Disclaimer: Don't own the stories I use here. I wish I did, but sadly I do not.

Cryos knew that someone was calling his name, but he just couldn't seem to make himself listen. The voice wasn't getting from his ears to his brain. Very slowly he pulled himself out of his trance and found a very worried Kentra looking into his eyes. "What happened!?" She shouted.

"Th-tha-that thing just turned into my mom for just a second!" Cryos grabbed her shoulders. "Don't you get it!? The One has my parents!" He had to admit that Sheep was right, no matter how little Cryos wanted to believe it.

"That was your mom?" Asked the gorilla boy. "Man that's cold…"

Cryos glared at him for a moment. "Excuse me gorilla boy," He said, "But I don't think I caught your name."

"Oh, sorry." Said gorilla boy. "I'm Marco."

"Marco, shut up! This doesn't involve you. You people, and I use the term loosely, are getting a trip to the nearest starport and then we're leaving! I've got more important things to do than baby-sit a bunch of helpless Humans wandering aimlessly around the Milky Way galaxy."

"HEY! We are far from helpless!" Jake objected.

"If I'm going up against someone who captured both my parents we're all helpless!" Cryos was getting hysterical. "When my parents work together they're unstoppable! No one should be able to beat them! If this guy is was strong enough to do that-"

He was cut off when Zon burst through the doorway, making the Humans who called themselves Animorphs back away in fear. "Something's wrong with Draco! Come quickly!"

"Keep an eye on them." He told Kentra before running off after Zon.

Draco was in bad shape. He had used a lot of energy when he had regenerated after the crash, but now he was feeling the effects of it. Why the stupid lizard hadn't told anyone he was so badly drained was beyond Cryos, but that wasn't important now. "Draco!" Cryos yelled out.

"Um… Oh yeah, what is it?" He sounded distracted and sleepy.

"Are you alright? How much power do you have left?"

"Oh not much. Maybe enough to go someplace close, but not far…" Draco started giggling. Cryos didn't know why, and even if he did care, now wasn't the time to ask. He had to get everyone someplace safe.

Cryos ran back to the Animorphs ship and told them what was happening. "And you see, you've all got to get over to Draco so we can starburst out of here!"

The Animophs were reluctant to believe him. "So let me get this straight," Asked Marco. "you want us to come over to your LIVING spaceship, who you admit is low on power and might not even be able to get us anywhere, and use this faster-than-light transport system none of us have ever heard of, and above all, TRUST YOU!?!"

"Yeah that's about it." Cryos told him.

"I say we go for it." Everyone looked at Marco, who just said, "Well someone had to say it. Rachel's not here anymore…"

Jake sighed, then asked in a low voice, "Menderash, do we have any choice?"

"I fear not Prince Jake. It seems that Cryos was right in his assessment that our Zero-Space engines were completely inoperable."

"Ok then," Jake said, "We'll do it, but if this is some kind of trap…"

"I don't need to trap you!" Cryos yelled at him. "Why try to trick you when I could easily kill you all?"

"He's got us there Jake…" Mumbled Marco.

"Could we go?" Cryos demanded, "the longer we take here the less chance we have of getting somewhere."

"Sure, but what do we do about Jeanne there?" He pointed at the still unconscious bear laying on the floor. Apparently Kentra had hit her pretty hard. "She's gotta weigh a copula hundred pounds in bear morph."

In response Cryos lifted the huge bear up and slung her limply over his shoulder. "Can we go now?"

Jake took one last look around at his ship. "I'm gonna miss this ship…"

"We can come back for it later, but we need to go now!" Cryos lead the way to Draco and lifted the Animorphs up one by on into the bridge. He carried Jeanne up last.

"Draco!" He yelled as the hatch closed behind him. "Get us to the closest planet capable of supporting Human life."

"Okey-dokey!" Draco bellowed (Sounding slightly delirious) as the power buildup needed for starburst began. Cryos looked around fearfully as the lights dimmed and the temperature dropped. This was going to be a rough ride.

But thankfully, the stream of white light carried them safely to a small star system with a tiny green planet.

Cryos waited for the lights to come back on as the remaining power was rerouted. Only problem was they didn't.

"Draco, can you hear me?" He asked. Draco's only response was a low moan. "Draco! Listen to my voice! You need to get to that planet. It's very important!"

"Oh… Do I have to?" Moaned Draco.

"YES!" Cryos yelled.

Draco grumbled as he put his last bit of power into the engines and began to slowly move towards the small green world.

The arrived at the planet a few minutes later, but when Draco hit the atmosphere and Cryos told him to slow down there was no response. Draco was completely out of it!

"Everybody hang on! This is going to be a rough landing!" He saw that everyone, including Kentra and Zon, had found something to cling to. Cryos wrapped his tail around the still-sleeping Jeanne before digging his fingers and long toes into the floor.

Cryos could feel the acceleration as they dropped deeper into the atmosphere. Small flames started licking at the viewport and after a few moments they grow so large that the blocked the entire window. In the last few seconds however the fire vanished, leaving everyone with an excellent view of the ground rushing up to meet them.

Cryos heard someone screaming. It might have been him, he wasn't sure. Then everything went black.

He awoke slowly. As conciseness returned, memories came flooding back: the Animorphs, his mother, Draco running out of power, and lastly the crash.

Looking around, Cryos saw all the Animorphs scattered across the ground. They were arranged in a rough semi-circle around a huge crater with Draco, back in his lizard form, resting contently in the middle.

"Ugh… How long have I been out?" He muttered.

"Since it was difficult to tell exactly when you passed out in all the confusion, but I'd estimate it was approximately forty-five minutes and twelve seconds ago."

Cryos jumped at the unexpected voice before he realized it was just Elfour. He just ignored the little droid however and went to check on everyone.

Zon was already waking up, and looked almost unscratched from the whole ordeal. He checked on Kentra next, he had a small gash over her right eye, and a small trickle of blood was running from it, but she stirred when Cryos touched her. So he picked her up and carried her as he checked on the Animorphs. Jeanne was waking up, her bear morph had suited her better than the others during the crash.

Ugh, gotta fight… She tried to attack Cryos, but couldn't even climb to her feet.

"Jeanne! Relax," Jake had woken up and was trying to calm his friend. "They saved our lives. The Rachel's engines were ruined. These people gave us a ride, but we crashed. Now demorph, you've gotta be low on morph time by now."

What? We abandoned the Rachel?

Yes. Answered a very sad sounding Tobias, the hawk boy. But don't worry, we'll get her back.

"Why is your ship called the Rachel?" Cryos asked them. "It sounds like it means something important."

Rachel was a friend who… Tobias couldn't even finish his thought.

"I understand." Cryos said softly. "I've lost friends too."

Meanwhile, Kentra was waking up in his arms. "Don't try to talk, he soothed her as she mumbled. "Just relax, everything's going to be alright."

"What are we going to do now?" Asked Jake.

"Call for help." Cryos answered.

"What? Call WHO?! Who's going to hear us way out here?" Marco demanded.

Cryos ignored him and pulled the scouter-like communicator that Washu had made for him years ago from a small pouch on his belt. He put it on and tapped the button to activate it. "Hello, Zeethra? Are you there? … Oh we're doing fine, did Washu tell you I'm getting married? … Well why don't you come over here and meet her? Oh and make sure you bring Draca. Draco ran out of power and crashed us on a jungle planet. … Yep, we're stranded. … Ok then, I'll see you in a few hours." He folded the communicator up and put it back in his pocket.

He looked back over at the Animorphs. Jeanne had finished demorphing. "So," Cryos started, "What exactly were you doing out there in space?"

"I told you," answered Marco, "We were looking for our friend. You even saw him for a moment when The One transformed into the blue, mouthless guy."

"I mean what were you doing right before we crashed. Most people with faster-than-light engines don't go racing through normal space at top speed."

"Actually," admitted Jake, "we had just had a confrontation with the Blade Ship, a very powerful Yeerk ship that we've been hunting for quite some time now."

"So you were running away?" Cryos offered.

"Well, not so much running away as attempting to ram."

"You were TRYING to crash?!"

"No, we were trying to ram the Blade Ship, not crash into you."

Cryos was about to start yelling when Kentra moved slightly in his arms. "Are you alright?" He asked her.

"I think so…" She muttered after she opened her eyes. "What happened?"

"We crashed." Cryos told her. "You got a pretty nasty bump on your head there too." She touched the cut on her forehead and looked disgusted at the sight of her own blood, then she tried to sit up. "Woh there," Cryos held her back. "Just take it easy. You just relax for now."

"So what do we do now?" Asked Zon.

Cryos thought for a moment before answering, "Well, I guess we set up a base camp. Draco's in no condition to go anywhere and it'll take Zeethra a few hours to get here with Draca, so we'll need food and shelter. I'm going to find some food, until I get back, Zon's in charge."

He had the Animorphs gather up some firewood and zapped it to make a small fire. Then he set out to find some food. Unfortunately, he couldn't go alone.

"I'm coming too." Jake announced.

Cryos gave him a funny look. "What makes you think you can keep up?"

"The question is," Jake responded as he started morphing to tiger, "can YOU keep up with ME?"

Cryos just smiled and ran of at a good clip. Not too fast for Jake to catch up, but fast enough that he'd have to work for it.

It took Jake almost ten minutes to find Cryos, but Cryos had stopped running by then. He was standing perfectly still in a small clearing with his eyes half closed, just listening.

What's up? Jake asked him. His tiger morph was breathing hard. I thought you were hunting.

"I was," Cryos told him, "But now we're being hunted."

Jake had just enough time to ask, What? before a three-foot-tall creature leapt at them from the bushes.

Cryos gave it one massive punch that should have splattered the little thing across the entire clearing, but instead it just picked itself up, shook off, and hissed at them.

But even that wasn't Cryos's worst problem. What really caught his eye was the dozens of identical creatures coming from the bushes all around them.