Two Hork-Bajir and Visser Three versus Ax and a snake. It was impossible! Doubly impossible with David and his father running around getting in the way.
Fwapp!
Fwapp!
Tail blades sliced the air.
Shwoop! Shwoop! Hork-Bajir wrist and arm blades slashed.
Ax was quickly driven back, desperate, against the far wall. It was a slashing, tail-whipping madness that ripped posters from the walls and lacerated curtains and sent all the little toys and gewgaws on David's desk flying.
I slithered after him, coiling, stretching, coiling,
75 sliding across the floor in pursuit of hooves and the big Hork-Bajir, Tyrannosaurus feet.
Target! A Hork-Bajir ankle!
I reared up, I sighted, I fired!
Fast as an Andalite tail, I launched my diamond head forward through the air, mouth open, fangs down.
Thmph!
Yes! I hit flesh! I sank my needle fangs in, all the way. I felt the venom pumping, pumping, pumping chemical death into the Hork-Bajir's leg.
"Rrrraahhhh!" the Hork-Bajir yelled in pain. He kicked, and I was like the end of a whip! He kicked madly, trying to dislodge me, but I was stuck to him by my fangs.
Back and forth! Whipped forward, whipped back. My head was almost still, glued to the vile Hork-Bajir leg, but the rest of my long body flailed away through the air.
Flail forward! «Aaaahhhh!»
Flail back! «Aaaahhhh!»
And then the Hork-Bajir began to slow down.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
David's father had found his gun. He was in the corner, still cradling his bloody gun hand and firing with the other hand.
I saw three circles appear in my Hork-Bajir's chest and down he went.
76 I disengaged my teeth.
More Hork-Bajir rushing into the cramped room. I remembered Tobias saying a moving van was coming. That would hold a lot of Hork-Bajir.
One big Hork-Bajir stepped on me, not even noticing I was there. A big mistake on his part. I jerked my head forward, quicker than the blink of an eye. This time I bit and released quickly.
Ax was down!
I saw him topple over and I saw Visser Three and two Hork-Bajir close in on him.
And that's when things got really ugly.
"Hhhhrrroooarrrhh!" There was a throaty, hoarse-sounding roar and through the door stepped something even more awesome, more terrifying than a Hork-Bajir warrior. Through the door, bowing her massive head and crunching her huge bulk, came Rachel.
If you were to come across a grizzly bear in the wild, out among the trees, it would look huge. But here, confined inside a bedroom, it was beyond huge. The bear was reared up on its hind legs and its cute little ears were scraping the ceiling. I mean, it scared me, and I knew it was just Rachel in a morph.
You want to know what it's like being a human up against a grizzly bear? Well, you know that "da,da,da,da" commercial for Volkswagen? Anyway, take that Volkswagen and run it head-to-
77 head into an eighteen-wheeler going ninety miles an hour. That's human versus grizzly.
You just have no concept, no concept at all, how powerful a grizzly bear is till you're up close and personal with it.
Hork-Bajir are nasty, tough opponents. But even they did a quick double take when Rachel stepped into the room. And behind her, sliding past her with unnatural grace, like molten steel, came a tiger.
The fight had been rowdy. Now it was going nuclear.
David was going to have a real problem cleaning up his room.
78
David's room started out with the usual four walls.
Within seconds, it had only two.
It was an explosion of wild, insane violence.
A bunch of Hork-Bajir, a grizzly, two humans, a tiger, a real Andalite, an Andalite-Controller, and me, Snake-boy.
SLASH!
ROAR!
«Andalite scum!» Visser Three cried, enraged.
The bed ripped apart. Foam rubber protruded from the gash.
SLASH!
FWAPP!
79 «This time you won't escape, Visser,» Ax said bravely.
Rachel swung one ham-sized paw, hit a Hork-Bajir warrior, and knocked him through the wall. Not into the wall. Through the wall.
«About time you guys showed up!» I said. «We were getting our butts kicked.»
«Is there some reason why you're a snake?» Jake asked.
«Long story,» I said.
Crash! Someone or something went out the window.
I slithered forward, under the feet of the Hork-Bajir. I was looking for Andalite hooves. I was looking for Visser Three. I was going to drain my venom sacs into him.
But down there on the ground, looking up at all these monstrously tall creatures screaming and roaring and slashing and stomping, it wasn't easy.
Suddenly, Jake cut loose. Rachel's grizzly might be scarier to see, but Jake's tiger was amazing to hear.
RRRRROOOOOOOOOWWWWWRRRR!
I mean, the floor jumped from the sound waves. The windows rattled. You could feel the air vibrating.
Then, hooves! Delicate, Andalite hooves. But whose? Ax? Or Visser Three?
80 As I stared through snake's eyes, I saw the hoof changing. Melting. And now growing.
It was Visser Three morphing!
I reared back. I flexed the bones that flared my hood. And I -
A hand reached down and grabbed me behind the neck. It was David.
"Look out, Spawn!" he cried.
«You idiot, put me down!» I roared in thought-speak.
David jumped back, startled, and dropped me. I spun, looking to take my shot. But then -
WHUMPF!
A big Hork-Bajir foot came down on me.
It didn't kill me, but it sure slowed me down. I lay there stunned, gazing up at Visser Three as he morphed.
Visser Three has morphs acquired from dozens of planets and moons spread all across the galaxy. We'd seen some of them. I had never seen this one.
It was as purple as Barney the Dinosaur. But it was not cute. And it didn't look to me like an animal that would sing "I love you, you love me." This purple monster did not have a happy family.
It rose from the body of Visser Three, hunched over beneath the ceiling. It had massive shoulders. Massive enough to make Rachel's
81 grizzly shoulders look puny. It stood on two widely separated feet, each with four thick toes as big around as my thighs.
Its face ... if you could call it a face . . . was in the center of its upper body, so it couldn't turn and look behind itself, only straight forward. Two big eyes blinked from where a guy's chest would be. Weird? Oh, yeah. Definitely weird.
As I watched in horror, the mouth grew, splitting open, a red-rimmed gash across the creature's belly. Serrated teeth and a tongue that lolled out almost like my own snake tongue.
And all of that was bad. But it wasn't as bad as what came next. Because from the shoulders grew four arms, two on each side. The arms started off smooth and muscular at the shoulder. But they became increasingly wrinkly as they went down toward the place where the hands should be. And instead of hands there were bony, deep, deep red points. They looked like, like, I don't know, like really sharp traffic cones. You know those things they put up on the highway to divert traffic? That's what they looked like: sharp cones on the end of the four arms.
The two sides had separated a little: Rachel, Jake, and Ax on one side, bloody, sweaty, gasping, hurt, and mad. And the Hork-Bajir and Visser Three on the other side of the room.
82 Between the two sides were the utterly destroyed remnants of David's bed.
Two of the walls were essentially gone. One wall now opened into a bathroom. David and his father were in there. David's father had his gun, but he was looking wildly from one of us to the other, probably wondering where to shoot. Who were the good guys?
The other battered wall opened onto the master bedroom. Twisted, shattered two-by-fours stuck out here and ther
e. Slabs of Sheetrock were all askew.
I wondered where Tobias and Cassie were. But then I realized I could hear a whole other battle taking place downstairs. They were covering our rear.
Visser Three had completed his morph.
«It's called a Dule Fansa,» he said. «A rather fanciful name, don't you think? Would you like to see what it can do?»
He aimed one traffic cone hand at Ax.
FwooooooOOOMPH!
It shot out like a rocket. The wrinkled skin at the bottom of the arm extended, stretched, zoomed right out! The cone shot toward Ax. Ax dodged but caught a glancing blow that knocked him to his knees. The cone shot right on past Ax, into the one remaining wall, and punched a two-foot hole through it.
83 In the blink of an eye, the cone hand retracted and wrinkled up, ready to fire again.
«Now, let's make this simple,» Visser Three said confidently. «l want the blue box. I will have the blue box. Or all of you will die.»
84
Fact One: There was no way we could let Visser Three have that box.
Fact Two: I didn't even know where the box was.
Fact Three: There were now six Hork-Bajir crammed into the room and the adjoining master bedroom. Plus Visser Three in his powerful morph. More Hork-Bajir downstairs were keeping Cassie and Tobias from helping us.
So Fact Four was: We were not going to win this fight.
«We need to bail,» I said to Jake and Rachel.
«We can't. If we leave, the Yeerks can tear this place apart and find the box,» Jake pointed out.
85 «Where is the stupid box?» Rachel wondered.
I should point out that thought-speak is a little like E-mail. It's only heard by the people you want it to be heard by. Unless you're speaking "in the open," in which case it's like any normal voice and can be heard by anyone within range.
The three of us were talking only to each other. But when the Visser spoke it was for all to hear.
«I'm not a patient Yeerk,» Visser Three said. «I'll have the blue box. And I'll destroy you all. But if I get the blue box now, I may decide to destroy you some other time.»
«Only David knows where the box is,» I pointed out.
«0kay,» Jake said. «Ask him.»
«David,» I said, directing my thought-speak to him. «David, listen to me.»
I saw his frightened eyes darting, looking for the source of the voice. He was in the bathtub. Not a bad place to be, considering the other choices.
«David, listen to me. I'm on your side. We have to rescue that box. So we have to know where it is.»
Visser Three glared at Ax with his chest-mounted eyes. «Brave Andalites,» he mocked. «You'll let me kill these humans rather than give up the box?»
86 "No!" David shouted suddenly. "I have the stupid box. Just let us go. I have the stupid box right here in my backpack, if you want it so bad."
He started to unsling his backpack. And about ten other things happened at once. The Hork-Bajir leaped for him.
His father fired. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! CLICK . . .
Ax whipped his tail toward the Visser's morph.
Rachel muscled forward, trying to grab David or his backpack or both.
The Visser took Ax's tail blade on one pile-driver arm. "Aarrraaawwwggghh!" the Visser screamed as Ax's blade sliced neatly through one arm.
Jake coiled his powerful legs and leaped straight at the Visser, ignoring the Hork-Bajir.
I struck the closest Hork-Bajir leg I could find and emptied my poison sacs into him.
«Rachel! Get that kid outta here!» Jake yelled.
Rachel bellowed, lowered her head, landed on all fours and ran straight at David. Like a train. Like a Mack truck she ran. Straight at him.
Hork-Bajir slashed at her. I shot a glance and saw what she was doing. There was a small bathroom window. She was going to try to shove him through it. Not exactly fun for David, getting
87 rammed through glass and dropped from the second story, but David's alternatives weren't too good.
Rachel ran.
David cowered.
And the Visser fired two massive pile-driver cone hands straight for David.
WHUM-WHUMPH! WHAM! CRUNCH!
The cone hands missed and blew a hole in the outer wall of David's bathroom. In a flash he was swept up by a mountain of bear, shoved through the shattered plaster and glass, and propelled out into the late afternoon air.
I knew Visser Three could not afford to go racing around a subdivision in his alien morph, followed by a dozen Hork-Bajir warriors. But I also knew he was going to take it out on someone. And the someones were me, Ax, and Jake.
WHAM! The pile-driver fist fired at Jake. I felt the breeze from it as it shot past my face. It hit Jake in the flank. He went down hard.
WHAM! The left side fired at Ax. Ax dodged, but just barely. He staggered aside and almost fell through the hole. He was off-balance, teetering. He couldn't hold on, so he turned it into a jump. By the time he hit the ground outside, he was already morphing out of his Andalite body.
«Jake, run!» I yelled.
88 He ran. But his back legs were dragging.
The Hork-Bajir encircled him, slashing, hacking, attacking. And I was helpless!
Then, swift, silent, unexpected, a flash of gray and white burst into the room. A wolf, running low to the ground, teeth bared. Cassie!
She leaped straight onto the back of the closest Hork-Bajir and locked her jaws on the back of his neck.
Jake staggered the last few feet to the hole in the wall and half-jumped, half-fell through it, to land hard and painfully on the grass below.
Cassie undamped her jaws and used the back of the Hork-Bajir to simply spring over him, sail through the wall, and drop gracefully to the ground below.
Everyone was out. Everyone but me and David's father. Two Hork-Bajir had him by the arms. He was yelling. He was crying his son's name, over and over.
"David! David! David!"
I was still there. Visser Three's awful gaze focused on me.
I slithered under the bed, fast as I could. I raised up into strike position, hooked myself over one of the bed slats, and held on, wishing I were a python.
Powerful hands threw the bed back.
89 «Hah-hah! We'll have one Andalite to play with, at least!» Visser Three gloated.
But what they saw on the floor was not me. It was Spawn.
The Hork-Bajir threw a towel over Spawn and gathered him up. They stomped away, down the stairs, carrying what they thought was an Andalite in morph.
I didn't want to think what they'd do to the poor snake. Maybe just hold him, waiting for him to demorph.
But maybe when they realized that wasn't happening, they'd do other things. Visser Three is an evil, vengeful creature.
As for David's father. . . he'd seen too much. There was only one fate for him: Within hours he'd have a Yeerk slug inside his brain.
His life as a free human being was over.
Visser Three stayed behind for a moment, after his Hork-Bajir and their prisoners were gone. Did he sense something wrong? Did he sense that I was still there? I was in plain sight, curled tightly around the upturned bed slat.
I froze. I was so still I could have been dead.
Visser Three demorphed. Back to his stolen Andalite body.
He took one last look around the room.
I wished he'd come closer. Maybe my poison
90 sacs were full again. Maybe I had enough to destroy him.
But he didn't come within range. He morphed into his human form and walked calmly from the room.
91
Police rushed to the scene. We heard their sirens as we were escaping and demorphing. But by the time they got there, my friends were gone. So were the Yeerks.
David's house was practically a hollowed-out shell.
I demorphed to human, then to osprey, and I flew away just as the police came rushing inside.
I spotted my friends down below. They had a
ll demorphed, except for Ax, of course, who had morphed his human form.
They were manhandling David along between them. He was unconscious. I didn't know if the fall had knocked him out or what.
I swooped down and landed in a Dumpster in
92 an alleyway. I demorphed there, away from prying eyes, and climbed out. The others were just reaching the alley.
"Hey," I said, catching their attention. Jake hustled the still-groggy-but-reviving David into the alley.
Rachel and I helped place David gently against the greasy brick wall.
"They took his dad," I said.
«They took his mom, too,» Tobias said, swooping down silently to land on the lip of the Dumpster. «l stayed over the house till everyone was clear. David's mom pulled up just as the Yeerks were pulling out. A Hork-Bajir snatched her up.»
"She'll be a Controller next time anyone sees her," Rachel said. She looked down at David. "Poor kid."
"He has no one to go home to," Cassie said. "Visser Three knows his name, his face, his address. By now he knows what classes he's in at school and where he hangs out. He's marked. If we let him go they'll take him, too. They'll make him a Controller."
I nodded. Then I reached into his backpack and fumbled around till I felt the smooth, hard edges. I withdrew my hand, holding the blue box.
"He hasn't seen any of us," I said. "He can't give us up to the Yeerks. They'll take him, make
93 him a Controller, and he still won't be able to give us up."
«What do you want to do, Marco?» Tobias asked. «Just write this kid off?»
"You have another idea?" I said.
"Harsh," Rachel commented. But I could see she agreed with me.
"There is perhaps one other alternative," Ax said. He was in his weirdly handsome/pretty human morph. He'd created the morph by taking DNA from Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and me. To this day it's weird, looking at him and seeing elements of myself joined with elements of Rachel, Cassie, or Jake.
"What alternative?" Jake asked Ax.
"We have the box," Ax said. "Box. Box-uh. We could use it. The box-uh."
We all stared at him.
"Create a new Animorph?" I asked skeptically.
"Create a new Animorph!" Cassie said enthusiastically.
Jake was nodding. Rachel was thinking about it, looking from Cassie to Jake back to David, zoned out on the ground.