Chapter 450: Ends Of The Same Straw

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Then the lizard slowly lifted its head, turned to look at its own newly-restored tail with an expression of frank astonishment, flicked it once to confirm it was real, and looked back up at Raizen, who was still gasping over the nest with sweat dripping off his chin.

“…Huh,” the lizard said quietly. “Well. I’ll be damned.”

The lizard took its new body out for a test drive immediately. It rose onto all four legs with the wobbling concentration of a newborn foal, stood there swaying while the back half figured out what the front half already knew, and then attempted a lap of the nest. The first three steps went fine. On the fourth, the new tail – which it had apparently forgotten existed – swung wide, clipped the folded edge of the blanket, and dragged the whole rear end sideways. The lizard tipped, scrabbled, and slid off the edge of the nest onto the mattress with a soft thump.

Raizen, still catching his breath, watched it happen from half a metre away.

“Say nothing,” the lizard said into the mattress.

“I didn’t -“

“You inhaled. I heard you inhale. That was the inhale of a person preparing mean commentary. I don’t want any of that right now, ok?”

It righted itself, shook once from head to tail-tip, and tried again, slower this time, placing each new leg with the suspicion of someone testing ice. The tail it held rigid and dead straight behind it, clearly under direct manual control. Halfway through the second lap it stopped, turned its head, and looked back along its own body – and then blinked, several times, deliberately, first one eye and then the other.

“Huh,” it said. “Depth. I’d forgotten about depth. Everything’s just looked like a half-assed painting all this time.”

It winked its left eye, then its right, then both together, then looked at Raizen with an expression of frank delight that it immediately tried to disguise as scientific assessment. Even its voice had changed – the rough scrape of the past day had smoothed back into something much closer to the voice he remembered from Ukai, the consonants landing clean again.

“Well?” Raizen asked.

“Well what.”

“Did it work? How do you feel?”

The lizard considered the question with visible reluctance, as though answering honestly would cost it something it had budgeted carefully.

“Functional,” it said at last. “Structurally complete. The tail is currently an idiot, but it’ll probably learn.” A pause. “You didn’t kill me. Against every prediction I made, you did not kill me. And the record still shows my objection was reasonable at the time-“

“There’s no record, but noted.”

“With my whole chest.”

“Which is now all of your chest.”

“Which is now – yes. All of it.” The lizard flexed its new back legs one at a time, watching them respond. Something in its posture loosened, a tension Raizen hadn’t consciously registered until it was gone. “If you ever tell anyone about the falling-off-the-nest incident, I will describe the door incident at dinner. In detail. With sound effects.”

“How do you know about the door – you weren’t even -“

“I can hear, idiot! And this household has no concept of “low volume”, so the deal stands. My dignity for yours.”

“…Deal.”

The lizard nodded once, satisfied, and climbed back into the nest – properly this time, all four legs cooperating – and settled into the hollow with its tail curling around itself in a smooth, unconscious motion that suggested the tail was already getting less stupid.

For a while neither of them said anything. The garden noise drifted up faintly through the floorboards, Alteea’s laugh riding over the top of it. Raizen wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The ache behind his sternum had faded to almost nothing, just a dull echo of the grinding pressure from before, and his arm had mostly stopped shaking.

When he looked back at the nest, the lizard was watching him. Both eyes, steady, the delight from earlier gone.

“What was the second thing,” it said.

“The second -“

“In the flow. Your Eon was the warm one. There was another one underneath it. Cold. Or – not cold. The other thing.” Its voice was careful now, each word placed the way it had been placing its new feet. “What was that?”

Raizen rubbed his chest absently, where the pressure had been.

“Overuse, I think. I was pulling too hard. It felt like –”

“No, no – It’s not that.”

“Kenzo says you get weird sensations when you overdraw, your body starts pulling from places it shouldn’t.” Raizen shrugged. “First time healing, first time reaching that deep – it probably just cost more than I’m used to.”

“No. It’s something else you’re not used to, something completely opposite.” the lizard clarified.

“What do you mean? Like, two ends-“

“-Of the same straw. Yes.”

“It’s not a perfect metaphor.”

The lizard looked at him a moment longer. Its gaze dropped, briefly – to the centre of his chest, just below the collarbone, and held there half a second longer than anywhere else – and then came back up to his face.

“…Forget it,” it said. “Overuse. Sure.”

“You don’t think -“

“I think,” the lizard announced, with sudden volume and its old theatrical sweep, “that I have a complete system for the first time in eight days, and that you are going to go downstairs and bring me something to put in it. Warm. Nothing the redhead made. If it has chili in it I will know, and there will be consequences neither of us can predict.”

“Keahi’s food isn’t that -“

“Warm. No chili. Go.”

Raizen got up, knees protesting the time spent crouched on the floorboards. At the top of the stairs he glanced back. The lizard had arranged itself in the nest with its chin on the blanket’s edge, whole and black and glossy in the window light, its new tail curled around it like a closed bracket.

It looked, for the first time since it had come back, just like itself.

“And Raizen,” it called after him, eyes already closing. “Discreetly. I’m a secret. A magnificent secret, but a secret.”

“I’m a magnificent secret.”

The lizard’s self-confidence recovered significantly faster than its body.

Power Ranking Weekly #30

Sept 13, 09:00 – Nov 1, 09:00

Mass release 10 chapters