A/n: Hi! Yes, this is a redo of Insanity Equals Happiness. I got my hands on my original documents so I've decided to fix them up for you all. Including the dreaded thought-speak problem. I've had this on my list of things to do for a while.

So here is the story, hopefully even better than before! :D

Oh, and note: The Cassie mentioned here is not Cassie the Animorph. This Cassie is white and slightly taller-than-average. Just to clear up any confusion.

The Controller

Chapter 1

My name is Leela.

I used to be your average kid. Kinda on the skinny side. Blond hair, blue eyes. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

I still am like that. I mean, I look the same. If you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn't notice anything weird about me. Until I opened my mouth, of course … but even then you'd probably just denounce me as a weirdo. You wouldn't know what I was. What I know. What I'm capable of doing.

But now I'm probably sounding like even more of a weirdo.

I'd better start at the beginning.

It all started with a poster. A stupid little poster hanging in the hallway at school ...

I bounced happily through the halls on the last day of school. School was officially out, and I was officially no longer a fourth-grader. Ten years old and the world was my oyster. Not literally an oyster, cause that would be just weird. But —

"Leela? Can I ask you something?" I heard my friend Cassie ask from somewhere further down the hallway. Cassie's my best friend and is also normal-looking — brown hair, brown eyes, a little bigger than me. Her level of weirdness is not quite up to my standards, but it's okay.

"Sure, anything," I yelled crazily.

"What the heck are you on?!"

"Cassie, Cassie. This is a natural high."

Cassie shook her head in a Leela-you're-pathetically-insane sort of way. "Would you come take a look at this poster?"

I'd like to take this moment to point out that Cassie was the one who noticed the poster first. So for future reference, it wasn't all my fault.

So I squeezed my way through about a million elephant boys and maneuvered between a couple cliqueish conversational circles, finally reaching the spot where she was staring at the shiny, colorful rectangle on the wall. The large block letters at the top of the poster read "The Sharing." It was advertising some kind of extra-curricular club. I couldn't really tell what the main point of it was — the poster advertised a whole bunch of different activities, from picnics to movie nights to service projects.

"Yeah, so?"

"So I'm thinking about joining," she clarified. "I really need some kind of life outside of school, now that it's over."

"What? I don't provide an interesting enough life for you?"

"Fine then. You really need some kind of life outside of school. I thought we could join this Sharing thing together, which answers your next question."

"Mind-reader." I was about to ask what this had to do with me, and if it didn't then why the heck had she made me battle my way over here in the first place.

She laughed. "I'm just that good. So, you wanna check it out with me?"

"Fine," I said. "Just checking it out won't hurt."

The next meeting of the Sharing was at the beach. Cassie's mom had agreed to take us.

She was nice enough to let us go wandering about by ourselves. She's awesome like that. She knows we love exploring. Well, I love exploring, at least. Cassie just follows me wherever I go.

We messed around for awhile, but didn't stray too far. We didn't want to miss the food. Some guy was cooking hot dogs on a grill not too far from us.

"Man. The smell of hot dogs is making me hungry," I said to Cassie.

"Me too."

I looked around. Most people were just having fun — kids splashing in the water, grownups and teenagers playing beach volleyball further down the beach — but I noticed a few scattered groups of people conferring in whispers.

I looked at the hot dog man again. There was something ... what was that? It was so creepy. He looked normal, and yet ...

I poked Cassie. "Cass? You ever seen that guy before?"

"Which one?"

"The guy cooking the hot dogs."

"Oh, him." She looked over at him, then back at me. "No. But he's just a little … scary. That is really weird."

"Yeah. Definitely."

She shivered. "Whatever it is, I don't like it."

"You don't?" I said, surprised. "I want to find out about him. What is that ... that ... feeling, I guess? Who is that dude, anyway? Hey, you still wanna join this thing?"

"Maybe. I'm not so sure now."

"Heck, I do," I said eagerly. "I seriously gotta know about that guy."

"Then I will too," she decided. "Somebody's gotta keep you out of trouble."

"Me? Trouble?" I put on my cute-and-innocent face.

Cassie just grinned.

"I also wanna know what those whispering people are saying."

"Yeah, me too," she admitted. "But we have to be careful."

"Just, like, one little sentence. That can't hurt. And I have to know."

She looked at me, amused. "And you'll be tortured until you hear that one little sentence. Right?"

"Yep."

It was seriously nagging at me. My mom says I'm way too curious for my own good. But I can't help it. I hate not knowing things.

"Let's go for those two," I said, pointing to a man and a woman chatting near some bushes. "We can hide behind the bushes."

We crept close. Tried to look like two kids who just wanted to explore around the bushes. Wasn't hard, since that wasn't too far off from what we were — the only difference was that we were after something far more interesting than rocks or shells.

"Shhh," Cassie told me when we were in position.

"No duh," I whispered back. "You think I'm gonna stand up and start doing the Hokey Pokey?"

"Shutup! I'm trying to hear."

" — you know, I hear Edriss is leaving very soon," the man whispered.

"Yes. Everyone is talking about it," replied the woman. "Who'll be the leader of the invasion now?"

"I've just heard rumors. People say it's going to be the Yeerk that discovered the humans."

"Esplin-Nine-Four-Double-Six? Primary twin, of course."

"Yeah. Visser Three. The Andalite-Controller."

"You know, I've actually heard things about Esplin lately. That he's starting to go insane. That he — "

"That's enough, Leela!" Cassie hissed. "Let's get out of here."

So we did. Again, trying to look like we were wandering aimlessly.

"That was more than one little sentence!" Cassie said when we had put a safe distance between us and the two people. "And I have no idea what was said."

"Yeah, me either! I'd sure like to know, though."

She gave me a look. "I've heard you use that phrase one too many times now. But still ... "

"Who's Esplin?"

"Who's Edriss?"

"And while we're at it, what's a Yeerk?"

Cassie shrugged. "I guess we could find out."

"We will find out," I promised. "Or else I'll go nuts!"

"As nuts as whoever this Esplin person is?" Cassie laughed.

"Yeah. And we're gonna find out just how nuts that is!"

Now we were both laughing.

"You know, we've been 'associate members' of The Sharing for a long while. We haven't found out any more about the stuff we overheard," Cassie said.

We were at her house. In her room. Not really doing anything.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I said, annoyed. It wasn't like it had escaped my attention. "I got a plan."

"What?"

I grinned conspiratorially. "You know, those meetings that the full members have? The secret, 'Only Full Members Allowed' things?"

She stared at me. "Leela. No way. Those are guarded by cops."

"So what?"

"We could get in huge trouble."

"It's a stupid meeting. They can't arrest me for being there. I mean, hey, it isn't really a crime, it's just against the rules of the Sharing."

"They could kick us out."

"Yeah. But who cares? They'll forget about us after awhile. We can just go back and pretend we're totally new."

"Fine. Knowing you, you'll probably go anyway and end up doing something stupid. So I'll come along to protect you."

She said that to make me mad. It worked.

"I don't need nobody to 'protect' me! Give me a break."

"Yeah, you do. You need protection from your own stupidity."

I stuck my tongue out at her.

"Shh," I told Cassie.

"No duh."

"Shut up."

"Didn't we have this conversation before?"

"I said shut up."

Cassie and I peered through the leaves. We had climbed this huge tree as high as we could. No one could see us unless they looked carefully, because there were about a thousand branches and billions of leaves between us and the ground.

I saw a couple of kids I knew. Plus the assistant principal of the junior high school, Mr. Chapman. And the creepy hot dog guy from before, wearing some dorky, tight-fitting clothes.

All of a sudden —

"Oh my God! Cassie. Look at the hot dog man. And do not scream. Do NOT scream."

Cassie opened her mouth, then shut it. Like I had three seconds ago.

The hot dog guy was turning blue.

"Whoa … " Cassie whispered. "That is scary. That is seriously scary. I knew there was something wrong with him."

"That is so cool!"

"Leela, I am like frozen with fear and you are saying this is cool?"

"I'm not saying it's not scary. But it's cool too. Hey! Look at his eyes! Weren't they dark brown a few minutes ago? They're dark blue now! And ... they don't look right anymore."

"How in the heck can you tell from here? I can barely see if his eyes are open or shut!"

"Speaking of which, shut up."

This eyeball on a stalk sprouted from his head. Then another one. I briefly considered screaming.

"Don't you dare, Leela. Mouth shut."

"Oh man, that is weird!" I whispered.

SPROOT! SPROOT! Something sprouted from the guy's chest. Two somethings. Horse legs.

Horse legs? Huh?

Blue horse legs! And the original legs were becoming two more horse legs. The guy was growing taller by the second.

Suddenly his body bent weirdly between the extra chest-legs and the arms. He reared up like a horse.

When his front hooves — yeah, hooves — hit the ground, he looked kind of like a centaur. A blue centaur with extra eyeballs.

Then his mouth disappeared! His hair seemed to be sucked into his head, like someone slurping up a mouthful of spaghetti. His ears climbed up the side of his head and became smoother, bigger, and pointed. His nose shrank, and for a second he had no nose at all. But then these three slits appeared in his face.

Blue and tan fur grew everywhere. The dork-clothes just kind of faded away into the fur.

Last, the tail sprouted. Long, thick, and furry. At the end, a mean-looking blade grew.

"HOLY CRAP!" I yelped.

"Leela!" Cassie hissed.

Whoops. I guess I'd forgotten to whisper.

Cassie was absolutely furious. "I am going to KILL you! You do NOT know how to hide!"

The weird horse hot dog guy had stopped changing. He turned his extra eyeballs on our tree.

I gulped. "Oops."

"Yeah, oops. Told you you'd do something stupid. Uh-oh. Now look. Horse-man is coming toward us."

"Horse-man. Sounds like a comic book character."

"Not the time, Leela."

‹All right, who's that? Get down here this instant!›

I jerked. There was this voice in my head! "Who said that?"

"Brilliant, Leela. Now Horse-man is definitely coming toward us."

‹Get down from there!›

I still couldn't tell where the voice was coming from. It was just … there, in my mind. It was the weirdest thing ever. Well, except for Horse-man's transformation. That definitely won the prize for weirdest thing ever.

‹If you don't get down, you will force me to take extreme measures. Stand back, everyone.›

Horse-man whipped his tail. It sliced through part of the tree trunk. He tried to swing it back for another try.

Only he couldn't.

It was stuck.

I snorted. I couldn't help it.

Cassie looked furious. She glared at me. "When he gets unstuck, he'll probably succeed in chopping this tree down. We better scram."

I climbed down the tree. Cassie did the same. We leaped off the last branch and hit the ground running, but these two men sprinted after us. They grabbed our arms and yanked us back toward the blue horse guy, who had finally succeeded in freeing his tail.

‹Now exactly what were you doing up there?›

Now I was sure it was Horse-man doing the voice-in-the-head thing. He was glaring at us. It was hard to read his completely-not-human face, but it was fairly obvious he was pissed.

"Um ... just climbing that tree. We, uh, like climbing it." Wow, I sounded convincing. "We weren't, you know, doing anything." Much, I added silently.

"Uh-huh," the person holding me sneered. He seriously was squeezing my arm hard. It hurt. I was not feeling good about this at all.

‹Give the little one to Hekliss 8275. I don't care about the other one. Ask Iniss who's next in line for a host. Now take them to the pool.›

"Well, if we're going swimming we can't be too bad off," I whispered to Cassie. "But little one? Remind me to beat Horse-man up when I'm twenty-five."

Before that, I hadn't been scared much. Not really scared like this. It was a new thing for me. I guess I didn't know what else to do besides make jokes.

Horse-man changed back into the hot dog man.

"He did have brown eyes," I commented.

We were dragged up to a nearby parking lot and shoved inside a car. Then the two guys got in the front seat, while I saw Horse-man got into the back of a black limousine not too far away.

"No fair. Horse-man gets the limo while we get this little thing."

"Shut up," the guy in the driver's seat said. He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine kicked on.

I glared at the back of his seat for a second, then turned to Cassie. "Seriously. These guys have no manners," I whispered under the engine noise.

"The bad guys never do," Cassie whispered back. "Haven't you seen any movies? We are so in some deep doo-doo."

I shrugged. "Hey, this is the most excitement I've had in a long time."

"Leela!"

"I'm just trying to look on the bright side here."

"Just shut up. You got us into this mess. Now leave me alone."

We rode in silence. I almost fell asleep. Suddenly the car stopped.

Cassie poked my arm. "Hey, Leela."

"What?" I asked, yawning.

"We're at the junior high school."

"Aw, man. I thought they said pool."

"So did I." She looked at me funny. "And how the heck were you SLEEPING?"

"I wasn't quite," I tried to explain.

"Shut up and come out," one of the guys said gruffly.

They grabbed our arms again and unceremoniously led us inside.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Yeah, where are we going?" Cassie echoed.

"Shut up, both of you."

"Geez," I muttered. What jerks.

Thr four of us walked down the hallway. I expected the place to be mostly empty — the halls were darkened — but there were actually quite a few people there. Men and women, adults and kids. Everyone seemed to be going the same place. Some were talking. Others were silent.

I didn't know what to make of it all. No one looked too miserable. Of course, no one else was being yanked through the halls by their arms.

It wasn't long before we reached what I recognized as the janitor's closet. Apparently that's where everyone was going, because people were coming from all directions and heading straight into the closet. Way more people than could comfortably fit in there! I blinked several times, but no, it was true. I counted at least nine people who disappeared through the door, and there were more coming.

"Out of the way. Involuntary uninfested hosts. Move, people!" said one of our guys.

"We're going in there?" I asked.

Cassie shrugged with her free shoulder. "Looks like it. I have no idea why. What's an involuntary uninfested host?"

"Wow. Say that ten times fast."

"No way."

They dragged us into the closet. The guy who'd just said "Move, people!" did something with a hook on the wall and the faucet on the sink, and the wall suddenly opened!

"In there," he ordered.

There were steps going down. Way too many steps. My legs were beginning to ache when the wall on each side of the stairs suddenly ended. No wall, and no railing either — just a sheer drop. If I strayed off the steps I'd be falling for a very long way, so I carefully kept to the middle of the steps as we marched down … and down … and down …

Out of boredom, I randomly sniffed the air. "Hey, I smell something strange and stinky. I smell something else stinky ... I think it's people's sweat. I smell — hey, I smell hamburgers! And French fries. Hey, I'm hungry." I hoped we were going to eat down here.

"I'm not noticing the smells," Cassie said tensely.

I risked a glance downward, although I'd been afraid to since the walls had stopped. I do heights okay as long as I know I can't fall, but the lack of a railing was making my nerves go wild. "Wow! It's practically an underground city. Look, there are buildings, and people, and — "

"Look around," she insisted. "And listen, too."

I listened carefully.

Someone was screaming. "Aaaaahhh! Aaaaahhh! Help! Help us! Get your hands off me, you monsters!"

I winced. "Oh, man. I'm getting a bad feeling about this."

"Soon it's going to be us screaming. Let's get out of here!"

Cassie tried to run, but the people behind us blocked her exit.

I rolled my eyes. "Could have told you that was gonna happen. Maybe if we cooperate, they won't do anything to us," I said, not really believing it. "Besides, the place has hamburgers."

"Just look, Leela!" Cassie hissed.

I looked. And this time I saw.

It looked like a huge pond. A pool. Full of this muddy gray-brown sludgy liquid. Every so often I'd see a flash of something swimming in it. Gross, I thought.

Two steel piers extended over the pool. On one, people were standing patiently in line. At the end were two creatures like nothing I'd ever seen before. They had to be at least seven feet tall, and they had blades everywhere — their arms, their legs. They even had spiky curved horns jutting out of their head, and two more spikes at the end of their tails. And I'd been freaked out at Horse-man's single tail blade. That was nothing compared to these guys.

Right now they were standing over a woman who was bending over the pool. I strained to see better, but couldn't tell what was happening. Without warning, the woman started screaming and generally spazzing out.

The blade-guys grabbed her arms roughly.

And then I saw the cages. The cages full of humans and blade-monsters. The two non-caged blade-monsters dragged the woman to one of the cages and shoved her inside.

She didn't stop screaming.

On the other pier was a shorter line of people. All humans this time. Two more blade-guys were at the end of this pier. They were holding down a screaming, yelling guy who was maybe in his forties.

Suddenly the man became quiet. He stood up and calmly walked away. The next human in line calmly knelt down by the pool, while the blade-monsters walked over to one of the cages and pulled someone out — this time one of their own kind — and dragged him harshly back to the end of the pier.

"Oh man. Cassie, what's going on?"

"This is really, really weird."

"As weird as I am?"

Cassie whipped her head around to glare at me. "Leela! This is so not the time for jokes."

"This is the perfect time for jokes. We're walking down stairs that have a sheer drop on either side to a place of screaming people in cages. We can't run away because there are guys with guns nearby. There are bladed monsters, giant worms — " there were these ten-foot-long bloated centipede thingies with huge round mouths full of teeth crawling about everywhere " — and a pool that stinks, and I can smell hamburgers while knowing I'm probably not going to eat one although I'm starving. There's that scary Horse-man down there, and he's a centaur again. He's got that tail blade that could probably slice a person apart before they could say one thing. And I'm actually relieved to see him, which means I'm probably going nuts. This is definitely a time for jokes."

She glared at me again. "How can you be relieved to see Horse-man?"

"Well, I don't know. Probably because he's slightly more familiar than those blade-guys and the worms. Slightly, as in pretty much not at all? But I have some idea of how he'll act, at least."

"Oh sure, that's comforting," Cassie muttered.

"Kosher what?" I said distractedly.

We had reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Now, you see the people standing nicely in line?" one of the guys with us said. "You two get over there. Don't try to run away, because we have Dracon beams as well as the human guns." He waved something that vaguely resembled a gun in our faces.

"Oh, man," I moaned again.

"Get over there now, or else."

I didn't exactly know what he meant by "or else", but for once in my life I wasn't gonna wait around to find out. "Come on, Cassie. I don't want to make these people mad."

"I have a bad feeling about this," Cassie moaned.

"Yeah, I do too. But hey, let's get in line before these guys use their guns."

We walked over to the end of the line. Trying to not make any sudden moves, because the guy had his gun-thing — Dracon beam, whatever — trained in our direction. I didn't want to make him freak out and start shooting.

"Man, this is insane," I said. "One minute we're normal kids — at least you were, Cassie — and then we see Horse-man turn into his blue-horsey-ness. We end up under the school with monsters we've never heard of, standing in line for I don't know what."

"I'd like to go home now," Cassie whispered.

"Yeah. I want my mommy."

Cassie snorted. I started laughing.

The woman in front of us turned around. "Voluntaries," she sneered. "Collaborators. What kind of no-good kids are you?"

"Hey, hey," I said, putting my hands up in a "whoa, slow down" gesture. "We have no idea what's going on. We're clueless."

"I don't think we're voluntaries," Cassie said. "That dude back there called us 'involuntary uninfested hosts.' Whatever that is."

"Do you know what's at the end of this pier?" the woman demanded.

"Yeah, blade-monsters." Cassie shot a look at them.

"No. You don't know. Sorry for bein' rude. Most people in this line are voluntaries. Not me, I'd escape if I ever got a real chance, but I know I wouldn't make it ten feet right now. My Yeerk knows that I won't try to run. I keep some dignity this way." She grinned. It wasn't a comforting grin. "Anyways. Welcome to hell."

"Come on, it can't be that bad," I reasoned.

She snorted. "It can't? You'll see how bad it can be, my friends. Wait till you reach the edge of this pier. My turn now. Don't touch me," she snarled to the blade-guys who wrestled her down. "Someday, I'll be free again. And you all will be dead."

She said some other words. The type of words that my parents would definitely ground me for life for saying.

"Okay, what is she talking about?" Cassie demanded.

I shrugged. "She's either wacko, or she's perfectly sane and we are all in trouble."

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