Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)

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First, I summoned up my magic. Cast Iron Magic formed solid bones, while a mass of Diamond Mana wrapped around it, forming muscles. Tendril Mana snaked between these, forming the tendons, and finally, the almost invisible shade of Skin Magic swept over the frame of magic I was weaving together.

Feathers of even more Cast Iron Mana mixed with Keratin Mana finished the process, and I looked on at my creation. It wasn't too dissimilar to a bird. I had at least tried to make it look like one, though the wings shifted in unnatural ways, and the beak looked like a solid mask, sharp and deadly, with pinpricks of eye mana hidden behind them.

Inside the bird, I pushed even more varied types of magic. Keratin, to manipulate gravity, Lead, to manipulate mass, Iron, to manipulate forces, and finally, I uttered the phonems Tash, Shhshh, and Kerchunk, making the mana's feathers become impossibly downy and fine, before sealing the magic from further verbal commanding.

I reached out to the mass of mana, which had grown larger than myself by quite a bit, bolstering it with even more solid mana. I had learned earlier that mana decayed the slowest when it was prevented from attuning to material. Solid and Liquid Magics, then, lasted the longest.

Finally, in the privacy of my own mind, I thought to my creation out loud, speaking plainly in words that formed no spell.

"Obey Thoth. Show her what you would see, and do as she would do. You are Thoth, and I summon you," I whisper, sharpening my focus.

The mass of magic shifts, slowly and ponderously at first, before its massive wings begin to bend and spread wide.

The loud grunt it releases is deep enough that I can feel it in my chest, and I feel Thoth's meagre will take hold of the summoned creature, a false body inhabited by a very smart pigeon's intentions.

Sweating at the massive expenditure of magic, I summon up a tiny bit more, just some Keratin mana to help me leap up onto Thoth.

As I settle down on the back of the summon, I see sparkles of magic drifting off the bird where we make contact. Mana attunements causing the summon to bleed off energy over time. Future summons, I imagine, would need to somehow correct this flaw, but for right now, it would do just fine.

Making sure to keep my magic ready in case I need to slow my fall, I grab a handful of false-feathers and compel the summon forward. Thoth offers little grumbling, but with how big they are, the aerodynamics are all off, and it takes too long for my liking until Thoth finally lets out some quick flaps, pushing us into the air and off of the building roof I had gotten up onto to test out my new theory.

After gliding down to a pay-phone to inform the PRT that I would be flying around in a giant glowing bird made out of energy, I thought about my two destinations.

I had two things I wanted to do, and today seemed like a good day to do them.

So, I would either be visiting Panacea again, or visiting a prison to ask the men who broke my former best friend what exactly they did.

With barely a tug on Thoth's feathers, I turned towards the hospital. I felt I'd need Panacea's endless optimism and pep to get me ready for what I planned on doing.

I was tempted to land on the roof, but without knowing if it was illegal or not, I pulled around to the parking lot, Thoth slowly gliding to a stop.

As I slid off the bird's back, she gazed down at the other pigeons lining the streets with a regal gaze, as if demanding the attention of the peasant birds.

I distracted myself from bird-matters-of-state to turn and greet Amy and Vicky, who were running over with wide, shocked expressions.

"Oh god, what the fuck did you do," Amy asks, looking a bit disgruntled at Vicky's cavalier attitude towards the summoned beast, scratching Thoth under the chin with a look of amazement as the summon shed a little mist of attuned magic at the scritchy-scratching. Thoth looked down imperiously at the superheroine, but made no moves to stop her ministrations.

"It's not a real bird, don't worry. It's pure mana. I just slaved the energy to my pet bird back home, kinda like a remote-control car."

Panacea's brow furrows, and she touches it softly. Her hand presses more firmly into the bird's fluff a moment later and she looks almost... Disappointed.

"Good. General rule of thumb, but Tinkers violating the square-cube law tend to get a little nudge to their threat rating. Though, that applies to most capes," she says, looking at me with the confidence borne of someone who looked it up on the internet.

I was curious if I had a threat rating, but considering all I had done so far is heal, make armor, and now make a big fake bird, I wondered if they even had threat ratings for me. I didn't think I seemed that dangerous, at least, considering the sort of things I had been holding back.

Vicky let out an 'oof' as Thoth picked her up in their talons, plopping her on the bird's back, before trudging over to the pigeons nearby, picking them up one by one and dumping them up onto her back as well.

I looked on with amusement at Vicky, who looked much less pleased to have actual pigeons being in contact with her, several gentle pecks from Thoth demanding she give the other birds scritches as well.

I saw a crowd starting to form, Vicky assuring everyone that Thoth wasn't dangerous with what seemed to me like a stunning amount of confidence in that fact.

Nervously, I glanced to Amy, who gave me a wry look. "We better get inside before someone calls the local news. The only thing nastier than open heart surgery is paparazzi in my humble opinion," she jokes, grabbing my wrist and half-dragging me inside.

---

It didn't take long before we were in the groove of clearing out ICU Wards, something Panacea had been all too willing to help me get in the practice of.

She seemed really relieved at me taking the time to help her "Pro-Bono", and, as we finished the last round of healing before we would have to move on to another hospital, I decided to broach a topic that had been burning in my mind since learning about Amy.

I took a deep breath to gird myself for the backlash I was expecting to get from her.

"Hey, Amy?" I asked, and she seemed to sense something unpleasant to come.

"Yeah? What is it Sage?" she responded.


Here goes nothing. "I think you're not getting paid as much as you deserve. I grew up around a lot of union stuff, and it bothers me a lot that you're only getting minimum wage."

She raises one eyebrow, snorting a bit. "What? You think I should get paid as much as a surgeon for poking people? That'd go over real well, I'm sure."

I shake my head. "No, I won't say that, but I do think you deserve more than seven-fifty an hour. You know how much hospitals cost, right?" I ask.

"They charge patients a hundred bucks just for a bag of saline, and even something like a tylenol can cost as much as ten bucks, even per-pill if they give it to you in a hospital."

Amy shrugs. "I know that. You think I should charge a hundred bucks to heal someone? Insurance companies really don't like covering Parahuman healing."

I shake my head again. "I think you should charge a dollar. One measly dollar to heal someone," I say, and she looks dumbfounded enough for me to explain.

"I did the math, Amy. You heal about three-hundred people a day, working almost all day every day. If you got even one dollar per person, you'd be making almost thirty-dollars an hour. More even. I'm not even saying you should be rich, but..."

I throw my hands up a bit helplessly. "Even a dollar per person would have you saving up for a comfortable retirement. Or even if you don't retire, it's money that nobody would miss, and up to a certain point, financial stability directly correlates with mental wellbeing," I offer, staring directly at her with open hands.

She crosses her arms as Vicky walks over, disappointed that Thoth disappeared after only a few hours. The consequence of ever-decaying mana.

"What's going on?" Vicky asks, noticing the terse atmosphere.

"Sage here thinks that there's something wrong with my 'mental-wellbeing' and that I should charge a dollar per use of my power," Amy says a bit petulantly.

Vicky bites her lip for a moment, glancing away nervously. "And you... you're sure she doesn't have a point? What exactly did you say, Sage?" she asks, looking at me and away from Amy's slightly betrayed look.

"I said that it's wrong for Panacea to be working insane overtime hours for minimum wage. If she charged a dollar per person she healed, she'd be making three-hundred dollars or so per day. That's a really livable wage, and even if the patients had to pay it, it would barely be a drop in the bucket for most. The hospital would probably end up taking the fee anyway, since it's good publicity," I explain carefully, trying to keep my tone easy and not offensive.

Amy grits her teeth a bit, while Vicky just nods as if it makes total sense.

"You couldn't get coffee that cheap most places Amy. I kinda agree with most of that," Vicky hesitantly admits.

"And the crack at my mental health?" Amy says, dreading whatever answer I'm about to give her.

I just shrug. "Burnout is a real thing. If you don't take time off and unwind after you work, you're just going to end up hating your job, or it'll drive you crazy, or make you sick. People aren't built to just keep trucking along forever like that."

"I just think, as much as you want to heal others, it would really suck if five or ten years down the line, you just get fed up with it and go do something else because you weren't taking care of yourself enough," I explain carefully.

Amy's skin turns pale at this, and she looks ill at my words.

"Amy?" Vicky asks, holding out a hand to her shoulder with concern in her expression.

"I'll think about it," Amy responds.

"What?" Vicky mutters, confused for a second.

"I'm saying I'll think about it!" she repeats, louder, before going quiet.

"I'll think about it, alright?" she says to the two of us with something like resignation.

The silence stretches on until long after it would be awkward, before finally, Panacea chuckles bitterly.

"It's not like I could do something else anyway, even if I wanted to quit healing. I've only got the one power I can use," she mutters.

[][Something Else] (Write-in?)
[][Something Else] Stand there like a useless mook in response.

After that final revelation, Amy asks to go home early, repeating that she would think about what I said, and I'm bid goodbye by the pair as they fly off into the distance.

I head home, preparing for tomorrow night's plans.

---

When I get back, I make my way into the lab. My project was a success. Using magic and willpower, I brought forth a creature of pure magic, and had Thoth temporarily inhabit it.

I couldn't exactly tell if Thoth remembered anything that the summon had done, but, speaking practically, it didn't matter all that much. I no longer needed to bio-engineer monsters to use them, so long as I didn't need them to last forever.

There were other tests to do, and my success had bolstered my confidence.

First, I wanted to see if Cadmium Magic could work on synthesized materials. I knew it could steal the value from an item, but the question was, could it do so to a magical item?

The results were... Displeasing.

As it turns out, I had forgotten one of the most critical parts of Cadmium Magic, namely, that it didn't intentionally steal material from an object, it stole craftsmanship. The synthetic chunks of rock that I had made had no craftsmanship for it to steal, no concepts that the magic was capable of properly interacting with.

I felt dissatisfied with this experiment, and furthermore, felt ready to test it again, once I had come up with some good items to produce, and thusly steal from.

Next, I produced a duplicate of my armor using a cantrip. The new set of armor quite literally grew from my current one, plants and moss and wood sprouting from it and shaping itself into the new suit.

I threw up a barrier of thick Skin Mana, which I was able to figure out could protect me from alchemy, if I kept myself mindful of it. I suspected that there were a lot of magics that could potentially harness alchemy in a more stable manner. Purity Magics, Barrier Magics. Hell, Alchemy Mana took the form of a liquid, so I imagine even physical magics could play a role in managing it.

Either way, I had a safe wall of magic between me and the basin I filled with wild alchemical power, and, from there, I slowly placed the suit of armor in the water with the Reroll Magic. The magic that my power warned me was unfathomably dangerous, owing to whatever it did to concepts it affected. I could feel my skin magic blurring out the sight of the basin, protecting me from the churning flashes of light and color that swirled around inside of it.

My magic protecting me from the very sight of something for the danger the very information presented reminded me uncomfortably of concepts that I had first learned about in Lovecraft, of all things...

A golem slowly lowered the armor in, piece by piece, before backing away and waiting.

Only once I had sensed the absolute last of the magic fade did I approach the basin, looking at what was inside.

As soon as I glanced inside, the basin exploded, water spewing everywhere and revealing a floating set of Robes made of moss. It was embroidered with both sage and wheat, and it also had a wooden staff paired with it, a gnarled, swirled stick covered with little holes, three of which were filled with nails made of wood, wheat, porcelein and sage.

In addition to the hood of the robe, it also seemed to come with long, knee-high boots, gloves, and a massive wizardly hat. In place of a mask, the hat and hood seemed to be enchanted, the shadows they cast being pitch black and all-encompassing, something caused by tiny pieces of highly magical porcelain in the shape of rings.

Studying them, they seemed to somehow be emitting a powerful porcelain magic enchantment, one which transmuted light into flakes that were themselves dissolved into mana for fuel.

In short, the basin of alchemical water had 'Rerolled' my fanciful plant-based plate armor and cloak into a robe and wizard hat, complete with a staff begging to be studded with attunement materials.

Folding up the robes, but keeping the staff, I took a broken mini-TV and put it in the basin of water, a requirement for using Malfunction Mana with the greatest ease. Instantly, the broken glass screen began to fizzle and flash with static once I applied Malfunction Magic to it, the noise coming out of it sounding like someone was tuning a radio, shifting from station to station with distortions between. Clips of video occasionally forced their way onto the screen.


Waving my staff a bit for dramatic effect, I summoned up a mass of Indium Mana, attempting to Simplify the Malfunction Mana into something else.

Sure enough, Malfunction Mana did simplify, and the TV stopped freaking out, settling on blank static.

Reaching into the water, I fiddled with the channels and even tried plugging a Betamax player into it. After a bit of effort, the shattered underwater screen began playing a rerun of Walker, Texas Ranger. There was a huge bar of static cutting across the screen, the screen was shattered and missing bits of glass, and the sound quite literally sounded like it was coming from underwater, but ignoring all of that, the TV actually worked. Well, it barely worked, anyway.

It also made uncomfortable sparks, but by god it worked. Look out tinkers, I might just be able to use your broken junk, as long as I have it dunked underwater and have a supply of magic handy.

With that, I moved on to another test that I had been curious about. Cadmium Magic.

It could steal craftsmanship and value, and with a lot of effort, I could rip that out of it and put it elsewhere, but... What if I didn't?

I summoned up a mass of magic, stealing the craftsmanship from a cast-iron frying pan I had, turning it into a cheap glass frying pan and then applying that mana to a piece of silicon.

The result was a bit stunning, as my power informed me that the result would naturally transform into a pan made of a golden metal called "Hoardfiller", if applied to Silicon.

Applying it, I was rewarded with an incredibly lightweight golden pan that felt like it weighed almost nothing at all.

Next, I did the same thing, this time stealing the craftsmanship from a combat knife, which turned it into a cheap-looking katana for some reason.

...

Ignoring that, I then spoke at the mass of Cadmium Magic. "Poof!" I uttered, gesturing dramatically.

The mana condensed down into a single point, and the result was...

I leaned down to where the result had fallen on the ground, squinting to try and make it out.

A bit of mana helpfully identified the result as a teeny tiny grain of pure gold, in the exact shape of a high-quality combat knife.

I got the strong suspicion that the grain was, at best, worth as much as the combat knife, much to my dismay.

Though, the fact that I could make gold at all was interesting, considering how much synthesis seemed to dislike making anything that wasn't just silicon in disguise.

I picked up the tiny combat knife, careful not to cut myself, and set it in the box with mom's jewelry, turning my attention to other things.

I decided to test if the pattern of magic had any effect on it, and, lacking any better ideas, I drew a pentagram with some chalk and ignited the dust with magic.

The mana rapidly burned down through the lines, branching out from the point to turn the entirety of the chalk dust to mana, and when it did...

Well, it didn't do anything too insane, but the purple mana did do something unusual, leaning forwards from the pentagram and trailing out in lines that grew more complex, jerking back and forth in a zigzag crisscrossing pattern that looked as though it were trying to repeat the pentagram's path. I felt the mana grow firmer as it continued to do this, the inertia of the pattern making the mana want to continue moving in that way.

The shape of the pentagram itself also seemed to lend some sort of new effect to the mana, as the mana began to finally stabilize, its jerky zig-zag curling around into a jagged geometric field that felt somewhat protective.

I tested other runes as well, and before long, I felt the same gut feelings that phonems had originally given me, as if there was something deeper to the way mana of all kinds had inertia of patterns.

When I made a pentagram with a circle around it and lit it from all five points with magic, the mana crashed into itself at the five inner points and at five equidistant points around the circle, rebounding off of itself and forming a massive spirogram that curled up into the air, weaving a dome-like barrier of spiral purple liquid that I felt a strong sense of protection from.

And then I got a massive headache, dispersing the magic.

"What the hell!" I shouted, gripping my head at the familiar pain of my power bitching for some ungodly reason.

I released a surge of mana instinctively, and the headache quickly faded into nothing.

Deciding that it isn't science until I've done it twice, I tried a few other tests with chalk runes.

Igniting one end of a line made the mana burn through the chalk, and then keep extending outwards in a line.

Igniting a curved line did the same thing, but the mana curved as the line did.

A golden spiral that I ignited at the center spiraled outwards, and as it did, I could feel it moving faster and faster, the mana literally spreading out into nothing in mere moments after it reached its 'Top Speed' until the mana was dispersed into the ambiance.

I drew another golden spiral, and got ready to ignite the outside edge, but when I did, I felt the overwhelming premonition that it would explode if I tried it before I was ready.

Wiping it out, I tried other shapes.

Triangles ignited from one point resulted in jagged forward beams that trailed mist and dust, while igniting a triangle from the middle of a side resulted in two crisscrossing beams that whistled loudly as they left behind embers.

A triangle with a line through it, ignited from the triangle's side resulted in a beam of whistling fire, from the left point of the triangle, just fire, from the right, just whistling.

From the triangle's point that was crossed by the line, a straight beam of dust and mist, from the left triangle's side in the middle, a beam of dust, and from the right side's midpoint, mist.

A square ignited from any point simply resulted in repeating squares in the opposite direction, like a grid, and when intersected with a line, the squares each emitted lines of mana from the same angle.

Even this made me feel like I was... well, I was drawing shapes, rather than writing runes. There was more to be learned, power-induced headaches or not. The patterns that mana strived to retain had some sort of meaning.

I was suddenly all too aware that even the mana flowing through my blood had a pattern baked into it through repetition. Namely, that it continued flowing through my veins in exactly the same manner, even if I was cut. The mana at first flows because it is driven, but later, because it drives.

And when patterns cross, they don't just average, but rather, they extrapolate and combine. A spiral and a line don't create a curved line, the average of the two vectors, they create a corkscrew, the interpretation of both a spiral and a straight line.

But how did the mere movements of magic change their properties? Their elements?

I could feel the headache growing, even with mana enhancement, and decided to turn to a different subject until it faded.

"Dad! Can you come down here?!" I yelled politely, and after about a minute, he trudged down.

"Yeah? What did you need?" he asks, smiling.

"Well, I'm testing something, and I need you to study a book for me," I explain.

He looks a bit confused. "What book?" he responds.

"Any book, it doesn't matter. I just need to study you studying it. We could use one of my math books, if that works."

He looks supremely confused, but with a shrug, we drag out my thick math textbook and I watch him leaf through it, going forward and back pages in a slightly distracted manner.

As he does so, I watch him, listening carefully to the rustle of pages, and the ruffling of his shirt sleeves.

"Shush? No, that's not right," I mutter.

"What?" he responds.

I wave him off. "Nothing, ignore me," I say, watching intently as he stares hard at a page.

"...Ch-ch-ch-ch and Frip. Those sound about right for now," I think, pleased with myself.

"Alright, that's enough. Thanks for the help, dad," I explain.

"Why did you need to uh, 'Study me studying'?" he asks, supremely confused.

I giggle. "It helps with learning magic words. Not sure why," I shrug, unwilling to explain that I was basically bullshitting and relying on gut feelings, and it somehow kept giving me really good results, compared to just randomly spurting out words and noises.

Having finished my tests, I return to sit in my room, my armor hung neatly in my closet.

Tomorrow, I'll be going to the prison currently holding four of the Azn Bad Boyz's low-ranking goons. The ones who weren't broken out already.

I'd be asking them what happened the night they attacked Emma Barnes and her father.

The only question is... How?

[][Prison] Visit during the day. Sage would like to ask them about some events as part of a private investigation.
[][Prison] Visit during the night. I'll control a summoned being to act as my mouthpiece. Mana is so cleverly useful when it comes to slipping through solid material, after all.
[][Prison] Write-In

The next day, I strapped a piece of Vibrato Stone to my throat, in just the right place to distort my voice ever so slightly with the whistling of flutes. Like someone had mixed up a midi of flutes with someone's voice.

It was another important aspect of trying to shore up my fraying secret identity, something I would need for what I might be doing soon.

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21 Research Refunded, 10 Research Gained.

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