The Knights of Grimm - Act 3 - Shattered Memory

Chapter 51 - Merlot Industries

"Yeah, you said you never had a semblance." Ruby states, remembering to the times of which that Cinder has told them this much. Cinder grabs her arm nervously, her eye gazes down at the floor sadly.

"I..." Cinder is acting really nervous, biting on her tongue because she does not what to say what her semblance is, as if she is ashamed of her own semblance. To the point of lying to them of what it is, and yet now it could be extremely useful.

"Why did you never tell us? You have to trust us if you want us to trust you." Blake questions, pointing at her and then at her own chest, showing the link there. Then Cinder seems to crack under pressure.

"Alright! Fine!" She exclaims, and Qrow looks around, hoping to the Gods that the Thralls did not hear that yell as well, in which he steps forward and points his finger to the ground.

"Can we stop shouting, please?" He whispers with gritted teeth, before listening to Cinder speak. For her to reveal what her Semblance is to them all.

And why she is so ashamed of it.

"My semblance...is the ability to communicate with people I know, across the world in some cases if they try and find me." Cinder tells them all, and that was the last thing that they were expecting. And it could be the best thing that they could have heard of, which now begs the question...

Why was she so ashamed of her Semblance when in the grand scheme of things, it is super useful.

"W-Why did you not tell anyone? Why are you acting so ashamed?" Jaune asks her, and Cinder looks up at her older brother in which he steps back slightly and looks at the floor. Clearly he has known about her Semblance the entire time and never told them either, seems to run in the family. Since he never brought up Hyde at first either.

"Did Kassius tell you all about how he got picked up by Taiyang, how he met you and Yang?" Cinder asks them, looking straight at Ruby.

"Yeah I remember..." Jaune agrees, remembering being there in the conversation when he revealed how he got the scars on his body and how Taiyang found him. The life he and his sister had to suffer through and the near-death experience he suffered when he was very young to that Grimm Terror Bird. A horrible story, one that still seems to haunt Kassius to this very day. The feeling of the thick bony beak and the razor sharp claws that slashed his spine, the beak that nearly broke his back when it hammered its head down into his lower spine.

"When he fell and that Terror Bird came for him...I wanted to help him, I tried to help him...but I couldn't. I was too weak, and my semblance was just to talk to people. I couldn't help him...I had to run and listen to his screams as that thing attacked him. I have rarely used it since...only a few times when Salem commanded me to do so." Cinder explains, having to sit down when she tells them all that.

Their expressions change...

They truly understand her reasons for not only refusing to be open about the semblance, but for why she never uses it in the first place.

"I wanted to be powerful...at first so then I could help people...but Salem messed with my head for years, and changed it into something much worse." Cinder explains, in which Pyrrha is the one that names what it was that Salem changed her reasons to.

"Power..." Pyrrha answers, and Cinder lifts her head and nods with a soft smile on her face.

"Yeah." She replies, sighing as she sits there. Jaune looks at her and he walks over to her, and he reluctantly pats her on the shoulder. He still does not forgive her or really trust her overly, but he can understand her on that.

Because in a way.

They are the same.

They both became warriors to become stronger, to try and help people. But Cinder went to the wrong person, and her mind was twisted because of it. "I'm...sorry." Jaune hesitantly says to her, and Pyrrha smiles slightly at Jaune to see him trying to get along with Cinder. The Fall Maiden sniffles as she wipes a tear from her eye and stands back up.