Sell you a Bridge chapter 137

Arkham Asylum December 21 2010 8:00 PM EDT

I  exhaled a cloud of frozen mist from my spot in the closet, opening my  eyes as I exited the Outer Body trance. I'd spent the last week in here,  occasionally communing with my friends but mostly just pouring my focus  into training with my new body. It had been excruciatingly painful for  most of the time, but I'd managed to progress rapidly with time to  really beat my head against that wall.

My  new body was massively powerful, but to get any actual value out of the  training I'd needed to suppress that strength. I pushed my stats down  to the lowest they could go while still remaining combat viable and  relied on my skills and abilities to combat my enemies. And I did mean  all my enemies, I'd fought the Warlord, Myrina, Monkey Boy, the Talons,  the Butcher, and every boss and monster I'd even come across.

Hell  I'd used my perfect recall to put together a simulation Klation to  fight, as well as every member of the justice bros I'd seen throw down  in person, which was all of them except Miss Martian. One after another I  fought them, learning from them, finding their weaknesses. The average  battle only lasted a few minutes, and I'd had seven full days with only a  few hours of sleep between hours full of those minutes. Thousands of  battles.

I'd  lost them at the start. Lost them badly, almost all of them. But the  more I fought the more I learned. I learned to employ Robin's agile  martial arts style against Superboy, to use Myrina's split second  attacks to counter Kid Flash. I beat Aqualad with monkey boy's  unpredictable style, and even fought against Blood and Jim. I maximized  my benefits and bled for every ounce of combat experience I could  squeeze out of my brain, and finally, I'd been contacted. It was time.

Jim's voice rang in my head. "The  ritual will take commence in four hours I believe. This is our only  chance to stop her while she's distracted. I can't exactly tell you what  will happen to Gotham when Circe tears a hole through to the Sphere of  the Gods, but I sincerely doubt it's going to involve puppies and  rainbows. We're sealed in a confined space with the city, I doubt any of  us will emerge unscathed."

Zee cut in. "Agreed.  We've managed to track down the person we think Circe is masquerading  as, we'll need you to follow her for the last few hours until this goes  down, since you're the sneakiest of us. Unfortunately we have a slight  problem. We were hoping they would leave before it was time and we knew  you were training so we didn't want to interrupt but the justice bros  are here."

Artemis cut in, her mental voice annoyed. "Ok,  that's getting annoying, can we stop calling my boyfriend and his  friends that please? I get their little club is a sausage fest, but  aside from the boy blunder the rest of them seem ok from what you guy's  have told me. Well, Aqualad and Miss Martian, Superboy needs to get  laid. Shame I'm taken because that boy is fine."

I rolled my eyes. "Yes  thank you for that important news bulletin Arty, but can we get back to  the fact that the fucking Leaguers let their daycare center loose on  one of the most horrifying places in Gotham? What the fuck is Batman  even doing? He knows how terrible Arkham is. Hell I've scouted every  inch of this place and even I want to throw up. I've been to a literal  Hell dimension."

Reggie was the next to chime in. "Well,  from what we can tell it's not all of them. Miss Martian seems to have  shapeshifted and joined the girls over with the female inmates, but she  hasn't noticed them yet. We think she's avoiding reading minds because  of all the crazy people in here. Wally and Conner are in with the male  inmates, and Aqualad is on surveillance outside. The only person we  can't pin down is Robin, which based on his past performance means he's  probably ninja'ing around out there with you."

I cursed. "Fine.  Seems like if they're in with the male inmates they don't actually know  what's going on, but we still need to keep an eye out. I'll track down  the boy blunder and scope out what they know. If I'm lucky that asshole  might come at me and I'll have an excuse to knock him out and shove him  in a vent somewhere. I hope he tries something. He doesn't want any of  what I am right now."

I  stood up and stretched. I didn't actually need to stretch, any more  than I'd needed to eat the last week. My ridiculous vitality meant I  could pretty much go months without food from what I could tell, but I  stocked my spatial ring with snacks because I love to eat so I'd been  keeping fed. I stretched because it felt right and because my new insane  flexibility was fun to play around with, and once that was done I  shifted to my intangible and invisible form.

My  shadow form was something Robin was familiar with and despite his  dickishness (pun intended) I doubted I would be able to sneak up on him  with it. Taking my ghostly form cost a few points, but at over eighty  nine hundred I wasn't too worried about the ten or so I needed to make  the shift. I stepped through the wall and split off a few clones to  search while remaining intangible.

I'd  memorized the whole layout by this point so finding him wouldn't be  hard. I made sure to leave a clone in the vanishing hallway so I'd have a  way to get back if I needed to. Shadow porting would let me open a  portal between my two selves to get back so I didn't have to worry about  it disappearing. Once I was sure I wouldn't lose our way in I set off  towards the first places I had searched.

I  might be giving Robin too much credit but I assumed he was at least  decent enough at at infiltration to come up with a similar pattern for  casing the place to the one I arrived at by instinct and experience.  After a lengthy thinking process. Probably. Unfortunately I'd given the  asshole too much credit, and he ended up circling around the other  direction. One of my clones found him and then dissolved, returning it's  memories to me directly, and I took the quick way over via  intangibility as I dispersed all the others except the one in the  hallway.

Once  I found Robin I followed him for a good ten minutes, paying special  attention to his aura and the way his eyes and body were positioned. I  waited until his attention was momentarily snagged by something nearby  and then when he looked away I went visible right where his face would  be when he turned back. I stayed intangible of course, so when he  shrieked and lashed out at me with his dumb little staff out of reflex  it passed harmlessly through me.

He  glared at me through his mask, managing to portray the proper amount of  rage even with his eyes covered, though seeing his aura might have  helped. He looked like he was about to attack me, but he seemed to think  better of it, exhaling slowly and evenly until he had his anger under  control. When he had his temper in check he hissed at me. "What are you  doing here? Do you really think you can just waltz around in front of me  after what you did? Every League member in the city is looking for  you!"

I  rolled my eyes, not that he saw it through my mask, but I'd learned  enough body language from Jim to make an eyeroll obvious without my face  exposed. "Get over yourself bat brat. I could tie you up like a pretzel  on your best day. Not the point though, I'm here for what I assume is  the same reason you are. The ritual." I didn't choose to dignify his  comment about devastation with a response, mostly because I knew we  weren't going to agree.

He  froze. "What ritual? You know what's going on here? We've been tracking  Amazons that have been vanishing into this place, but we don't know why  they're here. They'd been slowly shuttling in but for some reason today  they all flooded here at once. Specifically the most powerful of them  seemed to wait until the last minute to show up. Who's casting this  ritual? What does it do?" He stepped forward, like his tiny thirteen  year old ass was going to loom over my much taller form, but I wasn't  impressed and he seemed to sense that.

He  stepped back, trying to give me space and obviously hoping I would  share. I paused to debate. It might be useful to have some more heavies  on side. I didn't trust them as far as Reggie's sister could throw them,  but I wasn't exactly worried about them either. With Jim and I here and  the League clearly not there was nothing they could do to us. I sent a  silent message to Jim telling him what I was going to do and when he  didn't tell me to stop I took a deep breath and spoke up. "Circe is  performing a ritual here."

His  face drained of blood, showing me that he knew who Circe was and why  that was very bad, so I kept going. "She's trying to do some sort of  ascension thing and she's sacrificing Amazons to build up power. She's  way too strong to stop already at this point but if we can hit her while  she's casting the actual ritual but before she finishes it she'll be  too wrapped up in the magic to fight back. It's our only shot."

I  expected him to go off on me about the Amazon's but he bit down on the  obvious rage and forced himself to remain calm. "When exactly is this  ritual happening?" His teeth were gritted, and I could tell even  entertaining my plan was pissing him off royally. Unfortunately for him  he needed the information I had so he had to play nice for now. I made a  mental note to make damn sure not to tell him anything until the  absolute last second.

I  honestly wanted him around less as an ally and more as a potential meat  shield, but beggars and choosers, Circe was way out of out league and  the justice bros had a history of pulling off wins against odds like  that. At least based on what we were told about the Injustice League  showdown. I checked the time, we were coming up on a few hours out. I  decided it was about time to gather and try to figure out a plan. I'd  put a clone on the woman they suspected was Circe.

I mentally reached out to the others. "Alright  boys and girls, looks like we're doing a team up. Remember to expect a  double cross, especially from bird boy. Of course let him and his apple  dumpling gang be the ones to head up first. With the addition of new  people though I think it's time to meet up. I'll send a clone to follow  your Circe suspect and leave the one I have down by the sacrifice  chamber in place."

Jim responded quickly enough. "I'll  retrieve the ladies and we'll meet you at the boiler room. It's  relatively close to where you spotted the chamber so we can move as  needed. Keep an eye on you wayward guest Random, he may be a risk yet. I  sent my agreement back and turned to tell Robin the plan. He sneered  but contacted his friends anyway, and we both headed for the boiler  room. I could already tell this was going to be annoying.