The next day, after he'd done enough packing in his room to satisfy the Controllers who'd been given the roles of his foster parents, Tommy morphed back into the bald eagle that he and Rachel had jointly acquired, heading back to Cassie's barn to see what Jake had wanted to talk to all of them about. The look on Jake's face had suggested that there was something Jake had had in mind to say to him.

What it was, Tommy couldn't have said, but the expression did suggest it was fairly important.

Once he and the rest of the Animorphs had all gathered together in Cassie's barn, Tommy demorphed and then quickly morphed into the stray cat he'd acquired to keep Cassie's father from wondering how and why Cassie had become friends with someone so clearly out of her age-group. Or why the rest of the Animorphs were around, as well.

Cassie and Rachel were the only two out of their group who had been close enough to stay over at each other's house, it sounded like.

(All right, none of Cassie's family is anywhere close,) Tobias reported, fluttering in through the upper window in the hayloft and landing on the crossbeam he usually perched on.

Jake nodded, calling a brief thanks up to Tobias, and Tommy crossed his paws as Jake stood up and started pacing in front of all of the rest of the Animorphs. There was clearly something on his mind, but the way he was walking had Tommy following him with his eyes. His cat instincts always did want to follow anything that moved.

"All right, I'm sure you're all wondering why I called off the mission yesterday," Jake said, once he'd seemed to resolve himself for whatever it was that he was going to do next. "It started yesterday," Jake began, and then proceeded to tell them a strange story about how they'd gone into the Safeway, found some kind of an experimental Bug fighter, flew it up into orbit, ended up in a shootout with Visser Three's Blade Ship, somehow crashed in the Amazon rainforest in the past, and Jake only managed to make it back to all of them by dying. "And, while all of that was strange enough, Tommy mentioned something about his foster parents' Yeerks being sent to investigate Angel Grove."

"Angel Grove?" Cassie asked, clearly just as confused as Tommy himself had been, when the subject of where the Controllers playing the role of his foster parents had talked about going. "What are they trying to find there?"

"What, do the Yeerks want to try taking on the Power Rangers now?" Marco asked, nearly on the heels of what Cassie had just asked.

(Power Rangers?) he echoed, unfolding his paws and turning to look at Marco. (What do you mean? Who or what are those?)

Marco heaved an explosive sigh. "Do any of you people pay attention to the news lately?"

"Yes, Marco, but unlike you, none of us pay any attention to that tabloid crap you keep picking up," Rachel said, rolling her eyes.

"And yet, I'm the only one who knows about the Power Rangers," Marco said, smirk not leaving his face for a moment.

Tommy would have rolled his eyes, if he could.