Myst in Worm (CYOA) part 6 (Patreon)

John went into convulsions and stopped screaming about bugs crawling in his skin and the banana lord coming to devour them all.

“Aw man, that shit was funny,” one of the druggies complained, “I had that shit on broadcast and was getting some pretty good numbers. Hope he does something more entertaining before dying.”

“I doubt it,” another said, “after they start shaking like that they don’t last long.”

“Meh, I’ll leave it on screen anyway, people like watching weird shit on the net and I got a sponsor from some banana company down south.”

John heard them talking but his mind was far away at that point….

John found himself inside a medieval castle looking around. “Where am I?”

“I think that’s my question actually,” a dwarf said as he sat on a throne made of swords and sipped from a gold goblet that was filled with wine.

John stared in shock for a moment. “Holy shit it worked!”

“What worked?” the little man asked curiously. “The last thing I recalled was… well there was a lot of wine, so I don’t recall much. There were a couple of girls involved, I remember that.”

“Yeah,” John said with a grin, “I figured when you died, women and wine would be involved.”

“I’m dead?” he asked cautiously before nodding. “I think I knew that, but this isn’t the afterlife I was promised, of course the afterlife I was promised involved a lot of fire and pain so I’m not exactly disappointed. Still, this place is a bit empty.”

“Well, this is just the start,” John explained, “you see I was given a chance at great power at great cost and thought it was a joke, but it turned out to be real.”

“That tells me almost nothing, well done,” the small man said toasting John with his goblet.

John laughed. “One of the things I was able to choose was which god would empower me and I would in turn empower.”

“And I come into this where?” he asked curiously. “If it’s as one of those flying naked baby things… well as long as I can piss on some people from a great height I might not mind.”

“Better,” John said, “I chose you to be my god.”

“I… What?” 

“I decided I wanted a god who had a brain and wasn’t a raging asshole, so I needed a god of Wine and Tits,” John explained. “Tyrion Lannister, you are now the official god of Good Times.”

“I thought it was Wine and Tits,” Tyrion said, trying to wrap his head around the idea.

“Nah, I didn’t want to limit you that much, there’s also Beer and Ass after all,” John said. “I spread the faith and you grow in power, giving me a miracle or two here and there of course.”

“Of course,” Tyrion said leaning back on his throne. “Well, beats fire and blood. Alright, go forth and spread my gospel… as soon as you get around to writing it. I am not doing paperwork now that I’m dead.”

“As you command, my lord,” John said with a smile as he woke up chained to a wall.

“As I what?” one of the junkies asked, before being blown back by an explosive wave of light as wings burst from John’s back and his chains turned into flakes of rust.

John blinked and flexed his hands, looking at the way the muscles in his arms rippled. “Fuck you guys, seriously,” John said before flinging himself through the warehouse’s front window and escaping in a shower of glass. “Merchants can suck my ass!”

“What the fuck just happened?” one of the junkies asked.

“Either this shit is so good we got a secondary from five feet away or…”

“Or what?”

“Or we gotta go tell the boss,” the first one said, wincing at the light pouring in through the missing window.

0o0o0

Vicky would normally have laughed when she saw Vista in an old tattered trench coat and dirt stained hockey mask step out of the shadows, holding a two and a half foot long broomstick handle in each hand with a couple of layers of duct tape for grips, if there wasn't something a bit unnerving about the girl with the bulletproof vest, armored pants, and combat boots and she wasn’t feeling in a laughing mood at the moment even if she had regained some of her temper on the flight over. "Do we have a plan?"

"Of course, I'm going to find a group of gang members and politely ask them where John is then I'm going to find him," Missy replied, her voice sounding unusually low from the cheap voice changer she'd borrowed from her brother and giving the impression she was growling… if she wasn’t actually doing so, which Vicky was unsure of. 

Vicky sighed as Missy twisted space and stepped, skipping an entire block of space. 'We really need theme music for this, maybe 'Let the bodies hit the floor?' Nah, that would just encourage her,' she mused, to distract herself from her own worries about John and her all new worry over how he’d react if Vicky let his sister get hurt, as she flew after Vista, fairly sure something was going to go wrong with their rescue mission, but unwilling to leave it to the PRT who seemed to have done nothing.

"Where is he?!" Vista demanded as she stalked towards the group of ABB members walking down the street, not even bothering to describe who she was looking for, too focused on her goal.

One of the thugs looked up and saw an unfamiliar girl flying two blocks away then focused on the girl wearing a hockey mask as he pulled his gun out of his coat pocket. "Hey look, it's a pint sized Shadow Stalker wannabe."

Akari glanced between the broken broomsticks the girl was holding in each hand and the girl flying towards them and realized that Glory Girl was out of costume, which meant it wasn't an official patrol. "Who are you looking for?" she asked respectfully with a healthy dose of fear.

"A friend of mine, he was near your territory and grabbing chinese food and he vanished two days ago, where is he?!" Vista demanded.

"No fucking idea," the first guy said with a smirk, not having realized the mover was actually a familar cape with a tendency to break limbs and only seeing the young teen in front of him in a homemade costume. "We probably cut his balls off and stole his money, now piss off before we have-" he cut off with a high pitched shriek and fell to the ground as something nailed him in the nuts.

Missy hit the collapsed asshole in the head with her stick, knocking him unconscious from dozens of feet away as she stalked towards them. "Where is he?!" she repeated.

"Look bitch, we don't know who you're talking about," one of them snarled as he pointed his gun at Vista, "so fuck off! I doubt you're bulletproof."

"Don't," Akari tried to warn him before everything went to shit.

Missy smacked him in the side of the neck then kneed him in the nuts from twenty feet away. "Tell me what I want to know!"

Akari turned and started running as her associates tried to shoot the cape, wanting nothing to do with someone that was willing to confront a dozen people with guns without any concern for their health, mostly because it usually meant they were a powerful brute or insane and she didn't want to deal with either. Not to mention Glory Girl was known to put people in the hospital when in a good mood and Akari suspected she wasn’t in one now.

"Fuck me sideways," Vicky muttered as she watched Vista demolish the group of thugs, shattering kneecaps, breaking bones and otherwise disabling the gang member in less time than it would have taken her to do the same. She flew after the girl that was trying to flee into an alley and grabbed her arm. "Stop!"

"Fuck!" Akari cursed as she found herself grabbed. "Don't kill me!" she screeched in terror.

Vicky blinked as everything went black she found herself on the ground. She quickly scrambled to her feet and scanned the area for a Master or Stranger, before realizing she was being silly, since if they could knock her out like that she doubted they were weak enough to be seen or would already have fled. Seeing that her victim… erm suspect was still there so she quickly pulled her to her feet and shook her awake. "Where can I find Lung?" she demanded, deciding that while it was dangerous to face Lung, Vista would probably start an all out gangwar if she didn’t get the answers she wanted and pointing out that this case related to the unwritten rules should at least get them a chance to scope things out without being blown up or set on fire. 

Akari rattled off the address to the warehouse, figuring Lung could deal with the terrifying cape. "Please don't kill me!"

Vicky clamped down on her aura as she realized the girl had pissed herself in terror. "Find a new line of work," she ordered then stalked out of the alley, not in the mood to deal with a hysterical flunky that didn't know anything of value.

Missy turned to look at Vicky as she flew out of the alley. "Anything?"

"I have Lung's location, let's go," Vicky said as she pulled her phone out of her pocket and called the police to arrange medical attention and pickup for the gang members.

Missy glared at the unconscious or broken thugs scattered on the sidewalk, knowing they'd probably only spend a couple of months in prison for trying to shoot her.

"This is Glory Girl, I found some unconscious ABB thugs, they need medical attention," Vicky explained, knowing she was going to get yelled at.

"How badly did you hurt them?" the officer automatically asked.

"I didn't touch them," Vicky defended herself. "They were like that when I got here, a vigilante beat the crap out of them after they tried to shoot her."

The cop listened as Glory Girl rattled off the address. "Fine, we'll send people to pick them up and call the PRT to take a statement about the girl in the mask. How many people?"

Vicky took a second to count the bodies. "Eleven people, at least some of them have broken bones," she explained as she started flying towards the warehouse the girl had mentioned, knowing Vista wasn't in the mood to stick around and unwilling to let Vista track down Lung on her own.

He punched in the information and sent the alert, wishing he could leave them to die or wander off rather than making taxpayers foot their medical bills, but knowing the captain would be on his ass for it. "Are you going to stick around to make sure they don't escape or ambush us when we get there?"

Vicky opened her mouth to say no then closed it when she saw her cousin flying towards them. "Someone will be here, I need to track down the vigilante." She ended the call before he could order her to wait around as she knew Missy was just about out of patience.

Laserdream glanced over the bodies then stared at Vicky. "What the hell, Vicky?! I thought you’d gotten better at controlling your temper."

"It wasn't me," Vicky complained. 

"They tried to shoot me, I objected," Missy snapped, annoyed at the delay.

"You can't just…" Laserdream trailed off when the girl in the hockey mask vanished. "Great, we have another Shadow Stalker running around."

"I'll find her," Vicky promised as she flew off, knowing she'd hear about it later. 

Laserdream sighed as she grabbed her phone and called Amy, figuring she could make sure none of the idiots died.

0o0o0

"Right eye," Lisa called out as she tossed the tennis ball, pegging Coil in the left eye as he tried to move his head out of the way.

"Bitch!" Coil shouted from where he was standing, twenty yards away, wishing he could move anything more than his neck and face. 'I knew I should have killed the bitch the first time I saw her smug grin.'

"A little off," Myst teased as he reached for another slice of pizza.

"What? That was perfect," Lisa lied as she grabbed another tennis ball from the basket on the picnic table. "I called right and I hit him in his right eye."

"Yeah, that doesn't count," Myst replied as he transferred the pizza to his left hand then grabbed a tennis ball from the basket, knowing that she'd been aiming at his left eye which was the one on their right.

"You think you can do better?" Lisa asked as she studied Coil, only his head, crotch and a section of his stomach and thighs were flesh and blood, the rest was stone.

"Maybe." Myst tossed the ball and grinned when he nailed Coil in the nuts and he shrieked. "If you want, we could always set up an automatic ball machine and continually hit him."

"And lose that personal touch?" Lisa asked as she picked up a ball. "Left ear," she whispered then tossed the ball, nailing Coil on his 'left' ear.

"Fair point," Myst admitted then worked on eating his piece of pizza.

Lisa amused herself tossing tennis balls at Coil until Myst finished his slice of pizza, enjoying tormenting the bastard that had caused her a lot of nightmares over the last couple of months. "How long do you think it will take to replace all of the villains in town?"

"Anywhere from several days to a couple of weeks," Myst replied as he wiped his hands on a napkin. "I've already replaced Lung and Oni Lee with clones and I have the names and addresses of all of the Empire capes so it's just a matter of time."

Lisa turned so that she was looking at Myst rather than glaring at Coil. "What about the Merchants?"

"I have a general location and Coil has a couple of moles in their organization which means getting an exact location shouldn't be that hard. At which point I can start dismantling the gangs and replacing them with something more useful."

"Like what?" Lisa asked.

"I'd settle for a gang that runs illegal casinos or underground fights or even loan sharks that aren't complete assholes," Myst mused, thinking about some of the maffia shows and movies he'd seen over the years where they weren't completely horrible.

"As long as you don't suggest dogfighting," Lisa warned him.

"Yeah no, anyone that trains their dog to attack other dogs deserves to spend twenty minutes with Rachel in a locked room." Myst grinned. "I know a couple of healers that wouldn't mind healing people between pit fights so it wouldn't even be that dangerous. I should probably look into stealing Hookwolf's thunder by staging monster fights."

"Blasto?" Lisa asked, putting the pieces together.

"Depending on how much it costs to create his creations, we could make a decent amount of money creating monsters to fight cage battles," Myst explained, not seeing a problem with the idea as long as the monsters weren't intelligent.

"How is that any better than dog fighting?" Lisa asked.

Myst shrugged. "Rachel probably wouldn't try to kill me for working with Blasto as long as the monsters don't look like dogs and aren't any smarter than chickens."

"You'd never make enough money!" Coil shouted.

Lisa glanced at Coil then looked back at Myst. "Some people have issues with cockfighting."

"Some people have never raised the damned things," Myst grumbled as he picked up a tennis ball and threw it at Coil, nailing him in the crotch and causing him to scream, rather impressed with his increased agility as he'd made most of the shots.

"On that note, let's head somewhere a bit more private," Lisa suggested. "I want to try something." 

"Oh?" Myst asked.

"Sex,” she said bluntly, “my power normally goes into overdrive if anyone gets too close, you're the only person I've met that my power doesn't work on and you're decently attractive and nice enough."

'I'll take it,' Myst mused as he gestured and at the end of the meadow the fog parted, revealing a huge crystal tower.

“Your powers are such bullshit,” Lisa said with a grin. “Hope it has a hot tub.”

"Hot tub? It has a heated indoor pool," Myst promised, happy that he'd already included Amy's suggestions for a truly lavish getaway.

0o0o0

Lung sighed and leaned forward in his throne as he studied the small girl in a hockey mask that had taken out several of his minions in a very efficient and impressively brutal manner. "You have my attention," he growled out, flames beginning to dance across the top of his head as his form began to swell.

"I want my friend back," Missy demanded, too angry to care about the fact that she was less than thirty feet from one of the most dangerous parahumans in the city.

Lung glanced at Vicky who was hovering a foot off the ground to the strange cape's left then looked back at the small cape that had beat the shit out of his guards. "What does she look like?" he asked, calming down as he realized this wasn’t a typical cape fight but rather something personal that might have been orchestrated by others and he disliked being manipulated.

Missy scowled. "He's in his early teens, brown hair, and pale skin."

"He?" Lung asked in surprise. "We don't kidnap boys."

"He was last seen in your territory going into the Red Dragon," Missy said as she tightened her grip on her sticks.

"Have you checked with your local Catholic Priest or one of the other gangs?" Lung asked dryly.

"What?!" Missy sputtered.

"While I'll admit that our previous hiring practices might be a bit suspect, we don't kidnap boys, there's no profit in it, which means your friend was likely grabbed by a rival gang, check the Empire," Lung said, “if one of my boys had grabbed him he’d have shown up at home a few hours later, bruised and broke, not vanished.”

"Fine!" Missy snapped as she turned and folded space in front of her, vanishing in a single step.

Vicky sighed as she realized they'd just beat the crap out of a bunch of Lung's minions for no reason, well Vista had anyways. "Sorry," she apologized, trying to be polite and not upset Lung who appeared to be innocent… at least of this crime.

"They were weak," Lung dismissed them with a wave, seeing no point in starting a confrontation over some idiots that should have known better than to start shit with a cape.

Vicky stared at Lung, shocked that he'd turned away and was ordering one of his men to bring him dinner. 'Huh, okay, I guess that's fair.' She turned and flew after Missy.

0o0o0

John landed on the roof of a warehouse, his clothes in tatters. “What did I plan to do after I triggered?” he asked himself, shivering in the cold before creating the first clone of himself.

“Hey, I look pretty cool,” he noted with a grin, looking at the completely shredded angel standing next to him.

“I think we should split up,” the naked John said to the one wearing rags, both rapidly recovering from what he’d been through in the last three days as his Evolution based powers sought to repair any damage done to his mind as well as his body.

“What?! But Baby, I can change!” he begged tearfully.

The two burst out laughing, their good humor restored.

“Oh man, we are going to have a lot of fun with this,” John said at once from both bodies. “First thing, one of us needs to retrieve our shipping container full of gadgets that we paid for.”

“And the other can fly over to the PRT and check in as a fresh trigger, since it should have been broadcast,” the other body replied. “Or we can simply fly over and grab the container first so we can pick up our symbiote so we don’t have to explain where it came from later.”

“Also good, so you pop inside our pocket dimension and start building while I go get our symbiote on the way to the PRT, since we are near the docks anyway.”

“Bingo, you are as smart as you are handsome.”

“I know you are but what am I?” he asked as he high fived himself and one of his bodies vanished. Bending his knees he quickly launched himself into the sky and arrowed through the sky towards where he knew his shipping container was waiting. “Glad flying is instinctive,” he muttered, “I’d hate to end up crashing into everything.”

It took only a minute before his internal map guided him to his goal. He landed on top of the unmarked shipping container and quickly sent it into his personal dimension, where he had already created a well lit parking lot to store things, causing him to squawk and fall ten feet to the ground where he landed on his ass. “Okay, I could have planned that a little better,” he said, getting up and brushing himself off as his other self opened the container and looked at what was inside.

He saw the five stacks of glass tubs filled with glowing green fluid, the Tablet computer hanging on the wall, the gold sarcophagus lying on the floor and finally the featureless black sphere sitting on a pedestal. “Okay, that’s the New Life Tubs, Old World Media Tablets, Regen Chamber, and Symbiote… but where’s the Universal Replicator?” He looked around with a frown before noting the circuitry built into the sides of the shipping container itself. “Oh, that makes sense, it’d be a good size since it’s an industrial version so of course the shipping container is the Replicator.”

He tapped the black sphere and sent it to his outside body.

John examined the sphere until it suddenly popped black liquid running down his arm and covering his body, he leapt up into the air before remembering himself and calming down, letting the symbiote bond with him, feeling his already enhanced physique swell with even more power. “I would pat myself on the back, but the wings are in the way,” he said cheerfully getting a feel for the mental interface with the last suit he would ever need to wear.

With a thought he formed it into a body stocking that covered him from the neck down, flowing around the wings so as to not interfere with his ability to fly. “Definitely worth the points,” he said before leaping into the air and winging it towards the PRT building. “Man the city almost looks peaceful from up here,” he said, before hearing a loud crash from downtown. “I said almost.”