Bella answers the door.

He plonks the bags down beside it. Stacks of Tupperware containers inside them shift and collapse, scattering all over the kitchen floor. He grabs one teetering on the edge of the table, sits down in a chair, and starts eating the lemon tart inside with total concentration and a look of bliss.

"I wasn't expecting you," Bella remarks.

Trouble takes no notice of this. He is busy eating his lemon tart out of its little foil dish. It's somewhat messy, but he takes no notice of that, either. His movements are sharp and jerky and not especially Trouble-like.

The lemon tart continues to be an object of apparently total fascination to him.

"nononononono," he moans. There is no evidence of the kind of faces he usually makes when someone is hitting him with a hammer.

"You have a minute and fifteen seconds and then I give him up as a lost cause, open his head like a pinata, and see how much bleach it takes to dissolve you."

He shakes his head. "Please," he mumbles hoarsely, "pleasedon'tkillme."

She breaks his elbow.

"Forty-five seconds," says Bella, "I will not be satisfied until I see a slug, and how things go for that slug depends on its speed." Other elbow.

- demorph, and start rubbing her eyes.

"Gonna morph Robin for a sec," Trouble sighs, and he does that.

"They don't know shit," says Trouble. "They put her in me 'cause she fucked something up and Visser Three decided to make her sit through what Reggie does to me, as punishment. I'm not sure how much she knows, but she hasn't said a word to anybody."

"And she didn't tell any other Yeerks - anything. She didn't say that - that you can morph, that you've met an Andalite, that you've seen Visser Three, that - anything. Is she a she? I hadn't been assuming Yeerks had genders..."

"Well, I've seen Visser Three again now. But no, nothing, she hasn't said a word. I mean, nobody's looking to her to spy on me, you know? And - I don't know, she feels like a she to me."

"...It hasn't been my favourite couple of days," he says. "But I'm - I'll be fine. Are you okay?"

"I'll live." She swallows. "I don't know what to do with her - Renée could be home any minute."

"...Me neither," says Trouble. "I'd rather not kill her, but hell, even if we do, where do we stash the body? And if we don't, what do we do with her instead?"

"She's little, I don't think body-stashing is a huge issue, bury her in someone's backyard," shrugs Bella. "If she - we also - you can't go home, not without her."

"...yeah," he says. "Unless - I don't know. Her only job was to do whatever Reggie tells her and not break cover the rest of the time. I'd be screwed when her feeding cycle came up - she's due tomorrow evening - but I could fake it, until then, it wouldn't be hard. And if I'm gonna disappear, I shouldn't disappear out of your house if we can avoid it, right?"

"Right. If you're gonna disappear, you should ask a gossipy acquaintance for fifty bucks and be seen at the bus station."

"And they'll figure Aspret picked starving over another day of Reggie. Which I wouldn't blame her for. Actually I'm pretty sure somebody was taking bets on that when they hauled us out of the pool."

"Is there a way to talk to her when she's like this? And - let's go down to the basement at least -" She puts the hammer back where it belongs, checks the floor for blood, there isn't any. "Renée won't notice the mixing bowl gone, we're all going to Olive Garden tonight." She picks up Aspret's bowl.

"Well... somebody could morph and thought-speak to her," he says. "But she couldn't talk back."

"How do they even communicate, in-pool?" Down to the basement they go.

Bella puts the bowl in a box and the box on a shelf, accessible in a hurry but not obtrusive. "I suppose we could tell her to swim counterclockwise for no and clockwise for yes."

"Or somebody could morph her," says Trouble.

"That won't teach us her native language," Bella says. "I mean, we may as well acquire her - we'll call the others, we can meet after the Olive Garden trip when Renée's out at the movies - but I don't think it would let us understand whatever sounds or other communications she can emit right now."

"Sure, but it'd give us a better handle on her body language," says Trouble. "Or it'd give me one, if I did it."

"Be my guest," says Bella. "And you can see how comfy the water is, if it's liable to give her trouble if we leave her there for a while."

"Eeeh - if Renée comes back you got lemon tart on your clothes and you're down here sorting through the Goodwill box looking for the least objectionable thing," Bella says. Since he does in fact have lemon tart on his clothes, this should be believable. "I'll go put stuff in the fridge, assuming Aspret didn't, like, poison any of it."

"I won't swear it's all my best work, but none of it's poisoned," he says. "You can trust it as much as you'd trust, well, anything baked by a frantic sleep-deprived alien who keeps having trauma flashbacks. You're probably gonna have to scoop me up and put me in the bowl after I morph; do you wanna do that now, or come back and do it after you put stuff in the fridge, or what?"

"I'll do it now. And you can narrate while I'm fussing around the kitchen."

Bella makes a face, but picks him up and puts him in the bowl with Aspret, then lingers a moment to make sure she doesn't eat him or anything.

Bella goes up the stairs and starts fridging things.

<It's kind of - thin, in here,> he says. <The stuff in the Yeerk pool is more like sludge. Feels weird swimming in plain water. Definitely not comfy, but I'm not sure if it's doing us actual harm.>

Fridging, fridging, she could morph Andi and reply by thoughtspeak but Renée might arrive any minute. So, for that matter, might Andi.

<I'm gonna see how well I can talk to her,> he adds, and goes quiet.

Bella puts everything away and cleans up the lemon tart crumbs and then goes back down the stairs when Renée still isn't in the driveway.

The two Yeerks in the bowl are swimming together in companionable little circles, the sides of their bodies touching.

Bella morphs Andi. <How goes?> she asks, just of Trouble.

<Kinda slow. I mean, I can talk to her, but I can't get anything complex back. So far we've determined that she doesn't want to starve, doesn't want to be bleached to death, doesn't ever want to hold me still for Reggie again, doesn't really want to go back to the rest of the Yeerks...>

<Do you suppose we could trust her not to go back to the Yeerks if we went to the trouble of trapping her in some morph?>

<Probably. I mean, what would she go back for? So Visser Three can eat her? Especially if she wasn't even a Yeerk anymore, I bet he would.>

&ltWould she help us if we did that?>

<...I'm not sure,> he says. <And I don't want to ask her until I can talk to her better. Right now I bet she'd agree to a lot of things she'd end up regretting or bailing on later, if it meant she'd live through the week.>

<I'm... hesitant to suggest the obvious way to let her talk, but it exists.>

<What, pour her back in? Yeah,> says Trouble. <We could do that. As long as she knows you'd kill her if she tried to run, she won't try.>

<I believe I've more than adequately demonstrated my willingness.>

<I love you.>

<I'm just glad I didn't break your spine on a false alarm.>

He giggles over thought-speak.

<But let's save that for when the others are here.>

<Save what, putting her back in my brain? Sure, okay.>

<You're... okay with this plan?>

<Yeah. I mean - it'd be different if I didn't feel sorry for her. But I do. She's scared as hell and she's had a really bad week.>

<...Okay. Is the water still "not comfy, not actually hurting you"?>

<Yeah.>

<How about you wiggle distinctively or something and I'll take you out and you can demorph, and then I can put her away before Renée gets back? I can probably wrangle you an invitation to Olive Garden, then we call the other two and talk about how to deal with her.>

One of the Yeerks twists itself upside-down and undulates. <Wiggle wiggle.>

Bella scoops up Trouble and sets him down. As an afterthought, she -

- demorphs to acquire the real Yeerk, when it turns out to be necessary.

"You okay?"

"...Yeah," he says. "Mostly. Kind of."

Bella puts her hand on his shoulder, lightly. "Anything I can do?"

Bella hugs him.

"I'm glad."

He smiles and hugs her tighter for a moment.

After a few minutes, Trouble gets dressed and follows her. His clothes are a bit the worse for their encounter with that lemon tart, but most of it just brushes off and what's left isn't egregiously noticeable.

"Do you want to come to Olive Garden or would it be easier to make good your escape if you went home briefly?"

"...I think maybe... no," he says. "It won't help anything if I go home and come back, but I don't really wanna go to Olive Garden either. I will if it's the best way to end up here again afterward, though."

"You could wander off somewhere else and show up here again at like eight," Bella says. "If that works out better."

"Yeah. I'll do that."

"Okay. Andi's probably already on her way home from Robin's; I'll call Robin anyway." Bella heads for the phone.

And Bella calls Robin.

"Hi, Bella!"

"Hello. First, before I explain what happened today, I want to say that there is no longer an emergency, everyone is fine."

"...Go on," says Robin.

"I'm not sure how much to say over the phone, but Trouble was temporarily... not fine. You should come over at around eight when me and Andi are back from the Olive Garden and Renée's at the movies, and bring Ethan."

"Will do," says Robin.

Robin and Ethan and Trouble arrive all together.

"So," says Bella briskly, when they are in and the door is closed and the curtains have been checked. "Trouble got Yeerked. I chased her out, she's in the basement in a bowl of water."

"The humane option is put her in contact with the morphing cube and then a bird or something. The question is whether we can trust her if we do that. And right now, she can't talk."

...Robin looks at Ethan.

Ethan looks at Trouble.

"Yep," says Trouble. "You guessed it."

"Fortunately, in chasing her out I learned that it's doable, so if she makes a break for it or starts morphing or something, we chase her again, she dies, end of story."

"Yeah, it's weird how having at least two people around who'd kill me if things went south can be so comforting."

Andi hugs Bella.

"Well, I mean, the idea would be to get Aspret out of you first, but yes. Any comments before we go render the captive Yeerk suitable for interrogation? The three of us," Bella gestures at her sister and Trouble, "also acquired her, and you may as well do the same."

Ethan shrugs.

Robin shakes her head. "Sure. Let's go acquire the Yeerk."

Down to the basement. Bella presents the bowl.

Robin tentatively pokes the Yeerk.

So does Ethan, much less tentatively.

"Got her?" Bella asks.

Ethan nods.

"Yeah," sighs Robin, withdrawing her hand.

"Okay. Me and Andi can morph Visser Three's host, probably a safer bet than having a hammer around."

Andi squirms, but starts morphing. She winds up blue and furry before any changes in her shape occur.

Bella follows suit.

<How can I lower it? It's not like I'd stop Bella.>

"Yeah, I know. It doesn't completely make sense. Just... one big scary Andalite who looks a lot like Visser Three and would totally take my head off if I made a break for it is plenty intimidating, but when there's two of them and I read one as pretty much gonna hang back no matter what, it kind of, I don't know, dilutes the scary."

Andi shrugs and demorphs. She passes through "blue furry Andi" on her way again, except this time she keeps the pointy ear shape till the very end.

<Cool, you can do 'elf' as well as 'fairy'. Trouble, you about ready?>

"Yeah. Tell Aspret what's up?" he says, dragging a folding chair over next to the bowl.

<Aspret, this is Bella. We're going to put you back in Trouble so you can talk. If you don't come out as soon as any of us tells you to, staying's going to be unpleasant, and if you start to morph or otherwise make sudden movements likewise. The possibility of a complete lack of unpleasantness exists but we need to determine if there's any way we can trust you.>

Bella folds her arms and lashes her tail slightly. It makes a whistly noise, if she angles the blade right.

<I invite you to convince us that we wouldn't all be... entertaining mental guests... or dead or on the run if we found a way to keep you comfortably alive.>

"Are you kidding me?" says Aspret. "Trap me in morph! Please! I won't starve, I won't die, I won't ever have to see that Andalite-wearing sadist again!"

<The fact that he's numbered suggests that there are other Yeerk authorities running around. Even if you don't have any reason to like Visser Three in particular, he's not the only person you could betray us to if we gave you freedom of movement and the ability to thoughtspeak.>

"He's in charge of this—of the invasion of Earth, I mean," says Aspret. "There's no Yeerk I could talk to about, about you guys, that wouldn't lead me back to him eventually." She shivers. "Which is the last place I ever want to be. There are regulations against wastefully killing subordinates, but nobody dares to remind him about them anymore. I've heard rumours—" She bites Trouble's lip, then shakes his head, shivering again. "Some people try to get close to him, soak up the glory, stay on his good side. Not me. I'm done."

<We'd still be running a risk,> Bella says, shifting her weight, rippling her tail. <Even getting the morphing box and then putting it back is a risk, and we'd have to catch you some kind of animal, too. Would you work for us?>

Aspret huddles in the chair, wrapping Trouble's arms tightly around his stomach.

Bella waits.

"...Y...es..." she says tremblingly, and then shakes Trouble's head. "No! Not if I had to go anywhere near another Yeerk! Turn me into a, a bird, a migrating bird, I'll give you... everything I know that isn't something only I know, and I'll just fly away. Be a bird forever. I love birds..." She trails off with a sigh.

<Intel is a form of helping,> Bella says mildly. <I take it you don't have any friends you want to give the same deal?>

She shakes Trouble's head again. "N-no."

<Does anyone think she's lying?> Bella inquires of the room idly.

Andi shakes her head mutely.

"Doubt it," says Ethan.

<Go on.>

Aspret goes back to twisting Trouble's hands together in his lap. She continues watching Bella's tail.

"Y-you're scaring me," mumbles Aspret.

Bella's tail stills.

Bella waits.

<The pretending idea - there's no risk he'll be asked questions intended for you or required to physically produce you outside of the pool area? They consider you that inconsequential?>

She nods. "In my previous host I was assigned to an important project, but I wasn't a critical member of the team. And I have no duties now."

Bella is inclined to make a face, but the morph covers it up pretty well. <And he thinks he can unobtrusively store you, or get to a place where you're unobtrusively stored, before you need to feed.>

"Yes," says Aspret. "Or... or I could just - stay. But we're not sure if you'd be okay with that. And," she looks down at Trouble's hands clasped in his lap, "I don't want - I mean - I'm afraid of other Yeerks, now. I want to be around them as little as possible."

<Hmmm,> says Bella to the general audience, and, privately only to Trouble-and-Aspret (she's not sure if it's even possible to target only one of them, right now) <Tuck his hair behind his ear if the idea is that you don't want to get anywhere near his stepfather but he's willing to go back for final helpings if it diffuses suspicion when he vanishes.>

Aspret ducks Trouble's head and pushes his hair back on both sides, rendering it at least temporarily captive behind his ears.

Aspret shivers, and bites Trouble's lip, and looks up nervously at Bella.

<Although I suppose they don't seem to intend to starve you and it would be harder to transport him if he were hospitalized. I don't like the idea of betting on it.>

"Where would you unobtrusively store a Yeerk?" Andi asks. "I mean, the basement's super temporary, and Trouble should probably not be breaking into our house at night to get her. We have, like, Neighborhood Watch."

"I could just stay," Aspret murmurs. "I can - withdraw, and let my host control her own body and experience her own sensations. It... might be more comfortable than spending several days in a bowl."

"Whoa, you can do that?"

<Interesting.>

"It's not very common," says Aspret. "For obvious reasons. But it's not difficult."

<Can you communicate with Trouble while doing that?> asks Bella. <If so, and if he confirms after you go out briefly to let us check, this sounds like the safest option secrecy-wise.>

She nods hesitantly.

<He'll be able to maintain cover if something unexpected happens, take immediate advantage of access to ducks, etcetera. But,> Bella says, <I don't think you should stay longer than it takes to make the disappearance look good. And Trouble, for hiding out, you'll probably want a morph that can get into and out of private places for demorphing, remorphing, and sleeping, with or without someone's help. Does anyone else have input before Aspret goes out again to let Trouble confirm everything she's said and I go fetch the box?>

Ethan shrugs. "Not me."

Robin shakes her head.

"So - Aspret leaves, Trouble tells us if she was making stuff up, you bring the box, Aspret touches it, we trust her not to - I don't know, acquire Trouble and make off in his likeness? - for the next few days and in that time he finds her a duck and she flies away and Trouble hides?"

Aspret nods.

"And somewhere in there she tells us stuff about Yeerks? To help get Dad's one out?"

"I've already shared a lot of things with Trouble," she murmurs.

"Yeah, I don't have input," shrugs Andi.

<All right. Out you get.>

Bella demorphs. "I'll be back in about fifteen minutes," she says, and she goes up the stairs.

"Why are you petting it? Her?" Andi asks Trouble.

"She's... had a really shitty week," he says. "And being a Yeerk alone in a bowl is uncomfortable."

"Oh. Well, soon she'll be a duck, I guess."

"If this were anyone else I'd be muttering about Stockholm," says Ethan, "but you, no, I genuinely believe you've made friends with your brain parasite. Congratulations."

"Stockholm? Isn't that a city?"

"Stockholm Syndrome. No?"

"Sounds vaguely familiar but I don't know what it is."

"It's when kidnapped people and hostages and so forth become unnaturally sympathetic with their captors."

"That's weird. I hope Dad doesn't have that."

"I don't think it's universal."

Andi watches Trouble pet the Yeerk, thoughtful.

Eventually Bella appears, and takes the blue box out of her backpack, where it has been wrapped in a towel with a pair of swim goggles inside a plastic bag. "Last-minute objections, comments?" she inquires of the group.

"None whatsoever," says Ethan.

Bella puts the box in the bowl.

Bella wraps it up again and takes it away.

Trouble pets Aspret some more. Then he leans down to let her slurp back into his ear.

Bella is back after about the same duration of time. She notes the empty bowl, then picks it up and carries it up the stairs to dump out and wash.

Trouble... sits. Quietly. It's no longer completely obvious who's in control; he doesn't look excessively nervous, but neither is he as relaxed as usual.

"Any other Animorphs business for tonight?"

"Don't think so," says Trouble. Definitely in his own voice; Aspret uses it differently.

"Okay. I suppose we can disperse, then."

"Bye."

Trouble clears out.

So do Ethan and Robin.