Mercury was distracted from her annoyance when the entire building shook like there was an earthquake. Whoever else had decided to come here to pick a fight, they were really trying to bring the place down. She was starting to wonder if she was going to need to come up with a backup plan to get what she wanted. Her curiosity was utterly burning to know who was causing all the ruckus, but she knew it would be better to utilize the distraction while it was there. Sooner or later she was bound to run into the culprit anyway -- may as well try to get what she wanted first.
Getting up onto her feet, she started making her way up the stairs once more. She’d been trying to get outside, but whatever battle was still rattling the bunker felt like it had been happening right below her, which meant that her original theory of Corbin being outside probably wasn’t true. Or if he had been, he was already dead. Hell, maybe that’s who was fighting right now. She expected that the leader of this little camp might have at least some noteworthy battle skill, certainly enough to sound like holes were being blasted through the stone walls.
So instead, Mercury went with the next plausible theory: to check Corbin’s room. He was bound to have his own place, and chances were good that it was up on the top floor. So, up she started moving again, doing her best to ignore the rattling of the building as she paced her way up the stairs. Pulling out her tablet, she checked on the status of her drones, who had all but finished mapping out the building. There was someone making their way toward her down the hall of the third floor. They were moving with haste, possibly to get down to the action happening below. With a smirk, she silently moved up against the wall, pistol at the ready, and waited for the approaching foe to reach the corner.
In a swift action, she stepped into the hallway with the muzzle of her gun pressed almost right on the guy’s temple. But as soon as Mercury saw him she blinked her open confusion. It was Vandrad, dressed in his typical scowl and his armor. "“The hell do you think you’re doing, woman?” he spouted at her.
“I could ask you the same thing, killer,” she told him with a smirk, lowering her weapon. Something was wrong about all this, though Mercury didn’t express so on her face. He looked and sounded exactly like Vandrad, but the smell was all wrong.
"“I’m here to get you out, of course. Are you hurt?”
Oh yeah, this was definitely not Vandrad. There was no mocking involved, and he seemed entirely too caring about her wellbeing. Checking the sensors on her HUD, Mercury could also tell that his pulse was exceptionally high as well for someone who didn’t look like he’d been fighting. Who was this person, and how had they known to approach her in this guise? Elias was the only bandit who’d learned her name, and certainly no one here would have been able to do enough research into her to know any of her allies.
It was all very bizarre, to the point where Mercury was so curious about what was going on that she knew she was going to have to stop to address this issue before she could move on to Corbin. With a sweet smile, she casually slid up against him in a familiar fashion. “Aw, look at you worrying about me,” she told him, slipping her arm around his waist and drawing herself right onto him. “I’m fine, baby. All in one piece. Though you’re more than welcome to double check to make sure.”
He smirked at her a bit, his own hands coming around her waist like they did this every day, drawing from her cue. "“Maybe I will,” he said to her. When she leaned her face up to give him a kiss, he bent right down and accepted it, pressing his mouth against hers with a passion. Oh, he was good, whoever he was, Mercury thought to herself as she moved her lips on his in a long, drawn out kiss. If she was any less of a convincing liar he might have had her, but she fed him the illusion that she and Vandrad were romantic and this doppleganger ate it up and played along without missing a beat.
But even if they knew a bit about Mercury’s personality in the time she’d been here, and even if they’d somehow managed to drug up information about her knowing Vandrad, they clearly knew nothing about the man himself. He pulled back and took her by the hand. "“Come on, babe. Let’s get you out of here.”
The fake Vandrad moved to step past her, looking to bring her wherever it was he planned on leading her. Probably pretending to take her to safety where he would instead have a trap of some kind set. “Yeah, see… here’s the thing about that.” He got yanked back toward her when she didn’t move, and a look of shock spread across his face as she conjured a thick metal plating over their conjoined hands, leaving the two of them firmly shackled together. She turned and gave the man a devilish smirk.
“It’s a shame, really. You started out so strong, so convincing. But, the Vandaddy I know would never ask about my wellbeing. Or at least, not without mocking me in the process. He certainly wouldn’t call me ‘babe’, because I’m pretty sure he loathes my very existence, and the only way he would ever make out with me is if I pissed him off too far.” Her smirk slid into a dangerous grin, voice lowered as she said, “Ask me how I know that one.”
The man’s face turned into an ugly sneer as he realized he’d been duped. He roared and cocked back his free fist, shooting a blast of fire at her. Mercury yanked him toward her by their conjoined hands and jumped up onto the wall, using it as a platform to twist her body until she landed on the guy’s shoulders, using her momentum to spin them both around until he was pinned to the ground on his back with her straddled above him. He tried to shoot another blast of fire at her with his freehand, but she blocked the shot with a quick round of shield ammo from Mercy.
A steel plate formed beneath him, morphing around his free wrist and shackling it in place. Mercury pushed his other hand against the steel, the plating over their conjoined hands morphing to form a second shackle. With his hands tied up, he opened his mouth to breathe fire at her, a move she only barely dodged. “No more of that thank you,” Mercury said, slapping a muzzle over his face. Making sure to bind down his legs as well, she stepped off of him and directed her little makeshift board to lift up until the man was upright, jerking and fighting against his constraints.
“Now, that’s a familiar sight,” she teased, holstering her gun and approaching him with a wicked smirk. “The final test. Not that I need any more. It’s pretty obvious you’re not who you say you are, what with the fire breathing and all. But just to be completely sure.” Stopping in front of him, Mercury undid his pants and dropped them down before stepping back and taking a good gander. “Mm,” she hummed in a mixture of amusement and disappointment. “Looks like you’re not as good at copying as you think you are. You’re much too small.”
Leaving him that way, she turned and took a few more steps back, creating some distance between the two of them. As she walked, the bindings on the man’s feet separated and lifted, forcing him to be splayed out on the board. “So now, I have a few questions.” Mercury turned once more to look at him, and in her hand was a series of jet black, exceptionally sharp throwing knives. “First of all, what’s your name?”
She didn’t bother to remove the plate over his mouth so he could speak clearly. His muffled voice yelled against the muzzle and a plume of smoke blew out of the sides of it, the metal growing white hot like he was trying to melt it off. “That’s not the answer I’m looking for,” Mercury told him simply. Taking one of the knives, she aimed it just so and threw it. It lodged into the metal just against his side as he looked down in a panic.
“Alright then, here’s my next question: How did you know to try and trick me with this particular face?” Once more he reacted with something that was far more likely to be a spew of profanity rather than actually answering her question. She threw another knife at him, this one landing so close to his neck that it sliced through the side, not enough to pierce him lethally but certainly enough to draw a steady stream of red hot blood that proceeded to run down his shoulder and the rest of his body.
Mercury shook her head. “You’re not very forthcoming, are you?” she asked him innocently as he growled in pain and continued to try to struggle against the restraints. “Unfortunately for you, that particular question I do need an answer to, because there’s no conceivable way that I can think of that you should know about him.”
She threw another dagger, followed quickly by a second. The first lodged into one of his biceps, the other into a thigh. He was practically screaming into the muzzle in pain, pulling with such force that the metal was starting to bend and give way. Not allowing that so quickly, she decided to give him a fully loaded shock of her lightning, the electricity coursing across his whole body violently and catching him completely off guard.
A very mean look had settled onto her face. This man had managed to figure something out about her. She didn’t know how, but he had, and Mercury was not at all happy about it. She shocked him again, and then a third time, and then a fourth until he was quivering in his bindings and practically whimpering at the pain. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know,” she informed him, an exceptionally ill boding grin on her face. “So speak up: How do you know about him?”
This time it seemed like he really had tried to answer the question, or at least started pleading for his life, but Mercury had still rather unfairly left the plate over his mouth so none of his words could make it to her. Despite this, she continued to taunt him like he should have been able to speak clearly. “I don’t recommend you keep lying to me,” she told him, throwing another knife that pierced his chest in the shoulder.
He screamed into the muzzle. There was a pool of his blood on the ground, now, trickling from all the various wounds she’d inflicted on him. His replica of Vandrad’s armor was covered in black soot and streaks from the electric shocks. Taking the last dagger that was currently in her hand, Mercury casually tossed it up into the air and flipped it tip over end before catching it by the handle. He cowered under her grin as she sweetly told him, “Tell me everything you managed to dig up about me and those I know…”
“or the next one it’s going to take away half of your ability to procreate.” | |