Fifth Sin: Performance Past And Present (Pt. 3- Damnation)
--- Mercer ---
He blinked before shaking his head clear, glad that this transition was nowhere near as traumatic as his previous. His consciousness remaining intact this time rather than being drowned beneath the trauma of his first death.
A tide of cries and gasps ushered out from in front of him, drawing his attention out of his head and to the world around him.
He found himself standing on a stage in front of a faceless crowd, barely there and barely human as their sheer numbers made their true forms bleed through. The mists visibly coalescing around them as light flashed out here and there, attempting to distract from the illusion struggling to latch onto the bits of memory he’d mostly disregarded.
Still, knowing what memory this was referencing in particular he looked down at the corpse of a man (I’d kind of been hoping to shoot a second time) staring up at him with cold dead eyes.
He went ahead and double taped it because there was a decent chance the thing would get up and try to go zombie on him. (And I’ve got way too much experience with Killian to ever trust a corpse to stay dead.)
“Now then, we both know that this isn’t what this memory is about.” He told the mists with a gesture to the swarm of monsters he was inevitably going to have to kill before all of this was over. “So, we going to get to the real mindfucking or you going to keep showing me how much you suck at foreplay?”
The world around him shuddered for a moment, before a wave of mist washed over him and he found himself off of the stage where he’d executed a man and on the sloping rooftop of a church on the edge of the Way and the rest of the city.
“What were you thinking?!” A hypocritical voice asked somewhere between a yell and a snarl. “Do you have any idea what the fuck you’ve done?!”
As much as he hated to admit it, that question -or at least the tone it was asked in- actually stung. Which is why much like the first time, instead of focusing on the hurt he latched onto the burning rage inside to steel himself against it with his usual snark. “I was thinking your justice was going to take just a little too long for me… and all of the mayor’s present and future victims, V. And I’m pretty sure I’ve given all of us a little bit of closure.”
He could feel Vigilance’s glare through the black mask the other man wore, the costume looking more like the hero’s current costume than the one he’d actually been wearing on this night. A reminder that this wasn’t the real Vigilance but rather an illusion of the Mists. Something that made things easier if less… desired…
A silence fell over them, the nearby buildings stuttering as the Mist worked to keep him from noticing the void behind them, even as it drew attention to the fact that several of those buildings had looked significantly different five years ago before more than a dozen Hell Nights.
He tried to ignore, wanting to actually get into this memory but as the silence continued to drag on…
“Fuck, you can’t even get the little details right when I want you to mindfuck me.” He groaned, running a hand down his helmeted face.
Vigilance watched (always fucking watching) observing and calculating, more like his normal self than the side of him Mercer had dealt with on this night.
“No, no, no!” He grumbled beginning to pace. “Get angry! If we’re doing this, I want the Vigilance of that night. Not… this!”
“The me of what night?” The (faker) cautiously asked, rather than ranting about how much of an idiot he was for what he’d done or all the ways that this was going to damage the Heroes Guild right as it had finally hit its stride. (As the words burned the older man strode forward, and as he tried to make excuses he felt a fist impact rattle his skull inside of his helmet.)
“This night! The night I quit being a Vigil! The night that you beat me until I snapped and beat you within an inch of your life right back! The night I lost my fa-” His mouth snapped shut and he looked away from Vigilance.
“Mercer…” The (fake, fake, faker) began with no small amount of concern. “Something is clearly wrong… calm down and we can talk this out.”
“No, no, no we can’t!” He scowled, pawing at his helmet as it felt like he couldn’t breathe with it on. (Doesn’t make a difference… Mists run on magic and Madness, helmet ‘s doing jack shit to protect me here…)
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The world around him shuddered, the night briefly filling with a white fog, before being replaced with the rain clouds that had broken loose half way through his actual fight with Vigilance. Somewhere after he’d drawn his knife but before (he dodged the older man’s throwing dart and slipped, his boots skidding on the rain slickened tiles so much that he had to fire a grappling line at the church cross to keep from falling off the roof’s edge.)
He threw his helmet off, and yet he still couldn’t feel the rain on his face, dashing his hopes of clearing his head with the rain because he’d never taken it off in the actual fight and thus didn’t connect the feeling with this night.
“Fuck! Now you want to get the memories right!” He cursed knowing full well that he was letting the mists get to him here, but unable to help himself given how… complicated this night was for him.
“Mercer, I think you’re under a Slaver effect.” Vigilance told him, sounding oh-so reasonable and concerned. “If you can calm down and resist it enough for us to get back to base we can get you whatever help you need to break this.”
Which is why Mercer shot him- “Shut up. Shut up! Shut the fuck Up!” -repeatedly.
Of course not one shot actually hit Vigilance, the man’s edges shifting as he leaned out of the way of each shot. A seemingly supernatural feat if the older man hadn’t taught him how to do the exact same, if without the illusory edges.
He kept pulling the trigger on his gun even as the bullets ran out, before eventually letting his arm drop as he glared at what he knew was an illusion, hating the fact that if it wasn’t a fake version of Vigilance he’d be handling this a lot better than he was.
(No you wouldn’t.) A little voice whispered. One that he couldn’t tell if it was his own or the Mist’s.
He inhaled before exhaling, forcing himself to think even as he grasped the rage in his chest ever tighter.
“Are you done?” The creature of the Mist’s asked, exasperated and concerned in equal measure.
“For now.” He nodded before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a few cylinders that would look like glowing shotgun shells to the uninitiated. “And only because Clockwork-” The world shuddered as he said the name of the entity this place truly belonged to. “-limited my ammo because ‘bullets are to a gun, what paint is to a brush’ and he gives me a bunch of bullshit rules about the two.”
“Look, Mercer…” The fake Vigilance began. “You made a mistake, just… I’m worried about you. Just come home and… we can talk about all of this once you’re safe.”
“Nice words.” He assured the creature as he reloaded his gun, pocketing the shells that matched the ones he put in save their glow. “Not going to lie. Absolutely wanted to hear them five years ago but… that was five years ago.”
He locked his Rhapsody’s chamber back into place before pointing it at the fake. “So like the actual Vigilance you can go fuck yourself because we both know Auroura won’t.”
The fake Vigilance glared at him, as they stared each other down.
At least until a thud drew their attention to a third figure.
Between them stood a stressed looking man wearing a black and blue body suit, a strained smile on his face as his eyes darted between them from underneath his mask.
“Safeguard.” The fake Vigilance greeted his fake apprentice.
Him, he just started pinching the bridge of his nose, having a decent idea of where the Mists were going with this bullshit. (If this fake tries the real one’s kumbaya bullshit I am going to shoot- Actually, that’s not really a threat when I was going to shoot him either way.)
“Look, I uh, I know those looks… Let’s, let’s not do anything we’re going to regret when the sun comes up.” The fake told them, before quickly raising his arm and having a large metal shield appear from within his bracer to block several bullets that would’ve otherwise hit him. “Mercer, what the hell?!”
“That shit is annoying when the real you tries it every other month. I will not hesitate to shoot your ass before tracking down a brothel and pimping you out!” He warned the eldritch imposter. “I know plenty of freaks into both tentacles and pretty boys!!!”
“W-what?” The fake Safeguard blinked, looking like he couldn’t process what Mercer had just said.
(Another point against him. The actual Safeguard is one of the few people who can not only keep up with but actually match my verbal bullshit.) He thought with narrowed eyes.
“I think Mercer is under some kind of Slaver effect, disrupting his thoughts and exasperating his violent tendencies.” The fake Vigilance explained.
“Oh, that’s… well, it’s not good but it’s definitely better than him wanting to shoot us.” The fake Safeguard grinned looking a little relieved.
“That was a lie even when I was a Vigil.” He told the Mists. “I have zero trigger discipline with these fucks. I regularly shot everyone with rubber bullets to get them used to dodging random attacks, and I purposely aimed for the dick… Except in the girls’ case, I shot their boobs instead.”
Both the fakes stared at him for a moment before the world around them stuttered, the Mist becoming readily apparent for a few seconds before he found himself all six of the other Vigils staring at him on the roof in a sort of staggered half circle. The roof’s slant making it so they were each slightly tilted.
“Oh, fuck all of you.” He groaned, looking the various copies over. “Safeguard didn’t show up until I was leaving, and he was so busy dealing with V that he didn’t notice me fumble a grapple, crash into a wall, and spend the night in a dumpster with everything hurting. Swansong was babysitting the kids who were grounded because Vigilance snitched Hardknocks out to her mom -because he’s a bitch like that- and Virtue the sequel trilogy wasn’t even Virtue yet.”
He pointed at one of the Vigil copies in particular. “And what the fuck is Nightwatch doing up on a slanted rooftop? She’s in a fucking wheelchair you dumbass, if she wanted to come after me she wouldn’t be here, she’d be drone striking my ass. In fact, in fact, that last one is so stupid that you’ve officially been demoted from eldritch horror to dumbass horror. You are no longer the horror of the cosmic void but the horror of being a cosmic dumbass.”
A wave of mist rolled over them as they all reappeared on an empty city street.
He looked to the sky. “Just because you cover it up now, doesn’t mean we don’t both know you fucked up here.”