ANIMORPHS #33: THE ILLUSION

HI HELLO AND WELCOME BACK TO ANIMORPHS WEEKLY HI SORRY AM I? YELLING SORRY ONE SEC HOLD ON

sorry i’ve been listening to mitski’s laurel hell on full volume to drown out the sound of my own traumas

wanna read a book?

CHANGE HAPPENS. WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT . . .

boy howdy don’t it. this cover is chock FULL of change! a bird! an andalite! the ghost of boyhood past! honestly readers, today, i’m sort of all of it.

it’s a tobias book!

SUMMARY

we jump right in! in media res! tobias is at a DANCE! he’s deeply uncomfortable. he’s used to being a BIRD. he doesn’t know what to do with his human arms and he keeps accidentally staring at people, just like me whenever i have to go out in public now. at the last school dance, tobias felt pretty cool, but at the last school dance everyone got brain fever and cassie had to perform surgery, so the bar is in the ground.

tobias wonders if rachel realizes what a dweeb he is. she, of course, looks gorgeous, and he waxes poetic about how beautiful she is. he wants to dance with her but his whole body is sweating and he feels trapped. also how i feel when a pretty girl looks at me.

am i…tobias?

marco dances by and tries to get rachel and tobias in the groove, but they’re both immune to the marco charm. he slides away, and tobias tries to as well. he’s only got fifteen minutes left til his morphin’ time is up. rachel asks: would tobias really rather be sitting up in a tree somewhere, or spending time with her? he tells her he’s feeling a little overwhelmed. all the people, and this body…

“you mean your body. the body you’re in now is your body, tobias. it’s who you truly are. normally, naturally.”

we’d been through this before. i didn’t know how to answer. and i didn’t know why she was pushing it.

here’s where tobias explains the animorphs. he also explains his own unique predicament—if he decides to become a real boy again, he’ll be giving up his ability to contribute to the war efforts. a team of tweens and their friend ancient erek are all that stands in the way of earth and total domination to the yeerks. they can’t afford to lose a single member.

still, rachel asks tobias to dance to a goo goo dolls song. (not a bit. applegate doesn’t name which one, but there’s only the one, right?) they start to dance, and tobias almost loses himself in the music. and then he spots the clock.

eight minutes left.

he sprints out of the gym. rachel’s close behind. tobias wonders if she knew how much time he had left and chose not to tell him. does rachel want him to “accidentally” stay a human? rachel yells for him to stop, and he does. in front of a bulletin board display all about birds of prey. there’s a photo of a red-tailed hawk. underneath, the caption tells readers that in the wild, a red-tailed hawk can hope to live only eighteen years.

:/

rachel begins to talk. she knows the fight is important to tobias. it’s also important to her. deeply important. but they aren’t just warriors. rachel is just a girl. she doesn’t want to lose all semblance of normalcy, which makes sense, considering she spent the entire last book split into two halves. sometimes, normalcy looks like dancing with the boy she likes or going to the movies or walking along the beach. things they could have if he was human.

i cut her off, repeating her words out loud. “yeah. if i were human. if.”

he’s in pain. he doesn’t know how to have this conversation. he turns to go. he only has a little bit of time left! he tries to make it to the back entrance, but it’s blocked by one of those “collapsible metal gates that pull between walls.” sure. well, his only way out of the school is the front entrance. he whips around and sees assistant principal controller chapman cornering a kid in the hallway.

but not any kid. ancient erek!

tobias turns around and catches rachel’s gaze. she tiptoes to the edge of the hallway and peers around the corner to get a better look at assistant principal controller chapman. he’s chastising ancient erek for throwing away a cigarette. ancient erek denies it. he can’t smoke, he’s a robot!

on one end of the hallway, a gate. on the other, a yeerk! talk about a literal rock and a hard place. to make matters worse, another teacher, mr. feyroyan, emerges from the gym. he recognized tobias and remembers him from his school days!

luckily, rachel is still on tobias’s side. she tells him to hop the gate while she distracts mr. feyroyan—she’ll meet him outside. pulling a full spy, tobias clambers over the gate, ignoring the calls of mr. feyroyan and the shouts from assistant principal controller chapman. he runs outside and demorphs in a panic—he made it!

mr. feyroyan exits the school and calls tobias’s name.

[his] voice was more tentative now, uncertain. he stood alone in the middle of the playing field, searching for me in the shadows. he was one of the few friends i’d had when i was in school. he was a teacher, but he was young, and a dreamer. i’d always thought he was like an older me.

now, look

all i’m saying is feyroyan is an unnecessarily complicated name to type out and i wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be an anagram and i’m not saying that this teacher is somehow connected to tobias’s family but i’m also saying applegate has pulled wilder shit before

or maybe he’s just an english teacher who cares deeply about his students

unable to find tobias (or spot the pantsuit draped across the ground, its inhabitant lost to the rapture), mr. feyroyan moves back inside. tobias escapes the suit and flies to a nearby tree. he looks for rachel, who promised to see him outside. instead, he spots her cousin, jake, sitting on the front steps of the school.

jake’s my age. but there are times when his eyes are the eyes of a tired old man.

yikes!

jake doesn’t know where rachel is, but that’s the least of his worries. he’s calling an emergency animorphs meeting tomorrow morning at the barn. ancient erek—before he got D.A.R.E’d by assistant principal controller chapman—told jake that the yeerks are ready to test their anti-morphing ray. the chee still don’t know where it’s being held, but they do know the yeerks are planning to test it on a live subject.

uh, guys?

maybe somebody should go find rachel?

jake tells tobias to let ax know about the meeting. tobias tells him to get some sleep, and jake jokes that he’s big into catnaps now. jake takes this moment to tell tobias he’s glad he made it out of the gym. without tobias, the animorphs would be like “joan of arc without her sword.”

it felt good to hear jake say i was indispensable, but: with jake you could never be sure anymore what was sincere. and what was just expedient.

he’d been the most open of guys, back in the old days. what you saw with jake was what you got. but he’d been a leader for a long time now. he’d learned to say what he needed to say.

war changes us all

the next morning, the animorphs meet at the barn. cassie’s tending to a dying bald eagle, ax is in andalite form, and marco and rachel are discussing why assistant principal controller chapman was on ancient erek’s ass for smoking cigarettes. the answer, of course, is that ancient erek is a part of The Sharing, the yeerk cult and the tristate area’s third best volleyball team. members of The Sharing are meant to be upright citizens. the irony is not lost on the animorphs, considering members of The Sharing tried to assassinate jake’s dad a few books ago.

jake and ancient erek arrive. ancient erek explains that yes, the yeerks are ready to test the AMR, or anti-morphing ray. there’s a chance the ray could be deadly, or create a feedback effect that would blow the weapon up, which is why the yeerks won’t test it on visser three. obviously, they’re hoping to capture an animorph.

“well, then,” marco said, “we just won’t get caught. we won’t let them see us. or hear us. or smell us.”

“or will we?” jake interrupted.

jake thinks maybe they should get an animorph captured on purpose. then, the rest of the animorphs will be able to follow, and the yeerks will lead them straight to the AMR. jake volunteers himself, but rachel says he’s too important to the group, so she’ll go. ax says it makes most sense for him to be captured, because when the ray demorphs him, the yeerks will get an andalite, like they’re expecting.

i watched jake all this time. he was nodding. like he bought what everyone was saying. but he was remaining quiet. so was erek.

jake had another idea in mind. he was just waiting for someone else to say it.

suddenly, tobias understands. there’s only one option, and it isn’t rachel, jake, or ax.

i swooped down from the rafter to the floor. loose straw swirled in small eddies as i touched down. a ray of light from a crack in the barn wall bathed my feathers in yellow light. it was almost too much. too theatrical. i half-expected angels to hover up out of the hayloft and break into song.

it’s me, i said. i’m the one who has to go.

of course. if jake or rachel go, their identities as human kids will be busted and their families will be put in immediate danger. if ax goes, the yeerks get an andalite AND proof the AMR works. but if tobias goes, and the yeerks use the AMR on him, nothing will happen. he is a hawk. their identities will be safe and the yeerks will think their weapon is useless.

cassie is proud of tobias, but worried. rachel is angry, sad, and stricken. marco respects tobias for coming forward. jake is disgusted with himself. ax, of course, is the only one not driven by human emotion. he recognizes the logic in the plan and takes it one step further. the mission could last longer than two hours, and to play the part convincingly, tobias will have to “demorph” at some point. to andalite. which means tobias will need to acquire ax’s dna.

i’m gagged gooped and gobbled

no one’s morphed andalite before! no one’s acquired ax’s DNA! if tobias gets stuck in andalite form, does that mean he’ll still have his morphing powers? is it better to be a bird boy or an alien? so many questions!!!

time is of the essence. the capture needs to feel legitimate for the yeerks but the animorphs still have to be in control. tonight is the first night of The Sharing’s “three-day extravaganza” celebrating the opening of their newly built community center. the animorphs were planning on going to one of the nights, to scope out new membres and learn more about The Sharing’s influence. (ancient erek also mentions the chee believe the yeerks are planning a subterranean addition to the community center that will connect it to the big yeerk pool underground. cool!)

tonight’s as good a night as any—and it’ll be the busiest. there’s an awards ceremony. big brother tom is even slated to be presented with an achievement award! best attempt at patricide! jake tells everyone to figure it out with their parents and meet back at the barn later that evening.

since ax and tobias famously don’t have parents, they head back to ax’s scoop. (applegate calls it a scoop and i’m sure that’s a scientific term for “andalite clearing” but scoop is so CUTE. scoop!) the sun is setting. it’s a special moment, both for ax and for tobias. ax explains:

i mean, we are related, are we not? you are not andalite, exactly, but you carry the andalite heritage. i am glad you will have that DNA in you from now on. it is a very unique genetic mixture.

oh, we all know how much you think of your species, ax, i kidded.

i do hold andalites in very high regard. it is true. but it isn’t an unthinking allegiance. i honestly admire my culture. there are things i would like to teach you, to share with you if you are interested.

i’m gonna cry lmao

ax has been alone on this planet! the only other andalite on earth is visser three. and we all know how tobias feels in his isolation—not just as a bird boy, but as a kid who grew up without a family. and now they’re going to become brothers! identical twins!

tobias is also going to cry. this—andalite history and culture—is something he actually belongs to. he lands on ax’s shoulders and acquires his DNA. and then he morphs into an andalite. his eye stalks pop out and he gets 360 vision. he gets a tail with a blade! and he gets a closer look at the andalite mind. there’s confidence, poise, strategy for battle. and something else. unburdened, intense optimism.

keep in mind that you are experiencing instinct. the andalite mind in its untrained state. our culture teaches us to temper and control our optimism, to give equal value to realism. we have become, regrettably, a race of warriors. but that is in response to necessity. down deeper, beneath that, i believe we are a peaceful species, in love with learning, not combat. but to learn — and to fight — you must be joyful.

y’all………

i need to meet this woman

obviously, this isn’t just about andalites. we also have unbridled optimism as children, and are taught to replace it with reason. but i think at heart we’re meant to be joyful creatures interested in learning and bettering the world. fear and greed (and what is greed, really, but fear of scarcity) keep us from that, but it’s not an impossible dream.

ax tells tobias about shormitor, ancient tail-blade carvings done by early andalites. the shormitor talk about the above philosophy, and how the early tail-fighting masters tried to cultivate and listen to instinct, rather than what culture taught them. i’m screaming in my house rn. cool!

ax starts to teach tobias some tail-blade manuvers, but tobias is still getting used to his andalite body so he just gets his tail stuck in a tree trunk. silly tobias! after getting him out of the tree trunk, ax leads him to the river so they can drink with their hooves! it’s very cool!

and then ax teaches him the evening ritual

:’)

my guy has been out here performing this ritual every day aLONE since he crash landed on this planet and now he gets to teach it to another andalite! i’m so emotional lmao this is so beautiful! he guides tobias through the ritual: looking to the last bit of orange in the sunset, and speaking the mantra, “from the rising of the sun to the setting, to its rising again, we place what is hard to endure with what is sweet to remember, and find peace.”

that’s it?

that’s it.

i like it.

me too.

:’)

live from [redacted], it’s saturday night! the big awards ceremony at The Sharing’s yeerkapalooza is about to begin. tobias is, as usual, the eyes in the sky. jake is sitting with his family, and ax is in human morph, terrorizing a cotton candy salesman. tobias reminds ax that they’re supposed to be guiding the others, who are in fly morph. right on cue, marco calls for help. he’s fallen into the chocolate fondue and he can’t get out! hijinks ensue. it’s a classic farce. jake can’t do anything but listen while tobias tries to interpret what’s happening to the flies—and what’s happening is ax sticking his full fist into the chocolate fondue fountain. they get marco out, but god at what cost.

[SOUND THE ALARMS / POP UR CHAMPAGNE ]

visser three arrives in human morph! pretty early for an animorphs book, but it makes sense. he’s schmoozing! he stops by jake’s family’s table to congratulate tom on winning his award.

weird thing was, even tom seemed to squirm a little.

all is not well in parasite paradise

cassie the fly buzzes over to get a closer look at visser three. he nearly smacks her, but she flits away, landing on jake’s forehead. visser three tries to smack jake’s forehead and jake catches visser’s wrist!!! sick move dude!!

of course, after this sick move, it’s time to get down to business. jake excuses himself from the table and approaches ax. ax communicates to the others in thought-speak: it’s time to do what they came here to do.

what we had come here to do was turn me over to the yeerks.

personally, i wouldn’t have minded some more messing around.

AAAAAAA

jake goes around the back of the community center. tobias follows. the doors are locked, so jake breaks a window using a nearby cinderblock. minor crime! tobias flies through the window and zips through the empty community center. it’s well-furbished. they’ve got an olympic sized pool, playrooms stuffed with legos and costumes and board games, and big offices. just what you’d expect from a mega-church.

tobias finds ax, who has now demorphed to andalite. tobias reminds him that they’re not there to win, they’re there to let him be caught.

true. and yet there is no reason why i cannot do some damage. merely by way of adding authenticity and realism.

i was touched. he was worried about me.

they’re brothers!!!!

ax and tobias find a set of stairs leading to the basement. they’re roped off and there’s a sign that reads “UNDER CONSTRUCTION: KEEP OUT”. (that’s my current tinder bio.) they head into the basement. it’s mostly construction materials, but then, tobias discovers a nook underneath the stairs. it’s filled with computer screens showing what the security cameras outside are picking up. a man sits with his back to the animorphs, mesmerized by the flickering images.

without warning came the echo of hard heels pounding the concrete floor. rapid, metered steps. approaching.

they try to find somewhere to hide. in a break room, four hork-bajir are literally playing poker. tobias and ax back out. the footsteps are getting closer. they scramble underneath a table in the security nook. tobias is sure they’ve made enough noise to catch the attention of the security guard, but he doesn’t turn around. the footsteps approach the security room. two pairs of black boots, one crusted with mud. the three controllers have a brief conversation, mostly bemoaning how paranoid visser three is and how useless it is to try to keep all animal morphs out of an open air celebration. but try telling that to the boss man! he just doesn’t get it.

yeerks: they’re just like us!

one of the controllers then complains about his shift protecting the entrance. yes! the secret entrance to the yeerk pool! he empties his boot of wood chips. tobias begins to study the images on the computer screens. the secret entrance to the yeerk pool is on a playground.

a little weird! definitely going to draw some attention if a bunch of adults are sneaking onto a playground at all hours of the night to get their fill of those sweet delicious k-rays, but what do i know!

an hour later, ax and tobias have managed to sneak out of the community center and are reunited with the others. they’re all above or around the playground, and have witnessed at least three people crawling into the kiddie tunnel. none have crawled out. there are at least eight human-controllers guarding the playground—some up close, some from the nearby trees. it does sound like a cool fucking playground. i don’t really think i want this, but i would love to spend one (1) hour on a big playground designed for adults. i want to crawl around!

tasset, a man from the sporting goods store and Known Yeerk About Town, approaches the tunnel. the flies—cassie, marco, and rachel—decide to follow him in. jake, in owl morph, directs them. they follow tasset as best they can to understand the inner workings of the tunnel. it involves two punchcodes and what sounds like a sealed door. what they really understand is that the yeerks set this up as a trap.

tobias cuts in—a trap is what they came for. it’s time to put their plan in action. another controller is walking towards the tunnel and there’s no time to lose. rachel, in fly morph, settles onto tobias’s back, and jake gives them the all-clear. in private thought-speak, rachel tells tobias that if anything happens, he should save himself and forget the stupid mission.

i smiled inwardly. she was concerned about me. if i had been human … looking into rachel’s eyes, feeling her next to me, i might have … but she was a fly on my hawk body. which was good. i could keep my cool. a hawk’s feelings aren’t exactly visible to others.

i will, i said simply. then added, i have a lot to lose.

he’s a part of the FAMILY

the controller opens the tunnel and the plan is sprung. jake, in owl morph, flies to the fuse box. tobias darts in after the controller, and ax, in andalite form, dashes across the playground. one of the guards spots him and yells, “andalite!” tobias makes it into the tunnel and tells ax to get the hell out of there. ax begins to run away, chased by guards. it was part of the plan, of course, to make it seem realistic, but tobias is still very worried. ax could die.

well, you know. they all could die at any time. some of them have died!

the door closes behind tobias and rachel. up ahead, tobias can hear the “throaty, heavy breathing of yeerk-infested hork-bajir.” applegate does type out the sound of the breathing, and it goes like this:

“ahhhgggg-ggghhhha.”

yeah

the lights come on! there are approximately a fuck-ton of hork-bajir in the now-lit passageway, and a human girl. she’s a couple years older than rachel, but well-dressed and preppy and pretty like rachel. assistant principal controller chapman is also there, and he refers to her as sub-visser. uh-oh! tobias is frozen. what does sub-visser mean? and why is she staring at him like she wants to crack him in half and eat his heart while it still beats?

tobias, what’s going on? why aren’t we moving? rachel was all energy. put up a fight! let her know you don’t want to be here. come on, play the part.

right!

tobias flies towards the hork-bajir and manages to claw some eyes out before getting bonked on the head by the sub-visser’s plastic arm. (is this a mannequin situation? or disabled representation?) the sub-visser laughs and is like hi, i’m sub-visser fifty-one, but you can call me taylor. (i am picturing taylor swift and you can, too.) tobias knows he has to “demorph” to andalite to play his part, so he focuses on ax and begins to change. mid-morph, taylor steps forward and points her artificial arm at tobias. from the palm of her hand comes a white mist that paralyzes not only tobias and rachel (yikes!) but assistant principal controller chapman and half the hork-bajir. she laughs.

“so sorry for you all. looks like i’m the only one who remembered to take the antidote in advance. oh, wait. did i forget to tell you all?”

i love an unhinged girl villain!! i support women’s rights AND women’s wrongs!!!!

of course, this is bad news bears all around. rachel is paralyzed in fly morph and can’t hold onto to tobias. she’s supposed to be with him so she can report the location of the anti-morphing ray to the rest of the animorphs—and subsequently lead them back to rescue tobias. if she’s left behind, paralyzed in fly morph, she definitely can’t do that. AND if she’s paralyzed in fly morph, she could get stuck there—forever.

tobias is picked up off the ground by some hork-bajir at taylor’s command. rachel slips to the ground, crying in thought-speak. tobias tells her to demorph and forget the mission—and then he gets shoved into a metal box. he tries to call out for her in thought-speak, but he can’t get any reply.

tobias is still half-hawk, half-andalite, trapped in a box WAY too small for him. he’s panicking on all fronts. rachel could get stepped on and killed, or trapped forever in fly morph. the animorphs won’t be able to destroy the anti-morphing ray. and the box is getting increasingly warmer. h8 when that happens.

suddenly, the walls of the box begin to vibrate and then disappear! tobias blinks and adjusts to the sudden bright light. now, he’s in a new box, this one larger and made of glass. he demorphs back to hawk and takes in the room. taylor sits at a long table near the door of a windowless room. there are armed hork-bajir to her left and right. there’s a small panel on his glass box with a red, blue, and black button. taylor calls it a control device, and says there’s a little experiment to be carried out once visser three arrives on the scene.

on cue, visser three bangs on the door and enters the room. he says he was detained. staring straight at tobias, he explains what detained him:

…the festivities outside, the planning of our new base, the reassigning of duties to more … trusted officers. hmmm. and, oh yes, by a small and trivial matter of an andalite bandit found in the woods. we followed him from here, back to his pitiful shelter.

i was stunned. surely this was a bluff. surely ax had gotten away. the visser waited, clearly hoping to get a rise out of me.

we destroyed the scoop, of course. he paused again. touchingly primitive the way andalites live. you’re a claustrophobic species, aren’t you? always craving the open air. well, your compatriot is now random atoms floating in open air.

kids book! kids book! book for kids!

tobias has to believe the visser is lying. if they really caught ax—or any of the other animorphs, as the visser alludes—they would have been brought here to test the anti-morphing ray. visser three summons two doctors, dr. sinegert and dr. singh. they’re haggard and horrified. don’t blame ‘em. clumsily, they begin to operate the anti-morphing ray. it’s…Loud. and ineffective, on account that tobias is not in morph. the doctors try to plead with visser three and explain that the ray must work, that their science is sound, but visser three literally just opens a trap door and feeds them to some taxxons below.

pull the lever, kronk!

visser three tells taylor that tobias is all hers. she needs to make him demorph and infest him. and then he leaves. bye!

taylor approaches the glass box and delivers a classic villain line: you can make this easy or you can make this hard, but either way, it’s happening. and then she begins to literally torture him. pressing one of the buttons on the panel, she delivers an indescribable amount of pain to tobias. kids book!

“really quite beautiful, isn’t it?” she announced. a demented pride shone in her eyes. a look that left no doubt that her lips mouthed the words of the yeerk within. “some of our best scientists spent nearly a decade perfecting it. the concept is really quite simple. you see, i have direct, unhindered access to the parts of your brain that control emotion and physical sensation.”

she laughs! giggles is the word applegate uses. and then she slams the button again. it’s…disturbing. tobias is just screaming. he shits himself. (not a bit!) he is Majorly Suffering. imagine for a moment you’re a parent and your kid comes into your room and is weeping because their favorite character is being viscerally tortured in their silly little animorphs series. can you imagine? the horror? this is batshit wild! people IRL do NOT know how to respond when i describe this series to them. you can’t make this shit up!

and to top it all off, tobias is split—the boy in him is screaming for it to be over, begging for his brain to betray his friends and make it all end. but the hawk part of him is already shutting down, going on “primitive autopilot” just to survive. he begins to shut down his human mind. he needs to become the hawk. he needs to let go of the boy. but as he tries to do so, he gets flashes of random memories from his life, like a hellish slideshow set to good riddance by green day.

the memories are,,,sad. obviously. we learn that a drawing tobias made was hand-picked by a committee to make it to the state art show, but his uncle won’t take him to the prize-winners reception. he sees an old school bully, rick stathis (what a name). he even sees aria, the woman who claimed to be tobias’s family member but was actually visser three in disguise. they start coming faster: rick punching tobias, tobias landing in jake’s attic freshly trapped in hawk morph, wishing to go home but not knowing where home is. he sees visser three killing elfangor.

the father i never knew. my link to everything strong, enduring, and good in the universe.

murdered.

he even starts to hear the screams of every enemy he’s ever faced in combat, which is a super cool chill thing to experience! he’s twelve!

finally, the torture ends. there’s only silence. taylor’s stopped the torture, because she thinks tobias is using the hawk morph as a shield. she flips through the manual the scientists left behind and decides that it’s all about contrasts. if pain won’t break tobias, maybe happiness will.

:/

he has flashes of jumping on a trampoline, of eating a sugar cube, of petting a cat. he eats fresh raspberries and remembers a woman named professor powers who fed him and told him stories. he sees him and rachel, flying through the sky, rejoicing in the gift of morphing. he hears the ellimist asking him if he’s happy. he sees his friends, the animorphs, laughing at marco’s jokes and petting baby rabbits. he sees him and ax galloping through the field, brothers at last.

an alarm goes off. taylor tells him his time is up. he’ll be stuck as a bird forever. taylor begins to pace in front of his cage. she’s clearly freaked out. if she can’t give visser three an andalite body to make into a controller, she’s taxxon food. she tries to egg him on by telling him his friends aren’t coming to rescue him. friends only betray you.

tobias starts to peck at that line of thought, trying to buy himself some recovery time. he tells her that she’s failed, so the visser will throw her away. she’s expendable. the visser has a lot of human controllers.

“not like me!” she yelled, flying into a sudden rage. “i’m a voluntary, do you not know that? this girl, this human, chose this life, chose to invite me in to take control! why? why? because she’d seen humans as they truly were. she chose us over her own people. why? because humans are weak and petty and stupid and we will rule them all, we will make them ours, all of them!”

yoinks, scoob!

taylor then goes on to reveal that her host body used to be the hottest girl in school. (she was also a tennis champ, which…tracks. tennis people are a Certain Kind Of Person.) she had everything. at least…until the fire.

i wish i was fucking joking this shit is too good to make up

apparently, taylor’s house caught on fire while her parents were out at a party. taylor lost her left arm and her right leg, and her face was marred. a few kids visited her in the hospital, but she lost her queen bee status and all her friends. The Sharing offered her a chance at redemption: if she agreed to becoming a controller, the yeerks would not only fix her body, but make it better. taylor the girl wanted to be envied again; taylor the yeerk wanted to live a perfect life.

i had a terrifying moment of understanding. pity. to be the human girl, desperate, terrified, alone, all alone, needing someone to look at her without cringing. to be the yeerk, hungry for sensations that were so intense, so powerful compared to the dull, blind life of a slug.

taylor continues. as a sub-visser, living in the body of a popular teen wasn’t her end goal, but she chose to stay because she wanted the memories and the life taylor the girl had. she turned in her mom—the chief of police—and got to stay beautiful.

tobias calls her weak. taylor starts hitting buttons again. the blue one for joy, the red one for pain. over and over and over. tobias starts flinging himself into the glass walls in hopes of killing himself. eesh! it gets bad! he starts to name his friends! his vision swims. he starts to disappear into darkness. he thinks maybe it’s death, but it isn’t. it’s another memory.

he’s walking home. he finds a scythe-shaped blade in the dirt. there are two moons in the sky. he realizes he’s not on earth! he’s—an andalite appears in his view. the andalite tells him not to be afraid, and then presses the flat of his tail blade to tobias’s forehead. a new wave of memories washes over him, but they’re not tobias’s memories.

they’re elfangor’s.

elfangor crashing a ship on a planet called desbadeen. elfangor making his first kill. elfangor on a dome ship, missing his human wife loren, wishing he could hold his son.

elfangor tells tobias:

you are not alone in your suffering. you may die, tobias, but never alone. you are one in a legion of great warriors. valiant andalites who have died for freedom. your lineage is courage and bravery. if you live, you carry our torch. a burden carried by many. a singular honor…

the bright light around him begins to dim. tobias returns to his body, flattened against the floor of the cube, defeated but still alive.

the last fading strain of elfangor’s voice:

out of a respect for life, you have to endure.

what a fucking banger line

if i told you this came from lord of the rings—if i fucking made an instagram post and attributed this to winston churchill white moms would be sharing this shit all over the internet!!!!!!

anyway

visser three is now in the room. two hork-bajir are holding a wire cage. inside the cage is an eagle! tobias thinks it must be rachel! visser three says if tobias doesn’t talk, he’s going to feed it to the taxxons! tobias says he’ll never talk!! instead of dropping it into the pit, the visser summons two taxxons into the room!! they eat the eagle!!!!!!!!! in a few bites!!!!!!!!!

we have ten pages left!!!!

visser three tells taylor to continue the torture until tobias dies, then he leaves. tobias wants to face his death with honor. he tries to stand up and takes one last look around the room.

no way. i had to be hallucinating. my frazzled mind was playing a trick on me. this couldn’t be real. … what i saw growing up from the floor, behind the sub-visser, was no mirage!

a single andalite emerging from flea morph!

screaming hollering shouting stomping

it’s ax!!!! he tells tobias to make sure the visser, the hork-bajir, and taylor don’t see him staring. the eagle was a terminally ill eagle from cassie’s barn, and the other animorphs also rode along as fleas. they’ll be in as soon as ax opens the door. the chee have secured an escape route. friendship always prevails!!!!!!!!!!!

ax cuts the door open. in burst the animorphs in their classic battle morphs: tiger jake, wolf cassie, gorilla marco, and bear rachel. the hork-bajir stand no chance. marco has a grappling hook. don’t ask me why. he starts swinging from the ceiling to try to land on tobias’s cube. a hork-bajir follows. there’s a battle on the cube and a battle on the ground. the hork-bajir stabs marco in the chest. jake is missing an ear. ax is cornered. taylor find a dracon beam and fires at marco but misses. cassie tries to tackle her. taylor shoots again. she hits the cable! tobias’s cube falls to the ground!

glass is everywhere. it’s fucking chaos. tobias is bleeding out, stuck underneath a dead hork-bajir. he tries to morph, but taylor grabs him and begins to pull him over the shattered glass. (there was an episode of criminal minds with a trail of shattered glass. if u know u know.) she has the control panel to the torture device still. she drags tobias onto a balcony and flips him over the edge. he’s dangling over the yeerk pool!!! like, hundreds of feet above the yeerk pool!!

tobias clings to her even as she tries to let him drop. the control panel slips and falls into the yeerk pool. tobias is seconds away from losing his grip. and then: a massive roar shakes the room. taylor is thrown to the side and a large paw grabs tobias, bringing him to safety.

rachel!!!!

now on solid ground, tobias starts to morph into andalite. he watches as rachel begisn to choke taylor.

could you imagine being choked by a fucking grizzly bear

this shit is CRAZY

tobias tells her to stop. rachel says she should die for what she did to tobias. and tobias agrees—but she’ll die at the hand of visser three, not at the hands of the animorphs.

we cut to the beach. the animorphs are there, sans rachel, who has “something to do with her dad.” (probably explain why the last time she saw him she was acting so unlike herself.) cassie’s at the edge of the water, looking for injured wildlife; jake and marco are playing catch. tobias is sitting with ax, who’s trying to make a kite! “a human hobby he said he found unaccountably peaceful.” good for him.

tobias tells ax he thinks he saw elfangor while he was in the torture cube. he tells ax about the flat of the tail blade against his forehead, and ax freezes. he tells tobias there’s a legend, a spiritual rite called utzum. some andalites believe memories could be passed through DNA, and those memories are triggered by imminent death. “a surge of strength during the last moments to ease their passage,” ax says, “ancient superstition.”

then: a flash of gold. rachel’s here!! tobias runs towards her and they hug!! tobias admits he was really close to death, and he wasn’t sure who he was in the end. or who he is now. but rachel reassures him: she knows who he is. they hold each other for awhile in silence, and then rachel points out there are probably some killer thermals. tobias laughs and tells her they should fly.

“yeah,” she agreed. “right after i do this.”

she kissed me.

:’)

they fly. tobias ruminates on what happened to him. who he is. a bird? a boy? something in between? but what he knows for sure is that he’s someone who rachel loves. (yes! applegate says loves!!!!)

i discovered something amid the pain and terror and confusion. i discovered that the answer to what i am, to who i am, isn’t something to be answered in a single word or a single moment.

it could take a lifetime to figure out who i am.

for now, i’m willing to hang in there, floating on a thermal. biding my time.

[sobbing emoji]

REVIEW

5/5. what a bonkers book. top to bottom just absolutely wild. i have a feeling we’re going to be dealing with a lot of near-death experiences here towards the end of the series, and this is no exception. very scared to see what’s coming next!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• what memories do you think will play on your near-death slideshow? what song will play in the background? one of mine will definitely be me, on an edible, wandering a mirror maze at navy pier. i think the song will be i try by macy gray. or maybe an early avril lavigne song.

• have i asked this yet? what would your dream battle morph be? i think i’d go big cat. jaguar or something.

PREDICTIONS

• we have not seen the last of marco’s mom

• i think ax and tobias will deliver the killing blow to visser three together

that’s all i have for you this month, folks! these will come more inconsistently (obviously) but the inconsistency will help me stay on track. drink some water. go say something nice to yourself in the mirror. text a friend. see ya later!