Kai leaned back on the couch, pizza slice dangling from his fingers, eyes still lingering on the grimy crate Isaac had dragged in. Then his gaze shifted to Lenny - the giant humanoid lizard who had somehow, against all logic, become their ride home.

"Oi, Lizardzilla," Kai called out, tossing something small toward him. Lenny caught it with a clawed hand, blinking dumbly at the mutant suppressant.

"You saved my ass back there," Kai said, his tone light but serious beneath the surface. "I figured it's the least we could do. Take it."

A few of the others looked up, surprised.

Kai rubbed his jaw, then added, "I also wanna see if it works. I mean, curiosity's killing me."

Lenny tilted his head, clearly confused.

"With this," Kai continued, "you might be able to pretend to be normal once in a while. Pick up more suppressants when you need 'em and leave without being stared at."

But Lenny just stared at the syringe like it was an alien artefact.

Kai sighed. "You won't be able to jab it through your scales, whatever they're made of. Just squeeze the crap into your mouth. Swallow it."

Simple enough instructions.

Except the humanoid lizard glanced at the vial, then popped the entire syringe into his mouth and crunched.

Everyone froze.

"Wait, you weren't supposed to eat it," Kai laughed.

They stared. Nothing happened. For a few awkward seconds, Lenny just stood there chewing like a confused crocodile.

Amina looked concerned. "Maybe it has to be injected?"

"Guess his stomach acid nuked it," Sven muttered, waving the stench of sewer water from his face.

But then Lenny staggered.

His massive body seized up, muscles bulging and contorting as he let out a pained groan. He dropped to the floor with a thud, clawed hands clutching his chest as a sickly shimmer spread through his scales. Bones cracked. Flesh twisted.

"Shit, he's gonna explode," Nadya muttered, backing away.

The transformation was violent. Ugly. And then… it was over.

Lenny lay panting on the ground, covered in tattered, oversized clothes that had once stretched over his reptilian frame.

But now?

He looked like a completely different person.

A scrawny teenage boy, barely through puberty. Blonde hair clung to his forehead, and his eyes were wide with confusion, cheeks flushed red. The baggy clothes hung off him like a tent.

The silence was palpable. Then Amina stepped forward slightly, blinking in awe.

"Oh."

He looked… kind of like a fairytale prince. Not quite there yet, but on the path. Charming in a weird, youthful way.

Kai's eyebrow twitched as he looked between the two. 'Oh boy.'

There was tension now. That sort of awkward, budding kind of young affection that hung in the air like invisible strings. Lenny's gaze kept flicking toward Amina. She didn't quite look away.

And Nadya noticed. Her eyes narrowed.

"No," she said flatly, stepping in before the boy could even ask.

Lenny blinked.

"You can't join us," she repeated, her voice colder than usual. "This life? It's not for you."

Lenny's hopeful expression faltered.

But Kai?

Kai clapped a hand on the boy's shoulder before Nadya could continue.

"Forget her," he grinned. "You're not joining them."

Lenny looked confused. "I'm… not?"

"Nope," Kai said, tossing a wink toward the others. "You're joining me, kid. You saved my life. That earns you a spot in my little club."

He pulled Lenny in with a grin. "Since I'm tagging along with this crew anyway, you might as well stick close to us, too. It's safer. And there's Amina."

He waggled his eyebrows.

Amina blinked in disbelief.

Nadya glared.

Lenny's eyes lit up.

How could Kai say no to having a mutant tank that was stupidly strong, loyal to a fault, and clearly had no idea how the world worked? Not as a slave, of course. No. This was more like… a friend. A sidekick. A heavy-hitter to throw at problems while Kai did the thinking.

That's what he told himself, anyway.

And truthfully, there was something in Lenny's eyes that struck a chord in him. That look of loneliness. That hunger for belonging. Kai had seen that face in the mirror enough times to recognise it in someone else.

"Welcome to the freakshow," Kai said, patting his shoulder again.

Lenny grinned like he'd just been crowned king.

No one else could argue. Kai wasn't technically part of the Association. He'd decided to tag along, sure, but he wasn't bound to anyone. And honestly, he liked it here. It was fun. It was chaos. He was growing stronger. So he stayed.

And now he had a new pet lizard/friend under his wing. A free bird with its own little hatchling.

Sven groaned. "You're responsible for him now; he's just a kid."

"Yup," Kai nodded.

Nadya didn't look pleased.

"You should've seen him in action," Kai added, tossing another slice of pizza into his mouth. "I think he'd give Takeshi a run for his money."

And just like that, the air shifted again.

Takeshi.

The name landed like a stone in their stomachs, silencing everything.

He still hadn't come back.

And none of them wanted to admit the truth gnawing at the back of their minds.

He might never.

-

Lenny zipped from mirror to mirror in his small, cluttered apartment, pausing every few seconds to admire his reflection. Windowpane, microwave door, even the side of a toaster - anything with a surface that could bounce his image back at him became a makeshift mirror.

He couldn't help it.

His own face felt like a stranger. After spending years locked inside the hulking, monstrous body of a lizard, seeing smooth skin, blonde hair, and human features staring back at him was... surreal.

"Is this really me?" he whispered, grinning like a dork and striking awkward poses. "Damn, I'm kinda cute…"

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew had taken over the apartment like seasoned squatters. One by one, they took turns using Lenny's tiny bathroom to scrub off the stench of the sewers. Towels were in short supply, but no one cared anymore. It was amazing what you could tolerate after swimming through literal shit.

Sven had been unceremoniously kicked back out onto the street with a long list of demands - clothes, food, toiletries, socks. No one asked where or how he got them, and honestly, no one really wanted to know.

"Just don't bring back anything that smells like it's already been worn by a corpse," Kai had muttered.

In that lull of waiting and cleaning up, the most notable thing to happen was Lenny's reversion.

Roughly an hour after taking the suppressant, his body began to tremble. It started subtly, his shoulders hunching forward, skin twitching. Then, with a sound like bones grinding and sinew snapping, his human form crumbled and peeled away like a cheap disguise.

Within moments, the towering lizard mutant was back, hunched over and flexing his claws as if trying to get comfortable in his own skin again.

It had worn off.

Kai observed this with intense interest, his eyes gleaming.

"Fascinating," he muttered.

The suppressant didn't erase the mutation. It just… put it to sleep. Temporarily. Which meant, in theory, it could be used tactically. Weaponised.

That thought alone got his brain firing.

And naturally, Kai being Kai, had experimented earlier on Lenny.

With the others distracted, he turned to Lenny while the boy was still in his temporary human state, sitting on the floor cross-legged and blinking in confusion at his soft limbs.

"Hold still for a sec," Kai said casually.

"Huh?"

Crack!

The sound of a kitchen knife snapping filled the air. Amina gasped.

"What the hell, Kai!?"

"Relax, I wasn't trying to kill him."

"You stabbed him!"

"Technically, I tried to stab him. Huge difference."

The knife blade had sheared cleanly in two, unable to pierce Lenny's arm.

The boy looked more confused than anything, inspecting his unharmed skin as if he didn't fully understand how it worked either.

Kai ignored the shouting from Amina and the others, his mind racing.

'So even in his human form, he's still tough as nails. Mutant durability's not gone… just buried under the surface. That means the suppressant doesn't completely erase the mutation, just suppresses the active part of it. Interesting...'

He paced slowly, thoughts tumbling one after the other.

'If this stuff can be loaded into darts or bullets, it could be a game-changer. Mutants rendered powerless, or at least weaker, for an hour. Maybe less. Still, that's long enough to escape, subdue, or neutralise them. But I need more data...'

'How much of the original power remains intact? Can they still heal? Still resist toxins? Still sense danger? Or is it just a visual downgrade? And do different mutants have different resistances to it?'

He looked down at the broken knife in his hand.

'I should test it on myself next. Or one of the others…'

Then he glanced around.

'Okay, maybe not right now. I'll find a chance, it's not like they're going to volunteer.'

His curiosity didn't stop there, though. His thoughts drifted to the other side of the coin - the enhancers. The crate Isaac and the others had brought back had both suppressants as well as enhancers and TEMP Z - the labelling was clear enough.

Kai's fingers twitched.

He needed to know what those could do. What he could do… with one.

Nadya had seen that look in his eyes.

"We're handing those off to another Outlaw once Shadow gets in touch," she said sharply, arms crossed. "So keep your damn hands to yourself, Kai."

He raised both hands in mock surrender. "Sure, sure. Totally. Hands off."

But not even a couple of minutes later, he'd already slipped a couple of them into his pocket.

'You never know when you might need one,' he thought, eyes narrowing. 'If it helps me hold my own against some of these freakishly strong mutants, then side-effects be damned. My body'll survive. Probably.'

Eventually, as the adrenaline wore off and the exhaustion of the day crept in, everyone began to crash.

Some lay sprawled across the floor, some curled up on secondhand mattresses or leaned against mismatched furniture. Even Lenny, now back in his hulking lizard form, curled into a corner like a house cat, tail coiled beneath him.

Within an hour, the apartment was filled with quiet breathing and the occasional soft snore.

And in that stillness, Kai sat awake, red eyes glowing faintly in the dark...

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