Chapter 22: Upgrade people! Upgrade!

Cahaya POV

I smiled as I gazed proudly at my piece of art. I won't eat his body, I will expose him at the entrance. Good thing the room can serve as a giant fridge to freeze animals to death and conserve meat in this case.

I cleaned my hand. Then slithered out of the torture room, locked it with the key that Ibuki 'gave' me, and directly went where Haru and Agata were.

I opened another door. I saw 6 animals glaring at each other, one panda with burn marks on his forearms Gohin, my Dad, Haru with a blanket around herself, an unknown female lop-eared rabbit, a kitty crying on the ground Agata, and last but not least a Legoshi with missing fingers.

I decided to declare my presence, "Good news the Shishigumi are permanently out.", I declared loudly while slithering in the middle of the room.

"So you're the shy-hmmm hmmm-" she was interrupted by Gohin when he abruptly placed both of his paws in front of her muzzle. Muffling her.

"Kyuu you just… damn *sigh* sorry Cahaya-san for her earlier outbursts.", the panda apologized to the now named Kyuu while the latter pouted. Which looked strange since she seemed battle-hardened with the number of weapons on her person.

I could practically hear him say 'please don't kill us.

"It's alright.", I drily replied, making Gohin visibly relax, then I heard a whistling sound and caught by reflex a throwing knife with two of my fingers. There was a paper on it.

I read out loud, "You owe me 12400 Yen… huh. Okay miss bunny but not now.", I stared at the clearly irritated little murder rabbit, if a glare could kill I would be dead ten times over.

I approached Legoshi who was transfixed on the worried dwarf rabbit, I searched through my bag and found what I wanted. Can I make him grow back his fingers?

I disbanded his left bloody hand not caring about how everyone looked at me weirdly except Dad who got a sudden face of enlightenment.

It wasn't pretty, the bones were cleanly cut, and blood was slowly oozing out. I took a big lump of the undiluted version of the cream I gave Juno.

I separated the lump of cream into three portions and placed one portion on each of the missing fingers.

He finally looked down and made a 'what' of shocks before falling to the ground. Incrontrilably spasming, a seizure, might have put too much.

Meh, he is a hybrid he will survive and come out mostly unscattered, seizure can be deadly.

"Legoshi!", Haru sprinted full speed in his direction while looking plenty distressed.

I slithered backward, something quite difficult and exhausting for my serpentine body to do but I'm proficient enough in it.

"What da fuck?!", I heard Kyuu yell in surprise. And she wasn't the only one surprised. I was also pleasantly surprised.

As I stared at the left hand of convulsing wolf on the ground, I could see how his slowly regrowing fingers and bones were followed by tendons, blood vessels, nerves then muscle but the most interesting part was the emerald green scales growing at the place of the fur.

'Didn't really expect this… Does that mean hybrid nature is always that volatile?', I thought while I examined how each of the growing fingers was clearly the ones of Komodo dragons and not grey wolf ones.

I will also need to mark this place as mine, maybe writing Naja on the walls with my blood will do the trick and it might make them come here too.

_______________________

Cherryton Academy, in Cahaya room.

Third POV

Cahaya was now wide awake after a good slumber, it was quite an exhausting night after all.

He was slithering in his messy room, multiple papers placed haphazardly on his desk with also flasks with different liquid and fleshy things. 

Weights on the side of his bed were multiple pillows also placed in the same theme as the desk.

There even was a strange and way too worn out spear gun, it was dating from the Human-Animals War, he found it deep in the sea and he wanted to restore it. It was also way too big for any human to wield, weirdly enough.

It was overall a big mess but he could find everything he wanted and it was at least somewhat clean, he didn't sweat, lose dead skin, or hair/fur, and many other such things.

He was currently looking at his body in the mirror, he was shirtless, he didn't have mammary glands or nipples for the dummy, he wasn't a mammal so that was expected.

He was inspecting the two new appendices fleshy below his armpits. He probed the left one with his right hand and shivered at the alien sensation of touch on this new growing body part.

"This is so trippy… and I will need to find t-shirts for four armed animals… or make them myself.", the hybrid muttered while continuing his probing, he was going to grow a new pair of arms that he already realized.

It would take some time to adapt to being four-limbed again.

This body change will also give a reason to announce his hybrid status, evidently with his Dad's accord. And he will have it.

And even without this, the illusion can only hold for so long, some students were already suspicious or knew he is a hybrid. 

They weren't moronic and frankly it pissed him off to be pushed to hide his status like a worm.

Just because it might 'offend' or attract other animals' ire. Since he is a dirty mix breed between two nearly extinct species after all.

How dare he take the place of a fair and honest purebred animal! Would be their thoughts.

Well, if they aren't happy about him existing they will have a little talk face to face and it will probably not end very well for the bigot.

He knew there would be backlash and problems such as the media and all other shit of the same nature. 

Cahaya also understood that he might be reckless and put himself and others in danger by doing this. That is why he considered himself reckless for a reason. 

But he wasn't stupid. If worse came to worse the sea was always available and he knew many things that could and would provoke World War III. The last might be a tad bit drastic, though.

Continuing on the inspection of his own body, he was testing his new hood. It started from his spine just below his shoulder blade, was somewhat fused with his third set of gills from the top and it continued until the start of his cheeks.

It was a strange mix of bones, cartilage, and muscle, the whole thing surrounded by flexible scales and it could be mostly hidden by folding itself together against his neck. 

Totally different from how cobra hoods should work but evolution always finds a way.

"A human rotting skull with lavender eyesockets, very ironic and fitting. I like it…", he mumbled as he admired his own pattern on his expended hood.

It was quite big since he has a pretty long neck and at the largest part, it goes way past his shoulder. It was intimidating, to say the least.

On Legoshi's side.

He was in his bed hidden from everyone, he eyed his new three reptilian fingers on his left paw and kept thinking about what happened and Cahaya's status as a hybrid.

'I will talk to him and thank him… we haven't really interacted much since last time…', Legoshi thought, he was more than ashamed about what he did when he was younger.

He realized that his Grandpa, Gosha was smiling after the death of his Mom and daughter, Leano, not because he was happy about her death.

His Grandpa was trying to support him, and be a pillar for him to live through the grief of losing his Mom but he completely misunderstood his Grandpa's actions.

It was the second biggest mistake of his life, his first being not having stopped his Mom from killing herself just after she cuddle him before she committed suicide the same night.

The twelve years old he should have told her she wasn't a monster and that she was beautiful no matter what others might say or think.

He regretted many things but those two events were the ones he will regret all of his life.