Colonel Cinder

Cinder Alexey Vashnipov, or most commonly just referred to as Colonel Cinder, is a villain in the Fairy Rifts storyline. He was once a major adversary when Team Crystal fought him, but his power has since weakened significantly.

He currently is joined up with Bolter and Catalyst LLC.

## Personality

Cinder, despite his former empire's apparent collapse, still seems to hold on unwavering loyalty to it, despite not knowing that it fell years ago. He has also been told many times that nobody has even heard of said empire.

Still though, Cinder speaks as though he were some kind of figure preaching gospel; the gospel of his old emperor Lord Zygarde. Despite this, he has been shown to be quite sadistic and careless of how he treats others and isn't afraid to back down from violence as he's grown quite used to it.

## Backstory

### A Humble Grunt

Cinder was once like many Zygardian children, who gave into the propaganda and grew up idolizing Zygarde as almost a deity in his cult of personality. He'd eventually join the army, and worked his way up the ranks slowly, yet not really getting noticed for his efforts quite yet. It was then he'd be sent on an expedition to the Warrior's Continent that would change the trajectory of his life forever.

### The Mount Heaven Raid

Now at the rank of captain, Cinder would travel with his platoon deep in the Warrior's Continent, seeking a special treasure in Mount Heaven that would grant him more power. At first, he hired some of the local bandit clans to disrupt the actions of one strange and unique goodra in the area named Joseph Marriott. However, Joseph and his buddies ended up being too much for them to handle, so Captain Cinder had to take matters into his own hands. As it turns out, the thing that was giving Mount Heaven and the Sky Temple on top of it its unique powers would be an object called the Orb of Indemnity.

With the help of special tanks meant for climbing steep mountains, Cinder and his army scaled the mountain, burning down the Sky Temple in the process. Cinder would then face off in a long fight with Joseph to buy his soldiers time to find the Orb. It was a fight that was so long, it forced Cinder to mega evolve, but Joseph was too much for the Charizard. However though, one lone corporal named Nikolai would end up retrieving the orb, and he got the credit for finding it, leading to his promotion. This ended up hurting Cinder's pride greatly and he had to leave the mountain in a bit of anger.

### Power Struggles on the Warrior's Continent

Returning back to base soon after, Nikolai was celebrated and Cinder was in spite. For the next couple weeks, Cinder would enter a power struggle with his now co-captain Nikolai, each trying to one up each other as he held onto the orb. It even got so bad that they engaged in a fight with each other, which Cinder lost, hurting his pride even more. Cinder also started to hire more mercenaries, such as Jakob Tannehill, to hunt down Team Crystal and put a wrench in their plans.

At this point, Cinder and Nikolai now almost despised each other, yet now was the time for an attack on Rockport. The town was heavily attacked and Joseph and Team Crystal were forc ed to come to the rescue once again. Eventually Nikolai had used the Orb of Indemnity, which was a little suspicious since Cinder thought Zygarde wanted the orb for his conquests. However, Nikolai ended up betraying Cinder fully, and it was revealed his plan all along was to use the Orb of Indemnity himself for higher power! Thus, he absorbed the orb and turned into a higher being which forced Cinder to truce with Joseph to fight him together. They were successful in doing so, and so Cinder decided to back off from Joseph temporarily as sort of a sign of respect. The Orb was returned to Mount Heaven.

### Newfound Glory

Since the battle with Joseph and Nikolai was so rough, Cinder was forced to return back to his homeland to rest up for a bit. The resting up ended up turning into him gaining new cybernetic modifications, partially inspired by Jakob, that allowed him to do things no normal Charizard would do. He would also be promoted to the rank of Colonel personally by Zygarde himself, essentially making him Zygarde's right hand man at least in his eyes. Despite this, Cinder held much more power than a regular Colonel.

Cinder would also be responsible for commanding the troops in the invasion of the Gallant Continent, although he was not directly involved.

### The Edge of Insanity

Months later, after Team Crystal returned from the Gallant Continent, they would head on to face Zygarde directly in the Dark Continent, or in other words, Cinder's homeland. Cinder could do little to stop them when they arrived since they'd been working with the Resistance, a "terrorist" organization that would seek to upend Zygarde's rule from the inside out. In his new body, when Team Crystal reached the Imperial Palace, Cinder would face off against all of them in a long battle just before they could reach Zygarde, but to no avail. The group had to face Zygarde head on. When Cinder ran back to Zygarde after being defeated by mostly Salsa's stand, the emperor had enough of him. Zygarde then and there stripped Cinder of his rank and banished him from the empire because he felt he was of no use to him, and this practically drove him to madness. Zygarde would then throw Cinder into a nearby trash compactor where he ended up as a drifter for a long while in that pile of scrap, sometimes having some consciousness, and sometimes not.

### Awoken in a New World

4 years after Cinder was thrown into the trash compactor, he'd end up waking in the Scrapyard nearby to Diamond Town. He rose out of the scrap, and breathed fire into the air before being noticed by Scrapnik. Cinder tried to preach his gospel to Scrapnik, but the robot didn't seem to be bothered by it. Running out of energy almost entirely, Cinder fell back into the scrap for another year.

1 year later, Cinder woke once again to robots, but they were of a different variety. Actually, he woke up to robots and soldiers. These soldiers belonged to the personal army of Bolter's company, Catalyst LLC. Cinder would slash one of the plasma rifles of a soldier before being fired upon by an eradicator robot, which he promptly just shrugged off and walked around. Thinking he'd found Zygardians, Cinder would find a group of soldiers that he thought came to rescue him, but something was off about them. Their uniforms weren't the iconic Zygarde bright green, and they all didn't seem to be pokemon. Instead, they spouted what he believed was some unintimidating nonsense about their "boss", who would later be revealed to be Bolter. The soldiers even weren't that intimidated when Cinder tried to show off some his skills! Cinder basically had more questions than answers at this point, and he asked to go to talk with the Boss for answers.

Cinder walked into Bolter's headquarters, seeing all the violence and being fairly neutral on things. They were certainly a more rowdy bunch yes. Eventually, he'd find himself in Bolter's office where Cinder asked him where they were. Bolter said they were nearby Diamond Town on the Fairy Continent, one of the few places Zygarde's Empire had yet to reach. Bolter would talk about his violent achievements and this seemed to impress Cinder so much that he decided to show some respect for him. So much so that he agreed with a deal to work with Bolter: So long as Cinder would agree to reset back to the rank of a lowly soldier, Catalyst LLC would work on finding on wherever Zygarde had gone.

## Abilities

Basically all of Cinder's special abilities have some way to do with his cybernetic enhancements.

### Periscope

Covering his right eye is a periscope, that acts as sort of a magnifying glass to closely analyze a situation and/or a new creature. Cinder used this when he tried to inspect Bolter since he seemed to be an alien to him.

### Portable Antennae

His right horn seemed to be converted into an antennae that's capable of picking up radio signals. It can also cause some signal interference if he so pleases.

### Shock Claw

Cinder's left claw has very special wiring that allows him to shock anyone he slashes. This shock is also capable of jumpstarting generators and sending electrical transmissions.

### Minigun

Inside Cinder's chest houses a portable minigun that he's able to fire at unsuspecting individuals. He used this when an eradicator came and rescued him and he decided to fire at it when he was "rescued."

## Trivia

* A couple years ago originally, he was meant to heave a change of heart during Team Crystal's attack on Zygarde's palace. He was supposed to actually date Jakob and they'd live together after Zygarde's would-be defeat.
* His character is based off of Rudol Von Stroheim from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
* He seems to not like Galarian Slowking.
* Despite his very hard and sadistic exterior, if one tries really hard to best him in a fight, he will show some degree of honor and respect for the opponent.