Mist of Shadows
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Taylor Hebert Dungeon Girl Part 31
🕑 Added 2018-10-24 18:15:54 +0000 UTC Taylor looked up from sticking her books in her locker as a concerned looking Amy hurried over. “What’s up?”“Have you checked your phone yet?” Amy asked, keeping track of the various other students that should be too far away to overhear as long as she didn’t shout.
“Not yet. I turned it off to save the battery, why?” Taylor asked as she pulled her gloves on.
“The other Amy sent me a rather vague message about running into a problem that she needed help with.”
“In other words, we should probably see what she wants before making plans.” Taylor closed her locker then headed toward the exit.
“Probably,” Amy agreed as she followed Taylor down the halls, thinking about the short message Gothic had left on her phone. ‘No one’s dead or hurt yet, but we’ve got a problem. Call when you get this.’
“How was your history quiz?” Taylor asked absently as they made their way out of the school.
“Easy, it was straight out of the book and an essay on the teacher’s blog that he told us to read.” Amy shivered as the cold hit her in the face as soon as they stepped outside. “I should have brought my scarf.”
Taylor glanced at the grey clouds that threatened rain or maybe icy sleet depending on how cold it got. “It would certainly cut down on the wind.”
“How did you do on your Math quiz?” Amy asked as they headed down the street in the general direction of the base.
“I got an A+. It’s easy, now that I don’t have people stealing my assignments and trying to cause trouble.”
“I’m still sort of surprised that they don’t have more security there,” Amy grumbled, thinking about the sheer number of cameras at Arcadia.
“Same reasons the cameras never work when you need them to, no money or at least that’s what they told me when I demanded the video of getting harassed.”
“I’m just glad that you’re not going there anymore,” Amy muttered, picturing what Victoria would do if someone tried that stuff with her and how much effort it would take to put them back together afterwards.
“Same,” Taylor muttered as Amy’s phone rang.
Amy pulled her phone out of her pocket, glanced at the caller ID then answered, “What’s up Amy? Your message was a bit vague.”
“You remember the capes that helped us take out Hookwolf?” Gothic asked, not wanting to say more on the phone in case Coil was monitoring the local lines for his name or something crazy.
“Yeah, what about them?” Amy asked, not wanting to say names when there were still a couple of students that might be in hearing distance.
Taylor kept half her attention on what Amy was saying as they walked down the street.
Gothic sighed. “They have an evil Bond villain for a boss and need help dealing with him so they can be semi productive members of society.”
“Bond villain?” Amy asked, wondering if she’d heard her correctly.
Gothic snorted. “Basically. He has a large underground lair and a bunch of mercenaries with tinkertech weapons in addition to lots of fingers in various pies around the city.”
“Sounds like fun,” Amy replied sarcastically as they hurried across the street with a pack of students. “Why now?”
“Their boss wants information on our crew,” Gothic grumbled as she glanced over at where Kevin and Randal were looking at something on her computer. “I’d rather not get turned into a lab rat or kept in a cage.”
“Crap,” Amy muttered as she stepped onto the sidewalk and continued walking.
“Problem?” Taylor asked as she scanned the small group of students walking in front of them for trouble.
“Maybe,” Amy grumbled, knowing that Coil wanting information about them was a problem. “Where are you?”
“At the office, trying to come up with a plan for dealing with our villain problem,” Gothic replied as she walked over to see what the boys were playing with. “You should probably take the back way in.”
“Sure, see you in a couple minutes.” Amy ended the call then turned and headed toward the alley, curious why Gothic didn’t want them coming in the front door. “We’re taking a shortcut.”
“Sounds good.” Taylor rubbed her gloves together as she followed Amy, making a mental note to hit a dungeon that offered cold resistance or immunity. “Hopefully she turned the heat on.”
“Hopefully,” Amy agreed, not really enjoying the cold either.
Gothic stuck her phone back in her pocket as she studied the naked magic girl on the screen that Kevin was designing. “You’re going with pink hair?”
Kevin shook his head. “Nah, I was playing with the randomise button until I got a decent face, the hair is easy to fix.”
Gothic glanced at the character’s bouncy breasts. “Did you just push the breast slider all the way up?”
“Nah,” Kevin replied as he clicked on the bust icon and brought up a collection of sliders. “You can make them watermelons if you want but you start taking negatives after F cups.”
“I guess that’s one way to do it,” Gothic agreed as she looked at the options for tweaking breasts. “There’s customization and then there’s ‘I have too many options.”
Randal chuckled. “The real problem with the randomize function is that without tweaking, you generally get something that looks like a streetwalker or at least that’s been my experience.”
“Yeah, let’s avoid that,” Gothic agreed. “You might want to make the girl’s lips a touch thinner.”
Kevin clicked on the lips and inched the slider down a touch. “Hey, that looks better.”
“I’m pretty good with faces,” Gothic replied smugly.
Randal chuckled. “Any other tweaks?”
“Thin the nose a touch,” Gothic grinned as a town portal opened against the wall, “and widen her eyebrows a bit.”
Randal tweaked her nose then adjusted her eyebrows then looked up as Taylor and Amy walked through the portal. “Hey.”
Taylor closed the portal behind her. “What’s going on with the Undersiders?”
Gothic turned to look at Taylor. “Long story short their boss is a psychopath and recruited Tattletale at gunpoint. They’ve been trying to mitigate things but he wanted information on us and she decided asking for help dealing with the guy was better than pissing us off and getting hit with lightning.”
“Do we have any idea what Coil’s power is?” Amy asked.
“Some type of probably manipulation or something that lets him call which way a coin falls every time.”
Amy shrugged. “You could do that with telekinesis.”
“With Tattletale watching the coin?” Taylor asked.
“Probably not,” Amy admitted.
Kevin snorted. “He’s probably a Thinker, Tinker, or Shaker as he’s going with the mastermind Bond villain routine. I’m guessing Thinker or Shaker personally.”
“Not Tinker?” Taylor asked, curious why Kevin didn’t think Coil was a Tinker.
“I doubt it. From what Tattletale said, he wears an almost skin tight bodysuit when he meets with her. If I was stupid enough to recruit someone at gunpoint, I’d be wearing body armor even if it was just a vest.”
“Could he be a Brute?” Amy asked, thinking about her sister.
Randel shook his head. “It’s possible but most Brutes like hitting things or getting into the thick of things. He’s acting more like a Master or a Thinker than a Brute.”
“I doubt that holds true for every cape, I like hitting things, now and then, that doesn’t make me a Brute,” Taylor pointed out as she walked over to see what they were looking at on the computer.
Gothic snickered as she followed Taylor. “You’re also a Trump, you don’t count.”
Taylor stuck her tongue out at Gothic then looked at the naked character on the screen then up at the title of the game at the top of the screen. “I thought you said Cape Barbie was a horrible game?”
Kevin smirked as he finished changing the character’s hair to a dark purple. “No, I said it would be a horrible place to visit because of the insane PvP.” He hit the accept button then grinned as his character appeared in the starting zone. “Besides, we’ve been trying to come up with ways to deal with Coil that don’t involve him pushing the self destruct button and burying us under hundreds of tons of concrete.”
“Did you come up with anything useful?” Amy asked as she watched Kevin’s new character get cut in half by a girl dressed as a slutty looking knight. “You’d think the starting zone would be a safe area.”
“Nah, that would just ruin the experience and give people a reason not to spend money, the pay-to-win items are bind-on-equip and dying drops everything you’re wearing which gives people a lot of incentive to kill each other,” Kevin replied as he charged a small gremlin like demon and punched it. “Our best option is probably sneaking in and knocking him unconscious then dropping him off with the PRT.”
“That’s assuming we can even make it past his mercenaries,” Taylor pointed out. “Side question, bind-on-equip?”
Randal spoke up before Kevin could say something about that being basic gamer lore, “It means the equipment binds to the first person that puts it on which means that it stays with your character when they respawn.”
Normally Kevin hated bind on pickup or equip type games but in a game where you lost everything you were carrying when you got ganked, it had a use. “It also means you can’t trade it to other players once you’ve worn it but that’s a small price to pay for equipment you can’t lose...” he trailed off as the gremlin he’d been punching to death was surrounded by a dark glow that caused its eyes to glow red and it to double in size. “Shit!”
Randal chuckled as Kevin started trying to dance around the gremlin before it killed his character. “You’re so dead.”
A voice came out of the speakers, “Suck shit, newbie!”
Kevin laughed as he managed to kill the creature by the skin of his teeth then frowned as a girl dressed like a ninja tossed a throwing star at him and he died. “Now I remember why I quit.”
Randal laughed. “Don’t worry about it, you can try again after we’ve figured out what we’re going to do about Coil.”
“Fine,” Kevin grumbled. “What are you thinking?”
“No idea, we need a way to either draw him out or make sure he can’t leave if we have to go into his base.”
“This would be a lot easier if we had actual invisibility rather than just stealth boosting gear.”
Amy opened her backpack and grabbed her cape/gaming notebook and a pen. “I’ll put it on the list.”
Gothic shook her head. “You’re making this more complicated than it has to be.”
“Oh?” Randal asked, curious what she was thinking.
“Endbringer shelters have an independant air supply and a backup generator that takes care of the basics. Knocking out the main grid would put them on backup power.”
Randal shook his head. “The backup power will last more than a week.”
“Not at full lights and probably not full cameras,” Gothic pointed out. “Besides, we know exactly where the backup generators are thanks to endbringer shelters having a standard layout. I’m sure he’s modified it to a certain extent but I doubt he’s actually moved the generator room.”
“She’s got a point,” Kevin admitted. “It would take a lot of work to rewire everything especially if you aren’t supposed to have heavy equipment down there anymore.”
“How are you going to open a portal somewhere you can’t see?” Amy asked.
“Let’s see, five feet behind me and three over.” Taylor opened a town portal in the named location back to her bedroom. “Like that.”
Randal moved his mouse which got rid of the screensaver revealing a layout of the city power grid. “I know which switches to flip to shut off the grid and which breakers to adjust to make sure this doesn’t do any damage or at least minimal damage. I’d rather not have the Electrician’s Union after my ass.”
“Yeah, unions can get nasty,” Taylor agreed, thinking of some of her father’s stories.
“Do we have a plan for what to do when we find him?” Amy asked.
“Same thing we did with Hookwolf, hit him with lightning until he stops moving then we hand him to the PRT.”
Amy sighed. “We’re still going to have to deal with a bunch of mercenaries with tinkertech weapons.”
Gothic smirked. “We have lightning and fire resistant armor, night vision goggles, flash grenades and lightning, I don’t think they’re going to be a problem. Besides, we have a Vicky.”
“That’s actually a decent point,” Kevin agreed as he looked at the power grid on Randal’s computer. “We’ll need…” he trailed off as someone knocked on the door.
“I have pizza,” Richard called out as he opened the door and stepped inside.
“You’re my hero,” Gothic said as she jumped up to help Richard with the stack of pizzas.
“I try. I got your text, what’s up?” Richard asked as he handed her the stack of boxes then shut the door with his foot.
“Long story short, the Undersiders are basically working for Coil under duress and want out so we’re taking him down.” She set the boxes on the table and opened the top one.
“Cool, count me in,” Richard agreed. “The top is pineapple and sausage the other two are supremes.”
“Sweet,” Gothic replied as she grabbed a piece of pizza, having missed lunch other than some popcorn.
“Do you want to cut the power or assault the base with us?” Randal asked.
Richard shrugged. “I probably have the least experience running through dungeons so I’m fine with cutting the power.”
“Cool, I can walk you through which switches to toss and breakers to adjust so we don’t blow a bunch of breakers make a mess.”
“What happens if he’s not in his base?” Amy asked as he grabbed a piece of pineapple pizza.
Kevin smirked as he snagged a piece of pizza. “We loot it to the ground. Making stuff if you’re a Tinker isn’t exactly cheap, buying enough weapons for a small army? Yeah, that’s a serious investment.”
“Sounds good to me,” Taylor agreed as she grabbed a piece of pizza. She turned to look at Amy. “You should probably call Vicky and get her over here without mentioning Coil, while we’re eating pizza and laughing at Kevin playing Cape Barbie.”
“Gee, thanks,” Kevin grumbled good naturedly as he pushed the respawn button, hoping that he could eck out enough experience to hit level two before they had to get back to work planning the raid. He sighed as two seconds after appearing he got blown up. “Fucking corpse campers.”
“Suck my twat, Noob!” a Sailor Moon reskin in pink and blue said as she teabagged his corpse. The sound of a young girl’s laughter was decidedly sinister.
“I might as well, I doubt she’d forgive me if I didn’t tell her,” Amy grumbled as she pulled out her phone and called her sister.
Taylor snickered as she watched Kevin’s character charge toward a gremlin and start punching it. “I should probably start my own character at some point, but it’s so much fun just laughing at yours.”
Randal as he double clicked on the Cape Barbie icon on his computer to start the game. “That’s not a bad idea. We installed the game on all of the computers and we have a couple of hours to kill before it gets dark so we can get a peak at the entrance without getting spotted.”
“What about planning?” Richard asked warily.
“It should only take ten minutes to walk you through which switches to toss and Victoria is going to want in on the planning so there isn’t really a point in hashing things out until she gets here.”
“I guess you have a point,” Richard admitted, a bit nervous about the upcoming raid.
“It’s worth a shot,” Taylor agreed as she grabbed another slice of pizza.
Vicky’s voice came out of the speakers in Amy’s phone, “What’s up?”
“Hey Vicky, are you up for smashing things later?” Amy asked with a touch of amusement.
“Guilt free smashing?” Vicky asked, thinking about Taylor’s dungeons.
“Yep,” Amy agreed.
“I’m currently hanging out with Amanda at the mall, when do you need me?” Vicky asked, not wanting to ditch her friend but interested in running more dungeons.
“Take your time, we’re playing video games and eating pizza.”
“We should be done in an hour,” Vicky replied, knowing that Amanda had just wanted a top to go with her favorite jeans anyways.
“Perfect, see you when you get here.” Amy ended the call before her sister asked something she didn’t want to talk about on her phone.
0o0o0
Vicky bounced up and down on her heels excitedly. “This is awesome!”
Amy sighed as she pulled her gaze off her sister’s bouncing breasts with difficulty after a full two minutes despite her years of experience. “Vicky, Aura!”
“But, it’s a actual Bond style villain, you just don’t see those anymore outside of old movies!” she said excitedly.
Kevin sighed slightly as Vicky stopped bouncing.
Richard rubbed the back of his neck as he muttered, “I think I pulled something...” he trailed off as the girls turned to stare at him. “In my neck!”
“Right,” Kevin said sarcastically, thinking about what level he’d place the Master effect of Vicky’s breasts at. He glanced at Randal. “Two?”
“Solid three?” Randal asked as he pulled his attention off Vicky’s breasts.
“Three?” Vicky asked with a raised eyebrow. “Seriously, three?!” She looked seriously offended.
“What Master level would you rate your breasts?” Kevin asked.
Taylor snickered, trying not to laugh.
“Powered or unpowered?” Gothic asked as she checked out Vicky’s breasts.
“Sorry, for a second there I was thinking you were rating my breasts at two or three,” Vicky explained apologetically.
“What’s weird is that I’ve been around you guys long enough to no longer consider this weird,” Amy said as she shook her head slowly. “And they’re at least a four when you factor in her aura. I have seen villains run into walls unable to look away while trying to escape.”
“Thanks, Sis!” Vicky said, giving her a big hug.
“Not that this isn’t fun and all but we have an evil villain to capture and some not so evil villains to save,” Taylor pointed out, trying to keep everyone on task.
“Good, point,” Kevin replied as he pulled his attention off Vicky’s rather nice, if sadly underaged, curves. “General plan, we drop Richard at the substation so he can hack Coil’s computers through the power line with a nifty little gizmo I made before he cuts the power.”
“Bullshit Tinker,” Vicky muttered with a grin.
Kevin shook his head. “We’re nowhere near as bad as Trumps.”
Taylor smirked.
“Once Richard hooks into the cameras and we get a visual on the generator room we can drop in and Vicky can perform a little percussive maintenance on the generator.”
“How much is a little?” Vicky asked ‘innocently’.
Randal said, “At least a couple million, they’ll never trust the place to be used as an actual endbringer shelter so they’ll probably just have to fill it in.”
Kevin shook his head. “Just take out one of the consoles, it’s not out of the question to get paid for discovering the base and we’d get less if it’s trashed.”
“Besides, there is an outside chance that we might get to keep it,” Amy piped up, thinking about the salvage laws that applied to villains and their stuff.
“What happens when we get in there?” Gothic asked.
Richard started humming the mission impossible theme song with a smirk on his face.
Gothic grinned at Richard’s antics. “We’ll have our night vision goggles and play whack a mole with the mercenaries and steal their tinkertech and any candy they may have on them.”
Vicky grinned. “In other words, they’re like loot pinatas.”
“Basically,” Taylor agreed, glad that they had something that at least resembled a plan, if you squinted at it.
“Just remember that no plan survives contact with the enemy,” Randal reminded everyone.
0o0o0
Coil’s first indication that something was seriously wrong was when he went from being in his house watching the news and office reading a report to being in his office with the lights out and one of his mercenaries shining a flashlight in his eyes. “What the hell?”
“Welcome back Sir,” the mercenary stated as he stopped shining the flashlight in his Boss’s eyes. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last thirty seconds.”
Coil felt a shiver go down his spine as he realized his power had glitched again. It had started small enough that he wasn’t sure when the first glitch was or if he’d been imagining things. The first clue that someone was messing with his power was a week ago when one of his mercenaries had mentioned something from one of the reports that didn’t line up with what he’d read.
He’d blown it off at the time as someone making a mistake at the time, but waking up in the hospital with a cracked cheekbone, fractured femur, torn up knee and a concussion that screwed with his powers had caused him to realize that someone that could mess with his powers was trying to kill him. Thank god for healing potions. He’d have to see about ‘recruiting’ The Alchemist at some point... “Why haven’t the backup systems kicked in?”
The mercenary scowled. “We sent a team, they haven’t reported back. Orders?”
Coil split the timeline, hoping that he wouldn’t have any glitches this time. He still wasn’t sure what the cape that attacked him had done to his power but he’d found that as long as he only used his power for short stretches, the glitches weren’t as bad. In the first timeline he told the man to take two teams and kill the intruders. In the second timeline he told the man to grab a squad and guard the door. He pulled out his cell in the first timeline and scowled as he realized there was no service despite the fact that it should have had full bars thanks to the booster tied into the backup systems. Of course without power, the booster was just an expensive piece of metal and plastic.
After several minutes of waiting in the dark with just his flashlight he smiled as the backup lights came back on in the first timeline. He grabbed his radio. “Anything?”
“No sign of any intruders. It looks like someone just turned the backup off rather than stick it in standby mode,” the mercenary replied.
“Sweep the rest of the base.” Coil turned his flashlight off then asked for a situation report in his second timeline, “Anything happening?”
“No Sir, it’s quiet,” the mercenary replied.
Coil dropped the second timeline then blinked as everything went dark again. “What the hell is going on?” He scowled as he turned his flashlight back on and pushed the button on his radio. “What’s going on?” He shivered as he heard the radio crackle to life and a voice whisper, “Red rum.” He scowled at his radio then pushed the button to talk. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Lung sends his regards,” the voice whispered over the radio.
Coil split his timeline. In the first one he said, “I’ll pay.” in the second he said, “I’ll kill you and hunt down your families!” He scowled as the voice didn’t come back. In the first timeline he headed for the secret exit in the corner of his office, in the second he headed out the one visible door, intent on killing the bastards messing with him. He smirked as he saw a female figure dressed all in black standing in the middle of the hallway. He smirked as he raised his gun and shot the figure full of holes. “Stupid bitch.”
He screamed as he caught a flash of an explosion in his second timeline and found himself in the hallway being hit with enough current to put down an elephant. Thankfully the pain stopped as his consciousness faded.
Comments
Patrick Sandhop
Ah, good times...
Mist of Shadows
It's true. The monsters just happily sitting in their lairs and then bang... pcs. :)
Patrick Sandhop
Somehow this reminds me of the headaches of being a DM. Murder hobos can be hard to deal with if you aren't used to them.
