Greed God chapter 88

January 31st 2016 Gotham City 4:00 PM

Today  was the day. Wait, no, that sounded stupid. Who even talked like that?  Regardless, it was party time. Or it would be in a few hours. It was the  thirty first, which meant it was officially time for the big event.  Which is why I was meeting Zee at her place with my crew. I'd brought  Bonebreaker, Cherry, Waylon, and after quite a bit of waffling, Barbie.  My redhead had been there when Drench had delivered the invite, and I  absolutely couldn't have left her behind without her losing it. Not to  mention when she found out Cherry AND Zee were coming along she had  basically told me to bring her or she would hide in somebody's trunk to  get in.

Since I liked her enough not to want some mobster  to pincushion her because she made some noise in his back seat I'd caved  and decided to bring here. None of us were in costume anyway, and  hopefully the world ending evil magic would distract her from nosing  into my business. Despite that, she and Cherry had been at each other's  throats since she arrived, and I had been barely managing to balance  their animosity by keeping them on task. Luckily I had other things to  worry about besides their sniping.

I listened to the voice  in my ear patiently. "Yes Dinah, we'll be careful I promise. You and  Whisper watch out for each other ok? Did you call Dr. Karlsson like I  asked? Yes, I know she works at Arkham, but she's a very nice lady and a  good listener, you don't need to be crazy to benefit from therapy. She  agreed to have a chat with you, and I think it would be good for the  baby for you to get some of your feelings off your chest." I grimaced at  her response. "Sure, maybe I can talk to her too. I've gotta go, talk  soon."

I physically shuddered at the idea of giving the  walking sugar coma that was Ingrid access to my brain. Hell, at giving  anyone access to my brain. I was worried about Dinah though, and I  wasn't exactly qualified to talk to people about their feelings.  Manipulation and open communication had more in common than most people  liked to consider, but not THAT much. She needed an actual person to  open up to who could like...empathize and shit. Ingrid was good at that  stuff, plus it would get her around my house a bit and I might have a  chance to get my hands on her.

Still, I'd have to find a  way to avoid this whole therapy thing Dinah seemed to be leaning toward  for me. I absolutely wouldn't be doing that ever. I turned to the  others, ignoring Barbie and Cherry snarking at each other non fucking  stop to focus on Bonebreaker and Waylon. Sally was wearing a pretty sexy  dress and snuggling up to my bodyguard, who was looking pretty smug. I  rolled my eyes. "So I take it the new upgrade is taking well?" I did a  quick appraisal on my now F ranked body guard.

[Appraisal  function activated. Treasure detected. Waylon Jones- F ranked  Were-Deinosuchus. The former bearer of a crocodile curse, Waylon was  given a new lease on life by his current employed, Nicholas Lord.  Recently an increase in his capabilities changed his crocodilian shifted  form to a more primordial version of his former powerset.]

Waylon's  new shifted form was fucking terrifying. I'd expected something  draconic honestly, but he'd ended up becoming an ancestral version of a  crocodile. I hadn't known what the hell a Deinosuchus was until I looked  it up, but now I couldn't UN-know it. The fact that primordial reptiles  called Terror Crocs once roamed the earth was something I probably  didn't need to be aware of, but I didn't doubt having one on my side  would be a benefit.

Basically Waylon's shifted form had  gotten a metric fuckton bigger and he gained access to a portion of his  reptilian strength in human shape. Enough that he was able to fuck the  smile back onto Sally's face so hard it hadn't left since. I'd used some  merged crocodiles as the base for the form, along with a few strength  and speed boosters, and the results had been satisfying to say the  least. I was happy to be going into this mess with my muscle at full  power, and only Barbie hadn't been upgraded.

Waylon's smug  grin faded to a grateful smile at my words. "It's been amazing boss.  The one thing I missed about being..." He looked over at Barbie. "My old  self, was the power. It was the only real benefit, and now I have the  best of both worlds. Sally and I both love the power boosts. We can  never repay you." Sally did look happy, though I knew I had more to pay  for her particular service. Resurrecting some kids to keep a titan on my  payroll was hardly an imposition though.

We were in a  Limo at the moment, waiting for Zee, who was going to be driving in with  us. We needed her at the door so her plus two would count. Dreading the  answer I turned to the bickering girls. "Barbie, Cherry, why don't you  fill me in on your plans for when we get there? I know you'll be  sticking by me mostly, but I do you have anything you're hoping to  accomplish here? Information you'd like to acquire maybe?" I hoped  getting them focused on goals and not each other would shut them up,  because I was two minutes from power fucking them both into a drooling  coma to get some peace.

Luckily reminding them that I was  paying attention stemmed the tide of bitching. Barbie lit up at the  question, and probably partly because I'd asked her first. "Of course  daddy! I have more than a couple of targets at this thing that I'm  hoping to plant bugs on. This party is a veritable whose who of Gotham  crime lords and business scumbags, so I don't want to miss my chance.  Some of these people are NEVER seen in public." Strega, who was going to  be slipping into the party with us using a back door she knew and was  currently driving, had supplied the full guest list, and Barbie had been  drooling ever since.

Cherry cut in  enthusiastically. "I'll be searching the room we're in and picking  everyone's pocket. I wanted to try to comb the house for into, but  Strega convinced me that whoever Doctor Gotham is he's likely got  countermeasures for ghosts. I'll stick to the space we're supposed to be  in and use the dense crowd to my advantage." She paused as she heard  something. "Also sounds like our final party member is here. It's about  time. How long can it possibly take one person to get ready. One person  with MAGIC POWERS I might add."

The  car door opened, and Zee slipped inside in a very low cut dress.  "Perfection takes time." She dropped into her seat, flipping her hair  vainly as an obvious joke, then dropped the faux snooty attitude. "In  any case, nice ride Nicky, and you look gorgeous as always." There was a  pretty generous amount of cleavage flashed as she leaned in to kiss my  cheek, drawing a murderous glare from Barbie, and surprisingly a smirk  from Cherry who seemed to take pleasure in her rivals pain.

Cherry  held out a hand. "You must be Zatanna, I've been told positively awful  things about you, which is a glowing recommendation as far as I'm  concerned given the source. Charise Carnes, but daddy calls me Cherry,  so you can too. Any enemy of Barbie's is a friend of mine." She nodded  to the others. "That's Waylon and Sally. We're your backup for the  evening." She licked her lips and gave Zee a once over. "Though I think  I'd like to be behind you every night, if you ever felt like asking."  She winked at the brunette sorceress.

I  don't know why that surprised me. Cherry hadn't hit on anyone at the  house, but that wasn't shocking, given her relationships with them, and I  wasn't sure if she was actually bi or just making alliances, but Zee  certainly didn't seem to mind as she took in my pet psycho, ghostly  pallor and all, in her emerald green dress. "Nice to meet you, though  I'm sad to hear Barbara doesn't have a high opinion of me. I think  nothing but the best of her." She took Cherry's hand, kissing it softly  and getting a pleased grin from the blonde.

Barbie  for her part looked torn between anger and discomfort. I inwardly  grinned at her expression. Zee's friendly act didn't just make her  sympathetic to the others. Barbie actually did sometimes feel bad for  'bullying' her. Not enough to stop or calm down the seething jealousy,  especially with Zee's fantastic body on display, but enough that she  wasn't currently verbally assaulting the sorceress, which was already  pretty civil for the two of them. One of these days I really was going  to have to fuck them together. Half of Barbie's problem with Zee was  insecurity, and once she got a taste of that insane body I had a feeling  it was going to be much less of a problem for her.

As  much fun as letting my girls sniff around each other was though, we  weren't going to an orgy, this was a legitimate mess so I turned to Zee  for answers. "So. What did Sargon have to say about this mess? Anything  we can use to figure out Doctor Gotham's endgame? Because honestly  showing up to this mess without any idea what he's planning makes me  nervous." I was worried enough about whoever the fuck this guy was  without flying blind.

She  sighed. "Not for sure obviously but...we have a good idea. Apparently  Sargon had heard of him. Even he wasn't around at the time, but rumor  has it that the artist currently known as Doctor Gotham was obsessed  with creating a magical utopia he himself could rule over. He was  friendly with some of the fae monarchs at the time and fancied himself  the next best thing. He was planning a mass sacrifice to steep this area  in magic to create a sort of knock off fae demi plane. Based on his MO  we're pretty sure his ritual is some kind of magic amplification spell."

I  blinked. "Wait, you're saying he's trying to supercharge this whole  city so he can run a magic kingdom? What's the upside for him there? Or  the downside for us, because everyone has been making this sound like  the end of the world. A bit of extra magic doesn't seem like the  apocalypse to me." Hell it might even be nice to live in a magic city. I  could learn some sorcery after all.

That  got a bitter laugh. "A bit of extra magic wouldn't be. This isn't that.  Reality isn't made to withstand the weight of too much power. Weird  shit tends to happen when a place is exposed to too much, hell Gotham  already suffers from a darker version of that. This will be worse. To  give an example, if you think of magic as water, Gotham is pretty much  constantly under a downpour of really dirty rain. This ritual will be a  tsunami. The laws of reality will begin to fray, monsters will start to  rise from the mists of time, every petty criminal will have access to  sorcery. It'll be bad."

So  anarchy. Which yeah, I wasn't a fan of. Control was something of a big  deal to me, and Gotham was a shithole. I didn't want to see what that  was going to turn into on magical steroids. Once I'd conquered the damn  place I might be willing to play around with it a bit, but for now we  needed a way to stop this shit. "Ok, well I assume you wouldn't have  shown up without some kind of plan, so what are we going to do to stop  this? Because whatever it is, I'm in." Nobody got to fuck with my city  but me.