Pyrrha was on edge.
It was born of a combination of things. The botched dust robbery from a week ago was the most recent stress on Pyrrha. It turned out it was a good idea she had changed her mind at the last minute and decided to go herself. Cinder had an excellent grasp of dust usage, but Pyrrha didn't think Cinder was good enough to handle Beacon's deputy headmistress. Thankfully just half of the maiden's power she was enough to give her the edge.
Then there was her role; Pyrrha would be forced to give control to her false self as she did at her tournaments. However, instead of it only being a few days at most, it would be for several months. Until the Vytal Festival, Pyrrha would have to play the socially awkward, humble athlete. She hated it; she wanted to show off and take advantage of her standing, not hide from it like it made her uncomfortable.
And finally, there was her mission, she was to be the first layer of their infiltration; however, unlike Cinder, who would show up in a few weeks with their backup, Pyrrha would be going in alone. Alone in the greatest fortress of her mistress's enemy.
Leaning back in the airship, Pyrrha closed her eyes and thought back on how she ended up here. Her mistress approached her years ago at the beginning of her rise on the dueling circuit. Then Pyrrha had considered the acting a small price to pay. It began simply enough. Her mistress said she knew a way to boost aura, and this intrigued Pyrrha. All she wanted was to be the best at that point in her life, and more aura wouldn't hurt. It was still her aura, after all. All she had to do to gain this gift was keep it a secret and act the way her mistress told her. After Pyrrha made her promise, she was gifted a small pair of red and black stud earrings and told to wear them at all times but to take them off an hour before her fights. They worked as promised. When she fought without the earings, she always seemed to have more aura than when she was practicing, so Pyrrha held up her end of the bargain.
At first, it was not even really an act. She really did feel humbled by her wins, but it got boring as she grew older, especially after the media started calling her the Invincible Girl. Who wouldn't want to make the most of that name, but no, her Mistress said she needed to keep up the lie. However, there was a reward or, as it would turn out more of an incentive, her mistress had chosen her to receive an extraordinary power, the only catch being she had to take it herself. This incentive got Pyrrha quickly back onboard as by then, her need for perfection had twisted into a desire for power.
When Pyrrha was fourteen, a lot began to change in her life as she was drawn in deeper with her mistress. She learned of Ozpin's little cabal that apparently ran the world and how they represented what was wrong with the world. They kept the people weak and cowed, only permitting a select few to learn their arts. She learned how the only way to change things would be to tear everything down and rebuild it. About two years ago, her liaisons had deemed her well enough on side; she was taken to meet her mistress. Professor Lionheart made excuses for to explain why she would be gone to her parents, and she was taken deep into the Grimmlands. This location should have been a signal that she had made a mistake, but by then, she was invested enough that she did not see it as a negative. After all, if her mistress could control the grimm then once her group began to rebuild after the old order was torn down, the new people would not need to fear the creatures of grimm. So Pyrrha was barely even phased when she first laid eyes on Salem. What else would the queen of the grimm look like except a hybrid of human and monster?
It was this visit where she first met Cinder. The girl was a few years older than Pyrrha herself and seemed to hate her on sight. Salem told her it was because Cinder had wanted to be the one to wield the maidens' powers. When the two girls failed to settle their differences on their own, Salem stepped in. She demanded the two duel; the winner would become Salem's dark maiden the loser Salem would find other uses for. The only rule was they were not to kill each other.
Cinder was good; Pyrrha gave her that. Her rival's mastery of dust sorcery was unmatched by any she had fought before. But this was not a tournament nobody was telling Pyrrha to hide her semblance here, and Cinder's blades were still made of metal. Despite the whirling mass of superheated dust and glass, Pyrrha was the winner.
Salem then made Pyrrha sleep in the same room as Cinder while she stayed in the castle in the Grimmlands. Their mistress said that they would work together one day, so they would need to learn to get along. It had been a slow process, but slowly throughout several visits, Pyrrha found herself while not quite being able to call Cinder a friend at the very least, she considered her a tentative ally. As long as Pyrrha held the upper hand in the power balance between them, Cinder would do what she said.
Over the following year, it became harder and harder for Pyrrha to hide her extracurricular excursions from her parents. So, she moved out on her fifteenth birthday, getting a modest apartment in Mistral. Cinder also unofficially moved in with her as she needed to establish a presence in Mistral for their future plans.
The next year and a half had been pretty dull., Pyrrha fought in several tournaments, but most of her time was taken up by intelligence gathering. She made many trips to Vale to stalk the movements of Ozpin's Fall Maiden. Just a few months before she was due to turn seventeen, Pyrrha began to put her plan into action. She started by recruiting some help. She found Emerald in the city of Vale itself. A part of her pitied the street kid; she had no idea what she was about to get involved in, but the girl wouldn't bite the hand that fed her and possessed an enormously powerful semblance, so Pyrrha pushed her sympathy aside and took her in. Her next target was the assassin, Marcus Black. However, by the time she tracked him down, he had found himself permanently indisposed at the hands of his son. Pyrrha took this in stride and procured the services of the son, Mercury, instead.
From there, it was relatively simple to plan the attack. Emerald would use her semblance to take the maiden off her guard, and then Emerald and Mercury would rush in to secure her while Pyrrha did the dirty work. Cinder would be backup. One thing that Pyrrha was still worried about, with one and if Cinder's backup was needed potentially two other girls there, how was she to be sure the power would pass on to her. She brought this up to Salem when she next spoke to her mistress. Salem had apparently been expecting Pyrrha to ask this question because her mistress already had a solution presenting a small grimm. Salem showed Pyrrha the grimm shift into a glove and explained that it would leech the maiden's power into her. The only cost would be a sliver of her humanity. Pyrrha was thrilled; she had been provided an assured way to make sure the power went to her, she was so excited that the cost barely registered. And so Pyrrha set a date for just a few days after her seventeenth birthday.
The attack had gone off without a hitch until they were interrupted at the very end by one of Ozpin's cronies. The group of four managed to escape with their identities intact, but unfortunately, only half of the maiden's power.
That had been no more than three weeks ago. Since then, Pyrrha had bent Taurus's White Fang cell and Roman Torchwick along with his sidekick to her cause. Yet just as things were kicking off, Pyrrha had to run to Beacon and leave most of the day to day running of her operation to Cinder while she went off to play schoolgirl in Ozpin's fortress. At least they had an open campus policy; Pyrrha thought, as long as she was not required to be in class, she could do as she liked so she would be available to step in if needed.