<Right. Peel off together, then.>

So they do.

Meanwhile, the sharks continue to curiously approach the sub. They start nosing up against it.

Out of the door comes a large, gelatinous centipede-like creature- familiar to most of them, besides Nereus, as a Taxxon. It swims towards the sub as well.

"Be careful with this one. Even if you've made this Taxxon's Yeerk as friendly towards you as possible, even Taxxon-controllers can't resist their hungry. Don't bleed in its vicinity; it'll go into a frenzy."

"Right."

He's blasting full friendship, with every movement, every sound, every observable thing about him - it's giving him a raging headache, but hopefully it'll pay off...

The taxxon skitters along the exterior of the ship. One of the sharks swims past it. The taxxon notices it, but focuses on getting into the sub.

"At this point, what level of detail can you communicate? Our best chance to give you line-of-sight is to surface and hope it can come with us."

"Not much. It's - a paradigm shift, and they'll sometimes fill in the details for why they think I'm their best friend, but I don't have communicative telepathy or anything."

"Alright. Surfacing it is."

So they begin to surface.

-Scott finally notices that the sub is important, not just strange.

<...how long was I out of it?>

<As usual, Jessica and I were the only ones using our human brains, but Silv at least cooperated better than Stiles did.>

Hey wait that's

<That's our friend why is our friend going up and away no friend come back!>

The big metal one isn't being very friendly but it's a friend of the pod regardless, he remembers.

<The friend will be back. Cool it,> Jessica snaps.

Meanwhile, a gelatinous centipede manages to keep up with the sub fairly well. It doesn't quite manage to maintain a grip on the hulking metal mass, but when the sub surfaces, the taxxon is with them.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

There's the hatch, opening. Dr. Deaton braces himself for things to go very, very poorly.

The taxxon scrambles inside. Now that it's within his sight, it's a bit easier to recognize the same kind of signals that Nereus might look for in any social species. Cues, even though there's no audience. Body language, to read. The taxxon turns its attention first to Nereus, despite the other human (?) in its way.

"Hey there!" Nereus says, projecting friendly-friendly-friendly best-friend-ever wrapped-around-my-finger - body language and tone and power all wrapped together -

The taxxon curls up around him, its legs twitching as it lays there.

It doesn't seem to have a plan for communicating to him in speech, although it does make a few sounds which might be its own language.

"I speak some Galard- galactic common tongue- I can try to translate."

"That'd be - really helpful, yeah."

He speaks.

The taxxon eventually begins to speak to Dr. Deaton, though its four eyes focus on Nereus.

"The base is part of an experiment designed to assist with the Leeran invasion...they already have a few Controllers on the planet, although not many- Leerans are difficult because of their telepathy...they're using sea creatures somehow, as hosts. The taxxon believes that if I disguise us as another taxxon, we can easily get inside the base. There does remain the problem of breathing."