Mist of Shadows
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Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 15
🕑 Added 2018-06-30 08:28:42 +0000 UTC Victoria scowled slightly as Player Two managed to grab the feather with the hook Player One had made from a bit of wire on the first try. “How the fuck?”“Pure skill,” Randal replied with amusement as he flew the drone back toward the entrance of the dungeon so they could collect the feather.
Kevin snorted. “You should see him playing first person shooters, you almost feel sorry for the other guy.”
“That would require something approaching compassion,” Randal replied as he sent the drone into the alley.
“True, it’s way too amusing listening to them lose their shit,” Kevin replied with amusement.
Taylor grinned as the drone exited the dungeon with the feather. “I’ll admit, I’m a touch surprised that actually worked.”
“You’re doubting my awesome skills?” Randal asked with amusement as he flew the drone up so that Taylor could grab the feather.
“No, I’m just a little surprised that the feather didn’t disintegrate when it left the dungeon,” Taylor replied as she carefully unhooked the feather from the hook so Randal could land the drone without damaging the feather. She looked at the tooltip for the feather. “Sephiroth’s feather, epic crafting reagent… nice.”
“Epic crafting reagent?” Kevin asked in disbelief as Randal landed the drone and turned it off.
“Apparently,” Taylor admitted as she stuck the feather in her ingredients bag.
“What are you going to use it for?” Victoria asked curious how Neverland’s ability worked.
“I’m going to use it to make some really nice boots once we get some decent leather.”
“Lightning miniboss?” Amy asked with amusement.
Taylor turned to look at Victoria. “Are you up for it?”
“As long as I can borrow your crown,” Victoria replied with amusement.
“Sure,” Taylor replied as she took her crown off. “I’m going to want it back.” She handed the crown to Victoria.
“I know,” Victoria replied with a touch of disappointment as she put Neverland’s crown on. ‘I’m going to have to talk her into making me a crown when she has a chance.’
Taylor closed the Final Fantasy dungeon then opened the leatherworking dungeon. “Let’s talk to the leatherworker and get everyone leatherworking and cooking then we’ll head for the lightning valley and work our way to the miniboss.”
Amy glanced at the orange film over the dungeon. “Is it orange for anyone else?”
“Yeah,” Randal and Kevin agreed at almost the same time.
“It’s blue for me,” Victoria pointed out smugly.
“Orange,” Taylor admitted with a touch of annoyance.
“What is it normally?” Kevin asked.
“It was yellow last time, probably because of the crown. Still, we should be fine as long as we don’t pull too many and let Victoria handle the mini boss.” Taylor walked into the dungeon then stepped out of the way so that everyone could step inside the cave.
“Let’s go bash some monsters.” Victoria grinned as she floated into the dungeon.
“Right, because this can’t end well,” Amy muttered with a smirk as she followed her sister into the dungeon. She wasn’t looking forward to getting shocked, but at least the armor should help.
Randal glanced at Kevin and shrugged. “Could be worse, I guess.” He stepped into the dungeon then looked around.
Kevin shook his head then followed his friend. “I generally prefer to grind before hitting new and higher level areas.”
Victoria nodded mock solemnly. “Yes, but we just don’t have time for a handjob right now.”
“What?” Amy asked in shock before getting the joke as Victoria lost it and started giggling. “That was awful!”
“I don’t know, I think it was pretty funny,” Taylor said with a grin, while the guys chuckled.
Randal glanced between the cave entrance and the old man near the campfire. “Now what?”
Taylor glanced at the old man. “If you want to work on killing bunnies for a bit, I’ll take a town portal to my room and grab the stealth books then we can hit the lightning cats.”
“That should help,” Amy agreed.
“You can open town portals out of the dungeon?” Kevin asked enthusiastically.
Taylor focused on her bedroom then cast her new portal spell. She frowned slightly as a murky blue and white oval of translucent energy appeared out of thin air. “Apparently, we picked it up in the Diablo dungeon. If people can see the other side, I’ll have to be a little more careful about where I open them.”
Randal focused on the middle of the portal that showed a blue tinted bedroom. “It shouldn’t be that bad, at least you’ll know where you’re going.” He was just happy that they had an alternate way out of Taylor’s dungeons in case they got lost in a maze or something went wrong.
“True.” Taylor frowned as she studied the rather murky view of her bedroom. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, just follow the signs.” She stepped through the portal and out into her bedroom. ‘At least it worked.’ She turned and looked at the faintly glowing portal then smiled as she saw her friends through it. ‘At least I can see through it both directions.’ She waved and smiled as Amy waved back. “Hello?”
Amy asked, “Does it look like she’s saying something to anyone else?”
“Can you hear me?” Taylor asked curious if sound transmitted through the portal.
Randal frowned as he tried to make out what she was saying. “I’m pretty sure she asked if we could hear her.” He shook his head then headed over to the old hunter. “Let’s go, we’ll ask her when she gets back.”
“Okay,” Amy followed Randal over to the old hunter to get a lesson in skinning creatures.
Taylor grinned as dashed over to the treasure chest where she’d stashed the extra books and started grabbing everything she’d need for the adventure.
0o0o0
Amy ran her fingers through her overly frizzy hair and glared at Kevin. “You can stop snickering about my hair.”
Kevin grinned slightly as he watched Amy try to get her hair to stop looking like she’d been playing with a Van de Graaff generator. “Next time, dodge.”
“I’m not Spiderman, I can’t dodge lightning,” Amy complained as the group slowly made their way toward the white tiger they could see in the distance.
Randal cut in, “I’m fairly sure he can’t either, he’s just a precog.”
Amy twitched as another bobcat took a popshot from one of the trees with a blast of lightning when the group got close enough to target. She tried to blink the spots in her vision away as Randal brought his cold gun up and blasted the cat out of the tree. He frowned slightly as he watched Victoria rip through another group on her way toward the miniboss. “Hopefully their corpses don’t disappear before we can skin them.”
“They shouldn’t,” Taylor hadn’t had a problem with anything else vanishing the last time around so she doubted it was really something they had to worry about in this particular dungeon. She brought her bow up and worked on ‘distracting’ the group of tigers that Victoria was wading through.
Amy shivered as Randal shot another cat out of a tree that was about to blast the group with lightning that she hadn’t even seen before it was falling. “This dungeon should come with a disclaimer.”
Taylor winced slightly as Victoria casually batted a tiger out of the air with her massive club as it tried to pounce on her. “She’s having way too much fun.”
Kevin winced as Victoria brought her club down on the head of one of the tigers she was fighting, killing it instantly. “Remind me to never make her seriously mad.”
“Yeah, it never ends well,” Amy muttered as she thought about some of the people she’d had to put back together over the years when her sister got a bit too enthusiastic. It was more than a little sobering to watch her truly cut loose.
“At least she stopped complaining about how cute the rabbits were after one of them tried to stab her with its horn,” Taylor pointed out as she watched Victoria club the last group of lightning cats before the mini boss. “We should probably figure out how to…” she trailed off as Victoria raised her club and barreled toward the mini boss.
“Shit.” Randal stared in shock as Victoria’s overhand smash dropped the mini boss’ health bar to a bare sliver. “Sweet…” he trailed off as the blue stripes on the boss’ fur ignited with blue flames and it’s sliver of health slowly started climbing. “Run!”
Victoria took another swing and was more than a bit shocked when the club stopped dead, like she’d just hit something Clockblocker had stopped in time. “Fuck!” she screamed as the blue stripes flashed with light and everything exploded in a wave of lightning and blades of wind that ripped through everything they touched.
Taylor blinked as the wave of lightning vanished after traveling about thirty feet from the mini boss leaving a circle of near complete destruction other than the floating cape, the hopefully dead tiger and a treasure chest. “That’s completely bullshit.”
“Vicky smash!” Victoria shouted enthusiastically as she floated toward the chest, not even having the common decency to have her hair disturbed by the recent explosion she’d been at ground zero for.
Amy snorted. “You get used to it.” She gave the hopefully dead mini boss a wary look as the group made its way toward Vicky. “You’re insane, you know that right?”
“I’m fine, the crown nullified the lightning and my shield blocked the wind damage.” She was just glad that the tiger hadn’t managed to break her shield before hitting her with its finishing move.
“We need a fucking strategy guide,” Kevin muttered as Randal walked over and started checking the treasure chest for traps. “Anything?”
“I’m looking.” Randal spent another twenty seconds looking over the chest on the off chance that it was trapped then opened it. “White and blue cat ears and leather boots.”
“That’s it?” Victoria asked with a pout.
“It’s a just a mini boss, I’m sort of surprised we got a chest at all.” Taylor reached down, picked up the cat ears and looked at the tooltip. “Interesting and not what I was expecting.”
“What do you mean?” Amy asked curious about the fluffy headband.
“They have two enchantments on them, danger sense and noise protection which could be rather useful.” Taylor grabbed the boots and looked at the tooltip. “Boots of Jumping, not terribly impressive but rather useful, they increase your max jump by 30 feet.”
“They’re certainly worth salvaging,” Amy pointed out.
“I sort of feel cheated,” Victoria complained.
Taylor dropped the boots into her salvage box and hit accept. She looked at the new jumping quality. “Requires sinew, okay, that’s fairly easy.”
“That’s it?” Victoria asked a touch surprised.
“Looks like it, it’s just a mini boss,” Taylor replied as she started skinning the tiger.
Randal said, “We’re going to have to go back and skin everything.”
“I wish it was this easy to grab clothes…” Victoria trailed off as she made the connection between a bunch of strange clothes showing up in the market and a cape that could make dungeons. “You’re the one that supplies Taylor, aren’t you?”
Taylor tried to keep her expression neutral as she continued skinning the mini boss. “Supply her with what?”
“Clothes.”
“Ah, right, that. Yeah, I have a dungeon that drops clothes,” Taylor admitted as she finished skinning the tiger and got a wind and lightning imbued tiger pelt, a collection of bones and claws and half a dozen pieces of sinew.
“Can we go?” Victoria asked with puppy dog eyes as her aura unconsciously kicked in.
“It’s not exactly a challenge to beat up you average Winslow student though it is sort of therapeutic,” Taylor admitted.
“It’s not about the challenge, it’s about free shopping,” Vicky said bouncing in place like an over excited puppy.
Amy gave her sister an amused though rather exasperated look. “If you can make a Winslow dungeon, can you make an Arcadia dungeon?”
“It’s certainly worth a shot,” Taylor agreed as she stuck the components into her ingredients bag. “Let’s finish skinning everything here then I’ll see if I can make some type of Arcadia dungeon.”
“What’s the Winslow dungeon like? Can we shoot the teachers?” Kevin asked with an evil grin.
Taylor looked at Kevin. “Let me guess, you went to Winslow?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that I was sentenced to hell for the cirme of being underaged, but I certainly had some friends that went there,” Kevin replied.
“Sadly, I haven’t actually seen any teachers but I wasn’t picking the locks on the classroom doors so it’s possible,” Taylor admitted.
“Yes, Gladly must die,” Randal agreed solemnly.
“If we go to an Arcadia dungeon, we can gank the P.E. coach, right?” Victoria asked hopefully.
Taylor turned to look at Victoria. “What do you have against the P.E. coach?”
“He’s always accusing me of using powers, even when I’m not,” Victoria said cracking her knuckles.
“Okay, let’s get everything skinned and put in the chest then we can run through Winslow once, it should give you a chance to practice your stealth and lockpicking and get some clothes.”
“Sounds good to me,” Amy agreed.
0o0o0
Taylor gestured down the graffiti festooned hallway. “Welcome to Winslow, home of degenerate students, bastard teachers, an administration that makes the Mafia look honest and one Sophia ‘fucking’ Hess!”
Amy blinked. “Did you say Sophia Hess?”
“Yep, psycho bitch queen with shadow powers.”
“That’s…” Victoria trailed off not sure what else she could say without getting in trouble, “a weird... coincidence.”
“Dark skinned, edgy, female, yeah, only cape around that matches is Shadow Stalker, not really a large jump,” Taylor pointed out.
“Well, that’s a conversation killer,” Randal said.
“The unwritten rules say we can’t unmask a cape, but that applies to being in public and endbringer battles, bitching about them being insane sociopaths that should be fed to the Nine in private is another matter entirely,” Taylor said with a brittle smile.
“New cape, attends Winslow, knows Stalker in her civilian ID… She didn’t have anything to do with you getting powers, did she… Taylor?” Victoria asked.
Taylor briefly considered denying being Taylor then decided to hell with it, it was way too useful having her around. “What about the unwritten rules?”
“They’re unwritten and this isn’t public as you just pointed out,” Victoria teased, trying to lighten the mood. “Besides, I haven’t outed Uber and Leet, have I?”
“Well, now you have,” Amy said shaking her head.
“Aren’t you supposed to be all ‘Vicky Smash!’ not ‘Elementary my dear Watson?” Kevin complained.
“I find that life is a lot easier when people don’t expect all that much from me,” Victoria admitted.
“What? But how… Your aura?” Kevin guessed.
“It’s a subtle power, that seems like it isn’t,” Randal realized. “It doesn’t just project emotions it steers thoughts.”
“Emotions do that,” Victoria pointed out, “don’t try and make me out to be a Bond villain! It’s mostly just people seeing what they expect to see.”
Taylor sighed. “Yeah, Sophia basically stole my ex-best friend, drove her crazy, and tried to ruin my life for over a year.”
“On that note let’s go shoot some teachers,” Kevin said cheerfully.
Randal shook his head. “Try not to look so enthusiastic.”
“We might get to shoot Gladly! Do you know how many years I’ve been thinking about hitting him in the face with a brick? I’m fairly sure my power hates him as much as I do considering the number of weapon ideas I get when thinking about him...” he trailed off. “Yeah, never thought about using a toaster that way before.”
Victoria opened her mouth then closed it. “Nope, on second thought, I’m not going to ask.”
“Weapons platform, suborbital, toast ammunition,” Kevin muttered. “Gladly has a gluten allergy.”
Randal frowned slightly, he was fairly sure that his friend was joking but he had that gleam in his eyes that often led to explosions and stranger things. “What do we have to worry about for enemies?”
“Other than Shadow Stalker, the security guards are armed with mace and clubs, but those only come out if you’re breaking into the lockers. The teens are mostly skinny rich bitches, some of which have knives,” Taylor explained.
“In other words, let’s have fun.” Victoria giggled evilly as she flew down the hallway.
Amy frowned slightly as she recognized Emma Barnes from one of the Christmas parties she’d been dragged to by Carol. “Is that Emma?”
“Yep,” Taylor replied as she charged forward. She slipped behind the red haired girl, grabbed her neck and slammed her face into the wall repeatedly until she turned into pixels and vanished leaving behind a pair of purple panties.
“That’s the spirit!” Victoria shouted as she turned and accidently backhanded a girl. “Oops?”
The girl shouted, “Bitch!” as she pulled out a knife.
Victoria glanced at the knife then the girl’s face. “Seriously?” She shook her head as the knife bounced off her force field. She reached out and broke the girl’s wrist then flicked her on the forehead which caused the girl’s neck to snap and her to turn into pixels dropping a skimpy looking shirt. “That’s why I never do that in real life, Alexandria makes it look so easy.”
Amy shook her head. “You’re better off not giving people concussions anyway.”
Kevin looked over at Randal. “Do ever feel like you’re just an extra in someone else’s cutscene?”
“At least we have speaking parts,” Randal replied as he shot a girl running at them with his cold gun which caused her to lose most of her health.
“I got this!” Amy ran forward and touched the girl’s hand and turned off her brain. “Huh, that’s easier than I thought,” Amy said as the girl collapsed bonelessly to the title floor and dissolved into pixels.
Kevin blinked. “Yeah, speaking parts are good.”
Taylor grinned as they made their way toward Gladly’s classroom.
Amy winced as her sister grabbed another Emma lookalike, spun her around and tossed her down the hall like a cannonball, scattering a half dozen girls walking in a group. “So where would you go for strength gear?”
Kevin said, “Dungeons & Dragons has strength boosting items, Zelda has a bracelet that lets you move large rocks and various RPGs usually have their own strength boosting items.”
Taylor said, “The Diablo dungeon should have strength boosting elixirs considering it has magic elixirs, that would certainly help.”
“I’m looking forward to finding a vitality elixir personally,” Randal admitted.
“Either that or a heart container from Zelda,” Kevin piped up.
Randal shook his head as they followed Victoria. “Again with the places that might kill us.”
“We have cheat sheets for Zelda.”
“You’re assuming that they’d work or be remotely the same,” Randal pointed out.
“Hmm, good point,” Kevin admitted.
Victoria called back, “Which way are we going?”
Taylor called out, “Take a left!”
“Okay!”
Amy glanced around the hallways. “Is it this creepy in real life?”
Kevin snorted. “Worse, you’re not allowed to shoot the idiots in real life without getting in trouble.”
Taylor stepped around the scattered clothes on the floor as they headed down the hallway. “I’m fairly sure my dungeon is actually cleaner, it certainly smells better.”
Amy turned and grabbed a girl that jumped out at her and stopped her brain cold. She dropped her as she started to turn into pixels. “There is something to be said for being able to cut loose.”
“This would be a decent place to test your clothing removal ray,” Randal noted.
“It’s not a clothing removal ray, it’s an inorganic material disintegrator,” Kevin corrected him.
Amy opened her mouth to object then closed it, some of the girls were sort of hot and as long as they didn’t end up on camera, did it really matter?
“Think I’d want more guys around for that,“ Victoria said as the group came around the corner.
“I’m surrounded by perverts,” Taylor muttered.
“I’m half surprised you haven’t made a porn dungeon, I would have,” Victoria replied with amusement.
Taylor blushed, rather surprised that she hadn’t even thought of making a porn dungeon.
“Do I need to tell Dean about this?” Amy asked with amusement.
“This would be like internet history, don’t ask, don’t tell,” Victoria replied cheerfully.
Amy shook her head, fairly sure this counted as at least virtual reality porn, which might not be the same in his mind.
Kevin looked at the room number then at the nameplate. “Mr Gladly,” he read with a sadistic grin.
Randal shook his head. “This might not work.”
“It’s going to work, one way or another, pick the lock,” Kevin ordered eagerly.
Victoria reached out, grabbed the doorknob and twisted until she heard snapping sounds from inside the door. She pushed the door open revealing a classroom and Mr. Gladly standing behind his desk wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, and an old, faded letterman’s jacket that didn’t quite fit anymore. His hair was slicked back in an attempt to hide the thinning thatch on top and reclaim some of his alleged former glory. “After you.”
Kevin smirked as he walked in.
“It’s after class hours and damaging school facilities is an actionable offence,” he said his eyes carressing the girls’ curves, “though I might be convinced to overlook it this time…”
Amy winced as both Kevin and Taylor lunged forward into the room and started punching and kicking the shit out of the man. “Yeah, I think we may all need a little therapy.”
“This is therapy,” Victoria pointed out. “It’s confronting your feelings, accepting them, and exercising them.” She thrust her fist in the air with a wide smile.
“That actually sounded somewhat reasonable, where did you hear that?” Randal asked with amusement.
“Anger management class,” Amy guessed.
“Yep,” Victoria replied as she saw a security guard in his early twenties walk up. “Ah, hi?”
The security guard glanced in the room and saw Taylor and Kevin pummeling Mr. Gladly. “Ah Gladly, carry on.” He turned and walked off without a second glance.
“Right…” Amy trailed off as she watched the security guard walk around the corner. “There is something seriously wrong with this school… and the dungeon of it.” She turned back to watch the fight as Kevin started bashing the teacher’s head against his desk repeatedly. “Yeah, at least I’m not the most insane person in the room.”
“Bah,” Victoria waved it off as the teacher turned to pixels, “you just need a healthy outlet for your feelings.”
Kevin glanced at the pamphlet that dropped. “Pickup artist, 5 easy steps to start humping the hoes. That sure as hell better not be a skill book.”
Taylor snorted. “No idea, but you could always try it.”
Kevin sighed then reached down and opened it, he was rather relieved to find that it wasn’t a skillbook, it was merely a pamphlet of really bad pickup lines, lines that even he knew better than to use unless he wanted to get laughed out of the bar. “I think… it’s a joke pamphlet that he mistook for the real deal.”
“One can hope,” Taylor agreed as she turned to look at the rest of the group. “Do we want to hit Sophia then try Arcadia or did you have other teachers you wanted to hit?”
“Nah, most of them were just burnouts or senile, let’s go punch Shadow Stalker in the face,” Randal replied. “Provided she doesn’t just dodge it by going intangible.”
“That’s why I have my gloves,” Taylor replied with a grin as electricity crackled over her fingers.
Victoria thought about all of the times that Dean had complained about the bitch and the half heard comments Sophia had made under her breath the various times she’d had to deal with her. “That’s it, let the emotions out. Feel the hate and anger flow through you and out of your soul.”
“Who was your therapist, Emperor Palpatine?” Randal asked half seriously making Amy laugh.
Kevin stuck the pamphlet in his salvage box and hit accept, he wasn’t terribly surprised to get a small stack of paper from it and a vial of virgin’s tears.
“You’d think hitting her in the face would get boring after a while but it hasn’t happened yet,” Taylor said thoughtfully as they headed toward the cafeteria.
Amy worked on shooting the various students in their way with her cold pistol. ‘At least she’s working out her frustration in a… semi-healthy manner.’
Sophia looked at the group as they walked into the cafeteria, waving her group of underlings to stand back. “Hey, it’s Glory Hole, Bandage Bitch, Locker Lass and two guys you no doubt dragged in here with the promise of a shoddy blowjob from your loose ass.”
Kevin reached into his pocket and pulled out a grenade and handed it to Victoria. “Have fun.”
Victoria pulled the pin and threw it at Sophia as hard as she could, forgetting for a moment that she was a brute.
Amy winced as the grenade went through Sophia’s head, the wall behind her and the wall behind that and then exploded. “That’s certainly one way to do it.”
Kevin shivered slightly as the girl with the bloody hole through her head slowly slumped to the ground then turned into pixels and a treasure chest appeared in her place.
Taylor raised her gloved hands and unleashed a stream of lightning into the minions as they charged the group. “Die!”
Victoria frowned slightly as the lightning washed over the collection of girls and turned them into pixels after a couple seconds. “You’re right, that was therapeutic.”
“Palpatine must have been running a self help seminar,” Randal muttered.
Taylor walked over and grabbed the key and the two books that had dropped off Sophia. “Running and ranged. Amy?”
“With pleasure,” Amy agreed gleefully as she grabbed the books.
Taylor opened the treasure chest. “Shadow cloak, theater mask and a shadow vial, let’s load up the clothes and knives and see about making an Arcadia dungeon.”
“Sounds good,” Victoria agreed happy about getting a bunch of free clothes.
Randal shrugged. “Sure, I’m curious what we’ll find in a school where the Wards are known to attend en mass.”
Kevin figured they had plenty of time to hit the hovercraft dungeon after they explored the new dungeon Taylor was going to make. “Works for me.”
Amy nodded, looking forward to seeing what Arcadia had to offer.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
I had a lot of fun with that scene, thanks.
Jason N. Lundquist
The security guard glanced in the room and saw Taylor and Kevin pummeling Mr. Gladly. “Ah Gladly, carry on.” He turned and walked off without a second glance. This made break out laughing so hard I had to stop to catch my breath. Great Job.
Mist of Shadows
Thanks.
Alex Wierzbicki
Awesome as always.
