I followed Cassie into the open window of the TGI Friday's building, toward the orange glow. I heard her crash into the ground and tumble. Amateur. I had flown into more windows over my years as a hawk than I'd like to admit, so I approached with the caution that the situation deserved.

The scene inside was grim. The air was thick with smoke, and flames were spreading around the room. I saw people chained to the wall, and the same Jubba-Jubba that had eaten my rival hawk crashed through a wall. I told Cassie to follow Zenguh, and I set to work freeing the prisoners.

‹You okay, Ax-man?› I called.

‹I will be in two of your minutes,› he answered.

‹Ax, they're not…› Marco began, flying in alongside Jake. ‹Ow!›

As Ax got back up to his feet, the others joined us, landing in a heap like Cassie had. Maybe I should give them some flying lessons when this is all over. I told them that Cassie was following Zenguh as I freed the people chained to the wall. The flames began to subside as the water from the sprinklers pooled onto the floor.

‹It sounds like he's in the Jubba-Jubba morph that Ax told us about,› said Jake. ‹We'd better get into our battle morphs.›

In a couple of minutes, I was in a room with a tiger, a gorilla, a grizzly bear, and an Andalite, and an amazingly loud alarm siren. I stayed hawk for air support. We went through the hole in the wall, and walked out onto the scene of a disaster movie. Cars and rubble were scattered around the street, and there were utility vans and their workers busily trying to clean it up.

"Andalite!" yelled a man stepping out of a glass repair van.

We paused, bracing for a fight.

Another worker barred his hand in front of the man, and said to him, "No! Visser One says we have to clean this up before sunrise, or people are going to get suspicious and it's going to be a lot harder for us. Let them go."

We advanced a few wary steps, but no one made moves to stop us, so we hurried at top speed along the trail of destruction. The city was quiet, except for the occasional shout of "Andalite!"

A few blocks later, we stopped seeing any more debris or wrecked cars. The trail had gone cold. There were some tire marks, but they didn't seem related to this.

‹Tobias, do you see anything up there?› Jake asked.

‹Nothing yet,› I said, and flew higher. The sound traveled better above the buildings, and I began to be able to see over the shorter buildings. The sun wouldn't be up for a few hours, and the city was still fairly quiet, but I heard some police sirens start up, and figured that was as good a guess as any.

‹Go north!› I yelled to the group on the ground. They looked around, puzzled. I sighed internally, and yelled again. ‹The way Marco is facing!›

They started moving. I flew off ahead to check it out. Soon, the red and blue flashing lights stopped moving. I heard crashes and screams as I landed on the edge of a roof above them. Down at street level, there were flipped police cars, broken glass, and something huge moving through the smoke. An officer aimed his gun at whatever it was, and fired twice. The huge thing pounced on him, but instead of knocking him over, the thing flowed into him, and was gone. The policeman turned toward an upside-down police car and flowed into it, then the car liquified and became the Jubba-Jubba.

My emotionless hawk mouth fell open at what I was seeing. He's in another league entirely. We're definitely going to die. Or worse.

My eyes followed its gaze and saw that it was approaching some kind of buffalo. It had to be Cassie. The buffalo looked strong, but not strong enough to win this fight alone.

I dove from the rooftop and repeated to myself: Don't tseer. Don't tseer.

I extended my talons, and raked one of the Jubba-Jubba's eyes. It never saw me coming, and it wouldn't be able to see me go. The huge beast reeled back and let out a roar. Cassie took the opening and charged. I landed behind a burning car, and morphed quickly to Hork-Bajir. I leapt over the car and back into the action.

Cassie had done quite a bit with the opening I had given her, and Zenguh was bleeding a lot. I jumped on him from his blind side, and attacked like the walking food-processor that my Hork-Bajir body was. My arm and leg blades slashed, and my sharp feet tore into him.

The beast roared again, and I heard another animal sound. I looked up in time to see Cassie being thrown into the wall of a building and fall to the ground with a heavy thud. The Jubba-Jubba's giant head turned toward me, and I think it smiled.

My blades were plunged deep into the beast, which made it hard for me to move when the wall of flesh began to roll over and onto me. I was pinned, and it was excruciating trying to breathe.

‹It's you! The nothlit…and you're somehow able to morph now? Forgive my rudeness, I forgot your name when I ate you,› said Zenguh, enjoying my helplessness. ‹How is it that you are alive?›

I thought frantically for something witty to say, but the best I could come up with was, ‹I guess you missed?›

‹An interesting theory,› he said, as if giving it some real thought. ‹I will have to not miss this time.›

He rolled off of me, and I gasped for air. I couldn't feel my legs, and I couldn't tell if they were broken or just really asleep. I pushed myself away as best I could, using my arms, but it was no use. He grabbed me effortlessly with his giant three-fingered hand that, according to Toby's legends, was powerful enough to rip a Hork-Bajir in half, and…well, he ripped a Hork-Bajir in half.

It was a small blessing that I still couldn't feel half of my body, but the shock of seeing it ripped in two was still a lot to take in.

He was standing on his hind legs, half of me in each hand. He moved my legs toward his mouth, full of sharp glistening teeth, then he made an "Urgh!" sound.

I looked down to see a huge gash in his stomach, and Ax shaking blood from his tail blade.

‹The cavalry's here! Again!› said Marco, landing a punch from his cinder block sized fist into the beast's knee, and getting a crunching sound in return.

Zenguh dropped me, and I had never been so happy to fall twenty feet onto pavement. I fell in a heap. Well, two heaps. I reached desperately for my legs, and pulled them tight to my chest, just in case it made a difference, and demorphed. As if I didn't have enough nightmares already.

Zenguh liquified again, shrank, and became the tall, red-haired man named Dave.

"Andalite Bandits!" he called out, anger in his voice. "And humans, and hawks too! Holy mackerel, you just don't stop, do you?"

Marco shifted in his stance, uncertainly.

‹No?› he yelled back.

"What do you guys want?" he yelled. "I'm not even after your morphing shard anymore!"

"Are you kidding?" yelled Jake. "Stop trapping people inside you!"

"I'm not going to stop!" he said, like it was a crazy thing to ask. "Everyone and everything I add to myself gives me memories, makes me smarter, gives me new options! Imagine what I'll be able to accomplish when I've got the strength of a whole planet inside me! Look, I can do this now!"

He melted into one of the police cars that he had absorbed earlier, peeled rubber, and roared down the road, laughing in thought-speak. We chased him for about a block and it was clear we would never catch him. That is, until Marco's gaze landed upon a FedEx delivery truck, its door wide open. The driver was probably making a delivery to the apartment building where it was parked.

If you've never heard a five hundred pound silverback gorilla make a giddy squealing noise before, it's…interesting.

‹Oh please oh please oh please…› Marco said as he ran over to it. ‹Yes! The keys are in it! Get in!›

‹I don't know about this, Marco…› said Jake.

‹Your driving record as an Animorph is terrible,› I said bluntly.

‹It's fine, man! I've been playing a LOT of Grand Theft Auto,› Marco said, the excitement oozing from his voice.

‹It's true,› said Ax. ‹He gets a lot of stars!›

‹Fine,› Jake sighed. ‹But only because we have no other choice.›

The gorilla slid into the front seat, and the rest of the team crammed into the back with all the boxes. I had just had a near death experience, and was in no hurry to have another one, so I flew high into the air and helped navigate once again.

The FedEx truck had no hope of catching the police car, but Marco did his best. Zenguh merged onto the highway, lights on and siren blaring for no reason I could think of besides his own amusement.

There must not be any merging in Grand Theft Auto, because Marco caught air on the on-ramp, and sent off a bright flash of sparks as the guardrail nudged him into a lane. We were lucky there weren't very many people out at this time of night, only a few cars on the road and a couple of helicopters flying around.

I heard Jake's voice call out, ‹Everyone but Marco, morph cockroaches! It's our best chance of surviving this ride!›

I guided the increasingly mangled delivery truck up the highway, away from downtown, and to a lumber mill that we hadn't been to since the visser had tried to cut down the whole forest to find our Andalite scoops. We had thwarted him with termites and grape juice. Those were simpler times.

Marco's truck was still a couple of minutes away when Zenguh drove into the lumber mill's parking lot. I saw him swerve and drive straight at a large, cube-shaped object. As I got nearer, I recognized it as his spaceship from the ham shop. At the last minute, rather than crashing into it, he liquified again and splashed into the ship, which then became the birdwatcher man. How was he doing this?

He walked into the mill entrance, and waited. It had to be a trap, but what could we do?