The Enemy of My Enemy (Rewritten)
The Enemy of My Enemy
Pyrrha stepped forward, her body flowing like water into a guard with her shield held before her and her spear poised to strike as she placed herself protectively between Cinder and her team.
Ruby took a more direct approach and shot her.
Cinder raised her free hand, blocking the bullet … somehow. Pyrrha couldn’t work out how she was doing that; her semblance was something related to heat; that was how she was able to detonate her own arrows, how she was able to cause an explosion in the earth at the close of their duel, how she had been able to heat up Pyrrha’s arm; even the manipulation of the glass could be explained as some sort of superheating, but simply negating bullets like that? Could she be using convection currents to deflect them somehow? That wasn’t really what it looked like.
Could it be magic? But where from? She is not a pony, as Sunset is, she is from Mistral, and the only other kind of magic that we know of are the Maidens, and Professor Ozpin has them all kept safe and sound and secret.
So how is she doing that?
Cinder pouted. “Now that was just a little bit rude, wasn’t it? And quite unnecessary. I didn’t come here seeking battle.”
“Yet battle has found you as you have found us,” Pyrrha growled.
Armies manoeuvring upon the plain might not seek battle, but when they found each other, merely saying ‘I did not come here seeking battle’ would not be enough to stave off confrontation. Not when the enemy stood before them.
Time to finish what I started.
Her knees bent lower in preparation for her charge.
“Pyrrha!” Sunset’s voice cracked like a whip. She was silent a moment, her breathing heavy. “Don’t,” she said, quieter now, and more hesitant. “Ruby, lower your weapon.”
“Sunset?” Ruby asked, outrage coating her voice like syrup.
“If Cinder says that she did not come here for a fight, then I will not bring confrontation on,” Sunset declared. “I will … I will not take the risk. I do not wish any of your blood shed in this miserable place.”
'The risk'? The risk to who? Who is it that you’re protecting, Sunset? That was a harsh thought, an unworthy thought, a cruel thought to a dear friend, and yet … yet, Pyrrha could not unthink it.
Sunset supported me in the duel.
But she was not overly disappointed that Cinder had escaped with her life.
Pyrrha trusted Sunset. She trusted Sunset with her life, and if Sunset said that she would rather let Cinder escape with her life than risk the safety of any of Team SAPR in a fight with her now, then Pyrrha could not say that was not of a piece with Sunset’s thinking — cautious, if a little prone to short-termism. However … there was always something else when Cinder was involved, or Pyrrha feared there might be. A part of her wanted to grab Sunset by her shoulders and shake her, shouting ‘You are not kindred spirits! She is a monster, and she must be dealt with ere she does more harm!’
Another part of her remembered that Sunset had taken her side in the duel, uncomfortable as the whole thing had made her feel.
If it came to a fight, then Pyrrha had no doubt that Sunset would be on their side, but at the same time, she could not attribute Sunset’s desire to avoid battle wholly to their current situation. She could not escape the feeling that if they could somehow manage to go on not coming to grips with Cinder Fall, then Sunset would be much happier. She did not want the shadow to pass, only for it to keep its distance.
And that was cause for disquiet on Pyrrha’s part. It was why she had wanted to kill Cinder and banish the source of said disquiet for good and all.
All of which being said, there were valid reasons to indulge Cinder in her seeming desire to avoid battle, not least of which was the state of their auras after that fall; Cinder was likely to be in a better shape in that regard, and Pyrrha was not unmindful of the fact that the margin of her victory had been a narrow one. In another battle, where Cinder’s aura was full and Pyrrha’s was not, things might be different.
Although, by the same token, it will be four against one here instead of one against one.
Four against one, but very little room to manoeuvre and terrain with which we are not familiar and may conceal things to Cinder’s advantage.
Taking advantage of the ground had been how Cinder had come close to besting her in their first combat, after all; it would be foolish to ignore that.
So, yes, there were reasons to be cautious; Pyrrha just wished that Sunset had brought them up.
I am too hard on her, especially in this place which so badly affects her spirit.
Pyrrha kept her guard up, but straightened her legs into a less immediately aggressive posture.
“Why are you here, Cinder?” Sunset asked quietly.
“And why did you show yourself?” Jaune demanded. “If you didn’t want a fight, you could have just passed on by; it’s not like we saw you.”
“Why am I here?” asked Cinder.
Cinder blinked.
And then she blinked again, and rapidly at that. She was struggling to read the book in her hands, though it was only resting on her lap. She hadn’t noticed it at first because she hardly needed to read it — she knew so much of it inside out and could quote it from memory — but when she actually looked, when she focussed upon the printed words upon the page, it was all starting to blur a bit, becoming hard to decipher, like ancient carvings upon a stone worn down by years.
She frowned, pinching her brow as she moved the book a little closer. That was … an improvement, of sorts.
Were her eyes going? Did she need reading glasses? Her father had needed glasses to read, but Cinder hoped very much that she was not following in his footsteps in that regard. Apart from anything else, where would she put them when she was not reading? Was she supposed to wear them on a chain around her neck like some frumpy spinster librarian?
Hopefully, she was just tired, and it would pass.
“Cinder?” Emerald asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Cinder grunted. She had still not entirely forgiven Emerald for that way that she had tried to interrupt Cinder’s duel with Pyrrha, although that lack of forgiveness was manifesting itself more in the form of a passive-aggressive shortness with her than anything else.
Considering how it could be manifesting itself, Emerald should think herself lucky.
If she had not acted, you might be dead.
Yes, I might be dead, and were I dead, I would not be forced to live with this shame.
As it was, shame was Cinder’s closest companion now. It was with her in the morning, it was with her in the afternoon, and it was especially with her at night, when all others were asleep and Cinder had no other to keep her company.
She could imagine Pyrrha laughing with her friends, gloating over her victory — well, perhaps not; Pyrrha was too modest to do her own gloating — but nevertheless, the imagined laughter rang in Cinder’s ears. And while Pyrrha might be too modest, too humble, too much of a good girl to brag about her own triumph, there were plenty of others willing to do it for her. Pyrrha’s victory was celebrated by her supporters, who crowed of her prowess and made so much of Cinder’s fall, while Pyrrha’s detractors rubbed salt in Cinder’s wounds by implying that they had staged the entire thing. Staged! It had been bad enough to suggest that the two of them were in cahoots, that Cinder was Pyrrha’s lackey to do her bidding, but to go farther than and suggest, not even suggest, to come out baldly and say that Cinder had intentionally and willingly lost, that she had been play fighting, that she had taken a dive — in every sense — like some unprincipled gutter trash without a shred of pride…
Had they no respect at all?
No. No, they did not. And why should they? Cinder was nothing but a loser; what respect was she owed by any of them?
By anyone?
“Emerald, I want you.”
Case in point.
Nevertheless, Cinder found herself glad of the distraction — either from pondering her humiliation or from wondering whether her eyesight was beginning to fail her — as she put down the book and looked up to see Tempest Shadow standing in the doorway.
“In this house,” Cinder said, “we say ‘please’ when we want something.”
Tempest raised one eyebrow. “Do you?”
“Well, we certainly do since you walked into the room again,” Cinder said dryly. “I can’t help but notice that you’ve become a rather frequent visitor of late; please don’t feel the need to force yourself to come all this way. I’m sure there must be many other weighty matters that require your attention.”
“It’s true that there is a great deal to keep in hand,” Tempest agreed, a smug smirk playing across her face. “You, by contrast, seem quite at ease.”
“I’ve taken the decision to step back from day to day affairs and await the coming together of my grand strategy,” Cinder declared airily. If you want to stand at the top of the tree, then get on and do it; I hope you fall flat on your face and die at the hands of Sunset or Pyrrha.
She was more than a little tempted to call Sunset and tell her Salem still had an agent within the walls of Beacon and her name was Tempest Shadow, but that … well, that might lead to an even tighter cage enfolding her, an even tighter leash upon her neck. No, better to let Tempest fail on her own, without any additional knives in the back from Cinder; then Salem would see that success was not so easily achieved as it might seem from within her far-off castle.
Of course, if Tempest failed, then that would mean that Cinder had failed as well — again — and that was not a thought that put her in a good mood.
Succeed with Tempest or fail with Tempest; neither choice was entirely to Cinder’s liking, but what other choices were there? As far as Cinder could see, she had no perfect options left to her.
Have I trapped myself within a box of my own creation?
Not entirely; if Tempest succeeds, it will be because she followed my plan, and Salem will remember that in time.
I hope.
If not … I will have her permission to die.
Honestly, it was enough to make her think about leaving: quit Salem’s service, set herself against Salem and Ozpin both. Show that she did not need, had never needed Salem or her gifts.
Except she feared to find out that it was not so.
And besides … the time for that would have been when she was feared and fearsome; now … now, she was a loser, valued only as a vessel, a living container. Who would take her seriously now? Who would fear her, shorn of Salem’s backing?
What could I accomplish? What would be the point?
Better to wait and bide my time and see that Tempest does not live to enjoy her triumph.
And in the meantime … cringe, obey, bend low, speak softly, do as I am told, adopt a slavish posture and a bondsman’s key. Is this for what I killed my stepmother and ran away? Is this for what I sought out the Dark Mother? Is this for what I have killed and lied?
Am I come to this?
What else am I?
What else can I be?
“I’m not complaining,” Tempest said. “Things are certainly easier without your ego getting in the way.”
Cinder breathed in deeply. “What is it that we can do for you?”
Tempest pointed at Emerald. “I need Emerald for a mission.”
“Me?” Emerald asked.
Cinder’s eyes narrowed. “Emerald is not yours to command.”
“Everything under Salem is mine to command,” Tempest said.
“Not yet,” Cinder growled.
“Shall we ask Mistress Salem and see if she agrees with you?” suggested Tempest.
Cinder snorted. “Is that how it is going to be from now on between us? Are you going to run to Mommy every time I don’t let you have your way and beg her to make me share the toys? By all means, go ahead; I wonder how long it will take before she gets tired of your importuning.”
“More time than it took her to get tired of your foolishness, I’m sure,” Tempest said dryly.
Cinder put her book to one side and got up out of the chair. “You think you’re very grand, don’t you? You think that you have risen so high. Are you already dreaming of leading operations in Mistral or Atlas? You have nothing but what Salem gives to you—”
“You had nothing but what was given to you,” Tempest replied, “and now it has been taken away, and you … you accuse me of being surfeited with pride; look at you! Sitting here with your airs and graces, your mannered pretensions: the Mistralian honour and those dusty old books. What has it gotten you?” Tempest took a few steps into the room towards Cinder. “You were on thin ice with Salem already, and you chose to take a hammer to it for … what? So that someone who hates you might think that you were brave?”
“The opinion of our peers, for good or ill, is all that we have,” Cinder said.
“Power is all that we have,” Tempest replied. “You can sit here, stewing in your wounded pride, dwelling in the past; the future will belong to me.”
“What is this mission that you want me for?” asked Emerald.
“Nothing too important,” Tempest said. “Grimm have been … it’s hard to say for sure what has been happening; they are … disappearing.”
“You mean they’re being killed,” Cinder said. “Isn’t that what grimm are for? To die for Salem?”
They’re much like us in that respect.
Tempest shook her head. “It isn’t death,” she said. “It is … Doctor Watts couldn’t entirely explain it very well; I suspect that Mistress Salem is the only one who could really explain, but … something is being done to them. They’re being turned, and turned from Salem’s will.”
“Something else is controlling the grimm?” Emerald asked, her eyes widening.
Tempest nodded. “Not in huge numbers, but it is a concern. You’re to find out who is responsible and deal with it. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened; the last time was at Mountain Glenn, just before the city fell. You should start your search there.”
“Alone?” Cinder asked. “You’re sending Emerald, alone, to deal with who knows who and their own army of grimm?”
“A small army,” Tempest said.
“Emerald is rather small herself, as you might have noticed,” Cinder replied. “I think you’re trying to get her killed.”
“You think that I would do something like that?”
“The alternative is that you’re an idiot, so I chose the option that was less insulting to you,” Cinder said dryly.
“This is somewhat concerning, but not our priority,” Tempest declared. “To expend more effort on this would be to jeopardise our main mission inexcusably.”
“Is that what General Ironwood teaches you at Atlas?” Cinder asked. “To send one person to their deaths because to send enough to keep them alive would be an inexcusable waste of effort?”
“General Ironwood teaches a lot of sentimental claptrap,” Tempest said. “I see things with a clear eye.”
“It’s too dangerous for Emerald alone,” Cinder said. “I won’t allow it.”
“It is not for you to allow anything,” Tempest said. She smiled. “And yes, that is me threatening to run to mommy.”
Cinder hesitated for a moment. Her chest rose and fell with her breathing. “Very well then,” she murmured.
Tempest smiled. Cinder wanted to rip her tongue out. “Excellent.” To Emerald she said, “Mountain Glenn. Best of luck.”
She turned away and walked away, ridding the library of her presence — for now, at least, until she decided to drop in again.
“I, um … I guess that—”
“Elocution, Emerald,” Cinder chided her gently.
“Right,” Emerald murmured. “I … suppose that I had best be leaving, hadn’t I?”
“You are not going anywhere,” Cinder said. “This task is, or at least has the potential to be, too much for you. That’s why I will be going myself, to Mountain Glenn and wherever else this trail leads.”
“Yourself?” Emerald repeated.
“It’s better than sitting around here,” Cinder replied. “There is a wolf inside of me, Emerald, and he craves feeding. I need … I need to prove that though I may have been bested by Pyrrha, there are plenty of others out there in the world who ought to fear. I need to do something, I need to fight, and ideally, I need to kill someone.”
“But Salem—”
“Has already done all to me that she can do,” Cinder said. “As she has made clear, she cannot afford to kill me, which means … I am untouchable.”
“For now,” Emerald said. “Later—”
“Then later, I will worry,” Cinder replied. “Today, I will get myself to Mountain Glenn and to the bottom of this.”
Emerald hesitated for a moment. “Why do you have to go alone? Why can’t I come with you?”
“Because I haven’t forgiven you yet,” Cinder said softly.
Emerald swallowed. “I was only trying to—”
“I know,” Cinder cut her off. “Nevertheless, you disobeyed my instructions, and for that … for that, I cannot yet forgive you. But, by the time that I return, I may have.”
Cinder chuckled. "Isn't it obvious? I'm here because … because there is another beast in the wood, and that cannot be tolerated. At the very least, it is … a matter of some concern. Isn’t that why you are here?”
“We’re here because someone has been sabotaging Beacon’s defences,” Ruby said, “and kidnapping faunus.”
“'Faunus'?” Cinder repeated. “Is that so?”
Sunset nodded. “In Atlas.”
“'Atlas'?” Cinder frowned slightly. “Why would … faunus and grimm?”
“You know about the grimm, then,” Sunset said.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” Cinder replied. “In fact, I suspect that I know more than you do on that score. Someone has been … changing, the grimm. Those that are disappearing no longer respond to the commands of Salem.”
“Someone else is controlling the grimm?” Jaune muttered dubiously.
“So it would appear,” Cinder said. “You understand why this is a worrisome development, for both of us. For Salem, obviously, and for you … Salem is enemy enough to worry about, no, without some third party meddling in the game?”
“This is not a game,” Pyrrha growled. “But … you are right. If what you say is true—”
“If it were not so, why would I be here?” Cinder asked.
“To play games with us, how should I know?” Pyrrha snapped.
“The faunus that were kidnapped were experimented on,” Sunset said. “Could that be how—?”
“How the grimm are being controlled, or broken from control? I don’t see how,” Cinder said. “More likely that some mad scientist has his fingers in all sorts of unwise pies, pies that will burn his fingers off and worse.” She paused for a moment, before a smile spread across her face. “I’ve just had a wonderful idea! Since we are here on common purpose, why don’t we work together! Won’t that be fun?”
"No," Pyrrha said flatly.
Cinder tilted her head a little. "No to what?"
"To all of it," Pyrrha growled.
Cinder put on an affected expression of dismay. "Come now, is not the enemy of my enemy my friend?"
"You are not our friend,” Pyrrha said.
“Then what are we to do?” asked Cinder. “Go our separate ways, both following the same trail, both studiously ignoring one another, pretending we are not nearby, giving one another the silent treatment? Or, since we are not friends, are we to be enemies instead?”
Pyrrha hesitated, torn between the absolutely nonexistent objections that she would have to renewing the battle with Cinder and the knowledge that Cinder’s aura was probably in a healthier state than her own at present.
“Why would you want to help us?” demanded Ruby.
“There is historical precedent for it,” Cinder answered. “During the Great War, it was common understanding between the two armies that a truce would be in effect if the grimm descended on the battlefield.”
“You are the grimm,” Ruby pointed out.
“Well, not in this case, obviously,” Cinder replied, a note of impatience seeping into her voice, as though she thought Ruby was being deliberately obtuse.
“You didn’t answer Ruby’s question,” Jaune said. “Why would you want to help us?”
“We would be helping one another, would we not?”
“That is still not an answer,” Pyrrha said.
Cinder rolled her eyes. She was silent for a moment. “Because … because I’m bored, and I don’t want to play by myself. Do we not stand a better chance of success together than apart?” Her expression hardened as she took a step forwards. “Or do you think that just because you have defeated me once I have no value, that I am worthless, counting for nothing in battle or debate?”
“No,” Sunset said. “No, we do not think that. We are … if we esteemed you little, we would not fret our response. But … wait.”
A shield of green energy appeared like a protective dome around Team SAPR, separating them from Cinder on the other side. Sunset's hands glowed with magic as she stepped in front of Pyrrha, between her and Cinder. "Just … wait a minute, okay?" Sunset turned her back on Cinder, to face the rest of her team. Her right hand glowed a little bright for a moment. "I've just cast a muffling spell, so she can't hear what we're saying about her. But I think we should consider this."
"What?" Ruby yelled in a high pitched voice. "But she's … she's the bad guy!"
"Not in this case, apparently," Sunset said.
"Assuming she's telling the truth," Pyrrha said. She didn't look at Sunset, but kept her eyes fixed on Cinder on the other side of the shield.
Cinder waved mockingly at her.
"If this was a trap that she'd set for us, then why not just attack?" Sunset asked. "If this is all Cinder, then why the Merlot connection? Since when has Cinder or Salem used androids? And why would allies of the White Fang be kidnapping Atlesian faunus? It doesn't make any sense for Cinder to be behind this one."
"That still doesn't mean that we can trust her," Pyrrha pointed out.
“Pyrrha, I am as glad as anyone else that your confidence is renewed,” Sunset began.
“But?” Pyrrha asked.
Sunset sighed. “Much is uncertain in battle, you know that as well as I do; fortune … we are being offered an opportunity to avoid a battle which will be difficult—”
“With all four of us—” Ruby began.
“Why take the risk when we don’t have to?” Sunset demanded.
“For the reward?” Ruby said. “It’s like when Pyrrha was going out to fight and we all talked about what would happen if Cinder died, how Salem would have to retreat and start over again, how we could have, not peace, but we wouldn’t have to worry for the next four years. We can still have that, right here, right now.”
“Or we could have a grave,” Sunset said in a voice as heavy as a stone marker. “I let Pyrrha take the risk because, though heart and soul rebelled against it, because it was her risk, her choice, and because I am trying to respect the autonomy of your choices, but this … this involves all of us, including myself, and so, in this, I will have my voice heard: it is too great a risk.”
“Are our only choices between working with Cinder and fighting her?” Jaune asked. “Could we not just tell her to go away?”
“Assuming that she would,” Pyrrha murmured.
“Plus, as she pointed out, it would be ridiculous for us to work on this separately,” Sunset added.
“Hmm,” Jaune said wordlessly. “In that case … I think we should work with her.”
“What?” Pyrrha gasped, momentarily glancing away from Cinder towards Jaune.
“I’m sorry,” Jaune said. “I know that you don’t want to do this, I don’t really want to do this myself, but … if we fight Cinder, we’ll win. There’s no doubt in my mind about that, the four of us, working together; Pyrrha, you beat her on your own; if we all work together … but we’ll have lost aura, if we aren’t injured, and we’ll still have to try and figure out what’s going on, especially now, if what Cinder says is true. Someone else is controlling the grimm? Someone we don’t know? That … that’s bad. Salem is bad enough, but Professor Ozpin has been doing this for a long time, and he has records from his predecessors who passed down their knowledge to him; he knows what Salem wants, he knows how she acts, and he knows how to counter it. What does this other person want, who are they willing to hurt? If we have a chance to nip this in the bud now, I think we should take it.”
Ruby frowned. “Well … when you put it like that … I think you’re right. Working with Cinder … it’s a risk. But it’s better that we, as huntsmen, take the risk of working with Cinder, rather than other people take the risk of letting whoever this new enemy is get stronger.”
Pyrrha still kept her eyes fixed on Cinder, who would have been dead by now if looks could kill. "I do not like this.”
“You trusted that she was sufficiently honourable to meet you in single combat,” Sunset pointed out. “You don’t think that that same honour will compel her to honour any truce we make?”
Pyrrha scowled somewhat, in part because Sunset had caught her on the hip with that argument; it was very difficult to respond to. She had trusted Cinder’s honour, and that trust … Cinder had been worthy of it, if Salem had not. She had not betrayed the terms of their duel willingly — if her word to Sunset could be trusted, at least.
Why should Pyrrha trust her then, but not now?
Because it was only me at risk, then; we are all at risk now.
Because I fear Cinder’s effect on Sunset as much as her skill.
Nevertheless, unhappy though she was — deeply unhappy — it was nevertheless difficult for her to say with a straight face that Cinder could not be trusted. Pyrrha had, after all, already trusted her once.
And it was also clear that the mood of the team was against her in this; she had perforce to yield to it.
"Very well," she said, and tried not to grit her teeth too much.
Sunset looked at her solemnly. "This … this will be for the best," she said. "No good would come from a battle against Cinder in this place."
'In this place,' Pyrrha thought. Aye, that is what it comes down to, isn’t it?
Sunset frowned, but dropped the shield and presumably the spell as she turned to face Cinder. "The enemy of my enemy," she said, holding out one hand towards Cinder.
Cinder took it graciously. "Is my friend," she said. "This will be a lot of fun, just like when we hunted the Karkadann together outside of Mistral. Like old times, back again.”
Pyrrha stepped closer to Cinder. “If you betray my friends—”
“Did I not keep faith with you?” Cinder asked. “Did I not meet you at midnight as was agreed?”
“And then you fled,” Pyrrha said.
Cinder scowled. “That was neither my will, nor my doing.”
“Perhaps not,” Pyrrha murmured. “We will see, won’t we? If you are faithless here—”
“Then your vengeance will be violent, painful, and just,” Cinder said quietly. “As one of the Kindly Ones you shall be, and a Fury I will have earned with treachery. I would expect nothing less.” She smiled. “But fear not. I have never betrayed anyone, and I don’t intend to start now.”
“You’ve never betrayed anyone?” Jaune repeated incredulously. “What about all that time at Beacon you spent pretending to be one of us, pretending to be—?”
“Does the spy betray those whom they spy upon?” Cinder asked. “No, they wear their colours within their coat and practice deception upon the command of their true mistress, as did I. I was always Salem’s servant, and as Salem’s servant, I did her work. I betrayed nothing.”
“But not no one,” Sunset whispered.
Cinder glanced towards Sunset, her expression inscrutable.
“And now?” asked Jaune. “What would Salem think about you working with us?”
Cinder chuckled. “I’m sorry to puncture your vanities, but I’m afraid Salem doesn’t really care about any of you. You are … insignificant to her. Insects crawling upon the surface of the world. So she won’t really care whether we work together or not.” She smiled. “So, with all of that said, shall we get moving?”
She did not wait for a response, but turned her back on them and set off down the dark tunnels of black stone, her glass slippers clinking lightly upon the rock.
The enormous quantities of smoke that had been thrown up by the collapse of the Merlot building had begun to clear a little, the black fog that blocked out the sun decreasing to an ugly yellow haze that embraced the sky but permitted enough light to shine through for Pyrrha to see that they had not fallen so far as it might at first have seemed. They probably could, with a little effort, have made it to the surface without the need to find a subway station to help them do it.
But that was not the way that Cinder was leading them. Cinder was leading them deeper underground, where the surface would close in around them and they would be cut off from the light.
Again.
We defeated this place once; we will do so a second time.
Pyrrha glanced over her shoulder at Sunset, who was eyeing the tunnels that enclosed them warily, her ears drooping.
“Sunset,” Pyrrha whispered, hopefully softly enough that Cinder could not hear her. She smiled and hoped her smile spoke to Sunset in words that Cinder definitely could not hear.
Sunset managed a very small smile in response and nodded.
Pyrrha nodded also, and then looked around again to find Cinder looking at her over her shoulder.
Her brow was furrowed, and her mouth was downturned. She, too, looked away without a word.
The collapse of the Merlot building had opened up great crevices in the earth, cracks leading straight down to the lower levels of the underground city, cracks that might be lethal to fall down if they put a foot wrong. Fortunately, there was sufficient room along the ledge of black stone down which Cinder led them that falling wasn't a serious concern.
They found a grimm at the bottom of the ledge, a single solitary creep who had either been separated from his brood or else was the sole survivor of the collapse. The creature's leg had been pinned underneath some falling debris, and it could not extricate itself. But, though it was snapping and snarling at first, when Cinder drew near, the grimm calmed down like a horse recognising a trusted master, and it even mewled in what seemed to Pyrrha an affectionate manner.
"Stay back," Cinder commanded as she advanced along the ledge alone towards the wounded creep. She knelt down before it, scratching its neck and stroking its face as though it were a dog.
"Good boy," Cinder whispered. "Easy now, atta boy."
The creep moaned and put its monstrous head in her lap. It almost seemed as though it might be crying.
"Easy," Cinder whispered softly. "Everything's going to be alright now. I'm about to make everything better."
A glass dagger appeared in her hand, and with that blade, she slit the grimm's throat. It appeared that creep died instantly or so nearly so as to make no difference. It didn't even have time to cry out.
Pyrrha could only stare astonishment as Cinder remained kneeling until the grimm had turned to smoke completely, with not a trace of it remaining. Only then did she get to her feet and face the huntsmen.
"You're surprised?" she asked.
"I … I don't understand," Ruby murmured.
"You would have killed it wouldn't you, young huntress? Just as you would kill any grimm I summoned to my aid because you're huntsmen, and all you can see are monsters."
"The grimm are monsters," Ruby said. "They kill, and they destroy, and they don't care who they hurt. They’re a danger to all mankind."
"And those are just their good points," Cinder replied dryly. “The grimm … the grimm are what the grimm were made to be. The God of Darkness created them to war, to fight, to kill, all at the command and by the will of a higher power. And ultimately, they will die, for a cause not their own, for someone who sees them as … disposable. In that way, they are not so different from huntsmen or Atlesian specialists.”
“We are nothing like the grimm,” Ruby snarled. “We fight—”
“For fat men who live within a day’s march of creatures who would freeze their blood if you did not defend them,” Cinder said. “And what thanks do you get for it, what appreciation, what acclaim do you receive for your ceaseless valour? What gifts has fate for all your chivalry?”
“Honour,” Pyrrha said. “Friendship.”
“Anguish,” Cinder replied, “and an early grave. Such do hearts heroic oftenest win.” She paused. "I gave that creature a more merciful end than any of you would have done; what else needs to be said upon the subject?"
“Uh … could you summon a horde of grimm?” asked Jaune uncertainly.
Cinder stared at them, and smiled, and turned away without quite answering yea or nay to Jaune's question.
Pyrrha let out a wordless growl between her lips. “Sunset—”
"I think I know what you're about to say," Sunset said. "Hang back, and I'll speak to her."
"I would rather do it myself," Pyrrha said.
Sunset's eyebrows rose. "You? Why?"
"Because she needs to understand that we're serious," Pyrrha said, which was about as close as she could come to confessing that when it came to Cinder she feared that Sunset's judgement might be a little out of alignment as she could get without being unpleasant.
Sunset's mouth twisted, but she nodded. "Okay."
"Pyrrha," Jaune said. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she said. She smiled at him. "Watch my back, please?"
He nodded. "You got it. Always."
The other three hung back a little, letting Pyrrha quickly cover the ground with her long-legged strides until she had drawn level with the more casually sauntering Cinder. Cinder glanced at her out of the corner of one fiery eye.
"Are you here to give me a scolding?" she asked.
"I'm here to find out what you want."
"I've told you what I want."
"If you really want an alliance, then why are you being so deliberately unpleasant?"
"'Deliberately unpleasant'? This is… do you think I was being disingenuous?"
“You … you meant what you said?”
“Of course,” Cinder replied. “Is it really so surprising for you that I should feel sympathy for the creatures of grimm?”
“But not for their victims?” Pyrrha asked.
“And who are their victims?” Cinder replied. “Little men who grub at money with their dirty little hands, men who know what goes on behind closed doors but let the doors stay closed, doing and saying nought because to act would be inconvenient, men who will abuse a faunus, who will not stop to help a desperate child in need, men who allow a thousand petty evils to go on every day beneath their noses. Make no plea for the virtue of men, Pyrrha Nikos; I have seen more of the world than you, and I know the world’s deserving.”
She paused. “But you mistake me if you think I aim at the world’s destruction and the annihilation of mankind, though it may well deserve such.”
“Is that not what Salem desires?” demanded Pyrrha. “The death or subjugation of all things, once she gains the relics?”
“You would have to ask Salem what she aims at,” Cinder said lightly. “I am not her, and her goals are not mine.”
Pyrrha quickened her step still further, getting in front of Cinder and placing herself directly in her path. “Then what are your goals?”
Cinder stared at her, silent, not answering.
Pyrrha neither moved nor flinched, but waited for her answer.
“'Always be the best, the bravest,'” Cinder murmured. “'And hold your head up high amongst all others.'”
“A famous quote,” Pyrrha said quietly.
“Words to live by, no?”
“Many in Mistral think so,” Pyrrha agreed — somewhat.
“But not you?”
“I hope that I shall never be less than brave,” Pyrrha replied, “but there is more to life than this.”
“For you, perhaps.”
Pyrrha’s eyes narrowed. “Is that … is that all? Has that been the sum purpose of all this?”
“I…” Cinder trailed off. “What I want … what matters it to you what I want? Would you be persuaded of the justice of my cause?”
“Do you have a cause you think is just?” replied Pyrrha.
“I…” Again, Cinder failed to finish her thought, let alone her sentence. She glanced away. “I wish to do deeds, even as your namesake ancestor did, and to avenge the wrongs that have been done to me.”
“Those who wronged you are dead, as I understand,” Pyrrha said.
“Phoebe Kommenos lives.”
“Then challenge Phoebe!” Pyrrha cried. “Take her life, if you will; Mistral’s customs afford the right to you—”
“No,” Cinder said. “They do not. Because I was not gently born into the House of Nikos, I do not have a grand old name, why should the Lady Kommenos entertain my challenge?”
“Why should the world suffer for the wickedness of one woman?” Pyrrha replied. She frowned. “I … I fear that I begin to see why Sunset has hope for you.”
Cinder’s eyebrows rose. “You fear it?”
“I fear what it says for me that I understand someone like you,” Pyrrha said, “but you are skilled indeed, and if things had been different … you could have been my rival in the arena if fate had brought you there; you could… you could be a great huntress, if you wish to be, amongst the very best of huntresses, with as much right to hold your head up high as anyone.”
“But who remembers huntresses when they are gone?” Cinder asked. She smiled. “Emerald, in an effort to persuade me not to go through with fighting you, told me that when you are gone, Jaune will move on to some other lover.”
Pyrrha swallowed. Her throat felt a little tight beneath her gorget. “That…” Her voice became a trifle hoarse. “I do not wish to be thought selfish, therefore I will be a good girl and say that I would not begrudge him happiness.”
Cinder chuckled. “There’s only you and me here, Pyrrha; you can be as selfish as you want to be.”
“I do not want to be selfish,” Pyrrha said sharply. “That is the point.”
“And I do not want to be nothing,” Cinder said, her own voice sharpening in turn. “I … I would not be nothing,” she repeated, more quietly now. “But I will curb my tongue, if it please you, and endeavour not to give offence without cause, for the sake of our partnership. I … I really do hope that we may draw swords together ere this is done.”
Pyrrha stood there a little longer, blocking Cinder’s path, facing Cinder. Then she stepped aside. “It will come to that, I’ve little doubt,” she said. But I will not say that I look forward to it, nor that I am honoured by it.
Cinder said nothing further as she stepped past Pyrrha and strode on. Pyrrha did not immediately follow, but waited for Sunset to catch up with her.
"How did that go?"
Pyrrha sighed. “I do not know her mind,” she said. “I am not sure that even Cinder knows her mind; her motives are incoherent.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Sunset replied.
Pyrrha glanced at her. “I suppose it is not, in absolute terms, but … I suppose I thought our enemy might be more committed to her cause.”
“Oh no,” Sunset murmured. “I, for one, have had quite enough of enemies who were committed to their cause.” She shuddered. “I, for one, am glad that Cinder’s mind is … not so made up that it cannot be changed.”
“That … I do not believe,” Pyrrha replied. “I’m sorry, Sunset, but she is too proud to bend in such a fashion.”
“So was I, once.”
“You are not her, and she is not you,” Pyrrha insisted. “You cannot … however poor her reasons, she remains our enemy. I cannot see that that will change.”
“Perhaps she won’t,” Sunset admitted. “But I … anyway, we should keep moving.”
“Yes,” Pyrrha murmured. “Yes, we probably should.”
Cinder continued to lead the way, on and on through the lightless darkness, through corridors so devoid of feature or identifying markings that Pyrrha soon had to admit to herself that she was quite lost, with no idea of where they were in relation to the surface or anything else.
"Do you actually know where you're going down here?" Sunset asked.
Cinder stopped and half turned to face them all. "When I was last in Mountain Glenn, there was a part of the city the grimm would not venture into. A nameless fear dwelled there, something they could not properly explain to me. The White Fang soon learned that to send scouts into that part of the undercity was also a death sentence. We are aiming for the centre of that forbidden sector."
"You've known about all this since then, but you're only investigating now?" Jaune said.
"I've been very busy," Cinder said.
Busy preparing designs against us, most likely, Pyrrha thought.
They descended further beneath the surface. This wasn't like the parts of the city they had visited on their last trip to Mountain Glenn; this was not a city that happened to have been built underground. The passages they were moving through were part of a labyrinth of caves and tunnels carved out of the rock, part of an eerie subterranean world where ancient creatures might yet dwell … or where new ones might be making their home even now.
Pyrrha couldn't have said exactly how long they groped through such barely-more-than-lifeless tunnels, but eventually, they descended — literally, as the rock sloped down towards it — upon a sight more familiar: another railway yard, or a railway stop at least: two raised-up platforms connecting to buildings built into the rock itself so that only the smoothed-out fronts distinguished them, surrounding twin spurs of track that ran into the darkness. A few sections of mesh wire fence still stood here and there, though they were not connected now, and it was difficult to imagine who would have found their way down here to trespass on this place in any event.
A pair of buffers at the end of the rails signified that this was the final destination.
"I don't remember a stop here on the subway map," Sunset murmured as, with one hand, she reached for her scroll.
"It isn't on the map," Cinder said. "Which means that it was private and maybe even that whoever built it didn't want anybody else to know that this was here. Why?"
Before anybody could answer, a sound from up ahead drew their attention. It was a tapping sound, like something tapping on the metal of the railway track. Like a claw, perhaps.
Miló transformed into rifle mode as Pyrrha aimed it down the track and into the darkness; Ruby buried her scythe blade into the earth between the track spurs as a rest. Sunset raised her rifle to her shoulder, and a bow formed out of glass in Cinder's hands.
"A grimm,” Cinder murmured. “But not a friend.”
The light beneath the surface was murky, the air was stale, and Pyrrha's throat was starting to feel a little sore just from breathing it. Only the green glow of the crystals growing out of the rock tunnel walls and a few low orange lifts on the railway platforms provided any illumination at all. But as they waited, two more and brighter glows illuminated the darkness. At first, the green lights were all that could be seen, but as both lights and sounds grew closer, the creatures making both resolved themselves in the vision of the huntsmen. They were creeps, or at least, Pyrrha thought they were; they were larger than the average creep, larger than an alpha, in fact, both bulkier and much, much taller with high green spikes growing out of their backs like pilot lights, providing the illumination that had first drawn the eye. Their eyes were as green as the spikes that leapt out of their backs, and from out of their mouths, a green glow also spilled.
One waddled — in that, they were still creeps, it seemed — down the railway track, tapping its claws upon the metal rail; the other walked between the spurs.
The one upon the track stopped first, regarding the huntsmen — and Cinder — with its bright green eyes.
It opened its mouth to let out a croaking roar.
Crescent Rose's shot echoed in the cavern as Ruby fired. Cinder let a glass arrow fly from her bow. Both grimm were struck, the one shot by Ruby dying instantly, while the one pierced by Cinder's dart was only wounded, but both, as soon as they were struck, began to swell, exploding in a shower of green goop that, thankfully, was too far away to touch them.
"What was that?” Ruby demanded. “Since when do creeps explode?”
“Since someone started meddling with them,” Cinder replied.
“This is more than just taking control of the grimm,” Pyrrha said.
“I told you what I knew,” Cinder declared. “I now know more, as do you: that someone is not just mustering grimm but making them … different. These creeps were larger and would have been more dangerous if they had gotten close to us. If all grimm are the same — large beowolves, larger ursai — then it is all the more urgent that we discover who is behind this and stop them.”
“We need to find out where they’re coming from and who is creating them,” Sunset said.
“How?” Pyrrha asked. “I would have said that if we follow the rails to the end of the line, then we should find answers, but … here we are, at the end of the line, and there’s nothing here.”
She leapt up onto one of the platforms and kicked open a door set into the rock-face of the tunnel. She kept her rifle raised to her shoulder, her eyes peering into the gloom as she swept her gaze from side to side. She could see nothing, and not just because it was badly lit but because there was nothing here to see.
“Here we are, at the end of the line,” she said, turning away from the door, “and there are no answers.”
“We’re at an end of the line,” Cinder said. “But we are also at a beginning. Trains can go two ways.”
“Of course,” Pyrrha said, “but I can imagine trains heading towards the corporate headquarters, but where would they be going from the headquarters?”
“I don’t know,” Cinder said, “and none of us will know unless we follow the rails.”
“We should take a good look around first,” Sunset said. “There might be something, however small, that gives us some kind of answers.”
She glanced at Pyrrha, as if checking that Pyrrha took no offence from it. She didn’t; she had only glanced around a single room after all. She was quite willing to admit that she hadn’t conducted a detailed search. It was just that this place looked so deserted — and for such a long time — that it was hard to see that there was much chance of anything turning up here.
As it happened, she was not entirely correct about that. Although she was right that there was nothing here, as they searched the immediate vicinity of the railway yard, it was Jaune who noticed something.
“Did you ever notice that, when you haven’t cleaned your bedroom for a few months, a lot of dust builds up in places?” he asked.
The other members of Team SAPR — and Cinder — stared blankly at him.
Jaune let out an exasperated sigh. “None of you? You all kept your bedroom spotless?”
“Dad wouldn’t let me go outside unless I’d done all my chores,” Ruby said.
“The, um, the maids always kept my room and belongings very clean,” Pyrrha said, in a slightly shamefaced tone. She didn’t want to draw attention to the vast difference between their upbringings, but the truth was that she really had no idea what he was talking about.
“I used magic to clean my room,” Sunset said.
Cinder chuckled and rolled her eyes.
“What?” Sunset said.
“I just find it difficult to believe that you used the power to bend the very fabric of the universe to your will in order to do chores,” Cinder said. “It’s almost disgustingly frivolous.”
“It’s only frivolous if the power is rare,” Sunset said.
“Perhaps,” Cinder said. “And as for you two: well, of course, you had servants to do everything for you, and you are such a child, aren’t you?” She shook her head once more, with even greater dismissal implied. “And as for you,” she said to Jaune, “let’s just say letting that amount of dirt build up isn’t one of my life experiences.”
Pyrrha did her best to ignore the personal attacks from someone who was, by her own account, trying her best; honestly, having a chip on her shoulder about Pyrrha’s background was the least of Cinder’s sins, and of all her faults, the one to which she was the most entitled. Pyrrha had enjoyed a very privileged upbringing in many ways, after all.
“Please,” she said, “go on, Jaune.”
Jaune glanced at Cinder. “Uh, so, as I was saying, if you let the dust build up, and then you start to move things, you’ll find that they leave marks where there isn’t any dust … because it all went on top of what was there. Like a lamp. Or that book that Aunt Orange gave me that I never read … anyway, I was taking a look around here, and I saw this.”
He gestured to the ground behind him, not too far from the buffers that marked the end of the railway line. It wasn’t something that Pyrrha would have paid any attention to, but now that Jaune had brought it up and explained what they were supposed to be looking at, she could see that dust was lying unevenly upon the ground: there were squares where it was an altogether lighter dusting, not to mention footprints where the dust was thicker.
“Do you guys think that those squares are about the right size to be the cages that we saw in the Emerald Forest?” Jaune said.
Sunset stared at them for a moment, and then nodded. “So you think—”
“I think that once they were full, they were brought here, then loaded onto a train and taken … wherever the tracks go.”
“Which brings me back to my original point,” Cinder said. “We need to follow the tracks and see where they lead … and where those trains were headed.”
Since it seemed that, as abandoned as the yard might seem at the moment, it was in use or had been very recently, there was nothing to be said in objection to her point unless anybody wanted to object purely on the basis of who was making it. Nobody did, and so, they began to follow the rail line laid out before them into the darkness.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Ruby said. “If this train line is being used for something, why does it look so abandoned right now? Like … those footprints could have been made by the robots that we found, right?”
Pyrrha thought back to the androids that they had found destroyed in the Emerald Forest. “Yes, they might have been about the right size.”
“Then where are they?” Ruby said. “Why didn’t we find anything there? Or anyone?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Cinder said. “We haven’t found anything because our presence has not been completely unanticipated.”
“Whoever is behind this knew we were coming and so they started cleaning house,” Sunset said. “They packed up all their stuff and then demolished the building for good measure so that we wouldn’t find anything. That makes sense. Blake said that, in Atlas, the kidnapper was quite concerned with covering their tracks, including blowing up their own ships and aircraft so that they couldn’t be searched for intelligence.”
Pyrrha’s brow furrowed. “That’s a rather passive way of preserving security.”
“What do you mean?” Jaune said.
“She means that it’s surprising that more than a couple of perverted creeps haven’t been sent to harm us yet,” Cinder said. “I’m inclined to agree, although I expect that we’ll run into some kind of welcoming committee some time soon.”
They followed the train tracks down a tunnel which was, at times, so dark that they couldn’t even see the tracks; or at least, Pyrrha could not. Cinder always seemed completely confident in where she was going, and although Pyrrha was certainly willing to believe that Cinder affected a greater confidence than she possessed, in this case, she believed that Cinder was more confident than the rest of them, more sure of herself. Pyrrha could even believe that Cinder saw better in the dark than the rest of them. She was like a magician, except she didn’t even need to perform tricks to give the impression of possessing greater than human powers and abilities — not that there were not tricks; that business with the fire was a clever use of dust. It was the way that she bore herself, the way she acted, the way in which she showed no fear before even the most skilled opponent. She acted as though she was more than human, as if she had cast off the human frailties and vulnerabilities that the members of Team SAPR were shackled by, and by the act, she made herself seem more than she was. More than she could be.
Yet she is only human after all, and being human, she can be defeated.
They arrived, after some time of following the railway line and finding nothing at all but railway line, and at some points, a few abandoned crates that had been dumped here and there without any rhyme or reason that Pyrrha could determine, in front of a set of metal gates set into a fence dividing one part of the underground off from the rest. At first, Pyrrha was uncertain why that was necessary — considering that this was already a secret railroad, who would be allowed to see one side of the fence who would not be allowed to see the other? — before she noticed that a part of the metal wall appeared to be broken down by some great force, and she wondered if the question was not who was intended to be confined behind it, but rather, what?
The five of them weren’t the only ones to arrive before the gate, or rather, when they got there, they found a small railway cart, with a modest engine built into it and, more importantly, a bomb loaded onto its back.
“Interesting,” Cinder said.
“That’s one way to put it,” Sunset muttered.
“Think about it,” Cinder said. “I doubt this bomb has just been sitting here since the abandonment of the city.” She walked closer, the only one to do so. In fact, she walked right up to the bomb and made a careful inspection of it. “In fact, it looks very new to me, and high yield too. I think this was placed here quite recently to catch anybody who might come snooping around the ruins of the Merlot headquarters.”
“Is it active?” Jaune asked.
The bomb beeped.
“Now it is,” Ruby said.
“You had to ask, didn’t you?” Sunset said.
“If it goes off, it will probably blow a hole in the surface that will make the collapse of the Merlot building look like child’s play, not to mention burying us all beneath tons of debris, even if we do survive the blast,” Cinder said, sounding very calm for someone discussing her impending demise as though her own life — and the lives of Team SAPR — meant nothing to do her. She was even smiling. “However, fortunately, there’s a chasm a little way down the rail line that we can drop this down, and then it should explode quite harmlessly.”
Ruby said, “How do you—?”
“A little creep whispered it in my ear before they disappeared,” Cinder said casually. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Better than send the train down the tracks away from us?” Sunset said. “No, no, I don’t.”
Cinder smiled. “The stage is yours then, Pyrrha.”
“Excuse me?” Pyrrha asked.
“I’m not an idiot, Pyrrha,” Cinder said. “Your semblance is magnetism, isn’t it? You’ve kept it secret for now, but you needed to go all out in order to win against me, so you let it off its leash, as it were. There’s no other explanation for how you were able to manipulate your shield like you were.”
Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “Indeed,” she murmured. “As you say, I needed to use every weapon at my disposal in order to defeat you.”
“For which honour I am very grateful,” Cinder said, inclining her head a little. “Now, if you would be so good?”
“Of course,” Pyrrha said. “Step back, everyone.”
Only Cinder was standing close to the bomb, but she obediently shuffled backwards as Pyrrha raised her hands.
The bomb beeped again.
Pyrrha’s hands covered with a thick black outline as she mustered her semblance, flinging the metal gates open with a thunderous crack, revealing more track before them leading off into the darkness.
“I hope you’re right about this hole,” Sunset muttered.
“It’s there,” Cinder assured them.
The bomb beeped again.
Pyrrha focussed her semblance upon the train cart, flinging it out in a sharp shove that sent the train flying down the tracks, rattling upon the rails, rolling into the dark and out of sight.
The clattering of the wheels upon the tracks echoed off the walls of the cavern and the tunnel for a moment, then there was silence.
Then there was an almighty bang. The world around them trembled, and a little dust fell from the ceiling to land upon their shoulders, but it didn’t start to crack and crumble and fall upon them. Plus, they weren’t blown up.
The echo of the explosion and its attendant after-effects faded into silence, and Cinder began to applaud.
Her applause soon ceased as a different kind of sound filled the stale air all around them. The sound of paws upon stone, the sound of claws scraping and hooves tapping, the sound of growling and snuffling and snarling and hissing.
The sound of grimm on the approach, and it was coming from all around them.
The members of Team SAPR bunched closer around each other, weapons at the ready, turning in all directions looking for where the threat would come, or where it would come first.
“These aren’t your grimm, are they?” Sunset said.
“No,” Cinder said, conjuring her bow into her hands. “These are the twisted and the perverted, the servants of our mutual enemy.”
“But you can sense them right?” Sunset said. “So how many are we talking about?”
“I would say roughly … a lot of them,” Cinder said.
“Guys?” Jaune said, as he looked behind them.
They all looked. The first grimm had started to appear: all of them the larger, green-tinted versions, the ones that Cinder called abominations and perversions — her grimm, of course, were natural and wonderful, but that was perhaps an argument to have another time when they weren’t in immediate danger — the ones with extra large spikes and additional bone plates and emerald eyes that glowed in the dark. Creeps, beowolves, boarbatusks, even an enormous green ursa that was so large, it nearly took up the whole of the tunnel down which it advanced.
They all bore down upon the team and Cinder, howling and roaring and shrieking as they came.
“Run!” Sunset yelled.
They ran. Jaune turned for a moment at the gate and flourished his sword, creating a wall of ice in the open gateway, but the grimm smashed through it in moments and battered down the rest of the wall too as they raced to pursue the huntsmen and Cinder. The next few moments, the next minute or so that followed, the next however long it was, Pyrrha couldn’t be sure, because it was all a blur of green grimm howling and snarling. She remembered shooting, she remembered lashing out with Miló in spear and sword form, she remembered the bang of Crescent Rose and the green bolts of Sunset’s magic, she remembered Jaune shouting, she remembered rose petals falling and Sunset’s jacket burning as she activated the fire dust she had infused it with, Pyrrha remembered creeps springing up out of the ground, she remembered more grimm appearing from every direction, but she couldn’t have placed those events in a coherent order, she couldn’t have said exactly what happened and what proceeded from what. It was all a blur as the adrenaline took over, and all that mattered was fighting back and trying to stay alive while they escaped.
But she remembered Ruby most of all. Ruby was everywhere, her red cloak streaming behind her as she darted back and forth in all directions in a blur of rose petals. She sniped creeps from afar and made them blow up, tossing any mutated grimm unfortunate enough to be nearby upwards or backwards with the force of the blast. She ran back and forth, dragging her scythe behind her, cutting through even these larger and stronger grimm. She took the head off the giant green ursa and toppled it to the ground. She led the grimm upon a merry chase that gave the others no small degree of much-needed respite from the ever-growing horde that pursued them. She was so fast they never caught her, never pinned her down, never dealt her more than a single blow before she escaped their reach. Her expression was fearless as she practically flew before the grimm, daring them to chase her and knowing that they would never catch her.
Until one creep popped out of the ground right in front of her, when she was moving too fast to change course easily, and swelled and exploded right in her face. Ruby, who had so far escaped much harm or damage at the hands of the grimm, took the full brunt of the blast. It hurled her backwards, and her cry of pain drew Pyrrha’s attention.
Pyrrha’s breath caught in her throat as she saw the unmistakable ripple of shattering aura pass over Ruby’s body.
Ruby flew through the air, her eyes closed, her cape fluttering, her hair bouncing up and down as she fell slowly, so slowly, before hitting the black stone of the surface with a thud that was heavy, so heavy that it caused Pyrrha’s heart to skip a beat with fear. She kicked the boarbatusk that was worrying her away and ran towards Ruby, who lay on the ground unmoving, unresponsive, eyes closed as another pair of boarbatusks, small by the standards of these green-tinted grimm, advanced upon her.
An enormous blast of magic from both of Sunset’s palms hit one of them in the flank, shattering its armour plates and burning straight through its midriff like so that there was a hole in its body by the time it fell over dead. Jaune reached Ruby before Pyrrha did, yelling inchoately as he swung his sword into the grimm’s face, slashing at its mask and tusks, hitting it with his shield, knocking it onto its side through sheer furious force before he cut off its head.
Then Jaune turned to Ruby. He threw himself over her, covering her small body with his own larger and more armoured form as he began to glow, using his semblance both to restore Ruby’s aura and to strengthen his own.
Pyrrha cried out as a beowolf leapt for his back. She shot it, but it barely seemed to feel the impact; certainly, it did not stop its flying leap upon both Jaune and Ruby.
What did stop it was the green light of Sunset’s telekinesis that enveloped it, holding it still before Sunset gestured with one hand and threw the tainted creature of the grimm away into the darkness.
Which left her vulnerable to another beowolf which had snuck up behind her and slashed at her back with its claws in a series of brutal swipes. It didn’t seem to care that Sunset’s back was ablaze with fire dust, it didn’t seem to care that both its forelegs were on fire; all that mattered was that it had slashed Sunset across the back hard enough to knock her forwards, and then it hammered the ground hard enough that a row of green spikes just like those on its back erupted out of the rock to throw Sunset up into the air again like a mistreated doll. Pyrrha changed direction, going to Sunset’s aid now as she hurled herself at the grimm with the burning legs. She threw her shield, striking the beowolf on the head and stunning it as she slashed with her spear, pirouetting in place while she whirled it around, kicking it, shooting it as she leapt upwards in a flying spinning kick, anything to take it down. Down it went, but there were so many more of them. So many, and so strong.
“Are you alright?” Cinder demanded as she carved her way towards them, hacking a beowolf to pieces as it sought to stand against her. “Are you alright?” she repeated as green ooze dripped from her obsidian blades.
“I’m fine,” Sunset said, raising one hand, but as she tried to get to her feet, she stumbled a step and sank back to her knees once more.
“No, you’re not,” Cinder said. “Pyrrha?”
“I am fine,” Pyrrha said.
Cinder nodded, a fey smile upon her face, wild, almost exultant despite their circumstances. “Then let this be the hour when we draw swords together,” she said, and she laughed aloud, a laugh like a wild wind that rattles the windows and tears up the trees to their very roots, a laugh that struck the ceiling of the tunnel that enclosed them. “Jaune, carry Ruby out of here; Sunset, go with them. Pyrrha and I will hold them off.”
“Are you sure about this?” Jaune asked, though even as he asked, he picked up Ruby’s unconscious form, cradling her in his arms.
Pyrrha nodded. “I’m sure. Go. I’ll protect you.”
Sunset shook her head. “I can’t … I can’t just—”
“Go, Sunset!” Cinder snapped. “Go; you are half spent already.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes,” Pyrrha said. “You can; go with Jaune and Ruby.” She smiled. “No goodbyes.”
Sunset blinked. “No goodbyes,” she whispered.
And so the others retreated down the tunnel, while Pyrrha and Cinder turned at bay like lionesses standing guard over the cubs as the hunt comes baying, facing the mass of green grimm that bore down upon them.
Cinder’s smile was ecstatic, a bright light in the darkness, a sharp, fierce thing like a knife. “And now, Pyrrha, enemy of my soul,” she said, “let us go and either fall, yielding glory to another, or else winning great glory for ourselves.”
Pyrrha raised Akoúo̱, and drew back Miló for a slashing stroke. “I will go,” she declared, “but I will not fall.”
Cinder laughed. “That’s the spirit.”
And so they went. That was the heroic theme, passed down from the earliest Mistralians: they must go, no matter what awaited them. As a guide, it was far better, Pyrrha thought, than striving to be the best or the bravest. Go forth, to whatever end.
And forth they went, charging the grimm, drawing all the bloated, mutated, swollen green beasts towards them, meeting their brute strength with aura, and courage and skill, for Pyrrha. And with sheer ferocity, in Cinder’s case.
Pyrrha fought as she had been taught to fight, by Chiron, by her mother, by years honing her skills in the arenas of Mistral; she danced amongst the grimm, Miló lashing out, Akoúo̱ turning strokes aside when she did not fling it forth to stun or even decapitate her enemies. She switched her weapon fluidly from spear to sword and back again, thrusting with one, slashing with the other, keeping the grimm at bay from a distance one moment and then closing in with a flurry of blows the next, Miló a red-gold blur around her as she twirled and whirled and danced and spilled this green fluid upon the black stone.
Cinder, on the other hand, did not dance, though she wore the shoes for it; rather, she tore into the grimm, that smile fixed upon her face as though it had been fused there, wielding her black sword as a single greatsword, just as she had done for a time during her duel with Pyrrha, slashing with the long weapon as though she were scything through a field of wheat. She used the greatsword until the grimm pressed too close around her, and then she formed her glass into the pair of scimitars, hacking with left hand and with right, carving the grimm like banquets fit for the hounds. Sometimes, she would leap up, above the grimm, briefly fusing her swords into a bow to rain down arrows on them, but always, Cinder would land, and the swords would return, and she would hack and slash as fiercely as before.
Many times, they were separated by the dense mass of glowing grimm, and many times, they fought their way back to one another’s sides, only to be borne apart once again; they were like sticks floating upon the surface of a river, brought together by the current one moment, then flung apart the next. Sometimes, they managed to stay together for a little while longer, even fighting back to back as the grimm pressed close all around them, striking out at the snarling, howling, fang-baring faces that were visible amidst the press of bone and black and eerie green.
And the grimm fell before them, no match for Pyrrha’s silent virtue or for Cinder’s laughing fury. Beowolf, boarbatusk, even ursa, they fell to the two Mistralian warriors like trees before the woodsman’s axe. In their duel, Pyrrha’s virtue had been pitted against Cinder’s fury, but now, virtue and fury were aligned together, and the grimm could not stand before it.
At least, not at first. There were so many grimm. They fell like trees, but trees from a vast forest, a forest that stretched on and on for miles with no ending. Just so did more grimm pour up the tunnel, and though none tried to slip past Pyrrha or Cinder — at least, none that survived — Pyrrha felt her arms, her legs beginning to grow heavy, her movements with Miló and Akoúo̱ becoming a little less precise; she still had her aura, she had not been struck, but even aura could only do much to ward off the weariness of constant fighting.
How long can I keep this up? How long can Cinder?
How many more grimm are yet to come?
Cinder’s chest rose and fell. She looked weary also, her back sagging a little, her swords hanging by her sides. She glanced at Pyrrha.
“Do you want to live, Pyrrha Nikos?” she asked.
“What?” Pyrrha replied. “What kind of a question is that?”
“Do you want to live?” Cinder asked again. “Do you want to die gloriously, in the finest Mistralian tradition and be honoured with a gilded statue ten feet tall, or do you want to live?”
“I want to live!” Pyrrha shouted. “I want to live, and I want to protect the others, but—”
“Then stand back!” Cinder cried, and as she cried, a fire sprang up out of Cinder’s left eye, forming a golden blaze around it.
Cinder let her blades of glass fall to the ground as she spread her arms out wide on either side of her. She began to rise, to float as Sunset sometimes floated, the way that Jaune’s sister Rouge had floated, only Cinder rose higher than just a few feet above the ground, she rose up to near the ceiling of the chasm as dark storm clouds gathered all around her, and the wind blew through the cave, though Pyrrha could not tell from when it came; still, it blew nevertheless and whipped Cinder’s long black hair around her.
Lightning rained down from the clouds growing around her, striking the grimm that charged up the tunnel towards them, burning them, bursting them, skewering them through their heads, destroying them. And fire, fire leapt from both of Cinder’s hands to fall to earth, forming a wall of flame in front of Pyrrha. The fire filled the cave, even as the lightning continued the fall, and as the fires burned and the lightning fell, so the grimm died, their roars turning to screams as the flames consumed them all.
What is this power? Pyrrha thought as she watched the green grimm that had a moment ago seemed so mighty and so terrifying wither and perish in Cinder’s fire, screeching and shrieking and panicking as they burned. It was like nothing she had ever seen before; the most powerful semblance could not do so much. To conjure the tempest within a cave? To bring forth fire on such a scale could not be dust, and yet, how else was it being done?
Magic? Could it be anything else, and yet … how? What magic? Where had Cinder acquired such power?
And why did she not use it against me?
For, as Pyrrha watched the flames pour forth from Cinder like molten gold, one truth stood out to her, however uncomfortable, as inescapable.
If Cinder had used this power that she possessed in their duel in the forest, then undoubtedly, she would have triumphed, and Pyrrha…
Pyrrha would be dead.
So why am I alive?
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Perhaps cinder found some geodes, that would help her do magic.
Even with only half the Fall Maiden's magic, Cinder's power is a terrifying thing to behold. Now Ozpin and the others will know for sure that the one responsible for Autumn's condition is already here in Vale. And I'm especially looking forward to Sunset's own reaction, knowing that Cinder has magic. I wonder if Princess Celestia will have any advice about how to approach such power?
This was a fascinating chapter in so many ways. A common goal can unite the most unlikely of allies, but a common enemy can unite a great deal more. A cordial moment between SAPR and Cinder before the Fall. I for one am expecting Sunset to one day do this with Cinder.
https://youtu.be/UwMlgKUQaQ4?t=104
9718335
... have you even watched the show?
Cinder you little idiot. Salem is working to kill everyone. Ozpin is working to… prevent precisely that.
Okay. So SAPR’s the lackeys she brought.
– Seems you forgot a sentence before this one?
The question is how deep is Cinder's magic well. Sunset is capable of short bursts of extreme magic too.
In my opinion Sunset should be capeble of magic of this level the only question is if she knows the right spells (in my opinion no [weather manipulation is a pegasus thing after all])
I could see Sunset comenting about how Cinders magic , while impresive is more flashy and less effective than if she concentrated it
BTW Is this version of Sunset capeble of elemental magic like Pyrokinesis or Cyromancy , or is she only a 'pure' magic user (energy manipulation) ?
also , is she capeble of counter magic?
The enemy of my enemy, Is my enemy's enemy. Nothing more, nothing less.
I just hope this isn't the push for Sunset to "barrow" Twi's crown. Though I can see her pulling a Cozy Glow and looking into Tirek's magic stealing.
9718608
or asking Celesta what artifacts have been sent to Remenat , or maybe somehow getting the 'Phoenix Form' or going full alicorn or maybe when she meets Jaunes sister one of the geodes goes flying towords her or Celestia could send her a little gift in a form of some equestrian artifact , or better yet Suset gets desperate and uses Dark Magic , THAT would surprise Cinder for sure
9718605
9718617
Magic isn't as abundant in Remnant as it is in Equestria, and Sunset also doesn't have her horn to channel and amplify her magic to the same level.
With that in mind, I have to wonder how powerful she'd become in Remnant if she ever ascended to alicorn status.
9718335
.... No. She stole half of the Fall Maiden's power.
9718691
I know that magic isn't as powerful in Remnant , but still Sunset should at very least point out that if she was at full power she could match Cinder if not surpass her (in my opinion Cinder with only half of Maidens power should still be weaker than Sunset but Sunsets magic is more utility centered while Cinders is Combat centered)
Lets be generous and say Ozma was about as powerful as Starswirl , it would still make one Maiden less then 4th of that power (which is still alot)
Alicorn Twilight was almost as Powerful as Starswirl (same for Starlight) , Sunset (In EQG1) is canonicly weaker than Unicorn Twilight
Since Cinder curently has only half of Maidens power lets say she is less than 8th of Ozma (propably even less since Ozpin still had some magic)
so it is possible that she is in fact stronger than Sunset it is asuming that Ozma comes close to Alicorn levels of power which I find unlikely (tho he did beat Sirens in this universe somehow , I daubt it was with his power alone)
In my opinion a Maiden should be somewhere right below Sunset level of power or equal
But that is just my opinion and in the end it's Authors decision
9718335
No, Cinder’s powers come from RWBY canon.
9718728
One thing that is absolutely incredible is that for a Maiden to be able to wield so much power to control the elements and the forces of nature with such strength, and that is still only a fraction of what Ozma was capable of. And for a far weaker incarnation of him to be able to bestow a lifelong ability to transform into birds at will... just extraordinary.
9718750
Well if you realy think about it Maiden power isn't all that impresive
I mean RD and Lightning Dust alone ware capable of creating a massive tornado (they lost control but they still created it)
Even Trixe is capable of creating lightning clouds but on a MUCH lesser scale
Rarity in Season 3 Finale was capable of weather manipulation on a FAR greater scale than a Maiden so an argument could be made that she was in fact more powerful then one (tho she did have RD's CM at the time so that might have been a factor)
And I am preaty sure there are more exemples that I can't think of right now
9718766
I agree completely. Unicorns are still creatures born for magic. I've seen feats of magic that characters from other shows work tirelessly to achieve that Equestria does on a casual basis with barely a second thought.
Which is why I found Cinder's reaction to Sunset's idea of using magic for daily chores very appropriate.
9718780
Imagine if Cinder started doing all this storm and levitation that Maidens do and Sunset just canceling it out with a wave of her hand
Cinder: "How did you do that?!"
Sunset: "Your weather manipulation was so slopy that all I needed to do was simple counter spell."
Cinder: "But you never displayed a power like this before!"
Sunset:: "Your magic might be powerful but I doesn't change the fact that it is slopy , anyone can overcharge a spell but not everyone can concentrate it so that id doesn't fall apart. To put it simply your power is impresive but your spells bearly hold together , they might be powerful but they can be easly dispelled or countered. The only exeption is your Pyrokinesis which is quite solid."
Cinder: "Are you saying that I am an amature?"
Sunset: "Compered to me definitly , but you are still above norm"
I Extremely love reading this when Sunset and Cinder are interacting with one another. They are like distant sisters!
9718792
I'd almost pay to see that!
One reveal has been made and Sunset now knows about Cinder's magic. I wonder if Cinder will learn more about the depths/origins of Sunset's power up next. Now that Sunset knows for sure that Cinder has the power of one of the Maidens, she's not going to let it go. She'll definitely confront her on this right away.
9718608
No, Twilight doesn't have a crown at the moment. This is still the period where they're using the Rainbow Box powers/modes after they gave up the Elements of Harmony.
This is actually more about Pyrrha, to be honest: after her doubts in the previous chapters about her ability to defend her friends, she's now faced with a power that is just so much greater than her own abilities. If only somebody could offer her magical powers as well...
9718975
Is this version of Sunset capeble of elemental magic like Pyrokinesis or Cyromancy , or is she only a 'pure' magic user (energy manipulation) ?
also , is she capeble of counter magic?
9719011
Counter magic yes, pyromancy and cryomancy no. Those are to an extent provisional answers and I reserve the right to not be bound by them.
9719019
Where do you put Half Maiden Cinder compered to Equestrians
because if we go by feets Rarity (with RDs CM) would be stronger than Amber
I mean Pyrrha 1v1ed a full Maiden Cinder and held her own. She could probably take a half Maiden. And that's without her team backing her up.
9719351
like I said It's flashy and makes Cinder look powerful but it isn't some godlike power
9718617
I do hope that all of us readers can also remember that Sunset has achieved a more powerful form without the geodes or the elememts. All we need is for this world's Twi to create a magic detector that also steals magic, which she very well may do, knowing that magic is a thing. Then, all we need to do is give Sunset it and a surplus of magic, likely coming from the rest of team SAPR, perhaps some of team RSPT, and Blake, for the elements, and viola! Daydream Shimmer! (And I wouldn't complain of Midnight Sparkle appeared either.)
Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.
9719351
9719355
I always thought that Cinder was somewhat phoning it in for that fight, she didn’t pull out half the moves she did with Raven and Pyrrah was still seriously outclassed. Maidens certainly aren’t invincible but I get the feeling Cinder would be at least on even footing with the whole team unless they had some other advantage.
Not that I don’t want to see the protagonists serve her up some humble pie. Raven’s single redeeming moment from being the world’s worst mom was when she dropped Cinder down that bottomless pit.
9719038
This question is hard for me to answer because it touches on my feelings towards the power creep that happened with unicorns over the course of the show, which I didn't particularly care for (I preferred it in the early seasons when ordinary unicorns were limited to telekinesis plus some magic touching on their cutie marks, and characters like Twilight and Sunset were exceptional because they had access to a full range of magical powers; once Rarity started being able to shoot laser beams it wasn't a change for the better in my opinion). Plus there's the fact that Rarity with RD's cutie mark explicitly had no control over what she was doing and was awful at it.
And then there's the issue of RWBY's infamously low budget meaning that things don't always look as impressive as they're meant to be. I would actually say that, for the purposes of this story at least, a maiden is actually stronger than Princess Twilight in terms of raw power, but with a less varied and versatile powerset and less control (although that varies depending on the maiden in question).
9720627
I hope you mean Season 4 Premier Twilight and not Season 7 Twilight/Starlight who is almost as powerful as Starswirl because that is in my opinion a little to much
I mean I can't see Cinder having Star level/Solar System level power (moveing the Sun and the Moon) hell I doubt Salem or Ozma have that kind of power
Like I said before I just don't see Ozma as being as powerful as Starswirl (It's not Imposible but it is a bit of a strech) and a Maiden is less then 4th of that (of course some of them are stronger than others)
While I can see Cinder as low Alicorn tier (aka Cadence tier) and only as Full Maiden , I just can't see her as anything more than that
And most Unicorns are still limited to basic magic and thier Special Talent it's simply that magic beams are clearly just an basic offensive spell that any unicorn can learn propably only a bit harder than telekinesis , while ponies like Twiligh , Sunset , Moondancer , Starlight , Starswirl , Mistmane (and somewhat Trixie) are capeble of learning most magic if not all of it (they still have some areas of expertise like Twilight capeble of recreating and learning spells based on just theory or observation , Starlight talent for mixing multiple spells inot one more powerful spell and even creating a new one on the spot , and while we don't know what Sunsets speciality is cannonicly I always speculated that her speciality are oposites Light and Darkness , Fire and Ice , Positive and Negative , Good and Evil etc.)
9720672
Yeah, season 4 Twilight.
9720682
Full Maiden or Half-Maiden?
9720477
Oh hey, response from the author, so let me start by telling you; Really impressed, good read so far, and I always worry that Sunset through-the-mirror-into-another-established-universe stories go absolutely off the wall with power scaling and making Sunset a goddess of power. I think you handled power scaling amazingly, and the story has been a solid and enjoyable read. Keep up the good work, can't wait to see more.
As for the original topic, I can see why the expectations of the character could have been set at a certain level, especially considering the socio-political vibe of the Faunus rights and equality standards in the show during his introduction. I do, however, feel the need to disagree that a political story does /not/ necessitate a political villain, with the inverse being applicable as well.
One of my biggest drives that Adam wasn't 'The Faunus Right Savior' is that he is the first White Fang Leader we see to fall into Salem's plots. We watch as his chapter does things and works in ways no other White Fang chapter would have done. We know this because when Sun and Blake go up against Torchwick at the docks, Blake calls them out on it. She does again when her and Sun are at the White Fang meeting in the...second or third?... season. Anyhow, it shows that we know the Fang aren't acting in the interest of the Faunus there, even if they spin it that way.
I'd say that, going back to the docks episode, if you're going to look for political villains that are upfront, you're going to have to look at the humans and Faunus both, as the confrontation between Blake and Weiss, and them ultimately making up, prove that the real problem the characters have to face isn't necessarily one scary guy with a political agenda, but their lack of communication and understanding with each other. Sorting that out let everything else fall into place, proving that the biggest division between the two species is their refusal to empathise or accept the humanity of the other, regardless of 'who started it'.
This all happened before Adam's reintroduction to the series, and because of that I don't think Blake ever needed a 'Magneto'. I think it showed perfectly that expectations to accomplish such goals actively require people to be willing to sit down, talk to each other fairly, and trust the other side to do the same.
I think a lot of people liked to imagine beating Adam would've fixed it all, because doing the above can be harder and scarier than fighting one angry dude with a sword.
If anything, I believe a better take away would be to show how easy it is to use that lack of information, and use that lack of trust, and then take something political and use it for something that it isn't, or shouldn't, be. All of what the Fang could've been, fell to what Adam personally demanded it be. It happens in real life, it's a danger and can lead to horrible things. Of course we saw that in the show too.
And when taken into the light, along side Blake, who hid under a bow, and the Faunus, who some would call animals, and even the truth of the villain behind the curtain, Salem, who most people don't know exists, Adam is another important lesson behind "what you see isn't always what you get" and how easily our perceptions can be tricked into believing the wrong thing. I think this theme is prevalent through out RWBY.
9720984
I'm pleased to hear that but also amused, considering the original premise for this story was 'OP Sunset saves Pyrrha by beating Cinder'.
Aunt Orange? Are Jaune and Applejack related?
MARVELOUS!
Truthfully, Tempest was a fool for trying to send Emerald to Mt. Glenn, just to snub Cinder. She may be more level-headed, more like a quiet rumble of a storm than Cinder's raging inferno, but Tempest has proven that she can be just as proud, stubborn, and boastful once she feels she has secured strength over another. (She demonstrated this in Equestria by proudly, almost gleefully, rubbing her victory in Twilight's face during "Open Up Your Eyes.") Emerald is very capable even on her own, but the thief has always been more suited to stealth, infiltration, and subterfuge. She does not possess Cinder's pure martial prowess, versatile combat semblance or raw magical power, which is far more suited to anything you might encounter in the deep underground tomb of Mt. Glenn. Not to mention Cinder has Salem's protection from the Grimm.
And finally, Pyrrha and the others had best take heed. Pyrrha had to fight like a legend in order to just barely defeat Cinder last time, and that was only because she had called on Cinder's pride for a contest of pure martial ability. But that opportunity is now gone. Salem has inflicted new orders for Cinder, new rules. When or if they fight again, Pyrrha would not be permitted to win.
11499609
I wouldn't be surprised if Tempest was doing was Cinder said; Trying to get Emerald killed. After all, Emerald is truly loyal to Cinder instead of Salem or the greater cause. If the plan is to isolate and supplant Cinder, destroying her remaining allies is a good idea. Hell, for all we know Tempest has taken this opportunity to murder Emerald while Cinder is away.
Also I believe it says a lot that Cinder asked if Pyrrha wanted to live before going maiden. Because it kind of hints at the possibility that had Pyrrha said she was prepared to die, Cinder wouldn't have done so and allowed herself to die with Pyrrha. Sure, Salem would have been pissed but its not like she could have done anything about it.
And so the cracks widen... the dominoes have not started to fall but extra hands have begun to set them up, it should not be long now before things start to spiral in their inevitable direction
Ooh Cinder reveals her (half) Fall Maiden powers
10423996
Not necessarily. In French Jaune mean yellow and Scipio frequently used drops of French, so yellow and orange used as related colorful names are in my opinion more probable than Apples and Oranges growing from the same treeline.
Ok here comes the complaints.
While i love what you did with cinder using her magic, and while i love Pyrrha's moment, i have to ask. Why does Sunset always has to be saved? why?
throughout the begging of the story and now, you only given Sunset 2 or 3 wins and sooo many L's. You took the phrase " may your bitches be few and your L's many" quite literally. She can't catch a break. Every time, she has to get saved. You can't show me what she is capable in the last chapter, where she summoned hundreds of spears, and now she can't do shit. Like, who even is the main character? it is not supposed to be Sunset? Why are you not doing anything to her character. I don't understand how such a talented writer fails to understand that when the secondary characters are more interesting and well designed then the main character, it's a big problem. And it's not like you will have Sunset become stronger by surpassing her limits or something. She will be like she was in the begging of the story, except with one more L to add to her collection of failures. Good job mate.
I'm sorry for the mean comments, but this is really pissing me off. The best stories that this fanfic has, revolve around Jaune and Ciel, Neon and Penny, Rainbow and Blake, hell, even Weiss and Cinder. It feels like Sunset is not a secondary character, she is the secondary character to a secondary character. You only give her L's, we don't see how she grows stronger. Suddenly she can pull stuff from her ass and use cool skills and somehow she still needs to be constantly saved. She doesn't learn anything from all those adventures and life lessons she had, except hiw not to be a dick and actually care for her friends, but that's all she learned. And just like Jaune with his "I Am nOt WorRHy Of PyrHHa" and "SHe caN FinD SomEonE BetTEr", her not learning from her mistakes... or from anything for that matter, gets a little bit annoying when this is all she does. And let's not talk about Rwby being almost the most annoying character in this fanfic. If her teammates are annoyed at her, i am more then annoyed. It's like she obly has three phrases. "BecauSe ThaT's What a HuNTresS ShoUD dO" and "WhO CarES iF i GivE MY liFE". It gets annoying really fast when all she says is this. Ok, maybe not all the time, but enough for it to become annoying to read trough.
Whatever, i got a little off the path. My point is, give Sunset more moments, where she can learn something and not immediately forget what she learned. Give Sunset her moments, where she doesn't have to be saved every time. Give Sunset her moments, where we can actually see her becoming stronger. Give her SOMETHING.
11734544
I’m sorry, but what you’re talking about is bullshit, Sunset wouldn’t be “The same as the beginning of story but with a L on her list”, when she is the one that gains the most W on the story short term. She defeated Bolin, killed Adam, helped save the town in Dream Maker, found her Semblance, saved Blake in the incident involving the Lures, saved Twilight against Adam, and grew as a character the most out of anyone in the fic. The problem is that you’re too focused on the Shounen mentality that “someone doesn’t pull out an asspulling move out of nowhere” = “bad character that is useless”.
Sunset is the most explored character in the entire book, and Volume 3 (recent), just proves my point.