Mist of Shadows
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Boosted Villainy part 13
🕑 Added 2022-07-12 01:40:59 +0000 UTCThomas Calvert pulled his attention away from the news reporter that was talking about the amount of drugs the police seized on several raids when someone knocked on his door and a collection of male voices started mangling a Christmas carol. He glanced at the clock in the timeline that he was preparing to head to his base. 'Six forty seven in the morning and you're singing fucking Christmas carols?'
He grabbed his pistol off the table, stalked over to the door, flipped the safety off then opened the door and started shooting the eight idiots that were disturbing his day off, enjoying the way they screamed and bolted.
In the timeline where he was still in his sweats he stalked over to the door and pulled it open. "Do you know what time it is?" he demanded as he glared at the dark haired girl in her late teens that was standing on his porch in front of the rest of the singing idiots, not sure why she was wearing a pair of sunglasses despite the fact that it was still dark out or why he hadn't noticed her in the other timeline, making him think he needed more coffee.
"Just before seven, you can never be too early to feel Christ's love," S. Rose said as she copied the cape.
"Go to fucking hell!" Thomas snapped as he slammed the door then split the timeline so he could shoot them again.
"Jesus loves you!" S. Rose lied as she turned and headed back down the path towards the road, the minions following her. 'Not sure what he was doing in the other timeline but it wasn't a body double and I made a copy, which means I just need to leave without making a scene.'
Myst smiled as S. Rose and the minions stepped into the RV. "We'll give it a couple of minutes then we'll make a clone and get him off the streets."
S. Rose closed the door and let her minions vanish, causing their clothes and the pages of printed off lyrics to drop to the floor. "That was surprisingly fun."
"That's because you're evil," Myst replied as he dropped his minions other than S. Rose, causing them to vanish and the clothes drop to the ground. "I need to make something that lets me conjure them with clothes."
"Do we have a plan while we're waiting for Coil to split the timeline?" S. Rose asked as she started working on collecting the papers and tossing the clothes in the box of minion clothes.
Myst glanced around the messy area filled with cardboard boxes and way too much stuff for the small space. "Admin, Rose, Uber and Leet have family stuff for the next couple of days which means we're basically on our own unless New Wave gets in touch."
"Hot chocolate, a bed, and some movies?" S. Rose asked hopefully.
"Or we could take a look at one of the abandoned warehouses," Myst teased, not planning on spending that much time before he captured Coil.
"You'd pass up lying in bed with a naked girl and hot chocolate to crawl around old dusty warehouses?" S. Rose asked as she set the printed off lyrics on the table.
"When you put it like that, that sounds like a terrible idea, doesn't it?" Myst asked as he summoned Amy's shadow clone, causing the mousy haired healer to appear.
S. Amy casually flipped Rose off when she noticed her checking her out, glad that Myst wasn't paying attention. "Why doesn't your power come with clothes?"
"Because it doesn't, I didn't write the rules," Myst replied as he pulled the power copying gloves out of his pocket, glad that he could put the peanut gallery of shadow thugs to sleep so they weren't ogling the girls.
S. Rose grinned as she sat down on the bench. "You get used to it."
"Says the exhibitionist," S. Amy replied sarcastically as she picked up a large tie dyed t-shirt and pulled it on. "What can I help with?"
Myst finished putting the power copying gloves on. "I figured I'd actually get some work done before S. Rose and I spend the rest of the morning watching movies."
"S. Rose?" S. Rose asked.
"Short for Shadow Rose," Myst offered, figuring it would be easier than calling the clones the same thing as the original.
"Better than being Amy, Amy has responsibilities," S. Amy complained, thinking about the hospital and her family.
"Works for me unless you want to go with Daisy," S. Rose said thoughtfully.
Myst shook his head. "Not unless you really want to, it would get confusing."
S. Amy turned to look at Myst. "What are you working on?"
"I'm curious if your power works on shadow clones." Myst gestured towards S. Rose.
"Let's see." S. Amy reached out and poked S. Rose on the shoulder. "Nothing."
"Disappointing but not exactly unexpected," Myst replied as he reached out and poked Amy's arm with his finger. "Please, hold still for a minute," he said as he copied her biokinesis, happy that his gloves didn't care that she was a projection.
"You're still going to let Amy use the gloves with her family, right?" S. Amy asked warily.
"Of course," Myst assured her. "The more powers she has, the safer she'll be."
"Good," S. Amy agreed as she sat down on the bench next to S. Rose. "Are you going to copy Vicky's powers?"
"That's the plan," Myst replied.
'Happy to help,' S. Vicky said in Myst's mind.
Myst turned to look at the front of the RV. He summoned S. Vicky behind him, catching her appearance in the rearview mirror. 'Yeah, pretty sure Taylor has the second best power around.'
"You're looking in the mirror," S. Vicky teased, more amused than offended.
"You're hot, it would be a crime not to look," S. Rose pointed out as she checked out her friend's copy.
'Yep,' S. Amy agreed as she enjoyed the chance to check her sister out while she was distracted.
"That's because I'm glorious," S. Vicky replied with amusement.
"I'm going to need your hand," Myst told her without turning around.
"Pretty sure that requires a couple of dates and a ring, I also have a boy… huh, okay, Vicky has a boyfriend," S. Vicky admitted as she held out her hand. "That's going to take some getting used to."
Myst turned and touched the top of her hand with his fingers, pulling up the menu. "Looks like all of your powers are available," he mused as he selected flight and her basic force field.
"Nice, are you going to let me borrow the gloves when you're done copying my powers?" S. Vicky asked hopefully, giving him her best puppy dog look which was wasted as he wasn't looking at her face. "Eyes up here buster."
"Sorry," Myst replied, pulling his attention off the progress bars. "Yeah, I need to test if shadow clones can get powers."
S. Rose pulled her attention away from S. Vicky's breasts. "Hopefully, I don't want to get stuck as a squishy."
"I'm just happy that I already copied her powers," S. Amy said cheerfully, happy that she didn't have any responsibilities yet.
Myst floated off the ground a couple of inches then dropped back to the ground when he got close to hitting the ceiling. "At least that part works." He pulled the gloves off and tossed them to Rose. "See if you can copy her powers."
S. Rose quickly put the gloves on and poked S. Amy's arm. "Yep!" she squealed as she selected S. Amy's power. "We'll probably have to get a better copy from the originals but it should work for now."
"We should probably grab Coil before he pulls a runner," S. Vicky pointed out.
"Do you have a suggestion?" S. Rose asked.
'I walk up and punch him,' S.R. Vicky suggested.
'I approve,' both Lisas said cheerfully.
"Remember it's never too early to resort to violence, at least in Brockton Bay," S. Vicky said cheerfully.
Myst shook his head.
"You disagree?" S. Amy asked.
"It's not that, it's just that if we kill him, we'll only have a limited number of replacements and if we turn him in, the PRT might try to cut a deal, his powers are useful," Myst complained.
"Pull a Han Solo," S. Rose suggested.
"We'd need to find a fridge," S. Vicky said thoughtfully.
"Where would we get a 1950’s King Cool refrigerator, much less a nuke and how would that help?" S. Amy asked.
S. Rose stared at S. Vicky and S. Amy. "What? That's Indiana Jones, not Han Solo. Carbonite!"
"Okay, Carbonite would work better," S. Vicky admitted.
"I'll be back in a minute," Myst said as he tossed the gloves to S. Rose and left to grab Coil, leaving the girls to their discussion.
0o0o0
"Carbonite?" Leet asked thoughtfully as he half listened to the holiday movie his mother had playing in the background. "I could probably come up with some type of suspended animation or stasis field generator but I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days. Speaking of being out of town, I need to get back to the card game."
"No worries, happy holidays," Myst offered, ending the call as he walked back into Coil's living room.
S. Lisa glanced away from Coil's laptop. "No help?"
Myst glanced between the version of Coil that was sprawled on the couch unconscious and the shadow minion version that was helping Lisa sort through his finances and shell companies at the dining room table. "Nah, he's out of town, probably visiting family. Did you find any decent private marinas?"
S. Lisa smiled as she pulled up a picture of a large building on the docks that looked to have seen better days, mostly because of the graffiti and the fact that most of the windows that overlooked the bay had been replaced by plywood. "I found a couple but The Starlight Marina is probably the one you want to go with, it has an extensive kitchen and event rooms that would work nicely for what you're planning. The previous owner also died three weeks ago and his grandson would like to liquidate it."
S. Coil shook his head. "Considering the length of time the place has been sitting, you're looking at extensive repairs and some bribes."
"What happened to it?" Myst asked, curious about the history of the place as some of the damage looked like it had been done by a wrecking ball.
"It was damaged in a cape fight during a party eleven years ago, I'm guessing the previous owner decided to use it as a tax break or lost interest in the area as he moved to Florida five years ago and basically left it to rot other than renting one of the docks to a company that appears to be a shell company that he also owned, we can also buy the warehouse next to it for cheap," S. Lisa said cheerfully.
"How long would it take to set up an appointment with the owner?" Myst asked.
S. Lisa grinned. "I already called, everything is handled through a real estate company in town, they're open until two. Do you want me to call and set everything up?"
"That would be great." Myst turned his head to look at S. Coil as S. Lisa headed for the hallway to call the real estate company and set things up. "Do you have enough blackmail on the mayor to buy the ferry terminals and the ferry from the city?"
"No, but I could probably find it," S. Coil assured him. "Why do you want the ferry?"
"The bay has hundreds of people that have to drive across town every day for work, opening a portal to connect the terminals would drastically cut down the amount of travel time and we can probably make a couple of thousand a day off the portal if we set things up right."
"Tinkertech has a nasty tendency to fail when you least want it to," S. Coil pointed out.
"I was planning on using something safer," Myst assured him. "I might even be able to open portals to uninhabited earths or worlds that we can trade with."
"How can I help?" S. Coil asked, thinking about the profit they could make and wanting to be useful so that Myst would keep him around rather than putting him to sleep.
"How hard do you think it would be to use your contacts to reach out to Agnes Court?" Myst asked, wanting the cape's power to create structures as it would make things easier.
"Easy enough," S. Coil assured him. "Planning on using her power to set up bases on uninhabited worlds?"
"That's the idea," Myst agreed, knowing her power to 'grow' structures would drastically cut the time it would take to get a community up and running on an uninhabited world down to something much more reasonable. "I'm going to want to talk to Noelle, I should be able to fix her mental and physical health, same with her team."
"How do you know about her?" S. Coil asked.
"Precog," Myst replied as S. Lisa walked back into the room with a smile on her face. "You're smiling, did you get an appointment?"
"One fifteen, they'll have all of the paperwork," S. Lisa replied smugly. "We'll be in and out in twenty minutes."
"By which point Noelle should be more sociable," S. Coil offered.
"Good." Myst checked the clock on the wall, figuring he had a couple of hours to kill until he had to worry about spending his energy. "On that note, I'm going to head back to the RV and relax."
"Relax, eh?" S. Lisa asked with a grin.
"If Coil wakes up, hit him with a taser until he goes unconscious," Myst replied as he headed for the door, curious what the girls had been up to while he was dealing with Coil.
"I'll just activate my power, it caused him to freeze the last time," S. Coil replied, not particularly concerned about his original self beyond the fact that the Boss wanted him alive so he could share his power.
"Just don't kill him," Myst replied as he left. He paused when he saw Rose pull up in a van that he recognized from when he'd dropped her off. He walked over as she got out of the van. "What's up?"
Rose shut the door and stuck the keys in her pocket. "I'm avoiding spending the morning helping my grandmother prepare for a church party."
"How did you manage that without your parents complaining?" Myst asked as they headed for the RV.
"I told my father and he tossed me the keys while my mother was grabbing a book," Rose replied with a grin. "I'll probably hear about my betrayal tonight from my mother, but that's future me's problem."
"Makes sense," Myst agreed as he opened the door to the RV. He stopped and stared when the first thing he saw was an Amy sitting on S. Rose's lap on the bench with Rose's hand between her legs with their attention focused towards the front of the RV. He stepped into the RV and looked at what the girls were looking at, a touch surprised to see two naked Vicky's kissing. "You're having way too much fun."
"Or just enough," S. Amy said from where she was watching the show from the loft.
Rose smiled as she stepped into the RV and closed the door behind her. "Are you abusing your clones?"
"Nope," S. Rose replied cheerfully. "They volunteered."
S. Vicky stopped kissing her 'evil' twin. "Are you telling me that you've never wanted to have fun with your evil clone?"
S. Amy pulled her gaze away from the way her sister's breasts were mashed together against her other sister and focused on her possibly evil twin for a couple of seconds before she went back to looking at the Vickys. "I'm pretty sure that's just you."
S. Rose smiled at Rose and Myst. "You're wearing too much, off with the clothes!"
"When in Rome," Rose said as she started pulling off her heavy jacket, looking forward to seeing where things went.
"Your wish is my command," Myst teased as he started stripping.
0o0o0
"Please tell me you're upgrading the size of the shower and the water pressure," Rose told Myst as she walked out of the bathroom, a cloud of steam following her.
Myst glanced up from his notebook and smiled at the naked girl with a white towel wrapped around her head. "It's on the list, I just need to make an inventory system first."
Rose glanced at the curtain that blocked the view of the cab then glanced at the silver ring that was lying on the table, fairly sure the amethyst stone was larger than the last time she'd seen it. "What are you thinking?"
"I was sort of thinking about a generic RPG inventory system with an interface," Myst replied as he picked up the ring. "I'm just trying to figure out the best way to design the interface so I'm not wasting energy. I'm sort of thinking about one space and limiting the amount of volume each space has then seeing how much I can upgrade it."
Rose leaned up against the wall. "Worst case, you can always push more energy into it or start over."
"Point," Myst admitted as he picked up the silver ring with the amethyst and slipped it on his left ring finger. 'User interface and one storage slot.' He concentrated on the idea he wanted and pushed a trickle of energy into the ring until a mental interface appeared floating over his left hand with one slot. 'I need a size description and item identification,' he mused as he pushed more energy into the ring until everything sort of snapped into place. "Okay, I have one inventory slot that can hold up to a cup of water."
"How much energy did you use?" Rose asked.
"About a fourth of my entire pool so about half of what I have without my bracelet," Myst replied as he grabbed the bag of costume jewelry and boosted his ring once, increasing the number of slots by one and causing the interface to look a bit nicer. "They still hold a cup of water."
'Can you boost them with containers?' S. Taylor asked thoughtfully.
"Probably," Myst replied as he grabbed the stack of paper cups that he'd salvaged from Coil's cabinets and sacrificed twenty of them to boost his first slot, causing it to increase so it could hold two cups worth of material. "That's going to take a bit of work."
Rose laughed. "Cry me a river of tears, you have an inventory ring."
"Fair," Myst replied with a grin as he grabbed the remote out of his box of interesting electronics and pushed energy into the volume buttons, trying to get something that could boost the internal volume of a container. He dropped the remote into his inventory and smiled at the display under the inventory slot. "That was worth the energy. One magic remote. It allows the manipulation of an object's internal volume by one cubic centimeter at a time up to one cubic foot by pressing the volume buttons."
Rose shook her head. "Shouldn't they be in the same unit of measurement?"
"Probably," Myst replied as he pulled the remote out, pointed it at his inventory box and pushed the volume button, causing the inventory slot to glow purple for a second and the inventory units to change to 237.588 cubic centimeters. He pushed the button again and continued holding it down until the units changed to 'One cubic foot, one cup' and stopped increasing. "Yeah, I need to fix that, the units of measurement went from one cup to centimeters to one cubic foot, one cup."
"Your mind is a scary place," Rose teased.
"I had enough chemistry that you'd think volume measurements would be in metric," Myst complained as he focused on the mute button and pushed a touch of energy into it. He dropped the remote in his inventory and looked at the description. "Mute target for ten minutes or until target is unmuted."
Rose snickered as she thought about some of the people that she'd like to mute, if only to see what they'd do. "That sounds useful. Have you figured out what you're going to do with the channel controls?"
"Not yet," Myst replied as he pulled the remote out of his inventory and pointed it at a plastic cup. "Okay, there should be an element of concentration," he mused as he pushed the button, causing a thin glowing purple disk to appear near the top of the cup. He held down the button before the purple could fade and watched the purple area expand in a weird way that would probably make everyone other than Vista uncomfortable. He dropped the cup into the first slot in his inventory and looked at the description. "Cup with a permanent expansion field near the top of the cup that allows it to hold a cubic foot more than it should, material in the expanded space doesn't increase the container's weight."
"Does that mean you can just make bags of holding by pushing the button and sacrificing a couple of dozen trash bags?" Rose asked hopefully.
"Probably," Myst replied with a grin.
"What else are you thinking about making?" Rose asked, hoping it was something they could use.
Myst set the remote on the table then focused on the three twenty five inch by ten inch mirrors set in a brass frame that made up the free standing table mirror that he'd set on the table against the wall. "I was thinking about using a mirror to modify appearance and costumes."
"Magic mirror!" S. Rose called out from the cab excitedly.
Rose glanced at the curtain then focused on Myst. "It would certainly make things easier to keep our cape personas separate."
"Between a magic mirror and masks, we're probably good, especially if we change our hair colors." Myst thought about the various RPGs he'd played over the years that let you design the look of your character and the ads he'd seen for fashion games. 'Maybe an unholy combination of both?'
He focused on what he wanted and pushed some energy into the mirror until a floating interface appeared, giving him several options to modify his appearance and his clothing. He played around with the interface a bit before he realized that it didn't have enough patterns as he could only change the color of his clothes and hair. "It has a temporary change button and a permanent change button that's out of the way but it doesn't come with any clothes, just the ability to flip things between black, white and a weird blue jeans color."
"Can you give the mirror a way to increase the options without having to continually sink energy into it?" Rose asked thoughtfully.
"Probably," Myst replied as he focused on the mirror and what he wanted, feeding it more energy until everything seemed to snap into place. He pulled his sunglasses out of his pocket, put them on and looked at the mirror. "Okay, if we touch another mirror to the enchanted mirror, we should be able to push a button on the interface and link them so the mirrors can feed it styles and access the interface."
"How much energy did that cost?" Rose asked.
"About a third of what I had left," Myst admitted as he picked up the remote. "I'm going to need something that can open portals." He focused on the open/close button and pushed energy into it, focusing on what he wanted, eating up most of his energy for the day. "If I link everything to the number buttons, I can probably assign numbers to the different worlds or maybe I'll just link it to the channel buttons so I can flip through them."
Rose shook her head. "You're going to get in so much trouble when the PRT catches you."
Myst shrugged. "I'll have to look up the current laws on traveling to other worlds, but I doubt they've put a blanket ban on it, otherwise various capes that use pocket dimensions would be in jail, including Myrddin."
"We should probably look into that," Rose agreed as Myst's cell phone rang.
Myst pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and answered it. "Yes?"
"This is Admin, do you have time to talk?" Taylor asked hopefully.
Myst glanced at the clock on his phone. "I've got like eight minutes before my appointment, what's up?"
"My father had to head into work to deal with a contract and Emma is driving me nuts, apparently she was trying to get me to trigger so I'd be strong and now she's gushing about how much ass we're going to kick," Taylor complained.
"We're here," S. Rose called out as she parked the RV.
Myst shook his head, glad that this version of Emma at least had a reason for being a psychotic bitch. "Give me thirty minutes to sign some paperwork and I'll swing by and pick you up if you want. I picked up a couple of powers that you might like to copy."
"That sounds fantastic." Taylor winced when Emma fell off the back of the couch and crashed on the ground with a thud.
"What was that?" Myst asked, having heard the thud.
"Emma was pretending to be a cape and crashed," Taylor replied, doing her best not to laugh at her naked shadow minion that was sprawled on the carpet. 'I need to copy a therapist,' she mused as she dismissed her minion and resummoned her.
Emma blinked as the pain in her hand and knee vanished and she found herself standing next to Taylor. "That's awesome!"
"I should get going but I'll see you in thirty to forty," Myst assured her, making a mental note to upgrade Rose's ring to include healing mental issues with the last of his energy then upgrade the hell out of it so he could help Emma and Noelle.
"Cool," Taylor replied, then ended the call so he could get back to business. "What am I supposed to do with you?"
"Whatever you want," Emma said firmly. "You are the boss. Be strong! Make me kiss your feet if you like."
'Yeah, she's fucked in the head,' Taylor thought as she headed for the stairs, wanting to change out of her pajamas before Myst and Rose got there.
Comments
Bable Zmith
Damn good chapter! Says the guy about to pass out from lack of sleep, LOL!
