Closing her eyes, Shara focused her mind on the image of the mole that she had acquired probably half-an-hour or so ago. And, through whatever means that such things were achieved, the Andalite biotechnology that she had been given by Slade so long ago began to change her shape. The first things to begin changing were her hands and feet, strangely enough; either stretching or compressing until they became an exact replica of the mole whose DNA she had taken into herself.

"Whoa," she exclaimed, as the sudden reshaping of her feet caught her off-balance.

Shifting quickly, with the ease and smoothness that her earlier martial arts training had imparted to her, Shara just managed to catch herself before she would have fallen. Maybe standing isn't really the best idea for this morph, she mused, crouching before any of the more drastic changes could take place. Just as she had done that, both of her arms were suddenly pulled right back and up into her body.

It was certainly stranger than using the power that had been forced on her by the Radam, but at the same time, it was a great deal less intense.

When her legs began to pull back into her body, Shara shifted forward slightly so that she wouldn't end up falling flat onto her face. She hadn't been paying much attention to the others, most of her focus being absorbed by the morphing; the image that she had to hold in her mind to keep going the way she was, but when Cassie and Rachel grabbed ahold of her shoulders just before she could start to tip forward, Shara wanted to smile.

Just as she was about to open her mouth to thank them, the changes reached her face and began to drastically reshape it. (Thanks for catching me; it would have been kind of troublesome to fall over like that.)

"Not a problem, Shara," Cassie said, smiling.

"You doing all right?" Rachel asked.

(I'm fine. Thanks, though.)

Returning her full focus to the morph, Shara hurried the changes along, until she sensed that there were no more changes to be made. Once she had fully settled into her mole morph, Shara tested the limits of the animal's senses. Sight was, as she'd been expecting from an animal that lived underground, nearly nonexistent; smell and hearing were both better, but in this case that wasn't saying much.

There was one sense that the mole could be said to have an advantage over any other animal alive in was – again – something she had been expecting from the way the mole lived: touch. The sensations she was getting through her mole's nose were clearer, more powerful, than anything she could remember feeling as a human, and even better than those that her Radam-altered physiology allowed her to perceive. She, through the mole's nose that she was essentially borrowing, could feel the subtle air currents in the room.

As she began to feel the mole's mind emerging alongside her own, Shara put up a mental barrier between the animal's mind and her own, just in case. As she grew more settled, focusing on her sense of self and just what she was being tasked to do while in this particular morph, Shara let the barrier slip. Just enough so that she could sense the mole's mind that was sharing space with her own.

Just enough so that she would be able to use it, if she needed to.

The mole, as she felt was only natural, seemed a great deal more comfortable underground; it would have liked nothing more than to start digging. Digging and digging and digging; not stopping until it – he? She? – had managed to hollow out a tunnel for hunting, and an offshoot of that tunnel for resting when it wasn't actively searching for the worms and beetles and insect larvae that it ate.

Still, the others would be worried about her, Shara knew, if she didn't let them know just what it was that she was going to be doing. (I'm finished morphing, you guys.)

"What's the morph like, Shara?" Jake asked.

(Well, as you might expect, the mole feels a lot more comfortable under the ground than above it. Seems really eager to start digging, too,) Shara informed them, finding as she took stock of her morphed body that she had already started digging; she had been letting the mole have freer reign now that she knew it wasn't dangerous, so that probably explained things. (I guess you guys can already see that, though.)

She laughed mentally, along with Rachel, Marco, and a few of the others that she couldn't quite tell apart with her mole's pretty pathetic sense of hearing.

Setting herself to work in earnest, Shara sighed as the thing she hadn't wanted to bring up with the others came back to her again: the realization that, as much as the mole she had morphed felt more comfortable down in this tunnel that she was starting to dig, the fact remained that she did, as well. The warm darkness, the lulling silence, the feeling of closeness with others of her kind… they were all things that Darkon had tried to project into her mind, before she'd slammed up her mental barriers against him and he'd been driven off.

These were the same sensations that Radam Teknomen were mentally programmed to crave; what kept them from straying too far from the comfort- the confines of their bases, when they weren't ordered on missions for their Warlord.

This hole that she was digging, this tunnel… It would be entirely too easy to lose herself to the programmed desires of one of the Radam's own; to forget that she was human and had somewhere else to be. So, for all that, Shara was grateful to be in mole morph for this. The drastically altered shape of her body, the mole's mind that existed alongside her own, the fact that the eight of them all had an end-goal in sight…

It was perfect for reminding Shara that, for all that she had been removed from her normal life and everything that had mattered to her, there were still some things that she could call her own.

XXX

When Shara came back up and out of the mole hole – really more of a tunnel now, after all the work that she had put into it – Rachel exhaled sharply. Well, looks like I'm up next. There was really no avoiding it; not after all the times that she had rushed ahead, all the times that she had given the others someone to look up to when they were getting too ground-down by what the Animorphs had to do during the course of their long battle with the Yeerks; not when she'd spent so much time crafting her persona already.

"All right, Shara; you're on break now, let me handle this," she said, smiling more for the others than for the other girl.

She was starting to think that Shara might just be someone she could trust with everything; it'd be nice to have someone like that, since even Cassie looked to her for the strength that she showed in so many situations.

"If you insist, Rachel," Shara said, a smile on her face, too.

Closing her eyes, Rachel focused on the mole morph that she had acquired for this mission. As the changes began, Rachel tried to morph as fast as she'd seen Shara do. It was uncomfortably like becoming a shrew again, but once the last of the morph had been completed, Rachel found that the mole's mind – its instincts – weren't nearly as overpowering as the shrew's had been.

When Rachel opened her eyes, she found the mouth of the tunnel that Shara had dug gaping up at her. To the mole's eyes, the entire tunnel was pitch black; like being buried alive. She didn't know how Shara had dealt with it for the forty minutes that she had been down there, but the fact remained that she had, and now Rachel herself was going to have to do just the same.

She couldn't do anything less.

Making her way down into the tunnel, trying not to freak out as she descended into the enclosed space that Shara had seemed so weirdly comfortable with, Rachel felt her mole nose touch the dirt wall at the end of the tunnel. With a deep breath to steady herself, Rachel went to work at last.

As she peeled away more of the layers of dirt between her and the Yeerk Pool – trying to ignore both the fact that she was trying to get closer to that hellish place, and the creeping willies inching their way up her spine – Rachel began to wonder just how in the hell Shara had managed to keep it together while she was down here. Really, even if someone didn't have any problems with enclosed spaces, burying yourself alive wasn't exactly the kind of thing that normal people could deal with just like that.

Still, there was always another option; at least when you had thought-speak. (Shara? If you don't mind me asking, what's your secret?)

(My secret?)

Rachel sighed briefly; it was one thing to decide that you were going to trust someone with a secret that you'd been keeping for pretty much all of the time that you'd known them, and a whole 'nother to just up and confide in them. Still, given how well they'd been getting along so far, Rachel decided to hold out a bit of an olive branch to the other girl.

God knew she couldn't really talk to Cassie about these kinds of things anymore.

(I want to know how you kept your head on straight down here,) she said, continuing to scrape away at the dirt walls in front of her. (I mean, it's pitch dark, and all around you, and there's not much air-)

(Rachel?) Shara's voice was more gentle than Rachel had ever heard the other girl being; even when she had talked to them while her brother was asleep, she hadn't sounded quite like this. (Are you claustrophobic?)

Rachel laughed, knowing that it probably sounded a bit higher and more hysterical than she would have liked. (I think I might be.) Then she sobered; it was best to clarify things before they moved on. (Look, do you mind not telling anyone about this?)

(You don't want the others worrying about you,) Shara said, and Rachel would have smiled if she'd still been human.

(Everyone has a lot more important things to think about than just how I'm doing. Anyway, you mind telling me how you managed down here? I'd like to get at least a bit more work done before I head back up.)

(I don't think it's something you could use,) Shara said, sounding rueful. (It's not really something you have experience with.)

(Hey, I'd be up for anything that helps me out down here,) she said, and as she went back to work on the wall, Rachel couldn't help but notice that even just having someone else to talk to was helping. (Even if it's something embarrassing, like you singing Old MacDonald to yourself while you were down here.)

Shara's laugh, she noticed, carried a sense of amusement with it, just the same way that what the other girl had said earlier carried the sense of the emotions she'd been feeling then. It was probably something to do with the way she communicated; telepathy verses just thought-speak. Rachel didn't know, and at this point she didn't particularly care all that much.

(No, nothing like that,) the other girl said. (Nothing embarrassing, just something I don't really like to talk about.)

(Something about the Radam?) she ventured a guess.

(Yes,) Shara said. (About them.)