My goal with this mutation will be to have a member I can shift at will that transforms at my command to have the exact power I need at any given moment, an active version for my purely reactive power.

It will be important for it to have alternative sources of energy, the ideal would be if it had some sort of battery or stockpiling and I could command it to get energy from my body and from electricity and the sunlight, slowly increasing its stockpile of energy so I could use it without expending my energy.

Dan’s power not only absorbed the sunlight but used that energy and the energy from his own body to grow slowly, I can combine that with LED’s power, which has a sort of battery and construct it in a way that accepts energy from all the sources I have access to.

I intend to combine the way Dan’s powers are created with the central matrix telling the biological part of the body how to grow combined with Victor’s power and how the two pieces of matrix are intrinsically linked making the constructed matrix more responsive to my commands.

I also eventually intended to make something that is highly versatile, something that I could mutate the matrix directly to change the abilities of the appendage, and I’d need lots of inspirations from Victor’s malleable metal for that.

I imagined the final product as tentacles that I could then manipulate at my will, changing their matrix would then change the tentacles in the real world, I can easily make them act as anything I copy from Victor’s powers and I’d probably be able to extend my armors and transformations to them as they’d be part of my body.

Okay, that’s looking good. How far I’ve come huh, this is a huge step forward.

I set to meditate again, focusing deeply into the tiniest bits of my matrix, the most profound details, Dans powers grew in his palms and earlobes, I could just use the same thing and have mine grow from there.

But why do that if I could be more functional, if they’re going to be like tentacles although I should train to make much more diverse shapes with them in the future, then they coming from my back would be probably a better placement? They would get in the way of my hands, at least.

I searched where I knew all my skin grew from and modified my matrix to create tiny nudges of armored skin in places I thought would be close to where I wanted to put the mutation.

I chose in the middle of my back, a mix between a tail and a tentacle between my scapulas. In there, it would give me some range and more options of mobilities, and being just one would be quicker to create.

After searching for a while, creating the little pieces of armored skin around my body, triangulating the place that corresponded to the middle of my back, I found it.

Now to create the power itself, using my utmost focus and starting from the smallest pieces, just like I learned from Dan’s power, creating in matrix the command for that place to grow, creating some flesh that directly corresponded to that piece of matrix.

The flesh would need to be carefully told which types of cells it needed to have and in what orders, I wanted to create something similar to a tail, but much more powerful with muscles to give it range of motion in all directions, if the overall design didn’t get too complex, I might even try to add a surprise at the tip of the tail.

For the matrix that would be created in conjunction with it, it would have all the abilities I wanted the new member to have; accumulating energy from various sources, interpreting the various materials, and plenty of flexibility for me to change what powers I could use quickly.

So I could use it to create the serum or to send buffs using the energy it had accumulated.

With the plan made I spent all the free time where I wasn’t training and working out with the others, doing my portion of the chores once a week in the base, or making serums we’d been using to train, designing how the power would look and function.

Frist I had to figure out how to make the initial site, the focus point in my matrix that contained the biologically tied matrix and sent the energy for it to grow, the rest intended to be supplied by the own powers capacity to store energy but some of it needed to be given up front.

Stolen story; please report.

Something that was interesting and mostly why this was working was that my matrix was focused on creating changes to my body. My powers didn’t resist these guided changes, although when I had poor results, they wouldn’t become permanent.

But there were no signs of my core being inefficient in using its energy for these modifications, that could be because powers were intrinsically separated and a mutation power always could function together with a nonmutative one, or that the transformation aspect of the flesh was close enough to the initial purpose of my matrix that it happily supplied the energy.

Whatever was the case, I eventually finished this part, creating a new area in my matrix, like scribbles beside an artful masterpiece.

My simple lines lay there. Distinctive? Yes, of course. But similar enough that you could tell they were written in the same alphabet.

Next was creating a miniature version of what I wanted, and I quickly formed a shaky appendage, extending from the middle of my back. But from the get go, a lot of problems became apparent.

I touched the new appendage. It was tiny, about two or three centimeters for now, and it was already a disaster. Made of only the armored skin, it was tactless, had no connection to my nervous central system. There were no bones or ligaments or muscles this sure as hell would not move.

And then the cells at the tip were probably already dying, as there were no veins or ways for the cells to get nutrients that far out of my circulatory system. All problems I would need to fix before having something functional.

I sighed, well we gotta start somewhere. What I needed for this was a blueprint. For as much as I knew about biology, it wasn’t nearly enough to teach a metaphysical mosaic of fractals how to build a limb.

So I searched in my matrix for entire sections relating to members. My matrix had reconstructed my whole body multiple times, so I thought it proper that it kept some kind of blueprint around.

Although its rebuilding could have to do to with resetting me to a previous state or using my DNA as the blueprint, it even could use something like my memories or my soul for all I knew.

But the likeliest thing going from how everything else worked was for it to have a perfect copy of how my body was constructed here in my matrix, just so that it could then change it with the diverse temporary mutations that I could gain.

And sure enough, I only had to change my perspective, as even distance didn’t work like reality in this mental space. The fractals had meanings inside meanings, so seeing them at different distances granted them differed connotations, revealing details about what they encompassed.

Going away from the area I was I could see a whole portion of my matrix that meant my body, and I focused quickly in different parts of it, seeing that as I approached at different distances and different angles, I could access parts that dealt with different things.

I found a part I recognized that dealt with the material it made my cells of; it was where I had put Rebeca’s powers, and also blueprints for my bones, muscles, and every organ. Every type of cell was described here.

Rebeca’s powers could function on their own to heal the cells transforming in the different tissues that needed healing, but my power having the blueprint it could directly tell them to grow in any way it wanted, which was how it healed me so quickly.

It changed the blueprint as needed for the type of damage inflicted and shoved that into existence, healing me instantly.

In this sea of information, I eventually found what I was searching for: a blueprint for an arm. I was going to use this to test and then as a base for further modifications if it worked out.

I took a breath, keeping my excitement in check and using my changed version of David’s power to copy this area of the matrix, taking the ‘arm’ with me I went back to the area of my first experiment, wiping away my failure I copied the arm blueprint in its place, making sure that it still contained instructions to grow from the right area.

All good then. I opened my eyes, recoiling at the harsh lights. Blinking away the pain I got up, I could feel in my back the wiggling of muscles and bones as my matrix put into reality what I had added into it.

Reaching my hands to touch the new appendage was weird, even more so because I could feel it. It connected to my brain and my nervous system and I could feel through it, and what I could tell from the start was, besides the strangeness of the additional source of feeling, a clear disconcert from it.

It wasn’t sitting right on my back, not in how it connected and not in how it flopped over. I tried moving it, but it just twitched, being wholly stubborn about moving at all.

It was like trying to move only my pinky toe, or learn to move your ears a complete lack of muscle memory.

Something that I would need to deal with regardless, I imagined, when creating the finished version, even though with the intended design being more closely related to a tentacle than an arm might help with the range of motion

Adding a connection to my mind like the one Victor had with his matrix was also something that might help.

I twitched the limb with more and more force, just trying to move it at all, and it jerked and struggled in the confines of my t-shirt, I gave it a final pull putting all my strength into it and it finally came free, snapping the shirt as it stretched fully from my back.

I curved forward in the effort; the hand stretching as if to grab on air or as if something was trying to claw its way out of my body.

“Aahh,” I hear the shrill scream, cutting my concentration. I turn in its direction, seeing a shocked still Swordjuice in the door to the marble room.