OK, we're getting closer to the end of this fight. On that note, let's go check in on Yang and that...Mercury.
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"What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded, glowering as hard as she could at the silver haired boy standing over her.
"Oh, you know…," he shrugged, "just thought I'd enjoy the Festival: see the sights, grab a bite to eat-" He then lifted his leg and pointed his boot at the prone blonde, "-say hi to some old friends, things like that."
Yang grimaced. She knew Mercury had an advantage at the moment, so her best bet would be to keep him distracted and wait for an opening, despite how every fiber of her body wanted to sock him in his smug face. "You're leg healed up well," she commented.
A very annoying looking smirk made its way onto his face. "I know, right? It's amazing what having artificial limbs does for a guy. Still hurt like a bitch when you punched it out, though, so thanks for that." He shook his leg a little for emphasis, "Do you even know how freaking hard it is to fix these things with just stuff lying around a warehouses? It's ass, by the way!"
Yang chuckled.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"You wouldn't get it," she explained, propping herself up on her good arm, "Besides, my daddy told me it's not nice to make fun of crippled people!"
This actually caused Mercury's cocky expression to falter, his foot slowly descending until it rested on the ground. "I could say the same about you," he retorted, and gestures to the brace on Yang's arm, "Miss 'Tournament winner'." Then he reached behind his back and pulled out a pistol and aimed it at her forehead. "Unfortunately, I'll have to settle for this as payback for the leg, because I'm a busy man and there's other things my boss wants me to do before she gets back. Oh yeah, any last words and all that crap?" Yang thought for a moment.
"Yeah," she decided, turn the safety off first."
Mercury spared a glance to check his weapon, which was exactly what Yang was hoping for; she swept her leg at Mercury's, knocking him over, and proceeded to wrench his gun away from him as he lay stunned on the ground, tossing it aside.
He didn't stay stunned for long, though, and kicked the brawler off of him, quickly jumping back to his feet.
"OK then," he said, limbering up, "I guess we're doing it this way."
Yang also stood back up, dropping into a boxing stance.
"Fine by me; let's see if you're as fast as your namesake!"
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Neo was almost disappointed at how easy it was to breach the CCT tower; there had only been a couple guards stationed outside the place, and they barely even put up much of a fight. It was pathetic, and more than a little worrying that this was the big, powerful army General Ironwood sang praises of to the masses.
A thought crossed her mind as she rode the elevator up to the top floor: if anything, she'd done the man a service by weeding out those two examples of nepotism, thereby ridding his army of two weak links in it's chain. Of course that would make them stronger in the long run, but when their "long run" consisted of a day or two more at most, it went really something she was overly worried about.
She watched as the numbers over the elevator doors blinked in sequence, growling irritably the numbers lit up each time it passed a floor, the stupid thing was going too slow, in her opinion, and she wished there was a way to speed things up a little! She was never a very patient person to begin with, and every second this task didn't get done was time wasted in getting Roman out of the pokey!
...she missed him, ok? He always stole the best ice cream.
Regardless, after another ten, agonizing seconds the elevator dinged and the doors opened to a room lined with kiosks, with an island in the middle that had kiosks facing those on the walls. She smirked, making her way to the closest one, and after dusting the seat off sat down daintily and plugged her Scoll into the waiting port.
A little animatic of a spinning hourglass appeared on the screen, with the word "Searching…" under it.
Neo raised an eyebrow at the behavior; she was under the impression that the device was supposed to read and activate the virus Cinder planted instantly.
As if in responses to her suspicion, the Scroll's display changed to a blinking red X.
Now more than a little miffed, she redocked the Scroll, only to get the same result, growing more furious as the outcome refused to change no matter how many times she tried.
"That's not going to work," a stern voice said from behind her, "not anymore."
Neo whirled around, parasol at the ready, coming face to face with Glynda Goodwitch.
One of the most renowned Huntresses in all of Remnant.
And with her were Ironwood and a cubic buttload of Atlas soldiers.
Well.
"You may as well come quietly," the General said, gesturing with one arm to his cadre, "you're outnumbered and outgunned."
Ignoring the slight against her mute demeanor (however unintentional it might have been...probably), Neo tried to look for a way out. Her usual method of abscess still needed a path to work, and being at the top of a very high tower didn't afford many convenient escape routes, save for a very suicidal one; even if she was willing to test how much weight her parasol could carry, there weren't any windows in this room.
In her frustration, Neo threw her Scroll to the ground and stomped on it until it was nothing but scrap.
When she was finished with her temper tantrum she dropped her parasol and held her arms out limply in front of her.
As she was cuffed and escorted out of the tower, she wondered how they could have found out what Cinder had planned.
Though on the bright side her arrest meant she'd be reunited with Roman soon.
...she'd label this as a net victory.
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It turned out that Mercury was not as fast as his name would suggest.
Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't keeping up with Yang. In fact, it was quickly becoming clear that he'd been holding back against her during the Tournament a few days ago.
"You know, I expected you to be dumb because of your hair," the silver haired boy taunted as he launched kick after kick at her, "and I was right; you actually think you'll win,"
Yang grunted and tried to knock him out with an uppercut to the jaw, but he easily tilted his head out of the way. She tried just straight up pinching him, but he managed to deflect or dodge all her strikes and follow up with kicks of his own; he was even able to dodge out of the way of her shotgun blasts.
She was getting pretty pissed off now.
"I oughta be applauded for holding back like I did in our fight," he continued. "I mean, if I weren't planning to lose on purpose we wouldn't even be doing this." He landed a roundhouse kick on the side on Yang's head, causing her to stumble. "But because a certain Emerald goofed up, we've had to rework how things turned out-" He shoved her into a wall with a lock to the chest. "-hence why I'm here, beating you down."
Yang wanted to shut Mercury up so bad; she was actually wishing she'd run into that midget from the train, at least she didn't blather on and on!
"But hey, at least I got to enjoy the Festival because of that, so I'm not really mad."
She needed to think of something, or else this pissant would beat her, get his gun back, and finish both her and Weiss off.
Yeah, not gonna happen!
"Plus I get a chance to test my hew leg out, so bonus."
"Do you ever shut up?" Yang groaned, peeling herself off the wall.
Mercury made an exaggerated show if thinking about the question. "...nope!" he said eventually, popping the P, "Why, it bug you?"
Yang just glared at him.
"I'll...just take that as a 'yes' and keep doing it anyway. Gawd, I can't tell you how good it feels to not have to fight fair anymore!" He micked Yang in the face again, knocking her to the side. "It's fun, you should really try it sometime!"
By this point Yang was barely holding back her rage, her eyes glowing red. She really wanted to pummel the grey haired snot into the ground, but at the same time she didn't want to lose control to do so; on top of it not tending to work out well for her in the past (recent and otherwise), she wanted to be fully aware when it happened so she could properly enjoy the satisfaction of-
She noticed that Mercury was brushing something off his boot.
Something long, thin, and golden.
...screw that noise, all bets were off!
"Well Blondie, it's been fun catching up with you. I doubt the feeling's mutual, but hey, at least we figured out which of us should have actually won the dumb tournament." He lifted his leg above his head, ready to bring it down on her, "See ya later, hot stuff!"
Then he brought his leg down directly towards her head.
Yang's arm shot up and caught the deadly limb right at its ankle.
"You wanna see hot stuff?" she asked, her hair starting to glow as her Semblance flared to life. She squeezed her hand, eliciting a cry of agony as his leg was crushed, now hanging limply from her grasp. "I'm so hot, I burn!"
"You bitch!" he wailed, "it took me hours to freaking fix that leg!"
Yang ignored Mercury's moaning, instead rising to her feet and swinging him at the wall. (The impact left a shallow, human shaped indent.) As he slid to the ground, she fired a shotgun blast at his other leg, obliterating it.
With Mercury laying in tears, she let her Semblance die down, her eyes returning to their normal lilac color.
"It looks like you-" she said, still slightly winded from the fight. She took out a pair of sunglasses (that had amazingly survived the fight) and put them on, "don't have a leg to stand on anymore!"
In the distance a large rumbling sounded, like something massive had fallen over.
"Pass me my gun, will you?" Mercury asked through his pain, "After that pun, I feel like offing myself and saving you the trouble."
"Oh screw you, that was brilliant!" Yang shouted, "Everyone's always a fricking critic: my sister, my partner, my sister's partner, my-" Then she remembered, "Weiss!" She turned around and ran over to the comatose heiress, calling "Don't move, I'm not through with you yet!" as she did.
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Weiss drifted in and out of consciousness, never really spending too much time in either extreme before listing back to the other. That would be annoying in any case, but the fact that she could still feel pain from where she'd been shot made everything all the worse.
It was a weird sensation, being almost unconscious; her mind went to some weird places. For example, she was pretty sure she could hear Yang calling her name.
"Weiss! Come on, wake up already, Ice Queen!"
It was surreal, because her voice sounded both muffled and crystal clear at the same time. Like...like she was talking on the other side of a Scroll, and there was a low echo in the background-
"It's time to Weiss and shine, Princess!"
...she was going to murder Yang.
"I'm going to murder you…," she croaked, managing to break through to consciousness or if sheer willpower.
"Yus! I knew that would work!" Yang cheered, only to turn melancholy a second later. "Which is really depressing, now that I think about it…." Then she shook her head, "Anyway, you OK? No internal bleeding I should worry about?"
"How would I even know about that?" she asked. Despite how the asanine question was, she did appreciate that the Blonde care enough about her to ask the question. "But no, I think I'll be fine. ...what even hit me?"
Yang jerked a thumb behind her. "That jerk I fought in the Tournament shot you in the back," she explained, "But don't worry, I swept him off his feet just now!"
The fact that Yang was grinning when she said that made Weiss feel like a migraine was coming on.
She ignored that for the moment. "Here," she said, "use Myrtenaster."
Yang look confused. "...you want me to stab him?"
"Oh gawd no! Why in all of Remnant would you even think that?" the heiress exclaimed, looking aghast at the suggestion. She reached for her weapon and, upon grabbing it, ejected the deep blue Dust cylinder from the drum mechanism. "This is ice Dust," she held the cylinder up for Yang to see, "this will make sure he doesn't get away before the authorities get here."
Yang rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "Yeah, that makes more sense than what I was thinking." She plucked the tube from Weiss's hand and stood back up. "Don't run off on me while I'm gone!" she called back as she presumably ran back over to where Mercury was.
Weiss signed and laid back down, wincing a little at her sore back.
I hope everyone else is OK, she thought, her young partner and team leader in particular coming to mind. She hadn't seen Ruby since warily that morning, before they'd split into groups and headed to the finale parade.
...I'm sure she's fine.
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Alrighty, that wraps just about everything happening outside of Beacon! Again, sorry it took a while to get out, real life now isn't the same as what it used to be, so I can spare as much time for writing as I once could.
But enough about me! Next chapter will see the big, centerpiece final fight this has all been leading up to with Crimson and Cinder, and afterward some very important questions will be answered. You won't want to miss this!
Also, if any of you guys like videogames, I have a Twitch channel that I stream on twice a week: .tv(slash)the(underscore)layman.