Chapter 11

"You're sneaking back to her place tonight? As a cat?"

Rachel shrugged. "I don't know, maybe. Tobias can't keep playing lookout like this, and Cassie and I know the inside of Melissa's house."

"And the fact that there would be two cats in the house?"

"Not a problem. Fluffer sleeps in a pet bed in her closet. I could get in, shut her door, and the original Fluffer wouldn't be an issue."

"She named her cat Fluffer? Of course she did."

Melissa Chapman is good people. She's pretty, has that all-American girl next door look, red hair, sea blue eyes, freckles, she gets boys' attention. Admittedly, I thought she was cute. Not Cassie cute, but cute nonetheless. She was funny, spontaneous, and a little bit of a free spirit. She definitely put off a New Age hippie vibe, and she wasn't at all embarrassed or inhibited by that. She was a firecracker if there ever was one, and she was totally the kind of person that'd name a cat Fluffer.

As I watched my friends at the table, I noticed the osprey sitting on the Gate 3 archway. Ospreys aren't terribly common here, but they're not out of place either. Still, I was almost positive it was Elfangor. When we didn't show up at the WRC, he'd come back to the only other place he knew to look for us. Or he noticed when I'd turned off the street and had followed us.

"Rachel, I don't wanna be rude," I started.

"But she needs to go," she finished.

"Yeah."

"I understand. Her mom dropped her off, I thought about walking her home, but you can give her a ride, right?"

"Ugh, don't I always?" Tom might have a point about the SUV being more trouble than it was worth. But I still loved having it, so whatever.

We caught back up to Marco, Cassie, and Melissa, and Rachel told her that we had to do some graduation shopping for Tom.

"Oh, I understand. Well, I really don't because I've never had to go graduation shopping. But, yeah, I've kept Rachel all to myself this weekend. Cassie, you should come next weekend if you're free, it's been too long. We need to have a girls night, order some pizza, Netflix marathon, whole nine yards."

Did I mention the girl had energy?

We got her meal to go, and to my complete lack of surprise, the osprey followed us overhead.

When we got back to Melissa's place, the osprey landed on a branch of a tree. I saw Tobias, the familiar red-tail, perched a few branches below. Rachel ran in with her, and a few minutes later came back out with her overnight bag.

It was Tobias that followed us to the WRC, not Elfangor. That was good, we now had another pair of wings that knew where Chapman lived.

We found Tobias in the barn. He'd flown ahead of us, and was waiting patiently in the rafters. The hawk he had acquired, the one with the broken wing, watched him from its cage. I wondered what that felt like, to see your doppelganger staring down at you. I doubt the hawk put that much depth to it.

Tobias swooped down, landed on the hay-strewn floor of the barn, and began to demorph.

I'd seen this forward, but the reverse of it was somehow so much more disturbing. The feathers melted back to quills, which were absorbed into now oversized chicken wings. Those fucked up little wings turned into almost fetal arms and then continued to grow, the fingers emerging from the wingtips.

The talons rearranged the bone configuration of the toes, the scales receded into the skin like Silly Putty left in the hot sun. The black hooked claws turned translucent, and blunted before melting back into normal toenails. But his legs weren't back to normal yet, and he fell over and backward, laying on his side.

His naked chest bulged obscenely. Birds, it turns out, have a massive protrusion of the breastbone called a keel. It was a fin-shaped blade of bone that anchored the overdeveloped pectoral muscles needed for flapping, but right now, as Tobias asserted his human DNA, it looked like his chest was going to explode outward.

When he was about the size of a toddler, Rachel opened her bag and fished out his jeans and t-shirt. I wondered if we should turn around and give Tobias some privacy, but then I saw dark grey fabric emerge from his hips. As the human form emerged, I realized he was wearing boxer briefs.

He stood, a little wobbly at first, as it looked like he got his balance before all his human muscles had settled. Tobias is a little shorter than I am, but he's built kinda lanky. He was pale, and while I could see the muscles of his ribs and stomach, I saw him as also being a little frail, a little undernourished. I really wanted to take him out for a bacon cheeseburger.

"Damn," Marco said. "You need to get some sun, gringo."

Tobias laughed as he pulled on his jeans and shirt. "We can't all be swarthy like you, Banderas."

"How did you morph shorts?" I asked.

Rachel kinda blushed, but Tobias didn't seem to notice. "Yeah, that. It took some practice, but with some extra concentration, I was able to keep the boxers. It only works on tight clothing, though. I couldn't pull in the jeans or anything."

That didn't seem embarrassing, not enough to account for Rachel blushing anyway. "Rachel? Is there a problem?" I asked.

She shifted uncomfortably. "It's nothing, just need to ask Cassie a girl question."

Marco rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. Who do you think fills the tampons in the ladies room at the movie theater?"

Rachel looked at him like she couldn't decide if she wanted to hit him or was impressed with his candor. She just rolled her eyes and sighed. "Fine. Cassie, do you think I can borrow one of your sports bras? I don't think I can morph underwire."

"Yeah," Marco said, "that's Victoria's secret, not Andalite compatible."

We didn't exactly laugh, but there was a sudden relief to the group. Rachel suddenly looked less embarrassed. We were all in the same boat here, and at best, we were all going to see each other in our underwear. And Tobias said it took practice to get that far, so at worst, things could get really embarrassing really quickly.

"We seem to have just decided we're having morphing class in the barn, haven't we?" Marco asked.

"Looks that way," I nodded. "But one, I think we need to plan out the B&E, and two, morphing practice should probably be in the creek bed."

"B&E?" Rachel asked. "Exactly what the hell are you guys planning?"

I had only told her we needed the camera to spy on Chapman's office. I hadn't had time to go deeper at the Boardwalk, and so now she had to be brought to speed. She listened intently and then swore loudly. "Fuck, why am I missing this plan?"

"You were the one that wanted to spend the night in cat morph," I reminded.

That got another round of questions, more exposition, as Rachel went over her experience over the sleepover. There was an emotional element in her telling that had been missing from Tobias's more bullet point takeaway.

"She feels like her parents don't love her anymore," Rachel said. "I mean, she's not coming to the alien brain slug conclusion or anything, but she's noticed a definite change. Her parents are always at work, and they're distant when they're home. Chapman seems obsessed with the 'rec room renovations,'" she said with finger quotes. "They aren't taking any real interest in her like they used to."

Cassie nodded. "The Yeerks have all the memories, all the abilities of their hosts, but they have no emotional connection. Makes sense for alien parasites."

"I mean it's not a high sounding thing," Rachel continued. "It's not like fate of the world or anything. But these slugs hurt my friend, and I'm pissed."

She looked at Marco like she expected him to tease her or make a sarcastic comment. He didn't. He wouldn't. Marco knew too well how much a change in a parent could hurt, and he didn't even make eye contact with her.

"So you want to go cat and check out this mysterious basement project?" I asked.

She nodded. "Yeah. I mean if there's a pool in the basement, we've been wasting our time. Right?"

That was a possibility we hadn't considered. Marco seemed skeptical, though. "If there's a pool in the basement, that means Chapman isn't infested while the slug is in the liquid thing, right?"

I shrugged. "We're talking alien technology, Marco. I don't know what kind of assumptions we can make. Rachel makes a good point." I sighed. I didn't like the position I was in, but it was what it was. "Alright. We need to get this camera into the vent in Chapman's office." I set the box on the bench in the barn. "How do we do it?"

Cassie went first. "Can we just unscrew the vent cover and place it?"

Tobias shook his head. "I've spent enough time in Chapman's office. The vent is painted over. There's no way to take off the vent cover without the possibility he'll notice it's been fucked with."

"So we take it through the ductwork," I said.

Everyone looked at me. Great.

"We morph something that can go through the vent. Follow the duct till we come out somewhere less obvious. Open that vent, put the camera in, and push the camera through the duct till it's in position."

"Anything small enough to fit through the vent slits isn't going to be able to move that box," Marco noted.

"Yeah," Cassie said, "But if we're opening the vent, we can have a second morph that just needs to fit in the duct."

"Plus we can't have Jake pick us up in the SUV tonight," Tobias said.

I nodded. "No driving privileges on school nights."

Cassie seemed to be considering that. She was looking at the cages, assessing our options. "So we need something very small, something small-ish that can move a half-pound box, and something to cover the distance."

"So we've gone from one of us with one morph, to all of us morphing multiple animals," I said.

"We're animal morphers," Marco said. "Personally I'd rather have the Kryptonian deluxe package of superpowers, but shapeshifting isn't terrible."

"I'm sure you'd love to have Kal-El's deluxe package," Rachel said.

Marco shrugged. "Who says I don't? I think I'd look okay in red bikini briefs."

"Children," Cassie scolded. "Off topic. Besides, Animal Morphers? You can't come up with a better team name?"

"I could be biased," Tobias said, "but I recommend the hawk."

Cassie chortled, or whatever the hell you call it. One of those little sarcastic laughs that's nothing more than a punctuated exhale. You know what I mean. "Like we need a cloud of raptors descending on the school. There's that raven that flew into a window." She nodded to a cage near Rachel. "Common, intelligent, large enough as passerine birds go. Should be very workable for our needs."

I looked at the cage she indicated. Everyone knows what a raven looks like, but looking at its quizzical ink-black gaze, I felt a chill. "They look a little…"

"Creepy," Rachel said, agreeing.

Cassie shrugged. "They have a reputation. But they're one of the smartest animals in the world, and passerine birds can see ultraviolet, so that's something."

"So Poe here will get us there," Marco said. "What about the vents?"

"Well, I have something here that's actually pretty adept at getting into hollow spaces." Cassie went over a few cages, and pointed. In the cage was a raccoon. "They have incredible night vision and dexterous paws."

I nodded. Two for three, we were set. That still left a third outstanding. "What about our third?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I have no clue," she said. "We don't have anything smaller than a squirrel at the moment."

"Oh, I got it," Marco said. I looked at him, eyebrows raised. "It's gonna take a pit stop at PetSmart, though."

My stomach turned. "If you say gerbil, I'm going to hit you."

"Oh, no, it's much worse," he said with a wicked smile. "You like green, right? What would you think about a lizard?"

"Not enthused," I said honestly. "But I guess we don't have much choice, do we?" I took a breath. Okay, you can do this. "We need to acquire the raven and the raccoon, and head down to creek to practice morphing."

Heading down to the creek took a little extra effort than normal. I was carrying a length of rope and an old tarp. Marco was carrying the tent and sleeping bag that Cassie had alluded to earlier. Tobias had taken off to head back to Chapman's so Elfangor could fly back and demorph. He was already pretty casual about morphing, or at the very least he was used to the hawk transition. He wasn't particularly thrilled about the raccoon thing, it didn't seem. Rachel and Cassie had gone up to the house to change into something they thought they could morph.

I tried not to picture Cassie changing. I swear, I really did. I didn't succeed at all, but I did try.

That was actually what the rope and tarp were for. While we were waiting for Elfangor and the girls, Marco and I each tied an end of the rope to a tree, and when the line was taut, we draped the tarp over it. It was a very makeshift privacy curtain, but it worked. We were going to morph raccoon first. We had all agreed that morphing another mammal would probably be easier than morphing a bird for our first run. Plus, no offense to Tobias, seeing the process of growing wings and feathers was a bit of a turn-off for bird morphing.

"So," I said, hesitating. "You talk to your dad?"

"No," he said, a little deflated. "But I talked to Father Donovan today."

"Well that's progress," I said. I didn't want to push it. And Marco didn't really seem like he wanted to go further with it.

At any rate, the girls were here. Cassie was wearing a seafoam green one-piece swimsuit and her cut-off shorts. Rachel had the same clothes on as earlier. She was not happy. "I swear, Marco, you say one word, I'm killing you."

Marco rolled his eyes. "Rachel, we live on a beach. How many times have I seen you in a bikini?"

That actually seemed to stump her for a second. She blushed and started laughing. "Marco, sometimes I'm sure you're screwing with me. But thanks for being mature about this."

"Rachel, I'm wearing Spider-Man boxers today. I'm not what you'd call a pillar of maturity. I'm just not in a position to be throwing shade or mouthing off."

Deep breath. "Okay, we've got the privacy screen set up; I think we need to just dive in."

I peeled my t-shirt off, and stepped out of my shoes. I was very aware that there's no dignified way to take off socks. I tried not to stare at Cassie as she shimmied her hips out of her cut-offs. Rachel was down to black hiphugger boyshorts and a purple sports bra she apparently borrowed from Cassie. The words "Quit Staring" were written across her chest in pink, curly letters. And Marco, true to his word, had black boxers with a giant white spider emblem etched across the left thigh.

"That's what you were worried about me commenting on?" he asked.

Rachel's face turned pink. "Watch it, Venom."

"No, I'm not teasing. I just can't help but wonder if that bra doesn't say more about Cassie owning it than you wearing it."

"Hey!" Cassie said, suddenly very alert. "My lingerie is none of your business. And if you need the bra to tell you not to ogle, well, you're a pig."

"Alright, so we just concentrate on the raccoon, right?" I said. I was already distracted enough - Cassie has some nice curves, okay? I'm only human - and I didn't want this getting out of hand.

"That's what Elfangor said," Marco replied. "So the rule is we keep morphing until we morph our clothes, right?"

"I don't think any of us wants to be streaking through the school tonight," Cassie said.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the raccoon. I could see its chocolate brown eyes, the characteristic black mask, tawny grey fur. I suddenly felt like I was falling. I opened my eyes and saw the world in slightly muted colors. It seemed way brighter suddenly. I realized I was shrinking. My spine bent forward as my hind legs receded and I went to put my hands forward to break my fall only to see my hands were already halfway to paws. Black fur etched from my fingers up past my wrists, before becoming paler grey.

The process was going similarly for all my friends. I watched as Rachel's face extended into a muzzle before her sapphire blue eyes turned brown. Marco had lost his balance and rolled over, and his tail suddenly shot out of his spine, then exploded striped fur. If you'd ever wondered what it would look like to give birth to a toilet brush: A) you've got serious problems, get help, and B) you really don't want to see that.

Cassie was different. She had grown the grey fur all over her body, and she was standing on elongated feet ending in paws. And she had a mostly raccoon face. But she was almost entirely human besides. She looked like she was about ready to win first prize at a furry convention. But then the fur enveloped her swimsuit and she began shrinking with the rest of us.

Raccoons don't see color the same as humans. Cassie explained later that as a general rule, anything that can see in the dark has trouble seeing color. Only so much room in the eye, so they add more rod cells at the expense of cone cells. My sense of smell was incredible. I could smell the animals in the barn from Rachel's clothes. I rooted around the ground, trying to get a lock on smells. I didn't like being out in the open like this. I needed to be somewhere a bit more secluded. I needed to find a good place to lay down and get some sleep.

*Woah, so this is how a filthy trash-eater sees the world, huh?* Marco said.

*Does anyone else feel paranoid?* Rachel asked. *I mean I really want to book into the trees.*

*Cassie?* I asked.

*Yeah? Sorry, I'm picking up a lot of smells over here. Something weird.*

*It's Elfangor,* I said, noticing the smell. *The raccoon brain can't make sense of the Andalite scent.*

*Oh, that makes sense. What's up?*

*How did you do that? The swimsuit thing?*

*Yeah,* Rachel said, *That was cool.*

*She's a morph-dancer,* a voice answered.

We all looked up, and all of us went running. Raccoons aren't exactly fleet footed, but we all took off when we saw the osprey. The raccoon brain didn't know that ospreys were fish eaters. And the raccoon brain wasn't really scared. Actually a good part of it wanted to fight. Kick that bird's feathered ass. But when it comes to birds of prey, best not to take chances. We had run about ten or fifteen feet into the underbrush before Cassie - I think it was Cassie - got enough sense to turn around and head back.

*Sorry,* she said, looking up at the osprey. *This animal isn't fond of predatory birds.*

*I can imagine. At the beach yesterday, this form wanted very badly to observe the ocean much more than it wanted to observe your public communications console.*

*It's called a pay phone, dude,* Marco said snappishly. *And could you warn us when you're going to land like that?*

*My apologies.*

*So what's a morph-dancer?* Cassie asked.

*Most Andalites that use this technology have little voluntarily control over the process. But there are some that are able to execute very fine control over the process. It is admittedly more common in females. Morph-dancing is a popular civilian use of the Escafil technology.*

*Andalite burlesque, huh,* Marco snarked. *Don't think you'll find that on PornHub.*

*And just how much time do you spend on PornHub?* Rachel sniped.

Elfangor took this exchange as an excuse to demorph and remorph. Watching the black and white feathers of an osprey become the blue fur of an Andalite was still shocking, even as often as I'd seen him do it at this point. I decided he was on point, though.

*Okay, so we seem to have a handle on Bandito, agree?* I asked.

*Bandito? Poe? Are we going to name all our morphs?* Rachel asked.

*Ignoring that,* I said, *we're all in control right now it seems. I think my shorts carried, and we all know Cassie managed to keep the swimsuit. How did you guys fare?*

There was a pause and then I watched as one of the raccoons scampered over and dragged a bra and underwear to the tarp. *When you're done behind the curtain, I'm going to be right behind you,* Marco said.

*You keep your raccoon eyes on that side of the curtain, trashcan.*

Cassie and I opted to demorph. I was fully human just about the time Elfangor was back to osprey. I watched him go, off to let Tobias off surveillance duty at Chapman's. I was trying to avoid looking at Cassie. She noticed.

"You know," she said, perhaps a little demurely. "There's nothing written on my swimsuit that says you can't look."

I laughed. "Don't tempt me, Cass. You fill that suit out pretty well."

She whispered into my ear. "Maybe that's why I bought it."

I swallowed. I looked at her seriously, than smiled when I couldn't keep it going. "You're a little flirtier than I would've expected."

"And you're exactly as uptight as I'd expect you to be," she said, nudging me with an elbow. "Even in your underwear."

"Don't be ogling me."

Rachel stepped out of the curtain and put a hand on her hip. "You guys do know raccoons have good hearing right?"

"Quit staring," I said, not making eye contact.

"Ass."

"Blonde."

"See?" Cassie asked, "You're relaxed with Rachel. It's not a girl thing, because you didn't treat me with kid gloves before we started dating."

"Well, you're one of my best friends. It's been you, me, Marco, and Rachel since we were little. I'm worried I'm going to do something dumb and fuck this up before it really starts."

She kissed me on the cheek. "Y'know, it's cute that you worry about things, Jake. But why would you think you'd mess it up?"

I shrugged. "I'm a guy. And I know nothing about girls."

"I'm a girl, and I know nothing about boys. Try to relax, okay?"

I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her in. I was suddenly very aware I was in nothing but my shorts.

Thankfully, with perfect timing, Marco came out from behind the curtain. "Okay, so I guess Rachel and I need to concentrate on the clothing part more for raven morphing."

"Unless you want to morph raccoon again?" I said. "Since it's something you two already know. I'm just saying, if we're trying birds next, maybe wait for Tobias and see if he has any opinions."

"Or at least so the hawk doesn't scare the hell out of the ravens," Cassie said.

The funny thing about morphing, is that once you do it, it's a lot less scary. It's like riding the monster roller coaster for the first time or bungee jumping or whatever. The process was still unsettling, but all of us had done it now. It wasn't really a big thing for me now. I wasn't exactly impatient to try the raven morph, and I saw what Tobias meant about morphing taking a bit out of you. I felt like I'd just run sprints.

Marco and Rachel opted to wait, and it wasn't more than maybe ten minutes later that Tobias swooped through the trees. *Woah, did I miss out on the orgy?*

*Cram it, T-bird,* Marco said.

*Better than Ten Piece,* he said, coming down for a landing. *Elfangor said you guys were practicing morphing.*

Tobias demorphed, once again standing in his shorts, and he found a log to sit on. "Nothing new going on at Chapman's," he said. "What did I miss?"

"Jake and Cassie mastered clothes," Rachel said. "Marco and I not so much. Hoping our bird morphs work better, otherwise I guess we have morphing homework."

"Well," I said, "I actually do have homework. I guess since the bird expert is back, we might as well try ravens and get this over with."

"Bird expert, huh?" Tobias said. "Think I should try raccoon or no?"

I shrugged. "Four of us can do it, didn't seem to be too hard to control. I don't think we're going to need five raccoons at any rate."

"Alright, fledglings. Let's earn your wings."

Morphing ravens was a little different. We already knew the general anatomy stuff from watching Tobias. And to everyone's relief, Rachel and Marco carried their clothes this time through. The way feathers grew out of the skin can only be described as very itchy. The fusing of my fingers had been incredibly unsettling, but like Tobias had said, the process didn't hurt, even the parts that felt like they should.

And Cassie was right. The raven could see ultraviolet. I think all of us besides Tobias needed a few minutes to adjust to the change in color vision. It's literally a color the human brain can't imagine, so we had to rely on the raven mind to fill in gaps. Cassie was also right that ravens were very smart. The single most obvious instinct in the raven mind was curiosity. We spent a few minutes staring at each other, trying to size each other up, we broke into a cawing match. Raven are vocal, and they're communicative. I think because both the raccoons and the ravens were smart, getting a handle on them was easier. They kinda had like a bit of a foothold or base framework for human intelligence. They had behaviors and instincts that already included curiosity and memory.

I didn't like where that put me for morphing the lizard.

As Cassie told me, reptiles aren't exactly intellectual champions. They don't think about anything, they only react. They run completely on instinct, so she told me to expect the lizard to be trickier.

It was time for us to split up. We were all going to meet on the school roof at eleven. And it was barely three thirty now. We all put our other clothes on, found our shoes, and got ready for the next phase of the plan. For Tobias, it was back to alternating surveillance with Elfangor. I had to get Rachel home before her parents flipped out, not to mention try out her cat morph. Cassie had her chores to do. Marco and I had to go to the pet store and acquire the lizard, which we'd each have to try on our own.

And I had perhaps the most difficult job of all, something I'd have less than seven hours to do.

I still had to write that fucking English paper.