The Hidden Cube
(Author's note; A sequel to "The Plan", but before that there's a few more. This one is number seven in the "series". Might want to read them first, none of them is very long…)
Larynia staggered as Ax's blade swooped down again and, this time, hit her shoulder.
She held her own tail up only by habit. But her blade dangled loosely from the end.
Did you like my trick? the Yeerk inside Ax's head asked.
Larynia knew she couldn't outrun him. She would have been able to outfight him - she'd won over him a thousand times when they were younger - but Ax's Yeerk had learned that trick. He'd caught her blade and twisted it until it snapped at its root. The pain was unbearable.
Any Andalite that looses a blade feels depressed. Mourning. Larynia would never have guessed it would happen to her. But it had. And now she was weaponless.
And being weaponless in front of an enemy was turning out to be a very ugly experience. She hadn't counted the cuts, but they were counting up to more and more. Some were frighteningly deep.
She knew there was only one thing to do. However much it went against her pride.
MARCO! she cried.
Ax's face took on a look of disgust - but was that fear in his eyes? - and his blade stung her side again, only to swoop up and the flat of the blade hit her neck.
Larynia swayed. Her hand flew up to her forehead, as if to steady herself. Then she leapt away when Ax's blade again came towards her.
Shredder. Her shredder was on the ground. Somewhere on the other side of Ax. Maybe…
She leapt away again to avoid Ax's blade, but it left a neat slash across her arm. She was getting slower. The wounds slowed her down…
Larynia? Marco yelled. Where are you?
Ax's blade swooped down, she avoided it, but it turned in mid-air and cut deep into her side.
Here! Larynia called. And, if only to prove to herself that she wasn't out of the picture yet, she added; Hurry, you proton-brained human!
Tobias shot down another bug fighter. It was all too easy; they couldn't see him, so they couldn't shoot him. His camo-bug was hovering alone, over the mass of desperately firing bug fighters.
Not only did they completely miss the camo-bug when they fired, but they also shot each other. And Tobias was honest enough to admit that he had nothing against that.
He reached out for weapons again. Aimed for a fighter. Locked on target. Fired. The fighter blew into nothingness. Debris rained down in flames.
"Bingo," he said.
Yes. Much too easy. Boring.
Then the camo-bug's systems flashed red and instantly it threw itself to the side.
Tobias recovered quickly enough to see the flash of green light that was a hand-held shredder being fired. It had almost hit him! A mistake, of course, but it made him a little annoyed.
Anyway. That had been the signal. It was time to get to ground level. He fired at a few more bug fighters - just to create some confusion - and then turned the camo-bug's nose downwards and dove towards Earth.
He found the others right below him. He landed, put the systems on rest - but kept a mental link to the computer for safety - and opened the door.
A gorilla stood outside. Marco in gorilla morph. Gently hung over his shoulder was Larynia.
Alive, but barely conscious.
In his gorilla fist was an Andalite's tail. On the ground, having been dragged behind Marco, was Ax.
"What happened to Larynia?" Tobias asked.
Ax happened to Larynia, Marco replied in a dead, dark voice. If he wasn't a Controller, I'd have killed him. Slowly and agonizingly.
Tobias believed him. Marco was standing perfectly still, but quivering with held-back rage.
Out of the darkness came Jake, still in tiger morph. He had Rachel thrown up clumsily on his back. She wasn't moving. But that was a good sign; Rachel was a Controller. And when she was moving, she was big-time trouble.
Get me those force field ropes, Jake ordered. The ones you used on me when I was a Controller.
Tobias turned and searched around in the camo-bug until he found what he was looking for. He walked back outside and gently placed the "unbreakable" ropes around Rachel's wrists.
"They're low on power," he said. "But there's no time to refill them. We'll have to keep an eye on her, she could get loose any time."
It's better than nothing, Jake said and begun to demorph. Tobias pulled Rachel up into the camo-bug and left her in the back end. He wished there was a cage or something to lock her in, but the wall between the transport/cage area and the main room had been removed to let the small fighter carry three humans and an Andalite without being so crowded.
Marco silently lifted Larynia into the camo-bug. She couldn't stand on her own, so Tobias had to help her, and with that help she managed to lay down in a corner without falling along the way.
Any fool could have see what was wrong; she was bleeding badly from several cuts, probably a lot more than what was good for her, and her tail-blade was… twisted… unnaturally. It was simply fractured at the root.
Jake climbed in through the door and moved out of the way to let Marco lift - very brusquely - Ax in. After Marco climbed in himself, Jake shut the door.
"What about the Chee?" Tobias asked.
"They said they'd manage back on their own. We're outta here."
The large, shabby dog waved it's tail and rolled over for a belly rub. Jordan smiled; no matter what, the dog's blind do-goodish innocence could always make her smile.
"They're coming back," Sara sannounced, seeing a flicker of colour in the sky.
"Think they succeeded?" Jordan asked. "We've tried to save Rachel a few times. We never managed."
Sara smiled. "This is Jake, Tobias and Marco we're talking about. Plus Ax's cousin. As much of the Animorphs as you can get. If they can't, we'll sign it off as impossible."
"Jake failed in the long run," Jordan reminded her. "He lost the war."
"So will we," Sara countered. "However much you dislike the thought. It's impossible to win a war of a few hundred against a bunch of billion."
"There's a first for everything."
"Yeah, I suppose," Sara agreed carefully. "And if anyone can do it, it's someone in our family. Stubborn enough."
"We can only try." Jordan sighed and stood up. "Let's go meet them. See if our sister is finally on her way to freedom."
Rachel growled and pulled further into the corner. The force field ropes had given way, and her hands were free; fists ready to punch. She had gotten free just in the moment that Jake and Ax had left the transport.
Tobias was left to catch her again. Something turning out to be harder than it seemed.
"Look, Yeerk," Tobias said tiredly, "we can do this two ways. The easy way, or the hard way."
He reached out to grab her arm but she kicked out and hit his knee before he came close enough. Her hands shot out and he was shoved back again.
He rose awkwardly, rubbing his knee. "The hard way, then," he sighed. "Fine."
Not taking his eyes from the growling Controller he fetched the iron glove and slid it slowly onto his hand. Then he walked back to Rachel. She glared suspiciously at the glove.
Tobias held it up in a fist.
"I can knock out a Hork-Bajir with this," he said. "Don't make me hit you."
"You'd never dare," Rachel sneered. "Weak human."
Tobias bent down and quickly snatched her arm with the gloved hand. The pain made her flinch, and she kicked out again - less accurate this time - and he avoided it easily. He pulled her to her feet, and made sure her hands couldn't reach his eyes.
"That wasn't so hard, was it?"
"Dirty son of Andalite filth!"
Tobias's glove-clad hand squeezed harder - maybe too hard - around her arm. His eyes turned as hard as they had been while he was a hawk. He turned her around, and grabbed her throat (not in the glove-clad hand, in that case he was afraid he'd crush it.)
He spoke in a dangerous voice. "Take. That. Back."
Rachel sneered at him. But even for a Yeerk it was hard to manage a proper sneer with a hand holding her throat and her own hands held firmly at her side.
"Why?" she asked. "I'm a Yeerk, yes, and you don't mind killing Yeerks. But harm me and you harm Rachel. And little sweet Tobias wouldn't do that. Would you?"
Tobias replied in something that could only be a growl. But he forced himself to forget it and pulled her out of the fighter to join Jake and Ax.
"Is she okay?" Jake asked.
Marco was sitting, as he had done for hours, cross-legged next to Larynia.
"She's asleep," he said in an empty voice. "And alive. Not okay. Definitely not okay."
Jake looked over the wounds that the Chee had tended after best ability. The tail, they said, they couldn't do anything about. It was a very complicated fracture, and they couldn't fix it without the proper equipment. They couldn't even make it grow back right. They had lined the bones up properly as good as possible, and tied it up securely, but that was all they could do. A bunch of ligaments had snapped, and the Chee didn't dare touch them because they weren't sure which ligament part belonged to the next.
She'd lost a lot of blood. Since they brought her back, she'd been asleep when she was at her best. And the Chee had told Jake that "there was nothing to do" in a very sad way.
"When she wakes," Jake said, assuming the best that she'd wake long enough, "tell her to morph the wounds away."
Marco shook his head. "You never listen, do you? The Andalites fled with nothing. Which means, no escafil devices. Larynia can't morph. It's the only way to get her tail back, to get her back, and the numb-witted Andalites don't have any cursed cubes!"
Silence. Marco clenched his hands into fists until his knuckles were white.
"Neither do the Yeerks," Jake said. "At least, they didn't a week ago."
Marco sighed emptily, looking down at the sleeping Andalite. "Then there's no hope."
Jake disagreed. "There is one hope."
"What?"
"One escafil device. The one Cassie hid."
"Jake? You outta your mind?" Tobias snapped. "False hope. You've given Marco false hope! If the Yeerks didn't find that escafil device over all these years, then we won't. Cassie was the only one who knew where it was hidden."
Tobias was leaned over a part of the camo-bug that had taken a glance shot. It wasn't bad, but he wanted it fixed. And he wanted to have something to do to keep his mind clear. Otherwise he'd go mad. Too much to worry about.
"And Cassie is dead," Jake agreed in the same flat voice he used every time he talked about her. "But… Larynia'll die as well if we don't find it."
Tobias's head flew up. "Who said so?"
"No-one," Jake said. "But the Chee kind of suggested it, gently, when Marco wasn't near. And look at her. She's barely alive. We need her alive. She's essential to our mission."
"Why?"
Jake sighed. "When we get the Time Matrix and go back, sure; we'll alert our camp. Maybe lead the Yeerks away from it. But that would only delay the defeat. We want to undo it. For that, we need the Andalites to come. They won't listen to any of us, but they ought to listen to Larynia."
"That still leaves one question. How do we find that escafil device? Before it's too late?"
"We'll find it. We'll find it because we have no choice."
Jordan had a serious talk to the two Andalites in her camp. They knew nothing more of escafil devices than anyone else; which was, they weren't around any longer. She was very angry at them for it, and for the next few days they tip-toed around camp even more than usual.
She spoke to the Hork-Bajir seers. They barely knew what an escafil device was, having been born in Yeerk clutches and not having been too informed about the world until they were set free.
She spread word around her officers and the refugees and all the warriors that any information on escafil devices was well needed. Not many knew anything. A few knew how they looked, and could mention a material they were partly made of, but nothing more.
Then she spoke to the Chee. Two of them were away - pretending to be Ax and Rachel to fool the Yeerks. The remaining knew very little of use, although they knew more than all the others put together. But one of them mentioned that an escafil device could be located simply; by scanning for a specific type of morphing energy. But of course, the scanners with that ability were rare, and maybe there weren't any left.
Jordan sent her to Tobias, thinking maybe they could build one or find something that would do just as well in the camo-bug.
"Possible," the Chee, called Theresa, said. "But not likely. I don't know much about how they work, actually, but… I'll try."
Tobias rummaged through the camo-bug. "It is here somewhere," he repeated. "I know it is. It can't be gone, I mean, where could it have gone?"
"What are you looking for?" Theresa asked again.
"You said… about finding those cubes… you could track energy. I was hunting Veleeks on Saturn before… Visser One had some silly idea about using them again… I have it here, somewhere."
"Have what?" Theresa wondered. If she hadn't been a Chee, she'd have gotten annoyed by then. But Chee don't get annoyed. And Theresa was thankful for that. Ever since she had arrived to the camo-bug, and spoken for only a few moments to Tobias, he'd been rummaging around inside looking for something and he didn't even clearly say what.
Tobias straightened up, and his gaze swept across the camo-bug. It locked on something, and three quick steps put him in a new place to look.
"Okay, I give up," Theresa sighed. "tell me what you're looking for so I can help you. Or I'm leaving to work with my fellow Chee. You can at least talk to them."
"I'm looking for an energy beam," Tobias said. "we used it to lure the Veleeks."
"And how, exactly, would an energy beam help us find an escafil device?"
Tobias straightened again and looked at her. "It's not only an energy beam," he said. "We noticed that some Veleeks began preying on bug fighter energy - which was the reason for my Yeerk to get this camo-bug, which uses another type of energy - and we needed to avoid them. Simple enough… full speed out of the atmosphere. But we set up the energy beams to be able to track energy as well to warn us earlier."
"Can it track morphing energy?"
"I don't know," Tobias said. "I don't think so. But it can track many different types of energy… maybe the cube holds one of those."
"It's a slim chance."
"It's better than nothing. And there's another chance… a slim one, of course… that the energy beam can be reset to track morphing energy. If you Chee know… or anyone of the former Controllers know… how to 'teach' it a new energy."
Larynia squinted against the light. She was standing. Her tail was held proudly behind her. She had a faint feeling of that being somehow… wrong. But it vanished as soon as it had come.
A shadow emerged. An Andalite, tall, proud; like the Andalites had been before. He was mostly a shadow, fading and then reappearing with new strength. In a way, very familiar.
Larynia.
Then she knew. She knew who this was. He had stopped a bit from her. Barely visible; a dark figure against a bright light. A proud figure.
Elfangor.
Go back, Larynia, he instructed firmly. You're not coming through here yet. Go back.
She didn't understand. She was confused. Coming through where? she asked. Go back where?!
Go back, he commanded, lifting his hand as if to say farewell.
She was fading. The light faded, she faded… everything faded. Slipped away.
And suddenly she was back. Her tail was filled with pain. She felt dizzy, weak… she was lying on her side. She forced her eyes open. Two darker, human eyes were watching her.
Marco.
"Hang on."
She wanted to answer him. Tell him… something. But she couldn't form any thought-speech, however she wanted to. It was like trying to grab something far above your head with your hands tied to the ground.
"Please hang on."
Yes. She was back. For the moment, she was back… then her mind faded again as she fell into darkness.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Author's note; Next part will be up as soon as I finish it. Shouldn't take long.
(Author's note; A sequel to "The Plan", but before that there's a few more. This one is number seven in the "series". Might want to read them first, none of them is very long…)
Larynia staggered as Ax's blade swooped down again and, this time, hit her shoulder.
She held her own tail up only by habit. But her blade dangled loosely from the end.
Did you like my trick? the Yeerk inside Ax's head asked.
Larynia knew she couldn't outrun him. She would have been able to outfight him - she'd won over him a thousand times when they were younger - but Ax's Yeerk had learned that trick. He'd caught her blade and twisted it until it snapped at its root. The pain was unbearable.
Any Andalite that looses a blade feels depressed. Mourning. Larynia would never have guessed it would happen to her. But it had. And now she was weaponless.
And being weaponless in front of an enemy was turning out to be a very ugly experience. She hadn't counted the cuts, but they were counting up to more and more. Some were frighteningly deep.
She knew there was only one thing to do. However much it went against her pride.
MARCO! she cried.
Ax's face took on a look of disgust - but was that fear in his eyes? - and his blade stung her side again, only to swoop up and the flat of the blade hit her neck.
Larynia swayed. Her hand flew up to her forehead, as if to steady herself. Then she leapt away when Ax's blade again came towards her.
Shredder. Her shredder was on the ground. Somewhere on the other side of Ax. Maybe…
She leapt away again to avoid Ax's blade, but it left a neat slash across her arm. She was getting slower. The wounds slowed her down…
Larynia? Marco yelled. Where are you?
Ax's blade swooped down, she avoided it, but it turned in mid-air and cut deep into her side.
Here! Larynia called. And, if only to prove to herself that she wasn't out of the picture yet, she added; Hurry, you proton-brained human!
Tobias shot down another bug fighter. It was all too easy; they couldn't see him, so they couldn't shoot him. His camo-bug was hovering alone, over the mass of desperately firing bug fighters.
Not only did they completely miss the camo-bug when they fired, but they also shot each other. And Tobias was honest enough to admit that he had nothing against that.
He reached out for weapons again. Aimed for a fighter. Locked on target. Fired. The fighter blew into nothingness. Debris rained down in flames.
"Bingo," he said.
Yes. Much too easy. Boring.
Then the camo-bug's systems flashed red and instantly it threw itself to the side.
Tobias recovered quickly enough to see the flash of green light that was a hand-held shredder being fired. It had almost hit him! A mistake, of course, but it made him a little annoyed.
Anyway. That had been the signal. It was time to get to ground level. He fired at a few more bug fighters - just to create some confusion - and then turned the camo-bug's nose downwards and dove towards Earth.
He found the others right below him. He landed, put the systems on rest - but kept a mental link to the computer for safety - and opened the door.
A gorilla stood outside. Marco in gorilla morph. Gently hung over his shoulder was Larynia.
Alive, but barely conscious.
In his gorilla fist was an Andalite's tail. On the ground, having been dragged behind Marco, was Ax.
"What happened to Larynia?" Tobias asked.
Ax happened to Larynia, Marco replied in a dead, dark voice. If he wasn't a Controller, I'd have killed him. Slowly and agonizingly.
Tobias believed him. Marco was standing perfectly still, but quivering with held-back rage.
Out of the darkness came Jake, still in tiger morph. He had Rachel thrown up clumsily on his back. She wasn't moving. But that was a good sign; Rachel was a Controller. And when she was moving, she was big-time trouble.
Get me those force field ropes, Jake ordered. The ones you used on me when I was a Controller.
Tobias turned and searched around in the camo-bug until he found what he was looking for. He walked back outside and gently placed the "unbreakable" ropes around Rachel's wrists.
"They're low on power," he said. "But there's no time to refill them. We'll have to keep an eye on her, she could get loose any time."
It's better than nothing, Jake said and begun to demorph. Tobias pulled Rachel up into the camo-bug and left her in the back end. He wished there was a cage or something to lock her in, but the wall between the transport/cage area and the main room had been removed to let the small fighter carry three humans and an Andalite without being so crowded.
Marco silently lifted Larynia into the camo-bug. She couldn't stand on her own, so Tobias had to help her, and with that help she managed to lay down in a corner without falling along the way.
Any fool could have see what was wrong; she was bleeding badly from several cuts, probably a lot more than what was good for her, and her tail-blade was… twisted… unnaturally. It was simply fractured at the root.
Jake climbed in through the door and moved out of the way to let Marco lift - very brusquely - Ax in. After Marco climbed in himself, Jake shut the door.
"What about the Chee?" Tobias asked.
"They said they'd manage back on their own. We're outta here."
The large, shabby dog waved it's tail and rolled over for a belly rub. Jordan smiled; no matter what, the dog's blind do-goodish innocence could always make her smile.
"They're coming back," Sara sannounced, seeing a flicker of colour in the sky.
"Think they succeeded?" Jordan asked. "We've tried to save Rachel a few times. We never managed."
Sara smiled. "This is Jake, Tobias and Marco we're talking about. Plus Ax's cousin. As much of the Animorphs as you can get. If they can't, we'll sign it off as impossible."
"Jake failed in the long run," Jordan reminded her. "He lost the war."
"So will we," Sara countered. "However much you dislike the thought. It's impossible to win a war of a few hundred against a bunch of billion."
"There's a first for everything."
"Yeah, I suppose," Sara agreed carefully. "And if anyone can do it, it's someone in our family. Stubborn enough."
"We can only try." Jordan sighed and stood up. "Let's go meet them. See if our sister is finally on her way to freedom."
Rachel growled and pulled further into the corner. The force field ropes had given way, and her hands were free; fists ready to punch. She had gotten free just in the moment that Jake and Ax had left the transport.
Tobias was left to catch her again. Something turning out to be harder than it seemed.
"Look, Yeerk," Tobias said tiredly, "we can do this two ways. The easy way, or the hard way."
He reached out to grab her arm but she kicked out and hit his knee before he came close enough. Her hands shot out and he was shoved back again.
He rose awkwardly, rubbing his knee. "The hard way, then," he sighed. "Fine."
Not taking his eyes from the growling Controller he fetched the iron glove and slid it slowly onto his hand. Then he walked back to Rachel. She glared suspiciously at the glove.
Tobias held it up in a fist.
"I can knock out a Hork-Bajir with this," he said. "Don't make me hit you."
"You'd never dare," Rachel sneered. "Weak human."
Tobias bent down and quickly snatched her arm with the gloved hand. The pain made her flinch, and she kicked out again - less accurate this time - and he avoided it easily. He pulled her to her feet, and made sure her hands couldn't reach his eyes.
"That wasn't so hard, was it?"
"Dirty son of Andalite filth!"
Tobias's glove-clad hand squeezed harder - maybe too hard - around her arm. His eyes turned as hard as they had been while he was a hawk. He turned her around, and grabbed her throat (not in the glove-clad hand, in that case he was afraid he'd crush it.)
He spoke in a dangerous voice. "Take. That. Back."
Rachel sneered at him. But even for a Yeerk it was hard to manage a proper sneer with a hand holding her throat and her own hands held firmly at her side.
"Why?" she asked. "I'm a Yeerk, yes, and you don't mind killing Yeerks. But harm me and you harm Rachel. And little sweet Tobias wouldn't do that. Would you?"
Tobias replied in something that could only be a growl. But he forced himself to forget it and pulled her out of the fighter to join Jake and Ax.
"Is she okay?" Jake asked.
Marco was sitting, as he had done for hours, cross-legged next to Larynia.
"She's asleep," he said in an empty voice. "And alive. Not okay. Definitely not okay."
Jake looked over the wounds that the Chee had tended after best ability. The tail, they said, they couldn't do anything about. It was a very complicated fracture, and they couldn't fix it without the proper equipment. They couldn't even make it grow back right. They had lined the bones up properly as good as possible, and tied it up securely, but that was all they could do. A bunch of ligaments had snapped, and the Chee didn't dare touch them because they weren't sure which ligament part belonged to the next.
She'd lost a lot of blood. Since they brought her back, she'd been asleep when she was at her best. And the Chee had told Jake that "there was nothing to do" in a very sad way.
"When she wakes," Jake said, assuming the best that she'd wake long enough, "tell her to morph the wounds away."
Marco shook his head. "You never listen, do you? The Andalites fled with nothing. Which means, no escafil devices. Larynia can't morph. It's the only way to get her tail back, to get her back, and the numb-witted Andalites don't have any cursed cubes!"
Silence. Marco clenched his hands into fists until his knuckles were white.
"Neither do the Yeerks," Jake said. "At least, they didn't a week ago."
Marco sighed emptily, looking down at the sleeping Andalite. "Then there's no hope."
Jake disagreed. "There is one hope."
"What?"
"One escafil device. The one Cassie hid."
"Jake? You outta your mind?" Tobias snapped. "False hope. You've given Marco false hope! If the Yeerks didn't find that escafil device over all these years, then we won't. Cassie was the only one who knew where it was hidden."
Tobias was leaned over a part of the camo-bug that had taken a glance shot. It wasn't bad, but he wanted it fixed. And he wanted to have something to do to keep his mind clear. Otherwise he'd go mad. Too much to worry about.
"And Cassie is dead," Jake agreed in the same flat voice he used every time he talked about her. "But… Larynia'll die as well if we don't find it."
Tobias's head flew up. "Who said so?"
"No-one," Jake said. "But the Chee kind of suggested it, gently, when Marco wasn't near. And look at her. She's barely alive. We need her alive. She's essential to our mission."
"Why?"
Jake sighed. "When we get the Time Matrix and go back, sure; we'll alert our camp. Maybe lead the Yeerks away from it. But that would only delay the defeat. We want to undo it. For that, we need the Andalites to come. They won't listen to any of us, but they ought to listen to Larynia."
"That still leaves one question. How do we find that escafil device? Before it's too late?"
"We'll find it. We'll find it because we have no choice."
Jordan had a serious talk to the two Andalites in her camp. They knew nothing more of escafil devices than anyone else; which was, they weren't around any longer. She was very angry at them for it, and for the next few days they tip-toed around camp even more than usual.
She spoke to the Hork-Bajir seers. They barely knew what an escafil device was, having been born in Yeerk clutches and not having been too informed about the world until they were set free.
She spread word around her officers and the refugees and all the warriors that any information on escafil devices was well needed. Not many knew anything. A few knew how they looked, and could mention a material they were partly made of, but nothing more.
Then she spoke to the Chee. Two of them were away - pretending to be Ax and Rachel to fool the Yeerks. The remaining knew very little of use, although they knew more than all the others put together. But one of them mentioned that an escafil device could be located simply; by scanning for a specific type of morphing energy. But of course, the scanners with that ability were rare, and maybe there weren't any left.
Jordan sent her to Tobias, thinking maybe they could build one or find something that would do just as well in the camo-bug.
"Possible," the Chee, called Theresa, said. "But not likely. I don't know much about how they work, actually, but… I'll try."
Tobias rummaged through the camo-bug. "It is here somewhere," he repeated. "I know it is. It can't be gone, I mean, where could it have gone?"
"What are you looking for?" Theresa asked again.
"You said… about finding those cubes… you could track energy. I was hunting Veleeks on Saturn before… Visser One had some silly idea about using them again… I have it here, somewhere."
"Have what?" Theresa wondered. If she hadn't been a Chee, she'd have gotten annoyed by then. But Chee don't get annoyed. And Theresa was thankful for that. Ever since she had arrived to the camo-bug, and spoken for only a few moments to Tobias, he'd been rummaging around inside looking for something and he didn't even clearly say what.
Tobias straightened up, and his gaze swept across the camo-bug. It locked on something, and three quick steps put him in a new place to look.
"Okay, I give up," Theresa sighed. "tell me what you're looking for so I can help you. Or I'm leaving to work with my fellow Chee. You can at least talk to them."
"I'm looking for an energy beam," Tobias said. "we used it to lure the Veleeks."
"And how, exactly, would an energy beam help us find an escafil device?"
Tobias straightened again and looked at her. "It's not only an energy beam," he said. "We noticed that some Veleeks began preying on bug fighter energy - which was the reason for my Yeerk to get this camo-bug, which uses another type of energy - and we needed to avoid them. Simple enough… full speed out of the atmosphere. But we set up the energy beams to be able to track energy as well to warn us earlier."
"Can it track morphing energy?"
"I don't know," Tobias said. "I don't think so. But it can track many different types of energy… maybe the cube holds one of those."
"It's a slim chance."
"It's better than nothing. And there's another chance… a slim one, of course… that the energy beam can be reset to track morphing energy. If you Chee know… or anyone of the former Controllers know… how to 'teach' it a new energy."
Larynia squinted against the light. She was standing. Her tail was held proudly behind her. She had a faint feeling of that being somehow… wrong. But it vanished as soon as it had come.
A shadow emerged. An Andalite, tall, proud; like the Andalites had been before. He was mostly a shadow, fading and then reappearing with new strength. In a way, very familiar.
Larynia.
Then she knew. She knew who this was. He had stopped a bit from her. Barely visible; a dark figure against a bright light. A proud figure.
Elfangor.
Go back, Larynia, he instructed firmly. You're not coming through here yet. Go back.
She didn't understand. She was confused. Coming through where? she asked. Go back where?!
Go back, he commanded, lifting his hand as if to say farewell.
She was fading. The light faded, she faded… everything faded. Slipped away.
And suddenly she was back. Her tail was filled with pain. She felt dizzy, weak… she was lying on her side. She forced her eyes open. Two darker, human eyes were watching her.
Marco.
"Hang on."
She wanted to answer him. Tell him… something. But she couldn't form any thought-speech, however she wanted to. It was like trying to grab something far above your head with your hands tied to the ground.
"Please hang on."
Yes. She was back. For the moment, she was back… then her mind faded again as she fell into darkness.
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Author's note; Next part will be up as soon as I finish it. Shouldn't take long.
