The grove of trees wasn't very deep, but it still provided just enough cover for us to demorph without being seen. Still, I stayed in my hawk morph to keep a lookout. Rachel had already started demorphing by the time we caught up with her.
"That was so much fun!" Rachel cackled as soon as she was sufficiently human-shaped to laugh.
(Be sure to savor this moment, then,) I said, (You just did a quarter-million dollars' worth of damage out there.) Rachel stopped and stared at me.
"For real?" she asked.
(Well, I have no idea what the repairs are going to cost, but the sticker price on those cars added up to about $250,000.)
"Wow. I feel so rebellious right now!"
"I think we might be a bad influence on you," Lee said. He still had black markings around his eyes, making him look kind of like a bandit from an old cowboy movie. "I mean, you're a straight-A student, top student in your class, gymnastics champion and whatnot. But now you're hanging out with me and Tobias, and suddenly I find you sneaking around abandoned construction sites, lying to the police, spying on people, and smashing up cars. I'm sure your mom would be real disappointed in you if she found out about this."
"Ah, but you're not going to tell her, are you?"
"Of course not," Lee said as the last raccoon features finally faded away.
(My lips are sealed,) I said. It wasn't because of any real concern that Rachel might get in trouble over property damage. It was because we had no way to know who was a Controller and who wasn't. For all we knew, Rachel's mom or one of her younger sisters might have a Yeerk in their heads.
We'd already agreed not to tell Jake or Marco, either. We didn't think either of them would approve of using our powers in such a petty way. In fact, I hadn't even expected that Rachel would be willing to do it, but she and Cassie had overheard me and Lee debating whether to do it at lunch the day before and volunteered on the spot. Cassie also knew more or less what we were up to, but decided that the fewer details she knew, the less she'd have to stay quiet about. She said it was 'plausible deniability'.
"Hey, Rachel? That stupid hawk cut my back wide open on her way out. Would you mind-"
Rachel lifted up the back of Lee's tank top.
"I see a shallow cut running across the back of your ribs on this side, but it looks like it's a few days old. Nothing else back there."
"It's gotta be from that hawk. But why wouldn't it look like a fresh injury?"
"Well, I figured if the DNA wasn't damaged that we'd just demorph back to completely healthy bodies, but - hey, Tobias, look at this!"
I'd been politely averting my eyes, but turned to look where Rachel was pointing. There was a thin white stripe that clearly stood out against Lee's dark brown skin, but it was quickly disappearing even as I watched. Rachel poked at Lee's back.
"I don't believe it. That scar just faded away in a couple of seconds!"
"Ooh, does that mean we get some kind of Wolverine healing factor to go with the morphing and telepathy?" Lee asked as he pulled his shirt back down.
"Kind of looks like it," Rachel said, "But we should be really careful about testing that theory. Hey, Tobias? Anybody coming this way?"
I looked around. Dealin' Dan and his people were still examining the damage that Rachel had inflicted on their cars. A few people were walking down the sidewalk about 40 yards away, but there was no way they could see us through the bushes.
(We're clear,) I said.
"Good. Now you can demorph, too."
I glided down to the ground. While Lee and Rachel put their street clothes back on, I reluctantly focused on my own human body. But I didn't really want to demorph. I hated the feeling of gravity growing stronger and stronger until I couldn't jump more than a few inches off the ground. It was like struggling back onto dry land after floating almost weightless in a swimming pool. Bound tightly to the Earth. Instead of being able to see the whiskers on a mouse a mile away, now I couldn't even read a book from across the room. I was imprisoned in my own weak, blind, deaf, fragile body. And I hated it.