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Five pigeons, one with a beetle glued to her foot, fly to Seattle and find the aquarium and the orca tanks.
There is one with just one orca in it.
Five pigeons land on the glass edge of the tank.
pandion
"Seagulls have two wings and they're white and gray with black parts. Yellow beaks, yellow feet. Bella, are you going to get the most swelled head of all time?"
morphbox
Ax also starts looking for seagulls. <Will it be a great problem if I harm a seagull in order to catch it?>
"No," says Bella, investigating possible seagull hiding places. "Seagulls are commonplace and not well-liked and it wouldn't be likely for anyone to get suspicious about an injured one."
"Yes, not-hurting seagulls is the ideal, but it's not worth letting one get away if the only way to catch it is to clobber it out of the air."
palmofyourhand
It's a seagull. It's sleeping. Thoroughly sleeping, since he's acquiring it, and when he's done he passes it off to Robin.
pandion
"I hope seagulls are a happy morph," says Andi, and she goes first, getting wings before everything and turning in place like an armless angel before shrinking and finishing the morph.
aeskhyne
"I think I'll just go pigeon," says Trouble. "I'm all comfy with how they navigate."
He enpigeons.
He enpigeons.
morphbox
Seagulls all, the Swans and Ax.
<You want to lead the way, navigator-pigeon?> asks Bella of Trouble.
<You want to lead the way, navigator-pigeon?> asks Bella of Trouble.
morphbox
Flyyyyying. <Ax, when we get to the house, we're going to duck in through a gap under a door, and demorph once we're inside and no one will see us. We'll be able to turn on lights there, and loan you some clothes for your human morph, although I don't know if we have anything spare that will be snug enough to morph with you.>
<What is a house?> inquires Ax.
<...Just follow us,> Bella says.
<Yes, Princess Bella.>
<What is a house?> inquires Ax.
<...Just follow us,> Bella says.
<Yes, Princess Bella.>
morphbox
<Of course not. That is why we have the Dome on our large ships. Somewhere to run. A house is enclosed? Why? The planet is not enveloped in hard vacuum.>
<It rains,> says Bella. <The temperature fluctuates outside of our favorite ranges. There's wind and small unwelcome creatures. It's easier to control the environment in an enclosed house. Speaking of temperatures - how cold or hot do Andalites like it? It's cooler here than it is at the latitude where most of us usually live.>
<I do not know your temperature scale. It was a little colder than I would have liked on the beach but that may have been because it was dark and I had just come out of the water,> says Ax.
<Okay. Hopefully we can find someplace comfortable for you to sleep, even if you can spend most of your waking hours in this or that morph like Trouble does. We might have to tell Renée everything, but if you don't like to be enclosed I guess 'keep you in the basement' isn't a good long-term solution.>
<It rains,> says Bella. <The temperature fluctuates outside of our favorite ranges. There's wind and small unwelcome creatures. It's easier to control the environment in an enclosed house. Speaking of temperatures - how cold or hot do Andalites like it? It's cooler here than it is at the latitude where most of us usually live.>
<I do not know your temperature scale. It was a little colder than I would have liked on the beach but that may have been because it was dark and I had just come out of the water,> says Ax.
<Okay. Hopefully we can find someplace comfortable for you to sleep, even if you can spend most of your waking hours in this or that morph like Trouble does. We might have to tell Renée everything, but if you don't like to be enclosed I guess 'keep you in the basement' isn't a good long-term solution.>
aeskhyne
<I'm not sure the way I hide is gonna work for everybody, now that there's so many of us,> says Trouble. <Especially with one Andalite. I sleep in enclosed spaces a lot - outdoor ones, usually, but still.>
morphbox
<You and Charlie, in a pinch, we can tell Renée what's going on and put you in the basement over nights,> says Bella. <If Phoenix were near woods like Forks is, maybe Ax could hide out in them relatively safely, but the desert's too open - maybe it's unlikely for someone to wander by, but if they do, they can see him from a mile away. I don't suppose there is any useful tech in the Dome that could be repurposed for this or anything else? For that matter, do you need those specific plants to live on? Techwise - cloaking abilities? That force field's generator? Weapons, long-distance communication, anything else cool.>
<...Andalites do not share technology.>
<Elfangor shared technology. Telling us how it works isn't going to get anybody anywhere, we aren't physicists or engineers, but something down there is generating a force field. If it would become convenient for us to have a force field somewhere other than off the coast of Washington, can that be arranged?>
<I - don't know. I'm not a technician. I know where the generator is but not how to remove it or how its power supply works - and I would need to have hands, to work on it, and if it failed ->
<Okay. I'm not telling you 'do things likely to disable the force field while it's protecting you from a few hundred feet of water'. I'm just asking, what's there, what can we get, do you need anything from it, would any of it make it easier to hide you. How much sleep do you need? How bad is the claustrophobia?>
Ax hesitates.
<...Andalites do not share technology.>
<Elfangor shared technology. Telling us how it works isn't going to get anybody anywhere, we aren't physicists or engineers, but something down there is generating a force field. If it would become convenient for us to have a force field somewhere other than off the coast of Washington, can that be arranged?>
<I - don't know. I'm not a technician. I know where the generator is but not how to remove it or how its power supply works - and I would need to have hands, to work on it, and if it failed ->
<Okay. I'm not telling you 'do things likely to disable the force field while it's protecting you from a few hundred feet of water'. I'm just asking, what's there, what can we get, do you need anything from it, would any of it make it easier to hide you. How much sleep do you need? How bad is the claustrophobia?>
Ax hesitates.