Disclaimer: I wish I did own Animorphs. But, I don't. Surprise, surprise.

A/N: Well, on to the next chapter! Hurrah! Fun, excitement now ensues! Thanks so much for all the great reviews, and I do apologize for the millionth time about the thoughtspeak. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to send me a message. Just as a reminder: what I'm doing is putting the thought-speak in single quotations, like this: ', and normal speech in double quotations, like this: ".

Marco

Rachel, Jake, and I were flying around in bird-of-prey morphs, just killing time, I guess. Killing time until Ax was ready to talk. Killing time until we could apologize and hope to God he'd forgive us. We were circling in the air above Cassie's barn-not too close to each other; we didn't want to excite suspicion. I happened to be the first one to see a small, fair-haired girl walk into the yard.

'Hey, guys, isn't that Melissa Chapman?' I asked curiously.

Rachel turned a golden eye in my direction. 'Yeah,' she replied, in a tone of surprise which would seem to indicate she didn't have a lot of faith in my recognition skills.
'Wonder what she's doing here?' Jake said, but without much interest.

'Maybe she'll make Ax feel better,' Rachel said hopefully.

'Maybe,' Jake replied. 'Look, guys, I think I'll go take a turn over the forest and see if I can see Ax, okay?'

'Sure,' I said. I didn't feel much like joking at this point, so I didn't follow up my remark.

'I'll go with you,' Rachel offered.

'Yeah, okay,' Jake replied.

'I'll just stay here and see if I can find out why Melissa is here,' I decided. Jake and Rachel didn't answer. Instead, they turned and soared off above the forest. I continued circling. After about five minutes, the door of the barn burst open, and Ax ran out in his human morph, falling over his own feet and skidding to a halt in the dirt just in front of Melissa Chapman. They started talking about something, but I couldn't hear them. I must have been up too high. I was just thinking that I should fly off to join Jake and Rachel so I wasn't intruding on Ax's privacy for the second time in a day, when I heard, 'Me.'

I nearly fell out of the air. The Andalite form appeared from behind a tree. Terrified, I yelled at the top of my private thought-speak lungs, 'Jake! Rachel! Tobias! Cassie!'

There was no answer. Jake, Rachel, and Tobias must be out of range. There was no way to know if Cassie had heard me; she wasn't in morph and couldn't thought-speak back. On the off-chance she'd heard me, I called, 'Visser Three! We have problems, people!'

Visser Three was speaking, '…Andalite warrior, I have caught you.' Then he looked at Melissa. 'Do not move, or I will kill him.'

I knew that had to be so much bull. He couldn't risk killing Ax, with his valuable morph-capable body. Ax didn't seem to say anything, though, which suggested to me Visser Three had probably threatened Melissa as well.

'Melissa,' I hissed in private thought-speak. I saw her jerk a little in surprise. 'DON'T react. It's Marco. I see you. Um, um, I'm going to try to-'

'Marco…what…doing?' Rachel's thought-speak voice was faint and far-away. 'Thought…heard you…?'

I didn't answer. I couldn't. Something was opening out of nothing. A Bug-Fighter. It had to be. Ax was being shoved into it, and then Visser Three grabbed Melissa and hustled her in, too. There was only one chance. I was an osprey. I don't have as fast a dive as Jake's peregrine falcon, but ospreys do have to be pretty fast to catch fish for dinner. Taking a mental deep breath, I folded my wings and dove. Okay, I should have waited for Jake and Rachel to show up. But I was feeling really guilty about Ax and all, and I kind of felt that this was my fault. Consequently, I wasn't thinking all that clearly.

The black opening in nothing was getting smaller and smaller. If I didn't make it, I was going to be an osprey pancake on the side of the Bug-Fighter. I tried not to think about it.

'Marco, what are you doing!' I heard Cassie's voice scream, and I knew she must just have finished a morph. I shot into the last five inches of space in the doorway and leveled off, high up near the ceiling of the Bug-Fighter, hoping that no one would think to look up, and already mentally calculating how much time I had left in morph.

It was crowded in the Bug-Fighter. Ax was surrounded by two Hork-Bajir, who kept his hands pinned behind his back. A Hork-Bajir and a Taxxon piloted the ship. Visser Three dumped Melissa down in the back and stood with his arms folded, bawling instructions at the pilots and the guards. I swooped down to land lightly in front of Melissa's tear-stained face. Her eyes grew wide with shock.

'Melissa, don't say anything, it's um…well…Marco.'

Dumb. Pretty dumb. But what else could I say?

"Marco?" she whispered, putting out her hand to touch one of my wings gently.

'Um, it's a long story. Just keep watch and make sure no one comes back here-oh, and try not to throw up.'

Great suggestion. I began to demorph, as soundlessly as I could. Melissa's eyes grew wider, but she didn't make a sound. As soon as I had finished, she whispered, "You really are a freak, Marco. And I always thought it was a figure of speech."

Wonderful. Suddenly she had a sense of humor.

"I can't explain right now. Um, there's a bunch of parasitic aliens trying to take over earth, and we're fighting them. Yeah."

It was concise. Maybe not too clear, but concise. Melissa just stared. I rolled my eyes and started to morph a fly. Whoops. I should have warned her, since the first thing that happened was that huge fly eyes popped out of my head. Melissa shrieked. I cursed everything from my unlucky stars to my own stupidity and tried to speed up the morph.

I heard the Visser's thought-speak voice, 'What is it, girl?'

There was a thunder of hooves as he began to make his way back. Melissa jumped up and started to have very convincing hysterics. "Who are you?" she screamed. "What am I doing here? Why did you kidnap me?"

Then she started just screaming. Visser Three just stood staring for a couple of minutes, which gave me enough to complete my morph.

'Thanks,' I murmured to Melissa in private thought-speak. She kept right on screaming. Wow, was all I could think. I didn't know that girl could act.

Visser Three began investigating suspiciously, so I buzzed up to Melissa's ear and inside. She sort of twitched, but she didn't say anything. I started racking my brains to come up with a plan. Knowing the Visser, he might not want to infest Ax right away, but what about Melissa? And she'd seen me morph, AND she knew who I was. My stomach twisted as I thought of my dad. I didn't want to think about it. I would just have to rescue her.

Cassie

I was in the barn, cleaning out the stall of an injured raccoon, when I heard Marco yell in thoughtspeak, 'Jake! Rachel! Tobias! Cassie!'

I wasn't in morph, so I couldn't answer. I was running for the door of the barn when I heard, 'Visser Three! We have problems, people!'

I realized I couldn't just run out there if Visser Three were out there; that really would be putting my foot in it. I began to morph to wolf as fast as I knew how. As soon as I had thought-speak capability, I screamed for Jake, Rachel, and Tobias, but I don't think they heard me. They must have been out of range.

As soon as the morph was complete, I barreled out of the barn. Things were not good. I couldn't see Ax or Melissa anywhere; all I could see was a rapidly closing dark hole in nothing, which I suspected was the hatch of a Bug Fighter. I heard the scream of a bird of prey and I turned my head automatically toward the sound. Suddenly, I caught sight of an osprey shooting toward the dark hole in nothing with the speed of a missile. It was Marco. It had to be. But what did he think he was doing!

'Marco, what are you doing!' I shrieked at the top of my thought-speak lungs, but he didn't react. What was he doing! If he didn't make it, he'd be killed! It was only seconds, but I saw it all almost in slow motion: the black hole growing steadily smaller; the bird plummeting toward it, faster, faster…he made it!

I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, and nearly collapsed, wolf though I was.

'Thank God,' I muttered under my breath. Marco can be annoying at times, but after Rachel's dream--I was just glad he was alive.

'Cassie?' It was Rachel. I could see her bald eagle circling in the sky just above me.

'Yes?' I answered faintly, still weak with relief.

'Um…where's Marco?'

I sighed. 'This is not good,' I stated, instead of answering.

'Cassie?' Jake this time. He must have been just behind Rachel. 'Cassie? What's not good?'

I shook my shaggy gray head. 'You are not going to like this.'

Jake

"He did WHAT?"

Cassie sighed and rubbed her forehead. "He dived into the Bug Fighter, Jake."

I sank down onto a bale of hay. "Why? Why didn't he just wait for us? What's he trying to do, be a hero?" Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. Marco's not the person to take that kind of unnecessary risk. He's always been the most cautious of us. Behind all his jokes, there's a really smart guy, and he knows that what he should do, know matter what happens, is wait for the rest of the team to get there. Well, he didn't. And what we thought had happened was that Melissa and Ax had somehow been taken by Visser Three. And now Marco was up there with them.

"No, Jake, he didn't want to be a hero."

Rachel was standing with her arms crossed at one side of the barn. Tobias was perched on her shoulder. Cassie had been standing next to one of the cages across the barn from me. Now she came over to me, her dark face pinched with worry, and put her hand on my shoulder.

"Jake, I think I know what was going on."

"Please. Tell me." I was tired, I was so tired of being the leader, of making all the tough decisions, but now Marco's decision had just added an extra ten pounds onto the weight on my shoulders. Cassie smiled at me, that smile that always makes me think that she knows exactly what I'm thinking, and maybe she does.

"Okay. Here's what happened: You guys were feeling guilty about what you did to Ax--and no wonder," Cassie added with a touch of heat. Rachel ducked her head down, and I blushed at the reminder.

"Yeah," Rachel agreed quietly.

"Well, Marco was feeling just as bad as you two, probably worse, since it was his idea, something I doubt he was allowed to forget." Again, I blushed, but in a detached corner of my mind, I realized Cassie had to be awfully tired to be as snippy as she was being. Not that I blamed her. If I were her, I'd be snippy too.

"Sorry," Cassie gave my shoulder a squeeze. "I'm just tired and worried. Anyway, he was feeling really guilty. So then, he's flying around and he sees, well, we don't know, but we think he sees Visser Three capture Ax and Melissa and start to take them away. He knows that you, Rachel, and Tobias haven't heard him. He has no idea whether I've heard, and he's faced with a split-second decision: do nothing and wait for you guys to get there, or go after Melissa and Ax himself."

"Yes, but why did he--" I began, and Cassie laid a gentle finger on my lips.

"Shhh, let me finish. He's feeling really guilty about Ax, so he's not thinking terribly clearly, maybe he thinks it was his fault, we don't know. But anyway, he takes the course of action we were warned he'd take by the Ellimist: he acts. He can't stay still and do nothing, so he goes after them. Get it?"

I groaned. "Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I just wish--I just wish none of this had happened."

Cassie smiled at me, a small sad smile. "Do you mean you wish you'd never spied on Ax, or do you mean you wish we'd never walked home through that construction site?"

I started to answer but stopped and raised my hands in the air tiredly. "I don't know, Cassie. I just don't know."

"Because if the second, you have to remember, because of that we're able to make a difference, maybe save our planet, and we do have each other, Jake. We do have each other."

How can someone be so right so much of the time?