B33C24/25/27 - Repeated Damage

Thwoomp!

Two mammoth gorilla feet struck the top of my cube. It swayed violently and smacked me against the wall.

<Sorry, man!> Marco yelled as he wrapped a giant hand around the steel cable that suspended the cube. <But there's a time for delicacy and this ain't it!> He tightened thick fingers around a bolt head, securing the top of my cube to the cable. He twisted with all his might, trying to loosen the connection that held me a helpless, dangling prisoner.

BOOM! BOOM!

BOOM! BOOM!

Four clawlike Hork-Bajir feet etched the top of the cube. Sent it bobbing out of control.

<Ahhh!> Marco scrabbled to find his balance. The Hork-Bajir flailed, looking for a hold.

"Gilaaaaaaa!"

One slipped off, unsuccessful.

Floomp. Tasssshh!

He crashed to the floor. Green-blue blood began to ooze from his chest. Impaled on his own tail blade!

We were an out-of-control pendulum. How could the other Hork-Bajir maintain?!

And then I saw how. He had found a hold. And the hold was Marco's flank.

Marco fell to his knees on the cube. His face, contorted with agony, teeth bared, pressed onto the glass.

<Ahhhhhhh!> he screamed.

The Hork-Bajir, eyes bulging from strain, muscles flexing powerfully, struck again.

Ptt. Ptt. Ptt.

Red droplets began to spatter the top of the glass. The Hork-Bajir had slashed and embedded a wrist blade deep in Marco's flesh. The more they struggled, the more we bobbed. An unanchored raft.

Pttpttpttptt. The blood splattered more quickly now.

<Marco! Forget me. Just free yourself. He's killing you!>

Marco grunted, agonized. He continued to work on the bolts.

<No,> he gasped.

Two Hork-Bajir had Ax pinned into a corner. Another two slashed mercilessly at Jake. He swiped back with lightning-fast claws, but he was a bloody mess. Missing an ear.

<Marco!> Cassie screamed.

The sub-visser spun 180 degrees. From the weapon cabinet to the room's center. She extended her arm. Her hand clutched a Dracon beam. Aimed . . .

<Marco!> I screamed.

Directly above my head.

At Marco!

BOOM! BOOM!

BOOM! BOOM!

Two more Hork-Bajir landed on the cube. "Arrrgh!" Taylor shouted. Cassie leaped and knocked her down. Too late!

She fired.

(...)

TSEEEEW!

Dracon fire.

Keeeew!

And a snap. The cable, vaporized, just below Marco's hand!

The cube. Free! The floor rushing up . . .

KABLAMMMMM!

The cube smashed the floor in a thunder crack.

"Ghalaaaa!"

<Yeeaaaaaahhhh!>

Screams of confusion. Pain.

Shards of glass shot out from the impact like shrapnel. Drawing blood indiscriminately.

Wumph.

The dead weight of a Hork-Bajir arm collapsed onto me and held me down, my back to the floor. I looked up through a hole, a cylinder burned clean through his upper arm by Dracon fire!

Marco dangled from the red-hot wire. Flesh and hair began to sizzle.

<Hraaaaahh!> Thought-speak and gorilla fused in one wrenching bellow. A primal scream. He couldn't take it! He dropped. Onto a bed of gouging glass that cut and snapped under his weight. Another roar.

Pain wracked my body. As though the impact had fractured every bone. But I was conscious. Morph! Focus! The snarls and snorts of battle throbbed in my ears as violence raged around me. I felt the changes begin.

Suddenly the Hork-Bajir body was lifted and thrown aside. I was startled, vulnerable. I stopped the morph, twin Andalite arms budding from my chest.

Blond hair glittered. Spotlights. An iron-strong hand closed over my seven small fingers. Crushing them!

The sub-visser!

She yanked me across the piercing glass. Began to drag me across the floor. But then let me drop and ran back toward the destroyed cube like she'd forgotten something.

<Help!> My voice issued as a dry hiss. Jake and Ax, two-on-five with Hork-Bajir, couldn't hear my cry. The sub-visser picked through glassy rubble and found what she was looking for: the miniature copy of the control panel. With the larger control under one arm and the smaller one in her hand, she headed for me again.

<Help!> I called again, desperate. But I was too weak! Cassie couldn't hear me. I watched as she leaped off the table onto Hork-Bajir shoulders, knocking him down.

Only Marco saw me. He moved to run, but collapsed to the ground in a spasm of pain.

I tried to force the morph. Faster! Where was the tail! The blade!

I couldn't keep my focus. I flapped pathetically with my half-wing, half-arms. Beat at the air and scratched across the floor with exhausted legs. But I couldn't get away.

<Ahhhh!>

I felt the red circle cut into my back. Cripple me. Then stop. She was striking at me again with the torture device. But why now?

Again she clutched my delicate Andalite fingers. Out through the door she dragged me. Onto a sort of balcony. Maybe forty feet long, but very narrow. Not more than four feet wide. Projected out off the rock face. Running into a small tunnel at the far end. An observation deck? In an underground network of narrow tunnels? A putrid, earthy odor filled my lungs. A stench I . . .

"Ahhh!" A loud, shrill yell as she exerted herself to swing me up over the railing. Up in an arc I sailed, her fingers still gripping my own.

Bam! I slammed against the outside wall of the balcony.

<Uhhh!> Pain rattled my bones for the hundredth time. I looked down.

The Yeerk pool.



(After this part, the battle shifts focus to Tobias and Rachel against the sub-visser Taylor. No further word is given on Marco's condition, but he does appear in the final chapter back in his human form, which is what follows...)



It was a windy day. Sunny. We were all there, all but Rachel who'd had something to do with her dad.

We were all in human form. Even Ax and me. I sat on the sand at the beach. The breeze whipping my hair. The waves racing up the shore.

Ax was sitting next to me, unpacking a kite he had made out of scrap wood strips and paper bags. Untangling the string. Preparing for a test flight. A human hobby he said he found unaccountably peaceful.

Cassie was down nearer the water, scanning for any injured life.

Jake and Marco were playing catch, forcing levity. Jake rocketed a flawless spiral through the air.

"Ax?" I said.

"Yes, Tobias?"

"I had a lot of hallucinations back there. A lot of crazy visions." I tried to keep my tone casual. I paused. "But there was this one. It was just so real. I mean, as real as if I had lived it. It was Elfangor."