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Boko's lair had been unlike anything that Klein had ever seen.

They'd gone down through a trapdoor in the forest floor and climbed down a ladder into a large, open, cube-shaped room underground. Inside, there had been stairs on the floor, but also stairs on the walls and even stairs on the ceiling. The room seemed to have been built under the assumption that whoever would be in it would be able to move just as easily in three dimensions as in two. It had looked like a painting by MC Escher.

After they had reached the floor, when Boko had used his uncoiling tail to propel himself all the way up to the ceiling again turning upside down on his way up, Klein had understood that the reason for which it had been built that way had been because Boko had, in fact, been able to move in three dimensions as easily as in two, thanks to the way that his sticky hands and feet had helped him cling to the walls and ceiling on all four like a gecko.

Boko had started scuttling all over his dwelling in three dimensions, describing all of the objects that he had kept in it one by one on his way. Boko had showed him shelves, masks, candlesticks, capes, wrenches, robes, hourglasses, togas, beakers, uniforms, lamps, djellabas, bottles, loincloths, instruments, paintings, shoes, vases, canes, statues, boots, rugs, shoes, statues, and books about his favorite subject: everything. After having finished his series of mad dashes and the explanations that had accompanied each of them, Boko had dropped back down from the ceiling to the center of the room he'd jumped up from, turning right side up on his way down.

"As long as you don't break or lose anything, make yourself at home," Boko had told Klein, "I don't have people over often, but I hope you'll like it here." Klein had been quite impressed with what Boko's dwelling had looked like. "I've never seen anything like this!" Klein had said. "What is this place?" he'd asked. "I call it Noah's Vault," Boko had answered. "Noah? You mean like from the story with Noah's Ark?"

Boko had nodded. "Why do you call it that?" Klein had tilted his head. "You see, Klein, I've collected objects here to protect them, because there's going to be another Great Flood," Boko had answered, "I don't want them to be destroyed by it." Klein had seemed surprised. "But I thought that the rainbow at the end of that story meant that God forgave people and wouldn't do it again?"

Boko had shaken his head. "No, that's wrong. God doesn't forgive anything."

Klein had stopped and thought about it. He'd guess it hadn't been that much crazier than anything that he'd been brought up to believe himself. What had been the harm? "Do you ever get lonely living out here, all by yourself?" he'd asked. "With all of my little friends here," Boko had gestured to the myriad of objects around him, "how could I ever be lonely?" Klein had smiled. "I love that you'd think this way." Boko had smiled back at him. "Thank you." Boko had also believed that objects had souls, after all. "You must have so many stories to tell," the skunk had thought out loud, "there must be a story associated with how you got each of these things."

Boko had given him a strange look. "Did I say something wrong?" The chameleon's amiable expression had promptly returned. "No, I just have a strange emotional relationship to the past sometimes," he'd explained, "You understand, I'm sure." Klein had nodded. "Don't we all." He wouldn't have wanted his own past to catch up with him. "I am glad I have these objects to remember it by, though," Boko had said. "And there's always the future," Klein had added. "Yes... the future," Boko had answered thoughtfully. "So," Klein had said, "what was your future going to be before I showed up? I'd hate to get in the way of it."

Boko had smiled. "No worries. I'm a participatory anthropologist, actually." Klein had been impressed. "Oh, really?" Boko had nodded. "That means I go out among some of the only few remaining populations that still live out in the wilderness on their own, following their own traditional way of life. I try to find those that have already been studied the least. I've been observing a tribe near here called the Sahuagin, little known fish people who lived here before the settlers came, just like the Inca. I start out by observing them without revealing my presence there, using my color-shifting ability."

When Klein would meet Mano in Brazil later in his life, she would talk to him about how she'd used to use her own color-shifting ability both in the Middle Eastern desert and in the Amazonian rainforest to help her in her investigative forays for her journalistic reports.

"I do it mostly to get an idea of their language before I start talking to them," Boko had explained. "That way, when I do start talking to them, it becomes easier for me to earn their trust, since I don't have to go through as much of the process of trial and error figuring out how they talk that can cause a lot of diplomatic backlash, if you're not careful," he'd continued. "But, listen to me babbling on about work. I must be boring you silly," he'd apologized.

"No, that's fascinating, actually," Klein had assured him. "Do you go live with them?" the skunk's tone and expression had certainly seemed engaged, Boko had thought. "If I can get them to trust me enough to let me, ideally, for a few days, yes," he'd elaborated. "Would you like to come with me?" Klein had gasped. "You're really offering me to? But I've never done this kind of thing before!" he'd said. "There's always a first time for everything," Boko had said.

That night, on their way to where the Sahuagin lived, Boko had gone off to gather firewood so that he could build a campfire for both of them to huddle near for warmth in the cold dark of night. They had lain down next to each other about to go to sleep talking together as they had looked up at campfire smoke rising to the starry night sky. Klein began to feel that his earlier crush on Boko could become something like love, if it'd been going to be reciprocated at least.

In the morning, Klein had woken up to seeing Boko return from having been away from the clearing that they had slept in. "Hi! You left?" the skunk had yawned. "Getting breakfast," Boko had replied, as he'd set down a handful of roots, nuts, berries, mushrooms, and what appeared to be a small dead animal of some kind, "most important meal of the day. Don't worry, I traced a circle of protection around you before I left."

It hadn't occurred to Klein that he should have been worried about having been left alone sleeping in the morning in the middle of the wilderness. He'd only noticed the strange circular symbol traced in the dirt around him after the chameleon had mentioned it to him. He'd wondered whether or not something like this would have actually worked, but it'd seemed rude to question it. Boko had spoken with such certainty.

Klein had been stunned when he'd finally seen Boko in action with the Sahuagin. After having observed them for just a very short time, the chameleon had already picked up enough of their language that he had been able to hold completely fluent conversations with them. Klein had not had anywhere near his ability with languages, but Boko had offered Klein to translate for him. "I love translating," he'd told Klein, "it's almost like alchemy, isn't it? You take something which is one thing, then you turn it into something else, which is both still the same thing yet also something else altogether."

Through Boko, even Klein had been able to exchange words of his own with the Sahuagin. Klein had been especially surprised because, as Boko had explained to him, the Sahuagin had developed a reputation in anthropology circles for having been especially reclusive and mistrustful of outsiders. They had been taken advantage of at a formative moment in their history, and their culture had correspondingly encouraged caution in the presence of strangers.

"How in the world did you manage to get their trust so fast?" Klein had asked him. Boko had already gotten them admittance to stay with the Sahuagin for a week. "I'm not sure," the chameleon had shrugged, "I must just have a way with people, I guess." Klein had noticed that Boko's skin coloration had already changed to match the skin color of the Sahuagin themselves. "I offered them some practical help in exchange. It doesn't seem to have been too much to ask. Maybe I just got them in a good mood," the chameleon had theorized. "In any case I'm glad I did! It makes my job a lot easier," he'd rejoiced.

So they'd lived with the Sahuagin, for day after day after day. It had been the most unusual experience in Klein's life up until that point. Every point of reference from his previous life had been left far behind him, and he had to adjust to a whole new way of existence. While living there, his sense of time had become completely different, without any clocks around him to tell time. His sense of property had become different, with how people had shared around him.

Boko had helped them on their hunts, flawless with his bird calls given his natural skill with imitation of all kinds. Klein had helped with gardening and gathering, relying on a makeshift combination of body language and of the few words of Ichthian that he'd managed to learn how to use correctly. Both of them helped with building and rebuilding dwellings or furniture. In exchange, Boko had learned everything that he could about their culture, taking notes as though his life had depended on it. Just before their week had been going to have been up, Boko had found Klein alone in the wilderness while the skunk had been out gathering.

"He's dead, Klein," Boko had told Klein, seeming utterly distraught. "Holy shit! What happened?" the skunk had asked him in a panic. "We were out hunting, and the animal killed him," the chameleon had said, "some kind of mountain lion. There was nothing I could do," he'd lamented. "I had to run. This is very bad for us, Klein. If the Sahuagin learn of this, they will not like it. They will probably blame us. They must not find us. Run with me, Klein!"

Klein had had no time to let the full horror of Boko's statement sink in. A man had been dead! Yet there had been no time to mourn him. It had been the wrong time and place. For then, they had to run, as fast as they could, all the way back to Boko's lair, before they would be found. On their way back to Noah's Vault, the chameleon had suddenly stopped and raised his head, twitching as he'd sniffed at the air with a scowl of barely subdued fury on his face.

"The forest is in danger, Klein," he'd said through gritted teeth. "I can hear it. I can smell it. I can feel it in my bones," he'd gone on, any trace of meekness gone from his demeanor altogether by then. "I won't let them get away with this," he'd said, breaking into an even faster run than before. Klein had already been running faster than his limit to keep up with Boko and hadn't been able to believe that Boko had been able to run even faster. How would he be able to keep up? So Klein looked at Boko run, tried to put himself into the mind of Boko. What must have it been like to have been Boko, and to have been able to run as fast as this, he'd wondered?

Somehow, while having looked at Boko and having thought this, without knowing where he'd been able to find the ability to do so within himself, he'd still been able to keep up with the racing chameleon after all. Could he even have learned the power of imitation itself from Boko, if he'd stayed with him long enough? Despite the dangers that the chameleon had risked in the course of his life, could have it been worth it to stick around, if only to find out the answer to it?

They'd reached a clearing in which they'd seen beavers and woodpeckers working as loggers taking down trees with axes and chainsaws. Boko had smelled the metal of their equipment and heard the sound of their chainsaws from a distance. The sound of chainsaws had always made Boko feel as though he had been a tree being sawed through himself, and it had always driven him mad with rage.

So he'd leapt at them, his face a mask of demonic wrath. His body, far from his antics at Klein from earlier, had then seemed as though it had been covered in a million bees swarming all over his skin, scaring the shit out of the loggers before he had even had time to start doing anything else. Boko had attacked them, scuttling from one to the next as his color-shifting had made him seem to phase in and out of existence here and there, bouncing up high on his tail to drop back down on them, tongue lashing and tail whipping their axes and chainsaws out of their hands before crushing their axes and chainsaws in the coils of his tail. Just how strong was he?

Having just seen Boko do it, with an improvised battle trill, Klein had jumped in, and done the same thing. Even without having had any martial arts training, even in a situation in which, under normal circumstances, he would have been terrified to fight anyone like this, somehow, he'd still leapt into the fray nonetheless, driven off the deep end by passion and madness. He'd started taking down loggers left and right with kicks, punches, headbutts and takedowns, finally letting all the resentment that he'd built up from having been bullied over the course of his life rise up to the surface to unleash it on the world with everything he'd had.

It'd felt like blood had been running through his veins for the first time in his life.

Boko had carjacked one of the loggers' vehicles to drive it back to Noah's Vault. After having disassembled it, he'd hung up the pieces that it had been made from around his lair like a trophy, as though the vehicle parts had been the parts of some animal that they had killed together. That night, blood still pumping, Klein had admitted his feelings to Boko, Boko had enthusiastically returned them, and they'd made out on the floor of his lair like two animals.

If it'd felt this way to be a villain, Klein had wanted to be a villain for the rest of his life.

***

The first thing that Klein had heard upon waking up the next morning had been the sound of Boko's fingers typing at his computer terminal. "Ah, you're up!" the chameleon had chirped. "Someone stole a sculpture from Basilisk Museum yesterday. What a bunch of idiots must work there! If only I could've been in two places at once," he'd lamented, "I'd have showed them good, I can tell you that."

Klein had blinked a few times. "What's for breakfast?" he'd yawned. "You should get ready to go out," Boko had admonished him. "It's already late in the day, we're going to Basilisk Museum later today." Klein had rubbed his eyes awake. "... Huh?" Boko had scoffed. "Not a morning person, are you? We're starting work there this afternoon." Klein hadn't been sure he'd heard him right. "What? But how can that be possible? I don't have any experience with anything like that," he'd said. "You do now," Boko had smirked, indicating his computer screen. He'd hacked into a private computer system, giving them both top marks paving their way in.

He'd given Klein one of his best business suits, having donned one himself, and he'd taken Klein with him all the way to Basilisk Museum. Klein had always thought that museums had been kind of weird. He'd liked having been able to have access to the information they'd offered, but at the same time, it'd seemed weird to him how they'd embodied this strange urge to go into other people's cultures and gather all their objects in one place for people to gawk at. It'd seemed strange, that an object could go from something that was used as part of someone's everyday life, just like anything else, to become transformed into the status of 'artifact.'

When he'd be dead, was this what all of his objects would become, he'd wondered?

Every time museum employees had had a question for Boko, he had always known exactly which answer they'd wanted to hear, and Boko had given it to them. He'd sweet-talked his way past everyone, just as easily as he'd used his silver tongue to convince the Sahuagin to allow him to spend a week with them. He'd walked in like he'd owned the place. Klein had started to wonder if there had been anyone on Earth who could have resisted Boko's charisma.

Klein hadn't even questioned how Boko had gotten the security codes that he'd punched in to let them both through an unauthorized door by then. It'd seemed like Boko could simply find his way in and out of pretty much anywhere without even trying by then. Motioning for Klein to be quiet, Boko had shifted his skin color to invisible, and walked into the security camera viewing room. Spotting a seven-headed hydra security guard watching seven camera screens at once, Boko had used more tongue lashes and tail whips to knock him out in two seconds before becoming visible again.

In the next room, Boko's knowledge of the blueprints that he'd looked up before coming to Basilisk Museum allowed him to avoid all manner of tripwire, laser, pressure tile, and alarm that could possibly have stopped him or alerted anyone as to his presence there. His claws had let him cut through glass casings like knives going through warm butter. Klein had already helped him carry the sculptures all the way back to his lair before anyone had known what had hit them.

"So you're also a sculpture thief, like, some kind of cat burglar or something?" Klein hadn't really cared, from an ethical standpoint. They hadn't killed any of the loggers or any of the museum staff. People who caused deforestation and made money from gatekeeping artifacts of cultures that they'd colonized had been kind of jerks anyway, Klein had told himself. He'd just been curious because he hadn't understood the thread binding Boko's behavior together.

"Well, look at it this way," Boko had started, "if you were one of these sculptures, and your museum had just been robbed the night before, wouldn't _you_rather be somewhere much safer than that, like here, yourself?" Klein had laughed. "I guess I would! Who's going to break into here?" Boko had been terribly excited by the sculptures that they had brought back and, that night, Klein had only been too glad to help give the chameleon an outlet for his excitement.

***

"There's an abandoned building slated for demolition today," Boko had shaken a groggy Klein awake the next morning, "so we really need to make sure to get there in time, you understand?" Klein had slapped on his clothes, scattered on the ground around them from their night, and run out the door before having had time to scarf down breakfast for the second day in a row. Even the most important meal of the day had to wait in emergencies, he'd supposed. Soon, the running duo had reached an abandoned building near a cliff and a wrecking ball crane nearby.

"Come on, do something!" Boko had yelled at Klein. "What? What do you mean?" Klein had heard of protesters occupying abandoned buildings that had been slated for demolition that were supposed to be part of people's national heritage somewhere or things like that. Had this been the kind of thing that the chameleon had had in mind, he'd asked himself? "The crane, take out the crane!" Boko had rolled his eyes at Klein who'd looked at him with a stunned expression.

"Ugh, fine, I'll do it myself," he'd said, briefly looking back to stare daggers at Klein over his shoulder as he'd dashed ahead toward the wrecking crane. Leaping up into a running jump, Boko had landed sideways with his feet and hands on the wrecking crane's side. Coiling his tail under him between the wrecking crane and himself, Boko had forcefully uncoiled it against the wrecking crane with full force and, pushing against it with both of his legs at the same time, had shoved the wrecking crane right over the cliff, the scream of the person who had been driving it echoing up to their ears on its way as it'd fallen down the cliff to its destruction.

"Oh my God..." Klein had been duly horrified. It had shown on his face.

"What's the problem?" Boko had stuck his landing like an acrobat. "What did you _think_we were here to do?" His confusion about Klein's reaction had seemed completely genuine, like someone who is being forced to deal with the behavior of someone that just makes no sense at all. "I... You _killed_him? Did you have to?" he'd asked understatedly. Boko had looked at Klein like an exasperated adult explaining something obvious to a child.

"To protect the building? Yes, of course. What would you have done? I thought you and I talked about this. You said you agreed with me." It took Klein a second of scanning his memory, furrowing his brow, before a look of realization had materialized on his face, aghast. "You mean animism." Boko had nodded. "Well, yes! Objects have souls. The rarest something else, the most valuable it is, that's the whole economy, isn't it?"

Klein, shuddering, had realized by that point that he would have to pretend to go along with Boko's view of things for then, or that Boko may have killed him as well. "Of course, you're right," he'd nodded. "Well," Boko had continued explaining patiently, "do you realize how rare that building was? They make cranes like that by the truckload, you know," he'd reassured Klein, "you don't need to worry about running out or anything."

Klein had tilted his head at him. "What about people?" Boko had laughed. "People are all the same. We'll never run out of people. Why get invested in people when they'll just die? What would be the point of it? But if you protect an object, there's a chance it might just last forever. It's a worthwhile investment. When it all comes down to it, it's people who are nothing more than objects' way of making other objects. Objects' souls are pure, Klein. Objects never hurt anyone. That's why it's our job to be at their service, to protect them from the tyranny of the animate."

Klein had nodded. In his desperation to mimic the chameleon's mental and emotional attitude about everything so that the collector wouldn't kill him, Klein had paradoxically drawn his own inspiration for imitation from Boko himself, just as he had when they'd been running. 'I'm one of you - you will accept me as your own...' he'd striven to give off. For the first time, Klein had understood that the reason for which he had believed that he had fallen in love with Boko had been because the chameleon had used his extensive charisma on him, just as he had on the Sahuagin and Basilisk Museum staff, to get the skunk to go along with his own wishes later.

He'd understood that Boko had killed that Sahuagin hunter to take his 'artifacts.'

"I'm sorry." Klein had started wondering whether or not, if he'd gone along with Boko, the chameleon would have eventually killed him as well. "I understand." Klein would never want to feel bad for having said good night to his objects before going to sleep when he had been a child. "I'm glad you were able to handle it this time." Klein would never have killed someone to save his objects. "I'll do better next time!" Klein had only ever known Christian literalists over the course of his life. "You'll see." It had never fully occurred to Klein just how much any belief system, if you took it completely literally and at face value, could lead you so completely astray.

"I'm glad," Boko had smiled, "I'm still sure you can." Perhaps there had been hope for this one yet, he'd thought. "You'll get your chance." Klein had nodded. "We're on the same wavelength now," he'd assured the chameleon. "That's good," Boko had said with a wistful, bittersweet expression on his face, "I've been hoping to meet someone like you for a long time, who would understand me and help me in my quest. When I die, you can replace me," he'd said.

Klein had gasped. "Are you dying, Boko?" Boko had shaken his head. "Unfortunately, I'm not an object, Klein. I may not be sick or hurt now, but I'm a lot older than I look. I'm just another pathetic mortal thing, far too much like the rabble I kill for my own taste. Do you remember when I told you that you should write down your stories, Klein?" Klein had nodded. "I don't remember any of my past, Klein. I remember nothing that happened to me a long time ago. But, there are signs... I can tell that I've been alive for a really long time, longer than most people. When I die, I want you to take over, to save my objects for me... and to remember me."

Klein had felt so uncomfortable. There had been so much real emotion in how the terrifying murderer in front of him had been opening up to him. Klein had been horrified by what had just happened, but his emotions had still been screwed up from having still been in love with Boko just a few minutes before. Boko had seemed to care for him in his own perverse way. What manner of creature was he? What was it that had happened to him to make him the way he was?

Could he do this? He'd actually had to ask himself. If it had been the only way to survive, could Klein have gone along with this, pretended that he was okay with it, knowing that Boko's extraordinary powers would be there to protect him from any other danger, as long as he'd shrug off the people who Boko would kill and did what he'd be told to do? Looking at himself in the looking glass back at Boko's lair Klein realized that, no matter what would happen, he could not. How could Klein live with someone, even someone who would often act 'just like him' in a way because of his imitative skills, if Klein could not even live with himself in the first place?

It was Boko who found a note from an absent Klein on his table the next morning.

'I'm sorry, Boko. I didn't refuse one life of accumulating objects at other people's expense before to accept another life just like it now. Treating objects like people may be good for all I know. Treating people like objects isn't. I do want to protect the world, but people are a part of my world too. You have better social skills than me, but I think I'm still more of a people person than you. The only constant thing in life is change. You can't stop the world from changing, and you can't 'tell' people by artifacts, Boko. People aren't the same. They're the rarest thing of all. Who knows, if you really understood this, maybe you'd protect them too.

Good luck with your replacement. I'm sure you'll find someone.

Your erstwhile assistant,

Klein.'