Taylor and the Chaos Gacha Part 18 (Patreon)

Taylor yawned as she walked over and opened the door, expecting Amy or her clones since Amy had said something about grabbing breakfast before they'd gone home to get some sleep. She froze when she realized that Scion was hovering on her front porch wearing a trench coat over his normal costume and a fedora. "Ah?"

"I have been informed that you have the ability to send people on adventures where they can win prizes. I am a depressed cape, can I have an adventure item?" Scion asked, not sure why his Administration shard had insisted that he say his request exactly that way or why he needed to wear the coat and hat to have the strange cape grant his request.

"Sure," Taylor replied as she used her Metallurge ability to create a silver ring then enchanted it with her Adventure Awaits power. She handed him the ring. "Just put it on and say Adventure when you're ready to leave."

Scion put the ring on with the strange energy patterns flowing through it, figuring he'd have plenty of time to study it later. He said, "Adventure" and vanished.

"He's probably a bit autistic," Taylor muttered as she closed the door. She walked back over and sat down on the couch to watch the news, trying not to freak out about the fact that she'd just gotten to meet Scion in person. 

"Special report, this is April O'Neill with Channel Six, if you have children, you might want to have them leave the room, some of the images are disturbing. At least three members of the Slaughterhouse Nine are dead, we suspect the rest of the Nine to have snuck into Brockton Bay to recruit replacements."

"Damn…" Taylor trailed off as the picture changed to a view of a wrecked rest stop that looked like it had been burned and ripped apart. 'Melted glass and a burned corpse, is that Shatterbird?'

"We're not sure of the exact details but we know that Hatchet Face, Crawler and Shatterbird are confirmed dead after they started a fight with the Bay's very own Lung, a cape known for fighting Leviathan to a standstill in single combat. From the eye witness reports, the fight started because an accident caused delays and Crawler snapped, ripped his way out of the back of a U-haul where he'd been hiding and started eating people."

"Idiot," Taylor muttered, fairly sure they could have done more damage if they'd managed to sneak into the city before letting everyone know they were there.

"Apparently Lung objected when he tried to eat him, quickly turning into a dragon and started tearing Crawler apart. Things might have gone worse for Lung if Hatchet Face hadn't decided to get involved, stopping Crawler's regeneration and locking Lung as a dragon. Lung stuffed Hatchet Face down Crawler's throat then proceeded to reduce Crawler to cinders after Hatchet Face died because of Crawler's acid." 

'Probably just as well that I couldn't copy his power,' Taylor admitted, knowing she would have tried to get a version that didn't turn the user into a monster in the process of making them more durable. She pulled her cell out of her pocket and checked the messages, noticing that she had several from Vicky and Amy.

Taylor had managed to make her way through half of the messages about the Nine being in town when she got an alert that she wasn't expecting.

Feat Achieved! Destruction of a World Ender, help with the destruction of a creature that destroys worlds and burns civilizations to the ground.  

+1x Mythical Random Gacha ticket

Taylor stared at the message on her heads up display in disbelief. "What the fuck?" she muttered as she tried to figure out what the hell she'd killed or helped kill that might qualify as a World Ender. 'There's no way Voldemort counts, maybe Scion killed something on his adventure and I got credit because I sent him on the adventure?'

Taylor spent a minute trying to come up with other ideas before deciding that Scion taking out a world ending threat was the most likely. She tapped the card, causing it to flip over and reveal a powerfully built man standing behind an anvil and holding a sword. 'Divine Blacksmithing, your blacksmithing skill is qualified to be on the level of a god, with enough training you could give Hephaestus a run for his money. With enough resources and time, you can forge your own Excalibur, Gugnir, Longinus, Mjolnir etc. Damn, now I really want to find some magical metals.'

Taylor grabbed her head in pain when it was flooded with hundreds of years of practice working at a forge and an almost endless number of techniques, causing her to black out.

0o0o0

Doctor Mother glared at Contessa. "Why did you kill Manton?"

"Because the alternative was worse," Contessa replied as Rebecca walked into the meeting room.

Eidolon looked up from the report he was reading. "Why was the alternative worse?"

"If we hadn't killed him, Scion wouldn't have died," Contessa replied, happy that she'd finally managed to find a path that resulted in his death.

"What?!" Eidolon blurted.

"Are you saying that Scion is dead?" Rebecca asked.

"As of thirty seconds ago, all of my paths that involved him even tangentially have come back with a null result in reference to him," Contessa told them as Legend walked in with several bags of popcorn. 'And all it took was shooting Manton's tire.'

"Why do we need popcorn?" Legend asked.

Contessa smiled as she reached over and grabbed one of the bags of popcorn. "Because Scion is dead which means we don't have to worry about the end of all the worlds, just the end of Earth Bet via Endbringers."

"How?!" Eidolon demanded, not daring to hope.

"I don't know, I'm working around a headache-inducing blank spot," Contessa admitted. "I just know that he would have survived if Manton had been allowed to live. It's possible that he distracted the cape responsible for dealing with Scion or maybe Scion wouldn't have shown up in the Bay if the Nine were more active."

"What do you know?" Rebecca asked, trying to piece the events together.

"I know there wasn't a fight because the Bay is still intact and that trying to save the Nine would have resulted in Scion’s survival," Contessa offered. "Jack will be dead in less than twenty minutes and Mannequin five."

"Who kills them?" Kurt asked.

"Hookwolf kills Mannequin," Contessa replied. "I don't know what kills Jack, it’s a blind spot."

"And nothing of value was lost," Legend said as he distributed the popcorn.

"They caused triggers," Doctor Mother argued.

"The majority of which they killed," Legend argued as he opened his popcorn, still unhappy about the fact that the Nine had been allowed to exist because of possible paths they needed in the future.

"What are we going to do about the cape that killed Scion?" Eidolon asked, worried it was some sort of trick or a third entity.

"Nothing, I see no possible path where we succeed," Contessa replied as she opened her popcorn and grabbed a handful, knowing that things worked out better if she stayed away from the aggressive blank spot and quietly started dismantling the worst of the policies they'd put in place to create more capes.

"Are you saying they're hostile?" Rebecca asked.

"I'm saying that we're responsible for a lot of things right minded people like them would heavily and possibly violently disapprove of," Contessa said bluntly, knowing it would help get the message across.

"Door to Brockton Bay," Eidolon said and quickly jumped through the door when it formed, wanting to finally get to kill the Nine if they didn't need them anymore and needing to find the cape that had killed Scion.

Legend watched the door close then turned to look at Contessa. "That was part of the plan, wasn't it?"

"Yes, everything works out better if he gets his head removed from where it is currently lodged," Contessa replied then started eating her popcorn, knowing that manipulating Eidolon into going to the Bay, without just ordering him to do so, would cause the Endbringers to go inactive.

0o0o0

Amy kicked a spider bot, causing it to crash into the concrete wall and shatter then answered her phone. "I'm a little busy with robotic spiders, what's going on?"

"I'm trying to track Jack down by scent, do you need help?" Taylor asked as she flew toward the scent she was fairly sure was Jack Slash, a strange combination of citrus and ozone.

"No, I've got Amelia and Claire with me, be careful," Amy warned her, not happy about the idea of Taylor going anywhere near Jack. "Jack is dangerous, his power doesn't seem particularly impressive but he's got the devil's own luck."

"I'll be careful," Taylor assured her. "Call if you need help."

"I will," Amy ended the call and kicked another spider bot, causing it to shatter.

Taylor put her phone back in her pocket then conjured a baseball sized orb of steel so that she'd have something to throw when she spotted her target talking down the street like he didn't have a care in the world. She used her Mimic ability on the man, wanting to make sure she had the right person. 'Extend any blade, some sort of Danger Sense against parahumans with a bit of unnatural influence? That explains why he'd had so much luck escaping.'

Taylor briefly considered just calling the PRT then tossed her steel baseball as hard as she could at the back of his head, expecting him to dodge because of his power. She winced when his head exploded from the force of the blow. "That shouldn't have worked," she muttered as she pulled her phone back out so that she could call the PRT to pick his corpse up.

Feat Achieved! Kill the Joker Knock off, bonus points for not letting him monologue.

+1x Platinum Random Gacha ticket

Taylor tapped the card on her interface as she called the PRT's emergency line for capes, causing the card to flip over and reveal a brown haired girl phasing through a wall. 'Phasing: this allows you to phase through objects and make objects phase through other objects as well, you can unphase objects inside of other objects to cause massive damage that ignores conventional durability. At least it doesn't have Sophia's issue with electricity.'

"PRT's Emergency cape number, what's the problem?" a male voice asked over the phone.

"This is Maverick," Taylor glanced at the street sign, "Jack Slash is dead, corner of Fifth and Jackson, can you send someone to collect him."

"What happened?" he asked as he quickly flagged the location for a team to pick the body of the bastard up.

"I was expecting him to dodge, he didn't so he took a steel baseball to the back of his head, there's not much left but there's a lot of metal in there so I know it wasn't someone that just looked like him," Taylor explained, not wanting to admit that she could smell capes unless she had to.

"Armsmaster is in the area, stay there until he gets there if you can. Are you safe?" the PRT agent asked.

"Safe enough," Taylor admitted as she glanced around, half expecting someone to take a pot shot or something. 'Dad is going to freak.'

"Mannequin is dead and Burnscar was arrested, it should just be Bonesaw left but they might have recruited another cape," the agent warned her.

"I'll keep an eye out," Taylor promised. 'At least I've got my wraith looking for Bonesaw.'

0o0o0

Taylor's wraith felt his mana pool take a solid hit when he used his Eyes of Purification on the cape dressed in greens and blues that was flying over the street, removing a dozen minor physical issues along with a basket full of mental issues. He flew over while the cape was dazed, phased his hand through his costume and cloned him, intentionally flipping the cape's gender.

"What the hell?!" Eidolon blurted when he realized that he was facing a naked middle aged woman who resembled his mother to a degree, that was hovering in place.

"Pretty sure that's my line," the female cape said as she swapped her blaster power for a power that would allow her to quickly create a costume. She let it charge up for a couple of seconds then used her new power to create a simple costume to hide her face and body from view as she didn't want to deal with people getting distracted at the moment.

"Who are you?" Eidolon asked.

"I'm your clone and before you try to kill me, don't," she ordered. "It's not worth the power cost."

The wraith turned and headed off to make sure Amy was safe as it felt Taylor’s concern through their link.

Eidolon sighed. "This is going to drain our power faster."

"Yes but I might have a solution for that," she mused as she mentally looked through the list of powers she had available, happy that her version of their powers came with an instruction manual or at least a list of powers. "What the fuck?!" she blurted when she realized that one of her active powers basically let the Endbringers pick up targets from her subconscious.

"What happened?" Eidolon asked.

"One of our powers is weird," she complained as she focused on the Endbringers and realized that she could give them orders if she was willing to expend the energy. 'Stop attacking anything!' she ordered the Endbringers.

"What did you just do?" Eidolon asked, having felt the drop in their energy reserve.

"One of our powers lets us order the Endbringers, you should try to release that power since I told them not to attack and the power is draining energy being held in a ready state," she warned him.

"I don't…" Eidolon trailed off as he focused on his powers and realized that he'd been subconsciously holding onto one of them in a death grip and released it, feeling a tension he hadn't even known he'd been dealing with fade as he relaxed his grip for the first time in decades. "How did you know it was there?"

"I have a mental list of powers," she replied, hoping they'd get a break from the Endbringers for a while before they reset or started choosing their own targets. "Hopefully without Scion to send orders, they'll stay off."

"Hopefully," Eidolon agreed. "How much of my life do you remember?"

"I'd have to compare notes but I'm not doing that here," she stated.

"Let's see if we can find Jack before we leave," Eidolon said as he started flying again.

"Absolutely," she agreed as she followed him, mentally going through her list of available powers to see if she had something that would let her figure out how she was cloned.

0o0o0

"Fiddlesticks," Riley complained when she woke up and realized that all of her cyberwear had been removed and that she was currently sitting in a child's swimming pool wearing a yellow polka dot swimsuit with her hands and feet chained to several support beams with heavy chains. "How did you knock me unconscious?" she asked the pair of twins or clones that were watching her.

"Magic," Amelia replied with a grin.

"Liar," Riley replied as she tried to figure out the best way to escape without her various cybernetic tricks.

"How are you feeling?" Amelia asked.

"Strangely okay for being chained up and stuck in lukewarm water," Riley admitted, not sure why she felt as relaxed about everything as she felt. "Is this when you start torturing me?"

"Nope, we spent the last five minutes getting rid of all of the junk you'd stuck in your body, why would we want to break things we'll just have to fix?" Claire asked.

"Science?" Riley asked.

"Yeah, no," Amelia replied dryly. "We're Biokinetics, not bio-tinkers."

"If you're not going to torture me, are you going to let me go?" Riley asked, surprised they hadn't already killed her.

Claire shook her head. "Nope, we're going to hand you over to a competent shrink as soon as the boss gets done beating the shit out of Jack."

"Jack isn't going to lose," Riley argued as Panacea walked through the door. "I think your clones might be defective, Jack always escapes."

"He's dead," Amy assured her.

"How?" Riley asked, figuring he faked his death and not wanting to be disappointed again.

"He was distracted and didn't dodge a steel baseball to the back of the head…" Amy trailed off as another Riley appeared along with a second clone a second later. "Don't clone her!"

"Call Maverick," Amelia suggested when another Riley appeared.

Amy quickly called Taylor, figuring she'd be able to unsummon the wraith.

"I need to figure out how this works," Riley mused as she glanced between her clones, noticing that one of them was male.

"Would be nice," the male Riley agreed as he checked himself over. "Weird."

"It's a recent thing," Amelia offered.

"Are you okay?" Taylor asked, her voice coming over the phone's speaker.

"Maverick, some lunatic cloned Riley three times. Do you think you can show up and help us relocate them?" Amy asked, figuring she'd realize the problem.

Taylor dismissed her wraith and glanced at where Eidolon and a female cape that had a similar costume were talking with Armsmaster and his clone. "Noted and I'll get there as soon as I can, there's a bit of paperwork."

"See you when you get here," Amy told her then ended the call.

"So, we need to deal with her cybernetics, it has a bunch of plagues in it that will be released if you tamper with it," the male Riley warned them.

"I'm a Biokinetic, they're already dealt with," Amelia assured them.

"We're just clones, that means we're not responsible for Riley's crimes, right?" one of the female clones asked hopefully.

"I still remember doing a metric ton of evil shit," the other female clone admitted.

"No swearing…" Riley trailed off when she realized she didn't really care about swearing or not swearing. "Why don't I care about swearing?"

"We used magic to fix a bunch of your mental and physical issues," Claire explained.

"Magic? Are you saying magic is real?" the male Riley asked as he glanced between Amy and her clones.

"Real enough," Amelia replied as she held her hand out and conjured a ball of fire.

"Does that mean we can be magic girls?" one of the Riley clones asked hopefully.

"Not until you've spent at least a hundred hours talking to the shrink," Amelia told her as she let the ball of fire vanish.

"Do you think a hundred hours is enough?" Riley asked, fairly sure she'd never be anything close to normal as she had no reference for it.

"It's a start," Amy told them. "Your shard is probably responsible for some of your issues and Jack didn't help."

“He had a slight master ability that seemed to be effective only against capes,” her male clone said.

"Can't be, I heard plenty of people tell him that he had a small penis, usually before he killed them, but it happened enough that it was likely a subconscious order of his," Riley argued.

"It mostly just worked for gathering crazy capes and for his defense, they'd second guess themselves or crazy capes would decide to stick around and cause less trouble than they should," Amy explained, thinking about the short description that Taylor had told her about his power.

"That sort of tracks," the male Riley mused, thinking about the insanity involved in getting the collection of misfits and lunatics to follow him. "Now what?"

"Now we grab a bag of onions and I make a partial duplicate of Bonesaw around the cyberware that I can burn to ash with Pyrokinesis," Amelia explained.

"Why?" Riley asked.

"Because I want the bounty and I don't want the PRT to kill you over something that wasn't completely your fault, you were six when Jack found you, you'll never have a decent life here but you might on another world and I know someone that can take you there," Amelia explained.

"I like that plan but I'm not sure I deserve it," Riley admitted.

"That's why you need therapy and time," Amy told her, figuring she'd be able to get some therapy in Star Trek.

0o0o0