Joined Forces Part 1:The Switch

By: Andalite Girl

Chapter 1 Cassie #2

“ Cass, I’m going to need help with a patient,” My dad called from the barn. I put down the laundry that I was hanging and ran down to the Wildlife Rehabilitation center, which is also the barn. My job is to help Dad with
the injured and sick animals by writing charts and feeding the patents.
 I grabbed a new chart and headed for the examination table. Dad was hunched over it looking at some kind of a bird. “
 "What is it?” I asked.
 “ Male red-tail hawk,” Dad said as I wrote the info on the chart. “ He has first and second degree burns on its left wing. And a nasty slash across his chest.”
 I ventured a peak at the hawk, it was asleep or in shock. About half the wing feathers were burned off and the gash was dripping blood. “ What could have done this?” I asked amazed.
 Dad shook his head. “ Probably some punk kids, but what I would like to know is how they caught it.” Then he went back to work. I helped him clean the wounds, put some antibiotics on, and bandage up the hawk.
 “ Will he live?” I asked.
 “ I think so but it will be touch and go for awhile.” He put the sleeping red-tail in my arms. “ Here go put him in a cage and give him some mouse meat for when he wakes up. I gotta go and report this to the police, it’s
animal abuse.” He walked out of the barn to use the house phone.
 “ We will have you fixed up in no time,” I said to the hawk. I know he couldn’t hear or understand me, but I liked to think that my words helped a little. I searched for a empty cage in the bird room still holding the hawk
when it started to move and it opened it’s fierce yellow eyes.
 < Cassie? What happened? >
 “ Who said that?!” I demanded.
 
 “ Where?” I swung around looking for the source of the voiceless voice. I swear the voice chuckled. < In your arms of course! What, you don’t recognize me with burned feathers? >
 I almost dropped the hawk. “ You are not talking to me,” I said trembling. You can’t be!”
 < Quit fooling around! > The hawk said. < What happened to the others? >
 Suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore. I shoved the stupid bird into the nearest empty cage and shut the door.
 < Hey, Hey! Stop! Are you out of your mind? I’m Tobias! > He screamed in my head, < Where do you think you ‘re going? >
 “Out!” There was no way this hawk was talking to me! It has to be a dream! I ran out of the barn as fast as I could.

Chapter 2 Cassie #1

I woke up surprised to be alive. “Whoa it’s a wolf,” Someone said beside me. My nose told me it was Jake.
 < Jake? > I asked weakly.
 “ Did you guys hear that?” Marco asked.
 I tried to move my back legs but I couldn’t feel them. I must have broken my back, but that was no problem. I could just demorph and the wolf DNA would be fixed and ready for the next time I called it up. < Demorphing. >
 “ De-whating?” Rachel asked
 I must have heard her wrong. I focused on my human body. My face flattened and fur sucked into my body. My vision cleared and I saw the battle scene around me. Dead Hork-Bajir littered the floor. Jake, Marco, Rachel, and Tobias in his human morph were around me. But something was wrong.
 “Ohmigod! It’s a werewolf!” Rachel yelled. The others looked as white as sheets, Marco opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out. “ What’s wrong with you?” I demanded once I was fully demorphed.
 “ C-c-Cassie?” Jake stuttered. “ Is that really you?”
 “ Of course Jake,” I said just a little confused.
 “ Where are we and how can you do that?”
 I laughed thinking that he was making a really bad joke, but he wasn’t. " You’re kidding me right?” I asked looking at the others. “ Are you ok?”
 “ OK” Marco yelled. “ Are we ok?! Lets see, five minutes ago I was listening to my Walkman minding my own business, then the whole world dims out for a few seconds. And then I’m in the middle of a battle zone with dead
lizards with big ass blades lying all over the place and suddenly a wolf turns into someone I know from school and your wondering if we are OK?”
 “ Marco-“
 “ You didn’t answer my questions Cassie,” Jake said impatiently.
 “ Look,” I said as calmly as I could, “ I don’t know what happened to your memories but I’ll tell you anyway and maybe you will remember something. We are in a Yeerk complex in the middle of the forest. We came here to stop a weapon that was being built here. We got in a battle with the Hork-Bajir and I was knocked out sometime in it.”
 Tobias looked at me, “ And you can turn into a wolf because….”
 “ You can do it too,” I said looking at each of the others, “ All of you. Just hold a picture of an animal in out minds and you turn into that animal.”
 Marco snorted. “ Yeah right! How are we able to do this?”
 “I don’t know how it works, Ax would be able to explain-“ I stopped. Ax! He went into a different room to disable the weapon, maybe he would know what happened to Jake and the others. I headed to a door. “ Follow me.”
 “ Why should we?” Asked Rachel.
 “ If you want more proof about what I’m saying then you should follow me.” I said.
 The others looked at each other and kind of gave a silent shrug, but they walked behind me. The door lead to a room with even more doors, one of which looked like a machete hacked at it. Ax’s work. “ In here,” I opened the remains of the door and flicked on a switch. Ax was standing right in the middle of the room, his tail arched and all four eyes wide in terror.
 < Who are you!?>

Chapter 3 Cassie #2

I ran up to the house, not even pausing to look back. “ Did you find a cage for the hawk?” My dad asked as I walked past him.
 I paused, wondering if I should tell him that the hawk spoke. No, he wouldn ’t believe it. I didn’t even believe it. “ Yep,”
 “ Oh Rachel called for you while you were out.” Mom chimed in from the living room.
 “Ok,” I went up to my room and dialed Rachel.
 “ Hello?”
 “ Rachel is that you?”
 “Sure is, did something strange happen to you?” She asked in a careful voice.
 I wasn’t going to mention the hawk, but what the hell, Rachel is my best friend. “You could say that. A hawk talked to me while I was putting it in a cage, said his name was Tobias.” I expected to hear Rachel laugh but she was silent. “ Rachel?”
 “ What are you doing?” She hissed. Then she completely changed the subject. “ I bought a new CD and I was wondering if I could come over and you could listen to it.”
 “What are you talking about?”
 Rachel sounded exasperated. “ Can I just come over?”
 “ Yeah sure.”
 “ I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Then she hung up.
 I muttered, “ Ten minutes? It takes her a half-hour by bike.” Oh well. I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes. Then I heard a flapping sound and a < ohff >. I sat up and looked around.
 My dirty laundry was twitching like it was alive. I plucked a T-shirt from the pile and uncovered the red-tail hawk, but it was completely healed. “ Oh god! Just leave me alone!” I cried. The hawk, however, was not disturbed. He calmly removed a plant leg that was lying across his talons with his beak and hopped out of the laundry pile. < You should really clean your room. > He commented.
 “ Ok, Ok, Ok, I know that you’re not talking to me.” I said pacing around the room. “ It was just to much stress, yeah that’s it. The stress of school work got to me finally….” The annoying hawk cocked his head and looked up at me. < You’re starting to worry me Cassie. >
 “ I’m starting to worry myself Hawk.”
 < My name is Tobias. Come on you know that! Snap out of this Cassie we have an issue on our hands. >
I almost laughed. “ You don’t even have hands!” I lay on my bed and put a pillow over my head. “ Just leave me alone.”
 The hawk-er-Tobias was silent for a few moments but then he made some strange grinding sounds. I didn’t even look up, maybe if I ignored him then he would go away. Suddenly I felt somone touch my shoulder. I jerked up and looked into the face of…a boy!
 “ I can have hands when I want too.” He said, his face was completely blank and showed no emotion.
“ Something is really wrong with your memory Cass, but don’t worry we will figure out how to help you.”
 I tried to say something but my tongue was like a pound of lead. That’s it, you have officially lost it Cassie. I thought to myself.
 I saw a flash of white and grey. A bald eagle had flown into my window followed by an osprey, a flacon and a northern harrier. Finally I was able to say something. “Friends of yours? More talking-shape shifting birds?”
 < What is she talking about? > One asked. The voice was so familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
 Tobias shrugged. “ Something is wrong. She doesn’t remember me or anything else for that matter.”
 < She was knocked out for a period of time. Perhaps that is the cause. > Another said.
 “ That’s it!!!” I yelled. “ I have had enough of this! I don’t know you and you don’t know me and you can all get your feathered asses out of my room the way your came!”
 < Do you eat with that mouth? > One joked.
 < Let’s demorph, maybe that will jar her memory. > Then the birds began to mutate. The bald eagle sprouted long blond hair, while the falcon’s legs began to grow. The osprey was becoming larger by the second and the Harrier… Well it was turning blue. I started to scream. “ AHHHHHHHH!”

Chapter 4 Cassie #1

“Oh no not you too!” I cried at the Andalite.
 “ What is that?” Jake demanded.
 < My name is Aximilli-exgoratth-isthill, > Ax said.
 “ Jeez, can we just call you Ax?” Marco asked.
 Meanwhile I was busy freaking out. I was the only person that remembered anything. What was wrong with the others? What had happened to them?
 “I’m Tobias,” Tobias said. He was grinning, “This is Jake, Rachel, Marco and Cassie.”
 Jake turned and looked at me suspiciously. “ You knew that an alien was here didn’t you?”
 “ Yes,” I said grasping to a hope. “ I know him and he knows us. Don’t you remember?”
 My hope was shattered in the next instant. < Excuse me, > Ax said. 
 I felt like crying. They thought I was nuts and there was no way to prove to them that I wasn’t. Unless…. “ I do know you Ax because how else could I know about Elfangor or Visser 3 or the law of Seerows kindness?” I saw the look of shock on his face. “ I also know about you. You’re a young andalite Cadet that has always admired Elfangor.”
 Ax’s deadly tail was at my neck in an instant. < You must be a controller! >
 “ Fine, then lock me up for three days and I’ll prove to you that I’m not. Or maybe I should just morph. A power I got from your brother!” I concentrated on my wolf morph again. My mouth was just spouting out to form
a muzzle when Ax lowered his tail.
 < You must be telling the truth, > He admitted, < How else would you be able to morph. I believe you…human named Cassie. >
 I reversed the morph and smiled. At least now I had one person on my side. Marco held up his hand like he was in school. “ Am I the only one who is confused?”
 “I guess I will have to tell you the whole thing.” I said. “ Sit down and don’t interrupt.” So I told them about everything starting with Elfangor’s landing. (Ax protested that it didn’t happen. But I ignored him) Then I told
them about the Yeerks, how we fought them using our morphs, and how we came to be in this recent battle. After I stopped talking they all kind of looked at me like they we not sure if I was done or not. Finally Marco smiled. “ Man Cassie, if I just didn’t see you turn into a wolf then I would think you were nuts.”
 “ So what are we supposed to do now?” Tobias asked.
 “ You should really demorph” I told him, “ You wouldn’t want to become a nothlit again. Just form a picture of a hawk in your mind.”
 “Ok,” He closed his eyes and screwed up his face in concentration. “ Am I changing yet?”
 “ No you’re not,” Rachel said. “ Could he have already passed the time limit? What was it, 2 hours or something?”
 Jake stood up. “ What did I morph?”
 “Try a tiger.”
 Jake looked at his hand and seemed to concentrate. Again nothing happened.
 “ I don’t get it” Rachel fumed. “ You say that we can do this but we can’t. Are we doing it wrong?”
 I opened my mouth to say something but Ax cut in. < Maybe…> He trotted over to one of the control panels that ringed the room and played with the buttons and dials for a few seconds. < Prince Cassie! Come look at this. >
 “ Don’t call me Prince Cassie, I’m not the leader.” I said as I walked up. “ What is it?”
 Ax pointed to a small screen. < This is for monitoring life forms inside the building. Right now it only shows six life forms present, >
 “ That’s us,” Marco said.
 < Yes, twenty minutes ago there were still six life forms, but then for about ¼ of a second there were 11 life forms. Then it showed the normal 6 again. >
 “ So you’re saying,” Tobias said slowly. “ You’re saying that there were two of all of us expect for one person?”
 < Correct. I believe that we are in fact in an alternate universe, or at least Jake, Tobias Marco, Rachel and I are. That is why Prince Cassie remembers these things. They happened in her universe, not ours. >
 “ Tell us about that weapon you wanted to stop,” Jake said to me.
 I really didn’t see a point in telling him. After all he wasn’t my Jake, just some other guy but I decided to tell him anyway. “ It was supposed to make things disappear but actually destroying the matter of the object.”
 “ That’s impossible.” Marco argued. “ You can’t destroy matter.” Then he paused. “ But you can move it!”
 “ That weapon could have somehow messed up and caused this whole thing!”Tobias said, catching on.
 “ Ax, can you reverse the process?” I asked hopefully.
 Ax looked at the controls and played with the buttons a little more. 
 Marco grinned. “ Well it’s been nice seeing you Cassie.”
 Ax pushed the button. There wasn’t any popping sounds or a large flash or anything… just this strange, unnerving feeling. Like the whole world was shutting its eyes to sneeze. Then, suddenly I was looking at myself.

Chapter 5 Cassie #2

“ AHHHHH!” I screamed. The birds were literally mutating in front of my own eyes. “ AHHHHHHH!”
 Tobias grabbed me from behind and covered my mouth. “ Shut up,” He whispered.
 “ Cassie?” My dad called. “ Are you ok?” I tried to scream out but kept me silent. Then I noticed that the bald eagle was looking very familiar, in fact it looked a lot like Rachel with feathers stuck on her.
 “ Cassie?” My dad called again. I could here him walking up the stairs.
 Rachel-now completely human said in a whisper. “ Say that everything is all right.”
 I nodded dumbly and Tobias released his grip. “ I’m all right Dad!” I hollered. “ Just had a bad dream.”
 “ Oh,” I heard him walk down the stairs again. I turned to the others. It was Rachel, Marco, Jake and this thing! It had a horse-like body with four eyes and no mouth. Then I saw the blade tipped tail that curved like a scorpion and hung over its shoulders. “ Oh my god,” I said. “ You have like one minute to explain all of this.”
 They all kind of looked at Jake who said. “ You don’t remember any of this? The morphing or even Ax?” There was a pleading note to his voice.
 “No,”
 “ I guess we should remind her,” Rachel said to the others before turning to me. “ What we are about to tell you may sound a little crazy-“
 “ Yeah I don’t even believe it half the time.” Marco said.
 They went on to tell me that there was an alien invasion going on and they were the one’s trying to fight it. They got the power to morph from the brother of the alien standing in my room. There was a terrible battle in
which I was knocked out and Tobias was badly injured and in shock. They were trying to revive us when… something happened. And they were suddenly home or at a basketball practice or in the forest. “Oh, I thought that you guys would come up with a better story then that.” I said.
 Ax, the alien, sounded vaguely annoyed. < Then how do you explain the recent events? >
 “ Simple. You are freaks of cloning or whatever and you are crazy.”
 Marco threw his hands up. “ I give up! Even David believed us at this point.”
 Ax said. < Since this started at the building complex then we should go back and try to find out what happened. >
 “ No way, the Yeerks would be crawling all over the place.” Tobias argued.
 <Then we would have to be very cautious, >
 “ If we showed you this building then would you believe us?” Jake asked me.
 “ Yes,” I said slowly, “ Show me and I will believe.”
****************
 “ This is taking to long.” Rachel complained. “ We should have flew.”I thought of the way that Rachel’s bones had crunched and the way the feathers sucked into her skin when she demorphed. I shuttered. “ Don’t tell
me that you like to morph.”
 “ Oh it doesn’t hurt.” Jake said. He paused to step over a log then continued. “ I just don’t like the bug morphs.”
 “ Yeah, the ant was the worst.” Marco agreed.
 Tobias, in his own form, came swooping down from the trees. < We should be there soon. Quiet down or they will hear you. >
 We walked a little more then Jake signaled us to stay still. He whispered insuch a low tone that I had to move closer to hear him. “ It should be just ahead.”
 < I’ll go up and look around. >Tobias said as he flapped his wings and flew over the treetops. He came back about a minute later. < It’s gone! >
 “ What do you mean?” Rachel demanded harshly.
 
 We got up and walked about 15 feet though the line of trees. Stretched before us lay a wide field. The others looked around completely confused. I felt sorry for them. They looked so lost.
 Suddenly Ax arched his tail. < Something is happening! >
 Then right before me. No, all around me the field, the sky, the trees, even the others seemed to dim out like the world was going to sneeze. Then I was looking at myself.

To be continued

And now a small part of… Joined Forces Part 2:
The Power
 “ So what is it like?” He asked me.
 “ Is what like?”
 He smiled a smile that was so much like my own. “ You know, to turn into a different animal. To have all that power.”
 I heard crashing in the bushes and Ax, or should I say an Ax jumped out. < Jakes! Prince Cassie says that Marco2 has escaped and he has taken Marco1 with him! >

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