"My name is Cassie," she said, crouching to put herself on more equal terms with the other girl. "It's nice to meet you, Shara."

"It's nice to meet you, too," she said, nodding. "Jake, you said, 'one of us'. That implies that there's more to this than just you and Cassie, I think. Care to fill me in?"

Sitting down – the story of the Animorphs was a long one, and he wanted to be at least reasonably comfortable while he told it – Jake looked up just as Tobias flew in through the open hayloft. The third member of their group looked a little harried. As harried as a hawk could manage to look, anyway.

(Jake, who's she?)

"Tobias, this is Shara," he said, knowing the other Animorph would be able to hear him. He knew first-hand how good a bird of prey's hearing was. "She's Slade's sister."

"One of your friends is a talking hawk?" Shara laughed. "I guess you're more interesting than I thought."

(She knows about us?)

"Yeah; I guess Slade told her. Right?"

"Yeah," she muttered, turning to look back at her brother with a morose expression. "Slade told me."

"Jake," Cassie said, calling attention to herself again. "Weren't we going to discuss something with Ax?"

"Who's that?" Shara asked.

"He's… hard to explain," Jake admitted. "You'll see what I mean when you meet him."

It was pretty easy to see the way Jake was sidestepping her question, but it was also plain that he just didn't know what to say about this Ax person. Maybe the guy was just really unique. That fit; not many people had that kind of a first name, after all. It made her curious about what his last name was, and also about his parents if they gave him that name.

If they did, they were probably interesting people themselves. Probably a lot like their father that way; she wondered if Ness – or not really Ness anymore, but Slade – even remembered their father anymore. He'd seemed to have remembered her well enough, but something had seemed off about that.

But then maybe that had just been her being on-edge from all the things that had happened to her since she'd been separated from her family. Or maybe she was just hoping that was the case.

When another bird flew into the barn, she ignored it in favor of her brother. He was still sleeping, and if they were going to go out and meet this Ax guy he'd have to wake up.

(Slade, we're going to go out and meet someone named Ax. Do you want to come?)

(Shara…) he said; as if her name was some kind of talisman to him. It was kind of weird, but then weird things had happened to them all; there was no reason something like this should be normal. (Of course I'll come with you,) he said, opening his eyes as he sat up. (Where are we going to meet him?)

"I hadn't gotten around to asking that yet," she admitted, turning to look back at Jake.

"We're going to meet him out in the woods," he said. "There's less chance of someone we don't want knowing about this stumbling across us."

"This Ax of yours is that conspicuous, huh?" she asked, not sure herself if she was being serous or not.

"You'll understand when you meet him," Jake said, grinning just the slightest bit.

There was obviously something she wasn't in on yet – probably quite a few somethings – but as she'd just met up with these people, Shara made up her mind not to worry about that. Besides, Slade was still with her; that had to count for something. He seemed like he remembered some of what they'd meant to each other, even if it was only subconsciously.

"Slade, can Shara morph?" Cassie asked.

She turned, feeling Slade's uneasiness – probably through that weird telepathic connection they had now – and saw that he looked sheepish. Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar or something cliché like that; it would have been kind of funny if she hadn't known just how badly he was really taking this.

"I'm sorry, Jake; I should have asked for your permission, or waited until you were here," he said, addressing Jake even in spite of the fact that it'd been Cassie who'd asked him the question in the first place; there was a story behind that, she was sure. "But I wanted to get Shara ready to fight as soon as I could."

Slade's eyes glowed green for a moment, a tell-tale sign that she had learned to associate with the use of his – well, probably hers, too – telepathic power. She couldn't hear anything, but Jake sighed and adopted a put-upon look.

"I'm not going to punish you for anything, Slade," Jake said, sounding more resigned than she'd heard him sound since she'd met him.

I guess that's who he was talking to. "Well, since I can already do this morphing thing you've been talking about, I guess we can skip a step."

"I guess we can," Jake said, smiling amicably as Shara stood up.

She heard Slade standing up a few seconds later, and then they were all climbing down out of the hayloft to the floor. There, they were met by a boy with dark hair who was a bit shorter than her, and another girl. Shara didn't notice so much notice the girl, not at first. The boy had almost the same dubious expression on his face as Cain did when he was confronted with one of Conrad's 'experimental cooking projects'.

It was kind of funny; in a sad sort of way.

"I don't believe it," the boy said, looking between her and the other girl. "Rachel has a twin no one's ever heard about; this is just like daytime TV!"

"I seem to have left my Spaz-to-English dictionary at home," she said, turning to Jake with a slightly dubious look of her own. "Would someone care to translate for me?"

"I think he means that you and Rachel look a lot alike," he said, grinning.

"You guys, I think we should get going now," Cassie said, reminding Shara that they weren't really here to shoot the breeze and get to know each other.

That might come later, or it might not.

"Sorry, Cass," Marco said, still grinning and not looking all that repentant at all. "They really do look a lot alike, you have to admit."

"I know, but we need to find out what Ax knows about these Leerans that Erek was talking about."

Leerans? Erek? Shara mused. I feel so completely out of the loop right now; still, no sense complaining about it. I'm sure I'll find out what's going on soon enough. And if I don't, I can always ask. Taking a breath to steady herself, she watched as they all started changing into various birds. No need to ask how we're getting there, I guess.

Even Slade was starting to change, growing black feathers and shrinking down into the same type of black bird. She wondered for a few seconds if it was a raven or a crow; it could have been a jackdaw, but for some reason she got the feeling it wasn't. But that wasn't what she was supposed to be thinking about now.

Focusing on the seagull that she had made a part of her, Shara felt herself start to change. It wasn't quite as strange the second time around; watching the others change shape more than made up for that, though. It was stranger than the horror movies that Fritz and Cain – and sometimes Conrad – had seemed to enjoy so much.

It wouldn't have been out of place in a slasher film, except for the complete and conspicuous lack of blood. Nor would calling this kind of thing body horror be out of line; that description fit more than any other.

Once all of the transforming was done, Shara found herself in the midst of a bird of prey convention.

(I don't think you're going to fit in very well,) said a voice – almost telepathy but not quite – that sounded a lot like Cassie's said.

(I guess seagulls don't travel with birds of prey,) she said, chuckling a bit.

(Not normally,) Jake said, sounding oddly stern. (And we want to make this look as normal as we possibly can.)

She would have laughed if he hadn't sounded so forceful, and she was sorely tempted to start in any case. What could possibly make a flock of predatory birds – birds who would have never traveled in flocks unless they were migrating, and who would only travel with their own species – look at all normal?

Just then, she noticed that Cassie was back in human form; had probably demorphed while she was thinking things over.

"Shara, demorph and I'll find you a bird of prey," Cassie said, before she could even think of a question.

Focusing on herself the way she'd learned to do, Shara watched as everything seemed to shrink back down to the normal size that she was accustomed to. Back in her own body again, she didn't have the time even to stretch before Cassie took her hand and was leading her amongst the cages of injured birds.

"What kind of birds do you have here?" she asked, trying to think of something that would be able to keep up with the other Animorphs in their morphs and be able to defend itself besides.

He'd been awake for some time, down here in the Radam's base of operations, but Javelin still didn't feel like he belonged there. He knew it was probably stupid, this feeling that he'd been something else – someone else – before he'd been Teknoman Javelin. The Radam were the ones who'd created him in the first place – probably – and so he owed them at least some loyalty.

Whatever thoughts he was having to the contrary, he was Radam. Nothing else mattered.

They'd managed to find a Kestrel for her to acquire, so that was one problem taken care of. She still wasn't too clear on the specifics of what they were going to do, she just knew that they were going out into the forest to speak to one of their friends who they – for whatever reason – couldn't bring to the barn.

Shara was fairly confident of her ability to piece together what was going on from the evidence that was being presented to her, but she also knew that these people – whoever they were and whatever they were doing – were going out of their way to help her. And so she would most likely have the option to ask about anything she couldn't figure out for herself.

Okay, fact one: 'Ax' is not a human name. Still, these new kids couldn't be working for the Radam; the fact that they didn't possess the red eyes that distinguished those monsters notwithstanding, the technology was wrong. The only shapeshifting that any of the Radam could do was limited to changing in and out of that armor of theirs. Still, that left the question of just how a bunch of human kids had come to possess that kind of power.

That was the first thing she was going to have to ask about, Shara knew.

(There's Ax's feeding ground,) Tobias said. (We'll be able to find him quickly from here.)

Feeding ground? she wondered, scanning the grass for any signs of bones or other things. There were none; it was just a large grassy meadow with some vaguely strange-looking hoof prints in the grass. Shara found herself wondering, not for the first time, just what kind of people she had fallen in with.

They seemed nice enough, and she knew from her extra senses that they weren't Radam in disguise. So that was good, but it still didn't tell her just who these people were and what they were actually doing. But then, that was probably something she was going to have to find out for herself.

Once they had all landed – kind of an interesting experience, that – and had started to change back into their human forms, she saw – Tobias, was it? – fly off into the forest.

"I wonder where he's going?" she mused aloud.

"I think he's probably going hunting," the girl named Cassie said.

Looking over the path the hawk had taken, Shara found that it did indeed lead deeper into the forest. She thought a normal hawk would have been getting hungry by now, and she was starting to feel that way herself, so what Cassie had said was probably true.

"Why don't the rest of you head back to the barn," the boy – whose name, she recalled, was Marco – said, sounding like he was trying not to sound too eager. "I can handle things with Ax on my own."

"What about Shara?" Rachel – and the resemblance between them really was uncanny, if the other girl had had reddish eyes Shara would have been unnerved by it – asked sensibly. "Ax is going to want to know about her."

"Well, you know we can always tell him about her later," Marco said, and Shara could tell that there was something he didn't want to have known.

Cain, too, would always try to dance around things that he didn't want to confront. Always try to find ways of talking about something else… she just hoped working with this boy wouldn't be too much like living with her absent brother. Shara didn't think she could handle that.

"Why don't we head back to the barn?" she suggested to the other kids. "I haven't gotten to know any of you, and I think I'd rather be a little less outnumbered when we meet this Ax. Whoever he is."

She didn't see any real acknowledgement from Marco, but if he was that much like Cain then he wouldn't give one anyway.

"All right," Cassie said, smiling in a way that was obviously intended to be comforting. "Let's go back to the barn and then we can all get acquainted with each other."

"That sounds good," she said, trying to keep the attention on her; Marco obviously had something he didn't want to talk about, and it was none of her business to try finding out.

He would tell them later or not, depending on what he wanted.