When the Ellimist had told them that he would show them what they needed to see, understand what they needed to see to make them agree with him, or whatever it was that he actually wanted them to do, the last place that Tommy had expected to end up was in the future. Apparently, they were standing outside the future version of the school.

The fact that it was a devastated ruin didn't bode well for what they were going to be seeing in this strange, supposed future.

"Okay," Marco said, drawing the word out, clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation; Tommy could relate, though he wasn't going to say anything. "So, what're we supposed to do now? Just wait around until the Ellimist comes back for us?"

"I guess we look around," Jake said, shrugging. "The mall's just a quarter mile or so out from here, it should still be open."

As they all made their way toward the mall, Tommy looked back at the over-grown, empty expanse of what had once been their school. Seeing it covered in ivy and grass, the windows and doors seemingly gone entirely, and no one present in the area at all… Tommy shuddered, turning his attention back to the road they were all traveling down.

Still, even the road wasn't that normal: for one thing, there wasn't a single car traveling down it, for another…

"What's with all of these giant statues?" Jake asked, as the seven of them passed under a positively massive pair of statues; one of what seemed to be a woman in horns and a strange dress, and the other some kind of knight-looking figure, both of them holding hands over the gap that people would need to walk through.

The statues weren't just of people, either: there were lions, tigers, wolves… Really, every one of the morphs that he and the rest of the Animorphs had used in their battle against the Yeerks had been represented among the statuary they were all walking past.

"This doesn't make sense," Cassie said, as they passed beneath the huge, stone forms of every one of their battle morphs. "The Yeerks wouldn't do anything like this."

"I'm starting to think this wasn't the Yeerks at all," Jake said, as they all continued on their way deeper into the city.

Tommy was just about to say something, when they all came to the edge of a massive crater. It looked like it took up the entirety of what had once been the city where all of them lived. The sides of the crater had been built up like some kind of tiered seating, and as the seven of them began making their way down into what seemed to be some kind of stadium – or that's what it looked like to Tommy, considering his long experience with martial arts tournaments – Tommy found himself wondering just who or what could have done all of this.

It probably wasn't the Ellimist, given everything he'd said, but that still left the question of just who it was.