Sell you a Bridge chapter 221

April 20th 2016 Appalachian Mountains 6:00 PM EDT

I  was beginning to get tired of this whole 'calm before the storm' powwow  we had every time we were about to attack a fortified position. It felt  so climactic, always made me worry once of us would get killed or  something. I had wracked my brain on how to make sure the vibe was a bit  more relaxed, and as I looked around at all my friends I nodded  solemnly to myself and then pulled a big ass picnic basket from my ring.  "Alright folks, we're doing sandwiches and chips before the battle.  Everyone pick your favorite soda, I brought a selection."

We  were seated on a hill about ten miles from Lex's secret appalachian  base, and we'd stopped to get our bearings and prepare for battle.  Apparently those two things were not compatible with eating delicious  sandwiches, because everyone just kind of stared blankly at me. I  flicked my hand, a blanket appearing from my ring that I laid smoothly  down on some freshly pressed ground I'd smashed flat with a quick shadow  construct. I was rocking fifty thousand points plus with the tantric  boost I got every moment I was able, and a few spent on comfort wouldn't  hurt.

I  stared back challengingly at the flat looks. "What? I'm tired of these  grim pre battle meetings. We're going to have a nice picnic lunch and  casually discuss our impending sortie. Now, are you nerds going to tell  me what soda you want? Because if not you can drink Pepsi. I brought  every kind I could think of, including that weird Celery shit that Jim  enjoys for gods only know what reason. I assume you're drinking that?"  My ghostly mentor snorted and held out his hand while everyone else  volunteered their preference.

I  passed out each persons pick. "Root Beer for Morana, Black Cherry for  Zee, Sprite for Blood, Madame Xanadu you wanted Bubblegum?" I passed a  bottle of blue cane sugar soda to the ancient sorceress and finally  turned to my girlfriend. Giving Dreamer a dashing grin. "And for my  little goddess, THIS!" I whipped out a brown bottle with arabic  lettering across the front. "Heart attack soda. It's banned in the US  because it's technically just carbonated fudge. Luckily I can travel  across the planet in a blink, so I picked up a case from Syria.  Apparently they use it over there to induce labor in goats."

She  squealed with glee as I passed out the sandwiches, and I had to ask.  "How did you even come into contact with that stuff? Like mango boba I  get it's everywhere, but I'd never even heard of heart attack soda. I'm  from this planet and I didn't even know it existed until you told me  about it." I didn't need to ask about sandwiches, pretty much everyone  would eat either roast beef or turkey, except Zee who had some sort of  weird ham fascination I'd never quite understood, and exclusively ate  dill relish mixed with sour cream on her ham and cheese.

Dreamer  took a long pull of her liquid candy and gave a refreshing sigh. "I  heard about it in New York City. A nice young man in a hooded sweatshirt  was gushing about to his friend, a strange, overly happy man who  reminded of the Earth legends regarding Leprechauns." She took a bit of  her turkey and cheese sandwhich, enjoying the crunch of the pickles,  lettuce, and tomato. "In any case, now that the mood has been set so to  speak, is there any other part of this that will differ from past pre  battle briefings?"

I  rolled my eyes sulkily. "Sure, make fun of me for trying to improve  team morale." I took a long pull of my own Black Cherry soda before  continuing. "But no. I just felt like a more relaxed atmosphere would  help us all go into this fresh and less tense. We are all total  badasses, there's no real reason to worry, and as long as everyone knows  that they'll be operating at their best. Besides, I get to go into  battle without Nightwang looking over my shoulder, and that's a good  reason to celebrate all on it's own. Jim, you want to do the honors? I  can eat while you tell them the plan."

My  mentor was polishing of his roast beef sandwich and washing it down  with his vegetable flavored carbonated abomination water. "Well, as my  protege said. We're going to be planning our assault on Lex Luthor's  Appalachian base. We suspect they're stockpiling forces to oppose us,  but luckily they shouldn't be aware of our cognizance of the location of  the headquarter. We spent several days deciding the best attack  patterns for this. First we have the peasant." He sneered at Blood so  hard I could hear it in his voice. "Your demonic passenger will be  responsible for laying low their robot army."

He  gestured to Madame X. "Nimue, you'll be working with him. The demon  isn't particularly skilled at crowd control, and it defeats the purpose  if he goes on a rampage and lets half of them circle around to blow  holes in the children. Morana, dear one, you and I will be dealing with  the century of scarab warriors, and Zatanna and Dreamer will handle the  alien bounty hunter while Morgan takes care of the man in charge in his  special suit. Whoever finished first will support whichever team needs  it at the moment. Any questions?"

Zee  raised her hand, eyes narrowing at my mentor. "Yes, why is my fourteen  year old daughter going to be fighting a hundred alien cyborg  shapeshifters and Dreamer and I are only dealing with some washed up  alien biker? Because I'll be honest, I'm not enthused about leaving her  to clean up such a big mess, even with you to support. We've seen what  those things can do and it isn't pretty." Her voice was concerned as she  flicked her eyes nervously to Morana. I think she was worried our  daughter would be offended, but she didn't seem bothered at all.

I  cut in before it could go further. "You need to take Lobo seriously  Zee. Dreamer's sources claim he's a scary guy. As for Morana, she'll  have all the other soulless with her, not that she needs them, and I'll  jump in once I finish curb stomping Lex. Until then she's as strong as I  am going all out, and Jim is pretty fucking terrifying himself. They'll  be fine until they get some backup, assuming they even end up needing  it at all." I reached out and took her hand, Dreamer grabbing her other  one. "I get it, we just got her, but she's pretty much the strongest  person here, with the possible exception of Blood when he's going on a  full demonic rampage."

She  sighed loudly, turning to look at Morana, who, despite not showing any  outward sign of annoyance at her prowess being questioned, was  definitely avoiding eye contact. "I'm sorry Rana. Your dad is right. I'm  projecting my own insecurities onto you. It's just...with everything  that's happened to my family, I can't help but worry that now that I  have you I'm going to lose you." Her purple elven eyes began to glisten  as she teared up at the thought, and Morana melted, as either Dreamer or  I would have, and hurled herself onto the three of us in a big family  group hug."

I  kept it off my face, but I was seething with rage. This whole fucking  outburst was Dr. Fake's fault. Zee had come back from that fucking  meeting inconsolable and refused to talk about anything that happened.  It had taken Dreamer and I both talking her down before she had been  coherent enough to reveal that the literal tin pot dictator now  possessing her dad refused to give the old man up, and swore to fight us  to the death if we tried to make him, Giovanni's death more  specifically.

I  was already making plans to handle the asshole myself, I just needed to  pin him down, but I wasn't going to tell Zee about it until it was  done. I was pretty damn positive I could free Giovanni with my keyblade,  and when I was done I was going to chuck that fucking shitbox helmet  into a trench in the arctic ocean. I'd heard he'd gotten all whiny about  sitting on a shelf for fifty years, I was looking forward to his  response to spending the next century in any icy submarine ditch because  a teenager kicked his ass.

I  shook off my plans to deal with the worlds least qualified doctor and  focused on the others. "So, that's the plan. We'll be moving in together  and break off to deal with our individual assignments. We unfortunately  weren't able to get much in the way of recon done because The Reach has  Lex's base outfitted with some kind of spatial detection device that my  clones can't circumvent. We avoided getting noticed but only barely.  Still we watched from a distance for the last few days and we have a  basic idea of what their forces are like, so as long as we stick to the  plan we should be fine. Zee, you and Dreamer are going to have it the  hardest, if Etrigan and Madame X finish early and get to Morana before I  do the two of you are up second on the backup list."

With  that out of the way we all headed out. It was ten miles, but due to the  aforementioned spatial array we decided to walk in. With Dreamer, Jim,  Morana, Zee, Madame Xanadu, and I all weighing in on stealth magic we  had an iron clad obfuscation setup that my clones couldn't have matched.  I wasn't sure it would keep us below their radar for long but it was  enough for us to get close. Once we got in a bit closer to the mountain  lair I kicked on aura sight and pointed everyone who was fighting  something like a scarab or an alien at their enemies. The robots weren't  showing up to my aura sight, probably some kind of weird Reach  shielding, but Madame X and Blood had their own ways of finding things.

I  headed for the spot I'd noticed Lex Luthor's aura. Or at least the only  human aura I could see here. I phased through the stone and dirt before  emerging in a massive but luxuriously appointed cavern. I did my best  to avoid any sort of notice as I touched down, using my long ingrained  ninja skills to move in silence as I approached the spot where Lex was,  without a doubt, waiting for me to arrive. He stood with his back to me,  hands folded behind him as he stared down at a map of the planet, with  multicolored blinking lights covering the three dimensional globe  display holographically projected before him.

He  waved a hand and turned around after a minute. Slowly moving to face  me, and I couldn't help but be just a little impressed. It wasn't the  power. His aura was nothing impressive, though the huge green and purple  battle suit he had adorning his frame was clearly advanced, even if  whatever shielding the reach had provided kept me from seeing exactly  how powerful it was. I wondered for a moment why the scarabs weren't  shielded, but the answer came to me easily. The scarabs were meant to  intimidate. Even the scouts served that function. They didn't want to  hide their power.

Lex  Luthor looked my over calmly. His hawk like gaze taking in every inch  of me, studying my every breath, my every twitch. I looked him in the  eyes, bored with the games and rolled my own glowing green orbs. "I'm  curious, are you going to go with 'I've been expecting you?' or are you  jumping right into 'we're not so different you and I?' I imagine you  hear references to those movies pretty often, given your career and  hairstyle. Or lack thereof." I saw a twitch of annoyance in his aura  that never reached his face. Well, good to see I still had my mojo. I  wanted to see just how annoyed I could make him before he attacked. This  dick deserved to be messed with.