#rachelberensonwarriorprincess

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Have you thought of an AU where one of the others other than Rachel got split in half during the starfish book?

“Great.”  Rachel crosses her arms, surveying the scene.  “So starfish regenerate.  And now we’ve got two Marcos: one dumbass and one psychopath.”

Shallow Marco (as Jake has mentally dubbed him, with a twinge of guilt) recoils, eyes filling with tears.  “Jake, Rachel’s being mean to me!”

Robot Marco (and Jake feels bad about that one too) speaks over his double.  “I’ve tested all eight of my most commonly used morphs, and my abilities remain intact.  Therefore, it’s only logical for my other half to remain here, and for the destruction of the Anti-Morphing Ray to resume on schedule.”

Shallow Marco bursts out laughing.  “‘Other half’!” he says.  “You called me your other half!  Like we’re married!”

Robot Marco turns to Jake.  “Anyway —”

“I wouldn’t marry you,” Shallow Marco says.  “You’re boring, and bossy, and short.  And Jake is prettier.  Not as pretty as Rachel, but sometimes she’s mean and Jake is usually nice.  I wish I had a nice smile like Jake.  He’s not cute, but he’s more like, like…”  He looks at Cassie imploringly.

“Jake’s very sweet,” she suggests.  “But we should probably get back to —”

“Ax!” Shallow Marco bursts out.  “Ax is, like, hot when he’s a human.  Like, really hot.  It’s like he, like, got Rachel’s hot nose but not that weird thing with her chin, and Jake’s shoulders but not, I mean, let’s be honest that his face is totally asymmetrical, and Cassie has hot potential if she was a guy, but only —”

«Anti-Morphing Ray!» Tobias practically shouts.

“Don’t worry, you’re hot too.  But also, like, only as a human,” Shallow Marco assures him.

“We drop a nuclear bomb in downtown Los Angeles,” Robot Marco says.  “While the yeerks are distracted by the fallout, we engineer an electromagnetic pulse to travel through the community center.  With the metal floors, it should generate sufficient amplitude to kill all the controllers inside.  From there it will be easy to walk in and destroy the AMR.”

They all stare at him in horrified silence.

Robot Marco bursts out laughing, a second too late.  “Kidding!  I’m kidding.  Jeez, your faces!  What, this guy —”  He makes a dismissive gesture at his other self — “Is the only one allowed to be funny?”

Jake sends both Marcos home.  Robot Marco at least seems to understand the importance of not letting Peter find anything out.  And Jake honestly doesn’t know what else to do with them.  After they’re gone, the others discuss the actual plan for interrupting the transit of the AMR.  However, there’s nothing else they can do tonight.  Jake breaks up the meeting.

That night, Jake is about to fall into bed to try and force sleep through the worry when he hears Tom’s voice call up the stairs.  “Hey, midget?  Marco’s on the phone, asking for you.  He sounds weird.”

Jake is fairly certain that he breaks Olympic speed records on his sprint down to wrench the phone out of Tom’s hand.  “Hi!” he says into the receiver, breathless.

“You know what’s funny?”  Shallow Marco — it has to be — giggles slightly.  “Being underground.  It’s all squishy and gross, but remember the moles?  That was hilarious!”

“Uh-huh.”  Jake is excruciatingly conscious of the controller watching him from ten feet away with raised eyebrows and infinite patience.  “Sure is.”

“Also it’s really scary here, and dark, and scary, and the other me scares me.  Can I please please please spend the night at your place instead?”

Jake’s place has hazards of its own.  He glances at Tom again, unable to stop himself.  “I don’t know if that really makes sense…”

“Okay.  I guess I’ll just call you back the next time I think of something…”

“Come over!” Jake blurts.  “It’s no problem at all.”

“Thanks!  You’re, like, the best.”

It’s almost too easy for Jake to push past Tom and go talk to their parents.  To say, “Marco needs to come over,” the taste of the implied lie bitter on his tongue.  He hates leaning into their compassion, playing on their cynicism toward Peter, but it also works.  Marco arrives within half an hour, thankfully by bicycle rather than by wing.

“Thanks for letting me stay over!” he chirrups at Tom, who answered the door.

The yeerk, apparently thrown by this, stares at Marco in silence for a second before mumbling, “yeah, whatever.”

“You know…”  Marco rests a hand on Tom’s forearm, staring up into his face.  “You have just the nicest smile.  You know?”

A look of dull confusion crosses Tom’s face, his eyes slowly blinking once, twice.  Then, with a shake as if trying to stay awake, he apparently decides not to dignify that one with a response.

“Okay!”  Jake swoops in, grabbing Marco by the arm to yank him upstairs.  “And we’re going to bed.  Good night, everyone!”

Marco blows a kiss at Tom as they go.

The next morning, it’s Jake’s mom who knocks on the door and says, “Sweetie?  Phone call for you.  It’s Rachel.”

Marco doesn’t move, a lump of covers and tangled black hair in the sleeping bag on the floor.  Carefully Jake steps over him and tiptoes into the hall to take the phone.  “Hi!” he says to Rachel, trying for a casual tone.  “What’s up?”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Rachel says through her teeth.  “Marco’s dumbass half called my house five times last night.  Five times.  The first four were all ‘ooh, Rachel, I can’t call Jake so you’re the only one who can save me from this noise I just heard,’ or ‘Rachel, I’m scared of yee— uh, yetis, will you defend me?’  The fifth one was a fucking booty call —”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jake says, “Shallow Marco’s been here all…”  Which is around the time his brain catches up to his mouth.

Dropping the phone, he sprints back to his room.  The sleeping bag flops over when he kicks it, not nearly enough weight inside.  Long black hairs — cut off near the root, tucked under the blanket — scatter out to float across the floor.

Shallow Marco wouldn’t cut off his own hair just to sell a ruse.  But then, Shallow Marco wouldn’t be capable of pretending to be his other self.  Robot Marco, on the other hand…

“Rachel.”  Jake fumbles to pick up the phone.  “Get everyone to the usual place, STAT.  We have a situation.”

«It would appear,» Ax says slowly, «that most of Marco’s more affective functions — emotion, empathy, temperament, and the like — have ended up in this half.  Whereas his missing double appears to be in possession of colder cognitive functions such as judgment and decision-making, and yet remains as defunct in social communication as this Marco is in long-term planning.  However…»  He shifts his back hooves, shrugging in an oddly human gesture.  «I am hardly an expert in human behavioral norms or psychosocial development.»

Shallow Marco bursts out laughing.  “You can say that again!”  He elbows Jake.  “Get it?  Get it?  He said ‘I am hardly an expert —’”

“Got it,” Jake says tiredly.  “Ax, what’s that tell us about where, uh, thinky-Marco is going?  And how do we stick him and feely-Marco back together?”

«Marco’s cognitively biased half would likely have very little concern for anyone other than himself.»  Ax glances around at all of the others at once.  «I’m afraid he may have left the war entirely.»

«Great,» Tobias says.  «So we’re all the way back to the first month of this whole fight, when Marco was looking to bail at every possible opportunity.  No offense,» he adds, glancing at Shallow Marco.

“Assuming he ran, where would he go?” Jake asks.  “Feely-Marco, did you notice anything about him?”

“Yeah!”  Shallow Marco straightens in indignation.  “Is that really what my hair looks like from behind?  How come none of you told me?”

“Tom,” Jake breathes.  The realization comes too late; he could kick himself.  “He acquired Tom.  Probably the only reason he came to my place at all last night.”

«That’s probably not good,» Tobias says.  «He might be off infiltrating yeerk meetings right now.»

“Not necessarily.”  Cassie pats a horse’s neck, the motion distracted, self-soothing.  “Tom’s also an eighteen-year-old.  A legal adult with a driver’s license, access to a bank account with Sharing funds, and the ability to pass unquestioned through yeerk security.  If I was going to grab someone’s DNA and run…”

“You wouldn’t steal another human’s identity to do it,” Rachel points out.  “I still think it’s more likely he’s off kicking yeerk butt, or at least trying to.  Could he be going after Eva?”

«Is it necessarily bad if Marco’s cognitively biased half is trying to advance the war effort?» Ax asks.  «He does seem cogent enough to avoid coming to harm.»

«Kinda depends,» Tobias says.  «This version of Marco’s apparently willing to morph humans when it suits him.  What else is he willing to do?»

“Drop a nuke on Los Angeles,” Rachel says.  “Fuck.”

“Is that what he’s doing?”  Again, Jake looks at Shallow Marco for help.

«Not to be the guy tripping over the elephant in the room, but…»  Tobias looks down, straightening a couple feathers.  «Marco’s the smartest person on this team.  And the best liar.  Right now, he’s working with a twelve-hour head start.  Whatever his plan is, we’re probably not going to come up with it in the next twenty minutes of brainstorming.»

“Right.”  Jake shoves to his feet.  “Then we’ll just have to split up and find him.  Ax and Cassie, Rachel with Tobias, and I’ll take Marco.  Bird morphs.  Check in at the clock tower two hours from now.”

Shallow Marco bursts into giggles.  “Morphing is so weird.  And gross,” he wheezes, laughing harder now.  “And dangerous.  We’re craz —”  He gasps.  “Crazy people.  And we’re all — All gonna die —”

Ploosh!

Cassie lowers the bucket, now empty, back to the ground.  Shallow Marco shakes himself off, dripping but no longer on the verge of hyperventilating.  “Sorry,” Cassie whispers.

“My hair looks just as good wet as it does dry, so it’s okay.”  Marco smiles at her.  He seems to have forgotten his near-panic.

“Right,” Jake says grimly.  “Let’s go.”

Cassie and Ax find him first.  Or rather they find the first unambiguous sign of his presence.  They agreed to head for the community center and mall with their known cluster of yeerk pool entrances.  Jake and feely-Marco are off checking out bus stations and car rental areas for signs that a guy looking like Marco — or a guy looking like Tom — left town for good.  Tobias and Rachel, who have the most experience flying, are canvassing a broad area which includes most of the town and surrounding woods outside of the area over the yeerk pool.

There’s a body lying facedown on the sidewalk outside the door of the community center.  Human, male, obviously dead from the angle of his neck.  Ax looks at Cassie.  She looks back at him.  Together, they tilt to land.

Ax demorphs, presses cursory fingertips to the man’s pulse point at Cassie’s quiet instruction.  Nods, confirming what they already knew.

Cassie takes the time to change to wolf morph.  They don’t know what they’ll find inside.  She and Ax walk as softly as they dare through the door of the community center, fur standing on end.  Cassie’s nose detects blood, fear, pain.  Human and animal and alien.

They pick their way through the silent lobby.  The electricity is out, leaving half-dark.  A second human sits behind the desk, head lolling back, bullet hole between her eyes.  The room is otherwise deserted.

There are two corridors ahead.  Ax tilts a stalk eye at Cassie, inquiring.  Every one of her instincts tells her that the way to safety is straight ahead, where she can hear only soft traffic and smell only old furniture polish.  She walks down the left-hand corridor, with its terror-smells and echoing screams and hint of kandrona on the air.

The next body they find has no head.  Cassie sniffs briefly at the wound, again confirming her suspicions.  It’s clean and unburned, stinking of blood and death but not of ozone.  Not a dracon burn; a blow from an andalite tail blade.  Visser Three is here.

They don’t stop at the next seven or eight bodies, all killed by Visser Three.  Cassie glances up at Ax; he looks as confused and troubled as she is.  Did Marco manage to sow discord in the Yeerk Empire this quickly?  Is this a completely unrelated incident?

Neither one of them has said a word since before they landed.  Walking through a graveyard as they are, no words seem necessary.

It’s inevitable, really, when Visser Three himself looms out of the darkness ahead.

Cassie drops to a half-crouch, teeth bared.  Ax’s tail blade snaps to the ready.

Visser Three… stands there.

Stiff-kneed, every hair standing on end, Cassie takes another step forward.  Another.  There’s pale-blue blood pouring out of Visser Three’s nose, his ears.  His left side — stalk eye, arm, both legs — is strangely limp.

«Ax?» Cassie asks, voice too high-pitched, hoping for answers.

Ax takes two more steps toward the visser, not lowering his tail blade.  Visser Three gives a sudden spasm.  The fur on his right arm shifts, becomes red and scaly —

Skish!

Ax’s tail blade has twitched faster than either of them can think.  Visser Three falls, dead.

Ax stares at the body for a long moment, chest heaving, tail twitching as if in an effort to clean it of blood.  Visser Three lies unmoving, and soon he is no longer breathing.  

«Come,» Ax says at last, voice shaky.  «We need to find Marco.»

Marco himself is not far from the end of his ghastly trail of breadcrumbs.  He sits brooding over his fallen kingdom, a mountain of black fur and bloodstains amidst what have to be close to a hundred other corpses.  Some are hork-bajir, some human, several taxxon.

Ax gingerly steps forward.  «Mar—»  He stops, staring.

Cassie slinks around his far side, watching Marco, a snarl still in the back of her throat.  She sees what drew Ax up short, and sits hard on the ground.

The body resting at Marco’s feet is one Cassie only knows as Visser One.  But she knows enough to recognize the woman, to see the same full lips and dark curls and high cheekbones that Cassie associates with Marco himself.

Unlike everyone else in the room, Eva bears the clear marks of having been killed by a gorilla.  The small pistol still cradled in her limp hand wasn’t enough to save her, or Visser One.

«Ax.»  Cassie’s voice comes out strange, but she finds she can do this.  She can tap a deep reserve, take charge, when no one else can.  «Go find Jake and Rachel and the others.  Bring them back here, as soon as possible.»

«Will you… be all right?» Ax says.

«We’re going to be just fine.»  This time her voice is too gentle, bordering on patronizing.  Marco doesn’t react to her tone.  Ax just nods, and begins to morph.

During the half hour that Ax is away finding the others, Cassie bears witness.  She coaxes Marco into demorphing, and then she listens in silence to the dull recitation of his explanation.  How, once he’d had Tom’s DNA, getting into the yeerk pool itself was easy to do.  How he’d simply acquired a yeerk from out of the pool.  The next part had taken some doing, but after whispering and tracking rumor and observing the patterns of movement, he’d managed to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to shove Esplin 9466 out of the way — and slide into Alloran’s brain himself.  From there, it had all been so easy: executing half a dozen subordinates on the slightest excuse, bellowing contradicting orders and threatening death for all who disobeyed, claiming that there were traitors in their ranks who had to be eliminated.  Marco estimates that he has decimated the entire arm of the invasion force here in California, and that the carnage is continuing to spread even now.

“I had to demorph inside Alloran’s brain, in the end,” Marco says.  He and Cassie are both human by now, just two kids sitting among the corpses.  “Blew half his circuits in the process.  Shame, really, since he wasn’t even fighting back against me and he could’ve been useful.  But I suppose it’s one less distraction for Ax, so it’s more gain than loss.”

Cassie keeps her opinion of that assessment to herself.  She keeps it all to herself, even the tears that burn behind her eyes and the tension in the fist clenched at her side.  This isn’t Marco, she tells herself yet again, not really.  This is a half-person, lacking one half of all human nature.  Their Marco is himself entire.

“Speaking of distractions we couldn’t afford, I took the time to kill Tom as well.”  Marco shifts slightly, a careless leg propped against his mother’s body.  “Jake might be upset at first, but he’ll thank me in the end.  It’s better for the overall strategy to have him out of the way, and Jake will see that soon enough.”

This Marco, Cassie thinks, is not half as smart as he seems to think he is.

Jake makes it two steps into the room and staggers.  Mechanically, out of sheer lost uncertainty, he starts going from body to body: checking faces, checking IDs, checking for signs of life.  Shallow Marco shoves past him, running for the center of the room.  He falls next to Eva’s body, keening from somewhere deep inside. 

Robot Marco lifts his head up, watching his twin with what looks like idle interest.  “I remember what it was like to be half of you, to be frail and shrill and vulnerable.  Do you remember being competent and clear-sighted and monstrous when necessary?”

Shallow Marco (and yet there is nothing shallow about him, not now) lifts his head up to stare his doppleganger down.  His bloodshot eyes, his trembling lips, the soft sob of his breath… Jake has never seen Marco like this, not even after Eva’s first death.

“You see,” Robot Marco continues calmly, “it’s only a matter of time before the chee find a way to make us one again.  Morphing tore us apart, but I’m almost certain that it can’t hold us this way.  I got plenty done while I was free.  The war is won.  However, I’m starting to see that I need you almost as much as you need me.  Therefore, it’s—”

BANG.

Robot Marco jerks, mouth halfway open, and actually looks down at the bullet hole through his heart.  “You…”  He sounds genuinely surprised.  “You…”  He dies, still upright, between one breath and the next.  Jake sees it happen, watches the slow fall of his body.

Shallow Marco lowers the gun, resting it back into Eva’s hand.  “It’s funny, when you think about it,” he tells Jake.  There’s an edge of laughter — of tears — of something, catching at his voice.  “He didn’t think anything of me.  I don’t feel anything toward him.  It’s…”  Another sobbing breath catches in his chest.  “It’s hilarious, and…”

Rachel starts to move forward.  In an instant Marco (the only Marco, now) has whipped the gun back up to point at her chest.

“He killed my mom!” Marco screams at Rachel.  “Don’t you dare— He killed—”

Rachel holds up both hands.  She takes another step forward, because Rachel’s never had the good sense to be afraid.  “I know.  I know.  And I’m the last person to give a crap about that.  But right now, I just don’t want—”

“What, this?”  Marco whips the gun up, points it at his own head, and pulls the trigger.

There’s a faint click, but it doesn’t go off.  It’s empty.  Or jammed.  Or it’s simply not a semi-automatic.  Jake doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care, because Marco has time to look at it and laugh like it’s the silliest thing he’s ever seen, and then Rachel tackles him.  She tosses the gun clear across the room, wrestling both hands behind him, and pins him to the floor.

“I will,” she pants, “cause you severe bodily harm—” another gasp — “if you even think about morphing.”

Marco doesn’t answer.  He just curls under her, looking small and alone and very young.

“Okay.”  Rachel relaxes her grip a little, after a time.  “Okay.  Yeah.”

She looks up.  Her expression says now what?

Jake stares back, face full of I don’t know.

They’ve won the war, Tobias thinks, watching it all from overhead as if it’s happening to someone else.  If they haven’t won it already, Marco has just handed them the opportunity to finish the job.

One of the bodies curled on the floor is a girl can’t be any older than the Animorphs themselves.  One of the bodies has the face of a friend, of a part of them all.

Sure, Tobias thinks.  Yeah.  This is what victory feels like.  Sure it does.

Still.  They have a chance now.  To find a way forward.  To figure it out.  To find a way to live through the war, even if it has eaten half of their selves alive.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

“How’d you break the leg?” he asked. It was more than a casual question. The other TSA people were watching me to see if I’d lie or act nervous. “Got attacked by a whale,” I said. Jake buried his face in the palm of his hand.

DVD Commentary: 

*Climbs up on soapbox* *Slots fresh batteries into megaphone*

This moment from Total Recall gets at one of my biggest peeves in sci fi and a lot of related genres, that tendency for the writers to fail to consider the consequences of serious injuries — especially when it’s a protagonist who would be injured.  At best this trope is kind of silly (Timmy Hammond getting jolted with a fence that can knock out a T. rex and only getting a bad hair day, Kaylee Frye climbing engines and getting in physical fights a week after being shot in the gut, etc.) and at worst it’s straight-up ableist bullcrap (hero Jessica Jones emerging normatively pretty from a crash that leaves villain Alisa heavily scarred, hero Steve Rogers becoming nondisabled thanks to the same vita-rays that leave Johann Schmidt permanently injured, etc.) and I’ve ranted about it more fully here.  I think that this phenomenon is part of a broader issue with American media failing to consider the consequences of violence, but also one that implies good people can “overcome” injury because of “inner strength” in a way that enforces ableist myths, I have made entire conference presentations on this topic so don’t get me started.  ANYWAY. [deep breath]

Anyway, Tom.  At the end of #31, it says that his lower leg appears to have an extra joint in it, “a hinge where there shouldn’t be one.”  So that’s at least two broken bones, both of which are severely misaligned.  Based on what little I know, that’d be about a six-month recovery time until he got back full functioning at best, and an occasion for amputation at worst.  Not a bad way for Cassie to ensure he ends up immediately and thoroughly hospitalized (assuming it was deliberate, of course; it could’ve been anything from Cassie bumping him accidentally because she’s a WHALE in a POND to dolphin-Rachel or dolphin-Marco straight-up trying to murder him) and definitely an injury with a long recovery time.  However, as soon as #33, Tom is able to walk up a few stairs to accept an award on a stage at a Sharing reception, with no mention of casts or crutches.  As soon as #41 Jake is comfortable playfully knocking Tom over, which presumably he would not do if Tom was still in a leg brace — just because the kid’s a mass murderer, that doesn’t mean he’s a total asshole.

So I admit it’s mostly a ret-con on my part to have consequences for that particular injury beyond just “his leg was broken then it got better,” just like I’m diverting from canon by showing Eva as having long-term consequences from the friggin slew of major injuries she incurs between #30, #35/Visser, and #45.  Where I am all for K.A. Applegate having the Animorphs themselves be able to morph off serious injuries — A. it works as a character device because the mental trauma is still there, and B. it works as a plot device because it explains why they’re so hard to kill — I do wish that she had touched on the physical as well as the mental aftermath of the injuries that the squishy non-morphing humans accrue during the war.  The myth that it is possible to “shrug off” a bullet wound or broken bone, especially if one is a heroically-presented hetero-masculine white male, is incredibly harmful in that it presents yet another emotional experience men and boys are not allowed to have.

So I included Tom having major short-term consequences from that near-drowning experience and minor long-term consequences.  Because it’s more realistic.  And because being realistic is occasionally really freaking important, when sci fi gets used to reinforce stereotypes about masculinity and normative (i.e. non-scarred) physical beauty. 

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

The Threat

Short opinion: I might have had empathy for David while reading #20, but that all disappeared real fast around the time Jake tells Ax that they need to start looking for Tobias not in the sky but dead on the ground.  

Long opinion:

This book has always struck me as being a study in military leadership.  We get relatively little introspection from Jake for once (and thank goodness; as much as I love that kid even I think he needs to lighten up on the self-loathing sometimes) because this is a book about how the Animorphs are doing something very right.  Specifically, they are operating exactly as a small military unit should—and it takes a clueless, selfish outsider in order to act as a foil and show just how friggin’ competent these child soldiers actually are.  A lot of that competence comes straight from the Animorphs’ absolute, unhesitating trust in their leader, to the point of literally being willing to die at his command.  David throws a pretty huge wrench in the works by simply being there with the team, and none of the Animorphs handle that challenge to Jake’s leadership particularly well.  Then again, considering how much of the plot of this book hinges on the Animorphs needing strong leadership just to stay alive, one can appreciate their disgust at David’s disobedience.  

Because Jake holds that team together.  Marco might tease him for his lack of science knowledge, Rachel might treat him like a little brother, Ax might enjoy winding him up with the whole “prince” thing, Tobias might happily poke fun at his bad grades, and Cassie might be quick to point out his lack of people skills, but they all respect the hell out of Jake.  Again and again in this book (and in the series as a whole) they prove that they literally trust him with their lives.  Sure, it helps that going into the war Cassie and Marco have both been friends with Jake for years while Rachel’s known him her whole life, Ax wants anyone who can tell him what to do, and Tobias has latched on like a barnacle learned that he can rely on Jake to help him out.  But Jake also earns that trust over the course of the war.  He goes into every battle with six Animorphs, and he comes out of every battle except the last one with six Animorphs (X).  He will deliberately refuse to ask his team to do anything he isn’t willing to do himself, and he will physically throw himself between the line of fire and any of his friends if he can.  

…so it’s patently ridiculous that David thinks he can win leadership over the Animorphs through biting people.  It seems almost silly to consider that David thinks Rachel and the others will seriously acknowledge his superiority as a direct result of him hurting someone they love.  And yet that exact trope is incredibly common in fantasy and sci fi.  Highlander, Pacific Rim, Dune, The Sword of Truth, X-Men, Spectrum, Babylon 5, Journey to Chaos, and like 400 other books and movies I don’t have space to list all portray male characters winning or attempting to win leadership roles (or infinitely worse, the respect of relatively passive female characters) through punching each other.  Technically speaking, David and Jake’s little catfight is a classic dominance battle… and Jake loses.  Badly.  Non-technically speaking, David never had a prayer of getting the Animorphs to respect him as much as they respect Jake pretty much no matter what he did.  

Because this whole book is all about showing the boundaries of Jake’s authority, which are far-reaching and close to absolute. When Ax says that it would be smarter for him to join Jake in following David into David’s bedroom, Jake insists on having Ax in the backyard and Ax goes to demorph without question.  During the opening scene, Jake asks Tobias first for clothes for David and then for a seagull, and Tobias runs off (flies off?) to go grab both immediately.  When the Animorphs first pop up inside the banquet hall pillar next to the yeerk pool, Jake asks Rachel to go into battle morph… and then asks her to demorph thirty seconds later.  She does both without grumbling.  When the seven of them are facing down the (apparent) army of hork-bajir controllers, Jake asks Marco to attack the thirty-odd controllers while alone and unarmed (pun intended) and Marco just says “you’d better be sure” before he goes ahead and does it (#21).  Cassie and Jake toss the issue of What to Do About David back and forth, but Cassie defers to Jake’s judgment.  When the seven of them are poised to grab the Russian prime minister and Jake suddenly says “Battle morphs! Now!” without a word of explanation, his narration notes “No one asked why. No one hesitated” as everyone frantically starts morphing (#21).  

However, Jake also repays that trust in spades.  His snap-judgment order to have the team go into battle morph saves their lives when otherwise Visser Three’s trap would have closed on them all.  He doesn’t get Marco killed because he’s right about the hologram within a hologram, and he also correctly calculates that having Ax demorphed during that final battle with David is more valuable than having him in harrier morph would be.  When asking for favors from Rachel and Tobias he says “please” and “thank you” and “sorry for the trouble,” and offers to repay the surf shop out of pocket so that Tobias or David won’t have to.  He freely admits that Cassie’s a better judge of character, Rachel is a better fighter, and Marco is a better strategist than him.  He verbally acknowledges Tobias’s skill at aerial fighting and Ax’s at blade fighting.  

More than that, he knows his team.  Not only does he take the time to study all five of his friends, but he also spends this entire book trying desperately to figure out what makes David tick.  He says, “I knew each of the others. Name any situation. I could tell you exactly how Cassie or Marco or Rachel or Tobias or even Ax would react. But David remained unknown. Unpredictable,” and he’s right (#21).  He moves the chess pieces around and around and around solving the dual problems of the world leaders’ conference and the seventh Animorph throughout this trilogy, and eventually figures out how to solve the leaders himself and how to move out of the way to let Cassie and Rachel solve David.  He knows that when the David situation needs a gentle touch to use Cassie, that when the Animorphs start dropping like flies Ax has to “get Rachel,” and that when it comes to attacking controllers with finesse he needs Marco.  He tells Cassie that “I’m just a moron when it comes to figuring people out,” but the truth is that, while he might not be able to do it as easily as Cassie does, he’s still got the necessary brain power (and empathy, for that matter) to figure people out just fine on his own if given enough time to do so.  

All of the moments when Jake making snap judgments—and the other five core Animorphs following those judgements—result in lives being saved also justify the fact that Jake is pretty harsh at several moments in this book.  He threatens David’s life after catching him breaking into the hotel room, and actually snaps at both Marco and Rachel when they try to ream David out for nearly betraying them.  He risks everyone’s lives by sneaking them into the world leaders’ summit, and he goes after David on the roof of the mall with the intention of killing David to avenge Tobias.  Jake is not anyone’s dad (as he reminds the team again and again) but he’s also not a mere “teacher or principal or whatever” the way David tries to make him out to be.  The Animorphs’ lives depend on them having a strong leader who gives intelligent orders and can expect them to be obeyed immediately without question.  David threatens the continued existence of the entire team by subverting that order.  

Again, if this was a different type of science fiction series, then David winning the fight against Jake would be enough to promote him automatically to being leader of the Animorphs.  If this was a very different type of story, then David winning the fight against Tobias would mean he’d get to be Rachel’s boyfriend.  K.A. Applegate shows that those kinds of gender roles are frankly ridiculous, because the qualities that make Jake the leader of this team have nothing whatsoever to do with his ability to punch or bite things.