Chapter Text
I should preface this with the fact that I’ve spent a few months or so trying to explain how Ax became a part of our group. Tom told you how it all started for us, but that isn’t how it started for Ax. I mean, actually it started for Ax before he’d even been born, I guess. I’ve talked with him a bit about the Andalite home world. He’s still kind of cagey about it which drives Marco insane, but I think that may be more about Ax’s inability to answer his questions. I mean, he actually is pretty good with electronics, I think. But lots of other details I feel like he didn’t really pay attention to. Plus I think he’s homesick. I’d be homesick if I was that far from home, with no idea when I’d see my people again. But in either case, I thought it was important for you to understand how Ax fits into all this. He’s a critical part of our team.
I'm Cassie, by the way. I guess you don't really know which of is writing, do you? Well, I'm Cassie, the one with the barn and bird poop. But like I've been trying to say, I don't want to talk about me here.
So here’s the thing. I’m going to cut out that ridiculous beginning section I wrote where I worry about my ability to write stories or help you understand at all what’s going on. Or all that talk about how we have to keep this war really secret. I mean, we’re being secret to survive. It actually kind of helps us for other people to know what’s going on. And I spent some 8000 words talking about what we’ve done, which is all useless. Rather than what we’ve done, I’m going to tell you who we are. Tom did an okay job at telling you about most of us. So I’ll just dedicate this to telling you about Ax.
Finding Ax was this absolutely ridiculous new age-y sounding mission of weirdness. It involved “visions”. Which was apparently just thought speech pushed over a long distance, but still. Telling you the details won’t really make much of a difference. The short story is that Ax - Aximili-Esgarouth-Isthill is his full name, though don’t trust me on the spelling - was in the dome of an Andalite dome ship. The dome was actually really cool. It was a giant park of the Andalite home world. But they detached it in battle, and it sank way out in the ocean, and we went to find him and bring him back to shore and join our fight. The rest of the Andalite ships were destroyed, according to Ax. Ax is something they call an “aristh”, like a cadet or something. He basically ranked lowest on the ship, and he was the only aristh on the ship. Because he was a kid, really. I’m pretty sure he’s similar in age to us. Or probably Tom, actually. Who knows. The way he talks about it, it sounds like he was only on that ship to Earth because his brother was. Which makes sense - why send cadets out that far, when they knew it’d be a battle, and an aristh couldn’t fight? When they knew arisths were just kids?
That’s what really kills me. Ax lost everyone on that ship, not just his brother. All the teachers who were training him, and the highest officers he respected. He’s been left with Tom as his ‘prince’, which is what they call a leading officer, I guess. We make jokes about it, but Ax was pretty serious then. Now he’s picked up some snark (I accuse Marco on this), and it’s basically the best thing ever now. The snark, not the tragic deaths. But even so, I’m really happy Ax is here with us. He’s not just here to help us fight; he’s my friend. Our friend. And he and his culture are really great and you should know more about it.