- Narrator: Cassie
A mission gone wrong leaves Cassie stranded in the Australian Outback.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Cassie only intended to stun the second Hork-Bajir Controller hunting her in the plane, but she accidentally flipped a setting on the Dracon beam she stole, causing the Hork-Bajir and Yeerk to get vaporized.
- Auto Cannibalism: The first Taxxon that Cassie kills as a kangaroo tries eating its own spilled guts even as other Taxxon-Controllers swarm to devour it.
- Battle Boomerang: Yami explains to Cassie the difference between returning and non-returning boomerangs. The former are used for games, and the latter for hunting. Non-returning boomerangs are fetched by the dogs that accompany the hunters.
- Big Damn Heroes: Lourdes sneaks into the Blade ship to find Cassie when it lands in Australia. Thanks to her many Chee abilities, Cassie gets home safe and sound.
- Cold Open: The book opens with Cassie searching the airport for a transport carrying the wreckage of a Bug fighter.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Ax has to fight the Controllers in the airport as a cheetah, as an Andalite seen by normal humans would cause too much of a stir. He keeps trying to flick the cheetah's tail at his enemy, commenting that it's useless as a weapon.
- Deus ex Machina: The battle of the Yeerks versus Cassie and the Aboriginal tribe is halted before Visser Three can scorch the Earth thanks to two commercial airplanes that fly by, causing Visser Three to retreat before the Yeerks are exposed to the rest of the world.
- Drives Like Crazy: Marco once again crashes a car. And when Cassie tries her hand at driving a getaway vehicle, she does no better.Cassie's narration: If I got out of there alive, I’d never again give Marco a hard time about his driving. He was Jeff Gordon compared to me.
- Dung Fu: Cassie aggravates some human-Controllers by pooping on them as a seagull, causing them to fire wildly into the air and convincing the normal human authorities that they're a threat.
- Hypocrite: The human-Controller that Cassie confronts in the plane tries calling out the Andalite bandit for hiding in the body of a child, despite all the actual children that the Yeerks are using as hosts.
- Foreign Queasine: Yami's family serves Cassie a plate of witchetty grub. The larvae look too much like tiny Taxxons for Cassie to be comfortable eating them.
- Heroic BSoD: Jake spent the week that Cassie was missing searching the city like a man possessed.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Cassie pretends to be one of the frozen passengers on the plane when the Yeerks begin searching it. Unfortunately, the human-Controller suspects she'd try this, so they start using low power Dracon beams on the passengers to see who is capable of reacting to the pain.
- Lured into a Trap: Yami explains that kangaroos kill dingoes and dogs by being chased into the water, then holding them down and drowning them. The wild boomers repeat this tactic on the Taxxon-Controllers chasing them to great effect.
- Kangaroos Represent Australia: Being stranded in Australia and all, it's only natural that Cassie acquires a red kangaroo to roam the Outback.
- Madness Mantra: According to Tobias, the only coherent thing Jake could say while Cassie was missing was "I have to FIND HER."
- Mêlée à Trois: The Animorphs find themselves under fire from human-Controllers and the Marines they're trying to save, who are also fighting the Controllers.
- The Paralyzer: Cassie weaponizes the acquiring trance to steal a Dracon beam from a Hork-Bajir Controller.
- Partial Transformation: While running through the airport, Cassie stays in a humanoid mid-seagull morph to drive a tram and not be recognized as a human by any Controllers who can see her.
- Preferable Impersonator: Cassie is annoyed that Erek got way better grades than she normally does while filling in for her, as now her parents want her enrolled in the school's advanced classes.
- Roadside Surgery: Yami's grandfather gets an infected leg from a piece of Bug fighter shrapnel, and no means to reach a hospital. Cassie puts her medical knowledge and the new Hork-Bajir morph she acquired to amputate the leg.
- Rock Beats Laser: Yami comes back to save Cassie with the rest of the Aboriginal hunters, armed with boomerangs. The Yeerks are Hork Bajir and Taxxon-Controllers armed with Dracon beams. The humans win, though mostly because Visser Three retreats when a commercial airplane flies too close to the battle.
- Shadow of Impending Doom: Once Cassie is done amputating Yami's grandfather's leg, the shadow of the Blade ship falls over the village.
- Tractor Beam: The Yeerks use one on the plane in flight, freezing all the passengers in bio-stasis. Cassie avoid being frozen by means of being under material that casts a shadow in the tractor beam.
- Wrong Assumption: Cassie theorizes that the plane tags labeled SYD mean South Dakota. It's only after she lands that she realizes it was actually Sydney, Australia.
