Since none of these chapters are very long, and the first one
didn't have much substance, I decided to post two for all my
loyal fans...yep, all 4 or 5 of you. But don't expect it to
happen again.

Chapter 2
Jake

iA man's character is his fate.
-Heraclitus/i

A quick flash of pain shot up my foot. I stifled the "Ow!"
that was about to erupt from my mouth. The last thing I needed
was for Marco to think I was insane. Normal people don't have
sudden pain for no reason. Not that I'm exactly normal.

I was pacing back and forth across the hotel room. Maybe I
had stepped on my foot wrong. Yeah. Right. This had happened to
me before. I'd be sitting down, minding my own business.Then,
BAM! Major ouchie. I never really thought anything about it.
It's probably nothing. Probably.

Cassie and Rachel were in the room next door. Marco was
channel surfing. He stopped on some news guy talking about some
new spaceship going to the Andalite home planet. Me, I was
trying to plan.well, an attack against alien invaders. Only one
little problem. I had no idea what I was doing.

"They're keeping quiet," Marco said.

"Huh?"

"The Yeerks," there was a definite iduh/i tone to his
voice. "They don't want us to wipe them out again, so they're
keeping everything hush-hush. Very hush-hush. My guess is our
old pal Visser Three, or One, whichever you prefer, is not in
charge anymore. They've got somebody sensible."

"Which is bad for us." I agreed with what he was saying.

"Very bad. They're doing this the slow, quiet way. One host
at a time. Sooner or later, they'll have half the human race
enslaved."

Tobias had flown up and perched on the
window sill.

"Unless their plan isn't to take over the human race." I
said slowly. Hesitantly. It was a new thought, the Yeerks not
after humans.

"Then why would they be here?" Marco asked doubtfully.

It was at the very back of my mind, somewhere in the dark
regions of my brain. I had the answer. I knew it. But suddenly
it was gone.

"I don't know," I admitted. "They just don't seem to be
doing things in the invasion kind of way."

Tobias said.

"Not just different from last time. Different from
everything we thought the Yeerks were. There doesn't seem to be
a master plan, or even an ultimate goal. They're just here."

"You know the sad thing?" Marco said with a sigh. "We're
going to take this to the girls, and they're going to figure it
out in less time then we spent coming up with the whole idea."

Tobias disagreed.

"Revenge." Cassie, Rachel, Melissa, and Sara all said
instantly.

Marco looked at Tobias smugly. "I hate to say it, but.I told
you so."



"Maybe you guys are onto something," Sara said, shrugging.
"Maybe the Yeerks aren't here to use us all as hosts. Maybe they
have another plan."

"Like what?"

"Like wiping out the entire human race." Marco said,
apparently in a spontaneous burst of inspiration.

There was a long pause.

"How?" Rachel asked, finally.
"There's plenty of ways. I'm guessing they want to do it
nice and quick, so that would count out cutting off our food or
water supply. My guess would be either spreading some deadly
disease, or blowing up the planet."

"With their limited ships and resources, blowing us up
doesn't seem likely," Sara pointed out. "But disease is a
definite possibility."

"Ok," I said. "What are some deadly diseases?"

"The Bubonic Plague, yellow fever, cholera," Cassie listed,
ticking them off on her fingers. "AIDS."

"What's cholera?" Marco asked.

"Nothing you want to get," Cassie said.

"Victims suffer from uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea
before dying of a loss of bodily fluids." Sara added. Everyone
stared at her. "What? It was in my history class!"

"Ok, well, I agree with Cassie that I definitely don't want
to get that."



"I think Tobias is right," Cassie said. "There has to be
another reason."

I remembered something Cassie had said once, a long time
ago, when we were having trouble with David. "iIt's always
about character/i." She had been right then, and I had a
feeling she was right now. The Yeerks' character was to look out
for themselves. So why would they destroy us? They needed us,
for our host bodies.

I noticed Sara was rubbing her foot, like it was sore. The
same foot that had been bothering me earlier. Sara noticed me
watching her.

"I dropped my flute earlier," she said, smiling sheepishly.
"My foot got in the way."

iWeird/i, I thought.