Review Responses:

Korean Pearl: You'll see 'the whole Cassie and Karen' thing: the AU takes place a lot later on. Thanks for your review!

Anonymous- cat: Thanks for your review. More will happen in this chapter, the other one was just to get something up, before all of you guys attempted to kill me!

East Coast Ryder: Thanks! Enjoy this chappie (it's a little longer!)

LilManiac: Thanks. Hope you like this chapter as well!

Galaxytree: Inspiration was a little hard to come by, but seemingly only for Animorphs: my LOTR fics were going fine. I think I must have several separate muses, and the Animorphs one was on holiday! I am now inspired again. Yay!

Anifan1: I'm not sure if the signed and anonymous reviewers are the same people, so thanks to both of you. And to the signed reviewer: I know now that you shouldn't use more than one exclamation mark, but didn't when I wrote that chapter. I'll edit it when I have time.

Hey, I think I'm finally over my writer's block! Yay! So, here's a celebratory chapter. It's a little on the short side, but I wanted to get it up asap.

School. Not much fun, especially when you were an alien with superior technology, knowing most of the maths and science. Obviously, though, I couldn't just let Karen's grades go straight up from a fairly decent B or high C to getting 100 on everything, and I also had to take a reasonable amount of time over my.. no, Karen's work. I reminded myself not to get too attached to my host.

You humans, if any of you are reading this, may think it is difficult to get the answers right. Trust me, it's a lot harder to get the correct amount of the answers wrong. In a subject like Maths, there is only one right answer: but an infinite number of wrong ones, and I had to select one which would seem like a mistake that Karen would make.

So I chose the easy way out. Wouldn't you? I let Karen do her own work, allowing her a tiny margin of control. I corrected one or two answers to raise her grades slightly; well, she wasn't going to do it for nothing. She was a smart girl, I'll give her that much credit. Looking back, I realise she was actually managing to manipulate a creature who had control over her entire body, and access to her every thought and memory.

The two of us managed to get along, but Karen still kept some of the bitter resentment and anger that she had greeted me with. I couldn't blame her really. Even back then, a tiny part of me was telling me that what I was doing was wrong; but then a much larger part of me would remember how it felt to be a Yeerk in my natural form, and the sort of punishment I would get for sympathy with a subject species or for disobeying Visser Three's orders.

The bell rang for lunch. Wonderful! I had yet to sample some foods, to further experience the sense of taste. Yeerks can 'taste' to a certain extent; we could tell if areas of a Pool were polluted, for example; I had never experienced the difference between sugar and salt, or indeed any taste for pleasure.

(Honestly!) I scolded myself. (Don't be such an idiot!)

(Are you still talking to yourself?)

"Hey, Karen!"

I turned. A young girl approached me, and I recognised her as one of Karen's best friends, Emily. The two had met when Karen had moved to town several years ago.

"Hi, Emily," I said through Karen's mouth.

"Are you going out riding tonight?" She asked. Emily had been desperate for a pony since she was very young, but had had nowhere to keep one. Now the two girls kept their ponies together in the stables behind Karen's house, and often rode together.

"No, sorry. I'm going to The Sharing tonight."

Emily gave me a puzzled look.

"It's a new club. We do all sorts of things there. You want to come?"

(Don't you dare, you filthy slug! You leave her alone, you hear me?)

"I'll give it a go, sure."

That night, Karen's father (the reason she had been infested in the first place) dropped us off at the Sharing meeting.

"Have fun, you two," he said as we climbed out of the car.

"Hiya!" It was Redan.. I mean, Alex, another 'full member' of The Sharing.

"Hi Alex." I indicated Emily with one hand. "This is my friend Emily. She'd like to try out the club. Emily, this is Alex. She's a full member, like me."

The two exchanged greetings and shook hands.

"We've got a full member's meeting to go to now," explained Alex. "We should be back in about half an hour."

As soon as 'Alex' and I were out of sight, she whispered to me urgently.

"Aftran, this is no regular meeting. Visser Three's coming, I don't know what for."

I blanched. "You're sure? This can't be good. He didn't ask specifically for us, did he?"

"No, of course not. But Innis 226 wants to speak to you, and I don't think it's good news."

"Uh- oh."

"You sound like a human, Aftran."

"Isn't that the point? Blend in, be one of them, that's what Sub- Visser 19 said when he gave me my briefing."

"I guess you're right."

Before we could say any more, we were at the room where the meeting would be held. Innis 226, aka Chapman, was standing near the door. I tried to slip past him, unnoticed. It didn't work.

"Aftran 942!"

I sighed mentally, and walked over to him.

"Yes, sir?"

He drew me aside. "How much progress have you made with your task?"

"Honestly, sir, not much. However, I have brought another girl to the meeting today," I replied nervously.

"That was not your task, although it is good news. Continue with your work."

"Yes, sir."

We were interrupted as an adult human male, flanked by guards, came through the doorway. The door was closed and locked, and the man began to demorph.

Perhaps a little short, but at least it's here! Please review.