Chapter 3

"What's the problem?" Rachel asked, to no one in particular, as she leaned across the table in Cinnabon. "Okay, so you two found some dead Controller in a public toilet, and his Yeerk fell out. Big deal. Saves us the trouble."

I looked to Marco first, and then to Rachel, forming what I could only hope was a serious expression. Human mouths are so difficult to control, especially when presented with a tray of warm, aromatic cinnamon buns…

"Ax?" Marco said.

I formed a human smile and refocused my eyes on Rachel. "The Controller was not killed on purpose, Rachel. The Yeerk was pulled out and the Controller died as a side-affect. Ect. My tongue makes a clicking sound when I say that word. Affect. Aff-ect."

"That means someone wanted to murder the Yeerk, not the Controller?" Prince Jake asked, pushing the tray of cinnamon buns toward me.

"Exactly," I said, although with my mouth filled with delicious cinnamon bun, the sound came out more like "Eksacktluh."

I found that everyone except Erek looked away from me while I ate. Most humans seem to find my eating habits unusual. I cannot understand why. I place food in my mouth, I chew it and then I swallow it and the food travels to my human stomach. Exactly as humans do. Such strange people.

"And that's not forgetting the woman I found in the dumpster. She was killed in a different way, but the goal was the same. Kill the Yeerk, and the host died in the process," Erek said. "It seems as though someone is on a Yeerk killing spree."

"Not necessarily a bad thing," Tobias muttered, drinking a beverage known as a 'Coke'. He enjoys his human morph nearly as much as I do, although Tobias is now quite happy being a hawk.

"I have to agree," I said. "If someone is killing the Yeerks for us, we do not have to worry about them ourselves."

"No!" Cassie shouted, slamming her hands down on the table, and knocking one of my cinnamon buns onto the floor. I picked it up, dusted it off, and ate it while she spoke.

"It wouldn't be bad if someone was just killing Yeerks, but they're killing humans too, innocent human hosts who have done nothing wrong! We have to stop it."

Everyone fell silent for a moment. Humans prefer to be silent when digesting information, while I prefer to eat.

"Erek," Prince Jake said. "Can you find out who those Yeerks were? If they have anything in common or if they are important in some way?"

"I can," Erek said. "But it might take some time."

"We can be patient," Prince Jake said, smiling wryly.

"Okay then, I've got to go play coroner on two Yeerk corpses. Make sure you have as much fun as me," Erek said, laughing somewhat bitterly.

"You can do autopsies?" Cassie asked disbelievingly.

"I used to mummify Egyptian pharaohs, and I worked for the doctors who discovered the human veins carry blood, not air," Erek replied. "I can manage getting DNA out of a slug."

Erek left, and I finished eating my last cinnamon bun. I was still hungry.

"Prince Jake?" I asked. "May we purchase some foods containing the wonderful tastes of salt and greeeease?"

"Later, Ax," Prince Jake said.

Prince Jake no longer asks me to stop calling him 'Prince'. Perhaps he has finally accepted Andalite customs. Or maybe he was just tired.

"I must demorph soon," I said, suddenly noticing that in the midst of eating my tasty human snacks, I had only five minutes of morph time remaining.

"Me too," Tobias said.

We both stood up on our unstable human legs and walked out of the café leaving the others behind, and made our way to the public restrooms nearby. Thankfully, not the same one as before.

I walked in with Tobias behind me, and he locked the door.

It is paramount that every two hours I return to my Andalite body, or I will become a nothlit as Tobias once was.

Morphing is a strange process; it is never the same each time you do it. No matter how many times you perform a morph, it varies every time.

This time, as I stood in the centre of the room and began to demorph, my human arms changed first. My five fingers split into several more, and the arms themselves became thinner and less powerful. Fur sprouted from the pores on my bald skin, and in moments my entire upper body was covered.

But that was all.

The rest of me was still human.

As I continued, my eye-stalks emerged from my brows and looked left and right, though since my brain was yet to change, I could see nothing from them.

Next, my back legs appeared. POP. POP. At last I was stable again, balanced on all fours as every sensible creature would be, and then my tail shot out from the end of my human spine, and along with it, my tail blade.

Now I was fully Andalite with blue fur, tail blade and eye stalks…with one exception; my face.

It was not Andalite.

My lips, covered with cinnamon, now began to disappear. I quickly licked them with my tongue before that too shrivelled away, and for an instant I tasted it, before I was finally, fully Andalite again.

( I do wish that we Andalites could taste as you do, Tobias, ) I said wistfully. ( If only we could know what the fruits on our homeworld tasted like. Your species, flawed as it is, has many advantages over mine. )

(Hey,) Tobias said from atop the nearest stall, now a red-tailed hawk again, (I'm not technically human anymore, so it's not really my species, is it?)

(No, I suppose not,) I replied, before morphing back into human to return to the Mall. The whole process happened in reverse this time, until I was a human body, with human features, but with no mouth and an Andalite nose.

Any human happening upon this sight would have been quite disturbed, and so Tobias said, would have needed a shrink. Though I myself am confused as to how reducing the person's size would help them overcome hysteria. Obviously human psychology has very extreme ideas.

Tobias, now human again also, and I made our way back to the café, where we found that only Prince Jake and Cassie awaited us.

"Where has Rachel gone? Gohn. Gun?"

"Where else, Ax?" Cassie said. "The Gap. They have a mid-season sale on."

I know that human females, especially adolescents, seem to enjoy the act of purchasing artificial skin. However, Cassie does not, and she seems irritated when Rachel does so. Intriguing.

Seconds later, I heard a shrieking sound that indicated several humans were in distress.

Looking to the source of the sound, I saw Rachel running down one of the moving stairwells humans call 'escalators', carrying a plastic bag marked with 'The Gap'. I personally think 'A Bag' was more appropriate, but no one else agrees.

Rachel bolted toward us with the bag, which seemed to weigh a lot more than Rachel's usual load of artificial skin. Her skin was red, what humans call 'flushed', and her breaths came in ragged gasps.

"What is it, Rachel?" Marco asked. "Don't tell me you forgot your storecard and you had to rob the place?"

"There's a dead Controller in the changing room," Rachel said quietly. "She's got a hole in her head, above the eyes. I managed to grab the Yeerk before anyone saw it."

"Where is it?" Prince Jake asked.

Rachel put her bag on the table, and it made a noise familiar to my ears. A squelch.

"I believe I know where the Yeerk is," I said, making everyone laugh nervously. Most accidental. I was merely making a statement.

"This is insane!" Cassie said. "Someone's killed three Controllers now, and this one was right on the Yeerk's doorstep!"

I nodded. The Gap was one of the secret entrances to the Yeerk pool.

"Okay, we wait for Erek to tell us who the other two Yeerks were, and we need to give him this one too," Prince Jake said in what Marco calls his 'I am the fearless leader' voice. "Marco, you take it."

Marco said two words I gather are not acceptable to repeat, before sighing and accepting the bag from Rachel with a sound of disgust.

"When Erek calls, I want us ready to go as soon as possible. We have a murderer to catch."