Traveling Magic Shop Part 34 (Patreon)

Taylor pulled her attention off the house where she could sense two parahumans and looked in Harry's general direction, not actually sure where he was since they were both invisible. "We're crossing a line."

"That's why we're invisible," Harry replied in a whisper.

"That doesn't change the fact that heroes aren't supposed to sneak around at night and kill people," Taylor complained.

"Generally speaking heroes protect the innocent and try to make the world a better place, we're doing both by getting rid of them," Harry argued. "Besides, they lost the right to a peaceful night's sleep when they joined the Empire considering Kaiser was more than happy to accept the asshole that killed Fleur into their ranks. So no, I don't feel bad about returning the favor and hitting them in their civilian identities."

"And this has nothing to do with wanting the ability to turn into fog?" Taylor asked.

"I can multitask and I'm not going to lose any sleep over killing Nazis," Harry assured her, knowing that he'd do the same to the death eaters once he got back to his world. "Besides, this is a good chance to pick up the ability to copy people."

"If I give him the ability, I lose the ability to alter it," Taylor complained.

"You have the ability to make copies of parahumans that have mutated powers and you'll get a magical copy of the power that just creates loyal clones, do you really need the ability to tweak it?"

"It would be nice," Taylor argued. "What if I need to make evil copies or good copies of evil people?" Taylor asked.

"How about this, you give the power to Fog while he's stunned then you make a copy and steal the power back from the original, that way I'll get a copy and you'll still have the original that you can modify," Harry suggested.

"I'd be copying someone just to kill them," Taylor complained.

"Or you let me kill the original and you steal the copying power from the loyal sociopath then send them to hunt down the rest of the Empire," Harry suggested.

Taylor shook her head. "You just want the ability to copy people."

"Damn straight," Harry agreed. "Being able to copy people or emotional support animals is a really nice trick."

"I want a copy of your ability to convert parahuman powers into magic abilities so I can hand them out," Taylor said, knowing his power would let her change the world.

"Deal," Harry agreed, hoping he wasn't making a mistake. "If you suppress their powers, I'll slip in and put them into an enchanted sleep."

"You're going to need eyes on Night, she's in the living room, I don't want to try to suppress her powers while she's in her breaker state," Taylor told him, fairly sure it would just lock her into her breaker form.

"Do you need to copy her power or can I kill her?" Harry asked, unwilling to leave the sociopath alive even without powers or deal with the PRT since it would mean admitting that they had a way to modify powers or remove them, something they were trying to avoid.

"I doubt they'd be able to keep her contained and I don't have the option to temporarily copy her power which means there's probably something wrong with it," Taylor admitted.

"Good to know," Harry admitted, changing his mind about picking up her ability. "Give me a minute to sneak over to the window."

"Good luck," Taylor told him.

Harry carefully headed over to the window, trying to avoid making enough noise for the monster inside to see him as he really didn't want to get into a fair fight with a nearly indestructible monster that could rip him in half. He peeked through the tiny holes in the blinds and stared at the twisted insect-like monster that was sort of perched over the couch television. 'Yeah, that's worse than some of the shit Belle mentioned.'

Harry dropped his invisibility, causing the monster to change into a confused woman in an old fashioned nightgown when her power realized that someone was looking at its host. He summoned his sword then teleported behind Night and cut her head off before she realized that there was a problem and that Fog hadn't just woken up and walked into sight.

Taylor locked Fog's powers when Night vanished from her power sense so that he wouldn't be able to change into a cloud then headed toward the door.

Harry quietly walked down the hallway, opened the door to the bedroom and found himself slammed into the door and tumbling into the room when the door opening triggered the claymore trap buried in the wall facing the door. He staggered into the room and stunned the confused villain that was in the process of rolling out of bed and reaching for his gun thanks to the explosion.

'So much for being quiet,' Taylor thought as she hit the door with a lockpicking spell. She quickly crossed the distance and slipped into the house, closing the door behind her. She glanced at the headless corpse then turned her attention to the hallway where she could see a cloud of dust. "Are you alive?"

"Yeah, my force field took the hit," Harry replied from the bedroom. "You're going to want to fly to avoid leaving footprints."

Taylor floated off the ground and flew into the hallway, getting a better look at the large chunk of missing sheetrock that had been obliterated by the claymore. "What type of paranoid bastard boobytraps their own house?"

"The type that can flow under the door and that doesn't sleep with their wife," Harry replied, feeling a bit stupid for getting caught in a trap.

Taylor scowled as she looked at the cape that was tangled up in his blankets. "Can I touch him without waking him up?"

"He's out cold. As long as you don't use his head for a drum, he should be out for at least twenty minutes," Harry told her.

"Good," Taylor replied as she floated over, touched Fog's arm and copied his ability to turn into fog. She waited a couple of seconds to make sure he wasn't going to wake up then pushed the fragment of Noelle's power that let her copy people into the unconscious villain. She twisted the fragment of Oliver's power that let her change her appearance so she had more control over the results and an off switch then shoved it into Fog. "Do you want a copy of the Siberian?"

Harry considered the question then shook his head. "Let's make sure everything else works, we can always find more villains."

"That works," Taylor replied as she used her copy of Noelle's power to copy the unconscious villain, dropping the copy on the bed. She made sure the clone had a copy of the powers she'd stuffed into the original Fog then stole the extra powers from the copy, reserving her ability to alter them and give them to parahumans. "That should do it."

"You might want to stand back," Harry warned Taylor. He waited for her to move back out of the splash range then resummoned his sword and cut the original's head off. He gestured and summoned a swarm of miniature glowing pixies. "Devour."

Taylor shivered when the swarm of adorable looking pixies devoured half the corpse over the next three seconds before vanishing. "That's disturbing."

"Yep," Harry agreed as he mentally pulled up his menu of copied powers that he could swap around, making sure he'd gotten everything. "Nice, his ability to dissolve organic material is separate from his alternate form which means I can hand out the ability to turn into fog without worrying about what they're going to do with it."

"Probably just as well," Taylor replied, trying not to think about the fact that she'd just murdered a villain in cold blood and was planning on doing the same with Coil. "Now what?"

"We should probably…" Harry trailed off as someone pounded on the front door.

"Are you alive?! I heard an explosion!" a female voice called out.

"Screw it, give him the Siberian's power," Harry suggested in a whisper, surprised that someone had managed to figure out where the explosion had come from.

Taylor shoved the fragment into the cloned villain, not all that worried about the ability since she'd already made a copy and she didn't need to adjust it. "Done."

Harry hacked the cloned Fog's head off then summoned his pixies who quickly devoured half the body before vanishing, giving him the ability to summon a projection. "I'll teleport us out then we can fly to the next target."

"Got it," Taylor replied as she grabbed Harry's arm.

Harry turned invisible again then teleported a couple of hundred feet into the air, fairly sure the cops that showed up to check the scene were going to have a bad day on account of the condition of the bodies and the lack of motive as they hadn't had time to loot the place to the ground. 'Just as well, maybe they'll be able to link some of the jewelry to open crimes.'

Taylor started flying toward the nicer part of town, figuring that would be the best place to find Coil.

0o0o0

"Rose, can you help me convince Myst that he's lost his marbles?" Riley asked hopefully as she walked out of the backroom.

"Lost implies that he had marbles to start with," Rose replied with amusement.

"They're not lost, they're just misplaced along with the rest of my stuff," Myst called out from the workshop.

"What's the problem?" Rose asked, figuring there was probably a simple solution.

"He wants to create a giant cannon to knock the Simurgh out of orbit with a pie," Riley complained.

"Is there a reason you're messing with Riley?" Rose asked Myst, knowing he could hear her.

"Yep," Myst replied with a grin as he walked out of the backroom. "I wanted to know if my new ring stops her from being able to sense my emotions."

"I can…" Riley trailed off as she realized that the bland mix of emotions that she could sense from Myst hadn't actually changed and didn't match his grin. "You're a cheating cheater," she complained with a pout.

"I'm a mage," Myst replied with a grin, happy that he could call his ring a success.

"How much did you have to upgrade it?" Rose asked.

"Nada," Myst replied smugly. "I wanted to see if I could fool her without resorting to upgrading it."

Riley glanced over at where Jack was playing cards with Vivian and Amy. "Can you read his emotions?"

Jack focused on Myst. "Just a faint sense of amusement. I probably wouldn't even notice that I can't hear his thoughts if I wasn't paying attention."

"Excellent," Myst replied as he spent the mana to upgrade the ring to make it harder for people to realize that the emotions he was projecting weren't his actual emotions.

"Speaking of projects, did you make any progress with teleporting things into the crystal balls or connecting them?" Rose asked Myst.

"I have a gobbled together prototype that works perfectly, if you ignore the fact that it turns anything organic in the crystal ball into bubblegum ice cream after about ten minutes," Myst complained.

Rose scrunched up her face in disgust. "That's revolting and useless."

Amy shook her head. "Unless you can reverse engineer it and get a different flavor, I'd love something that you can pour milk into and get ice cream in ten minutes."

"It would also be great for getting rid of Nazis," Jack mused.

"That's fucked up," Amy complained, trying to get the image out of her mind of turning people into ice cream and eating them.

"What? It's not like we're going to eat them, it's bubblegum," Jack argued.

"That's wrong on so many levels," Riley complained, not sure if Jack was serious or just messing with her since all of the Frost clones had weird gaps in their morals from the education package they'd received from the cloning machine.

"Did you try upgrading the flavors?" Rose asked, trying to change the subject before Amy lost her dinner as she was looking a little green.

Myst shook his head. "No luck, it's a feature of the pocket dimension that the spell created."

"What happened to the rest of the prototypes?" Rose asked, knowing he wouldn't have stopped at a flawed prototype.

"The first one doesn't link to anything, but you can teleport in and out just by touching the glass and saying, 'Shit!'. I'll probably give it to Armsmaster as a Christmas gift."

"Let me guess, you couldn't get it to work and you cursed?" Riley asked.

Myst laughed. "No, it rolled off the table and startled me. I was going to set it to something annoying like beam me up Scotty or monkey balls."

Riley glanced between Jack and Myst. "Does working for the shop cover shrinks?"

"It probably should," Myst admitted. "The second prototype shattered and the fourth turned the glass green. The fifth flings anyone that touches it and says the command word to a random location in the multiverse," Myst explained.

"What's the command word?" Rose asked.

"Yippee-ki-yay," Myst replied with a straight face.

"Bullshit," Rose stated, recognizing his tells.

"Yep," Myst agreed. "It's actually just Dimension Jump, Activate."

"Huh, I was expecting something more complicated," Rose admitted.

"I wanted to make sure no one said it by accident." Myst yawned. "I'll probably try to grab some sleep and finish the project in the morning."

"You're working on Christmas Eve?" Amy asked.

"I lost track of time," Myst admitted. "Do you have any Christmas plans?" he asked Rose, not sure if she had any Christmas traditions.

"Not particularly," Rose admitted with a sigh. "Mum and Dad always made a big deal about giving us gifts and spending time with us but we barely celebrated it growing up in the shop. I think we only celebrated it like twice and you basically let us decorate a conjured tree and gave us chocolate and citrus in our stockings, a couple of presents and homemade rolls at dinner."

"Sounds nice," Amy said, thinking about Carol's tendency to get nasty over the holidays because of stress.

"So, nothing?" Jack asked.

"I'll probably dress up as a naughty Christmas elf and give all of my friends Christmas cards with cash," Rose replied with a smile.

"Do you need someone to take the pictures?" Amy asked.

"Sure, I'll grab my camera," Rose replied as she headed for the stairs in the backroom with a spring in her steps.

"What's wrong with Christmas?" Jack asked Myst.

Myst considered the best way to phrase his thoughts on the holiday for a minute, struggling with the best way to relate his frustration with the holiday. "Generally speaking, I think the holiday causes a lot of stress, more than it's usually worth. So yeah, I'm not surprised that we didn't celebrate the holidays unless we just happened to be somewhere they were celebrating the holiday."

"Nope, we're not letting you be a grinch," Riley told him. "We're going to make some new memories, you're going to enjoy yourself even if we have to drag you out of here kicking and screaming."

"Fine," Myst grumbled, trying not to smile and failing. "You're in charge of the holiday fun."

"Awesome," Riley replied cheerfully, looking forward to having a good holiday without any drama.

"Before I forget, Amy, do you want a Christmas adventure in the magic book where you can take a break from your family or do you want a handful of gold coins?" Myst asked, figuring he'd give her the option.

Amy considered the choice for half a minute then sighed as she realized that she really needed a break from her life. "I think I'll take the vacation, can I collect after I watch Rose take the pictures?"

"Of course," Myst replied, not seeing a reason to ruin Rose's fun or cause Amy more stress.

0o0o0

"Once he ran the bitch out of office, he was going to have his people shoot her and blame it on the gangs that hadn't fallen in line," Calvert's clone explained, sounding almost proud of his original's stupid scheme.

"Why bother when you can run two timelines and continuously send people to torture her with a video camera in different ways then drop the timeline after you've watched the video? You'd have years of entertainment and she'd be out of the way," Taylor pointed out.

"He wanted to win," Calvert's clone replied. "She was also a threat."

"A threat? She's on dialysis, she'll probably be dead in five years," Taylor pointed out.

"Why risk it?" Harry asked, wondering if the vial that he'd drank to give him his powers had fucked with his head or if he'd always been that messed up.

"He's a sadistic fuck," Clavert's clone explained. "Speaking of sadistic fucks, you should probably kill at least half of the mercenaries, they're pretty fucked up, it's practically a requirement to work for the original. I'd be happy to have them shot in the head and dropped in the bay if you want."

"Do you have any morals?" Harry asked, curious if there was a line in the sand that he wouldn't cross.

"Of course not," the clone replied as if the question was offensive. "If the boss wanted me to toss a bunch of babies on the grill after bashing their brains out, I'll ask how well done she wants them and if she wants them covered with-" whatever else he'd been planning on saying was lost when Harry summoned his sword and cut the clone's head off.

"Are all of your villains this unhinged?" Harry asked as he let his sword vanish, ignoring the blood that was pooling on Calvert's carpet and the blood that was covering his conjured hazmat suit.

"No clue," Taylor admitted as she looked at the half eaten dead villain that Harry's pixies had consumed. "Let's grab his laptop and get out of here."

"Give me a second to loot the safe and grab his go bag from the crawlspace," Harry told her.

"No point in leaving the money," Taylor agreed.

0o0o0