Act Five, Scene Ten
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Act Five, Scene Ten
Tyrant’s Palace
Just three doors left. Catherine could see it herself -
“The pursuers have yet to cease their march,” Elgolian murmured. “The countess has failed to bring them down.”
“Catherine?” Mercy said. Just three doors left.
“Yes?”
“I’m tougher than Elgolian and I’ve got less support abilities.”
“If you die I’ll bet the whole city explodes.”
“Come on, would I do that?”
I’m sure you wouldn’t try went through her head, and definitely not by your own free will, and -
Did you think you could succeed without a single friend of yours dying? Her father’s voice cut through her thoughts.
You did. They didn’t start dying until old age caught up with you.
(But how much history had she learned? How many tinkers had “The Royal Court” gone through, with Prudence steadily refusing to fill the role that kept being vacated? There’d been three heavy hitters, she knew.)
How many friends had he lost by the time she was born? How much experience was she missing -
- The question was strategy and the answer was she knew what Mercy’s powers were and how she used them and she didn’t want to be in the blast radius.
“Just stay away from the imposter Ilderia. She wouldn’t be any good as a fake if she didn’t have some way to throw lightning bolts.”
“Got an answer.”
Just two of them left (and Ilderia, always Ilderia, but Morgan couldn’t quite shake that while she trusted Ilderia - of course - with her life - forever - she was used to having Acerbus in earshot, or Zero, or someone else who talked to Ilderia, that was always their jobs... somehow it was always impossible for her to think that Ilderia... would make a mistake and then nobody would point it out - )
She dephased so she could inhale, then re-phased. Century really shouldn’t be doing any of this (he divided himself again), this was past his limits, and what was Ilderia doing, really -
“One of them up ahead,” Century said.
“Just one?” Extra Hands Henchman asked.
“Just one.” He paused. “She says we can come up, there’s no traps.”
Ilderia rolled her eyes.
Okay, so that was a pretty good way of buying time if Mercy did say so herself. They were going over the thirty feet between her door and Century with a fine-toothed comb, and all her metaphorical guns were trained on her door, the room’s south exit, where the black hats were lurking. There were more doors in each wall of this little crossroads room, but her scouting confirmed neither East nor West hooked up with South, and so they’d have a good deal of trouble trying to outflank her. North would eventually, but you’d need to use the robot express lifts and that did not seem like a likely attack vector…
She’d told her mom that the complete rapid-assemble statue of herself was useful. Right now it was in easy eyesight, standing in front of a table, back to the wall...
(A lightning bolt hit it and it exploded, sending sparks and shrapnel flying across the room.)
Century came through the door at a run, whipped a hand grenade at one corner of the room - it had taken him only a second - and she shot him about eighty times and lunged for the grenade, sucking it into hammerspace. Since this involved being visible through the doorway, she filled the space with bullets, blocking the stunray bolts and laser beams the Century-armies fired with sheer mass of lead. It wasn’t like she was going to run out. And sure, have a grenade, too!
Morgan phased through the wall and fired a bolt from her staff-spear-polearm thing at her, but by the time she finished aiming Mercy was already on the far side of the room and returning fire with a truly tremendous amount of lead. The forcebolt battered it aside into the next wave of bullets but there were still more coming, and Morgan phased through the western wall. Mercy heard bombs go off. One down.
A sheer gout of fire blasted out of the west wall where the next moment, catching Mercy’s armor in it, and she could suck the burning air into hammerspace but that had been fast - she spun and dodged, her armor still radiating heat, as Century hurled another hand grenade into the room and she jetted through the eastern door and around a corner, letting the explosion rock the room she’d been in.
She scanned the room on instinct, still didn’t see any other entrances, flooded it with poison gas anyways. (One of the kinds she was immune to, obviously.) Anyone coming in after her?
... No, it didn’t sound like it - they were just bypassing her - she pulled two gas grenades out of her pack, hurled them left and right through the door she’d come through, then dove through herself.
Century in the room, she shot him and rose then went after them - The room ahead was a vast hub, elevators sinking deeper into shafts, from which Catherine’s robots could come…
- and stopped abruptly in the doorway, staring at the man who stood next to one shaft, neat spectacles and fussy coat covering an AQM-23 velocity redirection suit. There was a half-open book in his right hand.
“I would think we could discuss this instead of fighting,” he said.
They’re already past her… and he’s Banisher. Kill him then go after Patience. “Give it your best shot.”
“You realize that it is hardly rational for you to risk your life in this foolish venture.”
“It’s the best way for me to get what I want,” Mercy said. She pointed a finger at him and he neatly stepped aside behind the shaft. “You murdered my mother.”
“Ilderia had a gun to my head.”
“And you didn’t quit? Are you stupid? Do you think that will slow down anyone who wants revenge? If I were you I’d be digging the biggest hole I could and hiding in there.”
“It would be unprofessional.” Mercy shifted her stance to get a better line of fire - it sounded like he was flipping through the book -
“Yeah, about that,” Mercy said, “you killed my mother. The deluge is here, you prick.”
He opened up the book, spread the pages. A sheet of leathery-looking paper erupted out of the page to the left, forced flat by another, even wider sheet unfolding out of it, and then a massive armored fighting robot with attached machine guns erupted out of the paper, leaping onto the ground with a crash.
She opened fire at it, bullets rattling off the walls. She could hear Banisher flipping through his book, unleashing more and more smaller robots, tiny boxy hovering things with attached guns that zoomed through the air and swooped around the edge of the battlefield. The larger robot’s chest glowed and she dodged behind a wall before the beam shot out of it, tearing through half a metal doorframe and half the wall next to it and carving a divot into the floor.
She pointed at it, hit it with a mass of lead most of its size that stove its chest in. The drones had the same tell and it was a flickering moment to fire enough bullets she’d be sure to hit each of them, tossing a few acid grenades in and heading for cover. Banisher flickered through his book for more weapons -
- and that was the point when the acid ate through the floor and it broke beneath them.
Banisher landed hard; he could hear a crack of bone breaking. Where was he? He’d fallen at least two floors.
“So, Banisher - you didn’t do enough research.”
There was the armored woman; he focused a barrage of spears from circles on his person at her, and she blocked them with waves of bullets.
“I, on the other hand,” she said as she slowly walked towards him, “did.” There was a switchblade in her hand. He fired a bullet out of his watch at her and it vanished.
“Research is supposed to be your specialty. You murder people. But I get to just ignore your powers,” she said. “I studied you. Because I have very similar powers to yours.”
He threw a scrap of paper at her feet; it was a shaped charge, or it was supposed to be. What it did was to vanish into thin air.
“See, there’s a difference. You need traps to store equipment. You need all this fancy paper prep.”
The woman stepped forwards.
“And your fancy circles have limits. You’ve sewn them into your clothes, yeah - but sometimes they run out.”
He opened a canister of poison gas at her face, and she drank it down deep, rolled her eyes, and shot him in the arm.
“I, on the other hand,” she said, “don’t.”
Then she killed him.
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