Sell you a Bridge chapter 302

June 16th 2016 Wayne Manor, Earth -11, 9:00 PM EDT

Scilla  was fucking large. Which, to be fair, could be assumed from how it tore  its way free of that cavern, but I didn't appreciate the sheer scale of  the monster until it was out in the open like this. My friends seemed  momentarily bowled over by it, but before they could come over I used my  bond to send Zee, Drea, and Rana a message. "I'll take care of big  orange and ugly. All of you circle around and wait for a shot on The  Drowned. If we want to open that lock and get out of here she needs to  be disabled."

I felt a pulse of agreement from all  three, and they pulled to a stop, the three of them each telling their  team what I'd said. Batwoman, meanwhile, was pretty distracted by her  whole evil water magic flex. Trying to play for time, I just raised an  eyebrow. "Gosh. A big ball of water. How scary. None of my other nemeses  have a ball of water that big." My voice was dry and bored, practically  begging her to inform me exactly how and why the water was a threat to  me, and how I would die horribly under it's might.

A  horrible death that almost befell me immediately as she hurled the orb  of liquid at me somewhere in the ballpark of three times the speed of  sound. While my armor was impressive, it was also cracked, and I wasn't  chancing being smashed like a bug, so I dove sideways out of the path of  the water, catching myself on my wings and gliding along the ground far  enough to avoid the doubled back smash of the returning orb as she  reversed its position.

I snarled, drawing on my ghostly  obsession with protecting my loved ones, and tapped into the part of me  that caused frost to form when I got angry. I lashed out with a wave of  blue ectoplasm, which hit the orb and flash froze the thing, breaking  her hydrokinetic control and causing it to go hurtling into the distance  by virtue of built up momentum, only to smash violently into a rock  formation.

She didn't attack again as I regained my feet,  glaring angrily at her. "Hey! That's poor form you know. You're supposed  to banter. All the best bad guys do." Despite the complaint I cursed  myself for not guessing that would happen. She was fucking female  Batman. Batman didn't talk shit, he got in hits. Luckily, he also liked  to pick apart situations to find weaknesses. I'd just demonstrated a new  ability, which meant she was likely willing to talk for a bit so she  could figure out a counter. I gave her the opening. "So, aren't you  going to tell me your evil plan?"

Her own eyebrow rose,  the one on the opposite side from the eye patch. "Evil plan?" She  sounded genuinely amused. "Boy, you broke into my house and tried to  steal from me. I think you're the one in the wrong here. If anyone has  an evil plan it's got to be you and your little gang of misfits. Yes, I  see them over there. It would be hard to miss them, given how many you  have along."

Well, fuck. That was basically the opposite  of a good thing. I let the cold of my obsession fill me, roiling against  the heat of my demonic power. My ghostly nature had been growing and  growing since my ascension, and the energy was almost the polar opposite  of my demonic energy. That wasn't a bad thing though, the collision  seemed to produce even more energy. It was a slow grind, but I could  feel myself getting stronger pretty much since we got to Hollow Bastion.  Something about the dark multiverse seemed to almost feed me.

Regardless,  I needed to keep her attention, so I did what I did best. I talked some  shit. "I mean, to be fair, you kind of drowned the whole city and  killed a bunch of people first. If there were enough humans left in  Gotham to form a government it would have put out a bounty on you. Since  there aren't, that just means we don't have to worry about breaking  laws. Still, I do feel kind of bad. Keeping the corpse of your cat  themed love interest buried in your basement is a whole new level of  'crazy cat lady'. Stealing from you almost seems mean."

She  went stiff, and I had to fight not to grin. It wasn't hard to find her  berserk button, what with someone having already pressed it to such  explosive results. I put on a sympathetic expression. "Sorry. Too soon?  He's been dead a while hasn't he? You probably haven't healed much. I  don't think building an army of zombie water mutants to conquer the  world is an accepted form of grieving in most psychological circles." I  paused, as if something had occurred to me. "I mean, assuming you even  are grieving. You ARE sad he died, right?"

Her single eye  was wide and fixed in a sort of shocked, predatory rage. Her mouth  didn't move at all as she watched me, waiting for me to say more. I  could hear the lies inside her, hear nagging doubts that ate away at  her. I actually felt bad about how easy it was for me to find the gaping  wound in her heart and ruthlessly dig into it. But I wasn't going to  let that stop me from doing it anyway. She'd basically ended the damn  world, and she was between me and my friends and getting out of here.

So  I kept talking. "Because, honestly. I almost feel like the did you a  favor by offing him. I mean, look what you turned into. Look at what a  monster you are. I know you like to pretend that this was a result of  the grief, but let's be honest. You always had this in you. Do you  really think someone like him would have stayed with you? Would have  been safe? How long before he saw the monster you really are and left.  How long before you slipped and showed him what he was really dealing  with."

The grinding of her teeth was audible from where I  was standing. "You, don't know what you're talking about." She said, her  voice a hoarse whisper. But she didn't mean it. Not really. I heard the  whispers under her words, the lies she thought she was telling herself,  and the ones she was REALLY telling. I knew what she was most afraid  was true, and that made it the easiest thing in the world to break her.  If she wasn't looming over me with an undead abomination ready to attack  my friends, girls, and daughter, I wouldn't have used it. But she was.  So I did.

"Don't I?" I asked slyly. "Come on, you know he  would have left eventually. Would have abandoned you once he saw who you  really were. How do you think you'd have taken that? Look at what you  did to the world for taking him away. Would you have done any less to  him for trying to leave? Like I said, you got lucky when they killed  him. They just saved you from doing it yourself. Maybe you'd have made  him one of those Dead Waters. Made it so he was forced to stay with you  forever."

I cocked my head as if something had just popped  into it. "Wait, maybe you already did? Is he out there in the mob? Did  you bring your special kitty back from the dead so he would be with you  forever? I wonder, can the Dead Waters talk? Do you make him tell you  that he loves you, even though you know its not real? That he would  never love something like you?" I pasted a grin on my face, watching her  aura roil with hate and building fury. Then I put the last nail in the  coffin. "Wait, was he one of the ones I already killed? Oh well, it's  not like he would be any different than the others. You could teach one  of them to say his lines I bet."

There was no words. No  warning aside from the snap in her aura as her mind fractured. One  second I was mouthing off and the next she just...screamed, and the  world FROZE. Not like ice. But like the absence of any movement. Every  drip of water, every shift of air, all of them stayed completely  motionless for one long second, and then the water within about a full  mile CONVERGED on me like a fucking implosion of millions of tiny liquid  spears.

I shifted into intangibility, using my power to  enforce the concept of avoidance and make sure I wouldn't get hit  anyway. The water tore the ground around where I'd been into chunks of  dirt. I hissed in sympathy for the ground, she had NOT held back. As I  reformed, I aimed my keyblade at her and bellowed "Thunder!" I fueled  the spell image with that some frosty ectoplasm, just to see if it would  help.

A fucking TORRENT of ice blue lightning ripped from  my blade and smashed directly into where she'd been standing. The  flickers of lightning didn't just leap to everything, they sucked in the  energy, draining the heat and power and spreading frost and ice through  the water near us, feeding the lightning and making it grow even as the  ice coated more of the world around us.

Sadly, the blast  didn't make contact. Scilla, who I had almost forgotten, shoved a head  in the way, and while I think the head might have been in the process of  dying it wasn't doing so quickly. The Drowned, unfortunately, had  vented most of her rage with that attack, and her aura seemed to cool as  she forced the rage down, glaring at me coldly. "Well." She said in a  detached tone. "That was certainly an effective tactic. Sadly your blow  didn't lan-" She didn't get to finish as a fucking COLUMN of purple gold  lightning descended from the heavens and slammed into the spot she was  standing.

Zee, Artemis, and Wally, had pooled their energy  for Zee to pump into one of those lightning spells, apparently inspired  by my own ideas about using alternate power sources. I let out a breath  I hadn't realized I was even holding. They were dealing with her, like  I'd said, I needed to deal with Scilla. I waved Tartarus again, I used  Cure on the massive beastie, hitting it with a weakening effect to  soften it up.

Scilla roared, all except the head that was  still slowly freezing as it was torn apart by ice lightning. That spell  had been really nasty. It seemed to be a continous effect until broken,  which made it something to keep in mind for later. I took aim at another  head as Scilla swayed on it's feet from the heal. I unleashed another  Thunder, this one fueled by demonic power. The pitch black lightning was  soundless as it split the night, smashing into a second head and  fucking DETONATING like thermite.

It didn't kill the head,  these damn god beasts were stronger than they looked, but it was a  start. I got ready for a third spell, but had to halt to dodge the  attack from another wave of water aimed at me from nearly every  direction, shadow porting out of the way. When I turned to look, I saw  The Drowned, staring at me with an intensity bordering on fanatical, her  whole body smoking and injured.

The others had been  swarmed by every single Dead Water, and they were dying by the droves,  but they were so rabid it was impossible for even the keyblades to put  them down too quickly. The Drowned smiled at me coldly. "I'm sorry. I  got a bit distracted." She whirled the trident around, pointing the  tines right at me. "Could you do me a favor and say all of that again?"  Well, looking like this was going to be a two on one.