Review Responses:

Korean Pearl: Yeah, their relationship is deteriorating; but it will pick back up in the chapters to come! Thanks for your review.

Elwing: I know, I didn't update for ages, but I had writer's block; thankfully, I'm over that now. My updates do tend to be a little irregular, unfortunately, depending on the difficulty I'm having with the section of the story and my mood at the time.

Anonymous- cat: Yeah, I figured Aftran's viewpoint would have to change to make her the character KAA introduces in the Departure. But Aftran's viewpoint will change back thanks to her interaction with Cassie.

Please do read the Author Note at the bottom of this chapter (before you review). And the dialogue towards the end is pulled directly from The Departure, so I have no claim to that.


In the months that followed, Karen and I spoke little. I gained many valuable pieces of information and succeeded in persuading Karen's father to invest in many Yeerk projects. The only thing that went wrong was Emily quitting the Sharing. I will say little of those few months, as it is a time of which I am now ashamed. Instead, I will skip ahead to a certain Sharing meeting which changed my life forever.

Karen's father (still Yeerk- free) dropped me off at that meeting just like he had at any other. Estril, my brother, was still in a Hork- bajir. He and several others were to stay aboard a shielded ship 'just in case'.

I had heard something going on in the woods. Seeing what was happening, I threw myself to the ground. A group of Andalites (for they were certainly not normal animals) were fighting the group of Hork- Bajir. I saw Estril engaged in battle with a wolf. That's all I knew back then about the wolf I was watching: it was an Andalite in morph.

As if in slow motion, I saw the wolf leap towards Estril's throat. I froze, unable even to cry out, as the wolf ripped the throat from the rest of the neck.

He was dead. There was no doubt about it. But there would be time to grieve later. I followed the wolf. Strangely, after several minutes the wolf split away from the others. I lost sight of her for perhaps a minute, and when I saw her again she was human, dressed in tight Lycra.

I followed her to a house with a barn behind it., and saw her go in. I then decided I would have to return, but in the days that followed I watched her. I saw that she stayed in this human form for more than two hours at a time. One 'Andalite bandit' was human.

There came a day when I followed the girl out when she went riding. I took Emily's pony, Pepper, not Karen's, and kept to the tree line. Emily's pony was a dark brown colour, blending in better than the golden coat of Sundance.

It all began to fall apart when the girl dismounted beside a claw foot bathtub serving as a water trough. I had the sudden sense that I was not alone. Pepper reared, pulling the reins form my hands.

I turned, slowly. I saw a bear, and behind her, cubs. I ran as the bear began to advance towards me.

The girl I had been following spotted me as I attempted to climb a tree to escape form the bear, having forgotten completely about the stolen Dracon beam in my pocket.

She galloped her horse towards me as I struggled to climb. She leapt the fence, and grabbed me as she galloped past. We were keeping away from the bear, but then the girl hit her head on a low hanging branch, and we tumbled form the horse into the river.

I woke up quickly, grabbing on to a floating log. I grabbed the girl: I wanted her alive.

When I dragged her onto the bank, I swiftly searched Karen's memories. For once, she was eager to help, not wanting the girl dead. I found a memory of being shown first aid, and breathed air into the girl's lungs.

As soon as she woke up she was sick. Then she looked at me.

"You saved my life, didn't you?" I rasped.

"You saved mine. That bear could have killed me. So now we're even. I don't owe you anything and you don't owe me."

The gril looked a little puzzled, but sat up. "My name is Cassie."

"I'm Karen," I lied.

"Where are we?"

"I don't know. We were in the river for a long time. I was knocked out, too. But I came to sooner than you. And I was able to grab onto a floating log for part of the time."

Cassie and I continued our conversation for a while, but then she asked me:

"Karen, what were you doing there in the woods to begin with?"

I didn't know what to say, so I opted to say nothing.

"The other night, someone was behind the barn, looking up at my window. That was you, wasn't it?"

Again, I said nothing.

Cassie began to panic now. "Why were you following me? Why were you spying on me?" She rushed, getting more agitated by the minuite.

She knew anyway, so I decided to go with the truth, But I wasn't going to say it straight out.

"You interest me," I said.

"There's nothing interesting about me. Really."

A lie, obviously. But if she wanted it to be that way, I'd play along.

"Sure there is. See, if I'm right about you, then you can fly away form this place any time you want. If I'm right about you, you can also.. let's just say, make a few changes… and kill me."

She faked a laugh. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing on Earth. At least that's what everyone believes. Humans can't morph. Only Andalites can morph. Only an Andalite could become a wolf and rip the throat from my brother's host body and leave him dying."


Short, I know. But that's where KAA leaves this chapter of the Departure. As you can see, I am now following the events (and dialogue!) of The Departure very closely. This may be boring for some of you who've read it, but it's necessary for those people (such as Korean Pearl) who haven't. it should hopefully be fun for you to see it told from Aftran's POV, and I hope you enjoy it. If you find it boring, feel free to skip the next few chapters, but then don't complain about faults in Aftran's cahracterisation as I plan to show a lot of Aftran's shifting emotions and thoughts as we follow through the Departure, as well as some of Karen's, told by Aftran.

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