Fingers interlocked, I brought my arms behind me until they began to tighten, stretching.
Mercury, across the training room, fists clenched and one leg ahead of the other, stood ready for a fight, not bothering with any kind of warmup. Just like I expected he'd been back and waiting for me outside our apartment building, no time wasted in asking for another fight despite how one sided things had been for him the other day.
As they were, this intent on challenging me was going anywhere anytime soon.
"Marcus was able to seal the semblances of others." I said, undoing the lock of my fingers and letting my arms drop as I rolled my neck.
"What about it?" He spat out.
"You got a semblance?" The subtle grimace across his face answered that question. Or at least that was the excuse I'd feed him if he ever asked how I knew he had one. "I assume he used his on you if he kept you locked up. You tried using it at all?"
"No point." Mercury said while I kept up my stretches.
"And why are you so sure about that?"
"That bastard told me exactly how his semblance works." Mercury fully glared, a foot shifting. "Are you ready or not?"
"Semblances don't always follow common sense or logic. Whatever he told you could be wrong, unless he found some way to test how his death would affect it?" Letting the question linger in the air for a moment, a raised a leg behind my back, grabbing my ankle with the opposite arm. "Why would you trust his word in the first place? He probably figured you'd try to kill him sooner or later and lied."
Of course, Mercury actually would've been right had it not been for our fight yesterday.
A clean hit to the neck. I'd slipped it while testing just how persistent he'd be about this whole thing, his father's semblance used to release the seal that'd been on his neck. He hadn't realized it but his semblance, whatever it was, had been at his beck and call since then.
Mercury's bottom lip curled slightly, one of his brows bending. After who knows how long with that seal on him and that man's words, his doubt was only natural. The fact that he hadn't already tried to use his semblance just showed how deeply ingrained the belief was.
It would've been the first thing I tried. Or second.
Maybe I would've delivered that same vicious beating to the man's corpse.
Turning away from me, Mercury's stance changed, right fist tucked in close to his side and balled up to the point that his knuckles whitened.
His gray aura moved rushing into the fist. It continued to gather as Mercury closed his eyes and took a breath, his aura as a whole beginning to act out, departing from its usually near motionless composure. Soon a ball of his aura, tightly compressed into itself, took shape.
His fist shot forward.
Sending his clothes and short hair flapping about, a compact gray blast left his fist, speeding across the training room and slamming into the metal wall. It didn't appear to do much damage at all to the sturdy thing, the aura dispersing across and away from it before completely vanishing.
"Looks like you got your semblance back to me." I said, the entire motion already committed to memory.
My words jolted the frozen Mercury out of disbelief. Rather than showing any kind of excitement or happiness, his skepticism held as he brought his fist back and shifted his body. As aura gathered into his left leg, a faint tingle raced across my eyes, Sharingan deactivated for a moment.
Again, this time without the long wind up, he kicked, both his hair and clothes only shifting.
Just like I thought.
Without my Sharingan the attack, comprised entirely of aura, was hard to pick out. Only shifts in the air as it sped towards the wall and the quiet sound of something zipping forward gave the attack away before it hit its mark and dispersed.
To anyone who couldn't see aura it as if he was using pure force or the air itself to attack.
Damn near invisible attacks that could be used at a distance like that. It wasn't exactly the sort of ability that Salem and her people would covet the way Marcus' was, but it was something most would struggle to combat especially in an environment like this, few loose things around to give away its approach. By the looks of it, he could choose how much aura he used too, the kick using far less than the more powerful one that left his fist.
A semblance like that gave him more options and made him significantly more dangerous for most people.
But not dangerous enough to warrant me keeping it sealed or taking the kind of active roll I did with Cinder and Emerald. Maybe without that seal acting as a constant reminder of his tormentor, he might be able to move on from the man without these fights.
As I reactivated my Sharingan, rushing, Mercury threw up a quick defense, no attempts made to use the semblance that'd been returned to him.
Probably not though.
XOXO
Finishing up the final donut that'd been on my plate, I looked between Emerald and Cinder, tuning out all the hustle and bustle of the city streets.
The latter had gotten better with her aura. She was able to reliably do away with her shield bit by bit no matter what was going on around her. She wasn't at the level where she could do it well while focused on something else, her fiery aura naturally defying attempts at such fine control, but there wasn't much point in me overseeing her practice it.
The effects were starting to show in her semblance use too, Cinder better able to distribute the heat in the things she touched to avoid burning her hands during intense use. She might just be able to pull off using dust crystals the way she intended.
All in all, she was ready to take on something more difficult.
"Cinder." I said, pushing aside my plate and placing my elbows on the outside table we sat around, palms held out towards her. "Hold out your hands."
Cinder's focus dropped as she formed a fresh aura shield, slowly doing as I said and mirroring me. Her hands shot back the moment mine were just shy of touching hers.
"What are you doing?" She questioned, that guarded look that I hadn't seen in quite a while focused on me.
"I wouldn't worry about trying to rush it now, but I do think you're ready to try out forming aura disks." I explained. "Still think you should read up on the technique too but feeling it for yourself will make the whole process easier."
Cinder kept up that suspicious stare as I waved my hands a bit for her.
I couldn't help the smirk forming as I raised a brow. "You afraid to hold hands or something?"
"Tsk." That bit of goading, however childish it was, struck at her ego easily, Cinder scoffing lowly before bringing her hands back towards mine. She stopped just before touching them though.
My own aura shield active, I interlocked the fingers of my right hand with her left while pressing the open palm of my left to her right. Our respective aura shields did little to stop our interlocked hands from touching, the space between them more or less nonexistent. But the palms of our other hands didn't touch at all, the dark red disk I'd formed before they would've met acting as a fully solid barrier.
"Go on." I said, encouraging Cinder who was staring down at our hands. "Put some pressure on them."
It took Cinder a moment, but her fingers did complete the interlock of our hands, applying a growing pressure to my shield. It'd take a lot to damage it but there was nothing but her own strength stopping that damage from occurring.
On the other hand, no matter how hard she pressed her palm against the disk between our other hands it didn't react in the least, not even rippling. "While disks generally make for a more efficient shield, they require a concentrated effort. You'll need a lot of control over your aura for it to be useful in a fight since you're in full control of the shape it takes."
To show off my point I had the edges of the disk grow backwards at an angle. Depending on what I was going up against, specific designs could render certain types of blows completely useless.
"The amount of aura you put into it, the shape you use. There's a few different things that go into how much use you'll get out of something like this." Undoing the lock of our fingers and letting the disk fade, I pulled my hands away from hers, Cinder's focused eyes jumping up from that palm and to my face. "Want to give it a try before you read up on it?"
Bringing back her hands, Cinder jumped right into doing just that, her shield dropping as she focused on her left hand. As expected, she failed miserably, her wild aura not taking too kindly to the new direction.
One eye on her, I glanced over to the closed eye Emerald. She'd taken to do same dismantling exercise Cinder had but her aura took to it far more easily, she making more progress than Cinder had in the same amount of time. It wouldn't be long before she was practicing more advanced aura techniques too.
The two kept up their practice for over an hour before we stood up, making our way back towards the apartment building. Normally Emerald or I might suggest going somewhere but she was dead on her feet, still adjusting to physically training with us, while Cinder was primed to go focus all her attention on those aura disks.
Better to just leave those two to their own devices for the rest of the day.
"That guy's back again." Emerald pointed out as we finished climbing the long flight of stairs and the entrance to our apartment building came into view.
Mercury, leaning against one of entrance's guardrails with his arms crossed, waited just outside it.
I was giving him every opportunity to just turn around and live out an easy light behind kingdom walls. Taking him to the city. Lien. Even taking the risk of releasing the mystery semblance he had just so his father wouldn't be weighing on him so heavily.
It was foolishly optimistic of me to think any of that would make him forget or let go of what must've been his goal for years. It was obvious that he'd already decided how he was going to prove to himself that he could've killed his father and got out of that prison.
As we made it to the entrance, I stopped beside him, Cinder and Emerald continuing up the stairs.
"You already saw what kind of work we do." I said. "You join us on those jobs and I'll keep having these fights with you when I have the time."
Mercury nodded, no time needed to think about it.
Maybe he would've recklessly tried to follow after us whenever we left the city. Maybe not. Either way, I might as well nip that possibility in the bud and try to help him move on from his obsession.
Summer would've been trying a lot harder than I was from the very beginning.
XOXO
(A/N: Hand holding spotted! Anyways, we're about turn into some extreme slice of life then do an extremely crazy swerve into some massively important shit. It shall all be very interesting but on that note, I come baring Grimm news. Lol, get it? You get it.
Stupid joke aside my car trouble continues rather than be solved with one quick fix and I'm sure many of you must know how many cascading issues suddenly not having reliable transportation is when you live in an area with horrendous and or nonexistent public transportation. My scheduling for everything is pretty pushed back since I have to rely on other means to get places.
All that's to say, I'm still going to be trying to hit my three a week but I'll be honest, don't expect a powerstone goal for extra chapters for awhile. Also, yes I know, I owe you all an extra chapter. I'll keep it in mind for the upcoming weekend but I am asking for a bit of leeway until I solve my real life issue first. My writing time is effectively neutered since I have to leave early and plan around other people now which I can't believe is happening just as get to writing some very important scenes.
Car trouble is a bitch.
Thank you all for you're understanding and I hoped you enjoyed reading.
Anyways, here is the link for those who want to read ahead for anything I'm writing:
patreon .com/ thirdratewriter
Hope you're all free of the same trouble I have to deal with.