Urban Nights

Mercury was intensely giddy with excitement. The moment Serilda had brought up this rave party and invited the two of them to it, the Silver Wolf Ace had already started counting down the days. She’d never been to a rave before, nor had she heard of one, but the more the Rune Knight couple talked about what would happen there, the wider and brighter her eyes had gone. It was like they had depicted a vivid image of heaven in her mind’s eye, giving her some weirdly misconstrued understanding of the concept that she’d been struggling to understand ever since being introduced to religion. Frankly, it sounded very similar to the orgy that the du Wolffs had brought her too, though this even sounded like it wouldn’t be quite as lascivious in nature. But thumping music, neon lights, black lights, drinking, punk styled dress codes… she was drawn in hook, line, and sinker.

Vandrad had surely seen it on her face, just as she had likely seen the horror on his. But now that Mercury knew such an event existed, she was going to go, with or without him, and if that meant she was going to be alone with his newly introduced adoptive brother and future sister-in-law… well, so be it. Fortunately, he seemed to think better of the kind of disaster that would turn out to be and opted to take the offer to spend the time with the other couple, even if it wasn’t the kind of scene any of them except Mercury would be interested in. She’d spent the next several days planning, and when the big day finally came she was fired up and ready to go.

Since Magnolia was between Clover and the Phoenix Mountains, Mercury agreed to meet Vandrad at Fairy Tail before moving on to the princess’ home town. So elated was she for the night’s gathering that she practically fell off her hover disc when she got outside the main hall and dramatically threw the main doors open as she strode inside. As always, the Fairy Tail hall had quite a number of people milling about inside, most of them members of the guild but a few of them guests such as herself. Nearly everyone stopped to turn and look at her, taking in the sight of her peculiar outfit: A high collared blue jacket with short, puffy sleeves covering a gold trimmed white top with a sweetheart neckline that curved daringly around the tops of her breasts. A matching pair of tight fitting booty shorts squeezed around her ass, and a dark set of knee high leather boots sat over top a set of white stockings that rose up to about mid thigh. In fitting with the rave theme, parts of her outfit were trimmed in gold metal, and there were pink hearts on her sleeves and stockings that glowed with light. Similar hearts were on the face of a pair of goggles that rested on her head over her hair, and she had also used a bit of her magic to make the gear shaped tattoos on her arm and neck glow pink like she had traced them with glow in the dark paint.

“TIME TO GO, DADDY!” she called out loudly into the hall, drawing the attention of anyone that hadn’t already been looking at her. It was fairly common for her to do something like this in an effort to tease Vandrad, who was already well known in his guild for hating attention in any form. Most of his guildmates were used to the antics by now, having long ago accepted that the Silver Wolf ally had somehow managed to wrangle the surly man into spending nearly all of his free time with her, despite how exasperated he often got with her shameless behaviors.

She strode into the room confidently with a huge grin on her face as she looked around to see if he’d even come down from his room yet. “You better be wearing that outfit I got you, or so help me I will strip you naked in front of your entire guild and dress you myself!”

“You know what I’m about,” was her only retort to him when he grumbled about her getting a hold of herself and how he had to pass up training to go to what he viewed as an utterly ridiculous event. This, as always, did nothing to deter her spirits. “Yeah yeah yeah, you have an aversion to fun. Luckily for you, I’m here to build up your tolerance. Let’s gooooooo..!” She was not to be stopped, eagerly ushering him out the door and into the sky.

It was a short flight later that they found themselves in Clover. Mercury already knew where to go as she had, unbeknownst to Vandrad, visited Serilda’s home town a couple times before their meeting in Era in her efforts to study the woman and Vandrad’s brother. So, she was already pretty familiar with the general layout of the city and where the bulk of the event was taking place. They could see the lights from quite a ways off, which just made Mercury all the more excited. Soon enough they touched down, and Mercury folded up her hoverdisc, tucking it away in the small pouch on her hip that she used to conceal her use of magic to summon devices. Then, barely able to really contain herself, she hooked him by the arm and pulled him along with her into the crowd.

She was immediately captivated by… well, everything. The flashing lights were a beautiful sight that filled her with energy both emotionally and magically. Music poured in from practically every corner of every street, giving a wonderfully chaotic rhythm and theme to the setting. People were packed together in clusters around DJ’s and stations where people were beating on drums and spraying paint everywhere, and while the idea of being covered in liquid and staining her clothes almost never appealed to her, she couldn’t deny that taking a round on the drums and making a mess actually sounded kind of fun.

Vandrad followed along with her all the while, grumbling his protests at how annoyed he was to be taking part in this. “Aw, c’mon. You learned to enjoy the after party. I’m sure we can find a way to make this fun for you, too,” she said, teasing him a little but also being somewhat sincere in trying to encourage him. Whether it was because she felt that was the right thing to do, or because she was trying to earn back some of the brownie points she was about to lose when he saw his outfit lighting up like a canvas of fireworks, was anyone’s guess. She was already having a hard time keeping from revealing the twist, wanting him to figure it out on his own.

It wouldn’t take long as he got momentarily distracted by one of the attendees who was high as a kite. At the same moment, Mercury saw the unmistakable form of Gren and waved to try and get their attention. “There they are,” she said, not really even realizing that Vandrad had gotten side tracked. By the time she realized he was a few paces behind her he would be searching for a reflection to see himself in, Mercury turning to look just in time to catch him staring at himself in agitation. She cackled merrily to herself before finishing her approach, her self satisfaction written all over her face as Serilda and Mythal greeted them. Both had drinks in hand, and while they were certainly more on the conservative side of things it was worth noting that both had actually dressed for the occasion. Mercury was actually quite impressed that Serilda had her stomach showing, given her understanding of how staunchly proper the heiress typically was.

Mercury’s grin widened when Serilda commented on how pleased she seemed. “Oh you have no idea,” she told the noblewoman merrily. At the offer of glowsticks, the Xocili happily dug into the box and pulled out a couple in various colors, snapping them to get that satisfying crack and shaking them into life. The wolves happily greeted her and Vandrad, and while Mercury didn’t quite gush over the animals like most women probably would she was quite happy to see them again and to get some pets in. Her subtle enthusiasm had less to do with any sort of dislike of animals so much as just still being somewhat new to the concept of pets in general. It was a phenomenon that she was quickly growing to like, as all her previous interactions with beasts up until recently had been mostly as sources of food.

Serilda commented her surprise at Vandrad’s apparent willing participation, with Mythal following the sentiment up in agreeance. Mercury grinned and jabbed a thumb at the prince lightly. “Poor guy made the mistake of trusting me with picking out his clothes. I’m probably in trouble so, if you find my body in the street tomorrow you know who to look for.”

Mythal was getting ready to form a new statement furthering the conversation along when he got distracted with the same thing Mercury was just noticing. Serilda was starting to glow, very much like one of the many sticks she’d just offered the pair. She blinked at the older woman even as the director voiced the occurrence aloud, causing Serilda to frown and lift her hand up in surprise to confirm that she had, in fact, started glowing. “So they’re selling the good shit at the bars, then?” she asked, confident in being able to make light of the situation given how both Mythal and Serilda didn’t seem too bothered by it. A lot of nobles might have been embarrassed or upset, but the princess of Clover seemed to have taken it in stride and found honest amusement out of it.

Then everything went buck wild. Vandrad was suddenly and rudely shoved aside by someone rushing quickly by, causing him to collide into Mercury who was equally thrown off balance. “What the hell?” she exclaimed as she recovered herself, simultaneously trying to determine how Vandrad had fared and to identify those responsible. The latter part wasn’t hard. Some Midian looking fuck stood at the center of the space that had just been cleared, and with him was a teenager not much younger than Mercury, some weird creature that looked like it was made of a mixture of light and liquid, and some faceless person adorned in cybertech armor. As Mercury quickly tried to judge how far she’d been separated from Vandrad, Serilda, and Mythal, she listened to his speech about how this party had supposedly been their idea and it had been stolen from them, so now they were going to cause problems about it.

“That so?” she murmured. Like hell was she going to let anyone take her fun away. The four individuals scattered at the samurai’s word, with Mythal snapping a hand out quick to catch the teenager before she could get too far. Mercury herself had her sights set on the one with the armor. Curious equipment, that. Without moving from her spot, she pulled her customized iLac out of her pouch and starting punching in commands with a devious little smirk, her own wireless waves rippling out invisibly through the air and infiltrating the tech. In a blink, she had quickly and easily hacked the soldier’s armor and put it under her own control.

“What the…” the guy inside muttered as the suit suddenly forced him to come to a grinding halt right when he was about to overturn a stall. Suddenly, without his instruction, the armor began to move. It turned him around and almost robotically made him walk right up to Mercury, stopping at attention before her.

Knowing by now that the others of this vagabond little party were already being seen to by others, she kept her focus on her own target, walking circles around him as she examined the armor. “My my, what a delightful suit you have here.”

He struggled in vain to try and get control back. “Who the hell are you? What did you do to my armor?”

“Well you see, I simply decided to ruin your night before you could get the chance to ruin mine. You should count yourself lucky that you got me and not my very angry friend over there.” She pointed at Vandrad, who was busy putting the PL4GUE’s boss in his place. “So! Let’s see what this baby is capable of, eh?”

Scrolling through her tablet, she got to work reading though the specs at computer speeds, quickly absorbing the armor’s features. “Nice sound system,” she commented, pulling the settings up and making adjustments so that the output was internal rather than external. “Tell me, is it true what they say about the brown note? That there’s a level of bass so strong that it forces you to expel your bowels? Let’s find out, for science.”

She pressed a button and loud thumping began to vibrate the suit violently on the inside, the sound muted to those without. The man inside cried out in agony as the impact and intensity of the beat began to make his head throb and disorient him. Mercury monitored his vitals with her scanners and while he was certainly experiencing a rush of adrenaline and bright spots of pain on the lobes of his brain, he did not, in fact, shit himself.

“Ah well,” she lamented. “It was worth a shot.” Turning off the music, she switched tactics. WIth one press of a button the armor’s mask flipped itself open, revealing the wearer’s pained and bewildered face. Then, with a pleasant smile, she entered another command and one of the guy’s armored arms lifted itself up and forced him to repeatedly punch himself in the face several times until he ultimately collapsed, unconscious. Quite entertained with herself, she glanced up to see how everyone else was faring.