My name is Marco.
I won't tell you my last name. Why do you need to know my last name anyway?
There are two reasons why I'm not telling you my last name. One, because of the normal reasons. You know, so random people can't just look me up and stock me.
Two, well... That one's a little more complicated.
Do you know what Yeerks are? No. Of course you don't. I'll just fill you in. Yeerks are slimy alien parasites that look like slugs. The Yeerks look harmless, but they're one of the most dangerous species I've ever faced. They crawl into the ear of a sentient being, rap around the brain, and completely take over.
The Yeerk has total and complete control of your brain. It rifles through your memories like a student looks through a textbook. Okay, maybe that's not a great comparison. But the Yeerk can learn everything there is to know about you.
And the worst part? You're still in there, fully aware and fully conscious of everything the Yeerk parasite is making your body do.
The Yeerks have conquered the Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, Gedds, and nearly the Leerans, but we stopped that from happening. The mission on Leera was one of our more successful missions. And they're trying to take over the human race.
If you haven't just walked away at this point, dismissing me as just another crazy guy ranting about alien conspiracies and all that crap, just let me tell you some good news.
There are some good aliens that aren't under Yeerk control. They are called Andalites.
Andalites are kind of like blue alien centaurs with a bladed tail and four eyes.
Author's note: I'm visually impaired, so I'm not great with visual descriptions. I'm assuming that everyone reading this has read at least some of the Animorphs books and knows what Andalites look like. Now back to the story.
On one ordinary Friday night, me and four of my friends were taking a walk through the mall. We left and walked home through an abandoned construction site.
It was there that we met a dying Andalite Prince named Elfangor-Something-Something. He had a three part name, and so do all Andalites. I guess they just go by their primary names. Elfangor told us about the Yeerks and he gave us the power to morph. A power which was both a gift and a curse.
The power was to morph. To adopt the form of any animal. I could fight with the muscle of a gorilla, fly high in the sky with the wings of an osprey, and much more. Oh man, just writing that, I realized that after the war was over, I could write ads for morphing.
The Yeerks use a front organization. It is called the Sharing. It pretends to be some kind of fun little club that kids, adults, and all sorts of families can come hang out and then become full members. The full members are all infested with Yeerks. They take you down to the Yeerk pool and have one of their own crawl into your ear.
We found out that the Yeerks have a crucial weakness. They have to return to the Yeerk pools every three days to feed on Kandrona rays. The Kandrona is the Yeerks home world's sun. But the Yeerks built artificial Kandrona particle generators that the Yeerks feed off of for a couple of hours.
If you keep a Controller out of a Yeerk pool for more than three days, the Yeerk inside will die.
The curse of the morphing power is that you can't stay in a morph for more than two hours.
That's what happened to Tobias.
Tobias stayed in red-tailed hawk form just a little too long.
An all-powerful being called an Ellimist gave him back his morphing power and twisted time so that he could acquire his old human self as a morph.
Tobias and Rachel are together. Jake and Cassie are together. And the only one on the team is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, an Andalite male. And although I have always kind of been into guys, I mostly prefer girls.
I also wouldn't date an Andalite guy.
I should probably get on with the story.
It all started after an intense battle at the Yeerk pool where I almost died. That's kind of a normal occurance for an Animorph.
It had only been a few days since our newest member, David, went rogue and tried to kill us. We ended up trapping him in morph as a rat.
It affected all of us. None more so than Rachel.
She was the one who waited out the two hours with him. He was screaming and crying, begging to be let out.
We all realized that what we had done was wrong. But we were telling ourselves that we did what we had to do. I knew that it was a load of bull.
"All right. Let's all go home." Jake said. "But can I just talk to Tobias, Rachel, and Ax for a few minutes?" Jake asked.
What? That was a different way of saying "Get out of here, Cassie and Marco."
Cassie and I both left the barn. The strangest thing was that this was Cassie's barn.
I'd noticed Jake, Rachel, Ax and Tobias were acting weird for the first little while.
I whispered to Cassie, "I think we should morph and eavesdrop on them."
"We might have to at this point. I'm really curious." Cassie said.
We morphed flies and snuck into the barn.
Flies can't really hear that well, but they can hear thought-speak just fine.
The others had morphed their bird morphs, to avoid eavesdropping from human ears.
[Let's discuss what we were talking about earlier today. What should we do with Cassie and Marco.]
Jake's voice had taken on a quality that I'd never heard before.
[I vote we kill Marco.] Rachel said instantly.
That made me stop. I didn't see that coming. I felt a mix of worry and anger at Rachel's words.
[Prince Jake. I suggest that we do away with Cassie. War has no room for morals.] Ax said.
[Cassie used to be my best friend, but I'm going to have to agree with Ax on this one.] Rachel said.
[Aximili and Rachel, we've heard from you. But we haven't heard your thoughts, Tobias.] Jake said.
[I'm with Rachel to the end.] Tobias said.
[How are we going to kill them?] Jake asked.
[Prince Jake, may I suggest an idea.]
[Yes, Aximili.] Jake said. He never used Ax's full name.
[Trick them into morphing insects. I will be delighted to eat one of them in my human morph. We keep the other as a nothlit and release it onto a busy street and see how it survives. Without our weakest members holding us back, we can finally crush the Yeerk Empire.]
That ruled out the possibility of them being Controllers.
So that meant ...
No! No! No! I couldn't think like that. I just couldn't think that the Animorphs were betraying me.
Cassie realized it too.
Cassie and I flew as fast as we could from them.
[What do we do?] Cassie asked. [We can't go to our homes. They'll be looking for us there.]
[No. We have to find another place to go.] I said.
[Ax said something about still wanting to crush the Yeerk Empire.] Cassie said.
[Yeah.] I said.
Then it hit me. [No. You can't mean—] I trailed off as Cassie said, [Yep. We're going to have to make a deal with Visser Three.]