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Trouble and Charlie fly to Las Vegas to get their collections of drunks. Ax, newly empigeoned, and Ethan loosely follow Renée's car back to Phoenix, so that Ax will not be stranded in an unfamiliar city obliged to demorph into Andalite form with no garage to hide in.
Renée makes a very large grocery trip. Ax deems alfalfa hay intended for consumption by guinea pigs and rabbits to be the hoof-eating equivalent of palatable; it also turns out he can eat a few other things, like carrot tops and turnip greens. He still doesn't like living in the garage, even though it's a different one. Andi finds him a little planetarium gadget that throws star-patterns onto the ceiling.
Renée installs a cot in the basement for Charlie. (His generic human morph is a man about ten years younger than him, plausibly Latino but just as plausibly not, plain and unremarkable. He also picks up a Renée morph. He will be able to drive the girls places, publicly know their names. They can tell he appreciates the opportunity, however weird it is.) Trouble is allowed to sleep on the couch, when Renée learns that he would prefer not to share the basement with Charlie.
Bella sews weights onto all the curtain hems so they won't be easily nudged aside.
The twins also collect generic-human-morphs. Both of theirs are college-age women, samples collected from going on premature college tours and shaking a lot of hands - Bella's looks maybe half Asian when she's done tweaking it, Andi winds up with a complexion much like her usual one but a surprisingly Hawaiian set of features.
Renée never asks to be enabled to morph. Bella eventually offers, "for emergencies", and Renée aggregates a number of her co-workers into the most stereotypical teacher-lady it is possible to Frolis into without requiring vision correction.
Renée makes the arrangements well in advance to homeschool the twins.
Bella quizzes Ax about all sorts of things, for large parts of each day.
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aeskhyne
"She's really cute," he reiterates. "We talked for a while and I didn't bring up aliens or use any sensitive vocabulary but I told her not to go near the Sharing and that I'm a shapeshifter, and she took me home and recognized me from a newspaper ad but she's not gonna turn me in 'cause I told her I ran away for reasons, and then we made out for like three hours, and can I make her an Animorph? Maybe?"
"Well, there's not exactly a lot of safe middle ground left, is there."
"There was enough advance planning involved for you to follow her for three days but you wait until now to tip me off?"
aeskhyne
"Yeah," he says, "it's not like I planned in advance to follow her for three days, I just kinda started, and time spent figuring out how to tell you what I wanted to do and then telling you would've been time spent not doing it."
"And they didn't say 'stalking cute girl to see if she's a Controller', let alone 'planning to thoughtspeak to cute girl', and now if you've made a mistake she knows you're a human and has personally identified you, and if she's a blabbermouth..."
Bella drops her head into her hands. "Do you know if her parents or siblings or friends are in the Sharing? Do you know if her teachers or neighbors or clergyperson are Yeerks?"
aeskhyne
"I'm pretty sure if she knew anybody in the Sharing she would've mentioned them when I said it was an evil cult, or like, anytime in the ensuing several hours, it's not like most people in the Sharing are quiet about it. She gets that I am a secret talking pigeon who is on the run from evil cultists. I pretty much left her in the dark about whether or not I have any talking pigeon friends. So, yeah, the worst thing that could happen is somebody's gonna find out I'm in Phoenix and I can morph. Pretty fucking bad, yep. I did it anyway."
"It certainly seems like it, yep. Okay. Do you think she wants to be an Animorph? Is her lifestyle amenable to being helpful? Do you have any read on how good she is at keeping secrets even when they have been identified for her?"
aeskhyne
"She definitely wants the cool shapeshifting powers, and is generally not on board with evil cults. I dunno exactly how she could help or exactly how she'd want to. And I don't think she's gonna be telling anybody she made out with a talking pigeon all afternoon."
"If she doesn't want to help, giving her shapeshifting powers is not necessarily a good idea. Makes her more useful if the Yeerks get her and a bigger security risk."
aeskhyne
"You're the one with the box," he says, shrugging. "Practically speaking, it's your call."
"Does that mean its literal meaning or are you also implying that you will not hold it against me if I decline to Animorph Random Beloved The Third?"
"Okay. I'm suspending judgment. Can you get her to come here without anybody particularly paying attention to her destination?"
aeskhyne
"Yeah, probably," he says. "Dunno if she'll jump just for 'hey, wanna see my secret pooka nest?', though. Can I tell her my talking pigeon buddy wants to meet her?"
"She thinks you're a pooka?" asks Bella. "Yes, you can tell her your talking pigeon buddy wants to meet her. For that matter, perhaps I should actually be a pigeon and we should meet elsewhere than here. A park or something."
"Okay. I will do that, then." She opens up her notebook, makes some marks that could be edits to her schedule.