The return animorphs 52, p.7
The Return (Animorphs 52),
p.7
And everyone would know who had been responsible.
Me. Rachel.
I wouldn’t overhear anymore “Rachel the Wacko” remarks.
I wouldn’t have to endure any more of Jake’s patronizing lectures about the need for restraint. About the dark part of me that frightened everybody so badly. No one could write me off as just another punk bully with a taste for violence. Finally, people would see that all I’d ever wanted to do was save the planet. To do this thing right and get it over with.
FWAP!
Visser One’s tail caught me in the knees and knocked me to the ground!
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Idiot! I’d been so busy dreaming about my big victory, I’d zoned out. His tail! Coming toward my throat, preparing to slash.
I rolled out of the way.
Amazing. I disappeared in a blur!
Visser One’s stalk eyes swiveled, desperately trying to locate me. I rolled around him, a tumbling blur. Then came to a dead halt. Jumped to my feet. Reached toward him, inhuman claws extended. He dove out of the way! Immediately started to morph.
I lurched forward and gathered his lump of a body in my massive arms. Prepared to hurl him into the back of the bleachers!
“AAAAAAHHHHH!”
I dropped the lump! My arms and chest burned as if they had been slathered with acid.
Because, in fact, they had been slathered with acid.
Visser One completed his morph. It wasn’t one I recognized, but it was monstrous. He was fifteen, twenty feet tall. Almost as tall as me!
His arms and hands dragged the ground like a gorilla’s.
His skin looked reptilian, weeping and seeping some kind of acid poison. My jaw racheted open and the sound that came out was so loud it shook the walls. The pain was unreal. Acid penetrating, eating my flesh!
But by the time the scream was over, the pain had already gone. My skin had morphed to meet the immediate need!
I was covered with thick, scaly plates like an alligator. Alligator!
The moment the image flashed into my mind, I felt my snouth stretch out, out, out.
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A split second later I fell forward to the ground. Landed on short, sturdy alligator legs.
Instantaneous morph! In less than a second.
This was unbelievable!
I shot forward and closed my alligator jaws around the visser’s leg.
CRUNCH!
I felt bones snap. The acid from his skin washed down my throat, but it barely tickled. A little hot sauce on a big, fat french fry. That was it. Just a little pleasant flavoring.
Then…no!
Suddenly my teeth lost their grip!
Visser One was morphing again. This time, to something gelatinous. His melting, liquidating body seeped out of my mouth. Whatever he had become pooled on the floor in a mass of red, quivering goo.
I morphed to Super-Rachel. Stared down at the goo.
Now what?
How do you fight to the death with a puddle?
Tentatively, I stepped forward and touched it with my toe. The red goo sprang to life, like some kind of hyper-speed sludge.
My scream reverberated through the dungeon.
Then I gagged. Because the red goo was streaming into my mouth, my ears, my nose!
I raked at my face! Tore globs of goo away from my cheeks. Flung it from my fingers.
But it was no use.
It kept coming. Pouring up my body, reverse gravity, then sliding back down, then pouring back up. A vicious cycle!
I was in the grip of a gelatinous goo monster. Some hideous living sludge determined to drown me.
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It didn’t matter how tall I became or how fierce.
I couldn’t fight this!
It covered me!
I was going to lose.
It was unbelievable.
I was going to lose to killer Jell-O.
———
Chapter Twenty-One
I could hear them laughing.
The Drode.
Crayak.
And David.
It was intolerable.
I had to morph. But what? What?
What had no mouth? No nose? No ears?
What could defend itself from this endless stream of runny, deadly mess?
What morphs did I have?
Birds. Fish. Mammals.
Nothing that would do me any good!
I needed to be a plant. No orifices. Something huge and hungry and dangerous. Suddenly, I felt myself melting. Like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Or maybe—withering. Like a tree starved for water.
Was I dying? Was this what death felt like?
My fingers lost their sensation. Human sensory ability—just gone.
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Instead, they grew rubbery and ultraflexible. Nob numb but—impervious to pain, to pleasure.
My lungs ceased to burn for air.
My legs! They were fusing. Braiding together at the hip. Where my feet had been, streching out like tentacles!
Or like vines or branches…
Suddenly, I realized what was happening.
I wasn’t dying.
I was being born.
I was becoming a living being that didn’t even exist on this planet!
That I’d only imagined!
That I’d conjured into being with the force of my will!
I was morphing into something my DNA bank had absolutely nothing to do with. A killer, carnivorous plantlike thing of my very own creation. The red goo was no threat now. It couldn’t choke or strangle me. I felt no need for air.
But I did feel hunger. And the goo looked delicious.
I bent my head, now a huge, green, veiny pod. It opened up like a flower unfolding, and a long proboscis shot out. Like the sucking organ of a giant butterfly. I dipped it into the goo and began to drink.
The goo pulled away, startled and frightened. Began to slide across the room. I chased it! Determined to eat it.
I approached on my magically gliding, trunk-like stem.
Thrust forward my pod-like head.
Close! Almost!
And then the goo began to morph. And in what seemed like only seconds, I found myself facing Visser One’s stolen Andalite form again.
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Too late to pull back!
He arched his tail. Swung his tail blade toward my vein-ribbed vegetable neck.
WHAP!
I felt my head snap off and fall to the floor.
Visser One began to laugh. And then abruptly stopped.
A tingling in my neck!
And within seconds, a second pod-like head appeared!
The visser roared angrily. No words, just a bellow of rage. I puctured myself as Super-Rachel.
Twenty feet tall. Arms like cranes. Teeth like bear traps. Immediately, I was as I had imagined myself.
Visser One galloped to the other side of the arena, out of my immediate rech. I couldn’t help but throw back my head. Couldn’t help but laugh. Then I began to walk toward the visser. Each step a boom of thunder. The crash of a collapsing building. The smash of colliding cars.
This time, the visser didn’t even try to morph. He knew it was useless. Knew the battle was over.
I flexed my hands. Saw the Drode nod and smile. I extended my cruel, steel claws. And prepared to put an end to one of the most wicked villains on this or any other planet.
I felt good to hear Visser One beg. To see him cringe.
Crayak’s red eye glowed more brightly. Approvingly.
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“Finish it,” Crayak said quietly.
It was unbelievable.
After all this time, I finally had him. Totally at my mercy. With a simple squeeze I could put an end to Visser One, to the Yeerks, to this whole sorry episode of Earth’s history.
All I had to do was execute him.
I’d never known true euphoria until now. What couldn’t I do? There was no species in any universe that could defeat me.
I was indestructible!
I would exterminate the Yeerks. I would bring universal peace to the planet. And then…and then…
I opened my hand. Then closed it again around his neck. Toyed with him.
He would kill. He would destroy.
He would obey.
I began to squeeze. The visser’s eyes—all four of them—began to bulge.
“Finish it.” Crayak. “Hurry.”
Visser One would obey. Just like David. Just like David’s punks. The red eye shone angrily.
“Finish it!” Crayak thundered. “What are you waiting for? Finish it or I will change you to a rat again and you will lose everything! Do you hear me? Everything!”
I tightened my grip around Visser One’s neck.
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Crayak could use you, Rachel.
And I was prepared to do what Crayak asked.
———
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Yes,” Crayak said. “Execute him. Free the earth from tyranny. And then…”
And then…what?
Sit around and watch TV?
An epiphany. A revelation. The lightbulb switching on in my head. Face it, Rachel. The power is like a drug. And you are like an addict. Would I ever get enough? How long before I turned into a morally decrepit monster like Visser One?
And making a deal with Crayak would only accelerate the journey to that inevitable end.
Suddenly, I had a vision of myself as I would really appear to the world. To my family. Friends. To the other Animorphs. To the Chee. The free Hork-Bajir. To every decent person on this planet.
Super-Rachel was not beautiful and kind and benevolent. She would not be honored and respected.
She was hideous and violent and brutal.
She would be feared by everyone.
Despised and hated.
A tyrant to be plotted against, just like Visser One.
Rachel of the darkness down deep inside.
“No.”
I released my grasp on Visser One’s neck. Fell back, horrified at what I was about to do.
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The visser dropped to the ground. Gulped air. Too stunned and frightened to move. He lay on the damp floor, his eyes following my every breath.
“What are you doing?!” Crayak thundered.
“I’m one of the good guys,” I said, panting.
To my own ears, my voice sounded like a booming, grating echo. It was the voice of a doomsday machine.
“You are a fool!” Crayak shouted. “You are a coward. You are weak, sentimental, childish. Worst of all, you have wasted my time. I have tried to help you free yourself from useless human emotions, but you choose captivity instead.”
WHOOSH!
Instantly, reality was altered.
Visser One was gone.
The arena or stadium was gone.
And once again, I was one of two rats in a cube.
David laughed.
“I knew it. I knew it! This is beautiful.”
Crayak’s big red eye glared at me from the other side of the clear wall.
“I offered you everything because you had the potential to win. To lead. To rule.”
“That’s a lie,” I argued. “You just wanted to use me to kill Jake.”
“Do you think the Ellimist would allow that?” Crayak hissed. “Don’t you see? We are trying to bring this occupation to an end. And only a strong leader can do that.”
“You’ll go mad,” Crayak threatened. “You’ll live out your life as a rat, and you’ll go mad.”
I am not some kind of nut!
Who was I kidding?
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The rat panicked. I panicked. Began, uncontrollably, to run around the walls of the cube. Around and around. The rat couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop!
I worry about you, Rachel.
I backed off. Slipped away, deep down under the rat brain. Let it rule. Because I didn’t trust my own brain.
I was afraid that I was already crazy.
Was this real?
Was it a dream?
Was it manipulated reality?
“I am real. David is real. You are real,” Crayak’s voice intoned.
“Time is real,” it droned on. “And Cassie is real. And David and his pathetic punks are real.”
“And this trap is real. And you really are going to be a rat. For real. And forever.”
I stopped, bumped into a corner. Collapsed onto my belly. The light from Crayak’s massive red eye again illuminated the whole ghastly scene. Cassie in her cube, trapped, slumped over. Looking across at me in despair. The two punks, cowering in a corner of the dungeon. Definitely freaked out beyond description. Trying, futilely, to hide from the searching red glow. David. In a furry, red-tinged lump not two feet from me. Slowly, the red light began to fade.
Going.
Going.
Until it was gone altogether.
Suddenly, I was cold. It was a shock. Like the temperature had plunged from ninety to thirty degrees in a matter of seconds.
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Whatever energy Crayak’s presence had created had disappeared along with it. Once again, the dungeon was sunk into a dark, damp gloom. Crayak and the Drode were gone.
They had disappeared back into the vastness of the universe. Maybe forever. And I was on my own.
With only minutes until I was trapped in rat morph. Definitely forever.
———
Chapter Twenty-Three
No help was coming. That much I knew. Nobody knew where I had gone. Not my family. Not Jake and the others. How could they?
If anybody was going to save me and save Cassie, it was going to have to be me. Not Super-Rachel. Not enhanced Rachel. Not even human-Rachel. The only Rachel around was rat-Rachel.
I had no power. No weapons. No room to morph anything of significance. Nothing!
David was loving my defeat. Gloating.
I worry about you, Rachel.
I am not some kind of nut.
And right then, a light went on in my little rat brain.
Another revelation, epiphany, realization.
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Like David said, Tattoo and Grease were still crouched in the corner. No doubt trying to figure out if it was safe to step out of the shadows.
He turned, startled.
Tattoo and Grease looked nervously at each other.
“Let’s get out of here,” Grease whispered. Loudly.
Tattoo nodded.
Bingo. I had their attention now.
First Tattoo then Grease got to his feet. Came over to the cube, slowly. Looked down at me with interest.
That was so not going to happen.
“You shut up,” he said to David. Then to me, “He’s right. We don’t know where the money is, and we can’t find it.”
Elation! It was more satisfying than any power high. I was on my way out of this trap. And, funny. I hadn’t had to use force, or terror, or pain.
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Just my brains.
I glanced at the clock.
Thirty seconds.
Twenty-nine seconds.
“What do you want?” Grease demanded.
Not so dumb after all.
Eighteen seconds.
