Chapter 10

I reached the house, and flew in through the still-open window into my bedroom. I saw that my mom had come and taken my laundry basket. As if I'd need clean underwear to fight the Yeerks. I smiled inwardly and focused my mind on my human body, beginning to demorph, suddenly wishing I'd remembered to lock my bedroom door. I could hear Tom moving about downstairs, and my parents both out in the garden. They had no reason to come up to my room. I relaxed a little, letting the changes come. This time, the first thing to change was my face. My eyes became smaller and hazel colored, my vision blurring as I lost the amazing vision of the raptor. My razor-like hooked beak, ideal for ripping and tearing, became the soft human lips of my human mouth. I felt an itching in my gums as teeth emerged. Light brown hair grew out of my head, and round ears popped out the side of my face. My neck became longer and thinner, and my shoulders became more obvious. My wings shortened and the joints switched direction as they became arms and hands. My yellowy feet and sharp, powerful talons dissolved into pink little toes. At this point, I was basically a bird-sized boy, covered entirely in light gray and bluish feathers. Not my ugliest looking demorph, but still a freaky thing to watch. I concentrated harder on my own self, willing the changes to speed up. Eventually, I was fully human. I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt on over my morphing suit, and went into the bathroom to brush my hair. Finally, I grabbed my coat and, on second thoughts, my homework bag, and cycled round to Cassie's. It wasn't quite two o clock, but I felt like going over some stuff with her before the others arrived. Something had begun to play on my mind as I'd been flying over my neighborhood, and Cassie was the best person when it came to understanding feelings.

Cassie's mom was outside the barn, feeding some of the goats as I cycled up the dirt track to the farm. I waved to her and smiled at one of the young lambs that was busily sniffing in my pockets.

"Hey, Jake," she said. "You looking for Cassie?"

"Yeah, is she around?" I asked.

"I think she's just up at the house. I'll go let her know you're here."

"Thanks, I'll just wait in the barn, shall I?"

"Yeah, don't get too close to the animals though," she warned. "Some of them are pretty wild and I'm sure you don't want to lose any fingers!"

I nodded and made my way over to the big red barn, leaving my bike standing against the side of it. The whole place was as noisy as usual with the various quacks, squawks and snorts of the various animals. I looked around at some of the birds, thinking how I could become any of them if I want to. There was a new raptor in, I noticed. A big brown hawk which looked just like Philip's buzzard morph, greedily eying a rabbit in a cage across the room.

"Jake, hi! I didn't realize you were coming early." I turned round to see Cassie making her way into the barn. She was covered in dried mud and stunk of horses, but that didn't stop me from thinking how attractive she was.

"Uh, I decided to pop over early," I told her. "I flew down to the Hork-Bajir valley earlier to tell Sam and the others about the meeting later. Ended up having a bit of a heart to heart with them."

"Yeah?" she asked, going over to the medicine cupboard and grabbing a little tub of pills.

"Just to see how they are getting on with stuff." I felt a little bad, talking about what we'd discussed, when they knew that only I had been present. But I needed to get something off my chest, and Cassie wasn't exactly going to be spreading my thoughts around the rest of the group.

"How are they?" She walked over to a savage looking fox, and calmly her hand down the back on it's throat, making it swallow a pill. The fox sat perfectly still, as if showing to the other animals how it should behave. I swallowed, unable to understand how the girl could cope with school, Animorphs stuff, and help her dad run the clinic and not have a breakdown.

"Yeah, they seem to be getting along really well," I replied, staring at the fox. "Toby and the other Hork-Bajir seem really happy to have them there. They've started building this really cool tree-house system, and they've got a well, and-"

Cassie looked at me, cutting me off. She knew I hadn't come down here early to talk about the valley.

"Something Sam said, it really made me think," I said at last.

"What sort of something?"

"I don't know if I could cope with losing one of us," I admitted.

Cassie removed her arm from the fox's throat, and came over to me.

"What makes you say that?" she asked gently.

"Cassie, they've all lost a team member already," I said. "That girl Asha died right before they'd barely started their mission."

"You're worried how you'd take it if the same happened to one of us?"

"Yeah, but not just that. It's making me think, aren't we the inexperienced ones here? I mean, we've been at this longer than they have, and we've got way more experience, but so far…"

I trailed off, trying not to look her in the eye.

"Plus, this will sound really stupid, but if I'm like, meant to be the leader here, I shouldn't even be thinking this way. But I am. And I can't stop thinking about it, and what I'd do if I was faced with that event. I should be thinking rationally about it, if anything, but right now I guess I'm feeling like a bit of a fool, like they don't think I can really handle this. Does that make any sense to you?"

Cassie put her arm round me and turned my face to look at her.

"Of course it makes sense," she said. "But you don't have to have already dealt with something to know how to fight it. You're scared about this whole thing - we all are. And yeah, it's a subject we're gonna have to deal with, whether it happens or not." She smiled. "Just because you're the leader, doesn't mean you can't have feelings too. I know you're always doing the right thing for everyone here, even if you don't. I think everyone else knows that too, including the new guys. We all have respect for you here. They're no question about that."

I nodded. "I guess. Thanks, Cassie. I really needed to talk to someone about that."

She smiled again and stood up. "You know you can always talk to me, about anything," she said seriously. "Now, you couldn't give me a hand with this pigeon, could you?"

I stood up and helped her fix the bird's bandage, feeling much better about things.

Cassie was right. I shouldn't start feeling like a failure just because I hadn't had to deal with one of us dying. I made those kinds of decisions all the time, whenever we went into battle. I guess if we all came out alive every time, I had to be doing something right.

A few minutes later, I heard a stomping outside, and Marco came trudging into the barn, covered head to toe in mud.

"Cassie!" he exclaimed. "You really need to sort out your farm's irrigation system! I just stepped in what I thought was a little puddle, and it turned out to be the freaking Pacific!" He sat down on a hay bale and took off a filthy trainer, banging it against the floor to get some of the mud off.

"Geez, Marco, I know you're an idiot for falling in a bog, but could you please not involve the rest of us?" I asked, shielding my face from the oncoming mud-storm.

"Hey, if I get wet, everyone else gets wet," he said, giving me a shove. I pushed him away and moved to the other side of the hay bale, rolling my eyes.

"Marco! You've just got dirt all over my new skirt!" a voice behind me squealed.

Rachel glided gracefully into the barn, staring at her skirt in horror.

"Oooh!" Marco teased. "The mighty Xena is worried by a little mud! Would you like me to clean you up, oh mighty warrior?" He walked up to her, attempting to brush the dirt away with his hands.

"Get off me, you little twerp," she said, pushing him away. She laughed as he fell on his butt in a pile of manure. "Don't touch me again."

I met Cassie's eyes and we exchanged a discreet giggle.

"I'm shocked that a bit of mud has finally found a way to break through your glamorous barriers and stick to your clothes, Rachel," she laughed. Cassie and Rachel are best friends, but like Marco and I, it's difficult to see why. Cassie's the animal loving save-Mother-Earth type, and Rachel looks like she's just stepped out of the fashion pages of Vogue. They are complete opposites, but it's never seemed to have bother them in the slightest.

Rachel smirked at her friend and looked at me. "I hope this doesn't become one of those all-weekend missions," she said, still picking at her skirt. "I still have that algebra homework to do. Unless we get to go on another stomping spree. That would be good fun."

"Well, I've actually got my math book with me, if you wanted to go over it before the others arrive," I said, ignoring her last remark about the stomping. Rachel had this huge African elephant morph that she loves, and she's always looking for an excuse to step on a few cars.

"Yeah, why not," she said, coming over to join me. "Maybe Ax can give us a hand when he arrives."

Just then, a hawk flew into the barn, followed by a disturbingly handsome boy who I recognized to be the Andalite in his human morph. It's a sort of combination of mine, Marco's, Rachel's and Cassie's DNA, which he managed to combine by means some advanced sciencey-technological thing which no one on this Earth would ever understand. As a result, you can see bits of me in there, like my eyes and broad shoulders, but also hints of Rachel's fine bone structure, Cassie's dark skin and Marco's hair.

"Hello, Prince Jake," beamed Ax, doing some kind of awkward salute-style wave that was most unlike him. "Ake-kuh. Print-suh Jake."

"Hi, Ax," I said simply.

"Tobias and I have just been sampling the fine delights of a movie theater," Ax went on. "Theee-et-uh. Move-ee. Eee. That is an excellent mouth sound. Eee."

"Yeah, it's incredible," Marco said sarcastically. "Sometimes, when I'm alone in bed at night, I just lie there, saying 'eeee' over and over again."

Ax gave him a blank look. I guess he still hasn't caught up with the whole humor thing.

"Shut up, Marco," said Rachel nonchalantly. "You went to see a movie? Which one?"

--That new Tom Cruise one,-- said Tobias, taking his usual place up in the rafters. --Ax liked the picture of the spacecraft on billboards, so I thought I'd treat him and myself to a little human culture. We had to leave early, of course, to demorph and all. Oh, by the way, he's been doing that salute all the way back. One of the characters did it like once in the film, and he's been copying it ever since.--

"I wouldn't mind seeing that," I said, unaware that I was looking at Cassie as I said it. Marco gave me a pointed look.

"The technical specifications were inaccurate, however,"Ax went, practicing his little salute. "There is no way a Class 9D cruiser could out maneuver a category three-nine-four fighter craft.--

No one bothered toanswer this.

Sam and the others arrived a few minutes later, flying in as birds through the upper windows, then starting to demorph behind one of the hay bales in case Cassie's mom walked in.

--Is that homework you're doing?-- asked Ferdie in amazement, looking at my textbook. --You've got a world to save, and you're sitting here doing maths?"

"Yeah, well, not all of us get to drop out of school just because we're hooked up in an intergalactic war," I said, turning round to face him. "Can't start raising suspicion among the teachers. Even if that means keeping up with school work."

--What is type of maths is it, anyway?-- asked Philip. --I was pretty good at it at school, maybe I could give you a hand.-- I noticed the two of them used 'maths' for 'math'. Must be some British thing.

"Algebra," I answered. "The boring type."

Philip nodded - a funny movement coming from a half-hawk, half-human freak. Philip was a fast morpher - nearly as fast as Cassie - and was already half done whilst Sam and the others had barely started.

--Well, I can do that,-- he said, his beak melting away into a mouth. --Got top marks at A Level.--

I passed Philip my notebook, aware that the others were looking at me to begin the meeting.

"You may as well start," he said haughtily, finishing the demorph andbeginning to flick through my messy scrawls. "I can decipher through this whilst listening."

Show off.