Sell you a Bridge chapter 265

June 5th 2016 The Nightside 4:00 PM EDT

My  jaw was hanging open as I pointed to the huge metal complex in front of  us. "Ok, how the fuck has no one noticed THAT on the fucking MOON? I  figured he would live in an underground cavern or some shit. How is it  possible that an entire fucking moon base made of what appears to be  some kind of ultra shiny space age composite metal is just sprawling  across the moon and no one's seen it?" Aside from the literal metric  fuckton of wards and security that is, but in my defense, I didn't  specifically see any stealth protections.

Taylor shrugged.  "The Collector probably hacked all the satellites or something. He  likes tech. He has some magic items too, but advanced technology is his  preference." I nodded, reaching out to put my hand on Zee and Jim's arms  as I opened my aura sight. I flexed my power a bit, just a little white  lie that my aura sight had always been able to extend to other people.  Once it extended far enough I saw Zee's nose wrinkle in annoyance as she  studied the defenses. That didn't seem like a good thing, but I figured  I'd wait and see.

She and Jim studied the wards for a bit  and then she sighed. "This is a problem. The magic we can crack easy  enough, but I have absolutely no idea what to do about the tech stuff.  Any chance you have something for that?" She raised an eyebrow at me and  I frowned. I might have been able to stop the tech security from  tripping but I was pretty sure it would take me every ounce of  concentration to hold a lie that complex. I wouldn't even be able to  breathe let alone walk into a heavily defended base.

Luckily  I wasn't here alone. I turned to my most recent teacher. "Tommy, do you  think you can keep the tech portions of the wards from registering  anything happening as long as Zee and Jim can crack the magical wards? I  don't have the strength for something that scale, but we can't have  whatever the hell those are going off while we try to get in, otherwise  we might get the Collectors attention."

The existential  detective bit his lip for a second then shook his head. "Nope. Not  prevent them from registering. I can stop them from triggering any  cascading effects if you can face them directly though. You can smash  them all to scrap and the rest of the security setup won't pick up a  thing." He sounded excited by the possibility, and I was interested to  see him flex his powers again too. but he wasn't the only one who would  be flexing.

I grinned. "Perfect, Zee, boss, I'll be  needing an extra large can opener, so quit sucking your thumbs and lets  light this candle." That got a snort of laughter from my girlfriend, who  had watched Jimmy Neutron with me before our little five year time out  and loved it. Jim and Zee both began chanting, slowly making sure their  magic was in position to open the wards for me. With aura sight I was  able to watch the magic take effect, climbing across the wards and  slowly stripping layers of them away.

It was absolutely  spellbinding (no pun intended) watching them work. Sections of the wards  were altered, sections were cut away, and sections were folded over to  reinforce. It was like watching magical surgery, but in more than the  normal three dimensions. My ability to use void magic gave me the  insight to capture what was happening in multiple strata of reality, as  the shields themselves were constructed not just in space, but in time.  The Collector had put some work into this, and only Jim's experience and  Zee's tireless pursuit of void magic via my grimoire let them adapt to  the wards.

Once it was all out of the way, I armored up,  and nodded to Tommy who slapped me on the shoulder. "I can hold this for  a few minutes, but it would be best if we were inside by the time that  fades. Being inside the base will be enough for me to convince the wards  we belong there easily enough, but I need that entry as a conceptual  jumping off point to stage that kind of alteration." He paused. "Now  that I think about it, I suspect the Collector will try a LOT harder to  kill me." He looked disturbed for a minute then shrugged. "Oh well."

I  snorted to myself, and made a note to arrange to placate the Collector  later to help get him off Tommy's back. With the way open though, I  didn't exactly have time to waste, so I stepped out of the bubble, my  armor keeping me pressurized and my breathing not an issue given I was  half ghost. I double checked the shield, and once Zee erected a  secondary barrier I let mine fall, though I left the slight alteration  keeping the air fresh. With that done I turned and walked out into the  sea of tranquility.

With Jim holding the wards alongside  Zee, I was the only space capable warrior we had available, so I was  handling this alone, but I wasn't too worried. I had handled worse than  some laser blasters or whatever. I made my way out onto the sea of  tranquility, flying slowly rather than walking, hoping to get an idea of  what I was facing before actually triggering any traps. As I drew near  the base, the shimmering side of the refractive metal base began to  warp, the side of the base rippling like a pond with a stone dropped  into it.

Through the ripples, a towering form stepped, a  massive robot with visible energy pathways running under its shimmering  metal exterior. Another ripple started, and another robot emerged. They  stepped one after another from the side of the base until there were a  full dozen of the damn things waiting for me, and I couldn't help but  sigh in exasperation at how annoying this would be. I could see from  aura sight that these things were strong.

Stronger than  the scarabs, which wasn't supposed to be possible really. According to  what I was told the scarabs were universe level enemies. I focused  closer on the aura and my lips twitched. Ah, from the future. That made  sense. I wasn't sure how far in the future exactly, but they sure as  hell weren't from anytime soon. These had come back quite a ways, and  they were scary strong.

I shrugged internally. It didn't  really matter. My job was to take care of them, I'd do it either way. I  stepped through darkness, appearing behind the closest robot in a surge  of liquid shadows as I slipped from the corridor, calling Tartarus and  bringing up its spinning teeth as I rammed it into the back of the  machine to see what effect it would have when it made contact. There was  a series of bright flashes as the shield of the robot flared up under  the repeated impacts, but before I could penetrate it I felt an incoming  attack and vanished back into a corridor of darkness.

I  reappeared a few yards away, annoyed. Shield. I hadn't even noticed  those. I could see the aura from the robots, but that aura was difficult  to sift through. The damn things had so many features and energy  signatures it was like trying to find Waldo during a rave. I cocked my  head, trying to think of a way to do this more easily. I looked down at  Tartarus. My chain blade was damn effective most of the time, but the  way the shield seemed to be configured I wasn't expecting too much from  it. I needed another tactic.

I let the teeth fade,  disappearing in wisps of smoke. I focused instead on the tip of the  weapon, releasing long streamers of dark, flexible abyssal alloy. Then,  focusing hard, I started them spinning. They whirled around the rip of  the keyblade creating a tight cone of force. I looked at the new drill  lance configuration, and decided to vary the strips of dark metal into  more jagged an uneven configurations. I stopped it, fixed the design and  started it, and grinned as I felt the air around it start to whip and  churn.

I could feel slices of air coming off the drilling  blade, not enough to damage my armor, but enough to prove this was a  nasty attack mode. Once the was done, I opened up my wings behind me,  flexing my power to pour demonic energy into the armor to amplify me  further before I blitzed forward to attack. I used a modified version of  Myrina's attack style to focus as much force into the lunge as  possible, amplified by my armor and my wings, and I felt the world  literally blur into tunnel vision as I slammed into one, two, and then a  third robot, spearing them like a kabob. I'd emerged from the corridor  off to a side of the grouping where I could line a few up.

My  new attack method (which I was calling void lance) was actually based  on my doom fist. Focusing all of my power into one extremely small area  to pierce their shields. It seemed even future tech wasn't enough to  stop it. In the spirit of that I started using an adapted version of  doom fist to stab out with the lance, with that experience and skill I  was able to penetrate the shields on the robots without an over the top  full body charge. Despite not needing to use points anymore for this it  DID still strain me, and the doom fist was much less of a strain than  flying around like that.

With  the new shorter range method of hitting, I could only punch through a  single shield, and even that took time and positioning, luckily, I was a  master swordsman, and adapting to the new weapon didn't take me long.  Within a minute or so the robots had me surrounded, but despite that  couldn't manage to land a hit. I was actually having a blast, but Tommy  had warned me not to drag this out, so I used every ounce of skill I had  to put them down one at a time.

One  of the remaining eight came up behind me going for a grab. I phased  through the move, taking advantage of the overextension to get up  underneath the machine and drive my lance straight up through the center  of its chest. Before I finished the blow I phased again, just in time  to avoid a pair of tackles from two of the others. With the weakened  chest section and apparently broken shield, the powerful robots hit the  thing full speed, one high and one low, and ripped it clear in half.

I'd  already moved on to the next one. I slowly took them out one at a time,  making liberal use of my invisibility, teleportation and even my clones  (which weren't nearly strong enough to do them any harm but made great  single use tripping hazards and distractions). I tore them apart one by  one, managing to get finished just before the five minute mark, and had  the others carry Tommy over so we could get him inside.

When  we reached the wall, Jim tapped out a sequence with his cane and the  ripples started again, receding to reveal a hole that air was escaping  from. We slipped in and let it close, with Zee finally able to let the  shield down. I felt Tommy strain a bit, and then relax with a ragged  breath. His eyes roamed over the hallways. "Alright. I tricked the  security system into thinking we belong here. We have until an actual  person notices those robots missing and goes looking so lets hurry up."  He turned to me. "You're the one with aura sight. Which direction is all  the valuable stuff?"