Sell you a Bridge chapter 340

July 3rd 2016 Traverse Town, 6:00 PM EDT

Zee  had decided to set the trap in the most simplistic way possible. While  complicated mechanisms were fun and interesting, they were also prone to  failure. Keep it simple stupid was a tried and true motto for the ages,  so Zee just set the door up to drop and seal in the next group of  people to enter once they passed the threshold. The rune she'd been  holding had kept the trap from priming until she dashed inside, and now  all we had to do was wait for them to show up. Knowing how annoyingly  omnipresent Luxord seemed to be I somehow doubted it'd take long.

True  to my prediction within a few minutes a dark portal opened in front of  us on the opposite shore of the little cave pool that Merlin's house was  situated in the middle of. Luxord stepped out again, along with  Sephiroth, the Devastator, and to my annoyance a THIRD fucking bone  monster I didn't recognize.

This one was even odder than  the others. While it was as spiky and brutal looking at they were, it  was taller and thinner. Its eyes were blood red, same as the first two,  but they glowed in an unsettling way. Long ragged waves of black hair  tumbled down it's back and over it's shoulders, some of them threaded  with bones and red fabric, and it wore a long red coat that fell in  tatters down to it's knees covering the upper body of the creature only  along the chest as it left it's lanky brutal arms free to hang to the  ground.

Tifa made a whimpering sound, her voice hoarse  with pain. "No...Vincent." I didn't know who Vincent was, but the thing  he turned into was STRONG. Its aura was malevolent and bloodthirsty. Not  like the virus, but in a completely different, but still alien way that  made me deeply reticent of letting my daughter and my girls fight it. I  stared in horrified fascination at the fucking MIASMA of abominable  power surrounding the...thing, only startled out of my horror by the  slam of the door shutting...effectively sealing us inside this place  with that thing. Fuck.

"What." I snarled, with barely  restrained fury. "Is THAT?" They clearly knew this guy, and he wasn't  just like this because of the virus. Hell he wasn't really MOSTLY like  this because of the virus. Whatever that thing was it had been part of  him since way before he was infected, though I suspected the ribbons of  made rage it had woven through his aura certainly hadn't helped much  when he was trying to fight the virus off.

Tifa choked  back a sob. "Vincent is a friend. He was part of our team back in  Radiant Garden. He is...WAS a vampire. I remember Yuffie telling me he  had another form, but I'd never seen it. Still, it can't be THIS. This  is horrible. What did they do to him?" Her aura was like an open wound  as she stared at her friend. I'd have assumed it was romantic, except I  could see her emotions. Tifa had ZERO romantic feelings for Vincent. She  just cared about her friends.

I sighed. "Sorry." I said.  "Didn't mean to snap. I thought you guys were holding out. The vampire  thing might have been nice to know, but honestly there was no reason to  connect the two phenomena. If you didn't know about the details of  this...transformation then you had no reason to assume he'd be any more  vulnerable than anyone else. Can you guys handle those two?"

This  fight should have been ours to win honestly. Luxord was an annoyance  more than a threat, and I had confidence in dealing with him easily once  the Devastator was licked. But with another threat on the level that  Vincent was, we were suddenly looking at a much tighter battle. I turned  to my daughter. "Rana, can you take Vincent with Sora playing backup?"  That would leave the others to dogpile Sephiroth which I hoped would be  enough. "Don't think about it, just answer. Gut instinct."

Her  ability to read people wasn't anything as coherent as my aura sight,  but it should give her some idea of how strong people were. She stared  at him a second and then shook her head. "Maybe with Mama. Just us won't  work." I cursed but turned to look at Drea, who nodded seriously.

I  sighed. "Not ideal, but it'll have to do. Sora you support with Goofy.  Zee, you and Donald back Cloud and Tifa against Sephiroth, make sure  they're in top condition. Namine, Roxas, you'll handle Luxord. I want  you floating around to intercept if that smarmy fuck makes a move.  Understood?" I let my armor roll over my body, coating my skin in  magnificent black metal.

Everyone nodded and then blurred  as we all separated, each of us dashing for our target. I popped my  wings and smashed headfirst into the Devastator like a black metal  wrecking ball. As he flew back I triggered my Domain, covering the area  around us as I manifested about a dozen illusionary copies. Clones would  take power I would need, so I had to stick with images, but they'd work  just the same.

As that took effect, I conjured Tartarus  and then flicked my keyblade, casting an overpowered demonic healing  spell to act as the channel for my ability. As soon as that was done, I  PUSHED with my power. I felt a massive resistance as something on the  other side of that energy pushed back, but despite losing a step, I  focused up, making damn sure I put my everything into this.

While  I did that, the Devastator charged me, but it was child's play to swap  with an illusion, letting the beast smash into the wall where I had  been. With a furious snarl, the monster grabbed up a handful off  shattered rock and hurled them underhand in an arc, creating a spread  pattern that would hit every single illusionary copy at the same time. I  grimaced, deflecting one and them immediately swapping out of thing's  path as it unleashed a blast of lasers from its fucking eyes. That  seemed safe.

I'd hoped the bullshit Superman powers would  stop at absurd strength, but that didn't seem to be the case. Probably  best to assume this thing could fly too. I sadly didn't think I'd be  able to hop around and dodge during the whole process of destroying the  virus. I'd have to actually engage, which would be annoying with my head  splitting open in pain, but what was I gonna do about it?

I  manipulated the closest illusion to close in on the Devastator and then  swapped out with it. His senses were pretty fantastic, and he spun on  his heel and executed a perfect spinning backfist on reflex. I put an  arm up and tanked it as I lashed out at his midsection with Tartarus. I  used the same trick as last time to offload most of the force across all  of my clones, solidifying them momentarily to take the blow as I tried  to open up his guts as a distraction.

As Tartarus hit,  there was a loud screech of metal on rock as his hide blunted most of  the damage. I cursed and swapped out with an illusion as he tried to  bisect me with his claws. Luckily, I had an answer to this. I dashed in  again to take another swing, swapping in with one of the five or so  illusions I sent lunging at him to confuse him. I cut out at his lower  spine this time, appearing behind him too fast for him to react. The  Devastator roared as it felt me appear, but my blow landed much too  quickly.

Rather than scrape off though, this time it  slashed through the spine directly. I didn't have the energy to pump my  strength through my armor, but I'd found a new technique recently that  I'd yet to try out. My offloading trick with the Domain was useful for  defense, but this one was purely offensive.

All twelve of  those doubles (the most I could do this with honestly) were potential  versions of me. It was why I could manifest in the place of them, make  one real, make myself false, become an illusion and let the illusion  become reality. This particular trick involved invoking the potential  for damage from all twelve of them at once and stacking it on my own  blow.

The force of the cut to the Devastator's spine was  the same as thirteen full force strikes from my keyblade. It was just a  normal attack, so nothing absurd like it would be if I could have  boosted, but still the amount of power in that strike wasn't something a  bit of thick skin could stop. There was a ripping sound as the stone  flesh crumbled away and a rocklike spine was torn apart by my cut,  dropping the Devastator to his knees.

I was smug as hell  about it despite the pain in my head and soul from the ongoing cleansing  spell, but unfortunately I was cut off from that jubilation by the  sight of the fucking thing's back knitting together even as I watched.  Right, regeneration and adaptation. Shit. I didn't stop, sending out  slash after slash at the beast, flickering between my illusions and  stacking blows as I appeared, doing my best to tear through the bastard  faster than he could regenerate. Even for me, combined with the strain  from trying to destroy the virus this was an insane amount of stress.

To  my delight though, I found that the combination wasn't less effective,  it was MORE. Every blow destroyed virus laden cells, and the regenerated  flesh had less of the pathogen in it as the spell cleansed it. The more  damage I did the faster my effort to cure the Devastator became. I  considered drawing my gun to see if I could do enough damage to speed  things up, but in the end I decided that it wasn't worth the risk. If  the Devastator died before I could complete the erosion of the virus on a  conceptual level then it wouldn't cure the others.

All I  could do was hold on, pushing forward with every ounce of willpower I  had as my head felt like it was about to split open like an overripe  watermelon. My vision started to get fuzzy, my movements dragged, but  with my superior martial skills and a shit load of effort I forced  myself to push on, tearing into the Devastator as I got closer and  closer to the end. If I could finish this we would erase a huge weapon  from the arsenal of the Organization and Barbatos.

As I  watched, I saw the skin on the beast's face start to pale, going from  dark grey to light grey even as the hide smoothed and the bones started  to retract. "No!" I heard an angry voice shout. But I didn't have time  to react to that while I was fighting. I trusted my team. There was a  clang behind me, and a quick swap with an illusion for a backstab on the  monster showed me that Roxas had intercepted one of the cards Luxord  used before it could slash into my back, deflecting it with a flick of  his keyblade.

Namine lashed out with powerful mental  attack, causing the blonde card wielder to curse and slip back into a  card to be shuffled away to safety. Finally, after what seemed like  forever, I felt the end approach. With a roar of exertion I SHOVED a  massive amount of energy into the spell, overpowering the virus. The  monster threw back his head and HOWLED, the existing features of the  virus melting away as the roar modulated into a human scream as he fell  to his knees in agony, shifting to the human shape of an older but still  recognizable Bruce Wayne. I had just enough time to see Sephiroth and  Vincent throw back their heads for the same roar before I blacked out  from the pain. Mission accomplished.