Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far for your kind words and encouragement. Life has been hectic but I have finally pumped out the most recent chapter. To Jinako -- as long as I can have the link, feel free to archive it. To everyone else -- I'd appreciate if y'all could keep me informed on how well I keep Cassie in character -- granted, her character is going to grow and change during this fic, but I'd like to keep it plausible. Thanks again, and here's Chapter 3.


CHAPTER 3: A Friend in Need

Somehow, at some point during that night, I actually managed to fall asleep. It was a restless sleep of course, everything you'd expect: blood and tears and screams and the thousand different scenarios in which I was just a split-second faster. And I saved Jake each time. I did, a thousand times. I'd saved him every time except for the one that counted, and I knew I would dream about that one time, that one missed opportunity, forever.

I knew I would save Jake, over and over, every night for the rest of my life. And it would never matter.

I woke up to a loud noise and a gorilla. Thought perhaps I was still dreaming, because when I'd visited jail on a field trip with my Criminal Justice class sophomore year, they didn't have gorillas. Of course, times had changed, but I was fairly certain the gorilla wasn't an inmate.

{ Come on already, Cass! Get up! } The voice was slightly irritated, echoing in my head. As I tore myself from the jaws of sleep I realized that inmate gorillas didn't use thought-speak.

"Marco…?" I asked stupidly. It was impossible. It would have been too good to be true, except that even if he rescued me Jake was still dead and I was still a fugitive. But first things first.

The scene suddenly came into focus with startling clarity and I almost fell. I didn't remember standing, but was willing to chalk that up to post-traumatic insanity. I was being funny, I chided myself. Why? How could I make jokes at a time like this?

Easy. If I didn't try to laugh, I would cry and cry and never stop crying.

I wondered idly if this was how Marco had always felt.

He tapped one of the guards on the head with his forefinger the size of a bratwurst. Just a little love-tap, but a love-tap from a gorilla will knock you out cold. That made three unconscious – or worse – guards. I must have slept through the beginning of the fight.

Marco had his back to the remaining two security guards, one of which reached for his gun. There was a click as the safety went off.

"Marco!" I tried to leap off of the bed but was jerked back by the chains connected at my ankles. Crap.

He turned, but too slow, too slow. Oh God, he was going to get shot, too. As long as he kept the guards occupied I could morph and slip the chains, but the guard was drawing the gun up. Marco was going to die just like Jake had died and I was going to be too late to save him. Was that my curse in life? To watch every evil in the world in action and always be a hair too late to stop it?

"Marco!"

The picture zoomed forward in a blur, like a hand had jammed the fast-forward button. He whirled and slapped the gun out of the man's hand. It sailed across the room and clattered into the wall. { Uh uh, none of that. } Marco said. { Bad cop. No donut.} His fist the size of a ham connected with the guard's stomach with enough force to leave a dent in a truck.

Down. Out.

Slowly, as if I was underwater, the changes began. My nose and mouth began to melt together and protrude outward into a snout, my ears started to move up the my head. The very beginning of the wolf, an old morph but as familiar as the back of my hand. I focused the energy towards my lower body, willing my legs to change first.

With a loud grinding, the knees reversed direction and my feet shrank as they transformed into paws. Smaller, smaller, just enough. I slipped free of the restraints and reversed the morph. Marco could take care of the remaining guard, I wasn't going to fight. I was not going to be the cause of anybody else getting hurt or killed. I was officially out of that business since we'd saved the world in our last big hoorah. It was somebody else's turn.

As a human, I ran forward to the bars as the other guard was put out of commission. Whether that was before or after he went flying ten feet across the room and into the wall with a sickening thud, I wasn't sure. Too much violence, too much pain. The world was so full of pain.

{ The cavalry's here, } he said, but his voice wasn't light and care-free as usual. { Miss me? } I just nodded, my throat tight with more tears that threatened to well up at any moment. He gestured at the bars in front of me. { You want to escape or should I? }

"I'm kind of tired," I said. Understatement.

{ Say no more. } BAM! He ripped the padlock off and produced a set of keys from one of the guards. He unlocked the door and I practically threw myself out of the cell and into his big, hairy gorilla arms.

"You came for me," I said. "Why?"

{ Of course I came for you, } he said, sounding a bit indignant. { You're my friend, Cass, and I know you and that annoyingly pure heart of gold. Anyone who believes that Cassie Chase could murder a human being obviously doesn't know Cassie Chase. }

"Everyone believes it," I said darkly. "Even my parents." Despite that, my heart fluttered for a second. There was someone, even if it was only one person in the world, that believed in me. One person in the world that knew I was innocent.

{ Well, I didn't buy it for a second, } he said, and I had to smile. Marco may have been a pain, sometimes. He never stopped making jokes, and when it came to battles he was far more ruthless than I could ever be, but deep down he was one of the sweetest people I'd ever met.

"Really?"

{ Really. Now, } he said, trying to be funny old Marco, to lighten the mood. God, I'd missed him. I'd never even known how much I would have missed Marco until now, with him standing in front of me. I was glad that if I was going to be on the run, at least I'd be with a friend. Marco truly was the only friend I had left in the world.

{ Let's blow this joint. }

*     *     *

I sent Marco back to my house to pack a small duffel bag full of things I might need. A few cans of food, bathroom appliances, some money. I waited across the street, lurking in the shadows. Nobody seemed to be awake, but we knew better than anyone that looks could be deceiving. We turned into animals, for crying out loud.

He came dashing out of the house less than ten minutes later, looking white as a sheet and breathing hard. He darted across the street, almost faster than my eyes could follow.

"Marco? Marco, what's wrong?"

"We're leaving," he announced, keeling over and putting his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

"What is it?" I tried to ask, to get him to talk to me.

"Now!" was all he said. We turned and ran into the shadows.

At first light, we headed to the bus depot. In order to go unnoticed, Marco and I actually had to acquire each other and perform two separate frolis maneuvers. We wound up looking like disturbingly identical mirror images of what the other would look like if we were the opposite gender. Not to mention the fact that it was a serious invasion of privacy.

Morning finally came, and the two of us, passing as twins, paid for our fare at the bus depot. The ride out of San Francisco was an hour and forty minutes. That was the farthest they were willing to take us, the final stop in some small town called Sunnydale or something. We were pushing our two-hour limit about as far as we could.

He still wouldn't tell me what he'd seen in my house that had spooked him so much.

"Give it up, Ca – Carmen," he said, avoiding my real name. There were enough Cassie's in the world, but I wanted to go as unnoticed as possible. Everyone knew that the Cassie who'd killed Jake was a morpher. Or, at least, they thought they knew, but they had no idea. Hell, I had no idea. Somebody out there wanted to screw me over royally. But who, and why? I'd made a lot of enemies in my time, not only as an Animorph but since I'd gotten into the fields of environment protection.

The list of people I'd pissed off was probably endless. I hadn't really bothered to sit down and ask myself these questions before, hadn't really had the time. Everything up until now had just been reaction. Now we had a plan. Granted, 'get the hell out of town' wasn't a particularly marvelous or complex plan, but it was a start.

Maybe it was just nerves, but I was fairly certain the young man sitting across from us was watching me. He was about my age, tall, lanky, and twitchy, and whenever I looked at him he averted his eyes quickly, like he'd been caught doing something wrong.

"I think that kid's watching me," I hissed to Marco.

"Maybe he's just checking you out. Did that occur to you?"

"Blind panic first, reality check later," I grumbled. "You're on the run with a wanted fugitive, Mario. A little paranoia could go a long way." If he didn't have enough, I'd be happy to share some of my own. I quieted down but kept a close eye on the kid for the rest of the ride.

After what seemed an eternity, we reached Sunnydale and exited the bus.

The kid followed.

"Mario," I said. "Do me a favor and carry my bag like the chivalrous twin brother you're pretending to be." He gave me a sideways look, like maybe I was acting a little strange. A bit too perky, perhaps. I probably was. It was all so ridiculous – me, killer-with-a-conscience Cassie, who cried every time she killed a Yeerk, was framed for the murder of the man I loved who just so happened to be one of the most famous men on the planet. I was on the run. From what? The police, jail, Jake's adoring fans. God, if they got a hold of me they'd tar and feather me in the streets. Me, an assassin. And my only friend in the world was Marco, and I still didn't understand why he was doing all this for me, risking his ass to save me. It was funny, really, and it took all the self-control I had left not to just collapse in a fit of giggles.

I may have been hysterical, but it beat the hell out of crying.

We hurried out into the street, and sure enough, Twitchy was keeping a safe distance behind so as not to be too obvious, but he was watching us. Following. I glanced farther back behind us, trying to look inconspicuous. A handful of tall men in dark suits and sunglasses were following the kid, so by the transitive property of equality, they were also following us.

Dammit.

Dammit.

Dammit.

My good humor had evaporated for the time being. Somehow, somebody had recognized us in our morphed forms. Maybe it was too obvious, maybe they were just really good guessers. We could pretend to play dumb and keep going, but it was useless. They'd already found us and we were too close to the two-hour limit to lead them on a wild goose chase. There weren't a whole lot of options. If we ran, they would follow, and possibly start a fight out here in public. Innocent bystanders could be hurt, and I couldn't risk that, even now, with the weight of the world on my shoulders.

"There's more of them. What are we going to –" I cut myself off in surprise.

Everything, everywhere, had stopped.

"Oh, shit," Marco said softly and with feeling.

I agreed.

YES, THAT SEEMS TO BE THE GENERAL SENTIMENT AMONG THE BEINGS OF THIS ORDER. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, reverberating throughout the very air and inside my body. Anyone who'd never heard the Ellimist speak before might think he was God. I knew better.

"You know," Marco mused, "I was about to say that we didn't have time for this, but I guess," he gestured around to the scenery with a sardonic grin, "that's not exactly true."

The Ellimist, a multidimensional and seemingly all-powerful being, was annoying. He had lent us a hand on more than one occasion, but ever since he and a being known as the Crayak had destroyed dozens of sentient species in all-out war, they laid down the law and played by a strict set of rules. They interfered in our daily affairs without actually 'interfering'. No, I don't get it either. The end result was the lot of us being jerked around like a bunch of puppets in one big galactic game of chess that we didn't understand.

"It's been a rough day," I informed the Ellimist. "Unless you have something particularly useful to tell me, I'm really not in the mood."

IN THAT CASE, he said, slowly appearing in front of us in the guise of an old man with pointed, swept-back ears, and long white hair, "I will make it quick." In this disguise he had a bluish glow to him, a sort of radiance of the night sky.

"First, I am truly sorry for what has happened. The entire dimension will mourn the passing of such a fine man and warrior." His forehead was creased and oddly enough, he looked tired.

I tried to think of something to say to that, but couldn't. "Thank you," I said instead.

"Secondly, you are both in even greater danger than you realize."

We started at him for a moment. "Like we needed him to tell us that," Marco grumbled.

"Please, let me speak." I think it was the first time I'd ever heard the Ellimist sound so serious, so despairing. Even his ground-shaking voice was lacking its usual vigor, and I was fairly certain that not all the signs of exhaustion he was portraying to us were intentional. "The Crayak will be here soon, and I must explain."

"Whoah," Marco said, holding up his hands. "Slow down. In fact, come to a screeching halt. Crayak is coming?"

"Cassie," the Ellimist said, turning to me and effectively ignoring Marco. "Listen to me very carefully: Crayak will present you with a variety of requests, offers, and demands. You must ignore all of them unless I explicitly encourage otherwise. Do you understand me? Do not. Say. Yes. He will tempt you and taunt you, but you must persevere.

"And Marco. There is a long, unpleasant road ahead for the two of you, and Cassie will need you there by her side. To the human world, the real Cassie is no longer a hero. You two will need each other in your journeys." He paused, tilted his head for a moment, then nodded. "And now, I present you with The Crayak."

Before either of us could even open our mouths to speak, the ground began to shake, softly and first but then gaining momentum until it was a deep, steady rumble. The sidewalk cracked beneath my feet and I jumped, yelping in surprise. Across the street from us, a large fissure tore through the cement, racing across the block and dividing it into two. Smaller buildings swayed and began to crumble as their support structures gave out. The people remained frozen in mid-stride or gesture like bendable dolls, steam lingering over coffee mugs, a ball suspended in mid-air between two children who'd just run away from their mommy.

From the scar in the earth, he came. Large turrets of metal erupted from the ground as his throne rose from the earth, harshly metallic and all spikes and ridges. The very earth itself quivered as both he and the enormous construction he sat upon loomed up to full height. It looked like someone had tried to build a royal throne out of dumpster-trash. Like a seagull with thumbs went crazy and made his throne for its thesis.

In the middle of all the rough edges and sharp points, he sat, gigantic. A large red eye, impossible to tell if he was organic or a machine, maybe some strange medley of the two. I'd met Crayak before, and none of those times had been pleasant encounters, but this time something was different about him. This time I wanted to piss my pants.

It was strange to see the two otherworldly beings, the Ellimist and the Crayak, the good and the evil, superimposed over a freeze-frame of southern California. I guess our lives were different than most people's.

Now we may begin our discussions, Crayak's voice boomed in my mind, almost a mixture of our morphed thought-speech and the Ellimist's annoyingly ubiquitous voice.

"Can I get another round of, 'oh, shit?'" Marco asked.

Again, I agreed.