No Need for a Core?

Mordecai studied himself in a 5-panel mirror before he began, considering his options. Human, elf, and orc were easy enough to hang off of the same frame, and his shape-changing was based primarily on the kitsune ability, so he had all combinations of those four options at his command at any time. And there were many heritages that showed up as variant features in other species which could be added with little thought.

It was when he wanted abilities from other physiology that he had some issues, especially if he wanted different ones at the same time or wanted to include abilities from avatars that weren’t even organic. Mordecai settled on creating three major alternate forms for different situations so that he didn’t have to waste time thinking about the details later. And he had so many options to choose from. Mordecai couldn’t have explained exactly how he’d done it anymore, and lacked the raw power to reforge an avatar with this much potential even if he knew exactly what he’d done.

His first choice was to impress, with an emphasis on potential social impact rather than pure combat. Starting from the top, he manifested the halo common to celestial bloodlines. It provided not only light, which he didn’t need, but within that light healing magic would be enhanced, and the mind and spirits of his allies would be bolstered. As he grew stronger, the light would eventually be able to burn undead and fiends on contact, but there was a fair way to go before that happened. He could also dismiss it and recall it easily enough, but for now he kept it up to ensure that he kept celestial traits locked into this form. Mordecai also decided to keep this as part of all his default alternative forms.

Now, his hair, time to let it grow. Animating it was actually a magic trick, but he did need it to be long first. He frowned slightly when he realized that manifesting the halo had caused his hair to lighten with a hint of silver, turning it a metallic purple instead of near-black, but decided to keep it rather than forcing it darker.

Next up, horns. Or rather, a single, small horn, not dissimilar to the ones young oni have. He’d have skipped horns entirely for this form, but there were useful magics that could be channeled through it, so he just settled for making it fancy and giving it an opalescent sheen. It also replaced antenna for some more esoteric senses.

The eyes turned out to be a little problematic. All the passive sensory features he wanted he’d already tuned in, but there were various more active senses and abilities he could channel through them, and some of those required less normal-looking eyes. After half an hour of tweaking, he was able to get his eyes to look almost normal, except that his default color of golden irises were now even more dragon-like, literally glowing with that molten color. It was better than making them look like crystal lenses.

Mordecai did not make any visible changes to his mouth, but there were a lot of internal adjustments he could make to his throat and lungs. Being able to use a breath weapon, and be able to breathe underwater, and use enhanced screams all at the same time was tricky, especially without visible changes, but not as difficult as modifying his eyes. And given all the variations of dragon-related avatars he’d made previously, he had access to almost every form of breath weapon.

Wings were next. Bird-like wings of white were the only real option for this form. They weren’t as durable as dragon wings if he wanted to smack someone with them, but they served better if he wanted to use the impression of an angelic being. He’d briefly considered fey-like wings, but as pretty as they would have been, the reality is that fey creatures can be utterly terrifying, and the polite, civilized ones were the most dangerous.

And finally they came to tails. Mordecai decided to keep the appearance and color scheme of the tails he’d manifested yesterday, but that wasn’t quite sufficient for functionality. Fox tails were beautiful, and were the channel for foxfire, but they were not particularly agile or strong. Fixing both of those issues without losing the visible floof took a fair amount of work, and left the core of the tail about twice as thick as they had been, but now he could grasp objects freely and with enough strength to support his weight, as well as use them to hit with almost as much force as his fist.

There were a few more internal tweaks, but that covered everything visual. Once he was satisfied, Mordecai memorized this exact form as a set so that he’d be able to change to it with a single thought, then reverted back to his human form to copy the less visible changes into it. Once those were set, it was time to work on his first battle form. This one would be more dangerous, but he didn’t want to be too scary.

He started with the Impressions form, then grew his horn out into a long, sharp weapon. After that, he grew two more horns, selecting more ram-like ones that swept back over his head as a protective barrier. Mordecai’s control over his hair let him cover those, making them less visible.

Mordecai debated with himself for a little bit about if he should give himself any sort of special bite, but in the end decided if he was going for this form at all, he should at least have something as a default, so sharpened his teeth and elongated his canines into proper fangs, able to both drain blood and inject venom.

The wings he changed into dragon wings, both for their more fearsome appearance and the ability to batter foes. Both the wings and his skin he then covered in a mottle of silver and gold scales, providing another layer of protection.

His nails elongated and thickened into razor-sharp talons, the process altering the shape of his hands and fingers. This was not a form suitable for fine manipulations. His tails changed as well, though less visibly so as he could hide the changes beneath the fur. For two of them, he gave spikes that could inject different venom. Three of them he altered with elements of plant and construct races to give different projectiles. And two more were altered to be able to give off various spores and pollen.

Once he was satisfied, he mentally locked this in as a single form and practiced changing it a few times. Then Mordecai experimented a bit with his tails, he wanted to see if he could go above his default limit of seven fox tails. The answer was both yes and no. Yes, he could have more than seven tails, but there was something about the shape-shifting that would not let that eighth tail be either fox-like or able to channel foxfire, at least not until he was stronger. Well, he didn’t need more, so he did not keep that eighth tail.

Now for the third form. For his mental label, he decided to call it his War Form. If he had to resort to this, he would be desperate. Keeping all the features he’d added to his humanoid form intact, Mordecai changed from humanoid to dragonoid, swelling in size as he did so. Now his bite had the power of a dragon behind it, while still being enhanced with fangs and toxins. He did alter that a little, making both his saliva and blood in this form actively toxic, in addition to the various venoms he could inject. The fox tails and long hair still flowing from his head were more than a little odd looking, but he was going for maximum effectiveness with this form.

Mordecai added another pair of limbs now, giving him six clawed limbs plus a pair of wings. Next, bony spines and toxin-dripping thorns erupted along his entire body, creating both another layer of physical defense and a very active deterrent to anyone seeking to close in on him. And even more disturbing, his body became somehow almost fluid in its appearance and motion, allowing him to slide through small spaces much easier than his bulk would imply, and protecting his internal organs should someone manage to strike deep.

For a final touch, he activated all the aura powers available to him, motes of fire and lighting flickering amongst a crystalline cloud while shadows deepened and darkened about his form, creating an ominous presence while also making it harder to target him accurately.

Honestly, the end effect was disturbing even for him. But this was the limit for what he currently found useful of all the options he had available. And there were many pieces he could still call upon, the form he had pulled together in haste to make sure he had all options available later was a mess.

That form, the one he had refused to take and still did, had several more shapes of horns and antlers on its head, over a dozen pairs of eyes of different types, more than 20 tails in total, climbing up his spine to fit them all, but having to squeeze them between his different pairs of wings, 5 pairs of limbs in addition to his wings, vines, and tentacles of various sorts, pincers in addition to claws, and various other manifestations of the more exotic races he’d formed avatars in the likeness of before.

It was also a worse form to do anything in. Mordecai had been putting everything he could into and onto that form in haste, to make sure that any variations he needed later would be available. It was more of a resource than a shape he’d intended to ever take, because innate shape changing like the type he was using could not create new functions or forms, only make changes based on what was already available. And he had really not wanted to need some random minor ability in the future and not have it available. Unfortunately, it also took a while to master control of one’s form to be able to pick and chose aspects, and merging them was even harder.

This was part of why he was so reluctant to pull detailed memories out of their folded configurations, Mordecai was prioritizing abilities and skills, techniques he could use. Those didn’t always require explicit memories to go with them.

But now he had enhanced his human-like form with more abilities, practiced some basic species appearances he could take, and created three acceptable forms to use in circumstances that demanded them. Mordecai gave thanks to the insight of his past self on not scrimping, made mental notes on some touches he might want to add when he had more power to back them, and reverted to his human form.

Kazue was still working on her shape-changing, though he could tell she was close to a breakthrough. He didn’t disturb her and instead began working through a series of katas, practicing different forms and weaving in abilities that the originators of these styles wouldn’t have had access to. He needed to forge his own style to take full advantage of everything available to him, not just add magic on top of his martial skill.

But it was less than an hour after he’d started practicing his katas that Kazue’s voice came over their link, asking if he was ready for company. After that, he was thoroughly distracted from practice for the rest of the day.