Mist of Shadows
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Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 5
🕑 Added 2023-08-01 04:34:07 +0000 UTCJessica giggled as she glanced around the PRT lobby, her feet only occasionally touching the ground. "This is so cool!"
"Hell yeah!" Frank agreed, already daydreaming about being a hero.
"It's certainly interesting," Amy agreed, enjoying hovering, but keeping close to the ground since she didn't know how long the flight would last if it turned out to be temporary.
"You should have asked for a force field," Vicky teased as they followed one of the PRT agents towards the door that led to the attached hospital.
"Probably," Amy agreed, wondering if they were going to be stuck in a cell while they figured out if they were under the influence of a master.
"How long do you think these powers will last?" Gwen asked Amy, fairly sure she hadn't actually triggered since there wasn't an accident or anything of note and she didn't have any capes in the family.
"Considering the powers haven't vanished and it's been at least twenty minutes, we're probably looking at a couple of hours or a couple of days," Vicky said, thinking about what she'd learned about trumps in her parahuman studies class.
"Or we could have triggered," Frank argued.
Amy shook her head as they walked into the hospital. "Considering I didn't black out and I'm already a parahuman, that's unlikely."
Doctor Lee glanced over the group of flying teenagers that the school had called about then focused on Amy who was floating a foot above the ground. "Do you feel strange?"
"Not really. I've had a good day and my friends were teasing me because I'm normally a bit grumpy until I've eaten. The first sign of anything being wrong was shooting some type of blast out of my finger, but I don't think I was responsible."
"Why not?" he asked as he pulled an electronic thermometer out of his pocket and touched the sensor to Amy's head.
"Because there's a mental switch for using the flight, there wasn't anything when I nearly shot a classmate and I haven't been able to shoot any of the trash cans," Amy explained, slightly annoyed that she couldn't recreate the blast.
"You should probably mention the blast to the lab techs in the testing department," he suggested as he checked the temperature on the machine. "You don't have a temperature. Did you check your classmates for corona pollentias?"
"I wanted a second option on my mental state before I offered," Amy admitted.
Lee glanced at Vicky who nodded. "You seem fine and you waited which means you're probably fine."
"Can I check your head?" Amy asked Jessica as she held her hand out.
"Sure," Jessica replied as she held her hand out, curious what she'd find.
Amy touched Jessica's hand and checked her biology. "Everything seems normal enough other than a couple of minor scars."
Jessica laughed. "Can I get that in writing?"
Amy laughed then held her hand out towards Frank. "Permission to check?"
"Go for it," Frank replied.
Amy touched his hand and checked his biology. "No corona pollentia."
He sighed. "Does that mean we're going to lose our powers?"
"I don't know," Amy admitted. "I just know that you didn't trigger. Do you want me to deal with your athlete's foot?"
"That would be great, I’ve been treating it with medicated spray for a week and it's not going away," Frank complained.
Amy quickly dealt with his feet. "That should do it."
"Thanks," Frank told her.
Gwen held her hand out. "Go for it."
Amy touched Gwen's hand and checked her biology and frowned when she realized that her brain was different from a couple of weeks ago when she'd fixed her bloody nose in gym after someone had spiked the ball into her face. "You have a couple of minor scars from old injuries and your brain's wiring is a bit off, mostly around the part of the brain that deals with motion. It was normal a couple of weeks ago."
"No corona pollentia?" the doctor asked.
Amy looked at Gwen and waited for her nod. "Not that I can see, though her brain seems to be pulling energy in from somewhere."
"How?" Gwen asked, wondering if her Flight power was going to melt her brain.
"I don't know," Amy admitted. "Everything seems stable so you'll probably keep the flight unless something changes."
"In other words, enjoy it while I can?" Frank asked.
"Might as well," Vicky suggested.
Amy looked at Laura. "Permission to check?"
"Sure," Laura replied, not expecting much.
Amy blinked when she touched Laura's hand and realized that the girl was durable enough to shrug off high caliber rifles. "Huh."
"Spit it out," Laura said.
"You're going to need brute testing, your flesh is more durable than it should be."
Doctor Lee glanced down at the girl's feet that were hovering four inches off the ground. "Is there any sign of her brain changing?"
Amy shook her head. "No."
"Have you checked Vicky?" he asked thoughtfully.
"She can already fly…" Amy trailed off when she touched Vicky's arm and realized that her sister had the same durability as Laura. "Yeah, we're going to have to do some power testing."
"Sounds fun," Vicky said cheerfully, wondering what Amy had noticed.
"Let's head to the power testing department," Doctor Lee suggested as he headed for the door, curious how long the strange effects would last.
0o0o0
Lisa scowled as she answered her cell, wondering what Coil wanted this time. "Yes?"
"It has come to my attention that you're between employers, can I interest you in a job?" Taylor asked as she finished registering Power_Fairy as a PHO user name on the extra cell phone that she'd picked up from Coil's stash of burner phones.
"You're not Coil," Lisa replied, fairly sure Coil wouldn't let anyone use his cape cell unless something had gone sideways.
"Correct. Coil had an unfortunate meeting with a baseball bat and a PRT holding cell which leaves me with a bit of a problem," Taylor replied as she turned the phone off and took the battery out, wanting to make sure tracing that particular user account was going to be nearly impossible since she planned to have some fun with it.
"What problem is that?" Lisa asked, wondering what she wanted.
"Coil had a number of illicit holdings, I've collected some of the money but I'm not an expert at computer systems or money laundering which is where you come in, I'd like to hire you to clean out the rest of his villainous accounts," Taylor explained as she leaned back in Coil's comfortable chair.
"Why would you trust me?" Lisa asked, wondering if this was some type of trick.
Taylor scried on the thinker and teleported her into the room. "Because I have a particular set of skills."
Lisa stared at the masked cape sitting in a comfortable looking computer chair, her power working overtime to put the pieces together. "Which happens to include teleporting people?"
"It also includes finding people," Taylor said cheerfully.
"In other words if I betray you, you'll find me?" Lisa asked as she ended the call and put the phone in her pocket, trying to figure out why her power was insisting that the girl's professionally tailored costume wasn't real.
"That's the general idea," Taylor agreed. "I'm willing to show you some of the notes and where the money is in general, you can give me a quote and if I like the number, you can do the job and get paid then we'll go from there."
"And if I don't want to work for you?" Lisa asked, wanting to know if the girl was psychotic or someone that she could work with.
"Then I'll snap my fingers and you'll be back in your apartment and I'll have to find someone else to collect the rest of his money and you get to tell the rest of your team that they missed a chance to help clean up the city."
Lisa ignored the start of a headache as she tried to figure out the girl's angle, getting the sense that she wasn't a villain. "You're a hero, why not turn the computer over to the authorities?"
Taylor shrugged. "I'm a hero, not a saint. They can have the computer after I've stolen everything he has."
"Can you teleport objects or just people and what they're carrying?" Lisa asked, trying to figure out the limits on her power.
"Anything I want," Taylor replied.
"Have you considered stealing from the gangs?" Lisa asked with a smirk, thinking of all of the cash and treasures they could steal with that sort of power.
"Tell you what, help me steal Coil's money and I'll help you loot the Empire and the ABB," Taylor offered.
"Not the Merchants?" Lisa asked, wondering if there was a reason she didn't want to go after them.
"I already have someone dealing with the Merchants," Taylor replied as she made a duplicate under the desk out of sight and teleported her to her room to get dressed so she could deal with the Merchants.
'Do I need to work with a new cape? She's green and a hero and if she's telling the truth, she dealt with Coil, it wouldn't hurt to check the computers.' Lisa glanced at the computer. "Do you have any of his passwords?"
"I have all of them," Taylor replied cheerfully.
"How?" Lisa asked, a bit surprised that she'd managed to get anything out of Coil.
"I'm psychic," Taylor replied smugly, knowing about her general claim of being psychic from poking through Coil's memories and reading Lisa's thoughts with telepathy.
Lisa shook her head. "Mover and thinker?"
"That would be telling," Taylor replied, wondering if she was talking to her duplicates too much because it was nice to talk to someone real, even if they were a bit of a villain. She flipped one of the pieces of paper over, showing the various account locations. "Are you good with twenty percent?"
Lisa raised her eyebrows. "Why so much?"
"We're in a bit of a time crunch, there's a chance that certain people learn about his capture before you manage to loot his accounts and you're supposed to be an expert, are you interested?" Taylor asked, knowing she wouldn't even get half of his money if she had to do it herself.
Lisa glanced over the account locations. "As long as you have the passwords, we have a deal."
Taylor opened the laptop and flipped over the other piece of paper, revealing the various passwords she'd dug out of Coil's head and teleported from his various safes. "Do you want the chair?"
"It looks comfortable," Lisa replied with a grin as her new employer stood up and let her have the chair. 'She's a hell of a lot better than Coil,' she mused as she got to work, reasonably sure the girl wouldn't shoot her in the back.
0o0o0
'You'd think one of the heroes would have dealt with this shit, they're not exactly subtle,' Taylor's duplicate complained as she floated towards the lighthouse shaped tourist shop that the Merchants had taken over, doing her best to ignore the loud and obnoxious screeching coming from the building that might charitably be called music if you were tone deaf and drunk.
'Shock and awe or quiet as a mouse?' the duplicate mused, trying to figure out which would cause less trouble in the long run. 'I already dropped Coil off in the lobby and they're going to be wondering about a trump that can hand out powers or at least Flight and durability, I might as well stick with the ninja angle.'
She frowned as she noticed one of the merchants stumble outside and light up something that started making green smoke. "Where the hell do they get their shit?" she muttered under her breath as she used her Power Creation ability to give the man poison resistance, figuring spending most of a year without the ability to get high would let him get his addiction and life under control.
She used her biokinesis to regenerate the man, dealing with the damage that he'd caused himself over the last couple of years and curing a couple of STDs and diseases he'd picked up living with the Merchants. She briefly considered trying to poke through his head to figure out why he'd started using drugs before realizing that she didn't care, he'd either take the chance to improve his life or he wouldn't.
'I should probably give Panacea a copy of my version of Biokinesis, it doesn't let me make changes other than healing people but it's fast and it doesn't require biomass unlike hers,' the duplicate mused as she used her Clairvoyance to check on one of the police stations in the nice part of town, not particularly surprised to find that they had three empty cells and half a dozen officers sitting around. 'At least you'll be warm,' she mused as she teleported the man to the cell without his drugs or weapons, not seeing a point in having a cop shoot him after she'd gone to the trouble of healing him.
The duplicate teleported the joint that was making the green shit into the ocean along with the smoke then headed towards the fake lighthouse, glad that she was immune to poisons and that she was a duplicate because the place smelled worse than a public restroom. She floated over to the window and started giving the people she could see poison resistance, wanting to take care of the basics before she teleported them to the station.
She spent the next couple of minutes healing and teleporting the people to the cells in the station until she'd emptied the room then she flew around to the next window. She gave Skidmark resistance to poison, not sure how to feel about it sinking in as that meant he'd never be able to use pain medication again. 'Screw it, it's not going to kill him.'
The duplicate took a minute to look through his head to see how he got started using drugs and what he was like before he'd gotten addicted. 'Huh, you're actually less of an asshole on drugs, go figure.'
She spent a minute digging through Skidmark's mind checking on their current stash houses and the quality of their drugs before deciding that anyone that used their drugs was playing Russian roulette. 'How the hell do you have repeat customers?'
The duplicate used her Clairvoyance to check on the PRT holding cells, wanting to make sure he wasn't going to teleport Skidmark into someone. She teleported Skidmark into the cell without his gun then dropped her Clairvoyance, glad that she could use her Power Detection for targeting capes. She went back to work healing and teleporting the rest of the gang members scattered around the room into various police cells. 'I doubt the police will be able to hold most of them for more than seventy two hours but that should be plenty of time to deal with their stash houses.'
The duplicate worked her way through the shop until she got to the attached garage where a twenty something woman in overalls was working on a souped up golf cart, her head bobbing to the 'music' as she worked. She flew closer to the tinker and used her emulation ability to start to copy her power, not particularly interested in damaging the golf cart so she could use her absorption ability, especially since she was just a duplicate.
She waited for the ability to slot into place in her Duplication ability then went digging through Squealer's mind with a mental probe, curious about why she'd started using drugs. 'Family issues and an asshole boyfriend, lovely. Skidmark's the gift that just keeps on giving,' she thought as she used her Biokinesis to heal Squealer, flushing the toxins out of her system and reversing the damage the drugs had done to her body.
"Weak shit," Squealer muttered as she grabbed a can of beer off a crate, finding her high already fading for some reason.
The duplicate gave Squealer poison and disease resistance then spent the next minute reapplying the powers until they powers sunk in while Squealer got back to work on her golf cart. She took a couple of seconds to find an empty PRT holding cell in New York with Clairvoyance. "Excuse me, can I interest you in a job?"
Squealer didn’t reply, humming along with the music or at least somewhat along with it.
"Right, music," the duplicate muttered as she reached out with Telekinesis and turned the boombox off.
"Hey!" Squealer complained as she spun around to shout at the asshole messing with her tunes.
"Can I interest you in a new job?" the duplicate asked, figuring she might as well try to recruit the tinker before she dropped her off with the PRT.
"What the hell are you talking about?!" Squealer demanded in a squeaky voice as she picked up a large wrench.
"I've captured the rest of the Merchants, can I interest you in signing up with a better team?" the duplicate asked as she used telepathy to listen to Squealer's thoughts.
"I don't suppose you'll show yourself," Squealer asked, figuring she'd hit them when they appeared.
'Yeah, so much for that idea. She probably needs some time to properly detox,' the duplicate mused as she teleported Squealer to New York, figuring she might get a better deal than dropping her off with the local branch. She turned to look at the tools and the mostly finished golf cart. 'I'll just have to find someone that wants to be a tinker,' she mused as she started teleporting Squealer's tools to the garage in her base.
0o0o0
Tomas Calvert groaned as he woke up on a cot that was too small in a familiar cell when something shocked him. "What the hell?!"
"That's what I'd like to know," Emily Piggot said from outside Calvert's cell as she slipped the remote to the drone that she'd used to shock him awake back into her pocket. "Who did you piss off?"
"What do you mean?" Calvert asked, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.
"You were teleported into the middle of the lobby wearing a gimp suit and stuffed in a cardboard box filled with some extremely illegal tinkertech drugs. I'll ask again, who did you piss off?" Emily repeated, not seeing a point in mentioning the list of compromised agents that had been stapled to the outside of the box as Armsmaster was still interviewing them with his prototype lie detector.
"I have no idea," Calvert admitted, not having a clue how he'd gone from being in his base to waking up in a cell.
Calvert flinched when he tried to split the timeline and nothing happened. 'What the fuck?!' he thought as he tried and failed a second time to split the timeline. "Get me out of here!" he demanded, wondering what the hell was going on and why his power wasn't working.
'They're going to kill you,' Taylor's duplicate whispered in Calvert's mind using telepathy, doing her best to make it match his own thoughts while suppressing his power.
"I'm afraid you're not going anywhere," Emily said, her lips curling up into a rather nasty smile. "We stuck you in a CT scan because you showed up unconscious, you're a parahuman."
'So much for bluffing my way out of things,' he thought as he tried and failed a couple more times to split the timeline, getting increasingly on edge with each failure. "Being a parahuman isn't illegal."
"No but falsifying test data is," Emily replied dryly. "You're not slipping out of this one."
"I want to call my lawyer!" Calvert snapped.
"By all means, give us a name and we'll get in contact with your lawyer. I have a feeling they'll walk when they realize how much evidence we have against you."
"I was framed," Calvert declared.
"For what? Being a parahuman or being a sadistic asshole?" Emily asked, curious what he'd say.
"I never gave you permission for that test," Calvert complained.
"You were unconscious and the doctor signed off on it, it's all nice and legal, unlike your entire career." Emily turned and left, wanting to make some calls before he managed to leverage his connections to escape a firing squad. 'So much for him not being Coil,' she mused as she headed towards the testing department, curious about the teens that acquired powers at lunch.
Taylor's duplicate dropped the suppression of Coil's power then suppressed it when he sighed in relief five seconds later, causing him to grind his teeth in frustration when his timelines came apart. She used her manipulation ability to change his power into something that predicted nightmare scenarios then dropped her suppression and let him torture himself.
0o0o0
Taylor finished putting the freshly washed sheets on the new king sized bed in her new bedroom then flopped down on it, finding it surprisingly comfortable. "I guess being a villain has perks."
"Generally," one of her duplicates replied with amusement as she used one of the digital cameras she'd found in the base's supplies to take a picture of the mutated snail that was crawling across a paper plate.
Taylor glanced over at her duplicate. "Is there a reason you're testing Noelle's power on a snail?"
The duplicate snickered as she took another picture. "I didn't want to make mutant rats or turtles."
"Yeah, I can't see the PRT being happy with us if we unleash a plague of mutated rats or ninja turtles," Taylor admitted as she rolled over so that she was looking up at the ceiling.
The duplicate set the camera on the table. "I figured I'd start with something extremely basic and try to work my way up to modifying humans."
"Probably for the best," Taylor agreed as she used her Clairvoyance ability to peek in on Madison, wanting to check on her before she caused trouble. She nearly dropped her Clairvoyance when she got an image of a wet haired Madison in a white shirt and a pair of pink panties with the words, "Hello Kitty!" written on the back of them leaning down so that she could type a message on her computer without sitting in the chair. She glanced around the girl's room that was filled with far too many stuffed animals for a girl in high school then focused on the computer screen where she could see the message page of the PHO forums.
"How do I report a crime at school when the school administration won't listen and I don't have any proof to take to the cops?" Taylor read the message, trying to figure out what Madison was going to try to pin on her. "What the hell is Madison trying to pull?"
"No clue, have you tried reading her mind?" the duplicate asked as she reached out and touched the slug, trying to get used to the sheer amount of data Panacea's power was giving her.
"Might as well," Taylor muttered as she focused on Madison and dug into her memories with a mental probe, trying to figure out what she was talking about. It didn't take her all that long to figure out that Madison was trying to find a way to report Emma and Sophia for the locker without getting her name involved because she thought they'd jumped the shark and didn't want anything to do with them anymore, even if that meant switching schools so she wouldn't have an 'accident' between classes or in the locker room if people found out she was responsible for turning them in.
Another minute of digging through her memories revealed the fact that Madison was only pranking her because she had a crush on her and because she didn't want Sophia and Emma turning people against her or shoving her down a set of stairs. "That girl needs counseling," Taylor complained.
"We're not exactly a pillar of sanity," the duplicate pointed out. "We're basically relaxing in a villain's secret lair while we leave everything to the heroes to deal with."
"I'm failing to see the problem," Taylor replied with amusement. "Besides, the bed is comfortable."
"If we're keeping the base, we should probably figure out how to put in a ball pit or a water slide," the duplicate mused.
"We have a pool for the minions," Taylor pointed out.
"We've got Molding and Crystallization, it shouldn't be all that hard to put in a water slide and to make some of the rooms larger," the duplicate suggested.
"I'm not turning everything to crystal until we've actually tested to make sure the crystal won't crack or break under pressure," Taylor replied as she read the response from the person Madison was talking to, 'Don't worry about it, Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess are in police custody for a bioterrorism attack, you shouldn't have to deal with them for a long time.'
"Get a hammer and run some tests," the duplicate suggested as she used her copy of Panacea's power to lower the acidic content in the snail's slime. "What are you going to do about Madison?"
"No idea," Taylor admitted as Madison jumped up and did a silly looking and very enthusiastic victory dance. "She wasn't involved in the locker, everything she did was basically a misdemeanor at most. Even if we could prove half the shit, she'd get a couple of weekends of community service at most. I'm probably better off walking away."
"Probably," the duplicate agreed as she went back to playing with the snail's biology.
Taylor used Telepathy to skim Madison's thoughts as she finished her dance, surprised by how happy Madison was that she wouldn't have to deal with Emma and Sophia anymore and hoping that meant people would leave Taylor alone now.
Madison grabbed her cat themed mask off her shelf and put it on then pushed the button on her remote, turning on the overhead camera. She sat down at her computer and clicked on the Shattered Lands icon then pulled up her streaming program, intent on finishing the desert race now that she was in the right frame of mind.
"She's a nerd," Taylor muttered.
"Madison?" the duplicate asked.
"Yeah, she's streaming a video game in her underwear and a mask," Taylor said as she watched Madison log in and grab a mech from a collection of vehicles.
"Everyone needs a hobby," the duplicate pointed out.
"Apparently," Taylor replied as she watched a giggling Madison running through a desert landscape blowing up monsters while carrying on a conversation with some of the people in her chat room. "Makes me want to build a mech and drop her on the empire."
The duplicate laughed. "That sounds like a recipe for collateral damage."
"Probably," Taylor agreed as she dropped her Clairvoyance and rolled off the bed. "I'm going to go stress test some crystals."
"Have fun," the duplicate replied as she got back to work modifying the snail trying to see if she could make it leave a dayglow trail.
