Broken Soul Part 15 (Patreon)

"This is going to be awesome!" Ron exclaimed as he created a shadow clone, causing his shadow to vanish and a clone to appear wearing his shorts.

"Zoom!" Ron's shadow clone shouted then flew up into the air.

Myst tilted his head back and watched the shadow clone as it accelerated, going straight up. "Is there a reason your clone took off like a bat out of hell?"

"I was thinking about reaching orbit, you know, being the first man in space under his own power," Ron mused.

"He'll probably pass out before he reaches it," Taylor pointed out as she created a shadow clone.

"Maybe, but it's still worth trying," Ron replied with amusement.

"He has a point," Akari's shadow clone said and quickly followed Ron, figuring she had a better chance since she had more durability.

"First woman," Taylor's shadow clone said smugly, then flew up into the air, causing the rest of the shadow clones to race to beat them.

Selene shook her head. "And that's our shadow clones for the day."

Myst shrugged. "Yeah, but at least they'll be done with that until we are tough enough to survive the vacuum of space."

Akari glanced at Myst's shadow clone who was the only one that hadn't flown off. "Is there a reason your shadow clone isn't flying off?"

"I'd rather have sex," Myst's shadow clone said bluntly.

Amy squinted her eyes as she stared up. "I think some of them are doing that as well."

"Shit!" Myst's shadow clone cursed and took to the air.

"And now you give a flying fuck, literally," Taylor said dryly.

Myst laughed, rather amused by his clone's antics.

Selena looked away from the group of dots in the sky. "I think we are going to need concrete plans or this is just going to happen every time we summon them."

"And they'll have to be plans that are more fun than simply having sex," Ron pointed out to a chorus of groans.

"Yeah, good luck with that," Myst said dryly.

Amy pulled her attention away from the shadow clones and focused on the group. "Do we have any plans for the day?"

"Sex," Akari replied with a grin. "I want to test my new talent."

"I'll help!" Selena offered enthusiastically.

"Sounds fun," Akari replied with a smile.

"Can I borrow the tiara and the regeneration items?" Taylor asked Myst. "I want to work on my lightning resistance so I can farm the goblins and work on building up my ki."

"Sure," Myst replied as his avatar handed him the staff and the tiara. He handed the staff and the tiara to Taylor then took his necklace off and handed it to her. "Can you give her the dragon blood technique?" he asked Amy.

"Yeah, just read my back," Amy replied as she conjured her spell book, tapped the dragon blood technique and activated the book's copy ability, causing the dragon blood technique to appear on her back.

"Thanks," Taylor replied as she walked around Amy so she could learn the technique.

Ron glanced at the staff Taylor was holding. "We should probably check to see if our shadow clones can increase the staff's regeneration and if the lost strength resets every time they're summoned."

"What if it doesn't?" Amy asked, not particularly happy with the idea of crippling her shadow clone.

"If they don't reset, they can probably use the cursed dagger to increase their strength," Ron pointed out, thinking about the cursed dagger that had a decent chance of killing the person using it, which wouldn't matter with shadow clones.

"And if they reset, half of my strength should give the staff a hell of a boost," Akari mused, fairly sure she could talk her shadow clone into beating some goblins to death with the staff, once she was done flying around and having fun.

Taylor smiled as the words on Amy's back vanished and she learned the technique. She put the tiara and the necklace on then looked at Amy. "Do you want to check my biology first or should I just use the technique?"

Amy gestured towards one of the lawn chairs. "Take a seat, I'll monitor your biology for the first couple of minutes to make sure you're not going to melt."

"Thanks," Taylor replied as she walked over and sat down on the chair, figuring the technique would be easier to deal with if she was sitting down.

"How long do you think it will take for everyone to get electricity immunity?" Ron asked.

"It shouldn't take more than a couple of hours per person," Myst replied, thinking about his own experiences with the technique. "Especially if we cut your wrists and let you bleed out to get rid of most of the acid."

Akari shook her head. "That sounds really bad out of context."

"Doesn't really sound much better in context," Myst admitted with amusement as Amy walked over to monitor Taylor.

"Cabin, shower, or lawn chair?" Selena asked Akari as she grabbed the coconut bikini off one of the lawn chairs and put it on.

"Shower," Akari replied with a grin as she picked the younger girl up and headed for the shower.

Ron grabbed the technique modification desk so that he could at least pretend to be working on something while he enjoyed the show and sat down on one of the bamboo chairs with a good view of the shower.

Myst grabbed Selena's magnifying glass off her chair then walked over and sat down on a chair away from the group and started creating more of the tainted talent crystals, figuring it was a good use of his time since his avatar was just flying around and scouting the island.

0o0o0

"What do you think we'll find?" Peter asked as they walked towards a cave entrance.

"Zombies," Gwen joked, fairly sure they weren't going to run into zombies.

"Why zombies?" Peter asked.

"It's like a bad movie. We're stuck on a cursed island and there's no sign of the cast, thus zombies," Gwen teased.

Peter shook his head. "Not a chance, it's been years, zombies would have rotted."

"Unless they're magic zombies," Gwen argued.

"We're not in a horror movie," Peter replied as he walked into the cave, fairly sure his spider senses would be tingling if the cave was filled with zombies.

"No, but the natives had shamans and they liked cursing people," Gwen argued as she followed Peter into the poorly lit cave.

Peter glanced over the old fashioned trunks and crates and focused on the bamboo bicycle that was connected to a metal tube by some wires. "Looks like they stashed everything they couldn't take with them."

"Makes sense," Gwen replied as she walked over to check the crates. "Which probably means they got off the island."

"Better than dying here and turning into ghosts," Peter mused as he moved over to check on the crates.

"Howels," Gwen muttered when she opened one of the steamer trunks and found that it was filled with stacks of cash.

"Probably," Peter replied as he opened one of the other crates and found a couple of high quality dresses. "Why would Ginger need five dresses for a three hour cruise?"

"She's a movie star," Gwen replied, not actually sure why you'd wear an expensive evening gown on a boat.

Peter smiled when he checked the next crate and found a couple of journals and some cobbled together lab equipment. "I might have found the professor's notes."

"Anything interesting?" Gwen asked as she opened the other steamer trunk and found a bunch of clothes that Mrs. Howel might have worn.

"Give me a second…" Peter trailed off as he checked the notebook and realized that the journal had notes for alchemy. "Jungle fruit alchemy?" he asked in disbelief when he read the title of the handwritten journal.

"Makes sense," Gwen mused.

"How does it make sense?" Peter asked as he skimmed through the journal.

"Can you create a battery using coconuts and stuff you find on a tropical island to make a battery?" Gwen asked.

"It depends on the tropical island," Peter replied absently as he continued looking through the journal. "I made a tropical island battery for my seventh grade science project."

"How… Seriously?" Gwen asked.

"It wasn't that hard," Peter replied with a shrug.

"Right, genius," Gwen muttered, fairly sure that most people wouldn't be able to pull off the same thing.

"I'm going to have to test some of these." Peter put the journal back in the crate. "We should probably come back with some type of light and explore the rest of the cave, they might have stashed something else useful."

"Or we'll find zombies," Gwen teased as she checked the last trunk, finding bits and pieces that had been salvaged from a boat and a collection of random things that looked like they'd washed ashore.

Peter shook his head then picked up the crate with the professor's books and alchemy tools and headed outside.

Gwen snickered as she shut the various trunks and followed Peter outside. "Are we flying straight back?"

"Might as well," Peter replied as he flew up into the air and headed back toward the cabin, wanting to grab some lunch and relax a bit before they continued exploring.

0o0o0

"Did you like the show?" Selena asked as she walked over to where Myst was examining the crystals he'd created with her magnifying glass, curious if he'd created anything interesting.

"Absolutely," Myst replied with a smile. "You looked like you were having fun."

"Yep, Akari is talented," Selena replied as she pulled a chair up and sat down across the table from Myst. "Did you find anything interesting?"

Myst pointed to one of the crystals. "That one turns your left arm into a tentacle and makes the flesh on your right arm nearly indestructible."

"Tentacles?" Akari asked thoughtfully as she walked over.

"Bad Akari," Selena 'complained', trying not to laugh.

"Are you saying you've never wondered what it would be like?" Akari asked, thinking about some of the hentai she'd seen over the years.

Selena shook her head. "You can tongue fuck me, you're not fucking me with a tentacle, I'm not a Japanese school girl."

"You have a shadow clone," Akari argued as she glanced over at where Amy was sitting with a glass of raspberry lemonade with her left hand on Taylor's arm so she could keep tabs on her changing biology. "What do you think, Amy?"

"I'm biokinetic, not a miracle worker," Amy argued.

"Does that mean you can't reverse the changes if she uses the crystal?" Selena asked.

"No, I was talking about Akari's brain," Amy replied with a smirk.

"That's fair," Akari admitted with a grin. "Joking aside, we should probably give the crystal to someone that doesn't have my durability."

"Can I have it?" Ron asked, wanting to have an arm that he could use to block things without worrying about breaking it.

"Do you want the indestructible arm?" Myst asked Taylor.

Taylor glanced over at Ron and noticed that he was giving her puppy dog eyes. "I'll take the next one."

"Works for me," Myst replied as he tossed the cursed crystal to Ron. "Does anyone want a talent that lets them shoot shards of ice out of their eye sockets?"

"Is that as bad as it sounds?" Amy asked.

"Probably, it causes instant brain freeze that just gets worse and worse until you pass out if you keep using it," Myst replied as he picked up the crystal in question. "Minion?"

"Minion," everyone agreed.

Myst tossed the crystal to Taylor then picked up the next crystal. "Does anyone want the ability to see invisible creatures?"

"What's the downside?" Akari asked as Ron used his crystal, causing his left arm to twist and change into suggestively shaped purple tentacle that was dripping a clear liquid. "That looks fun…" she trailed off when his tentacle touched one of the bamboo chairs and the chair started dissolving. "Acid!"

"Damn it!" Ron complained, having been looking forward to having some fun with his tentacle before he got rid of it.

"You grow half a dozen eyes in weird spots on your body," Myst admitted as he studied the writhing slime covered purple tentacle that looked like something straight out of a hentai.

"Toss it to Ron, I’ll see about correcting both at once," Amy suggested as she watched Ron's tentacle twist and shift in ways that were hard to look at because staring at it too long made her eyes hurt.

"What happens if you can't fix it?" Ron asked.

"Then you'll have to get used to turtlenecks and hats, maybe a mask," Amy replied as she turned to look at Taylor. "Can I borrow the regeneration necklace for a minute?"

Taylor took the necklace off, being careful to keep her grip on the staff since the staff's regeneration was the only thing keeping her from bleeding out or melting thanks to the acid and fire in her blood. "Is the staff's regeneration keeping up?"

Amy checked Taylor's biology. "You're fine, it's just the first couple of minutes that you need both."

Taylor handed her the necklace. "Okay."

Amy put the necklace on then walked over and grabbed Ron's tentacle, causing the skin on her right hand to burn and sizzle as the alien acid started eating away at her hand despite her resistance to acid from the dragon blood technique. "Fuck! That stings."

"What were you expecting?" Selena asked.

"Pain," Amy admitted after a couple of seconds once the pain started fading and her flesh regenerated thanks to the necklace. "I wouldn't-" she cut off when Ron's tentacle moved and some of the acid ate completely through his foot in less than a second, proving that the rest of his body wasn't immune to it.

"Fuck!" Ron screamed as his tentacle lashed out in pain, spraying Akari and Amy with acid and causing Selena to dodge out of her chair to avoid the acid.

"Fuck!" Akari cursed as she ran for the shower, wanting the shit off her before it ate all the way through her.

Selena conjured her sword, dashed forward and hacked Ron's tentacle off before it could spray anyone else with acid since it didn't seem to be under Ron's control or at least not his conscious control. "Sorry, not sorry!"

Amy reached over, grabbed Ron's shoulder with her left hand and worked on stopping the bleeding from his stump and his foot so he wouldn't bleed out.

"Fuck!" Ron screamed, trying not to pass out from the pain and shock of having his arm cut off and half his foot eaten.

Selena gestured and used a levitation spell to float the writhing acid coated tentacle away from the group. "We should probably burn that."

Taylor scrambled out of her chair, grabbed a healing potion from the box of potions she had in case the two regeneration items weren't enough and sprinted over to Akari to help.

"Did anyone else get hurt?" Myst asked as he checked Selena for signs of injury, glad that no one had gotten hurt worse and that they had Amy to fix things.

"You'll live," Amy told Ron as she numbed his nerves. She sprinted towards the shower to check on Akari, glad that Taylor was already giving her a healing potion.

Ron staggered over and flopped down on a chair so that he wouldn't have to balance on his mangled foot, reminding himself that having a nearly indestructible arm would make up for the temporary pain.

"That crystal needed more of a warning label," Selena grumbled, glaring at the tentacle that was still writhing and trying to escape her spell.

"Sorry," Myst offered. "The magnifying glass didn't say anything about acid."

"I should have waited until I was further away," Ron admitted, feeling like an idiot.

"Next time," Myst agreed, knowing they'd gotten lucky that no one had died.

Amy finished patching Akari up then walked over to the tentacle and grabbed it with her left hand, causing her hand to blacken and burn for a couple of seconds before her talent pushed her acid resistance up enough that she was immune to acid or at least the acid the tentacle was covered in. She studied the tentacle's alien biology for a couple of seconds then reluctantly headed back to the outhouse to make sure her hands were clean so she could finish healing Ron.

"That sucked," Akari complained as she walked back over, being careful to avoid any black spots on the sand where the acid had landed. "I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for Amy's insane vitality."

"Sorry," Ron apologized again, feeling really guilty about the whole mess.

"Not your fault," Akari assured him. "I mean, it was because you didn't get out of range, but I don't think any of us expected to have to deal with acid, so yeah, don't beat yourself up."

"Thanks and yeah, I'll be more careful next time," Ron agreed.

"What do you think the chances are of the eyes shooting lasers at everyone?" Selena asked thoughtfully.

"No clue," Myst admitted as he glanced over at where Amy was washing her hands. "Do you want me to fry the tentacle or do you want to study it?"

"That depends, does Taylor want a spirit beast with an acid tentacle?" Amy asked as she turned the water off and started walking back over so she could put Ron back together.

"That would make farming the monsters easier," Taylor mused as she walked back over to her chair and flopped down, doing her best to ignore the way her vision was fading in and out from the acid damage she was dealing with.

"Can someone other than Ron grab a couple of chunks of pork?" Amy asked, looking at Akari and Myst. "I'm going to need the biomass to fix his arm."

"Sure," Myst replied as he headed toward the lawn chair covered pit where they'd stashed the meat.

"Thank you," Ron told Amy.

"That's why I'm here," Amy replied as she reached out, grabbed Ron's shoulder and started fixing the damage.

"What else did we get?" Selena asked absently as she focused on keeping the tentacle from escaping.

"Eighteen twisted cultivation boosters that we're not using for various reasons unless we want to feed them to Taylor's beasts, a crystal that gives a thievery talent that turns you into a kleptomaniac and a crystal that gives you the ability to copy powers."

"What's the catch with the power copying crystal?" Selena asked when Myst walked back over with a side of pork, wondering if the crystal was worth using.

"It requires sex and using the power to copy someone's power gives them a temporary version of your powers for a day and drastically increases their sex drive when it comes to people with powers while they have the temporary power copying ability," Myst explained.

"That would spread like a virus," Amy complained as she took the slab of meat and started rebuilding Ron's foot.

"Pretty much," Myst replied. "The only saving grace is that your ability to acquire permanent minor powers doesn't include the power copying ability and you can't be reinfected for two months by a carrier which means that eventually, the power will vanish unless you have a lot of capes running around."

"Carrier? Does that mean the person with the talent can reinfect them?" Amy asked.

Myst sighed. "Yeah, every time they have sex with someone it adds three days to the duration, up to a week at a time."

"Do you want it?" Selena asked Akari.

Akari shook her head. "I'd love the temporary version but I'm the last person that should have the permanent version, Gwen would be a better choice. I don't want to risk spreading that every time I want to have sex with someone to get a boost to my attributes."

"Makes sense, but why Gwen?" Taylor asked.

"She has Peter and he's unlikely to run around screwing random capes which makes it easier to contain," Akari pointed out.

"Objections?" Myst asked.

"No," Ron replied, not wanting to deal with the responsibility.

"I've got enough evil demons that want to fuck me," Selena complained. "I don't need to give them more reasons and I don't want to make my girlfriends targets or boyfriends when my father lets me start dating boys."

Taylor shook her head. "I'm good, I don't need to paint a target on my back."

"Same," Amy agreed, wanting to avoid giving anyone a reason to kidnap her and toss her in a cage.

"Cool," Myst replied, figuring Gwen was the best choice as long as she was willing to have sex with Akari and get the power copying party started. "Next question, which shadow clone do we give the thievery crystal to?"

"What does it give us?" Ron asked.

"Stealth skills and the ability to steal equipment and coins off mobs or people. If we screw the shadow clone with the power copying ability active, we'd get a version of the power, we can probably use an upgrade tile to boost it."

"Or use an upgrade tile to boost Gwen's ability once she gets it," Myst suggested.

"Power copying?" Gwen asked as her and Peter landed behind Myst, having only caught the last bit.

Myst turned to look at Gwen and Peter. "One of the crystals gives someone a sex based power copying ability that they can share with the people they have sex with."

"Why do you want Gwen to have it?" Peter asked.

"Amy and Taylor's world has thousands of capes running around that would murder people for a chance to increase their powers, Ron's world has a couple of villains that would do the same who are actively targeting him, Selena would be more of a target for creepy demons and Akari doesn't want it because it would screw with her ability to use her other talent and Peter's unlikely to run around screwing villains which means you could keep everything contained."

"Makes sense," Gwen agreed as she looked at Ron's missing arm. "What happened to Ron's arm and why is there a tentacle floating in the air?"

"He used a crystal that turned his arm into a tentacle, we had to cut it off because it was acidic as hell," Akari offered.

"I'm going to need more details and food before I make a life altering decision," Gwen said, wanting to hear the rest of the story and all of the details about the crystal before she agreed to anything.

"I got the food," Ron said as he gestured and conjured Gwen and Peter cheese burgers.

"I've got the details," Akari added, then started explaining what everyone was working on, including the shadow clones.

0o0o0