Donni, after some reconnaissance via scrying, very competently buys Mardic a 'coffee' and a 'donut' at a 'café' on the second expedition, lining up with her hands in the pockets of her jeans, sounding bored and nonsuspicious when making her order (although she needed to practice the exact phrases in advance), getting her change and even going to wait at the counter rather than standing blankly. 

She's so pleased with herself. 

It gets a bit of a smile from him, and he kisses her on the top of the head. 

Awwwww, the barista thinks this is very cute even if the couple from out of town are a bit odd. 

They're doing really well! They have an advantage at being convincing humans because of the thing where they're human, but a lot of this stuff is confusing even given that. He does not get a coffee because he doesn't want to be distracted while on a mission. He does get a local guide-book and a French-English dictionary at the bookstore that this town has. 

When they get back he looks for Leareth; he wants to know how underground base progress is going. 

Leareth has gone and looked at the two locations that his Farseers thought were best, and the one he prefers is further from any towns and somewhat less convenient to get into, but has the advantage of not being wet in any of the parts they'd want to use and he's more confident of its structural integrity. There's a sort of mine elevator that probably still works but Leareth is dubious of it and Gated down instead.  

That makes sense. Maybe they can repair it or assess its dubiousness. Convenience is not a very big consideration because they'll usually be leaving by shuttle or by Gate, though the less they can get away with using the shuttle the better, since right now it seems like the Yeerks have no idea at all that they're here and no way to learn aside from seeing it fly. Sadly human airplanes don't seem like a workable alternative; they are slow and require lots of fuel and maintenance, and lots of practice to successfully fly, and they're very constrained in where they're allowed to go.  

"I think my aim once we've set up the base is to find a city that does have Yeerks, and then we can rent a house there, shield it, and Gate in and out for our operations there."

Nod. Leareth has a list of the top ten biggest or most important cities in the current United States, mostly as gauged from a combination of National Geographic and the tour guide. Checking them for Yeerk presence won't be instantaneous, so they might want to do that in parallel? Leareth is torn on whether attempting to Gate to somewhere it won't be detected is better, versus using the shuttle; both, if noticed and correctly interpreted, would reveal things they don't want known, and Gating has a more obvious signature to detect but also will be more mysterious to the Yeerks, instead of being instantly recognizable as something they know exists and makes sense. 

He's inclined to save the Gates for emergencies, of which there'll definitely be some; if there's a bunch of probable-noise on the sensors now they'll be on the lookout for it later. The shuttle reveals, if Yeerks can get past the shielding, that there are Andalites here somehow but not necessarily that they can do any things Andalites can't ordinarily do.

That makes sense. Leareth’s thought, here, is that they drop off a couple of Mindspeaker-mages in each of the listed cities, as soon as he can get up shielding to bring more people across; they can look for Yeerks, and also gather information on everything else about present Earth and figure out how to do things like rent houses. Given the importance of not appearing suspicious in cities that may have Yeerk presence, Leareth wants to start them off outside of town to camp for a day under illusion while they scry or Farsee the area.

That sounds good. They will have to hit up some more towns to have clothes and spending money for all of them but it'll probably only take a couple more days; the shielded underground location to Gate them in from will probably be the real bottleneck.

It'll be about a day's work once they have a designated area to shield, so hopefully not too much of a bottleneck. (That's just for the shielding against Gate detection; Leareth will want to put a lot more than that on their permanent base, but it'll be easier to do that once he's brought over another fifty mages to delegate to.) 

They can definitely make use of another day visiting small towns and figuring out how they work. Someone determines that identification cards are printed at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and finds one, and wants to break in after hours to look at their identification-card printing technology; Matirin approves this.

Leareth is happy to lend a Farseer-mage to scope out inside before the breakin, if that's helpful? Also they could try the same thing with a bank to get a debit card. 

Nayoki, after absorbing lots of Local Context via mindreading, suggests that she could try just showing up at a bank with money in cash and saying that she needs to open a United States bank account after moving here from a different country. (Probably somewhere in Africa, since everyone thinks she looks like she's from there?) She thinks it'll be easier if she's in fact meant to be foreign. She would also happily pickpocket someone so the Andalites can study their debit card and then she can helpfully 'find' it for them and give it back.

"I am not sure if it is easier to do that or just get into their bank computers?" Leareth says to Matirin. Nayoki probably just wants an excuse to go visit more towns and talk to more people, she enjoys it. 

"Getting into the computers is pretty easy but I am actually interested in what happens if she tries opening up an account legally. The consequences of seeming suspicious here are very small, I think." They've continued checking every town for Yeerks, and found none.

Nayoki has decided that she's going to claim to be from Ethiopia, which is one of the bigger countries in Africa. She's learned from the travel books she read that you need a different identity document called a 'passport' to travel between countries, but doesn't know what they look like yet. Maybe they can just make her up an ID card that says Ethiopia on it, and if the bank demands a passport then she'll claim to have left it at home and they can do more research to figure out how to print one. Her name is going to be Elizabeth Abebe, a mashup of two notable African people mentioned in a book she read. 

The bank teller is a woman in her fifties whose baby granddaughter is asleep in a carseat at her feet. She is thinking about her no-good son-in-law and how she wants to beat his face in. "Can I help you," she says to the black lady.

"Awww." Nayoki coos at the baby. "I just moved here and I need to open a United States bank account, how do I do that?" 

(Leareth is waiting nearby in Mindspeech range, illusioned, so that if Nayoki is put on the spot with anything he can help her think of answers.) 

"Are you a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, we can only open bank accounts for citizens and permanent residents."

Heeeelp what does 'permanent resident' mean, Nayoki knows that 'citizen' means you were born somewhere and maybe that you have a passport from there? "Really? I am not moving here permanently but I am moving here temporarily." 

"We only do citizens or permanent residents. Try Bank of America, I think they do accounts for more people."

"Oh, er, thank you. Is there a Bank of America in this town and do you know where?" 

"It's on Broadway."