"Come on, Marco, we've been planning this mission for
weeks. You can't chicken out now!" Jake said. "We're all
scared, but you gotta come through. We need you tomorrow,
dude." We all understood how Marco felt, because it's the
same thing each one of us was feeling. It's just that Marco was
the only one who could get away with saying it. Marco is like
that. Let me explain something to you. The Earth is under
attack. Not attack, like the little green men from Mars are
firing laser beams at us or anything. We're being invaded
quietly and discreetly by the Yeerks. They are a parasitic
species like gray slugs. They crawl into your brain and flatten
themselves into every crevice. They can open your mind and
read it like a novel. They can see every dream, every fear, and
every memory. And worse, they can laugh at it. Anyone and
everyone could be one. Your mom, dad, brother (Jake's
brother Tom is a Controller), the cop at the donut shop, or
your favorite teacher.
I'm Rachel. I can't tell you any specifics bout me
because we can never let anyone know who we really are. It
would be better to be dead. Better dead that to be controlled
by the Yeerks. I'm tall and blonde, but believe me, if you ever
feel the need to call me airheaded, you better hold your
tongue because that is one thing that I definitely am not.
Marco calls me Xena: Warrior Princess. I guess I am a little too
into the whole war thing, but I'm not a maniac. I know my
limits. It's just that up until that night at the construction site,
I felt like my life was missing something. I felt like God had a
purpose for my life but that I didn't know what it was. I know
that killing is bad, no matter what you're killing, but I think
that ours is justified. And I'm sure any human who is
controlled by a Yeerk would agree with us.
I know alot about being a Controller because Jake was
one for a while. He told us everything about it. Well, almost
everything. I have a feeling that he wasn't telling us
everything. But I know that there are some things that I don't
want to know.
Jake doesn't want or ask for the opportunity to be our
leader. But he is. He has this commanding presence. It makes
you want to stand up straight and say "Yes, sir" and "No, sir".
Even Ax calls him "Prince Jake". Despite many attempts to get
him to stop, Ax will always consider him his Prince. He's my
cousin, (Jake's my cousin, not Ax) and I know we're a lot alike,
but he'll always have authority over me. Cassie, my best friend
says that I'm like that, too, but I don't think so.
Cassie is exactly the opposite of Jake and I. She isn't
controlling at all and doesn't care about fashion or what she
looks like. She wears the most ordinary clothes of anyone I
know. That doesn't really mean anything, but that's one of the
things I notice about people. She is soft-spoken, but has an
outlandish love for animals. Her mom works at the Gardens, a
zoo where we have acquired many animals. Her dad runs an
emergency animal clinic in their barn. Cassie is the most
talented morpher of us all, because, as Marco says, "We all
know she likes animals more than humans anyways".
Sometimes, she can control the morphing and give herself
owl's wings or tiger claws just for a moment. It's really cool.
Not even Ax can morph like her. He has a word for it,
but I can never remember what it is. It means artist in Ax-
speak. Let me explain. Ax is an Andalite. His older brother,
Prince Elfangor Sirinial-Shamtul crash-landed on Earth and
gave us those morphing powers before he was murdered. The
one who killed him was Visser Three. No one will ever mention
it, except Marco, who makes jokes about it, as he does about
everything else.
You see, Marco has an odd way of expressing himself.
He can find a joke or a one-liner in any situation imaginable.
He hides his fear and sadness behind his humor. His mother
drowned a while back, or atleast that's what we all thought.
She was in fact infested by a Yeerk and was soon inhabited by
Visser One. We all are convinced that Marco is the first ever-
actual egomaniac on the face of the Earth. No one will ever be
as cute as Marco thinks he is. And I mean, no one. He's really
great once you get to know him, but it's hard to get past that
reckless sense of humor.
The last member of our strange group is Tobias. You
see Tobias isn't totally human anymore. Tobias was trapped in
a morph of a red-tailed hawk for more than two hours. That's
the only "rule" to morphing. Never, ever stay in a morph for
more than two hours. He is, or was, destined to remain in the
hawk body forever. The Ellimist, one of the puppet masters of
the universe, decided to give a second chance and return to
him his morphing powers. His normal body is a hawk, but he
can now morph and go on missions with the rest of us.
Back to our mission. This mission isn't especially
complicated, yet it's very important. On our last mission, we
were out in Tobias' and Ax's territory working with the free
Hork-Bajir. Tobias says that he saw a little girl walking near us
and that she had something in her hand. He told us that he
was pretty sure it was a camera. So Tobias tracked the little
girl to her house. Now all we have to do is get into her house,
take the camera, and destroy it. Not so difficult, right? Right.
Chapter 1
Today is what, Saturday? No, it's Sunday. And we're on
our way to the little girl's house. Tobias said her name is
Emily. How he found that out, I'll never know. Too much time
on his hands, I guess. Well, no hands, but lots of time. I think
everyone remembers when Tobias said that. It was a long time
ago, the first time he ever made a joke about his condition.
We're all in our bird morphs, Tobias as himself, I'm a
bald eagle, Jake and Marco are ospreys, and Cassie is her
beloved owl. We aren't flying together. Flying together would
be alot easier, but the birds we are all morphed as, don't
exactly kick it together. Any bird watchers may find our flying
together as just a bit odd.
So, we were flying at different altitudes at different
intervals from each other. Tobias was in the lead, riding the
thermals as he always does. Jake and Marco were the closest
together, flying low.
Cassie was nowhere to be found. She said she'd catch
up, as she had something to finish. We said we'd wait, but she
insisted.
I was way up, above everyone else, because eagles
aren't normally seen around these parts and the last thing we
wanted to do was raise suspicions.
Tobias said in thought-speak, There's the house.
weeks. You can't chicken out now!" Jake said. "We're all
scared, but you gotta come through. We need you tomorrow,
dude." We all understood how Marco felt, because it's the
same thing each one of us was feeling. It's just that Marco was
the only one who could get away with saying it. Marco is like
that. Let me explain something to you. The Earth is under
attack. Not attack, like the little green men from Mars are
firing laser beams at us or anything. We're being invaded
quietly and discreetly by the Yeerks. They are a parasitic
species like gray slugs. They crawl into your brain and flatten
themselves into every crevice. They can open your mind and
read it like a novel. They can see every dream, every fear, and
every memory. And worse, they can laugh at it. Anyone and
everyone could be one. Your mom, dad, brother (Jake's
brother Tom is a Controller), the cop at the donut shop, or
your favorite teacher.
I'm Rachel. I can't tell you any specifics bout me
because we can never let anyone know who we really are. It
would be better to be dead. Better dead that to be controlled
by the Yeerks. I'm tall and blonde, but believe me, if you ever
feel the need to call me airheaded, you better hold your
tongue because that is one thing that I definitely am not.
Marco calls me Xena: Warrior Princess. I guess I am a little too
into the whole war thing, but I'm not a maniac. I know my
limits. It's just that up until that night at the construction site,
I felt like my life was missing something. I felt like God had a
purpose for my life but that I didn't know what it was. I know
that killing is bad, no matter what you're killing, but I think
that ours is justified. And I'm sure any human who is
controlled by a Yeerk would agree with us.
I know alot about being a Controller because Jake was
one for a while. He told us everything about it. Well, almost
everything. I have a feeling that he wasn't telling us
everything. But I know that there are some things that I don't
want to know.
Jake doesn't want or ask for the opportunity to be our
leader. But he is. He has this commanding presence. It makes
you want to stand up straight and say "Yes, sir" and "No, sir".
Even Ax calls him "Prince Jake". Despite many attempts to get
him to stop, Ax will always consider him his Prince. He's my
cousin, (Jake's my cousin, not Ax) and I know we're a lot alike,
but he'll always have authority over me. Cassie, my best friend
says that I'm like that, too, but I don't think so.
Cassie is exactly the opposite of Jake and I. She isn't
controlling at all and doesn't care about fashion or what she
looks like. She wears the most ordinary clothes of anyone I
know. That doesn't really mean anything, but that's one of the
things I notice about people. She is soft-spoken, but has an
outlandish love for animals. Her mom works at the Gardens, a
zoo where we have acquired many animals. Her dad runs an
emergency animal clinic in their barn. Cassie is the most
talented morpher of us all, because, as Marco says, "We all
know she likes animals more than humans anyways".
Sometimes, she can control the morphing and give herself
owl's wings or tiger claws just for a moment. It's really cool.
Not even Ax can morph like her. He has a word for it,
but I can never remember what it is. It means artist in Ax-
speak. Let me explain. Ax is an Andalite. His older brother,
Prince Elfangor Sirinial-Shamtul crash-landed on Earth and
gave us those morphing powers before he was murdered. The
one who killed him was Visser Three. No one will ever mention
it, except Marco, who makes jokes about it, as he does about
everything else.
You see, Marco has an odd way of expressing himself.
He can find a joke or a one-liner in any situation imaginable.
He hides his fear and sadness behind his humor. His mother
drowned a while back, or atleast that's what we all thought.
She was in fact infested by a Yeerk and was soon inhabited by
Visser One. We all are convinced that Marco is the first ever-
actual egomaniac on the face of the Earth. No one will ever be
as cute as Marco thinks he is. And I mean, no one. He's really
great once you get to know him, but it's hard to get past that
reckless sense of humor.
The last member of our strange group is Tobias. You
see Tobias isn't totally human anymore. Tobias was trapped in
a morph of a red-tailed hawk for more than two hours. That's
the only "rule" to morphing. Never, ever stay in a morph for
more than two hours. He is, or was, destined to remain in the
hawk body forever. The Ellimist, one of the puppet masters of
the universe, decided to give a second chance and return to
him his morphing powers. His normal body is a hawk, but he
can now morph and go on missions with the rest of us.
Back to our mission. This mission isn't especially
complicated, yet it's very important. On our last mission, we
were out in Tobias' and Ax's territory working with the free
Hork-Bajir. Tobias says that he saw a little girl walking near us
and that she had something in her hand. He told us that he
was pretty sure it was a camera. So Tobias tracked the little
girl to her house. Now all we have to do is get into her house,
take the camera, and destroy it. Not so difficult, right? Right.
Chapter 1
Today is what, Saturday? No, it's Sunday. And we're on
our way to the little girl's house. Tobias said her name is
Emily. How he found that out, I'll never know. Too much time
on his hands, I guess. Well, no hands, but lots of time. I think
everyone remembers when Tobias said that. It was a long time
ago, the first time he ever made a joke about his condition.
We're all in our bird morphs, Tobias as himself, I'm a
bald eagle, Jake and Marco are ospreys, and Cassie is her
beloved owl. We aren't flying together. Flying together would
be alot easier, but the birds we are all morphed as, don't
exactly kick it together. Any bird watchers may find our flying
together as just a bit odd.
So, we were flying at different altitudes at different
intervals from each other. Tobias was in the lead, riding the
thermals as he always does. Jake and Marco were the closest
together, flying low.
Cassie was nowhere to be found. She said she'd catch
up, as she had something to finish. We said we'd wait, but she
insisted.
I was way up, above everyone else, because eagles
aren't normally seen around these parts and the last thing we
wanted to do was raise suspicions.
Tobias said in thought-speak, There's the house.