Sell you a Bridge chapter 339

July 3rd 2016 Traverse Town, 5:00 PM EDT

With  Cloud and Tifa onboard, not to mention Leon, we had the twelve illness  immune fighters we could swing. Since Aerith couldn't come anyway she  stayed behind, but we had enough people with us to do some serious  damage to whatever the Organization could throw at us. I assumed that  they had more people now, but so did we. My main worry was that now that  we DID have more people, we wouldn't be able to get the bastards to  commit to an assault.

"So." I said  grimly. "What are the chances he has more of your old friends stashed in  the background infected with the virus? Can you think of any of them  that might show up?" It seemed like at least a decent chunk of Radiant  Garden's population knew each other and tried to stick together, or at  least ended up in the same places? "Actually how did Auron and Sephiroth  end up together. I got the impression Auron was a friend of yours and  Sephiroth definitely isn't." We were wandering through the Second  District, completely unable to find any signs of the others, but I was  keeping a sharp eye out at least.

Cloud  grimaced. "When Radiant Garden fell, the world was swallowed by  darkness. The heartless overran the whole place, but darkness isn't  exactly stable. Different parts of it ended up in different locations in  the realm of darkness. Hollow Bastion which Sora has visited before,  was one place like that. It didn't get completely consumed because of  its defenses, and ended up breaking off from the rest of the world."

That  drew a sigh from Tifa. "Which is why we all got separated. Some of us  escaped, some of us got consumed, and some of us even died. I'm not sure  how Auron ended up in the Underworld, which is where Aerith said he ran  into Sephiroth, whether he died or got swallowed up and spat out there,  but if the two of them both got stranded close together, it's not  exactly impossible there are more of our friends or enemies in the same  place."

"Ok.  So how dangerous are they?" I asked unhappily. Cloud and Tifa weren't  like...god level threats, but I was pretty sure either of them infected  with the virus would be a nightmare. If their old friends or enemies  were even half as strong the others could have their hands full while I  dealt with the Devastator. I briefly considered just killing the  bastard, but I still didn't know if that would actually end things.  Curing the virus conceptually with my powers at the source would ripple  out and basically ensure we completely took that particular weapon out  of the Organizations hands.

Tifa,  for her part, was worried enough that I was not filled with confidence,  her aura flaring with anxiety and fear. "Very." She said quietly. "I  can't give you specifics because I don't know who might be with them,  but there are several very dangerous people I wouldn't ever want to  fight. Normally it wouldn't be a problem. I have confidence in  overcoming our enemies, and our friends would never hurt me. With this  virus though...I just don't know."

I  couldn't imagine that honestly. Kit had betrayed us in the dungeon, but  that hadn't really been a huge deal. She hadn't killed anybody, just  snatched some power. The idea of one of my friends or loved ones  becoming a raging bone covered monster who wanted to murder me  was...horrifying to say the least. It suddenly occurred to me that I was  asking a lot from Cloud and Tifa. I wouldn't go back on that, we needed  them, but I could at least try to be cognizant of how hard this was  going to be.

Not  only that, it was staggering how tough their lives must have been to  this point. The idea of having to fight monster versions of old friends  and allies was a nightmare to me, but their auras barely rippled from  their calm and certain state. How much bullshit would you need to go  through in order to be able to remain stoic in the face of something  like that. Not just on the outside, but to be truly unshaken? I wasn't  sure, but I knew enough to hope that I never went through enough to  reach that point.

When  we reached the Third District, where Sora and Rana and I had fought  Luxord and his minions, we all stopped. I glared around in annoyance.  Nothing. There was no aura trail, no clues, no possible route to follow  to track the bastards down. We were completely alone here and that  wasn't likely to change. We needed something that would draw them in,  something that would make them come to us, but I couldn't think of  anything.

Luckily,  I travel with a team. When I mentioned my thoughts, everyone pondered  possible solutions, but it was Zee who figured out the next move.  "Merlin!" She shouted, in the same way someone would usually shout  eureka. I wasn't convinced that was as helpful as she thought it was  though.

"Merlin  could definitely help. But he's gone last we checked. No way to contact  him either, unless you guys have him on speed dial?" I looked over at  Leon, who lived here and was more likely to be the one to have a method  of contact. Either way though, while it was a good thought, I wasn't  sure it was helpful at the moment.

Zee  rolled her eyes. "No, dumbass. Merlin was their target. He might be  gone, but that hut is still there, not to mention that warded door.  There's no way that if we open that door and leave it open they won't  come inside for a look. He's half their reason for being here. Not the  whole reason, granted, but even still, passing up the chance to snag the  greatest wizard ever born would be pure stupidity."

I  blinked. "That..." I was speechless for a second. "That's perfect! They  can't get into the grotto or whatever it is, and wouldn't have been  able to before either. There's no way they won't check it out once its  open." We could also slam the door behind them and lock them in with us.  The wards on that place had to prevent corridors from forming,  otherwise Merlin would have been overrun. Doors don't really work on  teleporters unless something stops them from just teleporting right past  them.

Everyone  thought it was a great idea, naturally, so we all headed for the grotto  to open the place up and lie in wait. As we walked, I decided to quiz  Zee on how this would work. She'd studied the runes on the doorway for a  bit, plus with her intelligence stat from the dungeon she should have  been able to remember it all and knowing her there was no chance she  hadn't spent at least some time deciphering them. "So." I said, sidling  up next to my sorceress. "How does this work? Like will they even  notice? We opened the doors before and they didn't come running or  anything."

She  giggled at that. "The wards are set up redundantly. The opening is more  like an air lock, in that it isolates the aura inside with a secondary  barrier when you open it. I can disable the barrier, and if I do they  should be able to pick it up pretty quickly. Assuming that they bother  to actually check it out. Still, there's no way in hell they won't  notice a new area appearing in this world."

That  was a relief. "They'll definitely explore it." I said confidently. "If  you can really take the wards down they'll come. But is that going to  break them?" I glanced around, focusing a bit on my Deception abilities  to do something I hadn't tried before. Deceiving the world around us so  no one could hear us talking. This wasn't a silence spell or a privacy  barrier, I was literally shifting reality slightly so we were only  talking to each other, but any observer, no matter how powerful,  couldn't pick up a thing. "I want to trap them inside." I said with a  slight growl of effort as my head started to sting. "Can you get the  wards back up once they enter?"

I  let the Deception drip, letting Zee know through the bond to watch her  words. I couldn't hold that for long, but it was definitely something I  was planning to explore more in the future. Once she realized she wasn't  free to talk, Zee mulled over her response for a second before  carefully saying. "Yes, though I need a minute to set it up before we  start. That work for you?"

I  beamed at her, leaning down for a quick kiss. "Perfect. You ready for  the fight? This will be a mess. You should layer on some defenses while  you have the time, just in case this is more trouble than we expect." I  still had the voo-don't dolls of course, but those were supposed to be  emergency preparation for random attacks. In fact, those things were  conditional on a 'lethal' strike. I'd had to tinker with them a bit to  prevent them from just going off mid fight at the slightest blow, which  would be a huge waste.

That  was why Rana hadn't triggered hers fighting Sephiroth. He hadn't been  enough of a threat to actually kill her, so it hadn't been necessary for  the doll to do its thing. Which if anything just underscored how scary  my daughter was. Since Zee could feel my worry, she didn't argue about  it, just cast a series of defensive spells and wards, some I'd seen and  could even use, and some were just her native magical talents.

When  we made it to the doorway, she stepped right up and got to work on the  wards, excited to have a chance to pick apart something Merlin had  created personally. I smiled affectionately at my magic crazy girl. She  wasn't a complicated person, even if she was brilliant. She could be  confusing like anybody else, could be kind, or petty or ridiculous, or  unreasonable. But at the end of the day, Zee was a person who saw the  world as a positive, wonderful thing. She looked at the universe and  searched for awe and adventure and magic, and that was what I loved  about her.

She  stopped working on the runes, turning wide violet eyes on me, and she  gave me the sweetest smile I'd ever seen. I smiled back, and we stared  at each other for a moment before she turned back to resume work on the  wards. Drea stepped up next to me, having felt all of that and leaned up  to kiss my cheek. "She loves you too. And so do I." I leaned down to  kiss her and she smiled into my lips. She could feel that I felt the  same way. The bonds were really a wonderful thing.

There  was a flash of annoyance through the bond connected to our daughter,  but she didn't say anything about it, presumably not wanting Tifa or  Sora to think she was childish. I turned and stuck my tongue out at her,  laughing at her offended expression as I buried my head in Drea's neck  to hide my laughter.

It  took Zee about twenty minutes of fiddling with the spell (hitting  random runes as far as I could tell which was probably why I wasn't the  one turning it off) to finally shut it down temporarily. The door slid  up slowly, seeming to almost be dragging itself up the frame as if it  was dying. The light on it flickered and I worried it might drop, but  once it reached the top it stayed put. Zee held her hand on a rune and  ushered us all in, only letting go once we had slipped inside and she'd  followed us. Now the trap was set, and we just had to wait for them to  jump into it.