Calvin tried to move his hand to his belt, but the sand was pressed in around him like a vice, so tightly packed against itself that he couldn’t move a single finger. He couldn’t see, closing his eyes against the assault of sand. He could feel his body falling out of the air, but that was honestly less important than the sizzling sensation he could feel transmitted back through the Mage armor.

Whatever was surrounding him was eating through the thin coating of crystal.

Now, how do I get out of this? Calvin thought, If I could just reach the shrink button on my belt. He’d long since made a device that could shrink him using the Unqua’s Warped mutation.

He summoned his list of choices for Trait Doctoring.

He’d been sitting on the newest acquisition for an emergency, and right now was starting to look pretty bad.

Energetic traits: User may choose an energetic trait to add to Trait Doctoring. Energetic traits include, temperature, combustability, explosiveness, acidity, radioactivity. Selectable multiple times.

Expanded Physical traits: User may choose a trait to add to Trait Doctoring. Further alter the physical traits of the target object. Expanded traits include friction, pressure, Frequency, phase shift temperature, opacity, reflectivity. Selectable multiple times.

Complex Biological Traits: Healing, Nerve Signal Strength, Gender, Means of Locomotion, Defense Mechanisms,

Complex Social Traits: Affiliation, Fame, Duty, Love, Prestige, Social Contract.

Subtle Identity Doctoring: User can more effectively incorporate skills and memories from the donor into the target’s identity without causing mental disconnect, increasing accuracy and decreasing possible side-effects and noticability.

Extra sources: User may add traits from 1 extra source. Selectable multiple times.

Extra Traits: User may add another Trait from the same source. Selectable Multiple Times.

Extra Duration: Duration of Trait Doctoring improved by (Int)%

Mutations:

Trait Condensation: 2 Bent: Rather than move a trait, user may condense it into a liquid contained in a self-generated glass. Liquid gives the trait to the first object it touches. 1 drop per hundred pounds. Liquid stores 1 hour per level of Trait Doctoring, effect follows Trait Doctoring’s duration.

Hmm…This is a conundrum.

Calvin would cross his arms and tap his feet if he weren’t cocooned by some kind of acidic sand bubbling away at his Mage Armor, rendering him immobile.

If Magenta was preventing his Bent from escaping his body – which would be absolutely dumb not to do – then Calvin could only cast spells on himself. Or possibly Magenta…except she showed quite a bit of resilliance against magic.

We’ll call that plan B.

The major problem was, most of the Trait doctoring abilities weren’t conducive to being alive. Making your body a superconductor does not mean it can continue to function normally and be a superconductor.

Calvin had realized that when he’d nearly lost feeling to his hand after making it hard as stone for a couple seconds.

So what does that leave me with?

Friction wouldn’t do much… If I matched the pressure of one of my compoonents, I would literally explode, temperature and combustibility are fun…but not on my body.

So if he wanted to cast something on himself, it would have to be one of the complex biological traits. Healing was attractive, but what if he couldn’t use Magenta as the base for the spell? Unless… Hey Elliot, could I copy a rock’s healing ability and use Opposite Day to supercharge my own?

Let me run a sim…

Nope, it would fail, because rocks didn’t fall in the category of having biologic traits.

Sizzle!

Yeah, I should probably hurry this up. Let’s try our opening gambit.

Trait Doctoring

Sense of self

14/47 Bent remaining

Calvin copied his identity onto everything around him. if he could assume control over Magenta for even a moment, this fight would be over.

***Copy Calvin***

Calvin found himself unable to see, suspended in a whirling, formless chaos of anger.

I must be the copy, Calvin thought glumly. Having a fifteen minute timer on the rest of his life was a bitch, but if he didn’t to work immediately, Calvin Classic™ would be dead in a matter of minutes. He didn’t exactly have time to get philosophical.

Okay, listen up, Calvin thought, spreading himself through that chaotic amalgam of hatred, replacing it with himself. You’re me. You don’t want to kill me. We should just back off and give me a chance to catch my breath.

He felt the formless mass move around him for a moment, but just a moment, before a face manifested in front of him, composed of whirling bits of rage. There was no way to describe what it looked like, only how it felt.

The lips were turned down with disgust, and Calvin could feel the retching abhorrence radiating off of them, little flickers of disjointed memories of awful sensations flickering across their face.

“What are YOU doing in here? What are you doing INSIDE ME? YOU’RE INSIDE ME!? NO! NONONONO!”

The entire world began pressing in around Calvin from every direction, smothering him with overwhelming force.

Ah, crap, this isn’t gonna work.

***Calvin***

The sand pressing in around him shuddered for an instant before he felt it’s strength return. The connection Trait Doctoring had made between the two of them popped like a soap bubble.

It was worth a shot. Calvin thought, praying for the unfortunate Calvin that had been so rudely created and destroyed in a matter of seconds.

Calvin felt a stinging pain on his arm as the first bit of sand made its way through the Mage armor.

Ow, shit!

Healing’s not gonna work, there’s no subjects that heal fast enough, Gender’s right out, locomotion too. Defense Mechanisms would work, but only if I could copy Magenta’s which she wouldn’t allow.

Damn, What about Bent Manipulation? Calvin thought

Abilities:

Ghost hand: Manipulate Bent stored by Beli Ma as hands with physical attributes mirroring User’s mental Attributes. Increases range of Beli ma by 1 inch per level of Bent Manipulation.

Bent Interference: Bent Manipulation correction applies to attempts to interfere with other user’s Abilities.

Bent Reclamation: User’s Abilities have a (correction)% chance to reclaim Bent spent on them when countered.

Bent Condensation: Condense 5 Bent into one hundred grams of black liquid Bent. One hundred grams restores 1 Bent.

Spell Penetration: User’s Abilites and Bent Constructs are (Stability)% more difficult to dispel.

Sliding Scale: Add up to (level)% To one numerical effect of an Ability while taking the same percentage away from another numerical aspect.

^ Ex. +5% Duration, -%5 Mass

Mutations:

All Seeing Eye: User can physically see Bent.

Warped Bent: User’s Bent is now closer to Warp in the way it interacts with the environment. More difficult to counter, more difficult to control. May cause mutations.

Shit, nothing in there!

His spare Ability in Drafting didn’t even bear mentioning.

What about Frequency? Wait, that could work!

I choose Frequency! Calvin thought.

The System Acknowledged his choice and the technique was adding, making his brain tingle, just as the holes in his Mage Armor were starting to widen.

Trait Doctoring

Frequency

13/47 Bent remaining.

Calvin linked his vocal chords to the rest of his body.

“MMMM!”

Calvin hummed. He hummed good.

The link between his body and his vocal chords made sure the rest of his body hummed along with him.

Oh, gods this feels weird! Calvin thought as his entire body was suddenly assaulting by violent vibration from his Scalp, eyeballs, and tongue, down through his crotch and into the soles of his feet.

Everything was buzzing and the sensation nearly made him black out. On the other hand, the sensation of his skin being eaten away by Magenta’s acid was good motivation for continuing what he was doing.

Calvin used Shifting to move mass into his body, making his body feel like it was about to tear itself apart.

The extra mass didn’t slow down the vibrations in the slightest, and since Force was Mass times Acceleration, the force of behind the vibrations became significantly stronger, shaking the sand off of him in droves, while simultaneously making his body feel like it was going come apart at the seams.

Calvin bulled through it, focusing on moving his hand to his belt.

The sand was having a hard time holding onto him because of the vibration, and Calvin was able to slam his hand down on the emergency escape button made with Unqua shrinking marbles.

The pressure on Calvin eased instantly as Calvin shrank down to the size of a man’s palm.

I’ve only got a second before the sand crowds me again.

He swung a fist forward, loading it with mass, and was flung forward at high speeds, puncturing through the veritable wall of sand.

Calvin glanced over his shoulder and spotted the sand coalescing into a single stream, flying after him as he fled.

Gotta go faster. He punched forward again, using the skating technique to gain even more speed.

The ground loomed large in front of him.

Ah shit.

Calvin had momentarily spaced the Every Direction is Down rule, and paid the price.

Calvin slammed face-first into the white, crunchy fungus, barely able to emergency dump most of his mass the instant before he slammed into it.

It still hurt, but it wasn’t bone breaking like it might have been if he weighed thousands of pounds.

Calvin flipped himself up and tapped the escape button, growing back to his former size as he turned back to the approaching sand.

Alright, bad guy is decentralized, in little bits and pieces. That begs an Area of effect spell. POsion won’t work because the poison itself is made of Bent and it’ll get defused. No, we need AOE damage that’s real.

Calvin glanced over at the white-hot pile of molten steel burning its way through the fungus.

Heat is real as soon as it’s passed from the original to the air.

Mass Shifting

12/47 Bent remaining.

Calvin targeted a tiny marble of white-hot thermite with the intention of copying the shit out of it. It reminded him of the first time he’d copied a single spark a thousandfold to create a raging forest fire.

This would make that seem lukewarm.

Calvin felt a stream of Bent launch itself out of Magenta’s sand-body and impact against the streams of his own Bent as they went to create a zone of white-hot iron spheres around her.

Instead of a densely packed sun-like sphere around her, The Bent streams meant to create marble-sized balls of white-hot iron were scattered everywhere, toward him, toward Magenta, and toward Kala.

The thought of Kala getting burned by his spell sent a spike of adrenaline through his heart. Unacceptable!

“Shit!”

Calvin reached out with his left hand, releasing blunt wave of his own Bent, severing the streams heading toward Kala and Ella with a reflexive jab, reducing them to nothing more than random patterns of Bent dissipating into the atmosphere.

10/47 Bent remaining

The rest of the marbles manifested without a hitch.

The world exploded with heat as tens of thousands of white hot marbles manifested throughout the battlefield, nearly blinding him with their sheer brilliance.

Calvin had the unique sensation of feeling his skin boil before his eyes rolled back in his head.

Calvin had a pain limit, and while it was lot higher than most, there was still point where his brain would shut down to protect his sanity.

***Calvin***

Calvin opened his eyes, finding his lungs being forced full of air, his heart aching as though someone had been using it like a punching back.

He tried to breathe out, but there was a pair of dark lips wrapped around his own. His nose was pinched, and he had no recourse but to flail and cough.

She backed off of him instantly, and Calvin was relieved to see Kala’s face above him, the sun shining down through her hair and making a beautiful halo. The sight nearly distracted him from the earth-shattering pain radiating from every square inch of his body.

“You’re alive, thank goodness! Kala will be so happy!” Kala said, pulling her fingers away from his chest, the vine-like tentacles piercing his ribcage retracting back into her hand.

Kala will be happy? Tentacles?

Calvin glanced at Kala’s bountiful chest, his brain overwhelmed with a sense of wrong.

No, it has to be Kala. Because if it wasn’t Kala, that would mean…

“Get away!” Calvin screamed hoarsely, trying to push Learner off of him. She’d been inside him! The creepy little miniature fractal clones she had squirming around just under the skin had been pressed up against his lips!

Calvin’s adrenaline tried to spike as he attempted to shift himself away from the eldritch creature, but he’d practically exhausted it all over the last couple days, leaving him to shimmy painfully away, hissing and groaning as his skin cracked and bled.

“What’s wrong?” Learner asked with a frown.

“You didn’t put any of those things inside me did you!?” Calvin demanded, ignoring the pain in his skin to pat his chest, where tiny dollops of blood were forming where she’d pierced the skin.

Is there anything moving inside me? Is it eating away at my lungs right now? Gods, she could be in my brain!

“Calvin, you’re being rude.” Kala’s voice came from his left. He peered over and saw her scowling at him.

“Rude? Did you forget the time I fought her?” Calvin asked looking at Kala. “I was in that wasp that she ate from the inside out, you know. I got to experience everything it did, and-“

Kala leaned forward and clapped a hand over his scorched lips, sending a fresh wave of pain through Calvin’s face. It was just a drop in the bucket at this point, though.

“Before you say anything you can’t take back,” Kala whispered in his ear.

Calvin glanced over Kala’s hand at Learner.

The creature’s eyes were brimming with tears.

Learner let out a wretched little hiccup before launching herself to her feet and running away, sobbing like a heartbroken teen.

What…The…Abyss. I didn’t realize Learner had…feelings.

“She’s been working on developing Human emotions. You’d notice if you weren’t so leery of her.”

“Dude, that was poorly handled,” Baroke said, shaking his head.

Ella simply nodded.

“Calmer now?” Kala asked after a few moments had done by.

Calvin nodded, and she pulled her hand away from his mouth

“I feel like toasted shit,” Calvin said, glancing around, trying not to move as much as possible. That made it hurt a lot worse. “What happened?”

“Your spell was a double K.O. with Magenta. Between the rest of us, we were able to mop up. When the fighting wore down, Learner noticed your heart had stopped, so she did CPR. Out of all of us, she’s the closest thing to a doctor. She saved your life.” Baroke said with a shrug.

“Ah crap, I broke her heart, didn’t I?” Calvin groaned, rolling his eyes, the only part of his body that didn’t hurt to move. Breaking a normal girl’s heart was bad enough. This one was on a completely different magnitude of ‘bad’.

“Just a little,” Kala said with a slight smirk, holding her thumb and forefinger apart. “But it’ll be okay, women are capable of suffering through a thousand little cracks in their heart for the one they love, and they come out all the stronger for it.”

Calvin stared at her.

“What does that mean?”

Kala shrugged, glancing to the side, avoiding looking at him so he couldn’t read her emotions.

She looked amused, though.