A/N: Okay, I know this seems disorderly, and at times, repetitive. But these are Tobias' thought. They're not going to be structured and organized. I mean, put yourself in his place. How would you be thinking? Exactly.
Disclaimer: Hers. All hers.
What do you do? When life, twisted, distorted life, turns it's back on you, what do you do?
If you're Rachel, you fight back. You turn around and fight back just as hard.
If you're Ax, you realize your duty and fight back as well.
If you're Cassie, you use peace and find a way to get life to turn back around and face you.
If you're Jake, you order life to face you, and it'll obey.
If you're Marco, you use your wits to get back at life.
But I'm not Rachel or Ax or Cassie or Jake or Marco. I'm Tobias. What do you do if you're Tobias?
If you're Tobias, you run away.
That's what I was doing. Running away. Like the coward, the idiot, the person that I was. Not even a person. I was some messed-up mix of bird, human, and alien. A freak. A friendless freak. I wasn't even human, for God's sake.
I remembered Rachel's voice, reassuring me.
"Tobias, you are human. Nothing can change that. And when this war is over, you can be completely human."
When this war is over....
Wasn't this war over right now? Wasn't it all finished? What more was left? My friends were gone, and were now my enemies who knew practically everything about me.
We had lost. Plain and simply, we had lost. That didn't justify why I was running away. But it was natural instinct. The hawk in me fled when it was scared. The human in me had always tried to do the same thing.
And now it had come down to this.
We had always thought of ourselves as invincible. Sure, we could get hurt, and we could endure a lot of pain, but a quick morph could fix all of it. We had never thought that we would go down so fast.
Right now, the rest of them probably already had Yeerks in their heads, leaving them as slaves in their own bodies. And there was nothing I could do.
They would be looking for me right now. And what was worse, they had all of my friend's memories and knowledge, so they would know where to find me.
I had to get away. I had to run. I had to escape and throw them off guard.
What could I do? There was no way that I was smarter or more intelligent that any of my friends. What could I do?
"Tobias, you are human. Nothing can change that. And when this war is over, you can be completely human."
Human.... Completely human....
I knew what I could do.
I spread my wings and let the wind lift me off my branch. I drifted east, towards the thicker area of the woods.
Towards where I had last seen campers.
There they were. Two guys, two girls, all hanging around and laughing. Friends.
I dove down and landed on the one guy. His DNA would soon be mine "Whoa!" He cried out.
"Oh my god, it's, like, a psycho bird," One of the girls commented.
"Get it off me!" The same guy yelled, trying to flap me off.
It was reckless. It was wrong. But now wasn't the time to sit around, and it wasn't the time to moralize.
When I was done acquiring him, I flew away. I flew away from my meadow forever, without looking back. What was left there for me anyways? Whatever was there, I wouldn't need it anymore.
I landed softly on the floor of a clearing. Took one, last, look through my hawk eyes. The hawk's body had been my own for so long. Was I really going to do this?
I concentrated on something I had seen Ax do so long ago. I blended my human body and the guy's DNA to form a completely different person. All it would take would be two hours, and then I would be safe from my friends- turned-enemies. Only two hours.
How ironic. The boy who got stuck in morph as a bird regained his morphing powers and used them to only get willingly trapped as a human. Not even the human I was once, either.
Two hours later, I was human. Not hawk any more, just human and alien.
I stood up, and looked around with my dim human eyes. Stretched my fingers. I would never again fly. Never again see with the clearness of Red-Tailed Hawk's eyes. Never again spread my wings.
I was human. Rachel would be happy.
She wasn't happy now.
Neither was I.
And that was when I did my first act in my brand-new, forever mine, human body. I sat down in the clearing and cried.