Argus was beautiful, from at least, a certain point of view. To Cinder, it reminded her uncomfortably of Atlas, with the regimented, cold, perfect city floating above the embers of the old, trading all the personality of such roots for a feeble dream of safety.
In just the past few weeks, the girl had gotten a crash course on Grimm sea life and sea life in general. That had been enough to utterly shatter any conceptions that she'd had about coastal cities and safety. The small boat that she and Raven had taken, rated for crossing the channels between the shipping lanes and hailing, really, flagging down larger boats, had given her an ample opportunity to watch radar and sonar contacts ping on the central displays. As the girl lay back on her bunk, the humming of the hotel's small temperature unit in her ears, she reflected on the journey as she'd taken it.
The first time she'd seen a leviathan, Cinder had nearly pissed herself from the fear. The shape had blotted out their sonar for almost 10 minutes, calmly swimming below them at such a depth that it had to be truly enormous to show up as it did. Raven had calmly leaned over, ruffled Cinder's hair, and told her that it likely couldn't even sense the two of them, even with Cinder's sudden spike in fear.
It had been a great relief, when the vast creature had turned away from them, heading to the east, towards the deepest parts of the oceans. A relief that had Cinder sagging with a released breath she hadn't even realized she was holding in.
She'd seen the flocks of birds and fish swarm around her and Raven's small ship, and when they'd been picked up by an Atlesian steamer, 4 days into their journey, the girl had been all too happy to leave the dingy barge behind for something with genuine, real power behind it as it moved.
That the vessel was very clearly a retired Q-ship had helped matters tremendously. But when she'd sat down to speak to Raven about it, in the privacy of a guest cabin, closely located to the vessels overtuned, vastly out of spec engines, her guardian had simply said.
"My reputation is vast. Summer and I have saved more than we ever let die, and none are more grateful to us than the sea captains who rely on the lanes for trade. It would be a great disservice to everything that we have bled for if they were to disrespect us."
She hadn't said anything else, that night, and Cinder had felt Raven's gaze upon her for a long, long time before she'd fallen asleep.
It said something to the girl that Raven even now refused to relax or let up on the watch rotation she occupied. Was nowhere in this woman's opinion safe? Or did she simply catch her rest when the crew were occupying Cinder with tasks and training alike?
Cinder suspected the latter, even if a part of her wondered if the former was more accurate.
She liked the crew, she'd decided. They were honest, hard-working, and to a fault, boisterous and rowdy and alive in a way that astounded her. She spent long hours of the day watching them jive and banter with each other, waiting with bated breath whenever arguments erupted that seemed always steps away from violence, until… without a thought, that had faded away like a fleeting breeze.
She'd wondered how they could snap at each other, how they could bray and argue and fight, and return to working side by side with each other scant minutes later whenever a daily crisis came up.
Raven wasn't helpful there, either. She'd only said a short sentence in response to Cinder's question, on the second day of their travel, and that sentence had only confused Cinder further.
"They are not like us, they do not have semblances or aura, they are mortal and they are whole."
Raven was frustrating like that sometimes. She'd speak in riddles, with a smug half-smile playing with her lips, until Cinder either gave up, or worried whatever the meaning of the sentence had been down to the bone. Often overthinking it to complexity that it simply couldn't have.
For the above, she'd puzzled over it for a day or more, wondering if Raven had meant that the crew weren't physically scarred, or why not having a semblance or aura made you… somehow more?
She'd stopped thinking so hard when one of the deckhands, a tall, very athletic woman with dark red hair she kept tied up, had slapped her on the back and told her in an accent so thick it was almost unintelligible.
"Qui' mutterin' to ya'self. Ya gon' burst a blood tube doin' tha'."
Cinder had stopped doing that at that moment and desperately tried to hide the blush from covering her face.
It really wasn't her fault that people who had that spark of life to them did things to her heart and stomach, and filled her mind with hope for the future, hope where she could fly or do whatever she'd set her mind to.
She'd spent the rest of the afternoon a dopey, near mindless wreck, thoroughly frustrating Raven, for once, when the third time she'd put Cinder down on the mat in a row had only resulted in the girl staggering to her feet and rushing the taller woman.
She'd needed to land something of a hit, or feel something that made the weird flopping in her stomach go away.
Contrary to Raven's stupid, smug, arrogant face, Cinder would get over these silly things whenever she wanted too! She could stop at any time she wanted, and she could absolutely stop wandering around on deck observing Diana at work.
She'd overheard the girl's name from someone, she wasn't really sure, but she liked watching her interact with the others aboard.
She had an infectious cheer and smile that lit up rooms, and Cinder could very easily see why the younger members of the crew gravitated toward her.
Raven only made it worse, waggling her eyebrows and smiling every time she caught Cinder staring, which was frequent, and every time that she wandered by and watched Cinder's eyes track across the deck.
Arguably, it was only just as frustrating as the fact that Cinder couldn't string a sentence together when Diana talked to her, which wasn't that common, but it happened, usually the woman would watch the girl and her guardian train, and yet, only at the end or in the middle, always preventing Cinder from noticing her.
It was infuriating.
Luckily for Cinder, her training regimen was starting to genuinely show serious effects, perhaps that was the aura boosting her regeneration? She wasn't sure, but Raven had been able to coax another couple pounds of muscle into banded cords that enhanced and flexed wonderfully when Cinder moved, and her motions were now more grace and feline than anything a normal human could do.
The first time she'd startled a crewmember by simply standing still near the shadows, then moving suddenly when he'd turned her into his peripheral vision had been an addicting rush.
This wasn't power like Raven's powers, but it was a power all its own, a power that let her start moving around the ship like a ghost. Which was where she started to hear things and see others.
Diana, for one, was running from something in Atlas.
Something big and military shaped, and something that she was terrified would find her remaining family back home.
Or so her letters had read. Cinder didn't know who "L" was, but the letters were open and vulnerable in a way so many people weren't.
The captain, one Barnes, was a man of unwavering focus on his ship and his crew, and that focus had rewarded him with deep scars and enough night terrors to fill an entire horror novel. That and the strange necklace he wore under his shirt, with three small items on it, Cinder reflected calmly on such a thing as she hung from a vent on the ceiling of his suite.
The string was thick, natural leather, aged and cared for. One charm, a bullet casing, scorch and dust markings where it had been fired. One, a locket sealed and even partially melted shut. One small ornament, a bottle full of clear amber liquid.
Cinder puzzled over what it meant, the spent cartridge… a friend lost in the line of duty? Barnes didn't carry himself as a soldier? The liquid was likely alcohol, perhaps something important to him? A lost vintage from an outlying town or village now swallowed by the grimm? What was the locket containing? What secrets did the necklace allow her to puzzle out about who Barnes was?
Cinder hauled herself back through the vents before any of the crew was awake beyond the night watchmen, and she'd gotten very, very good at avoiding their routes and shifts.
She'd returned to her room, watching Raven stalk the place in something akin to slight worry, the way her forehead creased just "so" under the dim light of the dust lantern swinging from the ceiling.
She saw the way the woman obsessively tinkered with Omen, reshaping and delicately repairing the mechanisms that Cinder herself had written off as complete loss.
Was Raven insane or was she that good? Cinder hadn't thought the blade operable, or even salvageable. But it seemed that Raven didn't share her judgment, and instead, merely turned to face her before asking.
"What did you learn? What did you see?"
These questions had begun almost immediately after Raven had caught her trying to sneak in on the second time she'd tried it. They always took the forms of lessons, in a strange fashion, always addressed towards what she could have, and what she did, learn. Raven never punished her if she forgot or failed to notice things, but the woman always challenged Cinder to think more clearly about what she was seeing, and what she was going to actually be able to use. Should a need arise, of course.
"Captain has a necklace, old bullet casing, sealed locket, sealed bottle of liquid on an old leather cord."
Raven nodded as Cinder continued.
"Suspicion is old war, lost family, and was addicted, carries the liquid with him to remind himself of something he lost, perhaps family or deeper relationship."
Unconsciously, Cinder had begun to hold her hands behind her back when giving these sorts of informal reports. While they quickly did seem formal, Raven was only half listening most of the time, if Cinder had said something of interest, she would speak up, but that was rare.
In this instance, she stopped her motions of fiddling with the blade, turning to look at Cinder and asking a simple question.
"Why?"
That could have meant any number of things, but the girl went with "motives" reinforcing her guesswork.
"Carries the locket to remind himself of family lost, so he doesn't forget, carries the bullet to remind himself of what caused the loss, carries the alcohol to remind himself of what he did in the wake of the death."
Raven nods.
"A succinct and good hypothesis, not one we can prove without direct evidence, but a good one nonetheless. What will this hypothesis provide insight into?"
Cinder easily responds.
"His motivations are towards any he considers family or adjacent, he served, so military hold a soft spot, yet he still likely blames commanders for the death of his loved ones, hence his retiring."
Another nod, encouraging, Cinder continued.
"The crew are prioritized over his ship, even more so than normal, and to such a degree that he will make them always go first in the event of a catastrophe. Will likely sacrifice himself to ensure their survival."
"Diana is the favorite, former Atlesian military, likely was tracked for the academy, didn't join, based on personal bias? Perhaps…"
Raven shrugged, her own reply cryptic as ever.
"Hone your edges, and use those guesses to judge the things about others that makes them useful to you. Summer figured out much from what she was able to discern, and yet, in equal measure, she was always a step ahead of much of anything anyone sought to hide from her."
Raven stops speaking after that, and Cinder and her pass the rest of the night in silence, Cinder sleeping, and Raven keeping watch once more.
The girl remembers the next morning because it is Raven shaking her awake and pointing, soundlessly, to the singular television screen that illustrates the news. The headlines point to one thing, something that has Raven's eyes hard and cold and viciously angry.
Beacon Headmaster and a surprise visit to Atlas? More at 10 pm, from Central News Atlas!
Raven's gaze was locked to the screen, but Cinder's, Cinder's gaze was hard locked to her guardian and her expression, more accurately.
Cinder has seen Raven annoyed, but she has never seen her furious with anger, until this exact moment. Raven's gaze is so tightly wound at the screen, at the picture of the young man with white hair and small black glasses. She wonders why Raven seems to hate this man so much, she wonders why the woman's every muscle is tight with exertion and the threat of imminent violence.
Raven's hands do not grasp for Omen, instead, they sit tightly clenched as the woman stares directly ahead. Gaze hardened and her eyes staring blankly forwards at the man on screen as if he were nothing more than a monster.
"Who… who is that?"
Cinder's quiet and gentle question is met by a hiss and a spit of anger from Raven.
"Its name is Ozma, it wears the skin of a man named Ozpin. Don't trust it ever, no matter what lies or platitudes it plies you with."
Then, Raven stopped talking, and Cinder was left in the quiet until the broadcast continued unabated.
In a surprising, but welcome turn of events, headmaster Ozpin of Beacon Academy announced his surprise visit to Atlas to congratulate newly appointed Lieutenant General James Ironwood, for his successful handling of what we are now calling the dockyard uprising riots. As well as his newly implemented equality for all programs.
Cinder tuned out the news for a moment, looking back at Raven, noting she hadn't moved, and hadn't shifted, her muscles stark and contracted. Once more, Cinder reflected on the fact that her guardian seemed about to destroy the cabin and everything else within it in a blaze of potent, powerful lightning.
She made the decision, at that moment, to make herself scarce.
The decks weren't quiet, but the noise was a welcome distraction as Cinder ran laps around the upper deck, Raven was furious and Cinder really wasn't feeling like she'd want to test that woman's particular limits, not on this day. Absolutely.
The entertainment value of Diana didn't cease, however, as Cinder recovered from the morning's workout, lying prone atop the bridge's prominent tower.
Diana was working again, the young woman stretching out a series of lines that linked to the vessels dust powered skimmers, retracting and propelling the massive vessel evenly throughout the waves.
Cinder's eyes tracked her, and then… they spotted something, rather, someone else. She'd seen the flash of the lifeboat's movement before but had assumed it was merely the tarp coverings that secured and protected it from inclement weather.
This time, she quickly picked up on something akin to genuine, natural movement and turned her gaze to the lifeboat itself.
Initially, she saw nothing, and could smell the sea but little else, until she focused, on doing what Raven had trained her to do.
Aura liked forming a defensive barrier once you'd trained enough to do so, in fact, it was almost completely natural to do so with enough training. The strange part of it was pushing it into what you were, using your muscles and the like to augment who you were and what you could do.
In this case, Cinder focused very firmly, very calmly, directly onto the nerves that allowed her to see, and with a slight, gentle push, she tugged the warmth of aura into her eyes and blinked.
Everything was suddenly much starker and much more in detail, she felt her body begin to flood her system with adrenaline, fighting off the weariness from earlier and preparing her for combat, the expectation, likely that she would be needing to fight.
In this case, Cinder chose not to fight, or react, instead, she just froze her gaze on the lifeboat.
Now? With the enhanced sight, she could make out faint motions and careful movements. She watched as something, perhaps a grimm? No, they bore specific tells, even the more humanoid ones, and this one was proportioned correctly for a human.
What was it?
Cinder's gaze is interrupted as Diana walks past the lifeboat, with her vision sharpened, Cinder is able to see many things in a greater light, from the way that Diana smiles to the way she walks, and Cinder finds herself quite unable to stop the very brilliant flush that spreads across her cheeks as a result.
By the time she's dragged her eyes away from Diana and her confidence, the figure is gone.
Mentally cursing herself, Cinder resolves herself to tell Raven about the little stowaway later, it would be important for her guardian to know, at the very least, and perhaps they'd do something about it, or Cinder could track the figure.
Why had they been messing with the lifeboats?
That had to be a question for later.
Nightfall.
She'd return at Nightfall, and inspect the boat thoroughly.
What was the saying about best laid plans and failing upon contact with the enemy? Cinder hadn't had a moment to truly comprehend that statement until she'd tried to return at night and found that the lifeboat had been meticulously cleaned of any identifiers, and more to that point, that someone had placed a very cold, very sharp blade at the corner of her neck.
"Who are you? How did you find me?"
The tone is lilting, high, and dangerous, and Cinder almost whirls to evaluate her apparent attacker, but the moment she indicates movement, the girl's grip on her knife tickles the underside of Cinder's chin.
"Ah ah ah, not a move or I'll give you a Dockyard Smile from ear to ear."
The threat is clear, this woman would kill her if she moved, so Cinder answers her questions.
"I saw you with aura enhanced sight. You are not as stealthy to me as you are to the crew."
"Aura enhanc-?"
Cinder interrupts the other woman with immediate motion, she slams her head backwards, and hears a satisfying crunch as bone met nose, the knife dropped with a clatter to the deck, and Cinder whirled and turned to face her attacker.
It was a girl, perhaps her age, with strange discolorations on her face, holding her nose as a few drops of blood spilled freely, but as her body flickered gray, Cinder stifled a disgusted sigh.
Why did everyone misuse their aura? It wasn't that hard to have a constant shield, and sure, not everyone had strong aura, but this girl should have been fine, but… on that note, why did she have aura?
Cinder narrows her eyes, flicking the small belt knife she routinely carried, even aboard the ship, open. This girl wasn't part of the crew, she was a stowaway, and she had aura.
"Really?"
Then, as the girl spoke, Cinder saw it, a dark series of lines running from the hollow of her throat down her body, a series of lines that flickered and meshed together as the girl's skin turned bright red and she advanced on Cinder.
"Why would you… I just wanted to talk!"
Cinder raises an eyebrow, talk?
"You put a knife to my throat."
"You were sneaking about like you were trying to stab me!"
"I didn't even have a knife out!"
"You walked like a warrior!"
"What warrior is 12 years old!?"
"Haven't you seen Mistral Mechmories?"
"That was a fictional character!?"
The other girl paused, and Cinder with her, the girl is the first to start, sheathing the massive combat knife at her hip.
"I… I'm sorry, start over?"
Cinder sighed, and nodded once, sheathing her own belt knife.
"Who are you? What are you doing onboard this ship?"
The faunus girl paused, and seemed to be weighing her options carefully, she didn't notice the black bird take up a position behind her, a good 10 feet above her, but Cinder did.
How had Raven noticed? Had she heard the argument!? Had she been following Cinder?
The girl wasn't sure, but now, Cinder had more confidence in her actions, and her questions.
"Call me Sunny."
Cinder's eyes almost narrow, but she stops them from doing so, she takes in the other girl's body language, and notes the pupils and the way she's breathing.
She was lying. Well, two could play at that game.
"Lavender, lav for short."
"Well, Lav, what are you doing with your aura openly displayed on this ship? Aren't you worried about the Grimm?"
"What do you mean?"
"Ugh, have you nev- has no one? Natural aura unlock?"
Cinder pauses, the other girl visibly frustrated, her skin a shade of light red.
"No. Unlocked by someone who's… in a different form now."
The raven on the decks made eye contact with Cinder enough to simply shake its head, Cinder thought she caught a whiff of sheer disapproval from the way that it moved, but she was sure she imagined it.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
The other girl's skin turned a shade of blue, sorrow perhaps?
"It's fine. But what did you mean?"
The other girl snaps one finger, turning back to face Cinder at that.
"Right, sorry, aura openly attracts grimm."
Cinder froze, Raven had never said anything like this before, was it her fault they'd been stalked by the grimm? Was it her fault that everything bad had happened to them if the grimm were attract-
No. It couldn't be, Raven openly wore her aura on her entire body, constantly. She never let it drop unless she was sleeping, and she rarely slept. What did that even remotely mean? They'd not been flooded by Grimm ever, even with Raven's aura active, so… what did that mean?
"I… are you sure, Sunny?"
Cinder doesn't miss the way the girl almost flinches away from herself, the pseudonym clearly not something she was used to being addressed as or by.
"That's what I was always told… restrain your aura lest the grimm narrow in on you because of it."
"But… why haven't the academies fallen then?"
"I don't know, I'm not from here…"
"Like Atlas has its fleet, and its walls, but Mistral's academy is only inside the walls of the city, so how could they not get overrun, wouldn't that be like a beacon to them?"
The other girl shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know, only that I was told to avoid pulling out my aura almost all the time because of it."
"But… what if you got ambushed!?"
That stopped "Sunny" in her tracks, and her wide gray eyes meet Cinder's own.
"Ambushed… what do you mean?"
Cinder freezes, she'd revealed too much, normal 12 year old girls didn't have the experiences she did… was she trying to convince this girl that she was normal?
"I uh… there are grimm that can sneak up on you, right?"
Sunny stared at Cinder, eyes narrowed and, it seemed, something on the tip of her tongue. But the two stopped speaking for long enough that Cinder missed when Raven arrived and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Time to return, you've spent enough out here and created enough noise for an evening."
Cinder turned back to look for the other girl, but "Sunny" was already gone.
As they returned to the cabin, Cinder asked Raven if aura could attract the creatures of grimm.
"No. What attracts them is the emotions, which you feel strongly, and which are, if not quite broadcast, but made more apparent to others who can look. I knew a man who had a semblance that let him read others emotions, and it was more powerful against anyone who had aura. Something in the way our emotions express themselves upon our souls means that others pick up on them easier. But simply put, there isn't enough understanding to confirm that or deny it."
She lapsed into silence, and Cinder processed the information. She had been quick to pick up on the other girl's body language, very quick, in fact, so was that simply her aura reading into "Sunny's" emotional state? Or was she just reading into it naturally?
If emotions attracted the grimm, as she'd seen with the beowulf in the tundra, then why weren't people weaponizing such a thing? Why weren't people using it to lure grimm away from the cities and destroy them there? How had Atlas not realized this or capitalized on this? It only would require some huntresses to bait away a group of Grimm, then cut their emotions off with their aura.
"It's not that simple. You aren't meant to be emotionless, you aren't meant to be brokenly robotic. Huntresses and huntsmen can't turn it off at will, they can't disable who they are."
Raven turned the doorknob and let herself and Cinder into the cabin, lying on the table was the form of Omen, the guts of the weapon spread across the table. With a start, Cinder recognized a small ceramic crucible and a few small bars of silvery grey metal. This must have been something Raven kept for battlefield repairs if necessary, but the woman could barely believe that she kept it all on hand, and raising an eyebrow, Raven responds before she can ask.
"Lightning is perfectly capable of heating the crucible to my desired temperature."
Cinder needs to pick her jaw up from the floor. She's familiar with what lightning is capable of, fully familiar with it detonating trees and leaving molten glass behind in the wake of the bolts, but the sheer control over it that one would need to have in order to use it as a heat source… let alone tempering the sheer overwhelming temperature down to a level where it wouldn't just melt anything around it…
Cinder watches in fascination as Raven calls her powers briefly, just long enough for the illusion of flames to sprout from her eyes, until the crucible glows red hot and she's tinkering with Omen's workings, shaping new components from the liquid and then, with a touch, chilling them to workability with another application of powers.
Cinder's semblance is capable of superheating, and as Raven continuously shifts between heating and cooling, Cinder reaches out a hand and focuses on the crucible. She can already feel the warmth deserting it, the heat flowing out of the material and into the ambient air. She can see the way it deserts, and the way the metal will be affected, and almost before she can think clearly, she pulls on that reservoir, opens the door to the crackling bonfire of her semblance, and pushes outwards.
The crucible heats up immediately, and Cinder can feel a strain as she gently controls the heat, forcing it to flow evenly throughout the small receptacle. She sees Raven raise an eyebrow at her when she turns back, but the woman doesn't say anything, merely nodding and getting to work.
Pouring molten metal onto the small metal portions of Omen that require it, Cinder draws the ambient heat out of the metal, taking it from there as Raven cools it with her powers, the repair work is quick, efficient and useful for both of them. Useful for Raven because within the hour, she's able to sheathe Omen and draw a dust blade from within without any issues. Useful for Cinder as she sees the inner workings of a mechashift weapon, and decides then and there that such a thing will not feature heavily in her weapon when she needs it.
By the time they're finished, Cinder is gasping for air as her semblance finally turns off. The sheer exertion beyond anything she'd ever been able to experience before. Raven calmly rests a hand on her sweaty haired head, and when she speaks, it is in a carefully neutral tone.
"Well done. Most would have fallen unconscious after semblance usage of such a long time."
Cinder tries very hard to keep from happily smiling at Raven, and while she does eventually fail, its a small smile that curves her lips up, a small smile that's matched by the genuine one that Raven wears, for the very first time since Summer died.
It's a small, heartbreaking thing, and Cinder finds herself tearing up, and then she's moving and throwing her arms around Raven's waist, and Raven's resting a hand on her head and gently ruffling her hair.
"It's ok… you've done well, little kite."
Cinder tried not to cry, she really did, and she'd even argue that she made it a whole minute.
Then the dam broke, and everything she'd gone through, from Madame, to Summer, to Iris and Clove and everyone around her, and it all shattered down on her. From Summer's sacrifice for her and Raven, from Tyrian's words, from the fighting against Grimm, from the near attack from that girl "Sunny".
Cinder sobs and cries and clutches at Raven's armor and clothes, and Raven just holds her close and doesn't say anything. Words failing the older woman as her own demons make an immediate resurgence.
Summer. She failed Summer. Taiyang, turning away from her, his hand leading a girl with hair the color of sunshine and eyes as lilac as her mothers away. Cinder, she'd trained the girl into a weapon, and had begun to reward her for that… wasn't that failure? That was just like her, wasn't it?
She wants to laugh at the hopelessness, if she returns to Yang, she'd leave Cinder behind, if she returned to Cinder, she'd leave Yang behind.
If she chose Yang, Cinder would be betrayed, and she'd sworn to Cinder and Summer she'd take care of her, if she left Yang behind… what would that do to her in the future? How would it be to grow up without Summer and with Taiyang as a depressed mess? How could she-
A kernel of an idea began to sprout.
The tribe, they were her lifeline, they'd been her lifeline. Could she use that here?
Raven chewed on her lip, one hand rubbing against Cinder's sobbing, shivering form, the other resting on her head. She wasn't good at this mothering thing, Summer had been amazing at it, and she'd then had to go and die.
Another current of red hot anger burns through Raven.
Ironwood.
She'd known James, she'd known his commitment to justice and fairness, where had that man gone? What had happened to him!? She wanted to strangle the man, she wanted to burn him so badly he'd never dream of withholding information from her again.
But another part of her simply knew that wasn't possible, Ironwood was untouchable now, as a liuetenant general, his program promising even more equality to the faunus, and his opponents decrying him as a racist scumbag.
Raven knew he wasn't, but she also wanted him crucified in the papers.
Her gaze is narrowed, and slowly, as she looks down at Cinder, the girl slowly breathing in her arms, her eyes shut, and an expression of rest on her face, she'd fallen asleep.
Right there Raven made a promise.
"Should I get my way, you will never have to fight the monster that hunts me. Should I get my way, you will grow up alongside Taiyang and Yang, as friends dear enough to fill in for me should I fail in my endeavor."
She would need to do a number of things. The first was make contact with the Branwen tribe. Argus was one of the three cities that the tribe kept dedicated lookouts in, and Raven just had to hope that she'd be able to find the woman or man that wore the tattoo.
Every different lookout had different methods of keeping touch with Branwen tribe observers. Argus' specialty, was tattoo's. Specifically a tattoo worn on the left hip, a spiraling circular blade.
She'd have to hope they could be found.
As her arms encircled Cinder and placed her into her bed, Raven turned to face the potholes, then, her mind made up, she wrote a small note on a sheet of stationary and left it on the table, then, she left the door behind, locking it behind her.
Time to find the stowaway.
The girl had nearly stabbed Cinder.
Raven had to consciously tamp down her immediate urge for violence. This girl might have been a child, but that meant nothing to the bandit queen.
Children made for excellent assassins, after all.
So when she found the little stowaway in the ship's second engine room, she wasn't surprised in the slightest. Raven watched the girl transition seamlessly from camouflage to camouflage as she made her way across the deck, avoiding the engineer and guard on night duty.
She continued to watch as the girl gently pried a metal device from within a sachet carried in her hands, and lay it flat against several small components of the engine. To Raven's eyes, they looked important, linked to the regulators of steam.
This could not be allowed to continue, this little girl and her zealotry wouldn't be allowed to slow Cinder or Raven down, at all. If that meant another little white fang spy had to be thrown overboard lacking a pint of her blood.
Then so be it.
Raven waited for the girl to finish planting her devices and sneak clear of the engine room. Then, she followed her progress to the lifeboat she'd been modifying earlier. The divots that held it on the crane had been loosened, all for the little spy to get away.
She seemed overconfident, completely ready to escape, which made Raven scoff, the woman turning to the rear of the vessel.
Far to the rear, she could just make out the flare of another vessel, bright lights extinguished, and the dark smoke from it's dust stack the only thing that gave an indication that she was steaming towards them. By Raven's estimation, she'd increased speed, trying for an interception and she'd get that interception.
Hm.
What should she do?
Would she need a ship for what she wanted to do with the tribe?
Yes.
Should she risk the lives of all crew onboard?
She could.
Should she defuse the situation?
No.
They threatened Cinder by proxy. That was their last mistake. So as the spy cut the divots and dropped to the dark waters below, Raven reached for the mask on her belt and donned the shroud of the grimm.
And the woman, the guardian of Cinder, the lover of Summer Rose, took a step back into the darkness, as Raven of the Branwen, Bandit Queen, stepped off the gunwale and plummeted towards the dark waters below.
A/N: The chapter is a tad bit shorter, but what happens next scene was far too large for this chapter, and I am not so cruel as to cut a fight scene in half just to achieve a fairly balanced word count. Expect a good show next chapter.
Letting everyone know that when Arc 1 ends, I'll be taking the week after the last chapter goes live to finish planning out Arc 2 as well as review all of Arc 1, so there will be a gap in between uploads, I'll let you all know precisely when that is when I post the last chapter of Arc 1.
Until then, be gay, do crime, and enjoy all the reading your little hearts can.
Next Chapter: August 7th