Penny, even through all her advanced processing power and calculations, could not grasp how the man across from her was even alive.
The meet up had went on for about an hour, and all throughout the group were storming up ideas for how to handle the next matches. Yang thought they could take each opponent one on one, only for Blake to mention the possibility of said opponent swapping targets mid-fight.
From there the back and forth carried on, and yet Penny tuned it all out in favor of observing the one silent body. Vermillion had been quietly watching the whole time, seeming content to let the others argue out their plans. Penny silently ran several more scans over him, believing the result earlier a possible fluke.
While she may have been state of the art, she was not free of flaws altogether. There had been times in the past where her equipment needed some fixes. They were applied as the issues appeared, which had mostly shown up back when she was first created. There was a miniscule chance that her scanner was faulty, and that could be why Vermillion's aura showed up the way it did.
No such luck, her scanner was fine.
Penny could tell as each scan of him appeared the same. She tried it on the others, and their aura's were the same. That led her back to the initial issue: how was Vermillion alive. There had never been a broken aura reported throughout all the history of Remnant, at least not to the extent of the Grimm hybrid before her, and was something she would report later.
She herself was powered by aura, but that aura still had a source, somewhere it originally came from that still existed. The aura didn't just... cease to exist, or even die; it merely split apart. But Vermillion had literal chunks of aura gone. Her excessive scanning proved futile as those particular patches remained empty. Even so it seemed as if his Aura flowed around them, avoiding the gaps.
"We could try holding them in place, like back on the train." Yang suggested as the heiress shook her head, arms crossed as she sighed.
"We'd need to catch them first. My glyphs take time to produce, and even a few seconds might be too long. Plus they'd see me starting them up anyway."
"Well what if I keep them busy? I could buy you some time." Yang tried again, only to be interrupted by Blake.
"No good, they'd split and immediately that plan would fail."
"Drat! So what then? It's either team up or go one on one. If they're on point like you said then we'll lose either way."
"They might not though, there's a chance they might split and take us on individually. It all depends on their abilities, and if they feel like you're no big deal they might not think it's necessary to team up." Blake suggested as Yang rolled her eyes.
"Yeesh, so we have to hope they're too cocky, is that really the plan we're going with?"
Blake was about to respond when she stopped. Everyone watched with curiosity as Vermillion leaned over and whispered something to the girl. Penny paid particular attention to the action, and filed it away under her observed data about the living anomaly.
What is he doing?
It was the prime question the robot girl asked herself as she watched Blake nod.
"That could work..." Blake mumbled as Penny prepared to document the coming events for later study.
"What could?" Yang asked as Blake looked to her and Weiss.
"You can't control them, or their skill, but you can control the terrain."
"I don't follow." Yang spoke bluntly as Blake looked to Weiss.
"How far do your glyphs extend?"
"About as far as I can see, but glyphs at longer distances take more time to form and activate." Weiss said as Blake looked between her and Yang.
"Then why not use them to move around the arena?"
"I already do that?" Weiss told as Blake shook her head.
"You use them to boost your speed. I'm talking about altering the field. You can create pillars and other things to bounce from, all the while limiting the available space of your opponent." The Faunus girl explained as Weiss though about it.
"I could... but I'd need a large supply of dust to keep it up all fight, and right now 'father' isn't too keen on helping me." Weiss cringed near the end, and Penny saw a dip in her mood.
"We've got plenty." Sun spoke up from behind Ruby, causing the girl to jump slightly.
"Stop scaring my leader." Weiss deadpanned as the guy chuckled and rubbed his neck.
"Sorry, thought you heard me coming. Anyway, we have some dust you could borrow." Sun said as Neptune nodded from his side.
"Don't you need it for your own match?" Weiss questioned as the two shrugged.
"We did, but our fight got rescheduled. We don't get to throw down until tomorrow."
"That's... strange. Do you know why?" Weiss asked as the guy shook his head.
"Not a clue, all we know is that the tournament bracket changed." Neptune spoke as Sun nodded.
"I thought it was random." Yang piped up as Weiss sighed.
"This is why we pay attention in class Yang. The tournament bracket is designed to appear random, but it's already pre-generated before hand. This way the staff can check coming matches if something goes wrong during the fights."
"So they know who's fighting all the time?" The brawler asked as Weiss sighed again.
"No, for the most part it's an emergency fallback. The bracket is pre-generated and immediately fed into the system while a copy is stored away. Nobody is allowed to look at it without proper reason. Last time they did the fights ended up being altered to allow the host kingdom an advantage."
"The Atlas scandal?" Blake piped up as Weiss grumbled.
"Yes... the Atlas scandal."
"Ain't that the one where some politician's rigged the fights or something?" Sun asked as Weiss nodded.
"One of the candidate's running for council based his entire strategy around Atlas's strength and pride. He opted to use the festival as a way to boost his numbers, claiming that Atlas would win every fight if he watched over it."
"I can already see where this is going." Yang let out as Weiss continued.
"So he went to the stadium and had a special throne done up for himself."
"Wow... narcissistic much?" Sun let out as Weiss smirked.
"Completely. He had it painted and everything. But when it came time to fight everything started to appear... odd. Atlas was winning like he said, but everything seemed off."
"Like?" Piped Yang as Weiss observed her nails, a plain look adorning her face.
"A team of aquatic specialists just so happening to roll an entirely ocean based field. Atlas teams with snipers getting rocky hills and forests. At one point a Vale team had stealth based semblances, and the terrain coincidentally rolled a flat field of short grass with no hills or cover in sight."
Yang cringed a bit as Weiss looked her way.
"The people called foul play, and Atlas in a bid to defend their pride brought out the bracket from the vault. Only it didn't match up, and so they looked at what was in the system and realized the bracket used was generated after the first, shortly before the tournament began. It proved the event was rigged, and the politician was arrested while Atlas lost a chunk of it's pride. He's still serving time if I recall."
"So we have a bracket, good to know. So how do we know it's random if Your fights been changed? You guys haven't even had your qualifiers yet, and as far as I'm aware those are random... right?" Yang asked as Weiss nodded. The qualifiers didn't need a bracket as they weren't part of the main tournament. Everyone fought a qualifier match, and as far as Penny knew it didn't matter what order.
"Qualifiers have been postponed, and have their own bracket this time." Neptune said as Yang raised a brow.
"How do you know that?"
Sun as he held out his scroll.
"Because the bracket's been made public."
.
.
Damnit!
As her fists crashed down on the desk a crack echoed throughout the room, and moments later the desk was lying in splintered pieces. Cinder calmed her breathing, or she tried to anyway as she couldn't get rid of the scowl that had seemingly etched itself into her face.
Of all the possible outcomes the tournament just had to go with the worst one, and it rendered her previous plans mute.
Worthless, fucking worthless!
The scheduled fights - which should have been hidden - were now public, meaning her plan of changing said fights was useless. The furious woman took several deep breaths as she paced back and forth. Cinder knew getting upset would achieve nothing, but she just couldn't escape the wave of hate that drowned her.
And worst of all, she knew exactly who to blame.
Her eyes gazed over to the wall, covered in photos of particular people, as well as notes with key information related to each. She stared hatefully at the photo in the center, growling slightly with a scoff of rage.
Ozpin...
The bastard of a man proved to be more of a thorn in her side than expected. She knew of his importance and the threat he posed, yet she never predicted something like this. The bracket for the fights could only be changed by the hosting school, and needed a particularly strong reason to do so, as well as that reason being made clear to the public.
Ozpin however seemed to take it to the extreme, making the whole bracket available for all to see. Cinder eyed the basted thing with ire, as if the words themselves were at fault. She scowled as she took in the pre-randomized battles, yet she found something interesting.
The fights were supposed to be random, yet if that were the case then a particular team should have had more matches than what they had.
Her eyes swept through once again as she focused. At first the woman believed she may have missed something in her anger; but no, she had seen correctly. Team RWBY only had three fights, as opposed to the other teams who had at least five to seven.
Strange, what are you playing at Ozpin, holding back your prized silver eyes.
Cinder instantly recognized the girls importance the moment she'd first seen her, and had expected Ozpin to utilize her more as a way to speed up her learning. Yet it seemed as though he was intentionally withholding her from battle, and Cinder itched to know the reason.
However none of that held a candle to the supposed source of said change, at least according to her suspicions anyway. Cinder looked to the monitor against the wall; set to loop a certain viral video of one rather odd looking man. She watched with curiosity as it played the scene from the breach, the one where a single Grimm swapped sides and aided him.
It was common rumor that he took control of the creature somehow, but Cinder knew better than to follow the words of random idiots online. Instead she had been set to studying the scene, doing her best to observe what happened and decipher what was really going on.
'Vermillion' as he was known, had indeed taken control of the Grimm, that part was obvious, but she knew there had to be more to it than that. Unfortunately the video was short with terrible quality, and she had not been able to get anything more than that; which only upset her more as she thought of it.
Salem had ordered them to avoid the guy, but when questioned she stated it was irrelevant to their plans. The Grimm queen clearly wouldn't talk more of it, meaning it was either incredibly important, or severely worthless. Cinder had labeled it the former, and set herself upon discovering the reason.
Still, that didn't help her ruined plans as any change made to the tournament would immediately be caught. She needed a way to instill fear into the populace, and without the tournament to fall back on she needed to find another way. Her eyes gazed back to the video as she wondered what the boy did to invoke such change in Ozpin's plans.
Yet her lips twisted, and a feral grin slithered across her lips. In the video the Beowolf fought alongside the guy, showcasing his control over the beast. Vermillion could control Grimm; it was common belief at this point, and with it she came upon a particularly vile idea.
For once Cinder was glad for the people's accusatory nature.
Author's note
...
Short chapter again because schedule issues. Good news is that it shouldn't happen much more. This week just so happened to love pelting me with surprise after surprise, but what can you do?
Anyway I brought back Cinder for this chapter - who's having a particularly bad time as it were. Although it seems she has some ideas moving forward; ideas that may prove destructive for a certain someone.
As for what's coming next? I'm trying to get a move on. Several times I've missed updates, and at this point it feels like the plot's starting to drag. Pace may speed up a bit for the rest of the arc.
Don't worry though, all the important moments and world building will remain intact, we'll just move a lot quicker for the tournament.
Anyway that's it for now, let me know what you think.
See you next time.