CHAPTER THIRTEEN: MARCO

Things were going great. Sure, I was going to punch Rachel soon, and then I was going to die, but things were going great. Sure, we hadn't actually heard anything from Jake since he announced that he'd successfully transferred himself from Rachel's hand to Tobias's fur- he thought-and for all we knew, he was currently being carried off into the great beyond of the other side of the neighborhood on the back of some random squirrel (or shrew), but things were going great. Really great. Totally, brilliantly, spectacularly great.

"I think it's going okay," I said aloud, because there's no point lying to yourself if you don't share it.

This was, of course, the wrong thing to say.

"Oh yeah?" Rachel snarled, rounding on me like she was the one with a tiger morph, not her cousin. "Did you get some private update from Jake that you forgot to share with the rest of us? Did you plant surveillance cameras on Chapman's house sometime last week and you've been enjoying a little closed circuit peeping-tom on the vice principal? Did you-"

"Rachel," Cassie said, and Rachel spun to face her instead.

"What?" Rachel snapped.

"Take a breath, girl," Cassie said, and for a second I thought Rachel was going to hit Cassie and that was insane. Why was she so worked-up? She'd made it out of Chapman's house okay last time, she'd been the one to argue for us going back in...but she'd also been the one to insist that somebody needed to go in with Tobias. Sure, she'd been pissed that Jake and Cassie had tricked her with the flea and he'd gone in instead of her, but it had been over an hour, she should have stopped sulking about that by now-

It clicked all of a sudden.

"So what didn't you tell us?" I asked.

Rachel didn't shout at me; instead she went pale. "Nothing," she said, in that too-fast voice that meant everything.

I smirked. "Uh-huh," I said.

Her pale cheeks went pink. Even in this murky, not-quite-night light the contrast was striking.

"Rachel…" Cassie said again, and her voice was the kind of heavy that I thought only moms could do; the kind of heavy that was full of a lot more than just one word. The kind of heavy that usually preceded I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. I almost winced-and not because I'm sensitive to anything that reminds me of my mom. I was wincing on Rachel's behalf, not my own.

You know, mostly.

Anyway, the important thing was that Cassie's mom-voice worked, and Rachel crumbled faster than Jake's dog Homer when somebody looked accusingly at the empty hamburger plate and asked him if he'd been a bad dog.

"I kind of almost got caught a little bit, okay?" she confessed all in a rush. "Before, when I was in there. Visser Three saw me. Got a little upset. Chapman convinced him it was fine, that I was just Melissa's cat, it was no big deal. That's why I didn't say anything before," she lied.

Cassie knew she was lying too, I could tell by the way her eyebrows went up, but neither of us said anything. I guess we both felt like Rachel already knew that we knew, so we didn't need to.

"But then, you know, I just got nervous about Tobias going in instead of me," Rachel continued. "I mean, what if he did something different enough that Chapman or the Visser noticed and realized it wasn't the same cat? Like...that would be bad. And if anything happened to Tobias-or now Jake, too-then it would be my fault. That's why I wanted to be the one to go in with Tobias, so that...so that I could help…"

It was strange. Rachel was tall-incredibly, grotesquely, Amazonianly, inhumanely tall, as I might have mentioned before-but right now, she looked small.

"Oh Rachel." Cassie took her hand and for a terrifying second I thought that Rachel was going to cry. I think I would have run for the hills if that had happened-girls like Rachel don't cry, not in front of boys like me anyway-but she never got the chance because just then, we finally heard from Jake.

{Guys! Guys, are you there?} he shouted. His thought-speak voice was tiny, probably from the distance, but I could still tell he was shouting-could tell he was scared, and trying to hide it.

Maybe I should have run for those hills after all.

{I need you to listen to me,} Jake said.

"Oh no," I said.

"Shh!" Cassie said.

{Don't panic,} Jake continued, which I could have told him was just about the stupidest thing to say unless he actually did want to cause a panic. Unfortunately my not being in morph meant that he wouldn't have heard me if I did tell him, so I rolled my eyes and kept my wisdom to myself.

{Chapman and the Visser think Tobias is an Andalite-or might be one, I guess.}

Rachel moaned and covered her face. Cassie gave her shoulder a shake and whispered something that sounded half-shushing and half-soothing.

{Tobias says they aren't sure so they're going to send guards to watch him for two hours to see if he demorphs. Chapman's got him in Fluffer's cat carrier. Tobias doesn't want us risking ourselves to save him→

"Screw that!" Rachel shouted, and Cassie changed her grip to put both hands on Rachel's shoulder.

"Stop it!" she said. "I can't hear Jake-and someone's going to hear you!"

Jake was still talking. {...viously not going to do that. You guys need to get ready. I'm demorphing now, then I'll come out and join you. I should be there before the Visser's guards. We can figure out an ambush or something. Wait for me...}

The thrumming, crunching sounds of a big vehicle driving on small roads caught my attention but it was the rumbling of the diesel engine that finally drowned-out Jake's distant thought-speak as a blocky brown UPS truck turned the corner and pulled-up in front of the Chapmans' house.

"What are the odds that Chapman's getting a really large delivery this late at night?" I quipped. "I mean, he probably buys red pens and manilla folders for detention records in bulk, right?"

"Pretty sure that thing's not carrying pens," Rachel said grimly. She was already starting to grow.

"Oh man," I muttered, and half-closed my eyes to concentrate on the gorilla within. "Oh man. This is going to suck…"

"Jake said to wait," Cassie said nervously, even as her face started to lengthen and her fingers fused together into the beginnings of hooves.

"I'm waiting," I said. "We're all waiting. Right, Rachel?" I didn't wait for her to agree because I'm not stupid. "We're just getting ready while we wait. Then when Jake gets out here, he'll tell us what we need to do and we'll be ready. Ready and waiting."

"Shut-up, Marco," Rachel snorted and I let her have the last word because she sprouted tusks just then and it would have been rude to keep arguing with a lady in such a delicate, enormous, capable-of-stomping-on-my-head state.

"You need to look into getting something smaller for these ambush-operations," I suggested. Gorillas can't exactly talk, but I think I keep my voicebox and human tongue farther into a morph than most of the others because a gorilla's body is closer to a human's than a horse or an elephant's is. So my voice was pretty deep, thanks to my expanding chest, but I could still get the sounds out. All Rachel could do was glare at me. Given that she still had her pretty blue eyes in the midst of a wrinkly gray half-elephant face, it was a glare to remember-and I've been scowled at by experts.

"Something practical, in the nice mid-range between an elephant and a shrew. You know, like-"

And of course my voice chose then to cut-out and turn into gorilla grunts, because the universe hates a sense of humor. Or maybe has a sense of humor. I've never been able to figure out which.

The nervous banter wasn't doing much to cut my nerves, anyway. There's just something about Chapman that always scared me, even before I knew he was an evil alien with a head-collecting fetish. Maybe it's the ability to assign detentions.

We watched as the truck backed carefully up the driveway. I inched sideways so I could get a peek inside and nearly fell out of my fur.

{Hork-Bajir!} I shouted to the others. {It's full of Hork-Bajir!}

The UPS truck was not, contrary to my academic expectations, carrying boxes full of red pens and manilla folders and other such tools of vice principal-style terror. Instead, it was packed with seven-foot-tall Salad Shooters from Hell-or to use their actual name, Hork-Bajir.

The Andalite had told us that the Hork-Bajir were a good people, enslaved by the Yeerks, just the same way the Yeeks wanted to enslave us plucky, non-bladed humans. But the Hork-Bajir didn't exactly look peaceful. Wickedly curved blades raked forward from their foreheads. More blades were at their elbows and wrists. Their feet were taloned like bird-feet, only bigger-more like dinosaur feet. They had long spiked tails and sharp beaks. There were more blades in that truck than in a hibachi chef's silverware drawer, and they were all attached to the terrifying-looking aliens crammed into two rows against the truck's walls.

There were two human-Controllers as well, perched uncomfortably at the edge of the truck bed. I wondered what the point was. Nobody who looked into that truck was possibly going to overlook the walking giant razor blades just because there were two dudes in suits telling them "everything's fine, situation normal!" at the front. I think they were holding weapons, probably Dracon beams, but I was a little too fixated on the Hork-Bajir to be sure.

I couldn't count how many of them there were; it was too dark, and they were pressed too closely together. I was amazed no one had sliced their neighbor's arms off. No wonder the driver was being so careful. One unexpected speedbump would have done our work for us and left a heck of a mess for the real UPS guy too-provided he wasn't already sitting in the front seat, with a Yeerk in his head driving him around just like he drove the truck in a perverse nesting doll parody.

{Oh no,} wailed Cassie. {I thought it was going to be people, Controllers I mean, human Controllers. Why'd they send Hork-Bajir?}

{Because they think they're dealing with an Andalite,} Rachel said. {Human-Controllers wouldn't do a lot to slow an Andalite down.}

{They would if they were wielding Dracon beams,} I pointed out.

Cassie shuddered. {I still have nightmares…}

{Shh!} Rachel said. {Look, the Hork-Bajir aren't moving. What are they doing? Why aren't they coming out of the truck?}

{Because they don't need to,} I said grimly, and raised one huge gray finger to point at the Chapmans' front door.

It swung open to show Chapman himself standing in the halo of light from within. He was holding a cat carrier like it was the president's nuclear football.

He glanced around like he was looking for danger. I held my breath, but he didn't see us-not even Rachel. I looked over my shoulder and could barely see her shoulders myself: she'd backed into the neighbor's yard and was crouched-as well as elephants can crouch, which isn't very-behind the big wooden fence around their pool. In the growing dusk, her gray bulk was surprisingly easy to overlook.

Or maybe Chapman was just nervous. Having a truck full of Hork-Bajir staring at you would do that to a guy. It was certainly doing that to me, and they weren't even looking my way. Yet.

Chapman took a deep breath and stepped out into the night.

{Tobias!} Rachel cried. {Is that you?}

Maybe she was hoping that it was going to turn out to be Fluffer in that cage; that Jake had somehow ended up on the wrong cat, or Tobias had managed to pull a last-minute switch, and the Yeerks were going to waste two hours of their lives watching a cat nap while we all got to go home safe, happy, and not carved into a million pieces by those nasty blades. Maybe she was hoping Tobias was going to lie and say it wasn't him, and we could all pretend to believe him and go home anyway.

Or maybe that last one was just me.

But it was Tobias, and he didn't lie to us. Instead, he told us to back-off and let them take him.

{Don't do anything stupid, Rachel! It'll be okay. I don't want you guys getting hurt for me.}

{We're not just going to let them take you!}

{We can't fight them here,} Cassie said frantically. {Not in the middle of a neighborhood! There are too many people who could get hurt. We should follow them instead.}

{No!} Rachel argued. {What about Tobias? What if it takes them too long to get wherever they're going? He's got under an hour before he has to demorph!}

{It's okay,} said Tobias. {I won't demorph. I won't let them see what I am-what we are. I promise.}

{Don't be stupid,} Rachel snarled. {You'll be trapped.}

{I know.} Tobias's voice was soft enough that I could practically see him ducking his head to hide behind his stupid blond hair like he does, but he didn't sound weak. I wondered if he ever had, or if my ears had just been telling me what I thought I was supposed to hear.

{Look, just hang on,} I pleaded. {Everybody stay calm and wait for Jake. He'll be here any minute. Just hang on.}

{Tobias doesn't have any time left to hang on,} Rachel retorted.

Chapman paused and looked around and I wondered if he'd heard us somehow-but then he kept walking, inching down the driveway like he thought it was made of ice that would crack if he took a full step. I wondered if it was the threat of an Andalite ambush that he was worrying about, or the threat of a disappointed Visser Three waiting for him if his daughter's cat didn't turn out to be an Andalite in morph.

In a moment it was a moot point: the impossibly loud trumpet of an angry elephant broke through the night air! All chaos followed!

Chapman turned at the same time I did and we both witnessed an elephant charge straight through the neighbors' once-immaculate fence and steamroll towards him. He wasted several seconds gaping, then turned to run for the truck-but Rachel got to him first. Her trunk smacked out and caught him across the shoulders. He went sprawling. Tobias yowled as the cat carrier tumbled from his grip and clattered back up the driveway. Rachel had to pull-up sharply and dance backwards to avoid trampling it, which saved Chapman as well.

The truck driver jumped out and I had a brief glimpse of a gun in his hand before thundering hooves and a shrill whinny told me Cassie had joined the fight; she ran past me and I stopped worrying about the UPS guy. He was busy.

Chapman cowered where he lay as the two human-Controllers jumped out of the truck-either because he was smart enough to know he couldn't fight an elephant, or because he was scared of being caught in the line of fire when the Hork-Bajir joined the fray.

I didn't have that option. I swore to myself and lumbered out of the bushes. The human-Controllers didn't seem interested in helping Chapman, but they were awfully interested in grabbing that cat carrier. So interested they didn't notice the dark, furry bulk of my big gorilla body coming up beside them-at least not until I grabbed the first one. The Guinness Book of Records states that a silverback gorilla can dead-lift up to 1800 pounds. This dude weighed maybe 200. I might as well have been lifting an apple.

I picked him up and threw him towards the neighbors' yard. I heard a yelp and a splash and I bared my big, flat gorilla teeth in a rubbery grin and turned toward the truck, bracing myself for the onslaught…

But the Hork-Bajir didn't move.

I stared at them. They stared at me. They looked furious. One of them scraped his wrist blades together and growled a string of guttural alien insults at me...but they didn't move.

{Oh my god,} I said. {They aren't fighting. Rachel, Jake! Cassie! They aren't fighting! The Hork-Bajir, they aren't fighting! They won't come out where people will see them! They→

{Don't have to come out if one of those losers gets that carrier into the truck!} Rachel snapped.

I turned to the sound of gunshots as the other human-Controller emptied his handgun into Rachel's face.

She was too big for him to do serious damage, but it still must have hurt. Rachel reared backwards, trumpeting with pain.

This either filled Chapman with renewed courage or reminded him of how desperate his situation was, because he scrambled to his feet and lunged for the carrier again. Tobias the cat yowled in annoyance while Tobias the boy shouted, {Guys get out of here! It's not worth it! Please go!}

Ignoring him, I punched the gun-wielding Controller into a patch of azaleas five feet away and turned to go after Chapman. He froze when he saw me moving towards him, but squealing tires stopped me from doing anything else. I glanced down the street to see two police cars come tearing around the corner, their lights flashing in silent outrage.

Cassie cantered into view around the front of the truck and shook her mane. {That was fast,} she said, sounding both worried and impressed. {The shooting barely started and they're already here…}

{Don't be stupid!} I roared at her, abandoning Chapman to pound pavement on all fours towards the cops before they could get themselves situated. {Those aren't real cops! Those are Controllers! They must have been waiting just around the block, in case the Yeerks ran into trouble!}

{Trouble?} Rachel asked, and laughed in all of our heads. {You mean us!}

{Yes,} I told her grimly. {I mean us.}

I ripped one door off its hinges before the car had fully stopped moving, pulled the cop inside out, and threw him out of sight over someone else's fence. The second cop-Controller shot me and I roared at the sting of the bullet in my shoulder-but I was a 400 pound gorilla. All it did was sting, and all that did was piss me off. I reached into the car and took the cop's gun away. I didn't do it very gently; he screamed, and screamed again when I yanked his seatbelt out of the door so I could pull him over and roar right in his face.

Somewhat to my disappointment, he fainted.

I dropped him and pulled myself out so I could deal with the other car full of cops.

Cassie had gotten there first, and she was giving the hood a good kicking. The front of the car was nothing but dents and the windshield was more cracks than glass. I guess the Controllers inside were pretty rattled by the pounding, because they hadn't tried to shoot her yet, but I knew that couldn't last. I loped over to help but paused to glance over my shoulder when I heard Rachel shout, {Ah-ha!}

Chapman was on the ground again and so was the cat carrier, but as I watched Rachel reached over and delicately folded her nose around it and lifted her prize high over her head. Given that her head was a good ten feet off the ground already, that effectively took Tobias out of the reach of the rest of us.

She was standing mere inches from the open back of the UPS truck. I knew she had to be able to see the Hork-Bajir inside clearly, even with her weak elephant eyes, just as I knew they had to be staring back at her and seething. I wondered what it would take for one of them to decide it was worth the risk of leaning out and slicing at her with their terrible blades, no matter how many neighbors might see it...

Rachel didn't seem to be worried; she laughed, wild and gleeful and triumphant, until-

"Fluffer?" the small voice cut through the battlefield like a scalpel. "Oh god, daddy, the animals have Fluffer!"

Melissa Chapman had come outside.

She stood on the front stoop, pale and horrified, her watery eyes wide and bright as searchlights in her narrow face. I wondered that she wasn't screaming-but Rachel's bulk was between her and the truck. She couldn't see the horrifying razor blade aliens, just a bunch of wild animals...and her cat.

"Daddy, daddy what's going on?" she shrieked. "Not Fluffer, no! Don't let them take him!"

We were all frozen, Yeek and Animorph alike, staring at Melissa. I don't think the Yeerks knew what to do; I know I didn't.

Melissa was the one who moved first. "You! Elephant!" she shouted. "You give me back my cat!" Tears streaming down her face, skinny little Melissa Chapman charged Rachel the elephant, all 10,000 pounds of her. Rachel didn't move; she just stared. We all did. I think it was shock.

That was the moment I realized why Rachel was friends with Melissa Chapman. Shy and quiet she might be, but no one who would charge an elephant and start pounding on its legs with her tiny, bare little human fists was meek.

I guess they were made for each other after all.