Fire. Visser Three's new, horrible alien morph could breathe fire! Huge, spinning balls of flame, shot from each of the long-necked heads – eight of them in all; to match the eight arms, and eight legs – that the Visser's alien monster morph possessed.
(We have to get out of here!) he shouted, just in time for Marco to make the same declaration, or maybe Marco had spoken first.
Frazzled as he was, Tommy wouldn't have really been able to tell anyone who had the presence of mind to ask.
(Right!) Jake called back. (Everyone, run! Head for the stairs! Rachel, you and Tommy clear a path!)
The both of them called back to him, acknowledging what he'd said, and then turned and made their way toward the stairs. But, just when they'd started closing in on the base of the stairs, more Taxxons than Tommy had seen before came swarming in on them. Gathering himself for a leap, as he saw Jake's brother – the boy who was almost his namesake – being circled by a pair of Taxxons that were clearly determined to drag him back to the cages where all of the people they hadn't been able to save were still being held, Tommy came down on the one nearest to him.
Flattening the enslaved alien underneath the full weight of his lion body, Tommy nudged Jake's brother firmly in the direction of the stairs, then turned to slash open the single remaining Taxxon before it could attack him again. Once he'd managed to make it back to Jake and the others, all of them pressing in close around Jake's brother so that they would be able to protect him even while they were all going up the stairs, Tommy looked over at Rachel as their group made it to the wide base of the towering stairs.
(Morph back!) Jake shouted, before anyone else could say anything.
Shuddering slightly as Rachel began demorphing, Tommy turned his attention back to what was going on all around them. Visser Three was still determinedly raining fire down all around them, and the last two Hork-Bajir they'd managed to free from the cages fell, flames from the flying fireballs eating them alive.
Screaming as a fireball slammed into his back from behind, feeling almost as though he'd been cut in half with a burning sword, Tommy heard Jake shouting for him to demorph, as well.
Concentrating on his human form, even as he felt Marco picking him up and carrying him when he failed to move very far on his own, Tommy blocked out everything else that was going on around him, wanting to be out of his badly-charred lion body as soon as possible. In the meantime, Tommy trusted that his friends and fellow Animorphs would be able to protect him.
