Chapter Text
As the sun sets and the moon becomes the source of natural light, Vale wakes up.
Commonly known as “The Neon District” due to its colourful lights and even more colourful people, Vale was a place for every human or Faunus, no matter the gender, sexuality or species.
Vale had anything a person would want.
Wanted a quick round of sex? Take a local escort for a ride.
Need to satisfy your inner psychopath? Take that same escort to an alley and make their blood be the colour of your dreams.
Need a quick shot of your favourite drug? Find a man in white.
Want to drown your worries in alcohol? Vale has you covered with 13 bars in a mile radius.
Truly, a heaven for the worst that Remnant can offer. And it showed.
The streets of Vale were hardly, if ever, without movement at night. Even now, at 11pm/23:00, the streets were alive.
A drunkard ready to be robbed walked, or rather, stumbled in one direction, while two escorts walked with their next paycheck to a nearby motel, all the while on the other side of that street, a man bled out due to the pair of Faunus that had seconds ago buried their blades into him.
But our story isn't about any of them, no-no.
Our story starts on the rooftop of a brothel, more specifically, The Neonwick Brothel.
On that roof, a small handle is taken from the inner pockets of a red-black jacket to the left hand of the assailant, and as a trigger in the place where you normally would rest your index finger is pressed, a blade unfolds on the top of the handle.
This action is followed by a whispered hex, which turns the tattoo in the back of the right hand blindingly white momentarily before it turns back into the black colour it was before.
The assailant stretches their neck and takes the mask on their hip to their hands. Quickly inspecting the nightmarish mask, the assailant finds no faults in it, making a small mental note to thank the mechanic back at ‘home’ as they lift the mask to their face and wait for the mask to tighten itself accordingly.
As soon as the leathery insides of the mask stop tightening around their face, the now assailant-turned-assassin begins their plan.
Crouching on the side of the brothels skylight, the assassin activates the zooming function on the lens of the right eye. Focusing this zoom on the lock of the skylight, the assassin begins to pick locking it open.
After almost no time at all, the lock opens and the skylight is opened, letting the assassin in. The skylight is shut as the assassin carefully falls on top of a wooden beam, making as much noise as a breath. They silently thank the bone charm on their chest for that.
As they crouch to get a better balance, the assassin's target comes into view.
Loudly slamming the door open, Roman Torchwick walks into the hallway, his bodyguard, a small woman named Neopolitan, following him.
“Is this what I get as repayment for giving him what he paid for? A dead fucking animal?! All I asked for is that he wouldn't get the bitch pregnant or give her a disease, I didn't think he would fucking kill her! Some people…” Roman angrily yells at his bodyguard.
‘I’m guessing he gets the usual treatment?’ Neo signs to Roman, showing a slight grin on her face.
“No, take him to the basement and cut him into pieces. He's more worth to us that way. For the animal, dump it into the river, it’s too pricey to pay Salem's guards to take care of it”, Roman answers without even turning around to see Neo’s signs.
The grin on Neo’s face grows into a full-blown smile and a pretty sinister one at that.
Roman opens a set of doors to a hall, Neo closing them behind them. The assassin wastes no time dropping to the floor and while keeping their crouched position, they silently sneak to the doors Roman went through and peek through the keyhole. Using the zoom function again, they see Roman stopping in front of some double doors.
“You can go now. Bring me the reports of possible buyers for the man by five”, Roman dismisses Neo with a quick hug and an even quicker kiss on her forehead. As soon as the hug ends, Neo turns back to the set of doors she and Roman went through seconds ago.
Roman pushes the double doors open, but before he goes in, he turns back to face Neo’s back.
“Have fun!” He says with a sickening smile.
Neo responds by turning around and blowing a kiss towards him while walking towards the door.
As Neo makes her way to the door, the assassin quickly rises from the crouched position and looks up for the spot where they were before. Spotting it rather quickly, he focuses on it with their eyes and teleports to it using the hex they readied on the roof, also known as Blink.
Neo reappeared as she threw the set of doors open, a part love-smitten, yet part deeply disturbing smile resting on her face. She started strolling happily towards the door that she and Roman had first appeared from, completely unaware of the assassin above her.
As soon as Neo passed below the beam where the assassin was hiding, they made their move.
The assassin made a small jump as they descended straight on top of Neo. Gripping her hair with their free hand (the hand that didn't currently have the sword in it) and planting their legs firmly on her back, the assassin pushed her onto her stomach so that she couldn't see the mask or the attire. And besides, making a person fall onto their stomach makes a lot less noise, yes?
Neo took pride in her ability to ‘sense’ unseen forces with her superior hearing and knowledge of common ways that assassins and such took to assure their kills, but even by knowing all of these, she was still taken by complete surprise by the attack.
In almost an instant, she could feel something sharp pointing downwards between her collarbone and left shoulder.
It didn't take a Grimm-hunter to realize that it was the tip of a sword.
The assassin momentarily lets go of Neo’s hair with their right hand to press a button on their mask before returning that hand into gripping Neo’s hair and pushing it down.
A small, but constant buzz can be heard from somewhere from the mask as the pieced together message plays itself.
“PaSSwOrD….doOr?”
Beneath them, Neo tensed up on the terrifying voice.
Seconds ticked by as Neo was paralyzed in fear and couldn't even move her hands, even though they didn't have any restrictions on them.
After ten seconds or so had passed, Neo could feel more pressure added to both the sword and the hand gripping her and pushing her face and head onto the floor.
“PaSSwOrD….doOr?” The message repeated itself creating the same amount of fear into Neo as it did the first time.
In all honesty, the message or the assassin didn't create all this fear by themselves, it was the fact that if she gave the password to the assassin, she would lose the only brightness in her life (that happening only if the assassin wouldn't kill her even if she gave it), but on the other hand, if she didn’t give it, she would die and the assassin would brute-force themselves in.
A lose-lose situation.
She was brought back from her thoughts by even more pressure added to the sword, it finally breaking the skin and letting a dribble of blood out.
“PaSSwOrD….doOr?....oR...DEatH..?”
She didn't have a lot of time on her hands.
Shit.
Under all of the pressure (both mentally and physically), Neo made a choice.
She slowly lifted her left hand, made it a fist and slammed it to the floor with mediocre force, taking the assassin with mild surprise, as they quickly checked the two doors around them.
The fist rested on the floor for a second, before rising back up and repeating the action. After these two, however, Neo slammed it down again, but let it rest there for a couple of seconds. This action got the assassin to realize what was going on.
The girl was speaking in morse. And so, all of the assassin's attention was brought to the fist.
One quick hit, One dot, meaning ‘E’
One quick hit, one long hit followed by a quick hit. ‘R’.
Two long hits, one quick one. ‘G’.
Three long hits. ‘O’.
Neo relaxed the fist by placing it back onto the floor, palm down.
Ergo.
The password was Ergo.
The assassin smiled under the metallic mask in satisfaction and leaned as closely into Neo’s ear as they could before the mask touched her.
“tHAnk...YoU….” came to a short message.
As the hand in her hair and the sword disappeared behind her, she stayed down, disappointed at how she had broken at the assassin hands so quickly.
She only barely noticed the assassin standing up and moving their legs so that Neo’s body was between them.
Neither of them moved for seconds, both of them thinking about their next move. Neo had no intention of moving, completely encased in the shame of what she had just done.
As quickly as they first dropped on top of Neo, the assassin was back on top of her, causing Neo to be surprised once again. This surprise feeling was however chanced quickly to terror, as she felt the right arms of the assassin to snake its way around her throat, essentially creating a lock around her throat.
In pure terror, Neo finally realized what was going to happen, as the assassin started to pull her upwards with the throat lock while tightening the lock at the same time.
She was going to get strangled!
Neo could do nothing as the weight above her legs kept everything under the waist secured to the ground, leaving only her torso to bend essentially to the wrong direction.
Gripping on the assassin's arm with both of her hands, she tried to pull it away, but she was no match against it.
Seeing black spots in her vision, she knew what was coming next.
Whether it was the thought of Roman’s death or the sudden knowledge that she was taken by surprise AND bested by a mere assassin, someone who she had trained her entire childhood to fight against, Neo’s last thoughts were full of revenge and torture as she passed out due to asphyxiation.
As Neo went limp, the assassin quickly let go of her neck, not wanting any ‘civilian’ casualties, their objective was Roman Torchwick and only Roman Torchwick.
Throwing Neo over their shoulder, they used Blink to get to another beam resting around 4 meters/13 feet above the floor. Placing Neo on the beam stomach down and so that one of her arms and legs were tangling on one side, while the other leg and arm were on the other side.
Dropping back down, the assassin could finally return to the main task at hand. Speed walking to Roman’s office's double doors (not bothering to close the set of doors to the hallway behind them), they once again readied their blade and knocked once at the doors.
Nothing could be heard. Not a single bit of movement or anything else. So they resorted on using the password.
E….R….G….O….
As soon as they were finished with the ‘O’, a chair could be heard pushed backwards.
“Neo? I knew you were efficient, but still! This is rather quick for you… did you even enjoy it at all?” Roman asked through the door as footsteps could be heard coming towards the double doors.
The assassin quickly took their battle stance.
Sword besides their body to the right, pointing towards the door. Their right leg positioned in line with their body so that they could run with the smallest effort possible and the left leg behind the body, ready for a kick if the target needed to be disarmed.
“I told you, you can take your time with him, killing one of the animals in other cases would be fantastic, but not in thi-”, Roman started as he opened the doors inwards, but stopped as he was thrown backwards by the assassin's body slamming into his ribcage with such force, that he didn't even notice the 60cm/24 inch blade being thrust into his heart.
The brothel fell into chaos not soon after due to some random escort finding Neo’s unconscious body on the beam and proceeding to scream using all of her might.
Luckily for the assassin, they were already on the roof when the body was discovered and made a mad sprint to the river not far from the brothel.
As they arrived at the riverside, they immediately recognized a familiar boat just barely visible along the shore. Using Blink once again, they teleported on the back of the boat, just beside the motor to scare or at least getting a surprise from the boat's captain.
However, this wasn't the captains first rodeo, as instead of seeing the back of the captain, the assassin found themselves to be stared at by the captain.
“Good evening”, Velvet Scarlatina, the official boatman (boatwoman?) of the crew greeted them politely.
Turning the ‘speak’ function off, the assassin generated a small smile behind the mask.
“Evening”, came a small yet strong female voice behind the mask.
“I’m guessing you had a pleasant night?” Velvet inquired as she grabbed the handle of the motor beside the assassin and started the turning on process.
“Indeed”, came a reply from behind the mask as the assassin started unwrapping their waistband that was keeping the sword and some other equipment together.
“Well then”, Velvet spoke as the motor roared to life, “Shall we return to the Black Dragon then?”
The assassin grabbed their mask and took it off their face, revealing the silver-eyed woman behind it.
Placing the mask on her lap, she swiftly pulled a small ribbon from behind her head which was keeping her usually messy hair somewhat restrained and not all over the place, but as soon as the ribbon was pulled, her black-red hair became the usual untamed mess that it was around her head.
“We shall”, Ruby Rose, a 27-year-old royal protector turned falsely accused murderer responded, wearing the sweetest smile know to man on her face as the boat started moving towards their haven.