23. Crusade
Once upon a time she had marched across a crowded playground and put a bully in his place with words, small fists and parental intervention roused by the vocal displeasure she was loudly projecting in her first real life 'knight on a white horse' moment; in retrospect Cassie had seemed more shocked by Rachel's own behavior than phased by the discriminating ignorance of the older boy- but her father had sworn her to secrecy over an ice cream cone he bought her following a brief talking to about the ways and rules of the world at large in reward for being his 'brave little girl', and the second reaction had taken greater precedence in the archives of her memory than the first.
Starting even further back Rachel had instinctively started running interference between her younger sisters and their parents heated displeasure with each other before she was barely old enough to tie her own shoes; this sibling distraction and emotional evasive action still continued to this day, but with their father on the other side of the country and herself rarely at home, it had faded by the wayside in the face of other (more fatal) problems.
Overwhelming as the daily paranoia, bloody battles and their fallout was on the day to day, the greatest fight Rachel continued to battle- but never ever fully win- was not the one between humans and Yeerks, but instead the ones between her fellow Animorphs- friends? Former friends? She was never sure these days where those lines lay- combined dependence on and fearful (for some) distrust of her skills and the bloodlust that had sharpened and honed them in the fires of her own temper and joyful exertion. Cassie flat out disliked her methods, Marco and Ax both distrusted her enthusiasm, Jake had learned to use her as needed but mostly couldn't look her in the face most times afterwards like they'd been doing something shamefully dirty or wrong, and sometimes she thought Tobias loved her too much to actually tell her what he was thinking.
She'd protect them all using the only methods she trusted until the day she died, though.