Traveling Magic Shop Part 31 (Patreon)

"Mistakes were made," Myst read the last line in the adventure book, causing a golden skinned humanoid that appeared in the shop. He relaxed a touch when he noticed that 'Scion' was smiling, something that he wasn't prone to doing. "Welcome to the Magic Shop, what can I help you with?"

"That depends, are you planning on trapping us in a cursed book?" Hephaestus asked dryly.

"Wasn't planning on it, Hephaestus," Myst replied with a grin.

"How much did you learn from the book?" Hephaestus asked.

"Nothing damning or secret," Myst assured him. "I was just trying to deal with a monster, I wasn't expecting you to jump worlds."

"What was your plan if Ares hadn't killed him?" Hephaestus asked.

"I was planning on leaving the rest of the book unread until I jumped dimensions and found someone that could deal with him," Myst admitted.

"Makes sense," Hephaestus agreed. "There's nothing wrong with hiring an expert. Speaking of hiring an expert, I owe you a minor boon for getting me out of Zeus' idiotic war. Do you want a magical artifact or a boon of knowledge?"

Myst frowned as he tried to figure out a polite way to ask if the gifts were going to cause trouble.

Hephaestus laughed when he realized the shopkeeper was trying to figure out a polite way to refuse. "Don't worry, the minor boons are perfectly safe, it's the major boons that occasionally cause problems."

"You're the expert," Myst replied, not wanting to offend the god since he doubted he'd be stupid enough to fall for the same trick as Scion.

Hephaestus gave the shopkeeper a minor blessing, permanently increasing his ability with technology and increasing his memory when it came to technology and science, knowing Hestia would be grumpy if he didn't reward the mortal for doing them a favor. "That should help with your creative endeavors without causing you to lock yourself in a lab as your brain melts trying to come up with insane inventions."

Myst relaxed when he checked his new boon with his Upgrade ability and realized the ability didn't have any strings or a divine connection, at least not that he could see. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Hephaestus replied. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to track down a mostly dead abomination."

"Best of luck," Myst told him, hoping that he hadn't made a mistake unleashing a couple of gods on the world and knowing that there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it now that the genie was out of the bottle. 'Screw it, Hestia should be able to keep Hephaestus from going completely off the rails.'

Cherie walked out of the game room with her street clothes tossed over her Rogue outfit. "How do I jump worlds?"

"Stick a coin in the fortune telling machine," Myst replied as he gestured toward the machine in the corner of the room that he'd roped off and stuck an out of order sign on so people wouldn't accidentally use it.

"That's it?" Cherie asked.

"Yep," Myst agreed. "Do you want a piece of advice?"

"Would it help if I said no?" Cherie asked as she started walking over to the machine, not seeing a problem with humoring the man since he was helping her escape her family.

"Not really," Myst replied with a grin as he tossed her a bag of silver and gold coins, figuring they'd help her get started wherever she ended up.

Cherie stared at the bag of coins then looked at Myst. "Are you trying to bribe me?"

"No, I'm just making sure you don't end up with a bunch of bad options when you're still trying to figure out where all of the lines are."

"Lines?" Cherie asked.

"The cider fixed the brain damage your father caused by torturing you with his power and Taylor fixed your power so it shouldn't push you towards conflict. You're probably going to be an emotional mess until you've had a chance to process."

"If you're expecting me to be a hero, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you," Cherie replied with a smirk that she didn't really feel, trying not to think about everything her father had put her through or the people she'd hurt because she was lashing out.

"I'm not expecting miracles, I'm just trying to avoid regrets," Myst admitted. "You grew up with a monster and I sold you a bottle of cider that fixes mental issues. Morally, I should probably lock your ability to manipulate emotions and drop you in an insane asylum while you get your shit together but your family would spring you and probably kill or torture a bunch of people in the process."

"That's assuming the staff didn't kill me when they figured out what I can do with my powers," Cherie argued.

"Yep," Myst agreed. "I don't know where you'll end up but I'm hoping that you'll keep in mind that none of the people in the other world are responsible for your father being insane."

"So, you're trying to argue that I shouldn't use my power on people?" Cherie asked, wishing her power let her read more than emotions because knowing he was frustrated didn't really help figure out what he was trying to say.

"No, I'm just saying that you should figure out where to draw the line," Myst admitted as Taylor walked out of the back room. "If the gold and silver gives you a chance to get your head on straight and you realize that fucking with assholes feels better than screwing over innocent people, I'll call it money well spent."

"And if I screw with everyone because there's no one to stop me?" Cherie asked as she pulled a quarter out of her pocket.

"Wouldn't be the first mistake I've made or the last but I'm choosing to believe in spite. Your father wanted you to be a monster, don't give him the satisfaction, there are plenty of assholes that you can steal from," Myst argued as he floated a cardboard box filled with cider over to Cherie, figuring she could use them or trade them to get started.

"Spite? I can live with that," Cherie replied with a smile as she grabbed the box.

"Stay safe," Taylor told her.

"Always." Cherie blew Taylor a kiss then dropped the coin in the slot of the fortune machine and vanished.

"I should have locked her power," Taylor admitted.

"Probably," Myst agreed. "If it makes you feel better, just assume that she'll end up using her power to hunt down a bunch of criminals and make the world a better place."

"Do you actually believe that?" Taylor asked.

"We gave her a chance, sometimes that's all you can do," Myst replied, knowing that Cherie would have to make her own choice and that it wasn't his fault if she didn't take the second chance she was given.

"We can hope," Taylor offered, trying to look on the positive side of things, something that was a lot easier with her mother back. "How much would you charge to boost my magic?"

"Tell you what, if you help me set up the replicator I picked up in Star Trek, I'll empty my mana pool boosting your magic," Myst offered.

"Where do you want it set up?" Taylor asked, wanting a chance to look at some of the tech he picked up from Star Trek.

"In the workshop," Myst replied as he pointed over his shoulder at the door in the back room that led to the workshop.

"Cool," Taylor replied as she followed Myst into the back room, figuring she could talk him into letting her make some tools once they had everything set up to ‘test’ the replicator.

0o0o0

"There's a girl on the ship," River announced as she put her cards face up on the table.

"Inara isn't back yet," Kaylie told her, wondering if River was having another episode.

"It's not Inara," River replied.

"I'll bite, where is the girl?" Mal asked as he dropped his hand on the table, hoping it was nothing.

"In Jayne's room," River replied with a smile.

Simon glanced at Jayne. "Seems unlikely that a girl would set foot in Jayne's quarters."

"Hey," Jayne complained.

"Vera doesn't count," Zoe argued as she tossed her cards on the pile, slightly annoyed that she hadn't folded when she had a chance.

River tilted her head slightly. "Her name isn't Vera."

"Mal, make her stop, she's freaking me out," Jayne complained.

"You're not the only one," Mal admitted. "How did the girl get on the ship?"

"She appeared out of thin air," River replied.

"There's no…" Kaylie trailed off as they heard a door shut in the crew section, something that shouldn't have been possible since Wash was piloting the ship and everyone else was playing cards.

"Maybe we should investigate," Shepherd Book suggested.

"Make sure she doesn't drop the cider, I want one," River said as she collected her winnings from the middle of the table.

"Hello?" Cherie called out, having felt the people on the ship getting concerned and determined and figuring announcing herself would be easier.

Mal turned to look at the shepherd. "Pretty sure ghosts are your department."

"She's not a ghost," Shepherd argued.

"If she's not a ghost, she's a stowaway," Mal replied.

"Or she's lost," Kaylie pointed out.

"On a ship, in orbit?" Mal asked.

"She needed a fresh start. If we give her a chance, she'll fit in," River stated.

"I'll talk to her," Shepard said as he headed for the door to the crew cabins.

0o0o0

"What should I start with?" Taylor asked as she scrolled through the list of items they could replicate with the emergency replicator.

Myst briefly considered ordering Picard's favorite tea for tradition before deciding that it would be pointless since he wasn't a fan of bitter tea and the emergency replicator worked via a menu rather than verbal directions. "You should probably start with a tricorder then replicate everything you need to build another replicator."

"Let me guess, you want a backup?" Taylor asked.

"I figured you'd want a copy," Myst replied with amusement then turned to look at the doorway to the workshop when he heard the bell ring in the other room. "I'll be back in a minute."

"Grab a weapon, it's probably Alabaster judging by his powers," Taylor replied as she headed for the door, wanting to grab a permanent copy of his thinker power that helped him maintain his equipment.

"No rest for the wicked," Myst complained as he followed Taylor into the back room. He frowned when he walked out of the back room and saw half a dozen punks in his shop carrying guns and makeshift weapons along with a guy with chalk white skin that was looking around the room in annoyance. "How can I help you boys?"

"Who are you calling a boy?" one of the guys that was in his mid twenties demanded, trying to put the shopkeeper on his back foot.

"It's a fucking expression, what do you want?" Myst asked, losing what little patience he had left since he'd already had a long day and it was only half over.

"Protection money," Alabaster replied with a smirk.

"Awesome, you're going to pay me to protect you, how much?" Myst asked, failing to inject enough enthusiastically to cover the sarcasm.

"No," one of the thugs replied as he smashed his baseball bat against one of the tables, getting everyone's attention. "You're going to pay us or we're going to break shit!"

Myst glanced between the rest of the thugs. "I'll give you one shot, walk away and you'll live to see tomorrow."

"I've got a better idea, if you don't pay, I'll rape your assistant and break your legs," Alabaster threatened.

"Seriously?" Myst asked when he realized that none of the thugs were reluctant members or they had unfortunately good poker faces because they all looked enthusiastic about Alabaster's idea. "You realize she's white, right?"

"Everyone has to pay their taxes," one of the thugs offered with a smirk.

"Fuck it, down!" Myst ordered as he brought his hands up and unleashed lightning on the thugs as soon as Taylor dropped behind the counter, causing the thugs to thrash and scream as the lightning cooked their insides.

"Don't kill Alabaster," Taylor ordered.

"I'm not going to kill him," Myst replied as he jumped the counter and kicked the man's gun away from his hand. He stomped on his neck to hold him in place since he'd just reset his actual injuries. "Can you grab his thinker rating? He's not going to need it when I'm done with him."

"Sure," Taylor replied as she walked over and grabbed one of his feet, glad that she'd picked up a brute rating from Noelle as it made holding onto his foot easy despite how much he was thrashing and kicking at her hand. She tweaked his power a touch to improve his ability to maintain his gear then stole it, leaving the rest of his power alone since she liked having a secret identity and the chalk white skin was a requirement for that half of the power. "What are you going to do with him?"

"Normally, I'd just turn him into the cops but the PRT would get involved and he'd probably spend a week in lockup before someone broke him out," Myst explained, slightly annoyed that the man was smirking despite the fact that he had his boot on his neck. "Can you do something about his pain tolerance?"

"Give me a second," Taylor replied as she tweaked the villain's pain tolerance, giving it a slider that he could adjust. "That should do it." She stole his pain tolerance, figuring someone might want it since they could adjust it.

Alabaster thrashed when the pain of having someone pressing down on his throat hit him like a sledgehammer, something he wasn't used to and that he'd never dealt with particularly well before he triggered.

"Much better," Myst replied with a smile then stepped back as Alabaster started screaming in agony and trashing like he was being burned alive. "What the hell?!" he sputtered, more out of surprise than concern for the asshole.

"His power resets everything!" Taylor shouted, trying to be heard over his screaming.

Myst gestured and silenced the screaming cape with a spell. "What happened?"

"I'm guessing the inability to feel pain was important," Taylor offered, knowing she should feel worse about the guy's suffering but finding herself all out of fucks for someone that had seriously suggested raping her less than two minutes ago.

"That's the problem with certain types of immortality," Myst mused as he watched the villain thrash on the ground, never quite managing to pass out before his power reset him and the agony restarted.

"What are you going to do with him?" Taylor asked as Rose and Riley rushed out of the book room, curious about the screaming and the lightning.

Rose glanced at the dead people scattered around then focused on the man that was thrashing on the ground. "What happened?"

"Alabaster decided to win a Darwin award," Myst replied as he gestured and levitated the thrashing cape over to the dimension jumping machine that looked like an old fortune teller.

"You're just going to make him someone else's problem, aren't you?" Rose asked.

"If we turn him in, someone might figure out how to get him to talk and dropping him in the bay with cement shoes won't solve the problem permanently," Myst complained as he levitated a quarter over to the villain's hand. "Can you use a spell to cut his pain?"

"Sure," Rose replied, then cast a pain relief spell, giving Alabaster some temporary relief.

"Kaiser is going to fucking kill you!" Alabaster snarled when the pain stopped long enough to think straight.

"You have about five minutes before the pain comes back and your power tortures you for the next couple of hundred years. Your only real chance of living any sort of life is to put the coin in the slot and hope the machine drops you somewhere where your power doesn't work. Or you can go back to screaming in agony and I'll bury you ten feet deep in the woods where no one will ever find you."

"Fuck you!" Alabaster cursed then stuck the coin in the slot, figuring it couldn't be worse than listening to the guy's shit.

Myst watched the asshole vanish. "How long will the pain spell last?"

"About thirty minutes, assuming his power doesn't manage to overload it," Rose mused, a touch annoyed that she hadn't thought to run the experiment before he'd vanished but figuring it was for the best.

"We need to pick up a crystal ball so we can check to see where the box drops them," Harry said as he walked down the stairs with a plate of freshly baked cookies.

"I'll put it on the list," Myst replied, making a note to pick up some crystal balls from an occult shop so he could practice enchanting them.

"How are you doing?" Riley asked Taylor, getting the feeling that she needed to ask even if Taylor was taking the entire thing better than she would have expected.

"I don't feel very heroic but at least I know he's not going to escape during transport," Taylor offered, not sure how to feel about the asshole or her part in his power torturing him until he finally snapped, something she wasn't sure could happen since he kept resetting.

Rose gestured and levitated one of the cookies that her brother had baked and floated it over to Taylor. "Join the darkside, we have cookies."

Taylor shook her head then grabbed the cookie and took a bit, finding it surprisingly good.

Rose snickered. "Gets them every time."

"That's horrible," Harry complained as he set the plate of cookies on the counter so everyone could grab some.

"Blame Myst," Rose told him as she stole a cookie for herself.

"That's fair," Myst admitted, knowing the version of him that she'd grown up with would have used the line at least a couple of times over the years. "Can you do something about the dead people?"

"Sure," Harry replied as he started turning the dead bodies into stuffed pigs, figuring it would make getting rid of them easier. He'd barely finished polymorphing everyone and cleaning up the blood when the bell rang and the door opened, revealing an old woman.

"Welcome to the Magic Shop, how can I help you?" Myst asked.

"I'm looking for a comfortable bed," the woman replied.

"Let's take a look," Myst replied as he headed toward the door that led to the furniture.

0o0o0

"This is completely unfair, you realize that right?" Rose grumbled as they made their way toward the workshop to see what Myst was burning an insane amount of magic upgrading something. “Myst is blowing through all his magic upgrading something that is probably a random thing that caught his eye rather than giving us magic reserves that could crush Merlin.”

"Yep," Harry replied.

"That's it? Yep?" Rose asked.

"What do you want me to say?" Harry asked as they walked into the workshop and found Taylor floating six inches off the ground and glowing with magic. "He wanted to make sure your magic was stable after the demons screwed you over and the years in the book don't count because the book couldn't duplicate his magic. Also… we forgot to ask him to."

Rose scowled at her brother. "I'm trying to be frustrated here, you don't have to be rational."

"Sorry," Taylor offered, glad that she could sense Rose's emotions and knew that she wasn't actually that upset, just a bit irked at Myst.

"It's not your fault," Rose told her. "What did you bribe him with?"

"She helped…" Myst trailed off as Taylor blurted, "Blow job."

"Seriously?!" Rose sputtered out, thinking that her father had gotten cheated.

"No, I just said the worst thing I could think of, it was part of the deal," Taylor admitted.

"Seriously?" Rose asked Myst.

"I just told her to come up with something embarrassing and funny, that's on her," Myst replied defensively.

Rose glanced between her father and Taylor then shook her head. "How long until your mana regenerates enough to boost my magic?"

"I should be fine in a couple of minutes, what are you going to bribe me with?" Myst asked, mostly joking since he didn't have a problem boosting Rose's magic.

“Well certainly not a blowjob,” Harry said.

“I could… Yeah, I can’t even say that with a straight face,” Rose admitted, “it’s a bit too much like incest and I’m saving my first time crossing that line for a special occasion and a cloning spell.”

“Still say it’s just really advanced masturbation,” Harry told her.

“Of course you’d say that, you’re a guy,” she told her twin.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he complained.

“It doesn’t have to, she’s a woman,” Myst told him.

“Yeah- Hey!” Rose complained as they laughed at her.

Myst shook his head. "Tell you what, if you cover the counter for the rest of the day, I'll boost your magic, I need to go shopping and I'm tired of dealing with idiots."

"Deal," Rose agreed, not seeing a problem with helping out.

0o0o0