"- This might become somewhat awkward if I then ended up meeting with your planet's leaders personally, though I suppose I could go by a different name, I have gone by many names other than this one. I am hoping your people will be inclined to cooperation given that we can, in fact, share our 'advanced technology' in the form of Gifts and what can be done with them." 

<I think if they first come across Velgarth as a society that has not invented electricity it will prime them wrong for things going forwards. But - lots of civilizations don't conduct any diplomacy on their homeworlds, and with the right framing it's much easier to convince everyone to see you as allies with capabilities we sorely need, which you are. I don't think it will be a spectacularly hard sell. We mostly don't want to do things on Velgarth anyway because of your gods. On the whole I'm pretty confident that we can sell an alliance with Velgarth and some tech-sharing there, it's just a question of - how many other concessions we're making in order to sell it. I think that it might be challenging to get consensus on apologizing for Seerow. - and Mhalir's safety is a very big concession that will be very expensive. Not unattainable, just - requiring favors I could otherwise trade for a more conciliatory apology about Seerow, or tech-sharing on Earth, or morph>

...Nod. 

Leareth hesitates. 

Then he lifts his hand and casts an additional privacy-spell. And switches to Mindspeech as well, just in case, though of course the Visser won't be able to reply that way unless Leareth straight-up reads his thoughts. 

:Mhalir, there is something I wish to ask you about, but it may not be something you wish your host to know: He tries to aim the Mindspeech just to the Yeerk, not to the host, though it's hard to tell. :I think that if you briefly leave her ear, I can be confident of Mindspeaking to you alone, and if you think the answers very loudly I will pick them up in your surface thoughts: 

Visser 3 hesitates. 

Then, eventually, he nods. "I trust my host to be cooperative. Matirin is welcome to ask her some questions while I do this, if he wishes." 

And he start extracting himself. 

Leareth is not at all intending to put Mhalir anywhere near his ear, but he holds out his hand to catch the Yeerk slug-body. ...Wow, this is weird and unsettling, knowing that the entirety of a person is in there. 

<I am Matirin-Ashal-Nelinfir> Matirin says to the woman. <It is a pleasure to meet you.>

     She raises an eyebrow at him.

<I cannot hear you if you think at me, you have to talk.>

    "Oh, okay. I'm Amanda Norell. Nice to meet you too?"

<How did you become a Yeerk host?>

     "Coworker asked me if hypothetically I'd want to be abducted by aliens, I said yeah, then I got abducted by aliens."

<I could imagine some people being upset that their answer was used against them in that way.>

     "Yeah probably a lot of them were but - there are aliens, with FTL, and now also magic, fighting a secret shadow alien war? I do not wish I was worrying about rent and watching sitcoms and missing out on this."

<Would you prefer to be - involved in it and not a puppet for a Yeerk?>

      "Hmmm, maybe? I miss eating and at some point I am going to get seriously resentful about how little I am getting laid but it's way less stressful this way, and I think I'm considerably less likely to die? Am I, do you people also kill the hosts when you execute Yeerks you're mad at."

<No! That would be monstrous. We understand that hosts are not responsible for the things that their Yeerks forced them to do. ...it is possible that the U.S. government will consider voluntary hosts within its national institutions to be collaborators with an enemy occupation and I do not know how they'll handle that.>

       Eyeroll. "It's, like, half of Congress, they're going to award themselves larger pensions about it probably. Uh, anyway I think I just wouldn't be doing anything this interesting on my own? And there are downsides but they are way smaller than the downsides of just never really doing anything interesting. I guess this is probably not a problem alien war princes have. Is prince a - hereditary title, are you Andalite nobility -"

<It is a military command rank. We do not have hereditary titles. Our leaders are democratically elected.>

       "That's not very Klingon. Which was sort of the analog I was going with, warrior race who calls their ships TailStrike and Mhalir was super unsure if you understood the concept of not killing people if they surrender..."

<I am unfamiliar with a people by that name.>

       "Nah, they're sci fi, they're fake. ...I assume."

Leareth holds a slimy greyish Yeerk in his hand. :Mhalir, I wished to ask if, as I predicted, you have a setup for your own immortality: 

...Yes, Mhalir thinks loudly, finally. (Thinking is a little foggier and significantly slower without a host brain to use as well.) How did you–

:Inference, from the fact that you thought you were the same as my younger self, it seemed very likely that would be a parallel as well. How confident are you of it?: 

There are several. One that piggybacks on morph tech, but would only have worked when I were in morph in Alloran's body - I have a backup of a very high-resolution neural scan in storage, but no way to actually run it...

:Could you, in theory, acquire morph ability, morph yourself, nothlit yourself, and have it set up that way? I assume that if Alloran had become a nothlit you would have been trapped in hyperspace and unable to feed, but Andalites trapped as, say, birds, seem to be able to eat in their new form and not starve, so I am not sure how that works: 

It seems rather unlikely the Andalites would cooperate with that plan, even if it worked, which I am not sure it would when I do not have an Andalite brain to throw at solving it. 

:Does Alloran know: 

No. I blocked his senses for it.

Sigh. 

Why are you asking this? 

:Because one way to finagle the politics of this situation would be - to allow your trial and execution. And, of course, arrange to catch you again afterward. You could continue under a different name - or perhaps not as a Yeerk at all, if we can run the brain backup on a robot instead, the Yeerk form is really suboptimal in some ways: 

:I know. You need not decide for certain yet. If I need to ask you again for a yes-or-no answer, I will refer to the plan as: he thinks for a moment, :Tantara: 

And, when it seems like Mhalir has nothing else to add, he offers the Visser back to his host. 

She takes him carefully and holds him back up to her ear and goes slack in sort of the lopsided fashion of a person having a stroke.

Wow that is really disconcerting to watch. Leareth hasn't actually seen the process before, only had it done to him. While semiconscious. 

Visser 3 has control in about thirty seconds, and quickly catches up on her intervening memories. <...I did not realized you missed eating. If there is a particular thing you miss, I see no reason why you should not arrange to do that. I can read emails or something at the same time as you eat.> 

Huh, thanks, she thinks. The last Yeerk decided to take her more seriously about the vaguely wishing she could drop fifteen pounds than about the enjoying eating a pint of ice cream for breakfast. And sometimes dipping potato chips in it. And to be fair weight loss with zero willpower expenditure is a pretty good deal, it's probably going to be one of the most popular uses of Yeerks, but she really misses the ice cream. 

What about the getting laid.

Visser 3 considers it. <That is a more significant time cost for me since it would be challenging to read emails during it, but I suppose if you are interested in getting laid with someone who is in a similar position to yourself, I could - think about interesting problems or something while you do that? I am not sure if you would feel weird about that though. I think some Yeerks find their hosts having sex to be enjoyable but I do not really get the appeal>