Wyrms in Worm Part 2 (Patreon)

Amy pulled her attention off the dragon flying over the water when Loki reappeared wearing a black conductor's uniform that he'd copied from an old Bug's Bunny cartoon and a guy fawkes mask that did very little to conceal his shoulder length blue hair, "Any trouble?" she asked, raising her eyebrows when she noticed that Loki was currently male.

"No," Loki replied as he handed Amy a black debit card, a folder and a silk robe, figuring she wouldn't want to be naked when he was planning on grabbing people. "They were surprisingly reasonable about the whole thing."

"What's next?" Amy asked as she pulled the robe on then opened the folder and looked at the account information, shocked at the number of zeros in her new account.

Loki let his mask vanish, seeing no point in keeping it now that he wasn't on camera, revealing features remarkably similar to his female form. "That depends, do you want to catch a movie and have dinner somewhere romantic or do you want to clean up the Bay and play mad scientist first?"

"Mad scientist?" Amy asked warily, wondering if it was worth asking if she was a girl or guy naturally then deciding it really wasn't considering his name and the various myths that surrounded his name.

"Excellent choice," Loki said with a grin as he focused on Noelle and used his clairvoyance to find the monstrous cape.

"That wasn't-" Amy stared at the large monstrous cape 53 that appeared on the sand about fifteen feet away. She looked human from the waist up while the rest of her looked like a mutated four legged beast straight out of Jabba’s palace. "Huh."

Noelle opened her mouth to demand answers from the strangers then stared when she noticed the dragon flying around. "Is that a dragon?"

"Probably," Amy replied, not sure what else to call their new forms.

'She'd be attractive if it wasn't for her monstrous half,' Loki mused as he studied the monstrous cape, prepared to grab Amy and teleport elsewhere if Noelle showed any sign of trying to touch them. "A precog I know told me you could use some help, I'd like to make a deal."

"What type of deal?" Noelle asked warily.

"You want a humanoid form and I want several people duplicated," Loki said, trying to sound more confident about his father's questionable idea than he felt.

Noelle shook her head. "My clones are homicidal, they'd try to kill the original."

"I'm aware that your power currently has some issues," Loki admitted as Aisha flew over and landed behind them. "One of my abilities lets me improve powers which means I can probably fix your power or at least make sure your clones aren't insane."

"You're lying," Noelle snapped. "I can sense powers, you don't have any."

Loki floated a foot off the ground. "Just because you can't sense them doesn't mean I don't have powers."

Noelle mentally stomped on the voice whispering not to trust the strangers. "Fine. How many people do you want copied?"

"At least a few dozen, it shouldn't take more than a couple of days, a week at most," Loki assured her as he dropped to the ground.

Amy shook her head, fairly sure Loki's plan was going to spiral out of control but strangely curious where things would end up.

"Where do we start?" Noelle asked, trying not to get her hopes up.

"Give me a second to figure out what I'm dealing with," Loki said as he opened his upgrade menu and looked at Noelle's power, surprised that her power wasn't more screwed up considering her monstrous lower half. "Huh, that's not as bad as I was expecting."

"So you can fix me?" Noelle asked, doing her best to ignore the furious whispers in her mind that were trying to crush her hope.

"Maybe, just a second." Loki spent the mana to upgrade Noelle's control so that her cloning power wouldn't automatically activate every time she touched someone. "That should let you touch people without copying them unless you want to."

"I don't…" Noelle trailed off as she realized she had a mental switch in her head that hadn't been there before. "I have a mental switch! Thank you!"

"You're welcome," Loki assured her as he tried to figure out how to fix the fact that Noelle's clones were insane.

"Something the matter?" Amy asked when she noticed the annoyed look on Loki's face.

Loki sighed. "I was hoping I could fix the mental changes to her clones but that's controlled by her shard which means I can't just upgrade her power to fix it, I'll have to fix the clones one at a time."

"Nevermind the cloning power, can you fix my body?" Noelle demanded, growing annoyed at the wait despite her best intentions.

'Chill already, he's helping,' Aisha thought to herself, surprised at how easy it was to stay focused and on task.

"Give me a second to check something, we're almost there," Loki assured the dangerous cape as he unchained his precog ability, feeling a bit uneasy with Noelle's fluctuating mental stability. He checked the results of just handing Noelle the bracelet that turned people into elves. 'Shit, you'd still end up looking like a monster eventually because of the changer rating but at least your clones wouldn't be as twisted.' He checked the results of using Null to link Noelle and Oliver before he tossed her the bracelet. 'That's slightly better but she'd still end up changing faces.'

"Anything?" Noelle asked impatiently.

"Working on it," Loki assured her, trying not to snap at the cape that was barely holding it together as his precog let him know that would lead to problems. He checked grabbing Ingenue from the Birdcage. 'I'll need to do some illusion work to make sure Dragon doesn't flip out but that should keep Noelle from turning into a monster and upgrading her mental stability should deal with Ingenue's power.' 

"I have an idea that should work, it's just going to take a minute." Loki focused on Ingenue and the birdcage with his clairvoyance power. He used his telekinesis to hold her blanket in place and cast an illusion over the sleeping villain so that no one would notice her absence then teleported her to the beach.

Amy took a step backwards as an unconscious woman appeared. "Who is she?"

Loki opened his mouth to tell Amy and sighed as he caught a vision of Amy freaking out about stealing people from the Birdcage which caused Noelle to attack because she didn't want a dangerous master screwing with her head. "She's a trump," he muttered as he reached into the woman's mind with telepathy and puppeted her.

Ingenue got to her feet. "Lovely day isn't it?"

"Yes," Loki replied, answering his own question as he pulled a jewelry box out of his inventory. "Touching the stone in the bracelet will change you into an elf. My not so lovely assistant here will suppress some of your more annoying powers so that you won't have to deal with them."

"Is it safe?" Noelle asked warily, doing her best not to listen to the voice whispering that she shouldn't trust the stranger.

"Perfectly," Loki lied as he had Ingenue walk towards Noelle. "Try not to copy her..." he trailed off with a sigh as he got a flash of precog and realized that Noelle's shard would trigger her power and that the clone would cause problems for Amy. He reached out with telepathy and dropped Noelle unconscious then picked up her trashing lower half with telekinesis so it didn't have any traction. "Change of plans." 

Aisha changed back to her human form. "Issues?"

"Her power is being a bitch." Loki tossed an illusion up over Amy and Aisha to hide them then had Ingenue walk forward, touch Noelle and suppress the worst part of her changer rating. She knocked the twisted looking clone Noelle's lower half spat at them unconscious then teleported both Ingenue's twenty feet back so that she didn't have to split her attention. "Okay, that should give me something I can upgrade."

"Nasty," Aisha said as she studied the mutated Ingenue, her limbs a bit uneven and unnaturally long.

"You have no idea," Loki muttered as he focused on Ingenue's trump effect. "She's suppressing the worst part of her changer rating, a touch more mana and that should get the rest of the shit," he muttered as he spent the mana to upgrade the effect then levitated the bracelet over and touched the stone to Noelle's head.

Amy smiled as she watched Noelle change from a monstrous creature that weighed over a ton into a slender half naked elf. "At least she doesn't look like a monster. Where did you find the villain?"

"I borrowed her from the birdcage," Loki explained as he lowered Noelle to the sand.

"Are you insane?!" Amy snapped.

"Not particularly." Loki sighed. "Noelle was getting worse and she's powerful enough to be an S-class threat even without her ability to spawn dangerous capes. So yeah, I borrowed a villain from the Birdcage to fix her, sometimes doing the right thing isn't the same as the legal thing."

"You're putting her back, right?" Amy demanded.

"Of course I'm putting her back, she's a homicidal bitch," Loki replied as he focused on Noelle's mental health and spent enough mana to burn a stadium to ash to boost it up to ninety percent, causing various issues to fragment and fade which would probably be enough that a therapist could deal with the rest of her issues. 'Dear gods, I could have burned a city with how much mana it took to fix her mental issues, way too much work.' He turned and looked at the twisted duplicate of Ingenue and examined her powers. "Just as soon as she fixes her clone."

"What's wrong with her beyond the obvious?" Aisha asked as she looked at the mutated woman.

"Her power manipulation ability causes permanent changes to the target's personality which makes the ability next to useless for helping people," Loki explained as he used Ingenue to 'temporarily' tweak the clone's power, decreasing the mental changes and boosting her ability to manipulate shard based powers. He focused on Ingenue's trump effect and upgraded it until the master effect was completely gone then floated the bracelet over. "This better work," he muttered as he touched the bracelet to the clone's head, changing her into an elf and snapping the connection to her shard.

"She certainly looks better as an elf," Aisha said as she compared the clone to the original.

"I doubt anyone will recognize her." Amy walked over and checked the elf's health. "She seems in perfect health and her muscles are slightly denser and yet lighter than they should be. How insane is she?"

"If she's like the rest of the clones, she'll hate everything Ingenue loved, I'm not sure if that will make her more or less sane honestly." Loki gestured and teleported Ingenue back to the Birdcage. "Probably more as she probably won't like screwing with people as much."

"Does she still have powers?" Amy asked warily.

Loki checked the clone's powers. "Yeah, she can manipulate parahuman powers by slowly increasing one aspect at the cost of another which is damned near perfect for dealing with unwanted powers."

"How does that even work?" Aisha asked, fairly sure losing the connection to powers was supposed to remove the powers.

"I'm going with magic," Loki replied with a shrug.

"How many dangerously unstable villains are you planning on copying?" Amy asked dryly.

"I wouldn't mind copying Teacher so that I can cripple the master component and hand out tinker powers to all of the wards to drive Armsmaster insane," Loki mused.

"Let me guess, you're going to see what crazy and perverted things you can get the wards to do for extra powers?" Amy asked, not sure if she should warn them or just shake her head.

"Exactly," Loki replied with amusement as he gestured toward Noelle and hit her with an enervate.

"I vote streaking," Aisha suggested with a smirk.

"We'll see." Loki smiled as Noelle sat up. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Noelle admitted as she stared at her legs. "It's going to take a while to get used to having normal legs again. Sorry for being rude and weird earlier, I was losing my mind."

"Don't worry about it, everything should be better now that we fixed your powers. Are you up for copying someone?" Loki asked as he used his precog to check to see if it was worth grabbing a copy of Teacher.

"Not really but I promised," Noelle replied as she wiggled her toes.

"Thanks." Loki teleported Teacher out of his cell then hit him in the back with a stunning spell, not giving him a chance to mess with anyone or even say anything. He used her precog to check to see if there was an advantage to manipulating his power before he was copied, rather disappointed that there wasn't. 'So much for that idea, at least I can upgrade the powers he hands out so they're permanent.'

"Let me guess, he's a villain?" Aisha asked as she studied the unimpressive looking unconscious man.

"Generally speaking I don't clone heroes unless they give me permission," Loki replied as he levitated Teacher over to Noelle. "Go ahead and copy him."

Noelle reached out and touched Teacher with her right hand, smiling when nothing happened. "At least I know the mental switch works." She flipped the switch and copied the floating cape, causing a normal looking copy to appear touching her left hand.

Loki caught the clone before he hit the ground and looked at his powers. "Better Tinker and Thinker abilities than the original with a temporary master ability." He quickly scanned the clone's general mental health with his telepathy. "I don't think he's any worse than the original, better really as he dislikes complicated plots."

"That's a relief," Noelle admitted, still not particularly happy with her power but less uncomfortable than she'd been ten minutes ago.

Loki briefly considered teleporting a thumbnail's worth of air into Teacher's heart, mostly because of all of the problems he caused after he escaped in the series then sighed when his precog flashed a warning about Saint going insane and killing Dragon because Teacher wasn't around to help. 'Okay, what about if I just sent a clone in that has the opposite personality?'

He used his precog to run the numbers and sighed when he realized that Saint would still flip out and cause problems. 'Fine, let's try this another way.' He used his clairvoyance to find Dragon's kill switch then teleported it to his hand after checking to make sure it wouldn't cause trouble. He stuffed the box into his inventory then focused on Saint's computer and teleported his workstation and backups to the beach.

"Is there a reason you're stealing computers?" Amy asked as she looked at the high end gaming computer.

"Saint was annoying Dragon, he needed a reality check." Loki gestured at Teacher and used his version of the gemino charm to make a body double then teleported the double back to the Birdcage.

"I'd argue that stealing is wrong, but honestly, he doesn't need it," Amy said, knowing that he'd caused Dragon a fair amount of trouble over the years.

Loki turned to look at Noelle. "Do you want me to send you back or do you want me to grab Jess so we can fix her legs first?"

"How do you…" Noelle shook her head. "Never mind, just grab Jess."

Loki focused on Genesis and teleported her out of her wheelchair and carefully lowered the unconscious redhead to the sand. He walked over and poked her shoulder, lending the young lady his regeneration. "That should do it."

Amy felt a touch of envy at the fact that Loki's regeneration power didn't seem to need biomass. "Is it always that fast?" she asked as she reached down, touched Jess's neck and monitored the changes.

"Pretty much," Loki replied with a grin when he felt her regeneration return which meant Jess was completely healed. "On that note, I'll let you know if I find a way to get you back to Earth Aleph or if I need someone else cloned."

"Just a second," Amy said as she fixed the girl's eyesight. "There, now she won't need glasses anymore."

"Thank you." Noelle considered asking how he knew they were from Earth Aleph then decided it didn't really matter. "Sounds good, thanks again for all of the help," she said, not sure what else to say other than a string of 'Thank you!'s and that would just be embarrassing.

"If you really want to thank me, be a hero or at least heroic." Loki gestured and teleported Noelle and Jess back to the hotel where he'd found Jess, figuring he'd grab the rest of the Travelers and boost their sanity when they weren't paying attention or while they were sleeping, mostly because he was reasonably sure that Trickster and Chris were Simurgh bombs or at least Chris was. "That went better than I was expecting."

Amy sighed as she glanced between the clones on the beach. "Please tell me you have an actual plan for the clones and Teacher?"

"Sure, I'm going to send Teacher to an abandoned world with Saint and I'm going to use the clones to give the wards and possibly some other heroes thinker abilities before we go jumping around the multiverse. On that note, I should probably drop the clones in my inventory, until I can figure out how insane they are because Teacher's a snake. Huh, that reminds me, I haven't taken care of Coil yet." 

"Isn't he just a small time villain?" Amy asked.

"He's also willing to kidnap and addict children to some rather nasty drugs." Loki focused on Coil with his precog and looked at his ability, wanting to make sure he had the right version. 'Your precog ability sort of sucks.' He took a couple of seconds to search through his head for his account information and contingency plans then teleported him in front of him and hit him in the back with a stunner. "Never mind, we can worry about the villains after we've upgraded the wards."

Amy raised an eyebrow as she looked at the probable villain that he'd just knocked unconscious. "We're going to need costumes. I'd rather not get in trouble for kidnapping wards."

Loki pulled a magical girl amulet out of his inventory. "I've got you covered. Just put the magic girl amulet on and think really hard about changing forms then we'll get you a nice skimpy costume and we'll be good to good."

"Do you have one that's blonde? I'll need something like my sister's costume," Amy mused, not particularly bothered by sexing it up when she could pretend to be someone else and wouldn't have to listen to her family complain.

"That I can do," Loki said cheerfully as he puppeted the Ingenue clone and pushed the Teacher clone's master ability as low as he could. "Almost." He spent the mana to upgrade the duration and quality of Ingenue's effect until no trace of Teacher's master ability remained then used the bracelet to turn him into an elf. "That should prevent him from messing with people, temporary or not."

"Are you going to do the same thing to the original?" Aisha asked.

"Yeah," Loki agreed as he repeated the process with Teacher, mostly so that he'd never be able to pull the same shit as he'd tried last time. "Which ward should we start with?"

"I vote Sophia," Aisha said thoughtfully.

"Why Sophia?" Amy asked, fairly sure Aisha hated her.

"Just in case something goes wrong, we might as well use her as a test subject," Aisha explained.

"There's that," Loki agreed, not particularly bothered by the idea of screwing her secret identity over by turning her into an elf especially if she begged for more power.