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Marco was lying on the grass under the Andalite tree, looking as if he'd just decided at random to plop himself down there. Though, if you could look closely enough, you'd be able to see him frowning, just a little, at the tree. This wasn't the best place for meetings. Too open. Too visible. Too much chance of someone just wondering by and wondering why they were up to. Sure, he trusted Tobias to notice anyone getting too close - but this place had anyone and everyone, and a whole range of odd abilities. For all they knew, there were people on board who could get past Tobias's sharp eyes.

But, Marco hadn't exactly found anywhere else that would work well either. And this was a place that Ax and Tobias came to regularly, so them coming here wasn't exactly suspicious. If anything, Marco was the odd one out. But hey, nothing wrong with wanting to lie down on the grass, huh? Or talking to his friends.

It was all too easy to slip back into paranoia and suspicion. Sure, there we no Yeerks and no apparent need for secrecy. But paranoia had got him through one war. It might get him through another. And everything about this was one great big mess of unknown quantities.

The really big question, though: how the hell were they supposed to explain to Ax his own future? "Guess what, the borg eats you. Try not to do that again if and when you go back."

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Marco will definitely blame you Ax, and totally suspect treachery.

"Dude, getting a parasite just to block psychics? Hell no. I'd rather have them reading my mind all the time. And morphing Leerans and turning off the psychic powers didn't stop other Leerans from reading our minds, remember?" Marco frowned, trying to remember the details of that particular mission. "Or did you get snapped back before that bit?"

"Anyways.. Point is, with psychics it won't matter what we're talking about. They'll be able to read our minds anyway. Best thing we can do is try to stay far, far away. As for everyone else, if we have our meetings while morphed, we can at least do private thought-speak so they don't hear." Marco paused, realising that the only other people around for meetings were Ax and Tobias, of all people. "Well. I can morph."

< Yeah that would be better. And I'd forgotten...guess neither of us wants to relive that little adventure. > replied Tobias. He listened more, and nodded, agreeing. < Yeah, just stay away and if we can't avoid it, watch our thoughts while we're close. >

"Keep an eye out for anyone coming along, alright?" Marco said to Tobias, already focusing on his wolf morph. Sure, Ax said the "psychic tree" would warn them of anyone nearby - but Marco preferred to trust in Tobias's eyes and the wolf's nose.

"I think thinking really annoyirrsh garf urgargh grrarrrghh..." Marco said, as a wolf's snout grew out of his face. A moment later, his though-speak kicked in. <Anyway. Thinking of really annoying songs very loudly might work. At least, I'm positive I saw Satori twitching when I kept thinking The Song That Doesn't End at her. Just a little. Maybe. Possibly. I think. Okay, I've got no clue. But it's worth a shot - and at the very least, it'll make reading our minds really annoying.>

By this time, Marco was fully wolf. Sure, anyone walking by would find the sight of an alien, hawk, and wolf all hanging out together odd - but at least they wouldn't be able to hear them. <So. Hand over your palms, Ax-man.>

< I'll keep track of time, to the best of my ability, > Ax promised. He wished that it didn't give him such a headache. He did make note of the annoying song technique, although he wasn't entirely certain how to differentiate an "annoying" human song from any other human so-called "music".

Marco got a strange look in response to his order. < My palms? What are you talking about? >

<Dude, palm reading? Come one, it's gotta have been in at least one of those soapies you were always watching. New-age nutsos think that you can tell the future be reading the lines on...oh never mind,> Marco said, rolling his eyes. Trying to explain palm reading to Ax was not what they were here for.

<You said the last thing you remember is the whole USS George Washington thing, right?>

< That's what I do best > Tobias took off and soared above them for a while, though he couldn't go long without a nice thermal. He listened to Marco trying to tell Ax about palm reading.

< They're probably too rational, too science minded and all. > he said. After the exchange about the time, he commented privately < let's see if he says they're our minutes again. > He wasn't normally huge on injecting humor, but he was slightly bored at the moment. He got quiet though when Marco got serious, waiting for Ax to reply.

Ax said dubiously. Trying to tell the future based on lines on someone's hand? Humans came up with the strangest ideas sometimes...

He shifted his weight as he scanned the area with his stalk eyes a little more intently than before. < Yes. We'd arrived back in the woods, but it was only later that evening. >

The Animorphs hadn't talked much on the trip back. Or if they had, they hadn't included Ax in their conversation.

<They're everybody's minutes,> Marco agreed privately to Tobias. <Especially when no one can keep track of them.> Which, admittedly, was rather worrying when you're an Animorph and keeping track of time is very important.

Later on they could go into specifics, but for now? Marco knew what Ax would really want to know.

<We won the war,> Marco said bluntly. <A few months after the thing with the USS Washington. <But it got real ugly before the end. And...> Marco darted a look at Tobias. <We lost Rachel.>

Tobias couldn't look sad in morph, but he was feeling it.

< A lot of things happened. Visser Three became Visser One, although we rescued Eva. And the Yeerks found out that most of us were human. We wound up recruiting more warriors to help us. > He was reluctant to go much further, looking to Marco for more direction. Ax would probably freak when he found out about the morphing cube being stolen. Surrendered, actually.

Ax's hearts leaped when he heard that they'd won -- that they somehow, against all reasonable odds, had won -- then plummeted again when he heard that they'd lost Rachel. It was a shock that any of them had survived, truly, and casualties were expected in war, but that didn't change the fact that an Animorph was dead. He looked over at Tobias, his chest tightening with sympathy. He'd noticed that his shorm had been more withdrawn, but he hadn't known why. Rachel's death must have nearly destroyed him.

< Continue, > he said, not trusting himself to say anything else at the moment.

<We used the morphing cube to make more Animorphs. Disabled kids, because we knew the Yeerks wouldn't have infested them,> Marco's voice sounded casual and off-hand, but he was giving Ax a wolf stare that almost dared him to make a comment about vecols. Marco had liked those kids. <But we lost the morphing cube one time when we were trying to get new recruits.>

Marco paused - like Tobias, he was expecting a freak out at this news. <Think he's go completely nuts if we tell him Cassie let them have it?> he said privately to Tobias.

< That's what worries me. I'm not sure > Tobias replied.

The Animorphs, and Marco in particular, had made their opinion of the Andalite idea of vecols perfectly clear. Ax had no doubt that it had been discussed again when they had recruited their new allies. He couldn't quite suppress an expression of distaste; but anything he would have said was lost with the second piece of news.

< WHAT?! > he, as predicted, exploded. Even the knowledge that they had won the war in the end couldn't dampen his horror at the very idea of Yeerks with free access to an Escafil device. Hundreds, easily thousands of those disgusting creatures erasing the one edge the Animorphs had over them--

He brought himself back under control with some struggle. < How? > Then, probably more importantly, < then what? >

<Yep, he's definitely gonna go nuts. He's already nuts. We might as well go and bake him a fruitcake.> Marco said to Tobias. <You know, you're his best friend. How about you tell him about Cassie?>

Okay, so Marco was definitely trying to pass the buck here. Sure, he knew they'd have to tell him eventually if they wanted their whole "save Rachel" plan to work. But Marco did not want to be the guy to tell him.

To Ax, he said, <Funny you should ask that...>

Tobias didn't want to be the one, either. But he knew one of them had to. < I suppose it should fall to me, although I don't like it either.

< Ax, can you promise that you'll stay calm if we tell you the whole story? You may not like some of it...I can see you getting upset, but please don't slice and dice, okay?>

Ax replied stiffly.

Marco snorted. Amazing how he could still manage that when a wolf. <Of course Ax. Cause you know, you've never done anything like oh, bring your tail-blade to anyone's face when they mention something you don't like. Like Visser Three. So, I think I'm just going to keep sitting over here. Way over here.>

Okay, Marco didn't actually expect Ax to go all slice-and-dice on them. But he couldn't resist needling. Still, as much as Marco would really like to have Cassie and her ability to read people around, he decided it was definitely a good thing that she was still in the pods.

< Here goes nothing. At least I have wings > Tobias told Marco privately. < Okay, brace yourself. The Yeerks got the cube because Tom took it. Jake chased after him, very obviously ready to kill him. > That was a far cry from the earlier days of the fight, when Jake was willing to do whatever he could to save Tom. < Cassie attacked his tiger morph with her wolf. She thought Jake wouldn't be able to cope with killing Tom. She decided she'd rather let Tom get away with the cube. >

He braced himself, in case he needed to get airborn in a hurry.

Ax felt his back legs weaken as he looked between Marco and Tobias. Cassie had turned traitor? Against the Animorphs, against her own people, against Elfangor? He felt a hot surge of something that he couldn't quite put a name to, but it felt a lot like hatred.

< And then? > he asked flatly. If Marco or Tobias expected him to react violently, they were going to be disappointed.

Hey, doesn't hurt to be careful of the guy with a freaking weapon on his tail.

<Well, we had a lot of morph-capable Yeerks to deal with. Makes you realise why they hated us so much,> Marco said. <They started trying to get more control over the army as well. So we went to go talk to the Governor. Well, not all of us. Just the three of us actually. She made a public announcement about the war once we talked to her and managed to get her away from the Controllers who were trying to kill her. Not everyone believed it, but it was enough.>

<After that the Yeerks started getting more overt. They were diverting whole trains to the Yeerk pool to infest everyone.> Marco paused. He didn't regret the actions they had taken next at this point - not for one moment - but that didn't mean he'd forgotten the sight of all those people running in terror.

<So we loaded up a train with explosives and we blew up the Yeerk pool.>

< Then, we got help from the Taxxons...And a Taxxon-nothlit Andalite. Arbron led a group of rebels who wanted to be free from their hunger. We decided that we had to strike a decisive blow...that we had to take the blade ship. We forced the Visser into submission, but the price was high. We lost Rachel...and Tom. And some of the auxiliaries...that's what we called the newcomers. The other kids. Jake actually struck the biggest blow...he emptied the pool ship. Sent sixteen thousand Yeerks into space. >

< The morph-capable controllers were forced to become nothlits for safety. And you got the Andalite high command to give us some more cubes for controlled use. Andalites came to Earth all the time, mostly for the cinnamon buns. The taxxons became snakes...most of them were still in the jungle, although poor Arbron got killed by a poacher. The Hork-bajir got their own colony in Yellowstone. Visser Three was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to a hostless imprisonment. You became a Prince...your people were happy with you. You were given your own ship. We ended up rather famous, although I retreated for a bit...it wasn't easy, dealing with losing Rachel. >

He went to private thought speech. < Now comes the tricky part > he told Marco.

With all the information coming in, Ax couldn't quite suppress a shudder at the thought of a Taxxon-nothlit. He bowed his head sorrowfully when Tobias told him that Rachel died, but it shot back up when he heard what Prince Jake had done. It made tactical sense of course, and was likely the sort of decision that an Andalite commander would make -- but Prince Jake? That didn't sound like the kind of decision he'd make. Not when Ax had knocked him unconscious just before he'd been abducted by Stacy so that he wouldn't have to make that sort of decision.

< I'm sorry, my friend, > he murmured to Tobias in private thought-speak. The post-war situation sounded, aside from the loss of Rachel, exactly what they had hoped -- although Ax had no idea how they'd talked the Andalite High Command into giving them Escafil devices.

It sounded as if they still had more to say however, so he held his questions in his head for the moment.

Tobias was right. This was the whole point telling Ax all of this.

<But Rachel doesn't have to stay dead,> Marco said. <You're from before she died. If somehow our world gets...I don't know, put back together or something...you can change it. Right at the end, when we were taking over the Pool Ship. The whole reason she died is because Erek disabled the weapons. Jake had sent Rachel after Tom, on the Blade Ship, and since the weapons were disabled...well, we couldn't take them out. So Rachel fought, and they killed her. But if you...I don't know, toss Erek out the window after he gets us control of the ship, that won't happen. We can disable the Blade Ship, Rachel will be alive, the Blade Ship won't escape, and Jake won't spend the rest of his life blaming himself for killing Rachel and Tom and seventeen thousand Yeerks. Which is something else you can do. Don't let him flush the Yeerks into space. Got it? Don't even tell him that it's possible.>

And that was Marco's real motivation for changing all this. Yeah, he missed Rachel too. And he didn't want her to stay dead. But Jake was his best friend, and even if this only had a small shot at making Jake okay again - well, Marco was going to take it.

Although there was another reason as well. <Plus, you kinda get eaten by this borg monster when you go chasing after the Blade Ship. And then we all die when we try to save you. I think. Except Cassie, Jake made her stay home. Speaking of which, if this goes horribly wrong and you can't save Rachel, don't go boarding the Blade Ship, alright? That is just stupid. Just blow it up, okay? Blow. It. Up.>

Tobias braced again, watching for Ax's response. He nodded his head, agreeing with Marco. < All we knew about it was that it was called The One. > he added. He wondered if Ax had ever heard of the thing.

Saving Rachel. Saving Jake. Changing the future -- his future, their past.

They'd talked about changing the past once, when they'd finally caught up to the former Visser Four and the Time Matrix. Time-as-it-had-been reasserted itself before they could come to any sort of decision, though.

< Truthfully, I had already been planning something like that, > he said. 

Wait.