can easily take a Kree punch, but a Skrull is one of them.
As if just realizing this, Visser Three roars in anger, a sound that was much more terrifying a year ago. Now, even knowing what comes next, part of my mind notices how pathetic Visser Three is. He was trying to banter with Anelle, got burned, and couldn't think of something to say to save face. He's throwing a tantrum because Anelle called him vermin.
The fact that his tantrums come with an army of blade-wielding lizard people and blaster-wielding human Controllers is what makes him dangerous.
Visser Three snatches a Dracon Beam cannon from the arms of a subordinate, and dispassionately empties the battery into Princess Anelle's body. I flinch as the first rays hit, and take to the sky.
I wanted to know what happened, but I don't need to see this. I don't need to see our hero's body disintegrated in front of me.
She just wanted to help us, Teddy says in shock. She wanted to save the Earth.
We're her legacy, I tell Teddy. and we're going to make sure her gift destroys the yeerks.
Far below us, Visser Three stares down at the remains of Princess Anelle. He frowns, snorts, and surveys the surrounding area.
"There were others here," he announces. "Find them. Kill them."
The kids can't hear him, I realize. I didn't hear him, a year ago. They're on the outskirts of the lawn, hiding behind bushes and fountains and ornamental statues. And if it wasn't Visser Three that made them run, maybe it was-
RUN I scream at them. Simultaneously, six kids flinch at the strength of the demand. Unfamiliar to thought-speak, they will each individually assume it to be an echo of Anelle's last words to them. The command will sink into their brains, and one by one they will all dart from their hiding places and flee. They will run and run and they won't stop running until either they are home or they can't run anymore. They'll run like the devil in on their heels.
The Controllers see the movement across the lawn, and they scurry after the indistinct shapes of six fleeing kids.
We have to do-
Noh-Varr leaps out from behind a tree as a human Controller passes. He easily wrestles her to the ground and takes her Dracon beam cannon.
-something.
Noh-Varr takes aim and shoots the cannon across the lawn, not aiming at specific people so much as trying to create maximum chaos. Several controllers scatter in the wake of the blast, trying to escape the energy beam. Another Controller fires back toward Noh-Varr, sending another half-dozen Controllers running, and missing Noh-Varr completely.
"You idiots!" Visser Three screams. "What are you-" This is about the point that I dive-bomb his face. Twenty pounds of vulture hits his face at forty miles an hour, surprising the shit out of him and distracting him from whatever order he was about to give his subordinates.
I scratch at his face with my claws, then beat my wings harder and get the hell out of there before he can grab me with Kree hands. Kree strength would snap my bones like crackers. I don't need to be dead to be a distraction.
Teddy screeches a horrifying, shrill tone, and dive-bombs another Controller. By now everyone who isn't dodging Dracon beams is staring up at the sky, squinting and trying to avoid attacking birds.
WE WILL EXTERMINATE YOU LIKE THE VERMIN YOU ARE! Teddy screams in public though-speech, the equivalent of broadcasting at top volume.
I think Teddy got the memo.
Every few seconds the yard is illuminated by the light of Dracon blasts, and it's during one of these moments that I see Cassie dodge across the lawn, darting between hiding places.
This is bad. Unlike Noh-Varr, Cassie has a public identity. If the yeerks see her here, they might recognize her and take their anger out on Cassie's past self- possibly erasing our Cassie from existence.
Condors can't screech, so I only grunt and growl as I swoop down and rake a Controller's head with my claws. He screams and throws himself to the ground, effectively increasing the chaos on this side of the lawn.
Teddy, get back and demorph, I tell him privately, A Skrull loose in the neighborhood should be enough of a distraction for Cassie to get away.
He lets out one more screech and pretends to dive-bomb a Hork-Bijar again, feinting left before he got within blade-range , before he answers.
On it.
Noh-Varr's survived so long by luck, agility, and the fact that he looks like any other humanoid in the darkness, and the Controllers, unlike their leader, are reluctant to fire at someone who might be an ally.
His luck can't last indefinitely.
Another Controller wielding a Dracon cannon gets close enough to lock onto him. Her host is a middle-aged woman in a skirt suit, who has at least traded her work shoes for dirty white sneakers before she came out to fight.
"Die," she snarls as the cannon whirrs to life and fires a massive blast of energy right for Noh-Varr.
No! I scream. A few Controllers look around, trying to find the source of my voice, but other than that I am helpless.
Noh-Varr drops his own weapon and throws himself to the side, trying to avoid the worst of the blast.
My Condor nose smells burning flesh. This excites my morph's instincts, which urge me to find the wounded animal and eat it. I want to be sickened by the thought, but the Condor's stomach is interested rather than disgusted.
I circle in the sky above the blast, the hot air lifting me up higher than I'd like to be.
My eyes search the area for Noh-Varr's body. He's Kree. He's durable. He could have survived the blast…
The harrier finds him first. This is how the condor mind sees it:
A much smaller bird dives past me. I think about reaching out a talon and ripping it out of the air, but there is death and injury below me, and food is plentiful, so I don't bother.
It dives down, down, down, toward the burning-meat smell. It pulls out of the dive ten feet above the ground, and as it slows, it changes. It grows, contorts, mutates.
It drops like a stone those last few feet, and what lands on the dirt is a huge green scaled creature, something that smells more like a lizard than anything else, but not by much.
Teddy snarls at the surrounding controllers, and the sight of a full-grown Skrull is intimidating enough that several back away in fear.
Noh-Varr's body moves. He tries to push himself up, but falls back down. Teddy curls his body over top of him, looking like some sort of humanoid dinosaur protecting his young.
I hear Cassie scream. I fold my wings and drop from the sky, scaring the hell out of the Controller who had her arms wrapped around Cassie's neck. I land on the woman's back and begin pecking at her face, which is enough to make even the most loyal yeerk let go.
Cassie falls to the ground, holding her throat and breathing deeply.
You ok? I ask worriedly.
"I hate this. I want to go home!" she croaks.
Yeah, me too, I answer.
She lifts herself out of the dirt, and for a moment I think I see something bright and blue shine in the debris by her feet, then-
Leaving so soon?
Thought-speech sounds like a voice in your head, but this was more than that. This was a concept that repeated several times, from different angles, as if echoing. This came from everywhere, from within, from outside, from myself. This was loud and overpowering, but felt like a whisper in the dark.
As soon as the words faded from my mind, we were home.