Emerald Sustrai had lived a simple life, her mother had been a prostitute who was strangled to death by a customer, without any parents or guardians to claim her, she spent a few years raised in an orphanage. At first she constantly had her things taken from her by the older kids, her food, her clothes and the doll that had been a gift from her late mother, after a few weeks of crying herself to sleep, she eventually got used to it.
Adapt, that was how she would describe it. She adapted to her new life and she survived the only way she knew how, taking after the older kids, she stole. If she didn't have food, she would take some. If she wanted something, then it was hers.
As a child she had been ignorant of the ramifications that would eventually fall upon her, in the end her orphanage would toss her out before they also suffered alongside her.
Alone in a cruel kingdom, she continued to steal to survive.
It hadn't been until the first time that she saw a mugger stab a man to death, a man who slowly bled out, that she began to wonder about the afterlife. Her faint memories of her mother included stories of the faithful going to heaven and the sinners going to hell, her mother had told her to be a good girl.
Emerald wasn't a good girl and she didn't mind, she was alive and that was all that mattered. The nightmares of her mother lamenting her current lifestyle did annoy her, but her mother had been a prostitute so she had no room to criticize her life as a thief.
Good and Bad, Just and Evil, those didn't matter to street rats like her. She wouldn't hear about how stealing food was bad when the ones claiming that were gorging themselves round and tossing out the rest.
Nothing mattered to her except for her continued survival, and then Cinder appeared.
Cinder Fall had seen value in her and she wanted Emerald to join her. Although hesitant at first she accepted, and soon Cinder's life became almost as valuable as her own.
Cinder was strong, so she could protect Emerald.
Cinder had been everything Emerald wanted to be.
Cinder was the embodiment of her ideals.
Cinder was currently downing a bottle of alcohol, gulp after gulp echoed in the large castle room.
Emerald had been instructed to wait here, so had Mercury but he left after a few minutes to wander about, although arriving here had been a shock, she would've never guessed a huge castle existed in the grimmlamds, she had been prepared to follow Cinder to the ends of the world.
"It's not faaaair!" Cinder whined after she removed the bottle from her mouth. "I was so cloosse, but nooww the Plan is on hooold!" She stretched out her words with drunken emphasis and she rolled her head around. "It's not faaaair!" She repeated.
More shocking than the castle had been Cinder's state, about an half an hour since they landed and Emerald waited in this room, suddenly she barged through the door with a bottle in hand.
From what Emerald could gather from her drunken rant, the head boss had found a lover and was currently freezing any and all ongoing operations.
Mercury Black had been raised to be an assassin since he could walk and eventually he killed his teacher, his father, and with the source of every problem in his life gone, he didn't know what to do.
Then some chick showed up, but that doesn't matter anymore.
See there was this thing called video games, and he was currently getting curb stomped in it.
"Wow, you've really never played a game before." The blond boy currently curb stomping him said.
"Ah shut it, I'm getting the hang of it! Just watch me!" Mercury shouted as another round started.
Huh? Killing? The life of an assassin? What does that matter? His new purpose in life was video games.