#shorms

"«Heh-heh-heh,» she cackled. «Just wood. Doesn't this little piggy know he should build his house out of brick? Come out, come out, little piggy! Or I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll crush this dump like a matchbox...

«Everybody out! Rabid elephant! Psycho elephant on the loose! It's Dumbo-zilla!»" (p. 84).

Rachel should be allowed at least one ecoterrorism a week. As recognition for her service.

Tobias describes Visser Three's morph as "bird-like" and Visser Three identifies it as "kaftid" — does it share a root with "kaffit," which we know is an andalite homeworld bird?

"«What's up?»/ «Up is the opposite of down. Although, of course, those terms are meaningless outside the context of a distinct, localized gravity field.» (p. 99).

Don't listen to Tobias, Ax — you're fucking hilarious when you feel like it.

It's so so clear on rereading that Ax isn't buying Aria's bullshit but is a) too eager for this to work for Tobias and b) not certain enough about human norms to say it outright. Poor kid. We've all been there where your BBF's (or nibling's) new favorite person sends up aaaalllll the red flags, but you want so bad to ignore your own gut and hope it works out for them.

Sorry, but I'm with Rachel on it being "stupid" for Tobias to be so obsessed with doing things the "right" way that he'd rather starve to death than ask for help. We know from #3 that Jake can keep Tobias fed! Like, I get that the whole point of the book is finding the balance of inner strength vs. dependence. Still, I'm with Rachel on this.

Aw, Tobias hating himself for eating a roadkill cat. :( In combination with in #33 him defining happiness as finding "that soft spot behind a cat's ear that made Dude close his eyes in ecstasy" (p. 120). :((((

"'Yeah, right,' Marco muttered, 'I'm an ant and I get chomped in half, I'm a flea and I almost get stuck in morph. I don't have a good record with bugs.'

'I got slapped as a fly,' Jake offered, like that was helpful" (p. 124).

These are the kinds of inspirational pre-battle speeches they keep you around for, Jake.

The parallelism of Tobias having a laugh about the obviousness of the trap for the hork-bajir, vs. being so willing to trust "Aria" because it's so clearly what Rachel and his human friends want for him... aaaarrrrgghhh.

In which Tobias and Ax have a hearts-to-lil-bird-heart. Shorm realness.

My guess is that the andalites have tried it at some point and Ax knows it won't work. Because — even though Tobias himself is ambivalent on the subject — Rachel and Jake are both DETERMINED to de-nothlit him no matter what. So between the Berensons' desperation to Fix The Thing and Ax's closeness with Tobias, I can't imagine that no one ever brought up the idea of trying to use the blue box on Tobias a second time. My guess would therefore be that it's widely known there is no cure for nothlitization, with or without the box.

I LOVE the way that Adam Verner (who voices Ax) does Tobias’s voice.  The other voice actors (MacLeod Andrews who does Jake, Ramón de Ocampo who does Marco) tend to make him somewhat hoarser than the other characters and give him a solemnity.  But Adam Verner makes him lighter and higher and smoother than the other voices, which IMHO does a much better job of capturing Tobias’s detached and sardonic side.

That is such a good point.  I hadn’t even considered that perspective before, but you’re exactly right that each one of them thinks that he’s the only sane one keeping the other two from going totally off the rails… and in a way they’re all kind of right.

Like, Tobias and Ax are wildly incompetent at everyday human interaction without Marco’s influence.  Tobias is a precious bby birb and also an utter dork who doesn’t get how social norms work even BEFORE he becomes a feral child who lives in the woods and eats rats, and obviously it only gets worse with time.  Ax ironically will sometimes pick up on nuances about human society that even Tobias misses, but he also misreads human communication badly enough to think that motor oil is food.  The shorm-kids need Marco’s social canniness to pass unnoticed around civilians.

Whereas Ax and Marco get up to the dumbest shit imaginable any time Tobias isn’t around to exert enough influence.  Those two try to run down a group of humans as mice, concoct a “brilliant” plan to escape Visser Three that’s literally just “jump out of a spaceship in midair and hope for the best,” advance human communications technology by a decade or so on accident, and hack the CIA’s private databases to steal top-secret government information BECAUSE THEY’RE BORED.  Tobias, as you said, is the closest thing that team has to an actual voice of reason, in the sense that he actually thinks about the consequences of his actions on occasion.

[Someone asked me what would happen if Ax joined the team at the same time as everyone else.  Whoever it was: sorry that I lost your ask; drop me a line so I can credit your idea.]

When Aximili asks to come along for the fight, Elfangor — against his better judgment — relents.  «Stay close,» he says, and «Don’t touch anything.»

«Yes, Prince Elfangor,» Aximili says.

Elfangor flashes him a quick smile, stalk eyes only.  The use of the title shows that Aximili understands the seriousness of the situation.  This is no driftball game where they can argue over the rules.  This is combat, and thus Elfangor’s word must be law.

Elfangor knows he made the right call.  That Aximili is mature enough to be cabin boy (as the humans would say) for the GalaxyTree.  He was right to insist to his captain that his little brother is ready for combat, aristh or no.  And he proves to be right in letting Aximili come along in his fighter.  Otherwise, Elfangor is reasonably certain, Aximili would have perished along with the rest of their crew.

It’s mere seconds into the battle that the Blade ship’s dracon cannon strikes the Dome ship square in its broadside.  Mere minutes that pass between the T.O. first spotting the yeerks and a thousand warriors crying out in a single thought-speak shout of despair, only to be horribly silenced.

In that moment, Elfangor’s mind races in a dozen directions at once: Andalite fighters aren’t equipped for planetary landfall.  The Time Matrix is down there on that planet.  The G-force of attempting to reach it could kill them both.  There’s an Escafil device stored in his fighter’s center console.  The yeerks are on Earth.  Loren is on Earth.  Tobias is on Earth.  Aximili is right here in the fighter with him, sharing the risk and the blame if anything goes wrong.  The Time Matrix... The G-force... The Blade ship... The humans...

Elfangor makes an impossible choice, because all the choices are impossible.  «Strap in,» he tells Aximili.  «Brace for impact.»

Aximili doesn’t ask.  Doesn’t point out that Elfangor’s out of his mind.  Instead, he scrambles for the crash harness.

A nudge of the controls.  Almost slowly, almost gently, the little fighter surrenders to the planet’s gravity well.  It tilts.  It slides.  And it starts to accelerate.

Elfangor yanks back on the thrusters with all his strength, even as the hydraulics scream at him and the craft judders with hull-cracking force.  They are become a meteor, arcing across Earth’s sky in a jet trail of flames.

Bracing all four hooves against the floor, Elfangor struggles for fast calculations of half-remembered geography.  That’s North America... That’s the west coast... No, no, further south, struggling to force the craft to obey... That patch of light must be Los Angeles... That satellite is San Diego...

Aximili is whispering the oaths to prince and people and honor, the oaths repeated before death.  He does not have to do it so that Elfangor can hear, and yet he seems to want to share this small comfort before the end.

Elfangor slams the secondary braking system into place.  The craft goes from thousands of miles an hour to mere hundreds in half a second.  Gravity flips sickeningly.

Aximili, safe in the harness, gets jarred but nothing else.  Elfangor, who had no time to join him, slams into the far wall with a breath-destroying crunch.  He staggers to his feet, weak gasps of pain escaping without his permission.  He’s bleeding internally, ribs broken, his lower heart sending out horrible judders of pain with every beat.  He remains hopeful, however — until he looks down and sees a wasteland of concrete and half-finished buildings where an empty field should be.  «No,» he whispers, helpless.  «No.»

«Elfangor...?»  Aximili’s voice is so tentative it verges on inaudible.

Elfangor is staring at the nav screen showing a familiar set of coordinates and also at the fifteen feet of solid cement between him and the Time Matrix.  Still, a part of him refuses to believe.

He lands anyway.  Stumbles out, just to be sure — and finds himself face-to-face with five human children.  Five children on a planet on the brink of subjugation.  Five children surrounded by threats on all sides and yet unknowing and defenseless.  Five children, one of whom has Loren’s wide grey eyes and soft yellow hair and the round-shouldered build of a long-lost human named Alan Fangor.

«Aximili,» Elfangor says.  The yeerks are coming.  Visser Three will kill him, either now or after the kind of hunt that will tear this planet apart.  Better to let it happen now.  Better to use these last moments to give Earth a fighting chance.  «Come out here.  Bring the Escafil device.»

Ax is reeling, spinning, too far into shock to take it all in.  Elfangor is dead.  Dead because of Visser Three, the Abomination.  Dead partially by his own choice, as well.  Because when Ax tried to insist that they stay and fight, or that they morph and run, Elfangor held up a hand to stop him.

«Aximili, I can’t explain everything right now, but this is what has to be done.»  His private thought-speak was rushed, harried.  «I need you to go with Tobias and the others.  They’ll keep you safe.  And they’ll need you to guide them.»

«I can’t do this,» Aximili had whispered.  «I don’t know enough, I don’t know how...»

«Aristh Aximili, formerly of the GalaxyTree, formerly of Mother and Father’s awful lopsided scoop they’ll never get around to fixing.»  There had been a catch of emotion to Elfangor’s voice, thought-speak letting more leak through than the words alone.

Aximili felt himself go cold all over, knees locking, breath struggling with unshed tears.  He understood a field promotion when he heard one.  He knew what was coming.

«I hereby relinquish my command to you, Prince Aximili.  I do so in utmost trust that you will serve our cousins faithfully, both on the homeworld and here, though we are far from home.»  Elfangor bowed his head.  «I am the servant of the People. I am the servant of my prince.»  He lifted his eyes to look straight at Aximili, leaving no chance that he could be referring to their captain.  «I am the servant of honor. My life is not my own, when the People have need of it. My life is given for the People, for my prince, and for my honor.»

It went against everything they’d been taught, but Aximili allowed the tears to fall then.  He’d listened, one last time, when Elfangor told him to take the humans and run.  To flee this place and not look back.  To avoid knowing what was going to happen next.

They take Ax (they call him Ax; he doesn’t care) back to the house of the human called Jake.  Ax staggers along, awkward on two legs.  He acquired the human called Tobias, for now.  Later, he will have to make himself a properly unique human morph, but for now he’s too sick at hearts to perform a proper frolis maneuver.

The humans were very concerned with putting artificial skins on Ax’s human shape; the two females refused even to look at him until he wore a windbreaker from the human called Jake and the human called Rachel had fashioned him a sarong of sorts from her overshirt.

“My parents are going to think that Tobias is a raging nutjob, but that’s okay because they’ve never met him before,” Jake says, by way of apology.

“Nutjob.  Nut.  T-t.  T-job.”  Ax understands most of the words, but for those two.  It’s comforting, even in this strange shape, to allow the dual click of his human tongue: once at the very front of his mouth for T, once further back for J.  “T... Tuh.  Juh.  T’Juh.”  The repeated motion calms him, keeps him from thinking.

“Yep, you’re really proving my point right about now.”  With a sigh, Jake pushes the front door open.

Jake shepherds Ax up to his room after a bare minimum of interaction with the rest of the family.  He offers a padded tube known as a sleeping bag (Ax declines) and assures Ax more than once that they’ll work out a better solution tomorrow.  Ax finds the human dwelling strange and uncomfortable; it is all blocky angles and enclosing walls.  He cannot even see the stars, and the thick fabric covering the floor proves to be inedible.  After demorphing, he folds himself into a  corner to try and sleep.

At first Jake asks many questions: about Elfangor, about morphing, about yeerks and controllers.  Ax does his best to answer without giving too much away.  Finally Jake’s voice tapers off, his breathing becomes slow, and he starts to make a steady noise that Ax will later learn is called snoring.

Ax tries to sleep.  He lists z-space theorems in his mind, breathes slowly, tries to think of nothing.  He recites the ritual of death.  Recites it again.  Continues to turn the phrases over in his mind.  Hoping that soon they will take on meaning and cease to be mere words.

They are both awakened the next morning by a staccato tap tap tap against Jake’s window.  Jake sits upright, rubbing at his eyes.  “What the...?”

There is a small quadruped balancing on his windowsill, batting at the glass with one front paw.  «Let me in, would you?» says the quadruped, in a voice that Ax recognizes as Tobias’s.  «I’m still learning how to balance as a cat, and it took me forever to get here.»

With an ease startling to Ax, Jake rolls to his feet and shoves the window open with strong human arms.  “How are you doing this?” he asks.

«How long have you been in morph?» Ax says over him, alarmed.  Elfangor told the aliens about the time limit last night, and Ax emphasized it again after they left the construction site.  This kind of behavior — morphing unsupervised, using an untested animal, failing to track the time — is shockingly careless.

«Not sure.»  Tobias drops lightly to the ground.  «This is hands-down the coolest thing I have ever experienced.  I don’t know how you andalite types ever get anything done, with this kind of fun to distract you —»

«Demorph immediately!»  Ax speaks so sharply that both Jake and Tobias stare at him.

«Okay, but I’m kinda naked—»

«It is imperative that you demorph!  Do you wish to become a nothlit?»

«Fine, fine,» Tobias says.  To Ax’s enormous relief, he is resuming his human form as he speaks.  «What’s a nothlit?»

Jake removes some artificial skins from the much smaller room adjacent to his desk and hands them to Tobias.

«A nothlit is a person who has become trapped in morph and cannot resume andalite shape,» Ax says.  «The process is irreversible.  Fifteen percent of andalites in the first generation ever to morph suffered this fate.  It is the terrible price of this gift.»

“Huh.”  Tobias finishes pulling one of Jake’s garments over his head.  “And then what happens to them?”

«They are trapped.  Unable to demorph.  Forever.»

“Yeah, but I assume you, like, accommodate them as animals or whatever, right?  You said fifteen percent of some groups.  So there’s probably a lot of people like that, and you probably have some fancy tech to help them do stuff, right?”  Tobias’s eyes are wide in what Ax is beginning to recognize as a human expression of hopefulness.

Ax shifts position on the carpet.  «No.  Not really.  They are usually secluded from society.»

“What, just because they’re stuck as cats forever?”

«They are vecols.»  Seeing Tobias’s confusion, Ax clarifies, «warriors who are permanently wounded.  It is best to allow them their privacy, apart from mainstream andalite society.»

“Separate but equal, huh?” Jake says, a darkness to his tone that Ax does not understand.

«Yes, exactly,» Ax says.

Tobias and Jake look at each other.  Tobias makes a wordless sound in the back of his throat.

“So much for the superior alien society coming to enlighten us,” Jake mutters.

«It is for their own good,» Ax tries to explain.

“Oh, so you polled every single one of them, and they prefer the ghettos to —”  Jake cuts himself off.  “Okay, this is not what we need to talk about.  Aliens.  Yeerks.  Let’s go get the others, yeah?”

The next few days are... overwhelming.  All of them assemble near the home of the human called Cassie, in a space filled several other species of Earth animal.  They have questions for Ax, dozens of questions, and they talk over each other in their eagerness to learn about andalites and thought-speak, interstellar travel and dracon beams.  Marco and Cassie want to recuse themselves from the war entirely, while Tobias and Rachel want to throw themselves headlong into the fight with an eagerness that shows they don’t truly understand how hopeless the fight will be.

Ax does his best to tell them what he can, while keeping state secrets to himself.  He reminds them time and again to be careful when morphing, because it’s the only thing he knows that they must be told.

He doesn’t know how to lead them.  He’s not qualified to be a war-prince.  He has no idea how to balance Seerow’s Kindness against their demands to understand why their home is being invaded and destroyed.

In the end, Tobias helps Ax set up a scoop in the woods.  Jake’s appalled at the idea of Ax being alone out there with no human domicile, but eventually Ax succeeds in impressing on him that this is what he wants.  Finally he wins them over.  It’s a relief, to be out in woods that are not quite familiar but nevertheless closer to what he knows from the homeworld.  It gives him the chance to be alone, away from the aliens and the infinite answers he doesn’t have for them.

All of the humans come by with gifts for his scoop: books, a small television, magazines and newspapers, a material called plywood that keeps out the rain.  Marco provides several cans of a delicious substance known as Spam, and an even more delicious condiment known as kerosene.  Their worry is... touching.  But Ax also suspects it is not right.  A prince should look after his warriors, not the other way around.

At their next team meeting, Ax walks in to find an ongoing argument between Marco and Jake.

“You don’t have any proof,” Jake is saying.

“That cop knew him.”  Marco crosses his arms. “That cop, who was definitely a controller, was like ‘oh, you’re Tom Berenson’s brother?  Never mind then.’  Not to mention the fact that you said yourself he’s been acting weird.  And yeah, him deciding to give us the ninth degree about UFOs and how we know Tobias was really fucking weird.  So you just don’t want to admit that your brother —”

Which is when Jake hits Marco across the face with a closed fist.  Marco staggers back a step, cursing and cupping his jaw.

“Stop!” Cassie shouts.

Marco presses the heel of his hand to his swelling lower lip.  “Tell me I’m wrong,” he spits.  “Tell me the Sharing isn’t sketchy as hell.  Tell me the way he talks about it is totally normal.  Go ahead.  Look me in the eye and tell me you actually believe that.”

Jake is gasping for air, face flushed, staring around himself as if lost.  His knuckles are bleeding.  “Ax,” he says.  “Ax, I’d know, right?  I’d be able to tell if — If —”

They’re talking about Jake’s older brother.  Ax briefly met the human in question on that first night, and didn’t get much of an impression one way or another.  “I don’t know,” he says at last, very slowly.  “I have not known... nnnnooonne... any controllers.  Oll-lers.  The yeerks can access all the memories of their hosts, so it would be possible... ssssib-bble...”

“Possible.”  Jake takes a breath.  “Possible.  But not guaranteed.  So we... we use this morphing thing.  We go to a Sharing meeting, and we prove that there’s nothing wrong with the Sharing, because Tom would never get involved with a yeerk organization.  In the process, we prove that there’s nothing wrong with Tom.”

It occurs to Ax that he shouldn’t allow his team to take this kind of risk, especially not for the sake of a single human who is likely lost to yeerk control already.  He knows, too, that Jake may even be right about his brother being unlikely to join the yeerks willingly, but that it makes little difference if so.

Only, the thing is, it occurs to Ax as well to wonder what he would do if it was Elfangor who’d been taken.

“We can do this,” he says aloud.  “Th—ssssss.  But we must be careful.”

Ax’s suspicions about Marco’s suspicions prove to be correct.  Tom, and most of the Sharing’s other full members, are in fact controllers.  Jake proves to be right as well that Tom isn’t voluntary, sparse consolation though it is.  Ax doesn’t like Jake’s plan to go charging down to the yeerk pool to free Tom and the other hosts, but this is a human affair and perhaps a human decision.  So he goes along with them to acquire DNA — and when Cassie gets taken, he commits fully to leading his first-ever battle.

“Tobias has been in morph for kind of a while, right?” Jake asks Ax as they walk to the middle school.

Ax has warned Tobias already about timing; he doesn’t feel capable of doing it again.  “I am sure that Tobias knows how to be safe,” he says.

Ax has read about battle.  Studied it extensively.  Listened to Elfangor’s stories, asking incessant questions.  Learned all the theories.  Even watched holos of famous fights.  In short, he is as prepared as it is possible for an untested aristh to be.

He knows nothing of war.

The battle happens all at once, from more directions than even he can watch with stalk eyes scanning frantically all around him.  Humans and animals and hork-bajir and taxxon clash and scream, shoot and claw and die.  Blood slicks the floor, spilled kandrona slopping over the sides of the pool as bodies crash down among the yeerks.  He doesn’t know who is a controller, who is a host, who is a friend or an enemy.

Hork-bajir charge him, dozens of blades at the ready.  He bashes them back with frantic graceless tail swings.  A taxxon is already down, intestines spilling across the floor, before he has time to plan the strike.  No time to think.  No time to feel.  Exhaustion and foreign gravity drag him down.

He’s going to die down here.  He’s going to die like his brother, slaughtered on an alien planet and devoured.  He’s going to die, and his parents will never learn what happened to either of them.

«Ax! Ax!»

He strikes at the shape.  Luckily fatigue slows his swing.  Luckily Jake ducks with cat reflexes.  Too late he registers blood-matted orange fur.

«We’re losing ground,» Jake says, gasping for air.  «Time to get the hell out of here while we still can.»

«But...»  Ax is crazy; why is he objecting?  «But we haven’t saved anyone... We haven’t...»

«This is— Ax, we stay, we die.»  He’s right.  He’s right.

«We go, then,» Ax says.  He’s a failure.  A coward.  He’s running from his duty.  If Elfangor knew— «Everyone!  We have to go!» Ax shouts.

Rachel raises her trunk, bellowing.  She shoulders aside controllers and hosts alike, clearing a path for the rest of them.  She’s not going to make the stairs, not with that bulk.  Marco is loping behind her, but Cassie is pinned down by three hork-bajir clear across the room.  There’s no sign of Tobias.

His warriors are dying around him.  He doesn’t know what to do.  All the choices are wrong.  Enemies are on all sides, far too many to fight.

«Help Rachel and Marco!» Jake calls.  «I’m going for Cassie.»

Ax doesn’t question.  He leaps, clearing the heads of a dozen human-controllers, and lands next to Marco.  Together they brutalize their way forward, cutting down or shoving aside anyone that gets too close.

The battle swells and screams and roars around Ax.  It’s too much to keep track of.  He loses Jake and Cassie, still hasn’t found Tobias.  All he can do is keep swinging, keep yanking his tail back bone-sore and flinging it gore-slick into yet another hot sick piece of flesh.

He stumbles over a small protrusion in the floor.  Marco steadies him roughly.  It’s the first stair.  He struggles up the first several too-small steps, hooves sliding on the blood-slick stone.

Rachel is shrinking, half-crushed by the crowd of fleeing hosts.  She goes down.  Marco and Ax haul her upright.  They pull her forward with unforgiving speed in spite of her many injuries, trying to keep the mob from eating her whole.  Ax feels the strange sizzling non-pain of a fourth-degree dracon burn along his left hind leg.  His collapse halted by the press of the crowd, he shoves onward.

Ax bursts into the bizarre empty quiet of the high school hallway.  Marco is just ahead of him, carrying Rachel with her face hidden against his dark fur.

Half a dozen hosts are fleeing in every direction.  «Godspeed,» Marco murmurs, looking after them.  His thought-speak is shaky with unshed tears.

It’s nearly a half an hour — long enough for Ax to show Rachel how to morph to be rid of injuries — before there’s a clatter of hooves.  Cassie, still in horse morph, bursts through the doorway.  Jake is slumped across her back, clinging to her mane with the arm that isn’t severed at the elbow by a hork-bajir blade.  His right side and Cassie’s entire flank are soaked with blood.  He slides off the moment they’re safe, green-white with shock.  Ax rushes to his side to tell him to morph.

When Jake has morphed and demorphed, he slowly sits up.  He looks from where Rachel is punching a locker door repeatedly to where Marco crouches over the custodian’s sink to vomit.  Finally, he looks up at Ax.  “Where’s Tobias?” he asks, soft and hoarse.

Rachel whirls away from the locker she was abusing.  “We thought he was with you!”

They all stare at each other in silence for several more seconds.

Jake curls forward to bury his face in his hands.  “We have to go,” he says into his palms.  “If... if I don’t get home before Tom does...”

There’s another long moment of silence.  Marco becomes the first to turn and walk away.

Tobias finds Ax, later that night.  He’s not dead, anyway.  And he’s not a controller, not in that form.  Ax knows better to voice such sparse consolation.  He can’t offer hope, not really.  Instead he does his best to listen, and to let Tobias say what he will.

Their next meeting in Cassie’s barn is... tense.

“How could we let this happen?” Jake demands.  “How could we have done this?  I should have known—”

«Jake...» Tobias says.

“Anyway, I’m out.”  Marco stands up.

“Fine, then get out!” Rachel shouts.  “What are you waiting for?  Go run home to Daddy!”

“What I’m waiting for is to see if I can convince any of you people to come with me!” Marco says.  “Because, for the record, we should all be out.”  He takes a breath.  “Ax... Jake... I know you both have more of a stake in this.  But...”

“It’s your call, dude,” Jake says.

“Okay, but back to the real problem,” Rachel snaps.  “How do we fix Tobias?”

Ax takes a step back.  She didn’t look directly at him, but both Jake and Cassie did.  «I... I wish that I had more answers... Escafil’s paradox of zero-space delay...»  He has no answers.  No words.

«In short: we don’t.»  Tobias jerks his head.  «So.  Guess I’ll be hanging out with Ax a lot more in the future.»

“But even if we can’t demorph him...”  Cassie is definitely looking at Ax.  So is everyone else.  “There has to be something we can do, right?”

Ax’s tail hits the stall door behind him.  He’s been backing away from them the entire time.  His chest heaves with panic, eyes skittering from one target to another.  Except Tobias.  He can’t look at Tobias.

“Ax?” Jake says, and then, “Hey, Ax, hey.  Just, just, take a second, okay?”

“Take a second?”  Rachel crosses her arms.  “He’s the one who got us into this, and now Tobias—”

«I’m a fraud!» Ax bursts out.  He’s shaking, still gasping.  «I don’t know what I’m doing — I’m just a stupid incompetent kid.  I ran last night, like a coward, and I left Tobias to be killed.  I’m not a war prince, I’m a fake!  A stupid, useless fake!»

Tobias flutters down to land on the stall door across from him. «There’s a big difference between being inexperienced and being a liar, Ax-Man.»

«You don’t — You don’t understand.»  Ax wraps both arms around himself.  «I can’t lead, I can’t do anything right. I have less than four months of training from living on the Dome ship, and even that was only because of being Elfangor’s brother.  I never should have tried to pretend to be a war-prince, because I’m not.  I’m not even a warrior.»

“And, what, you think any of us are?” Jake asks quietly.  “We’re all dumb kids with even less training than what you have.  But we all went down there anyway.  Not because you told us to.  Because I asked for it.”

«I still had responsibility for you all,» Ax says miserably.  «And I failed you.»

“You screwed up, yeah,” Rachel says.  “So do better next time.”

“Next time?” Marco demands.  “You saw that place— You heard— Are you out of your mind?”

She rounds on him.  “You’re right.  I saw.  I heard.  There are little kids down there right now, Marco.  My cousin is down there.  And so are thousands of other people.  If you’re too much of a coward to do anything about it, that’s your problem, but I’m not letting that stop me.”

«I’m still gonna do what I can to help,» Tobias says.  «So count me in.»

“I’m in too,” Jake says.  “Ax?”

«I can’t lead you,» Ax insists.  «I can’t.  It wouldn’t be right.  It’s not my place.»

“Hate to say it, but we need a leader,” Cassie points out.  “Ax, we can’t make you do it if you don’t want to. Tobias, should you lead us?”

«What?  No!  I’m nobody’s leader.»

“Okay, okay.”  Jake looks around.  “We don’t have to decide this right now.  We’re all tired, so let’s just take a breather and meet back here tomorrow when we’re clearer headed.  Yeah?”

None of them argue.  Cassie and Marco murmur agreement.  Rachel’s already turning away, asking Tobias where he plans to stay tonight.

Interesting, Ax thinks.  The vote isn’t until tomorrow, but he suspects he knows already who they’re going to choose.

Jake is not what Ax would’ve expected from a prince.  He calls for a vote any time there’s a major decision to be made.  He always explains himself to his team, after the fact if not in the moment.  He becomes the first one to admit when he made a mistake, and sometimes even when a mess wasn’t his fault at all.  He asks Ax questions.  A lot of questions.

But he leads them.  He makes the calls in the battles.  He takes responsibility for them all, and he carries it well enough to get by.  Unless, of course, the situation calls for an official chain of command.

«Prince Elfangor asked me to lead in his stead,» Ax tells the andalite commander on the long-distance call.  «I accepted the honor, and was humbled by it.»

«Very well, Prince Aximili.» Ithileran’s expression is stiff, but he doesn’t argue.  «We would like to discuss the nature of your strategy for leading the Earth resistance.»

Throughout the conflict on Leera, Commander Galuit seems to be almost bemused by the Animorphs.  «I’ve heard a great deal about you, Prince Aximili,» he says.  «What do you suggest we do about these explosives?»

«I wouldn’t dream of making such a decision without consulting my warriors,» Ax says diplomatically.  It’s Jake’s cue to make a polite suggestion, but that Marco can also be expected to weigh in with an opinion.

«Yes,» Galuit says, as much to himself as anyone.  «You’re an interesting one, indeed.»

“You’ll have to forgive him,” Tobias says loudly to the security forces.  “He’s visiting royalty, you see.  Extremely important prince.  From a place you wouldn’t have heard of.”

Ax has consumed what is, perhaps, slightly more than a typical quantity of mini quiches at what is supposed to be an all-you-can-eat banquet.  He fails to see why this is an occasion for law enforcement.

“Anyway.”  Tobias is now shepherding Ax out of the room, which is unfair because he has only made it halfway through the platter of crab rangoon.  “It’s considered a compliment where he’s from.  And if you even think about filing a report, you will be hearing from the rest of his majesty’s security team.”

“We will not be falling in line,” Jake tells Arbat, chin lifted, eyes narrow.  “We will not be deferring to your command.  We will do what Prince Aximili tells us, and I suggest you do the same.  Because you can either help us, or you can get out of our way.”

Standing on the bridge of the Blade ship, hand resting on the pad that broadcasts footage of the Animorphs to the entire Andalite Electorate, Ax does his best to look confident.  «We have won a great victory this day, but now is the time for peace.  Now is the time to work with the humans to help them rebuild.  Now is the time for forgiveness, for yeerks and taxxons alike.»

«Who are you?» the Technical Officer demands.

Marco opens his mouth to make a smart comment, but refrains.

«I am War-Prince Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill,» Ax says.  «And as of this moment, I am officially ceding my position to Prince Jake Berenson, Commander in Chief of the Earth Resistance.»

Jake steps forward.  Grieved but unbowed.  Nervous but resolute.  All eyes are on him.