SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Victim (New)

Victim

Sunset and Cinder had just left A & P – in fact the door had just shut behind them – when their attention was arrested by a cry of anger from just a little down the street.

“How dare you speak to me, you stinking wretch!” the angry shout came from… it took Sunset a moment to remember her name: Phoebe, that was it, Phoebe Kommenos, the girl who had tried to hassle Pyrrha on the day the Atlas students had arrived at Beacon.

She was standing only a few feet away from them down the street, dressed in a red dress with a ruffled neckline – with white at the edges – that swooped downwards to expose the beginnings of her cleavage; the ruffled sleeves were short, exposing her arms to the summer sun. An emerald bracelet hung languidly from off her right wrist, while on her left arm, a bracelet of rubies or red diamonds – Sunset couldn’t tell the difference from sight – was clasped more tightly against her skin. Her hair was down, dangling down her back towards her waist. A goat faunus in an Atlas uniform, horns growing out of her forehead, followed behind her, and she was accompanied by a group of well-dressed young ladies, none of them without some golden bangle or sparkling necklace or pair of earrings peeking out from beneath their hair.

So much for the valour of the north.

It was not just the materialism on display here that prompted that thought from Sunset, but the fact that Phoebe’s angry cry had been directed towards the homeless fellow sitting not far away from the café, begging a few spare lien from passersby. Cinder had ignored him on their way in, but Sunset – who felt a kind of squirming embarrassment whenever she left someone like that empty-handed – had tossed him a couple of lien to ease her conscience and enjoy her coffee and ice cream with peace of mind.

Phoebe seemed to have taken his importuning as a personal affront. The man cringed before her anger as she glared down at him.

“Sorry, Madame,” he said quickly. “It’s just that I only need a few lien to help me-”

“You’re still speaking, insolent dog!” Phoebe snarled, and one hand – the emeralds upon it sparkling as they caught the sun – lashed out to strike him upon the side of the head, drawing a cry of pain. She turned to her ladies and laughed. “The nerve of him, to address me. I’m surprised that Vale allows such idle scum to litter its streets, harassing decent people like that.”

Sunset folded her arms. “The pride of Atlas,” she declared. “How fortunate this city is to have such stalwarts here to defend it from the evils of homelessness and destitution.”

Phoebe’s eyes – all their eyes – turned to Sunset. Her painted lips curled into a sneer. “Is there a problem?”

Sunset glanced down at the homeless man, curling up protectively into a ball, his hands raised to protect his face from further abuse. One of the Atlesian girls had grabbed his little mongrel dog and was holding the creature by the neck as it squirmed and wriggled in a futile effort to escape.

Ruby, Sunset was certain, would have fought for the man, would have demanded that they back off and leave him alone. Jaune would have done the same, but with a tremor in his voice as he did so, while Pyrrha would probably have asked them nicely, at first. All of them would have stood up for an innocent man in trouble, just like Ruby had stood up for that old shopkeeper against Torchwick and his goons on the night that Sunset and Ruby had first met.

It was what a true huntress ought to do.

But Sunset wasn’t Ruby, or Pyrrha, or even Jaune. She was Sunset Shimmer, and there were seven of them, and while she might win a fight, depending on how useless these vapid rich girls were, Sunset thought she knew who would get in trouble for starting a fight, and it probably wouldn’t be Miss Hoity-Toity over there.

Sunset didn’t look at the homeless man. “No,” she said. “There’s no problem here.”

Phoebe’s gaze slid off Sunset to the left. “Then what are you staring at?” she demanded.

She wasn’t talking to Sunset; she was talking to Cinder, who seemed – who was – frozen in place, staring at Phoebe with both her eyes wide. Those eyes, which seemed usually to smoulder like flame, seemed dimmer now, like dying embers cooling amidst the ashes of a burnt-out fire.

Cinder said nothing, though her mouth was half open; if there were words, they had stuck in her throat, held fast by some power greater than Cinder’s strength. Her hands shook. Her whole body trembled. She was rooted in place, and yet, she shook like a tree assailed by the storm.

She was scared. It took Sunset a moment to recognise it because it was so unlike Cinder to behave this way, but she was scared. Scared of… of Phoebe? What was there to be scared of? What was there in Phoebe Kommenos to make Cinder Fall blanch so?

One of Phoebe’s cronies, a willowy girl with curled pink hair, called out encouragement to Phoebe as the latter stalked towards them, her six-inch heels clicking upon the pavement. The tips of her hair, Sunset could see as she got closer, were blonde; that must be her natural colour showing through the dye.

She glowered as she advanced on Cinder. “I asked you,” she snarled, “what you were looking at.”

Cinder didn’t respond. She didn’t seem capable of responding. She looked as though she wanted to retreat but didn’t seem capable of that either. Miniature flames sparked at the tips of her fingers, before she clenched her hand into a fist to quench them. It was all that she seemed capable of doing.

“Well?” Phoebe demanded. “Say something? Are you some kind of moron? Or are you one of those deaf-mutes? I swear they’ll let anyone into the academies these days. Well?”

“That’s close enough,” Sunset growled, putting herself between Phoebe and Cinder. She had to look up into the face of the taller girl, made taller by her heels, but she didn’t show any fear. “In fact, that’s more than close enough. Back off.”

Phoebe glared down at her. “And who are you to tell me to do anything?”

“I’m Sunset Shimmer,” Sunset said. “Now back off.”

Phoebe was silent a moment. “I remember you,” she said. “You’re one of Pyrrha’s friends, aren’t you?”

“I’m Pyrrha’s team leader, as it happens,” Sunset said.

“Well Pyrrha’s not around to protect you now-”

“I don’t need Pyrrha’s protection,” Sunset snarled. “What I need is for you to get out of the faces of me and my friend and be somewhere else.”

“Uh, Phoebe?” ventured the same of her cronies who had spoken before, “perhaps we should go. That… that’s the pony from the video.”

The video? Oh, right, the fight with Pyrrha. Did people actually watch that? Cool. What was especially cool was the way in which, their attention having been drawn to who she was, the girls now seemed wary of her. A couple of them even looked frightened.

Phoebe’s eyes widened a little.

“That’s right,” Sunset muttered. “I’m the one. Of course, Pyrrha beat me in the end, but…” She held up her hand, showing the green glow that burned around it as a spear of magic formed in the air above her. “You’re not Pyrrha, are you?”

Phoebe stared down at Sunset for a moment, her face contorting through several different expressions of rage, her roughed lips scowling and snarling wordlessly, before she seemed to calm herself with a visible effort. She laughed, that laugh that was already becoming oh-so-annoying to Sunset. “Ohohohoho. I’m so sorry. I had no idea your girlfriend would have such a strong reaction to my presence. Don’t feel too bad, little girl; many people are intimidated by me.” She laughed again, turning upon her high heels. “And forgive me, sir, for my behaviour.”

The homeless man blinked rapidly, his ragged blanket shuffling around him as he straightened up a little. “It’s quite alright, madame, I-”

“Oh, please, I feel simply terrible. You must let me make it up to you somehow.”

“I just need a few lien-”

“I’m not talking about money,” Phoebe declared extravagantly. “Let’s get you cleaned up, into some fresh clothes. Ladies, help this poor man up and onto his feet. We’ll take some time out on the way to the salon to… do a good deed.”

Something was not right about this. As Sunset watched two of Phoebe’s girls pick the man up by his arms, holding him as though he were their captive and not someone they were going to help, she knew in her bones that something was wrong. This was not going to end well.

That was in front of her, but as Phoebe and the others dragged the man and his dog away, Sunset was aware that Cinder was behind her, still trembling, still rooted to the spot.

And so she turned away from Phoebe and the homeless man alike and focussed her attention upon Cinder as they took the man and his dog away.

“Cinder?” Sunset asked, her voice gently, barely more than a whisper. “Cinder, it’s okay.” She placed one hand upon Cinder’s shoulder and delicately reached out to take her hand. “It’s okay, she’s gone. I’m right here.” She slipped her fingers into Cinder’s open palm and began to close them.

Cinder jerked away, the fire in her eyes beginning to burn once more. “Don’t touch me!” she snapped, clenching both hands now and retreating from Sunset. Her glass slippers clinked upon the paving stones. She glanced away from Sunset, towards the abandoned blankets that the homeless man had left behind, the lien cards sitting in a decaying plastic cup, and then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sunset, you didn’t deserve that, but… I don’t need… don’t touch me.”

Her chest rose and fell as she turned away, wrapping her arms around herself.

Sunset followed at a discreet distance, leaving a couple of steps between Cinder and herself. “I’ve never seen you like that before,” she said.

“And you won’t see it again,” Cinder declared. “I wasn’t… prepared.”

Sunset frowned. “Do you know her?”

“Your company is welcome, Sunset, but your questions about my past are not.”

“I suppose I can understand that,” Sunset replied. “Is… is there anything that I can do?”

“No,” Cinder said as her hands fell down to her sides. “Because I need no help from anyone. I’m fine.”

“You didn’t seem fine a moment ago,” Sunset pointed out.

“Well, I am,” Cinder barked. She took a deep breath, and a sigh escaped. “You realise… I’m fine.”

Sunset hesitated for a moment. “You know that you can tell me the truth, right? You don’t have to pretend with me.”

Cinder laughed bitterly, “Why not, because we’ve known each other for such a very long time?”

“Because we’re friends,” Sunset said, “and friends can be honest with one another.”

“'Friends,'” Cinder murmured. “Are we friends?”

“Aren’t we?”

Cinder was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I suppose we are.” She fell silent, speaking again only as she glanced over her shoulder. “I… you won’t tell anyone about this, will you? It would do no good at all for my reputation.”

Sunset grinned. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” Cinder drawled, and when she turned back to face Sunset, her expression was once more composed, much more what Sunset expected of Cinder than what she’d been shown not too long ago. “Oh, and by the way, it slipped my mind before, but Emerald was able to find out who graffitied that awful symbol on your door.”

Sunset raised her eyebrows. “It slipped your mind?”

Cinder nodded silently.

Sunset rolled her eyes. Of all the things to ‘slip your mind,’ honestly. “Well, go on, don’t leave me in suspense.”

“Bon Bon,” Cinder said.

Sunset stared at her, silently, processing the two little words that had just popped daintily out of Cinder’s mouth. “Bon Bon?”

“Indeed,” Cinder said. “A little surprising, no? I thought it would be that Cardin boy.”

“So did I,” Sunset muttered. He must be scared of losing his relationship. “You’re sure it was Bon Bon?”

“Emerald has ways of getting the truth,” Cinder assured her, “and she would never dare lie to me.”

Sunset’s jaw clenched. She felt a fire rising up inside of her, brighter than the flames which burned in Cinder’s eyes. “Little…” She bit back something unsuitable for genteel company like Cinder. “I’ll have her guts for this, you see if I don’t.”

The nerve of that girl! Who did she think she was? What right did she have to look down on Blake, to treat her like that, to treat Sunset like that? She had defaced the wrong door, Sunset thought as she turned away from Cinder and began to stomp off in the direction of the skydock. She had messed with the wrong team leader. She might think that Sunset had become tame and timid, well, she thought wrong! Just because Sunset’s track record for revenge wasn’t brilliant, just because her schemes had blown up in her face at Canterlot didn’t mean that she could tweak Sunset’s nose with impunity, certainly not by dragging Blake through the mud and bringing up her association with the White Fang! The nerve of it!

Cinder caught up with her, Cinder’s glass slippers clinking rapidly as she jogged to draw level with the shorter girl. “So, I ask you again the same question that I asked the day after Blake’s arrest: what are you going to do about it?”

“I know what I’d like to do about it,” Sunset growled.

Cinder waited a moment. “Well, go on, don’t leave me in suspense,” she repeated.

Sunset’s pace slowed. “Let me rephrase,” she said, “I know what I would like to do, but I don’t know if I have the skill to pull it off.”

“There’s a skill that you don’t possess? I’m astonished.”

Sunset glared at her. Cinder smirked.

“Come on,” she said. “You’ve seen me as no one else at Beacon has ever seen me. The least you can do is share your plans for revenge with me. I might even be able to help.”

“You might not want to get caught up in this if it goes badly.”

“If you let me help, it won’t go badly,” Cinder said.

Sunset hesitated for a moment, walking along the streets with Cinder beside her. “What I would like to do,” she confessed, “is get into her scroll and air her dirty laundry to the whole school. But I’d never get away with it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I didn’t get away with it the last time I tried something similar,” Sunset said sharply. “If only Twilight wasn’t here, but…”

“This sounds like a fascinating story.”

Sunset glanced at her.

“Once again, I remind you that you have seen another side of me,” Cinder said. “I can’t help but feel that entitles me to a little… compensation from you.”

There was a certain logic to that, a certain fairness that Sunset had to concede. “Okay,” she said, with a slight trace of a huff in her voice. “I’ll tell you.

“I arrived at Canterlot Combat School as a young m- girl,” Sunset explained. “Young, but not naïve. Not any more. That had been knocked out of me by…” By the world in which I found myself. “By the nature of Atlesian society.”

“Say no more,” Cinder said. She paused. “Except do, because you haven’t really said anything.”

Sunset grinned, shaking her head as her tail swept from side to side behind her, curled up a little at the tip so that it didn’t touch the ground. “My naiveté had been driven out of me by Atlas,” she repeated, “but my ambition had not. I arrived at Canterlot Combat School determined that I would triumph over all the prejudices that confronted me and establish my ascendancy over the whole school. No matter who I had to step on to do it.”

Cinder smirked. “I wish I could have known you then. You sound a lot of fun.”

“Are you saying that I’m not fun now?”

“I can’t imagine you being willing to step on just anybody to get to the top now.”

Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve realised that you can get further sometimes by stepping with people rather than on them.”

“Perhaps,” Cinder conceded. “Not always as amusing, though.”

“Do I need to be worried about a knife in my back?”

“Oh, no,” Cinder said quickly. “If I stab you, Sunset, it will be in the front, I promise.”

Sunset stared at her out of the corner of her eyes, silent for a moment, before a snort exited through her nostrils. “Thank you, for your honesty.”

“Thank you for appreciating my candour,” Cinder replied. “We’re friends, but let’s not forget that we’re also rivals at the end of the day. And if I find myself facing you across the Amity Colosseum, then don’t expect me to hold back on account of our friendship.”

“Right back at you,” Sunset replied. “Although if you want to make it to the one-on-ones, you should hope that you don’t run into me in the Amity Colosseum.”

“You’re not going to put yourself forward for the singles round?”

“No, I’m going to send Pyrrha,” Sunset replied.

“Of course,” Cinder drawled. “Who else but the Champion of Mistral? One might almost say that she’s entitled to it.”

“She’s a tournament fighter; we’re talking about the greatest tournament in Remnant,” Sunset replied. “Lady Nikos expects Pyrrha to get the chance to shine upon this, the most prestigious of stages.”

“And you wouldn’t want to disappoint Lady Nikos, would you?”

“No, I would not,” Sunset affirmed. “She has been good to me.”

“This is what I’m talking about, by the way,” Cinder declared. “I can’t help but think you would have been even better company when you didn’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“You realise that the me that didn’t care about anyone but herself would have only seen you as a threat, right?”

“I’d have taken my chances,” Cinder murmured, “but I do apologise for these constant interruptions. Go on.”

“Like I said… what did I say?”

“You were going to step on people to get to the top.”

“Right,” Sunset grunted. “I wanted to be the queen bee. I wanted to be looked up to and respected. I wanted to be feared. I wanted everyone to acknowledge that I was the one to watch, the one to look out for. Unfortunately for me, by the time I got there, Canterlot already had a princess.”

“Rainbow Dash,” Cinder ventured.

“Twilight Sparkle,” Sunset corrected her. “Rainbow Dash was… let me put it like this: Twilight was the heart of their merry little band, and Rainbow Dash was the soul. Does that make any sense?”

“Assume that it doesn’t and explain better.”

Sunset chewed on her bottom lip, her tail swishing back and forth as she thought about it how she could put it in such a way as to make sense to Cinder. “Think about my team, Team Sapphire,” she said. “Ruby is the heart of Sapphire, she’s the one that we all adore and who adores all of us, the one who guides us with her conscience, her morals. But Pyrrha is the one who defines our purpose, who articulates what we’re about, what we’re doing here, the best of us, the one who exemplifies our team. Heart and soul, see?”

“And what does that make you?”

“Oh, I’m the head, I keep the other two in check,” Sunset explained. “But do you get it now? Twilight was the glue that held them all together, everyone’s best friend, the one that everyone at school looked up to. She was the one who was unanimously voted Princess of the Spring Fling because everyone agreed that she deserved it. Rainbow Dash couldn’t have done that, she didn’t have that quality that brings people together, but Twilight didn’t exemplify what it meant to be an Atlesian combat school student the way that Rainbow Dash did. Heart and soul.”

“I… will take your word on that,” Cinder murmured.

“Together with their friends, they were the elite of Canterlot, even though they were only in their second year. They formed a clique, except it didn’t seem like a clique because they’d worked hard to dissolve the cliques before I got there. I found out that for some time, there had been tensions between the students on the combat track – the ones who were aiming for Atlas after graduation – and the ones who were taking the less rigorous aura training courses. The genuine combat school students looked down on the rest as dilettantes, but Twilight and her friends had put a stop to that by sheer force of personality… and probably a song or two. They had a glamour about them that no other student possessed, made even stronger by the fact that they didn’t even act like it. They were always so… helpful, to everyone, even the people beneath them, which was everyone. I couldn’t understand it.”

“Do you understand it now?” Cinder asked.

Sunset hesitated for a moment. “Not really, no,” she muttered. “It wasn’t like they were close to half of these people or anything. The point was, it didn’t take me very long to work out that I would never be on top while Twilight and her friends were ruling the school, and I wasn’t willing to wait until my last year when they graduated and left me alone. So, there was only one thing to do: I challenged Twilight for Princess of the Fall Formal. And then, to make it a sure thing that I would win, I decided to divide Twilight from all of her friends and, in that way, divide the school as well. I was certain that without Twilight’s friends as a shining beacon of cooperation and unity, the rest of Canterlot would fall apart, and all the old cliques and rivalries they were suppressing would reassert themselves.”

“Divide them,” Cinder murmured. “Yes… I can see the logic to that. After all, we are always being told by Professor Ozpin and all the rest that the strength of humanity lies in unity. It stands to reason, then, that division leads to weakness.” She grinned. “And weakness can be exploited, by an opponent with the foresight to do so.”

“My thoughts, precisely,” Sunset declared. “But how to do it? That was my problem. They were such good friends; as much as they didn’t suspect how much I hated them – when I put my name down for princess, Twilight actually wished me luck – but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy to turn them against each other. I knew that if I got caught, I would not only make their friendship stronger, but also earn the enmity of everyone who liked and looked up to them, which, as I’ve just said, was everyone.”

“So what did you do?” Cinder asked. “How did you square that circle?”

“I didn’t,” Sunset replied. “You already know this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Not for me, anyway.”

“But you tried something?”

“Yes, I tried to clone their scroll profiles so that I could make messages from me look like they were coming from other people. Once I’d done that, I sent them conflicting messages that would lead to conflict amongst the group until their friendships couldn’t take it anymore,” Sunset said. “So, I found out that Rainbow Dash had agreed to bring the softball team along to Applejack’s bake sale; I then sent Rainbow Dash a snotty message from Applejack’s scroll telling her that she wasn’t needed after all; that way, Rainbow Dash would feel insulted, and Applejack would be incensed that Rainbow had lied to her and made a liar out of her for telling everyone the softball team was coming to the bake sale. I sent Pinkie Pie a message from Fluttershy’s scroll that she – Fluttershy – wanted a big party instead of a silent auction to raise money for the animal shelter, which was exactly what Fluttershy didn’t want. And I… and I, um… I’m really not proud of what I did to try and break up Rainbow and Twilight’s friendship.”

She had known that they had the strongest relationship out of any members of the six, and she had also suspected that underneath the way she acted like she was a human just like the rest that Rainbow Dash was insecure about being a faunus in Atlas. So she had sent her emails which Twilight had ‘accidentally’ copied her into along with the rest of her friends, laughing about how they were pulling the wool over Rainbow’s eyes, pretending to be her friend, and filled with racist terms besides. None of what she had done or sought to do had been nice, but what she had tried to do to Rainbow Dash… that had definitely been the act of a bitch.

“Of course,” she went on, “it didn’t work, because-”

“They talked to one another?” Cinder suggested. “Because, to be perfectly honest, that plan seems doomed to fall apart the moment they had an in-person conversation and revealed that they didn’t send those messages.”

“Actually, that’s not how I got caught,” Sunset said. “You might think that would be how I got caught, but once someone is upset enough, then denials from the person they’re upset with just seem like exactly that: denial. No, I got caught because Twilight’s better with computers than I am, and she was able to prove that I was the source of all the messages and emails… with the predictable results.”

“They closed ranks,” Cinder murmured.

Sunset nodded. “Their friendship emerged stronger than ever before, and Rainbow Dash called me out on the carpet for it in public so that the whole school knew what I’d tried to do, and to say they didn’t see the funny side would be an understatement. Twilight won the Fall Formal crown by a landslide.” Flash had been the only other person to vote for Sunset besides herself. “To cut a long story short, my plans to dominate the school never really got off the ground after that.” In fact, things had only gotten worse from that point on, what with the Anon-a-Miss incident which she had been wrongly blamed for, Twilight and her friends becoming heroes as a result of the Canterlot Wedding, and eventually, Flash breaking up with her. It had all been downhill for Sunset Shimmer, from that very first failure.

"And that's why Bon Bon dared to deface your door like that," Cinder added. "She saw you bested and humiliated, and so, she doesn't fear you." She smiled. "Why don't you show her how wrong she is to think so little of you, to presume that she may trifle with you and with those dear to you?"

"Oh, I would, and gladly," Sunset growled. "But how? And how to do it without being caught, what's more?"

"Do you need her to know that it was you?"

"Ideally, but not in such a way as she can prove it," Sunset replied. "If I get punished for what I did to her in response to the thing that she skated off for, then I've come out of this worse than she has, and I may as well not have bothered."

"There's no risk of that if you take my advice," Cinder declared. "I know a few things about computers myself, maybe even more than the great Twilight Sparkle. I think I could help you get in just about anywhere you liked, and no one would ever be able to prove that you were there."

Sunset looked at her. "Really? You'd do that?"

"So surprised?"

"I'm wondering what's in it for you."

"Sunset, I'm hurt, really," Cinder replied. "What was in it for you when you put yourself out to help Blake?"

"Nothing much," Sunset admitted. "It just… felt like the right thing to do, I suppose."

"Precisely," Cinder said. "Isn't that, as they say, what friends are for?"

---

The tramp cowered against the dumpster that would soon be his tomb.

Phoebe Kommenos loomed over him. The little dog was dead at her feet – her bare feet; she had kicked off her stylish but rather impractical heels for this – and there was a light smattering of blood on her knuckles already. His blood, of course.

She was alone, now. Her girlfriends had gone, or rather, she had sent them away when she sensed that her desire for amusement was about to outstrip their own. Her mother had taught her to be aware of when her predilections were going beyond society's indulgence of the same; some things you had to hide if you wanted to be accepted in polite society.

That was why she had used to vent her frustrations on Ashley, behind closed doors where no one could see and no one could hear but mother and Philonoe, neither of whom cared. Ashley was dead now, of course, along with mother and her sister; the little idiot had left a fire burning and gotten them all killed. She missed them all. She missed her mother, and she missed her sweet, dear sister who had been so much a better person than Phoebe and yet had never judged her or reviled her. But she missed Ashley most of all. She missed having someone upon whom she could vent without consequence or without having to be careful.

Not even Mal afforded her that luxury; there were some things her teammates wouldn't ignore, some things that General Ironwood wouldn't tolerate, even if she was just a filthy faunus. But then, he had a fondness for those animals, didn't he?

And so Phoebe had to be careful. She had to hold it in. She had to hide, to control herself. But there were times… there were times when she just needed to let it out. And nobody was going to miss some vagabond from off the street or ask too many questions when he turned up dead. Nobody cared about riffraff like this.

That damned faunus had humiliated her, and for the second time! Humiliated her in front of her teammates on the day they arrived and in front of her friends today. Phoebe would pay her back someday, somehow, the same way that she knew with absolute certainty that she was going to pay Pyrrha back for all the humiliations that Phoebe had suffered at her hands.

And in the meantime, this would make her feel so much better.

Her hands clenched into fists as she advanced upon the helpless man before her.

Comments

[Mastermind4892]

This was legit one of the hardest chapters I had to read in a while.

Even without going through Sunset’s dark past, it was hard reading each line while wondering if we were really going to do nothing about that poor homeless man.

[alfonso_rd_33]

Welp, there goes whatever sympathy one could have for Miss Kommennos

[MSie95]

Well, now I'm sure Phoebe's fate was too lenient.

[Adser]

Hmm, I have just noticed something.

Cinder is brainstorming with Sunset the best way of divide and conquer, exactly what she is planning to do later on Vale.

This is the closest she ever gets to scheming with someone, since she considers the opinions of everyone who works under her as irrelevant as Salem considers Cinder opinions. That should help her polish the manipulation part of her plan much further that her canon counterpart, who was anything but subtle and caused the fall of Beacon by effectively hitting it with a really big hammer.

[Lancerguy]

Ok, seeing Sunset back at true neutral is great and adds to her character. Cinder's development was equally great. However, that was too much too quickly for Phoebe. I get that she is a CE psychopath, but there still has to be something there for the audience to connect with. I like the more subtle evil she used to be, this has me already wanting to off her, which is not good. Best evil is redeemable evil (see Sunnykins) followed by understandable evil. Phoebe is neither, and this destroys any chance of a reader trying to connect with her. I don't have to sympathize with her, but I should want to try to.

[Adser]

10657517
I would disagree, not every villain needs something for you to connect with, specially such a minor villain like Phoebe.

If we are completely honest, her only relevance is her impact on Cinder life and the potential reaction of both Atlas Academy and Mistral nobility if her actions are brought to the public. I don't mind her being a one-note villain, and I would have never called Phoebe characterization as subtle.

She is selfish, abusive and the only reason she doesn't do worse is because she would lose her standing on society. This is just the nastiness being shown instead of only told.

[Wysteria]

I honestly cannot recall if Sunset ever stated if the girls back at Canterlot High ever tried befriending her when she first showed up or not.

[JMP]

10657380
...when did she ever garner sympathy to begin with?

[Madforce Entertainment]

Why did the dog die? Also what happens to the homeless guy?

[Scipio Smith]

10830311
Phoebe killed the dog and she's going to kill the homeless guy because she's a psychopath.

[Animatorsnake]

DAMN! This entire chapter just dumped an entire load of information, though I wonder if Bon Bon was really the one responsible - considering the clues we learn early in the story - that and I was confused why Cinder acted that way toward Kommenos, but I think I know now why, but I'll keep that info to myself until later.

[Widow Peak]

Nobody is not kind of mean in their teen years. And if they were not, they were probably a sociopath.

Phoebe, is both mean AND a sociopath.

[Widow Peak]

You know, it did not dawn on me until I though about this chapter later. Phoebe really will see NO consecuence from killing a person. None at all. She wears a pretty porcelain mask that hides the awful person she is, which means nobody will suspect anything of her. I bet she will remember this very mild humilliation, and she will take revenge on Sunset when she least expects it... And no outside observer will think she has anything to do with it.

[Scipio Smith]

10888284
Mhmm. Although her technical fairytale allusion has yet to be revealed to you, the biggest actual influence on her character was Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill from Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books: a coward, a bully, and a murderous psychopath with mommy issues, he nevertheless gets away with it because, to most officers, he is the perfect soldier, always smartly turned out on parade, obedient, deferential, 'an evil man hiding in a cloud of pipe-clay' as he's described in the TV series.

Phoebe is in much the same mould, she presents the facade of a model student and that facade enables her to get away with murder - literally.

[Raul]

“Bon Bon,” Cinder said.

You know, I was genuinely confused at first, caught me off guard, but then I remembered why it makes sense, and god damn if that ain’t a perfect set up.

“Oh, no,” Cinder said quickly. “If I stab you, Sunset, it will be in the front, I promise.”

Great line, love it!

[Stet709]

“Do I need to be worried about a knife in my back?”

“Oh, no,” Cinder said quickly. “If I stab you, Sunset, it will be in the front, I promise.”

Why not both? A metaphorical stab in the back and a physical one in the front

I wonder though, is Phoebe part of Cinder's step-family and survived, hence why Cinder is reacting badly, or does Phoebe remind Cinder of her step-family and how abusive they were?

[Luviere]

Ok but, i didn't get to hear why Cinder had frozen like that. I would quite liked to hear about it.