"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."