Myst in Worm (CYOA) (Patreon)

Myst blinked as he fell out of his chair and ended up in a dark concrete room with a set of steel bars. "What the hell?" he sputtered as he tried to figure out how the hell he'd just gone from hitting the button to print out his CYOA sheet to ending up in a cell. "Yeah, I'm awake and I'm in a cell, this isn't good…" he trailed off as an alarm went off. "This is really bad."

He stood up and checked the bars, rather annoyed to find out that they were solid and locked. 'Great, how the hell did someone grab me without knocking me out?' He shook his head, uneasy about believing that he'd gotten grabbed by a ROB but nothing else quite made sense and the timing was rather suspicious. He pressed himself against the back corner of the cell, not sure what the hell was going on other than the fact that he really didn't want to be tortured which was what he remembered signing up for to gain a few more points.

Thankfully or not it only took Coil's men a minute to open the doors and rush in. Myst punched the first mercenary in the face then got hit by a taser from the man that hadn't rushed in like an idiot. He screamed as he fell down to the ground as his limbs decided they didn't want to work anymore, mostly because the guy he'd punched smashed his face with the butt of his rifle.

Myst blinked as he woke up being electrocuted and feeling like he'd gotten beaten by several trolls only to find himself chaired to a table with a man in a black outfit with a stupid looking snake on it. "Fucking stop that!" he screamed once the idiot with the cables stopped shocking him, playing with a generator was one thing, having some bastard playing with a car battery and your nipples was something else entirely.

"Good, you're awake, you can answer my questions," Coil said ominously.

"What do you want?" Myst asked, trying not to antagonize the sadistic bastard that was doing a good impression of Coil.

"How did you get into my base?" Coil demanded.

"No idea, it was probably a teleporter. So, yeah, if you'll just drop me off at the local hospital, I'll be on my merry way."

"Sorry, I'm afraid you've seen the inside of my base and I have to be sure that you're telling the truth, so you'll have to forgive me for my methods," Coil said dryly.

"Shouldn't you say that in a British accent?" Myst snarked.

Coil chuckled dryly. "Hopefully you still have that sense of humor after twelve hours. Boys, get to work."

"Fuck!" Myst screamed as they started shocking him again then started thrashing frantically as one of the soldiers pulled out a needle. "Stay the fuck away from me!"

"Make it hurt," Coil said cheerfully as he left the room.

"I'm going to fucking kill you!" Myst shouted, forgetting for the moment that he was trapped without a hope in hell of escaping, doing his best to avoid getting drugged by ineffectively thrashing. Sadly, the bastards were rather skilled when it came to interrogating and torturing prisoners. Unfortunately for their questions, Myst wasn't terribly cooperative, mostly because he was trashing, hallucinating and losing his mind as he tried to figure out ways to kill every mercenary in the base or crying and screaming from the pain. The path to powers in this universe involved going insane for a brief period of time and he was trying to throw himself directly into it to speed things up.

Thankfully for Myst's sanity or lack of sanity the beatings seemed to continue until the soldiers' morale improved. "Who is the head of HR, I'd like to lodge a complaint," he rasped out, through a voice hoarse from screaming.

"Take it up with Coil, he's the head of HR and he's an ass," one of the three identical mercenaries fading in and out replied sarcastically. He glanced down at his watch when the beeper went off. "Ah good, coffee break."

"That means I get a break too, right?" Myst asked hopefully.

"Sorry, you have to work here for a month before you can sign up with the union. They limit your torture to two hours a day, minus holidays of course. Best of luck with Velma, she wanted to play with the car battery, you have my sympathy."

"What!" Myst screamed as the man left and a stocky female mercenary with a battery and a pair of jumper cables slipped in after him. "Safe word?" he all but begged, recalling they were in a hentai universe and trying to use it to save himself some pain.

Velma laughed as she set the battery on the table. "This isn't sexual, it's just good old fashioned fun and I want to make sure you answer honestly. You wouldn't lie to me, would you?"

"No," Myst lied.

"Does my outfit make me look fat?" she asked with a fiendish grin as she touched the claws on the cables together creating a spark.

"No," Myst replied quickly then screamed as she hit him with the cables. "What the fuck was that?!"

"You lied, I told you not to lie," Velma said with a smirk.

"I didn't lie, it's not the fucking uniform that makes you look fat-" the rest of what he was going to say was cut off as she went to town torturing him in some less than pleasant spots. In between the screams, he couldn't help the thought, 'At least I didn't pick captured by the Merchants to start with like John, poor bastard, he’s going to be tortured for almost an entire week assuming they grabbed him.' 

0o0o0

"Dude, get me a burrito?" John said, between coughing fits as a cloud of smoke was blown in his face from a device that was cobbled together from a hair dryer and a popcorn popper to make sure he absorbed enough of their latest batch of pot.

“Co-operate and I’ll consider it,” the Merchant dressed in baggy clothes and scribbling something on the back of a pizza box said. “Now, how do you feel?”

“Hungry,” John said dumbly, hanging from the wall he was chained to. 

One of the men looked at the skinny teenager they’d kidnapped to test their latest batch on and snickered. “Told you this stuff was weak. Let's try him on some harder shit.”

"Wouldn't that ruin the results, we have to be scientistic about this…" he trailed off as he started laughing and grabbed the strange contraption and took a hit.

"You can still see, right?" the other skinny man asked.

"Fuck yeah, I see tang," the man said.

"Give me that," he said as he grabbed the contraption and inhaled.

0o0o0

Myst woke up in pain screaming, because it felt like he'd broken several ribs, thankfully or not the drugs kept it from hurting as much as it should. "Next time, I get to clamp your nipples."

"You do know she left ten minutes ago, right?" the other guard asked dryly.

"Thank god," Myst muttered. "What do you want to know?"

"How did you get into the base?" the mercenary asked.

"Hell if I know, I'm guessing my ex paid someone to teleport me here, maybe you can have a chat with her?"

"What's your ex's name?" the man asked.

Myst briefly considered saying Sophia Hess but recalled that John needed her for some reason and that Coil would have too much information on Sophia. "Mary Poppins." He winced as the guard punched him in the gut. "I might have deserved that."

"You're damned right," the man grumbled. "Why is your license fake?"

"What do you mean?" Myst demanded.

"Did you steal your father's fake id?" the man asked.

"What makes you think it's fake?" Myst asked.

"It's either fake or he's a time traveler," the man replied with amusement. "Not to mention they don't use that type of license."

"Fine, it's a fake, I'm the bastard son of Armsmaster and he's going to kill you," Myst replied.

"One more, one less, do you think he'd really notice?" the man asked dryly.

"Fine, what do you want to know?" Myst asked, having a hard time focusing.

"Why are you in Coil's base?" the man asked.

"Some asshat teleported me or maybe I just snuck down here like a ninja, yeah, I'm a fucking ninja!" Myst said before he started snickering.

"Great, he's high as a fucking kite," he muttered as he left, not seeing a point in asking questions when he was drugged to the gills and barely felt anything.

"Feed him some coffee," one of the other men suggested.

"Do you have French Roast? Or espresso?" Myst asked, wishing they'd just leave him alone and not subject him to coffee, the torture was one thing but adding coffee to it made the entire experience worse. Sadly for his sense of taste, the guards practically poured the hot liquid down his throat making him cough and sputter. "Ninety Nine bottles of Jack on the wall, take one down and pass it around."

"Get the pliers!" one of the mercenaries snapped. "I'm going to pull his tongue out."

"If you do that, we won't get any answers," the other man argued.

"At this point, it's pretty obvious that he's insane," the man complained.

"Like a fox! Once my father gets here, he'll kill you all," Myst said cheerfully, trying to ignore the way various spots on the wall were moving up then resetting, causing him to flash back to his time in the hospital years ago when he'd been on morphine.

The mercenary in charge scowled. "How did you get here?"

"How the hell do you think I got here? I took a fucking chocobo!" Myst replied, his temper getting the better of his common sense, mostly because of the drugs.

"Get Velma, shock him until he starts making sense," the man ordered as he stalked out.

"I'm not sure it works like that, does he get enough fiber in his diet?" Myst asked, wishing he could pass the hell out until someone rescued him but knowing no one was coming for him. 

The next several hours blurred together but that was okay, it was almost fun, if only because they'd drugged him to hell and he couldn't feel shit. Of course, that changed as the drugs wore off enough that he could feel them ripping his fingernails out, maybe he shouldn't have made the joke about Coil's mother or maybe the bastard was just a sadistic monster and would have tortured the hell out of him anyways.

Thankfully, eventually his mind just sort of snapped, his blood caught fire and everything made sense again, or didn't because he was staring down at himself on the table and everyone was shouting and rubbing at their eyes. He stepped forward and touched Coil on the hand and created four naked copies that proceeded to easily beat the shit out of everyone as he lunged forward and kicked the remaining mercenary in the nuts. "Duplication is awesome, I wonder if I have the rest of my powers…" he trailed off as he realized one of his bodies was dressed in black robes and had a wizard hat on. 'I'll worry about the insanity later.'

Myst started working on getting himself free from the restraints. "Please tell me this isn't being recorded."

"Of course it's being recorded," one of the clones of Coil said. "Coil wanted to make sure he didn't miss anything, he probably triggered the fail safe when he stomped his heel, if not we'll take care of it."

Myst sighed as he remembered the part about his trigger event getting broadcast in the CYOA which was probably unavoidable considering he'd gotten a fair number of points for it. He shifted into the pocket dimension with a pop, leaving his duplicate with the copies of Coil. He glanced around the small grass covered meadow surrounded by walls of grey fog. 'Yeah, at least I'll have a place to hide my original body.' 

"Okay, I'm supposed to be able to add items and features or at least that was what the description of the power said." Myst focused and created a duplicate of Coil's costume and a non magical copy of his robes and hat for his duplicate then focused on the ground in front of him and conjured a large king sized bed. "I wonder if I can have the clones stay awake while I get some sleep?" he muttered as he walked over and flopped down on the bed. "Worth a shot."

The version of Myst that was still in the torture room pulled the copy of Coil's costume and tossed it to one of the clones. "Put that on and loot the original. I want one of you on overwatch to make sure the Undersiders stay alive. One of you needs to make sure all of the mercenaries know that I'm not a prisoner anymore and I need one of you to kill the recording and get the base in order."

"I'll deal with the mercenaries," the Coil that was already putting on the costume offered.

"Good. I also want to know what we have to work with and what we have to dismantle, I don't want the city exploding because of some idiotic failsafe." Myst focused on the original Coil that had been stripped to his boxers and turned him into a stone statue. "I could get used to this."

"Is that permanent?" one of the Coils asked.

"If I don't change him back, yeah," Myst replied as he shoved the statue into his pocket dimension, mostly because he had to keep Coil alive and useful for at least two weeks, something he’d agreed to for more powers. 'If I'd known I was actually going to live through this shit, I would have skipped the damned trigger event and skipped taking a couple of powers I took for laughs and to mess with Armsmaster.'

Myst took a breath then let it out as he pulled the robe over his head. 'Okay, destroying Elisberg is probably going to be the worst mission I have to deal with and as long as I can kill Nilbog without losing a couple of million people I should be fine as far as the mission goes. That just leaves the Slaughterhouse Nine and Jack, mostly because I have to kill him personally.'

'I'll have to take out the ABB, wait, no, just the capes, that was under the kill order section. If John was pulled in, he needs the Merchants and maybe a couple of the Empire capes. Then again, there's no guarantee that he was grabbed. Worst case, I wait a week and deal with the Merchants if I don't hear from him or about him.'

'What else do I need to do,' he mused as he tried to remember the rest of the challenges he needed to take care of. 'I need to eat The Challenger at Fugly Bob's.' He winced as he remembered that he needed to screw 10 villainesses for one of his missions otherwise he'd get stuck with a horrible drawback that he couldn't quite remember, mostly because he hadn't planned on failing so he'd only glanced at it once, not even really reading it. 

'Okay, ten villains, Tattletale, Bitch, Rune, Purity, Othala, the twins, Cricket if I can't find anyone better. Does Sophia count? Probably not, it's not worth risking either way. Squealer if I put her through a decontamination shower and have Panacea work her over.'

'If the CYOA wasn't lying, I have magic and cultivation, as well the ability to turn people into knock off Crawlers or at least a version that stays sort of humanoid. Alchemy and Enchanting from cultivation and the ability to share magic and cultivation if I want. I should have mental defenses and protection against precogs… then again Contessa hasn't opened a door and kidnapped me, so maybe?'

Myst focused on his hand and shapeshifted it into a green dragon-like hand with talons. 'And I'm a shape shifter, awesome.'

"What do you want to see first?" one of the Coils asked.

"A list of all of the minor villains in town, I need to have a chat with some of them," Myst said, figuring he might as well see if he could deal with some of his list before things got messy with the Slaughterhouse Nine. 'At least I didn't take a flaw that sent the endbringers after me, I don't think I could survive right now unless I ran and hid.'

"Right this way," the Coil clone said as he accepted a mask from the other Coil that did a decent job hiding his features.

"Lead the way," Myst ordered, less than happy about having copies of Coil anywhere near him, even if they were loyal copies.

0o0o0

Karen scowled as she watched the clip of the teenager triggering that one of her husband's contacts from his less than heroic days had sent him. "This is why you shouldn't torture people."

"I've heard of worse," Ethan offered as he walked back into the living room with a soda, thinking about some of the screwed up crap he'd run into over the years.

"How many of them were recorded?" Karen asked, glad that she'd never had to put up with a trigger event.

Ethan shrugged. "Only one that I can think of but it didn't end up on the net, no one survived to broadcast it. Do you think he'll end up a villain or hero?"

"Vigilante or villain," Karen said without hesitation. "He'll probably want revenge, I know I would."

"It’s possible he might sign up with the Protectorate, or since his face is known, he could always talk to New Wave about joining, it's not like he'll have much of a private identity once this hits the boards," Ethan said as he sat down on the couch next to his wife.

"I doubt they'd take him," Karen replied as she closed Ethan's laptop. "They haven't exactly recruited anyone since Fleur was murdered."

"Can you blame people for wanting a private life?" Ethan asked.

"No. We're probably going to get called back into work, we should get ready," Karen told him.

"We could always turn our phones off," Ethan offered knowing it wasn't worth the trouble.

Karen smirked as their work phones rang at the same time. "So much for having the evening off."

"We could always pretend to be dead," Ethan offered. “I know some people who could fake our deaths and we could be in Hawaii by noon tomorrow with new names and faces!”

"That was bad, even for you," Karen muttered, trying not to laugh as she answered her phone. "Battery, here, what's the situation?"

Assault merely pushed the button to answer his phone, smirking at his wife.

"Dragon flagged a clip of a young man triggering from being tortured, Director Pigot wants us patrolling the streets in case we can contact him," Armsmaster explained, “while we don’t have a lock on where he was being tortured the metadata in the video stream does register as coming from downtown.”

"Do you know what his powers are?" Karen asked as she headed for the garage, seeing no reason to admit to having already seen the clip.

"He generated four faceless minions and created a projection of himself to take out Coil and one of his mercenaries," Armsmaster explained. “It’s not known whether his projections can take any form or just those he knows well, but since it doesn’t cover clothes any large public grouping of naked people should be considered suspect.”

"Where do you want us?" Ethan asked, trying not to snicker as he followed his wife into the garage.

"Head to the PRT, you can deploy from there," Armsmaster ordered.

"We're leaving now, ETA eight minutes. Do you know if he's hostile?" Ethan asked as he got in the passenger side.

"He’s a fresh trigger, assume that he's dangerous and proceed with caution," Armsmaster suggested then ended the call.

"He really needs to take a class on humaning," Ethan complained as Karen started the car.

"It would certainly help," Karen agreed, hoping that whoever it was hadn’t been driven into murderous insanity.