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. He now also wears a single notched belt with what appears to be a sash or bandana draped over it. Protecting his arms are sets of rerebraces and vambraces.

He has prosthetic legs, which attach part-way up his thighs. These legs are usually hidden, due to him always wearing pants and a pair of shoes. His armor hides what appear to be oddly-shaped scars on the outer sides and backs of both of his arms.

Haven Uniform
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.

Flashback
In "Beginning of the End", he was first seen wearing his signature zip jacket with the collar zipped all the way up, minus his armor. His pants were a dark orange, and he wore black boots.

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; 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 is later shown once more during his match against Coco Adel and Yatsuhashi Daichi in "Lessons Learned" where he takes advantage of the savanna biome to hide before lauching a surprise attack on Coco. He also uses the geyser biome to his advantage, using it to create an opening on Yatsuhashi and defeat him.

Judging from the nonchalant way he talks 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 appears to show genuine concern when spotting Qrow, knowing full well he poses as a substantial threat to Cinder's agenda and shows total cooperation in letting her know of all the details he can gather.

"Fall" and "Beginning of the End" demonstrates his acting ability, when he played a major role in framing Yang, where she attacked him, landing a serious injury; in truth, since he had prosthetic legs all along, the injury wasn't as grave as everyone else was led to believe. He's also very compliant with Cinder's orders, allowing himself to remain hidden for the immediate future, so as to not jeopardize the plan.

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.

Despite his focus on kicks, Mercury is not above using his hands to grapple, block, or redirect enemy attacks. In his fight with Coco and Yatsuhashi, he grabbed

☀them both and twisted them into an easier position for his kicks, and even stretched out Coco's arm, allowing him to kick her in the head. During his battle with Yang, he showed deft skill by weathering her barrage of punches using his arms, which Yang is known to be very skilled at throwing.

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 boots 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 boots whenever he kicks for moderate to long-range combat. Most of the time he's seen firing his boots are 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 Dust use. 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.

He can also use the boots to jump in midair.

Prosthetic Legs


Mercury has a pair of robotic legs, including a portion of his thigh and everything below the knee. He usually keeps them concealed under his pants. These robotic legs appear to give him enhanced performance in battle, such as being able to withstand blasts of fire without taking damage. This is most likely why he was able to withstand Yatsuhashi Daichi's strong hit from his weapon during their match and easily recovered. He is also able to very easily repair "injuries" to his legs that would otherwise put a normal human out of commission or require medical attention.

His kick-based fighting style, as well as his choice of weapon, are likely intended to take advantage of his prosthetic legs. His prosthetics are capable of firing blasts of air, which he makes great use of in combat.

Trivia

 * Mercury alludes to the Roman god Mercury, whose Greek equivalent is Hermes.
 * Mercury's emblem, a winged boot, as well as his legs and 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.
 * In Volume 1 his hair and eye color was violet.
 * 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 was an alcoholic.