Mist of Shadows
patreon
Mist's Jumps Part 29
🕑 Added 2017-11-30 08:12:59 +0000 UTC An: Had a bit of a glitch a couple of chapters ago, just assume they recruited Edward please.Harry smiled as he took another picture of Sin and Ginny with his camera. Even before they’d copied various appearance perks to Ginny, she’d been more attractive than the version he remembered. After the various beauty perks and importing in as Hermione’s sister, she was stunning in a way that would make most supermodels look shabby especially when she was naked and straddling Sin with her perfect bare breasts hanging down while she gave her a massage. “Perfect.”
Ginny giggled as she turned and looked at Harry and Edward. She winked at Edward which caused the twelve year old to blush. “I’m looking forward to seeing the paintings when you finish them.”
“We’ll see how good they turn out.” Harry wanted to improve on the ‘basic’ skills that he’d copied at the professional art studio he’d stopped at on the way back from stopping a bank robbery. Mostly he was just looking for entertaining projects and Hermione had suggested art.
“A little to the left Ginny,” Sin suggested lazily as she continued upgrading a copy of the agility belt that was part of Ginny’s costume.
Ginny trailed her fingers along Sin’s silky smooth skin to the left a couple of inches then went back to massaging her shoulder. “Like that?”
“Yeah, exactly like that,” Sin purred.
Harry took another couple of pictures absently as he asked, “Have you gotten any decent gocha items lately?”
Edward Potter pulled his attention off the naked girls and back to his gocha menu. “Sorry I got distracted waiting for my mana pool to recharge.” He selected the most expensive gocha option that said previous world then watched as it started spinning. “Let’s see what this gives me.” He blinked as a white bunny appeared.
Sin scanned the rabbit and snickered as she realized it was just a harmless transforming rabbit. “Careful it might be a vorpal bunny.”
Edward twitched as the rabbit changed into a pair of pink bunny slippers. “Funny.”
“I thought so.”
Harry frowned slightly. “We could probably get an alternate form out of killing a temporary duplicate of the slippers.”
Edward turned to look at his brother. “Why would you want to?”
“You mean beyond the fact that its eyes would be looking straight up a girl’s skirt?” Sin asked with a smirk.
“Right, beyond that.”
“Camouflage, who in their right mind would suspect a person’s slippers of being dangerous?” Harry asked with amusement.
“You can have the bunny if you want it.” Edward picked a different gocha and selected it hoping for something better than a transforming rabbit.
Sin said, “I don’t know, I’d like to see if I can transfer enchants to my alternate form.”
Ginny reached back and lightly swatted Sin on her behind. “I’m not running around as a pair of bunny slippers.”
“That’s okay, I have avatars.” Sin smiled as she saw the ring that appeared in Edward’s hand. “Anything useful?”
Edward looked at the ring his gocha menu had just given him. “It boosts magic which is useful.”
“That’s useful.” Harry smiled as he walked in around so that he was looking at Sin and Ginny from the front. “Smile for the camera.” He snapped the picture once Ginny turned and smiled at him. “Okay, that should be enough to get started painting.”
Ginny floated off of Sin. “In that case, let’s go paint.”
Sin twisted around then sat up. “Thanks for the massage, I’ll join you after I finish shifting a copy of the standard enchantments to Ginny’s high tech belt.”
“Thanks.” Ginny looked at Edward. “Let’s go paint naked portraits.”
Sin smiled as she watched her friends head off to the area they’d set up for painting. She levitated the bunny over to her then headed off to find a place to kill a duplicate bunny without any of the munchkins seeing.
0o0o0
Leo glanced over at Mist and Paige as they orbed to the roof he was standing on. “Is something the matter?”
Paige rubbed her temple. “Yeah, I’d like the ringing to stop.”
Mist glanced away from the Gotham skyline and over at Leo. “There isn’t anything physically wrong with her, thus it’s probably Whitelighter related.”
“Sounds like a charge,” Leo agreed.
“Great, how do I get it to stop and why isn’t this a problem for anyone else?” Paige asked testily.
Mist said, “Zoe, Brianna and Sarah aren’t really old enough to worry about charges and Phoenix and Leah aren’t Whitelighters, they’re part good darklighter, so I doubt they’ll end up with any charges.”
Leo said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.”
“We’re not even in our universe, why are we getting charges?” Paige asked with a touch of annoyance.
Mist reached out and lightly touched her nose with his fingertip. “Because that’s who you are love, jumping around the multiverse doesn’t make you less of a guardian angel.”
“Great.” Paige turned to look at Leo. “Do you have extra charges?”
Leo said, “A girl named Barbara Gordon, she’s a bit of a troublemaker but I have high hopes for her.”
“Your charge is Batgirl?” Paige asked in disbelief.
“She’s not Batgirl yet but yeah, she has the potential to be a hero.”
Paige turned and looked at Mist. “Is this why you didn’t pick half whitelighter when you had the chance?”
Mist frowned slightly as he considered how to phrase things diplomatically for a couple of seconds. “One of the reasons, I don’t mind helping people but it’s not my passion. I knew a girl before I started jumping, she wanted to save everyone when she started as a social worker, she ended up burning out fairly quickly because of the system. I’d rather build the gear so that people can help themselves than try to save everyone.”
“It’s worth trying.”
“Which is why you and Leo are Whitelighters and I’m not.”
“It’s not for everyone,” Leo agreed.
“I’ll leave you to your training, best of luck.” Mist smiled as he dark orbed back to the little slice of heaven to check in with Poppy.
Paige sighed as she looked at the spot Mist had been standing. “Hate when he does that.”
Leo smiled slightly as he thought about Piper voicing the same complaint when he orbed out in the middle of a discussion. “He’s right, it’s just a matter of practice. Try focusing on the ringing and orbing.”
“I’ll try.” Paige focused on the ringing and orbed. She blinked as a large thug swung a meaty fist at her face. She smiled as everything slowed down as her enhanced speed and perception kicked in. She moved her head to the side, grabbed the thug’s arm then tossed him into a brick wall taking care not to toss him so hard he broke anything too important. She took a second to look at the dark haired teenager with a broken and bloody nose the thugs had cornered then reached out and grabbed the next thug as she let her perception of time drop back to normal. She tossed him into the same wall as his friend. “Gun.” She gestured and orbed the third thug’s gun out of his hand. “Now might be a good time to surrender.”
“Shit, it’s a meta!” The last thug standing turned and ran.
“Jail.” Paige gestured and orbed the thugs to one of the cells in Gotham’s police department. “That was easy.”
Zatanna said, “Ank uh age.”
Paige smiled at Zatanna. “Let’s get that nose fixed before you cast something by mistake.” She walked over then carefully reached out and healed Zatanna’s nose after she nodded. “That should do it.”
Zatanna sighed in relief as the pain vanished. “Thank you.”
“So, what are you doing in a dark alley?”
“I was walking out of the movie theater when I saw some thugs grab someone’s purse, I tried to help and got ambushed, so I ran for it. I took a bit of a wrong turn,” Zatanna admitted as she pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket to wipe the blood off her face.
“It happens.”
“How did you find me?”
Paige shrugged as she smirked. “It’s sort of my deal, I’m a guardian angel.”
“Seriously?” Zatanna asked in surprise.
“Is that so hard to believe?”
Zatanna blushed faintly. “I guess not, how’s Mist doing?”
“Still too old for you,” Paige teased.
“I know, just asking,” she admitted wistfully.
“He’s fine, he’s been tinkering and making magical gear. We should probably get you some better defensive items if you’re going to be a hero.”
“I was just trying to help.”
Paige smiled at the younger girl. “That’s how it starts.”
Zatanna briefly considered protesting then decided that Paige had a point. “What type of gear are we talking about?”
“Armored clothing, kinetic shields and something to boost your durability high enough that a couple of street thugs aren’t going to be able to break your pretty little nose.”
“How much do you want?”
“Help with a couple of card tricks? Paige asked hopefully.
“That’s it?” Zatanna asked.
“I know the girls would love some autographs but we’re not picky.”
Zatanna pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. “Sure, let me call my Dad and tell him where I’m going.”
“Sounds good.” Paige had a feeling the kids would love hanging out with Zatanna and it was a nice chance to give her some decent defensive items.
0o0o0
Tara smiled slightly as she leaned against the lab’s doorframe and watched Mist carefully assemble some type of strange looking device the size of a refrigerator. She waited until he finished and stepped back then spoke up, “What does it do?”
“If it works like I’m hoping it will boost our power amplification ability,” Mist replied as he scanned the hopefully finished device.
“Any luck?”
Mist frowned slightly as he got a pattern for an inefficient and unstable power boosting device. “Eh, I got an inefficient and unstable amplification device pattern off my prototype so better than nothing. On the upside, it keeps me from going insane trying to deal with the various so called super villains that the League insists not be killed for one reason or another.”
Tara sighed. “That’s because they’re heroes and if they start killing villains, where do they stop?”
“At the ones that don’t deserve it.”
Tara shook her head. “We have perks to check that, they’d have to give it their best guess and it’s a rather slippery slope.”
“Maybe that should be my next project, making goggles that contain that particular power.”
“I doubt they’d trust the goggles.”
“Truth be told, I’d be a little bit disturbed if they did,” Mist admitted as he headed for Tara and the door. “Fancy some food?”
“What are you thinking?”
“Pizza in New York or pasta in Italy?”
“Considering one of my avatars is helping Willow and Hermione, let’s see if anyone cooked, if not we can use the replicator.”
“Good point.” Mist created an avatar. “See if you can figure out what is wrong with the device.”
“Sure, leave me to do all the work while you wander off with the cute girl,” Mist’s avatar complained good naturedly as he turned around and walked back over to the workbench to take another look at the machine that boosted powers.
“Exactly.” Mist held out his arm for Tara to take. “Let’s try the kitchen first.”
Tara grinned slightly as she took his hand as they headed for the warehouse kitchen. “On the upside, we only have another two months before we jump.”
“Thankfully, living in a comic book world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“I enjoyed meeting Wonder Woman and visiting Themyscira so it wasn’t all bad.”
“True,” Mist agreed as they entered the kitchen area and saw a collection of teens eating eggo waffles around the table.
Tara tried to keep the amusement out of her voice as she looked down her nose at her daughter and asked, “Eggos, again?”
Foxglove finished her bite of strawberry covered eggo waffles. “They’re good and we have Dad’s metavore power which means they’re healthy enough.”
“Besides, they’re easy and Gabrielle and Nathan were using the replicator earlier,” Jack pointed out.
Tara smiled as she ruffled Foxglove’s hair on the way past to the replicator. “Just make sure you eat something decent for dinner.”
“Sure, no problem,” Jack agreed.
Mist glanced between Foxglove, Jack, Zoe and Anna. “What are you mischief makers working on today?”
Zoe pouted at her father. “What makes you think we’re up to something Dad?”
“You’re being way too quiet.”
Anna shrugged. “Nothing, Mom and Riley kicked me out of the lab, they said something about making half kryptonian tigers for Mom to control.”
Mist twitched slightly then relaxed as he saw his daughter’s lips quirk up in a slight smile. “That was mean.”
Anna snickered. “You know Mom better than that, it’s auntie Skitter that you have to worry about, I mean can you imagine an army of half kryptonian spider beasts of doom?”
Mist shivered. “I can now.”
“Don’t worry Riley would be giggling too much to help her,” Jack pointed out.
“Probably,” Mist admitted. At least he hoped she wouldn’t make any half kryptonian spider monsters without a way to keep them under control when they weren’t around Taylor.
Tara walked over with a burger and sat next to her daughter. “You should avoid giving Riley ideas on monster creation.”
Jack asked, “Any plans for the day?”
Mist turned to look at Jack. “Why, what were you thinking?”
“Dawn mentioned she wanted to run a D&D game and was looking for more people.”
“Sounds fun, let me grab something to snack on then we’ll go see what she has planned.”
“Awesome.” Zoe was looking forward to seeing what Dawn’s next adventure would be like.
0o0o0
Genie smirked at Mist as he appeared in her blackstone room. “Welcome back Mr. Sidekick.”
Mist stuck his tongue out at Genie.
“Did you at least have fun tinkering?” Genie asked.
“It was actually sort of fun to just kick back and relax and not worry about the fate of the world, just the bounty hunters that popped up every time I left my slice of heaven. At least most of the bounty hunters that showed up had interesting toys.”
“That’s what I like about you, you generally make drawbacks work for you.” Genie snickered as she walked over and pulled him into a hug.
“I try,” Mist replied with amusement as he hugged her back. “I’m a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to kick Lobo in the nuts but it’s probably for the best.”
“Most likely, yeah.” Genie hugged him for a couple more seconds then let go. “So, where next?”
Mist let go. “I was thinking something fun and happy, like the Generic Cartoon jump.”
“You want to be a toon?” Genie asked in surprise.
“No, I want to be able to make toons,” Mist replied with amusement.
“Now that I can see.” Genie tossed the jump on the screen.
Mist walked over to the screen then scrolled down to the drop in section to double check how much the abilities he wanted to grab cost. “Mundane Mondays and Animator for the win.”
“You actually want to take Mundane Mondays? It strips all of your powers and abilities when you use it…”
“I don’t have to use it and if I turn it into a magical ability via shenanigans, safety first should protect me.”
Genie blinked then stared at Mist as she figured out what he was planning. “That’s dirty.”
Mist shrugged. “Considering how many idiotically dangerous world class threats are running around the multiverse, do you honestly blame me for wanting some type of defense?”
“Nope, there is a reason you’re my favorite jumper.”
“Aren’t I your only jumper?” Mist asked with a pout.
“Yes but that’s beside the point,” Genie replied with amusement.
“Right, now I just have to figure out who to import.”
Genie snickered. “Probably people that you don’t mind turning into half human half cartoon hybrids.”
“So most of them?” Mist asked with amusement as he looked over the jump.
“Who do you want?”
“Let’s go with the pranksters Fred and George, Lily, Sin, Sirius, James, Dennis and Aisha.”
“This should be fun, I’ll be right back.” Genie snapped her fingers and vanished to collect the crew while he worked on builds for everyone.
0o0o0
Mist
Generic Toon
Drop In:
Age: 21
Location: Shantytown 1931
Stunt driver: [Free] You can drive any vehicle like a maniac with professional stunt-driving abilities, popping cars over onto two wheels to drive in between lanes of traffic, drive off impromptu ramps to briefly fly through the sky and various other professional driving stunts. You can also combine this ability with the “Personal gravitation” perk or a similar gravity-controlling ability and drive vehicles on the sides of buildings and inside tunnels while upside down.
Mundane Mondays: [200] You seem to have developed an odd ability, you can turn on (and off) a field from your body which enforces the mundane laws of physics in its immediate surroundings in about a hundred foot diameter around you. This suppresses anything that isn’t the “standard” boring laws of physics. Time and space warping effects, psychic powers, cartoon physics, magic, magical fields, “soft” super science, FTL travel, dimensional rips are all affected by this power. This even stops the manipulation of matter inside of it by any sort of power like hydrokinesis.
Animator: [450] First, you can create any and all toon object you want, portable holes, cartoon magnets, cartoon rockets, cartoon mallets, etc. basically anything Acme sells you can draw. You can also create and modify (touch up) Toons. Animators capable of creating Toons, Toon-objects and touch-up artists are generally paid the same amount as plastic surgeons and are in high-demand by studios. Creating a Toon or Toon-object requires specialized ink and paint, high quality brushes, cels, pens. To create a Toon you have to draw them layer-by-layer on cels including internal organs and bones in slices and include side views, several poses and writing about their personality and general knowledge (up to high-school levels), all on specially treated cel-media. All knowledge you want them to have has to be written out on the cel media, you have to write out how to do things the long way. It takes at least seventy two hours’ worth of work to make one Toon.
Toon objects are significantly easier, they only take a few drawings and you can draw one in about two hours. Most animators just give Toons middle-school levels of knowledge and then just have tutors to get them a GED, This is what the “seventy two” hours base Toon-creation is based on. It will take you another three days’ worth of writing to get them to “high school levels” of education. Toons created by you will tend to look at you as their parent and are drawn with the personality you chose during the process.
Includes a non-expiring kit with enough ink, paint and cels to make two Toons or twenty toon objects. Toons created with your power will have 400cp worth of abilities from this jump document, they count as companions in future jumps and you can take them with you for free (if they agree).
You gain the detailed knowledge needed to modify existing ink, paint and animation cels to turn them into Toon creation capable versions. Effectively giving you unlimited Toon/object creation kits, it takes about a week to treat enough normal ink, paint and animation cels to make five toons (or fifty objects). The ink and paint expire about a month after creation and must be kept refrigerated until used. Just so you know, treating ink and paint requires a substantial fresh blood donation, once a day for a week from someone with the “Animator” perk/ability and some common mundane chemicals to restore the original color of the ink/paints (to cover up the strong tint from the blood). Treating the animation cels is just a chemical process to make the blood-ink and blood-paint mix stick better.
Items:
Acme Catalogue and Lifetime Acme Instant delivery Membership: [200] You have an indestructible catalogue containing Acme’s entire product line and comes with refilling order forms and envelopes. The catalogue includes everything ever stamped with “Acme” on it, yes the objects for sale do cost money. In additional to the catalogue you have a lifetime “Acme Instant delivery membership” which will deliver (nearly) anything, (nearly) anywhere instantly. Instant delivery is transdimensional in nature and they can pick up objects and packages from other realities that you have been too. You could order pizza from your favorite restaurant from
three jumps ago and it’ll be just-got-out-of-the-oven hot when you get it. You can only use this to acquire things which are being sold from other stores, not the local McGuffin or items hidden away or things which have some sort of restriction on purchasing. This is a delivery service, not an adventurers club to perform fetch quests or go through training for you.
It’s a Gasser!: [50] This is H-sized gas cylinder full of some sort of gas, not the liquid kind of gas you pour into a car, it’s a gas like helium, butane, laughing gas or nearly any kind of gas that you want to have in it. It continually outputs whatever sort of gas you want in unlimited amounts from an adjustable nozzle with a large selection of common fittings hanging around its neck. The tank itself is indestructible and is an off-white color with dings and scratches all over its surface. It also has a pressure gauge on it, which actually controls the pressure that the gas is expelled at and a series of hazardous/warning labels and content labels inside of a transparent pouch on the tank's side. You can change the gas inside of the tank by simply swapping the labels inside of the pouch to display the one you want. These are all mundane gasses, nothing magical or considered to be primarily used for warfare. Yes you can have vespene gas as it’s listed as being some sort of hydrocarbon gas. Its default gas is helium.
Companions: [300] 8 companions 300 cp each.
Drawback:
Villainous Rival: [+200] There is a particular toon who’s out to get you, I don’t mean he wants to kill you or anything like that. He just wants to show you up, take your job, get you fired, humiliate you in public and just make your life miserable in general. He isn’t above sabotaging you for petty results and will happily take a saw to the legs of your chair just to make you fall in front of your boss or send you lit cartoon explosives just to mess your hair and clothing up before an important photo shoot. Expect a visit from him every couple of days. He’s an Inkblot and has all of the same perks that you picked on this jump-doc. His hatred of you is completely unreasonable and he cannot be convinced to stop.
Mist turned to look as Genie reappeared with Abby, Aisha, Dennis, Fred, George, James, Lily, Selena, Sin and Sirius. “We’re heading to Toonville.”
Lily raised her eyebrows. “Toonville?”
“You remember Roger Rabbit, right?” Mist asked with amusement.
“Yeah, what about him?”
“Basically, we’re headed to a world sort of like that, only we’re coming in at the start of Cartoon City, in 1931.”
Aisha grinned. “Sweet, this is going to be awesome.”
“Let me guess, you’re going to turn us into toons?” Dennis asked with amusement.
“Companions get 300 points and a free origin which means taking the half toon origin gives you discounts on drop in stuff and one of the toon types, inkblot, traditional or modern.”
“What are the drawbacks?” Dennis asked warily.
“Some weird looks if people find out that you’re not actually human and you don’t get the ageless perk but we can pick that up from one of the cartoons I animate so that’s not really a big deal either. Worst case, you use an alt form for a year.”
James rubbed his hands together. “Excellent.”
Aisha frowned slightly. “300 points isn’t a lot, what do we need to grab?”
Mist gestured toward the document on the screen. “The fourth level of the hammerspace abilities look fairly solid. Being able to pull explosives that stun people out of your hammerspace would be nice.”
“In other words, we spread the abilities around then share all of the perks.”
“More or less, yeah. I’m planning on buying the land from the studios and building Cartoon City from the ground up while kicking back and relaxing.”
Lily asked, “What about your rival flaw?”
“That’s what stasis pods are for.” He figured he’d drop the inkblot toon in a stasis pod or the local equivalent of dip then spend a nice ‘relaxing’ year building a wacky toon city.
“In that case, let’s start working on builds.” Sin walked over to the screen and scrolled down to look through the various abilities and items they could snag.
0o0o0
Abby/Selena
Background: Drop In
Age: 21
Stunt driver: [Free] Crazy stunts
Lily
Background: Half Toon: Inkblot
Age: 19
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Hoser: [Free] Your body and limbs are extra flexible and your dexterity is increased, you don’t have an elbow or knees or really anything like bones or joints and your body acts more like a puddle of ink shaped into a vaguely toon-like shape. Handcuffs won’t really work on you since there isn’t anything “solid” under your skin to prevent the cuff from just sliding off. Since you lack “real” bones you can’t actually break any.
Sing!: [Free] You have a great singing voice and can stay in pitch for an entire song while dancing, juggling or doing something else equally as distracting. You can also mimic other singing voices and styles and can play an instrument of your choosing at a professional level.
Hammerspace: Level 2,3,4 [200] The passing time inside of your Hammerspace completely halts and the weight capacity starts at roughly forty thousand pounds then increases with usage and you can now store willing sapient creatures inside of your Hammerspace. With practice and effort you can learn how to expel items from your Hammerspace with a thought.
Hammerspace Lock: [50] Your hammerspace, inventories, dimensionally expanded-objects and similar personal dimensional pockets can be “locked” and are protected from unwanted access. You can also “lock” other individual’s hammerspaces, either denying them access to it or simply “locking” it to prevent people other than themselves from accessing their personal dimensional pocket spaces. Locking another being's hammerpsace, inventory, pocket dimension, etc. against their will is a temporary effect and will wear off in a few hours.
Toonify: [Free] You can change your alt-forms and future bodies into Toon versions of them and back to normal at will.
Quick change: [Free] You can, in a second or two of swirling around, change your outfit into something you have inside of your hammerspace, dimensional spaces attached to your body or dimensionally expanded bags/clothing/objects that you have within twenty foot of you. You can change into disguises and people will believe that you are what you are dressed up as even if the costume doesn’t really make much sense or look good. However, it’ll only work for a few seconds unless you have some other perk which make disguises more effective (which will increase the time that victims are fooled). Using disguises with this perk gives decreasing effectiveness when used on someone repeatedly. You can also instantly apply makeup and have access to minor shapeshifting abilities to make small alterations to your body to cross-
dress and/or give you a vague resemblance to someone else.
Toon Resilience: [Free] Your body effectively has pseudo-realistic organs and bones. Your various organs all work like a normal organic creature’s organs but you’re not as reliant on them as a purely organic being is and they are oddly easier to remove and reattach. You have a very slow regeneration ability which will reattach removed organs and seal up tears in your “skin” in a few minutes or regenerate organs and missing body part parts within several weeks. As an example, if your heart or brain were removed from your body, you would fall into a coma until it’s either shoved back in or after new organ(s) reform. You can still die if too much of you is removed or destroyed, it’ll take slightly more than half of your mass to be separated from you in some manner to kill you. Breaks in your (pseudo)bones will automatically reset themselves and heal within a week or two. Due to not being made of normal flesh you're immune to mundane disease as long as you are in a Toon body or Toon alt-form. Your body temporarily deforms comically when receiving damage. Getting hit by a cast-iron pan in the face might leave you with a pan-shaped head for a few seconds only to pop back into a normal configuration with more “realistic” injuries. Also, you can cause temporary comedic birds or stars and other small objects to appear flying around your head when you are beaten over the head by objects.
Toonspeed: Level: 1 [Free] Basically super speed, your legs and/or arms turn into a whirling mass of limbs and you can move faster than a normal human. Toonspeed Level 1 gives you a running speed of about 30 mph, you can also apply this same effect to your arms and perform actions faster than normal. Additionally you can ignore the effects of gravity for about five seconds, as long as you don’t look down. You can fight other Toons in a “cloud of flailing limbs”.
Find item: [50] You can once a day, name an item or a type of item and you will be able to find it. You will be able to feel a strong pull towards the nearest instance of the item. You will still have to deal with physically getting to it, you just know the direction and with a bit of practice in judging the “strength” of the pull, the rough distance to the item itself.
Aisha:
Background: Half Toon: Inkblot
Age: 22
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Toonify: [Free]
Hoser: [Free]
Sing!: [Free]
Stunt driver: [Free]
Hammerspace Thief: [100] Somehow, you have learned how to access other Toon’s hammerspaces and other similar “pocket dimension” or “Inventory” like abilities either attached to people or objects, you can reach in and grab objects that are stored inside. This can’t be done remotely, you have to “physically” reach into the victim, object or “doorway”, as if the entire body or thing was an entrance to a “bag” to grab objects from. This allows you to bypass any lock, magical or otherwise on the dimensionally expanded space. Unless you stick in your entire head into them you can’t actually see what you are grabbing. If you also have Squash and Stretch level three or above you can completely enter someone else's “inventory/hammerspace/pocket dimension” without any ill effects and without being subjected to any temporal “freezing” or temporal slowing and can exit at will from anywhere on the victim's body/object.
Annoying teleporter: [200] Teleport instantly to unseen locations, if you also have Squash and Stretch level 2 or above then destinations like “Someone’s pocket”, envelopes and desk-drawers become valid teleportation targets with your body shrinking to fit
into the space to the Squash and Stretch limits. Range is around half a mile and teleporting takes about half a second. “Unseen” also means unseen by electronic, supernatural or magical sight and the power works purely on visual monitoring. You instinctively know where valid teleportation targets are and you can make out roughly where and what it is you can teleport into. It also tells you what areas are under visual surveillance and where people are looking when they are in range.
Sin:
Background: Half Toon: Traditional toon.
Age: 22
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Toonify: [Free]
Stunt driver: [Free]
Wild Take: [Free] You naturally react to startling or exciting things with bizarre exaggerated effects like your eyes growing to hundreds of times normal size and bulging out of your head or your tongue growing and extending out of your mouth. You can of course control yourself and stop these reactions from occurring if you so choose. You also gain a minor shapeshifting ability and you are able to shift your face and body to look vaguely like someone or something else for a few minutes. This stacks with Quick Change giving you both a stronger, more detailed and longer lasting ability, with both of them you can look identical to someone else for about five minutes. This only covers the physical appearance of someone and does not extend to fingerprints or any other detailed identification method.
Concussive cure-all: [50] You’re quite good at hitting things with mallets and other objects, you’re so good that when you hit something just right you can fix it or get it to work. You can fix machines, broken bones and people’s mental issues and (non-congenital) mental illnesses like amnesia, split personalities, PTSD by giving them an enthusiastic whack. You can also bypass physical and electronic security by destroying the lock, dial, scanner or the keypad with a few hits. Why hack-it when you can whack-it?
Fast talk: [100] You can, if only for few seconds convince someone to stop doing what they were doing and do something you want them to do, including near-suicidal actions like holding a lit stick of dynamite. That’s an extreme example and you’d get more time before they realize they’ve been hoodwinked by convincing them to do something less hazardous, like guard a door.
Eraser Immunity: [50] Somehow you are immune to all effects of “Eraser”. To you it’s just a particularly vicious solvent that works great on ink and paint stains. You’re also immune to “being burned” from acids and bases. You could drink sulfuric acid and not even get an
upset stomach.
Temporary Toon: [100] By concentrating and touching someone or something you can transfer any perks which apply to your body to the person or object touched. The effect is temporary and will wear off within an hour, you lose the perks while the other person or object is using it. You can at will “pull” the perks back to you ahead of time.
Fred:
Background: Half Toon: Traditional toon.
Age: 22
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Toonify: [Free]
Wild Take: [Free]
Stunt driver: [Free]
Ink and Paint Innards: [100] This is basically an improved version of “Toon Resilience” You don’t really have things like bones or organs anymore. Well, you still do but they’re more like ink and paint bits of you shaped like organs. Your bones are comedically shaped like vague representatives of what they should be and aren’t even attached to each other when seen on an X-ray. You will no longer fall unconscious when “critical” organs are removed from your body or when damaged. As a Toon, your memories and personality are no longer tied to your physical brain. You could pull out your brain and play basketball with it with no negative effects or hand someone your beating heart. You are also basically immune to “critical hits” since you don’t actually need your heart that someone decided to shove a sword through. Likewise your spinal cord doesn’t actually transmit information between the parts of your body anymore.
Precognitive Tracking: [200] Within a few minutes you know where and when the person or thing you are tracking is going to be the next time they stop traveling before they arrive. You could arrive before them and lay in wait if you can move faster than whatever you are tracking. Basically, you will know when and where they will be stopping in the future.
George:
Background: Half Toon: Traditional toon.
Age: 22
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Toonify: [Free]
Stunt driver: [Free]
Wild Take: [Free]
Reality Warper 1,2,3: [300] You can project a twenty five foot diameter bubble centered on your chest that forces toon-like physics upon objects and people inside of it. This effectively turns people and objects into temporary-toons for the duration of the power and imposes toon-like-reactions to both objects and people. You can also temporarily create cartoon objects inside of your sphere at will, the objects will last just as long as any other changes you make which is about five minutes.
You can’t fool anyone with counterfeiting as the objects you create are “cartoonish” and visibly different from the real items. The bubble of reality also tends to push parental guidance “ratings” down to PG automatically.
Unfortunately or fortunately, the power does have some limits. First, you can’t directly harm people with your power as it automatically provides cartoon-physics-based protection to objects and people under its influence. If you were to do something like fold a human into an accordion shape and stuff them into a tiny safe, lock it and throw them off the end of a pier, when your power wears off they will pop out of the safe unharmed and pop to the surface. Likewise tossing someone into a volcano would give them a toon-like reaction, namely throwing them back out of it with their pants on fire and they would land safely near a source of water.
Second, the changes although stable “inside” of your influence are only temporary outside of it. The changes and objects that you make will only last about five minutes outside of your “sphere of reality”. Third, this power takes time to affect objects or people inside of your sphere of influence, it’ll take about five seconds before you can alter the object or person that has entered your “bubble”. If you have just “turned on” the power then you will have to wait five seconds before you can affect the objects/people inside of the “fresh” bubble. And finally, it has to be funny. If the outcome couldn’t be considered “funny” then nothing happens.
You also have the ability to turn yourself into a 2-D version of yourself at will. Flatten yourself to go under doors and enter drawings or paintings and emerge from them without breaking a sweat. You can now also create instant tunnels in or on surfaces by painting on them. Creatures, sentient and otherwise without this ability will simply run into the wall or surface. However you can lead creatures or Toons through them by holding their hand. You cannot travel through Eraser-soaked walls or walls specially treated to prevent toons from traveling through them.
Items:
Instant Painting Kit: [Free] Endless supply of ink, paint or fresh brushes from your hammerspace or pockets.
Sirius:
Background: Half Toon: Modern Toon
Age: 20
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Toonify: [Free]
Sing!: [Free]
Stunt driver: [Free]
Auditory Engineer: [100] You can change and alter the “noises” you make while interacting with objects or people. Opening a squeaky door? Now it’s a car horn noise, or complete silence. Punching someone? You can make it sound like a car crash or an explosion on impact. This doesn’t have any actual effect on the action, it’s strictly an auditory change. As an example, footsteps will still “vibrate” the ground with each step even if you have silenced them. This only affects the noises that you and the object/person make when interacting, so you can’t take away someone else’s voice or change their sound effects when they do something. You can also record noises, voices and conversations that you are capable of hearing and play them back out loud at will or change one of your “sound effects” to what you heard. Additionally, you have your own playlist which you can play, pause, go to next song or previous song at will. You can “load” music from a wide variety of media (records, CDs, and entire IPod or USB drives) by either placing the object in your pocket/hammerspace or by swallowing them, you can also simply listen to it and “record” it yourself. You can control the volume which all of your music and sound effects play at, hitting “jet-engine” at maximum or “complete silence” at minimum.
Personal gravitation: [200] Simply put you can control your own personal gravitation field, orienting it in whichever direction you feel like or nullifying it for yourself at will. The gravitation field extends outward around your body in a small ten foot diameter around you. Just enough space to have a small tea party with friends on your ceiling. You can also use this to run around a room on the walls or on the ceiling or roughly fly. You can also make small lightweight items orbit yourself if you want.
James:
Background: Half Toon: Modern Toon
Age: 20
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Sing!: [Free]
Stunt driver: [Free]
Shapeshifting: [300] You can change your shape, coloration and appearance at will. Change into a frying pan with arms and legs if you want or into a giant bowling ball. You can increase your mass to up to twenty times your original mass or reduce it to one twentieth of your original mass. Your body takes on the “Cartoon physics” properties of the objects or things you are mimicking. You can maintain that form until you fall asleep, become exhausted or you are otherwise knocked unconscious.
Dennis:
Background: Half Toon: Modern Toon
Age: 21
You’re a Toon: [Free]
Toon Resilience: [Free]
Quick change: [Free]
Hammerspace: Level 1 [Free]
Toonspeed: Level 1 [Free]
Sing!: [Free]
Stunt driver: [Free]
Items:
Toon explosives: [100] You can pull endless single sticks of dynamite and black round bombs out of your pocket or hammerspace with a fuse as long as you like and prelit if you want it to be. These won’t actually hurt or damage anyone but they will stun someone or something for about thirty seconds, leaving them covered in soot. You can also pull out larger stacks of dynamite and detonate them with a TNT plunger which is included, which greatly increases the diameter of the explosion. These can be (at will) real sticks of dynamite/bombs and can easily kill people.
Pocket Howitzer: [100] This is a working model of a WW2 era Howitzer (specifically it’s a M114 155mm howitzer) it can fit in a pocket and it only weighs about a pound. That is until you want it to expand to a full size cannon, which weighs the same and behaves the same as the real deal. Also comes fully loaded and will automatically be reloaded after you fire it, allowing you to fire an explosive shell every thirty seconds or so. You can also have it switch at will to the other commonly used ammunition for these like high explosive shells, flares/illumination, smoke (various colors) and a pepper spray shell. You do have to manually aim it and fire it though. Whenever you feel like it you can have it shrink back down to pocket size.
Portable Hole: [100] You now have a reusable portable hole, slap it on the side of the building and it’ll create a hole as thick as the wall or surface is. It starts out being as big as a dinner plate, but you can stretch it out to to be as large as a car tunnel. Or slap it on a Toon or mundane object to make a hole in it. Slap it on the side of a mountain, and you’ll have a hole as long as the mountain is wide at that point. To retrieve it, reach back into the hole and peel it off, pulling the hole into itself. Retrieving the portable hole requires an arm long enough to reach through the length of hole while standing outside of it to retrieve it. For retrieval humans are limited to their arm length, Toons are limited by how far they can stretch their arm.
Genie shook her head as she looked over everyone’s builds. “Unlimited explosives, exceptional durability, Eraser immunity, pocket weapons of war, yeah, nasty.”
Lily snorted. “Considering you’re dropping us into 1931, I don’t really see a problem with stacking the deck.”
“How large of an impact would it make on history if people found out we’re half toons?” James asked warily.
Genie snickered. “Considering the time period, I’d avoid it unless you want a lot of attention.”
Sin said, “At least we picked up the Eraser Immunity which means we don’t have to worry about being erased.”
“Which is good,” Selena agreed.
Aisha asked, “Are you planning on sharing your animator perk?”
“With the group, probably.” Mist turned to look at Genie. “Until next time?”
“Best of luck.” Genie snapped her fingers and sent the group into the cartoon filled world.
0o0o0
Mist glanced around the shantytown filled with out of work toons that were huddled in dark alleys and around corners looking more pathetic than he’d really been expecting. He frowned as he spotted a group of disgruntled inkblots with guns walking their way. “This can’t be good.”
“Maybe they can…” Abby trailed off as one of the toons shot her. “Hey, cut that out!”
James reached out with superspeed and caught the next bullet. He ‘remembered’ that some of the toons were rather disgruntled with their lot in life but he hadn’t expected the rioting to start as quickly as it had. “They’re using real ammo.”
“Great.” Sin scowled at the gang of toons.
Dennis glanced down the street at a group of brightly colored toons that were carrying makeshift melee weapons and looked out for blood. He pulled a lit stick of dynamite out of his pocket and tossed it at the group of black and white inkblot toons with the guns. “Catch!”
Mist winced slightly as the dynamite exploded scattering the group of inkblot toons with a loud bang. “We should probably rescue as many humans as we can before the riots really get going.”
“It would probably help,” Lily agreed.
Mist pulled his pocketwatch out of his pocket and pushed the button freezing everything other than their group in place. “Now that we’re not worried about people dying while we discuss things, do we have a plan?”
Lily spoke up, “The riots are happening because of tensions between between inkblots and colored cartoons because there isn’t enough work to go around and the great depression sucks. If we wander around for ten minutes and leave avatars whenever we find a person we can teleport them out of the city when Mist unpauses things.”
“Say ten seconds then pause things again?”
“Then rinse and repeat until we get them all,” Aisha said as she created several avatars and sent them off to collect all of the real firearms. “I’ll see about collecting all of the real guns the idiots have.”
“That would certainly help,” Dennis admitted as he made three avatars. “Best of luck.”
Mist created several avatars then headed off looking for people to rescue.
0o0o0
Mist scowled slightly as they watched a section of the town burn from outside the city limits. “Maybe we should have left well enough alone.”
Sirius shook his head. “It would have been worse if humans had gotten hurt, they’d have more reason to lash out and crack down on toons.”
“Or it would have stopped sooner and less toons would have died,” James pointed out.
Lily glanced at the group of toons that they’d saved that wanted nothing to do with the fighting then back at the town. “We did the best we could.”
“On the upside, it should lower the property values in that section of the city to almost nothing.” Aisha rolled her eyes as the group turned to look at her. “Don’t give me that, everyone was thinking it.”
Dennis snorted. “Yeah, but we didn’t say it.”
Abby frowned slightly as they heard an explosion inside the town. “We saved everyone that wanted to be saved, at this point, letting them blow off steam and go crazy might be the best thing.”
Mist had briefly considered reaching out and stopping all of the fighting with magic, he’d decided not to because if he did they’d never really learn that behaving like insane monkeys on speed had consequences. “At this point the best we can do is to wait until the toon police get things under control and the damage reports come in then talk to the companies that own the town. Judging by the jump doc, the riots bankrupted several companies involved with the town, we should be able to step in buy some of them out or buy the land from various banks then help build the town into something to be proud of.”
“Does that mean we can try our hand at acting?” Selena asked excitedly.
“I don’t see why not,” Mist agreed.
“Sounds like a plan.” James was looking forward to recording some comedy skits and having some fun with being stuck in the past for a year.
Fred spoke up as he walked back from talking with a group of toons, “We’re going to have to figure out a way to bring in more jobs or the problems will just get worse.”
“We should be able to make a decent amount of money off tourism once we get things set up.” Mist wasn’t all that worried about making money considering his business perk turned everyone that worked for him into a professional then an expert in a very short amount of time. “Let’s get everyone a tent and some food, hopefully if we’re nice and ordered the cops won’t go crazy on the innocent toons.”
Selena said, “We can hope.”
“Cops are cops,” Aisha muttered.
“Yeah.” Mist happened to agree with Aisha but it was worth a shot. He focused on his projection magic and conjured a number of large tents and enough bedrolls for everyone on the field so they could look more like refugees and less like a mob just waiting to happen. “Let’s make the rounds and make sure everything stays nice and civil.”
0o0o0
A bubbly toon woman ran up to Mist waving a bouquet of flowers. “Mister o’Shadows!”
Mist turned to look at the busty toon. “Yes?”
“Here.” She handed him the flowers. “From your secret admirer.” She turned and ran off quickly.
Mist sighed as the bouquet of flowers exploded. “You realize this means war.” He gestured at himself and cleaned the soot off his clothes.
An overweight middle aged looking toon shouted, “That’s cheating!”
Mist turned to look at the inkblot toon that was standing in the lobby radiating anger. He reached out with telepathy and looked through his head. “You’re the bastard that has been screwing things up, aren’t you?”
“Yes! I’ll prove that toons can draw themselves!”
“You know, I was planning on trying to reason with you or at least stick you on ice for a bit but you’re just going to keep coming back aren’t you?”
“You can never keep a good toon down!”
Mist glanced around the lobby at the various humans and toons watching them. “Perhaps we should take this outside?”
The toon said, “Yes I challenge you to a duel!”
Mist had to resist the urge to roll his eyes as he followed the toon out into the street. He pulled his phaser out of his inventory and set it to disintegrate as he half listened to the toon talk about humiliating him in the duel. He scanned the toon and was rather pleased to get a pattern for a toon animator. “We walk ten steps then turn around and shoot, right?”
“Yes!”
Mist glanced around at the crowd that had come outside the station to see the duel. ‘So much for shooting him in the back.’ He turned and studied the angry looking toon for a couple of seconds as he tried to get a sense of if he was a decent ‘person’ with his darklighter ability, sadly for the toon’s continued survival he wasn’t and he wouldn’t make the world a better place, far from it thanks to people’s reactions when they learned a toon could be an animator. ‘Sorry but if you survive a bunch of toons die.’ He walked over and stood back to back with the toon. “Ready?”
“Yes!”
Mist counted the ten steps as he walked away from the toon then turned and shot him as the toon pulled a comically large revolver out of his hammerspace to shoot him. Even knowing that he couldn’t leave him alive Mist still felt slightly guilty as the phaser reduced the toon to ash and he picked up his skill at animating things.
Someone in the crowd shouted, “What the hell are you using?”
“A wazer gun,” Mist replied absently as he glanced around at the crowd that looked like he’d just kicked a puppy.
One of the toon secretaries asked nervously, “Why isn’t he getting up?”
“Because he wasn’t as durable as I was expecting,” Mist lied as he put the phaser in his jacket pocket.
“You… you killed him?” another toon asked in shock.
Mist sighed as several toons started crying and turning on the waterworks. “I’m sure he’ll get up eventually, you can’t keep a good toon down.” He conjured a bag in his pocket then pulled it out and walked over to tiny pile of ash the toon had left and swept it into the bag. If nothing else he figured the ash would add some interesting abilities to any toon he used his minion tree to create.
“Back to work!” an older stern looking man shouted from the doors to the studio. He looked at Mist. “You and I have an appointment.”
Mist nodded his head then replied, “Of course.” as he started walking toward the man he was guessing was the director of the studio that owned part of toonville. He was just hoping the rest of his stops weren’t as eventful because he’d like to have all of the deeds or contracts he needed to start building by the weekend.
0o0o0
Mist was ready to strangle every damned toon on his volunteer demolition crew by the end of the first day, by the second he was almost ready to track down someone that had the recipe for the local version of Dip just so he could listen to them scream as they died because they treated everything as a joke, including using explosives to blow up buildings without bothering to do more than shout ‘Timber!’ first. Thankfully, by the third day his business perk had started to kick in and they’d started to develop something approaching a decent level of skill and a sliver of what might be considered ‘common’ sense or he probably would have lost his marbles completely and started teleporting toons into orbit just to see how many of them needed to breathe.
Lily glanced away from where a group of toons were painting a fence white as she asked, “How are you doing?”
Mist glared at the group of toons that were actually doing a decent job of things rather than goofing off and wasting half the paint like some of the idiots yesterday. “I don’t feel like setting anyone on fire so better than yesterday or the day before,” he admitted reluctantly as he looked up from the blueprints laid out on the table the design team was using.
“Are you still annoyed about your stripclub getting toonified?”
“It’s stuck at PG-13 at best, they don’t even take off their underwear and half of the girls are inkblots so yeah, just a bit,” Mist grumbled.
Lily smirked slightly. “Sirius showed me the memory, you have to admit the look on your face when you first walked in was somewhat amusing.”
“Fine, I’ll admit that it was a good prank.” Mist sighed as one of the toons slipped and tossed a bucket of paint onto another toon’s head. “Do you think anyone would care if we set him on fire?” He asked half seriously.
“You can’t set people on fire because they’re clumsy.” Lily sighed as several of the other toons tried to ‘help’ the toon with the bucket on his head.
“He’s a toon, he’d survive.” Mist reached out with his telepathy and checked the toon’s mind and relaxed slightly as he realized that he hadn’t actually meant to slip. “Fine, do you think upgrading their agility might help?”
“It might though I’m fairly sure some of them were just drawn to be clumsy which means it’s a feature not a bug.”
Mist glanced over at the section of the town they’d already completed. “I’m taking this too seriously aren’t I?”
Lily held her fingers a couple of inches apart. “Just a bit, yeah.”
“In that case, I think I’m going to leave James and the kids in charge of Toonville and focus on making movies now that I managed to buy out Maximum Studios.”
“If nothing else, it’s a decent change,” Lily pointed out.
“We can hope.”
“Speaking of stress and getting bent out of shape, have you decided what to draw for a first toon yet?”
Mist grinned slightly. “I might have a couple of ideas.”
“Oh?”
“Dawn suggested I draw her D&D character.”
“The cute and naughty elf girl?”
“That’s the one,” Mist agreed.
“I’m fairly sure she has more than a high school education at least in terms of how much she knows.”
Mist shrugged. “I can always hand her an enhanced mastery book then show her to a library or stick her with Uber for a couple of days of training.”
“Considering you scanned your paint kit and cels, it’s not like there is a limit to how many toons you can create other than time and you have avatars to share the work if you want.”
“Point, I think I’ll leave you in charge of the looney bin and track Dawn down to see if she has any suggestions for her character.”
“Sounds good.”
“How did you get good at dealing with toons?”
“I married James,” Lily replied with amusement.
“Point.” Mist orbed back to the slice of heaven to find Dawn. He frowned slightly as he appeared in the middle of a group of naked munchkins running around shooting each other with squirt guns. ‘I really need to talk to Genie about picking up an island or something so we can spread out.’
“Get him!” Ruby shouted as she turned her squirt gun on her father.
Mist raised his eyebrows as several of his daughters shot him with their squirt guns. “This means war.” He used his projection power to conjure an old fashioned fire extinguisher filled with water then aimed the nozzle at the girls and pushed the lever down sending a stream of water at Ruby.
Sarah shouted, “Retreat!”
He shouted, “Muahaha!” as his daughters turned and ran. His previously bad mood forgotten as he chased his children around the tiny island with a water filled fire extinguisher. ‘I can always find Dawn later.’
0o0o0
Willow slipped out of the shadows and looked down at the creepy bastard with the ugly ass half mustache sleeping ‘peacefully’ as she raised her baseball bat. She toggled her esp off so she wouldn’t pick up any of his memories then brought her bat down on the man’s face with enough force to shatter his skull and crack the supports for his bed. She looked down at the jagged length of bat she was holding then stabbed it through Hitler’s crotch just to make more of a statement. She phased through the wall and headed down the hall to find her next target. The rest of the group might have forgotten about the Nazis because they had eight years before the war officially started but she wasn’t going to leave the bastard alive longer than she had to. “Something wicked this way comes, something wicked this way comes.”
She blurred forward and backhanded the first guard that came to investigate her singing with a hundred tons of force after making sure that the world would be a worse place if she left him alive. She moved like lightning through the halls of the government building killing most of the people that crossed her path while singing bits and pieces of old songs in German to terrify the rest. Some people were saved by dint of being more or less innocent but most of the people in the building were anything but innocent as they’d been appointed by Hitler. She smiled as she dark orbed to the next group of Nazis that she wanted to deal with.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
Thanks.
Alex Wierzbicki
nice work
