It was so clear now that I understood how our punishment worked.
My crew and I were separated because of what we'd took.

Not what was taken as a whole.
But what we each took individually.
Anything that we personally took off the shelf, became part of our sentence.

Because I had separated my team, gave them each a different section in the store, they ended up becoming an animal from that section.

Obviously, I had taken the Fish section. Filling my pockets and back pack with different items like filters, air stones, and heaters, to mention a few things that I could get a lot of quickly.

Billy was assigned to Cats
Jessa to Birds
Sue -my scout- to Dogs
Larry -the get away driver- to Reptiles

...and John -the muscle- to the Rodents.

John...is the linchpin to all this. He's the reason we could possibly all get back together again.

Why?
Because he really didn't want to rob a Pet Store. He dug his heels in at every single turn. Making a million and a half objections. So I gave him the easiest section. The one with low selling items. With few things to grab.
And he still dug in his heels.

I'd been worried about this, and so I told everyone to meet up in John's section when they were done with theirs.
And unsurprisingly, but disappointingly, John had barely grabbed anything. A guinea pig cage, and some meds available for the rodents  The cage could have held so much, and what he took barely lined the bottom of it.

So I'd ordered everyone to grab things off the shelves, like wheels and balls, anything they could to put in the cage and their own packs.

That was the key.
We'd all grabbed something from that section. And it explained why most of us would change our shapes. John hadn't taken anything from any where else in the store.
The rest of us had.
So if it all worked out, we'd all eventually become rodents with him, while he'd stay a rodent the whole time.

Of course, the key to it all....was timing.

The girl kept referring to it. Timing. Timing was key. IF it worked out, we'd all be rodents at the same time.
I would be able to finally reconnect with my crew.
If the timing worked out.

#Henry