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"School's out in like a week, and after that we can pretty much collect any cheap tickets to Forks we like. Are you three going to have trouble accompanying us?"

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"Not at all," says Ethan.

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"I'll have to coax Mother a bit, but it shouldn't be too hard," says Robin.

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Trouble just shrugs.

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"The flight is longer than two hours, if you were thinking of hitchhiking in morph and pretending to have been somewhere else later instead of getting tickets and permission. Actually on reflection hitching might be a good idea regardless - put you in cargo, or on our persons to run to the bathroom every hour and a half... Then the Yeerks don't see an unusually large contingent going to visit Charlie followed by his accidental death. I don't know how much his Yeerk reports on his personal affairs to whatever organizational structure they have under the Visser, but it might be non-zero, they might notice that. Robin's convincing as an Andi-tagalong, I could maybe sell the Yeerk on Trouble too, but I don't think Ethan has ever been mentioned to Charlie at all and keeping the party small seems like the thing to do. So, Robin, ask your mom, Trouble and Ethan - make whatever excuses suit to be not-home, and wait for Robin's results on bug morphs."

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"Sure thing," says Trouble.

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Ethan nods.

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"Busy day for me tomorrow," laughs Robin. "I'll be looking up everything."

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"Depending on the timing for the flight up, it might be a good idea to first follow local known controllers in bug and/or stealth-bird morphs. See if we can find where they're getting fed, learn what we can about the organizational structure and their plans, see who's loitering around so we can expand our list if we recognize anybody, see if there are obvious targets for sabotage."

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"Ooh. Sabotage."

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"Probably not the exciting loud kind of sabotage, at least until and unless our cover is already blown. More like fizzling the electronics in their ray generator."

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"That can be just as much fun."

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"Personally, I prefer blowing shit up," says Trouble.

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"Please do not blow shit up without consensus. If one of us gets caught it will be relatively easy to find the others even if they don't stick a Yeerk in you."

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"Ruin all my fun," says Trouble.

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"I know you and being told to do stuff have a kind of difficult relationship. I know you could have figured out that getting caught is bad without being told. Can you understand that I don't want to bet all our lives on my ability to figure out what you have and have not figured out? Do I need to apply complex problem-solving to 'how to communicate about alien-related operations to Trouble without setting him off' or can you work with me sometimes telling you stuff? That's an honest question - we aren't Marines or something, we aren't trained, there is not an actual chain of command here, if I have to do something complicated and weird to make the five of us work functionally I will figure out something complicated and weird, but every minute I spend making sure we don't self-destruct is a minute I can't spend figuring out things about aliens or experimenting with morphing or keeping up appearances for the outside world."
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Trouble sighs.

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"Who appointed you Chairman of the Animorphs?" inquires Ethan.

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"Huh? I'm not even - I haven't been ordering people around. I said 'consensus' a minute ago, I said there's no chain of command."

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"Ani-morphs," says Andi. "Cute. I vote Bella for Chairperson of the Animorphs."

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"I abstain," says Ethan. "Look, I said Chairman, not General. You're not giving orders but you are acting rather as though the entire success or failure of this ridiculous operation is your, personal problem, to you all the minutiae of administration, to you all the cat-herding, to you all the responsibility for making sure Trouble doesn't morph into a complete idiot and betray us all. Not that I'm volunteering, you understand."

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"Bella thinks everything is her personal problem," says Andi.

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"...That's not far wrong, anyway. If something bad is going on I can either try to fix it or I can figure it's someone else's problem. The second option might work sometimes, I'm willing to delegate if people are willing to be delegated to and I can expect that to actually lead to the delegated thing getting done, but by default given tools and a problem I will work on the problem. Not because anyone assigned me the problem, but because if I don't solve it then it may not get solved. If someone else wants the job - if someone else could do the job better - I will hand it over."

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"I volunteer to keep Ethan from betraying us all," says Robin.

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"And abandon you to the brain slugs? I would never."

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