Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Old mate decides now is the perfect time to be unhelpful.

[System: Oi, remember those pics of Hana? The panty ones?]

Not now, old mate.

He doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t listen; right there in my vision, slotted into my slit-like eyes like some pop-up ad I never asked for, is Hana’s underwear, and not just the underwear, everything underneath it too, laid out clear as day like the system just doesn’t understand the concept of timing.

Come on, seriously, right now? My girlfriend is about to walk into a room full of dead cops and my dad, and you’re showing me this?

[System: Fair point. Bit of a mood killer, the corpses.]

Yes! Exactly! Take it down, and how did you get the X-ray vision? It’s amazing, can I keep this? I mean, wait no! Lyra! My beloved.

The image doesn’t move.

[System: Nah, keep it up a sec, I reckon you’ll thank me later. Anyway. Reckon we should start looking at her too? Hana, I mean. Solid frame, good bite force probably, decent addition to the roster.]

Not my type, Old Mate. I’ll happily look, no complaints there; she’s built like a brick wall wrapped in fur, and sadly I don’t want death by snu snu even though I may joke about it; looking is free. Wanting is a whole different bill.

[System: Yeah, nah, fair. Just putting it out there, efficiency, mate.]

My dad, completely unaware that his son is currently being pestered by an invisible Australian voice about one of his lackey wolf woman’s panties, is still cradling me like I’m made of glass.

”She will be safe,” he says, low and certain, like it’s a fact of the universe rather than a promise. ”Hana is very good at her job.”

I really, really hope that job today is being nice, and not the other kind of good she’s probably usually known for.

The doors at the far end bang open and there she is, Lyra, stumbling in like someone just shoved her, hair a mess, eyes still doing that groggy blink thing she does when she wakes up confused. Hana’s got a hand on her shoulder, gentle as anything, steering her through the wreckage like a tour guide at the world’s worst museum.

That right there is a sight I never thought I’d see. Hana, the woman who probably eats her enemies for breakfast and uses their bones as toothpicks, is being polite. Actually polite. Talking soft, walking slow, matching her pace to Lyra’s like she’s escorting royalty instead of dragging a scared dark elf girl through a murder scene.

Lyra’s eyes drift down, and I watch the exact moment her brain catches up with her eyeballs. The pile of dead cops, the blood marks. The general vibe of something horrific happened here. Her mouth opens, and I can see the scream loading up, winding up like a pitcher about to throw the fastest ball of her life.

Then her eyes catch me.

Curled up small and red in the arms of the single most terrifying man in this entire underground city, the man she has spent actual weeks being scared stiff of, the man who could probably end her whole bloodline with a raised eyebrow.

The scream dies somewhere in her throat and turns into something else entirely.

”You—?????!?!” She’s pointing, hand shaking, looking between my dad and me like her brain has hit a wall and just started reversing. ”What are you doing with him?!”

My dad, the absolute small unit of a man currently holding me like a prized garden snake, actually chuckles. Low, warm, completely unbothered by the fact that his son’s girlfriend just watched him stroll out of a room full of corpses.

”Ah,” he says, and there’s something almost sheepish in it, which is a wild thing to witness from a man built like a tax audit nightmare. ”This is not quite how I wanted her to meet me.”

Old mate, I don’t want her seeing me like this. I don’t want to talk to her right now, not in this form, not with all this going on around us. What do I do?

[System: Hahaha. Yeah nah, you’re properly cooked, mate. No idea what you should do here. Let’s just see how it plays out.]

That is not helpful in the slightest.

[System: Never said it would be.]

Lyra’s still staring, dazed, swaying a little on her feet like the whole scene hasn’t fully loaded in her head yet. My dad gives her a small nod, gentle, like he’s coaxing a spooked animal, and tucks me in a little closer against his chest before gesturing for her to follow.

She does. Slowly, like her legs are on autopilot and her brain checked out somewhere around the fifth dead body.

Behind us, the ring staff are absolutely losing it. Grown men with their hands on their heads, screaming about refunds, about odds, about money that just evaporated into thin air the second the cops got turned up.

”The bets! The bets were stacked five to one on the crimson snake going another three rounds!”

”Boss just walked off with him! With the snake! Are you kidding me!”

”At least the cops are dead, small mercies, small mercies...”

None of it matters to my dad. He snaps his fingers, and two golems, hulking things, peel off from wherever they were lurking and fall into step around us, carving a path through the chaos like we’re the only three people who matter in the whole building.

Which, I guess, we are.

The hover car is waiting at the end of the corridor, doors already sliding open on their own, a quiet hum of an AI engine idling in the dark. My dad steps up first, lets Lyra climb in after him, still dazed, still not saying a word, and once she’s settled he looks down at me with something in his eyes I don’t have a word for yet.

The look in his eyes was the kind you save for a newborn son. A soft, unguarded thing that had no business on the face of a man like him.

”Come,” he says, voice low enough that only I catch it. ”Let us get you both somewhere quieter.”