Chapter 11
Sleep had never been so welcome. Okay, well it probably had, but that night you could not have convinced me. I was probably asleep almost before I finished demorphing. I was so tired, I didn't even have the customary post-battle nightmares. At one point, I either dreamed or experienced my Dad trying to wake me up. But have you ever been able to successfully wake up a rock? Needless to say, I simply rolled over.
I did end up waking at 7:00 that evening. Even then, I just lay on my back yawning and watching the sunset. I went and found my mom and dad, then opened some Campbell's and had some soup. Cold.
I looked around the valley and watched the young Hork-Bajir as they climbed and jumped from tree to tree. The mothers were preparing some tree bark stew, or stroganoff, or spaghetti, or whatever dishes Hork-Bajir eat.
I finally got very bored, so I went osprey and flew to Ax's scoop. When I was still about twenty yards away, Tobias called me.
Hi Marco!
Wait a minute, I said, How'd you know it was me?
C'mon, Marco. I see an osprey, a water bird, flying like a dead duck. And I think to myself, Hmm. I wonder why this osprey is flying like a dead duck over the woods instead of the ocean. It couldn't be any of my friends, because I know they listen to my flying tips. Then I think, Oh wait. Forgot about Marco. He never listens to anyone. Yep. Has to be Marco. Either that, or an insane osprey.
Yeah, yeah, I muttered. I had known they would know it was me. I come around frequently to talk and to veg in front of Ax's tv. What're you watching?
Nothing much, Tobias replied, Ax is just channel surfing.
I landed and demorphed. It felt very good to just hang for a while, even if it was with a bird and an alien. We watched TV, talked, then got bored, so we got ice cream from the Dairy Queen. It felt so good to do something almost normal.
At 10:45, I decided to fly around and make sure everyone was at the barn. Rachel was not. So, I volunteered to fly to her house and see if she was still there. She was, and was fast asleep. I saw my opportunity to get back at her for what she had done that afternoon.
I landed on her window sill. The window was closed. That was fine, I could make do.
TO ARMS! TO ARMS! THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING! TO ARMS! TO ARMS! I yelled at her and banged on the window with my beak.
She screamed and sat bolt upright. She saw me fly away, and the look of terror turned to a look that basically said, "Marco, consider yourself dead." She opened the window, morphed, and followed me into the night.
Luckily, I had a good head start, or Rachel probably would have killed me on the way over. Instead, I flew as fast as I could to the barn, rushed in, demorphed and hid. I couldn't help but notice the looks of amusement given me by the others.
Rachel flew in seconds later, demorphed, and screamed, "Where is he! MARCO!!! Get out here and I'll kill you quickly!"
"Rachel, calm down," Jake said, "We have work to do, and I don't have time for you to go postal. Marco, you can emerge from hiding."
I came out of the empty horse stall I'd hid in, and said, So you're saying I should demorph? I thought a gorilla would be less likely to tempt Rachel to violence. I could see the hint of a smile on Rachel's face. Of course, she wouldn't have purposefully let me see that, but I'd noticed before she had had time to hide it.
Jake didn't say anything, but sighed and looked up to the ceiling in that classic gesture meaning, "Why me Lord?"
I demorphed.
When I had a mouth again I said, "So how are we going to get into the attic?"
"Well," Jake replied, "It has windows, but they'll probably be armed with an alarm system. The Yeerks don't know we know about the ray's whereabouts, so I doubt there'll be a Gleet Biofilter set up there. Bugs maybe? Find a way to disable the alarm?"
"Wait!" I said, "I've got an idea. I just remembered. A lot of boys sometimes climb up into the ceiling of the school. You know, when they think no one is looking. You can push up the ceiling tiles and climb up in there. We could climb up, then morph cockroach. A cockroach could certainly find a crack in the attic floor, and then we could just go right in."
Rachel lifted an eyebrow at me and said, "How would you know about climbing up into the ceiling?"
I thought about ignoring the remark, but then Rachel would think I had done it before, so instead I answered her by saying, "Oh, I saw Jake do it a couple times."
Jake grinned and punched me in the shoulder. "Did not. We both saw Andy and Tap-tap do it once."
I smiled back, relieved that he hadn't told them that Andy and Tap-tap had actually been showing me how to get in.
"But how do we get into the school in the first place?" Cassie asked.
"I am not doing ant again, no matter what anyone says," I said.
Nobody said anything. That was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
Cassie finally said something, but it wasn't what I wanted to hear. "You know, that probably is the best idea. Trust me, no one likes it any better than you do, Marco. But, with ants, we could morph right by a back entrance, then crawl under the door. The ant morphs we have would be nowhere near their own colonies, so they would be pretty easy to control. There also aren't many ants by the doors; too much traffic. It'd be easy."
"Cassie?" I said, "Remind me never to tell you what it is I don't want to do. Whenever I tell anyone what I don't want to do, we do it. Murphy's law, I suppose."
"Okay," Jake said, "Huh. I guess we'll just have to do that. We're wasting time, and we need to get this done. First of all, we need to find a cockroach and an ant for Laria and Yarin."
Cassie went inside her house to see if there were any cockroaches. She came out a little later with a roach. I found an ant.
Laria and Yarin acquired the cockroach and ant. Ax also acquired the ant. (We had only done ant morph once, and that was before Ax was with us.) Earlier that day, Cassie had had Laria and Yarin acquire some other useful morphs as well.
The rest of us also acquired some new morphs. Pigeons. We had decided that even though birds of prey were generally faster, pigeons were more common and less conspicuous when grouped together.
"Are we all ready?" Jake asked.
We nodded.
"Rachel?" I said, "Are you forgetting something?"
"What?" She responded.
"Oh, you know what I'm talking about. That trademark line, the one you always say before every insane mission."
"Oh yeah. Almost forgot! Marco? Shut. Up."
"Ha-ha. Wrong one."
"Let's do it!!!"
"Much better."
We morphed and flew to the school. We didn't talk much on the way over. Just the typical pre-battle banter between Rachel and I.
Soon we arrived at the school. We landed behind some bushes near the back door. The night was darker than a really dark thing. So, we demorphed, and were covered by the darkness. We rested a few minutes before morphing ant. Since ants don't exactly travel fast or far, we each went onto the porch and crouched by the door so that we were as close to it as possible.
Tobias had not morphed ant. Jake decided it was best to have someone provide surveillance. Besides, a hawk wouldn't have been very good at destroying a ray. He would also help by directing us toward the door. Ants don't see too well.
A troop of seven ants marched up to the school's back door, and then underneath. We couldn't tell when we had made it into the school, so we just kept marching for a really long time, until Jake felt sufficiently sure that we were inside. We demorphed about three feet from the door. We had to wait a few minutes to allow our eyes to grow accustomed to the minimal amount of light.
"This way," I whispered and motioned for the others to follow.
We went into a hall with lockers. They were nice and high, which would make it easier to climb into the ceiling. Ax, Laria, and Yarin morphed cockroach. We'd decided that would be easiest because it would be too difficult to have an Andalite climb up, and anything besides a cockroach would have to demorph before going into the attic.
I climbed up onto one of the lockers and removed a ceiling tile. Cassie handed me the three roaches and I put them inside. Next, I climbed up and remembered to remind everyone to only step on the steel beams, not the tiles themselves. I won't say what reminded me.
There wasn't much space, so I morphed as quickly as possible. Everyone else climbed up and did the same.
Everyone here? Jake asked.
We were.
Okay then. Follow this beam of light. It'll lead to a crack up above. That's our ticket in.
We scurried along until we found a crack, then climbed into it.
When we were all in the attic, Jake said, Laria? Yarin? Ax? You guys demorph. There will probably be some controllers up here, so take care of them. Afterwards, tell us when to demorph. We'll stay somewhere safe in the meantime.
Ax and the others demorphed. Now, roach hearing definitely ain't the greatest, but I swear I heard a couple "Andalites!" then some thuds. I definitely felt the thuds.
The controllers have been taken care of, Prince Jake, Ax said. It is now safe for you to demorph.
We did. "Whoah!" I said, "Look at this stuff! It's so totally Star Trek."
"Well," Jake said, "I guess we should morph and take care of the ray."
"Why don't we just smash the whole lab?" Rachel asked. "I mean, we don't even know which one the ray is."
"And if we end up releasing some sort of chemical weapon or something?" I asked. "I don't think so."
A chemical weapon is unlikely, Ax responded. Rachel had an 'I told you so' look on her face. A Quantum virus is also highly unlikely. I doubt there will be a problem if we destroyed the laboratory.
Jake nodded. "Okay then. We go with Rachel's plan. We don't need battle morphs, just something that can wreck a lab well."
I morphed gorilla to handle some of the big, heavy things. First, I stuffed the controllers into a closet where they couldn't see anything or get out. Some of the others just remained as they were. Most of us morphed chimpanzee. We figured hands with thumbs would be helpful.
What happened next was like that scene in Tarzan. You know the one: a bunch of monkeys come and trash the camp. That's just what we did. It didn't take long.
When we were finished, we exited the same way we had come in. Once outside, we morphed birds and flew off.
Okay, now that was cool, I said, I'd say that's probably the first mission that ever resembled fun.
Definitely, Rachel agreed. Let's do this again sometime, shall we?
I just wish it had been the school lab, I said. As expected, there were a few agreeing laughs. It had been a good night. What we'd done had almost been a variation on normal teen behavior. Or what was normal for us. Oh, you know, same old, same old. Turn into monkeys and smash up a laboratory. I do it all the time.
As we flew through the starry night sky, each of us said good night and separated from the others as we neared our own homes.
Chapter 12
The next day, Jake, Tom, Tobias, Yarin, Ax and I got together. I think the girls got together as well on their own. Anyway, we actually had fun. We went to a movie, got some cinnamon buns, then went to Jake's house and played a little basketball. It was great.
As we did these things, I knew what everyone was thinking about. We were all thinking about a time when the war would be over. It would end, and if it ended the way we wanted, this would become normal.
* * * *
That night we met together in Cassie's barn. Tom and Erek were there, too.
"Tom?" Jake said, "We've all been considering something. You still want to help in this war, right?"
"Yeah."
Jake smiled his slow smile. "Then we have a weapon that will help."
Cassie brought out the blue box. Jake said, "This is the device that will give you the power to morph. Just touch one of the sides."
Tom took a deep breath, then placed his hand on it. The box began to glow. After a little while, the box stopped glowing.
"Is that it?"
"Yep," Jake answered, "Now all you have to do is acquire some animals."
Cassie showed him some animals. Tom chose to acquire the cockroach because it was pretty useful as far as bugs go, a peregrine falcon, and a barn owl for night flying. He wasn't able to acquire any firepower morphs at the moment because we didn't have time to take him to the Gardens.
"Okay then. Is everybody ready?" Jake asked.
We nodded. "As ready as I can be, under the circumstances," Tom said.
"Then let's go," Jake said. "Tom, you'll drive. We aren't going far; just a little into the mountains. We'll morph birds and follow your car. I'll give you directions. Erek? You ride with Tom."
We agreed, then morphed night birds so we would be able to see well. Cassie held the barn owl so that Tobias could acquire it; hawks don't see too well in the dark.
We flew quietly, almost as though we were going to a funeral. In a way, we were.
We arrived at the designated spot far too soon. Jake had Tom park the car, then we flew down, landed next too it and demorphed. We had decided on a rocky area with no trees nearby so that the burning the car would not start a forest fire.
Jake had Tom put the car in neutral. Erek pointed it in the right direction, then gave it a massive shove. It slammed into a large boulder, smashing the front end of the car and sending huge splinters of glass in all directions.
We managed to get a back door opened and crumpled up some newspaper then placed it on the seat. We lighted the newspaper and watched as the flame slowly spread from the paper to the seat cushion to the rest of the car. When we decided it had definitely caught, we walked far enough away to be safe in case the flames reached the gas tank and exploded.
We watched for a while, but it was pointless, so we morphed and flew away. Tom came with me to the Hork-Bajir valley, while the others went their separate ways.
* * * *
Tom's funeral was held that Saturday. Ax, Tobias, Laria, Yarin and I couldn't go because it was going to be more than two hours. We did morph pigeons and sit outside much of the time, though.
After the service, I flew to Jake's house. He went up to his room when he got home. He opened the window and let me in.
After I'd demorphed, I said, "It will end. I don't know when, but soon. We'll be able to bring Tom back."
"Yeah," He said sadly, "I know it will end. I just don't know when. Or how."
Sleep had never been so welcome. Okay, well it probably had, but that night you could not have convinced me. I was probably asleep almost before I finished demorphing. I was so tired, I didn't even have the customary post-battle nightmares. At one point, I either dreamed or experienced my Dad trying to wake me up. But have you ever been able to successfully wake up a rock? Needless to say, I simply rolled over.
I did end up waking at 7:00 that evening. Even then, I just lay on my back yawning and watching the sunset. I went and found my mom and dad, then opened some Campbell's and had some soup. Cold.
I looked around the valley and watched the young Hork-Bajir as they climbed and jumped from tree to tree. The mothers were preparing some tree bark stew, or stroganoff, or spaghetti, or whatever dishes Hork-Bajir eat.
I finally got very bored, so I went osprey and flew to Ax's scoop. When I was still about twenty yards away, Tobias called me.
Hi Marco!
Wait a minute, I said, How'd you know it was me?
C'mon, Marco. I see an osprey, a water bird, flying like a dead duck. And I think to myself, Hmm. I wonder why this osprey is flying like a dead duck over the woods instead of the ocean. It couldn't be any of my friends, because I know they listen to my flying tips. Then I think, Oh wait. Forgot about Marco. He never listens to anyone. Yep. Has to be Marco. Either that, or an insane osprey.
Yeah, yeah, I muttered. I had known they would know it was me. I come around frequently to talk and to veg in front of Ax's tv. What're you watching?
Nothing much, Tobias replied, Ax is just channel surfing.
I landed and demorphed. It felt very good to just hang for a while, even if it was with a bird and an alien. We watched TV, talked, then got bored, so we got ice cream from the Dairy Queen. It felt so good to do something almost normal.
At 10:45, I decided to fly around and make sure everyone was at the barn. Rachel was not. So, I volunteered to fly to her house and see if she was still there. She was, and was fast asleep. I saw my opportunity to get back at her for what she had done that afternoon.
I landed on her window sill. The window was closed. That was fine, I could make do.
TO ARMS! TO ARMS! THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING! TO ARMS! TO ARMS! I yelled at her and banged on the window with my beak.
She screamed and sat bolt upright. She saw me fly away, and the look of terror turned to a look that basically said, "Marco, consider yourself dead." She opened the window, morphed, and followed me into the night.
Luckily, I had a good head start, or Rachel probably would have killed me on the way over. Instead, I flew as fast as I could to the barn, rushed in, demorphed and hid. I couldn't help but notice the looks of amusement given me by the others.
Rachel flew in seconds later, demorphed, and screamed, "Where is he! MARCO!!! Get out here and I'll kill you quickly!"
"Rachel, calm down," Jake said, "We have work to do, and I don't have time for you to go postal. Marco, you can emerge from hiding."
I came out of the empty horse stall I'd hid in, and said, So you're saying I should demorph? I thought a gorilla would be less likely to tempt Rachel to violence. I could see the hint of a smile on Rachel's face. Of course, she wouldn't have purposefully let me see that, but I'd noticed before she had had time to hide it.
Jake didn't say anything, but sighed and looked up to the ceiling in that classic gesture meaning, "Why me Lord?"
I demorphed.
When I had a mouth again I said, "So how are we going to get into the attic?"
"Well," Jake replied, "It has windows, but they'll probably be armed with an alarm system. The Yeerks don't know we know about the ray's whereabouts, so I doubt there'll be a Gleet Biofilter set up there. Bugs maybe? Find a way to disable the alarm?"
"Wait!" I said, "I've got an idea. I just remembered. A lot of boys sometimes climb up into the ceiling of the school. You know, when they think no one is looking. You can push up the ceiling tiles and climb up in there. We could climb up, then morph cockroach. A cockroach could certainly find a crack in the attic floor, and then we could just go right in."
Rachel lifted an eyebrow at me and said, "How would you know about climbing up into the ceiling?"
I thought about ignoring the remark, but then Rachel would think I had done it before, so instead I answered her by saying, "Oh, I saw Jake do it a couple times."
Jake grinned and punched me in the shoulder. "Did not. We both saw Andy and Tap-tap do it once."
I smiled back, relieved that he hadn't told them that Andy and Tap-tap had actually been showing me how to get in.
"But how do we get into the school in the first place?" Cassie asked.
"I am not doing ant again, no matter what anyone says," I said.
Nobody said anything. That was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
Cassie finally said something, but it wasn't what I wanted to hear. "You know, that probably is the best idea. Trust me, no one likes it any better than you do, Marco. But, with ants, we could morph right by a back entrance, then crawl under the door. The ant morphs we have would be nowhere near their own colonies, so they would be pretty easy to control. There also aren't many ants by the doors; too much traffic. It'd be easy."
"Cassie?" I said, "Remind me never to tell you what it is I don't want to do. Whenever I tell anyone what I don't want to do, we do it. Murphy's law, I suppose."
"Okay," Jake said, "Huh. I guess we'll just have to do that. We're wasting time, and we need to get this done. First of all, we need to find a cockroach and an ant for Laria and Yarin."
Cassie went inside her house to see if there were any cockroaches. She came out a little later with a roach. I found an ant.
Laria and Yarin acquired the cockroach and ant. Ax also acquired the ant. (We had only done ant morph once, and that was before Ax was with us.) Earlier that day, Cassie had had Laria and Yarin acquire some other useful morphs as well.
The rest of us also acquired some new morphs. Pigeons. We had decided that even though birds of prey were generally faster, pigeons were more common and less conspicuous when grouped together.
"Are we all ready?" Jake asked.
We nodded.
"Rachel?" I said, "Are you forgetting something?"
"What?" She responded.
"Oh, you know what I'm talking about. That trademark line, the one you always say before every insane mission."
"Oh yeah. Almost forgot! Marco? Shut. Up."
"Ha-ha. Wrong one."
"Let's do it!!!"
"Much better."
We morphed and flew to the school. We didn't talk much on the way over. Just the typical pre-battle banter between Rachel and I.
Soon we arrived at the school. We landed behind some bushes near the back door. The night was darker than a really dark thing. So, we demorphed, and were covered by the darkness. We rested a few minutes before morphing ant. Since ants don't exactly travel fast or far, we each went onto the porch and crouched by the door so that we were as close to it as possible.
Tobias had not morphed ant. Jake decided it was best to have someone provide surveillance. Besides, a hawk wouldn't have been very good at destroying a ray. He would also help by directing us toward the door. Ants don't see too well.
A troop of seven ants marched up to the school's back door, and then underneath. We couldn't tell when we had made it into the school, so we just kept marching for a really long time, until Jake felt sufficiently sure that we were inside. We demorphed about three feet from the door. We had to wait a few minutes to allow our eyes to grow accustomed to the minimal amount of light.
"This way," I whispered and motioned for the others to follow.
We went into a hall with lockers. They were nice and high, which would make it easier to climb into the ceiling. Ax, Laria, and Yarin morphed cockroach. We'd decided that would be easiest because it would be too difficult to have an Andalite climb up, and anything besides a cockroach would have to demorph before going into the attic.
I climbed up onto one of the lockers and removed a ceiling tile. Cassie handed me the three roaches and I put them inside. Next, I climbed up and remembered to remind everyone to only step on the steel beams, not the tiles themselves. I won't say what reminded me.
There wasn't much space, so I morphed as quickly as possible. Everyone else climbed up and did the same.
Everyone here? Jake asked.
We were.
Okay then. Follow this beam of light. It'll lead to a crack up above. That's our ticket in.
We scurried along until we found a crack, then climbed into it.
When we were all in the attic, Jake said, Laria? Yarin? Ax? You guys demorph. There will probably be some controllers up here, so take care of them. Afterwards, tell us when to demorph. We'll stay somewhere safe in the meantime.
Ax and the others demorphed. Now, roach hearing definitely ain't the greatest, but I swear I heard a couple "Andalites!" then some thuds. I definitely felt the thuds.
The controllers have been taken care of, Prince Jake, Ax said. It is now safe for you to demorph.
We did. "Whoah!" I said, "Look at this stuff! It's so totally Star Trek."
"Well," Jake said, "I guess we should morph and take care of the ray."
"Why don't we just smash the whole lab?" Rachel asked. "I mean, we don't even know which one the ray is."
"And if we end up releasing some sort of chemical weapon or something?" I asked. "I don't think so."
A chemical weapon is unlikely, Ax responded. Rachel had an 'I told you so' look on her face. A Quantum virus is also highly unlikely. I doubt there will be a problem if we destroyed the laboratory.
Jake nodded. "Okay then. We go with Rachel's plan. We don't need battle morphs, just something that can wreck a lab well."
I morphed gorilla to handle some of the big, heavy things. First, I stuffed the controllers into a closet where they couldn't see anything or get out. Some of the others just remained as they were. Most of us morphed chimpanzee. We figured hands with thumbs would be helpful.
What happened next was like that scene in Tarzan. You know the one: a bunch of monkeys come and trash the camp. That's just what we did. It didn't take long.
When we were finished, we exited the same way we had come in. Once outside, we morphed birds and flew off.
Okay, now that was cool, I said, I'd say that's probably the first mission that ever resembled fun.
Definitely, Rachel agreed. Let's do this again sometime, shall we?
I just wish it had been the school lab, I said. As expected, there were a few agreeing laughs. It had been a good night. What we'd done had almost been a variation on normal teen behavior. Or what was normal for us. Oh, you know, same old, same old. Turn into monkeys and smash up a laboratory. I do it all the time.
As we flew through the starry night sky, each of us said good night and separated from the others as we neared our own homes.
Chapter 12
The next day, Jake, Tom, Tobias, Yarin, Ax and I got together. I think the girls got together as well on their own. Anyway, we actually had fun. We went to a movie, got some cinnamon buns, then went to Jake's house and played a little basketball. It was great.
As we did these things, I knew what everyone was thinking about. We were all thinking about a time when the war would be over. It would end, and if it ended the way we wanted, this would become normal.
* * * *
That night we met together in Cassie's barn. Tom and Erek were there, too.
"Tom?" Jake said, "We've all been considering something. You still want to help in this war, right?"
"Yeah."
Jake smiled his slow smile. "Then we have a weapon that will help."
Cassie brought out the blue box. Jake said, "This is the device that will give you the power to morph. Just touch one of the sides."
Tom took a deep breath, then placed his hand on it. The box began to glow. After a little while, the box stopped glowing.
"Is that it?"
"Yep," Jake answered, "Now all you have to do is acquire some animals."
Cassie showed him some animals. Tom chose to acquire the cockroach because it was pretty useful as far as bugs go, a peregrine falcon, and a barn owl for night flying. He wasn't able to acquire any firepower morphs at the moment because we didn't have time to take him to the Gardens.
"Okay then. Is everybody ready?" Jake asked.
We nodded. "As ready as I can be, under the circumstances," Tom said.
"Then let's go," Jake said. "Tom, you'll drive. We aren't going far; just a little into the mountains. We'll morph birds and follow your car. I'll give you directions. Erek? You ride with Tom."
We agreed, then morphed night birds so we would be able to see well. Cassie held the barn owl so that Tobias could acquire it; hawks don't see too well in the dark.
We flew quietly, almost as though we were going to a funeral. In a way, we were.
We arrived at the designated spot far too soon. Jake had Tom park the car, then we flew down, landed next too it and demorphed. We had decided on a rocky area with no trees nearby so that the burning the car would not start a forest fire.
Jake had Tom put the car in neutral. Erek pointed it in the right direction, then gave it a massive shove. It slammed into a large boulder, smashing the front end of the car and sending huge splinters of glass in all directions.
We managed to get a back door opened and crumpled up some newspaper then placed it on the seat. We lighted the newspaper and watched as the flame slowly spread from the paper to the seat cushion to the rest of the car. When we decided it had definitely caught, we walked far enough away to be safe in case the flames reached the gas tank and exploded.
We watched for a while, but it was pointless, so we morphed and flew away. Tom came with me to the Hork-Bajir valley, while the others went their separate ways.
* * * *
Tom's funeral was held that Saturday. Ax, Tobias, Laria, Yarin and I couldn't go because it was going to be more than two hours. We did morph pigeons and sit outside much of the time, though.
After the service, I flew to Jake's house. He went up to his room when he got home. He opened the window and let me in.
After I'd demorphed, I said, "It will end. I don't know when, but soon. We'll be able to bring Tom back."
"Yeah," He said sadly, "I know it will end. I just don't know when. Or how."