After the close call they'd had with the cave, and then the way they'd been forced to work around the looming presence of Visser Three himself – not to mention the whole fiasco around morphing the trout in the first place – Tommy had thought that he was prepared for anything else this mission – this whole day in particular – was going to throw at him. Once again, it turned out that he was wrong.
There was no way that any of their current morphs were going to be able to get them to the other side of the grate that they were trapped behind; neither Jake's tiger claws nor Tommy's own lion's claws could make a mark on it, and Rachel's elephant and Marco's gorilla didn't have anything even resembling the leverage either of them would need to have a chance of knocking it out. Not with all the water between them and the bottom of the tank, anyway.
They seemed to be trapped, or at least that was the message that Rachel was sending, Tommy didn't quite know what to think, but he was at least going to go out fighting; it was all any of them could really do, given how far they'd come.
Then, as the ship around them shuddered, lurching into some kind of motion, Tommy couldn't help the thought that something entirely unexpected had happened. When the side of the tank they were swimming in tore open, spilling who-knew-how-many gallons upon gallons of water into the woods beneath them, Tommy tucked his arms and dove. Pushing every thought out of his mind except the focus that he needed for morphing, Tommy opened his wings and flew.
Of course, the Yeerks were hardly about to let any of them get away with something so audacious, at least not without a fight…
(Quick, get to the trees! Out of sight!) Tobias shouted, as the remaining Yeerk ships bore down on them with murderous intent.
As the six of them all took what shelter they could beneath the treetops, Tommy couldn't help but worry about all of the birds around them. The ones without human minds; the ones who wouldn't understand that they needed to hide in the trees for as long as they could. The ones who were taking to the sky even as he watched.
Knowing that there was nothing he could do, Tommy turned away.
Later, when he and the rest of the Animorphs were able to meet up again, Tommy found that that all of them seemed to have been unsettled by the experience, too. All except for Tobias, if what Rachel had told him was true, but that really seemed to be because he'd spent so much time as a hawk. Even Tobias himself seemed to understand that, if what he'd said to Rachel was any indication.
Still, the thought of what had nearly happened to them all lingered in Tommy's mind; there had to be some way to keep his friends safe…
