Hey. Fantastic. 3

I have something in common with Cassie and I don't like it. I'm stunned that a quantum virus is what got rid of the Visser. I thought he'd found a failsafe against that? Forget the Howlers, the Animorphs should've tried getting the resources for one of those on their own.

Time to Git Gud.

Sorry I can’t give better feedback, but it would just be “this is awesome” over and over again.

I just read the rest of the fic last week, so this is my first update and first review. I really like the way you develop and portray a range of very different yet interesting characters. I felt a little uncomfortable reading it, but in large part I think that's because you captured the stress and conflict in a much more realistic way than most fiction. (The other part of that has something to do with how distrustful of everyone else they are, which is a mindset that I'm generally wary about. But I'm still trying to figure out what's going on there.)

I liked the ellimist reveal this chapter! After the chaos and confusion of the last few chapters, it's narratively very satisfying for our heroes to have acquired knowledge of good and evil. It does seem very difficult to write fiction with such superintelligent entities though - I'd be interested to hear your reflections on it afterwards.

Looking forward to seeing what comes next :)

amazing

Okay so. The games were a minor thing and not a major Ketran pastime, Father was an AI and not a kelp network, Ellimist and Crayak aren't transcendent beings but physical superintelligences and Prime Ellimist is a few degrees off with the predictions (which is a little worrying). Oh, Crayak was a more limited super AI and had no special interest in any of the Animorphs.

Well this is a rational fanfic I guess. I thought this would be the last chapter so I'm surprised there's another update.

I just finished reading this story now, and you immediately update it. It's great! Best fanfic I've ever read so far.

Despite being entirely exposition, this chapter was fantastic.

I just binged the 77 chapters and I only have one thing to say but no word to express it. it is a mix between amazing, incredible, unpredictable and I want more. I just said wow.

Could I possibly love Marco any more? I didn't think so until now. Well done. Mind blown. Love it.

Esplin is "kind of " a jerk?
Kind of?
:P

People, please don't look up demodex brvis. Not that it's all that gross on its own, but generally you DON'T wanna think about the absurd amount of parasites and things we carry just all the time. *shudders*

I feel slightly lost here and maybe it's just me, or maybe it's something for you the author to adjust/correct. I didn't quite get how Temrash made it there, or how he/it knew to get there. It seems Tobias ended up there at "Terra" unexpectedly, thanks to Ryen and the Yeerk he gave Tobias. But how did Temrash get there? Wasn't Temrash's goal just to make it into Telor's pool? How did he get re-routed to Terra? Tobias did mention a rendevous point, but that couldn't have been Terra, cause they didn't know about Terra yet.

Also - what the hell, Temrash? So were you evil all along? Bloody freaking hell. I thought, as part of Aftran, that Temrash had also "caught" some empathy. So now it seems there isn't much point in getting him to Telor after all. Or will a little go a long way?

"What?" is the right word for this chapter. Looks like someone rage quit on the nigh omnipotent side.

This might turn out to be irrelevant depending on where you go with the Tobias-Chee thing, but for the sake of completeness: not having seen the conversation between Tobias and the Chee, it rather looks like, as Garrett would put it, TOBIAS is being KIND OF A DICK.

Like...picture a scene.

Mizuno Ami told a series of lies to enter the Light Gods' base under false pretenses. Once inside, she revealed the truth and asked them to help her go FOOM. The Light Gods refused, because that would be too dangerous.

(Ryen told a series of lies to enter Telor's base under false pretenses. Once inside, he revealed the truth asked Telor to keep his secret.)

((Garrett knew his view of the world was broken, so he decided to just trust everything Tobias told him. Take it in, believe it, make it a part of his universe.))

(((Tobias, not yet knowing Telor was about to be in danger, in a last-ditch attempt to save Temrash from discovery, placed the Yeerk against his ear.)))

((((Logan, not yet knowing the Howlers were about to arrive, handed Tobias the keys to his dead parents' car, hoping that Tobias would help him go FOOM. Tobias refused, because that would be too dangerous.))))

It was a tiny thing, really.

Just faith.

Just trust.

Whereupon...

The Light Gods let Ami go in peace, declining to reward trust with betrayal.

(Telor never screwed Ryen over. It kept his secret.)

((Tobias decided he would be worthy of Garrett's trust, even if he was the only one in all the world.))

(((Temrash betrayed Tobias's trust, attempted to abandon Telor.)))

((((Tobias stole Logan's dead parents' car right in the instant when Logan suddenly, desperately needed it.))))

With the result that...

Ami became a reliable frenemy of the Light Gods, a frequent source of intel and joint operations against common enemies.

(Ryen made contact with Tobias, brokering an alliance that later saved Terra and Telor.)

((Garrett stuck with Tobias beyond death.))

(((Tobias unlocked his morph armor and sabotaged Temrash, prepared to get them both killed if Temrash didn't yield.)))

((((?))))

If nothing else, two thousand humans on board means two thousand fewer dogs on board. This seems like the kind of thing the Chee would be Not Happy about.

Being fair to Tobias, maybe Logan's dead parents never let him get a driver's license, so Logan couldn't drive his dead parents' car himself. So in a sense Tobias was performing a service by being Logan's driver. But...Logan presumably could have gotten some other human to be his driver, someone who wouldn't neglect dogs in favor of humans. I believe there's a girl in Brockton Bay who might jump at the chance.

Being KIND OF A DICK isn't necessarily morally wrong, and isn't necessarily even a bad life-strategy. People who know Marco see him as an ass, treat him as an ass. That doesn't mean Marco doesn't have any friends. Basically every law-enforcement organization would reward trust with betrayal: if you walked in and confessed to a crime they didn't know about, they wouldn't let you go in peace. That doesn't mean they can't have productive negotiations with their enemies; everyone knows what they're like and knows that the way to open negotiations is to get a lawyer and follow the plea bargain procedure.

But there are some kinds of trust that you do not extend to people who reward trust with betrayal. And some kinds of betrayal mean that you are not friends anymore.

Tobias himself has never had much of an opinion on rewarding trust with betrayal (except when it was happening to him, of course). Tobias even made a point of making an explicit promise not to abandon Garrett. (Garrett never conditioned his trust on receiving such a promise; Garrett never demanded it, nor asked for it, nor suggested it, nor even believed it after it was freely given. It was strictly a thing that mattered in Tobias's own head.)

But Tobias seems to have carried out his betrayal with remarkably little thought. Indeed his narration refers to Logan's dead parents' car as "my ship" without hesitation. They would meet on board "my ship" after Garrett was on board "my ship". This is a ship that Tobias boarded, like, forty-eight hours ago, and stole less than twelve hours ago.

And Tobias seems to be oddly failing to grasp that he is not the Chee's friend anymore. Tobias is expecting the Chee to helpfully build pyramids for the human colony, which...

...which they'd probably do, on second thought. Tobias still holds the key, so the Chee at least want to keep an eye on him. But it seems like Tobias should care or at least notice that he's not their friend anymore. Maybe that's worth it, maybe it's even the only morally correct choice, to prioritize the survival of the human species over saving additional dogs (I would guess there's a viable breeding population of dogs on board too, so he isn't completely screwing them over). Thomas Hobbes would say that moral outrage at self-preservation is some kind of category error, even if Tobias had given the Chee any explicit promise. No man can transferre, or lay down his Right to save himselfe from Death, Wounds, and Imprisonment. It's not that big a reach to give preservation of Tobias's species the same philosophical treatment.

But at this point, Tobias keeping a hundred Chee "guards" is sort of like Aerys Targaryen keeping Jaime Lannister around as a "guard". Tobias has just given these people two thousand reasons to want him dead. Sure, Tobias wasn't planning to jailbreak the Chee, but even if they can't kill him...Tobias spent his guerilla career watching the Chee arrange Yeerk deaths via various improvised means; Tobias was one of those improvised means. Tobias seems, just, ridiculously blase about this situation.

Maybe...maybe the Chee actually agreed to this plan? For some reason? But Tobias has nothing to offer in exchange. He can get them maps from the other Animorphs, but as Tobias himself lampshades, "need is a strong word." They could have just blundered around a bit until they could buy maps off the Skrit Na or somebody.

Maybe the Chee were willing to let Tobias rescue two thousand humans just to buy his goodwill, still hoping he'll jailbreak them? But the Chee have previously been extremely inflexible about whom to rescue when dogs are in danger, even skipping over valuable bargaining chips. If the Chee had been willing to cross Godric, Salazar, and Rowena off their rescue run in favor of Jordan, Sara, and Naomi, they could have handed Rachel the key on the spot.

Technically, the Chee did pull one human out of Ventura...I assume because Chip would have been distressed at Chip's owner's loss? But the bar for that is obviously very high. Steve and Jean Berenson, notably, did not make the cut, presumably because the Chee figured Homer would be fine without them. Or maybe it was just that Chip's owner was physically holding Chip at the time, and the Chee weren't permitted to pry his/her arms off Chip. Regardless, it seems extremely unlikely that the Chee would sign off on a plan to load two thousand humans into their only ship, while the actual literal Howlers are ravaging the planet.

(Though on that subject, given that the Chee semi-regularly capture and raise human children, why not give one of them the key?)

Random note, but...the Andalites have been totally murdering Hawjabran vecols or something, yes? "The repeated insistence that the convoy had done nothing wrong" yeah, where have we heard that before. Sounds like Andalite high command might even know the truth, or have some idea, and keep it quiet. A diplomatic arrangement whose details Artem never learned. Then again, who knows what really goes on in the heads of Andalite high command. It was easy, after all, for memories to deceive...was it not?

Interesting that Artem held onto the knowledge, Alloran-style, that the homeworld shot first. I'm guessing the official narrative holds that Gaf shot first, just as Kyril shot first.

(Which they might have, actually; the ninth fleet could do doublethink too. But the fact that Artem held onto his version years after re-assimilating into the central military suggests otherwise. Plus the commander was named Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad so obviously he was in the right.)