Chapter Text
Cassie sat in the living room of the house, finishing her latest project. Together with Ax, she had started to introduce human culture to all interested Andalites. She did not think that it would be that many, but since she had come here, she had held classes for what seemed to be the entire planet. All of them, especially the ones that were planning to go sightseeing on Earth, or even work there, had asked her hundreds of questions, half of which she could not even answer.
She and Melissa, her assistant, were the only ones staying on the planet at the moment. Rachel, Jake and Marco were on a highly secret mission with Alloran and Arbron, Tobias was visiting Loren and Elfangor, who chose to stay on Earth after the war. Ax and Tom had accompanied a few Andalite diplomats to Leera in order to make a new trade agreement. No one knew when they would be back.
She had just put her note pad down, when the long-distance communication unit suddenly activated. On the screen was Jake´s face, looking angry at someone in the background, she assumed it was Marco, just having made another of his stupid jokes. Then there was the sound of a body falling to the ground, which made Cassie smile, she had heard Rachel knock Marco out too many times to not recognize it, even when she did not see it.
Jake visibly relaxed and stepped aside a bit, allowing Rachel to stand beside him. Then he looked at her and said: "Hi Cassie. Your classes are going well, I assume? We have finished the job earlier than we thought, we will be back tomorrow. I have to go now, Alloran is expecting me for my final report. I love you."
The screen went dark before she could reply anything, but at least she knew that he would be back sooner.
Ten minutes later she walked out the door with her shopping bag, ready to head to the supermarket owned by a former controller and a good friend of her and Jake. Due to relatively frequent flights from Earth it was no problem to get everything for the humans living here. Cassie quickly found everything she needed for the surprise meal she was planning. As there was no money on the Andalite homeworld, she would invite Alice to dinner as soon as Jake was back, like she always did.
On her way back she almost ran into Melissa and nearly dropped the eggs and the milk trying to get out of the way. Only Melissa´s fast reflexes avoided the accident. Her friend handed the things back and followed Cassie to her house to prevent any more accidents. They had just put everything in the fridge when they heard shouting from outside. They looked out the nearest window and saw a dome ship about two hundred meters away. For a moment it just seemed to hang there, then it exploded.
The clearing of the wreckage took the rest of the day. The remains of the bodies were buried in anonymous graves, there was not enough left to tell who had died. Cassie and Melissa were sad about the loss of life, but at the same time they felt guilty for hoping that their friends had not been aboard that ship.