Written in the Cards Part 14

Mist wasn't sure how to feel about Zora's summon, mostly because while she was certainly cute, it was also a rather large white and blue tiger. Of course, her intimidation factor was spoiled slightly by the fact that she was currently enjoying having her head scratched by Zora.

"She's adorable," Victoria offered. "Have you figured out a name?"

"Not yet," Zora admitted. "Any preference on a name?" she asked her tiger.

'Is cat,' the cat replied mentally, not particularly worried about a name at the moment as Zora was scratching between her ears.

"I suggest Tangles," Mist offered, having noticed the way the cat's tail was curled around Zora's legs. 'I need a camera, they're adorable.'

"I'm not sure tigers like playing with string," Zora mused as she studied her cat.

The tiger changed into a naked and busty teenage girl with blue eyes and long blue and white hair that was sitting on the ground. "Tangles works," she said as she reached up and moved Zora's hand back to her head when she went to pull her hand back.

Zora switched to running her fingers through Tangles' hair since 'scratching' didn't really feel right now that she was in a human form. "Hi."

"Master? Boss Lady? Summoner? Zora?" Tangles mused while testing out various forms of address for her master. "Hmm, mine!" she said as she hugged Zora's leg then started rubbing her face against Zora's bare leg.

Victoria snickered. "It's probably going to take a bit to teach her to properly human but she's gorgeous."

"Yeah," Mist agreed on both counts. "Are you going to try to summon your catgirl minions?"

"Cat girls?" Tangles asked, curious what she was talking about.

"Might as well," Zora replied as she focused on the new abilities she'd picked up because of her cards and summoned a naked and rather busty teenage girl with cat-like ears and long red hair that came down to her butt. "Nice."

"Very," Victoria agreed.

Tangles reached out and poked the girl's long red tail with her finger. "Hi."

"Hey sexy," the catgirl offered Tangles with a smile then turned to look at Zora. "Hey boss, orders?"

Tangles smiled up at the cat girl, glad that she knew who was in charge.

Zora shook her head. "Not currently, I was just testing my cards."

"Okay. Do you like what you see?" the catgirl asked as she slowly spun around, giving everyone a good look at her athletic body.

"Absolutely," Victoria replied as she watched the catgirl's fluffy red tail sway back and forth, wondering how soft it was.

"How high can you jump?" Zora asked. 'Her strength should be a tenth of my magic, does having Tangles out change that or is it my base strength? I'm going to have to run some tests.'

"I don't know," the catgirl admitted then leapt into the air, easily clearing the roof of the barn before she started falling back to the ground.

"Huh," Zora muttered when the catgirl landed on her feet, looking none the worse for the jump.

"Nice," Mist offered as he watched the catgirl's breasts jiggle, wishing he had some type of system or scanner that could tell him what everyone's stats were. "We're going to have to find a weight room."

"It would certainly help," Victoria mused.

"That was fun!" the catgirl squealed excitedly then tossed herself back into the air to see if she could get higher.

Zora smiled as she activated her transformation ability, causing her ears to change to resemble cat ears and causing her to grow a long fuzzy red tail, much like her catgirl. "Can you let go of my leg so I can test how far I can jump?"

"Okay," Tangles replied as she let go of Zora and gracefully bounced to her feet. "Bounce!" she squealed as she jumped into the air, her supernatural strength tossing her into the air like a rocket.

"I could get used to having naked catgirls around," Victoria mused.

"Yep," Mist agreed, sneaking a peek at Zora, happy that she hadn't replaced her shirt and that the panties Vivian had conjured were sheer.

"Where do you want your magic boosting tattoo and what do you want it to look like?" Zora asked Mist, not taking her eyes off her minions.

Mist smiled as he realized that he had an idea that might work. "How about an upwards facing five pointed star in a circle that is crackling with lighting?"

"I can do that. Where do you want it?" Zora asked.

"Shoulder," Mist replied as he touched his upper right arm with his left hand.

"Sure," Zora replied as she focused on the design she wanted and touched his upper arm, glad that he'd pointed out where he wanted because she would have put it in the wrong place. She activated her ability, creating a pentagram the size of a silver dollar on his arm. "That should give you a fifteen percent reduction on the cost of your magic spells, increase your magic by ten and double your mana regeneration and mana pool."

Mist smiled as he lifted his arm up so that he could see the 'tattoo', rather happy with the pentagram that was wrapped in evershifting lightning and the massive boost to his mana pool that his improved regeneration was working on filling. "I know a lot of people back home that would have paid a lot for an animated tattoo, thanks."

"You're the one that boosted my cards, it's the least I can do," Zora replied with a grin, rather happy with how things had worked out. "I'm going to have to talk to Molly to make sure the catgirls don't get too much sugar."

"Yeah, probably," Mist replied with amusement as he watched the catgirl bounce off the roof of the barn and soar through the air while laughing like a lunatic. "Did you figure out how your enchanting skill is different?"

"No…" Zora trailed off as thinking about enchanting, brought up an interface screen for her new enchanting skill. "Huh, it looks like I have an interface for my enchanting skill and the ability to scan enchanted items so I can reproduce them and learn their qualities so I can make my own."

"Looks like you've been promoted to our top enchanter," Mist teased.

"Excellent," Zora replied with a grin, happy that she had something special to contribute to the group.

Victoria pulled her attention away from the bouncing catgirls. "On that note, I should probably grab Mia and teleport back to the farm to pick up the goblin girls."

"Best of luck," Zora told her. "I'll start playing with the crafting skills I can give our minions."

"I'm looking forward to it," Victoria assured her then headed for the exit that led back to Zora's world, looking forward to seeing what the goblins had managed to loot.

"What are you thinking about for a tattoo?" Mist asked Zora as they watched the catgirl chase Tangles around the farm, always one step behind thanks to Tangles' superior attributes. 'She's going to be a nightmare to fight with a bit of training.'

"I don't know," Zora admitted with a shrug. "I have a couple of ideas but I'll probably talk to Eric and see if he can draw something I'm happy with."

"Sounds good," Mist agreed. "Any regrets that you didn't wait?"

"I still have two open slots for cards and I have a lot of magic and a bunch of cute catgirls, I don't have any regrets," Zora assured him.

"Just checking…" Mist trailed off as Sarah walked out of the mirror that had her forge without a stitch of clothing, just patches of what looked like soot on her.

"My clothes caught fire when I was forging the celestial bronze bracers," Sarah replied as she walked over holding her new bracers, completely unconcerned by her lack of dress. "What do you think?"

"About the bracers or your breasts?" Zora asked with a grin, not seeing a problem with enjoying the view.

"Yes," Sarah replied as she glanced at Mist who was doing a good job of looking her in the eyes.

"I don't think I'm legally allowed to answer that," Mist teased, taking a direct look at her perky breasts since she'd asked. 'Yeah, she'll probably end up at least a C by the time she's done growing.'

"We're in a pocket dimension and I have my cards, by local traditions and laws, I'm an adult, you can look if you want to," Sarah told them.

"Fair enough," Mist replied as he turned his attention to the set of golden bronze bracers that had Celtic designs all over them. "Do they adjust for different users?"

"Are you planning on stealing my bracers?" Sarah asked with a mock pout.

Mist shook her head. "No, I'm just trying to figure out a safe way to test them that doesn't involve you walking into one of the cursed mirrors since I have a feeling they're going to be extremely dangerous."

"Why would the collar mirror be dangerous?" Zora asked.

"Sorry, let me rephrase that," Mist replied as he turned and looked at the mirrors that he'd moved out of the way. "I think the mirror monsters that I created from the cursed shirt are going to be a nightmare, the collar might just be annoying or weird."

Sarah frowned slightly as a group of five dripping wet goblins stepped out of the cursed mirror carrying a black stone coffin. "What did you find?"

"Shiny things!" one of the male goblins bragged as they set the coffin on the ground excited to show off what they'd found.

"No clue, we're not enchanters," one of the female goblins offered as Derrick walked out of the mirror to the other world.

"Do you want me to take a look?" Zora offered, eager to play with her new Enchanting skill.

"Okay, you can take a look," one of the other goblin females agreed as Derrick walked over.

Derrick glanced at Sarah before forcing himself to look away, wondering why she looked like she'd been crawling around in a chimney without her clothes before deciding that it probably had something to do with the new forge or something she'd been working on.

Sarah glanced between the group of goblins. "Why are you wet?"

"We had to clean the slime off in the stream by the entrance before we grabbed the loot, it melted a dagger," she complained, annoyed at how sticky the damned stuff was.

"What was the dagger made out of?" Mist asked as Zora quickly started scanning the magic items.

"Rust and wood," the goblin replied with a sigh.

"What's the area like?" Derrick asked, curious if there were more monsters to kill since the mission to grab the hotel had gone off without a hitch, if you ignored some of the local idiots playing something they claimed was music and the local wino cursing up a storm when he realized that he was going to have to find a new place to sleep.

"It's a large grassy field with a stream of sludge cutting it in half, if you let the slimes cross the bridge it becomes unstable and you'll probably fall to your death trying to get the treasure chest on the other side. There's a sneaky wall of invisible magic keeping people from jumping the sludge."

"Cheating bastards," one of the two male goblins in the group complained, still annoyed that he'd ended up in the itchy sludge when he’d slammed face first into the wall of force.

"Nice!" Zora squealed when she noticed a bracelet that boosted magic by twenty points and regeneration by seventeen percent in the pile of loot in the coffin. Her eyes went wide when she saw the magic shirt that increased magic and allure by twenty five points that was made out of an almost transparent silk. "We could probably bribe our way into the nobility with some of these."

Mist shook his head. "I'm not particularly interested in sticking around or dealing with the nobles in your world."

"I'm just saying we'd be rich if we sold some of the magic gear," Zora replied as she continued scanning the magic items, increasing her collection of available enchantments that she could place on items.

"Did you clear the area?" Derrick asked.

"Other than the chest on the hill, we don't have the key and we couldn't break it open," one of the other goblin females complained as another group of five goblins walked out of the mirror that had been created with the cursed collar.

"Sounds like we need a rogue," Mist mused as the other goblins dropped a cardboard box filled with various types of leashes, rings and hats on the ground next to the coffin. "Any trouble?"

"No, just some really annoying people walking naked girls in a park on leashes and challenging people to duels," one of the girls offered.

"Did you manage to save anyone?" Sarah asked.

"No," one of the male goblins complained. "Whenever we killed their owners, the girls would tell us thank you, run away and vanish after about five steps."

"We didn't even get to fuck any of them!" one of the female goblins complained, getting a chorus of agreements from the rest of the goblins.

Mist smiled when he noticed Eric walking over with his notebook. "If you want to fuck someone, I'm sure Eric would be up for it."

"Up for what?" Eric asked, having been in his own world.

"Fucking a goblin girl," Mist replied.

Eric glanced over the busty and attractive green skinned girls that were giving him hopeful looks. "I mean…" he trailed off when he realized that Sarah and Zoara weren't wearing clothes. "What happened to your clothes?"

"Cursed shirt," Zora grumbled.

"They caught fire," Sarah replied, not particularly worried about the conjured clothes that she'd borrowed so that she could wash her normal clothes.

"I'd hate to offend them," Eric admitted, trying not to squeal in excitement at the idea of getting to have sex with a green skinned girl, something he'd dreamed about on more than one occasion.

"Excellent!" two of the goblin girls squealed as they grabbed him by the arms and headed for the barn. "A fucking we will go!"

Sarah shook her head when the rest of the goblin girls followed the other two girls chanting about how they were going to fuck him until morale improved. "We should probably talk to Elena about regeneration potions."

"Probably," Mist agreed with amusement as he watched the goblin girls haul the stunned geek away to do great and terrible things with him or possibly to him. "Did you manage to get the hotel?"

"Piece of cake," Derrick replied as he handed Mist a piece of broken padlock, still a bit shocked at how easy everything had been. "We just walked into the office, grabbed the deed and did a bit of techno magic with the city's records department. Five minutes later and we're the proud owners of a hotel that has seen better days. Molly decided to stick around to supervise her minions cleaning the place up and play with the future version of the net."

"Fantastic," Mist replied, not surprised that Molly wanted to poke around since her cards were made for it. "What's the padlock from?"

"One of the side doors was chained shut, the key was in the manager's office, I figured it would make a decent mirror dimension," Derrick explained.

"It's worth a try," Mist replied as he used his power on the padlock, causing the lock to turn to dust and creating a floating mirror. He turned to look at the group of male goblins that were standing around looking bored. "Check it out."

"Okay!" the four goblins replied as they jumped into the mirror to scout things out and kill monsters.

"They're going to be a lot more useful once we get them combat trained," Derrick mused.

"Yeah, they're going to be terrifying," Mist replied with a grin. "Did you see anyone interesting?"

Derrick shrugged. "Just a wino that was pissed because he was going to have to find a new place to sleep and some of the local youth that were blasting something that was probably supposed to be music but sounded like nails on a chalkboard."

"Cool," Mist replied cheerfully, fairly sure no one would believe the wino if he mentioned someone offering him magic cards. "Have fun sorting the loot, I'm going to see if people in the other world have the potential for cards."

"Have fun," Zora ordered as she continued scanning the plunder, more interested in the treasure and hanging out with Sarah than she was in exploring the other world, at least until she had a chance to ask a bunch of questions about the strange world so that she didn't look like a complete idiot.

"That's the plan," Mist replied as he headed for the mirror to the other world. He stepped out of the mirror and into a poorly lit hallway. 'I should probably move the mirror to one of the rooms,' he mused as he headed toward the set of double doors where Molly was standing. "Any luck?"

"Lots," Molly replied with a grin as she turned around to look at Mist. "We've got at least twenty five years of movies and television shows to catch up on and it's pretty easy to mark all of the utilities and taxes as paid when you have Technopathy."

"Just keep track of the utilities so we can pay them back when we get enough cash flow," Mist told her, fairly sure they'd be able to make enough selling magic items and cards that they'd never have to worry about money again unless they intentionally tried to lose money. "How long do you think it's going to take to clean this place up?"

Molly frowned as she glanced at the broken glass on the door that led out to the pool area, fairly sure it hadn't been up to code for the nineties since it had shattered into razor sharp shards rather than small rounded pebbles. "At least a couple of days. We're going to have to replace a bunch of windows and upgrade some of the plumbing and woodwork, I don't think they've actually put any serious work into the place since the early nineties."

"Seriously?" Mist asked, a bit surprised that the place wasn't worse off.

"Most of the walls are built out of concrete to deal with the moisture from the pool and the general humidity and they tiled everything so it held up pretty well. They never cared about people being able to order room service and they used to have pay phones so they didn't bother with phones in the rooms and just kept the price down until they got to the point where wireless was dirt cheap and practically required because of the loss of cell coverage from the concrete."

"What about the roof?" Mist asked.

"Concrete," Molly replied cheerfully. "They didn't want the roof blowing off in a storm and it helped keep the insurance low."

"Did you find out which company they were using for their maid service?" Mist asked.

"Yeah, Valentino's Maid Services," Molly replied with annoyance. "They're more than a bit sketchy since most of their maids are badly paid escorts and thieves according to some of the police reports, so I'll probably just train some of the summons and avoid the problem entirely."

"How do they avoid getting shut down?" Mist asked.

"Prostitution is legal in Florida, the state took a page out of Nevada's book when the medical technology improved to the point where you can get tested for all sorts of issues at a vending machine. Valentino's company is just skeevy and takes an unreasonable cut," Molly complained, not particularly amused by the number of complaints on file about the business.

"Hmm, escorts, maids and thieves, they might have some interesting cards," Mist mused as he walked over and looked at the large pool in the walled off courtyard, a touch surprised that it had a bar and enough lounge chairs for a decent sized party.

"Have you checked to make sure they have cards?" Molly asked, curious if they could pick up more cards related to technology.

"Not yet, I'll be right back," Mist replied as he turned and headed down the hallway. He sighed in relief when he got to the front door and saw several people across the street with cards floating over their heads, letting him know that the locals absolutely had cards. 'Huh, it looks like everyone has at least three cards.'

"Sure," Molly replied as she headed outside to lounge by the pool, glad that her minions had already magically cleaned the chairs. 'This place should be pretty cool once we clean it up,' she mused as she used her Technopathy and one of the local wireless connections to start looking at various hotels so she could see how everything compared.

Mist twitched and took a step back when a filthy looking homeless man holding a bottle lurched into view, banged on the glass and glared at him through the window. He focused on the man's potential cards. 'Brewmeister, Seaman, Swamp Dweller. Could be worse, could be a hell of a lot better,' he mused as he spent the mana to boost the Brewmeister card, curious if he could improve the card's alcohol resistance.

"This was my place," the man slurred as he made a rude gesture at Mist, not seeming to be able to focus on much of anything.

'This has potential,' Mist mused as he read through the collection of possible cards, wondering what he'd have to bribe the man with to get him to give up some of his cards and curious how he'd ended up on the streets and if he was worth trying to save.

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