A/N: Well, here's chapter 9. Hope you enjoy it. After the last chapter, it should be a little nicer. I'd wanted some conflict between Serenity and Jake, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Then, as I wrote chapter 8, all the pieces fell into place. I had a reason to make them be against each other. But another idea has come from that chapter, and I've started working on a new fic about Taylor, called "The Enemy". It's sort of what happened to her after #43 when she was blown down the tunnel by the gas. So far, I've written two full chapters, but haven't posted them yet. I've pushed that aside to work on my new original fic over on fictionpress.net, called "The Intergalactic Military: Book One: Erin Aspen". Enjoy chapter 9!

            Taylor was tearing apart the only family that I had. She deserved to die. Not the host, but the Yeerk. But if that weren't possible, then the host would die as well. It sounded harsh in my mind, but it was the only plan I could think of.

            It wasn't much of a plan. I didn't even know where the Yeerk pool was.

            Come to think of it, I didn't even know what it was.

            I circled until the two-hour limit, and then demorphed on the roof of a building near a park. A few kids stopped playing and pointed at me.

            I changed into my other form, and jumped off the roof. It was a ten-story jump.

            I landed gracefully on my feet then changed back. A little girl, around five or so, crossed the street and came up to me.

            "Are you an Animorph?" she asked incredulously.

            I smiled. "Yeah, I am."

            The little girl's mother was panicking because she couldn't find her daughter.

            "Samantha! Where are you? Samantha!"

            "Can you change into something for me?" Samantha asked.

            "Like what?"

            She thought for a moment. "A monkey. Like the man named Marco. He's funny. My mommy thinks he's cute."

            I laughed silently. "Sure, Samantha."

            I morphed and she squealed with delight. "That's neat! I wish I could do that."

            I demorphed and took her hand. "Maybe when you're older. Now let's go back to your mommy. I think she misses you."

            "Okay."

            I led Samantha back to her mother.

            "Oh, thank you," she said and watched her daughter run off to play with the other kids again. I saw her talking rapidly and pointing at me.

            "It was no problem. You have a very nice daughter."

            Samantha ran up and tugged on her mother's shirt. "Mommy, mommy, mommy! See this girl in front of you? She can turn into a monkey like Marco!"

            Her mother smiled and raised an eyebrow. "Is this true?"

            I shuffled my feet, not sure what to say. "Yeah, I guess."

            "Oh, I suppose I should introduce myself. I'm Jordan. Jake's cousin," she said.

            "I'm Serenity. Jake's sort of…relative or something, in a way. I didn't know he had any cousins besides Rachel."

            She laughed. "Neither do the history books. I'm Rachel's younger sister."

            Samantha tugged again on her mother's shirt. "Mommy? Can we do something else? I'm bored."

            Jordan scooped Samantha up in her arms. "It was nice meeting you, Serenity."

            I waved and watched her and Samantha get into their car and drive away.

            I wondered if Jake was reacting to my disappearance the way Jordan had reacted to Samantha's. He didn't deserve my doing that to him. I morphed to hawk, much to the amazement of the people around, and headed home.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

            I found Jake in his bedroom, staring at the wall. I demorphed and came quietly through the front door. I stood in his doorway and watched him for a moment. He looked so unhappy, like his whole world had come crashing down on him. Did he really take this parenting thing that seriously?

            "Jake?"

            He turned around and looked at me with dark eyes. He'd been crying. "You came back."

            "Yeah." I told him what had happened.

            "I'd like to apologize for what I said. I was caught up in the moment, and I'd hoped that you would kill her, after all that she'd done to us. I tried to see it from your perspective, and now I understand why you didn't kill her."

            "I'm sorry for taking off like that. I wanted…I wanted to sort of…punish you for what you'd said."

            He laughed. "I probably would have done the same thing in your place. I understand that you haven't had much human contact in your life, and expressing emotions is hard."

            "That's my problem. I shouldn't take it out on you."

            He got up off the bed. "Let's forget this, okay? Then we can eat. I was thinking of ordering Chinese or something."

            I nodded and followed him out of the room.

            *****

            As we waited for dinner to arrive, I thought of something.

            "Jake, what happened to Kym?"

            He looked behind me and I turned around to see…me.

            I laughed and shook my head. "What did you do Jake, adopt her?"

            "You know, personally, I don't think they know she's missing. I'll return her tomorrow."

            "You make her sound like a dog or something," I said. "Oh, Jake, can we keep her?"

            "No, because then they'll know my address, my phone number, everything and I'll be back in the news in no time. That's the way the world works around here, especially when they do those shows like 'where are they now?' or things like that. I'm always worried that somebody will knock on my front door and shove a camera in my face. Then again, I'm also worried about Visser One knocking on my front door. What would I do then? Invite him in for tea?"

            Kym laughed. "If I understand you correctly, this Visser One is not a person you want to be friends with, right?"

            "Unless you enjoy having slugs control your mind," Jake said. "If this is the Yeerk I think it is, you definitely don't want to be friends with him. But since he doesn't have an Andalite host anymore, I don't really see what we need to be afraid of."

            "But if he catches one of us, then he has a morph-capable host again," I said.

            "We don't want that, right?" Kym asked. Then she thought about it for a moment. "No, I don't think we want that."

            "But if we can get to him before he gets to us…" I began.

            "We could end up with a crazier Visser One than before. If we eliminate all the lower people and work our way up, then we can get him," Jake finished. "But I'm not the leader anymore. It's your call, Serenity. Personally, I would wait until I had more forces. Two teenage girls aren't going to do much. I mean, you can take him shopping, but that's about it."

            "That's not a bad idea," I said.

            "Taking the Visser shopping isn't a bad idea?" Jake said. "Are you out of your mind?"

            I laughed. "No, I meant that going shopping wasn't a bad idea. Just imagine the looks on peoples' faces when Kym and I walk in. We're one hundred percent identical. And if Jake—"

            He backed away from me. "No. I know what you're thinking, and no. I won't do it. You can't make me."

            Ten minutes later, the three of us were at the mall.

            Jake kept pulling on his miniskirt. "I can't believe you talked me into this. And I can't believe that I ever bought this skirt for you. It's a little too short. And this whole girl thing? It's a little too strange for my taste."

            "Oh, lighten up, Jake," I said, grabbing his and Kym's arms. "We're going shopping!"

            Behind me, I heard a scream, and a Dracon beam lanced over my head, shattering one of the lights. The three of us spun around, and saw three Hork-Bajir, about seven Taxxons, a lot of human-controllers, and one human that stood out from the rest. He seethed with evil.

            "Which one of you is Jake? I got word from Visser Four that you were still around. She had us follow you here."

            Jake demorphed. "So, we meet again, Visser."

            The Visser smirked. "Yes, and this time, you won't be so lucky. Recruiting teenagers? Shameful. Why isn't Jake the mighty Yeerk-killer fighting us? Is he too…scared?"

            A little boy stood up on one of the nearby tables. "Jake Berenson isn't scared! He's never scared! My mommy said so!"

            "I wouldn't say that, kid," Jake muttered.

            "Silence that child!" the Visser cried. A low power Dracon beam hit him in the chest and knocked him out.

            Slowly, the humans in the mall were gathering behind us, facing the Visser's small force.

            "Well, I see you've gathered an army, Jake. Pity they'll all be destroyed." He turned to his small group. "Kill them all. Save the morph-capable ones."

            They charged, and the world came crashing down on us.

A/N: Wow. They just go from one enemy to the next, don't they? At this time, I'd like to post a little bit of my original fic, called "The Intergalactic Military: Book One: Erin Aspen"…

I fell to the floor as I was suddenly pushed from the bed.

            "Get up, human."

            I moaned. It had to be around three in the morning.

            Something kicked me in the ribs. "Get up. Now."

            I opened my eyes and saw a black figure standing over me.

            "Not you," I moaned. It was the Hbrai. "What do you want?"

            "It's initiation time," she said and pulled me up by my hair. "Come with me." She pushed me out the door and into the hallway. Other people were waiting out there. One was green and had about seven-dozen eyes; another was yellow and looked like a frog. There were two more that looked almost identical; they were a deep red color and their skin looked as if it could really do some serious damage.

            "Okay, what in the world do I have to do?"

            I saw green-uniformed figures coming down one of the tubes, which I decided to call a drop shaft. One of the figures was Lee.

            I ran over and hugged him.

            "It seems that she knows this creature," the Hbrai said. "This makes it a little easier. Okay, human—"

            "The name is Erin," I stated, gathering up my courage. What were they going to make us do?

            "Okay, Erin," she mocked. "This is a simple initiation. We've all had to go through it the first night we were here, and now it's your turn. When I had to do it, it was a little awkward, considering he was of a different species. But it's just ten minutes, then you're done. If you don't do it, you will be mistreated until the end of your stay here."

            Rak'it came out of her quarters and yawned. "What's going on out here?"

            The Hbrai smiled evilly. "None of your business, Rak'it."

            "Oh no, it's initiation, isn't it? Erin, just do what they say. It'll all be over with soon."

            I turned to the Hbrai. "First off, I'd like to know my torturer's name."

            "Your primitive mouth can't pronounce it, human." She said the last word with such hatred in her voice. "But you can call me Mitrop. That means 'leader' where I'm from."

            "I will call you 'nothing', because that is what you are," I spat.

            She grabbed my hair again and pressed my face against a wall. Hard.

            "Oooh, this is a feisty one. She'll make a great comrade if she joins us," she said to the group. Then she leaned close to my ear. "If you don't join us, I'll make your life a living hell. You can trust me on that. I've done it before, I'll do it again."

            She could be worse than this? That can't be possible.

I know, that's the first half of chapter 3 of that fic, which may ruin it for some people, but oh well. That's life. Books Two and Three of that series should be out before the beginning of June. Actually I have chapter one of Book Two completed, edited, and ready to be posted, but have been too lazy to actually post it. I'm actually putting details in that fic! Oh the horror! I'm not saying my Animorphs fanfics aren't detailed, but I think the new original ones have more intricate details. If you decide to read that, follow the link in my bio where the homepage is supposed to be. If not, I hope you continue reading The Created and The Sight and read The Enemy when it's posted. Later, peoplez!