ANIMORPHS #7.5 / MEGAMORPHS #1: THE ANDALITE'S GIFT

hey hi hello everyone and welcome back to animorphs weekly, abc’s new bachelorette pre-show show. what a year last week was, huh? did anyone else have destiel becoming canon on their 2020 bingo card? does anyone else here even know what destiel is? by god i hope not. may the curse end with me. but! our work isn’t over. there are TWO runoff elections happening in georgia in january. i’ve pledged $5/week to be split between the two campaigns and if you’d like, you can join me here. if you can’t donate your money, consider donating your time via phone/text banking. we cannot give up on this momentum. the democratic party is going to need to be shoved to the left, and i mean hard. i think it is possible, but it requires hard work from all of us, especially those of us that are white/white passing. ok. i will step down from my politics soap box and step over here to my animorphs soap box.

wanna read a book?

as you could tell by the absolute batshit title of this email, we are reading a MEGAMORPHS this week. what’s a megamorphs, you ask?? great question!! i don’t know!!! a brief google search (i am still desperately trying to avoid spoilers) tells me that there are a handful of megamorph books. they serve as companion pieces to the animorphs series. (also, the animorph wikipedia page made sure to let me know that the article on the megamorphs books was written from a “real world point of view” which insinuates the existence of animorph wikipedia pages written from an book world point of view, and reader, i cannot wait to discover them.) this megamorph book falls in between books 7 and 8 of the animorphs series, so we are reading it now, as our lord and savior applegate intended for us to do.

i SCREAMED at the little hawk on this front cover

a fun thing about the megamorph books is that they inspired george rr martin—each chapter is narrated by a different animorph! the breakdown of this book might be a little more segmented than usual. i don’t know. it’s our first megamorph!!!!

SUMMARY

we open, of course, with a jake chapter. over the course of these seven books, our heroes have really grown hard. jake’s first book was like my name is jake and i’m scared to tell you my last name because of the yeerks! this book opens up with my name is jake and if i tell you my last name my blood—and the blood of humanity—will be on your hands. there’s a whole paragraph where he’s like, do you ever wonder about aliens?? do you ever look up at the stars and dream about what could be out there?? well wake up dork-o the yeerks are here and they’re coming for you and everyone you love

jesus

he’s like i know this because my big brother, big brother tom, is a controller. and so is my best friend’s hot mom!

the animorphs (minus ax) are all in cassie’s barn. rachel has to leave for a weekend for a two-day gymnastics camp and she, reasonably, doesn’t want to go. she’s worried about leaving her friends alone! honestly girl, you should be worried about going off on your own! the yeerks are everywhere, even at gymnastics camp!

cassie is like, you should go, because we are still Just Kids, and life can’t be all about fighting the yeerks. marco is like, rachel doesn’t think we can make it without her because she’s xena: warrior princess. rachel is like okay fine i’ll go just to get away from marco!!!! she looks to tobias and is like, you will stay out of trouble, won’t you? cassie and jake exchange a Look.

cassie has a theory that rachel and tobias like each other. not that rachel has ever said anything, even though rachel and cassie are best friends. cassie thinks it’s sweet and romantic. i just think it’s kind of sad. i mean, as far as we know, tobias will never be fully human again.

listen. having a crush on a birdboy is the same as having a crush on an unattainable celebrity man who is very cute and also requires no committment. that’s all i’m gonna say. i am staring directly into the camera for a long period of time.

jake is like we should all just have a nice and normal weekend! sure, you should. but will you?? marco points out that some people (jake) are going to have a better weekend than others (marco) because some people (jake) got invited to a pool party and some people (marco) did not. cassie asks jake to help her bring some cages from the truck outside. while the two of them are out there, she spends a long time staring up at the moon. she’s worried, obviously. she’s got a Bad Feeling about all of this. she’s been having bad dreams. something Bad is asking her to make a choice—in the dream, she has to decide who lives and who dies. jake, in classic Boy Fashion, is like, hey, it’s gonna be okay. you deal with your fear all the time!

it made me nervous talking about feelings like this. i guess i think if you just don’t talk about the fear, it will go away.

not true!

the next chapter is a rachel chapter. she tells us the brief history of the animorphs, and then heads out to the school to get picked up by the gymnastics camp bus. but! she gets there an hour early so first she can turn into a bird and say goodbye to tobias. she tells us that she takes care of some things for him, like bringing him books. he reads!

rachel gives us some horrible foreshadowing. she already told the people at the camp (namely melissa, the daughter of assistant principal controller chapman) that she wasn’t coming. and she told her mom that she was headed to camp. so no one is expecting rachel for two days. c’mon

as rachel is flying over the trees as a bald eagle, she spots ax running through the forest. she thinks to drop down to say hello to him, but as she’s flying down, she passes a nest of baby birds. of course, the parent birds are not happy to have a bald eagle flying anywhere near their little babies, so they swarm rachel and knock her out. she bonks her head against a tree. she’s fading. she’s trying to morph out of the eagle, but then….she passes out!!!

we cut to a marco chapter. it opens with marco explaining that there is a pool party that he was not invited to.

by the way, hi! my name is marco. i’m an animorph, too. i’m the smart, cute one. no, seriously. jake is the bossy one, cassie’s the nice one, rachel is the stupidly brave one, and tobias is a bird.

this is the fastest and most succinct wrap-up of the animorphs i’ve ever read. i feel like i ghost-wrote this.

marco is talking to ax about this pool party hosted by this girl darlene, who does not think marco is cute and did not invite him to her pool party. marco is trying to enlist ax’s help in spying on darlene’s pool party, because he is convinced that the only reason darlene didn’t invite him is because she likes him. ax is, understandably, confused. he’s like, isn’t prince jake going to be there? marco is like, yeah, but jake is not going to spy for me. i have to do it myself.

sure

tobias shows up with a live mouse for marco. he does chastise him a little bit—because it is a definitely bad plan—but tobias did bring him the mouse, so. we are all complicit. (also, it gets revealed that ax has fleas. hilarious.) marco and ax acquire the mouse morph. tobias, rightfully, points out that jake is going to give marco such shit for this. apparently, last time marco was at a Darlene Pool Party he was six and he floated a baby ruth bar in the pool and told everyone it was poop.

so, you know, that’s probably why he wasn’t invited

tobias is like, also, be careful. mice are like, the easiest and most wanted prey in the world. and all animals can get got.

tobias laughed. even we predators get ours sometimes. i saw a bald eagle get mobbed by a bunch of jays this morning. slammed into a tree. i guess the eagle was going after their nest.

no!!! that was rachel!!!

we cut back to jake. he and cassie are at the pool party, thinking about how nice it is to just relax, when suddenly—screams!! jake is instantly in fight mode, planning battle tactics, but one of the girls at the pool party uses her words and lets everyone know there are MICE!!!!!!!!!

cassie is instantly like marco

jake and cassie try to direct mouse!marco and mouse!ax towards cassie and not any of the other humans at the party who are trying to kill them (because teens are ruthless) but marco ignores them and follows darlene into the house. he and ax start to demorph in the basement. jake runs for the patio door and slams right into another party-goer. there is an eight-person pileup at the patio door.

as it turned out, that pileup saved my life.

the sky turns dark. the sun is hidden behind a swirling cloud of dust. the dust swarm turns solid, and into a shape never before seen on earth, and then it strikes.

we cut to marco. we learn how marco and ax morphed into mice (mice are very afraid) and snuck into the party to eavesdrop on darlene and her friends. they, of course, call marco immature and not funny, so he decides to show them funny and starts to chase them around the lawn.

marco…

he chases darlene into the house, communicates to jake that he and ax are going to demorph in the basement, and starts to do so. they’re about halfway through their morph when crrrr-RUNCH! the roof of the house gets RIPPED away. wood, concrete, and beams are just falling all around them. there is a giant creature up above, made of nothing but teeth and blades and wings. it’s ripping apart the house!!! ax morphs into a human (useless, but at least explainable). the two of them are standing in the skeleton of what used to be darlene’s house, staring up at this giant beast.

and then……suddenly……the beast dissolves back into dust and disappears.

let’s check back in with rachel. she wakes up, on her back, lying in the middle of the forest. she has no recollection of where she is, or how she got there, or even what her first name is. she tries to sit up and is confronted with a horrifying reality: she is half-bird. her feet have been replaced with talons, her hands are covered in feathers, and her mouth is actually a beak. she flips shit. i don’t blame her! she doesn’t remember who she is and she’s halfway from human to bird!! she starts to concentrate. she concentrates on wanting to be human, and it starts to happen. above her, the sky goes dark, and a cloud of dust hovers over it. it’s just watching. but rachel (who still doesn’t remember her name is rachel) knows she has to focus on changing back. once she’s human, maybe she’ll remember who she is.

it’s tobias’s chapter!!

we get the pool party from his point of view. he was tailing marco and ax (just in case they needed support from the air) and so tobias gets a bird’s eye view of dust monster. he watches the house get ripped apart, and sees that jake, cassie, ax, and marco are all alive and okay. his special eyes also clue him in on one more thing: the dust beast is made of individual particles that can move extremely fast and with purpose. as the beast dissolves, all of the particles start speeding towards the woods.

we’re back to rachel. she’s morphing back from bird to human. it’s disturbing all the time, but she has no memory of why she can do it — or why she was a bird at all — so the bone crunching is extra bone chilling. suddenly, the dust beast is above her, all teeth and eyes and blades. scary! she starts fucking booking it through the woods. the dust beast is ripping up trees and plowing through the dirt. rachel starts screaming for help. she emerges out of the woods and onto a freeway. our girl is hop skippin’ jumpin’ across six lanes of traffic. the dust beast slams into (this is not a bit) a ben and jerry’s eighteen-wheeler. rachel trips over the median and rolls down a grassy slope. the beast shreds the truck’s trailer and (again, this is not a bit) ice cream pints are tossed everywhere. rachel gets pelted with cherry garcia and wavy gravy ice cream.

the beast rises from the ice cream carnage and turns its thousand eyes onto rachel. but…it doesn’t seem to recognize her. it dissolves and leaves. rachel climbs out of the ditch in her tattered morphin’ uniform, barefoot and disheveled. she stumbles back into the woods.

i just wanted to get away.

whoever i was.

damn

we’re at a cassie chapter! she, marco, ax (in his human morph), and jake are all in her living room watching the afternoon news. there’s a special on about the “freak tornado” that blew through darlene’s house. the report cuts to a similar (or the same) tornado slamming into the ben & jerry’s truck on the freeway. rachel is on screen for maybe half a second, and cassie yells, FREEZE! that’s rachel

(camera!!!)

they’re like, okay. this dust beast knew where ax and marco (and jake and cassie) were, and then it found rachel. who should be at gymnastics camp right now? it’s definitely not a coincidence. ax has never seen such a beast before. cassie moves into the kitchen to call rachel. (“i dialed rachel’s number,” she says, “i’ve probably dialed that number every day for years.” sweet!)

cassie has a brief conversation with rachel’s little sister, jordan. jordan’s like, rachel is at camp. cassie, because she’s smart, is like, “she didn’t come back early?” jordan’s like nah. cassie’s like oh ok thanks jordan bye! she moves back into the living room, shook to the core. rachel is supposed to be at camp. but she definitely isn’t.

so where is she?

we cut back to rachel. she’s wandering through the woods, massively disoriented and probably injured. she remembers what things are — the color of the sky, the moon, that winter is colder than summer, even what amnesia is — but she can’t remember anything about herself. terrifying! so so scary. she stumbles across a bright yellow t-shirt outside of a shack. she gets a flash of memory. the limited, a store in the mall, shopping with a friend. the shack itself looks familiar, but she can’t quite place it…

a voice from behind. “if you want to return the item, you’ll need a receipt.” rachel jumps and whirls around. it’s an old woman in the woods, just hanging out with a large canvas bag. rachel is like, huh? the wood woman staggers into the shack. rachel follows. (why not!) the inside of the shack is a fuckton of dirty clothes. the wood woman starts pulling out more clothes from her canvas bag and starts setting up her rustic pop-up. rachel is like, what’s your name? the woman grins.

“my name? or its name? we are two, not one. yes. yes. if you want to return the item—”

“your name, please,” i said.

“it’s gone now,” she said craftily. “but it will be back. oh yes, they’ll be back. they never go away forever.”

i understand why applegate is doing this, but this seems like primo yeerk info. is this woman a volunteer controller? clearly she isn’t fully present in the moment. is she cooperating with the yeerk in her brain? is there a yeerk at all? am i jumping to conclusions?

rachel is like o k a y. i just want….to buy a pair of shoes. from your store. the woman is like, are you one of them? rachel is like huh? the woman literally says “there’s only one way to know for sure” and then, in true horror movie fashion, she bashes something in the back of rachel’s head. rachel’s down. the woman is on top of her, screaming YEERK YEERK YEERK (so it is a yeerk thing). rachel is struggling. she sees there’s a trapdoor in the floor. she tries to avoid it, but the woman shoves her inside and slams the lid shut. the woman is still yelling YEERK. rachel gets a flash of memory: a gray, sludgy pool; an underground cavern; slugs…

rachel is like, please let me out of here, wood woman, i don’t want to hurt you. the wood woman replies quietly, speaking to rachel as if she is a yeerk. she’s like, you don’t want to hurt me, just crawl into my ear and make me give you my husband and my children. but you died, right little yeerk??? rachel is, understandably, freaked the fuck out. she knows the word yeerk means something. but she can’t remember!

BAM. back to jake. he and marco have taken the bus out to the last place rachel was seen. ax is on his way to meet them, and tobias is already there. they’ve brought a bag with a shirt of rachel’s that she left at cassie’s house, and the plan is to morph into wolves to smell rachel out. it’s a good plan! good for them. tobias has done a quick sweep of the forest: he saw no humans except for one woman who lives in a shack out in the woods. applegate!!!!!! the boys morph into wolves. jake tells us that morphing doesn’t hurt, which idk if they’ve ever mentioned this before, but it’s good to know. mid-morph, the dust beast shows up!!!!!

BAM back to rachel. she’s trapped still underneath the shack. she’s angry. classic rachel. she gets a couple flashes of memories that make little sense without the context of animorphin’. she also gets a memory of prince elfangor dying. none of it makes sense to her (and honestly, i totally understand) and she’s freaking out. suddenly, smoke!! the wood woman is burning down the shack!! rachel needs to bust out of there!! but she’s too weak on her own! she needs power!!!!!!!!!!!!

CUE THE GRIZZLY BEAR

could you imagine being in a panic one moment and then turning into the biggest land predator in america??? the range

we’re back to marco. the dust beast is descending. he and jake finish morphing into wolves and then they’re booking it. the beast is behind them, shredding up trees with its thousands of teeth. marco and jake are running through the forest, heading for thicker trees, once again mere steps aways from the jaws of death. but then, marco smells smoke! there’s a fire! and what’s that? the faint sound of a human screaming? no time to process that! the dust beast has changed directions! it’s headed for the fire!

ZAP back to rachel. she’s morphing into a grizzly bear and wondering if she is losing her mind. i get it. she busts through the trapdoor and escapes the burning shack. the dust beast hovers above her! the grizzly bear swings! and then another creature approaches and thought-speaks to rachel. it’s ax! he says rachel? is that you? she says rachel? is that my name? and then the BEAST ATTACKS

we get an ax chapter!! he opens with a little intro post and then immediately moves into “i must kill visser three or be dishonored.” damn! ok! it’s good to have goals. he also says “while i am on earth, i have taken jake for my prince,” which, c’mon. that’s just gay. i love this ax chapter. his voice is so distinct from the others and it makes me giggle. it’s good stuff.

when we set off to find rachel, i traveled through the woods. i live in the forest now. it is my new home.

hell yeah pal

he runs across rachel in the woods (as we saw in the last chapter) and yells out to her. but rachel won’t talk to him, because she doesn’t understand thought-speak and is a little occupied fighting the dust beast. she swipes a paw and ax watches as the paw gets shredded. he tries to tell rachel to run but she doesn’t listen!!! then she loses a full bear arm!!!!! ax is freaking out. he can’t fight it — he won’t recover from his wounds like rachel’s bear can if she demorphs. he’s debating on morphing into a bird to follow the creature and see where it goes when the dust cloud reaches down and surrounds rachel completely. ax starts to morph — and that gets the beast’s attention! a-ha, he thinks, it’s the morphing energy!

but it’s too late. he stays in his andalite form and lets the beast descend upon him. it wraps him up in a tight cocoon and lifts him off the ground. as it begins to fly away with him, he suddenly understands the purpose of the beast, and the name of the beast’s master.

but of course applegate isn’t going to give that juicy nugget away so soon

blip! back to jake. (where is cassie??) they’ve found the remains of the burnt cabin, but apparently arrived shortly after the ax-gets-cocooned incident. they can smell him, a grizzly, and rachel, but see none of them. tobias swoops down and tells them the grizzly tracks lead north and are surrounded by blood. there’s no sign of ax. the andalite tracks just stop. the three of them think the worst. they saw what happened to darlene’s house and all these trees. there are a lot of loose ends, but they’re running out of morph time—and daylight. tobias lifts off to go search for rachel. marco and jake head back for the road with a plan to eat dinner with their families and then meet back up at cassie’s barn. marco asks jake what the hell is going on. (he doesn’t curse, but he would if he could.) jake isn’t sure. if the beast is related to the yeerks somehow, it would mean that the yeerks know the identities of the animorphs. it knew where to find them. so why not just show up at their houses? why bother with a dust beast? why hasn’t rachel gone home? and how are they gonna stay alive?

boop! back to cassie. she’s at the mall, looking for rachel. jake asked her to check out the places rachel might have gone (which, in cassie and i’s opinion, is a little sexist). she doesn’t need to be protected. she’s an animorph, dammit! the best among them! still, she’s a little relieved to be safe in the mall. she’d already checked out the gymnastics gym, the froyo place where she always orders key lime pie flavor, the school, and her house. which leaves the mall. she can’t find rachel anywhere (because rachel is currently bleeding out in the woods) but she does find someone else: assistant principal controller chapman.

cassie decides to follow him. it’s dangerous, and she might just be doing it because she wants to prove she can do dangerous things, but before she can talk herself out of it, she’s ducking into a bathroom, shoving her clothes and shoes in a trash can, and morphing into a house fly. we get a truly grotesque description of what it’s like for her to do that (the word “sploot” is used) and then she’s out of the bathroom, zipping towards chapman.

back to ax. he’s being carried by the dust beast to the blade ship. that’s right folks—visser three has entered the party. the dust beast brings ax into the ship and dumps him, unceremoniously, on the ground. he stands up and is surrounded by ten hork-bajirs, all pointing dracon beams at him. visser three rolls in, literally starting off his sentence with a “well, well” which is a CLASSIC villain move. if you remember, ax must kill visser three or else the memory of his brother will be tarnished (very inigo montoya). he’s weighing the risk of fighting visser three versus dying in combat when visser three starts monologuing.

he calls the dust beest a “veleek,” which in yeerk means “pet,” and he also mentions that he picked up this sweet lil monster on saturn! having ax on the ship confirms visser three’s suspicions that all the animorphs are andalites like him. ax, not a fool, plays along. visser three is fairly confident that ax is going to die on the ship, so ax is trying to get as much information out of him as possible. the dust beast is not a controller (obvs, there’s nowhere to put a lil slug) but rather just a weird thing that lives on venus. each particle can sense life-form energy, and when one particle senses prey, all the other particles show up and shred that life-form into bits. (which begs the question—what is on saturn that this thing can eat?? applegate!! i want to know!!!) visser three has programmed this dust beast to sense the energy of morphing, but because he wants to kill the animorphs himself, he just has the beast bring them to the ship and feeds it the energy from the engines. he’s basically like, it’s hopeless. my beast will hunt down all your friends and bring them here and then! it’s lights out

he pulls a classic “toss him in a cage and if he escapes all of you will die” and then rolls out. the hork-bajir grab ax, but all he can think about is the fact that visser three was within striking distance and he just let him walk away.

damn

that’s sad

back to cassie! zip zip! she’s hanging out as a fly over assistant principal controller chapman’s head. she spends like twenty minutes just watching him pick up books and put them down, when suddenly, a man and a woman approach. he chastises them for being late, and then literally says “walk with me.” another classic line! cassie takes a risk and lands on assistant principal controller chapman’s collar so she can hear what they’re talking about. the woman complains about how dramatic their meeting is (but she’s the only one complaining; i think it rocks) and assistant principal controller chapman says that their communications aren’t trustworthy. visser one has supporters among visser three’s people—and they can’t let what happened last time (visser one freeing the animorphs from the mothership) happen again. but, assistant principal controller chapman has faith in the veleek.

the woman, a controller on the police force, complains about cleaning up the dust beast’s mess. ten percent of the cops are controllers, she says, but that leaves ninety percent who are starting to get suspicious. (just invite them to The Sharing! cops love cults!) the man, who works at the newspaper, says the same thing. he starts to tell assistant principal controller chapman to tell visser three that it isn’t working, but assistant principal controller chapman whirls around and grabs this man by the arm and leans in real close.

listen to me, boy-o, he hisses (this is a bit), you wanna tell the boss man that his idea is dumb? rats who tell the boss his ideas are dumb get cut off from that sweet k-ray (kandrona rays). and since k-rays are hard to come by, after those meddling mutts destroyed our big k (kandrona), the visser is just looking for a reason to starve out any pansy-ass yeerks who think they know better than him.

the newspaper guy is like gee sorry chapman!! i didn’t mean to insult you!! and then assistant principal controller chapman gives him a little kiss on the nose and lets him go. (at least in my adaptation that’s what would happen.) assistant principal controller chapman says that if the dust beast doesn’t capture the animorphs, visser three might get demoted to visser four. even five. the horror. he tells them to stick to the tornado story, and if anyone started asking too many questions, kill them or make them controllers.

and break!

cassie is, understandably, horrified. she knows now about the veleek—that it’s a tool of visser three’s—and that it was hunting morphs.

speaking of morphs, let’s check in with rachel. she’s wandering through the woods, bleeding out of her bear arms, and she knows she needs to change back into a human. she does, and stands up, looking around for the alien who knew her name. yes! she remembers aliens. the creature in the woods who knew her name had to be an alien, just like the dust beast, and just like the yeerks. another flash of memory: a construction site, something landing, faces around her. but she can’t quite see the faces. she gets frustrated (for sure) and takes a second to assess. she knows her name is rachel, she knows she can turn into a bear, she knows she has some powerful enemies. but the forest holds no answers for her. she starts to follow the stream back to civilization.

listen if the sight of cassie restores rachel’s memories you will never hear the end of it

it’s time for a marco chapter! he, cassie, jake, and tobias are all in cassie’s barn. four out of six. they know ax is not okay, and they know rachel is not okay, but they haven’t located either of them. cassie pieces it together—the dust beast is attracted to their morphing! it’s a big piece of news, but as marco says to the room, rachel doesn’t know that. and this means that they’re safe only as long as they don’t morph—and they need to morph to fight the yeerks. jake asks if that’s what marco thinks they should do. marco shrugs. rachel isn’t here, he says, so he’ll vote like her: they need to find a way to kick the dust beast’s butt. cassie asks what the real marco would say.

“he’d probably make some stupid but very funny remark,” i admitted. “then he would start thinking about how to do just that: kick this big windbag’s dusty butt.”

nice!

back to rachel. she’s reached civilization—or at least, a suburban development. she finds a newly sold house that is currently empty and slips inside through the window. gymnastics! she gets some water and vanilla wafers and falls asleep on the ground. she starts to dream: back at the construction sight. there’s a girl next to her but she can’t see her face. there’s a boy with the face of a hawk. rachel is now on a balance beam. she has the feet of a cat. there are people in the crowd she knows hate her and want her dead. but there’s something wrong with them. there are worms in their head. then suddenly she’s underground. huge ants surround her! but she’s also an ant! she’s getting torn to shreds! morph back! morph back!

she awakes, literally screaming the word ANIMORPH. could you imagine. she’s like what does that mean?? but there’s no time to figure it out. BAM BAM BAM the cops are at the door! she’s freaking out! the cops can’t be trusted! she needs to escape. she’s afraid. she focuses on an image she saw in her dream, and starts to morph. she’s growing larger, and larger, and then her nose grows very, very long.

jake! the meeting in the barn has just ended and everyone’s a little bummed. ax and rachel might be dead. cassie walks marco and jake out to the road when they spot it—the dust beast zooming towards a suburban development. jake knows they can keep it distracted if they start morphing which could potentially protect rachel or ax, whoever’s its currently chasing after. but how are they going to get there? the development is half a mile away, and they can’t morph at cassie’s house or else the beast will show up there. marco spots an old pick-up truck.

“are the keys in that?” marco asked.

“no way,” cassie said."

“way,” marco said.

which left it up to me to decide. “let’s do it.”

HELL YEAH KIDS DRIVE THAT TRUCK

back to rachel. she’s almost done morphing into the elephant when the beast shows up! it chews through the back wall of the house. she runs for the front door and bursts through it, a horrible mixture of elephant and girl. (been there.) she trumpets into the air, and the police are dumbfounded. but she doesn’t care about the police! she cares about the dust beast! she starts charging down the road. the beast is chewing up everything in its path. rachel realizes that she can’t keep running—people live here, and she doesn’t want to be responsible for their pain. so she stops. she surrenders. the dust beast surrounds her as the elephant morph completes. it wraps her up in some ropes and tries to lift her.

but it can’t.

the elephant is too big.

rachel has a glimmer of hope! and then she hears something: a long and terrible screech. the sound of squealing tires. like a very bad driver was racing towards her.

it’s marco! our short king is driving the truck! i live for “kids who don’t know how to drive all driving a car at the same time”. it’s pure comedy to me. cassie is just screaming. jake is yelling out various obstacles. marco is hitting trash cans and driving on curbs and having a grand old time. suddenly, they see an elephant with blonde hair running down the street. they watch as the elephant turns and faces the beast, and marco says, “yeah, that’s rachel, all right.” another CLASSIC line. the beast lowers its little ropes around rachel, and jake, cassie, and marco learn that the beast isn’t trying to kill them. just capture them. they also watch as rachel is too heavy to be carried away. they spring into action. cassie is going to rachel, jake is going to morph, and marco is going to try to drive the truck (with a forming tiger in the back) away from the dust beast.

this is a beautiful midseason finale scene

we cut to jake’s perspective. marco has driven them out of the neighborhood and onto the highway. (my nightmare!) jake is slowly morphing to keep the dust beast interested. marco realizes that the highway is no place for the beast, and so decides to go off-road, driving the truck into the woods. always the woods! they need to separate. jake tells marco to start morphing in five minutes — and try not to destroy cassie’s dad pickup truck, will ya??? marco speeds out of there. it’s just tiger!jake and the dust beast. jake charges at the beast, but at the last second, dives underneath it and starts running. it takes the dust beast a few seconds to turn around, and then it’s off, chasing after him. the plan is to wear out the beast by giving it too many morphs to hunt. but can the dust beast even be worn out? tiger!jake climbs a tree. the dust beast starts to eat at the base of the tree, working its way up. tiger!jake does the only thing he can: leap into the night.

rachel is dropped by the dust beast. she hits the ground below and gets a flash of memory: flying, going to see tobias, slamming into a tree. victory! she remembers the name tobias! she watches the dust beast fly after a truck with a weird not quite a boy not yet a tiger in the backseat, and then, she sees a short girl in overalls. the girl yells her name and asks if she’s okay, and then rachel gets a lot of memories of people calling her rachel. she knows, for sure, that’s her name. but she doesn’t know who this girl is. rachel is like TELL ME WHO YOU ARE OR I’LL CRUSH YOU LIKE A BUG and cassie is like ooook. i’m cassie. i’m your best friend. rachel reveals that she doesn’t remember cassie—or anything. there are more cops coming. people are starting to wake up and look out their windows. rachel is like, what am i? cassie’s like, you’re an animorph. but more importantly, you’re my friend.

rachel doesn’t hesitate.

cassie, i said.

“yes.”

tell me what to do.

(camera)

back to ax! he’s trapped in a ramonite box with seamless walls on all sides. he’s pretty bummed because he didn’t kill visser three. logic says he did the right thing, but honor? honor says he failed. before he can fall too deep into that shame spiral, one of the walls of his box turns clear. visser three (surrounded by taxxons and hork-bajir) are watching a hologram of the dust beast tearing through trees. “i thought you might enjoy watching this,” visser three says, directly out of a bad spy movie. they watch as the dust beast comes close to the tiger (who ax immediately recognizes as prince jake) and is about to swarm it when—the dust beast disintegrates and speeds away. visser three demands an explanation! what is happening here!!! why does it not bring me this tiger!!!

a human controller steps forward and points out that the dust beast senses the energy expended during morphing, so it’s drawn to active morphing, not finished morphs. visser three does not kill this human controller. he commands two bug fighters to be launched. he wants a visual lock on the dust beast. a taxxon foolishly says, in taxxon, that it’s difficult to keep a visual lock on the dust beast. in a flash, the taxxon is split open and its guts are all over the floor. gross! everyone else in the spaceship hops to it. ax sneers at the visser, who turns his terrifying gaze onto ax. visser three knows all about the andalite morphing abilities. and he’s about to make their lives a living hell.

i would like to take them alive, for my own reasons. but if i can’t, i will make do with their lifeless bodies.

yikes!

back to marco. he’s driving the truck through the woods. he needs to get it back to cassie’s farm, but he also needs to morph and draw away the dust beast. two birds one stone! he starts to morph into a gorilla. can gorillas drive? we’ll find out!

marco’s chapter was literally only a page, so now we’re back to rachel. she’s running towards the woods as an elephant. cassie is on her back, explaining who rachel is to rachel. she’s going through the animorphs: jake is her cousin, cassie is her best friend, marco is marco, and tobias is a —

rachel knows this one. bird!

she tells cassie that the wood woman was yelling about yeerks. cassie’s like yeah, those are real too. but we don’t have time to unpack all of that! we’re in the middle of a fight. cassie explains the plan to wear out the dust beast, and rachel is like, that is a terrible plan. are the animorphs always this underprepared? cassie and i at the same time sigh YES. but it’s cassie’s turn to morph. she asks to get off, but rachel says no. the beast couldn’t lift her, so cassie should stick with the elephant. cassie calls her “my girl rachel” and starts to morph into a squirrel.

back to marco. he’s half-gorilla, driving the truck through the woods. from above, dracon beams are shooting down! in front of him, an elephant! he slams on the brakes and goes rolling. the dracon beams are firing. the gorilla is exhausted. he needs tot morph and get out of the truck. he’s scared, but he has to do it.

over to cassie — she’s morphing into a squirrel when the dracon beams arrive. pew pew! rachel is confused, but cassie isn’t morphed enough to use thought-speak and her human mouth is gone. suddenly, rachel gets shot by a dracon beam! there are headlights too close! BAM! cassie goes flying. she lands in a bush and scrambles to see the scene in front of her. rachel is on her side, trumpeting in pain and rage. the pickup truck is in a ditch. there’s a gorilla — marco! a bug fighter flies overhead. the dust beast hovers above all three of them. cassie knows it will take whoever morphs first. it’s her dream! an evil has come and is forcing her to choose. she closes her eyes.

ax is still on the visser’s ship, watching the hologram of his friends down below. he watches as the dust beast lowers and picks up someone, but they can’t tell who. visser three is excited. he tells the bug fighters to hold down the elephant. a human-controller points out that having hork-bajirs and taxxons surround this elephant will look mighty conspicious. so they’ll call some human controllers. visser three waves a hand, and ax’s cage becomes opaque once more. he feels really fucking sad, and then a flea bites him! rude!

but hey…maybe he could use this…

he captures the flea and acquires its dna and immediately starts to morph into it. it is truly a horrifying description. the description of how ax changes into a flea is longer than marco’s one page chapter. he sits and waits patiently. surely something will happen. and it does! visser three starts giving commands in thought-speak to open the hatch and let the dust beast in. he wants ax to watch, so he makes one of the walls of the cage translucent again and sees—nothing! some fool makes the mistake of opening the cage to investigate where ax has gone, and he leaps out, making his escape. he flies through the air and lands on something. there’s a swift movement, and the person ax is attached to is no longer alive.

back to marco. it turns out the dust beast chose him to lift up. he’s still in the gorilla morph. there are hork-bajir and taxxons and visser three around him. visser three demands he morph out of gorilla form, but marco isn’t an idiot. he stays just as he is. ax thought-speaks to marco and tells him that he’s on the ship as a flea! he’s on the safest place he could find: visser three. and he has a plan. there are small square pads on the computers the taxxons are operating. they work similar to thought-speech. all marco has to do is press his hand against one of those pads and think “open hatch.” marco’s like, what are you going to do? and ax laughs

it happens very suddenly. the dust beast starts going wild. it shoots its little ropes out around visser three! ax is morphing on visser three! hork-bajirs run in to save the visser, but the dust cloud is unbothered. it simply eats their arms! chomp chomp baby! marco moves towards the computer and opens the hatch. visser three cries out for water. marco starts punching hork-bajirs and tells ax whatever the second half of the plan is, now would be a great time to put it into motion.

we’re with ax. he morphs back into the flea and jumps into the dust cloud. he slams into one of the particles—it’s alive! it is a small creature with antennae and wires. he shoves the dust particle away and then blap blap! water starts spraying into the dust beast! ax falls to the ground! that’s why visser three called out for water. he tells marco to stomp his feet—marco does—and then flea!ax hops on. they jump through the hatch. they’ve escaped! but now they’re two miles up in the air and are plummeting down to earth!

blam! we’re with rachel. she’s getting more memories. the construction site. the andalite telling them about the yeerks. cassie’s barn. cassie! her friends! she remembers the animorphs! she remembers she had been an eagle and she slammed into a tree! and then cassie is talking to her. she feels super guilty because she let the dust beast take marco. rachel remembers marco! it’s all coming back to her now…

she starts to morph back into a human, and so does cassie. cassie is two steps away from a full spiral, and rachel is like, hey! focus! marco is gone and we can’t do anything about it. but we do have something to focus on now. these bug fighters, hovering above us. cassie’s like, good point. okay. focus. she tells rachel to morph into a great horned owl, and the two of them are ready to go. bam! a hork-bajir drops from a bug fighter. the owl!girls haven’t gotten enough altitude to fly over them, so rachel suggests a very rachel thing: fly right at it. go for the eyes. cassie calls her my girl rachel again (eyeball emoji) and they fly at full speed. they’re a few feet away from the hork-bajir when BAM! A TIGER! IT’S JAKE! jake takes out the hork-bajir and the animorphs are able to get away. as they’re running, jake asks, “what about marco? have you seen marco?”

marco is currently falling from the sky! he’s freaking out! ax tells him to morph into a bird! oh, right. birds! marco has to transform from a gorilla to a human to a bird. it’s truly terrifying. the ground is rushing up to meet them, marco is not the best morpher, and at the last possible second—woosh! his osprey wings kick in and he is flying! so is ax! good work boys!

we cut to jake. they had a rough night. rachel spent the night at cassie’s house because her memory was still shaky and she’s supposed to be a gymnastics camp. jake drags himself home and gets mega-grounded. for sure! he’s devastated. he thinks marco and ax are dead. the animorphs are toast. he falls asleep thinking that and wakes up to marco! marco is alive! he cracks some jokes about the dust beast and opens the blinds in jake’s room. it’s time to counterattack. jake mentions that he’s totally grounded, and marco’s like, yeah i talked to your dad on the way up and he said if you cleaned the garage you could go outside for a little bit. thanks dad!

in three hours, everyone will meet at the edge of the woods. no morphing.

back to cassie. tobias is bummed he missed all the fun! this whole time he was sleeping! a little birdboy asleep while all his friends were in danger! everyone’s having a good little chuckle, relieved everyone is okay, except for cassie. she still feels super guilty that she let the beast take marco instead of her. she feels like a coward. which is why she’s come up with a plan. she explains it to the group with one caveat: she has to be the one to do it. she tells them that she feels bad about letting the beast take marco, she calls herself a coward, and rachel is like, you’re the bravest girl in the world! there’s a bit of banter about rachel not remembering marco calling her xena: warrior princess (“do i like it when you call me that? or do i kick your butt?”) but the focus is on the plan. it also has to be cassie because it requires a new morph, and she is the best morpher. well. there’s no arguing that.

let’s go to the beach

each

tobias gets a brief chapter. he’s flying over the ocean in search of a whale. once he finds one, he meets back up with his friends on shore and tells cassie he got one.

back to cassie. tobias rolls up and lets her know about the whale. it’s time. they all dip into the water and morph into dolphins. the dust beast shows up, but it doesn’t like the water, so they’re safe (for now). they find the whale, and in the water, cassie morphs back into human so she can acquire the dna. with the help of rachel and jake, she stays afloat long enough to do so.

tobias is flying. cassie has morphed into a cockroach and is hanging onto his back. he’s going up up up. they have a brief conversation about fear. tobias is afraid all the time. cassie asks how he handles it. he says he doesn’t, really. he just is afraid, and then he does what he needs to. she tells him if she doesn’t make it, she wants jake to tell her parents one day the truth of everything. tobias insists she’ll be okay. but he promises he’ll let jake know. tobias can’t fly any higher. it’s now or never. she leaps off of his back as a roach and starts to morph into a girl. tobias and i both wonder how she could ever consider herself a coward.

back to cassie. she’s falling and morphing and falling. she’s exhausted. the dust beast is on her! it’s wrapping her up! she needs to morph. she’s focusing, focusing, focusing and she cries out to the whale inside her brain for help.

rachel is below, watching cassie plummet to the ocean. the plan is working. cassie is morphing into a whale, dragging the dust beast down with her into the ocean. just like that, the dust beast is toast. the animorphs cheer! it’s a real victory! they’ve won! cassie begins to sing a whale song.

it isn’t words, exactly, cassie said. but if it were, it would be just one word: hope.

REVIEW

WHAT A RIDE. honestly though? 3/5. i think i like being able to hang with one animorph for a whole book better. it was nice to get the dramatic cuts — and fun to get some ax chapters! — but i am ready to return to the regular ol’ animorph style. not to mention this book was twice as long. substack keeps telling me i’m close to the length limit.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• who are we casting as visser three? if this was happening any earlier, i feel like jim carrey would be particularly scary. maybe giancarlo esposito? maybe andy serkis? it feels like a motion capture situation.

PREDICTIONS

• my friend charlie texted me and told me his prediction is that an animorph will die before we reach book 20

that’s all i have for you this week! see you next time!