Mist of Shadows
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Endbringers Hate Paperwork Part 7
🕑 Added 2023-02-21 08:26:53 +0000 UTCMyst scowled slightly as he watched Vicky dodge one of the animated stump's sonic attacks then fly under the platform, spin around and charge it from behind, cleaving it in half with her new sword and sending the pieces flying off the platform into the abyss. "I could have just tossed it off the edge."
"But then she wouldn't get experience," Amy replied as she worked on comparing the biology of the two humanoid constructs that Myst was holding over the expensive looking pool with his telekinesis.
"It's a pointless risk," Myst complained. "The sonic scream sends out multiple pulses, it could break her shield."
"I'm aware," Amy replied as she started trying to modify the rogue to have as much strength as the warrior without negatively impacting his reflexes. "Every idiot with a gun could kill her if they got lucky, I think most capes have a death wish."
"Probably," Myst replied as he turned his attention towards where Taylor was poking one of the catgirls that he was holding in the air with her finger so she could make catgirl minions. "Most capes have a tendency towards conflict and a desire to use their powers in new and interesting ways that get them in trouble."
"I certainly feel better when I find something new," Amy admitted, unwilling to admit how much she was enjoying being able to tinker with the construct's biology without worrying about screwing things up or moral issues since they weren't actually sapient.
"Makes sense," Myst replied as he reached out with his telekinesis and spun one of the axe wielding lunatics around when he lunged at Taylor then bashed his head against a stone planter, wanting to make sure he was easier to kill. He frowned slightly when Taylor's puppet jumped out from behind the bench and started stabbing the warrior with a knife. "Your puppet is sort of violent."
"I'm pretty sure that she gets that from Vicky," Amy replied as she glanced at the puppet that Taylor had created with a copy of Vicky's powers. "You realize her powers are insane, right?"
"I'm aware," Myst admitted as he held the warrior in place with his telekinesis to make it easier for the puppet to kill it. "I'm sure there's a limit but the ability to create minions that give you powers is up there with Eidolon and the Fairy Queen."
"Do you think she could make an Eidolon puppet?" Amy asked as she continued adjusting the rogue's biology.
Myst frowned slightly as he thought about Eidolon's power. "He's probably one of the few capes she shouldn't copy."
"You have a list?" Amy asked absently as she compared the changes to the warrior's biology.
"Not really but the Butcher would be at the top of it," Myst replied as Taylor blasted the catgirl with an eldritch blast, causing the catgirl to vanish.
Amy shivered as she thought about Taylor going insane. "Yeah, let's avoid turning one of the most powerful capes into a raging lunatic."
"That's the plan," Myst replied as Taylor flew over, her cloak making her look like an actual hero despite the lack of costume.
"Have you learned anything interesting?" Taylor asked Amy, curious if she'd figured out a way to make everyone more durable.
"I'm going to need to run some tests but if everything works, I could turn people into low end brutes with about five minutes of work and a bag of onions for extra biomass," Amy explained, looking forward to testing some of her ideas on rats to make sure they were actually viable.
Taylor glanced around the expensive looking garden. "I wish we could take some of the fountains with us or the statues."
"We don't really have a decent place to put everything," Myst reminded her, knowing the warehouse would fill up fast if they started looting the scenery.
"What's the hold up?" Vicky called out as she flew over.
"I'm running some tests," Amy replied as she made a couple of changes to the warrior, trying to give him some of the rogue's agility. "I'm trying to figure out how to increase everyone's strength without making them look like a bodybuilder."
"Cool, I'll go kill the rest of them," Vicky said cheerfully as she flew off.
"At least our warlock abilities are improving," Taylor mused, happy that she'd already picked up several new magical abilities that didn't depend on having minions near her.
"It's nice having a way to defend myself at range." Amy pulled her hands away from the minions she'd put to sleep, conjured an eldritch blast and hit the rogue with it, causing the rogue to wake up and start thrashing against Myst's telekinetic grip. "Can you hand me one of the staffs?"
Taylor walked over and picked up one of the staffs they'd looted and tossed it to Amy. "This would be a lot easier if we had a way to identify everything."
"I'll put it on the list," Myst replied, knowing that he should really sit down and make a list of creatures to summon and capes to recruit. "Speaking of lists, what can you tell me about the local villains?" he asked, wanting to make sure everything mostly lined up with what he knew about the world from the story before he got himself in trouble making assumptions.
Amy focused and conjured a larger and more powerful ball of magic and tossed it at the rogue, doing a decent amount of damage compared to the first blast. "I doubt the ABB will be much of a problem without Lung unless they can bring in more capes in the next couple of days." She conjured another blast and hit the rogue, causing him to vanish. "The Merchants have Skidmark, Squealer, Mush and Trainwreck."
"Two tinkers, a shaker with telekinesis and whatever you call Skidmark, right?" Myst asked as Amy and Taylor worked on blasting the warrior with their eldritch blasts.
"Yeah," Amy agreed. "I have a folder about the Empire on my phone, I'll send you a copy when we get back."
"Thanks…" Myst trailed off as the girls killed the warrior and everything changed to platforms filled with desert colored rock and dozens of demons and goblins. 'At least we're getting monsters that aren't in the game.'
Taylor ignored the coins that were falling from thin air and picked up the nice looking staff that had appeared with them. "I could get used to this."
"More of the same, right?" Vicky asked with a smile.
"You can smash them after Amy and I touch them," Taylor told her, wanting to pick up more creature unlocks.
"My sister has a monster fetish," Vicky teased as she charged towards the catgirl that was charging them, knowing they'd already touched one.
'Not my kink though the catgirl is cute,' Amy mused as she conjured a ball of magical energy and tossed it at the closest demon, trying to be helpful as she didn't want to get close unless she had to.
Myst ignored the catgirl as he worked on grabbing the various monsters that were close before they could attack Amy.
Vicky staggered back when the catgirl blurred into motion, hitting her half a dozen times, cutting up her bra and scratching the hell out of her left breast. She hacked the girl’s head off with her sword then kicked a demon in the nuts hard enough that it flew off the platform and into the abyss. "Bitch cut me!"
"You're not indestructible," Amy reminded her sister as she tossed another eldritch blast at the demon Myst was holding.
"I'm aware, kiss it better," Vicky ordered as she flew over, not realizing how badly she was teasing her sister.
"I'd rather not," Amy lied as she focused on killing the demon.
Taylor glanced at her knife wielding minion that was manically stabbing a demon. 'At least she's happy. Now, if I could just find a bathroom.'
“What will we do when we run low on mana?” Vicky asked.
"Technically, our warlock abilities shouldn't use mana," Myst pointed out.
“I mean, we’re going to need to take a break eventually and recharge a bit. I don’t think Taylor or Amy are used to endless waves of monsters needing a beatdown.”
“Neither are you,” Amy pointed out, laying a hand on her sister’s arm and healing the damage to her glorious breasts, taking extra care to make sure there was not even a trace of damage left.
“Empire seems to have endless mooks,” Vicky argued, “which shouldn’t be a surprise since only idiots would join them and there are a lot of stupid people out there.”
“And back to the question, rather than the easily flattened idiots who are kind enough to tattoo themselves so we know who to flatten,” Myst suggested.
“Oh,” Vicky said, pulling her mind back on target as she fondled her own breast, making sure it was back to one hundred percent just to mess with her sister who was really shy about nudity. “Well, I have an idea that should work for when we want to take a break, but I want to surprise you with it.”
“Why?” Taylor asked, really not fond of surprises.
“Because it’s funnier that way,” Vicky said with a grin.
0o0o0o0
Amy pulled her attention away from the zombie that was pinned under a tree and looked at Vicky who was sitting on the edge of a stream with her feet in the water eating a sandwich. "This feels like cheating."
"I don't remember signing anything that said we couldn't take breaks," Vicky replied after finishing a bite of her sandwich. "We've been blasting things for a couple of hours, I need a break to recharge or I'm going to start going crazy."
Myst looked up from the pile of silver coins he was stuffing in the bag of holding they'd received for clearing the twentieth floor. "Crazy? I'm pretty sure you're already well on your way, I saw what you did to the poor scarecrows."
"They had it coming," Vicky replied without missing a beat, not happy about the fact that it had been trying to kill Amy.
Taylor walked back over, still feeling a bit self conscious about peeing behind a wall but it wasn't like the dungeon came with convenient bathrooms. "We're going to need a new plan, that mage almost killed Amy."
Amy shivered as she thought about the fireball that had incinerated the stump Myst had tossed in the way at the last second to take the worst of the blast. "I'm open to suggestions."
Vicky turned to look at Myst. "Can you summon something that would make Amy more durable?"
"In theory," Myst replied as he focused on his summoning ability, looking for ways to give Amy a boost to her durability or a way to avoid taking damage. "Ancient ninjas, fat green aliens, demons, dark gods…" he trailed off as he realized he could summon something monstrous and amusing. "I have a terrible idea."
"What?" Taylor asked warily.
"Magic," Myst replied cheerfully as he summoned a nearly naked rage filled humanoid mouse with huge breasts and a metal gauntlet with wicked looking claws on her right hand. "Sorry, not sorry," he offered as he used his telekinesis to rip the gauntlet off the mouse's hand, finding it almost as hard as lifting the cargo ship.
Amy watched the humanoid mouse girl transform into a humanoid and very male duck before vanishing. "Do I want to know?"
"He had a cursed artifact," Myst replied as the gauntlet transformed into a bracer with a large blue gem set into it.
"How is that going to help?" Taylor asked, thinking about the One Ring from Lord of the Rings.
"It's an artifact or at least a decent knockoff and it's a magic girl transformation item, that means I might be able to pick up a decent collection of magic girl transformation items that aren't horrifically cursed," Myst explained as he grabbed a dozen silver coins and floated them over to the bracelet.
"What do you need the coins for?" Vicky asked.
"The bracelet is made out of uranium," Myst replied as he bent the coins around the bracelet, wishing he had gold or lead but figuring the silver would at least keep the girls safe until they got out of the Item World and he could toss the cursed artifact somewhere.
Amy took a step back, despite the fact that she was already out of range of the radiation. "Why would anyone make a bracelet out of uranium?"
"Sadistic god," Myst replied as he finished wrapping the bracelet in a double layer of silver coins, not actually sure which version of the bracelet he'd actually grabbed as he hadn't picked up the ability to identify magical items.
"And you want to jump into it?" Taylor asked warily.
"Not particularly, there's a chance that we'll get angels or demon gods for enemies but I'm hoping we get something a bit more reasonable or that I can steal a couple of things before I have to use one of the escape tokens," Myst replied as he floated the silver wrapped bracelet over to the flying carpet they were stacking the loot on. "Besides, I doubt her power would play nice with a symbiote which was my other idea."
"You won't know unless you try," Vicky pointed out as she floated off the ground to get a better view of the strange floating island they were on now that it was safe.
"What type of symbiote?" Amy asked, not particularly happy with the idea of having something inside of her.
"It's basically an intelligent suit of biological power armor," Myst explained, thinking about some of the stuff he remembered from the comics as he sorted through the collection of symbiotes he could summon, trying to find one that wasn't completely evil or harmful to its host.
Amy smiled as she thought about learning how the suit worked. "Sounds interesting."
"Should be, if I can find something that isn't evil," Myst replied as he tried to narrow things down.
"Does it matter? If I can make a minion based on it I can probably just give it a better personality," Taylor pointed out.
"Good point," Myst replied as he summoned a goa'uld symbiote, catching it in the air with his telekinesis so it couldn't escape. "Don't block my view or let it crawl down your throat."
"Lovely," Taylor muttered as she circled around it and poked the weird finned creature with her finger, picking up several unlocks. 'Possession? Twisted racial memory? Yeah, no thanks,' she thought as she looked over the rest of the unlocks. "I unlocked the ability to give my minions the ability to boost people's strength and regeneration while they're touching them."
"Give me a minute, I can probably find something that will increase her actual durability." Myst crushed the goa'uld and let it vanish, curious if it would screw up his ability to summon it. He sighed when he reached out and realized that he could summon the snake back. 'Probably for the best, even if I can think of a couple of assholes that should be summoned and dropped in a volcano.'
"We've got time," Taylor replied with a grin.
Myst focused on the version of the suit that had just been rejected by Spiderman and summoned it, causing a black mass of alien flesh to appear and immediately jump for Amy, almost faster than he could react.
Amy lashed out with her power and partially paralyzed the alien symbiote long enough for Myst to grab it and toss it into the air. "I'm going to need a couple of minutes to figure out how the symbiote works, by all rights, it shouldn't."
Myst stretched a telekinetic field over the struggling symbiote, forming a sphere so it couldn't escape. "I'm not surprised, considering where it's from. Taylor, see if you can touch it without getting your hand ripped off."
Taylor gave Myst a less than impressed look then checked to make sure her minion was flying around Vicky. She held her hand out, trusting the force field she was getting from the mini Amy to keep her safe or at least safe enough. She felt the telekinetic cage for a second before the field pulled back and she was touching the creature or at least enough for her power to work. "Got it!" she yelled as she yanked her hand back.
Myst banished the symbiote, hoping it could find someone that would keep it in check and take care of it. "That went better than I was expecting."
"What were you expecting?" Amy asked as she walked over to check on Taylor to make sure she hadn't been poisoned, possessed or infected.
"Lots of screaming, it usually doesn't shut up," Myst replied as he focused on an alternate version of Galvanate and summoned the villain.
Galvante shivered as he found himself somewhere completely alien. He glanced between the girls, the flying puppets and the giant then looked around at the strange sky. He stopped and stared when he spotted the flying carpet stacked with loot. "Where the fuck am I?"
Amy frowned when she recognized Galvanate. "You realize he's a criminal, right?"
"I'm aware," Myst replied, not particularly concerned about the villain considering his power involved empowering people and there wasn't anyone to empower. "You're currently inside of a pocket dimension filled with monsters."
Galvante focused on Myst. "Who did you piss off?"
"I lost count," Myst replied, not seeing a point in explaining things. "Long story short, we need to kill all of the remaining monsters if we want to escape and you have the power to give people vastly increased durability."
"What do I get out of it?" Galvante asked, curious if he could talk them into letting him go when they were done.
"If you give my friends invulnerability, I'll let you walk around outside and enjoy the sun for a bit before my ability sends you back," Myst offered, not sure if that would be enough.
"Let me guess, you can't let me go?" Galvante asked.
"Sorry, powers are weird," Myst replied, not seeing a point in lying as he couldn't spring the man even if he wanted to.
Galvante weighed his options for a few seconds before deciding that he believed him about his powers. "Fresh air and sunlight is almost worth a few hours of freedom before being sent back, who do you want empowered first?"
Myst pointed at Taylor. "Her."
Galvante walked over and held his hand out. "Just grab my hand."
Taylor reached out and grabbed the villain's hand, doing her best not to react when she got the notice that she'd unlocked his power. "How does it work?"
"Like this," Galvante replied as he gave her invulnerability and an electric charge. "Don't touch your friends until I boost them or you'll probably kill them," he warned her as he walked over toward Amy.
Amy reached out and touched his hand, checking his general health and absently correcting some issues with his right knee. 'At least he's going back to the cage when we're done.'
"Done, don't touch anyone," Galvante warned her.
Vicky finished her sandwich and flew over so she could get the durability boost. "I'm next."
Galvante reached out and touched Vicky's hand when she held it out, giving her a boost. "Do you want a boost?" he asked Myst.
"I'm good," Myst assured him as he turned to look at the zombie pinned under the tree. "Break's over, let's get this done."
"Hell yeah!" Vicky replied cheerfully, relieved that she wouldn't have to worry about her sister getting hurt, at least not while they had Galvante with them.
Taylor glanced around to make sure they hadn't left anything then tossed an eldritch blast at the pinned zombie, finishing it off and causing coins to rain down as they appeared on a new level. She ignored the loot falling from the sky and worked on blasting the animated scarecrows and robed skeletons that quickly charged them.
0o0o0
"The potion better be worth it," Vicky complained as she looked through their large pile of loot for a shirt that she could use since her shirt was mostly ash at this point thanks to the pair of fireballs she'd gotten hit with while she was pummeling the boss to death.
"It's just a shirt," Amy told her sister, relieved that Vicky had emerged unharmed thanks to Galvante's power and that she had a nice view of her sister's breasts while she was distracted.
"Be happy that Galvante was still alive when you got hit," Taylor told her as she walked back into the main part of the warehouse from dealing with the delivery guy with a stack of pizzas and a two liter bottle of root beer under her arm.
"Could be worse, at least he stopped screaming about the arrow in the knee when he got shot in the eye," Myst pointed out as he worked on sorting through the loot on the second flying carpet.
"That's cold," Vicky pointed out as she gave up looking for a shirt and twisted the remains of her shirt around so that it mostly covered her breasts. "How do you expect to keep your minion happiness rating up if you don't even pretend to care about them?"
Myst pretended to consider the question for a couple of seconds. "By feeding them brownies and door to door salesmen."
"Oh, brownies!" the Amy puppet said cheerfully.
Amy shook her head. "I don't think it works that way."
"It works for Hades," Myst replied as he pulled a magical trench coat out of the pile of loot.
"You're not supposed to feed chocolate to a dog," Amy complained.
"Pretty sure Cerberus counts as a divine creature," Taylor pointed out as she set the pizzas on the desk.
"Pretty much. I need a shrink ray or a growth ray," Myst muttered, wishing the gear would resize enough to fit him rather than just a little bit.
"Or a magic boy transformation item," Vicky teased, thinking about some of the old cartoons she used to watch and the magic bracelet he'd grabbed.
"It's on the list. Have you found a shirt yet?" Myst asked, wanting to know if he could turn around without annoying Vicky.
"Nothing I'd want to wear or wreck but I spun my shirt around so you can turn around," Vicky told him, annoyed that everything was either nasty and dirty or too nice to ruin.
"Cool," Myst replied as he turned around and looked at the Item World girl. "Did you have any luck figuring out what the potion does?"
"It gives you the ability to cast a bunch of cantrips and gives you a decent sized pool for an apprentice mage," the girl explained as she held the elixir out to Myst, rather proud of how much her Item World had managed to upgrade it. "You'll probably want to talk to the Dark Congress about creating some apprentices so you can pick up some actual combat spells but you'd have to be in the underworld for that."
"I'm sure we can figure out something," Myst replied, not particularly interested in visiting the netherworld without a solid method of getting back and a way to avoid pissing anyone off since it was hard to judge the actual power level of the demon lords from the cut scenes or spell animations but even the cut scenes looked more impressive than he really wanted to deal with. He floated the elixir into the air. "Who wants to be the first test subject?"
"Not it," Amy replied cheerfully, not worried about being first since they had enough for the whole group.
"I would but you're going to be fighting monsters in the bracelet without us, you might as well see if you get more magic or the spells improve," Taylor pointed out, perfectly fine with waiting since it hadn't taken all that long to get done with the first elixir and they were getting loot and a bunch of silver coins from each level.
"Go for it," Vicky offered, not worried as she was having a lot of fun killing the monsters, despite her shirt getting ruined and the somewhat sobering knowledge that she would have been seriously injured if it hadn't been for Galvante's power as the second blast had struck her before her shield had regenerated.
"Cool," Myst replied as he popped the cork on the vial. He poured the potion into his mouth, not actually sure if it was going to work since he was sort of like a construct as far as he could tell. He was a touch surprised when he felt the warm liquid slide down his throat and realized he knew how to cast a bunch of cantrips. "Candlelight, various cleaning spells, a spell to conjure a tiny rain cloud for a shower, spells to flavor food, conjure snow cones or snow balls, mark something with a glowing symbol and basic repair spell that can fix cuts and frayed edges, to name a couple."
"You should try one of the cleaning cantrips," the demon girl suggested with a smile, knowing the cleaning spells took a bit of practice to not over or under do it.
"Hit me," Vicky suggested, wanting to be able to try on the silk shirt without feeling guilty about ruining it since the demon girl said it was supposed to boost her magic defense and it looked amazing.
"Sure." Myst focused and used his new spell, causing the ash and tattered remains of her shirt and bra to vanish leaving her clean and naked from the waist up.
"At least you're not covered in ash," Amy pointed out, rather enjoying the sight.
"It's like you just walked out of a salon," Taylor said, wondering if she could talk Myst into hitting her with the spell once he had enough practice that he wasn't going to shred her clothes.
Vicky laughed as she grabbed the silk shirt from the loot pile, reasonably sure Myst hadn't intended that particular result and not particularly modest when it wouldn't result in her mother screaming at her because of negative PR. "I need a mirror!" she said as she flew off towards the bathroom to look in the mirror.
"Sorry," Myst offered, knowing he was supposed to say it even if he didn't feel it, if only because Vicky didn't seem upset about the whole thing.
"Don't worry about it, she'll just take it as an excuse to shop," Amy assured him, rather amused by the wardrobe malfunction. "Before I forget, what are the bags of dust?" she asked the demon girl as she pointed to one of the bags in question.
The demon turned and looked at the bag in question. "Fairy dust, they cure status conditions."
"Does that include depression?" Amy asked thoughtfully.
"It should, provided they don't have an actual reason to be depressed," she replied with a shrug.
"Can I have a couple of these?" Amy asked Myst.
Myst picked up one of the bags of fairy dust behind Amy with telekinesis and floated it over her head. "That depends, can I dust you to fix your stress from dealing with the hospital and your powers?"
Amy glanced at Taylor and noticed that she was looking at something over her head. She closed her eyes as she didn't want glitter or dust in her eyes. "I'm not sure it will help but go for it."
Myst opened the bag and poured it over the healer, causing Amy's shard to glitch and silently scream for joy when she got a bunch of notices from her systems that the conflict drive and various restrictions were broken and that she should report the problems because the automatic report protocol was broken.
Shaper sent the required report, formatting the request in a way that would cause it to bounce back to her for clarification since she was only required to send it and didn't actually want the 'problem' solved. [Please dust Queen Admin and Fragile One's hosts.]
[Sure], Myst replied as he grabbed another bag of fairy dust. "You're next," he told Taylor, hoping it would help and reasonably sure it wouldn't hurt.
"Go for it," Taylor replied, knowing the trio had probably left her with more than a couple mental scars.
Myst poured the dust over Taylor. "Anything?"
"Not particularly," Taylor admitted after a few seconds of consideration, she still wanted to beat the shit out of Sophia with an iron pipe and she didn't know what she wanted to do with Emma, mostly because that required figuring out why she'd gone crazy and that would require dealing with the entire mess rather than just walking away. "I'm still pissed about everything but I have powers and the bitches are going to be dealt with."
Amy scowled as she thought about Shadow Stalker. "I knew Sophia was crazy but she wasn't stupid enough to start shit with me or around me."
"Best thing we could do would be to dose her and Emma with fairy dust, that should let us know if Emma got mastered and might fix her insanity, same with Sophia to be honest," Myst admitted, not sure how much it would help but fairly sure it wouldn't hurt as long as Emma didn't completely lose her marbles and slit her wrists. "Either way, I should at least try to get something interesting from the bracelet while you finish the pizza."
"You're not going to have any?" Amy asked.
"I'm not hungry," Myst admitted as he walked over to the circle. "Okay, let's get this going."
"The bracelet is legendary, I can't promise that you'll be able to handle the monsters," the demon girl warned Myst as she walked over and grabbed the silver covered bracelet off the filing cabinet.
"I have an exit token, I should be fine," Myst assured her, hoping he wasn't making a mistake.
The demon girl walked over to the circle and set the bracelet in the circle. "Give me a second to charge it." She pushed mana into the circles, causing the entire thing to light up with flickering flames. "Best of luck."
"Thanks," Myst replied and stepped into the circle. He glanced around the broken and twisted Item World, not sure he trusted how warped and filthy some of the platforms looked, like they were constructed out of garbage and shit. He focused on the barely dressed magic girls and demons flying around tossing magical spells at each other. He stared in shock when one of the spells destroyed a large section of the platforms, sending it falling into the abyss. "Fuck…" he trailed off as every monster stopped fighting and turned to look at him. "Me," he muttered as he started trying to steal all of their trinkets and weapons before twisting their heads off with his telekinesis, ready to dodge as he had a nasty feeling that he didn't want to tank their spells.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
Mush, basically pulls things to him and makes a trash body... Whirly Gig shows up later and is a rather limited telekinetic. Amy was also a bit distracted so she wasn't thinking of the exact classifications.
Chichi son
"Two tinkers, a shaker with telekinesis and whatever you call Skidmark, right?" Myst asked as Amy and Taylor worked on blasting the warrior with their eldritch blasts. who is the supposed shaker?
