Disclaimer: Sorry for taking ages but I had a whole load of homework. I do not own Animorphs, K.A Applegate, a 15" HDTV or a certain rubber ducky donated by the interstellar Chamber of Commerce.

You guys wanted longer chapters, here they are.

P.S I'm no longer 10, I'm now 11, going on 12. My original story just hit 30 000 words!

Chapter 8

Tobias had been sitting on his branch a long time. Trying to think things over, ignoring the gnawing sensation in his stomach, which was not all to do with his hunger. He caught himself a rabbit. Ripped the still warm flesh with his sharp beak. Felt the blood beneath his beak.

Night had already fallen and he was getting confused. He caught a thermal and glided up past the nearby petrol station. He tried to sift his thoughts out. Flying through the cooling air of the night, he could think clearer. He could spot Cassies's barn in the distance. The lights were on. The others were probably having a meeting. He wished he could just swoop down there and join them, like he usually did. He narrowed his laser sharp eyes at the barn. The door seemed to be moving but there was nothing there. A distortion in the air shimmered in front.

Oh look, it's the cloaked Blade ship. Ha ha. Irony did not seem to be helping him calm down so he moved off. The lights were on in the kitchen. Tobias could see Jake's mother preparing a steak. She was laughing and talking to Jake's dad. Preparing a meal that would not twitch in it's final death throes and drip warm blood as they ripped apart its tender flesh and… Tobias turned away and gazed longingly at the barn before turning back.

Tom was there, with a slightly more malicious look in his eyes than normal. Jake's parent's did not seem to notice though. He was fingering something in his jeans pocket. Something that looked like a Dracon beam. Tobias glided past a petrol station, savouring the cool air. It was a frigid night. He tried to sift his thoughts out.

The other Animorphs were not coming near him in case he dragged them up to Visser Three yelling 'Look, look sir! I found the Andalite bandits! Only their not Andalites, only you already knew that sir!' Then the Visser would give him a pat on the head and a bone or a freshly caught rabbit and send him off again.

Irony really did not seem to be working tonight. So, the Animorphs were avoiding him. Which meant he had to prove to them he was not a Controller. That was one problem more or less solved. Just prove to them that there's no Yeerk stuck in his head.

There was another more urgent question bugging him. Why didn't the Visser infest him with a Yeerk? It didn't make sense. They could have just popped a Yeerk into him from a Taxxon and everything would be hunky-dory. For them at least. Why would Visser Three throw away the one thing that would virtually guarantee his immediate promotion? Why?

"Tsewwww!" He was shaken out of his thinking daze by a beam of sizzling red. The bolt flew past him and fried the circuits of the petrol stations floodlights.

They went off, plunging the bottom of the station into darkness while the streetlights kept the road nearby illuminated.

"Tsewwww!" Tobias moved into action just as another bolt hit much nearer to him, passing him by as it flew into the night. Tobias launched himself off and soared past the station where people were screaming. He glanced behind and saw two humans holding something that looked like a Dracon beam. Cleverly hidden under a coat. The street was deserted and apart from the people working inside the stations mini-mart, no one else could see them. The men turned as one and fired again.

"Tsewwww!" A gigantic bolt of crimson flashed past Tobias, incinerating a pine tree unlucky enough to be growing near by. The Dracon portable assault cannons fired off another blast that sent a streetlight crashing onto a Volkswagen parked nearby. The car alarms joined the screams of people as Tobias soared off towards his meadow at top speed. The attackers weren't crackshots but several blasts were just a bit too close for comfort. The men seemed to know that the target was too far to hit and the cold barrels of the Dracon cannons disappeared into the folds of the leather jackets they had come from.

The men walked off calmly, as the fuel tank in the Volkswagen ruptured and the car burst into flame. Fire trucks could be heard already and the police would be just behind them.

Tobias didn't stop until he was back at his tree. The he thought about the incident that had nearly killed him. Then he thought some more.

He had been doing a lot of that lately.