Mercury tossed the dagger in Reina’s direction and then waited to see what would happen. Predictably, the woman recognized the weapon as metal and consumed it without a second thought for its appearance, which told the ace everything she needed to know. Reina took a step as if to continue but then had to stop, leaving the researchers to scramble for some explanation of her reaction. Mercury simply waited patiently for the shoe to drop and it did so in the form of Reina collapsing onto her hands and knees with a metallic clang until she began to retch the contents of her stomach onto the floor.
“So! Who can tell me what happened here? Anybody?” she asked pleasantly, turning to the scholars on the other side of the glass and electing to treat this as any other academic endeavor. After a brief pause when no one could give her an answer, Mercury continued. “Well, let’s look at the data, then. Reina here is a metal slayer, as all of you are no doubt aware by now given the way she deep throated that dagger. Specifically, she is a dragon slayer, which allows her to create metal based spells and consume most items of metallic origin. Most.”
The ace turned to look back at Reina as the woman continue to hurl blue color bile onto the floor for a solid minute, giving Mercury plenty of time to educate the members. “Dragon slayers are indeed quite powerful and they are a force to be reckoned with, but they are not the only kind of slayer out there – and compared to other types of slayers, dragon slayers are really quite basic. They can consume their respective elements to gain power, yes, but only if those elements are in their natural forms. In Reina’s case, this means traditional metals like the ores you would pull from the ground, or even natural metal crafted from magical spells. However, metals that are imbued with the magic of gods and demons – holy and unholy magic as it were – those kinds of metals are simply too much for a mere dragon slayer to handle. As you can see, it acts like a poison to them. Not a fatal one, typically, but a poison nonetheless.”
Reina had slipped and fallen into the puddle of sick she’d made on the ground, causing Mercury’s nose to wrinkle in disgust. For all of Reina’s earlier claims that Mercury smelled, the ace was actually a woman that kept herself almost meticulously clean, who showered every day – sometimes twice a day – and absolutely hated to be covered in filth. So the sight of someone else caked in their own bile was quite unattractive. She watched in calm silence as Reina did somewhat impressively drag herself back to her feet, drained and ragged. Now would be the telling moment. Would Reina submit? Continue to fight? For all that Mercury knew the woman wasn’t a match for her, the ace had spent her entire life for as long as she could remember being dragged through the darkest and cruellest corners of the universe under the banners of war and tyranny and oppression. She had fought and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people directly, and was responsible for the loss of more lives than she would ever be willing to admit…
So she knew that right here, right now, was when Reina was at her most dangerous. She was a wild animal backed against the wall with nowhere to run, seemingly powerless against her opponent. How many times had Mercury herself been in this exact situation, against an enemy that had every intention of killing her, and through unpredictable desperation she had found the strength to overcome the seemingly insurmountable and prevail as the victor? No, now was not the time to take Reina lightly. Mercury was confident, sometimes even arrogant, but she knew better than to count her winnings before the chips had finished falling. She had no doubt in her mind that at this point Reina would try to kill her. The dragoness’s pride had been absolutely torn to shreds in a matter of minutes, before a live audience no less, and given how little regard Reina had held for Mercury or really anyone up until now the ace simply had no reason to believe that the redhead would hold back in what was surely her final stand.
Consumed by her loathing, Reina shrieked out Mercury’s name and charged, one of her arms tripling in size with layers of iron that had formed a sharp point at the tip. And while Mercury was inclined to counter the charge and simply knock the woman out right there and then to keep things from getting out of hand, the scientist in her simply was far too curious to let things play out. As ill advised as it was, she couldn’t help but want to see what Reina was capable of in this broken and desperate state. So, rather than strike back or stand her ground, Mercury simply dodged the incoming charge, deftly stepping out of the way and forcing Reina to have to adjust to follow her. She continued to do this for a minute or two, soaking in data like a sponge as Reina came at her with a full arsenal of spells and abilities. She even allowed a number of strikes to hit her so she could analyze the woman’s strength in this state. And while plenty of it certainly hurt more than Mercury would state outloud, the strikes appeared to do very little to her in the long haul.
When Mercury was satisfied with the encounter, she determined that it was time to finally put things to an end. Waiting for an opportune moment, the second the ace saw an opening to strike she took it. Without any outward or visible displays of magic, Mercury utilized one of her own spells to strengthen her body. Then, with a sudden burst of blinding speed, she snatched Reina by the fist as the redhead took a swing at her, gripping down so tightly that the woman’s limb would be practically locked in place by a vice, the weight of it threatening to crush Reina’s hand. With a deft pivot, Mercury twisted the limb to force Reina down to her knees. Rearing back her other arm, Mercury torqued her entire body from hip to shoulders and drove her fist right into Reina’s sternum with enough power to break her ribs in one blow, likely knocking not just the breath out of her but her state of dragon force as well as the broken bones pierced into many other nearby organs to cause an alarming amount of internal bleeding.
Transitioning smoothly into her next attack, Mercury continued her offensive by completing the twist on Reina’s arm and breaking the limb at the wrist and elbow. Then, she crossed her arm over her chest and backhanded the dragoness across the face, sending her broken body flying across the room so hard and so fast that she would likely break through several walls before coming to a stop in a pile of rubble and dust. After waiting a beat to see that Reina wasn’t making any effort to get up, she zoomed her sight in on the dragoness, swapping her vision to its x-ray setting to see her through the debris. Her internal sensors analyzed the woman’s vitals, the radar’s in Mercury’s head feeding numbers to her that caused the ace to sigh. “Well, that was sufficiently disappointing,” she lamented.
Turning toward the remaining scholars, Mercury began to brush some of the dust off her clothing. “Would one of you go retrieve the nurse, please? Reina needs to be taken to the infirmary. We’ll also need the cleaners.” Luckily anyone who worked in the labs was used to the space being heavily damaged on a regular basis, so a few broken walls really wasn’t much to scoff at. Testing unknown magical artifacts often caused far worse damage than this, and Silver Wolf was prepared with both members and artifacts that could easily repair the damage in a matter of minutes. Mercury would wait to make sure that Reina was brought to the guild’s infirmary and stabilized before heading up to her room to shower off. She was feeling entirely too grimy after all that.
Several hours later, once there had been plenty of time for Reina to get patched up and recover consciousness, Mercury decided it was time to pay her a little visit. Locating the room where Reina was, she knocked twice on the door to announce herself before opening the door and strolling in as casually as if they had just shared breakfast with one another earlier in the day. “Well!” Mercury said with a small but cheery smile as she shut the door behind her. “You’re back among the conscious, I see. For a while there I was starting to think I hadn’t been holding myself back enough.” Perched on her shoulder was Bandit, her companion crow. The large black bird hopped a bit back and forth where he stood before leaping out into the air and flapping his way up to roost on one of the beams near the ceiling to preen himself.
Pulling up a chair, Mercury dragged it over to Reina’s bedside and swung a leg around to sit backward on the seat, her arms lounged comfortably over the back of the chair. Her emerald gaze roamed over Reina’s face with a studious, somewhat unreadable expression before she spoke up again. This time, her tone was more sober than before, not necessarily gentle or compassionate but certainly still genuine without any of her teasing mannerism. “So tell me, Reina: where do we go from here? I have some ideas, of course, but I would very much like to hear what you have to say, first.” | |