The team is strengthening. Chaldera proved that, tested it, was responsible in part for bringing them closer together and pushing them deeper into their potential.
It's the progress that should signal hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, and a couple of years ago that's all she would have seen.
But now, she can't ignore the warning she senses, as though doom were still where the Elite Force is headed, their breaking apart inevitable.
Ahsoka tries to shake the feeling away. She's so tired of visions and tragedy, and every hell she had never dreamed coming to fruition in reality.
She's not ready for another disaster.
He's not either, but he prepares for it anyways.
That's not how he's elected to think of it. They have enemies, Roman and Riker, and a mission, to prevent them from committing genocide. He's simply working towards that goal, staying ahead of the game.
If that were the whole truth, he wouldn't be so secretive about it.
He tells her, of course. Trusting her goes without saying. She helps him, and they work together every evening that week, even on Halloween.
With reluctance, Chase tells Kaz part of the truth, after the superhero comes unexpectedly wandering down, moping about Oliver going on a date with Bree instead of helping him pulls pranks this year. Not that Perry hadn't already ruined that, kidnapping Bree and insisting on protection from some curse.
In retrospect, Chase and Ahsoka should have known better than to leave Kaz alone with the serum.
As it happens, they don't know what's gone wrong until Korkie and Skylar frantically pull them upstairs. And there the disaster is, the sheep that Kaz transformed into, and stubbornly won't shapeshifter out of.
Chase is forced to explain that with the serum, the individual does not retain their cognitive abilities if transforming into an animal or inanimate object. He says it's because he simply hasn't cracked that part of shapeshifting yet.
Ahsoka doesn't say anything to contradict him.
The antidote is rushed, but it works, thank the force it works, and that's all everyone concerns themselves with. Bree and Oliver finally get rid of Perry and finish their date, and the early hours of the morning tick uneventfully by.
Ahsoka breathes a sigh of relief, though she knows they shouldn't be so paranoid, that there's no truly compelling reason to not tell the others what they're doing. Chase had only said he wanted to keep it a secret until he had fully tested it.
But if the events of tonight have proven anything, it's that some things, some weapons, should be kept away from hands that would recklessly use them.
The agreement was already silently understood before they verbalize it in whispers down in the tunnels. Another secret carried between the two of them, one of a few that bound them together before love ever did.
She wonders what the fallout will be if all those truths are ever set free.