Sell you a Bridge chapter 130

Gotham City December 13th 2010 12:00 AM EDT

As  I watched that five thousand jumped to fifty two hundred as it hit  midnight, but the usual exhilaration of my points arriving was absent.  Or rather, it was overshadowed. I had found a way to gain points outside  of my daily allotment. It was almost impossible to put into words how  big of a game changer this was for me. I'd been a slave to my point  allotment since I first got my powers all those months ago. It was  easily the biggest weakness I had, and just like that I had finally  figured out a way to surpass it.

Monkey  boy meanwhile was howling mad, literally, the little weirdo was  screeching like a monkey as he jumped up and down. He could clearly see  my shadow form was undisturbed this time. "You dare ignore my wrath,  demon? I'll show you why it is unwise to toy with the Monkey Prince."  With a primal screech he opened his mouth back up again, wide as before  and vomited up another golden burst of light. Again it slammed into my  current self and was absorbed by my Hole bloodline. If I'd had a body I  would have been dancing as I closed my eyes and saw that number tick up  to ten thousand two hundred.

Sadly  my celebration was short lived as the Monkey Prince used his amazing  skills of basic pattern recognition to note that shooting me with his  crazy mouth beam did nothing and lashed out with his fucking staff  again. I dodged. That weapon could hurt me even in shadow form and was  absurdly powerful, I wasn't at all certain my bloodline would be able to  tank whatever the hell made that thing so dangerous. Avoiding the  literal staff of Sun Wukong just seemed like a common sense move  honestly, and it was made all the more urgent because I was still kind  of reeling to know I was fighting his kid.

Still  I was in my shadow...Hole form? Whichever I was two dimensional and  made of empty space so moving was pretty much pure willpower. I could  really move my ass with my reflexes as they were. The shift back to my  corporeal form cost pretty much nothing since I was just regaining my  normal devilish shape. Once I was back in person form though I grinned  maniacally. I felt like a fucking beast. I had so much energy flowing  through me. I'd never felt this supercharged, some kind of side effect  of consuming power like that I supposed.

Weirdly,  my arm was actually healed, I was assuming that repair was the first  place the energy went before it got dumped into my points total and I  wasn't complaining. I teleported behind the simian bastard and lashed  out with my blade again, my two hands allowing me to exploit my power to  the fullest. It was a picture perfect slash, and despite him deflecting  it with his shitty tail I was able to flow into a second attack, and  then a third, raining down blows on the monkey boy as I built up speed.

With  both my limbs and the euphoria of all this energy I completely reversed  the momentum of the fight. Monkey boy was obviously intimidated by my  ferocious attack and I saw him start to give ground, which was exactly  what I wanted. I'd been on the defensive since minute one in the fight  and I didn't like it. I needed to take this asshole apart so I could go  help Reggie and the girls. As I poured on the pressure he started to  make mistakes. A small slip here, a slow block there, nothing huge but  each little nick I'd managed was enough to put him slightly more off  balance.

Each  touch I scored made him slip a bit worse the next time and he kept  getting worse and worse, leaving me bigger and bigger holes to exploit  until I finally managed something nasty. As he blocked a low shot to his  leg I switched direction mid blow, whipping my body around in a full  three sixty and using the momentum to bring my blade slashing at his  head. He reeled back, stumbling to block the head shot and I called up  my power. I created a portal in front of my blade and one right next to  his midsection and slashed him across the guy by spatially displacing my  blade.

Despite  the speed and skill of the blow his monkey reflexes mostly saved him,  allowing him to leap backwards into a handspring, avoiding the worst of  the slash. Despite the dodge however I'd still opened up the skin on his  midsection, splitting his hoodie and revealing pink muscle underneath.  He hissed with rage and pain but clearly saw the writing on the wall and  took off. I made to follow but his exit strategy was to brace himself  against Ruyi Jingu Bang and extend the damn thing, hurling himself up  into an arc and clear of the battle.

I  sneered at the little twerp but in the end let him go. My friends might  get hurt if I followed him, and the little bastard was too messed up to  be an issue soon anyway. I hadn't eviscerated him (which I was honestly  kind of happy about, killing a kid younger than me seemed messed up  even if I hadn't had the luxury of hesitating) but I'd laid open his abs  and that had to fucking hurt. He would need to get that stitched if he  wanted to operate properly anytime soon.

I  turned to check on the other battles. Zee was protecting Paula and  trying to throw some magic at Artemis's sparring partner, but her  attention was being kept by a small guy with white hair made of ice and a  meta I recognized as Killer Croc. The combination of bruiser and blasts  of ice was proving annoying to her as they switched out with surprising  efficiency, keeping her from focusing too much on their fellow penguin  metas.

Reggie  was helping as best he could but he'd ended up actually having to  engage directly as one of the penguin thugs had led a small group behind  his cover and was trying to wreck his day. My friend was more than a  match for a bunch of random gangsters so he was taking their asses apart  but still. The one in the most trouble though was still Artemis.  Whoever that big gray woman was she absolutely did not fuck around.  Artemis was using every bit of her training and abusing her stats hard  to avoid those beefy limbs.

The  tattooed muscle head was faster than she looked but as her appearance  suggested the real killer was her strength. Unlike monkey boy however  she wasn't a kid and I had absolutely no compunctions teleporting in  behind her and trying to sever her fucking spine. Sadly she had pretty  good reflexes for a big lady and managed to dodge. I slashed open her  side  but the wound wasn't as deep as I'd hoped because her fucking skin  was way thicker than I expected. Once again she demonstrated that  surprising quickness once again when she lashed out with a back fist at  my chest. My Armor of Gloom soaked it up as I let the force push me back  from her and I grimaced.

Unfortunately  for her I wasn't fighting alone. While I could have taken her apart  easily enough over time her tough flesh would have been annoying.  Luckily it wasn't an issue because Artemis put a lightning bolt into her  back at point blank range. Since she was mostly immune it didn't really  hurt her, but she was only MOSTLY immune. Which meant her muscles did  lock up for a split second, and that split second was all I needed.

I  teleported in front of her and lashed out with one of my usual  lightning fast attacks, engaging my full body. I aimed this one right at  her throat. For a normal person the blow would have beheaded them, or  at least cut to the spine, but the gray lady was made of tougher stuff.  Despite that I'd used more than enough force to cute through her skin,  which when you slit someone's throat is pretty much enough. Her eyes  flew wide as her mouth worked silently, blood flowing from her severed  neck.

By the  time her muscles stopped convulsing her throat was open and the return  of normal bloodflow sent a fountain of the red stuff spurting from her  neck as the fell to her knees, eyes wide with panic and despair. Despite  the fact that I'd been the one to do it I winced to see the expression  and I felt my stomach tighten in shame. This was the first person I'd  really killed aside from Annabel. Forcing myself past my horror I  straightened my back and pulled back my sword.

I  swung hard at her neck chopping into it like a tree. My sword wasn't  made for this kind of work but it was fast and sharp and hard so it  would do. As brutal as it must have  looked from the outside though my  only real motive was mercy. i wanted that horrified expression to end. I  didn't want her to suffer because of me. It took me a good four or five  whacks before her head fell off, and even though the fear faded from  her eyes pretty early on I forced myself to finish. I'd already started  and it felt wrong to leave it half done.

Once  her head rolled to the ground I turned and glared at the nearby penguin  goons. All of them, metas included had stopped, staring in horrified  fascination as I decapitated the big gray woman. Their auras pulsed with  fear and despair, the same emotions that had gone through her eyes. I  sheathed my sword and fixed my eyes on the nearest goon. "Run." That was  all it took. Every single one of the goons turned and took off, with  Killer Croc and the ice kid nipping at their heels.

I  sighed loudly and turned to regard the Shadows, as well as all the  watchers that lurked unseen inside the nearby buildings. I raised my  voice loud enough to carry. I'd practiced this in the mirror a few  times. This was something I'd thought about a lot when we were holed up  on the island, and now it was time to put it into words. "This is not a  game! It is not a contest, there is no prize at the end, and most  importantly there are no rules! We are stuck in here, trapped like  animals and when you corner an animal it attacks."

I  pointed at the head lying at my feet. "So this is my first and only  warning to you all. If you come at one of my people I will end you. The  heroes won't stop me. Your bosses won't stop me. Your reputation or your  friends or your daddy will do nothing to save you. The old rules are  over with, and this is a new Gotham. So if you come to play you'd better  get ready to play for keeps!" I kicked the cornrowed head away from me.  "Here endeth the lesson." Then I turned and walked away, sickened.

Every  bit of glee and exultation from earlier was washed away in a bitter  flood of shame and regret. This had been the solution I'd come up with  on the island while I trained. I'd put off thinking about it for as long  as I could once I got finished but this was necessary. If we wanted to  make it in Gotham we needed a rep. This was the best time to establish  that, the League was severely weakened and I was at my strongest. I  needed to show everyone that my team was not to be fucked with. As I  walked over to where they stood I tried not to meet Zee's eyes. I wished  she hadn't had to see that. I just hoped she could understand.