Sell you a Bridge chapter 97

The Clock Tower September 29th 2010 4:30 PM EDT

Once  again, upon waking I felt fucking amazing. Despite all the energy  though my muscles still felt a bit weird and twitchy. Almost  hypersensitive as I stumbled to my feet. The girls caught me on either  side, holding me up as I got my balance, and of course I headed straight  for the mirror, because I am a vain son of a bitch. It took me a few  steps to figure out how to walk, and i couldn't understand why, until I  got close to the reflective surface and realized my mistake.

My  wings were out. Now if you've never suddenly got wings that might not  sound that weird, but trust me. Having that strange extra limb really  throws you off. It's like when you do something on reflex all the time  but then you think about the steps and your brain kind of skips a beat  and messes it up, or like saying a word over and over and suddenly it  stops making sense. The introduction of those strange new muscles threw  off my whole groove, and weirdly my reflexes made it way worse. Like  every weird muscle twitch fired at max speed and just screwed me.

I  took a deep breath, closed my eyes, then focused every ounce of my  attention on banishing my wings, and then poof. They were gone. Despite  their absence however, the me in the mirror looked...different. For one  thing I was hot. Like weirdly, seductively man pretty, in a sort of dark  sexual way. My hair was black. Like glossy black, so deep I could  almost see blue undertones in it, and my eyes were emerald green. I  don't mean in the way people usually mean when they say that, I mean it  looked like someone literally chiseled emeralds into rings and set them  into my eyes.

My jaw was defined as hell, and my bulk had  sort of compacted. I wasn't big anymore, just dense, but very lithely  muscled, like a swimmer. My teeth were white as porcelain and my canines  were weirdly sharp for some reason. I opened my character sheet to take  a look and my eyes went wide. My name was the same, but that was pretty  much it where it had previously said I was a rogue, my sheet now listed  "High Class Devil". My resistances were all higher for the most part,  lightning and fire resist were both at thirty percent, though there was a  new resist box for light that was at negative forty.

My  stats were...nuts. Fifty for all my physicals. Vitality, strength,  dexterity, all now five times the human max. Along with that I had  gotten a cool hundred point bump to my point total, bringing me up to  two hundred and fifty points of daily income. I was in awe (though I had  been expecting more points than that, greedy as it sounded). This was  insane. I'd never been this strong before. Physically this made me one  of the heaviest hitters in Gotham. I'd be a joke in Metropolis sure, but  for my town I was a tough son of a bitch now. But that wasn't the  important part. The important part wasn't on the sheet at all. I could  just feel it.

I turned to look at Artemis, who was gaping  at me alongside Zee, and grinned. "I'm going to hold up my hand, I want  you to zap it." I put my hand in front of me and focused. A black circle  of energy, somehow the same as my shadow porting but different, opened  in front of my hand, and I felt a wave of dizziness as all one hundred  points went into making a circle of darkness the size of an hors  doeuvres plate. Artemis looked at me uncertainly, but after a nod she  cast a small bolt of heavenly punishment lightning at my hand. A bolt  that vanished into the circle completely.

I could feel it.  Inside my power. Waiting to be let out. I knew what it was, what this  strength made me. Abaddon clan devil. Power of Hole. The Abaddon clan  were a noble devil lineage, though I didn't know much more than that.  The Power of Hole was our bloodline. Because I was an Abaddon now. I was  still my parents son, somehow, but I was a pureblood noble devil.  Regardless the Power of Hole was out noble birthright, and it was  perfect for me. The dark energy meshed with my shadows, creating an  entirely new and even deadlier power. Black Hole if you will.

I  let it dissolve, though I still had the power inside me, being held in  some strange place I hadn't possessed before. I could open that same  hole again as long as the energy was inside me. It wouldn't take more  points, though once I released the attack I would need to spend more to  absorb another. I couldn't do too much right now, I was still getting  used to it. But once I had some time to get stronger, once I put more  stats into my points total, I knew I'd get more use from it. Eventually  able to fully manifest my powerful shadow constructs with the power of  hole imbued inside.

I turned to the girls and grinned. "It  worked. I feel...amazing. Stronger than I ever have. Hell better watch  out, because there's no way I'm going down with this kind of power." I  glanced down at myself awkwardly. "Although...Zee could you maybe make  me a quick glamour charm? Something like the last one that fades over  time. My new devil sexiness is like movie star level, but still humanly  possible. It'll take some acclimating but I shouldn't start any riots or  anything." plus I'll admit I kind of wanted to show off. I'd never been  hot before. It felt kind of amazing.

Zee clearly thought  so too because she was kind of drooling, which given her insane charisma  looked gorgeous anyway but it was still very pleasant to look at. I  didn't have a charisma stat on my sheet sadly, but based on what I'd  seen I was sitting at a solid fifteen. Not mind breaking or unnatural  but still damn good looking. It took her a minute to notice I'd been  talking to her and she flushed a bit. "What? Oh, yeah of course." She  held out a hand and muttered a string of incantations, handing me a  necklace. "This is temporary. I can make you a new focus with Artemis's  help in the forge and it'll be done before this one wears off in a few  days ok?"

I slipped the thing on and  jumped a bit as what felt like cold sticky water flowed over me,  clinging to every inch of my body. I glared at Zee. "Jesus, why does  this feel so awful? I feel like someone rolled me in egg so they could  batter and deep fry me?" Artemis snickered and held out a hand, into  which Zee placed a small bag of gold as she glared at me. I gaped at  both of them. "Did...did you do that on purpose just to see if I would  complain? That's so fucked up." I turned to glare at Artemis. "She used  to be so sweet. Look what you've done."

Zee  rolled her eyes, trying to hide a smile, then stood up on tip toe and  kissed me on the cheek. "Sorry baby, it happens to everyone. The bet was  just on whether you would complain. Artemis said you never miss an  opportunity to bitch, and I said that you would never berate the love of  your life because her hard work was momentarily inconvenient." She  raised an eyebrow at me archly, but giggled at my unamused expression.  "It's good to know that even as a hunky devil you're still a huge baby.  So, tell us what you ended up with. You said there was a random  bloodline possible, was that black circle yours, or did you just  teleport the lightning away with shadows. Wait could you do that  before?"

Seeing  my girlfriend go full magic groupie wiped out the urge to even pretend  to be mad at her. Zee was at her most beautiful when she was passionate,  and the only thing she was more passionate about than magic was me  during the occasional bit of fun times. Knowing I wouldn't get away with  hiding a thin I told them about my new details, my new bloodline, and  even the weird girl I met when I was half unconscious.It took longer  than expected to fill them in. Hell, it took longer to tell them the  story than I think it technically took to actually happen to me.

Artemis  looked intrigued. "I've never met any of Teague's siblings, but I've  heard of Del. She was Barnabas's person before Teague was, I think he  actually mentioned you reminded him of her. Weird that she was just  waiting there for you. I've never gotten a straight answer from Teague  where he actually came from though, so who knows what he can do." Which  was actually a really good point. What the fuck was Teague if his sister  could randomly pop up in my brain, or vice versa I guess. There had  been a few weird things about him but I hadn't paid much attention given  all the madness that had happened since.

Looking  back though Teague was one big unanswered question. How was someone  like that just...around, especially somewhere like the narrows. Everyone  important I'd met seemed to know about the guy, but no one even  considered fucking with him. He was basically a surrogate uncle to  Artemis, but the court never even hinted at targeting him, and Kent,  Jim, Blood, and even Madame Xanadu treated his name with a ton of  respect, just waving away Artemis's new skills when they heard he was  involved.

Regardless  it wasn't something I could worry about here. I decided to focus on the  now. "As for what Del said, she might be right honestly. I've been  pushing from one new power to another pretty quick. Granted some were  for you guys, which is cool, but it also means I haven't been committing  those points to actually refining my active skills like shadow dancing.  Especially with the new points income once we get the lair committing  short term to putting more points into training seems like a smart call.  Have to push my limits to find them."

Because  I could feel that I hadn't even touched them yet. There was some kind  of synergy between hole and shadow dancing and my ninja skills, some  kind of way to merge them into a single skillset that I could feel but  not utilize because I had been lowballing my powers to save up for new  trinkets. Now that I was pulling in a thousand points every four days  though I had the freedom to really push myself. Learn some of the higher  end aspects of my powers and figure out the most efficient ways to use  them.

It was  like poker. If you go in short stacked you lose a lot less if you have  to fold or get a bad beat, but you also have less leverage and it makes  it harder to win. Difficult to bluff or bully when your all in bet is a  drop in the bucket to whoever you're up against. Really giving my powers  a workout after we got the lair would make a huge difference in how I  could use them on a smaller scale. You can only push your limits after  you find them. I was excited to see what I could do. Sadly it would have  to wait until tomorrow. In the meantime I decided to kick Artemis out  to spend time with my girlfriend. Kent let us close the door because she  was in here with us but I wanted some cuddles damn it.