Mist of Shadows
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Boosted Villainy Part 10
🕑 Added 2022-07-02 07:04:12 +0000 UTC"Do I have…" Amy trailed off as she got close enough to get a decent look at the broken teenager that was strapped to a gurney. "What happened?" she asked the cop that was standing next to the patient the intern wanted her to heal, looking far too calm for the injured guy to be innocent.
"Karma?" the cop offered with a shrug. "The owner of the shop said that someone in a duct tape mask walked up to him with a baseball bat and just started swinging."
Amy reached down and touched the man's arm with her finger so she could get an idea of the extent of his injuries. "Karma?"
"I've run into him a couple of times on patrol, he likes to harass the local business owners and swear up a storm, but there's never enough evidence to convict him," the cop explained. "Can you make sure he's not going to bleed out?"
Amy pulled her finger back. "They just worked him over, broke his knees, one elbow, and his other arm."
"Aren't you going to heal him?" the intern asked.
Amy shook her head. "If I heal him, he'll be back on the streets harassing people. If he has to spend a couple of months putting himself back together, maybe he'll learn something."
"I doubt he has insurance," the intern complained.
"I'm sure someone will figure out something," Amy replied when her phone vibrated in her coat pocket. She pulled her phone out and read her sister's message. 'Dinner? Dad is cooking and is feeling great!'
'Sure, pick me up,' she texted back. "Sorry, I've cleared all of the kids and anyone that isn't a criminal, so I'm going to spend time with my sister."
'I'm outside :P,' Vicky texted her back.
The officer gave the intern a less than impressed look. "Don't worry about the idiot, someone left a note filled with things to look into so he'll probably be making his recovery in prison."
"Best of luck," Amy told the officer then turned and headed for the exit, ignoring the look the intern was giving her. 'I'm not going to feel guilty because I didn't heal someone,' she told herself and smiled when she didn't feel guilty like she usually did. 'At least Carol isn't being a lunatic since Vicky bopped her over the head with the wand and Dad's better, maybe this will be a decent Christmas after all.'
Vicky smiled when she saw Amy walk out of the hospital with a smile on her face rather than a scowl or a grimace, sure it was a small smile but it still counted. "Ready for food?"
"Strangely enough, yeah," Amy replied, having missed her father's cooking from the good days when he used to cook or barbeque. She stuck her phone in her pocket and zipped it up so it wouldn't fall out. "Ready."
"Welcome aboard Air Vicky," Vicky said cheerfully as she picked Amy up in her arms and flew into the air, looking forward to getting home, “please keep your limbs inside the forcefield and limit your carryon bag to twenty pounds.”
Amy relaxed into her sister's arms as they flew back towards the house, actually happy about the idea of the holidays for the first time since she'd triggered. She tensed up when she heard the gunshots. "We could ignore them!"
"I'd lose my hero card!" Vicky argued as she flew towards the sounds of gunfire, figuring she'd stash Amy out of sight then deal with the problem.
'Would it kill her to remember she's not actually bulletproof?' Amy complained in her head as her sister changed direction.
0o0o0
Myst focused on the guy that was trying and failing to shoot his shadow clone with some type of automatic rifle and failing miserably. "We need to clone decent help."
"PRT or police?" S. Rose asked thoughtfully as she copied the person she could see in the second story window when they moved their hand and she could see the shadow on the catwalk. She manifested the shadow clone, creating a naked skinny brown haired girl that could have been anywhere from thirteen to sixteen. "Are you part of the gang?"
"Hell yeah, I'm Ed's girl," the shadow girl replied proudly.
Myst kept his eyes on the rather one sided fight where the thugs guarding the abandoned firehouse had his shadow clone pinned down. "Can you shoot a gun?"
"I can hit a can from twenty feet," the shadow girl replied.
Myst grabbed one of the crappy knives they'd picked up from the scrap yard and handed it to the girl. "Okay, run out there and stab the guy guarding the door in the leg."
"Hell yeah, he's an asshole," the girl said cheerfully then ran out the back door and charged towards the 'abandoned' fire station. "Blood for the blood god!"
Myst wasn't expecting the girl's shadow clone to accomplish much, but it would probably cause a distraction which might let one of the other shadow clones close the distance. "We should probably look into some type of tinkertech stunner."
"We'd have to recover it," S. Rose pointed out.
Myst scowled when the thug gunned down the shadow clone of the girl without any hesitation as she charged at him with a knife. "I'm starting to think it would be easier to start tossing criminals in the bay."
"Sounds like a good way to end up with a lot of dead gang members…" S. Rose trailed off as a blonde figure hit the thug like a wrecking ball, sending him through the door.
"Shit!" Myst cursed when he recognized Vicky, fairly sure she was going to complicate his other shadow clone's ability to sneak away with the money unless he slowed her down. "Any idea how to distract her?" he asked as he copied Vicky, wanting to make sure he could duplicate her as she'd be useful to have, since her shield could tank a hit from an Endbringer.
"Not really," S. Rose admitted as the shadow girl that had been shot bled out and disappeared, vanishing from her collection of shadows. "Hopefully no one saw that." She sighed when she saw Panacea staring at the spot where the girl had vanished. "So much for that idea," she muttered as she copied the healer.
"Shit…" Myst muttered when he spotted a group of Aryan thugs heading their way from down the street carrying guns. He started the RV, shifted it into drive and hit the gas, causing it to lurch into motion faster than it had any right to move. He spun around and stuck the RV between Panacea and the thugs when they started shooting in their general direction. "Grab her!"
S. Rose jumped out of her seat and scrambled to the back door and opened it. "Get in here!"
"Rose?" Amy sputtered as she ran for the door to the RV, as any cover was better than no cover with the thugs. "What the hell is going on?!"
"Saving the healer, they're important…" S. Rose trailed off as several bullets bounced off the side of the RV, making her really happy that Myst had already upgraded it a bunch, as none of them got through and even the one that hit the window merely caused the window to chip.
Myst sighed in relief when the thugs seemed to lose interest in the RV. He took a couple of seconds to quickly copy them then opened the driver's door and shouted, "Incoming Empire!" hoping that Vicky would hear him.
"What the hell is going on?!" Amy demanded as she crouched down, trying to minimize the amount of area she was exposing to the thugs.
Myst quickly copied Amy. 'Okay, you're going to have to kick the idiots in the nuts. Scream ninja attack or something,' he told his collection of shadow thugs then manifested them in the middle of the group of gang members, causing the group of Merchants to open fire on the people that had appeared out of thin air, expecting Oni Lee to kill them. 'Yeah, this turned into a cluster fuck.'
"No idea, just heard someone start shooting," S. Rose complained, a bit surprised things had escalated this quickly.
"Amy!" Vicky shouted as she flew out of the firehouse carrying two unconscious thugs.
"Over here!" S. Rose shouted.
Vicky flew behind the RV when the thugs opened fire, knowing her shield didn't do well with continuous fire as it would drop once they stopped or if they paused long enough between shots. "What the hell?" she sputtered when she noticed who was in the RV. "Rose?"
"Thanks for the save, we got a bit lost," S. Rose told her.
"Did you break them?" Amy asked as she checked the thugs for injuries after Vicky set them on the floor in the RV.
"One of them was already unconscious," Vicky assured her as 'Rose' shut the door.
Amy pulled her wand out of her sleeve and waved it over the guy that Vicky body checked through a wall, figuring that would be easier than dealing with multiple fractures. She smiled as the man's injuries vanished and his breathing went from labored and wet to healthy. She checked his injuries then made sure they'd stay asleep for a couple of hours. "They'll live, what happened?"
"He shot a girl so I hit him. I found the other guy passed out and there was yet another guy passed out on the stairs," Vicky offered. "Do you have any suggestions for dealing with the people coming towards us?"
"Leave?" Myst suggested, figuring that would be the easiest.
"Let's get out of here," Vicky agreed.
"What about the other guy?" Amy asked.
"He should be fine, the other guys looked like merchants," Vicky replied, not particularly worried about the gang members, since she was more worried about making sure Amy was safe, which meant getting her away from the shooting.
"Good enough for me," Myst said as he took his foot off the brake and hit the gas, wanting to put some distance between them and the thugs with guns. 'I really need to find an actual brute to copy so I don't have to worry about the small shit.'
Vicky sighed in relief that she wasn't leaving someone to get executed. "Okay, we can drop these two off with the cops, maybe they can figure out what they were fighting about. What were you doing in this section of the city?"
"Research," Myst replied as he stopped at a light two blocks away.
“Sex,” S. Rose said at the same time, drawing the two girls attention to her, noting how she was barely dressed.
“Isn’t he a bit old for you?” Amy asked.
“He’s only paying minimum wage, I need some benefits,” S. Rose said bluntly.
“And that happens to be his penis?” Vicky asked, trying not to laugh.
Myst took his foot off the brake when the light turned green, rather amused by the whole thing.
“And tongue,” S. Rose agreed with a smile. “I’ve decided I’m head of HR so any sexual harrasment going on will be reported and then graded by me.”
Vicky burst out laughing.
“Anything to say in your defense?” Amy asked dryly.
“I’m not giving her a raise,” Myst said, “and if that means I have to prostitute myself, well so be it!”
“You both have the same sense of humor,” Amy said with a sigh. “Now I can see you two together.”
“If you’d got here just a few minutes later you would have too,” S. Rose agreed.
Myst pulled over and parked in an open spot then pulled his power copying gloves off and handed them to Amy. "I found something else interesting, poke your sister."
Amy reached out and poked her sister's arm.
Myst shook his head. "Put them on first and touch your sister, it takes a couple of seconds."
"Are these anything like the healing wand?" Amy asked as she pulled the gloves on.
"Yes," Myst replied as he turned to look at everyone.
Amy touched Vicky's arm and blinked when she got a menu that told her she could copy two of her sister's powers. "Is this for real?"
"Real as the wand," Myst replied.
"I'm not feeling any tingles, what does it do?" Vicky asked.
"Give me a minute," Amy replied as she picked her sister's force field and flight then watched the progress bar.
Vicky turned to look at Myst. "What's the deal?"
Amy giggled when she got a sense of how to use her new powers and floated above her seat. "He found power copying gloves."
Vicky stared at Amy then looked at Myst. "How lucky are you?"
"I have a lucky penny," Myst replied with a grin.
"You're a trump, aren't you?" Vicky half stated, half asked, showing she wasn’t nearly as gullible as she liked to seem.
"Let's just go with I'm just really lucky," Myst replied with a grin as he slipped out of the driver's seat so S. Rose and take his place.
Amy reached out with the gloves and stopped a foot away from Myst. "Can I check?"
"Only if you don't tell anyone the result," Myst replied as he held his hand out.
Amy touched his hand and selected the precog S.E.P. field and the Let's Give It a Boost power. "Do you think I can share the gloves with my family?" she asked as she copied the powers.
"Can you guarantee that they can keep a secret?" Myst asked, wanting to make sure they wouldn't sell him out to the PRT.
"They can keep a secret," Amy assured him, thinking of some of the stuff they hadn't mentioned publically.
"In that case, I'd share the gloves for a chance to copy a couple of powers," Myst offered.
"Which ones?" Vicky asked.
Myst shrugged. "Ideally we'd just pass the gloves around and everyone would copy two powers from each person. I'd love a limited copy of your force field."
"Limited?" Vicky asked.
"I'd rather not have to deal with your aura," Myst replied.
"I can't blame you for that one, it makes relationships complicated," Vicky admitted. "How does the power copying work?"
"You can pick two powers from a cape, it takes five seconds to copy the first one and ten for the second," Myst replied.
"How long do they last?" Vicky asked.
"Until you pick something else," Myst assured her.
"Do they work for people that aren't parahumans?" Amy asked, looking at Rose.
"So far," Myst replied as he gestured at S. Rose. "Rose isn't a parahuman, she didn't have any trouble copying powers."
"What do you have?" Vicky asked.
"I grabbed a precog avoidance field and one of Myst's powers," S. Rose replied, not seeing a point in mentioning Admin's power.
Amy reached out and poked S. Rose's hand. "How come she doesn't have a menu?"
"The gloves can't copy the powers they give someone which means you'd need the original cape around if you wanted to get a copy of their abilities," Myst explained, making a mental note to see if they could get a copy of the powers from a shadow clone.
Vicky stared at the gloves. "If they're actually permanent the PRT would love the gloves."
S. Rose sighed. "Or hate them because it wouldn't be that hard to make a bunch of capes."
"I'm not planning on telling them," Myst stated firmly, knowing they had issues.
"I don't think we can pass this up," Vicky admitted, knowing it was just a matter of time before she screwed up and someone got lucky.
"Yeah, it would go a long way towards keeping everyone safe and Crystal could use better shields and Eric better blasts," Amy pointed out.
"Not to mention Neil's powers would give everyone decent durability," Vicky mused.
Amy frowned as she realized how much more training they'd have to do. "It would mean more training."
"Worth it," Vicky assured her. "You're planning on being a hero, right?" she asked Myst, knowing her mother would ask.
'Rogue? Part time hero? Heroic rogue?' Myst asked himself as he tried to find a truthful answer that wouldn't cause her family to reject the offer. "I'm mostly planning on running a nightclub and enjoying life but I don't mind helping to clean up the city or giving some of the heroes a massive boost from the shadows."
"If you want to help the heroes in the city, why not talk to the Protectorate?" Vicky asked.
"They're part of a large organization and those tend to leak information, even a hint around the office would probably lead to someone showing up to press gang me into service," Myst argued, not particularly interested in trying to deal with the PRT or Cauldron until he had better defenses.
Amy sighed as she thought about some of the stuff she'd overheard while healing people that the various agents shouldn't have been talking about. "He's not wrong."
"You don't have to decide anything today. Take a couple of days and think about it, discuss the idea with your team and get back to us," Myst said as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed Vicky the number he'd written on the inside of the case. "I'm sure we can come to some sort of agreement."
Vicky pulled her phone out of her pocket and set up a new contact. "Cool."
S. Rose slipped past Myst and climbed into the driver's seat. "Do you want me to head to the station or your house?"
"We're already running a bit late," Vicky admitted. "You might as well head to the house, I'll drop the thugs off at the station."
Amy opened the door and stepped back so Vicky could haul the thugs out. "Just be careful of their necks."
"I'll just carry them by their ankles, they should be fine," Vicky assured her sister.
"I'm suddenly glad that I'm not a villain," Myst muttered as Vicky hauled the people out of the RV and into the air by one leg each, making it look rather awkward and painful. "At least they're unconscious."
Amy watched her sister fly away for a couple of seconds then closed the door. "Hopefully I don't get a text asking me to show up at the station because she bounced their heads off a car."
"You could always turn your cell off?" S. Rose suggested with a grin.
Amy sighed as she turned to look at S. Rose. "I can't, there might be an emergency."
Myst put his phone back in his pocket. "That's the other reason to spread powers around, being on call twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty five days of the year is draining."
"If my powers were just healing, I'd agree," Amy said as she pulled the gloves off. "They're bio-manipulation."
"I'm aware," Myst replied as he took his sunglasses off and held them out as S. Rose shifted into drive and started heading towards Amy's house.
"Something else you found?" Amy asked as she took the sunglasses.
"They let you see the names of powers," Myst offered.
Amy put the glasses on and looked at Myst, realizing that he had several powers she couldn't copy. "Is your Copy Protection power interfering or did you copy the Iterative Improvement power from someone?"
Myst sat down on the bench. "Considering I started with the power, I'm reasonably sure it's mine."
"How come I can copy your other two powers?" Amy asked.
Myst covered his mouth with his arm as he yawned. "I'm guessing there's a subconscious component. I don't want to share my Iterative Improvement power as it can do just about anything with enough time and my copy protection power would prevent me from copying your power."
"Makes sense," Amy admitted. "What else have you made?"
"A bag of holding, a pez dispenser that creates a pill that removes addiction and purges the body of foreign chemicals, a ring that gives me a deflection force field, a ring that heals people and I boosted the shocks in the RV a touch so that they'd give me a better ride," Myst explained.
Amy glanced at the pez dispenser on the table, surprised to see the description floating over the dispenser explaining how it worked. "It cures addiction?"
"Technically, it transforms pez into a magical or tinkertech pill that safely removes addiction and purges chemicals," Myst corrected.
"Magic?" Amy asked skeptically.
"The glasses call it magic, probably because of an unconscious bias," Myst replied with a shrug.
"Either way, how much are you selling them for?" Amy asked, fairly sure the hospital would buy some if she could prove they worked.
"I was thinking five dollars each," Myst admitted, fairly sure he could get more but not particularly concerned about it at this stage, mostly because he wanted people off drugs and leading productive lives or at least off the shit that caused them to leave used needles scattered around everywhere.
"That's it?" Amy asked in surprise.
"They're cheap," Myst replied, not particularly worried about the money. "I'm literally turning sugar and whatever they stick in pez into something that removes dangerous chemicals by loading the dispenser with pez and pushing the button. If I sacrifice another forty dispensers, I'll be able to make a few thousand pills a day."
"Tell you what, if you give me twenty in a bag and I'll take them to the hospital and see if we can run some tests and get them provisionally approved for limited use," Amy offered, fairly sure she could get a couple of the doctors to sign off on the test as long as she was there to fix things if anything went wrong.
"Thanks," Myst replied. "Do you think they'll take the deal?"
"If you'd asked me before Vicky hit everyone with the wand and they chilled out, not a chance. Now? Probably," Amy admitted. "What type of nightclub are you planning on running?" she asked, changing the subject.
"Strippers, live music and decent food," S. Rose said cheerfully, fairly sure they could cut costs by replacing some of the staff with shadow clones or the bands with shadow clones.
"Sounds fun but I'm not eighteen and Carol would kill me," Amy admitted.
"Give me a few days or a week to sort some things out and I can probably make you a disguise ring so you can look like someone else," Myst offered.
"I'd appreciate it, how much?" Amy asked.
Myst shook his head. "Nothing, everyone deserves the chance to relax and it's hard to actually relax when you're worried about saying something that will end up on the boards or in the paper. If you want something else, I could always use help making custom plants."
"Custom plants?" Amy asked.
Myst glanced at S. Rose when she slowed down and parked. "Powers like to be used and bioluminescent plants would be a fantastic draw for the club."
"I'll consider it," Amy said as she took the sunglasses off and handed them to Myst along with the gloves. "I'll give you a call if my team doesn't want to make the deal, the world needs more healers."
"I can't argue with that," Myst replied. "Is it safe to open the door?"
S. Rose looked in the mirror. "Yeah."
"I'll let you know if we find more capes that are willing to trade powers," Myst told Amy as he stepped over to the door and opened it.
"Thanks," Amy replied as she checked to make sure there weren't any cars coming. She resisted the urge to fly over the RV and surprise everyone in the backyard, if only because some of them had blaster powers and startling capes was never a good idea.
Myst closed the door then walked over and sat down. "Let's go pick up my minion, he should be waiting at the coffee stand."
"Assuming nothing killed him and he didn't leave your range," S. Rose replied as she checked her mirrors and made sure she could see Amy through the passenger window before shifting the RV into drive and continuing down the street. "Where are we going after we pick up the idiot?"
"Do you know somewhere that has used appliances?" Myst asked as he put the sunglasses and the power stealing gloves in his pocket and pulled out the repair gloves. "I'm going to have to upgrade the windows a bit more when I have a chance."
"Could be worse," S. Rose admitted.
"A lot worse," Myst agreed as he pulled the gloves on and activated them, repairing the window and the dents to the outside from the bullets. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started looking for real estate sites, trying to figure out how much he was going to have to steal to pull off his idea.
