Leareth doesn't observe this yet because he's watching in z-space still, but Cayaldwin will if he's morphed Thoughtsenser for this. 

There is not, at first, all of a mind there. Normally a person in morph is conscious in z-space, and the morph mechanism has a sane way of transferring their cognition, but Mhalir isn't running, there, and so he's being shifted piece by piece into a brain that is. 

- at first there are no thoughts, or even emotions, it's not coherent enough for that, only fragmented sensory experience - 

- feeling of dream-tripping, a body that should be there and isn't entirely - wrongness - proprioception is still only half there and reasoning is not yet there at all but it's not the right shape -

And then enough of him is there to complete an actual emotion, which is PANIC, because everything is scrambled and wrong and broken and he can't think he doesn't know where he is or how or why any of it - he's still not complete enough for plans or even deliberate action to happen, but he flails aimlessly for something - 

Cayaldwin had at first planned not to interrupt Leareth to tell him, but he decides to when Mhalir starts moving, since it might affect something - <He's there. Do I need to hold him still.>

<I think it should be fine but maybe just in case?> The z-space side of things still looks stable enough. People can move during normal demorphs, he's pretty sure, but this setup might be more fragile. 

Cayaldwin hasn't spent that much time practicing magic but he can pin demorphing-Mhalir with a force net until the forced-demorph is done. This will probably be alarming but that's much less bad than somehow disrupting the link halfway through.

It's initially not much more alarming than the existing situation, because his sensory experiences aren't linked up well enough to tell what's happening at all.

Eventually it comes together coherently enough for Mhalir to notice that he's a) in a human body, for some reason, that's why he can't find the tail, and b) trapped. He stops struggling.

He's still mostly not able to think, but more in a 'being very drugged' way than a 'missing half his brain' way, he keeps losing his train of thought as different connection finally slide into place. He's not in pain exactly but the disorientation and sense of everything-in-flux is very distressing.

And then, finally, things are not constantly-scrambling and are instead settling into a more stable state of confusion. Where is he - why can't he - it's not just that he can't remember how he got here, it's that the process of remembering-things-on-purpose is not entirely working, which is terrifying. The physical reaction that the human body is having about the terrifyingness is not helping at all. 

He opens his eyes and everything is blurry but he can still make out that there's an Andalite standing there - which is not surprising, though he can't drag out the rest of the reason why it's not surprising, but it nonetheless feels VERY DOOMY and he still can't move and is now panicking even more. 

Leareth hops back to normal space. <It finished fine - is he...?>

He releases the force-net. <He's - conscious? He's not doing great - I hope it's just temporary ->

Gradually the sense of static-noise in Mhalir's head is fading and he can complete more thoughts. 

- something bad - and good - something very surprising - why is it so hard to remember, it's like it's in a different language - memories of conversations in the Yeerk pool are a little like that, once you're back in your host, like the difference between dreams and waking, and there doesn't seem to be anything to grab onto here, he doesn't remember being any places or doing any things...

Oh. 

Right. 

He was murdered, which was the bad thing, and the Andalites found and ran his backup, which was the good and surprising thing, and they were doing research - he can't remember the Andalite researcher's name, right now, he's now reaching for it in human sounds but it wouldn't have been communicated to him that way. 

He seems to be in a body but he can't at all tell if it all worked properly, it seems to work at all - he feels like him, like he's conscious - but he also feels fairly terrible. 

He tests whether they're going to let him move now. 

<Mhalir? Can you hear me?>

He sits up, slowly, still half-dazed. Keeps his eyes closed, because panicking more at the fact that there are visibly Andalites in front of him is not going to help at all.  For a second he confusedly tries to answer in thoughtspeech as well, and of course he can't.

The human body he's inhabiting doesn't have a human mind in it, of course, but it seems to know how to talk. "Y-yes," he manages, for some reason he can't speak without his voice shaking. 

<Do you need anything?>

He doesn't try to answer right away, just rubs his forehead and wiggles his human body's toes and tries harder to remember the last however-long-it-was. He can dredge up more bits and pieces, with effort, but it's not very signposted - the lack of any accompanying sensory experience means there's nothing to tie it together or help cue him to the order of things. 

"I - am having some trouble remembering," he says finally. "Things that happened when I was a computer. ...That did happen, right." 

<Yes. There are logs you can read, and you can talk to yourself on the computer to make sure you came through all right.>

"Oh. Good. I think it might just be - for Yeerks it is harder to remember Yeerk pool things when in a host, it is sort of a different state, and it would have been even more like that. I - think I came through all right."

He's just, for some reason, incredibly scared. He doesn't think he was scared before? Or if so it wasn't salient. Then again, he can retrieve exactly zero salient emotions from what he can remember. Yeerks in pools also have more muted, less memorable emotional experiences, and again, this was that except more so. 

He - thinks he remembers reasoning about the situation, deciding he might as well act on the version of the world where they were telling him the truth because being very paranoid was unproductive, and you would think being given a new body would count as evidence of their friendliness, but he's still scared. 

<I want to reassure him somehow but I am not sure how> Leareth says to Cayaldwin, privately. <...Are you reading his mind too? I am.> 

<Yes. It is partially our job to make sure he came through right.>

<Do you want us to use magic to calm you> he asks Mhalir.

It seems like that can only improve matters from here. "Yes." 

Leareth can do that. 

<I have a theory about the disorientation> he says. <A great deal of your mind's contents are in - state information, electrical signals, rather than the physical brain structure, and it would have gone from paused in z-space to running on meat not all at once, which would have disrupted the timing on all of that.> 

"That makes sense. I feel - my head does not hurt exactly but it feels as though it should? I am not sure how to explain it." He's a lot calmer now and it's an improvement. 

<Also probably some Yeerk brain regions got translated into a human mind very oddly. I am not sure that would work at all for any species other than a Yeerk.>

"I am quite curious how it ended up mapping over! Whether my brain on a scan would look like just a human brain, or a human with a Yeerk, or some odd blend. It does not feel different from being a Yeerk in a human host, I think? Except for the part where there is not a person with memories in here with me, just procedural memory for using the body." He's silent for a moment, thinking. "I am curious if the human parts of the brain are based on anyone in particular? Or my appearance, actually. I am not sure if I even asked about that before. Probably it did not seem very salient when I was a mind in a computer." 

Mhalir's voice is calm enough, just a little hurried. His body language, however, is not relaxed at all; his eyes are still scrunched shut and he's hugging his knees to his chest. 

<It's just a composite morph of a bunch of different people. Leareth's organization which you are claiming to be from has a lot of ethnic variety.>

Mhalir is curious what he looks like, but he's also not sure if opening his eyes and seeing Andalites looking down at him is going to push the calming-magic too hard.

It's so stupid. He had an Andalite body for decades and occasionally he saw himself in mirrors. Well, saw Alloran. A sudden sliver of fear pushing through the calm: they have mindreading, they're probably reading his thoughts, they must be angry about his keeping an Andalite host involuntarily enslaved for decades– confusion, [Andalite whose name he can't remember] is furious with Alloran for murdering him, which doesn't...

He's still too bleary to fully finish that thought and he tries to shove it aside and focus. What should he be doing. Approach the situation productively, which means not panicking about information that isn't even new. He feels so helpless and it's dumb, he was a lot more helpless before, with the Andalites in complete control of all information flow between him and the world - and they gave him a body and he should be grateful for that whether or not he's sure he trusts them, and it makes more sense to trust them than it has at any point, in light of that evidence - they might be offended that he's reacting with fear instead, and that thought only makes him more afraid - 

He should get up and ask to go talk to the other Mhalir on the computer and read his logs and move forward from here and get situated in the world again so he knows enough and feels enough in control to stop being scared - however he is demonstrably not doing that, the magic is helping him stay calm enough to think but it's not at all helping unstick the loop he seems to be caught in, trying to reason his way to feeling safe so he can do the next thing and it not working. 

<I think he will cope better once he recovers from the demorphing process and gets used to the brain mappings, and is thus less disoriented> Leareth says to Cayaldwin. <I...am not sure how long that will take.>

And it's pretty distressing, actually, observing his baby self feeling this way, and not knowing what to do, because– no, it's not exactly true that he's never felt that helpless, there was the time he was kidnapped by Mhalir before they were allied. But he's never experienced the mixture of helplessness and confusion-about-reality that Mhalir is feeling right now, and he's not sure how to help.