ANIMORPHS #30: THE REUNION

hi hello and welcome BACK to animorphs weekly, the not-so-weekly weekly blog that exists to remind you that time is an ever-changing, unknowable beast, and our puny human words could never come close to understanding what a vast creature it truly is.

also i have depression :/

wanna read a book?

MARCO MUST MAKE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE….

so, reader, in my treasure trove of Not Illegal animorphs pdfs, the cover of my book 30 had a tagline that said “make a change for the better.” i was like, ha ha! clever, applegate, good one! then i went to google image search to snag this handy cover for you all, and every single image of this book cover had this haunting tagline about marco.

(laughs nervously) what the fuck

it’s been a Hot Minute since i’ve sat down to read one of our beloved animorphs books, and i’m afraid that the time away has truly whittled down my tolerance for the absolute bananas bullshit applegate is about to throw our way. but, like the animorphs, i won’t be doing this alone. because you’re here.

right?

it’s a marco book!

SUMMARY

we open with a nightmare. (what’s new.) marco is desperately trying to save his drowning mother from the ocean, and just as he reaches her, an unseen force sucks her under the waves. he’s woken up by his dad, who knows pretty much instantly that marco was dreaming about his mom. sad!

his dad goes to take a shower and marco ruminates on how he got here. yeerks, elfangor, ax, blah blah blah. most importantly: the last time he saw his mom, she was face-down in the ocean, after the animorphs destroyed an underwater yeerk base. a leeran (those psychic frogs) had been swimming towards her, and rachel had seen a submarine escape, but no one knows for sure if marco’s mom survived — or if the yeerk inside her head, otherwise known as visser one, is still in her.

after his dad leaves for work, marco gets ready for school. he walks towards the bus stop — and keeps walking. instead, he hops on a city bus, and heads downtown. he emerges in the Business District, and is immediately thwacked on the back of the head by a briefcase. he’s down! he wipes off the dust and grime and lasers in. the woman who knocked him to the ground is still hurrying forward.

this woman had an appointment with the dirty pavement, courtesy of a well-placed saucony cross trainer.

product placement!

marco scurries after this business woman, determined to send her flying to the ground. he notes she’s wearing a terrible wig and her briefcase is big enough to hold a doberman. he skirts along the edge of the crowd and hides behind a pillar, ready to stick his foot out as soon as she walks by.

i peeked around the pillar to see how close she was to meeting my foot. and then i bit my cheek to stop from screaming.

the woman with the awful blonde hair and the briefcase…

was my mother!

is marco going to kill his mom

i know we’re only six pages in and that’s a really bold question to ask right out the gate but like

what is the ultimate sacrifice

applegate!!!

marco takes a second to assess. his mother is alive, wearing a horrible disguise. why a disguise? is she still a controller? he considers going back to school to grab the others, but decides against it in favor of following his mom. she hustles to Sutherland Tower, the downtown area’s tallest building, and scans a pass to get by the guard’s station. marco’s not an idiot — he’s a kid in a fancy building downtown. there’s no way he’s getting into the building alone!

he plants himself by the revolving door. it spins and spits out an older man. marco calls him dad and takes him by the hand — and starts to acquire his DNA, putting the man (named mr. grant by a sycophant security guard) in a slight trance.

let me make it clear that i had no intention of morphing this man. i just needed him to get me past security and to the elevators.

having an old white guy morph is not a bad idea, tbf

anyway

marco uses mr. grant to get into the elevator and lets go of his hand. the elevator picks up a few people along the way — including marco’s mom. he’s packed into the elevator like crayola crayons, but he’s too far from his mom. if she gets out at the next stop, he’ll lose her!

so he decides to morph in the elevator

i’m too stressed out for this

he starts to morph into the housefly. classic morph! as he does so, nobody notices. it’s weird! no one turns around or even glances around. they all just keep staring ahead. capitalism turns us all into mindless drones :/

the elevator dings. everyone gets out — marco has a near-miss with a woman who catches him mid-morph, but doesn’t register the rat-sized flyboy until marco’s finished morphing. he’s left alone, as a fly, in an elevator with his mom. on the twenty-second floor, she gets out. he rides her briefcase to where she stops just outside the third door on the right side of the hallway.

and then — smartly — he gets the fuck out of there

or at least he tries to

before he can make his great escape, his fly body gets sucked up into an air vent. not wanting to get shredded, marco starts to demorph. he’s trapped inside a dusty air vent, but he isn’t totally sliced into smithereens. now he just has to get out of the air vent. he crawls towards a grate, where light is streaming through. he hits it a few times and tumbles into an empty office. he hears footsteps approaching — and then someone calls out, “mr. grant?”

aw nuts

marco starts to morph mr. grant

of all the morphs we’ve seen thus far, this might be the most haunting for marco. he refers to it as “getting an unwanted glimpse into my own future” and that is — something. he morphs mr. grant just in time for an intern to approach. he asks her to get him some coffee from the starbucks around the corner (insert the intern song from bo burnham’s special inside) and she acquiesces. after she leaves, he scurries out of the office and runs smack into — you guessed it — the real mr. grant.

who faints!

marco hides mr. grant’s body in a closet, steals his clothes, and takes the elevator out of there. i’m sure that will not come back to haunt us later.

he makes it to school! late, but just in time for lunch. assistant principal controller chapman asks marco where he’s been, and he bluffs his way out of trouble. he slinks into the cafeteria. there’s a lot happening around him and inside him.

but my mind wouldn’t stay on any one topic. nothing really mattered, did it? nothing except one extraordinarily complicated, amazingly wonderful fact.

my mother was alive.

alive.

i saw rachel giving me the fish eye from across the room. i mouthed that one word: alive.

evidently rachel doesn’t read lips. she misunderstood what i’d said and responded by mouthing two words i won’t repeat.

what words

let rachel say fuck

we cut to the kids in the barn. he tells them how he skipped school that morning and found his mom — visser one — in disguise downtown. rachel wonders if visser one knocked marco down on purpose, but he reminds her that as far as visser one is concerned, marco is a controller. they spoke on the underwater base. (sad!) speaking of: last time they saw visser one, visser three witnessed the animorphs sparing her life. visser three probably thinks visser one is a traitor—which would explain the disguise. she still needs kandrona rays, she just can’t get caught sipping on ‘em by visser three.

cassie wonders why she’s on earth. it’s gotta be dangerous for her, what with visser three thinking she’s a traitor. but rachel understands: visser one is sticking around so she can take down visser three. once he’s out of the way, she can clear her name to those working even above them.

plus, it’s kind of good news for the animorphs. two vissers at each other’s throats are a lot easier to handle than two vissers united.

jake is all about action. first step: find out what’s in the office. they conclude that cockroach morph will be best—heavy enough to not get sucked into the ventilation system, wily enough to get around (hopefully) unnoticed. it needs to happen asap, but rachel, jake, and cassie all have family obligations.

ax and i are available, tobias said. no families, no homes, nothing to do but watch the owls eat my mice. ax-man and i will handle this.

dark!

marco, of course, insists on going, too. cassie tries to offer him an out in the form of his dad, but marco’s like, nah he’s so busy! he’s working twelve hours a day on a big project! he won’t even notice i’m gone!

d a r k

ax, of course, isn’t here to beat around the bush. he’s like, well, it will be complicated by your relationship to visser one’s host body. marco’s like, well, yeah obviously that’s why i want to be there. but i haven’t given us away before and i’m not going to do it now.

jake sighed. “okay, marco, ax, and tobias. tonight.” he looked at me. “don’t do anything foolish. it’s reconnaissance only.”

i nodded.

“and if it comes to a judgment call, tobias makes the call.”

makes sense!

then jake grabs marco by the arm and hauls him outside so they can have a private conversation. jake points out that marco kept some details to himself about his big day out, and marco admits that yeah, he kept some stuff that jake probably doesn’t want to know about. and then jake folds his arms and levels marco with the cool gaze of not a fellow kid, but a “battle commander.”

“marco, you’re my best friend. but if you ever go off like that again you and i will have serious problems.”

in the old days, i’d have said “bite me” or something equally brilliant.

now i said, “okay. undersood.”

yeah remember last book when jake DIED

it has been really fascinating to watch the trajectory of all of their character arcs. jake’s is the clearest, i think, mostly because it is straight-forward: he has to lead, so leader he has become. and he’s getting more and more comfortable in his role! AND if anyone understands the very specific emotion marco is experiencing in relation to his mom and visser one, it’s jake. he has to eat dinner with big brother tom all the time. his brother was his hero, and now he’s the enemy. and even that empathy doesn’t stop jake from calling marco out on his shit.

i just love these little rascals

that night, marco, tobias, and ax fly to sutherland tower. they morph roach. i can’t even get into the descriptions. roaches and i are Not Friends. just know that it’s absolutely horrifying and not made any better by the fact that tobias is morphing from hawk and ax from andalite. it’s all bad. bad. i hate roaches

but i love our boys

the three of them head inside.

(i just gotta pause here and say the dynamic between the three of them is so fucking funny to me. tobias, ax, and marco? have they Ever hung out alone before?)

there’s a zillion stairs to get down before they’re even in the building proper, so marco suggests an absolutely wild option: what if they just slid down the banister?

because not one of them has a single self-preservation brain cell, they do it. they fucking FLY down the banister like olympic skiiers. it’s a rush. they survive! roaches are Impossible to kill.

>:(

they scurry into the hallway of the 22nd floor. ahead, there’s a door with a little light coming out from underneath it. a man steps out, muttering about the IRS, and then he’s gone to the elevators. the roaches scuttle forward. marco reminds himself he cannot think about visser one as his mom — it’s important that he keep that distinction clear in his mind. visser one is their enemy.

they reach the office door that marco watched visser one approach earlier that day. there’s an impenetrable seal all the way around it, so they have to climb through the air vents. they make it into the office, which, on the inside, is not an office.

ax briefly explains hologram paint: a person can paint a window, and project a hologram on the back, to disguise the room to those outside. i don’t know if this is relevant information, but just in case: that’s what the visser has done. through any outside windows, this room appears to just be an office. but on the inside…

in the corner of the room is a portable yeerk pool, with the large briefcase nearby. on the edge of the pool was a large clamp, collar-like in shape and function. and inside that clamp is marco’s mom. the clamp holds her head sideways, so her ear is pressed into the water, while the rest of her body just sort of awkwardly slumps. ax hisses: the yeerk is feeding.

which means right now, marco’s mom is just marco’s mom.

he takes a step towards her. before he can get to his second, ax has his tail against marco’s throat. he tells marco the obvious: visser one will slurp back into his mom’s head before he can even consider getting the locks off of her. her head is turned away from them, so she can’t see him. tobias is like, look dude, i get it—but this isn’t the time. and they’re right. and marco knows it.

it made sense. it was the cold and calculated thing to do.

i wiped my hand over my face. it came away wet.

:(

to distract himself, marco looks at everything else in the room. there’s surveillance equipment with photos of the free hork-bajir colony. a few dracon weapons, a portable yeerk pool, and two emergency kandrona particle generators. “one use each,” ax helpfully explains. she’s got six days to do whatever it is she’s here to do.

marco’s mom hisses “rot in hell,” which 1) metal and 2) yikes! she’s gotta be talking to the yeerk, which means its started to slither back into her brain. then the room starts to tremble. the boys dart into the connected bathroom. chaos ensues. the door to the office gets battered down by a handful of hork-bajirs, sent to kill visser one by visser three. marco can’t stand by and let his mom be murdered, despite jake’s orders to not get involved.

“blame me,” i muttered.

we will, tobias said with a laugh.

marco morphs gorilla and opens the bathroom door. visser one is crouched behind a surveillance console, shooting. there’s a scuffle between the hork-bajir, the animorphs, and visser one. visser one tries to shoot marco—she doesn’t take help from andalites!!—and scurries into the bathroom. ax does some major damage to the hork-bajir forces and sends them running. visser one re-emerges from the bathroom and starts shooting at the animorphs again. marco tackles her to the ground, disarms her, and then hoists her up into a gentle armlock.

we save your regrettable life and you try to kill us, ax sneered. you are a perfect representative of your species.

“so why don’t you kill me?” visser one spat. “arrogant andalite filth! why don’t you kill me now?”

as you wish, ax said, nodding to me. for my part i say: kill her.

this is an incredible season three opener

ax immediately private thought-speaks to tobias and marco to assure them he’s only being dramatic, just trying to frighten the yeerk. marco’s like, yeah i can’t really hold my mom for too long the emotional turmoil is starting to take a toll. tobias confirms she’s not carrying anymore concealed weapons, and marco releases her. (he also knocks her wig off, an incredibly funny decision.)

they get down to brass tacks, a phrase i’ve never understood and always loved. there is a gashad on visser three: a warrant to kill her on sight. she’s a dead woman walking — unless she can discredit visser three. the animorphs would be down to help with that, of course. they want visser three dead as much as visser one.

her dark eyes glittered. “you help me destroy visser three, then you destroy me. is that the plan?”

yes, i said bluntly.

gina torres would crush this scene

visser one explains: after the destruction of the underwater base, she was demoted to sub-visser. visser three told everyone she was a traitor, the council of thirteen believed him and issued the gashad. her plan is to reveal the free hork-bajir colony to the council, as proof of visser three’s incompetence and traitor…traitordom? traitorship? whatever he’s a traitor

marco smashes the portable kandrona. visser one respects the move. she turns to ax. he’s honor-bound to kill visser three, to avenge elfangor. she can help. for a price. a trade: the free hork-bajir in exchange for visser three.

a moment of silence. the boys confer in their private thought-speak office. marco’s down to make a deal — obviously, they’ll figure out a way to keep the hork-bajir safe. but the yeerks think the andalites are ruthless, so they might as well keep up the ruse. tobias is like, look, even if we do kill visser three, visser one is just going to replace him. and we’re going to have to kill visser one, too. no matter what host body.

marco understands. he also understands that jake left the decision-making power in tobias’s wings. tobias calls it: make the deal.

they reach an agreement. the andalite bandits will hand over the hork-bajir after ax has killed visser three. visser one says all the andalite bandits will need to be present for the killing of the hork-bajir, and ax agrees. they don’t know what the visser is planning, but there’s no way she’s working alone. she gives them an email (lmao) to contact her when they’re ready. and then she really studies them.

then she narrowed her eyes and looked at us, each, one after the other. “one of you does almost all the talking. two of you stay in morph. visser three is a fool. he has overlooked something strange about your group of rebels. he has missed something.”

she grinned a savage grin. “but don’t worry. when i am returned to power i will figure it out. and then…” she made a gun hand, pointed it at my head, and said, “and then … TSEEEW!”

the mommy issues are SKYROCKETING could you IMAGINE your MOTHER doing this to you

not to get too personal on this blog where i’ve told you literally every thought running through my mind, but: this is kind of what it’s like to grow up with an alcoholic parent. i don’t know if this is applegate’s intention (who knows what’s going on in her brilliant brain), but that’s how i’m relating to it, because marco is my comfort character and i project onto him

anyway

what a fucking wild moment there’s gonna be so many gifs of gina torres doing that gun thing

the three animorphs leave. as they fly away, four helicopters approach the building, most certainly filled with hork-bajir sent by visser three. the boys fly in silence until tobias speaks. he’s like, well, marco, i hope you’ve got a really good plan. marco’s like yeah, i do. we kill visser three and visser one.

tobias gently probes. is marco really cool with setting up his mom? he doesn’t have to prove anything, everyone sort of understands how shitty the situation is.

it’s not about proving anything. it’s about winning this stupid war.

they’re just kids

ax wants to tell jake, but marco points out it’s the middle of the night and big brother tom is always there. they’ll talk to jake tomorrow. tonight, they act. tobias is clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation. marco tries not to take it personally. he knows the others doubt him. but he sees a way to destroy both vissers.

people don’t understand the word ruthless. they think it means “mean.” it’s not about being mean. it’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from a to b. the line that goes from motive to means. beginning to end.

it’s about seeing that bright, clear light and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.

that’s what had happened. i saw the way to take both vissers down. and that’s all that mattered. but i wasn’t going to explain all that. other people’s pity just messes with the straight line. other people’s pity makes you think things you can’t think about when you are seeing the line.

they’re all just being polished into little soldiers. grief can turn us very, very cold.

marco says they’re gonna need a morph native to the mountaintops where the hork-bajir live. so they’ll need to see cassie. tobias is like it…is the middle of the night. marco’s like yeah, but cassie doesn’t live with a controller. ax is quick to point out that they don’t really know that for sure — a horrifying thought. marco’s like, if you don’t want to come with, you don’t have to. i’ll do it alone.

but of course, he knows they’ll come along.

you’re a jerk, marco, tobias said.

yeah, i love you too, i said.

aw

they fly to cassie’s house. tobias accidentally breaks her window trying to wake her up. she thinks it’s jake — disappointed. marco is quick to the point: they need a morph for traveling in the mountains, something that can climb and kick ass. she huffs, but acquiesces. they’ll need a mountain goat. sharp horns, agile, good at kickin’ and climbin’. marco’s like okay great where do we get one. cassie turns to tobias. is he okay?

marco’s like, uh hello i’m right here!!! cassie literally goes, okay. are you okay? “you seem jazzed. manic.”

i said a harsh word.

let the animorphs say fuck!!!

cassie goes quiet for a moment. marco thinks maybe ax or tobias or both are speaking to her in private thought-speak. but finally, she tells him the gardens has a newish mountainside habitat. they’ll be able to reach the mountain goats just fine. marco flies away. ax and tobias follow in silence.

they make it to the gardens and the mountain goat exhibit. they decide to try to acquire one that’s sleeping, because the goats that are awake look tough as hell. marco’s like what do i do if it wakes up??? tobias says, in the absolute snippiest tone, “this is your little picnic, you tell me.” marco’s like ok look i get ur worried about jake being mad but can we please be friends

tobias laughs and is like ok ok you’re right good point. i’m done pouting. unless i get kicked by a goat. then i will pout.

friendship!

they acquire the mountain goat. as they turn to leave, all the other mountain goats settle in along the ledge. tobias flies, ax jumps, and marco gets horned in the butt. he flies down a fifteen-foot-cliff. he’s fine!

we cut to marco laying in bed. he knows he needs to sleep, but he just keeps imagining conversations. talking to jake, talking to his dad, talking to his mom, talking to visser one. explaining why he did what he did. there’s no other way. he has to be cold to survive. he has to be cold to win the war.

he’s just a kid and life is a nightmare

the next morning, they all meet in the barn. marco explains the plan, which will end with the vissers dead and the hork-bajir colony safer than before. everyone’s pretty quiet. even rachel, who normally has a biting remark for everything marco says, seems to be contemplating what he’s offering. cassie, of course, is like, look, we will try to help your mom if we can.

“she’s only one person.” i shrugged her hand off and stood up. “and we’re supposed to be saving the world, right?”

it was one of the lines i’d practiced the night before. it sounded more bitter and less cool and calm and in control than i wanted.

jake agrees. marco will call the plays. he stresses how important the timing is — visser one can’t have a chance to hesitate. they need to get in touch with ancient erek. marco keeps referring to visser one as visser one, and then cassie has an outburst. she’s like, that’s your MOM! that’s your mom! you can’t just keep calling her visser one! jake’s like, not the time, cass. she asks when the time is and accuses marco of being in denial. it gets real quiet in the barn. and then jake tells marco to continue.

does cassie have a point? absolutely. is now the time to talk about it? definitely not.

marco continues. they’ll need to play up the arrogant andalite thing to keep visser one focused on hating the andalites. there’s a good bit of banter here where tobias is like i hang out with ax the most, i think i can do arrogant andalite. ax is like >:( and then two seconds later is grumbling about primitive human technology. classic ax

marco sends an email, and the plan is set in motion. he and tobias fly to a parking lot outside an ace hardware. visser one rolls into the parking lot in an audi (nice). tobias starts to play the role of arrogant andalite and gives her thought-speak instructions. she bumps into assistant principal controller chapman on his daily run. (applegate specifices he’s wearing a lime-green and yellow jogging outfit which is so hideous and so assistant principal.) once contact has been made, assistant principal controller chapman books it to the nearest pay phone, presumably to call visser three. tobias tells visser one to get on the bus and ride to the jc penneys.

the product placement of it all!

once at the mall, marco and tobias meet up with jake. a quick confirmation: rachel and cassie are in place. ax will be at the mountain soon, and they’re pretty confident ancient erek will be there on schedule.

one of the things i love about ya books — rick riordan does this a lot in the percy jackson books, too — is that the plan is never laid out for us. we get it in bits and pieces. i just think it’s neat! innovative storytelling to keep kids guessing and involved!

tobias leaves jake and marco to phase two. marco demorphs into human and grabs some clothes from the old navy dumpster, and jake morphs fly. they follow visser one into the jc penney, and jake takes over the role of arrogant andalite. doing an incredible ax impression, he tells her to buy a scarf and some gloves and also she’s being followed by like, four human controllers so if she wants to survive she better follow instructions.

visser one storms into Scarves, Gloves, and Hats. rachel is nearby, “her hair in two dorky braids and a goofy fisherman’s cap low on her head,” or as i like to call it, kelsi-from-high-school-musical-core. visser one grabs a scarf and some gloves and pays for them, and then a plainclothes cop approaches her.

the kind of guy who always seems to end up following me through a store.

racism!

the plainclothes cop is clearly a controller, trying to get visser one out of the store. she reaches for her dracon beam, he reaches for his dracon beam, and then rachel steps in. in a high nasally voice (someone nominate this girl for a jimmy), she’s like, I SAW THIS LADY BUY THIS SCARF WHAT KIND OF ESTABLISHMENT IS THIS IF A LADY CAN’T BUY A SCARF WITHOUT GETTING HARRASSED, HUH?

well that draws enough attention that the plainclothes controller cop backs off. rachel drags marco through the dressing room and out into the back hallways. they make it to the camping store, where cassie guides visser one through buying climbing rope and pitons.

are they ,,,, , , , gonna make her ,, ,, , , fall off a cliff?

yoinks

anyway rachel and marco drift through the store, keeping an eye on visser one — and all the people also keeping an eye on visser one. rachel’s like, well, you wanted to make sure she was being followed, and hot damn is she. i hope you know what you’re doing.

marco’s like, me too!

we cut to visser one in her audi driving towards the mountains. the animorphs are all roaches, under her seat, still unseen by visser one. in order to put visser one off her guard, cassie is taking point on communication, to try to get visser one to see them as allies. great plan! they talk briefly about where they’re going. cassie tells visser one the andalite bandits know visser one’s troops are coming as back-up. visser three is dangerous. cassie lies and says that visser three has killed a lot of andalite bandits.

a lie, of course. but it sounded real enough. visser one would latch on to the information. she would think we were fools for revealing it.

we wanted her to think us fools.

but then, the animorphs slip up.

visser one asks if they think she will be more gentle when she’s in power. cassie says no — she’ll be weaker. humans are easier to kill than andalites. visser one is like, hm, true. but why, then, do none of the casualty reports list human-controller deaths? why only hork-bajir and taxxons?

cassie hesitates. no one else knows what to say, and the opportunity to respond slips through their fingers.

“well, well, well,” visser one said.

only a human would spare a human life.

the stakes jump infinitely higher. before, visser one needed to go down because she was the enemy. now she needs to go down because she’s the enemy and she’s figured out their greatest secret.

she’s also apparently a crazy fucking driver! rachel asks marco if his mom always drove this way. he admits the truth: yeah, she was.

yeah? now i know where you get your driving skills.

rachel, being nice. i laughed to myself. when rachel started being nice it meant things were really bad.

finally, they reach their destination. visser one gets out, and jake tells her to unpack her items and start along the main trail. once she’s gone, rachel demorphs and remorphs into bald eagle, soaring off to meet up with tobias. marco, jake, and cassie start to demorph as well. straight to bird morphs, jake instructs. one at a time, cassie reminds them. marco heads out first. as he flaps up into the air, a black limousine pulls into the parking lot.

SOUND THE ALARMS / FINISH UR DRINKS

VISSER THREE HAS ARRIVED

a hand shoots out of the window of the limo. with INCREDIBLE precision, a dracon beam disintegrates the front of the car. and then:

Ka-BOOM!

a fireball exploded from the audi’s gas tank. the entire car, what was left of it, erupted upward, spun halfway on its axis, and landed on the gravel.

it was a charred shell before it hit the ground.

marco calls out for jake and cassie. no response. he tries to call out to rachel, but she’s too far ahead. and then everyone’s pouring out of the limo and the SUV’s that have pulled up behind it. they kill a park ranger. visser three’s in human morph. he gives the order: kill the bird.

marco starts dodging dracon beams left and right. after a few near-misses, he zips off into the trees. panic sets in. jake! cassie! the charred metal that was once an audi! he tries to focus, but all he can think about is how fucked everything feels. he’d been so focused on visser one, he’d forgotten about visser three. and now, he’s led his mom directly into a trap, and probably gotten two of his friends killed. unless he gets his shit together. he thinks of the next steps: tobias, rachel. ax. if ax and ancient erek have done their jobs, the plan could still work.

only one thing needed to be changed: i would have to play the part of jake.

how many times do you have to believe your friends are dead before it loses its shock? it probably never does, huh? they are twelve

he soars ahead, passing over visser one. she’s still hustling, so he does, too. he pulls up to a campsite where ax has cleared out the campers. no innocent bystanders need to get hurt. (this sends him into another near-tailspin, of course. lots of innocent bystanders have gotten hurt.) he flies up. he can’t see his friends down below, just his mother, hiking. far below, back at the trailhead, visser three’s troops surround him as he moves swiftly up the trail.

but there’s a man, camo jacket and jeans with a hat covering most of his red hair, moving faster than the troops. he makes marco nervous.

me too! what’s ur deal, redhead?

he circles back to the campsite, landing in the trees. there, he finds tobias and rachel, both in hork-bajir morph. rachel asks about jake and cassie.

i couldn’t. couldn’t say it.

marco!

visser three. he got them.

what? tobias cried. captured?

no. no. i don’t think so.

a moment of silence. marco knows his friends. rachel wants action. tobias, in the face of so much sadness, will retreat from his human side. and what can marco say to them? he’s not a leader, not like jake. he has to stay focused on the plan. or else.

visser one reaches the clearing. rachel and tobias approach her, playing their parts as free hork-bajir. marco spots redhead in the bushes, holding a dracon beam in what looks like self-defense. visser one asks the hork-bajir to take her to the colony. tobias points to a high rock summit. the colony, he says, is up there. visser one understands. they begin the ascent.

it will take hours to climb the rock face. rachel and tobias will have to dip out to demorph and remorph. it wouldn’t be too much of a problem if ax was around (he acquired the same hork-bajir dna as rachel), but…ax is nowhere to be seen. on the ground, visser three’s forces only grow in numbers, and redhead has already made it back to visser one, to report what he saw. simply put, shit’s not going well.

rachel starts to berate marco over thought-speak — the plan is a failure, they should just shove visser one off the trail and be done with it, etc — but tobias cuts in. he tells her to lay off. he trusts marco. aw

still, though, marco knows rachel has a point. the plan is falling apart. and where the fuck is ax?

marco needs to morph out of osprey soon, but first, he decides to check in on visser three and his troops. assistant principal controller chapman, presumably still in his highlighter running outfit, suggests just killing visser one. visser three is like, you short-sighted fool! she will lead us right to the hork-bajir! then visser three decides to ditch the slow-walkers. he starts to morph into a huge, crab-like creature, with two front claws, four back legs that end in barbed spikes, and also it has the camouflage ability of a chameleon. visser three turns nearly invisible, and marco nearly shits himself.

he flies to a high point and demorphs. before he can get too down in the dumps about his plan falling to pieces in front of his eyes, ax appears! he’s like marco your shit is everywhere please pull it together the taxxons and hork-bajir will be here soon. marco starts to morph into mountain goat while ax rattles on about how the numerous troops visser three brought put the animorphs into a bad situation. they need reinforcements.

“you know some private army you can call, cause if you do, now would be the time!” i yelled.

it was sarcastic. i didn’t expect him to take me seriously. but before i could object, ax had caught the breeze and was heading downhill, letting gravity get him speed.

insane! i’d found ax and lost him within a minute!

bye ax

marco morphs into the mountain goat. it is as horrific as all other morphs, and then it’s over. marco wants to jump! he leaps up the mountain with the nimble grace of, well, a mountain goat. he passes visser one and his friends. rachel calls out to him in thought-speak to wish him good luck. he says, “no problem-o, xena.”

friendship: fighting one minute, using old nicknames the next.

marco waits at the top of the mountain for rachel, tobias, and visser one to finish the climb. visser one emerges first, exhausted but triumphant. she sees the mountain goat and asks if he’s an andalite. marco affirms. he has to be careful — this was supposed to be jake’s role. marco wasn’t supposed to risk his visser one recognizing his voice from his mother’s memories, but as far as we know jake is for real dead this time, so. we work with what we’ve got.

visser one’s like, where’s the hork-bajir colony? all i see is scraggly rocks.

erek, i said privately. i hope you’re here, dude. then, in open thought-speak, not to get all prince of egypt on you, but…behold!

marco

his downfall will also be my downfall i could never resist a prince of egypt reference

ancient erek plays his part, displaying a huge hologram of a hork-bajir colony, complete with kid hork-bajirs playing tag and adult hork-bajirs stripping bark. it’s excellent work. but visser one is not one to be distracted by beautiful holograms. she approaches marco.

“i know you, don’t i?”

i am an andalite warrior. that’s all you need to know.

“no. andalites don’t make jokes. let alone human popular culture references. no, you’re a human. and…” she searched her memory, rolling her eyes up. “someone i knew, once. long ago, maybe. but someone i knew.”

as a person with mommy issues, this is devastating

could u imagine ur mom being like, i think i know you. or i did, once.

anyway

marco freezes. he knows he’s fucked up, and selfishly. he just wanted to hear his mom say his name, even if it was really the visser.

it’s okay, marco, a gentle voice said. but not my mom. rachel. it’s okay, man. it’s okay.

friendship :’)

then, a bunch of shit happens. visser three climbs over the cliff in camo-crab form. he and visser three yell back and forth at each other, each accusing the other of being a traitor. visser one pulls out a cell phone and barks the order to attack. a huge fucking ship, bigger than the visser’s blade ship, appears in the sky above them. visser three identifies it as a nova-class empire ship which sounds fucking rad as hell.

visser one tells visser three he’s under arrest for criminal incompetence. visser three’s ships arrive in the air. everyone’s shooting. massive dracon cannons in the air above, and visser one and visser three on the ground. visser one gets a good shot at visser three and visser three slices through visser one with his claw.

lots of visser talk here

visser visser visser

it’s not even a real word and now it looks less like a real word

visser visser visser

marco freaks out. the sight of his mom covered in blood triggers his fight instincts, and he rams into visser three’s crab form. visser one shoots marco. then she barks another order: destroy the colony.

the ships start firing at the ground. ancient erek, techie of the year, adjusts the hologram so the hork-bajir suddenly look as if they’re under attack. but his hologram can only do so much, and it can’t defy physics. the dracon cannons aren’t shooting into a valley, but a mountaintop. it cracks in half. a huge fissure appears. rachel, tobias, and visser three and his army are on one side. marco and visser one are on the other. visser one calls for an extraction. marco turns to face her.

i lowered my head and felt the power in my legs. it would be a hundred-foot drop.

i love you, i whispered. and then, i lunged.

“the boy!” she whispered, amazed. “it’s the boy!”

marco lunges. just before he hits his mom and sends her spiraling over the cliff, a blur of orange and black roars and knocks him off his feet.

A TIGER!

JAKE!

THE UNKILLABLE BOY

a bird swings down from the sky and claws at visser one’s face. she drops the dracon beam and staggers back towards the edge of the cliff. marco tries to save her, but jake holds him down. “hang on, man,” jake tells him. “hang on.” marco loses focus on the battle. he centers in on jake’s voice, telling him to hang on.

we cut to a week later. marco learns that cassie and jake saw visser three’s limo pull in and morphed back to roach. jake had only been halfway to roach when the car exploded, so he’d been hurt, but cassie had been able to nurse him back to consciousness and got him to demorph just in time. marco stays in bed for a week, watching soap operas and jerry springer and old movies. two days into his self-imposed hermitude, rachel comes to visit. she puts her feet up on his desk and tells him there’s no sign of his mom’s body. she went and searched in eagle form: nothing.

marco says rachel’s just trying to make him feel better. rachel shakes her head. it wouldn’t make marco feel better. it’d be easier to know if his mom was dead. but this, the knowledge that she might still be out there, that’s worse. but it’s the truth. and he deserves the truth. marco doesn’t say anything for a while, and rachel goes to leave.

“rachel? i was going to do it. then i wasn’t. i was trying to kill her. and save her. what do you do?”

“do?”

“what do you do when you have to make a decision, and each choice is horrible? what would you do, rachel? if it was your mom or dad or sisters. what would you do, xena?”

“me?” she sighed. “i guess i’d hope that someone would come along and take that decision away from me.”

rachel comes back and sits on the bed with marco. she’s not a hugger, so she doesn’t hug him, but she reminds him that they have to take things one battle at a time. and then she tells him to flip it to the movie channel.

REVIEW

5/5. y’all know i love a marco book. did it take me a full month to read this one? maybe. but i love the mommy issues stuff, i love that there’s a lot of turmoil and growth, i love that the hork-bajir can be safer than before. we are Officially in the back half of the series, and i think things are only going to grow more dire. can’t wait!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• what would you do in marco’s shoes?

• which halfway morph would be the most horrendous to live in: roach-human or human-sized-flea?

• what’s your favorite song off the prince of egypt soundtrack?

PREDICTIONS

• well come on now marco’s mom has gotta come back, right? but maybe as marco’s mom? if the bug fighters didn’t get to her in time, she’d be without kandrona rays…

that’s all i have for you this time, folks! i’m going to try to get back into a regular routine with these blogs, but i make no hard promises. the only thing i will promise is that we will finish these books together. drink some water. be nice to yourself. ok bye