Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20160103163552/@comment-26397825-20160105202415

73.Anon.52 wrote:

1.Maiden powers and Amber going down quick: I think the reason her abilities are considered "godlike" is just that she can generate as much oomph as she needs at any time, but she still can only funnel that power usefully using her aura. So, she could probably ass-pull something like conjuring a volcano... but the damn thing could just as easily kill her as kill her opponent, because in order to use it she would expend about as much energy as a foe using dust... that foe just wouldn't have the dust to try such a stupidly dangerous stunt.

The main problem with that is that we specifically see her aura go down - she gets the same effect Mercury had when he ran out of aura - and she is severely injured afterwards, clutching her side even before Cinder shoots her in the back, but she can still throw around wind blasts like it's nothing. That suggests that the Maiden powers aren't in fact tied to how much aura the user has.

73.Anon.52 wrote:

2. Mercury's injury/introduction: I think the prosthetics were rather new, though perhaps Merc and Marcus did not have a terrible relationship, what if they were found by Cinder and Emerald fighting(in the verbal/emotional sense, not physically) and Cinder had Emerald give them a "push".... because as noted Cinder talked a lot about looking for what seemed like a follower/apprentice leading up to the moment she learned of Marcus... who was already sounding like an old hat at freelance assassination and not someone Cinder could use either of those descriptors for. A fight between the two would have profited Cinder either way, Merc alone is cheaper/easier to mold, while if Marcus killed Merc she wouldn't need to worry about Marcus demanding more cash for his time or Mercury being a loose end.

And I like this theory a lot more than the 'Marcus and Mercury had a bad relationship because Marcus was a drunk douche' theories. At least it doesn't follow the cliche entirely.