Chapter 44 – merKury part 2

Ilia actually kind of hoped she didn't have to kick Weiss' ass. Yes, that was a weird thought, but it would be better if it turned out to be Goodwitch. If she had been the one to kill Marrow, taking her out of the picture would deprive Ozpin of his last chess piece. Qrow was hospitalized, and even if he did recover miraculously fast, he wouldn't be fit enough to fight anytime soon. That just left the headmaster himself.

He was clearly leaning towards Ruby, likely due to her silver eyes. Blake could win the tournament and be the greatest huntress to have ever lived, but that wouldn't change the fact that Ozpin had, intentionally or not, practically groomed Ruby to be loyal to him. The time had come to stop hoping they would be chosen and start taking matters into their own hands.

Penny had assured then that she, with her father's aid, could convincingly fake a scroll message from Goodwitch to Ozpin explaining her absence before he got suspicious. There were five people on Atlas' side, so three of them could easily keep tabs on his whereabouts while one other took Blake to the underground vault and stole the maiden power.

They still didn't have to code to the elevator, but Ilia had thought it over, and she had a solution. Placing a hidden camera inside the elevator itself was too risky, because with it came the risk that Ozpin would find it, but that didn't mean there weren't other ways to see Ozpin enter the code. It seemed obvious in hindsight. Penny had thermal vision, and she could see through the walls of the elevator. There was no way to observe the keypad itself, but they could see the headmaster when he used it. If Penny could report the order in which Ozpin moved his fingers, they could get the code. Simple as that. Penny was currently watching the CCT, waiting for Ozpin or Goodwitch to go check on Amber.

If that failed, they could always just beat the code out of Goodwitch. It was like the stars had aligned for everything to be in their favor.

And if Weiss was the killer…

Well, Ilia didn't think it was Weiss. At least, Ilia hoped it wasn't Weiss, because it would be sooooo much easier if it was Goodwitch.

Adam and Winter were out questing, Blake was keeping an eye on Penny as she watched the CCT so that she didn't accidentally download malware and explode or something, so Ilia had the night off to watch the tournament with Ruby again. The last time she'd wandered off in the middle of a fight, Qrow had gotten his butt kicked by his OP sister, so Ilia decided to buy her Mistrilian Fish in before the round started, this time around.

They'd gotten to the singles, and the first match of the night was Mercury Black vs. Yang Xiao-Long. Ilia clearly knew who she was rooting for.

"Kick 'er in the dick, Mercury!"

"Iliaaaaaaa!" groaned Ruby. "You have to show team spirit."

"She's not on my team," pointed out Ilia. "Hey, speakin' of which, how come it's her and not Pyrrha?"

"Pyrrha's out in Vale, visiting Jaune. This was the first time that both of them could meet, so Yang gave her the go ahead to skip the match. And since we all know Yang's gonna kick Mercury straight in his vagina, Pyrrha can just watch the next match for Yang, or maybe the finals."

Mercury was kicking up a storm with his gun boots or whatever foot weapon he was using. Flying white comets of some kind of Dust were twirling through the air in all sort of directions as Yang boxed them away from her.

"How many singles levels are there?" Ilia asked Ruby.

"Three," she answered distractedly.

"Fricking whaaaat! This tournament is bull Faunus shit. One person gets to fight five matches, but half their team doesn't even last beyond the first round?"

"Well, there's thirty two teams in the line-up. In order to fit everyone, they have to have five rounds of fighting. I guess three solos fights are–"

"No, they aren't. You and I coulda at least had one more chance to shine."

Whoever had planned the tournament cared more about the audience than the participants. It was probably entertaining to see two top hunters duke it out for glory in an epic one-on-one honor duel, but it meant that teams had to brutally choose who went on and who didn't. Ilia cared little for it, but Ruby had, and Ozpin or the referees or whoever was in charge was a real jerk for crushing her dreams like they had.

Yang's semblance lit up, and she began to throw around Mercury like a ragdoll. The fight had been a close one, closer than Team Yellowjacket-P should have ever come in a singles round given how powerful they were, but it was over now. Yang was throwing punch after punch, and there was nothing Mercury could do to defend himself. He hadn't even used his semblance yet, whatever it was.

That's assuming he's figured out what it is. Or maybe he's like Russel and doesn't know how to use it right. But if he doesn't even have a combat semblance, then why did Team Cinnamon choose…

Team Cinnamon.

Cinder.

"Something's wrong," said Ilia instantly.

"I know you don't wanna see Yang win, but–"

"Not that. Something's wrong about this whole thing. Mercury isn't the best man on his team for this. There's no way he could have lost so easily. Why would she even send…"

Ilia trailed off, fully aware that Ruby was no longer listening to her. Her attention had been snatched by the arena below.

"Marvelous! Despite holding the first half of the fight in the palm of his hand, young Mister Black has had victory snatched away from him by–"

"HIYA!"

Mercury's leg bent at an angle that made Ilia want to retch. Yang's eyes were blazing red when she punched, and her opponent went down with a blood curdling scream.

A fake bloodcurdling scream. Ilia had faked and overacted wounds before when the mission called for it, typically to give her an excuse to leave the White Fang while she 'recovered' and was debriefed by the general. She knew everything there was about the pitch, sound, and tonal difference between a real scream and a false one. He was faking it, and he clearly wasn't well trained as an actor. Still, the masses were fooled.

"Turn it off! Medics, get in there!" bellowed Port.

Cinder didn't know K was onto her, so there was no reason for her to intervene. But on the other side of the coin, Cinder was tied to Neo, Hazel, and Tock, who were after the maiden power. This could be her big play. Ilia had but moments to interfere if she was going to.

Pros: Stop Cinder, maybe.

Cons: Attention. Notoriety. Risk of exposure to both the world and Cinder's forces. Knowingly aiding Yang Xiao-Long.

"No," breathed Ruby. "She…Y-Yang wouldn't…"

The pros suddenly got a whole lot more appealing.

"Get me down there."

"What? Ilia, I don't know what's–"

"Get me down there right now¸ or they'll take your sister to prison!"

Ruby eeped, grabbed Ilia's arm, and ran them down with her semblance. The guards nearly shot them where they stood, but Ilia raised up her hands in surrender.

"I have a healing semblance! I can help him!"

Ruby looked at her funny. "You–"

"Please, let me help!" Ilia shouted over Ruby before she could ruin it. "That looked like a bad hit, and I might be able to fix up his wound a bit!"

The security guards looked at one another. "Phone it in?"

"We don't get paid enough to make the calls like this." He nodded "Phoning it in."

Mercury quickly sat up, pushing his torso up off the ground with his hands so that he could keep up the ruse. If Ilia hadn't been 100% sure before, she was now. "It's not–"

Ilia spoke over him as well, to keep herself in charge of the situation. If she kept pushing, she kept control. "Don't worry…Mercury, was it? You're friends with Ruby, right? I can help you out here."

"Hey, that's right!" said Ruby. "You were my friend of the week! Oh, I'm so glad we can help you."

Yang stepped towards them. "I–"

"DO NOT APPROACH! STAND DOWN!"

The barrel of a gun was thrust in her personal space. Yang wisely backed away.

The guard who was radioing the situation in turned back to them. "Go ahead, ma'am. Heal him."

"I'm going to have to see the wound," said Ilia, crouching in front of Mercury.

"You know, what? It's feeling a lot–"

Their eyes met.

Mercury saw it. Ilia didn't know how much he figured out, but he knew that she knew.

A grin spread across his face, and Ilia's confidence faltered. "Go right ahead." He pushed out his foot.

Ilia pulled up his pants leg. The audience gasped upon seeing the exposed metal wiring and leaking fluid. Ilia had known he hadn't been injured badly, but she had no idea that he was a cyborg. That meant that he'd clearly pre-meditated being hit by Yang on the legs, specifically around the kneecap. Yang nearly raised her fists in anger, but the barrel of a guard's gun stopped her.

Mercury shrugged.

"Y'all caught me, I guess."

The guards, entirely unsure of what to do, helped him to his one remaining robotic foot just as medical personnel joined Ilia, Ruby, Yang, and a smirking Mercury on the battlefield.

"What is the meaning of this?" asked one of the guards.

"Let me put it in a way you simpletons will understand," Mercury said, louder than necessary. Awfully loud…loud enough for the people in the front rows to hear and pass on. "Us huntsmen don't care about things like the rules. We do whatever–"

Ruby socked him in the face.

"You jerk! You cheated!"

Mercury felt to the ground, only to be the cushion for Ruby, who'd thrown the punch with such force that she lost her balance and went down as well.

"Guilty on all counts, your honor." He roughly rolled her off of his torso.

"You big meanie! Yang was gonna go to jail, and just for what? So your team could get a stupid, stinking trophy?"

"This is the big leagues, kiddo. We pro hunters gotta do what we gotta do, and we don't really care who we gotta do it to."

It was then that Ilia realized just how loud the boos of the crowd were getting.

"So you didn't stop Cinder's plan?" asked Blake.

Ilia shook her head. "I don't think so. Mercury was too smarmy to have not accomplished whatever it was he'd set out to do. I interrupted it, but he managed to twist things back in their favor somehow."

"How could Grimm at the walls of the city be in anyone's favor?"

"I…I don't know. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have–"

Blake patted her shoulder. "You took a risk you thought was worth it. We now know more about the situation than we did before."

"But still, I unilaterally decided to expose us to Team Cinnamon. That should have been a choice we made as a team."

"Yeah, but if you hadn't done anything, you'd probably be apologizing for unilaterally deciding not taking any action when you had the chance. It was a limited time opportunity. You couldn't have contacted us either way to make the call, so you did your best. At least this way Yang's not in trouble."

Ilia looked away.

"Yang's not in trouble, right?"

Why would she be? The entire world had seen clearly that Mercury had pretended to be injured. Anyone with half a brain, no, a quarter of a brain would realize that he had been playing Yang.

"She's not disqualified, and there's certainly no legal action to be taken against her. But some people are still wondering why she hit Mercury like she did, especially if she didn't know he had prosthetics."

Blake sighed. "I guess we'll just have to ask her."

Ilia was probably fighting off the urge to turn green in shame, but Blake honestly wasn't mad at her. There was a reason K was made up of people instead of unthinking Atlesian military drones. Making quick choices on the fly was one of their specialties, and Ilia had made the best judgment call she could given what she knew at the time. Had Blake been in her shoes, she probably would have done something similar, though skipping out on the healing semblance angle since her shadow clones were already well known.

Yang was alone with Sky and Ruby, ostensibly offered so that she could have time to cool down with just the company of her teammate and sister, but really so that K could meet up and discuss Mercury's actions before they confronted her. Penny and Winter would be fine on their own, so the Faunus members of K were reconvening after the tumultuous events of the first singles fight. Blake had been at the CCT, which was close to their dorm buildings. Adam was on his way.

"Yang's a jerk, but she wouldn't punch Mercury without provocation. Not only that, but she hit him in the leg, where he wouldn't take any damage. Cinder must have had some way to control her. Yang says she saw something, but we need to get to the bottom of this."

Blake nodded in agreement. "This is too close. We're a quarter step away from having finalized our pathway to the maiden powers, and now she's on the move? It can't be a coincidence."

"I don't think so," said Ilia. "Mercury was surprised to see me. I don't think they even knew about us. I think we just went about casually for too long, waiting for Ozpin to give us the maiden powers. We should have been more aggressive from the start."

"Hindsight is twenty twenty. Once we're – Adam!"

The bull Faunus joined them, and Blake and Ilia filled him in.

"How did they get Ruby's sister to–"

"We don't know! Ruby and Sky are in there with her right now. Now that we're all here, everyone ready?" Blake looked at the two other Faunus and nodded. "Remember, we don't know anything. We're just concerned friends."

She knocked on the door.

"Yang? Can we come in?"

"The door's unlocked," came from inside.

K filed into the room cautiously. Yang was sitting on her bed, her eyes red and puffy. Sky was pacing back and forth with such fast motion that Blake nearly mistook him for her rose-petal super-speed girlfriend, and he would fidget his hands every now and again. Ruby herself was peering out the open window into the empty night sky, her hands resting on the frame.

"Hey, guys," said Ilia with a wave.

"Hey," Sky shot out between growls, barely even acknowledging them.

"Ilia, I would've been in deep shit if not for you," said Yang. "You really jellied my strawberries back there."

"No probl– what?"

"You salted my soup, girl."

"Yang, what does–"

"You buttered her biscuits," said Ruby. Her voice wasn't normal. It was like someone had put it through the wringer, and every word was flat. If Blake had to guess, it almost sounded pained.

"Y'all Patch girls are weird," Sky grunted, still pacing. "There're some weird idioms in yer parts."

"That's racist," intoned Ruby, rolling her eyes calmly. Blake felt a chill run down her spine.

Adam turned to Yang. "Speaking of that, what exactly did you–"

Ruby rotated around and started forcefully walking towards the door. Blake paused her interrogation of Yang and watched Ruby. She seemed to be more upset than someone trying to cheat her sister's team out of a tournament should have made her. Blake reached over to take her palm, hoping the gesture might express some comfort and calm Ruby down, but Ruby placed her hand on Blake's shoulder and roughly shoved her out of the way. Blake hadn't been expecting it at all, and her feet couldn't compensate in time. She awkwardly half-tripped, half-slumped against the wall of Team Yellowjacket-P's dorm as Ruby moved to her target.

Ilia shrunk backwards as Ruby wrapped her up in a full body hug. She looked at Blake, perplexed, then gently patted Ruby on the back in return.

"Ru–"

"For saving my sister."

"Oh, thanks. Er, I guess, you, uh, butter my…"

Then, Ilia joined Blake in the awkward position of nearly falling backwards only to be stopped by one of the room's four walls. The action had been too quick for Blake to see with the naked eye, but Ruby's handprint could be seen in red on Ilia's cheek.

"For lying to me."

Balling up her fists, Ruby strode out the open door.

Adam stepped in her way. "Where are you going?"

"Out of my way."

"Don't do this to yourself. If you have a problem, talk to us."

For a second, Ruby didn't respond. That is, she didn't respond with words. Crescent Rose unfolded, and the scythe blade took a centimeter out of the floor as Ruby pressed it down.

"Out of my way."

Adam wisely stepped out of the way.

"What the fuck was all that about?" he asked, when Ruby was gone.

"I'm so sorry, you guys," said Yang. "It's all my fault."

"Mercury's fault, more like it," said Sky. "Bastard tried to screw with us…I say he deserves more than just disqualification. They should kill him. They oughta fucking kill that fucker, slowly."

"Ilia said that her semblance was healing back when we were in the arena," said Yang. "And when Ruby and I were talking, I pointed out that I thought it was color changing. I swear, I thought she knew. W-We figured out you're a Faunus, Ilia."

Sky shook his head. "Yang…"

"It's all my fault. I ruined Team Rabies."

"Not all your fault. The whole breath thing wasn't your fault."

Blake froze. "Breath?"

Sky looked at Ilia. "Ruby noticed you don't breathe. Like, apparently you pranked her by not breathing or something? She knows that your semblance is holding your breath." He turned to Yang and placed both hands on her shoulders. "See? Not your fault. Ruby already knew."

If Ruby knew that Ilia's semblance was not needing to breathe, then that meant…

"…she figured out I knew Mercury was cheating before I saw his legs," finished Ilia. "She knew I was lying about having a healing semblance, and she intuited that I just wanted to get down there to expose Mercury. That's why she's mad."

"I think it's all of it at once," said Sky. "The Faunus thing, you lying about knowing the asshat was cheating, and most importantly, the fact that at no point did you even try to tell Ruby about either of those things. Trust breaks easily, folks."

"Shit," groaned Adam. "Any of you know where she's going?"

"We know as much as you. She just ran off in front of us all."

"I'll go find her," said Ilia.

"Bad idea," said Adam. "You too, Blake. The fact that you two are dating might make her feel like the dishonesty is more personal. I'll go after her."

Ilia rose. "I didn't mean to…"

"It's no less my fault than yours, but Ruby won't see it that way. Why don't you talk over what happened with Yang? We're all curious about…" He trailed off.

"…why I attacked Mercury's legs?" Yang finished as Adam left the room.

"We would like to know, if you don't mind sharing."

"You don't have to," said Sky to Yang. "Today's been stressful enough as it is. We don't need to talk about it anymore."

"Nah, it's fine." Yang wiped her eyes. "I owe it to the girl who scalloped my potatoes back there. I just, I dunno, saw him try to kick me, so I punched him in that leg before he could. It's as simple as that."

"That's it?" asked Ilia. "You just…saw something that didn't happen?"

"But it did happen!"

"The video recordings disagree."

"Maybe you all got tricked, and I was the only one who saw what was real!"

Blake decided not to point out that Mercury's broken cybernetic leg was proof that they were right. Tensions were getting too high, and they probably didn't need to rile her up any further.

"Maybe you guys want some alone time," said Blake. "We'll see ourselves out.

Ruby hadn't used her semblance to run off, so there was no trail of roses to follow. That didn't stop Adam from trying. Physical evidence was sparse, but still present for those who knew how to look. A door ajar, a table bumped out of place, a knocked over Winter Schnee…

"Winter! Did you see which way she went?"

"Which was Ruby went? I'm afraid I didn't. I barely even knew it was her I'd bumped into before she was gone."

"Dammit!"

"What's – actually, never mind. I spoke to Weiss."

Adam desperately wanted to hunt down Ruby, given how fragile her mental state would be after so many of K's lies were exposed at once, but the mission came first.

"And?"

"She's innocent. It wasn't her."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. I'd stake my life on it. Dust, I'd stake your life on it."

That meant it really was true. Adam sighed deeply, trying to calm himself down. It had been less than a single day, and both his team and the Yellowjacket-P's were falling apart, Cinder was making her move, the Grimm were congregating outside the walls of Vale in numbers never before seen, and now this.

"What's our plan?" asked Winter.

"Does Penny have the code?"

"Last I checked, no."

"I'll call her back. We'll need our full strength for what comes next."

"And what is that?"

Adam had to remind himself that Winter, while a treasured friend of the team, wasn't technically affiliated with Atlas, and thus hadn't been told their full plans yet.

"We take Goodwitch."

"Dead or alive?"

"Alive…until we have the code. Then, we avenge Marrow."

Author's Notes

Me: Resist the urge to have Yang say 'You really jammed my clams, Ilia.' Resist. RESIST!

It would seem as though Ruby is finally...how do the kids say it?

Oh, yeah.

Done.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!