Sell you a Bridge chapter 26

Gotham Park, July 4th , 12:00 PM EDT , four weeks later.

It  was a good day. Annabel and I were at the park for a picnic for the  fourth of July, enjoying the sunshine and each other's company. After  our first date the day after the heist we started spending more time  together. She'd even gotten to know my friends, though Reggie was still  twitchy around her. I'd asked him about it and he said he'd always  suspected she was in the Court. I'd used my ninja abilities to follow  her around for a few days and hadn't seen anything even remotely  suspicious so we'd decided he was jumping to conclusions.

At  the moment I was laying with my head in my girlfriends lap and she was  feeding me pie. She looked pretty amused by the laziness. She smiled  down at me "So, how has your extra credit been going? You're always so  busy I feel like I never see you anymore. I hope you're learning a lot."  She'd been a bit put off when I told her about my extra credit  assignment from my old school and how I couldn't share the details, but  it was the most convenient way to get her off my back about training  with Jim.

The last few weeks had actually involved a crazy  amount of studying. Jim was a consummate professional, and his biggest  pet peeve was insufficient foundation. He'd been dumping huge piles of  books on me to read and remember. I'd ended up getting that perfect  memory pill for twenty five points and picking up an offer for speed  reading lessons for another twenty five just to keep up. Manuals for  security systems, magical ward books, textbooks for polymer science,  books on weather patterns in the Gotham area, local history, the list  went on.

Jim was obsessive about preparation and insisted  the only reason he had been able to be so successful was that he had a  diverse range on knowledge to help with his profession. Once he figured  out I could remember them perfectly he'd actually redoubled my homework,  constantly dumping more reading material on me. He also had me combing  city records with my "natural computer genius" luckily I was a shut in  computer addict and was able to pass off that seventy five point hacking  power as long years of secret training.

I'd stocked up a  massive number of over three hundred points over the last thirty or so  days. A hundred twenty five had gone to the aforementioned powers,  another twenty five had gone towards...ahem...male enhancement pills  (I'd forked out extra points for an overnight version) and fifty had  gone towards a weird training regimen that enabled me to see auras.  Being able to somewhat make out what people were feeling and see certain  magical aspects of objects had proven invaluable in my training to far.

Between  the drain on my points from the aura sight and constant use of my ninja  abilities while training with Jim I had been ground down to ten points  of emergency energy I kept around just in case I needed it. Still, it  had paid dividends. Jim had put us all through our paces over the last  few weeks but I was in the best shape of my life. My muscle powder had  finished and with the full ninja power set and all the training Jim was  very pleased with my progress so far.

I was broken from my  reverie when Annabel waved a hand in front of my face "Earth to Morgan?  Where did you go? I said how is your extra credit going?" I smiled up  at my girlfriend, leaning up to steal a kiss that tasted like apple pie.  She was always patient with me when I spaced out or when I didn't get  some obvious social cue because I hadn't been around people much.  Annabel was one of the sweetest people I'd ever met. My mom adored her,  and she and Artemis got along great. Reggie was the only one still  nervous around her.

She'd apologized for her part in all  the hazing after his family lost their money. She felt terrible about  the way she'd let them pick on him, but she told me privately she was  afraid if she stood up for him she would lose her friends too. She went  out of her way now to be extra nice to him at school and encourage her  friends to do the same, and things had gotten much better for Reggie at  Gotham Academy.

I pulled back from the kiss with a smile  "Sorry babe, just got a bit sidetracked, you know me. The extra credit  has been rough. My academic advisor for the program has been running me  ragged. Constantly giving me new books to read. Still gotta catch up a  bit to the other kids at school in terms of academics. Gotham North  didn't exactly have a plethora of activities to fill up a college  application, and we can't all be track stars like Arty." Artemis, to the  surprise of literally no one, had been kicking ass at track, and had  even been offered a scholarship to GCU.

Annabel snickered  "I swear she doesn't even like it. She just goes so she can flirt with  that redhead she's had her eye on. I don't get it, he's too skinny for  me and he never shuts up." She gave me a naughty grin leaning down for  another kiss "I like my men well muscled and contemplative, thank you  very much." I pulled her down on the blanket with me, enjoying the taste  of her lip gloss mixed with apple pie for a while, before I suddenly  paused. She pulled back, frowning with concern. "What's up?"

I  cocked my head a but in confusion "Weird question. Does it  seem...colder to you all of the sudden?" I thought I might be crazy but  it really did seem nippy out of nowhere. Of course, that was when the  snowing started. And the screams. People started bolting past us,  shrieking in fear before a massive beam of blue white light raked over  them, freezing them solid right where they stood. I followed the beam  back to it's source to see a massive man in a dome helmeted suit with  icy pale skin.

Great. Mr. fucking Freeze. I strangled the  urge to put a shuriken through that stupid helmet. Couldn't do anything  too impressive in front of Annabel or I might give something away. I  carried my shuriken everywhere, though I left the tanto at home today.  Luckily I wasn't the only one with ranged weaponry. A metal bat came  whirling out of nowhere and deflected the ray gun before he could shoot  again. I heard an eerie high pitched laugh echo around us as Mr. Freeze  spun to look.

Between aura sight, my ninja skills, and all  the training from Jim over the last month, spotting Robin was literal  child's play. Still, I went out of my way not to notice him too  obviously, just pulling Annabel against me protectively as the boy  wonder engaged the icy maniac, dropping onto the helmet than flipping  off of the villains head to throw a pair of his own shuriken. The helmet  cracked under the impact. Their banter lasted like two minutes before  Batman dropped down from above and shattered the helmet with a punch.

I  felt Annabel relax against me as he went down, and I pulled her up to  bring her over to thank Batman and Robin for the assist. I could have  handled it, but normal civilians gush over that kind of a save, and Jim  was always very strict about how we need to act in our public guises. In  any case if they hadn't shown up I would have had to use my powers in  public so they kind of saved my ass.

I waved down Robin as  I got closer and almost swallowed my own tongue when I noticed  something about his aura. It was familiar. I'd run into Dick Grayson a  few times in school and this was definitely him. Now that I knew what to  look for it was kind of obvious just by body type. I forced down my  shock and pasted on a smile "Hey, Robin, thanks for the help man. My  girlfriend and I would have been ice cubes without you."

I  noted from his aura he seemed to be a bit distracted, impatient to get  out of there, but too polite to actually blow is off. He gave me a smile  back that was just as fake as mine "No problem. Hey I'm sorry to cut  this short but I have to go. You guys enjoy the holiday." He pulled out a  small device and hit a button, launching a cable with a hook on the  end.

I made a mental note to ask Jim to help me get one of  those, it would be  easy useful on jobs. Shrugging I turned back to my  girlfriend with a smile. "Now, where were we." We went back to our  picnic now with a nice bit of shade from the spikes of ice sticking off  the top of the nearby rock formation. It might have seemed odd to some  people but this was Gotham. Even if I was still a bit thrown by all this  after years as a shut in I was also a professional thief now. Not to  mention my ninja skills.

Annabel  and I sat down to eat, and I reminded myself to try to dig up cooking  lessons. That would be a good way to impress my girlfriend. Annabel  smiled at me as I poured us some lemonade "So, I've been meaning to ask.  We're coming up on our one month anniversary. Do you think you  could...come over to my place for dinner?" The emphasis she put on that  made her intentions pretty obvious, and thank god for ninja training  because the deception lessons it had included towards the end saved me  from making a fool of myself.

Annabel  had wanted to wait to have sex, which since I was a virgin and I  assumed she was too (I was scared to ask because I didn't want to offend  her) seemed reasonable even if it felt really frustrating. She  was my first girlfriend after all. I swallowed hard "That  sounds...wonderful. I think we have school the day of and the day after,  how about Saturday? In case things...run late." It also gave me time to  find some sex lessons in my email. There were dozens of messages like  that I could pick from and it would give me time to save up for one.

She  licked her lips and leaned forward to kiss me deeply. "Saturday sounds  great. I'll send the servants home after the cook makes us dinner so  it'll just be you and me. My parents are out of town this weekend. We'll  have the whole place to ourselves." I swallowed again. The way she said  that had been pretty intoxicating. She could have literally shouted  that she was going to strip down and fuck me and it would have been less  sexy than that. I couldn't wait for this weekend. Before I could go on  though I heard a slight beep and slipped my phone from my pocket.

I had a text from a burner number. Happy fourth of July, don't do anything I wouldn't do-Z .  I smiled at the message. Zatanna had been texting me regularly since  I'd broken into her house, turned out she had a bit of a rebellious  streak and thought me putting my number in her phone was gutsy. Annabel  said my name to get my attention and I looked up with a smile "Sorry  babe, text from a friend. Yeah, Saturday sounds fantastic I can't wait,  just give me the address." I shot Zee a quick thank you and a same to  you text and put up my phone to listen to my beautiful girlfriend talk,  still thinking about what would be happening this Saturday.