#writing this post made me think about v2’s interactions with humanity

[scruncheduppaper]

same dynamic. do you guys get it. they are literally the same dynamic.

fast blue cocky protagonist vs rival red fan favourite look-alike who is worse but only marginally and is more closely bonded with humanity in its past (shadow having grown up in the ark and v2 originally being a guard robot). and theyre homoerotic enemies bc of course why not. do you guys understand.

[whitefangworldbuilding]

The Strength of Sienna Khan

I find the subject of how to address where Sienna is on the power scaling of Remnant to be both an interesting question and rather pertinent if one ever wants to write a fic about her and so I have provided my own breakdown on the matter below. 

Opening:

Now, I certainly don't mean it in a "How much Ki does she have" or "Does her Semblance make her an S Class threat" or "She can move at Mach 5". No, I more mean it in a general scaling of, who would she measure up well against in a fair fight sense.

& obviously the answer should be "Whatever doesn't break established canon too much" (Unless an AU or what have you)

However, I do feel there is a sort of bare minimum that needs to be cleared based on what we've seen, but even more, what we know.

So, time for some grounds keeping:

Now I could go into how I doubt one rises to a position like Sienna's and survives being functionally at war with something like the SDC and presumably wanted in every nation save Menagerie and likely Vacuo without being badass, but given she has allies that only means so much, Jac certainly didn't survive based on his personal strength after all, so lets move on.

Someone might argue that anything beyond what we saw in Sienna's trailer (Sorry Adam's, but I digress) to not be applicable, however we only saw her fight once and it seems anyone not at mook level didn't really struggle in that fight so it is hard to get a gauge.

We can infer a lot from the fact that despite having her presumably elite guards, and six other soldiers, plus himself and potentially Hazel on side, Adam still chose to kill Sienna by surprise before she realized he didn't intend for her to step down. This can certainly give the impression that Adam did not feel confident he could defeat her either with that back up, or at least not without severe risks, but that still only gives us so much, because we don't know what those risks were.

Still, I think as a starting point as strong, or more likely stronger/better than Adam seems like a fairly reasonable place to start from based on that and the trailer.

But we can go deeper.

One integral thing to think about when considering where Sienna might be on the overall metric and scale is this.

Cinder didn't try to recruit or intimidate her.

Now, some might argue that "Sienna didn't exist before V4" or that "Adam was High Leader before V3" or what have you. I say this.

But I don't think it matters; not just because Sienna is canon, but because as far back as V1 when Blake imagined the shadow figures who replaced the previous leader, there was not just 1. This means that even if Adam was meant to be higher up than he eventually turned out to be he still would not have been alone, eh wither would have had contemporaries or superiors right from V1 and them needing to recruit in V2 and having such a small pool of forces in V/3 really doesn't give any eight to the idea Adam had the full resources of the Fang at his command.

(Though why the boss of a massive organization would be messing about on a train blowing shit up for the lols is beyond me, hence why I don't think he was ever the leader)

This means that regardless of whether Sienna the character, her design or background, ETC, did to didn't exist specifically before V4 doesn't matter because someone always existed in the WF who wasn't submitting to Cinder as Adam was and held a great deal of power.

So what does that mean?

Well what this means is that to reach a final conclusion we need to look at Cinder Fall and her involvement with the White Fang to reach a final conclusion.

So, Cinder is someone with the training of a skilled Huntress (Seemingly), had an assassin and hallucinogenic thief and fighter on her side, and the resources provided to her by Salem, but rather than going for the High Leader of the White Fang and thus potentially netting the entire organization, she went to Adam.

And we know it was intentional because Cinder knew who Adam would be, seemingly that he had an ego given her degree of flattery and she placed great emphasis on choosing him, meaning that give her intelligence on the WF, means she determined him the best.most likely candidate to agree that would be useful. Now this info wasn't perfect because it either failed to communicate Adam's ego effectively or the political situation in the WF, IE, that they would not be willing to work for a human like this, or at least not with her plan.

But by all of this we can determine Cinder had some moderately good Intel on the White Fang, so the question  becomes...

Why not Sienna Khan? (Or whoever pre her creation, but yes Sienna Khan)

This next segment will involve a slight digression down, but please bear with me.

Cinder is someone not against bribery, flattery or threats to get what she wants, we saw all of this in her recruitment of Adam, so her avoiding this route with the WF's High Leader means a few things. Firstly it means she likely knew Sienna would not agree to such a destructive plan because it served no purpose; this objection could be moralistic or pragmatic, but Cinder would likely assume the latter given her general disposition and attitude.

But would she, would anyone object if it meant not dying? Would someone actually fight a doomed battle and die just to avoid being forced to commit a terrible act, or being subjected to slavery via threat? I doubt Cinder would believe that possible at least for someone who operates at Sienna's level in the world.

Here's the digression.

This was based off Cinder's interactions with Raven but it still feels applicable here. When Raven said that she wanted to kill her own brother, Cinder did not for a second seemingly doubt her, not even assuming something sneaky like an alliance of pragmatism to deal with her (Likely because she knows they fear Salem). No, Cinder just accepts that Raven wants her own brother dead, cheerfully in fact.

Now, say what you will about Raven but given she still has a portal to him & hasn't slit his throat while he was asleep, I think we can agree she, while willing to endanger Qrow, doesn't actively 'want' him dead or to murder him.

But Cinder was willing to accept that she did, and I feel its for much the same reason as one tumblr post mentioned. Cinder assumes everyone else is as petty and evil as she is. That might not be 100% accurate, but I think she'd definitely assume that of people like Raven, Sienna & Adam, even if she likely regards it in degrees, IE, Adam was the most likely to go along with her plan hence seeking him out.

End of digression.

This to me means that Cinder would not be acting on the assumption Sienna would object to her plans morally, or assuming that Sienna would sacrifice herself to stop them, because she likely thinks Sienna is incapable of such things.

So why wouldn't she seek her out and try to force Sienna's hand once she had half the Maiden powers? Cinder seems rather confident in the ability of power and fear to command respect and yet she didn't aim any higher than Adam despite the potential benefits.

Well given Adam was able to blits through her former guards relatively easily -though be it with a bit of shock given they didn't expect him to go that off the hook- this means to m that Sienna would be the major deciding factor here, not her guards or mooks, especially given Cinder can control Grimm and so could likely organize a Grimm attack to keep the grunts busy while she and her allies go for Sienna.

Thus, to me, this means that as far as Cinder was concerned , even with half the Maiden powers, her wonder minions and potentially Adam...

She still did not feel confident in taking down Sienna.

Or at least she was not confident in being able to force Sienna to surrender or to kill her quickly and turn her into a martyr without it being very blatantly clear that she did it, that Adam was a traitor, and generally just turning the entire WF against her or causing it to fracture apart defeating the purpose of the battle.

Given Cinder's ego likely means she has a fairly high bar before she feels threatened or like she couldn't pull off a "just as planned"; the only conclusion I can reach is that even after gaining the Maiden powers and potentially/likely/certainly Adam as an asset, Cinder still did not think she could overpower Sienna easily enough to either win, or at the very least accomplish her goals.

Conclusion

So, when we put all this together what do we get?

Well, we know that Sienna was at least a skilled fighter and one of at least comparable strength to Adam in the trailer.

We know that despite having her guards, back up and Hazel, Adam did not feel confident in either winning or at least not in a quick fight and so resorted to a sneak attack.

We can deduce that despite her powers and connections, Cinder did not feel she had adequate resources to either defeat Sienna and force her to heel, or kill her quickly and frame it on Vale to make Adam High Leader.

Thus, I reason, that Sienna Khan would likely have at the very least be stronger and more skilled than Adam, and could have put up a good fight even against partial Fall Maiden Cinder, Emerald & Mercury, enough that trying it would not be deemed worth the risks involved.

Exactly where you want to put Sienna's strength is obviously up to your own discretion, even if you follow this analyse there's still a lot of room for interpretation or extrapolation.

But I hope that this breakdown has proven insightful and well reasoned, thank you for your time.

Notes:

I almost wish I had made a video of this :D

Brainstorming Semblances could also be fun.

My main one for Sienna is that she has a 'crest' that she can store her Aura in, storing up potentially days, weeks, months or even years that when activated means she can drastically multiply her strength, sorta like Adam, Yang or Nora, but its pre-stored and has a massive gauge, This is the one I give her in the War idea (and in general) hence her being able to vaporize that cruiser, though using said Semblance can be hard, slow and painful and take a long time to recoup.

Other idea include Nine Lives, IE self Resurrection.

One idea I had in a fun little snippet I wrote ages back involved Sienna being able to forge a psychic link with animals, awakening their Aura, extra intelligence & having them fight along side her as her familiars. She had tigers :D

Another had her able to make solid, independent duplicates, or at least one that operated as an e extension of her, dividing her power in half, but letting her be in two places at once.

Another was tat she operated a bit like Cortez from X-Men, but in this case she basically cleaved off a chunk of her own Aura and infused it into others to give them extra strength and energy but could also return said power to herself if she wished to, weakening the, especially if they'd become dependent on her enhancements.

There's probably a lot of other ideas and if you folks have any I'd love to hear-em, but those are some thoughts.