Mist of Shadows
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Boosted Villainy Part 27
🕑 Added 2022-08-30 04:15:11 +0000 UTC'What do you do for fun when you're not at the club?' Myst asked as he watched Riley spin around the pole.
'When I'm not studying for my classes, building or repairing computers, I mostly crush people in WoW, catch up on fanfics or work on my robot of doom,' S. Riley replied cheerfully as she watched Riley dance.
'Robot of doom?' Myst asked, wondering if she was joking.
'Ironman wrecked a bunch of robots in a fight with some aliens a couple of months ago with some type of EMP pulse; it crashed into the back of my truck.'
'And you stole it?' Myst asked as he watched Riley dance.
'I'm reasonably sure any claims of ownership are null and void when you send your toys to attack a city,' S. Riley argued.
'That's fair, what are you studying?' Myst asked as Kitty returned with their food. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Kitty replied with a smile. "Just let me know if there's anything else."
S. Amy pulled her attention away from Riley long enough to move her food into position and smiled at their waitress. "Sure."
"We'll let you know," Myst replied then started eating. 'This is surprisingly good.'
'I know,' S. Riley replied smugly. 'To answer your earlier question, I'm taking technology and a bunch of biology classes, I want to go into medical technology design.'
'Sounds interesting, do you think she'd trade powers for permission to clone her?' Myst asked as Riley stepped away from the pole and took a bow.
S. Amy clapped enthusiastically with the rest of the room, rather impressed with the show.
'In a heartbeat,' S. Riley replied cheerfully. 'She'll be working the crowd for another ten minutes then getting changed and heading home. You could talk to her in the parking lot but you'd have better luck finishing your dinner then swinging by the electronics store and picking up the video card she's been looking at.'
'Wouldn't showing up at her house freak her out more?' Myst asked.
'That's why we're bribing her,' S. Riley replied with amusement.
'You're the expert,' Myst replied as he watched Riley saunter down the stairs connected to the stage with a smile on her face and a bounce to her steps. He pulled his wallet out and grabbed two hundred dollar bills, glad he'd upgraded the wallet to exchange cash. 'How much are we supposed to tip?'
S. Riley giggled. 'As much as you want, anything from a couple of dollars to a couple of hundred isn't going to raise eyebrows.'
'Good,' Myst replied as he watched Riley work the crowd, figuring he could use the time to get to know her.
0o0o0
Riley peeked through the spyhole and froze for a couple of seconds when she saw herself standing there with a smile on her face. She reached over and grabbed the baseball bat she kept by the door. "If you're a body stealing alien, I have a weapon."
"We come bearing video cards," S. Riley teased.
"And that's supposed to make me feel better?" Riley asked as she stepped to the side and opened the door so she didn't have to talk through it.
"I'm not a shapeshifter or an alien," S. Riley assured her.
Riley glanced at the guy standing next to her that she recognized from the club, mostly because it wasn't every day that someone dropped a pair of hundreds in her hat without asking for a lap dance or something extra. "If you're not a shapeshifter, what are you?"
"I'm a temporary clone," S. Riley replied with a grin as she held out the bag with the top of the line video card that Myst had enhanced with a stack of cheap ones the clerk had sold her for a song. "I trade you a video card that will blow your mind for ten minutes of your time."
Riley reached out and carefully took the video card. "Start talking."
"Myst has the ability to make temporary copies of people. He ran into an alternate version of us in another world and wants to permanently copy you because we're awesome," S. Riley explained.
Riley glanced between the two people standing on her porch. "Let's pretend that I believe you, what are you willing to trade?"
"That depends on what you want. I can give you superhuman powers or I can use a pair of magic gloves to instantly clean and repair your house," Myst offered.
"Magic?" Riley asked, thinking about Doctor Strange. "What are the drawbacks?"
"Technically none, but you'll probably get pulled into interesting adventures," Myst warned her.
"Wouldn't be the first time," Riley replied with a laugh as she opened the door, revealing the fact that she was wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a Ironman t-shirt. "How many powers can you give people?"
"I haven't found a limit." Myst glanced at the wooden baseball bat Riley was carrying then at the notes floating over her head that his sunglasses were showing him. 'Ability to generate force and heat using a wooden medium, nice choice of a weapon.'
Riley glanced at Riley then stepped out of the way. "You might as well come in, no point in confusing the neighbors."
"Thanks," S. Riley replied as she headed inside.
"What types of powers can you hand out?" Riley asked as she walked over and set the video card on the table.
Myst stepped inside and shut the door behind him. "Flight, regeneration, enhanced reflexes, speed, strength and durability along with the ability to create force fields, a tech database and flora, cryo, and pyrokinesis."
"That's an impressive collection of powers, all that for cloning me?" Riley asked, not sure what his game was.
"Like your shadow copy said, I ran into another version of you in a different world, she was extremely smart but she'd been through enough crap that she needed a break from cape shenanigans."
"Whereas I'm more stable?" Riley asked thoughtfully.
"Basically," Myst admitted as he glanced at the pictures hanging on walls of Riley and her mother or of Riley and her dog. "My world doesn't have reliable super science, I could use the help. You're looking at working in the medical field."
"The tech side," Riley agreed. "How long does it take to give people powers?"
"A couple of seconds, I just have to touch someone's hand and give them power," Myst explained.
Riley glanced between Myst and the girl that looked like her. "What do you get out of it?"
"I get a copy of a hot as hell crazy, mad scientist, stripper that managed to graduate two years early," Myst replied with amusement.
Riley raised her eyebrows. "Crazy?"
"You walked off with an alien robot and I've seen your browser history," S. Riley teased.
"What's my favorite picture?" Riley asked.
S. Riley smiled at Riley. "No contest. The signed autograph of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts at the club that you keep over your computer to remind you that anything is possible. Something you've never told anyone else, you have a pink duffle bag under the stairs with cash that's your go bag. Do you need more proof?"
"First crush?" Riley asked S. Riley.
"Officially, Tony Stark. Unofficially? Our fourth grade teacher," S. Riley replied smugly.
"So, how does this work? Tissue sample, blood sample?" Riley asked, figuring the other girl was either a telepath or a clone, as she'd never mentioned having a crush on her teacher.
"Nope, I just reach out and touch your hand," Myst replied as he held his hand out. "Same as the powers, which powers do you want?"
"Is there a reason not to take all of them?" Riley asked.
Myst shrugged. "I'd make a joke about power and responsibility, but you're a mad scientist."
"Yep, with great power comes the potential for great collateral damage," Riley replied with a grin as she reached out and touched his fingers, ready to hit him upside the head with her bat if he tried to drain her power or life.
Myst smiled as he started copying the powers he'd listed off, along with the powers he'd picked up from her alternates and a copy of Anne's power. "This could take a minute; it’s a couple of seconds a power."
"That's fine," Riley replied, relaxing a touch when she realized he wasn't joking about having the ability to hand out powers as she could suddenly sense her house plants and realized she really needed to water them. 'This is going to be awesome!'
S. Riley smiled as she slipped away to copy her clothes while Riley was distracted getting powers. 'I should probably copy my computer.'
'Might as well,' Myst agreed as he watched the progress bar.
"How much are you going to pay my clone?" Riley asked.
"At least a couple of million a year once we get rolling," Myst assured her.
Riley stared at Myst for a couple of seconds. "What's the commute like?"
Myst laughed. "I have a remote that opens portals."
"I'd love to see the multiverse," Riley said cheerfully.
"What about class?" Myst asked as he finished copying over all of the powers he wanted to give her.
Riley grinned. "I don't start class until the third."
"What about your mother?" Myst asked.
"She's out of town for the weekend," Riley replied with a shrug. "I'll just tell her that I'm going to a convention for the weekend."
"Your funeral when she catches you," Myst replied with amusement.
"You should probably make a clone," Riley suggested, curious if she could talk her clone into having sex before she left.
'We're done copying powers, you might as well knock on the door,' Myst told S. Amy as he activated his copy of Noelle's power and created a naked copy of Riley.
C. Riley smiled as she looked down at her breasts then looked at her original. "I'm going to miss that shirt."
"How much do you remember?" Riley asked her clone as she looked her over.
"Everything up until a couple of seconds ago," C. Riley replied.
"Bedroom?" Riley asked thoughtfully.
"When are we leaving?" C. Riley asked Myst.
"I'm not in a hurry," Myst assured the girls.
"Considering your earlier tip, do you want to watch?" Riley teased.
"I'm not dead," Myst replied with a smirk.
"Off with the clothes!" C. Riley ordered as she walked over and flopped down on the couch.
Riley laughed as she pulled her shirt off, looking forward to having some fun with her clone and gloating to Amanda that she got to cross ‘fucking her mad science created twin’ off her bucket list before her.
“Hey, wait for me!” S. Riley yelled, hurrying after them.
0o0o0
Myst looked up from his bowl of cereal as Vicky flew over wearing an old Guns & Roses t-shirt and looking half awake. "How are you doing?"
"Red mage needs coffee," Vicky replied as she grabbed the coffee pot that Leet had set up in the room they were turning into a staff lounge.
Myst laughed. "You've been spending too much time with Leet and Uber."
Vicky took a drink of the delicious black liquid then looked at Myst. "Uber set up a really realistic VR machine loaded with all the fighting games, it helps take the edge off since someone decided to make all of the villains in the city stop doing villainous things. For god’s sake, I discovered Lung helping put out a house fire and Kaiser escorting an old black woman across a busy intersection!"
"Wait a couple of weeks, I'm sure more of them will show up," Myst complained then went back to eating his cereal.
"Who pissed in your cheerios?" Vicky asked with amusement then took another drink of her coffee.
"Amy, she even sent me a picture on my phone after I’d taken my first spoonful," Myst replied, causing Vicky to sputter and spray coffee over the table.
Amy beaned him in the back of the head with a koosh ball, from where she was eating her cereal. “Stop defaming me, or at least pick something less disgusting to defame me with.”
"Asshole," Vicky complained when she realized that Myst was just messing with her. "Funny tho’. What's up?"
"There was a news story in the paper about the Fallen attacking a charity event," Myst grumbled as he pulled his cleaning gloves out of his inventory and started putting them on. "I'm just trying to wrap my head around the fact that no one has bothered to kill them yet."
"The same reason no one goes after Heartbreaker, it's a good way to lose capes," Amy complained. “Masters are not something to mess with if you can avoid it.”
"We could always stamp everyone," Vicky suggested as she poured a cup of coffee for her sister.
"I wouldn't even know where to start," Myst admitted, thinking about what he knew about the group of degenerate cultists. "On the upside, if we can take out one of their Strangers, we should be able to destroy their ability to avoid precogs, which would let the PRT and Protectorate deal with them."
Amy shook her head. "It's still going to be a nightmare."
"Speaking of nightmares, the fuckers at the company screwed up and we got another huge shipment of rubber ducks, can you get rid of them?" Leet asked as he walked into the lounge.
"Sure," Myst replied with a grin as he used the gloves to clean up the mess from Vicky's coffee, looking forward to seeing how far he could push his current project. "Speaking of acceptable targets, do you have any ideas for dealing with the Fallen?"
"Blast them from orbit?" Leet asked as he headed over to the coffee maker.
Myst shook his head. "It's eight in the morning, I'm not doing the math for that."
"Closer to nine," Leet replied cheerfully.
"Not to mention the collateral damage," Myst muttered.
"This is why you're not a hero," Amy teased, causing her sister to stick her tongue out at her. "Do you have any socially acceptable ways to deal with them?"
"Make everyone so high, they chill the fuck out?" Leet asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
Vicky gave Leet a look. "I don't think you can get them high enough to ignore master effects."
"That's easy, I know the right bits of brain chemistry you'd have to tweak," S. Riley said as she walked in with her older alternate. "The hard part is getting the plants to produce the right chemicals."
Amy considered the idea. "That's actually easy."
Riley glanced between the shadow of her alternate and the biokinetic that she'd spent half the night getting to know. "How long would it take?"
"Mega pot?" C. Squealer said as she walked into the lounge, not wearing anything. "If we get Myst to enhance the grow lights, we could mass produce the good stuff and corner the market."
"Did you forget about the florakinesis that we picked up from Ivy?" Myst asked with amusement.
"Yes," C. Squealer admitted. "Okay, I know some of the people in their supply chain, creepy bastards for the most part, but they had connections, especially Blasto. We could flood the market with anti-master pot in just a few days."
"This can't be legal," Amy muttered.
Leet laughed. "Eh, if we clean things up a bit and we can prove that it has antimaster effects, we can probably sell it to the PRT directly."
"I can just imagine Simurgh fights, everyone has to toke up after the fact," C. Squealer said enthusiastically. “Can you imagine Armsmaster high?” She burst out laughing.
Myst stared at C. Squealer in horror for a couple of seconds then stood up and headed for the door. "I'll be back in a bit, I need to deal with some trash," he muttered as he walked out.
0o0o0
Myst walked into the storeroom filled with what looked like endless rows of rubber ducks with still more unopened crates labeled ‘Duck, Yellow’ piled near the wall, wondering if his lucky penny was responsible for the mess up or if it was just an honest mistake.
Reaching into his inventory he pulled out an extremely detailed rubber duck that was all but crackling with energy and glowing a dark blue. The eyes seem to be staring into his soul. 'Three full tanks worth of energy, tens of thousands of ducks,' he thought to himself, ‘I’m not sure if I’m going to cause the first magic based black hole or an artifact level rubber duckie… but it’s going to be a blast either way.’
He turned to a shelf and held up the magical duck, half a row of ducks vanishing and the item in his hands pulsing as if it had gained a heartbeat. He smirked as he walked down the row, shelves emptying themselves and the air beginning to smell of ozone, like the air before a major lightning storm.
By the time he had reached the warehouse’s back door the hairs on his arms were standing up and his hand was twitching. He opened the door with his free hand and forced the hand holding the duck to unclench as he held it up to the sky.
He spoke the activation phrase, “Release the Quacken,” and was blown ass over teakettle by the explosion of power as the duck soared for the heavens!
0o0o0
"Can you figure out a better way to control the growth of the anti-gravity field?" Colin asked as he double checked his math.
"I've been running some tests." Dragon's attention jumped from the calculations on containing the anti-gravity fields and jumped to the alert that she'd set up if anything unusual appeared to be happening with the Simurgh. "I just got an alert about the Simurgh, I need a second set of eyes on something."
"Toss it up," Colin said as he turned to the large flat screen television. He blinked as what looked like a blue rubber duck appeared, flying in space on a rainbow of light. "Did someone hack…" he trailed off as the giant duck passed next to a satellite and realized it must be at least fifty feet tall.
"My systems? That's what I'm trying to find out," Dragon admitted, feeling better that Colin was obviously seeing the same thing she was.
"Why is there a giant," he paused when the massive rubber duck started crackling with lightning or at least something that resembled lightning, "electric duck in space?"
"No idea," Dragon admitted as she watched the lightning continue to crackle and build up over the duck's body.
Colin blinked as lightning blasted out of the duck's eyes and struck the Simurgh in her back, causing a massive flash of light. "Where did the Simurgh go?"
"Give me a minute," Dragon replied as she slowed the image down and replayed everything, wanting to make sure she hadn't missed something.
Colin stared at the screen as something in one of the Simurgh's wings exploded with enough force to obliterate or at least heavily damage the Simurgh. "Can we find out where the fragments are going to hit?"
"Working on it," Dragon replied, fairly sure the fragments were going to hit before she was able to calculate their destination and warn people.
0o0o0
Accord looked up from the neatly printed and organized page of notes on the genetically modified collection of plants that Coil's associate had dropped off and focused on the cape with a jester's cap and a silver mask. "Please tell me that you didn't acquire this from Blasto."
"We might have stolen some of his work, but it has been heavily modified and his markers erased," Myst assured him. "We took several strains and enhanced their positive qualities and reduced the negative ones to a reasonable level before we handed them to a team of biokinetics and biotinkers to modify."
"You realize I'll have to run tests, right?" Accord asked.
'Don't agree, just tell him that he's a professional,' S. Lisa told him.
"You're a professional," Myst stated. "We've tested the patch version and the inhaled version, both have proven effective against one of Heartbreaker's children, so there’s a reasonable expectation that it should work against Heartbreaker himself. We can also stamp one of your agents if you prefer additional assurances."
"Additional assurances would be useful," Accord agreed. "If this checks out, I'll pass the information along to interested parties. Lizard will take you to the cape that needs to be protected."
"Much appreciated," Myst replied, then turned and followed the cape with a lizard mask towards the exit of the audience chamber, keeping his posture straight and trying to look respectful. 'No point in dealing with the PRT when I can toss the drugs in Accord's lap. He'll probably spend the next couple of hours refining his plans.' He smiled behind his mask once he was out of Accord's sight. 'Hell, I bet it takes Accord longer to deal with than it took the girls to make.'
Accord waited for the cape to leave then turned to look at Citrine, finding the entire situation more relaxing than it used to be. "Find some volunteers and run everything through the standard anti-master tests. If this works, we'll need to keep a supply on hand and arrange a team. Heartbreaker and the Fallen are a problem that is long overdue a solution."
"I'll arrange it," Citrine assured him then left, glad that Accord was an order of magnitude more relaxed than he used to be and more focused on the big picture, no longer getting obsessed over the small details.
Comments
Franklin Martinez
Duuuuuuude!!!
Mist of Shadows
Yep, she was killed by the Quacken...
Franklin Martinez
Did that duck kill Ziz?
Mist of Shadows
It was a general bit, Mama Mathers is basically one of the main problems with dealing with the Fallen.
Hunter128
Which Stranger were you thinking? Because most of the reason precogs and other Thinkers don’t go after the Fallen is Mama Mathers, a Thinker/Master who can hijack any sense turned on her, including Parahuman ones. She can spy through them, communicate and even cause hallucinations or torture the subject. Admittedly there are a bunch of Master, Thinkers and Strangers in her particular branch of the Fallen given that they are the Simurg worshipers.
