Myst in DC part 13 (Patreon)

Zatanna raised her eyebrows as she walked into the lab and saw Myst cutting a green tube sock with a pair of sisters. She glanced over at Karen who was working on drawing some type of schematic on one of the computers. “Is there a reason he’s cutting up a perfectly good sock?”

“No idea.” Karen pointed at the less than elegant looking solar panel on the table next to her. “I’ve been working on writing up the schematic for the solar panel he managed to modify.”

Myst set his scissors down on the table. “I wanted to see if I could duplicate the rupee purse and I can’t exactly run down to the shops without making a scene.”

“I’m blaming this on the fact that you’re male,” Zatanna teased as she walked over to the hat box that Kara had mentioned, opened the lid then reached into the box and pulled out a green coin purse that had her name embroidered on it. “Purses are accessories.”

Myst rubbed his face. “Thanks, I was stuck thinking about the box creating clothing, not accessories that haven’t been used in a couple of hundred years.”

“I noticed,” Zatanna replied with amusement as she dropped the coin purse in front of Myst. “Shouldn’t you be saving your mana for upgrading people?”

“That’s what my pendants are for, besides my regeneration is up to 500 a minute, I can afford to play around a bit.”

“Recognized, Captain Atom 12, Recognized Lantern Stewart 14,” the computer announced over the coms.

“Right on time.” Myst focused on the rupee bag then poured a thousand mana into turning Zatanna’s bag into a magical bag that could create rupees.

Zatanna giggled when the mana wave washed over her. “How much are you going to have to upgrade the bag?”

Myst looked at the bag with his upgrade ability. “It looks just about the same, if you ignore the fact that it can only make one to six green rupees and still takes a week to recharge. It also doesn’t start recharged which is probably part of the lost power. Still, in the grand scheme of things, that’s not so bad.”

“Can you upgrade the recharge rate?” Karen asked without looking away from the schematic she was working on.

Myst grinned as he realized that it was only 200 mana to increase the recharge rate so that it would recharge in six days rather than seven. “It’s actually decently cheap all things considered.” He spent 1,200 mana to increase the recharge time on Zatanna’s bag so that it only took a day to recharge then frowned as the price jumped to 100 an hour. “For a given value of cheap.” He slid the slider up then sighed when he hit the last hour and the price jumped to 100 a minute. “Hmm, I think I’ll stick with an hour recharge for right now considering the jump in price.” He spent the 2300 mana. “Okay, that should let you create rupees every hour.”

“Can you upgrade the quality?” Zatanna asked hopefully.

Myst looked to see what the bag’s upgrade options were. “Looks like I have a couple options. I can increase the types of rupees for 500 mana. I’m assuming that changes the available colors and I can increase the amount generated by 100 per rupee or 300 for a d6 of them.”

“Considering two of the heroes are going to be here shortly, you might as well drop your mana into upgrading the bag, so you can start recharging just in case the pendants aren’t enough,” Zatanna said.

“You’re just saying that because it’s your bag,” Myst teased as he spent five hundred mana to upgrade the types of rupees it could generate then spent 1,500 to boost the number of rupees it generated by 5d6. “That should generate anywhere from 6 to 36 rupees every hour.” He picked up the ‘coin purse’ and handed it to Zatanna.

“Don’t worry, I’ll share,” she assured him.

“Share what?” John Stewart asked as he walked into the lab with Captain Atom following him.

“Ingredients,” Myst replied as he reached over and grabbed one of the pendants. He didn’t see a point in sharing more information about his abilities than he had to with the Guardians. “Let’s start with Stewart.” He burned all of the mana in the pendant to boost John’s mental defenses then grabbed the next pendant and did the same thing. “Almost there.” He spent another 200 of his own mana to finish the job then grabbed another pendant. “That’s it for Stewart.”

“Already?” John asked, a touch surprised that Myst was already done.

“Did you want it to take longer?” Myst asked with amusement.

“No, but I was expecting it to take longer, considering the magnitude of it.”

“Fair enough.” Myst upgraded Captain Atom’s mental defenses then grabbed a fourth pendant and pushed Captain Atom’s mental defenses well into the supernatural range. “And you’re good.”

“Thank you for the assistance,” Captain Marvel said.

John nodded, realizing that he hadn’t thanked him. “Thank you for the assistance.”

“You’re welcome. I’d rather not have to deal with members of the League getting mind controlled, once was enough.” Myst complained. “You should be reasonably safe, but I’d still try to avoid giving anyone the chance to control you if you can help it.”

John nodded. “Increased resistance, not immunity, Batman mentioned it.”

Myst nodded. “I should be able to do more eventually but for right now, that’s the best I can do.”

“It’s more than we had,” Captain Atom assured him. “Speaking of improving things later, I know you are supposed to be able to improve nearly anything, so would increasing the amount of energy I can store without getting shunted into the future be possible?”

“Let me look,” Myst said as he glanced at John’s ring, slightly annoyed that he couldn’t just cast a silence spell around the listening device. He looked at Captain Atom’s powers. “Hmm, I’m not even sure how to measure the amount of energy you can store, but increasing it takes a large amount of mana... So, yeah, that’s going to have to wait, but it should be possible within a week or two.”

“Good to know. Thank you again for the assistance,” Captain said then turned and left.

“Recognized, Captain Marvel 15,” the computer announced over the speakers.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.” John turned and left.

“Best of luck.” Myst briefly considered asking John to scan the solar panel and create a schematic then decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle as it would reduce Karen’s part in the project and the bubblehead malware on the ring would probably prevent it, rules were rules after all. He bought the last wheel on his gacha menu then closed the menu.

Zatanna glanced at the label for the spinning wheel. “Weapons?”

“It was the last wheel on my gacha menu and I haven’t seen weapons pop up all that often. You’d think they’d be more common all things considered.” Myst twitched and nearly jumped backwards when the wheel stopped and something that looked like a cross between an alien blaster and a squid dropped. “What the fuck?!”

Karen turned and looked at the alien weapon that Myst was holding by a metal tentacle. “No idea. It’s certainly not Kryptonian.”

Myst looked at the weapon with his upgrade ability. “Okay, it’s a technomagical mutation device.”

“Why did it drop from the weapons wheel?” Zatanna asked warily.

“Probably because the mutation is unstable and causes a berserk state.”

“How does it stop someone from attacking the user?” Karen asked.

“As far as I can tell, it doesn’t.” He stuck the weapon in his inventory before someone had the bright idea of confiscating it. “No one said every wheel would be useful.” He was looking forward to making a couple knock-off copies and separating the properties into something more useful. The ability to cause an entire pirate crew to go into a berserk rage sounded useful in certain situations as did the ability to mutate test subjects without the berserker rage if they could upgrade the mutation effect into something useful.

“Point.” Zatanna turned and smiled at Captain Marvel when he walked into the lab. “Hello.”

Myst looked at Captain Marvel with his upgrade ability. ‘Crap, he’s already almost as resistant to mind control as the people I upgraded, great.’ He worked on moving the pendants to his left wrist while he tried to figure out a diplomatic way to tell the hero that he already knew he was a ten year old kid. “Let’s take a walk.”

“Is something the matter?” Captain Marvel asked.

“Not exactly but I’d like to have a conversation about a couple of things I noticed about your powers that you’ll probably want to keep private, so let’s go.” Myst walked out of the room and headed for the conference room as he didn’t want anyone else finding out that one of the League’s more powerful heroes was a kid.

Captain Marvel plastered a smile on his face then followed Myst.

Myst walked into the conference room then shut and locked the door. “Okay, look, I know you’re a kid.”

“What? I’m not a kid,” Captain Marvel objected awkwardly.

“You’re ten years old. I don’t actually care that you want to play hero, part of your power is the Wisdom of Solomon after all. What I do care about, is that your upgraded form makes it almost impossible to upgrade your mental defenses to a reasonable degree without a great deal of power. On the plus side, I have an easy solution. If you turn back into a kid, I can upgrade your baseline abilities and they’ll be affected by the power multiplier when you turn back into Captain Marvel.”

“How did you know about my age?”

“I’m not stupid and I have the power to upgrade people, which lets me know in detail what their powers are. So, yeah, you have two choices here, don’t take the upgrade and put the League at risk or change back and take the upgrade and be a more powerful hero that I don’t have to worry about being mind controlled.”

“Alright. Shazam!” Billy exclaimed, causing a ‘bolt’ of ‘lightning’ to jump from the ceiling and hit him, changing him into a ten year old in jeans and a red hoodie.

“Pleased to meet you, let’s get started.” Myst touched the first pendant hanging from his wrist and spent its mana to upgrade Billy’s mental defenses. He grabbed the next pendant and did the same, barely reaching the human ‘cap’ for an adult. He used the third pendant to push his mental defenses into the supernatural range. “Okay, that’s the mental defenses done, what else do you need upgraded?”

“I thought you were just going to upgrade everyone’s mental defenses?” Billy asked.

“I was but you’re here and it seems like a decent opportunity to give you a boost, considering your powers will magnify whatever I do improve. Let’s start with the good ‘ol wisdom stat.” He touched the next pendant and spent all of the mana to increase Billy’s general ability to learn and retain information. He figured that was the best way he had to shore up the fact that Billy was a kid underneath his powers.

“What about my intelligence? Wisdom is nice but that doesn’t help me much in school.”

“That’s easy enough.” Myst used one of the pendants to boost Billy’s already decent intelligence up to almost genius level. “You’ll still have to work for things, but between your boosted ability to learn and increased ability to retain information you’ll find school a lot easier to deal with. Okay, four more pendants worth of mana left to use. What else would you like?”

“Durability or strength?” Billy asked hopefully.

Myst shook his head. “You’re ten, I’m not upgrading your strength, it might cause issues with your bones.” Mostly he just didn’t want Billy breaking things or people and he could always upgrade him again later once he knew how seriously he was taking his training. “On the other hand, fatigue regeneration, durability, and general endurance would be workable, if you’d like.”

“Please!” Billy said excitedly, thinking about how much it would help with gym. “Maybe agility if you can?”

“Don’t expect superhuman levels but sure.” Myst touched the next pendant and pushed Billy’s agility up ten points, putting him in the top two to three percent for his age if he was reading the numbers correctly. He spent the rest of the mana in the pendant to increase Billy’s fatigue regeneration. ‘Yeah, that’s borderline supernatural for a ten year old.’ He used the next two pendants to increase Billy’s physical endurance and durability. “You’re going to need to do some training as a ten year old to get the full effect, but I’ll arrange it with Robin when I have time.”

“That would be great!” Billy agreed excitedly, looking forward to having some heroic friends closer to his own age than the rest of the League.

“One pendant left, how about a boost to your self control and patience?” Myst asked, hoping he’d go for it.

Billy considered Myst’s suggestion. While he’d love something more flashy, he knew he could use a bit more patience and self control. “That works, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Myst spent the pendant’s mana to upgrade Billy’s self control and patience. Sure, part of self control and patience was learned but enough of it was natural talent which meant he could boost them to a more reasonable level. “You should probably change back. I’ll let you know when I’ve arranged things with Robin.”

“I’m looking forward to it. Shazam!”

Myst blinked as a ‘lightning bolt’ hit Billy and changed him into Captain Marvel. He grinned when he saw that the gods’ blessing added to what was already there which meant that Captain Marvel’s mental defenses were high enough that he doubted he’d notice a thousand demons trying to get into his head at the same time. “I’ll let you know when I can arrange practice with the team.”

Captain Marvel smiled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it, you’re a great hero. You should probably head home and talk to your guardians and practice running.”

“Why?” Captain Marvel asked not sure why Myst wanted him to practice running as Billy.

“Two reasons, it gives you a baseline for your new abilities and it gives you an excuse for your increased physical abilities. As long as you have a reasonable excuse like spending the summer training and you don’t show off in gym, I doubt people will question your improved abilities all that much.”

“Probably a good idea,” Captain Marvel admitted.

“On that note, best of luck.” Myst grinned as he unlocked the door and made his way back toward the lab to check on Karen’s progress.

Artemis smiled as Myst walked into the lab. “Just the person I was hoping to find.”

“What did I do this time?” Myst asked as he glanced over at Kara who was sitting next to Karen looking over the upgraded solar panel schematic.

“Something you’d like to confess?” Zatanna teased.

“Sorry, I’m not Catholic. So what’s up?” Myst asked as he walked over to the lab bench and carefully took the pendants off his arm.

Artemis took a breath. “Can you heal my mother’s back?”

“Probably but I have a better idea.” Myst set the pendants on the bench next to the pendants he hadn’t taken with him then reached into the hat box and pulled out a forest green cloak. “I was planning on making copies of my regeneration cloak for the entire team and you can let your mother borrow your new cloak for a couple of minutes and fix her yourself.”

“That would be wonderful,” Artemis said with a smile lighting up her face. She studied the forest green cloak that Myst was working on and inwardly laughing at how low rent her original costume had been. She hadn’t even been a hero for a year, but it was touching how much they looked out for her and the others. “I’d love a new cloak.”

“Excellent.” Myst focused on his cloak and spent enough mana to create a knock-off. He looked at the newly enchanted green cloak with his upgrade ability. “Six points of health and mana regeneration a minute. That should be more than enough to fix your mother’s back, no matter what condition she’s in, considering my cloak regenerated Green Lantern’s arm in under a minute.” He smiled as he handed her the cloak. “Happy belated or upcoming birthday.”

Artemis smiled as she stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. “Thank you!”

“You’re part of the team,” Myst assured her, happy that he could help. “I take my unpaid support staff job seriously.”

Karen spoke up, “Speaking of being paid, we’re done with the schematic, which means we should be able to file the paperwork for the patent.”

Kara glanced between Myst and Zatanna. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to file a patent? It’s not something I have experience with.”

“Beyond ‘hire a lawyer? Not a clue,” Myst admitted. “I have a vague idea what the process entailed on my world and I could probably do some research online, but considering the value of these solar panels, I’d rather just hire a lawyer.”

“Or we could just ask Cyborg,” Zatanna suggested. “He’d know who to talk to, considering he’s patented a number of inventions.”

“That sounds cheaper than dealing with a lawyer,” Artemis said, letting go of Myst. “Best of luck with your patent, I’m off to see how well my new cloak works.”

Myst smiled at Artemis. “If your cloak isn’t enough, I’ll make a trip to Gotham and lend her my regeneration. One way or another we’ll have her back on her feet,” he assured her.

“Thank you!” Artemis smiled at Myst then turned and headed out of the lab, barely avoiding running into Robin as he walked in. “Sorry, I have to go home!”

Robin blinked then looked at Myst. “What’s up with Artemis?”

Myst shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her when she gets back. Do you know where Cyborg is?”

“In the kitchen, why?” Robin asked.

“We finished the schematic for the advanced solar panel and wanted to ask him if he knew any tricks to speed up the patent process.”

“He has a half dozen lawyers on retainer to handle his patents,” Robin replied. “In cases like this you can’t go wrong with hiring a lawyer.”

“Yeah, I should have thought of that,” Myst said sardonically while the girls giggled.

“If we’re going to upgrade the team, I could set up a magic circle that should speed your mana regeneration up as long as you stay inside of it,” Zatanna offered.

“If you can do that, why didn’t you mention it before?” Myst asked.

“It requires a number of nearly flawless crystals of identical shape and size. They tend to burn out quicker the more differences there are between them, which means most mages don’t bother outside of important ceremonies and emergences.” Zatanna held up her rupee bag with a grin. “Now if only we had a source of nearly identical crystals.”

Myst laughed. “If you want to set things up I wouldn’t complain. How many rupees would the ritual take because I can turn the rupees into pendants that would generate mana.”

“Seal of Solomon would take six rupees and increase your regeneration for at least a couple of hours before everything burns out,” Zatanna said, not exactly sure on the length of time the ritual would last.

“I wouldn’t object, it would drastically speed up increasing my mana capacity which would let me swap over to regenerating mana by percent.”

“By percent?” Robin asked.

“The pedometer gives 01% of my mana per mile I run, the larger my mana pool the more I’ll regenerate and the faster I can buy the mile part of that equation down,” Myst explained.

“In other words, you’ll shortly have mana of yes,” Kara said with a chuckle.

“I’m hoping.” Myst glanced between Kara and Karen. “I need to borrow a Kryptonian lap for a moment.”

“Go for it,” Kara said as she spun her chair around, wondering what strange and arcane ritual required him sitting in her lap… or possibly doing other things to it.

“Thanks,” Myst said as he walked over and sat in her lap then opened his gacha menu and looked at his options, not sure how things worked except that he’d gotten a Tamaran fruit when he’d been near Starfire. “Footwear for 500, Plants for 1000, Sex Toys for 100, Movies for 100, Scripts for 50, Vending Machine... 15,000? That’s an expensive wheel.”

“Which probably means it’s worth it,” Robin said cheerfully.

“Hopefully.” Myst bought the Plants Wheel. “Let’s start with the plants.”

“What are you hoping to accomplish other than sitting in Kara’s lap?” Zatanna asked with amusement.

“Kryptonian tech or plants or whatever. It’s also comfy, super comfy, it’s like a super power!” Myst said enthusiastically.

Robin shook his head. “Yeah, sure…” he trailed off when the wheel stopped and dropped a strange alien looking tree in a silver crystal pot. “That can’t be native.”

“It’s not, it should be extinct, how?!” Karen asked in surprise as she flew over to examine the potted plant.

“Magic!” Myst exclaimed smugly as he picked the script option because it was cheap and because he was curious. “Blame the wizard.”

“You realize you’re the wizard, right?” Zatanna asked with amusement.

“Curses, foiled again! I mean, what’s your point?” Myst asked with amusement.

“And here I thought Beast Boy was the most insane person on the team,” Robin said.

Myst glanced at the script that dropped. “Harley does Gotham… yeah, I don’t think I’ll be using that one.”

“They made a movie script about Harley?” Robin asked, more than a little surprised.

Myst handed Robin the script. “No idea, take a look.” He bought the Sex Toys wheel, curous what he’d get.

“We should probably be careful about giving the tree actual sunlight,” Karen mused, not sure what would actually happen if the tree was exposed to yellow sunlight.

“So, it’s a Kryptonian tree?” Myst asked, wondering what eating the fruit would do to humans.

“It looks like and smells like it,” Karen said as she picked one of the purple fruits that looked like a palette swapped orange.

“You’re not actually going to eat that are you?” Robin asked, a bit disturbed that she’d risk eating an unknown, possibly magical, fruit without at least testing it.

Karen took a bite of the fruit, savoring the taste of her favorite fruit from back home. “It’s delicious.”

“That was reckless,” Robin complained, looking at the bite taken out of the purple fruit in her hand and noting that it looked like the inside of a grapefruit.

“I haven’t anything from home in years, it’s delicious and I’m Kryptonian, we can eat just about anything without problems.” Karen picked another fruit and tossed it to Kara before she took another bite of her fruit.

Myst glanced at the fruit in Kara’s hand. “It should be safe enough for Kryptonians.” He blinked when the wheel stopped and a transparent blue disturbingly likelike dildo appeared, dropping onto his lap. “Yeah, that’s interesting.” He bought the Footwear wheel, hoping he got better results than the Sex Toy wheel.

Karen reached over and grabbed the dildo out of his lap. “It’s squishy and a good size. Feels almost... warm.”

Zatanna snickered. “The color certainly matches.”

Robin shook his head then blinked when he got to the part in the script about Harley fucking him. “That never happened… sadly.” He flipped back to the front of the script to look at the date. “Huh, that’s a couple of months in the future.”

“What happened?” Zatanna asked, looking at Robin.

“It started off with some unnamed figure killing the Joker, his last word was ‘Blue’, then Harley started working through the heroes,” Robin explained, trying not to blush.

“Huh, that’s a bit odd,” Myst said, realizing that he needed to read the script to make sure that no one ever found out that he’d killed the Joker. He laughed when the wheel stopped and dropped a pair of lime green winged crocs on his lap. He looked at the shoes with his upgrade ability. “Huh, these actually grant flight.” He grabbed the movie wheel, curious where his ability would copy the movie from.

“How fast?” Zatanna asked.

Myst smirked when he realized that the boots were decently fast. “Three hundred and twelve mph… slightly problematic, you’ll want to wear protective gear.”

“Connor will be happy,” Robin said, looking forward to having his own pair even if it meant getting a helmet.

“Any idea what you’ll get for a movie?” Zatannna asked.

“Not a clue.” Myst blinked when a DVD dropped in his lap. “The Real Story of Little Red Riding Hood, starring Beast Boy and Raven.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Robin said, morbidly interested in the movie.

“I have a feeling Raven is going to kill Beast Boy,” Zatanna said.

“It could be interesting,” Myst said, glancing at the rating on the spine of the movie. ‘Gore, nudity and gratuitous violence, yeah that should be amusing and at least mildly traumatizing.’

“In that case, let’s talk to Cyborg then we can relax and watch a movie while we’re waiting for the bag to charge enough to use,” Zatanna suggested.

“Works for me,” Myst agreed. “I need to let my mana regenerate enough that I can grab the slot machine.”