"I don't know if I can do this." Ty whispered to Narissa.
Beyond the mall there was a small mostly undeveloped patch of forest outside the new subdivision. Having left the mall and prying eyes, now Ty, Narissa the lizard/woman, and the terribly embarassed Krissy found themselves in a secluded area of the trees far away from any houses or human beings.
"So, all right." Krissy paced the clearing nervously. "I just need a reality check here."
"That's fine." Narissa said patiently. "We'll answer whatever you need to ask."
"Okay... you." Krissy pointed to the lizard. "I... I need to see you. Like the real you."
Once more, Narissa checked around, her super advanced senses scanning for anything that would see them, but she sensed nothing beyond a few animals roaming the clearing.
"Yes. All right." Narissa took a deep breath. In a single blink, she was back to her true lizard self, kneeling on her flexible digitigrade legs with her haunch tucked into her rear. Partly to make herself less intimidating for the poor girl, partly because she wanted her to get a better look.
Krissy stared in wonderment, her hands covering a gasp from her mouth, and like Ty she appreciated the strange gloss of the reptile woman's scales and the colors reflected against the warm afternoon sun beaming through the trees. Narissa positively shimmered under the light, as beautiful as any creature Krissy had ever seen, and while her startling yellow eyes triggered some deep primal fear in the human girl, she slowly approached until they were nearly face to face.
"Y-You're beautiful." Krissy whispered, smiling as Narissa beamed with pride at the compliment.
"Thank you, darling." The lizard said softly. "You're a very lovely young lady as well."
"How old are you?" Krissy asked, startled as the lizard offered her hand and she took it. "Where do you come from?"
Ty came close now, too, gently putting his arms around the reptile woman's neck and hugging her close. "I didn't ask that."
"No, you didn't." Narissa said with a chuckle, bathing in the sensations of love and wonder surrounding her aura, drinking it in and feeling distinctly drunk wih happiness. She gently caressed Krissy's palm with her dark finger claws and studied the human girl's reaction as she seemed lost in a combination of both shock and curious astonishment.
"Well..." Narissa blinked her inner membranes to moisten her eyes. "I'm very ancient, but I'm not particularly a certain age. Age is sort of a moot point where I come from, since we don't experience linear time. It always seemed absurd to say 'I'm a billion years old' or some kind of nonsense like that."
This caught Krissy off guard and she seemed to process the answer. "All right. So... where's home?"
"Another dimension of the universe, outside of time and space." She said calmly, rather enjoying the physical attention from both the humans. Especially as Krissy's smooth and gentle hand rubbed under her chin affectionately, leaving the lizard no choice but to offer a pleased growl. "You could consider it a different aspect of the same universe, a layer above a layer, existing in a physical space you can't perceive."
"We studied a little quantum theory." Krissy said with a grin. "The many worlds scenario."
"Sort of." Narissa nodded. "But not quite. Your science has yet to really grasp that alternate and concurrent dimensions exist simultaneously at every point in time, since we're exempt from its laws, while your dimension in the third density is not a set or predetermined circumstance. Because it has linear time, future events are still being shaped, and will always be unknown. So not all outcomes have happened. Which means free will determines the future."
"Which... makes prediction of the future impossible." Krissy raised an eyebrow, sighing heavily. "Which means you lied about seeing me and Dustin."
"True, it's impossible to chart future events." Narissa said calmly, glancing at Ty as he kissed her cheek with an almost annoyed 'cut it out' glance. "But there's also probability control. That's an informed and statistical evaluation of all possible outcomes to a being's life, based on past events and actions, and the determination that certain events or outcomes are highly unlikely or at least semi-predictable to a realistic margin."
"So... you guessed." Krissy crossed her arms, pulling away from the lizard.
"In the most literal and broad sense, yes, but no. I can see and perceive in five dimensions beyond space and matter, not to boast, and I can guarantee that the likelihood or your mistreatment and relationship breakdown at the hands of Dustin is nearly a 95% probability, which is the kind of odds I'd bet my skin on."
"Jesus." Krissy sobered up, sighing sadly. "But what if Dustin changed?"
"I accounted for that too." Narissa said, stretching her legs out beneath her and sitting on the forest floor, tail happily swaying behind her. She crossed her arms on her lap and cuddled Ty close to her side. "Dustin's capacity for personal change and recognition is very low. It would take a major life event, such as having a mental breakdown, to force him to acknowledge he needs help. Right now this second, I believe he's being diagnosed with narcisistic personality disorder by a qualified mental health practitioner."
"So... you actually helped him." Krissy concluded. "You helped him!" She beamed, suddenly reaching the truth.
"Yes." She turned to Ty, nodding. "She's quite clever."
"Okay, fine, but you didn't answer my question." Krissy said excitedly, suddenly reinvigorated by the idea that Dustin, her love, could be reformed. "What's your dimension like?"
"Ah!" The lizard shifted excitedly. "Well, the fifth density, or dimension, or whatever you'd like to call it, is basically where you go when you die here."
This gave Krissy serious pause, and she seemed to take it in with a certain amount of skepticisim. "Like... where we go? Like me and Ty?"
"Yes." The lizard nodded said simply. "That's life after death, because you have a soul. Which has to go somewhere when the body dies."
"Holy shit." Krissy, a stout atheist, said with some disbelief.
"You know how when you were twelve not too long ago? And your dad, a devout Christian, told you that you would burn in hell for your choice to reject his God?"
Krissy blinked and blinked. "You..."
"She does this." Ty sighed.
"There is not a God figure that passes judgement down on each individual." Narissa said sarcastically. "We're left to our own free will and our soul has to deal with whatever we do here on this plane. So basically, you deal with your own shit. And if that means coming back for multiple lives to even the score and learn something, then that's what you do."
"Have... I... lived many lives?" Krissy said cautiously.
"Can't tell you that." Narissa shrugged. "Anything that influences your current life or your thoughts would be a violation of the universal law. Which is basically that all souls do their own thing."
"So... what happens when you die?" Krissy asked, sitting against a tree in the suddenly somber woods.
"Not much." Narissa shrugged again. "Honestly, it's a sense of relief if you've had a pretty typical human life. Suddenly you're standing outside your body, and there's this sense of wanting to go home. That tunnel of light you hear about? Yeah, that's a thing. Except it's a wormhole returning to the fifth dimension that's opened by a gate keeper of sorts. That's where that bullshit about St. Peter and the pearly gates comes from."
"Okay." Krissy shook her head. "There's a lot to unpack there. So just tell me what it's like there."
"All right." The lizard said carefully. "Fair enough. Picture something twice as colorful with colors you can't even perceive. Everything is brighter, everything is more vivid, and you feel everything. Sort of like a hypersensitivity, or a permanent psychedelic experience."
"But you're a soul." Krissy raised her eyebrow. "So you're like a see through ghost. Or a cloud of ectoplasm or something."
"Do I look like ecto-goop to you?" Narissa said with a hint of playful sarcasm. "No, we still have physical bodies the same as here, or you can be a floating mass of soul energy, or whatever, really. Only matter changes, to a lower weight and density. So you can slip through solid matter, or not, split your energy into two places at once, or three, or four, or twelve. You can communicate with everybody because we have telepathy."
"Ew." Krissy narrowed her eyes.
"Do you know what happens when you can read each other's minds?" Narissa smiled warmly. "You don't fight anymore because you understand what the other person is thinking and can appreciate their views."
"So there's no war." Ty blinked. "Right?"
"And we can't die anyway." Narissa said. "There is no super death or anything like that. Because time doesn't happen so bodies don't age so cellular degradation doesn't happen, and also you're a form of pure soul energy instead of flesh and blood so the rules are very different. Basically, there's no point having a war because you can't kill the other guys, so we all just kind of give up and finally work together."
"And... what do you do? Play harps on a cloud?" Krissy rolled her eyes. "I'm guessing not."
"Naw!" The lizard waved a hand. "That's stupid. No, we travel the stars, explore unknown infinity, build cities, trade ideas and materials with each other, laugh, play, write music, solve problems, create things, work on medicine and mechanics. Save the Earth."
The last one caught Krissy's attention and Ty's, because now that meant something to both of them.
Narissa read Ty's unspoken question and nodded to him aside. "All right. So here's the skinny." Narissa said, leaning forward to the two humans and taking a pause. "There's a bunch of bad guys who want to keep the planet in a state of perpetual war and fear so they can feed off the energy that brings them, because it sustains their life."
"Holy shit..." Krissy leaned back against her tree. "That... that's right, isn't it? It just feels right."
"Nothing makes any sense here without that plain and simple fact." Narissa agreed, gently dipping her long snout and looking to both Ty and Krissy with deep truth. "So basically, I'm sort of a resistance fighter, but in a long and silent war. And..." She pointed to Ty.
"Uh..." Ty looked at the lizard in confusion. "Oh!" He realized, blushing. "Uh... I can change things. Like actually change things."
"So you say." Krissy said with a trill of excitement.
Narissa pointed to a small tree and Ty caught the intention.
"Watch the tree." He said simply, and willed it to grow older and larger.
Krissy's eyes went wide and her jaw dropped as the tiny tree started to rapidly grow, sprouting new branches and leaves, rustling and creaking, seemeing to pulsate the Earth below them as roots expanded. Soon, the tree was one of the largest and oldest in the forest, full and beautiful with healthy green leaves. Still Ty let it grow until it towered over them high above.
"Oh my God." Krissy stared, standing up in excitement and touching the giant tree with total astonishment and a little arousal. Just a slight little sexual energy, Narissa smiled.
"That... that's AMAZING!" Krissy blurted, almost hopping in childish excitement. "That's fucking amazing!"
"Isn't it?" Narissa stood, walking over and leaning against the thick powerful tree trunk in her dark jumpsuit, smiling and stroking the bark gently. "Think of all we could do with this."
"Yeah..." Ty stared at his own handiwork and pondered on suddenly solving global warming.
"But here's the thing!" Narissa said, raising a finger into the air. "We don't know what the extent of Ty's abilities are yet, or what he can do."
Krissy suddenly blushed deep red and threw her hands over her mouth as both stared at her. "Omigod!" She bounced excitedly. "You... you want me to be your test subject?"
"I know for sure that whatever I do I can reverse." Ty said, willing the tree to shrink back to a sapling, which it did quite suddenly, reversing its awesome growth and pulling back down into the ground, startling Narissa away in the process, and shrinking down to a tiny weak sapling of a tree.
"Oh shit..." Krissy stared in awe. "I don't know what to say! I mean... I'd... I'd be so honoured to help you guys!"
"So. Can we address the other thing?" Narissa smiled. "For Ty's benefit."
"Yeah." Krissy hung her head, recalling Narissa's earlier reassurance. "Okay. So... I like transformation. Like... there's porn and stuff. Of people. Becoming animals and things."
"Oh!" Ty said, going stiff and wide eyed. "Uh..."
Narissa chuckled and slowly walked over to Ty, bending down and gently kissing the boy on the lips again, holding his chin in her hand, closing her eyes for a sweet and delicate lizard kiss. Ty went visibly weak and began to shake as Narissa drew away.
"Whoa." Krissy stared, her brain registering what just happened and processing it. Until. "You... you two?"
"Yeah, sort of." Narissa giggled. "It just kind of happened."
"That... is..." Krissy blushed. "AWESOME!"
"See?" Narissa put her arm around Ty, pulling him in for another quick peck on the cheek. "I told you this would work out."
"All right." Krissy said, eagerly throwing herself on the ground next to Ty and Narissa, staring at the huge lizard woman with pure unbridled fantastic lust. "Fuck it. Do something to me. Anything. I'm game!"
"Don't talk to me!" Narissa laughed. "Talk to that guy." She pointed at Ty with a chuckle, who stared at Krissy with equal amounts arousal and surprise. "Really put him through his paces for me."