Tobias likes Jake well enough, but he has a lot of friends of his own, and they only really know each other because of that time Jake saved his butt from school bullies. Between that embarrassing history and Marco’s barely-concealed dismissal for The New Kid, Tobias is about to bow out from walking home with them. That is, until Jake’s incredibly hot cousin smirks and says, “C’mon, don’t you want a big strong maaaaaan like Jake to protect you from the scary construction site?” He thinks for a second that she’s mocking him, but then he realizes that her smile and raised eyebrows are flirtatious.
Suddenly, walking home with them seems like an excellent idea.
Either Jake or Cassie spots the light in the sky first, but Tobias is the one who blurts out “It’s a flying saucer!” before anyone else has the chance to say anything. He’s not quite right; it’s actually two shapes. Two ships, one far more damaged than the other, careening out of the sky. Jake is yelling about finding the nearest public building to call 911, while Rachel blusters a loud threat at the possible alien invaders and Cassie wonders aloud if anyone has been hurt. One ship slams the other, engines locking together, and they explode on the ground.
The others all dive for cover, but Tobias walks toward the crash site. He’s the one who sees when one of the ships opens, and a figure — blue-furred and muscular, like nothing he’s seen before — stumbles out of the wreck.
<Mertil!> a voice shouts, inside Tobias’s mind. <MERTIL!>
Without thought, without sense, without plan, Tobias is already running forward and shoving aside chunks of wreckage, helping the strange alien search. Moving as one, they drag the second alien out into the dull moonlight of the abandoned construction site.
Cassie gasps sharply at the sight. The second alien’s tail ends in a bloody stump, whereas the first one’s is a beautiful prehensile scythe. The larger alien falls to his knees, pressing both hands to the face of his wounded companion. Tobias isn’t sure how he knows they are whispering tenderly to each other in their strange psychic way, and yet he finds himself certain that an entire silent conversation is happening before his eyes.
<Gafinilan,> Mertil says, in thought-speak they can now hear. <We must.>
<They’re human,> Gafinilan snaps. <Seerow—>
<They’re the only chance this planet has.> Mertil closes his main eyes for a moment, bracing himself. <You don’t have much time left, and I would never survive on this planet alone with no way to morph… no way to defend myself.>
Again, an eternity passes as they stare at each other and say words that are meant for no one but each other. Tobias finds himself looking away, ashamed to be witnessing such an intimate exchange.
At last, the one called Gafinilan shoves to his feet. <So be it,> he snaps. <Humans, come here. I will need one of you to fetch me the Escafil device from inside my ship. We shall do our best to give you as much information as we can, but there is little time. The yeerks will arrive, and they will likely kill me rather than letting me get away. My—> His voice falters. His posture softens as he looks down at Mertil. <My utter fool of a mate has opted to die by my side, and if you allow his sacrifice to go in vain then I swear to haunt you throughout this life and the next.>
They split up, not long after the andalites’ hasty explanations of kandrona and time limits and intergalactic wars get interrupted by the arrival of a different set of aliens. Marco asks the rest of them 500-odd whispered questions about what kind of “Romeo and Juliet and E.T.” insanity is going on here, getting steadily more pissed off with this whole evening when the others can only shrug and tell him to keep moving.
Tobias walks home, mind reeling, still not understanding what on Earth — or off it — just happened. He eases the front door of his house open and sneaks past the living room, where (his stomach clenches) his parents are arguing in harsh whispers.
“He’s the vice principal of the entire school,” Tobias’s dad says sharply. “Almost certainly voluntary, and he’s infested at least Frank Tidwell, maybe half the faculty —”
“We are not just pulling Tobias out of school, Alan.” Loren never uses his full name unless she’s pissed. “Not three months after we moved him across the country with no explanation.”
“And what kind of education is he going to get if he stays?”
Tobias must make some kind of noise, because they both cut off abruptly. “Honey, we thought you were in bed,” Loren says, too bright. She steps into the foyer. And then, frowning, “you okay, kiddo?”
Tobias wonders what she’s reacting to. He might still be pale, or maybe she can see the way his hands are shaking. Trust no one, Gafinilan said, and Mertil had agreed. “I’m fine,” Tobias says. “Just— just tired, I guess.”
Tobias goes to Jake’s the next day. They compare notes, they experiment. Tobias morphs Champ; Jake morphs Homer. They start to think that this thing is for real. Later the following night, Tobias escapes the Yeerk Pool with a couple singed feathers, demorphing in the taxxon tunnel leading away from the cavern with what feels like seconds to spare. Maybe it’s not even seconds. Maybe he’s over. And yet he thinks of home, thinks of his family, and finds another well of desperation he didn’t know he had.
Ever since they moved to California, it seems like Tobias never talks to his parents anymore. It seems like Loren’s always away at the call center downtown, like Al’s late-night phone meetings pile up. It seems like he’s, just a little bit, out of the loop. It’s fine, he tells himself; after all, he has secrets of his own.
Rolling out of bed at 6:00 on a Saturday morning after giving up on sleep, Tobias is surprised to find his dad already sitting at the kitchen table. Al is a programmer for Microsoft, meaning he sets his own hours, and he’s not an early riser by habit. “Couldn’t sleep?” Al asks.
Tobias shrugs, sitting down next to him. The nightmares were different this time, filled with deep water and haunting voices.
After a long silence, Al says, apropos of nothing, “Did I ever tell you I have a younger brother?”
“No,” Tobias says, caught by surprise. He doesn’t really have extended family. Loren’s estranged from her alcoholic brother and eternally judgmental sister, whereas Al just says that he was born outside the U.S. and his parents are still in their home country.
“I’ve never met him in person, only seen videos. But I keep having these dreams, about a kid calling for help, trapped under the ocean inside a Dome shi — inside a dome.” Al takes a meditative sip of his hazelnut dark-roast coffee. “It’s not him, it can’t be, but for some reason it makes me think of him.”
“A voice calling for help?” Tobias realizes he’s shoved back from the table. “From inside a glass dome, under the sea? And you dreamed this?”
“Yeah,” Al says. “Why, something wrong?”
“I just remembered.” Tobias is already glancing toward the sky outside, gauging the flying weather. “I promised Jake I’d help him with a school project. I’ve gotta get over there, make sure…” He trails off, already running for the door.
Tobias loves the chance to explore the inside of the andalite ship thoroughly, in the interim between meeting Ax and escaping the yeerks with him. It’s soothing and harmonious inside in a way that feels homey and familiar to Tobias; he’s sadder than he should be to see it destroyed. The whole way back after the whale saves their butts, Tobias pesters Ax with questions about andalite culture and andalite history and andalite politics. Some part of him feels like he knows Ax already, even upon first meeting him.
The mission is going rapidly off the rails — all six of them cornered by too many hork-bajir, Visser Three recently arrived at the scene and bellowing orders — when there’s a bang. And then a strange silence.
Tobias, flying cover as always, becomes the first one to see what just happened.
Visser Three lifts a hand halfway, eyes wide with confusion. There is a hole in his forehead trickling clear-blue blood. The back of his head is simply gone. One stalk eye droops, falls. His whole body follows, collapsing to the ground. His back hooves twitch once, twice. Then he stiffens and goes still.
Tobias has already swung around, following the trajectory of the shot. The sniper is posed on a low hill, rifle back up and across her shoulder, running hard. With hawk’s eyes Tobias can see it’s a woman, athletic build, a few blond hairs escaping from beneath the silk scarf that otherwise wraps her entire head. She tucks her chin and runs with hard efficiency, gun bouncing against her back and hip even as she braces the strap with one gloved hand.
Several controllers have run forward to try and help Visser Three, but at least four or five others are already charging up the hill in the direction of the fleeing shooter.
<Tobias, Ax, help that sniper!> Jake calls, breathless exhaustion coming through even in his thought-speak. <Everyone else, break their line. Let’s bail.>
Ax leaps clear over the heads of several human-controllers and dives into the woods. He’s already morphing bird as he runs, but the controllers are gaining ground, so Tobias dives after the running woman.
There’s a getaway car waiting for her as she crests the far side of the hill, engine already running, passenger door open. The driver’s face is covered too, sunglasses obscuring what little of his face isn’t blocked by the ski mask. Tobias jerks to a stop, screeching in midair and almost taking a tumble. Frantically he flaps to regain enough altitude to tilt into a dive.
He turns away. Doesn’t follow. Instead, with a scream of challenge, he dives at the front line of controllers. Two catch talons to the scalp, the other three ducking out of the way.
It’s enough; by the time they recover, the getaway car has peeled out with a screech of tires and the familiar roar of a V8. There’s a screeee of damaged metal as a branch scrapes along the driver’s side door, but the driver gets it free and zooms off down the forest road. Ax gets a glimpse of the car as well, but he dives down next to Tobias to harass the line of controllers and there’s no time to talk before they make a getaway of their own.
They convene at Cassie’s barn later that afternoon, the other five all sitting on hay bales to watch as Marco paces and waves his arms. “What was that?” he demands of the ceiling. “What the hell?”
“Disgruntled yeerk,” Cassie suggests. “Or an escaped host?”
“Yeerk hosts don’t escape,” Jake says dully.
“I vote we gang up with this shooter, we kick butts, we take out a few more vissers.” Rachel punches a fist into her palm. “Visser Three is dead, dudes. This is good news.”
“Probably,” Ax says darkly. “Bobabibly. But it all depends which visser takes over in his stead.”
The discussion continues to swirl around Tobias, and he stays silent all the while. He does his best to smile and nod and not get too lost in his own head. But he can’t stop thinking about what he saw with unmistaken hawk eyes.
There have to be thousands of Ford Mustangs in their town, he tells himself. There have to be dozens from 1989. At least a handful of 1989 Ford Mustangs in canary yellow, with convertible tops. And loads of people like The Rolling Stones. It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t possibly mean anything.
He makes his excuses as soon as possible, slipping out of the meeting and riding his bike home. His dad’s Mustang — canary yellow, 1989, Rolling Stones bumper sticker — is sitting in the driveway as always, top pulled up and doors locked for the night. It was probably never taken out. It’s just ridiculous, to think that his volunteer-admin mom could ever fire a gun at someone while his computer-nerd dad drove a getaway car. (Unless, of course, it wasn’t his mom’s will pulling her finger across that trigger…) The silk scarf and sunglasses tossed across the back seat don’t mean anything, other than the fact that you need to protect your face from bugs when driving with the top down.
Tobias knows that he’s lying to himself, even before he sees the long scratch along the driver’s side door.
Just for a second he rests a hand on the hood, wondering if he dares tell anyone — his mom, his dad, his team, his shorm — what he saw. But there are some truths he’d rather not have. After all, Jake said it: if they are controllers, they won’t be escaping any time soon.
Rachel comes home for dinner with Tobias. (She’s no-nonsense. Surely, surely, she would spot it if…) She and Loren draw Tobias into a game of catch in the backyard as Al roasts yak meat with a cabbage slaw and dry sherry marinade. Rachel debates politics with Loren, tells Al outright that Microsoft has a duty to hire more female programmers, and twice compliments them on their “lovely home.” After driving her home (and pretending not to see their kiss goodnight), Al ruffles Tobias’s hair and says, “I like this one. You’re lucky to have her.”
Tobias invites Jake by, on an afternoon when neither one of them has anything else going on and he senses Jake could use the company. (Jake has a controller living in his home. He’d know what one would look like if…) Jake cleans his plate twice, enthusiastically comments on Al’s cooking, and only goes slightly pale upon finding out that the whole thing is a lamb stew with a seaweed base and Moroccan spice mixture. Loren gets into a rousing debate with Jake about designated hitters and interleague play in the MLB that lasts throughout dinner and into the evening. Al and Tobias, both more nerd than jock, settle for watching in awe at the enthusiastic gesticulation and war of pitching statistics. As they walk their bikes outside afterward, gears ticking softly in the quiet of the night, Jake turns to Tobias. “Thanks,” he mumbles, and then, “I wish my family still did stuff like that.”
Cassie spends the entire afternoon and evening at Tobias’s place on the excuse of the Algebra test they both have the following morning. (She’s the most discerning. They wouldn’t be able to hide from her if…) She’s quiet most of the time either of Tobias’s parents is in the room, picking at her kielbasa and bell pepper stew, studiously polite but no more. “Where exactly did your dad say he’s from, again?” she asks Tobias the next day. He tells her briefly what little he knows: his dad’s from a piece of Balkan territory that has changed hands so many times Alan himself doesn’t know what country it is today, and neither of his parents like talking about the past very much. Cassie nods, and visibly considers more than one follow-up question, but then the bell rings and they rush off to their test.
Marco stops by to try out Tobias’s game system. (He’s naturally suspicious, unwilling to let anyone get away with anything if…) Tobias’s parents both disapprove of the Nintendo — both disapprove of what they call “playing at war” — but they caved and got it for him anyway a few years ago. Marco… doesn’t exactly make a good impression. He hits almost immediately on the fact that the call center where Loren works is located directly next door to the car wash they all know is a yeerk pool entrance, goes from there to the fact that Microsoft is loosely affiliated with the Sharing, and spends the rest of dinner brightly asking too-innocent questions about what they do in their spare time and how they feel about maple-and-ginger oatmeal. Al turns against him almost faster than Marco turns against Loren, matching him with suspicious questions about what exactly Peter does for NASA and how Marco came to know Tobias. That night Al stops short of telling Tobias not to invite him back, but only just: he hedges for a while, and finally settles for, “You should invite that Jake Berenson back, next time you have a friend over.”
Tobias sneaks Ax into his home so that Ax can help with his chemistry homework. Ax comes over to Tobias’s place because yeerks might be logging in the woods, and Tobias wants to keep him safe. Tobias encourages Ax to spend the night when he’s sick with yamphut. Ax and Tobias raid Tobias’s fridge constantly, since Al is on a ridiculous quest to eat every food at least once before he dies, and the shelves are always well stocked with obscure vegetables and proteins.
They’re leaning against Tobias’s kitchen counter, sticky-mouthed from where they’re sucking fresh lemon juice through peppermint sticks, the sixth or seventh time Ax has been to the house. “Yes,” Ax is saying, “At the Academy most arisths simply eat at the same time, in the Dome ship’s main area, with no jockeying… Keying? For position, as you say. We have no lunch tables and yet—”
Cli-chak.
Alan is standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Rage distorts his features, clenches his fists around the stock of the rifle. The bullet is chambered, the safety off. The muzzle points straight at Ax’s head.
“Dad!” Tobias slips off the counter. “What the—?”
“Step the hell away from my son, andalite,” Al says through clenched teeth. “And don’t even think about trying to demorph.”
“Okay.” Tobias’s heart is pounding, mind racing through possible morphs. He steps between Ax and his dad, hands up. “Okay, there’s clearly been some kind of misunderstanding…”
“We knew you were using humans.” Alan speaks to Ax, voice still tight with anger. “Seerow’s Kindness be damned, apparently. But we never thought you would sink low enough to recruit children. He’s fourteen years old, you hruthin. Barely three and a half of our years. And you’re using him as cannon fodder. If the Electorate could see how far the war-princes have fallen…”
Ax makes a gesture, holding his hand flat with its back pointing toward Alan, and then moving his arm to his side. It takes Tobias a second to figure out, but he realizes what that same motion would’ve meant if Ax had done with a tail blade: he’s declaring no contest, and that he surrenders without a fight.
“I’d have killed you already if I didn’t care so much about this planet.” Alan doesn’t directly acknowledge Ax’s concession. “Might kill you yet, if I find out you brought Tobias into combat. It’s a crude projectile weapon, this, but it’ll get the job done just fine. In almost twenty years I’ve been on this planet, I’ve had plenty of time to master it.”
Something shifts. Ax blinks several times, drawing himself straight. <Elfangor?> he says, suddenly sounding very young.
Tobias’s dad stiffens, gun barrel lowering to point at the floor. <Aximili?>
Which is how all six Animorphs end up sitting around Tobias’s living room, arguing with his parents. Every time he thinks his life can’t get any weirder…
“No offense,” Rachel says, looking from one of them to the other, “but how do we know you’re not controllers?”
“It’d make a hell of a lot more sense than the story they just told us,” Marco mutters. “Well, except for the part where Tobias is half alien. That practically explains his entire personality.”
“I’m not a controller,” Elfangor says. “Aximili?”
<He’s right,> Ax says. <Alloran’s capture was the single greatest intelligence loss in the history of the andalite species—> Elfangor winces— <So if the yeerks had captured a second andalite, one who knows this planet far better than Alloran ever did and had up-to-date expertise on the workings of the andalite fleet…> Ax tilts his stalk eyes in an andalite shrug.
“If they had, we’d know by now,” Jake finishes. “Mostly in the form of us all being dead already.”
Elfangor smiles. “Precisely.”
The argument continues from there. Loren demands, sharp and angry, that Tobias be taken out of the war. Jake explains with a sad little smile that there are only six morphers on the face of the planet, and they’re it. Without Tobias, the resistance would be only five children without a clue. Loren tells him that that’s not good enough. That she and Elfangor have been fighting the yeerks for over a year now, and she knows this enemy enough to know that there’s no way in hell she’s letting her son continue this fight.
<I’m sorry I tried to shoot you earlier,> Elfangor says in private thought-speak.
Ax glances over at him with a single stalk-eye, and then pretends to focus back on the main conversation. <You were concerned about Tobias,> he answers. <I have killed many controllers for that same concern, so I have no place to judge.>
Talking like this, one conversation whispered in private while another is going on in the same room, is considered terribly rude and childish in andalite culture. Ax knows for a fact that their parents taught Elfangor better than this. But then, Elfangor has always had a reputation for being bad at playing by the rules. Too curious, they used to mutter, too capricious. Not proper warrior material.
<Everyone at home thinks you’re dead,> Ax says reluctantly.
Elfangor is still watching Marco’s extensive rant about how much it sucks being an Animorph in apparent fascination, but his gaze is slightly unfocused. <I know. It’s…> He looks down at his folded hands, and then back up. <It’s better that way, is it not?>
Ax’s hearts stutter unpleasantly. <Because you’re a nothlit.> There are those on the andalite homeworld who consider nothlits no better than vecols, and vecols no better than… Than humans.
<It was at Arbron’s request that Alloran reported him killed in combat, after he was trapped in morph.> Elfangor tilts his head slightly. <I know Mother and Father are, shall we say, more liberal than most. But even so, I think it’d strain their reputation to the limit if people knew I had become a second Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan. Taking Arbron’s way out seemed to be for the best.>
<Arbron-Fraomta-Semiag is still alive?> Ax says, caught off guard. <What happened on that mission?> He knows the official story — that War-Prince Alloran and two arisths were killed while assisting the in the rescue of some aliens taken by the Skrit-Na — but Visser Three’s presence was always an obvious contradiction to that version of events, even before Elfangor decided to come back from the dead.
<If you had actually been paying attention, Aximili,> Elfangor says smugly, <You’d know that Loren just explained how it was we ended up on Earth.>
Ax stiffens in indignation. <You are the one who started it!>
Elfangor breaks into a grin. <Yes I am.>
“I’m sorry,” Marco drawls, “was my horrifying war epic amusing to you?”
“Of course not.” Elfangor gestures to him. “By all means. You were saying?”
Ax suspects that he’s going to like having an older brother.
After Jake and the others have been shooed out the door, nothing gained and nothing resolved, Tobias finds himself alone in the living room with his parents. They still don’t like the idea of him fighting the yeerks, but he also suspects that his dad at least will have to be realistic in the end. For now, however, they’re sitting around the living room, looking in three different directions.
“Soooo…” Tobias breaks the silence at last. “Were you guys planning on telling me? Like, ever?”
Loren and Elfangor glance at each other. The silence expands.
“We hadn’t decided, honestly,” Loren says at last. “If… if it came up, we never planned on lying to you.”
“Yeah, well, in that case your planning sucks. You told me that you two met at a party in college, not…” Tobias gives an incredulous little laugh. “Not on a friggin’ spaceship just south of Jupiter!”
“It was Saturn,” Loren murmurs at almost the same time Elfangor says, “The term ‘south’ is meaningless outside of a localized gravity field.”
Tobias does not dignify either of those comments with a response.
“We wanted to do right by you, and we thought that meant not telling you wild stories.” Elfangor runs a hand through his hair. “We could have insisted all day long that I’m an alien and we’re refugees from an intergalactic war and we only got here because we misused a time machine, but what proof did we have?” He shrugs. “I can no longer morph, we have no alien technology at hand, and mainstream human culture firmly insists that this planet is the sole supporter of life in the universe.”
“We just wanted you to have a normal life,” Loren says softly. “That’s all.”
“Oh, so you were lying to me for my own good. That’s just —” Tobias cuts himself off. “Can I… Can I go to my room? I need some time to process this.”
“Don’t leave the house,” Elfangor says. “Please?”
“Yeah.” Tobias turns away.
“Sweetheart?” Loren’s voice is tentative. “We love you. You know that, right?”
Tobias stops, but he doesn’t turn back around. “Yeah, Mom. Love you guys too.”
The first time, Cassie calls in the middle of the night to report that Visser One has started a mass infestation effort out of a Sharing charity auction. Tobias sneaks out, fights, doesn’t die. He comes home to find both his parents sitting up waiting for him, exhausted and enraged and terribly grave. They ground him. He doesn’t argue.
The second time, he and his friends go rushing out to stop an emergency kandrona shipment meant to disperse the controllers’ presence across the entire west coast. Tobias comes back to find that Loren is sitting on the couch with their phone in hand.
“Next time you disappear,” she says, “I will call the police and report you missing.”
“Great plan, Mom.” Tobias smiles bitterly. “The cops’re ten, maybe fifteen percent controllers? Probably more than that by this point. But go right ahead. Tip them off.”
She opens her mouth to respond, doesn’t find words, and shuts it. Tobias pushes past her to go collapse on his bed upstairs. It’s been a long day.
The third time they need Tobias for a mission, Jake shows up in person. Tobias finds him standing on their front stoop, patiently allowing Elfangor to bar him from entering.
“With all due respect, sir,” Jake is saying, “the way I see it is this. Either we can continue to be a problem for you, and you can continue to be a problem for us… Or we can remember who the real enemy is here.” Jake folds his hands in front of him. “We’ve been fighting the same war at the same time on two different fronts this whole time, and we’ve mostly been getting in each other’s way as a result. I’d rather we work together from now on, because the alternative greatly increases the chances of us all winding up dead or worse.”
“That’s admirable, but this not Tobias’s problem,” Elfangor says sharply. “It’s not his fight.”
Jake takes a deep breath. “Frankly, sir, it’s everyone’s fight at this point. All we have to do to ensure the yeerks win is stay home and let it happen.”
Elfangor doesn’t answer.
“You can continue to try to stop him.” Jake shrugs. “But you understand how morphing works. You know that’ll only inconvenience us, and even then not for long.”
“You…” Elfangor takes a step forward. He glances once at Tobias, but then focuses all his attention to staring Jake in the eye. “You keep him safe. You hear me? You do everything in your power to bring him back alive.”
“I’ll do everything I can.” Jake lifts his chin, meeting Elfangor stare-for-stare. “Even if that means dying in his place. Even if it means letting the yeerks win some, to keep my team alive.”
Elfangor nods. “Very well, Prince Jake. I am holding you to that promise.”
Ax tenses, ready to run, ready to morph, when he registers the figure moving through the driving rain toward him. There’s no reason for a human to be this deep in the woods at this time of night. But then he sees the umbrella, the familiar shape holding it up and dodging between the branches, and lowers his tail. “Come on,” Elfangor calls over the downpour, once he’s close enough. “I have roasted kohlrabi in the slow cooker at home. Better than getting as much worm and mud as grass trying to graze out in this mess.”
The z-space communication system looks questionable — it’s cobbled together out of Peter’s half-remembered equations, Ax’s somewhat outdated training, and parts Elfangor picked up at Radio Shack — but the yeerk and andalite signals coming through the crackly sound system speak to its effectiveness.
<Who is this?> the andalite technical officer demands.
Jake runs a nervous hand through his hair, moistens his lips. “This is Earth,” he says, and then, “this is the resistance.”
<You are illegally transmitting to a protected channel.> The andalite sounds unimpressed. <Identify yourself immediately.>
Jake glances up at Elfangor, who nods once in encouragement. Tobias makes a small go-on motion. “This is War-Prince Jacob-Elijah-Berenson, commander of all resistance forces here on Earth.”
<You are human.> The technical officer’s voice becomes sharp with anger. <But you claim the title of war-prince?>
“Here goes nothing,” Marco mutters.
“Just like we practiced,” Elfangor reminds them in an undertone.
“War-Prince Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad died here on Earth. Before he did, he evoked the ritual of… He called it the ritual of iscalara rusgith, under the emergency protocol of fovharsa,” Jake says, barely hesitating over the unfamiliar words. “He had me swear the oaths of a war-prince: to serve my people, to protect my warriors, to lay down my life for the sake of my honor. And then he placed his tail-blade upon my forehead and…” Now he does let some hesitation come into his voice. Both Elfangor and Ax struggled to explain utzum to Jake, leading him to believe that it’s not the kind of experience easily put into words. “I experienced many of Prince Gafinilan’s memories. As if I had lived them myself. He left me his hirac dilest. A lot of other knowledge, too. Some of which I didn’t even understand myself until later.”
There is silence on the other end. The small group crouched under the flimsy shelter of the pine trees exchanges worried glances. They can all but hear the wheels turning in the technical officer’s mind: Jake has just demonstrated knowledge no human should have. He correctly described the procedure that a dying andalite war-prince would use to pass on his title and his command, bypassing all the usual protocols in case of extreme emergency.
<Very well, Prince Jake,> the technical officer says at last, and Marco pumps a silent fist toward the sky. <Although I would not have thought Prince Gafinilan capable of such a rash decision…> The words sound like they cause him pain. <What is it you require, my prince?>
A slow smile spreads over Jake’s face. Ax and Tobias exchange a nearly solemn high-five.
“First and foremost,” Jake says, “some backup from the andalite fleet would be greatly appreciated.”
ruby-dear archive 