Mist of Shadows
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Travels in the Multiverse Part 5
🕑 Added 2020-09-12 01:09:54 +0000 UTC"How do we jump worlds?" Sirius asked, eager to get Harry and Hermione as far from the wizarding world and its problems as possible.
"I can basically slip between worlds at will, rip open portals that you could drive a train through, or I can make an alcove device that works as a permanent device that people can use once I train them in its use.”
"Not just on and off?” Sirius asked curiously.
“No, a device that just went to one world is only so useful, the alcove goes to many worlds, though always to the same spot in each. Part of the training allows you to open the alcove from that spot on the other world, otherwise it would be a one way trip.”
"How big is an alcove?" Hermione asked curiously.
"About the size of a garage,” Myst replied thoughtfully, “two car, not a public parking garage.”
“Got anything more portable?” Sirius joked, thinking about where they could put a garage sized device.
"I can make wands, they're basically the size of a candy bar but they take about eight hours of dedicated work which is less than an alcove but there isn’t a return feature so if you lose it you're fucked," Myst explained.
“Hmm,” Sirius said thoughtfully. “It’d probably be better to have both, using the alcove to get back in case of emergency.”
“Yeah, that would be a nice safety feature,” Myst agreed. “If you’re attuned to an alcove then you can find the spot and open a way back without a problem, except for reaching the spot of course.”
“Yeah,” Sirius said excitedly, “how long would it take you to set that up and how much would you charge to do it?”
“Well…” Myst said going through what he’d need to do mentally, “it’s a couple weeks work, but I can create everything I need pretty easily. I’m thinking… well, actually we already are doing most of what I want since our interests coincide. How about a couple weeks of spell casting on your end later?”
“Sounds more than fair to me,” Sirius said, mentally leaping for joy in his head. The ability to walk from one world to another was something even Merlin lacked and made keeping his friends and family safe and happy easy. Not to mention having a home where even the Ministry couldn’t touch them.
"Can you cast the fidelius charm and do you need the permission of the owner to hide something?" Myst asked.
"Yes I can cast it and no, you don't need their permission," Sirius said cheerfully, wishing he'd known the spell when he'd been a student.
"In that case, how do you feel about capturing an underground base from a supervillain?" Myst asked with a grin.
"I could be talked into it," Sirius said thoughtfully, wanting an excuse to get out of the house and wondering what a supervillain was.
"Are we talking about a Bond villain or someone like Lex Luthor?" Hermione asked.
"More like a Bond villain," Myst replied as he stood up and stretched. "Lex is generally competent even if he's a bit fixated on Superman."
"Are you saying Superman's real?" Harry asked.
"I can jump worlds, I'm not saying he's not real though I haven't ran into him yet," Myst admitted.
"What type of minions does your villain have?" Sirius asked, curious what they were getting into.
"Mercenaries with guns and lasers," Noelle offered, having seen some of the mercenaries on her way into the base.
"Lasers? Don't they make swords out of those?" Sirius asked, recalling one of the movies that Lily had dragged them to.
"Not generally. They basically damage things with a lot of heat at a distance like a spell," Myst explained.
"Right, impervious and flame freezing charms on our gear should help with lasers and disillusionment charms should help with being spotted in the first place," Sirius said thoughtfully. "Shields should protect against bullets, depending on the caliber."
"Assume military grade rapid fire rifles," Myst suggested.
"Alright, scratch that thought," Sirius grumbled, knowing that it took a lot of magic and concentration to create a shield that could stand up to that type of abuse, especially in combat. "We could probably layer metal repelling charms on our gear and use shields but I'd still want to avoid being seen or hit."
"My shield should help against bullets," Amy offered, looking forward to field testing her new shield.
"Good. I'm assuming they have cameras scattered everywhere?" Sirius asked, thinking about some of the spy movies that Lily had shown them.
"Yeah," Myst agreed. "Unfortunately he's not quite incompetent enough to skip placing cameras around his base, which means we should probably teleport to his office and disable him before we start disabling his minions."
"What did this particular villain do?" Hermione asked, wanting to make sure he actually deserved their attention.
"Kidnapped and drugged a twelve year old precog so he could use her power to rule the city like a bad Bond villain," Myst replied. "He's working on starting a city wide gang war that will get hundreds if not thousands of people killed, just so he can take over behind the scenes."
"What do you need?" Harry asked, unwilling to leave an innocent girl trapped if he could help it.
"Stunners or some method of dealing with the mercenaries without killing them would help," Myst admitted. "I don't have a nice method for knocking people unconscious and I'd rather not waste the time tying people up."
"That's easy enough, stunners and the incarcerous spell," Sirius said as he thought about his auror training. "Where would we teleport to?"
Myst shrugged. "Coil's office is a good place to start, it would keep him from triggering the base's self-destruct."
Hermione glanced between the strangers. "Is that normal for your world?"
Amy shook her head. "Not really, a decent number of villains have secret bases but that's generally a hidden lab or workshop, having an actual self-destruct system and a hoard of mercenaries on your payroll is weird."
"In that case, grab your cloak Harry, we'll disillusion everyone, if they're moving stun them, we'll sort things out later," Sirius said cheerfully.
Harry turned to look at Myst. "I'll need my trunk."
Myst pulled Harry's trunk out of his pocket dimension and set it on the ground. "Here."
"How did you do that?" Hermione asked, wanting a list of Myst's powers.
"It's basically a pocket dimension that I use for storing things," Myst said as he focused on Coil's base and checked the results of a jump to his office. 'Mercenaries in the corners, not a bad idea but nothing I can't deal with as long as I have my shield and some defensive charms.'
"What about my team?" Noelle asked warily.
"Good point, once we drop Coil we'll have access to the com-system, it should be easy to tell them to stand down and tell the mercenaries to surrender. If that doesn't work, we'll stun them and let the PRT sort them out."
"Sounds good," Noelle agreed, wishing she had a map of Coil's base and a way to warn her team before the mercenaries.
"In that case, let's steal a base," Sirius said cheerfully.
'Yeah, he's been cooped up way too long,' Myst thought as Sirius started casting protective charms on the group. 'At least he doesn't look exactly like the actor that played him in the movies, he should be able to wander around Earth Bet without too much trouble.'
0o0o0
Vicky stared in disbelief as someone that looked like Hermione Granger landed in the backyard then jumped out the window and flew down to see what was going on. "Who are you?!" she asked as her aura flared, projecting fear into the unknown parahuman who had just invaded their property.
"Aura, Vicky," Amy reflexively snapped, pretending nothing was wrong.
"Amy?" Vicky blurted, reining in her aura when she recognized her sister's voice. "What happened?"
"I ran into a crazy wizard that asked if I wanted superpowers," Amy replied with a shrug, causing Vicky to stare at her breasts that her silk dress barely hid. 'Now she notices.'
"A wizard?" Vicky asked doubtfully, trying to figure out if her sister was concussed or just messing with her.
"Yep, glowing purple eyes, arcane runes, oh and I met Harry Potter and Hermione Granger after jumping worlds," Amy said cheerfully, knowing her sister wouldn't believe her without proof.
"I don't see a broom, how did you get flight from that?" Vicky asked dryly, knowing her sister was just messing with her now.
"Magic," Amy replied.
Vicky rolled her eyes. "Are you going to actually explain anything?"
"I wasn't planning on it," Amy replied with a smirk as she walked towards the back door. "I also helped catch Coil, the PRT will probably call Aunt Sarah to bitch about it."
"Why would they bitch about capturing a villain?" Vicky asked as she floated after Amy.
"He's sort of dead," Amy admitted.
"How did that happen?" Vicky demanded, flying around and in front of Amy to block her way so that she could get some answers.
"A wizard did it," Amy replied.
"How?" Vicky demanded.
"You should be able to relate, Coil bounced a bullet off the wizard’s force field and hit himself in the neck, he was dead before I could save him, mostly because his mercenaries kept shooting at us until we dropped them unconscious," Amy explained.
"That's always messy," Vicky admitted. "Why do you look like Hermione?"
"Because shape changing is awesome and she's completely fuckable?" Amy asked sarcastically.
"Does that mean you can't change back?" Vicky asked.
"Bingo," Amy replied, touching her nose. 'Technically, I could change back, but I don't see a reason to.'
"Mom is going to freak," Vicky warned her.
"Blame the wizard," Amy replied as she walked past Vicky, mostly because Vicky was too surprised by her response to grab her or move in the way.
"What?!" Vicky demanded as she flew after her.
"He's the one that forgot to tell me that my nice shiny shape changing power doesn't have a built in reset feature," Amy explained as she opened the door and walked inside. ‘Life is so much easier when I can blame everything on Myst.’
"So you're stuck like that?" Vicky asked.
"There are worse people to look like," Amy replied as she noticed Mark sitting in a chair watching the evening news. "Mark."
Mark raised his eyebrows. "She has a point," he agreed, having caught their argument as they came in as neither was exactly being quiet.
"That's it?" Vicky said as she glanced between her father and Amy.
"Oh no, Amy was turned into a model by an alien wizard," Mark said dryly.
Vicky blinked then scowled at her father. "She already told you, didn't she?"
"She might have mentioned it when she called and said she'd be late. Did you have fun catching the villain?" Mark asked, glad that his meds were actually working and even more so that Amy was actually getting out of the house and making some friends.
"It would have been better if he hadn't committed suicide by force field, but it was certainly interesting and we managed to hand over most of his mercenaries completely unharmed to the PRT," Amy said as she floated a foot off the ground, glad that Myst had recharged her crystals before wishing her luck with Carol. "I even managed to pick up some magic powers."
"I don't suppose you can share?" Mark asked hopefully.
"Maybe later," Amy replied as she dropped back to the ground. "I only have about an hour's worth of charge."
"Can't you just plug it in?" Vicky asked, not sure where she'd hid the tinkertech.
"Sorry, it doesn't run on electricity, it runs on magic," Amy said she headed towards the stairs.
"What did you do?" Carol asked as she walked out of the kitchen and stared at Amy, shocked to see the change to her appearance and her silk dress that clung to her new curves.
"A wizard did it," Amy replied absently, not bothering to turn around.
"Get back here and explain!" Carol snapped.
"Fine," Amy replied as she spun around. "I met a wizard. He took me to dinner and gave me some magical powers then we jumped worlds and went to England and met Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Sirius Black," she explained, figuring Carol wouldn't believe any of that regardless of how true it was.
"Stop lying!" Carol ordered.
"I'm not. Call Sarah, I'm sure the PRT already called her about the idiots at the restaurant and about my help taking down Coil," Amy replied as she floated a foot off the ground, resisting the urge to say something less polite.
"Call her about…" Carol trailed off as she noticed Amy floating. "How are you flying?"
"I told you, I met a wizard and picked up some interesting powers," Amy replied, having fun messing with Carol. 'Myst is right, when you don't care, it's easier.'
"You're grounded!" Carol snapped.
"For what?" Amy asked dryly. "Taking out a villain or for dealing with idiots that tried to rob the restaurant?"
"For lying!" Carol replied angrily.
"Fine, if you don't believe me, I'll just call the wizard," Amy replied as she pulled her phone out of her purse and selected the number for Myst's new burner phone.
"Who are you calling?" Carol demanded.
"I just told you, the wizard," Amy replied wondering if she had to check Carol's hearing or if she was just being stubborn.
"Put that down," Carol commanded and stepped forward to grab the phone.
Amy sighed as she activated her force field, figuring it was for a good cause. "No, you're being unreasonable."
Myst answered the phone after the first ring. "Amy? I thought you were going to get a shower and get some sleep?"
"That was the plan," Amy replied as Carol hit the force field with her hand. "Carol decided to flip out, which means I'm going to need to talk to my aunt about my future in New Wave."
"Do you want me to pick you up?" Myst asked.
"Probably better than dealing with Carol right now," Amy replied.
"You're not going anywhere," Carol stated firmly, wondering what type of Master effect she was under or if she was finally showing her true colors.
"Carol, you should call Sarah before things get out of hand," Mark pointed out, wishing that Carol would just take a breath and relax before she said something she'd regret and they’d all have to deal with.
"Give me five seconds," Myst replied as he focused on teleporting to Amy's house, wincing as his first rushed attempt would have resulted in appearing with his legs ‘in’ the couch. He quickly abandoned that effort and concentrated before he teleported inside Amy's shield right next to her. "You called for a taxi?" he asked as he ended the call and stuck the flip phone in his pocket.
"Thanks," Amy replied as she ended the call and put her phone back in her purse.
"He doesn't look like a wizard," Vicky said, looking over the tall teenager with shoulder length dark hair and glowing purple eyes that was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt without any attempt to disguise himself.
"You can't just teleport in here, you're trespassing!" Carol snapped.
"I normally respect property rights, but you're shouting at Amy," Myst said, trying to defuse the situation. "Either way, please stop, it's rude."
"You don't get to come into my house and tell me that I'm being rude!" Carol yelled.
"Glass houses Carol," Myst replied coldly as he glared at Carol. 'You have no room to talk, you nearly killed Amy when you broke into Marquis' house and started a fight,' he whispered into her mind using his power. "Now if you'll excuse me, we're going somewhere less hostile." He turned to look at Vicky as Carol stared at him in horror. "Are you coming?"
"Yes!" Vicky flew to Amy's side as she dropped her force field and grabbed her sister's arm. "I still want answers."
"Great," Amy muttered, secretly pleased Vicky was taking her side. "Take us to Sarah's, maybe she can talk some sense into Carol," Amy complained.
Myst teleported with Amy and Vicky to the sidewalk in front of their aunt's house. "I suggest doing some damage control, I have to get back and make sure Sirius doesn't go overboard with the defenses on the base."
"Thanks, if I don't call you in the morning, come get me," Amy ordered.
"Okay." Myst teleported back to the underground base they were in the process of stealing from Coil. 'I really need to get Amy some permanent mental defenses, which means another crystal and probably some magic.'
Harry looked up from the futuristic phone he was playing with. "Any luck?"
Myst turned to look at Harry. "Amy needed a lift to her aunt's house. She'll either spend the night or she'll call for a pick up."
"Family issues?" Hermione asked, trying not to break down as she thought about her parents.
"Less than Harry," Myst replied as he dropped into a less than comfortable plastic and metal chair across the conference table from Hermione and Harry.
Harry snorted. "Considering my family, I'd hope so."
"How do you lose a building this size?" Hermione asked the question that had been bothering her since they'd finished capturing the mercenaries.
"Hell if I know, even with copious amounts of bribes, it's under downtown and everyone in the area should have felt it when they were digging it." Myst glanced over as Sirius walked into the rec room. "If it was built thirty or forty years ago, I'd understand how people might have forgotten about it but it's less than ten years old."
"Are there any capes that modify memories on a grand scale?" Sirius asked as he walked over.
"Not that I know of," Myst replied, fairly sure it would have come up in the story. "If someone around here had that power, the government would probably kill them or the gangs would. It's more likely that Coil's people roughed out the base then faked the issues and used tinkertech to 'finish' the construction."
"It shouldn't be too hard to finish with magic," Sirius replied. "I tossed muggle repelling charms on the entrances and hid the base with a fidelius charm, which means you should be safe enough unless Godzilla shows up."
"Don't taunt murphy, Leviathan exists," Myst replied, suddenly curious if Earth Bet had made any giant monster movies after Behemoth appeared or if they'd sworn off an entire genre because of the Endbringers.
"Do you have a plan for killing him yet?" Sirius asked.
Myst shook his head. "My best plan involves dropping the Endbringers somewhere they can't come back from but I'm not going to seriously consider building what I need until I can find something that will keep me off their radar considering the Simurgh is a precog or at least good enough at running prediction software that she can see things years in the future with a disturbing amount of accuracy."
"That shouldn't work without magic," Hermione said, knowing you'd need an insane amount of computing power to get anything even close to accurate predictions without magic. She didn't even want to think about how many planet sized computers you'd need to make decent predictions years into the future.
"Welcome to my life," Myst replied with a grin. "If you'd asked me yesterday, I would have said magic didn't exist outside of coincidence. This dimension has giant crystal computers that make physics cry or at least our understanding of physics. Either way, I want better gear and powers before I get anywhere near any of the Endbringers."
"I can't say I blame you," Harry admitted as he turned to look at Sirius. "Any ideas how you'd kill one?"
"Not really," Sirius admitted. "I doubt reducto would do more than scratch it and it's not really alive which means the killing curse wouldn't work. If I had to try, I'd go with transfiguration. Of course, that's assuming that the sheer durability doesn't cause the spell to fail."
"Considering each layer is more durable than the last, I'd rather not get close enough to try, especially since you'd probably only get one shot before the entire area starts getting hit with rods from god," Myst said, fairly sure the Simurgh would stop sandbagging if you found something that could actually kill one of them.
"Rods from god?" Sirius asked, not familiar with the term.
"It's basically where you toss something large and or durable from orbit and obliterate your target on the ground, the Simurgh is a flying telekinetic that doesn't need to breathe and there are a lot of wrecked satellites floating around in orbit," Myst pointed out.
"Fun," Sirius replied sarcastically.
"Not really which is why I don't plan on causing trouble or making waves, I just want a place I can hide while I get things set up," Myst replied as he focused on the table and used his crystal growing ability to start creating a bracelet on the table, using one of the schematics the Traveler had left floating around in his mind.
"Jewelry?" Hermione asked as she watched the light blue crystal bracelet form from various types of crystal thread and larger pieces of crystal that fused in place as he assembled it. "Or something more?"
"A bit of both. It's an interdiction device," Myst explained as he picked up the deceptively complicated device and touched the dark red crystal on the bracelet's face, causing the red crystal to light up with a soft glow.
"What's an interdiction device?" Harry asked.
Sirius looked at Hermione. "Do you want to explain?"
Hermione raised her eyebrows as she looked at Sirius. "Do you even know?"
"I was giving you the chance to show off," Sirius replied, trying and failing to look like he actually knew what was going on.
"It's basically an anti teleportation device, it blocks any form of teleporting within a half a mile radius while active which should keep people from just teleporting in and blasting me without warning," Myst explained.
"What happens if they try?" Sirius asked.
"They should just get shunted out of range unless they try to force it." Myst tapped the red crystal, causing the light to go out. "If that happens, they'll probably end up dead, either in a wall or the ground... or just in pieces."
"Don't ever tell the ministry that, they'd try to steal it," Sirius warned him.
"I'm not planning on telling the ministry anything," Myst replied, wanting nothing to do with the ministry of magic outside of looting their vaults.
"Can you key in exceptions?" Sirius asked hopefully.
"Not currently," Myst admitted, not even sure where to start.
"I guess it's a good thing I'm not in the habit of apparating everywhere." Sirius glanced between Harry and Hermione. "Remind me to teach you how to apparate before the end of the summer."
"Don't we have to be seventeen for that?" Harry asked, knowing it was something you learned in your sixth or seventh year.
"Only legally," Sirius replied with a grin. "The British Ministry doesn't like the idea of teenage wizards and witches popping around the country."
"It would certainly prove helpful, just let me know before you start practicing so I can make sure the field isn't active," Myst warned them, wanting to make sure there weren't any accidents.
Sirius covered his mouth as he yawned. "On that note, we should probably get some sleep if we're going to do the power boosting ritual in the morning."
"Sounds good," Myst replied as he headed towards the crew quarters to grab some sleep or at least relax while he worked on creating a wand for jumping dimensions.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
Fixed.
Chichi son
"I can make wands, they're basically the size of a candy bar but they take about eight hours or dedicated work which is less than an alcove but there isn’t a return feature so if you lose it you're fucked," Myst explained. hours of dedicated?
