A/N: I'm picking this story up again, after it was so randomly dropped. I guess that's good news.
Freak Apple: Lol! My pity about your grandma. I can just picture an old lady saying "boo-tay!" Lol, it's hilarious. I'm sorry she said that in front of your friends…
Oedipal Kat: I'm glad you're still there reading my story! Sorry for the large lapse in updates… (it felt like five months since I'd updated. Was it five, or does it just seem that way?)
Ah, chapter 5:
Celia called Marco.
Celia. Called. Marco.
The teenage Spaniard found great joy in these words.
"Is this Marco?" The girl's voice on the other line was soft and delicate.
"Yeah," he replied.
"Chapman told me to call you and a few other people. I guess the trip to Valley Fair is canceled."
"Really?" Marco acted surprised as he sat casually down on the couch.
"Turns out, they're having problems with the plumbing."
"Huh. No kidding?"
"So, it looks like we're going next Saturday instead of today."
"When does it open back up? Tomorrow?"
"I don't know. Do you still wanna do something today?"
Marco perked up. Did Celia just ask him out? She didn't even know who he was the other day! I guess I'm just that good, he thought to himself. He was about to agree, when he realized that Jake announced a meeting at Cassie's barn for that day at noon. He looked at his watch that read 11:03. He wouldn't have time to do anything with her before then, and he didn't know if they were going on a mission after the meeting. Saving the world was such a drag sometimes.
"Um, well, I would, but I have plans…"
"I thought your plan, which was to go to Valley Fair, was just canceled?"
Marco winced. Well, Celia, that's the thing. See, I'm fighting slugs today… "Oh, yeah, that's right. But, you know Jake? We do stuff every Saturday, so now that this is canceled, we'll probably do something today, too." What a weak excuse. He realized that it probably sounded like he didn't want to go out with her.
"I thought you liked me."
Marco wanted to yell. It was so hard for him to turn her down because he'd had his eye on her for so long, but he just couldn't do anything today. "I know it sounds like some lame excuse, but it's true. Jake's really territorial… I mean, no one gets my Saturdays but him, y'know?"
"I thought you were friends. Can't you talk to him?"
"Well, his… his great-aunt just died, and he's kind of in a fragile state right now."
"His great aunt?" Celia asked skeptically.
"Yeah. She was, um, driving in Australia and hit a kangaroo. The thing went right through her windshield and killed her."
"Jake's depressed because a kangaroo killed his great-aunt in Australia?"
"And he never got to say goodbye…"
"That is the biggest lie I've ever heard."
"Look, Celia-"
"Forget it, okay? I'm going with someone else next week." Then she hung up on him.
Marco stared at the phone in his hands unbelievingly. She'd asked him out… he was so close… then Jake's great-aunt 'died' and killed his love life along with her.
"The things I do for him," Marco mumbled as he turned on the TV. He commercial-surfed until five till noon, when he left a note for his dad that he was hanging out with Jake and went to Cassie's house. He walked this time. It had been awhile since he'd walked.
When he got there, everyone was there except Cassie herself and Ax, who wasn't going to be there that day.
"Cassie's finishing up lunch," Jake told Marco when he walked into the barn. "She won't be more than a minute."
"If Celia asks, your great-aunt died in Australia," Marco said. Jake blinked.
"What?"
"She asked me out, and I turned her down because you're possessive of my Saturdays, and your great-aunt died so you're depressed."
"Here I was thinking we'd gotten pretty good at lying," Rachel mumbled.
"I panicked. Not to mention, I don't lie well when I'm mad at myself for not accepting a date with probably the best looking girl in school."
"Did she buy it?" Jake asked. Marco snorted.
"She's not as dumb as the rest of the French. 'Course she didn't."
Then Cassie walked in. "I'm really sorry," she said. "But my parents had friends over, so I didn't want to skip out too soon."
"That's fine," Jake replied. "So, this is simple: all we need is a plan to destroy the Yeerk pool. We think of a plan today, we execute it tonight, and everything's fine."
But we still need a plan, Tobias said. That's the hard part.
"I wish we could just blow it up," Rachel stated. "But I guess we'd need explosives for that, huh?"
"Could set the place on fire," Marco suggested.
How would we do that? Tobias asked.
"Simple: go in there with matches. When no one's looking, strike it and leave it. Run like heck."
"No," Jake said. "If we do this, we do it right. 'Run like heck' is not a plan."
"What about dropping it from the sky as we flew over? Fly like heck."
"How would you set the match on fire?"
"I'm just brainstorming."
"Actually, the house is right by the fence," Cassie stated. "Right by the fence that marks the outside of the fair. We wouldn't even need to get in that way. Just toss it over."
"Yeah, but how would we get away with that?" Jake replied. "They wouldn't let a bunch of teenagers just throw a match over the fence."
"Run like heck," Marco supplied.
"Pretend to be Controllers," Rachel said suddenly. "That'll get us in. We 'guard' the house. When no one's looking, go in."
"Once we're in, then what?" Jake asked. "How do we get rid of the Yeerk pool?"
"I was hoping someone would take up the plan from there."
Dracon Beam, Tobias said. Fry it.
"So we get in, use a Dracon Beam on the pool which will probably take care of it, then walk out like nothing happened?"
Rachel shrugged. "Sure. It won't blow the place up; no one'll even notice. They'll have no reason to be suspicious if they think we're Controllers… unless they see us go in."
"How about one of us does an insect morph and hang on to one of us pretending to be Controllers? Once they're by the house, tell the insect, insect goes in… no one'll see it." Marco smiled, proud of his idea. "The only thing to make that more perfect is if we went out for ice cream afterwards."
"We should be able to swipe a Dracon Beam easily enough," Jake said, nodding. "They'll probably have some inside the house; if they don't, we'll probably get some for guarding it."
"Next question: who and what insect?" Cassie asked. "Probably not fly or ant. Something that can see."
"Wolf spider?" Rachel asked.
"Cockroach?" Marco wondered.
"It'd maybe be best if it wasn't an insect," Jake replied. "What about a rabbit or something…"
"Would a rabbit fit in someone's pockets?" Cassie asked.
"It might," Marco replied. "If you wear a large jacket over it, no one'll notice. But it'd have to be a really small rabbit. Maybe a baby."
"A bat," Rachel said. "And, no one'll think anything strange about a bat being in a Haunted House."
"But how would it fly in there?" Jake replied.
"Someone carries it in," Rachel answered. "If they're only in there for five seconds, it won't matter."
"If someone's just gonna set it down, we might as well do cockroach."
"Cockroach, then."
"Final question: who's gonna do it?"
"I will," Rachel said right away.
"Okay. Let's meet back here at 8:00 tonight."
A/N: I hope that ending was better than my last one! =)