Mist of Shadows
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Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 11
🕑 Added 2023-08-22 05:52:44 +0000 UTCDanny paused as he walked into the conference room and found his daughter laughing along with a pair of elves and one of his duplicates. "If you start cackling without a good reason, you're grounded," he teased, glad that she was having fun.
"Muahahaha," Taylor replied as she turned to look at her father, using her Sound Manipulation ability to make her voice echo and her Illusion-Casting to change her BDUs into an evil looking black dress straight out of a Disney movie.
'Probably just as well she's not a villain, she'd take over,' Danny thought as he walked over to see what she was working on. "It works better if you show your clothes changing rather than just swapping them."
Taylor dropped the illusion then worked on creating an illusion of her clothes changing back then twisting into a black dress. "Like that?"
"Better," Danny agreed. "What are you working on?"
"I was grabbing Enchanting and a Magic Creation ability while I had your duplicate around to boost my Absorption ability." Taylor let the illusion vanish along with her elven duplicates, picking up their memories. "Enchanting basically lets me make certain types of magic items and Magic Creation lets me give out magic powers."
"Sounds useful," Danny replied, glad that she was having fun and laughing.
"You're looking better," Danny's duplicate pointed out.
"Panacea does good work," Danny replied, feeling better than he'd felt in years. "I just wanted to swing by and check on things before I headed back to work."
"We're good," Taylor replied, not seeing a reason to mention the duplicates she had looking through the gateways they could reach for versions of her mother in case they couldn't find anything.
"Let me get you caught up." Danny's duplicate dismissed himself, giving Danny his memories.
Danny blinked a couple of times as he reviewed the new memories. "I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that."
"You'll get used to it eventually," Taylor assured him as her phone beeped, letting her know she had a message. "Blue wizard needs food badly?"
"Did you forget about the villains you kidnapped?" Danny asked, more amused than he should be that Taylor had basically kidnapped a couple of villains to keep them off the streets for a couple of days.
"No, I'm just trying to figure out what he's talking about," Taylor admitted.
"It's from an old arcade game, the characters had to eat a lot in order to avoid dying and if you were low on food the arcade would announce that the character needed food," Danny explained.
"I'll take your word for it," Taylor replied as she tossed a telepathic message to the duplicate she'd sent to pick up food for Vicky and Amy, 'Pick up some more tacos, the villains are probably hungry.'
'No problem,' the duplicate replied mentally as she waited in line to order.
"Can you send me back to the union?" Danny asked, wanting to get back before his break was over.
"Sure." Taylor used her Clairvoyance to check the union then teleported him back to the break room a couple of feet behind Kurt since there wasn't anyone else in the room and she doubted Kurt would ask too many questions as long as he didn't actually see him appear. She teleported the extra clothes back to the laundry room then headed for the door, curious what the gamers were up to and wanting to grab some lunch.
"Hey," Danny offered, causing Kurt to jump and almost fall out of his seat.
Kurt turned and looked at Danny. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough," Danny replied with amusement as Lacey walked in. "Did you hear back from the Mayor about salvaging the spheres from the cargo ship?"
"We've got permission provided everyone involved signs a disclaimer absolving the city of any responsibility if the spheres turn out to be dangerous but he can't pay us, something about the budget being rather tight for a number of reasons," Lacey complained. "I checked the price of salvage, it's barely enough to cover the cost of fuel and the extra cape related insurance the PRT wants us to buy because the spheres were made by a cape and some beancounters have concerns about traps and contamination in the water if one of them cracks open."
"Why are they being difficult?" Danny asked.
Lacey shrugged. "I don't know, my PRT contact is still on vacation.
"What if we can get the spheres directly to the salvage yard?" Danny asked.
"That should cover the listed reasons and let us avoid the insurance which would make the job profitable enough to hire people around the clock to cut it up and salvage it."
Danny smiled as he thought about the number of people that would be able to afford to catch up on rent or their car payments if he could pull this off. "I'll have to talk to the lawyers to make sure we're covered, but I know a cape that should be able to help get the spheres to a warehouse. Do you remember which warehouses are free?"
"I'll grab the list," Kurt said as he stood up and headed for the door.
"How's Taylor doing?" Lacey asked once Kurt left.
Danny sighed as he thought about the locket incident and the school's involvement. "She's tough and knowing she'll never have to go back to Winslow helps."
"If she needs to talk, give me a call," Lacey told him.
"Thanks," Danny told her, glad that things were finally looking up.
0o0o0
Taylor stepped out of a portal into what looked like a dressing room filled with cheap looking suits. "Weird."
"Pretty sure that's my line," Xander said as he studied the tall dark haired girl that had just stepped out of a portal in the dressing room he was borrowing for the night.
Taylor spun and stared when she saw the well built man with dark hair that was wearing nothing but a tiny black thong that barely covered his equipment and carrying a plastic bag filled with loose bills. "Sorry, the portals open to fixed locations."
"Which just happens to include the dressing room I'm using? Are you a demon?" Xander asked warily, thinking of his luck with women.
Taylor pulled her attention away from the teenager's crotch and studied his rather handsome face. "Demons don't…" she trailed off when she read his mind and realized that demons actually existed. "Ah, okay, so much for demons not existing."
"What makes you say that?" Xander asked.
"Clairvoyance, I checked," Taylor replied, figuring that was better than admitting that she'd read his mind.
"Witch?" Xander asked, jumping to the next most likely choice.
"I don't know," Taylor replied as she skimmed through what he knew about witches. "My Power Detection ability registers some of my abilities as magic and I know a couple spells, does that count?"
"Probably," Xander replied thoughtfully as he set the night's take from dancing on the table and grabbed his pants. "Do I have any powers?" he asked as he started pulling his pants on, fairly sure he didn't unless weird luck with girls counted.
Taylor used her detection ability and checked to see if he had any powers. "Technically."
"Technically?" Xander asked as he finished pulling his pants on.
"Your magical durability isn't enough to walk off being shot but it's probably enough to let you survive fighting someone stronger than your average person with bruises where someone else would have broken bones, you heal a bit faster than you should, you have an affinity for magic and you're about thirty percent faster in the water than you should be."
"Any idea where the abilities came from?" Xander asked, wondering if his affinity for magic came from living on the hellmouth.
Taylor shook her head. "Sorry, my power doesn't give me their history, just their stats. The durability and regeneration are magical, the swimming ability isn't, though it might have been caused by it."
"It was probably alchemy," Xander mused as he grabbed his shirt off the table, thinking about his swim coach. "So what brings you here if you don't mind my asking?"
"Sorry, I got distracted," Taylor admitted. "My power only gives me a vague idea of the destination and I'm trying to find interesting worlds to explore."
"That sounds a bit dangerous," Xander replied as he pulled his t-shirt on.
"It's worth the risk," Taylor replied with a smile, touched that a random stranger was actually legitimately concerned about her. "I'm basically a temporary magical clone, so it doesn't really matter if I go splat, Taylor gets my memories and we try again."
"That's…" Xander trailed off, not sure where to even start.
"I'm Taylor or at least a copy of her, when I die or get dismissed, we recombine," Taylor explained.
"So, no desire to turn evil and survive by taking her over?" Xander asked, wanting to be sure.
"That sounds counterproductive, we're both Taylor. It's probably a power thing," Taylor admitted with a shrug. "I don't suppose I can talk you into taking me out to dinner and telling me about your world and possibly stripping in exchange for super powers?"
"Seriously?" Xander asked hopefully.
"I'm hungry, you're attractive and I need to learn about the world. Besides, it doesn't actually cost me anything to give people powers and we need to learn to be a bit less shy," Taylor admitted, wanting to hear more about his adventures fighting vampires.
"I could eat," Xander admitted. "Do you need to leave the portal open?"
"No," Taylor replied as she let the portal close. "I can always make a portal back home or just dismiss myself."
"Let me get my shoes then we can get out of here," Xander said as he grabbed his socks and sat down in his chair, looking forward to having dinner with a cute girl and possibly getting some superpowers out of the deal.
0o0o0
Emma twitched when someone rang the doorbell, wishing not for the first time, that she still had her legs so that she could jump for the baseball bat Danny kept by his chair in case they got any uninvited guests.
"Relax, it's probably just the pizza guy," Taylor Hebert assured her friend as she walked over and checked the peephole, wanting to make sure it wasn't a religious nutcase or a member of one of the gangs before she opened the door. "Huh, the girl standing on the porch could be my twin."
"I'm reasonably sure I would have noticed having twins," Annette pointed out as she walked out of the kitchen.
"You were a bit drugged out of your mind," Danny joked as he grabbed the baseball bat and moved a touch closer to the door in case he had to use it.
"I'm from an alternate dimension," the Taylor standing on the porch offered, able to hear the people inside just fine, thanks to how quiet everything was and her Sound Manipulation.
"Might as well open the door," Danny suggested, knowing the door wouldn't stop most capes from breaking in if they wanted to, even with Taylor's improvements to the door and the frame.
Taylor opened the door and looked at the slightly taller and better looking version of herself that was standing on the porch, taking in the details that hadn't been apparent through the peephole. "Why are you here?"
"Do you want the long version or the short version?" Taylor asked, barely resisting the urge to dash past Genie's alternate and give her mother a hug.
'She looks like she's seen a ghost, if she's a changer, she's an amazing actress,' Annette mused as she studied the girl standing on the porch. "You might as well come in and start with the short version."
Taylor walked in and let the other Taylor shut the door behind her. "I'm basically jumping through dimensions looking for a version of my mother that will let me clone her, mine died a couple of years ago and everything fell apart."
"What happened?" Annette asked.
"Car crash, some idiot wasn't paying attention and ran a red light while talking on a cell phone," Taylor explained.
"Did you put him in the morgue?" Taylor asked, trying and failing to figure out what she would have done without her mother, especially after the attack.
Taylor shook her head. "It was an accident and I was twelve."
Annette stepped forward and pulled Taylor into a hug. "Sorry."
"It's not your fault," Taylor replied as she returned the hug, trying not to cry.
'Yeah, probably not a changer,' Danny thought as he watched the girl relax in his wife's arms. He leaned the baseball bat against the couch.
"How did you get here? Tinkertech or a power?" Emma asked, trying to change the subject to something less depressing since her friend's double looked haunted and she didn't like thinking about her aunt dying.
"Power," Taylor replied.
Annette glanced at her husband, wondering how long it had been since anyone had given the girl a hug. "Does your father know you're jumping dimensions?"
"That's complicated," Taylor admitted as she reluctantly let go of Annette. "I'm basically a shadow clone and I didn't want him to get his hopes up so I didn't mention this particular trip."
"Like Naruto?" Emma asked excitedly.
Taylor snapped her fingers and created two Illusionary duplicates of herself. "I'm not exactly splitting my powers but close enough."
Taylor stared at the duplicates for a couple of seconds then poked one of them, putting her hand through it. "How many powers do you have?"
"Classified," Taylor teased as she let the illusionary copies vanish.
Emma pouted at Taylor. "We're in another dimension, spill."
Taylor sighed. "Give me a chance to figure out how well everything lines up before I share all of my secrets."
"We're family," Emma argued.
"My Gateway ability lets me look at a decent number of worlds and scry on them, they don't actually give me a cheat sheet of the changes," Taylor admitted. "For example, my version of Emma still has both legs."
"Lucky," Emma muttered.
Taylor shook her head. "Not really, she lost her fucking marbles about a year and a half ago and stabbed me in the back because she got attacked by the ABB and ran into a sociopathic cape."
Emma stared at the alternate Taylor. "What the fuck?!"
"Language," Annette reminded Emma.
"Sorry," Emma replied absently. "She lost her father and she snapped?"
"Alan's fine or at least he's alive," Taylor replied, still not sure how to feel about Mr. Barnes since he didn't notice Emma's spiral into insanity. "I doubt he's all that happy right now, the other Emma is facing charges for trying to kill me."
"Did the PRT check for a f-" Emma glanced at Annette then focused on Taylor, "a cape with a master ability?"
"I've checked, the cape that saved her is just a sadistic bitch and found Emma at the exact wrong time, it probably didn't help that Alan tried to pretend that nothing was wrong," Taylor admitted.
"That sounds like Alan," Annette admitted as she let the girl go, thinking of her friend's tendency to bottle his feelings up and keep things to himself.
"Unfortunately," Danny agreed.
Emma scowled as she thought about betraying Taylor. "Please tell me that I can jump worlds and beat the shit out of my evil twin?"
'Why couldn't I get this version of Emma? She lost her legs and she still wants to help,' Taylor thought. "Probably not the best idea considering she's in jail, but I'll keep that in mind if she manages to avoid spending the next ten to twenty years in prison. Speaking of fixing things, do you want me to heal your legs?"
"That would be fantastic!" Emma squealed, looking forward to being able to walk again.
"How safe…" Annette trailed off as Emma's legs regenerated completely before she could even finish the sentence. "Have you tested the ability for side effects?"
"Yes, I've also had Panacea check the results," Taylor assured her.
"Thanks!" Emma squealed as she jumped at Taylor to give her a hug, the local Taylor also joining in, overjoyed at seeing her friend healed, though she was sure she’d have managed to adjust the cloning tanks so she could have done it herself eventually.
"You're welcome," Taylor assured her as she patted her ex-friend's crying doppelganger on the back, relieved that at least one version of her friend had managed to remain a decent person.
"How does your cloning work, tanks or a power?" Annette asked, trying to get a bit more information before she let herself get cloned.
"Power," Taylor replied as Emma let go of her.
"Lucky, it's a pain in the ass to hide cloning tanks," Taylor grumbled.
Taylor smiled as she imagined trying to get a large tank down into the basement. "Would it help if you could teleport objects?"
"Yes! Can you make a teleporter?" Taylor asked hopefully, still annoyed about the warehouse lab that she'd had to abandon when someone sold her out to the gangs because they'd noticed supplies going into an 'abandoned' warehouse.
"I probably could but I'm a trump, I can give out powers," Taylor replied cheerfully.
"How long do they last?" Annette asked, thinking of some of the more famous and dangerous capes that she'd heard of over the years that could give people powers.
Taylor smiled at her mother's alternate. "I can make it permanent with a bit of patience and luck."
Annette smiled when she realized Taylor wasn't joking. "How many powers can you hand out?"
"I have a decent list," Taylor assured them. "Everything from durability and Flight to the ability to create duplicates or teleport."
Annette turned to look at Danny. "What do you think?"
Danny glanced at Taylor. "I think we should spend a couple of hours comparing notes to make sure there aren't a bunch of surprises, but I can certainly understand where she's coming from, I'd be a broken wreck if I lost you or Taylor."
"The…" Annette trailed off as the doorbell rang.
"Pizza!" the delivery girl called out from the porch.
"Perfect timing," the local Taylor said as she opened the door and handed the delivery girl thirty dollars after checking the peephole. "Keep the change."
"Thanks," the girl replied as she handed Taylor the two boxes of pizza and headed back down the path, always happy when people tipped.
Taylor walked over and put the pizzas on the coffee table while the other Taylor shut the door. "Where do we start?"
"Favorite classes or teachers?" Emma asked thoughtfully as she opened the top box and grabbed a slice of pizza.
Taylor scowled as she thought about Winslow. "I hate school but if I had to pick, computers. There were less assholes."
"Which school did you go to?" Taylor asked, getting a bad feeling.
"Winslow," Taylor admitted.
"Why?" Annette asked, more than a bit confused why Taylor would have ended up in Winslow.
"I wanted to be with Emma and Dad was broken enough that he signed the paperwork. I wasn't expecting her to make it a nightmare," Taylor admitted, not looking at Emma.
"Someone needs to kick the shit out of that girl," Emma complained, pissed that someone was messing with her best friend or at least a version of her.
"And Alan," Annette muttered as she grabbed a piece of pizza. "Give me an overview of the local capes and middle school, we'll go from there."
"Sure," Taylor replied then started talking about the last couple of years and the city.
0o0o0
Taylor stepped out of a portal and glanced around, wondering why someone built a wooden cabin on a cliff ledge. Her attention jumped to the ornate circlet sitting on a wooden chopping block when she felt the magic imbued in the strange bronze colored metal thanks to her Power Detection ability. She let the portal close behind her then focused what her detection ability was telling her about the circlet with a dull red stone set into the circlet.
She spent a minute trying to make sense of what her power was telling her before she used her Power Manipulation ability to temporarily twist her Power Detection ability into something more game-like that would give her actual numbers. 'Okay, that's better. It reduces the amount of mana I need to spend for spells by five percent and generates a weak force field that reduces incoming physical damage by point eighty four percent. That's nearly useless unless it stacks with similar items or if I can boost it.'
'I'll have to run some tests. At least it automatically resizes,' she mused as she stopped using her Manipulation power to twist her detection power and reached out with her telepathy, scanning the area for people. 'Okay, one old guy in the shack and a couple of people near a giant statue?'
She quickly skimmed through the thoughts of the people near the giant statue, quickly finding out that the Empire had banned worship of Talos because of pressure from a group of xenophobic elves. "Not my problem," she mused as she turned her attention back to the old man in the shack, searching his memory for information about the circlet.
'Maybe a bird dropped it,' she mused as she walked over and picked up the circlet, figuring that it wasn't stealing if the man that owned the property wasn't aware it existed. 'Now I'm just making excuses,' she admitted she put the circlet on and went searching through the old man's mind for information about the general area.
'Bandits, cultists, monsters and a civil war, yeah, it's like someone set things up for a hero then forgot about actually grabbing the hero.' She walked over to the ledge and looked down at the surrounding landscape, suddenly wishing she had a camera because the view was breathtaking. 'Screw it, I might as well deal with the bandits in the tower, I'll need a decent amount of gold to bribe a smith for training.'
Taylor checked to make sure she hadn't dropped her invisibility then flew towards the tower, easily reaching the tower in a couple of minutes of 'lazy' flying. She reached out with Telepathy and started scanning the bandits, wanting to make sure they actually deserved her attention. Her previously good mood evaporated when she learned that the leader of the bandits was a necromancer and the previous owners of the keep were worse than dead.
She took a minute to make sure she wasn't going to throw up then quickly checked the rest of the bandits, wanting to make sure they deserved death. 'How the fuck do you make Nazis look sane?' She teleported the leader of the bandits a thousand feet in the air in front of the keep without his stuff then teleported the second in command into the leader, causing the leader's body to burst at the seams as his flesh and bones were displaced. 'At least I know what happens when I teleport something into someone else.'
She watched the bloated body hit the dirt and splatter then opened a portal to the world that was labeled Recursive Error and started teleporting the remaining bandits through, fairly sure the world involved testing and had a high amount of danger from what she could feel.
"If you are a non-employee who has discovered this facility amid the ruins of civilization, welcome! And remember, testing is the future, and the future starts with you," a pleasant sounding female voice announced.
Taylor finished teleporting the bandits through the portal then closed it and headed for the tower to start looting, not sure why the voice sent shivers down her spine but glad that she wasn't in the same dimension.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
On the one hand, they're sort of stupid, on the other some of them probably have spells which are new... so it's a toss up.
ZeroLink21
Pretty sure that was a aperture science testing facility and galdos and she will not be satisfied with the quality of those testers lol
