The sound of metal clattering to the ground, along with the softer sound of something heavy falling, drew his attention. He could just see Shara, leaning over the bushes on the left side of the pathway. He wondered for a moment what she was doing, before the sound of vomiting reached his ears.

No one else seemed to know what to do in this situation; he didnt know much better than them, but he knew that a leader had to look like he always had the answers to any problem that came up. And, more than that, he had to take care of the people that followed him.

Walking over to the place where Shara still crouched, spitting to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth, Jake put his hand on her back. Her head snapped around, pinning him with the gaze of her eerily glowing pink eyes. He tried not to flinch; hed seen Slades eyes glowing green, and hed seen the color of Sharas own eyes in daylight.

The combination of the two shouldnt have been so surprising to him as it was.

Shoving all of that aside, Jake strode over to Shara and gently laid his right hand on her back. When she looked up at him, her face stricken and her eyes wet, he wasnt surprised that the next thing she did was to bury her face in his chest and sob. Hed have honestly been shocked if shed done anything else.

Even with everything else that he and the other Animorphs had done during their battle against the Yeerks, they had tried to keep the human casualties to the absolute minimum. Still, Jake thought that he might have been starting to understand why Shara acted the way she did.

Hed been trying to forget, or at least ignore, the differences between Slade, Shara, and the other Animorphs. Hed tried to think of them as just another part of the Animorphs, albeit with some useful skills that had often saved him and the others from getting into trouble. But, something like this it hammered home the fact that neither Slade nor Shara were quite who they had been before the Radam had gotten to them.

They werent really even human anymore; a fact that was made abundantly clear by the fact that their eyes glowed in low light, the sheer speed at which they could move, and the sheer, uncaring ruthlessness that they had both displayed when they killed those guards. Even though Shara had been shocked by her own actions, it still didnt change what she did.

It just made her actions easier to understand; she had her and Slade both had acted to protect the rest of them from something that she didnt think they could handle. Her heart was in the right place, it was just that her methods were a bit harsh. Then again, given what he had seen when Starfire had come to him

Stroking her hair, the way his mother did for him when he was sick, Jake felt Shara trying to pull away. Loosening his grip, he let her step away to wipe at her eyes.

"Thanks," she said with a wan smile.

"Are you sure youre all right?" he asked; something like that couldnt have been easy to get over.

"I think I will be," she looked down. "Eventually; maybe."

XXX

She thought it was very kind, the way that Jake was trying to help her. Still, that didnt change the fact that she had just killed another human being with the same lack of reaction that would normally have accompanied eating a handful of potato chips. It scared her, the way she could be so cold-blooded.

Slade didnt seem to care, but that only served to reinforce the gulf that now separated the two of them. Ness would have been horrified if hed done something like that. But all Slade did was to pick up the corpses and ask what Jake wanted him to do with them.

"Heres an idea," Marco said, looking fairly unnerved and carefully averting his eyes from the corpses themselves. "Why dont we dump them in the shark tank?"

She couldnt really blame him; she was trying to do that, too.

"The slightest smell of blood would drive any normal shark into a feeding-frenzy," Cassie said, and she looked like she was trying to avoid the sight of Slade entirely.

"Okay, another shark tank, then," Marco said. "You guys have to know that we cant just leave those bodies out to rot. Someone would be bound to notice and start asking questions. Especially considering the fact that I dont know of any knives that can cut through bone that easily, and Slades probably gotten fingerprints all over both of them by now."

"Slade, go dump those two in the shark tank," Jake said, with obvious reluctance. "Make sure its not the one with the Hammerheads."

"Yes, Jake," Slade said calmly.

This was one of the few times that Shara found herself grateful for the fact that Slade couldnt remember who he had once been. Her brother would have hated himself if hed been the one to kill that man. Just like she hated herself now. She could only hope that no one else would try accosting them while they were here; Shara honestly didnt know if she would be able to control herself.

Of course, it wasnt like she had done such a bang-up job this time