End of RAF

[DinosaurNothlit]

Aww... Now I want more than ever to come visit you guys. :'(

Zee plan, eet it verking.  *rubs hands together* 

Chapter Sixteen

You really ought to at least consider the option, Myitt was saying, in the language of squeaks and clicks that only Yeerks could hear.  Terenia, of course, could understand her perfectly, even though she herself tended to prefer to use thought-speak.  Only as a very last resort, of course.

<No,> Terenia said flatly.  <Not even as a last resort.  I'd rather die, than let my mind slowly waste away to nothing until I'm a ranting idiot.  I'm not going to let myself be that kind of a burden, on anyone.  And, I don't ever want to be something only half-alive.  Give me life, or else death.  I don't want some horrid, macabre thing in between.  If that ever happens, you kill me, understood?>

You don't know it'll come to that, Myitt answered pleadingly.  Maybe it can be fought.  Maybe you can wean yourself back to normal again, after this is all over.  You're a strong-willed person.  If anybody could come back from it, it's you.

<Yeah, well, what if it isn't something that can just be overcome by strength of will?  The books never really say how quickly the changes become permanent.  It could be that once you start down that road, you have no willpower left to resist it.>

I still think it's better than dying, Myitt said sadly.  I don't want you to die like that.  You know what the books say.  It won't be a quick death.

<That will have to be a risk I'm willing to take, because I won't take the other option,> Terenia said, although she still sounded just a little hesitant, like she wasn't quite convinced.  <No.  Not ever,> she added more firmly, as though trying to persuade herself.

Myitt sighed.  Well, I guess it's your decision, she said hesitantly.  There was pain there, in her Yeerkish 'voice.'  She didn't want to admit it, that she couldn't control Terenia's fate.  She didn't want there to be nothing she could do, other than watch one of her best friends die.

Meanwhile, Aquilai was sitting on the side of the pool, watching the two slugs swim leisurely through the Kandrona-radiated water, as he chatted with Myitt's human half, Tara.  Myitt's RAFsona, unlike Terenia's, included both her Yeerk self and her human self, which were now linked by that strange psychic bond that allowed them to be almost like the same person, stretched between two bodies.

"You're seriously discussing oatmeal with her?" Aquilai said incredulously.  "You think that's a good idea?"

"Good idea?  No, of course it isn't," Tara said darkly.  "But if you're right about not being able to stop the future we saw, we might not have much choice.  It beats starvation."  Her expression twisted with pain.  "But, Terenia is having none of it.  She says she'd rather die than go insane.  She doesn't want to put that kind of burden on anyone."

"She could fight it off, though, I'm sure she could," Aquilai said encouragingly, but then he hesitated.  "Probably."

"It's the 'probably' she's worried about," Tara said.  "Fact is, we just don't know.  It was only ever in one book, and we only have one example, from that book, to go off of.  And, well, he was a ranting lunatic barely able to keep control of his own host.  That could end up being Terenia.  If she were to agree to that."

"Hmm," Aquilai muttered, as he glanced worriedly back towards the two Yeerks in the pool.

"And, I can tell you something else," Tara went on, quietly, tentatively, as though afraid to say aloud what she was about to say.  "I can understand Yeerkish, now.  So I know what Edelman's Yeerk was actually saying, in that book."

"Yeah?" Aquilai said curiously, turning his focus back towards Tara.

"Edelman wasn't the only one, who jumped out of that window," Tara whispered.

The somber silence that followed Tara's words, was thankfully interrupted by the return of the other RAFians.  Tara and Aquilai could hear them filing noisily through the door.

They're back, Myitt told Terenia.  I feel pretty full up on Kandrona, how about you?

<Yeah, I think I'm good,> Terenia replied.  <Good as I'm gonna get, anyway.>  She and Myitt started swimming for the edge of the pool, where Tara was already holding out her hands in the water, ready to pick up the two Yeerks.  Tara set Terenia down on the linoleum floor, where she immediately switched back to her human self.  Then she cupped the other Yeerk to her ear.  As soon as Myitt was safely back inside Tara's head, the three of them went off to greet the others.

Bear held out three boxes clearly marked with the blue-and-tan Cinnabon logo.  Terenia and Myitt both smiled immediately, and after a belated moment Aquilai smiled as well.  He'd never had Cinnabon cinnamon buns before, but he was excited to try one.

"We think we should go to the future, next," Jess commented as the three of them dug into their cinnamon buns.  Aquilai made a delighted humming noise, his mouth full.

"It will be helpful to see what Queen's endgame is," Jess continued.  "Five years ought to do it?"

"Nah, five years is too much," Bear thought out loud.  "We don't want to see a world with Queen in total control.  That would just be depressing, and probably not helpful.  How about, one year?  Long enough to see where she's going, but hopefully not so long that we're looking at post-apocalypse."

"One year," Aquilai said, around a bite of cinnamon bun.  "Just to make it easy, we'll stay in Texas.  Maybe we can even figure out why the Lone Star war happened."

Putting down the box for the time being, the Time Lord threw some switches, and twisted a few knobs.  The TARDIS started making that characteristic sound, that electronic whooshing noise that signaled its transit through time and space.

The room bobbed gently as the TARDIS flew.  It was hard to tell if the journey was longer this time, or if anxiety merely made it feel like it was.

The RAFians each wondered, what they would see when they got there.  What would the future look like?  They wondered, but didn't dare to hope.  They knew, it would not be good.

[redtailedsaffa]

Ooh. Keeping-the-reader-guessing time.

Zee plan, eet it verking. *rubs hands together*

Don't get my hopes up!

[theyoungphoenix]

I am very, very curious now...

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Seventeen

The RAFians stepped, nervously, out of the TARDIS.  Several peeked through the barely-open door, looking around fearfully for anybody who might see them.  But Aquilai had parked well, once again.  The TARDIS was hidden in a secluded alleyway.

The rest of the RAFians filed out of the TARDIS and down the alley, rounding the corner as they reached the end of the narrow street.  One by one they gasped, as they stepped out into a dark and dismal scene, something straight out of a sci-fi horror movie.  It was midday, but the light was the color of late evening, underneath the reddish-grey clouds that filled the sky.

Flashes of greenish lightning lit the hellish swirling clouds from underneath.  And that eerie lightning seemed almost brighter than the meager sunlight that peeked through.

Even the buildings looked darker, their edges sharper.  Or was it just a trick of the light?  Nothing looked the same as it should.

"It didn't take five years," Bear whispered fearfully.  "Oh, man, the world ends in a year?"

They tiptoed through the dismal scene, abandoned streets and buildings that should have been filled with cars and people.  Nothing moved, except bits of windblown debris, and the RAFians themselves.

Their senses sharpened by fear, they began to notice something.  Something that had been prodding at the edges of their subconscious thoughts since Cinnabon.  At the time, they'd only halfway noticed, out of the corners of their mind, the people in the restaurant looking at them a little too long.  The ones who had left the Cinnabon upon seeing them, had done so just a little too quickly.

It hadn't just been because they'd been in such a big group.  No, there was something else.

It was like people could sense that something was different about the outsiders walking amongst them.  There was something odd there, that most people didn't quite know what to make of.  Something just on the other side of their mind, where they couldn't quite put their finger on it.

The RAFians knew, because they could now sense it too, when they looked at one another.  Yes, for sure, something wasn't quite right.  Goom's solid holograms were perfect, though, weren't they?

But, on the other hand, maybe that was exactly it.  They were perfect.  Too perfect to be quite entirely human.  They were a bit like artistic renderings of themselves.  Like computer models, almost.  Nothing there was obviously 'digital,' it wasn't like they were pixilated or anything, but there were none of the usual blemishes or imperfections that should have marred their faces.

They were perfect representations of themselves, but they were not quite themselves.  Only representations.  And, in some way that only instincts could sense, it showed.  They weren't human.  Close, so very close, but not quite.

After a while, stalking through that empty place, they began to feel it in their bones.  It was a hollowness, an emptiness.  Like they were nothing but the puppet masters of their own bodies.

The difference wasn't just in their faces.  It was in the way they moved, too.  There was a falseness in their walk, the way they stood too straight.  The detached way their bodies seemed to glide along as they moved, as though merely mimicking the motion needed to portray the too-perfect illusion of walking.

Once they noticed, they tried to correct it.  Feeling exposed, as though the first person to see them in this dismal place would immediately know exactly what they were.  But it wasn't something that could simply be mimicked away.  The seemingly so simple act of being human, whatever ephemeral quality it entailed, was something so subconscious that no conscious effort could ever replicate it.

Tony, as one of only eight naturally 'human' RAFians, along with Estelore, Saffa, Aquilai, Underseen, Cody, Rachel, and Myitt, had absolutely no such difficulty.  He had no need of a disguised form.  An outsider himself, he seemed oblivious to the subtleties that the other RAFians were slowly coming to grips with.

But, after a while, it occurred to him that something, some odd little niggling thing, didn't seem right.  He turned to look at his friends, noticing the slight off-ness of their disguises for the first time.

"Hmm," he whispered, unable to help being a little disconcerted by it.  Whatever 'it' was.  "Hope that won't become a problem."

There was no time to wonder about the implications of this strange new revelation, however.  Suddenly, the RAFians spotted movement in the street nearby, and were stunned to see bladed figures, marching in broad daylight.  They crouched back against a building.  A rather pathetic attempt to hide such a large crowd.  But the all-too-familiar bladed creatures never broke their ranks, as they continued to march, ignoring the 'humans.'

"Hork-bajir!" Phoenix hissed.  Pointlessly, because all the RAFians had immediately known what they were.  "What are they doing here?"

"Maybe they're free Hork-bajir?" Noelle offered tentatively, not really believing it.

"Somehow I doubt it," Russell whispered, pointing up at the ominous sky.

From around the corner of a building, behind the squadron of Hork-bajir, a steady stream of Taxxons came into view.

"Definitely not free!" Dino commented anxiously.  "Run!"

"No!" Rachel hissed sharply.  "If we stay calm, they might just think we're human-controllers.  If we run, they'll know we aren't.  Come on, they will have seen us, so we should probably move."

Following Rachel's lead, the RAFians fell into step alongside the Hork-bajir, acting as best they could like they knew where they were going.  Trying not to seem nearly as nervous as they actually were.

Most of the Hork-bajir paid the RAFians no mind.  One casually glanced in their direction, looked away, then glared back at them again, like he'd seen something he didn't quite like.

The suspicious Hork-bajir happened to look down at Seal's wrist.

Too late, she threw her other hand over her Mark.

"Gafrash RAFians!" the Hork-bajir shouted, and suddenly every alien eye was turned towards them.  "Get them!"

[redtailedsaffa]

Oh dear. The crap just hit the fan.

[theyoungphoenix]

Awww crap!

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Eighteen

Immediately, the RAFians hit the blue buttons on their Marks, flashing back to their true forms, ready for battle.  Dino took out a Hork-bajir just by appearing at her full size, as he was bowled over by the sudden Ankylotyrannus tail.

But, unfortunately, Dino also presented a target.  The other Hork-bajir began to fire their dracons, and Dino roared, as painful charred holes were scorched in her skin.  None of the burning red light actually penetrated her bony armor, at least not yet, but it still hurt like hell.

Estelore had better luck, sweeping their hands from side to side as they blazed forth with stellar fire.  Hork-bajir erupted in flames, and Estelore frowned with worry and guilt, as they considered what was happening to the innocent creatures within.  These Hork-bajir were not programs, as they would have been, back in RAF.  These Hork-bajir were real beings.

But Estelore gritted their teeth in determination.  They had to fight for their friends, and they told themselves that was all that mattered.  Still, their hesitation slowed them down, and allowed the Hork-bajir to press inward, surrounding them.

Phoenix rose up into the air, shooting fireballs at Hork-bajir from above.  They returned fire with their dracons, which Phoenix dodged, but he had to keep moving or else he would be hit.  Whenever he stalled to aim his own projectiles, he became a target.  A lucky shot sizzled past his ear, and he clutched the side of his head in pain.  Instinctively, he rose higher, away from the danger of the fight.

Underseen had taken the form of a Hork-bajir, adding to the confusion.  He'd shifted too quickly for any of them to notice, far quicker than morphing, and so for all they knew one of the RAFians had simply vanished.  Until they noticed the Mark that remained on his wrist, of course, and opened fire on the imposter.  He ducked out of the way, his shoulder sizzling and bubbling from a very near miss.

Noelle and Russell were fighting side by side, their tails flashing, galloping around the Hork-bajir, trying to work together to hem them in.  But the controllers were smarter than that.  They stayed out of the circle formed by the two Andalites.  Noelle and Russell already sported several cuts and burns, the results of trying to press their luck.  Yet, they were making headway against the numbers, and so far none of their injuries were deeper than what they could inflict back against their opponents.

Saffa had run from the battle, needing to get away just long enough to morph to hawk.  She willed the feather patterns to sprout faster from her skin, as she worriedly watched her friends fight.  She wished she had a proper battle morph, but hawk would have to do.

Terenia and Myitt stood back to back, firing their own dracon beams at the Hork-bajir.  They were better marksmen than even most of their opponents were, hitting their targets on almost every shot.  But they were still only two, facing off against dozens.

A dragon swooped down from the sky, circling the battlefield as it dived down upon Hork-bajir who scattered in its wake.  Shock was flying slower than he should have been, though.  He labored through the air, listing slightly to the left, where there was a neat, circular, charred hole in his wing.  Finally, exhausted, he landed with a resounding thud, where he began to claw and bite at the Hork-bajir from the ground.  They quickly pressed in around him, and soon he no longer had the clearance to get back into the air.

Gaz fought with all the supernatural grace of a vampire, her superior reflexes allowing her to dive between and duck around the slicing blades.  She darted in to bite, swiftly draining enough blood to weaken her prey before spinning nimbly away again.  She hesitated to use her own pirate sword, preferring to weaken the innocent Hork-bajir hosts rather than kill them, if she could.  As she fought against one of the alien creatures, her previous opponent slumped to the ground behind her, falling unconscious from blood loss.

Cody unleashed his magic, casting spells left and right.  Hork-bajir were thrown back, crashing through debris.  But they were, slowly but surely, hemming him in, and he couldn't cast quickly enough to force them all back.

Suddenly, Cody heard a hawk's screech, and saw a flash of red feathers.  Two Hork-bajir backed off, clutching at their eyes.  "Thanks Saffa," Cody said, but without pausing his own battle.  He couldn't afford to.

A grizzly bear raged through the Hork-bajir, far more reckless than any of the other RAFians were being.  Rachel had experience in battle, far beyond any of them.  Enough to know that she couldn't afford to get caught in her own thoughts.  She stood on her hind legs as the Hork-bajir pressed in, swinging her mighty paws, disemboweling everything that came within range.

A different bear stood up, copying Rachel's move and roaring his own defiance, as he fought back the wave of enemies.

There was a metallic clanging, as Lumy punched his opponents with his aluminum fists.  He teleported back and forth as he fought, easily keeping himself from being surrounded, and leaving the Hork-bajir quite hopelessly confused.  He let out a laugh as one of them slashed another, having aimed for the spot Lumy had been a second ago, only to hit one of his own comrades.

But more and more Hork-bajir were coming, drawn in by the sounds of battle.  Taxxons, too.  The RAFians' chances, though never good, were getting worse and worse by the moment.

Dino was lying on the ground, weak from the collective blood loss of her many injuries.  The Hork-bajir were staying back from her teeth and her tail, so Dino was returning fire with her own head-mounted dracon.  But, with a red flash of dracon fire, the contraption on her head suddenly sizzled, and was instantly rendered a useless smoking wreck.  Dino winced, as the metal pressed against her face began to hiss from the heat.  She shook her head, flinging the defunct weapon from herself.

Jess was trying to use her powers to heal her, but it wasn't doing much good.  The Ankylotyrannus, even lying down, was too big a target, and it seemed Jess would only heal one wound for another to appear.

In a moment of clarity, some of her strength returned to her by Jess's efforts, Dino stood back up and roared defiance.  <Get out of here, guys!> she yelled.  <NOW!  I can hold them off.  Just GO!>

The RAFians hesitated.  Seal, frozen in shock for only a brief instant, cried out in pain as a blade bit into her back.  Blood stained her white fur, the price she paid for Dino's distraction.

<She's right,> Russell said coldly.  <There's no way, save for a miracle, that all of us are making it out of this.>

"NO!" Jess yelled furiously.  "We are not leaving a RAFian behind!"

Dino, however, wasn't giving them a choice.  After only a moment's fearful hesitation, as she considered what she was doing and what it meant, she lowered her head and went barreling through the chaos.  Drawing every Hork-bajir's attention to herself.  She barely felt their blades and their dracons at this point, barely even noticed she was still being hurt.  Until the edges of her vision began to darken, and her headlong charge began to weave back and forth as her strength faded fast.

A familiar sight began to appear.  Aquilai's TARDIS was slowly flickering into existence, right in the midst of the battle.

"IN!  IN!  IN!" he screamed frantically at the RAFians.

But Dino, weakened from her injuries and her own stupidly reckless charge, was not going to make it.  Her misguided self-sacrifice had been a terrible mistake, and, ultimately, pointless.  She knew that now, as she felt the life draining from her body.  Her consciousness was fading fast, and she slumped to the ground as her vision faded to black.

The last thing she heard, was the metallic sound of the TARDIS, flickering away.  Disappearing.  And taking the last of Dino's chances, with it.

[theyoungphoenix]

Dang. That...that sucks.

[redtailedsaffa]

Nooo!

[Underseen]

We have Rachel who is experienced in battle, but someone needs to heal seal.

[redtailedsaffa]

That's what Jess came along for.

[DinosaurNothlit]

FYI, I'm editing the previous chapter a bit.  *mutters something about forgetting that there was a dragon in the battle*

Chapter Nineteen

"That idiot!" Jess yelled.  Masking her fear and grief behind anger.  "What the hell was she thinking?"  She whirled around to face Russell.

"You," she snarled, spitting the word like she was uttering a curse.  "What the HELL do you think you're doing!"

The moment the TARDIS had landed in the battlefield, Russell had pushed his way on board and brutally shouldered past Aquilai to take control.  It was he, who had forced the rest of them to abandon the battle.

<What needs to be done,> he answered, and even his thought-speak voice was edged with barely controlled grief.  He didn't like this, any more than anyone, but he saw no other choice.  And he'd known, that he was the only one strong enough to make this choice.  <We all know there was no way she was going to make it.>

"We do NOT know that!" Bear screamed through his collar translator, an angry roar accompanying his words.  "We have to go back!"

Gaz shook her head sadly, her head in her hands.  "If it wasn't too late before, it surely is now."

"Well, lucky we happen to have a time machine!" Seal grated.  "We can fix this!"

Aquilai bit his lip.  "No, we can't.  My TARDIS is almost never that accurate.  I can't hit within a split second, which is the kind of timing we would need to save her."

Phoenix took a deep breath, trying to keep his own emotions in check.  "My time machine, then."

"Yours can't fit a dinosaur!" Aquilai shot back.  "What would you do when you got there?"

<We can't just do nothing,> Noelle muttered, her hooves clopping as she paced anxiously back and forth.  <She's our friend, we can't just leave her!>

Rachel stood back, drawing herself away from the group.  Wanting to offer advice, but knowing that it wasn't her place.  She had barely known Dino.  Anything she said, would only fan the flames of the other RAFians' fear and fury.  So she bit her tongue, and wondered to herself what she would have done if it had been Jake or Cassie or Ax.  Or, Tobias.

"Queen won't kill her, though, will she?" Underseen suddenly wondered.

Several RAFians' eyes widened as they realized Underseen was right.  Demos nodded enthusiastically.  "No, you're right, she won't!  She's got a RAFian right where she wants.  No way she's going to just kill her."

A few RAFians shivered with revulsion, as they thought about what Queen would do.  Whatever it was, it would not be pleasant.

But, as long as Dino was still alive, there was hope.

Everybody took a few deep breaths, letting the anger of terror and powerlessness simmer slowly back down to manageable levels.  They were still scared, still worried, and still angry, but they were at least willing to talk about it now.

"Okay, then," Aquilai said with carefully forced calm.  "We should find out where Queen will be keeping Dino, then.  An ego like hers, if she has a captive RAFian, she's going to want her prize to be on display."  He walked up to the control station of the TARDIS, and with a pointed glare at Russell, he began to dial in some coordinates.

"Okay, we're in the air above Dallas right now," Aquilai said when he had finished.  "I'm going to need somebody to open the door and take a look."

Terenia opened the door, and nervously looked outside, careful to keep a few feet back from the edge of the TARDIS, away from that nerve-wracking drop.  The ruins of Dallas looked even more dismal from a few thousand feet in the air.  The land looked like it had been bleached of color.  Everything was the same pale grey.  Nothing was green.

But then, Terenia saw what she was looking for.  A massive trailer truck, hauling a dinosaur bound in chains.  The truck was headed for a complex, where there had already been set up a giant cage strung with wires.  The fenced enclosure looked like it was taken straight from Jurassic Park.  Spotlights were being set up around the cage, glaringly bright, like interrogation lights aimed at a suspect who was not yet there.

"We should probably wait for nightfall," Myitt cautioned.  Not wanting to put any of them in the same situation they had just escaped.  She winced angrily.  "That's what we should have done in the first place.  Hork-bajir with their night vision, this would never have even been a problem."

"What's done is done," Shock said simply.  "Let's just focus on getting Dino out."

"One nighttime, coming right up," Aquilai said quickly, as he turned a knob on his control panel.  The sun accelerated through the sky, and shadows quickly darkened.

"Okay, stop!" Terenia yelled, then gasped.  "Oh, no.  No no no, this is bad."

<What's wrong?> Noelle asked worriedly, pushing forward to take a look for herself.

Dino's cage was empty.  The concrete floor was charred black, and wires were bent outward.  The obvious aftermath of an explosion.

"Terenia, what did you see?" Tony demanded sharply.

"It was too fast," Terenia said frantically.  "I don't know what happened.  But, there was a flash, like a fireball.  One second Dino was there, then she was just, gone.  I don't know, I honestly don't know, if she could have survived that explosion.  Oh, god, those . . . those are dracon marks!"

"Are you sure?" Bear demanded, terrified.

"Yes.  I'm sure," Terenia whispered fearfully.  "I know what dracon burns look like.  Nothing else, could have left those burns.  Oh my god they must have burned her alive!"

"Oh, god," Seal wailed as she looked to see the damaged cage for herself.  "There's nothing left.  There's nothing at all left of her!  We have to go back!  We have to undo this!"

"We can't," Aquilai said sadly.  "Don't you remember what I said?  The TARDIS cannot change the past.  What has happened, must always have happened.  There is nothing we can do."

[DinosaurNothlit]

Chapter Twenty

Dino woke up in a cage, blinking against the glaring lights that surrounded her.  She carefully got to her feet, her body sore from a dozen injuries, her thoughts woozy from a pounding headache, and stumbled towards the wires that stood between her and the outside world.  But, something held her back.  Those wires, there was something familiar and dangerous about them.

Jurassic Park.  The wires would be electrified.  Dino kept her distance.

She already knew how she would escape, the plan unfolding beautifully in her mind.  But, she needed to wait until nightfall.

In the meantime, she realized, she could heal herself.  Her ability to change size was essentially a very limited form of morphing, after all.  It wouldn't heal her after only one change, the way true morphing would have.  But after a few iterations of shrinking and then growing and shrinking and growing, her wounds had healed well enough.

A few hours later, Dino finally decided it was dark enough.  She looked around to be sure she wasn't being watched, but she couldn't really see anything beyond the spotlights of her cage.  Well, it didn't really matter, anyway.

Dino switched to her human form, where her Sario Ripper was still hanging from the holster on her hip.  She quickly raised the fused dual dracon into the air, and, wincing slightly, pulled the trigger.  There was a brilliant firey flash that managed to be blinding even against the bright spotlights, and a crack like thunder magnified tenfold.

Dino shook her head, reeling from the explosion.  She rubbed anxiously at her ear, which was ringing.  When her head cleared, she looked around.  She was in a forest, but the trees looked strange.  Not as tall as they should have been, fatter, rounder.  And the bark was scaly, with crisscrossing diamond patterns.

Dino turned as she heard something buzz, and she spotted a dragonfly, fluttering its wings as it rested against the tree.  She took a startled step back.

It was a moment before she realized that the dragonfly wasn't nearly as close to her as she thought it had been.  She had thought the thing was right in front of her face.  But it had only looked that way, because it was huge.  Its wingspan measured in feet, not inches.

She crossed her fingers, and pressed the white button on her Mark.  "Please tell me this thing somehow works across time," she said worriedly.  There was an agonizing pause, silence on the other end.  For a moment, Dino worried she would be trapped here, unable to contact the other RAFians.

"It does!" Aquilai's voice finally crackled across the other end.  Dino could hear excited shouting in the background.  "The saved timeline links us all across time, so we can communicate no matter when we are.  It's wonderful to hear you, we all thought you were dead.  Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Dino said.  "But I'm pretty sure I'm in the Carboniferous period."

"Give me a minute to get a reading on your signal," Aquilai said.  "You gonna be okay for a few minutes while I try to find you?"

"Oh, yeah," Dino said sardonically.  "Just spiders the size of cats, and six-foot centipedes.  Absolutely nothing to be worried about."

"Six-foot centipedes?" Seal repeated.  "Don't get yourself eaten by a Taxxon, Dino."

"Are you really gonna be okay?" Jess said impatiently.  "Or are you just messing with us?"

"Seriously, guys, I'm not too worried," Dino reassured, calming down a bit as she realized that as far as prehistory went, the Carboniferous probably wasn't too bad.  "There's nothing here that's bigger than a person, no land vertebrates except maybe a few amphibians, certainly nothing an Ankylotyrannus should be worried about.  I'm good."

Moments later, Dino turned around as she heard a familiar metallic noise.  She grinned, as the TARDIS slowly appeared amidst the trees.

She was quickly ushered inside, where she was hugged several times.  She rolled her eyes, but smiled anyway.

But the celebrations were suddenly cut short.  Not by something they could see, or hear.  It was something they could sense.  Something, it seemed, that they were remembering.  The memories felt old, but they hadn't been there before.

It was their Marks, they realized.  Their Marks were allowing them to feel the changes Queen was making, in time.  Their own memories, were changing.  It was a very strange feeling.  Something none of them had ever felt before.

Everworld and Remnants had never been written, that's what they remembered.  The RAFians didn't know why.  Perhaps the ideas had been rejected by Scholastic.  At Queen's behest, of course.

Without those creative distractions, though . . . K.A. Applegate had gone on to focus more attention on Animorphs, in this timeline.  More books had been written, a far more thorough conclusion to the series.  At least a dozen extra books, and an ending that, while still a cliffhanger, nobody had ever complained about.  It was a satisfying ending.  It felt firmly true, and right.  It was, it seemed, the best ending that could have been written.

The RAFians grinned joyously at each other, thoroughly enjoying the knowledge of all these new books that had been suddenly dumped into their brains.  Like they were in grade school all over again, reading the books for the first time.

"Well, that one backfired on her, didn't it?" Bear said, laughing in sheer glee.

But then, his features suddenly darkened.  Across the room, every smile froze, then faded into a look of horror.

The timeline was changing again.  The extra Animorphs books had never been written.  The information, the plots, the writing, were all quickly fading from the RAFians' minds, no matter how they tried to hold onto them.  They were part of a timeline they no longer had any connection to.

"NO!" Phoenix yelled in frustration.  Then frustration turned to terror.  "No, no."

It wasn't just the extra books that had never been written.  Many years before, two authors, who had never really written anything of note, had mysteriously vanished.

Nobody had ever heard, of Animorphs.

[redtailedsaffa]

That's even worse than it is now...

[theyoungphoenix]

Eek!! So does that  mean RAFians exist, outside of time?