Over the next three weeks I continued to teach cultivation to the bat family. Dick wasn’t able to practice with us, as he had to be there for his wife and new daughter, but Tim managed to cultivate to the Gathering phase during that time and I managed to return to Foundation level the night before. Every day I would have Bruce, Tim, and Damian spar with me. They were not as strong as I was with their magic, and rarely used any, but they were all in better shape than I was, making their physical stats almost as high as my own. This allowed the three of them together to continuously press me, even if I rarely lost to them.
Things with Raven were also going well. We had even started to teach each other our specific cultivation techniques, even going so far as to share memories directly using Elixirs, so that we could understand that other person’s cultivation. She had little experience with elemental chi, generally using spell formations to cast elemental magic if she wanted an elemental effect, so it took her a few days to properly refine any elemental chi, in her case producing fire chi first. She didn’t seem to like that she had a high natural affinity for fire, but I assumed it was because, as we both knew, that affinity was a result of her demonic bloodline, one she hated.
Her own cultivation technique, the Azurathian method, used a type of chi that I could only understand as “purity chi”. Whenever it touched something it would remove the imperfections and contaminants, making it better than what it was. By using this, her people could break through to new levels without constructing shells around their three dantians, or, in their tradition, their seven chakras. I had found these seven chakras within myself, the three dantians being three of them, but the other four being weaker than those three, possibly because I hadn’t developed them. Had my own traditions missed something? Perhaps this difference in our cultivation techniques was what allowed her own spiritual multiplier to be so much higher than mine, at around zero point two.
On every date we would meet in our minds, in a version of the space used for image training. It was all I could do to create a simple room in that place when I first showed her the technique, but once she became familiar with it she started creating the rooms for us to meet in. She was even able to fill the space with elemental chi, her subconcious mind performing a level of refinement on it before showing it to us in that place, so I was able to cultivate much faster thanks to her help. It would probably only be another week or two before I returned to the level I was at before breaking my cultivation, my base stats, physical, magical, and spiritual multipliers higher, and my dantians much larger than before. I was also working on expanding my chakras. These were more difficult to work on than my dantians, but from what I had learned so far, they would greatly improve my chi regeneration as well as my magical and spiritual multipliers.
After the day’s sparring session I went to take a shower so that I could head to Raven’s for another date when Bruce received a Signal. It was seven p.m., so it was most likely related to some sort of criminal activity.
---
Earlier that day:
Yu Bang’s phone rang, and he answered it. “Hello, Mr. Bang.” the woman said. He recognized the voice as the one that had been there when he woke up in the clinic, after the Metabrawl. “Or should I say, Hello Mr. Soul Blade?”
“Either is acceptable. I didn’t want to use that name during the first metabrawl, but I don’t think I need to keep it a secret any longer.”
Fist looked at him. Two weeks ago he had found John, the former homeless drunk, looking for work and had offered him a position as Fist. Since then John had spent most of the day cultivating and had even reached early Gathering. His cultivation after that had been slow, however. He was having difficulty refining sword chi, and was hesitant to cultivate that which he did refine into his dantian. Every time he did, however, the chi Severed some small bit of weakness inside of him, slightly increasing his Physical multiplier, as he was cultivating it into his lower dantian like a body cultivator.
“In that case, Mr. Bang,” the women continued, “I believe I have a job that is worthy of a man of your talents.” Bang had done a few jobs for her over the last three weeks, but none of them required him to exert himself. He had asked for better jobs, and now it seemed like she was delivering.
“And what would that be?”
“A client of mine has a shipment he needs protected until his client can pick it up. It must not fall into the hands of the heroes, and if it does not only will you not get paid but your reputation with my employment agency will be negatively effected.”
“And if we succeed, what does it pay?”
“One hundred thousand, plus another hundred thousand if you have to fight off any heroes.”
“This must be a valuable package, indeed.” he responded. Maybe he could negotiate for a bit more?
“Quite. In fact, we have hired two other super villains for the job as well. You are allowed to bring support, if you wish, but we will not be increasing your pay if you do.”
“I don’t think I’ll need it.” he responded. Fist probably wasn’t ready to take on super heroes, and he couldn’t trust the random thugs in his employ with anything more than running a few underground businesses.
“Very well, do you accept the job?”
Bang nodded. “Yes, I accept.”
“Good, then I will send you the details. Good luck.” With that the woman hung up, and a minute later Bang received a Signal message with the details of the job.
A few hours later he set out for the location, a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. When he arrived, not seeing anyone else outside, he opened a door and went inside. Immediately he smelled a sickly sweet smoke and saw a man in clown makeup sitting beside the door. Bang recognized the scent as marijuana, as some of his thugs also had the dirty habit of smoking it. “So, you’re here for the job too?” the man asked. Bang nodded and the man lead him past several empty wooden crates to an open area where three people sat playing cards, a woman in red that carried a baseball bat, a man in purple that wore clown makeup, and a big guy in a mask with tubes stuck in his arms.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He recognized the two men at once. “Joker, Bane.” he said, sitting down at the ‘table’ they had set up. “So you two were hired as well? Where’s the crate we are supposed to protect?”
The Joker smiled and kicked the table. “You’re looking at it.” he said. “We threw a tarp over it and decided to play cards on it.” He pushed two blue chips towards the center of the crate. “Harley?” he asked, looking at the woman.
She looked at her cards intently. “Gin.” she said, throwing her hand on the table. Bane rubbed his face in exasperation.
“We’re playing Texas hold-em, dear.” said the Joker.
“Oh,” she said, then picked up her cards. “In that case, I’ll call.” She pushed two blue chips into the pile as well.
Bane called as well and they revealed their cards, the Joker taking the pot.
“So, you playing for money, or something else?” Bang asked, taking a chair from one of Joker’s henchmen.
“Whites are ten dollars, reds are one hundred, blues are one thousand.” said Bane, then showed me a box with chips and cash in it. “Just buy your tokens and we’ll deal you in. You can cash out once the crate has been delivered.”
Bang shrugged, threw a ten thousand dollar stack into the box, and removed nine blue and ten red tokens. “Ante is one hundred” said Bane as he started dealing and Bang threw a red into the middle of the table.
---
Batman looked through the skylight at the four villains playing poker. They had received word that Lexcorp would be shipping something through Gotham, and Batman wanted to know what. They hadn’t, however, anticipated dealing with dozens of Joker’s minions and four villains.
Thankfully, they had five heroes. Besides Bruce and Chang, both of the boys had also come out to help. Dick had even asked Raven to come over and help Kori with the baby for the night so that he could be here as well. The boys would be tasked with taking on the minions, Batman would handle the clowns, and Jade would take on his friend, leaving Bane for Dick to deal with. While they weren’t sure that he could actually take the big man in a fight, he should be able to keep Bane busy long enough that one of the others could finish their enemy and come to his aid.
Bruce gave the signal and dropped into the sky light along with Dick and Chang. Each of them picked their opponent and attacked.
The two clowns ran at Batman, who jumped backwards to dodge the Joker’s blade, then bent to kick at Harley’s legs. The woman jumped in the air only to catch a batarang to the face, knocking her down. Even as good as she was at physical combat, she was more predictable than the Joker, who sent out a series of jabs and slashes that almost caught batman several times, once even needing to be blocked by an armored arm.
Nightwing hit Bane in the face with a knockout grenade. As the big man choked for a few seconds, Nightwing followed up the attack with several blows to the head with a metal stick. This made Bane stumble backwards for a few seconds before recovering and counterattacking. Now that he was no longer surprised he was able to block all of Nightwing’s attacks with his arms, and even drive the man back by a few steps.
The boys took down the clowns with ease. Few of them were good enough to block or dodge even a single blow, so they amounted to little more than training dummies. Two, however, managed to parry an attack, one of them kicking Tim as he went to kick the man and winning only because his legs were longer, and the other grabbing Damian’s staff with two hands and swinging it overhead like a hammer at a carnival game. Realizing what was about to happen, Damian released the pole so that the man swung it with too much force into the concrete behind him, then threw a fire bolt at him, catching him on fire. The one that was about to kick Tim while he was down noticed that his friend was on fire and grabbed an extinguisher, ignoring his combat partner.
He took a few seconds to put the man out, and just as he succeeded Tim ran up behind him, grabbing him by the waist. Releasing his chi, he gave himself a burst of strength and lifted the man off his feet, bending backwards to drive the man’s head into the ground.
Tim dropped the unconscious muscular man and stepped back to catch his breath. Even that brief use of chi had used 20% of his reserves. Several other clowns were now running at Damian, so Damian picked up the extinguisher and threw it at the lead one. It hit him in the chest, knocking him down and cracking a rib. The other three weren’t able to do much against the boy and soon they too were on the ground, unconscious or in pain.
Upon seeing the enemy, Soul Blade had immediately pulled out his sword and taken to the sky. He knew that there was only one enemy from that group that could follow him in aerial combat and soon found a bolt of lightning flying at him from that man. He leaned backwards and the lightning bolt harmlessly hit the bottom of his sword. “So, we meet again, Jade.” he said. “This won’t be like the last time. You won’t get in any lucky hits.” Ordinarily he should let Chang win this contest, but he had already agreed to protect the cargo. That meant that he needed to protect it as best he could or risk his reputation, which was the most important thing for a villain. Even if he had to lose he would give Chang a good fight.
“Who said it was just luck?” countered Chang, and threw three balls of fire at him. This was a technique known as Multiple Fire Bolts. Each one had the force of a regular fire bolt, but could be controlled independently. One was blocked by the sword but two flew around behind Soul Blade and hit him in the back, changing trajectory as they passed him. Chang had been practicing new techniques, Bang realized.
The fire bolts did little damage, a first degree burn at worst, so Soul flew at his opponent. He was much better at close combat, after all. Not bothering to slow down, he flung the sword upwards with his feet as he jumped off and caught it, swinging it downward. Surprised by the move, Jade barely had time to hold up an arm to block the blade, and a bright metallic silver light was released as the layer of metal chi he had wrapped around himself for safety burst, allowing some of the attack to hit the layer of Earth chi beneath.
Jade swung the fist of his bruised arm down towards his enemy, but the man still did nothing to slow down, and he barely missed. Instead the man grabbed the handle of Jade’s own sword as he fell and pulled himself up. Now that the sword no longer had enough room for both of them to stand on it, especially while fighting, they both lost their balance and fell ten feet onto some wooden boxes. Without a master giving it instructions, the sword fell out of the air.
Jade stood up, only to see Soul standing on the taller stack of crates beside him. The other man dropped down and he jumped out of the way. Now that they were engaged in hand-to-hand combat Bang had the advantage, and Chang knew it. His only hope would be to gain some distance and throw spells at him.
As the groups fought a bright light shined in through the skylight. “Police helicopter?” thought Bruce as he took a split second to look up. To his surprise, however, a large, hawk shaped ship hovered in the air above the warehouse. Seconds later several windows shattered as four men with wings flew in, firing energy weapons at the heroes. Batman and Nightwing, who were still near the crate, were forced to back up. Two of the men threw the tarp off of the poker table and connected a gravity tether to the crate. The tether was activated and the crate flew upwards through the skylight, sticking to the bottom of the ship. With that the four men released a burst of suppressing fire then retreated.
The attack left the area in disarray. Joker had been forced to dodge out of the way of a falling skylight and Batman had taken advantage of it by hitting him with some sort of bolo, tying him up. Harley was twenty feet away from her man and the bat, so she would have a difficult time freeing the Joker before the Bat attacked her. Bane was now facing the two boys as well as Nightwing, and was being pushed back. Soul had likewise managed to put Jade on the defensive.
Bane backed into a forklift station that the warehouse worker used to store extra fuel tanks and grabbed a propane tank. He would need a weapon to handle three people at once. He swung the cylinder at Nightwing and connected with his head, sending him flying backwards into a shelf. Tim glanced at where Dick lay. From the size of the gash on his head Tim could tell that he was badly injured, so he left Damian to hold Bane off while Tim administered emergency medical care. Dick was unconscious, but Tim pulled out one of the Foundation level Blood Staunch pills that Jade had made a few of and force Dick to swallow it. Soon the blood stopped flowing and the wound closed slightly. He followed it up with a Collection level healing pill and the wound closed even more, becoming a nasty looking scab instead.
Damian repeatedly backed up, throwing tiny bits of lightning at Bane to keep his attention. In anger the man had even thrown a forklift at the boy, but thanks to a quick Release Damian was able to jump out of the way. Bane crossed into the middle of the warehouse, twenty feet from everyone else, and there was a metallic clank. Not realizing at first what it was Bane looked around only to hear a second, louder one followed by the hiss of gas. Damian stood forty feet away as the golden energy of Sword chi dissipated from his hand and the red of fire chi formed there instead. Bane noticed what was about to happen and threw the cylinder at Damian, only for the leaking tank to be caught by a fire bolt five feet from him.
There was a loud explosion which shook the warehouse and shattered what windows were still intact. Bane and much of the shelving was blown backwards. Jade took the opportunity to attack his distracted enemy and launched two five-finger lightning bolts into Bang’s chest, knocking him off the boxes they were fighting on. Bang hit the ground and Jade jumped down to land on him with a falling punch, Releasing all of the Foundation level chi he had left into one blow to the man’s face. Bang’s defenses shattered in a burst of silver and gold light, being made of metal and sword chi, and Bang lost consciousness.