Sell you a Bridge chapter 164

February 12th 2011 Space 9:00 PM EDT

We  decided to go with them. Mostly because there was still a slim hope  that we could talk sense to this...Queen Azkedelia. Of course, even if  we couldn't we were more than strong enough to handle pretty much  anything we ran into. A bunch of literal gods, my demigod best friend  and girlfriend, and a conduit to some sort of god related speed energy  vortex, combined with my own pretty terrifying abilities we were pretty  much good to take on anything I could think of.

That  said, going into this situation with less than a generous amount of  information seemed like a bad call, so we took the time during our  journey to talk to the men who had come to fetch us. The men in the long  coats (imaginatively dubbed 'longcoats' by some absolute master of  wordplay) worked for the current government of "the OZ" as they called  it. Basically the current queen was a descendant of the original  Dorothy, who had taken over Oz after the Monster war.

Dreamer  and the others had been here well after that but they hadn't cared much  about who was in charge so Dreamer hadn't bothered mentioning the royal  family. The Queen who was active when they had visited had apparently  vanished some years ago, and her daughter Azkedelia was ruling in her  place. The longcoats had nothing but great things to say about their  Queen, but with my ability to read aura I noted some signs that they  might have just been towing the party line.

Still  they filled us in one a few things. The Emerald City (now called the  Central City apparently, a fact that made Wally wince a bit) was ruled  by Azkedelia and her thugs. Since we were in the company of said thugs  at the moment they didn't have too much bad to say about the woman, but  in general it was easy to see how unpleasant she was from reading  between the lines, and I had the unfortunate feeling that the city  wouldn't be as nice as we had been promised.

We  were skimming pretty close the yellow brick road, and the closer we got  to the gleam in the distance the less of that stunning yellow we saw.  The bricks began to look cracked and dilapidated, and I shared an uneasy  look with the girls and Wally. I was about to try contacting one of  them when one of the further ahead longcoats doubled back, his face a  mask of clear panic. "Sir!" He addressed the leader. "The Queen sent  word. There was a recent travel storm to retrieve a dissident from the  other world, several of our brothers were lost nearby when the dissident  came through!"

The  man on the flying device I was riding paled before turning to look at  me. "My apologies, but we need to investigate. I hope a minor derailment  of our course won't go amiss." I was thinking about what had been said,  and had no interest in getting involved so I just shook my head. He  gave a relieved smile. "You have my gratitude. We should only be a short  time. You can wait for us near the path as we head off to search." He  touched down near the yellow brick road to let us all off and then sped  off in a random seeming direction.

I  turned to the others after a few minutes. "Ok. Well. Killing them would  have been unnecessary trouble, but honestly they seemed like dicks to  me. All in favor of just bailing before they come back?" Everyone raised  their hands and I chuckled. "The aye's have it. Now I guess we should-"  I was cut off by a loud crack and a scream in the distance. I turned to  Wally, raising an eyebrow. "That could be a problem for us, can you  check it out?" The redhead nodded and vanished in a crackle of  lightning.

He  was gone for only a minute or two before he reappeared. His face had an  odd look on it. "Ok. So, I followed the sound in the direction we heard  the scream from. Took me a minute or two to narrow down the location. I  found...well, painted little people in tribal clothing. They have  captives. A girl a bit older than us who dresses like she's from back  home and a weird guy in a ratty coat with a zipper on his head." He  nodded in the direction he must have come from. "They're about a half  mile that way. We going to help?" His question was more of a formality  than anything. I could tell he would go either way.

Luckily  I was down to save some random earth girl. She might have some  information for us. Wally set off in the direction of this camp or  whatever it was, and we followed him. As we walked into the forest I  found my eyes drawn to the sky. The moons were up, but considering there  was three of them there was plenty of light, and with my own darkvision  it was basically midday to me out here. The others seemed to have a  slightly tougher time of things, but I did my best to help in any case,  pointing out any spots they might slip or twist an ankle.

Finally  we came to a large overgrown clearing. The trees were lined with huts  at about three quarters up, with bridges between them to allow easy  travel. On the far end of the clearing I saw our old pals the longcoats  gathering on their flying devices and off to one side a girl and a tall  man with wild hair bolted down a wooden walkway suspended on ropes. The  longcoats hadn't noticed them yet. I focused on the shadows, and with a  minor effort of will opened a portal under their feet that dropped them  right next to us, firmly out of the line of sight of the searching  longcoats.

Once  they were clear of the line of sight Dreamer cloaked all of us and  Vykin and Bear grabbed the two, picking them up and carrying them with  us out of earshot. Once we were in the clear they put the two down, and  the voices I hadn't realized Dreamer had been muffling poured out,  albeit with their volume greatly lowered. The two of them were babbling  over top of each other but that was annoying me so I nodded to my  Genesisian girlfriend and gestured to the man, whose voice was cut off  again completely.

It  took the girl a bit to stop freaking out, but when she noticed her new  friend wasn't talking she finally quieted down a bit, enough for me to  get a word in edgewise. I knelt down next to her. "Hi there. I'm Morgan,  in case you were wondering, and my friends and I just saved your life.  Do you mind if I ask how you got here?" Because she was wearing a black  leather jacket and sneakers, and if she came from Earth like we  suspected, we might not need to visit the Gamelands at all.

The  girl, who looked maybe nineteen or twenty, with big blue eyes and dark  hair, swallowed hard. "I...I was at home, with my parents. The men in  the long coats, they showed up and grabbed them, and this storm hit and I  ended up lost in these woods. I was trying to follow them but those  little people grabbed me as I was passing by." Her big blue eyes teared  up. "Please. Please help me find them? They're old and fragile, I can't  begin to understand what all this must be doing to them."

Zee  stepped forward, looking sad and understanding. She shot the girl a  smile. "Don't worry. We will. You're ok now. Can you tell us where  you're from honey? And your name, if you're ok with sharing." Her voice  was soft and kind, and her Charisma stat was a hell of a social  lubricant, plus I was betting this poor girl was terrified, and the  beautiful elf girl telling you everything is going to be ok was probably  extremely comforting. She seemed to deflate slightly as Zee spoke,  almost folding in on herself like the thing that was keeping her going  was partly gone.

She  took in a deep, shaky breath. "Yeah. I'm from Smallville, in Kansas. My  name is DG." At the statement everyone in the group focused on  her,  paying MUCH more attention then they had before. Because they had heard  what I had. This girl was from Earth and had gotten here without the  Boom Tube. This storm...what the longcoats called a "travel storm"  seemed to be some kind of natural gateway home, bypassing any of the  normal means and letting us get back to Earth directly from the  Wozenderlands.

Zee  reached down to help the girl up and smiled at her kindly, brushing  dust off her shoulders. "Well DG. We would be happy to help you find  your parents. We've been looking for a way home to Gotham, so we're both  after the same thing. Returning to our families." I could see from her  aura that this wasn't sweet talk either. Zee really felt for this girl.  She'd lost her mother young to cancer, and now she hadn't seen her dad  in months. Previous fights aside she wanted her parent back.

Which  I got. I hadn't spent nearly enough time with mom since I got powers.  I'd been off on one adventure or another and let her kind of fall by the  wayside, and I regretted it so much now. My mother had been all I'd had  for years, and while she wasn't anymore, and I wasn't all she had  either, it still hurt knowing I wasn't there for her like I should have  been. I made a promise to myself that I would spend some time with her  when I got back. In the meantime I turned to Dreamer and nodded, and she  unsilenced the guy in the coat.

He  was glaring at us, and when he saw us looking he tried to speak again,  jumping when he realized he could. "Oh! You returned my voice. What's  the big idea? You can't just take away a persons means to speak. Do you  have any idea who I am?" He paused. "No, that was a genuine question. DO  you have any idea who I am? Because honestly I'm not entirely sure.  Mostly I go by Glitch because sometimes my head glitches." He blinked.  "Mostly I go by Glitch because sometimes my head glitches."

I  raised an eyebrow. "No. I have no clue who you are man, sorry." That  said his aura did look weird to me. I flicked my eyes to my girlfriend.  "Hey Zee, come here for a minute." She wandered over and I leaned down  to murmur in her ear. "He looks weird to me aura-wise can you give him a  magical once over?" She bit her lip, staring for a second at the man  before she nodded. She stepped in close and started muttering, magic  dancing on her fingers as she employed several new scanning spells from  her time studying with the Outer Body trance.The light flickered over  him and as it did her concentration became a frown, which became a  scowl. She stood up after a bit and pulled me over to one side.

"Ok.  Something is very wrong with him. Like...horribly wrong. Someone used  dark magic to remove his brain. That zipper on his head? It literally  opens into an empty skull. Which is awful, and also very scary. People  shouldn't be functional without a brain Morgan. That kind of magic is  old and dark and very hard to come by, and people who have it mostly use  it to do thinks like remove their own hearts for protection." Her face  was pale as she relayed what she'd found, swallowing hard. "This is  magic even we should be scared of baby, and I don't think he's the only  one. This place might be more dangerous than we expected." I swallowed  at the look on her face. Guess that was one more thing to be careful of.