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Cinder

"My niece is dead." Levana snarled, her beautiful features twisting into something that might resemble imperfection. "She died over a decade ago."

Cinder spread her hands in front of her. "Clearly "she" didn't."

"I believe it's even clearer that she did." Levana retorted, "You are nothing more than an imposter, a child born to a common mistress, seeking attention."
"You think I actually have to try to get attention?" Cinder asked, raising her metal hand, "I don't exactly blend into crowds, even without the whole, related-to-Lunars thing."

Levana sneered with disgust as she looked at the metal appendage. "Even if you are who you say you are, you're clearly no threat. Your skill with you gift is rusty and fresh. If you were anywhere near my level, you'd at least cover those hideous robot parts."
Cinder shrugged. "Too much trouble. If I want to hide my "hideous robot parts", I'll just wear gloves, boots and long pants, thank you very much."
Levana sniffed. "I daresay a glamour is far easier than some clothes. With a mere thought, you could hide all of your many imperfections. The fact that you don't trust your gift enough for even a simple task like that is enough to tell me that you are no threat whatsoever."
"You wouldn't trust your gift to hide who you are either if you had a lie detector in your brain."
"What difference would that make?"

"Ever since you took off that veil of yours my lie detector's been going off, which is weird because you haven't said anything, so how could you lie? But it's your appearance that's a lie, isn't it? That's what's triggering my lie detector. This isn't what you really look like."
Levana glared down at her, a dangerous light brewing in her onyx eyes. Her ivory skin was as pale as when she first took off her veil, but Cinder had a sneaking suspicion she was using her powers to cover up an angry blush.
"You are fast trying my patience, "niece"." Levana hissed mockingly, "I strongly advise that you don't try it any further."
"Or what, you'll force me to kill myself?" Cinder smirked. "Sorry, but that's one of the perks of having a computer in your brain. I'm a little hard to control."

"Then I suppose we'll have to do this the hard way."

Levana closed her eyes, her brow creasing ever so slightly in concentration. All at once, eerie howls rang through the air, and the sound of too many feet to count thudding against the ground soon followed.

Cinder widened her stance and narrowed her eyes as she looked around her, trying to find the source of the noise. The other Rampions did the same, their gazes still foggy from Levana and Cinder's manipulation.

She wasn't sure who was the first to see the invaders, only that someone in the crowd of Rampions suddenly shouted and pointed to a group of people walking down the main path of the fair. Soon, more of them came around the other end of the path, then more silently crept out of the shadows. In no time at all, they were completely surrounded.

Cinder cursed under her breath as she struggled to get an idea of how many of them there were, but her mind quickly shied away from actually stamping a number on them, maybe because of how utterly crushingly big that number would be. However many there were, Cinder was sure of one thing: there were a lot more of them than there were Rampions.

She frowned in concentration, trying to gain control of at least a fraction of the massive force she was faced with, and hope to the skies that she would still be able to move so she wouldn't get killed within ten minutes. But just as soon as she touched the mind of a single soldier, a white-hot dagger of pain built up behind her skull, piercing through her consciousness and fracturing her concentration. She shrieked in pain, her hands instinctively reaching up to clasp her forehead. In the background, she could hear Levana's distinct tinkling laughter.

"You honestly didn't think I'd let you get away with that trick twice, did you?" she said mockingly before turning to Animal King. "This girl bothers me. Get rid of her."

Animal King grinned and bowed low for her. "Gladly, My Queen."

A low growl from behind was Cinder's only warning.

She scrambled to get out of the way as claws swiped at where her head had been moments before. Wolf whipped his head around as she struggled to get away, never letting her out of his sight. His fight with Iko hadn't left him unscathed. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and a trickle of blood ran from a busted lip. He was slightly favouring his left leg, probably because of the heavy bruising on his ankle, and some of his toe claws were broken off. But… if Wolf was here, where was Iko? Was she alright? Was she…

Cinder shook the thought out of her head before it could finish. She wasn't going to think about that right now.

Wolf's attack seemed to be the signal for Levana's army to charge, enraged shouts tearing from the throats of the prodigies, and excited howls and roars from the wolf soldiers. The Rampions were only too happy to meet them in the middle, their own battle cries mingling with the Lunars in the worst orchestral piece the world ever had the misfortune of hearing.

The man with the smug smile extended an arm to Levana, who took it graciously and they vanished. Great, now not only did Cinder have to deal with one of, if not the most, powerful prodigy alive, she didn't even know where she was! Why couldn't things be easy for her, just once?

Wolf lunged towards Cinder again, and she just managed to dodge out of the way. She felt for his mind, hoping that maybe she could make him stop attacking just for a few moments so she could come up with any sort of plan for stopping his attack. But there was nothing. Nothing human for her to grab onto.

She dashed behind a carousel register and hurriedly fished around her belt for something she could use, uncomfortably aware of the fast approaching pounding footsteps as Wolf stalked his prey.

Her hand closed around a belt of bullets. She clenched her jaw, but hastily loaded them into the compartment in her hand.

I won't shoot to kill. She told herself. Just to… knock him down for a bit. I won't kill him. She hoped to the skies she'd be able to keep that promise.

Cinder hastily ran out from behind the register just as Wolf leapt over it, landing squarely where she'd been crouching moments before. Quickly, she raised her hand and fired one of her recently loaded bullets. The bullet buried itself in his side and Cinder winced, waiting for the howl of pain or for him to stumble back from the force of the shot. But all Wolf did was growl and run towards her, claws outstretched.

"Oh, come on!" Cinder moaned as she struggled to stay out of the way of those deadly knife-like weapons, "What's it gonna take to get you to stop?"
"More than you can give, cyborg." Animal King said smugly.

"I wasn't talking to you." Cinder said through gritted teeth as she struggled to aim her finger-gun for another shot.

"But I'm answering anyway." he nodded towards Wolf proudly, "That beast won't stop attacking you, no matter how much you hurt it. Its instincts are under my command now, and it won't stop until it has fulfilled my wishes."

"First of all," said a voice from above, "Wolf's a he, not an it."

Cinder looked up to see a familiar red head, holding a gun with a lot more confidence than Cinder felt with her robotic hand.

"Second of all," she continued, narrowing her brown eyes at Animal King, "I get the feeling you're going to have a hard time giving him orders if you're dead."

Wolf turned and with a furious roar leapt up at Scarlet, swiping at her with his claws, but she simply flew up out of his reach and pointed her gun at Animal King. Even from the ground, Cinder could see the hatred burning in her eyes.

A squeeze of the trigger. A deafening bang. And then Animal King was falling, his hand pressed uselessly against the steadily bleeding hole in his chest.

Wolf blinked and shook his head, as if trying to shake away the man's influence from his mind, before tilting his head back and howling up at the full moon, the long, low note lingering eerily even after he stopped.

With a feral snarl, he turned his attention to the battling prodigies all around him, charging into the fray. At first, Cinder was relieved when she saw him knock down a Lunar. Maybe he was on their side after all. Maybe he wasn't totally animal. Then he immediately turned and tried to kill a Rampion. Cinder huffed with dismay. Never mind.

She looked up at Scarlet. "I need to find Levana. Have you seen her?"
Scarlet raised an eyebrow at her. "You want to go up against the most powerful Lunar there is? Are you crazy?"

Cinder shrugged. "Probably."
Scarlet sighed. "Well, hate to disappoint, but if you want to find The Queen, you're on your own because I haven't the faintest clue as to where she might be."
"Then I'll just have to go about taking her down the hard way." Cinder said grimly.

Scarlet offered her a strained smile. "Good luck. You're really going to need it. I'm going to try and calm Wolf down."
Cinder grimaced. "Scarlet, you know it might be too late-"

"No, it's not." She said stubbornly, "I know Wolf, and I know he wouldn't just let himself go full animal, letumosis or no."
"Well, good luck. You're really going to need it." Cinder told her, echoing her friend's previous statement.

Scarlet smirked down at her, before flying off to find her animal friend.

Cinder huffed and scanned the fairground-turned-battlefield. "Alright Cinder, if you were an evil queen, where would you hide?"

A/N: Please review!