Okay, a lot will be answered, but not all! I gotta keep some secrets, don't I?

I'm sooo nasty!

Michelle

I walked around to the cages with Lily and the boy. Cody had already started ripping the locks off the cages, as a gorilla, and Elflangor and Aerionna were helping him. Nicole and the others were helping to round up the controllers we'd managed to knock unconscious. Some of the Andalites were helping to get rid of the bodies by simply dumping them in the pool. Unless the Yeerks inside could bring back the dead, I doubted we'd be having any trouble from them.

'Lily' opened the door to one of the cages, and her voice suddenly turned honey soft.

"You can come out now. We won't hurt you" she said gently, and the first person that came out was perhaps a boy only a little younger than me.

"Thankyou. Oh god… thankyou!" he stumbled out, and soon the others followed him. I walked over to the next cage, where Cody was having trouble with the lock.

(Not even gorilla fingers can get these open with ease. They must be using titanium or something!)

"Maybe not titanium, but some sort of alloy close to it" Lily said, coming over as she dug a hand into her back pocket, pulling out what looked like a switchblade knife. I backed up as she flipped it open, then stuck the instrument that she'd flipped out into it. She twisted it a few times, making a couple of small grunting noises, before I heard the latch click, and she pulled the open lock off the door. Cody opened it, and waved the people out. Lily flipped the thing shut, and put it back into her pocket. By then the other cages had been opened, and I saw a lot of them were lining up around the blond-haired boy, who had found some weapons, and was handing them out.

"What's he doing?"

"Who, Zack? Oh, he's preparing the others just in case"

"Just in case what?"

"In case they have to fight. My dad always says you can never be too prepared" She tapped the weapon I suddenly realised she had on her hip, making me also realised only shape-shifters could put things like that into a change. In fact, now that I looked at her, I realised she was fully dressed. Like, shoes and all. Not even Megan could do that. Something was seriously whacked with this girl, and I was going to find out what.

We finished helping to free the caged hosts, some of which were Chanaiben and Andalite. I even spotted a few furry looking aliens in the crowd, which I suspected were Runchak.

Nicole then called us over, giving Lily and the boy she'd called 'Zack' a fish eye. But she turned her attention to us.

"Okay, listen up. For now we play their game, all right? As soon as we've secured the bridge, we go in hard and fast. The freed hosts, please, for the love of all that's good, stay here until then, all right. We don't want to give them a heads up or get you all killed. Is that understood?"

Everyone nodded. Including Lily and Zack, believe it or not.

"All right. We work like before. We do the armbands thing for our guards, and have the four of us walking through the halls, with Kay shackled"

"I hate to interrupt" Zack said "But we're going with you"

"Uh…. say what!" Megan asked, shocked. I wasn't far behind her.

"He's right. Hey, it's what we came here for"

"Okay, enough of putting us through the loop" Seth snapped "Tell us who you are, and why… no, no, how you got here"

"I agree" Toni said. Cody was beside, and a bit behind, her. I could tell their fingers were touching.

Zack sighed, and looked at Lily. Lily shrugged, like she wasn't sure what to do. He gave her a disdainful look and she rolled her eyes.

"Look, this Ellimist dude showed up at our doorstep, all right?"

(Ellimist!) A few of the Andalites whispered. The Chanaibens seemed equally surprised.

"That still doesn't explain why you're both shape-shifters" I blurted out before I could stop myself. I heard the others gasp.

"Michelle, what…" I cut my brother off.

"Look at them. And think of mom. What happened when she shifted? She kept all her clothes, and these guys are no different"

"Okay, that explains one thing" Sean said, "But what about the rest?"

"Why don't you let them finish, and we can find out" Nicole said, looking over at them. Zack looked at Lily, and she sighed.

"Fine. This stupid Ellimist showed up on our doorstep, or rather, stopped time to talk to us just outside our home, and told me and my mum and dad that I was needed for some 'special purpose' in another universe"

(A parallel universe?) Kay asked, coming up to us. Lily nodded.

"Yeah. So he tells us all this mumbo-jumbo, my parents freak out, and of course try to stop him. But then they accept it, I get magically zapped over to Zack's house-"

"Where the process repeats, and so on, ands so forth-"

"Then 'boom!', we're here, tucked away in some place on the blade ship" Lily shrugged. She was either a very good liar, or she was just a bit of an airhead.

I voted for the second one.

"So… who are your parents?" Alex asked. Zack shook his head.

"You'd never believe us if we tried. Now come on, before the Vissers get a little suspicious"

"For once since I met 'im, I'm agreeing with him" Megan jabbed a thumb in his direction. So we prepared, finding the material for our armbands again. Sean soon came up to me.

"Something's wrong. What is it?" he asked as I kneeled down and swiped up one of the old cloths we'd used before.

"Nothing. I just… I have a feeling they're not telling us something. And you know how I hate not having the answers"

"Agreed. But if they say they're here to help, then we have to trust them"

"But what if they're not?"

"Look, they saved our-"

"Sean, don't make me ask it again"

"Well then that's what we're here for" He patted my shoulder, then kissed me gently on the cheek. It sent mad shivers up my spine.

"Okay, I'll trust you" I said in a light, feathery voice. He smiled, did it again and walked off.

I only hoped I'd be able to return that favour when we were done. If we were all still alive by then.

I know, I know! Short, but I say the shorter the sweeter (hehe!) I think you all know what I mean. I'll update again as soon as I can though. Kinda sucks when that little friend called WRITERS BLOCK begins to set in. SOMEONE INSPIRE ME!