Boosted Villainy Part 19 (Patreon)

‘Do you have eyes on Trainwreck?’ Myst asked as he watched the snow fall on the derelict warehouse the merchants had used for their Christmas Eve rave, the early morning light giving it an almost innocent feel.

'He's currently in the trainyard,' S. Coil replied over the mental connection, having already checked to make sure he wasn't going to lose any of his assets.

'Good, I haven't had a chance to copy him,' Myst replied as he pulled his remote out of his inventory, brought up his portal menu and selected the option to create a portal that moved, selecting the flooded and abandoned Brockton Bay he'd found earlier as his target. He pointed the remote at the warehouse and pushed the open button. He quickly increased the size of the portal until it was large enough to swallow the warehouse, causing the quickly moving portal to slow down.

'An inch a second, twelve seconds per foot, so five feet a minute,' he mused as he glanced down at his phone that was sitting on the hood of one of the cars in the parking lot that was showing part of the PHO discussion about Winslow. 'You'd think they'd have better things to do at six forty in the morning on Christmas, then again most people are probably just chilling at home.'

'Pretty sure I'd rather be fucking someone,' S. Rose teased.

'Sorry, if we went with your idea, we'd never get anything done,' Myst replied as he skimmed through the thread.

'If we're not going to spend all day fucking like rabbits, what are you planning?' S. Rose asked.

Myst glanced back at the warehouse, checking on the progress of the portal. 'I was thinking about catching some movies when Squealer's clone gets back from healing Aisha.'

'Are you planning on giving Aisha powers?' S. Rose asked, not sure they needed to give a hyperactive teenager powers.

'Maybe later, I didn't give Squealer's clone the gloves,' Myst replied, not particularly interested in seeing the chaos that would result from C. Squealer handing out powers to random people because it sounded fun. 'Besides, I want to make sure Aisha's actually stable first, she has a sarcastic personality and the healing wand didn't fix Amy's snark, I doubt it will fix Aisha's personality, at least not immediately.'

'Makes sense, we can always revisit the issue in a couple of weeks once she's doing better,' S. Rose agreed. 'Are you still planning on exploring the world with hover cars?'

‘Sounds more interesting than being stuck watching a bunch of romantic comedies with the shadow girls or Home Alone or whatever horrible Christmas movies they're showing,' Myst complained.

'You realize that's half the fun, right?' S. Rose teased.

'And the other half is stuffing yourself,' Myst said as he read a comment by Void Cowboy, 'Santa dealt with the school? How does that make sense?'

'Apparently against all odds, someone that went to Winslow was good this year and wanted it gone,' S. Rose teased.

'Yeah, Taylor, she's a bloody saint for not killing Emma and Sophia,' Myst replied as he typed out a response for Void Cowboy. "Pretty sure it's aliens, the government has been studying their flying saucers for years man."

'This is like kicking a retarded puppy,' S. Rose complained.

'Does that mean we can't grab a saucer shaped hovercraft and fly it past his window?' Myst asked.

'On the one hand, no, on the other Void…' S. Rose trailed off thoughtfully, having run into him on the forums more than a few times.

"Dude, there's no way it's aliens," Void Cowboy posted, followed by a number of people chiming in to agree with him, their stunned tones somehow coming through in their posts.

Myst glanced back at the portal that was replacing the warehouse into an empty snow covered lot. He chuckled as he read through some of the comments, rather amused that Greg was actually being reasonable. 'Now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably drop by in a flying saucer and heal him.'

'If you're going to cause him mental issues, at least give him the learning ability to make up for it,' S. Rose suggested. 'If nothing else, I'd like to see how the world deals with him being an actual expert on everything.'

Myst laughed. 'It shouldn't be all that hard to find him, Veder can't be a particularly common last name.'

'Changing topics for a second, have you figured out how to deal with Lung yet?' S. Rose asked.

'Vista,' Myst replied.

'Vista?' S. Rose asked in surprise.

'Yep, she can get us close and Amy can take him down. Once we have a copy, we can start sending people through portals, if we do it right, they'd jump at the chance,' Myst replied as he turned his attention back to the warehouse, wanting to make sure the portal didn't get away from him.

'Probably better than fighting him,' S. Rose agreed.

0o0o0

'Fucking bastards!' Aisha Laborn complained as she ducked into the alley, narrowly avoiding a burst of frozen paintballs that shattered against the far wall of the alley. She stopped when she saw a woman dressed in overalls standing next to a dumpster holding a large wrench. "Shit!"

C. Squealer scowled at the pair of idiots with shaved heads and paintball guns that stopped in front of the alley. "If you hit me, I'm going to beat you stupid with my wrench," she warned the idiots as Aisha ducked around the dumpster to get some cover.

One of the guys pulled an actual handgun out of his jacket and pointed it at C. Squealer. "If you give us the bitch, I won't kill you."

"You realize I'm white, right?" C. Squealer asked as she glanced between the thugs and the hero that was sneaking up on them, wondering if they'd suffered brain damage or if they were just naturally this stupid and deaf.

"I don't actually care. Besides, you're probably Jewish," the thug replied with a smirk. "Which means you've got money, empty your wallets and give me your leather jacket."

"Counter argument, you put the gun away, turn around and reevaluate your lives before I use my oversized wrench to defend myself," C. Squealer told the thug cheerfully.

"I have a fucking gun," the thug said as he waved the gun in her general direction.

"You think I…" C. Squealer trailed off as the other thug shot her five times with his paintball gun, splattering her force field with blue paint. "Next time we use actual bullets."

Clockblocker reached out and touched the idiot with the handgun, freezing him in place then did the same to the other thug. "Thanks for the distraction."

"You're welcome," C. Squealer replied as the cape pulled a small chunk of silly putty out of his utility belt. "Putty?"

"It's useful," Clockblocker replied as he stuffed the putty into the end of the punk's gun and froze it, hoping it would stay frozen longer than the idiots. "This way if he unfreezes and pulls the trigger before I can secure him, he won't hit anyone."

"How long will they stay frozen?" Aisha asked as she walked out from behind the dumpster, being careful to stay out of the line of fire of the goon's pistol.

"Anywhere from twenty seconds to a couple of minutes," Clockblocker replied as he pulled a bundle of yarn out of his utility belt and tied the idiot's feet together.

"Shouldn't you be calling the police?" C. Squealer asked.

Clockblocker shrugged. "I already called it in, I doubt they'd bother sending someone considering I stopped him before he could actually shoot you and the police are trying to stop people from causing trouble at Winslow."

"What's wrong with Winslow?" Aisha asked as she pulled her pepper spray out of her pocket and walked over to the frozen thugs. "Beyond the obvious?"

Clockblocker glanced at the pepper spray then bent down and worked on tying the other guy's legs together so he 'couldn't' see her spray the idiots in the faces, knowing that they'd only get a slap on the wrist if he hauled them in. "Someone caused it to vanish."

"How the fuck did they do that?" Aisha asked as she put her pepper spray back in her pocket and dashed past the skinheads, not wanting to be in front of them in case they unfroze.

"No clue," Clockblocker admitted as he turned to look at C. Squealer. "Is there a reason you're walking around with a large wrench?"

"They hold up better than baseball bats," C. Squealer replied with a grin.

"Would-" Aisha winced when the thug with a gun started screaming and fired his gun blindly, causing the gun to explode as the bullet hit the time locked putty and had nowhere else to go.

C. Squealer winced at the noise. "That's annoyingly loud."

"Yeah," Clockblocker agreed as he reached out and touched the screaming thug when he dropped his paintball gun and the remains of his handgun so he could rub his eyes, freezing him in place again. "You should probably leave before they unfreeze again."

"Thanks for the help," C. Squealer said as she tapped Aisha on her shoulder with Myst's ring, curing her various physical and mental issues. "We should probably get out of here before they come back."

"Thanks for the save," Aisha told Clockblocker, rather impressed that he'd let her hit the idiots with pepper spray. 'Maybe all the heroes aren't assholes.'

"That's why we're here," Clockblocker assured her, looking forward to getting done with his shift so he could relax with his family.

'Might as well,' Aisha thought as she followed C. Squealer, fairly sure it was safer than trying to get back to her father's alone, especially since she was going the same direction. "What were you looking for in the dumpster?"

"Electronics," C. Squealer replied with a grin. "I'm trying to build a flying go-kart."

"Cool, any luck?" Aisha asked, surprised that she'd basically admitted to being a tinker.

"It's a work in progress," C. Squealer said cheerfully.

"Cool," Aisha replied with a grin. "What else have you made?"

"Tools," C. Squealer admitted. "You have to make the tools to make the toys."

Aisha listened to the tinker as she launched into a discussion about tinkering, wishing school was half as interesting.

0o0o0

Myst pulled his attention away from the waves when S. Rose walked over holding a faded and water damaged newspaper. "Not my monkey, not my problem."

"You didn't even wait to see what I was going to say," S. Rose teased as she leaned up against the railing next to Myst and looked at the broken boats they still needed to fix.

"Let me guess, someone found yet another problem with the electrical systems, skeletons in the basement or monsters in the other Brockton Bay?" Myst asked, fairly sure someone would have run screaming if they'd found monsters in the abandoned city they'd been looting for replacement kitchen equipment.

"Yes to the first one, no to the skeletons or at least nothing human and someone found monsters but it wasn't us," S. Rose replied as she handed him the faded newspaper, thinking about the faded pictures that made her think of a less stable Blasto.

"What type of monsters?" Myst asked as he glanced over the faded paper.

"Krakens, ship sized squid? Mermaid army?" S. Rose asked. "It's a bit hard to read the articles as they're faded."

Myst gestured at the faded newspaper and used his gloves to restore it to mint condition. He frowned as he studied the pictures of monsters that looked real enough to be straight out of a high budget movie or nature shoot. "Myths and legends, no mention of tinkers or capes, just a bunch of pictures from somewhere in Florida."

"Probably some type of biotinker that went off the deep end," S. Rose suggested.

"Or they woke something up," Myst suggested, unwilling to discount the possibility considering his powers were most likely the result of magic. "Did you find anything interesting in the other warehouse?"

"Twelve cases of guns, five boxes of questionable explosives, a coffin filled with cigars, a bunch of specialized electronics tools, a strange tinkertech device that S. Kid Win is examining and two briefcases filled with cash," S. Rose replied cheerfully.

"Cool," Myst replied as he turned to look at the broken glass door. "Let me know when he's done making sure the device won't explode and we can boost a bunch of things before we close the portal and stick a warning label on it."

"What about the Merchants?" S. Rose asked, thinking about the people they'd trapped in the other world.

"What about them? There should be plenty of canned goods and fish which means they probably won't starve," Myst replied as he raised his hands and used his gloves to manipulate the scraps of bulletproof plexiglass, causing them to flow together and into the doorframe.

"Would you actually care if the monsters ate them?" S. Amy asked as she floated down from the roof where she'd been watching the team that was installing the solar panels.

"Depends on the monsters and their resistance to poison," Myst replied as he walked over and opened the previously broken door, wanting to make sure the door opened and closed smoothly. 'How long until you get here with Noelle?' he asked S. Vicky.

'Three minutes? She's not a fan of heights,' S. Vicky replied as she flew over the snow covered city heading towards the Marina, finding the city strangely peaceful.

'Cool, we're on the deck,' Myst replied as he used his gloves to 'melt' the glass bottles together and push the glass into the aluminum door frame he'd made out of cans. "We should probably start ripping doors off the buildings in the other world, it would be easier."

"Yep," S. Rose agreed. "We can probably grab a bunch from the other world's version of Home Depot, assuming they haven't looted it to the ground."

Myst shook his head. "I doubt they'd bother with the doors considering the flooding, they'd probably just leave them to rot."

S. Rose glanced at the nine flimsy doors lined up against the wall. "We can check tomorrow, it shouldn't be that hard to open a portal in the RV to the other world then just walk everything through."

"Works for me," Myst replied as he turned so he could see the glass and aluminum doors leaned up against the wall and wrecked boats they were planning on sacrificing to improve the more impressive boats. He used his power to boost the bulletproof door, causing the plexiglass to double its durability and to go from merely transparent to a cloudy mess that you could actually see through in spots and making the rest of the doors vanish.

S. Amy glanced at the large plexiglass windows that Myst had created using the gloves. "How long do you think it will take to get everything finished?"

Myst pulled his attention away from the boats and focused on S. Amy. "No clue, the dockworkers should have the wiring done by tomorrow or the day after, which means if we're lucky we can get it inspected and finished by the first, but I doubt we'll be that lucky."

"Probably for the best, you'd drive yourself crazy trying," S. Rose warned him as S. Vicky and Noelle cleared the roof.

"Probably," Myst replied as Noelle and a green haired S. Vicky and Noelle landed on the deck. "Any trouble?"

S. Vicky pulled her ski mask off and ran a hand through her green hair. "No, we saw Rune on the way here but I didn't chase her."

"Probably for the best," Myst replied as he opened the door, fairly sure she was just flying around and blowing off steam. "No point in starting a fight on Christmas."

Noelle focused on Myst. "You mentioned a couple of ideas for fixing my powers when you called, what did you find out?"

"I was trying to figure out the codes to edit your corona pollentia using a scan of Oliver's corona pollentia but his power isn't the same and I'm not sure how well tweaking things would work. The best solution is probably going to be making a copy with slightly different powers and copying her corona pollentia or trying to make something that would let me tweak your powers," Myst explained her options.

Noelle shook her head. "I'd rather not have permanent copies running around, especially if they have a chance to end up evil."

"You realize that you're going to be on another earth and there are probably countless alternative copies that picked a different path in various alternate earths, right?" Myst asked.

"Doesn't change the fact that an evil version of me with my powers is terrifying. Can you try making something that lets you alter my powers?" Noelle asked hopefully.

"Probably for the best," Myst admitted as he focused on his power copying gloves that were currently in bracelet form and pushed energy into them, trying to give the gloves the ability to alter powers and eating up a decent chunk of his energy for his trouble before he twisted the ability into something that would work. He checked the bracelets with his glasses. 'Ability to scan and modify power granting items? Not quite what I was looking for but that might come in handy if I find a cauldron vial or make something so she can ditch her powers.'

"Give me a minute, I have an idea," Myst said as he pulled his bag of snap bracelets out of his inventory and started upgrading his bracelets, trying to boost his new ability into something more useful. He pulled a second bag out of his inventory and continued boosting the bracelets, managing to boost them four times before he ran out.

He tossed the mostly empty bags back in his inventory then grabbed one of the packages of pez dispensers. He glanced over the package until he saw the version with Vader's head. 'Power unrelenting, that works.' He used three of the twenty four dispensers and boosted the Vader dispenser, causing it to become more durable and improving the quality of the spring and how well it worked.

'Power unrelenting?' S. Amy asked with amusement.

'I figure Vader seemed appropriate since we're breaking things,' Myst replied as he ripped the package open and grabbed the plastic candy dispenser with a Vader head. He pushed his energy into it, creating something that would create a menu and let someone push part of their powers or supernatural abilities into the dispenser and have it imbue a pez shaped candy with the donated ability. 'One ability or part of an ability, takes an hour to transfer the power. Not bad.'

'Seems useful,' S. Rose agreed, fairly sure some of the case 53s would love to ditch their physical changes.

Myst boosted the dispenser, consuming the rest of the dispensers to boost its ability to function and cut the required time down to something more reasonable. "Two abilities, thirty minutes, not quite there but we're getting closer."

"Okay?" Noelle asked, not sure what he was talking about.

He pulled out another package of dispensers and consumed most of the dispensers, boosting the Vader dispenser again and dropping the required time to condense a power to fifteen minutes. "That's closer," he muttered as he did the same thing three more times, dropping the time down to a minute and a limit of donating five abilities or pieces of abilities at once. "This should let you imbue some of your powers into pez candies which should let me modify the powers and give them back."

"Candy?" Noelle asked in disbelief.

"My powers are weird," Myst replied as he put the mostly empty packages back in his inventory and pulled a package of pez out so he could load the Vader dispenser. "Worst case, you can probably ditch your changer and master abilities, best case, you can use them for something interesting."

"Either works," Noelle replied, not particularly picky as long as she didn't end up a monster, once had been enough.

S. Vicky smiled as she pulled a deck of poker cards out of her pocket. "Let's play some cards while we wait for the cleaning crew to finish the kitchen."

"We'll have to find some chips," S. Rose said as she opened the door.

"I might be a bit rusty, can you spot me a couple of extra?" Myst asked innocently as he walked through the door.

S. Amy gave Myst a look of disbelief. "How come I don't believe you?"

"Because you're overly cynical?" S. Vicky told her sister as she floated inside.

"Probably," Myst teased as he worked on loading the Vader dispenser so Noelle could get started fixing her powers.

"Doesn't mean I'm wrong," S. Amy muttered as she followed her sister.

Noelle laughed as she followed Amy into the building, fairly sure Myst was less rusty than he was pretending.

"We still need to find chips," S. Rose pointed out as she followed the rest of the group.

S. Vicky smiled at S. Rose. "We have clothes."

"I'm game," S. Rose agreed with a smile.

'Works for me,' S. Amy thought as she headed over to the table.

"Welcome to the madhouse," Myst told Noelle as he handed her the pez dispenser.

"I've been to conventions, I've seen worse," Noelle replied with amusement, not particularly worried about them stripping as long as they didn't expect her to play. "How does it work?"

"Concentrate on donating a power and use the menu?" Myst offered, not actually sure how to make it work.

"I want to…" Noelle trailed off as a menu open appeared and she realized that she could split her powers up in various ways. "Have you ever considered making something that would print a description of a parahuman's powers off on a piece of paper if they touch it?"

"Not until you mentioned it," Myst admitted, fairly sure the PRT power testing department would love and hate such a device, mostly because it would put a lot of them out of a job or at least cut their hours. "Which powers do you want me to modify?"

"Let's start with my minion creation ability and my changer rating," Noelle replied as she carefully selected the broken abilities, hoping he could turn the changer rating into something useful but happy enough to have both of the abilities gone if he couldn't fix them.

"Should we deal you in?" S. Rose asked.

"Sure," Myst replied as he walked over and took a seat, looking forward to a chance to play some cards and relax.