OK, wow, it's been a while =D Just thought I'd see if people actually still read this.

Chapter Six

Will's urgent whisper shot through us like something physically cold. I calculated the odds. There was a path that led up and around the hillock, and that was obscured from the clearing by the trees and bushes we'd hidden in the night before. The Controllers would come up that way, if they hadn't seen us.

If they had, they'd come straight up the side, trying to catch us as quickly as possible.

Praying that we'd been concealed enough by the undergrowth, I motioned the others to climb down the other side of the hill. We all could hear the crunch of boots on the gravel path and rumbling voices. With the speed of desperation, Maria, Jon and Hannah ran down the side of the hump away from the human-Controllers. Using his arms to turn the wheels of his chair, Will followed them.

I was the only one left with the fighter. The wind had gotten colder and there was a bitter taste in my mouth. We'd failed. We'd failed Jalilan. We hadn't found the morphing cube.

The voices were getting closer.

"Steve! Come on!"

With one last glance at the fence surrounding the Andalite fighter, I ran.

The next day was a Saturday. Jon and I had agreed to meet some other friends at the skate park, and we had to keep the agreement, or it would have looked suspicious.

We both had started getting into skateboarding a year or two ago, after hanging out at the skate park for something to do and seeing all the older kids do their awesome moves. So, we decided to try out; or rather I persuaded Jon to take it up with me. That's usually how it was back then. I'd think of something (usually something moderately crazy, but not always) that we could do, and then persuade Jon to tag along. He's always been much more cautious than I am.

Anyway, I used a few months' allowance to buy a deck, and Jon managed to persuade his foster parents to get him one as well one Christmas. Then we practiced a bit on the sidewalk outside my house, falling down a lot and skinning quite a few knees, teaching ourselves tricks from a book. It's not like either of us is really any good on a skateboard – I mean, we can stay on and do a few basic moves, but we're not pro or anything. Jon's a lot better than me. He's got this natural grace that makes him look good, somehow, even though his repertoire is pretty limited.

We made quite a few good friends our age at the skate park, so hanging out there became a usual weekend fixture. Even when it was winter, like now, the skate park became a place just to stand around, talk and watch the few brave souls attempt to actually skate. We couldn't just cut it for no reason. Jon called at my house in the morning as he usually does.

The only difference was that I wasn't awake when he came over. I hadn't slept all that well the night before. Jalilan's hopeless face kept intruding between me and rest, and I'd only fallen into a peaceful, dreamless sleep sometime in the morning, so I hadn't woken up when I was supposed to.

I was rudely awoken by Jon yanking the covers off me and opening the window so the room was saturated with freezing air. When I tried to curl up around my pillow, he grabbed it and whacked me.

"Get up, lazy! Time to get going!"

I am not the most coherent of people in the morning. Especially not when my blanket has been stolen and I have been chilled to the point of death as well as whacked with a pillow.

"Mmph… Wha…?"

Jon shook his skateboard under my nose.

"You know, what we usually do on a Saturday? Going out in the freezing air to attend a societal congregation that is pretty pointless in winter but is necessary, for some obscure reason? Skateboarding?"

"Oh yeah…. Right…" I sat on the edge of the bed. I'd slept on my hair funny, and it stuck out at the back and flopped into my eyes. I tried to straighten it out. Jon installed himself into the chair in front of my desk.

"I'll just wait here, then. Take your time."

That's the thing with Jon. Whatever he says it sounds like he really believes it. It's difficult to spot sarcasm in anything that comes out of his mouth. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

I stumbled blearily across the landing to the bathroom. The hot jet of the shower cleared my head a bit, and I was more wide awake when I got back to the bedroom. Wide awake enough to notice what was strange about this whole thing.

"Hey – how did you get in here?"

Jon was reading a comic book he'd picked up and laughing to himself. "What? Oh, your mom was just going out to work when I came by. She said you were still asleep and that I'd better come in, since she didn't want to have a death from hypothermia on her hands."

"Right." I jammed my feet into sneakers and grabbed my skateboard.

"Come on, let's get going." Going to the skate park did sound like a good idea at the moment. Anything to get Jalilan's image out of my mind. Anything normal.

The bunch of kids we usually hung out with was there when we arrived. No one was doing much boarding so they were sitting on one of the ramps, talking.

They greeted Jon and me when we walked up and sat down too. Jon was soon laughing with them but I looked around the circle of faces as if seeing them with new eyes.

Sure, we'd been friends for a couple years now, but did that mean anything? The Yeerks are insidious. I stared as hard as I could, thinking maybe I'd sense something, some vibe that would tell me all was not right. I wanted to think that, if I looked hard enough, I'd be able to see the grey slugs that might be lurking.

I guess I looked out of it; Jon gave me a nudge that meant "get with it".

It wasn't quick enough. The others had already noticed. CJ, a tall, blond boy who was one of the best among us at the whole skateboarding thing, leaned across curiously.

"What's wrong, Steve?"

Great.

"Uh…I…"

I couldn't very well say "I'm currently the de facto leader of a band of kids that are the only force currently standing between the Earth and Yeerk re-invasion, oh, and did I mention we don't even have morphing power to fight with, that's why I'm scared as hell", so I just mumbled something that didn't even pretend to be words. Jon saw I was in trouble, and quickly butted in.

"He's really tired these days, not been getting enough sleep, right, Steve? No idea why, but he was so dead to the world this morning I had to come in and yank off his covers before he woke up!"

They laughed at that, and forced Jon to expand on my supposed insomnia, leaving me to sit off and join in the laughter when I was expected to. I was glad he'd taken the responsibility of explaining off my shoulders.

I had a feeling that I was going to have to deal with quite enough responsibility to be getting on with.

Still, after a while of just sitting and feeling the wind knife through my jacket, I began to feel better. The coldness of the air scoured my tired mind, cleansing it of the fear and guilt and bitterness I'd been feeling lately. I found myself joining in the conversation, laughing along with my group of friends.

The weather was too cold for us just to sit there, so when we began to feel our limbs getting numb we grabbed our decks and tried out a few tricks. Somehow, it was totally exhilarating to rush down the ramps, through the winter air, feeling it stripe our cheeks with pink.

Sometime in the middle of all this, as I yelled to the others and raced Jon over and around the ramps and half-pipes, I forgot all about Jalilan and the mission he had given us. Rather, I pushed it to the back of my mind and for a while I was just me again, with no knowledge of aliens other than from schoolbooks and no idea that the Yeerks had already landed. I knew a leader wasn't supposed to act this way, and that I'd have to get back in the game sooner or later.

But you know what? That was fine with me, because I had here and now.