The gun Glassmetal made took long seconds to charge, where I just kept my focus on the area where I knew my matrix would activate to change my skin, seeing the region already absorbing energy, probably because I knew there was an attack coming.

The pain came abruptly, almost breaking my focus, but I held, focusing only on my matrix, putting my mind to the sole objective of understanding what was going to happen, the moment after the pain hit, I could see the matrix altering itself, I got a sense of familiarity from the shape my matrix took after the tsunami of twistings and foldings that was the transformation.

Then the pain was gone, and I could see the complete transformation. It differed from way before when I was first testing my powers. Glassmetal and Victor had shot me with a laser weapon, my power had created a reflexive layer then and even though I didn’t have nearly as much experience and a set of powers to analyze the transformation or my matrix then, I could tell that it was different this time, much more complex and sophisticated.

it was familiar yet different, and it probably was because it was a transformation of my skin, almost all the mutations I went through, at least initially, started with some type of tougher skin, which made sense, it was usually where the attacks hit first.

I also see from this transformation some of my power’s capability for sophistication. This matrix was intricate, just like any of the most complex powers I had encountered, and its matrix intertwined into my body’s biology.

Not unlike that of Dan’s powers, which was to be expected as they’re both mutations, I just never realized I was mutating myself in the same way mutant powers manifested because I had never seen one before, after all the sensation to me is minimal, it’s a matrix in my body just like all the rest.

It was curious that the matrix didn’t need to be spread over where my skin would be in relation to my core, as Dan’s matrix in his mutation was with his body.

I would need to do this more times. The transformation occurred too quickly, even for my enhanced senses.

Something that I was glad to, of course, it was what kept me alive, but it would make this more difficult to work with. I’ll first try to get better at constructing matrices and then try this again.

After all, even if I could grasp exactly where to mutate to put the new matrices in place, I want to be able to create something good that connects with my biology perfectly.

This coating of skin for example I could tell that it was reflexive and heat resistant, a complex overlaying of solid material that made it reflect light because of its physical shape in a microscopic scale, and my matrix made it absorb part of the light’s energy, combining that ability I copied from Dan’s plant and his seed pods and the general energy reading and absorptive properties I had normally.

To make a connection this intricate with the other powers, like LED’s manifestation of matrices or creating substances like the metal that Victor made or being able to extract properties like Swordjuice, I would need to change the matrices to have a biological channel for them to act on the real world through my body.

I think I can break it down in a couple of phases. First is making or adding to my matrix a component that will dictate how the biological part will develop to accommodate the power. then localizing the body part and creating there the power and how it manifests, thought the new biology that is matrix-made.

I think that’s the reason my automatic transformations aren’t permanent; they have no anchor, to say, to maintain themselves. If my theory is correct, that’s the purpose of the matrix biology, for it to hold on to the powers they need to be connected in some manner.

Yeah, that’s it.

Let’s get to training then. I opened my eyes and told Glassmetal about my findings, telling him he could relax, as I wouldn’t call him to shoot me every day as I wanted to train the other thing first.

But for today he accepted to still shoot me with different weaponry as he was already there.

----------------------------------------

I encountered Victor and Glassmetal at the lab while going down to the marble room the next day; I was planning on training more on how to create matrice pieces that would cause biological tissue to grow in parts of my body, but what they were doing seemed interesting as well.

Victor was standing over a long line of bizarre weapons as Glassmetal looked on slightly bored sitting on a bench by the side.

I approached him asking what was going on

“Victor is analyzing some tinker weapons we have here. They normally have interesting firing methods of crazy energy sources.”

“I see. That’s pretty cool. How many he analyzed already?”

“He’s still in the first one,” Glassmetal said, bored.

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s been three hours already.”

“Jesus, he really can only do this outside of combat.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Yeah.”

“What one did he choose to analyze first, then?”

“Oh, it’s a flamethrower we have here, more like fireball thrower. It’s one of the best and coolest weapons we have here, so he wanted to try that first.”

“Wow, that sounds crazy, man. No wonder he’s taking that long. Do you think he will can use it, though?”

“Well, his power should be able to just copy anything the weapon has that makes it work. Even if it is a power, the problem is that tinker powers are fickle things, they work on pure belief sometimes.”

“Yeah, I heard about it, that the technology is unpredictable, but I had never heard of powers having matrices before, so maybe the tinkers are imbuing part of their powers into their weapons.”

“How so?” Glassmetal asked, the conversation having finally taking him out of his bored mood.

“I imagine something like the plants Dan powers makes. They have reservoirs of energy to function and the means to fill them again. It’s possible that tinker weapons might have mechanisms to absorb all sorts of things as fuel, including belief and expel destruction for it.”

“Well, it works out. It is their powers that are creating them, after all, sometimes out of thin air. It would make sense.”

At that, victor opened his eyes. He seemed tired but also happy, so he must have gotten something interesting from that.

“Oh, got something then?” I asked him, making him notice my arrival.

“Yeah, I think so.” He said as he raised the silver liquid to his eye level, mutating it so it looked just like the gun on the table, a long metal muzzle filled with holes all menacing looking.

“Hey don’t fire that here,” Glassmetal said, shooting up alarmed.

“Hey calm down, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you? I doubt that for some reason.”

“Sheesh, okay, let’s go to the testing area.”

I followed them to the marble room just through the door and Victor immediately pointed the gun at the opposite wall, letting it spill out a ball of pure flame, held together by whatever means, it flew in a slight arc, like a gently thrown baseball.

It impacted the wall with an oomph of dislocated air, painting a huge portion of the wall and floor in flames from the point of impact.

The flames danced glued where they landed for a couple of seconds before slowly going away.

“Pretty cool, it ends quickly though..” Glassmetal said, not that impressed.

“Yeah, the duration of the flames is consistent with how much energy you put into it.” Victor explained. “The original gun had a fixed setting. The original tinkerer probably could modify it as well. But yeah.”

“That’s pretty good, but we come to the same issue of you needing more energy to spend than you have.” I said

“Yeah, it’s a shame,” Victor agreed dejected, “but nothing I can do but keep training more and more.”

“That’s true. I wonder what I’ll be able to do with it.” I laughed.

He glared at me in a show of fury before laughing as well.

“I’ll go copy more weapons. There is a nice one that will give me quite a bit of coverage and flexibility. I’m looking forward to the next training session.”

“Grant us coverage, you mean,” I said, “Let us get more powerful, comrade.”

“Fucking leech.” Victor tsked.

I laughed, knowing it was without heat, and went to my training while he and Glassmetal went back to the lab.

----------------------------------------

The lab was the same when I came back, though there was only Victor there, seated in front of yet another weapon, looking at the table. It was probably his fourth, unless they had changed the order. Did that mean that I trained for over six hours or was the time different for each weapon?

I waited around for him to finish, wanting to know what types of weapons he got and copy the improvements for myself, something that I wouldn’t simply pass up on.

My training was leading to results as well as I could now create bumps in my skin just from altering my matrix, starting with the skin because it was something I was used to seeing happening the most.

This could not seem like much, comparing it with the complex and whole transformations that my power did on its own, but so was the nature of things. Even the tiny bits that I could accomplish now were through laying down thousand of lines of matrix, creating and weaving a complex network of shapes.

Victor opened his eyes then, having finished with the weapons, he noticed me and I smiled in greeting

“Hey, how long you’ve been doing this?”

“Oh, for about five hours, I think.”

“Hmm, so it doesn’t take as long as the fireball gun for every weapon.”

“Yeah, it seems to decrease with time. Some things are consistent throughout the weapons, probably because they’re all guns that fire projectiles. I only need to copy the new stuff each time.”

“Hmm, I see, and what did you copy?”

Victor smiled in satisfaction, pointing at the guns as he said what each one was; “I got the fireball that you already saw, and then a freezing beam, that took about three hours as well, then I got a normal energy shots weapon, common stuff, I think it’s plasma or something and the one I just finished with is basically a normal gun but it gives the ammunition an electric charge.”

“Ooh, really expanding your horizons. Can you use the electric one at the same time as one of the fancy projectiles?”

“I can. My power lets me mix and match all the effects if they don’t work in the same way or the same part, so what you suggested is pretty easy to get.”

“Now, to combine the same type of effect together if it’s at all possible with my powers will be much harder. I tried combining the plasma with the other two and had no luck.”

“I see. Can’t you try the inverse? Instead of combining the mechanisms, like imbuing a projectile with the freezing effect of the beam.”

“Hmm, I haven’t tested that, it might be possible, I’d need to do it with a normal projectile, the ones I create myself, another thing I wanted to test is if I can change these fancy projectiles as well, giving the more of a pierce or a bang.”

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t, but you’ll probably need to relearn how to change them. The way a bullet needs to be to scatter differs from how you would need to change a blob of contained fire to do the same.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. I can probably whip something in testing and then go tweaking it. If there’s a casing of energy that then explodes, it would be easier, as that can be more analogue to a bullet. The beam is way easier. I only need to change the shape of the muzzle.”

I copied the relevant parts from his metal’s matrix as we talked more about the possibilities, he could make any gun with any of those setting as parts of it, being able to shoot them at will, and of course the invert mod that he could put into it as an effect could really be a game changer or take someone by surprise.

On my side there weren’t any new interesting materials as all the guns were metal in the end, but a nice benefit of Victors power was that the matrix portions were all nicely separated and easily identifiable so I could just copy them over and let them stored.

There was gunpowder, plasma, the liquid fire, the freezing analogue to photons and a weird type of magnetic or electric field, maybe. I really didn’t understand these mechanics, but it would imbue any metal passing through it with an electric charge.

These will be much more interesting when I implement them in mutations. They are exactly what I need to make active attacks a reality. For now though, I could use the interpreting from Victor’s matrix to make my transformations have the effects of these materials.

“I’ll really need to make a list at this point,” I said to Victor’s confusion.