Sorry for the delay, January turned into Helluary. But hopefully the next couple chapters should come faster than this one. See you soon!

Chapter Three

I am afraid that my own reaction might have seemed, upon retrospection, perhaps marginally severe.

(Absolutely not!) I failed to keep the livid emotion out of my thought-speak. (I have come to accept that some of the law of Seerow's Kindness must be set aside in these times, but this is far and away more than could possibly be acceptable. You wish to use Andalite DNA, not even living beings who might give consent, but blood, in order to morph Humans into Andalites. This is absurd. Andalites do not even morph other Andalites, let alone allowing a primitive-)

"Hey!" Rachel objected. "You like our cinnabons well enough, Mr. Super-Advanced Alien."

(I am sorry.) I twisted a single stalk-eye to look at her, while keeping most of my attention on Cassie. (I am not trying to insult you. But, how would you feel if someone proposed a plan that would allow your Earth-Cows to become human?)

Marco leaned slightly toward Melissa and spoke in a low tone that was nonetheless audible to all. "And this is Ax trying not to insult us."

I sighed and brought my hands up to my face, an expression I had seen many humans make when expressing frustration. "I am merely attempting to make a correlation that is impossible because there is no analog known to the human race. You are brilliant in your own ways, but, consider, you do not even morph one another except in the most extreme of circumstances."

"Yeah," Melissa spoke. "I've been meaning to bring that up. How come? I mean, it seems like it would be useful."

"Because if we morph into other humans without having their consent, and whose consent could we get other than each other's, then how are we any better than the Yeerks?" Prince Jake spoke up with a glance toward Cassie.

Marco's head shook rapidly. "See now that's just a stupid argument that doesn't make any sense. You're making a false equivalence straw man argument. How are we different from the Yeerks? How about the fact that we're not enslaving anyone? If the Yeerks worked by say, going into someone's ear, then coming out the other side and transforming themselves into a copy of that individual, there'd be people lining up from here to the Yeerk homeworld to let them do it! Making a copy is not the same thing as enslaving and suppressing the will and personality and mind of the individual. It's not even close!"

"Marco's right." Rachel spoke up, though she looked as if saying so might have caused her no small measure of discomfort. "We're fighting a war, and not morphing humans could cripple us. How many times have we needed to get into a building and move around where morphing into an actual person who worked there would have been so much easier than becoming a fly or another bug?"

"Easier doesn't always mean better." Prince Jake told them. "It's a slippery slope. We can't ask people's permission, so wouldn't taking over their bodies be a little… gross?"

"And the human race being enslaved by a bunch of mind controlling slugs isn't?" Marco demanded. "It's war. Not just a war about religion or land or one set of people. It's a war about the entire human race. If the Yeerks win because we handicap ourselves just because we think borrowing someone's shape is gross, can you live with that? Because I can't."

Tobias spoke up then. (We have to deserve to win. We can't just do anything we want to in the name of victory, or we won't be any better than they are. There is a line, and we have to stay on the right side of it.) His hawk body shifted around a little as though he didn't like disagreeing with Rachel.

"Oh that's bullshit." I am still not an expert in human facial expressions, but it appeared as though the words had burst from Rachel's mouth before she realized who she was responding to. There was a pause as girl and hawk stared at one another, before she continued with a slightly more subdued voice. "Look, it's like Marco said. We're not taking them over. We're not making them do anything. We're borrowing their bodies in order to save them, to save everyone."

Everyone stopped talking then, as though waiting. After a moment, I realized what we were expecting, and turned my attention to Cassie, who had always given a strong opinion on the subject. The others were all looking that way as well.

Our former teammate shook her head. "It's not up to me anymore, guys. I can't tell you what to do. You know my opinion about taking over humans, but… I can't give you the answer this time. Things are different now, everything's different, and you know that." She seemed reluctant to speak again, but finally did so. "I'm going to leave you guys alone for a while. I shouldn't be distracting you."

"You're not distracting." Rachel argued. "You're always going to be one of us, Cassie. Please don't leave."

Cassie's eyes and voice were soft as she gazed at the girl who had been her best friend. "I'll be back, Rachel, I promise. I'm just giving you some time to work things out." Her hand reached out and touched Rachel's shoulder, and then she vanished.

(So where does that leave us?) Tobias wondered after a minute of silence.

"First," Prince Jake's eyes moved over everyone. "On the issue of morphing humans, who is against it?" He raised his own hand. A moment later, Tobias's wing lifted enough to be counted.

(This is not my vote.) I said. (They are your species.)

"And you're one of us, Ax." Prince Jake insisted. "You get a vote on this as much as you get a vote on anything else. Especially considering what we're talking about doing with your people."

There was a moment where I considered objecting or refusing, but then I raised my hand. I did not want to see what would happen if the humans accepted morphing one another and anything went wrong. There was a reason that Andalites did not morph one another. Sapient creatures were different. They had to be.

Prince Jake nodded. "And who is for it?" At that question, Marco and Rachel's hands went up immediately. They were followed a moment later by a slightly more hesitant Melissa.

"Three and three." Rachel observed. "What does that mean?"

"It means we sort it out later." Prince Jake said. "Right now, we do nothing different. We have a more important question. Do we acquire Andalite DNA to get through this ship?"

"I say yes," Rachel answered immediately. "Why is this even a question? We don't have any other way to reach the controls to stop this piece of junk."

Unable to keep the annoyance out of my voice, I corrected her. (A top of the line Andalite warship has never been and never will be 'junk'. A thousand years from now, buried in four separate pieces beneath six tons of rocks on an uncharted moon on the edge of the galaxy, this vessel will still not be 'junk'.)

Her eyes rolled backwards until her pupils were pointed upward, a gesture that I was quite certain meant that she wasn't nearly as impressed as she should have been. "You know what I mean, and you're jumping on an inconsequential point to avoid the actual issue. Trust me, my mom's a lawyer. I know that trick. Now do you mind if I go on?"

I met her gaze with three of my four eyes for a long moment, but she never looked away. Finally, I dipped my head in acknowledgment and let her continue.

"Thanks. Like I was saying, whether we want to do this or not is moot. We have to. End of line. If we don't, there's that big Z-Space boom and the Earth is stuck fighting the Yeerk invasion alone for the next five years. Five years! Do you people understand that? Do you comprehend? That's more than an entire Presidential term. It's like… " She paused to search for an appropriate example.

"It's like two and a half Batman movies." Melissa put in.

Rachel nodded at that, distractedly. "Right, like that."

"Or an entire Playstation console lifespan." Melissa added.

"Oh yeah, okay." Rachel nodded again.

Melissa continued to give examples that made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. She might as well have been speaking utter nonsense. "Or the time between one DC universe reboot and the next one. Or the number of seasons that Buffy was able to go before it got stupid. Or like five of the older Final Fantasies but only maybe three of the newer ones, which is really making me regret that I used the 'before it got stupid' notation already. Or-"

"Melissa," Rachel pleaded. "For the love of every ounce of respect I have for your coolness, please stop helping. We definitely, definitely get the point. But if you make yourself any more of a geek, I swear I will duct tape your mouth shut."

"Speak for yourself." Marco put in. "I don't think I've ever been so ready to marry a girl in my life."

Although I understood the concept of blushing, prior to this point, I'd had no idea that a human being could turn quite the deep color of red that Melissa became just then. "I-I tha-tha-it-bu-bu-really-not-I-that-"

(You see?) I announced, inordinately pleased that I was not entirely alone. (I am not the only one who enjoys the sounds that the human mouth can make.)

Rachel's hand moved to smack Marco's shoulder. "No! Bad! Don't even think about it. Off limits. No." She repeated the order as if giving instructions to a particularly disobedient animal. "No." Then she turned to Melissa. "You see what happens when you encourage them?"

Before Melissa or Marco could respond, it was Prince Jake who spoke up. He sounded as though he was having a conversation with someone who wasn't there. "Yes, mom, I know we were supposed to save the Earth from the Yeerk Invasion. But see, we had to settle who Marco was and wasn't allowed to want to marry and that just ate up the entire day. I mean what were we supposed to do, prioritize? Pffft."

"Okay, okay." Marco grumbled, waving a hand. "Either way, Rachel has a point. We don't have a choice. We morph Andalites, or we fail. What other option is there?"

(I can go alone.) I said promptly, making everyone stare at me. (I am more than capable of altering this vessel's flight path by myself, and I am already an Andalite.)

"Can you get through the entire ship with all of the temperature fluctuations?" Prince Jake asked. I began to answer, but he continued before I could. "Can you avoid the Veleek babies the whole way? Can you be absolutely, one hundred percent certain that you can safely reach the controls, without any help from any of us and no backup whatsoever, and remain intact and healthy enough to do what you have to do?"

For a moment, I met Prince Jake's steely gaze as he seemed to stare straight into me. His eyes were not quite hard, but they were intense. They were deep, and knowing. They saw my weakness and made me confront it myself. They were the eyes of a true Prince. I had to look away. (No, my Prince. I cannot do all of that alone. But, I believed that you agreed with me, that morphing sapient creatures was wrong.)

"I do." Prince Jake nodded. "I absolutely do. But here's the thing, Ax. War isn't always about doing the thing you agree with. It's about doing the thing you have to do, if that's the only option you have. I still don't think we're to the point that we have to morph humans. I think there are other ways around doing that. But in this particular case, morphing Andalites is our only option. And don't think for a second that just because I disagree with something on a moral standpoint, that I won't do it if it comes down to getting my hands dirty, or losing this war."

"If the tradeoff to kicking the Yeerks off our planet and freeing the human race is that I can't look myself in the mirror anymore, then… I just won't buy any mirrors."

(I guess that settles it.) Tobias spoke up. (Because I can't think of any disagreement that makes more sense than that.) His laser focused vision settled on me. (Can you, Ax?)

There was a pause while I considered, before shaking my head in the human sign for a negative answer. (No, I cannot. If this is the only way, then I only ask that we do so respectfully, and without actually morphing a specific Andalite. I will teach you all to perform the Frolis maneuver in order to combine multiple samples of DNA from the same species into a single morph. That will at least make this slightly less distasteful.)

Prince Jake nodded. "I think we can all agree with that." He looked toward the others, who had no disagreement, then back to me. "Okay, what do we do first?"

I walked to the cooling unit where the blood had been stored. (We gather as many genetic samples as possible.) I plucked several vials from their places, and began to pass them to the others. (Each of you touch it with one finger and acquire the DNA within. While you do so, think of a single word or concept, a single thought, and hold it in your mind. After you acquire your sample, pass the vial to the next person and acquire the next one while holding the same thought. The combination of the same DNA and the same thought when you morph will blend the genetic samples together.)

(It's that simple?) Tobias asked, after giving a couple flaps and hops to get from his perch to the table nearby.

I nodded once more. (The morphing technology is not meant to be difficult to use. It is what I believe the human scientists would call 'user friendly'. The Frolis maneuver was invented by one of its creators, who believed that there may come a time when, in order to successfully blend, an Andalite infiltrator would have to-)

"Okay, got it." Marco interrupted, passing the first vial he had used to Prince Jake. "Trust me, Ax, touching Andalite blood is creepy enough without adding in a history lesson. Wait…" He frowned up at me, clearly worried by a single thought. "This stuff is blood, right? I mean it sort of looks like blood, but it's all bluish black instead of red, so… Ax, please tell me this is blood and not something else even more disgusting."

(It is blood.) I acknowledged, and he sighed with relief before taking the next vial.

Rachel was touching the blood from her own vial, and then holding the same vial out for Tobias to dip his talon in before passing it to Melissa. "Okay so we combine this DNA into a single morph, and then we become Andalites. Anything we should know about Andalite instincts or impulses right off the bat? It's not every day that we get to ask the morph subject what to watch out for."

I considered the question for a moment, and thought about what I felt before I had grown accustomed to space flight. (Andalites prefer open space, so the enclosed nature of a starship makes us feel instinctively claustrophobic. It is an experience that Arisths are trained to accept, and with luck your human minds will compensate, but when you first morph, it will likely be very uncomfortable. You will feel as though the walls are closing in. The floor will feel utterly unnatural as well. Andalites do not taste the way that the human tongue does, but we do process food through our hooves, and so the sensation of having ground beneath them that does not feel edible is disorienting for many young Andalites at first.)

(Right.) Tobias acknowledged. (Claustrophobic and weird tasting floors, got it.)

It occurred to me then that this would be my nephew's first real chance at being the same race as his father, and I hesitated. There should be something I could say for this momentous occasion, some ritual to undertake. Unfortunately, as, I shall be kind to my ancestors and use the term 'thorough' as the historical Andalites had been about preparing extensive rituals for almost any conceivable situation, they had failed to foresee this precise situation. I would have to mention something to the Elders about creating a 'Relative conceived while morphed into another race who somehow also acquires the ability to morph into the original race ritual'. I had absolutely no doubt that there would be a dawning sun and bowing involved.

For now, all I could do was point to the hatchway. (There will be more space within the corridor. You would not wish to be all squeezed together. Andalites are herd creatures at nature, so we do enjoy company.) Somehow I managed to say that without getting incredibly sad. (But the claustrophobia will be worse if you do not have space to yourself. You may instinctively lash out with your tails until you have brought yourselves under control.)

"All right then." Jake waved a hand, gesturing for them to go. "Everyone in the hall and spread out. Give yourselves plenty of space."

I stood in the hatchway and watched as my human friends spread through the corridor and prepared to morph.

"Well, Ax-Man," Marco extended his hand toward me with his fist closed and his thumb raised up, a gesture of camaraderie and approval. "See you on the other side of having the slightest idea how those stalk-eyes of yours work."

The last thought I had before the changes began as the others focused on the morph was that my wish to be among other Andalites had come true… but in a way I could never have seen coming. It was something, as much as I had been resistant to the idea. I did enjoy the thought of passing some of our traditions to my friends, particularly Tobias, who should have been raised Andalite, who should know how his father lived. But I still wished for more than a proxy. I wished that when this was over, I would not, once again, be alone among my species.

WhatI had no way of knowing, at that point, was that my wish was already being granted, and that when this mission was over, I would not be the only Andalite that returned to Earth.