Hello again! This chapter, Emerald and Mercury gear up for some sabotage and Justice learns not to discuss philosophy with wild hybrids.

51. Unconditional Love

"—must be something Watts did! They just got here, and he's been sniffing around, I don't understand why she trusts him!" Emerald flung out an arm to punctuate the latest point in a very long rant. Mercury's patience was dangling by a last frayed thread. Her mouth opened to continue, and he snorted, cutting her off before she could start again.

"She doesn't," he drawled. "You know that. The White Fang screwed the pooch, so we're stuck with him."

"I know. But if he scared them off somehow..."

He wouldn't have said it, but he was tired and frustrated and they were about to attack the goddamn SDC. His patience finally snapped. "You're just desperate for this to be all his fault, aren't you?"

They'd worked together long enough for him to pick up a whole glossary of death glares and dirty looks from her. This was a new one.

"I guess you wouldn't understand. You're only here for the money."

Mercury rolled his eyes. As if any of them were only bound to Cinder by money... but he didn't bother to say that. It was obvious that Emerald wasn't in a listening mood. He changed the subject back to what they should've been talking about in the first place—namely, how to break into the SDC's nearest injection facility and destroy every piece of equipment they could find.

'Nearest' still meant several hours away on dragonback. They'd already done that—now it was just a matter of walking the rest of the distance on foot, so that they could keep a relatively low profile sneaking into the outskirts of Vacuo.

Out here, so far from the oasis that was the source of life for the city, there wasn't a single residential building in sight. The injection site stuck out like... well, like an Atlesian skyscraper in the middle of a desert. Sure, there had been some nods to practicality here and there—it wasn't made mostly of glass, which probably would've cooked the eggs inside—but there hadn't been much of an attempt to match the local aesthetic.

Which, in this area, was mostly industrial buildings. Factories, foundries, the occasional warehouse. It was pathetically easy to slip in close, even with Jade and Rudder walking with them. Security was tighter than it had been when they attacked Shade. Still far from tight enough.

They approached the rear entrance. There was a massive metal door, the pull-down kind used for loading areas. Big enough for a dragon. "Okay," Mercury said. "You remember where the guards are?"

Emerald gave him a flat look. This one was familiar—Are you stupid?

"There might be more of them," she reminded him. "The information we got is a couple months old." Pre-kidnapping, in other words.

Now it was Mercury's turn to be annoyed. "First of all, this of all places isn't going to be where he jacks security up to eleven. And second, I always assume there are more guards than I think there are."

"Just checking," she said mildly. "You're so eager to defend your doctor friend, lately. Maybe some of the arrogance rubbed off. Not that you don't have plenty of your own."

He scowled at her. She went around him, slamming into his shoulder on her way to the locked door. Seconds later, it wasn't locked anymore. "After you."

Mercury had the last word as he strode past her into the complex. "I don't think anyone wants to defend him. And if she was really your perfect hero, he'd be dead in a ditch right now."

She couldn't fire back, not now that they were inside. But she gave him another look he'd never seen before that promised she was going to bring it up again later. Whatever. He didn't know why he'd bothered—it wasn't like the puppy dog act was new. It said a lot that her fawning over the kid had been more bearable.

Emerald led the way through a deserted service corridor, then up a flight of stairs. The dragons managed it, barely, though at one point Rudder slipped and skidded back down a few of them. Their paws were too big for them to balance comfortably.

It was late enough that there should have been almost no one there. No technicians, only the bare minimum of security. One guard in the hallway, and one inside the actual lab. Too easy to need the dragons... except that they'd make the actual destruction part much easier.

Mercury had been expecting extra guards, but he was disappointed. They saw only one of the guards that were supposed to be there, since Emerald managed to slip them past the one in the hallway while he was checking the stairwell. Jade took care of the one in the lab by knocking him over and gently pressing a paw into his back until he stopped squirming. They tied his hands together with a bit of surgical tape and stuffed him in a supply closet.

It was the smoothest operation he'd ever pulled off, right up until the point where Emerald stuck a lockpick into one of the cabinets holding the injectors and the lights went out. She froze. The darkness lasted only a few heartbeats before red emergency lights came on. Alarms blared.

"Fuck," Mercury hissed. Leave it to Atlas to skip the extra guards in favor of sticking burglar alarms in every cabinet.

The noise was annoying. Rudder folded his ears back, hoping that the alarms would turn off. They didn't. Mercury stood by one of the windows, muttering curses under his breath. "We gotta go."

"But we haven't—" Emerald started to say.

"Do you want to try fighting our way through a bunch of cops? We could do that instead."

"...Shit."

"We'll just break what we can before—fuck. Fuck."

"What?" Emerald joined Mercury at the window. "Oh, come on!"

Rudder made a confused noise. "Airship," Mercury gritted out.

"Is that the fucking military?" Emerald demanded.

"Probably mercenaries. Vacuo doesn't have a big enough standing army to use it on shit like this." Mercury grimaced and backed away from the window. "The old man's pissed and looking to flex."

"We could get out through the roof," Emerald suggested.

"Pretty sure that thing's armed. It wouldn't take that many lucky shots to bring us down."

"Ground level won't be much better."

Mercury swept a hand through his hair, then scowled. "They don't know how many we are."

"...No. Merc, you can't just—"

"This isn't some self-sacrifice bullshit," he said dryly. "I'm not stupid. There's sewer access from the basement, but the dragons won't fit. So I'll distract the big guys outside for a bit while you get the dragons out the back way."

"I could—"

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. But I figured we should go where our talents are."

Emerald made a face, but she nodded and beckoned to Jade. And, Rudder suddenly realized, to him as well. He balked. "Nno!"

"I'll be right there," Mercury promised. "We'll meet up at the warehouse—Emerald knows which one."

Emerald hesitated. "Merc, maybe you should take him. You won't be able to sneak out after the... distraction. If you're fighting anyway, you may as well go ground level."

Mercury stood with his shoulders tense, his face washed in red from the emergency lights. His eyes flicked towards Rudder once. He didn't say anything.

"Oh." Emerald's eyes widened. "Oh my god, you're going soft—"

"Shut up and go!" he snapped.

She smirked at him. "Fine, fine. But I'm going to make fun of you for this for the rest of time."

Rudder warbled in frustration. Emerald thought he should go with Mercury! But his rider shook his head and gestured for him to follow her, and Mercury had told him that he and Emerald had done things like this many times before, and they might get hurt if Rudder and Jade didn't listen to them. So, reluctantly, he went.

There were distant explosions as they clambered down the stairs—it was harder going down than up, and eventually he gave up and hurled himself over the railing. He landed hard, but better one big impact than dozens of smaller ones. All the guards that should have been inside were gone. Emerald said they were probably pulling out to cover the exits.

Many were focused on the chaos on the upper level. When Jade and Rudder burst out of the back exit, through the door they'd come in, there were only a few mercenaries in dark vests and one woman in the guard's uniform. None of them had the long rifles the council used on dragons, and all of them went down like bowling pins as the dragons barreled through them. Emerald stayed between them, protected from the gunfire.

Then they were in between buildings, winding through an urban maze while Emerald whispered directions. The airship didn't follow—another explosion suggested that it was probably busy with Mercury. Rudder's ears pinned back. He should have stayed.

A few mercenaries tried to chase them. Jade and Rudder were faster, and soon all sounds of pursuit faded away. He noticed for the first time that a few bullets had stung his shoulders and side. Nothing serious, he soon decided. The smaller guns that humans and faunus used on each other didn't usually hurt very much.

Rudder whined and fretted when they reached the darkened warehouse, refusing to let Emerald try to treat his injuries, until a back door opened and Mercury slipped inside. He bounded over to his rider, moved to lick his face... then thought better of it when the smell reached him. Instead he nuzzled him and winced. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised—his rider had explained what sewer access meant—but it was worse than he'd thought.

So bad that it masked the bitter, coppery scent Rudder might otherwise have recognized.

"You were caught."

Cinder's voice was as even and calm as it always was. The only warning Jade had that something wasn't right was the way Emerald tensed beside her, and one of Mercury's fists clenching behind his back.

"They had the whole place alarmed to hell and back," Mercury said, lifting his chin. "We're lucky we got out at all."

The outer air of calm burned away in an instant. "You are both lucky I have further need of you, or I'd send you both back where I found you!"

Emerald flinched. Jade purred as quietly as she could, hoping the vibration of her chest would soothe her rider. It didn't. She kept her eyes on the ground as she said, "We destroyed some of the equipment while we were getting out."

"Did you." Cinder took a step forward, and Emerald cringed away until her back hit Jade's scales. "Did you almost complete your objective? Will you be making the same useless excuses when we almost defeat the council and they put a spike through your dragon's head?"

Jade quailed, and Emerald's head snapped up. "I don't—"

"This wasn't our fucking fault!" Mercury shot back. "Our info was shit. Old Man Schnee is ready to have a pissing contest the next time the White Fang show up, and we got caught right in the middle of it because your informant didn't think to update after they kidnapped his kid!"

Jade's tail curled around her legs. He'd said exactly what she'd been thinking... and she really wished he hadn't. Rudder warbled nervously and shuffled his paws.

Cinder turned, terribly slowly, to face Mercury. Strike mirrored the motion. "Is that so, Mercury?"

He was silent.

She approached him. Leaned close to his ear. Whispered something that turned his face milk-white.

"Next time you fail me," she said, her voice back to a serene drawl, "I want no excuses."

Mercury's eyes flicked towards Rudder, then to the floor. "Yes, ma'am."

Cinder flicked a hand dismissively. "You may go."

Released, all four of them fled the cabin and stumbled into the twilight. They passed Tumbleweed, who lifted his head sluggishly and snorted a sleepy greeting. Mercury put a hand on Rudder's back. He was trembling.

"What did she say?" Emerald demanded, an edge of panic in her voice.

He shook his head.

Emerald slid to a sitting position in the grass, breathing hard. Jade curled around her. Mercury stayed standing, pacing anxiously back and forth. "She's pissed," he said.

"You think?"

"Not at us. At Watts. I'm talking nuclear level pissed." Mercury rubbed a hand through his hair. "Fuck, I hope she asks me to kill him."

"Mercury!" Emerald hissed, looking around to make sure the doctor wasn't present.

"What? I doubt anyone's spent more than a day around him without wanting to stick a knife in his back." She kept glaring reproachfully at him. Finally he threw his hands up and said, "Alright! Fuck you too! I'm going to feed the pit dragons."

With him gone, Jade wound herself all the way around her rider and purred until she started to relax. It took a very long time. All the while, she kept one eye on the cabin where Cinder was standing. After everything Emerald did, how she spent so much time and energy trying to make Cinder happy... this was what she got for it?

Jade didn't growl. She didn't want to scare Emerald. But she did remember Ruby's face as she turned away. She was bitterly disappointed, maybe even betrayed... but never angry.

On the same day, Justice killed a human.

It was one of the guards for a shipment of lightning Dust. There had been more of them than there ever were before—the Lieutenant said this was because they were stealing from the Council, not the Schnees. Justice wasn't sure what the difference was, but he knew there were too many of them, and too many guns, and some of those had been pointing at Ilia, and he'd stopped caring if the humans were safe.

Now Ilia wouldn't look at him. He tried to ask Brand, but the old dragon was still annoyed with him and wouldn't say anything except that he didn't know. Justice wasn't sure if he was lying or not.

Harbinger tossed his head and said that maybe Ilia was getting soft. Justice snarled and chased him away.

Baby Gigas stared at him with his huge violet eyes. Justice felt a little better, even though neither had said anything.

With no other answers to be found, his footsteps turned towards the woods. The hatchling was there—though she wasn't the hatchling anymore. That was Gigas. Justice decided to call her youngling, which was how Brand often addressed him. It was annoying, just like her habit of scratching him whenever they talked.

"I'm back," he said, sitting on his haunches and curling his tail around his paws.

She watched him warily.

"...I killed a human."

"Bad?"

"No." Justice decided it in that moment, and his growl was laced with smoke. "She was going to hurt Ilia. And now she's angry, or upset, or something, and I don't know why!"

"You were. Why?"

He blinked. "I was... what?"

"Angry. Upset. Something."

Oh. She meant when he'd told her not to hurt the White Fang. "That's different."

The youngling gazed at him steadily, a slightly unnerving glint in her sun-yellow eyes.

"It is," he snarled. "I already told you, they would have hurt Ilia!"

"They hurt Ilia. Ilia hurts us. Bad." It was the most words he'd ever heard her speak at once.

"It's—that's—the Fang don't hurt us, they just need our help!"

"Help hurts us."

"But they're only doing it because the humans—"

She hissed, cutting him off. "You asked. I said."

"What kind of answer is that?" he growled.

"Confusing."

Justice wasn't sure why he'd thought she would be less exasperating than Brand or Harbinger. "Whatever. I don't care."

The youngling's amusement evaporated. "Grimm... not confused," she said gravely.

She'd seen the Grimm, too? Of course she had—she lived in the woods around their camp. She probably saw more of them than he did. Not for the first time, Justice fought down the urge to seize her by the scruff and drag her back to Sienna. He didn't feel like getting into another fight.

Justice huffed more smoke and whipped his tail at a fallen log. "This is stupid. I wish—" He stopped himself, but she nodded.

"Rudder."

"Shut up." He hated hearing her say it. Maybe it was too much of a reminder of where he was. That he could talk to this infuriating youngling, but not to his own brother and sisters. He wished he was back at Haven.

Failing that, he wished she would stop reading his mind.

"You wish. Go back. Rudder."

"Fine!" he roared. "I hate it here! Happy?"

"You could go."

That time, he did snap at her. She melted back into the shadows. For a panicked second he thought she'd left him there, but then he saw the two pale pinpricks of her eyes. Justice slumped. "Haven's gone."

"Not Haven. Rudder."

"I don't even know where he is!"

"Find him."

"Just stop!" Justice's tail whipped back and forth in agitation. "I can't go and find him, because the camp is here and Ilia doesn't want to go!"

"Not her. You."

Justice reared up, ears folding flat against the three most terrible words she'd ever said to him. "You don't know anything! You don't even have a rider, you could never—!"

He stopped. The pinpricks had vanished.

With nowhere left for his anger to go, he left deep gouges in the trees and scorched leaves on the ground, and slunk back into camp. That night he tossed and turned and whined in his sleep. His paws clamped down over his ears.

Too late. He'd never heard anyone talk about him and Ilia like that before—like they were separate. It was that, not the dead human, that haunted his dreams.