After finding out that Tobias had been trapped in the hawk morph he'd been using, Tommy had found himself almost wishing that he'd stayed with the rest of the Animorphs instead of heading home the way he'd done as soon as he'd managed to regain the focus he'd needed to morph. Once the six of them had all been called together to plan what they were going to do next – with him in a cat morph that Cassie had found for him, since he and Jake had both agreed that it would be too suspicious if he started hanging out with the rest of the Animorphs when their social circles had never really overlapped in the past – Tommy sighed, feeling his tail lash sharply in annoyance.

(Look, I don't think it was the best idea for Rachel to get herself into that situation either, but it sounds to me like she was really worried about her friend. I think we all know what that feels like, right?)

"Point taken," Jake said, nodding at him as Rachel reached down to scratch behind his ears.

Tommy found himself purring almost against his will, and he heard Cassie chuckle softly. Jake got them all back on track before Marco could say anything sarcastic, of course.

"I think that the main thing we have to take away from this is that we can't count on Melissa being our way to get close to Chapman," Jake said, taking up the main thread of their conversation again. "Not if she's a Controller herself, and not if she's going to keep being weird to Rachel."

"I guess we'll just have to find another way," Rachel said, sounding more than a little eager; he could understand the feeling, since he wouldn't have been particularly in favor of using any of his friends in a bid to gain information on their mutual enemies. If he'd had any to speak of before the Animorphs, at least. "I mean, we already know where Chapman's office is; we know where his house is. Maybe we could just morph into some small animals and hide out there for awhile."

As all of them discussed what they were actually going to do next, eventually settling on the idea of morphing into the cat that Rachel's friend had gotten for a previous birthday, Tommy found himself hoping that nothing would go wrong on this next mission. Or, at least not as wrong as what had happened when they'd ended up in a fight with Visser Three. He hoped that nothing would go that wrong ever again.

Once the meeting had concluded, with the six of them making plans to meet up outside the Chapman house tomorrow, Tommy quickly jumped out the window, demorphing and then quickly morphing into the bald eagle that he and Rachel both used to fly when they needed to.