Chapter Twenty

Leah

We were ready. Or at least, we were as ready as we were going to ever be. We'd set what we could, to make it so everything would be as hot and out of control as possible. Everything was as perfect as Aximili could have made it. All in its place.

We didn't set anything off right away.

The Animorphs and I went down to the duck pond. Relaxing, having a good time. We fixed food, brought some junk food from the restaurants that weren't really restaurants. Celebrating what would hopefully be our freedom. We hoped.

I guessed even if it didn't work, we'd be free, in a way, in our own deaths. Unless what we had learned what was wrong. And it certainly could have been. None of us understood The One. But the evidence seemed fairly concrete, since Marco else had suffered from Dracon fire in a later Scenario and we had found that even though he came back not morphed and still suffered an injury.

Reality might not have been real here, but there were apparently some consistencies.

"Will anyone miss this?" I asked lazily.

"Yeah, as much as I miss Visser One," Marco said dryly.

"There are some interesting things about it," pointed out Tobias, "It's not like this isn't cool in any way. I mean, I might not be able to morph in reality. Probably, even. So being here, I get to keep all that."

"But it's not real if you have to be in a dream to do it," Jake said. "There's nothing real in this place."

But he kept himself quiet after that, not meaning to have spoken to Tobias. He seemed to carry some timidness about interacting with him, like he wasn't really sure what to expect, or do, or say. But from the little I knew about this group dynamic I knew Tobias and Jake had run into some really terrible history, so I didn't ask about it. If it was that important, I'd find out eventually.

Plus, I didn't exactly want to come off sounding like a kid, whining to know why.

It wasn't that there was nothing amazing about being in a world of wonders, where we could have what we wanted, when we wanted. But what we had here wasn't real. And that truth was something we needed to feel that our lives had purpose. Meaning. Otherwise, we were just a game piece to The One's whim.

I guessed the Animorphs were used to that. They had told me about the Ellimist when I had asked about why Tobias was a hawk outside of this reality. I couldn't decide if I liked that idea, or if I felt sorry for them. Being chosen seemed like it would be an honor, but they didn't seem happy about it. Still, they were wanted.

Maybe I could feel jealous about the last part only. You don't need to be part of some cosmic giant's manipulation in order to feel wanted or needed. It wasn't who thought they were so important, in a way, it was just their importance to someone, period. And they were important to each other.

Someday, like being a grown-up, I wanted that. To matter to someone.

We continued the festivities for a while. They weren't really festivities though – we weren't really talking to each other much. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts of what getting out of here would mean. Or what our next steps were, especially considering the possible situation we had with the Kelbrid.

No one wanted to talk much. Everyone was worried, especially Aximili and Jake. I guess it weighed on them, the decision of being leader.

I was antsy. I wanted to get it done. Free, or dead.

Maybe I wasn't ready to be a real person again yet. Or at least, not a grown-up. Maybe I never even would be, because I had missed out on so much. The others talked about subject I'd never even thought about. And it made me feel self-conscious, or at least self centered. Ashamed, at times, that I had been so much in my own world.

So maybe asking to be a grown up was too much. But I was ready to be out of this limbo.

I knew that.

Our little celebration was dying down. We couldn't stay here forever. We had to go on, whichever way that was.

"Can we go yet?" I murmured, a bit giddy, on an adrenalin high.

Marco rolled his eyes at everyone and then giggled. I didn't know why, but it was probably just nerves. I hoped. I didn't need everyone making fun of me, definitely. I knew I shouldn't be so self-conscious. But I couldn't seem to help it, at least, not yet.

"Okay, everyone," Jake said, "Ready.

"Set.

"Go."

I pulled out my recurve bow and drew an arrow from my quiver. Lit the arrow.

Flit!

Miss! I couldn't believe it. I had messed up. I hadn't hit the mark, a pile of grasses by one side of the McDonald's of our world. And it hadn't exactly been a small target.

I had missed.

Archery had been a large part of my life. When I was a kid - well, a younger kid - I had been obsessed with Greek gods and goddesses. I wanted to be Artemis, the hunter. Well, without actually hunting anything. I just liked the bow and arrow. Shooting targets. And my parents had put me in archery after I had pestered them enough about wanting to learn to use the bow and arrow.

I couldn't believe with all that experience the best I had done was miss something so large it could have been the side of a barn. Even if I hadn't done it in as long as I had.

But at the same time everyone else was in rapid action. It was almost like a tape on fast forward. Setting flames to areas that would take off, then fueling everything around.

Madness!

I shot again to make the shot I had missed and ran in, joining everyone else in setting the near things on fire. The restaurants were an obvious target, since everyone knew those things were full of oils and other flammable items. As long as reality worked in some ways like we assumed it would, the restaurants would be our biggest hit.

And they turned out to be. They caught, blew, into huge flames.

The world shook, and I trembled. Afraid. But I kept going.

Eventually everyone had gotten everything anywhere near us – at least, in our minds – on fire.

"The pond!" Jake cried, and everyone ran, letting the fire go up. Everywhere.

I jumped into the pond, watching the flames quickly grow. Six feet. Ten feet.

Did flames really grow that quickly? I had no idea.

I could hear the world literally moaning around me. Things pulsed, shifted, trying to reform. But it wasn't working. Whatever this thing was, it couldn't take the heat and the dry. And we had just put its biological system into an emergency it wasn't coping with well.

I hoped it would work soon, before the "air" around us became toxic.

I hoped, even though in the past I had wished for it, that I wouldn't die. Not now that there was something to do.

I hoped I would wake up soon.

I hoped...

Suddenly, I was no longer in a delusion. I was where I belonged. Not eased into reality like I had been into the delusion, but dropped painfully. Like skydiving without a parachute.

Burning! I still felt myself burning! All around me.

I tried to move, but I couldn't. I hadn't moved my own body in years. Years.

No offense, Leah, but you should have thought about that, I thought in a haze of pain, There's no reason the Animorphs would have known that I couldn't move, and you sort of did know that. Stupid thing to forget.

So I sat. Excruciating pain, burning all over as the tendrils started to shrivel and die from.. From what? Overdosing its own system? Was it over-saturating itself with a substance like any human can do to cause certain illnesses? That was the best explanation that I had for this. But I was just a kid in my mind – I had had a Yeerk in my head for a lot of relevant school years. But I thought maybe it was like having an allergic reaction to something. Or that maybe we'd instigated something else, kind of like when a person has too much sugars until their body stops making glucose.

Poison. Poisoning your body with its own system. I guess most things are capable of having that problem.

The pain. It was overwhelming.

I couldn't move. I kept trying, but I couldn't. Too many tendrils in me. Over me. And I even as I tried to move a finger, ever so slightly, I couldn't. I kept trying, madly demanding for the movement in any finger.

Move, I told my body, move. But I was like a puppet with the strings cut. Essat and her mind had been directing my body for so long, and I hadn't so much as thought about moving after she had killed my family. I hadn't tried, just stayed locked up in my head while she had commanded me.

Hadn't even tried.

Sometimes, people get sick or injured in ways that prevent their body from moving as they want them to. And when whatever it is has gone away or been taken care of, people still can't get their body to do what it wants, at least, at first. I guessed that was what happened to me. My mind forgot how to move everything after those years.

Hosts felt that a lot. I knew how it felt to be a Controller, fighting or not fighting. I hadn't ever known anyone to have it as bad as I did. Maybe I was weak. Or maybe it was because I hadn't even done anything when Essat had been feeding after she had destroyed everything. Who knew why I couldn't move to this extent?

But it hurt so bad, and I wasn't going to stop trying.

I kept commanding, willing my body to move at my own thoughts and not hers, but nothing was happening.

Nothing.

Nothing.

In the end, I didn't move myself out from the mess. Losing consciousness, already wishing I were dead from the pain, I barely noticed it.

Fwap! Fwap! Fwap!

I didn't see or hear so much as vaguely felt what I knew would be an Andalite tail blade.

And then, arms that seemed stronger than any human lifted me up, and rushed me away, as I faded, once again, into the black.