Chapter 2

{Well, that was dumb,} Marco complained as we flew back.

Marco, Tobias, and I were all in owl morph as it was getting dark, and owls can see well at night.

Prince Jake had taken a human vehicle called a 'bus', as he lived relatively close to the escape room. Additionally, he was carrying a backpack with our shoes and outer clothes. Humans are very picky when it comes to which types of artificial skin can be worn where.

{I know, right? I thought we were almost done and then there's still another room to solve,} Tobias said.

{Guys, I think we are missing the point of the activity,} I said. {Our objective was to destress, and we were successful.}

{Yeah but it would be more fun if we won, obviously,} said Marco.

{Ax is just trying to distract us from the fact that he spent the first 20 minutes trying to convince us that the 'strategy' of the escape room was just to walk out the unlocked door,} said Tobias.

{Well, it would have been a good plan,} I said defensively. {Besides, what's the point of having an escape room if you don't lock the door?}

{It's for safety,} explained Marco. {Fire codes mandate there has to be a way out in case of an emergency.}

{Fire codes?} I inquired.

{Never mind,} Marco said.

{Plus, you kept trying to eat the clues!} said Tobias. {The entire time I was keeping one eye on you to make sure you wouldn't blow our cover!}

'Keeping one eye' is another human expression. Really it just means to look at something very often. Humans do not have the ability to point their eyes in different directions, unless that direction is inwards. I do not know why.

{All right, this is where I leave you,} Marco said. {You guys are aware of the meeting tomorrow, right?}

After we replied that we were, Marco flew off towards his human home.

{Hey, Tobias,} I called out. {It's still pretty early, want to watch television for a bit before going to sleep?}

{No thanks, Ax-man,} Tobias responded. {I'm pretty tired, I'm going to get some rest.}

{Okay, see you tomorrow.}

{See you,}

After a quick circle over my scoop to make sure there were no humans nearby, I landed and began to demorph. Soon I was back in my Andalite body.

My scoop had only a few items, but the most important one was a human television.

Television is an important aspect of human culture. It is often used as an excuse for humans to socialize. For example, a human might ask another human if they want to watch 'The game' at their house.

The other human will often say yes, even though they could watch 'the game' at their own house on their own television. 'The game' is a human sport, usually referring to the sport called 'football', but can also refer to other sports such as, 'baseball', 'basketball', 'soccer', or 'hockey'.

There are additional sports in human culture, but they are not referred to as 'the game'. Again, I do not know why. Humans are a very confusing species.

I watch television for several reasons, but the most prominent reason is that it makes me better at pretending to be a human.

Recently, I have been watching a human program called 'Good Eats'.

In 'Good eats', a human chef demonstrates how he makes particular foods. I find it very interesting how humans see cooking as almost an art form.

Unfortunately, tonight 'Good Eats' was not on, so I began a human activity called 'Surfing'. This is where you watch something for a very short time before switching to watch something else.

I stumbled upon a movie called, 'The Hunger Games'.

This must be interesting, I thought.

I often considered eating to be almost a game, with the goal being to find something that tasted even better than whatever you just ate.

It would be interesting to see a human interpretation of this game.

I watched for about an hour, and the movie did not make much sense to me. Luckily, there were several breaks for These Messages. The entertaining shorter shows that play during breaks in larger shows. They are some of my favorite forms of human entertainment.

Unfortunately, I was getting quite tired, and I soon fell asleep, with the television still on.

The next morning I woke up early and completed the morning ritual as usual.

Soon I morphed to northern harrier. Northern harrier is one of my favorite morphs, it is very fast and has excellent vision and hearing. I flapped into the air and began flying to Cassie's house. Before I knew it, I was soaring through the window into the barn.

Hannah, Jordan, Rachel, and Cassie were already there.

I demorphed to Andalite. While demorphing, I engaged in a human activity known as 'small talk'.

{Hey guys, how was the roller blading?}

"It was fun," Hannah responded. "I fell over a few times but I got used to it."

Hannah had even less experience moving on two legs than me. If she could rollerblade, perhaps I could, too.

I told them about our experience at the escape room.

Rachel thought it was particularly hilarious.

Cassie was in the middle of feeding a fox some medicine. Usually, Cassie was very good at calming wild animals, but this fox was unusually restless. Perhaps it was upset by watching me morph.

"Calm down, girl," Cassie said to the fox, but it wasn't helping. The fox continued to squirm and resist.

"Screw it," Cassie muttered to herself, and she began to acquire the fox. The fox instantly stopped resisting as the trance took effect, and the fox's eyes seemingly unfocused.

Cassie took advantage of the fox's temporary calm, and gave it its medicine. Before the trance wore off, Cassie gently placed the fox in its cage and closed the door.

{Interesting technique,} I commented.

Cassie smiled at me in return. "Thanks. I try not to make a habit of it though, but usually animals are more calm with me."

"That brings up an interesting question," said Jordan. "Can an animal be acquired more than once, solely for the purpose of placing them in a trance?"

I contemplated. {I am not sure,} I admitted. {But it would be simple to test.}

I approached a nearby cage. Inside was a small animal called a groundhog. I began to acquire the creature and it went into the familiar trance.

{I will wait a few minutes before attempting to acquire the groundhog again.}

Just then, Marco arrived. {Trying to predict the weather, Ax?}

{No. Why would I?} I asked.

"It's a superstition," explained Rachel. "If a groundhog sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter."

"Which is stupid," interjected Jordan. "Because if the groundhog sees his shadow, the sun must be out, which means the weather is good. But somehow that translates to it being winter for longer."

{Excellent!} I exclaimed. {You humans are becoming self aware of your own backwards nature!}

"Not so much self aware," Cassie said. "Most people think it's stupid or irrelevant, the only reason it's still done today is because of tradition."

{Why was this tradition started in the first place?} I wondered.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Marco, who was now almost fully human. "Ancient humans believed rodents were smarter than them!"

"If they saw you, I wouldn't have blamed them," Rachel said.

"Watch it," Marco warned. "I'm not as stupid as you think."

"Nope, you're even more stupid than I think," Rachel responded.

"Oookay, I think enough time has passed for Ax to attempt to acquire the groundhog again," Cassie said, trying to deescalate the situation.

{Good idea,} I said, and walked towards the cage of the aforementioned creature.

"Uh… why was Ax acquiring the groundhog in the first place?" Marco wondered.

"Jordan was wondering if the same animal could be acquired multiple times," explained Hannah.

I began to acquire the groundhog again, and once more it fell into the acquisition trance.

"It does work!" Jordan commented. "Very interesting."

"Well, I could have told you that," Marco said. "My stepmother's dog, Euclid, attacks me practically every time I walk into the house."

"Who could blame him?" Rachel interjected.

Marco glared at Rachel, but continued.

"Acquiring the little menace is the only reason I still have ankles. I've acquired the flea-ridden furball probably 200 times by this point."

I suspect this might be a slight exaggeration. But I could not be certain.

"How is everyone's advanced morphing progress going?" Hannah asked.

For the past week, we'd been having daily morphing sessions. I had started out by teaching everyone the Frolis maneuver, and everyone had successfully blended the DNA of several dogs into a new animal.

Hannah and Jordan had both acquired several new morphs: bat, owl, seagull, fly, cockroach, flea, wolf.

Additionally, Hannah and Cassie tried to teach us how they control the morphing process.

Marco and Rachel had picked up on it fairly fast.

Jordan, Tobias, and I had managed to do it with substantially more effort.

The only person who had not been able to successfully control the morphing was Prince Jake. I knew he must feel embarrassed at this, considering he is the leader of the Animorphs.

I made what the humans call a 'mental note', a reminder to myself to talk to Prince Jake soon.

"Well…" said Marco. "Let's just say my biology grade has gone up."

"You used morphing to cheat on a test?" Rachel demanded with a look of disapproval on her face.

"It wasn't cheating, it was…using my resources," Marco said defensively. "By resources, I mean osprey eyes. And before any of you get on my ass, I figured out how to morph just the magnification factor, while leaving the color and shape of my eyes the same. Don't worry, I tested it extensively in front of the bathroom mirror before attempting it in class."

I have to admit, I was impressed. I had not been able to control the fine details to such an extent. However, I did not approve of using the morphing technology for such a purpose.

Cassie seemed to have read my mind. "Marco, this isn't why we have the morphing power. We're supposed to be fighting the Yeerks, not improving our grades."

"Yes, but think of it like this Cassie," Marco countered. "If my grades drop, my parents will ground me. And if I'm grounded, I can't fight the Yeerks. Therefore, my good grades are in the world's best interest."

I noticed Jordan crack a smile before looking away.

"Jake probably won't approve," said Cassie.

"Speaking of Jake, where is he?" asked Hannah. "And where's Tobias?"

"Jake will be here soon," Rachel said. "He had some chores his parents said have to get done today. As for Tobias, I have no idea. But with regards to advanced morphing, yesterday I couldn't find the can opener. But I morphed just one Hork-Bajir wrist blade, and then I didn't need a can opener after that."

"That reminds me," Jordan said. "Hannah and I still don't have a Hork-Bajir morph."

{Yes, we should get you each a Hork-Bajir morph sooner rather than later. Additionally, we still need to decide if we are going to assist the free Hork-Bajir to sneak into the Yeerk convoy.}

Everyone fell silent at that. The convoy was leaving in three days, and we had decided to let the convoy leave, favoring intelligence of the Hork-Bajir homeworld and fewer controllers on Earth. Much to my dismay, the humans had also voted against informing my people of the Yeerk movement.

Approximately half of the free Hork-Bajir wanted to go fight for their homeworld, and the other half wanted to stay on earth.

The ships in the convoy would be docking directly with the pool ship in orbit, and not ever touching down on Earth. We had decided sneaking aboard the pool ship was too challenging of a task, we just hadn't decided the best way to break the news to our Hork-Bajir allies yet.

Just then Tobias showed up. {Hello, everyone,} he said.

{Greetings, Tobias,} I responded. The others echoed similar greetings.

{Have I missed anything important?} Tobias asked as he ruffled his wings.

"Nothing much," Marco said. "Just your typical day saving the world."

"You mean cheating on a test," Cassie mumbled.

"Like I said, saving the world," Marco said.