Hork-bajir lope by, their wrist blades hanging loosely by their sides as the human and taxxon controllers part to give their bladed brethren a wide berth. Effilit watches as one of the soft-bodied taxxons swerves away from a perilously close hork-bajir. The glistening blood orange of the taxxon's many eyes catch sight of Effilit as it stops just past the other, loping alien. Rearing up its front half, the taxxon rises to get a better look. The russet flesh of the worm-like creature ripples with the motion, its eternally gaping maw quivering as it tries to catch their scent.

Effilit stares it down. He hasn't even made it a few feet from the sheds. Temrash leans too heavily against him; his shudders travel through Effilit's side as the host fights for control. The absence of space between their bodies would make it impossible for Effilit to pull out his laser weapon in time.

The taxxon shifts towards them. Its gaping hole of a mouth widening and shrinking with interest.

Effilit slowly shakes his head. His hard stare causes it to pause. The taxxon recognizes him, and even if it didn't, it surely recognizes the warrior lieutenant by Effilit's side. But even so...a taxxon's hunger is ceaseless. Despite the fellow yeerk in that creature's head knowing they would die if they allowed their host to consume a higher ranked yeerk, the sense of maddening starvation must be nearly impossible to control.

The taxxon shudders, lurching back and scurrying away as its yeerk wrestles it into submission.

Effilit takes in the first breath he's had since the taxxon caught sight of them. The human mind beneath his loosens in relief at the air flowing through his lungs again. Effilit ignores his host, just as he was trying to ignore Temrash's indignation at being dragged to the Pool like an invalid.

Even so...They'll never make it there if every taxxon grows aware of Temrash's weakness. The one taxxon's struggle alone has already drawn the attention of a few of its fellow worms.

"If I may..."

The human's thoughts tread lightly. Not quite hesitant, but cautious all the same. While being voluntary affords the host certain privileges, he still understands his place. The human will not speak without permission.

Effilit's silent probe slides inward. No time is wasted allowing the host to 'voice' his thoughts. There isn't time. Not with the trembles traveling through Temrash's body and into Effilit's hands gripping tight over his arm.

Like Effilit, the human fails to see a clear path to the Pool where Temrash's weakness won't be exposed to the roving taxxons and other lingering controllers. Unlike Effilit, the host remains aware of the storage sheds to the side. The ones where the limited-use portable Kandrona tubs are kept locked past access pads only accessible for higher placed yeerks. Such as the chief engineer.

There is no need to humiliate Temrash past his tolerance by parading him in front of their fellow yeerks; not when they can simply slip into one of the sheds to feed.

Effilit says nothing to the human. He owes the host nothing for the thoughts of this human naturally belong to the yeerk. As dictated by the Empire, the livestock they wear is just a meat suit that they use to partake in their duties. Certainly not an entity that they may owe favors to.

"Thank you." Effilit allows the gratitude to slip past the barrier between himself and the human's, George's, awareness. As the Empire dictates, one must not owe their host favors, so it's best if he rids himself of any now.

George remains silent as he settles back into his place as an observer in this body, and Effilit...ignores the sense of relief that his host can't stop from escaping.

The sense of relief at...

It doesn't matter, not now. Temrash needs to feed.

That isn't the Pool.

The steps that were taken to get here are hazy at best, but Temrash's aware enough to know that this metal pond isn't the Pool

Maybe not a pond either, it's more reminiscent of a hot tub if anything. That is, if it weren't for the still sludge residing several inches from the rim. Temrash leans forward and Tom recoils, pushing and straining beneath his own skin to pull away from the opaque leaden fluid that begins to swirl as the tub beneath them hums to life.

Temrash breathes in, the earthy stench makes the human want to hurl while the yeerk—

He can already feel it, the surface sliding over his body. The grey-green fluid seeping into his skin, through to the damaged nerves as the warmth of the Kandrona washes away the pain—

—rash." The voice jerks Temrash back to the now. Effilit still crouches next to the control panel of the machine. He watches Temrash carefully.

"It's ready." Effilit repeats. He straightens and steps back to give room. One hand dips into a pocket while he waits for Temrash to move.

And Temrash doesn't move, not yet. Because Tom is an annoyance whose flickering thoughts need to be observed. The human boy eyes Effilit from a gaze that he can't stop Temrash from turning back to the swirling fluid. But that doesn't matter because once the yeerk's out, Tom can slide around the edge of the tub before Effilit can grab him again. The door's right there, and he's faster than the other guy. He has to be. He has to be faster than the hork-bajir and the taxxons and all the rest. Just enough to make it to the stairs. Those alien creeps suck at climbing those steep stairs. And the other people there, most of them aren't even in shape. Tom can make it. He knows he can.

The boy's frantic thoughts keep filtering into Temrash. The body's lip quirks into a smirk that the yeerk can't quite help. Tom rears up, rage and desperation flaring outward into a flash of pain along Temrash's side.

"What? You're going to tell your buddy over there about how much you guys suck at keeping a host."

The bravo trembles over barely covered despair. Because now the yeerk's going to tell the other one about Tom's plans.

"I'm not. You can certainly try to escape, even if you won't get very far." Temrash gleefully responds back.

And the human won't. Effilit dipped his hand into the pocket concealing his dracon beam. It'll take him less than a second to shoot the boy as he straightens to run. And hardly any more time than that for the human to slump to the floor unconscious from the energy that will wash over him.

It takes effort to stop the bleed through of thoughts, but Temrash manages not to share that pleasant piece of knowledge. The human boy has to learn sometime how truly futile escaping is, and this seems like as good as time as any for a more impactful reminder.

"Don't be so sure about that, slug." Tom shoots back to Temrash's earlier taunt, hope unfurling in the boy's thoughts because he can make, he knows it.

Temrash kneels down. His smirk falters under another spike of pain, so he quickly turns his head to the side. He detaches palp after palp, peeling away the dying connections as a few dead cells stick to the host's brain.

He'll need to reabsorb those later when he comes back; however, for now, he draws himself over the folds of the host's brain. Stretching out in a thin ooze over the cranial nerves, Temrash eventually slides over the inner ear structures and past the ruined ear drum that he punctured the very first time he crawled into this boy's head.

It isn't long until most of his body has gathered into the outer edge of the ear canal. Only a tiny part of himself still connects to the human's ability to move, just enough to make Tom stay kneeling in place for the time it takes Temrash to exit.

Temrash disconnects, that thin part withdrawing instantly to his main body as he surges forth out of the ear and into the inches of open air before he hits—

The steel door shoves open. His hands, his human hands outstretch as he stumbles past it, slamming onto the gravel. The little rocks dig into his palms as he gasps for air that won't go down.

He shouldn't be here. He should be submerging beneath the surface of that little pool. Not here, on the ground in a human body.

Temrash curls on his side. Lungs burning as his confusion flares up against the emptiness echoing beneath his real body. Once again, that secondary presence, Tom is gone. And he can't...Temrash can't...without the host's mind there, he can't interface right. The command to breathe sputters out over gap between the yeerk and the body's neurological systems.

Outside. Temrash is outside because the blue sky stretches over him when he rolls his head. The gravel digging into his palms slips out as his grip loosens.

He could...he should disconnect with the body. It needs air to live and if it dies while he's entwined with it, he'll perish as well.

Disconnect and do what? Ooze up out onto the gravel to dry up in the sun beating down on him. Die blind with this foreign star draining the life from him until he's a little husk on the ground.

He'll die either way. Better for it to be quick, with the sight of the blue sky above him even if it darkens and blurs before his host's eyes.

From within, Tom crashes into him. Anger and fear whirling throughout them both as air rushes down their working lungs. Temrash thrashes as every bodily connection properly fires for the first time in minutes. He gulps in breath after breath as Tom screams into their shared mind.

" What the fuck?!" The adolescent finally stutters out comprehensibly. "What was that. What..."

The sentiment echoes right back at Tom because Temrash has no idea either on why they're here out in the open. The sky still stretches above them as Temrash lies there with his chest heaving.

The sky isn't just blue. There's a patch blemishing its singular color, something to focus on that isn't the trembling of limbs that come not from a rebellious host, but from the recent lack of oxygen in the blood flowing through them.

There is a cloud jagged like a starburst. An orange cloud as wide and as bright as a predawn moon hanging in the air directly above them

Temrash sits up; Tom's moans of protest and pain at the motion fades when he too focuses outward.

"What the hell is that?" Because even the human knows that normal clouds don't glow like that.

The knowledge filters through to the host because Temrash refuses to waste the energy to block it. A ship, a spaceship has exploded far above the atmosphere. The telltale glow comes from the radiation glowing off of its heated debris cloud as it expands through space.

The only ship that lingers in orbit above this city is the Pool Ship. Their one stronghold that circles this planet as the yeerks spread silently through its people.

The one ship that could be torn apart is...No, no. Certainly there was an attack, the andalites must have come sooner than expected. But it must be their Dome Ship that was destroyed. Visser Three would have ensured that. His Blade Ship is far superior to anything that the andalite's could have muster together. His prowess in battle far greater than even the best of the andalite commanders, the Beast Elfangor.

The Pool Ship is still there. It has to be.

"Hey, Earth to jackass, are you even listening to me?" Tom's annoyance pelts against Temrash's inattention. "Stop sitting on my ass and get up. I want to know what's going on."

The human barely gives the briefest of mental shoves from within his own limbs. Tom's too hesitant to adequately shove through the permeable barrier between them.

The human boy doesn't like Temrash's mood.

How naïve.

The human children here aren't used to war. Of the necessity of carving out your enemy's will to fight by destroying everything they have. It's a well-taught lesson that the andalites have gifted to Temrash's people. But this child can't even handle the momentary, misplaced doubt of the survival of the Pool Ship and the yeerk's comrades aboard it.

No wonder the Visser has called this race weak.

"I'll move my ass when I want to." Temrash sneers back at the boy still skirting around him. "I want to watch the Dome Ship burn awhile longer." Tom stills, then vibrates with anger.

"Those are slugs frying up there. Not andalites." He fires back. Unbidden, the image of sizzling earth slugs on the afternoon pavement comes to mind. Shifting, it slides into a darker color scheme. Of the scorched marks along the sides of a makeshift pool, and the remnants of Temrash's people, those who weren't simply vaporized, seared onto the charred wooden sides. Tom rears back from the foreign memory, like a child scrambling over the loose sand of a steep dune, only to go slipping back into—

Temrash rage burns as the human leans away from it and ends up absolutely no farther away from the alien wrapped around his brain.

"No, they are not." Temrash shoves off the ground to his feet. The world wavers but he pushes back with legs firmly planted against the nausea.

He'll prove it. There has to be some underling back through that door behind him who knows what's going on. Temrash turns, wobbles, and stomps his foot back down. With the motion, he catches sight of the edging of the roof several yards from him. Of the pool of blood seeped into the gravel some feet away.

The tumultuous flow of emotion still between them as Temrash stares and Tom freezes in silence.

The source of the blood had to have come from that dead human lying curled away from them. Even if the lack of blood still oozing from the wound didn't make it obvious, the cut wedges too deeply into her side.

Red stains the tips of her blond hair as it sticks to the soaked ground under her.

Temrash turns his gaze without any resistance from Tom. The lower half of a hork-bajir sprawl a few feet away from the dead girl. It's charred waist the only evidence of the laser fire that must have killed it.

The yeerks don't kill humans, especially young and healthy ones like that. Why slaughter the bodies that are meant to be infested. Yet, that clean slice through that human's side...No, she had to have been one of Temrash's people. A cut down human controller and a destroyed hork-bajir.

An andalite's here.

Temrash whirls around. Searching the near endless expanse of gravel spreading out from him. The sound of an andalite's hooves would give it away on this type of terrain. But that doesn't mean that it isn't taking aim at him right this moment.

It's shredder readying to burn through him just as it did to that hork-bajir.

The nausea slams into Temrash but he refuses to look down as he stumbles through it. The telltale blue of his enemy remains unseen, but the tension still tightens the muscles through his body.

Only a fool would let his guard down with blood that fresh on the ground.

"Hey, no wait, you need to check." Tom's panic pulses. "You can't be sure she's dead. You have to check." That girl might still be alive. She might need help. One of Temrash's fellow slugs is in her head, so the alien has to care enough to at least check for that.

The image of Temrash kneeling down to inspect the girl's ears as one of his fellows oozes out of her head shudders through Tom, but his whirl of insistence that the yeerk has to care enough about his own kind to walk over to her rises higher in its horror.

Because there can't be a dead girl on the rooftop of wherever they are. There just can't.

The boy's thoughts pulsate again and again as Temrash grits his teeth against them. Whoever was in that girl's head died with the host. A yeerk entwined with a dying body always perishes with it.

Temrash shoves that simple fact right through Tom's panic. The boy stutters, "she might not be dead" right back.

Forget the annoyance of the host's family. Temrash should have followed Effilit's example and taken the body of an ex-soldier. At least a human like that wouldn't have broken down at such a thing.

Temrash turns on his heel and stomps over to the body. Perhaps the boy will shut up when he turns her over and the glazed, lifeless eyes of one of his own kind stare back at him.

They pass under a shadow that shouldn't be there.

Temrash spins, steps back with fists raised and—

The Blade Ship hangs like an axe in the air above them. The black, sharp edges could cut open the rippled blue sky above them.

It could be taking off, but it isn't. The ripples that signify the activation of its launching systems are impossibly frozen in place, warping the air around it in an immobile pattern.

The Blade Ship is here. Not above the atmosphere. The Blade Ship is here while a ship, the Pool Ship, burns in an orange cloud in the sky.

"Okay. No, nope, this isn't real." Tom's words echo through the hollowness in Temrash's head. The hollowness that had been reverberating for quite some time before Tom desperately reaches for an explanation. "That thing is taking off, right. But it's just, not. It's not moving even though its engine things are glowing...Hey, are you listening to me!?"

Temrash swallows. His gaze drags over from the frozen ship to the girl. The blood in the girl's wound wells up like more should be spilling over, but it doesn't.

He breathes in and...the stench of burnt hork bajir flesh remains absent. The baking ozone that should be spewing from the glowing propulsion systems never hits his nose like it's supposed to.

The next gasp drags down his throat as Temrash stumbles away. Hands digging into his hair when nothing makes sense. What is this? What's happening to him?

Is this kandrona starvation? Delusions caused by the hunger ravaging his body? Is that it?

The Blade Ship vanishes. The streak of darkness above them carves through the blue sky as a curve of night where it had been.

Temrash scampers back. The Blade Ship disappears and reappears with each several steps. The stretch of night remains looming over them.

Tom moans in horror that escapes Temrash's hold. They stop, eyes wordlessly following the stretch of night as it curves past the top of the building. The open door behind them sits forgotten as Temrash staggers forward. Closer and closer to the edge until he can see the parking lot of the mall beneath them.

Under the swathes of blue sky, the city resides exactly where it should be. Branching through the bands of buildings, strips of trees reach towards the darkness above them.

Wherever there is night, the forest cuts through the city. Where there once were neighborhoods, old growth sprawls under the thickening bands of night that converge to where the abandoned construction site should be.

Even as the sun sits above Temrash's right, it's too dark at the convergence, the night too thick to see what lies there instead of the half-finished buildings.

Neither the yeerk nor the human can voice their confusion at the incomprehensibility before them.

"My, my, my, look what the rat dragged in." A voice outside of them both taunts.

Temrash twists to face the creature that had been behind them. It grins at his raised fists before he's even stopped turning. It's lime green lips pop out hideously from its wrinkled prune of a face.

"What is that?" The heart throbbing in Temrash's chest matches the fear pulsating in Tom's question. The boy assumes that Temrash knows every alien, but this thing before them—there has never been anything like it.

"I am the Drode." It replies to a question that was never voiced outside of the mind it resonated in. "And you," it twists its arms with too many joints until its wrist bends too far under the quick glance the creature makes a show of making. "are out of time. So, bye, bye."

The shadow beneath their feet stretches out, dragging down the ground underneath them as they slip through the darkness.