Sell you a Bridge chapter 344

July 4th 2016 Traverse Town, 11:00 AM EDT

"So."  I said as we climbed aboard the gummi ship (which was much bigger than  it looked from a distance). "Quadratum. Pull up the directions. I hope  this place isn't in the Dark Multiverse. Showing up there would be a  problem for us at the moment." As Sora socketed the blue cube into a  slot on the dashboard, the windshield of the ship flashed brightly and  then a series of readouts began to flash across it.

"Nope.  It isn't in the realm of light either." I almost jumped out of my damn  skin at the high pitched voice. I flicked my eyes down to where it came  from to see...a chipmunk. Standing on two legs. Wearing clothes. Well, a  shirt anyway. There was even another one right next to him.

Rana  squealed in joy. "Ooooh, look at them! They're so cute!" She scooped  both of them up gently and started nuzzling her face against the little  guys, who seemed too shocked to process what was happening. "Sora, who  are these little cuties? And they can talk? I love them so much!"

Donald  was snickering off to one side as Goofy tried his best to hide a grin.  Sora, meanwhile just looked obliviously happy. "Oh, that's Chip and  Dale, our navigators. They're the best. I wouldn't be able to read  directions like these, but since these two are helping we should get to  Quadratum no problem." He frowned at the chipmunks. "That's weird  though, right. Like isn't dark and light all of it? Where else could it  be?"

Chip wriggled free of my daughter's hands, glaring at  her as he hopped back onto the dashboard. She pouted and set Dale down,  though the second chipmunk was giggling delightedly rather than being  upset. Chip smoothed down his fur a few times before exhaling loudly.  "No." He finally said, squeaky voice even. "Light and dark are not all  of it. Quadratum is in the realm of the unreal. It's a higher plane of  existence. You need a specific kind of portal to reach it, Merlin  enchanted the cube to provide a path."

I froze. That  sounded...familiar. "Wait. It's in the SPHERE? Quadratum is in the  Sphere of the Gods?" Because that was the only higher order dimension I  knew of that required a special portal to enter.

Chip  looked surprised (and isn't that a weird expression to try to puzzle out  on the face of a chipmunk."Yeah." He said. "Some people call it that. I  mean, plenty of special places are there. Like King Mickey's castle."  That was true, wasn't it. When I first heard about the mouse king it had  been in the sphere. His kingdom was in the magiclands just like the OZ.  The thought made me briefly wonder how DG and Azkedelia were doing. I  doubted we'd have time to stop in, but I hoped they were taking care of  the pups.

"Alright." I said. "Well it sounds like we have  our path lined up. Let's go ahead and set off then. Can you open the  portal?" We hadn't been through a boom tube in ages. I wasn't worried  about it affecting me this time. The whole reason for Del making me take  the long way home was so I would be operating on the level of the  Sphere and Could become a god. Now that I was one I should be able to  use the boom tube either way without any problem.

"Get  ready!" Squeaked Chip excitedly. "It's time for us to go." The little  chipmunk had been smashing buttons on the dashboard for a minute or two  and then finally jumped up onto the cube, using his whole body to push  the thing deeper into the groove it sat in. When it clicked into place  the circuitry blazed up brightly. There was a shuddering groan from the  gummi ship before the whole thing flashed brightly, and a massive white  tunnel of brilliant light shone into being in front of the ship.

Looking  at the portal honestly kind of hurt my eyes, but it was hard to look  away at the same time. A massive white hole in the universe, with rings  of energy streaming endlessly down from within the heart of the portal.  With a cry of triumph, Chip leapt over onto a steering console, and Dale  did the same, each using their full body on one part of the dual  controls, perfectly maneuvering the ship with their flawless teamwork.

The  ship jerked and then blasted forward into the portal, and within a  second white light consumed our vision. The sensation of being hurled  through the void was different than last time when we went through the  Arkham portal, but no less dizzying. I felt like my body was being  pulled and stretched like taffy, but more than that, I could feel the  way the void was being warped and torn by what we were doing.

My  understanding of void energy wasn't where it needed to be, but it was  still much higher than the last time I'd jumped between planes. I could  see shifts in the space, movements in the warp and weft of creation that  shouldn't have been visible, but between my aura sight, my divine  nature, and my bloodline's connection to the void, I watched the  universe torn apart and stitched back together a million times.

This  portal wasn't a portal, it wasn't some hole we jumped through. We were  all threads in a cosmic tapestry, being shredded and then restitched  into place in a million different subplanes, each one elevating us  higher, pushing us closer to the heights we were striving for. My mind  was spinning, my eyes were bleeding, and if I hadn't been a god and a  proto-endless I'm pretty sure I'd have literally gone insane. Hell even  then, without that brief glimpse of the truth of Taylor's gift to give  me some context for this level of reality it would still have been too  much.

Finally something...clicked, and we were just  suddenly fine. Standing there on the other side of the portal. I  understood so much now. I knew why Del had forced me to go through the  magiclands to leave the sphere. Going through a boom tube was an  evolution or devolution. It was a complete restructuring on a  fundamental level. It didn't unmake you, not completely, more like...a  million partial unmakings.

No ship of theseus worries  here, anyone who went through came out the same person,  just...different. That said, the makeup of a deity was built to  withstand this flawlessly, made to be altered in such a way. As a  mortal, when I went through the first boom tube my level of existence  had been raised, but if I'd gone back through it would have been  returned to a normal human's. Only as a god could I move through a boom  tube without experiencing any real changes.

The others  looked much less shaken than I did, probably because without all my  unique aspects they couldn't pick up what we'd just done. The only one  besides me who seemed bothered was Rana, who with access to my  bloodline, her mothers divinity, and the diluted for of aura sight,  probably hadn't seen nearly as much, but had most likely born witness to  something pretty fucking awe inspiring.

I stepped up to  put and arm around her, and she leaned her head on my shoulder, closing  her eyes as she tried to process what she'd just experienced. None of  the others noticed though, eyes focused on...earth? "Um. Why are we  here?" If Quadratum was on earth I'd have heard about it I was sure, and  earth wasn't in the Sphere of the Gods. So what the fuck was going on?

"This  is Quadratum." Chip said with finality. "Merlin's cube used the gummi  ship as a focus to cast the boom tube enchantment. It opened us a portal  directly to where we needed to go." He hopped over to study the thing.  "It's not finished yet either. There's still coordinates locked in  there, though they aren't usable yet." I looked at the familiar planet,  and with my aura sight active I could see that it was...different, than  it should be. This wasn't earth. At least not ours.

Zee  leaned down to study the circuitry for a minute or two. "He's right."  She said with interest. "Conditional unlock. Looks like we need all the  wielders to get it to open. I assume this is how we get to Scala ad  Caelum. Though I have no clue how we get back to the tower to pick  everyone up. I know I won't be close to doing anything on that scale for  years, no matter how much studying I do."

"I might." I  grimaced. "That was high level void sorcery...kind of. I think with  enough time I could do it. But I don't think I'll need to. Mickey is  supposed to be here, and he was trained by Master Yen Sid. I bet he can  get us back to the tower somehow. We'll just have to find him and see." I  paused for a second. "Please tell me the direction in that cube have  some sort of heading. That planet is huge, I can only imagine a tracking  spell would fail too, otherwise the Organization would have tracked  them down ages ago."

Chip  snickered and kicked a button, bringing up an image on the screen. It  was a map of the alternate earth, with a red dot over what looked like  Tokyo. That was convenient. Ish. Tokyo was still huge, but it was a  better starting point than 'the world'. Chip reached over and started  hitting buttons. It only took a few seconds for us to see the ship's  outside to fade completely from view through the windshield. Some kind  of cloaking tech.

As  soon as that was done, the two of them resumed their places on the  sticks and started to steer us into the atmosphere. As we approached the  city, I focused hard on it with my aura sight and was quickly surprised  to find... almost nothing. Or at least, almost nothing alive. Unlike  Gotham in the Dark Multiverse this place wasn't destroyed or damaged at  all. It was just almost completely empty.

"Well."  I said in suspicion. "That's going to make things easier at least." At  the questioning looks from the others I gestured to the slowly  approaching city. "There are like ten or fifteen living beings in that  city. Finding Riku and Mickey might not be as hard as we thought. We  have a one in five chance if we just walk up to a random person. Of  course, the aura signatures are blurry and hard to make out. I don't  know why...shit. They're wearing the coats."

I  had noticed briefly that the coats could slightly obscure the auras of  people wearing them when we found them originally, but since I was right  next to everyone when they had them on it wasn't really an issue. Now,  with a whole city between me and my targets the blurring effect was much  stronger. I had trouble even identifying the exact location for any of  the people here, never mind WHO they might be. That was annoying, though  it would still be easier than finding two people in a crowded city, so I  called it a net win.

As  the ship finally came to a soft landing on top of a building with '104'  on the front of it, we all climbed out and headed over to the edge to  look out over the city. A massive skyline of skyscrapers that dwarfed  even Gotham was arrayed before us. I sighed as I tried again to narrow  down a location for the nearest signature and got nothing specific. Oh  well, at least we had a general direction. "Alright folks." I said  loudly. "Let's get moving. We're burning daylight and this place creeps  me out. The sooner we find them and bail, the better."