Wait. When it says sensitivity -- it's not, like, painful, is it? He didn't mean to hurt Z.

"You okay?"

“I, uh. Yep. Yeah.”

He stares at his hand.

Carefully, he runs the pad of the other finger’s hand over  his palm — or, he starts to, before going even wider-eyed and stuffing both hands into his hoodie pockets like they might develop minds of their own.

"You're sure? Do you need a hand?"

Why did he say that.

“I, uh—”

Wait, was that a pun?

Nooooo.

His eyes dart back and forth.

“…I’m gonna…go back to my room…like, now. Do you wanna come with.”

He should be saving the world with his app -- because he could save the world, with this, could cure diseases and overthrow tyrants and make a hundred years of scientific progress spring into being at the tap of a button --

-- and he should be thinking about the morality of his choices, because he just altered two people's minds and it probably wasn't harmful, not really, at least not beyond mortifying that one guy, and it was probably the right thing to do, wasn't it, he's going to make such good use of it --

-- but that sounds really stressful and complicated and, honestly, like it can wait for later.

"Yeah. Let's do that."

He very carefully slips his backpack on, gingerly drops his phone in his pocket, and gets as close to sprinting as he can get without leaving Camillo behind.

Once they’re both behind closed doors, he takes his hands out again.

“…this — is gonna sound really weird.”

Oh. He thought they were just going to play with the new toys (Z's hands).

"--yeah? Okay."

He holds out his hand to Camillo for inspection.

“Was this, uh…pointy? Like ten minutes ago?”

Camillo takes the hand in both of his, as if to examine it.

His fingers twitch, and he halfway moans before he cuts himself off.

“Fuck. Uh.”

How the fuck does he explain this.

“That feels really good right now.”

"Yeah?"

He brushes his thumb over Z's palm.

He whimpers.

“We should, uh — this is weird, right? It just, suddenly—”

His improved self-control is trying valiantly to hold on.

It's super weird. Making Z whimper is really fun but also they're not -- this isn't --

"I dunno. Is it, like, bad?"

This is, after all, the crucial information.

“I mean I’m, uh, kind of freaked out…”

He’s rubbing his palm against Camillo’s thumb a little anyway.

“Look at the nails, man, those are — like, those are new, right?”

Freaked out is -- probably okay? Z kind of likes being freaked out, once in a while. He'll stop if it gets bad.

"I guess? I dunno. They're nails, man."

He can't explain or it'll stop working. And then he won't get to cure leukemia, and Z won't get to have weird pointy nails. Lose-lose.

He pulls his hand back.

“Are you — can you seriously not see it…?”

"...you're wearing them longer than usual? I don't get it."

God he feels like such an asshole. It's for a good cause, it really is.

“…yeah,” he says, feeling a little unmoored from reality. “I guess.”

(Camillo’s phone buzzes politely in his pocket.)

"--I gotta get that."

Z nods and sits down on his bed, processing.

Let’s learn about save states.

The app directs him to Z’s profile, and to a new highlighted button, which opens the SAVE STATE menu.

You can save this state by pressing the + button.

When he does, it prompts him for a nickname. (Or he can just hit the button, and go with STATE 1.)

This might as well happen.

He calls Z's new save state TALON, for the nails, and hits CONFIRM.