Sell you a Bridge chapter 301

June 16th 2016 Wayne Manor, Earth -11, 8:00 PM EDT

We  were back at the manor by eight PM. We'd spent half the day practicing  the healing spells, and with my help we'd been able to teach it to  everyone but Wally and Suzie within a few hours and still have time for  them to rest up while we put together a battle plan. Luckily my ass had  studied Wayne Manor before, both when I'd been there and retroactively  when Jim had insisted I tell him where the heist had gone wrong after  that whole mess. I'd seen enough to know it was thankfully the same  layout, so coming up with a plan of attack was more than doable.

Now  we were all camped out in the bushes on one side of the estate,  watching the Dead Water's patrol. While I didn't think they were smart  enough to be aware of what they were doing, some of them seemed to be  following some kind of path, probably laid out by their undersea  Bat-mommy. She must have noticed we'd been here. I hadn't used my trace  erasure ability in a long time because I hadn't needed it. My stealth  skills were pretty much perfect. Seemed that she was a damn good  detective though.

While that was annoying, it wasn't a  huge problem. Knowing someone had been near her yard wasn't enough to  get any useful information. Even if I'd left a trace (or more likely  Rana had, my daughter didn't have my level of skill at stealth, or Jim's  for that matter, if it had just been the two of us I was sure it  wouldn't have been an issue) she couldn't have managed to deduce  anything really damning. We'd literally just been standing here.

"Alright."  I said quietly. "So when we go in, just follow the plan. Keep to your  groups. I made sure each one has a keyblade wielder present, so things  should be fine. Sindella, Taylor, Suzie, and Zee. You're group one. Jim,  Artemis, Wally, and Rana. Group two. Tommy, Kit, Eddie, and Drea are  group three. I'm flying solo on this one, because shut up." I finished,  cutting off Artemis who was about to speak up. "I have armor that can  keep me safe, and we're not arguing this again." I armored up to make my  point.

She just snorted. "Why are we splitting up at all?  There's an army here. We should stick together and steamroll the whole  place. Anything could happen to one of us like this." I grimaced. She  wasn't wrong. This was a dangerous way to do things, but no matter how  sliced it we needed to deploy in groups.

I sighed.  "Because the keyblade wielders can sense the keyhole. I don't know how I  know that, I just do. She isn't going to be carrying the damn thing  around her house like a security blanket. Even world ending  supervillains have down time. It'll probably be hidden somewhere and  Wayne Manor is a big ass building. This is the most direct way to  search. If she figures out the target she could fuck off into the ocean  or something and we'd have to spend ages hunting her down. We need the  element of surprise to count."

She huffed but didn't  argue. I kissed my girls goodbye, gave Rana a hug, and said my farewells  to the others before heading off toward the main house. The others were  splitting up and would be trying alternate entrances, but I was going  right for the front door. I had no worries about not managing to get  past the Dead Waters, I slipped into the shadows partially, using my  black armor to blend and relying on a combination of ninja skills and  ghostly intangibility to move unnoticed among the army of monsters.

I  turned to shadow and shifted under the door with ease, shifting back on  the other side and resuming my sneak. I recognized the whole place from  memory, of course. It was the same as the Wayne Manor back home, at  least in structure, but the differences were apparent at a glance too.  Cracked, peeling paint, darkened halls rotting floorboards, moldy  carpets. Once again, this shitty fucking world was fucking WET from top  to bottom. I really hated this place. Still, I managed to avoid tipping  off the Dead Waters as I made my way to the spot I felt most drawn to.

That  weird bust I'd seen a year ago in the original Wayne Manor. Something  about it had always bothered me. I wasn't sure what, just an instinct  maybe. Could have been the beginnings of my ability awakening, or could  have been my imagination, but it was as good a place as any to start  searching. If it turned out to be nothing I could continue on my way and  find something else to investigate.

I followed the  familiar path through the place, my memory guiding me easily through the  halls like I'd been here yesterday, until finally, I arrived at the  spot where I'd first noticed the inconsistency. Just like before I found  an incredibly expensive (albeit weathered) grandfather clock, with a  roman bust on a small decorative column sitting nearby. Unlike last time  I ignored the clock itself. I could just walk through it, but I wasn't  here for the clock, I was here for the bust. I put my hands on it and  started feeling around until there was a click and the head tilted fully  back, revealing a big ass red button.

Raising an eyebrow,  I reached down and pushed it firmly. Seemed weird to make the entrance  so obvious, but to be fair there was no reason to check the damn bust  unless you knew something was there. As soon as I pressed the button  there was a loud grinding, and the clock clicked loose, swinging away  from the wall to reveal a long, dark staircase leading down  into...somewhere. A basement maybe? I had no clue what was down there,  but I did know one thing. Once I got a few steps down, I started sensing  something coming from my keyblade.

Tartarus seemed to be  reaching out for something, grasping down into the darkness below. I  grinned. My instincts were just as useful as ever. First try and I'd  found the right spot. I stepped carefully down the stone staircase, my  feet not making direct contact lest the metal alert my enemy. I floated  just about the ground, soundless and nearly invisible in the shadows. As  I descended into the hole, I found that I was standing in a massive  open cavern.

As I reached the floor, I scanned the huge  room, noting several strange items. A giant penny. A stuffed T-rex. A  series of glass cases holding what looked like gender swapped costumes  for robins and a few other vigilantes. Off to one side of the cave was a  huge computer, shockingly not wet, or at least not decomposing from  filth and moisture. It seemed to be working still, though it wasn't in  use. I let Tartarus bloom in my hand, using the keyblade as a dowsing  rod of sorts, letting it drag me deeper into the cave.

I  followed the stone floor until I ran out of floor, and then floated out  over the drop and to one of the nearby islands of stone. Islands in  truth because the hole between was half full of water, and based on my  aura sight I didn't want to meet what was in there. Not Dead Waters,  something bigger and much more animal, though just as deceased. I  grimaced. Fucking zombie krakens? Ridiculous. I followed the pull,  floating from island to island until I finally came to the one that  Tartarus was pulling me towards.

When I reached it, I  stopped. It was...not what I was expecting. The small island wasn't rock  like the others. It was dirt. At least the top was. Dirt and grass. A  single nearly flat grassy hill. A beam of moonlight shone down from the  ceiling, falling directly on the center of the island, revealing two  objects that couldn't be mistaken for anything but what they were. A  polished white marble tombstone, empty except for the initials SK, and a  golden trident, driven into the ground in the middle of the grave.

I  felt the pull stronger than ever, and I didn't need Jim's research to  tell me this was what I was looking for. I looked around, smiling in  relief when I didn't see any kind of trap waiting to spring and reached  out for the trident. That glance was the only warning I got. The only  thing that tipped me off as the small surge of aura beneath me informed  me of something moving in the water. No. Not small. Far. Far and large  and VERY fast. My eyes widened and even with my armor empowered godly  form it took all my prodigious reaction speed to blitz backwards, taking  to my wings to avoid the beast heading my way.

A head  broke the surface of the water, orange scaled maw wide in roaring fury. I  avoided it easily enough having been warned. I was less easily able to  avoid the second, even less the third. By the time the SIXTH fucking  head emerged from the depths to try to fucking swallow me, I had to  shift into intangibility to avoid the jaws coming for my armored torso. I  ALMOST vanished into darkness before I remembered that method of travel  was out, and managed to switch to shadow porting as I emerged from the  monster's head.

As I did though, I felt a spike of pain  through my leg where it had passed through a tooth. I looked down,  stunned, to see a fucking crack in my armor, blood leaking from my leg  into the water. The monster roared a challenge as I retreated through  the floor above us, emerging into the Manor and then out through the  wall into the yard. I cursed heavily as I slipped from the house,  turning to face the monster as it followed me like a bloodhound,  completely unbothered by my shadow port of intangibility, tearing  through the bottom floor of the house and breaking free into the night  air, roaring its defiance against the building that would contain it.

I  reached down to touch the wound, using my aura sight to gaze into it to  figure out what had happened. It took me a minute to see what the hell  was there. It was nearly invisible. The same murk as the Dead Waters and  the definitely not a kraken before me. Venom. But not just venom.  Something else. Something familiar. Something wearing away at my godly  flesh. Divinity. The monster was a fucking god beast. A dead god beast,  but it was divine. I wracked my mind for anything like this, no way a  creature like this would be unknown.

There was no monster  like this in my research or training. Not in the books Jim had shown me.  But I did remember something. Something I'd read before I got my  perfect recall, when I was just a kid. A reference to a six headed  monster created by the gods, orange and huge and venomous, with a bite  so potent it could even harm the divine. I groaned as the monster turned  reptilian eyes on me. I knew what this fucking thing was. Scylla.

I  heard a long, low laugh bubble up from the wreckage of the house. As I  looked to where it had originated, I could see a gorgeous woman with  corpse pale skin and only one eye step from the destroyed wall. In her  hand she held a golden trident, aimed right at me. I saw my girls and  the others swarm out of the house in the distance, thankfully all  emerging far from the form of The Drowned as she stepped to meet me.  "Well." Said Bryce Wayne. "I suppose I know who my mysterious guests  were after all." She smiled placidly, her face cold and hungry for  violence as she gesture into the hole behind her, calling a sphere of  water to float up to hover next to her. "Can I offer you something to  drink?"