A/N: I wrote this for my friends, but one of them thought it might be worth posting. I guess we'll see if she was right. It's supposed to be right after book #23, my favorite. Just so you know, ( ) is thoughtspeak.
"Good grief, you're as crazy as he was!" I practically spat. It was the first bit of real emotion I'd shown while in Visser Three and DeGroot's presence. But it was ok. I was supposed to be angry. A street thug mad because his whacked-out family hadn't left him any money. Could the real motive for my rage be any farther from what the two Controllers perceived?
I heard "Cousin Aria" tell DeGroot I wasn't worth infesting as I left the law office. If anyone was following me, I didn't care. I couldn't think. Couldn't do anything but run on my ridiculous legs blinking through the tears in my ridiculous weak eyes. The past 36 hours flashed through my mind as I sprinted through the alleys next to the strip mall. First I had no family, then a long-lost cousin who turned out to be my mortal enemy, then no family again, then a father—a real father. And I'd even met him once. A few brief moments before he'd been murdered…by my "cousin." I felt the perverse urge to laugh as I slowed. But I had to demorph. There was no way I could stay human now, so I changed back before I could be trapped.
I flapped through the park, past Jake and Marco's neighborhood, toward the mountains. As I passed over Cassie's farm, I landed on an abandoned water trough at the edge of her property and morphed back to human. See, I wanted to cry. And hawks don't cry. But the tears just didn't come. I sat there in a daze, staring into the middle distance. I went through the self-pity, the fury at the universe in general and Visser Three in particular, the guilt over Rachel, and then I just sat there. No family. Not now. Not ever.
Suddenly a horrific noise crashed through the underbrush behind me. I jumped up and was half way to flapping before I figured out it was Ax.
His blue form sailed over the water trough and landed in the tall grass at the edge of the woods. (Tobias. You survived,) he thought-spoke about as excitedly as he ever got. He smiled with his main eyes, still jazzed from the day's battle.
"Hey Ax-man, yeah, I'm fine. You survived too, I see. How's everyone else?" I tried to sound cheerful.
(We are all alive. Prince Jake wishes to see us in Cassie's barn as soon as possible.)
"Great. Let's go"
(You're not going to demorph?)
"Nah, let's just walk."
It was about a mile and a half back to the barn. I could've flown and Ax could've run there in seconds, but I felt like taking it slow. We hiked in silence for a few minutes. I glanced sideways at the Andalite trotting next to me. He saw me looking at him, of course. With four eyes, two on movable stalks, it was hard to put anything past Ax. Looking at this six-foot tall, four-hooved, scorpion-tailed centaur alien next to me, I realized I did have family. Sure, there wasn't much resemblance, but this was my uncle walking next to me here.
"Ax, you don't talk about Elfangor much," I commented, breaking the silence.
(I…I never had to. Everyone on my world knows everything about him. He is…was a legend.) He scuffed his front hoof, kicking a piece of bark. I recognized that gesture of mild annoyance. It made sense. Ax had probably grown up in his brother's shadow. We were probably about the same age, so that was at least 20 years of Yeerk-killing before Ax was even born. It was a lot to live up to.
"Ax…" I started, but my voice cracked. Oh great. How could I possibly say this? I cleared my throat and started again. "Aximili," I began again, but I saw his quizzical expression. He knew something was up. None of us ever called him by his full name. It didn't exactly roll off the tongue. I made a snap decision. "Tell Jake and the others I'll be there really soon. I need to do something."
(I will tell them. Can I help?)
"No," I said as I demorphed, (I'll be there as fast as I can.) I took off for town.
I flapped hard back toward the strip mall and DeGroot's office. How the hell was I going to tell my friends, much less Ax, the truth about my family? I wasn't even one-hundred percent sure what the whole story was. Obviously the Ellimist was involved. Only such an all-powerful being could move a person 88 light years through space and a few decades through time and erase his existence allowing only one too-short note to be left behind. I could practically see it: Elfangor hiding as a human on Earth, meeting my mom, living happily, maybe. And then given one of the Ellimist's infamous impossible choices: stay there and doom the galaxy to Yeerk conquest or leave his family and fight the good fight. Now the only proof of his time on Earth was in the hands of a sketchy lawyer Controller.
I couldn't tell the others. I'd just come across as some crazy, attention-seeking psycho and they wouldn't believe me anyway. And after my meltdown on the mission to save Bek, could I blame them? But one thing was certain: I had to get that letter. So I skimmed low over the cars in the parking lot and perched precariously on a trashcan right outside the front window. I knew it was dangerous. In fact, Ingrid the secretary was looking right at me. She stared for a second and went back to putting folders in a briefcase. I flew behind the building, trying to think of a plan. When no plan presented itself, I decided to go with improvisation.
I marched on my talons through the back door of the office and into a supply closet. What I was about to do was stupid and risky, and I knew it. But I was a little too emotional to listen to common sense right then, so I morphed to Hork-Bajir. (You wanna see what kind of fighter Elfangor's son is? Get ready to find out.) I said grimly to no one. Delivering what would've been a rib-shattering kick at the solid oak door, I bounded into the office. I screamed with a lifetime of pent-up frustration and snaked my reptile head around, looking for someone to hurt. The office was dim but the sunset glared through the slats in the Venetian blinds. I blinked a few times and stood there stupidly. Of course, it must've been almost 6pm. The place was closed for the day.
Oh well. If I couldn't kill Yeerks, I'd at least trash their property. I raised one massive bladed arm, about to smash the desk and computer in two when I heard in my head (Tobias! Stop!)
(Rachel! What are you doing here? Where are you?)
A bug on the floor transformed into a beautiful blond Amazon. I demorphed and remorphed to human before I spoke to her again.
"Why are you here?" I muttered, dejected.
"Ax said something was up with you. I wanted to make sure you didn't do something insanely stupid, like, say, demolishing this place? After all the crap you went through to convince these Controllers there was nothing special about you."
I had no answer to that. The little movies of violence in my mind diminished, leaving me feeling hollow and cold. The whole idea was nothing more than pure, unbridled fury acting itself out in the most ludicrous way possible. Saying nothing, I turned away from her and opened the filing cabinet. I could at least get what I came for.
"Don't you DARE pull this crap with me now, Tobias!" Rachel yelled, grabbing my shoulder and spinning me to face her. "You tell me what's going on with you or…or…" she trailed off.
I looked at her expression of anger and worry. Her face was red. Her eyes flashed hotly. She wasn't crying, but I could tell she had to try like hell to hold back her tears. That got through to me. Rachel never cried, and I was damned if it was going to be me who made her start. I took her hand off my shoulder and pulled her close. She started to say something else, but I kissed her fiercely, stopping her protest.
Gripping the document in one hand and Rachel's wrist in the other, I lead her over to the leather couch lining one wall of DeGroot's office. We sat down. I looked at her anxiously, though I'm sure my face showed no recognizable expression. If Rachel doesn't believe you, no one will, I thought as I held the paper up to my absurdly weak eyes. Squinting, I began to read:
"Dear Tobias," my voice cracked, but I continued, "I am your father. You never knew me…"
She didn't laugh. She didn't glare at me skeptically. I kept going, just barely holding it together.
"…signed Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, Prince."
"Oh Tobias," she whispered.
We sat there holding each other in the waning summer daylight.
Eventually, we flew back to the barn. Rachel carried a photocopy of the letter in her giant eagle talons. I didn't take the original. It would have been too suspicious when DeGroot found it missing.
I flew in through the hayloft. To my surprise, everyone was still there even though it had been more than an hour since I left. Three empty pizza boxes lay on the hay-covered floor. Marco was just finishing a piece of crust. Cassie and Jake stopped their conversation and stood up. Ax in his usually-pretty though currently tomato-sauce-stained human morph lay on a bale of hay, curled up in a ball. I could easily guess where most of the pizza had gone. Rachel demorphed, and I fluttered to the ground.
"Ax," Marco said, rousing him by kicking the hay bale.
He woke up out of his pizza-induced trance and demorphed. I morphed to human. I don't know why. I just felt like facing them all as equals. We stood there for a second, four humans, one Andalite, and me.
"Uh, well guys," I said, clearing my throat, "DeGroot's a Controller. Aria was definitely Visser Three in morph." I figured I'd start with the small, obvious stuff. Jake nodded. Marco glared at me expectantly. "And, I found out who my father is. Was."
"Tobias, you don't have to tell us if you don't want to," Cassie spoke up.
"No, I think I should. See, we all knew him. He was Elfangor. Prince Elfangor," I said. I looked over and met Ax's gaze, almost defiantly. All four of his eyes were on me. That never happens. He always has at least one eye scanning the landscape for threats.
"But…how?" Jake asked incredulously.
"Tobias, you had a long day—" Cassie started gently. I cut her off.
"It's true. Why would I lie about this?"
"No one's saying you would, but maybe the Yeerks, trying to flush out some Andalite bandits?" Jake left the statement hanging in the air.
"He has proof," Rachel growled, brandishing the paper. She moved forward like she was about to start something, but then Marco jumped in.
"But then why go through all that crap about luring a street punk into the office? That's too subtle, too uncertain for them. And Visser Three would never involve himself personally if he didn't believe it was the real deal." He stared at me like I might explode at any minute. Like I was something dangerous.
"Jesus Tobias," he whistled low.
I glanced over at Ax, trying to read his expression, but he was inscrutable as usual. He didn't say anything. I wasn't sure if he was angry or embarrassed or what. Ax held his race in very high regard; he might not want to be related to a human…or whatever I was.
Finally in private thoughtspeak directed only at me, he said, (Happy birthday, Tobias. I am proud we are family.)
And that was it.
If it had been anyone else but Ax, I would've doubted the sincerity of his statement, but Ax didn't lie. He was always brutally honest, especially with me. If he said he was proud, he was proud.
I didn't know how to react. So I did something I rarely do in human morph, something rare for me even back when I was fully human.
I smiled.
The tension in the room melted away like a dissipating fog.
"Well we had a big day too," Jake said. Oh right, the debriefing or whatever. Jake and the others filled me in on the destruction of the rest of the Yeerk compound. Toby and her people had freed fifteen more Hork-Bajir, and Bek was perfectly safe living with his parents once again.
"So it seems like everything worked out ok," Rachel said.
"Except for one thing," Marco added.
(What? What went wrong?) I asked back in hawk form once more.
"Well we went through this whole ordeal, this whole hellish weekend, and it was someone's birthday and there was no party!" he cried in mock outrage.
"So what do you want to do, Bird-boy?" he continued, "Chuck E Cheese? McDonald's playland? I could go for some skeeball, myself, but passing up Ronald McDonald…I dunno." He rubbed his chin pensively, pretending to give the question serious thought.
A light breeze blew through the barn, swirling the bits of hay on the floor. I looked out through the skylight. With my eyes, I could see down the gravel driveway, across the highway, and into the forest. The stars were barely visible in the twilight, and the sun was almost completely below the horizon. But it was summer. The days were long, and the thermals lasted late.
(Let's go flying.)
The others morphed their various raptors. Normally we wouldn't risk flying all together like this. It was something we'd only done occasionally, back when we were less experienced with morphing, when we didn't know or care about the risks so much. But it was getting dark, and no one would see. We took off in a huge mob of russet, white, gray, and brown, headed for the sky.
(So you're what now? Half human, half bird, half Andalite…) Marco started to crack one of his lame jokes, (imagine the family reunions. Imagine what would be on the barbeque at those reunions…) he prattled on, enjoying the sound of his own voice. Rachel teased him and Jake and Cassie tried not to laugh while Ax missed every joke. Eventually we wound up near the construction site where it all began.
Later Ax and I would go back there and talk. Much later we would find the hirac delest and learn the whole truth. But that's another story.
At that moment, my friends and I circled high in the dying light, happy, healthy, and as normal as we ever were.