"Hi, Dad."

Trouble-the-bear snickers over thought-speak.

"No, really - girls - what? Bella, you're sitting on an Andalite bear, you were a pigeon, what's going on."

"We're not any of us Andalites," says Andi. "We're Animorphs. Are you okay, Daddy?"

"I'm - fine, for now anyway - what's an Animorph?"

"We were thinking we'd fake your death, unless you have a better idea," Bella says. "An Andalite gave us morph tech, but then he died."

"A few weeks ago," elaborates Andi. "And then we found out what the Sharing is and knew you had to have one of those things so we saved you."

"Do we need to fake your death or do you or your ex-Yeerk have some kind of extremely convenient circumstance?"

"How were you planning to fake my death?"

Bella pats the bear she is sitting on. "This one morphs you. That one," she points at Ethan, "assuming I haven't mixed them up, mauls him and drags him off to the nearest water source, then this one demorphs, all better, he doesn't mind getting mauled. We find park rangers and tell them a bear attacked you and we barely got away. The tracks are right, the blood is right, etcetera. Meanwhile, we make you morphable, you turn into some kind of bug or something else we can catch here, we take you someplace you can hide out - probably back to Phoenix, ultimately."

"Trouble's been being a pigeon a lot," adds Andi. "You can... be pigeons... together?"

Bella checks her watch. "Bears may as well demorph now," she remarks, "even Ethan, low on morph time - who wants to check again for park rangers?" She slides awkwardly down Trouble's side.

Trouble rubs the side of his big furry head against her shoulder in a gentle friendly sort of way and then starts to demorph.

Ethan demorphs too.

<I'll take a look,> says Pigeon Robin.

"Thanks," says Bella to Robin. "Okay. Dad, do you have a better idea than ours?"

He shakes his head slowly. "I didn't - think I was ever going to get rid of him, I don't have a plan. And we should hurry in case anyone at the Seattle pool notices I'm not showing up."

"Okay. Back to the picnic stuff for the box, then you let Trouble acquire you, they try for their Oscars, we leave some of your stuff around - Andi has your bullets, you can reload the gun, maybe fire at a tree to make it plausible that you tried to hit the bear and missed, leave it on the ground. Then you turn into whatever's handy and little and me and Andi go act hysterical."

Trouble leads the way toward the picnic stuff.

Bella takes the box out of its layers of obfuscation and takes Charlie's hand and puts it on a side.

He twitches a little when it zaps him. "That's it? That's the big Andalite morphing tech?"