Things had happened quickly, once Tobias had come shooting down from high in the air and tearing his way across the face of the pair of Hork-Bajir that had been herding both him and Cassie out to the end of the pier, distracting the pair of them and letting Tommy punch the enslaved police officer who'd handed them off to the enslaved aliens. They'd nearly been at the end of the pier when that had happened; one of the two that had been built out over the pool that all of the Yeerks had been swimming around in. The worst of the two, as far as he was concerned; after going through the unloading of the alien slug, someone could at least be free while they were waiting in the cage. After the slug had gone in…
Steeling himself, even as he and Cassie completed their morphs – him into the lion that he'd found when he and the other Animorphs had been making their way through The Gardens for just that kind of thing, and Cassie into the horse that he remembered seeing her as when he'd come to her barn to warn her that she was in danger – Tommy leaped into the fray beside her. Roaring at the Hork-Bajir that had begun closing in on the pair of them, once they'd managed to break away from the crowd of people who they'd used for cover while morphing, Tommy looked over at Cassie as she called out to him.
(Could you not do that again? You really scared the horse.)
(Sorry about that,) he said, feeling a little sheepish for having to be reminded that the minds of the animals they morphed were just as much a part of them as their bodies.
Since he wasn't about to leave Cassie alone to face the army of alien slaves trying to either capture or kill them, Tommy reined in his lion instincts as best he could.
(Cassie! Tommy! Keep heading for the stairs!)
(Right, Jake!) he called back, keeping abreast of Cassie as the pair of them charged the mass of Yeerk-enslaved humans and aliens that were still moving to overtake them.
They'd clearly been getting organized somehow, even as he and the other Animorphs had fought their way through them, because a line of Yeerk-enslaved Hork-Bajir and Taxxons – all of them with those same energy weapons in their hands that he'd only seen a few times before – was forming up in front of them even as he, Cassie, and Jake charged forward.
(Up and over!)
He and Cassie both echo Jake's words back at him, and together the three of them leaped over the heads of the Yeerk-enslaved humans, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons in their way. That, of course, was when Visser Three appeared again. Visser Three, whose Andalite form almost seemed small and comparatively harmless next to all of the other Yeerk-enslaved aliens they were fighting. Or, at least he would have, if there hadn't been something about him that made him stand out from them.
Tommy wouldn't have known how to describe it if someone had asked, but something felt wrong about Visser Three.
(This Taxxon fool says that you are wild animals,) Visser Three said, as one of the Yeerk-enslaved aliens came over to talk with him in their strange, snakelike language. (He wants to know if he and his brothers can eat you.) The Visser's cold, inhumane laughter – even silent as it was – sent a shudder down Tommy's spine. (But I know that you are not animals. I know who and what you are. So; not all of you Andalites died when I burned your ship. I commend you for getting this far, but it will accomplish nothing. Because now, my brave Andalite warriors, it is time. Time to die.)
Even in his lion body, Tommy still found himself shuddering as Visser Three chuckled.
(I acquired this body on the fourth moon of the second planet of a dying star. Like it?)
