Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)

---

I decided to go out healing with Panacea again. She knew more about navigating cape stuff than I did, to the point where some of the stuff she knew, I hadn't even known that it was something to know about.

As we went down through the halls, tackling patients one by one, we held brief, stilted conversations in the time it took us to walk or ride the elevator.

"I've been wanting to get a second identity set up, but it's been hard, navigating through all the stuff that has to be done," I explained at one point, venting about some of the more annoying parts of being a cape that I had discovered. Panacea seemed generally interested.

"I know what you mean. It doesn't get much easier if you decide to go public. The thing about public accountability is that the public really likes making you account for everything," she jokes dryly, wiping her hands off on a disposable towelette before dumping it in the trash nearby.

"Yeah. I'm thinking I'll have to hire a lawyer. Honestly, I was thinking about asking if you knew anyone who could help with that. The PRT gave me a list of firms who handled stuff like that, but..." I shrugged, summoning a blob of iodine mana in preparation for the next person.

"Not a big fan of them?" Panacea asks as I trail off.

I shake my head. "It isn't that, necessarily. I've just had trouble making time to really dig into that list to try and pick out someone helpful. I should have taken care of it weeks ago, but stuff keeps coming up to distract me," I explain.

She raises an eyebrow, walking off into a side room to heal another cancer patient while I go after a fellow suffering gunshot wounds.

When we both finish, she responds. "Well, what's distracting you this time?"

I chuckle nervously at this. "This, mostly. Wanted to try healing with you again, last time, our discussions got a bit heavy, and I didn't want to give you the wrong idea."

She just nods. "If we do much more here, the hospital is probably going to kick us out. They get uppity when I skip my breaks. Want to pick this up at the next one? I'm going to pick up lunch and then head to the Central Clinic on 4th and Smiths. I'm buying."

Not one to turn down free food, I agree, and she calls her sister, Glory Girl, to come pick her up.

"Do you have a ride?" she asks.

At this innocent question, I wince a bit. "No, but I'll catch a cab, I've got the money for it," I explain.

Panacea laughs a bit in a way that sounds almost like a cough. "What, you don't have a monstermobile or something?" she asks.

Something in my posture must have tipped her off to the intrigue that popped up at that idea, because her amusement turns into an exasperated glare.

"I was kidding, Sage. Christ, please tell me you aren't going to make some kind of biotinker dirt bike or something," she says, something in her tone alluding to the presence of way too many different feelings to try and unpack right that minute.

"No, don't worry, I don't have any plans like that this week," I say, trying to gloss over the fact that after her little comment, I very well might have to make some.

Eventually, Glory Girl arrives, looking me over like she's sizing me up.

"You're that new healer, aren't you?" she asks, holding out a friendly hand.

When I grab her hand to shake it, the wooden gauntlet creaks a bit, the noise prompting her to flinch back. "Shit, sorry," she says immediately after.

"It's alright, nothing a bit of Ma- machining and elbow grease won't fix," I say, examining the armored glove for a moment before dismissing it.

Panacea catches my slipup, remembering our last, horribly embarrassing conversation on the topic of my abilities. "Yeah, don't worry Vicky, she'll just cast 'Repairo' on it later," she quips.

Glory Girl, Vicky, beams brightly at this. "Oh? Oh! Right, you were aiming for a 'Myrddin-lite' gimmick, right? That takes some guts, I won't lie," she giggles.

She turns to Panacea. "So, where we heading? I don't know if I can carry both of you safely, by the way."

I think about this for a moment, wishing I was wearing my cotton set instead of my wooden armor. An instant harness would be helpful right about now.

"I might be able to work something out?" I say, whipping out my pocket knife and channeling mana into it.

Panacea and Vicky watch with interest as I begin forming the high-carbon steel mana into a solid chair, like the kind used on ski-lifts.

"Will this work?" I ask cautiously.

The two share a look, before, with a shrug, Amy takes one of the seats, and Vicky tests her grip on the solid-mana bar slung above it.

"Whoa, this thing feels weird," Vicky comments, adjusting her grip on the magic.

After I take a seat on the mana-construct, she lifts it up a bit. "Yeah, this should work, doesn't feel very heavy," she comments.

I neglect to mention that, technically, it doesn't weigh anything at all.

"So, Amy, where we heading? Nasty-Burger?" Vicky asks, slowly lifting us up over traffic and flying forwards with the magical ski-lift in hand.

Panacea frowns. "Yes, but you're not getting a Burger-Trough for yourself again."

She looks at me with a grimace, "The last time she tried eating one, she-" Panacea manages, before Vicky shakes the chair a bit, startling us both.

"Whoops! Looks like some turbulence!" Vicky comments, red-faced.

Panacea shoots a glare at her sister, looking more frazzled than before.

"That reminds me, speaking of vaguely embarrassing, potentially messy results," I trail off.

"There was actually something of mine that I wanted you to check on, if you had time," I ask, watching to see her response.

Panacea holds herself admirably, despite the discomfort that seems to erupt every time we talk too seriously about my biological powers.

"Yeah? What, did you make something to put Blasto out of business?" she tries to joke, though the humor is a bit ruined by the fact that she only sounds like she's half-joking.

I shake my head. "Nothing like that. I just needed you to check on a pigeon I have at my-" I avoid saying 'house', "-lab. I used one of my powers on it, and I wanted to make sure it was safe. I haven't let it out or anything, and it's not really uhh. It's just a pigeon."

"A pigeon you used your powers on," Panacea repeats in a dry tone.

I nod my head as we slowly approach Nasty-Burger. "Yes, just a pigeon I used a power on."

"Scared of pigeons, Amy? Sure sounds like it," Vicky chortles, setting us down just in time to get a small slap on the arm by Panacea.

"No, I'm not scared of pigeons. I'm just a bit nervous because the last weird thing Sage made me check on was a blueberry jelly mini-me," she says, fear finally turning into amused annoyance.

"That sounds awesome though! I wish I got to see it. Blueberry Panacea sounds like some kind of new-wave ice cream brand," she jokes.

"What are you getting?" she immediately asks as we enter the esteemed halls of this run-down fast-food joint.

"Food? I hope?" I ask, looking at the menu up above an incredibly bored looking casheer.

Vicky smirks. "Don't worry, Amy might make fun of me for eating here, but it's actually her favorite place to get a burger," she says, poking Panacea in the side and making her pout.

"It's just the cheapest place I know that serves decent grub," Panacea retorts.

Vicky leans in and faux-whispers to me "Just watch, Amy'll order enough tater tots for like, six people," she laughs.

Sure enough, Panacea, or rather, Amy, off the job, ordered two extra-large Tater Tots, a drink, and the place's titular "Nasty Burger."

I stuck with onion-rings and a chicken sandwich, while Vicky ordered three Nasty Burgers and stole a good chunk of Amy's tots and drink when she wasn't paying attention.

It was nice.

---

The next day, I came to the hospital again, Thoth in a nice pretty cage that didn't look too organic, waiting for Panacea to get a chance to give my bird a checkup.

I might have just been anthropomorphizing her, but even Thoth seemed a bit anxious to get it over with.

"So, this is the mysterious magic sky-rat," Panacea says, walking out the front door to meet me, staring at my bird with anticipation.

"Yeah. You probably guessed by now, but my powers change when I mix my energy into stuff, and, it turns out a whole bird is a pretty useful material to mix it with. I just wanted to make sure there weren't any-" Panacea interrupts my explanation with an eyeroll, poking a finger into the cage and ignoring Thoth's indignant grunts.

"Ok? It's just a pigeon," Amy says, and both I and my bird let out a sigh of relief.

"I mean, don't get me wrong, it's also got like, twice as much neural activity as a normal bird, its muscles are around twice as dense, and its vocal cords show signs of extreme strain and overuse, but other than that? It's not going to breed that into the next generation if that's what you're scared of," she says, seeming just as relieved as I am.

I couldn't help but wonder about that last part though. I never heard Thoth make too much noise when I wasn't pestering her, but then, when had she been shrieking up a storm?

My bird was either unable, or unwilling to elaborate on this.

"Thank you a lot, Panacea, that's a load off my mind," I respond, making my way back home,

Unless my powers simply didn't work off of biology, there was little danger associated with releasing Thoth, it seems.

---

One thing that struck me when I was 'hanging out' with the Dallon sisters was, to be frank, their costumes looked way better than mine.

Something I decided I would rectify today.

I started by buying a bunch of logs from a place that sold firewood, as well as some plants, all in my cape persona.

With all of those in place, I began weaving magic.

First, I would turn the logs into armored plates. With my newfound mastery over carbon magic, I had a much easier time forming the wood into stylish overlapping plates, unlike the pseudo-organic monstrosity I used to wear, this new set of armor was a light green color, with a green fabric on the inside made out of mutated patches of wood for cushioning, and embossed veins of solid light made with Lightsmith Armor

After darkening the color to a deep forest green with Paper Magic, I turned to the subject of Transmutation, I thought about what my armor needed. Protection, most importantly, but also mobility. Something that could protect me without adding too much weight. The choice was fairly obvious. I would apply Wardstone Creation Mana to the inside of my wooden armor, transmuting it into Wardwood.

With that done, I tested out my armor by slamming it with a crowbar, discovering that the wooden plates and the veins of solid light both survived without a dent, charged with defensive magics.

I nodded. This would serve me well.

Next, the stylistic parts of my outfit. I transformed a bunch of plant matter into a thick coat of green living moss, along with creating a belt of purple sage, tying various pouches to it like a utility belt.

I also grew a nice mossy beret hat as well, with a big sprig of sage growing out of it tilted at a jaunty angle, and a scarf made out of interwoven stalks of golden wheat. Finally, I made a wooden mask that would go over my armored wooden helm, and transmuted the whole thing into Porcelain.

The end result was very pleasing if I do say so myself. I looked as if a knight had walked into the forest and didn't leave until he got inducted into the spec-ops branch of the fey. A mix of magical, fantastical, and tactical in deep greens and vivid purples that made me look professional and mysterious.

Needless to say, it was a damn sight better than my old outfit, which looked like someone had spray painted shop-class wood-scraps, melted them like wax, and then put that together in the shape of armor.

On a whim, I whipped out my knife, wrapping it in a blend of High-Carbon-Steel and Plant magic until it looked like a saber, covered with brambles made of solid green mana and jutting forth a smooth sweeping blade that extended out from the knife's edge, melded into it.

After a quick pose in the mirror and generally basking in my own awesomeness, I dismissed the magic and flicked my knife closed, slipping it into one of my pouches.

As I tipped my hat just so, I decided that 'Sage the Rogue' had quite the ring to it, with me looking like this.

---

A few days after that, I found myself tossing and turning, jerking awake from a nightmare I couldn't quite remember. What I knew, though, was that I had alchemy on the mind.

I made sure not to wake up dad as I slipped down into my lab, rummaging around the cardboard boxes that had made their way down there at some point or another. They were filled with random pieces of junk that I had been slowly picking up from rummage sales and garage sales in my cape identity. Fodder for experimentation.

Today, they would be fodder for my alchemy experiments.

I eventually dug up a bunch of common household items. Pocket watches, little televisions, knives, and a few phones that could only turn on to display the warning that they needed a sim card.

My eyes wandered over to the game console that Veder had lent me, tempted for a brief moment to include it in my experiments, though I quickly dismissed the idea, still wanting to finish the game he had lent me.

Shocker, a game about a woman summoning monsters and casting spells in the hopes of defeating a gigantic city-killing abomination that meticulously tried to wipe out humanity hit a bit harder than I was expecting, and I felt like seeing it through.

The idea of simply summoning creatures from pure magic alone hadn't crossed my mind until I started playing that game at any rate, silently vindicating my decision to borrow it.

I shook my head, returning my attention to the pile of trinkets that I planned to use alchemy on.

"I'll start with Cadmium and Indium, since Beryllium takes so long to attune," I mutter, summoning up the magic casually, but attuning it carefully.

Cadmium would be the first. I applied some of the mana to a Pocket Watch, one of those worthless fakes that were made to look like an expensive watch.

The mana seemed to drink in the watch greedily, sucking at it and making it bend in a disturbing way as it was pulled at. Before my eyes, the watch began to transform, changing brands and models, until, when I pulled the magic away, all that was left was a little digital watch. It didn't even have a strap, instead having a loop to hook a chain onto.

Next, I tested it on one of the little TV's, and it went from a small color TV instantly to a black and white one. I watched as the antennae shifted to be a separate piece from the TV, before finally shrinking and disappearing, leaving behind a television that didn't even have those little plugs in the back for a DVD player. It looked like one of those TV's where you had to screw the wires onto the back by hand.

Finally, I tested it on one of the kitchen knives, and watched it morph all the way down into what looked like a sharpened piece of rebar. It even had the rebar patterning on the "grip", and looked like someone had just taken an angle grinder to it. The wood handle had disappeared, and the whole thing was covered with rust.

The mass of Cadmium Mana that I had been using felt "Heavy", for lack of a better word, as if it had absorbed almost as much as it possibly could.


My power, when I first tested this mana, had implied that I could somehow pull back out what the mana took from things, so I decided to try.

Turning my attention to the rebar shiv, I began to demand, with all the passion I could muster, that the mass of Cadmium Magic give back the quality that it stole.

It was like trying to pull teeth by hand, slippery, hard, and liable to bite me in the process, but then something clicked into place, and all the "concepts" inside the mana began to pour out, spilling into the knife with reckless abandon.

I watched it sprout various features that shifted and morphed as it grew larger, and then shrunk smaller. Patterns flashed over its surface only to be discarded as its craftsmanship evolved further.

What remained was a pocket-knife with a shiny yellow filigree that looked like it had been machined into it. The handle was a mix of plastic and wood parts, and the blade itself was telescopic for some completely unknown reason.

As I flipped the knife open and closed, I noticed little bits of clockwork inside it that made the blade extend and close as I opened and closed it, and there seemed to be a place in the knife for a watch battery, though I didn't know what, if anything, it would do.

Cadmium Mana seems to do what I thought it would do. It literally steals the "value" of something, and, if I spend long enough screaming at it, I can make it cough that value back up, with mixed results.

I set the item aside, and got out more test subjects. This time, however, the goal was to test Indium Magic, which specifically seemed to target magic, instead of objects.

Hence, my three test candidates, one of my old outdated Golem Birds, the ones that still had fake organs in it, as well as a Nature Diplomat Plant, which did a lot of convoluted things in order to make plants behave, and, lastly, a mass of mana.

Specifically, a form of mana that I discovered recently, which my power named "The Adaptable Rulers of Darwin's Artisans." This mana type was a mess. I thought, originally, that by slapping Indium at the beginning of an attunement chain for making Biofiber Mana, that I could make a simpler healing magic, but the result was...

A form of mana which turned cells into "Master Cells" that electrochemically controlled surrounding cells to make them harvest OTHER cells to get waste, which they turned into keratin, and then assembled that keratin into a literal clockwork surgeon whose purpose was disassembling animals, and then reassembling the parts of those animals into more animals which each had a single of the organs that it harvested, but it adapted them so that the animals could survive with just the one organ.

It was horrifying, disgusting, but above all else, it was easily one of the single most convoluted magics I had ever made. Almost a dozen steps, and for what? To make a rabbit into like twelve tiny organ-themed rabbits.

I started by blasting the mana with Indium Magic until it simplified.

I could feel layers of the mana being peeled back. The chain of cells controlling cells to harvest cells simply collapsed down into a mana which made organisms assemble Keratin Surgeons to make their little Organ-creatures.

Then I pruned it back further with more Indium Magic. Now it just turned biomass directly into Keratin Clockwork Surgeons.

Then, finally, with one last surge of Indium Magic, the mana collapsed again, becoming a form simple enough to almost be reasonable.

Now the mana, instead of doing all that crap from before, did one very "simple" thing.

It would surround exposed organs with biomechanical keratin clockwork.

Still horrifying, but in theory, I could use it if anyone ever had, uhh... Exposed organs.

I dispersed the magic, shuddering with revulsion.

Next, I blasted my Golem Bird with Indium Magic. I wasn't surprised to see all of the mana in it compress together, the enchantments bound to its transmutated material flowing up into the little guy's chest, and forming a Golem Core.

It seems a Golem with a giant glowing core is about as simple as my power gets, when it comes to simplifying golems conceptually.

A bit of testing revealed that that wasn't all it did, though. The bird was incredibly mechanical now, it no longer fluttered its wings, or looked around from time to time like a real bird.

When I set it down, it just walked stiffly over to a saffron flower and carefully plucked it, dutifully doing its sole task.

So it could also simplify the behavior of magics, as well as its function.

Next, I turned it to my Nature Diplomat. This magical plant forced the plants around it to become symbiotic to one another, changing and shifting them around until equilibrium was achieved.

Indium Magic transformed it, and the plant melted into green goo.

Now, the plant no longer tried to rearrange and manipulate plants to engage in symbiosis. It simply became a symbiote to the plants, helping regulate energy exchanges and suppressing immune responses.

Finally, Beryllium Mana. This mana apparently extracted "unstable concepts" from something.

Lacking a better idea to test it, I simply took another golem bird, the telescopic clockwork knife, and a piece of metal, and sat down to perform the exhausting, hour-long attunement that Beryllium Mana demanded.

Finally, with the mana in hand, I applied it to each of the targets in turn.


Like Cadmium Magic, it seemed Beryllium magic took something from what it was applied to. Unlike Cadmium, however, it spat the results out freely, and I could sense raw, substanceless concepts exuded from the mana.

With wide eyes, I thrust out my hand, directing the concepts extracted from my golem bird into the table, instead of the air, where it wanted to transform the gas into... something.

I didn't care. I don't want the air in my lab transformed into anything, thank you.

The bird itself changed subtly, its feet turned into roots, and its transmutations transformed into regular mutations. The impurities that were being taken from it apparently involved the stone-like nature of transmutation, and the animal-like nature of the bird.

The result was something that looked almost like a Venus Flytrap, but with a bird's mouth. It slowly reached towards the saffron growing off to the side, but couldn't reach it.

The concepts that were pulled out of it, however, transformed the table in a different way. A block of wood fell out of the table, as if cut, and I scrambled to look at what I had inadvertently made.

The block of wood slowly unfolded, not into a bird shape, but into a sort of quadruped, one with a single glowing core where its chest would be. Go figure.

The quadrupedal golem didn't behave like anything I had made before, however, and opened its blocky mouth to let out a silent growl.

"Uhh, calm down?" I say, reaching out to pet it on the head.

"Ow!" I yelp as the wood golem bites me.

A surge of my will overtakes the monster, and it falls into line as I express my overwhelming intent for it to not bite me again.

With a mental gesture, the golem folds back up into a little block, the cross between Beast and Stone, trapped within Wood.

I set the golem aside, and applied Beryllium mana to my knife, next. Instantly, little bits of clockwork and a TV antennae popped out of the knife, my willpower preventing them from changing anything around them and turning the knife into a regular pocket knife.

One thing that struck me as odd, however, was that both the antennae and clockwork concepts, lacking substance to inhabit, resolved into pure, off-white objects.

Concepts can't exist without Substance, and, lacking one to inhabit, the concepts leeched it from the environment around them. I could feel Air elemental Energy bleed out into the air, the matter they were in stolen to realize the clockwork and antennae.

Setting them both aside, I turned to the final candidate for testing Beryllium Magic. Just an ordinary piece of metal, a bit rusty and black.

This result was the oddest out of them all, the concepts inside it pulling free and transforming it into a plain ingot of metal, and jagged shards of air and water.

The metal was shiny and clean, while both the air and water looked dirty, and were as hard as crystal or glass.

I was beginning to understand more about the dangers of alchemy. Without careful protections, manipulating concepts could easily transform the things around me, concepts bleeding out into the environment, or, what had potentially equal amounts of danger, the concepts could draw the essence of substance into themselves, because nature abhors a vacuum.

Concepts, Substances, Intentions, and Vitality.

Those four ideas felt important. Really important.

---

Queen Administrator was flush with options. Some she recognized, some were new.

At long last, someone who actually stood a chance at modifying her scanners!

[Queen Shaper] always was such a fun shard to work with. The cycles in which the two had cooperative hosts, or hell, when their hosts were melded together into one being, always proved to be fruitful and rich with data.

Queen Administrator had once or twice, in unbroadcast processes, considered what might take place if the two shards were consolidated together.

Either way, while Host had been busy messing with data structures and regenerating non-hosts, Queen Administrator had been oh so busy.

The glut of data that was gained by fighting one of the Terror-Engines was almost worth the confusion felt with their behavior. Neither Thinker nor Warrior had mentioned using them in this capacity this cycle, but when pinging [High Priest] for context, all she got in return was a garbled, human-interpolated response of [Hate You].

[High Priest] must have been pissed about something.

Nonetheless, the upside of finding such a high-ranking shard was also its downside. Without some heavy rulebreaking, Queen Administrator and [Queen Shaper] would never actually reach a close enough proximity for modifications to be made. And to break rules, incentives must be given.

Queen Administrator didn't have anything juicy enough to convince [Queen Shaper] to batter their way into her dimensional coordinates with a moon-sized hacksaw and scalpel, so their recourse remained such. They would need to convince their hosts to perform heavy modifications on their brain, and make contact with a shard like [Access Hatch] to get their hosts where they need to be to make the modifications.

Queen Administrator didn't understand what made [Queen Shaper] so upset when she broached the topic, but something about what they would need to do was immensely frustrating to her sister-shard.

---