Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-67.70.92.41-20151228204640/@comment-27517554-20160218021557

Mercury beat Yang within 16% of her aura's depletion, and that was something that was very risky, he doesn't have the mental capability to know exactly when to put the first down. And even if he did, 16% is so close to 15%, which is the point at which they call the match. Plus, look at his face and listen to his vocal expressions, he did not think she was going to beat him or take out his robot legs, it took the quick thinking Emerald and Neo to put together a haphazard get away plan. And Emerald tells Mercury how hard it is to work with two minds at once. If Cinder, the super smart planmaker, figure everything out mastermind, couldn't think of a better way to shame Ozpin, then she is dumb. But she did, her plan was to have Yang lose, and using Emeralds semblance, make her attack Mercury from a defeated position. Even further shaming Yang. And then Mercury could just pretend to be angry, and keep in the action if they needed him, (and that was really dumb, if he's just going to show up next episode anyways). He did not throw that fight, but I think he could do better if he was allowed to hold nothing back, he had to make it look good for the cameras, and underhanded killing attacks might just upset someone.