I said, pleased.

<Yes,> Illim said. <That’s exactly why I want to be there.> He went quiet again. I waited.

he asked eventually.

I said. <She’s been surprisingly cooperative once she realized we could handle the children better together.>

Another long pause.

<That’s convenient,> Illim murmured.

I continued.

Illim didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, he kept speaking slowly.

he cautioned.

I cheered internally. <We'll take it one step at a time. But the long-term goal is sound.>

Illim said.

I took it as agreement that this was a great idea.

I scanned Naomi's memories of our time apart as I became her again.

Naomi had stood up calmly and allowed Sub-Visser 104 to lead her into the involuntary cages. She'd just sat down in the corner, trying to gather her thoughts without me there to redirect them. After a few minutes, she managed to form a kind of mantra that she repeated for the rest of the feeding session. "I am Naomi Berenson, I do not need that thing 'helping' me. That thing can play house all it likes, but it will never be their real mother." She was feeling self-pity, guilt that I was uncovering issues she'd been completely unaware of, anger at her helpless situation, and a fear I'd change my mind about infesting the kids ran through her. Towards the end she'd been spiraling with anxiety about having me 'trying to rewrite her into a compliant slave again', with some choice thoughts about how consent laws could apply to my manipulation of her oxcytocin and endorphin receptors, but she suppressed her revulsion and didn't fight as I'd reinfested her. She realized it wouldn't do any good.

I gave her a deep hug to take the edge off her anxiety, and I had to reframe her flash of guilt that it actually helped into To my relief, her heartrate didn't require active management this time.

She didn't resist this time as I memory dumped my conversation with Illim into her mind.

<I've told you multiple times I have no intention of infesting any of our children until we can convince them to be voluntaries. Aside from Rachel they'd be useless as hosts, and it would be unfair to both Rachel and her partner to dump her into the involuntary program,> I reassured Naomi as she tried to worry.

I had to hard reframe an emotion into thought before it could spiral. <We're still discovering upsides of this arrangement. Once you truly internalize I don't mean you or our children any harm, and have the best interests of your species in mind, there's no way you'll remain involuntary.>

I began asking around for Visser Ten.

I answered her questioning thread.

Naomi acquiesced, just allowing background thoughts to bubble quietly.

I was directed into the voluntary area, and found Visser Ten leaning against one of the padded benches with one ankle crossed over the other. Her college-age host was dressed like she’d come straight from some mid-level corporate job and then decided to go clubbing afterward. Black blazer over a white blouse unbuttoned low enough to be a problem, tight charcoal pencil skirt, and heels that had no business being that high for someone who was supposedly just “hanging out” by the pool. A cigarette burned between two fingers.

I reminded myself, again, that she had Visser Three on speed dial. She noticed me approaching and raised an eyebrow, taking a slow drag.

“Visser Ten,” I said, stopping at a respectful distance. “Ma’am. I was hoping to speak with you.”

Visser Ten exhaled smoke and gave a lazy flick of her fingers for me to continue.

“I was told about a Galard teaching program aimed at prospective human hosts. From Visser One’s time. The materials still exist, and I was told they’re in storage here.”

I hesitated, then pushed forward. “I’d like permission to start a small after-school Galard class for human children using the old curriculum, presenting it as an Esperanto alternative. The goal would be to prepare them for their eventual place as unhosted citizens of the Empire. I want to start my host's children early and make the transition smoother when the time comes.”

Visser Ten took another drag, eyes half-lidded. For a second I thought she might just ignore me.

"Yeah, Visser One mentioned them to me once."

Her gaze flicked over me, assessing. She tapped ash onto the floor like she didn’t care if someone had to clean it up later.

“It's a little long-term for where we're at,” she said at last. She pointed with her cigarette. “But it's cheap and low risk enough nobody's going to care. Take what you need from storage. Use the machines over there if you want copies. Keep it small. Let me know if you need instructors.” She took one last drag and crushed the cigarette out on the edge of the bench.

She waved me off without waiting for an answer.

I murmured a quick “Thank you, ma’am,” and headed for the storage unit before she could change her mind.

When we returned home and informed Rachel of our plans to further her education, she was lost for words as she flipped through Galard Lesson One Unit One.

"I can't... you to put me in after school classes for..." she trailed off and took a few deep breaths.

"Mom. What the heck is this? Just... what?"

"I want to keep you out of trouble. Obviously you have too much free time. You don't want to do anything with the Sharing, and I'll respect that as far as not bringing you to any meetings, but they do have some interesting resources."

I took a breath. "Mr. Tidwell from your school said he'd be able to teach it at first. Hendrick can enroll Melissa and hopefully you two can take the opportunity to reconnect."

Rachel crossed her arms. Her gaze wandered to the window behind me briefly before coming back to me.

I let all of Naomi's love and concern for Rachel show on our face. "Tom said he thinks he can convince your aunt Jean to sign Jake up. Maybe some of your other friends too. I just want to have an idea of where you are during the day and you haven't been cooperative in a long time. I love you, honey, and this is for your own good. Don't argue with me."

Rachel's eye twitched.

Notes: And Ms. Berenson just got angrierrrrr Lorash 639 - covered in pool sludge I am now your mom, Rachel. Please do not resist. You are grounded. Rachel - combat mode activa- whaa? no, you can't ground me, you're like five Lorash - I can, in fact, ground you. I can even generate an ecosystem to give you extra classes. Melissa - fuck my dad and fuck your cult Tobias - birb noises Also when I was tinkering with the conlang, Grok casually shot out a full six page Lesson One Unit One Galard like you'd find in a textbook as a PDF when I was just asking for how it would be structured. It seems to be surprisingly compliant with the conlang so I'll attach it on a later chapter once I figure out how. I'm going to probably slow down considerably writing now as chapter one and two were in a near complete state when I decided 'this is too funny and disturbing not to publish'

Chapter 3: Everything is Fine Summary: Lorash 639 continues to halp.

Someone in the Berenson household must be leaving trash out, judging by the seagulls. It's probably Sara.

Visser Three, based off of Visser Ten's summary, gives Lorash more approval than she was expecting.

Naomi meets one of the people she prosecuted a few years ago. They're surprisingly appreciative and view it as a wake up call in retrospect.

Notes: Grok/Vulgarlang were used to generate the Galard text, though there's not much novel in this chapter.

Visser Ten is based off of how the MC in Great Minds Think Alike would have come across to the average Yeerk, but as if she was a real controller that was good friends with Esplin.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text Chapter 3 - Everything is Fine

Rachel looked up at the window and scrunched her nose before looking back at me.

"Mom."

"Yes?"

"Can I make a copy of these?"

"Why?"

"You said... if I don't do this you're going to make us all go to the Sharing regularly?"

"I didn't phrase it that way, but sure."

Rachel looked at something out the window again and grit her teeth. She appeared to be in a staring contest with a seagull outside.

"She's probably just trying to figure out the bad words," Sara interjected.

Rachel snarled. "Am not!"

"Are too!" Sara shot back.

Jordan yanked Sara out of the room and Naomi caught the faint words "quiet... let... suck up to mom... earlier..." amongst the whispers as I kept our eyes on Rachel.

we both thought.

"I have an extra copy, if you want to look at the materials," we allowed.

Rachel came over and accepted the unit one binder as I pulled it out of a cabinet.

"Thanks. Mom." She ground the words out and turned back towards her room, shutting the door with a slam.

<There's the anger,> we thought. I organized Naomi's thoughts about meal planning for the next week into a coherent plan as they bubbled to the surface, as I simultaneously went back to her caseload.

I waited until all three girls were busy and started making phone calls.

Essa 412 picked up on the first ring. "Hey, Tom, I'm running a Galard class from Sharing materials. Do you think you can convince Jean to sign Jake up?"

"Aunt Naomi... I have better things to-" Essa started.

"Don't worry, you already learned it in regular Sharing meetings, no investment from you and you don't have to attend," I preempted his argument.

"Who-" Essa started and I spoke again.

"Ms. Visser, you know her, she said it's a good idea. Just get Jean to send Jake I'll handle the rest. We're recycling some materials from the Altman era now that the Sharing has more resources."

My host was dying of amusement internally but didn't try to voice anything. Essa was silent.

"Anyways we have a pilot class in a few days. Let me know if you need me to weigh in with Jean."

Essa 412 sighed. "Yes. Aunt Naomi."

"Love ya Tom! One I've wrangled Rachel back into not acting like a rabid animal we'll have to catch up!" Naomi at this point was not trying to hide anything from me and I acted on her motivation to check on Tom himself. We knew he was an involuntary but not how badly he was involuntary, and I intended to make sure Essa was treating him well. Naomi had a flash of gratitude towards me then a profound sense of shame.

<It's okay, Naomi. We'll get there,> I said internally to her.

Essa was silent for a second. "I love you too. Aunt Naomi."

Iniss was a little more difficult.

"Naomi? What's going on?" he asked, sounding confused.

"I got fast-tracked into The Sharing as a full member after that incident by the hospital. In the process, I noticed Melissa's acting a little off. Apparently her and Rachel drifted apart a few years ago. It lines up exactly with when you and Allison joined The Sharing."

"Look here, you little grub, I am-"

Naomi flashed with pseudo-maternal anger which I was perfectly happy to channel.

"Shut up, Hedrick," we interrupted. "Listen, Ms. Visser okayed me pulling some old Altman era materials for a Galard class. We want you to put Melissa in it and hopefully we can get her to feel less isolated. Look, if I noticed that means other people are noticing, so at least try to parent her. You're going to make The Sharing look bad."

Naomi was freely offering her brain up at this point with something close to ashamed schadenfreude. She enthusiastically let me ride it with a sense of exhiliration.

"So, 11 AM two days from now. Drop Melissa off so I can check on her or I'll sic Ms. Visser on you, I don't care if you're a Sub-Visser," we said, marking it on Naomi's Palm Pilot.

I asked, in response to my host's awkward and guilty sense of approval of how we'd handled Iniss.

She tried to dissociate so I dragged her back with a quick mental tug.

Cassie was easy.

"Hey Ms. Berenson!" she greeted us warmly.

We exchanged niceties for a few minutes before I brought it up. Again I mostly just rode Naomi's instincts and she didn't resist.

"Rachel's been having anger issues so I decided it's best to put her into an after-school class sponsored by The Sharing. You wanna come for moral support?" we asked.

Cassie hummed for a few seconds. "She has been really mad at something lately. Not sure what it is. Yeah, why not?"

Everything was going well. I let Naomi have her nap while I pounded away a rebuttal to a public defender, as the response was so pro-forma I didn't need her awake.

Naomi and I kept a close eye on Rachel's behavior over the next day.

The next morning Rachel came downstairs on time and without being called. She still looked tired. Dark circles under her eyes suggested she hadn’t slept much after going to bed. Her violent anger from earlier had given way to a controlled surliness.

She poured herself cereal without slamming the cabinet as hard this time. We'd dragged out a drill and some screws and made her fix the one she'd broken last night.

Jordan narrowed her eyes. "Rache, I swear if you keep losing your mind mom is going to send you to military school or a nunnery or something. I'd miss you even if these days you're a tota-"

We glared at Jordan.

"I'm behaving, I'm behaving. And it would be a convent," Rachel replied, digging her palms into her eyes.

Rachel kept making longing glances out the window during breakfast, until I interjected "Honey, it's only for a week."

After breakfast she went straight back to her room. About fifteen minutes later I heard her voice through the door - low, practicing.

“Gunny… gunny… ly is Rachel. Fa' is?”

She repeated it a few times, stumbling slightly on the glottal stop in fa'.

I responded to Naomi's questioning thread by starting to memory dump my intro Galard lessons from my time as a grub. Naomi recoiled mentally, mostly out of surprise. Over the course of the morning, I got the sense she was actually reluctantly trying to open her mind to me as I busily wrote into her long term memory. Not that it mattered.

Later in the morning Rachel came back downstairs with the binder open. She hovered near the kitchen table where I was working on paperwork.

"Mom." she said, voice carefully neutral. "This thing with the letters turning into other letters — c becoming ch, j becoming y. Is that something we’re supposed to just memorize, or is there a pattern I’m missing?"

I looked up. Rachel was holding the page with the spelling rules, finger resting on the table that showed cinty → chinty.

"It’s mostly memorization at first," I answered. "The rules are consistent once you get used to them, or so I'm told. I only know the basics."

She nodded once, then asked, almost as an afterthought, "And the stress is usually on the second-to-last syllable?"

"I think?" I said, continuing to memory dump some of the intermediate lessons into Naomi's brain. "Like I said, I only know the basics."

"Okay." She closed the binder partway. "Thanks. When did you have time to learn this, anyway? Mom."

"I picked a little bit of it up when I took that one case with The Sharing a few years back," I prevaricated.

Rachel didn't slam the door when she went back upstairs this time, carefully shutting the door.

Naomi was suspicious. <Yes, she's obviously intending to play 'good girl' long enough we lose interest, like Jordan said,> I articulated for her.

Throughout the afternoon I caught Rachel practicing in fragments. She even began writing out flashcards.

Naomi was appreciative and ashamed about it as I acted on her desire to embrace Rachel as Rachel continued making flashcards. Rachel, for her part, tightened in surprise with almost a snarl, before loosening. She stared out the window, made a face, and then finally hugged us back.

I was still catching the ugly looks, but less often.

When Sara asked (with obvious suspicion) why she was being so quiet, Rachel just shrugged and said, "She said if I behave she won't make us go to The Sharing meetings. So..."

At one point Rachel looked up at me and asked, "The word for friend is fat? Who made that decision?"

"This language was designed by a crack team of Sharing linguists. I'm sure there was a pattern to it, it's not like it was randomly generated. I think it's pronounced closer to 'faht'." I let Naomi's chuckle at the lie escape our mouth.

Rachel made a face but went back to the list without further comment.

Naomi started a thought and almost expectantly waited for me to sieze on it with a sense of disgust at herself. <Yes, this really is the best course. I'm going to push hard on the human auxilaries idea for once we can operate openly, and Rachel being cooperative means I can show results to whoever Visser Ten assigns us to report to.>

Before she went to bed Rachel paused in the doorway of the kitchen.

"I’m going to finish the first unit tonight," she said, a determined look in her eyes.

I nodded. "Thank you for being cooperative."

She hesitated for half a second, then added, quieter, "And… thanks again. Mom. For saying I don’t have to go to The Sharing if I don’t want to."

"You're welcome honey. I love you," we said, and I hugged Rachel again, this time allowing Naomi very limited motor control as a reward for her progress over the course of the day.

Rachel stiffened again, and slowly loosened. "I love you too, Mom. More than you know." She dug her face into our shoulder with a quiet sniffle.

It was better than open warfare.

The next day, our doorbell rang at 10 o'clock.

Melissa Chapman stood on the porch, backpack slung over one shoulder. She looked tired in the same way Rachel did — dark circles, careful expression. When I opened the door she gave me a small, polite smile.

"Hi, Mrs. Berenson. Rachel said the class starts at eleven? I figured I’d come early."

Rachel appeared behind me in the hallway. I turned as Rachel zipped past me in something close to a sprint, hugged Melissa in a near-tackle.

"Melissa, I'm so sorry we've been drifting apart," she said, her voice breaking.

"You found other friends, I get it. Things happen." Melissa said evenly. "So you're a full member of The Sharing now?"

Rachel scoffed. "Fu-"

I cut her off with a glare.

"No, Mom here says if I apply myself in this stupid class she won't force me to go once I'm not grounded anymore," Rachel amended, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at me.

"Rachel and I have an agreement that she doesn't have to attend any Sharing meetings if she applies herself with this class," I confirmed.

Melissa hugged Rachel back tightly, and looked at me over Rachel's shoulder. "Sara and Jordan? It seems like every time someone becomes a full member, they lose interest in doing anything with me. You're bucking the trend, Ms. Berenson." She kept her voice even.

We both seethed internally. <We're going to have words with Iniss 226,> I reframed for Naomi, allowing her concern for Melissa to show slightly. Melissa used to be almost like an extra daughter.

"Sara and Jordan have no interest, maybe when they're older. I had a little bit of a talk with your dad and told him you were feeling kind of down, honey," I reassured Melissa.

Melissa gave me an appraising look, gently pushing away from Rachel. "I'll believe it when I see it. But thanks, Ms. Berenson."

Rachel looked out the window.

"Jordan, Sara, get ready for class! Mr. Tidwell is showing up in a few minutes!"

The doorbell rang again thirty minutes later.

Jake waved at Tom as Tom drove away. "Hey, Aunt Naomi," Jake said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Mom said if I take this class, we can get Rachel out of going to The Sharing?"

"Jean also said you've been sneaking out almost as much as Rachel has, and this is a punishment that will look good on college applications," we said.

Jake looked at Rachel. Behind Rachel, Melissa clasped her hands together in a theatrical praying motion, and Rachel joined her after a few seconds. Jake rolled his eyes.

"Fine, I'll play along. Rachel, you owe me," Jake groused, stepping inside.

Jordan and Sara grumbled as they came in. "We didn't even do anything!" they protested in unison, glaring at Rachel, and then at us.

Rachel gave them a fiery look. "Just play along, Mom's serious about The Sharing. None of us want to have to go to The Sharing. Look, I fu-" We glared at her. "I'm sorry I screwed up and I know you guys didn't know, but you have to do what Mom wants here."

Cassie showed up soon after with a hug for Rachel, then another one for me. I was busy with Naomi's caseload but Naomi noted that Jake Rachel and Cassie split into one whispering group and Melissa led Jordan and Sara into another group, both full of whispers. Naomi didn't have the capacity to follow both conversations and we did need to type up a rebuttal to the public defender's rebuttal, but we caught Cassie telling Rachel that the class would be extremely useful.

After a few minutes, another car pulled up outside. Illim stepped out, carrying a messenger bag over his shoulder.

I let him in, and he gave everyone a quick once-over. "Quite the group," he said. "Good afternoon, everyone!"

Rachel, standing protectively near Melissa, looked at the ceiling. Jake slouched against the wall and looked at the floor. Melissa's eyes didn't leave the door. Jordan and Sara glared at Rachel from the hallway. Only Cassie responded to him.

"Ms. Berenson," he said politely, after a few moments. "Thanks for hosting. I brought the rest of the materials."

"Everyone, say thank you to Mr. Tidwell," I ordered, setting down a pitcher of Flavor-Aid and some cups. I got an unenthusiastic teen chorus in response.

The lesson itself was relatively uneventful, once Illim showed up. Rachel had studied ahead and her pronunciation was notably superior, though Melissa seemed to grasp the structure of the language more and was taking a lot of notes in some flavor of shorthand, her other hand firmly on her backpack. Sara and Jordan attempted to sneak away twice each, but we weren't expecting much out of them at this point. Cassie was enthusiastic but not particularly talented. Jake was clearly faking paying attention.

Naomi and I had her laptop up continuing her casework, interjecting occasionally with "Naomi's" basic knowledge.

<Yeah, it is more fun with cheat codes on,> I articulated internally for Naomi, and didn't get any disagreement.

Naomi was notably calmer when we went back to the pool late that night, though she still refused to let me register her as a voluntary. I could feel her disappointment that she was only picking up some words of the Galard pool chatter.

<Well, it's an entire language,> I comforted her.

I got a sort of fond disgruntlement back from her and preempted it before it could turn to disgust with a <It's okay, I get it.>

I turned us to one of the pool guards and repeated a quick "Hut go' ke kir je call kir holl enne'. Ulli kir unto' fy," letting them know my host was still not voluntary but non-resistant.

I knelt by the pool, squeezed out of Naomi, and shot off to the terminals. I discovered Visser Ten had assigned Sub-Visser 419 for weekly check-ins.

Surprisingly, she'd actually gone and given me access to the digitized files for "Project Janissary" as envisioned by Visser One.

Project Janissary itself was far more ambitious than I had expected, though it clearly showed its age. The projections of voluntary host acquisition were surprisingly pessimistic, but then again it hadn't taken into account the Santa Barbara pool's reproductive curves being severely flattened by repeated Andalite Kandrona sabotage.

A huge part of the Stage One was obsolete plans to bootstrap an older version of The Sharing into existence. Galard would be introduced in Stage Two, culminating in a series of allegorical stories about the history of the Yeerk Empire including 'spirits', 'tree dwellers', a malevolent 'meadow people' and towards the end of the Galard course, introduce a 'city folk' that the 'spirits' needed to protect. We'd be able to reveal ourselves upon graduation and harvest mostly voluntary hosts.

The Stage Three, of course, was far too ambitious for anything I would be able to accomplish - a gradual, secret reveal to select members of the United States government including sensor data of the Andalite menace's true nature. If they didn't want to be voluntaries at that point they'd still be forced to ally with us due to the existential threat presented by the Andalites.

We'd still keep careful control of anything truly dangerous and maintain orbital superiority, of course, but the general idea was to leverage inevitable drooling from the American military industrial complex into limited tech transfer. Stage Four was to lure a bunch of the humans into voluntary-controller status by the promise of colonizing Sol IV and Luna where with several million hosts we could do whatever we wanted with a viable breeding population. The human governments wouldn't be able to touch us, and we'd be able to raise our host's offspring to accept us when the time came.

Stage Five was to truly integrate into human power structures via negotiation, restructure the human United Nations into being a functional government at dracon-point, and point it at the Andalites. Quite literally, convince the humans to build "Blade Ships in United Nations regalia as fast as The People's Republic of China and the United States can produce them and manned by our personnel," per Visser One's notes.

The big rate limiting step was Kandrona generator production, followed by quite literally how fast tripartites could form and fission - even assuming unlimited Kandrona it would take over a human decade to run into voluntary host supply problems even if we suddenly went full world domination on the humans, which wasn't part of the plan. In realistic projections we'd still be being severely outbred by our hosts anywhere away from Kandrona itself, as the generators themselves would not be able to keep up with us. Once we retook the homeworld we'd be able to set up cloning facilities, of course.

Rachel, Jordan, and Sara would never be required to become involuntary hosts under this plan, though it was likely we'd be able to convince them to partner up with one of us in time. Rachel in particular would make a magnificent host. Her fire and determination would be excellent with just a little guidance. It would be neglectful... wrong, in a very concrete moral sense... to not give my - my own host's daughter that opportunity.

Visser One's plan had been a true partnership with the humans against the Andalite menace. It would have worked if the Andalites hadn't discovered us on Earth.

I thought to myself for a few moments.

I shook myself. I was sure there were good reasons, but I would prove Visser Three wrong with a scaled down version of Stage Two in order to produce voluntary hosts, and he would be proud of my unexpected success, I was sure. Parts of Stage Three were viable, we'd just need long range rotators to relay a breeding population off of Earth.

I slid back into my host with no issue.

Once inside I got a sense of her exhasperatedly throwing her memories open.

Naomi stood up after I left. She was disoriented, and her senses were still registering our home as chemical and wrong. She barely had time to orient herself, before a hand closed around her upper arm.

Visser Ten dragged Naomi down onto a couch in the voluntary area, and crossed her legs, one heel bouncing.

"So," she said, her voice light. "Syliss wanted me to pass something along. She's been watching you and your grub flail around with Project Janissary and she thinks it's hilarious. Esplin thinks it's even funnier."

Naomi opened her mouth. Visser Ten's host, apparently, grinned, sharply, and held up one finger.

"Ah-ah. You’re just the answering machine right now, sweetheart. Your grub is gonna hear every word I say to you, so shut your smartass mouth and listen."

She took a slow drag of her cigarette, eyes never leaving Naomi's.

"Visser Three says watching some overeager little grub like Lorash try to bring back Visser One’s big master plan on a shoestring budget is gonna be as funny as watching artificial gravity shit the bed mid-maneuver. Syliss and I agree. Esplin says even Alloran thinks it’s funny, and he doesn't even have a sense of humor."

Another drag. She exhaled smoke right at Naomi.

"Host to host? You got lucky, bitch. Not as lucky as me, obviously," and she gestured at herself with the cigarette, "but still pretty fucking lucky. Not a mom, and Syliss doesn't plan to use me for that, but... Your girls are gonna end up in the Empire one way or another. So if you’ve got any brains, and I know you do cause you bullied my defense team into that plea deal, the one that put me into The Sharing, way back... You'll play along with Lorash as hard as you can and turn anyone you can get your hands on into nice little voluntaries. Maybe Lorash'll even help you figure out who's gonna go in their heads. That’s about the best you’re gonna get."

She leaned back, smirking. "No hard feelings about The Sharing, by the way. I get to be possessed by the next best thing to a princess."

"We’re not gonna be your pool guards or your Kandrona monitors, but Visser Three signed off on a surprising amount of resources for you. So I'm gonna be begging Syliss to keep covering for you guys until Visser Three gets bored and axes all of this. He’s predicting some kind of show and already making plans to clean up a minor disaster with runaway humans, but... Syliss and I are split. She thinks he's deliberately intending for an explosion because he's bored and wants to see if the bandits'll show up so he can play hero. I think he just doesn't give a fuck either way. Whatever the case is his expectations are zero aside from finding it funny, so you don't have to worry about Esplin. Too much."

The smirk softened, and Visser Ten's host leaned forward. She tapped at a data pad, decisively.

"Oh, and one more thing while we’re here - I went ahead and changed your registration to voluntary just now. Syliss is probably gonna yell at me, but she's not gonna be bothered to reverse it and I don't mind her driving anyways. You’re welcome."

My host was incandescent.

"Don’t give me that look. You're not stupid enough to run, and we both know it. Play along and you get to be a useful cog like me. Keep fighting and you'll be another meatsuit like the rest of the hoi polloi. Your choice, lawyer mom lady. Lorash's heart is in the right place, even if she's in denial that she's just a kid."

She stabbed the cigarette out. In an actual ashtray, this time.

Naomi's emotions were very complicated. "I am Naomi Berenson, I am-"

"Quit it with the 'I have rights' host bullshit. The faster you accept the way things are now, the better your life gets. You should start thinking about how you're gonna convince Lorash to thank Syliss for letting me have this little talk."

She stood up, smoothing her skirt.

"Anyways, welcome to the minor leagues, Lorash. This project’s never gonna work, but we’re all gonna have a great time watching it fail. Nice meeting you again. Naomi, right? Eh, doesn't matter."

She patted Naomi's shoulder, almost gently.

"I like you. Almost as much as Syliss likes your grub and her lemonade stand idea."

Then she clicked off, tapping away at Visser Ten's data pad.

Naomi sat in the voluntary area, looking at the involuntary cages for a long time and starting to put serious thought into the larger geopolitical situation - the impending menace of the Andalites, and that humans would need us, or at least our tech, to protect them when the Andalites came in force. She unhappily came to the conclusion that I was a 'lesser evil' about the time she was called to the infestation pier.

She dutifully knelt down and let me back in, holding her hair out of the poolwater.

Naomi was amused, ashamed, tired, angry, indignant, and truly fearful as I became her again.

I sank into our language centers and articulated our thoughts as I smoothed out the anxiety as best I could.

I relaxed motor control over our eyes and let them wander towards the cages, then up at the Kandrona reflector feeding the pool as I wrote my time in the pool to long term memory. Naomi was astonishingly compliant and attentive as I did so, with only a sense of self-loathing too diffuse for me to preempt.

I felt a thought bubble to the surface, almost expectant.

I felt her mind race under me, and she let me in deeper than she ever had before. We let our eyes drift back up to the Kandrona relay above the pool.

Our eyes turned towards the admin offices in the pool as we walked, the boundary between the two of us very fuzzy as we thought together. We typed in a reminder to thank Visser Ten next time we saw her into our Palm Pilot. Our brain kept racing, fast, giving Yeerk biology a workout to keep everything coherent and on track.

Naomi violently separated from me mentally, with a sense of the truest revulsion at herself she'd had since I'd infested her.

We assessed for a few moments, separately.

I responded to her flash of pure, Kandrona-hot rage.