Two and the Last Year on Earth ✓ [humor, sci-fi, romance]

Act 4: Genji the Lizard

The forest of the island was just like an island forest anywhere. There were tropical trees and pretty flowers and strange bugs. Two stopped dead in her tracks when she heard a squeaky voice behind her.

"Gaijin? Mitakotonai gaijin (Foreigners? Never seen before those foreigners)."

"Koko (here)," came the squeaky little voice again.

Two looked around but all she saw was a lizard waving at them, standing on his hind legs.

"Wait, what?" she almost shrieked. Dr. Lorkhead who was already quite a bit ahead of them but stopped at her voice and turned around. He rushed back to the scene to see the lizard walking toward Two waving its hand.

"Looks like the work of Coger Fiskleweed!"

"Koga Fizzleweedo?" the lizard said, clearly only able to speak Japanese.

"Dr. Lorkhead, do you have your Translation Earphones?" Two held out her hand.

"As I matter of fact I do." He searched in his many pockets of his Made-For-Survival-In-Wilderness Jacket.

The Translation Earphones were, as their name suggested, phones, and when you set the dial on your language you would be able to hear any foreign language in your language. The Doctor had made different sizes and there was one the size of Two's pinky finger. She set the dial to English-Japanese and handed it to the lizard who accepted it with a polite bow. Then she motioned for him to put it to his ear, wherever that was, and set hers to Japanese-English.

"Do you know Coger Fiskleweed? He's a mad scientist who did strange experiments on animals. I have a mouse that can talk just like you," Two said.

The lizard almost jumped a meter in the air when he heard her voice in a language he knew.

"Wow, this is amazing I can understand you, wow, really, it's wow." His squeaky voice came like a storm in her ear. "I've never seen anything like it! Genius, genius! You foreigners are amazing! And yes, come to think of it Coger Fiskleweed does sound awfully familiar. Really. But I can't seem to remember much."

"So, you could have been one of the altered ones?" Two nodded to Dr. Lorkhead and he mouthed "I knew it".

"Yes, probably. Otherwise I wouldn't have known such a weird name." Then the lizard held out the phone in front of him and scrolled down the different language translations and muttered, "Chou sugoi, chou sugoi, (Super amazing, super amazing)," over and over again.

"Um," Two began and the lizard put it back to its ear. "Lizard—"

"Genji. My name is Genji."

"Okay, Genji, what do you know about the strange clock that came to this island, and do you know of any civilization nearby?"

"Well, the clock had been coming here and drilling a hole in the ground for some time now. One day, summer became fall and then winter and then spring and then back to summer again. There are people here you just need to go more north. But the problem is there's some sort of barrier that blocks anything from going north. I talked to Mr. Kamon, he's a seagull and he said he can fly, but only after he goes high enough this thing blocks everything else. He thinks it's a dome of some sorts."

Two released the phone from her ear to tell Jarid about the dome. He had begun to wake up now that he was in the presence of a talking lizard.

"Do you need to go to the clock? I know a backstreet way."

"Yes, please, thank you so much," Two said with a bow which Genji promptly returned. Then he motioned for them to follow. Though she soon found out that following a green lizard through a green forest wasn't always an easy task.

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Note: You can actually learn Japanese in this chapter ;) Those aren't made-up words.