Sell you a Bridge chapter 231 (Patreon)

April 22nd 2016 Gotham City 8:30 PM EDT

Gilotina  WAS actually really good with a blade. Within three exchanges I was  able to confirm she was better with a blade than the Warlord was, and  the thought of a new sparring partner in my head was exhilarating enough  to drown out my internal complaints about her bullshit sword got  ability to cut things. Luckily for me, my keyblade could be dismissing  and resummoned without and lasting damage, so the first swing I caught  on the blade without compensating for it didn't permanently cut into my  weapon.

Still, even managing to gouge a hole I could wipe  away was damn impressive, considering I hadn't run across anything in  the past that could actually damage my magic weapon. She seemed shocked  when she didn't actually cut through the whole thing, and even moreso when I dismissed and resummoned the keyblade to repair the chunk her  blade had bitten out of it. She also seemed frustrated as she came back  in for another exchange, clearly hoping to repeat the process and  actually manage to break it this time.

She didn't. With my  understanding of her attack strength I switched from a hard form to a  soft one. Instead of blocking, I started turning her blows, using the  teeth of my keyblade to hook the weapon and drag it out of alignment  before batting it aside. Her reaction to my adapted defense was mostly  just to get really pissed off and try harder to cut me in half, and  honestly the sloppy breaks in her timing as she sped up were a godsend.

Unfortunately,  it wasn't all good news. Gilotinas defense was more offense, but it was  a really well constructed one. Her annoyance left breaks in the form  for me to exploit, but not big enough ones to manage to land a hit, and  the battle stalled out there for a minute, with the two of us engaged  more in a countering contest than a match with the blade. Rather than  continue getting more and more angry though, she seemed to calm down as  we exchanged, blows, seeming almost soothed by the rhythm.

It  was a weird feeling to be matched against a girl who physically look  about my age and was just as good as I was with a sword. I knew she was  actually much older, New Gods aged slowly to maturity and not at all  after, but still, this fight was the first thing I'd had like an  interaction with a peer in swordplay since I'd mastered the Outer Body  trance. I think Gilotina felt the same way, because the smile pulling at  the corners of her mouth was obviously one of enjoyment and fun.

It  was such a weird sensation I decided to reach out with my bare  fingertips to brush her skin and use my clairvoyance on her in our next  exchange, and that...that was a mistake. My enhanced reflexes were the  only thing that saved me from her next attack, and I barely managed to  turn her blade before it opened my throat as I froze at the sight of  what had been done to her. As someone who grew up on Apokalips under  Darkseids direct supervision, she had been subjected to much more than  the light bit of mind twisting that Adam had experienced.

I  was able to get back into the fight seconds later, returning to our  back and forth pattern, but trying to forget what I'd seen was much  harder. Clairvoyance was absolutely the kind of thing that used  symbolism as well as emotions. I was able to handle Gilotina's emotions.  Basically just a lust for battle, that was fine, but the visual effects  of using clairvoyance showed me a physical representation of what had  been done to her over the years, and that was much, much less bearable  to look at.

Her eyes were gone. And the blood coming from  her ears made it clear she couldn't hear. Her tongue had been removed,  and she was screaming constantly, her mouth open in a silent wail that  made no sound. Her heart was missing, a gaping hole in her chest where  it should have been revealing nothing but a small version of what I  assumed was her as a little girl, trapped in a cage of barbed wire,  crying constantly. When the crying stopped, the cage tightened, making  the tears come back as she curled up to get away.

I  blinked eyes now filled with tears to clear away that image, trying not  to be physically ill and desperately wishing I DIDN'T have a perfect  memory. I had been hoping to understand some of what Darkseid did so I  could undo it or detect it better in my own people but that had been...I  didn't think I would ever be able to forget any of that. Suddenly, I  was much less willing to kill this girl. This girl who was my age  physically and had been emotionally tortured and twisted into a literal  weapon for the amusement of a sick god.

Despite how  sickening it was, it gave me at least a bit of insight into her as a  Swordsmaster. It might not seem important, but being able to interact  with each other for the last few minutes in combat had given me a good  idea of what she COULD do, and understanding her better made it clearer  what she WOULD do. I started to compensate for her style somewhat, more  easily able to exploit the gaps in her technique with the knowledge of  how to open them myself.

She'd gotten a bit annoyed during  that slip, but once we got back into the fight she lost the impatience  and started to genuinely enjoy herself again. I could see the twisted  thorns of black malice in her aura now that I had looked deep enough to  uncover the darkness inside, and where before I'd only seen the surface  aura of bloodlust and ferocity, now I could actually see the small  flashes of peace she felt between the blows when she was giving her all  and meeting a worthy opponent. The flashes never lasted long, as the  thorns choked down on her spirit, causing pain and hate to flare up and  crush down any hint of enjoyment.

The whole thing made  me...angry. This was wrong. Everything that had been done to this girl  was wrong. I looked at her and all I could see was the way my daughter  might have turned out if she'd ended up with someone like Darkseid.  Morana had been an innocent, someone we had to teach and guide. She  still was in plenty of ways, and Darkseid had used someone just like her  to make...this. I'd heard stories about Darkseid. How he was evil and  vicious, and for Dreamers sake I'd promised myself I'd get rid of him,  but for the first time, I couldn't wait to be strong enough to finish  that fight. I wanted to kill the bastard for this. He deserved to die.

When  I first saw her I thought Gilotina was amazing. She was forged for war,  obviously devoted to the blade, hell, she was the next best thing to a  sword herself. But now I could see the dents where someone had used a  hammer to crush her into the weapon she'd become, and it made everything  about it disgusting to me. I made a mental note to absolutely not use  my fucking clairvoyance and random strange gods again, but for the  moment, I had this knowledge, and I needed to know what to do with it.

But  I did know. Deep down. I wouldn't kill her, but as much as I wanted to  help, that process could only begin after I captured her. I needed to  beat her and then lock her up, and after that I could use my  clairvoyance to try to undo what had been done. As cold as it sounded,  she could be a test run for how much of that damage I could undo in case  it happened to my loved ones. Despite that, I did hope I could actually  fix her. No one deserved to be something like her. For now all I could  do was fight, and win.

This had stopped being any fun for  me a while ago, and it was no longer about the blade. As much as I  wished I could give her more of the flashes of brief happiness our  battle was causing, especially without the corresponding pain tearing it  away, I didn't have time for a moral quandary. I reached out with my  power, and straining hard I activated my demonic strength enhancement  through the armor, with absolutely no point cost whatsoever.

I  banished Tartarus as the next blow came in and ducked lazily under it.  Thought became action, and with the triple speed of my reaction time  multiplied by my dexterity I didn't have any trouble walking right  through her previously well constructed guard. I grabbed her wrist,  surprised by how durable she was since the bones didn't powder under my  grip, and had to actually yank to get one hand off the pommel of her  sword. I shoved the other away, sword and all, and then punched her in  the face.

My head pounded as much as hers must have been,  using my powers like this, even with the armor as a focus, fucking hurt,  but I managed it for a few seconds, which at those speeds was enough.  Once the first blow landed, the fight was over. All that was left was a  beating. I was moving too fast for her to process, and she had slipped  off her flying disks, only for me to catch her by her sword arm.

It  made me hate Darkseid even more how badly I had to beat her to make her  stop resisting. She wouldn't give up. She wanted to, deep down. I could  see her desire for the pain to end, to just give in, but every time she  tried to consider it those twisted thorns bit back in and drove her  into a frenzy, forcing her to keep fighting, and me to keep hurting her.  It took longer than I could have imagined for her to finally lose  consciousness, and the second she did I dumped her through a shadow  portal into the oubliette.

I felt...hollow, when I was  done. And even after I let the demon strength drop and my head quieted  down I couldn't get the images out of my head. I looked up as a  Parademon flew in close and I grabbed it, ignoring its nonsense attacks  as I tore it bodily in half with my bare hands before reaching for  another. I was angry, but luckily there was a whole bunch of mindless  cannon fodder flying around here for me to take that frustration out on.  So I did.

I killed Parademons. Crossing the distance  between them instantly through the shadows, feeling my headache increase  a bit bit just pushing it down. It didn't matter. I didn't need to  think to crush garbage like this. Until I felt a strange tug on my  spirit, and I stopped. I was on a building, standing over a few dozen  Parademon corpses, and Zee was standing in front of me. The tug has been  the connection between my girls and I. She'd felt what was happening  and come to find me.

She looked sad, and tired, and she  opened her arms, and I stepped forward and wrapped mine around her and  cried. I left my armor on. I didn't want anyone to see me crying. But I  knew I wouldn't hurt her. I could never do that. It took me a few  minutes to get past what I'd just seen and felt, and I mentally rebuked  myself for using a new power in the middle of a battle as I calmed down.  That one was going to take some getting used to. For now though, Zee  just kissed my metal cheek and turned to return to the battle, not  saying a word. She didn't need to, and I loved her for it.