trans_9 | 'Meat' 'n Greet

Marco's mind started working on overdrive. Tom was here. Tom was here. But was the Yeerk with him too? It was hard to figure out how Tom would react, if he was free after years of imprisonment. Fact is, none the Animorphs had spoken to the real Tom since before he became a controller. Would Stacy bring the Yeerk as well as Tom?

But the "normal" act immediately made Marco suspect that this was a Yeerk talking. He remember the way Alloran had acted after he was freed - giddy, and exited over just being able to move his tail again.

And when was he from? If Tom was from after the Yeerks discovered who the Animorphs were, that was bad news. If he had already gotten the ability to morph, that was even worse bad news.

Still, Tom wasn't being aggressive. He wasn't making any moves to morph and attack. He was keeping up the same old act he'd had when he was pretending to be the real Tom.

He didn't know who Marco was. And unlike back home, here the Animorphs had the advantage. They'd gotten here first. The crew knew about Yeerks, and didn't like them. And all they needed to do was find a place they could keep Tom for three days, and that Yeerk was dead.

"Tell me about it," Marco said. If he could get the Yeerk's trust, this could go a whole lot easier...but there were too many people around who could overhear. This was not something Marco wanted others involved in. He stalled, trying to figure out a way of getting Tom away from the crowd. "Man, and here I thought it was just me on this crazy ship. Dude, you will not believe the freaky people that are here."

Marco looked odd, just for a second, something that wasn't the kid who used to play video games at 'his' house and slack off with Jake. The Yeerk paused for a moment, assessing and studying. Marco was taller, wasn't he? Older perhaps?

He spent a moment shuffling through Tom's memories. Yes, a little taller.

"I believe it, there was some guy flying around like Superman earlier. And alien goo, lots and lots of alien goo. Is anyone else here? Jake? My parents?"

<Stay asleep.> The words were odd, almost a prayer, and the host's reaction was mingled hope and fear. He wanted his family to still be sleeping. Sleep was safe. Sleep meant the Yeerks couldn't touch them. <Don't trust him, Marco. Jake would never forgive me if I got you infested.>

The Yeerk ignored the host's thoughts, paying attention to the kid standing in front of him. Tom remembered Marco as a good kid, a bit of a slacker, but a good kid. "Sheesh, Marco, you got tall. How long have you been here?"

"Jake's still asleep," Marco said, unknowingly answering Tom's question. "Your parents too. Other than you, I haven't really seen anyone I know." No need to mention Tobias. And saying that he knew Ax and Elfangor was just stupid.

He grinned at the mention all him being 'tall'. And he didn't even have to put on an act. Hell yeah he was taller! ...Although come to think of it, Tom didn't seem to have noticed that Marco was now 19. Which implied that Tom thought he still looked like a kid. Okay, that wasn't so good.

"Just a few months," Marco said. "But the ship doesn't seem to respect things like say, 'time and space' when she goes kidnapping people. She got me from 2001, but you get people from all kinds of times. And man, you look young. There's a lot I'm going to need to fill you in on."

After a surreptitious look at all the other people around, Marco said, "You know, we should go find somewhere to talk. No way am I telling my life story with all these people around."

<Thank you, god.>



<Jake and my parents are still free and alive and aren't involved, I still believe in God. And I thank Him for every small blessing.>

"I'm not sure how to feel about that, is it safe? I mean...could something happen to him? 2001? What!?"

Time travel or something else? How exactly did this work?

"How long have I been gone?" He sighed, slipping the backpack over his shoulder, dismissing Marco as a threat. "Yeah, quite a bit you need to fill me in on. Lead the way."

Marco shrugged. In this area, he probably didn't know much more than Tom did. "Hey, I don't remember you disappearing at all. Don't ask me how the whole time travel thing works. And they keep telling us that apparently our worlds are destroyed. Somehow, I think keeping the time-space continuum intact is the least of our worries."

Marco watched Tom pick up the backpack. Good. Tom didn't seem suspicious. "Come on, let's go talk in the hallway." He started moving, making his way out of the room while looking back every now and then to make sure Tom was still coming.

"Is that even *possible*? I mean...yeah....Damnit, sometimes it feels like it would be better to not get out of bed in the morning." He grumbled faintly, leaving the matter of the world destruction alone for the moment. To be honest he didn't exactly feel like he could properly demonstrate the horror a human should feel at the news, and Tom's inclination seemed to be avoid thinking about.

The yeerk would allow that, if only for the moment. Once he got a chance...

"Yeah. Man, this was not what I expected when I left school this afternoon...or however long ago it was." Keep casual and comfortable, Marco was a simple creature. Tom's memories told him this, a bit smarter than the host's brother, but still just a kid.

A simple minded human kid.

Tobias called to Marco. < We're screwed...I mean, we can try to save him, but you know how Stacy is. >

His hawk eyes caught another face as well, one that was only vaguely familiar but that rang some kind of bell in his mind.

Marco didn't respond to Tobias - he couldn't, not when he was right next to Tom and couldn't use thought-speak. But he was glad to know that Tobias was nearby. If this went wrong, it was good to know he'd have backup.

But...wait, Karen too? Was Aftran controlling her? This was insane, man, insane! But Marco couldn't think about Karen and possibly Aftran now - he had to deal with Tom.

"Still at school? Oh man, that sucks. But hey, at least you won't have to go here, right?"

And then Marco was out in the corridor. No one else was around - as soon as Tom went got through the door, it would just be Marco and him. And possibly Tobias - but Marco trusted Tobias to keep out of sight if he followed.

Tobias knew he'd have to morph, and he found a spot where he wouldn't be noticed very much, and then he went to fly. Nothing better for shooting around in corridors and such, he figured.

< I'm still with you...still flying, just in a much smaller body > he told Marco. He zoomed downward, landing in Marco's hair. < Sorry if I tickle. >

"Yeah, you should be graduated by now, if it's '01. In college? Is Jake? How'd that whole Y2K thing go over?" Normal questions, normal conversation. "Tell you what, first thing I'm going to do is burn my math book, with great unending pleasure." He grinned, following Marco out of the room.

The host was observing, but quiet, listening and paying attention to what was going on, but not attempting to interact.

<I'm hardly going to infest him. He'd make a terrible host.>

<You're an idiot.>

He paused, reassessing the situation for a moment. Occasionally the host saw things he missed, but it was just Marco...Marco was harmless. It would be like acting frightened at Sara or Jordan. "So, what exactly is going on?"

No one else was around, he had Tobias to back him up (although Marco was so going to get him for landing in his hair later on) time to put this plan in action.

"No college," Marco answered, let his whole demeanor change. He stopped grinning, stopped with the jokes, stopping looking like your average hid. "There was no point keeping cover anymore. Earth is ours."

Talking about this with Tobias first would have been better, but that couldn't be helped. But as far as Tom knew? The Yeerks had been winning. And since Marco was from Tom's future...well. Hearing that the Yeerks had won the war wouldn't just be what he wanted to hear: it'd be what he expected. He did feel a bit bad about the fact that this would mean that Tom believed this too - but once they'd killed the Yeerk, Marco would tell Tom that he'd been lying.

For a moment Yeerk and host stared at the boy in complete silence.

"Cover? What on earth are you talking about, Marco? Were we fighting in a war I wasn't aware of?"

<NO!nononononononononopleasegodnotMarco. notJakenotRachelandSaraandJordanandmomanddad.>

<Hush.>

For a moment, Marco may have seen a very real, very raw, flash of agony in Tom's eyes, lips half open in a denial before the yeerk pushed him away again, ignoring the terrified whimpers and pleas. Marco might claim to be a host, but he wasn't going to drop his cover so easily.

Iniss was no fool.

said Tobias privately.

He stopped talking though when Marco went into his act. < Nice fake...> He was curious what would come next.

"You're not just Visser One's head of security anymore," Marco said casually, as if Tom hasn't spoken. "You're Sub-Visser Seventeen now. There's still a few humans who are free, but they're all on the run. We're in control." Of course, the Yeerk wasn't actually a Sub Visser. Marco had no idea what his rank had been - but he was willing to bet saying that he was a Sub Visser now would stroke his ego.

He squashed down the uneasy jolt he felt when he saw that flash of agony. Marco couldn't afford to show Tom sympathy - not if he wanted to save him.

And even without Tobias's reminder, he knew the rest of the crew didn't like Yeerks - a fact he was planning to use against Tom. "We have to be careful here though. From what I hear, a few of us tried to take control of the ship before I woke up. Unfortunately, the humans found out and killed them. And there are two Andalites on board."

Iniss was not nearly as egotistical as his brother yeerks.

But hearing the title...now that was a thrill. "Sub-Visser 17." He mused aloud. "Well now." That changes things.

Some of the relaxed persona vanished, hands dropping lose to his sides. It was both a comfort and a further stress to know that the other was a controller. "And Jake?" There was no point in not driving the shard just a little deeper, ammunition with creativity just ended up with a boring host.

Marco raised an eyebrow. "Why do you care about Jake? He's just your host's brother." Except now Marco had to think up what supposedly had happened to Jake. He could just say he was a controller too, but...Marco really didn't want to do that. He still remembered that time when Jake had gotten infested, and it was not something he liked remembering.

"He disappeared when our attack went public. I don't know what happened to him. He's probably one of those humans still in hiding."

Tobias tensed, a little nervous about Marco's question about Jake. It could have easily been a problem, but Marco handled it well. At least, it seemed that way for the moment.

< Can you give me a clue if you're heading somewhere? These eyes are awful. > Tobias said to Marco. He wanted to be as aware of what was happening as he possibly could.

"Oh surely you know how attached these humans grow to their 'families'. It's an effective strategy to remind them who is in charge." He smirked, head tilting.



"Disappointing. I always wanted to infest that one myself. Ah well, you can't have everything." There was a casual shrug, dismissing the matter as irrelevant. "And who are you, then?"

Marco shrugged. "It's easy enough to remind them when we control everything."

Resisting the urge to strangle the Yeerk right then and there for even suggesting that he infest Jake, Marco decided to just avoid all mention of that. "Eslin 2256," he said instead, rattling off the name of a Yeerk he knew Ax had met, and a random number.

And he had been able to, he'd have glared at Tobias just then. Hello, he was busy? Trying not to let the Yeerk know about the fact that Marco was outright lying about all of this? He couldn't exactly communicate what he was doing to Tobias through elaborate hand signals.

"Easy enough, but far more pleasurable to rub it in." Casual cruelty had always been the way of things, yeerks broke hosts. It was unlikely that behind those eyes even a fragment of the host personality remained intact, or if it did...

Well, he wouldn't have to deal with the host, likely.

"And your rank and pool affiliation?" Always a good way to track down alliances, or at least half understand them. "How long ago"?

< Lucky you aren't blowing these details > Tobias called to him. He'd gotten nervous that Marco might say the wrong thing, and he still was. < Sulp Nar pool will work > he called. It was the only one he knew, although he couldn't help with the rank thing.

"Sulp Nar pool," Marco repeated. And while he wasn't necessarily confident about this whole thing, he wasn't as nervous. Besides, if all else fails and Tom realised something was wrong? Marco was fully prepared to morph gorilla and threaten to bash Tom's face in if the Yeerk didn't crawl out.

Never mind Stacy.

Rank though...that was a tougher one. And Tom would be unlikely to believe him if Marco claimed to be of higher rank. "Sub Visser 26", he said, picking a number below 17 at random. Let the Yeerk think he was in control.

If anything, Marco fulled expected Tom to assume he had given himself a higher rank, with no other "Yeerks" no contradict him.

"Really?" His eyebrow quirked, but he shrugged, casual and confident. If the Yeerk was lying, it didn't really matter.

In fact he was almost certain that the Yeerk was lying about his rank, but he didn't really care. The other wasn't trying to act more powerful. "So, Eslin 2256, what do you know of what is happening here?"

"Supposedly, according to the story we've been given - a species called the Ohm has been destroying universes. We were apparently 'rescued' from our universe being destroyed by Stacy. Everyone here is from a destroyed universe. If you believe the story, that is."

Marco found it darkly ironic that he was actually giving the Yeerk accurate information here. But then, if Tom were to go and ask someone else about this, he needed Tom to hear exactly what he'd heard from Marco. If Marco lied, Tom would know something was up when he heard differently.

"You'll find that a lot of the people here are recognisable from human fiction. The man in charge at the moment is, of all people, Captain Kirk. Yes, it's ridiculous, but the theory is that the events of one universe can end up in the fiction of another. But that's not important. The important thing is that they don't like Yeerks here, and there are Andalites on board. One of them is in Command. You might recognise him - I'd heard you were there when Visser One killed Elfangor."

If Elfangor wasn't enough to get Tom's Yeerk terrified, nothing would be.

"A destroyed universe, so they weren't just destroying planets, then." That made no sense, planets were full of resources, living and otherwise. Such wanton, mindless destruction seemed...both unwise and unproductive.

<Is that all you can think of?> The grief had only be lessened slightly by the thought that his brother might still be alive and free. Marco had stated that Jake was-

<Wait. Back up. Marco said Jake was sleeping with the others.>

Shuttered wariness for the host. <You talked about it.>



The host seemed to consider it for a moment, organizing his thoughts.

<A lie, but which part?> There was quiet hesitance in the thought, not wanting to help him.

His brow furrowed in though, gazing at the human shrewdly. He almost got the question out.

And then the name was spoken. His lip curled, a bare hint of an eternal hatred between the two species. "Elfangor is dead." But there a tiny hint of doubt. Marco was older. What was to say that this hellspawned ship couldn't reach back further in time?

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