Waking up in her nice, warm bed, in her room that had been repaired and re-carpeted after that little incident she'd had with the crocodile DNA and all of the assorted problems she'd had with that particular morph, Rachel yawned and stretched. Yesterday had been a fairly interesting day; she and Shara had saved a man's life, and that was still a good thing no matter what Jake had said. Besides, just because he was the leader of the Animorphs, that didn't mean that he was the undisputed, final authority in everything they did.

No matter what Slade seemed to think.

Shoving the thoughts of one of the Animorphs' strangest members aside, not in the mood to try to puzzle out the motives of someone who seemed to have no spine, Rachel left the warm comfort of her bed and began to prepare for her day. It was times like this that she found herself almost envying Shara: the other girl didn't have to get up, get dressed, and go to school; she probably spent almost all of her time psyching herself up for the next mission that the Animorphs would carry out. And, besides that, Cassie had said that she brought Shara and Slade breakfast where they slept.

Rachel herself didn't get breakfast in bed unless she was sick, or it was her birthday.

Chuckling slightly at the direction her thoughts had taken at the end, since she kinda doubted that Shara was the kind of person to think about those kinds of things when she was trying to help save the world, Rachel headed down to breakfast. It might not have been breakfast-in-bed, but she wasn't about to skip it just because of that.

XXXX

When she woke up to the sound of someone coming inside, someone she suspected wasn't Cassie since she knew that the younger girl was heading off to school, having already eaten her breakfast and said her goodbyes to the both of them, Shara quickly turned herself invisible and moved out to the edge of the hay-loft. Slade was already there, and when she turned to look at his face, Shara saw that his eyes were fixed on the man that she had glimpsed walking inside.

That, combined with the half-lancer gripped in his hand, let her know that he was prepared to defend them both if it came down to a fight. Smiling slightly – it was almost sweet, the way Slade was so determined to protect her in spite of the fact that he'd admitted to remembering almost nothing about her – Shara turned her attention to the man moving around in the barn below them. Slade, for all his determination to keep their secrets, could sometimes go overboard in his zeal. It came with being Radam-influenced, she knew.

So, if she didn't want this man to end up dead and buried in some unmarked grave – which she didn't, since she was starting to recognize him – Shara knew that she was going to have to reign Slade in.

(Wait a minute,) she said, gripping the arm opposite the one that held his lancer. (I don't think he's come here for us, Slade. I think he might want something in the barn itself.)

(How do you figure that?) Slade asked, not taking his eyes off the man for a second.

(Because I recognize him,) she said, turning her attention to the man she had come to recognize. (That's Cassie's father. See? He's just here to take care of the animals.)

(Maybe,) Slade said, and when she looked back at her brother, Shara found that his eyes were tracking the man's movements minutely; if Cassie's father made even the slightest move, Slade was clearly determined to be aware of it. (Still, if he comes up here...)

(If he starts to come up here,) Which I pretty much doubt he will, Shara didn't add. (I'll help you get him to go back out.)

It was something that she had begun developing, both in response to Darkon's attempts on her mind, and because she was just curious to know how these telepathic abilities she'd been granted by the Radam could be used. With what she'd experienced from Darkon, who had obviously changed his tactics when she herself kept repulsing his attacks on her mind, the Radam's telepathy wasn't just some blunt instrument that was used to keep their Teknomen in line. It could be a lot more subtle than that.

In fact, if she hadn't been so used to sealing her mind against outside influences from Darkon's previous attempts on it, Shara worried that she might have found herself out in the forest one night; closer to Darkon's base of operations than she would ever have voluntarily gone.

Dragging her focus back to the present, Shara continued to watch as Cassie's father went about what she was beginning to realize was a normal routine for him. There wasn't anything particularly routine about the way he moved through the barn, at least not insofar as the path he took to get around, but his actions were beginning to become familiar to her: the way he would look at the papers that were clipped to the various cages, then check to make sure that the animals inside still had food and water. It was something that Shara had come to expect; not exactly a routine, it wasn't quite frequent enough for that, but it was something of a comfort all the same.

(See, Slade?) she said, smiling, more for herself than for her brother, though. (He's leaving now; you didn't have anything to worry about.)

(Yeah, I guess,) Slade said, sounding just as neutral as he had when he'd clearly been planning to kill Cassie's father if he went too far into the barn. (I'm going to go back to sleep.)

(Yeah,) she said, already beginning to feel the heavy, intense lethargy of what she was now beginning to settle back over her.

She didn't particularly like the way she felt tired all the time, or the fact that she never felt entirely full no matter how much food Cassie brought for them, but she knew that the alternative was worse. The alternative, of course, being to return to Darkon; to be nourished and confined by the teknopods within the artificial cavern where he kept the rest of the slave-warriors that had once been her friends and the members of her family.

At least, the ones that had been unlucky enough to survive the transformation process.