Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28189972-20161117073343/@comment-4010415-20161117123614

BenRG wrote: Purely FWIW, I can 't help but wonder if Salem kept that particular card close to her chest - Cinder probably didn't know about the relic, mostly because Salem coudln't trust her not to take it for herself, given her lust for power and notoriety.

That aside, destroying Beacon and cutting off that paricular limb of the Huntsman Order was always likely an objective all of its' own. Just as Haven (but not Mistral itself) is the League of Evil's next target. True. Besides, infecting the CCT with the Black Queen virus may have been enough of an incentive for her to pose as an exchange student rather than a random civilian anyway.


 * She needed to infect the CCT ahead of time, so when the virus got into the colosseum's randomizer, it would infect the randomizer early enough that she could choose the matchups from the beginning.


 * Mercury and Emerald needed access to Beacon's sparring class so they could observe the competitors and report back to Cinder with their findings of each competitor's fighting style, weapon, and Semblance. That way, Cinder could come up with a good list of who all to target and use in the tournament, so she knew which teams to match up with each other and what biomes to give them. This is how JNPR ended up facing a team that had a member who uses a cattleprod and received the stormy mountain biome - because Nora's Semblance has to do with absorbing electricity.


 * The CCT tower is on Beacon's campus. It was much easier for Cinder to infiltrate the tower if she was already on campus, and it was also much easier for her to hide in the student dance than to try to hide elsewhere. Besides, doesn't the trip between Beacon and the city involve riding in an airship? Sneaking off to the CCT tower is a lot less conspicuous if she's already on campus rather than having to take an airship to the campus.