CHAPTER 4
Cassie





I woke up, and it took me a moment to remember that I wasn't in my own bed, in my own universe. I was on a bench in the park.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, fully awakening when I discovered my breath was disgusting.

I realized that I was starving, and I had no way to get food in my human form. I morphed to osprey (A/N: I think Cassie's bird-of-prey morph is osprey, please tell me if I'm wrong!) and spread my wings, taking to the air.

I flew around, watching everything below as if through a magnifying glass, binoculars and a telescope combined. I had not morphed osprey for a couple years (not couting yesterday's encounter with Visser One), so it took me a little while to get re-adjusted.

Then, looking ahead, I saw what I thought could only be my Animorph friends: five unique birds flying in neat formation together.

I clumsily flapped over to them, still not adjusted to my bird morph. ::Hi guys,:: I said.

One of them, probably the leader, looked at me. ::One of the human child bandits! Attack it!::

I was wrong, these weren't my friends. I had overlooked something: Rachel was dead, so that meant there should only be four birds.

::Oh, shi--::



I woke up for the second time that day, except this time it wasn't on a park bench, it was in a barn.

I opened my eyes, and stared up at the faces of my friends. The nasty, huge-pored, dirty faces of my friends. And Marco's disturbingly uneven haircut. I was still in bird morphs.

::Oh no!:: I started panicing. How long had I been in bird morph? Thirty minutes? Sixty minutes? Was I a nothlit? There was no way to tell. No, wait... there was.

I began demorhing. No no no! Not working! How could this be! My claws... they're changing! They're fingers! Mini fingers. I pushed harder. ::Must demorph!:: Slowly, I began changing. My wings turned into arms.

"Cassie, what happened?" Jake asked.

::Andalites in...:: I started, but faded off because my beak was turning into a mouth.

I looked at Ax. Actually, check that. There was no Ax.

"Andalites in bird morph." I said, and realized they were all looking away from me. I blushed, realizing I wasn't wearing anything. I morphed to bird again.

::They attacked me. I-- I thought it was you guys.:: I continued. They looked at me again. ::By the way, where's Ax?::

"Kidnapped," Jake said. He seemed distracted by something.

I nearly choked. Rachel dying, Ax getting kidnapped... there was something odd going on, but I only knew what it was way in the back of my mind. The same things had happened in my timeline...

This was serious. I mean it was a coincidence, but it was serious too. If the Yeerks infested Ax all of our secrets would be discovered.

"This is insane," Marco said, not for the first time. "If Rachel were here, she'd have us storm the place, and..."

"Yeah, but Rachel's not here, okay?" Jake said, almost angrily. Something was definetely bothering him. I decided I woul ask him what it was. Later.

"I'm sure Ax could escape," I said, trying to cheer everyone up. "He could morph to fly and get out of there."

::No,:: Tobias said. ::They would catch him and kill him in mid-morph.::

"Or zap him when he was a fly. Andalites have good seeing and accuracy," Jake said.

Geez, what was with these people? Why all the gloom all of a sudden? No, nevermind, I knew why.

"Visser One wouldn't risk killing one of us," I said, still struggling to lighten the mood.

Marco brightened for a second, but it disappeared. ::He killed Rachel,:: Tobias responded.

Aargh. Fine, they were right. But there had to be some way to get in there... I suddenly snapped my fingers.

"I have a plan," I said, grinning...

I guess I still had my reputation in this universe, because all Marco could said was "oh... no..."