[Opener: Bringing back the "Savages" AMV by thuskindlyshescatters because it's just so good, and it fits the theme of the chapter.]
Blake and Emerald had reached Blake's house in only a couple minutes.
"Hey, I think you should hold back," Emerald said to Blake.
"What?" Blake said.
"We don't know what's in there," Emerald said. "The others will follow me, but you have the baby to think about."
"I'm not even a month in," Blake said. "There's no reason I can't fight."
"Blake, it's not that... It's just if you get hurt..." Emerald said, "...Sun would never forgive me, and I wouldn't forgive myself either."
"Maybe I won't forgive myself if I let you go in there alone with all those...potential Grimm." Blake said.
"I'm hoping they won't act up if we stay calm," Emerald said.
"We can't waste time arguing..." Blake looked up. "Look, we can go in through my old room. The balcony. I'll wait there and keep watch. That's as much as I'm willing to compromise. Then I can jump in if there's trouble."
"Okay...yeah, that other guy could be lurking around," Emerald said. "I don't think he'd come here if he's trying to escape, but who knows who else could be working with them."
Blake nodded.
They used their weapons to swing onto the balcony from the trees, and then Emerald opened the door. It wasn't locked.
Blake kept her eyes on the ground and trees, looking for anyone suspicious...
Suddenly she realized she hadn't seen Illea at the docks at all. She hadn't spent a lot of time looking for her, but it was odd that she hadn't appeared before now.
She dialed Illea's number. No answer.
"Oh no..." Blake said in a chilled voice.
* * *
Emerald ran through the room. There were kids in it already. They were reading or doing some kind of puzzle on the floor. They looked at her and yelped.
"Sorry, I'm a friend." Emerald held up her hands. "Listen, did anyone come in this house? Downstairs?"
"Human," one Faunus girl said suspiciously. "You're not supposed to be here."
"Dummy, a bunch of humans are arriving here today," said an older one.
"Listen, I'm Emerald Sustrai--" Emerald began.
"Emerald Sustrai?!" they said.
Then one girl squinted at her. "It is Emerald!"
She ran up to her. "Remember me? Mindy?"
Emerald peered at her. She did look familiar.
"Atlas," Mindy said. "I was one of the first Faunus they moved into the shelter after it was expanded. You're my hero." She smiled.
Emerald blushed. "Oh, well... Wait, there's no time for this. Listen, you guys, don't panic, but there might be some bad people coming here."
"What?" the kids said.
"I'm going to take care of it," Emerald said. "My friend Blake is outside on the balcony, keeping watch. I need you all to do whatever she tells you, all right? And can you tell me, did anyone already arrive here today?"
"There was some commotion downstairs," Mindy said. "They might have sent some human kids here. None of us really wanted to go meet them. Humans make us nervous. But it sounded like kids."
"Okay, stay in here unless Blake tells you to run," Emerald said. "Don't let anyone in who you don't know. Does your door lock?"
"Yeah," Mindy said. "But the attic is safer. That door only opens from inside if you pull the rope up."
"Why do you know that?" Emerald asked.
"Because Jesse locked himself up there last month," Mindy said dryly.
"I didn't know it would get stuck!" a boy, who must have been Jesse, said grumpily.
"Your brain is stuck," one other girl said.
He stuck out his tongue at her.
"Can you all get up there?" Emerald said.
"Easy," they assured her.
They opened the door to Blake's room and showed her.
"Okay, but don't go in there unless you hear a lot of noise and Blake doesn't come." Emerald didn't like the idea of the kids locking themselves in, but if all else failed, it seemed safer than just waiting in the room or trying to run for it if the bad guys were waiting in the street.
Hopefully, help would come before they had to worry about this.
She shut the room door and slipped down the stair.
The Belladonna house was beautiful, and the renovations had not made it less so, though they had made it bigger and had turned a lot of the rooms into bedrooms or bathrooms. The front room still had a nice, pillared look though.
Sure enough, down here were about 15 Faunus and human kids and a handful of guardians and the escorts.
Also some staff from the orphanage.
"I really thought there would be more people here by now," one of them remarked. "But if they aren't coming, I guess you can start finding your rooms. I was hoping not to have to do this more than once, but that's how it goes. Most of you will be in the west wing. That had the most space."
"Hey, who is that?" One other kid looked at Emerald.
"That's Miss Sustrai," said another. "Remember?"
"Hello, Miss Sustrai," said another boy.
Emerald blinked "Cliff?"
He nodded.
"Oh...hi." Emerald really hoped he hadn't been given the fake shot. "Nice to see you again."
"Sustrai? The Sustai?" the staff said. "Wait, how did you get in?"
"No time to explain. Can I talk to you?" Emerald asked. "Aside?"
They exchanged a look, and then the staff ladies and the huntress and the two male and one female guardians of some of the kids stepped aside.
Emerald explained that there might be trouble with the shots, though she decided not to say what.
"They need to check them back at the ship," she said. "Just the humans."
"Are they going to send us home?" the female said, sounding tired. "I only brought my two here so they would be safe. Argus isn't safe anymore. They wouldn't really make us go back there?"
"No, they'll just check you," Emerald said. She thought this was the truth.
"No one is going anywhere," a new voice said.
They all looked up suddenly. And gasped.
A huge Faunus with bull horns--Mino, Emerald guessed--had just opened the door.
And he had Blake, who looked limp. She glanced at Emerald dazedly.
Mino held up what Emerald recognized as an Aura-zapping device.
"It was almost too easy to weaken the Belladonna," he said. "I've been wanting to kill one of them for years... It's not important to my mission, but if any of you get any ideas of heroics, I can make it my mission. Nobody move."
The adults all stayed still.
The kids, scared, also froze or began to cry. The smaller ones moved to run to their guardians or older friends.
Thankfully, Mino didn't take that as a challenge, but he tightened his grip on Blake--who, of course, couldn't move her arms.
She was barely even conscious. Maybe her extra Aura had kept her from totally blacking out... Emerald hoped she'd be able to harness it to escape, but clearly it hadn't kicked in yet.
"Please," she prayed. "Please..."
Better stall.
"Hey," she said, holding up her hands. "Listen...I don't want any harm to come to these people. What do you want?"
"Oh, nothing much," Mino said. "Your doom is already on its way. Shouldn't take longer than a few hours to wipe this place out, I would say. It's a shame--it's a nice house, but it won't be here by morning."
"What do you mean?" one of the adults asked.
Which just played right into his hands.
"It'll all be gone," he said, shrugging. "The Grimm are coming to eat and kill all of you. The humans brought them on that ship."
"That's a lie!" Emerald cried. "Well, it's twisting the truth. You brought them--we never did."
"Same difference," Mino said.
Emerald wasn't sure what would happen if he kept talking.
But...maybe there was a way to persuade him?
She saw Blake's ears twitch slightly.
Emerald blocked Mino's mind from seeing her move.
Blake slipped out of his grip using a shadow clone, and then she slipped out the door.
Emerald was glad she didn't try to fight. She hoped she was getting help.
"Hey, she's gone!" one of the kids, who didn't know any better, cried.
Emerald lost focus at once.
Mino looked around. "What the--?" The shadow clone vanished.
"You little devil!" he spat at Emerald. "With the mind games. Well, if that's how you want to play it."
He pulled out a huge gun. "One more move, and I'll set this entire place on fire! I'm warning you all. You can die right now like dogs."
"That's not a nice thing to call us," one child with dog ears said.
Emerald suddenly realized it was Carmine. What was she doing here?
Kali and Gira had sent her ahead because she was tired, and they knew they would be busy for hours. They had assumed the staff would keep an eye on her.
"Dodger's daughter?" Mino locked on her. "You look like your daddy. Even if you are a half breed."
Carmine clenched a fist. "You're mean."
"No," Mino said, with a smile.
He dropped his cloak, and his tail whipped out.
The staff gasped, and so did the other adults.
"He has two Faunus parts!" one boy cried. He didn't know what it meant, he just had a tone of astonishment.
"That's right," Mino said, still with a scary smile. "What's your name, Dodger's girl?"
Carmine looked nervous. "Carmine..."
"Well, Carmine, you and I are alike," Mino said, in an almost gentle voice that still gave Emerald chills. "Both of us are looked down on by other Faunus, even though we can't help what we are or who our s----y parents were. I'd almost be inclined to spare you. The tribe might welcome some new blood."
"I think her treatment there would be worse than here," Emerald spoke tightly. "If you pitied that girl, sir, you would never take her to that den of hell. They did things to those girls you took, they told us what. They were horrible."
The adults who got it looked ill, and the kids who didn't were still scared.
Carmine shivered nervously. "I don't want to go with you," she said. "I want to go back to my Dad."
"Your dad is still in Argus, rotting in one of their prisons because of these people," Mino said. "That's what they do. They take everything from us, and we don't have much. Even what we do have, they want to take."
"We don't want to take anything from you." Emerald was afraid of what he'd start if he kept talking. "That's the Grimm talking, Mino."
Mino glanced at her. "Dawkins talked. So you know my name."
"Dawkins realized what you did to him," Emerald said. "Those things that you put in him, that made him act crazy and made him want to hurt people, just because he thought they were trying to take what he wanted. Even Carmine saw it wasn't normal."
Carmine glanced at her uncomfortably but nodded.
"I think she'd like her dad back in the same way he was before you guys ever tried to change him," Emerald said. "Did they do it to you too, Mino? Did they tell you it would give you power?"
Mino frowned at her. "Shut up."
"That's what they said, right?" Emerald wanted to keep him talking. "That it would make you powerful. But what it also did was make you insatiable. Ever since they started using that dust, I bet nothing is ever enough, is it?"
Mino began to look uneasy.
"Not money or goods..." Emerald said, "or...other pleasures. You always want more, right?"
[I didn't mean to rip off The Curse of the Black Pearl, but I did realize the Avarice effects kind of are the same. And they're infecting pirates, so go figure.]
"Maybe it's like it took you over." Emerald tried to keep her voice steady. "Is it even you anymore?"
Mino was silent.
* * *
Mercury reached the door just in time to see Blake slip out of it.
"What's going on in there?" he said.
"Shh," Blake hissed. She cocked her ears. "The bull Faunus is in there. Whatever his name was."
"Mino?" Mercury said. "He's a bandit. I'll kick his a--!"
"No, wait," Blake said. "He's got a weapon pointed at them. If you jump in there he might just kill whoever is in front of him. We need more people who can sneak around him. You and I aren't that good at that."
"Is Emerald in there?" Mercury asked.
"She's stalling him," Blake said. "Actually..." She tilted her ears. "Hang on..."
After a second she said, "I think he's listening. She's trying to get him to understand that the Grimm are influencing how he thinks."
"Emerald would be trying to convince the bad guy to stop at a time like this," Mercury said.
"What if it works?" Blake said. "It's worked on others. If we startle him, though, it could be all over. I'm calling the others to come help. Pyrrha was supposed to be looking around the streets, so she'll be close. Just be ready."
"That's crazy. What if he flips out?" Mercury asked.
"If he loses his grip it might be easier for us to stop him," Blake said. "The Grimm are less of a problem to us than he is if he takes the kids hostage. Please, Mercury, don't blow this."
Mercury hesitated. "Keep your ears cocked. If you hear any change, I'm going in there."
Blake nodded and tilted her ears back.
* * *
[The Oh Hellos--"Eat You Alive"]
"Whatever they promised you, in the end, this will eat you alive," Emerald said. "Please, I'm trying to help."
"You're trying to distract me," Mino said. "Because you're afraid."
"I'm not as afraid of you as I am afraid for you," Emerald said. "You could give them your soul. I met the god who made the Grimm. He admitted he was a liar and a fraud who made them to control mankind. I saw it myself."
The adults stared at her in astonishment, and the kids looked impressed.
Mino, who certainly had heard some of the story--everyone had--twitched his tail.
"Maybe the gods meant it that way, but they're gone, and we're still here," he said. "They weren't so powerful."
"We only stopped them because we had a better One on our side," Emerald said.
"Is that really your story? This other One, the One no one has ever seen. Sure, likely story. You made it up just to get credibility," Mino scoffed.
"You let me take the Grimm out and you'll feel how real He is," Emerald said, which sounded far more threatening than she realized.
Mino winced. "I don't need any help of yours, you street rat. Who are you to tell me I'm in the wrong? You're the same dirt as us. You just joined the enemy."
"Atlas?" Emerald said.
"All the kingdoms are the same. They all refuse to give us our dues," Mino said.
"You know, you sound just like a friend of mine," Emerald said. "Cinder Fall, maybe you've heard of her."
Most of the people here had. They muttered.
Mino raised an eyebrow.
"She used to say that, that everything was hers," Emerald said. "She even allowed Grimm to grow on her too...but in the end she gave it up. She realized it was taking her over."
More shudders from the kids and their chaperones.
Mino seemed to hesitate just for a moment.
"She could talk to you," Emerald persisted, "explain what happened. I saw how close we got to being consumed by that stuff. I know I'm not better than you. I know that, but I've been taken out of the darkness. That's all I want. It's not too late for you either. If some of you is still not under its sway, it's not too late. Even Salem was able to turn back. hy not anyone else? Just let me help you."
"Liar," Mino bristled. "You would just do to me what you did to the others."
"We didn't set out to kill anyone," Emerald said. "We're just trying to save the kingdoms, that's all, because we need each other. No one's independent. Even the bandits need us. We need Menagerie too. These are your own people--"
"My people? No!" Mino raged. "They never accepted me. Only the bandits did, because all you people think you're above the refuse like us. So why should I listen to you and what you think is best for me? Screw you and your deities and your heroes! They never gave a s--- about any of us!"
"That's not true--" Emerald tried to protest.
"I should end you all myself!" Mino didn't listen to her. "Why wait for the Grimm?"
He raised his gun.
"Don't!" Emerald tried to jump in front of the civilians.
But Mino wasn't aiming at her. He fired into the ceiling.
The huge blast sent a big chunk of it falling into the ground, and the kids and chaperones had to scatter.
Mino was not done though. He shot several more times around the room, and then the walls of the nearest rooms, only this time he was shooting fire dust.
Lots of fire dust.
And the stuff began to blaze up.
"What are you doing?" one of the staff screamed. "We just finished this place!"
Emerald tried to slip past Mino's guard using her Semblance and stop him, but he shot out a hand and grabbed her by her hair.
His Aura flared. "There's a reason they sent me here, Sustrai." He lifted her off the floor by her hair while she struggled to break free. Then he shot at the door, and a huge growth of rock dust blocked it from being useful for an exit.
Literally just as Mercury and Blake were about to open it. They now found they couldn't.
"What?" Mercury said.
"Dust." Blake shoved at the door. "Maybe the window--"
Mino was closing those off too.
"You see, once someone uses their Semblance on me once, I start to build up a tolerance," Mino said to Emerald, as she squirmed. "So in a way, I'm perfect for stopping people like you. One step better, I can nullify those Semblances once I've gotten a sense of their Aura."
He clenched, and Emerald felt like her Aura itself was being shoved back into her body.
"No more mind games, hero." Mino threw her onto the floor. "Maybe you can fight me without your little tricks, maybe not. I heard you were kind of trash without it."
Emerald pushed herself up. "Try to get out a difference entrance," she said to the others.
"It's too late anyway, Sustrai," Mino said. "Now that they've all gotten scared enough, the Grimm will only be here faster. I expect we'll hear them any second."
He wasn't wrong. Before anyone had even fled the room, Mercury and Blake suddenly heard the sound of something coming.
The light was fading, but they hear the whooshing of something.
They stood back from the wall for more room to look upward.
"Is that a cloud?" Blake asked.
"A cloud couldn't be making that sound." Mercury narrowed his eyes.
* * *
On the docks, the group had had some success with finding the people who'd been infected and removing it without too much fuss, but they hadn't accounted for all the the shots that they'd finally discovered had been given (with some checking of the boxes).
Then suddenly Royal looked up. "What is that?" he asked.
They all looked.
A dark cloud-like thing was coming over the horizon from the side of the desert on the east side of Menagerie.
"Rain?" one of the natives said uncertainly.
"Not rain," Weiss said. "Somehow that looks familiar."
"Mom says she'll be here any second." Yang put down her scroll. "Since Sun just told her there's a real emergency... Do you think that's it?"
"Yang, haven't we seen that before?" Neptune asked.
"Have we?" Yang asked.
"In the Grimm lands, I think," Meridian said.
"You'd have to be more specific." Cinder frowned.
Drops began to fall from the black cloud...or were they creatures?
Pyrrha, who'd been searching the street for any sign of Mino, not knowing he'd already gotten to the orphanage, saw them and jumped up onto a roof, shielding her eyes.
Then she threw her javelin towards one and brought it back to her.
There was black sludge on the end of it, and, as she watched, the sludge rose off her spear and formed itself into a bug-like creature that looked like a mosquito.
Pyrrha stared at it in horror, then she looked back up at the cloud.
"There's Pyrrha." Jaune saw her. "Pyrrha, what are those?"
"DEIMOS!" Pyrrha yelled. She wasn't sure what he'd said, but she knew they were all wondering the same thing. "It's DEIMOS!"
"What did she say?" Weiss asked.
A Faunus with long ears looked up. "She said something like demons."
"That's too obvious," Cinder said. Then she froze. "Wait, did she say Deimos?"
"That might have been it," the Faunus replied.
"What? No!" Weiss said. "I thought Salem made those special."
"Haven't we established by now that nothing she did was an original idea?" Neptune said. "Oh no."
"No!" Cinder said, scared already. "No, no, no!"
"What are Deimos?" Royal asked.
Oscar rushed forward to get a better look. "Deimos are Grimm that have a toxic bite," he said. "It induces extreme paranoia for several hours. You lose all rationality... Some people last longer than others against it. We were able to survive before because we had special Aura help from above and Alicia's gifts."
"The Deimos was when Neo almost killed me!" Cinder grabbed Royal's arm and yanked it for emphasis as if that would make her point stronger. "Because she took everyone for an enemy!"
Royal began to understand. "It's that intense?"
"My mom trapped Neptune and I in ice for hours so we couldn't hurt ourselves or each other," Yang said.
"Yeah, and at first I thought she just didn't want us to get together," Neptune said weakly.
"This isn't funny," Yang said. "Of all things we dealt with there, that was on my top three of the worst experiences. The only one worse than that was the Pride and maybe the Anger."
"I actually think this was the worst," Weiss said. "At least the others you could reason for a short time and snap out of it once they were dead... These ones it didn't matter if you killed them--it still lasted for hours."
"All of this is not helping!" one huntress who was with them cried. "Can you stop them?"
"We have to stop them now, before they get close," Oscar said. "Everyone, we have to tell them to leave."
"They're already landing," Ruby said, eyes narrowed. "I think they're going to the house on that hill."
"That's Blake's house, isn't it?" Weiss said.
"Yeah, it is," Meridian said. "And that's where the other children went."
Sun, Roman, Neo, and their captive, came running up right then. "Do you see that?" Roman was already panicking. "That's the sight of death right there!"
"Roman, get a grip," Sun said. "We can fight this."
"Everyone get inside who's not one of us," Oscar said. "Now. Get under cover, lock all your windows and doors. Don't let them in."
People began to run.
"Oscar, we need to try to stop them before they land," Ruby said. "I can try to fry them."
She rushed to get on a roof for a closer shot.
But as she did, something hit her in the neck.
"What?" she said.
The Faunus nurse with finns, of before, had been watching from a hidden place and had a dart gun out.
Ruby stared at the object in her hand and then fell over.
"Ruby!" Yang and Oscar cried.
"Where's Mercury?" Neptune asked.
But no one knew the answer to that.
"I'm on that sniper." Sun had spotted her in the foliage, and Neo was pointing her out also to the others.
Sun took off.
Cinder decided to run after him, and Royal, thinking perhaps he might be more useful there, did also.
Jaune rushed over to Ruby and tried to use his Semblance to wake her up, but she was still asleep.
"I can't speed up her recovery fast enough," he called. "Oscar?"
"She has to be able to look," Oscar said.
That was kind of an oddly specific weakness, he thought. Well, maybe he could still help.
But the Deimos wouldn't give them time to do this.
"Hey." One huntress (who Neptune and Sun recognized as Dew Gayl, one of the ladies team SSSN had fought in the Vytal Festival, one with a trident that was different from his), came out of the knot of people trying get on the boat and below deck.
She held up her weapon and wind swirled. "Arc, come here. I might be able to help hold those things at bay."
"I get it!" Jaune said, jumping down to where she was standing.
He held out his Aura.
She focused, and a huge blast of wind formed around them and up towards the Deimos.
They were starting to land in the streets, though, thankfully, most of the people had rushed to get inside, and the bugs hadn't found holes in their walls yet--but there always were, especially in rudimentary houses like most of the people here lived in.
The wind pushed back a large portion of the cloud of Grimm.
[According to the wiki, Dew uses wind dust, but as wind dust has never really been explained in the show, and it could just as well have been her Semblance since her name suggests it is, I decided to make it her Semblance.]
* * *
Emerald's attempts to hold off Mino were more successful at first than Mino expected.
He was much larger and physically stronger than she was, and he had thought she'd go down easy after the way he grabbed her and neutralized her Semblance, but, to his great surprise, while the others fled, Emerald put up a much better fight than he thought.
She used the pillars in the room to make it harder for him to hit her with his gun, and rolled out of the way much faster than he thought she would.
Mino had underestimated the instincts and prowess of someone who'd had to work with Cinder and had to be good enough to beat much older huntsmen to even be considered by Salem, and assumed she would use her Semblance like she had in the Vytal Festival and that meant she was not much without it.
Granted, Emerald wasn't much for inflicting real damage without using it to make an opening. She could shoot, but bullets didn't do much. Mino deflected them easily.
Blake and Mercury had still been trying to get in one of the windows and then to go in through the balconies--but that was when they realized that the cloud was right overhead.
"Okay, we have to get inside right now!" Blake said. "Or...can you stop it? It has to be Grimm."
Mercury looked up at it.
"I might be able to stop a fraction of it," he said, "but it's huge. There's gotta be thousands upon thousands of Grimm in that, based on how thick it is, I might shave off the top, but I don't think I could kill them all. Ruby and I might, together. Where is she?"
Finally, they saw her on a roof, and then they saw her fall off of it a second later.
"Ruby!" Blake said. "Ugh!" She yanked on her door. "Wait...it's locked now."
The kids had heard the commotion downstairs and had not seen Blake on the balcony, so they'd panicked and locked the door.
Perhaps that would have been smart, actually, but they'd all run to hide, and no one saw her trying to get in now. And they might not have let her in if they had, since they had no way to know who was a friend at this point.
Blake's balcony door was pretty thick now, as her dad had decided to make sure it was hard to break into after the White Fang incident, and jumping on it wasn't doing any good.
"Maybe my parents' old room?" she suggested. "It's on the other side."
She leapt onto the roof.
The Deimos were lowering themselves. They seemed to be heading right for this house first. It was the most visible, but Blake had a bad feeling it was because of the kids.
Mercury's eyes flashed, and he took out the first wave of them...but he was right--so many more were coming, spreading out, that you could hardly tell after a few seconds that he'd done anything at all.
Blake thought in this time that the Deimos had not attacked the group in the Grimm lands while still in liquid form, but now they all seemed to be in bug form... That meant someone must have had the liquid form somewhere else...or else was making them a different way.
She had thought they wouldn't be a problem without Salem's magic there to make them worse.
One stray one flew down at her, and she swatted it away, and it hit a palm and sizzled, but at least it died.
She tried her parents' doors... No, they were locked too. The kids here must have freaked out.
She thought about breaking a window...but no, that could let the bugs in, and there'd be no way to stop them, unless she could seal it back up, but any dust she used short of rock dust wouldn't last, and rock dust might break it further.
This was starting to look impossible! Where was everyone!? They needed backup!
"Mercury!" she called. "It's locked. I think they're all locked. I don't know what to do!"
She hated that she was about to cry, but...
Mercury sped over the roof to her.
"Get a grip, Blake," he said giving her a sharp shake.
Blake nodded. "I know, I know..."
"Those things will be on us any second. Some of them already are trying it." Mercury motioned that way with one hand. "If they affect us, we'll be down for the count."
"If they affect us, we could attack each other," Blake said.
"Doesn't this house have another door?" Mercury asked.
"I... Well, it didn't before, except for the one to the garden, and we tried that one already," Blake said. "But...maybe the others put one in I don't remember."
She jumped to the ground on the other side to look.
There was a small back door. But it was padlocked shut.
"Why would anyone have locked this?" Mercury cursed, tugging at it.
"I...I'm starting to think it wasn't the staff," Blake said. "This is feeling like a set up, Mercury. I think the bad guys must have been staking this house out already. Maybe they already had it in mind to do this... Maybe we led them here... We led the kids here like lambs to slaughter..." She started to sound shaky again.
"Blake, I swear if you start panicking right now, you won't need the Deimos for me to kill you," Mercury said. "We can break in."
"But that will let them in!" Blake returned to her earlier concern.
Mercury paused. It would do that.
But in the next minute he didn't have much reason to hesitate because a new smell hit them.
"Is that smoke?" he asked.
"It sure smells like it." Blake wrinkled her nose. "Where's it coming from?"
Then they heard someone banging on the door.
"It's not giving!" It sounded like one of the staff to Blake. "We need something harder to hit with."
"Hey, what's going on in there?" Mercury yelled.
"Who is that?" said a kid's voice.
"It's me, Blake Belladonna!" Blake called.
"Oh, you're back, are you?" one angry adult said. "A little late. That maniac set the place on fire, and we can't get this door open. The other door, we'd have to go back through that room, and it's already on fire!"
"Stand back," Mercury called.
"Mercury?" Blake said.
"I think the Deimos are not going to be their biggest problem," Mercury said, pulling her back.
Then he shot a lot of his special missile-like bullets into the air, and they circled around and all hit the lock and the door at once.
The door blasted mostly off its hinges, and Mercury kicked the rest of it off.
The adults rushed out--some of them remembered to grab the kids first and pull them.
The kids ran too.
"Is this all of you?" Blake only counted about 30, and she knew the house was outfitted for at least 3 times as many.
"No," one of the staff, who Blake recognized as Docie Fawn (who appropriately had deer antlers), said to her. "There are a bunch more upstairs. But the stairway is already on fire! It's right next to the front room."
"Where's Emerald?" Mercury asked.
"Still fighting that nutcase," one of the other adults said. "But her odds weren't looking too good."
Mercury moved, and Blake grabbed him. "Wait," she said. "You can't just rush into a burning building without a plan. We need a better escape point for Emerald than this door. If we're going to break the house anyway, then let's just break the front door. And we have to get the kids out of the top floor."
"There's some ladders in the garden," Docie said. "If we can get them to open a window... But how would we do that?"
"It won't matter in a second." Blake suddenly looked up.
The monster cloud was lowering now as a whole.
"It's too late," Blake said in a tiny voice.
[This actually looks pretty impossible even to me...]