EXTRICATION
"I think I've made my goals pretty clear to you, Miss Hill. I only wish to see this Kingdom burn, both cities and all." Watts explained flatly.
"So none of the lives of these people matter to you? Not even the ones who looked up to you in your prime? The ones who thought you'd bring the world into a new age-" Robyn was cut off.
"Those people are either dead, or agree with what I've done." Watts flatly spoke, sitting up.
Robyn glared at him now. "So life holds no value to you now just because Ironwood chose someone else over you? Your ego just couldn't handle it, that's it, huh?!"
"Well when you put it that way, you make me sound petty." the doctor laughed.
"It's incredibly petty, and selfish. To think such a smart person could be so short-sighted like that." Robyn stood herself up now.
"I know I have no place in this conversation. But I do think I can speak for all of us when I say you're a reprehensible person, Arthur. You really should have died that day." Jacques spoke up.
"Are you really one to call me reprehensible, Jacques? After what you did to your family? Your children? That wife of your's who'd much rather spent her nights with a bottle than with-"
"Can it." Qrow spoke up now.
"And the murderer talks again!" Watts mockingly praised him.
"I didn't murder Clover. Your buddy, Tyrian did the killing." Qrow affirmed now, grasping onto Clover's pin tightly. "I'll pay him back for that. But not before I pay James back for turning good people like him into nothing more than blind servants to his orders."
"By all means, please do indulge your righteous vengeance with James." Watts goaded him along now.
"Shut up!" Robyn yelled now as she put her hand against Qrow's cell and looked at him. "I know I barely know you and what you've probably been through, but I know going down this path isn't going to lead you anywhere good-"
She was cut short by the sound of a distant explosion from outside, followed by more.
"What's happening?" Jacques asked in concern.
Even Watts was confused by the explosions that were starting to sound closer…
The source of those explosions was none other than Cinder Fall, who pulled her bloodied Grimm arm out of the stomach of an Atlesian soldier.
Atlesian Knights started to flood into the room, which only earned a slight chuckle from Cinder who stomped her foot down on the ground, blasting them away with a single wave of fire. "Is that the best the tin man has for me?" she summoned a sword into her hand before charging forward into the next wave of Atlesian Knights. She decapitated the first one, sliced the arm off of the next, and then threw her sword at a further away one, detonating it and kicking one that flew at her.
The soldiers accompanying these Atlesian Knights opened fire on Cinder, who spun around while flying at them, dodging their gunfire and grasping onto one of them, tossing him through a wall.
The other soldier turned around and quickly produced his stun baton when Cinder sliced his gun apart. He futilely attempted to swing at the fall maiden who just chuckled, blocking his attacks with no effort. It took another aggressive swing from him to shatter her glass sword, but she didn't seem phased by it. Instead, she redirected each shard right at the man, who had no way of blocking it, his blue aura breaking and the shards piercing through him while Cinder turned around, continuing through the halls of the Command Center.
She halted when a pair of Atlesian Specialists stepped forward.
They both wore standard uniform, one was clearly an older man with gray hair and a thick gray beard. He wore glasses over his brown eyes and carried a cutlass in one of his hands that had a trigger near it's handle.
The other specialist was a younger, black haired woman who wore a beret, decorated with various pins(one of which was a skull and crossbones), had a clearly prosthetic right hand and carried a bulky looking pistol over her shoulder that glowed with burn dust near its trigger. Her green eyes glared directly at Cinder "Well, well… Lookie who we got here, Specialist Smith… I hate to break the news to you, but this is as far as you're going." She pointed her pistol right at Cinder.
"Specialist Hook, are you sure we can take her?" the older man sounded unsure of himself.
"It's our job to show our grunts out this is done, and to show General we're as good as his Ace Ops." the woman transformed her prosthetic hand into a sickle, making it look more like she had a hook for a hand.
"This'll be a fun warm up." Cinder cracked her neck before creating a bow in her right hand.
The lights to a tiny stall in the Mistral slums turned on, and behind it sat a slightly older, more tired-looking Cinder Fall. The sign above the stall simply read. Clothing repair 5Ⱡ.
Her appearance had changed since her time in Atlas, she had cut her hair shorter, yet it was still parted enough that both of her eyes were visible. She wore a ragged outfit, the top was red and stitched together with a yellow string and she wore a similarly stitched together pair of black pants. Her shoes were simple black slippers.
She didn't get much in terms of customers on a daily basis, but she had enough to just barely scrape by. She'd patiently begin sewing clothes for patrons on the spot, closing up any tears, filling in gaps with extra fabric, and just trying to make a mostly honest living out of herself.
That would be until they arrived… Those damn Spiders…
It was a particularly common occurrence for a gang to assert control over the various areas of Mistral's slums, but none had lasted quite as long as the Spider's, the infamous syndicate run for decades by leaders that shuffled in and out of power, it seemed nothing would cause this organization's end.
They of course offered protection services, which really just meant that they extorted people for their money… Cinder was no different from the rest of these folks as she emptied a good portion of her already sparsely packed pouch into the hands of a female thug who tipped her straw hat. "Pleasure, doin' business with ya, miss!" she dropped the lien into a pile in her own bag.
Cinder grit her teeth in anger, hating every moment of this, yet these damn smug criminals came for her every time.
Day in and out it was the same schtick, she'd work for barely anything, then lose a portion of what little she made.
Things would finally come to a head one day when she emptied out all but a single lien card from her wallet, and the Spider Thug in front of her held her hand out. "That's not all ya got, c'mon now… Pay up."
"I can't eat without this." Cinder shook her head as she held her wallet away.
"I missed the part where that's my problem, lady." the thug, brandished a revolver now.
Cinder's wallet dropped from her hand now as the thug cocked the hammer back now. "Pick it up."
As Cinder knelt down below the counter, the temptation for another murder was right there, all she had to do was snatch her sword from under the counter and drive it through the other woman's chest.
Before she could bring herself to do that, Rhodes's voice echoed through her head. "You'll never be able to, Cinder…"
She pulled herself up soon and dumped the last bit of money from her wallet onto the woman's hand as she smiled. "Pleasure doin' business with ya. Sure hope ya can eat later." she laughed as Cinder grit her teeth angrily, her hand balling up into a heated fist while watching her walk away.
She saw other people on the same street that were being extorted by these thugs and a smile formed on her face, she had finally decided that she had enough of this. She was going to see to their undoing herself.
A deranged smile formed on her face as she sat down and got back to her work.
In the distance a Grimm mouse creature scuttled away from Cinder, something she barely caught a glimpse of.
Smith was the first to rush at Cinder who simply swung her bow in front of her to block his succession of slashes. "You're fast for someone your age… But not, fast enough." Cinder kicked him backwards while Specialist Hook came at her next.
Her sickle-hand heated up with burn dust as Cinder simply dodged each and every swipe that came her way. "Is this really the best Ironwood could send to deal with me?" she commented, which only seemed to anger Hook more.
"Ironwood trusted us to deal with you!" Hook yelled while firing a shot off at Cinder from her pistol. The shot was a large fireball of a projectile that Cinder caught in her hand, unimpressed with it.
"My turn." Cinder formed an arrow in her hand with the caught projectile and fired it at Specialist Hook, who dodged each subsequent arrow to the best of her abilities. She swung down hard at Cinder, successfully managing to shatter her bow, while Smith ran in after her, slashing upwards with his cutlass, a powerful gust of wind accompanying his slash that knocked Cinder several feet away and onto her back.
She quickly flipped herself backwards as Hook fired more shots off at her that were dodged while Smith charged up the dust in his sword.
Cinder again formed a glass bow in her hand and started firing on the pair, who blocked, dodged, and deflected the arrows that came their way. "Is that really the best you got?!" Hook taunted while returning fire.
Cinder smiled, dodging around Specialist Hook's shots by jumping off of the wall and even simple jumps made that easier for her. Smith came to a shocking realization when Cinder suddenly stopped attacking.
"Hook, stop." He lowered his weapon, clearly conceding defeat to Cinder. "I told James I was too old for these kinds of things.".
"What are we stopping for?! We have her on the run!" Specialist Hook aimed her pistol at Cinder, but suddenly found herself struck from all angles by reformed arrows that cut through her aura effortlessly.
"You were good warm up practice." Cinder made her way down the hall as Hook was still standing up, despite the few arrows stuck into her body.
"We're not done here, you fiery bit-!" Cinder snapped her fingers and the arrows stabbed into her body heated up before detonating, taking both Specialists with them in the fiery blast.
It was clear Cinder had far more important business to be attending to than playing with Ironwood's soldiers.
The explosions were starting to sound even closer for the prisoners as Jacques fearfully hid behind his bed. "I can't believe Jacques has the right idea for once." Robyn grunted while doing the same.
"Everyone keep your heads down!" Qrow warned before seemingly vanishing from sight as an explosion filled the room entirely.
Cinder began digging through the rubble of the room now before unearthing who she was there for. "Arthur…" She offered him a hand.
"Cinder." he took it and was pulled to his feet as his aura shattered from having tanked that blast. "I figured that she wouldn't-" he was cut off by Cinder who picked him up now, slinging him over her shoulders, much to his own surprise.
"You and I have a lot to discuss, Arthur…" she glanced around the rubble and noticed Robyn slowly pulling herself from it.
"You…" Robyn glared and tried to get a particularly large chunk of roof off of her leg, but couldn't.
Cinder smiled, forming a fireball in her hand while aiming it at Robyn Hill, only to get cut off by gunfire from behind, a couple of bullets nearly hitting Watts. This was troubling for her mission.
Without another word, Cinder simply flew out of the command center with Watts in tow.
One of the guards aimed his weapon at Robyn, while another pulled an unconscious Jacques out of the rubble.
"Where's Branwen?!" the last of the guards asked as he lifted up a rock to find a crow perched under there. "A bird-" he was suddenly tackled to the ground by Qrow who vanished while the bird now circled the room.
"What the hell's going on?!" the guard that was with Robyn asked, just after lifting the rubble off of her.
Seeing this as the only chance for an escape, Robyn took the stun baton off the guard's belt and struck him with it as he was distracted, while Qrow tackled the last of the guards from the air and stood himself back up.
"We're leaving, now." he glared forward.
Commentary: A shorter chapter, like I said last time. These next two chapters could be viewed as like "half chapters". But they all essentially take place along the same time frame as Chapter 9 and Chapter 12. You'll see that more clearly next chapter when we focus on the battle with Monstra.
So this chapter starts us off with our inmates(soon to be out mates... Okay, I apologize for that one.) With Robyn really grilling into Watts about why the hell he's so hell bent on murdering every person in Atlas and Mantle. Even Jacques is appalled by this, not that he's really one to talk. And then we hear some explosions.
The big focus of this chapter is once again, Cinder... Which, the two specialists she's fighting, I decided to make them allusions to Captain Hook and first mate Smee. Which, if those allusions end up appearing in the actual show at some point, no biggie, I reason that Remnant is probably full of reused fairy tale allusions.
Also, surprise, surprise... Cinder's backstory isn't over yet. You're probably wondering where I'm planning on ending it, if it isn't with her killing Rhodes? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.
Qrow and Robyn are loose, and are about to tear the place up, more on that next time. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!
EDIT: Holy hell I did NOT think I'd be making an edit on this chapter, but things have kind of changed here... Now I hope this will be the only edit I make to this chapter, but... I personally did NOT like the direction this new portion I added to Cinder's flashback went after reading over my initial draft. It just did not look good at all, thankfully there's not an insanely large amount to it all, so I was able to make the changes, though the resulting effect is that this chapter was severely shortened, but again, if it's to get rid of content I found less than stellar, than so be-it. It's amazing how being sick can really help you put your ideas in perspective. Now then, if you're at all interested in hearing about the direction this new backstory segment would have gone, had I not changed it... I'll gladly go over that for ya when I finish it up later in the Volume. All you really need to know is that it was pretty bad by my standards now that I'm reading it over again.