I figured that Bobby hadn't really missed anything that he could pick up on as I went along, so I decided to continue on with my display. It was annoying, because he had definitely disrupted my thought process, and so I had to try to get my mind on the same track it was before. Lance and Steph had him come over and stand with them, and I tried to continue my presentation.

"I think my power gives me a running tally of everything that's in my Grab-Bag." I started. "Oh! I can make clothes or shoes appear on my body, but if I shape them into a knot or something it doesn't start off very tight, I have to tighten it by hand." With this, I made a pair of winter gloves appear on my hands and a checkered scarf around my neck.

And, um..." I stalled out. I couldn't really think of anything more. "I guess that's about it." I finished lamely.

"Cool, I think there's some good stuff here." Lanceton said. Then, looking to his other teammates, our other teammates, he asked, "Anyone have any questions before we get into the brainstorming session?"

Bobmancer (Oh how I wanted to call him Rayby) awkwardly raised his hand. "Uh, yeah. Hey Lily, have you ever tried seeing if you can count stuff with your power? Like if you absorbed a handful of sand, would you be able to tell how many there were? I just ask because you said you got a mental list of what you absorbed, and it gave me the idea."

As I shook my head, Lanceton gave him a look. "That sounds an awful lot like you were just wanting to get a jump on the brainstorming and decided to phrase it as a question." Looking to Grace, he said, "I don't have any questions before we move to that. Do you, Steph?"

Looking at me like she was solving a riddle, Steph answered Lance's question. "Well...if you don't mind Lily, could you walk us through your fight with Voltaic?" Before I could respond, she hurriedly continued. "I just ask because it might give us more information."

I shrugged. It wasn't really much of a fight and I didn't particularly care to go over it again, but I couldn't see the harm in it.

[][][][][]

"Three hundred sixteen million forty-one thousand eight hundred eighty-nine." They all stared at me. The idea of a handful of sand had morphed into a bucket full of sand. Apparently a byproduct of my power was that I could count the things I absorbed really easily. I was also noticing that I basically had a detailed understanding of the physical dimensions of each grain of sand that I had absorbed. And it had taken me less than ten seconds to get the entire bucket.

Holding out a hand over the bucket, I started unbagging the sand, just a few thousand at a time. It looked like a hand-shaped waterfall. In a strange way, it was beautiful.

I started moving my hand in small circles, seeing the patterns as the sand fell. It reminded me of water. I increased the complexity of my movements, pushing my hand down, then pulling it back. It looked like something I had seen before. It seemed like just a few weeks ago...Something on TV? Leviathan. The sand coming from my hand looked a lot like Leviathan's shadow in the snippets of the fight the news had released from Brockton Bay just weeks before. I stopped unbagging the sand.

Looking up, I could tell that Raymancer and Tecton had noticed it too. Grace noticed my face first, but quickly saw theirs as well. "What? What is it?" She asked with concern.

Shaking his head as if he were getting rid of a dream, Lanceton said, "Nothing. Just Lily's sand, it looked a little bit like Leviathan's shadow." Turning to me, he continued. "But really, it's nothing like that. This was a useful test, Lily. You can put the rest of the sand away, and then we can go on to the next thing."

I nodded and put my hand just over the pile of sand in the bucket. I pushed the sand out much more quickly this time, and the bucket was filled in a few seconds.

Fortunately, Lance was socially adept enough to keep it from becoming awkward. "The first test I thought about was whether you could make things appear inside of other things, or not. Like if you took a long pole, could you make it appear inside of a wall somehow? Or, the sheet recommends we see if your power is constrained by the Manton effect or not. Do you know what that is?" He asked.

When I nodded, he continued. "So which of those would you prefer?"

Uh... "Um...The Manton Limit one I guess. So what should I do, just try to absorb one of you or something?" I asked.

That brought a chuckle, which didn't really make me feel any better, because I hadn't really been joking. How else were you supposed to test that?

"We use-" Grace began.

"There are-" Tecton also began. They looked at one another. Tecton opened his mouth again to finish his sentence. "There are plants that we use to test that." He said. Walking to a door that I couldn't see where it led, he quickly returned with what looked like some sort of boring plant used to spruce up a living room. Note that I said boring, because it wasn't anything cool like a Venus flytrap or a vase plant. Not even a cactus. No, this was like the most boring fern I had ever laid eyes upon. So I didn't feel bad that we were risking its little plant life.

Tecton held out the small vase in the palm of his hand, and I approached, touching the plant. Looking around, I shrugged, then exerted my power. Nothing happened.

They looked at me for a few more moments until I said, "Uh...Nothing happened."

Everyone seemed pretty unsurprised by that. Honestly, I was too, but it would have been nice. And, I felt a little stupid not trying it sooner.

Taking a pair of clippers, Tecton clipped off a sprig of the plant and handed it to me. "See if you can absorb that. Obviously you can absorb cotton and wool that have been dead for a while. Probably wood, too. Everyone's Manton limits are a bit different. It would be useful to see if we can find yours."

Taking the sprig of fern, I exerted my power again. I shook my head to them: still nothing.

"That's still the most common. Most people can't absorb things that have immediately died or been cut off from their living tissue. We'll set this aside and see if you can bag it tomorrow." He said with a grin, probably about using my terminology.

As he was putting the sprig into a little baggy, Raymancer said "I'm not so sure we should try the wall thing you were talking about Lance. At first it sounded like a good idea, but imagine of it works? What happens when one thing's atoms intersect with another thing's? It could just shunt the foreign object out, but it could also cause a nuclear explosion. I'm not sure I want to be around for that, at least not without some Thinker feedback before we do."

Grace and I stared at him. A nuclear explosion? Well, wouldn't that be quite the way to go. I had certainly never considered my power able to produce nukes before.

"I don't think that's very likely, Bobby." Tecton said, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

"Do you really want to risk it. Lance?" Raymancer responded, putting extra emphasis on Tecton's name.

Shrugging and shaking his head, Tecton conceded. "No, I don't. I can call a meeting with Alloy and we can run some tests. Once we do that we can submit it to Thinker oversight and see what they say." Then, looking to me, he added, "Unless you have any input that could solve this?"

A bit startled, I began to speak before really knowing how I would respond. "Well..." Unfortunately, that's all the further I got before I couldn't think of what else to say.

It made me wonder about my power. So much of what I did with it felt like it happened automatically. I didn't feel like trying to make something appear in the same space as a wall would really create a nuclear explosion, but I also didn't feel like it was a good idea. Now that I really thought about it, it seemed strange that I could make clothes or a mask appear on me without risking having one thing appear inside of another thing. In this case, the second thing being my own body. It was even more strange when I considered that how I "put my shoes on" involved making shoes appear first, and then making socks appear between my feet and the shoes. I couldn't just make the shoes appear around the socks, because when things appeared, they had to be touching me.

I took a few steps until I was only a few inches away from a wall. Tentatively, I considered making a ladle appear between my hand and the wall. I knew I could do it without even having to manifest it. I moved my hand a few inches closer, all the while keeping the ladle in my mind. In a make-believe part of my head, the ladle was sticking straight out of my hand with the handle pointing toward the wall. I felt the exact moment when I could no longer make the ladle appear in that configuration. Not with my hand that close, anyway.

In retrospect, it was really stupid what I tried next. Without really thinking of the consequences, I tried to force the ladle to appear, despite my power telling me it wouldn't. I snapped out of my ruminations when it felt like my hand was pushed backward by about an inch and the ladle appeared, balanced tightly between my palm and the wall. Okay, that was just really freaky. I was almost certain I hadn't moved my hand of my own volition. Had my power pushed me, or had it subconsciously forced me to move?

I looked up to see the rest of the team staring at me.

I could feel my features coloring. "I don't think I could even do it if I tried." I said, all to aware of how strange they probably thought I was. Sheepishly, I re-bagged the ladle.

"Ohh...kay." Raymancer said.

Grace swatted him on the shoulder. "That's fine, Lily. Saves us a lot of time wondering about it. So what'd it feel like?"

"Well..." I started again, rubbing my forehead. "I could sorta' feel when I could or couldn't unbag it in that orientation. When I got to a place I couldn't, I tried to force it and my hand just got pushed backward."

Nobody responded right away. I think they were all assimilating the information. Raymancer in particular had a frown on his face and his forehead was wrinkly. It was probably a sign he was thinking. Either that, or he was suddenly really angry about something. It looked like Tecton was about to speak up again when Raymancer beat him to the punch.

The look of concentration (I decided) was completely gone from his face, replaced instantly by one of excitement. "This might mean you can fly!"