"This place is spooky."

"The alternative is walking for half an hour. Although I'd walk that far for those poppers, they were about fifteen million times better than the outside of that place suggests."

Trouble beams.

"Our boy Trouble is a connoiseur of the delicious yet suspicious," says Ethan.

"Maybe we should've got a to-go box. They're probably not as good leftover, but still."

"Ooh. But I wanna go home, I'm kind of tired. Next time Mom can give us a ride."

"There should definitely be a next time," asserts Robin, hopping casually over a fallen girder.

"...The hell is that?" says Robin, staring.

"Hmm?" asks Bella, carefully picking her way around a gravel heap.

"Holy shit, hide," Bella says.

Andi dives behind a pile of sand.

Robin ducks into the building frame next to her, just behind the ten-foot vertical slab of concrete that is its only solid wall. She drags Ethan with her.

"Damaged but no bullet holes," Bella says. She's hiding with Andi, and Ethan and Robin might just be able to hear her too. "Not Earth-weapon damage. Aliens aren't all friends? Don't know which kind this is though..."

"That looks nasty," breathes Trouble, somewhat enviously.

"I'm sorry," says Trouble.

&ltWill your friends come out? I will not harm them,> the alien says. <I bring a warning.>

...Trouble glances back at said friends. He can't see any of them.

Ethan follows.

Andi goes after none of them are immediately vaporized.

Bella follows, clutching her sister's hand, maybe for balance.

"Talk about pod people," mutters Trouble. "So what are you warning us for? How do we know who to spill to? A bunch of kids aren't gonna stop an alien invasion by themselves."

<I...> The alien turns all four eyes towards Trouble again, even as the others approach. <I may be able to give you some small advantage. It may help. If you go into my ship you will find a blue box, very plain.>

"How many Yeerks are there? How do you understand English? How can we identify Controllers if we're not sure? Can we get Yeerks out of people? What about the other aliens with all the blades? Are there more of you coming to help? What powers can you give us?"

"Going," says Trouble. He heads into the ship to look for the box.

<There are many millions of Yeerks. And they can breed quickly when there are hosts for them. On this planet - I do not know, but tens of thousands, at least. Controllers can mimic their hosts perfectly if they wish, but Yeerks must leave their hosts once every -> He pauses to make some kind of calculation. <Three Earth days, to go into a Yeerk pool and feed on Kandrona rays, from their home sun or an engineered duplicate. Longer than that and they begin to starve.> He pauses again, main eyes shutting briefly, perhaps in pain. <If you have seen a bladed alien that was not my kind it was probably a Hork-Bajir. They are peaceful of themselves, but their world fell years ago and are now all infested by Yeerks. More Andalites like myself may come to help here but I know not when. And -> He holds his hand out for the blue box.

Trouble hands it over.

<I can, if you are willing -> His stalk eyes crane upward, scan the sky. <I can give you the power to morph. Any animal you can touch and concentrate on will be yours to become. The Yeerks do not have this technology. There are limits, but it may help you.>

"If you can do that why don't you turn into something that isn't burned - does that not work? -"

<It does work. I do not have the strength to morph in this condition; I am dying. Will you take the power?>

"Power's good, let's take power, how does this box work?"

<Each of you, place one of your hands on one of the sides of the box. Do not be afraid.>

Bella plants her hand.

Andi follows.

Trouble does it about the same time as Bella.

Robin and Ethan are last, on adjacent sides.

"I can't - run," Bella murmurs, taking the box and handing it to Andi, "I fall -"

<You cannot be here when they land - they are already narrowing their search - acquire one of your friends, if they can run where you cannot,> suggests the Andalite, collapsing ungracefully, legs folded under himself.

Trouble crouches down beside him, concerned but helpless.

Twins' hands clasp each other tighter. "I just concentrate on her...?"

Andi's eyelashes flutter.

- changes.

<You must run, now. Hide, and better than you did from me. They must not catch you, and they are coming.>

Ethan pulls Robin away from the group and starts running.

Robin follows his lead.

The twins, distinguishable now only by outfit, bolt. They find a concrete wall with small holes in it, presumably intended for wiring or plumbing, so they can still see what's going on.

"Well, she believes in aliens," he says, grinning.

"Can I—" says Trouble, putting his hand over the Andalite's hand on his face.

<You have seen the Hork-Bajir. They are the Yeerks' shock troops. The Taxxons are the long creatures with the numerous legs; they are almost exclusively voluntary Controllers, motivated by promises of food. Always hungry, often cannibals. Excellent reflexes.>

Last of all, an Andalite steps out of the ship.

<That is the only Andalite who has ever been taken alive by the Yeerks. The only Andalite-Controller. Visser Three.>

<Your Dome ship has been destroyed, Prince Elfangor,> the Visser continues. <I watched it burn as it fell into the atmosphere of this world.>

<There will be others,> Elfangor replies.

<They will be too late,> Visser Three says dismissively. <By the time they arrive, this world will be mine. My personal gift to the Council of Thirteen. The Yeerk Empire's greatest conquest. And then I'll be Visser One.>

<Humans are many,> says Visser Three, stalking closer to Elfangor. <Many and weak. Billions of bodies, waiting in helpless ignorance for the Yeerks who will control them. We'll have to build a thousand new Yeerk pools just to infest them all. With this many hosts, we can spread throughout the universe. Unstoppable! Glorious!>

Elfangor stands up. Slowly, with difficulty, but he stands.

<I promise you this, Elfangor,> the Visser continues silkily. <When we have this planet, when we move against your homeworld with our fresh army of human-Controllers, I will personally hunt down your family. I will personally oversee the placement of my most faithful lieutenants in their heads. And I will require detailed reports on how their minds scream when they try and fail to resist.>

Elfangor's tail flashes forward. The motion is almost too swift to see, but it's illuminated with a sudden light-flash from the tail of his ship, which fires at one of the small Yeerk fighters and obliterates it.

Elfangor cannot restrain a generally-broadcast cry of pain, or fear, or despair - but his tail never stills once it's freed; he slashes at the monster that Visser Three has turned into.

The twins flinch simultaneously.

The twins are holding each other's hands so tightly their knuckles are white.

He crosses the open space, stopping next to the warped gravel to put his hand in a dark stain on the ground. Whatever he's doing there takes him a full few seconds, but then he gets up and continues toward the twins.

"Shit, sounds good to me," says Trouble, wiping his hand on his pants.

- turns back.

"Yeah," says Trouble. "Turns out you can acquire from it. Anybody else feel like morphing that Visser guy?"

"We don't know how many of these... morphs... we can get. Duplicate morphs could be handy for obscuring our numbers if it's animals, but I assume two people showing up as Visser Three's host at the same time makes it obvious what's going on. Of course if you're unavailable and we need to fake it... and the tails looked..." She considers, then goes to touch the blood, too.

"This is so weird," mutters Andi, "how do we even know this is Visser Three's host and not poor Elfangor?"

"I've got 'em both, I can tell," says Trouble. "They feel different."

Andi chews her lip a bit, but bends to acquire Visser Three too. "Is this a boy Andalite? It's going to be weird if it's a boy Andalite. Being temporarily identical twins is not that weird by comparison."

"I'm pretty sure it's a boy Andalite," says Trouble after a moment's consideration. "Insofar as Andalites have boys. It's not like I've ever seen a girl Andalite."

"Bleh." Andi finishes acquiring the Visser's host, finds a tissue in her purse, and wipes the blood off her hand. "Let's see if we can catch up with - okay, we can't catch up with Robin and Ethan unless Bella morphs into me again and they're being slow, but let's go - catch a bus."

Trouble follows them.

When they have stopped walking, Bella starts writing. She fills a couple of pages, then goes back and annotates.

"Whatcha got?" says Trouble.

Bella looks around. There is no one else at the bus stop; the nearest pedestrian is a block away. She speaks softly anyway. "Descriptions of the ships, everything I can remember about what the aliens looked like and what Elfangor had to say about them - that'll be a reasonable benchmark for how good my memory is if we can turn into Andalites now - everything I can remember about what Elfangor said about morph limits and Yeerk numbers and how to starve them, what Visser Three said, how the - thought-speaking - seemed to work, my best guess about how long it took me to morph into Andi versus how long it took Visser Three to turn into the Antarean Bogg, the fact that we can acquire from blood. You hung back with Elfangor for a second; did he say anything else? I neglected to ask him how many morphs we can get - the limit probably isn't very low or he would've said, he seemed like he was definitely trying to be helpful..."

"He... asked me about my mom," says Trouble. "I told him she believed in aliens. Didn't seem like the time to get into the rest of it."

"...That's weird."

"Yep."

Bella writes it down anyway. "He was just like, 'Tell me something about your mother?' Why would he say that?"

"It was something like, 'Tell me about your mother, tell me about your family'. Maybe he was just going with the first thing he thought of in our five seconds of get-to-know-you-time? That's the only thing he asked, then he told me to scram and I asked if I could acquire him and he said sure if I was fast and I did it and ran."

"Weird. I wish..." She shakes her head. "Okay, so morphing works for healing, which is big, but takes enough energy that he couldn't do it, so it's not perfect elixir of life..." She chews her lip. "...And speaking of - Is there any point to talking to your mom, she who believes in aliens?"

"...Maybe," says Trouble. "I don't know. She hasn't said shit about them in years, and they weren't this kind of aliens to begin with, anyway."

"What kind were they?"

"The kind with, like, flying saucers. Not flying cockroaches."

"She didn't describe the aliens themselves?"

"Yeah. They looked like aliens. You know, skinny, grey, pointy chins, big eyes. As opposed to looking like the actual aliens we've seen. I dunno, maybe there are more aliens out there who go around abducting people and starting UFO legends."

Trouble sits quietly with her on the bus.

"It's worth a try. I'd say let them sleep, but if they remember any details it would be best to get them down while they're fresh."

"Maybe not a good idea to try to get them over the phone, though." says Trouble.

"I wouldn't say what it was about over the phone."

He shrugs. "Yeah."

"Can we," Andi says softly, "our dad - something?"

"Maybe. I hope so. I need to think."

Trouble looks out the window.

Several stops and two left turns later, Ethan and Robin get on the bus.

"Fancy meeting you here," Bella says.

"Yeah, imagine that," says Ethan.

"You guys want to come over to ours for a bit?"

"Love to," says Robin.

"Great. I think we should all hang out more."

Ethan makes a face, but voices no objections.

All five of them.

"Hi, Mom," Bella calls experimentally after she opens the door.

"Hi girls! How was swimming?" Renée's voice replies from upstairs.

"It was good," Andi calls back. "We're all here, we're gonna hang in the basement for a while."

"It's nice and cool down there," agrees Renée.

"Yes, so I see," says Ethan. "And how was your evening?"

"You missed some interesting spectacle." There are folding chairs; she starts unfolding them. Then she gets her notebook out. "Are you guys thinking you want to do something, or would you rather forget you saw anything?"

"Something such as what?" says Ethan.

"I am not gonna forget any of this," says Robin.

"We have a resource now. We have information and really killer spy gear to get hold of more. We know what's doing the pod person shtick, we know they have at least one weakness, we know there might be help on the way, and we can - turn into things. It's no longer all we can do to sit around making tentative, useless inferences based on the one alien Robin saw one time. I'm going to figure out how to un-Yeerk Charlie without arousing suspicion, and then I'm going to see where else I can hit them. I know Andi's with me, but the more help I have, the easier it is to accomplish anything."

Trouble shrugs. "Sounds good to me."

"What else am I gonna do?" says Robin.

"If she's in, I'm in," sighs Ethan. "You can't just starve him out and let him loose, they're bound to give him another one. Or kill him. They probably have an entire division for it; anyone sensible would."

"Right. I'm going to guess the guy Robin saw murdered was a fleeing host. My best guess on a workable plan, right now, is that we fake Charlie's death and he goes into hiding; maybe we cube him and he adopts another identity or something. If we're lucky his Yeerk got him in position to see all kinds of stuff and Charlie will be able to tell us more after we get it out of him."

"Fake his death how?" wonders Robin.

"Don't have that part figured out yet. If we're going to cube him we could potentially - I don't know how much it takes to render morphing impossible like it was for Elfangor, but morphing heals, which means there's lots of evidence we could leave without actually killing him, if nothing else you can get blood out of a person without hurting them too bad or killing them, we could do it in a few stages. I don't know how much of more solid evidence-leaving he'd go for and I'm still contemplating staged causes of death. It might be better to follow him to wherever the Yeerk soaks up its rays and spring him while it's doing that, but that alerts the other Yeerks, so I'd rather think more on the 'fake his death' plan."

"We can experiment," Trouble says brightly. "For the morph-healing thing."

This produces a grin from Ethan.

"...I'm reluctant to suggest this because you already have two morphs and we don't know how many you can get," Bella says, "but since that seems like such an appealing prospect, you could maybe turn into Charlie and leave lots of evidence, once you know your tolerances. Maybe one of the others of us figures out how to get our hands on a bear. There's bears near Forks."

"I volunteer to be the bear that eats Trouble," says Ethan.

Trouble blows him a kiss.

"Okay. Bear tracks, miscellaneous Charlie possessions, plenty of blood, maybe a hand or something, I bet the Yeerk is carrying his gun everywhere so maybe we fire a few slugs into a tree trunk, me and Andi sit at home until it's been long enough that we get worried, we 'try his phone', we call his co-workers, they find that a bear has mauled our fishing father and dragged him into the river, meanwhile Charlie himself is off safely elsewhere and his Yeerk is - I don't know if it'll be a useful bargaining chip later to have one on hand but we can't feed it, so probably just squished."

"Could be useful to keep it even squished," says Trouble. "In case one of us wants to be a Yeerk sometime for some reason. Can you acquire from dead stuff? I already know you can acquire from blood..."

"One of us grabs it pre-squish, then we let Charlie do the honors if he wants or I will if he won't and we find out."

"Sure," says Trouble.

"Which leaves the question of how to keep him home for three days."

"Well, at least he can't sneak out at night, I'd wake up. I mean, he can't sneak out without us knowing, anyway. I don't know what we do if he's trying to leave and we don't want to let him."

"Yeah. A loitering bear would attract a lot of attention around the house. Maybe get him away from the house? It's trying to pass for Charlie; if we tell it we want to go kill a weekend in Olympic National Park it can't very well say boo. Take his phone - Andi, do you remember how to unload his gun? - siphon the gas out of the cruiser, bear."

"Yeah, I remember."

"Sounds like fun," says Trouble.

"So Ethan needs a bear, maybe Robin should also have a bear for backup since you have to morph out every two hours to avoid lifetime bearhood and it might take longer to turn into a bear than it did for me to turn into the relatively more similar Andi - I think I'll try a bug, see how long that takes to get a range on the timing so we aren't surprised by a fifteen-minute morphing process later or something. Getting into the zoo to get a bear could be hard. I can catch a butterfly; I don't think any of us can catch a crow or pigeon or something similarly unobtrusive and aerial, and butterfly flight speed is nothing to write home about, morphing on-site carries exposure risk..."

"And the bear might be mad. But when you acquired me I was kind of - sedated? For a little while."

"...Trouble, does 'bear bait' by any chance sound like your dream job?"

"It does!"

"Okay. I still don't want any of us filling up on morphs too greedily, and as long as we don't know the limit diversity could be important, but you're bear bait, you sedate the bear for Ethan, then you both get out of there. Me and Andi should probably also have combat-capable morphs in case things get hairy. I'd want us all to be the same bear if I knew we could be as many things as we wanted - the last thing we want is for the Yeerks to notice us and then be able to count us, way better if they never notice us and if they have to notice us they should at least think we're a small surgical strike force from some unknown large pool of morphers. Since we don't know that we can be an unlimited number of things and don't know the limit me and Andi should pick up something else. Elephants maybe, raw blunt force and some fine-manipulation capability. I think if the limit were very small - fifteen, twenty - he'd have thought to mention it - but he was kind of dying at the time. I wish I'd asked."

"He did seem pretty on top of things. You know, up until—" He makes a vague gesture.

"Yes." Bella blinks, then writes something down. "Also, the cube has to be hidden someplace, and someplace is not this house, at least after tonight."

"Good point," says Trouble. "Where the hell do we put it?"

"And what did you just write down?" says Ethan.

"You weren't there for this part, but Visser Three, who has an Andalite host - the only Andalite host, apparently - used its host's morph capability, turned into a giant monster, ate Elfangor, and then morphed back without being noticeably distended or anything. I am noting that when I have a chance I want to look into how morphing interacts with eating, generally speaking."

"Lovely," Ethan remarks. "Shame I missed the show."

Bella makes a face, but doesn't comment. "Anyway. We should also have birds. Unobtrusive birds - maybe owls if we have room once we know more about what we're going to need, but unobtrusive daytime birds, raptors are tempting but people notice them. Pigeons can be fast, pigeon racing is a sport - I'll compare them to crows tomorrow but it might come down to which is easier to catch. That'll get us into the zoo at night."

"Smart," says Robin.

"Renée might know someone who has volunteer slots at an animal rescue, or something, which is probably easier than trying to get hold of a wild pigeon. We can ask."

"Do you think people will notice if the critters go all floppy and sedated when we touch them?"

"Maybe. I don't think the Yeerks expect us to be able to morph, though. They didn't even check Elfangor's ship for the blue box before they vaporized it, so if it's standard cargo on Andalite fighters they don't know that. We should be able to fly under the radar long enough to get some utility morphs."

"I'm interested in that pigeons versus crows thing now," says Robin. "I think I'll look them up, if you don't mind."

"Yeah, go for it. And anything else particularly neat we might be able to lay hands on that you want to look up."

"Pigeons, crows, bears... I should have a list," says Robin. "Spare me a page? What else do we want?"

Bella writes in plaintext on a blank page. "Pigeons, crows, bears, elephants, I'm getting a butterfly to check morph speed - I'd get a fly or something similarly unobtrusive, but if Renée catches a butterfly in the house she won't kill it, I can't say the same for a housefly. You might want to look into other bugs though, for non-practice spy morphing - small things we can get that are hard to see or hard to kill or both." She tears off the page and hands it over.

"Got it," says Robin. "All right."

"Thanks," Bella says.

"No problem."

"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?"

"Not at all," says Ethan.

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

Trouble just shrugs.

"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."

"Sure thing," says Trouble.

Ethan nods.

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

"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."

"Ooh. Sabotage."

"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."

"That can be just as much fun."

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

"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."

"Ruin all my fun," says Trouble.

Trouble sighs.

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"...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."

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

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

"Which is why I'm perfect for the job," she says cheerfully. "I don't have to do anything."

"Yeah, I was thinking about it, and then I got distracted by the comedy duo here," he says, gesturing at Ethan and Robin. "It's... not simple. And I'm guessing you won't just let me take responsibility for myself."

"There's no 'just' in there anymore. You have my life and my twin sister's life, plus Robin's and Ethan's lives - and our un-Yeerked status - in the palm of your hand. One of the things I need to function is to keep the best track I possibly can of what risks are being run with those things. I'm sure you'd hold up brilliantly under conventional interrogation, but the Yeerks don't need to conventionally interrogate you if they get ahold of you. So - what do you need so that we can, jointly, function?"

"If you just want me to not run off and do stupid shit that might get you killed without telling you first, I can do that," says Trouble.

"That's good. It's not a complete answer. Do you need longer to think?"

"I could use some, but I'm not sure it'll do the job," says Trouble. "...How about we talk about this... later?"

"Okay."

"Is it just me or is not having somebody in charge a recipe for disaster? I don't think armies and stuff do it that way just because they couldn't decide which number of uniform stripes looked prettiest and they wanted an excuse to use them all."

"What kind of disaster do you expect?"

"Well, for one thing, when Bella turned into me that was one thing but I bet if we turn into butterflies or whatever we can't talk to each other, so we have to be coordinated in advance if we're gonna do stuff in morph."

"Elfangor talked," says Trouble, thoughtfully. "Bet you I could talk too, if I morphed him."

"Sure, but Elfangor isn't - wasn't - a butterfly. Poor Elfangor."

"...And the Visser talked. When he was still the what'd-he-call-it, he made that crack about taking a bite out of your enemies. So is that because he was an Andalite to start with, or running one at least, or is it because morphing lets you do that?"

"Good question."

"Well, if being able to morph lets you do it, then I - at minimum, possibly all of us - should be able to do it right now," muses Bella. "I just have no idea how."

"Do you anticipate having the privacy to do this somewhere other than here? There are -" She glances around. "Random appliance boxes you could go stand behind."

"Here's probably best. Ethan's place has privacy for having sex, not so much for turning into an Andalite, given the parents. I'll just go hide behind a box, huh?"

Bella nods. "Not that I'm not curious what it looks like, but I can do my butterfly test in the mirror."

Trouble goes and hides behind a box. There is the sound of clothing being removed, and then some other, moderately disturbing noises.

"The Visser morphing was pretty gross, but his end result was gross - I guess it's about the process too?"

"It is definitely about the process," says Robin.

"If he did I missed it. That's a serious limit, then, have to pause to be human every two hours minimum. So what's being an Andalite like?"

<Kind of... jumpy,> he muses. <No, maybe jumpy's the wrong word. Alert. Goes with the eyes, I guess. I think I like it. And the tail's not bad either. Probably the strongest part of my body right now.>

Bella writes the no-morph-to-morph limitation. "So you're getting - psychological effects, too? The alertness...?"

<I dunno if it's exactly psychological,> he says. <It's more physical. Like, I've got a whole new brain in here.> He taps one slim blue finger against the side of his head. <Whole new set of reflexes. Also, grinning without a mouth is weird.>

"And you're not having any trouble standing, moving extra fingers or the eyestalks or the four legs or the tail, it all just makes sense?"

<Yeah. Even the grinning. I'm doing it right now, you probably can't tell.>

"Well, there's still tone-of-voice going on when you thoughtspeak. Nothing too obvious in the face, though."

<It's the eyes, and the whatever these are,> he says, gesturing at the three vertical slits in what on a human face would be the nose-and-mouth area. <Kind of subtle.>

Bella nods. "Can anybody else think of anything worth finding out before he demorphs?" she asks.

"Yes," says Ethan, smirking.

Bella can't restrain one brief giggle.

"I don't get it?"

"You might be happier that way," says Robin.

"...Is it some sex thing, is it just me or is it totally skeevy to use a dead guy's body that way?"

"I don't know, maybe," says Robin. "But he's hardly going to complain, is he?"

"Well, no, but, still."

"Not worth policing," mutters Bella.

"I don't see anything wrong with it," says Ethan.

"Not worth policing," repeats Bella.

"Well, now I've gone and thought of it I don't want anybody besides Bella acquiring me."

"What if I solemnly swear not to use it for anything dirty? Not that I especially want to morph you in the first place."

"I, however," murmurs Ethan to Robin, "have conceived a sudden urge to morph you."

"I guess I'd believe you if you promised," Andi tells Robin.

"I remind everyone that there may be a limit to how many of these we can collect. That said, it might be useful to be able to cover for each other, particularly insofar as we can successfully imitate each other's personalities."

"In which case, Ethan and I should definitely morph each other," says Robin. Smirking.

Trouble giggles.

"Trouble, of course, may be inimitable."

"Fucking right."

"Everybody owns timers, yeah?"

"Yeah, tons," says the cook.

"Er... I wear a watch?" says Robin.

"Does it beep? Some critters don't have great vision."

"Lord knows. I don't think so."

"Okay. Perhaps Trouble can loan you a kitchen timer until you have a chance to buy one, or something."

Robin laughs. "Sounds good to me."

"Can anyone else think of something that should be discussed tonight, before the buses slow down for the evening?"

Robin shakes her head.

So does Ethan.

So does Trouble, but he adds, "Can I crash here tonight?"

"Of course."

He smiles sunnily. "Thanks."

"All right," replies Renée's voice, still floating down from upstairs.

"Your mom is nice," says Trouble.

"Conveniently," says Ethan.

"She is nice," agrees Bella.

"Oh man, I expected to be home earlier, I have to do, like, at least half the math homework," says Andi, and she scurries upstairs.

Bella fetches sheets to make Trouble comfortable on the couch.

"We should talk about the complicated stuff," Trouble murmurs. "Later. Hug?"

"Okay." Hug.

Bella puts her hand on his cheek, briefly. "I'm glad." She sighs. "I'm going to bed."

"G'night," he says, grinning the grin that he always grins when she says that. It is a very happy grin.

And Bella goes to bed.