Then, slowly, his hair starts to change colour, length, shape, and texture. It gets longer, and the undercut starts to fill out so it's more even. The colour goes to a more natural-looking brown, starting at the root and spreading out. All of the spikiness and floof is smoothed out, and eventually it all reaches his shoulders.

And after that, he starts working on his skin, darkening it and changing his own complexion. The changes there are less drastic, but they start to add up: a minor bit to the tip of his nose, the angle of his cheekbones, the width of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the corners of his eyes. Those go much more slowly, and seem to require more concentration, but the effect starts to get pretty stark.

"Okay, neat trick, but you're going to need different clothes, too. You run around in a bright red jacket and you have a teal prosthetic, man, just hair and skin color ain't going to be enough. ... Heh. But then I did go grab all of that spare cloth, didn't I."

"Can you sew? Because I can't sew."

"Man they don't let you learn anything practical in cities, do they, of course I can fucking sew."

He grins, and it's kind of uncanny to see the same grin on a different face. "You're the best."

"You're right, I am," she agrees, smugly. "I'm thinking we go with wrapping both of your arms, maybe give yourself some obvious scarring elsewhere to make it look like that's why?"

"I can just lose the arm. Or, you know, store it somewhere, more like."

"Ehhh. Except with not-God on the loose the plant might get attacked. And then you'd be without an arm. Do you want to be without an arm in a combat situation, Zash?"

"I don't mean leaving my arm behind, it was a gift. I meant just for boarding."

"Uh, that won't work. Just for boarding isn't good enough, security would notice if you suddenly gained an arm you didn't have when you got on. You'd get uncomfortable questions," pipes up Yvette, delighted to at least get to contribute.

"Hmm. I could keep it in a backpack and only put it back on if necessary? I can do that very quickly."

"... Iiiii do not think my credentials will get you out of a bag search. Sorry."

".... What about my gun though??????"

"You'll officially be my hired protection, you being absurdly armed will be fine. They might want you to put your gun up but they will consider it your property and not try to take it away from you."

"Oh. Phew. Okay."

"I could always try to do some plant bullshit for it I guess. But maybe just wrapping it will work best."

"I... think wrapping it will be fine. It might help if you could get it more of a junky metal color? Or black? And pretended it wasn't as articulated as it is, a machine gun arm would be an odd choice but not precisely notable."

"I... can't alter the appearance of the arm like I can mine. It's not as much a part of me, I think."

"Okay, so no freaky plant superpowers with that one. But it's perfectly amenable to paint, yeah?"

The resulting disguise, on top of Zash's cosmetic changes, is as effective as it is uncomfortable, which is: very. It's really pretty good for something scraped together in a couple of days on the way to their destination. He very much looks like someone who has spent his whole life far away from any city nonsense.

"Do you uh, have an opinion on the name we call you by?" wonders Yvette, as the mining city of Terminal comes into view on the horizon.

Honestly this isn't that bad—or rather, he's had much worse. Gunk and smelly clothes really don't hold a candle to bullets and blood. And he can help with the sewing; again, all the bullets certainly make his clothes need the occasional stitching (even though his clothes also do have a little bit of plant bullshit going on and eventually regenerate).

(Why does he still have scars, then? Stop asking questions that make him sad.)

When Yvette asks him what he wants to be called he spends a long time in silence and then says, "Vernon."

She softens.

"Aw. Yeah. Last name Evanson. And you can be my guide in our very silly cover story."

"And be the sneaky one in the group," he says, tapping the side of his nose.

This elicits a little snort from Yvette, and she taps her own nose in response. "Yes. Very sneaky."