"Do you believe in destiny?" Pyrrha began recording her message for Cinder and sent a shiver up my spine.
The Allies Against Evil took my plan to lay a lethal trap for 'Amber's assailant', and Pyrrha -in all her true hero glory - chose to be the girl they would try to influence Cinder into thinking about while they flooded the room with sarin gas. Didn't that idea fill me with dread.
Aura does great protecting the body from external force. It did jack shit stopping heat transference, poison gas, or internal forces. As such, conventional explosives leave a chance for Cinder to survive. She'd get a lethal dose of sarin gas in seconds. She'd be dead in under a minute, giving her time to throw off our attempt to influence the Maiden inheritance process, but chances are high she wouldn't think of anything but the raw agony coursing through her once the effects took hold.
Lots of people think they can handle pain. Those people are ignorant. Intense pain can be all encompassing and chronic pain can wear down even the toughest people. Salem may have trained Cinder into a super bitch, but no amount of conditioning can prepare a person for the feeling of a superheated knife carving into them, and that is exactly how survivors of Sarin gas exposure describe it.
I couldn't think of a better ending for the bitch.
Ironwood sent out some orders for his androids to secure a route out of Beacon for a VIP extraction right after the tournament finals in two days. It was the cabal's test of how close the enemies Qrow warned them against actually were. I knew that Cinder knew what was going on as soon as Ironwood delivered the order and now had a time window where Amber would only be guarded by androids she could scythe through like hot butter and the girl's location. If she resisted this trap then she is some AU version of herself and I got nothing that can help.
Pyrrha and I went back to our dorm for the night somber people, and Nora picked up on that right away. The girl may seem like a ball of pure eccentric bullshit, but she had a deeper understanding of people hidden under that whacky exterior. She brought us in for supportive cuddling rather than egging us on for amorous adventures.
The singles matches of the tournament began the next day, and we put forth Pyrrha as our team's representative. It both gave the fans what they wanted and me the freedom to work my angle on Emerald. Unfortunately for Yang, this meant that when Cinder rigged the random selector to put her up against Mercury for the first match of the singles I did nothing to stop their plan to both discredit her as a Maiden candidate and test their ability to use the stadium audience to draw grimm.
The rest of the evening's matches were postponed to the next day, meaning that all the singles bracket would happen on the final day of the tournament, not just the semi finals and final. Ironwood stopped by the next morning to tell team RWBY they were disqualified, but I interrupted the proceedings by being there with Blake to help 'comfort' her partner. When Yang announced that Mercury attacked her and Ironwood countered with the fact that video evidence and forty thousand eye witnesses say otherwise, I stepped in.
"And the fact that Emerald Strusai, Mercury's partner, has a hallucinogenic semblance does nothing to bolster Yang's claim that the smug bastard attacked her?" I implied heavily my belief in the opposite.
"I'm sorry," General Ironwood spoke, "Could you repeat that?"
"I said that Mercury's partner Emerald has a hallucinogenic semblance." I repeated, "She controls what her target sees, hears, feels, smells, tastes. If Yang says she saw Mercury attacking her, then it is very likely Emerald made her see that."
Yang looked at me like I'd been replaced by my evil twin and only she recognized it. Probably due to her and I getting along like water and oil since I first broke up with Blake.
"How did you find this out?" Ironwood asked me.
"I've been suspicious of their team ever since they got here." I told them, "I interviewed Coco and Yatsuhashi after their battle and figured out Emerald's semblance there."
"Do you believe you know the motive for this action?" Ironwood questioned me in that super stiff way of his.
"I'd say it was to cover Mercury throwing the fight against Yang." I answered while Yang and Ruby hit me with a 'hey!', "His stock in the tournament was at an all time high after he humiliated Yatsuhashi and Coco. Taking a dive against Yang would be very lucrative after she struggled so much in the doubles. Emerald causing that scandal gets people distracted from the fact that the guy who smacked around two of Beacon's top students got beat by the girl who only advanced because her opponent tripped into an arena hazard."
"That makes sense." Ironwood nodded, "The Vytal tournament is notorious for organized criminal's paying off students to take a dive."
"I don't think that is what is happening in this case." I shook my head, "I did some thinking last night, and with our last conversation in mind, I think Cinder is our girl."
Ironwood's normally narrow eyes widened in shock.
"Her team seems more like professionals a member of Haven's staff let through rather than some rando's the mob approached." I told the general, "Cinder is a first year closer to thirty than she is to seventeen. Emerald and Mercury act more like her lackey's than teammates when they think no one is around, and the fourth member of their team suddenly went home for a family emergency after I killed a certain illusionist out at Mount Glenn that shared her exact body type and disability. Both were mutes."
"That," Ironwood choked out, "Why didn't you bring this up sooner?"
"I put her description in my mission report." I answered, "It was Ozpin that failed to make the connection."
"I'll need to run this by Lionheart, find out why these people got through his background checks." Ironwood stated as he turned to leave.
"I'd hold off on that." I told him, "Remember that Cinder is likely the culprit of the CCT break in. She can likely monitor important communication facilitated by the tower and it is how she is rigging the 'randomized' tournament selections."
"Has this whole tournament been rigged!" Ruby shouted in annoyance.
"We've been dancing to her tune from the start." I confirmed, "But I think it is time we pushed back on her, and to do that I need a pair of aura suppressing cuffs and the junior detective badge of he-who-must-not-be-named."
"I'll get you the cuffs, but what do you need the badge for?" Ironwood asked.
"How else will I arrest Emerald for prostitution?" I answered while the rest of the people in the room dropped their draws somewhere nearby their toes.