Foreword

(AKA the dreaded Author's Note)

Feel free to skip everything in italics and jump right into the story; I'll not hold it against you. I just wanted to take a moment to explain the why of this piece...why I'm making it. I'm an adult now. When I look back on my childhood, a few things stand out as sources of total pleasure. The Animorphs are one of those things. Hours spent reading and re-reading the books. Dozens of hours spent doing chores to be able to afford the next one. Everything having to do with this series brings a smile to my face...except for the way it all ended. And I'm not even saying it was the wrong ending; that's not for me to say, that's the author's call. But I will say that in my opinion, it wasn't enough ending. Us most loyal to the series...we committed so much to it. In this age of ADHD and get-bored-click-off, spending your time and money reading 70+ canon books isn't an investment to take lightly.

I feel that the ending we got was a very, very meager payoff for the investment we made, as fans and readers. Maybe I'm the only one who feels that way, I don't know. If so, then me writing this can just be an exercise in therapeutic narcissism. But if there are other fans out there who wanted to see more of how things went for our heroes between the 100 or so pages in which the Animorphs won their war, and then were unceremoniously killed off, then hopefully this will bring you a little satisfaction and pleasure.

If you've made it this far, thanks for your candor. This is planned to be an all-encompassing, multiple point of view, full book, in which I try to fill in the blanks of the mysterious three years after the Yeerk War. I ask you kindly to leave a review here and there if you read. Whether you like it or not...well, that's what I'd like to know in your review, lol. What you'd like to see, what you'd like to see less of...the review tool is all of our friend, writer and reader alike. Thank you in advance, and I do hope you enjoy the piece! Now...let's see what our old friend Marco has to say :)

Marco

Two months after the Yeerk defeat at Earth

I've always been a problem solver. I'm not bragging, but my contributions to the war effort have been chronicled to death already. I'm just saying, any and every bind has a solution. It may not be pretty or fun, but there's always a way to get from Point A to Point B, if you know how to look for it. I almost always know how to look. But for the first time that I could remember, I was stumped. And that scared me, because it was an important problem that needed a solution.

On the surface, you might think that Jake sitting around his parents' house, doing nothing, was no big deal. You might even say that he'd earned it. I happen to know my best friend better than anyone, though. I'd known him my whole life. We went through the wars together. A lot of people use that phrase metaphorically; of course, I'm using it literally. We fought the wars together, man.

So yeah, on the surface, him taking a breather was nothing to worry about. I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm sure staying close to his mom and dad was some therapeutic thing for the way they lost Tom. Jake's parents didn't know about Tom being a controller until the very end, so it was a really sudden thing for them to lose him. The funny thing is, though...it was a sudden thing to Jake, too. I mean, yeah, he knew for three years that Tom was a middle manager at Yeerk-Mart. And a long life expectancy wasn't part of the benefits package for Yeerk managers. But somehow, after everything we'd seen...after everything we'd done...Jake never really expected to lose Tom. Up until the point where he gave the order for Rachel to take him out, I really don't think he knew that Tom wasn't coming home.

The reason I was so stuck on what to do about Jake's stagnancy was because I wasn't really sure who he was anymore. Everything from before we got drafted to fight that war was so pale to me. It's not like I had amnesia; I could still remember shooting hoops with Jake, having bottle rocket wars in the woods by his house, sleepovers, hanging at the mall. It's just...how could that stuff possibly have any weight compared to the three years of hell we went through? Not just the fighting. That was bad enough. But the exhaustion...man, I cannot express what it feels like to never sleep well for years.

The secrecy, that's a whole other thing, too. It's been two months since we beat the Yeerks and were able to drop all of the lies. But you go three years lying to everyone about everything, except for a handful of people. It's a very hard habit to break. At some point, the lies and secrecy just become natural, just turn into your day to day life. Ax was always going on and on about how adaptable humans are. Now that we've gone from normal, to extremely abnormal, back to somewhat normal again...I can kind of see what he meant.

Again...not bragging. But I really do feel fine now. Normal. I'm actually glad to get back to the world I know, but now I've got the advantage. How many people grind jobs they hate their whole life to buy crap they don't really need? I don't have to do that. But before you start thinking of me as spoiled or entitled, think about what I had to go through with my mom. How many times I had to look Visser Three in the eyes. How much stress I had to live with, how much fear and pain was in my daily life.

I already put in my grind, all right? And I don't see anything wrong with reaping the benefits of it, now that it's over.

That's what worries me...hell, scares me, about Jake. I was able to flip the switch. I was able to go back to life, now that the fight's over. He...hasn't been able to do that. And if it was just like he was taking a rest, I wouldn't be so worried. Have...have you ever had a best friend? One you've had since you were little, I mean? If so, you know what I mean when I say that you get to know them in a way no one else does. You know what they're thinking in any given situation. You can guess what they're going to say, what they're going to do. You know when they're going to call you on the phone. You can sense their moods, and they can sense yours, and it all just becomes so normal that you don't even think anything of it.

Well, this Jake...this post-war Jake...this was not my best friend. It's like he'd been made a controller (that's that paranoia – yeah, I've actually considered that possibility. I know what reality I live in now, but sometimes the old reality creeps back in.) Of course, I'm a logical guy. I know what's really wrong with him is psychological, emotional...PTSD, depression, I dunno, whatever.

What keeps me up at night is that it's getting worse, not better. He's showing no signs of putting this behind him, moving on. He's isolating more and more every day. He doesn't do interviews. I actually caught on pretty quickly to the fact that in the long run, that would be good for him and his image. The battle-wearied commander, tragic hero, whatever...it would play. It would sell.

I'm starting to realize that it's not a game, though. Not for Jake. He doesn't care about his long term image or his marketability. He's not interested in any of the outrageous things people wanted to do for him, to make his life more comfortable, to show their appreciation. The one conversation we had about Tobias...it really freaked me out, to tell you the truth. Because while Cassie was disappointed and worried about Tobias' disappearing act, Jake actually seemed envious of him. He made it sound like morphing, losing yourself, flying away...like that was the most logical thing in the world.

So it was all of these things on my mind as I strolled through the east wing of my new home after a long day at CBS studios. Pitch meetings, schmoozing with the producers, interviewers, news anchors. That was my life now, and I'm not going to lie, I love it. This is the shit I looked forward to, on the off-chance I survived the Yeerks and we could get rid of them.

I loosened my tie with one hand and concentrated on not spilling the drink in the other. I looked up at the vaulted, oak-beamed ceilings in the east wing. The east wing. Of my house. Not bad for a kid who'd almost been evicted from an 1,100 square foot rathole apartment only three years before. I looked at the flagstone fireplace in the study, and even though it was around seventy degrees outside, I decided I wanted a fire. I'd always wanted a fireplace, and now I had four of them. Little realizations like that were still hitting me at random times and blowing my hair back, and in all honesty, I hoped it never stopped. I didn't want to take it for granted – any of it. I didn't want to take for granted that in two months, I was worth more money than most of the athletes and actors I admired. I wanted to appreciate that the glass in my hand was Waterford crystal. That my suit was Brioni. But more than that stuff...I had made it through something that would have killed anybody else. The proof was in the fact that I was breathing. I was safe. I wasn't broken.

As my night butler lit my fire, I settled into the recliner beside it. I took a sip of my drink. And my thoughts turned away from me, and my success, and back to Jake. My comrade. My best bud. The guy I'd do anything for, if only I knew what to do. And I thought about the fact that he wasn't broken yet, but he was breaking. He was. And I had no idea what to do about it.

But, like I said, solving problems is my thing. And as I sat there, beside my ridiculously out-of-season fire, an idea started to form.