Xaviers!

Will had to stop and think about it, like cogs whirring up slowly -- not as quickly as he would have normally answered, at any rate.

"Very, though there are limits to what I can do myself. Not quite a hair's width, but thin enough for most purposes. Should I hide somewhere?"

"No. I was thinking you could help me imitate somebody."

"Oh, well, I can do as thin as a person no problem," Will said, with a half-confused smile. "There's really a limited range people can fit into."

"While that might work I'd be concerned about your ability to bluff your way through what this will entail. Especially since I'll probably have to adjust based on what I can pick up." she says, tapping the side of her head.

"So, you were thinking...an identifying mark? Did you need a tattoo or something? That's possible, though if you really want it to pass inspection, we'll need to do more than just lay me down on top of your skin."

"No. More... all encompassing. Can you give me a new face?"

Will frowned. "Well, no," he said, poking at Miriam's face. "You're not a shapeshifter.

...You're not a shapeshifter, right?"

"No, but you are. I'm talking about a mask, thin enough to not be suspicious but real enough to be convincing. Can you do that?"

"Oh! Yes!


...But no. That's not how you identify people, Mnemoysne. Unless you're going for an uncanny valley effect. People would still figure out you're not the right person right away," Will nodded, after a moment's thought.

"How so?"

"I mean, hold on a sec," he said, closing his eyes and focusing.

His face shifted, facial features moving around and adjusting to match Miriam's, or at least come very close. Like looking into a mirror...

...except the body, obviously, was wrong. And, more to the point, the connection between face and the rest of the body wasn't quite right, either. The skin tone didn't match. The shape of the chin didn't really match the neck it was sitting on. The hairline was awkward, the ears not fitting right with the hairstyle.

"Just a mask won't do the trick. And we're fairly alike in frame, too. What if you weighed 300 pounds? Or were six inches shorter than I was? With 'just' a mask, you wouldn't pass for a second."

"You're right, it throws the proportions off... Come here, I want you to wrap yourself around my hand and arm, as thin as you can manage. I need to feel how cumbersome that is."

"Yes, Mnemoysne."

He leaned in, losing his human proportions quickly as he fell towards Miriam's arm.

Her hand plunged into the clay, which reached under her shirt and up towards her shoulder, stopping just short of the actual joint as it thinned out and spread across her arm. It sank into the nooks and crannies, aligning itself with the crook of her elbow, the ridges on her knuckles, even around and underneath her fingernails. It was a very precise, very close fit, to the point where she could see her own veins slightly pushing the clay upwards and out.

At first, it was a cold and wet sensation, like plunging her hand into muck, but that quickly evaporated as the clay re-formed itself into, well...

Skin. Warm, human skin, on the outside. Poking at it would feel just like poking at flesh -- the sensation muted somewhat, but still tangible through the WillArm, so it wasn't blocking out all the tactile sensation. It didn't feel like skin on the inside, however; it was more...artificial than that. Like...neoprene rubber, perhaps. That wasn't quite right, either, but it was closer. It was tight, for certain, but it wasn't cutting off circulation or restricting her movement, as a few test flexes would make clear. It was also a bit warm, perhaps -- not uncomfortably so, but it was pretty airtight.

As she watched and flexed, the 'arm' shifted. It started as a pretty fairly typical feminine arm, than bulged out to show impressive musculature. It cycled again into an old, wrinkly, hairy arm, before ending up smooth with a complicated (and detailed, and rather specific, with images that looked like XU but...not the one she was familiar with...) tattoo sleeve, going up her arm and just short of the shoulder, where the arm 'stopped'.

Miriam lifts her arm, turning it back and forth to look at it as it changes. It feels almost pleasantly warm, her own arm unnaturally cold for a person. She flexes her fingers to test the range of movements and how it feels. She could see how it might get uncomfortable for a regular person, but she doesn't really sweat anymore. It looks real enough to the point that it's very easy to imagine this being her arm, enough so that the tattoo of Sam among the mostly unknown people on it makes her... uncomfortable.

"Change that. The tattoo." she says curtly. "I want you to try mimicking a mental image of mine." she goes on, focusing on Alessia and the way she looked, the color of her skin, her hands and fingers. She hadn't actually spend that much time with her, but what little time they'd had had been rather close. Now the memories just make her angry and for a moment she considers abandoning this idea at the thought of making herself look like her, even just for a while. But it'd be worth it in the long run. She just has to stomach it for a while. She tries to focus on the physical details to distract herself from all the emotional baggage and send her mental impressions of Alessia's body to Will.

The tattoo vanished essentially immediately, leaving bare flesh. That was easy.

Changing to look like Alessia took a bit longer, as it fluctuated back and forth. It was sort of a data-processing issue -- the way Miriam constructed a mental picture of Alessia was not, necessarily, the same way Will constructed a physical shift. It ended up being a matter of honing in on the details, tweaking and twisting and extrapolating (and sometimes, frankly, guessing) details until it ended up as a reasonable facsimile, going up her arm.

"Close enough. Can you spread over to the other arm and copy this one?"

Of course... Will thought back, slightly dubiously.

The cold feeling returned as the clay spread over her shoulder blades and the top of her torso, stretching around and wrapping itself down her other arm. The gray clay quickly shifted itself into an exact mirror image of the right arm, identical in every way.

"Hmm..." she wonders, holding up both hands next to each other. "No, this looks strange. Maybe not an exact copy. Add some variance between the two."

The arm wrinkled and changed -- somewhat arbitrarily, because when was the last time Miriam stared intently at Alessia's left arm?

It certainly looked more natural, however -- no one is perfectly symmetrical after all. A few test flexes and movements proved that it looked pretty accurate to Alyessia -- the clay was thicker in some spots, and tightly restrictive in others to more naturally match Alessia's rough shape.

"Incredible work. Hang on, I might need a mirror for the rest..."