Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-32082639-20180422002301/@comment-27144409-20180422004500

If she didn't retaliate to the percieved threat, she would probably block or maybe dodge, which could look weird to the audience, This could potentially cast suspscion on Merc's team, but unless Emerald was successfully banned from the coliseum, at least during the Penny vs Pyrrha fight, the Grimm still would have attacked.

That said, the attack might not have been as severe since there wouldn't have been as much negativity to draw them. Cinder might well have tried to adjust for that by activating the Black Queen malware to hijack Atlas' robots sooner though.