Notes:
--...yoroshiku, baby! *mwee*
Chapter 7
Cassie
By Aura Kage
You can't help, the Andalite female that I was already thinking of as simply "Anku" in my mind said with a strange tone. She trod forward and put a delicate many-fingered hand on my shoulder as if to ease a scared animal. But what if you could?
If I could? Why was she even asking? Of course I would! To help Jake, to help Ax, Marco, Tobias – of course! I had stayed behind to continue a dream – but that dream had turned out to be a nightmare.
"If I could?" I said, regretting that I had nearly snapped at the Andalite. I reversed the morph, feeling my feathers sink back into my skin with a distant itch. "If I could?"
Yes. If you could help…would you?
"Well, rather than face the president and the tourists, yes," I told her flatly. "Rather than explain why all the Hork-Bajir are gone, yes. If I could help, well…then yes. I would."
She looked at me with a deepness, a profoundness that was strange, as if she was expecting something to happen.
And then, all of a sudden, I felt the firmness of the moist ground give away under my feet as I was hoisted into the air by an invisible hand, and the peaceful Yosemite landscape fell apart in a myriad of earthen novas exploding all at once.
~
It seemed like hours when I was able to regain my "thoughts," but when I did, I still wasn't sure that I had. All around was a dark blackness – a sable so…so final that it scared me. It was as if you had been living in your little house for your whole life and then suddenly looked out a window and saw nothing. Saw nothing, when some back part of you knew that there was supposed to be something there. Disturbing. Discomforting.
And then I saw that familiar blue glow comings towards us, with the familiar and yet dis-attached clop, clop, clop of hooves or hard-soled shoes. I felt his presence in my mind even before I saw him, knew somehow that this was all his doing.
The Ellimist. He who was of no gender, the one that was also many.
He appeared, an old little man, and how he had made the hoof-noises I didn't know. He came towards us – I felt Anku beside me, though I still hadn't "acknowledged" her – with the grace of a swan on seamless deep water.
Very complementing, Cassie, the Ellimist remarked upon reading my thoughts. Cassie the Animorph.
So sick of people calling me that. So sick of me calling me that. I mean, only "high-ranking" people had the word "the" in their names – the President, King Arthur of the Round Table, the star of so-and-so some-such sitcom or whatever.
And Ankulei-Shloroun-Dristhfill, of course, the Ellimist said, turning to the Andalite experiment, as she had called herself, and smiling warmly. Ankulei only looked back at him with stony eyes, eyes that were her own Andalite brilliant green and the expressive eyes of a hundred and then some other different species. Her "form" in this…wherever-this-was…was strange – her own Andalite form, and the wraiths of what looked to be all of her acquired morphs in a semi-transparent mist shrouding her body. Behind her I saw the massive hindquarters of beings too large to comprehend, and the feathered, scaled, and dragonic wings of avian creatures too distant to even think about.
And what was I? I looked down, and saw only me, Cassie.
Of course. I was enough of an anomaly as I was in my own body. I didn't need an Ellimist to contort my image in order to be weird.
Why your change of heart, Cassie? The Ellimist asked, tilting the head of his little-old-man guise. Wasn't there once a pacifist girl where you are now?
I hated the way he talked – as if he was above us all, talking down, and acting as if we should appreciate his attention. As if he were the player, and we were the pawns. No, no, not "as if" – we were the pawns. The pawns in his little game with the Crayak.
But he was right. The Cassie-During-Yeerk-War wouldn't have thought such scornful thoughts. What had I become?
We were locked in gazes, the Ellimist and I, for what seemed to be centuries and what should have been seconds…though now we were in the Ellimist's "world," so I suppose that shouldn't have been strange. Centuries would seem like seconds if you were immortal, afterall, and that was what I was convinced the Ellimist was.
You said you would help, Anku said accusingly, taking a step forward, the ghosts of her morphs moving with her. But how can I? Cassie does not know the location of any Z-Space vehicle that can move to Kelbrid territory.
I understood Ankulei's perspective on the Ellimist. Andalites, I learned, didn't trust him very much – he was the figure of omnipotence in stories, but not to be relied on. He used his powers for his own ends and used the universe and everything in it as his game pieces with the Crayak.
Maybe I shouldn't have trusted him either. Anku, though I had just met her formally about ten minutes ago, was someone that I already trusted more than the little blue man in front of me. Staring me down. Daring me to deny that I wanted to help, and daring me to say that I did.
And all around me, the blackness that shouldn't have been there.
"Where are we?" I asked finally, tearing my eyes from the Ellimist's own and looking around. Nothing much to see.
We are where we are.
"Oh, so now you've become all philosophical?" I said hotly, surprised at my own irate words. The Ellimist was right – I had had a change of heart.
The Ellimist looked around slowly, relaxed, and then turned back to me. You don't trust the appearance I put on…very well. Maybe you will trust me more in this form…
I looked back at the Ellimist and saw the little old man distorting, breaking apart, like a broken holograph – and then reassemble in another blue-radiating body that I knew very well.
Jake.
I stiffened, and I feel more than saw Anku look to me, bewildered as to why I would react to this, or perhaps just my pure reaction. She most likely had heard about Jake the Yeerk-Killer, but had never seen him.
"Get out," I said, hearing my voice break. It was so loud, echoed back and amplified by the walls that bordered all the worlds in existence. "Get out of Jake's body!"
My voice echoed in the vast expanse of ebony, and the Ellimist slowly, painstakingly aged Jake's features until he was again the old man.
Anku glanced at me uneasily with one stalk eye, and then quickly looked back to the Ellimist, again starting her protest. You heard Cassie, no doubt, on Earth. She wishes to help as well. But as to where we can obtain a Z-Space craft…
The Ellimist smiled and turned his attention to Ankulei, temporarily leaving me to my tormented thoughts. You don't need a Zero Space-capable craft in order to get into Kelbrid territory. I can take you there myself, even make it seem as if you had spent absolutely no time during the journey, though the time it would have taken you to get there via craft will still have elapsed. I can, for now, assure you that the other Animorphs are doing…well…but they will not fare this way much longer without further assistance.
He sounded like a mechanic telling me that my pipes were clogged; Anku seemed to start excitedly at the idea, but I was troubled. I held up a hand slightly, as if to stop her, and then dropped it limply at my side.
I gazed at the Ellimist defiantly, and he turned jaunty eyes towards me again. "Wait. I don't trust this."
And why not?
"Because…of the rules," I said, as if the words were being whispered in my ear and I was just saying them. The Ellimist's eyes flickered, startled, and I gained strength from his loss in composure. "That's it, isn't it? The rules. The rules between you and Crayak. If you…if this…if you're doing this so you can get advantage in the game, then there must be some sort of deal that you had to make with the Crayak. You don't exactly just bend over and help like this."
You are correct, Cassie, the Ellimist agreed, not sounding a trace resentful. There is a pact between Crayak and myself. The stakes are too high to waste. I know nothing myself of what the Crayak plans with the free rein that our concord has promised, but he also does not know what I'm planning to do.
"But why me?" I said helplessly, not even recognizing myself. "Why us? Why not some other super-hero clan in the other part of the universe?"
Because they could care less about what happens in this place, the Ellimist said simply. Because they do not have the rather interesting relationship that would bound them to help, if not just to satisfy the obligation of friendship.
I stared, feeling as if my lower jaw would drop straight off my head. He was using our morality? That was just…I don't know. That was just wrong. To use something that was supposed to be good for twisted purposes.
"That is low," I spat. "That is just low."
The Ellimist shrugged, unconcerned. If you don't want to help, Cassie, then you don't have to. I'm not forcing you to do anything.
"Yes, you are!" I practically screamed. "You are! You're…you're forcing me, you're using my…my love for Jake against me!"
But wasn't this what you wanted to do?
He was making me angry. And he was confusing me…or was I confusing myself? Whatever it was, it just made me angrier.
What will it be, Cassie? The Ellimist asked in his infuriatingly calm voice. Will you help to help, or will you decline if not just to spite me?
I glared. Felt like screaming. I had tried, tried to be kind to life. Tried to keep a hold on morality just when it seemed it was something that I had to lose for the sake of a billion other humans. Tried to keep human, Hork-Bajir, and Andalite together, peacefully. Tried. Succeeded – temporarily. Then, failed. Life just didn't feel like returning the favor I was trying to give.
"I'll help," I said, grudgingly. "I'll –"