Sell you a Bridge chapter 351

July 4th 2016 Castle Bat, 11:45 PM EDT

Darkfather  was faster than he looked. The whole imperial leader hands behind the  back pose made him seem cumbersome, especially with the wide shoulders  and thick arms, but his speed was deceptive. His explosive movement,  was, of course, well within the parameters I'd established in the Outer  Body though, and my reflexes were insane, so I dodged the punch  flawlessly, whirling midair to lob a blast of demonic energy empowered  ectoplasmic ice at him as the other twelve of me did the same thing.

The  illusionary me's all landed their blows at the same time, and my Domain  allowed me to superimpose the attacks in a massive burst of deathly  cold that wrapped his legs and lower body, encasing him in midnight  frost from the waist down. He hurled another punch, and I swapped with  one of the other me's as the punch landed, shattering the ground with  casual ease, even in this castle.

Speaking of the castle,  once it realized I wasn't losing the fight, the bat castle came alive  again, raining down stone and sharp beams on my companions as I held off  Darkseid. Thanatos seethed with demonic power as I imbued my strength  into it, the keyblade screaming for death and the end of all life in a  way that would be deeply unsettling to me later. I'd perfected the  forging process, but my Outer Body trance could only model things I had  knowledge of. The merge between keyblade and death gun was outside of  any parameters I could predict, and could have horrible consequences.  Oops.

I swung the blade twice, creating a cross of dark  energy in the air, and Darfather put up his arms to tank the blow,  howling with pain and rage as his arms split open. I was between them  before he could move, shifting to shadow and then back at a comparable  size to him as I flashed forward, slamming my metal clad shoulder into  him and driving him back as I lashed out with every ounce of skill and  ruthlessness I could bring to bear.

I'd tried taking it  slow, tried exploiting weaknesses, tried defense, tried mobility. The  only thing I could do to beat him was pure offense. I had to tear his  entire style apart at the seams, had to make sure he didn't have even a  split second of time to gather his bearings. If he built up and momentum  he would crush me. This wasn't some fairy tale where I had the perfect  counter to his every strike and calmly took him apart with calm  collected technique. I needed him off balance and flailing or I was  going to fucking die.

He roared as the keyblade opened a  gash along his ribs, the greyish flesh wound seething with dark energy.  Thanatos was trying its damndest to consume him, but his own power was  fighting back. Predatory entropy vs. tyranny, it was a close call, but  it was also really fucking painful as far as I could tell. Good. I  slammed a metal punch into his torso, explosively piling on strength,  and he gasped out in shock because even gods have a solar plexus.

My  other hand flashed forward and pressed over his open mouth as I poured  death and demonic power and void into a gravity spell and shoved it down  his fucking throat. His eyes bulged with pain and I hammered him in the  short ribs with my keyblade wielding hand before driving Thanatos into  his thigh (it was the closest spot I could get leverage for) and leaving  it there. I clamped my hands around his head and shoved both thumbs  into his fucking eyes, gouging them out viciously.

Sadly  that didn't work as well as I hoped, he tried to use those fucking beams  again, but since my thumbs had already smashed his eyeballs the damn  things overloaded and almost blew my hands off. Only my reaction speed  and armor saved me from losing fingers, but my hands were seriously  fucked up. I cast Cure on them, using my power to select a potential  outcome where the spell went off flawless;y and instantly and healed  them up right away.

The split second I needed to heal  though, interrupted the punishing rhythm of my assault and gave him a  second to recover. Not enough to launch a proper attack, since I'd  carved his eyes out and there was a fucking black hole going off inside  his skull, but enough to start hurling out short, brutal attacks that  smashed into my upper body with punishing force.

I felt my  armor dent under the impact in a few places, though I smoothed it out  without too much enrgy wasted. The cracked ribs were less easy to  dismiss, but I was still a ghost, at least partly. I bounced back, even  ignoring the damage. I called Thanatos, smashing it across my body in a  short, harsh chop as I slammed it into one of his still injured arms,  and where it clashed against his pitch black bone sparks flew up. Cracks  spiderwebbed across his bone, leaking light into the air.

My  head hurt, I was shaky and starting to get tired. I was pouring my  energy into every fucking aspect of my powers at once, supercharging  myself to deal with this bastard. I couldn't let him catch his breath or  we would all be killed. There was a crash behind me, but I ignored it. I  trusted my friends, I had to. If I looked away to make sure they were  ok it would be over.

Swings of my keyblade blurred out,  dark metal howling like an ebony storm, strikes of freezing power  splitting the darkness as frost spells buried themselves in open wounds,  exploding out into deadly ice that tore them open even wider. He  started to regroup and I dropped the keyblade, hammering a punch into  his throat and then shoving a thumb back into his scoured socket to  smash his head back into the wall.

A knee came up to slam  into his balls, then his gut, then the wounded thigh, as my other foot  stomped down on the inside of his knee to break it. There was barely any  plan left, barely any style, I was a fucking animal, savaging the dark  god as viciously as I could.

Of course, if it had just  been that it wouldn't have been enough. But these weren't just animal  ravagings. They were sum total of a million head on brawls. The absolute  knowledge of his weakest points and most inconsequential gaps. I was a  fucking machine built to just to tear him apart, and every single  thought in my head was dedicated to ripping through him piece by piece.

He  opened his mouth, vomiting black blood, and it splattered my armor,  beginning to corrode it. I cursed but didn't stop. Couldn't stop, as the  acidic liquid ate through the metal, crackling with whatever that eye  beam energy was, somehow having been backed up into him and corrupting  his insides. I felt my flesh begin to boil and sear and I ignored it,  flooding those body parts with blinding cold to counteract the agony, at  which I was only mildly successful.

It wasn't enough. It  was all just superficial damage, just physical harm. I hammered him  until I found a real opening, a perfect spot to attack, and then I  poured every ounce of power and speed and strength and magic into the  tips of my fingers and stomped down, driving my hand forward into his  chest and ripping out his heart, just like I'd done to Kalibak.

Of  course, that wouldn't have been enough. It was torn out but not  destroyed. The pain was too much, Darkfather roared, his agony  overcoming the shock and damage more thoroughly than even my perfect  predictions and modeling could account for, and his ravaged arms came  up, gripping either side of my shoulders before he got a grip and  PULLED.

He howled with triumph as my giant form tore in  half, only to pause in confusion as my gigantified body dissolved into a  cloud of black smoke. I'd switched with one of the illusions last  minute, changing it to a clone to give me the time I needed. My giant  hand dropped the heart, and I grinned as I called Thanatos to my hand.

The  illusion was small, or rather, normal sized, and when I appeared in  front of it the heart was the size of a small person, but it didn't  matter, that just made it a bigger target. I slammed the keyblade into  the black crackling mass of power, and as I did I POURED void and death  and demonic power into it, and I threw every ounce of my energy into the  strike, calling on my power to create the lie I wanted. Screaming with  every ounce of my being DIE.

And he did. I felt it as it  happened, felt the power as it ended him, snuffed out this bottomless,  colossal thing I should have been completely incapable of killing. But I  did. I staggered, but I didn't fall. I'd had my other illusions circle  around and get in position near my friends, and with the last of my  power I shifted my Domain, making all twelve of them real as I grabbed  them each in a different set of arms and hurled us all through a shadow  portal directly into the fucking Gummi ship on top of the 104 building.

I  slammed into the deck of the ship, my body seizing as my head rode the  edge between pain and complete dissolution. I dismissed my keyblade  because leaving it out might kill someone, I'd need to deal with that  shit later, but for now I needed to BREATHE. I was choking and twitching  and I let my armor recede as I writhed on the ground.

Zee  was there, and Drea, each pinning my shoulder to hold me in place so I  didn't hurt myself as I screamed, trying to stop my fucking soul from  fracturing like sugar glass under the pressure of the massive amount of  power I'd used. Too much, too fast. I was supposed to do it slow,  supposed to ease into it.

Then, suddenly, I felt a wave of  power course into me, my soul started to mend, my head began to clear  (slightly, it still fucking hurt) and the screaming stopped as I slumped  back across the deck, turning my head to glare blearily around until I  saw my phone, which had been thrown clear in the confusion. My eyes were  blurry, but they finally resolved the image of the screen and showed  what I expected. Midnight.

My power had dumped another  surge of energy into my body, and it had burned itself up mending the  damage I'd done. I was healed. My points had saved me. Maybe not  completely patched me up, but enough that I could recover like normal.  If I'd torn all my Deception muscles, this knitted them back together to  a post workout state, making them just damaged and able to recover.

I  panted as I stared up at the ceiling. "Everyone ok?" I asked in a  croaky voice. I got a series of stunned agreements and affirmatives, and  Sora leaned over me to check if I was ok before Kairi pulled him back.  That was fine, I didn't mind. We were alive. I'd fought fucking BATMAN  DARKSEID, and was somehow alive.

Kind of wished I could  have taken out the Joker one, but I had a feeling I'd be seeing him  again. There was a commotion as the others started gesturing out the  windshield, and Chip and Dale kicked us into gear to get us out of  there. Apparently the catle had turned into a giant Batman golem and was  heading for us, but it was too far to get to us in time. We were safe  for now, and I was so tired. I buried my head in Zee's lap and closed my  eyes. I'd just take a short nap. But hey, at least I didn't get knocked  out this time. Progress.