(Rachel, cover me. I'm going to transform,) she said, kicking her way downward so that the murk of the water would absorb at least some of the light produced by her transformation.

(Right. On it,) Rachel said.

(Thanks.)

Closing her eyes, Shara drew on the power that the Radam had forced upon her down in that underground hell they had built for themselves and anyone who had the misfortune to stumble inside. The energies of her transformation filled her, burning away all traces of the light-headedness that she had been suffering from in this airless environment. Scanning the riverbed, Shara quickly located its lowest point.

(Rachel, follow me; we need to get to the middle of the river,) she said, projecting an image of what she had seen, and adding in some of what she had in mind.

(Yeah, got it,) the other girl said, sounding amused. (That's a really interesting idea you have there, Shara.)

(Well, I think it might work better than trying to fly out of this river as birds,) she said, giving some juice to her thrusters and powering her way along the riverbed. (If nothing else, it'll be quicker.)

(Well, you'd definitely be right about that,) Rachel laughed.

As the two of them made it to the lowest point of the riverbed, Shara flipped over on her back, wrapped her armored arms as far as she could get them around what passed for Rachel's midsection in her dolphin morph, and opened her thrusters up all the way. The two of them burst out of the water like one of the rockets Shara had so enjoyed watching when she was still fully human, blasting up through the atmosphere too fast to be seen as anything but a blurred streak of pink light.

(You should probably start demorphing now, Rachel,) she said, as they cleared the tops of the buildings in the time it took to blink.

(Yeah, I think you might be right about that,) Rachel said.

XXXX

Starting her demorph back to human, Rachel tried to ignore the feelings she was getting from her dolphin mind. Sure, it had all been a game before, but now that the both of them were so far out of the water, the dolphin had started to panic. She hadn't known before this that dolphins even could panic, but she was finding out right here and now.

It wasn't a pleasant experience.

Once she was fully human again, Rachel took a deep breath and started morphing into a Bald Eagle again. Her skin itched as feathers sprouted out of it, but she wasn't nearly distracted enough by that sensation not to notice when Shara opened her arms and pushed the two of them apart. The other girl had also clearly turned off those weird rockets of hers, since the two of them were no longer rising into the air like they had once been. A blast of bright, rosy pink light obscured Shara entirely for a few seconds, and when it cleared that weird armor of hers was completely gone.

The wind whipped Shara's hair upwards, and just before she turned her attention back to her own morph, Rachel saw Shara close her eyes.

Opening her wings as the last of the Eagle's bones slid into its proper place, Rachel folded them back and dove though the clouds on her way to meet back up with the other Animorphs. She knew that they were probably going to ream her and Shara out big time for what they had just done, but they'd saved someone's life today. Even if no one else but her and Shara thought so, that had to count for something.

Shara came racing down out of the clouds what seemed like just a few seconds later, blazing past Rachel like she'd been fired out of a missile tube. Rachel was slightly annoyed that there were two people with faster bird morphs than she had, but hers was still the biggest. She could still rely on that, at least.

(What in the hell were the two of you thinking?!) Jake demanded, as soon as her and Shara got back into thought-speak range.

On one hand, Jake never swore, so anytime he did was a warning to take whatever he was saying seriously. On the other, if he'd really wanted to tell them something important, he probably would have remembered that he could have had Slade relay it to them. So, while Jake was fairly cheesed-off at them, it wasn't anything that they should be concerned about in the long-term.

(What, did you just expect Shara and me to just let that man drown?) she demanded, indignant. (Please. I thought we Animorphs were supposed to be saving people, here.)

(We're supposed to be saving the entire world from being enslaved by the Yeerks,) Jake said, in that low, silky tone he used when he was well and truly cheesed off by something. (Not to mention the Radam, which we still haven't managed to really do anything about, aside from discovering that they're here and freeing two of their Teknomen without them knowing it.)

(Or, you know, them hunting us down and killing us,) Marco added, and Rachel didn't quite know if he was trying to break up the tension or what.

(Yes, or that,) Jake said. (What I'm trying to say, here, is that we can't afford to go trying to intervene in any accident that we might see. Especially when there's the chance, however slight, of our being spotted by Controllers. The Yeerks are, for now, the most immediate threat we have to deal with. We can't afford to take senseless risks.)

(All right, Jake,) Shara said. (We'll keep that in mind.)

(Rachel?) Jake prompted, after he'd probably said something that she hadn't been inclined to pay attention to to Shara.

(Right,) she said, just to get Jake off her back; they'd been moving way too fast to be seen back there, no chance of being spotted by Controllers.

Maybe a Teknoman could have spotted them, but there didn't seem to be any more of those than just Slade and Shara. She didn't quite know why, since Jake and Marco had both said that there were a lot of those weird plants with the armored figures inside. Why more of them weren't running around loose was a question that she didn't know how to get the answer to.