Author's note: So this one's set sometime after #29 where they all get sick (one of my faves. Ax at the dance? Genius!). I started this one a looooong time ago and just now found it again. I don't own Animorphs or anything copyrighted. Parentheses equal thoughtspeak since the carrots don't work.

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Rachel

My name is Rachel. And usually I'd go into the whole shebang about good aliens and bad aliens and conspiracy and paranoia and morphing and such, but you already know about that. Besides, right at that moment, I had more pressing things to worry about. Like the fact that I was wearing a black leotard. With glitter on it. In the middle of the mall. How had I come to this? I've faced monsters so horrific they'd make Schwarzenegger cry like a baby. I've charged full-grown Hork-Bajir when the odds were eight to one against me. I've opposed the darkest evil this planet has ever seen for almost three years and I still live. So why why why did I have to be seen in my own mall all sparkly and prissy-looking doing the absolute worst gymnastics routine of my life?

I love gymnastics, don't get me wrong. And I used to be good at it. Sometimes I think that if the war had never happened, if I'd had the time and energy to devote to the sport, I might've been ok despite my height and broad shoulders. But the fact was flipping around on a springy floor just didn't hold many thrills for me anymore. Yet I had to do it, to maintain the façade of normalcy. My mom probably already thought I was in a gang with all the time I spent away from home. If I quit gymnastics now, it would only raise more eyebrows.

And you can't keep going to practice without somehow getting roped into a competition, so there I was at the all-city meet. It was being held in the arena on the fourth floor of the biggest mall in the county—my favorite mall. Which somehow made it even worse.

I squared my shoulders and glared at the far corner of the floor. Already that day I'd fallen off the beam twice, misplaced a hand on the vault, and face-planted during my bar dismount. The floor exercise was my last shot. The generic bass-heavy music my coach had chosen began blasting through the sound system, and I cleared my mind and ran.

Almost two minutes later, I took my final tumbling pass. It all came down to the dismount, a simple one; I'd nailed it in warm-ups. I landed hard, my knees taking most of the shock. My toes gripped the short carpet fibers as my quad muscles strained to hold my wobbling body upright. No! I lurched out of bounds and then sat down hard. Dammit! I cursed myself. But like an idiot, I had to stand up, fling my arms out, and smile as if I'd stuck a perfect landing.

I walked off the floor scowling and swearing under my breath as my coach delivered some lecture I wasn't interested in hearing. Instead my gaze wandered up to the spectator area where at the very top of the bleachers sat a tall, skinny, sandy-haired guy. He smiled at me and nodded slightly. I shook my head and made a face. Next to him sat a curly-headed, eerily-pretty, wide-eyed boy guzzling a slurpee so big he could've bathed in it. Tobias and Ax. I told them not to come, but secretly I was glad they were there. At least I had some fans.

(Good job, Rachel,) Tobias said in private thoughtspeak. I smiled and rolled my eyes self-depreciatingly. A pang of sadness sneaked up on me as I realized not for the first time that Tobias could communicate that way only because that body was a morph for him as much as my grizzly was for me.

I tried to pretend I was listening to my coach—he seemed kind of angry, something about my heart not being in it—but Ax's own thoughtspeak interrupted him again.

(Yes Rachel, excellent display of acrobatics. I am constantly amazed at your species' ability to overcome your lack of balancing appendages,) he said as he took the lid off the giant cup he held in order to stick his face in it. (Marco says to tell you "Nice landing, Keri Strug," but I believe he may have been employing sarcasm.) Marco. The boy loved to torment me. It was probably the only reason he'd come along with them. But then I remembered the athletic girls in skimpy leotards running and jumping all around me. Well, maybe not the only reason.

The dark-haired, olive-skinned kid grabbed the slurpee away from Ax and threw up his hands in exasperation. Ax's face had a blue ring around it, and his cheeks bulged with the syrupy ice shavings. I saw all of this over my coach's shoulder and stifled a giggle. It didn't go unnoticed. "Come back when you're SERIOUS about this sport, missy," he barked. He turned and stalked off. Oh well, maybe now I could quit without raising suspicions.

I headed for the locker room to change. I left the meet without even checking my scores. No way was I winning anything today. Besides, I wanted to catch up with my friends before two of them had to demorph. We met in the crowded food court. I slipped into a chair and helped myself to some of Marco's fries.

"Hey hey hey! Don't you gymnasts have to watch your figures?" he griped petulantly, shielding his plate.

"You shouldn't eat these, Marco, they'll stunt your growth. Well, they'll stunt it more," I shot back.

"Great meet, Rachel," Tobias said again. He took my hand under the table and squeezed it.

"I'm just glad you guys missed most of it," I said. Then, lowering my tone, I added, "So are we going ahead with this plan?"

"Oh man, this has got to be the worst idea ever," Marco complained, "Taking Ax and Bird-boy on a major class field trip? Especially now that Jake's not going to be there? Too risky."

Our politics and civic values classes had put together a field trip to the nation's capital for our entire grade. Originally Jake thought it could be an opportunity to see if the Yeerks had gained a foothold in Washington DC. He, Cassie, Marco and I were going to go, leaving Ax and Tobias to monitor the situation in our town. But now Cassie had come down with the Yamphut virus that plagued the rest of us the previous week, and Jake wanted to stay with her. He also made some excuse about Tom's involvement in secret meetings with Visser Three, but I knew the real reason he was reluctant to go. Cassie had saved us all. He wasn't about to leave her alone and sick for a week. It was actually his suggestion that Ax and Tobias go in his and Cassie's places.

"I think we should do it," Tobias stated, "This could be a really good chance to figure out how much progress the Yeerks have made. Besides, Ax wants to learn more about human history. We should have no problem ditching the class, right?"

"Hello? Am I the only one here with a survival instinct? You do know who the primary chaperone is, right? Only everyone's favorite Controller: Assistant Principle Chapman. I can think of twenty ways this mission could blow up in our faces before we even leave the airport," Marco protested

"Oh c'mon!" I rebutted impatiently, "We'll be fine. When else are we going to get a chance this convenient?"

"Rachel is correct. And there is also the possibility we may be able to expose the Yeerk conspiracy to your president or someone else in authority," Ax added, taking a break from the chili dog he was inhaling. "Thor. Ritty. Tee tee teeeee," he said as an afterthought. He still hadn't quite been able to stop playing with sounds.

"Oh yeah, how could this possibly go wrong?" Marco snapped sarcastically.

Eventually, despite his doubts and misgivings, the three of us were able to talk him into it. Even Jake thought the idea was sound. After all, this was predominantly a reconnaissance mission. There would be no battles, no Yeerk pool infiltration, no Visser Three. It was going to be a vacation, practically.