The protests had begun on the second day that Cinder and Raven had arrived in Argus, with anti-White Fang sentiments spilling into the streets and beliefs manifested into crowds of angry civilians that swarmed from the dock district to the center of the city all the way to the walls. Cinder and Raven swaddled themselves into their hotel rooms, save for when Raven went out for food. It occurs to Cinder that the crowds almost seem too large to be naturally formed, while Madame did not like the faunus, even her guests were above such outright displays of militant racism.
She stares evenly as a column of a dozen or so angry men and women chant slogans and hold picket signs, she notes the way the faunus move back and forth, the way they dart from shadow to shadow in the slowly dimming lights. The protests showed no signs of slowing down or stopping anytime soon. Cinder's disbelief was only exacerbated as they continued to escalate She realized that there had to have been a sudden draw, or a sudden attack that caused the outbursts within the faunus community. But it didn't make sense to her, even so.
She resolved to ask Raven when her guardian returned from… whatever she chose to do during the days. Cinder herself was allowed a full run of the practice room that the two had rented, a feat accomplished by shoving the beds to one side. The ring was tiny, but it served decent enough for frantic and close-quarters combat. The kind that Raven was infuriatingly good at and the kind that left Cinder with bruises all over the place and a simmering sense of failure, even if the older woman tried her best to be encouraging.
Cinder squares up against the furniture once more, raising her bound fists up and concentrating inwards, pulling on the reservoir of her aura that flickered and crashed into who she was. Even now it felt like a blaze, aching to be released in a powerful burst of heat and light and all the energy she had within her.
Raven had described how addictive it was, but Cinder had underestimated that statement, she could feel it in every single patch of skin, the rush of pure power, the fact that with a whim and a twist of her will, she could make her presence pass without trace, that she could shatter concrete with a punch, that she could leap and run and charge faster than any human. That her eyes could be the better of any faunus she'd ever encounter, simply because she wished her aura to shape itself around her as such.
She pushed for stealth, for subterfuge, and felt the sensation of cool air brush over her exposed arms and legs, the gentle rush cooling her pulse and slowing her down until…
She stamped her foot, hard, and smiled as no sound emerged from where she'd hit, she breathed in and felt her heart pulse once, twice, gently. Aura cloaked every part of who she was, and while she knew Raven had told her to stay inside the hotel… surely there was no reason to not take a small, slight peek at what was happening outside?
Besides, it wasn't as if anything other than a fully trained huntress or hunter would be able to see her, and she'd just stick to ground level for that. One would think that you should stay on the rooftops for a higher vantage point… but anyone stalking Raven and herself would be hard-pressed to find her in a crowd, especially with her childlike appearance and the way she chose to move and cloak herself in aura.
She waited until the room service people entered the room, using her cloaked presence to watch them as they idly passed through the room. The maid, a dark-skinned young man, casually surveyed the room with the tired indifference that only years of experience at this place could have had. Cinder assessed his features briefly; he had the same sweeping, sharp nose and articulate features as the faunus woman in the lobby downstairs. Siblings? Or mother and child… age was difficult to tell, especially with faunus or anyone with their aura down. Raven herself was in her 30's, as she'd reminded Cinder of. But Raven looked, at Cinder's best guess, to be in her mid-twenties, a condition that the woman had laughed at, sure, it wasn't a full belly laugh or anything like what Madame had produced, but it had that small smirk around the corners of her eyes and a gentle chuffing in her throat.
Cinder had decided that she'd take that, even if she would likely have to get used to the woman never showing any form of true laughter around her, she'd take that sort of halting chuffing snickering that Raven seemed so reluctant to let show.
Cinder had her assumptions of why the woman didn't laugh and a suspicion that she wouldn't until she faced what had happened to Summer, just as she herself had to face that.
The first woman to give her genuine kindness besides her own mother, and she'd been dead not 24 hours beyond. She'd said that Cinder could rely on Raven and herself for anything, that they'd take her away.
They'd done that.
She no longer held a serious amount of mistrust for her mo- Raven. The woman had proven herself time and time again, and very likely she would continue to do so.
Cinder slipped out with the maid, following his footsteps and ever so cautiously making her way toward the other exits, normally, she would have had to exit through the lobby, but for all the advances of cloaking oneself in aura, it didn't quite fool cameras. Oh, it would static them out and mess with them, for sure, but it was draining and tiring, and she wasn't in the mood to be drenched with sweat, especially when she needed to remain calm and unobserved.
The fire door would have sounded an alarm, but Cinder evenly reached out and rested her fingers on the door, letting her aura flow out and around her, then, with a thought, she pushed a small tendril of it into the door, and then, with a deep breath in, pushed.
The tendril of intangibility flooded through the mechanism, and Cinder reappeared in view as the door clicked, and no alarm sounded. As soon as she pulled herself through, the door shutting behind her, her aura recloaked across her, and intangibility returned in the silence and quiet of motions that no longer produced noise, Cinder smiled to herself and dropped to the street below. Their room was on the second floor, and nominally, a fall like that should have injured her, but she used the training Raven had given her to catch herself and land evenly on an awning first, then on the ground itself.
From there, it was a simple event to pop out into the streets and join the crowd. The rabble-rousers had formed into two groups by the time that Cinder had reached them, a group of faunus counter-protestors and a group of humans screaming at each other across a thin line of the street. It appeared to Cinder as though some students from the local huntress academy were trying to keep the peace, although… the positions were strange, not spread out, but clustered instead…
Cinder threaded between the crush of bodies until she could get a closer look, and saw a girl at the center of their circle, she had a head of flaming red hair and a pair of piercing emerald eyes that locked onto Cinder the moment she appeared.
She'd been seen, that should have been impossible! Cinder ducked back into the crowd, withdrawing from the easy sightlines until she could catch her breath and focus her mind forward. There was no reason to have lost her composure like that, just because some pretty girl saw her through her intangibility… which meant she was strong, and she was young too!
No, bad Cinder… no more of that, instead… why was Argus using children to fight back the protestors!?
The screens that dominated the inner city of Argus may have the answer that Cinder sought, while the older, sprawling outer boroughs of Argus bore similarities and fusions between Mistrali wood and stone and Atlesian brick and mortar buildings, the inner city was made up of smooth, modern buildings in glass and steel. The ever-present, floating screens that served to continuously broadcast the news of the day dominated the streets, casting glows that clashed with the portable lights held by the protestors. Here, it was a much more unified front, with several groups chanting slogans for dozens of different humanity first groups.
Cinder felt nothing but disgust churn her gut, they were so… weak. They resorted to attacking civilians and the innocent in a pointless crusade over their own inadequacy.
She almost missed it when the news began rerunning something they'd clearly had forced upon them by Atlas. But she was paying full attention when the broadcast fizzled, and the grizzled, scarred face of a woman the program addressed as "General Sol" took to the screens. When she opened her mouth and began to speak, the harsh, grating tones of a vocal synthesizer showed if not in her throat, in the robotic nature of her tone.
"People of Argus. My citizens. I am disappointed in you, I look upon our fair city and I see nothing but wasted energy, I see nothing but a shameful excuse for conduct that would not even pass at the lowest of Atlesian academies. I see nothing but embarrassment, falling for such rabble-rousing in an effort to do… what, exactly?"
The woman stood from her desk and walked to a large window that oversaw Argus, the camera following her outstretched fist and hand until she could point to the camps outside the walls, visible from the window by the smoke of their cooking fires.
"You let these people wander about your city and you protest by attacking them? They are, in many ways, simply those less fortunate than yourselves. They attack their betters because they have no drive or desire to do better themselves! My good citizens, you're letting them win by engaging with them! Do you really want to allow this rabble to attack the streets? To ruin the businesses that you call home? Do you want to let them do this by provoking them? Or would you rather have a casus belli upon the vandals, thieves, brigands, and runabouts that would do this for no reason!"
Breathing hard, an almost wheeze pouring from her chest. She finished.
"It brings me to tears to see you all surrendering to the fang, to see you all surrendering to a policy of vandalism and pain and suffering so drastic that it justifies their actions! We must be BETTER! WE ARE CITIZENS OF ATLAS AND MISTRAL, AND WE. WILL. NOT. SURRENDER. TO. THE. RABBLE!"
The broadcast cut off a moment later with a screech of static that felt like a hammer blow and lasted for what felt like forever. Leaving Cinder staggering, before looping back to play once more. Cinder was left staring as the protestors around her seemed to take the opposite course of action.
They got more violent, why was that?
She looked around her and looked at the humans who seemed to begin to organize themselves, sorting out who and what was in their groups. She noted the way many seemed to be dispersing, how they moved about, and how they started moving.
What was happening? Before, they'd been an unorganized rabble of people, but now… now they were coordinated and frankly terrifying to behold. The sheer precision that they moved in…
Cinder detached from the main group, following a small trio of men moving with a pair of women, it wasn't the way that they walked so much as the way they had walked previously that made her suddenly wary. Just… something didn't feel right.
When one of the women diverted into an alleyway the moment her partner's concentration wasn't looking for her, Cinder waited for a touch, and then she followed. She heard quiet, hushed tones speaking across the waves, and listened, pumping her aura into her ears.
"Yes. Nightingale's influence is confirmed. All fell under her sway quickly, aura is low, but I'll wear the plugs until I can return to the camp."
As Cinder watched, the woman… no, the girl, her face was too young and round to be a woman, straightened up, tucked her hood up, and the long black gloves she wore over her hands moved into the pockets, then… she began to move. A flickering coating of aura surrounded her ears and her head.
Cinder watched with abject fascination as the woman pulled a pair of earbuds from her pocket and shoved them in, then relaxed her aura, and it shrank away.
Hearing protection? Who was Nightingale? What was she doing? Was this woman a Fang spy? If so, why was she here?
Cinder turned and began to move once more, following the woman for what felt like an hour as they moved from shadow to shadow, until she reached the outskirts of the city. There, the woman whistled one high note, and two low notes, and finally sounded something that reminded Cinder of a bird song. As the girl watched in astonishment, the other woman was suddenly pulled up into thin air, vanishing almost immediately into the night. She tried to move closer, but the sheer speed had the girl vanish completely.
Cinder is forced to abandon her search as she hears sudden voices coming closer, and the pattering of running feet that charge ceaselessly ahead.
Someone is running from something, and they aren't slowing down, it seems.
Cinder has just enough time to sequester herself behind a building as she hears two people run past her, followed shortly by another, who takes a sharp turn to the right. Then, a pair of Atlesian guards charge past her, their armor shining and white, and rifles clasped tightly to their chests as they split off. One guard moving for the duo that headed towards the walls, the other charging towards the inner city.
Cinder chose to follow the second one, was that one trying to bait her pursuers from her followers? She had to know, was this more White Fang intruders?
Her path followed to an alleyway, and she found herself staring into the darkness, cursing her lack of vision until a crackling announced the presence of the Atlesian guard as he lit some form of flare, tossing it to one side.
The harsh white glow illuminated the entire alleyway and the dirty and bruised faunus girl at the end of it. A pair of black cat ears stood proudly atop her head and a scowl on her face as she held up a splintered protest sign in one hand.
"Here~ Kitty Kitty~"
The man spoke with cruelty and something akin to greed in his voice, as he advanced on the girl, and Cinder dropped her aura cloak and stepped forwards before she even knew what she was doing.
It occurred to her later that he'd reminded her of Madame and Iris and Clove in the way he spoke to the girl, the unrestrained cruelty coursing through his lips as he strode forwards.
"Stop."
Her voice is quavering, and even as she knows that she shouldn't fight, shouldn't get into it with others, Cinder knows she can't just sit by and let this girl be harmed when she could step in.
The man does not turn on her, he places his back to a wall, leveling the rifle at the girl and drawing a dagger in his free hand.
"This is official Atlas business, Citizen, apprehension of a wanted terrorist."
His voice had turned from cruel and greedy to cold and professional, dark, small, piglike eyes stared at her. He believed in his convictions and his oath, but he also hated the faunus. Cinder studied his appearance, noting a scar that trailed on bare arm down, and then the way he carried himself. The dagger was lackadaisically pointed in her general direction, something that Raven had warned Cinder time and time again to never do, as it would be fatal in a true fight. But his rifle and stance are all towards the small faunus girl.
He'd been hurt by someone who exploited children to do it, possibly faunus?
"She's no wanted terrorist, and you and I both know that. She's a child!"
She had to be sure.
"No, that's how they get you, see! These scars are because someone was "just another child!" They're lies! Evil, all of them!"
His jowls flew and spittle sprayed, and Cinder subconsciously took a step back, there was something feverish and maddened in that gaze, something that… didn't seem his own. As her eyes continued to study him, she reached out with her aura.
Before recoiling in disgust.
There was something horribly wrong with his aura. It twisted and turned around him, cloying at his mind and his body, twisting it left and right and it was all she could do to fight free of those cloying, singing, twisting vines.
"YOU SEE IT! YOU SEE HOW THEY'RE HERE TO KILL US ALL!"
His voice was desperate, and Cinder watched as he stared at her, it wasn't greed for the girl, no, this one wanted to be free of his pain, something had jammed up his memories and his soul… the agony must have been indescribable.
He stepped forwards, and in that moment, the faunus girl struck, purple aura flared around her, and as the soldier pulled the trigger, his spray of bullets struck her, and blood fountained… only for her entire body to fade into shadow.
The man's forehead met the pavement a moment later with a sickening "crack" as the girl slammed a knee into the back of his head, before she stood up, and asked Cinder.
"Friend or foe?"
The response was automatic.
"Friend."
"Known?"
The girl's voice held emotion, but it was restrained, this was a routine for her, she was assessing if Cinder was known to the Fang, and there was only one response for that.
"Unknown. But… hopefully not for much longer."
The girl smiled then, an expression that lit up her entire face and brought a similar one to Cinder's own face. She was pretty… her eyes and hair framing her face…
She almost missed the girl introducing herself.
"Blake Belladonna, you?"
There was something in her eyes, she was assessing what Cinder knew, but… in this case, the girl had a suspicion that Blake's name was important, but not much beyond that.
"Cinder… I… haven't really decided on a last name yet. Mom says that she'd be fine with me taking her name, but I don't feel that it's right…"
She was rambling… by the gods…
The other girl giggled, a hand over her mouth and it seemed as though Cinder's impasse was forgiven.
"You get to pick your last name? Are you an-"
The other girl, Blake, she reminded herself, seemed to pause as she almost finished the sentence, realizing perhaps her faux pas as she spoke. Cinder let her smile remain as she eased the other girl's regrets.
"It's fine… Grimm, I barely remember them anymore."
She should be more upset about that, but… Raven was there for her, and while Raven wasn't exactly warm in the normal way… she was… nice… to be around.
"We should… probably go before he gets back up."
Cinder nodded, and Blake took her by the hand and began to lead her away from the alleyway.
Cinder thought, that in the context of everything that had been happening today, it was brutally unfair that such a simple action could make her blush. This was hardly the stuff of the books that Raven thought she didn't read, the ones that the woman herself had proclaimed as trashy.
Then again, Raven had read them just like Cinder had, she'd seen the rather distinctive cover of "Knights of Love" hiding in Raven's bag more than once…
She came back when Blake led her to a building, and bit her lip once before she began to scale the walls. Cinder watched in awe as the girl clambered up the sheer brickwork with the agility of someone who was far, far more trained than she'd been pretending.
Cinder had to follow her up using the fire escape, and secretly, she was already resolving herself to get better at free climbing, maybe Raven would listen if she pestered her enough.
The rooftops of the building were shrouded by dozens of towers and eclectic pieces of machinery Cinder had no real knowledge of, and Blake, of course, was sitting gently towards the edge of the roof, her legs hanging in the open air as she turned to face Cinder and asked, gently.
"So… where's your trait? Or are you one of the faunus who have theirs under their skin?"
Cinder shook her head as she closed and dropped to the side of Blake, her own legs kicking out over the abyss of the 10-story building.
"I'm… not one, at least, as far as I know. Just a plain human… here."
Blake tensed up next to her, she tried to hide it, but Cinder wasn't an idiot and their auras were mingling with the proximity.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
Blake's voice trembled just a bit, with… uncertainty and anger.
"Why help me?"
Cinder looked up from the streets below, she looked over and found those pretty, pretty eyes staring into her own with intensity burning into them. It would be a lie to say that she didn't blush at the emotions held within those lamplike eyes.
"Because… it's the right thing to do?"
Cinder's voice trembled with uncertainty, a part of her knew that Raven's brand of help was different than hers and that her mother lived with something akin to a code of strict noninterference. But… that code was shifting, and had been, it was with some consternation that Cinder admitted she didn't really know whether or not it was the correct decision to help Blake.
"Is it? They seem to hate everything about us!"
"I… I don't know… something's… wrong with them, something is really wrong with them… I don't know why whether or not someone has cute ears matters or not."
"You think my ears are cute?"
She was absolutely blushing now, and it felt very unfair to see that Blake's expression was one of bemusement, this was, Cinder decided, absolutely unfair, completely undeserved that she would have to suffer in this particular manner. Because her face shouldn't feel like an erupting volcano and her heart absolutely shouldn't be pounding in this way. Was she sick? Was that why she was so off guard?
Surely that had to be it. So there was no harm in admitting then, to Blake, that her ears were indeed, very cute, right?
"Yes, they are."
Now it was Blake's turn to look away and flush a brilliant color, and a silence, awkward and poignant set in soon after. One that Cinder broke before it could fully cover the atmosphere of the rooftop.
"Do… you know anything about something called Nightingale?"
"You mean like the bird?"
"I… don't think it's meant to be the bird."
Blake finally looked back at Cinder with something like curiosity on her face as she thought about what the other woman had asked.
"I… maybe?"
Cinder pressed forward.
"What do you mean?"
"There's… something that I've heard my mom and dad talking about… when we've moved from place to place."
Cinder wouldn't question Blake on what the moving meant, and Blake seemed fine to keep pretending that she wasn't white fang. But she did continue, giving over much-needed information to Cinder.
"They always seemed very worried about it when they spoke about it. I can ask them if you'd like me to?"
Cinder nodded in lieu of giving a verbal answer, her thoughts absent. What was Nightingale? Why was it doing this, and why… were the Atlesians ignoring it? It didn't make any sense!
Nothing was making sense, she reflected. First the strange behavior, the riots, General Sol's speech, what was happening? Why was it happening what was causing this utter breakdown entirely and utterly?
Why were they so strangely twisted? And why had that man… why had he broken like that? Why had his aura twisted and coiled around him like a serpent?
She didn't know, she couldn't understand people sometimes. Raven hadn't talked about when she'd come back covered in blood that night on the ship, and she'd never spoken much more about it. There was something that still made Cinder scared about the future, about what was threatening this city, a twisting, uncomfortable feeling burning in her stomach as she tried very hard to shift herself to viewing this place as anything other than a trap.
It was Blake, actually, who brought her out of it all with a slight touch.
"Hey… he'll be fine, you only knocked him out for a little bit… in fact, see, that looks like it might be him now."
She pointed, raising a finger down as a figure in white armor staggered out of the alleyway, raising a hand to his head, where they'd hit him earlier.
Neither of them was prepared for what happened next.
The man listened to something over his helmet, and then, as Cinder and Blake watched. He raised the rifle slung across his back, pointed it towards himself, and squeezed gently.
The gunshot was thunderously loud, echoing and cascading off the buildings as Cinder squeezed Blake's hand unconsciously, and as the cat faunus trembled as the man slumped over in the road. The puddle of liquid, blood, Cinder idly reflected, pooling beneath the dark shadows cast by the splintered bone of his helmet.
The suddenness was only broken by the stunned silence and trembling muscles as both Cinder and Blake shook.
What was wrong with this city? What the hells was wrong with this city? Why? What…
Blake shook, and Cinder was secretly glad that she didn't see what happened next, as the other one, the man who'd split from his friend arrived, looked around the body like a clinician, and then… simply, reached down, pulled the pin from the man's grenade belt, and stepped back.
A crackling whoosh sent flames into the sky, ugly, roiling black smoke that consumed the dead man soon after.
Blake and Cinder did eventually have to move, the two standing, hand in hand, and walking on feet that felt as though they would have fallen off of Cinder's legs if she'd let them. She was following Blake, more than anything, and the other girl was taking her into the outskirts. It had been Blake, more than Cinder, who had recovered from the shock first. She'd dragged and towed Cinder to the walls, and then, she'd said… something.
By the time Cinder was able to think, again, to put the image, and the smell of burning flesh out of her mind, she was being hoisted over the walls. Taken up and over by strong arms and a wide smile on the face of a woman with prominent wolf ears, her eyes hidden behind a half mask.
For a moment, fear shot through her as she was pulled up and over. Terror suffusing her body and she twitched her muscles as she was back, trapped in the hotel. But… it passed as the white fang woman pulled her up to the wall and ever so gently set her down, affectionately boxing Blake over the back of the head and calling out.
"Silly cat, you keep rescuing strays like this and we'll have to open an entire new tent for the way your mother will act."
Her voice was nice to listen to, an almost whistle in the gentleness that she expressed as Cinder was lowered into a basket on one end of the walls. A basket that descended into the darkness, she'd been so nice that it would have been easy to ignore the weapons that hung at her hip, but Cinder had her training to fall back on, and even in her shock, her eyes darted between the white fang agents. Noting the pair of them standing back and away from the woman who had helped her up.
Both were armed, one with a high-caliber weapon and the other with a pair of razor-sharp shears longer than one of Raven's combat knives… and the woman who had been so kind to help her up and over the wall? She carried a breaching shotgun in a shoulder holster, and a sidearm in a leg sheathe.
These were White Fang militants, and as Cinder began to really feel fear course through her, accompanied by frustration born of her own weakness. She could not run from these people, even if she wanted to, a casual gaze saw the patchwork, hardened ridges of tissue on the nice woman's exposed skin revealing a checkered past full of little more than combat.
Blake settled into the basket behind her and with a short, gentle birdcall from the man with the shears, the basket started its journey from the walls.
The slow trip gave Cinder a long, long time to inspect the way the Fang had set up their impromptu way in and out of the city itself. A network of tightly secured ropes bridged from the ground up to the walls, and the small wicker basket trundled shakily along thin rails and wooden guide wheels. The rope was new, coarse and very rough on Cinder's hands as she dragged them along the surface.
This assembly had been pulled together that night… then, a factor that Blake confirmed a second later.
"Yes… Every night it's assembled, then taken down until we're all ready to leave. We're not willing to risk the grimm getting into the city. We don't want to emulate Mountain Glenn."
Cinder must have looked puzzled because Blake's left eyebrow rose up on her face as she continued.
"You've… not heard? Perhaps Atlas failed you in its school?"
Cinder promptly flushed.
"I… learned what I could from my stepsister's textbooks when they weren't looking… I guess the books didn't talk about it…"
"That… that makes sense."
She had to pause for a moment before she chose to continue.
"Mountain Glenn was an expansion by Vale… there aren't alot of reports on what happened, and I don't know tons about it, mom and dad didn't want to scare me, but the place got overwhelmed by the grimm and fell…"
Her voice was scary, low and sad, and Cinder felt the chill of fear run down her spine.
The events that had happened, from the sudden running to the violence that saw several beaten and left, to the speech of Sol, nothing made any sense, why was this happening now? Cinder puzzled over it until the basket slowed to a stop and a pair of figures, covered in sweat and a bit of city dirt stepped from the shadows. Cinder only recognized the first one, the chameleon girl who'd called herself…
"Sunny."
"Lav!?"
The exclaimed shout greeted Cinder as the girl stepped forward and then, was quickly shoved back by the young man at her side, who hissed something in a tone that Cinder almost didn't catch.
Almost.
"Are you insane? No noise like that, Ilia, do you want us to be shot?"
"I… I'm sorry, Adam."
Then, the young man was stepping forward, and Cinder saw a bandanna over his eyes, one that was freshly cleaned, his boots were caked with dried mud, but the man himself didn't seem to notice, or mind. At his side, a long blade hung in a resplendent black sheathe, and as he extended a hand towards Blake, she noted him glance her over, and dismiss her.
Anger bubbled up instantly. Her semblance roared in her ears. No one would dismiss her if they knew what Raven had taught her, what she could, what she was capable of doing if she so wished.
Blake declined the offered hand and stepped from the basket, extending her own arm down to Cinder. The girl took it and almost resisted the urge to throw a look of satisfaction at Adam.
Almost.
She swore she could almost see steam burst out of his head as Blake stood and turned to the other two, and then, Belladonna surprised her again.
"Adam, Ilia, this is Cinder, she's saved my life from one of the soldiers."
Adam stiffened, and Ilia and Cinder met each other's eyes and lies for but a second until they could hold it no longer, letting their gazes meet and dodge and meet again.
They'd met under false names, introduced themselves under false names… and now were meeting under their very real names.
The embarrassment was poignant and immediate, and an awkward silence set in between Ilia and Cinder as they tried, refused and then tried again to meet each other's gaze.
That silence was only broken by the dry voice of Adam as he spoke up.
"Are you two going to kiss? Or just get over yourselves already?"
Ilia was not the only one who turned scarlet, and Cinder felt she might as well die of shame as a small, high-pitched chuckle broke into her mind from behind her.
Blake was laughing at her embarrassment, and now Cinder was darker than Ilia, who practically glowed red with her color-shifting scales in the darkness. It took her a moment to realize that the harsh, barking noises weren't Blake or Ilia or herself, but Adam's own laughter. A deep and throaty baritone that… sent something akin to a shiver down her spine.
It wasn't… an unfriendly feeling.
She shuffled her feet together, and it was Ilia who broke the silence first.
"Cinder fits you much better than Lavender…"
It was Cinder's turn to stop and return the favor, and, grateful to her impromptu rescuer, the girl evenly replied.
"Where does your name come from?"
"Oh… um… my parents chose it… reminded them of a purple butterfly… or something."
Cinder caught the sudden sadness and didn't ask the follow-up question as Adam's face suddenly twisted slightly. For all his bluster and projected confidence, a part of her could evenly see that he could not quite tamp down his sadness at whatever had happened to Ilia to land her here.
Instead… Cinder asked a different question.
"Why… do you think my name fits me better?"
Ilia, apparently caught off guard, began to ramble.
"Um… just, that your hair and eyes… like fire and cinders, so… it's just a better name than "Lavender", is all."
Blake chuckled again as Ilia turned red, and Adam, this time, was the one to step in.
"We'd better get moving, sunup will be coming soon, and the wallwatchers need to take the basket array down before coming back to camp. Are you taking the stray with us?"
Blake nodded.
"She has something useful to tell, and she saved me, I think my parents will want to talk to her."
"You know… Shine's going to be right about you and strays."
"Whatever."
She casually hit him on the shoulder, falling into an easy step with the man as they led the two away. Ilia, for her part, was nearly silent, and Cinder watched everything around her with interest. This was the first time she'd been so up close with a Mistrali forest outside of the television in The Glass Unicorn.
She wasn't quite sure whether to be astonished that such beauty could exist, or feel violently angry for missing out on it for so long.
She wanted to cry at the sheer beauty, the gorgeous flowers that danced in the air like so many fantasy creatures, the colors so bright they felt as though they'd been torn from the commercials she'd seen on tv, the very atmosphere of the forest filled with birdsong and the occasional movement of beasts clad in their flesh beneath the shrubs.
She used her aura to focus her ears in those cases, listening for the tell-tale swiping and cracking against the undergrowth of bone armor. The tell-tale signs of stalking grimm, but it seemed the forest itself had been swept, as the only grimm she'd even thought she'd seen was a small creep, that quickly burrowed at the group, only for Adam to do… something, and cut it cleanly in two with such a fast movement that Cinder herself almost felt like it hadn't happened at all.
As though Adam's pointer finger had traced the air and shadow, cutting the incoming Grimm cleanly in two.
Ever so occasionally, the croaking of a raven would light upon the air, descending towards her until it wheeled away, at several opportunities, Cinder made eye contact with the bird, flashing it a thumbs up.
Her mother could really be so very protective of her.
It only took them half an hour of walking to reach the White Fang's camp, and Cinder had caught Adam looking back at her, several times, as though uncertain of whether she could keep up. She could, it wasn't a problem, this didn't even approach the level of training that Raven had put her through in just their tenure in the Atlesian forests.
The camp itself had a rudimentary at best barrier, wooden and earthworks piled up to form a wall around 8 feet tall. It wouldn't stop any large or seriously inclined Grimm, but then again, from what Raven had told her, the White Fang made a point of not staying in one place long enough to attract that kind of negative attention or emotion from either the city hosting them or the natural grimm life.
But… now, with the way that Cinder had been seeing what happened in the city of Argus… she was worried, genuinely worried. There was an undercurrent of thick fear that ran hot through her as she passed by the stony-faced guards at the entrance to the camp and took in the scents of cooking fires, dozens of people stood around in rough circles, helping to cook the meat from animals they'd slain for food.
It was to Cinder's consternation that she noted the stares… she shifted uncomfortably, even as Blake, chattering amicably with Adam ahead of her, dropped back and gently rested a hand on her shoulder.
"Most of us have had really bad experiences with humans… so that's why they're staring, but you're not that bad, so you should be okay."
Cinder shivered as one of the women in the camp stared at her with naked hatred, the sheer emotion in those red-rimmed eyes cutting to the core of who she was until they had passed.
It was when they reached the center of the camp that she found herself astonished by the sights in front of her eyes.
Standing at the head of a war table was a gigantic man conversing evenly with a pair of women, the man himself wore a long coat, had a thin frame of glasses that almost seemed strapped together from other pairs, and wore no top under his coat, exposing a bare chest that rippled with the type of muscle she'd only ever seen on Raven before this. The kind of muscle earned after hard-fought years on the front line of combat.
Of the two at his side, one was… the spitting image of Blake, a sinewy, thin woman with black cat ears on her head, adorned with golden jewelry, and carrying what looked like a machine gun strapped across her back. She wore a long smile, exposing the corner of one razor-sharp fang as she listened to the other woman.
The other woman was gorgeous in a way that actually made her just… stop. Bronze skin graced every form of her, and armor covered the most vulnerable places on her torso, leaving her arms bare aside from leather gauntlets. She had worn a breastplate, given it's presence on the table next to her, but now had most of her stomach bare. She had stripes of black ink adorning her arms and stomach, her flawless form glistening in the morning light. This was someone to whom "beauty" was as easy as breathing. Cinder felt herself spellbound, and stood there staring at her for far, far too long, until Ilia kicked her.
"Hey!"
"You're staring. Again."
The women and man looked up at this point, staring at the four young children in their midst, Blake, forging on with no fear of what was to come, evenly moved through the crowd of people and whispered something to the gigantic man, who had to lean down and hear her out. Before he stood up and started advancing on Cinder.
Her first instinct was to cut and run, this man was huge in the way that Raven's glares were able to freeze people half to death. His physicality was so enormous that people were simply swept out of the way by his motion.
Cinder almost made up her mind about running when he reached her and with one massive paw of a hand, swept her up and into his arms, smashing her into a hug that felt like an industrial press.
Breath was crushed out of her body, and every motion felt like moving against a stone. She couldn't move and could barely breathe, even as a gentle touch on her arm announced the presence of the larger Blake, her mother, then?
"Ghira, dear, please set her down, lest you crush our daughter's rescuer."
The bronze-skinned woman heard her speak, Cinder made out through the grip on her, as her ears twitched, and an eyebrow raised. Ghira, the big man, set her down as the second woman finally approached.
The larger and older version of Blake nodded once, a pleased and gentle smile crossing over her face. Before she spoke gently once more.
"Thank you, for doing what you did."
Cinder did not succeed in controlling her blush as the other woman enveloped her in a hug for a few moments. Even as the third woman finally joined them.
"May I?"
Her tone was severe, harsher, and colder, and Cinder was immediately reminded of the way Raven often spoke as she was set down, and the other woman leaned down to survey her.
"Trained, by a huntress then, but you don't have a sliver of another's aura within your own."
The woman stared at her with the same gaze of intensity she'd seen on Summer, but… the way her eyes were hard was far different… Summer had been a gentle, kind, and warm soul, and her eyes, even in their hardness, had shown that.
There was something in those eyes, dedication and iron will that reminded her more of Raven, than of Summer.
"How strong are you, little flame?"
Cinder stared at her, and then, just for once, she let her aura and semblance flare.
Heat, wonderful, brilliant, beautiful heat suffused her form as flames licked at her skin and her body began to shimmer with the heat haze. The women and her companions stepped back, and the dusky skinned one smiled at her, a vicious, warm smile.
"One of Raven's, then."
The harsh, sharp croak of Raven above, as the woman landed in the center of the camp with her full form shrouded in the regalia of combat. Hand on her blade and a mocking tone in her voice as she spoke.
"Sienna Khan~ How have you been~?"
A/N: Hiatus over, and the rest of this arc has been planned out, with bonus interludes! I can say that those will usually be experimental, and I especially value criticism on them, it's safe to say that canon divergences lay ahead as well, not for the characters, but the general plot of the story. Much as I love this show, I am interested in taking this story to places not explored in the main series.
As always, if you like what I am doing here, leave me a comment or a kudo/like, it's always appreciated.
I have begun classes once more, so writing, while still one of my goals, may have to take a backseat to important class matters. If I can foresee any delays or slowdowns, I shall let you all know ahead of time, but for now… this note is quite long enough.
Thank you all, your comments are wonderful things to read over.
Next chapter: Sept 4