Sell you a Bridge chapter 214 (Patreon)

April 15th 2016 Infinity Island 5:30 PM EDT

The  rush of energy flooding into me was beyond anything I had ever  experienced. The Monkey Prince's little beam spit was nothing compared  to the massive, unadulterated SURGE of pure undiluted power being dumped  into my soul through my void form. It funneled through the void that I  was, into my spirit, and I felt myself shift slightly, stretch to try to  accommodate the sheer mass of the new strength.

I'd been  empty before, more than once. It wasn't nice, headaches, fatigue, just  general unpleasantness, but I'd never been FULL of points before. Not  like I couldn't take any more, but like I was swallowing something way  too big and my body had to stretch to try to to get it down. It wouldn't  fill my stomach, but it was still a challenge to absorb that much power  at one time. It reminded me a bit of the strain when I tried to use my  power without a focus, but deeper, and much more  intimidating to  experience.

Because of how I'd been holding Adam he didn't  fall into the void form, he just dropped into the open air. Blue dashed  forward and caught him, signaling the end of the fight, and I groaned  as I shifted back to my corporeal form. I hung there, suspended in the  air and rubbed my eyes, trying to get rid of the headache. Despite that  though, the pain wasn't the main focus of my attention. There was  something else keeping me distracted. A big blazing number behind my  lids. Over one million points.

I was flabbergasted. I'd  never had that much power before. Ever. Two hundred and fifty thousand  had been my max, and I needed almost a month of scrimping and saving,  not to mention daily tantric rituals to juice me up, but Adam using his  little battle cry once had quadrupled that number in a single second.  Not to mention I still had a few thousand left of my original twenty  thousand points to use in this fight. Demonic reinforcement was  expensive, but Adam had slipped my hold pretty fucking fast.

I  shook off the head pain, adjusting to the new tolerance limit. I could  feel that I would be able to manage a bit more with my power, and it  reinforced my interpretation of points being like training wheels. I was  getting myself ready to use my power differently, though I had no clue  how exactly that would manifest. I turned to Blue and the girls. "Get  him back to the boats. Without his enhancements keeping him unconscious  and bound should be easy enough, but don't take chances."

Blue  nodded and he and Zee took off. Dreamer lagged behind though, floating  in the air on her own pink energy. "You're going to join one of the  other fights." It wasn't a question. She knew me well enough by now to  understand that I couldn't just sit around and stare. She glanced at the  other battles. "Morana's fight seems to be going pretty well. She' s a  powerhouse. So I'm guessing you're going to help your mentors with the  witch boy. I expected them to be doing better with this fight."

I  grunted. "Yeah me too. A big open space like this suits his magic  better than theirs though. And he left behind that shitty cat on the  island, so they can't aim for the anchor. I wasn't aware he could  separate from it. Some annoying trick of Circe or Darkseid probably.  They need someone to slow him down. Chaos is a bitch to contain, someone  is going to need to injure him before we can catch him, and since the  cat is out of the picture...well, that's just me." I reached into my  jacket and drew my gun, showing her the dark metal.

I was  pretty sure it wouldn't end him. It was stronger now, but based on what  it had done to him before it probably wasn't possible. Klarion wasn't  really a kid. This body was the equivalent of the toe he was dipping  into this world. A very small part of a very large being. Regardless,  while I wasn't going to kill him shooting up his toe, the gun would give  him a hell of an infection. And the prison would basically slap a cuff  around his ankle with the toe as leverage. Once I fucked him up enough  with the gun we could shove him in there before he managed to purge the  malignant energy.

Dreamer nodded, obviously trusting I  knew what I was doing. I mentally reached out to Morana, asking to  borrow Solomon. My daughter was currently slapping Circe up and down the  length of the island, but the annoying goddess wouldn't stay down.  Luckily she had all of Zee's magical knowledge, and the power to really  go to town with it, so she was more than holding her own. I was pretty  sure she was learning a lot too, and I looked forward to seeing her try  the Outer Body trance with all these magical attacks Circe was using to  try and get away.

So I took off towards the battle with  Klarion. As I'd mentioned to Dreamer, this was a bad situation for my  mentors. Granted they pretty much matched if not outdid him in terms of  magical muscle, but Klarion's mobility was top notch. Most of them were  land bound, Jim being the exception, and it was hard for Madame X and  Blood, now in his demon form, to even put hands on the slippery little  bastard. It was mainly Jim against Klarion with support from the other  two, and not having his anchor to protect meant the bitch boy was NOT  holding back.

Still, Jim was doing better than most would.  He was blowing the shit out of the kid when he did manage to hit,  blasting holes in him and tearing off limbs that Klarion healed and  regrew much too quickly. Stupid higher dimensional entities, I hated  their bullshit. I slipped into my incorporeal state as I flew towards  their battle, doing my best to line up a decent shot. I was pretty sure  Jim could see me in ghost form, but if he could he didn't let on at all.  My boss was a consummate professional after all.

I would  have liked to use my giant construct cannon trick, but unlike Adam  Klarion was too slippery for it to land, and even if I managed, it  wouldn't pack the same punch. Where I had to worry about the death  concept in the twenty two killing Adam, that very energy was the only  real show we had at slowing down Klarion. I needed all that darkness and  evil. My knock off killing blow wouldn't be toxic enough to infect that  toe.

I lined up my shot, taking my time, and when I had a  solid bead on him, then I reached out to Solomon to have him cast stop  and then emptied my gun into the little bastard. I saw him try to move,  but in the slowed time I was easily able to react and adjust, bullets  punched through him center mass and there was a wave of red energy as he  let loose a torrent of chaos magic and tore the spell to shreds.

He  spun on me, and I let the invisibility and intangibility drop, because  there was no real point. His too wide mouth pulled into a snarl, beady  little eyes narrowed in rage. "OUCH! That really hurts! What a mean  trick! Where did you get a nasty weapon like that?" He paused. "Wait. I  recognize you. That gun too. You're that mean boy with the shadow powers  from a few years ago. You shot me in the head and then threw me off a  roof. What did you do to that gun? It feels...different."

His  tone shifted as he spoke, from childish antics to cold, arrogant  interrogation. He wasn't bothering with the flighty child charade. He  was a lord of chaos and he was genuinely recognizing the gun as a...well  not a threat, but something of interest. I knew for sure I absolutely  didn't want this little bastard getting his hands on my gun. Luckily I  didn't need to worry about that. Because while Klarion was now taking me  seriously, he was NOT taking the other people nearby seriously anymore.  Or at least not as seriously as he should have been.

Jim's  conjured giant skeleton hand lashed out from a massive set of floating  doors to the chime of graveyard bells, wrapping around the distracted  chaos lord with an iron grip. Rather than throw a fit, Klarion turned  his fucking head a full one hundred eighty degrees and glared at Jim. "I  was busy with something, you obnoxious spook. Wait your turn." He  flexed his red energy again and it tore the hand apart, dissolving the  thing into a cloud of graveyard mist. Jim grunted and flinched back as  if struck, which wasn't a great sign.

Klarion  looked...wrong. His chalk white skin, distended features, long thin  body, and shark like teeth made him seem like some kind of nightmare  creature. Like he was what a serial killer who had never seen a child  before would draw based on a vague description. It was even more  pronounced now than it had been a minute ago too, like tapping into his  chaos energy had stripped away some of his facade, showing even more of  the monster beneath.

Or rather, tapping into his chaos  energy while so severely wounded. Because I could see tears in his aura  where the bullets had struck him. Not big tears, especially not in  comparison to the the aura itself (which reminded me of nothing so much  as the outline of a fucking Megalodon under dark water, or some other  horrible monster in the depths) but tears all the same. I could see his  power bleeding out, and small amounts of sickening dark corruption  beginning to spiderweb through his aura.

Klarion was  acting tough, but he was truly and genuinely wounded. We had him on the  ropes, but this wasn't over. A cornered animal was the most dangerous,  and Klarion was so much worse than an animal. I wracked my brain for  some easy finishing move. Some perfectly suited spell or ability I could  bust out. But I couldn't think of anything, couldn't come up with a way  to bind him until we could get him go the prison. I needed to lock him  down...then I froze. I looked down at my hand, and had a brilliant idea.

I  reached for Tartarus. Not with my hand, I was already holding it, but  with my soul, reached out with the same part of me that had heard its  name when we met, and I asked it a question. Its response was gleeful,  overjoyed, and I grinned as I raised the weapon. I'd forgotten one of  the first things Jim ever taught me as a thief. There is a proper tool  for every job. Thugs force the world to submit though muscle or power,  but thieves are more elegant. We accomplish our tasks through the most  efficient means possible.

Klarion  was, despite it not being on hand somehow, anchored to that form. He  had purposefully bound himself to the mortal plane tightly enough that  only killing that cat could really get rid of him. The key word there  being bound. I raised my key, envisioning that binding as a chain, and  on that chain I envisioned a lock. I saw Klarion's head jerk my way  unnaturally quickly as a small keyhole materialized on his chest. I saw  genuine horror on his face as I pointed my keyblade at the hole, and  with a mighty heave, turned it.

There  was a resounding click that seemed to echo through the entire  hemisphere as that binding that Klarion had made purposefully tight, but  not too tight, was locked in place, and his entire aura was condensed,  yanked inwards. Every ounce of power was stuffed into his childlike body  trapped there as that whole monstrous entity was locked inside. He fell  from the air horror and confusion plain on his unnatural face, and I  opened up a corridor of darkness, letting him plummet right into the  hole, too disoriented to even think of avoiding it as he dropped right  into the prison I'd made for him. I stared down at my keyblade in awe.  Ok, that was REALLY cool.