Fandom Distorted Mirror [IC]

[MidwayLives]

She didn’t move for a little while, didn’t even react to the hand holding or the question. At least not initially. Cinder was just thinking that extensively about what she’d been told, but eventually she did respond. She slowly looked at him and just as slowly shrugged. “I...I don’t know.” She admitted but then tried to turn the topic away from her. “Are...you?”

Tyrian didn't let go of Cinder's hand.

"...Yeah, I guess that makes two of us."

He looked over at wherever Mercury was.

He was....glad(?) they didn't break out into another fight. It wouldn't have solved anything. If anything it'd have only made things worse and left nobody happy. On top of that it was like he'd told Morgiana. He didn't hate Mercury or anything like that. The other teenager had made a point, an important one. Things just...got out of hand.

Still didn't mean he'd forgiven and forgotten that fast.

"....But I'm as okay as I'll need to be to see this through."


"Afterwards?"

He shrugged.
​

From the perspective of anyone listening, the thief's voice was buried under a layer of muted distortion the moment they stepped through the shimmering green pool of light; as if their heads slipped below water before she finished speaking. Yet the visible sensation was far more disconcerting. Unlike the previous, disparate times they'd all taken the portals, when the physical effect on their end had been instantaneous, the chain of life still linking the more conventional plane of Remnant with those taking point—which, in a twist of mild hilarity, was most likely Char and Blanche given how the groupings shook out—meant they found themselves stepping through and simply... continuing to walk.

"See, Blanche? Ain't you happy we decided to hold hands now-"
​

From there the process, at least from their point of view, was once more entirely instantaneous. The dazzling array of colors was still burned into their retinas when they felt themselves slowing down, becoming corporeal again, a pleasant sense of weightlessness their only fleeting memory of the journey itself to be had once their adrenaline spikes faded.

That, as it transpired, would be another couple of minutes from now. Their next feeling of weightlessness was far less pleasant as rather than a simple collapsed tunnel like Emerald had indicated their destination ended up giving an ironic twist to her final sentence: it was most definitely, completely underwater. They managed to ascertain that they were in a vertical mineshaft of some sort, recognized mangled bits of debris floating here and there, and that was all they got before the portal's emerald light sputtered out, leaving them to react however they did to suddenly finding themselves miles underground in a submerged tunnel with no light and no air.

Needless to say, the next few seconds were chaotic. Mercury was among the quickest to react in a purposeful way, his bouts of fight-or-flight perhaps those with the shortest fuse, and while his legs did enter a brief period of frantic scrabbling for some sort of bottom as their weight pulled him down hardly a second went by before he got his bearings, tightened his grip on both hands in his, and started kicking up; smooth, powerful thrusts that less pushed and more propelled him through the water.

'Whoa.' Is all Char would have found himself saying.

If he wasn't too busy trying to keep his partner from flailing all over the place once it became clear to the two of em that they were underwater.

"blaNCHE-" Char sputtered as his head bobbed up through the water. "You gotta calm down!"

Blanche DIDN'T want to calm down.

Getting water in his shoes was one thing.

Being coated in it was another altogether. Who knew if this water was clean? Or what had been through it? It could have been absolutely filthy!

"BLANCHE!"

Blanche finally ceased his thrashing around and held onto Char's arm.

"Sorry."

"It's alright, just chill-out man. We're supposed to be professionals. You think it makes us look good to these kids if one of us is splashing around like a kid having a tempter tantrum at the trashy water park their folks reserved a day just for their tenth birthday?"

"....That's oddly specific but yeah, yeah you're right."

Char nodded.

"Right on, man."
​

Mercury's head was first to breach the water's surface, followed shortly by Neo provided she didn't wriggle loose of his grip, hacking and sputtering as the torch in his hand whirled to illuminate the air pocket they were in. Their heads were skirting the mineshaft's ceiling, less than a few feet between it and the water for them to bob and draw precious breath in. He was already turning, scanning the heads beginning to pop up from the depths one by one and gauging them against Emerald's swim speed and where he last had a sense of her, the conclusion he drew having him sucking down air a few times before he held it in and—

It wasn't something that Tyrian got to do too often: the opportunity never really presented itself too much.

But he absolutely LOVED swimming.

On the days when he and Trifa got to do their training outdoors, he'd always cool off by swimming in the river.

As his tail swayed from side to side, he kept his hold on Cinder's hand and seemed well-off enough.

"Neo??? Cinder??? Watts?? Mercury?? Everyone ok???"
​

It was a few seconds before she spoke again, but the upside was that when she did it was only with a slight strain as she finally rotated herself around to face everyone, her own torch clicking on.

"...Is everyone here? Can anyone not—*cough*—swim?"

"We're fine." Blanche and Char responded.

Tyrian let his swimming speak for itself.

"Wait a minute, wasn't that spider girl with us?" Blanche questioned aloud. "Yeah, she grabbed my other hand. She's right-"

There was a clear lack of Trifa next to Char.

"Uh oh."



"blurg..."

Bubbles rose to the surface and popped.

"Oh shit-" "She can't swim??" "Trifa!"



Trifa held her hands over her eyes as Tyrian continued to hold Cinder's hand and gently dragged the spider faunus along/kept her above water by wrapping his tail around her waist.

"All those lessons at the river, Trifa...."

"I *cough* never *cough cough* WENT TO THOSE, TYRIAN!"​

 

[MyrtenRose]

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts, so emotionally distant in that moment, that Tyrian’s response with that otherwise worrying shrug only got a small, barely perceptible nod out of her. That and a softspoken “yeah” of agreement. The frankly beautiful, almost ethereal display of light and color that followed got even less of a reaction. She always loved getting to see and experience things she’d never imagined she would but in this case, it was too quick and she was much too focused on something else to truly appreciate the show. It was over and done with in the blink of an eye, the explosion of color reflected in her own eye and what might have provoked an awestruck “wow” or an amazed “ooh” barely got anything beyond her single eye widening a tiny fraction of an inch.

Those last exchanged words from the temporarily bedridden woman stole pretty much all her focus, her thoughts stuck on what the hell it meant and what the hell she could do about it.

It took her emergence on the other side to break away from those concerns, as ironically as it might have seemed for someone who could control the elements and possessed the ability to fly, her response to suddenly finding herself completely underwater was among the group’s worst, like this was something she was the most ill-suited for. It was one thing for her to be splashed on by Mercury trying to play some trick, and quite another for her to emerge this deep in a body of water.

Sheer panic gripped her, a look of pure terror etched on her face. An involuntary knee-jerk reaction got her mouth to widen in an attempt at a scream, but only letting out gurgled gasp and letting in too much water in the process. Though Tyrian tried to hold on, her terrified thrashing made it difficult and the scorpion faunus found it almost impossible to hold on, as the sheer scorching heat that came from her hand was enough for anybody to recoil in pain and pull away, her magic power and semblance both giving off incredible heat in her panic, and without those helping hands...the panic really did settle in to an absurd degree.

Even with all she had, the power of the maiden she possessed that logically made this a non-issue, she evidently wasn’t thinking clearly as even as a majority had surfaced, she had not. On the contrary, she was sinking further down.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

As their respective torch beams roved from face to face, the two were engulfed by a sense of mounting panic.

"Where's—?"

"CINDER!"

The realization hit them both around the same time even with Emerald about as unsettled as a cat dipped in ice water, a look exchanged between the two that packed roughly a minute of back-and-forth into under a second as her eyes rounded in alarm, his with a dissuading shake of the head that presumably came bundled with a discouragement.

She didn't stick around for it.

His mouth was halfway open to tell her to let him, he was a stronger swimmer, she didn't have the lung capacity right now, she was still coughing for god's sake, and all of two of those words had made it out before he was cut off by the jangling of chains and reflexively caught the kusarigama she pitched at his face. The other end was clipped to her belt, and he could do little more than grunt his frustrated dismay and grip a wooden beam to act as an anchor before she stuck the torch between her teeth, sucked in as heavy a breath as she could retain, ducked back below water level and kicked off the ceiling with both heels, taking strokes far smoother and more rapid downward than her wild clawing on the way up had been as she used the torch's beam to search out Cinder through the murky depths. Once she located the most distinct source of panicked struggling in the pool she made a cautious, if harried, approach, dipping low around the maiden's side and hooking one arm around her waist, then yanked on the chain a few times to signal Mercury to start reeling while she attempted to swim them back up.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

His mouth was halfway open to tell her to let him, he was a stronger swimmer, she didn't have the lung capacity right now, she was still coughing for god's sake, and all of two of those words had made it out before he was cut off by the jangling of chains and reflexively caught the kusarigama she pitched at his face. The other end was clipped to her belt, and he could do little more than grunt his frustrated dismay and grip a wooden beam to act as an anchor before she stuck the torch between her teeth, sucked in as heavy a breath as she could retain, ducked back below water level and kicked off the ceiling with both heels, taking strokes far smoother and more rapid downward than her wild clawing on the way up had been as she used the torch's beam to search out Cinder through the murky depths. Once she located the most distinct source of panicked struggling in the pool she made a cautious, if harried, approach, dipping low around the maiden's side and hooking one arm around her waist, then yanked on the chain a few times to signal Mercury to start reeling while she attempted to swim them back up.

Her frenzied panicking had slowed greatly by the time Emerald got down there, the lack of oxygen really affecting her badly...not that she wasn't already badly affected. So many reasons this shouldn't have been a problem at all, considering her abilities but...it just was. For entirely different reasons. One being that she had never learned to swim and that she hadn't been expecting to drop into deep waters. Her eye was a narrow slit by the time Em grabbed hold, though it widened a little bit at Emerald's touch, her stare lingering for just a moment and saying quite a lot even in that time...but the eye swiftly slid back to nearly closed and she put all she had into struggling to stay conscious/trying to help get them both up. No matter however pitiful an attempt it was.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Her frenzied panicking had slowed greatly by the time Emerald got down there, the lack of oxygen really affecting her badly...not that she wasn't already badly affected. So many reasons this shouldn't have been a problem at all, considering her abilities but...it just was. For entirely different reasons. One being that she had never learned to swim and that she hadn't been expecting to drop into deep waters. Her eye was a narrow slit by the time Em grabbed hold, though it widened a little bit at Emerald's touch, her stare lingering for just a moment and saying quite a lot even in that time...but the eye swiftly slid back to nearly closed and she put all she had into struggling to stay conscious/trying to help get them both up. No matter however pitiful an attempt it was.​

Cinder, and in short order Emerald, were discovering in the least pleasant fashion imaginable that this particular mineshaft was far, far deeper than it was wide, years of geographical decay and seismic activity having left the town's mine network a fragmented patchwork of vaguely connective spaces that had continued to erode and shift in the time since the disaster. The flashlight's beam did little to illuminate its true depths, but by the time Emerald reached her Cinder was fairly certain she was almost at the bottom, her fading vision and the near total lack of light ensuring she could see practically nothing aside from the torch and the odd crimson reeds drifting up from the gloom. The way they danced was almost mesmerizing, their faintly luminescent shade of red invoking both the primal curiosity to reach out and touch and the overwhelming urge to swim hard in the opposite direction—

There was a sense of urgency in the way Emerald jerked her away from them, and she broke off the eye contact to give them a leery glance before the chain received another yank and she redoubled her efforts to get them back to the breathable part of the shaft as quickly as possible. Albeit with a far more careful pattern of swimming than before.

They were almost at the top when one of the reeds brushed off a piece of rubble dislodged by almost a dozen people suddenly being deposited in an old, water-damaged mine structure, and the effect was sudden and immediate as the red of the tendril in question started to glow. The soft light quickly spread to the rest, arranging them into a pattern visible from above that looked almost insectoid and far too predatory to resemble a harmless cluster of reeds any longer.

Not reeds.

Antennae.

Spoiler

A long, narrow blur too quick to perceive in the lowlight tore up from the ground through a cloud of wood and debris, surging straight for a more tantalizing prize in the much stronger vibrations it felt closer to the surface. Whatever it was was on Emerald and Cinder in seconds, mandibles just barely visible in the light of the torches from above clamping shut around them with a muted snap of such impact it sent pressure bubbles rising to the surface and sounded like a depth charge going off from where they were.

Which turned out to be not at all where the monstrosity thought they were, its jaws ripping apart the massive chunk of wood the two young women had suddenly become the moment they clamped shut on them. Its hiss was furious as it whipped its gaze in all directions, fixating its focus on a single point with terrifying stillness as it caught sight of the actual Emerald and Cinder, scant inches from breaching the water as the disruption of the pickpocket's illusion unveiled their true position.

She made sure Cinder's head came up for air first, and when her own followed half a beat later there was seriously no overstating just how starved for air her lungs were, having not entirely caught her breath before she dived back down. She used her first breath to speak, which meant the stark, urgent warning she choked out emerged as little more than a desperate wheeze, difficult to pick up amid all the churning water.

"There's a grblgk—"

Her head vanished back below the water level again with such sudden momentum it could only be the effect of being pulled, Mercury's attention torn away from the duffel he'd been despondently picking through and now very much regretted bringing. His eyes flared wide in shock, and though his initial instinct was to dive after them whatever he felt from the other end of the kusarigama had him wrap his arm tighter around the beam he was gripping to stay afloat instead. No sooner than he had was the chain pulled taut, and for that matter so was he, a pained, incredulous grunt escaping his windpipe in a rare slip of composure as he turned frantic eyes towards whoever was closest (besides the recently drowning Cinder) and started furiously gesturing downwards with his head, doing his best to hold on and act as much an anchor as the chain had been.

The support beam he hooked was loud in its disapproval, the sound of groaning, creaking wood giving way to a sharp crack as the assassin's son cursed. But it held.

For now.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

A long, narrow blur too quick to perceive in the lowlight tore up from the ground through a cloud of wood and debris, surging straight for a more tantalizing prize in the much stronger vibrations it felt closer to the surface. Whatever it was was on Emerald and Cinder in seconds, mandibles just barely visible in the light of the torches from above clamping shut around them with a muted snap of such impact it sent pressure bubbles rising to the surface and sounded like a depth charge going off from where they were.

Which turned out to be not at all where the monstrosity thought they were, its jaws ripping apart the massive chunk of wood the two young women had suddenly become the moment they clamped shut on them. Its hiss was furious as it whipped its gaze in all directions, fixating its focus on a single point with terrifying stillness as it caught sight of the actual Emerald and Cinder, scant inches from breaching the water as the disruption of the pickpocket's illusion unveiled their true position.

The sight of a literal sea monster was so so so not what she needed right now. Not at all. So unwelcome. As if she didn't have enough problems with her first time having to confront the fact that she just didn't know how to swim. She could breathe fire, summon storms, superheat objects into glass and manipulate their shape into anything she wanted, could put an arrow in a deer's eye from 100 yards away, but she'd...just never had the opportunity to swim before. As first times went, she could have gone for better than dropping super unexpectedly into this. Her failure at doing so was so overwhelming that she'd probably die from embarrassment if not for the fact that she was in danger of dying for real.

She could already see the edges of her vision darkening as she caught sight of the disgusting creature rising up from the depths. One hand moved as if to conjure up something, but...it fell back to her side before anything came up, and her whole body went limp as she fell unconscious from the lack of oxygen before she'd even broken the surface of the water.​

She used her first breath to speak, which meant the stark, urgent warning she choked out emerged as little more than a desperate wheeze, difficult to pick up amid all the churning water.

"There's a grblgk—"

Her head vanished back below the water level again with such sudden momentum it could only be the effect of being pulled, Mercury's attention torn away from the duffel he'd been despondently picking through and now very much regretted bringing. His eyes flared wide in shock, and though his initial instinct was to dive after them whatever he felt from the other end of the kusarigama had him wrap his arm tighter around the beam he was gripping to stay afloat instead.

Perhaps that was better for her, for if she had been aware to see Emerald drop back beneath the surface of the water, likely yanked back down by that beast down there...likely would have gone right back down after her, the safety of a friend of supreme importance. No matter what. But as it were she just floated along the surface with no conscious direction or movement.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Cinder, and in short order Emerald, were discovering in the least pleasant fashion imaginable that this particular mineshaft was far, far deeper than it was wide, years of geographical decay and seismic activity having left the town's mine network a fragmented patchwork of vaguely connective spaces that had continued to erode and shift in the time since the disaster. The flashlight's beam did little to illuminate its true depths, but by the time Emerald reached her Cinder was fairly certain she was almost at the bottom, her fading vision and the near total lack of light ensuring she could see practically nothing aside from the torch and the odd crimson reeds drifting up from the gloom. The way they danced was almost mesmerizing, their faintly luminescent shade of red invoking both the primal curiosity to reach out and touch and the overwhelming urge to swim hard in the opposite direction—

There was a sense of urgency in the way Emerald jerked her away from them, and she broke off the eye contact to give them a leery glance before the chain received another yank and she redoubled her efforts to get them back to the breathable part of the shaft as quickly as possible. Albeit with a far more careful pattern of swimming than before.

They were almost at the top when one of the reeds brushed off a piece of rubble dislodged by almost a dozen people suddenly being deposited in an old, water-damaged mine structure, and the effect was sudden and immediate as the red of the tendril in question started to glow. The soft light quickly spread to the rest, arranging them into a pattern visible from above that looked almost insectoid and far too predatory to resemble a harmless cluster of reeds any longer.

Not reeds.

Antennae.

Spoiler

View attachment 885551

A long, narrow blur too quick to perceive in the lowlight tore up from the ground through a cloud of wood and debris, surging straight for a more tantalizing prize in the much stronger vibrations it felt closer to the surface. Whatever it was was on Emerald and Cinder in seconds, mandibles just barely visible in the light of the torches from above clamping shut around them with a muted snap of such impact it sent pressure bubbles rising to the surface and sounded like a depth charge going off from where they were.

Which turned out to be not at all where the monstrosity thought they were, its jaws ripping apart the massive chunk of wood the two young women had suddenly become the moment they clamped shut on them. Its hiss was furious as it whipped its gaze in all directions, fixating its focus on a single point with terrifying stillness as it caught sight of the actual Emerald and Cinder, scant inches from breaching the water as the disruption of the pickpocket's illusion unveiled their true position.

She made sure Cinder's head came up for air first, and when her own followed half a beat later there was seriously no overstating just how starved for air her lungs were, having not entirely caught her breath before she dived back down. She used her first breath to speak, which meant the stark, urgent warning she choked out emerged as little more than a desperate wheeze, difficult to pick up amid all the churning water.

"There's a grblgk—"

Her head vanished back below the water level again with such sudden momentum it could only be the effect of being pulled, Mercury's attention torn away from the duffel he'd been despondently picking through and now very much regretted bringing. His eyes flared wide in shock, and though his initial instinct was to dive after them whatever he felt from the other end of the kusarigama had him wrap his arm tighter around the beam he was gripping to stay afloat instead. No sooner than he had was the chain pulled taut, and for that matter so was he, a pained, incredulous grunt escaping his windpipe in a rare slip of composure as he turned frantic eyes towards whoever was closest (besides the recently drowning Cinder) and started furiously gesturing downwards with his head, doing his best to hold on and act as much an anchor as the chain had been.

The support beam he hooked was loud in its disapproval, the sound of groaning, creaking wood giving way to a sharp crack as the assassin's son cursed. But it held.

For now.​

Watts had, before Lance cut off his train of thought by stepping through, considered blasting the rune that lead to Gneiss into nonexistence before anyone could step through. He believed Morgiana when she said that she could see some semblance of future events with her disquieting, well, semblance. He also believed her when she said that He and Cinder had a chance to shift the future of events. Not because of whatever bullshit traits she seemed to think they'd supposedly gone and internalized to spite their worst halves or whatever that shaky line of reason was; no, because, if they had succeeded at basically nothing else, he and his partner were absolutely agents of chaos, and nothing gave the middle finger to a trip to a destined location of doom like destroying the gateway to the supposed demised's end. She could call it untethered from destiny or whatever nonsense mysticism she preferred, he called it solving problems directly. They could still make it to the staff faster than most anyone else who wasn't already there, and if they lost it, well, Ozpin wasn't doing much of anything with 3 out of 4 relics, and the group from the original Remnant could go fuck themselves if losing the staff meant not ecxaberating the number differential between the surviving members of WTCH and MTEN.

He was a little too slow to enact that plan.

Just like he was a little to slow to be of any use in Haven

Just like he'd been too slow in his warning for his partner back in Vale.

He was getting rather sick of that feeling.

Which was why the moment he surfaced from the water finally himself and took his first gasp of breath, he threw his arms back and flicked his wrist to activate the hardlight screens for his rings, pressed a few buttons, and the scooter from hell that was slowly sinking to the bottom whirred to life and quickly shifted, spun, and expanded, until it engulfed him entirely and the visor whirred to life

*CRITICAL WARNING; WATER INSIDE PRESSURIZED ENVIRONMENT, DROWNING DANGER*

"No shit" he snarled, before he turned himself downwards and let the thrusters combine with the sheer weight of the suit to send him plummeting straight into a rocket dive to try and put a fist straight through whatever beast was down here; His H.U.D. lit up with scanners, doing its best to pinpoint the monster as well as Emerald, which he could just barely make out as all the water inside the suit swirled down from the bottom half to the bowl that was his helmet a millisecond after he sucked in a breath.

 

[Gus Gungus]

Perhaps that was better for her, for if she had been aware to see Emerald drop back beneath the surface of the water, likely yanked back down by that beast down there...likely would have gone right back down after her, the safety of a friend of supreme importance. No matter what. But as it were she just floated along the surface with no conscious direction or movement.​

"No shit" he snarled, before he turned himself downwards and let the thrusters combine with the sheer weight of the suit to send him plummeting straight into a rocket dive to try and put a fist straight through whatever beast was down here; His H.U.D. lit up with scanners, doing its best to pinpoint the monster as well as Emerald, which he could just barely make out as all the water inside the suit swirled down from the bottom half to the bowl that was his helmet a millisecond after he sucked in a breath.​

The struggle wasn't hard to pinpoint.

Environmental hazards were a leading cause of death among career Grimm slayers, the benefits of aura among the sort prone to making complacent huntsmen forget just how easy it was to—for instance—run out of air. That Emerald, negative thinker extraordinaire and generally cautious person by nature, had taken a second to throw Mercury her weapon even in the midst of a mad rush to save Cinder was likely the only reason she hadn't been dragged straight to the bottom on a fraction of her lung capacity, an all but inescapable fate no matter how proficient one was at wielding sword or semblance. The kusarigama's chain was extended to its full length, no slack whatsoever between the ends Mercury and Emerald each held as its links strained immensely under the pressure but held for now. The same could've been said of Mercury, who for once was silent with jaw clenched tight as he poured everything he had into resisting the Grimm's monstrous pull, letting go of the dangerously creaking wood for the time it took to blink so he could grip the chain in both hands and wrap his legs around the strut instead.

Hilariously shitty a time as he was having right now, he was still doing better than Emerald. The thief currently looked like a cross between a cat taking a bath and a canary in the jaws of the cat itself, which in all honesty wasn't far from the actual truth. Arthur's scans picked her up right away, eyes screwed shut and hands clutching the chain desperately like it was the literal lifeline it was.

Spoiler

They also picked up the four huge pincer-like mandibles clamped down around her opposite thigh so tightly her aura around the point of contact burned bright green in response, continuously beset. They met unexpected resistance attempting to feed her ankle into the large, circular maw nipping and snapping less than a foot away from it, razor teeth lining the orifice from all directions, and while Neo may have at least thought she yearned for death it was evident from Emerald's face alone just how much she didn't, furiously raining down kicks on the creature's face to little effect as they were absorbed by its bony carapace.

Said carapace was the main reason Watts felt his fist ram home hard against the creature rather than through it, nevertheless leaving a spiderweb of cracks under his knuckles and sending a wave of impact rippling all the way through its long, spindly body where it spiralled back into the depths. Its predatory reaction to this new threat was vicious and immediate, jaws releasing Emerald so it could turn and snap then shut around Watts' arm instead, pincers tightening with a quite frankly stunning bite force as they compressed around the sealed container that was the suit.

That pressure alleviated all at once when Emerald, fueled by adrenaline and a sudden profound desire not to be saved by Watts, drew the pistol from her other hip and fired a single round straight into the monster's spiky maw. It was there at least one good thing came from the fiasco at the marketplace, as the dust she'd appropriated from the stand earlier ignited and expanded into fractals of ice, blooming up from the back of its throat like petals on a rose and forcing the pincers open. It hissed in outrage, its body's long coils lashing to collide with Watts as it torpedoed for the mineshaft wall to collide with it, shattering the ice in one clean break. The wasted second meant Emerald's lungs ended up choking down an involuntary gulp of water in search of air, and she panicked as her thrash back to the surface grew frantic once more, drawing the beady eyes of the worm away from Watts as it veered and again darted for her with blinding quickness.

And twisted straight past her, looping to wrap its seemingly infinite body around her once and hold her bucking form under just inches away from air as it started constricting, even while the head went for its true target: the floating, motionless form of Cinder, seeking to snap down and drag her back under. Apparently they had happened across an ambush predator smart enough to identify and target the most defenseless prey in the room.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The struggle wasn't hard to pinpoint.

Environmental hazards were a leading cause of death among career Grimm slayers, the benefits of aura among the sort prone to making complacent huntsmen forget just how easy it was to—for instance—run out of air. That Emerald, negative thinker extraordinaire and generally cautious person by nature, had taken a second to throw Mercury her weapon even in the midst of a mad rush to save Cinder was likely the only reason she hadn't been dragged straight to the bottom on a fraction of her lung capacity, an all but inescapable fate no matter how proficient one was at wielding sword or semblance. The kusarigama's chain was extended to its full length, no slack whatsoever between the ends Mercury and Emerald each held as its links strained immensely under the pressure but held for now. The same could've been said of Mercury, who for once was silent with jaw clenched tight as he poured everything he had into resisting the Grimm's monstrous pull, letting go of the dangerously creaking wood for the time it took to blink so he could grip the chain in both hands and wrap his legs around the strut instead.

Hilariously shitty a time as he was having right now, he was still doing better than Emerald. The thief currently looked like a cross between a cat taking a bath and a canary in the jaws of the cat itself, which in all honesty wasn't far from the actual truth. Arthur's scans picked her up right away, eyes screwed shut and hands clutching the chain desperately like it was the literal lifeline it was.

Spoiler

View attachment 886166

They also picked up the four huge pincer-like mandibles clamped down around her opposite thigh so tightly her aura around the point of contact burned bright green in response, continuously beset. They met unexpected resistance attempting to feed her ankle into the large, circular maw nipping and snapping less than a foot away from it, razor teeth lining the orifice from all directions, and while Neo may have at least thought she yearned for death it was evident from Emerald's face alone just how much she didn't, furiously raining down kicks on the creature's face to little effect as they were absorbed by its bony carapace.

Said carapace was the main reason Watts felt his fist ram home hard against the creature rather than through it, nevertheless leaving a spiderweb of cracks under his knuckles and sending a wave of impact rippling all the way through its long, spindly body where it spiralled back into the depths. Its predatory reaction to this new threat was vicious and immediate, jaws releasing Emerald so it could turn and snap then shut around Watts' arm instead, pincers tightening with a quite frankly stunning bite force as they compressed around the sealed container that was the suit.

That pressure alleviated all at once when Emerald, fueled by adrenaline and a sudden profound desire not to be saved by Watts, drew the pistol from her other hip and fired a single round straight into the monster's spiky maw. It was there at least one good thing came from the fiasco at the marketplace, as the dust she'd appropriated from the stand earlier ignited and expanded into fractals of ice, blooming up from the back of its throat like petals on a rose and forcing the pincers open. It hissed in outrage, its body's long coils lashing to collide with Watts as it torpedoed for the mineshaft wall to collide with it, shattering the ice in one clean break. The wasted second meant Emerald's lungs ended up choking down an involuntary gulp of water in search of air, and she panicked as her thrash back to the surface grew frantic once more, drawing the beady eyes of the worm away from Watts as it veered and again darted for her with blinding quickness.

And twisted straight past her, looping to wrap its seemingly infinite body around her once and hold her bucking form under just inches away from air as it started constricting, even while the head went for its true target: the floating, motionless form of Cinder, seeking to snap down and drag her back under. Apparently they had happened across an ambush predator smart enough to identify and target the most defenseless prey in the room.​

Watts grunted and tried to brace himself against the cave floor as the thing latched onto his arm, and warning lights almost immediately flashed on his H.U.D.'s tiny display of his armor, the left arm flashing bright orange until the entire chunk of armor there suddenly flared a darker green than Emerald's. Before he could even level a weapon at it he was already being whipped into the wall, and he was dazed for a moment from the internal impact, long enough that he sucked in a breath of the water trapped in the suit that immediately had him gagging as he forced himself to right so that the water could drain back down towards the legs. He sputtered again but forced himself to look up in the process, ignoring the smattering of warnings Hayes was intoning as the cannon on his back slid up to his shoulder and began to prime.

Too slow.

It was going to fire too slow.

The laser took a few seconds to prime. But there wasn't anything he could do it any faster in this much metal under this much water, and he felt his eyes slowly widening in dread, a pit in his stomach that reminded him that just because they weren't the ones supposedly destined to die down here... didn't mean they couldn't.

Then Cinder was suddenly yanked straight out of the water, Hush' handle hooked into a belt loop at a nimble angle and Cinder Jerked upwards at the last possible moment, to try and give the beast as little time as possible to change course.

Neo was perched practically inside an outcropping of the cave, one heeled boot planted on a lower rock, a hand latched onto a stray pipe, and her other foot propped almost all the way into the ceiling, her first reaction to ending up in the water not all that different from a very soaked cat, and it was a mesmerizing display of flexibility that was keeping her up there, and an almost absurd show of strength for someone of her build even as an aura user to hoist Cinder out of the water. She kept her up there, the hand holding Hush at the top all but white knuckled in her grip, but her face was locked into a taut grimace that bordered on pain, and it was clear that she wasn't going to be able to hold up that position very long.

Hopefully she didn't have to, as while the Dread Biter swirled around either to try and leap up at the unconscious maiden or for different prey, a beam of energy suddenly cut through the water like a flashlight through the fog, the water boiling into steam around it as it impacted the beast head on

 

[MidwayLives]

It took her emergence on the other side to break away from those concerns, as ironically as it might have seemed for someone who could control the elements and possessed the ability to fly, her response to suddenly finding herself completely underwater was among the group’s worst, like this was something she was the most ill-suited for. It was one thing for her to be splashed on by Mercury trying to play some trick, and quite another for her to emerge this deep in a body of water.

"Cinder??? Cinder, calm down, it's okay, I'm-"
​

heer panic gripped her, a look of pure terror etched on her face. An involuntary knee-jerk reaction got her mouth to widen in an attempt at a scream, but only letting out gurgled gasp and letting in too much water in the process. Though Tyrian tried to hold on, her terrified thrashing made it difficult and the scorpion faunus found it almost impossible to hold on, as the sheer scorching heat that came from her hand was enough for anybody to recoil in pain and pull away, her magic power and semblance both giving off incredible heat in her panic, and without those helping hands...the panic really did settle in to an absurd degree.

Even with all she had, the power of the maiden she possessed that logically made this a non-issue, she evidently wasn’t thinking clearly as even as a majority had surfaced, she had not. On the contrary, she was sinking further down.

*vsssssssh*

"AGH!" Tyrian pulled away his hand as smoke hissed off his aura.

Then Cinder disappeared under the surface of the water.

"CINDER!!!!"



No, no he wasn't losing her again.

He wasn't gonna lose anybody.

Not again.

"Hey, old guys!"
​

Which was why the moment he surfaced from the water finally himself and took his first gasp of breath, he threw his arms back and flicked his wrist to activate the hardlight screens for his rings, pressed a few buttons, and the scooter from hell that was slowly sinking to the bottom whirred to life and quickly shifted, spun, and expanded, until it engulfed him entirely and the visor whirred to life

*CRITICAL WARNING; WATER INSIDE PRESSURIZED ENVIRONMENT, DROWNING DANGER*

"No shit" he snarled, before he turned himself downwards and let the thrusters combine with the sheer weight of the suit to send him plummeting straight into a rocket dive to try and put a fist straight through whatever beast was down here; His H.U.D. lit up with scanners, doing its best to pinpoint the monster as well as Emerald, which he could just barely make out as all the water inside the suit swirled down from the bottom half to the bowl that was his helmet a millisecond after he sucked in a breath.

"He doesn't mean us does he?"

"Tyrian, no stop, stopstopstopSTOP!"

Trifa was whipped through the air and crashed right into Char, nearly knocking both of them below the water.

Climbing off Char and desperately clinging to the ceiling with her back facing those still in the water below, Trifa shook like a wet dog.

"For gods's sake, Tyrian! Don't DO THAT EVER AGAIN."

"No, no, no I'm fine." Char growled as Blanche swam by to support him.

Tyrian wasn't around to hear the complaints. He wouldn't have to worry about Trifa being in danger and he sure as hell wasn't gonna just float around while the others did the heavy lifting. His tail splashing against the water was all that was left as he swam under.

Char frowned. It didn't feel right to just...stand by but Riot Breaker very much wasn't the ideal weapon for this kind of situation. If he activated it and it fell in the water, it'd turn this entire cave into one big electric chair with him at the center of it.
​

That pressure alleviated all at once when Emerald, fueled by adrenaline and a sudden profound desire not to be saved by Watts, drew the pistol from her other hip and fired a single round straight into the monster's spiky maw. It was there at least one good thing came from the fiasco at the marketplace, as the dust she'd appropriated from the stand earlier ignited and expanded into fractals of ice, blooming up from the back of its throat like petals on a rose and forcing the pincers open. It hissed in outrage, its body's long coils lashing to collide with Watts as it torpedoed for the mineshaft wall to collide with it, shattering the ice in one clean break. The wasted second meant Emerald's lungs ended up choking down an involuntary gulp of water in search of air, and she panicked as her thrash back to the surface grew frantic once more, drawing the beady eyes of the worm away from Watts as it veered and again darted for her with blinding quickness.

And twisted straight past her, looping to wrap its seemingly infinite body around her once and hold her bucking form under just inches away from air as it started constricting, even while the head went for its true target: the floating, motionless form of Cinder, seeking to snap down and drag her back under. Apparently they had happened across an ambush predator smart enough to identify and target the most defenseless prey in the room.

Tyrian had enjoyed swimming.

He'd never told anyone WHY he enjoyed swimming.

Maybe it was just due to the context of the reasons why he'd gone there. It'd been simply under the guise of just taking some time off practice. Get some 'fun' in but Ichabod in his heart of hearts had never truly seen it as a child enjoying himself. It was supposed to install a set of ferociousness in Tyrian. Give him that edge that he was lacking.

That killer instinct.

In the end all he got was a child who enjoyed his time splashing around.

His tail swayed behind him as he swam as fast as he possibly could, drawing closer and closer to the section that had Emerald in it's clutches.

He held his breath, obviously, but it was clear enough by his actions what was on his mind.

'LET HER GO!!!!!!!!!'​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Watts grunted and tried to brace himself against the cave floor as the thing latched onto his arm, and warning lights almost immediately flashed on his H.U.D.'s tiny display of his armor, the left arm flashing bright orange until the entire chunk of armor there suddenly flared a darker green than Emerald's. Before he could even level a weapon at it he was already being whipped into the wall, and he was dazed for a moment from the internal impact, long enough that he sucked in a breath of the water trapped in the suit that immediately had him gagging as he forced himself to right so that the water could drain back down towards the legs. He sputtered again but forced himself to look up in the process, ignoring the smattering of warnings Hayes was intoning as the cannon on his back slid up to his shoulder and began to prime.

Too slow.

It was going to fire too slow.

The laser took a few seconds to prime. But there wasn't anything he could do it any faster in this much metal under this much water, and he felt his eyes slowly widening in dread, a pit in his stomach that reminded him that just because they weren't the ones supposedly destined to die down here... didn't mean they couldn't.

Then Cinder was suddenly yanked straight out of the water, Hush' handle hooked into a belt loop at a nimble angle and Cinder Jerked upwards at the last possible moment, to try and give the beast as little time as possible to change course.

Neo was perched practically inside an outcropping of the cave, one heeled boot planted on a lower rock, a hand latched onto a stray pipe, and her other foot propped almost all the way into the ceiling, her first reaction to ending up in the water not all that different from a very soaked cat, and it was a mesmerizing display of flexibility that was keeping her up there, and an almost absurd show of strength for someone of her build even as an aura user to hoist Cinder out of the water. She kept her up there, the hand holding Hush at the top all but white knuckled in her grip, but her face was locked into a taut grimace that bordered on pain, and it was clear that she wasn't going to be able to hold up that position very long.

Hopefully she didn't have to, as while the Dread Biter swirled around either to try and leap up at the unconscious maiden or for different prey, a beam of energy suddenly cut through the water like a flashlight through the fog, the water boiling into steam around it as it impacted the beast head on​

"Cinder??? Cinder, calm down, it's okay, I'm-"


*vsssssssh*

"AGH!" Tyrian pulled away his hand as smoke hissed off his aura.

Then Cinder disappeared under the surface of the water.

"CINDER!!!!"

View attachment 886301

No, no he wasn't losing her again.

He wasn't gonna lose anybody.

Not again.

"Hey, old guys!"


View attachment 886306

"He doesn't mean us does he?"

"Tyrian, no stop, stopstopstopSTOP!"

Trifa was whipped through the air and crashed right into Char, nearly knocking both of them below the water.

Climbing off Char and desperately clinging to the ceiling with her back facing those still in the water below, Trifa shook like a wet dog.

"For gods's sake, Tyrian! Don't DO THAT EVER AGAIN."

"No, no, no I'm fine." Char growled as Blanche swam by to support him.

Tyrian wasn't around to hear the complaints. He wouldn't have to worry about Trifa being in danger and he sure as hell wasn't gonna just float around while the others did the heavy lifting. His tail splashing against the water was all that was left as he swam under.

Char frowned. It didn't feel right to just...stand by but Riot Breaker very much wasn't the ideal weapon for this kind of situation. If he activated it and it fell in the water, it'd turn this entire cave into one big electric chair with him at the center of it.


Tyrian had enjoyed swimming.

He'd never told anyone WHY he enjoyed swimming.

Maybe it was just due to the context of the reasons why he'd gone there. It'd been simply under the guise of just taking some time off practice. Get some 'fun' in but Ichabod in his heart of hearts had never truly seen it as a child enjoying himself. It was supposed to install a set of ferociousness in Tyrian. Give him that edge that he was lacking.

That killer instinct.

In the end all he got was a child who enjoyed his time splashing around.

His tail swayed behind him as he swam as fast as he possibly could, drawing closer and closer to the section that had Emerald in it's clutches.

He held his breath, obviously, but it was clear enough by his actions what was on his mind.

'LET HER GO!!!!!!!!!'​

Next to Neo's eminently graceful show of dexterity raged Mercury's far more chaotic one, hanging upside down like a a bat with mechanical legs hooked tight around one of the ceiling support struts but more resembling a leaf clinging to a branch in the heart of a hurricane at the moment as he was whipped around madly by the other side of the chain he was wrestling with. He cinched his thighs around their anchor point tighter and channeled every last drop of the degree to which that was ticking him off into yanking back against the writhing crustacean's strength with a strained yell and a single, prodigious heave, which in concert with Tyrian's efforts managed to haul Emerald up out of the water with an immediate furious coughing fit as she hacked up an uncomfortable amount of liquid.

Regrettably Emerald had negative intention of just letting herself drown, and appeared to have been engaged in some wishful attempt to wrestle the creature back. The end result was that she pulled enough of the worm's heavy frame up with her that a second, far more violent CRACK sounded in time with wood splintering as Mercury's legs ripped straight through the decades-old damp structure they were wrapped around.

For about a split-second, almost everyone was in the air. Mercury and Emerald, yanking each other up and down, respectively, the thief already in the process of demonstrating impressive coordination herself with one eye squeezed shut for accuracy and the other lining up a shot with her pistol's barrel. Cinder, dangling precariously where she'd been snatched just millimeters from the jaws of certain death by Neo. The creature, currently on its own collision course with the ceiling, Tyrian following close behind where he was grappling with its long, spiny body.

And lastly, and perhaps most tragically, Neo herself, who just got totally screwed over when Mercury's neanderthalic instinct to grab Cinder's ankle as he flew by ripped her from her delicate little perch and towards the inky, churning depths with all the dignity of a cat being wrenched from the rim of a bathtub. The dread biter was already twisting, rearing back on its own spine, its hiss filled with malice as it prepared to pluck what it deemed the lightest, most vulnerable target from the air and drag her to the very bottom, only for a single shot from Thief's Respite to pin its head to the ceiling under a dense cluster of ice.

A second later that ice was obliterated, along with the head, by the beam fired up through the gloom, briefly illuminating the entire chamber a murky jade and making the moment one of odd serenity.

Then that serenity was shattered in an instant as the water still filling the mineshaft all rushed in to replace the portion of it Watts' beam had evaporated at once. Between that and the dread biter's form hitting the surface in the midst of the most violent spree of thrashing it had exhibited to date, the waters everyone crashed back into were the furthest thing from calm, a frenzied pool of white foam that was thunderous in volume and refused to settle as the waves battering the cave walls started to crash and swirl into a miniature whirlpool.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Next to Neo's eminently graceful show of dexterity raged Mercury's far more chaotic one, hanging upside down like a a bat with mechanical legs hooked tight around one of the ceiling support struts but more resembling a leaf clinging to a branch in the heart of a hurricane at the moment as he was whipped around madly by the other side of the chain he was wrestling with. He cinched his thighs around their anchor point tighter and channeled every last drop of the degree to which that was ticking him off into yanking back against the writhing crustacean's strength with a strained yell and a single, prodigious heave, which in concert with Tyrian's efforts managed to haul Emerald up out of the water with an immediate furious coughing fit as she hacked up an uncomfortable amount of liquid.

Regrettably Emerald had negative intention of just letting herself drown, and appeared to have been engaged in some wishful attempt to wrestle the creature back. The end result was that she pulled enough of the worm's heavy frame up with her that a second, far more violent CRACK sounded in time with wood splintering as Mercury's legs ripped straight through the decades-old damp structure they were wrapped around.

For about a split-second, almost everyone was in the air. Mercury and Emerald, yanking each other up and down, respectively, the thief already in the process of demonstrating impressive coordination herself with one eye squeezed shut for accuracy and the other lining up a shot with her pistol's barrel. Cinder, dangling precariously where she'd been snatched just millimeters from the jaws of certain death by Neo. The creature, currently on its own collision course with the ceiling, Tyrian following close behind where he was grappling with its long, spiny body.

And lastly, and perhaps most tragically, Neo herself, who just got totally screwed over when Mercury's neanderthalic instinct to grab Cinder's ankle as he flew by ripped her from her delicate little perch and towards the inky, churning depths with all the dignity of a cat being wrenched from the rim of a bathtub. The dread biter was already twisting, rearing back on its own spine, its hiss filled with malice as it prepared to pluck what it deemed the lightest, most vulnerable target from the air and drag her to the very bottom, only for a single shot from Thief's Respite to pin its head to the ceiling under a dense cluster of ice.

A second later that ice was obliterated, along with the head, by the beam fired up through the gloom, briefly illuminating the entire chamber a murky jade and making the moment one of odd serenity.

Then that serenity was shattered in an instant as the water still filling the mineshaft all rushed in to replace the portion of it Watts' beam had evaporated at once. Between that and the dread biter's form hitting the surface in the midst of the most violent spree of thrashing it had exhibited to date, the waters everyone crashed back into were the furthest thing from calm, a frenzied pool of white foam that was thunderous in volume and refused to settle as the waves battering the cave walls started to crash and swirl into a miniature whirlpool.​

Neo's face in those split seconds contorted into a face that was entirely unbecoming even her eclectic range of emotions; total affronted, indignant rage, torn from her admittedly precarious perch a split second after stealing Cindictory from the jaws of Dreafeat. Whatever anger Mercury thought he deserved for Roman's death, if his attention had anything in the tank to spare her any (spoiler; it probably didn't), he got a brief view of what it would've been like to be on the other side of it, even if it was at the situation itself rather than her teammate right before she disappeared with the rest of them into the swirling water and her tiny form was immediately swept and battered into the current like a twig tossed into the rapids.

Watts, for his part, did know that was likely going to happen; he just also didn't know what else to do from the bottom of the cave floor besides abandoning the others to their fate. He grit his teeth at the sensation of the water crashing against his suit and the vertigo of it rapidly swirling in front of his visor and slowly backed towards the wall, pushed himself against it and kept a wary eye out for everyone else in case they swirled by close enough for him to grab so they could get their bearings.

 

[MyrtenRose]

:cinderunconsciouspanic: too much water in lungs​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Neo's face in those split seconds contorted into a face that was entirely unbecoming even her eclectic range of emotions; total affronted, indignant rage, torn from her admittedly precarious perch a split second after stealing Cindictory from the jaws of Dreafeat. Whatever anger Mercury thought he deserved for Roman's death, if his attention had anything in the tank to spare her any (spoiler; it probably didn't), he got a brief view of what it would've been like to be on the other side of it, even if it was at the situation itself rather than her teammate right before she disappeared with the rest of them into the swirling water and her tiny form was immediately swept and battered into the current like a twig tossed into the rapids.

Watts, for his part, did know that was likely going to happen; he just also didn't know what else to do from the bottom of the cave floor besides abandoning the others to their fate. He grit his teeth at the sensation of the water crashing against his suit and the vertigo of it rapidly swirling in front of his visor and slowly backed towards the wall, pushed himself against it and kept a wary eye out for everyone else in case they swirled by close enough for him to grab so they could get their bearings.​

Emerald's leg happened to be the first thing that moved into grabbing range amid the frenzy of foam and bubbles, and whether or not Watts just immediately let go again when he looked up to see her unenthused eye roll cut through the murk and gloom like a beacon was entirely his prerogative.

Assuming he found it within himself to be the bigger person, however, it wasn't long before her eye caught on something else, gaze far sharper, more serious, and sharing a magpie's affinity for picking out shiny things as it lingered on a spot just past Watts' shoulder cannon. The wall he ended up backing up to was less an actual wall and more a towering pile of rubble and detritus blocking further access to the tunnel, and embedded right at the heart of it like the central Jenga piece glowed a minecart full of what had once been freshly-harvested dust crystals, undoubtedly the last day's haul before the disaster.

Her lips were taut in contemplation, but it needed to be said that what she did next was actually functionally a really terrible idea. This far underground, in a tunnel, with glaringly obvious signs of flooding, erosion, and general environmental decay? In the continent of Remnant most susceptible to volatile, unpredictable soil movements? It was too risky, and those risks were far too dangerous to be worth consideration. The better, more sensible play would've been to try link up and form a human chain of some kind, figure out a means of draining the water from the mineshaft, then put their heads together and figure out which way Lance had gone. There were just two considerations the thief was making that stood in opposition to that.

One, Cinder was drowning.

And two—something she'd only ever admit to herself in her most private moments, despite the fact that it'd been one of the influential factors in her decision to leave Vacuo behind in the first place, and that she was really starting to wish she'd given more thought to before she had the awesome idea of dragging all her friends back here so they could all watch her slowly deteriorate into a more erratic, high-strung and emotionally agitated person overall:

Emerald really, really didn't like caves.

Or being underground. Or feeling trapped in general. None of which was apparent past her inscrutable features, but the inscrutability itself was what was worrying. It meant there was no warning when, midway through shimmying her way down Watts, the pistol still in her hand whirled for the cart with a bite-the-bullet wave of determination and confidence that belied just how reckless a move it was.

And then the entire mineshaft lit up like the fourth of July as the explosion went off.

Right in their faces.

-----------------------------------------

For about a full minute after that their recollection of events were an incoherent jumble. Emerald had been prepared for the detonation to rip a hole in the debris and let the water drain out, but what she hadn't necessarily expected was just how fast the sudden current was going to drag them, the beheaded-but-somehow-still-thrashing dread biter, and pretty much most of the clutter and debris in the shaft with it, reducing their world from one of agency and distinct individuality to one shared, furious struggle to stay above water as the tide washed them all down a long, near-vertical tunnel to rejoin the larger body it had hailed from. They were passengers to the current at this point, batted back and forth like they were no more substantial than twigs or leaves to these underground rapids, and for all their skills, equipment, semblances and intrepid attitudes the experience probably counted among the more terrifying in their lives. The only thing rising above the deafening roar of rushing water was the deep, ominous rumble of the earth itself around them, rocks and stalactites falling from the ceiling en masse as they felt tremors quake the water even through its own current; if they ended up in a pool with no air pockets whatsoever or the ceiling decided it wanted to collapse on them entirely, there wasn't a whole lot any of them could do about it.

So Emerald's relief was unimaginable when, after minutes of darkness lit only by torchlight, she was sucked through an opening and came face-to-face with actual, genuine rays from the sun, albeit filtered through various cliffs and rock outcroppings from above. The shape of the ravine Gneiss took as its tomb had changed over the years upon further seismic activity, and while the sheer size of the cavern they were in (and its contents) made it clear they were in the right place the sky still wasn't quite visible from where they were. Even if it had been, it probably wouldn't have been what grabbed their attention first.



That would've been the view.

Even had Emerald bothered going into detail on how the town was the definition of urban sprawl with a downward twist, how the settlers who arrived after the very first had made their homes in the old mining tunnels they left behind and just kept building from there, or that being 'well-off' in this context meant that in its heyday the dwellers of Gneiss entertained flights of fancy about founding their own kingdom with it as the capital, nothing could've prepared them for the sight of it. Reclaimed by nature though it was, overgrown with moss and overrun by cascading waterfalls, the sheer feat of human adaptability and architecture on display was nothing to scoff at, a town built into the world itself that only grew more immaculate and majestic the higher one went.

And now here it lay. Abandoned, desolate and forgotten, the fate of most feats of human adaptability and architecture littering the modern world like old bones.

Its central platform was clearly identifiable as the population center compared to the smaller, shanty-like cluster of huts and buildings they washed out near, and that was where Emerald's attention immediately fixated, eyes doleful and unblinking as her jaw clenched so sharply and tightly her teeth started grinding almost of their own volition.

Unfortunately that meant she was slow to notice that the opening they washed out of was a good seventy feet in the air, and while Watts, Cinder, Char, and Blanche dropped neatly into the body of water the current they'd been unwillingly riding crashed into her reflexive panic and a messy kusarigama throw had her swing from its chain a second too late after its blade caught the arm of a statue. This left her to sail straight past the shore and crash loudly into the remnants of a ruined shed, absolutely totalling it and spelling the end of her aura between it and the explosion as it shattered where she lay amid the rubble, gave an extremely dazed once-over of their surroundings, and spoke in throaty, half-delirious relief.

"Oh, good. I know where we are."

Then she threw up a whole bunch of water, giving a shuddering grimace when it was done and wiping her lips with a sleeve. She glanced around, and if she hadn't been pale enough already she looked genuinely embalmed when she realized why her weapon had been able to hook on anything at all.

Mercury wasn't holding it anymore. He wasn't here. Neither was Neo.

Or, for that matter, about half their number all told, Tyrian and Trifa likewise missing from any headcounts. She scrambled to her feet unsteadily, whipped her gaze around with a far more frantic energy and cupped her mouth with her hands.

"M-"

-----------------------------------------

"-ARCO!" Mercury bellowed at the top of his lungs, listening to its echos grow more and more distant as they bounced across the network of mining tunnels before finally disappearing entirely to no reply. His standard call-and-response with his partner having failed, he let his hands slowly fall back to his sides, features locked in an ambivalent thousand yard stare as he tried to recall when the last time he and Emerald had been out of earshot was. Huh. There had to have been at least one time.



He let that one simmer as he slapped his torch a few times to fix it, only to realize he could see well enough anyway. His best guess was that they'd been washed deeper into the mine, having at some point ended up in a run-off that eventually gave way to little more than a stream they could all stand in, and enough opened dust veins proliferated the tunnel they were in to cast it in a faint glow. They also illuminated the crumpled forms of Neo, Trifa and Tyrian where they were composing themselves from various states of disarray, and for obvious reasons it was the former he went to first, shining the torch right at her face and blinking it in her eyes a few times as he nudged her with his boot because why wouldn't he.



"C'monnnnnn, twinkletoes. Rise and shine. Better wake up or you're gonna miss the bus."​

 

[MidwayLives]

Next to Neo's eminently graceful show of dexterity raged Mercury's far more chaotic one, hanging upside down like a a bat with mechanical legs hooked tight around one of the ceiling support struts but more resembling a leaf clinging to a branch in the heart of a hurricane at the moment as he was whipped around madly by the other side of the chain he was wrestling with. He cinched his thighs around their anchor point tighter and channeled every last drop of the degree to which that was ticking him off into yanking back against the writhing crustacean's strength with a strained yell and a single, prodigious heave, which in concert with Tyrian's efforts managed to haul Emerald up out of the water with an immediate furious coughing fit as she hacked up an uncomfortable amount of liquid.

Regrettably Emerald had negative intention of just letting herself drown, and appeared to have been engaged in some wishful attempt to wrestle the creature back. The end result was that she pulled enough of the worm's heavy frame up with her that a second, far more violent CRACK sounded in time with wood splintering as Mercury's legs ripped straight through the decades-old damp structure they were wrapped around.

For about a split-second, almost everyone was in the air. Mercury and Emerald, yanking each other up and down, respectively, the thief already in the process of demonstrating impressive coordination herself with one eye squeezed shut for accuracy and the other lining up a shot with her pistol's barrel. Cinder, dangling precariously where she'd been snatched just millimeters from the jaws of certain death by Neo. The creature, currently on its own collision course with the ceiling, Tyrian following close behind where he was grappling with its long, spiny body.

In any other case or situation, Tyrian would have been overjoyed.

His friend had been saved. That was cause enough to be glad and appreciative for.

But-even if he didn't know it himself-there was a darker method to Tyrian's madness. Gripping onto the creature for dear life and trying to dig in his blades as best as he could, as quickly as he could given how slow his movements were through the water. Have you ever tried to throw a punch underwater? It isn't the most graceful of things. His tail flailed around like a wrecking ball with the stinger going this way, that way, up-down-left-right. With his hair soaking wet and clinging to his back and his scars on full display, he spit out a mouthful of water and let out a primal shriek.

"RRRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!"

As he tried to lay blow upon blow upon the beast, it wasn't a mystery to anyone with half a brain to figure out if Tyrian was doing this just to save Cinder/Emerald or if there was a need to vent some pent up anger there....

Trifa-who was currently clinging to said ceiling-saw the creature approaching.



"Oh HELL no!"

She didn't have the weaponry or skill needed to take that THING down. She shook off water droplets that'd soaked her suit and tried to crawl along the ceiling like greased lightning. Her semblance was going off like an air raid siren in her head and she couldn't get it to shut up faster. "IknowIknowIknowIKNOW!!!!" It was all the same thing: MOVE!
​

And lastly, and perhaps most tragically, Neo herself, who just got totally screwed over when Mercury's neanderthalic instinct to grab Cinder's ankle as he flew by ripped her from her delicate little perch and towards the inky, churning depths with all the dignity of a cat being wrenched from the rim of a bathtub. The dread biter was already twisting, rearing back on its own spine, its hiss filled with malice as it prepared to pluck what it deemed the lightest, most vulnerable target from the air and drag her to the very bottom, only for a single shot from Thief's Respite to pin its head to the ceiling under a dense cluster of ice.

If there were anything to break Tyrian's furious and 'not imagining it was Mercury he was punching' stride....

It was that.

"Cinder!" He ripped his blades free and leapt for Cinder.

He was going to lose her....

"No!!!!!!!!"

Watching Cinder fall towards the water from her vantage point atop the ceiling, Trifa removed one hand and shot out a stream of webbing. The goal being to try and catch Cinder's foot with it and reel her out of the water. Whether or not the webbing stuck, Trifa couldn't see once the webbing trail had vanished underwater. One hand being all that was keeping her from falling into the water below herself.

Her semblance had gone quiet for now....

Then the cracks started appearing in the ice.
​

A second later that ice was obliterated, along with the head, by the beam fired up through the gloom, briefly illuminating the entire chamber a murky jade and making the moment one of odd serenity.

Then that serenity was shattered in an instant as the water still filling the mineshaft all rushed in to replace the portion of it Watts' beam had evaporated at once. Between that and the dread biter's form hitting the surface in the midst of the most violent spree of thrashing it had exhibited to date, the waters everyone crashed back into were the furthest thing from calm, a frenzied pool of white foam that was thunderous in volume and refused to settle as the waves battering the cave walls started to crash and swirl into a miniature whirlpool.

The falling chunks of ice severed Trifa's webline and her semblance went off like a foghorn deep in her head.

"Nonononono!" She pleaded to anyone who'd listen. Tyrian, his friends, higher beings.

But if there was one hard truth to this world it was this.

The ones in charge of it were dicks.

The cracks spread outwards and as she lose her leverage, Trifa plummeted to the water. She fired a shot of webbing that stuck to Tyrian's stinger and another that tried to cling onto what remained of the ceiling. But-and maybe it was due to her panicking/her semblance getting her anxious-the webbing she shot just wasn't long enough and fell short and dipped into the water.

Seconds later, so did she.
​

Neo's face in those split seconds contorted into a face that was entirely unbecoming even her eclectic range of emotions; total affronted, indignant rage, torn from her admittedly precarious perch a split second after stealing Cindictory from the jaws of Dreafeat. Whatever anger Mercury thought he deserved for Roman's death, if his attention had anything in the tank to spare her any (spoiler; it probably didn't), he got a brief view of what it would've been like to be on the other side of it, even if it was at the situation itself rather than her teammate right before she disappeared with the rest of them into the swirling water and her tiny form was immediately swept and battered into the current like a twig tossed into the rapids.

Feeling a weight tugging on his tail as Trifa attached a stream of webbing to it, Tyrian continued splashing around in the water. Refusing to believe that his efforts were in vain and smashing any ceiling chunks that got too close to him, Tyrian looked around for any sign of her. Any hope that she somehow resurfaced.

But there was none. She was gone yet again.

This time through no choice of her own and worst of all? He'd been unable to save her.

"Cinder..." Just as his arms fell to his side and he felt himself pulled under as Trifa's attempt to keep them both afloat failed, the last thing he saw was Neo disappearing under the water as well.

A terrible last sight, right?
​

Then that serenity was shattered in an instant as the water still filling the mineshaft all rushed in to replace the portion of it Watts' beam had evaporated at once. Between that and the dread biter's form hitting the surface in the midst of the most violent spree of thrashing it had exhibited to date, the waters everyone crashed back into were the furthest thing from calm, a frenzied pool of white foam that was thunderous in volume and refused to settle as the waves battering the cave walls started to crash and swirl into a miniature whirlpool.

Things were going to hell real fucking quick and there was nothing the two adults in the 'room' could do about it.

Char couldn't activate 'Riot Breaker' without frying everyone in the water-including himself-along with the Grimm.

Blanche drew his pistol and fired. For all the good it'd do. His weapon was meant more for dealing with security/officers, not experienced huntsmen/grimm like this. The bullets pinged off the creature's armor and as the water got more vicious, Blanche looked to Char. The message on his face was clear enough: 'what the fuck are we gonna do???'

Char had been there to see these kids verbally and literally take eachother apart. He'd fought three of the kids(and lost). He had respect for some of em.

He wasn't going to stand by and let them die.

"Blanche! Try to grab the kid's hands! Before they go under!!"

Blanche did his best. But between the water slamming into him in waves. it wasn't long before Char's beloved partner/best friend disappeared into the murky depths.

"Blanche?! BLANCHE!!!"

As if that wasn't bad enough...
​

her teammate right before she disappeared with the rest of them into the swirling water and her tiny form was immediately swept and battered into the current like a twig tossed into the rapids.

Pinky....

He'd reached out towards her but she was too far and he too weak to swim through the water as it kept flooding in.

His cries got muffled and he tried to the bitter end to resist.

But just as it'd taken everyone else, Char was to be no exception.

All that was left was an eyepatch floating on the water's surface. A grim reminder of what had occurred.
​

Unfortunately that meant she was slow to notice that the opening they washed out of was a good seventy feet in the air, and while Watts, Cinder, Char, and Blanche dropped neatly into the body of water the current they'd been unwillingly riding crashed into her reflexive panic and a messy kusarigama throw had her swing from its chain a second too late after its blade caught the arm of a statue. This left her to sail straight past the shore and crash loudly into the remnants of a ruined shed, absolutely totalling it and spelling the end of her aura between it and the explosion as it shattered where she lay amid the rubble, gave an extremely dazed once-over of their surroundings, and spoke in throaty, half-delirious relief.

Everything went hazy for a while.

He remembered how he'd told Blanche about a swimming park earlier.

Kinda felt like fate was kicking him in the balls for that.

He and Blanche were thrashed around until they along with some of the others crashed into the water below.

As they waded over to dry land at last, Char pulled himself across it while holding Blanche's hand and pulling him as well.

Then he barfed up a huge and gross amount of water.

"Urghhkkkkkblegh....blegh....urk.....agh....shit...shit"

He looked around to get a headcount.

No sign of Pinky.

"Shit."

"aghc....gurk...." Sitting Blanche up so he could spit up some water, his partner shakily staggered up to his feet and reached inside the pocket of his jacket. A box of cigarettes came flopping out and fell atop the water. The box itself was soggy and the cardboard was peeling away. The cigarettes were ruined and no matter how many times Blanche tried his lighter, it just wasn't going to light. "Damn thing." He muttered as though things were just mildly inconvenient and they hadn't just been forcibly split up with none of them knowing if the others were alive or dead. All of them being children.

Children that neither of them-two grown ass men-couldn't do a thing to do to help.

"Blanche?"

Blanche continued to try his lighter.



Blowing out a tuft of fog that was more likely from his semblance than any chance of his lighter working on that soaked to hell cigarette, Blanche chuckled. "Y'know my friend, I cannot get a light no matter how many times I try. I try and try to get it going and the flame just won't come out. But here I sit soaked and freezing and I still got it in my mouth. I think it brings me some kinda comfort y'know? Like everything's okay. Even though things couldn't have possibly gotten worse. Unless we're dead, that's probably it." Blanche himself chalked up the whole still trying to use his cigarette as a mixture of being in shock/oral fixation. Mostly the former though.

"Blanche! Snap out of it!" Giving his partner a rough turn, Char immediately recoiled upon seeing what he did.

"Blanche, your eye...I..."



"Yeah. Guess it must have fallen off during all the commotion."

He looked down at his cigarette and flicked it away.

"Before you say anything else.....I feel just as terrible about things have been going as you. I don't need a reminder."

With that he tried to get his bearings and Char relented.

'Hope you and the rest of your pals are alright, Pinky...'
​

He let that one simmer as he slapped his torch a few times to fix it, only to realize he could see well enough anyway. His best guess was that they'd been washed deeper into the mine, having at some point ended up in a run-off that eventually gave way to little more than a stream they could all stand in, and enough opened dust veins proliferated the tunnel they were in to cast it in a faint glow. They also illuminated the crumpled forms of Neo, Trifa and Tyrian where they were composing themselves from various states of disarray, and for obvious reasons it was the former he went to first, shining the torch right at her face and blinking it in her eyes a few times as he nudged her with his boot because why wouldn't he.

"C'monnnnnn, twinkletoes. Rise and shine. Better wake up or you're gonna miss the bus."

"CINDER!"

Tyrian shouted as he hopped up on all fours with his stinger splashing the water.

As the smack sent ripples casacading across the water, Tyrian frowned at what he saw in the reflection.

'It's....just me.'

Cinder wasn't anywhere to be seen.

Ripping the remnants of her webbing off Tyrian's tail, Trifa shook herself off like a dog.

Pulling off her mask and letting the water drip out of it, she looked over the other three.

"Are you guys alright-"

DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!

Her face twitched and-



"BLEGH!"

This went on for about a minute or two.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

That would've been the view.

Even had Emerald bothered going into detail on how the town was the definition of urban sprawl with a downward twist, how the settlers who arrived after the very first had made their homes in the old mining tunnels they left behind and just kept building from there, or that being 'well-off' in this context meant that in its heyday the dwellers of Gneiss entertained flights of fancy about founding their own kingdom with it as the capital, nothing could've prepared them for the sight of it. Reclaimed by nature though it was, overgrown with moss and overrun by cascading waterfalls, the sheer feat of human adaptability and architecture on display was nothing to scoff at, a town built into the world itself that only grew more immaculate and majestic the higher one went.

And now here it lay. Abandoned, desolate and forgotten, the fate of most feats of human adaptability and architecture littering the modern world like old bones.

Its central platform was clearly identifiable as the population center compared to the smaller, shanty-like cluster of huts and buildings they washed out near, and that was where Emerald's attention immediately fixated, eyes doleful and unblinking as her jaw clenched so sharply and tightly her teeth started grinding almost of their own volition.

Unfortunately that meant she was slow to notice that the opening they washed out of was a good seventy feet in the air, and while Watts, Cinder, Char, and Blanche dropped neatly into the body of water the current they'd been unwillingly riding crashed into her reflexive panic and a messy kusarigama throw had her swing from its chain a second too late after its blade caught the arm of a statue. This left her to sail straight past the shore and crash loudly into the remnants of a ruined shed, absolutely totalling it and spelling the end of her aura between it and the explosion as it shattered where she lay amid the rubble, gave an extremely dazed once-over of their surroundings, and spoke in throaty, half-delirious relief.

"Oh, good. I know where we are."

Then she threw up a whole bunch of water, giving a shuddering grimace when it was done and wiping her lips with a sleeve. She glanced around, and if she hadn't been pale enough already she looked genuinely embalmed when she realized why her weapon had been able to hook on anything at all.

Mercury wasn't holding it anymore. He wasn't here. Neither was Neo.

Or, for that matter, about half their number all told, Tyrian and Trifa likewise missing from any headcounts. She scrambled to her feet unsteadily, whipped her gaze around with a far more frantic energy and cupped her mouth with her hands.

"M-"

'Neatly' wasn't the right word, because the metallic weight of Watt's form plummeted from the opening into the water like an anchor, and even those bobbing on the surface could hear the sound of the metallic *CLUNG* as Watts hit the stone at the bottom.

It was almost a minute later that he finally burst back to the surface, his suit landing with a nigh drunken stumble that shook the rocky beach before he collapsed to his knees and the suit steamed as its faceplate slid back and its sides cracked open.

Water gushed out like the suit was blister that'd just been popped, steaming from the heat of the suits systems as Watts all but hacked up a lung as water came out his mouth before he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His face was red, along with his arms, and pretty much every piece of skin one could see, halfway to broiled alive inside his suit.

"...Is everyone alright?" he croaked out

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

View attachment 887463

Emerald's leg happened to be the first thing that moved into grabbing range amid the frenzy of foam and bubbles, and whether or not Watts just immediately let go again when he looked up to see her unenthused eye roll cut through the murk and gloom like a beacon was entirely his prerogative.

Assuming he found it within himself to be the bigger person, however, it wasn't long before her eye caught on something else, gaze far sharper, more serious, and sharing a magpie's affinity for picking out shiny things as it lingered on a spot just past Watts' shoulder cannon. The wall he ended up backing up to was less an actual wall and more a towering pile of rubble and detritus blocking further access to the tunnel, and embedded right at the heart of it like the central Jenga piece glowed a minecart full of what had once been freshly-harvested dust crystals, undoubtedly the last day's haul before the disaster.

Her lips were taut in contemplation, but it needed to be said that what she did next was actually functionally a really terrible idea. This far underground, in a tunnel, with glaringly obvious signs of flooding, erosion, and general environmental decay? In the continent of Remnant most susceptible to volatile, unpredictable soil movements? It was too risky, and those risks were far too dangerous to be worth consideration. The better, more sensible play would've been to try link up and form a human chain of some kind, figure out a means of draining the water from the mineshaft, then put their heads together and figure out which way Lance had gone. There were just two considerations the thief was making that stood in opposition to that.

One, Cinder was drowning.

And two—something she'd only ever admit to herself in her most private moments, despite the fact that it'd been one of the influential factors in her decision to leave Vacuo behind in the first place, and that she was really starting to wish she'd given more thought to before she had the awesome idea of dragging all her friends back here so they could all watch her slowly deteriorate into a more erratic, high-strung and emotionally agitated person overall:

Emerald really, really didn't like caves.

Or being underground. Or feeling trapped in general. None of which was apparent past her inscrutable features, but the inscrutability itself was what was worrying. It meant there was no warning when, midway through shimmying her way down Watts, the pistol still in her hand whirled for the cart with a bite-the-bullet wave of determination and confidence that belied just how reckless a move it was.

And then the entire mineshaft lit up like the fourth of July as the explosion went off.

Right in their faces.

-----------------------------------------

For about a full minute after that their recollection of events were an incoherent jumble. Emerald had been prepared for the detonation to rip a hole in the debris and let the water drain out, but what she hadn't necessarily expected was just how fast the sudden current was going to drag them, the beheaded-but-somehow-still-thrashing dread biter, and pretty much most of the clutter and debris in the shaft with it, reducing their world from one of agency and distinct individuality to one shared, furious struggle to stay above water as the tide washed them all down a long, near-vertical tunnel to rejoin the larger body it had hailed from. They were passengers to the current at this point, batted back and forth like they were no more substantial than twigs or leaves to these underground rapids, and for all their skills, equipment, semblances and intrepid attitudes the experience probably counted among the more terrifying in their lives. The only thing rising above the deafening roar of rushing water was the deep, ominous rumble of the earth itself around them, rocks and stalactites falling from the ceiling en masse as they felt tremors quake the water even through its own current; if they ended up in a pool with no air pockets whatsoever or the ceiling decided it wanted to collapse on them entirely, there wasn't a whole lot any of them could do about it.

So Emerald's relief was unimaginable when, after minutes of darkness lit only by torchlight, she was sucked through an opening and came face-to-face with actual, genuine rays from the sun, albeit filtered through various cliffs and rock outcroppings from above. The shape of the ravine Gneiss took as its tomb had changed over the years upon further seismic activity, and while the sheer size of the cavern they were in (and its contents) made it clear they were in the right place the sky still wasn't quite visible from where they were. Even if it had been, it probably wouldn't have been what grabbed their attention first.

View attachment 887499

That would've been the view.

Even had Emerald bothered going into detail on how the town was the definition of urban sprawl with a downward twist, how the settlers who arrived after the very first had made their homes in the old mining tunnels they left behind and just kept building from there, or that being 'well-off' in this context meant that in its heyday the dwellers of Gneiss entertained flights of fancy about founding their own kingdom with it as the capital, nothing could've prepared them for the sight of it. Reclaimed by nature though it was, overgrown with moss and overrun by cascading waterfalls, the sheer feat of human adaptability and architecture on display was nothing to scoff at, a town built into the world itself that only grew more immaculate and majestic the higher one went.

And now here it lay. Abandoned, desolate and forgotten, the fate of most feats of human adaptability and architecture littering the modern world like old bones.

Its central platform was clearly identifiable as the population center compared to the smaller, shanty-like cluster of huts and buildings they washed out near, and that was where Emerald's attention immediately fixated, eyes doleful and unblinking as her jaw clenched so sharply and tightly her teeth started grinding almost of their own volition.

Unfortunately that meant she was slow to notice that the opening they washed out of was a good seventy feet in the air, and while Watts, Cinder, Char, and Blanche dropped neatly into the body of water the current they'd been unwillingly riding crashed into her reflexive panic and a messy kusarigama throw had her swing from its chain a second too late after its blade caught the arm of a statue. This left her to sail straight past the shore and crash loudly into the remnants of a ruined shed, absolutely totalling it and spelling the end of her aura between it and the explosion as it shattered where she lay amid the rubble, gave an extremely dazed once-over of their surroundings, and spoke in throaty, half-delirious relief.

"Oh, good. I know where we are."

Then she threw up a whole bunch of water, giving a shuddering grimace when it was done and wiping her lips with a sleeve. She glanced around, and if she hadn't been pale enough already she looked genuinely embalmed when she realized why her weapon had been able to hook on anything at all.

Mercury wasn't holding it anymore. He wasn't here. Neither was Neo.

Or, for that matter, about half their number all told, Tyrian and Trifa likewise missing from any headcounts. She scrambled to her feet unsteadily, whipped her gaze around with a far more frantic energy and cupped her mouth with her hands.

"M-"

-----------------------------------------

"-ARCO!" Mercury bellowed at the top of his lungs, listening to its echos grow more and more distant as they bounced across the network of mining tunnels before finally disappearing entirely to no reply. His standard call-and-response with his partner having failed, he let his hands slowly fall back to his sides, features locked in an ambivalent thousand yard stare as he tried to recall when the last time he and Emerald had been out of earshot was. Huh. There had to have been at least one time.

View attachment 887532

He let that one simmer as he slapped his torch a few times to fix it, only to realize he could see well enough anyway. His best guess was that they'd been washed deeper into the mine, having at some point ended up in a run-off that eventually gave way to little more than a stream they could all stand in, and enough opened dust veins proliferated the tunnel they were in to cast it in a faint glow. They also illuminated the crumpled forms of Neo, Trifa and Tyrian where they were composing themselves from various states of disarray, and for obvious reasons it was the former he went to first, shining the torch right at her face and blinking it in her eyes a few times as he nudged her with his boot because why wouldn't he.

View attachment 887537

"C'monnnnnn, twinkletoes. Rise and shine. Better wake up or you're gonna miss the bus."​

A hand lashed out like a snake to smack the flash light away, and Neo sat up with an incredibly disgruntled groan and flicked her arms a few times in a truly, utterly futile attempt to be less wet no matter how much water sloughed off her arms and clothes in the process, altogether looking more like a giant pink and brown cat who'd been forced into an extremely unwilling bath than Blake Belladonna ever could.

She looked around, and her gaunt dismay gave way to concern as she saw who exactly Mercury was trying to Marco Polo for and scrambled to her feet, reaching for where Hush's magnetlic hoslster-

It wasn't there.

-----------------------------------------


Watts, from where he was flat on his back, saw it coming a good two seconds before impact; he just couldn't muster the energy to move before the parasol plummeted directly onto his face with a wet thwack of cloth hitting skin and bone.

"Ow"

------------------------------------------

Great! That was great. It was karma for yesterday, she was 100% sure. She gave a flustered huff and glanced up to Mercury with a nervous shrug and glanced in either direction in askance of where they should go from here to find the others.

 

[Gus Gungus]

'Neatly' wasn't the right word, because the metallic weight of Watt's form plummeted from the opening into the water like an anchor, and even those bobbing on the surface could hear the sound of the metallic *CLUNG* as Watts hit the stone at the bottom.

It was almost a minute later that he finally burst back to the surface, his suit landing with a nigh drunken stumble that shook the rocky beach before he collapsed to his knees and the suit steamed as its faceplate slid back and its sides cracked open.

Water gushed out like the suit was blister that'd just been popped, steaming from the heat of the suits systems as Watts all but hacked up a lung as water came out his mouth before he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His face was red, along with his arms, and pretty much every piece of skin one could see, halfway to broiled alive inside his suit.

"...Is everyone alright?" he croaked out​

Emerald's response was immediate, and while given her delightful self and apparent intention of doubling, quadrupling, and octupling down on the hostility she was showing Watts of late long before she even considered issuing an apology of any kind it would've been fair to assume his state was liable to provoke a scoffed remark or two even if there was a nugget of concern to them. The voice that came, however, was a long way from a scoff, and put any such notions to rest the second it reached his ears.

"No."



Nearly a minute was more than enough time for Emerald to have shifted from one immediate crisis to the other, arguably more immediate one, and judging from the way her shoulders sagged at her sides and her lungs heaved for breath it had not been a minute spent idle. She was kneeling by Cinder, having beaten her own record for how frantically someone could drag another person from the depths set just a few minutes earlier, and if the gravity of the situation wasn't clear from the growing look of agitated horror on her face and how thick with overwhelmed dread her voice was getting then another glaring sight when Watts sat up cinched it.

Cinder was as still as a corpse.

"I can't get her to breathe, I keep trying but she's not—"

This wasn't what she needed to be using breath for. She cut herself off with a groan so miserable it fizzled out as little more than a shudder, and the first chest compression she flung her hands down into was far harder than necessary before she settled into a more steady cadence as she counted under her breath in a trembling whisper. When she hit 30 she stooped down for her lips, almost fumbling the act of pinching her nose and tilting her head back as they made contact with her own and she huffed out two rescue breaths before switching back to the chest. This was exactly how you were supposed to do it, she was sure, no one training to be a huntress didn't know CPR but it wasn't working, it should've worked by now, Cinder wasn't, Cinder was...

Cinder was going to die.

Because Cinder couldn't swim.

And Emerald had dragged everyone to the underground mineshaft that turned out to be completely submerged.

The compressions were happening so quickly and desperately now there was no way her count could possibly have been accurate, the jerks of her wrists made sloppy and erratic by how badly her hands were shaking as her teeth chattered together. She got to 30 again, probably, she didn't fucking know, and transferred back to the lips to again try for an impromptu lung-to-lung air transplant.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Great! That was great. It was karma for yesterday, she was 100% sure. She gave a flustered huff and glanced up to Mercury with a nervous shrug and glanced in either direction in askance of where they should go from here to find the others.​

"Yeah, you're gonna miss that bus." He muttered with wry surety, flicking the torch away to get a better look at the two faunus instead.
​

"Are you guys alright-"

DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!

Her face twitched and-

"BLEGH!"

This went on for about a minute or two.

Stellar.

He switched his focus back to Neo, giving her a look up and down to check her condition now that she was standing and meeting the shrug with one of his own, the only reassurance to be had the fact that their former team leader's own nerves were either made of steel or just extremely well hidden.

"What do I look like, Merc the mole? Guess we pick a direction, walk and yell til one of our lost little lambs hears us and comes running. Wanna take the first one? Throat's feeling kinda hoarse after all that."

He massaged his jugular, gave a few feigned throat clears and smirked all the wider if she didn't quite see the humor in the situation, taking a few jogging steps up the tunnel and walking backwards to keep addressing her.

"C'mon, loosen up. The others got the buddy system going for them, plus Gneiss's very last born-n-raised tour guide to show 'em around. And drowning in some 'big, stupid hole in the ground' is just about the lamest way anyone could go out, so no way Emerald's—"

"Emerald's what?"



A less recognizable voice would've had him come up in a combat stance on the other end of his barrel roll away from the person obviously standing right behind him, but as it was he let his weight settle on one knee and whirled his gaze back around with eyes that were wide, incredulous, and relieved.

If not completely trusting.



Standing there, plain as day for as absent as she'd been from Mercury's headcount just a few moments ago, was the thief herself, no different to how they'd seen her just a few moments ago right down to the water she was wringing out of her hair, not looking too thrilled about the state of affairs in her own right. Mercury's super-dynamic reaction did elicit a deadpan stare, though, not without a glimmer of amusement as she complimented his form dryly.

"Nice."

"You didn't do the thing."

It was a rare instance of Mercury sounding uncertain as he climbed back to his feet, squinting slightly in time with her approach.

"The thing?" Her stare was blank as she shook out the rest of her damp hair, rolling her shoulders with a few stiff cracks just in time for the penny to drop. "Oooooh. The thing. Yeah, no. Polo, or whatever. You don't think we're a little old for this 'attached at the hip' schtick?"

She brushed past and made no effort to keep the judgment out of her sniff, though neither did she hide the undercurrent of mirth there was to all this that apparently only she could see. Neo got a steady look from the thief as she passed, Mercury's eyes darting to meet hers with a raised eyebrow before they went back to the shape of his partner, who paused at a fork in the tunnel and gave both passages a lingering stare without much in the way of visible familiarity.

"So we should probably get it together and move our asses, right? Friends to save, humanity to champion, all that stuff. You know, if we're all done vomiting."

A horrible, indescribable noise came from Trifa's direction.

"Ookay. We're not done."​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Emerald's response was immediate, and while given her delightful self and apparent intention of doubling, quadrupling, and octupling down on the hostility she was showing Watts of late long before she even considered issuing an apology of any kind it would've been fair to assume his state was liable to provoke a scoffed remark or two even if there was a nugget of concern to them. The voice that came, however, was a long way from a scoff, and put any such notions to rest the second it reached his ears.

"No."

View attachment 887989

Nearly a minute was more than enough time for Emerald to have shifted from one immediate crisis to the other, arguably more immediate one, and judging from the way her shoulders sagged at her sides and her lungs heaved for breath it had not been a minute spent idle. She was kneeling by Cinder, having beaten her own record for how frantically someone could drag another person from the depths set just a few minutes earlier, and if the gravity of the situation wasn't clear from the growing look of agitated horror on her face and how thick with overwhelmed dread her voice was getting then another glaring sight when Watts sat up cinched it.

Cinder was as still as a corpse.

"I can't get her to breathe, I keep trying but she's not—"

This wasn't what she needed to be using breath for. She cut herself off with a groan so miserable it fizzled out as little more than a shudder, and the first chest compression she flung her hands down into was far harder than necessary before she settled into a more steady cadence as she counted under her breath in a trembling whisper. When she hit 30 she stooped down for her lips, almost fumbling the act of pinching her nose and tilting her head back as they made contact with her own and she huffed out two rescue breaths before switching back to the chest. This was exactly how you were supposed to do it, she was sure, no one training to be a huntress didn't know CPR but it wasn't working, it should've worked by now, Cinder wasn't, Cinder was...

Cinder was going to die.

Because Cinder couldn't swim.

And Emerald had dragged everyone to the underground mineshaft that turned out to be completely submerged.

The compressions were happening so quickly and desperately now there was no way her count could possibly have been accurate, the jerks of her wrists made sloppy and erratic by how badly her hands were shaking as her teeth chattered together. She got to 30 again, probably, she didn't fucking know, and transferred back to the lips to again try for an impromptu lung-to-lung air transplant.​

It took a little while, a few rounds of repeated attempts, but the panicked desperate pushes against her chest and the sharing of worried breaths did what it was meant to. Cinder moved of her own volition for the first time since she started drowning, her body twitching after the next couple thuds against her chest. Then her head followed, an even more clear twitch of movement in her pale face. She wasn't going to die here. She hadn't come this far just to drown to death in some long buried city. If there was anything she knew with complete certainty, deep down, it was that. Even subconsciously. She didn't want it to end like that, for her or for her team, and her friends. Then before anything else could be done, her eye shot open in an instant. Opened wider than it had ever been in her entire life. She shot straight up so fast herself too, so swift that she bonked heads with Emerald. Cinder sputtered, some of the excess water expelled from within and splashing right into Em's face.

Yet before the pain from that totally accidental headbutt could even start to settle in, the teenage maiden turned to the side and leaned down, horrible sounding coughs and retches escaping her mouth as she did.

Her lungs felt like they were literally on fire, so starved of air and so full of so much water. She spent several minutes just pathetically struggling, trying to get it all out. It hurt so much...too much. But she managed, and she dropped back like she was made of stone, the back of her head smacking onto the shore with a rough thud, but she didn't care. She wasn't ready to move quite yet, and she just lied there for another minute, the maiden utterly silent save for the repeated heavy breaths as she took in as much oxygen as possible.

Her insides were still burning by the time her eye moved to settle on Emerald. She didn't say anything for a few seconds, just studying her former classmate's face. Her mouth slowly opened after that, though, and her voice came out, albeit very weak. "Hey, Em. What...happened? I mean.............." It took a second or two pause, and some of her focus drifting away from the burning sensation to let her register the faint sweet taste on her lips, though she couldn't tell exactly what it was, and her eyebrow raised ever so slightly. Emerald had been close enough for that purely unintentional headbutt. Not for no reason. She continued on, a little stronger than before. "...You...did you...save me?" ​

 

[Gus Gungus]

It took a little while, a few rounds of repeated attempts, but the panicked desperate pushes against her chest and the sharing of worried breaths did what it was meant to. Cinder moved of her own volition for the first time since she started drowning, her body twitching after the next couple thuds against her chest. Then her head followed, an even more clear twitch of movement in her pale face. She wasn't going to die here. She hadn't come this far just to drown to death in some long buried city. If there was anything she knew with complete certainty, deep down, it was that. Even subconsciously. She didn't want it to end like that, for her or for her team, and her friends. Then before anything else could be done, her eye shot open in an instant. Opened wider than it had ever been in her entire life. She shot straight up so fast herself too, so swift that she bonked heads with Emerald. Cinder sputtered, some of the excess water expelled from within and splashing right into Em's face.

Yet before the pain from that totally accidental headbutt could even start to settle in, the teenage maiden turned to the side and leaned down, horrible sounding coughs and retches escaping her mouth as she did.

Her lungs felt like they were literally on fire, so starved of air and so full of so much water. She spent several minutes just pathetically struggling, trying to get it all out. It hurt so much...too much. But she managed, and she dropped back like she was made of stone, the back of her head smacking onto the shore with a rough thud, but she didn't care. She wasn't ready to move quite yet, and she just lied there for another minute, the maiden utterly silent save for the repeated heavy breaths as she took in as much oxygen as possible.

Her insides were still burning by the time her eye moved to settle on Emerald. She didn't say anything for a few seconds, just studying her former classmate's face. Her mouth slowly opened after that, though, and her voice came out, albeit very weak. "Hey, Em. What...happened? I mean.............." It took a second or two pause, and some of her focus drifting away from the burning sensation to let her register the faint sweet taste on her lips, though she couldn't tell exactly what it was, and her eyebrow raised ever so slightly. Emerald had been close enough for that purely unintentional headbutt. Not for no reason. She continued on, a little stronger than before. "...You...did you...save me?" ​

Emerald gave a strangled yelp when Cinder's teeth, then skull, knocked against her own, and though she jerked back it wasn't fast enough to avoid the torrent of water the maiden coughed up in her face as the thief half-toppled onto her back with eyes pinched shut and a muted shudder of revulsion. She let her muscles sort of just go limp to take her the rest of the way down, staring up at the stalactites high above and doing her best to process this latest development where she had, in fact, not killed Cinder, having more or less already accepted that she had. She seemed dead-set on looking anywhere but the other girl's face, for the most part, hands settling over her eyes to give her thumbs easy access to her temples as she tried to think, tried to jump tracks back to the other crisis unfolding.

She couldn't. She would after, she needed a minute, she just... god, it wasn't supposed to be like this. She wasn't expecting coming back here to be easy or anything but this was just messed up, it had to be the worst possible way their first five minutes in Gneiss could possibly have gone, and the only people who knew how hard just being here was for her weren't here. She didn't even know if they were...

But she knew Cinder was. At least there was that.

She didn't take her hands from her eyes. Just continued rubbing circles around her temples, her response coming out worn and scratchy despite its shaky attempt to affect her customary indifferent aplomb.

"...I-it was more a group effort by like, five or six different people actually, so... you might wanna go check on Robocop. Think his suit's cooking him alive." She swallowed. "I just need to... just... just let me... think, Cinder, okay, I gotta think through where we're going, I need to figure out what we're gonna do—"

Her voice cracked suddenly on the 'do', but she caught the whimper it turned into on her hands and forced it back inside to eventually work itself out as another shiver. She wasn't gonna let them see her cry. Following that the thief more or less just became dead to the world, finally taking the time to just catch her breath after that nightmare start to the mission. At least, that was what Cinder saw.

What actually happened was Emerald sat up, pulled her knees to her chest, buried her face in her arms and started to sob.

This was so bad, wasn't it?​

 

[MyrtenRose]

She didn't take her hands from her eyes. Just continued rubbing circles around her temples, her response coming out worn and scratchy despite its shaky attempt to affect her customary indifferent aplomb.

"...I-it was more a group effort by like, five or six different people actually, so... you might wanna go check on Robocop. Think his suit's cooking him alive." She swallowed. "I just need to... just... just let me... think, Cinder, okay, I gotta think through where we're going, I need to figure out what we're gonna do—"

Her voice cracked suddenly on the 'do', but she caught the whimper it turned into on her hands and forced it back inside to eventually work itself out as another shiver. She wasn't gonna let them see her cry. Following that the thief more or less just became dead to the world, finally taking the time to just catch her breath after that nightmare start to the mission. At least, that was what Cinder saw.

What actually happened was Emerald sat up, pulled her knees to her chest, buried her face in her arms and started to sob.

This was so bad, wasn't it?

The thought that so many jumped in to help her was a nice and relieving one, but that also...it meant that all those people knew now that she didn't have the faintest clue about how to swim. So that feeling of relief and of appreciation, was matched only by some perhaps childish embarrassment, but she managed to keep any of it from showing on her face. She didn't smile in relief, didn't blush in embarrassment. She only frowned, the corner of her mouth turning down as she listened. That was...rough to hear. She'd only just come back to consciousness, had barely avoided a pretty bad way to die, but in that moment, she wasn't thinking about herself. Yeah, she was not really doing too good right now, and yeah, Arthur didn't sound like he was in much better condition...but Cinder didn't just continue to lie there and take a breather. She didn't go over to check on Watts yet either. She pushed herself up shakily and slowly slid over until she was seated right next to where she perceived Emerald to be.

Cinder didn't wrap an arm around her(or try to) yet, she didn't even really look over at her directly just yet. She just sat there, staring straight ahead for a few seconds until: "You know...it's okay if you're not okay. You don't have to be Miss Cool all the time, to not let people in and to keep them from seeing you when you're...vulnerable. I know I wasn't....wasn't there before, after Haven, but if you need me...need anything...well...I'm here to help however I can." Her gaze remained staring forward​

 

[MidwayLives]

Stellar.

He switched his focus back to Neo, giving her a look up and down to check her condition now that she was standing and meeting the shrug with one of his own, the only reassurance to be had the fact that their former team leader's own nerves were either made of steel or just extremely well hidden.

"What do I look like, Merc the mole? Guess we pick a direction, walk and yell til one of our lost little lambs hears us and comes running. Wanna take the first one? Throat's feeling kinda hoarse after all that."

He massaged his jugular, gave a few feigned throat clears and smirked all the wider if she didn't quite see the humor in the situation, taking a few jogging steps up the tunnel and walking backwards to keep addressing her.

"C'mon, loosen up. The others got the buddy system going for them, plus Gneiss's very last born-n-raised tour guide to show 'em around. And drowning in some 'big, stupid hole in the ground' is just about the lamest way anyone could go out, so no way Emerald's—"

To say that Tyrian had 'recovered' would be lying.

But at least he wasn't being sloshed around by powerful waves of water.

He was just down both of his teammates.

"Trifa-"

"ach..."

"Trifa, are you ok-"

"hold on-"

Tyrian held off putting -what was earnestly supposed to be a comforting hand on her shoulder-as Trifa wretched and shook.

"Okay. Okay, I think that's all. I'm sorry, Tyrian, guys...." Trifa started as she wiped at her mouth and pulled her mask back down over her face. "I shoulda tried to do more. Maybe if I'd gotten more of my webbing out faster, I could have stuck some of us together against the walls or something-" The odds just hadn't been in...well, anyone's favor from the looks of how things had turned out lately. It'd felt as though one bad thing had just started to continually snowball into another, one blow following right behind the previous one. Tyrian shook his head. "Don't worry about it, Trifa." Was all he said before he started to stride over towards Mercury. The last thing he'd seen before he was dragged under was Cinder disappearing under the water. He hadn't been able to tell if she ever came back up. He hoped she did.

He...He really hoped she did.
​

She brushed past and made no effort to keep the judgment out of her sniff, though neither did she hide the undercurrent of mirth there was to all this that apparently only she could see. Neo got a steady look from the thief as she passed, Mercury's eyes darting to meet hers with a raised eyebrow before they went back to the shape of his partner, who paused at a fork in the tunnel and gave both passages a lingering stare without much in the way of visible familiarity.

"So we should probably get it together and move our asses, right? Friends to save, humanity to champion, all that stuff. You know, if we're all done vomiting."

A horrible, indescribable noise came from Trifa's direction.

"Ookay. We're not done."

Trifa waved a hand. Then relaxed for a moment.

....Maybe?

No?

....Yep, she was all done.

"All good to go on my end!"

Well, not knowing the status of the rest of Tyrian's friends(least of all Cinder who....seemed nice enough in the brief bit that Trifa had to talk to her!)was still pretty bad but if there was anything that could brighten up the dark it'd be the fact that all it'd take to get them back on the right path was someone who knew the way. Lucky them that they were the ones who ended up getting the tour guide then, huh?

.....

Yeah, in poor taste until they went and actually found the others.

Tyrian just stepped forward, looking about as ready as he was ever going to be. With water dripping from all over his person. Flicking his tail to the side to send a small spray of water droplets every which way, he squelched some water out of his hair. "Let's go find our friends." ​

 

[MidwayLives]

Water gushed out like the suit was blister that'd just been popped, steaming from the heat of the suits systems as Watts all but hacked up a lung as water came out his mouth before he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His face was red, along with his arms, and pretty much every piece of skin one could see, halfway to broiled alive inside his suit.

"...Is everyone alright?" he croaked out

Hearing and seeing the amount of water that poured out of the suit, Char and Blanche both winced. Blanche had absolutely hated the fact that they'd have to wade through the water, then swim in it, all escalating to being dragged under and flung around like they were in the middle of a raging storm. But the idea of being trapped in that metal suit with all that water around you almost made him want to wretch. ...He'd done enough of that though and bit his tongue to try and fight back the urge. Even as Char and him looked over at Watts. Kid looked like he'd spent too much time in the sun or in Char's mind, like a lobster that'd just gotten dunked in a boiling pot.

"Geez....Looking like that and worryin about everyone else?"

These kids seemed to certainly have their problems. Problems that neither man felt qualified to stick their noses into. It'd been too long since they'd been teenagers(something Blanche was loathe to think of for more than the briefest of seconds.) and in Blanche's mind the goal hadn't been to stay tagging along with this bunch forever. They'd just make enough to get to wherever they needed to go and try to reconnect with the others. Prove that the whole 'assuming Blanche and Char died a horrible death opposing the Boss' fear was nothing to be worried about at all! But seeing how these kids had tried to do their best to help eachother?

It reminded the two adults about how close the Hitman Team had been. Hell, although neither of em knew it, their team's own leader had died attempting to fight what she later found out in just the few seconds before her untimely death was the Boss himself. They fought, they argued, there were many times Char would have wanted nothing more than to storm off and never look back. But in the end they always worked things out and laughed and had drinks after their checks cleared.

....Kinda felt like what these kids had going on.

Well, aside from the whole bit that they saw Black's kid put the scorpion faunus through. Neither of em had been expecting that but given who Mercury's dad had been/Char's own past experience with him, they weren't too surprised.

"We'll be fine but how about you, kiddo? You're looking about as red as a tomato-" Char started before he caught a glimpse of Cinder's still downed form in the corner of his left eye. That was the kid that they'd seen pretty much get the worst of this whole shitty water ride from hell experience. Fell below the water's surface not once but twice. The two men looked at eachother and grimaced. "Blanche, you wanna try doing chest compression-"
​

"...I-it was more a group effort by like, five or six different people actually, so... you might wanna go check on Robocop. Think his suit's cooking him alive." She swallowed. "I just need to... just... just let me... think, Cinder, okay, I gotta think through where we're going, I need to figure out what we're gonna do—"

Her voice cracked suddenly on the 'do', but she caught the whimper it turned into on her hands and forced it back inside to eventually work itself out as another shiver. She wasn't gonna let them see her cry. Following that the thief more or less just became dead to the world, finally taking the time to just catch her breath after that nightmare start to the mission. At least, that was what Cinder saw.

What actually happened was Emerald sat up, pulled her knees to her chest, buried her face in her arms and started to sob.

This was so bad, wasn't it?

Cinder didn't wrap an arm around her(or try to) yet, she didn't even really look over at her directly just yet. She just sat there, staring straight ahead for a few seconds until: "You know...it's okay if you're not okay. You don't have to be Miss Cool all the time, to not let people in and to keep them from seeing you when you're...vulnerable. I know I wasn't....wasn't there before, after Haven, but if you need me...need anything...well...I'm here to help however I can." Her gaze remained staring forward

Ah.

Well, that was a relief and a half.

If there was one brightside to this mess, it was that little brief reassurance.

No matter what happened between these kids, they'd have each other's backs.

"Blanche."

"Huh?"



Char held up three fingers and then gestured his head over towards Emerald and Cinder. The clear hint being to go ahead and give the two girls some time to talk and do whatever they had to do. Say whatever needed to be said. Wasn't like the two of them were gonna be able to do much or go anywhere without someone else pointing em in the right direction. Blanche nodded and then slowly the two men turned their attention back to the still downed Watts. "I'm sorry, my young mechanically-inclined friend. Neither of our semblances are fit for healing injuries such as yours." Or really healing at all. Char's would have been useless here and 'Beyond the Years' would only have made Watts old AND still in pain.

"Anything we can at least try to do for ya, kid?"
​

Watts, from where he was flat on his back, saw it coming a good two seconds before impact; he just couldn't muster the energy to move before the parasol plummeted directly onto his face with a wet thwack of cloth hitting skin and bone.

"Ow"

"One of us should have probably grabbed that, huh?"

"Probably." Blanche moved to try and prop Hush aside and off Watts's face.

"Sorry about that, kid. I'd uh, ask if you're okay..." Char gestured to well...Watt's entire person at the moment. "...Feels like it'd be disingenuous"
​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

View attachment 887999

"Yeah, you're gonna miss that bus." He muttered with wry surety, flicking the torch away to get a better look at the two faunus instead.




Stellar.

He switched his focus back to Neo, giving her a look up and down to check her condition now that she was standing and meeting the shrug with one of his own, the only reassurance to be had the fact that their former team leader's own nerves were either made of steel or just extremely well hidden.

"What do I look like, Merc the mole? Guess we pick a direction, walk and yell til one of our lost little lambs hears us and comes running. Wanna take the first one? Throat's feeling kinda hoarse after all that."

He massaged his jugular, gave a few feigned throat clears and smirked all the wider if she didn't quite see the humor in the situation, taking a few jogging steps up the tunnel and walking backwards to keep addressing her.

"C'mon, loosen up. The others got the buddy system going for them, plus Gneiss's very last born-n-raised tour guide to show 'em around. And drowning in some 'big, stupid hole in the ground' is just about the lamest way anyone could go out, so no way Emerald's—"

"Emerald's what?"

View attachment 888004

A less recognizable voice would've had him come up in a combat stance on the other end of his barrel roll away from the person obviously standing right behind him, but as it was he let his weight settle on one knee and whirled his gaze back around with eyes that were wide, incredulous, and relieved.

If not completely trusting.

View attachment 888008

Standing there, plain as day for as absent as she'd been from Mercury's headcount just a few moments ago, was the thief herself, no different to how they'd seen her just a few moments ago right down to the water she was wringing out of her hair, not looking too thrilled about the state of affairs in her own right. Mercury's super-dynamic reaction did elicit a deadpan stare, though, not without a glimmer of amusement as she complimented his form dryly.

"Nice."

"You didn't do the thing."

It was a rare instance of Mercury sounding uncertain as he climbed back to his feet, squinting slightly in time with her approach.

"The thing?" Her stare was blank as she shook out the rest of her damp hair, rolling her shoulders with a few stiff cracks just in time for the penny to drop. "Oooooh. The thing. Yeah, no. Polo, or whatever. You don't think we're a little old for this 'attached at the hip' schtick?"

She brushed past and made no effort to keep the judgment out of her sniff, though neither did she hide the undercurrent of mirth there was to all this that apparently only she could see. Neo got a steady look from the thief as she passed, Mercury's eyes darting to meet hers with a raised eyebrow before they went back to the shape of his partner, who paused at a fork in the tunnel and gave both passages a lingering stare without much in the way of visible familiarity.

"So we should probably get it together and move our asses, right? Friends to save, humanity to champion, all that stuff. You know, if we're all done vomiting."

A horrible, indescribable noise came from Trifa's direction.

"Ookay. We're not done."​

Neo nigh jumped out of her skin at the sudden appearance of the very one who presence she'd been missing the most, and nigh instantly pivoted with a look of nigh giddy relief as she threw up her hand for a hi five for their successful team maneuver of 'not dying in a horrible vortex'

...

...

...

She slowly lowered her hand as she cracked her eyes back open, initially more than a little flummoxed at the distinct lack of sound of hands slapping against hands. It wasn't like she forgot how stressful and awful this must've been for Emerald, being back here, and their first few minutes going like that to boot, but that little bit of silliness was meant to try to break down some of that weight.

She supposed she couldn't really blame Em for not being super enthused about even that, especially given how a chunk of their group wasn't even here. She sheepishly lowered her arm all the way and padded off in step with Emerald, snapping her fingers and pointing into the air next to her where a tiny little Cinder and a dark green toaster were floating in the air next to a question mark.