Travels in the Multiverse Part 3 (Patreon)

"Is there any way to recharge the bracelet myself?" Amy asked as Myst worked on finishing his milkshake.

Myst considered the question as he set his empty glass on the table. "Do you want a nice method where nothing gets hurt or do you want the quick and easy method where you use blood magic to recharge it?"

Amy stared at Myst, not sure if he was messing with her or not. "What's the nice method?"

"Dancing naked under a full moon," Myst replied, his lips unconsciously curling into a grin as he pictured her trying to dance under a full moon.

Amy shook her head. "You're messing with me, aren't you?"

"No, I'm fairly sure the ritual would work, of course it would probably take a couple of hours and might require other people to get enough energy to recharge it."

"Isn't blood magic evil?" Amy asked, thinking about the various stories she'd read over the years.

Myst shrugged. "From what I understand it depends on the dimension. In some it's just messy, in others it's a good way to go completely insane and around the bend."

"If it's that bad, why suggest it?" Amy asked as she picked up another fry.

"Time and effort. Rather than spend several hours dancing, you'd merely cut off a chicken's head, say some words and charge one of your crystals. Skinning the chicken and making soup would take longer than the actual ritual."

"Is making soup important?" Amy asked, not sure about her cooking skills.

"You don't have to cook it yourself but it falls back to the old rule of not wasting what you're killing," Myst explained. "I'm not sure it technically matters in most worlds, but it's a good mentality to have and might keep some gods of the hunt from causing trouble if you travel to other dimensions."

"You're saying various gods exist?" Amy asked.

"Here? It's possible, but I doubt it or they're being quiet for some reason," Myst replied, fairly sure any god worth the name would have already destroyed Scion. "In other dimensions, almost certainly or at least creatures with the powers of gods exist."

"In other words, be respectful and avoid getting noticed?" Amy asked.

"Pretty much, one of the first things I'm going to look for when I get to a world with magic is something that protects from precog and scrying," Myst explained.

Amy grinned as she thought about what someone like Legend or Eidolon could do if the Simurgh couldn't predict their actions. "If you're in a hurry, why stay?"

"Every cape has a connection to another world which should give me a certain amount of cover, it's like trying to track someone by sound in a rock concert," Myst explained as he pulled a twenty out of his pocket dimension. "Ready to find somewhere quieter?"

Amy glanced at the group of kids that were occasionally looking their way and giggling. "Sure, I might as well fix your knee then I can start playing with the bracelet."

"Sounds good," Myst replied as he got up and headed for the register. He handed the girl behind the counter then twenty. "Keep the change."

"Thank you," the girl replied with a grin. "Are they doing a movie promotion?"

"Nah, we just…" Myst trailed off as four dirty looking men in their twenties in worn jackets walked in holding guns. 'Two blacks, one hispanic and an asian, probably the Merchants,' ran through his mind as the young men rushed in.

"Give us your money!" the hispanic man shouted as he pointed his shotgun at the waitress.

Myst used his telekinesis to flip the safeties on the guns then yanked them out of the idiots' hands and sent the guns flying towards the ceiling as he gestured towards the thugs and lifted them a foot off the ground.

"Cape!" the asian shouted as he frantically struggled against Myst's telekinetic grip.

Amy turned to look at the waitress behind the counter. "You should probably call the police."

Myst walked over and touched one of the black gang members on the hand. "I don't suppose you know where I can find Skidmark or one of the Merchant's stash houses or Squealer?" he asked as he focused on the man's thoughts.

The man spit at him which hit Myst's hastily conjured force field. "Go to hell!"

"I'll make sure to tell Skidmark that you solid him out, Mark," Myst assured him as he lifted the information he wanted out of the man's mind, slightly annoyed that he didn't know where to find any of the capes or stash houses, just names for a couple of the people that he sold drugs for and the location of the next 'party'. "How many times have you been to jail?"

"Fuck off!" the man shouted as he frantically tried to pull his hand away from the strange cape, despite the fact that he couldn't move it at all.

'I really need to find an explosive castration spell or maybe an impotence charm that doesn't leave any evidence,' Myst mused as he mentally skimmed over the man's rather impressive collection of crimes. "Hopefully they'll keep you locked up for more than a year this time."

"Fuck you! Skidmark is going to kill you then I'm going to have fun with your friend!" the man snapped.

Myst briefly considered stepping forward and kicking the man in the nuts as hard as he could, but figured the brief sense of satisfaction he got wouldn't be worth the trouble with the cops. He grabbed the man's tongue with telekinesis and glared at the thugs floating in the air. "I'm not a cop but I'm reasonably sure you have the right to remain silent, I suggest using it."

"We'll be out on the streets by the end of the week," the asian man argued, knowing the guns were just movie props and they couldn't prove shit.

"Do yourself a favor, shut up and wait for the cops like reasonable criminals," Myst ordered, less than happy about having to deal with criminals that would be in jail or dead in a sane world.

0o0o0

"It could be worse, it only took twenty minutes to deal with the cops," Amy offered as they flew over the water, practicing her new flight power.

"It would have been easier to drop them in the bay," Myst grumbled as he thought about the idiots that would probably only get a couple of months in prison at most, because the prisons were overcrowded and they hadn't been using real guns.

"Don't let Vicky hear you, it might give her ideas," Amy replied, fairly sure her sister wouldn't intentionally kill anyone but she was reckless enough that she might drop someone in the bay to scare them and water wasn't as forgiving as most people thought.

"No worries, I'm not insane," Myst assured her. "Are you having fun?"

"Yes!" Amy shouted as she started 'ice skating' in the air, letting herself laugh and have fun for the first time in a long time. She could see why flyers spent so much time in the air, it was really freeing.

"Good," Myst replied with amusement as he lazily flew after her, letting the stress from having to deal with the police bleed away as he watched the biokinetic skate over the water. 'I can't stay here forever, eventually someone is going to find me and they're going to kill me and I'm basically a crystal growing telekinetic with some random tricks which isn't going to cut it against someone that has been jumping worlds for years or decades?' he mused, not sure how long the red eyed bastard had been running around the multiverse collecting powers. Though he had to admit this dimension with all its parahumans, each connected to another world, did make for some decent camouflage at close range.

'How the hell did he even find the Traveler? Did he hunt down one of his friends or apprentices or maybe he got some of his blood and used a ritual?' He pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind and flew after Amy when he realized she was almost out of sight.

Amy lost track of time as she flew around, played with her force field and worked on getting a mental idea of how much power each of her crystals had. She also learned that slamming her force field into the water while flying like a bat out of hell took more charge than merely keeping it up for a couple of seconds or at least she was fairly sure the slight spike in energy cost was because of the impact or maybe the fact that she'd went underwater for a second. She smiled as she turned to look at Myst. "Have you tried going under water?"

"Not yet," Myst replied as he floated over. "I doubt it generates air, so we shouldn't stay under more than a couple of minutes."

Amy sighed as the alarm on her watch started beeping, reminding her to check her charge on her flight crystal. She focused on her flight crystal and realized that she probably only had five to ten minutes of flight left before she ran out of energy. "I'm almost out of charge." She focused and surrounded them with her shield then descended into the water.

Myst grinned as he looked at the water that surrounded the force field. "I should have brought a camera."

Amy pulled her phone out of her purse and took several pictures. "Best I can do, unless we want to swing by the mall."

"Maybe later, you should probably deal with your step mother and I need to deal with some villains before they get in more trouble than they can talk themselves out of."

"Do you need help?" Amy asked, looking for an excuse not to go home and listen to Carol bitching about her new appearance.

"I wouldn't object," Myst admitted after thinking about it for a couple of seconds. He reached out with his senses and focused on teleporting to the group of dimensional breaches he’d located earlier, catching sight of a room filled with people dressed in costumes playing video games before he stopped picturing jumping. 'Which means the slightly wider breach is probably Noelle.'

"What do I have to do?" Amy asked.

"Just stay calm and lend the girl your bracelet so she can use the shape changing power at least once." Myst focused on the wider breach and considered teleporting, getting a flash of a dark vault with a monstrous four legged cape inside that looked far more terrifying than he'd been expecting. He teleported with Amy, reached out with his telekinesis and picked Noelle up so that she couldn't charge them. "Hello, we're here to help."

"Help?!" Noelle demanded as she struggled against the force holding her.

"What the fuck?!" Amy blurted as she stared at the woman's inhuman and monstrous body that had several extra animal-like heads sticking out of her centaur like lower body.

Myst focused on his warping power and jumped, wanting somewhere they wouldn't have a bunch of mercenaries bursting in and causing trouble any second before he could fix things. He blinked as they appeared in a dark tunnel and saw three floating skeletal-like creatures, one of which was sucking the soul out of a fat teenager while one of them was reaching for a messy dark haired teen with glasses that was sprawled on the ground. "Shit!" he cursed as he grabbed the undead-like figures with telekinesis and pulled them away from their victims, the fat teen's soul going down the creature's throat.

"Where are we?!" Noelle demanded as she struggled against her bindings.

"Give me a second!" Myst snapped as he gestured towards the fat teenager could have lost a hundred pounds and been better for it. "Amy, check to see if he's still alive."

Amy dashed over to the teen and grabbed his hand. "He's alive, but his brain’s almost completely inactive."

"What about the other one?" Myst asked, hoping the young man with glasses and a lightning bolt scar on his forehead hadn't had his soul consumed, because he had little doubt who he was.

Amy ran over and checked on the skinning teenager. "He's alive, he's just in shock."

"Good," Myst said in relief as he telekinetically pulled the struggling dementors towards him. He reached out and grabbed the dementor's cloak and pulled the dementor into his pocket dimension then grabbed the next one as it reached for him and did the same.

Amy frowned as Myst grabbed the air, wishing she'd brought a thicker jacket as it was cold. "Is something the matter?"

"I'll explain later," Myst promised as he took care of the third dementor the same way. "I need to borrow your bracelet."

"Here." Amy reluctantly slipped her bracelet off and tossed it to Myst.

"Thanks." He caught the bracelet with his telekinesis and floated it over to Noelle. "Put the bracelet on and concentrate on looking like a half giant."

"A half giant?" Noelle asked confused, wondering why the two capes had kidnapped her.

"The bracelet can only cut your size by 50% at a time and you're massive," Myst replied, not seeing a point in sugar coating things when they were on a time limit, which they surely were with three dementors captured, a teen rendered soulless, and a knocked out Harry Potter.

Amy stared as the monstrous cape's lower half shifted before her eyes and she went from a four legged beast to a massive twelve foot tall bodybuilder with grossly overdeveloped muscles. 'That's an improvement.'

"Take the bracelet off then put it on and try again," Myst ordered, wanting to finish everything and leave before the ministry sent a bunch of aurors after them for screwing with Umbridge's plan to discredit Harry. "You should be able to drop your size by 50% each time until you're back to a reasonable size."

Noelle quickly took the bracelet off then put it back on and dropped down to a much more reasonably shaped eight foot tall girl then repeated the process, dropping down to what he assumed was an airbrushed version of her normal appearance that was just over six foot tall.

Myst used his telekinesis to reclaim the bracelet before Noelle could screw something up with another attempt. "You look fine, we should get going."

Harry groaned as he sat up. "What happened?" he asked numbly, shivering from the after-effects of dementor exposure.

"You got attacked by three dementors, your cousin had his soul sucked out," Myst replied as he helped Harry to his feet.

"Shit, they're going to kill me," Harry muttered, not able to muster up the strength to care.

Myst raised his eyebrows. "I was expecting more tears or at least concern."

Harry shook his head, trying to throw off the lassitude he was feeling. "Dudley’s made my life hell for as long as I can remember and makes a habit of beating up the neighborhood children for fun. While I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to hurt him, I’m not exactly going to cry at his funeral either." He shivered and rubbed his arms.

"In that case, we should probably get your trunk and find somewhere else to spend the summer," Myst suggested.

"Trunk?" Harry asked, then blinked as he realized that the stranger knew about the dementors. "Where did the dementors go?"

"I stuffed them in a closed space I can access. Just because you can't kill them doesn't mean you can't contain them," Myst replied with amusement as he read Harry's mind, looking for details on his homelife. 'Shit, the Dursleys are worse than the books, telling people he's a criminal and trying to make sure he had a criminal record.'

"Where did you learn that?" Harry asked curiously as he regained some of his energy, wishing he had some chocolate on him.

"From an old man that loved traveling. Is there anything other than your trunk that you need from the Dursleys?" Myst asked, figuring Harry could show him around the alley and point out some acceptable targets for ritual draining if nothing else.

"Nothing worth grabbing," Harry replied, thinking about the hand me down clothes in his room.

Myst nodded then turned to look at Noelle. "I can help you with the rest of your issues but you're going to need to avoid touching people and spawning copies in the meantime, can you do that?"

"You've done more than anyone else has been able to, I'm good," Noelle promised, glad to have hope for the first time since she'd ended up on Earth Bet. She ignored the voice in the back of her head telling her she was worthless and that they’d soon notice and abandon her.

Myst activated his invisibility power and vanished from sight. "In that case, do I have permission to retrieve your belongings so you don't have to confront your aunt and uncle?"

"Yeah, I don't think my returning there is a good idea," Harry replied, thinking about his uncle's tendency to get violent at the drop of a hat and Dudley being turned into a vegetable was a rather large hat.

"In that case, I'll be right back," Myst replied as he teleported outside of Harry's house. He stared in disbelief at the cobwebs of blue light that covered the house and the frayed holes large enough for Hagrid to step through without ducking that were slowly growing. 'So much for wizards having arcane sight in this dimension,' he mused as he walked up the path towards the house, thinking about the various stories where Dumbledore's glasses were enchanted to see magic.

He tried the handle and realized it was locked. 'Of course they'd lock the door, they're paranoid.' He focused on the other side of the door and teleported near the broom closet. He scowled as he looked at the heavy lock on the broom closet. He grabbed the lock and used his telekinesis to pick it, easily opening the door. 'They're going to have enough reason to hate Harry, I might as well not give them more.' He reached in and teleported Harry's trunk into his inventory with the three dementors, idly wondering if it was stacked on top of them or they were all just standing upright.

Myst teleported back to the park and dropped his invisibility. "By the way, I believe the dementors were sent by the Undersecretary."

"How do you know that?" Harry asked, wondering if he should care. It sounded important, but Voldemort had been trying to kill him for years and what would the odds be that whoever the Under Secretary was would be even marginally more competent?

"We're travelers from another dimension so we know quite a bit. Your name is Harry James Potter, your parents were James and Lily Potter, Sirius Black is your godfather and an illegal animagus and Hermione Granger is your best friend. How am I doing?" Myst asked.

"Not Ron?" Harry asked as he turned to look at Amy, surprised with how much she looked like Hermione, other than the red hair and larger breasts she could be an older sister or cousin. ‘Okay, not telling Hermione I ran into her older sexier twin, even I’m not that thick.’

"Really? After last year?" Myst asked in surprise. "That little shit abandoned you because he thought you wanted fame and gold, two things he should have known you didn't want, and did his best to turn all of Gryffindor against you, are you really telling me that he's still your best friend?"

"When you put it like that you have a point," Harry admitted, thinking about Ron's behavior over the tournament and the fact that the lazy twat had convinced him to take divination back in third year rather than something more useful, like... anything really. "Not sure Hermione is exactly my best friend at the moment either, she hasn't written all summer and not to winge on about it or anything, but… I really could have used a friend."

"Yeah, because Dumbledore told her not to. He's afraid you'll say something you shouldn't in a letter and the ministry will intercept it," Myst explained.

"If that's the case, why didn't he just say so?" Harry asked.

"He has his reasons," Myst offered, not actually sure why Albus wouldn't just have Mrs Figg let him know that his letters were suspect as it would have saved a lot of hassle. "On that note, we should probably head somewhere else, unless you want to continue standing around your cousin's comatose body."

"Where do you suggest?" Harry asked, glancing down at his cousin’s open unseeing eyes and wishing he could feel something more than annoyance.

"If we head to Ron's house, Mrs. Weasley will call Dumbledore and you'll be back with your aunt and uncle before you can sneeze or we can pick up Hermione and maybe Sirius and make tracks from England for a time," Myst suggested.

Harry shook his head. "If I knew where either of them were, that would be a great idea, but I don't."

"You could always call her or we could look her up in a phone book and teleport over there. Sirius should be in London, but that's slightly more problematic in that he's behind magical wards and I'm not sure how to reach him without causing trouble."

"There's a corner store that has a payphone, I'll give Hermione a call," Harry said perking up, glad that she'd had him memorize her number in case he needed it, warming up a little as he thought about seeing her again.

"Sounds good," Myst said as he lifted the location of the store out of Harry's head as well as what Hermione looked like, rather amused that she looked close to Amy's current appearance other than the red hair and being a bit smaller. He started walking towards the corner store.

"Can we get introductions?" Noelle asked as she followed Myst, not sure what was going on.

"Myst, dimensional traveler and amateur mage," Myst replied.

"Amy, healer," Amy said, not sure if his abilities counted as magic but they certainly worked so she wasn't going to argue.

"Harry Potter," Harry said as he followed along, not sure what was going on but figuring it was better than staying with the Dursleys.

"I'm a wizard, that Harry Potter?" Noelle asked, finally putting the dots together.

"Yeah, just don't tell everyone, magic is a secret around here," Harry replied, hoping he wasn't making a mistake.