| #49: The Diversion |
Detailed Plot: After losing a mouse to a rattlesnake in his meadow, Tobias has McDonald's with Rachel. She tells Tobias that Jake and Cassie want a meeting, so they head out to Cassie's barn. There, they find out that the Yeerks broke into The Gardens demanding blood samples of the Animorphs' most popular battle morphs, and they flipped out like they were frightened when they weren't able to get red-tailed hawk blood. They have also found out that The Sharing is sponsoring a blood drive, which means the Yeerks are probably looking for humans with animal DNA in their blood . . . and that suggests that the jig is up. The Yeerks suspect the Animorphs aren't Andalites. After deciding none of them have given blood and their risk of being caught based on stored samples is pretty much nil, they decide the best way to figure out what the Yeerks are up to is to try to hack into hospitals, blood banks, and the like. Anything that has a suspiciously good firewall is probably the Yeerks. Marco and Ax find a place called Midtown Bio-Services that has better security than the CIA, so they figure this has to be it. Along with Tobias, the three decide to go right over and do a daytime Saturday mission, hoping to surprise the Yeerks. When they get there, Cassie, Rachel, and Jake are waiting, having scoped out the building ahead of time and discovered that the DNA-identifying (and destroying) Gleet Bio-Filters are installed on the doors. Rachel volunteers to create a distraction by morphing an elephant, and since the circus is in town nearby she should have no trouble blending in with the other elephants if she retreats there after the damage is done. She manages to deactivate the bio-filter by slamming a street sign into the doors, which lets the other Animorphs get inside as flies. They hide, then make use of Marco's conveniently blue morphing outfit to fashion armbands for themselves which exactly match the color of the armbands elite Hork-Bajir guards wear. They all assume Hork-Bajir morphs and don the armbands they've fashioned from strips of Marco's shirt. Out they go, marching through the hallways, and if any Controllers suspect anything they don't show it because elite guards are not to be questioned. At the computer room, a guard does argue with them and tells them they need a pass, but Jake psychs him out enough to make him open the door, and then renders him unconscious. Once they're in the computer room, Ax demorphs so he can handle the computer better, and he looks through to see that a partial match has already been found. A family member of a human member of the Animorphs has been identified, and it's Tobias's mother Loren. And they have her address. But before they can really figure out what to make of this, actual elite guards storm in and tell them they can't escape. Jake privately asks Ax to delete Loren from the computer (and the Controller holding a Dracon beam on him surely won't shoot because she can't risk destroying the computer). As Ax works, a fight begins and Marco gets severely injured. The others do their best to protect him, and they notice the human-Controller in charge of this interruption has noticed the match, so she knows exactly how valuable that computer is. But they're prevented from making much headway and can't get in a position to destroy the computer. Rachel ends up barging in with a forklift and makes an exit, and Marco is forced to demorph or die, even though Controllers can see him. Jake concludes that it doesn't matter anymore. They escape and block the exit with a dumpster, and try to morph to birds to get away. But their pursuers make it through fast enough to shoot at the escaping Animorphs. They just barely manage to escape into the air (with fire trucks already arriving at the scene), but Tobias is reeling--not just from the battle, but from the knowledge that his mother lives only a few blocks from him and that she never came to take care of him. He'd assumed that she loved him but for some reason couldn't take care of him due to mental issues or some other problem, but now that he has her in reach he doesn't want to face her--doesn't want to find out that yet again someone in his life just plain didn't want him. And he finds it a little ironic that the Yeerks were looking for matches amongst humans and the place they found the match was the kid who lives as a bird and doesn't know his mother. After the group is all safe again and discussing what they need to do, they realize it's only a matter of time before their families are found and made into Controllers, so they figure they need to save them and take them away from their lives if they expect to be able to preserve them. Tobias decides to go see if his mom is taken yet, now that he has her address. He finds that her house is dark, but soon she emerges, and due to a guide dog and hideous scars across her eyes, he finds that she is blind. He follows her, morphed as a fly, to wherever she's going, and finds that she's a volunteer at a crisis center. It's all overwhelming. Especially since she's clearly such a caring person but hasn't ever stepped in to have a relationship with her own son. He leaves, thinking dark thoughts. Cassie's family is first on the agenda to be told the secrets and be taken to safety. Cassie worries about who's going to help sick animals now that her parents are going to have to go into hiding. They go to her parents and explain everything (while Mr. King the Chee projects a hologram around their porch so no one can see). Tobias speaks to them with thought-speak, Ax shows his true form, and Cassie demonstrates morphing. They manage to get her parents convinced--though they're horrified Cassie's been through so much--but they don't know how to get them to understand that they need to drop everything and leave, now. They eventually make arrangements to take their sick animals and have Mr. King care for the one that's too big to travel, and that's one Animorph family saved. Next is Rachel's. Rachel warns that her mother isn't likely to listen to logic, so they're going to just have to barge in and get it over with. Rachel goes in as a grizzly bear to get her mother's attention, but her mom tries to attack her. Tobias is struck by this, considering he's now watched two demonstrations of mothers throwing themselves between something dangerous and their children. Ax greets Rachel's sisters. They give no real explanation; Rachel just tells her mom she's got to drive, gets in the car (in her grizzly morph, causing damage), and instructs her mother to drive. Tobias, Jake, and Ax go on to try to take the next difficult target: Jake's house. Since Tom is a Controller, this is going to be a tough one. They decide to kidnap Tom without explanation, which will be collateral to make the parents cooperate. Tobias is feeling a bit bitter with all this recognition of proper parent behavior around him. But even though this is planned well, Erek the Chee has been waiting at Jake's house for a while and hasn't seen a sign of them. They begin to worry about whether Jake's family has already been taken. Jake is in denial about it, insisting that their family shopping was normal. But when they start heading toward the house with other vehicles behind them, they realize how bad this looks. Jake flips out temporarily, partially morphing a tiger, but when his mother tries to shoot Tobias, they realize they're taken and there's nothing else they can do but retreat, so Jake becomes a falcon. He deliberately does it in front of his parents so their real, non-Controller selves can see him and have hope. They narrowly escape his Controller family attacking them with Dracon fire, and Jake berates himself viciously, insisting that he should have gotten them out last night. Ax promises him they'll get Jake's family out, and Tobias thinks about Jake's situation--how he'd always been fighting for Earth, but personally it's all about his family. Tobias claims he needs to hunt, and goes off to start watching out for his mother. She is, indeed, being tracked by Controllers, and then his friends unexpectedly show up. Ax and Marco are there to protect him and to help him get Loren to safety. They morph to human and duck into a corner store where Loren is shopping while the Controllers close in. They pretend to be hoodlums and cause trouble while harassing Loren and her guide dog. Marco tells Loren he's going to "borrow" her dog (and gets him to come with her by putting him in the acquiring trance), and Tobias also acquires the dog after they've walked him behind a door so his demorph to hawk won't be suspicious. Tobias then morphs the dog and lets Marco put the harness on him. Tobias, as the dog, goes out to guide his mother to the cash register and home. When she strokes his face he has a hard time controlling himself because he'd always dreamed of having his mother do that. Once inside her house she takes his harness off and he snoops around trying to make sure she isn't a Controller. After Loren goes to bed, Tobias checks around in her home trying to find some explanation for why he isn't part of her life. He happens upon insurance paperwork refusing to pay claims for an accident she was in which resulted in scars, blindness, and amnesia. That wraps it up for him: she doesn't remember him due to an accident. Tobias stays the night at his mother's house, and in the morning he makes coffee and waits for her to come out. She does, and seems calm; she asks who's there and he explains. Turns out she knows his name is Tobias and knows he's her son, but doesn't remember him. She explains that she had no information and was brain-damaged, and didn't know how to get him back--but also thought she couldn't raise him as a blind, brain-damaged woman who couldn't even properly care for herself. She also reveals that she has memories of aliens. He proves to her that those aliens are real by describing what she half-remembers, and convinces her to meet him in the park in two days. (First they have to give her real dog back to her though.) Tobias discusses the possibility that his mom is a Controller with Jake, and Jake isn't ready to believe she's not. Animorphs are watching her as well as the Controllers are, and if she doesn't leave the house for two more days they'll know she isn't harboring a Yeerk. Tobias has a plan, though, and though Jake wants him to forget Loren, he can't do it. Rachel's mom is helping the Hork-Bajir draft a constitution, and Cassie's parents are having a ball hanging out with the aliens. They're all training for battle as well. Rachel's getting tired of watching her sisters, so she's relieved when Tobias asks for her help in the mission. Tobias acquires and morphs Loren's guide dog and they switch dogs while Loren is walking through a tunnel so the watching Controllers aren't suspicious. He leads her back to the house, lets her touch him while he's morphing to hawk so she can understand what's going on, and then he gives her morphing powers with the morphing cube (carried there by Rachel as an eagle), and coaxes her through the morphing process, allowing her to become a red-tailed hawk. But during this whole procedure Tobias has had to keep his head straight, because he's getting multiple warnings from his friends outside that the Yeerks are approaching. But once Loren has completed her morph, she's stunned--she can see. Rachel busts through the wall to help get them out of there, and the Yeerks spot two red-tailed hawks flying away. Loren is still mentally stumbling to make sense of her situation, and now she's got to flee deadly forces while coping with the scary situation and the fact that she can see again and has to learn to fly. She follows Tobias's instructions and the hawk's instincts and they manage to escape Dracon fire, but then the Yeerks begin to bear down in a helicopter. Up there in the chopper is the same Controller who came after them back at the computer room. They have to do some fancy flying and get some assistance from Marco and Ax to escape. Marco and Rachel beat up on Controllers, but there seem to be an endless supply of them. They're trying to get them into the parking lot of the building they're hiding in, and Tobias suggests they just go out there. Tobias thinks he can out-fly the chopper pilot. Tricky flying by Tobias teases the pilot into getting tangled in wires and crashing. But at one point Loren tries to protect Tobias by taking a shot that was aimed for him, and her hawk body is mangled. Tobias urges her to demorph and explains that she can become a hawk again whenever she wants. She follows his instructions and demorphs, finding that as a human her body is healed of the injuries she sustained in the accident all those years ago, and she's no longer blind. Rachel picks her up and they escape just before the helicopter crashes. Back at the Hork-Bajir valley, Tobias and his mother are able to see each other, and she is able to see her dog Champ (with whom she's reunited); her memory is not restored, but her body is. And Tobias is satisfied that even though she doesn't remember him, she was willing to sacrifice herself for him just like a real mother. He finds it ironic that Jake, the one used to having an intact family, is the only one who no longer has his, while Tobias never expected to get this kind of relationship and here it is. Narrator: Tobias New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: None Marco: Dog (German shepherd--Champ) Rachel: Dog (German shepherd--Champ) Ax: None Tobias: Dog (German shepherd--Champ) Notable: This book is ghostwritten by Lisa Harkrader. Rachel brings Tobias some food and says "I know you have to eat it as a hawk." This suggests that at this late stage in the game the author IS saying morphed people have to eat in their natural bodies and that eating while in a morphed body will not last. This seems to contradict what they did in a previous book when they ate while morphed in order to sustain themselves. There's a line that seems a bit inaccurate: "When we'd rescued Marco's mom, we'd also had to rescue his dad." That suggests the rescue of his dad was because they rescued his mom, but his dad was actually taken to safety first, and it was pretty much unrelated to his mom's liberation; they don't even receive word that Visser One was to be taken to Earth for execution until after his dad has already been taken to the free Hork-Bajir valley. The Animorphs stage a ruckus in order to get a chance to disable the Gleet Bio-Filter, which is the only thing stopping them from getting inside the building they want to investigate. When Rachel succeeds in doing this, a helpful computerized voice announces that the bio-filter is deactivated and has gone into "immediate shutdown." This makes it sound very contrived and awfully convenient. Why would an error message announce exactly the information they need to know? Seems more like a smart way to program it would be that if it goes offline, it sends a message to someone who can fix it or someone who's in charge of security. After very obvious commotion goes down outside (and the bio-filter is offline), it also seems ridiculous that a guard inside doesn't suspect anything and everyone just goes about their business as if nothing unusual just happened at the door. Another contrived event happens immediately after the Animorphs gain entry to the facility: Marco has a new morphing outfit, and the shirt of it happens to be the color of the armbands that elite Hork-Bajir guards wear. They decide to make use of this coincidence and pretend to be those guards, even though they hadn't planned it. Using the shirt as a solution would have been a much less coincidental happening if they'd just planned it ahead of time, because it was a good idea. It's obvious from previous incidents that the Yeerks can tell Hork-Bajir apart pretty easily, as Visser One (previously Visser Three) knew certain Hork-Bajir at a glance. Considering that, it seems fishy that the Animorphs assume they can just slap on blue armbands and no one will question them. It's like assuming you could morph any human and put on their clothes and everyone would accept you as that human. Marco jokes that the Yeerks are "from another galaxy." Considering the Andalite home world is only 82 light years away from Earth and it was never suggested that the Yeerk home world was incredibly far away from the Andalites, it's unlikely that they're from outside the galaxy. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across and 1,000 light years thick, and the closest other galaxies to the Milky Way are at least 25,000 light years away. This book has a Pokémon reference. Rachel's little sisters think Ax is a Pokémon. When Tobias morphs into Champ, Loren's guide dog, he refers to knowing he's Champ and knowing he has "responsibilities." This suggests he has the memories and training of the guide dog, which isn't consistent with the morphing rules. Being responsible the way guide dogs are trained is not innate. The whole scene in the convenience store is very awkwardly written and hard to believe in. There is no way a couple of hoodlums harassing a blind woman and temporarily kidnapping her dog would be responded to by the blind woman with silence. Loren doesn't speak the whole time the unfamiliar teenagers are messing with her, taking stuff out of her basket, or leading her dog away from her into another room. Her only acknowledgment that it even happened comes after the dog is returned to her. If she cares about being able to get home or about her dog's life and well-being, she'd never let disrespectful teenage boys take the dog away from her. Seems like any blind person would scream for the clerk to call the cops or something. It seems unlikely, also, that Tobias would suspect his mother of being a Controller at all considering she's blind and the Yeerks love the sense of sight. They wouldn't want a damaged host. Another "way-too-convenient" happening: Tobias manages to find, open, and read the very piece of paper that tells him his mother has amnesia, in a claim form from an insurance company. The narration acknowledges that a reunion involving amnesia is like something on a soap opera . . . but his finding the paper (and not being worried about rooting around in such a way that he wakes his mother) is a bit ridiculous. He also stays there the entire night and his friends don't come to check on him or make sure he hasn't been captured along with his mother, which is especially ridiculous considering Yeerks are watching her house. Several of Applegate's books make blindness out to be horrific--mostly from the point of view of Yeerks who are blind in their natural state and then become sighted creatures by taking over host bodies. They hate the idea of going back to blindness after being sighted, and they harp on it a lot. But in this book a human does it too--Loren even claims she doesn't want to go back to being a blind human while she's DYING AS A DISMEMBERED HAWK. Perhaps Applegate and the ghostwriters of Animorphs ought to take some sensitivity courses before acting as though blindness is a fate worse than death. Rachel's father is left as a dangling unknown. They didn't go after him and bring him to safety; Rachel simply said he would find his way there and they didn't follow up on it. Best lines: Rachel: "You know, Tobias, we have very weird dates."
Marco: "I've been too busy saving the planet." Tobias: What kind of self-respecting hawk lets his girlfriend feed him?
Marco: "Unless you count the Victoria's Secret Web page, there are no babes in my life anymore."
Jake: "Then mingle into the crowd, do not call attention to yourself, and wait patiently for the rest of us." Tobias: The Yeerks were looking for humans who were related to human Animorphs, and where did they get the match? From a bird with no family.
Rachel: "Stay at my house tonight. You shouldn't be alone." Ax: "They think I am a 'pokey man.' I have told them I am an Andalite and am actually quite swift, but they insist they need to train me." Ax: "Do not worry. We are irresponsible teenage hoodlums, possibly gang members, but you are not in any danger."
Ax: "There. I have now shamelessly destroyed the symmetry of this shelf, undoing hours of labor by underpaid store employees. If you could see me, you would be frightened."
Marco: "ARE YOU INSANE?"
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