6

SURPRISE! Another chapter in the same month! The 6th chapter of Twilight of the Animorphs is finally here. Thank you all for faithfully following this story, this story now has at this time 432 views, quite the slowdown there. I'm honestly shocked how few new readers I got when I posted the last chapter.

As always credit goes to flaks314 for doing a wonderful job at editing this fic to perfection.

Jake, Rachel, Marco, and Cassie have left their summer camp and hiked to a ghost town without the councilor's knowledge or permission. To their surprise, they meet Tobias, a long lost friend of Jake's, and his father. Both Tobias and his father will forever change their world's fate, though whether or not it's for the better remains to be seen.

The Dying Star II

"I know you have a lot of questions," Tobias said as he stood leaning against the wall. "But please let me try to explain first, or the answers aren't going to make a lot of sense."

He looked way too casual. Like, he was uncomfortable, sure, but… He has his dad lying on a table in a ghost town in the middle of nowhere, looking like he should have died days ago, and just appeared out of thin air. He looked like this was normal for him.

It wasn't even 2 minutes since we saw Tobias' dad, and already this day had gotten so strange. A lot of questions didn't even begin to cover it.

"So you were an alien the whole time?" Marco asked in a hostile tone of voice.

"Yes, er, no, it's… complicated," Tobias said, struggling to explain. "You see, I'm a-"

"You're half right about us being aliens," Tobias' dad interrupted. "I am a member of an extraterrestrial race known as Andalites. We come in peace."

At first I thought he was joking, even despite Tobias materializing out of thin air. But he looked dead serious.

Tobias looked at his dad with a blatant 'are you kidding me?' face.

"What? Dad, are you ser-"

"Yes, Tobias, I am," he replied, looking at Tobias with a knowing stare. "We have to tell them."

Tobias looked back and forth between his dad and us a few times. Then he sighed, nodded, and seemed to relax a little.

"As I said, I am an Andalite. My name is Elfangor. I may look human right now, but we Andalites have an ability unique amongst our species, one that allows us to travel most places unnoticed. We have the power to morph into other organisms."

"Morph?" Rachel asked incredulously. "As in transform? Shapeshift?"

"Yes, exactly," Elfangor continued. "We also use this power to fight our mortal enemies. Extraterrestrial nations of great power, using their might to seize what never belonged to them, growing fat off the suffering of others… of innocents."

"Like all those other aliens that are on Earth?" I asked, eyeing the door.

"Yes. All of them came here to claim this planet as their own, but humanity has put up an amazing resistance. All of those invasions have ground to a halt." Elfangor looked up to the ceiling and in a wistful voice remarked, "If left alone long enough, I have no doubt you would have removed or pacified all of the invaders in less than six years."

He coughed, holding his hand in front of his mouth.

"We Andalites also use the ability to morph to… take sanctioned vacations from the war, whether to recover from our injuries or get away from the stress of battle. Once upon a time, Earth was quite a popular place for Andalites to rest, particularly America. Most of us spend years at a time in morph on this world."

Tobias held his left arm at the elbow and looked down, like he was recalling a memory that he clearly wanted to forget.

"I was on one such vacation for five years when I met Tobias' mother, Loren." Elfangor continued, closing his eyes as he recalled fond memories. "I basically fell in love and… well, while Andalites marrying other species while in morph while isn't stigmatized, it is rather frowned upon due to our monogamous nature. An Andalite's heart will only ever belong to one, and mine was owned by a human. Because of Loren, it will never belong to another Andalite."

"Me, my brother, and my mom worked together with them for a while," Tobias said, turning away from us. "I… had many Andalite friends, a number of them Elfangor's relatives. They all… accepted me. Even after my mom and… brother passed on, and the rest of the Andalites that were on Earth were… Dad's the only one left."

"Okay, I'm sorry for your loss," Marco said. He was clearly only talking to Tobias, because he seemed to make a point of turning to Elfangor before he continued. "Don't you Andalites have your own resorts or something to go to? In case you haven't noticed, we're not exactly in need of any more aliens to come here acting like they own the place."

"I'm pretty sure he noticed, Marco," Rachel said irritably. "Just look at him!"

"Y-yeah, shouldn't we go get help or something…?" Cassie tried. "He looks pretty bad…"

"Our enemies are many, widespread, and relentless," mostly ignoring Cassie. "They constantly send assassins to take us while we sleep and when we're young. They've grown in number to the point that not even our homeworld is safe. The safest place for us is inside our Dome Ships, but there are not enough to house us all, and they take a lot of resources to build. Andalites are also naturally claustrophobic, so even if we would have enough of them, they would not be a permanent solution. As such, using our morphing technology to pretend to be a member of an alien society has become very common."

"So… what?" Marco asked. "You're saying you took a vacation on a planet that has half a dozen alien invasions going on last time we checked? You really expect us to believe that?"

He looked ready to bolt back to the camp and call in an airstrike on Elfangor or something the minute he'd get to a phone. Rachel seemed to be taking his side.

I felt Cassie take my hand from behind me. She was shivering. I'm not sure whether she believed Elfangor or not, but either way, she didn't like where the conversation was going.

To be honest, I'm not sure what I was thinking at the time, either. But I was definitely ready to run if it came down to it.

Tobias blocked the door before anyone moved, though, gesturing for us to calm down. "Th-this planet was far safer when w- they first started coming here. They were blindsided, just like we were. But they're helping us. Humanity doesn't even know about some of the invasions. Last time we checked, there are ei- no, seven invasions going on right now."

"There were two hidden invasion forces attacking your world," Elfangor said. "The first were the Mercora. A race of giant crab-like creatures that had an army of machines that they were going to deploy. These war machines would have been controlled from deep within their secret stronghold in the wilds of the US. We crushed their fortress just two weeks ago."

Elfangor took some time to catch his breath, then he looked at my best friend. "Marco, Tobias told me your father works at the ETS. Two weeks ago, did he speak of any unexplained explosions in Wyoming?"

Marco glanced down as he recalled, then his eyes widened. "That was you?"

Elfangor nodded. "Yes. But very shortly after we eliminated the Mercora, we discovered the presence of the second secret invasion."

"Most of the aliens invading are actually low on the galactic food chain. They're basically six schools of small fish surrounded by even smaller fish in an isolated pond," Tobias said. "The Mercora, Helmacrons, Nartec, and others were minor threats, but these guys? Not minor… not minor at all."

"We had six invasions left to deal with, taking down the biggest threats first," Elfangor said. "After the Mercora were gone, we were discussing how to deal with the Nartec, an ever-controversial topic. We were on our way to their stronghold when we were ambushed."

He let out a shuddering sigh and put his hand to his gut, grimacing.

"We had not encountered their species before. But they're dangerous, several orders of magnitude more dangerous and powerful than anything mankind has encountered so far. I only barely managed to rally my people for a counterattack. They were led by another Andalite, by the name of Alloran. He had disappeared some sixty years ago, along with his warship, the Ascalin. We found the wreckage sixteen years later, and the Ascalin was declared lost with all hands. However, Alloran was never seen again… until the ambush. We were whittled down until I was all that remained. The battle was close, but Visser Three gained the upper hand, and I had no choice but to flee."

Rachel shook her head in confusion. "Visser Three? I thought you were talking about Alloran, who's Visser Three?"/

"Visser Three is the identity of the one who led the attack," Elfangor elaborated cryptically. "It seems that Alloran had been taken over by a sentient alien parasite, who called himself Visser Three. It was ultimately this parasite which led the ambush. The rest of the ambush consisted of a number of other species, likely all being controlled by these parasites. There were centipede-like creatures that operated their artillery and vehicles, and seven-foot tall bipedal lizard-like creatures covered in blades. But above all, under their command they had humans, scores and scores of humans. They outnumbered the other species ten to one."

I was shocked, so shocked I couldn't speak for a few seconds. I assume the same went for the others, because they were also quiet. I was the first to speak up again.

"S-so… these things are invading and nobody even knows about it?" I asked.

"Nobody but us," Elfangor said. "We do not know what they call themselves, but the rest of us Andalites do not even know they exist, much less that they're here."

"Visser Three…" I thought to myself out loud. "What does that number mean?"

"It could mean anything," Tobias said, tapping his foot on the floor. "He could be the third highest ranking warlord. Vissers could be candidates for an even higher title. Hell, the three in his name might be like Casimir the Third and he's a prince, or king, or whatever. We have no idea."

"Whatever these parasites are, they're a serious threat," Tobias' dad said.

"If they could take out the Andalites on Earth, then they're too much even for the ETCS to prevail against them," Tobias said.

"If not even the ETCS can take them out, then what are we supposed to do?" I said.

Tobias shifted on his feet and elected to move away from the door and look out the window. So he was still hiding something? Great.

"Andalites are not born with our morphing ability," Elfangor continued a few seconds later. "Instead, it is given to our children at a very young age. Before we were ambushed by the Controllers, we had finished a device that would be able to give the power to humans."

"What?" I asked. "You're giving us the power?"

"Yes. It comes with other benefits as well. You will be able to sense your planet's magnetic field, and will be able to tell time without a watch. You also get some small-scale regeneration in your true forms, and you will be able to morph faster than any Andalite could hope to. You will not be able to go into shock and will be given a superhuman tolerance to pain, and every time you morph you will be fully healed."

"Fully healed? Really?" Marco asked skeptically. "Then why didn't you do that to recover?"

"When Alloran disappeared, he was transporting a weapon discovered in the ruins of an unknown alien civilization. Dubbed The Crystallizer, the weapon was being moved to be studied and to keep it from falling into enemy hands. This weapon was one that…" Elfangor held his hand over his gut and grimaced. "… that inserted jagged purple crystals into you. They latch on to your flesh, and then grow until they burst out and make air contact, often causing lethal damage. Morphing does not heal it, because they grow from my own flesh."

He looked at us with a jaded stare, "I'm sure you must have found some of these crystals that my son removed from me."

Those crystals came from him? I gagged at the thought of that sickly flesh having been part of the person I was talking to.

"And in case you don't believe us about the pain tolerance, some of those crystals are still inside my dad's gut. He would be screaming and flailing uncontrollably right now if he were a normal human." Tobias said while grasping and ungrasping his fingers.

"Before I fled the battle, the weapon was destroyed," Elfangor said. "However, there was more than one on the Ascalin, and I do not know how many more the Controllers made operational. But on top of morphing, getting the morphing power will also allow you to use any of our technology."

Elfangor then turned to face his son.

"Tobias, little featherhead. The Cube, if you will."

"Of course," he said, then he put his hand to his left pocket and pulled out a blue cube and started walking towards us.

"Now, it is here and now that you decide," Elfangor said. "If you touch the cube, you will have the power to morph, and many others besides that, and with it the strength to take down the Controllers. But if you choose not to take the power, then Tobias will erase your memories of this encounter, and you will return to whence you came, completely unaware of all that I have divulged to you."

"H-hang on, when you said you were giving 'us' the power you were talking about the four of us specifically?" Cassie asked, with a tone that seemed equally scared and excited. "I thought you meant humanity as a whole…!"

"Tobias has already received the power, and others besides yourself will, but not all" Elfangor said in a soft whisper as Tobias held out the cube in front of him. "What is your decision?"

I was stunned into silence, it was just so… real. You know; crazy, but not the impossible crazy.

The ability to morph into animals? That would be the thrill of a lifetime! But on the other hand, if we were to accept, we'd have to fend off those parasites.

No matter what I and anyone else around me chose that day, our fate had been forever changed. It seemed so simple back then, looking at our situation. Even what Tobias' father told us was straightforward compared to the convoluted mess we're in right now. No matter what we would answer, yes or no, it was clear that we could not go back from this decision. On that day, we took our path, made our choice, and forever changed the fate of our world, and that of many countless other worlds unknown.