Sell you a Bridge chapter 346

July 4th 2016 Quadratum, 2:00 PM EDT

There  are a lot of ways people can hurt someone, even someone like me. Magic  can do amazing things, certain levels of brute force can ignore even my  armor, and there are plenty of weapons that can negate most forms of  defense. SHOOTING someone with the ability to phase through physical  objects, godlike speed, and triple the reflexes a GOD should have,  however, is not a viable form of attack.

Despite the thick  blanket of light blasts showered the street we were on, but I wove  between them pretty much effortlessly, deflecting a few once I realized  they were actually some kind of crystal shard. The girls, Sora, and  Roxas did fine too, with Roxas tanking the blows for Namine and Goofy  taking them for Donald on his shield. Not sure what that thing was made  of, but it was sturdy as hell.

Xigbar looked annoyed. "You  know, when someone shoots at you, it's good manners to die." He made a  complicated gesture and the two sword gun things jammed together, one  folding into the other and shifting into a kind of attachment that  increased ammo capacity. Once it locked in he lifted the now much bigger  gun and held down the trigger, shooting out another wave at us.

This  next series of attacks was MUCH faster, and to my annoyance had a  fucking homing ability. I shadow ported  over to the group to stand in  front of the others, shifting in the the defensive stance I learned from  Lexeaus. Between my flawless defense and the blade extension energy  attacks I'd learned from outer body sparring with cloud, I was able to  create a sort of defensive perimeter to keep the blast off the others.

Unfortunately,  homing blasts meant that I had to deflect every single shot, and only a  haste spell from Zee let me manage it. My defensive stance didn't  prioritize speed, especially not stretched over this large of an area.  It didn't fucking help that Xigbar was fucking teleporting all over the  place and showering us with attacks from random spots midair.

I  wasn't really able to do much other than focus on him, so I had to  leave it to the others when Axel attacked. Thos damn chakram scything  out from either side to circle around me, exploding in a burst of flame  as they landed, though thankfully each one was deflected by one of my  team members. They were about to move out, when a voice from one side  brought them up short. "Don't." Said Roxas quietly.

Even  under the din of the deflections, it was easy to hear him. He walked out  from behind the cover, and Xigbar tried to take a potshot, but was  forced to refocus on me when I winged an ice blast at him the second he  shifted focus. Roxas walked alone to stand in the center of the street,  looking up at Axel. "This is what you wanted, right? Just you and me?  One on one?"

Axel bared his teeth in a vicious grin. "It's  so nice to be remembered. I heard you lost your memories. I'm glad.  It'll be so much more satisfying to burn you alive." He leapt down from  the roof, not even bothering to use any method of flight to offset the  force. He touched down roughly twenty feet or so from Roxas.

Namine  looked terrified. "Roxas what are you doing? You have to let us help!"  She was pulling at the hem of her dress, but I could tell she wouldn't  go against his wishes, no matter how much she wanted to. Namine had been  inside his memories after all, she knew better than even I did what  this fight meant to him, and I could see it plain as day in his aura.

He  gave her a big dopey smile, and all the sudden, I could see exactly  what everyone else had meant about him and Sora being almost identical. I  hadn't really noticed before, there was a bit of similarity sure, but I  see aura, and theirs was way too different for me to mistake them. That  grin though, it was pure Sora. "Hey, don't you worry about me." He shot  her a wink. "I've never lost a duel to the death, not one."

The  word death seemed to break him out of his confident posture though. I  saw a shock of sadness roll through his aura. Roxas might be fighting to  the death here, but he didn't want to. Axel had been his friend, and he  felt bad about how things had gone down. Still, he wasn't going to let  the red haired man kill him, or any of the rest of us. Namine gave him a  shaky but confident smile and clenched her fist in support.

Roxas  turned to face Axel, and holding out one hand, he conjured a SECOND  keyblade. A familiar keyblade I'd seen Namine use a dozen times. One  Drea wielded as well. Oathkeeper flashed into existence opposite  Oblivion. I stared blankly, looking at the others. "I...did not know he  could do that. Can I do that?" I held out a hand, reaching for Zee's  keyblade, and nothing happened. I turned to my girls. "I can't do that."

At  least not without cheating. I was sure I could brute force it with my  powers, but it would be exhausting, and frankly not super useful anyway  since I mainly trained in a one sword style. Still, it clearly shocked  everyone else too, because Axel's eyes widened and he muttered "Two?" He  shook off the surprise though. "I don't care if you have a thousand  keyblades." He hissed. "Die for me!"

He waved the chakram  and a circle of fire popped up around them, the ground transforming into  near molten rock before our eyes. Namine looked terrified, not that I  had much time to watch with Xigbar redoubling his attack. I was getting  real sick of that asshole. I turned my attention back to him, leaving  Roxas to his fight. With Namine's keyblade in hand he should be up to  this fight...assuming he knew how to use two of them. But I doubted he  was dumb enough to try dual wielding for the first time in actual  combat.

Focusing on Xigbar, I debated using my Domain, but  decided it would be best to save it. Using it took a lot out of me and  who knew who else would be running around in this place. Instead, I  decided to fuck with him a little bit. Focusing on my Deception powers, I  made a tiny tweak to his light dagger bullets as I deflected them. He  snorted in amusement, but that turned into shock as the homing  projectiles turned on their master and started trying to punch holes in  his stupid floating ass.

His eye narrowed at me. "How." He  started to say, rolling sideways to avoid a shot to the throat. "Are  you doing that?" He was able to shoot his own bullets out of the air,  which was impressive, but since he had no other counter for the  deflection trick he had to stop firing. He dropped down to the ground to  glare at me. "You know, I see what the others meant about you. You're  an annoying brat." Yanking his hands apart, the massive machine gun  broke into the pair of sword pistols again.

"Ain't I a  stinker?" I twirled my keyblade at him mockingly, smiling through the  metallic coating of my armor. As he watched me, I waited until his eyes  flicked to the edge of my keyblade, then shifted into intangibility and  created a clone. Stepped back, I faded from visibility as my form  stopped overlapping the duplicate's leaving behind a seamless version of  me without any clues that I'd vanished.

My Deception  powers helped make sure that I wasn't noticed, and as I floated up off  the ground I skimmed over the surface of the street without touching in a  roundabout circle. When I was behind Xigbar, I launched a burst of icy  ectoplasm with a freeze spell at his beck. Sadly, this guy was quite a  bit more astute than the rest of his band of assholes. He sensed it and  rolled aside.

The spell hit my clone, creating a huge  glacier of ectoplasmic ice and dispersing it, but I didn't mind. I was  already sprouting wings and pushing my demonic energy to enhance speed  as I flashed forward at Xigbar to engage him directly. He snarled at me  as I approached, and his sword guns came up to smash my keyblade aside  with more force than I was expecting.

To my shock, his  aura began to rise, quickly reaching the point where it rivaled my own.  "Boy." He snarled. "You think you're the first keyblade wielder I've  killed. Or even the hundredth? I fought in the keyblade WAR. I've killed  masters who were ten times the wielder you'll ever be." His one yellow  eye began to glow a hellish red, a state echoed by his sword guns as he  sped up substantially.

Cursing, I  shifted my stance to defensive and deflected the blows as they came in,  as I did, I  slightly altered my profile to minimize my vitals, but  still ended up with a hole torn in my side. Growling, I funneled power  into enhancing my armor's strength as I tugged on my bond with Zee,  feeling another haste spell roll over me. Between the strength and speed  I was able to keep up with Xigbar, but it was close.

I  was bewildered. "Who the fuck ARE you?" He WAS a Nobody, technically,  but his aura was fucking ANCIENT now. It hadn't been like that before  his eyes started glowing. He grinned at me viciously. "A servant of the  Master of Masters. Chosen of the no name. Anything else I say would just  be wind in your ears boy." I was preparing to activate my Domain. This  guy was extremely odd.

Before  I could though, I noticed an aura appear within range of my senses. I  grinned internally, and held off on using my Domain for now. This guy  was a servant, which meant his boss was around, and somehow I didn't  think that boss was Xemnas. His aura as Xigbar was laconic but somewhat  driven, this guy though, this guy was on a fucking mission. I'd  accidentally triggered a fucking sleeper agent in the Organizations  ranks.

I'd  have tried to make a deal with him or something, but there were streaks  of madness and rage throughout his spirit, as well as a suspiciously  familiar chunk of it fucking missing. He'd been a keyblade wielder  himself, like he mentioned, but whoever had taken his keyblade had not  done so gently. It had been straight up ripped out of his soul in the  most violent way possible.

Even  with the haste spell and my boost, keeping up with not-Xigbar was  actually starting to be tough, but it didn't really matter. My backup  was coming. The aura coming up behind him wasn't one I recognized, but  it had deep connections to two of the members of our party, and lesser  connections to most of the others. Noting his location, I grimaced and  shifted slightly, letting one of his blades bury in my shoulder before  smashing the other aside and grabbing his arm to pin him in place.

Out  of the shadows behind him rose a short figure in a black coat, with a  pair of huge ears. "Haha!" Shouted the high pitched voice triumphantly. "Holy"  Xigbar's eye widened in alarm, the red fading back to yellow as he  desperately tried to escape. He managed to break my grip and turned to  bolt away.

Not fast enough though,  as the massive cascade of light magic straight consumed one of his arms,  even as he fell through a corridor of darkness. I hadn't realized you  could even use those here. I turned to grin at the tiny figure as my  flesh knit itself back together. "Your majesty. Excellent timing. It's  nice to meet you, I've heard good things." The figure lifted his gloved  hands and pushed back the hood to smile back at me. King Mickey had  appeared, and we were one wielder closer to ending this.