Marco was just behind Jake. He's smaller than Jake, with longer, darker hair, laughing, dark eyes, and an attitude.
Marco thinks the whole world is just a setup for a joke. Marco will tell a joke while he's bleeding and terrified and in pain. But there are times when his eyes lose their skeptical expression and grow glittery and dangerous.
"Cassie," Marco said, "you look beautiful, as always. Your use of manure as a fashion statement is so tasteful." Then he gazed at Rachel and winced. "Yikes! Every time I see you, you're taller. Stop it. Stop growing."
13 Rachel patted Marco on his head. "Don't worry. I don't look down on you for being short, Marco. I look down on you just for being you."
Marco grabbed his chest in pain. "Aargh! And Xena puts another spear in me."
"Hi, Jake," I said, ignoring the usual Marco-versus-Rachel stuff.
"Hi, Cassie," he said. He gave me one of his rare, slow smiles. "Hey, I heard this weird story.
These two guys at school claim they were attacked by a pair of lab rats."
"Really? I didn't hear about that," I said, trying not to make the fakey, shrill sound I always make when I'm lying.
Jake raised one eyebrow and I quickly went back to cleaning out the cage.
"What are we here for?" Rachel asked bluntly.
Jake shrugged. "Tobias told me to get everyone together. He and Ax have something."
Right on cue, we heard a flutter of wings. A hawk shot in through the open hayloft above. It turned sharply, killed its speed, swept its talons forward, and landed neatly on a rafter.
It was a red-tailed hawk. Mostly brown on its back, a lighter, mottled brown and tan beneath.
The bird took its name from its tail feathers, which were the color of rust.
The hawk glared down at us with unbelievably intense brown and gold eyes.
"Hi," the hawk said, a silent voice that we heard only in our heads.
"Hi, Tobias," I answered.
Tobias is the fifth human member of our group. Although he's not entirely human anymore.
See, if you stay more than two hours in a morph, you stay forever.
In his mind and heart, Tobias is still a human being -- mostly. But he has the body of a hawk.
He lives as a hawk.
"Hi, Tobias," Rachel said. "I thought maybe you'd stop by last night."
Tobias sometimes hangs out with Rachel. He flies into her upstairs room and watches TV, or reads. Things he can't do in the wild. Human things.
"Um, well, I was going to," he said in thought-speak. "But there was this thing with Ax . . .
"
Ax is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. He's the sixth person in our group. He's even less human than Tobias. Ax is an Andalite.
"Speaking of which, is Ax coming?" Jake asked.
"No. He's still out keeping an eye on things. Or four eyes, actually. " 14 "What things?" Marco asked, beginning to sound impatient.
Tobias swooped down to be closer. He landed on the top edge of a stall door. He checked out the many cages. At the moment we had, in addition to the raccoon, a fox, two wolves, a handful of various bats, a really cool porcupine, a pair of jackrabbits, a deer that had been mauled by a bear, several doves, a goose, a swan cygnet, a whole group of assorted gulls, a beautiful red-winged blackbird, and a barn owl.
"What happened to the golden eagle?" Tobias asked.
"He's all better so we released him," I admitted. See, golden eagles occasionally kill and eat hawks. "We released him way back in the hills, though. Nowhere near your territory, Tobias.
"
Tobias didn't look too happy. But then, Tobias has a hawk's face, so he never looks anything but fierce. Once he was a very sweet, slightly dopey kid. Jake and he met when Jake stopped some bullies from sticking Tobias's head in the toilet.
"Anyway. I have something to report. It looks like someone is getting ready to start logging in the forest. "
"No way!" I cried.
The others were less upset.
"So what?" Marco asked.
"So habitat will be destroyed! So animals will be made homeless! So old-growth trees will be chopped down to make plywood!" I cried. "That's so what."
Marco frowned. "And I care about this . . . why?"
I started to answer, but Tobias cut me off.
"You don't care, Marco. But you might care about who is doing the logging. "
"I'm guessing a logging company," Marco suggested.
"Yeah. You're right," Tobias said. "Only this logging company has built a command center deep in the forest. A log building, actually, like you'd expect. Except for one little thing. "
"What one little thing?" Jake asked.
"The building is protected by a force field. A force field that seems to stop anything that gets near. I tried to fly closer, and it was like hitting a wall. Also, there are armed guards walking the perimeter around the building, and patrolling up and down the access road. "
"Oh," Jake said.
15 "Guards armed with automatic rifles. "
"Yeerks?" Rachel wondered. "But why would the Yeerks want to be logging in the forest?"
I knew the answer to that question. The Yeerks" plan was all too obvious. "They want to destroy habitat," I said.
"What? Now the Yeerks are out to destroy the deer and the owls?" Marco said with a dismissive laugh.
"No," I said. "It's not owl habitat they want to destroy. They're after a different species."
"Yeah," Tobias agreed. "They're going to wipe out the habitat of the very, very endangered Animorph. "
16 Chapter Four
"The Yeerks are right there in our forest. Fine," Rachel said with her usual enthusiasm for anything dangerous. "Let's go take a look."
"If this is a Yeerk operation, we have to be careful," Marco said. "They're expecting us."
"Expecting us?" Tobias said.
Marco nodded. "Look, the Yeerks believe we're a band of Andalites, right? They think only Andalites can morph. They've figured out that the forest is the only place a group of Andalites could be hiding. Let's face it -- if we were Andalites, we wouldn't exactly be able to rent an apartment."
"So we'd be in the forest. Just like Ax is right now." Jake nodded. "They want to use the logging operation as a way to go Andalite-hunting."
"Right. Which means they think we're out in the forest. So they have to be prepared for an attack. They are going to be totally ready for any strange group of animals that show up."
I agreed with Marco. But there was another question that was bothering me. "How did they ever get permission to cut trees in a national forest?"
Marco rolled his eyes, like I was being an idiot. "Who cares? The fact is, they did."
"If we're going to take a look at this place, we can't show up there in a big group," Jake said.
"We split up, go in two groups. In different morphs. We see what we see, but we do nothing.
Agreed?"
Everyone nodded.
"So. If it's okay with everyone, I'll go in with Rachel. I'll morph the peregrine falcon. Rachel, you can morph your bald eagle. Tobias will show us the way. That's a lot of excellent eyes to look things over. Cassie, you go in with Marco. Get a different perspective."
"Why can't I go with Rachel?" I asked. It's not that I don't like Marco. He just grinds my nerves sometimes.