The situation with Widowmaker didn't get any easier as the day went on. Pretty much everyone who spoke with her described her as little more than a robot. Her responses lack emotion and she barely does anything without prompting.
And the only one who can provide that prompting is Angela or anyone she deputises.
It made things much more complicated. Angela basically has a pet assassin that she can deploy at will, and pretty much no one can remove from her control.
"You know, you could just send her to one of our other worlds. Assuming that we confirm that she is relatively harmless, we can just leave her to guard this compound, or maybe even help on one of our other worlds." I offered.
Angela nodded, "I suppose that would work."
The decision itself could still wait for a week or three before the worldwide Talon takedown took place and was wrapped up. The mission was due to take place at the end of the week, and depending on how much Widowmaker would be needed to hunt down any of the stragglers, that might push the decision as much as another two weeks.
"Still, she follows me around unless I have a task for her to do, and I'm going to need to go back to Gibraltar soon because she's really determined to get back to me if I'm not around. The first time I left Watchpoint, she knocked out twelve guards and was half-way through hijacking one of the aircraft to get to Switzerland before I managed to duck back through the portal network and calm her down. I'm fairly sure that the only reason that she didn't kill any of them was that I had a standing order for her not to kill anyone and that the guards weren't a major threat to her." Angela moaned into her hands.
Gwen nodded sadly.
I shrugged, "Well if she needs to be close to you anyways, I guess I can try and fix that mess that Talon calls an augmentation program and have her posted as a permanent guard, especially if you are going forward with the Biotic Pill technology."
Angela looked at me, "Why would I need a guard if I can go forward with the Biotic Pills?"
"Angela, you are going to be putting a good portion of the pharmaceuticals industry out of business. Those pills cure cuts, bruises and partial fractures on top of accelerating recovery from viral and bacterial infections. The only things those pills don't invalidate are surgeries and treatments for congenital problems. If you sell the pills at the prices you are planning on, they will demolish the current pharmaceuticals industry entirely." Gwen explained, "I mean, it's probably better in the long term, if the pharmaceuticals industry is anything like the one in my world, it will drive a hell of a lot of competition, but still."
I nodded, "I did some research, back when I said I'd be willing to fund her manufacturing. The companies are the same sort of bleed people for money with treatments instead of cures and medical insurance providers are almost worse, so I didn't have any compunction with funding the pills. That said, I did take a moment to look after the little guy. The factories producing Biotic Pills will be staffed by the people who used to manufacture other drugs, and I'm going to be dropping a lot of money on reeducation programs for the rest of them."
Angela nodded, "Oh that… I try not to think of them actually."
"Well, you can go back to not thinking about them if you have a good bodyguard." I offered, "I'll give Widowmaker a tune-up so that she can act as your permanent bodyguard. Widowmaker isn't super well known out of certain communities and I'm fairly sure they will have the clearance required to know about the state of her mind."
Angela nodded, "I guess that works… I'll have to speak with Jack and the other first though."
"If what you've said is true, there's not much he can do about it. I assume that you've done a mind-dive to see if you can re-imprint her?"
"Yes. There's nothing there, at least not that we could find. I'm not actually sure how that works, but we don't actually know how her conditioning works in the first place, so we don't know if the imprinting changed things." Angela griped, "No one really knows what to do about her."
Eventually, we tabled the topic, there was time enough for that down the line, and in all honesty, we had better things to do for the moment.
Amber was travelling again soon, and from what our intelligence was able to uncover, Cinder had been spotted in the surrounding areas. While Qrow was already on high alert for the initial attack from her, our member had already promised our support on that front.
We had also begun work on finding the other two maidens. Fria and Amber were well in hand, but the other two were still missing.
At the moment, we were hoping to spare Spring from her canonical fate by keeping a close eye on Yang's mother.
As far as we could tell, she hadn't yet gained the Spring Maiden's powers and given that her 'Tribe' didn't wander too far, our own forces were scouring the villages in the surrounding area, trading medical supplies for information on the Spring Maiden.
The Summer Maiden remained a mystery. Unlike the other three, we didn't have the slightest hint as to where she may be.
We expected Cinder to make her move sometime in the next couple of days. Qrow would remain in his corvid form during the next couple of days, keeping a watch on the situation while hidden.
I, however, would remain in the sky under my holographic cloak. It still wasn't perfect, but when all you have to do is replicate a small patch of largely black sky, it was pretty close to being there.
Accompanying me would be Ahri and Lena. The two girls had decided to come along as backup when the news of Cinder being spotted had been shared with the group.
Honestly, we were still a little nervous. We still hadn't heard back from Strange about his summoning of Aggamoto to Remnant. The man had completed the ritual last week, but the sorcerer had yet to hear from the gods about our intervention.
It was literally the only thing stopping us from deploying our satellite communications platforms at this point. Putting together some satellite designs to provide communications and GPS services on the planet our compound had been a brilliant test of the development of the technology that we wanted to deploy on Remnant.
All that remained, I supposed, would be to wait for Cinder to make her move.
For the next two days, I spent the mornings checking over the progress on the facility in Niger, the afternoons training and completing my various projects and the evenings camped out around Remnant floating high above Amber as she rode her horse between various small towns.
And then, we saw them.
Apparently, the illusion that Emerald applied to Amber didn't apply to us, so we clearly saw Cinder and her male minion stepping up behind Amber even as we pulled ourselves into a steep dive.
I went ofter Emerald, who was about to land a blow on Amber, but the kick was caught in mid-air by my hand.
Behind me, I heard the sounds of battle. Amber just seemed confused as Lena charged at Mercury and Ahri strutted towards Cinder, her hands ablaze with weaponized life-force. Cinder tried to bolt, but the Kumi-ho wasn't having any of that.
In a flare of azure light, Cinder was blown off her feet tossed heels over head down the road.
A little further away, Lena had lead Mercury off the path, and the assassin was having a hard time keeping track of the temporal trickster as she flickered through the woods around him.
After knocking her out, I simply began tying up Emerald, binding her limbs together with a cable, leaving her hogtied on the ground before turning back to Amber.
The girl looked at me in confusion, the battle roaring around her, "What's happening?"
"We had information that suggested that they would try to kill you in order to gain your Maiden powers, so we kept an eye on things and intervened when we saw them attack you." I offered.
Amber nodded disbelievingly, but I just shrugged. It wasn't until Cinder revealed her Grimm infested hand in a desperate attempt to turn it onto Ahri (perhaps she mistook the fox-spirit for another maiden?) that things escalated.
As the tendrils sprang onto Ahi's face the woman scoffed before screaming in pained rage. A blaze of blue-white energy burst from her body, burning the black strings of Grimm flesh. Cinder was sent flying, and before I could react, a massive blast of energy washed over the brunette.
To my surprise, and Ahri's frustration, Cinder actually survives the attack. Her aura flaring up in response to the attack. However, it seemed she didn't escape unscathed.
Cinder collapsed to her knees in pain as the light of her soul shimmered around her.
Ahri's follow up, however, was stopped when I used my gravity spells to pull her away.
We weren't supposed to kill her after all.
Still, Ahri's attack did still hit Cinder. The blast, knocked off course by my intervention, barely grazed the aura of the brunette, and we saw her aura shatter. The woman screamed as she lay on the ground, and we could see the sparks of her aura attempt to coalesce until they seemed to spark out, laving a glowing tracery across her body.
It took both me and Lena to restrain Ahri long enough for her to calm down and no longer attempt to finish the job but honestly, it seemed like Cinder was in some pretty terrible shape.
As we bandaged her up and bound her, she seemed to come to her senses for a moment, trying to break free, but her motions were weak and ineffectual. What little I had managed to do wouldn't have heald a normal person from my world, let alone the people here.
Quite worried, we ferried her to Beacon as fast as we could, placing her in Ozpin's care as Lena followed Amberto her next destination.
Eventually, we received our prognosis.
Aura Scarring.
Cinder Fall's Aura had been damaged by her encounter with Ahri and the chances of her regaining her ability to use aura ever again were extremely slim.