- Narrator: Rachel
The Chee suddenly lose their holograms and mobility, so the Animorphs have to find a Pemalite ship in the deep sea to turn them back on.
Tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes: A cop-Controller takes down Marco's gorilla and Cassie's wolf, leaving Rachel's elephant staring him down. Luckily, Ax shows up as a skunk and skunks him right in the face.
- Contrived Coincidence: Humans and Controllers are conveniently not looking when Marco as a gorilla rescues Erek by hauling him through a mall and into a bus. All the security cameras malfunction at the same time. A sperm whale beaches itself just when they need a deep sea morph. This foreshadows that the Cosmic Chess Game is a little more involved in the plot.
- Crazy-Prepared: The Pemalite ship has the means to allow aquatic creatures to wander around in it.
- Deal with the Devil: The Drode offers one to Rachel before leaving.The Drode: Your cousin's life is your passport to salvation in the arms of Crayak.
- Didn't Think This Through: While Erek does need a disguise to be snuck out of the mall, Rachel wastes time buying him designer underwear. Marco and Cassie call her out on it.
- Drawing Straws: Or the "human scientific method" as Ax calls it. The Animorphs use it to determine which two of them acquires the sperm whale, which is guarded by The Sharing. Tobias's hawk vision allows him to see which straws are the short ones, allowing him and Rachel to guarantee it's them who draws them. Jake is smart enough to see through them when it happens.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: After his plan is foiled, the Drode goes into a rant about how the Pemalites could have been the masters of the universe with their technology, but squandered it on love and peace. He also tries to offer Rachel a Deal with the Devil, assuming she'll take it up eventually.
- Floating Water: The Animorphs arrive to the Pemalite ship in giant squid morph, which creates water bubbles for them to float around in while inside.
- Giant Squid: As the Pemalite ship is in the deep ocean, the Animorphs have to acquire a sperm whale, hunt a giant squid, and bring it to the surface so the team can acquire it.
- Glory Days: Suggested; Erek mentions that Lourdes used to be a famous actress before her current identity as a homeless person to assure the Animorphs that Lourdes doesn't suffer in her current situation and Chee have so many lives they appreciate the variety.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Rachel uses Lourdes to smash the cop-Controller through the floorboards of the crackhouse.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: Tobias gets a talon stuck on a barnacle while acquiring the sperm whale. The Controllers in the area notice him, knowing that a red-tailed hawk is one of the Andalite bandit's favored morphs.
- Hopeless Suitor: A boy Rachel calls T.T. tries asking her out. While Rachel admits he's not bad looking, and she's tempted by the thought of a normal boy and a normal date, she's too entrenched in her life as an Animorph and loyal to Tobias to take him up on it. Just as well, he calls her a bitch when she shoots him down as bluntly as possible.
- Just a Machine: The Drode can't kill sentient creatures. By his definition, robots are not creatures, so setting them to explode is fair game.
- Loophole Abuse: The Drode claims he didn't kill the sperm whale because he can't kill sentient creatures and the whale happens to be sentient; he just beached it and action will be taken to get it back into the water before it dies. He also justifies the destruction of the Chee by saying they're not living beings.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Tobias's hawk instincts are present even while in morph. Morphing into something aquatic causes the hawk to panic, as to it, being underwater means death. He only manages to override it by adding the sperm whale's instinct to catch a giant squid, which the hawk, also a predator, can understand.
- Race Against the Clock: The Animorphs need to rescue one Chee before human-Controllers come across her, reach the Pemalite ship before the Yeerks do, and reactivate all the Chee before ordinary humans discover another Chee.
- Reality Warper: The Drode has enough power granted by Crayak to avoid all damage and teleport around.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: While brainstorming over how to get a deep sea morph, the Animorphs get sidetracked by confusing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and calamari with escargot, and the fact that Ax once digested a snail while grazing.
- Suicidal Pacifism: The Animorphs get extremely annoyed with the Pemalite ship's AI, which shows them that the Pemalites had little concept of self-defense.
- Surrounded by Idiots: One has to feel for Erek when the people rescuing him buy him unnecessary designer underwear, knock a human out as a gorilla, and get into a Seinfeldian Conversation about Teletubbies.Erek: No offense, but how on Earth have you people managed to avoid getting caught for this long?
- Super-Speed: Erek gets from his house to the bottom of the ocean in ten minutes after being able to move again.
- Tap on the Head: Marco knocks out a suspicious store clerk by conking him as a gorilla. He survives, but the Animorphs never check to see if he suffered brain damage.
- Time Stands Still: The Pemalite's hostility containment program stops the Animorphs and the Yeerks from moving after they start spilling blood. Only Erek and the Drode can still move.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Lourdes is hiding out as a homeless woman on a seedy part of town. Rachel describes the place as darker, grayer, and lacking hope. The Animorphs are forced to tear apart a crack den just to reach her.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: The Drode sings Rachel's praises after insulting the others, and then offers her a chance to become Crayak's lackey like himself. She refuses.
- Wild Card: Subverted. The Drode's name is his species' word for "wild card", but he's just a lackey for Crayak as obsessed with violence and death as his master.
