ANIMORPHS #16: THE WARNING

i breathed a sigh of relief. actually, that's just an expression. i had no lungs.

hi hello everyone and welcome back to high school musical: the musical: the series: animorphs weekly. i wish i had something clever or pithy to say, but just like modern democracy, my brain is dissolving faster than i anticipated.

wanna read a book?

NOW IT’LL TAKE MORE THAN THE TRUTH TO SET YOU FREE. . . .

sometimes, the way these taglines relate to this moment in time really freak me out :)

she’s right! last week was a wild whirlwind (both irl and in the animorphs universe) and i’m sure that energy is only going to continue. today, reader, i’m a 4: a vague diagram of how a rhino would hypothetically wear a shirt. what’s most important is that the sleeves are cuffed.

it’s a jake book!

SUMMARY

i typed “Bball24.”

then i typed in my code word, which is a series of letters and numbers.

i moved the mouse and placed the arrow on “sign on.” i clicked the mouse. and i waited while the modem dialed.

that’s right folks!!!!! book 16 we are finally entering the CHAT ROOM PORTION of the ANIMORPHS SERIES are we going to get a catfish episode i’m going to lose it

thank u lord of demons for this delicious meal

that’s how the book starts!!! jake is like, this isn’t my real online name, of course. it’s close, but i have to be careful with that, just like i have to be careful with my real name, because the yeerks can find you anywhere, even online.

hell yeah

jake also tells us that his screenname, Bball24, is because he loves basketball and the most points he ever scored in a game is 24. but none of that matters now, because he’s embroiled in an intergalatic war against parasitic aliens, and basketball has sort of lost its appeal. been there. jake checks his email: one is a chain letter, one’s a conspiracy theory about politics. he deletes both of them. the third is from “cassie98.” it’s very clearly a letter from marco pretending to be cassie. jake responds quickly:

“cassie, you know i like you, too. but i have vowed not to get involved with any girl until my best friend, marco, gets at least one girl to like him. and since we know that’s never going to happen i guess we’ll never get together. signed, jake.”

slam dunk

jake’s about to log off the internet, because he can’t really think of anything else to do while on it, when he gets an idea. what if he just, i don’t know, googles “yeerk?” surely nothing will come up! but of course: there’s exactly one link.

jake summons all the animorphs to a new meeting place: marco’s house. he needs a computer to show them what he found, and since marco’s dad works with computers for a living he’s got the best tech. (best by earth standards, at least; ax doesn’t hesitate to point out that andalites shit better internet connections than the one marco has.) speaking of ax, jake once again refers to his human morph as “disturbingly attractive,” which brings the count up to, like, 38. jake describes rachel’s hair as silky and then says she’s beautiful but you know, not to him, because they’re cousins, which brings that count up to 74.

jake pulls up the yeerk page. it’s got four icons: facts about yeerks, suspected human-yeerks, types of yeerks, and chat about yeerks. marco makes sure that jake disabled his cookies before clicking around on a webpage about yeerks, and we learn that cassie hates technology. a Horse Girl move if i’ve ever heard one. jake clicks on “types of yeerks.” there’s a drawing of a hork-bajir, a drawing of a standard close encounters alien, and then one that looks like a cardassian from deep space nine and a narn from babylon five. ax is like, yes, the close encounters alien looks like a species known as a na. but the others are unknown to me.

it appears the webpage, like everything else on the internet, is a confusing blend of the truth and lies. jake clicks on the “suspected human-yeerks” list. every politician in the country is listed, as well as john tesh, snoop dogg, and all of the spice girls. all of them??? damn. the kids are ready to write it off, but there, nestled among the various spices and the speaker of the house, is assistant principal controller chapman. it could be a coincidence, but he is a controller. there’s nothing on the webpage about the sharing, which seems suspicious, too. is this a trap set by the yeerks, or just an internet weirdo running a blog about yeerks?

regardless, there’s a chat scheduled to start. (was that a thing?? did you have to schedule chats in chatrooms??? i was born in 2002 so i don’t actually know how it worked in the ancient 90s.) marco offers to beef up jake’s security, so they can go into the chatroom safely, but ax is like, why would you do it when i can do it? fair point. he’s an ass about it, as always, but he does make marco’s system hack-proof. and then they’re logging on to chat about yeerks.

jake’s like, if you’ve never seen a computer chat room before, you might be kind of confused! “it’s like a conversation between people who aren’t really listening to each other.” jake, my boy, if only you knew. also, the rules of this chat room are that people can only type ten words at a time. ten! could you imagine if the twitter limit was ten words. what a different universe.

there are a handful of people inside this chat room. their usernames are, in order of appearance: YeerKiller9, GoVikes, Chazz, YrkH8er, Gump8293, CKDsweet, Carlito, MegMom, and Fitey777. the conversation is hectic. govikes thinks you have to chop up a yeerk to make sure it’s dead, yeerkiller9 claims they were infested with a yeerk, chazz wants everyone to get fucking serious, and ckdsweet is like, hey, has anyone heard of this thing called The Sharing? yrkh8er is like, The Sharing is fine! their beach volleyball games are all the rage! chazz, seemingly an expert, disagrees. gump8293 is here because he thinks his dad might be a controller, and everyone ignores him. carlito heard the yeerks need to visit a secret place to eat every so often. megmom identifies “visser” as a rank. it’s a mess. finally, fitey777 shows up with the name of a known yeerk (charles j sofor, the deputy police chief in the capital), and everyone’s like, thank god, fitey777 is here.

the animorphs are unsure what to believe. on one hand, it seems like yrkh8er is probably a controller, trying to gain information. but chazz, megmom, carlito, and fitey seem pretty real. and since two out of the six animorphs have family members who are controllers, gump’s story carries some weight. but it’s hard to know for sure. jake asks ax if he can hack into the mainframe and get the identities of any of the people who seem to know what they’re talking about. ax is unable to hack into web access america via marco’s ancient technology, but that’s not gonna stop them. they could just bust into waa’s main office and get the information from there!

admittedly it’s not the wildest plan they’ve ever had, but it still feels like a really bad idea

and it gets worse

the next chapter opens with the animorphs peacefully milling about the airport! turns out web access america’s main headquarters are 200 miles away, which is way too far to fly, even in morph. but an airplane ride would only take an hour and a half! all the animorphs have to do is morph into flies, chill on the airplane, and hope nothing goes wrong! jake and marco drift through the airport, where the other animorphs are just, milling about, trying not to look suspicious. they explain the plan: a united flight is set to leave in fifteen minutes from gate 19. they’ll morph flies, get on, and get off in the other city and just fucking, i don’t know, go to web access america to hack into their mainframe to get the real life names of some people they met in a yeerk chatroom

tobias is like, ok, how good are fly eyes? how are we gonna find gate 19 once we’re in fly morph? marco’s like, pretty bad. but their sense of smell is great! especially for garbage or poop!

i looked at marco. he looked at me.

“oh puh-leeze,” marco said. “where would we find it? and what would we do with it? hand it to the flight attendant at the gate? tell him, ‘hang onto this for us. we’ll be right back as flies’?”

yes

reader, that is what they do

a couple with a baby emerge from a nearby gate. the baby is screaming and is clearly in need of a diaper change. after a high-stakes version of rock paper scissors, jake goes and gets the newly discarded poopy diaper and puts it in a trashcan near gate 19. and then they go to the bathroom to morph!

of course, airport bathrooms are busy, so the boys have to go two to a stall to change. tobias and jake are in one, marco and ax in another. once tobias and ax have morphed back into their hawk / andalite forms, the fly transformation can begin. they all disrobe and shove their street clothes into a backpack which they just shove behind the toilet (again, what a different fucking world), and then they morph into flies! it’s incredibly grotesque. midmorph, someone starts banging on the stall door. they gotta go, bad. jake and tobias panic, but there’s really nothing they can do. they gotta finish the morph. the stall door swings open, and we get another member of our animorphs anonymous group therapy meetings. (to their credit, tobias and jake did lock the stall door, but this man had to go so bad he reached over the door and unlocked it. don’t ask me how he did it. applegate didn’t tell me.) understandably, the man screams, a serious of increasingly loud “oh no’s” before he slams the door and starts yelling for the cops.

cops can’t help you now!

just before the transformation is complete, jake warns tobias about the fly instincts. right on time, they finish morphing as the stall door swings open again. jake can hear the troubled cries of a man who, by now, has surely shit himself. but the one thing he can’t hear?

tobias

instantly, he, marco, and ax are all screaming for tobias in thought-speak. a few moments later, tobias reaches out. he panicked and let the fly instincts take over, and now, he’s trapped in a toilet bowl. a toilet bowl he cannot get out of, because the non-watery exit is blocked by an ass.

i gotta say, i was not anticipating the sheer amount of literal potty humor this book had to offer

tobias manages to escape via the space between the toilet bowl and the toilet seat, and the animorphs zip off to gate 19. tobias agrees that being a fly is pretty cool (it’s his first time!) once you get past the fact that your body makes you want to throw up. rachel gets a dig in at marco (“marco feels that way in his human body”), marco tells rachel not to hurt him with the “chakram of [her] wit, xena”, and jake is overall confused about the nature of their relationship.

i haven’t figured out if they can’t stand each other but secretly like and admire each other, or if they really just can’t stand each other. i’m not good at understanding subtle human behavior. i kind of rely on cassie for that.

i don’t care who’s the top or who’s the bottom

which one of you understands subtle human behavior and which one of you is responsible for making decisions

the animorphs make it onto the plane and manage to chill for a hot minute. and then salisbury steak gets served. once the food comes out, all the flies are like, fuck yeah, salisbury steak, and all the humans are like, hm, there’s an awful lot of flies on this plane! jake is like, alright everyone, out of first class! let’s go bother the poors! they zip out of first class and head towards the back. jake almost gets swatted, but dodges! another hand, another dodge! another hand! another dodge!

but that one was a trap!

jake gets swatted

my left wing was gone, ripped away. my right wing barely moved. i was blind in my right eye. four of my legs were broken. but by far the worst was that my body, my green-black body, had burst open.

but there was no pain. no pain. just terror.

jesus christ

jake starts to die! jake starts to die and all the other animorphs start freaking out because jake s t a r t s to d i e . he’s floating in and out of consciousness, thinking about cassie and how much he likes her. the other animorphs come and lift him up (he loses a leg along the way) and carry him to the bathroom. they yell at him to morph.

human?

sure. why not?

mood

he morphs! he’s human! just a human boy and his five fly friends, chilling in an airplane bathroom so they can break into web access america’s main building to hack into the mainframe to get the real names of some people they meet on yeerk.com.org/chataboutyeerks

i’m stressed!

the plane lands a few minutes later, and everyone zooms off. jake waits outside the bathroom. cassie’s the first to emerge. she sits next to him and just holds him for awhile. because. you know. he almost died as a fly. his body burst open! rachel heads to the western union to pick up the money she’d previously wired to herself to buy them shoes and clothes, and once everyone’s collected in one place, they discuss the next part of the plan. time to take a bus to downtown to break into waa!! super easy!!

(they take a brief taco bell break and ax sucks up so many hot sauce packets they get kicked out. it has nothing to do with the plot but i loved that little detail so i’m including it here.)

they arrive at the waa building just in time for a tour! no joke! the universe was like, hey, sorry about all that guts business, here’s a well-timed tour bus. the animorphs stick to the back of the group and are guided inside. the first stop is the command center, where all the information about chazz and carlito and fitey777 lives. the only question is: how are the animorphs going to get in? they don’t want to endanger the lives of the seemingly normal people inside the building.

then it popped into my head. “that’s the morph: nice, normal people.”

moral dilemma has entered the chat

cassie, of course, is uncomfortable. marco thinks its immoral but brilliant. ax points out that humans are the animals native to the area, but then marco points out that taking people’s dna without their consent puts the animorphs on a yeerk-like path. everyone turns to jake. he considers it for a moment, but acquieses. it would be weird. there are other ways. ax and marco are the computer kids, so they’ll sneak into the command center. meanwhile, the other animorphs will cause a distraction. nothing life-threatening, but something so fascinating and weird and impossible to ignore that no one will notice what’s going on behind the scenes. sounds like all my coping mechanisms!

marco and ax head for the entrance of the command center. the rest of the animorphs duck into a nearby janitor’s closet. they morph (rachel is a grizzly bear, jake is a tiger, cassie’s a skunk, and tobias is tobias) and then rachel asks the question my sexuality said to my gender identity when i was like, fifteen:

just one slight problem. who’s going to open the door of this closet?

rachel takes matters into her own hands and slams it open with her “one side-of-beef-sized shoulder.” problem solved! they trot their weird little circus out to the large glass windows of the command center. jake roars to get everyone’s attention, and then the show begins.

the show, to be clear, is just them mopping the floor

but it does get everyone’s attention in the command center. all eyes are on them, which means no eyes are on ax and marco, who successfully sneak in amidst the confusion. two security guards come around the corner. one of them simply fucks off at the sight of a grizzly bear and a tiger. the other tries to be brave. cassie steps forward and lifts her tail.

no one, no one, can be brave when he’s been hosed by a skunk.

amen

they scurry away, taking an elevator down to the lobby and demorphing while inside. they meet up with ax and marco and head outside. jake’s like, alright, status report. marco’s like, well, we got the info we needed. also, it was so easy to hack into the system that i decided to check out a few other online usernames. there’s this girl, prtygirl802, who’s been sending me flirty emails. cassie’s like, you spied on a stranger? that’s not very nice.

“yeah, no kidding it wasn’t nice. i found out my online girlfriend prtygirl802 is actually a retired seventy-three-year-old retired postal worker.”

Y I K E S

this is clearly played as a laugh here but y i k e s

someone get chris hanson!!!!

still, that’s not the only big discovery. turns out fitey777, revered yeerk hunter, is actually joe bob fenestre, the billionaire owner of web access america. what are the odds!! also, what is a billionaire doing on a yeerk chatroom? it’d be nice to have a billionaire on your side, but if i’ve learned anything in my time on this earth, it’s that billionaires are never on your side, and we should be dragging them into the streets.

kidding!

anyway

the kids head back to the airport. the entire time, jake is seconds away from losing it. he’s really not looking forward to turning back into a fly, considering last time, his body split open and he lost 3/4 of his limbs. cassie, ever the expert in human emotion, is the only one to notice. she tries to give him an out by suggesting to the others they find a new, fun way to get on the plane, but jake isn’t having it. he’s fine! cassie’s like, haha, okay! come buy me a pretzel!

once the others are out of earshot she’s like what the fuck is your deal

jake’s like, it’s fine! i’m fine. cassie’s like, no, you’re not, and with good reason! you almost died. what is the problem with letting the others in?? jake is like, marco isn’t the only one stunted by the patriarchy! i’m supposed to be the leader, i can’t let the others know i’m afraid! if one of us is afraid, then we’re all gonna be afraid, and we’ll never get anything done. (as an anxious person who only has other friends with anxiety, i can confirm, this does happen.) cassie points out that they don’t morph ants anymore because it fucked all of them up, but especially marco. and they don’t morph termites because of what happened with cassie. what’s the difference here?

cue how to save a life by the fray in three….two….one….and….

“the difference is you all decided i was the leader,” i said. “that’s the difference. a leader may be just as weak or scared or doubtful as anyone else. but he isn’t allowed to show it. people say they want leaders to be just like them, but i don’t think so. people want leaders to act the way people wish they could act themselves. marco and rachel and tobias and ax don’t want me to give them permission to be scared. they want me to help them be brave.”

damn

cassie’s like, i can see the emotional scars forming. but just so you know, even the toughest of leaders have friends they can confide in, people who would never lose faith in them, no matter what. jake wants to cry and/or hug cassie. he does neither. (men!)

the flight home is uneventful. jake gets back to his house to discover big brother tom on the phone, but big brother tom quickly hangs up once jake’s in the room. jake makes food and heads up to his bedroom to mull over what they learned. joe bob fenestre is fitey777. he owns web access america, so he also has access to the information of everyone in the chat room, and whoever made the web page. maybe that’s how he discovered the yeerks. or, the yeerks knew he’d be a powerful ally, and they made him into a controller. jake considers going over to marco’s house to do some recon on joe bob fenestre, but his parents arrive and guilt him into hanging out for dinner. he does his homework on the couch with his dad while they watch a rerun of a Big Fight. dinner is jake’s favorite, salmon, and big brother tom and jake make jokes about the clothes their mom bought at the mall today. dad tells a boring story. it’s heartbreakingly normal. jake thinks about almost dying on the plane, and the time he was almost able to save Real Tom from the yeerk pool. he thinks about how this - a normal, sit down dinner with people he loves - is the whole point of fighting against the yeerks.

but i guess there is always someone out there who thinks life, just plain old boring, sweet, everyday life, isn’t enough. and that’s when the killing starts. in this war it was the yeerks. but there had been an awful lot of wars when it was just human against human.

hey kids could you lighten up back there

jake’s mom is like, hey honey, you’re awfully quiet, are you contemplating the reasons why war is invasively and irreparably destructive? jake’s like, no, mom, i was just thinking about how cool this is. we should eat dinner together more often.

and then jake watches the yeerk inside big brother tom rifle through all of Real Tom’s memories and pull out the exact answer Real Tom would have said, if Real Tom was able to speak and not forever a prisoner in his own body and mind.

i laughed the way i should. and i thought to myself, the day will come, yeerk, when i will tear you out of his head and destroy you for what you’ve done to my family.

woof

the kids meet up in the woods behind cassie’s barn. while jake was ruminating on the necessity of simple joys, marco was back in the chatroom, doing some recon. there are a few different things to discuss. it looks like gump8293 is getting ready to confront his dad about being a controller, oh, and also he’s nine. he lives pretty close - close enough for the animorphs to maybe do something about it. (but like, what? go talk to this nine year old kid and be like, hey don’t tell anyone you saw us but also your dad is essentially dead to you keep your nose to the ground we’re working on it?) yrkh8r might be a controller, and might be named edward cheltingham, except cassie did some research, and there are no edward cheltingham’s in the phone book! so that’s another mystery, though they got an address for him and could potentially go check him out, too. the third thing on the table is joe bob fenestre: if they go directly to the center of all of this, there’s a chance they could get all the answers they need.

the two high-priority decisions are this: go to joe bob fenestre’s house and check him out, or go rescue a nine-year-old from becoming dead or a controller. everyone, of course, looks to jake. tomorrow, he says, they’ll go check on gump. tonight is for checking out the super mega rich.

i sensed i was making a mistake.

aren’t we all!!!

they fly to joe bob fenestre’s house. it’s fucking gigantic. boathouse, stable, inground pool, an observatory, a greenhouse, a forty-car garage, a security building, and of course, the mansion itself. around all of this are armed guards, teams of rottweilers, and an underwater fence. there is, however, an open window near the back. this plan, like all other animorph plans, is being made on the fly. tobias will stay outside and keep watch. once inside the house, half of the animorphs will turn into flies, half will turn into cockroaches, and try to find fenestre and i guess just like, hope he’s monologing about yeerk shit?? fine whatever

rachel heads towards the open window, the others close behind. she soars through, and then, TSAPPPPPPPP! she makes it through the window. she’s inside. but she’s not answering anyone’s calls.

rachel was unconscious.

at least, i hoped she was only unconscious.

t w o near death experiences!!! one for each third of the book!

suddenly alarms start blaring!!! sirens shrieking! men are shouting! cassie flies over the wall, but marco, jake, and ax are struggling with dead air. also, rachel is still inside!! the guards get orders to shoot the birds. fuck! ax gets hit! he starts plummeting to the ground. tobias and cassie manage to catch him, but they’re only able to carry him so far. they drop him in the dog run. rottweilers start racing towards him. jake flies for the rottweiler’s eyes, hoping to buy time for cassie and tobias to rescue ax again. it doesn’t work. cassie and tobias can’t get off the ground with ax, and the rottweilers are closing in. jake makes the call: leave him or they all die. cassie and tobias let go of ax just as the rottweiler approaches. jake and marco manage to escape, and the last thing they see is a rotteweiler holding ax’s limp body in its jowls and a group of men surrounding rachel.

two of us captured. and i was to blame.

should’ve gone for the nine-year-old

the animorphs that are left - tobias, marco, cassie, and jake - land on the roof of a wendy’s a quarter mile away. product placement! immediately they’re arguing. this is some juicy shit. the ratings for this episode are going to be through the roof. no one knows how long they’ve been in morph. jake estimates maybe half an hour. which means ax and rachel have half an hour before they need to demorph. but jake knows that rachel would rather stay an eagle forever than reveal her humanity to a group of controllers. but, tobias points out, staying an eagle might not even be the worst of her problems. the eagle body she’s in might be harmed beyond repair. marco yells at jake about the importance of proper research, cassie points out that ax is at least still alive, and jake starts to have a panic attack.

understandable

he finally admits he doesn’t know what to do. it comes out as a sob, which is a particularly sad detail and also reminds me, once again, that these are literal twelve year olds. marco yells again, cassie comes to jake’s defense, and none of it is helping. half of his brain is racing too fast to follow, the other half is stuck on the fact that he failed as a leader. but one detail does stick out to him: those people weren’t controllers. every time they’ve gone against the yeerks, they’ve used hork-bajir and taxxons. yeerks would have no need for a team of dogs when they’ve got cannibalistic centipedes and walking slap chops.

still, cassie points out, they do have teams of dogs and guns and thick walls and crazy fucking security. jake’s like, you’re right. and we don’t have any morphs that are tough enough to bust through those. but we could. how far are we from the gardens?

THIS BOOK IS NOT SLOWING DOWN FOR A SECOND

what’s also important to note, reader, is that i have no idea what time of day any of this is happening

tobias and jake soar to the gardens. jake is still panicking, but there’s no time to waste. they spot the rhino exhibit from above. there are people at the gardens, so presumably it’s…daytime? jake floats down and lands on the back of a rhino as a falcon. but he’s gotta be human to acquire dna. so, he starts to demorph on the back of a rhino while zoo guests meander around so he can charge through the security gates and take a few bullets to rescue his friends who are both stuck as birds from joe bob fenestre’s house who may or may not be in cahoots with the yeerks. and yesterday he almost died.

he does manage to acquire the dna - while in mid-morph, which is an interesting tidbit that might come in handy in the future - and then he and tobias are racing back to joe bob fenestre’s mansion. jake’s like, did anything happen while we were gone? marco’s like yeah, the clock kept ticking!!! which like, marco, dude, i know you’re worried about your friends, but everyone is stressed out right now so maybe stop coming for jake’s throat for like, two seconds??? rachel is going to be fine probably

cassie also says they realized there’s a band of poison around each door and a bug zapper in each window. joe bob fenestre is paranoid as hell. as all rich people should be. because i am coming for each and every one of them. jake instantly starts demorphing the bird and starts morphin’ the rhino. he’s human for like, two seconds. the time crunch is felt so hard that applegate doesn’t even dive into the normally long and excruciating details of morphing. ax and rachel have about ten minutes. it’s time to see what this horn can do.

the others have to aim him, because rhino eyes are so bad, but jake manages to slam through the first gate and then the first fence. the dogs approach and quickly turn tail. even the armed guards can’t stop him. they bash through the wall of the house (missing the door).

we’re inside, aren’t we? i asked.

yes, tobias answered, sounding tense. and we are out of time.

AAAAAA

they start seraching room by room, but there are almost a hundred rooms in this house and ax and rachel are out of time. they decide to start looking where there are the most guards. tobias flies ahead, and BLAM BLAM! he finds the guards, and their guns. more guards with guns approach from behind. there’s a lot of gunshots. it’s fucking tense. jake can’t climb the stairs as a rhino, so he has to demorph. as he’s shifting out, he finally thinks to reach out to rachel and ax now that they’re inside the house. he manages to connect with ax. he tells ax to demorph, now — even though there are humans watching him. the guards upstairs are still shooting at tobias. marco and cassie are morphing and so is jake. ax is morphing in front of people who might be controllers, and no one knows if rachel is even still alive.

mid-morph, jake starts slugging himself up the stairs. there’s a really grotesque moment where a bullet slides out of his skin as his morph into human completes. tobias has momentarily lost the guards, giving the animorphs a few seconds to regroup. jake calls it (though he’s tired of always having to call it): morph again, combat mode. he tells tobias to try to get in touch with rachel and ax, and if he gets rachel, to get her to demorph, no arguments. once the three of them are in their combat morphs (tiger, gorilla, wolf), they head down the hallway towards the guarded room.

two guards stand outside, both armed. jake reaches out to them in thought-speak and lays it out on the table: he needs to get past them. he doesn’t want to hurt them. he will if he has to. the guards are like, we do not get paid enough for this, and put down their guns. smart! cassie keeps an eye on them, marco opens the door, and jake charges in.

the room is large and dark. the floor seems to be made of soil, and there are scruffy plants sprouting from it. in the center of the room is a pool of liquid both the color and consistency of molten lead. kandrona? beside the pool are two cages: one holding ax, mid-morph, and one holding rachel, still as an eagle. jake can’t detect any movement from either of them. he’s devastated. he’s too late. also in the room is joe bob fenestre, pointing a dracon beam towards ax. marco and cassie and tobias join jake in the room.

but fenestre just kept staring at me.

at last he spoke. “so. not yeerks, after all. i’m to be destroyed by andalites. well, i suppose there is some honor in that, at least.”

jake is like, let them go. joe bob fenestre shrugs. fine, he says, you can take them. killing andalites isn’t my bag. jake’s like, they look dead to me!!! joe bob fenestre is like, what kind of andalite doesn’t recognize bio-stasis when they see it? jake’s mind is racing. what the fuck is joe bob fenestre’s deal? well. turns out that joe bob fenestre is a controller after all. he and his host are on good terms. but that doesn’t explain why the andalites have come for him. joe bob fenestre asks if his brother sent them. everyone’s confused, including me!

jake starts pacing. they need to get more information out of joe bob fenestre, and at least keep him talking long enough to get their friends out of there. jake tells joe bob fenestre that they traced him through the yeerk page. joe bob fenestre starts to laugh - they came all the way out here to see if he was with them or against them. and then he’s like, should i tell you who i am, andalite? would you like to know my name? my yeerk designation is esplin-nine-four-double-six. the double means he is a twin. two yeerks from the same grub. (gross.) when there are twins in the yeerk world, one is the prime, and one the lesser. esplin-nine-four-double-six is the lesser. (clearly.) his brother gets all the best assignments, hosts, ranks, power, glory, etc. and esplin9466 got stuck with joe bob fenestre, a lowly programmer trapped within the bowels of some telephone company. but that wasn’t good enough for esplin9466, so host and yeerk struck a deal to become powerful together. and by using the internet to do so, joe bob fenesplin is privy to the greatest power of all: secrets.

what the fuck is up with men and secrets

they’re always like money is power but power is secrets like chill out you’re essentially running a high-tech burn book you punk poser gross

anyway

turns out joe bob fenesplin’s brother wasn’t pleased with his rising through the ranks. so his brother labeled him a traitor and had him cut off. jake instantly knows, and cassie knows too.

“yes, only one twin can be great,” fenestre said bitterly. “only one of us could be the mighty visser three.”

BOWBOWBOWBOWWWWWWW

the animorphs are like, yeah, we’re familiar. jake’s like, ok, so you got cut off, but you clearly made a replica kandrona. joe bob fenesplin is like, well, uh, no, i u h, i can li ve, uh with out a k androna , u h who cares about that!!! jake keeps pressing. if visser three wanted him dead, he’d be dead. so why isn’t he? joe bob fenesplin is like, well. i know how to survive without kandrona rays. i’ve figured out how to refine kandrona rays from a different source and turn it into an edible product that i can eat with my human mouth.

what is the different source, you ask?

yeerks

the man has to destroy, process, and eat a yeerk every three days to stay alive

reader

how is it possible that i happen to read a book about cannibalism now, in this moment, when cannibalism has risen to the forefront of our cultural consciousness

i am afraid

:)

fear

this explains, of course, why joe bob fenesplin is in the chat rooms. he uses them to hunt down controllers and take their yeerks. marco is ready to give the man a pat on the back, take their friends, and get out of there, but sweet sweet foolish cassie asks a question an andalite would never ask: how is he getting the yeerks from their human hosts?

cassie lunges at joe bob fenesplin. jake intercepts her. they have to get their friends out of here, and they can’t do that if they hurt him. cassie is outraged. he’s preying on innocent people! there’s a moment where jake almost says that he’s destroying yeerks and that should be good enough. he doesn’t, but he doesn’t have to. he thought it. cassie knows. he’s like what do you want me to do? she’s like i want you to kill claudio. (jk) she’s like well, your morph would be better suited. and jake’s like, you want me to kill him for you??

so it is a little like kill claudio, you know

jake turns to joe bob fenesplin. he tells him to release ax and rachel, and makes him a promise: so long as he is inside this house, he’s safe. but if the animorphs ever find him outside these walls, his ass is grass and they’re gonna mow it. joe bob fenesplin knows a weak threat when he hears one, but he lets the others go. ax finishes morphing into his andalite form. rachel, thank god, is still conscious. jake tells her to demorph. she’s too weak to move, so jake tells marco to carry her out. they escape, they all demorph, and regroup outside. rachel asks what happened. was he a controller or not? was he a good guy or a bad guy? jake looks at cassie, and then looks away.

“rachel, i don’t even know which i am anymore.”

jake arrives home. he mumbles his way through dinner and then steps out into the backyard to sit on his old swingset. he stares at the stars and he hates them. the stars are where all of his problems come from. his mom finds him outside and comes to sit beside him. she’s like, you know, if anything was bothering you, you could tell me. he’s like, i know, but it’s nothing. she makes a joke about how he’s finally turning into a teenager, and then she levels with him. being a kid is hard. it’s all the stuff adults have to deal with without experience or perspective. they sit outside together for a while, ruminating on that.

the next day at school, jake doesn’t see cassie anywhere. suddenly, he realizes where she must be. he skips second period and makes his way to the roof, morphing into his falcon and soaring after her. (again, like, in front of assistant principal controller chapman’s salad??? stop morphing at school!)

he finds her at the elementary school. she’s in her wolf morph with a boy around nine years old. the boy gives her a pat on the head and scampers back into class, and jake follows cassie away from the playground. that boy, of course, was gump. cassie came to tell him to stay away from the chatrooms, and also that he can’t trust his dad. she’s crying. so is jake. as two kids who have good relationships with their parents, it’s really hard for them to have to be the ones to break that news to the kid. cassie calls it a filthy, disgusting thing to do. jake’s like, sometimes, to fight evil, you have to do evil.

a few days later, the news reports on a big fire. joe bob fenestre’s billion dollar home burned to the ground. jake did warn him that he was safe only as long as he was in that house. now, it’s impossible for him to do so.

if someone set the fire, there was a long list of suspects. visser three. cassie. one of the others.

me.

i guess you’ll never know.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a week after the fire, jake finds cassie in the barn. he helps her bandage up some animals, and they start speaking again, and then laughing. the others show up, one by one, and they don’t do any morphing, they just help cassie with her chores and make dumb jokes and let rachel complain about cassie’s fashion choices. they’re just kids.

for now.

ROLL CREDITS

REVIEW

5/5. what a fucking wild ride. we started with chatrooms, flew on a plane, broke into the internet, broke into a billionaire’s house, learned that visser three has a twin, and maybe one of the animorphs committed ARSON???????? jesus christ. not to mention the CANNIBAL YEERK i can’t handle this

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• how are you taking care of yourself this week? i got a gay haircut (that’s when a gay like me gets a haircut) and started working on making writing my full-time job. (more on that below.) what about you? you drinking enough water? getting enough to eat? i worry

• which celebrity do you think is a controller?

• do you understand the subtlety of human emotion or can you make decisions?

• is jake anyone’s favorite animorph?

• do you think you’d try to strike a deal with the yeerk in your head?

PREDICTIONS

• charlie’s prediction of an anideath before book 20 (which we are rapidly approaching!! can u believe???)

• matt’s prediction of an animorph love triangle before book 20 (just gonna plug crazy ex-girlfriend, my favorite show i haven’t finished)

that’s all i have for you this week folks!!!! y’all are the best. and i’m gonna let u in on some insider info: next week is my birthday and the official launch of my patreon!!!! if you like the animorphs blog, and you have $5 to spare each month, consider becoming a patron! i’ve got all kinds of tiers for all kinds of needs, and the animorphs blog will remain free, but if u can spare the cash i’d really appreciate it!! i’ll be making a more ~official~ announcement on all my social medias next week (and i’ll be promoting it a bunch) but i wanted y’all to be the first to know. even if you can’t support me financially, sharing the info with folks you know is helpful as well. (also coming soon is a list of freelance services on my website, including editing services and commissions, but that’s for a later post.) anyway!! regardless, i’m glad you’re a part of the anifamily. smooches. see u next week. go drink some water.