Chaotic Clusterfuck 3 (Patreon)

Chaotic Clusterfuck

Chapter 3

-VB-

So.

I slept with the mother of the first minor antagonist.

And goddamn she was a good lay.

More than that? I think I was going to keep fucking her. What’s a decade-plus age difference when she still looked like she was in her late 20s and early 30s?

“You’re not put off by my age?” Zoe asked me with raised eyebrows.

I looked at her incredulously before responding. “Would you like me to make you scream like you did last night to show you how little I think about that?”

She blushed a little before giggling. “Well~,” she cooed. “I certainly wouldn’t mind.”

I grinned. “I’ll be glad to tonight.”

She blinked before remembering that, yes, it was now day and most people went to work. Wordlessly, she pulled out her phone from her handbag and smiled.

“What’s your number?” she asked me with a smile.

I gave it to her.

-VB-

After getting a promise of date out of the certified MILF, I went back out to Brockton Bay.

Now that I found some fun (and most likely a continued source of fun and companionship), I wanted to see what I could do in Brockton Bay.

As a parahuman myself, I didn’t want to not to use my power. I certainly didn’t want to go back to normal life. As for the powers I had, I had Regalia (a new clone per day), Ajin (the best Master/Stranger/Brute), Search (marking and keeping track of up to one hundred objects and persons), Hyper Visible (anti-divination and anti-Thinker), Alchemy (calculated matter conversion) and Deep Pocket (pocket space). On top of this would be the rest of the power systems that everyone on Earth Bet currently had access to: Chakra, Quirks, Magecraft, and Gamer.

Overall, this meant that I was not a super-powerful cape by myself right now. Sky-high levels of potential I think.

… Actually, I should test out my powers and how they interacted with each other. Who knows if Regalia and Ajin worked together if I don’t, right? I already tested out alchemy and ajin, but I needed to see how the rest of my powers would work.

---

And thus, I found myself once again in the ship graveyards but in a different part of it and not in the same place that I did my first alchemic transmutation.

Now, I wanted to use Regalia but how did I go ab-?

A thought suddenly rose up. It felt almost foreign in how smoothly it came to the forefront of my thoughts, but the thought didn’t worm into my mind with force but rose up from within me like a fish being pulled up by a fishing line and the thought of how to use the Regalia had been that fishing line.

And then … I knew how to use it.

“Huh,” I muttered to myself. I waited for a bit as my Ajin - the black linen cloth covered invisible mummy that I controlled - scouted the area, and once I saw that there was no one to see me experiment, I pulled at Regalia.

There was no fancy power at work.

Between one blink and the next, there was another me, staring back at me.

And the two of us were suddenly one of us.

““Wow.””

Oh, that was me. No, us.

Ugh, this was already hurting my - our - heads (head?).

The second me quickly pulled at the same string that made our Ajin, and we watched as a second ajin formed, no different than the first Ajin we made.

Well, that settled that question. We got a new ajin for each clone, and this also made us probably one of the scariest motherfuckers (heh) out there. This combination of powers meant that we could, theoretically, produce an infinite number of Ajin. We wouldn’t even have to risk ourselves in battle, not when our Ajin can end all threats to us.

Importantly, could the Entities see Ajins? We’ll have to see how other parahumans interacted with it.

Next: magecraft.

In magecraft, the fuel to power all of the magecraft came from od and mana, if we remember correctly. Mana came from the world and od came from the practitioner. However, if we had multiple bodies, did that mean my soul increased? Or did each of our bodies get its own soul? An increase in the size or number of soul would mean that we would be able to perform more magecraft, but if the soul remained the same because we were still, spiritually, one person, then the mysterious we could perform would remain static.

So.

How did I test that?

We sat down and brainstormed.

---

It took us the entire morning to get the basic shell of a very primitive spell down.

Of course, we didn’t know our Element and Origin, aspects of a person that determined their Element (no duh) and what field a person might be best suited for.

In its original world, Emiya Shirou was the most famous individual for his Element and Origin. He was Sword-Sword. Yes, his Element was a “Sword” and origin was a “Sword.” This determined a lot of things about Shirou like what kind of magecraft that he could use proficiently. This was why Emiya Shirou could barely use any magecraft mysteries that didn’t involve a bladed edge of some kind.

Knowing this, we knew that we shouldn’t get discouraged about advancing our magecraft just because we didn’t get immediate results.

So if this primitive spell didn’t work, then that was alright. What we were doing today was setting a “control” to what future results.

The spell we wanted to test was Projection, a magecraft spell that was a branch of magecraft alchemy. We chose this because since we were already familiar with Fullmetal Alchemist alchemy, we hoped that the symbols and system from that universe would translate, even roughly, that would allow for a spell we could use instead of blowing up in our faces.

“You good?” I, the original, asked my clone, even though both of us were me and I was us and thus our thoughts were shared.

“Better me than me.”

I snorted and backed away.

Projection was a spell used to create an object. It would also be more correct to say that it was a copy of the object rather than a true object.

And we watched as our first clone activated our magic circuit… and the original me felt nothing.

This was an indication that each of our clones would have separate and independent magic circuits to work with, which could mean that we were spiritually independent beings. We put that thought aside to continue the experiment.

The clone poured the od out of his body and into his palms where we watched as a battered metal bat appeared first as a “grid,” like a 3D map of a battered metal bat, and then it filled in.

And there it was. A battered metal bat.

The clone swung it and even struck it against one of the shipwreck hulls, making a GONG ring out.

“Well, magecraft works.”

“And I don’t feel anything.”

“So each clone can do magecraft independently. Nice.”

Alright, that’s one round of experiment done. Now to see if the Ajin can use them, too…

-VB-

Our experiments continued throughout the day, and I made more gold and sold it to Simon again at dusk. Simon, having confirmed that the gold I sold him was real gold became much more affable during my second visit.

After dinner, we then spent the evening looking up just how different this version of Earth Bet was compared to the canon Earth Bet and the original Earth.

I already read and saw the result of direct changes that I’ve caused. Now, I wanted to know more about how those changes changed the world, and more specifically, how they affected Brockton Bay.

Three hours of trowling over the internet and the Parahuman Online forum netted me the following.

E88: still big, more spread throughout, but overall less influential.

ABB: still headed by Lung, a few more capes, and a far less of a gang and more of a pirate federation roaming the coasts of “East American Island.”

Merchants: gone. In its place was a shit ton of smaller local gangs dealing in all manners of goods, not just drugs. There were legitimate businesses selling marijuana, mostly because the government - after the Impacts - decided that they needed some form of tax revenue to substitute the loss they incurred and marijuana was the least controversial.

Faultline’s Crew: she was still around and actually settled in Brockton Bay earlier. She was less known for mercenary work and garrison contracts, which was why she was in Brockton Bay.

And speaking of which.

Garrison.

Because of the new threats to human life, living in the countryside was riskier than it ever was. There were now gigantic wildlife that specifically targeted people, Grimm that chased after all of the negative emotions, demons of all kinds, and dragons. Yes, dragons were here in North America as well, not just the Dark Continents.

And despite the need for security, the military was too stretched thin between all of those threats and the human threats. Even after the apocalypse, human civilization and polities busied themselves with political and military jocking.

USA, despite being a much more stable state compared to the rest of the world, had its own separatists, revolutionaries, anarchists, pirates, and more. Rooting, fighting, and defending against those alone would have been a straining task for the police and the military.

As such, many capes were offered garrison contracts, a legitimate way to earn money without going criminal.

This was how the ABB - and even parts of E88 - partook in legitimate work outside of their criminal elements. It was almost like endbringer battles except it was a long term work that paid even when there was no fighting.

Messing with the garrison of a city or town was tantamount to declaring war on that city or town, so even regular criminals didn’t aggressively attack garrison members, off duty or on duty.

The only people who were the pirates.

The expansion of the oceans and the ease of acquiring nautical equipment made piracy an issue once people realized that they might be able to make more money being a pirate than a regular joe, especially once it became known that ships transporting goods from the Dark Continent expeditions … well, they had a lot of stuff.

Dark Continent Expeditions were also a thing. The Dark Continents, which was far more dangerous than any other part of the world including the Batarian-occupied “Green” Sahara, were full of riches. People viewed it like how they viewed the Americas and Africa. If it didn’t come from the ground, then it came from the dangerous elements themselves. Crystal valleys that created an ever-present thunderstorm netted electrical crystal batteries that could be stored for decades without issue. Dragon hide was comparable to plate armor. Fish caught off its coasts were simply much more delicious and bigger.

And stealing that with none of the risk of staying in or around the Dark Continent?

Oh yeah.

Piracy was big.

I wasn’t too interested in piracy, though. As an immortal cloner (Ajin made sure none of my valuable clones died), doing legitimate work brought more power and money in the long run. This meant I had to establish myself.

And that meant … paperwork.

Oh yeah. It’s the post-apocalypse, an age of piracy, a world filled with wonders and riches, and all sorts of powers everywhere causing chaos and opportunities…

And I found myself doing paperwork.

But at least Marris Corporation was now a thing. Oh, and what did we do?

Mineral extraction *COUGHalchemyCOUGH*, garrison contracts, security work, and water management (because, oh wow, a big American city without river access needs a lot of water, and who can purity water with but a touch?).

Oh yeah.

I was going to make a lot of money.