Mist of Shadows
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Endbringers Hate Paperwork Part 13
🕑 Added 2023-03-14 04:48:14 +0000 UTCMyst pulled his attention away from the field of stars and looked at Taylor as she walked over wearing a black duster over her costume and holding a rune covered staff. "Let me guess, it had decent armor?"
"Decent armor, magic resistance and it keeps Alec from staring at my ass," Taylor replied as she finished walking over to where Myst was sitting.
"He's a teenager," Myst laughed.
"Are you saying he'll grow out of it?" Taylor asked.
"Nope," Myst replied, not seeing a point in lying. "Have you decided on a cape name?"
"Not really, I'm trying to avoid anything that reminds people that I'm master," Taylor admitted.
"Demon Lord, Dark Princess, Queen of Escalation, Magic Girl, Magic, Twisted Princess, Wicked, Candy, Breaker of Chains?" Myst offered.
Taylor laughed. "Let me guess, you were looking at random name generators?"
"There are a lot of capes," Myst complained. "Joking aside, keeping it short and simple is probably a good idea."
"Most of the good names are already taken," Taylor complained.
"Wiz Girl, Magic Hat, Mad Hatter, Enchantress, Wizard, Witch of Minions, Minion Witch, Witchy Minions?" Myst offered.
Taylor snorted. "I'm not calling myself Wiz Girl and I'd rather avoid anything that screams master which means Enchantress is off the table."
"That's fair," Myst replied with a grin. "What about Pixie?"
Taylor shook her head. "I'd rather avoid anything that makes people think of the Fairy Queen."
"What about Mystic or Warlock?" Myst asked thoughtfully.
Taylor considered the names. "I'd get flak for picking a magic related name."
"Do you know what the difference between a villain and a super villain is?" Myst asked as he cast a cantrip.
"I'm not a villain," Taylor argued.
Myst glanced at Lisa and Alec as they made their way across the courtyard. "Just humor me."
"Intelligence and power?" Taylor tried.
Myst tapped into the magic of his cantrip, causing his voice to echo, "Presentation!"
Taylor laughed. "Even with a decent powerset Myriddian still gets shit for going with a magic related name and he's had years to build up his reputation."
"He also called himself Merlin," Myst pointed out. "What about Captain Grumpypants, Lady Avoidance, Death of Worlds or Master of Minions?"
"You could always just go with Captain," Lisa suggested as they stopped a couple of feet away from Myst's overly large boot.
"Captain?" Taylor asked thoughtfully.
"Your power involves making and controlling minions but you don't have direct control of them, just influence which means you're basically a captain. The term also doesn't have any baggage and people generally associate it with sports or ships," Lisa explained.
"Captain," Taylor said, testing it out. "Captain what?"
"Just Captain, as in The Captain. You're a trump, you don't need anything else," Alec pointed out, frowning as his gaze touched on the leather duster that was obscuring his view of what he considered an admirable ass-et. His breath hissed out as Tattletale elbowed him in the gut, which made him choke a little as he tried to laugh.
"It works," Myst admitted, knowing it would take a bit to stop thinking of her as Skitter. He glanced at the glitter in Alec's hair then glanced at Lisa and Alec's bags. "Did you find anything good?"
"A decent gun, a pair of boots that let me run fast and a shirt with defensive enchantments and a self cleaning property so I don't have to wash it," Alec said smugly, having recovered.
"A couple of outfits and a gun," Lisa offered as Cloud and his girls walked out of the item shop carrying a couple of bags each.
"Cool," Myst replied as he used his telekinesis to stand up. "Now we just need to finish the last couple of levels and we can jump into something more impressive."
"What do you think we'll find?" Alec asked, looking forward to getting enough defensive gear that he could shrug off getting shot.
Myst watched Cloud and the girls as they walked over. "Materia, gear that makes you immune to various status effects or elements or gear with materia slots, I'm not picky."
"Right," Taylor teased.
"There's a difference between picky and greedy," Myst argued as Cloud, Aerith, Tifa and Yuffie walked over. "Ready to finish the dungeon and jump into something interesting?"
Tifa grinned as she thought about upgrading their gear. "We picked up a nice collection of healing and mana restoring food and some new outfits."
"Any idea how we're supposed to get back to the Item Word…" Myst trailed off as they found themselves back in the Item World or at least on the next level depending on the exact location of the shopping center. He focused on the comet spell and pushed mana into the mental framework, causing burning rocks to rain from the sky on the various monsters scattered around the level. 'Rocks fall, everyone dies, missing all their stuff… mostly.'
Alec pulled his gun out of his bag and shot one of the heavily damaged demons, putting it out of its misery. "I could get used to this."
"Enjoy it while it lasts," Myst told Alec as he lifted a demon off the ground with his telekinesis so it couldn't attack them. "I've been meaning to ask, is there a reason you're still using the buster sword?"
Cloud put the buster sword in his expanded belt pouch and pulled out a sword with a dark purple, almost black blade. "I wanted a challenge," he replied as he slashed the blade and all of the monsters in front of the group died, dropping the group back in the warehouse.
"Is that a feature of the blade or a power?" Alec asked, wondering if he could get a copy from the Item World.
"Just the materia," Cloud replied as Yuffie started picking up the silver coins that appeared with them.
Myst used his telekinesis to levitate the vial of amber liquid and the fully upgraded Identify tome from the middle of the runic circle over to the table next to the enchanting altar. He stepped over to the enchanting altar, being careful not to step on anything or accidently touch anything as he didn't want to damage it. 'Clark had a point, everything is like tissue paper,' he thought as he used the altar to look at the upgraded tome, picking up the ability to create spell books.
"Anything?" Taylor asked Myst, hoping they'd upgraded the number of uses they could get out of it.
"The cost dropped from six points to two and it's upgraded the amount of detail it reports which should make everything easier." Myst opened the book, causing it to burn the spell's formula into his mind or soul as the book turned to dust, giving him the ability to cast the spell.
"How long do you think it will take the girls to get back?" Taylor asked.
Myst focused on where he could feel Amy and Vicky's powers. "Three minutes assuming they don't get sidetracked. I'll get started on the Diablo gear, hopefully they have something useful."
"We can hope," Lisa replied as she headed for the door, wanting to talk to Brian and Rachel about the Item World. "I'll be back in a minute."
Tifa walked over and sat down in one of the metal chairs so she could start organizing her purchases while they waited.
Myst pulled a cutlass out of his spatial ring and cast his new identify spell on it. 'A couple of points of defense, five points of vitality and a negative to hit that would make it damned near useless if we upgraded it.'
He checked to make sure he'd unlocked the enchantments on the blade then set it in a box, fairly sure they'd be tossing most of the trash in a box if it wasn't a legendary or rare item. He grabbed the next weapon and took a look. It quickly joined the cutlass in the box. He grabbed the club that looked like a spiked metal baseball bat and examined it on the altar. "Nice amount of defense and vitality and it reduces the damage you take against physical attacks with specific bonuses if you happen to be in or have started a riot."
"Always nice," Cloud offered as he worked on sorting through the stuff the girls had talked him into buying.
Myst pulled a jester's hat out of his spatial ring and stuck it on the altar. 'So much for things matching the game,' he mused when he realized that the jester's cap actually improved the wearer's mana and health rather than increasing the amount of damage they took unlike the jester's cap in the game. He checked to make sure he'd picked up the enchantments then set the jester's cap off to the side and grabbed a pair of gloves from his spatial ring.
0o0o0
Rachel ignored the discussion about monster filled pocket dimensions Brian and Lisa were having as she watched three capes fly in for a landing in the parking lot. "Relax," she ordered as her dogs turned to focus on the new people.
"I might have to swap sides," Alec joked as he watched the girl in a sheer blue spandex costume that left very little to the imagination walk towards them.
"She's out of your league," Brian pointed out, trying to keep Alec from offending the capes.
"If you only go for girls you think are in your league, then what does that say about your self esteem?" Alec asked with amusement. “And how do you know which league she wants to play in? It’s entirely possible she considered herself an enthusiastic amateur and you the pro. People are a lot more complex than you give them credit for.”
Grue turned to stare at his friend for a moment. “That sounds suspiciously deep for you.”
Alec drew himself up. “I’m perfectly willing to take a chance and strike out for an ass like that.”
Grue nodded. “And there we are.”
Amy pulled her attention off her sister's behind and followed her over to talk to the villains that Myst was trying to recruit. She frowned when she noticed one of the dogs was missing an eye. "Do you want me to see if I can fix the dog's eye?"
"Are you a healer?" Rachel asked, wanting to make sure she wasn't a tinker before she agreed.
"Yes," Amy replied, not seeing a point in sharing details. "If you want, I can give all of them a checkup, I just need to touch them."
Rachel glanced at Lisa then looked back at Amy when Lisa nodded. "Yes."
Amy held her hands out and walked closer, stopping a foot away so she wasn't crowding the dogs or Rachel. "Now what?"
"Stay," Rachel told her dogs, then reached out and grabbed Amy's hand so that she could put it on Angelica's head.
Amy carefully fixed the terrier's eye and missing ear then fixed a couple of old injuries. "There, missing parts have been regrown and all her injuries have been healed. She’ll need more meat in her next couple of meals to make up for the energy that takes, but she’s now in perfect health."
"Thank you," Rachel told her.
Amy held her hand out so the next dog could sniff her.
"How did you get roped into helping Myst?" Alec asked Vicky as the girl with demonic horns walked inside.
"He offered me free candy," Vicky replied with a grin that they couldn't see thanks to her helmet.
Lisa shook her head, fairly sure the girl was just messing with Alec. "Myst is sorting through the loot and we're getting ready to run through one of Cloud's swords."
"Sounds fun," Vicky replied as she headed into the warehouse, looking forward to an actual challenge.
"I'll be done in a minute," Amy told them, wanting to make sure the dogs were healthy before they got side tracked.
"Sure," Vicky replied as she glanced over the people in the warehouse. "How many people did you summon?"
"Four," Myst replied as he used the enchanting altar to check one of the rings they'd picked up in the Diablo Item World. "How many people can you bring into the Item World?"
The demon considered the question for a couple of seconds. "Officially, ten. Unofficially, most demon girls can manage twice that, but the union set the limit at ten. Thankfully, we're not in the underworld so I can ignore it."
"Good to know," Myst replied as he dropped a cursed ring into the box of things they were going to turn into dust. He turned to look at Vicky. "Did you have any trouble getting the rings?"
Vicky pulled the bag of cheap jewelry out of her spatial ring and set it on the table. "No, we just ran into an idiot when we were grabbing snacks and had to wait for the police so we could make a statement."
"What happened?" Tifa asked.
"One of the local thugs crabbed Emerald's ass, she knocked him out," Vicky said proudly.
Yuffie snickered as she mimed hitting something. "Pow!"
Tifa frowned at Yuffie. "We're going to need to work on your technique."
"Does that mean we're ready?" Yuffie asked, ignoring Tifa's comments about her skill at fighting.
Myst glanced at the door as Brian and Amy walked in followed by Rachel and her dogs. "Just about. Everyone ready?"
"Yeah, I was just giving the dogs a check up," Amy replied as she walked over. "What are we jumping into first?"
Myst glanced at the Item World girl. "Can you check Cloud's swords? I'm curious how many levels they have."
"Sure," the demon girl replied, happy to help.
Cloud pulled his Buster sword out of his bag and handed it to the girl with horns.
The demon girl examined the sword. "It's not the most impressive blade I've seen, but it has a complicated backstory and it has potential, one hundred levels." She handed it back to him and carefully accepted the purple blade. "You could probably…" she trailed off as she checked the new blade. "Where the hell did you get this?"
"Off a giant mech," Cloud replied, remembering the battle where he'd finally stopped Scarlet and Heidegger. "I've lost track of the monsters I've killed with it."
"It certainly has potential but I doubt most of your party would want to jump into it, they'd probably die even with their durability trick," the demon girl explained. "You're going to want to get better gear before you try to upgrade it."
Myst checked the number of mana potions he'd picked up from the last run then looked at Taylor. "How many mana items did you grab from the shop?"
"Three and half, four dozen?" Taylor replied, not sure how many food items she'd grabbed that helped with mana as she hadn't been counting and some of them just restored health.
"Should be enough," Myst mused as he floated the plastic bag filled with silver rings over to the enchanting altar. "We should probably make some more spatial rings before we get started, I don't want to run out of space."
"Bet I could sell those for a couple of million hel each," the demon girl mused as Myst pulled a ring out of the bag.
"Not a horrible idea," Myst admitted as he pulled one of the rings out with telekinesis and set it on the enchanting altar. He selected the best spatial ring he could make then started adding the arcane dust to pay for the enchantment. 'I'd rather have an actual skill but this works until I can find something better.'
"It would certainly make shopping easier," Aerith mused.
"We should have enough for everyone," Myst assured them, not seeing a problem with giving everyone their own rings as they were going to get a bunch of magical items.
Brian glanced at Noelle who was busy sorting through loot with a blonde woman in her late teens or early twenties then focused on Myst. "What do I need to do when we get there?"
"Don't die," Myst replied with a grin. "Joking aside, we're going to be using a power to give everyone increased durability, you should be fine."
"This would be easier if we had a way to duplicate all of the armor," Alec pointed out.
"What I wouldn't give for a replicator…" Myst trailed off as he remembered something that might work better than a replicator. He focused on Kryten and scanned through the various versions until he found one that was holding a triplicator and summoned him.
Taylor stared at the blocky looking humanoid. "What are you?"
"I am Kryten 2X4B 523P, B.S. I'm a Series 4000 mechanoid," Kryten stated as he looked around at the room filled with humanoids, curious what species the giant was. "How can I assist you?"
Myst smiled as he looked at the device the android was carrying. "I was hoping I could borrow the triplicator for a bit."
"The triplicator has some serious and dangerous issues," Kryten warned them.
"I'm aware, the copies have to be merged with another copy to remain stable and you shouldn't eat the bad version of anything. You also shouldn't try to reverse things while on a spaceship, you'll copy your entire ship and cause it to explode."
"That would have been useful to know before we blew up the Dwarf," Kryten complained.
"Considering you explained everything in the future, if I'd stopped you before you found out, you wouldn't have found out and things would have gone worse," Myst lied.
"Time travel?" Kryten asked warily.
"Unfortunately. Can you help me set the triplicator up?" Myst asked hopefully.
Kryten frowned when he noticed the wall sockets. "Are we on Earth?"
"Yeah," Myst admitted.
"You won't have enough power," Kryten warned him.
"Don't worry about it, I have it covered," Myst lied as he lifted the triplicator out of Kryten's hands with telekinesis and let him vanish, fairly sure the machine was just left in a storeroom and forgotten about in the show.
"Time travel?" Amy asked.
"I needed something he'd believe that would keep him from asking too many questions," Myst replied as he moved the device over to a filing cabinet where it would be out of the way. "On second thought, I'll deal with it later, I'm going to need an engineer or a tinker," he admitted as he went back to enchanting spatial rings.
"What does a triplicator do?" Vicky asked.
"It basically turns an item into energy and splits it, creating two unstable copies and leaving the original untouched. The unstable copies are basically temporary versions of the original with exaggerated 'negative and positive' traits of the item it copied. If you don't combine the positive and negative copies, they'll vanish after an hour."
"Weird," Amy muttered, fairly sure technology shouldn't work that way.
"Yep," Myst agreed as he finished stacking enough arcane dust on the enchanter to make the next ring and hit the button on the display.
"You could probably talk Armsmaster or Kid Win into building something that would let you power it," Vicky mused.
"Or I could summon a mad scientist…" Myst trailed off as he realized he was being stupid, he knew the perfect person to summon that wouldn't have a problem powering the triplicator and rigging something up. "Why didn't I think about this before?"
Myst focused and looked through the various versions of Marvel for a reasonable Tony Stark and smiled when he found a familiar looking man with an arc reactor in his chest. "That works," he mused as he reached out and summoned the dark haired engineer.
"Huh," Tony said as he looked around the warehouse, pausing slightly when he noticed that one of the girls in revealing clothes had a cloak that moved on its own. "If it wasn't for the giant, I'd think I was at a costume party. What's going on?"
Myst gestured towards the triplicator as he floated it over to Tony. "We have an alien device that we'd like to use to replicate some technology and magical items, but we don't have a decent power source."
"And I do," Tony mused. "I'm sort of attached to it."
Myst gestured at Amy. "We have a biokinetic, you don't have to be."
"What are you going to use the device for?" Tony asked, curious what they wanted it for.
"Most of the local mad scientists have issues mass producing their tech, we're hoping the triplicator will help us figure out how the tinkertech works so we can duplicate it. It basically makes two unstable copies together to recreate the original, leaving you with two extra copies, one that works extremely well and one that is basically a failed copy or a maggot filled strawberry depending on what you copy."
"Great, schizo tech," Tony muttered, thinking of some of the inventions he'd seen that were completely unintuitive and you’d have to be mad to think up, hence the name.
"Basically," Myst agreed.
"What happens if I don't want to help?" Tony asked, trying to get an idea of their character.
"I send you back," Myst assured him. "Either before or after Emerald fixes your heart, your choice."
"That's it?" Tony asked.
Myst pulled Palpatine's lightsaber out of his spatial ring. "I might have a habit of stealing from villains, but I'm not going to steal from you."
"Is that a lightsaber?" Tony asked as he studied the lightsaber.
"Yep," Myst replied with a grin.
"When did you get that?" Taylor asked.
"When you were shopping, Palpatine didn't need it," Myst replied with a grin as he made sure it wasn't pointed at anything and turned it on, creating a red beam of something that might be plasma or might be something specific to that universe.
"If I help you get your triplicator working, can I get a copy?" Tony asked, curious how it worked.
"Sure," Myst replied, not particularly worried about Tony getting a copy of a lightsaber.
"I'm going to want a copy," Alec piped up.
"We'll see," Myst replied as he turned the lightsaber off and put it back in his spatial ring so Alec wouldn't mess with it.
"How long would it take to get the arc reactor out?" Tony asked Amy.
"Arc reactor?" Noelle asked as she stared at Tony. "Tony Stark?"
"That's me," Tony replied with a shrug.
"Huh," Noelle muttered, making a mental note to ask Myst more about his summoning ability since he could apparently summon comic book characters or at least people that sort of matched.
"Let me touch your hand, I'll check," Amy said as she walked over and held her hand out.
Tony reached out and touched the girl's hand, figuring if they wanted to screw him over he was screwed as he wasn't sure where he was or how he'd gotten there. "Where am I?"
"On another world, they call it Earth Bet," Myst offered, "home of parahumans and endbringers."
"Parahumans? Endbringers?" Tony asked as the girl in green spandex touched his hand.
"You're lucky you're not dead," Amy muttered as she started pushing the fragments out of his heart and healing the damage.
Tony sighed as he thought about the scans he'd looked at of his heart. "I'm aware."
"Parahumans are basically altered humans and endbringers are basically giant sized monsters that show up every three to six months and destroy a city or at least attack a city so the heroes and villains have to try to stop them," Myst explained, deciding not to mention the alien supercomputer bit in a room filled with parahumans connected to said alien supercomputers who were programmed to hide that information.
"Every three to six months?" Tony asked, trying to calculate the death toll and the damage to the world's infrastructure. "Civilization wouldn’t be sustainable."
"That's one of the reasons that we're trying to figure out how to duplicate tinkertech, we're looking for an edge," Myst replied as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and floated it over to Tony with telekinesis. "Go ahead and look up endbringers."
Tony looked over the unfamiliar phone before easily figuring out the controls, mostly because it was still made by humans and menus were a thing. He ran a web search for destroyed cities, getting a bunch of hits for destroyed cities scattered over the world. "This is worse than back home."
"Probably," Myst agreed, knowing that most of the problems in Marvel weren't on the same scale or ran into heroes that could deal with it, mostly because people like Strange and the Avengers. "At least your world has hope that things will improve."
"You might want to catch the metal piece in your chest," Amy said as she made the final push, repairing his chest as she pushed the metal out.
Tony reached up and grabbed the arc reactor as it came out of his chest, a bit surprised when he felt perfectly healthy skin where it used to be. "That's amazing."
"Give me a second to clear up the rest of your medical issues," Amy said as she pushed the metal out of his tissues and moved it to his colon so that his body would dispose of it as she healed the damage and gave him a tune up. "That should do it."
"Huh, no pain," Tony mused, surprised that the background discomfort he'd been dealing with since getting kidnapped was gone, leaving him feeling fantastic. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Amy told him, feeling amused by his reaction.
"I'm going to need some gear," Tony mused. "And a gift for Piper, she's going to be annoyed that I missed the meeting."
Myst laughed. "Sorry to disappoint but my power sends you back to the moment you left so you won't lose any time. You'll vanish at dawn and reappear in your home safe and sound."
Tony smiled as he thought about all of the interesting tech he could study. "I'm going to need tools."
"Have fun," Myst replied as he gestured towards the tool boxes they'd salvaged from the warehouse. He went back to work enchanting the spatial rings, figuring that would give Tony enough time to look over the collection of tools. "If you can't find what you need, we'll talk to some of the local tinkers."
Comments
Chichi son
lol
Mist of Shadows
I've done that before, usually the other way with things actually being dust.
Chichi son
I know it's a typo but it's one that's really easy to overlook if it's not pointed out specifically the first time I saw it I thought it was just a bit of dust on my screen until it moved when I scrolled the page
Mist of Shadows
It's a typo.
Chichi son
Captain., You've got a word followed by a period then a comma and it's not an abbreviation
Mist of Shadows
Tony's great, he's a decent person in the MCU and a great engineer.
Bable Zmith
Only for a day! Okay that is bad... But think of all the weird crap he had at the end of the Avenger movies. This is where he could have acquired it.
