Marco reluctantly picked the guy back up, having dropped him because his armor was mostly dead weight. And some of the sharper parts of said armor were digging into his skin and making him uncomfortable. Marco was just glad that the guy's helmet wasn't sticking into him somewhere, those horns looked like they'd hurt.
Jake and the others were quick about getting back to the barn, though Marco lagged a bit behind, owing to the amount of dead weight he was lugging. They made it back to the barn with five minutes left for Ax, Cassie, Tobias and Rachel to demorph. Marco dropped the armored guy on the floor before he started his own demorph, since even as a gorilla he was struggling to hold onto the guy. He was really, really heavy.
Marco started demorphing once the weight was off his back, as he demorphed, Marco looked around at the other Animorphs. Cassie was just finishing her demorph, while Tobias and Rachel were still more wolf than human, or in Tobias' case, more wolf than hawk. Jake still had lingering traces of his tiger morph, and Ax still had wolf ears and a shaggy gray tail.
Finally, all of the Animorphs were finished demorphing. Four humans, a Red-tailed hawk, and an Andalite stood in a loose semicircle around the prone armored figure. It looked like he was starting to wake up, since he was shifting on the floor like some of them did when they were just starting to wake up. His black armored hand seemed to be grasping weakly at empty air.
Then, after they had just seen what conceivably might have been a pair of bright green eyes flashing at them, the entire figure started glowing green. The glow spread and intensified until it shone like a newborn star, but at the same time the outlines of the armored figure were still visible, shining a bright white. Those outlines now seemed to, shrink somehow, becoming smaller and less robust.
Then the green light started to fade away, leaving only the small figure in the center. As the light dimmed slowly to nothing, the watching Animorphs began to glimpse the outline of the figure. It was human, or at least that's what it was starting to look like. As the glow retreated, they began to pick out more subtle details. Long slender but muscular legs, powerful but not overly muscled arms, and a head of longish hair of some yet unidentifiable color.
The light faded further, and the Animorphs realized that whoever this was, they didn't have a stitch of clothing on. It reminded Jake of the time that he had first morphed into his dog Homer, he'd ended up in the same situation.
"All right everyone, I think we'd better give our new friend some privacy," Jake said, turning away from the inert figure.
The Animorphs now stood facing outward, staring at the walls or floor of the barn. Jake, who had been standing by the guy's head, turned to get a quick look at the figure behind him, just so he could tell whether it was a boy or a girl. If it was a girl, Jake would have to ask Cassie and Rachel to get her dressed up.
There were just some things a boy - even one who was the leader of a group of guerrilla rebels - wouldn't do. But, when he glanced backward, he didn't see any of the usual… well, stuff that girls had. Jake turned back to get a closer look, making sure to keep his eyes above the neck.
The face was angular and neatly framed by glossy, spiky black hair. Glancing a bit below the collarbone, Jake saw that it was a boy lying on the floor. Jake turned around entirely, and then saw that calling this guy a "boy" was a bit of a mistake. He looked older than any of them.
Jake stepped closer to him, thinking he recognized something about his face. Kneeling down by his head, Jake took another look.
"Ness Carter?" Jake gasped, having suddenly realized where those angular features were familiar from. Jake had seen Ness around school enough to know him when he saw him, sometimes the other guy would just be walking to another class, other times he would be talking to his brother Cain.
When Ness' eyes started to flutter open, Jake was about ready to ask Cassie if she had any extra clothes that would fit on a guy his size. That was when he caught sight of Ness' eyes. Jake had seen pictures of him in the trophy hall of the school, since he had won a few medals in the track team.
The eyes in that picture had been a cool jade, and Ness had been smiling at the camera. The eyes now staring Jake in the face were a bright emerald green. The eyes themselves were intense, despite the fact that his gaze was still unfocused. Ness blinked, then started trying to push himself into a sitting position with his hands.
Jake saw that he was struggling with this, and also that he looked more than a little haggard. As if he had recently been through the wringer. Jake took a few steps closer.
"Hey Ness, maybe you shouldn't try to get up just now. You look like you've had a rough time," Jake said worriedly.
That got Ness' attention. His head snapped around, his eyes fixing on Jake. He looked confused, but more than that he looked frightened. Why in the world would Ness be acting scared when Jake had only mentioned his name? Ness was shaking his head, as if he was trying to clear it.
"Not Ness… name's… Slade," he managed to mutter, before his arms gave out under him and he collapsed again. He lost consciousness soon after he got the last word out.
"Slade?" Jake wondered aloud. That wasn't what he'd been expecting. Truthfully, Jake hadn't been sure what to expect, but it hadn't been anything like what he had just seen.
Jake snapped out of his daze, seeing Ness - Or should I call him Slade? Jake wondered - lying unconscious on the hay-strewn floor.
"Cassie, do you have any spare blankets?" Jake asked, hoping that she did, since it wasn't all that warm in the barn.
Cassie nodded, and quickly went off to get one of the old blankets that her dad used to keep the horses warm in the winter. Jake, meanwhile, turned back to the unconscious teen on the floor.
"Can we turn around yet?" Rachel asked, getting a bit bored with staring at the walls of the barn.
"No, not yet, Rachel," Jake answered absently, wondering what to do with Ness. And why he had called himself Slade.
