Recherche lead Bolt and Blake to their location in the map. Their location was also in the woods, but they came to a cave, not a hole in the ground. If they hadn't been looking for it, they wouldn't have found it. No random hiker would stumble upon it. It looked to be a simple hole in the cliff.
"Are you sure this is it?" Bolt asked. Recherche gave him a look that scolded him for even asking. They entered the dark tunnel. It was nearly implausible to see anything at first, unless you were a faunas or had fire dust. After a short distance of walking blind, lit torches guided the way.
"Strange," Blake said, breaking the silence as they continued down the tunnel.
"What is?" Bolt asked the cat faunas curiously.
"If this was a White Fang base, shouldn't we have come across some White Fang members by now? I mean clearly there's someone here but... this doesn't really seem like the White Fangs thing," she explained.
"You've got a point," Recherche nodded. "Proceed with caution." They continues in silence until they came to a large set of wooden doors. The trio paused just outside the doors and prepared themselves. "Be careful. There could be an ambush just inside," Recherche warned. Blake drew her blades out of their sheiths and crouched down low. Bolt loaded his bow and readied and arrow. Recherche held all of her daggers between her fingers.
"Ready?" Bolt asked, reaching towards the door. Blake and Recherche nodded. Bolt counted down in a whisper, "Three... two... one." He yanked open the door and Blake rolls into the room, ready to strike. She came to a crouch and quickly scanned the room for any threat, and found none.
"Clear," she called back to the other two, "There's no one here."
"What?" Bolt asked in surprise as both he and Recherche entered the room.
"The room is empty. There is no one here," Blake repeated as the group looked around the room. It seemed to be a meeting hall of some sort. There were two sets of doors similar to the ones that they had come in with one on the right and one on the left, forming a sort of triangle. The room itself was circular and seemed to be carved out of the stone that they had entered when they went into the tunnel. Off to the sides were impressively large stone pillars. In the center was a large circular table with four chairs all made of stone. They stood tall and proud, with symbols carved into each of them.
Recherche walked over and examined the symbols. They were carved into the stone, and painted the appropriate color of the symbol. The one closest to her seemed to be a black pair of shoes that formed a heart shape, exactly the same symbol as the one that Cinder had tattooed on her back. "This is Cinder, do you recognize anyone else?"
Blake gasped quietly as she remembered another of the symbols, and who it belonged to. She walked over slowly and traced it slowly with her fingers. It was a red rose, but not like Ruby's. This one had a stem that sank down and formed a sort of check mark. There were also two petals with one being on either side of the stem. It was a symbol that she knew well. It belonged to her own mentor.
"Adam Taurus, this is his symbol," she sighed, dropping her hand, "he was my mentor, and my friend." Recherche placed a comforting hand on the cat faunus's shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she said calmly, but she meant it. The two words may have been simple, but the way that Recherche said them, made them mean so much more. "Will you be okay?"
"Yeah," Blake told the other girl, pulling herself together, "but I don't recognize any of the other symbols, well besides that one." The one that she indicated to had the White Fang's symbol on it. It was probably for the Lieutenant, but there was a thin layer of dust that covered his chair but not the others, meaning that he was only invited or knew about some of the meetings held at the table.
The last mark was a purple umbrella that was partially opened, forming a sort of arrow. "I've seen this before," Bolt said, holding is hand under his chin as he thought. He shook his head and scratched it. "I just... cant remember."
"That's alright sweetheart, you won't be alive to tell anyone anyway," a woman's voice said, coming from a different one of the doors. Recherche was the first to react.
"Cinder!"she cried, realizing who the woman was. The black haired girl just smirked at her. Then Recherche changed. Her body nearly shook with anger and her eyes seemed to glow with rage, remembering that this was the woman who had killed her girlfriend Nevermora. "I'll kill you!" she snarled.
"Rech don't!" Bolt called, but his leader was too far gone to listen to him as she charged recklessly towards Cinder, clutching her daggers tightly. Recherche barely even noticed the other White Fang members along with the people who had been Roman's men entering the room. She threw one handful of daggers at the woman with the eyes that glowed like embers, and used the other handful to try to slash her face.
With a smug smirk, Cinders clothing lit up with fire dust as she used small amounts of flame to almost flick away Recherche's daggers. Recherche was too angry to focus and think clearly enough to control them. Instead of circling around and coming back to her like they normally would have, they embedded deeply into the stone behind Cinder. Recherche was close now, and tried to slash at Cinder's face with the remaining three daggers in her hand. Cinder's smirk didn't budge as she knocked Recherche's hand to the side with a bit of fire dust, making Recherche give a small cry and drop her daggers as her hand was burnt. Cinder didn't even waist a second to knee Recherche in the gut, and then kick her to the ground to the side.
"Sorry children, I'd love to stay and play but I've got places to be," Cinder sighed. She turned to one of the men just behind the door and said, "Make sure Nickolas knows that he might have company at the other location." The man nodded and walked off. Cinder waved as Recherche pulled herself up to her knees, and with a growl of effort, called her daggers out of the stone wall and off the floor so they floated just behind her. Cinder wasn't fazed at all. In fact, she waved to Recherche as two other men reached for the wooden doors. "Farewell," she smirked before turning around.
Recherche yelled in frustration and sent her daggers forward with more speed and force than she could ever hope to throw them. Unfortunately, actions like that used a lot of her semblance, and it still wasn't enough. Cinder's men managed to close the doors just before the daggers reached them. The beautiful blades sank so deeply into the wood that even their handles disappeared. Recherche shouted again in frustration, but used a few breaths to try to calm herself, but angry tears threatened to fall from her eyes. How could she let Nevermora's murderer get away that easily?
"Recherche, help us!" Blake called to the other girl, bringing Recherche back to the situation at hand. She shook her head and focused as men continued to swarm into the room Blake and Bolt stood back to back with their weapons drawn as the men began to circle them. Recherche's eyes widened in surprise. How could she have let this happen? She was supposed to lead them, but she got so caught up in her own vendetta that she just left them there. She called her daggers back to her hands and stood beside the other two.
"I'm sorry," she apologized.
"We understand," Blake nodded.
"Now lets do this!" Bolt shouted, firing arrows at the incoming men.
