Once they'd all found the time to meet up – a three-day weekend, which would hopefully give them enough time to carry out the mission and to recover from whatever happened to them either during or after it – at the river, Tommy followed Tobias out to where the rest of the Animorphs were waiting for them. Thanking Tobias for his help, as he landed on the ground and Tobias landed in a nearby tree, Tommy quickly demorphed.

The others were already human, and they seemed to have been waiting for him, given the way most of them greeted him; Marco would have been sarcastic no matter how quickly he arrived, Tommy knew.

(I'm going to be the timekeeper, watching out for the deadly two-hour limit,) the hawk said. (I'm the only bird in the world with his own watch,) Tobias continued, holding out a leg so that all of them could see the small, digital timer strapped to it. (Rachel put it on for me; I'll be out over water the whole time, so I figured it was fairly safe. No bird-watchers to wonder when red-tails started wearing Timexes.)

"I figured we'd hide our clothes, wade into the river a little way, and then start morphing," Jake suggested, getting all of their attention.

Pretty much all of them agreed to that, and Jake asked Cassie to be the first one of them to try out the dolphin morph that all of them had acquired yesterday. Cassie really did seem to be the one who was best at morphing, or at least she seemed to be able to make it look more normal than the rest of them. Not that turning into animals could ever really be normal, but it did at least seem to look better when Cassie was the one morphing.

Still, she didn't seem to be able to do much about how strange it was, to watch a human transform into a dolphin, though; still, once she was finished, that was when they were able to get underway.

(Come on, everyone!) Cassie shouted, her silent voice giddy as it filled all of their heads. (Come on! Let's go! Let's swim to the ocean! I want to play!)