"Hhhhuuuuhhhrrrooooooomm!" I threw up my trunk and let go of a trumpet blast. It was the sound of a very angry elephant.

"You could have warned me," I heard Cassie whisper. "I almost wet myself over here." It took about three minutes before the trainer came rushing into the pen. In the dark, all he saw were the gray shapes of his elephants. I wasn't exactly hiding, because, let's face it, when you're an elephant, you can't scrunch up and look small. But I was staying back until he was all the way inside the pen.

Then . . .

I lunged forward, pushing two of the other elephants aside.

The trainer gaped up at me. "What? What the...?"

In a sudden, fluid movement, as he stared in puzzlement, I wrapped my trunk around his waist.

"

Hey! Hey! You're not one of my elephants!" Here's the thing about elephant trunks. They are so subtle that I can pick up an egg with my trunk and never crack it. Or I can pick up a tree and throw it across the yard.

Josep Something knew this.

I wrapped my trunk tightly around his waist and then I lifted him up off the ground. His feet kicked helplessly in the air. His arms pounded weakly on my trunk. I lifted him up till he was at my eye level.

6 "Hi, Josep." I said, using thought-speak.

"What the . . . . Who? Who said that? I'm hearing voices!"

"Me." I replied. "I said it. See, Josep, I am from the International Elephant Police. We have had some complaints about you. "

"This is crazy! This is crazy! What are you? Is this some sort of a joke?"

So I squeezed him a little tighter. Just enough so he couldn't really breathe very well.

"Now, listen to me. Because I could just as easily squeeze you out like a tube of toothpaste.

So pay attention. You have been using cattle prods on your elephants. That is a no-no."

"But..." he gasped. "They ... are ... my ... property!"

This man was just not getting the message.

So I extended my trunk a little and held him right over the tip of my left tusk. Like a worm about to be placed on fishing hook.

"With one twitch of my trunk I can make you a shish kebab. Now are you going to listen to me?"

"Yes! Yes! I'm listening," he said. "I am listening very closely." "No more cattle prods. No more pain of any kind. Do you understand me?"

"Y-y-y-yes."

"Because I'll be watching. And if you ever, everhurt an elephant again . . . ever. . . I'll come back for you. And I will squeeze you till you pop like an overcooked hot dog. Do you understand me?"

"Y-y-y-yes."

"Josep, can you fly?"

"What? Can I fly? No. No, of course not."

"I'll bet you can." I said.

And with that, I lowered my trunk almost to the ground. Then, with a sudden toss of my head and a deft twist of my trunk, I sent Josep Something flying.

He landed safely atop a tent. About, oh, twenty feet away.

"Now can we go home?" Cassie asked.

7 Chapter 3

You threw the guy into the air?" Jake asked.

"Wasn't that maybe just a little unnecessary?"

"No. He made me mad," I said.

It was the next day after school, a Monday. We were walking through the woods. Me, Cassie, Jake, Marco, and Tobias.

Of course, Tobias wasn't really walking. He was flying overhead in little hops from branch to branch.

He stayed close so he could hear us. Red-tailed hawks have excellent hearing, but he still had to stay fairly close.

"Well, Rachel, you know I sympathize," Jake said mildly, "but I don't think our job is really to right every wrong that's done to animals. That would be a full-time job, unfortunately."

I looked at Cassie. She gave me a wink.

We kind of didn't tell Jake that she had been there, too. Cassie and Jake like each other. She didn't want him to be mad at her.

With me, it's a different story. Everyone knows I'm going to do whatever I feel like doing.

"We have other stuff to deal with," Marco grumbled. "The Andalite didn't give us this power so we could turn into the Animorph Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals."

"Fine," I said. Which wasn't exactly like admitting I was wrong. "But what's got you so serious, Marco?"

"Let's wait till we find Ax. I don't want to have to tell the story twice."

So we tromped noisily on through the woods.

I felt a surge of excitement. You couldn't miss the tension in Marco's voice. Something was up. There was the smell of danger in the air, and that meant action.

I like action. I like doing things instead of just talking about them. Marco makes fun of me over it. He calls me Xena, Warrior Princess.

But I'm not one of those morons who is just into danger for its own sake. It's not about cheap thrills. It's about feeling like I am involved in something very important. I mean, let's face it - as corny as it sounds, we are trying to help save the world.

It began months ago. The five of us just happened to hook up together at the mall. It's not like we were a group, really. Not before that night.

Jake's my cousin, but we never hung out together much.

8 Jake's sort of in charge. It's not something he ever asked for; it's just that he's good at dealing with responsibility. He's the kind of person you automatically turn to if there's a crisis. And probably the best thing about him is that he can tell people what to do without ever sounding bossy.

"Since when don't you want to tell the same story twice?" Jake teased Marco. "I've known you to tell the same tired jokes eighty or ninety times."

"It's your own fault," Marco said. "If you would just laugh the first time, I wouldn't have to keep telling them."

Marco is Jake's best friend. He's smaller than Jake, funnier, darker, more skeptical. But his suspicious nature makes him very good at seeing beneath the surface of things. And as much as he whines and complains about the dangerous situations we get into, he's still there in the worst of the fight, still making dumb jokes.

Marco has changed lately, at least a little. He doesn't resist being an Animorph like he used to. I don't know why. Maybe it's because his dad finally seems to have gotten over the death of Marco's mother. I don't know.

"Hey, look! Over by that tree. See? A baby skunk with its mother." Cassie, of course. No one else would notice, or get excited over skunks.

"Let's run right over and pet them," Marco said.

Cassie laughed. "I've handled skunks plenty of times and never.been sprayed."

"Yeah, well, that's you, Dr. Doolittle."

Cassie has been my best friend forever. I have no idea why. No one does, because we seem like we would never get along. Cassie lives on a farm. Both her parents are veterinarians. She spends all her free time in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic her dad runs in their barn. They save injured animals.

Cassie is very into animals, but she's not one of those animal lovers who can't stand people.

She just thinks of humans as a different species of animal.

Then there is Tobias. Back when all this started, Tobias was barely an acquaintance of Jake and Marco, although I kind of knew him. He was a sweet, poetic kind of guy. The kind bullies love to pick on. He used to have messy, out-of-control hair and dreamy eyes that always seemed to be looking at something no one else could see.

Used to...

Now he has fierce, angry eyes that look through you like laser beams. Now he has brownish feathers, and a white chest, and a reddish tail, and cruel-looking talons, and a wickedly-curved beak.