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Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.70

— Raven —

“This… is a bad idea,” Raven deadpanned to herself.

Surprisingly, Passion agreed with her, “The worst.”

“Terrible.”

“Just...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.69

— Sean —

“-As I said, Seattle was the big time for Shadowrunners,” I continued. “It was the perfect blend of corpo and criminal, tech and magic. Those gray areas, along with the fact that it was the last bastion of UCAS on the West Coast, meant the Shadows of Seattle were extensive and deep. The megacorps ruled the Seattle Metroplex more than UCAS did, though, and it was cut off from the rest of the country. There was always work to be found, even mostly legal work sometimes. But the real rep and money were f...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.68

— Lucy Kushinada —

Comms buzzed back and forth as she kept them all connected on Overwatch. Here, not nearly as many people could challenge a netrunner in her prime. But those who could…? They tended to be much, much more dangerous as a result. Like, ‘AI past the Blackwall’ dangerous… Still, for something as simple as keeping everyone in the crew in communication with each other, Lucy wasn’t worried.

“Damn, those hips, choom… Look at ‘em work, work, worrrr~kkkk~…” Becca muttered.<...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.67

— Su Xing —

The chance to know his father was the greatest gift, the best blessing that Su Xing could ask for. He’d dreamed of it for as long as he could remember. Since he was just a babe on Mother’s knee. Way back then, Mother would tell him stories. Stories of a man who shook up the Heavens with everything he did, of an impossible man who never settled for simple stagnation, of adventures and mischief that awed and exasperated even Mother.

Even now, years later, the tale of the Drunken Fist and the Kun...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.66

— Diana —

Diana was mid-flight when it happened. Just traveling, truthfully. Her presence had been requested to deal with an ancient foe. A monster from her own mythology. Such things happened now and again. Currently, a minotaur (thankfully, not The Minotaur) had managed to set itself loose in Alexandria, Egypt.

She would deal with it quickly and without much hassle, Diana was sure. The unnamed minotaurs were only a threat to mortals and civilians. A warrior of her prowess and fame would have no tro...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.65

— Sean —

I’d been clotheslined. Bamboozled. Flabbergasted. Dumbfounded. Stricken and staggered. Completely and utterly. And I really should’ve seen it coming.

“STEP-BABIES, STEP-BABIES, STEP-BABIES~!” Didi squealed, practically chanting her excitement for Heaven and Earth to hear.

I knew I’d left proverbial (and rather literal) buns in the oven when I moved on from this reality. But those ‘buns’ had completely slipped my mind up until now. I had kids here — kids from the En...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.64

— Sean —

The reveal of ‘when’ Didi and I ended up in the world I knew was certainly surprising. It also promised to be very, very entertaining. 800 years in the past, well before I was reborn here, and another 200-odd more until this iteration of myself would ascend past this Heaven.

The Fa Ram wouldn’t be founded by Jin Rou for a good long while yet. A shame. I was looking forward to visiting again. But this era had advantages of its own to offer, without a doubt. I’d meet peop...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.63

— Wind Waver —

The day had finally come. Waver always knew it would. Rose was leaving the tribe, leaving Chy’a-kit entirely. Waver had to go with her. She’d forget all the little, important things otherwise! Like eating! Or sleeping! Or the most terrible prospect of all…! She’d forget how to laugh the rare little la...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.62

— Rose Rising With the Sun —

Rose Rising With the Sun — simply ‘Rose’ to those she cared to claim and ‘Rose Rising’ in less formal settings — had been named in the tradition of her clan. Her venerable father was named for the rare sun in all its glory — Ember of Sunlight, always burning through the tribulations sent by Heav...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.61

— Sean —

Traveling out past the Source Wall and through the Void Between to other realities and clusters could’ve been instantaneous… But really, where was the fun in that? Every vacation needed downtime. To relax, to comfortably simmer, to truly appreciate the break from it all you were giving yourself.

So instead of traveling in an instant, Didi and I settled in for the ride. We surfed the Void Between, our course set and nothing that lurked there truly able to touch us. There was Madness and M...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.60

— Kara —

Mid-flight, Kara was forced to duck and dive. A beam of electrified, half-solidified, and widely varied radiation swept through the space she just was a moment later. Even her Kryptonian physiology would’ve had trouble standing up to it. Especially since the monster seemed to be learning, adapting, and semi-evolving on the fly. Half of that radiation was of the Kryptonite variety…

Kara pulled her charge up short and flew back up. Hovering high, she took a moment to take in the battlefield. The de...

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.59

“As you might expect,” I began. “I couldn’t do

Gotham's Dead End Bar Ch.58

“-So stories never die. They linger and spread and Change post-humously. Some grow within their own bounds, others grow beyond. But so long as they’re not forgotten, stories will be told somewhere, somewhen, somehow until there’s no one left to tell them.”

As I spoke of immortality in the form of stories and legends and every tale in between, I looked out over my domain. A domain that had quickly become a modern legend of its own. The Dead End was a place where those same immortal stories could be told. A place where enemies dr...

Gotham's Dead End Bar - Companion Piece #3

In yet another life, war came for Sean at his end. A crusade from the blackest of Hells ravaged everything sacred and Living. The 13th of its kind — an ominously auspicious number — it threatened to bring the galaxy itself to its knees. Watching the end of that life of Sean’s, Didi witnessed Death, Despair, and Destruction on a scale that even she and her siblings would struggle to comprehend.

In that reality, Mankind had long since spread throughout the stars. They’d thrived once, only for an Age of Strife to strike down every...

Gotham's Dead End Bar - Companion Piece #2

— Didi —

How long had this fight been raging? Didi didn’t know. Perhaps she couldn’t know, and for one such as her, that was a terrifying prospect. All she could say for certain was that her beloved was TIRED.

Weary of Body. Weary of Heart and Mind. Weary of SOUL, most of all.

Sean fought for an eon, an age, and even beyond. He was given only mere moments of respite throughout it all. Infinite waves of invaders pounded against his mounted defense. When one fell, two m...

Gotham's Dead End Bar - Companion Piece #1

[AN: Alright. This isn’t the first return chapter of The Dead End. More like… side content. A ‘companion piece’, as the post’s title says. Omakes, but only a few. Three, I think. That’s what I have tentatively planned, at least. They’ll all be from Sean’s lives that we already know about. And mostly (I expect), they’ll focus on his death in those lives. This one (Life 68), Sean’s Cultivation World endgame, and 40k.

I’m about halfway through my reread of the whole story, but I pumped this o...