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Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 6
🕑 Added 2023-08-05 03:13:59 +0000 UTCTaylor walked into the firing range and froze when she saw Sophia was being used for target practice. "What the fuck?!"
The duplicate stopped shooting the vaguely person shaped target and let the illusion drop when Taylor looked at her. "What?" she asked as she pulled off her earmuffs.
"What the fuck is wrong…" Taylor trailed off when she glanced back at the target area and realized that her duplicate was just shooting at a person shaped target dummy with a crystal plate strapped to its chest. "Sorry, I thought you were shooting at Sophia."
"I thought about teleporting her in and shooting her with rubber bullets or paintballs but I figured the PRT would have cameras on her and I didn't want to complicate the case against her, so I'm just using illusions." The duplicate gestured as she used her Illusion-Casting to cover the target with an image of Sophia.
Taylor shook her head. "You've got some screws loose."
"My screws are your screws," the duplicate replied cheerfully as she set the large hunting rifle on the table and pushed the button to retrieve the target, causing the target to move towards her, “and let me tell you, there is a lot less strain on my screws after a bit of stress relief.”
Taylor stared at her duplicate for a couple of seconds then focused on the unmarked crystal plate. "Did you find anything that can scratch it?"
"Not yet," the duplicate replied cheerfully as she walked over and checked the crystal trauma plate for damage. "I used a crystal drill bit but I couldn't put enough pressure on the drill to matter. I was expecting a couple of scratches or maybe a crack from the elephant gun, but it might as well have been a nerf gun for all the damage it did. We might need a drill press or a plasma torch."
“I think we have some tinker tech lasers lying around, but I’m almost positive we don’t have a plasma welder or press,” Taylor told her.
"I bet the dockworkers could test it for us," the duplicate mused.
"Not a bad idea," Taylor said thoughtfully as she used her Clairvoyance to scry on the large drill press in the Dockworker's shop. She glanced around the room to make sure no one was paying attention then teleported one of the large drill bits to her hand. She teleported two of the empty soda cans from the recycle bin to her other hand then dropped her Clairvoyance. "Let's see if this works," she muttered as she used her Molding ability to turn the aluminum cans into a 'matching' drill bit, making sure it was as sharp as she could get it.
"There's always a chance," the duplicate said as Taylor turned the aluminum into crystal.
Taylor compared the drill bits then teleported the original drill bit back where it was supposed to go. She used her Power Creation ability to give her duplicate Hyper-Strength then handed her the drill bit. "See if you can make a mark, I boosted your strength."
"Sure," the duplicate replied as she tried to scratch the crystal plate with her drill bit. "Not even close, we're going to need a plasma torch or tinkertech."
"Maybe," Taylor replied as she pulled her notebook out of her pocket and scribbled a note with her left hand, "Please test the crystal plate to destruction, it survived getting shot with an elephant gun without a scratch, the drill bit should help." She swapped her focus to the laundry room where one of her duplicates was literally washing the money that she'd picked up from the Merchants and teleported fifteen twenties and two fifties to the table in front of her.
"Aren't you overpaying?" the duplicate asked.
"We made almost a hundred thousand off the Merchants and millions off Coil, we can afford it and it's a weird request," Taylor replied as she teleported the crystal plate to the table so she didn't half to deal with the tape. She stacked the mostly dry bills, note and drill bit on the crystal plate then focused on Lacey with her Clairvoyance. She smiled when she found her in the break room talking to Kurt and her dad. "Perfect."
"Not quite," the duplicate said as she grabbed the pen and added a line to the note, "P.S. feel free to keep the drill bit."
"That works," Taylor agreed as she teleported the stuff to the table in front of Lacey, figuring she could use the extra money.
0o0o0
"How long do you think it will take the PRT to finish checking out the remains of the cargo ship?" Lacey asked.
Danny finished a bite of his reheated pizza. "They're waiting for a couple of divers to check the bottom of the channel and make sure there's nothing that could hit the ships. We should be in the clear by the end of the week."
"Good, I could use the money…" Lacey trailed off as a crystal plate appeared in front of her along with a stack of cash, a crystal drill bit and a note. "Test to destruction?"
Kurt looked up at the ceiling. "Can I have money?"
Danny stared at the familiar looking crystal for a couple of seconds then shook his head. "I don't think it works that way."
Lacey picked up the note and read it. "Someone wants me to destruction test a plate."
"Should be easy enough, right?" Kurt asked.
"The note says that it survived being shot with an elephant gun," Lacey replied as she picked up the money and counted it. "Three hundred in twenties and two fifties. Are we counting this as a union job?"
"Only if you break something," Danny replied with a shrug. "I'd start with the crystal drill then try the plasma cutter."
"Sounds good," Lacey said as she pocketed the cash, grabbed the drill bit on the smooth side and headed for the door.
Danny reached out with telepathy and tossed Taylor a message as he followed his friends, 'Nice call on targets.'
'I thought so, tell me if they can damage it,' Taylor replied.
'No problem,' Danny replied and ended the link.
0o0o0
Taylor glanced at the target that her duplicate had been shooting. "Does shooting Sophia shaped targets really help?"
"More than Emma shaped targets," the duplicate admitted then dismissed herself, giving Taylor the memories.
Taylor reviewed the memories of shooting Sophia and Emma shaped targets for a minute then created another duplicate.
The duplicate used Power Creation to give Taylor a temporary copy of her Self-Duplication power that created elves with random powers. "Best of luck, I'm going to check on Noelle."
"Have fun," Taylor replied as she focused on her new power and flipped the mental switch, creating an elf shaped duplicate.
"Beep," the elf offered.
Taylor glanced at her duplicate's pointed ears which was basically the only feature that was different from the rest of her duplicates. "Beep?"
Taylor duplicate nodded enthusiastically. "Beep, beep."
Taylor reached out with telepathy and sighed when she realized her elven duplicate was just messing with her. "Funny."
"I thought so," the elf replied with a smirk as the other duplicate left to talk to Noelle.
"What power do you have?" Taylor asked as she used her Power Detection ability to check the details of her duplicate's power.
"Weapons Creation, I'm basically a weapons tinker and I can synthesize alloys as long as they're part of the weapon systems I'm working on and yes, power armor counts as a weapon," the elf replied cheerfully.
"Good to know," Taylor replied as she used her temporary self duplication power to create another elf. She stared at the elf with black scales covering most of her body. "What the hell?"
The scale covered elf shrugged. "My skin is basically armor."
Taylor frowned as she thought about losing her sense of touch. "I don't think I'll be copying that considering Body Resistance and Invulnerability are better."
"I can't say I blame you," the second elf duplicate replied.
"Don't go anywhere," Taylor said as she created another normal duplicate.
"I want to check something," the new duplicate said as she stepped forward, touched the armored elf's arm and activated her Duplication power, curious if temporarily using the power caused any lasting changes.
Taylor used her new power and created a third elf. She twitched and dismissed the new elf when she realized what power the duplicate had. "I don't need the ability to screw people over with Pheromones."
"Yeah, fuck that," the remaining elves agreed, not remotely interested in using powers to seduce people.
Taylor created another elven duplicate, hoping for something better than Pheromones.
"Self-Sustenance, I don't need food, water or air," the new elf offered.
"Nice," Taylor replied as she created another elf duplicate.
"Body Resistance, nothing you haven't seen," the new elf replied with a shrug then dismissed herself.
"Okay." Taylor spent thirty seconds using her Power Detection to make sure the new power didn't have side effects. 'It covers any food, water or oxygen I don't get, which means I can still enjoy food and breathe normally when I want to.' She reached out and touched the elf's arm and activated her Residual Absorption power, copying the power. She double checked that she'd managed to permanently copy the power then dismissed the elf.
"You should probably just make a dozen elves then we can start copying everyone," the normal duplicate said as she swapped the power she was emulating to the new Armored Skin power, causing black scales to slowly grow over her skin as the power settled in.
"Might as well," Taylor replied as she used her power and created another dozen elves.
The duplicate waited for the armored skin power to settle in then let it drop, causing the scales to vanish and leaving her skin looking normal. "No real side effects once you drop the power. Is it worth sticking the power in a wand in case we need it?"
"Might as well, no point in losing the ability to curse someone with scales," Taylor replied as she got to work scanning the elves with her Power Detection ability.
"Anything interesting?" the duplicate asked as she focused on the recycle bin at home with her Clairvoyance and teleported a couple of cans to the table in front of her.
Taylor ignored the wand her duplicate was making as she ran through the list of powers the elves had that she could copy. "Zombie Animation sounds like a good way to get a kill order, we can probably skip it."
"Zombies have some useful resistances that we might be able to copy," the elf with Zombie Animation argued, wanting to be useful.
"Okay, we'll animate a frog or a rat then burn it to ash after copying the resistances," Taylor replied as she started making notes in her notebook.
"I just have regeneration, you already have it," one of the elves said then dismissed herself, giving the rest of the group a bit more room.
"That works," Taylor said as she focused on one of the elves. "Elemental Conversion, you can convert things to a strange type of metal. Can you tell me anything else about the metal?"
"It's nearly indestructible silvery blue metal and an excellent magic conductor, I'm calling it mythril," the elf said proudly.
"Is that because you're an elf?" Taylor asked.
The elven duplicate laughed. "What else would we call it?"
"Divine metal? Sky metal? The stuff that doesn't break?" Taylor asked thoughtfully.
"Divine metal sounds pretty arrogant," the elf pointed out as she focused and activated her power, converting the aluminum spiral wand into her special metal. "That should give the wand an excellent boost."
The normal duplicate frowned as she studied the silvery blue wand. "I'm not using this to make a wand of zombies, I don't need to animate entire cemeteries."
"Probably a good idea," the elf with Zombie Animation pointed out.
"Probably fair," the elf with Elemental Conversion admitted. "Just a warning, using the power takes some of your life force or health, you'll get it back when you regenerate but you should probably let the duplicates make the stuff."
Taylor reached over, touched the wand and used her Residual Absorption ability on it, picking up the ability permanently. "And we're good."
"First try? Nice. In that case, have fun," the elf with Elemental Conversion said cheerfully then dismissed herself and vanished.
"What else did we get?" the duplicate asked as she glanced around the room.
Taylor read her notes, "Hyper-Leaping, Mind Drain, Detection: Extradimensional, Levitation, Hallucinations, Detection: Tracking, Water walking, rocket powered flight and Energy Detection."
"Mind Drain? Hallucinations? Are those as bad as they sound?" the duplicate asked.
The elf with Mind Drain shrugged. "Mind Drain isn't something I'd want to give out or admit I have considering you can permanently reduce someone to a vegetable or a child but you can also use it to erase memories if you're careful, including traumatic ones."
"If I didn't have excellent mental defenses, I'd probably skip copying it," Taylor admitted.
"What about the Hallucinations power?" the duplicate asked.
The elf with Hallucinations shook her head. "It's not as bad as you're thinking. It's basically the image sending part of Telepathy with some specialized tools that make it easier to get past people's defenses."
"Does the rocket powered flight boost the speed you can normally fly at?" the duplicate asked.
"No clue, I don't have flight anymore," the elf with Rocket Flight replied with a shrug. "We'll probably have to do some testing and we'd need more room."
Taylor created another duplicate then teleported the elf with Rocket Flight and the new duplicate back to the house to get some clothes and a mask so they could head to the boat graveyard to run some tests to see if it was worth keeping or if it was something to stick in a wand and forget about until they found someone that needed the power. "Let's start with the Extradimensional Detection, that should be easy enough to copy."
The elf focused and used her ability to look into another world, seeing an attractive tall muscular green skinned woman in the shower before the woman reached up and pulled the shower curtain closed. "Huh."
Taylor reached out and touched the elf with the power and activated her Residual Absorption ability, figuring the ability to see into different dimensions would be useful. "I might be getting better at this, that stuck the first time."
"Don't taunt Murphy," the elf with the detection power told Taylor then dismissed herself.
Taylor looked at her normal duplicate. "Grab Levitation and Leaping and make some wands."
"I'll pick up some pizza while I'm out," the duplicate replied as two of the elves stepped closer.
"Sounds good," Taylor replied as she teleported the three duplicates back to the house to grab some clothes. She turned to look at the Weapon's Tinkering elf and created another normal duplicate. "Grab some clothes, she'll teleport you back and you can get started making something I can absorb to learn the ability."
"No…" the elf trailed off as she found herself in the living room, "problem," she muttered as she headed for her bedroom. "We should probably grab a bunch of clothes from a second hand shop or search the base for BDUs in our size."
"I'll put it on the list," the duplicate replied as she followed the elf.
"Let's start with Hallucinations and Mind Drain then Energy Detection and Tracking," she told the group then looked at the elf that could walk on water. "Then we'll head to the bay afterwards, walking on water sounds like a fun power to be able to hand out."
"I'm not in a hurry," the elf replied with a shrug.
0o0o0
"Rise!" The elf girl with Zombie Animation glared at the rat that refused to reanimate. "Rise!" She shouted as she tried animating the rat. "Get off your fucking ass!"
Taylor's duplicate pulled her attention away from the news report on the large flatscreen television and looked at the wannabe necromancer Taylor duplicate that was glaring at the rat in the middle of the lounge. "Have you tried chanting in Latin?"
"It's not magic, it's just a power and it's not fucking working!" the elf complained as she tried and failed to animate the dead rat sitting in a cage for what was probably the fiftieth or sixtieth time.
"Screw it," Taylor's copy muttered as she opened the laptop she'd grabbed from the server room and opened a blank page.
The elf glared at the dead rat. "Rise! Zombie! Spirits of the underworld, rise!" she shouted as she tried her power again, getting rather annoyed by the fact that she couldn't raise the rat as a zombie.
Taylor's duplicate ran a net search for 'Zombie mash music' then clicked the link and played the video.
The elf looked over as the rock music started playing. "I don't think a rock song is going to help."
"It's worth a shot," the duplicate replied as she walked over, touched the dead rat with her finger and used Residual Absorption, picking up the ability to animate zombies at a much higher level than the elf. She snapped her fingers and used her Illusion-Casting to change the look of her clothes, going with black robes and a creepy plague mask. She waited until a dramatic point in the song then gestured at the rat and chanted, "Rise, Sophia the Mouse of Doom!"
The elf snorted when the rat didn't reanimate. "Yeah, it's not that easy."
"Zombie Rat!" Taylor's duplicate chanted as she gestured at the rat, causing it to reanimate and lurch to its feat.
The elf stared at the reanimated rat with glowing red eyes in disbelief for a couple of seconds then scowled at the duplicate. "Cheater."
"Yeah, I don't care, you were taking forever," the duplicate replied as she studied the zombie's powers using Power Detection. "It's got a couple of resistances that are tied to being a zombie but the immunity to hard radiation and sonic damage should be safe, same thing with the resistance against most types of Body Manipulation."
"Cool, does that mean I'm done?" the elf asked.
"Sure," the duplicate replied as she tried to shape change the rat, causing its resistance to block her ability and giving her a chance to use Residual Absorption to copy the rat's resistance against Body Manipulation.
The elf dismissed herself, not seeing a reason to stick around.
The duplicate smiled when Taylor teleported into the room. "Your elves are whiny."
"Glass houses," Taylor replied as she used her Sound Manipulation power to increase the noise around the rat, causing the rat's Sonic Immunity to create 'residue' that she could absorb. She walked over and used Residual Absorption on the rat, picking up Immunity to Sonic effects. "Nice, I got that on the first try."
"Nothing wrong with being lucky," the duplicate replied as she turned the music off.
"Nope," Taylor agreed as she used her Shapechange Others ability on the rat, trying to build up the residue so that she could absorb it. "I'm trying to figure out if it's worth taking a trip to Russia to copy the radiation immunity."
"That sounds like a horrible idea. Even if you're immune, you'd have to deal with the shit getting on your clothes or in your lungs," the duplicate argued.
Taylor shook her head. "I was thinking about having a duplicate pick the ability up then meeting them in Utah, they should be able to give me the ability from a couple of hundred yards away."
"Or you could grab Grue and clean up the radiation site while you're at it," the duplicate suggested.
"Not the worst idea," Taylor mused as she pulled out her phone and called Lisa.
"After this, we're going to have to do something fun, like play some video games or something," the duplicate complained, not actually sure what counted as fun anymore.
"We'd have to set up the server and download some games," Taylor replied as she gave her duplicate Hyper-Invention.
"Shouldn't be that hard," the duplicate mused, figuring they could find the information online.
Taylor reached out and poked her duplicate's forehead and used her Residual Absorption power to copy the Hyper-Invention power.
"What's up?" Lisa asked on the third ring.
"Can I borrow Grue for a minute?" Taylor asked, wanting to pick up his ability to see in the dark and his ability to create clouds of darkness that ate radiation and various forms of energy.
"He's out. How urgent is it?" Lisa asked, not really wanting to call him since he was still a bit annoyed at her for not mentioning that their previous employer was psychotic.
"Not…" Taylor trailed off as she used her Clairvoyance to take a look at Grue and realized he was in the middle of taking a shower. She reluctantly dropped her power. "That's fine, I'll try tomorrow."
"Speaking of borrowing teammates, I don't suppose you'll take Regent off my hands for a couple of hours?" Lisa asked hopefully, wanting some peace and quiet from his questions, questions he was only asking because it annoyed her and he was bored.
"Sure, give me like twenty minutes to get the computer network set up," Taylor replied then ended the call.
The duplicate shook her head. "There's no way I'm going to be able to set things up in twenty minutes."
"Don't worry, I have a plan," Taylor replied as she tossed a message to her other duplicate that was grabbing pizza, 'Bring the extra pizza to the computer room.'
'Cool, I need to deal with some idiots,' the duplicate with the pizzas replied as she ducked down an alley and teleported the pizzas she was carrying to the computer room.
"Hey, don't be like that," one of the Asian thugs that had been following the girl with a stack of pizza boxes said as he hustled into the alley.
Taylor's duplicate turned to look at the suspiciously dressed Asians that had been following her and froze when she recognized one of the men as one of the assholes that had caused Emma's mental breakdown. "You should be in prison."
"Lung disagrees," the man replied with a smirk.
“Sadly for you… I’m not Lung,” Taylor’s duplicate said with a smile that made them back up a step.
