Boosted Villainy Part 5 (Patreon)

"I'm surprised you didn't go for the challenger with how quickly you devoured that burger," Rose teased Myst as they left the restaurant.

"I'm not a fan of grease at the best of times, it's like they're intentionally trying to kill people," Myst grumbled, coming to a stop when he saw two suspicious guys in their twenties walking towards them. His gaze jumped to the shorter man's t-shirt where Mario was fucking a half naked Bowsette while Princess Peach sat on a green toadstool, playing with herself and watching. 'Amusing, not something I'd walk around in, but I've seen worse.'

"Probably, I'm pretty sure you have to sign a waiver to eat it," Rose admitted as she studied the vaguely familiar looking men.

Myst glanced at the taller man's black sweatshirt that simply had, 'Player 1!' written across it in mostly red letters with several drops of red ink under the letters like drops of blood. 'White letters and 'blood' splattered over everything, gotcha.' He pulled his sunglasses out of his pocket then wiped them on his shirt and put them on, as if to check something, not particularly surprised to see parahuman labels floating over the guys.

"Can you make us a bag of holding?!" Leet blurted out once they got close enough, running some of the words together in his excitement.

"What?" Myst asked, having only caught half of what the shorter guy asked.

"He asked if you can make us a bag of holding," Uber offered, reasonably sure that was what his friend meant to ask.

"Are you high?" Rose asked.

"Your friend has a bag that is larger on the inside!" Leet told her excitedly.

"I don't fucking care," Myst said loudly, when he noticed a couple of people watching what might be a confrontation, "I'm not giving you my mystic card, it's rare," he argued as he walked past the two capes and headed towards the RV, wondering where he'd screwed up.

Uber followed Myst, realizing that they should have waited until he was further away from the restaurant before they asked about the bag. "That's not how this works, you're supposed to trade cards," he played along.

"What makes you think I have a bag of holding?" Myst asked once they were out of earshot and near the RV.

"One of my programs flagged a video of you sticking multiple bags of things in your backpack, far more than it could actually hold," Leet said smugly.

"Fucking tinkers," Myst muttered, fairly sure the amount of work a normal programmer would have to put in to get a program to recognize a random bag being unreasonably empty looking would be beyond insane.

"You think he's a cape?" Rose asked, wondering if her ‘boss’ had stumbled across a tinker’s stash, considering he’d had a ‘magic’ wand.

"No idea, we just know he has a bag of holding," Leet replied excitedly.

"How much would you charge for it?” Uber asked. “If you aren’t interested in cash we do have some tinkertech options.”

“Hey,” Leet complained, “you know that’s a limited resource. Stick with money or a guest spot on our show or something.”

“Show? You’re Uber and Leet!” Rose realized.

“In person,” Leet said proudly. “Always nice to meet a fan.”

“I don’t know that I’d call myself a fan,” Rose said with a frown, “not after seeing you mow down all those prostitutes.”

Uber groaned. “I told you we should have done a behind the scenes video to show that we hadn’t actually hurt anyone,” he complained. “We really alienated our fan base.”

Leet sighed. “I know, but the batsaber shorted out after we’d finished the run, so there really wasn't much we could show them.”

“Batsaber?” Myst found himself asking.

“Holographic bat,” Leet explained, “shaped light that imparts a force field around what you hit that lasts for a few seconds. It made for an impressive scene, but all the girls felt was like they were smacked with a pillow into a mattress. We cleared it with them in advance… along with fifty bucks apiece once they saw how the batsaber worked.”

“Oh,” Rose said. “If I’d known that I wouldn’t have canceled my subscription to your feed.”

“I really wish it hadn’t shorted out,” Uber cursed. “We lost a lot of viewers, it took months to build our following back up and it’s still not at the level it was before the GTA episode.”

“I’m working on it,” Leet said, shaking a book at Uber.

“The new you?” Rose asked, reading the title of the book.

Leet winced. “I’m trying to stop sabotaging my work,” he explained. “It’s why my inventions keep shorting out, I’m subconsciously sabotaging myself. Apparently I’m not allowed to have nice things because I don’t believe I deserve nice things,” he quoted.

Myst shook his head. “Or maybe your passenger doesn’t believe you deserve nice things.”

“Passenger?” Uber asked, looking interested. “You’ve read up on the passenger theory?”

“Something like that,” Myst said. “How much would you pay to have your little problem fixed?”

“Fixed?” Leet asked, confused. “You think you can fix my problem?”

“So you are a parahuman?” Rose asked Myst.

“Let’s step into the RV and discuss things,” Myst replied, “too many ears out here and far too many surveillance cameras which might be able to get a transcription of public conversations by reading lips.”

0o0o0

"What do your powers do?" Leet asked once they were in the back of the miniature RV and he was reasonably sure they weren't going to get overheard.

“Pretty much anything I want them to, including trump effects,” Myst told the pair, “that’s why I know I can fix your powers.”

“How are they broken?” Leet asked, confused. “I mean, what makes you describe them as broken… besides the number of times my own creations try to kill me…” He groaned and buried his face in his hands.

Myst passed his sunglasses to Uber. “Put these on and look at Leet.”

Uber shrugged and did so. “It has a hud… Why does it say Prototype shard?”

“Because Leet has the Prototype shard, meaning he’s allowed to make anything… but only once,” Myst explained, getting both their attention as Leet put on the glasses.

“Fleeting?” the tinker asked, as he read his partner’s shard’s name.

“Temporary skills,” Myst replied, holding out his hand.

Leet turned to loom at him. “Shardless, Iterative Improvement and Let's Give It A Boost? That's not exactly how you described your powers."

"Technically, Iterative Improvement is my ability to improve things with my pool of energy, I can basically improve it by stages which is probably where the iterative part comes into it. The Let's Give It A Boost power lets me boost certain objects by sacrificing other related objects," Myst explained.

"You weren't going to mention that were you?" Uber asked.

"Would you?" Myst asked.

"Considering Leet's ability lets him make extra, albeit flawed copies of his inventions, probably," Uber argued, then thought about some of their videos and how they made them look. "Okay, on second thought, I can see why you wouldn't want to mention that."

"Your videos don't exactly paint you in the best light, you come off as dicks more often than not," Rose pointed out, surprised to find that she was working for an actual cape as her part time job and that Uber and Leet were surprisingly normal out of costume.

"They're not supposed to, if we weren't incompetent dicks, the gangs would try to recruit us," Leet complained, “and while a little pot is fine, the Merchants suck dead donkey dicks and the other gangs are even worse.”

"We might be assholes but we're not bigots," Uber agreed firmly, bumping fists with his friend.

"Equal opportunity dickery," Leet added smugly.

"Not helping," Uber complained. “Anyway, the gangs are out and the hero groups are almost worse. Why bother having powers if you aren’t going to have fun with them?”

"Fair," Myst admitted. “If Leet’s power was more reliable you wouldn’t have to worry about the gangs, the Prototype shard is pretty much Tinker: Yes in terms of power.”

“What would you want to fix it?” Uber asked intently, seeing how much this would mean to his friend as Leet was practically bouncing in place and realizing how much it could improve their situation.

“The only way to really avoid the gangs is to form your own, one that doesn’t suck dead donkey dicks,” Myst told them, the implication of what he had in mind clear to all of them.

“I don’t know, forming gangs or groups seem to make people dicks,” Leet argued, “I mean have you met Armsmaster or Brandish?”

“That’s because they are all about fighting,” Myst said with a shrug, “I was thinking more about forming one based on not doing that. It’d be more about keeping the gangs from attacking us while we have our fun doing whatever we want, providing we aren’t being assholes about it.”

“No protection schemes or robberies?” Uber asked.

“Exactly,” Myst agreed, “there are other ways to make money, even if the government seems bound and determined to make them crimes, probably so they can force all the parahumans to work for the PRT.”

“Now you’re sounding like Void Cowboy,” Uber said, shaking his head.

“Hey now, no need to be insulting,” Leet said, “let’s hear him out.”

“No, that was everything, make money without hurting people, band together to avoid the gangs on either side,” Myst told them. “I don’t have any big picture ideas, I'm not trying to become some warlord or anything.”

Uber and Leet had a quick whispered conversation before Uber nodded. "We'll give it a shot."

"My power recharges at midnight. I can use a ring to fix your power, but I'll need a lot of cheap rings to sacrifice to boost its power high enough to work,” Myst explained.

“What kind of quality are we talking here?” Uber asked. “Are we talking diamonds and gold or what?”

"I used a bag of those cheap rings they hand out at bridal showers to boost mine, plastic mass produced crap works just fine,” Myst assured them.

Uber exchanged a grin with Leet. “I think we have you covered.”

Rose tapped Myst on the shoulder. “I didn’t know I was going to be working for a cape, I want a raise.”

Myst stared at her for a second. “Wand?” he guessed.

Rose smiled widely and nodded.

0o0o0

"What's your cape name?" Leet asked Myst.

"Myst," Myst replied.

"I thought that was your name," Rose said.

"It is," Myst replied.

"In other words, you need a cape name," Leet said.

"I'm not naming myself after my powers, they can guess and be wrong," Myst replied as Uber failed to avoid a pothole. "Watch the potholes."

"I hit the smaller pothole," Uber called back from the driver's seat, “the larger one would have damaged the suspension.”

"Someone should look into fixing that," Myst complained.

Rose laughed. "Sadly no one has shown up with the power to fix potholes."

"If I made some modifications to the mario karts…" Leet mused.

"You have an idea?" Rose asked the tinker.

"If I mount a scanner on the Mario Kart I can use one of the inorganic transporters I came up with to transport in the right amount of asphalt in the right shape to perfectly fill any potholes I drive over," Leet explained.

"Isn't that a bit complicated?" Rose asked.

"It seems simple and straightforward to me and if we drove around fixing potholes I doubt they'd even try to arrest us," Leet replied. “We’ll have to use the Karts and pretend we’re just racing around so no one can complain before we finish.”

Rose shook her head. "There's probably a law against being useful."

"Probably passed by one of the unions so they'd never run out of work," Myst suggested.

"That makes a disturbing amount of sense," Rose admitted.

"If the road crews could actually keep up with the maintenance I'd feel a lot worse about this plan," Myst said thoughtfully. "I'd say we get rid of the graffiti as well but the gangs would probably flip out and start a war."

Leet snorted. "No shit."

"Are you sure you want to go with Myst?" Rose asked.

"They'll probably be looking for someone with mist based powers, I doubt they'd think about it twice if I had some," Myst replied with a shrug.

Leet glanced at Rose. "How do you feel about Princess Peach?" he asked, wondering if she was a fan of Mario Bros.

"Yes," Rose replied.

"Yes?" Leet asked.

"You were going to suggest dressing up as Princess Peach and doing something crazy, right?" Rose asked hopefully.

'I wasn't but that works,' Leet decided, changing gears as he realized she had a good idea. "It should only take an hour or two to modify the Karts after I get my powers fixed then all four of us can run around fixing the streets before crashing."

"No crashing," Uber called out as he turned into the warehouse parking lot.

"I meant sleeping!" Leet complained.

"Sure you did," Uber replied.

"We're going to need a costume for Myst," Rose said thoughtfully.

Leet glanced at Myst. "Donkey Kong or Princess Daisy?"

"Why would anyone pick Princess Daisy over Donkey Kong?" Myst asked.

"You sweat your balls off in the Donkey Kong costume, which isn't a problem in the Princess Daisy costume, it's surprisingly comfortable," Leet admitted.

Myst considered the two costumes as Uber pulled into a parking spot and shut the RV off. "Overly hot costume or having to shave to play a princess," he said, weighing his options.

"You realize it's funnier if you have a beard or were you talking about your legs?" Leet asked.

"I was thinking beard, the dress should cover the legs," Myst replied. "When was the last time you washed the Luigi costume?"

"It's mostly self cleaning, it has to be because of the oil slicks and I washed it last week, I haven't worn it since," Leet replied. "Why?"

"I'll toss in a minor social thinker ability to the ring if I can go as Luigi," Myst offered as he opened the door and stepped out.

"That is an excellent bribe, deal," Leet replied without hesitation, figuring Armsmaster would go after Luigi first as he tended to target tinkers and he always went as Luigi.

"So, what's in the warehouse?" Rose asked as she followed Leet out of the RV.

"Prizes," Leet replied with a grin as Uber opened the door, showing off a shelf filled with poorly lit carnival prizes. "Yeah, that would have gone better if we'd left the lights on."

"Yeah, but then we'd have people trying to break in," Uber replied as he reached in and flipped the lights on, revealing shelves filled with cheap plastic toys. "We own a number of claw games around the city, it's a good way to launder money as long as we keep it below a certain amount."

"Not exactly that hard, most of our revenue goes into tinkering and costumes," Uber admitted.

"I can relate, cosplaying is expensive," Rose agreed as they followed Uber into the warehouse.

Myst glanced at the various bags filled with prizes then stopped and stared when he saw rows and rows of bright yellow rubber ducks. "Is there a reason you have hundreds, if not thousands, of rubber ducks?"

"Someone misplaced a zero on the order. Thankfully, they didn't misplace a zero on the invoice, just the warehouse part," Uber replied. "Unfortunately, it left us with a…"

"Metric fuckton of ducks?" Rose asked with amusement.

Leet shrugged. "That works, I was going to go with a lot of rubber."

"Bouncy balls," Myst mused, getting a devilish gleam in his eyes.

"No," Rose stated firmly. "Wait until you have everything set up."

"What?" Myst asked.

"You looked like a mad scientist for a second there," Rose pointed out.

"That's fair," Myst admitted as he picked up four of the ducks. "Can I borrow a couple?"

"Sure, no one ever tries to grab them so they're basically just taking up space," Leet admitted.

"What are we going to do to pass the time?" Rose asked.

"We've got a gaming rig," Uber said as he showed them to the part of the warehouse that they'd converted into a living space, a wall filled with large plasma TVs.

"Nice," Rose squealed as she stared at the comfortable looking chairs.

"Can you upgrade copies of games?" Uber asked thoughtfully.

"No clue what that would do but I'm willing to try," Myst replied.

"I'll make some copies on extra flash drives," Uber replied with a grin, hoping they could get better graphics on some of the older systems.

0o0o0

“Fucking red shells!” Rose cursed as Leet cackled while Uber and Myst laughed.

“Midnight!” Myst said suddenly, feeling his power gauge refill. “I need a ring that you want to wear and a hundred or so cheap plastic ones.”

“On it,” Uber said, jumping up and vanishing among the isles of shelves.

“So… what exactly are you going to do?” Leet asked, pulling a ring off his finger and passing it to Myst.

Myst examined the simple silver ring with a series of arrows and letters etched into it in black. “Konami code?” he guessed.

“Konami code,” Leet agreed with a grin. “I’m always looking for places where it works. I once found an ATM that someone had messed with so it kicked out twenties without charging your account when you used it.”

“That’s kinda awesome, if unethical," Rose offered.

'I need a stranger power that works against his shard. Wait, I might as well extend that to shards in general, no sense in limiting things when I don't have to.' Myst pictured what he wanted as he focused on the ring and pushed a touch of power into it, causing the arrows and letters to light up in order, the previous letter or symbol fading when the next letter lit up.

"Nice effects!" Leet said cheerfully.

Myst put his sunglasses on and looked at the ring. "Okay, that worked better than I was expecting but I'm going to have to boost it."

"What do you mean?" Leet asked.

"There's a 10% chance that shards register you as a new person each time they interact with you, I should be able to boost that to a hundred percent," Myst assured him as he used a small bit of his energy pool to give the person wearing the ring a small boost to their social comprehension.

"Meaning what?" Leet asked.

"Meaning you should be able to build anything and your list shouldn't get worse while you're wearing the ring," Myst explained, not sure what effect the ring would have on other shards but doubted it would cause that much trouble.

"Sweet," Leet replied as he held his hand out. "Can I see your glasses?"

"Sure, take a look," Myst replied as he took his sunglasses off and handed them to Leet. "I also tossed in a touch of social understanding."

Leet put the glasses on and checked the ring. "Damn…"

"What can I say, my power is awesome," Myst replied with amusement.

"Can I get a bag of holding?" Leet asked in excitement as Uber came back with a couple of plastic bags filled with prizes.

"You can probably make yourself a bag of holding once your shard is fixed," Myst pointed out.

"That's a storage device and it would still be tinkertech, it could fail," Leet pointed out.

Myst opened his mouth to complain that he only had a limited amount of energy and that he didn't want to waste it on a bag when he realized that he already had a bag of holding and walking around with it wasn't all that useful as shopkeepers got twitchy about bags. "Give me a chance to shuffle things around and you can have my backpack."

"Sweet!" Leet exclaimed.

"I'm going to need some sunglasses, you have some, right?" Myst asked, figuring they were a pretty common prize item.

"No problem," Uber assured him as he set the bags on the table, one of which had sunglasses in it.

Myst focused on Leet's ring and boosted it, causing twenty of the plastic rings in one of the bags to vanish. "Twenty percent?"

"Twenty percent," Leet agreed excitedly, having watched the number change. He laughed when the number jumped to forty percent as twenty more rings vanished. "Forty!"

"Eighty, and one hundred?" Myst asked, not sure on the last bit.

"Yep!" Leet replied enthusiastically. "Social thinker three too," he added. “Hopefully that’ll help me figure out why people turn into dicks half the time or yatter on about meaningless shit like they’re important.”

“Yeah, definitely a problem on their end,” Uber said with a smirk, used to his friends' foibles.

"Nice," Myst replied as he turned his attention towards Rose. "Okay, which ring do you want me to upgrade?"

"My favorite," Rose replied with a grin as she pulled a silver ring with an amethyst stone set in the middle off her finger.

Leet slipped his ring on and blinked as he thought about his previous statement and some of the things he'd said that resulted in people flipping out. "Oh my god, I was the dick the entire time!"

"Yep," Uber agreed cheerfully.

"Hey, how come you didn't tell me I was the dick?" Leet complained.

Uber tilted his head slightly and raised an eyebrow.

“Good point,” he conceded.

“What was a good point?” Rose asked as she handed Myst her ring, knowing they were having a conversation at a glance, much like her parents, weird as that was, but having no idea what was being said.

“He let me know I was being a dick every time I was one and I just kinda tuned it out, cause he didn’t want to be a dick about me being a dick because he’s not a dick, ya know?” Leet explained.

"Makes sense," Myst offered as he studied the cloudy amethyst stone set in the middle of the thick band. "I was thinking about protection and healing, does that work for you?"

"Hell yeah," Rose replied instantly.

"Actually, let me upgrade the glasses first," Myst said as he held his hand out.

Leet pulled the glasses off and handed them to Myst. "Sure."

Myst focused on improving the glasses a touch more, pushing a small amount of energy into getting more information. He focused on his ring and pushed some of the energy into it to boost his regeneration by a tiny amount. "I'll dump the rest of the energy into Rose's ring."

"Cool," Rose replied, trying not to sound greedy.

Myst focused on what he wanted and pushed the rest of his energy into Rose's ring, giving it the ability to heal anyone she tapped with it. He focused on her ring and boosted it, consuming twenty rings. He focused on his sunglasses and boosted them, consuming twenty of the silly plastic sunglasses in the bag and improving the quality of the physical glasses.

Myst put the glasses on and looked at Uber. 'Instant skill tricks, he could really use a copy of Oliver's ability to fill in the gaps or actually practice.' He looked at Rose's ring. "You can heal minor cuts by tapping people with your ring, let me see how much I can boost that."

"You're the boss," Rose replied with a grin.

Myst bit back the comment that jumped into his head and worked on boosting her ring, going from minor cuts to near lethal wounds after consuming a hundred rings. "I'll have to toss in mental issues next time but that should help."

Rose slipped the ring on after Myst handed it to her and tapped her left hand, causing her body to glow. "That feels good."

"Like good good or just good?" Leet asked then frowned when his social ability caught up with his mouth. "Never mind that, what I said wasn’t what I meant, though I am curious."

"Just good, not the other type of good," Rose replied with amusement.

Myst focused on his ring and boosted it a couple of times, increasing the regeneration it gave him and consuming the rest of the rings in the bag.

"I'm going to tinker," Leet said.

"You need to fix the carts first," Uber reminded him.

"Oh right, we have to do that first," Leet said cheerfully as he bounced out of his seat and ran for the area with the karts. “I’m not actually fixing the carts, they are damn near perfect though I will want to give them a quick look over, what I am doing is fixing the matter teleporter and creating a VI to handle the equations needed to repair the asphalt as we drive!”

“How much asphalt do you have on hand?” Myst called out.

“Not enough, I am actually pulling it from the asphalt dimension!” Leet called back.

“Asphalt dimension?” Rose asked.

Uber shrugged. “Powers are weird and it is exactly what it sounds like and no we have no idea why.”

“Yeah… I’m not going down that rabbit hole,” Myst decided. “Mario Kart?”

“I call Bowser!” Rose yelled as she scrambled for her seat.