Epilogue (Part four)

Cassie

"I'm not wearing it," I called through the bathroom door. Rachel, Tobias and I were at Rachel's mom's house. I was in Rachel's bathroom in my new bikini, and I'd just totally lost my nerve. I was Cassie – I didn't wear bikinis. I wore overalls and took care of sick animals and fought murderous aliens. I definitely didn't wear bikinis.

"Cassie, don't make me come in there," I heard Rachel call threateningly, and I made sure the door was securely locked.

"Not this time, Rachel. You have talked me into some things I didn't want to do before, but this is not going to be one of them."

"If you're not out of there in ten seconds still wearing your suit, I will morph to grizzly and come in there the hard way. Don't make this any harder than it has to be." I analyzed Rachel's tone, decided she was serious, and sighed. I opened the door and came out.

Tobias was looking at Rachel in envy. "You know, you're really lucky you can still morph," he grumbled.

Rachel looked surprised as she stopped eyeballing me and turned her gaze on Tobias. "You can too, probably. Why wouldn't the Ellimist leave you your morphing powers? We did everything he asked."

Tobias didn't reply. He closed his eyes and began to shrink. "Whoa! Whoa! I thought…well, I thought I'd never fly again. Awesome! Oh yes, oh yes!" he yelled. Rachel chuckled and tossed me a bag.

"What's this?" I looked inside when she didn't answer. It was a pair of shorts and a cute summertime spaghetti strap shirt. "Oh, okay. Well, this isn't too bad. I can wear this."

(Hey, I'm going to fly over to Marco's if you guys don't mind,) Tobias said, still giddy. (I'll meet you there.) Rachel ran over and opened the window.

"Bye, Tobias!" she yelled as he flapped hard, up and away. She looked pretty pleased with herself. "So how are we getting over to Marco's?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said, pulling on the shorts and shirt. Rachel was already clad in similar clothing, but of course she looked a hundred times better in them than I did.

"I guess we could probably take my mom's new car. You know, the Lexus with the convertible top? But I don't have my license," she chewed her lip.

I laughed. "Rachel? You've manned the weapons station on an interstellar starship. You've flown a starfighter at three times the speed of sound in atmosphere. I'm sure you could handle your mom's Lexus. Besides, even if you wrecked it, they'd replace it with two new ones before your mom even found out. Add that to the fact that there's not a cop alive who would write you a ticket, and I think we'll be pretty okay."

Rachel continued to chew her lip, then barked out a laugh. "Who's talking who into things, now?" she asked me. "But you're right. How hard could it be? Let's go!"

One hour and two accidents later, we pulled up into Marco's driveway. I released my deathgrip on the plush leather seat and tried to breathe normally. "Rachel? Remind me to never, never ride with you again."

She laughed and got out, pressing the lock button on her keychain. "Oh, come on. You can't possibly expect me to see every single stop sign my first time driving. Besides, both of those people acted like I did them some great honor by running into them," she didn't bother knocking on the front door. She just opened it and walked in like she owned the place. Marco's butler hustled to greet us, and Rachel took off her sunglasses to look around. "Nice place," she said casually, and tossed the butler the keys to her mom's car. "Take care of that for me, would you? Thanks," she said, making her way through the house, stopping to stare at some of Marco's belongings.

I gave her a wry smile as she stopped in front of a flat screen TV hung on the wall that was the size of a big persian rug. "Marco actually did pretty well after the war," I told her.

"I see that," she said, moseying through the kitchen out back to the pool area. Jake and Marco were fast asleep in lawn chairs by the pool, and judging from the bright red coloration of Jake's chest and face, they'd been that way for a while. Ax was in a lawn chair too, but he was surrounded by several food bags, platters, glass bottles, and assorted boxes. There was an enormous bulge in the place of his human morph's normally thin stomach.

"Prince Jake and Marco!" Ax yelled, startling them awake. "The girls are hee-yer. I am waking you as you requested. Quest-tidd. I also require more donuts, Starbucks, Doritos, Fruity Pebbles, and Coca-cola. And some more of the fizzy water called – call – all – all – alled – Miller Light."

I started laughing. "You fed Ax beer?" I asked Jake and Marco, a little appalled. I had no idea that either of them drank, but I could plainly smell the alcohol on both of them as I settled beside Jake. "And you, Jake? You let Marco talk you into drinking alcohol?"

Jake smiled sheepishly. "I let him talk me into a drink. It wasn't anything special. As for Ax – we didn't feed him anything. He's pretty much helped himself to anything edible he and Wetherbee could find."

"Edible is a very flexible human term. Erm. If something is edible, by definition, it is something that can be eaten. A lot of things can be eaten that are not meant for human consumption," Ax pointed out. "Cardboard can't be digested, but it tastes good and can be swallowed. Therefore it is edible. Can you have Wetherbee bring out some more food and drink while I demorph and morph back to human?" Ax asked Marco, who nodded.

Rachel counted the beer bottles beside Ax's chair and started laughing, and I squeezed into Jake's chair with him. It was only meant for one, but it was still very comfortable. He smiled, kissed my forehead, and said, "Hey, you. You're cute."

I blushed. "You're kinda cute yourself," I played back.

Marco leaned over and pretended to vomit. Ax, still mostly human, said, "Yes, me too, Marco." He wandered to the grass and really did puke. Marco looked over to Rachel, who was laughing too hard to speak. He looked at Ax, who was still hung over the grass. He gave a whole body shake as if to rid himself of the situation and called Wetherbee to clean up.

As Wetherbee took care of the vomit, Rachel whispered to Marco, "How much do you pay that guy to be your slave?"

"Too damn much," Marco whispered back. "The only butler in the world who gets paid more than Wetherbee here is the one who works for Bill Gates."

(Hello, hello, hello!) Tobias said smugly, flaring his tail and perching expertly on a chair. (Oh wow, what a day for flying! Thermals like you wouldn't believe! The only bad thing about it is that it can only last for two hours,) he lamented as he began to demorph. Jake cleared his throat and sat up a little, careful not to bounce me out of our chair.

"About that," he said. "Whenever me and the Ellimist cut our deal, I asked him for a few extra things. One of them was to get rid of our time limit when we morph."

Silence met his words. I know I sure didn't know what to say. Tobias, fully human, breathed, "You're serious?" Jake nodded.

Rachel started giggling hysterically. "Awesome! We could morph dolphins and go play all day long without a care in the world!"

Jake smiled his slow smile. "Actually, that was exactly what I had in mind when I asked him for that."

"What else did you ask for?" Marco asked grumpily. "I'm still not over that little stunt you pulled, bringing me back in the Mako fighter without a clue."

"Well, apparently lots of things can happen out there in space. While right now we're only a month or so from Xylen, we're a couple of years from the Andalite world because of a Z-space rift. I figured it'd be nice if the Ellimist would get rid of that rift for us, and keep the spacelanes clear of stuff like that for us."

"Anything else?" I asked him. He looked hesitant, and I knew there was something else that he didn't want to say in front of everyone else.

"Nope," he lied. "That's it. So, what do you do to entertain people around here, Marco?" he asked.

Tobias, now fully human, was lying with Rachel in a fashion similar to Jake and I. Marco looked at us, then at them, and said, "You guys look plenty entertained to me, but I'll fulfill my duties as a host. Welcome to Margaritaville," he said as he pressed an inconspicuous red button on a small remote he'd produced from his robe pocket. Jimmy Buffett started blaring away from hidden speakers and Wetherbee came out of the house a moment later with a tray full of big, frozen margaritas. I grinned and accepted one.

I took a sip and sighed in pleasure. It was the little things like this I'd always missed out on. Laying with Jake, sipping a frozen strawberry piece of heaven, among great friends…what else could a girl possibly want? I raised the glass. "To the Animorphs," I said, giggling at the sound. I expected Marco to make fun of me, but he just clinked his glass and repeated the toast. I set the drink on the table and snuggled into Jake. In that unguarded moment of pure happiness, I admitted something to myself. I'd always said that unless I was doing somebody some good at all times, I wouldn't be happy. But you know what? Laying with Jake, with all of my best friends hanging out nearby, being totally useless never felt so good.

A/N – There's at least one more part to the epilogue coming, perhaps two. Enjoy!