She was looking at the address written on the paper, but she had a hard time believing that it was right. They stood in front of a run down apartment building. The metal sign with the name of the place was almost unreadable due to the faded colors and rust.
"Why do you think Torchwick lives here. He gets a larger cut than both of us, and that's a lot of lien." Emerald asked.
Which was true. Both Emerald and Mercury made a large sum of lien from their life of crime. Which allowed both of them to do some heavy spending. Mercury spent his first pay check on a brand new expensive pair of kicks just because he could. And Emerald didn't spare any extravagance she wanted. So why was it that the one of them that had the biggest ego didn't have a house to match it?
"Maybe he's blowing it all on drugs." Mercury said, uncaring.
"Well, I guess we're about to find out." Emerald said, walking into the building.
As Mercury joined her, he said,
"I still can't believe she sent us to go pick up Roman. What are we, his babysitters?" Mercury said indignantly
"He hasn't been showing up as often to her meetings. She just wants us to make sure that he'll be at tonight's. Plus think of it like this, if it turns out that he hasn't been showing up cause he plans on making a break for it then we get to kill him." Emerald said with a smile.
They had to go up a few flight of stairs before they found his apartment. The wall paper was peeling and the paint on the door was cracked. Mercury knocked on the dirty door. The two didn't have to wait long for Roman to answer. He wasn't in his usual attire. He was dressed in a plain white t-shirt and pajama pants. He didn't have on his eyeliner, and his hair seemed flat, as if he hadn't styled it yet.
"What are you two doing here?" He growled.
"Cin-" Emerald started, but was cut off by a different voice. It sounded young and sweet, but hoarse.
"Daaaaadd." The voice said, followed by a few loud coughs.
Roman turned on his heels and headed toward it, completely ignoring the two at his door.
Emerald and Mercury decided to let themselves in. The small apartment was cramped, but clean, unlike the exterior of the place. The room they were in seemed barren, only having the essentials. A fridge, a table, two chairs, a sink in the counter, and some cabinets in the corner of the room that was the kitchen area. Two comfy chairs, a dresser, and a coffee table in the other corner of the room. One of the chairs had a couple of blankets piled on it.
The coughs got more intense from the other room. Roman came rushing out, and went to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass, and filled it with water from the sink. He then reached into one of the cabinets and grabbed two pill bottles. Emerald noticed that the first bottle was for pain. The other one looked like it was some type of prescription medication.
"Roman, we need to-"
"Not now!" Roman shouted.
He quickly retreated back into the other room. Mercury, with no sense of house manners, followed to see what he was doing. Emerald, curious as well, decides to follow Mercury.
In the room, Roman knelt next to a bed with a girl laying there under a few sheets. She had pink hair on the right side of her head, and brown on the other. Her eyes are the same colors but on opposite sides. She looked sickly pale, and weak. She was drinking some of the water that Roman gave her.
"Are you okay?" Roman asked.
The girl just nodded in response. She sat up straighter when she saw Emerald and Mercury standing in her door way. Roman looked over to them. and with a sigh, he stood up.
"Roman, we need to go." Emerald demanded.
"Yeah, yeah, just let me get changed." He muttered.
Looking back down to the girl, he said, "Neo, I'm going to leave the pain medicine right here by your bed. Only take one if you think you need it. It should say on the bottle how long you need to wait before you take another one."
Neo again nodded in response. He rubbed her shoulder before he left the room. Emerald and Mercury followed him into the living room corner.
"What's up with her?" Emerald asked as Roman grabbed some clothes from the dresser in the living room. With no regard to his house guest, He started changing in front of them.
"When she was just a baby she got sick, and since then she hasn't gotten better. We thought it'd be manageable if she took her meds twice a day. But she didn't tell me that her semblance makes it worse. After that mech got destroyed her health just took a nose dive." He said putting on his shirt.
"what happened?" Emerald asked.
"She used her semblance so that we could get away. But the mix of the high air pressure on the Bull Head and something else caused her to collapse. I took her to the hospital, and that's when I found out about her semblance's side effects. It puts her body under a lot of stress, and since she last used it she's been bed ridden." His words almost seemed forced out.
"How did you not know about that?" Emerald accused
He sighed as he continued.
"She told her mom, my wife, but not me. Then her mom died, and that means that she was the only one that knew." He defended himself.
Emerald felt like she was learning a lot more about Roman than she cared to know. But there was one last question she felt gnawing away at her. She needed to ask.
"So what do you plan on doing about it?" After working with Roman for a while she could tell that while he may be working for Cinder, he wasn't loyal. He would leave first chance he got, especially considering his sick daughter. 'Maybe I will get my chance to kill him' she thought to herself.
"Let me tell you, It's expensive being alive, and it cost even more when you're sick. There's a doctor in Atlas. Apparently they're some type of miracle worker. Healing semblance or something. But that isn't going to be cheap. I also have to pay off my old debts, and finish business with Cinder. That's why I live here, all of my lien that isn't used on stuff we need is being saved up so that she can get proper treatment." Roman finished.
"Ahh, isn't that sweet. Did you forget the part where Emerald said we need to go?" Mercury said condescendingly.
Roman put the finishing touches on his look by tugging on his gloves. His hair still unstyled, and his eyeliner was still absent. He held up his index finger as he walked back into the other room. He knelt back by the bed.
"Alright princess, I gotta head off to work." He said softly.
"Oh, okay. You think I can sit this one out, I'm not feeling up to breaking the law tonight." She said with a small smile on her face.
"Sit out as many nights as you need. Just focus on getting better. I should be back pretty early in the morning tomorrow. And if you need anything, call Junior."
Mercury gave him an odd look. "The idiot from the bar?"
Roman glared at him, "He may be an idiot, with incompetent henchmen, but I trust him more than anybody else I associate with."
Neo spoke up.
"I would say be careful dad, but if Cinder really hired people like those two then it must be a pretty petty crime." Neo said, laughing dryly.
Mercury and Emerald both looked angry, but Emerald stopped him from saying anything by whispering to him, "Ignore her, let's just get going."
He spared once last glance as he walked out of her room.
"Go. I'll be fine." She said, she coughed a few times as she finished.
Roman had a hard time believing her.