Two to Tango

This was quite the predicament Mercury had found herself in.

For once in her life she had decided to just take a personal day for herself. She had been very busy since joining Silver Wolf, actively picking up jobs and using them as excuses to research Earthland and its countries, as well as the people that lived there. Her work load had picked up more now that she had been promoted to the status of an Ace in the guild, which seemed to be some kind of privileged position that marked her as a more trusted member. She took it as a source of pride, the sign of a job well done so far.

But today, she just wanted to relax and not worry about any of her duties. Lavanatir Port was as packed and bustling as she’d heard it would be. It was actually a very beautiful city. Mercury hadn’t grown up with large bodies of water around, so the sight of the endless sea was both beautiful and terrifying for her. She couldn’t help herself but to take a casual walk along its shores, the bright sun warm with the promise of coming spring, which Mercury was greatly looking forward to experiencing as seasons were also a bit of a novelty to her.

Rolling her pant legs up to just below her knees, Mercury slipped out of her shoes and braved stepping into the cold waters. The waves lapped gently against her ankles, and she wiggled her toes a bit to feel the sand between them. In this manner she continued her lazy gait along the beach. While there weren’t a ton of other people using the place this time of year, she wasn’t the only one. A good handful of people were using the beach to jog or walk their pets.

It was during this leisurely stroll that she first picked up on the fact that she was being followed. Her internal sensors had alerted her to a ping on her radars that seemed to be following a similar path at a similar pace as her. Not wanting to alert this potential stalker, she did not turn around or otherwise deviate from her course. Rather, she continued along the shoreline, enjoying the water, until she came to a pier that blocked her path.

Finding a spicket that had been provided to the public for such uses, she used the fresh water to rinse the sand off of her feet and slipped back into her shoes before wandering into the shopping district nearby. This area was exceptionally more crowded with hundreds of citizens going about their daily tasks. It would have been easy to get lost in the crowd, but that wasn’t what Mercury wanted. Not yet, at least.

Instead, she moved through the shops and stalls, stopping occasionally to browse. She even spent a few minutes at a bookstore, browsing through history and cultural sections and making a couple purchases that interested her. Each time Mercury made a stop, she monitored the position of the individual in question in relation to her own, to confirm if they stopped nearby to wait until she left.

Sure enough, she was being followed. The question was: by whom? There were a few people it could be and a few theories came to mind, but why theorize when she could confirm? Continuing her walk, she kept an eye out for any place that would be ideal for her purposes. Mercury wanted a spot that would take her out of immediate line of sight to force her pursuer to come in after her, but in a place that still had enough people to discourage the person from being too aggressive.

It didn’t take her long to find a building with a large tarp out front advertising the wedding services of a chocolate company that was actively accepting walk in guests to test some of their newer services. That seemed convenient enough. Mercury wandered through the front doors and found a spot inside where she could watch to see who might come in after her, curious to see if her mysterious friend would be brave enough to follow and risk showing their face...

Mercury wouldn’t have to wait long to find out who her stalker was. She both was and wasn’t surprised to see the unmistakably large form of Gangting stroll through the door shortly after her. “Well, that’s not a coincidence,” she murmured to herself quietly. Thankfully, her short height gave her a bit of an advantage here in that she would be more difficult to find in the small crowd that had gathered, and that gave her a moment to think.

Should she run away? Should she confront him? Mercury had figured he would choose to go after her, and that he would catch up to her at some point. Though in all honesty, this was a little sooner than she had expected. Had he actually tracked her all the way here, she wondered, or was this just a coincidence? And furthermore, what was his intent? If he meant to attack her, the people around them would obviously offer some kind of protection as she doubted he was keen on hurting uninvolved people.

But he could have attacked her at the beach. There had been some citizens walking by her, but not very many. Confronting her there would have been a lot less restrictive. In fact, he probably would have been at the advantage with all the sand around, which really was little more than microscopic specks of the earth. So either there was some reason that he felt he would not have the advantage in that location, or he wasn’t intending on confronting her physically.

Well, there was no point in holding herself back, Mercury figured. If he had found her now, he would find her again, and she would rather be confronted here in a public area where she was sure it wouldn’t come to blows. Thus, she took her opportunity while he was momentarily distracted and confused by the event coordinator to make herself known. Coming up gently from the side, Mercury slipped her arm comfortably onto Gangting’s and smiled at the woman politely. “I’m sorry, miss. I’m right here. I had to use the lady’s room.”

The woman still seemed a bit unsure, her eyes flicking to both Mercury and Gangting’s weapons, and once more to the large man’s armor. In the end, she seemed more reassured by Mercury, who was a fair bit less intimidating than the Dies Irae mage was, and decided not to press it. “Very well, thank you for your attendance. The ceremony will be held in the main chapel just ahead, followed by a reception in the courtyard. If you wish to change into something more… suitable...” Her eyes flicked once again to Gangting’s armor. “There is a mage tailor in the room down the hall. He is providing his services free of charge for today.”

“Thank you so much.” The woman nodded and let them pass. Should Gangting feel the need to pull his arm away from hers, Mercury would not attempt to stop him. But similarly, if he did not make any protests to it she would keep her arm where it was. Either way, once they had stepped away and started inside, she lowered her voice a little, enough that he could hear her clearly but not so loud that their private conversation would be easily overheard from the others milling about.

“So. You’ve found me, and followed me around for a small chunk of the day. What’s the plan? Are you here to talk to me, or to hurt me?” Despite how much it hurt her neck from this close, Mercury turned her face to look up at him, her expression unreadable. Her tone was even, lacking any trace of flirtation that had been there before, but not necessarily lacking in friendliness or respect. She simply was trying to get an idea of why he had been following her without confronting her, wanting to understand if this was a thing where he wanted to try and talk things out like reasonable people or if he was still vehemently angry with her and simply wanting to wipe her off the map.

He made no move to pull himself from her, though Mercury figured that was a strategic choice. It was difficult to miss the slight stiffening in his arm when he’d realized who had taken it. But as she had gambled, he was not going to risk an open confrontation in this place with so many innocent people around. So, she figured that rather than push himself from her once they were past the other woman, that he had elected to let her stay if only because it would be easier to keep an eye on her if he kept her close.

She posed her question and waited, content to walk forward with him slowly to wherever they were going. The tailor, it seemed. Really, Mercury wasn’t thinking about that, her mind focused on more pressing matters. It took him a minute to reply, his expression… stoic? There was no denying that he was pretty unreadable in that moment as he thought about her question and what his answer would be. In the end, he sighed and finally looked down at her with something akin to sorrow in his gaze and admitted that he didn’t know.

Her lavender brows furrowed together in confusion as she studied him, clearly surprised by his response. He didn’t know? Gangting had been pretty undenyably furious with her at their last meeting. Surely he’d had a lot of time to think about exactly what he wanted to say to her, and to decide some kind of fitting punishment. Why track her down and follow her all this way if he didn’t even have a plan? That seemed… ill conceived, to parlay with an enemy without some kind of plan in place, and an enemy was what she assumed he considered her.

She was so busy churning her thoughts over the matter that Mercury hadn’t even realized how long he’d been looking at her. At least, not until he spoke up about her eyes, catching her entirely off guard. She had expected a lot of things out of running into him again like this, but not for him to go right back to complimenting her, and so sweetly too. A sense of heat rushed to her cheeks and she was grateful when he finally pulled himself away from her and closed his eyes, so she could look away for a moment to get her traitorous face under control.

By the time he started talking to her again, she would have mostly managed to contain her blush, though there was still a slight tinge of rosiness. Otherwise, she stood casually facing him, her arms crossed over her chest with patience to hear what he was working himself up to say. It seemed he had found a way to listen to her, despite his rage, commenting on some of the things she’d said before they’d parted ways last time. He wanted to confirm that she really didn’t understand what gods or demons were, as well as to confirm the nature of her magic and how she attained it. Unlike the last time he’d asked, however, this was not a demand for information. He was simply asking her, this time from a much more respectful place.

“I don’t--” she started to tell him, only to be cut off by a exceptionally metrosexual man with no regard for interrupting two people in the middle of a conversation. It seemed he was the tailor, and as soon as he’d spotted Gangting’s massive bulk he’d absolutely had to design for him. At first Mercury was a little annoyed, but there were practically stars in the man’s eyes as he referred to Gangting as a “large canvas” and she couldn’t help but smirk a bit in amusement. That expression only grew as the man and his assistant started pulling off the demon slayer’s armor.

Or well, trying to. She barely stifled a giggle watching the younger man practically drag parts of the heavy armor away, while Gangting easily removed the rest and set it down, clearly uncomfortable with all of this but going along with it because he didn’t know what else to do. Mercury stood off to the side and out of the way, watching the show with some enjoyment while her mind continued to race. This reunion really wasn’t going at all the way she’d figured, mostly because she hadn’t expected him to come back to her with this much willingness to try to understand.

It just wasn’t the kind of interaction she was used to. Her experience was that most people who felt wronged by someone, as he clearly had felt by her, were more… volatile than this.

By the end, the giant was in a simple but finely tailored suit that was perfectly sculpted against his overabundance of muscles. Mercury couldn’t stop herself from taking a good look at him as a mirror was fetched for the man, so Gangting could see himself in all his unarmored glory. Makhmudov asked for his opinion, as well as Gangting’s, but it was Mercury who managed to speak up first. “He’s certainly a sight for sore eyes,” she commented with a small but playful smile, for once managing to stay her tongue away from the more… suggestive comments that she was typically prone to making. Flashing the tailor a grin, she added, “Isn’t it against the rules for you to make him look more handsome than the groom?”

“Tradition should not come between an artist and his genius,” the man told her, his gaze finally fixing on her. He hummed thoughtfully, walking around her in a circle to size up her frame, as apparently she was his next target. Mercury caught Gangting’s gaze and playfully rolled her eyes as if to say, I guess we’re both going to have to put up with this. “Mmm, yes, I can already see it. But no red for you, no. I absolutely must play up this striking purple hair of yours. Something simple, sleek but elegant.”

Then, as with Gangting, a curtain suddenly rose up around her and she was met with a bright light that filled her with warmth, tickling at some of the newer elements of the recent upgrades to her magic. When the curtain dropped, she was in a dark plum gown of satin that clung and draped from her body. It had an open back that was covered only by a lavender cape of sheer chiffon that had rhinestones along the hem. There were also rhinestones on the pair of sandal heels he’d conjured for her feet. When the mirror was placed in front of her she was surprised to see that he had even painted her nails and done a flawless make up job.

Honestly the whole thing was so elegant that the only thing that felt out of place was her hair, which he had straightened for her but it only came to just about her shoulders. A look as elegant as this desired hair length to match, and so she tapped into one of her genetic skills to fix that little problem. Without the use of anything resembling magic, her hair grew in length before their eyes until it reached about halfway down her back. Makhmudov kissed his fingers in approval. “I adore it! Tell me what you think, both of you.”

Mercury barely managed to suppress a small giggle behind her hand as Gangting looked down at the shoes in mild distress and disappointment. He was clearly uncomfortable outside of his armor, which was both delightful to observe and a shame to see, cause he looked pretty damn fine in a suit. Still, he did seem pleased by her own compliment, looking up to give her a genuine smile and referred to himself as an uncut gem. After that, he busied himself staring at the shoes like he was mathing out the best way to rid himself of them until the tailor finished his work on her.

She was looking in the mirror when his jaw dropped, fixing her hair and making sure the outfit was in place. “This dress is outstanding,” she told the tailor, expressing her adoration of it. “Do I get to keep it? I’ll pay you for it.” It was then that Gangting spoke up and her attention was drawn to where he stood, staring at her with his jaw agape. The tailor was rubbing his shoulder with a grimace like he’d just been struck on it.

The blush started rising back to her face when he spoke up with an overwhelming number of sweet and romantic praises that she had absolutely no idea how to react to. Mercury considered herself an expert at flirting, but all of her experience was in sexual innuendos and playful teasing. She’d been flattered with words by others in the past, of course, but not to this extent and not with such… gentle adoration. The Xocili was surprised to find her mouth suddenly a bit dry, with a fluttering in her stomach that was an entirely brand new feeling.

“Well, aren’t you complimentary today?” she mused with a playful smirk, stamping down the odd sensation beneath her mask of confidence and charm. Little more could be said after that as the coordinator ushered them in toward the ceremony. It was a simple affair, one that Mercury watched with interest. She’d never been to a wedding before, even back in her own home, so she was curious to see what happened. There were a lot of little traditions and formalities that she didn’t understand, but she could always go back later and research them in her room at her guild.

After the short ceremony there was a reception, which basically was little more than a large social gathering to party. There was music and food, and a great number of fancy and flowery decorations. And here, too, there were also some traditions. The bride and groom shared a first dance with one another, after which other couples were invited to come to the floor as well.

Mercury was more than a little surprised when Gangting opted to lead her out to dance. He’d seemed pretty disinterested in everything so far, at least as far as the ceremony and reception went. She’d caught him a couple of times looking at her, which normally Mercury would have openly teased him about in an effort to flirt with him in her forward, shameless way. Instead, she had found herself keeping her mouth shut and unsure what to say to him.

By the time they got to the dance floor, it was clear that neither of them actually knew how to dance. “Not even a little,” Mercury told him through a very entertained chuckle. Her laughter only got more frequent as it slowly sank in just how awful both of them were at trying to move in rhythm with the music, and how foolish they must have looked to everyone else around them.

At least, until he stepped on her foot.

If she’d been prepared, Mercury probably would have been okay. Her defenses were pretty good when she wanted them to be, as she could easily make her skin as hard as steel. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been expecting it. As such, all the weight from his stone-like body smashed right on top of her foot, causing her to gasp in shock and pain. Her hands grabbed onto his arms out of instinct to keep herself from falling over as she quickly tried to shift her weight off the injured foot. “Fuck!” she exclaimed.

Somewhere, over the roaring of pain in her ears, she heard him quickly and profusely apologize. “It’s okay, I’m okay,” Mercury tried to reassure him, gulping back any further profanity. Truth be told, if she had been human with complete fleshy insides rather than organic steel, her foot probably would have broken. Thankfully, as much as she felt like flesh and bone, she was made of sturdier stuff. Already, her body’s healing agents had released themselves into her bloodstream to start easing the pain. “I think I just need to sit for a couple minutes.”

Gangting nodded his understanding and the two of them made their way over to a vacant table where Mercury could sit. He suggested looking for a healer, worried that he may have accidentally broken her foot. It had certainly swollen a bit, but not as much as it arguably should have since her body was already at work ebbing away the pain and repairing the minor damage. “No, I think I’ll be okay,” she told him earnestly. “I’m a quick healer, and it takes a lot more than a big handsome guy like you stepping on my foot to break it.”

She smirked a little at him then, giving the man a flirty look. Mercury then watched in amusement as he finally glared down at the shoes on his feet and quite literally ripped them off, leaving the limbs bare. It dawned on her that he probably could sense things around him easier when his feet were in direct contact with the earth, much like she had a connection to metal and the other newer aspects of her magic. The shoes, she realized, had probably blinded him in a sense, which in turn may have been what caused him to step on her by accident in the first place.

He seemed eager to make up for the incident, offering to go get her some cake and jumping away to go do so before she could even get a chance to reply. As Gangting moved across the room to retrieve the desserts, Mercury watched him go with a soft chuckle, shaking her head. He certainly was charming, in an awkward kind of way. There was an odd smile on her face as she replayed the amusing, if unfortunate, scenario in her head.

By the time he returned, she had also removed her own shoes. Going around barefoot wasn’t exactly her favorite thing in the world, if only because she didn’t particularly like getting dirty, but it also wasn’t the worst fate. And then he wouldn’t be the only one without shoes at the party. He brought back two slices of cake, a pink one for her and a velvet one for himself. The way he displayed it to her practically right under her nose betrayed how excited he seemed to be at the idea of eating the dessert.

She was about to point out that he’d forgotten forks when he used his magic to form the utensils for them out of some of the glass in the displays. Interesting. Mercury had never thought him able to manipulate glass as well, but at the heart of everything glass was crafted from earth. His was a useful and multifaceted magic, to be sure. “Thank you,” she told him before the two of them finally dug into the treats. “They do look quite scrumptious. You know, I’m not even sure I’ve ever had cake before.”

She scooped a piece of the dessert off and put it in her mouth, savoring it slowly as the blends of sweetness mixed on her tongue. Mercury was actually surprised at how decadent it tasted, and it showed as she did a bit of a double take looking back down at the place. “Shit, that’s really good,” she admitted, going in for another bite. After a couple more mouthfuls, she picked out another piece with the delicate utensil and held it up to him with a playful smile. “You want to try this one?” Mercury asked him, silently offering to feed the bite to him.

Assuming he accepted the mouthful, she would sit up a bit to guide the fork toward his mouth. Unfortunately, he was so much taller than her that even sitting down it was a little hard to reach him. Some of it managed to get in his mouth, but a lot of the frosting wound up around his lips and part of his cheek. “Oops,” the woman said, her eyes going wide with surprise before she chuckled lightly at her own error. “Sorry about that, big guy.” Setting the fork down, she reached up and gently wiped the frosting off of the side of his lip with the pad of her finger.

Mercury chuckled a bit when he asked if she wasn’t from their world, a question which she only took without panic because she had already been around long enough to understand it was a fairly common turn of phrase to use when someone like herself was unfamiliar with things that everyone else considered commonplace. “Not all cultures are the same, or fully similar to one another,” she told him simply. He blushed a bit when she wiped the frosting off his face, then glanced down and noticed her bare feet. “It hasn’t swollen terribly, no. In fact it doesn’t even hurt all that much anymore. I just figure it’s better to let it heal without having to balance in tall shoes. That, and I figured maybe you’d appreciate not being the only one in bare feet.”

She gave him a playful little smirk. However, it wasn’t long after that before he brought things back to his original inquiries that had gone unanswered after all the interruptions and distractions. He gave her an even look that told her he did not intend on letting the matter go, and for her part Mercury returned the look with an equally unreadable and unwavering gaze. It was a shame, really. She had a feeling he wasn’t going to be satisfied with her answers, and they had been having a relatively good time tonight, despite her foot.

And a part of her was still trying to decide if she was even going to answer his questions at all, after the way he had demanded them on their prior job and tried to treat her like she was his servant to command. The truth was that while Mercury had managed to find a mindset from which she could be cordial and even a bit flirty with him from, she was still quite angry over that. She watched him silently for a couple moments, weighing the choice she had before her and whether or not Gangting had worked himself back into her good graces enough for her to feel comfortable sharing anything about herself with him.

Finally, she sighed softly and relented. “As I said before. Not all cultures are the same. Things you take for granted are things that simply don’t exist where I come from. Likewise, I’m sure there’s plenty about my home that you’re unfamiliar with. After our last interaction I looked into things and learned a bit more. My understanding is that gods and demons are essentially…” Mercury paused there, gathering her thoughts as best she could to describe something that she still didn’t fully comprehend. “Exceptionally powerful mages on opposite ends of a political spectrum, constantly at war with one another. And I guess they’re powerful enough that a lot of people choose to revere them as kings and queens.”

The woman shrugged a bit. “I still don’t really see the difference between them, if I’m being honest. The way many of the articles read, demons are associated with evil and gods with good, but I don’t know why. I read up on a number of gods and their legends, and there were a lot of them that seemed just as awful and selfish as their rivals… demanding sacrifices and constant praise, taking away basic needs and resources as punishment for making mistakes. Similar behaviors as many of the demons I read about, except the demons were at least up front with their natures. They’re just two sides of the same coin, fighting a war like any other political conflict.”

Mercury stopped to take a sip of her drinks, allowing the cool liquid to wet her palate while she geared herself up for the part she was fairly certain Gangting wasn’t going to be happy about: how she got her powers. “I ran into the demon Jadus while on another job. I didn’t know what he was, of course, though it would have made little difference to me anyway. He was in my way for something that I needed, so I attacked him. And he absolutely kicked my ass.” She smirked a bit wryly, amused over the memory despite the complete and utter humiliation Jadus had dished her that day.

“Still, I guess I made an impression on him. He liked my spunk, and my technology intrigued him. Rather than kill me, he offered to teach me how to use his magic, and I accepted. I’ve been meeting with him periodically ever since to test my skills and see how much I’ve managed to learn in the course of my guild work. He’s a good teacher, though he wasn’t very happy that the other demon from that totem I took revealed some of his secrets.”

Even that she smiled over a bit. Jadus had been annoyed, but not at Mercury. After all, that had hardly been her fault, so he hadn’t taken it out on her. She flicked her gaze back to Gangting’s, meeting his eyes resolutely as she told him, “I won’t lie to you. I did also take the powers that the other demon offered me, and they have been considerably valuable. Magic itself is also not something I am very familiar with, but I am quickly discovering how useful and advantageous it can be. What Jadus offered me was fruitful, so when I had the chance to gain more, I took it.”

“That being said, I’m not a fool. The being trapped inside that artifact was not benevolent, and I didn’t need the label of ‘demon’ to know that his aim was to swindle me. He wanted to be released, promising me his help once he was free. I made him give me his powers first, as a sign of good faith… and then I left him trapped.” She took another sip from her drink, her eyes intently watching Gangting without reservation to see how he took her words. In the face of a demon attempting to manipulate her, she instead played the creature’s game and won, manipulating it back to get what she wanted. Jadus had been good to her, better than most people in her life up until that point, and she had no intention of betraying the strange man just for the promise of strength.

But she had still made the conscious choice to accept power from an entity that Gangting clearly loathed, and from the look on her face she would absolutely do so again if a reasonable opportunity to do so arose. She saw nothing condemning about her actions.