Marco

"AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!"

That was the sound a Hork-Bajir made when I picked him up and threw him into the kindergarten class craft table.

It was Friday night. I was in gorilla morph. Our newest attempt at destroying the new elementary school Yeerk pool entrance. The plan, simple enough, had been to go in hard and fast, tear up some Hork-Bajir, and do as much damage as possible while the kids weren't around.

Apparently the Yeerks had had an idea that we might be trying something like this. They had set up guards for the weekend. Lots and lots of guards.

I wasn't sure how many we were outnumbered by, but it was not looking good.

Cassie, in wolf morph, ran past me, vaulted off the teacher's desk, and sank her teeth into the throat of another Hork-Bajir.

Cassie and I had managed to get ourselves cornered in the kindergarten room. It was the two of us against six Hork-Bajir. And more could come in at any time.

Two Hork-Bajir came at me, wrist and elbow blades flashing!

I grabbed a metal filing cabinet that was covered in alphabet magnets and swung it at the nearest Hork-Bajir. He went down, but I wasn't fast enough to get the second one. He sunk his elbow blade deep into my shoulder, cutting through muscle and tendons and scraping against bone.

(AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!) I yelled in thoughtspeak.

(MARCO!) Cassie cried.

I grabbed the Hork-Bajir's head. Nicked my hands on some of the blades, but managed to get a good grip. I yanked my hand, and heard his neck snap.

Hork-Bajir, when they are not infested by Yeerks, are incredibly sweet creatures, despite their deadly appearance. It never feels good to have to kill them. Unfortunately, sometimes it is kill or be killed.

I pulled the Hork-Bajir out of my shoulder, and tossed his body aside.

Four of the Hork-Bajir were down. Cassie went after the one closest to her; I took the one by the door. My shoulder was gushing blood, and my left arm was getting weak. I slammed my right fist into the Hork-Bajir's face, and he went down. I turned just in time to see Cassie ripping the throat from the last Hork-Bajir.

I needed to demorph and remorph to repair my injuries, but there was no time. I could still hear the others battling it out, and more Hork-Bajir could be coming. I lumbered after Cassie as she went running out the door of the classroom.

Jake and Ax were in the hallway, fighting at least eight Hork-Bajir. They were moving too fast for me to get an exact count. Cassie ran to join that battle, but despite myself, I was looking for Rachel. My plan to become indifferent was still a work in progress.

FWAAAAAAAPPPP! Ax's tail struck, and the head of a Hork-Bajir came rolling towards me. I kicked it out of my way.

(Where are Rachel and Tobias?) I asked.

Jake, a 600 pound Siberian tiger, leapt on a Hork-Bajir that went down like it had been hit by a truck. Another Hork-Bajir came in behind him. I grabbed the Hork-Bajir and slammed it into a wall of cubbies before it could touch Jake.

(Rachel and Tobias are in the north end of the school,) Ax answered me. I had no idea which way north was, but just then I heard a hawk cry out ahead of me. I went that way. As I moved down the hallway, I had to struggle not to slip in the puddles of spilled blood.

I slid around a corner when my foot hit something soft and squishy—intestines from someone or something. I could finally see Rachel and Tobias.

There were seven Hork-Bajir on Rachel, a grizzly bear. Tobias was his normal self, a red-tailed hawk, which basically meant that Rachel was fighting seven to one, with her pet bird as very weak back up.

Rachel was in even worse shape than I was. Her right arm had been almost entirely hacked off, and was dangling by a small flap of skin and muscle.

(JAKE!) I yelled. (We need help over here!)

(Shut up, Marco!) Rachel growled. (I have everything under control.)

(Bullshit!) I told her as I ran into the fight. (You're down to one arm.) I grabbed the nearest Hork-Bajir by the ankle and swung the seven-foot tall alien into two of his brother Yeerks. Hork-Bajir blade cut through Hork-Bajir flesh, but they were only wounded and far from done fighting.

(Can't help you, Marco,) Jake answered me. (There are more coming in through the cafeteria.)

I mentally ran through every cuss word I knew as I pounded a Hork-Bajir with my good fist. I didn't even realize I had been thought-speaking aloud until Tobias said (Watch your mouth, Marco. This is an elementary school.)

(Oh. Right. Tobias, man, we need some more muscle.) Tobias is good as a hawk. Very good. But we needed more than a bird for this fight.

(I know,) Tobias admitted. (I'll see if I can duck into that classroom while they're not looking. Take care of Rachel while I'm gone.) He added in private thoughtspeak.

(Uh, ok. I will…I will do…that.) Great. If Tobias somehow didn't know that I had the hots for his girlfriend before, he definitely did now.

Rachel slammed her shoulder into a pair of Hork-Bajir. One of them went down. The other slashed a blade through her right eye.

I swung a huge, powerful fist at the Hork-Bajir I was fighting. He dodged it, and one of his blades sliced into my stomach.

Ouch. Now that hurt. I gasped in pain. I swung my good fist into to the Hork-Bajir's face. He went down, ripping his own arm blade right out of my stomach.

If Tobias didn't get back in the next six seconds, Rachel and I were toast.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Two human controllers armed with guns had come in through the door that led to the playground. A bullet blew past me, just missing my head, and lodged itself into a wall decorated with children's art.

(JAKE! We have to get out of here now!)

I used my weaker arm to try and hold my stomach together, and used the other arm to rip one of those old-fashioned porcelain drinking fountains out of the wall. I heaved it at the two controllers. One managed to dodge it; the other got hit right in the knee.

"AAAHHHHHH!" The controller screamed as he cradled his shattered knee.

BAM! The remaining Controller shot me in the shoulder. The same shoulder that had already been mutilated by a Hork-Bajir.

I was starting to feel dizzy. Not good. I was losing way too much blood. Not to mention that I was pretty sure a lot of my internal organs had been ripped to shreds.

Rachel bellowed. She tried to take down the controller that had shot me, but she wasn't doing so well with only one eye. She ended up just trampling the controller that was already on the ground.

FWAAAAAAP! The controller's gun hand went flying through the air, still wrapped around the gun. Tobias was back, morphed to Andalite. Morphed to Ax, to be exact.

(Oops,) Tobias said. (I didn't mean to take off the whole hand.)

I picked up the gun. Tossed the hand aside. Adjusted my clumsy gorilla fingers, and…

BAM! BAM! BAM! Two Hork-Bajir went down.

(Marco! Tobias! Is there an exit down there?) Jake yelled. (They just keep pouring in over here.)

(There's a door going out to the playground,) I answered. BAM! Another Hork-Bajir down. I figured I owed my aim to hours of playing first person shooter games on Xbox. (Two human controllers came in that way, but I don't think there's anyone else out there.)

(We're coming towards you,) Jake said. (Get ready to head out.)

FWAAAAAP! Tobias took down one of the remaining Hork-Bajir. We were down to only two that were still standing. Rachel had collapsed, and was lying on the tiled floor in a growing pool of blood that was pouring out from her arm stump.

Jake, Ax, and Cassie came skidding around the corner then, looking in about as bad of shape as I felt. Jake was missing the bottom half of his tail, Cassie was gushing blood from her side, and Ax looked like he had been shot. There were five or six Hork-Bajir chasing after them.

BAM! BAM! BAM! Click. Now there were only three Hork-Bajir, but I was out of bullets.

(Rachel! Can you get up?) Cassie asked. (We need to leave, now, before the rest of them catch up with us.)

(I'm fine,) Rachel grumbled. Weakly. She heaved herself onto her three good legs. (Let's go.)

There was one Hork-Bajir guarding the door. The rest were coming from the other direction. FWAAAAP! Tobias struck with his Andalite tail, and then there were no Hork-Bajir guarding the door.

We stumbled out onto the playground, leaking blood everywhere. The Hork-Bajir couldn't follow us. The playground faced a main road.

(The playhouse,) Jake said.

It was big for a playhouse. Wooden. Still, only Rachel and Cassie could fit in at first. They started to demorph, and there was more room. Jake and I squeezed in too. Tobias and Ax stood behind the playhouse at an angle where they were not visible from the road. Tobias demorphed to red-tailed hawk and Ax morphed to Northern Harrier.

Jake, Rachel, Cassie and I ran out of the playhouse as soon as we were fully human. We hopped the chain link fence and ran down the sidewalk towards the busier area of town, where we could get lost in the people.

"Well, that sucked," I muttered as we walked along the sidewalk, mostly silent except for the slapping sound of bare feet on concrete. Even though I was no longer injured, I was exhausted, so tired that I was literally using all of my strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

"Anyone else wondering why they weren't using Dracon beams?" Rachel asked.

"No. I'm too busy wondering how we managed to get out of there alive," I grumbled.

"And how we're going to go back and shut it down for good," Cassie added.

(I am fairly certain that the use of primitive human weapons was to avoid leaving evidence of comparatively advanced Yeerk technology inside your human school,) Ax said helpfully.

We hit a crowd of kids our age then. I hoped that no one from school was around—I looked ridiculous in my tight bike shorts, which would only have been appropriate if I was competing in a triathlon. Plus I was barefoot, and freezing cold.

The crowd separated us into two groups for a few seconds, Cassie and Jake on one side, Rachel and I on the other. Rachel and I walked side by side in silence, but when we came back together, it was obvious that Jake had been whispering to Cassie and had just stopped when he spotted us.

Rachel folded her arms across her chest. "Jake? Do you have something that you would like to share with the rest of us?" she hissed.

Jake sighed. "We don't need to get into it now, Rachel."

"If it was important enough that you needed to share it with Cassie, than I think you can tell me and Marco."

I looked up to the sky, but it was too dark to see Tobias or Ax. Were they still close enough to hear? I had a nagging feeling that, whatever Jake had been whispering to Cassie about, it might not be

in my best interest for Tobias to overhear.

But it turned out that Jake was not the gossipy little girl I had worried he was becoming. "I was telling Cassie that maybe we won't be able to go back," he said, staring straight ahead and avoiding Rachel's face the entire time.

There was silence while we all digested that for a few seconds.

"So, basically," Rachel said in a slow, quiet voice. "You are writing off my little sister?"

"We almost got killed in there," Jake shot back. "And I don't even think we slowed them down. They'll mop up the blood and dump the bodies, and the school will be open again on Monday."

"When they will infest my sister, and then it will be two Animorphs trying to sneak around with Yeerks in their houses."

"SHHHHH!" I hissed, elbowing Rachel in the side. She kicked me hard in the shin.

"Jake?" Rachel demanded.

Jake moved closer to Rachel. "It's too well guarded," he said. "And it's right in the middle of town. We can only do what we can. You almost died in there, Rachel."

I looked at Cassie to see what she thought. Her eyes were filled, ready to spill over at any moment. "I'm so sorry, Rach," she whispered.

"You too, Cassie?"

Cassie put her hand on Rachel's arm. "You know I love your sisters. And I don't know if we are doing the right thing. When I think about all of those kids…and so many of them have already been captured. But as of right now, we are their only hope of ever being set free. So if we get ourselves killed in a fight that we have no chance of winning..."

Something smelled wrong. No way that Jake could have convinced Cassie to let the Yeerks take an elementary school full of children just by whispering to her for a few minutes. Which meant that he must have talked to her about all of this before.

Which meant that Jake never thought we had a chance to save the school. So, what had tonight been? A pathetic attempt to appease Rachel, who Jake knew would never turn her sister over without a fight?

I locked eyes with Jake. I could tell that he knew exactly what I was thinking.

"We'll vote," Jake said. "We don't decide anything without a vote."

"Let's do it," Rachel nodded. "Now."

"I don't think this is a great time…" Jake began. We had mostly stopped walking, and the four of us were standing in front of closed clothing store. Most people were down by the open restaurants and bars.

"It's a fine time," Rachel snarled. "I'll start. I vote that we find some way to tear the Yeerks apart and shut down the elementary school."

"Fine," Jake said through gritted teeth. "Cassie?"

Cassie wiped her eyes. "I vote no."

"What about you, Jake?" Rachel demanded, hands on her hips.

"It's too big of a risk. I say no," Jake said. "Ax?"

(I agree with Prince Jake,) Ax said, answering my question about whether or not he and Tobias were in hearing range.

"Tobias?"

(I say we go for it,) Tobias said.

"So that's three people against, two for," Jake said. "Marco?"

If I voted with Rachel and Tobias, it would be a tie. I wasn't sure what would happen in the event of a tie.

At that moment, Tobias swooped down and landed on a lamp post. His fierce hawk eyes were staring right at me.

The Marco that hadn't been involved with Rachel would definitely have voted no. There were too many guards in too small of a space. In the elementary school, we didn't have room for our biggest and most powerful morphs. Rachel's grizzly bear could barely move in the crowded halls, which had led to her almost being killed. And we had barely done any damage.

"Marco?" Jake repeated.

Tobias was still staring. Rachel was pointedly not looking at me.

"I vote no," I said.

Rachel slammed her fist into the glass window of the clothing store. The glass shattered, and her fist went through the window. It was bloody when she pulled it back out.

"Rachel!" Jake said. He grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and started to pull her away from the store, Cassie and I trailing behind. "If we come up with a different plan, something that might actually work, we can vote again."

"It will be too late by then," Rachel shoved Jake away from her, leaving a bloody handprint on his tight white t-shirt. "When we started this fight…we did everything we could to save Tom. Everything."

"That was a long time ago," Jake said flatly. "Things are different now. You know that."

"No. No, I don't know that."

Cassie was still crying. I wasn't sure what to do. If I tried to comfort Rachel, everyone would know something was up. And Rachel would probably punch me. If I tried to stick up for Jake, I knew I would end up sticking my foot in my mouth. And Rachel would probably punch me.

"Fuck this." Rachel turned and stomped away into an alley. A few minutes later, I caught a glimpse of a great horned owl rising up into the night sky.

Jake, Cassie, and I stood on the sidewalk in awkward silence.

"She'll get over it," Jake finally said. Unconvincingly.

I was struggling with indecision. Go after Rachel and comfort her. Stay and change Jake's mind. Go after Rachel and convince her to accept Jake's decision.

Go home and try to convince myself that I didn't care.

"Marco?"

Jake looked uncertain. I knew he wanted me to tell him that he was doing the right thing.

I didn't answer him. Even though I had voted with him, even though the numbers said he was right, I still wasn't sure.

But I was pretty sure that I knew what Rachel was going to do.