Xaviers!

"Wait... you talk to machines, right? Maybe it's going through this one somehow." she says knocking on the container. "And from it into Will?"

"But I was just touching the glove when I changed the type of glove, not the container. I mean, I suppose it's possible, it wouldn't be the first time I'd accidentally communicated with a machine before, but it's not really a signal as I know signals. Can't even see whatever this is."

"Well it's just weird cause it worked for you once and then it didn't."

"It worked for her twice," Cam pointed out. "From clay to latex gloves, and from latex gloves to dishwashing gloves."

"Okay, fine, twice, but that just makes it weirder that it didn't work a third time. Something must have been different."

Tosh rubbed his forehead as if he had a mild headache.

"Look. As fascinating as I agree this is, Will isn't our research subject and the clock is ticking. With Sam's help we can maybe have something to show by the time the authorities get here."

He texted Sam before Cam could object.

Made progress. Need you in lab.

I'll be right there.

She must not have been far away, because soon there's determined footsteps sounding in the hallway and getting closer fast.

Sam could feel the tension in the room. Tosh angry at Cam, Natalie pondering, Nailah puzzled, Cam bored.

Four minds. No more, no less.

Meanwhile Nailah seems to be intent on staring at the gloves, trying a variety of things to see if she can make something happen. Sword. Grappling hook. Mask. "This is so dumb. Why's it just gloves? Wait... Boxing gloves?" she half asks the dishwashing gloves.

That last one, finally, worked! The yellow, neoprene gloves ballooned out into bright red, padded punching boxing gloves -- sized properly for Nailah's hands, at that.

And that's about when Sam storms in, still wearing her uniform, with feathers poking from her shoulders and woven into her hair.

She looks to the group pondering the boxing gloves.

"...that's progress?"

"Hey, we paid dearly for these boxing gloves." Nailah points out.

"The clay we salvaged from the raid transformed into this, after several preceding stages; do I know you from somewhere?" Cam asked.

"Oh god, we must be desperate if we're working with Cam bloody Becket..."

"I mean honestly," she says to Cam, "weren't you trying to make the sprinkler system at Muir dispense chocolate milkshakes when last I saw you?"

"That's not very safe, but it is delicious."

Samantha McManus wrote:"Oh god, we must be desperate if we're working with Cam bloody Becket..."

"I mean honestly," she says to Cam, "weren't you trying to make the sprinkler system at Muir dispense chocolate milkshakes when last I saw you?"

"It would have worked, too, if I hadn't encountered unexpected difficulties with the induction coils underneath the lawn.

Now, I forget, were you the shouty one, or the one who was always hiding in the corner whenever anything interesting went down?"

"Wait... you were..." Tosh said to Cam, "...nevermind Things make way more sense now."

"Anyway. Do you sense anything Sam? We know his powers work... being stuck on gloves notwithstanding... but he certainly isn't conscious."

Sam could sense only four minds (well, five, including herself). Just like in Cerebro, or in the mint, she couldn't find Will.

"I still can't feel him. Sometimes it's really hard when he gets deep into being an object."

"You've had difficulty 'sensing'", and here Cam did air quotes, "him before?"

"There have been times when he just... gets into a groove. Especially when someone's wearing him."

"Creepy, but useful information," Cam mused, going back over to the notes Tosh and ASHLIE took on Will.

"But why gloves specifically? Was that the last object he turned into?"

Bro? Two words. Hamburger Helper.
That's... so stupid it might work.

"Hold on. I have a seriously dumb idea." Tosh looked to the gloves and said, "Hey Will. That Hamburger Helper talking glove thing?"

It shifted again!

...To, essentially, a pair of glove versions of the Hamburger Helper mascot, complete with printed-on smile. No actual talking involved.

"So he's stuck on 'Gloves'? Why? Cause it's the first thing someone asked him to be?"

"Damn. For a second there I thought that was actually going to work."

"No. I meant before Finn got him."

"Even if we knew that, that doesn't necessarily mean anything," Cam pointed out. "If he was fighting someone, he presumably was using his power there, right? At least, you'd assume so.

And then he was rendered into the tallow, which might count -- if he wasn't quote-unquote using his powers then, he'd be DOA, right?"

"Okay then... maybe the last pleasant thing? We can't discount the possibility of a psychological factor being at play."

"Perhaps there's something animate or a computer he feels safe being?" he asked Sam.

"How are gloves particularly pleasant? Besides, he only did it when Natalie wanted him to. And now he's stuck on that cause... I dunno. Maybe he thinks we still need gloves?"

"He likes... being useful, sometimes."

"I hate to butt in to this fascinating conversation about his mental state or lackthereof, but we haven't even established that he's conscious at this point. Assuming he's still alive, this might be some sort of...automatic response. Like a reflex action of some sort.

Mind you, how he reacted to someone's thoughts remain unclear, though I have theories," he began, before looking at everyone else staring at him. "...theories that can wait for a more appropriate time."

"Okay let's back up. Before he gloved up, he was the wrong color. Perhaps that's a clue to something."

He started examining the filtration tubes for residual clay.

There were some small trace elements of clay remaining -- just a tiny bit. Tosh's dimensional scanner had done a very good job of separating the clay from the slush, and only some scraps left behind by friction remained.

"There's a goop girl in the dorms who changes color every time she eats something colored. It's probably just something like that." she says, pulling on the stupidly large gloves and posing dramatically with her hands on her hips. With the cartoonishly large gloves she looks rather ridiculous.

"Exactly," he said, collecting a sample and taking it to a microscope to compare to the sample of Will on file.

The clay was definitely contaminated. It didn't seem to have any traces of any of the printing materials -- Tosh's process had seen fit to remove anything mundane like that. It also didn't appear to have any of the herbs inside, as the straining process had removed all but the faintest trace amounts of that nonsense.

What didn't seem to be removed, however, were the two mysterious chemicals from Setec Astronomy. They seemed to have bonded with Will on an atomic level -- no wonder they were difficult to pull apart!

"Shit. Shit shit shit," he cursed worriedly before stepping back from the superscience microscope and clearly avoiding looking at Sam as he said, "Some of the chemical ingredients have... bonded to his atomic structure."

"What does that mean?" Nailah asks, sounding worried mainly because Tosh does.

"It means that we're not going to be separating it out of him anytime soon, so I hope candy-apple red is in this time of year."

"He can change color. I'm guessing it's worse than that?"