Chapter 32
Sometimes, what you don't say can speak louder than any shout. And Mr. S, as his trembling fingers slipped fatally away, was surprised at the dearth of words that faced him. His mind flashed through the instants, quietly observing the Hangar slowly recede above him.
And then, a kind hand supported him - hooking underneath his arms, and wrapping around the length of his back.
It was a surprisingly gentle arrest from motion; for, in one short swoop, Mr. S found himself carried in the sure grip of a deliriously pink girl - whose frizzy hair curled against the high-altitude winds. One of her hands hugged him tightly against her while the other reached up, acting as a swaying vine they hung from. Glancing up, Mr. S saw that her fingers were deeply embedded into the inch-thick layer of ice that covered the metal plate.
Why hadn't he thought of that…
He looked back at the woman, who donned an impressive smile. She'd been the one who tackled the cane wielding man, if he remembered correctly.
"Uh, hi," he greeted, voice diffuse in the thin atmosphere.
"Hi!" She shouted back, apparently lacking volume controls. For a heart stopping moment, Mr. S felt her supporting arm twitch - taken by an instinctive desire to wave enthusiastically; but she thought better of it, and instead hugged him closer to herself. "How are ya?" she asked, voice pitching up to a sugary squeak.
"Fine, at the moment," Mr. S said. "How did you get here?" he asked, feeling the urge to shout as the wind picked up.
At which point - as if in answer - Mr. S saw the carnival scene briefly flash in his vision before it replaced itself with the dingy walls of a back alley.
Schwarz, now near him, was facing the back alley, blades in hand and head wheeling about as she took in her surroundings and - noticing Pinkamena - stepped away from the hand the girl had pressed up against her back.
Mr. S - honestly just glad to be on solid ground - didn't offer any of the obvious questions. Taking a look around, he noticed the rectangular block of sky above - the only source of light in the maze of brick walls that surrounded them.
Schwarz turned to the brightly dressed woman with an authoritative look. "Pinkamena," she addressed with a nod.
Pinkamena straightened into an exaggeratedly stiff pose, raising a hand in salute over an expression so hard it could have been machined into existence. "Yes, Schwarz!" she announced, lowering her hand and returning almost immediately to her previous, jovial stance. All of this done in the space of a second, and without any hint of unprofessionalism.
"Report," Schwarz said.
"Five enemy figures sighted, at least one illusionist and one sensor, mam!" Pinkamena yelled, as if reporting on a sports game.
"And Raven is involved in this attack, too," Schwarz added. "She's likely to create a portal in the industrial district not too long from now, so keep an eye out for combatants there, as well."
"Will do!" Pinkamena saluted again, cheerily.
"First order of business, though - take us to the castle," Schwarz ordered, holding open her arms as if inviting Pinkamena to make physical contact.
Mr. S, in anticipation of the moment, did the same.
Pinkamena looked off to the side.
"Ehe," she chuckled, rubbing her shoulder. "I, uh, I can't," she offered, somehow laughing her words out despite the dark bags under her eyes.
"What do you mean you can't?" Schwarz scowled, not understanding. "You brought us here, after all."
"Yeah," Pinkie agreed, turning to face them, "and I can totally take you to the castle, I can. It's just that, after the recent ports, my heart rate goes up, and… you know, since I'm more susceptible in that state, my hands just started shaking, and... I'm not sure I'm up for the precision work of taking other people with me and, the castle…. Uh, It's... just... a bit far away," she said, her voice similarly distant and melancholic
Schwarz's angry look faded into one of understanding, and her voice came with sympathetic anguish. "Oh, gods, Pinkamena, don't tell me you're on drugs again!"
Pinkamena nodded sadly.
"I thought we agreed you'd quit!"
"But I don't want toooo!" Pinkamena whined, lolling her head back with frustration.
"Do I have to start paying you in food stamps again!?" Schwarz threatened.
"You know I'll just sell them," Pinkamena turned her eyes down with shameful despair.
Schwarz, in response, let out a patient breath, shaking her head and closing her eyes as she willed herself to look away from the party girl.
"Ok," Schwarz opened her eyes and directed them at Pinkamena. "We'll take the overland route back to the castle," she said, indicating herself and Mr. S. "You gather the rest of the team, and keep them off our trail."
"Okie, dokie!" Pinkie saluted, cheerful again. Crouching lightly, a puff of air gusted from her position, and she disappeared, for a moment, from Mr. S's view; looking up after a moment, he saw her silhouette arcing through that block of light onto the rooftops.
"Ok," Schwarz turned to Mr. S, now wearing a business-like expression that brooked no argument. "Let's go."
And she went, tearing down the alley, vaulting over a garbage collection unit, and cornering the far turn - managing this feat despite the fact that she'd just broken Earth's land-speed record for olympic sprinters.
Mr. S sprinted after her, barely keeping a bronze-medal pace.
He was only halfway down the alley when, after a pondering moment, Schwarz came sprinting back in a panic.
"What's wrong?" her look seemed to ask. It needn't have, it was obvious.
'I'm not Mr. Schnee. I'm an imposter that can only run at human speeds!'
That was the truthful answer. And, also the answer most likely to get him killed in the long run, Mr. S decided.
So, Mr. S, with unbridled sagacity, answered instead: "Schwarz, I'm not so sure running is our best recourse."
Schwarz, again, eyes blinking rapidly, looked at him without understanding.
"If we rush, we're more liable to make mistakes." Mr. S explained. "Likely, they don't even know where we are, so if we take it slow and hide-"
"We know you're here, Schnee!" Torchwick's voice blared in the distorted tones of a megaphone. "Come out and make this easy on yourself!"
Schwarz looked at him with increasing urgency.
"They're probably just trying to flush us out," Mr. S defended. "I mean why would they announce themselves if they knew exactly-"
Schwarz disappeared from view, and the sudden gust of her appearance behind him was his only warning before the chain-gun rattling bore down on him from everywhere.
Have you ever heard a gun shot? A real one? It's a lot louder than regulations allow Dolby-Digital to show. And Mr. S, while never having heard so much as a single round fired in his entire life, was intellectually aware of the decibel system, and of it's logarithmic nature, and of how, on that range, a gun-shot landed somewhere in the range of "ten times louder than a running jack hammer" and "fuck you, have some tinnitus".
And, whoever was behind him, apparently was a fan of rusty nails as a child, because Mr. S was certain he was now deaf, only able to hear the barking gun-fire through the vibrations that hammered against his chest.
He saw only darkness as this went on. His eyes shut instinctively as the world shook. The coming bullets ran together into a single stream, and it felt like the air was tearing itself apart around him as he stood, pinned in place, between the running streams of gun-fire that ran either side of him.
He wasn't sure how it came to be, but, in an adrenaline cracked moment, he found himself, with eyes open, facing back towards the gunfire. Schwarz was standing defensively in front of him, blurring blades through the glowing volume of space before her, which was filled with a curtain of ricochet sparks and which hid the perpetrator from his view. All around him, fist sized holes appeared - as if by magic - in the concrete and masonry.
And Mr. S ran, adrenaline boosting him to the silver podium as he turned the far corner and found Schwarz standing on the other side, steam rising from her bloody blades. He noticed, in the brief moment of calm that followed, that the air was now empty of noise.
"Come on!" Schwarz, not waiting for any argument, ran urgently down the alley, breaking Earth's land-speed record for production cars.
As soon as she passed the second corner, the walls of the alley collapsed, blocking his way like he was a struggling Taoist.
Torchwick, Tyrian, Neo, and one other figure came through the resulting hole, yelling for him.
Of course, Confucius did say desire was the root of suffering, after all. So Mr. S decided to look on the bright side.
For one, this did furnish him with the perfect excuse for why he wasn't able to keep up with Schwarz.
Really, they'd saved him from the humiliation of exposing his below average running speed.
"Come out here so we can gut you already!" The psychotic sounding scorpion faunus yelled, raising his blades into the air and clanging them together with impatient fury.
...lucky him.
We'll note here that most hunter battles are high speed, high damage affairs, and rarely last longer than several seconds.
So, really, it was a mark of her immense loyalty and pride that Schwarz only retreated after fighting for twenty seconds.
...
Schwarz was assaulted by practicality.
Schwarz raised a blade, and filled the alley with fire, willing herself to jump through the flames her enemies had avoided - but, again, she was intercepted. In the alley, the space was far to narrow for trespass.
Again, Tyrian took the blow of her approach and Schwarz was forced to accelerate, falling back just in time to dodge Neo's counter stroke.
Landing, Schwarz feinted low and went high, leaping from wall to wall, and forced to dodge back from a precise stab of Neo's parasol.
The blade barely missed, caressing her cheek as she whipped back to avoid the lightning fast jab.
Schwarz overcorrected in her dodge, and her acceleration sent her slamming into the ground, skidding back to the alley mouth. Behind her, the open street, ahead - Neo and Tyrian were guarding the corner.
Of course, they had no need to follow her, Mr. Schnee was trapped on the other side against three to one odds, and here she'd already wasted 15 seconds. If only she could get past-
No.
She stopped that thought.
Looking back, Schwarz noticed for the first time the approaching storm clouds that hung over the inland, and she noticed an approaching beacon of white bounding over the rooftops - Raven, with her horrid bone mask - guiding a train of other figures to their location. Among them was Cinder.
Schwarz was assaulted by practicality.
She was tortured by sensibility.
She wanted to die fighting, she wanted to die in this alley, comforted by the sight of her blood running into the gutters, just to wash away the distress of honor that stabbed her.
She accelerated herselt, and felt her blades pulling at her hands, lifting them into the air infront of her. Her chest and lungs were warmed by unfulfilled, torturous, anticipation, and it was something that beckoned for stab to distract from it.
She would kill one of them before she died, she decided. Trying for both would be too risky, and would distract her, but, if she picked one, she knew she'd could trade her life for theirs.
Her heart beats blended together as she accelerated, growing into a warm, electrical hum that lit up her chest, and sending her blood flow smoothly through her like circling laser beams.
Her hands moved themselves to a ready position, and her legs moved to a ready stance, feet placed in the perfect position as her body balanced itself until it was weightless, and the world teetered under her as if a slight shift in any direction would send her rocketing towards it.
But, Schwarz, unfortunately, had been trained to the peak of her field. She'd trained herself until her stances were as instinctual as breathing. But, unfortunately, she'd also trained her perception until it could supersede her body's desires.
Even as her chest shook and her thoughts roared with tearing accusations of cowardice, she turned and left the alley.
Raven wasn't too far away now, and it was nine to one odds. And, while Mr. Schnee was trapped, there were places where she was better used.
The security team was only thirty seconds away from arriving, maybe twenty if she reached them in time. She'd intercept them, tell them the location, and maybe save-
No.
She looked at the world through impartial eyes, now. And her insights were as frightening as they were harsh. Even as she looked with stoic figure however, she was aware, however faintly, that she would pay for this, someday… they all would.
She forced herself not to feel pity for Mr. Schnee. He'd… died in action, fighting valiantly against overwhelming odds.
"I'm telling you, he's not here!" the sensor insisted, "and if he is, he's dead."
Mr. S was lying face down in the thick snow, hiding valiantly in the rubble and trying not to cough on the powdered cement which hung in the air like a thick fog. Braving himself, he tilted his head back the slightest bit, peeking out from the trench of snow his fallen body had created, and sending several snowflakes streaming up from where they'd stuck to his hair.
The figures were indistinct against the fog, and lacked definite shapes.
One of them gestured in response. He thought he recognized the figure as the one who'd threatened him back at the precipice. "And I'm telling you to check again!" Torchwick yelled. I saw both of them coming in through this alley, and only one of them came out! And that secretary hasn't been banging away at us because he's not here!"
The sensor, at the height of her frustration, raised four fingers up to her temples in an exaggerated fashion. She held the pose for a second and then straightened back up, flashing open her brightly glowing eyes. "There! Checked again! He's not here!" she announced, yelling. "Happy?"
"Check again!" Torchwick demanded.
"Hey, maybe he did die?" A mercury clad boy suggested, arms crossed and legs scissored as he leant against one of the remaining portions of the alley wall.
"Are you listening to yourself?" Torchwick looked all around him with the offended sensibilities of a craftsman. "Nobody dies from this!" He gestured at the surrounding rubble, and Mr. S looked warily at a one-ton block of stone that had landed not too far from him. "Besides, I doubt Salem will be happy with us if we come back with a nice story about how he probably died out of sight."
"You mean, she won't be happy with you," Cinder glared. "You are 'leading' this expedition after all."
"Oh, I'd like to see you-"
"Enough," Raven sighed, voice eerie with resonance as it traveled through her hollow mask. "We're wasting time. It's obvious he escaped."
"Damn it!" Torchwick yelled, kicking a loose stone.
"Well, what are we supposed to do now?" Cinder said, sounding mildly annoyed. "We don't exactly have all day until the authorities arrive."
"His security team isn't too far away, either," the sensor said; her glowing eyes stared through a nearby wall.
"We'll follow his security team," Raven said. "Likely, they have ways of tracking him, and they'll be looking for his body."
"I'm not sure that's a great idea," Torchwick hesitated. "We're not exactly equipped for a fight, here." He gestured at the sensor, and at himself.
"We won't need the advantage," Raven said boredly. "Erra, here," Raven nodded her head towards a girl with cut-off sleeves who apparently was an acquaintance of hers, "can amplify people's semblances. And I hear your Emerald can cast illusions," she finished suggestively, hanging her statement on a bait hook.
Torchwick was eager to bite. "We can blind the lot of them with illusions!" he yelled triumphantly, and with sudden realization. "They'll never see it coming!" he held his cane in the middle and waved the hook up into the air, dancing slightly
"Excuse me," Cinder interrupted, glaring at Raven, "I thought the whole point of bringing you along was so that we wouldn't have to fight his entire security team? And now you're suggesting we do exactly that?" Cinder, still smarting under her current subordinate position, stoked herself into a new fury, apparently not happy that even her authority over Emerald had been commandeered by this stranger.
"Are you afraid?" Raven asked.
"No." Cinder answered.
And, to Cinder's credit, she didn't so much as flinch when the sensor's head exploded, splattering into an impromptu grenade of blood and bone chunks.
And, precisely in the center of their little shin-dig - using the words Melva would later use to describe the event - on an invisible section of flat ground, two pairs of bright eyes landed, lashing out with bullets and blades before quickly retreating into the fog and noise of the reverberating sound.
The next several seconds were a dance of the blind, as the whole group circled around one another with panic.
Raven pulled out her sword into a wide arc, and stood, tree-like, with a wide stance. She directed her attention downward in a fashion that told that she was emphasising her sense of hearing.
Cinder was far less meditative about the fight, and sent some small fire blasts arcing in random directions, failing to do anything but blind herself as the flames turned the reflective dust into opaque light.
One of these fire blasts, sent the very tip of it's flame just above Mr. S's prone form, leaving glowing dust particles hovering over him as he crashed several inches down into the sudden puddle of snowmelt he found himself in.
Mr. S observed all of this, and Mr. S decided that now would be a good time to run.
So he got up, and sprinted as quietly as he could, back the way he came.
Unfortunately, he'd - earlier that morning - decided to wear darker clothes than usual. So he was wearing dark clothes in a white fog, and he stood out like a target in a background factory.
And, of everyone, It was Cinder, who spotted him first.
Though, while Mr S was far from well hidden, Melva, who's eyes could see through the fog like air, was in prime position to choose her hiding spots, where the dust was thickest, and in prime position to choose her moment when she - noticing Cinder's distraction - fired several shots at the back of the woman's head.
It didn't killer her, but it did cause a stumble and buy Mr. S enough time to make it around the corner before he tripped, and fell, and crawled back fearfully back from Cinder - who'd clipped through the space in between them, rubbing the back of her head with one hand and stood over him, a ball of fire raised in the other.
"Wait!" Mr. S shouted, imploring her with kind a raised arm.
Cinder, surprising herself, actually paused, her growing rage inspiring the compliance.
And she slowed slightly, raising an eyebrow as she looked down at him with an expressively angry look.
"...Wait?" she mimicked with a biting tone. "Did you just ask me to wait?" she lowered her flame hand. "Are you insulting me? Are you playing a joke I can't understand? Are you a child!? Is this what the great 'Mr. Schnee' has to say at the end of his life? 'Wait'?..."Wait for what!?" She yelled. "Wait for your leaders to come back to their senses? Wait for your mistakes to stitch themselves back up? Wait for just a couple of seconds so that you can prolong your miserable life!?"
Mr. S felt that she was projecting a bit, but decided there was no harm in answering her.
"No," he said, "wait for him."
And he gestured at the completely innocuous man who'd been approaching them - and who was now close enough to Cinder to throw a punch.
Again, it didn't really harm her, but it did launch her across the alley, sending her barreling into the far wall and stunning her just long enough that, by the time she looked back up, there was nothing facing her but an empty alleyway.
The fight hadn't lasted more than several seconds before it's subjects dispersed, beating a hasty retreat out of her preferred element.
Outnumbered, Melva decided to stay in the rock dust, which hung, suspended, like a colloidal solution in the air.
Eventually satisfied that sufficient time had passed, she ventured around the corner, where the dust was thin enough to see by.
She paused and looked around herself.
"Melva!" She jumped, as she heard Mr. Schnee's voice.
Now that was a surprise.
Melva looked around herself.
"Melva!" it came again.
"Where are you!" Melva asked, urgent. "And what are you doing here?"
"I'm standing behind McGarnagle," he answered, "apparently he thinks it's ok to trap people against a wall, and he hasn't been very responsive."
Now, that made sense.
"Yeah, he's probably pretending to be a section of wall," Melva answered. "Just give him a couple of moments, he should snap out of it." Melva looked closely at the alley walls, trying to spot any discrepancies that might give away the pair, but quickly gave up the search.
"Where are the rest of them?" Mr. S asked. "Are they gone?"
"They're gone," Melva confirmed.
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
Suddenly, a small chip and a scroll leapt out at her, surprising her enough that she almost failed to catch them.
"What-?" she began.
"No time!" Mr. S said. "They're planning to attack my security team! They're going to be using an illusionist."
"Where are they? Your security team." Melva clarified.
"I've already unlocked my scroll, you should be able to see them on the map. My team's going to be tracking that chip, and Raven's going to be following my team!"
Melva didn't waste any time; nodding, she took off. "Tell McGarnagle where I am when he wakes up!" she yelled back.
Melva left knowing it might be some time before Mr. Schnee could manage to talk McGarnagle out of his stupor.
He was like talking to a brick wall in that state.
Mr. S, however, had much more success than most in getting to McGarnagle.
How?
Well... let's just say he had a few tricks up his sleeve.
"Open Sesame!" Mr. S yelled, his voice growing hoarse and his impatience sparking before, eventually, he just decided to push the man over, who fell, face planting, stiffly onto the floor.
Eventually, he managed to talk the man down to a more responsive state, managing in the intervening moments to come up with some very convincing excuses for himself.
…
"So, you're out of aura?"
"Yes," Mr. S smiled.
"You'd like an escort, then?" McGarnagle offered, following precise procedure for a potential murder victim, and unable to hide his derision and murderous anger.
"No, actually, I'd like you to go support my security team." Mr. S answered, forcing himself away from the burning desire he felt to hug someone and refuse to let go.
McGarnagle nodded and left, hurrying to leave as much as to support his partner.
And Mr. S, now standing lost and alone in a collapsed alley, immediately regretted his decision. - not least of which because there were two dead bodies accompanying him.
Mr. S looked around himself in a paranoid fashion, feeling the seconds tick by like hours as he sat on the ground, making himself small against the alley wall, alone in horrible anticipation.
"Come on, grow up," he whispered to himself. Schwarz needed the backup more than he did. And the attackers couldn't stay in this city for too long. They'd be off chasing after McGarnagle and Melvanova, who had the trackers, and he'd be safe here, far away from any of the fighting.
He'd be fine. He concluded decisively.
…
And, for no reason in particular, he felt the need to reassure himself, as a cold wind brought the smell of blood and exploded heads to his nostrils.
He'd be fine.
For you see, he was a needle in a haystack in this city. He was hiding in some random alley, sitting in the last place the enemy would think to look - the last place they saw him!
He'd be fiiine. Totally, and completely, fine.
He spent the next several moments consoling himself with similar mantras until, in the silence of the alley, the worst thing happened.
He started to think.
You see, there were in fact three ways Schwarz and the security team had of tracking Mr. Schnee.
There was his scroll, of course, but that could be easily lost.
There was the tracking chip, which he kept on himself at all times.
There was, also, however, a smaller beacon, inserted into each of his teeth.
Because they were small, and because they often had to deal with the interference of being inserted into his body, they were far less precise than the other two options. And it was - he consoled himself - one option that had, according to Mr. Schnee, "never been used."
In any event, they required specialized hardware to track, and Schwarz was unlikely to rely on them while the other two beacons were still active.
...
However, they would become the measure of last resort for whenever he was presumed to be dead. Because, in that case, the enamel trackers were the only one that could be trusted to be accurate.
But… he was alive.
And, there was probably no reason for Schwarz to assume he was dead.
After all, she'd only left him inside of an alley, with nine hunters, all of whom wanted him dead.
There was no way she'd be tracking the tooth beacons instead of the tracking chip. No way.
There was no chance at all that he'd just sent away the only two people who could provide support, and left himself alone, while his enemies and friends rushed to his location.
There was absolutely no reason for him to be worried about, or in fact, to believe, that, at this very moment, a large riot of super beings was making its way to his location, just after he'd left himself alone, and vulnerable, and huddling against the alley wall like a homeless man.
Besides, he consoled himself, if it came to it, he could just warn Schwarz not to approach by… calling her… with his scroll.
It took a heroic effort on Mr. S's part to ignore the horrible dread that was now eating him up.
After all, he'd made all the right decisions, hadn't he?
He'd acted rationally, and sent off support to his security team. He'd followed Mr. Schnee's advice and considered the primary tracking devices first.
There was no universe cruel enough to do anything but reward him for such foresight and practicality, was there?
There was absolutely no way that he was about to be involved in a running fight with a bunch of super men, at least half of whom wanted him dead.
BOOM!
He jumped a bit, not from fright but from the sheer energy with which the ground rocked itself underneath him.
BOOM!
It was closer this time.
BOOM!
And it was speeding up, forming in a straight line, like an arrow pointed at his doom!
...
Now, Mr. S wasn't running because he was at all worried.
He wasn't worried at all.
Why would he be worried, considering that everything was going according to plan, and nothing was wrong?
Yeah, that made sense.
That made more sense than anything, lately.
