Chapter Text
My name is Cassie.
And for the first time in a long time, I was in a pretty good mood.
After all, we'd won on the logging thing. We'd actually won. We'd stopped the yeerks from tearing up the National Forest, and we'd saved the Commissioner from life as a Controller doing it.
Of course, the reason the forest and the Commissioner had even been in danger was because the yeerks were looking for us. But still. A victory was a victory. It would've been nice to take a bit of a break and bask in it for a while, without anything new and strange cropping up to threaten our lives.
But that would never happen.
“Okay, okay,” I said, putting one hand up in a nonverbal request for Marco to slow down, and trying not to be distracted by what even I could recognise as his horrible new haircut. This gesture required some tricky rebalancing of the duck whose wing I was bandaging, but I managed it. “What happened? From the beginning.”
Marco absent-mindedly plucked a piece of twine out of Ax's hand before he tried to eat it, glanced up at Tobias for confirmation that the Animorphs were still alone in the barn, and started again. “Right, so we were on this mission...”
“Mission?” Rachel asked, raising an eyebrow.
“A private mission. Didn't want to disturb you guys with it.”
“We were at a concert,” Jake confessed. “As dogs.”
I raised an eyebrow at Jake. So turning into rats for a project was a problem, but sneaking into a concert as dogs was okay?
“I went and Jake had to be responsible and keep an eye on me,” Marco corrected, glancing at me. I wondered how long it had taken them to come up with that excuse. “Anyway, right in the middle of The Offspring set, and let me tell you, you have not heard The Offspring until you've heard them with dog ears, we run into Erek King, who's handing out flyers for The Sharing.”
“Who's Erek King?” Rachel asked with a frown, at the exact moment that I asked, “Wait, this was a Sharing concert?!”
“Erek's a kid who used to go to our school,” Marco continued patiently, “until he transferred to Truman about a year back. And it wasn't a Sharing concert, he was just advertising for them. So he goes up to pet us, and then we notice it.”
“Notice what?”
“He doesn't have a smell.”
I frowned. “What do you mean, he doesn't have a smell?”
"I mean that he didn't smell. He had picked up some odors off other people, off the ground, off dogs, whatever, but he had no smell himself. None. Like a black hole of smell. Like nothing there, nobody home."
"Maybe you just didn't notice it," Rachel suggested.
"Rachel, you've been in wolf morph," Jake said. "You know how good your sense of smell is? Well, the dog's sense of smell is almost that good."
"So, what does it mean if a kid doesn't smell like a human?"
"There are plenty of times when you don't smell human," Rachel said with a smirk. "But then, maybe that's because you have a small monkey living on top of your head."
I tried not to laugh. I really did.
"Next time you decide to get a haircut, talk to me first," Rachel said.
“Did you get the haircut before or after the dog thing?”
“Is that really what's important here?” Marco asked impatiently. “We find somebody who doesn't smell, and you want to hear about my hair?”
“Yes. Before or after?”
“Before.”
“So your human form 'remembers' your new haircut. But heals injuries.”
“Didn't we already go through this with my earrings?” Rachel asked.
“Your ears were pierced before we got this power,” I pointed out, “like all my scars. A 'scan' of a default natural form makes sense. But a haircut... it's fortunate, but confusing. I guess that means we age too.”
“Wait,” Marco said, “there was a chance we didn't age?”
“I considered it a possibility, if we reset to however we were when we acquired the power,” I shrugged, “but then andalites would be functionally ageless, so unless Elfangor and Alloran acquired the ability to morph at a much later age than Ax did...” I glanced at our resident andalite, who had somehow managed to tie the fingers on his left hand to a haybale by playing with twine. He didn't offer any new information. Not that I expected him to.
"He doesn't smell, and he's handing out flyers for The Sharing," Jake said, bringing us back on track.
"He must be connected to the yeerks," Rachel said with a shrug.
"But how?" I asked as I pushed the duck back into its cage. "I mean, yeerks infest various species – humans, hork-bajir, taxxons. But that doesn't change the fact that a human with a yeerk in his head should still smell like a human."
"Chapman is a Controller. He still smells human," Marco pointed out. "And by the way, I can't believe I'm even talking about how the vice principal smells."
Jake shrugged. "I guess we need to find out what's going on with Erek."
"But how do we find him?" Marco asked.
"Infiltrate a meeting of The Sharing?"
<I could do surveillance of his school.> Tobias said.
"Or maybe we could go back to where the concert was and look for clues," Rachel said. Then she winced. "Wow, that sounded so Nancy Drew."
"Maybe Ax can try and tap into the Internet and get past all the security buffers and locate him," Marco suggested.
I held up my hand like I was asking a question at school. "Those are all fine plans, but how about if we just look him up in the phone book?"
Everyone just stared at me for about five seconds.
"Or we could just look him up in the phone book," Jake said sheepishly.
I headed for the house to get a phone book.
“Hey, sweetie,” Dad said as I went through the kitchen. “Everything going well?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We just need to look someone up.” I found the phone book and headed back out. Dad didn't challenge me. Either he was still making an effort not to interfere on my life, or an environmental awareness group needing to look people up was totally normal and didn't require questioning. Maybe both.
I had the book open to the K's by the time I got back to the barn. "There are twenty-seven 'Kings’ listed. But you said he transferred to Truman, so there are maybe six 'Kings' that are in that part of town."
"We work our way down the list," Marco said. "Although he still could have an unlisted phone."
"I can't hang out tonight," Jake said. "I have got to write that English paper."
"Here's a clue on the English paper. Don't say 'I have got to,'" Marco teased.
"I could go tomorrow, maybe," Rachel said. "But not tonight. My dad is in town just for tonight. He's taking me and my sisters to Planet Hollywood."
I looked at Marco. "I'm free," I said.
<I'm good till it gets dark,> Tobias volunteered.
"Fine. Me and Cassie and Tobias till it gets dark," Marco said. "Shouldn't be too hard. Our mission: to find the boy who doesn't smell."
"Maybe he just showers a lot," Rachel said. "Did you think about that?"