We're Here To Talk About Your Car's Extended Warranty...

[Samantha McManus]

"Alright Miriam, hold still."

Sam reaches down to try to yank the extraneous limb off herself.

[Narrator]

It's a bit of an odd sensation, ripping off your own limb. It felt as much like her own arm as, well, her actual arms. But it's a mental block more than anything else, and Sam is able to convince herself that yes, she should be able to do this. There's a bit of stretching and elongating as she pulled, as this was her first time, but she was, sure enough, able to pop off the arm with a bit of a wet *splorch*, leaving a small patch of exposed clay behind on her side.

[Will Stantn]

"Do you need a ha..." the girl said, and then caught herself with a snort.

"Do you need assistance?"

[Miriam Bell]

"What I need is apparently the world's hackiest surgery."

[Samantha McManus]

"Look, I'm working with what we have, here."

She reaches out and tries to press Miriam's wayward limb to her vacant shoulder.

[Will Stantn]

It's not too difficult to do, though Sam's hand sinks into Miriam's shoulder briefly as she's pressing limb to clay. That's an unusual experience, sending not-at-all unpleasant tingles down their non-existent spines for the very brief moment they interconnected.

Miriam would feel the arm (and, very briefly, Sam's fingers) slide back into her body consciousness as it was pressed into her clay, the slightly misshapen and dissimilar arm feeling natural enough. She could wriggle her fingers and bend her elbow and do all the other Important Arm Things.


"Now you're looking a little more like yourselves. Though you're sure you wouldn't prefer a wick?" Will asked, trying to stifle a giggle at her little private joke.

[Miriam Bell]

Just for a moment Miriam wonders how it would feel to just let her entire body fall into Sam but then the shared bodily awareness passes and she's left with only the restored arm, flexing her fingers experimentally and willing them to take on the details that make it hers.

"Thanks. That was... something else."

[Samantha McManus]

"They're still making the maps for this, aye?"

[Narrator]

Miriam was much, much worse than Sam at this, with every attempt to reshape the arm seeming to make it less accurate, if anything. With no experience working with shapeshifting -- and, perhaps more importantly, no true connection to the Spark -- it was a child playing with modeling clay at best.

[Miriam Bell]

"Great. Maybe I can slap somebody with this. How do you live like this?"

[Will Stantn]

"Same way you make it to Carnegie Hall. Practice, practice practice. Say, if we flatten that hand a little more, it'd make a great spatula. Get a grill, an apron, and we're cooking," the girl teased.

[Miriam Bell]

"Pretend I'm flipping you off." she says, holding her arm by the wrist in the vain hope that manually holding it in a way an arm could be held would make it easier to will it into obeying her again. Arms shouldn't be this difficult.

[Samantha McManus]

"Let's just be glad you're meeting the apparent minimum requirements to be a Miriam and not a Will, aye?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Not according to the faun." she grouches.

[Will Stantn]

Will gave a fond little sigh, and tugged Miriam over to sit down on the bench next to her. She scootched over to make more room on the bench -- it may be designed for two people, but snuggling up close would make room for three. Especially when sitting this close caused part of Miriam's side to smush up against part of Will's, clay pressing into clay.

"Right, shapeshifting 101, or how to crawl before you can walk. It's second nature to those of us with a bit more experience, so it's no wonder you're struggling. It's probably why our new fauny friend thinks Sam belongs here more than you do, right?" she smiled. "We may be....speaking a different dialect, but she at least knows some of the grammar."

"And don't sell yourself short. Why settle for a Miriam when you can be the best?" she added with a wink.

[Miriam Bell]

"So you do know I'm not one of you. Is he just fucking with me or is the Wyldclay still catching up?"

[Will Stantn]

"No, maybe, and yes, in that order," Will grinned.

"It hasn't been that long since the Mythologicals were added. They haven't experienced coming in and out; they're still trying to come to grips with the entire process. I'm sure the Wyldclay himself, the Paragon, gets it. But then, they couldn't really be their full selves until they were added to the mix, right? And that's still sort of propagating through. You have to give them a little time. And some of them may never get it, and will just stay in here forever and ever. Heck, there are bits from my side that have never come out, and probably won't unless you reach in and grab them. It's a complicated world in here; I wouldn't expect anyone to understand it right off the bat. I mean... you two don't."

"Is he fucking with you? Well, maybe. But Sam's different then you, and you know that. She's been..." she trailed off, biting her lower lip. "She's been. She's kin. Of a kind. I don't know; I'm not really the expert there."

"But of course you're one of us. You don't think we'd discriminate against flesh and blood, do you? Why, some of my best friends are flesh and blood," she grinned. "You're home, now. Both of you."

[Samantha McManus]

"Okay, so even the ones who know a little bit more are a bit... bent," she mutters.

[Miriam Bell]

"Well, that simultaneously answered a lot and nothing at all. Can you two at least show me how to use my arm properly?"

[Will Stanton]

"Mmm, bent, are we?" Will teased. "I think I'd prefer 'flexible.' Twisted, even, if you ask nicely enough."

"And if you don't like the answers, maybe you're just not asking the right questions," she added. "But talking can be overrated. Let's see if we can't teach an old dog a new trick or two."

Will pressed up closer to Miriam's side, further smushing her clay into Miriam's. She pressed her arm flush against Miriam's flappy paddle, sliding her arm into Miriam's. That same tingling she had when Sam had pressed her fingers into her shoulder was there, now running up and down the length of her arm.

"Alright. Try to focus on me, " Will said. "It's easy to just go 'picture an arm and make it happen', but that kind of ignores how complex an arm can be, right? You've got skin and bones and hairs and tendons and muscles and all sorts of veins and capillaries. Not to mention color and smell and weight and flange and everything else you can do. Trying to picture that all in one go is a recipe for disaster. I bet if you took a bunch of us and X-rayed us all, you wouldn't find a single arm that was 'right'."

"Especially for your first time, you want to start simple. Think basic shapes, basic functions. Don't try to be perfect. Just think about what you need."

Miriam's arm started reshaping itself. No, that's not quite right -- Will was reshaping it. No, again, that's not quite right -- Will/Miriam were reshaping it. Because right now, it wasn't her arm -- it was theirs. Will was taking it slow, the arm gradually losing it's definition until it was basically just a grey stick, and then slowly started bringing it up again. First a bend where the elbow would be, then a ball where the hands were, very slowly shaping through things as if to demonstrate the basics. One protrusion popped out of the end of the ball -- the middle finger Miriam had asked for, flipping Will off.

"Alright, we're adding detail now. Just relax, and follow my lead. We don't need to get everything right; just imagine what's important..."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam might be a fairly disciplined person (in matters related to her telepathy and structured thinking anyway) but this was annoying and frustrating. A mental picture of the target should be plenty but apparently this is some kind of intricate sequence of molding things.

"As much as I'm in favor of perfecting my looks down to the littlest details, this feels like teaching color theory to a blind person. As in, what's the point."

[Will Stantn]

"Maybe I'd just like you to know me better. Or maybe this is just me flirting. Or maybe I want you to be impressed at just how good I am at doing this."

"Or maybe you're wrong. Maybe you won't just pop out of the cauldron like everything's fine, back in your own flesh and blood. Maybe the faun is right, and you're part of this now, forever and ever and ever. And maybe you always have been, from the very start."

Will whipped her/Miriam's/their arm dramatically up and down, solidifying it into a perfect copy of Miriam's normal arm with a sudden *crack*. It wasn't painful, but it was sudden, the tingling sensations intensifying into a quite strong pins-and-needles effect that slowly wore off, rather than the more pleasant slow fuzz it had been before. And then, with a bit of a wet schlopring sound, Will pulled her arm free from Miriam's, once again leaving the telepath driving solo.

"Who knows?" she said, the smile returning. "Not me, at the very least. You need someone brighter than I am. I'm sure the faun will get you where you're supposed to go."

[Miriam Bell]

"Whoa, that's... Thanks." she says, rubbing her arm at the fading sensations. "Just a bit much going on right now and being you isn't so much the issue as is the idea of not being me. The idea of being a clay-copy is... existentially terrifying in a way I'm not sure I can properly convey."

[Samantha McManus]

"If you think about it, either of us could just project ourselves into clay, and the result wouldn't necessarily be all that distinguishable to anyone here."

[Will Stantn]

"And Sam, you're you whether you're dressed up like a regular college student or storming through battle covered in blood, or looking down on us as a flock of ravens. The body is just a tool for the mind, right? Feathers or hair, it's all the same where it counts."

"You're worried that somewhere out there, there's a real Miriam, waiting to reach in here and pluck you out, right?"

[Miriam Bell]

"If you put it like that it sounds stupid. Just... If I can think I'm the real Miriam and not be then what does that mean for the real me. Be that in here or out there. And not being able to even muster enough self-image to produce an arm just drives that home."

[Will Stantn]

"Well, you're used to shaping an astral form. This is the real world. This is actual physical stuff, and you're just a little baby trying to figure it out. You've gotta give it at least a little time and practice. Whether you're a meatsack or a clay blob, you're still Miriam, after all."

[Miriam Bell]

"Didn't realize this took physical skill and not just... visualizing a form." she admits.

[Will Stantn]

"I do make it look easy, don't I?" Will smirked. "One percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration."

She stretched out a little in her seat. "I understand it's a little different for other shifters. But the physicality of it is something of the point, for those made of the clay. There's a reason I'm so...amenable to being molded by outside forces, from a taffy puller to the British Mint. It's taking the load off of the physicality, making it that much easier. Try doing that to, say, Sam or Mystique, and you're likely to just get punched in the face.

But it becomes second nature after a while, just like walking or riding a bike. I wasn't this good in my first go 'round at Xaviers. When I was exhausted and physically beat, it was all I could do to look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Now, for me, I'm happy and living my best life here as a woman, so I just kind of slide into the form and relax. For the most part.. But I'm just part of the Clay, and our interests are multifaceted.

The new mythologicals are eager to get out and about, so I'd keep an eye on them. Pranksters and tricksters and brats, for the most part. And more likely to be active then our lot, which has a lot of inanimate objects. You won't find a Wyldclay couch unless it is planning on gobbling you up when you least suspect it. You're more likely to see our orc friend bashing heads," she said, indicating the large green-skinned lady still staring out the window. "Which I suppose is interesting in it's own right, even if it's not ~my~ thing.

"I'm interested to see what adding our new paragon here will do," she said, nodding at Sam -- apparently, this Will also thought that Sam and Miriam belonged as part of the clay, rather than being visitors.

[Samantha McManus]

"I think you'll find that you've already got a Sam around here somewhere, though her garden might not get much traffic."

[Will Stantn]

"It's possible," Will nodded. "There's a lot of space here. But then again, I don't think I've seen a Sam lining up to come out of the cauldron, or someone reaching in to pull one out, have you?

And I'm pretty sure, right now, that if we took on Sam's shape, we'd just be acting -- maybe taking their place in a class they don't want to go to or something. We wouldn't really be Sam."

[Miriam Bell]

"'Right now' makes it sound like you could just be Sam."

[Will Stantn]

"Well, when Sam joins Will and the Wyldclay and gets thoroughly mixed in, then yes we will.

You must be one of the missing parts," she said, turning to Sam. "We can feel it in you. You have a connection to our Spark. You must be part of us."

[Samantha McManus]

"I've left my handprints on you before. I'm not the only Morrigan who has."

[Will Stantn]

"You're thinking in here," Will said, tapping the side of her head. "We're not in my head now, though. We're in the clay. Surrounding us, flowing between us, joining us together. The only thing separating you from the 'air' around you is your own sense of self."

"When you made the mirror -- and now, erm, the cauldron -- you connected me to something. There was too much of me to exist in once space, so you created a new space. And this is it!" she said, gesturing out the window. "It's remarkable, and it's exciting, and it's new, and it's vast. So vast. And it's connected to so many things. The cauldron is just one exit -- the safest one, the one that's been made solid and right. But there are pathways out there; dangerous and rickety. To other lands and other places, where Wyldclays roam. You connected us to something larger than ourselves. And now you're in here, too."

"You were always welcome, whether you plan to stay or not," she added, pursing her lips a little. "But the hall of paragons is still so empty. And you're so important to us, Sam, and your spark is...it surely is close enough. It makes almost too much sense that you should be here, yes?"

[Samantha McManus]

"I'm here now because you lot tried to eat Miriam, point of order."

[Will Stantn]

"Well, maybe we were a bit peckish after the Wyldclay. And surely, you can't blame us for craving a little Miriam with some Sam on the side? Two of our favorites tastes that go so well together," Will giggled.

The bus had slowed down, entering a more built-up area. This appeared to be something akin to the center of this area, if the fact that other main roads seemed to be converging on this part of the city meant anything. Here, the buildings were even more mix-and-match than before; buildings made up of multiple parts or floors, stitched together -- distinct parts, somehow flowing smoothly into one another.

One thing that wasn't a hodgepodge was was the large, municipal-looking building ahead. It was rung with a line of torches on top -- three of which were lit, the vast multitude of which were not. Wings of the building stretched off to either side, with the eastern wing having a line of people waiting to get in, and the western one seemingly unused at the moment? Or at least, less busy.

[Miriam Bell]

"As housewarming parties go, it's a bit unconventional." Miriam notes as she looks out the window at the huge building they're pulling up to. "I suppose the torches are for which paragons are present?"

[Will Stantn]

"Yes. The unlit torches are just kind of an estimate, we're finding new holes all the time. Like a fine Swiss cheese."

[Samantha McManus]

"So you've been conscious of missing bits for awhile?"