- Narrator: Tobias
A woman named Aria searches for Tobias, claiming she wants to adopt him.
Tropes:
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Tobias's birthday (whose date he doesn't remember) is the day Elfangor's will is read to him, and also the day Visser Three plans to capture and infest him.
- A Child Shall Lead Them: Toby is a few months old and still a child by Hork-Bajir standards. Because she lacks the intelligence dampening that the Arn installed in the Hork-Bajir, she's smarter and wiser than all the adult Hork-Bajir around her, which makes her their leader by default.
- Aborted Arc: The subplot about Tobias suddenly seeing things from the rabbit's point of view while he's trying to hunt them is clumsily explained as some part of his human mind holding on to empathy, and doesn't come up in future books.
- All for Nothing: For Visser Three and the Yeerks the whole Aria scheme comes to a lot of wasted effort, as Elfangor's son is seemingly not connected to the Andalite Bandits at all. You have to wonder what they thought near the end of the series; the first Animorph the Yeerks manage to identify is Tobias, and they might have been able to grab him here if Visser Three hadn't been dismissive.
- Ambiguous Situation: Does Tobias have a Cousin Aria? He doesn't know about his family on either side but the Yeerks don't know that. Inventing a fairly close relative seems risky, especially since the Yeerks suspect he's connected to the Andalite Bandits who might be able to look things up. Additionally, Visser Three's impression of a human woman is perfect and includes checking his hair in the mirror. Did he train for this, or was there a real Aria who he infested (possibly by acquiring a Yeerk) to pick up on her mannerisms?
- Antagonist in Mourning: As gleeful as the Visser had been while killing Elfangor, now he shows more respect and regret that he's gone.
- Anti-Humor: Ax attempts a joke in response to "What's up?"Ax: <Up is the opposite of down. Although, of course, those terms are meaningless outside the context of a distinct, localized gravity field.>
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Tobias in Hork-Bajir morph gets the keys to Bek's cage by telling a Hork-Bajir Controller that the Visser wants to talk to him. Then he walks up to the cage, unlocks it, and takes out the guards with the help of the other Hork-Bajir he just freed.
- Black Gal on White Guy Drama: Discussed when Rachel lists all the ways she and Tobias are Star-Crossed Lovers. One example she brings up is Jake and Cassie being white and black, respectively.
- Call-Back: A couple things about the David trilogy that are never explicitly linked back but are suggestive.
- Tobias has been killing and eating prey for months including quite young animals, but it's in this book, after helping get David trapped as a prey animal, that he keeps seeing himself from the rabbits' perspective and self-sabotaging. He'd struggled so much with being a nothlit himself, and that was at least a form he liked. It's easy to interpret this difficulty as deferred discomfort.
- In Animorphs: The Threat Visser Three made the correct assumption that the "Andalite bandits" had recruited a human kid who went along with them on missions. He investigates Tobias now, knowing that if the "bandits" are recruiting humans now that they have the Escafil device, Elfangor's son is among the most likely prospects.
- Coincidental Disguise-Complementing Trait: Tobias is meant to be pretending to be a self-interested delinquent throughout the big reveal, but he's left so shocked by the knowledge that his father was a Prince Elfangor that he loses all human expression... which ends up making him come across as bored and uninterested, exactly as an ordinary street kid would be on hearing this frankly insane-sounding claim that the dead father he never knew was an alien. Consequently, Visser Three is left so unimpressed by Tobias that he dismisses him as unworthy of infestation and lets him go free.
- Entertainingly Wrong:
- Visser Three thinks Elfangor would be ashamed of the "street trash" Tobias is. The reader has already seen Tobias from Elfangor's point of view, and the Visser couldn't be more wrong.
- When Tobias, in his Hork-Bajir morph, encounters Visser Three, Visser Three makes the mistake of assuming Tobias is a free Hork-Bajir and doesn’t realize he is someone in morph.
- Eye Scream: A Hork-Bajir named Fal Tagut turns out have been raked across the eyes by Tobias when they fought in the Yeerk pool in the first book, when Fal Tagut was a Controller. Tobias apologizes, but Fal Tagut doesn't hold a grudge.
- Heroic BSoD: After Tobias learns the truth about Aria, he crash lands on the ground and lies there, hating himself for believing he could have a family who cared.
- Hollywood Acid: The Kaftid that Visser Three morphs into has the power to spit acid that eats through wood in seconds. Tobias in Hork-Bajir morph takes a direct hit and runs around screaming in pain.
- Honor Before Reason:
- Tobias refuses to use his morphing power to get rid of the other hawk encroaching on his territory, even though this would scare it off sooner rather than later.
- The other Animorphs cover Tobias during his first meeting with the lawyer Degroot, standing by as backup in case it's a trap. For his second meeting, with both the lawyer and "Aria", Tobias decides to go it alone and not so much as hint at this to the others. He even knows it is a trap, though not that they're trying to tell if he knows anything about Elfangor.
- Hope Spot: Tobias, encouraged by Rachel, lets himself believe that he could possibly have a home with Aria. It lasts until he sees her show up when Visser Three was supposed to.
- I Have to Go Iron My Dog: "Aria" makes an excuse to not adopt Tobias, saying "she" has to go back to Africa to photograph some more lions, when the Visser decides Tobias is just some street kid who a Yeerk would be wasted on.
- Inhumanable Alien Rights: The Hork-Bajir have freed more of their people offpage since the reader last saw them. Toby does this knowing that she'll need backup even after victory over the Yeerks, as she rightfully doesn't trust humans to have the Hork-Bajir's best interests at heart. Tobias can't fault her for it.
- Internal Reveal: As The Andalite Chronicles was released before this book, the reader is likely to know that Elfangor was Tobias's father, and was returned to the war by the Ellimist. Tobias himself finally learns about this in this book.
- Kill and Replace: After stressing about it all book Tobias catches the mother rabbit, acquires her, kills and eats her, and then morphs into her to raise her litter himself.
- Master Actor: Aria is a compassionate woman who loves nature and children. Visser Three is a psychotic despot whose general vicinity is bound to cause someone's death; he is an Animal Lover, but not in a good way. One can only wonder the amount of patience the Visser had to muster to pull that one off.
- Menagerie of Misery: Bek is found in a roadside zoo, the type where large animals are kept in cages too small for them. After a few minutes in there, Rachel proposes morphing to grizzly bear, freeing all the animals, and attacking the humans running the place.
- Missing Child: A Hork-Bajir child named Bek is captured, not by Controllers, but ordinary humans who put him in a crappy zoo and treat him as a freakshow.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Visser Three ironically and unknowingly screws up his patient scheme against Tobias by arriving to ensure the capture of Bek. This leads the Animorphs to break into the Yeerk facility, and when Tobias sees Aria arrive, he realizes she is Visser Three.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Due to Tobias being overwhelmed by the shock from the realization that Aria is Visser Three in disguise, he doesn’t pay much attention to the battle at the Yeerk facility. So the reader doesn’t learn the fine details beyond Toby and the Hork-Bajir coming to the rescue.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Visser Three shows some unexpected sides of himself, first running an incredibly patient, clever scheme to investigate Elfangor's son, then, when Tobias, pretending to be a tough street kid, bad mouths his father, wistfully telling Tobias that his father was a great man, and he should be proud to be his son.
- Properly Paranoid:
- Every Animorph finds something suspicious about a long-lost relative of Tobias's trying to adopt him. Predictably, it's a Yeerk plot.
- Visser Three plays the role of Aria flawlessly to fool any Andalite bandit who could possibly be watching her.
- The Reveal: Aria is Visser Three in morph, trying to catch and infest the son of Elfangor.
- Shoot the Hostage: When the Yeerks capture Bek they cage him outside in a facility in the woods, so the free Hork-Bajir will see him. Toby plans an all-out attack and to kill Bek if he can't be rescued, because the Yeerks can't be allowed to think they can use hostages against her people.
- Spanner in the Works: Bek being captured by humans complicates Visser Three's plan to find Tobias, as he has to see this for himself in Aria morph, attack the roadside zoo in a monstrous form to retrieve Bek, and then when the Hork-Bajir and Animorphs are fighting at the facility where Bek is held he has to fly overhead to see what's happening. This allows Tobias to see the truth about Aria and not be fooled when they come face to face.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Tobias has trouble hunting in this book and resorts to eating roadkill, only to abandon it and get out of there when he sees Rachel watching.
- Villains Never Lie: When he's being read the letter from Elfangor, Tobias doesn't have the slightest suspicion that it could be something the Yeerks forged or at least altered to try to provoke a response from him, not even thinking it's too crazy to make up.