Mist of Shadows
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Myst and the Magic Shop Part 6
🕑 Added 2022-05-03 02:46:14 +0000 UTC"That's cheating," Myst muttered as he watched Kara roll a 'sheet' of molten glass and sand into a giant tube, blurring between the various points of the tube to keep it moving so that it didn't melt or break into a useless mess as it cooled enough to support its own weight.
Kara snickered as she pushed and stretched one of the ends into more of an arch shape rather than sort of melting it together like she'd done to the rest of the tube. "Just because you can't do the math in your head, doesn't mean the rest of us can't."
Myst stared at Kara for a couple of seconds as he tried to figure out if she was actually doing the math in her head before he noticed the hint of a smirk she was trying and failing to conceal. "Yeah, I'm calling bullshit."
Kara used the barest touch of her cold breath to help the tube cool in a reasonable timeframe then turned back to look at Myst. "If I'm not doing the math, how did I pull it off?"
"You smiled at physics, fluttered your eyelashes, then stuck out your chest and distracted it while you rolled the glass," Myst offered with a straight face.
Kara stared at Myst then burst out laughing when her clone couldn't keep a straight face.
"Ba dum tss, I'm here all week," Myst joked as he hit an imaginary drum with imaginary sticks.
"Don't quit your day job," Kara teased after getting her laughter under control.
"Not a chance," Myst assured her. "I'd rather walk into random coin shops and sell a stack of gold coins every couple of weeks than stand in front of an audience and come up with jokes that don't get me booed off the stage."
Kara grinned. "I'm reasonably sure most people would rather sell free gold than tell jokes in a club."
"Speaking of day jobs, do you have any idea where our energy comes from? There's no way we can absorb enough solar power in a year to power the extraordinary tricks you or Kal do on a daily basis, let alone some of your fights."
"I'm aware," Kara admitted. "My best guess is we're using the stored solar energy to power an energy tap that connects to another dimension, but I haven't been able to replicate it with technology or detect it."
"Or you're using the solar power to tap into magic and you're actually solar powered demigods," Myst replied with a grin.
Kara sighed. "Please avoid mentioning that theory in public, I don't need to give the religious nutcases more reasons to lose their marbles."
"Issues?" Myst asked.
"Kal had some issues with various religious groups when he first started but they mostly died down once he got the public behind him. I've been pretty careful to avoid mentioning religious affiliation beyond admitting that Rao was sort of a secular god, worshiped as the bringer of life and light," Kara said as she walked over to the large tube.
"Don't worry, I'll just tell people that I worship the moon goddess and that she loves to give people cheese," Myst replied with a mischievous grin.
Kara shook her head. "I'm going to assume you're joking. Can you help me with this? I don't want to break it."
"Sure," Myst replied as he floated over to the other side of the tube and down from where Kara was. He carefully picked up the tube at the same time as Kara and helped her maneuver the arch shaped end onto the overhang above the airlock.
Kara let the glass tube settle against the sand. "Do you want to hold the tube in place while I fill everything back in?"
"Sure," Myst replied, fairly sure he didn't have the fine control to avoid damaging the entrance tube unless he spent the rest of the afternoon putting everything back together and they were trying to have everything back to looking normal by the time the next government satellite flew over which was less than an hour.
0o0o0
"If we find any eggs we're going to blow it," Myst muttered as Kara played with the manual controls for the airlock.
"Yep," Kara agreed without any hesitation as she pulled the lever, opening the iris so they could step into the chamber and causing a rush of air into the six foot by seven foot chamber.
"I was expecting a protest," Myst admitted as Kara walked into the chamber.
"There are a number of alien species that reproduce in dangerous ways, I'd rather not let some of them spread on earth," Kara replied as Myst walked into the airlock.
Kara pushed the large blue button she was reasonably sure would close the iris and smiled when it closed the iris.
Myst flinched when a hidden speaker or something let out a high pitched warbling noise before the other iris opened, revealing the inside of the ship which looked a lot like the inside of a Navy ship if you'd made everything out of chrome or something else metallic and shiny. "Do you think it's safe?"
Kara inhaled a touch and relaxed when she realized that the air was safe. "The oxygen is a bit thin, but humans would be fine."
"Shouldn't you have a gizmo for that?" Myst asked as Kara stepped into the hallway.
"I left my tools in the lab," Kara replied as she looked around. "Do you want to look at the engine room first or the cockpit?"
Myst glanced in the direction of the cockpit and used his X-ray vision to examine the strange cockpit, wondering what all of the two inch glasslike tubes that went everywhere were for. "Any idea why the chairs have a row of foam running down the middle of the back rest and look like torture devices?"
"Not everyone has bipedal body types," Kara replied as she used her X-ray vision to study the dead monitors in the cockpit, not recognizing the architecture as any of the species she was familiar with. "Random buttons, spheres of some sort of crystal set into the armrests of the pilot's chair and a couple of dozen switches without any labels that I can read."
"Remind me to pick up something that lets me read alien languages in D&D," Myst said as he turned his attention towards the other hallway and the engine room. "There's some broken tubes, bits of chemical sludge that has left nothing but a residue and a section of the hull that got slagged, this is probably going to take some work to fix or a couple repair spells."
"Do you want me to call Lena, she can have a team of tech ninjas here in three hours," Kara offered, only half joking.
"Lena?" Myst asked.
"Lena Luthor, she's my girlfriend and business partner," Kara replied as she walked down the hallway.
"Aren't you with Diana?" Myst asked, making a note to look Lena Luthor up.
"Supergirl is with Diana, Kara Danvers is with Lena," Kara explained. "And yes, she knows that I'm with Diana and Kal."
"How does that work?" Myst asked.
"Lena's used to acting differently in public and private, it doesn't hurt that Kal is also Lena's type and Diana is Diana," Kara replied with a grin.
"Huh," Myst muttered as they reached the engine room. He frowned as he glanced between the damaged bits. "Even if I repair everything with magic, I'm not sure what is supposed to go into the tubes."
"We can probably check the fortress or run some tests," Kara assured her.
"That's probably the best I'm going to get," Myst admitted, then cast his mark spell so he could teleport back to the ship.
"What did you cast?" Kara asked, having noticed the glow around her hands.
"Mark, it's part of the mark and recall series, it lets me mark a location to teleport back to," Myst explained, wishing he'd grabbed the exit or warp spell from Final Fantasy so he could just teleport out and then recall back to the ship.
"That would be easier than dealing with the airlock," Kara admitted and grabbed her phone off her belt when it rang. "Hello?"
"Your reception is terrible, where are you?" Clark asked, wondering if they were in the middle of nowhere.
"Nevada, we found an alien ship buried under the sand and we're checking it out," Kara replied, freezing in place when the number of bars on her phone went up by one.
"You found an alien ship? What type? How long has it been there?" he asked eagerly.
"At least a couple of decades or it had stealth systems," Kara replied.
"When are you heading back? Diana and Lena wanted to have lunch with Myst and Project Kr, now that J'onn dug the subliminal commands out of his head," Clark explained.
"Let me check," Kara replied. "Do you want to eat lunch with everyone?"
"Sounds fun," Myst replied, figuring it would give him a chance to get something to eat and check on 'Connor'.
"Twenty minutes?" Kara offered, figuring it wouldn't take all that long to search the ship and fly back to Metropolis.
"Sounds good," Clark replied and ended the call, relieved that she hadn't used any of their code words.
"Let's take a quick look then we can fly back," Kara said as she used her X-ray vision to scan what probably passed for a cafeteria and the storage room and bedroom or at least she was guessing it was a bedroom as it had a deteriorated mess of cloth and plastic on a metal frame that was slightly larger than a single.
Myst scanned the ship with his X-ray vision, wanting to look at everything from the proper angle now that he wasn't looking at things from above the ship. He focused on something that looked like a sonic shower and a metal sculpture that sort of resembled a backwards toilet with a view screen on the wall behind the toilet, which sort of supported the idea that the creature had wings or non-bipedal biology. "Aliens are weird."
"We're technically aliens," Kara pointed out.
"Kryptonians don't count, they're mostly understandable," Myst replied as he glanced over the strange tools that might have something to do with cooking in the room that looked like a small lounge.
"Mostly?" Kara asked.
Myst stopped using his X-ray vision and looked at Kara. "Their caste system seems rigid and tossing people into a timeless nightmare for minor crimes is barbaric."
"The caste system wasn't particularly rigid on this version of Krypton, the aptitude tests were designed to make sure you ended up where you'd make the most contribution and be the happiest but they leaned towards the good of the many rather than individual happiness. It was a bit different for my family, we've been scientists for thousands of years with the occasional member of the military caste tossed in. My uncle tried to get the Science Counsel to stop once he figured out how horrific the phantom zone is, but they liked having something they could threaten people with that didn't offically look like torture."
"Lovely," Myst muttered.
"Most of them were xenophobic pricks," Kara agreed with a shrug as she headed for the airlock.
0o0o0
Myst landed in the dead end alley next to Kara, in front of a metal door. "I would have expected bums."
"Giovanni set something up," Kara replied as she punched in a code next to the door. "It basically makes sure that people don't linger."
"That actually makes sense," Myst admitted.
Kara glanced at Myst. "I have a feeling that your comics were less than flattering about our intelligence at times."
"You should have seen your comics in the 80's, bright colors, mini skirts, and feathered hair," Myst replied as she opened the door, revealing a locker room.
"At least it wasn't pastels," Kara replied as she walked over to one of the lockers.
"Fair point…" Myst trailed off as Kara blurred and swapped to something approaching business casual and feathered hair. "You did that just because, right?" he asked when he noticed the smirk on her face.
"It helps disguise my identity," Kara replied.
"How? You're glorious," Myst argued.
"How does glasses disguise Kal's identity? J'onz thinks it's some type of mental perception field tied to the glasses or maybe hair," Kara explained.
"Or humans are just blind?" Myst asked.
"Not to mention there are a lot of people that look like Supergirl, I actually have a third place trophy for a Supergirl lookalike contest in my office, it keeps people from connecting the dots because they've already connected them. Someone that is trying to hide the fact that they're Supergirl wouldn't enter a contest."
"Unless they were trying to throw off suspicion," Myst offered.
"You're sounding like Batman," Kara pointed out with amusement.
Myst shook his head. "I'm not jumping down that rabbit hole."
Kara opened one of the other lockers. "These should fit."
"Black slacks and a shirt, that works," Myst replied then frowned when he saw the heels. "I'm not wearing heels."
"Hey, that's how I learned to fly, I kept tripping over every third step," Kara explained with a grin as Myst quickly stripped out of her pajamas and pulled her old slacks on.
He swapped his t-shirt for the dress shirt then pulled his hair back into a ponytail. "That should work."
"Rather casual on the shoes," Kara teased.
"Do you have dress sneakers?" Myst asked hopefully.
Kara opened one of the other lockers and grabbed an extra pair of shoes and handed them to her. "Here."
"Thanks," Myst replied as he quickly put the shoes on. "Now what?"
"Now we walk out the alley and across the street to Lena Corp and have lunch after we get through security," Kara replied.
"Problematic?" Myst asked as they left the locker room.
"No more than any other tech tech company worried about shape changers," Kara replied with a grin, knowing it would be fine as she had her ID.
Myst glanced at the familiar yet slightly off cars that traveled down the street towards the crosswalk, reminding him that he was in another world even if most of the buildings looked like something you'd see in the newer sections of a major city. Thankfully, it didn't take all that long to get into the building and get through security, mostly because Kara swiped her card and punched in a code while touching one of the screws on the panel, a screw that looked slightly more polished than the rest.
He followed Kara to the administrative elevator then tapped the button for the second to last floor. "So where exactly are we going?"
"The administrative dining area, it gets less use than the scientist's cafeteria," Kara replied.
"Let me guess, the administration didn't want to eat with the scientists?" Myst asked.
Kara chuckled. "Other way around, the scientists got tired of listening to complaints about the whiteboards scattered everywhere, and the lack of food they could eat with one hand while writing."
"That makes a disturbing amount of sense," Myst admitted.
"What can I say, we enjoy our work, that pesky food and sleep thing keeps getting in the way. Every quarter we have to stop someone from experimenting on an intern to try to fix that," Kara offered as the door opened, only half joking as it was normally only once a year, twice if they were exceptionally busy.
Myst glanced around the room, recognizing Clark and Project Kr and stopping when he saw Lena, surprised to find that she looked like the actress that played Lena in the Supergirl series. He glanced at the distracted looking boy in his early teens that was sketching something on a tablet with a stylist while talking to Project Kr about something. He glanced at Diana then sort of looked at the group as they walked over.
"I'm Clark, this is Lena Luthor and her son Lewis," Clark paused. "Our son, sorry, I'm used to not mentioning that bit."
"My father is ashamed of me, however will I survive," Lewis snarked.
"Do you want to go to a baseball game?" Clark asked hopefully.
"God no, but I wouldn't mind going to Star Labs tech convention," Lewis replied.
"Are we betting on who is going to rob it?" Lena asked thoughtfully.
"I've got twenty on Metallo," Lewis piped up.
"Gorilla Grod," Clark suggested.
"Too far from Star City," Kara argued.
"So you wouldn't mind betting?" Clark asked innocently.
Lewis opened his mouth then closed it and exchanged looks with his mother. "We should probably look at what the demonstrations are about before we take that bet."
"Good plan," Lena agreed with a grin.
"So what are we going with, aunt, cousin or what?" Lewis asked.
"Ah, technically Kara's twin," Myst replied with a shrug. "We'll probably go with uncle."
Lewis glanced at Myst's breasts with a confused look on his face. "Uncle?"
"I used to be male before I reincarnated into a female body," Myst replied with a shrug.
"You remember a past life?" Lewis asked excitedly.
"I was given a choice in reincarnating and chose kryptonian, this is what was available,” Myst explained, wanting to be honest about his past without confusing things with the comic book bit.
"How are you fixing it, genetic engineering, building a male clone, or downloading yourself into an android body?" Lewis asked, running through the simplest solutions he could think of.
"I was thinking magic," Myst replied with a shrug.
"Magic, how are you going to bribe Zatanna to help?" he asked.
"I don't need to bribe her, I can do it myself, I just have to pick up the right spell or item first," Myst replied.
"I didn't know you were a skilled practitioner," Clark said.
"I've retained the ability to open portals to the section of reality that can best be described as Dungeons & Dragons," Myst offered. “Magic is a lot more common there and I can easily buy what I need.”
"Waterdeep?" Clark asked excitedly.
"That's the first place I opened a portal to, I wanted to make sure the ability was working," Myst replied, a touch surprised that Clark knew about Waterdeep.
"Can other people use your portals?" Clark asked hopefully.
"My father is a bit of a nerd," Lewis offered proudly exchanging grins with his father.
"I'm pretty sure all our family could be considered nerds," Kara said.
"Uncle Lex assures us he isn't," Lewis said.
Lena laughed. "Your Uncle Lex created a car that transforms into a robot because he saw it in a movie and thought it was cool, he's worse than Clark."
“I’m the superior nerd,” Clark said smugly.
"Don't look at me, I'm just a Greek goddess," Diana offered.
"Demi," Kara teased.
"Still counts," Diana replied with amusement.
"What am I?" Project Kr asked.
Clark reached over and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Whatever you want, you name it, we'll help you achieve it, that's what family is for."
"Thank you," Project Kr replied, glad that he had people to help him get used to everything because the genomorphs training had left some sizable gaps in his education. He turned to look at Myst. "Do you have all of Kara's powers?"
"I'm still working on everything," Myst admitted. "I got a bit distracted by the alien ship we found."
"Did you figure out what species it belonged to?" Clark asked Kara as she walked around the table and sat down between Diana and Lena.
Kara shook her head. "No, I was going to grab some bots from the fortress unless you needed them for something?"
"There should be a couple that don't currently have projects," Clark replied.
"Thanks," Kara replied.
"Were you able to get it running?" Lewis asked hopefully.
"Not yet, I'm going to need some testing equipment, some of the tubes were broken and part of the wall was melted in the engine room, along with one of the engine pods," Kara admitted.
"In other words, give it a week?" Lena asked thoughtfully.
"No clue, we're missing a lot of details," Kara replied thoughtfully.
"How was Kid Flash's place?" Myst asked Project Kr.
"His parents are nice and made a large amount of food," he replied, not sure what else he could say without giving away private details.
"Do you know if the League had any luck with creating our IDs?" Myst asked Clark.
Clark shook his head. "Not yet. Anything with Gotham in the paperwork gets looked at carefully and we're still trying to deal with Cadmus' mess. Batman will probably want more details before he sets everything up and if you're swapping back to male, he'll need pictures."
"We can set something up once I know how everything is going to work and which magic item I end up going with, a cursed belt of gender reversal might be the easiest, but it's also a cursed item and might result in side effects that I'd rather avoid," Myst said.
"Probably for the best depending on the world, do you know which edition is the best approximation of the world?" Clark asked thoughtfully, drawing a blank look from Diana.
"No clue, I just opened a portal then closed it. I haven't actually explored any of the magic shops. Asking about potions would be the easiest way to tell if the portals are to second or third edition," Myst mused, knowing second edition had a 'better' system for potions.
"Or they're just based on the world and bear little actual resemblance to a dice based game," Kara pointed out.
"Probably," Myst replied with a shrug.
"She's just so picky," Clark teased.
"So has anyone actually told Lex that he has a child?" Kara asked.
"Lena won the coin toss," Clark replied.
Lena frowned as he thought about Lex's reaction to the whole thing. "I have a feeling we're going to have to call the lawyers when Lex finds the idiots that stole his DNA without his permission."
"I'm reasonably sure they'll never find the bodies," Clark pointed out.
"That was a given, he'd want to sue them first, it's Lex," Lena replied.
"How much of a supervillain is he?" Myst asked.
"He does okay, I'm reasonably sure he's piloted some robots and hired some people to deal with shady competitors but we can never get enough evidence to prove it," Clark replied, unconcerned about the whole thing.
"It's not like you look that hard," Lena pointed out.
"I'm sure he's covered his tracks well enough that I'd just be wasting my time, I have faith in him, he's family," Clark replied.
'In other words, more like the early Smallville before things went weird,' Myst mused as he sat down across from Kara.
“So what does everyone want for lunch?" Clark asked.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
He's decently close to getting his anti mind reading stuff, there's less batman can actually do about things and he's relaxing now that he's got things on track to having defenses against mind erasing telepaths.... and because poison resistance is useful.
Bable Zmith
Severely lacking in the 'Big Bad Batman' fear that so characterized the earlier chapters. LOL
