Sell you a Bridge chapter 128 (Patreon)

Gotham City December 12th 2010 10:00 PM EDT

Detective  vision made tracking Paula a breeze, it did not however, make the  streets and safer. I heard Jim's bored voice sound in my head. "Left on Sycamore, there appears to some sort of riot up ahead on Wiltshire." The  roads had become infinitely worse since we'd retreated to the island.  Because the city had been mostly area locked no one was driving anywhere  anymore. The streets had been blocked off to create small territories  and I could see broken blockades where people had created their own  cover but then been overrun.

The buildings we passed were  starting to look cracked and broken down, and the empty feeling that had  already been present a month ago was now even worse. I half expected to  see a damn tumbleweed roll down the street. I took the left like Jim  said and turned to check with my team. I gestured Reggie over and he  stepped in, leaning down to whisper. "Hey, I have a way to check in on  things if you can help me out." He handed me a rubber ball about the  size of a grapefruit. "Toss that up onto that building over there for  me?" I shrugged and did what he asked. When it landed he reached into  his pocket and pulled out another orb, this one with an obvious camera  and a bunch of spider legs on it.

He invoked his power as  the ball made it to right above the roof and switched them before the  ball was out of sight. The spider camera thing landed on the roof out of  sight, and he pulled out a remote and switched it on. An image appeared  on the screen and Reggie grinned. "Haven't had time to bust this thing  out. I ordered it special from Toyman, but it's too fragile to use in  the dungeon so it was just gathering dust until tonight." He manipulated  the remote, causing a scuttling sound to feed over the camera and  microphone as the tiny machine climbed across the roof and hung down to  look at the street below, giving us a view of the street around the  corner and up ahead.

I grinned, slapping my friend on the  back. "Nice man, the map doesn't show what people are doing, just where  they are. Now we have eyes on the street to make sure some asshole isn't  hanging out a window spooning a bolt action and waiting to scoop off  our heads." Granted we had costumes and armor that would make that less  likely to work, our masks were specially enhanced, but still, masks only  cover the front. I focused on detective vision for a second as we  rejoined the main street we'd been following, needing to pick the trail  back up after the detour.

I pointed down a side alley.  "Paula went that way, good we'll be getting off the main roads, now  maybe we won't have to sidetrack as often to avoid random looters." We  picked up the pace, Reggie retrieving and resetting his camera spider  orb with my help. We made decent time but as we went we got to see more  of what the city had become over the last month. Gotham had always been  bad, and in some ways that actually helped, preparing the civilians  somewhat, but in other ways that made it even worse.

The  Gotham natives had created cliques, tiny gangs in essence, and the more  wily and experienced in the city seemed to be flourishing. Add in that  the people running the show had apparently been solo running the dungeon  (from what we could see through the camera they seemed to be using  health potions as a replacement for food, or at least to repair the  damage starvation did as it happened) and there was massive power  imbalance in basically every building. The delvers were all geared with  decent weapons and items and they passed out more to their followers, so  most of the groups weren't exactly led by the nicest member.

The  camera views into the various buildings as we looked for threats showed  the situations were mostly stable however. We didn't see anyone beating  anybody or anything too outrageous so we had no reason to step in. We  weren't heroes but if we had spotted some old person or kid getting  their teeth kicked in I don't think any of us would have been  comfortable ignoring it even if Zee hadn't pushed us to intervene.  Finally after about a half hour we neared the end of Paula's tracks, and  Reggie's spider cam picked up some movement outside. We stopped and  hid, checking the camera to figure out exactly who was involved.

As  expected, the League of Shadows were under attack. It looked like  they'd been jumped while in the middle of some kind of patrol. Several  of them were injured but they seemed to have found a place to take cover  and were currently ducking behind some blockades to avoid the rain of  bullets from the Penguin's thugs. For their part they Penguin's people  were incredibly well armed, obviously having come here for a fight, and I  saw more than a few of those old fashioned Tommy guns among their  numbers. They seemed to be pretty well stocked on bullets too, because  the pressure didn't look like it was letting up.

Among the  suited thugs were a few people with obvious powers or special gear. The  one at the back was the weirdest. Standing behind a wall of goon was a  kid a bit younger than me. Well, I say kid, but I had no real idea how  old he was because he appeared to be an anthropomorphic monkey. He was  wearing a set of golden armor with an M on the front and carrying a  staff that glowed like a fucking solar flare in my aura sight. I winced  at that, dismissing the other capes as I focused on the obvious threat  in front of me. I turned to whisper to my crew. "Ok slight problem. See  that Monkey kid? He's carrying a magical nuke. Seriously. That thing is a  reactor core of magical energy. What's the play?"

Zee  spoke up, murmuring a spell to view the magical spectrum and wincing.  "Ouch. Ok yes, we'll leave him to you. Do you see Paula though? I cant  spot here anywhere?" I flicked on detective mode as I tried to spot her,  using my aura vision on in conjunction with my newest ability so I  could spot the freshets tracks. It took me a second of scanning to find  the footprints leading behind one of the furthest blockades and I  pointed it out to my team. Zee's glowing blue eyes focused, her spell  clearly letting her spot the woman even through cover. "Gotcha, I'll  head over there to back her up. What about the guns though?"

Reggie  grinned behind the mask, the smile obvious in his voice. "They're using  Tommy Guns, which means all the bullets are in the mags." He reached  down and picked up a hefty piece of building that had cracked off and  was lying on the ground. With a quick flex of power the rock vanished  and he was holding a magazine full of bullets. He shot us a wink. "Best  part is since they don't have the magazines they can't reload even if  they have more. I'll stick back here and deal with their ranged options  and provide support with my explosives. Neith I assume you want to go  beat the shit out of a bunch of thugs?"

My best friend  nodded. "Yeah, that sounds nice." Her words were light but her tone  promised horrible vengeance for the men shooting at her mother. Not that  I blamed her for that one. She nodded to the random suited criminals  mixed in with them. "Any of them have an aura that tells you they might  give me trouble? I assume Zee will provide support once she gets over to  Mom in either case but I'd like to know who to watch out for." I shook  my head and she nodded again as Reggie finished up stealing the  magazines from all the goons.

I swiped them all into my  spacial ring in case we found a use for them later. "Nah, no one that  looks like a threat except that monkey kid with the staff. Aside from  that nuclear staff he's packing his aura is pretty bright on its own.  He's strong. My King's Sword of Haste is reinforced so it should hold up  but I'm worried I might not be able to take him for long. Don't fuck  around in there Neith. Keep them pinned down while Zee grabs Paula and  then beat it with the others. I'll follow once I can shake them. With my  ninja skills losing a tail is simplicity itself, especially with  wings."

She didn't look incredibly pleased about the  instructions but I could tell she understood I was serious because she  nodded stiffly. With our roles in mind we headed out, Artemis drawing  attention first as she came out firing a lightning bolt into the biggest  most menacing goon, an absolutely massive woman with grey skin and  conrows, wearing a single pauldron and covered in black thorn tattoos.  The bolt didn't drop the woman in a single hit, most likely because of  her obvious meta powers, and the very large woman curled a lip at my  bestie in a snarl.

Knowing she  could handle herself and had plenty more in her I didn't distract myself  watching her fight, triggering my shadow port and appearing behind  monkey boy, lashing out at his arm at top speed. With my new combat  style courtesy of Myrina and the enhancement from my weapon my blade  cleaved through the space where his elbow should have been. Despite the  speed of the attack though I missed, the furry bastard somehow noticing  me and dropping his arm out of the way, releasing the staff to avoid the  blow.

This  would have been a much needed gap for me to exploit when it came to most  fights, but most of my enemies didn't have a prehensile tail. The tail  caught the staff and swung it at my head, a blow which my instincts  screamed at me to dodge. I triggered shadow form as a last resort,  desperate to avoid the swing from that horrifying staff. I didn't know  what the fuck it did and honestly I really didn't want to find out, but  whatever it was I was positive getting hit by it would not be pleasant  at all.

Monkey  boy hissed at me. Literally hissed like an animal, and hopped off the  ground, somehow landing in a crouch balancing on the tip of his fucking  staff as he glared at me. "How dare you?" His voice shook with rage and  hate, and his tone was unpleasantly high pitched, reminding me of the  scream of a monkey. "You seek to deprive me of my weapon? TO dare steal  from the monkey prince, only death is a satisfactory end for someone  like you!" Wordy little bastard, but even though I didn't love the death  threats I was pretty sure I would be fine.

He  didn't seem that impressive to me. The monkey boy lashed his tail,  leaping up and setting the staff to spinning below him. When it was mid  spin and the end was pointed at me he hissed. "Grow Ruyi Jingu Bang!"  The staff expanded. Turning into a fucking column big enough to stick in  front of a greek temple. The monkey kid had aimed well enough and it  went under his feet, letting him plant his feet on the expanding item  and run down it.

I however, was not  nearly as well placed, and somehow my instincts were good enough to be  positive that I didn't want that to hit me even in shadow form. I surged  to the side but sadly didn't make it in time, and when the pillar hit  me I felt an actual attack smash into my body, breaking an arm and  forcing me back to my corporeal state. The broken limb wasn't my biggest  issue though, because my brain finally caught up to what he'd called  that staff, and I felt myself pale as I realized how very fucked I was.