I remember the night I met Sol.

It wasn’t long after my breakup with Zhen Rong, and during that period I was going through a bit of a depressive rut. I’d wake up, go through the motions and sleep early so I didn’t have to face my newly single existence, alongside the multitudes of teenage problems I had. Even when things end well, that doesn’t make it any easier to cope.

Back then the voice in my head was my own, I got winded climbing too many stairs, and I’d always take a nap midday. Drama club productions were my biggest worries, tests playing second to that, and Carissa was never even a point of stress. In other words I was a normal girl with friends and responsibilities. That person existed a lifetime ago.

I was lying in bed when a burning bright starlight fell from the sky, its glow cleaving open my blinds and illuminating my room with the strength of the sun itself. My parents burst through the door, paranoid a meteorite had crashed right beside us.

“Girl, come on!” My dad shook me out of my sleepy stupor, forcing me out of bed like a necromancer does a corpse. I, for one, would have liked that meteor to crash into my room.

The cicadas outside seemed to have turned completely silent, replaced by the cacophony of neighbours gushing out like a tidal wave to check out the commotion. I was not immune to curiosity, but the cloud of depression I was living through made it hard to be paranoid or curious.

A smouldering crater had spawned near the playground, thankfully hurting no one. Whatever crashed here, its size couldn’t have been bigger than an average watermelon. However, it was completely empty. No sign of a meteorite, no sign of alien life or ship containing a baby, nothing. People were searching around for any weird aliens, parents comforting their small children and rearing them away from the crater, zoomers taking photo after photo of the crater for social media. Before long, the police had gathered to disperse us and promised they’d handle the situation and update us accordingly.

And that was a good explanation for no one else but me. Everyone else wanted to investigate, take pictures, call their friends and say ‘dude, you’ll never guess what happened!’; I was already pivoting on the ball of my heel back to my room.

I hopped back into bed, annoyed I was missing out on sleep. My tiny puddle of energy was completely sapped by this night’s excursion, lethargy pulling me under my blanket.

At the nadir of energy, I felt a crawling sensation over my thigh, slowly making its way up my body. I tossed and turned and scratched, trying to get it off me, but no matter what I always missed the spot. It stopped on my neck, and assuming it was some insect or spider, I smacked the back of my neck to kill whatever roamed.

Unknowingly, I had inflicted the most painful burning sensation of my life upon myself. It’s exactly what you imagine hellfire and brimstone to feel like. My breath was cut off momentarily. I gasped for air, seemingly unable to breathe at all. The pain spread like a wildfire in a forest, the agonising inferno breaking and tearing apart my skin and muscles. I tried to scream but no sound came out, only a small ghastly release of air. The taste of putrid copper infected the taste buds in my mouth, my vision being erased and replaced by horrific flashes of colours the conscious mind couldn’t fathom. Everything was in misery. I fell off my bed, flailing madly, convulsing and spasming. I tried to sit up, but my body constantly betrayed me, imprisoning my mind in unending torment.

In this state of perdition, a gnawing sensation on my skin began to grow and spread from the back of my neck. Scales covered my skin like a casket sealed away a corpse. The feeling imitated a constant torrent of spiders crawling all over my body, peeling away at my skin and in its place imposed reptile-like scales. My new skin was hard, cold and moist, a tar-coloured void in which my humanity was made grotesque.

Every inch of my body was being reshaped excruciatingly, like being cleaved apart and stitched back together over and over and over again. Muscles were tearing then repairing rapidly, my bones felt as though they were being reinforced with a metal alloy. My body was steel, and a hammer was striking at me as though I were on an anvil, forging me into something greater.

The original feeling of the scales breaking out over my face was choking, like being smothered to death. An illusionary octopus wrapped its freezing tentacles around my lungs and constricted then tightened, every breath taking a world of will and effort to muster up.

And then all the pain and discomfort vanished. The transformation was over.

The world spun like a top slowly coming to a halt. In full crystal clarity, I saw my glasses sitting on my bedside table. Alarmingly and excitingly, my sight was no longer restricted to well lit areas. Carefully, I pushed myself up, heaving and adjusting to my changed body. Panic flew overhead when I felt my tailbone land on my bed, only to realise it was a tail.

I had a tail. Still coping with new skin, new body structure and recovering from the fit I just experienced, I had completely neglected the extra limb now manifested. I lifted it, swung it, twitched it, stiffened and loosened it. It felt no different from doing that with your arm. I wondered what it would feel like if I ever became human again, would I feel as though a part of me was missing? Would I feel phantom pains? The thought fascinated me.

I looked down at my Stygian black hands, curling and uncurling them to feel it. Inside myself I felt constrained, as if I were a caged animal waiting to unleash itself on the world. The transformation was evidently not just visual. I felt much more powerful. Careful not to knock something over, I let my tail hover above the ground, wiggling it to indulge in that sensation, and walked over to my mirror. I inspected my face with its newly chiselled jawline and devil-like eyes, noting I was now blacker than velvet tamarind all over my body.

‘Hello, Rose.’ A stoic, musky voice echoed in my head. My body tensed up, my senses dialled up to eleven as I listened and looked around the room for the source of the voice. The grandfather clock outside seemed to have somehow gotten louder, as if I was right next to it. I was acutely aware of the carpet on my feet, the smells of specific soaps in my bathroom. The sound of my heart pounding in my ear overpowering the other voice.

‘Sorry to alarm you.’ The voice continued, ‘I am, how to put this in a way you’ll understand, in your head.’

‘Who are you? Are you the reason I’m like this? What’s going on? What are you?’ I thought to no one in particular, reasoning that if they were in my thoughts then they could hear them. They could, and that was my first ever introduction to Sol.

‘Slowly. Breathe, child. This is beyond the limits of your world. I am Sol.’

Sol explained they were the last surviving member of their planet, who came to Earth in a last ditch effort to preserve their kind. But the conditions on Earth were not suitable for their species to survive, so they required a symbiote host to bond to and continue life. They needed a host body in order to survive.

And they chose my body, bestowing upon me the ability to transform into a salamander human monster hybrid at will. The revelation that I could turn back into a human filled me with the lightness of relief, the salamander skin retracting itself as if it were a living, sentient being. Performing a small surface level analysis in front of my mirror, I noticed I had gotten more toned, muscles far more developed and firm. It’s nothing anyone would notice unless they saw me up close, but it was obvious once you saw it. Meek and wimpy used to be rude but accurate words to describe me, but now they were unsuitable.

‘How are you… speaking to me?

‘I have a surface level connection to your mind right now. It allows you to process what I say in the language you best understand and offers me some insight into what your culture’s norms and habits are like. ’ They patiently explained as I transformed back to further inspect my new body. On my second morph back, it was as though a needle poked every atom of my body.

‘I… have abs.’ I poked at my stomach, enjoying the defined features. ‘I feel really good, like I just had the best night of sleep.’ I ran my hands over my body, being invited into my own body. My chest was flat, bound by the scales, comfortably so as though it was always meant to be this way.

‘I feel… stronger.’ I asked, afraid to move around too much or touch anything in my room, apprehensive about what I was capable of.

‘It is more than just strength. Our hybrid form has an arsenal of incredible power. Would you like to try it out for yourself?’ Sol spoke matter-of-factly, but their voice had a hint of curiosity and excitement. The implication was obvious: they too had to see what their form could do.

Giddy with excitement upon hearing those words and still waiting to wake up from this nightmare turned wish fulfilment, I was more than happy to agree and test out this new body. Forget trying out a new phone or outfit. Ever test ran a new body? Gotta tell you, it feels damn good.

That was the first night I ever went on patrol. Well, patrol is stretching it. More like I went out for a joyride like trying out a new car and stopping crime was an added benefit to my nightly leisure. I had never felt so free. That was the first time I leapt off a building’s walls to another as if solid concrete were trampolines, walked up buildings like it was flat ground, shot fire from your palms like a real life comic book character. It was an incomparable feeling of euphoria for me. When I fell from my first building, landing on the ground felt like tripping over air, embarrassing but not painful. I hooked my tail around a tree branch, made myself a pendulum, and flung myself up.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Still, unbridled excitement aside, there were still many questions to tackle.

‘So how much of my mind can you read? Like do you know everything about me?

‘I know about as much as your subconscious and conscious would willingly tell a stranger. As of now, not a lot, but it could change depending on how we bond.’ They attempted to hide it, but I could sense Sol’s emotions. The mental link was a two-way street. By letting them into my mind, I was allowed into theirs. And there was an obvious sentiment of hope, hope that we would get along.

‘What’s the deepest thing you know about me?’

‘Whatever a ‘fanfiction’ is, I know you consume a lot of it.’

Okay, Sol knew a lot then.

‘Why me? Why choose me to be the host? Surely you’d rather like, a man’s body? Or someone older?’

‘Frankly, Rose, it could have been anyone. When I crashed I panicked and ran, as far as I could. I didn’t know how long I could survive, and once my rational mind came back online I just looked for the nearest living creature that could sustain me, and it was you walking back to your home.’

‘That’s ironic. The only one who didn’t care about you ended up being your host.’

‘Perhaps it was. It’s a coincidence, some may call it fate.’

‘The skin around me… it’s all black and hard and moist and… y’know. Like a lizard kind of. But it’s not like a tight fitting spandex around my body like all the superheroes from comics and movies…’ My mind trailed off, not entirely sure what I was trying to ask.

‘This form we have forged for ourselves is a manifestation of our ‘self’, as you might call it. This is how we see ourselves, as far as you and I’s subconscious mind is concerned. Should that mindset shift, we could end up looking differently.’ They explained, though I wasn’t sure which part of my brain saw me as an anthropomorphic reptile.

Still, that left the most challenging query.

‘Does this make us friends? Or am I just a means to an end?’

Out of all the questions I asked, this one made them think the hardest. A hollow air blew in my mind where their voice was once heard from momentarily.

‘If you want us to be, we can arrange it.’ There was something adorable about how they said it. I could imagine a child blushing as they said that, trying to act all cool and stoic yet foolishly still giving away the fact that they’re happy they found a companion.

From the night forth, the Salamander was born, and neither Sol nor I were ever alone again.

I thought being a superhero would change my life forever, like at that moment a supervillain would come forth and become my arch enemy, but as it turns out not much changes when you undergo such a transformation. I still had the same friends, same problems, same family, and there were no devious moustache twirling villains announcing their plans for world domination. But I felt more alive, as if this was who I was always meant to be. Like I was finally true to myself.

But stopping a man getting handsy with women at night, stopping petty thieves and boiling water without ever needing to touch a stove again were Salamander’s jobs. Rose’s jobs had remained, study hard, get into university, sell her soul off to a corporate company or a news station and report whatever she was allowed to report on, and finally publish her romance novel on the side as a passion project. And for quite a while, I successfully kept both lives separate from one another.

And now I can’t. Because Rose’s friend is now the Salamander’s worst, hopefully only, enemy. Rose’s friends are endangered because the Salamander exists. And that only scratches a bit of it. My family could be next, and even if I don’t know them, how many strangers have become casualties of war just because I exist?

The rest of the day passed in a daze. I opened my chat with Carrie once I got home, thinking about what to message her, how I could ever warn her in advance. Maybe I could devise a way to get her out of her house and I can search for explosives.

‘But if we do that…’

‘Ashen might just blow the damn bomb up anyway. If he could put a bloody bomb there, then he could easily have put a camera, or tapped her phone, or anything.’

‘Do we trust him to keep to his word?’

I thought about the events of terror he’s unleashed onto the country, the things he said to me in Lucky Plaza.

‘He will. He’s not interested in killing my friends or family or anyone for fun. It's like he wants me to know it's him, that he wants me to see everything about this plan. I don’t know why, but he needs me.’

I lay in bed, mind buzzing like television static. Tomorrow had to come sooner rather than later.

‘Do you… regret me?’ Sol asked gravely, shame attached to their words. Did I? It’s almost their fault in some way. Without the Salamander existing, maybe all of this chaos wouldn’t have unfolded. And without Sol, there’s no Salamander. If they had bonded with anyone else, wouldn’t that have been better for me?

‘No.’ It’s the truth.

‘We’ll get through this. But this is who we are. It’s difficult. But fuck, I’m going to save my friend.’

"Hey Rose, you want ice-cream?" The door cracks open. My brother stood at the door with a bowl of mint ice-cream in his hand that he's unapologetically devouring, a green moustache forming. I shake my head and smile at him, hoping he’ll just leave me alone. I didn’t even know he was home today.

"You okay, mei?" He whispers, inviting himself into my black box of a room and taking a seat next to me, setting his ice cream on my nightstand. He comes close, his figure is imposing. Like his body is a magnetic force that pushes me away.

“You’re pale. And… have you been crying?” I didn’t even realise it, but my eyes were tearing. I wiped them with my sleeves and shook my head unconvincingly.

“Is there… something you wanna talk about with me?”

There wasn’t. There wasn’t. There wasn’t.

“Gor…do you think, we’ll ever go back to normal? Like… all the… stuff in the news. Relating to… yeah.” He frowned but gave the question some thought. I already knew his stance on the matter.

“It’s been… hard to think about, mei. Everyone I know, law school to the actual government to friends outside all feel differently. Some people think it’s just the beginning. Some people think the worst of it is over.”

“What do you think?”

“I… don’t know. I gave it some thought, knowing what you think and what I think, and just let it sit with me for a bit. I’m honestly just scared, I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not, but you’ve been at an attack twice now. And I’m thankful that… the Salamander man… was there. To save you and your friends. On the other hand, maybe it’s his fault that all this is happening.”

“But there’s the dilemma. He didn’t really do anything up till the explosions I’d consider a problem. I-I let myself indulge in fallacies and assumptions about him that, well, reality didn’t agree with. So I considered your view: that he’s being targeted. And if he is, maybe it’s not his fault then. We shouldn’t fault him for… existing. I guess. It’s hard. I’d… rather he not, maybe. But it’s not my right to choose that for him.”

We sat in silence for a bit.

“I used to want to get back with Jasmine.”

“Your ex?!” I almost shouted, but Gor shushed me. The revelation shocked me- because I saw Gor cry at the dinner table about it.

“She hit you… used you… yelled… why?” I asked with a shakiness in my voice. If there was one person I’d never save, it’d likely be her. For hurting my brother like that, I loathed her so much.

“I know, I know,” he smiled sadly. “But as I progressed further into law school it just got so… stupid. Like why was I doing what I was doing? I was stressed and needed affection, y’know? And I was damn stupid lah, I thought she’d change or she’d treat me better or take care of me again and I could be happy. That it could all be normal again, that I’d get my motivation back lah, to study.”

“So why didn’t you go back to her?”

He heaved and leaned back a little, staring up into my ceiling.

“I talked to friends, lor. And essentially, I’m damn stupid.” He laughed a bit to himself, the deluge of memories pulling the corners of his lips upwards. “I just wanted to feel whole again. To have a girlfriend again, even when I knew it was bad, when I knew I was being naive.”

“And I mean, you saw what happened right? Pa asked how I could let a girl hit me. My friends and I all knew Jasmine was bad news, a horrible person. They tried to block her on my phone, but fuck lah I memorised her number.”

Anger swelled within me. I want to hurt her.

“She... she abused you. You’re sweet and nice. A bit annoying, a scaredy cat, and you chew too loudly, but you’re one of the best guys I know. It’s not your fault that she knew how to get to you.” I joked to relieve some tension, but it wouldn't go away. I abhorred her, she took advantage of Gor's generosity and kindheartedness.

“Exactly! Right? That’s what the counsellor said, and what my friends and I eventually realised. It’s not my fault if I get tricked into thinking about her again. At least, I wouldn’t blame myself for it completely. Really, it’s Jasmine’s fault she did all that to me.” He pulled me in, letting me lean on his shoulder. A long time ago, he was so much stronger than me.

I remembered what Rosa told me. It’s not my fault. One isn’t responsible for how the world reacts to them. They can only be wholly responsible for their own actions.

“So I mean, I kinda get it. It’s not the Salamander’s fault someone’s after him. If they are. It’s whoever’s fault for wanting to go after them. And if we solve the problem of those insane people, we can go back to normal. It’s harder than blaming that Salamander guy, but it’s our moral responsibility.” Gor pulled me in for a hug, patting my back to comfort me.

“Do you still… hate him?” I whispered.

“I don’t agree with what he does, necessarily. I wanna know who he is and what his motives really are. But, I guess, based on the facts of the case, there isn’t any damning evidence that he is a terrorist, so I’ll reserve my judgement. I know he’s like, cool. I get it. But yeah, it’s much more complex in the real world…” He sighed, slurping his now melted ice cream.

"Thanks… yeah. I get it. I just hope… we can go back to the way things were. I’m just scared…" I tell him in between sniffles. He pats my head and gives me one last hug before saying goodbye and leaving, seeing that I needed a moment. No doubt he'll tell my Ma and Pa that I'm crying, make them promise that they will keep quiet and not bother me until I'm ready.

The door creaked open again, surprising me.

“And I love you… just take care of yourself. Even if it doesn’t get normal any time soon, just… stay safe.” Without leaving me time to respond, he walks back out into the hallway and out of my line of sight. My brother and his powerful sense of justice, fighting every day in the classroom, during tests, someday in the courts and offices, all to make the world a better place. I try to bring justice too, in the ways a vigilante can. The ways only I can. And one day, these two methods of justice might clash. Knowing my luck, they probably will.

I flopped onto my bed and let out a dry laugh.

Whether it’s fate or coincidence, you gotta admit that whatever it is, it’s cruel.