As he felt Cassie sliding down off of his back, Slade narrowed his eyes as he began demorphing as fast as he could. There was something approaching, and Slade knew that he had to be ready to face it. Once he was back in his human body, and Cassie had morphed back into a dolphin alongside him, Slade transformed.

By the time he'd fully transformed and gotten into the air, the creatures that Ax had pointed out to them had erupted from the water. The pair of them – which he'd heard called the Loch Ness Monster, and even suggested to be Visser Three in morph by some of his fellow Animorphs – were racing toward the more vulnerable forms of his and Shara's fellow Animorphs.

Narrowing his eyes, Slade threw his lancer so that it spun around, cutting deeply into the head of the lead creature, then checked to see what the other one would do in response.

~MM2~

(That's impossible,) she heard Tobias say, some of his own apprehension coming through even the flattening effect of thought-speak.

(About sixty-five million years of impossible,) she said, even though it kind of seemed like Tobias had been thinking in as close to an approximation of "out loud" as anyone could get when they were using thought-speak.

(Shara, you know what those were, too?) Tobias asked, even as the seven of them all reached the shore and started demorphing.

(What, the two Kronosauri, or the one I could swear was an Ichthyosaur following them?) she asked, feeling more than a little unsettled – more than a little giddy – at the prospect of being so far from where and when they'd started out.

(All of them, really,) Tobias said, and Shara wondered for a moment what he was thinking. (Though I have to say, I wasn't expecting to meet someone else who knows about dinosaurs.)

(Especially here, right?) she asked, feeling more than a little amused, herself.

(Pretty much,) Tobias said, as he demorphed fully and fluttered up towards Rachel.

The seven of them all slogged their way out of the water and back onto the beach, with Slade swinging back around to land, thrusters cutting out and dropping him to land just beside them.

"Something is very wrong here, Prince Jake," Ax said, having clearly taken the extra time while she had been recovering from their race back to the shore.

"What do you mean, Ax?" Jake asked, as they all began to gather around the Andalite.

"I think he means that we're not where or when we started out," Shara said, as she and Slade made their way over closer to where the rest of the Animorphs were standing.

"Yeah, I think she might be right, Jake," Marco said. "Look at this!"

Turning, though she already knew what she was going to see, Shara looked at the line of trees pressing up against the sand. Through the gaps in those same trees, she could catch glimpses of rank upon rank of trees standing one behind the other. And then, even beyond that, she could see ferns, soil, and flowers in what seemed to be a clearing.

"And listen," Marco continued, drawing Shara's attention back to where the rest of her and Slade's fellow Animorphs were all gathered.

"Yeah, it's a lot quieter than I've heard before," she said, looking up into the sky. "Especially so close to the ocean."

"I've never seen a beach without gulls," Cassie said, looking around with clear apprehension on her face.

Shara found herself chuckling almost involuntarily. "Oh, no. We're way too early for gulls."

"What do you mean, Shara?" Jake asked, turning to look back at her, seeming curious and more than a bit apprehensive.

(She means that, while we might have ended up in some other place, we are definitely in a different time,) Tobias said, shifting slightly from his perch on Rachel's left shoulder.

"How do you know that?" Marco asked, clearly surprised.

"Because those Kronosauri died out with the dinosaurs at the end of the late Cretaceous," she said, folding her arms as she looked down at the sandy beach they were making their way steadily across. "But, if you still have your doubts, then just look down at that sauropod footprint Jake's standing in."

Biting back a smirk as Jake all but launched himself out of the four-foot wide footprint – made as it was by some kind of sauropod – Shara sighed as she took another look around.

(It might be best if we get away from the ocean,) Tobias said, before Shara herself could make that same kind of suggestion. (More of those Kronosauri might come back. We might be safer under the trees, too.)

"Yes, we'll at least have some protection from the larger dinosaurs," she said, turning to scan for any signs of said dinosaurs, chewing her lower lip for a long moment. "Slade, it might be best if we both transformed," she said, knowing that there was no chance at all that Darkon or any of his forces would be able to find either of them.

Not here and now, of all places.