A/N: I sort of made a little mistake on the last chapter. Sarah does like Josh, but she isn't going to wait around for him forever. Plus, she's hoping that maybe he'll get jealous and ask her out. Also, Sarah is good at strategy and stuff, but she's just incredibly lazy.
Disclaimer: Sarah, Bade, Josh, Alexandria, and Hope are mine. The Animorphs and anything relating to the Animorphs are hers [K.A. Applegate].
~~Josh~~
This is too easy, I said to Bade.
Please excuse me for taking a leaf out of Marco's book when I say ARE YOU INSANE!!! ARE YOU TRYING TO JINX US?! Bade yelled at me.
I actually think its Sarah's book. She is a lot like him.
Yeah. Too much like him if you ask me.
We were in our bird of prey morphs investigating our little club. It was hard work with all the flapping and trying to glide every once in a while. I hated thinking how tired Bade must be. My raptor morph was made for flapping and short glides, but his was made for soaring. We were flying over the beach I used to hang out by, so there were very few thermals. Even Bade's seven foot wingspan which he got from his Golden Eagle morph had trouble catching air in which to glide on. Unfortunately for me, I only had a three foot wingspan. However, I was in the lead despite them.
How…did…Hope…get…so…good…so…fast? Bade panted.
She's a natural, isn't she? I asked rhetorically.
Yeah, I envy her right now. She's probably a one bird ballet.
I spotted something with my very keen eyes: A clearing surrounded by leafy green trees. There was a huge play set with swings and a slide at least 20 feet tall. Several dozen kids dotted the place, playing see-saw and tag and all the other games you play when you're little and don't know the world is under the same attack it was 20 years ago. I envied those kids.
But there were adults too. Adults who were helping other adults take care of babies and dinner. If my sense of smell was as keen as my eyesight, I would have smelled the barbecue a mile away. A woman was talking to a man in a business suit. A man was playing with his daughter on the swing set. All of them were doing normal adult things except for one item. I, not being an adult, would not know everything adults do when kids aren't around but I do know one thing for sure:
Plotting the destruction of the human race is not ordinary adult activity.
Do you see it? I asked.
See what? You're about 100 feet ahead of me, Bade replied. It was true. The Cooper's Hawk was a lot faster than his Golden Eagle morph..
Bade caught up to me in three seconds, Welcome to Yeerk central, he sighed.
Well, shall we dive? I asked.
Shouldn't we split up? We look sort of like a bird convention. Bade pointed out.
Good point, I said as I turned a sharp left to land on the farther side of the park.
I finally caught a thermal and used it to glide for about five seconds before I plummeted at over 60 miles an hour towards the ground. I swooped up to kill my speed and landed on a tree branch.
Can…hear…Josh? Bade's faded thought-spoken voice rang in my head.
Barely, I replied, hoping he would hear it.
Do…land near…building. I hoped there wasn't anything important that I missed.
I looked at the building that was once hidden by trees. It was tan stucco with a mural on it of kids and adults holding each other's hands around a horrible depiction of Earth. I noticed that they had forgotten to include all the Yeerks. Or maybe they were in the heads of the people in the mural right now. Blue doors kept opening and closing and I got glimpses of a rather expensive looking rooms. It'd be a nice place to join and have fun if having a alien parasite in your head wasn't mandatory.
I saw that a couple of people were staring at me. Make that a couple hundred people. They were gawking at me like a circus animal. I caught a bit of the conversation two of the spectators were having.
Do not land near the building. They will shot at you. Bade said, the voice in my head stronger and clearer.
Shoot at me! What was that supposed to mean?!
"Didn't the Visser say to be on high alert for suspicious animals?" A woman asked in a whisper so low that only the man next to her and I could hear.
"Yes, he did. After the fiasco last night, we better take him down. We don't want any Animorphs getting in our way like they did last time." He replied.
This told me two things. One, they knew there were Animorphs. Two, I had to haul my butt out of there now, especially since one of the guys was holding a tranquilizer gun.
"Stay calm," the gun man said to the crowd, "This bird is from the zoo and needs to be returned. I'm just going to put it to sleep."
Oh no you're not! One gun pointed at me is enough, thank you very much. I started to flap my wings to gain altitude.
SWOOSH! A dart blew right past me. I really need to get me and my tail feathers out of here.
I took off with all the speed I could. Ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet away from the branch and I still had a way to go to be safe.
Dude, I'm coming, Bade said with much stronger thought-speak than before. He dove down and all I saw was a blur of golden brown feathers whiz past me.
The gun man fired several shots at me and him. All of them missed, thankfully. A few more feet and I would be completely out of reach of any dart, bullet, and controller. All I had to do was fly up a few more feet.
Too bad that's when a car parked right next to the building. A car that looked ever so slightly familiar. I had only seen it once, but I definitely knew who it belonged to. Hope's foster parents. I wouldn't have cared if two very familiar people didn't get out of the car right then.
Sammy and Mel.
Or more commonly known as Sarah and Alexandria.
I dove down with shocking speed.
Josh, what are you doing?! Bade yelled form the safety of altitude.
It's Sarah and Alexandria, man. They're here! I replied.
A/N: Cliffhanger! I'm so evil! I know this was a short chapter and I apologize. My next chapter will be on what happened to Hope when the others were at the meeting.