This is awesome! Twilight of the Animorphs as of publication of this chapter has 191 views, 2 reviews, and 1 follower! Thank you all so much for your attention! This chapter has been edited faithfully by flaks314 to make this reading experience the most faithful to how the books read. Now, enjoy a chapter of sweet but awkward teenage romance!

An Uncomfortable Road

"Hey Jake," Cassie said as she walked to us. Holding one of her hands behind her back. I was silent for a moment, then I couched to break the awkwardness.

"Hey Cassie, how have you been?"

"I'm fine, how are you?"

"Good," was all I managed to say.

Awkward silence permeated the air.

Rachel coughed into her hand to try to break the silence. Marco just scratched the back of his head and looked away.

"So, I… I brought you this," Cassie eventually said, presenting the sunflower she'd been hiding behind her back to me. A few of its petals were missing and the head was leaning slightly to the side because the stem was partly broken.

"Thank you," I said while taking it. I looked into Cassie's eyes, and I saw everything I needed to know. She actually likes me. I started to think that maybe I should be thankful for Rachel playing matchmaker. I looked to Rachel and nodded my thanks, hoping it properly conveyed what I was feeling. My armpits were sweaty, my breathing had gotten faster, I was furling and unfurling my fingers. I turned to Cassie, shoved aside all of my nervousness, and came to the conclusion that we were a match made in Heaven, I opened my mouth to speak…

… then closed it as the words died in my brain. I repeated this every few seconds, sometimes the words dying on my lips. After a time that seemed like forever, I spoke up.

"Thank you…" was all I could manage to say, then I blushed.

"So, I… I brought you this," Cassie eventually said, and presented what she'd been hiding behind her back. I took it from her and said "thank you" without thinking, then stared at it.

It was a sunflower. The head was leaning slightly to the side because the stem was partly broken, and a few of its petals were missing. But never mind all that. She just gave me a flower? Did Rachel put her up to this? Or… could it be that she actually likes me back?

I looked back up to her. She was looking down at the flower as well now. She was blushing pretty obviously, but was it because the flower looked a lot better before she'd nervously pressed it against her back for a few minutes, or because she was just doing all this for Rachel?

I opened my mouth to say something helpful, but nothing came out for what seemed like forever.

"Thank you," I eventually heard myself say. Again.

What?! That's all you could manage?!

"O-oh, good, th-that's good!" Cassie said as she turned away.

"Ay yi yi, that was disappointing," Marco said, scratching his head.

"Well, the flower was sweet. But let's do it. We're burning sunshine!" Rachel said as she ran off toward the hiking trail.

We walked up the hill that was past the stairs to the pool, then continued along an overgrown trail that went further up the mountain. It was pretty clear from the state of it that no one had been there for a very long time. And it wouldn't exactly have been an easy path even in its prime.

"Man, these hills are killing my feet!" Marco panted, wiping the sweat off of his brow. "I like hiking, but seriously, can we walk on a flatter path?"

"Yeah," Rachel said. "I agree with Marco for once, these hills are seriously hard on my ankles! Any ideas Cass?"

"Depends on how much flatter you want it," Cassie asked. "I think there's some more even ground downhill, but not much less steep than this. I know for sure that there's a trail higher up that's almost even."

"Are you kidding Cassie? I want it as flat as how flat-earthers think the world is! I want it as flat as Coke that's been shaken up for 10,000 years, I want it as flat as Wilee Coyote when he hits the ground! Flat as 1-dimensional pancakes!"

"Marco?" I said to him, turning behind to talk to him, he stopped.

"…Polo," he responded after hesitating, he was chuckling and wearing a wide smile.

"I think that's enough."

"Okay, let's take the top path, sooner the better!" Marco said as he walked uphill.

As Cassie walked uphill she went past me, her hand brushed up against mine. In an instant, partly from regretting my fumble with my words earlier, I grabbed her hand.

Cassie looked at me and began to blush. I must have been blushing right back at her, because I could feel my heart pounding in my head. Then she turned away and started walking uphill, pulling me along with her. I briefly looked back at Rachel, who was wearing this wide and stupid grin, was giving me two thumbs up, and was nodding yes eagerly and rapidly.

17 minutes later

"This is much better!" Marco said as he held his arms out, absorbing the now brightly burning sunshine. "Cassie, you know your way around so much of the land no matter how little time you spend in it! It's amazing, you're like…like…Terra! Greek Goddess of the Earth!"

"Thanks Marco! Glad to be of service!" Cassie said with a smile, while we were still holding hands.

It's so weird. Now that I'm doing it, I'm sort of used to it, like it's not a big deal. Technically this is our first date!

"Hey Marc?" I said uneasily.

"No," he said in a very abrupt voice. My eyes widened out of shock before realizing that he was messing with me.

"Now don't be rude, Marco," Rachel called out from behind as I chuckled.

"Okay, what's on your mind, J-man?"

"I think you meant Gaia? Terra's the Roman Earth Mother."

"Bah, Roman gods are just foreign fanfictions of the Greek ones. So they're the same dirt mommy!"

I heard Rachel quietly laughing in the background. I looked behind to see her hand over her mouth. "Unbelievable," I heard my cousin whisper.

"Hey Rachel, for real though, if you were a Greek Goddess, which one would you be?" Marco asked.

Rachel paused before speaking very curtly. "Not Hera."

"What?" Cassie asked, "why not? Isn't she the queen of the gods?"

"Yeah, but if you remember, a lot of the Greek gods were actually petty, cruel, and straight up abused humanity in almost all of their myths," Rachel clarified.

"Ah," Cassie said.

"But for real, I think I'd be Artemis."

"The chaste Goddess of hunting?" Marco said with a smile. "The hunting part I get, killing things seem to be your forte with how vicious you can be, but the chastity part?"

"Artemis' heart only belonged to one person, a guy named Orion. After he was gone, killed by Gaia, Artemis never looked for another."

"So… where's your Orion?" I asked, curious.

"I haven't found him yet," Rachel said softly.

Marco then grinned, his lip quivered before saying out loud. "Bet you 50 bucks that'll only happen when Rachel runs out of Spice Girls."

"Marco!" Rachel shouted, I looked behind to see her running up to us with a furious expression on her face, ready to exact justice.

"Wait, WAIT NO! I'M SORRY!" Marco frantically turned around, putting his hands between himself and Rachel. "I know you're not gay, I was just kidding!"

"Prove it!"

"You're not gay! You're not gay for the Spice Girls, I promise! I promise I was just joking!"

"And…?" Rachel prodded him.

"You're not gay for Lady Gaga either! Or Jennifer Hewitt, Julia Stiles, Destiny's Child, or Katie Holmes!"

Good, this isn't turning violent.

"And?" Rachel prodded him further.

"You're definitely gay for Hillary Clinton though," Marco said with a wry smile.

Oh no.

"OH, THAT'S IT! IT'S ON!" Nothing could stop Rachel from taking a swing at Marco, but he dodged before her punch hit his face. It took both me and Cassie to keep her off of him. We only needed to do it for a moment, then Rachel calmed down and stopped struggling.

"Okay, I'm sorry, I really am. No hard feelings, right?" Marco said as he walked back to the rest of the group to hold out his hand to Rachel.

Rachel crossed her arms, not paying attention to him.

"Hey, don't leave me hanging."

Rachel shook her head and smiled, said, "all right, fine," and shook Marco's hand.

"Okay, so, now that that's out of the way… Are we there yet?" Marco asked Cassie.

"No, we still have a little way to go, but we're close."

"Are we there yet?" Marco repeated as the path turned back toward the mountain, shading us from the sun.

"NO!" Rachel said vehemently. "No, no… Marco, please don't. God, you're just as annoying as the Helmacrons at times!" Rachel said.

The Helmacron invasion was the least serious of all the alien menaces. They tried to take over the world, but they weren't really a problem because… well. They have egos bigger than Mt. Everest, but they're actually the size of a grain of sand. Their spaceships are the size of toys. During their attempts at invasion, they hijacked TV channels worldwide and broadcasted their intentions for all the world to hear in screeching, high-pitched; make-you-kill-yourself-with-a-teaspoon annoying glory.

When they appear they make it obvious, but we still try to eradicate them as quickly as possible. Not because they're actually a threat but because they are not tolerable at all! But I don't really agree with responding so extremely. The record for the fastest incursion dispatched is held by Soviet Russia, 2 minutes. One part of me feels bad for them, another part of me finds it darkly funny.

"Hey guys, seriously though," Marco said with a tone that was actually serious. "Have any of you guys realized that all the aliens have just gone quiet for no reason? They're just… dug in."

"What?" Rachel said. "Are you for real?"

"Yeah," I said, thinking. "Yeah, now that you've mentioned it, there hasn't been a single news report of any alien offensive, anywhere on the globe, for a week now."

"Huh. You're right, there hasn't been a single Nartec sighting in months either," Rachel said, referencing the amphibious aliens who have been trying to conquer the US West Coast. "They just declared a truce, left the cities and vanished into the oceans, never to be seen again."

"It gets even weirder. Don't tell anyone this, but you know how my Dad's working with the military, right?"

"Yeah, and?" Rachel said.

"Well, he is in the military. He's not a soldier, obviously, but the top-secret part of his work is that… is that he's the leading global expert on Z-space communication's technology."

"Wait, what?!" I said in shock.

"Hold up…" Rachel said, "You mean to tell me that your Dad's ETCS? Are you telling me that he's monitoring alien signals all over the planet?"

ETCS, short for Extraterrestrial Counter-Strike Group, is the international organization dedicated to repelling alien incursions all over the planet. After the Cold War ended, Russia and a lot of the Soviet-allied countries of Earth joined.

"He's ETS, ET Surveillance, to be specific. But yeah, Dad's a part of ETCS. He's actually a high ranking ETS dude, bona fide brass in his own field. The ETS' main mission is to reverse engineer alien communication's technology, and listen in on the invader's chatter," Marco explained.

"They've gone completely silent. No Z-Space chatter anywhere on the planet!" he continued, motioning with his hands. "They've been on mute for two weeks now."

"Two weeks?" I said in surprise. "Really?"

"Wait," Cassie said. "If they've been holed up for a week now, how come you know about it? We've been at this camp for eight days?"

That is a good point.

"Uh, I," Marco stuttered for a moment. "I snuck into one of the guidance councillor's buildings, to leave a funny note. One of them had a radio tuned on to the news, there was all sorts of speculation about it."

"So that's what you got whipped beaten and flogged for?" Rachel said, referring to the time Marco had to do a lot of cleaning when he got caught.

"Hey, keep in mind I was never caught!"

"Just like how nobody's been catching alien radiowaves?" Cassie said.

"All right, this is getting really creepy!" Rachel said. "They're obviously responding to something. Something's coming that made them go silent. You know how all the animals go silent before a tornado or earthquake hits, right? Maybe they're like, fleeing a natural disaster?"

"Probably some good guy aliens are coming to save the day?" I proposed, deciding to take a page out of Cassie's book.

"Dad and his coworkers think it might be an invader worse than what we've seen," Marco said darkly. "The Nartec, Helmacrons, and the rest of them might just be small fish in a pond. I think they've gone silent because a-"

"Hey guys?" Cassie interrupted us softly. "We're here."

Who, and there it is, that concludes An Uncomfortable Road. Yeah, in this version the Nartec are aliens because of a story idea that I got involving the Skrit'Na. Don't worry though, I am not doing them 100% faithful to how they were in the books, consider this a sort of...ah, fanfiction redemption. Although if the merfolk are really that intolerable, I'll just edit them out, just tell me in the comments. And so, on the next chapter, we finally encounter Elfangor himself!

~ To flaks314: I'm sorry that I changed the chapter's name to "An Uncomfortable Road," but since the titular "Dying Star" wasn't in this chapter, I found that the current chapter name suited the chapter better. Thanks for reading to the end of this, farewell and 'till we meet again!

~ To Reddit user u/BPRoberts for spotting some mistakes that were in this chapter when published.