Little Ashes (Rewritten)
Little Ashes
Sunset parried Cinder’s stroke with the stock of Sol Invictus, but the force behind the blow was enough to push her backwards. Her platform shoes scraped against the ground as she skidded backwards.
Sunset countered, lashing out with the rifle-butt like a club aimed at Cinder’s head. Cinder ducked. Sunset let go of the rifle with one hand and loosed a beam of emerald energy from the palm of her hand. It struck the courtyard stone in a shower of debris as Cinder leapt athletically away, doing a backflip before landing gracefully on her feet.
“You know, I really envy you at times,” Cinder murmured.
Sunset reversed her rifle so that she could once more use it as a gun. With one hand, she felt along the wooden stock until her fingers made out the scar that Cinder had made in the wood. “I thought you envied me all the time?”
Cinder smirked. A chuckle rose from her lips. “Oh, I do, of course. Every day, every waking moment, I am consumed with envy. But sometimes, such as now, I confess that I am… particularly envious.”
“'Particularly'?” Sunset repeated. “Why’s that?”
“Because you can use your magic freely, and nobody cares,” Cinder declared, in a tone so casual as to almost be offhand.
Sunset felt a chill feeling run down her spine, which was funny, because at the exact same moment, sweat started to trickle down her arms. “What are you talking about?”
Cinder’s laughter was cold. “Come now, Sunset; we’re all alone in the night out here, with no one but the stars to hear our darkest secrets. You don’t have to pretend or pass your talents off as a semblance. We’re both initiated into the higher mysteries. What you do is magic, and I’m guessing that you’ve had it for some time, considering you’re so much better at it than you are with any of your other skills.” She chuckled. “No offence intended, of course.” She began to circle Sunset, like a wolf circling the flock in the dead of night. She pointed one of her black blades at her opponent. “So my question to you is… where did you get it?”
“I was born with it,” Sunset growled. “My question to you is how do you know about magic, and why didn’t you say anything before now?”
“That’s two questions, but I’ll answer anyway, even though you didn’t really answer mine,” Cinder said. “Because I’m… a classy lady.” She laughed softly. “I know about magic because I know everything. My mistress told me all before she sent me out into the world to do her bidding. But she didn’t tell me about anyone quite like you.”
Sunset grinned. “Guess she didn’t quite tell you everything then, did she?”
“I know more than you could comprehend,” Cinder insisted. “Sunset, please, listen to me. There is more at stake here than you know. However clearly you think you see, I promise, you are blind to the truth. Professor Ozpin has made you blind and keeps you so; he will put out your eyes if you allow it. If you follow him, he will lead you into the abyss.”
“I am no one’s blind follower!” Sunset snapped.
“Are you not?” Cinder asked, sniffing. “Then prove it.”
“How?” Sunset demanded. “By joining you?”
“Why not?” Cinder replied “The world is changing, Sunset. There’s an east wind coming that will sweep away everything that all these people have ever known. Only those who are strong enough to survive, only those who deserve to survive will be spared when the storm breaks. Join me, Sunset. Prove that you are worthy of survival, as I already know you are.”
“And what if I do?” Sunset said. “What happens to Pyrrha? What happens to Ruby? What happens to Jaune or Blake, what happens to any of them?”
Cinder’s smile was positively vicious. “As I said: only those who deserve to survive.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Sunset muttered. “If you expect me to take a deal like that, then you don’t really respect me at all, do you?”
“I respect your intelligence.”
“But not my integrity.”
Cinder laughed. “Creatures like us don’t have integrity, Sunset; it’s a luxury we can’t afford. We do whatever we have to do to survive, to thrive, to achieve our dreams.”
“I’m nothing like you!” Sunset lied, because she was a lot more like Cinder than she would have cared to admit.
She had a feeling – call it a hunch – that the next words to come dripping out of Cinder’s mouth would be to point out exactly how much of a lie that was, how alike she and Sunset were, and so Sunset forestalled that by firing the last two bullets in her rifle’s cylinder.
Cinder blocked them, somehow, again, but in that moment of distraction when she was doing that, Sunset had teleported right in front of her and hit her across the face with the stock of her rifle.
Cinder staggered backwards; Sunset pursued. Sunset swung again; Cinder parried with her obsidian blades, swept Sunset’s guard away, and slashed across her midriff. It was Sunset’s turn to retreat and Cinder’s to pursue, black blades swinging.
“Is this all there is?” Sunset demanded as Cinder battered her strokes against her guard like the waves beating upon the shore. “You betrayed the whole world, and for what? Because you think you’re better than everybody else? Is that really all there is?” At least the White Fang have a cause.
“What more is there, in the end?” Cinder shouted, and she threatened to slip a stroke through Sunset’s guard.
Sunset fended her off with a beam of magic that threw her off her stride, even if she was able to evade it. “A reason?” Sunset suggested. “What are you hoping to get from this? What’s going on? I just want to know why.”
“Why? If you’re not going to join me, then what does it matter?” Cinder demanded. She slashed; Sunset pirouetted out of the way and countered with a sideways blow, which Cinder ducked to get under Sunset’s guard. Sunset retreated, parrying before countering with a thrust of her bayonet.
“Because I want to know why you ended up this way,” Sunset said. I want to know how far you’ve gone and how close I was to becoming just like you. I want to know… I want to know how someone so charming, how someone who won me over so completely, how someone I could care so much about so quickly, could come to this. “If you tell me why, then maybe I can help you!”
“I don’t need your help!” Cinder yelled. Her blades clashed against Sunset’s rifle, glass sword scoring the wood as Sunset twirled her weapon to strike with butt and blade intermittently. “I don’t need help from anyone!” She swept Sol Invictus out of Sunset’s hands to land in one of the flowerbeds. “I am about to change this world!”
Cinder thrust straight at Sunset.
“But why?” Sunset repeated, as she turned and leaned out of the path of Cinder’s oncoming blade. And as the blade swept past and Cinder’s momentum carried her forwards, Sunset reached out and grabbed her by the arm.
In that moment, she was filled with a desire to know, to understand what could drive Cinder Fall, the person she’d trusted, the person she’d fought beside, the person who had seemed so like herself in so many ways, to turn against the kingdoms for reasons that couldn’t possibly be so nebulous as she was making them seem. Sunset wanted to know – she needed to know – what had produced someone who was so like Sunset but who revelled in describing herself as a monster. She wanted to know – she needed to know – if they were really as alike as Sunset had thought and Cinder was making out. She wanted to know – she needed to know – if she could have turned out like Cinder seemed to be.
She wanted to know. She needed to know. She was filled with a desire to know that burned within her, and so, as Sunset’s hand closed around Cinder’s wrist, she felt something spark within herself, and then a feeling like ten thousand volts running down her arm. Sunset’s head jerked backwards; her eyes widened as they were filled with pure light, brilliant white light consuming the night sky and the high towers of Beacon and anything else that she could see. There was nothing but the light, no sound but a high pitched whistling in her ears, no sensations but the electric feeling rushing down her arm and then…
And then…
Then Sunset saw.
“What’s that place, Momma?”
Sunset saw a young Cinder Fall – she saw things, but she also understood things instinctually, as if she’d seen all of this before – a mere child, who barely went up to the knee of the woman holding her hand as they walked down the Argus street. Not just any woman. Cinder’s mother.
She – the mother – was wearing the uniform of an Atlesian officer. She’d been stationed at the base in Argus; she’d fallen in love with a local man, a Mistralian; Cinder was the result.
Cinder’s mother looked at where she was pointing, to the grand, old-fashioned building nestling behind a pair of wrought-iron gates at the end of the street. She knelt down beside her daughter. “That is Sanctum Combat School; it’s where the next generation of huntsmen and huntresses start their training.”
“Could I go there and become a huntress too one day?”
Cinder’s mother chuckled. “If you still want to.” She kissed young Cinder on the forehead. “You can be whatever you want to be in this world, muffin.”
“Really? I can be anything?”
“Anything at all,” Cinder’s mother said. “And I can’t wait to see what you decide to do with your life.”
“Daddy, where’s Momma?” Cinder asked. “When is she coming home?”
Cinder’s father was a tall, well-dressed Mistralian man, who had the dark hair and amber eyes that his daughter had inherited. He sat at a writing desk, side-on to his daughter, and he didn’t look down at her, even as she stood looking up at his face, desperate for answers.
His whole body seemed to shudder, and as Sunset watched, he gripped the pen in his hand especially tightly.
Cinder’s mother was dead. Sunset knew that, even if the little girl who was asking where she was didn’t. Whether it was because of some especial understanding or because she knew how these stories went, Sunset wasn’t entirely sure, but she knew. She knew in the same way that she knew this man at the desk was Cinder’s father, that this Argus townhouse that might have looked elegant and comfortable if the lights hadn’t been turned out to shroud so much of it in darkness was her home.
“Daddy?” Cinder repeated. “Daddy, where’s Momma?”
Her father’s head bowed. “Ashley… your mother…”
Ashley. That was her name. Cinder’s name, or at least the name she used to have. Ashley Little-Glassman, because her mother had decided to hyphenate her name, and her father had agreed to it being passed on to their daughter. Thinking that… it gave Sunset a headache just to think about it, as if the fact of Cinder’s old name was physically painful.
Painful to her. To Cinder. Part of a past that she would rather forget if she could.
“Ashley,” her father repeated. “Your mother… she’s gone.”
Cinder – Ashley, but Sunset found it easier to think of her by the name she knew – blinked in confusion. “'Gone'? What do you mean, gone? Where did she go, Daddy?”
“I don’t know,” her father said. He put his head in his hands, and Sunset could see that there were tears running down his face. “I don’t know; I only know that…that we’re never going to see her again.”
Sunset had known that it was coming, but that didn’t stop it from hitting her like a punch to the gut when it arrived. It felt as though she’d lost her own mother, except that Sunset had never known her own mother, and so, she’d never had any need to mourn for her. Except now, faced with the death of Cinder’s mother, she could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.
This was a woman that she’d only seen once, in somebody else’s memory. She didn’t know her at all, she had no idea what kind of a mother she’d been, she knew nothing about her as a person, and yet, here she was, about to weep for her, feeling the loss of her as though she’d been told that Princess Celestia had passed away in Equestria during her absence. She felt emptiness inside of her, an absence that might never go away.
Why was she feeling like this? Was this… was this how Cinder had felt?
Cinder’s eyes were wide, and she stared at her father in silence, as the gloomy darkness that had already claimed so much of the house closed in around her, until the only light was a small patch around young Cinder herself, with no source that Sunset could discern.
And then even that light was snuffed out, and everything was plunged into darkness.
It rained during the funeral. Her mother was buried with full military honours; a section of Atlesian soldiers in tall hats fired a three-round salute, and afterwards, the commanding officer – a stern-faced woman whose hair was starting to turn grey – folded up the Atlesian flag and presented it to Cinder.
As though a rag torn from a pole was a reasonable substitute for a mother and her love.
She hated that flag. She hated that flag and everything it stood for. As far as she was concerned, that flag – and the Atlesian military who upheld it – were the ones who took her mother away.
“Ashley, I have something to tell you,” her father said, as he knelt down before her. Cinder looked a little taller, but she couldn’t have been very much older because – slight increase in her height aside – she still looked like an adorable little kid. “We’re leaving Argus and going back to my home in Mistral.”
“Leaving? You mean… for good?”
“Yes,” her father said. “I… I can’t stay here after… I know that things haven’t been perfect since… but they’ll get better, I promise. Once we get to Mistral, we can start over again.”
Cinder hadn’t been too sorry to say goodbye to Argus. Sunset wasn’t entirely sure how she knew that, but her best guess was that she was connected to Cinder’s thoughts somehow. It was as though when she had touched Cinder’s arm, she’d been able to read her memories. Was this her semblance? Was she a touch telepath?
No, or not entirely, anyway. She wasn’t just reading Cinder’s thoughts, or even seeing them. She was no detached observer in this place. She had felt Cinder’s grief for the loss of her mother as raw as if it were her own. She had felt her anger and her rage at Atlas for taking her mother from her. And now, she felt Cinder’s loneliness. She hadn’t been sad to leave Argus because there was nothing there for her. She hadn’t had any friends there. She kept to herself, and the other children avoided her. That was a feeling that Sunset knew well enough: reading in the corner of the playground when everyone else was fooling around, convincing yourself that they were wasting their lives while you were making the most of your time because it made you feel a little better; listening to their conversations and wishing that you understood so that you could join them; convincing yourself that the one person in the world who loved you was the only one you needed.
And sometimes, that was all that you needed. As Sunset watched memories of Cinder’s father teaching her how to shoot with a bow, how to fight with two swords the way he said her mother had – Cinder was always using wooden swords at her age – as she watched the way that her father would buy Cinder these glass figurines, these little animals until she had a whole menagerie of them on the shelves of her bedroom wall; as she watched the way she’d run eagerly to him when he came home… as she watched all of that, Sunset was once more reminded uncomfortably of herself. She was reminded of the way, whenever Princess Celestia had to travel to Manehatten or Baltimare or somewhere like that, Sunset would count the days until she came home again, make sure that she was there, one of the first people to greet the princess on her return. She was reminded of the way that they’d sit on the throw rug in front of the fire with hot chocolate as Princess Celestia would explain this or that principle of magic to her. She was reminded of the way she always felt so warm, so safe, so loved in the princess’ presence. She was reminded of the softness of Celestia’s coat when they nuzzled one another.
Sometimes, that one person who loved you was all that you needed to get by in life and be happy… but unfortunately, it was rarely possible to stay that way for long.
“Ashley, I want you to meet Lady Clytemnestra Kommenos,” Cinder’s father said, as he presented this woman to his daughter. “She and I are going to be married this fall.”
From Sunset’s perspective, Lady Kommenos seemed to be cut very much from the same cloth as Pyrrha’s mother; they didn’t look alike, but in their carriage and bearing – not to mention the fine quality of their attire – they were very much of a type: proud old women with more ancestors than they had money, and they had a lot of money. Lady Kommenos, it turned out, had two daughters of her own: Philonoe and Phoebe.
Phoebe? Phoebe Kommenos, and didn’t Lady Nikos refer to a Lady Kommenos? Phoebe is Cinder’s stepsister?
The look of the two girls was right: the young Phoebe in Cinder’s memories had eyes as dark as night and hair of spun gold, just like Phoebe’s roots when the dye started to wear off; she wore her hair in curls, long ringlets falling on either side of her face.
They kept that quiet, didn’t they?
No. No, it was more than that. It wasn’t just that they were pretending not to recognise one another when their paths happened to cross. Cinder had frozen up outside the ice cream parlour, and that hadn’t been an act, Sunset would bet Soteria on it.
Cinder had been terrified then.
As she was terrified now. Sunset could feel the fear, the anger – she could feel it – she felt angry and afraid herself. She wanted to fight and flee at the same time, and Phoebe was the cause.
Sunset wasn’t sure that she wanted to find out why.
“I want you to try and make friends with your stepsisters,” her father told her. “It isn’t right for you to be so alone.”
“I’m not alone, Daddy,” Cinder said. “I have you.”
Her father had smiled at her. “I know you do, my sweet, but I’d like for you to have friends your own age. Will you try, for my sake?”
Cinder nodded. “I’ll try, Daddy, I promise.”
Unfortunately, Phoebe and Philonoe were not greatly interested in being friends with their lonely stepsister. Phoebe dreamed of being a great huntress, aided by the finest weapons and armour that her mother and stepfather could buy for her, and she delighted in using her stepsister as a training dummy. Philonoe was more feminine, which only meant that she preferred to hurt her stepsister with words rather than with blows. On one particular night, after seven year-old Phoebe came home grievously upset because a young prodigy two years her junior – a certain Pyrrha Nikos – had beaten her handily in the Junior Tournament, she had taken it out on Cinder so badly that even her father had noticed the results.
For the most part, however, her father’s presence prevented the Kommenos girls from going too far, and when he and his daughter were together, things were as they had been before, and if the days of happiness were more intermittent, at least Cinder could be happy with the one person in the world who cared for her.
And then Cinder’s father died, and whatever troubles Cinder had felt before were shown to be mere prologue to the misfortunes that now descended upon her head.
“Stop it!” Cinder shrieked, as Phoebe and Philonoe gleefully smashed all of her glass animals, tearing the fragile ornaments from the shelves to smash to shards and splinters on the floor. Any pieces that survived the fall in recognisable fashion, Phoebe stamped upon until they were as broken as the rest. “Stop. Please stop.”
They did not stop. They didn’t even hesitate. Cats and dogs, horses and camels, elephants and tigers, they were all hurled down to the floor as though they had incurred the wrath of the gods.
They were so fragile. As frail as human lives. And like those lives, they were destroyed.
Sunset felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes as she watched Cinder’s collection, lovingly built up with gifts from her father, destroyed by her stepsisters for no other reason than because they could.
“Please,” Cinder pleaded, lunging towards Phoebe, grabbing her by the arm. “Please don’t; they’re all-”
Phoebe grabbed Cinder by the neck, and Sunset found herself recoiling in fear as Cinder was slammed into the wall.
“Don’t touch me again,” Phoebe snarled into Cinder’s face. “You know what will happen if you do, don’t you?”
Cinder whimpered, and sobbed and nodded frantically. Even Philonoe looked a little discomforted.
Phoebe smirked and released Cinder, who shrank to the ground in the corner of the room, huddling beneath the shelter of her frail arms as her beautiful menagerie was turned to broken glass.
And then, when the stepsisters' sport was done, they made her clean the debris off the floor.
Sunset could feel everything. She felt the confusion when she was stripped of her room and clothes and dressed in rags to work as a servant in her own house, the fury when she went out into the garden and screamed into the night because her parents had promised, they’d promised that they wouldn’t leave her, so where were they? Mother said that she wanted to see what Cinder did with her life, Father had promised that things would get better, but they’d just gotten so much worse, and they’d left her! Her own parents had abandoned her to the mercies of these people! She hated them. She hated all of them; she hated Phoebe and Philonoe and Lady Kommenos who made her do all the work around the house, and she hated mother and her father too for leaving her.
Sunset could feel all of it. The hate, the rage, the desire to get back at each and every one of them coursing through her, burning away at her childhood kindness. She felt the brooding anger that accompanied each slight, the deadening sensation that came from trying to cope with a constant stream of insults and abuse, the ever-present brooding melancholy that consumed her. She felt everything that was done to Cinder as though it had been done to herself: the humiliation, the degradation, the way her home became a prison with the added insult that she was responsible for maintaining it.
“-never been so humiliated in all my life!” Lady Kommenos cried. “Lady Nikos practically laughed in my face!”
Phoebe looked down in shame. “It’s not my fault, Mother.”
“Of course it’s your fault, you stupid girl!” Lady Kommenos shouted. “Pyrrha made a laughingstock out of you. You couldn’t even land a single blow on her!”
“She’s cheating!” Phoebe snapped. “I know she is; I just don’t-”
Lady Kommenos’ hand struck swift and hard, slapping Phoebe across the face, twisting her head sharply.
“Enough!” Lady Kommenos snapped. “Do you have any idea how ludicrous you sound when you make such accusations? You make yourself seem not only useless, but a sore loser too. If all the money I spend on your training and equipment cannot deliver victory, then you could at least seek to impress the crowds with your grace and bearing in defeat!”
As she scrubbed the floor in that room, Cinder felt – and Sunset felt it too – a touch of well-deserved schadenfreude at Phoebe’s humiliation.
Unfortunately, she made the mistake of snorting loud enough for Phoebe to hear her.
And the look in Phoebe’s eye as she looked at Cinder drove all pleasure from Cinder’s heart completely.
Cinder shivered, and Sunset shivered too. She was afraid. She was terribly, terribly afraid. The room was dark, and Sunset felt as though there was a monster in there with them, out of sight, waiting, prowling. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t. She did not dare. Her legs – her whole body – was frozen in place.
She was hiding in one of the pantry cupboards, in the dark, her body contorted to fit in that small space. She covered her mouth with both hands, even as her eyes welled up.
She didn’t want to risk any sound getting out.
“Cinder?” Phoebe called in a sing-song voice. “Come out, come out, wherever you are?”
Cinder didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound, because there was a monster in the kitchen, and she was desperate not to be found.
“Open your eyes, you have to get up,” Phoebe called, as Sunset could hear her footsteps in the kitchen beyond the darkness.
“Monsters are coming to gobble you up.
Out of bed, hide under the floor,
The monsters are breaking down the door.”
Cinder stifled a moan of fear and tried to shrink back yet further into the cupboard.
“Hide in the cupboard, are they near?
Monsters know how to smell your fear.”
Cinder’s fear only rose at that; she began to quiver with panic, wondering if she had chosen the right hiding place, if maybe she should have hidden somewhere else, if maybe the garden would have been better.
“You’ll hear the screams and then you’ll know:
Mommy and Daddy can’t help you now.”
The cupboard door opened. Candlelight flooded inside, dispelling the darkness to reveal Phoebe, a smile like a knife upon her face.
“Close your eyes, don’t look up,” she said.
“Here comes a monster to gobble you up.”
Cinder screamed, but no help came. She beat at Phoebe, but it was all in vain as she was dragged, kicking and screaming and struggling to no avail, out of the cupboard and into the kitchen.
Sunset didn’t want to see what was coming next. She didn’t want to be a witness to it, she didn’t want to be a part of it. She turned away, she closed her eyes, she covered her ears against the screaming.
But she felt it, nonetheless.
She felt it all.
It was her stepsisters who started calling her Cinder instead of Ashley; they called it her for so long, and they and her stepmother were the only people that she spent any time with, that it had become her name. Who was Ashley? A foolish, spoiled little girl who hadn’t understood the way the world really worked, an idiot who believed in love and happiness and that the arms of a parent would keep you safe. Ashley was another girl, who had lived another life, a pleasant life and one to be envious of, but not her life. Not her. That hadn’t happened to her. All of those things that they remembered had happened to somebody else. She was Cinder. Cinder Little-Glas- no. No, that wasn’t her either. Those names meant nothing to her. They belonged to the people who had abandoned her. They were somebody else’s parents, and she didn’t want their name. She was Cinder, Cinder nothing, Cinder of the fireplace, Cinder the slave; just Cinder.
Cinder the Destined. When she was not working, she read; she read the old Mistralian warrior epics, full of great princes and warriors driven on by destiny to great and terrible fates. If they had endured adversity, it was no matter, because they had destiny carrying them forward, and secure in that knowledge, they had gone forth and endured all trials. That was her; that was what she had to be: destined, and confident in her destiny. It didn’t matter how much they teased her, they beat her, they insulted her; it didn’t matter what they made her do or where they made her sleep. All that mattered was that she had a destiny, a great destiny, the greatest destiny that had ever been seen in the world of Remnant, and she would overcome all of this and all of them because destiny had willed it so.
Phoebe went to Atlas Academy; despite the money lavished on her training and equipment, she continued to be, at best, an average fighter. Her path crossed that of Pyrrha Nikos more than once, and every time, she was effortlessly swatted aside. And while she was away at school, Cinder would steal her training weapons in the middle of the night and resume the instruction that her father had begun: with the bow, with the twin swords, with the javelin. She unlocked her aura simply by persistently willing that it should be so. She trained by night until she was at least as good as her stepsister was who trained during the day and with no expense spared.
When she was fourteen years old, with stepsister Phoebe away at Atlas, Cinder Nothing had locked her stepmother and stepsister Philonoe inside the house and then burned it to the ground.
Sunset could feel the heat of the flames as she stood and watched it burn. She could feel the satisfaction as her stepmother and stepsister screamed for help which did not come. She could feel the glee at being free of them, the joy at their being dead, the feeling that once again, life lay open before her to choose her own path.
She could be whatever she wanted to be in this world.
She had fought, she had killed, she had stolen; she had disdained the criminal gangs who infested Mistral’s lower levels and had rained down wrath on any who tried to use her for their purposes. Cinder had aimed at higher things than simply being a skilled enforcer.
She had her sights upon the upper town, upon the high society that her father and her unlamented stepmother had been a part of.
Sunset saw a party, a glittering Mistralian party, more crowded even than the reception that she, Sunset herself, had attended in Mistral as Pyrrha’s guest. Everyone was so splendidly turned out; jewellery glittered upon every lady’s neck and arm and finger, and on many of the men as well. The colours were a riot of golds and reds and purples. The air was rich with the scent of expensive perfume. The great and the good of Mistral mingled and talked and danced and ordered the whole kingdom as they willed.
Mistral was ruled from such events as these, Cinder realised; the policies of the kingdom were set not in the council chamber but by men and women of good family setting the world to rights over hors d’oeuvres, accompanied by glasses of exquisitely aged wine that had been laid down in the days of their many-times great-grandfathers.
Sunset saw Pyrrha, younger then but quite recognisable, already the talk of the city; the great and the good fawned over her; Pyrrha’s mother stood over her, basking in the reflected glory of her daughter’s skills as people talked of her as a champion of the regional tournament, of the city, even of the Vytal Festival.
It was strange; as herself, Sunset could recognise the signs of Pyrrha’s discomfort with all of this, the way that she didn’t talk much, the way she looked and held herself with subtle discomfort… but Cinder didn’t notice any of that, and so, through her memories, Sunset could feel all of the resentment, the rage that Cinder had felt – and still felt, now that Sunset reconsidered some of the things that Cinder had said about Pyrrha – towards her: the precious princess of Mistral, the spoiled brat, the girl who had everything she ever wanted handed to her because everyone loved her so much, the girl who never had to work for anything in her whole life because she was pretty and rich and came from the right family, and so, she didn’t have any worries. She got all the chances, she got all the choices, she could be anything that she wanted in this world, while Cinder… it was as though people could tell, despite her stolen dress, that she didn’t belong here, that she wasn’t one of them, that she was an outsider, unwanted, unclean.
She hated them. She hated all of them. Sunset could feel the rage, the hollow absence of all other feelings; no one to love, no one to cherish, nothing but hatred, hatred incarnate, hate for Mistral, hate for Pyrrha, hate for Phoebe away at Atlas, hate for the high society that didn’t want her, hate for the parents who had abandoned her, hate for the whole wretched system of the world that seemed determined to destroy people like her.
She had lived a life of fear and powerlessness, but no more; she would be the one to put others in fear with her power. She would be the enemy of this world and its destruction.
She was Cinder, and she would see this whole rotten edifice… Fall.
Sunset saw-
“NO! Get out of my head!”
Sunset was jolted out of Cinder’s thoughts and feelings as she felt a powerful punch to the stomach that threw her, pinwheeling through the air, to land flat on her face on the stone.
Sunset groaned just a little as she looked up. Cinder was gasping. Her face was pale and she looked… she looked afraid.
“What…” Cinder murmured. “What was that?”
Sunset started to push herself up off the ground. “Did… did all of that really happen to you?”
“Stay where you are!” Cinder snapped, and Sunset had the sense that she was now – perhaps for the first and only time – seeing the real Cinder, stripped of all the masks that she used to hide herself from the world and all those in it. “Stay away from me.”
“Cinder…” Sunset murmured. “Ashley-”
“Don’t call me that!” Cinder snarled. “I... I care for you, Sunset; you make me feel... but if you call me by that name again, I will burn you from the inside out, I swear it!” She breathed heavily, in and out. “My name… my name is Cinder Fall, the harbinger of this world’s destruction! I’m not… I’m not some stupid little girl who believed that her mother loved her and that her father would protect her from all danger! I am Cinder Fall, and my destiny will not be denied! Not by Ozpin, not by Ironwood, not by Pyrrha Nikos, not by all the power of Atlas and Mistral! And not by you either, Sunset Shimmer. If you have really seen what you were never meant to see, then you have to know that I won’t stop until-”
She was stopped in mid-flow by a bright spotlight suddenly shining down upon her, illuminating her like the star of a play.
Sunset looked up to see an Atlesian dropship, the first of several swooping down out of the night sky, shining the spotlight down on Cinder.
“This is the Atlesian military. Keep your hands where we can-”
Cinder ran. She turned and ran, fleeing into the night with the Atlesian dropship in pursuit.
Sunset did not pursue. She wasn’t really dressed for a fight, she didn’t have her dust… and as one hand went to her stomach, to the scar that Adam had given her, Sunset couldn’t help but reflect on how badly it seemed to go for when she pushed her luck in battle.
So she stood there, her enemy gone, but her soul full of the feelings that that enemy had left behind.
She could still feel it. All the anger, all the rage, all the bitterness. When she thought about Atlas, Cinder’s disdain mingled with her own feelings towards it, amplifying the bitter memories that she had about Canterlot and warring with the attachment she felt towards RSPT. When she thought about Pyrrha, Cinder’s hatred mingled with her own affection like oil and water, her thoughts flickering between her own feelings and those of Cinder from moment to moment.
Sunset would have liked – she would very much have liked – to say that she had never felt so much anger and hate inside anyone before, but that wasn’t true. She had felt it before: inside herself.
Thinking about Cinder was like looking in a mirror.
And it was terrifying.
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So Sunset's Semblance is her geode power? Damn, and here I have hoped for Daydream Shimmer action.
Well, it doesn't matter, at least we got some Cinder (Ashley) background. Though I am really interested to see where the story will go from now on. Cinder and her team have to escape the authorities and are forced to leave Beacon Academy posthase, Ozpin, Ironwood and everybody else know now who Roman's boss is, meaning that Season 3 events like the festival's end and the Fall of Beacon can not happen like it did in canon. Penny's identity remains a secret, Roman and Neo are already captured, Cinder couldn't download Dr. Watt's virus.
As for Adam, he won't be able to become the White Fang leader, because the Atlas military and their robots won't be compromised, essentially making it impossible for the Vale branch to invade. Besides, without the virus, no broadcast can be done, so no Grimm can be attracted by fear of the ones watching the tournament, meaning no chaos to use as a way to infiltrate.
I wonder how Salem and Cinder will adapt to these changes. Or how Cinder attempts to get the rest of Amber's magic.
On that note, I really like and prefer stories with their own storyline. Most people just recap the most important plot events without further changes, which is pretty boring in my opinion.
Oh god damnit... Her Semblance is her Geode power. Should have seen that coming.
...Oh my god... In a world of character designs drawing inspiration from fairytales, how did I miss Cinder being based on Cinderella for so long. I mean, her symbol is literally just two heel-like slippers in the shape of a heart. Unless you just came up with her backstory for this canon. I am not caught up on episodes, so I am not entirely sure which.
Well. Now the question is how long can Sunset keep her true Semblance a secret?
9438226
I....can't 100% agree with this. I mean, we were in Twilight's perspective when Cinder was using the CCT, so we don't actually know if she was able to upload the virus while she was deleting Twilight's work. I mean, she transferred the virus from her scroll in canon, didn't she?
Ahh man... she didn't get eye lasers as her semblance.
Well anyway, that was a great backstory that you've developed for Cinder, either that or I really need to watch Season 6. It was pretty snazzy how you made her story parallel with Cinderella's, like how the other characters are based off of other fables. What I'm wondering now is, 'what happened to Phoebe.'
No.
9438242
Well people already think she has a ridiculously versatile semblance as it is so what difference is one more power? Not only that I don't see Sunset wanting to use it too often since she is subjecting herself to other people's emotions and is a massive invasion of privacy. And besides, I doubt that she would keep this from her team, and Ozpin already knows about her magic.
9438246
Well, we will see. Perhaps she succeeded, perhaps not, but surely they will now thoroughly check the system and every computer for any kind of virus or hack attack.
9438279
On that I agree. And with Twilight, there is every possibility that the virus, if it was uploaded, will be purged.
9438262
I wonder if this will actually cause trust issues for some people. For one, we don't know how Sunset's Semblance works, it could activate whenever Sunset "really wants to know something". And as you said, this is a pretty invasive kind of ability, I wouldn't feel so comfortable around a mind reader. Hell, Sunset's Semblance is flashy, but she could perhaps use it on people when they sleep to look for secrets and memories she wants to know, if one goes down a darker route. Though the biggest drawback is that she is not able to move and an easy target for everybody and everything. Maybe, if Cinder wouldn't have been caught off-guard, she could have seriously injured Sunset. Or you can resist her Semblance, if one has a strong mind.
Whoa. Revelations all around. Well, it doesn't look like Sunset had a chance to demonstrate what abilities her magic can really do and I'm not sure if she realized that Cinder has magic of her own. But I must admit, it was so good to see Sunset unlocking her power to see into the memories of others. So good in fact, that when it started happening I actually started running joyfully around the house like too many of Pinkie's cupcakes!
It's frightening to see so many similarities between you and a monster, a thought that can shake you to the core. But always remember that humility is the hardest lesson and the best teacher. As a wise man once said, it isn't about how you are alike... it's how you are not.
And with that, you finally managed to make Cinder a full-fledged character instead of a plot device like in canon.
Also, I see I'm not the only one who was planning to dive into the Cinderella story in their fic. Great minds think alike.
So, Sunset has walked a mile in Cinder's shoes. Nothing allows for knowing how to fight another than knowing what makes them tick. Cinder probably fears Sunny more than anything else at the moment.
Ok I LOVE what you did with Cinder here. Like holy shit made one of my least favorite RWBY characters into someone incredibly interesting, and made it into a double meta reference (Cinder - Cinderella, Cinderelle is one of the origional Gimm’s fairy tales - Grimm are tge creatures Cinder’s aligned with). Incredible chapter, and you introduced her semblance and tied it into the equestria girls canon abilities too. A total hat trick for this chapter!
Well. That was a solid twist.
9438292
Well we know that your last point is at least partially true since Cinder forced Sunset out of her head. Whether or not you can stop it from taking root is something only time will tell. I'm predicting that time will be when Sunset tries to use this ability on Professor Ozpin due to trust issues. Another unknown is how long did this take in real time? If all of that happened within a time span even as long as a second then it becomes incredibly useful, if it takes longer it starts to significantly lose its practicality. At the very least it seems like the person she uses it on is just as stunned as she is so a longer time looking into a mind would be pretty useful in a SAPR VS 1 assailant scenario.
Nice to see the authorities finally show up. Shame they have zero chance of actually achieving anything but nonetheless it is good to see they exist.
Cinder really is a pitiable excuse for an individual.
Not sure where the ‘we are alike’ stuff comes from. We are defined by our choices, not our feelings. Miss Fall is actively working towards genocide and gleefully ripped out someone’s soul for her own enjoyment. Even canon Sunset, who mind-raped a school and intended to conquer a country, doesn’t match that level of monstrosity. This version isn’t even in shouting distance.
Sunset wanted the world to acknowledge her greatness. Cinder wants to watch the world burn.
9438438
I mean, Cinder was always based on Cinderella. That's not new with the fic. Although I will agree that getting the backstory here is infinitely better than the literally none we got from the show so far.
Excellent. Simply excellent.
Uh... I'm taking a wild guess that the second "Sunset" is supposed to be Cinder.
9438648
Uh no. Pretty sure that was said once Sunset went back on the offensive.
Sunset, you were just a selfish person who realized she could be better. Cinder is a cruel individual who takes out her own misery on everything she can reach. She's nothing like you.
Maybe I don't fully understand competitive sports, but 5 and 7 seem to me as too young for combat tournaments.
9438718
They exist. The level of contact and intensity of the fights are extremely low but they definitely have slots in combat tournaments with kids that age.
Really good. Definitely eager about the fallout of this on both sides. Cinder reliving those memories and bringing the emotions from early childhood etc.... back right to the surface. And sunset of course. Going forward things should be interesting. Given the nature of Salem and Ozpin and where that might head. I think Cinder deserves Daydream Shimmer to give her a hand.
Huh, so that's what Cinderella looks like when she turns to the dark side.
Wait...................CINDERella...................with a magical mother figure giving her unprecedented control over reality and offering her the means to take a position of political power............................. I know RWBY characters are based on fairy tales, but this is actually pretty damn spot on.
Welp, I thought it was going to either be Daydream or her element, seems it's her element.
A.much nastier version of it too. Sunset's own feelings are wrapped up in Cen... Ashley's now. That is not a good thing.
If it was someone who was less vibrent than Sunset, they could be taken over by someone else's though and feelings. Even now, Sunset's relationship with Pyrrha is going to change because of this.
If anything, priTwi needs need to rigger jig the mirror so Sunset can go home and hug her mother at lest once. Sunset won't, of course, but she should.
Huh. I was not expecting the Cinderella tie-in. I cannot complain, though; it more or less works for Cinder's character.
9438456
Ozpin's will is far stronger than Cinder's will ever be, in addition to whatever mental techniques he's gathered over the many millennia. I'm surprised that the person Sunset's probing can feel what's happening unlike the original version (though that could be limited to those with strong minds or magic), but considering how Sunset sadly didn't get far enough to even catch a tiny of glimpse Salem, I doubt that if Sunset were to try with Ozpin she would get any further than when his 'predecessor' first says 'hello'.
And that's a pretty generous estimate to begin with.
By the way, does anyone else remember that Zwei makes his appearance after the dance?
9439712
In regards to people being able to notice her mental intrusions, we need to remember that Sunset's 'Geode' power is no longer magic based, it is aura based. This means that it is perfectly natural for people with higher aura reserves would be able to defend themselves against it. And don't worry, when I made that comment, I too was fairly certain that if Sunset tried to use it on Ozpin she would barely get anything IF she even got anything. The fact that Sunset was able to get as much as she did the very first time she used her Semblance is rather surprising. Maybe another factor for how affective her power is is how she can relate to her target. After all, Sunset said that she was basically looking into a mirror when he did her trick so who knows.
9439823
And I'm sure we'll get those answers very soon. Despite this harrowing first experience, Sunset will be eager to learn more and consider everything about finally unlocking her Semblance.
9438535
I will actually defend the complete absence of any Cinder backstory in the show, because I think it's important for the themes that RWBY is trying to convey (I could be proven absolutely wrong when we get her backstory in volume 7, but I'll go out on a limb anyway): RWBY is actually a surprisingly subversive show, and the biggest subversion is the very idea of heroes and villains; life is not a fairytale, life is not a story, nobody is a 'hero' or a 'villain' outside of stories and if you go through life thinking that you are or could become one of those things then you are, at best, dangerously deluded.
This is at the heart of Pyrrha's tragedy: that she is torn between being a hero and fulfilling her destiny or an ordinary life with Jaune when actually there is no choice at all, and the hubris of believing otherwise leads to her death. This is why Penny gets killed off at the end of volume 3, because a robotic supersoldier learning to become human has no place in a story about fundamentally ordinary (for a value of ordinary which includes a world were everyone has superpowers) people caught up in the midst of a manichaean struggle because they happened to be at ground zero when it all went down.
And that is why Cinder has no apparent backstory or motivations beyond becoming the villain of a fighting anime, and why once she has apparently achieved that goal and triumphed she spends the rest of the series reeling from one humiliation to the next, because no one can actually be a 'villain' and no good can come from trying.
All of which being said, I find that idea to be a bit depressing and not altogether to my taste, which is why I've taken (or tried to take) a different tack with SAPR.
I think we all know the only way this thing between Sunset and Cinder can end
9439827
Canon Sunset was eager to learn about her empathy magic because aside from when she was teaming up to rainbow lazer things, she didn't have any. It was a chance to recapture some of her old life, even as gimped as it was compared to her unicorn magic. The context and setting she gained it in was much kinder as well.
This Sunset, on the other hand, still has her old magic available and her very first use of this new power was rather traumatic and has already compromised her own emotions. Yes, she'll certainly want to learn about and train it, as she needs to be able to control it; but she'll be just as if not more cautious about doing so than she is with Ruby's eyes.
Ashley Little-Glassman if knowledge is power then this little bit of knowledge is very powerful
9438482
She didn't get the later stuff, though, just the start.
9439877
No. Just... no.
Well, it looks like 0,5 Henderson by the Scale of Plot Derailment. Go, Sunset! You still have enemy Immortal to seal and wings to earn.
9438226
Why does everybody assume that she didn't download the virus? When she was talking to Twilight, Twilight knew that she was doing something with the computer other than erasing the tracker. She didn't start stocking towards Twilight or singing the nursery rhyme until after she had already uploaded the virus. It didn't take very long in the show, I can't see why it would in the story.
9445132
Well, even if she managed to download the virus, everybody already knows that she did something. So Atlas, especially Twilight, will search for any attempts of hacking, or any form of virus. Watt's virus will most likely be found and terminated in progress, so this McGuffin won't have any effect on this fic. Of course I could be wrong, in case Watt's virus can't be found, nor eliminated, but we will see.
Excellent development with both Subset's semblance, and how she got it, abd Cinder's backstory.
Great work.
Just remember, Sunset: It wouldn't disturb and frighten you this much if you really were a monster like Cinder.
Just like many of the lessons of MLP, it's really that simple.
A *Fall*en *Cinder*ella...I gotta admit thats clever.
These past two chapters have been great, but since when did Sunset consider Cinder her friend? Since when did she think of her with anything but suspicion? All of Cinder's obvious monologues and her attitude towards the rest of SAPR did nothing go warm her to Sunset. So why does Sunset feel betrayed? When did Twilight see them together to think they're friends? If anything, Sunset should feel vindicated
I do have to compliment your version of Cinder's backstory, though. Really took the Cinderella theme and ran with it until it fit perfectly in the world of Remnant
9447199
Is it? Can it really be that simple when we live in a world dominated not by black and white...but by shades of gray?
Oh
The Cinderella complex
Yeah that sucks
For all the relish of Cinder's backstory (which is all well and good), this is such a weird answer for Sunset, if it's even supposed to have meaning and not be some sort of non-committal response to Cinder. It could mean her birth mother, because pretty much everyone in Equestira is magical. More on the nose, it might point towards Celestia. Either way, her turning it on Cinder by dangling it as an unknown in front of her was definitely good of her.
To sidetrack a bit, one of the little plot bunnies that sticks in my head is, rather than... well, what does end up happening in Sunset's headspace happening, if her own turmoil overnight somehow forced her magic to returning her to her natural form, causing an entirely different chain of events for her avoidance of her team.
This has nothing to do with a mental image of Ruby gleefully carrying around a (rather unamused) pony Sunset Shimmer, to the concern of Pyrrah and Jaune. Or Sunset carrying Ruby via magic in revenge (despite Ruby enjoying it).Cinder really is representation of a Cinderella that Fell.
honestly, this chapter wasn't badly written, but it was my least favorite.
the lack of change was really annoying for how this doesn't care for the canon version.
I think it would had been better to combine your version (especially since it's focus on Cinder when she was a young child) and RWBY canon reveals from volume 8.
also, there isn't anything to say since it is far more like the old version of the story than the current one, and since the rewritten version is 10 times superior, especially with Sunset and Cinder relationship, so having a chapter far closer to the old version on all points, instead of the rewritten one really take out the enjoyment .
i don't think than it is badly written, but i really don't like it much, which is a first for this story.
While a fan of this chapter overall, and love the additional backstory, there is one part at the end that bugged me, as it did in the original. I do not like that at this point Sunset's semblance breaks her soul and has it take on a piece of those she touches. It comes up too inconsistently in the story to make sense as a part of the story overall and raises some questions. If Sunset absorbed too many people at once, would she lose her self/soul and just become a mix of those she touches? How long would it last? And if a part of her goes the other way as well, why is it seemingly lost to her and her control forever? I think as an upgrade as her semblance evolves makes sense, so long as Sunset remains in control. If it became some sort of empathic soul link/bond, that makes more sense in several ways: 1)Sunnykins stays herself but gains a deeper understanding of others 2) She still controls the link and decides how she bonds with others and 3) the other person maintains themself as well so the empathy could work both ways.
So Sunset’s semblance is a tele-empath (part telepath but as an empath that can see people’s memories and the feelings of those memories).