Joyful, and decidedly feminine, laughter from two harmonizing sources rang through the clearing. My bodies danced, and I felt the joy of movement as, for once, it was not immediately and aggressively pared down by ever present melancholy. Why was I celebrating? It worked! I'd been able to sculpt my brains and bodies exactly how I wanted!

After fixing the chemical imbalances that caused my depression, and undoing my dependency on my medications, I'd found that there were quite a number of other improvements I could make to my brain to make my life better. Naturally, after having already made some changes to the area, I couldn't help but make a few more!

I was now able to raise and lower the maximum heights my emotions could reach. Of course, it wasn't really like dialing the volume of an amplifier up or down, but the metaphor seemed to fit well enough. With my depression dealt with, I didn't feel any need to dial up the maximums for any emotions, but the ones I most associated with my depression I dialed down to minimum levels. I'd experienced quite enough of them, thank you very much.

I had also enhanced the speed of my thoughts and reactions, and extended the duration of the neuroplasticity enhancement I'd received by a good margin. My memory, which I'd known to be spotty at the best of times, also got a tuneup, though I hadn't foreseen it making some of my memories notably cloudier, while others became clearer by far, with no discernable rhyme or reason. For all I knew, some memories might be lost forever, though I had the feeling that I'd retained the most important ones.

Outside my brains, I'd also sculpted and changed my bodies. I'd gone from a slightly overweight, 5'9" woman to a rather slender one more than half a foot shorter and with a slightly smaller bosom to fit my new frame. Naturally, I'd applied the same changes to both of my bodies equally. I put a good deal of effort into making my bodies look like identical twins from the outside, if particularly attractive ones. After getting the shape right and clearing up all the scars and whatnot, I'd done away with the vast majority of my freckles, leaving my skin lovely and pale. I'd withdrawn every visible hair on my body save my eyelashes and (most of) my eyebrows, before growing a new head of hair, just as long and curly and coppery as it had been before, but so very glossy from relative youth and lack of damage. My teeth I whitened a little, before a whim saw me lengthening and sharpening my eyeteeth a tad. My face's shape, of course, I made more feminine, and my eyes slightly larger. My vision became better than 20/20, and the central heterochromia I was born with, brown surrounded by gray, became the more well-known version; specifically, my left eyes became the lightest, iciest blue I could make, while my right eyes, I made the darkest blue a human could naturally possess.

My insides, naturally, differed far more from baseline human anatomy than the outsides. My musculoskeletal systems looked normal, my bodies looking slightly muscular but hardly ripped, but on the inside, it was very, very much denser, stronger, and more durable than normal. Despite shrinking my bodies to the point where they looked like they should weigh but half what they had before, I hadn't discarded a single milligram of mass from either.

Almost the entirety of the contents of my abdominal cavities had been cannibalized, save for a fist-sized cluster of highly efficient replacement organs near the top of each, and a brand new, but completely baseline, womb. The rest of the space I filled with compressed flesh to use in transformations. I technically didn't need the uteri, especially since their menstrual cycles had been set on hold for the foreseeable future. but since my power kept me intimately acquainted with my insides, being able to feel them there simply made me feel that much better. I wasn't trying to make my bodies perfectly optimized for combat, and I deserved to feel nice and have a good time.

My thoracic cavities and the organs they contained seemed more normal, though I'd made my hearts and lungs more efficient because why not? Speaking of my hearts, the circulatory systems of my smaller bodies each contained more blood than my larger, baseline bodies had possessed. No real reason for that – I wanted to be able to bleed a lot and have fun freaking people out. My blood wasn't my bodies' primary means of transporting oxygen, nutrients, and waste products anymore, so I could afford to bleed a lot. Oh, and while I'd been messing around with blood, I'd gone back to my brain to mess around with my sense of pain. Pain was important, and knowing what bits of me might be damaged was too valuable to discard. The sensation of pain, though, I altered, changing it from something that felt bad to something that felt good. I could easily fix any injuries I might receive, so there wasn't much downside there. Also, more opportunities to have fun freaking people out!

For a moment, I wondered if I was even still human, before I forcefully discarded the thought. I was not my body, no matter what form it took. And even if I was forced to be a monster, if being one would allow me to live instead of merely drifting through life, I would welcome it with open arms. I was me, no matter what form I took.

Once I was done rearranging my insides and I'd made sure to memorize every aspect of my new forms, my focus turned toward leaving the clearing. My bare feet posed a problem, but I grew two pairs of black leather knee-high boots, which I summarily killed and separated from myself. Using my outer power, I fashioned some seamless socks from the excess fabric generated by tailoring my dresses to my bodies' new dimensions and put them on, followed by the new boots.

Speaking of my outer power... well. The tattoo had called it "a form of" solid matter manipulation, and the form it took was amazing. It was a field that could only exist in solid, non-living matter, extending through touch. Each of my bodies had its own field, but rather than overlapping, they pooled together if they met. The field would expand to its maximum volume in a hemisphere in the ground below me. I could sense the physical makeup of the matter within it, and will the relevant matter to flow into different shapes, while remaining fully solid. For example, I could tell that the stone in my pendant was colored quartz rather than actual emerald, which wasn't exactly a surprise. It was cheap, but looked pretty, which was what had mattered to me.

In addition, I could sense vibrations traveling through the material within my field. The maximum volume I could affect seemed, quite frankly, pretty huge, though given the lack of units of measurement being provided I couldn't say precisely how large it was. Something to check later.

Taking my various powers all together, and the fact that I really had wanted something of the sort in idle speculations before… all this, really drove home the fact that I had not triggered in anything approaching the traditional way. A sobering thought, truth be told, and one that calmed my moment of glee and triumph.

But unalterable circumstances aside, I needed to find my way to Brockton Bay… or, did I truly need to? Technically not, I suppose. I could, in theory, go anywhere. But I was, apparently, somewhat close to the Bay, and I knew of more of its dangers than I did any other city on Bet. That, in turn, made me think of Taylor Hebert, and how me going to BB might disrupt her path to becoming Khepri, defeating Scion, and saving these Earths from destruction. Assuming this was canon Worm, of course.

Urgh. Now that I thought about it, doing anything other than staying in this clearing and never leaving ran the risk of butterflying these worlds into unstopped destruction, but for one, I couldn't be sure that not leaving wouldn't mess with things, and for another, it wouldn't be living. At the moment, to be perfectly honest, I valued getting to live for a time over possibly not fucking over the worlds.

You know what? Fuck it. I'm heading to Brockton Bay. I can always leave later if need be. Now, which way should I head?

I started to look around for a good tree to climb for a decent view, when I realized that I could just make my own! With… with, uh… that one Futurama reference. Yeah.

Anyway, as it turned out, there was a lot of stone not all that far under the soil in the clearing, and it didn't take much to start gathering it onto a column that slowly rose beneath one of my bodies. Soil was shifted aside to make way for the flat, meter-wide top to emerge and lift my body up towards the canopy above. Flesh flowed through my rising form to emerge as a trio of long, muscular, blade-tipped tentacles from the palm of each hand, lashing out to sever branches before I reached them, collecting what fell for consumption. After I broke through the canopy and took care of the severed branches, I withdrew the tentacles and returned to my new normal form in full.

I built the column up until it towered a few meters above even the tallest of the nearby trees. From my high perch, I spotted evidence of civilization to the south-east of me, judging from the early evening sun. However, less than half as far from me, I caught sight of a road that, one way or another, could lead me to my destination.

Descent was as simple as ascent had been, naturally. On an amused whim, I had the center of the column take me down, decorating the interior of the resulting tube with rifling, as if it were the barrel of a gun. Opening a door at the bottom to allow my body to exit and then sealing it up behind her was simplicity itself. I looked up at the column, then frowned at how plain it was from the outside. With a few minutes of attention, it had the appearance of being cradled in the arms of an enormous octopus, and I felt pleased at the accomplishment. With all that done, I turned in the direction the underground stone arrow pointing towards the road dictated, and, as my bodies held one another's hands to equalize biomass, I set off.

After a minute of walking, I frowned. If I didn't want to instantly give away my parahuman nature, I'd have to act like my bodies were separate people from one another. That meant they needed individual names. But what names to choose…

… Tabitha. I had an original Worm character named Tabitha Blair, and while her power to manifest gravity-defying crystals of explosive energy wasn't like anything at my disposal, her name would do nicely. And her sister would be… Acacia.

I had Tabitha adopt a wider smile than the one Acacia bore, and I swapped Acacia's eyes so hers were dark blue on the left and light on the right.

Yes, this would do nicely.

.o.o.o.

It took about half an hour of leisurely walking to reach the road, with Tabitha humming cheerfully and holding Acacia's hand the whole way there. As it turned out, making a straight ridge in the stone beneath the soil really helped me keep my directions straight when there wasn't a path to follow.

I heard and felt the road long before I saw it, the sound of the occasional car making it through the trees, and then the sensation of my field permeating pavement not long after. With the road to guide me, I turned to follow it while remaining in the trees, not wanting to risk hitching a ride.

A mere handful of steps later I stopped as the silliness of my concerns filtered through my mind. I had at my disposal some pretty strong powers, so I had nothing to fear from whatever potential creep might try to victimize me. In fact, it might be good if I hitchhiked, since if I encountered a predator I could deal with them easily.

My decision made, I moved out to walk alongside the road, with Tabitha doing the thumb thing whenever a car approached. And a mere eight vehicles and ten minutes later, one deigned to pull over to the shoulder along side the two of me, and I approached, easy smiles on my faces. Time to secure a ride, one way or another.