Chapter 11

Yellow lives with her uncle on the edge of the Viridian Forest. Nobody is sure what happened to her parents, not even her herself, but when they'd vanished in Yellow's infancy, before she had any real memories of them, her uncle had taken her in.

Back then, he'd had a farm, with Miltank and Rapidash and even a few Tauros. Now, after a few years of working to gain funding, he runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic out of what used to be the barn. Most people just call it the Clinic. It's a veterinary-type organization that specializes in just about everything except pets. Lycanroc, Noctowl, Pidgeotto, Fennekin, Deerling... you name it, it had probably been in the Clinic at some point.

Yellow has taken on the role of his assistant in running the Clinic, in between schoolwork and downtime. She helps him with various tasks, like giving medicine, calming unruly Clinic residents, tending to the equestrian Pokemon, cleaning, gardening, and other such things. She has fun with it, though, so she never views it as chores.

Her uncle also works part-time at a place called the Viridian Nature Preserve. It's a sort of zoo that's based around the idea of Pokemon having large environments in which to run free like they do naturally, kind of like in Jurassic Park, except without Tyrantrum and Aerodactyl breaking free to eat everyone (thank the Lord those things are extinct). They always have incredible exotic Pokemon, so it never gets boring to go there.

When I got to the barn, Silver, Blue, and Green were waiting for me outside, chilling on a couple of bales of hay. Neither Yellow nor her uncle was to be seen. I figured he was at the Preserve, and she was probably finishing up some work.

Blue was sprawled out on her back on the hay, eyes closed like she was sunbathing. She had a newspaper folded over her stomach. When she noticed I'd arrived, she opened an eye and tossed it at me. "Check this out."

The front page article was circled in black Sharpie. I looked at the headline and got a sinking feeling. It read "ALIEN HOAX" in large, bold letters, with the subtitle, "Flying Saucers or Juvenile Delinquency?"

I skimmed the first few sentences of the actual article, squeezed alongside an overlarge picture of the construction site. The article told about how several people had noticed flashing lights at the construction site last night and called the police to report a disturbance, and how many of them had claimed to have seen flying saucers. It was fairly short, but the content made me hopeful, despite the title.

"Well, it looks like the police know about it now," I said. "That's good."

Blue rolled her eyes, obviously exasperated with my optimism. "Keep reading."

I did. The rest of the article went on to cover how police had investigated the scene and found that the whole thing was just a bunch of teenagers setting off illegal fireworks. The teenagers had run, and the fireworks had been taken as evidence. "Flying saucers," read a quote from one officer. "What a joke. This was just some juvenile delinquents playing with fireworks. The whole idea of spaceships was a bunch of panicked nonsense."

At the bottom of the article was a small note, offering a considerable reward for any information about the aforementioned teenagers. The police were looking for us.

"This is a load of garbage," I decided, tossing the newspaper to the ground. "The whole thing is a lie!"

Silver laughed darkly. "So glad Captain Obvious is on our side."

"Well..." I struggled to think of some way the conclusion I knew I was going to have to make was false. I couldn't, and decided to instead try to draw a positive from the article. "At least we knew a few people think it was aliens."

"A few people thought it was aliens, you mean," Blue corrected. "Anyone who read this newspaper and had any doubts about what they'd seen will immediately trust the more believable story." She shrugged. "And go on, say it. You've figured it out; you're not stupid. Tell us why the police would be covering this up."

I hesitated. I really didn't want to accept it. But I had no choice. "The police are Controllers."

"Not all of them, probably," Green added, keeping the tiny shred of optimism in the situation alive.

"Yeah, not all of them," Silver agreed, his tone still dark. "But a lot of them. Enough to push through this totally fake story without any resistance."

"And if the police have Controllers among them," Blue continued his thought. "Then how many other powerful positions do as well? The government? The radio? The TV?"

"Businesses?" Green added. Then with a bit more hesitance, "The school?"

A nervous shiver passed through all four of us. The idea that any one of our teachers could be, and could have been for who knows how long, the puppet of a parasite slug was chilling, to say the very least. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

"Mr. Benson has to be. He wouldn't have given me a D on that quiz if he wasn't a Yeerk," Silver joked, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work.

"This can't be real. It shouldn't be," Blue said, but there was an air of defeat to her tone that betrayed even she didn't believe what she was saying.

The light breeze rustled the hay in the bales, a surprisingly eerie sound. Perhaps it was just because I was so on edge, but I fully expected an army of Controllers to show up at any second. This was too much to handle, especially for a bunch of kids.

Like he'd read my mind, Silver said, "Look, why do we have to deal with this? Why us? We're just kids, what are we even going to do? Let's just forget about it. Let's never morph. Let's just keep our heads down and stay out of the whole thing."

Silence. I realized Blue and Green were expecting me to answer him. Had Green told the others that I was supposed to be the leader already? The thought made me a bit nauseas. If he had, that meant it was all but official. The weight on my shoulders grew even heavier.

"Silver," I began. "You have a point, but–"

That was the tipping point. "But what?!" he exploded. "Don't you get it? This isn't some sort of video game. This is real, Red! R. E. A. L. REAL! We could get killed! We could get eaten, just like that Andalite!"

Green gave Silver a funny look. I understood why. Green was the most enthusiastic about fighting the Yeerks. Of course he'd be off-put by someone seeming so cowardly about it. But I also understood why Silver had such a strong resistance to getting involved.

Silver suddenly quieted down and looked at the ground. "I know, it's terrible. I want these Yeerks off our planet just as much as the rest of you. But if I died... my mom would..."

He didn't finish. I knew what he was talking about. Two years ago, Silver's dad had died, drowned in the middle of the sea. Nobody had managed to find a body, and eventually they gave up, assuming the tides had carried it out into the deep. Silver's mom couldn't handle it. She quit her job because she couldn't stand to be around people and spiraled into a deep depression. She's only able to keep a roof over herself and her son by working odd jobs at odd hours. The rest of the time, she sat alone, watching TV with no sound.

"I don't care what you think of me," Silver continued. "Call me a coward if you want. But I can't get myself killed for this. If I die, my mom will die too. She's only keeping herself alive because I am."

I wanted to do something to comfort him. Maybe a pat on the back. But, knowing him, he'd just make a joke at my expense out of it.

Blue moved past the topic, seeming unwilling to address it at the moment. She squinted into the sun, farther out into the fields. "There's Yellow."

I turned to look where she was looking, and I saw a Ponyta galloping towards us. I didn't see Yellow.

The Ponyta came closer, slowing down, and I got a strange feeling about it. It slowed to a stop right next to us, and I could swear there was something very, very unnatural about it.

"Yellow and I have been here for a while," Blue explained. "We've been practicing."

Ah, so that was what was strange about the Ponyta. I felt another bit of nausea that my reaction to something so strange was already so muted.

"She's really good at this. She can do it way faster than I can," Blue continued. "Check it out."

The Ponyta started to melt, a human face forming as the equine muzzle retracted back into its skull like a kid squishing putty. The hooves started to split into fingers.

"Hi guys," Yellow said with a big grin. Her teeth were still the size of the Ponyta's.

"I'm gonna puke," Silver informed us, and looked green enough to prove it. This was the first human morphing he'd seen.

"First, don't," Blue ordered. "Please. Second, it's just Yellow. Nothing strange about it."

Nothing strange about it. Right.

Yellow continued to change, becoming more human before our eyes. I realized that I should probably look away, because from my experience, morphing is usually a clothes-less affair. But before I did, I noticed that Yellow's more human parts were covered with a black, skintight fabric that I recognized as a gymnastics leotard. With no reason to look away, I continued watching, and realized, around halfway through the morphing process, that Yellow was deliberately controlling the changes, because no freak accidental order of changes could have resulted in her torso being perfectly human, while she still had the body of a Ponyta from the waist down. It had to be on purpose, because she looked almost exactly like the Andalite.

"Whoa," I said, an understatement. "You are good at this."

She grinned. "Thank you!"

There was almost a serenity to watching Yellow change slowly back to human. Compared to Green's and my own morphing, it seemed almost therapeutic.

But that serenity was shattered when we heard tires on the gravel road. There was a car approaching the barn. We whirled to face it. There was no mistaking that iconic black and white design.

"It's the police!" Green yelped.