Chapter 30: Ghost Stories - Part 2
48 Hours Earlier...
"What are we supposed to do now?"
Mercury's question was an echo of Emerald's own thoughts. She still held Cinder in her arms in an attempt to keep her from lying on the cold, dirty floor. Her semblance was still actively shrouding Ruby from her partner's view, which made it a bit more difficult to focus on otherwise simple tasks. "I don't know. We have to get off of this tower though. As long as Cinder is in this condition, we can't run the risk of running into that huntsman."
Mercury scoffed at the idea of a cautious approach, "Come on… we can take him, no problem."
"He's probably found the Schnee girl by now," Emerald reminded him, as she glanced at the hooded young huntress that only she could see, "Maybe Ruby too. That's three versus two, and we've got to worry about keeping Cinder safe. I don't like those odds."
The way in which she manipulated her partner was masterful. She saw no reason to kill everything in their path, but Mercury would not hesitate. So Emerald needed to control the odds just a bit. Hiding Ruby from his sight might be enough to convince him that she was still a viable threat lurking somewhere nearby, but he could be such a blockhead sometimes. The only reason she had agreed to come along was to make sure that Cinder was alright and she was, to some degree. Now, it had become a matter of finding a way out of this without being detected. Eventually, they could make their way back to Haven, but she knew that there was no practical way to get there if they had to haul what amounted to little more than a corpse the entire way.
Mercury's response was along the lines that Emerald hoped it would be. "Why can't you let me have any fun?"
"Oh, were we having fun at some point?" She shot back. "I must have missed it in between your psychopathic murder sprees."
He laughed again, something he was prone to doing in even the darkest situations. "Come on, Em! I told you, we're ghosts here. Everyone thinks I went home to be with my… family..." he raised his fingers to make air quotes. "You disappeared into a stadium full of people, and could be anywhere. If anyone finds those guys down in the lobby, they'd think it was a Grimm attack long before they guessed that the innocent victim Mercury used his magical powers to heal his broken leg and come back to take revenge against the civilized world."
"What about Ruby?" Emerald asked him, attempting to further embed some shred of doubt into his mind. "You fought her for crying out loud. Who knows if she's told anyone else about that. We… well… you could be a wanted criminal by now."
As far as he knew, Emerald brought up a good point. The half-pint had escaped his pursuit, although he had allowed it to happen. It wasn't worth the risk of being seen in public to put a beating on her. As much as he hated to admit it, it was a safe bet to lay low for now. A disgruntled sigh indicated his frustration with their predicament. "I hate when you're right. But we still don't have a plan. You wanted to get off of this tower?" He pointed at Cinder, "Well, how do you propose we do that, especially with her being dead weight?"
"I'll get myself down, and I can take Cinder with me. I'll use my blades to dig into the side of the tower and climb down." She sensed what Mercury was thinking and explained her course of actions before he could ask, "We can't go back down the way we came up because of that huntsman. If he climbs back up, that's the way he'll go."
"What about me? I can't dig into the walls like you can."
"Mercury, you practically have rocket boots. I think even you'll be able to figure this one out."
Without a second thought, he realized that she was right. "Good point… See ya at the bottom!" He took a running start, and front flipped off of the back edge of the building into a controlled, feet first dive towards the ground.
Normally, this would have been an alarming course of action that Emerald might have protested for the sake of her partner's safety. But by now, she wanted nothing more than to shut down her semblance. Rare was the occasion that she kept it activated for such a long time, and she was drained from it. She had kept her fatigue hidden well, but the daunting task of carrying her boss down from the tower loomed ahead of her. Her simpleton of a teammate had more or less abandoned her, and there was a veteran huntsman roaming around somewhere, probably looking for the girl in the red hood located a few feet away from her.
She made her way to the edge of the crumbled shell of a building that had previously acted as the headmaster's chambers. During the short walk, she could hear the low rumble of her partner's weapons slowing his descent. As she peered off of the edge, Emerald could see that Mercury had landed on the ground, and was casually kickboxing with some scattered Grimm near the base of the tower.
You've got to be strong, Emerald. Now, more than ever. She did her best to think reassuring thoughts as she unholstered her pistols, and unraveled the chains concealed within them. With the blade portion in hand, she draped Cinder's arms over her own shoulders, and proceeded to secure her by tying the chains around both of them. This would prove to be a test of balance and strength.
The hulking mass of humanity that was Emerald and Cinder walked back to the shattered edge of the building. Emerald dropped to a knee, and dug one of her blades into the floor. Once she was sure that it was lodged well enough to hold their combined weight, she slid both of her legs off of the side of the building, and with a mighty swing, plunged the second blade into the vertical wall. It took a great deal of strength and dexterity to pull the first blade free. Ok, here we go. Don't look down.
With a sharp jerk, she pulled the second blade free, and began to fall. After a second, she jammed both blades back into the side of the tower. The sound of the metal digging and scraping into the smooth stone of the tower was not subtle, at least not from Emerald's perspective. The main advantage was that it would require less endurance than climbing down one hook at a time, and that was worth the hair-raising screech that came along with it. Every few floors, a protruding ledge allowed her to take a break. She did not take much time, but it helped her stay in control of the speed of her drop.
After ten minutes or so, she finally reached a ledge where it became reasonable to jump the rest of the way. She estimated that the ground could not be more than twenty feet below her. As she eyeballed the distance, she took a moment to survey the ground for Mercury, who was standing uncharacteristically still, looking into the sky in the direction of the docks. She wondered why he was of so little use, especially at the moments when she could use his help the most. It's almost like he's always trying to make my life as difficult as possible, she thought.
On the final ledge, she unchained Cinder from her back, and wrapped both chains around her waist in opposite directions so that she wouldn't just unroll and plummet to the ground. Then she took great care to slowly lower her down to the ground. Her arms were throbbing from the level of exertion she had committed to since leaving the top of the tower, but with Mercury staring off into space, Emerald couldn't take the time to rest. Cinder was helplessly lying on the ground, and even though most of the Grimm in the area were keeping their distance, the danger seemed to be very real.
Emerald lept from the overhang she had been on. Her landing was harder than it would have normally been, but her muscles had become weak and sore from her descent. The groan she made was unnecessarily loud, but it helped to emphasize the physical and mental drain she was experiencing. She made quick work of untying her leader, and sitting her up against one of the concrete supports that helped balance Beacon Tower. With that done, she turned her attention back to Mercury, who was still staring into the sky.
She did not shout, but her scathing whisper of a voice was no less abrasive against the sudden stillness of the night. It carried just as much venom as if she had screamed at the top of her lungs. "Mercury! What the hell are you looking at?" He turned his body enough to hold out his hand with only his index finger raised above the rest.
"I'm uh, not sure, honestly… I mean I know what my eyes are seeing, but I have… one or two questions." He finally turned his head to look at Emerald, revealing an utterly bewildered expression. "How much weight do you think an umbrella can hold?"
Emerald's expression changed to match Mercury's. She had no idea what he was alluding to. "I don't… what kind of question is that?."
Mercury took several strides towards Emerald, turned, and stood directly behind her. He pointed with his arm right next to her head, so that she would be able to follow it more precisely. "There. Look. I mean, that's her, right?"
It took a moment for her to see it. The dark made it hard enough to see, and she wasn't sure exactly what to look for in the first place. But when she found it, there was no sense to be made of what she saw. "What… How in the world…" Emerald had no idea what could have caused Mercury to pick the young girl's slight figure drifting lazily through the sky from the direction of the docks. "Neo?"
"Yep… So, that's one question out of the way." They stood silently for a moment, watching the young girl floating down to the ground. After a several seconds, Mercury continued his questioning. "So... what happened to your favorite criminal mastermind? Weren't they supposed to be stealing an army... or an airship armada... or something?"
"Well, she was supposed to break Roman out of the holding cell aboard the ship. Based on what we saw happen to the Atlesian Military, I guess she was successful. I'm sure Neo just couldn't take any more of his incessant snark. I can't blame her, I'd probably jump overboard too." Emerald took a step away from Mercury, now that such a close proximity was not required. "Why don't you go make sure she's okay when she lands. I'll try to take Cinder somewhere safe."
Mercury raised an eyebrow, "Where, exactly, is safe? Have you looked around us?"
She considered the audacity of her partner asking her to pay attention to her surroundings. "Yeah, I know, but the Grimm don't seem to be interested in Cinder. It's almost like she repels them somehow. As far as where… I was thinking of using our room in the guest dorms. Nobody else is even still here, and if they come looking, we just tell them that we were holed up there. When she wakes up, then we'll go from there."
Mercury was not thrilled with the prospect of sitting on his hands, again. For weeks, he had done nothing but wait for Cinder to arrange everything. He had been allowed to entertain himself in various matches throughout the tournament, but only within the confines of the master plan. He was never allowed to put his full ability on display. No one would let him have any fun, as he called it. The entire process was becoming incredibly boring, to the point where his dedication was waivering. "So, we're going to wait. Again..."
"I mean, what else can we do Mercury?"
"I don't know... Emerald. Maybe if our fearless leader would have trusted us with the details of her super secret plan, we wouldn't be standing here twiddling our thumbs. Maybe, we'd be doing something other than watching the silent assassin gracefully float with the breeze." For once, Mercury wasn't being sarcastic. He was legitimately upset that there was no contingency plan.
His genuine emotion was also surprising to Emerald, who returned fire as best as she was able, "Don't talk about her that way! You don't seriously believe that she intended for any of this to happen, do you?"
"No, Em, I'm not stupid. But I can't even count how many times Cinder just sent us to our rooms, with no indication of what our next move was going to be. She didn't tell us anything! How am I supposed to know what to do? This is a master plan with no master."
Their argument served as a soundtrack to Emerald's short walk to Cinder, having given up trying to use reason on her hopelessly childish teammate. She lifted her leader over her own shoulder, and began walking towards the guest dormitory. As Mercury finished up his most recent diatribe, their attention was drawn to Neopolitan, who had finally touched down a good distance away from them. She immediately dropped to her knees. The thousand yard stare was visible in her eyes from the mere hundred yards away that Emerald was in relation to her.
Since she had nothing more to say to Mercury, Emerald began her march toward the guest building on the eastern edge of the campus. She could only hope that her partner would be more delicate with Neo. It was probably in his best interest to do so anyway.
As it turned out, she was half right. Mercury slowly made the walk across the campus to where Neo was. She was distraught at something, and he was unsure how to handle her. He was not the most comforting person in the world, not by a long shot. Instead, he tried a more witty approach, "So… what'd you do with Roman?" which failed miserably.
She broke free of her blank stare, and snapped to her feet. Despite being more than an entire foot shorter than Mercury, her glare actually startled him.
"What…? Did you leave him on the ship or something?"
He didn't see it happen. His focus had been on her eyes, trying to decipher the source of her angst. Mercury heard a click, and a sound that he could only describe as a sword being unsheathed. Then, he felt it pierce his foot. It didn't hurt him physically, only what was left of his pride was wounded.
There was no wry smile as Neo proceeded to walk right past him, apparently in the same direction Emerald had gone. She left her umbrella lodged in his prosthetic foot, without saying a word. It was her style. "Yeah, nice to see you too," was Mercury's only response to her outburst. His words were directed toward no one in particular, since he was the only one still standing in the clearing. He pulled the umbrella from his foot, and walked off in another direction entirely, muttering to himself the whole way.