After the six of them had managed to escape from the Gardens' security, something that Tommy had never expected to have to do before, he, Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias decided that they would stay in a group for as long as they could manage. He'd been the one to suggest it, knowing that there was at least some safety in numbers for them, even if it wasn't as much as it would have been if their plans didn't hinge on getting into and out of the habitats of the kind of dangerous animals that ordinary people would have probably wanted to have as little to do with as possible.

The fact remained that none of them could truly claim to be ordinary anymore.

Once he'd made his own selection – touching the lion in order to sample its DNA being both one of the most exhilarating and one of the more nerve-wracking experiences of his life up to that point – Tommy followed along with Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias as the former acquired an African elephant, and the latter two tried to abstain from making their own selections. As it turned out, Cassie had had an injured wolf being treated in her parents' clinic, and so could have easily have been said to be covered as far as fighting against the Yeerks was concerned. It was Tobias that Tommy found himself honestly worried about.

He didn't really know what the younger boy's reasons ultimately were for deciding not to acquire a new animal morph that could fight better than a hawk could; they were going to need all six of them ready for action if they were going to have any chance of defeating the Yeerks and their forces.

Making up his mind to speak to Cassie, once the four of them had managed to find Jake and Marco again, Tommy turned his attention back to searching. His and Rachel's comparative height helped the pair of them to find Jake and Marco, who had apparently been hiding from the security that they hadn't been able to lose nearly as well as the group that Tommy had found himself a part of had done. Though a large part of their nervousness seemed to have also come from the fact that their attempts to acquire a combat morph for Jake seemed to have gone more wrong than any of them had ever expected. Rachel didn't seem to be putting much stock in their story, but Tommy found himself wishing that he could have found a way to keep them all together.

It wouldn't have been easy, considering everything that had been going on at the time, but he couldn't help thinking that things would have been better that way.