Visser Three flapped his water wings.

I grinned a crocodile grin.

He came closer, closer, then he slowed and began to swell. Larger and larger he grew, like an overfilled balloon. And closer and closer he came.

Ten feet. . . five . . . two . . . twelve inches . . .

Close enough.

I jerked every muscle in my powerful crocodile body. My head thrust forward. My jaws opened wide.

And I bit down.

I definitely bit down.

Did you know a crocodile has the most powerful jaws in the animal kingdom? Did you know they can practically crush rocks with their jaws?

I clamped that long, toothy crocodile jaw down on the left wing of the Visser's javelin fish. And then . . .

POOOOMPFF!

SPWOOOOSH!

It was like biting into a water balloon. The inflated javelin fish exploded. All the water it had sucked in to fire its next spear went blasting out through the hole I made.

And that Lebtin javelin fish learned a whole new way to fly. It squirted wildly through the water, blasted up through the surface, arced through the air like a sick dolphin, and landed far away with a loud, satisfying splash.

And the whole time, we heard Visser Three's thought-speak voice crying, "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!"

I relaxed a little then, although relaxing just made me notice the pain in my tail. A dolphin came nosing up to me.

"Hey, it's me, Marco. I'm here to save the day!"

I actually laughed. "Just in time, Marco. Just in time."

"Allergy," Ax said. "You acquired some animal you're allergic to. It happens sometimes."

"This out-of-control morphing is an allergy? I have an allergy? To what?"

"What was the last animal you acquired?" Cassie asked. Then she answered her own question. "The crocodile. You must be allergic to crocodiles,"

We were in the safety of the woods out beyond Cassie's farm. It was a little area we went to fairly often for privacy. Ax needed to morph back to his own body. And Tobias . . . well, Tobias needed to hunt dinner before it got dark.

As we all talked, Tobias waited in an overhead

branch. We were on the edge of a small, grassy meadow. A meadow full of mice.

Tobias kept his laser vision focused on the tall grass of the meadow.

The others were all glaring at me. Except Cassie, of course, who was just shaking her head. She felt she'd made a mistake letting me keep my secret.

"You're saying because I acquired that crocodile I lost control of my morphing powers?"

"Not all control. Just some. It's . . . it's like when you humans suddenly make violent exhalations through your nostrils and shout, "Achoo!""

"Sneezing. You're saying I've been sneezing."

"Hah!" Tobias said. He opened his wings and swooped out across the grass, just a few feet above the ground. He flared suddenly, raked his talons forward, and for a few seconds disappeared from sight.

"And another mouse bites the dust," Marco commented.

"Yes, Rachel," Ax said. "You've been having an allergic reaction to the crocodile DNA."

"So what do I do? Is there some medicine I can take or something?"

"No medicine. At least none that humans could create. But there is a process. Something that happens naturally in these cases. At least it happens to Andalites. It's called hereth illint."

"That sounds poetic," Cassie said.

"A literal translation would be something like "burping DNA.""

"Now that's poetry," Marco said, laughing.

"Since we have no mouths we don't have phrases like "spitting out" or "vomiting up." Hereth is what we say instead."

Even Jake smiled. "How does Rachel do it? This process?" he asked Ax.

"The offending DNA will eventually be expelled from your system. You can't control when it happens. You just have to be careful, especially since this crocodile is a dangerous creature."

"Sounds easy enough," I said. "I'm always careful."

"It isn't easy. See, you basically have to morph the animal while you retain your own body. You have to create a whole, living animal out of the excess matter floating in Zero-space."

I looked at Ax. "Excuse me?"

"Until the hereth illint begins, you can control some of the symptoms by remaining very calm and unemotional. The out-of-control morphing in the water happened when you were upset or emotional."

I shrugged. "I was mad because that jerk Jeremy Jason McTraitor was betraying his fans. Not to mention his entire species, yeah."

"And you said a similar thing happened when

you were in Chapman's office, where you were afraid."

I nodded. "Uh-huh. I mean, not like afraid afraid. Just sort of nervous afraid."

"And the first time? When you morphed inside your house? What emotion were you feeling then?"

"Nothing." I kept my face blank.

"What were you doing when it started?" Jake asked me.

"I don't remember," I lied.

Cassie cocked an eyebrow at me. "Rachel, you were pulling up pictures of Jeremy Jason off the Internet."

"So?" I demanded. "That's not something emotional!"

"It was l-o-o-o-v-e," Marco crowed, drawing the word out. "The deadly, dangerous emotion of puppy love. Rachel was overcome by attraction! By desire! By intense, uncontrollable Tiger Beat passion! And it -"

He was interrupted by the fact that I tried to grab him and choke him.

But he dodged behind Ax.

"It turned her into a wild animal!" Marco yapped on. "Several wild animals, actually. She became the alligator of l-o-o-o-v-e!"

"It's crocodile," Jake said, smirking in a most un-Jakelike way.