ANIMORPHS #5: THE PREDATOR

"ahhh! ahhh! taste! taste! wonderful!"

hi folks! welcome back to animorphs weekly, my personal cry for help. it feels like years since i’ve last written to you and also maybe two hours. is anyone else having trouble keeping track of time? i was going to set up a schedule for myself this week, but i couldn’t get over the fact that time is a construct and we live in a hologram. shall we read a book?

WHAT YOU SEE ISN’T ALWAYS WHAT YOU GET….

incredible. i live for these threatening four-dot ellipsis. as far as taglines go, i think this is better than last week’s. nothing will top “some people never change. some do….” for me personally, but the animorphs game is young. who knows what’s in store for us. also this book cover promises “COOL ANIMORPHS DECAL INSIDE” and my god, reader, do i wish i had a cool animorphs decal. (i simply can’t do any research on animorphs merch, because i’m on unemployment and i have to save my money for ordering delivery, but if you come across any, please…please let me know. also if i made t-shirts that said “yeerks don’t give a fuck about geese” would any of you wear them?)

it’s marco’s book!!!!!!

SUMMARY

we open with marco giving us the spiel. what i like about these openings is that applegate takes every opportunity to illustrate how different these kids are, and right out of the gate, marco shows us that he’s the wisecracking sidekick with a deep, deep mother wound. (my favorite characters.) he says his name is marco, and then he launches into this extended bit where he lists a bunch of last names that decidedly aren’t his, including mccain. he also says he’s not going to swear that marco is his first name, which, good point. don’t give away any personal information, kids.

marco’s walking home from the 7-11 because he’s in charge of grocery shopping ever since his mom died. (right! out! the! gate!) on his way home, he comes across an old man getting mugged by three punks. marco doesn’t want to get involved because marco believes in minding his own business, and all the punks are twice his size.

“i’m not even average height for my age, although i make up for it by being incredibly cute. and charming. and witty. and modest.”

we stan a short king!

but marco has also accepted a lot of responsibility in his life (morphin’, grocery shopping) so he can’t just walk away from an old man getting mugged. he morphs into a gorilla (classic marco morph) and goes barreling in to save the old man. gorillas are pretty docile creatures, marco explains, but marco is in charge. he starts tossing punks around (two in a dumpster) when the third pulls out a gun. a gun! gun punk tries to shoot marco, but marco rolls a dumpster over him. (“i checked. he was alive. he wasn’t happy, but he was alive.”) he’s like huh, where did the gun go…when he remembers the old man he saved! the old man has the gun now. and he’s pointing it right at marco. marco gets the hell out of dodge. no good deed…

the next day, marco and the other animorphs are strolling through the far meadow of cassie’s farm. it’s one of my favorite bits of the books: narrator morph describes their friends! according to marco, here are the other morphs:

jake

• marco’s best friend

• unfortunately a pain sometimes

• “you say the word ‘responsibility’ and he snaps to attention”

• sensible brown hair, trustworthy brown eyes

• (i’m looking at the camera)

• great sense of humor

• very smart

• marco would trust him with his life

• would never tell him that

cassie

• kind of jake’s girlfriend now (but it’s a secret)

• “if i’m comedy, she’s poetry”

• (marco that is poetry)

• natural peacemaker

• like sincere, or something

• animal expert

• overalls and boots

• can tame a wolf

rachel

• very beautiful

• very leggy-blond-supermodel type

• ms fashion

• ms properly applied makeup

• ms has it all looks and brains

• jake’s cousin

• amazon warrior-queen

• “if she could rachel would be wearing a suit of armor and swinging a sword. and it would be a fashionable suit of armor and she would look great in it”

tobias

• he used to be a kind of dweeby kid

• marco doesn’t even remember what he used to look like

• before the accident

• now he’s a fierce, angry bird of prey

• marco teases tobias sometimes

• what happened to tobias scares marco

they don’t spend a lot of time lecturing marco on what a bad idea it is to turn into animorphs willy-nilly (even though it is a bad idea because y’all! you’re supposed to be keeping it a secret!) because they have Bigger Things to Discuss. mostly ax, the andalite and newest member of the animorphs.

well, maybe not. ax really wants to go home.

the andalite home world is eighty-two light years away - and marco is quick to do a lot of math to point out just how far away that is.

““light travels about one hundred and eight-six thousand miles per second,” i pointed out. “times sixy seconds per minute. times sixy minutes per hour. times twenty-four hours per day. times three hundred and sixty-five days per year. that’s one light year. times eighty-two years.””

sure

basically, it’s pretty fucking far. marco’s like, how exactly are we going to get ax to home world?? and then jake says some absolute bananas shit:

“that’s why we’ll have to steal a yeerk spaceship.”

WHAT

listen i’m sure they’re going to put the argument out here for us but let me just say, this sounds like a bad idea. all the animorphs have ever had, it seems, are bad ideas but this one seems particularly dumb. you’re telling me you want to steal a yeerk spaceship so you can send the only person who can teach you about animorphing back to home world? which is a bazillion trillion miles away? you’re all going to get murked

ax comes trotting up and is like what’s up fellow kids!! marco’s like you want us to steal?? a yeerk?? spaceship?? ax is like no danger no glory!! marco tells rachel that ax might be her future husband. (if rachel ends up queen of the andalites i’ll lose my mind.) jake’s like we’re not exactly in it for the honor and glory. we’re trying to stay alive. (are you jake?? are you??) ax is like i will imitate a yeerk distress signal and they will send down a bug fighter. marco points out that on every bug fighter is a taxxon and a hork-bajir and ax is like, what are you, scared?? marco’s like YEAH dude i’m fucking SCARED a taxxon is a murder centipede with lobster claws and a hork-bajir is basically a roomba with a hundred knives taped to its body!

ax is like ok. good point.

tobias asks if getting ax home will help speed up the process of getting the rest of the andalites to come help earth. ax is like, yeah, probably. jake’s like, sweet. let’s vote.

DEMOCRACY

we cut to saturday. obviously all the animorphs are in on the plan, so now we need to take a trip to the mall to get ax the parts he needs for his transmitter. ax morphs into his human form (which, you remember, is a combo of all the human animorphs dna). there’s no mention of bone crunching (thank god) and then we’re off. we’re going to radio shack baby!!!!

marco, jake, and ax are in the packed saturday afternoon mall crowd for exactly two minutes before ax wanders off. they panic but can’t show it because in a crowd this size there are bound to be controllers. they finally spot ax at a starbucks ordering a double latte. in the book, the double latte costs two ninety-five. (could you imagine? i haven’t walked into a starbucks and paid less than five dollars for coffee.) jake and marco are like DUDE you can’t just WANDER OFF!! ax is like i wanted to try to eat and drink with my new mouth. now is not the time for experimenting!! you are on a time crunch!!

ok what happens if ax gets stuck in the human morph??

is he gonna get stuck in the human morph

anyway

ax tastes something for the first time and it’s a double latte. he’s like this is delicious!! which confirms he’s an alien. (i know y’all are gonna make fun of me because i can only drink coffee if it doesn’t taste like coffee but a double latte with no sweetners and probably whole milk is gross.) they shepherd ax to the radio shack and he just starts picking up tech. he’s like where are your z-space transponders? to get the signal into zero space? which is the opposite of true space? anti reality?

marco and jake are like yeah that doesn’t exist yet. we just have coffee.

jake, worried about time (good) goes to pay for all of the things ax has picked out. ax is like do i have to keep carrying this empty cup around? marco’s like nah dude you can just throw it away. ax literally yeets the coffee cup at a cashier, hits him directly in the head, and bolts. marco and jake run after him (after having paid for the technology, because we didn’t risk it all at the radio shack just to leave the tech behind). there’s a large crowd amassing at the food court. marco and i have a very bad feeling about this. in the food court, ax is running around, snatching up leftover food from tables and just shoving it into his mouth. he loves taste! but the paul blart mall cops are closing in on ax, so marco yells for him to run. he does!

but unfortunately, he only really knows how to run as an andalite, so he starts to morph.

ax is booking it, morphing from human to andalite. marco and jake are not far behind, trying to catch ax before paul blart one two and three can. people are screaming because there is clearly a real alien in their midst. they’re so close to the exit when ax beefs it and falls (classic). marco and jake rush up, paul blarts close behind. ax springs up, full andalite form, tail and all. one of the paul blarts says, “andalite!” and the kids are like, aw, fuck, a controller. controller cop pulls out a gun and ax swipes it out of his hand with the scorpion tail all andalites have. sick! ax, marco, and jake burst out of there. real cops are pulling up now — and by real cops, i mean controller cops, obviously. ax, marco, and jake run into the nearby grocery store (sure) and start causing a commotion. the cops have the grocery store surrounded. there’s only one way out.

a lobster tank

that’s right folks, they’re gonna morph into lobsters! in the grocery store! what could possibly go wrong!

by far the description of morphing into a lobster is the most horrifying one. i mean like, bone-chilling. i can’t even describe it to you. lots of valves and antennae and splitting open. lobsters, like all other ocean creatures, freak me out. they’re ancient. we are not meant to know them. it is hubris to bring them to the surface. according to marco, the lobster brain only has two thoughts: eat and kill.

jesus

jake marco and ax all check-in with each other. they’re all lobsters and they’re all scared. thankfully, ax is an alien clock, so he starts counting down the time. they all agree they should probably wait as close to the full two hours as possible to make sure the cops aren’t waiting for them. (here’s the thing that i’m sure is going to come up in future books: at some point, these lesser controllers are just gonna wait more than two hours and the kids will be forced to reveal themselves. right?) about an hour into tank time, someone picks lobster!marco out of the tank and rubber bands his claws together and drops him into a different container. same happens to jake and ax, and then they get covered in ice. ice makes lobsters feel sluggish (good to know) so they don’t really do much until ax announces they have seven minutes left. seven! marco, reasonably, doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life as a hellmonster, so he starts to try to morph back into human. unfortunately, at that moment, someone snips the rubber bands around his claws, and marco can feel steam billowing around him.

y’all……i’m too stressed!!!

he, reasonably, starts freaking out. a human mouth appears where his lobster mouth once was and that is enough for the woman holding lobster!marco to drop him. he manages to fling himself off of the stove and start morphing back into a human, effectively scarring this poor woman who just wanted to eat a lobster dinner for the rest of her life. jake and ax follow suit. now this woman has two human boys and one alien standing in her kitchen where lobsters should have been. let this be a lesson to us all.

the boys convince her this is just one weird dream and get the hell out of there.

speaking of weird dreams, the next chapter starts with marco having a nightmare. totally understandable. he’s screaming and screaming until someone jerks him away. he says, “mom?” but of course, it’s not his mom. it’s his dad. (sad!) we learn that marco looks a lot like his mom, who’s hispanic. (knew it.) which is super sad because whenever his dad looks at him, “my dad will just glaze over and stare at me like i’m not even there. like i’m a picture of someone else.” dark! marco and his dad have a quick little chat about nightmares, and then marco’s dad goes to sit in the living room and continue to mourn his dead wife.

“i lay there in the dark and tried to get the dream out of my head. but it’s hard to forget a nightmare that’s true.”

damn

the next day, all the animorphs meet together in the woods so ax can try to make his transmitter. they’re all a little stressed. the distress beacon won’t work without a z-space transponder, so all the trouble they went through yesterday feels like it’s all for naught. but then tobias suggests assistant principal controller chapman. assistant principal controller chapman had been communicating with visser three — which means there has to be some sort of z-space transponder in his house. the z-space transponders are small, ax says, and he’ll only need one of them. rachel is the first to speak up with a resounding no. last time she went into assistant principal controller chapman’s house, she was caught as a cat and almost got melissa turned into a controller. the animorphs agree - going into chapman’s house is too dangerous.

but…cassie might have another idea of how to get the transponder from chapman.

i felt my heart sink. “as long as it doesn’t involve anything with an exoskeleton.”

i’d meant it as a joke. but cassie just looked at me solemnly.

ANTS

marco leaves the meeting. he doesn’t want to be an ant. he’s stressed, he’s scared, and he’s angry. the next day at school, jake approaches him in the hallway to let him know that the animorphs agreed on black ants, and marco’s like, i don’t want to be a bug, dude. jake makes a good argument - they need to send ax back to home world because a) he can get the andalites to hurry up and b) he’s definitely going to get them caught if the mall fiasco is anything to go off of. marco’s not having it. he was almost boiled alive! he storms down the hallway, and jake tries to keep up with him, and then marco whirls around, full drama, and says, “do you know what next sunday is?”

that’s right folks! next sunday is the anniversary of marco’s mom’s death.

“two years, to the day. two years since my mom died. and i don’t know what to do. i don’t know whether i should talk to my dad about it, or just let it pass. but i know one thing — this would be a really bad week for me to turn up dead.”

damn, marco! that’s sad!

he storms away from jake (who, also full drama, doesn’t follow him). if this were an hbo show, some really sad, hip song would start playing as marco’s memories of his mom flashed in front of us. (please, hbo, if you’re reading this, hire me. i’m begging you. i need a job.) marco explains that marco’s mom had taken their boat and sailed it out into a rough sea. “she’d never done it before. we’d always gone out together. the three of us.” the coast guard found the boat driven up on the rocks, but no sign of his mother. (i am looking directly into the camera. right into the camera. this isn’t a gay thing this is a prediction thing. come. on.)

“somewhere, very, very far away, a mother and a father wondered what had become of their children.”

marco has his come to jesus moment. he realizes that after awhile, ax’s parents are going to accept that ax and prince elfangor aren’t going to come home. they’re going to mourn their children, like marco mourned his mom, who died helping marco and the rest of the humans on earth fight the yeerks.

i just want to take a second to say that i really could not have predicted how much parental/familial trauma there was going to be in this series. this is book five, y’all! one of my favorite things about ya is children having to make mature decisions they’re not quite ready to make yet, and so far, every animorph has had to come to terms with the weight of their responsibility, both personally and on a grander scale. applegate will not rest until i am full on weeping by the end of this series, i just know it.

marco brushes past cassie and mutters under his breath, “tell jake i’ll do it.” he’s in! ant-imorphs!

we cut to the animorphs at night. they’re gathered in the backyard of assistant principal controller chapman’s neighbor’s house. the neighbors have moved out, leaving a conveniently empty backyard for the animorphs to become ants. tonight’s the perfect night, because assistant principal controller chapman is at a meeting of The Sharing, the yeerks total cult-front. they are 100% playing volleyball.

anyway, they’re all standing in the backyard. ax is in andalite form and all the animorphs are human (marco points out that they’ve tried morphing from animal to animal and they couldn’t do it, which answers that question). and then the tr-ant-formation begins! lots of exoskeletal morphing happening in this book. it’s not pretty. and it seems like marco is more afraid of the morphs than any of our other narrators because homeboy is just terrified watching cassie morph into an ant. i don’t blame him! bugs are weird!

once they’re all in ant morph, they have a really difficult time regaining control. ants, of course, are of a hivemind and incredibly territorial. (ants will have huge turf wars. if you don’t know anything about them, i highly suggest googling it. it’s truly terrifying to think about what is happening beneath our feet.) tobias is trying to get all of the antimorphs to focus up — and when they do, they’re all really freaked out. tobias wants all of them to morph out of it, but rachel’s like, no fucking way am i trying this again. we’re getting that transponder and we’re getting out of here. tobias directs the antimorphs towards chapman’s house. the smell of the enemy is growing stronger…

the antimorphs make it into chapman’s basement with only a minor run-in with an enemy ant. they morph back into human (and andalite) and start poking around to get the transponder they need. they find assistant principal controller chapman’s computer - and not his desktop, but his yeerk computer. marco starts poking through the files when ax is like HALT. I CAN READ THESE LETTERS. we learn that the yeerks are expecting a very important guest: visser one. (“there are forty-seven v issers in the yeerk empire. or so we believe.” thanks, ax.) visser one has a human body (any guesses as to who that’s gonna be?) but before the kids can really think about it, ax has the transponder they need. it’s back to the ants! they’re pushing the transponder through the tunnels they came into when suddenly — what’s that? the sound of snapping? that’s right! it’s time for an ant fight!

the enemy ants waste no time. they’re snapping the antimorphs in half - literally. the kids start panicking and just morph! morph right in the dirt! they burst out of the ground, all human (and andalite) once more, only minorly scarred from their like, seventeenth brush with death.

“a month or so after the experience with the ants, i picked up a book about ants. the author said, “if ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week.”

he’s wrong. it wouldn’t take them that long.

ants are fucked up, y’all!

the next day at school, marco is processing the trauma of being an ant. the animorphs have agreed that they shouldn’t hang out at school, so they don’t draw suspicion, which means that marco just passes all of his friends and registers how haunted they all look, but none of them can say anything to each other. marco is really nervous that one of them is eventually going to snap — he knows it’s possible, because it’s what happened to his dad after his mom died.

at lunch, marco is eating near rachel when some girl named jessica bumps into rachel. rachel snaps, and some girl named jessica is like calm down rachel! don’t pull out the nine! but rachel does. she spins around (gymnast) and pins some girl named jessica flat against the cafeteria table. “rachel leaned over [some girl named] jessica and in a voice of cold steel, said, “don’t. touch. me.””

damn!

marco is the only animorph close enough to get involved, so he does. he tries to pull rachel off some girl named jessica when some girl named jessica punches marco right in the eye. the three of them are dragged into assistant principal (controller) chapman’s office. he’s grilling the three of them, and marco is worried that rachel is going to lose it on chapman like she lost it on some girl named jessica, so marco takes the fall.

“it’s my fault, mr. chapman,” i said… “yes sir. um, they were fighting over me. see, they both want me. they’re both madly in love with me and i can certainly understand why. can’t you?”

my boy

some girl named jessica calls him a little toad, but rachel does smile a little bit. mission accomplished. assistant principal (controller) chapman yells at them for a bit and then tells them to make appointments with the school counsler, but sends them on their way with no punishments. rachel catches up with marco in the hallway and compliments him on his coping mechanism: humor. rachel’s like, you annoy the hell out of me, but we need your sense of humor.

“humor? you thought i was kidding? you mean you and jessica aren’t both insanely in love with me?”

“dream on, marco.”

(i read a section of this book out loud to some friends on the phone to pose the question: is marco into rachel? or is this just some like, classic short king amazon queen solidarity? sound off in the comments below.)

a few days later, ax has finished building the fake distress beacon. tobias has scouted a location - a gravel quarry about an hour away via wings - and the animorphs are in agreement. that’s where they’ll summon a bug fighter and try to get ax onto it. marco and jake walk home, and marco summons up the courage to have a Big Conversation with his best friend. he tells jake, “this is my last time.” marco doesn’t want to risk it anymore. he’s done enough, he thinks, and jake agrees. jake surprises marco again by asking what he’s going to do on sunday. marco’s not sure. sometimes he and his dad leave flowers on his mom’s grave, but this is the big two-year anniversary. “i’ll tell you one thing, jake,” marco says, ending the chapter, “a year from now i don’t want my dad going to leave flowers at two graves.”

dark!

we cut to saturday. the animorphs + ax fly to the gravel quarry. marco isn’t sure if jake told any of the other animorphs his plan to quit, and he’s starting to get a little sad about quitting the team. no time to stay sad, though! it’s time to summon a bug fighter! rachel, jake, cassie, and marco morph into an elephant, a tiger, a wolf, and a gorilla, respectively, and ax sets off the beacon. it doesn’t take long — a bug fighter arrives shortly after.

immediately, shit hits the fan. a hork-bajir exits the bug fighter - but no taxxon. rachel easily keeps the hork-bajir down - almost too easily. marco tries to get into the bug fighter, but then, pew pew! dracon beams! they look around and the entire quarry is lined with hork-bajir warriors, each armed with a dracon beam. and then he shows himself.

that’s right! it’s visser three!

he does a nice little monologue - “i have you at last, my brave andalite bandits. fools. do you think we never change our frequences?” - and then reveals that he isn’t alone. he’s here with visser one, and from the tone of his voice, visser three is not a fan of visser one. juicy! once again, the animorphs have found themselves in a life-threatening predicament. they’re completely surrounded. they have no other choice but to file onto visser three’s blade ship, still in morph, one by one. they get lifted into space and get their first look at the mother ship.

it’s a massive ship. three quarter-mile long tendrils that serve as weapons and energy collectors, three engines to power the thing, and all of it cloaked, invisible to earth’s radars. (of course.) the blade ship docks onto the mother ship, and we get to learn a little bit about yeerk politics. inside the mother ship are distinctly uniformed sections: some red-and-black, some gold-and-black. each visser has their own private army in their own specific uniform, and the tension is thick. the reds do not like the golds. (good! use the tension!) visser three enters, followed by two hork-bajir in red. then a woman enters in gold.

“she looked up at us with those dark brown, human eyes. eyes i knew. eyes i remembered. the same eyes that watched me sleep every night from the framed picture beside my bed. my mother. visser one.”

reader, when i say i cheered, i cheered. MARCO’S MOM IS VISSER ONE. SHE’S NOT JUST A YEERK SHE IS YEERK NUMBER ONE!!!! this is an amazing development. incredible. bless up.

the only other animorph that knows visser one is marco’s mom is jake. he’s immediately like, play it cool dude. that’s not your mom anymore. that’s a yeerk. the yeerk. visser one. visser three makes some snippy comment about visser one’s human host body, and visser one shoots back with the whole this was strategy so i could learn about earth and start the invasion which you have now put in danger with your idiotic criminal incompetence! they are not friends. visser one is like, i know you want to be number one, number three, but the Council of Thirteen doesn’t like vissers who make mistakes, and you are one huge mistake. oh snap! then she walks off.

marco asks jake to keep this a secret - not even cassie can know - and jake’s like, of course. you’re my oldest and best friend. no one will ever know. (aw.) visser three is left with the animorphs and orders them to be thrown into a holding cell. “if there is the slightest trouble, kill them all.”

a CLASSIC line

the animorphs get marched into a holding cell with thirty-six minutes left on their morphs. marco has a small spiral. when exactly did his mom become a controller? did a yeerk tuck him into bed, give him christmas presents, kiss his dad? how long had she been one of them? the other animorphs are slowly starting to accept their fate when marco has a burst of inspiration. he’s not going to accept their fate. he’s going to fight back. they could morph into ants, escape the holding cell, move around the ship, fuck some shit up. all the other morphs are into it, when suddenly —

the door slides open. there are three hork-bajir wearing gold uniforms. there are four hork-bajir in red uniforms, dead or unconcious on the ground. the gold hork-bajir give them exact directions to escape pods which have been programmed to take them back to earth (and then self-destruct). at first, tobias is like, this is a trap. but cassie points out that it’s actually politics. visser three is gonna look like a huge loser if the animorphs escape — and that’s exactly what visser one is counting on. not one to look gift horses in the mouth (but certainly acquire their dna), the animorphs are like, sick, thanks!

they fucking book it. they run into a few taxxons and hork-bajir in red uniforms along the way, but easily slice their way through those. they make it to the escape pod with six minutes left in their morph, and they all begin to morph back as the escape pod shuttles them back to earth. before they’re fully de-morphed, jake and marco have one more thought-speak conversation. marco’s like, seriously, no one can know. jake’s like, of course. i swear. marco’s like, but someday…i’ll free my mom. and jake’s like yeah, someday. we will.

the book closes on a scene of marco and his dad at his mom’s grave. marco’s dad is like, hey, kid. i haven’t been a very good father to you these past two years. your mom would be disappointed if she knew. so i’m gonna try to go back to work, see if i even remember how to turn on a computer. marco makes a joke (classic marco) but the two of them hug and begin to walk home. marco looks up at the sky.

someday…

REVIEW

what a fucking rollercoaster. this one was a little more emotional for me personally? it was really stressful and dealt with a lot of trauma stuff, which i wasn’t expecting (but that’s on me, because i know what these books are about). there was a lot of really gross morphing BUT we got MARCO’S GODDAMN MOM! 4.5/5. i really liked this one.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• where are the models for these book covers now?? where are they now?? what was it like? will someone please find them for me? i just have a few questions

• which animorph are you? i wish i was rachel. i think i’m a marco.

• which animal would you least like to have to morph into?

• i’ve cast marco’s mom/visser one as gina torres. who would you cast?

PREDICTIONS

• i’m taking a break from predictions because i got a major win this week

• what are your predictions

that’s all for this week, folks! i hope you’ve voted by now/have a voting plan in place. see you next week!