Myst in Worm (CYOA) Part 9 (Patreon)

“Now what, sir?” one of the Armsmasters asked, eager for a task as they’d just finished clearing out the Industrial Replicator.

John handed over the Old World Media Tablet. “Find a design for a home you’d like.”

The four quickly huddled around the tablet, flipping through files.

“Temporary or permanent?” one asked.

“Temporary,” John decided, “good enough for a week or two. If you want a volcanic island super fortress we’ll have to design one, so just go for good enough to keep you occupied for now.”

“Can it have dinosaurs?!” they chorused.

John chuckled. “Yes, but that’s only after the designs are finished, stick with comfy for now.”

He relaxed as he watched his other self deal with the four tinkers as they finally settled on a copy of a Super 8 Hotel, that they’d stayed at once and found comfortable, finding the cost vs the available facilities to be a pleasing balance.

0o0o0o0o0

"This is going to suck," Myst muttered under his breath as they walked towards the door to the old shop the Undersiders were using as a base.

"Probably," Lisa lied as Brian opened the door to the shop from the inside. "Is everyone here?"

"Yeah, Bitch isn't happy," Brian pointed out as he stepped out of the way so Lisa and the brown haired man in his early twenties could come inside. "I was expecting someone in a suit or a costume."

"I'm not a fan of suits and costumes draw attention, especially in the middle of the day," Myst replied as he walked inside the old metal shop that had been converted into an apartment. He glanced between Rachel and her three dogs sitting on an old couch and Regent who was sitting in an old recliner playing an unfamiliar first person shooter on a console he didn't recognize then looked at Brian as he closed the door. "No one is going to look twice at a young man in jeans and a jacket."

Regent turned and looked at Myst after finishing the round, slightly surprised that he'd shown up in person considering he had to know what his power was. "What makes you think we want a new boss?"

Myst smiled at Regent. "Considering your old boss was a psychopathic piece of shit that was holding Lisa at gunpoint and had no intention of helping you with your problems, I'd assume you'd want an upgrade."

"Gunpoint?" Brian asked as he turned to look at Lisa.

"We probably had another year or two before he would have tossed us in the trash or had us tortured to death," Lisa admitted.

"Why didn't you say anything?" Brian asked, trying to stay calm.

"What was I supposed to say, grab your sister and leave town?" Lisa shook her head. "He has connections all over the world and would have found you eventually."

"Are you going to help with my dogs?" Rachel asked, not particularly concerned about the change in management as she'd never even met her old boss.

"That's the plan," Myst replied as he handed Grue his folder.

"Good," Rachel said as she scratched Angela between her ears.

"What's this?" Brian asked as he opened the folder and looked at legal paperwork.

"Congratulations, sign the paperwork and you're the legal guardian of a teenage cape, best of luck," Myst explained, doing his best not to laugh at the shocked look on the teenager's face.

"What?" Brian sputtered.

Myst shrugged. "I'm not Coil, your father was more than happy to sign the paperwork and I bribed your mother."

"When did she trigger?" Brian demanded.

"Recently." Myst looked at Rachel. "I have a lawyer working on getting your case re-examined and some of your criminal charges thrown out so you'll have less trouble taking care of your dogs. I've also arranged a better place to keep your dogs where the cops and gangs won't bother them."

"Thank you," Rachel replied.

"That's nice and all but what do I get out of it?" Alec asked with a smirk.

"That depends on what you want. I'm more than happy doubling everyone's pay and making sure your father never bothers anyone again," Myst offered.

"Do you have a plan for killing him?" Alec asked, curious if he had a way to avoid the collateral damage his father's death would cause.

"That depends, do you want him dead or do you want him to suffer until the sun burns out?" Myst asked as he studied Alec.

"What do you have in mind?" Alec asked with a smirk.

"Seriously?" Brian asked as he glanced between Myst and Alec, he'd known Alec didn't like his family but he hadn't expected this level of hatred.

"My father's Heartbreaker," Alec admitted, knowing that Brian needed to understand before he freaked out about them casually planning on murdering someone.

"Oh," Brian admitted, his moral objections falling apart as he thought about the serial rapist the Guild and Protectorate were afraid of dealing with. "How are you going to deal with him without being mastered?"

Myst grinned. "I'm immune to master effects."

"Yeah, right…" Alec trailed off as he found he couldn’t even sense Myst’s nervous system much less make him twitch. "Trump?"

"Something like that," Myst admitted, fairly sure his magic would count as a trump power as far as the PRT was concerned. "Speaking of dangerous lunatics, how would you like to be known as the team that brought in the Slaughterhouse Nine?"

Brian shook his head. "I'm not going after a bunch of dangerous lunatics."

"No need, I've already killed most of them," Myst replied with a grin. "I just figured you'd want a share of the bounty."

Alec snorted. "Bullshit!"

"I have Crawler trapped in my pocket dimension, do you want to see?" Myst asked, fairly sure they wouldn't believe him without proof.

"Right," Alec replied sarcastically. "I don't believe you."

"Try not to scream," Myst said as he walked over, touched Alec's arm before he could yank it back and transported him to the far side of the section of the pocket dimension that contained Crawler then quickly pulled him back when the abomination turned and spat acid at him.

"Fuck!" Alec shouted as he dropped into his chair, eyes wide. "What the fuck was that?"

"That was Crawler, it was easier trapping him than killing him," Myst explained as he turned to look at Brian.

"You're a fucking lunatic, you know that right?" Alec asked, trying to get his breathing under control and not laugh at their boss's sense of humor, enjoying the adrenaline rush a near death experience gave him, it made him feel… normal.

Myst shrugged. "Would you have believed me if I hadn't shown you proof?"

"Probably not," Alec admitted.

Brian glanced between Myst and Lisa. "Why give us part of the bounty?"

"Because I don't need the money and because the money is worth less than the doors we can open by turning in the bounty," Myst explained.

"And you don't want the fame?" Alec asked suspiciously.

Myst shook his head. "I'm a hero or at least a rogue without a record, if I turn in the bounty, I'll get some money and a pat on the head, if you come with me, I get the same and we can leverage the bounty or the fame to get someone in the justice department or the PRT to look into Rachel's record and get a competent judge to toss the murder charge out. Without that, we can probably arrange a pardon from the governor."

"You'd also get a reputation for working with villains," Brian pointed out.

"It won't matter," Lisa cut in, "we're small time thieves and it's the Slaughterhouse Nine, Lung could walk into the PRT and collect the bounty and they'd give it to him with a smile."

Alec grinned. "I'm good with free money."

Brian considered the pros and cons of helping collect the bounty and figured the benefits outweighed the negatives, especially as they could just retire with that type of money. "How much would we get?"

"An even split," Myst replied then launched into a description of the fight and where the Undersiders could have fit in.

0o0o0

"The printing press was invented a couple of hundred years ago," Leet grumbled as he flipped through the handwritten spellbook.

"Five and a half," one of Lisa's clones corrected absently as she set a book on her stack that had been printed in something approaching block lettering. "Relax, that's what we have Uber for."

"Point," Leet agreed as he set the book in the stack with the books that needed to be typed up by hand rather than scanned in and ran through a program. "Do you think he's lost a chunk of his ass yet?"

"From the Siberian?" one of the Amys asked as she worked on writing a summary of the book on cantrips she was looking through. "I doubt it, he sent one of the Hatchet Faces in first to make sure Manton couldn't use his powers."

"Probably for the best," Leet admitted as he grabbed another spell book off the shelf and started flipping through it. "We need a pile for books with notes in the margin."

Amy pointed towards one of her stacks. "Right there."

"Thanks." Leet set the book on Amy's stack and grabbed another one. "We should have minions for this."

"Beginner's Guide to Necromancy," Vicky muttered as she tossed the book into the pile that needed to be scanned. "How much trouble do you think Amy will have with Bonesaw?"

"That depends on how much metal she has to rip out," Amy replied as she closed her book on magical baking and set it on the cart. "I'm more worried…" she trailed off as another Amy walked in looking more than a little grumpy with a slightly annoyed Leet following her. "What happened?"

"Who the fuck puts a self destruct system in a cyborg?" Amy demanded as she flopped down on the folding chair and grabbed one of the books off the shelf.

"Insane bio-tinkers?" Vicky asked, not particularly bothered by the fact that Mannequin was most likely dead. "Is he dead?"

The Leet that had helped Amy with Mannequin's suit sighed. "I've seen charcoal briquets that were less crispy."

"Is that a bad thing?" Vicky asked, not particularly comfortable about Myst cloning insane villains.

"Considering he built a moonbase, probably," the other Leet grumbled, more than a little annoyed that he hadn't found the device before it fried Mannequin's brain.

"Hopefully Amy is having more luck fixing Bonesaw," Amy said as she grabbed another book.

The version of Amy that had planned on working on Mannequin nodded. "Amy is awesome, she'll be fine."

Vicky smiled as Myst teleported in with four identical middle aged men in shorts that looked like they'd seen better days. "Your picture is on the back of my Parahuman Studies book," she said with some surprise.

"Which is why we're here, he's a bit too noticeable even if he looks twenty years older. Can you tweak things?" Myst asked as he glanced between the two Amys.

"Sure," Amy replied as she stood up and stretched, glad to have a reason to stop looking through the books for a bit. "How sane are you?"

"Sane enough that we'd rather not look like a lunatic," one of the Mantons replied, less than happy about having the bastard's memories even if his power was impressive, already working on mentally distancing himself from the original Manton, since as a clone he was not only not responsible for the actions of the original but also hadn’t lost a daughter that he had loved dearly.

"Just so you know, we sort of lost Mannequin," Leet offered, "I think Bonesaw installed a failsafe."

Myst turned to look at Leet. "What happened?"

"Two of the Hatchet Face clones were helping me take him apart when he just started clicking repeatedly, I bolted and he blew up like a bad capacitor," Leet explained, feeling annoyed that he hadn't noticed the failsafe.

"Was anyone hurt?" Myst asked, forgetting that Amy would have already fixed any injury short of death.

"Nah, you could hit Hatchet Face with a steamroller and he'd walk it off, this wasn't that impressive, but Mannequin’s brain is rather crispy," Leet admitted.

Amy sighed. "I put the brain on ice in case Bonesaw can fix it, but I wouldn't hold my breath."

"Thanks. Do you need help with the books or should I go work on making a blade worth enchanting?" Myst asked.

Vicky raised her eyebrows. "Don't you need actual metal for that?"

"Probably," Myst admitted as he made a mental note to have one of his clones swing by the boat graveyard for scrap.

0o0o0

“I have your food,” Cask said, as she came in with a large tray and set it on an over the bed table before wheeling it to him.

“Feels like I haven’t eaten in weeks, though I’m pretty sure The Merchants amused themselves by throwing fries at my mouth, they just had really bad aim.”

Cask winced. “Well if you need anything just push the call button, there is somebody right outside at all times. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night,” John said with a nod before digging into the food. The PRT had decent food, though it was five star quality it still beat what you’d get at most schools or hospitals so he was pretty satisfied with it and between the food and the bed was already beginning to fall asleep when two bodies landed on him.

“John!”

“Ack!” he squeaked out. “Watch the wings!”

“Wings?” Missy asked, before noticing the large white wings they were lying on.

“Are they sensitive?” Vicky asked as she floated off the bed while still keeping a hold of him.

“No, they seem okay,” John noted as his right wing curled protectively around Missy, pinning her to his side as she clung to him. “I just got them, so I don’t know much about them yet.”

“Never letting you go again,” Missy muttered through her tears.

“I’m okay,” John tried to assure her as he made four clones of Missy, who immediately tackled his other self off his recliner. Naturally he called himself an asshole as he had to calm down four naked Missys who were upset enough not to even notice the change in scenery. The four Vickys that joined them were less emotional, but willing to wait for answers as they looked around curiously.

“You are not okay, you triggered!” Missy exclaimed, in horror.

“I got powers like my favorite sister,” John replied. “I don’t really recall what caused me to trigger… or the last three days. I was drugged out of my mind, so I got the powers but not the mental scarring,” he assured her.

“I’m still going to stab them,” Missy said seriously.

“Stab who?” Vicky asked.

“Our parents,” John suggested.

“What?” she asked, completely confused.

“They are partially at fault,” Missy agreed, “but you already stabbed our parents last time.”

“Last time what?” Amy asked as she came in the room, shooing the Sgt away. “We’re probably going to have an orgy in here, fuck off.”

“When I triggered because of our parents fighting, John stabbed both of them… a lot,” Missy explained.

“If I’d had something more than a fork it might actually have done some good,” John complained. “Somehow that led to me being shuffled around to different relatives, but not Missy here, who was stuck with them.”

“Probably cause you kept stabbing them,” Missy pointed out.

“Then they should have stopped doing things to deserve it,” John argued. “Anyway, I basically live on my own with a caretaker who checks on me several times a day. Thankfully they were never stupid enough to try and keep us apart, so she got to spend a lot of time over at my place rather than at home.”

“Your place is home, I just visit them enough to make them ignore me,” Missy said.

“So anyway, in conclusion stabbing is a good way of solving family disputes,” John said.

“Let me see your hand,” Amy said, shaking her head, sure she’d heard the story before, but John appeared to have downplayed his reaction to Missy triggering when they were younger.

“Hmmm,” Vicky said thoughtfully.

“No, Vicky,” Amy said absently as she noted all the multitude of tiny changes that had occurred throughout John’s body, “you can’t stab our family.”

“Pretty sure I can,” Vicky disagreed, “pretty sure they deserve it too. Besides, you can heal them afterwards.”

“That… No, even if it would work, I’m going to have to say no to that,” the brunette said shaking her head, “it’d just open up other cans of worms. Good news, you are perfectly healthy, possibly a bit better than perfect in fact.”

“Good,” Missy said.

“So no stabbings?” Vicky asked.

“There will still be stabbings,” Missy said firmly.

“Not at the moment,” John replied, “I think we’re just going to lie here for a while.” He made four Amy clones as he pulled her into the bed on top of himself. "You doing okay? You look stressed.”

“I found out my best friend was gone for three days and I didn’t even notice,” Amy said, “it’s hard to be okay after that.”

“We see each other a couple of times a week, not every day,” John reminded her, “so it’s hardly your fault.” He wrapped his wings around the three pulling them close. “I’m fine, everyone here is fine, the only people at fault and need stabbing are The Merchants and our parents.”

“Still, I should have noticed when you didn’t text me,” Amy said.

“These things are warm,” Vicky said, stroking a wing, “and super fluffy. How fast do your feathers grow back?”

“You are not plucking my brother,” Missy growled out.

“Hey, I’ll… Wait, you said plucking? Yeah, I wasn’t planning on it,” Vicky assured her.

“You guys planning on spending the night?” John asked.

“We should probably get home,” Amy said trying to move and finding herself pinned down by a wing and Vicky’s arm, “but then again it has been a traumatic day, so perhaps as your friend I should stay and cuddle with you, whether I like it or not.”

John snickered. “That’s the sarcastic bitch I know and love!”

Missy muttered something.

“Love you too, sis,” he assured her.

“Ahem,” Vicky said.

“Yes, we all love and adore you,” John assured her, knowing she was just teasing.

Missy mumbled something.

“Except Missy, who has promised not to stab you in your sleep,” he added.

“That’s true love there,” Amy deadpanned.

Vicky looked confused. “For me or him?”

“Him,” Missy lifted her head to say.

“Okay, I’m just saying Birons seem to favor communicating their feelings via flesh wounds, so maybe not stabbing me was her way of saying she liked me,” Vicky pointed out.

“You’ve made the no stabbing list,” John said, “it’s a sacred honor.”

“Some members of your family haven’t made that,” Vicky said proudly.

“Seriously, the wings are much warmer than they should be, so can we lose some clothes in here?” Amy asked. “If we are going to sleep I need to shed a layer.”

“I’ve got it,” John said, not moving.

“What was that?!” Amy exclaimed.

“What was what?” John asked innocently.

“I feel something messing with my shirt,” Amy replied suspiciously.

“That would be the tentacles,” John said, sending several tentacles of symbiote to start undoing buttons and sliding off clothes.

“Okay, this is new,” Missy noted rolling over a little so a black tendrel could peel off her trench coat.

“You are an angel... with tentacles from a hentai anime?” Vicky asked with a grin, feeling one undo the snap on her bra.

“Yep,” John agreed.

“Huh,” Amy said as one slid across her lower back pulling her panties down. “It’s a separate organism, but connected to your nervous system.”

“It’s an extension of me,” John agreed as he continued undressing the three, the clothes being dropped off whatever side of the bed was closest.

Inside his pocket dimension John was wishing he had a symbiote as he dealt with the twelve affectionate and emotional clones.

“So… what all can you do with those things?” Vicky asked eagerly.

Missy and Amy turned to look at her.

“What?” Vicky asked. “You can’t tell me you weren’t thinking it too!”

“I admit nothing,” Missy replied, “I deny everything, and I can find out most any night anyway.”

“I would never have asked a question like that,” Amy said.

Vicky narrowed her eyes for a second and then snickered. “Because your power would tell you?”

Amy shrugged and felt some interesting movements from below John’s waist against her skin. “Well that and the fact that I am more subtle. For instance I would never suggest seeing if they could duplicate certain body parts in a small size then expand when in… position,” she hissed out.

“Don’t forget me,” Missy said, pulling John’s face towards her own.

“Hey, I’m feeling so unloved,” Vicky pouted as the twins made out and Amy began to writhe and moan.

Amy reached over and pulled Vicky to her. “We spoil you so much,” she teased before she kissed her.

The door opened and then quickly closed again. In the hall Cask hung a do not disturb sign on the door. “I thought she was kidding about the orgy.”

0o0o0

Amy stepped back as Myst pulled his hands away from Bonesaw's temples looking like he'd just stared into the abyss or maybe hell. "Are you…" she trailed off as he spun and conjured ten life-like ice statues of Jack Slash in a triangular pattern, much like the pins in a bowling alley.

Myst conjured a ten pound sledgehammer then charged the closest statue and slammed it into the statue's head as hard as he could.

Amy watched as Myst smashed the first five statues into fragments, venting his rage at whatever he'd seen in Bonesaw's mind. "Yeah, not okay. Better?"

"Not particularly," Myst admitted as he dropped the sledgehammer, feeling slightly better or at least less likely to waste one of his New Life Tubs to bring Jack back just so he could torture him for a couple of hundred years. "I might have to learn necromancy."

Amy shook her finger at him. "I'm going to veto any plan that involves turning him into an undead abomination, I've seen the Mummy."

"Point," Myst admitted reluctantly.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Amy asked after twenty seconds of silence.

Myst took a breath and tried to get his thoughts on order. "I'm just trying to figure out how to fix six years of hell without erasing everything."

"I'd start with giving her a better understanding of right and wrong then I'd probably give her art skills," Amy suggested, figuring that might help with her demons. "You might consider heavy doses of thorazine but I'm not a shrink."

"She's not insane, she's just broken," Myst muttered as he walked over to where the tinker was strapped to the hospital bed in case she woke up and started trying to kill them. "You have a good point about ethics." He reached over and touched Bonesaw's forehead with his finger and refreshed some of her better memories with her parents that he could use for the basis of a code of ethics. "Can I take a look at your code of ethics?"

"You'll probably want something slightly more flexible, Amy's code is a bit rigid," Amy admitted, thinking about some of Carol's rants that had managed to seep into her mind despite her best efforts.

"Between the three of us, I can probably come up with something that works," Myst mused as he reached out and touched Amy's forehead and looked through her mind, trying to build something that would help Riley be a good girl without causing her to snap.

He spent the next couple of hours carefully giving her decent examples of right and wrong or at least trying to give her a framework and knowledge of positive social interaction, mostly filtered through Amy's somewhat jaded memories as well as professional art skills thanks to his Roleplay power. "That's probably the best I can do without just erasing everything."

"Do you want me to remove her cyberware?" Amy asked.

"No, she's basically a traumatized child, I'm not taking away all of her weapons, just the bioweapons. We can always revisit the issue once she's stable." He reached out and touched Bonesaw's forehead. 'Loyal, happy, fun loving, bisexual, nudist magic loving mad scientists with ethics.' He focused on his words and created four clones, hoping that he wasn't making a terrible mistake.

Amy stared at the four naked blonde haired girls that were taller than Riley, almost as tall as she was. "Are they safe?"

"That depends, are you a good girl?" the collection of Rileys asked at the same time with wide grins, sending a shiver up Amy's spine.

"Generally," Amy replied as she compared the clones to the original.

"Can you fix your original's cyberware?" Myst asked.

"What's wrong with it?" two of the Rileys asked as they turned and looked at Bonesaw.

"She's a bit unstable, I'd rather not give her access to anything too nasty until she's had time with a therapist," Myst said, not sure where they were going to find a therapist she could trust.

"We should probably get rid of the acid reservoirs," one of the Rileys mused.

"She probably doesn't need the ability to give everyone amnesia or rapidly age…" another Riley trailed off. "Okay, this might take a bit and we're going to need her tools."

"At least we have the same blood type," one of the other Rileys said cheerfully.

The last Riley smiled at Amy. "Speaking of upgrades, we should talk about upgrades when we're done."

"You want upgrades?" Amy asked warily.

"Of course," the collection of Rileys replied at the same time.

"Your tools are over there," Myst replied as he pointed at the RV. "Can you get rid of the worst of her experiments?"

"Sure," one of the Rileys said cheerfully.

"Some of them are nasty and pointless," one of the other Rileys added. "Are we permanent copies or temporary?"

"Permanent, and I can make an additional copy every day," Myst replied.

"Good," the group of Riley's replied at the same time as two of them headed for the RV to get the tools and start destroying some of Riley's more dangerous creations before they caused a problem.

“I didn’t think our breasts would be this large,” one of the two remaining Rileys noted.

“Yeah, we kinda overdid it,” the other one agreed, “but we really didn’t need any of the others looking at us as anything but a young girl.”

The pair shivered.