Sell you a Bridge chapter 338

July 3rd 2016 Traverse Town, 11:00 AM EDT

It  turned out I was short one vial. I hadn't really done the calculations,  not that it listed how many in the email. Everyone was fairly excited  about the viral immunity when I explained it could be trusted a hundred  percent, but with one person needing to miss out, I was afraid I would  need to volunteer myself. To my surprise though, Aerith spoke up. "I'll  skip it." Everyone looked at her in confusion, and she just smiled. "As a  Centra, my body is constantly overflowing with life energy, and I  almost never get sick. I might not even be vulnerable, plus I have to  stay behind and keep the infected in stasis anyway. I haven't caught it  so far so it should be fine."

I hesitated a bit at that,  but the truth was, she lived in a pretty safe town, virus monsters  aside. Once we got rid of the Devastator Traverse Town should be  completely free of problems. The same could be said of the others, but  they'd all be fighting against the infected in the upcoming battle.  Sora, Donald, Goofy, Roxas, Namine, the girls, and I were all even more  in need, because we traveled the universe constantly. Being immune to  sickness and most poisons would be a huge help in our upcoming travels.

In  the end, despite feeling really bad for the woman, I acknowledged that  she would be the least affected, and her inhuman nature would make the  serum almost moot anyway. Once we came to a decision I passed them all  out, and everyone injected themselves with the serum. Luckily they were  created by my power, and made no mention of being human specific, so  they would be safe for Donald and Goofy to use. When my power said  anyone could use something, that's what it meant.

As I  injected the serum, I was surprised to see my veins shifting to blue  along my arm as a freezing burn rolled through my body. I gritted my  teeth, enduring the pain, and it passed quickly. I was surprised to see  that nobody in the room, even Sora, made a sound at the pain. I'd pegged  the kid for the type to just own his discomfort, so I guessed he'd just  been hurt so much it didn't really affect him anymore.

Once  that was done, we all breathed a sigh of relief. This whole thing was  much safer with all of us being immune to illness. Even a kryptonian  virus wasn't beyond my powers. If they said no sickness it meant no  sickness. Hell I wasn't even sure one of the other endless could just  blatantly contradict me like that. Deception meant all lies were  believed. I was pretty sure we couldn't overrule each other in our own  areas of expertise like that.

Still, despite that being  taken care of, it wasn't all we needed to get done. I turned to Cloud  and Tifa. "So, now that that's out of the way, we have to adress the  elephant in the room." The pair of them looked alarmed and started  searching the space around us, and I resisted the urge to facepalm.  "That's a figure of speech where I'm from. It means we need to talk  about the obvious thing we were avoiding bringing up."

Cloud  remained stoic, but Tifa looked a bit embarrassed. "Ah, had not heard  that one. What exactly do you mean though? Since we can't get sick we  should be perfectly fine to help now."

I nodded. "Sure.  But we still need to know if you're strong enough. I've seen Sora and  his friends fight, they're solid in a brawl. But I don't know what you  can do, and if I'm trusting my daughter and girlfriends to you I want to  make sure you can back up your smack talk. You guys open to a little  sparring match to prove yourselves?"

Rana looked incensed  that I was picking on her crush, and Aerith looked unhappy, but Cloud  and Tifa both just smiled approvingly. They didn't begrudge me making  them show off their stuff. In fact, from his aura, Cloud actually  respected the requirement. He would have been uncomfortable if I'd just  taken their word for it. It was so nice to be working with professionals  again.

After a bit of complaining from my daughter (whose  side was that girl on?) we finally settled on having the fight in  Merlin's cavern. Zee was practically skipping at the idea. "I hope he  lets me look at his books." She squealed excitedly. "Oh, I saw so many  volumes I want to check out. And so many more with no title on the  spine. I wonder what they are? Maybe he has some kind of  superdimensional construct theory grimoires. I've been dying to get my  hands on some research notes since you told me about that giant gun  construct."

Right, the void gun. I hadn't really used that  since my fight with Black Adam. Too many gods mixed up in my fights  lately. Sadly the bastards weren't really vulnerable to the death energy  of my gun. I was pretty sure the Nobodies weren't either, being pretty  much walking corpses themselves. It made me wonder if there was some way  to use it to augment my keyblade? If I could create a new keychain from  the gun for Tartarus it would massively amplify the effects I was  betting.

I probably wouldn't just kill everything with one  blow, but it would give my keyblade the ability to deal mortal wounds  to even gods. Being able to off Darkseid next time I saw him would be  nice. Speaking of which I hoped Gojo was out of that Domain field by  now. I'd have to call my mom and check in when I had the chance. This  little quest would be a while, but that was no reason to worry her. The  fact that calling home had tipped her off that I was about to die made  me feel like kind of an asshole.

When  we arrived at the cavern sadly, Merlin's house was empty. Sora nodded.  "Yeah, he comes and goes. He keeps all his stuff in that little bag he  carries around." Sure enough, the furniture and book cases were all  gone, leaving just a bare stone room with a raised platform in the  middle. Poor Zee looked like she might cry.

"Alright."  I said to get her focused. "Cloud and I will fight." I grinned  maliciously at my daughter. "Rana, you can fight Tifa. Don't hold back  though, or she'll think you're a weakling." My daughter's jaw dropped in  horror and she glared at me, but I just winked back. Poor thing didn't  want to beat on her crush. Too bad for her, I didn't want to use my  armor on them, and tag teaming both of them unarmored would have meant  using my powers more than I would like.

I  turned to Cloud. "I figure you and I can just have a nice one on one  sword duel." I conjured Tartarus, and cloud actually smiled slightly.  Reaching up, he grabbed a long pole behind his shoulder, and lifted up  to reveal an absolutely massive chunk of metal vaguely in the shape of a  sword. I whistled. "Overcompensating much? I hope you don't think that  hunk of potmetal will be enough to handle my keyblade." I made sure my  tone was teasing, so he wouldn't feel like I was insulting him, but I  wasn't worried.

His  smirk widened, and he reached into a pouch at his waist to draw out  three orbs of crystal in different colors. He slotted them into a trio  of holes in the base of the sword, and I saw the thing's aura shift as  whatever they were altered its fundamental nature. Interesting. Still, I  was a master of the sword.  Once he was in position I blitzed forward,  calling Tartarus to my hand and slashing with all the speed at my  disposal.

Cloud  had been standing in a strange stance with his sword held out behind  him, and I saw one of the crystals glow as it activated, shifting the  aura of the sword as he blurred into position to deflect. Some kind of  magical parry. Once the blade was knocked off course he hauled back and  swung, a trio of bright energy lines slashing out from his wide swing  like the claws of a huge beast coming at me.

I  pulled my blade across my body, blocking the blow, but I was sent  flying back by the force of the amazingly effective attack. He flashed  forward, using a quick series of chained slashes to try to dice me into  three. Unlike the last one this attack was more straightforward than  some kind of energy wave, so I was able to react and deflect all of the  slashes before countering with a series of my own blows.

Another  crystal, and Cloud set his stance behind his huge sword, tanking all of  my hits before dropping the tip of the blade and swinging up, creating  another energy wave so bright it almost blinded me as he tried to bisect  me. There was no real killing intent in his aura, but also no mercy. If  I couldn't keep up I'd die. He was fine either way. I smirked  internally. Harsh guy, but I kind of liked it.

This  was the best fight I'd had in terms of pure swordsmanship since Myrina.  Weirdly, I could tell this WAS swordsmanship. He was using magic to  fuel those attacks, but they were part of his combat style. Of course,  seeing him execute them with aura sight meant that my ass would have  them mastered within the next day after some time to run through the  Outer Body Trance.

Though  it wasn't as neat and clean as his, I even tried using one now,  leveling a slash at him that unleashed a blade of ectosplasm in the same  basic shape as his slash, then following with a second nearly  instantly. A cross shaped green blur slammed out at him, and he used  that block magic attack again to withstand it. His smirk from earlier  had turned into an eager grin, and I could see he was having as much fun  as I was.

Driving  forward, Cloud thrust his sword out at me, energy gathering again to  create a lance of red magic along the line of his drive. I didn't bother  to deflect this one, I just let my body shift into insubstantiality  with my ghost powers, and he flashed right through me. I spun off my  heel to swing t his back, and the third crystal activated, speeding up  his didge to let him roll away. To my shock though, that wasn't all.

The  energy that sped his roll seemed to have leeched something from the air  around him and his next swing, another wide blow that created those  same three lines of power from the beginning of the fight, was  supercharged by the force. The slashed landed hard...dissolving my clone  into nothing on contact. The return slash had been a feint. I'd used  the moment on insubstantiality to shift into invisibility and leave a  duplicate in my place. The blow wouldn't have even hurt him if he hadn't  dodged it.

I  appeared silently behind him, setting the jagged teeth of my keyblade  to his throat. "Match." I said with a grin. And I saw him grimace before  lowering his sword. I held out a hand. "Not bad." I said happily. "That  was a great fight, welcome aboard. Hope we can spar some more later. I  feel like I have plenty to learn from you. If you're interested." His  'hn' was almost friendly as he nodded turning to walk away.

"Alright."  I said grinning over at my daughter. "You're up next. Tifa seems like  the hands on type, and you're plenty strong, so why don't you avoid  using your keyblade." After all her bitching about me and Zee, it was  hilarious to watch my daughters face turn bright red at the thought of  grappling with her crush. She glared at me but nodded, and I laughed as I  moved to watch the fight. I doubted it would be anything too impressive  though. After Cloud's showing, I trusted his judgement. We had two new  teammates for this fight. I just hoped it would be enough.