They hadn't had a meeting for a while - when it was just Ax, Marco, and Rachel, there hadn't really been much point to it - but with Jake, Cassie, and Tobias all podpopping? It was definitely time for another one, if only to fill everyone in on everything.

It was almost like being back on Earth, with all of them settling into their usual spots in Cassie's barn. The only real difference was that Rachel wasn't there, still being stuck running mazes with GLaDOS.

[[ooc: Okay, so a separate thread for each topic, basically. I figure two will do for now, but we can set up others as we need them.]]

This house was strange thing, stranger than any dwelling in Teyr. But it was livable, if overfull of humanity with their strange comings and goings.

She had the feeling that some of them did not trust her, and she found that logical, she didn't trust any of them entirely yet either.

Kali had found herself a quiet corner on the porch, tucked away from everyone else. It was strange, only a little while ago her biggest worry had been that Yana might knock another one of Brevo's teeth out in a brawl, and now...

Now there was a bronze dragon, and so many humans she barely knew, and no siblings. Strange how much they had irritated her at times, and yet now, bereft of their presence, she felt so much more alone than she would have otherwise on this giant ship far from home. She missed them, and there was no shame in that. She missed her mother and her father.

She would like very much to go home. And yet she was here, and her father would return, until then she must do her best to be brave. She must attempt to follow the instructions she had been given and make her father proud of her. That was her only option.

She looked out over the city, left hand resting against her right wrist, wondering if Eva would notice or care if she slipped away to climb one of those impressively tall buildings and if her father would consider that following the rules.

He'd asked for directions from Marco and after a little more exploring, Jake had wandered down to the city and found Cassie's house. For a long while he just stared at the familiar building and its accompanying barn. It had been years since he'd actually seen it - after the war ended and everyone went their separate ways, he hadn't had much call to visit it. But here it was, exactly as it had been the first day they'd all met to figure out what they were going to do. A bunch of frightened teenagers trying to deal with something way out of their league and with no one to turn to but each other. He flexed his fingers and swallowed thickly. And he was supposed to meet his brother here.

His real brother, not the slug pretending to be him. The brother he'd ordered killed for the sake of the war. An order that had gotten his own cousin killed. He glanced down at his feet, hoping that maybe he could find some respite from this train of thought - he knew where it lead. Just more questions and more guilt. Maybe if he'd tried harder to find another way, his brother would be alive back home. So would Rachel. Or maybe they'd all be dead.

The self-doubt and the guilt always gnawed at him, but here and now it was hitting him doubly hard. His brother was alive, which meant he was probably pulled from earlier on the timeline. Which meant that i they fixed this, everything would go back to the way it was "supposed" to be. His brother would move on and end up dead by Rachel's hand and Rachel herself would die soon after.

Fantastic. Why was it always him again?

He shoved those thoughts aside, took a deep breath and put his hand on the front door knob.

Time was difficult enough to figure out on ship when she was having a good day. The mild hangover she'd had this morning (drinking water and forcing herself to down slop from the mess hall had kept it mild) had morphed into a milder headache and light sensitivity that had mostly faded by the time she'd picked up her omnicomm and run across Lash proposing some kind of celebration.

It was in the sensoriums, which was anything but good in Sakura's general opnion, but as she stared down at her omnicomm yet again, she had wondered if it would be a decent distraction to keep her mind off the stupidities of last night and early in the morning. If nothing else, given that she wasn't expected in MedBay today, it would fill in some time before she heard back from Marco. So she'd gone. What was there to lose?

It was only later, after she'd excused herself from the sensoriums and everyone within them, that she realized why she probably hadn't heard from monkey boy. Staring at the desk in her room, she looked between the omnicomm she'd just set down and the one that was on top of a book.

The slow realization that the omnicomm she'd thought had fallen out of her pouch last night hadn't fallen anywhere. She hadn't had her omnicomm with her. She'd walked off with someone else's omnicomm from where Marco lived. With her luck, it was probably Marco's omnicomm.

Sakura shouldered her satchel once more and raced down the stairs. If anyone was around to see her, she probably looked amusingly out of sorts, still dressed for the beach and heading back out within minutes of finally getting home. It didn't take long to make her way over to his residence, relying on shinobi speed to cut down on travel time. She came to a stop at the front door, running her hand through her hair to get it to calm down before she knocked. Best to get this started. By now, she owed a few apologies.

I am never drinking again.

[OOC: Bendytimed to before Cloneplot.]

Eva has decided this hour is designated for special self-indulgence. Having brought back out another lawn chair to the front yard, she now sits with a blanket, a glass of XaXingian wine, and the collection of Clarín's short stories she got from Kang.

Occasionally she waves at a familiar passer-by on the road, but for the most part she's lost in her own little world, filled with one of those too-infrequent senses of satisfaction - especially when the wisteria isn't taking to her garden well and they've finally run out of ice cream to sweeten the coffee. Still, it feels nice to only worry about mundane things that can be set aside for a good story, for once.

Under her breath, she reads some sentences aloud and sings snatches of a Rubén Blades song.

In the middle of the night, Marco woke up with a start. Sighing, he got out of bed and silently made his way down the stairsn. (Stupid nightmares. Come on, was sleep too much to ask for?)

He knew he wasn't going to get back to sleep for a while though, so there was only one thing for it: ice cream. Intent, he made a bee-line for the kitchen.

[[ooc: takes place a few hours after this log]]

Kang knew exactly what Marco meant in that omnicomm message, and honestly, he'd halfway expected it. He knew better than to discuss it in detail in any other way besides face to face, so when he found some free time, he made his way over to Cassie's house. The boy could usually be found there.

Sighing, he knocked on the door.

With her son back to being self-sufficient (and being able to remind her of such), Eva's suddenly found herself with a windfall of downtime. Doing what any sensible lady would do with such a situation, she raided the hall closet for board games.

She sits outside the house with a little plastic table an lawn chairs set up, as well as a battered old chessboard of Cassie's. A few of the white pawns and the black rook were missing, so she replaced them with bottlecaps and a salt shaker.

A cardboard sign in impeccable handwriting reads: FREE CHESS GAMES, YOUR LOSS. She drums her fingers as she waits for company.

[OOC: bendytimed to a little after Melting Clock.]

For the short period of time she's known Daniel Jackson, she's certainly run the gamut of expressions. Hostility, sorrow, detachment, cheerfulness, bursting into tears. She's so very proud of herself.

It's bad behavior. Ugly behavior. Victim behavior. She knows Daniel has no interest in her apologies, though, despite her interest in crafting them, so she'll try to keep them to a minimum.

She fills a mug up with XaXingian coffee, then spoons a dollop of ice cream into it. She's threatened Ax under penalty of Mom Powers not to use up all the contents of the fridge. Rather than wait for Daniel to knock, she takes her mug with her to the front of the house, checking on the flowers there. They're growing back rather nicely after her last destructive outburst.

She runs her finger around the edge of her coffee mug, takes a sip, and adjusts some of the roses by the front door.

There are worse things to wait with than nature and caffeine.

At Cassie's house, it was just another average, normal day.

Well, except for the fact that two of the residents had regressed to being eight-year-olds and were currently throwing the house into complete and utter chaos, that is.

[[ooc: set after the Sleepover Party, but before this log.]]

A good number of those affected by the clock had reached childhood, and required supervision. Several of the adults had offered to help, and no one was quite sure anymore who had first suggested it, but it was decided that one night, there should be a sleepover, something fun for the children. The idea had grown; Eva had offered Cassie's house, after getting permission from the other non-deaged resident, Aximili.

In the end, it turned out to be a packed house. There were about twenty children running around, and thankfully, there were five adults and two teenagers supervising. Luckily for Eva, she had made sure to childproof the house the best she could beforehand.

It was going to be needed.

[Planning post is here. HAVE AT. A description of Cassie's house is here, and if you have any questions about it, you can ask Lisa (Eva), Blue (Marco), Cait (Rachel) and Kaylin (Ax). Start up subthreads for stuff, and try not to wreck the place. :D; ]

If Eva has a personal raincloud, she's convinced it's storming today.

She sits on her feet in the garden, wrenching plants from the earth, not caring about the hard dirt digging angry separations between her fingernails and her flesh. What she'd really like to do is throw all the silverware and dishes in the house onto the yard, but she can't justify that luxury on Stacy. So instead she digs aimless holes and uproots weeds and flowers alike, up to her arms in earth, face smeared with dust.

She's keeping herself in the mechanical headspace where the only thing she can focus on is the movement of her arms, the way her shoulder's old wounds ache, the unbidden clench in her jaw. If she thinks about anything less physical, she'll think about Marco, scared and maybe sick in the Med Bay. She'll think about that violation on the Quarter from the psychic wave. She'll think about how much she could use Peter to lean on right now. She'll think about the possibility that they won't find a cure for Marco and that his last memory of her will be her betraying his physical safety to Kang.

So she doesn't think. She digs, she pulls, and she waits for Rory.

[trigger warning]

Marco couldn't really say that he was a fan of Kang coming around to teach Eva some random language she'd never even use. It's not like she'd ever need it, and he wasn't going to by the argument that there was value in learning a language anyways; if she'd really believed that, why hadn't she ever made him learn Spanish?

Okay, so it wasn't really the language thing. Marco just still wasn't on good terms with Kang, so all he'd done was mumble a grudging hello before making a point to be Somewhere Else.

Now though, they'd gone outside to look at plants or something, so Marco could rummage through the kitchen without being bothered by any scaly reptiles. They had food! Lots and lots of glorious food! Alright, so it was a battle to stop Ax from eating it all, but for once they didn't have to live off of slop.

As he took out a spoon and box of ice cream, eating straight out if it without bothering to waste time by actually putting it in a bowl first, something about Marco...shifted. His hair didn't quite seem exactly the same length anymore, and he seemed to have gotten a little shorter. Marco, however, was oblivious.

He took another bite, feeling a kind of perverse glee at the fact that Nora couldn't show up and tell him to knock it off.

Marco was on a mission.

He was going to find that cinnamon stash of Ax's, dammit. He was sick of gloop. So, after surreptitiously checking to make sure that Ax was out in the barn and not the house, he'd started checking the inside the couch. No, not under the cushions. He was checking inside the cloth itself, around the springs.

Hey, he hadn't checked there yet - you never know! It could be there!

But, Marco's search wasn't going to last very long, this time.

Marco couldn't quite remember how he got back home.

Did he morph? He must have morphed. Or maybe he walked, so that Samson couldn't have looked out the window and gotten a glimpse. But what would have been the point in hiding? He knew. He knew. Sure, not about the morphing. Not yet. But it was only a matter of time. Already he knew way to much, and Marco didn't have a clue how to stop him from finding out anymore. Not without setting the entire Council on his tail. On all their tails.

Marco ran straight up to the attic without even stopping to talk to anyone, and tried to think of how the hell he was going to explain this to Jake.

[[ooc: bendytimed to just after Marco's psych eval. Also guys, timelinewise I'm going to assume that all the threads with anyone except for Jake happen after Jake's talked to the others / they've had a meeting / whatever, and thus know about the eval and whatnot. Also Marco's pretty much going to be holed up in the attic all day]]

[[ooc: continues on from this thread]]

Half-carrying Eva into the house, Marco soon maneuvered her to the couch. "Move from there and I'm never buying you a fancy car again," he said, before moving off to start looking through the house.

"Cassie?" he said, yelling. "Cassie!"

A little way off from the Labyrinth in the City, there was an apparently normal farmhouse. Normal, except for the fact that in it's world it (and, more specifically, it's barn) had become a global landmark and it was also occupied by a bunch of teenagers, one middle-aged woman, a bird, and an Andalite.

[[ooc: Okay, so this is basically a post were we plan to stick a whole bunch of threads relating to daily live at the Animorphs house. Its not really set in any particular time, since it's mostly going to be everyday stuff and we'll probably just stick future everyday threads here so we don't spam the comm with it. The post is open though, if anyone else wants to come visit them or something - just make a note in the subject whether you're looking to thread with someone in particular, or are just happy to tag with whoever happens to answer the door]]

Hah, he'd been right. There was a barn down here.

Paco began circling the hopeful site of Team Have Some Freaking Fun's next party, looking for signs that it was some kind of house of worship or something without going inside. It sure didn't look like it from the outside, but it did seem to be related to the house nearby, and that looked lived in.

He ran his hand through his hair and stared up at the windows thoughtfully for a moment, before he went up and pressed the doorbell. Hey, it couldn't hurt to ask!

It had been a few days, now, since Rachel had arrived on the ship-- and since the initial excitement that came with her arrival, it had been... at least a little bit calmer. She'd gotten everything (or at least the important stuff) figured out, now, she thought. And it seemed like now it was a period of relative calm.

Frankly, Rachel was bored.

Maybe she should have been glad that they weren't fighting the Ohm or whatever, but then she wouldn't be called crazy would she? She was just anxious to finish this fight, so that she could hopefully save their world and go back to finish the other war she was stuck in. The stakes were getting higher and higher, it looked like. At least her friends were here for their usual team. So there was no way that they'd lose. And at least they had Cassie's place, so she was in familiar territory.

Too bad the ship didn't have a mall.

It took a short time before Cassie could gather enough comprehensible thoughts after exiting the maze for her to start wondering just how long she spent in the maze.  She wasn’t exactly sure where she was so she looked around before hiding and morphing to her wolf.  She knew what flying in hallways would do and it wasn’t that easy.  Besides, as a wolf she was able to smell much better and soon found a trail fresh enough to follow.

She ran down the hall and while she had seen much of the same after being in the maze, it was a sense of freedom to be a wolf.  It was one of her most common used morphs and the fact that she used it now to find her way back instead of fight was a liberty she enjoyed.

However as she found herself closer to a more commonly used hallway, she found a place to morph back and follow in the direction where the multiple smells had seemed to come from.  Soon she found the surroundings familiar.