My fingers and toes disappeared, leaving behind only thick, bony nails.
I realized I could see something flapping around my head. Flapping like someone shaking a sheet out of the dryer. It was my ears, growing thin and huge.
My face bulged outward. It was as if someone were blowing my head up like a balloon. My eyes moved apart, spreading farther and farther, blurring my vision. My nose melted with my upper lip and began to grow like some nightmare Pinoc-chio. It grew till it wasn't a nose anymore, but a rope, a cable, a massive octopus tentacle so strong I could rip trees out of the ground.
I was monstrous, towering huge above Marco, and Cassie in her wolf morph. My back pressed against the roof. My sides shoved crates and boxes aside.
"Marco, look out!" I yelled and Marco dropped the Dracon beam trying to get out of the way. Because at that moment, my teeth ground and cracked and suddenly sprouted. Out, out, out from my mouth they grew, forming two long, curved tusks.
If Marco had stayed where he was, he'd have been impaled.
"Marco, get the Dracon beam. You dropped it. Your fingers are the only ones that can work it."
"Dropped it where? Under you? Great." He crawled awkwardly beneath my bulging gray stomach and emerged with the Dracon beam in his fist.
"Okay," I said. "Right for the oatmeal shed, no stopping. Ready?"
"Ready," Cassie said.
"You know, Jake was right. You just never hear about oatmeal being involved in any of the great battles of history," Marco observed.
"Yeah, whatever," I said tersely. "Come on." I didn't have to do much to go through the back wall of the pantry we were in. I just leaned forward and pushed my head against the wall. My head alone weighed more than half a ton. It was a serious battering ram.
Crrrrr-UNCH! Crunch! Scree-UNCH!
Down came the wall. Down came half the roof on my back. Out we barreled, an elephant, a wolf, and a lumbering gorilla.
The shed was thirty feet away. No more. Not even two body lengths for me. One, two, three steps and I was there!
The two Hork-Bajir yelled and almost ran, but then held their ground. I had to admire that. Go to the zoo some time. Take a good, long look at an African elephant, and imagine that thing charging for you. See how long you'd want to stand there.
SLASH!
A lightning-quick swipe with an arm blade, and I had a bright red line in my trunk. It was just a shallow cut, but it hurt.
"HhhhrrroooooREEEE-Unh!" I screamed.
I kept my speed, and plowed straight into the Hork-Bajir. Ten thousand pounds of fast-moving elephant.
The brave Hork-Bajir-Controller was out of the fight.
No time to stop. I saw Marco and Cassie take down the other Hork-Bajir.
"Two more Hork-Bajir coming!" Cassie yelled.
I backed up a few feet and slammed forward. I hit the shed with my head.
WHAM!
The four walls of the shed literally blew outward.
Like someone had set off a bomb inside it. The walls burst outward from the impact. The roof fell and then slid aside.
A blue barrel, like a beer keg, rolled away. A piece of debris stopped it. There were five other barrels, all standing there in a group.
"The oatmeal!" I said.
"The instant maple and ginger oatmeal!" Marco corrected gleefully.
"Get them!" a huge, thought-speak voice roared. The voice of Visser Three.
I turned my head to look. An entire army of Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, and human-Controllers was rushing for us. There was no way out. No way at all.
And there, in the midst of the onrushing army, was Visser Three.
I wrapped my trunk around one of the barrels of confiscated oatmeal. I lifted it up like a feather. I saw the closest Hork-Bajir hesitate.
I threw the barrel in a high arc. It landed with a big, soggy splash, right in the middle of the Yeerk pool.
"lt's not sinking!" Cassie cried.
"Marco. Point the Dracon beam at the barrel. Now." The big gorilla raised his mighty arm and aimed the Dracon beam at the barrel.
"Your move, Visser," I said.
"Stop!" that awful voice roared.
And every living thing stopped. They barely breathed. Hork-Bajir stood poised as if they'd been frozen. When the Visser said "stop," you stopped. Period.
He came forward, pushing human and Hork-Bajir and Taxxon aside. He came forward till nothing separated him from us except a shield of three straining, awkwardly frozen Hork-Bajir and a twitching Taxxon.
His Andalite stalk eyes swept from side to side, sizing up the situation. His main eyes looked right at me.
"There's nothing in that barrel but garbage."
"Then you won't mind if my friend fires and blows it up." It was always deadly dangerous talking to Visser Three. In addition to an Andalite's body, he had an Andalite mind under his evil control. He might figure out that I was not an Andalite in morph, but a human.
He laughed. Not a nice laugh."There are perhaps a thousand Yeerks in that pool. The ... the product in that barrel might affect half of them before we could get it cleared up. Five hundred Yeerks. " He paused to consider. "And against that, I suppose you want your fellow terrorists released and a chance to escape."
"Exactly," I said.
Marco still held the Dracon beam aimed at the wallowing barrel.
"Then I'd better give you my answer," Visser Three said with silky menace.
Before he could say it, I knew. I'd seen it in his eyes. In his body language.
He was writing off five hundred of his own people. Condemning them to madness. He didn't care. It would be a setback, but that was all. Beyond that, he didn't care.
Visser Three cared for nothing.
Oh, wait. Visser Three did care about one thing.