The Crazy Joker Girl

Clayface froze, his clay-formed features drawing together slightly in a humanlike look of confusion.

"Just now—" he muttered, withdrawing his tentacle from the dark green gel. The warmth had faded, but the lingering, faintly enhanced affinity for and ability to mimic plant-related substances was a real new experience. He could not understand the principle behind it, and could only attribute it to some unknown property contained within the strange gel before him.

"This thing... has something to it."

The villain studied the slowly writhing dark green substance and decided to stay a while longer, to investigate it carefully. Perhaps he could find the key to strengthening himself.

He had no idea that, in complete ignorance, he had just completed an incredibly hidden "grafting."

The contaminating "mutation fuse" from Ian, and the vast "growth code" from the ancient network of life—

Inside this body of his, a shell born from tragedy, a tiny connection had quietly formed.

It had buried a dormant seed of unknown nature.

And after that insignificant "interaction," the vast network of life resumed its eternal, unconscious pulse, as if it had never paid any attention to this puddle of clay that happened to flow past.

Only the indescribable change within Clayface's matrix, and that subtle new "inclination" in his abilities, silently recorded this soundless convergence beside the underground dark river.

How this buried seed would gestate in the chaotic soil of this clay body, and when, and in what form, it would break through the surface—

No one could predict.

This change was so minute that even Clayface himself had not noticed it in the slightest.

It was like spraying the surface of an ancient oil painting with a layer of new protective coating so thin it almost did not alter the color at all. Only under