Mist of Shadows
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Boosted Villainy Part 24
🕑 Added 2022-08-20 07:29:12 +0000 UTCDespite the legitimate if unnecessary concerns about Night and Fog, it took less than thirty seconds to deal with them from the time Taylor and S. Rose flew out of the RV to the point where they were unconscious on the ground. "I'll keep my eyes on Night, open a portal."
"Working on it," S. Rose replied as she worked on selecting the right world. "How much do you think they'll have in their accounts?"
"No clue," Taylor admitted, not taking her eyes off Night as she didn't want her transforming and waking up on the off chance that her powers came back early.
S. Rose pushed the open button and created a portal under the unconscious capes, dropping them into the other world then closed the portal. "And we're done."
Taylor manifested a copy of Night and Fog in the living room then turned to look in S. Rose's general direction, wishing she had a way to see through invisibility. "How long do you think it will take before we start getting new gangs showing up?"
"I talked to Lisa, it's only a matter of time. Katana_Forever already posted about Oni Lee's death and how Lung would kill the people responsible which means everyone that can read between the lines knows the ABB just got weak enough to challenge," S. Rose explained as they flew back to RV.
"They still have Lung," Taylor argued as she opened the door and flew inside.
"Doesn't matter," S. Rose replied as she followed Taylor into the RV and shut the door behind her. "Don't get me wrong, Lung is terrifying but his ability to leverage his strength requires stationary targets or people willing to stand and fight."
Myst looked away from the mirror that was showing Hookwolf sitting in front of a large television with a couple of white guys with swastikas tattooed on their necks and focused on the area where he could hear the voices coming from. "Whereas Oni Lee could teleport and basically appear out of thin air."
"It's a lot harder to motivate your minions to attack anything important if they have to worry about a homicidal lunatic tossing grenades at you." S. Rose dropped her invisibility and looked at S. Lisa. "How long do you think it will take before the Protectorate makes a move?"
S. Lisa glanced up from the spreadsheet she was working on. "I doubt they'll do anything drastic until after New Years, they'll want to confirm Oni Lee's death and give Lung a chance to kill some of the Empire capes before they risk a confrontation."
Taylor dropped her invisibility. "Isn't that a bit cynical?"
"Not really," Myst replied with a shrug. "If they wanted the capes dead, all it would take would be a couple of snipers on a roof in the right location. They're playing nice with the villains because of the Endbringers."
Taylor scowled as she thought about all of the people like Sophia that were basically getting a pass because they were useful. "Do you have any suggestions for dealing with the Endbringers?"
"I have a couple of ideas," Myst replied cheerfully as he pulled a stamp out of his pocket. "We should probably do something about precogs before we start discussing the best way to kill the Endbringers on the off chance the Simurgh takes us seriously and decides to toss an old Soviet satellite at us," he suggested as he pushed the last of his energy into the stamp, focusing on giving it the ability to create magic stamps that would remove and block master effects and precog.
C. Squealer glanced at the ceiling, fairly sure the roof wouldn't stop a couple of tons of metal hitting them like the hand of god. "That's a fan-fucking-tastic mental image."
"Yep," Myst replied as he checked the stamp with his glasses. 'Nice, 13% chance to remove unnatural mental influence, it increases resistance to mental influence by 17% and gives a 29% chance of precog effects resulting in garbage data or no data depending on what helps the person with the stamp.'
Lisa frowned as she felt the start of a headache. "Are you going to share with the class?"
"Give me a couple of minutes," Myst replied as he pulled a large bag of cheap stamps out of his inventory and started boosting his magic stamp, knowing he needed a decent defense against masters before he dealt with Heartbreaker and the rest of his family or the Fallen. He boosted the stamp a third time then tossed the bag of stamps back in his inventory after checking to make sure that he'd managed to boost things up to a 100%. "I need a volunteer, it should help block precog and master effects."
C. Squealer smiled at Myst then turned away from him and pointed at her butt. "Stamp away."
Myst pulled an inkpad out of his inventory, flipped it open, pressed the stamp on it and wiggled the stamp around then stamped C. Squealer's behind, leaving an image of a star with a smiley face. "That should give you two months of immunity to masters and precogs."
"I'll go next," S. Rose said as she let her shadow clothes vanish as she got off the couch and walked over.
Taylor pulled her attention away from S. Rose's body and looked at Myst. "Is there a reason you have to stick it on our behinds?"
"No, it just has to be somewhere you're not going to scrub it away in a couple of days, like your hands," Myst replied as he stamped S. Rose's behind.
"Live a little," C. Taylor teased as she unbuttoned her pants and pulled them down so Myst could stamp her ass.
"Anne!" Taylor complained as she looked at her 'twin'.
"Get over it," Anne replied with exasperation. "None of the shadow clones have clothes when we summon them and Alice and Squealer's clones walk around naked. It's not a big deal unless you make it one."
Taylor took a breath then let it out. 'Screw it, it's not worth arguing about considering I have shadow clones floating around. If they want to see me naked, they'll just summon a clone,' she told herself as Myst stamped Anne's behind.
"Thank you," Anne replied with amusement as she checked the design out.
"Fine," Taylor muttered as she pulled her sweatshirt and shirt up so Myst could stamp her side.
Myst stamped Rose's behind then walked over and stamped Taylor's side. "It could be worse, they could be insane and homicidal."
"Point," Taylor agreed as T.S. Emma stood up from where she was sitting next to Alice on the couch, twisted around and leaned over the couch, resting her hands on the back of the couch and spreading her legs in a way that made everything worse/better.
"Can you toss Admin the stamp?" T.S. Emma asked hopefully.
"Have fun," Myst teased as he handed Taylor the stamp and the inkwell after getting more ink on the stamp.
"Right, fun," Taylor muttered as she walked over and stamped S. Emma's behind as Alice stood up and turned around so that Taylor could stamp their ass. She stamped Alice's behind then walked over and stamped S. Lisa's arm when she held it out. "I'll stamp the driver, then you can explain your plan."
"Sure," Myst replied, not pulling his attention from the naked redhead with an amusing star stamped on her behind.
"How long would it take to deal with the Fallen and the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Anne asked, figuring they might as well deal with the worst of the villains wandering around if they could.
Myst glanced at the magic mirror then looked back at Anne. "I know how to kill the Siberian and the Fallen are only really dangerous because of masters and a few of the capes they've brainwashed. It wouldn't be all that hard to sneak in and clean house while invisible, especially if we copy the Butcher's ability to 'see' blood vessels so we can keep track of everyone."
Alice stared at Myst in disbelief. "How the fuck can you kill the Siberian?"
"It's not hard, she's a projection," Myst replied with a grin. "Her master drives around in an old van, it should be easy to sneak up and disable his powers with the remote."
"Which would get rid of the Siberian," Alice mused. "How sure are you that she's a projection?"
Myst considered the question for a couple of seconds then shrugged. "98%?"
C. Squealer frowned as she thought about the stories she'd heard of the Siberian over the years. "Not one hundred?"
"I trust the precog that gave me the information, but there's always a margin of error. Either way, I'm going to be invisible and out of phase when I disable the master, if that doesn't disable her, I'll lead her through a portal like Lung," Myst assured them. "Once I've dealt with the Siberian, I'll take out Shatterbird and the rest from range. Crawler should be easy enough to lure through a portal, you just have to damage him."
"Or you could avoid the insanely dangerous capes and work on making money," S. Rose argued, knowing the Nine had killed countless people over the years that had thought they could take them.
Myst sighed. "It's not that simple, the Nine are going to show up in the Bay eventually, Jack has a history with the place and we're going to improve things. I'd rather blindside him in the middle of nowhere than let him show up and wreck things on his schedule."
"Do you have a way to deal with Hatchet Face?" C. Squealer asked.
"His ability to negate powers works on capes, not their powers which means I can shut him down with the remote at range," Myst assured them. "As long as we have the stamps and kill or disable the Siberian's controller, we should be fine."
"Invisibility, invulnerability and hit and run tactics," Alice mused. "There's a Home Depot near the location Hookwolf is using, it’ll have a bunch of mirrors you can use to upgrade the magic one."
"Salvage run," Myst said cheerfully, not seeing a reason to buy a bunch of mirrors when he could just grab them from an abandoned city where there weren’t any thinkers that would find their purchases interesting or alarming. The fact that it meant he didn’t have to pay for anything was just icing on the cake.
Anne frowned when she looked at her watch. "On second thought, we should probably park at the Home Depot and open a portal, it won't take more than twenty minutes to grab the rest of the Empire capes if we don't have to deal with the traffic."
"We'll probably need help with Rune unless we get lucky," Taylor pointed out, knowing she was flying around outside of town earlier.
"I'm not particularly worried about Rune or Purity, considering Purity split with the Empire almost a year ago and Rune is just a teenager with authority issues. We can grab her in the middle of the night if we have to. I have a feeling she'd have a blast in the world with anti-grav and capes that work for the government, sanctioned fun and decent therapists for the win."
"She'd probably go for it," Alice agreed, knowing her cousin liked causing trouble more than she actually cared about the Empire's beliefs.
0o0o0
"Shit!" Rune cursed when she went from flying on her metal disc to falling out of the air on it for no good reason, causing her life to flash before her eyes as she plummeted towards the ground. She spent a couple of frantic seconds trying to draw her rune on her jacket with no success before she hit the grass and bounced. It took her a couple of seconds to realize that she wasn't in pain and or dead. "What the fuck?!"
"Temporary invincibility," Alice offered as she floated over, dropping her invisibility.
Rune spun around and glared at the two people standing on the grass looking at her, wondering where the assholes with jester masks and black robes had come from. "What the fuck happened to my powers?!"
"I turned them off. You should have seen your face!" S. Rune exclaimed cheerfully, the robes and mask disguising her appearance as she handed the remote back to Alice.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Rune demanded before her brain caught up with the fact that she sounded exactly like her voice when she recorded it.
'Lots,' Myst thought as he took the remote from Alice and stuck it in his inventory when Rune was glaring at her shadow clone, fairly sure her clone was a bit off for wanting to watch Rune fall out of the air.
"Who are you?!"
S. Rune pulled her mask off. "I'm the girl you see in the mirror every day of your life."
"Stranger!" Rune blurted out in horror as she took a step back. "What do you want?"
"I want to eat your soul," S. Rune said, managing to sound serious for about three seconds before she started laughing like a lunatic.
"You're fucking insane!" Rune complained, glaring at the girl wearing her face.
"Meh, it was funny," S. Rune replied with a grin, waving off her complaints. “Trust me, if you were on this side of the joke, you’d be laughing just like I was.”
Myst smiled as he dropped his invisibility. "She might need therapy."
"You think?!" Rune snapped.
"I'm willing to listen to a shrink if you sit on the couch with me, we can tell her how we have Daddy issues and how we want to fuck our sister," S. Rune said with a leer.
Rune stared at the Stranger. "I don't have a sister."
"Do you want one?" S. Rune asked, running her eyes up and down her body.
Rune shook her head and focused on the other two capes. "What the hell is going on?"
"I made a shadow clone, she thought it would be funny to turn your powers off, give you invincibility and watch you hit the ground," Myst explained.
"And you fucking helped her?!" Rune demanded.
"No harm, no foul, right?" Myst asked sarcastically. “That was your trademark, right?”
Rune stared at Myst for a couple of seconds then sighed. "I might have deserved that."
"Pretty much," S. Rune agreed.
"Speaking of second chances, how do you feel about sanctioned villainy and getting the fuck out of the bay and away from the Empire?" Myst asked.
"I'm listening," Rune said, knowing her folks would love to get away from the Empire, not that she blamed them now that she'd seen how far some of the idiots liked taking things, messing with people was one thing, killing people just because they had different colored skin was another thing entirely.
"I have access to a world where there are only a couple of hundred capes, they've basically turned it into an entertainment industry and are always looking for new villains," Myst explained.
"So it's basically theater?" Rune asked.
Myst shrugged. "More like managed villainy, you'd either request a list of acceptable targets or submit one and you'd get to keep all the money you steal. You also get access to shrinks and a support network to make sure you are taken care of mentally and physically."
"And If I refuse?" Rune asked, not even remotely sounding like she meant it, but was just doing it to be contrary.
Myst pointed at Rune's shadow clone. "Then your mirror replaces you and you can join Kaiser and the rest of the trash in a world that I’ve been mentally calling Disaster Central."
Rune frowned as she realized the guy sounded serious and she still couldn't feel her power which meant running wasn't an option anyway. "Fuck that, I'd love to be a movie star."
"Excellent," Myst replied with a smile. "How do you feel about regeneration?"
"Nice power if you can get it, why?" Rune asked.
"Your power is a bit basic and doesn't come with a lot of defensive options," Myst replied with a shrug. "The ratings increase when the heroes can actually beat the villains up a bit without feeling guilty and they soar when they can basically destroy your clothes without killing you."
"Are you saying you can give people powers?" Rune asked in surprise.
"Trump," Myst replied with a grin. "Of course, that's contingent on actually jumping to the nicer world, I don't really care what happens to you if you join Kaiser, mostly because that proves you aren't trying to improve your life."
"Fair," Rune admitted. “I want to take my family too, none of us wanted to sign on with the Empire, they just didn’t like hearing no, you know?”
“She ain’t just whistling Dixie,” S. Rune said.
Alice just looked at her for a moment. “I can’t tell if that was you trying to make a horrible pun or not.”
S. Rune just looked at her in confusion for a second before realizing what she meant. “The Empire is funded by some German group, the white sheet crowd doesn’t actually have anything to do with it.”
“Oh,” Alice said with a shrug. “Empire makes people of the appropriate race join just like all the other gangs, check.”
“Was that even in question?” Rune asked.
“No, we’re just used to clones making double entendres with every other word they say,” Myst said dryly.
“You’re all nuts, you know that, right?” Rune asked.
“No we’re powerful and nuts, that means we’re eccentric,” Myst corrected her with a grin. “Let’s get you taken care of so we can finish up the rest of the capes, we still have things to do today.”
0o0o0
"Mr. Wagner?" the secretary called out as she pressed the button for the door to her boss's office. "Mr. Anders will see you now."
Myst dropped the travel magazine he'd been skimming back on the coffee table then stood up and looked at Taylor, finding her current disguise rather amusing. 'At least no one is connecting Taylor with a blonde supermodel.'
'How the fuck are you supposed to walk in these without cheating?' Taylor complained as she followed Myst into Kaiser's office, using her copy of Uber's ability so she could walk without falling on her face, breaking an ankle or taking a tumble as she was durable enough she doubted she could actually break her ankles.
Myst forced himself to smile at the handsome man in his thirties wearing an expensive suit that probably cost more than most people's cars as the villain walked over with a glass of alcohol in his hand. "Thanks for seeing me on such short notice."
"Of course, you come highly recommended," Max replied, glancing over the man's expensive suit and the folder he was holding before he turned his attention to his stunning assistant that could have easily walked right out of a photoshoot. "Your assistant mentioned you wanted to invest in our company."
"That's correct," Myst agreed as he made a shadow clone of Max Anders and held the folder out. "I have research notes for five experimental drugs that would result in a significant increase in your bottom line."
Max pulled his attention away from the man's assistant and accepted the folder. He flipped it open and looked over the contents of the folder, surprised to see five cures for medical conditions that were quite profitable to treat. "Are these numbers correct?"
"Of course," Myst assured him, hiding his smile as Lisa had picked some of Max's most lucrative products to screw with when she'd selected the cures to pitch. "We've had success with animal testing, we just need to move to human testing and finesse some people on the approval boards but we've been assured by a precog that they're all viable."
"You realize there are problems with introducing parahuman powers, right?" Max asked, trying to figure out how to tank the man's research so he didn't cripple some of their best cash cows.
"We didn't use parahumans in the initial research, merely making sure we were on the right track," Myst 'assured' him, rather amused by the look on Max's face despite his attempt to hide his concern.
"It could take years to turn a profit at these rates," Max pointed out.
"You'd be out a couple of hundred thousand for testing, maybe another fifty in bribes, I mean gifts, it shouldn't be all that hard to make a profit, just stick a zero on the end of the price, charge like twenty cents instead of two cents, you'd break even in a couple of years and get at least seven to ten years of pure profit out of it."
"How much do you want for the research?" Max asked, not sure if it was better to ruin the testing and make sure it wasn't viable or to trick them into a bad contract.
'He's going to bury it, isn't he?' Myst asked Max's shadow clone.
'Like a treasure chest filled with pirate booty,' S. Max replied. 'He makes tens of millions on the treatments each year, actually curing the problem would cut into his company's profit.'
"What do you think is fair?" Myst asked as he gestured towards the window. "You're obviously not hurting for money, I'd like to keep the costs down."
Max turned to look at the view, wondering why the company had sent an idiot. 'I can always wait until the patent on the current drugs runs out then come out with the cure, especially if I tack a few zeroes on the end of each pill.'
Myst pulled his remote out of his inventory, pointed it at Max and pushed the power button when he glanced at the window. "On second thought, I'd rather deal with someone reasonably honest." He pushed the button to open a portal behind Max when he turned around and kicked him through the portal. "For Sparta!"
Taylor watched Max fly through the portal into the other world's version of Medhall then looked at Myst when the portal closed. "For Sparta?"
"What else are you going to say when you're kicking people through a portal?" Myst asked as he put the remote back in his inventory.
"Go to hell or maybe hasta la vista?" Taylor asked thoughtfully as she manifested her copy of Max Anders along with a copy of his suit.
"Next time," Myst offered. "We're going to need you to call Krieg in here or take us to him, he's annoyingly hard to reach."
"He's normally at home or work, he was just here because he had to sign some paperwork for the pharmacy chain. I'll just tell him that you're an investor," Max replied as he walked over to his desk and pushed the button for the intercom to talk to his other office. "Krieg, I have someone in my office that would like to invest in the cause, bring Cricket."
"On my way," Krieg replied.
Myst kept a smile on his face until a section of the wall opened and a brown haired man with a mask walked out with a woman wearing a metal cage around her head that made him question her sanity after about forty seconds. 'Of all the stupid costume choices.'
Taylor pasted a smile on her face as she copied the capes, doing her best to stay calm and not give the 'game' away.
Myst waited until the capes were a couple of feet away from the secret passage before he pulled his remote out, pointed it at Cricket and pushed the power button, not wanting to give her a chance to use her powers. He felt the air get thicker as he tilted the remote enough to point at Krieg and pushed the button, shutting down his powers. He ignored the look of surprise on Krieg's face and manifested S. Amy behind them. "Join me or die."
"You're…" Krieg trailed off as Amy touched him and Cricket and they slumped to the ground.
"A bastard? Not technically," Myst said as he walked over and tapped Krieg and Cricket with his ring, restoring them to perfect health and hopefully curing some of their mental damage.
"Shouldn't Othala's regeneration have fixed her throat?" Taylor asked.
"She's insane, she won't accept regeneration unless it's life threatening, she wants to keep her scars," Max explained, still not sure why she was insane despite knowing her for a couple of years.
"Do you have copies?" Myst asked Taylor, wanting to make sure she had everyone copied before he tossed them into the other world.
Taylor manifested copies of Krieg and Cricket along with their costumes. "Yeah."
Myst opened another portal then quickly tossed the two capes through before Max Anders could cross the distance. He flipped Max off then closed the portal, rather happy with his progress for the day. He turned to look at Max's clone. "How long have you been waiting to tell all of the idiots in the Empire just how stupid they are?"
Max smiled as he realized he didn't have to put up with the Empire anymore. "My entire life, they were just useful idiots. What are you thinking?"
"I want to send the worst of the idiots through a portal to another world where they can sink or swim without anyone to blame for their failures," Myst replied with a grin.
"Is the medical research legit?" Max asked, wondering if they'd faked the research notes.
"It's legit, I picked it up on another version of Earth," Myst replied smugly. "I just need someone to test it to make sure it works with local resources."
Max sighed. "You're going to wreck my company."
"It gets worse, you're going to sign a contract to finish the research and 'miss' the detail that we reserve full rights to the product, outside of a limited license to produce the drugs in question," Taylor told him.
"The board of directors are going to murder me," Max complained.
"As Myst would say, not my monkey, not my problem," Taylor replied with a grin, not in the least bit guilty over the fact that they were going to screw over a company that willingly helped the Empire and had been willing to bury research if it meant increasing their profit margin.
