Hello everyone! ;D Sorry I haven't updated for a while. I have three things to blame for this. 1. School, the holidays are now over in Australia. 2. Youtube. I've been watching too much anime and anime gets me out of a writing mood. 3. General writer's block.

Let's all shout "ZOMG YAY!" because you won't have to put up with my horrible horrible grammar and spelling in this chapter. Mimi-dudette has agreed to beta-read for me ;D Yay! So everyone give her a cookie. XD

I was watching the news the other day, and there was an article about all the bush fires in Victoria (a state in Australia.) There was this head of fire-fighting brigade, or something like that, and his name was David Esplin. LOL. I Immediately thought VISSER THREE!? The fact is, he did look a little like Eugene Lipinski (the dude who play V3 in the Animorphs TV show.) How about that, eh? Just thought I'd share ;D

Disclaimer: I did own Animorphs, but the ducks came and stole it.

Credit:

Mimi-dudette for beta-reading ;D

Cornflakecrunch for Spencer's name.

Skyflight Erek's Loyalty for the names "Daniel, Chee-Shanos and Chee-Kolee."

Note: Story now rated "T." I don't feel I could get away with a K plus, especially with what is going to happen later in the story.

Warning: Contains one small drug reference kiddies. Nothing too serious though XD

Chapter 25 – Operation Infiltration (Don't you just love the name?)

My name is Marco.

Like I have mentioned previously, I'm normally the one who sees the funny things in life. Little did I know that what I was about to hear would be a start of a whole lot of trouble for us Animorphs. And when I say a whole lot, I mean a whole lot.

"But I'm still going to be watching you, android."

Spencer walked onward, bumping shoulders with Erek as he moved. Erek just stood there, as if trying to absorb what had just happened. Once I was entirely sure Spencer was gone, I opened the door. If Erek had noticed, he didn't act like it.

"Uh Erek," I said, "I think we may have trouble."

"I've noticed..." he muttered.

&&&

"So why are we here again?" Rachel asked impatiently.

It was a few hours later and we were all gathered in Cassie's barn for our regular death-wish meeting. Cassie, who was busy attending to the broken wing of a goose, Jake, who was pacing back and forth, wearing that "serious leader" face he always does, Tobias, who was sitting in his usual place in the rafters, Ax, who was standing off to the side of the room near the stalls, Rachel, who was asking impatient questions and I, the fabulous Marco. I was sitting on a bale of hay.

"Well, we should probably wait until Erek arrives until I get into any of the details," Jake said.

"You don't even know, do you?" Rachel asked.

"Nope. Marco called this meeting, not me."

"Well Marco?" Rachel demanded, "What is so important that I had to cancel my manicure?"

I was about to speak, but Tobias beat me to it.(He's approaching the barn door now,) Tobias said from the rafters, (3, 2, 1...)

At that very moment, the barn door opened and Erek walked in. You should never underestimate the sight of a hawk. According to Tobias, he could see a mouse from a mile away.

"Hi guys," Erek said as he walked in. It was kind of funny, despite the situation he managed to say those words with unnatural calm. Casually, even.

"Hey Erek, what's up?" Jake asked. Erek shut the door behind him and walked up to Jake.

"Well," he said, "the secret of Chee may be in danger, but besides that; it's all good."

Cassie let out a gasp, "What happened?"

"You know Tedahko's little boyfriend?" I asked.

"Yeah. What's his name...?" Jake began, "I keep on forgetting his name. It begins with "S", doesn't it?"

"Spencer," Cassie confirmed, "I think that's it."

"Oh yeah," Rachel said, "I know him. He's in my mathematics class."

"Yeah, well, he somehow found out that I'm an android," Erek said.

There was a long and unnerving silence in the barn. Even all the animals remained quiet. These silences seemed to always come just after something bad happens.

(I do not believe this is a good situation,) Ax said, stating the obvious like he so often does.

"Oh nah, you think?"

(Yes Marco, I do think. We Andalites are very good at thinking.)

I rolled my eyes, "It's an expression, Ax."

"Will you two be quiet!?" Rachel snapped, "The identity of the Chee, not to mention us, is at stake and you two are talking about thinking!"

"Rachel has a point, sort of." Jake said, "We need to figure out how we're going to deal with this."

"There's more," Erek continued, "We think Spencer may be..."

"An NSA agent," I finished off.

Again with the unnerving silence.

"An...NSA agent?" Cassie asked, perplexed. "Doesn't he seem a bit...young?"

"He mightn't be," Rachel said. Everyone looked at Rachel and she let out a sigh which, may I add, was very unlike her.

"The other day, Tedahko and I wagged class."

(Ah yes,) said Ax, (I remember. You said you were going to bring along Prince Jake, as I required assistance. But instead you brought along,) I swore I saw his eyes narrow, (the Nishkak.)

"Yeah, thanks for interrupting," Rachel said, "Like I was saying, we wagged class. When we arrived where Ax was, there was a guy there who was claiming to be an NSA agent. He was wearing a mask, so we couldn't see his face but he sounded young. Young as in..."

"Spencer's age," Jake finished off. "Okay, anything else?"

"Yeah. The kid left a notebook with what appeared to be goals in them. They were... unusual. Things like "investigate psychotic break downs in area" and "invest sightings of animals roaming unusual habitats.""

(I wonder who that could be,) Tobias said thoughtfully.

"The last one," Rachel continued, "is what was really disturbing. It said, "Keep a close eye on Erek King."

Erek frowned, or at least his holograph did, "And nobody told me this... why?"

Rachel shrugged, "I thought Tedahko would tell you. Besides, I think in the end we just dismissed it as a minor incident, so we just forgot about it."

"Yup," I said, "stopping rampaging NSA agents. All in a days work for the Animorphs."

Jake snapped out of listening mode and into his "serious leader" mode once more. "Has anyone else got anything to add?" he asked.

(I do,) Tobias said, (the other day…I was sitting in a tree near the school-)

I shot a Rachel a mischievous grin, "Why bird-boy? Where you waiting for someone?"

Tobias ignored me. (This woman could have possibly have been one of these NSA agents. She was talking on the phone to someone, saying how the person on the other end of the phone was right, and that Erek wasn't human.)

"Hmm," Jake said thoughtfully, "Well, this isn't good."

"No." agreed Erek, "It certainly isn't."

Jake clapped his hands together, "Okay here's what we'll do..."

"Oh! Oh!" I put my hand up, as if I was a very impatient student in class, who knew an answer to a question."

"Yes Marco?"

"Whatever insane and suicidal death mission we go on, can we call it Operation Infiltration?"Jake raised an eyebrow, "...Why?"

"Because it sounds cool," I replied, as though it was obvious.

Rachel made a "pttf" noise. "Operation Infiltration is a stupid name. The last thing we need is for you to go around naming our missions."

"It isn't stupid!"

"Is too!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!""Is not!"

"Now Marco," Rachel said a lot more calmly, "Who's right?" Her question confused me. She was chanting "is too!" just a moment ago and was so sure of her opinion. So why was she even bothering to hear my opinion once more?"Uh, I think that's obvious, Xena," I said, "I'm right."

Rachel threw a punch, which the destination of was my nose.

"Ouch!" I yelped, "Tobias, your girlfriend punched me in the face!" If Tobias wasn't a hawk, he probably would have blushed. But instead, he began to preen his feathers.

"Now tell me again Marco," Rachel said patiently, "who is right?"

"You are..." I muttered.

(Humans are very weird creatures,) commented Ax randomly.

"You're telling me," said Erek.

"Excuse me?" I questioned, "You're calling us weird? You're a frickin' android!"

"Yes, I am an android. An android that lives like a normal, everyday human. You, on the other hand," he gestured to me, "can turn into animals, and have the ability to tell incredibly awful jokes which the level of fun of listening to is that equivalent to landing in a bush of poison ivy."

Silence.

Everyone burst out laughing.

"Hey!" I protested, "That wasn't even funny!"

"Erh... no. Of course not," Jake said, trying to hide the obvious smirk on his face.

&&&

Once everyone had stopped laughing at Erek's awful "joke," we figured out what we were going to do.

We decided that three of us, (Jake, Ax and myself,) would sneak into Spencer's house and recover suspicious documents that might link him to the NSA or anything of that nature. We needed Ax, because if this information was stored on a computer then we needed him to crack it. The others (Rachel, Tobias and Cassie,) would wait outside in case we needed backup. And when was this excellent plan going to take place, you ask?

Midnight.

After the meeting, I went home to sleep and watch some TV. There was just one thing I forgot about.

"Grrrrraghfth! Yip yip!" snarled Euclid, the evil poodle. The second I walked through the door, she pounced at my feet, trying to tare my shoes to pieces.

"Euclid!" scolded Nora, who walked out of the kitchen, "Down girl!"

Euclid snarled again and trotted off, giving me a cold, hard stare.

Nora smiled, "I think Euclid likes you."

"Yeah... bet she does..." I muttered. That damn poodle.

"Your father is still at work," Nora said, "so how was your day?"

I shrugged, "It was alright."After greeting Nora, I then proceeded to my room where I planned to play my PlayStation. Realizing that my PlayStation wasn't there (I had forgotten that my dad had taken it away because I had gotten a D in my little extra credit project of doing the play because I slacked off) I lay down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling.

May as well get to sleep early, since I have to get back up before midnight anyway, I thought to myself.

Then, just my luck, the doorbell rang the moment I closed my eyes. I swore under my breath and stuffed my pillow over my head.

"Marco! One of your little friends is here!" Nora called.

I was secretly hoping to myself that it was Jake, so he could tell me that we weren't going through with this suicidal mission anymore. However, this was not what happened. I opened the door to my room and peered down the hallway.

"Hey Marco, what's up?" said Erek, who was standing at the end of the hallway. He walked casually into my room, Euclid the evil poodle following him. Erek gave Euclid a scratch behind the ear and I swear that stupid poodle actually looked happy.

"How do you do that?" I asked, "I try and pat her and she tries to chomp off my hand."

"Some are just gifted," he said with a grin.

I rolled my eyes good-natured, "Sure, man. Whatever you say."

My mood then fell into the pits. A visit from Erek wasn't often a good thing. It normally meant that he wanted us to go on a suicidal mission or he wanted to tell us something dangerous about the mission we were about to attempt that he had forgotten before.

"So..." I prompted, waiting for Erek to bring up whatever reason he was here. He flashed something green in his hand. Ten bucks.

"Sorry Erek, I don't sell drugs," I joked, trying to get the image of androids smoking drugs out of my mind.

Erek rolled his eyes, "Oh, haha Marco." The look on the holographic face then turned serious, "Ten bucks if you break something tonight."

It took me a moment to catch on to what he meant, "But wouldn't that be wrong?" I then grinned stupidly to myself, "Gee, you must really hate him."

Erek looked exasperated, "Think what you like Marco. Are you going to do it or not?"

I shrugged, "Well, as you know, I'm not the sort of dude who ignores the opportunity to get ten bucks. But what if this Spencer guy isn't even gui-"

"Twenty?"

I grinned, "Well, maybe I might able to range for a vase to accidentally get knocked over."

Erek returned the same grin. "Deal."

&&&

That night when everyone in my household was asleep (including the psycho poodle, Euclid) I morphed to osprey and flew out of the house. Spencer's house was quite close, actually. Only about a ten minute flight.

I met up with the others in Spencer's neighbor's backyard. The yard looked like it needed quiet a bit of maintenance and the house was falling part, indicating that nobody was living there, which probably made this a safer place to morph than Spencer's backyard.

"Okay, lets morph," Jake whispered once I had finished whining about how insane this whole plan was.

"Um... what are we morphing?" I whispered back.

"Maybe if you weren't late then you would know," Rachel whispered angrily.

"We're going roach," Jake said.

"Oh man, why?"

"Because, according to Tobias, the space underneath the door is big enough for roaches to fit through. Besides, at least we would be in a strong and hardy insect morph. We could do flies if you want."

I shuddered at the thought of doing flies. "Roaches it is."

Jake was right about roaches though. You could drop them from a second story building and they wouldn't care at all.

It was then that Jake, Ax and I morphed to cockroach. Like usual, we avoided looking at each other. Morphing isn't the prettiest process to watch. Tobias then scooped us up in his talons, and dropped us at Spencer's front doorstep. You know, just in case we happened to get eaten [or] attacked in between the distance of the neighbor's back yard to Spencer's doorstep. You would be surprised how far it looked from a roach's point of view. Besides, the grass was long and unkempt so there was no telling what could be lurking in it.

One by one, three roaches crept under the door and into the unknown. I half expected my roach brain to go off at some distant sense of food. Roaches aren't particularly hard to control, but they still often crave garbage. But the first thing I noticed when I crept under that door was how clean the floor was. In fact, the whole room was drenched in this clean, dirt-less smell. My puny cockroach brain had nothing to go off at.

(Wow, somebody's a clean-freak.) I commented.

(Yeah,) Jake agreed, (This whole place smells clean. It actually sort of reminds me of Erek's place.)

We continued crawling along in the pitch-black of the night. All was silent. Until we heard arguing coming from behind a nearby door. We all crept close enough to hear it. It was normally quite hard to interpret what people where saying while we were in morph. But we had quite a bit of experience.

"You fool!" a voice yelled, presumably female. "How could you have done something so stupid?!"

(Isn't it way past their bedtimes?) I said, mainly to myself.

(Yeah, I would have thought so too.)

"Lay off it, Alicia. I did what I had to do," said a very familiar voice. Spencer's voice.

"Don't "Alicia" me. Address me as June, otherwise Myers will be hearing about this."

"Whatever. I just can't see what the deal is here. The android was going to find out we knew about it sooner of later anyway."

"That isn't the point, Brown. We could have gone for a silent and easier capture of the android and it could have possibly revealed more clues about all the weird happenings in the area."

"You don't understand. I said that because I thought it might stay away from my girlfriend. If it hurts her..."

"Don't speak such bull. You may be a prodigy, Spencer, but you don't fool me. I know there was another reason why you're even together with that girl, and I myself have to question if is morally right. But we aren't here for morals, are we?"

(I do not understand the context of the word "bull,") said Ax, (Up until now, I believed this was an earth animal. How could one "speak a bull?")

(I'll explain it later, Ax,) I said. Of course, that was a lie.

"Yeah, there are some perks to it. The fact that she is best friends with that...that...thing, and probably doesn't even know it is one of them. I admit; I liked her a lot in the beginning. But I don't feel that way about her anymore. The only reason I'm still with her is to find out more about the android. But I still care about her, at least as a friend. So don't go putting the hard word on me."

"But you are still using her. Even if it is for the good of the mission."

"Yeah, so? You know what, sometimes I even think that -" Spencer stopped himself mid sentence.

"You think that...what, Brown?"

"Sometimes I think that I'm not the only one pretending."

"Oh yeah, and how would she be pretending?" the female voice asked skeptically.

"I-I don't know. But sometimes I think she doesn't even like me as a boyfriend. The look on her face when she kissed that thing in the school play, it still hurts. Even though I don't feel that way about her it still did. Because it sickens me how she is oblivious to who and what Erek really is. The look on her face... it looked like she actually liked it."

"Human and android? The thought is absurd. You have too much of an imagination." replied the female voice, "In fact, I've had enough of your absurd ramblings for tonight, Brown. As your superior in rank, I order you to go to bed."

"Whatever. I don't care what you have to say. But I'm going to bring this android down, with or without your help."

The door swung open and a figure stepped through which was supposedly Spencer. Three cockroaches scrambled to the side.

(Well,) I said, (that was certainly interesting.)

(Yeah, I'd say. Okay, now let's find the computer room,) said Jake.

All the lights in the house where out by now. It took us about five minutes to finally find the computer room and another five minutes to demorph. Once demorphed, I happened to spot a Walkman that somebody had left carelessly sitting on the desk. A Walkman with the name "Spencer" on it. There was also a heavy paperweight sitting on a stack of papers within an arm's reach. Nobody was watching. Ax was too busy trying to hack through the computers security. I believe his exact words where:

(This primitive human device has a lot more security that I expected. But it is certainly not a challenge.)

Jake was busy watching Ax, probably not understand an action he was doing, and rubbing his temples from exhaustion.

Quickly, I grabbed the heavy paperweight and smashed it into the Walkman. Unfortunately, this made a "CRACK!" noise and attracted Jake's attention.

He looked blankly at the Walkman.

"Accident!" I whispered urgently.

Jake just sighed, as if he was too tired to care, and turned his attention back to the computer screen. Jake soon got bored of this, however, and sat on the floor. Sometimes I honestly wonder how he does it. He has to make life-and-death decisions for us weekly, yet he is still in one piece. Though I would never say anything about this to anyone, but I am so glad that isn't me.

All of a sudden, Ax paused. (Prince Jake, Marco, I believe you may want to see this.)

"Don't call me prince," whispered Jake and stood up to look at the screen. He also paused.

"What is it?" I whispered. I walked over to look at the screen.

"Spencer has an aunt and an NSA spy agent uncle that live in this town and a missing cousin? So what?"

"Marco," Jake said deadpan, "Look at the bottom."

I froze, "Oh man. You have got to be joking."

"I know," Jake whispered back.

"I always knew that kid reminded me of someone."

"How come we didn't notice this before? They have the exact same last name," Jake whispered.

"Brown is a pretty common last name. But still...Oh crap. This is so not good."

&&&

Tedahko's P.O.V

It was after the play and I decided to take a walk along a real beach, instead of the imaginary beach in my dreams.

Admit it Tedahko, you like him. Yes, the annoying burden of a subconscious was back. Unfortunately.

"Anne, do you know how annoying you are?"

Oh, come on now. How could I possibly be annoying?

"Oh, well, maybe because you shouted "DON'T CHOKE!" before I was about to start on a very important line in the play."

Yeah, yeah, whatever. So, did you enjoy kissing Erek?

I tried everything I could to slap her, though since she was in my head this technically wouldn't be possible in the first place.

"Where were you anyway?" I asked, "Where you waiting all that time just to yell "Don't choke!" and make me screw up, or where you actually doing something worthwhile with your life?"

Just for the record, she said, I was busy arguing with the Ellimist about my rights. The guy doesn't give me enough credit for dealing with you.

I made an arrogant "pttf" sound and was just about to make a smart comeback when I spotted something glittering from a spot in the sand. Curiously, I walked over to it and dusted the small object off with sand. Once I had dusted all the sand off, it revealed a small, sparkling crystal, no bigger than a grape. A very beautiful crystal.

Wow, good find, commented Anne.

Yeah, it was.

Maybe I would go and put it on a necklace or something.

A/n: Damnit, no cliffie. Oh well. Now, there is a few stuff in this chapter you have to "interept." Example, it doesn't say who Spencer's cousin is. But there are a few clues there. Also, if you regard the description of Spencer in earlier chapters saying he had "blond" hair, that also gives you a clue. I think everyone figured out what the crystal Tedahko found was. If you don't, go back and read book ten ;D Hopefully you're all good at this "interepting" stuff. Yay! So... uh... yeah. I'll get started on the next chapter soon! Another thanks to Mimi-dudette for beta-reading. FREE ICECREAM FOR ANYONE WHO REVIEWS! XD