Disclaimer: Love 'em, don't own 'em. Though I'd love to own them. lol.

So we have our first battle, and Madi in action. A bit more on her morals. Sorry, this is more filler chapter, and I'm not too pleased with it. Next chapter should get into the hard gritty and interesting stuff, so stay tuned.

And thanks to all who reviewed or alerted or fav this story. You know who you are, I know who you are, plus I'm too lazy to put up your names though I really should. hehe.

And without further ado, the story.

Chapter Ten:

(Madi!)

Ow. My head hurt.

(Yo! Mads. Nap later. We got problems!)

Breath. In and out. Live, survive.

I opened my eyes blearily, staring at the vast amount of black fur beneath my nose. I sneezed. Even that hurt.

"Marco?" I asked weakly. I felt pretty helpless right then. I doubted I could even morph.

(So you're up then?) He asked. (Good.)

I looked around. I was slung across Marco's shoulder, with one of Marco's large hands holding my legs in place, so that I was staring at Marco's back, and the bellowing Hork-Bajir. They looked angry.

I hid my face in the fur, heart beating quickly. "Did any of them see my face?" I asked quietly.

We were bounding, leaping from cart to cart. It figured. Marco and Ax had completely decimated the rest of the carts and disabled the human guards and guides as well, though not before they managed to call in reinforcements. Now we were jumping from floating cart to floating cart on the water, as well as possible. Marco didn't linger too long on each cart, since they started to sink the minute he landed on one.

TSEEEEEEWWWWWW!

A cart behind us exploded. I flinched. Of course, there was the small matter of the Hork-Bajir chasing us and their Dracon beams.

(I don't think they saw your face.) Marco replied. (How about we get away so you have a face?)

I ignored the blunt comment. "Where's Ax?"

(Eh. Fighting Hork-Bajir and dodging Dracon beams and stuff. You know, the usual. No biggie.)

He was mad at me. Why? I considered what I did wrong. Well, Tobias did tell me not to go in. But how could Marco know that? He was inside by the time I was.

Or maybe I was overanalyzing everything. Maybe he was just being Marco.

And then the cart we were on exploded.

(Ahhhhhhhh!)

"AAAAAHHHHHHH!"

My hands were ripped away from the gorilla, small clumps of black fur still clenched in my hands. And I was turning in the air, flailing arms and legs, completely and utterly helpless. I felt panic settle at the bottom of my stomach and invade my mind. I couldn't think!

"AAAAHHH-"

I hit the ground hard. I heard, rather than felt, something break. I couldn't be sure, but it might've been my wrist. Years of torturing and being tortured on the Blade ship taught me a good deal on anatomy of different species.

I lay on my side, feeling rather sorry for myself, and then decided to roll over and take a look at my surroundings.

Good thing I did.

TSEWWW!

A beam hit where my hand had been. I stared wide-eyed at the smoking spot on the ground, and then turned to see it's source.

To my surprise, I found that I was in a huge steel room, resting against a wall. It looked pretty empty except for a few metal contraptions against the opposite wall. Nothing that indicated a forestland and a lake of Yeerks.

Oh, of course. The forestland had been an illusion. I must've gone flying through the hologram and in here. But it made me wonder about the lake. Hologram?

I was guessing no. Which made our problem pretty big and annoying.

And where was the force field of the hologram anyways? Shouldn't there be one, just in case? Where were Marco and Ax? I was annoyed at the fact I couldn't communicate with them, but unless I wanted to be caught by the Hork-Bajir in a bad position, I couldn't yell out. I really had never worked alone like this. There was always some sort of voice in my head, some person talking to me. Now, there was...nothing. Silence. Just me, and that felt awfully lonely.

TSEWWWW!!! TSEWWWW!!!

Discussion later, I decided. Right now, my priorities leaned in favor of getting out.

I stood up shakily, carefully watching the hologram, circling the spot where the illusion was. This had to be planned out carefully. If not, I could get burned badly, or worse, dead.

I concluded where the least Dracon beams where shot, and ran towards there. Hopefully I'd find Marco and Ax, and then we could get out.

That was when I tripped on air, and went sprawling across the floor. My wrist throbbed with pain. I cursed profanely in Yeerk, and then I looked up.

Black eyes met mine. My eyes wandered down a thick scaly green-yellow snout, past a wrinkled chin and the folds of the skin in the neck. I stared at the pebbled body and the four thick splayed legs ending in long claws.

Even worse. I stared at the large blades that cropped up on its head, and down its back. The way the feet showed characteristics of talons. How the eyes betrayed it's ravenous, never-ending hunger.

Oh. No.

This wasn't supposed to happen. It was the humans who Visser Three was supposed to test the Hork-Bajir/Taxxon mix with. Not on this sadly changed creature.

I was faced with a Hork-Bajir/Taxxon mix of a creature. It made me queasy and sick to my stomach. It was unnatural. It was unnatural just by the way that creature was looking at me.

Hunger. If you haven't ever seen a creature look at you as a potential food source, count yourself lucky. This thing was mad with hunger of a Taxxon.

And I was its main meal.

I gulped, totally numb with fear. There was no way to protect myself. There were no voices telling me what to do.

It opened its mouth in a grin. I inhaled at the sight of a thousand little serrated fangs arranged in the jaw. Taxxon teeth. They would hurt. And my wrist still ached.

And then it attacked.

It rushed towards me, and I didn't even have a chance to move. It had been barely a foot away in the first place and there was no way I could move like this.

Milliseconds before it could snack on my head; a blur of scales rushed in front of me and hit the creature head-on. There was a whirl of claws and teeth, and two creatures faced off, growling and snapping at each other.

Big difference. One was an obvious Hork-Bajir/Taxxon mix with the DNA of whatever the creature was to being with. The other was an original, unchanged Earth animal. No blades, no weird teeth, no talons, no Taxxon type of hunger.

I backed up. Most likely they were fighting for the honor of eating me alive. Joy.

The hologram was right at my back. I could just rush through and be on my way, while the two creatures battled it out. I almost did, when another Dracon beam whistled from the other side of the room, and hit something. The something squealed.

The something... was alive.

I really shouldn't look.

I hesitated, really missing the voices in my head from before.

Then ran around the hologram to take a look.

No. Way.

I gaped at the steel cages that lined the walls. Each one of them crammed with one or two Earth animals.

There were all kinds. Animals with fur, animals with teeth, animals that couldn't walk, and animals with wings. And some who weren't animals, but were similar to the trees I saw from before.

And at first, I didn't realize anything was wrong. But then it dawned on me.

I saw the green beaks, the multi-eyed, and the round mouth frothing with hunger. I saw the waving skinny legs, the tough dark skin, or the gelatinous body.

And I turned away after that. My stomach felt the way it did when I first ate the berries in the tree-place.

All of those animals were experiments. They had mutated DNA strands, which most likely were failures. Most of these creatures were clearly unstable, unable to control, unable to live more than a few hours at most. It was a miracle they could breathe this air.

I noticed the smoking remains of a creature in a cage, and I felt my stomach rebel harder. There's something about seeing a DNA experiment burned up that makes your stomach twist and turn in a way it shouldn't.

I also noticed the burned-off lock on an empty cage that obviously had once held the creatures that were battling on the other side of the hologram.

Speaking of which...

TSEWWWW!

It was inevitable for one of the Dracon beams to hit the fighting animals. The strange mutated creature looked horrified for a moment before it vaporized. I couldn't say that I felt very sorry for it.

The other one seemed fine. It swaggered about, looking confused at the burning dregs of the thing it was wrestling with a moment before, before it also collapsed.

I don't know why I did what I did. I know I walked over to the animal, avoiding Dracon beams, and knelt next to the helpless creature.

Its side was burned badly, probably from the heat of the blast. The wound was oozing blood and pus, but I could already tell it didn't have long to live. Maybe it was better this way, not to have to watch the horrors of the Yeerk laboratory and suffer those horrors personally. Death wasn't the greatest way to go, but you took what you could get. And this was as good as it was going to get.

The animal looked up at me. Its eyes were far apart and wild, but I could see the look of a creature that had seen nightmares. I know. I've seen that look again and again; so many times it seems that the whole world is full of people who have seen nightmares.

I reached out slowly, and the eyes watched my hand warily as I placed it on it's bumpy skin. "You know," I began conversationally. "I've heard of the phrase: One good turn deserves another. In the words of the Yeerks, that can be summed up as the word, weak."

I didn't know why I was talking to a clearly insentient creature. Sure, it had saved my life. That didn't mean I was entitled to tell it bedtime stories.

I kept talking. "The Yeerk Empire's motto is more along the lines: Every creature for itself. We don't trust. We don't do friends. We do allies, but that can't mean the same thing. Friends are weak. Allies mean strength, but no one trusts allies anyways." It wasn't much of a story.

"In any case, you helped me." I stroked its skin, and inched my hand up to pat its head. "So I guess I should help-AAARGHHH!"

It bit me!

It hurt, to say the least. My nerves were on fire on my fingers. The small teeth embedded themselves in my fingers, not quite as small as the Taxxon's, but serrated.

It jerked its head to the side. I had a feeling my fingers would've ripped off in normal circumstances, but the creature was weakening from the lack of blood, and didn't have as much strength.

It's eyes glared at me, challenging me. I wanted to pluck out those eyes and crush them in my hands. Oh, ow.

My lip curled, but I didn't say anything. I glared right back into it's eyes.

It was stupid, to say the least. Holding a staring contest with an Earth animal. But, fascinated, I watched as the eyes began to flutter shut, the grip loosened, and the body slacked.

It was dying. It-

The realization hit me like a jolt of lightning. Its DNA was being absorbed. Into my body. I was acquiring. And it was going into a trance.

The animal slumped, its heartbeat stalling, a puddle of blood lying around us. Then it lost its breath, and its head thudded to the ground and stayed. Dead.

And I had its DNA.

Is it strange to say that I felt like I stole something? And right at someone's death bed. Strange that I would care. Stranger that I cared more for an Earth animal than I did for many of the other sentient I had killed before.

I straightened. No use hanging around. It was back to the pool.

I gave the other animals in the cages a pitying look. Two more had died from Dracon beam blasts. Unfortunate-

And then I knew. Perfect distraction.

I had already morphed a red-tail hawk. I remembered concentrating hard on the creature and not panicking while the changes occurred.

Same concept, applied to a different animal. I felt the bumpy skin covering my arms, the claws shooting out of my hands.

My smooth teeth hardened and shrank to little nubs of triangular bumps, but more than before. At least fifty, if not sixty.

My body lengthened so for a moment I was an elongated piece of meat. Not a great image.

I felt my eyes move farther apart, on either side of my head. It was strange adjusting to the different views. Bones cracked and creaked as my internal systems rearranged themselves, the nose stretching out farther and farther.

My legs and arms were the same length, powerful and thick, capable of sprinting, but not long-distance.

I blinked. I could see, not far, but good enough. There were muted colors and shapes, and I found my hearing range was narrowed. High and low sounds I could hear before couldn't be heard in this shape. And I could smell pretty well, though. Much better than the human nose.

And then the animal brain moved in.

It reminded me a Yeerk. Somewhat lazy, but able to move when given the motive. It could be vicious, could be violent, but didn't feel like it. It wanted to sleep, mostly. And eat, when it was hungry. Maybe it'd snack on one of those things in those metal boxes later.

And it was cold. So unbelievably cold. It didn't care. It didn't need to care, it didn't want to care. Life was good for itself and that's all that needed to matter. Every creature for itself indeed.

Food. I turned my eyes to the other animals. My tongue flicked out, which I noted with amusement, was much longer than my human one, and could scent things.

The creature wanted to eat. The creature wanted to sink its teeth in, jerk, rip, and tear-

That creature wasn't me. I was me. I couldn't forget that.

Plus I had a job to do.

I waddled- because that was the only way to describe it- over to the cages. Each had a sophisticated lock on it that even Hork-Bajir couldn't rip off.

I wasn't a Hork-Bajir. I locked my jaws on the cage door, jerked my head, and ripped. The lock came off, easily.

The animals didn't bother coming out. Well, of course, they didn't. They were traumatized. A strange animal had shifted into another scary animal and was ripping apart their cages. And strange beams of light were killing off their other friends. I mean, I would be scared, too.

Did I care?

No.

I charged at them from behind, and most, if not all, ran. The ones that didn't run, lunged for me, and hung on. I ran, those animals swinging from my skin like ornaments.

The bites didn't really hurt. I mean, I felt it. But it didn't cause me any pain. Because that was how this creature was like. Acknowledge the pain, and move on. Don't let pain slow you down. When you want to go, you go.

And so I chased those animals into the hologram.

The first couple of animals at the lead of the stampede were picked off by Dracon beams. Most of the animals tried to back up, as the view abruptly changed from a steel room into trees and forests, but it was too late to go back.

Those animals ran towards the fighting, right into a few Hork-Bajir. They didn't go into the water, but that was ok, since the fighting must've moved onto the land.

I growled, and launched myself at a Hork-Bajir harassing Marco.

(Holy-) He said, and yelled several other words that I didn't think were meant to be compliments.

I ignored him. I ripped and tore, and ripped and tore my way through the Hork-Bajir. Screams and bellows radiated through the trees. Adrenaline surged into my system, stimulating the animal and me. Those screams were loud enough for me to hear, and enraged the animal.

A Hork-Bajir slashed unexpectedly, and a small wound appeared on my neck. No problem. I dispatched the Hork-Bajir efficiently.

A Dracon beam headed for me. Oh, wow. That was a problem.

It glanced off my shoulder. Considering the circumstances, I was relatively lucky.

But it hurt like- it hurt. A lot.

(That's it, we're going.) Marco reported, and then proceeded to pick me up, not without difficulty. I battled against him, in the heat of the fight.

(Ah, great.) Marco complained. (We got a mini-Rachel. Come on, Ax, we found Madi, let's go.)

(Agreed, Marco. The exit is in the northwest direction. I will lead.) Aximili, jumping over a fallen Hork-Bajir, a few more on his tail.

I wanted to argue. But we were outnumbered, and there would be more fights. More chances to use this wonderful creature's body.

I didn't say a word, but let the Andalite lead and Marco hold me, as we ran out of that pit of death.

Eh. Not so good. Long, kinda tedious. Gotta work on that.

Next part is where you see the other Animorphs, and Madi and Marco work out their sexual fustrations- kidding, kidding. She's nine, for heaven's sake. I'm not that evil.

voodooqueen126: Interesting point. The way I think of it is this: Madra is the kind of person who has built up walls all around herself. She doesn't trust anyone. What she does have going for her is her instinct for survival, which the Yeerks hammered in her. Each Yeerk she has ever gone through tells her the same thing: Do what you have to and survive. Madra might be crazy, but she's not stupid. She listens to the Yeerks and uses their advice in whatever she does. She's strong because in the Yeerk Empire, there's no place for weakness. She had to be strong to live. She had to know how to cope, or else she couldn't make it that far. Madra also has Darwin, her brother who gave her hope in her darker times, and you'll see some of that later. Thanks for your views.

metamorphstorm: I'm actually surprised you read the newest chapter so quickly. I thought it would take a while for people to actually realize the story updated and read it. I had to reread my own story too, actually, because I forgot where I left off lol. Nice thing is I know where I'm going and what I'm going to do. Plus I've written out the ending after a loooooong debate about it, so that's good. Thanks for your review!

Yeah. So follow your cursor and press the blue button on the left hand side. Bless you forever if you do. Remember to review!