The Crossing

Author's Note: Okay, okay, I'm really sorry it's taken me this long to get the next part of this out, but I've had writer's block so bad it's suffocating. Thank you so much to all the wonderful people who reviewed the first part of this! Please R&R this part everyone! Send any feedback, love letters, death threats and rotten tomatoes to nova_mist@yahoo.com Thank you!

Chapter One: Tobias

"Full emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade Ship."

Fear as cold as the space outside the ship's walls gripped my heart in its icy grasp. I was going to die…oh, God, I was going to die…and all in vain, for what had I accomplished? What had I done to make my life worthwhile? I was an Animorph; I had played a part in defeating the Yeerks. But what else had I done? What had I achieved?

Nothing. My life, nothing but a waste.

My thoughts flew immediately to my father, Elfangor. To the dreams of him I had been having. Why had he risked his life to save me, when I had done nothing?

Why did my father come to protect Earth? The human race; murderous, cruel, jealous, evil. Why did he bother with us? None of us are worth saving.

Especially not me. No one loved me. No one, not even Rachel. She might have thought that she loved me, but she didn't. if she did, she would not have tried to force me to become a human nothlit. She should have left me alone. Besides, I was nothing but the loser, the freak, the loner.

And now I was going to die. And all for nothing.

There were tears running down my cheeks. I brushed them away. I had morphed to my human self without even realising it.

"Energy transfer in progress, Captain," Menderash reported.

"Fools, you cannot destroy me!" The One cackled insanely. But even the overpowering insanity did not hide the tinge of fear in his voice.

"Watch us, bastard," I hissed at the shifting monstrosity.

The One turned to face me, red-rimmed teeth bared in a feral grin. "Ah, yes, of course you would say that, Son of Beast Elfangor, as these Yeerk fools call him."

My mouth fell open without me wanting it to. How could he possibly know who my father was? Did he get that information from Ax? He said something like Ax was now part of him. Did that mean, like a Yeerk, he could access Ax's memories?

The One laughed coldly, snapping me out of my thoughts. "I pull no information from the mind and memories of Prince Aximili," he replied to my unspoken questions, sneering the work 'Prince'. He smiled, the face of my closest friend distorted again by a mouth that did not belong there. "I need not to, when I can simply pull the information from a far more…reliable source?" he sneered, his voice changing.

Jake went pale as he recognised the voice. "Crayak." It was a statement, not a question.

The red-rimmed teeth showed themselves again in a wintry smile.

"But...how?" Marco whispered. "You have never before been able to simply…absorb…people!"

Crayak laughed coldly. "You think that over the many millions of millennia that I have been in existence that I haven't learnt to evolve?" he sneered at Marco. "The One is nothing but one aspect of my power. The creature you know as Crayak is the most powerful of all my beings." He smiled coldly. "And now, just as I absorbed your Andalite friend, I will now absorb you. All of you."

"I don't think so." Menderash cut in. Computer, Maximum Burn!

"NOOOO!" Crayak/The One screamed as The Rachel slammed into the Blade Ship full force.

BOOM!

"Ahhhhhhhh!" I was thrown against the bulkhead as the two ships exploded in a brilliant flash of light, temporarily blinding me. I sunk to the floor, grabbing the flight console; dimly aware of the fact that my blood was now all over the metal I had been thrown into. I was gasping for air, only to realise there was none. The oxygen from both ships had disappeared into the soundless, empty vacuum that was space.

Computer, fire all weapons! Menderash gasped in thought-speak.

I felt massive vibrations in the floor as our weapons fired. The Blade Ship buckled on it's axis, and then spun around quickly to face us, vibrating slightly for some reason. It steadied, and then…

AHHH!   I screamed as the Blade Ship's massive Dracon cannon impacted with the ship's hull, tearing it apart. A piece of shrapnel had buried itself in my thigh. But it didn't matter. I was dying. The lack of oxygen was killing my body. My eyesight was dimming. Jeanne and Santorelli floated past me, into space, already dead.

Suddenly, all around me, it was as if everything was going in slow motion. I saw Marco close his eyes, hid hands falling away from where he was gripping onto the co-pilot's chair, and slowly go still as he drifted away.

And then, everything stopped. The ship rose suddenly, the beam rising to meet the Blade Ship's and…

AHHHHHHHH! a blinding flash of light. Outside, all I could see as a brilliant, white light, which drowned out everything else. But the pain was incredible. It felt as though I was being ripped apart. I grasped my head with both hands, gasping for air through reflex as my lungs collapsed.

But I was already floating away…floating away to a better place. I fell back, not caring anymore, and felt two strong hands catch me, a strangely familiar voice saying words that I couldn't comprehend.

I wasn't there…I was away…away…flying away…

I shut my eyes and–