Breaching the Corsairs

This was the second time that Mercury had found herself on a joint mission for a haunting, although this time she was noticeably more excited about it. The last time she’d dealt with something along this nature, she’d stumbled across an exceptionally useful artifact of demonic origins that had greatly boosted her powers. Sure, doing so had painted a rather large target on her back… but it wasn’t an entirely unwanted target. Gangting had yet to track her down, but she knew he would eventually and that knowledge kept a devious little smile on her face most days.

And ever since their little foray into that haunted castle, Mercury had done some research on the giant’s magic. It had sounded so similar to her own that she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps what she had was slayer magic, and she just hadn’t realized it. After a few hours online -- and a friendly but admonishing conversation with the secretive Jadus -- this suspicion of hers had been confirmed. In fact, Jadus had been rather impressed with what she’d found. Supposedly it was something called a “lacrima” and it had heightened the magic that he had already bestowed on her, granting her access to powers that the demon hadn’t. It was still weird to think of herself as being a mage, given that she hadn’t even known magic existed until a few months ago, but as an engineer she was hardly going to turn her nose up at any tool, even a foreign one.

As such, when the opportunity arose to take on another job related to a haunting, the Xocili jumped on it immediately. After all, if her first haunting had been so rewarding, surely another one would. This job once again required her to be paired up with a mage from another guild, but this time it was not Dies Irae. There was a small amount of disappointment there. How wonderfully ironic would it have been to be paired up with her overly large rival again? But Mercury was a social creature so she was not remiss to meeting new people.

Getting to the glaciers had been an easy enough trip. Public transportation was able to get her to the checkpoint area ahead of schedule with relative ease. The area was quite chilly, but thankfully Mercury had gotten used to snow and freezing temperatures pretty quickly as Silver Wolf’s guild hall was located at the top of a mountain. She had plenty of warm clothes because of this.

Today, she’d selected a simple, practical outfit rather than some of her more flashy clothes, since it would not do for her to freeze to death. A plain cream colored shirt made of thick cotton was adorned over a pair of camel colored cargo pants. She had straps for days around her body that held a number of pouches and tools, and kept her clothing hugged tight to her petite frame. Over the shirt was a short camel colored jacket, and over it all she wore a forest green cloak made of soft but durable wool that kept her neck covered from the elements. Strapped to her hip was an impressively large pistol of almost alien looking design.

Since she’d arrived a bit early, Mercury made a stop at a coffee shop to get herself a nice hot cup of joe to go, and soon she was on her way to the meeting spot. There were a few people milling about and handling their daily affairs, but only one of those present really stuck out. A man with tall, spiked hair and the most impressive widow’s peak she’d ever seen stood with quite the impatient scowl on his face. The height of his hair almost seemed in compensation for his lack of height in stature. He was exactly the same height as her, and she was not very tall even by female standards. How totally opposite of her last joint venture!

She approached him with a smile that did nothing to hide the inherent mischief in her emerald eyes. “Fairy Tail?” Mercury asked him, taking a quiet sip of her coffee, the steam warming her face. Assuming he confirmed that he was with the guild and was the one she was supposed to meet, she introduced herself. “I’m Mercury, with Silver Wolf. Ready to see what all the fuss is about?” Normally she would try to chat him up to get the size of him first, but they still had to travel to the cave itself so there was plenty of time to do a little talking along the way. And it was clear by her almost dismissive tone of the topic that she didn’t really think that anything supposedly in this cave was going to pose much of a threat.

Well, he certainly wasn’t the chatty type. Not that it was hard to overlook that simply from the unapproachable way he carried himself. Mercury was very good at reading people. It was a skill she prided herself on. However, even an infant could have assessed that this man was exceptionally standoffish even before he started talking. He barely deigned himself to look at her before giving the bare minimum of a greeting and walking off, expecting her to follow. Most people would have surely been put off by his brisk and cold mannerisms, but Mercury was not most people. As he walked away, she watched him briefly and only one thought entered her mind.

Excellent. A challenge.

With a grin, she followed him, easily catching up. Her head was already racing with all the possibilities of driving him crazy. Did she chat his ear off and watch him implode into a ball of rage? Did she fight fire with fire and treat him with even more blatant disrespect to see if he could be goaded into a pissing match? Maybe she simply acted for all the world like he was the kindest human being on the planet, responding to his harsh behaviors with over flowered kindness and sensitivity? The possibilities were truly endless, and honestly she didn’t know where to start.

Thankfully, she had plenty of time to think about it as she drank her coffee, which was more important to drink while it was still hot. Mercury was in the middle of deciding the best way to crack his hard exterior when Vandrad utterly shocked her by attempting to break the ice himself. It was a lackluster attempt to say the least, but an attempt nonetheless. She stared at him openly with a curious expression, entertainment dancing through her eyes as she casually sipped from her cup while looking at him. She said nothing for a long couple seconds. If he was so disinterested in being social -- and clearly he was -- why the forced attempt to act so?

The only explanation she could come up with was that he wanted something and felt that he needed to honor certain social traditions to get it, even if they were honored begrudgingly. She grinned at him. “Well, and here I was thinking that you were going to give me the cold shoulder this whole trip. I just lost a bet to myself.” Finally, she looked away from him and faced forward once more, seemingly unperturbed by his gruffness. “I’ve only been a member for a few months, though they have been very studiously spent. I’m not from Fiore, but I’ve made it a point to learn as much as I can about it. But there's something more specific you’re interested in, isn't there?”

Mercury flashed him an impish smirk. “Save us both the pain of you faking effort at small talk. What do you actually want to know? If I have answers, I’ll give them to you. No tedious pleasantries required.”

“I am a little, yeah,” Mercury admitted to him with a grin when he scoffed at the amusement she took over their exchange. He had the condescension in his voice down pat, his mocking words dripping with absolute ire, but she didn’t appear to be in the least bit offended.

Her ability to cut down to the heart and intent of his pathetic attempts at being cordial got an even bigger reaction out of him. He actually stopped walking, fixing a black eyed gaze on her so he could just glare at her with all the derision a single person could possibly muster. Mercury didn’t exactly have a lot of exposure to royalty, particularly not of this world, so she could not deduce the history behind the well practiced look. And frankly, even if she could she probably wouldn’t have treated him any differently. But she stopped alongside him, holding his eye contact without waver and patiently waiting for him to decide the proper way to react to her.

For a couple seconds she thought he was going to explode on her. Once again, however, he discarded her expectations and chose instead to relax, turning to face her full on. A single, lavender colored brow raised in interest at this change in demeanor, and she resisted the urge to comment on it. There was no sense losing whatever progress was being made here. She listened attentively as he explained what he was really interested in: information or whereabouts related to one individual known as Gren Ragnos, who used to be a Rune Knight. According to him, official records marked him as dead but he had heard rumors that claimed otherwise. He even went so far as to insult Fiore’s established government. How curious.

“Hmm,” she hummed thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard the name myself, though ‘Ragnos’ sounds familiar. Hold this.” Mercury handed him her coffee with one hand while she used the other to pull a sizable tablet out of one of her pouches. Holding the device so he could see it clearly with her, she typed away on the screen with baffling speed and searched the name he’d mentioned to see what articles popped up.

“Let’s see… here’s an obituary. Some military accomplishments… Ah yes, of course!” Mercury clicked on an article to open it in full. “I knew that last name was familiar from somewhere. The current director of the Rune Knights is Mythal Ragnos, the most recently appointed of the four Gods of Ishgar. As director, he’s second in command of the entire Rune Knight army and answers only to Serilda Sinclair, the field marshal. She’s also one of the four Gods of Ishgar.”

Her curiosity had taken hold, and now that she was in research mode she was in deep. Another link caught her attention and she clicked on it. “Not sure if he’s connected to your Gren or not. How common of a surname is Ragnos? I’d have to do some real digging to see if I could find anything of interest about where he comes from. Most of these are bringing stuff up more about Serilda than him. Looks like she’s a duchess or something. Oh, and they’re recently engaged? That’s spicy.”

If she knew that he was bothered by her casually depositing her drink into his hands, she didn’t show it. He had a moment of indignation before realizing that she was in the process of actually being accomodating to what he wanted and seemed to decide that it was better to just let the moment go rather than make a scene out of it. The things she was pulling up on her tablet interested him far more, it seemed.

What was really interesting to her, however, was the article she had briefly skimmed past of Gren’s obituary. It had included a picture of the man. Take away his facial hair, and he may as well have been an older copy of Vandrad. The two were practically identical, and while her outward expression didn’t show it, that tiny tidbit of information had her mind racing at digital speeds to calculate all the possible scenarios and pick out the most likely one.

It seemed he didn’t know how common the surname was, but from the look on his face even this little bit of information she’d gleaned for him was more than he’d had before their little chat. After a moment of contemplation and what sounded like a genuine, if strained, attempt at gratitude, he thanked her for her help and suggested they continue on. “My pleasure,” she told him with a knowing smirk, keeping up with his stride to walk beside him as she tucked her tablet away once more.

Once her hands were free, she gently plucked her coffee back, offering only a rebellious wink if he shot her any kind of glare over it. After that, she was content to let him stew in silence for the rest of the trip. He was probably busy processing the details she’d just passed along to him, and she intended on using that time in patience to let him drop his guard and forget about her for a bit. Besides, it was a lovely walk to the cave, which was located along a beach. It was a beautiful sight to adorn this frozen wasteland, the shores of which were covered in uniquely frozen foam and sand.

Before long, they reached the cave which was well out of sight of the town they had left a while back. Mercury had long since finished her coffee. She stepped inside the cave where the light from the sun filtered inside enough to give decent illumination. The entrance was open enough, but bare of what anyone might consider hoards of pirate treasure. Instead, it seemed that there was a tunnel that lead further inside, into what was surely a much deeper set of caves and darkness. “Well, this looks cozy,” she remarked in good humor.

Mercury withdrew what appeared to be a set of curious looking marble sized beads and tossed them into the air above her. Immediately, they began to hover around them and glow, emitting more than enough light for the two of them to see clearly for several meters in front of them. In all truth, she probably could have seen inside the cave just fine without the lights by switching her vision to night mode, but Vandrad wasn’t the only one pretending to be something that he wasn’t. Better for her to appear as human as possible.

She gave him a grin and pulled out her peculiar looking pistol, holding it up as if to silently indicate that she was ready to venture further in whenever he was. They had been walking through the caves for only a minute or so before she spoke up again. “So. How long have you been looking for your father?” She asked the question with such ease, such casual certainty, that if Vandrad wasn’t fully paying attention to her he might have forgotten that he’d never actually said that Gren was his dad. She was curious to see what all he may or may not say before remembering that he’d been mum on that particular detail earlier.

Oh, she'd touched a nerve.

Her prying question jarred him so hard that practically screeched to a halt as they walked. Mercury could only stand there in anticipation as he took a moment to gather himself for the storm he was about to deliver. Slowly, Vandrad wheeled on her and approached until their faces were well within kissing range. His anger truly was something to behold. A part of her legitimately wondered if this would be the time where she’d finally pushed someone too far, but the larger part was just excited by what was going down. In fact, she was pretty surprised that he didn't make any attempts to lay is hands on her in any sort of aggressive fashion.

As he rather sternly informed her to mind her own business -- while not, she noted, denying her assumption -- she calmly held his gaze with that pertinent little smirk that seemed to be permanently plastered to her face. In fact, from the moment he referred to her as “woman” she couldn’t help but be just the tiniest bit aroused by how mad he was at her just now. Still, he made it quite clear that he wanted her to stay out of his business. And then he proceeded to take his anger out on a reindeer that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Not once during his display of power did she look or back away from him, her emerald gaze remaining as teasing and playful as ever. “No one ever gets what they want without a bit of meddling in all the wrong places,” Mercury told him lightly, “But sure thing, killer. You got secrets. I can respect that. Can’t say it won’t be a struggle, though. You’re pretty sexy when you’re angry, gotta admit.”

She followed up behind him once more, taking a glance down at his back side for the hell of it while he was facing away from her. Though most of his body was covered by the large, almost obnoxiously neon green jacket he wore, there was no mistaking the corded muscles of his calves and thighs beneath the skin tight leggings he was wearing, She could only imagine how firm his buttocks were if the rest of him followed suit. Ah, well.

They hadn’t walked for much longer before something caught her attention. A silent radar beeped in her head, alerting her to the presence of a toxin in the air. A strange, musky odor tickled her nose, which had grown a dozen times more sensitive since Jadus had granted her his powers. “You smell that?” she asked him, looking around. Her eyes fell on a patch of peculiar moss growing on a wall.

Pulling her cloak up to cover her mouth and nose, she used her free hand to withdraw a new device. This one was similar to her tablet, but much smaller and a bit thicker. She held it up toward the moss and a little latch opened on the front of the machine, where a small rod shot out and clipped off a piece of the stuff, yanking it back inside the device. After just a few seconds of calculations, it beeped and alerted her to the results. “Whatever this stuff is, it’s poisonous,” she told him. She pointed to a few bulbous looking growths on the patch. “Those probably burst under agitation and release a much more lethal quantity of spores into the air. Not sure what your resistances are like, but we should be fine as long as we don’t trigger them.”

Her scanners picked up something else, and she peered further down the cavern just beyond where the lights were currently hovering. A few steps was all it took to uncover a few bodies that weren’t entirely decomposed yet. From the clothing that sat on their half rotten corpses, they appeared to have been some of the pirates whose ghosts were now supposedly haunting this cave. The bodies themselves were positioned such that they looked as though they had died rather agonizing deaths, slumped and curled in fetal position with many of them appearing to have been clutching their chests. On the wall nearest them was a much larger patch of moss, and there was even some of it growing on the bodies as well.

“Yeah, I’m gonna stick with the theory of ‘triggering is bad’.”

If she didn’t have an internal monitoring system that could alert her to things like the slightest deviance in temperature, she may have been caught totally by surprise with what happened next. As it was, she still barely had time to process what was happening before she reacted. A cold spot seemed to develop near her -- impressive, given the already chilly location -- and as she turned to look a bonafide ghost appeared faster than a blink. It came at her at a full charge, hands stretched forward as if to reach for her neck, it’s mouth open in a fully audible roar that reverberated off the cavern to assault her sensitive ears.

Before it could get close enough to actually touch her, she lifted Mercy and shot the ghost right between the eyes. A bolt of purple energy zapped its way out of the barrel of the pistol and dispersed into the spectral figure, its ethereal form rippling with what appeared to be hundreds of tiny currents of electricity. The ghost burst into a cloud of glowing light that wooshed past her like a small breeze before disappearing before it could even reach the ground.

Though Vandrad might not have been all that quick on the uptake when it came to reading people, a man of his military training could not have missed even the slightest detail in her swift and precise resolution of the ghost attack. She had reacted out of well honed instinct, and had aimed a deadly shot without hardly taking the time to aim. Her stance was firm and practiced, betraying that despite how unassumingly she presented herself, she’d had military training. harsh military training.

Once, she was certain there wasn’t going to be a subsequent attack, she lowered her weapon and returned at ease to shoot him a toothy, almost wolfish grin. “Smells like payday.”

It was his turn to stare at her, this time with scrutiny. His dark eyes searched her and while she said nothing she raised a lavender brow in his direction. Whatever was going on in his mind, however, he didn’t have much time to think about it as there was a shift in the air. The direction of the draft floating through the tunnels changed, if slightly, and it was enough to alert them that there was more potential danger ahead. He raced ahead to tackle the thread, Mercury following after, and what laid beyond was an even more gruesome sight.

Or at least, it would have been to anyone less desensitized than either of them seemed to be. There was another array of bodies, though these appeared decidedly less pirate like in nature. Floating above them was a whole gaggle of ghosts, who turned toward Vandrad with as much ill intent as the last one they’d seen mere moments ago. Mercury was getting ready to help engage him in battle, once more lifting her pistol, when he caught her attention with some impressively flashy behavior.

Vandrad ripped off his giant jacket, revealing himself to be an absolutely solid unit of manhood. She honestly wasn’t sure what it was about signing on for haunted jobs and running into men bulging with muscles, but it was a trend she certainly wasn’t going to complain about. Since he was otherwise preoccupied, Mercury took a moment to confirm that his ass was, in fact, quite taut. There was the most wicked grin on his face and frankly she was so intrigued by the whole display that she just decided it was better to sit back and let him do his thing unimpeded.

And that was exactly what she did. Leaning against a moss free section of wall, she simply watched in a mixture of morbid curiosity and titillation as his power exploded from him. It was like he had charged himself up, power radiating off of him to the point where it actually caused his physical appearance to change. His hair turned a bright golden yellow, his eyes as green as her own, with a fiery aura dancing around him that lit the cavern even more brightly than her orbs had. And she, content to simply soak in the view, did little more than draw a small lollipop out of a pocket, depositing the wrapper on the ground and suckling idly on the candy as she watched.

It was impressive that he could actually punch these ghosts, to say the least. Her computerized brain ran all sorts of calculations as she analyzed his skills. He clearly had gone through some pretty rigorous training in his life, and it was interesting to note that while he had been a scowling bowl of black mascara and punk rock music the entire trip up until this point, he was having the time of his life now. Even the ghosts were having second thoughts, which was just plain silly. They were already dead! “Ha!” she chortled as he taunted them mercilessly.

All in all, his magic was a fine display, particularly to someone like herself for whom power the likes of which Earthland considered the norm was still a novelty to her. He could launch blasts of pure energy from his hands, which was especially intriguing. She was familiar with similar ranged attacks, of course, but through the use of a medium like her gun. Or even her own body, which was actually mechanical in nature. But it was fascinating to see it coming from a being of pure flesh and bone.

He caught one of the ghosts in his hand, tightening it around the specter’s neck like a vice. As he strangled the the thing, Vandrad turned to her with a devilish expression and inquired as to if she was going to let him have all the fun. What he would see when he turned was her head cocked to the side as she checked out his ass a bit more studiously, the delicate fingers of one hand holding the sucker in her mouth. She blinked at him as he addressed her. “Right, sorry. I was enjoying the show.”

Smirking at him from around the treat in her mouth, she stopped lounging against the wall and hopped in, shooting blast after blast from Mercy to incinerate the creatures. Mercury whooped and hollered her enjoyment of the chaos while the two of them beat down ghost after ghost until they were gone. “Now that’s the fuckin’ spirit,” she told him with a grin as she moved to continue deeper into the caves. Giving him a shameless glance over while she walked by him, Mercury said, “That’s a good look for you, Vandaddy. You should strut that considerable bulk of yours around more often.”

With a wink, she moved along and sashayed her way into the next tunnel. Once again, they walked for a bit without much resistance, but something itched inside of her. It was her magic trying to tell her something, though she was still learning to understand it. A metallic scent reached her nose and she sniffed the air a couple of times. Was she smelling gold? They must have been getting close to where the bulk of the pirate horde -- and their treasure -- was.

Sure enough, they eventually reached an immense cavern that was utterly jam packed with enough gold and jewels to allow a ship full of pirates to live in luxury. Mercury couldn’t help but whistle at the sight, the sound echoing off the ceiling of the cavern. There were coins, necklaces, swords, tableware… literal mountains of gold and steel. It smelled pretty delicious too, but before she could even consider trying to take a bite out of something -- a skill she’d only recently learned she had -- something else caught her attention.

There were a number of small bulbs floating around the room. They felt almost like large fireflies. The sight was actually pretty breathtaking, something that Mercury didn’t often stop long enough to care about. Still, the scientist in her was drawn to this strange phenomenon. What were these things? Were they plant based? Insects? Were they even sentient? It seemed like the kind of thing the rest of the Pack would be interested in studying.

Wandering over to one, she peered at it curiously. It didn’t seem to have any shape that she could discern. Mercury blew on it gently to watch it float, and was surprised when the bulb turned red mere seconds after being disturned. That, in turn, set off a chain reaction as the rest of the floating lights in the room also turned a deep, ominous shade of crimson. “I don’t think our fun’s over quite yet,” she told her partner, and sure enough the bulbs began to twist and warp and grow until they took on the forms of a few dozen pirates.

Unlike the one she’d killed earlier, these were armed with deadly looking swords. Their presence felt stronger too, much more than the last group they’d fought. They held their weapons with expert skill, rushing to swarm the pair. To keep them from being overwhelmed, Mercury adjusted the settings on her pistol and shot a massive concussive round that rocked the entire cavern, causing even the ghosts to stumble backward and the treasure to jingle as it loosened from its piles.

Adjusting her settings again, she tossed him a smirk over her shoulder. “Person with the higher kill count wins?”

“Oh, he’s sassy now,” she remarked with teasing humor. His words were harsh, but it tone was decidedly less so than it had been before the fighting started. It seemed he was actually playing with her, perhaps even flirting back a bit despite his claim that looking was all she was ever going to get to do. “Alright, killer, you’re on. Challenge accepted.” Mercury glanced back at him to give him a cheeky smirk when he snorted, thinking it was his response to her comment, only to find that he was rather conspicuously looking anywhere but at her. Curious.

She wouldn’t have much time to ponder it before they were in the cavern and gazing upon the hoards of treasure and trinkets. He took up digging through these while she focused on the orbs, but it wasn’t long before she’d set them off. “Oh, don’t sound so disappointed,” she playfully remarked as he turned his transformation back on and came to stand beside her, braced for a new fight. “I know what your kink is now. You should be thanking me.”

As the ghosts recovered from her stun blast, Mercury posed her challenge and Vandrad rose to greet it with a vengeance. She didn’t even have a chance to fire off a shot before she found his hand very rudely, and almost intimately, shoving her back against a wall by her chest. The Xocili’s ever present smirk finally wiped from her face, replaced with pure surprise. He simply stared at her as he blindly shot a blast up at the stalactites on the ceiling, causing them to rip violently from the cavern and pelt the entire group of ghosts below.

She, on the other hand, watched the perfect display of carnage just over his shoulder with narrowed, attentive eyes. As the dust and gold settled, Mercury could clearly see that he had wiped out every single ghost with a single shot. Slowly her emerald gaze flicked back to his, her face a serious mask that was betrayed by the twinkling of mirth in her stare that not even he could miss. “Now that was just unsportsmanlike,” she chastised him, her smirk returning ever so slightly.

There was no effort on her part to stop him from keeping her pinned against the wall. If anything, she looked like she was quite enjoying herself. He did pull his hand away, chirping quite smugly about having earned himself a prize. Her grin returned in full. “Oh, I get to decide that, do I? That’s dangerous territory you’re treading in. You may regret giving me that kind of power.” There was a suggestiveness to her tone, though whether or not she was serious or joking was entirely up for debate.

While his mind was on leaving, hers was finally on the treasure itself. “What, you don’t want to take any of this with you?” she asked him, sizing up the state of what was left in the wake of his attack. Half of it was melted, which wasn’t really an issue with Mercury around. Not that he knew that, of course. “The clients don’t want it, and it would be a shame to let it continue to sit and gather dust. A bit of bribing money goes a long way to hunting down people and information. Just a thought.”

She flashed him a knowing smirk, and it was then that she felt it: another cold spot coalescing behind her, further into the cavern toward the center of the piles. A new ghost formed, this one much bigger and much more threatening looking than any of those that had come before. It had a skeletal face and a sword in each hand, with the full regalia of finely crafted robes. Power oozed from him, marking this singular ghost as the most dangerous of all that had encountered so far. There was no mistake: This particular ghost had been the captain, and he was without a doubt going to take more than one hit to go down.

A devious little grin lit her face, and without turning to look at Vandrad she tapped into her magic for the first time on their little quest. Flicking her wrist upward, all the melted gold rushed in a liquid wave up toward the ceiling, bolting itself firmly from top to bottom, wall to wall, until a grated barrier of solid gold bars blocked any chance Vandrad would have had to engage the creature in a fight. All he’d be able to do is watch as the captain summoned even more ghosts to threaten her with. Turning to Vandrad, she crooned at him through the bars, “It’s only polite when a man blows his load first for the woman to get her turn after.”

He had forced her to stand there and watch as he annihilated almost an entire crew’s worth of pirates, and now she was going to make him watch as she played with the deadliest one of them all. Turn about was fair play. And hell, if he was going to show off, then she would do.

The smaller ghosts rushed at her. Without looking away from her partner, she used her sensors to determine their exact locations behind her. Aiming her pistol seemingly blindly behind her, two of the three ghost went down with perfectly aimed chest shots. Smirking smugly at Vandrad, she rested the gun on her shoulder as though she were letting her guard down and oblivious to the third ghost. Right when it was about to tackle her, however, she released the lever on her weapon that kept it in pistol form, and the intricately curved blade of a long sword snapped out over her shoulder. The third ghost, unable to avoid it in time, impaled itself right on the weapon and burst into a cloud of ethereal dust that blew through the grate to Vandrad.

Finally, she turned and faced the captain again. “Alright, big boy, looks like it’s just you and me.” Bracing herself to run, a dozen or so spikes grew from the soles of her shoes. They were small enough that Vandrad probably wouldn’t even notice them, but she didn’t need him to. All she needed was the boost of speed they would grant her.

Brandishing her gun that was now a sword, she practically exploded toward the captain who raised both his weapons and bore them down on her in a powerful, overhead swing. Mercury dropped to her side and skid effortlessly along the ground under his legs, slicing one as she slid by even as his own swords bashed uselessly on the ground where she’d been standing before. He turned to redirect his attack behind him, but Mercy was already lifted to parry the attack, deflecting his first blade harmlessly to the side while she danced gracefully out of the way of his follow up swing.

Using her magic subtly to keep the treasure from giving way under her feet, she leaped up the side of one of the piles and back flipped over him as he wildly swung his weapons after her, slicing gold rather than flesh or bone. He was quick to spin again, both blades once more careening down on her in tandem but she lifted her own with her free hand supporting the back of the blade at the tip, and caught them both with much more strength than a woman of her petite stature should have been capable of. With a wicked grin, she overpowered the much larger creature and shoved his swords back so hard that he stumbled.

She spun in the direction of her push, using the momentum to torque her body around and land a wicked gash across the ghost captain’s chest, which was quickly followed by a second one as whipped the weapon back around in the other direction. The ghost was furious with her now, bringing both blades in the bare on either side of her like he was fixing to smash her between them. Mercy she lifted on her right side while on her left she simply moved to block the swing with her arm, tapping into her power enough to turn her flesh hard as steel.

Mercury stood her ground, keeping both swords at bay with her arms long enough to analyze the captain with a devious smirk. She honestly hadn’t been sure whether or not the ethereal sword would pass through her, but it seemed that her connection with metal transcended the gap between the material and spectral worlds. That interested her greatly. Was there a way she could make his body solid enough for her to attack like Vandrad could? Only one way to find out.

Flicking a switch on Mercy, the weapon burst into an electric charge that jumped to the ghost’s sword and then to the rest of his body long before he had the chance to react to it. His entire form seized and he tried to back away, but she had already hooked one of his arms under hers. Yanking him toward her to pull him off balance, she kicked his feet out from under him and down he tumbled. As he fell past, she utilized one more precise swing to cleanly behead him. The still electrified head rolled along the ground and stopped just a few feet away from Vandrad on the other side of the grate where it poofed into nothingness once and for all.

Resting her sword back on her shoulder, she grinned wickedly at her partner. “And you wanted to leave…”

Vandrad was so delightfully angry at her, and not just that. With the shadows in the cavern and the bars partially blocking her vision, she didn’t get a glimpse of exactly how frustrated he was until he turned, unable to give her any sort of comment on her performance. Unsure of whether she was seeing things or not, Mercury quickly swapped her eyes to infrared. Sure enough, his entire body was warm from the energy he had been exerting, but the spot just below his belt was absolutely radiating compared to the rest of him.

With his back turned to her, he didn’t see her grin spread. A part of her wanted oh so badly to call him out on it, to humiliate him just a bit, but she’d already done that plenty for today. Clearly he was ready to be done with this mission and with her. That was fine. Mercury was a patient woman, and unfortunately for Vandrad she had already decided that they were going to see each other again, probably much sooner than he wanted.

She opened a space enough in the grate to allow her to walk through before sealing it back up again. If Vandrad didn’t want any of it, Mercury certainly wasn’t going to get it go to waste. She could easily get every bit of treasure out of there quicker and easier than the clients could, and fully intended to since they had made it very clear the hoard was up for grabs. Once she and Vandrad confirmed with the clients that the job was done, the two of them would probably part ways and she could come straight back here to get everything shipped back to Silver Wolf.

And then, it would be to work researching as much as she could about her new best friend...