Taylor and the Chaos Gacha Part 10 (Patreon)

"How fucked are we?" Director Piggot asked bluntly as Armsmaster walked into her office. 

"It could be worse," Colin offered. "Oni Lee is confirmed dead and Lung is trying to keep the ABB from fracturing at the moment, Coil's mercenaries did a number on their infrastructure while managing to keep the collateral to a minimum and without Skidmark and Squealer, the Merchants will probably fall apart, especially with a bit of help."

"How many villains were duplicated?" Emily asked, cutting to the important part of the shit they were going to have to deal with.

"I don't know," Colin admitted. "If we're lucky, just Rune and Squealer. None of Faultline's people were duplicated or at least none of them admitted to being copied when I talked to her and they sounded surprised when I asked. We've had eyes on Lung since Coil's attack or at least eyes on the general area, I find it unlikely that he would hide being cloned."

"Unlikely," Emily agreed, figuring the confrontation would have been public. "And the Empire?"

"Rune's clones mentioned checking with several Empire capes before swinging by for a health check and a mental evaluation, none of them knew what she was talking about so we might have dodged a bullet."

"Or the clones are being patient and waiting to take over," Emily suggested, thinking about Nilbog.

"While that's certainly possible, there are better ways to do it," Colin pointed out. "If they'd wanted to hide things, they would have just copied everyone while they were asleep and replaced them over time without letting us know about the extra clones. I doubt we'd have a way to detect the clones if they didn't have powers and there is no reason to suspect that the cape responsible can't clone non-parahumans."

"Did all of the clones have slightly different powers?" Emily asked, trying to figure out if there was a common element to the changes.

"Some of the changes were more extreme and some of them are close enough that you'd be hard pressed to notice, but the clones seem to be more powerful or have less limits on their powers."

"Do you have any idea why Clockblocker was cloned more than anyone else?" Emily asked.

"No but I have a couple of theories," Colin offered. "They were either looking for a clone with a particular power or it was just a matter of luck. I'm leaning toward the second because of the video of Squealer being cloned. She was cloned three times, the first clone was female, the second was male and the third was female. Kid Win has two male clones and a female clone, it's likely that the female clone was an accident."

"That doesn't explain Assault or your clones being female or the fact that Gallant has one of each," Emily pointed out.

"I can't explain why Gallant only had one of each unless they kidnapped his other clone because he ended up with a useful power or maybe they were interrupted but I think I can explain why they didn't copy us more. I was in my lab when the first clone appeared behind me. I was in the process of ordering the computer to scan the room and seal the doors when the second clone appeared. I suspect that the cape responsible didn't trust their stealth against a tinker tech scanner. Assault and Miss Militia were copied in the hallway, Hannah started covering everything with foam."

"Which would have made making duplicates harder assuming they can't displace anything heavier than air," Emily mused. "What's your best guess for their powers?"

"At least a master nine or ten, they're creating permanent clones of parahumans with powers that are stronger than the original or at least less limited. If the power includes some type of mental control the rating would jump. They have some method of moving around unseen that covers cameras and the naked eye, along with weight sensors and some type of movement ability that let them escape the lab and the Rig or they'd need a team."

"Or tinkertech," Emily pointed out.

"While it's certainly possible, most cloning tinkers lean toward using vats rather than instant cloning, at least if they want a stable clone that actually lasts."

"Could Leet have pulled this off?" Emily asked.

Colin considered the question for half a minute and sighed. "It's certainly possible that he could make some type of phasing device and a cloning device, I would have expected more explosions and visual effects."

"True," Emily agreed. "See if you can get in touch."

Colin activated his phone app on his helmet, set it to speaker mode and called Leet.

"You've reached Leet's phone," a female voice replied cheerfully after the first ring. "He's a bit tied up at the moment, how can I help?"

"Are you a clone?" Colin asked, taking a shot in the dark.

"Yep," the girl replied with a grin. "My name is Hax."

"Why is Leet tied up?" Colin asked.

Hax sighed. "He made a pass at Geek, she didn't appreciate it."

"How many clones does Leet have and was Uber cloned?" Colin asked, figuring he might as well ask on the off chance that she answered.

"Nope, just myself, Geek and Gear, Uber managed to avoid getting cloned, probably because he'd had too many tacos last night and was on the shitter," Hax offered, not seeing a point in making things easier on the PRT by telling them the truth.

"Hey!" Uber complained. "That wasn't-" Gear covered his mouth with her hand and shook her head when he looked like he was going to complain.

"Behave, or I'll put on clothes," Gear told Uber in a whisper, causing him to stop struggling.

"Can I talk you into coming in for power testing?" Colin asked.

"That depends, are you going to try to arrest me for Leet's various crimes?" Hax asked, not interested in dealing with that mess.

"Not today," Emily assured her, not particularly interested in opening that can of worms at the moment if it meant they could get more information.

"We'll be at the PRT building in twenty minutes," Hax told them and ended the call.

Emily frowned slightly. "She's surprisingly pleasant for a clone of Leet."

"Most of the clones have been pleasant," Colin agreed. "I'll have Gallant try to get a decent read on everyone."

Emily sighed when her phone rang with the Chief Director's ring tone. "Keep me posted, I need to take this."

"Good luck," Colin offered as he turned and left the director's office, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.

0o0o0

Taylor yawned then stared at her heads up display when she realized that she'd gotten a bunch of notifications at some point while she was sleeping.

Feat Achieved! Mad Science! Clone a hero, bonus points if it's permanent and for questionable purposes.

+1x Diamond Random Gacha ticket

Feat Achieved! Mad Science! Clone a Villain, bonus points if it's permanent.

+1x Platinum Random Gacha ticket

Feat Achieved! Miracle Max, cure a deadly disease or medical condition.

+1x Gold Random Gacha ticket

Feat Achieved! Naughty Science! Clone a naked girl, bonus points if she's under age.

+1x Platinum Random Gacha ticket

Feat Achieved! Not Forgotten, cause Imp to trigger with different powers, bonus points for doing it accidently.

+1x Platinum Random Gacha ticket

Feat Achieved! Heroic Ascendance, recruit heroes for the Bay until the heroes outnumber the villains.

+1x Platinum Trait Gacha ticket

Feat Achieved! Clone Wars! Clone more than fifty people with the purpose of tossing them into combat, bonus points if they have powers.

+1x Platinum Random Gacha ticket.

"What the hell?" Taylor sputtered as she tried to make sense of her collection of achievements. 'Okay, the Mad Science one makes sense, the rest don't. Okay, maybe Coil was sick? That would explain the Miracle Max achievement. No clue on the trigger one or why he cloned a hero or fifty heroes since that's about the only thing that makes sense for the Heroic Ascendance bit.' 

Taylor focused and summoned her wraith. "What were you doing last night?"

"I was healing and cloning heroes last night. I managed to clone most of them before I was destroyed," the wraith replied, still slightly annoyed about getting blasted.

"How did you get killed?" Taylor asked.

"Some type of beam weapon," the wraith admitted. "I'd just finished copying a tinker three times trying to get a male copy when someone that smelled of tricks used some type of beam weapon on me."

"Tricks?" Taylor asked, then shook her head. "I thought you were running around invisible?"

"And phased," the wraith assured her. "He had a pair of strange goggles and he was screaming something about getting the ghost trap when the beam hit me and I died."

"Weird," Taylor offered, not sure what else to say since death was only temporary for her wraith. "Do you know who you were copying?"

"No, I just know that he smelled of burnt wires," the wraith replied. "I was more worried about mastering my cloning power than I was collecting names."

Taylor smiled when she realized that both of the powers she'd given the Wraith were ready to collect. She collected the powers, picking up a copy of the cloning ability and restoring her Mystical Eyes of Purity ability to full power. "Did you have any trouble with Coil's clone?"

"No, she was quite helpful in convincing Coil that his power was more unreliable than it was and that he should leave town," the wraith replied.

"Leave town?" Taylor asked, surprised they didn't hand him over to the PRT.

"According to his clone he has some rather annoying associates that would have reacted badly to his death," the wraith explained. "She thought it would be safer to give him a reason to leave than to risk killing him, we can always revisit the issue if he causes trouble and he doesn't have a reason to connect his problems with you so leaving him alive is safe enough for the moment."

"How did you cause an imp to trigger?" Taylor asked, making a mental note to warn Tattletale that Coil would probably hold a grudge and that he wasn't dead.

"I didn't see an imp but a teenage girl turned into a cape when she saw me clone her brother. She blacked out from the shock so I used my Eyes of Purification on her to deal with her mental issues and cloned her twice then left before she woke up."

"Weird," Taylor muttered, not sure how to feel about that mess or about her familiar running around and cloning people. "How many clones did you make?"

"I wasn't counting, maybe fifty?" the wraith replied, sounding like it didn't care in the slightest. "I cloned most of the heroes at least twice, sometimes more if they had opposite sex clones since I was trying for triplets."

Taylor stared at her Wraith for a couple of seconds then dismissed it, not sure what she was supposed to say that wouldn't result in her screaming at it. 'So much for the wraith being the safer choice.'

Taylor spent a minute staring at the wall of her room as she tried to figure out what type of gift basket you were supposed to get someone when your familiar cloned them without permission.

'Lots of chocolate?' she mused as she tapped the gold card she'd picked up, causing it to flip and reveal a guy with glasses bent over a keyboard typing. 'Expert Programming: You're an expert programmer, your skill with coding is comparable to a low-level Tinker ability. You can craft and code complex algorithms and programs with ease, you can even make basic artificial intelligences.'

'Basic artificial intelligence? Is that like Star Wars droids or like actual people?' she wondered as she tapped the stack of platinum trait cards, causing the top card to flip and reveal a man trying to push a boulder up a hill. 'Sisyphean? A lifetime defined by futile struggle. Your mind is inhumanely durable, even if you get bored, even if you get tortured, even if you have to push a boulder up a mountain for hundreds of years, your mind may bend, but it will never break. You are rendered nearly immune to any external mental interference.'

"That should help but I should probably enchant something with my Purification ability to activate if I get mind controlled," she mused, adding it to her growing list of things she needed to work on. She tapped one of the platinum cards. 'Chaos Response? Your existence is chaos as defined by the chaos gacha, automatically causing feedback to whatever tries to peek into your existence. Future seeing gets scrambled and incoherent, abilities that try to read into you will malfunction and trying to read your mind will cause them a great headache at minimum.'

"That would make dealing with precogs easier," Taylor mused, wondering how much trouble her trait would cause Amy since her power read the biology of anything she touched. 'I might have to figure out a way for her to turn that part of her power off,' she thought as she tapped the next card, causing it to flip over and reveal what looked like an old video game character holding a sword up. "Level Up! Whenever you kill something, you absorb 10% of their physical and magical stats and permanently add them to your own, such a simple ability with promises of so much power. Seriously? Is it trying to turn me into a villain?"

Taylor wasn't surprised when she checked her traits section and noticed that her curse blocked the physical side of her Level Up! ability. 'I need to figure out a way to break the curse or maybe not, I don't need a reason to look at gang members as loot pinatas.'

She tapped the next card and looked at a painting of several famous artists sitting around a wooden table. "Master Fine Arts? You have the skills of a true Master Artist. Having incredible, almost supernatural skill in most fine arts, Drawing, Painting, Sketching, Sculpting, Engraving, etc., and in general, the art of making things more aesthetically pleasing comes naturally to you. Given some time and inspiration, you can produce masterpieces; you instinctively know what kind of aesthetics appeals to what kinds of people, how to pour your thoughts and emotions into your works, and create art that can shake the hearts of even the sternest art critics. You would most likely be renowned as one of the greatest in art history. And you are the exact kind of person they speak of in the legends of gods being pissy about mortals beating them in a game of skill and cursing them. Yeah, because that's not ominous."

Taylor tapped her last platinum card and smiled slightly when she saw another copy of the Polymath card. She checked her trait section on her interface and realized it had changed. "You improve in all areas of expertise with speed that vastly outstrips most people. That's better than vastly outstripping the average person."

She tapped her diamond card and watched as it flipped over, revealing a picture of a young man with dark hair and a lamp tucked in his sash. 'Adventure Awaits! Allows you to temporarily leave your current world and be sent to a random world with a mission, you can leave the other world once you have completed your mission and you can also travel to that world and back with spatial transportation abilities or vehicles. Cooldown: 1 Month(In your current world excluding the mission). That sounds a bit dangerous since I don't have the ability to jump worlds other than my challenge ability but at least I'll have a way to get out of a holding cell if the PRT finds out that my minion was cloning people.'

Taylor pulled a pair of sweats on and then headed for the door, figuring she'd grab something to eat before she started working on making her way through the books she'd bought in Sunnydale.

0o0o0

Taylor looked up from her magic books when someone knocked on the door. "Hello?"

"Can we come in?" Amy asked loudly enough to be hard through the door.

"Give me a minute," Taylor replied as she made her way over to the door, wondering how much trouble she was in because of her familiar. She opened the door, revealing an Amy in her normal clothes and two Amys wearing copies of the costume Amy picked up from the magic booth. "Come in."

Amy followed her clones inside Taylor's house and glanced at the collection of leather bound books and silver jewelry on the table.

"Hey sexy," one of the Amy clones offered as Taylor shut the door.

Amy glanced at her clone then focused on Taylor. "Are the clones your fault?" she asked, hoping she had a reasonable explanation for the entire mess.

"Not exactly, but yeah, basically," Taylor admitted as she walked over and flopped down on the couch, not expecting the conversation to go particularly well.

"Meaning?" Amy asked.

"I fucked up. The ability to clone people sounded useful so I gave my wraith a bud of Noelle's cloning ability before I lost it, figuring it could copy rats or something until it mastered the ability."

"Makes sense, what happened?" one of the clones asked.

"I sent it to check on Coil and copy him so we could dismantle his gang. It asked for permission to target other suitable targets if it found them and wasn't paying enough attention. I thought it was talking about using the Eyes of Purification ability that I'd given it to fix people's mental issues, not clone a bunch of heroes."

Amy winced. "You have to be careful, some projections can be rather literal if you can't directly control them."

"Apparently," Taylor muttered.

"Can you share the details of the cloning ability?" Amy asked. "Some of the wards are a bit worried about them killing us in our sleep."

"We love you, we're not killing you in your sleep," one of the clones assured Amy.

Taylor mentally pulled up her interface and looked at the description for her power. "Naughty Clones: It gives me the ability to clone creatures by touch if I want. The clones have a small chance of being the opposite sex when they're cloned or I can intentionally flip their sex when they're created. The clones will gain a large amount of loyalty to me and lose any modesty the originals had. They also have a chance to end up with slightly different powers or mutate physically. It also comes with Noelle's parahuman detection ability which is probably how the Wraith found everyone to copy."

"You should probably never mention that part or the fact that you can clone people," Amy warned her. "The ability to mass produce capes is something nations would kill for."

"I wasn't planning on it," Taylor assured her. "Sorry about the modesty bit."

One of the clones snickered as she stretched her hands above her head, drawing Taylor's attention to her. "Completely overrated."

"Did any of the clones end up mutating?" Taylor asked, trying to figure out how common that part of her power was.

Amy shrugged. "Kid Win's clone ended up with a large nose that I had to fix and some of the clones had optimized organs that I copied to the originals after making sure they wouldn't cause any trouble."

"Biokinesis for the win," one of the clones said cheerfully.

"It was actually interesting and it gave me a couple of ideas," Amy admitted, looking forward to tinkering with some of the organs to see if she could figure out a way to grow them en masse for transplant patients. "I'm pretty sure one of Armsmaster's sisters is a Biotinker because she started scribbling down notes when I mentioned a couple of things."

Taylor glanced between Amy and her clones. "Did you end up with different powers?"

"Some people did, we just ended up with extra stuff," one of the clones replied cheerfully. "I have a mental switch that lets me turn off my extra senses."

Amy sighed. "We need to figure out how to share that, it would make sitting down at lunch a lot less horrifying."

"Absolutely," the clone agreed.

The other clone giggled. "And I can change my hair color with my Biokinesis and keep it from growing where I don't want it so I won't have to shave."

"I'll see what I can come up with," Taylor assured her. "How much trouble did my wraith cause?"

"It freaked a bunch of people out but we'll adapt," Amy's clone assured her. "We've got more heroes in the city than we have villains so we can finally make a dent in the gangs."

"Until the PRT tries to send all of the clones to other cities," Amy argued.

"At least half of them are wards so they're not leaving the city without their parents' permission which I doubt they'll get," Amy's clone argued.

"I doubt most of the heroes are going to want to leave, at least until the Empire has been crushed," the other clone pointed out. "And Armsmaster's sisters are all tinkers with different specialties so they'll want to work together."

"Any fights?" Taylor asked.

"No, everyone seemed pretty chill," Amy admitted, finding the entire situation a bit weird.

"Speaking of being chill, can we talk you into swinging by the PRT and using your clothing beam so that everyone has a couple of outfits that don't look like they came from the secondhand store?" one of Amy's clones asked hopefully.

"Let me leave a note," Taylor replied as she grabbed a piece of paper and started writing a note to her dad.

"Thank you," Amy told her. "The less we have to stretch everyone's budget, the better."

"Sorry about that," Taylor offered.

"We'd rather be alive than not exist, you're fine," one of the clones assured her while the other just blew her a kiss.