Myst in DC Part 10 (Patreon)

Zatanna frowned slightly as a well crafted celtic knotwork silver pendant with a large cheap looking purple and white stone dropped when Myst’s Jewelry wheel stopped spinning. “If the stone wasn’t crap that might be worth something.”

Myst frowned as he looked at the pot metal chain that was far too thin for the size of the pendant. “At least the knotwork is excellent.”

Kent grinned as he examined the new pendant. “I imagine the enchantment will make up for it.”

Myst examined the pendant with his upgrade ability. “Completely, the enchantment is weaker than I’d like and the stone needs work, but the framework is excellent.”

“Meaning?” Robin asked as he walked into the lab with Raven, Starfire and Beast Boy.

Myst turned to look at Robin. “The necklace has a one hundred point regenerating mana pool which the user can use to cast spells or fuel anything their own mana could be used for.”

“Having extra mana would be nice,” Aqualad said as he studied the pendant with his various detection spells, trying to figure out how it worked.

“Does that mean you could create a few dozen copies and boost your effective mana regeneration through the roof?” Robin asked as he walked over so he could look at the various items scattered on the lab table.

“In theory, it would cost a bit to get started but once I have everything up and running they’d pay for themselves fairly quickly. Not to mention they’d be a decent boost for everyone else once I don’t need them. Sadly, I have a feeling that the enchant needs a gemstone to store mana, possibly a precious gem of some kind and they can get expensive.”

Robin smirked as he pulled a greenish blue gemstone pendant out of his pocket and set it on the table. “Would this work?”

Myst reached over and picked up the turquoise pendant, looking at the silver dragon that secured the semi precious stone to the chain. “Quite well. Where did you find this?”

“I picked up a dozen of them from a jewelry store when I grabbed the rest of the supplies, they were decently cheap.”

“Define cheap,” Artemis said, looking at the attractive pendant.

Robin shrugged. “A touch over twenty dollars a pendant. Batman give me a decent budget and I knew we were going to want gear that looked good without being over the top.”

“Ah, that makes sense,” Artemis admitted, knowing that a couple of hundred was a drop in the bucket when it came to League expenses.

“I like it!” Starfire said, happy that Robin had such great taste in jewelry.

“They’re perfect,” Myst said as he set the original pendant on the lab bench next to the pendant Robin had bought then concentrated and pushed 200 mana into the dragon pendant while focusing on duplicating the enchantment.

Kent watched the entire process, not sure if he should be amazed or disturbed by how efficient Myst’s ability was. “It’s certainly weaker, but I can sense that the enchantments are stable.”

“Does that mean it worked?” Beast Boy asked.

Myst smiled as he looked at the newly enchanted pendant. “More or less, they have barely any mana regeneration to speak of and only 10 points of capacity but I can fix that.” He dropped enough mana into the pendant to bring it up to five points a minute. “There, it’s up to five points a minute.”

“I’ll go collect the rest of the pendants,” Robin said as he headed for his room where he’d stashed them.

“Thanks.” Myst turned to look at Kent. “In case I forgot to mention it earlier, thank you for the assistance.”

“You’re welcome, but it was my pleasure, really. It even offered a couple of insights into improving my own enchanting,” Kent said as Dinah walked into the room. “On that note, I should get back to the Tower. I need to track down a master armorer.”

Dinah smiled at Kent. “If you can’t find one, Diana probably knows someone. Thank you for making sure everything was safe.”

“Probably and my pleasure,” Kent said as he stood up, happy that his knees hadn’t locked up from sitting too long and indeed did not even ache at all.

Dinah glanced between Myst and Beast Boy. “Are you up for another round of sparring practice?”

“Would it help if I said no?” Beast Boy asked, half joking.

Dinah smirked at Beast Boy, giving him all the answer he needed.

Myst picked up the pendants. “I guess I can work on the pendants in the gym just as easily I can in the lab.”

“That’s the spirit. What do the pendants do?” Dinah asked as they headed towards the gym and Kent to the Zeta-tube.

“Independent mana regeneration and storage,” Myst explained as he dropped the rest of his mana into boosting the original pendant’s mana regeneration. “Hopefully we don’t hit any snags.”

Dinah smiled as they entered the gym. “Better to hit snags in practice than in the field.”

“True.” Myst set the extra pendant near the door then headed over to the mat and brought his hands up. “Hopefully I’ll do better than last time.”

“Anything’s possible,” Dinah teased as she walked over to the mat. ‘If he keeps improving at this rate, I’m going to have someone worth practicing with in a couple of weeks.’

Artemis glanced at Zatanna. “Do you want to spar?”

“You’re on,” Zatanna said cheerfully as she headed toward the mats.

“Just remember everyone is a friend and work on controlling your speed and strength,” Dinah said as she threw a snap kick at Myst’s head.

Myst slipped to the side and blocked the kick then got hit in his face for his trouble with an insanely quick roundhouse kick from her other leg, followed by a backhand. He ignored the momentary flicker of pain as he worked on trading blows with Dinah. He figured he’d get in a quick match then work on his pendants and grab a match with someone else, repeating the process until everyone was done with training.

0o0o0

Aqualad glanced over at Myst as yet another faint pulse of mana washed over him, feeling like he’d just stuck his tongue on a baby eel only it wasn’t his tongue it was his tattoos. He still wasn’t sure what to make of the strange humanoid slime that the team had picked up on their mission to help Doctor Fate. He seemed almost frantic to increase his abilities and oddly calm in other ways. “Where are you from Myst?”

Myst glanced away from the collection of pendants arranged in two lines on the padded stool he was using as a workbench and glanced at the television, making sure there was still a commercial playing rather than the only slightly more interesting action movie that Beast Boy had selected because he liked the actress that played the main character. “The Pacific Northwest on an Earth like world without metahumans or magic, at least as far as I know.”

“As far as you know?” Starfire asked.

“If magic users exists on my world, they’re either hiding it extremely well or they can’t affect things other than coincidentally. Aliens probably exist, but I doubt any of them have ever been to Earth given the vast distances you’d have to travel and I’m not sure that faster than light travel is possible back home.”

“Why not?” Starfire asked.

“If it existed, we’d probably have already seen signs of aliens.” Myst made a mental note to research faster than light drives to see if they actually worked on something approaching real physics or if they worked because the DC universe was more flexible. Sadly, he wasn’t sure he remembered enough from middle school science classes, or bleed over from all of the math classes he’d taken in college, to do more than shrug.

“What about psionics?” Megan asked from her place on Connor’s lap, thinking about her people.

“People have claimed to have various psychic powers throughout history, but no one has been able to prove it to a reasonable degree,” Myst explained as he reached over to the second pendant in the top row, touched it with his index finger and spent the forty mana the pendant contained to boost the pendant’s mana capacity then moved to the next pendant and did the same with the fifty mana it had regenerated.

“What about Atlantis?” Robin asked as he glanced at Aqualad.

Myst shook his head. “As far as I know, it was just a myth in my world.”

“Which means you never found it,” Aqualad said smugly.

Myst briefly considered arguing with him, but decided there wasn’t a point, unlike Wally’s insistence that magic wasn’t real, Aqualad’s insistence that Atlantis existed in a world that he’d probably never visit, wasn’t hurting anyone. “Anything is possible.”

“Please tell me that you still have stage magicians,” Zatanna teased.

Myst grinned as he turned to look at Zatanna. “Plenty, some of them have even pulled off tricks that no one has been able to duplicate, but I’m fairly sure none of them have actual magic, though it would explain a couple things.”

He sighed as he reached out and touched the next pendant and realized that the pendant’s mana pool was full. He spent the pendant’s fifty mana to increase the cap then spent 500 of his own mana to increase the pendant’s cap by 50 points so he wouldn’t start losing mana if his routine got screwed up by getting distracted.

“That is going to drive me nuts,” Aqualad complained as he rubbed at the tattoos on his arms.

“What’s going to drive you nuts?” Robin asked, looking at Aqualad.

“It’s like sticking your tongue on a bunch of electric eels, only it’s running over my tattoos every time he spends mana, the more he spends the more annoying it is,” he complained.

Myst glanced over at Zatanna and Raven. “Are you feeling the same thing?”

Zatanna pulled her attention off a rare potion recipe that Sabrina was showing her. “No, it feels like a breeze, cool or warm depending on which is better.”

“Same,” Raven said as she turned to look at Aqualad. “It might be because of your tattoos.”

“It’s possible, I’m going to send a message to Atlantis and ask,” Aqualad said as he stood up and left the room, wanting to put some distance between himself and Myst if he was going to continually spend mana.

Beast Boy pushed the mute button to turn the sound back on. “On that note, back to the show.”

Myst absently paid attention to the show as he worked on upgrading the pendants. He was hoping he could get each of the pendants up to 2,000 mana so that he could take thirty minute cat naps on the magic pillow without letting them cap out as he slept when he could be using that mana to upgrade things. He figured worst case, going a night without sleep to get everything set up would mean a lot less wasted mana moving forward.

“That was awesome!” Beast Boy exclaimed as the credits started rolling a touch over an hour  later.

“For a given value of awesome,” Myst agreed as he picked up his collection of pendants.

“What do you mean for a given value of awesome?” Beast Boy asked in disbelief.

“Pretend for a moment that you’re a henchman working for a villain and an attractive women without any supplies just happens to wander up to your secret base.”

“She could just be a lost tourist,” Artemis pointed out as she grabbed the remote and hit the mute button.

“When you’re out in the middle of nowhere? Sure, it could happen, which is why you tell her that the area is restricted and tell the other minion to get her a bottle of water while you report her presence.”

“What happens when she takes him hostage?” Megan asked.

“You shoot the ground to alert the rest of the base that there’s a problem then let her know that you owe the minion money from the last poker game and are perfectly willing to shoot through him if you have to.”

Robin shook his head. “I think you’re overestimating most minions.”

“I’m fairly sure that’s just basic common sense,” Myst said dryly. “The most likely event is that she tries to get a ride so that she can have her friends ambush the truck or jeep that you use to get her back to town, which is why you send someone you don’t like.”

Zatanna shook her finger at Myst. “You don’t get to turn villain.”

Myst shook his head. “Even ignoring the insanity of making you and Raven cry, I don’t have a reason to turn into a villain.”

“Money?” Kid Flash asked.

“I won the superpower lottery, I’d make more legally in a week in Hollywood using my power than I ever would as a villain.”

“In a week?” Artemis asked. “I think you’re underestimating how much certain art objects go for.”

“Not really, if you steal anything too valuable, you get heroes that are willing to track you to the ends of the Earth. So yeah, I’d rather just give the occasional billionaire an extra ten to twenty years of life for a couple of million and live a very comfortable life.”

“You can make people younger?” Kid Flash asked suspiciously.

“Not yet, but I can increase their lifespan and increase their resistance to wrinkles and their ability to heal, which would likely be enough to make me more money than I’d ever make as a villain.”

Beast Boy shook his head. “Enough about over the top powers, who wants to watch another movie?”

“I’m up for another movie,” Artemis agreed.

Myst glanced at the clock on the wall. “Sorry, I feel like sprawling out and doing some research if Sabrina is up for it.”

“Of course,” Sabrina spoke up.

“Want someone to bounce ideas off?” Zatanna asked Myst.

“I wouldn’t object,” Myst replied.

“Have fun,” Raven said as she handed Sabrina to Zatanna. “I’m going to go meditate.”

Zatanna waited until they’d reached Myst’s room before she asked, “What are you researching?”

“Aquaman has the ability to breathe water and air and he’s supernaturally durable. I’d like to see if I can track down the original spell that was used to create Atlanteans so that we could breathe water without ending up with gills or other animal traits,” Myst explained as he climbed the ladder on his loft bed over the computer terminal.

“I’m fairly sure the original spell has been lost for several thousand years,” Zatanna said as she slipped her boots off. “It would be an amazing discovery though. Sadly, I can’t see it happening.”

“And yet, I know where to find a forgotten tower with a plaque that explains how to cast the spell,” Sabrina piped up, causing the two young mages to turn and stare at her as the book practically radiated smugness.

“Let me guess, it’s buried on the bottom of the ocean?” Zatanna asked.

“Nope, if it was that easy, the Atlanteans would have found it. It’s in Norway, they tossed up a spell around the mage’s tower to conceal it and it’s been there ever since.”

“We’ll have to see if Megan will give us a lift tomorrow,” Myst mused as he lined the pendants up at the end of the bed so he could easily touch them but where they’d be out of his way.

“Should we invite Aqualad?” Zatanna asked as she climbed the ladder.

“You mean the guy that would immediately claim they were Atlantean secrets and try to confiscate it for his people? Yeah, no, not until I’ve learned the spell.”

“You don’t know that he’d do that,” Zatanna teased as she sprawled on the bed next to him.

“You’re right I don’t. He’s a great teammate and hero, but he’s also an Atlantean which means there’s no point in causing him divided loyalties. We can always tell Aquaman about it later... after we’ve discovered all of the lost Atlantean magic.”

“Right, you just want to steal a bunch of ancient artifacts,” she teased.

“That implies someone owns the tower. I’m fairly sure they didn’t turn themselves into a lich which means no one owns the tower,” he countered.

“What about the local government?” Zatanna asked.

“Do you honestly trust any governments with magic?” Myst asked.

“I think Atlantis and Themyscira are the only governments I might consider trusting with magic and Atlantis has their own issues so yeah, point,” Zatanna admitted as she set Sabrina next to Myst’s pillow. “If the tower has been sealed for thousands of years how do we get in?”

“A lot of mana and a series of magical challenges designed to test your abilities,” Sabrina explained. “On the upside, if you defeat the challenges, you can claim the tower and who doesn’t want a wizard’s tower?”

“If you can’t defeat them?” Zatanna asked.

“Let’s put it this way, OSHA wasn’t even an afterthought back then.”

“In other words, don’t fail.” Myst opened his gacha menu and looked at his options. “Hey, neat, that’s the first time I’ve seen a Weapon, Bag of Stones, or Armor wheel. I’d even say the food option was normal except it is a thousand mana, which means it’s probably something interesting.”

“Or very expensive French Cuisine,” Zatanna joked.

Myst stuck his tongue out at Zatanna then selected the Armor wheel for a thousand. “Let’s see what the Armor wheel gives us.”

Sabrina said, “Let’s hope the wheel doesn’t drop a set of platemail on you.”

“That would be annoying.” Myst grinned when the wheel stopped spinning and dropped an exceptionally well crafted silvery left gauntlet.

“Is that silver?” Zatanna asked, not sure why someone would make a gauntlet out of silver.

Myst looked at the gauntlet with his upgrade ability. “Mithril, extremely durable and light as a feather.”

Zatanna picked up the gauntlet. “More like a leather glove.”

“You’re just being nitpicky,” Myst argued as he looked at the stats on the gauntlet.

“Does it do anything interesting?” Sabrina asked.

“You’ve seen Star Wars, right?” Myst asked with amusement.

“Yes? What does that have to do it?” Zatanna asked.

Myst put the glove on his left hand then pointed at the wall and zapped it with a stream of blue and white lightning. “Zap!” He felt his mana pool drop by twelve points, a negligible sum.

“If can’t be that impressive, the wall is still standing and it barely makes any noise,” she joked.

“It’s a stun weapon, you can’t actually hurt people with it, which means it’s great for crowd control or dealing with Kid Flash.”

“I’m going to have to borrow that glove,” Zatanna said cheerfully.

“I don’t know, I sort of like it,” Myst said with amusement as he reached over and touched one of the pendants and selected the thousand point Bag of Stones wheel, emptying the pendant and most of his remaining mana to pay for the wheel.

“Bag of stones?” Zatanna asked with a raised eyebrow.

“It seemed suitably weird.” Myst pulled his magic pillow out of his inventory then touched the next pendant and used fifty mana to upgrade the pillow’s sleep reduction. “Huh, neat, you only need five hours of sleep with the pillow now.” He looked at the next upgrade. “And a hundred mana for the next hour.”

“You’re going to have to make the rest of us pillows.” Zatanna raised her eyebrows when the wheel stopped and dropped a yellow coin purse dropped. She ran her fingers over the embroidered letters on the bag. “Link?”

Myst studied the enchantment on the bag. “It conjures a number of crystals that are cut to resemble gemstones every week. I’m going to have to upgrade it.”

“You’re telling me that you can make bags that conjure gems every week?” Zatanna asked in disbelief.

“Gems are basically only worth anything because we give them value, the elements they’re made out of aren’t exactly rare. I’m sure you could create gems with the right spell,” Myst explained as he emptied the bag of gems, not terribly surprised to find the thirteen crystals cut like rupees from the Zelda games. “At least we’ll have plenty of gems for making jewelry.”

“That reminds me, I want a body, you all seem to have a great deal of fun with them and it’s better than having to sit around and wait for people to carry you somewhere interesting,” Sabrina mused. “Can I have one of the extra magic girl lockets?”

“Sure,” Myst replied as he pulled the copied locket out of his inventory and set the locket on Sabrina’s open pages. “I’m not sure it will work on you, but I was going to have to replace it anyways considering the headband.”

Myst winced at the grinding noise when Sabrina’s pages snapped shut on the locket and started eating it. “Yeah, that’s one way to get rid of extra magic items.”

Sabrina giggled as she turned into a kneeling naked red haired girl then promptly fell on her face between Myst and Zatanna when she lost her balance. “I might have to work on that.”

Zatanna stared at the naked girl that used to be a book on the increasingly crowded bed. “You can eat magical items for powers, can’t you?”

“Yep!” Sabrina replied as she sort of propped herself up on her arms.

Myst twisted so that he could see Sabrina’s empty forehead then glanced at her generous behind. “The original item is more of a guideline isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Sabrina replied then swapped back to her book form. She used her telekinesis to float up then twist around before she changed back to her new human form sitting upright facing them. “How do I look?”

“Adorable,” Myst assured Sabrina, a touch surprised that she was far more attractive than anyone else that had tried one of the lockets while still resembling the girl everyone else had turned into when trying that particular locket.

“We’re probably going to have to find a spell for conjuring clothing or let her eat a copy of your ring,” Zatanna said while she checked out Sabrina’s breasts and compared them to her own. “Are you grabbing anything else from your gacha?”

“I might as well grab the food for a thousand,” Myst mused as he reached over and touched the second pendant in the line and used a thousand mana to pay for the Food wheel.

Zatanna snickered as she looked at the spinning wheel. “Maybe we’ll get some of Popeye’s spinach.”

“Or something useful like a Devil Fruit,” Myst mused.

“What’s a Devil Fruit?” Sabrina asked.

“Something from a comic back in my world. It was basically a cursed fruit that gave people vaguely shitty abilities but cursed them with the inability to swim on what was basically a water world.”

“That sounds less than useful,” Zatanna noted.

“Pretty much.” Myst caught the cupcake that dropped from the wheel. He silently read the frosted words on the top of the cupcake that surrounded the single candle. ‘I R Six!’

Zatanna shivered as she stared at the cupcake radiating magic. “There is a lot of magic in that cupcake.”

Myst blinked as he checked the cupcake. “That’s because it gives you immortality, by physically turning you six years old and stopping you from aging.”

Zatanna winced. “That sounds like a good way to go insane.”

Myst checked the cupcake’s upgrade options. “Pretty much, on the upside, upgrading it makes you younger, which means a knock-off should make you older, not sure how much until I try and I can always make a knock-off of a knock-off if that is still too young.”

“Which means you could eventually get it to a reasonable age?” Zatanna asked.

“In theory,” Myst said, stuffing the cupcake in his inventory so he could play around with baking tomorrow.

“If you can get that to twenty to thirty years rather than six… you could sell them for a large fortune.”

“That’s the idea, even sixteen wouldn’t be a complete deal breaker though mid to late twenties would be better.” Myst reached over and touched the next pendant then the pillow, dropping a 100 mana to reduce the required sleep by another hour. “Let’s see how far I can push the pillow then I’ll see what else I can get.” He spent another two hundred to bring the required sleep a night with the pillow down to four and a half hours then spent 400 to get it down to four. “Rats.” He tapped the next pendant and spent 800 mana to get it down to three and a half hours of sleep. “I got it down to three and a half hours of sleep before it jumped to 1600 points for thirty minutes off.”

“Considering the pillow boosts naps, you’d probably only need an hour and a half or so a night, maybe two hours split up,” Zatanna mused.

“Which would keep from having to boost my mana capacity to insane levels to avoid losing any while I sleep.”

“If you manage to forgo sleep altogether I am stealing your bed,” Zabtanna teased stretching out and getting comfortable next to Sabrina, “it’s just so comfy!”

“Somehow I think you’d do that anyway,” Myst replied as he dumped all of his mana into his mana capacity, not at all displeased by the idea.

“It is comfy,” Sabrina agreed, laying back down between the two and making them scoot around till the three were comfy. “Someone gets the lights.”

“sthgiL,” Zantanna incanted. “Night!”

“Night,” Sabrina repeated pulling them both half on top of her to use as covers.

“Maybe a nap wouldn’t be too bad an idea,” Myst mused before closing his eyes, it had been a long day after all.