"Hello," he said, using mouth-sounds to speak, just as any other human would. "I will work for money. Muh-nee. Mnee."

"Do you want to order something?" the human at the front of the store – the one who would receive the money and then present the purchased items in return – asked.

"I require money so that I may exchange it for the delicious cinnamon buns," he explained; perhaps this human simply required clarification.

"So, you do want to order, or you don't?" the human asked, after a momentary pause and a blink.

Clearly, this human was less intelligent than others that he had met. He would need to go into more detail, if he was to have the terms he wanted met. "I wish to perform labor, lay-bur, lay-burrr," that was a rather nice sound. "And to have you give me money. Then I wish to use that money to acquire delicious cinnamon buns. Bun-zuh."

"I'll get the manager," the less-intelligent human said, turning to leave.

"Bun-zuh," he repeated, enjoying the way the sound tickled his human mouthparts; many sounds were enjoyable, but this one was his favorite.

The less-intelligent human returned with another human, this one with a small, white rectangle attached to her artificial skin that read "manager".

"What did you want?" the manager asked.

"I wished to perform labor in exchange for money, that I would then be able to exchange for cinnamon buns. Bun-zuh."

The manager seemed hesitant, but only for a moment. "Well, I can't give you a job. It looks like you're under age. But, I guess if you're really hungry, I could have you clear some of the tables out there and then give you some food."

"That would be quite acceptable," he said, smiling at the manager. "Thank you."

"Poor kid," he heard the manager say to the other human as he turned away. "A little off in the head, maybe; but a good-looking boy."

A rather odd thing to say, Aximili mused briefly, before turning his full attention to performing the task that had been asked of him.

Soon enough, he realized how generous the human manager had truly been: the tables were covered in delicious foods! They had, for some reason, been abandoned by the humans who had presumably purchased them to eat; but then humans as a whole were very odd when it came to eating things. And Aximili was not going to concern himself with their peculiarities when he had so many delicious things before him.

Not when they were all his for the taking.

On the first table that he came to, Aximili found thin, crisp, salty, greasy triangles that had been covered with a pale orange secretion. The secretion had a hint of the flavor of the chili that he had enjoyed so much when he had morphed Prince Jake and been invited to dinner with Cassie and her family. However, the orange mock-chili was nowhere near as intensely flavored as what Aximili had discovered of true chili.

Mildly disappointing, but there were many other things atop the tables that he had been asked to clear by the human manager.

On the next table he came to were cups with liquids still remaining inside them; one still not, and the other rather cold. Both on them were rather enjoyable – one of them carrying a hint of the wonderful chocolate flavor that he had so enjoyed in the past – and there was also a crumpled square of paper. Smeared on the inside of the crumpled part was a reddish, semi-liquid secretion. Licking it, Aximili found that it too had a rather pleasant flavor.

Nothing he was particularly inclined to sample again, but not terrible by any means.

However, when he turned his attention to the next table that he was meant to clean, that was when Aximili saw them: two large, steaming hot, cinnamon buns. They glistened from both the delicious spices and the wonderful frosting that had been used in their creation, and Aximili could feel his human mouth beginning to overproduce saliva from the smell of them as it wafted over to him.

However, there was a complication that Aximili had not encountered before: there were also two humans sitting very close to them.

It seemed as if those humans were going to eat them!

"I am clearing these tables!" he shouted, running as fast as he could manage in his unstable human body.

"We haven't even started eating yet," one of the humans said, after they had shared a long look; humans did not possess thought-speak, and neither of them showed the signs of being altered by the Radam that Shara had informed him were present on all of their warriors, so Aximili did not understand the significance of such an action.

"Good," he said, honestly relieved as he made his way over to the table to take the tray.

Two! He had two delicious, wonderful, rapturous cinnamon buns! The most that he had ever gotten in one sitting, and none of his fellow warriors had even needed to pay for them! He could hear the humans that he had left behind shouting for him to stop; clearly, they did not understand the concept of clearing tables. As he began to eat, taking as large a bite as his human jaws would allow him, Aximili moaned softly in pleasure. There were no other Andalites that could share this pleasure with him; not yet, but once the fleet had arrived and the Yeerks and Radam had been driven back from their attempts at conquering this planet, Aximili would be able to share it with them.

It was something that he looked forward to a great deal.

"What are you doing?"

Turning to look at the manager of the Cinnabon, the human who had so generously offered him work in exchange for the delicious cinnamon buns that he enjoyed so much, Aximili tried to speak as best as he was able with his human mouth full of food. "I amm glearing khe khables."

It was nearly impossible to speak the way humans did when one was eating; clearly a design flaw of the species, and one that the Radam had sought to improve.

"I'm terribly sorry for this," the manager said, her attention returned to the pair of humans who were attempting to take away the cinnamon buns that he had cleared from the table. "I'll get you two some fresh buns, on the house. And you," the woman said, pointing at him in a way clearly intended to leave no doubt as to who she was speaking to. "Come with me."

Aximili found himself pulled away from the table he had been sitting at, causing him to drop a small portion of half-chewed bun from his mouth. Then, he found himself being steered deeper into the eating area, and made to sit down on an available chair. He had always found the action odd, but as humans only had two walking-limbs, he supposed that it made sense for them to do such.

And, as he was in his human morph, Aximili chose to ignore the strangeness of the action and simply accept the comfort that the action caused his human morph.

"Okay, now look, son," the human said, in spite of the obvious fact that the two of them did not share any kind of familial relationship. "If you're that desperate for food, there's a tray of buns here that are only a bit stale. You're perfectly welcome to help yourself. You poor kid."

There was, likely as not, an expression of compassion on the human's face as she offered Aximili this unexpected bounty; he had not been paying as much attention to her face as another human might have done in her place, once he had caught sight of just how many buns she was offering him. There were a round dozen of them! Truly, this was a generous and compassionate human.

"For me?" he asked, the excess of emotion in his human voice causing it to sound rather odd.

"Sure, son; you just go ahead and have one."

She had not specified, and there was already imprecision inherent in the very nature of human mouth-sound based communication unless the human themselves acted to clear it up. Since this human had not, it could – therefore – be surmised that she was offering him the whole of the tray, since it could just as easily be counted as a single object in and of itself.

Truly, a very generous human.

Happily, Aximili took hold of the nearest bun, and bit deeply into it. Oh! It was ecstasy; just as wonderful as the first bite he had ever taken.