Sell you a Bridge chapter 337

July 3rd 2016 Traverse Town, 10:00 AM EDT

Sure  enough, Cloud and Tifa, the two friends that Aerith had called, arrived  the next morning. Cloud was almost as stoic as Leon, but Tifa was a  tall, cheerful woman with a wide smile and kind brown eyes, who snatched  Sora up into a tight hug the second she saw him. Even Sora, who was  almost aggressively naive, blushed at being squeezed by the older woman,  who was admittedly about as stacked as Zee and Drea.

When  she put him down, she turned her friendly smile on us. "Hey there! You  must be Morgan." She held out a hand, which I shook, and marveled at the  strength of her grip. Aside from the calluses from obvious combat, Tifa  was shockingly strong. Not like 'wow she's strong for a girl' strong,  like 'wow she could lift a bus' strong. I suddenly believed Sora when he  said they would be able to help us out with the infected. This woman  was a brawler on a level that was rare even back home. She could have  turned Bane into mincemeat.

Cloud just gave a silent nod,  which caused Tifa to roll her eyes. "This is cloud. He doesn't talk  much. Ignore him. We heard you guys have been helping out with this  whole virus mess. It's lucky you're able to cute it or else there's no  way we could have come to help." She looked uneasily at Cloud.  "Actually, that's not the whole reason, but that isn't exactly my story  to tell."

Rana appeared next to me like she'd teleported  (which she might have honestly, I hadn't been watching) her wide smile  was shockingly enthusiastic as she shouldered me aside to grab Tifa's  hand. "Oh wow! Hi, it's nice to meet you! I'm Morana, but you can call  me Rana, that's my dad, don't mind him, you seem so strong, maybe we  could spar sometime." Her eyes were shining in interest that I didn't  get until I used my aura sense. Apparently Rana's first crush was  quickly followed by second.

Which was fair, Tifa was a  knockout, no pun intended based on those gloves at her belt. Still I had  to snicker internally. My poor daughter. Tifa was obviously sweet on  cloud, based on that flash of affection in her aura. Sadly Rana's  ability to read people was more instinctual than mine, and therefore  MUCH less exact. Clearly she could see enough to get an idea of a  persons personality though. Sora and Tifa were both genuinely wonderful  people based on their auras. In a way it made me relieved that my  daughter had such discerning taste.

Content to let her  drool over the busty brunette I turned to look at Cloud. "I'm guessing  the hesitation was because of Sephiroth?" He tensed, eyes narrowing and  jaw tensing, but eventually relaxed. This wasn't a subject he was happy  to talk about, but it was one he knew we needed to hear.

After  a minute of waiting he sighed, then nodded. "Fine. I can understand  needing to know more. I won't go into details but I can give the cliff  notes. Sephiroth was born to Professor Hojo, and a woman named Lucretia,  employees at a company in our home world of Radiant Garden called  Shinra Electric Power Company. I won't get into Shinra or what they did,  but suffice to say they were bad people who did shady things, one of  which was injecting a pregnant Lucretia with cells from an alien life  form which mutated her baby."

Jesus. That was awful.  "So...he's part alien?" Because that could be a problem. I didn't know  much about aliens, but if Sephiroth was a part alien mutate, who knew  how that would interact with whatever the fuck kryptonian virus was in  his body now. Aliens were rare back home, but they did happen, and  hybrids could be notoriously unpredictable, inheritang weird powers and  temperaments.

Cloud grimaced. "Maybe? Sephiroth is a  complicated person, both internally and physically. He's not sane, I can  say that for sure. but he IS intelligent. He also has a will of iron,  so if this virus was able to conquer his mind it is not to be  underestimated. Sephiroth was a trained special forces officer for years  working for Shinra's elite special ops unit, S.O.L.D.I.E.R. Aside from  being powerful and crazy, he is also absolutely deadly in combat."

As  I tried to figure out what kind of fucking power company had an elite  special ops unit, Rana chimed in. "He's right. He's not as good as you  dad, but he's almost as strong." She grimaced. "Also that long ass sword  is a bitch to fight against. His reach is nuts, and that's not even  counting his like...five foot long arms in his mutated state. Not to  mention that gross wing." She looked at Auron. "I didn't fight you,  but  how strong do you think he was compared to you?"

Rana was  a complete beast in combat. My daughter had inherited her powers from  both her mothers and myself. Her physical form was based on Zee's, which  was superior to a normal humans to begin with, and augmented by Drea's  godly power and my own devil strength with some ghost thrown in, She  hadn't manifested most of our unique characteristics, but she was a  blend of the strongest parts of all three of us. If Rana had trouble  fighting someone, it meant they were not to be fucked with.

Auron,  sadly, didn't look optimistic. "Much stronger. Two or three times at  least. Granted, I was getting more powerful, we both were, which means  he'll be stronger than that next time. The virus allows us to adapt when  damaged, and the longer you're infected the tighter its hold. I shudder  to think what that...creature, is capable of at this point. Having been  infected so completely for so long it must be nigh unkillable."

I  grimaced, because it had kind of felt that way to me. Not unkillable  really, just real fucking strong. Getting my ass kicked by Darkseid in  the outer body state every night definitely gave me a good threshold for  scary, and while the Devastator wasn't there, it wasn't as far off as  I'd like in terms of brute force.

I thanked him for the  information and excused myself, smiling as I saw Roxas and Namine make  their way carefully into the room. I'd noticed their absence, but it  wasn't weird to see them avoiding Sora. Still, I was glad they were  going to actually talk to him. It must be strange meeting the person  whose body you used to be...or something? Sora and Roxas existing  together was fucking weird and the keyblade was bullshit.

Once  I was alone I fished out my phone. I'd been planning to use my points  last night, but wanted to get all the info before that came up, so I'd  waited until after Cloud and Tifa got here. I hadn't learned too much,  but any information was valuable when figuring out your next move. Now I  just needed to decide exactly what I could use to turn the tides here.

I'd  been saving points since my last purchase, but that hadn't been too  long ago. The keyblades used points every time, so it hadn't been too  long. Because of that I knew I couldn't afford something huge like a  super virus cure. Just to be sure, I checked over the emails though, and  sure enough, while I COULD access one of those, it wasn't going to be  useful to me. At least not in this case.

The only cure all  I found was a syringe, but the needle wouldn't penetrate the  Devestator's skin and it needed to be injected. There were, of course,  numerous cures for earth and even New Genesis maladies, but nothing that  would be useful here since they were all far too specific. I grimaced.  That wasn't exactly helpful, I'd been hoping to get lucky, but all these  emails were for individual sicknesses like Malaria and cancer, I guess  you could bilk more money from someone who was desperate and the  desperate ones already knew what they had.

Which left me  with something a little different. An ounce of prevention was worth a  pound of cure after all, and there were several preventative measures in  here that I could still afford. Pills to prevent radiation poisoning,  ones that could stop you from getting ebola, a few crystal treatments  that could prevent you from getting cancer and some STD prevention  stuff, some if which was weirdly cream and spray. No thanks.

Finally  I found it. Well, them. There were a few different options. A series of  tablets that when taken could prevent you from contracting any nearby  virus, some face masks with perfect filtration (sadly not usable since  this stuff wasn't airborne) and a few syringes of an anti-viral vaccine.  I was interested in all of them, but eventually settled on something a  little different.

In one of the emails there was an ad for  something called PAX. It was a kind of genetic treatment that adapted  your system to boost your immune system to absurd levels. According to  the ad a person who had been injected with PAX would never get sick, and  would be completely immune to most poisons as well for some weird  reason. I didn't much care about the second part, but it wouldn't hurt,  so after burning all my remaining points I picked it up.

I  got charged for it of course, but a few grand for perfect disease  immunity was literally a small price to pay. There was a knock at a  nearby door, which I opened, and I found the box I was expecting sitting  in on the floor, waiting for me to pick it up. I frowned up past it at  the contents of the room, or rather, the closet. My power was kind of  pushing it there, but it fit with the way it was usually supposed to  work I suppose.

Picking up the white, futuristic looking  case with the blue lights on it, I flipped it open, grinning at the  sight of a series of blue vials all lined up for me nice in a row. It  was gorgeous. Glowing churning liquid with particles of white light  flickering through it. Weird, but pretty. There were, to my shock, about  a dozen vials in the box, which would be more than enough to cover  everyone most likely. Perfect.

Of  course, while the rest of my crew might know about my ability, Roxas,  Namine, and the others didn't. So I couldn't just bring back the serum  after leaving the room or it would be too suspicious. I decided to just  go take a nap and come back in a few hours to tell them about it. It was  early in the day anyway so they wouldn't be going anywhere, might as  well get some rest in.

I  walked upstairs to the spare room I'd been allocated for my stay and  dropped into bed, making sure to shut the door so I could pretend I'd  gone out to find the serum vials. Then I went to sleep. It was always  nice to nap midday, and a few hours of snoozing made me feel right as  rain when I got up, despite not having been too tired. Once I checked  the time and confirmed it had been long enough I strolled downstairs.

Zee  was talking with Donald about magic, while Roxas and Sora were deep in  converation with Namine waiting nearby with an affectionate smile. Rana  was chatting with Tifa, and Cloud and Leon were talking to Aerith, who  looked thrilled to see the blonde man even after hours together. I was  glad we were leaving as soon as this ended, I had no interest in  superpowered love triangles. My relationships were complicated enough  without sticking my nose in other peoples. As I entered the room, all  eyes flicked to me and I grinned. "So. Who wants to ask me what I did  today?" now I just had to make up an interesting story. Easy enough for a  master of Deception.