Mercury Black

Mercury Black is an antagonist in RWBY. He is an associate of Cinder Fall and partner of Emerald Sustrai.

Appearance
In Mercury's first appearance in "Black and White", he was shown to be a pale, well-built man with gray eyes and, while draped in shadow, seemingly purple hair (revealed to actually be gray in the credits of the same episode), partially slicked back while unkempt at the front. He also wears a gray and black two-tone partial-zip jacket, that covers his upper body.

Mercury's appearance did not change much in Volume 2, though his hair and eyes are now a silvery-gray. A not-so-noticeable change is his style of belt. In his first appearance, he appears to be wearing two belts, one crossing the other. He now wears a single notched belt with what appears to be a sash or bandana draped over it. It is unclear whether his rerebraces are attached to his jacket.

While at Beacon Academy, Mercury wears the Haven Academy uniform, a dark gray outfit with a long-sleeved collared top, black pants and a white armband.

Personality
In "Best Day Ever", Mercury is shown to be rather care-free and jokes around when in the company of Emerald, whom he makes an effort to annoy. He seems to opt for excitement and action, as he dislikes books without pictures, and tells Emerald that he finds the city boring. However, when it comes to matters at hand, Mercury drops this, focusing himself on the mission.

During battle, Mercury displays a sense of seriousness and levelheadedness. Based on his fight with Pyrrha Nikos, he appears to test and gauge his opponent before fully committing to an attack, implying that he has a strategic mind. His cunning was later shown once more during his match against Coco Adel and Yatsuhashi Daichi in "Lessons Learned" where he took advantage of the savanna biome to hide himself in to launch a surprise attack on Coco, and the geyser biome, which he used to create an opening on Yatsuhashi to defeat him.

Judging from the nonchalant way he talked about killing Tukson, Mercury appears to have no qualms about killing, even light-heartedly joking about it afterwards with Emerald. Although subtle, he also speaks in a derogatory fashion about Tukson even after having murdered him in cold blood.

In "It's Brawl in the Family," he appeared to have shown genuine concern when spotting Qrow, knowing full well he poses as a substantial threat to Cinder's agenda and shown total cooperation in letting her know of all the details he could gather.

Fighting Style


Based on his fight with Pyrrha in Volume 2, Mercury is shown to be a very acrobatic and agile fighter who relies on quickly overpowering his opponent with complex kicks that imply a near-mastery of martial arts that resemble Tae-Kwon-Do. He's also capable of a break-dancing style, similar to Capoeira.

He was able to outmaneuver and disarm Pyrrha, although he forfeits as soon as he discovers her Semblance and preventing her from finding out much about his combat skills. Due to the lack of Mercury's true skills in this match, it is likely that the entire time he simply had been toying with Pyrrha.

Mercury reveals his high level of skill in the doubles round of the Vytal Festival, dominating both Coco and Yatsuhashi single-handed with his impressive feats of speed and strength. He also seems capable of briefly moving faster than the eye can see, almost appearing to teleport, however this may simply be another feature attained by his super-human speed.

Mercury is very observant, as he notices Pyrrha using her polarity to interfere with his kicks after experiencing her Semblance a single time only. Mercury also demonstrates impressive physical strength, as he was easily able to endure Yatsuhashi grabbing him by the neck and throwing him quite the distance from the Colosseum's middle area all the way to the geyser biome behind them with relative ease and also block a powerful sword strike from Yatsuhashi with just his legs while the shock wave devastated the surrounding arena.

Weapons
Mercury's weapon of choice is a set of greaves equipped with a firing mechanism built into them similar to Ember Celica. The similarities between the two weapons extend even to their visual similarities.



Similar to Yang's usage of her Ember Celica, Mercury is capable of firing explosive rounds from his greaves whenever he kicks for moderate to long-range combat. Most of the time he's seen firing his greaves is usually mid-handspring, also known as a kip/kick-up or when maneuvering his body in a manner similar to break-dancing, more specifically; "Thomas flairs" and "airflares", and is able to fluently translate from his aggressive Tae-Kwon-Do-like kicking style strikes to this Capoeira style.

Mercury can also control the rounds through unknown means, possibly through his Semblance, a currently unknown form of Dust or through the combined efforts of Dust and Aura. During his tournament fight, he gathered multiple rounds that spun around him in a manner similar to that of a cyclone surrounding him before the rounds were later unleashed in a devastating flurry.

Trivia

 * Mercury alludes to the Roman god Mercury, whose Greek equivalent is Hermes.
 * Mercury's emblem, a winged boot, as well as his weapons, may be an allusion to the winged sandals of the mythological Mercury.
 * His colors are black, gray, and silver, likely to give off the tones of the element mercury.
 * Both Mercury and Emerald lacked 3D models in Volume 1, using 2D still image sprites instead.
 * Mercury's last name, Black, was originally suggested by his previous voice actor J.J. Castillo.
 * Gray and Miles described Mercury to J.J. as "a hipster douchebag, but he's cool."
 * In an interview with AfterBuzz TV, J.J. claims that if Mercury were going all-out, he would have been able to defeat Pyrrha, though he admits this claim is biased. He also hints that Mercury's backstory will be explored in Volume 3. When describing his voice acting for the character, he says that it's basically him doing a bad impression of Jack Nicholson.
 * In "It's Brawl in the Family", Mercury mentions that Qrow smelled like his dad after a long day, implying that Mercury's father is/was an alcoholic.