Invasion

"Did you hear my thoughts before that?" I asked.

Suddenly Tobias leaped through the air. He pounced precisely on an autographed baseball that was lying in the corner. Maybe a four-foot jump.

"Pull a string? Why?"

I dug in my desk drawer and found a length of string left over from a birthday gift. I'm not exactly big on keeping my room clean. The string was from a birthday two years ago, "How's this?" I drew the string slowly across the floor, a foot or more from Tobias's nose. He settled back on his haunches and began wiggling his hindquarters. He pounced! He landed on the string, grabbed it in his sharp teeth, rolled over, and began ripping at the string like it was the only thing on Earth that mattered.

I tried pulling the string away, but he pounced again.

"Tobias, what are you doing?" "Tobias, what are you doing?" I shouted. "You're playing with a string!"

Suddenly he stopped. His tail twitched. He looked up at me with those cold cat eyes, but I'm sure I saw a look of confusion there.

he admitted. He extended his claws to demonstrate.

"Tobias, I think we're learning something here," I said. Amazing, how quickly I was becoming used to the idea of talking to a cat.

"I think you aren't just Tobias. You really are a cat. I mean, you have all the same instincts. You want to do the things a cat wants to do."

"You'd better change back," I said.

He nodded his cat head up and down. Very weird to see, I can tell you — a cat nodding yes in a thoughtful, normal way.

The change back to human form was at least as strange as the change to cat. The fur disappeared, leaving bare patches of pink skin behind. A nose grew out of the flat cat face. The tail was sucked up like a snake going up a vacuum cleaner.

Tobias stood there, looking embarrassed. He quickly pulled on his clothes. "Maybe with some practice we can figure out how to change back into our clothes."

"We?"

He smiled his gentle smile again. "Don't you get it yet, Jake? If I can do it, so can you." I shook my head. "I don't think so, Tobias."

Suddenly he grew angry. He grabbed me by both my shoulders and actually shook me. "Don't you understand, Jake? It's all true. All of it."

I pushed him away. I didn't want to hear it.

But he kept after me. "Jake, it's all true. The Andalite gave us these powers for a reason."

"Fine," I snapped. "You use them."

"I will," he said. "But we'll need you, Jake. You most of all."

"Why me?"

He hesitated. "Geez, Jake, don't you understand? I know what I can do and what I can't do. I can't make plans and tell people what to do. I'm not the leader. You are."

I laughed rudely. "I'm not the leader of anything."

He just looked at me with those deep, troubled eyes — eyes I can now see only in my memory.

"Yes, Jake, you are our leader. You are the one who can bring us all together and help us defeat the Controllers. We have the ability to be much more than we are, to have the stealth of a cat, and… and the eyes of eagles, and the sense of smell of a dog, and… and the speed of a horse or a cheetah. We're going to need it all, if we have any hope of holding out against the Controllers,"

I wanted it not to be true. I wanted none of it to be true. But I knew that it was.

I nodded slowly. It felt like I was agreeing to something awful. Like I was volunteering for a trip to the dentist or something much worse. It felt like a million pounds of weight had just landed on my shoulders.

I knew what I had to do next.

"Well," I said grimly. "I guess I'd better go find Homer." Homer. That's my dog.