And here we are, chapter 3! Since the last update I got 28 views in a single day, a new record! And this fic is at 361 views total. We are finally here, it's in this chapter that it finally happens; they meet the people who were talking in the interlude. Nasty business abounds though. As was clear in the prologue, the Andalite hero clearly didn't escape the battle in one piece.

The Dying Star, I

We entered the ghost town. It seemed like a pretty small place at first, but would probably have housed several hundred people when it was first built. Which would have been a long time ago. A good part of the roofs had collapsed, and some walls had holes rotted through them that were big enough to step through.

It didn't look like anybody had been there for a while. There were some signs of vandalism, but even those looked ancient.

"Well, we're here. We saw the ghost town, I had fun, let's go home!" Marco said when we reached the first building.

"What?" Rachel said, raising an eyebrow at him. "Are you scared already?"

"No," Marco said, bursting into nervous laughter immediately after. "We just got here. I was just joking!"

Rachel just shook her head at him and continued walking.

We found what looked to have been the main road a few minutes later. There were two-story buildings on either side, with those characteristic wild-west signs mounted on the front walls. Most of them weren't readable anymore, but I could make out a dentist, a stable, and even a saloon.

The road itself looked more like an overgrown garden though.

"Add some more desert and less mountain and this place wouldn't look out of place in a Western," Marco whistled.

"So, guys, wanna explore the mineshaft?" Rachel suggested.

"Oooooh, count me in," Marco said, raising his hand.

"Su-" I agreed, or rather, tried to agree.

"No, we're fine here," Cassie said, speaking for both of us.

Did Rachel and Cassie plan this?

"Awesome! Let's go!" Rachel said, then my best friend and my cousin were off.

"Are we there yet?" Marco asked Rachel less than a second after walking away.

"No," she responded.

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"How about now?"

"No."

I took Cassie's hand again. She looked down at it and blushed a little.

"Hey Cassie?" I said.

"Yeah?"

"Nobody else is here, right?"

"Not recently. We're the first people here in a while."

"NO!" Rachel shouted at the top of her lungs in the distance.

"Uuuh, do you think we should keep my best friend from mauling yours?" Cassie asked.

I didn't need to think it over. My answer was brief; the judgment of an expert.

"Nah, they'll be fine."

We explored some more. Besides more abandoned buildings, we also met some local wildlife.

First, we came face to face with a deer and her fawn. Cassie slowly knelt down to try not to scare them, wearing this ridiculously cute smile. She was so focused on the deer that I don't think she'd even realized that she'd knelt down into mud specifically until they eventually ran off. She looked a little embarrassed about that afterward, as she failed to brush the mud off her pants.

A little later, she suddenly looked up and pointed at the sky. She said that she saw some sort of bird of prey fly over us, but I was too late to see it.

Finally, while we were going to where Cassie said the farmer's market was, we were blocked by a hornet's nest.

"Uh, we should probably leave those guys alone…" Cassie said.

"Yeah. So… should we turn back or head into that barn?"

"Actually, that's a granary."

"A granary?" I asked, in need of a vocabulary lesson. "That's the same thing right?"

"Almost. A granary is sort of like a storage barn, but for grains, like wheat or barley," Cassie explained.

As she talked, I was distracted by something oddly purple in the overgrowth a few yards behind her. "Wait, what's that?"

Cassie looked to see what I was looking at. "Huh. I don't know."

We walked over to get a closer look. It looked like a pile of broken purple crystals, with very sharp, jagged edges, spikes, and even some hooks. It might have actually been pretty, if it hadn't been covered with rotting flesh and a sickly red liquid. The stench it emitted was horrible.

"Ugh, is that blood?" I asked as I put my hand to my face.

"Yeah, it is."

"What kind of crystal is that, amethyst?" I asked nervously.

"I don't think so…" Cassie said with a strange voice, as if she had been possessed by curiosity. "What's strange is how this meat looks untouched… It had to have been out for several days already. Scavengers should have eaten it all by now…"

The crystals gave me a really bad feeling, even ignoring the rotting meat around it. A sense of wrongness, like they weren't natural.

"I… think we should get out of here," I decided, gently pulling Cassie away from the crystals. "Let's go back to the others."

((Dad!)) Tobias said as he walked down a flight of stairs, leading into a room where a man soaked with dried blood lied on a table, recovering from his wounds and cradling a walking stick.

((What happened?)) the man said.

((A group of people entered the town. Two of them.))

((What species?))

((They're just regular humans from what I've seen. I don't think they're under a Controller's dominion, but I can't be too sure…)) Tobias said.

The man squinted at him for a second. ((You're hiding something, aren't you?))

((Well… One of them's a friend I made a while back. He lives a few towns away from here, last I checked. His name's Jake. It looks like he's got a date with him.))

((I think they'll both work,)) the man said after another pause.

((What? Are you serious?)) Tobias said with exasperation. ((We're going to use that on them? This soon after we got it back?))

((It sounds like he's a worthy candidate, and we have to start somewhere. Besides, you've already used the box on yourself.))

((We have no base, and they're on the other side of the town!)) Tobias insisted. ((We have no weapons, no supplies, we can't even give them properly functioning armor! How are we supposed to handle this?))

((We'll start from scratch. It's not like we've never done that before. Besides, we're already in a better position then we were. Nobody even knows we're here, much less –))

Both froze as they heard people walk up to the house.

((Oh clarjiatz,)) Tobias's father cursed in his own language. ((That's not your friend is it?))

((No, it can't be them!)) Tobias said desperately with gritted teeth as they opened the door. ((They must have been hiding in the mines when I came back!))

Tobias's father then held out a blue cube. Tobias' eyes widened, then he nodded bitterly. He took the cube and soundlessly stepped behind the open door. Once he was positioned so that he would be hidden, Tobias turned on his hologram to make himself invisible.

"Okay, those crystals are definitely dangerous," I noted as we walked past the body of a crow on our way back to the others.

It must have eaten some of the flesh around the pile of crystals we'd found, and swallowed some of the crystals as well. It looked like they'd spontaneously erupted from the bird's stomach not soon after. They looked less colorful and more translucent than the ones in the pile, but they had the same… wrong feel to them. And they smelled just as horrible.

"Hey Jake, look!" Cassie said as we passed through an alley a little later. She was pointing between two porches, at a pile of tree branches and dead leaves.

"Huh?"

Cassie walked over to the pile of dead plants and moved it to the side, revealing a patch of barren land with a scorch mark around it.

"Oh great," I said. "So someone was here."

"By how long the plants have been here they're probably long gone, so it's nothing to worry abo-"

"Aaaaaaiiiiiii!" I heard a feminine scream in the distance.

"RACHEL!" Cassie shouted.

"MARCO!" I corrected, and just like that we broke into a sprint. We crossed the main road quickly and headed toward where the scream was.

"They're not too far off from the mines!" Cassie said as we sprinted.

We sprinted all the way over there, but stopped at the entrance to look around. The entrance was a square-shaped hole in the side of the mountain, with a cart track running out of it. There was a tree growing in front of the entrance, blocking our view inside.

"What on Earth are you doing here?!" we then heard Rachel ask someone from inside a building to the right of the mine entrance.

We sprinted inside, and quickly found Rachel and Marco in a room to our left.

"Rachel! Marco!" Cassie yelled worriedly. "Are you oka-AAaaaiii!"

I froze when I saw what scared her.

An adult man in a trench coat, covered in blankets, lying prone on a table, holding a walking stick. He was hurt, bad. Every inch of him that was visible was covered in blood. The only proof that he was alive was that his chest was moving.

"Jake?" a voice called out from behind us. I looked for its source; the space behind the door we'd entered through. There was nothing there at first, but then there was this shimmer, which quickly turned into a person.

"Tobias?"

I was startled by coughing from the man on the table. So he wasn't just alive, he was very much awake.

"Tobias?" Cassie asked, very confused. "What's going on? How did you just… appear?"

"Okay, I know you're freaking out," Tobias said in a soft voice. "But I can explain. I'll tell you everything."

"Ah, I see," the man spoke up in a weak voice, and smiled. His teeth were seemingly the only part of his body that wasn't covered in blood. "Are these the friends you told me about, son?"

"Wait, son?" I asked Tobias in shock. "This is your dad?"

Tobias' dad squinted at us. "Clearly there's a lot more about our family that you don't know about. I say it's time we get to know each other. Sit down, there's much to discuss."

So, that's that, Tobias and the other Animorph's lives are OVER! Goodbye to any semblance of normality they would have enjoyed. And by the way, please do tell me what you think, if you have any criticisms, please leave them in the comments.