Cinder writes a love letter back

The very next day, Ruby heard a knock at her door early in the morning while her team was asleep. Ruby had not been sleeping well for many days. Somehow, Ruby's restlessness worked to her advantage today. She sprung out of bed in her pyjamas and found a red envelope at the doorstep.

Ruby saw the faintest glimpse of Cinder turn a corner down the hallway when she looked about for her. Ruby's heart fluttered at the thought that Cinder's presence was near. The envelope Ruby received was larger than the one she gave Cinder. She ran into the toilet, locking herself inside to read the handwritten letter it contained.

Dear Ruby,

I adore your old fashioned sentimentality.

Firstly, I would like you to know that I am not pregnant. I took the morning-after pill shortly after our encounter.

Secondly, you are not a coward. In fact, you are one of the bravest people I've met, purely on the basis of wanting to take responsibility for a love child! I wish my own parents were so brave...

For being so open with me, I will share something I have never given any of my other bedfellows- my past. What I am about to tell you I have never told a soul. No one alive knows the whole story of how I became a criminal, except me.

I was raised in an orphanage on the rural outskirts of North Mistral. I knew nothing about my father and the only thing I knew about my mother was that she was a mouse Faunus. The orphanage matron told me. Back then, I was only known as Cinder. I had no family name.

People tend to have the misconception that all Mistrali are more tolerant towards futanari. This is not the case. Especially, if you are a futanari with Faunus ancestry. If you are human with the futa gene plus Faunus blood, you are considered "contaminated".

This fact I was reminded of constantly by the other children at the orphanage. The boys would sing "Cinder has a tail between her legs" and laugh. They called me a "trap". A boy with tits. A half-breed. A freak!

I started fighting with boys at the orphanage frequently when I was 10. Fate would have it that some visitors from Atlas were happy to take me away from the orphanage that year. The matron probably wanted an excuse to get rid of me once I began puberty. They said I was being adopted. In reality, I was being sold. I bet they were worried that the half-breed futanari would try to corrupt their innocent pure blood girls if I grew any bigger around them.

I was flown to Atlas and put to work in a hotel called the Glass unicorn. And no, they are not referring to ‘that’ kind of unicorn! In Atlas, unicorns have a different symbolic meaning! This was the kind of high class establishment that was too stuck up to allow underpaid Faunus workers yet too entitled to pay fair wages to humans for menial labour. So, they used me as something in the middle. A half-breed child labourer, given food and shelter but paid nothing.

There came a day when I snapped at the two idiot daughters of the hotel manager who decided to dirty the floors on purpose. I stole weapons from some luggage belonging to a huntsman. I wanted to end the twin bimbos that night. But the huntsman followed me back to the storeroom where I slept. He talked me out of committing ****. He offered to train me how to be a huntsman so I could leave behind the Glass unicorn one day.

Unfortunately, I was too young and dumb to realise that he was grooming me... For the next five years, I was sexually exploited by that huntsman whenever he visited the Glass Unicorn hotel. He told me that it was love, and I believed him. He made me do things I was too young to understand.

HE DEFILED ME.

After years of doing everything he said, eventually the hotel manager's twin bimbo daughters found the weapons that were lent to me. When the hotel manager came into the storeroom to punish me, I killed them all. Seconds after I choked the life out of the hotel manager, guess who walked into the storeroom? The huntsman who lent me the weapons I used to commit the ****. Fate is a cruel mistress...

I thought he would understand why I did it. I thought to myself that this was the day I've been waiting for! The day my lover and I would run away together, living happily ever after.

Instead, he threatened to take me to the authorities. Ironic, right? The sex offender who exploited me for five years and knew about the abusive working conditions I experienced in the Glass Unicorn was ready to snitch because I committed a crime! As the old saying goes, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. I killed him that night as well.

At the age of 15, I had four murders on my hands. I knew I couldn't stay in Atlas. I ran away back to Mistral. With no family to run to, making a name for myself in the seedy criminal underbelly was my only option. I worked in the red lights district, surrounded by every vice imaginable. Prostitution, ****, gambling, you name it. I robbed a few sugar daddies and discovered my talent for crime. If the boot fits, wear it.

There were many other players in Mistral's criminal underworld with friends in high places... One day, I was approached by someone with a rather stingy character. He said that his master needed someone with ambition to pull off the greatest heist in history. He knew of my reputation for stealing rare dust, among other nefarious schemes.

The rest is history.

Regardless of whether or not I succeed in this heist, I want you to have my secrets. Take them! They are yours, my love! The kingdoms as you know them have been built on a rotten foundation. One that shall be unravelled soon. For this reason, I am leaving the city of Vale. If you managed to connect the dots on my schemes, surely others will too. I leave tomorrow.

We have one night only to make love.

I will message your scroll number with a hotel room and a time later today.

Tonight, I will be a freak for you!

Love,

_Cinder- - - - - -

_

Reading Cinder's letter made Ruby feel overwhelmed. Her entire worldview of huntsmen was flipped upside down by Cinder's story of the Glass unicorn. The person meant to help the weak stood by and took advantage of Cinder. The same way huntsmen today continue to stand by, doing nothing about discrimination against Faunus or rampant crime.

Ruby wanted to be a hero. A hero saves everyone. The job of a huntsman was to protect the kingdoms from Grimm. Are the kingdoms really worth protecting if they enable corruption and exploitation? If their foundation was rotten?

Yet, through all this darkness shined a small glimmer of hope. The chance to meet her futa lover again and forget about their differences! But something in the back of Ruby's mind told her a great calamity would fall upon Remnant if she did report Cinder to the police. The signs were obvious. Cinder made no attempt to hide her intentions.

Ruby's hands shook as she held all the evidence she needed to incriminate Cinder and potentially save the world...