Travels in the Multiverse (Patreon)

AN: Based on a CYOA... (Traveler)

Of all of the things that Myst expected when he sat down at his computer to work on his latest chapter, having a portal open and spit out an old man in a stylish gray suit wasn't even on his list. "What?!"

"He's coming." The old man coughed up blood as he collapsed to his knees. "Take my power and run, he must not have it!" the old man gasped out urgently before he exploded, releasing a vortex of blue and purple energy as his body turned to dust. 

Myst screamed and collapsed on the ground twitching as the energy and memories of millennia of life washed over him as concepts and design schematics burned into his mind, redefining his meaning of the word pain or at least adding a few new levels past agony.

"No!" a voice cursed from the other side of the vortex as it closed.

"Fuck!" Myst cursed as the pain dropped from agony to kicked in the nuts level of pain to merely horrible stabbing migraine levels of pain that he could sort of deal with, mostly because he had a disturbingly clear idea of what would happen if he stuck around, which involved more screaming and eventual death via a pale skinned man with red eyes, a pimp cane, and an old fashioned suit that he’d spotted on the other side of the portal.

He grabbed his chair and took a moment to try to get the world to stop spinning. He stared at the carpet where the body had been or at least where he was reasonably sure a body had been several seconds ago considering the mound of dust lying there now. 

They’d killed him, the old man who had simply wanted to wander the universe and see what it had to offer… sometimes that might include females who were open to new experiences and had pre-existing ties to other people, but that had hardly been his fault. No, the simple old man who had wanted to walk among the worlds had been murdered by small minded people who had wanted nothing but power and soon they would be coming after him as well! 

He blinked as a red crystal shard appeared in his grasp, pulsating with power.

"What the-" his eyes went wide as he recalled exactly what he'd just conjured. He reflexively tossed the crystal out his open window and winced when it exploded a second later, sounding like glass breaking. He wasn't sure how the hell he'd known the crystal would explode but somewhere in the back of his mind he'd known. He felt a shiver run down his spine as he felt a weird yet disturbingly familiar ping on his awareness in front of him. He reached out towards the strange warp in the air and nearly screamed as a futuristic printer like contraption fell out of a ripple in the air. "What the fuck?!"

Myst glanced up at the window and saw a vision of his death if he walked over to the window and looked down at the portal in the driveway. "Fuck that, I need a gun…" he trailed off as he saw another vision of himself shooting the red eyed bastard with a shotgun before he died screaming without anything to show for it. 'Precog or maybe a weird effect from the portal…' his mental rambling trailed off as he touched the printer wishing to be anywhere but here, fell through a purple vortex and found himself in a garage looking at an attractive red haired teen in a purple tank top and white yoga pants.

"Rick!" the girl shouted as she looked up from her phone and noticed the man's glowing purple eyes and strange almost arcane runes floating over his head. "One of your friends is here!"

"What?" Myst blurted as he stared at the red haired teen then stared as an old man with wild bluish grey hair ran into the room holding an alien blaster along with a shorter teen with a disturbingly yellow shirt. "I don't want any trouble, I don't even know how I got here."

“It happens,” the old man said after giving the new arrival the once over and dismissing him as a threat.

"What's the last thing you remember?" the boy with the yellow shirt asked as the older man grabbed something from a workbench that sort of looked like a barcode scanner and pointed at the box he was holding under his arm.

"I was in my room working and a portal opened, a dead guy stumbled out and gave me this box then I found myself here," Myst explained, feeling slightly better as his headache was fading.

"Makes sense," the man muttered as he scanned the box. "Knock off energy conservation device, not bad, a bit limited in programming though."

"What does it do?" Myst asked as he studied the man, feeling like he was missing something he shouldn't be and fairly sure he shouldn't sell it.

"It's a fancy laser printer," the old man replied as he scanned Myst, trying to figure out how he'd slipped past his detection net.

"In that case, can you point me at the door, I'll be on my way-" Myst trailed off as several lights flashed on the walls. "Let me guess, someone tripped an alarm?"

Rick rushed over and arranged several flies on the windowsill, causing the tool board on the wall to flip and reveal an entire wall filled with alien weapons. "Incoming."

"I knew it!" Summer said as she ran over and grabbed a gun, glad to finally have proof that the flies controlled access to the weapons. “I told you that was exactly the kind of security he would use, Morty!”

“Yeah, well… you were bound to be right about something eventually,” Morty muttered, knowing his own record wasn’t all that impressive and from her smirk, knew that Summer knew it as well.

"By order of the Order of Travelers, come out with your hands up!" shouted a voice from outside into a megaphone. "We have you surrounded, your unauthorised portal won't be tolerated!" 

The old man turned to stare at the door leading outside. "The Order? Great, more fucking problems."

"What are we going to do?" the girl asked excitedly as she fondled the alien rifle.

"Come out of course," the old man said as he walked over to a cabinet, grabbed a small metal ball with a bright red button on the top, and walked over to the door. "We surrender!" he lied as he opened the door and tossed the ball at their feet where it beeped twice and then vaporized the three men dressed like futuristic cops. "In your dreams, eat plasma!" He casually turned to the others with a grin. “The key to a good light grenade is to have it explode after two blinks, everyone expects three.”

Myst stared in disbelief at the old man that had casually murdered the officers and his mental gears engaged and he recognized the old man. 'Rick Sanchez, shit! Maybe I should have just surrendered. How the hell did I end up here?' he mused as he tried not to freak out about the man's casual destruction.

Rick turned to look at Morty. "Grab a scanner and check the backyard. Summer, grab your mother, we might need to take a vacation."

"What about Jerry?" Summer asked.

"He'll be fine," Rick lied as he checked for more agents. "New guy, help me grab the equipment that was on the bodies, they might have something useful."

"Sure." Myst set the printer like thing on the ground then headed over to help Rick, fairly sure that he was going to get blamed for the dead agents. 'Why the hell did I end up in Rick's garage? He's a fucking cartoon or at least he should be.' He grabbed one of the dead guy's armor and dragged it into the garage, not sure if the Order was his fault or Rick's as he didn't remember them from the show. 'Of course, there's probably a lot of shit that didn't make it into the show,' he mused as he walked out and grabbed the last set of gear.

"Who did you piss off?" Rick asked as he quickly and efficiently checked the gear he'd grabbed for anything that looked useful. 

"No idea, I'm guessing it was the dead guy that opened a portal to my house," Myst replied as he dragged the last set inside. He glanced at the man's gear, surprised that he didn't have a force field generator or better defensive gear considering the general tech in Rick and Morty. "Have you run into the Order before?"

"No but I've heard of them, I sold some weapons to a bounty hunter that mentioned them. They normally just go after people that visit certain primitive worlds they ‘guard."

"As in middle ages or as in worlds without advanced technology like anti gravity and blasters?" Myst asked.

"Mostly the second from what I understand," Rick replied as he worked on looting the second set of armor. "Damn, I was hoping they had something worth stealing."

"I'll take it," Morty said, figuring he could use some of the stuff.

"You're welcome to it," Myst assured him, not wanting to argue.

"What's his box actually do?" Beth asked as she walked in with Summer.

Rick sighed as he turned and looked at his daughter. "It's a food printer, it turns organic material into food, which means when Jerry cooks, I don't have to starve, as long as that shit is still organic when he’s done with it, it will convert it into actual food."

"Or you pissed someone off," Summer argued, fairly sure the whole mess was her grandfather's fault.

Rick shrugged. "We're taking a vacation for a couple of days while this blows over."

"What about the stranger?" Beth asked as she looked at the man with glowing eyes and strange almost arcane symbols floating over his head.

"What about him?" Rick asked as he grabbed his portal gun and pointed it at the wall. "I'll just send him elsewhere, if they're after him, we'll be fine, if they're after us, he'll be fine."

"Are you going to send him to some inhospitable hell dimension?" Beth asked suspiciously.

"No," Rick replied as he adjusted his portal gun, "that's the first place they'd look. I'm sending him somewhere more interesting."

Beth shook her head. "Right."

"So, I'll deal with the clean up for your fancy toaster," Rick offered, figuring they were probably after him as well, since he had vaporized a couple of their drones so he might as well be paid for his trouble.

"Sure," Myst replied, figuring he had more important things to worry about. "I can just…" he trailed off as he fell through a green vortex and found himself in a vaguely familiar room. "Yeah, I'm going to have to work on that."

"Did you just teleport into my room?" Sabrina asked in surprise as she glanced between the man's glowing purple eyes and the glowing runes floating over his head, wondering what spell he'd screwed up.

Myst stared at the half dressed girl with wet hair that looked a lot like the actress that played Sabrina on the Adventures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. "Sorry, my last teleport went to a mad scientist's garage, he just portaled me somewhere at random."

"Zelda!" Sabrina shouted as she grabbed a pillow and covered her breasts, having remembered that she was half naked. "Don't move!" she ordered.

"Sorry, I am out of here and hopefully we won’t be seeing each other again later,” Myst said and activated his dimension jumping power, aiming for anywhere that wouldn't get him in trouble or hexed.

Myst looked around the market street he found himself on, noticing the odd looks he was getting. 'At least they're not running and screaming. Maybe if I casually walk off no one will say anything.' He started walking down the street, a little unnerved by the fact that a number of people were still giving him strange looks even though it was happening from people that hadn't seen him arrive. He glanced down at his clothes, wanting to make sure he hadn't left them behind or anything. 'Weird, there are plenty of people in jeans and sweatshirts, some of them have coats but my clothes shouldn't be that out of place.'

Myst sighed as he noticed several people pointing their phones at him. 'Worst case, I just jump again.' He spent another minute walking through the crowd where he was still getting the same looks. He blinked as he caught his reflection on a woman's shades and realized he had glowing purple eyes and strange arcane script floating above his head in a circle. "So much for hiding…" he trailed off as he got a flash of memory of the old man vanishing with a simple magical trick. 'Screw it, I need some time to think.' He flipped the mental switch he'd just 'remembered' and let his arcane energy flow around him, hiding him from sight and muffling the sound of his boots.

He grinned as he people started looking around as he quickly worked his way through the lightly crowded street, wanting a chance to calm down and figure out what the hell was going on. 'Okay, you're glowing and you have arcane symbols and you have fragments of memories of an old mage, traveler or whatever the heck he was, floating around your head. Not to mention you have no idea where the hell you are or how long you have before the Order comes after you. On the upside, you can jump between worlds.'

Myst took a breath as he mentally reviewed the fragments of the old man's memory floating around in his head, trying to figure out what the hell he could do. 'Lots of memories of crystals, technology and magic, oh telekinesis, can I fly with that?' He grinned as he remembered a type of flying that wasn't just hauling himself around by his hands. He barely resisted the order to start laughing maniacally as he flew up into the air. 'Oh yeah.' He twitched as he heard gunshots, that didn't sound all that far away. 'Okay, do I run or do I help?'

'Yeah, running towards trouble is stupid.' He relaxed slightly as he remembered how to create a telekinetic shield that should keep him safe. 'On the other hand I don't have any money and I could use a burger, they probably have cash.' He surrounded himself in a telekinetic field as he flew towards the sound of gunfire.

It didn't take him long to get close enough to see several cops taking cover behind their squad cars while exchanging gunfire with a bunch of thugs with weapons that certainly wouldn't have been legal back home. 

"Fucking die, pigs!" One of the thugs jumped out with a military style rifle pointed at the cops.

"Fuck that," Myst muttered as he reached out and crushed the rifle with telekinesis then started pushing the magazine release buttons and flipping the safeties on the various guns in possession of the gang members, fairly sure they weren't legitimate rebels or resistance members.

"Cape!" one of the gang members shouted as he spun around, looking for an obvious cape.

'At least it's not a completely normal world,' he mused as he ripped the gun out of the man's hand, breaking a couple of fingers in the process. He winced as one of the cops put a bullet in the middle of the man's forehead, splattering the back of the guy's head. 'So much for taking them in quietly,' he thought as the cops quickly shot another five gang members before the rest of the gang members tossed their ineffective guns on the ground and dropped to their knees or sprinted towards the alley.

Myst tripped a couple of the runners once they got into the alley and telekinetically stole several wallets out of their back pockets as they were scrambling to their feet. He quickly yanked the wallets up to the roof before the cops could run another the corner and start shooting. 'News flash, don't shoot at cops, bad things happen.'

He grabbed the three wallets out of the air and opened the first one as he watched the cops secure the injured gang members and shoot the idiot that pulled out a knife in the head. 'Yeah, that's annoyingly loud and she's a disturbingly good shot.'

He grabbed the fat stack of bills and stuffed them in his pocket then blinked as he touched the debit card and remembered that the Traveler could manipulate machines with his mind and he was fairly sure he could duplicate the trick thanks to the fragmented memories. 

'How the hell did someone manage to kill you?' Myst mused as he thought about the Traveler's collection of powers, some of which he knew the trick for and the others that he could only vaguely recall. 'Because I'm all sorts of screwed unless the red eyed bastard used a specialty curse or a massive ritual.'

Myst shook his head then slipped the debit card into his back pocket and headed back the way he'd come, figuring at least one of the ATMs he'd seen should be in working order. He wasn't sure if he should laugh or cry when he touched the first ATM and got a mental snapshot of how the machine worked and how to control it. 'It's just as well I'm not a thief. Okay, just as well I'm not going to steal from people that aren't criminals.'

He pulled out the debit cards he'd looted out of his pocket and started emptying their accounts, glad that none of them were joint accounts or anything he'd have to feel guilty of. Of course, none of them had more than two grand in the accounts but he hadn't been expecting much. He glanced at the stack of hundreds and fifties. 'I should probably have thought this out a bit more.'

Myst focused on the pocket dimension the Traveler had created and tied to his soul and mentally pushed one of the fifties into it then pulled it back out. "Okay, maybe this isn't completely hopeless," he muttered as he stuffed the cash into his pocket space, happy that he didn't have to walk around with a bunch of cash in a plastic bag. He pushed the button to get a receipt. 'Brockton Bay Credit Union? Yeah, okay, I'm either in Worm or I'm somewhere close or maybe maybe DC or Marvel has a Brockton Bay?'

'Is that any weirder than being able to jump to Sabrina's house?' Myst mused as he headed back towards the market, figuring someone could probably tell him where to find an internet cafe or library where he could figure out what the hell was going on. He grinned as after another block of flying he saw an intact newspaper box.

He flew down and looked at the headline he could read through the plastic. "Questions about PRT competence due to the attack on the PRT fundraiser, May 13th, 2011. Undersiders, yeah, that's definitely Worm or close enough. The city doesn't look trashed which means that Leviathan hasn't shown up or maybe he went somewhere else in this world."

"Screw it," Myst muttered after spending twenty seconds wracking his brain, trying to remember details of a story he hadn't read in years. "I should be fine for a couple of days, most of the crap doesn't start until June if I remember right."

'Which means, I need a hotel room and a phonebook,' he mused as he continued flying towards the downtown area.

0o0o0

"No ID, no room," the manager of the Motel 8 stated with a slight smirk. 'Fuck you, I'm not cleaning up after another fucking cape.'

"Fine, can I borrow your phonebook?" Myst asked, trying not to scowl at the twenty something year old behind the security glass that was on a power trip.

"No," the guy smirked as he moved the phone book to the back shelf to make sure the cape couldn't just reach through the slot for cash and grab it. "Now leave."

"Fine," Myst grumbled. "Before I go, what's your girlfriend's name?" he asked as he used his Sense Thoughts power to read the man's surface thoughts.

'Like fuck I'm telling you about Mandy,' the guy said. "I'm going to call the police."

"I just asked a question, nothing illegal about that. Have you ever cheated on her?" Myst asked with a smirk, knowing he was unnerving the asshole.

'How the fuck did he know about the lake and Susan, fuck he has to be bluffing.' The manager scowled at Myst. "Go away before I call the cops!"

"Sure, no problem," Myst replied as he walked out of sight and around the corner then turned invisible and walked back, mostly because the asshole had complicated his already frustrating day and was being a prick. 

He waited until the young man set his phone down to grab something from the mini fridge then grabbed it with telekinesis and floated it under the safety glass. He used his technopathy to bring up the young man's text history with Susan and look through his photos. 'Damn, you actually took pictures of your girlfriend's underage sister passed out drunk at the lake with your phone and a selfie with her, how fucking stupid are you?'

He sent Mandy the pictures of her boyfriend and sister while he looked up a map of Brockton Bay and ran a search for New Wave, curious if they had a contact number or anything that might let him talk to Panacea. He was slightly surprised to find a thread on the parahuman boards that put her at Brockton General.

'WHAT THE FUCK!?' Myst snickered as he read the return message from the idiot's girlfriend. 'Sorry, you'll thank me later, probably.' He typed back, "He got her drunk." He sent the message then stuffed the phone in his pocket dimension, not sure if that was actually true but figuring it might keep the sisters from killing each other and the manager was enough of a prick they could find better. 'You should have just handed me the phonebook.'