#03: The Encounter

Title: The Encounter
Number: 03
Narrator: Tobias

Tobias has found a car dealership using a caged female red-tailed hawk in their commercials and that's not cool with him. He liberates the hawk during a television commercial shoot with some elephantine help from Rachel. As the hawk flies off, Tobias is struck with a sudden urge to go with her, but Rachel draws him back.

On the way back to report to the other Animorphs Tobias notices a ripple in the sky over the city, going against the wind. He dismisses it and, with Rachel, gets a responsibility speech from Marco, Jake, and Cassie about morphing in public again. We learn that Tobias is sleeping in Jake's attic and avoiding eating live animals, as the thought of surrendering that much to the hawk mind would be like betraying his humanity.

The next day everyone else is busy at school, so Tobias decides to spend the day flying. While he's up there he sees another ripple in the sky and watches a flight of geese smack into something large, solid, moving, and invisible. He deduces that it's a Yeerk ship with cloaking and tells the others about it. They talk over what to do and Tobias says it was heading towards the mountains. Eventually the "great power, great responsibility" speeches are made, and the animorphs get to morphing.

Everyone gets wolf morphs and runs off into the mountains, following the rough direction of the ship. Eventually they reach a lake and Tobias sees a group of park services vehicles filled with park rangers wielding automatic rifles. The vehicles are soon joined by some helicopters and Tobias watches them drag two campers away.

He sees some Hork-Bajir and lets everyone know the Yeerks are around. He runs into a second wolfpack but finds his friends and tells them what he's seen. As he does the ship, which was hidden above them, uncloaks and reveals itself as a massive, massive, city-sized vacuum ship. It's joined by two bug fighters keeping a lookout as it lowers a hose and sucks up a bunch of water to take to the Pool ship in orbit.

While they're talking about what to do about the ship, Tobias notices the lady hawk he and Rachel freed, and that triggers a bit of an identity crisis in him. It distracts him long enough that his friends end up in a face-off with another wolf pack, but he distracts the real alpha wolf and checks on their morphing time.

It's super late!

He tells them they're two minutes over the two hour limit when they're really seven over, so they hastily attempt to morph back to human. Cassie manages it easily and coaches the rest through, but not before some creepy half-wolf morphing scenes. Marco uses Tobias's state as motivation and makes it through his moprh in time. Tobias angsts about this a little bit and flies off.

Tobias returns to Jake's attic that night, where he realizes that his new body doesn't want comfort, doesn't want human-prepared foods like potatoes or green beans. He flies to Rachel's house and has a chat with her where he admits he feels like he's losing himself. Rachel tries to comfort him but only calms him down a little bit.

The next day Jake calls a meeting to discuss what to do about the truck ship. They decide that somehow shorting out its stealth capabilities while its over the city is the best option, as no one would be able to hide something extraterrestrial of that size. The idea is that they will morph fish, go up the tubes, and sabotage the ship from the inside. They decide to wait for the weekend for a variety of reasons, including homework, family stuff, and Rachel's upcoming gymnastics showcase at the mall.

While everyone else is at school Tobias is flying around when he lets himself surrender to the hawk mind for a minute. Unfortunately the experience is too strong and he kills and eats a rat. In his frustration and disgust he flies to the mall, intent on ending the entire thing. In a sign of serendipity he manages to fly through two sets of open doors and through the mall. As he flies over Rachel and Marco at her gymnastics thing. They recognize him because red-tailed hawks don't frequent malls.

Tobias fully intends to slam into a wall when he gets ahold of himself and stops. Rachel tells him to get our of the mall because, you know, he's a bird. The hawk takes control and flies up to the skylight, which Tobias faintly hopes will kill him. Luckily, Marco breaks the glass with a baseball and Tobias flies off for a few days on a hawk bender.

As far as benders go, Tobias's is pretty mellow; he hangs out in some trees, eats some vermin, and palls around with a girl hawk. He's snapped out of it when he sees a human getting chased by a hork-bajir and blinds the alien. The hork-bajir calls out and a bunch of other Controllers appear, and Tobias remembers his humanity.

He stops to talk to Rachel and says he can hold on as long as he can stop other people getting trapped in their bodies like he is. The animorphs go to the mountain lake ahead of time and acquire some fish morphs. The yeerks arrive and almost catch the kids but Tobias distracts the helicopter and they get in their cave in time. The truck ship decloaks, and so do the four bug fighters, two more than usual. Tobias wonders if it's because he helped the non-Controller escape when the blade ship decloaks and the yeerks start exterminating the local wildlife.

A bunch of hork-bajir and taxxons leave the blade ship, followed by Visser Three. The animorphs realize they'll never get to the water in time, so they decide that, one by one, they will morph into fish, Tobias will pick them up, take them to the lake, and drop them in. Sure, why not?

The plan goes well until a hork-bajir and a human controller find their cave and let Tobias get away. The Controllers freak out because Visser Three doesn't believe in mercy, but the fish-morphs all get into the lake and up the pipe. Tobias keeps a watch and sees the hork-bajir Controller get...terminated by Visser Three. It seems the yeerk let Visser know about the suspicious bird from the past few days, so he orders the bug fighters to patrol on kill alert. Tobias almost gets hit, but parks himself just above the truck ship's bridge, making it impossible for the yeerks to fire on him without potentially hitting their own ship.

Visser Three shows up and gloats for a bit, so Tobias stalls. Rachel gets in thought-contact with him and tells him there's no way out for them because the grate won't open. She says they're trapped and that they're planning on not being taken alive so they'll wait to get in orbit, then battle-morph and go down fighting. Then she says goodbye and goes dark.

Up above the Visser has released a bunch of taxxons on Tobias. Tobias charges a taxxon, steals his hand-held Dracon beam, and uses it to blow the hell out of the truck ship's bridge. The thing immediately dips and slides to one side. It crashes into a helicopter, then a bug fighter. The impacts open a gash into the water tank and Tobias watches his friends fall out. As they do they morph into birds and fly off. As they do the female hawk flies into the air and gets one of her wings burned off by a Dracon beam. Tobias watches her fall as they fly away.

We learn the truck ship burned and was disintegrated by the yeerks. Tobias visits Rachel and the two talk about what happened to the hawk and whether they should give her a burial. Tobias says to not, it wouldn't have mattered to her either way. After seeing how the yeerks would treat him and all the other birds like him (but who don't have the capability to understand it), Tobias has his reason to fight.

Some Thoughts:

 - One problem with the early books (that carries a little bit into the middle ones) is that the introductions and exposition tend to be fairly heavy in the first 20% of each book. You'll get the standard "My name is X, but I can't tell you any more" and than each character's recollection of the construction site encounter and following adventures. They tend to mellow out in the later books, but sometimes you feel like skimming the first few pages of each of the early ones.

- Some heavy stuff in this one: the kids are almost stuck as half-wolves, we see the Yeerks harvesting both humans and resources, and Tobias tries to commit suicide. See below.

- Based on Goodreads ratings, the Tobias novels have the highest averages out of the main 54 novels. I remember liking them a fair amount, but I also remember Marco being my favorite narrator, but that's because I think Marco's storyline is far more interesting than Tobias's but reading about Tobias dealing with his hawk instincts makes for great "measure of a human" drama.

- Morph timer: The kids are almost trapped as half-wolf, half-human monsters because their morph timer runs over. We're told that two hours is the time limit, but I don't know that we ever learn if it's an immediate loss of the ability or it just gets exponentially more difficult as time progresses past two hours. The animorphs manage a seven-minute late morph in this book, but Tobias says the clock might have been wrong. There are similar instances of last-minute morphing in these, but I think this is the longest time they've gone over.

- This is the third time the animorphs have been in a bad situation and have had some farewell scene to another animorph. At this point they haven't been in any real serious fights (I mean none of them have lost limbs yet) so they aren't fully aware of their potential. We'll see how often they give up in the later books.

Character Sheets:

- Tobias: Came from a broken home, now stuck as a red-tailed hawk. He's slowly adjusting, but it's a reluctant change as he fears losing his humanity. Regularly serves as the eyes and the ears of the group. Struggles with his identity, but ultimately embraces his hawkishness as a way of life in cooperation with his human mind. Exact number of deaths caused is unclear, but (based on standard Yeerk vehicle deployment) he is directly responsible for at least fifteen taxxons (dozen on top of ship, at least two on bridge, one in a bug fighter), two hork-bajir (one in helicopter, one in bug fighter), and one human (in the helicopter).

- Cassie: Still an animal lover. This won't ever change, but it's worth mentioning because Applegate sure wants us to know. She's the moral compass for the group and often serves as the voice of reason, especially when Jake gets too personally involved. Her and Jake have crushes on each other early on, but neither her nor he will admit their feelings yet. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Marco: Still the most reluctant Animorph, but it's worth noting that he is offered an out by Rachel and doesn't take it. Seems to take everything just a little more seriously than the other animorphs, as he's worried what would happen to his father if he vanished like his mom did. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Jake: The leader, by involuntary appointment. Usually ends up at the front of the pack, in this case literally. He's still showing a bit of reluctance, but his brother's Controller status motivates him to at least attempt to keep the Yeerks from winning. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Rachel: The tough one. Cares a lot about Tobias, and serves as his rock when he needs someone to remind him about his humanity. Seems to harbor deeper feelings for him, but never quite admits it. Acquires wolf and trout morphs.

- Visser Three: Yeerk mastermind, cat lover, imperialism enthusiast. Doesn't tolerate failure, half-successes, and sometimes doesn't seem to like success too often. Has finally instituted a shoot-first, ask-later policy against earth wildlife. Hobbies include punishing subordinates, hurting things, and gloating before he has any reason to. Kills one hork-bajir.