I'm back babies! It's been way too long since I posted these things. In all honesty, putting this on hiatus because of Covid was a mistake. But I'm back now for you to enjoy this tale!

Jake ventures to the Zoo in the dead of night to acquire his battle morph, escorted by Rachel in the form of a Great Horned Owl. With his cousin providing overwatch, the Animorph's leader is able to evade the Park's security, however, he still encounters problems and is thrown off track. Meanwhile, Tobias continues his efforts to find and recruit the Andalite descendants living amongst humanity and encounters complications of his own.

Filling the Deck V

Day 7, Morning: Before Sunrise

((I have a lot to learn,)) I muttered, not realizing I had said it out loud.

((About what?)) Rachel asked.

((Ah, nuts, about...uh, the war and how we'll fight and stuff,)) I said, hoping Rachel didn't figure out what I really meant. We were truly novices, and yet Tobias promoted me as the leader. I don't have any idea of what the extra advantages are, what our limits and weaknesses are, or even the ways the morphing power can be applied. He knows this stuff better than I do, why is Tobias not the leader instead of me?

When he comes back we're definitely going to have to talk about...everything.

((Here's to hoping Tobias returns with a giant space battleship,)) Rachel suggested.

((I don't think he can afford that,)) I replied as we soared over the Gardens' parking lot. ((It would be awesome, but we shouldn't expect anything big.))

((One can hope,)) Rachel countered. ((But seriously, the Andalites had to have gotten here somehow, right?))

((Yeah,)) I said, looking at the ground.

We flew silently over the stretches of the city, passing over a highway. Our journey was quick in a way I'm not used to. Nobody noticed a pair of owls flying overhead, with the Nartec gone there's nothing for any humans to really watch out for on this continent. Nobody stopped to talk to us, and when we reached The Gardens, we didn't need to pay them for a ticket. We flew past the gate and wall, nobody could hear us, nobody even knew we were here.

The Gardens was a completely different place at night without anyone else here, it had closed a few hours ago. The security was sparse, but me and Rachel memorized a map of the maintenance areas Cassie had drawn for us a few days ago.

After a guard walked by it I landed in a few hedges separating the park from the zoo area of the gardens. It took me some time to demorph, but when I rose above the hedges I was a human, gone were the owls' feathers to keep me warm, replaced by my naked skin. My eyes could see a lot less, the darkness was more pervasive. All in all The Gardens was at its creepiest when the nocturnal things roamed.

((Alright, it's clear. Just make your way over past the food carts,)) Rachel spoke up, giving me directions.

I didn't respond, instead nodding to indicate I heard her before poking my head out of the hedges like a cat in a box. I swept the area with my eyes, checking the dark for guards and to see that the food carts were still where I saw them. After a few looks I broke out into a full sprint, leaves exploding from the bushes, running as fast as I could toward the food carts. My bare feet padded the cobblestone as my breath huffed in the night. Thank God the frostbite from earlier is gone!

((Do you remember which way it is?)) Rachel asked.

((Yes,)) I responded simply.

The food carts raced past me as a blur, after which I kept on running straight, my body low to the ground in a strange crouching position. I kept running not only to avoid detection but to preserve my modesty, everything was on full display. I ran past another exhibit, crossing another lane. After this one I turned right, and-

((Watch out!)) Rachel warned me, her voice frantic. ((Guard! Coming from the Gorilla cages, he's making a break for the lion exhibit!))

I skid to a stop, my bare feet grinding against the cobblestone, I grit my teeth and leaned down, moving to the side of the closest exhibit, a few feet further away from the approaching guard. I couldn't see or hear him, but Rachel doesn't joke around like that, her word's better than most.

I am not going to be seen naked like this, I thought with a stubborn determination. Especially inside a zoo by a total adult stranger! My cousin, best friend, and girlfriend are bad enough!

I looked around myself, there has to be some place in here that can hide me!

The lion exhibit is right there on the other side of the path, it's walls are high.

But that's open space, not only would I be stuck naked with a bunch of sleeping (if I'm lucky) lions, there's nothing to break the fall, and that place wouldn't hide anything! The ostrich enclosure has the same problem, plus giant birds with nasty attitudes that can take your head of with a single kick, and I've been with Cassie long enough to know that the hippos I passed are not in the book.

So I looked at the exhibit whose wall I was clinging to, I poked my head over and peeked inside.

Yes! Trees and foliage all around. It would be very hard to hide in that during the day, but at night even with a flashlight you'd struggle to see much. And there's a tall tree perfectly positioned for me to slide down! Good for a human to climb, but too light for whatever's in there to use it to climb out.

I put my hands on the railing and climbed on top of it, after I put my feet on it I jumped forward. Hands outstretched, for a few heart stopping moments I flew through the air without wings, falling. I put my arms toward each other and I was hugging the tree.

Yes! Yes! Ow! Ow! I said in my head gleefully as the bark scraped my skin, it stung but I was so relieved that I barely noticed it.

Smiling, I climbed down, dropping by letting go of the bark, then slapping my hands to the trunk repeatedly to stop myself from falling. I kept at it until my feet hit the moist dirt, branches slapping me several steps of the way.

((Crap, he heard you!)) Rachel warned me. ((You gotta get into hiding position, now!))

I looked around myself for something to conceal me further, the perfect hiding place. All of a sudden my foot landed and I retracted it, water.

((Am I in the crocodile pit?)) I asked.

((No, the water's safe! Dive! Dive!)) Rachel said in desperation.

I jumped into the water, I quickly waded into the moat, careful to make as little noise as possible. The water was slightly chilly, but I pressed on, I kicked off with my feet into the moat until I found myself next to the wall of the enclosure again. Looking up I saw the shaking careless beam of a flashlight before taking a deep breath and submerging myself, I didn't just submerge myself, I grabbed the concrete wall and used it to push myself deeper down into the water.

I heard a strange noise, I looked up to see the guard flashing his beam into the enclosure. It took me a few seconds to realize that the strange noise was the guard talking, distorted by my aquatic eprspective. The beam swept the area, and even searched the moat. I heard my heart beating in my chest, desperately thumping, my lungs started to burn.

After a bit I saw the light vanish, I waited for a few moments, my lungs really started to hurt.

((Okay, he's gone.)) Rachel reported, relief evident in her voice.

I let go of the concrete wall and floated back up. My head broke through the surface, gasping for air.

((Thanks for the warning, you're a lifesaver)) I thanked Rachel. ((But which enclosure am I in?))

((Let me see, you should be in...oh no.))

((Rachel...am I in the Tiger Pit?))

((Yep.))

Swell, was the only thought in my head as I looked for the tree that would take me high enough to climb or get out of the enclosure.

((Wait, I think this'll work out. Acquire a tiger!))

((Acquire...a tiger?)) I said. The thought not entering my head. ((How big are tigers compared to lions?))

((Beats me,)) Rachel asked. I could imagine her shrugging her shoulders. ((But the Tigers should be longer, and are stealthy.))

I blinked as I waded in the cool water. I stayed there for a few more seconds, considering the advantages of the creature.

What kind of fight will this war on the Controllers be? Guns blazing like in Terminator or Star Wars? I doubt it, I don't think we should expect a high amount of guns, or backup. The numbers advantage will be theirs so we'll have to fight it out like the Vietcong did. What did they call it, gorilla warfare? Yeah, I think we'll definitely need stealth for that, and Tigers are ambushers, so maybe they're actually a better choice than chasers like lions after all.

((Alright, I'll take it,)) I decided, wading toward the land.

((Just be careful,)) Rachel remarked.

I waded back to shore, where my feet found the solid ground of the enclosure. Once the water was waist deep I stopped. I took a deep breath, clenching and unclenching my hands.

The tigers won't maul you, I reminded, or maybe now that I had the benefit of hindsight, deluded myself.

After a moment's hesitation I resumed my walk until I started walking on solid ground.

My hands probed in front of me moving the foiliage. My eyes were starting to adjust to the dark, but I still walked forward slowly, carefully.

Suddenly, without warning, I felt my hand come into contact with fur. I couldn't see it, but immediately I felt the presence of the beast I wanted to acquire.

And it was big in a way that was hard to appreciate from the behind the rails separating the crowd from the tigers.

Wasting no time, I focused on the tiger, like I did so many times before, and acquired it. I felt the animal go into the trance as I scanned its DNA.

Then the trance broke.

((Okay, I got it,)) I announced to Rachel. ((Where's the ladder?))

((It's to your right, but it's retractible. I'm going to have to wait a minute to put it down because that guard is still close by.))

I grit my teeth and almost snarled in frustration as I began walking to the right, blind as a bat. I had my hands held forward, nervously hoping that I don't walk face first into a branch, or another tiger.

((You're starting to walk back into the moat, veer a slight left.)) Rachel advised, and I turned.

((Wait! Not now!)) She warned. Too late.

My foot kicked a dense, furry thing.

Everything that was me froze.

The tiger jolted awake with a growl.

Remembering one detail from Tobias letter, I reached my hand forward and acquired the Tiger. I instinctively somehow knew what to do, I acquired the beast, hard, causing the big cat to go back to sleep.

I quietly let out a breath I didn't know I was holding, corrected my course, and moved past the tiger.

((Okay, keep going straight, it's right up ahead. I'll demorph and bring it down.))

Soon enough my probing hands touched concrete wall instead of the plants the tigers live in.

((I'm there,)) I announced. ((Still demorphing?))

((Yes,)) Rachel said. ((I should be able to get the ladder down soon, there!))

I heard a small clicking sound, then another clicking sound, and the the clanking noise of a metal ladder falling to the ground. And the sudden feeling of something very hard grazing my shoulder.

"Ow," I quietly voiced my problem.

((Hurry! Get out, get out, soon!)) Rachel urgently prompted. My hands reached for the runs of the ladder and I flew up just as I heard a rustling sound, a tiger was rushing for me. I heard the thud of the thing landing just below me, I felt the sharp pain of claws raking the back of my leg where it met my foot. I didn't care, I was just too hooked on adrenaline to care about anything other than reaching the top. Rachel was waiting, still holding the ladder, not completely reverted to a human, her eyes were large and strange, her legs in the middle of reversing. But her upper body and hands had become human.

I looked down to see the tiger that tried to lunge at me, it dropped off of the ladder, its paws unable to grip the rungs. In an instant I helped Rachel pull the ladder up until it was no lnoger in the tiger cage. Rachel manipulated a lever that clamped over the ladder, reaching over the edge of the railing. Then she reached behind and twisted what looked like a combination lock untiul it clicked, and when she put the plastic safety cap in place of the ciruclar lock I began returning to my Owl body.

Soon we flapped away, laughing at the insanity of it all.

((Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Did you see that? You should've seen the look on your face!)) Rachel said.

((My face? Could you even see my face?))

((No. Ha ha ha!)) Rachel crowed, promptin me to join her in her bout of humor as we veered toward the grizzly exhibit.

((That was way too close, oh man, roller-coasters will never beat this!))

Day 6: night

This was Tobias' most daring venture yet. He was holding a bundle of large balloons, coated in a pain designed to completely conceal radar. Were he in his red-tailed hawk form, the bags of helium would be enough to carry him to the stratoshpere. But in his true form, Tobias lazily descended down to the roof of the large building that was his target. In time, Tobias' boot clad feet gently set down on the concrete, prompting him to set his balloons free by releasing his death grip.

Wasting no time he turned invisible and snuck to a vent, stepping carefully to a vent, he peered inside and didn't find any sign of security measures. Looking around for a quick check for alarms and triggers, Tobias began shrinking. Down down down his measurementson the height chart went, all the while a second pair of shoulders and arms burst from his side. His neck changed to keep Tobias from being able to look up while his split into mandibles. The flesh on his limbs decreased until there was just skin over his bones, then the skin grew hard and the bones changed into a dark shiny brown. Brown shiny protrusions ran down Tobias' shoulder like a cape before becoming a pair of wings, his body grew an abdomen as his innards were squeezed into the third body part, narrowing his body shape.

Tobias only needed a few seconds to turn into a cockroach, he wanted it to only be a few seconds. But there are benefits to morphing a particular form multiple times other than speed, by going it as slow as possible, Tobias was ensuring that he didn't trip any morph detection technologies that he suspected the building to have.

It was, after all, an ETCS compound. An invisible roach skittered into the vent as nothing noticed it, it scurried past scanners designed to detect motion, way too small and slow to trigger it. Tobias would've easily gotten lost in the vents, but he knew the layout of this place, a map was drawn long efore he got here. The ETCS keep a lot of valuable stuff in this building.

Skip a vent, turn left, turn right, skip a vent, skip another, turn left, then left again, skip two more vents and Tobias was there.

He saw the room as best he could with his cockroach eyes, one would call it a cockroach, but it was a species genetically designed to have superior sensory capabilities on par with a human's. It's otherwise indistinguishable from an ordinary German Cockroach, but he could see the layout of the room when he walked over the vent and held onto the metal beams. It was a big wide square room with a single one way mirror in the front, with a bunch of consoles with a dozen rolling chairs in front of them, a few of them were unoccupied because it was the night shift.

The lights in the room were low, most of them turned off. A wall divided the room from the side with the one-way mirror and the side with the exit door. Behind the barrier on the door side were six humanoid war machines and four ETCS guards, lying in wait.

This has to be the place, Tobias determined, dropping down into the room. Six Human war machines and four gaurds is not something to laugh at.

Tobias activated his wings as a roach, he felt like a helicoptor, deciding his flgiht path, once he was out of the vent, he noticed a bathroom on the side without the wall splitting the room in two. Tobias flew onto the window, he was not a fairly big roach, but against the glass would still have been difficult not to notice...were he not an invisible insect. Tobias' legs skittered around to adjust his viewpoint to look at the consoles, checking the species listed among the inmates.

Inner Worlder, Skrit-Na, Korla, Anati, Mashtimee.

Huh?

Tobias flew around, checking all of the consoles to the ETCS Prison Facility. He found the Human Section, reserved for people who betrayed mankind to the alien invasions, in theory, but when he read through the individual name list, the person still wasn't on there.

If not here, then where are they? Tobias wondered, deeply confused. He elected to fly back up into the vent, a good twenty feet.

Or tried to, as it turns out, Tobias learned that cockroaches can't fly vertically. So he elected to demorph and remorph in an isolated portion of the room into a fly. Again the process was slow, taking four minutes as he measured his rate of change. But once more he was back in the ventilation system.

I might have to check the whole building, Tobias realized as he changed back to his true form, before reverting to his roach body.

He moved all throughout the facility, taking careful care to keep his bearings. The cafeteria, the proving grounds, the medical ward, armory, vehicle bay. He scoured the building for his target for hours, deep into the night.

The first A.M. hour passed when he decided another approach, and sought to directly search for her in the Cyberwarfare Department.

The room was dark, filled with a series of computers in cubicles completely concealed by vantablack sheets. Tobias demorphed again once on the ground after several hours of searching, he was beginning to grow impatient.

"Hello?" He softly said, prowling around the room with his invisibility cloak not turned off. His words came out so quiet that nobody without enhanced ears could her him. Thoughtspeech detectors also weren't off the table for Tobias to expect. Slowly he crept around the black cubicles, he couldn't tell if any of them were occupied.

"Hello?" Tobias repeated again.

All of a sudden he heard a scrambling noise, and out of the cubicles a woman jumped out and looked around. Tobias, who was almost on all fours, leaned further to the ground. She was wearing a fullbody suit that concealed her face, Tobias didn't know who she was, so he had to take a risk.

"Is someone there?" She asked calmly. "Greg, if you're trying to prank me again, then stop it!"

The young man de-activated his stealth cloak, and raised himself up to his full height, which was considerably tall for a human. And faced the lady.

She noticed almost immediately, when she turned to face him she jumped out of her skin and took a few steps back, letting out a shuddering gasp of fear.

Tobias had to suppress a smile, he know what he looked like. A pale faced person with hard and gaunt features and a grim and determined expression with dirty blond hair that went down to his neck. Wearing all black, including a dark green collar with beads on it, and gloves with gunmetal grey fingertips, a skirt with what looked like was made of black rods, and carrying a small dark blue pouch on his back. All of this was overshadowed by striking blue eyes that almost glowed.

Or, they would glow, if I left my night-vision on.

The absolute last kind of creature you'd want to meet in the dark lighting.

"Hey, you have the password?" Tobias asked the test question in his soft voice, banking on how similar his clothing looked to an ETCS Officer's uniform. "I think I forgot it."

By the Ellemist, he thought. I probably even sound like an angel of death!

"Bu-what? Who-?" The woman was barely able to keep her composure.

I don't have time for this! Tobias frowned.

"What's with the funny sounds? I just want a computer."

The lady calmed down, seeming to have realized behind her interface suit, she nodded before taking the zipper at the top of her head and revealing her face. As the interface suit revealed her face, a head full of long shaggy unruly hair was set loose, her eyes were closed as she shook her head. I couldn't see her face, as I had turned off my night-vision.

Tobias' eyes widened, his heart beat faster, this was extremely atypical behavior. Why would ETCS personel just unsuit in front of him?

Then she opened her eyes, and Tobias was broken from his silence and for the first time was visibly shocked.

"That gleaming eye, in the dark!" he whispered in shock as the lady in front of him opened her jade green glowing eyes.

"Ah, yes, I see it now. So you were lurking in the Cyberwarfare Department this whole time! I thought you had been taken prisoner, when I didn't find you in the cells I assumed you had escaped, and was waiting somewhere in the facility. I knew you were good, but to be accepted by the ETCS and work for them as their Cyber Warrior? Now I really understand what Zavezz meant when he described a friend in a bizarre place was hiding here."

"It wasn't as hard as you make it out to be," The old Blood shrugged, smiling, Tobias could tell with with his reactivated night-vision. She had wipe lips and a long nose, her eyes were calm, completely and utterly calm. Tobias could easily belive that her freak-out was a facade.

"What else did you expect? I suppose Zavezz never told you that I was also the Master of Shadows?"

"No, he didn't mention you at all, other than where to find you. I still can't believe you were keeping tabs on the ETCS this whole time, I thought you had died in the Scattering."

"Well, premature annoucements of death are part of the job, my friend."

Tobias smiled and laughed, clapping his hands.

"So I assume you know who I am, and why I'm here?"

"Bring it out," she said. Her smile growing wider, and Tobias reached into his blue satchel and brought out The Cube, presenting it to her like the best made hamburger on the planet was on a tray at a buffet. And there was only one option, one course.

"I knew you could do it," she praised.

"I also assume you know what happened to the others..." Tobias said.

Her smile vanished, and she solemnly nodded.

"And what happened to your father. They will pay for the massacre. I swear, I won't leave a single perpetrator alive," The Master of Shadow's voice was dripping with cold dead certainty as she reached forward and took the cube in her hand, the fusion between the cube and her palm caused her to start shivering.

"We will see," Tobias responded. "I have data on a tracking device my father placed on one of the perpetrators, I'm hoping you'll provide a better examination of the data than I can."

He retracted the cube, placing it back in his satchel before looknig around the room.

"I assume we'll need to fake your death? Your absence will definitely raise questions otherwise."

"And before we leave," she mentioned, beginning to return to her cubicle, the cube now detached from her hand. "You're going to need to make accomodations for me, there's some business I need to take care of."

"Very well, but I'm going to have to send a message home, they're expecting me to be back in a couple of days."

"Of course, carry on." The Master of Shadows whispered before zipping her suit back over her head.

They arranged a place to meet at and discussed how the manner of accident they would use to take the one who would become Alice Priester off of the census. Tobias then left through the vents, and being informed that there were no morphing detectors, returned to the rooftop and immediately turned into a red-tailed hawk. Flapping off into the distance, the stars twinkling above as he flew over miles upon miles of trees shrouded by the night.

Eventually, Tobias set down his exhausted wings and demorphed into his true form, he kneeled down and sent out a command. The little creature scurried up to meet its master at the camp sight.

"I have a favor to ask, would you be so kind as to deliver a letter?"