Chapter Ten

Tables and tents stretched out half the length of a football field before her and off to either side. Some vendors had only fold out tables strewn with gizmo's and gadgets. Others kept their wares in cardboard boxes or crude shelves. The more permanent looking booths had tents, and a few of them had even constructed walls and store fronts, creating the illusion of a sprawling miniature suburb interspersed with an odd sort of roving gypsy camp, with no single shop bigger than maybe ten or twenty feet on any given side. The backs of container crates stacked up on top of each other, the large metal containers she'd seen on cargo ships, formed a wall of sorts off to the right, with single stack of missing containers forming the only gap in the extensive wall. To the far left she could see the simple concrete wall stretch off into the distance. Straight ahead though was a main path cutting clear through to the back of the building, nearly twenty feet wide. Shops and booth's on either side of the main thorough fair were bustling with traffic. About halfway between the entrance they had just stepped through and the concrete wall on the far side was a giant plexi-glass square, maybe only four feet on either side, but stretching all the way up to the roof. She could see a thin platform, held in place by apparently nothing more than the four metal posts surrounding the corners of the shaft, moving slowly but steadily down from the roof towards the floor. The platform was studded with a cluster of dark bodies, faces obscured by the warping of the plexi-glass, as they rode the shaft calmly towards the centers floor. In a wide swatch of cleared space by the base of the make shift elevator stood a collection of benches and what appeared to be water fountains from what Cassandra could make out. Many of the tents and tables lining the circle appeared to have smoke rising from them, but the smell of cooking food was most definitely unmistakable from any distance.

"Well?" Cassandra turned back to see Tobias looking at her with a bemusedly expectant little smirk and a single raised eyebrow. "Meeting your expectations yet?"

Cassandra was rather embarrassed to admit that she floundered for more than a moment, her mouth opening and closing expectantly as she searched for the words. Fortunately, Marco found them for her.

"Oh my God… the geeks have inherited the earth!"

"Shut up Marco," Jake grumbled, but he was mostly ignored.

"So where do we start?" Cassie asked from Jake's side, still clinging loosely to his arm. Right… and there was nothing going on between them.

"Well Marco and I needed to get some IR goggles for, uh, paintball," Tobias stumbled out. Marco looked at him curiously and was about to open his mouth to question it when he caught Tobias gesturing towards Cassandra subtly.

"Uh, yeah. Paintball. I think that stuff's in section ten, right?"

"Section ten is LARP gear, Nine is astronomy, Eight is psychiatry, Seven is robotics…" Max began rattling off, still having not taken his eyes from Cassandra as she surveyed the markets before them with a wide eyed curiosity. There was something else in her expression as well, perhaps a sense of painful familiarity? But that did not make sense, earth did not have many open markets such as these, at least not in this part of the world. And he saw no reason for such a market to recall a feeling of pain. He would have to question Prince Jake about such things later and re-evaluate his ability to comprehend human facial expressions as emotional representations.

"Yeah, we get it Max," Rachel groaned, cutting the curly haired boy off.

"Well, I've got to go meet up with some friends of mine. They were supposed to have the situation on a new gaming system," Erek aliped in with a shrug. Jake nodded subtly at Erek's quick glance before speaking up himself.

"I'm gonna go with Erek. I've been meaning to find out about this game myself. Cassie? You want to come with us?"

"Yeah, sure," Cassie responded ambivalently. Jake seemed to have put a bit too much weight on his words, trying to make them sound like a command, but Cassie didn't even seem to notice.

"What were you going to do Max?" Cassandra's question was simple and innocent enough, but it still seemed to manage to make the exchange student blush.

"I, uh, intended to confer with several associates in the astronomy and software programming departments. Would you, uh, I mean… would you care to… I do not intend to imply… I would be open to other…"

"I'd love to go with you! I've actually been meaning to take a look at some new encryption software myself. Does the astronomy department have anything looking in to alien life? I know most people think it's more science fiction than anything else, but I do believe that it would be incredibly arrogant to assume that we were the only intelligent life forms in existnace. What do you think?"

"I readily concur," Max nodded eagerly, not smiling but looking at the girl before him in a mixture of shock and agreement. The other were still trying to process what she'd just said- she'd apparently not taken a breath throughout the whole thing. "I do not believe there is an alien life interest in the astronomy department, as that is mostly located in section five. They like to refer to it as Area 5.1 as a method of pop culture reference, although I do believe there is some level of cross over in the departments. We could, however, visit all three. It would not be disagreeable."

"Great! Oh, and can we take a look at that center square? It looks so beautiful…" Cassandra was still speaking to Ax, she had somehow managed to loop her arm around his without him jumping back, and the two had begun strolling off down the main street, Cassie pointing excitedly at things she saw, and Max looking only at Cassandra and little else. The remaining animorphs turned to look at each other with raised eyebrows while the resident android just shrugged. Tobias turned to Rachel expectantly.

"Ready to go?" Tobias asked simply, holding out a had towards the short tempered blond. Marco, who was standing just behind the other boy, interlaced his fingers under his chin and began making fluttering his eyelashes and making kissy face. Rachel glared, a blush rising quickly to her cheeks, and slammed the boy hard with her shoulder as she strode past, knocking Marco to his ass, but also brushing past Tobias's extended hand in the process. Tobias looked after her for a moment, his brow furrowed, before helping Marco to his feat and following after her.

"Well, they're doomed," Cassie announced, looking after her friends in something close to exasperation. She looked back to Jake for a comment, but the boys face was stony and blank as they turned and began trekking off towards the metal container crates lining the one side of the warehouse, Erek leading the way as Cassie and Jake traveled just behind him, arm in arm. "I mean, Rachel just can't stop herself from getting in her own way, and Tobias is too softhearted to knock enough sense into her for her to see it. He'll never get through that thick shell of hers at this rate. Maybe we should get Rachel an intervention. Like a 'stop sabotaging your only romantic interest' intervention? Do you think they even do those?"

"You shouldn't have invited her." The change in topic threw Cassie for a bit, and Jake's still stony expression didn't help any as he kept his gaze straight ahead even as she tried to meet his eyes. She tried to slow him down a little bit, so that she could look him in the eye, but Jake just pressed on, almost dragging Cassie to the ground as their arms were still intertwined.

"Invited who?"

"Cassandra. It was risky and foolish and you shouldn't have done it." He was serious. Cassie was starring at him, dumbfounded, but he was being completely serious. His jaw was set and clenching so hard that she worried for the well being of his teeth- he was going to grind them all away someday if he kept at it like this. She could see a muscle twitching in his jaw as they walked.

"Why not? It's not as if she's in any danger than she already was with the Yeerks tailing her. And besides, I like hanging out with her. It's fun to have another girl in the group. And Rachel and I aren't always on the same wavelength…"

"It was irresponsible." Jake cut her off again. That was really starting to annoy her. So were his short and unnecessarily terse sentences. "She could find out something that she shouldn't, or draw the Yeerks attention to us. She's a target. If they want her that bad they'll try to go through us to get herand then everything we've worked for would be gone. This is a war Cassie, not a social event. You shouldn't have invited her."

This time, when Cassie stopped, Jake was forced to stop with her. He didn't have much choice as Cassie had positioned herself directly in front of him, disentangling their arms. Not stopping would have meant colliding with her. Although, the glare she was sending his way certainly helped in his decision a little.

"You're right Jake. This is a war," well, this wasn't the verbal berating that Jake had expected. He opened his mouth to accept what he assumed was her apology when Cassie cut him off and continued. "But this is also our lives. It has been for the last seven years and I refuse to let this war stop me from living my life. I like Cassandra. She's a nice person and I think we could be really good friends. Is she in danger? Yes? Does that mean that I should abandon her because of the risk to myself?" Cassie didn't look mad any more. She didn't look pissed, or angry, or indignant. Just tired. Tired, and a little disappointed. "Cassandra is my friend now Jake. She's Rachel's friend. We can't abandon her just to save our own skins. If we give that part of ourselves up, if we let this war dictate who we are… then we might as well just let the Yeerks win. Because that's not a world I particularly want to live in."

Cassie stormed off, following after Erek and leaving Jake standing in her wake. He stared after her for a long moment before reluctantly following her footsteps. She just didn't understand what was at risk here. None of them did.

"Dude! Check out those things! This is wicked!" Marco was already sprinting towards the table that held multiple sets of infra red and night vision goggles right next to the booth that was apparently selling ninja costumes and fully body padding. Tobias hung a few yards back, not wanting to get between an over excited Marco and some shiny new toys. Rachel was wandering a few feet behind him, arms wrapped around her torso and just generally moping. Looking back to Marco, he hazard a guess that his friend wasn't going to miss his presence any time soon and wandered over to where Rachel was sulking.

"Hey."

Rachel looked up, but quickly averted her gaze back to the floor. "Hey."

"You okay?" he wasn't usually this straight forward, but he was getting tired of constantly being pushed away.

"I'm fine."

"You're lying."

Rachel's eyes shot to his and Tobias mentally kicked himself. He knew he was pushing her too fast, but he just couldn't take this anymore. He couldn't stand to watch her self destruct like this, and he couldn't stand being powerless to stop it. Marco let out a loud hoot as he discovered another booth that sold paintball guns and gear next to the goggles booth, temporarily drawing both their gazes. When Tobias turned back to Rachel though, she was still eyeing Marco in irritation, and even a little anger.

"He's such an idiot. He's going to get us all killed one day," Rachel spat out angrily. Tobias responded calmly to her anger, an immovable ocean to a raging volcano.

"We're shopping. Not at war."

"He's reckless, no matter where we are. It's going to come back to bite us all one day," Rachel argued, still glaring at Marco and not meeting Tobias's gaze. He frowned, lines wrinkling his forehead, green eyes furrowed, and took her hand. Her blue eyes shot to his green ones, but Tobias did not release his grip on her hand.

"What is wrong with you?"

"What? Nothing is wrong with me!" Her voice was angry and defensive as she tried to pull her hand out of Tobias's grip. But he was tired of letting giving up and letting her push him away.

"Yes there is. You and Jake. It's been building for a long time now. You're angry all the time, defensive, you snap at people for no reason…"

"There is always a reason to snap at Marco!" Rachel snapped, unwittingly proving Tobias's point. His expression went from intense to just disappointed. He knew she didn't know about the nights that he, Marco and Ax would stay up late watching old movies when they came out on DVD together. Neither Ax nor Tobias could sit through a feature length film without risk, and rarely went out. Shortly after Marco's father had disappeared and Ax had moved in, he had begun surprising the two of them with movies and Pizza, sometimes staying up until nearly two am. Neither of them had questioned it, figuring that Marco needed this probably more than they did, and none of them talked about it. But the movies were always there. And on stormy nights, the back door was always left unlocked, just in case Tobias wanted a warm place to stay. Rachel didn't know all of this, but Tobias did.

"You need to take a break," Rachel looked like she wanted to slap him, but Tobias still had a hold of her hand. "You're wearing out, and you're going to self destruct soon if you don't calm down, and you can't do it on your own. But I can't hang around and watch you kill yourself if you're not even going to try to stop it. So whenever you're ready, I'll be waiting." Tobias let go of her hand and began walking over to the booth Marco was standing at. He stopped halfway and looked over his shoulder, not surprised to find that Rachel hadn't moved, standing frozen in the same place he'd left her. "And you should give Marco a break. He's dealing with things in the only way he knows how, but at least he isn't taking anyone else down with him."