| #12: The Reaction |
Detailed Plot: Rachel and Cassie are in a group field trip at The Gardens, where Cassie's mom works. Cassie's stressing about how much of a dork her mom is when she tries to relate to teenagers, so she's not looking forward to her mother's presentation. But then the presentation becomes the least of her worries, because a kindergartner falls into the crocodile pit and Rachel feels compelled to save him. She jumps into the pit, acquires a crocodile to calm it, ends up having to fight the crocodile she just acquired, and swims the boy to safety (after having to thought-speak to him to get him to get on her back). She also notices that when she acquires the croc's DNA, she feels sick, like she just ingested something that disagreed with her. Back at an Animorphs meeting, Jake is angry with Rachel because saving the child required risk of exposure. He admits he would have done the same thing himself, but Rachel is reminded that if the Yeerks got her on tape or something, the Animorphs would be in big trouble. Apparently the news is spinning the story as if Rachel accidentally fell into the pit, and the child is a big hero for being brave while "riding" a crocodile. Rachel's kind of annoyed that they think she wasn't heroic and was just dumb, but Jake says it's better that way. Then they discuss how Jake's brother Tom has revealed that a very popular celebrity, Jeremy Jason McCole, is being recruited for The Sharing. Since so many girls have a crush on him, making him a spokesperson for their group would be disastrous to the people of Earth in letting the Yeerks get a foothold with McCole's followers. The male Animorphs don't think this is very serious until Rachel and Cassie explain that McCole's advertising The Sharing would be like if the Baywatch girls endorsed something. It becomes a big issue very quickly. Rachel starts looking for information on the celebrity by looking at websites. During the search she finds out he's coming through their town and stopping at a local show, so they have a chance to get close to him and find out if he's already a Controller. She gets excited--both at the prospect of helping the mission and at getting to meet Jeremy Jason--and calls Cassie, but immediately after she hangs up the phone, suddenly she realizes she's having trouble breathing and her skin is changing into crocodile skin without her intending to morph. What? Rachel turns into a crocodile without meaning to, but then she morphs from crocodile directly into an ant morph, which was thought to be impossible. From there she morphs into a fly and then an elephant, all without trying to. As an elephant she is too heavy for her upstairs bedroom, and she falls through the floor into the kitchen. No one was in there, but she wrecked that part of the house. Her sisters are on the phone to 9-1-1 while she does her best to morph back to human as soon as she can, and finds that she's able to get back to her natural shape before anyone sees her. Soon ambulances and reporters are all around and she's discovered to be the girl who fell into the crocodile pit AND lived through her house "falling in" on her. Rachel decides to try to arrange things so that her media attention will earn her a spot on the same show that Jeremy Jason McCole is going to be on, and manages to swing the opportunity because her reporter dad agrees to help her (though he thinks she's doing it because agreeing to do ONE show will keep all the other reporters off her back). Rachel stays at her dad's hotel suite in her own room and invites Cassie over (who flies in in owl morph). While enjoying food from room service, Rachel discusses the issue of the uncontrolled morphing with Cassie, but she downplays the seriousness. Cassie thinks Rachel should stay home and not expose herself until they figure out what's wrong with her, but she's adamant that she gets back to her normal life. They agree that they need to talk to Ax about the issue. They also discuss how Jeremy Jason McCole is supposedly staying on a yacht that's out on the bay at the moment, and the group intends to go investigate. But in the meantime Rachel goes back to school and gets silly comments from fellow students about almost dying twice in one day. Then she gets called into Chapman's office. Rachel is afraid of Chapman because he is a Controller, but he is also an administrator, and he acts like one. He discusses Rachel's personal problems with her, but then it becomes clear that he fears she's suicidal because she had those accidents, and during her nervousness her feet suddenly start morphing into grizzly bear feet. Chapman doesn't notice (and when she's leaving his office he thinks they're fashionable new boots), but Rachel doesn't end up accidentally morphing any more than that and returns to normal. She meets up with Tobias after school and turns into a seagull to follow him out to the yacht mission. The seagull group goes out to see Jeremy Jason McCole's yacht, and Tobias has to desert because he can't fly over the ocean long enough (as hawks aren't built for it while seagulls are). Ax has the same problem as Tobias, but he remains a little longer in his harrier morph and helps guide the seagulls to the right boat (as his harrier eyes are better than seagull eyes). Then Ax leaves too so he can morph something in the ocean and stay close by, while Cassie and Rachel decide to be the ones to get close to Jeremy Jason. They're excited because they've had a crush on him for years, but then they land and things change a bit. Cassie and Rachel are kind of disgusted by Jeremy Jason's attitude toward the girls who are in love with him--some of which he reveals in a conversation with the other people on the boat--but they recognize that one of the men accompanying him is Visser Three in human morph, and they're trying to recruit him as a voluntary host for The Sharing in exchange for offering him a movie career, which he wants (so he can move beyond being a goody-goody on TV). Cassie and Rachel try to rejoin the others, but Rachel realizes she's growing an elephant trunk in the middle of trying to fly as a seagull, so she falls into the water and becomes an elephant underwater. The others of course find out what's been happening, as Rachel uncontrollably turns into an ant after almost drowning. She gets a temporary reprieve because the ant gets sucked into an air bubble, but then she becomes a crocodile. Ax is in the water with her as a shark, and Cassie and Jake drop into the water to turn from seagull to human and human to dolphin. Only Marco is left above, and he tells them Visser Three is morphing into something that looks like it can swim and shoot spears out of its mouth. The Visser jumps in and starts shooting his spears at Animorphs, using water jets inside a pocket of his morphed body to propel the spears, and Rachel is the first one hit, impaled through the tail. He tries to hit Cassie next, then Ax. Meanwhile, Rachel is pretending to be dead and telling the others to run. When the Visser comes too close to her, thinking she's out of the fight, she attacks and bites a big hole in him, causing him to splurt up out of the ocean propelled by the water that had been inside his body. Marco comes into the water in dolphin morph and offers to help Rachel get out of there. Later, Ax reveals the problem: Rachel has an allergy to the crocodile. The process of getting rid of the crocodile DNA is called hereth illint on the Andalite world; it means expelling an animal from oneself, literally. So Rachel will actually have to wait until she goes through an involuntary process by which a crocodile will actually come out of her body before she is free of the crazy morphing and the "allergy." In the meantime, Rachel is supposed to try to avoid becoming emotional because that's what triggers the involuntary morphing. But when Marco starts kidding her because of her becoming emotional over her crush on Jeremy Jason McCole, she gets angry and that triggers her morphing again. She has to calm down for a while before she ends up becoming an eagle. Jake insists that Rachel needs to keep a low profile until she has "burped" her crocodile out, and he gets angry with her that she still wants to go on that TV show to try to stop Jeremy Jason from endorsing The Sharing and becoming a Controller. He tells her it's her fault the first mission was blown and that she needs to tell the group if she isn't in shape to fight. Because of her, Jeremy Jason McCole might be a lost cause. Because Rachel feels the TV show is very important, she lies to the group about having already "burped" the crocodile. She tells them details that make them fall for it, but knows that if she'd tried to tell Ax about it, he would have wondered what she'd done with the extra crocodile. So she heads for her TV appearance and resolves to stay unemotional so she doesn't morph on live TV. But when she gets there with Cassie helping her, the hairstylist who tries to style her hair pisses her off and she starts growing wolf fur. Cassie is upset and shocked, telling her she can't go on the show if she lied about her condition. And then Jeremy Jason McCole comes in and Rachel realizes there's no way she won't go dopey over him and possibly morph out of control. Even Cassie goes melty when he comes in, despite them both knowing that he's a jerk and probably a Controller. In comes Marco--in llama morph! He's acquired a llama from one of the other acts--an animal trainer who makes a habit of taking wild animals on talk shows--and finds out from Cassie that Rachel isn't cured. Cassie acquires Rachel's DNA in case they need a copy of her. After Marco briefs them on where the others are (in fly morphs), Marco lets himself be led away by animal trainers who think he's one of the group. Someone runs up and gives Rachel instructions on what to do when she's on stage, and then they see Jeremy Jason McCole throwing a fit because he can't sit in the green room (it was trashed by a previous guest and they haven't cleaned it up yet). Rachel feels sick watching him be a jerk, but then realizes she feels REALLY sick and that the hereth illint is happening. The crocodile mind disorients Rachel even though she is still human, and she tries to bite various people backstage--first Jeremy Jason, then Cassie, then Marco as he comes offstage as a llama. She feels that the crocodile itself is trying to come out of her back. Cassie and Rachel run to the bathroom before anything too noticeable happens--the stage assistant protests that she can't leave, but Cassie insists that Rachel has to puke--and in they go. The crocodile starts coming out fully, and Rachel warns Cassie that the crocodile will kill her. Rachel herself has morphed a grizzly bear as a result of her emotional reactions, and once the croc is fully formed and separated from her, the two face off while Cassie cowers as a squirrel in a toilet stall. Squirrel-Cassie ends up having to help Rachel after the crocodile tries to bite her, and she scrapes the croc's eyes. The three creatures end up tumbling out the door surprising the heck out of some woman trying to get into the bathroom. Nothing seems to be able to stop the crocodile, and the fighting animals end up on the actual live show stage. One of the hosts keeps insisting that the animal trainer come "remove his animals," but he says they're not his animals. Eventually Ax enters the scene and Cassie announces that she has found light switches and can turn off the lights. Llama-Marco knocks Jeremy Jason out of his seat by accident and he lands right in front of the crocodile, which scares the Yeerk in his head enough to jump out of his ear while he's getting attacked. The lights go out and Ax stops the crocodile with his tail, and Rachel steps on the Yeerk in grizzly bear morph. They then run to demorph (or morph, in Ax's case) in the bathroom. But when they come out, Rachel hears her own voice talking to a producer, and realizes it's Cassie pretending to be her. The producer had apparently had a suspicion about Rachel being the crocodile, but since the crocodile was destroyed and she was still there, he stopped being suspicious. Just to test her, he yells "Andalite!" at her, but Cassie-as-Rachel just replies that yes, and a light would be helpful. (The lights are still off from Cassie's intervention.) Later, in Rachel's hotel room, the Animorphs watch TV and see the news report of the show getting destroyed by animals thought to be brought by the animal trainer, and also reports of Jeremy Jason McCole quitting the TV show that made him famous and fleeing to Uzbekistan. Cassie and Rachel think it's a shame because even after all that they really did think he was awfully cute. . . . Narrator: Rachel New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Human (Rachel) Marco: Llama Rachel: Crocodile Ax: None Notable: This book had dated passages almost immediately. First, Cassie talks about buying a CD because Marco wanted to "make a tape." Second, she rattled off popular bands that her mother mixes up, naming Nine Inch Nails, the Fugees, Snoop Doggy Dog, and Boyz II Men. Not all of these folks were still recording ten years later, so kids who read them when they weren't in their prime wouldn't get these references. It's also a bit amusing that this book's made up celebrity, Jeremy Jason McCole, is so very popular that there must be twenty websites just about him. Twenty? Wow, must be a popular guy! And speaking of Jeremy Jason McCole, he appears to be a parody of Jonathan Taylor Thomas; the fictional celebrity is on a show called Power House, while the real star was on Home Improvement. Both had a "comedian guy who played his father" as well. And Barry and Cindy Sue are obviously supposed to be Regis and Kathie Lee. Ax recognizes a morph Visser Three uses as a Lebtin javelin fish. We don't know what "Lebtin" is, but Ax is excited about getting to see it even though it's deadly. A naturally occurring process called hereth illint is what happens when a person must expel an animal's DNA due to being allergic. We learn about it in this book when Rachel has to expel a crocodile from herself after finding out she's allergic to crocodile DNA. This allergy issue never happens to her again or anyone else mentioned in the book series. Best lines: Rachel: Brave isn't about not being afraid. It's about being scared to death and still not giving in.
Reporter: "Do you have any advice for other kids like yourself?" Marco: "It turned her into a wild animal! Several wild animals, actually! She became the alligator of l-o-o-o-v-e!" Jake: "You're the one who blew the mission today. [ . . . ] Next time maybe you'll let the rest of us know when you're not in shape to handle a mission."
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