Everyone from the training had come with Swordjuice, I noticed.

First Glassmetal; his mouth open in shocked silence. LED frowning, weirded out. Payback looked disgusted, and Spotlight frowned before breaking into an excited smile.

Spotlight took a step forward, “I knew he would end up splitting, quick we need to contain the spread.”

Payback shook the disgusted and weirded out look on his face and pushed Spotlight back again, “hey its probably only one of his weird mutations, or something.”

“But he never did that before,” Glassmetal said, voice shaky. Swordjuice nodded quickly in agreement.

I was only watching their reaction, smiling, seeing them all together, and had a great idea. Focusing on the arm coming from my back that was still raised above me, I made it wave at them, shakily moving side to side.

LED only shook his head at me, exhaling through his nose with a little smile on his face.

“You’re sick, man,” Spotlight said, smiling and approaching.

The others approached as well, even Glassmetal and Swordjuice as queasy as they looked.

“What you trying to do from this early matrix?” Payback asked.

“Early?” Oh, it’s another day already. It seemed I had spent significantly more time here than I thought, not that I had stopped to think about it, but time sure flies when you’re focused.

“Yeah, wait, you’re here since yesterday?”

“It seems I lost track of time,” I said, then pointed at my new arm. “I was experimenting.”

“Yeah, we all noticed,” Glassmetal said, now looking more curious getting himself under control. “You giving yourself more members now, then?”

“Kinda. They will not be like this one. I just needed to start with something.”

“Isn’t it dangerous, though? It looks uncanny,” Swordjuice asked, still the one the farther away from me.

“No, at least not for anyone else, and even for me. I think I have things pretty much under control.”

“That’s great then. What’s the end goal with this?” Spotlight asked me animatedly.

“I want to build a sort of tail or tentacle. And then create a mutation power to go with it so I have more attacking options.”

LED nodded. “It’s great to cover up the area you’re most lacking Matrix. Good job.”

“It’s not finished yet, but thanks.”

“Slow down dude, you gonna leave us in the dust,” Payback said, going to give me a slap on the back but stopping himself as he saw the arm.

“Not so soon. I’m still learning the ropes, but I figured a lot of new things from Dan’s powers.”

“It’s crazy that the old man finally has a power,” Spotlight said. “I saw him all happy taking care of his little plant.”

“Little plant for now, you saw the smile on his face,” Payback interjected. “He’s going to be putting those down everywhere. I doubt he’s ever cultivating wheat again.”

“That might be true, but then this place would be even safer, or more noticeably.” I shrugged. “He’ll figure things out.”

“But then his powers were a mutation, you said?”

“Yes, you saw him right; you can’t miss the green lobes he has now, with how they’re extended and everything.”

“Yeah, I saw them.”

“And how that ended up with you having an extra arm?”

“Well..”

I told them about what I found that day in Dan’s matrix, and how I was trying to implement the findings in my power, they had some questions and suggestions but they didn’t have the same experience with matrices as I did and the whole things was more esoteric for them because of that.

LED asked me if I wanted to train or go to sleep, but I declined, still in high gear and wanting to continue testing. I told them I was going to skip training and focus on building myself my new power.

They agreed easily the training never really was an obligatory thing, and I went to a far corner of the huge marble room to train on my own, Glassmetal offered to put walls around me so I could focus better and I accepted even if I wouldn’t need them, focusing completely on my matrix I would probably forget about the rest of the world again.

But while I intended to unmake this arm, it really wasn’t my intended goal, I still tried out how it was to move around with an extra member.

I started a simple kata I still remembered, the extra arm making it extra hard. It threw my weight off to a degree that amazed me. I thought it would be more like a... a tail!

Why hadn’t I thought of that? Instead of putting a tail dabbed in the middle of my back in between a huge and complex amount of bones and muscles, I could just follow the natural anatomy of the mammal that I was.

I sighed, shaking my head. At least I caught this now instead of after having a working prototype.

I’ll first do the analysis of the matrix and see how it looks like from the inside. The tail idea is a huge improvement, but I’ll have to see if I can form a member I don’t actually have right now.

That humans have the instructions to make tails in our DNA only deactivated might help.

At least I hope it does. It’ll make my life much easier.

Another thing, I didn’t really put any power in this matrix, and implementing one will be the next step. I should first make a test with something more inert and non dangerous, like the ability to absorb energy from Dan’s powers, something I would like to add, anyway.

And then I’ll try making it more similar to a biological version of Victor’s powers.

I smiled at the thought, not feeling a shred of tiredness this deep into experimentation. Sitting down on the smooth marble floor and closing my eyes to focus on my matrix, I let the rest of the world fade away.

The matrix construct was still whole and intact where I had grafted it, showing that it was improbable that it would deteriorate once created. Satisfied, I started the process of tearing it apart.

Immediately, I flinched sharply, opening my eyes as my back arched from the tearing pain.

‘shit’, I grimaced. I thought this might happen. After all, it had a whole functional nervous system connected to me, with all the implications that destroying it would bring.

I ground my teeth, forced my muscles to relax, and focused. This would be an awful experience. The pain of tearing a member from the inside out was comparable to the worst tortures I had inflicted on myself.

Like high voltage shocks that seemed to fry my nerves, or gouging pieces of myself away, just the fact that I had those experiences to compare with still sobered me sometimes.

The lengths I had gone all hoping to get something even remotely close to what I had now.

But well, if I didn’t stop then, why would I stop now, right?

I winced as I gouged some more of myself out from my Matrix, the corresponding flesh dying away in a sharp pull of my nerves; the worst is that I still couldn’t manipulate large portions of permanent matrix, so I had to unmake it bit by bit.

By the end of the experience, I was panting, covered in cold sweat.

I wiped it away from my brow, refocusing.

I let myself breathe for a while, feeling the lump of dead meat attached to my back. Another thing for me to deal with, and after the experience of slowly having to unmake the new member, I was ready to have a bath and a good sleep.

I just needed to call my buddies to help me cut the extra arm off first.

I blocked LED’s punch, quickly delivering one back into the opening his attack created. He was fast enough to pull his head out of the way. I spun with the motion, striking my tail into his hastily made cross guard.

He stumbled two steps back. I smiled. Resetting my posture.

“So it works,” he said.

I nodded. ‘’finally’’

Two weeks, the time it took me to get to this point, I had been trying since the day of the ‘arm incident’, as we got to call it. And it was harder than I thought it would be, primarily because I didn’t find a magical switch that granted me all the blueprints I needed to form a working tail.

That didn’t mean these blueprints didn’t exist. It’s more that I don’t have such a deep control or understanding of the body down to the genetics. Encountering a power that delved into these areas would be an incredible find.

So, I’d had to build it basically from scratch, studying every day while I wasn’t training or doing chores where and how the matrix represented the body and figuring out exactly where my spine ended.

What allowed me to make these tests at all was that what I changed in my matrix turned into part of the blueprint my body healed to match.

That meant any modifications I did translated into my body instantly when I triggered any kind of healing, at the cost of some pain.

I started testing in my finger bones, seeing if I could extend them; I got a lot of weird effects, the most interesting finding out that I could grow the bones in any direction, even to the sides.

It still took a while for me to figure out what I wanted; how to extend them by increasing the number of repetitions of bones the member got, so I could expand my vertebral column.

Then I had to figure out how to change its size so it got progressively thinner. I took the time to figure out how to make a nice and sharp last bone. The good part was that the repeatable process came with the ligaments the column needed. The bad part was that it didn’t bring with it all the rest it would need

So when I set to test it all confidently, I ended up with my tail rupturing my lower back and having to deal with a raw part of my vertebral column exposed to the air, which isn’t really pleasant.

It just isn’t more unpleasant to having then to unmake said column. Not an experience I would recommend.

After a couple more days of refining the muscle structure all around the tail, making it quite girth and figuring out how all of it should connect to my back, mostly using the internet, with the helpful video and guides to ape anatomy, including dissections.

And then it was mostly done. I had a functioning extra member in a tail. Next steps are making it green and then trying to transform it into a shapeshifter.

I’ll get to that slowly over the following weeks, for now I’m enjoying my success and that isn’t just to postpone more work.

Because another discovery I made was the need to pace the transformations and alterations I did to my matrix. The more I worked in a specific area, the more it got malleable, like a metal heating and getting easier to work with.

That was only beneficial up to a certain point though, as it then became too malleable making the modifications break apart and unfold, risking setting me back if I kept trying, a lesson I discovered when I lost almost three days of work after I just kept pushing the first time.

Before I could continue my spar with LED, Spyglass entered and waved for us to get our attention.

We had been sparring in groups of two. I was fighting with LED while Swordjuice fought Victor and Payback fought Spotlight. We were focusing more on physical training, having finished with the powered one for today.

“What is it?”

“We received a letter. Dan bought it in.”

“What does it say?”

“I didn’t look at that yet,” she said as everyone approached.

She gave the letter to LED. He turned it over to read who they addressed it to;

“To LED and team.” He read aloud, slowing down as he saw the last part; “From Spawner.”

I look around, seeing that only Glassmetal and Swordjuice seem as puzzled as I am.

“And who’s that?” Swordjuice asks.

“The Dawnbreakers South Division Overseer,” LED states gravely.

“Oh!” Swordjuice answer, giving voice to what probably is in everyone’s mind.