Finding out that Tobias and Ax had gone off on their own, and further that Ax had gotten Tobias to keep whatever it was a secret… It wasn't a good feeling, and Tommy could more than understand why Jake wasn't happy with him.
"Hi, Ax," Jake said, the tension in his voice and body more than plain, even to Tommy in his cat morph. "How's it going?"
"I am fine, Prince Jake," Ax answered, though he still seemed off-balance.
"See, I figured we should all get together," Jake said, sounding like he'd have liked nothing more than to go sit down and just not do anything for awhile. "We need to think about what this thing with the Controllers means. We saw this guy at the mall, and then there was Mr. Pardue. And in the paper this morning, there was a story about some businessman. According to the paper, he was in a meeting and just went nuts. I'm pretty sure that was another Controller losing it."
"See, it's like this, Ax: we're tired of you giving us a runaround," Marco said, standing up from his hay-bale to pace in front of where the rest of them were sitting. "Tobias shows up and he's dragging around a scrap of bloody shirt. I ask him what it is, and he won't tell me. Why won't he tell me? He must have promised someone. And who might that have been?"
"I made Tobias promise," Ax said, looking down. "Puh-romise. It's my fault."
"So, you're not just keeping secrets from us, you're getting us to keep secrets from ourselves!" Rachel snapped, nearly leaping off of the hay-bale where she'd previously been sitting. "You need to get something straight, Ax: we're not your action figures here; we're not toy soldiers. This is our planet. And this is our fight. You don't control us, just because you're some mighty Andalite."
"I am not trying to control anyone," Ax said, his tone starting to become more than a little defensive.
The conversation veered more toward being an outright argument from there, and while he and Cassie tried to settle things down, Ax still ended up leaving. He seemed uncomfortable with what they had all been discussing, but it also seemed like… Like he was planning something else. Something dangerous.
Tommy didn't think Ax would be willing to talk about it; he could only hope that they would be able to protect him, in the end.
