"Congratulations!" *I throw my hands up exasperatedly.* "You've made a form of water with zero surface tension! God forbid you spill any, as instead of the puddle being manageable, it'll stretch itself into a 1 micrometer thin film that coats the floor of the entire room. Excellent work, ladies and gentlemen, this is *real* innovative stuff."

And then there's a line break between the lore and the solve notes.

Latency. Just make one fast, and figure out the period after the fact. Since this is how I usually approach Cycles puzzles, I feel like MAYBE I'll do better here than usual. 27 certainly SEEMS good, though I'm semi confident at least 24 is possible. Once you're there, genuinely unsure about theory stuff. This was some fun geometry to work with though! I like that I was able to nest the two monomers with the input nicely when the time came to make the second earth-air bit. I'd like to note that IF this was a cycles primary, it'd be a lot faster to keep one earth-air bit as a catalyst until it gets tacked onto the last product. That would mean coding 6p though and that'd probably be a pain. Anyways, it was fun working with a latency puzzle for the first time! I'm also excited to be submitting for an actual tournament with scoring for the first time! Good luck to those placing higher than me!

Signed, Trixie Kagami, the Cheshire Alchemist: Making One Output Fast Since 2025