Clutching gently to his daughter's shoulder, Brutus let Mercy lead him into the darkness.

Natalie kept a rear-guard, checking over her shoulder every so often to make sure they weren't being followed.

~-~

Styx looked a little nervous. "You're not going to throw anything else at me, are you?" he asked, slowly moving towards the entrance hall.

(Clarissa?)

Bijou smiled back at him.

Jason smiled back. "So tell me a little more about yourself?" He asked, a little cheered up from his shower.

_

Mercy treaded through the mine, heading for one of the exits, whilst carefully avoiding the jagged, silver-veined walls.

Bijou paused and shrugged slightly, "What do you want to know?"

"Whatever comes to mind" Jason remarked.

Bijou paused for a minute, "Well... you know who my family is... ummm... I like to bake."

"I've never had anything baked before..." Jason said, softly.

Bijou frowned a little but nodded.

Franziska and Natalie carefully dodged the silver walls. Natalie was almost as handicapped as Brutus, not possessing any sort of nightvision of her own, and was forced to half-cling to the vampire's gear so she didn't get separated.

Eventually, a light shone near the end of the tunnel.

"What do you bake?" Jason asked, it was like he was spinning an alien word around his mouth, testing it.

_

Mercy tentatively sniffed the air for adversaries as she stepped in the direction of the light.

"It all depends. I bake a lot of cookies, cakes, pies, pastries of sorts." she said, "I used to have a little bakery, before the war started up."

"What happened to it?" Jason asked.

Brutus followed her, peering tentatively into the light as his eye readjusted to it. Franziska and Natalie were doing likewise, keeping their eyes and ears open for anything amiss.

"When James Saxon took over, I had to close it."

Jason nodded. "Of course"

_

Mercy stepped closer and closer to the light, pretty sure that in other situations, she wasn't supposed to do that. She went slow, so her eyes could adjust to the glare as she went.

Bijou nodded slightly.

"I don't really know much about the world before the war" Jason said.

"Sometimes it was nicer, sometimes it wasn't. It just depends on who and where you were."

"Who and where were you?" Jason asked her.

Bijou smirked, "I was a lot of different places. But most of those places, for most of my life, didn't like me very much."

"Why not? You seem very likeable" Jason said.

Bijou looked at him, "I was a poor black woman." she said, "I was kind of at the bottom of the social ladder for most of my life."

Jason raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, people didn't like you because you were black?"

Bijou shook her head, "I was born when slavery was normal. Most of my family was thought of as second class citizens."

"Because you hard dark skin?" Jason asked.

Bijou nodded.

"...That's ludicrous... how can that even matter to anyone?" Jason asked.

"It used to."

"Well that's stupid" Jason muttered. "Even I was raised to know that it doesn't matter what colour your skin is"

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