Sell you a Bridge

by MalcolmTent6730

Have you ever gotten an email telling you you've won a free cruise? Or one for a work out that will get you ripped in ten days? Wouldn't it be crazy if those offers were legit? Well for Morgan O'Malley they can be. Spam becomes real life when his meta powers finally manifest. Hopefully the perks of the super life aren't false advertising.

16. Chapter 16

Mirror House August 7th 2010 8:30 PM EDT

Despite The Dealer having literally no distinguishing features from the rest of the people in here, somehow after a while it became easy to tell him apart from the others. He just had this kind of...presence about him. A weight of confidence or certainty the others lacked. Which considering the people under those masks was pretty impressive. I leaned over to whisper to Jim. "So who is this guy again? You weren't really clear on why he's so special or impressive?" They had talked a lot about The Dealer, but mostly things he did rather than who he was.

Jim just shrugged. "That's a matter of some debate really. Over the years people have figured out his current position, he's part of some evil cult that worships the darkness in the the human heart, but as for who he actually is we have no clue. We can't find anything about his origins or even his real identity. And trust me we've looked. Just about all of us have tried to puzzle out his secrets, but even with the whole Gotham criminal world working on it no one had gotten anywhere. He seems to have severed all ties with his past, and he did it thoroughly."

That was pretty impressive considering the quality of some of the scarier people in Gotham and their information gathering operations. Keeping personal secrets like my power was one thing, I could just never tell more than one or two people, but erasing all traces of your own existence was a feat I couldn't even imagine. Every piece of information from school, the doctor, the government, even casual mentions and photos by friends or people who had been at the same events, there was just so much information to curb and erase.

My musings on the man came to an end as he finally reexerted his control on the room. He had allowed the listeners to lapse into a pitch of fevered whispers after his dramatic proclamation, which for most would have seemed over the top. Despite the obvious theater (no pun intended) The Dealer didn't come across silly or cartoonish, with his sheer presence he recaptured the attention of everyone present before launching into another announcement. "As you all may know, a powerful rift in the world has appeared in our city. Many have dove into it's depths and come out with treasures."

He gestured to one side and a bright spotlight flipped on with a loud clack, illuminating a white marble pedestal with gold veins. I recognized it as Calcatta Oro Marble, a specialized and expensive luxury stone from Italy, and one of the many materials I learned about in my research for Jim. Upon the pedestal sat a ring, one too far for me to identify easily but which they helpfully announced the name of in a plaque below it. The ring was made of a dull gray steel with a large clear jewel set into it and I was positive before I even saw the plaque that it was unique.

The Dealer gestured at the displayed ring with a flourish. "First up we have a particularly impressive specimen. As any who have entered the dungeon beneath us may know, magical items are marked with blue lettering when identified or beheld. The yellow lettering on this item proclaims it to be Unique, based on our sources. While not truly one of a kind, these rare magical artifacts are few enough that even with thousands of people delving the dungeon we've only managed to find a minuscule number."

His voice took on a smug tone. "While normal blue artifacts will be auctioned in bulk at the end of our proceedings, none of them rate a place of honor in our collection. This is the Empyrean band. It provides a flat plus two to all stats, through trial and error we believe that the human peak of all statistics is a flat ten, and one fifth of that added to what appears to be strength, speed, endurance, and magical power is nothing to scoff at. It also increases your light radius in the dungeon, as well as allowing faster recovery from being struck and absorbs half of the damage done by traps or ambushes."

I wasn't sure how the hell they got this one honestly, in the game I remembered it being a reward from Griswolds Magic Rock quest, but quests didn't exist here so maybe the dungeon just spawned quest rewards on drop like other uniques. I didn't bid on that, because I could find it myself if I looked long enough and even if I didn't I could increase my stats other ways. The auction for that ring was quick and very pricey, and by the end the price had gone from a starting value of ten thousand gold pieces to nearly ten times that.

It seemed everyone was using gold pieces at this auction, which considering Jim's revelation about their enchantment potential made sense. But to have this much they must have been either buying the coins in bulk from adventurers or sending gold farming teams down into the Labyrinth. Either way it didn't bode well for us. We only had about fifty thousand gold pieces total between all of us, and most of them were Reggie's. They accepted cash too, but at a ten to one exchange rate for the dollar bidding with normal money would be tough even for me after a certain point. Hopefully prices stayed as low as they were now.

The next item up, thankfully, was not dungeon spawned. Nor was it even magical. A second pedestal lit up on the other side of The Dealer with another flourishing gesture and the light on the first one went out. The gas masked auctioneer sounded positively gleeful about this one. "Now this is a wonderful piece of technology. A synthetic super serum known as BRZK, or Berserk, this little beauty is perfect for creating disposable minions. This vial will create a super powered berserker soldier from any living being,and in its second stage becomes unstable enough to turn them into a living bomb."

I could almost hear the nasty grin in his voice as he spoke and I winced. That was pretty dark stuff. He shrugged before continuing. "We only have a single vial of the compound unfortunately, and our attempts to recreate it have been less than fruitful, perhaps one of you may have better luck however. In any case this is a must have last resort for any super villain. Simply inject the compound into your rear guard as you slip away, and you have a distraction and a finishing blow all in one, not to mention the possibility of a berserk super minion getting lucky and killing your enemy themselves."

Zatanna grabbed my sleeve. "Morgan that's horrible, are we really going to let these kinds of people buy something like that?" I winced. When Jim said it was a supervillain auction, I assumed he meant like a weather machine and some magic bullets or something. Nothing this...obviously evil. I considered myself neutrally moral most of the time, hence my career as a thief, but this pushed my limits and then some. But that wasn't what made me angry. It had been Jim's idea to invite Zee. This wasn't an outing, it was a fucking test. He was vetting my girlfriend, either to join the team or to make sure she could be trusted.

I took her hand in mine. "I know babe, I don't like it either, but this isn't the place to start something. We won't win that fight. I can figure out a way to track them down after, no matter what precautions they take." I meant it too, I would use my power to get a device for finding these people. I wasn't a saint but letting dangerous criminals have this kind of gear rubbed me the wrong way. Which I suspected may have been another point to this. It wasn't just a test for Zee, but for me as well. Jim wanted to see what I would do.

My assurances didn't seem to make Zatanna feel much better, but they calmed her down enough to not do anything stupid and I was grateful for that. The serum finally sold for a million gold pieces, and the men in masks came up to take it away carrying the thing off the stage in a box that they sealed tightly before lifting it. Whoever bought that might want to be careful about that little display, but the sale had been finalized so there was no going back now. Luckily for all involved they accepted credit, mostly because they knew where the invitees lived, and plus carrying that much gold was prohibitive.

Reggie and Artemis were fairly unsettled by the kind of goods being put up too. The ring was a pretty neutral piece of gear, but exploding super soldier serum was too malicious to ignore where it was going, it might by hypocritical but once we heard what it did we suddenly regretted coming here. I was right behind Zee honestly, I wanted to raid this shithole, and only worries about my friends kept me back. The Dealer stepped forward, gesturing for them to shut off the light on the second pedestal and relight the first, which now had a jar of...something on it.

It was...hard to describe. Green and metallic but somehow misty and liquid at the same time, like it was constantly shifting between states of being, the disturbing riot of material slight changing to a different green with each change, but all of them eerie as hell. "This!" Crowed the maniacal auctioneer. "Is Dionesium! A sample found by an explorer in the catacombs beneath Gotham, in a pool he subsequently lost, this miraculous material possesses amazing regenerative capabilities, so potent it can bring even the dead back to life. This jar of liquid metal is completely unique and it's like has never been seen."

That wasn't true. I'd seen it's like. Electrum, the compound the court used to raise their Talons. But this seemed stronger. Electrum was a limited commodity that required long term exposure and replenishment. This stuff was one and done from the sound of it. Zee leaned in. "We can't let them get something like this. It's much too dangerous. The Court is bad enough with that crazy metal you told me about but this seems way worse. Someone could go and dump this in a supervillains coffin or something and bring back someone terrifying. We need to stop them from auctioning this." She turned to Jim. "Is there really nothing we can do?"

I turned with her, despite not being able to see his face, Jim's invisibility made his body language more expressive, at least with people he trusted. I could see the tension in him, and it occurred to me that we had overlooked something pretty huge. Jim was dead. He might be able to use this to come back. He must have predicted my thoughts though because when I turned to look at him he shook his head. "No. It wouldn't work on me. I have no body to revive. I am but a spirit. Even my mortal form is simply a simulacra, though it means a great deal that you would think of me."

He turned to face Zatanna directly. "The answer, I'm afraid, is no. The security on this venue is astonishingly tight. Even more so than usual I can feel the presence of some powerful beings here. If I am not mistaken, Teth-Adam himself is in attendance, acting as a silent threat, and as terrifying as some may find me, I am no match for that old beast. It would take a fool of the highest order to attempt to stage a theft at such an event." Which was, of course, when the Vampires decided to attack.

Mirror House August 7th 2010 8:45 PM EDT

Turns out vampires are real. Which shouldn't be a huge shock with all the other shit I've seen but...vampires? They were pretty stereotypical vampires too. Pale skin, dark hair and frilly gothic clothes. It should have looked silly, they all seemed pretty young it should have been like watching some goth social club from a local high school, or a bunch of drama kids letting their inner Poe out. It should have been all of those things, but it wasn't. Vampires, even stereotypical looking goth kid vampires are not funny.

It's something about the pale thinness and the catlike grace. Vampires don't look like poser goths, even when they dress like them. They look like hungry creatures PRETENDING to be poser goths. Like seeing a black mamba in a wig. It should be hilarious, but black mambas are fucking terrifying, so the comedy isn't there, just the overwhelming sense that this thing isn't pretending to be something it isn't for any other reason than to get close enough to tear your fucking throat out. The unnatural lightness that floated them safely to the ground to surround the stage and The Dealer on it was spooky.

At the head of the pack of vampires surrounding everyone was woman. Long cascading red hair the actual color of blood draped over pale flesh wrapped in a dress the same color that clung to a body that put Jessica Rabbit to shame. But once again I wasn't aroused. First of all my girlfriend was hotter, and second of all the woman, while gorgeous and graceful and clearly on the prowl was so obviously predatory it was impossible to be attracted to her. It was like looking at a tiger. Sure, they're pretty, but you don't want to fuck a tiger. This woman was too dangerous to be sexual,all I wanted was to get away.

Jim cursed off to one side and I turned to give him a questioning look, which he didn't see because of the gas mask but still obviously picked up on. He hesitated for a second in embarrassment. "That's Mary Seward. Who goes by the name Mary, Queen of Blood. She was a...one time paramour of mine. She is extremely powerful and not entirely stable I'm afraid to say. It seems she is also here for something specific so we need not worry just yet." He paused, cocking his head. "Though I recall she and Teth-Adam have a less than cordial relationship. Which may bode poorly for our health."

I stopped gaping at the vampires out of the corner of my eye to focus completely on mt boss. "Seriously? Are there any attractive, evil, and or immortal women over the age of thirty you haven't slept with? Also does that mean she's stronger than you? Because having seen you throw down I don't find that comforting at all." It was mind boggling to me that my urbane, stuffy mentor was such a ladies man. Jim had so many exs it was insane. I knew the man was two hundred years old but still.

Jim coughed in embarrassment. "A gentleman does not kiss and tell. But yes, she and I were lovers. As for her being stronger than me." He held out a hand, sawing it back and forth in a yes and no gesture. "Teth-Adam is a bruiser, and my own talents are ill suited to combat him. Mary, while similarly focused on physical combate, also uses a variety of vampiric abilities as support. That skill set is much more in my wheel house so to speak. I'm confident in my ability to face Mary, where Black Adam would be too much, and Mary would do better against Adam himself than I." He shrugged. "Think of it like a game of roshambo if that helps."

Despite the severity of the situation I head Zee giggle at the old fashioned terminology and had a hard time holding back my own laugh, but I suspected that was partially hysteria and I shook it off fast. "So what the hell should we do? Fight? Flee? Shut up and lay low? You know this woman better than we do, what's most likely to get us out of this alive." After realizing this was some kind of test this entire clusterfuck, though probably unplanned rankled infinitely more than it would have mere minutes ago.

On the one hand I suspected that we could put up a decent fight, less me than the girls. My shadow and physical combat powers would probably be less that useful against vampires, but their heavenly punishment lightning was probably damn effective. The issue here was that they probably didn't have the power to effect someone who could bang it out with Black Adam in a fist fight, and if they offed a few small fish and pissed off the shark we were fucked.

Jim paused for a moment then jumped a bit as a realization hit him, he spun to Reggie. "Reginald can you start swapping us with the people at the edges of the crowd? If we use your translocation to get to the edges we may be able to slip away undetected before-" There was a loud crash and I winced and turned to look. The stage in front of the dionesium had been shattered by a black clad form. A mountain of a man with dark skin and slicked back black hair, his features aristocratic and in some ways almost elfin, glared down at the redheaded vampire with open malice.

Around his wrists he wore what looked like shackles of gold with no chains, and he had a gold sash around his waist. A single gold lightning bolt streaked down from his collar down the middle of his broad chest and his eyes crackled with dark promise and command as he sneered at the approaching vampiress. "Leech." His voice boomed around us, cracking through the air at a volume I found shocking but without any sign of him actively trying to raise it. He wasn't yelling. He just wanted to be heard, and so he was. Teth-Adam, Black Adam in cape circles, stood before us radiating menace like an unsheathed blade.

In her defense the vampire queen didn't seem overly intimidated. She sneered right back at him, her crisp british accent cracking the air like a whip as she spat. "Thug." She sounded actively pissed off at his very existence, and countered his cool disdainful royal bearing with a sort of punkish devil may care attitude that made it hard not to like her. "Move your giant arse or I'll turn you into a pincushion. We have need of that metal." I'd expected her to be aristocratic and prim but she came across just as wild as she looked when she spoke.

Black Adam however, just laughed. "Little beast, I stood against your progenitors when they walked this world. You are far from Lilith's equal, never mind a match for the first murderer. I stand vigil in this place, and you will not take that which I protect. Attempt it at your peril, for only death awaits." He seemed genuinely amused by the threat which didn't bode well. "To think such a child would call herself a queen. Royalty is not something you are infected with wretch. A queen is born, not made. Your delusions of grandeur have made you arrogant, allow me to educate you on the truth."

Black Adam hurled himself forward so fast I couldn't even track it, and I was glad for the wards keeping us from sight, because I didn't want that monster to look at me. The vampire should have been meat paste, but whatever claims the old monster in black and gold may have made, Mary Seward was no pushover. As he hit she shifted into a cloud of bats, scattering into the wind in a dozen directions before reforming behind Adam. Her hands were claws when she reappeared and she lashed out at him with the razor sharp appendages.

But Black Adam wasn't a worldwide threat on the level of Superman for nothing. He turned and caught her wrists with a speed and coordination that made it seem like she had been moving in slow motion. Rather than looking scared or angry however, Mary shot him a triumphant grin. Black Adam seemed as confused as I was by the expression, snarling as he released one hand, letting it scratch at him undeterred as he reached his freed appendage out toward Mary's head with all the deliberate menace of an executioner.

Menace that was cut short unfortunately, by a rumble in the ground. The stage collapsed, imploding beneath them as some kind of shaped charge dropped the pedestal and the jar of magic metal on it into the depths below the theater. Black Adam turned in surprise to see what had happened and as he did Mary shifted into mist and with a ringing laughter reminiscent of a witch's cackle the mist flowed into the tunnel and out of the room, followed quickly by the other vampires in a similar form.

Adam roared with outrage and hurled himself into the tunnel after them, but even for someone like him catching a dozen vampires made of identical mist flowing in a dozen directions was going to be borderline impossible. Jim whistled. "Well, that was certainly clever. I taught her a few tricks when we were together but that was unexpected." Reggie had been getting ready to swap us out of the line of fire but it seemed unnecessary now. Black Adam was gone, as were the vampires. As I had that thought it gave me an idea. I shifted into my shadow form when everyone was distracted.

I slipped through the wards easily, the magic didn't understand what I was, my powers making me an actual living shadow and casting a shadow through this particular ward was more than possible. I flowed across the room as fast as possible, easily avoiding notice in the chaos and damage. This was stupid. I was being stupid. But Zee was right, that BRZK formula was horrible and if I could get it I had to. I couldn't live with the thought of what Zee would go through if someone used that on her dad, or hell on her if she decided to do the hero thing.

Plus I admit, part of me just wanted to make my girlfriend happy. She had been so upset. Jim taught me to always take advantage of an opening and while stealing from this place might be suicide normally with this much chaos flooding it a vanishing vial would just be treated as something the vampires picked up. We'd need to leave right after and we would miss the rest of the auction but with all this madness we would hardly be the only ones to go. I managed to snag the thing with my shadow form and slip back to my boss and friends, wincing as I burned way too many points speeding myself up.

I was gasping by the time I got back, I'd never forced myself to move that fast before. I was down to eighty points, which boggled my mind since it was easily four times more draw from that power than I had ever seen before. I activated my tracelessness power to remove and video footage that may have captured me then grabbed my girlfriends hand. I mutter a vague explanation to Jim, not secure in our privacy even inside these wards, then dragged Zee behind me as we all bolted through the crowd of panicking supervillains in gas masks.

Most the the wards had been broken by fleeing people, much as ours was as we bolted through it to head for the exit. No one bothered us other than a few people who got in our way, but Reggie took care of them, swapping himself for anyone who got in front of us then lagging to the rear again in preparation for a repeat. My friend was a huge asset to a retreat.

Finally we got outside of the theater, stumbling into the alley and up to our car. We climbed in and high tailed it out of there. The last thing we saw in the rear view mirror was a column of golden lightning smashing right through the center of the building. I pulled off my mask and stared wide eyed at my friends. Well, that had happened.

Gotham Docks August 9th 2010 11:30 AM EDT

Today was the day. My mom, Paula, Callie, and Claire were all coming back. Their cruise got in at noon and I had begged off school to meet them, with Reggie, Artemis, and surprisingly Zatanna joining me. I'd told Zee she didn't have to come since we were planning dinner tonight anyway, but she refused to be left out. She'd actually snuck out of her house to come down here, and her dad was under the impression she was home in bed. She told me privately without the massive power boost from her magic stat she would have never managed to slip out undetected.

As of yesterday Zee was at sixty magic, having leveled up twice, which was great actually because she needed the extra magic power to improve her glamour. Her charisma had gone up by ten each level, sitting at a cool fifty now, and it had started leaking through her damn glamour. She was able to tighten up the spell and I made a mental note to introduce her to Madame Xanadu to talk to her about helping her improve her glamours. Meanwhile I'd made it to level six, boosted my points to thirty five per day, and was sitting at a cool one hundred eighty.

Artemis put all of her points into dexterity, and her glamour had needed touching up too, though not quite as much since she was a full nine points under Zee. Fifty seemed like some kind of watershed for physical stats from what I could tell. Still even with the glamour Artemis was moving a little differently, unconsciously more graceful and agile. Or she had been, before she got here and saw the cruise ship in the distance, now she was fidgeting like there was no tomorrow and I couldn't help but smile to myself.

The ship coming towards us was big. Which sounds like an obvious thing to say about a cruise ship, but I couldn't imagine they were all quite as big as this. The massive ship was pitch black with silver accents and glided over the surface of the waves with barely and disruption. The bank of fog beneath the hull swirled forward like a cross between a read carpet and a cushion beneath the ship, making it seem to almost float over the ocean. It made me think about what the email had said about "unknown places". This ship very clearly had some kind of strange ability and traveled in a mystical way. Where exactly had I sent my mother?

I knew my power wouldn't give me overtly harmful abilities and the email had said safety was guaranteed, but it was somewhat alarming to think of all the awful things she could have seen. The general vibe of the email had been pretty joyful but I made a promise to myself to be careful to think of the possibilities before I committed to a power. I'd been so spooked I'd just shipped her off without checking and while from what I remembered it had worked fine this time I had to be more careful. Safety was guaranteed on this cruise but if it hadn't been my mom might have been hurt accidentally by something not associated with the trip or my power.

I turned and took Zee's hand and squeezed, expecting her to squeeze back. She didn't and I looked over at her to see her worrying her lip. I chuckled and leaned in to kiss her cheek. "She's going to love you baby, trust me. Don't look so worried. As soon as she meets you and sees how crazy I am about you she's going to adore you just as much as I do." She glanced up at me uncertainly and I smirked before grabbing her by the waist with one hand on each side and whirled her up into a circle in the air.

She shrieked and laughed before being cut off by me bringing her down for a kiss. When I pulled back she pouted cutely at me. "That's cheating. How am I supposed to stay worried with you giving me butterflies." I laughed and kissed her again, a bit deeper this time but she pushed me back and flailed her hands between us. "No, stop it you giant thug, you'll mess up my makeup. I wore my Love Devotion lipstick today, and if you ruin it I'm going to give you the worst case of blue balls in recorded history. I'm not meeting your mom with lipstick smeared all over my face like a whore."

I burst out laughing at that. "Jesus you are worried, you never talk like that." I smacked my lips experimentally. "I do taste something fruity. What is that?" I pondered it dramatically while I held her against me. "Tastes like Guava. I love Guava. Why wear lipstick flavored like a fruit I love if I'm not allowed to kiss you." I clucked my tongue and shook my head in disapproval. "Such a cruel capricious woman." It made me smile to see how at ease she got when we started bantering, Zee wasn't a nervous girl, but this was a big deal, if I could distract her I'd help as best I could.

She rolled her eyes and snuck in one quick kiss before pulling away. "I'll buy some guava lip gloss for you. But it won't be twenty five bucks a tube and the flagship line of the NARS summer collection. Keep your wandering hands off mister." She leaned in with a teasing grin. "If you're a good boy when I meet your mom I promise you can have all the fun you want with my mouth later." My eyes actually lost focus out of sheer lust when she said that and I swallowed hard and stepped back. She turned to look at Artemis. "And what has you so nervous anyway? You haven't gagged at us once today."

Artemis was so distracted she actually jumped at the question, which was strange because she was usually almost as situationally aware as I was. She shook her head for a second to clear the cobwebs. "What? Oh, yeah, you two are gross. Sorry I'm distracted." She hesitated, as if not sure she wanted to share. "Wally wants to meet my mom. Which is great, I mean I love that he takes us seriously enough to want to meet my parents. But..." She looked nervously at the ship. "He doesn't know who my dad is, and I'm afraid if he meets her he'll ask questions I don't want to answer."

She took a ragged breath. "I don't want him to look at me and see Sportsmasters daughter. Mom was in prison until last year, and if he meets her and they talk it might come up. Things are so good with use but he only knows the new imrpoved Artemis. The track star Gotham Academy student with a close knit group of friends who care about her and watch her back. Someone who gets invited to places like Wayne Manor. I just love how he sees me as I am, and not all the bad shit my dad did. I don't want to lose that."

I frowned, because as much as I wanted to say Wally wouldn't do that, I didn't know Wally that well. Finding out Artemis's dad was Sportsmaster might be far fetched, but treating her like the child of criminals because of her moms time in jail, time that was public record? I didn't see him being like that, not with Artemis, who he treated like she hung the moon, no pun intended, but who really knew. I turned to look at Zee to see her smile and nod. I smiled at my friend. "Why don't you invite him over tonight. He can have dinner with us and we can take some of the pressure off."

Her eyes widened and she looked at Zee. "Are you guys sure? I mean I know how big a deal this dinner is to you, especially to Zee. plus Wally is kind of a pig and he eats a ton, if this is gonna be a thing just forget it, I can handle it myself." Zee put both hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow, glaring at her blood sister frostily for a minute before Artemis threw her hands up with a laugh. "Ok, fine, noted. I'll go text the boyfriend now and have him get ready." She beamed at us and threw her arms around us both before literally skipping off.

The skipping would have looked ridiculous if not for the elven grace she had now, and it came across as dextrous and elegant, but I still had to chuckle at the dissonance of my hardass best friend being excited enough to skip like a little kid, elegance or no. I turned to smile at my girlfriend. "Thank you. I know this is a big night for you and being willing to share it is amazing." I leaned forward for a kiss but received a hand in my face and pulled back, putting my hands up with a laugh. "Fine, fine, no kisses I remember." I put an arm around her though an pulled her close, inhaling the scent of Lavender and Chamomile. My favorite smell in the whole world.

Artemis came back in about fifteen minutes with a blinding grin on her face. "He said he's free. He sounded so cute and nervous I love it. He's always such a cocky dork but tell him he's meeting my mom and his spine turns to pudding. I'm going to torture him about this for years. Do you have enough stuff to make the extra food? We can always stop and get stuff?" I did have enough, I was making Jambalaya tonight because it could cook by itself while I wasn't home and because I loved the stuff with an unholy passion. Luckily Jambalaya was best made in huge pots and I wanted leftovers.

I waved her off. "It's fine. I used a jumbo sized Le Creuset pot, there's enough Jambalaya in there to feed a dozen people. I was going to keep the leftovers for lunches at school but I can always make more later." I ignored their snickers as I discussed my amazing culinary skills, they didn't think a mountain of a man talking about his cookware was masculine, but I was an Iron Chef damn it. There's nothing manlier than butchering animals and slowly using fire to prepare their flesh.

Finally the ship came into port, or whatever the term is. It docked, pulling alongside us and somehow stopping. I had no clue how boats braked. Anyway the ship stopped and the passengers started to disembark. First off of our group was Callie. The boisterous little girl barreled into her brother with a squeal, chattering away about their trip and the amazing places they had been. Next came Claire, the pretty older woman smiling at all of us and sweeping the lot of us into a warm hug. Paula was after her, wheeling herself down the ramp with a relaxed demeanor I'd never seen from her before.

Artemis's mother was usually tense or sad, but being away from any chance of seeing her husband had clearly been relaxing for her. She looked so at peace, and she hugged her daughter and then rolled her eyes and pulled me in for a tight hug as well. Zee looked excited to meet her new sisters mother, but she stayed back, because my mom didn't know about my power and explaining their connection would detract from their first meeting. Finally my mom came strolling down the ramp. What shocked me however was that she didn't come alone. She was walking arm in arm with...a guy. My mom was with a guy. She'd never brought a guy anywhere near me before. She'd kind of flirted with Jim but this was different.

They were holding hands, and she had a brilliant smile on her pale face (O'malley's do not tan) as she brought him up to us. The tall man was...interesting. He wore a hawaiian shirt and had chalk white hair and a pair of round lensed sunglasses. My mom beamed at me as they came with range and waved enthusiastically. "Morgan!" She barreled up to me and pulled me into a hug. "I'm so happy to see you." She smiled wryly and turned to the man whose hand she had dropped. "Oh honey, I'm so sorry. I'm being rude. Satoru, this. is my son Morgan. Morgan..." She trailed off with a blush. "This is my new boyfriend. Satoru Gojo."

O'Malley penthouse August 9th 6:00 PM EDT

So here we were, at dinner at our penthouse. It was Paula, Artemis, me, my mother, Zee, Wally, my moms new boyfriend Satoru, and a partridge in a fucking pear tree. Mom had wanted to invite Reggie's family too, as she and Claire had really bonded on the cruise, but knowing how important this night was to Zee I didn't want to pull focus more than we already had. That said, I was in fact not focused. I busied myself checking on and the food and getting bowls to get away from everyone as Zee helped ease Wally and Paula's meeting.

The older woman was pretty blunt at the best of times and while she was being perfectly nice to the redhead, she was also horrifying him with poignant and deeply personal conversations about his sex life with Artemis and future plans. The poor guys face was as red as his hair and he looked like he wanted to climb in a hole and die, with Artemis right on his heels. Personally I thought it was funny given his usual forward and flirtatious nature, but hey she wasn't my future mother in law (her words). No I was distracted by something else. Or rather someone else. Satoru. I'd checked the guy out in my aura sight and I almost blacked out from mind numbing terror.

Not that I knew what I was afraid of, just that he was fucking scary. I couldn't really understand his aura at all, it was complicated and abstruse, but whatever it was it was powerful. The thing was I was positive looking at it that he had no bad intentions, mostly because if he did I was pretty sure he could wipe the whole city from the face of the planet. Plus the cruise was safe by virtue of the nature of my powers, and I had to trust that those worked or what the hell was I doing. In the end I had no option here but to be nice, besides having him around would make my mom, Artemis, and Paula safer.

So I carried the bowls to the table, making a mental note to have Jim come and check him out, but figuring playing along was my only option here. I sat down next to Zee, who was already chatting with my mom, and took her hand under the table, squeezing gently to let her know I was here for her. She gave me a grateful smile, before nodding to my mom. "Morgan! Wow, that smells delicious, thanks baby, your mom was just telling us about the cruise, it sounds fascinating. I haven't even heard of some of the places they went."

Which was her way of letting me know that the cruise had indeed left this dimension like I'd suspected. Places you've never heard of is a pretty broad description but the phrasing made me think the ship would be moving between worlds. That actually explained Satoru, because whatever the hell that guy was, he wasn't someone that I could imagine people being unaware of. Despite his sunny, friendly disposition, which was obvious even just after meeting him, anyone with an ounce of any kind of power would feel the raw predatory strength rolling off the man in waves. Satoru Gojo was strong enough to beggar belief, and he knew it. He carried himself like an apex predator, relaxed and happy because he could afford to be.

Weirdly though, he also seemed to genuinely not care he was so scary. The guy was a major goofball and it was hard not to like him. When Zee finished talking he hopped his feet energetically and exclaimed "And that's where I come in! Marie-chan ended up visiting Tokyo to take in the sights, and when we met I just fell head over heels." He waggled his eyebrows. "I don't know if you know this kid but your mom is quite the cutie. She stole my heart at first glance." He put a hand to his forehead and tilted back his head with an exaggerated sigh of nostalgia. I blinked a few times, this guy was kind of hard to keep up with. He dropped his head back down to grin at me. "And please, call me Gojo. First names sound strange to me."

Mom reached out with a delighted smile to take his hand. "Ah, yes, sorry honey. Satoru has been teaching me about his culture, and using first names is reserved for close loved ones, usually romantic ones. He doesn't bother with stuffy honorifics but going by his last name will help him feel more at ease." She blushed brightly. "Well, he only uses honorifics for me. He says Marie-chan sounds pretty, and I like it too." Wow. Now I kind of got how Artemis felt around me and Zee, watching family members fawn over their significant other was kind of gross.

It didn't help that Gojo looked like a male model. Seriously, aside from being cut as hell (though not like me, more martial artist than body builder). The dude's hair was fine and silky and his cheekbones were razor sharp. Plus he had weirdly delicate eyelashes, like almost girlishly delicate and long. Still, as long as Jim gave the ok I was happy for mom, she deserved to find someone. She spent so much of my life focused on me, now that I had my own life I guess she felt like it was time. I wasn't enough of an asshole to stand in the way of my mothers happiness if Gojo was on the up and up.

I wondered how dad would react to this, and mentally smirked at the thought of him trying to use the family name to bully this absolute beast of a person. Aside from being too damn strong to push around, Gojo had the most obvious case of not giving a single fuck about anything had ever seen. Oblique threats would roll right off him, hell overt threats would roll right off him unless you tried to actually hurt him. Or at least that was the impression I got of him. It was hard to figure him out without my aura vision, but apparently the combination of aura sight and perfect memory had given me a small talent for reading body language. I guess I subconsciously learned to associate certain movements with emotions.

Gojo spent the next twenty minutes entertaining us with dramatic tales of meeting my mom and their instant connection and his harrowing battle to win her a stuffed bear at a Tokyo carnival, almost thwarted by the nefarious stall owner and his hidden machinations. It was silly and over the top and my mom loved it, giggling like a school girl the entire time as the grinning man loudly proclaimed his victory over a slightly too heavy stack of bottles with a baseball at the eleventh hour. Honestly I was amazed. There was something about Gojo that just put people at ease.

I even managed to adjust my perception enough to start picking up very slight impressions from his aura, with only a constant pain in my skull to prove it wasn't going perfectly. What I saw from him was...weird. He seemed relieved. Like he had been pressganged into doing something hard and awful before but now for the first time he was free. I wasn't sure where Gojo came from exactly, but I was glad my mother wasn't there anymore, because the grief and weariness coming through his aura was so strong once I noticed it I had no clue how I had missed it before.

On the upside I saw his aura shift when he looked at mom too. He really cared about her. He had felt so trapped and isolated where he was and he saw her as a savior. She came and took him away from that awful place, though I had no clue why he hadn't just left. Was his old world really that bad all over? Was every place on that earth so horrible that escaping from the entire universe was his only out? What a scary thought. Though he didn't seem afraid of where he came from, just sick of it. I could feel that same overwhelming apex predator vibe still shining through.

Once I learned to read his aura a bit better I felt much more at ease around Gojo. I could tell he genuinely cared about my mother and that's all I needed. I would still mention him to Jim to check out of course, though I would caution my mentor to be careful, but all in all I decided to give him a probationary ok. In the meantime my mother and Zee had gotten to chatting and mom was thrilled. She turned and gave me a grin. "I like her much better than the last one honey. Annabel was nice enough but she was so controlling in so many little ways."

I blinked. I hadn't ever gotten the impression mom didn't like Annabel. They seemed to get on great. She saw my expression and shrugged. "She was your girlfriend, I wasn't going to butt into your relationship. If you didn't mind her being in charge that was up to you. If I'd seen her mistreat you I would have said something, but she seemed like a sweet girl, just a bit domineering." She smiled at Zatanna. "This one I like better though. She doesn't want to change you, I can tell. She just wants to keep you." Her warm gaze turned back to me. "Besides, you gave Satoru the benefit of the doubt, it would pretty rotten of me not to do the same."

The sense of pride and gratitude coming off her in my aura sight was suffocating and I walked around the table to give my mom a hug. She had been worried about me meeting Gojo. It had been just us for so long she thought I might pull a stereotypical child of a single parent move and be a brat about it. But I had accepted her boyfriend and she could tell and she loved me even more for it. I tried to tell her with my hug that of course I had. She'd done everything for me, I would never get in the way of her being happy. No one deserved it more than my mom.

I was pretty sure I was going to sleep at the clock tower most nights though. The thought of my mom having a sex life made me nauseous. I wanted her to be happy, but I didn't want her to do it close enough for me to hear it through the walls. Meanwhile Artemis had seemingly managed to weather the storm of probing and unusually personal questions without Wally turning into a bowl of red mush, and her mom seemed to have accepted that Wally was sticking around. I was happy for my best friend, and glad we had invited her.

Everyone loved the Jambalaya, a recipe I had put a ton of work into because I absolutely loved the stuff and desperately wanted it to be perfect, and after dinner I brought out the dessert I had made without telling anyone. Of course since we had Cajun food there was only one dessert worth making, and I put out a plate Beignets proudly and listened to the delighted sounds as everyone dug in. I had expected them to be a hit, but they loved them so much Paula made me promise to make more for her for her birthday and I was pretty smug about that.

Finally it was time for everyone to go. Zee's dad would be home soon and she couldn't stay, so I walked her outside to say goodnight. When we were outside she adjusted her glamour so I would be able to see through it and pulled me into a tight hug, putting her head against my chest. "Thank you. I haven't had a family dinner like that in...years. Even before we lost mom dad was always working. It was everything I hoped it would be, and so much more." She leaned up to give me a soft kiss, her lips tasting of guava. "Love you Morgan. Goodnight." And as she teleported home I had to smile. It certainly had been a good night indeed.

The Cathedral August 10th 2010 8:00 PM EDT

Tonight was the big night. We were about to kill the skeleton king. I stared at the entrance to his crypt along with the others. Reggie raised a hand questioningly. "Umm, anyone else getting a bad feeling from this weird vaulted archway? Because seriously, that might as well be screaming trap." He turned to me worriedly." You sure we can't like, lure him out here or something? I might be able to swap him with one of the skellies near the door." He paused. "If my power even works on skeletons. I don't know if I've ever actually tried that. Does my power count as magic?" I hadn't considered that either, but it was something to keep in mind.

I shook my head at that one. "I'd leave experimenting with translocation for another time. Unfortunately that leaves all our ranged options out of reach, so we need to group up and move as a unit. Do we have enough potions?" Everyone here was strapped with a full complement of potions. Mostly health for this since magic didn't effect them, but we even had a few rejuvenation potions we had scrounged up on the way here. The things were rare as hens teeth, but damn useful at the same time, and honestly it would almost have been a waste to use them here if not for the increased effectiveness across the board.

Rejuvenation potions, as it turned out, were more than just more effective than health potions, they were qualitatively better. Aside from healing wounds and replenishing mana, the rejuvenation potions could repair long term injuries. Artemis had been thrilled when she found out and had gotten one for her mom, but sadly Paula's spinal injury was too severe for the potion to cure. However I had mentioned that there was a full rejuvenation potion down here that should do the job and Artemis had been over the moon.

Due to this little quirk, rejuvenation potions had quickly become priceless in Gotham, with everyone and their mother trying to get their hands on one. Especially after one of the Arkham doctors had given one to Two Face last time he ended up in there. Oddly rather than fixing Harvey Dent, the healing seemed to have broken the man. Two Face had done some horrible things, and he had based a huge part of his identity on his appearance. Without that foundation he was left too damaged and stained to return to his former self but too whole to remain Two Face.

Regardless everyone here knew not to use the rejuvenation potions unless they had to. I got a nod from everyone nearby in regards to potion allocation so we moved in. I was the one who took the lead of course. My reaction time and twelve dexterity made me a perfect dodge tank. Artemis was faster flat out, but she couldn't process and respond to an attack as quickly as I could, so I was the better front man, even if I was less able to take a hit. Durability had never been my scene, but with my speed and instantaneous movement skills dodge tanking was a role I was suited for. Combine it with my ability to do damage and my knowledge of the human body and I could grind down anything I met. So far.

The crypt looks almost identical to the cathedral at large. Gray stone floors, gray red brick walls, arches and torches, the same old same old we had been dealing with since we got here, but there was also something different about it. The cathedral felt predatory, but it was a pervasive suffocating feeling. Like there were thousands of beasts hiding in the dark waiting to fall upon us as a tide. This place felt predatory in a united sort of way. Like Leoric had become the dungeon itself in this space and we were within his domain now. I wouldn't be shocked if he could see everything that happened here.

True to my impression of events to come a series of skellies converged on us as soon as we entered. Not just normal ones either, burning dead, captains, and archers had all become commonplace here, but usually only one or two. The swarm that we hit when we walked in made it obvious that the King had been expecting us, or at the very least had been a boy scout or something because this level of preparation was absurd. I had my tanto out and swinging before my conscious brain even registered what was happening, my reflexes taking out as the short blade lashed out with a snicker snack.

Bones fell in piles as I put my knowledge of killing skeletons to work. Though they were magical and didn't have any muscle or sinew for my anatomy knowledge to work with, I was still a master assassin with weeks of practice fighting them and I'd learned which bones to shear through to disable them quickly. I took apart the two Captains without even trying, not just because of my speed, but because fighting down here day in and day out had allowed me to finally make the most of what I could do.

The constant battle pressure had forcibly started merging my various skillsets together more seamlessly and more than that, was squeezing every ounce of usefulness from each point I had in my body stats. I had been purposefully waiting to start gearing up until I ran into a real issue with combat just so I could learn to adapt to how my skills and body worked together, and it was paying off. Having a brain full of random disparate techniques was fine, but until I could learn to synergize properly in combat I would never be using them to their fullest.

With the extra training and the exponential boost in effectiveness I took apart the two burning skeletons, circling around to take off the archers left leg at the knee before sweeping up to sever the spine of the Corpse Bow in front of me, causing it's bones to collapse into a pile as I wiped out its ability to function. Artemis put several arrows in incoming skellies as Kit unloaded a series of beanbag rounds into the things, a genius idea of her own conception since blunt force is the ticket for skeletons.

Reggie though unsure if his translocation would work directly was using it to swap balls he was tossing at them with small explosives. Holding a tennis ball in one hand and a small grenade in the other he pulled the pin with his teeth while keeping the clip depressed then hurled the ball. The skeleton captain dodged it with ease but the tennis ball bounced off the wall behind it and Reggie swapped it with the grenade right before it hit the back of the things head. He'd been training the combat style for a few days now and could reliably bank the ball off a wall or ceiling to get a better angle.

Zee was unable to effect the skeletons with magic, but considering how versatile she was and how powerful her spells had gotten she had just started conjuring anvils above the heads of the archers, crushing them easily. There were so many that even she had to pace herself however, and could only cast the spell a few times per minute, and eternity in a combat situation. Leoric as it turns out, decided not to bother with laying traps this time and just hurled waves of skeletons at us to bog us down.

I hadn't expected him to be able to command them perfectly over a distance though I suppose it was a kingly sort of power, but the waves of the bastards kept us busy while he summoned even more of them and we were barely making progress. I snarled but we had expected some kind of concentrated push, even if we hadn't figured on it being this bad. I kicked our plan into gear and nodded to Reggie and Zee. Zee used levitation to get herself up near the vaulted ceiling and when she had an eye on the right spot she shot Reggie the signal.

Reggie chucked me a pair of his grenades, which I caught easily, and then swapped us out. Using my teeth to pull the pins I reacted at top speed and used my perfect marksmanship to wing both of them down the length of the crypt and through an open door to land near the hulking crowned form of a skeleton who could only be Leoric himself. I fell back towards the floor and Zee caught me with magic, lowering me down as we heard a boom. I was sure the explosion wouldn't kill the bastard but at the very least it should slow down his summoning and let us close the gap.

We went back to fighting the army of bone bastards, hacking and cleaving our way through. Kit had a backpack of those beanbag rounds to work with and Artemis had brought plenty of arrows so we were more than capable of keeping up the pace for a while. With the King out of commission or at least distracted we started making actual progress in the battle, cutting through two full rooms of skellies before making it to the door I had hurled the grenades through. The room on the other side was burnt and broken, these had been full sized frags, not the baby grenades Reggie used in combat.

Still, despite the severe damage to the surroundings and the piles of bones, it was easy to see at first glance that as I suspected Leoric was fine. Super pissed off from the way he was stalking toward us but not really damaged too much aside from some scorch marks. His crown shone with a cold light on his brow and the sword he was carrying was fucking massive, which fit really well with his frame. Because holy shit. Leoric was easily ten feet tall. His bones were thicker than other skellies, the fingers being almost as wide around as my wrist and the wrapped snugly around the grip of his fucking monster of a blade.

I swallowed hard at seeing him but lunged forward to do battle. Much like with the butcher I was on the back foot, but Leoric was on a whole other level. I had to dip into shadow form constantly to avoid being split in two and I winced at the point use. If I was lucky I'd be down to two hundred when this was over, though the fight should put me up to level six and increase my point yield to thirty five per day. Reggie was hanging back as we fought because those tennis balls weren't safe with me in range, but the beanbag rounds were proving to be worth their weight in gold.

Zee continued dropping anvils on the bastard, which seemed to seriously disorient him so that was good. Finally after minutes of frantic dodging I saw an opening. I used my water walking to step off Leoric's knee and then again off his extended arm and catapult myself up into range of his fucking basketball hoop height head and slashed out at the his third vertebra with my tanto. It connected and sheared through the bone. The stress had been mounting all fight and that blow had been what my assassin skills told me would end it.

And end things it did. The huge skeleton collapsed into a massive pile of bones and I felt a rush of power as I leveled up and I knew Artemis and Zee did the same. I slumped to the ground, exhausted, as the others made short work of the stragglers. We all smiled in triumph at the final hurdle of level three being clear and let the exhaustion wash over us as we started at the huge metal chest at the back of the room. We had won.

Ok a few things. First. Gojo is retired, he isn't going to be involved with anything that's going on anytime soon. Don't expect him to become the new mentor or anything, he will be relevant more later on, I have some fun plans, but Morgan has a mentor and doesn't know Gojo, while Gojo has no reason to follow his girlfriends kid around and find out what he's upto in the first place. Regardless you won't be seeing too much of him for the next few arcs and when he does show up it'll be when the power balance can better accommodate him. Second yes he stole the vial, he's a thief, and any thief worth their salt would take advantage a riot in an auction house. That said he isn't keeping it and he stole it to destroy so no he won't be tracked down, especially since the dealer has bigger things to worry about right now. The short auction arc was setup for later, we will see more about that down the line. In any case hope you all enjoyed this one and I have some very fun things coming in the advance chapters including the first real interaction between Morgan's crew and the team nd a very fun fight with Klarion. Let me know what you guys think, and of course the advance chapters are available on my pat-reon at that site /malcolmtent. Let me know what you think!