Sell you a Bridge chapter 343

July 4th 2016 Traverse Town, 10:00 AM EDT

We  obviously didn't up and leave for Quadratum at almost midnight. Merlin  took his leave, but the rest of us decided to sleep at the old house.  After informing my daughter that being unconscious did NOT count as  sleep, I and the girls went to bed. I slept unusually well given the  whole mess that was going.

In the morning, I rolled over  to kiss each of my girls and told Zee. "Happy 4th of July by the way."  I'd been keeping time based on the Gotham standard (since trying to do  it regionally would have driven me insane given all the world hopping). I  was avoiding calling my mother because of the whole Barbatos thing,  though I'd included some news of what I was doing in the note I'd sent  with Hana's bear.

Zee snorted. "Is it? Huh didn't notice. Huh, I've never really been too big on the holiday."

I  shrugged. "I liked blowing things up when we could afford it. But fair  enough." I grinned over at Drea. "I assume from your expression you have  no clue what I mean by that?" At her nod and raised eyebrow I explained  independence day real quick. "Anyway, you two ready for the trip to  Quadratum? Two of three of our last three wielders there."

"About  that." Said Drea. "Not to be negative, but how do we know for sure  they'll help us? Sora agreed, but we don't know the last three. They  might just decide it's too dangerous."

That was definitely  a possibility, but I didn't think so. "I'm betting they won't." I said.  "For a few reasons. One they're Sora's friends and he's helping. Two,  the heartless are an extension of the dark multiverse. The keyblade  wielders have been fighting them since time immemorial. If the Dark  Multiverse becomes whole, it'll return balance to the darkness and quell  the unstable hunger that results in the manifest darkness of the  heartless."

That one was hands down one of the biggest  aces up my sleeve for recruiting. While I hadn't run into many  heartless, according to Sora the others hadn't been so lucky. Finding  out that reforging the Dark Multiverse would dissolve the heartless  (Rana would be fine since she was a real person made from parts of  hearts, despite her connections with the heartless) meant I had a solid  reason for any keyblade wielder to help me with my mission.

"Alright."  I said climbing out of bed. "Let's go check in with Sora and the  others." It was early, but Sora struck me as a morning person. I was  guessing if he was up so was Rana. I was less concerned about that than I  would have been with anyone else given Sora's personality.

As  I walked downstairs, I confirmed that I was fine on that front, as I  found Sora enthusiastically telling a dead eyed Rana all about his best  friends, Riku and Kairi. I'm not sure the kid even realized how much he  was talking about Kairi, but seeing my poor daughter looking so  devastated was almost as sad as it was funny. "Hey all." I said as I  came into the room. "How's everyone's morning going?"

Sora  perked up, turning to us with a wide grin. "Oh! Hey guys! Morning. I  was just telling Rana about my friends before we meet them. They'll  definitely help you beat that bat guy. I think King Mickey will be super  excited about stopping the heartless too. He's been working toward that  for years, right guys?"

He turned to a bored looking  Donald and a sleeping Goofy, who jerked awake at the question. "Huh?"  Said Goofy blearily. "Oh, yup, King Mickey has always been trying to  keep everyone from back home safe. I'm sure he'll want to help if we can  really eliminate the heartless." The clutzy guard captain was every bit  as excitable as Sora, and once he woke up a bit his voice burned with  zeal.

Though I was curious about something else. Turning  to the back corner, I caught sight of our Nobody team members. Roxas and  Namine had been incredibly quiet since meeting Sora, both clearly torn  on exactly how to react. Fixing my gaze on Namine, I asked. "About that,  how will that affect the Nobodies? You guys aren't going to be hurt  when we reforge the Dark Multiverse right?"

If they were,  I'd have to figure out a way to tweak things. I wasn't willing to burn  our teammates because I was impatient. It would be more than feasible to  fix any problems with my abilities if I was willing to work at it. My  Deception powers might be limited in some ways, but within their niche  they were pretty damn strong.

To my relief, Namine just  smiled. "No. Heartless and Nobodies are connected for sure but not like  that. Actually, destroying the heartless will help us. When a Nobody  dies, their consciousness just fades, since we don't have hearts of our  own. But if you destroy a Nobody after the Heartless that came out of  them is destroyed, the disparate pieces reform and create a whole  Somebody. Destroying the Heartless basically means that even if we die  we get to live on again later in another form."

Roxas  grimaced. "Sadly I doubt the Organization will see it that way. Becoming  a Somebody again would basically be no better than dying to them. I'd  be shocked if we didn't come across quite a few of them guarding this  Scala ad Caelum place. We need to move carefully once we get to  Quadratum too. Based on Luxord's showing up here, ther Organization's  information gathering abilities are as strong as ever. Probably Saix.  The Luna Diviner has always been an annoying guy to deal with."

Sora,  unexpectedly, looked highly troubled. "Really? Then are Riku and King  Mickey going to be ok? If they beat us there they might attack them.  Should we find some way to get in touch and warn them?"

I  shook my head before Roxas could answer. "No. That would be a bad idea.  No telling if they have some way of intercepting the contact. If they're  smart, they could use us to figure out exactly where Riku and Mickey  are without needing to track them down. No, from what you said those two  are real powers. I wouldn't worry too much about them, especially if  Mickey has managed to find Riku already."

Realistically I  could have probably used points to arrange for some method of contacting  them in secret, but if I was going to accomplish my task at Scala ad  Caelum I'd need to get my hands on at least one, if not more  intelligence and brain enhancing boosts. That void grimoire was a  massive amount of information, and even with my current divine standards  the chances of me managing to decode it in time were slim to none. That  was if I dedicated all my time to it. It was even less likely if I just  occasionally read through it while on my mission.

Not  that I was lying to Sora. Mickey and Riku were both powerful fighters no  weaker than Sora from what I was told, stronger in one of their cases. I  didn't believe that they were helpless to protect themselves,  especially if they were together. Which brought us to the current  situation. "Speaking of the two of them, we should leave soon to try to  catch up to them. Do you know how to get to Quadratum Sora?"

Like  the clouds on a sunny day, the worry passed from Sora's face to be  replaced with his usual beaming grin. "Of course! Or...well, no. But  Merlin left me this!" He reached into his incredibly baggy shorts and  pulled out a blue cube of crystal, covered with what looked like  circuitry. "It's a navigation gummi! We can slot this into the gummi  ship and it should show us exactly how to find that Quadbottom place."

Rana  giggled slightly at the ridiculous mistake, and I was gratified to see  hearing Sora gush about his girlfriend hadn't been too big a setback for  her. I suppose getting another crush so soon after her first in Tifa  had helped keep her from putting too much importance on it. I was  secretly relieved. My relationship with Annabel what seemed like ages  ago had messed me up bad for a while. I wanted better for Rana. Besides,  a relationship this early in her development was just a bad idea. She  had all those memories to fall back on, but she'd only really  experienced a few months in the world.

"So where is your  gummi ship?" I asked. I'd been wondering about that since I heard about  it. Drea's friends had flown in one and I knew how big they were. The  fact that Sora had one was convenient, but I somehow doubted it was in  his bedroom, and I hadn't exactly seen an interspatial parking lot  anywhere nearby.

"I'll show you!" He said cheerfully,  gesturing for us to follow. I'd already packed up and so had the girls,  so I saw no reason not to humor him. We followed him through Traverse  Town, listening to the jovial wielder narrate his adventures here and  tell us all about the heartless he'd fought on his last visit. The guard  armor sounded interesting, considering my own skillset.

Finally,  we made it to the same courtyard type district we'd arrived at, and  Sora led us over to the exit, an absolutely gigantic set of double doors  that had been behind us before and that I hadn't really noticed.  "Ok...so this leads out to some kind of hangar space or like...sky  harbor?" I said in confusion.

"Nope." Said Sora proudly.  "Watch." Lifting his keyblade, he tapped it lightly against the door,  and then stood back as it started to glow. The blazing key built up a  charge for a minute and then launched a single beam at the door,  manifesting a keyhole on the wood the size of a person. I recognized the  effect, but weirdly, based on my aura sight this was a lot different. I  memorized the movements of the energy to study later when I had time,  but that would have to wait because the click of unlocking heralded the  doors slowly swinging open on their own to reveal...space.

Like..just  space. Empty blackness with stars in the distance and a series of  floating asteroids surrounding. Parked like...ten feet from the doorway I  could see a large brightly colored gummi ship. Sora turned to grin  proudly at us. "This is the Excalibur. She's our gummi ship." He turned  to shout to the ship. "Hey, time to go, come pick us up." At the sound  of his voice the ship seemed to shudder and then flare to life,  streaking over to hover in front of the door as if waiting.

"Nope."  Everyone looked at me curiously. "I do not accept this." I gestured at  the door. "This is madness. That's fucking SPACE. Where is the vacuum?  We're breathing like five feet away from cosmic nothingness. The air  should have been sucked from our lungs in a blink. Why is there gravity?  Why is it still so warm? Do you know how COLD space is? This is  absolute insanity!" I was just glad Wally wasn't here. He'd be having a  nervous breakdown over this shit.

Zee  patted me on the shoulder comfortingly. "It's ok baby. Let it out. We  know the magic isn't fair." I glared at her, but she just smiled back  sweetly, and since I couldn't stay mad at her I just rolled my eyes and  stalked over to the edge of the doors to wait to get on. I stood by my  point that this was nonsense, but she was right, lots of what we did was  nonsense. I'd just deal with it like I always did. As we waited for  Sora to help everyone board though, I did fish my phone out of my  pocket. Time for an upgrade to my mental capabilities. I had ten  thousand points from my daily charge, and that should be enough to get  me started with a low level boost. Just to test the water. Then I could  buckle down and really get started.