Ch.4 Explanations
My mother and sisters were silent as I recounted everything that had happened since that night in the construction yard. Mom didn't believe it at first. She even wanted to call Jake's parents so that she could talk to Tom. I yanked the cell phone out of her hand before she could dial. "Mom, if you call them and start talking about Yeerks, you doom them. Tom will make hosts out of them immediately." She nodded. I had to give her credit. She'd had a lot to absorb in the past hour.
"So all those times you said you were spending the night at Cassie's, you were actually fighting aliens?" she asked. I shook my head. "No, Mom. I'd say ninety percent of the time we were fighting. We had an actual sleepover rarely." My mom nodded. She was taking it better than I expected. I was expecting to be grounded for the rest of my life. I might have been, if not for what just happened. But what Mom saw could not be ignored. My sisters hung on every word of my story. Sara thought it was exciting. She was too young to understand everything it entailed.
We pulled up to a place that I only hoped the Yeerks overlooked during their search for me. The abandoned logging camp from when they tried to cut the forest down looking for us seemed perfect. I was more worried about my family than myself. It was me they'd come after. "Nice outfit," my sister Jordan complimented. Our morphing outfits made us look like rejects from a foreign gymnastics team, as Marco once put it. One of the limitations about was morphing was that if you tried wearing anything that wasn't skin-tight, it would be shredded during the change.
"So how many animals can you change into?" Jordan asked. She thought it was awesome that I could become animals. I thought for a minute, and began counting on my fingers. I realized that wouldn't work. "Too many to count." She laughed. "Oh, it's not all fun and games," I said. "Sometimes morphing doesn't always go as planned." Sara got confused. "What does that mean?" she asked. I laughed. "This one time, I morphed a crocodile to save a girl who'd fallen in. It worked fine, except I'm allergic to crocodile." Jordan looked at me skeptically. "Allergic?" she asked. There was a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice.
"I couldn't control my morphs for a while. It almost cost us the war. And it didn't stop till I puked out a fully grown crocodile." My mother laughed. "I find that hard to believe," she said. I figured it would be a good idea to educate at least Jordan. We still had the morphing cube, which I would need to retrieve before the Yeerks did. I figured we could trust Jordan with the morphing power. Besides, Seerow's Kindness only applied to Andalites.
I noticed that most of the buildings were intact. "Look, I have some things I have to do." I pointed to a building. "Mom, can you and the girls hide in there? I'll be back with food and drink as soon as I can." My mother understood. "Don't leave, no matter what. The Yeerks are probably going to be combing this forest looking for us." My mom nodded. "How will we know when it's you?" Jordan asked. I smiled and replied, "I'll find my own way in." With that, I left. I had to retrieve the morphing cube before the Yeerks did. I only hoped I could get to Cassie's barn before my friends.
I morphed to seagull and took off. As I flew, I noticed a group of Hork-Bajir moving in a wide circle around the area. They weren't heading towards the camp, so I pretended to not notice them. They didn't appear to notice me either, and for that I was thankful. A seagull isn't exactly capable of fighting. It was another relief that I didn't see any of my friends leading the search party. It took me about fifteen minutes, but I finally reached Cassie's barn. Her parents didn't seem to be home, which made it easier for me to demorph.
I quickly retrieved the morphing cube, and just as I was about to fly away, I heard the familiar voices of my friends talking strategy. It infuriated me that the Yeerks were defiling our bat cave, for lack of a better word. But I also realized that I could stay a step ahead of them if I knew what they were planning. "Visser Three is getting impatient," I heard Jake say. "He wants the girl found," he continued. Cassie spoke up. "Maybe she's at the mall. You know Rachel, she can't resist a sale." Cassie knew me too well.
And as it happened, there was a pretty good sale at the mall. I would have been there, if recent happenings didn't interfere. Just another reason to take the Yeerks down, as far as I was concerned. Jake looked at Ax. "Did you find her family?" he asked. It made me sick to my stomach to hear the Yeerks use my friends like this. [No, Prince Jake. I went back to the house, but it was deserted.] Marco spoke up. "Do you think she took them to the free Hork-Bajir colony?" he asked. Cassie shook her head.
"No, Marco. She's not that stupid. She knows by now we have the position of the colony." Jake nodded. "As soon as we capture her, Visser Three has ordered us to lead the attack on the colony." That was at least partly good. As the last morph-capable human on Earth, I was the Yeerk's top priority. I'd heard enough. It was time to get back. Unfortunately, as I started to morph to seagull, I bumped the side of the wall. It was loud enough for my friends to detect my prescence. They came running out of the barn just as I took off.
"After her, you fools!" Jake ordered. "She has the morphing device. If we let her escape with that, Visser Three will have our heads! Use your bird of prey morphs." I tried to get as much distance as I could. I didn't even look back. There was no way my seagull could out fly four birds of prey, especially Jake's. His was the fastest bird in the world: the peregrine falcon. My problems just got that much more difficult.