Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-110.146.149.161-20150813074512/@comment-4010415-20150902042741

1. Cinder's tattoo doesn't glow. Meanwhile, her clothes do, and Ironwood explicitly said that she was likely using Dust-infused clothing.

2. I'm a supporter of the idea of those circular shields Ren and Cinder made being Aura shields, which people who have a higher level of Aura control can generate.

3. By the way, back in volume 1, Pyrrha said that all of their tools and equipment are conduits for Aura. This explains why Pyrrha and Blake were able to fight using loaves of bread without them breaking, plus the fact that the loaf that Blake threw broke. Once it left her hand, she was no longer channeling her Aura through it, and it could be broken again. The melon on Nora's melon hammer didn't break until she hit Yang through the roof, so it's possible that, with that final strike, she had spent too much Aura to maintain the melon's integrity any longer.

This completely explains why Cinder's obsidian swords (fricking black volcanic glass swords) didn't break. Her swords were acting as conduits for her Aura. She was channeling Aura through her swords, thus protecting them from breaking.

This actually also conveniently means that, as long as a hunter has enough Aura, they can protect their weapon from being broken at any of its hinges or dented in any of its hollow spots.

4. In WoR: Dust, Cortana said that Dust can be activated by the Aura of humans and Faunus. She also said that, if someone chooses to use raw Dust, they need to have a certain level of discipline so its power doesn't break free from their control.

Weiss doesn't need anywhere near as much Aura control as Cinder does because Weiss uses Myrtenaster as an instrument to direct Dust with augmented attacks and also uses her glyphs, which control motion, to move Dust and make it manifest its energy in the way she wants.

Cinder, meanwhile, does not use an instrument to direct the energy of the Dust infused in her clothes.

By the way, I think it's entirely possible that Glynda made the hailstorm using her telekinesis Semblance. She uses her crop as an instrument to help her focus/aim/direct her Semblance, and she used her Semblance to throw Dust into the air above the Bullhead and activate it. It's possible that the arcane symbols that she created in episode 1 were just the result of a higher level casting of her Semblance. (That said, it seems her Aura may be purple. Of course, Aura doesn't necessarily have to be the same color that a character's name portrays and doesn't have to be the color of their hair. Jaune's Aura is white, after all.)