Dandelion's quiet reverie with Eilidh was broken as the small robot came crashing into the penthouse, startling Dandy as well as seemingly everyone else. They got up to join the others gathering around Julian as he assessed the damage to the robot, but much of what he said went over Dandy's head, but they understood that Julian was about to lead the team on a dangerous mission. Dandelion's pulse quickened as human adrenaline flooded their bloodstream, but they suppressed the hormone and reasserted control over their "involuntary" systems; this was no time to let primitive human biology take control.

Mismatched eyes quickly flicking between the robot, Julian, and their various other teammates, Dandelion weighed the options as quickly and thoroughly as they could. Foremost, Dandy felt utterly unprepared for something of this nature, and the prospect of a potentially violent altercation was immensely unappealing. Even leaving aside the significant probability of Dandelion being injured, killed, or recaptured, the idea of having to exert violent force against humans made the imitation organs in Dandy's chest cavity quiver uneasily. What's more, if Dandy was forced to change shapes in order to survive, which was incredibly likely in this scenario, they worried that the spectacle of their transformation would only make their teammates distrust them further, or attract authorities that would seek to imprison Dandy again.

Dandelion's anxious thoughts were broken by Julian shoving Vincent, and Dandy snapped into focus, watching Vincent closely for signs that he was about to attack Julian. Rather, he laughed it off, declared his intention to join the mission, and teleported away. Dandy released a breath they didn't realize they were holding, and felt other team members do the same. Every other person in the room stank of adrenaline and other stress hormones, which Dandy hadn't noticed as they were wrapped up in their own thoughts. They were all frightened and alarmed like them, Dandy realized, even Julian. Even the ones showing a brave face had an elevated pulse that Dandy could hear. None of them were planning to sit this out, not even Eilidh. Could Dandelion sit by and do the same? This is where their new friends needed them, and so they would do whatever they needed to do. They were a Renegade now, and this was part of that.

As the others rushed off to change into costumes and gather their equipment, Dandy was left to linger, as they didn't have any other clothes to change into. The ones they were currently wearing were all they owned at the moment, having taken the time to gather them when they escaped the S.T.A.R. Lab. Furthermore, human clothes were not conducive to shapeshifting, as they were liable to be stained and ruined just by the fluids Dandy sometimes released during the process. This was a lesson learned early into their human education at the lab. However, Dandy noticed a small piece of paper, folded into a shape that was meant to resemble a dinosaur, left at their feet. Dandy only recognized the paper craft because Hayden had given them something similar once before. The reminder of Dandy's fellow shapeshifter friend dredged up the memory of a conversation they had shared some days before. The two of them often spent time together in the gym when few of the others were around, amusing each other by taking turns shapeshifting. There was a particular shape that Dandy could assume that Hayden enjoyed the most, and they wondered if it would work for them here...

Dandelion carefully stepped back to their room, taking the dinosaur with them, and shut the door firmly behind them. The dinosaur was set on their empty dresser, and their neatly-folded clothes next to it a moment later. Then, the changing began. Julian and Hayden were the only other Renegades that had ever seen Dandelion completely change from one "skin" to another, and while it didn't seem to bother Hayden, it only took Julian seeing it once to tell Dandy not to do it in front of anyone else. And so Dandy changed here, quickly, privately, and taking care to not make too much noise in the process.

After some struggling with the doorknob, what emerged from Dandelion's room was not the androgynous chimera that was Dandy's human form, but a very large dog. Ostensibly it was a husky, with a thick grey and white coat, but it was nearly double the size of a sled dog, with thick limbs and a deep chest. The animal blinked, and its blue eyes had become a mismatched pair of green and yellow when they reopened. The increased scale of the dog was of course to accommodate Dandelion's five-hundred pounds of biomass, but the already lupine features of the husky breed gave Dandelion's swollen form the presence of a dire wolf, or some other prehistoric mega-predator. The original template for this dog had been given to Dandy by one of the scientists in the lab, a sample of her own pet husky (Wilford had been the dog's name, Dandy remembered), as one of the early tests of Dandelion's shapeshifting ability. Besides the dog's size and bulk, Dandy had made only a few other small adjustments, as was their wont, but overall the dog template was left alone, and Dandy relaxed into their new skin.

The stairs took some doing to get down, given Dandy's new equilibrium and considerable mass, but working with this skin's natural instincts, Dandy eventually made their way down to where the others where. Dandy relished being able to change their skin into something other than human for once, as they were beginning to feel stagnant after staying in the same skin for so long. The instincts written into the dog's neurology were so much stronger than a human's, that Dandy could easily just relax and take a back seat to them, letting the skin move itself around with minimal input from Dandy. Even leaving those small comforts aside, Dandy knew that this would be a superior skin for a potentially dangerous situation. Obviously staying in any fixed skin at all was inferior to being able to change as they needed, but for the time being Dandy was enjoying the power and confidence that came from wearing a predator's skin. Humans were ostensibly apex predators, but thousands of years of civilization had dulled their instincts, and there was a difference like night and day between them and a dog, even after thousands of years of domestication had blunted its drive to hunt and kill.

Dandy sniffed around and at their teammates as they awaited... whatever they were waiting for. For now they were taking their hands off the controls, so to speak, and settled into this fresh skin, getting to know it a little better before the mission. They couldn't speak in this skin, at least not without some significant alterations to the dog's vocal apparatus, but hoped that their eyes were enough of a tip-off that their teammates understood it was them. Rather, they gave an excited bark, the volume and bass of the massive dog's scaled-up vocalization rattling the glassware in the penthouse.