“Now this is quite a bit more interesting, don't you think?” Narissa smirked, her snout lowering and her eyes twinkling with apparent happiness.
“Jesus.” Ty said softly. In full daylight, the lizard woman practically glittered with colour, her reptilian hide a wash of glistening greens, blues, and yellows. Ty simply stared in wonderment, eyeing her head to toe, and taking in the total unfamiliar familiarity of her form. She stood almost two feet taller than Ty's diminutive height, and while her long snouted face was not entirely unlike an Iguana or some other terrestrial lizard, it was entirely unlike anything Earthbound at the same time, with the flexibility and range of emotion the same as a human being.
“I can still read your thoughts.” She leaned down, grinning playfully.
“Oh.” Ty said, turning a deep shade of red on his cheeks.
“I'm afraid we've bonded.” She pointed a claw to her forehead and then to Ty's. “So you'll have to get used to me being inside your head. Good reason to control your thoughts.” She chuckled. “Although I am tempted to get naked for you now. Since you're curious about my anatomy.”
“Please don't.” Ty said in mortified shame.
“Like I said, perfectly healthy for a human lad your age. Don't be so prudish.” Narissa began poking around the house, opening the kitchen cupboards, snooping through Mark's DVDs, and glancing out the window at the yard. All the while her tail swayed behind her happily like a content dog.
“Uh... so...” Ty followed closely, nervously glancing out the windows. “You probably shouldn't be seen, right?”
“Oh, I'm cloaked right now!” Narissa reassured Ty, flipping open a cupboard and grabbing a tall glass in her webbed fingers. “The only people who can see me are you and anybody else who is aware of me. So effectively, if you can't sense me I'm not here.”
“You can do that?” Ty blinked.
Narissa paused, sniffing the air with a raised muzzle, and held up a finger for a pause. She shrugged and walked over to the fridge, raising her toes off the ground with each step on digitigrade legs. “Third dimension doesn't smell quite like I remembered it.” She pulled open the fridge and bent over to grab some orange juice, tail swaying from side to side. Ty simply stared, prompting the lizard to bend her head around with a smirk and sway her hips provocatively. ”Not so scared of me now, are we?”
“Sorry.” Ty diverted his glance to the cupboard and feigned coughing.
Narissa emerged from the fridge with some cool OJ and poured the carton into her glass as she swung the fridge door shut with her foot, turning in a fluid moment and setting the carton down on the counter.
“Well.” She raised her glass, grinning. “Here's to us, I'd imagine.” She put the glass to her lips and downed the entire contents in one swig, gulping and wincing. “Ohhh... you put such awful additives in this stuff.”
Sated, the lizardess stretched and adjusted her strange dark blue jumpsuit, pulling it away from her hip. She set down her emptied glass and turned to the bemused Ty.
“All right, kiddo.” She crossed her arms as she leaned her shoulder against the cupboard behind her. “You've got to clean the yard up, and I've got to project a form that isn't going to scare the living shit out of human beings so I can help you. But first we have to put down some ground rules.”
“I'll pretend I understood.” Ty nodded, sighing and sitting down on a kitchen chair.
“Good call.” The reptile nodded, chuckling. “All right. So, basically, there's three important rules. First, don't mess with the space time continuum. That means no changing history, no going back in time, no trying to undo major events.”
“Like Dustin?” Ty gulped.
“That wasn't a major event.” Narissa laughed. “Nor was it in the past. That was the active timeline we're still playing out. Honestly, you could of left the little punk as he was for all I care. Point is, no changing the past.” The reptile rolled her eyes. “Unless you're CERN, in which case you make a huge mess for others to clean up. But that's neither here or there.”
“Did you just... the LHC?”
Narissa snarled suddenly. “Oh, do you really think they're just doing harmless experiments with that beast? No, they're fucking with space time and trying to merge us into a parallel reality where the bad guys win. That's how bad we're kicking their ass.” She took a breath, seeing Ty's horror, and blinked. “But... I digress.”
“What's... rule... two?” Ty said, visibly sweating in terror.
“Nobody cares if you use your power as long as it doesn't interfere with the bad guys. If it does, they'll be coming for you, and we'll get to that later. So be careful.” At that point, Narissa stepped forward and took a seat on the floor next to Ty. Even with her sitting next to him, she was still nearly eye level.
“All right.” Ty nodded. “Don't be a target.”
“You know, you're handling this very well.” Narissa complimented, giving Ty a gentle push. “Even if you are checking out my ass from time to time.”
“All right. Third and most important. Ready?” Narissa held up three fingers.
“Ready.” Ty agreed, his smile fading as Narissa's expression changed to dead seriousness.
“I can only do so much to help you. There are political and legal considerations about me even being here that it would take years to explain. That too has to be for another time, because it's about history. So, don't expect me to be this all knowing entity that can bail you out with magic. I'm not a God. Neither are you.” She stood again and walked back over to wash her used glass.
“All right.” Ty nodded, taking a heavy sigh. “No changing what's already happened.”
“Exactly. There is a clear line between what's happened, what's happening, and what will happen. The last one is fluid. The future is always fluid.” She finished washing her glass and began drying it with a nearby cloth.
“Don't piss off the bad guys.”
“Good!” She pointed, nodding in heartfelt approval. “Exactly.”
“And you're not infallible.”
“No, but I can do many things you haven't seen yet.” She laughed ominously. “I'm not just a lizard woman.”
“Oh, and I can check out your ass.”
At that, Narissa took on a huge smirk and sauntered over to Ty. She bent down in front of him, putting her hands on the top of his chair, and gave him the sultriest and most overwhelmingly sexual glare he had ever seen from anything real or otherwise. Her mere presence exuded a cripplingly strong sexuality that made Ty break into a warm sweat.
Ty gulped as the lizard extended a long thick forked tongue and trailed it over the outside of her scaly lips with incredible control and dexterity. She narrow her eyelids, on which Ty noticed long dark lashes for the first time, and blinked seductively and slowly.
Ty said nothing. He trembled slightly.
“Little boy, I have existed for several thousands years and have all the sexual experience to back it up, I would fucking destroy you in bed. And I know you're not up the challenge of pleasing a creature like me.”
Ty went deathly pale white and felt faint.
“But...” She said softly, winking in the most frustratingly sweet way. “I've never been with a human before. I could be wrong.”
Ty simply blinked. “Wait...” He said, regaining colour again as her display sunk in fully.
“No.” She laughed. “Don't you dare.”
“Challenge accepted.” He grinned from ear to ear.
“Yeah, okay...” She rolled her eyes. “So we've got the rules down and the fact that you're a horny teenager and you have no chance to get with me.”
“Maybe.” Ty rose from his chair, still trembling somewhat, and began laughing as he realized just how bitingly sarcastic and delightfully funny his new friend was.
“Let's go clean the yard.” Narissa grinned, walking towards the door.
“How?” Ty stopped suddenly. “I mean, if you can cloak yourself, that's one thing... do you stay cloaked if you're doing stuff?”
“Ah!” The lizard stood to her full height and nodded patiently. “No, you're right. The second I start interacting with your world my ability to remain undetectable fades.”
“You're about to do something, aren't you?” Ty leaned in, interested.
“Yes, I'm going to show you the fabled reptilian shapeshifting.” Narissa said matter of factly, placing her hands on her hips.
“Shut up!” Ty said in disbelief. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, and blinked into a perfectly unassuming human girl in perfectly normal and unassuming clothing about Ty's age, somewhat taller than he was.
Ty stared. “What the fuck. That's it?”
“All we do is trick your mind.” She shrugged. “I'm still me. I'm just suggesting that this is how I look to everybody around me.”
“What about the eye thing?” Ty insisted. “Like in videos? Or... or like the teeth or weird skin thing in pictures?”
“The eye thing?” Narissa blinked, her eyes suddenly turning to slitted pupils. “You mean this thing? When the second membrane over my eye blinks too, but humans don't have it so it momentarily throws off the ruse?”
“Yes.” Ty stared in amazement.
“It's interesting.” She smiled, her sharp eye teeth momentarily flickering and her tongue extending well beyond a human's length as she licked her canines. “It's actually the fact that when you take a picture of somebody masking themselves, the equipment itself makes the disguise fail because it doesn't have any kind of bias. So yes, bits show through.”
“Kind of takes the power out of it. Like, it sounds pretty simple.” Ty said with realization.
“Right? Makes us, I don't know, less scary?” She smirked. “Do you know what else? It takes no effort for reptilians or any other non human to do this. Because the human mind is so damn closed off to anything besides the human itself. So never mind that I'm a seven foot tall lizard lady, your brain is naturally predisposed to accepting I'm not. Just a simple mental suggestion is all it takes to hide what I am.”
“So wait, if you're still you, how come you visibly change to me? Like, if I was able to see a lizard, then would pictures show a lizard? How come you've changed height?”
“Oh, that's a good one.” Narissa grinned, heading for the door and taking Ty's hand. “All right. So here's the thing about other dimensions. They have a different kind of matter that is much less physical than yours. So as well as the disguise all I have to do is project the form behind it. I don't have to change anything. There's no equipment present. No physical transformation. I just suggest what I am and pretend I'm what I look like. All in my head.”
“So there's unknown physics?” Ty raised an eyebrow as Narissa giggled beside him and they stepped into the yard.
“No.” She said coyly. “You've got a pretty good handle on your own dimension's rules. You just have no idea how ours work.”
“That's going to take a bit for me to understand.” Ty said, genuinely overwhelmed.
“For now, just know that while I look like a young human girl, I haven't actually changed at all. In any way. But everybody sees me like this.” She held up a finger. “Except! And this is important... except people who already can get past the mental block. Those are usually other beings with telepathic or mental suggestion. You can't trick the magician, you see. Because he knows his own tricks.”
“Got it.” Ty said.
Now, Narissa and Ty stood in the mess of the back yard, staring at garbage, broken car parts, and weeds everywhere.
“This is kind of surreal.” Ty stared at Narissa, who stared back with a playful grin.
“Because you know what I am.” She finished, giggling.
“Yeah...” Ty admitted.
“Well, if you want a laugh, think of my actual form out helping some human kid with his Saturday chores. That's really really funny to me.”
“Couldn't I just will this all done?” Ty asked.
“Do you know, Ty, on my side of things we can build entire cities, houses, and infrastructure just by thinking about it?”
“Really?” Ty said excitedly, grabbing a shovel.
“Yeah.” Narissa nodded, grabbing a rake and starting to pull at the leaves left over from last fall. “But a lot of us, despite that power, still choose to build things with our hands in a very physical sense. Especially my particular group, who, despite having keen metal abilities, still have a great strength in our bodies. Do you know why?”
“Satisfaction?” Ty guessed, starting to dig at weeds.
“In a broad sense, yes.” Narissa smiled, knowing what she was building up to. “But also because it's fucking lazy and boring.”
Ty burst out laughing and nodded. “You're going to have to tell me more about your home. It sounds really crazy.”
“Oh, no, it's nice.” She smiled. “It's the folks living in it who are crazy.”
Ty and Narissa continued cleaning the yard.