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It took a while for me to recover after that last summoning so I rested while the rest of my children conversed in low tones, well most of them did anyway. The others kept their volume at a dull roar, but it wasn't like I really minded, it was nice to have some noise echoing around the house again. But once I stopped gasping for air and sat back up they all quieted down and waited for me to speak. Glancing around the room before starting I saw each of them were eager to set out to complete the tasks they were literally born for.
And while I was happy they had such a defined purpose I still hoped that they would grow as people and discover things about themselves I didn't write about them. But in the meantime they were waiting for orders so I dismissed my worries and started, "You already know each of your purposes and you have everything I am able to give you in order to complete them. I wish you luck and make sure to look out for one another. I don't want to find out I have to summon you again so soon."
That got a couple of chuckles from the practical jokers of the group and I smiled in return, "Now get to work." There wasn't much more to be said and they most likely would fare better in their goals if I let them work on their own instead of micromanaging them, they were literally born for it afterall. While I was the jack of all trades and master of none, each one of them would only need a little time to grow before they outpaced every other expert in their respective fields.
They were ready to leave the nest so without another word they all disappeared out the window and into the world beyond. Only Dick waved goodbye before performing a swan dive out the small gap. I had to give a small chuckle at that before I stood and made my way downstairs, it was time to open up the shop for the day. Nothing interesting happened that day as it was like any other day before it, more proof that despite appearances I wasn't living in a comic book.
Just because you take that first step doesn't mean something has to happen in order to keep the balance. I spent the day going through all the life stories I've made so far, focusing on the objects I have won in different games. While I had gone over them before, that was just to make sure they weren't dangerous, now I wanted to learn more about them. How they worked, if they had any hidden uses, what their limits were, if they were used by any historical figures. I wanted to know it all, but unfortunately it meant there was a lot of boring reading in my future.
But now that I had finished learning pretty much everything I could get my hands on I had plenty of time to waste. Reading books while hunting for treasures sounded at least a little bit interesting. So the next few weeks passed the same way, I would perform my morning rituals, play my game, summon a couple of characters and read books about various items throughout the day.
I soon learned a rather disturbing fact about the items I had won over the past couple of years. Because I had not done well in most of the games at first and most of the various prizes had no discernible effect I thought they were just normal items. Well it turns out that was not true, not even a little. Almost all of the items except the scifi prizes had some sort of magical effect attached to them.
The scifi prizes were just a little more advanced then the current level of technology. But the seemingly mundane items all had magical effects, some were good, some were bad, and even more were practically useless. A cabinet that would age things an extra day for every year that passed. A telescope that would subtly focus and guide the viewer to whatever they were trying to see. Or a baseball that when thrown would seek out the most painful but plausible area to hit someone.
There were more since I had been collecting the items for years now but it concerned me that I hadn't noticed until now. Especially since the items after I got my brain boost started to win more games and therefore receive items with more pronounced effects. A bottle of wine that would produce a hallucinogenic effect 10 times that of Shrooms. A wheel that could spin in place forever, at least as far as I could tell, I gave it a spin a couple days ago and it is still going. A cross that could induce a healing effect when worn but did so by draining future lifespan.
If these were the things that were still in my store, then what about the ones that had been bought? It looks like my children might have more work to do in the future than I thought. I also might be getting a visitor from the one eyed pirate or his loyal minions in the future. Not ideal circumstances but I would deal with whatever happened. It wasn't like I could turn back time and stop myself from selling those trinkets, besides, even if I could, why would I?
A little more chaos could make this world less predictable and even more interesting, what's life without a bit of chaos after all. With my powers I would be able to protect myself. They were also growing a lot quicker than I thought they would, or they started off a lot weaker than I thought. Doesn't really matter much, it was just nice to see them growing and being able to welcome more of my children into the world faster than I thought.
I still hadn't brought anyone that would draw too much attention or any of my heavy hitters. But I would be strong enough after about another month to summon some of my stronger kids that would attract more attention. There were a couple of reasons why I was waiting, number one was something I found out way back when I first started experimenting. If an avatar ran out of power from whatever source I gave them they could draw power from me.
When I finally had hundreds of children running around that was a lot of potential power drain. So I wanted to make them less likely to run out of power and that meant making them as powerful as I could. Reason number two was pretty simple, backup. Before they made contact with anyone in this world I wanted them to be able to call on allies should they feel the need to do so.
I was supposed to be running a secret worldwide organization but it would take years to build the actual foundations for that, even for me. So it would be a bit shaky for a while, fake it till you make it and part of that was the ability to call on backup. But that didn't mean my children weren't making good progress, I did check on the avatar books using a little trick I discovered.
It was a couple of days after I first summoned Bruce and his family when I was feeling a little lonely and wanted to know how my children were doing. Then it occurred to me that I could use Life Story on the Avatar books themselves, and if I pointed it in the right direction it should be able to tell me about current events in their life.
Of course like with all things I had a couple of missteps, I learned a little bit too much about the… arrangement Talia, Selena, and Bruce worked out. Not something I was ever going to mention to them and I also slammed the book shut as soon as I realized what the book was describing. I mean I was happy for all of them but I never wanted to know about that part of their lives, I even stayed away from that stuff in their backstories.
Like in most stories I eluded to but never outright stated, anyway, once I got it working I learned what they had been up to. Apparently Bruce was feeling right at home and had already started his crusade against crime. Even with nothing but his fists, criminals were already whispering about the Bat and the Cat and their family of birds. Not enough to catch the attention of the police or media but enough that criminals were starting to look over their shoulders a little more often.
There had been less progress on Red Hood's ventures but he had decided to set up in Hell's Kitchen. I hadn't heard anything about Daredevil yet but I hoped everything would work out there, Matt Murdock's Law office exists so the Devil of Hell's Kitchen probably will at some point as well. If he doesn't already. I just hope they can coexist, but I think they'll either get along like a house on fire or end up being bitter enemies.
Talia has also been sending probes into the underworld, luckily New York City seems to be a melting pot of almost every criminal enterprise in the world in Marvel. So from here she'll be able to spread out fairly well, and she has already built up a good amount of shadow minions of each type. Catwoman on the other hand hasn't hit anything bigger than a stash house to fund the bat clan, but that just means she's learning the lay of the land before she really gets started.
As for the new children, well I had the batfamily in New York City and one day that might be enough but right now it was not. So when I summoned members of Team Arrow I had them work separately but still in the same city. Oliver, Thea, and Sarah had their training with the league of shadows and a couple of tricks stored away in their quivers for a rainy day. Roy and Slade had Mirikuru in their system, only without the anger issues. Roy also took the name Arsenal and Thea took Speedy in order to keep the confusion to a minimum.
Diggle had his training from his time in the army and ARGUS, not literally but the memories and requisite skills. I also made sure to summon his wife Lyla both because I wasn't heartless enough to keep them apart but also because I needed someone to focus on logistics. Felicity was the computer whiz and Laurel had the legal know-how and the same tricks as Sarah.
But they weren't the only ones I summoned, there was also Merlin, Tommy, Slade, and Nyssa. Merlin and Nyssa were part of the League of Shadows with Talia but I only gave the training to Tommy while giving him his Nazi earth identity, Prometheus. Without, you know, being a Nazi.
Slade on the other hand had ASIS training and the Mirikuru in his system, I also did him and Oliver a favor and removed the whole lover's triangle angle with Shadow. But I didn't write a book for the woman herself, I may do so one day but currently she was just an old flame of Slade's. And that was team arrow for now, I'll definitely be adding more in the future but right now that was enough.
While my children started to make progress in their new lives I also started to head in a new direction in my own life. Elevating my junk shop to a pawn shop. The difference between the two wasn't that big, junk shops held more odds and ends while pawn shops started to lean more into higher end items. Then there were the antique shops that had completely strayed from the path of junk, at least that was how my old man used to explain it.
With my discovery of the uniqueness of my items I was no longer content to stay in the realm of junk. I mean I was always planning to move on eventually but that discovery just moved my plans along. I personally thought it was more about labels so when I decided to make the change I also decided to change the name of the shop as well. With a little nod to my abilities the new name would be Myriad Paths, as in the many paths life may lead us on.
My powers certainly led me on an interesting path of my own and I no longer regretted a thing. Soon enough I would have more family than I knew what to do with and I couldn't be happier. The store itself wouldn't change much, I would start to cut down on odds and ends, not all the way as I didn't want to lose access to my favorite story teller after all. I would also set up another artifact I won a while ago that I recently learned I had been egregiously misusing.
The Anywhere Door, the door that let me see some truly amazing views, was the same one from Doraemon. And once I used Life Story on it I learned I could use it to connect to other worlds. That's right, other worlds, and I'm not just talking about traveling around the multiverse like Rick and Morty, more like stepping into Gotham or Winterfell. But how will this help my shop you ask?
Well that's because by jury rigging the settings I can set it so the door doesn't let me go anywhere, but let any door lead to here. That way I could get customers from across the multiverse coming into my shop. Now, how would people like that buy my goods with money I can't use? Easily, they can barter instead, an aspect of life story lets me see the value of something, and that will let me perform fair deals with anyone who may walk through that door.
An added benefit would be that once the door connected with that particular reality it would serve as a semi-permanent link. It can be severed of course but until then the two worlds were permanently connected. Some of my more adventurous children would certainly love that, I can just imagine Luffy dragging his crew to travel through different worlds to have some "fun" there.
But that was for the future, the modifications I would have to do to the door to make this possible would take a significant amount of time even with my prodigious intelligence. In the meantime life will continue as if nothing had changed, it wasn't like the rest of the world knew what was happening in this little out of the way shop after all.
My chain of thoughts was interrupted by the ringing of the bell above the door. I looked up to see a balding older man in a suit and an affable smile walk in, destroying all of my ideas of not being noticed. Because standing in my shop was none other than Phil Coulson, right hand of the badass himself, Nick mother fucking Fury. It was only thanks to the enhanced control I had over my body that I was able to stop my jaw from literally dropping.
The man in question didn't know the crisis I was currently overcoming and walked right up to the counter before putting on one of his trademarked smiles. "Hello, my name is Phil Coulson and I was wondering if you could tell me about an object that recently came into my possession." Seriously! I just found out about my little blunder and SHIELD was already knocking on my front door.
Well if anything I suppose I could admire their sense of timing, "Sure, I'll help if I can. What sort of object are we talking about?" Coulson then reached into a messenger bag that had been hanging from his shoulder and pulled out a thick hardcover book. When I looked at it I remember what game I had won it from but for the life of me I couldn't understand how this could be dangerous. Sure it was old, but the book just had various disaster stories inside.
Then I remembered reading some of the earlier ones and it reminded me of the Prehistoric Avengers. A comic that I had not read myself but merely heard about, without my enhanced memories I doubt I would have remembered at all. So when I first won the book by completing a crossword puzzle I just thought it told some good stories. I never would have given it away if I thought the stories were true, and now my carelessness was coming back to bite me in the ass.
"This came into my possession recently, a… friend showed it to me after sharing some of the most interesting stories I have ever heard. I just had to come and see where he got such a remarkable book from." Ah so the guy probably bragged online and SHIELD came and picked him up after he unknowingly released some classified information on the internet. Now, how should I play this?
Should I play dumb and say that some random guy brought it in or should I part the curtains a little and give Phil a little peek. Decisions… decisions, once I make this one it will change how I interact with the people of this world. I can do the whole man in the shadows but I think it would get kind of boring if I never interacted with any of the more interesting people in that world.
On the other hand if I open up a little then when will it stop, once I give an inch they'll want a mile and then more and more until I am subsumed into their orbit. I don't think I really want someone like Fury digging around in my life that much. He's like a dog with a bone, he won't give up until there is no stone left unturned and probably not even then. But there is a third option, I just went through all that work of making a secret organization to change the world, who is to say I am not part of that?
"Well Phil, can I call you Phil? Are you sure you want to know? The world is a lot more interesting than you would believe and once you peek behind the curtain, you'll never look at the world the same way again." If he was a more expressive person I bet that I would have just made his eyes sparkle, but Phil being the master of bland he just leaned forward a bit. "I'm pretty sure the curtain's already been opened for me."
I shook my head in exasperation, I forgot how arrogant SHIELD was in the beginning, guess I should do my part and offer a little advice. "Well then Agent, I guess I should reveal how little you really know. But just remember that sometimes ignorance really is bliss." When I called him out he only blinked but for him that might as well have been a whole body flinch. He got himself under control and only shifted his stance a little, probably to better reach for his gun if it was needed. But it wouldn't be, at least for now.
The current advanced chapters are:
Master of Magic Ch2-3
Seal Smith Ch2
Flip the Script Ch1-2
The Game Ch1-2
Millennium Ch1-2
Haven Ch1
Who is a Zoo? Ch1
God of Games Ch6
Breathe Ch1
Another Wayne Ch1
Salvation Ch1
Guide Ch1
Growth Ch1
Ark Ch5-7
A Real Gamer System Ch5
Further Ch2
Puzzle Maker Ch3
A Thousand Words Ch1-2
Free Range Ch1
Not All Heroes Wear Capes Ch3