Mercury was unfeeling. Sparks danced on his skin – sparks of magic, both his own and José's – but they may as well have not been there at all for all he cared about them. They were sparks that burned, sparks that stung, sparks that pierced, and yet he found himself ignoring them entirely, simply moving forward to the man facing him.

That's all he had to do. Keep moving. Keep dodging. Keep healing.

José was a gross man. He had unruly hair and an even more unruly mustache; if Mercury hadn't known who he was, if he couldn't feel the waves of power radiating off him, he'd have thought the man to be some random scum off the streets – and even that assumption wouldn't have been entirely wrong.

José was scum. He just happened to be very influential, even among the world of scum.

His magic was disgusting, too, as it washed over Mercury. The water mage found himself choking on it if he stayed within it for too long, even if it didn't actually make contact with his skin. It seemed to burn the very air that the mage breathed. It was revolting. It was acid. Getting within a couple of inches had him fighting to retain his determination, because it felt like pure fear.

It was nothing like Makarov's magic. He hoped his guildmaster was alright.

Duck, dodge, jump, roll – blasts upon blasts of that foul magic surged to greet him, and the man could only do his best to make sure he didn't actually touch it. There was hardly any time to counter. Mercury wasn't in the state of mind to, anyway, entirely focused on making sure that he wouldn't get burned to a crisp by the magic that looked like fire, but wasn't.

José's magic was death. There was no other way to put it.

Whether or not that meant he could finally kill the water mage, Mercury had no idea – but he wasn't willing to risk it. There were still things he had to do, tasks he had to finish before finally kicking the bucket, and José was absolutely not going to be the one to make him do so.

So, Mercury danced.

For as strong as José was, his magic was not faster than Laxus's was, even if he still wasn't going all out. That didn't matter. What mattered was that José was still not taking Mercury seriously even though none of his attacks were landing.

"Boy," José said after a minute or two of attacking. Rather, José himself was not attacking; he merely stood in place just a few feet from the door he'd entered from, watching with simultaneous excitement and boredom as he allowed blasts of purple to rise from his palms. "Did you kill Aria?"

The assault stopped; Mercury didn't, taking in a quick breath and sending spears towards the guildmaster, but he did answer – "No."

He was sure José didn't actually care whether or not Aria had been killed. Phantom was not the type of guild to care about their members.

The guildmaster sighed dramatically. "Ugh. Another one of Makarov's ilk. Too weak to kill another person."

Mercury didn't correct José. He had killed other people before, both intentionally and unintentionally, and he knew for certain that the ability to spare someone wasn't a weakness. If anything, it was a strength – to not give into rage and disgust when fighting with one's life on the line was hard.

Water manifested in Mercury's hand, in the shape of a whip – which he launched forward at José with as much force as his enchantment-boosted arms could handle without the muscles completely tearing. There was no telltale crack of the weapon as it raced towards the man. It was just made of water, but it could do some serious damage.

If it actually hit, that was.

José manifested his own wave of purple magic with his left hand, and the water was blasted apart, sending droplets towards the walls. It was clear that a frontal assault would likely mean nothing in the face of such raw, overwhelming power. Mercury would have to be sly, sneaking, and even then, he wasn't sure he could do anything to really matter.

But that was fine. He was just a distraction; as long as he could sufficiently pull José's attention away from his guild below, that meant he was doing his job. The shades down there would become less strong, and Erza would be able to break through with the guild in a much more comfortable position to defend themselves.

That was assuming José didn't just knock Mercury out, though.

"I wished it was Titania that was here instead of you. Do you know why, boy?"

Mercury hated how José called him 'boy.' It was fine coming from Makarov, but from this man in front of him, it was nothing but a demeaning title; Mercury was nothing more than a child in his eyes.

"I don't care," Merc hissed out. Erza's spear was still in his hands, though the metal handle was already creaking as he used it to block or cut through waves of magic.

It was clear that the weapon wouldn't last much longer.

Mercury summoned up another wave of water from the air. Instead of a whip or weapon, this one took on his own form – a water clone. It lacked any of Mercury's own ability to use magic or even his mass, but it was sturdy enough to not dissipate when José launched a spear of shade magic at it. He had it rushing towards the man, using its own watery body as a heavy battering ram.

"I wanted to make a little announcement, you see. What better way to kill any remaining hope than to show the flies below that the person they'd placed their faith in has been killed? Though, if it was her, I'd love to play around a little bit. You, however, are worthless to me. I don't even know your name, nor do I care."

Yes, Mercury was entirely aware of how little people knew about him. He was nobody, an outsider, even among Fairy Tail – but that had always been okay, because there were still plenty of people who appreciated him.

Obviously, José was not one of them, and Mercury was perfectly okay with that.

"And," José continued, "even if I did care, it would mean nothing. We have already accomplished our first goal. Lucy Heartfilia is in our possession, so there's no longer any point in your fighting other than trying to save yourself from complete annihilation. What a selfish little Fairy you are, hmm?"

"Lucy isn't an item that you can just take," Mercury ground out. It meant nothing; nothing he could do would change José's mind.

"Life is mine to take, boy. Only the strong have the privilege to have their own lives. Anyone else lives under the assumption that someone stronger than them can choose whether they live or die, and I am far stronger than even your pathetic guildmaster."

That was a truth – not the truth, but certainly one of the many truths of the world.

Merc hated it. Even if it was a truth he grew up with – no, because it was the truth he grew up with, it was not his truth. Even if he was weaker than someone else, that didn't make him a possession, nor someone who was fit to be controlled by the strong; regardless of how weak or strong someone was, they were still someone. They were still a person with thoughts and ideals and dreams.

There was not a single person in this world who deserved to be controlled by someone else.

"If the Heartfilia girl is not a possession, why is it that you of all people can decide whether or not she goes with us? What gives a weakling like you the right to make that decision?" José asked.

Their fighting had momentarily come to a pause as the two exchanged opinions – if one overheard the conversation, they might have thought it nothing more than a debate over the ethics of control; who gave someone the right to make a decision of another person? Why was it that some people's opinions were worth "more"? Was it power? Was it strength? Was it respect?

But José was not more worthy to be listened to simply because he was a Wizard Saint; in fact, it was that very title that showed Mercury the contradiction. His own Master was kind, and he was a Wizard Saint of nearly equal standing as José – so why did this man in front of him believe that he held enough power to reduce someone to less than an item?

"She would never go with you," Mercury explained. "Phantom Lord is a –"

"I assure you, boy, she went with us quite willingly. Of course, there may have been a few people's lives on the line, but those aren't really worth much these days, are they?"

Mercury's brain stalled. Whose lives had been threatened for Lucy to go so far as to give herself up?

Were they even still alive?

José was certainly cruel enough to go back and kill them as soon as their "use" had been fulfilled, or at least to send someone else to do the job for him.

"A threat doesn't constitute agreement, you dick," Mercury snapped. He didn't much like philosophy, and discussing it with a man as disgusting and perverted as José certainly didn't make him appreciate it any more.

"Care to demonstrate?" José asked.

For a moment, the water mage was confused at the statement – and then José lunged forward much faster than he could track, even faster than Laxus, the boy who took the form of lightning. Mercury didn't even have time to take more than half a step back. The spear in his hands fell loudly to the ground, and he found himself with his back pressed to the church-like room's wall with José's hands around his neck.

It was the second time today that he'd been choked, and frankly, Mercury was quite tired of it.

He thrashed under José's grip even as the Wizard Saint squeezed tighter, until hardly any air made it through Mercury's throat. For such a slender man, José was quite strong. His grip didn't even falter when the water mage managed to smack him in the face and kick him in the thigh, instead, using his remaining free hand to grasp at the man in his grip's arms.

"Listen, brats," it was immediately clear that José was not simply talking to Mercury. His voice echoed loudly around the room, magnified by magic. It was the same thing he'd done earlier. José was transmitting his voice through the Phantom Lord guild hall's sound system, and it was definitely carrying outside to the Fairy Tail mages in the plaza.

"We've completed our first objective. Lucy Heartfilia is in our possession, meaning that we can move on to our second objective – slaughtering the rest of you brats."

As if to prove his point, José kneed Mercury right below the stomach, hard.

"Fuck," he coughed out unintentionally. The water mage's voice echoed from the room and outside; it was being transmitted, too.

Waves of pain radiated from where bone dug into muscle, but José did not move his knee, instead pushing it in deeper. Between the man's hands around his neck and the limb pressing into his gut, Mercury wasn't sure he could breathe, even if he wanted to – but if he did manage to take a breath now, José would surely use that as an opportunity to get him to cuss again, and broadcast his voice to the waiting Fairy Tail mages.

Mercury refused to be used as bait. The guild already had to worry about Lucy; they needed to prioritize her.

José only removed his foot when it looked like he'd dropped whatever magic had been connected to the speakers outside, and he glared down at the person in his hands as though he were less than a bug – less than the flies he had proclaimed the waiting Fairy Tail mages to be.

"You… There's something odd about you, hmm?"

Mercury wanted to object, or to state the obvious – 'no fucking shit' – but that hand was still gripped around his neck, and he quite literally felt his face turning blue as he fought to inhale.

How ironic. Perhaps he could die, and the cause would be asphyxiation.

And the water mage wasn't sure if he should be glad that José didn't follow up his statement with another one, unraveling the truth of the skin just below his own finger tips. If he felt the ridges there, he made no comment about it. José simply stared down at him for a moment.

Then he got a twisted look of glee on his face, and started flooding Mercury's system with his own magic power.

Magic power wasn't intended to be shared.

Each person had their own individual tendencies when it came to magic, just as some mages had innate magics and some didn't. It was probably related to genetics and parents, though, if you were to get more philosophical, some would probably argue that it came from the soul or whatnot.

Whatever it was, he didn't give a fuck – his magic was his own, even if he shared it with a group of people who were so similar to him that it would be tough to pick the water mage out if a crowd. That magic that coursed through his veins didn't mean shit to others. The magic could be the same, but what you did with it was what mattered. How he used it –

That was a digression. His body was his own, and his magic fit into it exactly like a puzzle piece – but then what happened when somebody tried to slot something in that didn't fit? A triangle in the square hole made for his magic, an arrow through the wrong target.

It wouldn't fit.

Magic couldn't be transferred from one person to another as easily as that. You needed to force it in against the flow of a mage's innate magic, overwhelming what was there with what you were adding.

José could do that quite easily.

Mercury had a lot of magic power – or at least, in the past he did – but José was a Wizard Saint, and not for nothing. He could overwhelm that unique magic as easily as breathing. Probably even easier, judging by the way he didn't even break a sweat. That ugly smile remained on his face as the water mage started to thrash against his grip.

Only once in his life had he been forced to accept the magical power of someone else – his Mother – and that had been so powerful that it had altered his very being.

José, however, was not Mother.

He was just a dick.

His magic flooded through Mercury's body like poison. If the water mage had thought that it was intense before, he wasn't prepared at all for the sensation of it literally dripping through his veins, clogging up every pore on his body, and forcing itself into his own magic system.

It wasn't a spell, wasn't like Aria's magic. It was simply brute force that shoved it through Mercury's body like a river being forced to change direction by an even more powerful counterflow.

What followed was agony.

Perhaps José had somehow been aware of the fact that people like Mercury were overly sensitive to magic, or perhaps something in the Wizard Saint had just decided to do so on a whim. Regardless, the forced transfer was boiling hot acid through the water mage's veins. It was every bone in his body broken down and piercing his muscles. It was his head lit on fire, every fold of his brain exposed to scorching heat.

It was pain.

Mercury probably couldn't have screamed even if he wanted to. Even when José dropped him to the floor like some kind of toy he was tired of playing with, the water mage couldn't force his mouth to move – he wasn't even sure he was seeing anything at all, vision lit up with all sorts of colors and shapes that really shouldn't have been there.

Was that José laughing?

It sure fit the man – the loud cackle of a madman echoed in Mercury's ears, tinged with the familiar sound of those Mercury had once been close to laughing.

Laughing, always laughing. Did they get off to watching Mercury in pain? Or were they just sick bastards who enjoyed seeing anyone suffer under their fingertips?

No – it wasn't an either-or situation. It was probably both. They enjoyed the feeling of being in control and of taking said control away from others, of playing with lives like they were a simple game.

People who played with other people's lives were the worst kind of people.

And Mercury, tired of getting tossed around, of being choked, of not being in control of himself, was angry. More angry than he was before.

This day had been shit. This week had been shit. No, this whole world was shit – and he was sick of it. Absolutely fed up. The guild was a wreck, and surely it would be on his own shoulders to work around getting more materials to fix it up. He'd been embarrassingly surprised and subsequently taken down by Gajeel. Master was down, Erza was hurt, and the whole guild had probably heard him get kicked in the dick by a madman.

And José would not stop laughing.

He was not just angry; he was mad. Crazy. Insane – and sick of always being on the receiving end.

Fuck it, Mercury growled to himself. He may as well just die right there out of a combination of pain, shame, and embarrassment. If he could, he likely would have – but he couldn't. And so, he wouldn't.

Because Mercury was the only person in the guild who would always survive this. No matter what, he wouldn't die, which made it his responsibility to take on the role of the suicidal maniac who put himself in front of an magic cannon to make sure everyone behind him was already, who went off to one-v-one a Wizard Saint who could probably have made him disappear into the pits of hell if he really wanted to.

And so, Mercury stood. He, too, was a madman.

Who cared what it cost – there was hardly anything left to lose. His pride? Gone. His confidence? Demolished. His life? Hell, if he could give that, he'd give that too, if it just meant that this man in front of him would stop fucking laughing.

So, fuck it all. Who cared what happened now? Mercury certainly didn't.

José didn't even bother to turn to the staggering man behind him. That man was beaten, and bruised, and could hardly walk more than one step before he fell forward into the ground, his body so entirely damaged by what was essentially the magical version of taking a lightning bolt to the chest at point blank.

But Mercury was hardly that person anymore. Who he was, he had no idea – he just knew that he must continue to stand and fight so that the one in front of him would not have his way.

The ocean below called for him, screamed in his ears, but for once, he could hardly hear it; in its place was a simmering rage that had finally, finally boiled over.

And the ocean liked that. For once in his damn life living on the surface, it heeded his call. Its power surged through him like a second wave, entirely unlike when José flooded him with magic; his body accepted this magic, craved it like it was something that had been missing from his body, the last piece of a puzzle that had been left unfinished for over half a century.

Mercury felt whole again.

A blue magic circle formed in the center of the room, dull enough that the haze of José's magic barely allowed it to glow through, yet large enough that it stretched from wall to wall. The pattern it inscribed meant nothing. It was practically gibberish, just a bunch of magical "words" and "codes" taped together to form something that could hardly even be considered a spell.

José finally stopped laughing.

He whirled to look at the man behind him who remained standing, a second surge of power fuelled solely by rage and desire having overtaken him. Though the Wizard Saint was quick enough to react, he wasn't fast enough to cover the mere ten feet of distance he'd put between the two men.

It was okay.

Mercury wasn't going to kill José; even fuelled by rage, he wasn't strong enough to do so. All he needed was to be a distraction. That much still remained true. If he could just pull José's attention away for long enough – er, wait, hadn't Jupiter already been destroyed? Erza was probably already on her way, racing through hallway after hallway just like Mercury had done just minutes (hours? seconds?) ago.

Well, that was fine, too.

Erza could hopefully make use of the opportunity that Mercury was providing her.

Four small arms of water exploded from the magic circle on the ground. They were blades more than anything, much like the ones that Mercury had used in his fight against Gajeel, except much larger and much faster. Two went towards the stage, one across from Mercury, and one to his right – towards the four doorways of the room. No, not towards them. Above them.

The four blades slammed into the crappy stone overhangs that were above each entryway. Mercury, distantly, would have cackled at how positively dreary they now looked, each one dappled in the blue light of his magic. It made them look cracked – and then they were cracked, his water slamming into each one.

Each doorway collapsed.

José put his hands on Mercury's body once more. Mother, he hated being touched, but maybe this much was okay for now, if it meant that the man's attention was on himself more than anything. Those cold hands made his skin itch, digging into his forearms.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" José hissed right into his face.

Who even knew at this point?

With the entrances crumbled, the room became a small, rectangular cube to trap them both inside – by Mercury's estimates, it was fifteen feet wide and twenty five feet wide. That meant he needed approximately five thousand six hundred and fifty cubic feet of water if he wanted to flood the damn thing.

Which was exactly what he wanted to do.

Because, while José had superior magic and superior strength and superior… Well, most things, Mercury was the only one who had gills.