The sun beat on asphalt. Afternoon, late enough that I could sit in the shadow cast by a billboard advertising toothpaste. I could see all of the cracks in the pavement, could pick out each black tarred-in granule, blinding white sun reflected in it. Could see the dirt boiling up from inside those cracks when the breeze drifted around, air shimmering in the heat. I was in the city-sized parking lot of a sports stadium. It took all day to fly here. The parking lot's empty, like the stadium: nobody playing today.

Hi. My name is Tobias. You know the deal.

So why does Bird Boy come out to hang out with an empty stadium? Because I can be alone. Because Rachel doesn't have her license and nobody else would come looking for me. Because maybe I like staring at asphalt.

See, there are some days that aren't worth living. Where I'm trapped inside me and I just want to scratch it all out. But I'm not a cutter anymore. Instead I'm a bird. So it used to be that when I needed a way out I would sink into the hawk. Into the calm, focused dullness. Into predator's relentless hunger. But if I try that these days…

Crimson. -(Ahhhhhh!)- Twisting pain. Needles. Poison."Demorph!" Taylor roared. Hollow bones snapping. Marrow: loose fluid. Blue. Laughing. Red. Shattered beak. Blue. Red. Blue. My uncle's hand in my hair, shaking it, after too many beers. He never hit me, but sometimes I got in his way during the wrong part of drunk. Taylor's face an inch from the glass. "You can make this easy or you can make it horrible. It's up to you." Her bubbly laugh. Acid. -(Ahhhhhhhhh!)-

Yeah. So, not great. Sometimes I fall from the sky. Not like I crash into the ground, but like I come back to myself standing in head where a bobcat could get me. Bird Boy, defender of nations, slain by kitty.

So full hawk-mode is a no-go, and now Taylor only comes for me when I'm sleeping. Which I don't do much anyway.

A car is driving around. I hadn't paid it much attention at first, but now I realize I recognize it. I also recognize the driver, who has his head out the window and is calling, "Tobias!" And, "Tobias!"

I consider staying put. He's passing me by; human eyes aren't good for much. But he wouldn't be here unless–

"It's important!" Marco calls.

-(I'm here,)- I say, and flap down.

"Hey Tobias. If you're going to start sulking and brooding halfway across the state, can I suggest Disneyland? Jake won't let me sneak in and cheat the lines by going mongoose, but if I was looking for you, I figure he couldn't argue. Also, this parking lot is depressing. You could fit the population of Wyoming in here and still have room left over for a few impoverished Eastern European countries. Minislovichstan or something."

-(What's going on?)-

"We've got a Bluey."

A pause. -(A what?)-

"A bluey! C'mon, Tobias. A code blue?"

-(What?)- I said, confused.

"Remember how I've been saying we should have code-words? I've been working out a system. Code green is the Yeerks have initiated a plan to steal the ocean. Code gray is I've failed another math test and Norma wants to ground me. Code purple: return of the Helmacrons. Code pink: Visser Three has started cross-dressing. C'mon, get in the car. We have to go."

Hawks don't like being in enclosed spaces. I have to quash my instinctive panic, and try instead to enjoy the air conditioning. Marco doesn't have a license, but the Chee—the Kings—let him borrow their car when he needs it. First time it happened we all nearly died in a car crash.

-(How did you know where I was?)- I asked as Marco drove down an eternal stretch of highway.

"Rachel said you'd started hanging around here. You weren't in your meadow, or the Hork-Bajir, or Ax's scoop. So Jake sent me out here while he checked some other places Rachel suggested. If it was a secret then that's between the two of you. I'm just the chauffeur. Speaking of which, not that I'm not excellent at this, but I maybe nearly crashed on the way over and it would be smart to de-bird and put on a seat-belt."

-(No thanks,)- I said.

"Yeah, I don't like them either."

-(The belt is superfluous, as restrictor of motion. You're already chained by gravity. Caged. I don't like cages. You ever just stand on the ground and jump? You can't get more than a foot from the floor. It's relentless. It's claustrophobic.)-

"No, Tobias, I can't say that I have done that."

-(And your whole body weighs too much. And your heavy organs squish on top of each other, and your lungs are too heavy to pump, and the air is choking you, and you want to just find a bridge and take the guardrails in your hands like you're holding in for dear life and just—)-

"Can't say that I have," Marco said firmly.

A brief lull. Then I remembered to ask, -(So what's going on?)-

"A code blue is yeerk resistance movement. We're supposed to meet up with Essef 2668 tonight."

-(Can you drop it with your dumb codes?)-

"Excuse me for trying to lighten the mood."

-(I don't want you to lighten it. You're not lightening it.)-

"Fine." We drove in silence for a while. Thank god. But Marco can't take much silence. Kid loves the sound of his own voice. In fairness to him, I'm sure he held out as long as he could. "So," he began. "Why here?"

-(Where?)-

"The parking lot. I have to know."

I would have sighed, if birds did that. -(My feathers melt in acid, my own thoughts. Butter on a hot day. The wax on Icarus's back. Soon I will drown in the sea.)-

"Ok, please stop it with all of that. I don't need your melodrama. We're going to be in the car for a while. How long did it take to fly out here?"

-(I have no body,)- I said coolly. -(No matter where I go I am trapped. I am a freak unlike any other.)- Yes, I was doing it to piss him off. No, I don't know why. The heat. -(Faith, this next mission will be my last.)-

"And this is why nobody could ever stand you," said Marco. "I mean good god. You should dye your feathers black, borrow a bunch of Rachel's makeup, and strum a mournful ukulele while wailing tunefully about loneliness. You could make it big. The only thing I don't get is why Jake felt sorry for you and let you hang around him. Us. You've always wanted to be unhappy."

Ah. Is that so. -(Whereas you want to be happy so bad that you tried to kill your own mom.)-

Marco froze.

The rest of the animorphs were in Cassie's barn, doing homework.

"Ah, calculus. Fuck," said Rachel. "Ax, can you check this for me?"

Ax glanced at the sheet of paper held out to him, examined it briefly with enormous contempt. -(The questions are founded on inferior principles of logic,)- he declared. -(Even the most basic understanding of the Ruliad must concede–)-

"Thank you Ax, never mind," Rachel interrupted. She glanced at the reference sheet, then scribbled something down. Then erased. "Fuck me."

"What's the name of that literary device for the splitting of a line in poetry?" Jake asked.

"Enjambment?" Suggested Cassie.

"Pretty sure it's a poetic device," said Rachel.

A light went off on a jumble of electronics Ax had been fiddling with. "Prince Jake, Marco has indicated that he has found Tobias."

"Ah. Good," Jake said."

"They'll be a while getting here," said Rachel. "Hopefully Marco hasn't crashed the car yet."

"Why don't we examine the reasons you're so afraid of Rachel," Marco said. "The amount of alcohol she had to pour into you to get you into bed. Yes, I know about that. Cassie too. You're afraid of becoming too connected to anyone. It's pathetic the way you keep feinting back and forth with her. Disgusting."

-(I don't think I'll ever forget the look on Cassie's face when you proposed your scheme for wiping out the taxxon hive. My god, the pain on her face when Jake gave that idea the OK. You did that to her. And to him. What would your dad say? What could anyone ever say?)-

Cassie had to get up at one point to give a shot to one of the raccoons. "Antibiotics," she explained. "Her leg was run over by a car, poor girl. She was barely alive when we found her." She made quiet, soothing noises as she lifted the animal out of the cage. The raccoon clearly knew what this meant, having received many such shots, and was having none of it. But Cassie was practiced at holding animals firmly.

-(You would have killed your mom on the mountain that day. We all know you would have done it. You probably wouldn't even have felt bad, after a week.)-

"Or," suggested Marco, as though struck with a brilliant idea, "Maybe you just have a really, really small penis!"

"Can I help with that?" Jake asked, standing up and walking over to Cassie.

"Nah," she said. "I've got it." She did, too.

"You sure?" He was standing right next to her, looking at the squirming raccoon as Cassie emptied the contents of a needle into it.

"Yeah."

"Aw, look at you two," said Rachel. "Cassie, do you remember how the Maclaurin series works with special functions?"

"It's on the reference sheet."

"Doesn't help if you don't remember how to use it."

There was a long period of silence in the car. At first it was deeply tense silence. Gradually, it became less tense silence. Marco was the one to break it.

"I'm sorry man," he said. "I've seen your penis and it's a normal size. More or less. A little bit small. Let me start again." He started again. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's gotten into me. I'm all high-strung."

-(You must be stressed out from fighting aliens and not sleeping,)- I suggested.

"Could be it. Anyway it's good to get stuff out. Listen man, you ever want to talk, or just take stuff out, hit me up. Yeah?"

-(Sure.)-

"You know, I saw a therapist for a while. Don't tell Jake. Made sure he wasn't a yeerk first obviously. Three days surveillance. And didn't tell him anything much. I couldn't, he would've locked me in the loony bin. So it didn't really help much. I think all we really have is each other."

-(I know.)-

We drove in silence for a while longer.

-(My uncle was an alcoholic,)- I said. I don't know why I said it. The air conditioning. -(He broke things when he was drunk. I hid from him. I didn't hate him but I was afraid of him. My uncle never hated me. My aunt did. I don't know why, exactly. She resented having to deal with me, I guess. Anyway, one time my uncle took me to a baseball game. It was when I was young. He had just joined AA. Mostly he watched sports on TV but for whatever reason he took me to the game at that stadium. He was all excited. I didn't really care. I sat through it. He bought me a hot dog.)- I sat on this for a moment trying to think how to explain the rest. In my head it had seemed a lot deeper and profound. Coming out of my beak, or however thought-speech works, it seemed kind of random. -(That's why I was at that stadium. I guess. I've been thinking about stuff recently, about the past, and I can't stop thinking about that day. It doesn't actually make much sense outside my own head. For some reason I've felt like going there recently.)- There was a pause. Then Marco seemed like I was getting ready to say something sympathetic but I didn't want him to, so I spoke first. -(So, what color is the ellimist?)- I asked.

"What?" Marco asked. After a moment, he got it. "Code white. Crayak is code black. Code gray is if the Borg or Daleks team up with the yeerks."

"I thought gray was failing a math test."

"That too. It's both. It's a complicated system. Still in progress."

-(Code heliotrope?)- I asked.

"Code heliotrope: there's been a sario rip and now we're the Vegemorphs," Marco said instantly. "What's heliotrope look like?"

-(Purple.)-

I own none of the rights to this material. This is the first chapter of a novella-length story. I will release the other chapters if people seem to like this one. Otherwise, what precisely Essef 2668 wishes so urgently to discuss will remain a secret forever.

Reviews are greatly appreciated, particularly if critical + constructive.