Please Note: Any resemblance to reality is purely accidental and unintentional. Any resemblance to previous story lines is also unintentional but unavoidable, given the number of Animorph books and fanfics out there. (I can't read them all!) The Animorphs, and all references to them, belong to K. A. Applegate. The words that come from my head belong to me.

Rated PG-13for references to natural human development…

This story takes place several years into the Yeerk Invasion and follows the books at least as far as 'The Sickness.' Slight variances may occur after that book.

Second Star to the Right: a short story about the possible consequences of morphing…

Jake

It took us a while to realize it.

I mean, when every day might be your last…when every friend you make might be an enemy in disguise…these things tend to age you, prematurely. So for a very long time, all of us actually looked older then our age. Our faces creased in ways that children's faces should never crease. Our eyes took on haunted wisdom. Our movements became alert and wary. But as the years passed it became apparent that something was very wrong.

You see, on the inside we were shriveling up, aging before our time.

But on the outside, we weren't aging at all.

Rachel

I think we girls probably noticed it first. Or at least I know I noticed it before the boys did. After all, I was probably the only girl my age to have to body of a teen supermodel and yet none of the other…well, shall we say 'problems' that come with a woman's body. As the years went by and I still showed no sign of…that…my mother became increasingly concerned. Trips to the family doctor became more frequent and I had to endure an agonizing three weeks of cancer testing, all the while sweating bullets for fear that somehow the tests would reveal the extra DNA swimming around inside of me. Fortunately, the tests came back negative for both cancer and grizzly bear.

Finally the puzzled physicians concluded that there was nothing physically wrong with my body, and told my mother that my 'retarded development' was likely due to psychological factors; their favorite suggestion, as I recall, was 'emotional stress and/or substance abuse…'

What substance they were thinking of was never defined within my hearing.

Marco

Yes, the universe is out to get me.

Rachel gets stuck half-way through puberty…she ends up the equivalent of a goddess incarnate. Me? I got stuck with a voice that tends to crack too much and a 5'1' stature that all the wishing in the world won't change.

It seems odd, now, that we never considered the side effects of morphing. We were always so worried about where our mass went when we morphed. Always so grateful when we morphed out of dying bodies into our own, genetically reconstructed forms. We never stopped to think about why our battle morphs never showed any sign of aging. Never stopped to think why we could log hundreds of hours of use into a body and never have it show any signs of wear.

I suppose, though, that it was to be expected. After all, the Andilite morphing technology was never developed with the human physiology in mind. It's rather like trying to sit in a chair designed for a Gedd or a Hork-Bajir. It is possible, but that is no guarantee you'll be comfortable…

Tobias

It wasn't just that our bodies weren't maturing. After all, I barely use my own body. So long as it was functional (and the body that Rachel had fallen in love with) I was content. Only…our physical bodies were not the only things affected by our sudden transformations.

Although the war against the Yeerks was forging our thoughts into bitter wisdom, our emotions and hormones remained that of young teenagers. All of us, Rachel, Jake, Cassie, Marco, and myself, were doomed to the eternal romance of young love and teenage uncertainty…

Immortal warriors. I often wonder if my father had foreseen this outcome. Would he have been so quick to give us the ability to morph had he known the consequences?

Cassie

The emotional burden of a teenager is remarkable. The emotional burden of a teenager involved in war is even more so. But for most humans, the turmoil and intense mood swings are at least temporary.

I was incredibly lucky, that night in the construction site. Of all the Animorphs, I was the only one who had passed through most of the horrors of puberty before a chance encounter with alien technology suspended my biological clock. Although I still had some residual hormones messing up my system, I was what a doctor would consider 'fully developed.'

The wild, unpredictable emotions of a teenager were less of a problem for me than they were for my friends. This often made me appear calm and collected, more mature than the others. But it wasn't anything to do with my personality. It was just a lucky chance—a biological fluke.

So like an outsider, I watched as the extended puberty and the war began to take their toll on my friends.

I watched as Rachel spun further and further out of control, hovering on the edge of sanity. I held her during the rare moments she cried into my shoulder, frightened of what she was becoming.

I watched as Tobias, who had seemed to emerge from a shell at first, eager and earnest, slowly sank away, hiding emotions he could no longer handle underneath his hawk-like mind.

I watched as Marco changed from a handsome guy with a ready laugh and an obsession with all things geeky to a hardened, cynical warrior with severe emotional issues.

I watched as Jake, my Jake, the one who I had come to love and trust even before the whole Yeerk war forced us together, became an entirely different person. One whom I could not longer trust. One whom I still don't know if I can love.

Were all of these things the result of our immortality? Or were they just a result of the war? I will probably never know.

But I watched my friends, and felt part of my own heart die with each minute change…

Ax

Seerrow's Kindness. Time and time again the ultimate law of the Andilite people has been broken for the best of reasons, only to bring about more sorrow and pain. I do not know why, exactly, my brother chose to forget this. He was desperate, I know, and seeing Loren's child—Tobias, my nephew—probably gave him false hope. But in truth, he has no excuse.

Many objected on the home world when I was initiated to the rank of artisth. They felt that I was too young, too immature; after all, I hadn't even passed through the dangerous yamputh fever that marks the final stages of puberty in the Andilite life cycle. But I was physically mature. I still had a lot of filling out to do, but I was the size of an adult. When War Prince Elfangor added a forceful request to those already asking that his younger brother be morph-capable for his first mission, all objections were silenced.

So Elfangor knew what he was condemning the children to, that fateful night. His battle to grant me morph-capability was still fresh in his mind. And yet he willingly chose to break the law of Seerrow's Kindness. Willingly chose to destroy these five children's lives.

There is a reason that the morphing technology is only used by physically mature Andilites. So long as the Animorphs continue to morph, they will continue to be regenerated at a certain age. So long as they are forced to fight, they will remain separated in time from their families and friends…young forever.

---

…uh, yeah. Apologies for any utter weirdness, it's currently three o'clock in the morning. Critiques and comments welcome; I know there are many ways to improve this, and I would appreciate feedback. I'm still trying to get used to prose…it requires way more concentration than poetry, and you can probably tell that I based the format of the story on a poetic concept rather than a normal story format. I do have an idea for an actual story based on this short, if anyone is interested…

PS—for anyone who has actually read my other, seemingly abandoned fic "The Unavoidable"; sorry! A severe case of writers block coupled with one hellish week of exams threw me off of my game…but the next chapter is almost ready…