Well here's one for you then, Phoenix.
Chapter Seven
An hour and a half later, we met up at the barn where Cassie's father kept his wildlife rehabilitation clinic. Her mom works at the Gardens as a vet and her dad works with the wild animals that people bring to him, so it's no wonder that she's as attached to animals as she is.
Cassie stopped feeding the caged ferret and turned to us once Ax was demorphed into himself and Tobias had perched in the rafters to keep an eye all around the barn. The look on Jake's face must have told Cassie all she needed to know, because she said. "Couldn't find him, huh?"
"Not a trace." Jake sighed and moved to pick up a shovel, almost angrily starting to work on moving a pile of manure. When Jake's angry and feels useless, he likes to work to feel like he's accomplishing something. I keep telling my dad if we want our house painted or reshingled all we have to do is catch Jake after he fails a pop quiz or something.
Rachel nodded and rolled her eyes with a disheartened sigh. "We looked all over the place, but he's not anywhere on the streets. He's probably at home, or at the mall... which we should have checked."
"Rachel's convinced that David's checking out this sale that she just conicidentally wants to see too." I looked around while going over to crash on one of the hay bales. Melissa was in the corner sitting on an overturned bucket. She was watching Ax with wide eyes, obviously still surprised by his appearance even now. Honestly I couldn't blame the girl for that. He still surprised me sometimes. "So how'd it go on your end?"
Moving over by Melissa to look questioningly at the other girl, Rachel threw a dirt clod at me, which I ducked. "Dork. Just because some of us understand that the Gap isn't that crack you step over on the way into K-Mart. But yeah, how'd it go?" Her question was half directed at Cassie and half at Melissa.
Cassie looked to the quiet girl first, then shrugged. "It went well enough, I guess. We got into the Gardens and got what she needed." Melissa nodded silently and bit her lip, like she was going to say something but thought better of it. I got the feeling she wasn't the type to say much if she didn't have to.
After a moment of obviously considering whether he should question what it was that they had gotten for Melissa, Jake started to ask just that while the rest of us looked to him to voice the question. He was interrupted before he could by a Tobias. <Erek's coming.>
Immediately I shook my head. "Tell him we aren't here. Erek hates us. He only ever shows up to say 'hey kids, wanna go almost die?' Just once, I'd like to run the hologram and pretend to be him while he goes off and ends up blubbering for his mommy."
Melissa stood from the bucket and looked slightly alarmed as her mouth opened while looking at our resident alien. She must have figured we'd panic about how to hide Ax or distract our visitor long enough to get him out of sight. Instead, we just looked to the barn door while Rachel put a hand on her shoulder to tell her it was all right.
Erek King, who appeared to be an ordinary boy our age but was about as far from that as Ax was, stepped into the barn and looked around at us while he spoke. "We have a problem. There's..." He stopped himself as his eyes fell on Melissa, who looked back at him with a confused expression. "Oh hey, Melissa, I didn't know you were here." His gaze flicked to Ax. "And with Aximili I see. Jake?"
Jake, who had come back from shoveling away the manure of his failure, glanced to the new girl. "Melissa, Erek is a highly advanced robot from another planet. They're called the Chee. He uses a hologram." He gestured and Erek complied by shutting off his hologram for a moment so we could see the canine-shaped robot underneath before bringing it back up. At the sight of the mechanical being, Melissa quietly eeped and covered her mouth. Jake sighed then and went on. "We've got our own problems. Melissa found the..."
He looked questioningly to Ax, who supplied. "Escafil Device."
Nodding, Jake continued. "The Escafil device. She found it, but a boy named David took it. He was running around with it. We got it back but Visser Three saw him, and.... David heard Marco and I talking about all this. If the Yeerks get ahold of him...."
Wincing, something I still wasn't sure if he did to look more human or if it was a real reaction that carried to his hologram, Erek lifted his hand to stop us for a moment. He seemed to look at nothing in particular, then nodded. "The other Chee are looking. I sent a picture from the boy's file in the school system. Anywhere he is, we'll find him."
Intrigued, I stepped closer. "Hey, while you're in that system anyway..."
Jake shook his head. "Erek isn't fixing your grades, Marco."
I shot him an injured look. "Jake, I'm insulted, horribly insulted, that you would think that I'd cheat like that. The idea that you believe I would have Erek break the law just to give me a better grade hurts me. It really does. Right here." I put my hand on my chest.
He shot me a knowing gaze. "And you weren't going to ask him just that?"
"Well, yes." I responded with a broad grin. "But that's beside the point, isn't it?"
Jake looked torn between laughter and exasperation. "It's the entire po-you know what? Never mind. Erek, what problem did you have when you came in here?"
"Yeah, cuz we really need another one." I supplied with a sigh. "We're collecting problems. One more and we get a free coffee at 7-11."
"Marco?" Jake said conversationally.
I picked at a bit of dirt under my nail, looking from Erek to him. "Yeah?"
"Shut up." Pointedly, Jake turned back to Erek. "What is it?"
Turning away from examining Melissa, Erek looked at Jake. "There's something huge happening. The leaders of the free world, in this case Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States, are coming here. It's a big secret summit meeting where they're supposed to talk about how to solve the middle eastern crisis."
Cassie frowned. "That's what we call a good thing, Erek. What's..." Then she got it. "Wait, are you saying the yeerks would..."
He nodded. "They would take advantage of it, and they are. It's an irresistable target. The leaders of the six most powerful nations in the world all gathered into one place?"
"They replace those guys..." I groaned. "And it's game over. War's over, we lose. They've got control of every major power."
"What if it was the other way around?" It took me a second to realize that it was Melissa who had spoken, looking more at the dirt near Erek's feet than at his face. She slowly looked up at him then and continued hesitantly, like she wasn't sure she should be speaking out. "What if... what if the world leaders were told about what was happening? What if they were... shown...?" She cast a quick glance back at Ax and managed to stop herself from staring too long before biting her lip as she looked to Erek once more, questioningly.
Rachel warmed to the idea quickly. "The yeerks would be totally exposed. They couldn't keep hiding from every government on the planet. They'd have to show themselves. We'd have soldiers on our side, the military."
"It's not that easy." Erek elected to give us more bad news, because he hated when we were optimistic. I knew it had to just irk him, which is why he always kept some in reserve in case he saw us happy. "One of the leaders is already a controller. If you approach the wrong one..." He trailed off as we stared at him.
Jake reached up to grasp a wooden beam running down into one of the stalls. "Let me guess, you don't know which one." At Erek's nod, he groaned. "Great, so one out of five leaders is already one of the yeerks, and the other five are in danger of being taken. Which means we have to stop them, without being killed by either the yeerks or by the regular security forces who are going to be on paranoid shoot on sight alert for this thing. We also have to figure out which one of the leaders is already a yeerk and avoid exposing ourselves to him, while figuring out the yeerk plan and stopping it. Is there anything else?"
"Jake!" I shot at him. "Don't give Erek that kind of ammunition. He'll use it to tell us the earth's being invaded by invisible dragons with atomic breath and we can only stop them by being transported to their homeworld where we have to swim into the gullet of the queen dragon and kill her before being digested."
Rachel gave me a look. "Where do you come up with these things, Marco?"
"I watch a lot of late night tv." I answered with a shrug. "So just say there's nothing else, and go hologram yourself into a big sofa." I waved to Erek with more than a hint of jealousy.
Making his hologram smile, Erek stepped back. "That's all. Oh." He looked at the barn wall and then back to us. "David's been spotted. He's... at the Gardens."
Tobias, who had flown down to sit by the same wooden beam Jake had been holding onto, questioned. <What's he doing there? It's not like he could have gotten the morphing power himself, right Ax?>
Ax was silent. We all turned to him, and Jake raised an eyebrow wearily. "Tobias said, right Ax?"
Lowering his head in a human nod he had picked up from us, Ax hesitantly answered. <I did hear, Prince Jake. But there is a slight possibility that he may not be correct.>
"Stop calling me prince." Jake responded automatically. "And what do you mean, a slight possibility? How could he possibly... are you saying he might actually.." He didn't quite want to say it.
<The Escafil device is programmed with a tutorial, for field use. It is... possible that if he were to have any idea of what it was for, while holding it he might... I stress the term might, have activated this and gained the morphing ability through the computer's instructions. The possibility that he could however is so remote as to be inconsequental. I simply wished to voice the remote chance, as he has gone to a place where many animals are kept..."
"Right." I said with a sigh. "So we can pretty much figure he's gotten the morphing powers and has been bulking up. Cuz you know, our luck being what it is. What now?"
Jake as silent for a long moment, then he spoke. "David has the morphing powers... and our secret... and he's not approaching us to help. We have to find him. Erek, tell the other Chee to keep an eye on him, and approach us when we get there. Guys... birds, let's go. We've got to stop David quick so we can figure out what to do about this world leader thing."
"And at some point." Rachel added. "I have got to study for my english test on friday. If I don't pull a B, mom's yanking the credit card." She sounded like this would be a fate worse than yeerk infestation.
Tobias flew back up to keep watch while we morphed. But none of us did. We all looked to Melissa as we realized that this would be her first time morphing. Somehow Cassie was elected to talk her through it. She moved to the girl and slowly coached her. "Just think about the bird. Trust me, you have the ability. You saw it go into the trance, so it worked. Think about how it flies, how majestic and beautiful it must look... imagine being up there..."
Melissa followed Cassie's instructions, and slowly a feathered outline appeared on her arms. She immediately stopped changing and cried out in surprise, obviously not having expected it to actually work. Cassie put her hand on the girl's shoulder. "It's okay, Melissa. You're morphing, just like any of us. Just keep focusing on the bird so that it continues. Keep going."
After a moment of hesitation, Melissa slowly continued the morph. Blue grey feathers sprang up along her back while she shrank out of her clothes. Belatedly, the rest of us turned around just to be on the safe side while Cassie and Rachel helped extricated Melissa from the clothing as she morphed. When we looked back, we saw a bird with dark back and somewhat orange and white tinted underbelly, and was about the same size as Jake's peregrine falcon.
"A merlin." Cassie supplied. "We had a golden eagle and the merlin. This is what she chose."
<Good choice.> Tobias remarked. He hated the big golden eagles, and he was a little afraid of them. He's gotten a lot more to worry about since he was trapped as a hawk. He had all our fears, plus the predator and prey ones. Sometimes golden eagles attacked smaller birds like him.
Rachel crouched down in front of the bird. "That's awesome, Melissa. You did it. Now just think at whoever you want to talk to."
<Like... this?> Her voice came a moment later, as she lifted her wings out and shuffled around on her small taloned feet. <I did it? I did it. I'm a bird. I've... I've got wings. Wings.> She held them out and up as though to show them to us, still sounding amazed.
Cassie smiled. "Yeah, just like that. Now wait a second and then we'll join you. We'll get you a morphing suit as soon as we can, and show you how to avoid complete embarrassment.
Jake nodded. "Everyone morph then, we'll fly out to the Gardens and stop David from... whatever he's trying to do."
<We can fly? I can... fly?> Melissa sounded like the thought honestly had never occurred to her, despite her astonishment over managing to grow wings.
I smiled, because flying really was one of the very few awesome things about being an animorph. "Yeah, Melissa. We can fly." And a couple minutes later we did just that, rising from the barn on our way to the gardens. One more unsteady than the others, but all of us helping to give her tips and guide her into the air, helping her be more comfortable. We flew. The seven of us.