Sell you a Bridge chapter 129 (Patreon)

Gotham City December 12th 2010 11:30 PM EDT

I  admit, I actually stopped what I was doing and gaped at him as I  reformed my wings extended. "The fuck? Dude, you broke my arm!" I  realized it was a bit petty to point that out after attempting to lop  his off at the elbow, but come on. That was just cheating, I'd been a  shadow, how the hell do you break a shadow's arm? I had to grit my teeth  against the pain, but I was used to physical discomfort. The Outer Body  training method was incredibly lifelike, and between the Warlord and  Myrina I'd spent most of the last month in there being carved up like a  Christmas ham.

The masked monkey  boy sneered at me. "Despicable beast. You seek to deprive me of my  divine weapon and cast aspersions on my character when you fail? Your  vile actions and your wings make your true nature plain as day. Demon,  you stand before the son of the Monkey King!" He lashed out with his  staff again, and this time I was able to dodge it much more completely,  now that I knew that asshole had an extendo rod. Ignoring the wounded  arm I closed in and lashed out with my blade. I'd broken my left arm,  and despite being left handed I wielded my sword with my right.

My  vitality was high as hell, so I felt my arm start to heal pretty  quickly. Of course it would still take minutes to finish, but I conjured  a shadow cast around my arm to keep it splinted while I attacked.  Unfortunately the damn staff shrunk down and he used that shitty tail of  his to swing it to intercept my blade. I winced as the clash provoked a  teeth rattling shake from my blade and dove backwards, abusing my wings  to fly out of the way. Then I went all out. The Warlords terrible skill  and Myrina's split second attacks merged together into the new style  I'd been refining since my fight on Blackgate.

I  was moving through the air like a force of nature. The perfect skillful  slashes of the Warlord delivered instantly with perfect bodily control,  but despite all that I just couldn't land a hit. Shifting the whirling  staff between his hands and that damn tail gave him insane coverage, and  combined with his speed and his incomparable agility and flexibility he  was barely keeping up with me. Before long he lured me in close and  started abusing that insane growth property to smash down on me with  that damn staff over and over again, and I had to resort to a bunch of  teleports to avoid it.

I  snarled at him, darting back before that stupid column could crush me  like a bug. Suddenly I had a brilliant idea. I focused hard, creating a  massive construct of shadow and pouring about two hundred points into  it. Once that was done I shifted to shadow form and then merged the  construct with my shadow body. I fed the power into myself, creating a  giant twenty foot tall shadow avatar of me just like when I stayed in  humanoid shadow form and then I shifted back. Another fifty points  burned away as my normally low energy shadow form skill became  stretched, but despite that it worked.

I  grinned beneath my mask as I brought down my now giant sword on the  bastard at my fastest speed, which strangely seemed even faster than  before because of the enchantment on the sword. I felt the power sing  through my veins as my now massive body blitzed through the exact same  pattern of sword work I'd used before, but this time with massively  increased range and damage. Monkey boy snarled and enlarged his staff,  managing to meet the giant blade head to head by bracing against  buildings and the ground for leverage.

I  was almost fucking vibrating with eagerness to fight at this point. His  stupid expanding staff had given me the idea to try this. My shadow  form and shadow manipulation were different skills, and since I could  use them together to teleport there should be other uses. By creating a  giant simulacrum of myself out of shadow and then shifting it like I  would my normal sized shadow body I'd been able to grow myself into a  fucking giant! Of course this wasn't all hearts and flowers, I wasn't  used to handling myself at this size so I was a bit worried about  stepping on someone or something but still it was turning the tide of  the battle.

As  I put monkey boy on the defensive I used my massively increased range  of vision to check in on my crew to see how they had been doing. From  the looks of it the mooks had gone down easy enough but the big tattooed  lady was giving Artemis some serious trouble. The few other costumed  thugs were fighting the Shadows while Zee tried to drop magic on the big  gray woman to help Artemis to a frankly disturbing lack of success.  Reggie for his part was just chucking bombs into the crowd as always,  trying to make sure not to hit anyone but the bad guys.

That  was about as much as I saw because monkey boy used my brief distraction  to launch a counter attack. Say what you will about monkeys but the way  that kid was spinning that staff was a clear demonstration of how  fucking lethal that flexibility was with that staff. He was doing his  daddy proud, because every time that staff shrunk it was spun up to  create the maximum amount of momentum and expanded into a giant pilled  on the downswing to maximize the force. I felt the jarring ring of metal  on metal as the enchanted black iron pillar smashed into my damn sword  over and over, sometimes making it around my defenses to smash one of my  bones.

I was  kind of glad I was speed based, because judging by the feel of the  impacts this thing actually was like five tons. Unfortunately, that was  just the beginning of my problems. I was able to deflect the impact by  perfectly preparing but I had a much harder time adjusting when a second  one smashed into my ribs from behind. I cursed, teleporting away about  fifty feet as I saw a second monkey boy shrink down his staff and spin  the damn thing up again, getting ready for another attack. I cursed. I  had to point out. "Doesn't that seem a bit unfair. The whole duplication  thing?"

Granted  being twenty feet tall kind of took the wind out of my sails but still.  The monkey prince laughed arrogantly. "What is fairness in battle?  Victory and defeat are the only standards!" I gave an annoyed huff.  Well, he wasn't really wrong. He closed in from both sides, and  deflecting the damn pillar got much harder under the dual pressure of  two attackers. Honestly at this point being huge was starting to become a  liability. It helped counter that annoying staff by creating a weapon  that could match it's size but now that there was two of him I'd kind of  left myself wide open.

I  grunted in anger and manifested into my shadow form, dispersing the  shadow construct into at least ten versions of me. Sadly my skill  couldn't duplicate that particular trick. I became corporeal again at my  normal size but then condensed all the shadow into a few dozen  duplicates of my sword. I swung around and pointed my physical blade at  monkey boy and the two versions of blanched and tried to dodge as a rain  of razor sharp shadow blades poured down on him from on high, clearly  aimed right at his vitals.

The  staff shrunk down again, but rather than lash out alone, the second  monkey boy passed his staff to the first like a baton as the dark blades  shredded his body. The first monkey boy, who I was pretty sure was the  original recipe, passed the staves between his limbs and tail like he  was conducting a parade, batting aside the army of shadow swords. I  controlled the blades to come back around, but I couldn't get through  his defenses. I sent the swords up into the air with a thought to hover  above the battle and exert silent pressure as I dove forward again.

I  teleported in, wielding my sword as viciously as possible and monkey  boy countered, with only one arm I couldn't get through his defenses.  Three limbs and two weapons versus one of each wasn't anything I could  handle for long, but luckily I didn't have to. The asshole took my bait  and tried to smash me with the expanding pillar again, and I took the  opportunity to deprive him of one of the weapons. I dissolved the shadow  swords, converging them into a giant hand that wrapped around the staff  and yanked it away, hurling it off into the distance.

I  winced in expectation of a smashed building or something but the staff  just dissolved into stardust as it flew. I cursed. Fucking duplication  bullshit. Monkey boy flipped backwards into a series of cartwheels and  used his staff as a pole vault to open space as he tossed himself up and  back catching a ledge of a nearby building. He called down to me with  frustration. "What are you? I've never fought another in this city that  was my equal. I suspected the caped one in metropolis was my better but I  should have heard of you."

I  just laughed at him. "Kid, the dungeon has been open for months now.  I'm betting there's more than a few Gothamites that have something to  show you. I didn't get all my powers from there or anything, but it's a  hell of a training ground. Since you seem to be too proud to ask though  my name is Random. Just so you know the name of the guy who kicked you  ass." I grinned up at him from under my mask, admittedly kind of  enjoying the ability to let loose like this.

Fighting  an opponent who was stronger and faster but much less skilled with my  reflexes was kind of a rush. I could tell from his aura he was getting  pissed off about it too. He knew he should be beating me but he wasn't.  Of course I'd yet to really cut loose, but I was picking up some of his  combat style. He may not be as good as me but he had some weird martial  arts going on and I didn't hate the style. It would work well in three  dimensions.

The  monkey boy sneered at me as always. "I am the Monkey Prince, that is  all the name you need beast." I choked down a comment about the irony of  an anthropomorphic chimp calling me a beast but apparently he wasn't  done. "I will allow you the glory of dying beneath my most powerful  attack then demon." His freaky monkey face contorted in the first smile I  had seen from him so far. Then it opened wider, and wider. It was  deeply disturbing to see, and only became moreso when I saw the tiny  sparkle of golden light inside his maw. My eyes widened in panic as I  shifted to shadow form.

Despite  the shift though I remembered my broken arm and panicked, before  pouring another two hundred points into my bloodline and doing something  I had never even considered trying before. I converted my shadow body  into a hole. It felt really weird and incredibly uncomfortable but I  became a gap in space and time just as that shitty monkey kid literally  SPAT a column of golden energy at me from his freaky monkey face.

I  saw it coming my way and prayed with everything in me that the Hole  bloodline would save me. I closed my eyes, which felt weird to do as a  Hole, and just stared at the burning red five hundred behind my  nonexistent lids. Which was the only reason why, as I felt the energy  slam into the depths of my being, I noticed the points value start to  skyrocket. From five hundred up to five thousand as my body and being  absorbed the energy and converted it into my own points. Deep in the  darkness of a place between places my spiritual self grinned. That...was  going to be a game changer.