Meteor Effect

Phoenix Fire 3: Tails look fun but aren't.

A few days after Tango discovers that he can eat gold and thoroughly traumatizes Doc; pay back for the fish incident, he's in the shopping district restocking his shops. He's made about a stack of diamonds and is humming a bit as he restocks. He's about halfway done with the restocking when his back starts throbbing with pain. He winces but continues on. As he's leaving the rocket shop to head over to the concrete shop, someone from behind asks if he's ok.

Turning around Tango spots Keralis sitting in the shade of Xisuma's honey store, "I'm fine, my back started aching a bit."

Keralis makes a slight buzzing sound as he hops down and joins Tango on the road, "Be careful, the meteor is still active."

"I will be," Tango says, inhaling sharply as his tail bone throbs painfully. He crumples to the ground as white-hot pain rockets up his spine.

Seeing this Keralis instantly calls Xisuma, before sitting down next to Tango and talking softly asking him questions trying to distract him from the pain. This proves pointless as Tango passes out a few seconds later.

A few moments later Xisuma shows up, takes one look, and teleports them to Tango's base. Where he gently picks him up and sets him down on his bed. Turning to Keralis he instructs him to go and get Impulse and Zedaph.

Keralis runs off his wings fluttering nervously as he tries to find a way down. Xisuma pulls a few potions from his bags and slowly gives them to Tango taking extra care to prevent him from choking. As he waits for the others to show up his tail gently sways as he paces back and forth.

A few minutes later Zedaph and Impulse arrive saying something about Keralis having to deal with something at his base. After about thirty minutes it's apparent as to why Tango had collapsed. What seems to be a tail is slowly growing from his back.

After a few hours it appears to have stopped growing. It's about as thick around as a quarter and it was about three feet long stopping just above his ankles. By this time the sun is setting so they decide to go to sleep and deal with this in the morning.

Surprisingly Tango is the first one awake, in his sleep-filled haze he doesn't realize that he has a new limb until it hits his leg as he brushes his teeth. He stumbles back until he hits the wall. A few moments later a knock sounds at the door and Zedaph calls through, "Tango, you in there?"

In response Tango opens the door looking at Zedaph with wide eyes, all color slowly leaching away. He stumbles out of the bathroom and into his sitting room where he collapses face-first into the couch, "Can someone explain what happened?"

Xisuma sits on the floor next to Tango and explains what had happened the day before. Before asking if anything else was hurting.

Tango considers this for a few minutes before answering, "My shoulders, it feels really weird just below my shoulder blades."

Xisuma nods for a moment writing something down in his notebook before snapping it closed and standing up, carefully pulling Tango to his feet, "Can you walk to the wall and back?"

Tango gives Xisuma an inquisitive look before complying and he attempts to walk over to the far wall. He only makes it a few feet before he trips himself up by getting his tail curled around his leg.

When the bare skin on the tail touches his leg he shudders, lifting the tail away from himself. Seeing Tango almost completely restricting the movements of the tail, Xisuma walks over and starts explaining why he should let the tail do what it wants.

.............

A few hours of hard work practicing walking later and, Tango's ready to be done for a while and just wants to go back to sleep. At Xisuma's prompting he walks around the base once more before carefully sitting down in a chair taking extra care not to squish his tail.