We stepped out into the hall, leaving Jake alone with the nurse.

"Hey, uh, thanks," I said awkwardly.

Marco ignored this. "How is he?"

"He's..." I wasn't sure how much Jake would want me to say. "He's trying," I said at last. "He's okay, I guess, even if there's a lot of crap he's working through right now."

Marco was watching me closely, stare uncomfortably piercing. "So I'm gonna take that as a 'not well.'"

I wanted to snap at him - it was none of his damn business and he had no right to judge - but what I said instead was, "Yeah, well, you put any thought into that whole being a better friend thing you mentioned?"

Marco winced, looking away. "I'll try, okay?"

"Thanks," I said again.

"And how're you doing?" He was peering intently at me.

"What? I'm fine," I said. "I'm great. Really."

Just for a second his eyes narrowed but then he laughed suddenly, an angry edge to the sound. "You and Tobias should play poker sometime, you know that?"

I could figure out what he was getting at but I was sure as all hell not talking about my feelings with Marco of all people. "In case you can't tell from the sound of my voice, I have had a really long day and I'm about one smartass comment away from punching you."

Marco held up both hands. "Okay, okay, fine. I'll just go back to my incredibly fabulous life and my gorgeous girlfriend and leave you stoic losers here. Tell Jake - "

"Tell him yourself."

He grinned suddenly. "Yeah, okay. Will do. Be seeing you."

I turned away, not watching him go. I really was grateful to Marco. I just wasn't sure I particularly liked him.

Jake was silent on the ride home. Fortunately he didn't morph any more, although he was still breathing stuffily. Unfortunately, when we walked in the door both our parents were sitting at the kitchen table wearing identical cold expressions.

"Where have you been?" Mom demanded.

Jake and I exchanged a glance of confusion. Neither of us were sure if we'd ended up in the wrong house and accidentally wandered into a sitcom in the process. It was five-thirty in the afternoon, not two AM, and we'd been gone less than four hours. Considering the number of times that both of us had gotten away with sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night or disappearing for hours on end with the flimsiest of excuses, this was a little... unexpected.

Dad stood up. "Your mother asked you a question."

I was sorely tempted to make a sarcastic comment about how we'd been off doing drugs and robbing banks, but lucky for me Jake beat me to the punch.

"We were at the hospital. I'm allergic to morphing cats but I'll be fine in a few days," he said tiredly. "Sorry we didn't call."

That, of course, did exactly nothing to forestall the coming explosion.

"You were where?"

"Oh my god, what happened?"

"And you didn't tell us?"

"Are you both all right? The only important thing is that you're all right."

"No, Steve, the only important thing is that they went to the hospital and didn't even - "

"Guys!" I said. "It's okay. Seriously. I just overreacted but it was no big deal."

Dad took a deep breath, looking like he really wanted to start yelling again but was controlling himself for now. "Apparently you underreacted, because the appropriate thing to do would have been to call us."

"We were a little busy," Jake muttered.

"We're not blaming you, sweetheart." Mom stood up as well, looking Jake over like he was concealing massive injuries from her. "We just - "

"What, blame Tom instead?" Jake asked.

"That wasn't what she said, midget."

"We're not blaming anyone." Mom's tone definitely didn't give me reason to believe that was true. "But the next time you feel like disappearing for hours on end without telling anyone..."

"Don't," Dad finished.

"Why?" I said, annoyed that they had apparently decided to padlock the barn around dead cows. "It's never bothered you guys in the past."

Mom flinched. I felt like an asshole.

"We are not turning this into an accusation contest," Dad snapped. "What you did was immature and irresponsible, and I can't tell you how worried we were."

I gave up. "I'm sorry. Won't happen again."

Dad crossed his arms. "It had better not."

Eight or nine petty and sarcastic responses to that wandered through my head, but I kept them to myself. "Yeah, fine, sure."

"If anything else happens," Mom said firmly, "You call us. Right away. We want to know. And that means bringing your phone with you everywhere. And calling us. No matter what."

"Sure, since you guys would be a huge help if one of us was actually getting ax-murdered or abducted by aliens," I muttered.

Jake kicked me to shut me up. About three seconds too late.

"Excuse me?" Mom demanded.

"If you're going to stand there and be flippant like a child then I don't see how you can possibly expect us to trust you to have even the minimum amount of responsibility necessary to - "

"It would have taken two seconds to call us, and you apparently never thought - "

They were talking over each other; I lost the thread of what they were saying. I took a deep breath, actually considering trying to apologize. That had come out a lot harsher than I meant it to. I wasn't trying to hurt them, they'd just pissed me off, and now…

"Go ahead," Mom said. "Give me an excuse to ground you for the rest of your natural life."

I wanted to roll my eyes. Oh, no. Being trapped in my room for a couple weeks. Unable to come and go as I chose. That'd really show me. How cruel and unusual. How would I ever cope with the loss of freedom?

"Leave him alone," Jake said sharply.

"Jake…" Mom looked like she was at a loss.

"What?" He tilted his chin up a degree. "It's not as though he kidnapped me and dragged me to the hospital. I could have called you guys at any time, and I didn't either. So get off his case." He leveled a look at both of them that was not so much defiant as daring.

That shut them both up, at which point Jake chose to walk out of the room. That's the thing about Jake: he can get just about anyone to listen to him by just acting totally certain that of course he'll be listened to.

Mom, Dad, and I didn't meet each other's eyes for several seconds.

"Cat allergies, huh?" Dad said at last.

I shrugged. "Some weird morphing thing. He's fine."

"Okay." Dad took a deep breath like he was considering saying something else, but ultimately didn't. "Okay."

When no one said anything else I left. I went upstairs as well and tried really hard not to act like I was hovering outside Jake's door waiting for him to turn into a rhinoceros and bring the whole house down while actually… Doing just that.

But he didn't, not for the rest of the afternoon. And he slept through the night. Which is to say he was quiet all night; I don't know for sure if he dreamed or not. Anyway, when I felt the need to wander downstairs for a while at three in the morning to try and shut up my jerk brain, there was no sign of him.

The next day he seemed better-rested too. He actually ate breakfast with Dad before Dad left for work, rolled his eyes but agreed to tag along when Mom dragged him out of the house to go shopping later in the day, and contributed a couple things to the conversation over dinner. As far as I knew there were no other weird spurts of morphing, which was good. We were all still waiting for him to spontaneously sprout out an extra cat the way Marco had assumed he would, but nothing happened yet.

He slept through that next night too.

I considered sending flowers to Dr. Franklin and concluded that that would be creepy of me. Then I toyed with the idea of sending flowers to Marco instead, before deciding that I'd never live down the eternal sexual harassment I'd get in return if I did.

Maybe I should have been more cautious. Shouldn't have taken twelve hours of almost-typical activity after a single night to be any kind of sign.

But hey. If you can say one good thing about humans, at least we keep on hoping for a better outcome under the stupidest of circumstances. Just ask any yeerk. It's one of the primary things that drives them nuts about us.

Which is why I thought everything was going pretty well, right up until I came downstairs and found Jake perched on the back of the couch like a demented gargoyle, balanced on the fabric and barely hanging on with his fingertips to keep himself from tipping off onto the floor.

I stopped, taking in the scene, and then glanced around to be sure that he wasn't reacting to anything in the room. He wasn't. Not that I could see, anyway. "What the hell are you doing, squirt?"

Jake looked surprised at the question, and then he glanced down at himself. "Um. I think I just wanted to be up here, and then I… was?"

There was really no good way to phrase the question "are you going completely nuts or does it just look like it?" so I settled for waiting for him to say anything else.

"Y'know, I think it's the cat DNA," he said at last. "Like, it kind of feels like I've got a tiger brain, only… not."

"Oookay." I walked slowly forward, hoping that I didn't startle him and cause him to try and claw me with claws he didn't have. "Let's hope that that's the case. Do you remember if…?"

If Rachel had had anything similar. It had been three months and I still couldn't say her name without an automatic moment of hesitation. Damn it.

Jake cocked his head in a way that looked, well, cat-like. "She did bite Jeremy Jason McCole just before she barfed up the alligator. Maybe that had something to do with it."

I filed my cousin once bit one of the most famous teen actors of all time under things I was really going to have to get the full story on one of these days (slightly below where'd they get a giant squid? and a little north of anaconda?), and nodded like this made perfect sense to me. "Does that mean that you're going to—?"

Jake answered the question by starting to morph. At least, that's what I thought it was for a second when his left shoulder started to bulge and shift and change shape, his whole body twisting toward that point like there was something moving under his skin. Then I realized that nope, there was actually something moving under his skin.

The shape grew and gained definition, stretching away from his body and pulling the fabric of his shirt outward until it suddenly split. A grey housecat tore itself away from his body and jumped off the couch onto the floor. It crouched there, hissing, like it was daring either of us to get too close.

It was all over in a matter of seconds.

"Oh," I said.

"Gross," Jake commented. He slumped down to sit on the couch normally, watching the cat in the corner.

"My standards of 'gross' are so fucked, because that was just about the least gross thing I've ever seen you do with morphing tech," I admitted.

"Felt grosser," he said. "Or weirder, anyway."

I tried really hard not to think about that one scene in Alien as I turned toward the corner, but it looked like… a cat. Specifically, the ugly bowlegged cat that belonged to our next door neighbor Mrs. Guerin.

The cat looked back at me. And then it snarled.

"What did Rachel end up doing with the extra crocodile?" I asked.

"Turned into a grizzly and attacked it," Jake said, tone dripping with duh. "And then it ate a yeerk and then Ax killed it."

The cat was looking between the two of us with its fur puffed out and its ears flat against its head, wagging its butt like it really wanted to pounce on one of us but just barely had enough sense not to attack either much larger creature currently threatening it. It looked sort of pathetic huddled there, clearly wigged out and unable to figure out how it had just spontaneously come into existence in the middle of an unfamiliar living room.

"I guess we can't kill it," I admitted at last. "And we don't have any yeerks handy either. Shame."

Jake gave me a scandalized look. "Of course we can't kill her! It's not her fault she's here."

There was a comment in there about Cassie rubbing off on him, but I kept it to myself.

In the end Jake pulled some string for the cat to chase while I sat down at the computer and started putting together an ad for it on eBay. Figuring we'd get more hits and a faster sale that way, I told the truth about the cat's odd origin story and uploaded a cell phone picture of Jake holding the thing and looking doofy in the preview section.

"Poor Muffins," Jake said, rubbing behind the cat's ears while it purred loudly and kneaded its claws into the carpet. "Everything must be confusing right now for you."

I made a strangled noise of horror. "No. Just - No."

Jake looked up. "What?"

"You are not calling that cat 'Muffins.'"

Jake looked back down at the cat, which had gotten bored with his petting and was now batting a stray piece of paper across the floor. "She's got Muffins's DNA, so she's basically a clone of - "

"Then we owe it to her to come up with a better name than 'Muffins,'" I said flatly. "Bad enough that Mrs. Gruen named one cat that. We are not perpetuating the cycle by inflicting 'Muffins' on a second one."

"Fine, then." Jake scooped the cat up, holding her up to the light as if expecting to find a name stamped on her. "What are we supposed to call her? Mini-muffins? Clone of Muffins? Muffins the Sequel? Muffins II: The Revenge?"

Muffins II: The Revenge apparently didn't appreciate being picked up, because she swatted Jake on the nose, leaving shallow scratches across his skin.

"How about anything that isn't a derivative of Muffins?" I said. "I mean, Muffins? All other concerns aside, who the hell gives their cat a name that's plural?"

"Yeah," Jake said, carefully shifting his grip on the cat until she retracted her claws. "Although it's kind of apropos now that there are multiple Muffinses, right?"

"And then there's the fact that Mrs. Guerin apparently wanted her cat to grow up to be a stripper, because Muffins? Really?" I shuddered.

"Poor thing," Jake agreed, apparently not caring that he still had blood running down his cheek from the shallow scratches she'd left on him. "Okay, how about Kitty Pryde? And then for a nickname - "

"Oh my fucking god," I said slowly. "Jake, 'Shadowcat' is probably the only cat name on the planet that is actually worsethan 'Muffins.' No. Just... no."

Muffins II: The Revenge was either deeply literal or had no taste, because she was back to purring now.

"Any of the X-Men who isn't Shadowcat," I insisted. "Rogue. Perfectly good cat name. Jubilee. Beast. Emma Frost. Angel. Lots of people name their cats Angel."

"She's a girl cat," Jake protested, holding her tighter. "And Kitty Pryde has the most badass powers." Dear god I hoped he wasn't getting attached to that thing, because currently she was on sale for over five thousand dollars on eBay and the price was still racing upwards.

"She's a cat and therefore doesn't speak English and probably doesn't care about human genders." I sighed. "I mean, by your reckoning we should be calling her Mini-Jake or Jake: The Empire Strikes Back or Jakeses or - "

"Okay, okay, shut up," Jake said.

Rather than write "Muffins: The Sequel" or anything equally stupid on the ad, I just left the title at "Cat. No fleas. No rabies shot. Cat carrier not included. Animorph sold separately."

"We should just let whoever buys her name her," I told Jake.

"And that's another thing. How do we know she's going to a good home?" he asked, holding Muffins II: The Revenge a little closer to his chest.

"Because I'll tell whoever shows up that if they mistreat the cat they'll get eaten by a tiger," I drawled, refreshing the page yet again.

"You think that's a good idea, right?"

Yes, Jake was talking to the cat, not me. Great. He really was getting attached.

And then he glanced back up at me. "But how will we know? Anything could happen, and I have responsibility for her now, you know."

"No you really fucking don't," I said patiently.

"It's my fault — "

"It's your fault nothing. That cat is the result of a very very weird technological mishap and nothing else."

Jake looked back down at Muffins II: The Revenge, biting his lip. "But — "

"I'll assure any buyers that 'we have our ways of knowing,'" I said, air quotes and all. "And then I'll remind them that they have no way of knowing if you're a fly on the wall at any time. And if they're not completely freaked out into abandoning the sale and running for their lives, then we'll know they're probably trustworthy."

Muffins II: The Revenge snuggled a little closer to Jake, purring now. Like that was helping anything.

"Okay," he said. "But you don't think we should hang onto her for just a little while, just to make sure that she's completely normal and nothing is going to happen to her if we let someone else take her? After all, the other people probably aren't going to be experts at taking care of cats with her kind of, um, unusual past."

"Jake. Read my lips. We. Are not. Keeping. The damn. Cat."

Jake shot me a look that I would have fallen for five years ago but didn't fool me right now into thinking that he was actually hurt. I'd seen Jake when he was shocked, horrified, had the carpet yanked out from under him by something I'd said. This was just him faking puppy eyes to try and be manipulative.

"Homer would be devastated because he'd think you didn't love him anymore," I pointed out. "And Mom and Dad would probably just forbid you from getting any more pets anyway. Oh, and have you forgotten that you're allergic?"

"Yeah, but..." He looked down at the purring cat.

I gave up. "Fine. If you really want to take it up with Mom and Dad, I'll pretend I agree with you."

Jake sighed. And then he set Muffins II: The Revenge on the floor. "No, you're right. She'd probably be better off elsewhere."

"Look, if it makes you feel any better, the bidding is now at…" I refreshed the screen and raised an eyebrow. "Eighteen thousand dollars. So whoever gets her is going to be rich and extremely committed to the idea of owning this particular cat. Probably not going to be some batty old lady who has forty other pets and no way to take care of them."

"Yeah," Jake muttered. "You're right."

Muffins II: The Revenge rubbed against his leg. Manipulative animal.

I started to answer when something else on the screen caught my eye. You know those stupid personalized ads that try to suck you into a death spiral of buying shit on eBay for all of eternity until eventually you go bankrupt?

If you like Animorphs merchandise, this one read, You'll love the genuine unaltered Sharing t-shirts available at Second Time Around Gifts!

"What?" I said out loud.

"What is it?" Jake circled around to look at the screen over my shoulder, probably reacting to my incredulous tone of voice.

I clicked on the ad.

Yep. It was a Sharing t-shirt. Slightly used. Nearly new condition. Promising to be the genuine article. Bidding had already gone over three hundred dollars.

"Huh?" I said.

"Controllers?" Jake asked.

"Doubt it. They kinda blew that cover a while back," I said absently.

I was paying more attention to the description, which read: Express your inner edgy commentary with this cutting-edge new item, which will show off your finely-honed sense of irony! Don't settle for the cheap knock-off shirts being mass-produced over at Abercrombie and Fitch; get the genuine article here today! Get it quick before everyone has one!

"Why are people selling Sharing t-shirts?" Jake said. "More importantly, why is Abercrombie and Fitch selling knock-off Sharing shirts?"

I smiled bitterly at the screen. "Because it's edgy and ironic, apparently."

It was weirding me out a little, too, to tell the truth. I'd seen a couple former controllers with heavily modified Sharing merchandise — including a few shirts that had been annotated with Sharpie to include slogans like "Join the Sharing - you have nothing to lose but your brains!" or "Come for the volleyball, stay because you have no choice!"

But I hadn't heard of people treating the Sharing like the world's weirdest fan club before this. Or of hawking the leftover shit to people who were apparently bored with band t-shirts and fake bike chains and wanted something more controversial and offensive.

"Maybe I should forget selling the cat and start raiding my closet for stuff to auction off instead," I said, trying to sound casual.

"But what's the point of it?" Jake asked.

"To show off how little you care about current issues. To shock people. To be an asshole teenager the way that asshole teenagers have been assholes since the dawn of time. I don't know."

Jake was staring away from the screen, expression grim.

"And what the hell is 'Animorphs merchandise'?" I asked, looking back at the screen.

Sure enough, the distraction worked: Jake's head whipped back around and he leaned toward the screen. "What merchandise?"

I clicked on the ad from the ad. This time a whole bunch of sales popped up. The first entry was for "Jake Berenson action figure — Really morphs!"

Jake let out what I could only describe as a squeak of horror.

I opened the listing and we both crowded close to the screen, squinting at the little preview image.

There were several seconds of silence during which we both tried to comprehend what we were actually seeing, and then I gave up and said, "Okay, is that supposed to be a human or a hork-bajir?"

Jake leaned even closer to the screen, elbowing my hand off the keyboard and zooming in on his own. "Hork-bajir don't have two heads. That definitely has two heads."

"What? Where's the second one?"

He moved the cursor over a lump sticking off the shoulder of the… thing. "See?"

"Yeah, that's the first one, but where's the second one?"

He pointed. "Uh, there."

"Are you sure that's not a second tail?"

He glanced sideways at me, biting his lip. "Maybe, but... Why would it have two tails?"

I shrugged elaborately. "Why would it have two heads?"

"Better than one," he said, as if that actually answered the question.

"Pretty sure that that doesn't usually refer to them both being stuck to one body," I said. I double-clicked on the image and it suddenly filled the screen.

We both recoiled with noises of horror.

"Oh, I get it," I said finally.

"How?"

"It's supposed to mid-morph," I said. "Mid-morph into a… a…"

Jake was tilting his head at the screen. "What's that thing Visser Three could do with the tentacles and the weird lumpy spike things?"

I leaned back from the screen a little, trying to see what he was talking about. "Oh, you mean the one that shot poisonous goo?"

Fortunately, we were interrupted when the computer let out a pinging noise letting me know that the bidding time window was closed. Because I'd been starting to nudge the cursor toward the little "Buy it now!" button in the corner of the screen.

"Okay, Muffins the Second, you now belong to… a fashion designer in Sun Valley who likes to be known as 'feathered_demon1972,' and has four hundred twenty-six thousand dollars to drop on a cat with no name. God damn."

And yes, now I was talking to the cat too. Shut up.

Muffins II: The Revenge, who already seemed to be learning her new name, jumped up on the desk and pranced over the keyboard to get to Jake. She plopped herself down in his lap and started nudging her head insistently on his wrist until he gave in and started petting her again.

"Don't worry," Jake told her. "I'll make sure it's a good home."

I sent the fashion designer a quick email asking how soon he could be over to pick up his new prize, explaining that it was fairly urgent seeing as we didn't own a litter box. He was by less than an hour later, having fortunately brought a cat carrier of his own. The little monster made pathetic mewing noises when Jake let her go like she was deliberately trying to break his heart. But as soon as the guy with more money than sense started petting her she calmed right down and started purring again, which made us both feel a lot better.

We didn't hear anything else from Muffins II: The Revenge until the fashion designer emailed us a week later to gush about how nicely she was settling in and making friends with all his other cats. Apparently he'd decided not to keep the name we'd given her. Which, all things considered, was probably for the best. Instead, he just called her "Tiger."

A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting, which mostly comes from the fact that it took me forever to find a name I liked for this one; working titles included "He Ain't Heavy (He's a Lizard)," "My Anaconda Don't Want None Unless You Fight Yeerks, Son," "The Three Lives of Thomas(ina)," "Muffins Episode II: Attack of the Clones," and "Things You See in an ER." More to come in this 'verse soon.