Hey everyone, thanks for enjoying the story. I'm really glad you like the twist with David being The One. It should be a fun ride, so let's see where else the story takes us, shall we?
The Threat
Chapter One
My name is Jake. And that's about all I was going to have time to explain if I didn't figure out a way to stop David from choking the life out of me. His arm was like a lead weight pressing relentlessly down on my neck. I had just seen him take down Rachel as a grizzly and Marco as a gorilla with barely an effort, literally while holding me with one arm.
You know the story, or you should. If not, that entire last paragraph probably confused the heck out of you. The short of it is that my friends and I are fighting a losing war against a race of parasitic slug creatures called Yeerks. They crawl into a person's head and literally take over. They control your every movement and word. They decide what you look at. You are a prisoner inside your own mind. It's sheer and utter torture. I can say this without a doubt, because I have been there. I was a controller, what we call a person who is taken over by a yeerk, for a very brief time. My brother Tom is also one of them. I swear every time I see him that I will free him someday. That's what a yeerk does, it takes over a person completely. They could be in anyone you know. The teacher that you like, the coach that you don't, or even your mailman. Anyone could be a controller.
The five of us, me, my friend Marco, my cousin Rachel, her friend Cassie, and this other guy Tobias were walking through the construction site next to the mall when an alien ship landed. The dying being onboard, an Andalite named Elfangor, told us about the yeerk invasion and gave us the power to morph into any animal that we can touch. That is our only weapon in this battle. We've been fighting ever since. We found and were joined by Elfangor's little brother, Aximili. We call him Ax. Somehow, it was decided that I was the leader. I'm still convinced I got the job because everyone else was able to say 'not it' faster than me. But I do what I can, and I try to keep my people alive and sane. Sometimes sane is harder than alive in this war.
For months, that was it. The six of us against an all but invisible alien invasion. Then, a couple days ago that changed. The blue box, the device that was used to give us our powers was found by a girl named Melissa. She was Rachel's friend, or at least she had been before Rachel, along with the rest of us, was so distracted by the war. I guess she was an okay girl. She was usually quiet, and it was kind of easy to feel bad for her since we knew both her parents were controllers.
Melissa found the box, and then a boy named David stole it. We retrived it just before Visser 3, the leader of the yeerk invasion force on earth and the only Andalite-controller in the galaxy would have taken it. Melissa saw us demorphing, and we had to explain things to her. She promised to keep our secret, and then chose to fight alongside us, something she could do since we had the box. We gave her the morphing power. And it was a good thing we suddenly had a new ally, because our friend Erek, part of the android race called the Chee, let us know that a summit meeting of all six top world leaders was taking place in our town in a couple days at the local Mariot. We needed all the help we could get to stop the yeerks from infesting them.
That wasn't even all our problems. Somehow David took the morphing power from the cube. At least that's what we thought he did, but now I'm not so sure. He attacked us, and ranted about a being named Crayak that we've never heard of. But more confusing than that, he was able to break the rules of morphing. He could morph straight from one morph to another, which wasn't supposed to be possible, and he could combine them, morphing only partway or one specific bodypart. That shouldn't have been possible either.
David also did something to Cassie. She was missing, and he posed as her, but we found him out. We had no idea where she was, so when we had to go on our mission to find an entrance into the Mariott, we brought him with us. Four of us went, me, Marco, Melissa, and Rachel. Tobias and Ax were supposed to find our one yeerk ally in this war so we could get answers from David's head. We thought he was our prisoner, but he was playing us. As soon as we arrived and were trapped inside the grounds by the yeerk field that would disintegrate us if we crossed it, he turned on us. He escaped and we found him in one of the conference rooms of the resort literally absorbing a secret service agent into himself. He wasn't acquiring the body the same way we did. Somehow David was taking the entire animal or person into his own body and shifting to that whenever he wanted to.
He had changed into Cassie before, and the implications of that terrified me. Was she trapped inside of David? Was there a way to free her? There had to be. That was all there was to it. We had to find out what this Crayak thing he kept ranting about was, and we had to free Cassie and anyone else David had absorbed. First though, I had stop myself from passing out.
Rachel was down and so was Marco. I was pinned against the table, and Melissa seemed frozen in a panic over what she had just seen. I couldn't really blame her, since I was pretty much in shock too. Rachel and Marco had both gone down in seconds, with barely a hint of effort from David. I didn't even know how much longer either of them would survive with their bloodloss unless they came to enough to morph out. I would have yelled at them to do it, but I couldn't breath through the arm choking me.
It would have been nice to expect Melissa to back me up, but she was an unknown. She'd only been in one battle with us and she lost control of the morph which led to David getting away. It wasn't her fault, but still, I didn't know how she'd act now. I had to move. "Egghhgn... David..." I managed to say, and I felt his arm relax very slightly. He wanted to hear what I had to say. I forced my head up enough to look at him and saw the arrogant glower from the face of the secret service man that David had morphed into. I matched his glare with mine and forced the words out slowly. "I bet... all your morphing tricks... didn't teach you... to take away your weak spot." As his eyes opened slightly in confusion, I drove my knee as hard as I could up between his legs, slamming it into the space that no guy in the world will ever ignore being hit in.
As David's eyes shot open in agony, I shoved my arms out hard and caught him in the shoulders. He was in too much pain to focus on morphing anything for the moment, and I took advantage of that to get to my feet. "Rachel!" I yelled, not caring who heard at that point. "Morph out! Marco, morph out! Do it!" Even as I spoke, I started my own battle morph. Orange fur sprouted up all over my body and I started to contort as my spine changed, becoming more suited for something on four legs instead of two. I started to grow bigger, ripping through the cheap kitchen aid clothing we'd stolen. It was slow, all too slow. David, tears in his eyes from the pain, was already starting to change himself. He was starting to get bigger, and somehow he always seemed to morph faster than we could. Even staggered and half crippled by the blow I'd inflicted, he'd be done long before I was.
I was only halfway through the morph when David staggered to me. He was half in the form of the security man and half something I didn't even want to think about, some strange predator gorilla creature. The inch long canine teeth that filled his mouth as he grimaced seemed to drip saliva as they anticipated the killing bite. I was helpless, still midway between boy and tiger when he leaned over me and snarled. "Morphing, Jake? Morphing to the tiger. I beat the tiger. I can beat it again. I beat you. I beat all you. Then you cheated. Keep morphing, Jake. Keep morphing so I can kill the tiger. Can't kill humans, but I can kill the tiger. Do it. Morph!"
He was rambling again, about things I didn't even know about. His words didn't make any sense, because he was talking as though we'd fought him before, which prior to the zoo yesterday, we hadn't. I never fought him as the tiger. He was clearly insane, and I briefly felt a little sorry for him before remembering what he had probably done to Cassie. Then I got mad again and started to finish the morph to tiger. He wanted a fight, I'd give him what he wanted. I'd rip and tear at him until he begged to tell me where Cassie was. I could even feel the predator's grace of the tiger, the calm of the perfect hunter. I wanted that confidence right now. I wanted to lose myself in the tiger's instincts so I could make David hurt.
But as I morphed, I felt David's grip on me get tighter. He was fully in the form of his strange predator gorilla now, as he put his foot on my neck, the neck of the tiger. I tensed and tried to roll to my feet, but the foot held me in place as easily as he had held me on the desk. David crowed. (You see, Crayak!? He's not that unbeatable! I've done it easier than the last time! I told you I could beat him again! He's pathetic, look! Look at him, he can't even move!) I struggled and kicked but it was ineffectual. I saw familiar black spots as my vision started to go out. David leaned down, as though eager to watch the pinned tiger's struggles. (I bet you'd like some help right now, huh Jake? Too bad you let everyone down again. Too bad you failed again. Too bad--)
He was interrupted by another thoughtspeak voice. (You know what, David? You're a real jerk.) And then Melissa in the form of some kind of doberman, lunged right over the desk and latched onto the same spot that I had kneed earlier in his other form. Her teeth clamped onto the gorilla creature there and David let out an impossible howl of agony in both thought speak and outloud. I couldn't imagine the pain he was going through just then, but I didn't care. I scrambled to all four paws as his foot lifted form mine and instantly took a quick slash at his stomach. My claws ripped through him as he staggered and almost fell.
Melissa growled and clamped her jaws tighter against the gorilla creature's sore spot, and I heard flesh tearing as David's howl of agony echoed over the walls. His arm came up finally and slammed into the doberman, knocking it across the room with a yelp. But I was on him then, clawing and slashing at every bit of the little psycho I could reach. Blood poured from my claws, and I ripped into his shoulder with my teeth. Then he managed to push me away from him and across the floor. I rolled and sprang back to my feet, teeth bared. David, injured and staggering, looked around the room. Rachel and Marco had both managed to demorph, and Melissa had picked herself off the wall and was pacing back toward us. Taking in the odds, David chose to turn and hurl himself out the window, morphing into something small as he went.
Rachel ran to the window, starting to grow larger as she moved. I shook my head and began to morph out. (No, wait. Security's coming. Melissa.. where did you get...) I turned in her direction.
Sitting on her haunches, Melissa tilted the dog's head up to me and panted a little. (I couldn't sleep last night so I went for a walk. He belongs to our neighbor's down the street, I thought he might be useful because.. .well he always scares me, so he might scare the bad guys.) She paused, and then added. (Are dogs always this... incredibly happy, or is that just me after biting that turd?"
"Pretty much always." Marco answered, shuddering from the thought of what had almost just happened to all of us. "But the big grin on the rest of our faces? That's from the bite." He reached down and scratched Melissa behind the ears, and she perked up in enjoyment.
We heard running footsteps, and Rachel turned from the window, furious. "He's getting away! What do we do? Jake, he..." She looked too shaken to say the words fully. "He morphed Cassie... if he... if that man... is how he... acquires... Cassie might..."
"Stop it, Rachel. We'll save Cassie. We will." By then I was fully myself. Standing quickly as the tromping footsteps of panicked security grew closer, I looked to Melissa. "I need you to get out there and distract them. Have fun, they won't shoot a dog, they'll just try to catch you. Run around and lead them away. We'll meet you... on the seventh floor, by the ice machine, okay?"
She hesitated, looking doubtful, which was a feat for a dog, then she agreed. (Okay, Jake... Rachel... Marco. Be careful.) Then she scrambled around and barked loudly before tearing for the doors. She went through them into what sounded like an entire herd of security men, barked loudly again, and then we heard her running away down the hall while the men chased her.
"Now what are we doing, dude?" Marco asked while checking the door to make sure we were alone temporarily.
"David's trapped here by the yeerk force field the same as we are." I answered. "He can run, but we're going to find him. And when we do, we're going to make him tell us how to help Cassie. If he really absorbed her. If he really took her into himself..." I paused, then looked to them both squarely. "Then we will rip her free of him, no matter what it does to him in the process."