Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was just Neopolitan on this one. 

It was a simple little job. Get into the academy, steal the lamp off of whoever had it, get out and back to Cinder without dying. No fuss, no subterfuge, and unfortunately--for her--no killing Ruby Rose yet. 

*I’ll get Red later.*  She had her deal with Cinder, and Ruby would be hers soon enough. 

Her soldier disguise shimmered as she slipped through the window and into Atlas Academy, brushing straight past any patrolling guards or cameras into the little back halls and supply closets. She knew the lamp was on Oscar, so all she would have to do was literally walk out. 

She smirked. There was no way they would actually be able to stop her. And even them trying to stop her would be dependent on them actually finding her. 

Footsteps at the end of the hall got her attention, but they were far too fast to be a soldier’s. Neo’s Semblance changed to hide her in plain sight against the wall as Oscar sprinted past, glancing over his shoulder as the smell of burning wires and a small explosion in the distance carried over. He didn’t notice her illusion as he ran down the hall, but she noticed the lamp dangling from his belt. 

*Well, that was nice timing.* Neo’s Semblance changed again, this time mimicking Yang. She quietly followed after, barely making any noise as she lightly bounced off the carpet with each step. Oscar slid to a stop in front of her, panting from exhaustion, but glanced up when he saw the friendly face approaching. 

“Yang! Thank the Brothers you’re here. The robots attacked me and I, I tried to break them, and it’s just scary around here. Have you seen the others?”

Neo--Yang--shook her head, raising her finger to her lips as she put on the most concerned fake expression she could.

“Quiet, got it. Don’t want to let them know we’re here.” Oscar paused for a second. “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be all the way over in the command building--” 

An umbrella to the side of the head cut him off, sending Oscar to the floor as Neo dropped her disguise to pick up the lamp. Oscar weakly reached out for it, but Neo just batted his hand away as she smirked and reactivated her Semblance, leaving one former farmhand lying on the floor while another strolled away down the hall. 

She got about 45 seconds before she got spotted. She stepped around a corner glancing around, and happened to look away right as the JNR trio stepped into the other end of the same hall. 

“Oscar!” 

Neo-as-Oscar jumped a bit and turned, smiling at Nora as she sprinted straight at her. *Perfect.* The redhead sprinted in to hug who she thought was her friend, complete with the lamp and all, and Neo didn’t move or do anything that didn’t look friendly. No sense blowing her cover now. 

“NO!”

*Well, shit.* 

She’d barely reacted to the guttural scream before the real Oscar--the one she could have sworn she just knocked out--literally skidded around the corner and clocked her in the face. 

To the other three people in the hallway, it looked like one angry Oscar had punched another angry Oscar. Their surprise lasted for about a quarter of a second before the illusion fell away from the impact, though, and a pink and brown shape flew back through the air. 

Oscar didn’t have much in the way of technique, but he definitely had the strength, and the lamp was knocked clean off Neo’s hip as she landed in a flip. She saw it roll over to the others as the three hunters with actual experience surrounded him, weapons already out. 

“This crazy girl showed up and attacked me! But she looked like somebody else?”

“Neopolitan!”

*I didn’t ever tell them that, did I?*   

“You know her?” “We haven’t exactly heard good things.”

Jaune’s voice was full of hollow spite, but Neo *had* just attacked one of his friends and stolen a valuable artifact, so it was a fair response to have. She drew Hush, the blade already extended and pointed at the four, eyeing up the lamp. It was an old-fashioned standoff in the hall, and both sides thought it was horribly imbalanced. 

“Give. Up. We have you outnumbered.” 

Neo didn’t reply to Jaune’s, in her view, empty threat. She just dropped Hush into a dueling position and put her finger on the opening button. 

“Alright then.” Nora shrugged and fired off an opening salvo from Magnhild, but the grenades just bounced off Hush’s canopy as Neo swung it up and around. She heard the other two start sprinting behind her, and kept the parasol open as she turned, StormFlower’s rounds pinging off of it as she bounced off the wall and flipped through the air. She closed Hush at just the right time to slam it in a heavy blow into the blocking Ren. The momentum held her still for just a second before Ren pushed, and Neo flipped back through the air, landing right back where she started. A magazine of Dust and two high yield grenades later, and the only difference was the hall was now slightly more covered in particulate and residue. 

Neo hadn’t even had time to properly balance herself before Nora charged at her, screaming with her typical battle rage. The hammer went straight at her skull, and she ducked down, not even trying to stop the hulking mass of metal. Nora didn’t see Neo after she swung Magnhild, but she felt Hush opening and shoving her upwards, knocking her over the short little psychopath. Neo shot a wink over her shoulder as Nora hit the floor, and then it was a three on one as the hammer clattered to the floor. 

The sound of StormFlower’s grapples firing snapped Neo’s attention back around, and she parried the cable-guided knives to either side of her with ease. The blades slammed into the pillars at the end of the hall, and Ren yanked himself up, dropkick aimed straight at Neo’s face. A face that was struck with fake shock before Neo dropped down in a split, Hush’s handle pulling the cable to the side enough to send him flying. Ren barely pulled the cables back into his guns before his spine made contact with the metal door, weapons dropping out of his hands as he rolled to the ground by Nora. Two down, one hunter and one literal child to go.

Speaking of the child, he was currently sprinting down the hall with his weapon out with an absolute lack of technique. Again. And he was absurdly open. *Holy shit, this kid needs lessons.*  

Oscar’s sprint was pulled to a stop as Neo slipped half her body underneath his arm, and his face shifted from surprise to fear as she did a triple backflip with him still attached. The lamp slipped of his waist as he went flying through the air, and hung for a second before the both of them lunged for it with their weapons. The Long Memory having actual width beyond that of a stripped pipe cleaner got the grip first, and Oscar landed, blocking a double jab from Neo as he slid backwards. Neo smiled and raised her arm, about to swing Hush down and break his guard for good. 

 And then Jaune decided to jump in between the two. 

The Gravity Dust on the shield sent Neo flying back for the third time in a single fight, and she slowed her landing just a bit with Hush before she clicked it shut. Oscar slid the lamp back onto his belt, and Jaune was shooting her a death glare. It was an impressively intense one, and she almost didn’t notice when Nora swung the hammer. She was actually surprised the redhead was up and standing again, and the fact that she had just flung Ren upwards was even more of a surprise for her. She raised Hush, blade out, ready to finish off the comically open hunter--  

*What in the hell just grabbed me?* 

Neo froze, looking down to see Oscar’s arms wrapped around her ankles. The ultimate move that didn’t need technique: literally being dead weight. The look of disgust on his face almost matched Jaune’s in intensity, and she certainly wasn’t dodging anywhere with him wrapped around her. Not an issue, though. She could just use her Semblance, shatter as Ren hit her, and she’d be gone. All she needed to do was focus a bit, and all Ren would be hitting was bits of nothing. Neo smiled at Oscar, a smug and toothy smile, spitting the fact she knew she was about to win in his face. 

He could tell what that meant.

“I don’t think so!” 

Oscar tugged. Just a bit, not enough to break a leg or anything, but enough to knock Neo off balance. She started falling backwards, waving her arms around as she tried to break her fall, but she couldn’t stabilize with half her body being held in place. She looked up from Oscar, trying to see if there was anything to grab onto with Hush’s handle, and then remembered the thing she was initially trying to avoid. 

The last thing Neopolitan saw or felt in the hallway was Ren’s angry face and StormFlower slamming into her skull.

Chapter Text

Neopolitan woke up in a closet. 

The first thing she noticed was that Nora, Jaune, and Oscar were all angrily staring at her. 

The second thing she noticed was that she was tied up. 

She tried to test whatever was holding her, but Jaune shoved her into the wall with his boot wordlessly. She locked eyes with him, angered glare meeting angered glare, but this time the numbers matched the power imbalance. Neo glanced from Jaune to Nora, stared into the exact same furiosity, and then to Oscar. It was a bit more hollow coming from him, much more of “You just punched me” than “I hate you so much”, but he was still clearly willing to hit her if he had to. 

The closet door slid open a quarter of the way, and Ren stuck his grayscaled head in the door. Neo cocked her head at the sight, but nobody noticed. 

“Maria called. She’s got a Manta, and she’s going to be outside in a few minutes. We need to hurry.” 

Jaune nodded and glanced at Nora, who then looked at Oscar. He nodded too, before removing the Long Memory from his back and staring at it for a moment. 

“There’s something I need to do. Alone. Jaune, you get the lamp back to the others. I’ll be back soon.”

“Oscar, we’re being hunted! Now’s not the time for side missions!”

“Jaune, just trust me. We’ve got the lamp, and whatever happens, I’ll make it back. Just get to Maria and worry about what we’re going to do from there.”

“Speaking of where we go from here…” Nora pointed at Neo, who was trying to slide herself up the wall to a standing position. Jaune sighed and poked her with Crocea, and she slid back down to the floor, glaring at him. 

“We could just leave her here.” The sound of stomping feet outside the closet made Ren slip entirely inside, shutting the door behind him as they waited out the soldiers. “Case in point. The soldiers find her, she gets arrested, and we never need to worry about her again.”  

Jaune was about to say something, but cut himself off as the steps faded into the quiet. He pushed the door open, ensuring the hall was clear before turning back to the hiding hunters. 

“Are you looking at her right now? If we leave her alone, she’s going to get out, and we’re going to be dealing with her doing the same thing in a week.” “Closer to a day with our luck.” “I’d bet on that, Ren.”

“Why not just knock her out again?” Nora slung Magnhild from off her back, readying it in hammer form as Neo’s eyes went wide from panic, and she began shaking her head as Nora smiled a bit. “The soldiers find her, they arrest her, and she doesn’t wake up until she’s in prison!” 

*She’s far too enthusiastic about giving me brain damage.*  

“No, that’s not going to work either.” Jaune shut the door again and thought for a second. “If they haven’t found us yet, they’re not going to find her until she’s out. Besides, Ren, you really can’t leave her here like this.” 

Ren glanced down to the notably empty holsters at his waist, and Neo suddenly got why she hadn’t been able to just break out of whatever was tying her yet. 

“Do you want me to pity her?” “No, dude, I mean your guns. Look, leaving her here means Ren’s unarmed, she probably doesn’t get caught if they haven’t found us yet, and we can’t keep track of her after we leave.”

“Can we just--” “We’re not killing her, Nora. If they just find a corpse lying around in here, and know that we WERE here at some point, regardless of whose corpse it is, we really will be wanted. For an actual reason.” Jaune paused and looked at Oscar. “We need to take her with us.” 

Nora and Ren grimaced in sync, but Neo just let out a small sigh and slumped. And this one was supposed to have been simple. 

*Maybe if I try and make a noise, alert some of the guards, I can snap the cables, run off with the lamp, or I can try and stop the elevators. I don’t know what that cane does, but if I get it, I could use it to—*

“You there?” 

Neo jumped as Oscar spoke from right next to her ear, losing her balance and toppling over onto her side. She didn’t see Nora giggle, but she heard it as she blew her hair out of her face and started trying to pull herself up.

Unsuccessfully.

She spent a solid minute wiggling around on the ground helplessly before Ren yanked her upright, sending her scrambling for balance until her feet finally found purchase on the closet floor. Ren didn’t give her a death stare this time around, but he did shove her around towards the door as Jaune cleared the hall again and gestured the other two out. Oscar gave a wave before shutting the door before them, and the three hunters plus one Neo crept down the hall, Ren hiding them from alarms and sensors. It didn’t take long for them to make it to the elevator, and Jaune started a call on his scroll.

“Ruby? You there? We’ve got...somebody. Yeah, I’ll explain in a bit.” 

Chapter Text

“Are you sure she doesn’t know sign language, or did you just not give her a chance?” 

“I don’t know, Weiss! I didn’t want her attacking us and running off with the lamp!” 

“You could have at least left her hands in front of her so she could try to answer. You SHOULD have left her there or thrown her out of the window! But no, you had to bring her here, and now we have a CRIMINAL in the ship!” 

Neo huffed and rolled her eyes. The hunters hadn’t even been reunited for a minute before they’d begun arguing about where Oscar had gone and what to do with her. 

“I’m still voting for just throwing her out.” “Yang, don’t be brash. She might know something important.” “Weiss, she’s tried to kill me! She helped bring down Beacon! Hell, for all we know, she’s been working for Salem for--”

A loud clang cut Yang off, and everybody on the ship jumped. Neo had fallen over. Again. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Yang started towards her, prosthetic arm racking a round as she walked. “Get up, and stop lying on the ground like a pathetic little shit. You’re not going to get any sympathy from me, so stop--”

“Yang, wait.” “Oh come on, let me finish a sentence!” 

Weiss held her arm up in front of the pissed blonde, a confused look on her face as she stared at Neo. Everybody else in the ship saw it, too. Neo’s hands were furiously moving behind her back, trapped in a spot they wouldn’t have seen if she had been sitting. 

“Is that…? Wait, wait, slow down.” “Wait, Weiss, can you understand her?” Ruby walked over to where Neo was lying, kneeling down next to her as Weiss motioned for the thief to restart.

“Well, yes, I know sign language, but I completely missed the first part of whatever she was saying. Can you start again?”

Neo sighed and stopped for a moment, then started signing again, much slower. Weiss mimicked her motions as she processed the signs, but she only looked even more confused after the sentence was finished. 

“‘I didn’t do it for her?’ Do you mean Salem?”

Furious nods. 

“Then why did you do it?” 

She did her best to point at her head. 

“I don’t recognize that motion. Is this a regional thing?” 

*She honestly might be the stupidest one. And that’s counting the redhead.*

“No, seriously, I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.” “Weiss, wait.” 

Ruby knelt down and, before Neo could react, picked her hat off her head, spinning it around in her hands to get a look at it as Neo tried to lunge for it and just fell again. 

“Is this...wait, is this Roman’s hat?” 

*I’m going to kill you the second I get out of this.*

“Roman? As in attacked Beacon before Cinder did Roman?” Blake stuck her head around the crowd and tried to take a look at the hat. “He was running the Mountain Glenn network, thing...wait, you were there too. What, did Cinder send you to keep watch on him?” 

Neo shook her head, and Weiss started translating her motions again. 

“‘I was there because Roman needed me there. I didn’t care either way.’” 

“How the hell did you not care? People died!” A handful of sparks ran through Yang’s hair as she grabbed Neo’s throat, holding her in the air outside the moving Manta as Neo desperately kicked towards the bay of the ship. “I lost an ARM because of your little plan! Pyrrha died! Penny died! Beacon FUCKING FELL! And you have the audacity to say that you don’t care?!” 

“Yang, calm down! You’re killing her!” “And why should *I* care when she doesn’t, Ruby? Why?” “That’s exactly why!” 

A burst of fire shot out from Yang’s hair, and she threw Neo back to where she’d originally been, knocking the Manta off balance a little with how hard she impacted. Neo just gasped for air, her face losing the little bit of blue it had started getting, and curled into a ball as she looked at Ruby out of the corner of her eyes. 

Ruby opened her mouth to say something, but got cut off by the cockpit door slamming open and Maria sticking her head out. “What the hell are you all doing out there? I can’t bring us down with you trying to crash us!”  “Just bring us down, Maria. Any sign of Oscar yet?” “The sensors picked up something hitting the ground near the crater, but that’s a ways out. We should hide for the night.” 

Ruby nodded, one hand jumping up to silence Yang without looking. “Got it. Just take us down somewhere in the city, we’ll pick him up tomorrow.” 

The door slammed shut and the Manta began descending, but Ruby knelt back down in front of Neo and met her gaze. 

“This was his, wasn’t it?”

Neo nodded. Once. 

“I hope you both knew what you were getting into.” 

Neo let out a snort, but her look of quiet bitterness turned to barely concealed rage as Ruby hung the hat off of Crescent Rose on her waist and turned to get up.

*I should have just gone for you from the start.*

Chapter Text

It was freezing in Mantle that night. 

The Manta was half-sticking out of a destroyed apartment building, combat parked in the part where what used to be a dining room stuck out into the cold air. RWBY, ORNJ, Penny, Maria, and Pietro were all scattered around the ruined building, either catching some sleep after the clusterfuck of a day it had been or keeping watch out a window. It was quiet. 

*I’m getting sick of this.*

Mostly quiet. 

Another loose brick dropped off the crumbling wall as Neo fell over, again, another attempt to get out of StormFlower’s cables met with absolute failure. She grimaced as she rolled off her face again, arms close to the ground as she tried to get as much space between them and her torso. If she could just get her legs in between them…

Nope. Another failure. She’d gotten standing for a split second, and immediately slipped, landing face first on the floor. This was getting really old. She scanned around the partially opened room, looking for anything sharp. RWBY was smart enough not to leave their weapons too far away when they slept, so there was no way she’d be able to use any of those, but maybe if she found where they’d put Hush or somebody had been foolish, there’d be something. 

There. A shard of glass, probably left over from a Grimm breaking a window with the rest of the building. It would take an eternity to cut through the presumably dust-infused cables, but getting away as they all woke up was better than not getting away at all. She began shuffling over to the shard, trying to be as quiet as possible--

“And what do you think she’s going to do?” 

Yang was usually loud, but this was far louder than usual. Did she have any respect for the people that were presumably trying to sleep in here? 

“Listen? Look, something just doesn’t feel right with me about what she’s doing. You saw her scroll, she doesn’t care for Cinder.” *I’m going to kill that robot. And Red, if she keeps talking.* “If she doesn’t care for her, then why is she still here?” “Yang, that’s what I want to ask her!” 

Neo heard Yang sigh through the floor, and somebody started pacing. “Ruby, she’s not Winter. She tried to kill me. She was there at Beacon, helping Torchwick!” “That’s my point! She was there because of Torchwick. He’s gone, so she doesn’t have a personal stake in this anymore.” “We do, though. We’ve got dozens of them. Everybody that didn’t make it out of Beacon is one. And all of them are because SHE helped them attract those Grimm!” 

Whoever’d been pacing had stopped, and there was barely enough time for a breath before Yang spoke up again. “We can’t even consider beginning to trust her. She wants us dead.” “She didn’t kill Oscar and the others in the academy.” “She didn’t try and kill me until after I was unconscious! Look, I don’t care about what you think with why she’s here, the point is she’s here, she’s working for Cinder, and I think we should solve this problem now.” 

*I knew that was coming.* 

“Yang, just--please. There’s something wrong with why she’s here, and I don’t think she’s actually here for her own motives.” Ruby paused for a beat. “Roman told me, on top of the ship, that there were some bets that he couldn’t take because he knew he couldn’t win them. I think if we try and give her a way out, she might even start helping us!”

“No.” Yang’s answer sounded very final. “We’ll deal with her in the morning.” Neo heard heavy steps heading away she assumed were Yang’s, but she didn’t hear Ruby leave. No matter. If they were going to kill her in the morning, even more reason for her to get to work on these cables. She started shuffling over to the shard again, pulling her wrists as far away from the sharp glass as she could before she started sawing. It was going to take a while, but she was going to get out, get the lamp, and get away with it. 

It took twenty minutes for the glass to break. 

Neo wasn’t used to feeling disappointment at the sound of something shattering, but that might have made her feel worse right then. She officially had no way out. She tried to twist around and see how much progress she’d made before it’d broken, but that was a little hard to do even when she’d rolled over without slicing her hands open. A quick attempt to pull them apart yielded just about zero difference, and Neo didn’t even try to get up again before just hitting the ground and staring at the half-opened roof. 

She was screwed. No bones about it. They were going to kill her in the morning, so she’d have to wait to steal somebody else’s weapons or crawl her way to wherever Hush was and risk just getting killed then to try and get out. She began shuffling towards the door, hoping that they hadn’t hidden Hush far away or some idiot like Jaune had left something sharp lying around. 

She’d almost made it to the door when Ruby appeared in her way. 

If Neo had been standing, she would have fallen over from exhaustion. *I hate you so much, Red.* She glanced up at Ruby, expecting to see a scythe raised high or a gun pointed right at her face--

And instead saw her holding Roman’s hat, looking at it with an expression that was very notably not hatred. 

Neo leaped up as much as she could, repeating the same thing she’d done on the Manta, but Ruby just jumped out of the way again. She kept trying to lunge for it, each time landing just short as Ruby stepped further backwards. She kept going until she was almost at the stairs, and lunged one more time to the side, trying to predict Ruby’s sidestep, but she missed again and saw the stairs rushing up to meet her. 

*Fuck.*

Until she wasn’t moving anymore. 

*What?* 

A yank at the back of Neo’s coat sent her onto her back, staring straight up at Ruby’s almost sad face. She knelt down beside Neo, ignoring the latter’s attempts to get away, and lightly patted her on the shoulder before reaching down and...untying her. 

*What the hell is going on.* 

Ruby didn’t say anything as Neo stood, just waiting as the shorter girl shrugged out the cramps of being tied up for the last few hours and glanced around. All that surrounded them was crumbling buildings and cold air, with everybody else either on a lower floor keeping watch or asleep. Neo stuck her head out over the stairs, trying to catch a glimpse of the almost certain Yang or Blake waiting to get her if she tried to sneak off. 

“There’s nobody else here right now. They’re all going to sleep.” 

*I don’t buy that at all.* The sound of Ruby suddenly speaking surprised Neo, but her actual words didn’t. This was almost certainly a trap, trying to see if she’d run off before finishing her off while she wasn’t looking. 

Ruby sighed and looked down at the hat, the movement catching Neo’s attention both for the fact it was movement and for what she was looking at. 

“I can’t tell you why you’re here, or why you’re doing this. But I don’t think you’re here for you, because you want to.” She started spinning the hat, slowly, fidgeting with it like she wasn’t sure what to do with it. “Roman told me some things, on the ship, before that Grimm got him.” *Grimm?* “He said that he couldn’t take a bet he couldn’t win, that this was a game he couldn’t afford to lose.” *It’s just common sense.* “He did all of that out of fear for Cinder and Salem, and just hoping he could survive another day.” *Don’t talk like you knew him when all you did was kill him.*

Ruby stopped twirling the hat, but she stared at it for a few more seconds before looking up at Neo. “He wasn’t leading himself, and neither are you right now.” 

The last thing Neo expected Ruby to do was hand her Roman’s hat. But that’s exactly what she did. 

“I know you probably blame a lot of people for his death. You obviously cared about him a lot. But chasing ghosts won’t do anything.” 

*I should kill you right now.*  

“I’m not going to ask you to suddenly join up with us. I know that’s not going to happen.” 

*You should be trying to kill me right now.*  

Ruby opened her mouth to speak again, but closed it, letting out a small sigh before muttering “one moment” and turning down the stairs, barely making any noise as she went. Neo didn’t know how long she had alone up there, but she knew there weren’t many options for her to try anyway. She just waited, staring at Roman’s hat as Ruby’s words ran through her mind. 

*She killed him. She had to. She hated him from the day she first saw him and ruined that robbery, and she’s hated me since the day she saw me too. She’s probably trying to throw me off, to go blame Cinder or run off and cry all day, alone, away from her. But why would she--*

“Sorry about that.” Ruby’s voice was quieter this time, but Neo still jumped a bit. Shooting a glance over at Ruby before returning to the hat, she noticed Hush and her scroll in her hand. 

“I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t know why you’re still following Torchwick. But I know you’re still following him.” Her shoulders slumped a little. “I’ve seen enough people fall to just blindly following others. I saw it tonight.” She tightened, and held Hush out towards Neo. “And I don’t want to see it any more.” 

Every thought in Neo’s brain told her it had to be a trap. There was a bomb hidden in Hush, or somebody would jump out around the corner if she took it. But at the same time, she could tell Ruby was--somehow--being entirely honest. 

She took Hush and the scroll, slipping one into a pocket while she felt out Hush to see if the weight had changed. It hadn’t. They hadn’t done anything to it. 

What the hell was Ruby thinking? She’d just handed Neo a perfectly silent weapon back. She could easily just cut the huntress’s throat, hop out the window, and call it a night. 

But what the hell was Neo thinking that made that not an option? What *was* she there for? If Ruby had killed Roman, which she had, then how could she be doing, well, this? 

A quick glance showed Neo that Ruby still had Crescent Rose on her belt, slung behind her, and if that thing deployed it would wake everybody up. And a silent kill would be damn near impossible on somebody so fast with Neo as tired and confused as she was. Neo inhaled sharply, and without shifting her gaze from Ruby, slowly walked backwards and towards the giant opening in the wall by the remains of a window. 

Ruby didn’t budge, even as Neo peered out over the edge and raised Hush. She just let out a nod so small it might not have even happened, and spoke one last time. 

“I’m not sorry I stopped him. But I am for everything after.” 

Neo didn’t respond. She just turned, looked Ruby in the eyes for a second, then leaped through the gap and opened Hush, Roman’s hat still in hand but not on head. She landed on the street without any sign of reaction from the hunters, or anybody following her. Closing Hush back up again, she looked at Roman’s hat, Ruby’s words still stuck in her head. 

She glanced back up at the building one last time, barely catching Ruby’s cloak standing where she’d just been before it vanished from sight. Neo took a breath, slid Roman’s hat back on her head, and set off down the softly lit street. 

Why wasn’t one of them dead? 

Chapter Text

The Monstra was a fleshy kind of gothic, a disturbingly effective mixture of alive-feeling floors and walls and ominous, dark brimstone doors and decoration. The fact the sinew making up the floor was bouncing under every step somebody in the whale-like monster took the horror from terrifying to a light annoyance, though. 

The random bits of muscle and grit falling from the ceiling didn’t get less annoying, unfortunately for Neo. Hush had been out and open for every moment since Cinder had picked her back up off of Mantle’s streets and brought her back to Salem’s undeniably dramatic but definitely disgusting mothership. 

Neo knew she had a few days before Cinder went for the lamp again, and she’d already burned a solid fourteen hours of that. She wanted it, and wanted it badly. Why, exactly, Neo couldn’t tell. She certainly wasn’t going to use it for herself, as if she had anything to ask, and Salem didn’t seem to care much for using it either. At least, Cinder hadn’t told her why Salem wanted it. Cinder hadn’t told her a lot of things beyond what the next move was. Sure, it wasn't new, with how Beacon wasn't exactly the standard paying type of job, but they hadn't even known about the whole Maiden thing at the time, just that Cinder could very easily torch them. And since Neo had a consistent mild sinking feeling that the stakes were much less "one city" and much more "the whole of Remnant" on this part, she'd prefer to know what she was getting into. Then again, that half wasn't really her specialty. 

Another drop of Grimm gristle splashed off of Hush as Neo flinched a bit under the impact. It hadn’t been hard, just surprising, and Hush’s kinetic absorbers removed most of the sensation anyway. She really needed to stop falling so deep in thought, because it was going to cost her a fight if she didn’t snap out of it. It already cost her an opportunity to solve a problem, and every hour counted at this point. 

At least, that was true for one of them. Cinder ran like her life and life goals were on the line, and it was very clear to just about everybody. Neo's weren't. 

They weren’t, were they? She--well, Cinder might not take it too well, but she could just walk away right now. Take the ship, fly out, hide out in the crater or in Atlas, maybe steal some big military ship and run back off to Vale or Mistral, and act like nothing ever changed. In fact, that option was far safer, far more profitable, and probably a little bit more fun than whatever eldritch gambit Salem was playing against a bunch of children. 

A bunch of children that happened to include Ruby Rose.

Who notably had not left her to die last night. 

For some reason Neo couldn't quite parse. 

*She hates me, but she didn't kill me then. Some honor bullshit? Trying to rub it in? No, but she wasn't lying.* 

*Why didn't I kill her?  I was outnumbered, but--*

“Neo.” A snappy voice from behind got Neo’s attention, and she whirled around, flicking a bit of goop off of Hush as she turned to see Cinder. The Maiden gestured at her as she stalked past, and Neo did a little flourish with Hush before following after with her classic bounce in her step. 

“Change of plans. We’re going to be going somewhere later tonight. I’ve got something I need to...take.” 

Neo shot Cinder a quizzical look and slid in front of her, though being a solid foot shorter made her more of an annoyance than somebody actually posing a question. It worked, though, and Cinder rolled her eyes before pushing past. 

“The robot. She has the Winter Maiden powers, and I intend to take them.” 

The sound of Neo’s Semblance made Cinder turn around, immediately sigh in severe annoyance, and turn away from the five foot tall caricature of Salem standing behind her. “Yes, I’m aware of what she said. I don’t care. The robot’s causing a lot of issues for us, and I think we should take this chance while we can. They’re distracted with that horrid looking tower, and Salem’s busy cleaning up the mess you failed to make.”

*Well now I’m just offended.* Cinder opened a door and started descending the steps towards their stolen ship, and Neo jumped off the highest one and opened Hush, a skeptical look directed at Cinder the entire time she was slowly floating towards the ship. 

“Neo, just get in the ship. You lost to a farmboy and three children, and this is your chance to make it up.” Cinder popped the cockpit open, and Neo almost danced along the top of the ship before dropping in and hitting the switches to boot it up. She caught the reflection of Cinder talking to Emerald in the window, and scoffed, spooling up the engine as she saw the green-haired woman following Cinder. 

“Take us to Atlas.” 

Neo rolled her eyes and tapped out a message on the display as the other two climbed in the ship. "Red better be there."

“If she’s not, you’ll still stay there. If she is, go crazy.” The last word was almost spat out of Cinder’s mouth, and Emerald twitched a bit as she heard it. 

Another message as the ship lifted off. "So reluctant to solve your problems."

“Neo, are you going to keep stalling, or are you going to do what we need to do?” 

"I don’t need this part."

The ship flew through the sky towards Atlas, a nearly invisible speck against the dark sky, but turned as the horizon to the north lit up in a glow of distant dust. 

“They’ve got more guts than I thought.”

*Not like they’ve got the official option.*

Chapter Text

Neo saw the giant robot before the other two did. 

She knew it was a construction frame, probably one left on site as those idiotic kids had blasted this haphazard heap of a CCT skywards without actually clearing the place. And considering they’d figured out the only people on the actual site were the robot, her father, and the short blind woman exactly none of them had recognized before she’d become wanted, she figured it had to be the woman in there. She saw it scale the side of the coliseum and crash through the roof, and knew exactly where it had landed. The ship was ready to fly out at any point anyway, the engines fully spooled and ready, and all she had to do was lift off, move slow enough to not get noticed over the sound of construction grade servos, get inside the arena so she was perfectly lined up with the side of the frame--

And slam the throttle. 

She was so close to the frame’s cockpit as she crashed straight into it that she saw the woman--Maria, she was fairly sure she’d read in the notice--react almost as fast as she flew straight into the massive construct, moving faster than the controls could actually respond. But they did still respond, and in under a second, the ship’s thrusters were fighting against the strength of an industrial-grade miracle of equipment. 

Maria cursed the machine out so loudly Neo heard it through two cockpits, and slammed the controls downwards, sending the ship crashing nose-first into the floor. The thrusters weren’t strong enough to actually deal any damage, and Neo thanked whatever gods still cared for modern crash prevention technology as she slammed the reverse button and rewound the ship along the course it’d just taken, knocking the frame off balance as Neo swapped the thrusters back to normal and realigned the ship. She almost dived back in again until she caught Emerald waving at her from far off in the stands, still looking at Maria. 

*You clever little thing.* 

She waited just a few seconds longer and then screamed towards the mech at full throttle, barely noticing Maria’s reaction when Emerald dropped the hallucination as the ship slammed the frame into the wall and swerved to the side, Neo landing it cleanly as the robot slumped down and sparked. She was almost proud of that one, even though she hadn’t actually fought anybody yet. But no sense in leaving anybody alive, especially somebody that could react as fast as Maria just had.  

Neo almost skipped towards the slightly smoking wreck of the former construction frame, a smug smile wide on her face. She saw the cockpit hatch go flying off from a distance, and her smile got wider as she struck an ironically heroic pose over Maria crawling out of the crashed cockpit. 

“Neo, let’s go!” The sound of Emerald yelling and sprinting off towards the stairs was distant, and Neo just rolled her eyes as Maria coughed and hauled herself through the port. The old woman looked up at Neo looking down on her, and something clicked behind her eyes. 

“What do you still want?”

Maria’s tone caught Neo off. It was honest, not defiant. She didn’t physically react, simply cocking an eyebrow and putting on a smugly neutral expression, like she was looking at a fairly interesting rodent. 

“You know what I’m asking. She asked you the same thing. What. Do. You. Still. Want?” 

The blade came out of the tip of Hush with a quiet whistle, and Neo lowered it to point at Maria. At least, she tried. Maria swung her cane up and batted the umbrella away faster than Neo could react and swept her leg down in one fluid motion, sending Neo flying backwards before Hush could even be leveled. Neo caught herself as she slipped down the robot, cartwheeling before pushing herself off and spinning through the air, landing on the floor with a stylish twirl, shooting daggers at Maria. 

“She asked me what I thought you wanted. I thought it was vengeance.” Maria tapped her cane on the metal of the frame, matching Neo’s gaze. “But I’ve seen people that want vengeance. And you don’t fight like them.” 

Neo tensed, ready to launch herself at the huntress. Her free hand crept closer to Hush, ready to fully unsheath the blade at any moment if she had to. She’d already prepared to activate her Semblance, and she knew exactly where she’d attack from if she had to. 

“I think you fight like somebody who’s lost.” 

Her cane banged against the metal for one last time, and the two of them stood still, staring each other down. 

“Well? What are you standing there for? Are you going to prove me wrong?”

The sound of shattering glass sent Maria moving before she’d even properly processed the noise. The air next to her broke apart in sync with the image of Neo in front of her, empty air swapping places with the assassin as she swung Hush at Maria, hard. 

Neo barely felt the impact on the umbrella as Maria went flying backwards into the wall, falling to the floor as her cane flew out of her hand. She twirled Hush around her arm before slinging it back over her shoulder, leaping off the robot towards the ship, her form almost unbroken but her smile gone.

*I haven’t lost.*

*I haven’t.*

Chapter Text

It was almost a miracle Cinder was still alive at this point. 

Being hit with knives, ice blasts, lasers, and rubble was bad enough, but against a trained fighter’s aura amplified by being a Maiden, it didn’t hurt too much. But being hit with a giant chunk of Amity’s seating, combo’d into a blast from Penny’s entire Array at once, and then followed up with a giant slab of frozen metal sent flying through three separate support pillars?

Yeah, that would hurt a bit. 

Neo’s timing had been impeccable as usual, swooping in with the ship’s cockpit open to catch the falling, slightly on fire Maiden in the back before swinging around to give Emerald an opening to leap on in. Penny immediately started flying towards the ship, but a shot from Thief’s Respite that Emerald popped off as she hopped into the open cockpit sent the robot off balance just enough to have to slow down and correct her course. The adjustment left just enough time for Neo to yank the cockpit shut and take off screaming through the hole Penny had just used Cinder to punch in Amity. 

“Did her aura break? Is she okay?”

Neo just aggressively shrugged as the ship tore through Atlas’s night sky, going at full tilt back towards the Monstra. She could hear Emerald shuffling around in the back, trying to see if Cinder was injured, but she wasn’t willing to turn the autopilot on to help her. Frankly, she was annoyed with her. 

*Fucking ego tripper.*

*Could have just swooped in from behind, but you had to do the stylish thing.* 

*We’d have been out of here and back at the damn whale already if you’d just stabbed her and been done with it.* 

*It’s not that difficult to grab somebody, especially when you can fucking fly--*

“Get off! Where--take us back. Now!” 

*And now you’re awake.*

Neo responded by ripping open the ship’s turbochargers, sending Cinder and Emerald to the floor as the ship blasted away faster than anything that could fly had a hope of following at. 

“Neo! Take us back there, now! We’re not done!”

“Cinder, please. You’re hurt. It’s done, and we lost. We’re going back.”

“No! I’m going to get these powers, and--”

“We’re not supposed to be out here! Salem’s already going to know what we’ve done when we get back, and if we try and go back after you lost, what’s she going to do?”

“If I get the power of the Winter Maiden, she’ll forgive it all.” “That’s the one thing she told you not to do! She’ll literally be more mad!” “Emerald, get out of my way.”

The turbochargers wound down, that attempt at shutting Cinder up failed, and Neo heard the Maiden’s heels on the metal as she stood back up. 

“What did I say?”

Neo glanced in the glass’s reflection just long enough to see Cinder standing over Emerald, literally towering over her with one eye fully alight. 

*Why couldn’t you have just gotten a concussion?*  

The ship banked hard to the left, and the two standing girls tumbled to the floor as Neo used the momentum of the curve to lean over the pilot seat, looking directly at them as the ship slowed down into a hover close to the snow-covered ground below. 

Cinder was the first to recover, and was looking at Neo like she was about to gut her with one swing. Neo glared right back, furiously typing on her scroll with one hand while steering with the other. 

”Your moves keep costing us. Make better ones. I’m not the weak link here.”

“You couldn’t get the lamp!” Cinder’s eye flared up again, and she stomped across the handful of space the ship had to stare Neo down from a height advantage. “You got captured by a farmboy with no fighting skills, couldn’t escape from them for hours, and left them all alive! Do you need me to do all the work to get Red ready for you, or are you going to start doing what we agreed to?”

"What have you won since Beacon?”

The blackglass knife was at Neo’s throat before she’d started typing the next message, and Cinder looked like she was in a feral frenzy as the blade smoldered under Neo’s chin. Neo didn’t flinch, her face stone cold as she set the scroll down and slowly reached towards Hush propped against the seat. She knew she could use her Semblance to try and get behind Cinder, but if she did that without Cinder attacking, Emerald would almost certainly join in against her. It was a no-win, regardless of who struck first. 

The ship was silent save for the engine noise for a handful of moments before Emerald cleared her throat. “Guys, please don’t do this. We need to work together for this us all to get what we want.” The brokenness in her voice almost betrayed how much she didn’t actually believe it. 

“Plus, the tension in that image is *really* bad and it’s just getting incredibly awkward.”

Cinder shuddered and dropped the knife, furiously wiping absolutely nothing off herself and gagging. “Gods, Emerald, why would you *say* that?” “You weren’t going to listen otherwise! Summoning that one knife took half the Aura you have left. Get back here, let me clean you up. We need to make it look like they got away, not that we lost.” 

Neo snorted and held up her scroll. " She lost. We won.”

“You were fighting an old woman, it doesn’t count.” " Still won, Greenie.”

Emerald didn’t have a comeback to that, but Cinder did. 

“Don’t forget who beat you in Mistral.” She slumped back down in the seat, voice fading, eye still on Neo. “You know the deal.”

Neo scoffed and turned back to the controls, kicking the ship back into high speed flight mode as her smile widened. 

*She likes me too much.*

*She needs me too much.* 

Chapter Text

Atlas was strangely pretty at night. 

Half the city was out of power, a quarter of that was smoking, and the fields were desecrated with Grimm liquid and blast marks. But the sky was still unbroken, and the stars were shining even brighter than they had before over the darkened skyline. The Grimm had pulled back for the night, and Atlas’s defenders were taking the chance to catch a break and a few hours of sleep. The island was as quiet as it had been in the last few days, and the quietest it would ever be again, that night. 

Neopolitan thought it was the perfect time to take a walk. 

It wasn’t like she had much else to do. Hazel and Emerald were fixated on the new resident inside the Monstra, but neither of them was letting Neo have any fun. She’d heard far better screams from people far more fun than just farmhands anyway. 

Getting out of the Monstra hadn’t actually been that hard. There were enough tunnels in and out of the abomination that it was no trouble at all to sneak off without anybody noticing. Even the ones guarded were easily circumvented with a little bit of imagination. Literally, a bit of Overactive Imagination tricked the watchers into thinking nobody was there. It was a shockingly easy system to dodge, especially with as much experience in doing just that as Neopolitan had. 

She was almost disappointed in Salem as she skipped across the scarred fields, invisible to the nobody paying attention under a cloak of Aura. To think that somebody so powerful, so strong and dedicated to a goal, would have security measures worse than Vale megamalls was, in Neo’s view, absolutely unacceptable. And something to factor in when considering that Emerald hadn’t snuck off yet. 

The fields began to give way to tracks and semi-paved roads, and Neo’s Semblance rippled as it brushed past uprooted crops and battle wreckage floating in the faint breeze. A few wrecked drones and torn medic bags looked like they promised something of a good time, but it wasn’t exactly safe to be sneaking all the way back into an Atlesian high-rise now that the whale was parked in the literal backyard garden of the kingdom. Even going into the city on a jaunt like this, when everybody would be asleep and enjoying the quiet, was full of risk from patrolling guards or the emergency power giving out and anybody caught outside freezing to death. But it wasn’t the inside of a giant Grimm. 

Gravel turned to pavement, which turned to roads and sidewalks as Neo finally made it into the city proper. Hush down by her side as she strolled along, she switched off her Semblance, the illusion gently folding away with a quiet rustle and a faint pink glow. Nobody in the city knew who she was, and nobody who did would be looking for her right then, so it was the perfect time to go looking for a distraction. Neo’s eyes began scanning for unlocked doors, lonely stragglers, something showing there was somebody to mess with. She couldn’t exactly get away with it back on the Monstra, since if anybody wound up hurt, the culprit was either her or Tyrian and he had been gone for a solid day at this point. 

Streetlights and neon billboards began to flick themselves on as Neo kept walking, approaching the parts of the city where the power hadn’t gone absolutely kaput. The normally blinding white of Atlas was much softer than usual, most of the streetlights turning an almost limp shade of pale instead of their standard eye-killing white. These streets were a bit more populated than the ones Neo’d been walking on before, but zero plus one is still just one. A few civilians here and there, an off duty Atlas soldier sitting on a front step, it was all very quiet. 

Neo stopped and leaned against a building on a corner intersection, taking a look around at the handful of people willing to risk it to enjoy a quiet night. 

*I think I respect the guts. Or maybe lack of brains.*

She didn’t move from her stance, letting them all walk on by out of her view. The night was quiet, and she decided she didn’t want to spoil it with somebody’s noise. She tilted her head down, arms crossed with Hush hanging from one of them, chin on her chest like she was about to fall asleep. Neo closed her eyes for a second, standing still against the wall, and smiled as she enjoyed the first moment of quiet she’d had in months. 

A moment immediately shattered by her scroll buzzing in her coat pocket. 

*Who the hell is that?*

Neo’s eyes snapped open and her arms shifted, Hush’s handle now firmly in her grip. The notification buzz had been unfamiliar, which meant it wasn’t Cinder or Emerald. But she had it set to block unknown numbers, which meant it couldn’t be any of the others without scrolls. 

It buzzed again, still sitting in her pocket. A sweep of the street didn’t show any lens glares or shapes in windows, nobody hiding under benches or behind trash cans--not that Atlas had anything so unsightly--and an absence of people on their scrolls, texting. Neo didn’t know what she’d been hoping for, but that certainly wasn’t it. 

Leaning back against the wall, she lowered the hand holding Hush as the other reached into her pocket and carefully took out the scroll. Her eyes kept bouncing around the street, looking for any sort of twitch or change to match her movements. 

They didn’t find anything. 

Neo let out a sigh and let go of Hush to rest it against the wall as she unfurled her scroll. Whoever was texting her wasn’t actually watching her, so she’d need to actually read the text to see what it said. Maybe this could be interesting--

>Neopolitan, it’s Ruby.

>Don’t go back to the whale. 

>Please. 

The first buzz had been a system notification of her location being tracked. 

>We need to talk. 

She didn’t even see the last message as she started sprinting back towards the Monstra. 

Chapter Text

*What kind of fucking warning was that?*

It had been an hour, and Neo was sprinting right back down the exact same path she’d just taken. She was pouring every little bit of her Aura she could into her Semblance, replacing the shattered pieces of the illusion as her own running speed kept threatening to shatter it. Hush was sparking behind her, the kinetic absorbers almost toasted from the explosion she’d barely survived on the way out. The same explosion that had rendered the Monstra a smoking corpse behind her. 

Things had all gone downhill from when the little shit had texted her. The fights had started up in the fields as she’d been pushing out of the city, and the first air support runs were strafing in as she’d slipped back inside the monstrosity. She hadn’t even had time to catch her breath from the death sprint before Yang, Jaune, and Ren rounded the corner in grayscale, barely missing her as she threw up her Semblance and hid against the wall. It’d been a heartstopper when Ren had looked her dead in the eyes and stopped for a second, but all three of them had moved on without noticing anything. Neo didn’t drop her illusion until they were at least a minute gone, but once they did, she took off sprinting towards the vault-thing. 

*They’re here. Safehouse equivalent is broken. Threats on the outside and the inside.*

She’d fallen back into old habits. 

*I’m taking the most valuable thing here and running.* 

The lamp was on her waist three minutes after that, and she was on the move towards the airship bay at full sprint as the sound of alarms echoed through the Monstra. Even though the ship was gone, she thought that it was the safest spot to try and jump out from, chaining illusion breaks to get across the field as fast as possible. A notion that had ended up being proven very wrong once she’d cracked the door open and seen who was in there. 

She hadn’t been able to properly tell who was in the bay past the light show going on in the middle between Hazel, Salem, and Oscar, but she’d seen Oscar look at her and gesture towards the ledge as the sparks got brighter and a lot greener. Neo hadn’t needed to be told twice, and had leapt straight off the side of the walkway to the bay, snapping Hush open as she curled into a ball behind the canopy. She’d seen the flash of light, heard the sound like reality ripping, and felt Hush’s mechanisms strain to the point of near failure as she went soaring through the air and right back down to where she’d started. 

At which point she’d taken off sprinting back into Atlas. 

Neo didn’t stop moving until she was well past the fortifications and off the field, sprint turning to a jog which turned to an exhausted, limping walk as the illusion finally shattered for good around her. She didn’t need to check her scroll to know her Aura was close to gone if not down to one-hit levels, or that her heart was going like she’d just run a mile in six minutes. She’d barely pushed through an unlocked door into a recently abandoned apartment and locked it before collapsing onto the floor, last of her Aura finally dropping as she laid there, exhausted. 

*What kind of fucking warning was that?*

It didn’t make sense to her. Even if she’d been ready for a fight, it wouldn’t have made sense. Ruby hadn’t threatened her, or told her to hold still through the scope of a rifle. She’d told her to not go back to the Monstra. She’d even said please. 

It didn’t make sense if she had known that blast was going to go off. She would have encouraged her, or messaged her even a few seconds later and she wouldn’t have made it out in time, and gotten blown away by whatever that was. It could have been reverse psychology, but if she had the number, the robot definitely had the number, and nobody else had tried that on her. 

It didn’t make sense that she hadn’t used the location tracker before. At any point, she could have tried to head them off, track the scroll down, find Emerald and Cinder and all of them through it, or tried to lure her back in. But the robot hadn’t tried to hunt her down after Amity, and Ruby had sent the messages almost immediately after checking her location. Which meant she made the decision then and there to tell her to not go back. 

She knew that they were going to be there. Neo knew she knew. It was obvious, there was no other reason for Ruby to try and tell her unless she had been informed that they were in the whale, and wanted to make sure Neo wasn’t there. That part made sense. Neo could see how Ruby could have maybe wanted to make Yang and crew’s job easier, or wanted to make sure there was nobody else trying to steal. 

The part that didn’t make sense was why she had checked Neo’s location in the first place. 

None of it made sense. 

Neo reached up and gently removed Roman’s hat, holding it in one hand as the other lay on her stomach. She was tired. She was confused. Her weapon was broken, the lamp was unusable to her, her scroll was compromised, and she had no idea where in the city she was. 

But she wasn’t dead. 

Why wasn’t she dead? 

If Ruby hadn’t warned her, she’d be dead, one way or another. But why had she warned her? Why had she checked Neo’s location? Why hadn’t she killed her that night in Mantle? 

The feeling of an incoming tear welled up behind Neo’s eye, and she reached up with her free hand to rub it away. She was barely holding it together, and she had to keep it together. For Roman. She had to try and figure this out. 

Ruby had saved her, intentionally or not. She’d definitely intentionally saved her that night. She’d let her go. 

Why? 

Ruby hated her. That was a fact to her. She’d killed Roman, and went off gallivanting around like she hadn’t done anything at all. She hated Neo, and Neo hated her back. Neo wanted her dead for killing Roman, and she wanted Neo dead for the reason that she hated Neo. 

But she hadn’t killed her when she had the chance. She’d let Neo go. 

But she hated Neo. 

But she’d saved Neo. 

She was cradling Roman’s hat now, clutching it to her chest with tight breaths. She hated Ruby. Ruby hated her. She hated Ruby *because* Ruby hated her, and she knew Ruby hated her because she’d killed Roman. She’d taken the one thing Neo had. She’d known what she was doing, she had to, she had to hate her, she had to have known what he meant to Neo and why it would hurt and what that would do to her--

And then she’d apologized for it. 

Neo let out a gasp for air, and her arms dropped to her sides. Roman’s hat rolled off into another room, and she started up at the ceiling, croaking out breaths. She wasn’t crying, she couldn’t afford to, now, when things were so dangerous. She just had to get up and get going. She could wait for her aura and Hush to recover, and then she could head out with the lamp. 

The lamp. The one at her waist. She slowly moved to pick it up from its mount, making sure it was undamaged. Neo couldn’t feel much of it through her gloves, but it felt almost like it weighed nothing at all. She reached up with one hand and poked it, rubbed it, just to be sure--

And blue smoke came hissing out as the world ground to a halt around her. 

Neo didn’t move, just clutched the lamp to her chest and pressed herself against the door as the smoke coalesced in front of her. With what almost felt like a flourish, as if the smoke was actually capable of that, Jinn emerged from the cloud, covered in gold and floating leisurely in the air. 

“Do you have a question?” The spirit of the lamp asked. 

Neo didn’t answer, verbally or nonverbally. She just cowered further into the corner, wild eyes on Jinn. She hadn’t meant to do that. 

“Oh, it’s you, Miss Neopolitan.” Jinn leaned forward, a confused look on her face. “Why are you scared? Did you not mean to summon me?” 

She still didn’t answer, and Jinn’s eyes widened. “Ah. You didn’t. I see. I would take my leave now, but…” The genie-approximate spun backwards through the air, floating higher up as she looked down on Neo. “You do have a question. Something you are thinking about, fearful of, even.” A blue hand stretched towards Neo. “Would you like to know the answer?”

A quiet head shake. 

“Is that true, or do you simply not wish to ask?” 

Neo didn’t. 

She looked at Roman’s hat, lying on the floor, just like how she’d first found it lying on the streets of Vale. It felt like it mocked her, the red band sticking out in the frozen world. 

She looked back to Jinn, the question written all over her face. 

She never asked. 

But she needed to know. 

Chapter Text

“What the hell do you mean, watch what happens next?” 

Neo smirked as she stood on the freshly repaired Hush, the curved handle hooked over a balcony, looking down at Cinder. The maiden was about ready to crush her own scroll as she glared up at Neo. 

“Give me the lamp, Neo. Before I have to take it.” A faint flame flared out from Cinder’s eye, attempting to intimidate Neo. It didn’t take, and the assassin turned to Watts and gestured, an aggressively sarcastic smile wide on her face, like she was asking him if he was seeing this. 

He was, and he tapped Cinder on the shoulder. “You do know you don’t have the leverage on her--” “Don’t, Watts. She knows what she needs to do.” 

A message came through Cinder’s scroll. 

<Do I?

“Yes you do, you fool.” Cinder shoved the scroll back into her pocket and went back to glaring at Neo. “Either hand it over, or say what you want.” 

<I did.

“Telling me to hold tight and watch what happens next doesn’t count, and you know it.”

“If I may,” Watts piped up, “I have spent long enough around Salem and Tyrian to earn a spare doctorate in ominous vaguespeak, and ‘watch what happens next’ most certainly does not count as actually communicating information.”

“Thank you, Watts. Wait, how am I agreeing with you?” “You were just trying to kill me!” “It was an hour ago, but yes. Are we getting distracted?” “This is one of the things you need to stop falling for.” “Shut up, Watts--give me that!” 

“There it is.” Watts quietly chortled and took a long step back as Cinder lunged for the lamp again, faster than Neo could react. Her fingers barely brushed it before the lamp and Neo shattered, and Cinder felt Hush’s handle around her neck for a split second before Neo pulled her back down to the roof, slamming her into the concrete. The pain went straight through her aura, and when her vision faded back in, the point of Hush’s blade was right in her face. 

“Fine.” Cinder stood back up, looking down at Neo now that they were both on even ground. “I’ll watch whatever it is you’re about to do. What else do you want? You want me to fly you to little red?” 

Neo shook her head. She just drew a finger across her stomach slowly and flicked her thumb past her throat. 

“I thought our deal was you get to gut red, not I do it for you.”

She shrugged and fell backwards, shattering and appearing back in the same spot. 

“Do you understand what it’s like to take the fall when Salem is handing it out?” Watts didn’t sound happy. “Because there is always a fallout. If you’re not being careful, it’ll blow back on all of us. And I assume you don’t have a death wish.”

“I didn’t know you actually cared about honoring her wishes, Watts.” “I’m not a power hungry brat like you, Fall. I’m here for my payback. She is a vector for that. You can do whatever you want to those little shits, and I couldn’t care less.” 

Cinder nodded. “So you want me to wipe out the others, and leave red for you. Are we going to fly off to wherever they are, or do you need me to ask that for you?”

Neo silently chuckled and snapped her fingers, a fake cloak appearing over Cinder, hiding her face from view.

“I like it, but why do I need this? They’ll see us coming.” 

Neo smiled, held up her hand, signaling for Cinder to wait. A minute passed, and Atlas shuddered, the semi-distant sound of gravity dust activating very audible as bits of rubble faintly liften up. Watts’ eyes widened, but Cinder was spinning around in a panic, shattering the illusion. 

“What the hell did you do?” 

Her scroll buzzed. 

<I didn’t do anything. This was all them. 

<I said to watch what happens next. 

“The city’s going down. We have a few hours at most.” Watts flexed his gloves and opened a projection, scrolling through a holographic map of the city. “We need to get out, now.”

Neo shook her head, disrupting the hologram as she shoved her scroll through it to show Watts the message typed on it. “We stay here. There’s more fun to have.”

“In a crumbling city?”

“In Atlas.” Cinder was calm now, and was pointing to a certain spot on a map. “The control center. You’d have the keys to the kingdom in there.”

“And to the arsenal.” Watts smiled. “I can get in there myself. You two can chase your petty little vengeance, if that is what you’re after.”

“I may as well drop you off.” The projection went away, and Cinder flexed the Grimm arm as she threw it around Watts. “I assume there’s a second step to this?”

Neo nodded, holding up the next message typed on her scroll. “Drop him off and meet me back here. The next part will be obvious by then.”

An annoyed growl died in Cinder’s throat as she took off towards the control center, Watts pinned close to her. The light from her flames was bright enough that Neo could see it in the early morning, but once it was gone, she turned to look at the streets and waited. 

It was another fifteen seconds before the golden portals emerged below them, scattered along the street in front of random buildings and stairs to the subway network. Neo smiled, scanning the street for something to disguise Cinder with before opening her scroll.  

*It’s rude to drop in unnoticed.*

*Gods, that was hypocritical.*

Chapter Text

“I don’t see her.”

“She’s got to come through eventually.”

“Ruby, is it possible you’ve been lied to?”

“It’s better safe than sorry, isn’t it?” Ruby lowered Crescent Rose just long enough to shoot a dirty look at Weiss before bringing the scope back up to her face. “If Cinder does come in here, we need to be on the lookout for her. Nora says most of the portals almost have everybody in the area, so we need to watch the ones with the most people.”

“No, I can admit that stragglers would be really suspicious.” Weiss was using Myrtenaster as a baton, guiding people towards the portal to Vacuo as the more mobile teammates jumped between entrance portals to confirm everybody was through. “But what if you’re watching the wrong portal? He said not to fall, and I don’t want to know what would happen to people if they did.” 

“Yeah, I don’t entirely trust your...source, Ruby.” Blake’s skepticism was audible as she emerged from a portal alone, answering a confused look from Weiss with a wave. “Nobody left through there. And I really don’t know if we can trust that information. How do you know she’s not already inside?” 

“It’s been like ten minutes. Do you really think Cinder’s that patient?” “No.” “No.” “Exactly.” Ruby shifted her gaze to a different portal, trying to get a glimpse of anybody that might have been wearing a hood or hiding their face. “Cinder’s going to be here, and I’m trusting where she’s coming from.” 

Blake opened her mouth to retort, but got cut off by Penny flying up from below the walkways. “I believe you may want to know that I may have spotted a hooded figure that I suspect may be Miss Fall coming through exactly where Ruby said she would.” 

“Told you.” Ruby was gone the moment the comeback left her mouth, speeding underneath the walkways in a cloud of petals towards one of the more distant portals. Penny followed close behind, sticking out of the sight of the slowly dwindling crowd of evacuees. Blake took a leap across one of the smaller gaps and stuck her head through another portal, letting out a low whistle to get Yang’s attention back in the actual city. Weiss waved at the flying Nora, signaling towards the portal in question, and Nora nodded, swinging Magnhild around to go pick up Jaune from the last big portal. Her, Blake, and Yang all began moving through the crowd, pushing through to the portal Weiss had pointed at. 

Cinder noticed them start to move. And she noticed the three girls push straight past her, not even the faintest looks of recognition flickering on their faces as she slid straight past. She let the tiniest hint of a smile creep on her face as she slowed, ready to turn and steal the staff right off of Weiss--

“Nice try.” 

A ring of Dust-powered fire erupted around Cinder as Gambol Shroud’s blade brushed against the back of her hood, pushing away the civilians on the path as team RWBY lined up with weapons ready. Penny was floating above the path, eyes already aflame and staring straight at Cinder as the people left on the path sprinted off in the direction of the portal. 

“Did you really think that would actually work?” Weiss’s tone sounded almost offended, clearly intended to get a rise out of her. 

“It was worth a shot.” Cinder was still, the only figure apart from RWBY standing on the walkway now. “But I’m still here, and I’m still going to take what’s mine.” 

“Alone and outnumbered? I’d be real damn impressed if you pulled that off.” Yang racked a round in her arm to punctuate the sentence, leveling it at Cinder.

“You really think I’m alone right now?”

Ruby’s smirk was audible, even though Cinder couldn’t see it. “Yeah, I do.” 

A round ripped from Crescent Rose’s barrel, but it passed through empty air as Cinder threw herself to the side, incinerating the cloak as she started flying. Penny was on her in seconds, throwing ethereal versions of the Array wildly to try and catch her off guard. One clipped her Grimm arm, and she went spiraling down, one of the walkways racing up towards her. She steadied herself, flailing her arms around to catch her balance, but Cinder didn’t even have a second to breathe before she felt a fist impact her back. A metal one. And then felt another, slightly more explosive impact.

The blast from Ember Celica sent her flying forwards, and not in the sense Cinder wanted, her Grimm hand stretching out and digging into the walkway hard as she spun around to face the huntresses. Yang swung her mechanical arm around in a circle and jolted it, the mechanical muscles flexing themselves as they recovered from the almost dangerously powerful round she had just slammed into Cinder’s just flickering aura. The false Maiden quickly looked around, a fireball growing in her real hand, and the sight of the slightest of shimmers behind Weiss made her smile a bit before throwing the fireball far to the left, reading Penny’s movements and knocking her off balance. Cinder darted off the walkway at top speed, almost singing her own cape from how big the flames at her boots were.

“Penny, go! She wants you!” Ruby tried to leap off towards the clashing Maidens, but Yang grabbed the end of her cloak and yanked her back in. Weiss pushed the two aside and knelt down, one arm twisted as a level for Myrtenaster as she aimed down the blade. If she got a good gravity dust shot off, Cinder would go falling straight down, and her powers would hopefully go to Ruby or Emerald or somebody that was always on her mind--

“Ruby, stop trying to look for my pockets. This isn’t the time.”

“Weiss, I’m not doing anything?” 

A faint weight lifted off of Weiss’s waist, and she spun around, the level arm spinning Myrtenaster’s chamber to the lightning rounds as everybody turned to face what she was looking at.

“Oh, you little shit.” 

Neopolitan just shot a smug smile at Weiss, twirling the staff around in her hand like a toy as she tipped her hat at the group. 

“Neopolitan, just give us the staff back. We can talk this through in Vacuo, but please, don’t do anything stupid--” 

A fireball impacting the bottom of the walkway cut Ruby off, and Cinder flew up in view of the others, uppercutting Penny to send her tumbling towards the Vacuo portal. Her eyes locked with Neo, and she dived down, Grimm arm open to pick her up as Ruby and Blake raced forwards to intercept her. Neo was standing there with her arms open, lamp on her hip and staff in her hand, ready to grab Cinder’s arm and fly on out. 

Ruby shoved Crescent Rose in lance mode out as Blake threw Gambol Shroud forward with full force, both blades flying towards the point of contact between Cinder and Neo as the Maiden reached out, the assassin raising Hush to block the incoming weapons. 

*I’m gonna get away with it.*

Cinder smiled as the two weapons stopped on Hush, her own expression matching Neo’s toothy grin as the Grimm arm met Neo’s coat. 

And then felt nothing but air.

Her smile vanished as the small girl shattered, the illusion breaking in an instant as the floor raced up towards Cinder again. She hit, hard, and tumbled towards the edge as flames flared everywhere. There weren't even curses coming out of her mouth, just grunts and growls as she looked around with hatred in her eyes. 

Ruby’s expression changed from concern to confusion as she watched, Crescent Rose folding back to scythe mode as the four of them spun around, looking for any shade of pink or brown, since looking for something gold in there was absolutely redundant. 

The sound of clashing metal dragged their attention to one of the furthest portals out, the blade of Crocea Mors glinting in the reflection of the walkways and portals as Jaune swung at Neo. She parried with the blade just through the tip of Hush, backstepping with every swing as he pushed her closer to the portal. Ruby glanced over to Cinder’s crouching form, and the Maiden snarled at her before blasting off through a portal, back to Atlas. She shifted her gaze over to Penny, who nodded, a stern expression on her face, and flew through the Vacuo portal. 

“After her! Go!” Ruby folded Crescent Rose and took off sprinting towards the clash, the rest of the team following behind after a beat of processing time. Jaune heard the yell and lunged forward, Crocea Mors aimed at where the lamp dangled off Neo’s hip. 

Neo saw that one coming, and she dropped to a split, retracting the blade right back into Hush before striking Jaune clean in the stomach with the tip and sending him skidding back. She popped herself back upright before he even stopped moving, tossing the staff into the air and catching it with a flourish as Jaune picked himself back up. He grimaced and twirled Crocea Mors, matching her flourish. 

Neo’s smile widened like she was laughing, and she gave a sarcastic salute to Jaune as she backflipped through the portal faster than he could react. 

“Oh, I really don’t like her.” 

They didn’t even take the time to be exhausted with her before they all followed her through.

Chapter Text

Atlas was coming down on top of Mantle, and team RWBY was right in the middle of it. 

Ruby had been the first through the portal by a fraction of a second, and in that time she’d taken off like a bat out of hell looking for Neo. The others couldn’t keep up with her, but Yang was doing her best, blasting round after round out of Ember Celica to try and match Petal Burst’s pace. The rest of the team was dashing between buildings as fast as they could, checking houses and apartments for any sign of Neo hiding out in one of them. 

“I told her not to trust her!” Weiss slammed herself into a locked door to try and force it open, with no luck. “I told Ruby not to trust that little shit, and here we are!”

“I mean, she was right,” Jaune yelled back as he slammed a Grimm cellar shut. “Cinder did come through where she said, and we wouldn’t have stopped her from doing that anyway.” 

“Actually, we very much would have.” Blake’s voice came from three places at once as two shadow clones sped inside a run-down shop, although their voices were a lot wispier than her normal voice. “If none of us had hesitated, she’d be unconscious and we’d have the lamp AND the staff by now.” The actual Blake hopped through a window, shaking her head at another empty apartment. “I really don’t think she’s hiding around here.” 

“You haven’t seen her fight. We only got her in the academy because Oscar got lucky and knocked her off balance.” Jaune bristled a bit and straightened up.  “And no, you’re right. She’s not hiding at all.” 

“She probably stashed a bike or something around here to run off with. She knows how fast Ruby and Cinder are, she needs the speed.” “She had to have come through an Atlas portal with Cinder, Weiss. There’s no way she made it back down to Mantle, found a working bike, hid it in this exact spot, and then made her way back up.” 

A buzz on her scroll pulled Weiss’s mind away from a comeback, and she opened it to answer the call. “What is it?” 

Yang’s voice came through the line instantly, staticky and full of concern. “Ruby just swept everywhere four blocks out, and she didn’t see the little shit anywhere. She has to be somewhere around the portal. We’re on our way back to you all.” 

“We should come up with a better insult for her.” “What, is short not good enough?” “No, but it feels like low-hanging fruit.” “Guys, please, not now.” Weiss stopped just short of smacking Jaune and Blake as Ruby materialized in the middle of the three of them, Yang crashing into the pavement a few seconds later. “Any idea where she could be?”

Ruby shook her head. “I don’t even think she knows where to go. She’s not running out of the city, but she’s not hiding around here, and it just doesn’t make sense to me where she’s going.” 

“I vote for going back up to Atlas and trying to track her from there. If we get into the control center, we can try and track her through the cameras.”

“Blake, we don’t have the time for that.” Yang’s point was accented by a chunk of rubble from Atlas crashing through a building a while away, the dust cloud blowing through the street as the entire group jumped in surprise. “Atlas is literally falling apart above us. Going back up there would only be extending our death sentence, and that’s not counting how much time we’d lose actually going there.” 

“What’s our alternative, letting her bury two of the relics under a city’s worth of rubble? Salem’s probably pulling herself back together right now--”

The sound of breaking glass in the distance made one of Blake’s ears twitch, freezing her mid-sentence. “You all heard that?”

“No, but it was probably just another bit of rubble falling.” “No, it wasn’t a big crash. It was like breaking...glass.” 

Realization hit Blake as she sprinted off towards the direction of the noise, the other four barely a split second behind her. The street was empty when they rounded the corner, but a flicker of motion just around the end of the next block caught all their attention. 

“Was that her?”

Ruby dashed towards the corner, petals coming off of every step, but she was back within seconds. “We need to go, now!”

“But that was her!” “No it really wasn’t!” 

Another piece of rubble crashed through a closer apartment, covering the group in a layer of dust. Ruby didn’t need to say anything else to prove her point as they all took off back towards the portal, the agreement clear between the five of them. Neo could wait as long as death was a threat quite literally hanging over their heads. 

Yang was the first to make it back to the portal, blasting another round off to try and speed through it, only to slam headfirst into a solid gold wall instead of passing into the voidspace. Jaune picked her up off the ground as Weiss slid to a stop, gently poking the portal and finding no give. 

“Is it supposed to seal up like that?” “Maybe we got everybody out of Mantle?” “This fucking sucks.” “Guys, I don’t think that’s it.” Jaune picked a rock up off the ground and threw it at the portal, only for it to freeze in the air for a second before dropping straight down with no momentum at all. “That’s not a wall, that’s nothing there. It’s bugging out.”

“But that would only happen if somebody else is making something, right?” Ruby’s eyes widened as she finished the sentence. “Oh, brothers, she’s actually using it.” 

The ‘I told you so’ coming from Weiss got cut off before it even formed by the sound of crashing rock, and the group collectively looked up to see the building next to them crumble apart. Jaune swung his arm and activated his shield as Weiss summoned a cluster of cover glyphs, and the others braced for the impact and the pain as the rubble fell towards them. 

Until the debris stopped in midair. 

There was no effect, no fancy semblance work. The rubble just slowed to a stop in midair, the sounds of the crumbling city fading to silence around them. Jaune kept his shield up as he poked a rock, not budging it in the slightest, but Weiss dropped her glyphs and began looking around. 

“You guys know what this is, right?” 

Quiet nods all around. Jaune switched his shield off and knelt down, trying to feel for any other auras in the frozen time with them. “I can’t tell if anybody else is here. The time thing’s probably messing me up.”

“An astute observation, Mister Arc.” The team collectively had a heart attack for the third time in five minutes as Jinn’s floating form appeared above them, lounging in the blue smoke with casual nonchalance. “Semblances and Aura do not work here, as the soul often fails to understand why time no longer moves.” 

“How did you do that, bringing us in? We don’t even have the lamp.”

Jinn sighed, her expression softening from its usual aloofness. “Very true, Miss Rose. You do not. However, this frozen time was already existing, and I...felt pity.”

“For us?”

Jinn didn’t respond. She just shook her head and made a shushing motion, and all of them heard it in the distance. A noise that shouldn’t have existed in a space that couldn’t exist. 

Somebody was crying.

Chapter Text

The walk was silent. 

The sobs in the distance had been getting louder over the few minutes RWBY and Jaune had been moving towards the source, but that was all they had been hearing. None of them had dared to speak, not even Jinn, who was hovering along above them and guiding them. They just kept moving towards the cries, confused and ever so slightly concerned.

A draft of blue smoke around the next corner made Jinn wave them to a halt, and she spun around to look at Ruby. 

“I cannot be here for this. Ambrosius is already here, and two spirits together would produce what you would call unwanted results. This must be left to you all. I would wish you good luck, but…” Jinn shot a glance at the smoke and turned back to Ruby, genuine concern on her face. “You can change this. I told her the same. Prove each other right.” The genie vanished, and Ruby took a breath, holding up a hand to preemptively silence the others. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please. Trust Jinn on this.”

Trust me, went the unspoken finisher to that sentence. 

Jaune and Blake nodded. Weiss raised her eyebrows, and Yang narrowed her eyes at Ruby, but none of them armed their weapons. They just stayed still, silently acknowledging what she hadn’t said. 

Ruby took another deep breath, exhaled, and stepped around the corner. 

The center of the street was full of smoke, a byproduct of Ambrosius’s manifestation. The spirit himself was floating above the staff, usual macho replaced by an unusual look of sympathy aimed at right below him. 

And Neopolitan was kneeling on the pavement, sobbing as she clutched the staff. 

Ruby took a gentle step forwards, and then another, trying not to scare Neo as she approached the crying girl. Ambrosius noticed her, though, and waved her over. 

“Don’t be shy, Ruby, come here. If you wish to commission me, simply say so.”

Neo turned at the noise, stifling her sobs for long enough to get a look at Ruby, and then immediately snapped her head away as she choked back the tears. Ruby cautiously got closer, eyes on Neo as she did. “What are you up to, Ambrosius?”

“At the moment, nothing,” he replied. “This girl keeps attempting to summon me, and I fear it may be causing my last creation to have issues, but I am not currently busy at the moment.”

“But didn’t she summon you to create something?”

Ambrosius grimaced. “Well, yes. But what she asks, I cannot provide.”

Ruby was about to ask for an elaboration, but her eyes drifted over to Neo, her sobs choked to a quiet gasp by now. She was clutching the staff tight, but she wasn’t holding it close. She was shaking it, begging for it to work between breaths barely there. 

Roman’s hat was on the ground between it and her. 

“I told her, I truly do pity her.” Ambrosius’s voice was faintly tinged with sadness. “But I cannot bring him back. You know the rules, death cannot be a part of my creations.”

“I do.” 

“She has been summoning me again and again, but I cannot change my answer. I honestly am sorry for your loss, but I can’t help you. Nobody can, here.” He was looking at Neo as he said the last part, but she didn’t show any signs of hearing him. She just sat and shuddered, barely shutting down her gasps. 

Ruby’s gaze hadn’t moved from the hat, and she lowered herself, picking it up to look over it again. If Neo saw her do it, she couldn’t tell, but she held the hat out toward Neo. 

“I said I was sorry that I stopped him, that night.” She paused. “That was a lie.”

Neo didn’t quite perk up, but she turned to look at Ruby, bloodshot, tear-filled eyes barely visible under her messed-up hair. 

“I never stopped him. I never even wanted him dead. But it was my fault that Grimm got him, and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even want to. But I did, and I’m sorry.” 

Gasps turned to sniffs and silence as Neo turned away, staring at the ground. 

Ruby let out a defeated sigh. “I get it if you don’t believe me. But please, at least, don’t let yourself die here like this.” She gestured around herself at the city, the ever-growing shadow of Atlas frozen in its descent. “This isn’t a place to go. Please.”

A hand, outstretched. An extension of aid, of assistance, an offer of something murky. 

“I don’t want you to die here.” 

Neo turned, slowly and limply, and Ruby met her tear-soaked gaze with the most sympathetic look she could give. 

Her grip had no strength to it, but she took Ruby’s hand.

The redhead barely smiled, but her entire face softened. They both stood up, Ruby much faster than Neo, and the staff and hat traded hands. Ambrosius let out a little chuckle and dematerialized, blue smoke fading as time sped back up. 

“Can we go now?” Weiss yelled from around the corner. 

“Yeah, go ahead!” Ruby shouted over her shoulder, clipping the staff to her waist as Neo slowly put the hat back on. 

“Hey, I mean it. I don’t want you to die here. Come on.” She grabbed Neo’s hand and tugged at it, pulling the girl along. 

Neo didn’t resist. She didn’t want to. 

*I lost.*

*I lost him.*

Chapter Text

It wasn’t freezing cold in the mine, but it felt like it was getting close. 

Blake had managed to hotwire one of the few functioning vehicles left in Mantle, and the five hunters plus one had been out of the city barely a minute before Atlas came crashing down. The drive out to the mine had been full of frenzied phone calls, the raw panic of the last day setting in as they all tried to make sure friends and family were okay. 

Well, not quite all of them. 

Neo had barely moved during the drive, only shuffling once when Yang had accidentally gotten a little too close. She’d been staring out the window, through the window, not looking at the scenery as they’d gotten closer to the mine. Roman’s hat was still on her head, and Hush was still in her hand, but she’d handed the lamp and staff off to the others without any resistance at all. She didn’t care at that point. 

*I lost him.*

The mine had been mercifully empty of Grimm, and Maria and Pietro had been thorough about getting the systems working before they took off on Amity, so they’d settled on it as a safe spot to hide out and come to a new plan. The heating was a little on the fritz, but it was better than freezing to death. 

“Are you sure they even got it working?” Yang was holding her metal arm over Myrtenaster, which was currently plunged into a pile of fire dust with the blade on fire. “This feels way too cold for Atlas systems.”

“It wasn’t going to be a permanent situation.” Weiss was somehow fine with the cold, and the only thing keeping Yang from making bad puns was Blake constantly poking her in the ribs. “They were going to dismantle it all once Amity was built. Now that there’s nobody here, they’ve just left it behind.”

“Speaking of leaving things behind…” Yang jerked her head towards Neo, who was standing a short bit away. “What are we going to do with her?” 

Silence. None of them wanted to try and come up with a good answer. 

Neo heard it, but she didn’t react. She knew they were all too scared to go and kill her. Ruby had probably told them some wild story about how she got out, so they were just going to leave her here to freeze to death like cowards. 

*Fine with me.*

Vengeance was gone. Rebuilding was gone. He was gone. She’d had one last gamble, something she wasn’t even certain would work, a plan cobbled together from Watts’s offhand comments and semi-ambiguous advice. It hadn’t paid off. 

She'd never say or even think that she actually wanted to freeze there, curling up to nothing in the middle of nowhere in the tundra, but she wasn’t going to do anything better. 

A touch on her shoulder snapped Neo back to reality, and she flinched away from it. Ruby jumped back, hands raised, waiting for the tension in Neo to relax before lowering them. 

“Just wanted to make sure you were still here. Are you sure you don’t want to come over to the fire? You look pretty cold.” 

Neo just turned away, hugging herself to warm up. Her outfit, missing shoulders and half the shirt and all, but she didn’t want to go to the fire. She didn’t not want to, but she definitely didn’t want to. 

Another feeling on her shoulder made her bristle, but this time Ruby didn’t let up as she pulled her back towards the fire. “You’re freezing. You do know that’s bad, right?”

A scoff without strength and a slow painful nod. *I know how the cold works.*

“Just making sure.” She let her go as they got close to the fire, Neo standing just outside the circle the other five had set up around it. Four of them were giving her strange looks, but only two of them seemed to be from actual suspicion. 

“So now that technically everybody’s here, we need to make our decision.” Ruby’s voice was strangely chipper for the grim circumstances. “First off, do we make a decision now?”

“There could be other survivors stuck on Solitas,” Jaune chimed in. “I didn’t see Qrow or the Ace-Ops come through, so odds are they’re still on this side.” 

“Cinder’s still here though.” Yang definitely sounded appropriately grim. “She went back through the Atlas portals. She could be anywhere, she could have followed us here without noticing.”

Ruby shook her head. “Subtlety isn’t something she’s good at. We would have known by now if she was following us.” 

Everybody waited a moment for the irony to kick in, just to make sure Cinder wasn’t doing something clever, but nothing happened. The relief was thick enough in the air they could all taste it.

Jaune sighed and spoke up again. “Anyway, like I was saying on the Ace-Ops, since the bomb didn’t go off I’m assuming they’re alive, and since we know Qrow’s alive and can answer messages that they’re probably not that hostile to us anymore. It might be a good idea to try and link up with them.” 

“That could actually be a really good idea,” Weiss answered. “We know Winter and Ironwood are alive and in Vacuo with Oscar, so we could call them up again and work out some sort of plan. I don’t know anybody from Shade--” “Neptune. Sun. The entirety of SSSN.” “Neptune hit on me every ten minutes. The only other person that even came close to that total was Jaune. Actually, it might have been the other way around.” “Well, that’s certainly flattering.” 

The conversation began to drift, and Neo was about to space out again when Ruby elbowed her and began speaking. “Getting back to the main topic, we agree on a plan for now?”

“If by that you mean not make a plan until we find the Ace-Ops and reconnect with Ironwood and Oscar, sure.” Blake sounded like she was about to pass out. “I think we all really should get some rest, first, though. I really don’t think I can pick another fight.”

“Somebody’s going to have to stand guard.” Yang was far more awake and staring right at Neo. “We can’t leave her unattended. She’s not actually on our side.” 

“We’re not going to drag her along.” Weiss sounded absolute in her statement, and Blake’s reply was immediate and not exactly calm sounding.  “You want to leave her here?” 

“To a death sentence? No! Don’t tell me you still think I’m Ice Queen.” “That’s always going to be your name in my head.” “Blake, I’m not heartless.” Weiss rolled her eyes and turned back to Neo. “But we can’t just bring her along on whatever the next plan is.”

“We’re waiting for tomorrow to decide what to do next, right?” The others nodded at Ruby. “So let’s include her in that topic. Unless you have any ideas?” She turned to Neo, who was just looking at her with exhaustion in her eyes. 

“I’ll take that as a no.” She patted Neo lightly on the shoulder and looked back at the others, and Neo collapsed down to take a seat on the ground. “If you guys are that worried, I can watch her. But I really don’t think she’s a threat to us right now.”

That didn’t convince either of them, and Ruby sighed. “Look, I know what she’s done. But she’s not Cinder, and she wasn’t here for Salem. Let’s just work out the rest tomorrow.”

“Ruby, if she pulls anything--” “I know, Yang. Don’t worry about it.” “I kinda will, knowing how she fights.” “I can handle it. Especially with her like this.” 

The others let out disbelieving murmurs, but they didn’t try and fight her on it. Blake stood up and half walked, half stalked off towards the supply shed to find something to sleep on, and Yang gave Neo one more look before lying down. 

The short girl noticed, but she didn’t care. She was just staring at the ground in front of her, watching the sparks from the fire sputter out on the dirt. 

*I don’t think I like fire any more.*

Chapter Text

Neo didn’t sleep that night. 

Blake had thrown her a blanket, and she was small enough that she could lie on it without any part of her touching the ground, but it was still too small to wrap herself up in. She’d laid her coat over herself, and placed Roman’s hat and Hush on top of a crate, but it was still too cold in there. 

It would have been too cold even if it wasn’t too noisy. Every so often, something would happen. A dust crystal would roll, a cable would spark, or somebody’s mumbles would echo out loudly enough to wake up Neo. 

It would have been too noisy if she had even wanted to sleep then. 

This wasn’t the place to sleep. Nobody here wanted her there. She made a mental note about this being the third time she’d wished they’d had the guts to just leave her behind, just so she could accept fate without having to fight them on it. She definitely didn’t have the energy to fight them on that. Or anything. Or any energy at all, really. 

A breeze blew through the cavern, and Neo pulled her coat tighter around her. The fact most of team RWBY were okay with the cold was baffling to Neo, but she supposed it made sense. One of them was from Atlas, and they were all trained huntresses anyway, so they were probably used to hiding in caves on rainy nights. 

*Wait, why would you hide in caves if they’re breezy?*

*That seems counterintuitive.*

*Wait, that’s not how thermodynamics works.*

The breeze blew past again, in the other direction this time, and Neo rolled onto her side and pulled the coat even tighter. There wasn’t supposed to be a breeze in here, not this deep in. Somebody had to be making it, and since she wasn’t hearing the usually pleasant noise of somebody bleeding out, either they had a stalker or somebody was here just to kill them. Likely her. 

Footsteps behind her specified the point. Great. At least *somebody* in this world had the guts to do it. Hopefully they’d be slow. Death usually needs processing time when it’s staring you in the face. Then again, speedy meant she wouldn’t technically need to think about it. 

The steps stumbled a bit, and Neo involuntarily tensed as some dirt hit her back. A notion about professionalism died in her head as the threat of death began to kick in--

“Sorry, sorry, I tripped over a rock.”

*Red?*

“I uh, didn’t wake you up, did I?” Ruby’s voice was about as quiet of a whisper as she could make it. That was, unfortunately, still pretty loud. “I was just making sure everybody was asleep.”

*Gods, I don’t want to deal with this.*

“I didn’t think it’d look good if we tried to talk and everybody saw me dragging you off somewhere or something.”

*Either they think I’m going to kill her or they’re all disasters.*

“Yang would have never shut up about it. For a few reasons.”

*It’s both.*

“But I--” 

Ruby sighed, and Neo heard the sound of somebody sitting down behind her. “The others don’t trust you. They’re not going to if you don’t try. I know it’s...hard. And I know I’m probably making it harder by trying here. But I want to trust you.”

“I do trust you.”

*You’re a fool.*

A small shuffling noise, and Neo felt somebody sitting back to back with her. 

“Neopolitan, I trust you.”

“I don’t know why you’re still here.”

“But I want to help you.” 

*I don’t want your fucking help. It’s the last thing I want.*

A hand on her shoulder. 

“I saw how you were, in Mantle. I didn’t want you to make the mistake of chasing ghosts. I...I know how it feels. And I don’t want you to make some of the mistakes I’ve seen people make.”

“I just want to help you for you.” 

The hand dropped, and silence set in. 

Neither of them moved. 

Minutes passed before Neo felt Ruby move, standing up, trying to disturb the not really sleeping girl as little as possible. She heard her move over to the fire, heard her shuffle her own cloak around and lie down. 

“Night, Neopolitan.”

*Just let me rot.*

*It would make this all so much less sorry.*

*Why do you have to be so damn innocent?*

Chapter Text

“You do know how bad alcohol is for being in the cold, right?” “Do you know how nasty this shit is after this much Aura exposure?” “You’re not actually going to run the engine off of that, are you.”

Qrow shrugged. “We need to get this thing started somehow. The fuel tank’s insulated, but the ignition chamber’s scuffed. Swap...whatever the hell this is in for the ignition Dust, and we should be good to go.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been drinking that?” “Shove it, Ice Queen.” 

The exasperated sigh left all of the Ace-Ops and Weiss at once as Qrow yanked the hatch on the airship’s thruster access open. “I’ve got this, okay? Just watch. This isn’t my first time hotwiring Atlas tech.” “Do I even want to know what that means?!” 

The other members of RWBY+J collectively rolled their eyes, and Yang took a knee in the snow to watch. They’d found Qrow, Robyn, and the Ace-Ops not too far out from the mine, their own airship landed in the middle of nowhere--which was ninety percent of what Solitas looked like anyway--and frozen over from spending the night hunkered down in it. The plan had been to make sure they could actually get off of the continent before making a decision on where to go next, but the fact it was frozen over was making that a little difficult.

“Is saying we’re the best trained people in Atlas really a legitimate thing to say now?” “Ruby, I don’t think Atlas exists anymore.” “You know what I mean, Blake.” 

“I’d argue Atlas does still exist, it’s just a government-in-exile.” Jaune was rooting through the crates on the airship, looking for more gravity Dust for his shield. “If you basically treat Ironwood and the military as the government.”

“What if we count the government as the government?” “Well, then, Atlas doesn’t exist anymore.” 

“Are they really helping here?” Elm was less than pleased. “We’ve got one badly wounded, no wide-scale communications, and I don’t even know who the short one is.” “Hey!” “The pink one, Ruby. I know who you are.”

“I was actually wondering about that.” The ship’s cockpit slid open, and Robyn stuck her head out. “Who is she? She doesn’t look like a huntress, but nobody in Atlas that can afford to dress like that would...well, dress like that.” She gestured towards Neo, who was half-asleep and leaning on Hush to stay standing a little bit behind the group. “Is she even from around here?”

“We don’t actually know,” Ruby replied. “I think she’s from Vale, but we haven’t really talked about it. That was just where we first met her.”

“Well, that’s not suspicious at all.” Robyn hauled herself up and out of the cockpit, landing right next to Weiss. “But did you really just drag a girl that none of you know along for the ride without--”

“We know who she is.” Weiss didn’t turn to face Robyn as she spoke. “She’s a criminal that was working with Cinder that stole the relics from her and us, and we had to rescue her from Mantle. She worked with Roman Torchwick at Beacon, and that’s just what we know.” 

“So, what, she’s here for us to drag her back to Vacuo for a trial? You yourself said you don’t even know what she’s done.” The annoyance in Elm’s voice was clear. “Can you even prove any of this?”

The hatch slammed shut, and Qrow chuckled as he walked over to the rest of the conversation. “Don’t go acting like you suddenly care about the burden of proof, hammer time. And if stealing the relics was really a crime, you’d have to arrest everybody we’ve been in contact with for the last...however long we’ve been out here.” He leaned over, trying to get a look at Neo’s face. “She really pulled a fast one over on you and Cinder? Both of you?” 

Yang nodded, shooting daggers with her gaze at Neo. “We almost lost the relics in Mantle because of her.” 

“We’ve almost lost the lamp like three times, firecracker. I’m more wondering what her plan was after.” 

Neo looked up, trying to blink herself back to awareness as she realized Qrow was actually talking to her. She wasn’t trying to keep her expression a vaguely depressed neutral, but the exhaustion made the message in her eyes even clearer. 

*I didn’t have one.* 

Qrow nodded. “You didn’t think that far ahead, did you?” 

She shook her head, blinking rapidly as the movement woke her up. She raised her hands to her face, trying to wipe off the grime and lack-of-sleep-grit that had accumulated, and Qrow stood back up. 

“So, what were you going to do with her?”

The members of RWBY all looked between each other, then collectively back to Qrow. Yang spoke first. “We don’t know. We were going to wait until we decided what the whole plan was to decide what to do with her.” “I honestly thought she’d have tried to escape by now.” “Me too, Blake.” 

“Why would she?” Harriet joined in the conversation as she came around the side of the ship. “She didn’t just betray her boss, she betrayed Cinder. I’m surprised she hasn’t been melted yet, in all honesty.” 

“Guys, don’t forget, Vine’s still passed out back here.” Marrow was calm, but the edge in his voice was very clearly directed at them. “I honestly don’t care who we go along with, but unless we get something to treat these burns soon, it’s going to take a long time to heal.”

“And we don’t have that time, I know.” Harriet nodded at the ship, even though Marrow couldn’t actually see her from inside the loading bay, and turned to the others. Jaune chose now to emerge from the supply cabinets, slotting a new Dust charge into his shield as the entire group stood outside the ship. “So, anybody have any plans?” 

“First, we need to get somewhere with a doctor. None of us are combat medics,” Harriet said. “After that, we get some more fuel and head towards Vacuo. That’s where Atlas is, and that’s where Salem’s going to be going next.”

“We might not be able to come along.” Ruby reached behind her and took the lamp off her hip, and Weiss did the same with the staff. “Salem wants these, and if we bring them to Vacuo, that’s three relics in the same place out of four. She almost got both of these yesterday, and if we lose again in Vacuo, the only thing left will be Beacon’s relic.”

“Which we can’t defend because that Wyvern’s still there.” Qrow nodded. “So you want to make sure she never gets those two.”

“Oscar wrecked her army, and she can only be in one place at once.” The lamp went back on Ruby’s hip. “And Vacuo is on the other side of Remnant from Mistral.”

Elm shifted, leaning forward a little. “Do you have a hiding spot in mind?” “There’s a vault beneath every huntsman academy that only the maiden of the relic can open. Haven’s is still intact.”

Robyn leaned further forward, finishing Ruby's explanation for her. “So if we put the staff in there, then the Winter maiden would have to open it, but Penny’s in Vacuo.” “But can’t Cinder steal powers? You guys mentioned that when you first arrived.” “Elm, Penny’s in Vacuo. She can’t steal her powers unless she’s in Vacuo. And knowing Penny, she would rather die than let Cinder get those powers. She knows what that means.” 

“Ignoring that really, weirdly ominous sentence,” Jaune interrupted, “I think that means we have a plan. You guys meet back up with Ironwood, Winter, and everybody else for the fight in Vacuo, and we go and hide the relics in Mistral.”

“Still missing somebody from that plan.” Elm gestured towards Neo. “Really, what are you going to do with her?”

Ruby glanced at Neo, then Qrow, then to Yang. Weiss’s eyes widened as Ruby looked at her. “No, no, no. That’s not happening. Ruby, this is actually the single worst plan you’ve ever had. Out of any of them.”

“Do you have something else?”

Weiss’s answer was silence punctured by wordless stammers, pointing at Neo as she stared back at Ruby. 

“Think of it like Emerald. It’s just us trying to approach her this time.” “Yeah, because they’re at all similar.” “Yang, you don’t even know either of them.” “Neither do you, Ruby.” 

Neo looked up, slowly snapping back to attention after drifting out during the planning conversation. Yang, Blake, and all of the Ace-Ops were staring at Ruby, but Qrow was looking at her with a mix of pity and amusement as Weiss pointed at her and Ruby tried to stand between them. 

“Weiss. Please. She’s not here for Salem. She’s not here for Cinder. She doesn’t have a reason to kill us. If she was going to, she would have already.”

“She could in the future. There’s any NUMBER of things she could do to us.” 

“I don’t think she will. Look at her, Weiss. She’s barely standing. She didn’t sleep last night. She could have killed all of us then.” 

Weiss crossed her arms, letting out a huff. “You know who she is. She’s a killer, a criminal.” 

“Does anybody here have any other suggestions?” Qrow’s voice was full of annoyance, glaring at Weiss from halfway to the ship’s cockpit. “No? Well then I think I know exactly what the plan is.” 

Weiss let out another huff, but she didn’t say anything snide. Qrow pulled himself fully into the cockpit, motioning for the Ace-Ops to get back in the ship. Weiss was right behind them, breezing right past Ruby’s attempt to stop her as she stormed into the ship’s passenger bay. Yang and Blake followed, and Neo fell in behind them, willing herself to stay awake to whenever this was all over. 

She needed to sleep. 

Just not here. 

Not near them.

Chapter Text

Neo’d been staring at Hush for hours. 

Nobody else had tried to look at her. The Ace-Ops were all clustered around each other, occasionally muttering about Winter and Ironwood. Robyn and Qrow were up in the cockpit, trading out with Harriet or Elm every so often to avoid fatigue, but they just sat in silence when they weren’t flying. Jaune was almost unconscious, having spent most of the last few hours throwing his Aura at Vine, who himself was prone on a bench with bandages wrapped around his arms. RWBY was all lined up in order along the same bench as Neo, Ruby serving as an unsubtle barrier between the other three and her. Nobody had tried to speak, and Ruby had battered away all of Weiss and Yang’s attempts to give her angry looks. At least, that’s what she assumed happened, since she wasn’t getting the feeling of being stared at with malice. 

The ship shuddered, more than it had been over the last few hours, and Neo turned her head to look out the back windows for the first time. The snow had faded to more of a muddy taiga, patches of green poking through the half-snow half-dirt mush. A brief glimpse of coastal trees through the window as the ship sped by set off the bells in Neo’s brain that they were almost there, and the ship shuddering again confirmed it. 

“Sorry about the rocky descent. Weather’s a little bumpy near the coast.” Robyn’s voice stirred the bay out of its collective stupor, everybody’s eyes snapping up to the cockpit. “We’ll drop RWBY, Jaune, and Neopolitan off once we land. We might stick around for a bit, but once this thing’s fueled up and ready, we’re off to Vacuo. If you guys want to change something, this is your last chance to.” 

Neo couldn’t see anybody’s faces, but she could see Ruby shaking her head. “We’re sticking with this one. We’ll get the staff and the lamp to safety, and Salem won’t get at them again.” 

“Besides, they already slogged through this entire continent once,” Qrow commented from the other pilot seat. “What’s doing it one more time when nobody’s looking for them?” 

Marrow let out a small chuckle from his position next to Vine, and turned to look up at RWBY. “Are you sure you don’t want our help? You’ve got twice the number of relics you had before.” 

“Marrow, that’s still only two.” “Y-you still know what I mean. It could be worse this time around. You might need some extra help to deal with the extra Grimm. More people, shorter fights, more time to rest and recover.” 

Blake held up a hand, nodding. “I get it, Marrow, but your people are in Vacuo. You should help them there. We’ve got it handled on this end. Besides, Amity’s still up there, so you can just call us, and Atlas doesn’t exactly have the best reputation.” 

Marrow glanced down at his very clearly Atlesian uniform and groaned. “It’s Mistral. We have a historical basis to be nice together.” “You’ve been cut off from the world and stockpiling enough guns to bribe Ruby for the last several months. Nobody likes Atlas right now.” “Point taken.” 

Harriet sighed as the ship shuddered again, leaning over to look out a window. “You sure this is the right spot? There wasn’t somewhere less likely to try and steal any weapons that looked newer than a decade old?” 

“Speedster, I have been all over Atlas, especially over the last year. This is the only place on the entire coast where we can get a ride to Argus and refuel a military-grade ship without getting noticed by your coastal comrades.” Qrow leaned through the cockpit door, looking at RWBY, Jaune, and Neo. “We need to be off to Vacuo as soon as possible. That means you guys need to get moving the second we touch down, and I can’t stick around.”

“He’s trying to ask if you’re sure you’re fine being all alone once you’ve landed,” Robyn yelled from the cockpit. “We can’t cover you. You will be on your own.”

“And not the version where I’m flying ten feet behind you all the time.” The ship jolted, slowing down as the sight of a small city filled the windows. Qrow fully stood up, filling up the doorway and facing everybody in the bay. “You ready?” 

Ruby stood up, posturing like she was about to skydive out the bay door. *I think that might not be too bad of an option.* “We can do this,” she declared, determination in her voice. 

“Don’t use all your badass cards this early,” Harriet shot over her shoulder as she flexed her harness. The entire ship laughed at that, the sorts of quiet laughs heard when there hasn’t been a reason to in a while, but Neo just turned and looked away. *She’s not even scary.* 

A very loud whirring noise filled the bay, and the cargo door open, fully revealing the backlot they’d decided to land in. There was barely anybody around, just a skeleton crew on what looked like a refueling station, and just about nobody else in the lot or the alleys around it. Ruby had already leapt off the ship before it had even landed, and Neo felt almost swept up as the other four hurried out, her movements sluggish compared to their urgent scramblings. She felt her feet touch gravel and kept moving, barely tuned in as she lagged a fraction of a step behind RWBY+J making their way out of the lot and through the alleys.

They glanced back to make sure she was still there, didn’t go too far off to make sure she didn’t sneak away, but they never tried to pull her in, never tried to talk to her. 

They still weren’t looking at her.

Chapter Text

“There has to be something else to do here.” 

Ruby wasn’t literally bouncing off the walls of the inn’s lower floor, but she was moving fast enough to leave petals every few steps as she paced. Yang was taking the wait equally poorly. “Does it really take this long to set up a hotel room?”

“We did come here in the offseason.” Weiss had grabbed a magazine from off one of the floor’s tables and was absentmindedly flicking through it, very clearly looking away from the two half-siblings that looked likely to burn down the building from friction and possible fire out of boredom. “And hotel rooms take time to clean. We can’t just show up and expect them to have one ready for us.” 

“So how long do we have to wait?” “You’ve never actually stayed in a hotel in a city before, have you.” “No.” “Of course.” Weiss sighed at Ruby and tossed the magazine onto the couch, ignoring Blake launching herself at the nearest thing to read. “Well, it’s not going to be in the next few minutes. Anybody have any ideas?”

Yang literally threw herself into a standing position, smiling as Ruby came to a halt next to her with enough momentum to send a bunch of petals flying in front of her. She let out a huge sigh of relief and flicked a petal off her shoulder without looking. “Oh thank the brothers, we’re actually going something.” “You can’t just say that without deciding what to actually do, you two.” 

“Suggestion over here.” Jaune let out a slight groan as he shuffled in his seat. “I don’t know what they put in Atlas MREs, but I need something to eat besides that. Either that, or my airsickness has made a return after too long.”

“Calm down, Vomit Boy.” “Oh, don’t start this again, Yang.” “I was going to say I agree. I think we all need some food right now.” She turned to face the others, and was met with three strong nods and one weak one. “Good. So, where should we actually go?”

Weiss sighed and stood up, not missing a beat as she started walking towards the door. “I saw half a dozen places on our way here. We can probably stop by one of them.” “Do we have the cash for that?” “The answer is yes, Yang. We’ve literally always enough. Even when it doesn’t make any sense, we still have enough. It’s weird.” 

Blake dropped the magazine on the table, folding it shut, and turned to Neo. “Did you eat anything on the flight?” 

Neo shook her head, looking straight through Blake as she did. The latter sighed, standing up and adjusting Gambol Shroud on her hip. “You need to. Especially considering you’re the size of Ruby.” There was a second of pause as she glanced at the mentioned girl before looking back to Neo. “I really expected her to hear that. Come on.” She followed after the others, and Neo took a deep breath before doing the same. Jaune followed a step behind her, and she saw his eyes bouncing from her to the rest of the group in the reflection in the window in the door as they all stepped outside. Neo was too exhausted to even sigh for any reason, and she just kept walking as they made their way down the street. 

It wasn’t anywhere near as cold as Atlas proper usually was, but Neo still shivered a little as she walked. Nobody else seemed to notice, the other four preoccupied with arguing with each other over plans. For some reason. *Isn't one of you supposed to be an actual leader?*

A hand on her shoulder broke the train of thought and she spun around out of instant reflex, her brain half-snapping into fight mode. Exhaustion kicked in midway through the turn, though, and instead of drawing Hush into a combat pose like she usually did, it just hung at her side in a clenched fist as she stared at Jaune with wide eyes. 

Jaune took a step back, immediately jerking his hand back to raise it along with the other in surrender. “Sorry! I just wanted to help I saw you were cold and I didn’t want you burning Aura on this don’t hurt me?”

It took a second for the words to hit Neo, and she took a deep breath, her grip on Hush relaxing slightly as she did the sign equivalent of mumbling “sorry” under her breath and slowly turned away from Jaune. He didn’t reach for her again, but she saw a candy-pink glow out of the corner of her eye as her Aura started shining. *Forgot he could do that.* The others apparently hadn’t noticed, and her and Jaune stayed right behind them as they made their way through the city streets, the cold stinging far less than it had before. It still didn’t quite feel warm, despite Jaune’s Semblance bringing her Aura the highest it had been in the last few days, but she wasn’t shivering anymore. He let off after a while, the glow fading but the energy staying for the last handful of minutes before they stopped in front of a building, Weiss standing in front of the group. 

*One of these dives. Great.*

“Am I supposed to be seeing something here?” “It’s a pub, Yang.” “Are we legally allowed in?” “I’m not.” “Thank you, Ruby. And for your information, we’re all legally allowed in. We’re all hunters here, and even in Atlas, the customs of who gets in are...loose. We’ll be fine.” 

Yang and Blake nodded in tandem, and Ruby made a face like she was thinking way too hard about a small thing before nodding a lot more energetically than the other two. Weiss led the three of them in, and Jaune was about to follow before he stopped at the door and turned to Neo. 

“How are you still standing?” There was a bit of genuine concern in his voice. “You’ve been chewing up Aura so fast I could barely keep up, and none of it’s going to keeping you warm. Did you sleep at all last night?”

Neo shook her head and pushed past him, not even glancing at him as she entered. She immediately paused, tilting her head up just a bit to look around at the shockingly loud patrons. 

*I smell a fight coming on.*

Her vision landed on RWBY uncomfortably sitting at a table back in the corner, Weiss looking unperturbed by the slowly growing clamor. Jaune slid past her and headed for them, and she did the same, tiredness mingling with paranoia as she got closer. 

“I think this was a bad move, Weiss.” Ruby’s voice had lost its energy, a distinct discomfort in its place. “Everybody here seems pretty angry.” 

“We didn’t cause it, so we should be fine.” “Weiss, have you ever actually been in a bar fight?”

Weiss scoffed. “I’m a huntress, Yang. I can hold my own in a fight.”

“I’ve started bar fights. They’re never as clean as Grimm ones.” “Well, I assure you, things will be fine.” 

The sound of a glass shattering on the other side of the room immediately proved her wrong, and Neo just sighed weakly as the other five glanced at her for a split second before looking to where it had actually come from. The shouts were getting louder, and Neo caught the few staff present cautiously making their way into the back rooms before another breaking glass dragged her vision away. 

“I don’t think things are going to be fine.” Jaune began to reach for Crocea Mors, but stopped midway through the action. “We probably should just leave, huh?” 

“I don’t know. What do you place the odds of everybody in here having a strong enough Aura to take some hits at?” “None.” “Zero.” “Jack shit.” “Nothing.” 

Neo would have turned to add her own reply to Blake’s bet, but barely dodged out of the way as a wildly thrown plate from the other side of the room hit the floor and shattered next to her. Weiss didn’t miss a beat before literally jumping off the chair and moving towards the door, Ruby and Jaune right behind. Blake turned to Yang for a moment, who was staring very intently at her mechanical arm and obviously having a furious internal debate with herself, before grabbing her and dragging her along to the door as more plates started getting thrown. The sound of scraping chairs and slurred battle cries hurried them up a bit, even Neo moving a fair bit faster than she usually did to escape the rapidly growing brawl inside. 

She was almost at the door when a glass hit the wall and shattered in her face. 

The shards didn’t break her aura, but the sharp edges still scraped along her skin, digging in in vain attempts to try and cut her. The sensation wasn’t unfamiliar, but it was enough to start sending the adrenaline through her still paranoid brain. She barely stumbled and kept moving towards the door, but she gradually focused less and less on the hunters in front of her and more on the every growing brawl that was happening around her as she got closer. On Hush, still gripped tightly in her hand. Gripped comfortably in her hand. 

She slowed as she reached the door, stopping to watch RWBY+J slip out one by one. Ruby was the last through, and Neo didn’t wait a second before slamming the door shut behind her. She saw Ruby whip around through the window in the door, eyes wide in panic. 

“Neo, what are you doing?” She reached back for the handle, only for Neo to reach up and lock the door without looking away. The girl on the inside raised her other hand and waved a finger at Ruby, shaking her head. *You don’t get to call me that, Red.*

Neo dropped the shade on the window and turned to face the absolute brawl inside the building. The adrenaline was still in her head, and she let out the first smile she’d had in the last two days as she twirled Hush once. 

*Just one little break.*

Chapter Text

The first person she’d properly hit in the last four days was a drunk man holding a pint glass angrily at nobody in particular. 

One strike from Hush to the diaphragm literally knocked the wind out of him, sending him down to the floor gasping for air. He hadn’t even noticed her. 

Neo smirked, twirling Hush around her arm as she strolled through the din of the fight that was less a fight and more an utter free for all. She hadn’t caught how it started, and she didn’t really care. She just ducked and dodged blows that were clearly not meant for her, thrown glasses and plates, and the occasional piece of flying silverware, taking in just how massive of a fight this was. 

Never mind that she’d been downright exhausted and barely standing ten minutes ago. Adrenaline plus thrill was a hell of a drug. And this was certainly a thrill. 

An unconscious body hit the ground in front of her, and Neo swept out with Hush’s handle, hooking it around the ankle of somebody standing on top of a table next to her. She pulled and another body hit the ground, bouncing off the table and rolling to the floor with a thud she could barely hear over the rest of the fight. Her smirk got a little bigger and she kept walking, weaving through the crowd like she didn’t care about the risk of imminent harm.

She did a flip over two people grappling with each other and landed on a seat at the main bar, reaching out to grab a bottle somebody had abandoned once the fighting started. Champagne, the cheap kind. *Smells like ragman’s. Does he drink that shit they used for fuel?* She spun the seat around and looked out at the melee, watching the less skilled or more drunk ones slowly fall to the floor. She let out a single near-silent giggle and turned back to the bar, looking around for any matches somebody had left lying around. 

The din slowly got quieter as she dug through the various plates and other things left on the counter, ultimately coming up empty. She sighed and spun around again, bottle in one hand and Hush in the other. The fighting was almost entirely gone, a few drunken stragglers wailing on each other in the corner, but the rest that were still standing were all looking at her with a mix of confusion and clarity, right on the cusp of realizing something. 

“Isn’t she wanted or something?” “She looks familiar, yeah.” “You sure she was that short?” “It’d be a shame if anything happened to you, girly.” 

Neo scowled at the last one, not quite sure who in the standing few had said it, but she could get the message. And she didn’t like it. She leaned back and raised an eyebrow, taking a sip from the bottle. 

*That’s fucking rancid, holy shit, how do people drink this shit?*

A man wearing far too much dark blue and holding a chair leg was the first to make the bad decision, stalking up towards Neo with the improvised weapon in hand, clearly thinking he looked much more intimidating than he was. Neo smirked, tilting her head at him like she was looking at a fascinating insect, and threw the bottle at him. He didn’t react in time, and the impact and subsequent shattering sent him stumbling back as Neo literally launched off the seat, flipping through the air and swinging a leg out to land a kick. Her heel connected with the back of his skull with a crack, and he dropped, dazed and barely conscious. Neo landed next to him, straightening Roman’s hat on her head as she looked at the other half dozen or so people that still wanted to pick a fight. 

The worries of the last week were all the way in the back of her mind, shoved away and tamped down for the moment. She was outnumbered, her Aura was running on fumes to keep her standing, the adrenaline and thrill wouldn’t last forever, and she wasn’t sure if that pounding was her body starting to cave in or RWBY+J trying to get the door open. 

Another person, a woman in green and yellow, charged her with two handfuls of knives grabbed from off the tables. She flung one arm forward, hurling the knives straight at Neo. Hush was up and opened almost instantly, the canopy covering Neo for just long enough for the entire barrage to bounce harmlessly off before she clicked the parasol closed, spun it around to grab it by the wrong end, and hooked the handle around the still-charging woman’s other arm. She twisted, twirling Hush around her head, and the woman went flying away, crashing into the wall with a thud as the knives fell out of her grip and clattered to the floor. They didn’t stay there for long before a third person, a short man in a shade of green that made Neo double take at first glance, grabbed them and started throwing them at her in rapid succession. Her brief pause was enough for one of the knives to hit her, and it scraped along her face as her Aura held, barely. 

*That’s something I haven’t felt in quite a while.*

Neo’s smirked merged with a snarl as she tossed Hush up, catching it with both hands on the handle, and began to charge the man. A few more knives whiffed past her as she dodged, and she was halfway to him when one went sailing straight for her face. The odds of her Aura tanking that one again weren’t good, especially considering how many others were about to follow. 

It didn’t need to. 

The illusion shattered the second the knife touched it, and Neo was right next to the man, Hush pulled all the way back over her shoulder. She swung for his stomach, and hit, sending him doubling over as he went flying through the air and crashing into the window. He started to get up, reaching behind him for something, but Neo was on him in a split second, stomping on his sternum enough to make him cough, but not enough to break his Aura. 

A knock right above got her attention, and she glanced away from the mostly conscious and still struggling man beneath her to see Weiss, Blake, and Ruby in the window, staring in awe. Ruby was yelling something to her, but Neo didn’t listen. She didn’t want to listen. She just looked Ruby in the eyes for the briefest moment she could manage before extending the blade out of Hush’s tip and stabbing it into the man’s shoulder. His Aura broke, and the point went through cloth and flesh without any resistance. Neo twisted the parasol, sending a spurt of blood up out of his shoulder and onto the window. She didn’t waste a second before literally leaping off the man and opening Hush again, slowly descending down to one of the few tables still standing. 

There were only a few people that still looked like they wanted to stand up to Neo in the room, and all but one of them backed away as she glared at them in turn. The last one, another woman in a different shade of blue, leaped at Neo as she drew a dagger, the weapon glowing with Lightning Dust as it raced towards her. 

It never hit its mark, slipping out of the woman’s hand as Neo sidestepped and clotheslined her with Hush. She was in the air for a second before Neo spun back around and pressed the handle to her neck, catching her and dragging her back to the surface of the table. The polymer cut into her skin, and Neo felt the woman’s windpipe start to collapse as she pulled tighter. A sideways glance didn’t show her anybody else ready to try and jump her, so the one in control of the situation yanked Hush again, watching the woman’s face slowly start to match the rest of her clothes. 

She would have pulled it all the way if the door hadn’t been thrown off its hinges with a bang.

Neo spun around, dragging the woman with her, and saw Yang standing in the door, Ember Celica engaged. 

“Holy shit, what are you doing?” 

The others of RWBY+J rushed in behind her, staring at Neo and the struggling woman. Neo shot a glare at Yang and released Hush, letting the woman regain her breath for a second before twirling the parasol and smacking her in the face with it, sending her flying into the bar. She hopped down from the table, and barely took a step before stumbling forward and putting a hand to her head as the adrenaline finally ditched her. Jaune and Ruby were on her instantly, Jaune’s Semblance already active as he caught her. Her Aura looked pale against his, the pink barely glowing at all. 

“Seriously, how are you still standing?” 

Neo shrugged, a weak smile coming onto her face as she pushed the other two away, only to gasp and almost fall again as she tried to use the last bit of her Aura to keep herself standing. Ruby caught her by the arm, again, and Jaune grabbed the other as he shook his head at Weiss, Blake, and Yang. “She’s gone. We should go.” They looked at Ruby with their protests written all over their faces, but a silent glare back made them start moving semi-hastily, Weiss staying behind a second to hand a napkin and pen to Ruby. She scribbled something down onto it and tossed it onto the table before poking Neo and starting to walk out. Neo just grimaced as she limped along, held up by the other two. 

*That was a hell of a feeling though.*

She smiled a little bit. 

Chapter Text

“So, WHY did we cover for her?” 

Weiss’s hands were pressed to her temples as she glared at Ruby from the opposite side of the hotel room. 

“It wasn’t her fault!” “She severed a man’s artery just so we couldn’t see what she was doing!” “It was a moment of weakness!” “Don’t quote shitposts in an actual argument!” 

Jaune rolled his eyes and sighed loudly from his position in the chair in the corner. “Look, nobody’s dead. We’re all tired. Blake’s getting food, right?” 

Right on cue, the sound of somebody failing to unlock the door for several seconds made everybody look towards it before the lock clicked and swung open, revealing Blake holding several bags of carry-out. 

“So I got one salad, two chicken sandwiches, one spicy, one tuna melt, one normal burger, and one disgusting burger with bacon and egg. Are you sure she ordered the last one?” Ruby just shrugged, and Blake returned the gesture as a shadow clone shut the door behind her and locked it. “Fair enough.” 

“Getting back on topic, we covered for her.” Weiss took the container from Blake without really looking, her entire vision still focused on Ruby. “It was very clearly her fault, because if she hadn’t intentionally locked herself in with the giant bar fight , she wouldn’t have been attacked by a half dozen people at once and used the last of her Aura to stave off exhaustion! How did she even do that?” She whirled to Jaune with a face like she was expecting answers, and he just gave her an innocent look through a mouthful of chicken sandwich. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Brothers help us all.” 

“As much as I dislike her, Weiss, they’ve got a point. Nobody’s actually dead.” Yang spoke up from the corner, pinching the bridge of her nose. “There’s nothing to actually hide from. As soon as she has her Aura back, we should just go. We need to get to Haven, and we’re not going to do that if we sit around fighting.”

“You were just as reluctant as I was to bring her along!” “Yeah! But she’s here now, so there’s not too much to actually do about it. So just stop arguing and eat your damn leaves.” 

Weiss stared at her for a few seconds, not moving when Blake poked her with the container. “Weiss? You in there?” She waited a few seconds before throwing her hands up in exasperation, tossing the container onto the table by Weiss’s side. “No. You’re not going to start arguing over a damn salad now. We’re not doing this, we’re not doing this, we’re not doing this--” 

“I just think you’re all hungry,”  Jaune said between the last few bites of his sandwich. “I’m already feeling better, and I had like, one sandwich. We get some sleep, some breakfast, we should be perfectly fine.” 

There was a beat of silence, and team RWBY shrugged in tandem, mutters of acknowledgement filling the room. Blake sighed and grabbed her own sandwich, flopping down onto one of the beds. “I do kind of agree with Weiss, though. None of this was the best decision.”

Ruby shook her head and started talking. “Okay, guys, look, there’s a plan. Even if anybody recognizes her, don’t forget, we have our licenses. They never took us out of the system. If anybody does recognize her, we just say we’re taking her in for trial or something and that she’s too dangerous for local jails.” “You just came up with that now, didn’t you.” “Guilty as charged, Blake. Guilty as charged.” 

Yang rolled her eyes. “At least, it’s a better plan than getting into a barfight in the first hour here. Seriously, who would have come up with that?” 

Five pairs of eyes gave her a skeptical look. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” she conceded. “I would have done it too. With more explosions. I probably would have actually--hey!” She stopped and jumped up, dramatically pointing at the spot on the wall where she’d just seen a floating pair of eyes. “You don’t get to criticize me! You were the one that literally did it!” 

A quiet sigh was made by nobody visible, and the wall rippled for a moment before the pink shards of Overactive Imagination tumbled away. Neo smiled weakly as she leaned against the wall, trying to straighten herself up to hide how much she was relying on it to stay upright. Nobody bought it, and Blake didn’t miss a beat before jumping off the bed and grabbing her before she could fall over.

“I thought I told you to stay in the other room and not get up until your Aura was at full!” Ruby was borderline yelling as she leaped across the room, her Semblance flaring up the tiniest bit and leaving a handful of petals in the path of her bounding across one bed and landing next to the other. “You could have knocked yourself out by doing that! We already had to pull you out of one ditch.”

“Technically, two, if you count the entire fight as a figurative one.” Yang walked over to the bed, propping an elbow onto Ruby’s shoulder to lean on her. “I’ve gotten into bar fights before, but never when I could barely stand! I mean, what were you thinking?” Neo gave her the closest thing to an angry glare she could muster and began to sign, only for Yang to throw her hands up in surrender at the first gesture. “Hey, I never said it wasn’t fun. That’s got to be the one thing I agree with you on. I just said this one was stupid.” 

Neo’s hands were lifted to form another response, but a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye made her snap around with her hands up and catch the container Blake had just thrown at her. She instantly popped it open, her eyes going wide when she saw the greasy abomination in front of her. 

“I know how much you use your Semblance, and I don’t know how fast your Aura comes back, so I just went with the biggest option. If it’s too much, sorry, I don’t actually know what you like—“ Ruby cut herself off as Neo began to devour the burger, pausing every few seconds to avoid the egg dripping onto anything. 

“And I thought Ruby ate fast, jeez.” “She’s also probably starving, I don’t blame her.” “Has anybody else noticed we’re just standing around watching her eat a sandwich the size of her hand? Don’t we have other things to do?” 

“Right!” Blake started moving back towards the door before stopping and turning to Weiss. “Forgot we were still in Atlas. You should go and actually figure out when the next boat or airship or whatever to Argus is. We’ve all got enough Dust, right?” 

The other four nodded in turn, and Ruby raised an eyebrow at Neo as she wolfed down the burger. “Do you need any? I haven’t actually seen you use any, but I know umbrellas aren’t supposed to work like that--” Neo cut her off with a wave, shoving the last of the burger in her mouth as she quickly signed at Ruby. “She says not to worry about it, she doesn’t need any.” She nodded at Weiss, and hopped off the bed as she wiped a few crumbs off her gloves. *Now, if they can all shut up, that’d be great.*

“Whoa, whoa, bad idea. When was the last time you actually slept?” Neo shrugged in reply, and started walking towards the door, wringing the last bit of energy she could out of what had recovered of her Aura. 

She got two steps before it broke, and she fell forward with a lurch. 

“Apparently, way too long.” 

*This sucks.*

Chapter Text

*I could be done with it now.*

Neopolitan was the only person awake in either of the rooms.

The door between the two had been propped open, and she could see team RWBY sleeping through the gap. Jaune was passed out in a chair in the same room as her, presumably put there to make sure she didn’t wake up and try to do something without a functioning Aura. *Red’s orders, probably.*

She carefully removed the sheet that was covering her, sliding off the bed and shivering in the cold. Her shoes and coat were next to each other on the floor, and she slipped them both on without making a sound. Roman’s hat was on the other chair, placed on the seat instead of hanging from the side like she’d expected. What had she actually expected? 

*I didn’t want to get that sleep here of all places, and I don't plan to. Can't believe he fell for that.*

The door squeaked as she opened it, and she moved as slowly as possible, getting the gap just wide enough for her to slip through and no more to minimize the noise. The room looked like it had earlier that day, when she’d snuck in the first time. The beds were both occupied, with Blake and Yang in one and Weiss in another, and most of their hunting gear was thrown up onto one of the chairs. Ruby was in the other chair, slumped over and out cold, doing a very subpar job of keeping guard or staying awake. The desk was very different though, with everybody’s weapons all piled on it, and a few boxes full of dust and magazines to the side. Hush was next to them, the rapier within removed and set next to the canopy. Neo quietly moved over and picked both parts up, staring down at the interior mechanisms of the canopy half in the dim light. 

*Must have just been cleaning the blade.* 

She slid the two halves back together, opening the canopy and flicking it a few times to check the kinetic absorbers before closing it again. 

*I could finish this right now.*

They were all so vulnerable. No armor, no weapons, no Aura, nothing. It would be so easy to plant Hush through their jugulars, slip the point through some ribs, and leave the bloodstained sheets for the morning as she ran. 

It hadn’t even been a week, and here she was, holding their lives in her hands. So different from that night. She could almost hear the blood in their veins, alone in her awakeness. 

But she was still alone. 

*Cinder was going to leave me from day one, wasn’t she? She gave me that deal to save her own skin right then because she knew. She knew I’d win.* 

*Who abandoned who?*

Ruby was still there. Sitting in that chair, slumped over, cloak tangled up behind her as she dozed. Months, close to a year, she’d lost count after a bit, spent waiting for somebody to get payback on. The list of people had shifted, hunting for something to do, for someone, until she’d been presented a name in red. 

And here she was, at Neo’s mercy, and there was nothing to do. 

*You could have made this so much easier, Red.*

She had pulled one over them both, Cinder and Ruby. Taken the lamp and staff from both of them, for her own. Ran on down into Mantle, and then found out her gamble hadn’t paid off. 

But Cinder hadn’t gone looking for her. 

Cinder hadn’t asked her to not let herself die there, like that. 

Cinder hadn’t blindly trusted her. 

*You don’t trust your crew, but you trust your crew. They bail you out. They cover you.* 

Neo hadn’t realized she’d been raising Hush, and she dropped it to the floor with a muffled thump. The others in the room shuffled, turning over in their sleep, but none of them woke up. 

Cinder hadn’t come looking for her. Hadn’t messaged her. 

Her crew had left her. 

The realization hit almost as bad as Ambrosius’s words two days ago. Had it only been two days ago? 

*The worst days are the ones when things fall.*

She couldn’t. She could, right now, kill all of them. Remove the biggest thorn in her side, the thing that had caused all of this to go wrong. She couldn’t kill them. 

Neo fell to the floor, her back against the wall. 

She’d almost had something. Anything. 

It was all gone again. 

Her crew had abandoned her. The closest thing to him she’d had, gone. 

She couldn’t stop, but she didn’t know why she could keep going. 

She wished Ruby’s friends weren’t cowards. She wished they’d had the stomach to do everything they’d been talking about, to just leave her or kill her. She wished that she didn’t know how things really were, didn’t know that Ruby trusted her. She wished she could say any of it. 

Neo brought her head back and began to sob silently. 

*They don’t want me here.* 

*The others left me behind.*

*I lost him a year ago.*

*It’s just me on this one.*

Chapter Text

The boat wasn’t actually as bad as Neo had been expecting. 

That part was almost certainly due to Weiss actually knowing what she was doing in terms of legitimate routes of transportation, plus the fact that team RWBY+J apparently had more money on them collectively than Neo had brought on hand to Atlas. 

*Then again, I was kind of expecting Atlas to stay standing afterward, so.*

“Weiss, I just realized something you and Neopolitan might be able to agree on.” 

“And what would that be, Ruby?” Weiss turned to look at Ruby at the same time Neo did, the latter taking another sip of the coffee Jaune had handed her as they’d boarded. Considering how she hadn't slept last night, it was most definitely needed. 

“Actually, no, that joke’s pretty bad.” “Is my sister abandoning the bit? I’m almost disappointed in you, Ruby.” Yang stood up from her spot on the floor and jokingly punched Ruby in the shoulder, a smug look on her face. “Or are you too scared to make a joke in front of both Ice Queen and short, pink, and deadly over there?” 

Neo stopped mid-sip and gave Yang a confused look, matching the annoyed one on Weiss. “Hey, you didn’t kill us last night, so I’m claiming a single nickname use for every day without a direct threat on our--” She paused for a second. “Ruby, I suddenly see why you didn’t commit to the bit, this feels like a terrible idea.” 

Blake snickered from behind her magazine, the one she’d stolen from the lobby as they’d left, and Neo turned to look out the window at the early morning ocean as Yang wheeled on the Faunus. It was far too cold to go up on deck, and it would be until they were either closer to Argus or later in the day. Wandering around the passenger decks would either take her focusing a whole lot on her Semblance to keep the illusion from shattering on every little bump and jostle, which would cost Aura she still couldn’t entirely afford to lose, or run the risk of her being recognized by some hunters that would either follow through on the fake capture story or just try and grab her for themselves. That just about left her only option as stare out the window and drink coffee. 

*It’s half decent.*

*I wonder if they’re actually gutsy enough to try and poison me.*

“Jaune, what did you do to my coffee? It’s disgusting!” 

“I left the sugar out of it, I didn’t know how much you wanted!” “You know the answer, it’s six!” “A number doesn’t give an answer when I need units of measurement!” 

Yang sighed and looked at Neo with exhaustion she didn’t even try to hide. “Yes, this happens a lot. I know what you’re thinking. It’s not usually this early though. Sorry.” She did a small double take as soon as the words left her mouth, staring at the magazine for a second before looking back to Neo. “That might have been one of the weirdest things I’ve ever said.” 

“What, apologizing to the person that’s tried to kill you before?” Blake chuckled again, looking up from the magazine this time. “Tell me about it. Being in Menagerie was...wild.” A beat of silence as Yang raised her eyebrow. “No, not like that--oh, shut up. Do you know how bad that joke actually is?” 

“Do you know how much of a pun queen I actually am?” “Enough to know when good taste ends and just being mean begins.” “You MEAN to tell me those aren’t the same thing?” 

Blake sighed and looked at Neo, the exhaustion on her face worse than Yang’s. “She fought you in the train at the Breach, right?” Neo nodded. “Why didn’t you spare me from this then.” 

Neo shrugged and tapped the side of her cup for a few seconds, making a show of it, before doing her best to mime something flying with one hand full. 

“Oh, you could probably take my mom.” 

The entire cabin turned towards Yang with the same skeptical look. *Rephrase, please.*

“She wouldn’t have outed herself as the Spring Maiden that easily. You’re acting like anybody saw that coming. The Vernal thing was pretty clever.” 

Neo literally did a spit-take at that, coughing a mouthful of coffee back into the cup as the others glanced over in surprise. Ruby jumped and began to move over, but she waved the redhead off as the coughing faded before turning to Yang with an expression that looked insulted. 

“What? It was a pretty good trick.” Yang shrugged. “I never would have actually expected them to just go with a name. It sounded perfectly normal, compared to stuff like ‘Fall’ and ‘Winter’ as names.” 

Her expression changed from insulted to confused as she turned to Weiss and began signing. 

“Um, Yang, you do know that the word ‘vernal’ is just an adjective for things related to spring, right?” 

Yang blinked. “What?” 

Blake and Neo slammed their heads into the wall in perfect sync. 

*I legitimately do not understand how Raven Branwen had this child.*

Chapter Text

It wasn’t a particularly tense silence in the cabin, but it wasn’t entirely pleasant either. 

It had only taken the others leaving Blake and Neopolitan in the cabin as they went to go handle something to bring back that same sinking feeling Neo had been feeling for the last two days, now that she was awake enough to remember why she’d been awake last night. The attempt to drown it out using anybody’s leftover coffee had failed, with Ruby’s in particular nearly making her heave it back out the window from the sheer sugar levels. Blake hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared, but Neo wasn’t exactly making much noise when it happened, so she wasn’t exactly heartbroken about that part. She was just sitting on the chair, slowly sipping through the sheer blandness of Jaune’s mix to try and wash the taste out, occasionally shooting glances at Blake as the other girl read through the third magazine that day. 

She still hadn’t looked up. 

Neo let out another near-silent sigh to herself and finished the last of Jaune’s coffee, setting the cup down as she turned to look out the window. The sun was actually in the sky by now, but they were still a good twelve to fourteen hours out from Argus, for Grimm-avoidance-related reasons Neo didn’t actually know much about. Going up on deck was still probably a poor idea, even though the turbulence--was it actually turbulence on a boat?--was far more manageable and far less likely to result in the illusion breaking when everything went thirty degrees to port. She could probably get away with a little stroll, but any recognition at all would be shit when she couldn’t actually get away. 

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of something outside the cabin creaking. 

*That’s not right.*

She stifled her reaction, shooting a quick glance at Blake to gauge if she’d noticed that before turning back to the window. *Quiet. Not too quiet, but still quiet. Solitary. An accident from somebody that knows what they’re doing. Possible hallucination, though? No reaction. Maybe a trick.*

Something else creaked, a little further away, and Neo saw one of Blake’s ears twitch in the reflection on the window. She looked up from her magazine, glancing around the room before turning back to it. Neo had barely turned around when she shot up again, looking straight at Neo. 

“Did you hear that?” 

*You don’t fake that panic.*

Neo nodded, slowly, raising one hand to her lips as the other dug her scroll out of one of her coat pockets. The message was half-typed before it was even out, and Blake’s scroll buzzed with the near-silent notification a few seconds later. 

<Don’t say anything yet. They might have heard that.

>Somebody slipped up a Semblance?

<No need for quiet steps if you’re doing that. 

<Wait another minute.

The silence set back in, decidedly tense this time, as the both of them held perfectly still. Nothing drifted in under the door, no sound from the hallway. 

<Bait?

>Bait.

Blake nodded and started walking to the door, tossing the magazine onto her chair. “You wanna go see where the others are? It’s getting a little quiet in here--shit, no offense.” Neo let out a fake laugh in response, making the giggle as loud as she could as she and Blake slipped through the door and headed off down the hall. 

Or looked like it, anyway. 

Neo stopped, letting the illusion continue down the hall uninterrupted before turning it around a corner and making the two fakes lean against the wall in the same pose she was making just outside the cabin door, empty handed but ready. 

It didn’t take thirty seconds for the source of the creaking to come around the corner, and Neo definitely didn’t like it. 

*Of course it’s the fucking Fang.*

The outfit was different, a dark suit with a purple vest and tie, with the same color on the pinstriped dress pants, but the mask was definitely the same because no self-respecting terrorist would ever slack on branding. He, pretty clearly a he by Neo’s judgement, was creeping down the hall in a standard stealth approach, stepping wide around a few spots in the floor. *Sorry, buddy. You only make that mistake once.*

He stopped in front of the door, glancing around to check the hall before snapping an arm out and reaching up to the lock. Something shiny glinted in the hall lights as he reached in, and Neo smirked as the sound of shifting tumblers echoed in the otherwise silent hall. 

A sound immediately cut off by the door getting flung open in his face. 

The Fang half-stumbled, half-flew back, landing right at Neo’s feet. He pulled himself up, grimacing, something silver dancing around his hands as he pulled himself back to his full height. Neo let out another silent giggle, one she didn’t have to fake, and the Fang turned around to see the noise. She dropped the illusion around her eyes just long enough to make sure he saw them before swinging a kick into his abdomen, sending him really flying down the hall to the sound of breaking glass. 

“Nice one.” Blake’s voice grabbed Neo’s attention, and she glanced to the side just in time to see her tossing Hush through the air. The polymer met her hands before she consciously processed it, and she dropped it into a ready pose by her side the instant she caught it.

“Belladonna.” The word sounded acidic from the other end of the hall, spat out by the Fang member. Blake sighed and slid Gambol Shroud off her back, the machete-sheath in a reverse grip. “Why can’t you all just leave me alone?” 

“Do you really have the audacity to feel exhausted now? After being away from the fight, our fight, for so long?” The Fang pulled himself back, stretching his arms in a way that Neo knew meant he was about to be using them a lot more than fighting with them. “You left us to rot, Belladonna. You left us and then came back to sink the knife in right.” 

The faint sound of twisting metal met Neo’s ears, and she dodged backwards as something shattered the illusion where she just was. Blake did the same as a clone got cut to ribbons, dissipating in a cloud of black. 

“I’m going to cut you up for it. Show them we’re not dead yet.”

Chapter Text

Blake was off and down the hall before Neo.

She dashed forward, each vanishing clone behind her giving her the slightest of speed boosts, Gambol Shroud out and thrown before she’d even covered half the distance. The Fang dived to the side, yanking an arm back as he came out of the roll, and Neo felt something sharp surrounding her before the illusion shattered again and she was on the other side of Blake, flipping off the wall and over her head as Blake wrapped her arm around the ribbon and yanked. The bayonet stuck on top of the gun came flying back to her, swinging around to hit the Fang right in the back, pinging off his Aura before bouncing off a bunch of spots with nothing and returning to Blake’s grasp. 

“I know you, don’t I?” Blake dodged between flashes of silver in the air, every third one catching a shadow clone and tearing it apart as she got closer. “I’ve seen this before.” 

“You saw everything before, of course you’d think that.” He lifted himself up on nothing and pulled, flying feet-first towards Blake. She braced down, ready to dash through another broken shadow clone, only for the air in front of her to shatter as Neo batted him away with a well-timed swing of Hush. He jackknifed in midair, legs out at an angle as his torso kept moving, and Neo planted an elbow right in his sternum as his legs hit the wall. She could feel the wind she’d just knocked out of him, and he twisted, pulling himself away from the momentum-frozen position into a fighting stance with a twirl. 

As he twirled, the entire hallway looked like it shimmered, and then both of them saw it. Wires, thing and silvery, stretching and swaying in the hall. They didn’t go on forever, clumping together at his hands where he grabbed them, a few held between his teeth in a grimace, but the rest wandered through the air like they had minds of their own. 

Neo took a sharp breath in, and Blake charged. 

The wires were ripping clones to shreds as she dashed through them, occasionally battering a cluster out of the way with the sheath as she fired shots down the hall. The Fang was jerking around to dodge or destroy them, grimacing as the shattered Dust rounds painted the formerly borderline invisible strands a very clear red. It only made them easier to dodge, and Blake was doing that just fine, each clone gone granting one more burst of...she didn’t actually know, but it had to be close to sheer intangibility to get through all of that. 

The split second of bafflement at how exactly Blake was doing that was enough for the wires to wrap around Neo’s leg. She felt them bite into her Aura before feeling them on the illusion, and she shattered, appearing three feet away on the other side of the hall no worse for wear. The wires tangled as they pulled together, uselessly piling up on the ground, and she saw the flash of panic in the Fang’s grimace as he grabbed a strand with his teeth and pulled. 

*That’s disappointingly sloppy.*

Hush’s handle was around the knot fast, and Neo tugged, watching the strings flail as something else interfered with their control. The Fang slipped forward a fraction, and it was just enough of a lapse in control for Blake to finally get a shot through the web. The first round caught him off guard, and he flinched just enough for his control to slip a fraction more, just enough for the next round to get past the wires. And then the next. And then the rest of the magazine. 

His Aura flared an almost rancid shade of purple, dark and tinged with black, and Blake ejected the magazine in the same motion she hurled Gambol Shroud with. The blade went straight through the gap in the shimmering web, as unobstructed as the rounds it had just fired, and smacked him right in the diaphragm. He let out a gasp, releasing the ones held between his teeth, and half the wires in the hall went slack in the air. Blake smiled and pulled the weapon back to her, grabbing a spare magazine as the blade flew back toward her. 

Neo caught the motion out of the corner of her eye, glancing between the spinning blade and the wires, and she twirled Hush’s handle back into her grip as she dashed across the hall. She was between Blake and Gambol Shroud in a fraction of a second, and she could hear Blake start to yell something as it slammed into her. 

“Neopo--”

The shatter of Overactive Imagination cut her off, Gambol Shroud crashing through the shards of not quite glass and into Blake’s hand as Neo crashed into the Fang, shoulder first. She stopped dead in the air, and the Fang went flying back, letting go of the few wires left and crashing into the far wall. His Aura flickered one more time before breaking in a shower of purple sparks, and Blake sheathed Gambol Shroud as Neo landed on her feet with a flip. 

The huntress looked from side to side, taking in the wires all over the hall, and paused for a second before taking a breath and glancing toward Neo. “Can you not jump in front of me again? That was…why would you do that?” 

The only reply Blake received was an irritated shrug as Neo walked toward the Fang with an annoyed expression. “Fine, it’s fine. We’re just going to have to get all this cleaned up now. Where was he storing this many wires? This is kind of ridiculous.” 

Neo kicked one of the Fang’s arms, and something clicked under his sleeve. An arm-brace with a bunch of spools mounted on it slid out and onto the floor, and the wires snapped back into it the second she kicked it. Blake knelt down to examine it as she kicked the other one off his arm, hopping over it as one of the wires snapped to the side before fully retracting. 

“I think I recognize this. Flittermouse.” She turned to Neo, who was glaring at the Fang. “Don’t tell me you recognize it too.” 

Neo shook her head, miming flicking something out of her sleeve and pointing to the door without ever looking at Blake. 

“I’m gonna hope I understand you. Come on. We’ve still got a few things to ask him.” 

*Starting to get a little done with all this. Just a little. Maybe.* 

Chapter Text

“Yes, you can wake him up.”

Neo’s expression lightened a bit, and she smashed Hush into the Fang’s mask. It broke with a crack, and the pieces fell to the floor as the Fang bolted awake with a cry. 

“Fuck!” 

“Good to see you too, Naiz.” 

The Fang’s eyes were filled with enough malice to make Neo flinch, had it been directed at her. “Belladonna. Can’t even kill me right.”

“I’m not trying to kill you, I’m trying to talk to you.” Blake knelt down in front of him, a cold expression on her face. “Who else is here, Cedar?” 

“Nobody. You think any of us wanted to be on our own in Atlas?” He grunted and shuffled a bit, straining against the wires now tying his hands behind his back. “I was the only one even up in Argus when that Leviathan showed up, and it took months for me to get here. Imagine how I felt when I finally get to the continent, and Atlas falls out of the sky.” 

“You don’t seem too broken up about it.” 

Cedar scoffed. “What, do you expect sympathy from me? For them? Gods, you really must have rotted away with the humans if you think I’d feel sorry for them.” With his mask gone, Neo could clearly see the salamander scales all over his face shifting in color with his anger. “All the more reasons to kill you like the impudent brat you are.” 

He pulled against the wires again, letting out a few more grunts. “I’m disappointed, Belladonna. The fact I’m still here means you still can’t stick through anything to the end.” 

*Yeah, well, I’m with you there.*

“Then you don’t know how things really are.” Blake stood up and shook her head at him, sighing. “Cedar, I thought you actually had some sense. I hoped you would be one of the people to see how far Adam had gone.” 

“I was one of the first to throw in with him, once it was clear Sienna didn’t have what it took.” 

“Was it on the vacation to Vacuo?” “I didn’t actually know we had vacation days until he told us about that one.” “I thought so.” 

Neo’s confused expression wasn’t missed by Blake, and she turned to her with a wave of her hand. “Adam told a bunch of people that we actually had the ability to take time off without arguing under Sienna’s rules, there was this trip to Vacuo, it’s a whole story.” She looked back to Cedar. “I was hoping you hadn’t thrown in with all of them. Even when things went bad, when you were involved with Beacon, I was hoping I’d see Flittermouse out there, or Winger, Wicker Man, anything from one of you that could see past Adam. All I saw was Adam trying to kill Yang, and the Fang helping destroy my home.” She began to turn away, ignoring Cedar’s new bout of straining against the wires.

“Do you think you’re innocent? Do you think any of your friends are—“ Cedar stopped thrashing when he saw Neo. “You. Oh, you little shit! I knew you weren’t there for us, but you’re working with her now? How much is she paying you to—is the fire bitch threatening you again? Or did you just up and ditch us like the traitor here?”

Blake stopped, her eyes widening a fraction as  she turned to Neo. “You did know him.” 

Neo gestured to her face, trying to mimic a mask, and Cedar let out a quiet laugh. “The human didn’t tell you something? Figures. She never even spoke to us in Mountain Glenn.”

“We knew she was there.” The tension in Blake relaxed a little. “That’s nothing new. And you tried to kill her too.” 

“She was dressed differently the last time I saw her, and most humans look the same.” Neo tried not to scoff. “Her, less so, but still. And she wasn’t only at Mountain Glenn.” 

Like that, the tension was back. “I know she was at the meeting with the Paladins. I crashed that one.” 

“She was there way before. How do you think we got those Paladins in Vale in the first place?” 

Blake flinched the tiniest fraction and looked Neo in the eyes. “You helped Roman move them into the city?” 

Neo ignored the question and pointed at Cedar with Hush. “Yes, he’s here. Answer the question.” 

She pointed again, a little more irritation in the action this time. “I know he’s not lying. You were there, it’s a fact.” 

More pointing, with a frustrated eye roll this time. “Stop trying to deflect it on to him! I just want to know how involved you were in stealing the--” Neo grabbed Blake’s shoulder and spun her, facing her towards Cedar. 

Right as the wires snapped with a metallic twang and Flittermouse’s gauntlets began flying back towards him. 

*Dammit.*

Neo’s reaction was instant, leaping up into a spinning kick directly into Cedar’s jaw. Blake was a split second behind her, swinging Gambol Shroud down with both hands. Something cracked, and the lunge he’d begun to make after freeing his hands was reversed as he slammed back into the wall, hard. The gauntlets missed their target, sailing right past where Cedar had been and hitting the wall with an unceremonious thunk nobody heard over the rapid reintroduction of Cedar’s spine to the wall. He slumped back down, groaning, and Neo extended the blade out of Hush’s tip as she stepped over the pile of cut wires and toward him. 

He noticed. She hadn’t taken two steps before he grabbed a handful of wires and threw them at Neo, the normal edges suddenly gleaming with sharpness as they left his hand. She leaned back, dropping one hand to the ground to not fall as the wires flew over her, and pushed herself back up and swung Hush overhead in the same motion. The tip of the blade grazed his face, but his Aura remained unbroken, flimsy as it was, and he launched himself off the wall and past Neo towards where Flittermouse was lying on the ground. Blake swung Gambol Shroud around her, the ribbon pulled just short enough to let her use it in the tight quarters, but it whiffed past him as he landed, rolled, and pulled one of the gauntlets back on in one swift move. 

Neo barely had enough time to restand herself before the wires started moving again, snapping around her and into her Aura. She shattered, landing on top of one of the chairs as Blake launched off a shadow clone and next to her. 

“He’s burning Aura keeping them sharp. It’s his Semblance.” 

*Only need one hit to break what’s left.* Neo held up a finger, and Blake nodded. “Yeah. Only one hit.” 

“Chat all you want with silent treatment here, but it’ll only take me one hit, too.” The other gauntlet was on Cedar’s hand by now, and the wires in the room that hadn’t been severed were shimmering as they floated. “I’ll cut you both up. It’s a bit of a shame both your parents spoiled the child to spare the rod, but if that’s what it takes to get you back for the betrayal--” He looked down. “Are these rose petals?”

Ruby’s uppercut from out of literal nowhere knocked him towards the door, and he tried to use the wires to slow himself, only for the door to swing open and reveal Jaune with his shield already raised. The Gravity Dust fired, and he went flying back again, right into a glyph that appeared in front of the window. Yang jumped over Jaune’s shoulders, planting her feet on the shield, and the Gravity Dust fired again and launched her off as she activated her Semblance and landed a punch straight in his torso. His Aura shattered again, and he slumped, properly slipping out of consciousness this time. 

Ruby picked a wire out of her cloak and turned to Blake and Neo. “What did you guys do this time--” She got cut off when Neo pushed straight past her, the blade pushing out of Hush’s tip shining as she eyed the right spot to plunge it into Cedar. 

*Another layer on this shit cake of a week can I please just get this OVER WITH--” 

She felt something holding her arm back, half-raised to slip Hush right between Cedar’s ribs, and jerked her head around to see Ruby behind her, eyes half-concerned and half-pleading. 

“Neopolitan, don’t. Please. No more murder while we’re trying to survive.” 

There was a second of silence, and the sound of the blade retracting back inside Hush’s tip broke it. Neo yanked her arm out of Ruby’s grip and stalked off to the other side of the room, her hand tight around Hush. 

*Just fucking do it.*

Chapter Text

“Do we even have the right to give her terms?” 

Jaune’s question was half-lost in the din of the Argus square, but everybody that needed to hear it did. 

“I don’t know, honestly.” Ruby’s voice was tired, and she rubbed her eyes as the six of them made their way through the coastal city. “She just kind of…ended up with us. She never asked anything, or really even did anything.” 

“You think she’s biding her time?” “I don’t know, Jaune. Blake said she wasn’t smiling or anything, and if she wanted to, she probably could have killed both of them then. But…” she paused for a second. “You saw how she was. She’s been like that this entire time.” 

“It’s only been two days, Ruby.” Jaune glanced behind him as he said that, biting down his own disbelief at the sight of Neo dejectedly following them around like she had back on Solitas. “She could just be sad that she lost, and run off as soon as she finds somewhere to sell the relics to.” 

“You don’t think so, do you?”

He paused for a moment.

“She looks like me when it set in that she was really gone.” 

“You don’t.” “No.” 

The crowd began to thin, and Ruby saw Yang gesture to some benches near an intersection. Her, Blake, and Weiss sat down, but Neo stayed standing, leaning on Hush as the other three quietly chatted. She wasn’t looking at any of them. 

“I think she got mad when I called her Neo at the bar yesterday.” She let out a tired chuckle. “Gods, it was only yesterday.” 

“It’s been a long few days. We’re going to get through it fine.” 

“All of us?” 

“You seem to hope so.” 

Ruby sat down on the sidewalk, facing the other 4 but her eyes down to the ground. “Weiss isn’t happy. She doesn’t trust her. Yang’s willing to trust me, I think, and her saving Blake might help, but Weiss…” 

“None of them trust her. Ruby, I’m going to be honest, I don’t. And I know you’re trying to be sympathetic, but she’s not Emerald. She’s not conflicted, she didn’t come to us.” 

“Does that give us the right to just walk up to her and tell her no more murder?” 

“Do you even know how stupid that sounds?” Weiss’s voice carried as she crossed the street towards Ruby and Jaune, and Ruby sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” 

Weiss winced. “Sorry. That was rude of me.” “No, you’re right. This whole situation is weird. She should have done something by now, right?” 

“I think the bar fight counts.” “I--well, yeah, but you know what I mean. You saw her this morning. She didn’t look like she’d slept more than enough to barely get her Aura back.” 

“She didn’t shut the door, either.” 

Weiss and Ruby nodded, and Jaune kept going. “I don’t actually know that much about her, but...that seems like the type of thing somebody would do. I know that’s something you do, and I’m me. She was Torchwick’s right hand, and literally broke into the Academy and didn’t get caught until we fought her.” 

“She’s really out of it.” “Understatement of the year, Weiss.” “I think that title actually belongs to when Yang said the plan could have gone better as we were running for our lives out of Mantle.” “Yeah, fair enough.” 

Ruby let out a tired chuckle and looked back up, watching Neo as she leaned on Hush. “What are you still doing here?” she mumbled to herself. Neo looked up, and she looked away, turning to see Blake and Yang moving across the street towards her, Weiss, and Jaune. 

“I’m sure you two would love to spend all night alone on a street corner--” “Projecting again, Yang.” “--but we should probably find somewhere to stay the night. Jaune, do you think your sister would let us stay again?” 

“Eh, maybe.” He gestured to the lamp and staff on Ruby and Weiss’s hips, respectively. “We’re probably going to have to explain all those, plus where Oscar’s gone, and where Nora and Ren have gone, and where Atlas has gone, but her and Terra probably would.” 

Blake half-turned to Neo, who was slowly moving to catch up with the rest of them. “We’re still going to ask her to not kill anybody, right? I mean, I’m glad she helped deal with Cedar, but we can’t leave a trail of bodies behind.” 

Jaune’s eyes flicked over Neo for a second before looking back to the others with a hint more worry in them. “Okay, then we just stay there for a bit to call the others in Vacuo, maybe plan something out. Figure out if we want to try the train again or not.” 

RWBY immediately all shuddered in sync, and Neo looked around in confusion for a second before Jaune resumed talking. “Okay, maybe not the Limited, then. We’ll work it all out once we’re there and eat something.” 

“We need to stop getting to this city so late.” 

“That’s the least of the things we need to talk about.”

Chapter Text

The five of them were quiet in the Cotta-Arc's attic. 

Yang spoke first. 

“I still stand by what I said when we had her captured.” 

“That’s hypocritical.”

“It’s a fair perspective.” 

“It’s wrong.” Blake nearly spat the last word out, the bitterness in her voice almost physical. 

Yang folded her arms and looked at Blake with skepticism. “She’s gotten into two fights that almost got somebody killed in two days. I wasn’t that bad at Beacon.” 

“You were close, but nobody went around wondering if they should kill you.” 

“I’m with Blake.” Jaune shuffled a bit from near the trapdoor, trying to listen for any movement without being too loud. “By that logic, everybody from you to Cardin to Nora shouldn’t have made it to the second year.” 

“We can argue about who had the worst disciplinary record later,” Weiss whisper-yelled from her seat atop an old set of dressers. “The point Yang was trying to make was that getting into fights this often isn’t good.” 

“Twice in two days is bad, even for us. And that’s not counting everything before we dragged her out of Mantle.” 

“I wasn’t going to just leave her there,” Ruby muttered. 

Yang’s gaze shifted to Ruby. “Apparently you were willing to let her go when we had her captured.” 

“She didn’t kill me then, Yang, and something’s different now.” Ruby stood up, facing Yang with tired defiance. “She looked like she was ready to kill me that night, but she didn’t. And…something changed between then and the evacuation. She didn’t reply to the text, but she told us where Cinder was coming from, and she didn’t hand the lamp over, and then the whole cave thing and—“ She took a sharp breath in, cutting off the ramble, but Blake took over in a quiet voice from the corner. 

“She doesn’t even look at any of us.”

“That doesn’t change who she is.” Weiss was still whisper-yelling. “She got a lot closer to killing somebody this time. If she starts leaving trails of bodies behind, innocent bodies, then we need to do something with her.” 

Yang huffed. “Then turn her in to Vale. Most of the kingdom’s still standing.”

 “She’s broken out of Atlas before. I don’t think that would stop her.” 

“I still stand by what I said.” 

There was a moment of silence after Yang’s final statement, as everybody looked at something that wasn’t another person. 

Weiss broke the silence. 

“I stand with Yang.” 

“We don’t have the right to make that judgement.” Blake’s shadow rippled in the dim light, looking more tense than she actually did as she stared daggers at Weiss. “I’ve seen what happens when good people start judging lives. Do you want to know what happens? The Fang happens. And I’m not going to watch another family poison itself because we decided we’re the final line for who gets to live!” Her shadow flared, darkening more than the others in the room for a second before Blake stood up. “I don’t care who, but I’m not letting us make that decision.” 

“So you’re willing to let her live?” Weiss yanked herself up off the dresser, facing Blake. “Brothers only know how many people she’s killed. She almost killed Yang, almost killed Cedar, probably would have killed everybody in that bar if we had let her, and that’s already enough people to get anybody arrested before we even count what we didn’t directly see!” She swept an arm towards Jaune. “You didn’t go on a killing spree when your girlfriend died--” “Don’t do this.” “--and Neopolitan looks just as sane as you! In fact, she almost certainly is! So why are we letting her get away with such a childish, futile grudge when she’s half the reason we ended up here in the first place?!” 

There was silence for a few moments, the only sounds Weiss’s breathing from her outburst and Blake’s twitches, until Ruby stepped forward, eyes on Weiss.

“Do you know what she reminds me of?” 

Weiss shook her head, glaring. 

“She reminds me of Salem.” 

Everybody’s faces froze at once. 

“She lost somebody, and focused it all on getting him back. That moment, in Mantle, that was when it all could have gone wrong. When she could have snapped and done something that got us all wiped out. We all know what happens when we lost somebody, and I--” 

The sound of shattering glass made everybody whip around to the trapdoor, and Jaune had it yanked open in a split second. Ruby was through first in a burst of petals, glancing around in a panic as Saphron came running up the stairs. 

“Did one of you guys just jump through the window?”

Chapter Text

*That white haired bitch.*

*What the fuck does she know?*

*What the fuck do any of them know?* 

*What the fuck do I know?*

*And can this fucking lock break, gods.*

*I don’t feel guilty about this.*

*She was half the reason he even ended up on that ship.*

*Stupid god damn Glenn plan. Train robberies are such bullshit.*

*Was it technically a train robbery if we used a train as the tool?*

*It was a fucking terrorist attack, was what it was.* 

*I think that guy--yeah, he did help plan it. He should hold still.*

*Maybe not.*

*Don’t care.* 

*Brothers, those little fucking bitches. All of them. Little bitches.* 

*I don’t even feel guilty about it. I just can’t fucking touch them.* 

*They’re too scared to try me.* 

*’Oh, we can’t judge who lives and dies!’ Tell that to Atlas.*

*Red, why couldn’t you have made yourself my problem? Or made myself your problem?*

*We could’ve had a nice chat in that little void with the gold stairs and the sky blacked out--stop screaming.*

*Gods dammit, Red, why couldn’t you have just FUCKING MADE IT DIFFICULT?!*

*JUST*

*LET*

*ME*

*FUCKING*

*HURT*

*AND YOU, FIRE BITCH, YOU’RE LESS INNOCENT*

*You’re lucky I can’t touch you, right now, Cinder, or I’d peel that ghastly arm right off your stump.* 

*Not a poor idea.*

*Gods, how are you the only one I can blame?* 

*Is it so fucking hard--*

*Yes.* 

*It’s that fucking hard because it was all I had and I can’t just recenter everything with how it is now I can’t touch her my only shot was gone the one thing I had left is fucking gone and I didn’t even fucking try to reach out to them they did it first and then yanked it away like some teasing little shits STOP SCREAMING*

*Why can’t you just fucking hate me*

*I said hold still you one-eyed motherfucker. This won’t--great, you passed out. Didn’t even fucking sputter out right.* 

*Couldn’t even let me sputter out right.* 

*Gods dammit, I missed him, I miss him. I can’t stop missing him, I don’t want to miss him, I want payback for him, but it’s so far and so hard and it used to be so simple. It could just be so simple again.* 

*Why can’t you make this simple, Red?*

“Neopolitan?”

Chapter Text

Ruby had no idea where she was.

The warehouse was massive, and the only inclination that Neopolitan might have been inside was a flash of pink Ruby had seen in this direction a moment earlier. But it was close to the house, and there was another thing she’d noticed.

The lock was picked.

“Neopolitan?” 

She pushed the door open as nonthreateningly as possible, the metal barely making any noise as it opened. The entry office was empty, everything switched off, the only light the streelamps outside through the window. Ruby took a few steps inside, looking around for anything around her, one hand slowly creeping toward Crescent Rose as she pushed the door to the actual warehouse area open. 

And she immediately dropped both hands to her sides as she saw what was inside. 

There weren’t many people in the main unit. 

But there were so many of Cinder. 

She nearly tripped over one bleeding out a vein in her arm and lying unconscious in the first step, the blood rippling less than it should have as she stepped in the pooling puddle. Another lay a few feet away with bleeding lines down her back, her dress barely stained as her breaths came out in gasps. Something faintly moved in the gaps of cut skin with each breath. 

Some were barely stained with blood, only one or two clean cuts sending them barely holding on to consciousness or maybe even life, and some were absolutely drenched, patches of muscle where skin had been flayed off burning bright red against the rust brown that covered them. One stood propped up on a support pillar, Grimm arm half-peeled from her stump, the black matter hanging on by threads and dripping shadowy crimson blood into the floor. Pale bone shone sickeningly through gaps where flesh or Grimm had ripped off and left on the floor. Almost carved. 

Ruby approached the standing one with both hands empty, opening an eyelid as gingerly as she could. 

It was silver. 

“Oh, gods…”

Something shuffled at the other end of the warehouse, and Ruby almost sprinted after it.

The Cinders became less like Cinder as she ran. The hair became a fraction too long, a glint of red at the end. The cape over the Grimm arm became a cloak, said arm became a flesh one, dark flesh turning to a dark sleeve. The eyepatch vanished, or came back, a different symbol plastered on it. One eye started up glassily as Cinder bled out, dull gold, the other a shining silver. Both eyes slowly faded out into unconsciousness, a bright green with orange streaks in the hair. The wounds got better and worse, single bones poking through unblemished skin, veins cut and skin slashed but form intact and could have stood if Cinder wasn’t unconscious. Breaks, stabs, pooling blood, but no death. They were all still breathing. Still alive. 

A faint motion in the shadows grabbed Ruby’s attention, and she turned to face it, fumbling for her scroll. She brought it up with the flashlight on, and almost immediately dropped it. 

Neo was covered in blood, clothes stained, hair matted, Hush’s canopy in one hand as the blade dripped red. She was looking at Ruby, not through, at, eyes wide in fear and shock as she shuddered and her Aura flickered from the strain. She tried to take a step forward, only to fall, catching herself on both halves of Hush with heavy breaths. Ruby was under her in a second, picking her back up and trying to meet her gaze. 

“Neopolitan, are you okay?”

Neo didn’t respond as she fell again, barely getting caught by Ruby, and the smaller girl coughed up blood over Ruby’s shoulder. She didn’t bother to wonder how she pushed her Aura so far to start hurting that much. 

“No, no, no, not here.”

She tried to grab Neo’s arm and move her, but her legs gave out, and Neo fell down with a crack and a final break of her Aura. The bodies around her began to almost glitch out, shuddering in bursts of Overactive Imagination and features returned to normal, and blood started pooling around Neo. Ruby grabbed Hush and slung it over her arm before picking up Neo and moving, carrying her in her arms as she half-ran half-walked out of the warehouse. She waited until she was back outside before stopping and looking at her, grimacing at how much paler she looked. 

“Do you want to go back to the Arcs, do you have a safehouse, what do I do--”

Neo weakly nodded at the last one, reaching out and limply pointing at a street to the South. Ruby started moving, well aware of how much blood Neo was losing as she ran. Neo kept guiding her, pointing down streets before stopping at a small townhouse not far from the docks. The door was keycoded, but Neo punched it in, the last thing she did before her head lolled and she went limp. Ruby didn’t waste time in getting her onto the couch, shutting the door behind her as she fished her scroll out of a pocket and punched in Jaune’s number with bloodstained fingers. 

“Jaune? I found her.”

“Ruby? Where the hell did you go? You just ran off the second Saphron asked what happened!”

“Don’t worry about it, I need you over here now. Her Aura’s completely—just put me on speaker.” 

She heard him shuffling a bit, and then the video feed kicked in the rest of RWBY. All four of them let out a panicked gasp as Ruby’s end of the call kicked in. 

“Ruby, why are you—“

“It’s not mine, and most of it's hers. Jaune, I need you down here now, maybe Blake too. She’s hurt, and bad. Weiss, Yang, there’s a warehouse a few blocks out from the house with a picked lock. I think I saw some Fang uniforms there, but I’m not sure. I didn’t do what’s in there, but I’ll explain once you’re here.”

“If you didn’t, that means she did.” “Yang, she’s bleeding out in front of me right now! Can you please just make sure things are mostly fine over there?” 

Yang huffed and walked out of frame, with Weiss right behind, and Blake took out her own scroll as Jaune closed the call. She got the ping of her location being tracked a few seconds later, and she turned to Neo.

“Why aren’t any of them dead?”

Chapter Text

Everything came rushing back to Neo the moment she woke up. 

The IV needle in her arm, the bandages all over her, the sight of her coat and Roman’s hat covered in blood and folded on the dresser, and the fact she was in the Argus safehouse all registered in a second. She reached over and yanked the needle out, ignoring the pulsing lightness in her head, and went to kick off the blankets she hadn’t realized she’d been under. Her boots were by the foot of the bed, and she leaned over the edge to try and strap them back on. 

She froze at the sight of just how much blood was still on her pants right as Ruby opened the door. 

Neo’s head flicked up, and the two of them stared at each other for a second before Neo yanked her boots on without even bothering to properly strap them and made a lunge for Hush leaning by the door. Ruby beat her there, kicking the umbrella off to the side as she grabbed Neo’s arms. 

“Neopolitan, please, I’m trying to help you!” 

Neo ignored her, kicking out as much as she could as Ruby held her away. She tried to swing a leg up, hooking it around Ruby’s arm and breaking out of her grip as she spun. Ruby just dematerialized in a cloud of petals and grabbed her from behind, pinning her shoulders as Neo flailed and grunted. 

“Neopolitan! Stop, you’re hurt!”

*You think I don’t know that?*

Neo’s head spun around as far as she could turn it to give Ruby an angry glare, and she swung her leg back, aiming her heel for Ruby’s knee. She missed, and Ruby began dragging her back to the bed. 

“Neo! Please! I’m not going to hurt you!” 

*Well why fucking can’t you?*

She reached down and swept up Neo, barely avoiding the whirling kicks and punches as she tried to gently deposit her back on the bed. Another kick from Neo hit her in the side, bouncing off her Aura, and she grabbed Neo’s arms again. Not hard enough to hurt, just grabbing them to pull her attention back over. 

“Neo, please calm down. You got hurt last night, you were bleeding all over, and--” 

She cut herself off as she noticed the hints of tears in Neo’s eyes. 

“Neopolitan, you know I’m not going to hurt you, right?” 

Neo scowled at her, anger mixed with a bit of a sneer, and she weakly pulled against Ruby’s grip. The disdain went away as soon as Ruby let go, though, and her eyes went wide as she just stared at Ruby’s hands. 

*Why won’t she just let up on this?*

Ruby smiled, a small smile, but gentle. “I’m not going to hurt you, Neo. I told you that, in the cave. I know the others don’t trust you, but I do, and--” Neo cut her off, raising a hand and spinning it in a circle. “I know.”

The smile cracked a tiny bit. “Did you run because you thought they’d just try and kill you?” 

She shook her head, continuing the spinning motion as the hints of tears began to grow a little bigger than just hints. “So you knew they wouldn’t kill you?” 

A nod this time, and the spinning hand dropped, falling limply onto the bed as Neo tried to keep herself composed. She sniffled, her other hand reaching up to wipe her face, and she pointed at Ruby. 

“Me? Were you scared you’d kill me or something?” 

The disgust in the head shake was crystal clear even without any sound, and Neo broke her gaze again to stare at one of the bandages on her side. 

“Were you scared *I* would kill you?” 

She didn’t respond this time, just holding a hand out and gesturing with it like she was waiting for something to be put in it. “Wanted to.” 

“You wanted me to kill you?” 

Neo’s breath paused, and the hand shook, wobbling side to side like she was gesturing “So-so” before she fell forward, and Ruby had her arms on Neo’s shoulders in a second. 

“Neopolitan, I won’t kill you. I didn’t kill Torchwick, and I won’t kill you. I told you in the cave I trusted you, and that night in Mantle, I tried to convince Yang not to kill you. I--” She sighed, the noise heavy with exhaustion, but not directed at Neo. “I don’t hate you, or anything like that. You know that, right?” 

Neo pulled back, hands fumbling for her inner pockets as she tried to hold back the tears. Ruby got the message and pulled her own scroll out, opening up the word processor as she handed it to her. 

“Wish I didn’t”

“Wish you didn’t know?” 

“Known for while”

Ruby ran a hand over the side of her hair. “Can I ask how? I knew something happened between that night and when we evacuated everybody, but I wasn’t sure what. I--Neopolitan, what happened?” 

“Needed to know”

She started typing.

Chapter Text

Not long before, in a city about to crumble...

It took Neo a full minute to tear her gaze away from Roman’s hat and look back to Jinn, but she didn’t need to nod or tell her anything. 

She needed to know. 

Jinn moved her hand again, drawing Neo’s attention, and she took it, nodding. Jinn’s grip wasn’t entirely there, in a sense, and Neo felt like she was holding water, but she didn’t break grip or gaze until Jinn pulled away. Neo immediately scrambled for Hush, fumbling the rapier out, and the blade sliced into her Aura as she almost dropped it. 

*Can’t ask, just find out.*

The handle felt too loose in her trembling hands, and she wrapped a glove around the shaft as she lifted the blade and jammed it into the wall. She didn’t put any strength behind it, but the tip still pierced the wall easily, and she dragged it downward to create a line. 

She could figure out the physics of doing all this in frozen time later. She needed to know. 

Jinn watched behind her as she worked, floating in the air as Neo carved and scratched pieces out of the wall. She knew exactly what Neo was going for, but she smiled to herself, a smile of knowing something everybody else didn’t as she watched the mute girl work. 

After a few minutes of silent work, Neo turned back to Jinn, breathing a little heavier than normal. She tossed Hush’s blade over to the canopy, not watching it slow and stop in midair before it hit the ground. Jinn looked at her for a moment, then turned her gaze to the word she’d carved into the wall. The letters were jagged and sharp, all straight lines and scratches, but the word was still clear. 

“Hate.” 

Jinn said the word like she was tasting it, trying to wring a meaning out of it beyond the textbook definition. She looked back to Neo, standing there, the paths the tears had made down her face still visible. 

“You ask without asking. A dangerous game.” 

Neo didn’t move. 

“You will know.” 

The world went white for a moment, leaving just Neo and Jinn in the void, before the spirit waved a hand and everything filled in. They were in a bedroom in Schnee Manor, and Neo recognized one of the guest rooms before the talking began. The words were hushed, and Neo didn’t process them properly, but they were gentle, kind. She looked at Ruby, standing over Nora lying in bed, covered in scars Neo didn’t recognize the source of, then back to Jinn. 

“You need to know if they hate you.” 

She finally nodded. A single, short motion, eyes of two different colors locked onto Jinn’s disconnected yet pitying gaze. 

“Ruby doesn’t. RWBY doesn’t. They don’t like you, but they don’t hate you. You haven’t done close to enough to make them hate you like Cinder. She does, though.” The image shifted to Cinder and Neo in the apartment they’d been hiding in, frozen as Neo walked out the door, Cinder looking out the window with a smile on her face that made the actual Neo pause a moment. “To her, you’re a liability. She’s going to kill you. To be honest, a lot of your former associates didn’t like you.” A few images of the White Fang and Mercury flicked past before they stopped, settling on a prison cell. A very familiar prison cell. 

Neo’s breath froze at the sight of Roman, hatless and a little beat-up, sitting on the built-in bench and staring at the floor. He was shaking his head, mumbling something under his breath, but Neo only caught the words “pint-sized” and “unsubtle”. 

“Roman didn’t...quite. He thought you were too smug, second guessed him too much, were annoying and a nuisance sometimes. But he also cared about you. He respected you, for all you did, treated you as his own family, and if not for his own hubris and list for revenge, he would have ended Ruby on that ship before that Grimm found him.” The image shifted to the last confrontation, one Neo had never seen, paused the instant before the Griffon bit down on Roman. She saw his face, twisted with a combination of rage and satisfaction. And she saw Ruby’s, wracked with fear, but Neo could tell it wasn’t entirely for her own self-preservation. 

“She does not hate you.” 

The images faded, leaving them in the white void again, and Neo trembled, barely holding herself together. She began reaching up to wipe her face, before something dawned on her. 

*Roman. Dum-dum. She knows about Roman. The relics know about Roman. If they know about Roman, then Cinder’s staff thing knows about Roman, and she said it’s about creation and all that and I can*

Her breath caught in a sigh of mixed elation and sorrow, her mind blindly jumping from one plan to the next. She turned to start walking away, desperately trying to cradle the idea of a plan she’d had before it slipped away between thoughts, but Jinn speaking up again stopped her in her tracks. 

“You can change how people feel. The others. They don’t trust you, but you can make them. She wants them to.” 

“You can make things better. She wants to.” 

“They seek to use the staff to leave Atlas, and save both cities. If you wish to do anything, any sort of change, now is your chance.”

The world faded back in, time slowly speeding back to normal as Jinn faded away. Roman’s hat rolled to a stop, both halves of Hush clattered to the floor, and a cloud of dust exploded out from the wall all in the same moment, but Neo just stood there, slowly moving the lamp to her belt. 

*I can figure out a way through this. I’ll get him back.*

Jinn’s words never left her brain through the next three days.

Chapter Text

“...and I knew it’d be so much easier if you just hated me.” 

The scroll dropped from Neo’s fingers as she reached up to wipe at her eyes again, the notepad app far too full. Ruby’s eyes hadn’t left it for a word as she’d typed out what Jinn had said, Neo barely choking back tears as she described just what she’d found out. 

She’d known Ruby hadn’t hated her for the whole time. She’d cared. She’d simply wanted it to be wrong. 

Neo reached for the scroll again, her hands trembling, but Ruby gently grabbed her wrists before she could get there.

“Neopolitan.” 

She looked up, blinking as her gaze met Ruby's. 

“I don’t hate you. I never have. That night in Mantle, I meant every word I said. I saw what was going on, with his hat and why you were there, and I wanted to give you a way out.” She sighed, her gaze dropping to the floor for a second before returning to Neo. “I want you to have a way out of this. I just...I don’t want you to fight me on it.” 

The blinks paused for a second, pink and brown staring straight ahead, and it was enough time for the first tear to fall. Neo fell forward, jamming her eyes shut, and Ruby caught her, letting Neo’s head drop onto her shoulder. 

*I just wish you did it’d be so much easier I could keep using it to chase him to remember him to not have to leave him*

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay. Just...please.” Ruby’s breath caught a fraction, and she reached up and around Neo’s shoulders. “Please stop fighting this. Hatred won’t get you there. I want to help you get past this, past him, and I don’t want you in this stupid cycle forever.” 

*I know, and I know they’ll respect what you say.* 

“You can’t stay like this.” She sniffled a bit, and Neo couldn’t tell if her arm got tighter around her through her own crying. “I know what happens here. You just can’t.” 

Neo nodded, a jerky motion between gasps and sobs, her eyes still shut as she just listened. 

“Neo.” Ruby pulled Neo off her shoulder, and her eyes opened as she did. They looked exactly like they had in Mantle, when they’d all found her with the Staff. 

“You need to know this.” 

They both took a sharp breath in. 

“I want to help you. I don’t want to be your enemy anymore. I don’t care that there’s people more deserving of vengeance, or who else you need to get back at. You need to move on.” 

Neo blinked, her eyes swapping colors, and she leaned forward, landing in the exact same spot on Ruby’s shoulder as the sobs began to die down. Ruby stretched her arm up again, but froze as she felt something on her shoulder. 

The pressure was light, but it was noticeable as Neo traced something on her combat gear. 

M

I

S

S

H

I

M

Ruby smiled a bit, moving her arm all the way up to Neo’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I know the feeling.” The smile faded, and she let out a small sigh. “I know it was easier. But you need to move past it.” 

*He was the only thing I had.*

*My only friend, the only source of light in this dark, bloody world.*

*I thought you knew that, thought that what you did on the ship was intentional and aimed at me.* 

*I thought I didn’t care that they weren’t, thought that I could make them that way.* 

*I thought you just didn’t care.* 

*You don’t hate me, Red.* 

*Ruby.*

Ruby squeezed Neo’s shoulder, and the smaller girl pulled herself back again, blinking away the last few tears. 

“Did you hear me?” 

She shook her head, reaching up a hand to wipe her eyes. 

“I want to help you. Give you...anything, really. Will you let me try?” 

Neo’s eyes glanced to her coat, to Hush, to Roman’s hat, clean as ever, back to Ruby. 

She nodded. 

“Thank you.”

She leaned forward, pulled Neo into a hug. Neo returned it, limp, drained, emotionally exhausted and a little confused, but she returned it. 

*I thought I ended up with the ones that hated me most.* 

*Thought I could make that happen.*

Ruby hugged her tighter. 

*I don’t think I expected this many crew changes so fast.* 

*Then again, she wasn’t exactly going to give me a choice.* 

*Out of all the things to force herself in on…*

Neo did the same. 

*I’m not alone on this one.* 

*I didn’t exactly agree.* 

*But being with the people that hate you—you hate—most is better than nobody at all.*

*And it hurts less when you were wrong.* 

*When they don’t.*

Chapter Text

The safe house was concerningly equipped for a lot of blood loss. 

The freezer had only contained a bunch of blood bags labeled “Neo” and “Hothead”, along with a single tub of ice cream that Ruby had brought into Neo’s room after she’d stopped crying. What Ruby, Jaune, and Blake all assumed was a broom closet actually had a full IV set in it, and there was a fairly well-stocked first aid kit mounted on the wall right by the living room couch. 

Jaune was collapsed on the couch, slowly recovering from having to pour far too much Aura into Neo to bring hers back up, and Blake was slumped against the wall not too far from him. Her coat was on the coffee table, the sleeves outright drenched in blood, and she was staring at the ceiling with a vacant look. The two of them were the only ones in the living room by the door, almost too tired to enjoy the blessed silence between them. 

A silence immediately shattered when somebody knocked on the door. 

Neither of them moved. 

Somebody loudly sighed on the other side, and they knocked again, yelling through the door. “Olly olly oxen-free!” 

Blake sighed and pulled herself up, ignoring the tired and confused look on Jaune’s face as she unlocked the door and opened it. “Next time, just knock the pattern,” she mumbled. 

Yang ignored her as she pushed into the living room. “I’m gonna teach Ruby how to set up a bank account, just so she can start paying me for doing some of this.” 

“That bad, huh?” Jaune’s voice was cracked from exhaustion, and all he managed to do was raise a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “What was it actually like out there? All I saw was Neopolitan.” 

“It was bad.” Weiss shuddered a bit as she replied, and Blake shut the door behind her once she was inside. “They were all hurt…badly. But none of them died. And between that, and how it was a Fang hideout, the authorities aren’t looking too deeply into it. But they are still looking into it.” 

“Turns out, double digits in people knocked out and pints of blood spilled makes you a person of interest. Who knew?” Yang was at the kitchen table now, sitting in a chair and fuming, but her expression softened as Blake shuffled toward her. “Come on, it’s fine, you should get some sleep.” 

One of the bedroom doors swung open, and Weiss turned to see Ruby standing in it with Neo’s coat in her hands. “Yang, please don’t yell the secret code out in the middle of the street. It’s secret for a reason.” 

“Security’s important…” “Shh, it’s fine.” Blake leaned into Yang’s hair, and Ruby turned away from the two of them with a thoroughly baffled look. Weiss matched it. 

Jaune groaned and looked over at Ruby. “Why do you have her coat?” 

“Oh! Right,” she exclaimed as she unfolded the coat. “I was going to try and run this through the laundry, but I got distracted by wondering where her weird...sleeve things went, and then I realized how much blood--” 

“No, I mean, why do you have her coat?” He pulled himself upright with a grunt, eyeing the bloodstained garment. “You’re not actually serious about--”

“Yes, I am.” Her voice hardened. “We talked, and she’s going to be sticking with us for a while. I know you’re worried, but I’m telling you right now, she’s safe. For everybody.” 

Ruby’s scroll buzzed, and she took it out of her pocket. “She also wants me to tell you to keep your boots off the couch.” 

The room went silent, Jaune staring at Ruby with a look of sheer indignation, before Weiss started snickering to herself. “I’m sorry, sorry, it’s just--that’s so damn *normal* compared to the last few days, it’s--are his boots even dirty?”

Everybody looked down at Jaune’s boots at once, and he groaned as he unlaced them and tossed them to the ground by the door. “This is bullshit, you know? This is just utter bullshit. I go and burn half my Aura to save her life for the second time in two days, and what’s the first thing she does? Yell at me to get my boots off her couch. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.” 

The door behind Ruby swung open again, and Neo stuck her head out for just long enough to throw an empty bloodbag at Jaune before dipping back inside. 

“I think she also says to stop complaining.” “Oh, gee, I couldn’t tell.” 

Weiss sighed and held out her hands, and Ruby handed her Neo’s coat before going to get another bloodbag out of the freezer. “Like I was saying, I don’t know if that’s actually salvageable, because there’s a LOT of blood on there, and I don’t know if she has any spares? Weiss, you’ve washed blood out of stuff before, right?” She closed the freezer door with her foot and ran back into the bedroom, ignoring the levity draining from everybody’s faces. 

“Uh, I don’t actually know, Ruby.” Weiss leaned in to sniff the coat, and immediately recoiled once the coppery smell hit her. “Eugh. Nevermind, this is definitely ruined. I might be able to go grab a spare, or--” 

“Actually, I’ve got a bit of a plan for that.” Ruby’s head poked out the doorway. 

“How much did you have left on your card?”

Chapter Text

“I strongly disagree with all of this.” “I disagree with your disagreement.” 

Yang sighed and went back to fiddling with her arm. “Are you entirely sure it’s a good idea to leave the two of them alone, yet? Or leave anybody alone with her? Or leave her alone at all?” 

“Yang, how much of this is a grudge from that time she beat you on that train?” “None of it.” 

Weiss gave her a deadpan look. 

“Okay, maybe a quarter. But you have to agree so much of this is concerning.” 

“I can agree it’s concerning,” Weiss replied. “But I can also agree with Ruby. She’s going to be stuck with us for a while, so--” 

“That’s the thing. Why is she going to be stuck with us?” Yang’s eyes narrowed into an annoyed expression. “So Ruby can work out some weirded-out fantasy of helping a girl who can’t choose a color stick it out through missing her dead criminal boyfriend who, by the way, helped bring down Beacon and is half the reason I have this?” She gestured to her arm, flicking the elbow joint for emphasis. 

“How would you feel if Ruby died?” 

“I’d be pissed!” Yang threw herself up off the seat she was sitting on, wildly swinging her hands in the air. “I’d want to get right back at whoever did it, because she’s my sister, and apart from Dad, Qrow, and you guys, she’s all I’ve got left! And why are you even asking that question?!” 

“Because that sounds exactly like what she did.” 

Yang paused mid-motion, and Weiss ran a hand down her braid. “Ruby was...right, with the Salem metaphor. That’s what she is. She never got over Roman, never tried to move on.” The hand went through her hair again. “I’ve been...barely working out what happened with my father. Granted, I didn’t care too much for him by the end, but Jaune’s helped. He’s helping. Neopolitan never got that. Apparently, she’s been running off that anger for months now.” 

She looked at Yang. “What would you do if you found out the whole reason you thought you were still alive was just yanked out from you?” 

“You were agreeing with me fifteen hours ago.” 

“I didn’t read what she’d written on Ruby’s scroll fifteen hours ago.” 

A beat of silence, and Yang sat back down. “You want to help her?” 

Weiss sighed. “No. But I do feel bad for her, and I trust Ruby’s judgement. Especially after what I read.” 

“It could be a trick.” “What does she get out of lying to us now?” 

Yang shrugged, and the motion kicked the strength out of her argument as she collapsed even further back into the seat. “I don’t know, Weiss. You asked me what I’d do if Ruby died? I just don’t want to get there. And I don’t know how much Neopolitan’s going to bring us closer to that point.” 

“If she had wanted to, she would have. And I don’t think she does any more.” 

Yang huffed. “Alright. I’ll trust you guys with this.” 

“Thank you.” 

“But why the hell are we in Coco’s third favorite store in all of Remnant?” 

Weiss sighed again and gestured to the racks of clothes and gear around them. “This is the best place in the city to get Huntress gear, and her coat was absolutely ruined. I don’t know why Ruby didn’t just order her a new coat, if she’d let me handle it I could have one in a few hours and we’d be out by the end of the day.” 

Blake spoke up from somewhere, her voice muffled. “We can’t exactly leave, Weiss. They’re going to be looking for her. If we try and get out, they’ll notice her, and then it’s gonna be a whole mess.” She stuck her head through a rack of cloaks right next to Yang and looked around, her ears flicking in random directions. “Have any of you seen Jaune? Ruby dragged him off with Neopolitan earlier, and I’m kind of scared for what would be going on.”

“Gods, get your minds out of the gutter.” A stack of boxes of combat boots got pushed out of the way, and Jaune emerged, retying the sash around his waist. “She just needed me to compare shades of red for some reason. How does she need my help on that? She’s got at least three different shades on her, she should be able to tell which one works.” 

“She couldn’t color scheme her way out of a bag, Jaune. Remember Beacon? Her entire outfit was the same shade of red and black.” Blake sat down next to Yang, glancing around in confusion. “So if we’re all here, then where…” 

“Hey everybody!” Ruby emerged from around the corner, a smile wide on her face. “So, yeah, Neopolitan’s outfit was kind of ruined by all the blood and I figured hey, it might be a better idea for her to not be wearing the outfit she associated with the whole Roman revenge hunt, and, well, look!” She did a dramatic flourish to the corner she’d just come from, and Neo rounded the corner, uncertainty in her step. 

A full coat hung off her shoulders, a rich shade of brown with white lining on the cuffs, collar, and down the pink buttons. A white dress shirt was underneath, the collar pressed, with pink buttons and pinstripes. She tapped one of her new boots, white Huntress-style combat boots that stretched midway up her calves, matching the white slacks, on the floor to test the fit, and shrugged approvingly. The dark brown belt meshed with the coat, and a few things hung off it, some old necklaces Neo had left behind, a little charm of a pink, brown, and white tomoe, and a small ice cream keychain she’d managed to salvage from the old coat. The only thing that didn’t fit the color scheme was the gray neckerchief tied around her arm, the other thing she’d salvaged from the old outfit and technically from before. 

“Oh! One other thing.” Ruby darted back around the corner for a second and then emerged back out, holding a black fedora with a red band around it. “I didn’t throw the old one away, obviously, but it looked like it went well, and I thought you’d--” She cut herself off as Neo took it and put it on, cocking it at a slight angle. 

“Huh,” Weiss muttered. “I can live with my Lien being used like this.”

Chapter Text

Neopolitan wasn’t hating as much of this as she had expected. 

She’d had faith in her own fashion choices, even if it didn’t quite feel like the time for a rebranding, and her outfit was definitely something she liked. Ruby’s suggestion for the hat was one she hadn’t seen coming, but had to admit didn’t look bad, and Roman’s was still nearby for whatever reason she might end up needing it. Even the presence of the rest of the little gremlins wasn’t that bad, since half of them were leaving her alone and the other half were trying to piss her off as little as possible. 

What she was hating far more than expected was Jaune constantly accidentally stabbing the bloodbags with straws. 

“It’s not my fault you put them in the fridge! What do you expect when I’m tired and looking for juice boxes?” 

Weiss glared at him as Neo poured the ruined blood down the sink. “I expect you to know the difference between a fridge and a freezer, and to not make the same mistake two days in a row. Three if you count that night.” “I had just used up seventy percent of my Aura what do you WANT from me woman?” 

“Preferably not that! This is the third time you’ve spilled something on the rug, and we might end up needing those blood bags.” Weiss turned to face Neo, who had just dropped the empty bag into the trash. “Neopolitan, what’s your--did you just throw a used bloodbag in the normal trash?” 

Neo shrugged. “Do you not have some sort of biohazard disposal system around here?” 

The assassin rolled her eyes and let out a silent sigh before raising a hand, letting the pink light of her raw Aura shine across it for a second before dropping it. Weiss opened her mouth for a few seconds before speaking again. “You know what, that’s fair. I didn’t know if he actually had Aura or not from when we were fighting.” 

Jaune poked his head over Weiss’s shoulder. “Did he really not have any Aura? I feel kinda bad for showing up at Beacon like--ow!” He doubled over as Weiss elbowed him right in the gut, looking very annoyed as she did. 

“I’m still angry you keep spilling blood on this rug. It’s a very nice rug.” “It’s not even yours why do you care?” “Force of habit. I can still respect things, and besides, blood is probably really difficult to get out of any type of carpet.” 

*It’s really not.* Neo’s expression was deadpan as she shook her head, and Weiss got the message immediately. “I feel like I should be concerned you know that.” 

She just raised an eyebrow in response. 

“You know, I did call you a criminal the first time we technically met, I really shouldn’t be surprised you know that.” 

Neo smiled and tilted her head in acceptance before turning to check the freezer, making sure Jaune hadn’t broken any more bloodbags in the last fifteen seconds, only for the door to one of the bedrooms to slam open immediately. 

“Hey, have any of you guys seen Blake or Yang? They said they were going somewhere a little while ago, but they didn’t say where, and Yang’s scroll is still here.” 

Weiss turned to face Ruby, standing in the doorway with her gear half on. “Is it possible she just forgot it? We should get food to last more than a few days, since we don’t know when they’ll stop looking for her, and we might need that blood.” She began to glare at Jaune with the last few words, and he didn’t even reply, just raising his hands in surrender and walking over to the couch. “I think I saw them go into the basement,” he commented over his shoulder. “Could be wrong, though.” 

Ruby raised a hand to her chin. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would they be in the basement? There’s nothing interesting down there apart from the closet with all the foam.” 

Neo raised her scroll. “Soundproof room. Integral part of all our safe houses.”

Ruby just kind of blinked at her. “Why do you have a soundproof closet with no windows and a door locked from the inside in your basement?” 

“I get bored between jobs sometimes.”

The redhead decided to ignore the ominousness of that statement and turned to the other two. “But what would they be doing down there in a soundproof room?” 

All four of them were silent for a few seconds, just staring at each other, only for Neo to facepalm after a few seconds. 

“What?” 

“It takes days to get the smell out of there.”

Chapter Text

It wasn’t much later that night when Neo got a message. 

>Weiss. Meet me on the roof in ten minutes. We need to talk. 

She was there in two with Hush in her hand. 

Weiss was sitting on top of the safehouse’s chimney, Myrtenaster on her waist. She looked up at the sound of Neo’s steps on the roof, nodding at the other girl. 

“Sorry for the message. I didn’t want to be rude, so I just tried to keep it concise.” 

For the second time in two hours, Neo leveled a look of deadpan skepticism at Weiss. 

“Yes, yes, I know. I--look.” She stood up and looked at the moon, perfectly balanced on the townhouse’s roofing. “This whole situation has been...absurd. You were a complete unknown for months, we didn’t even know if you were still a factor, and then you suddenly show up on what had to be one of the worst nights of our lives trying to steal the lamp. And then the next morning you’re just gone.” She shrugged to nobody in particular, gaze not leaving the moon. “Everything went wrong, and...none of what happened in Atlas was what we wanted. None of it. But it was all going so wrong so fast, we didn’t know who or what to trust, so when the next time I saw you was you picking the Staff off my belt, I was pretty sure I couldn’t trust you.” 

Weiss looked away from the moon, staring down at the roof in front of her. “But then the last five days happened, and I didn’t know where to go. On one hand, you were a clearly dangerous criminal, but on the other, Ruby wanted to help. We argued about that after we found out you were gone, that night in Mantle. Why she’d let you go.” 

She turned to face Neo. “Ruby wants us to trust you. You...I don’t know what you want. I want to trust you, and I almost think I want to help you, after seeing what you told Ruby, but I care about this team like it’s my family, I’m scared.” 

Neo didn’t flinch at the blatant admission. *So this is what this is going to be like.*

“I don’t want to insult or hurt you, but I just want to do something to see if that fear is wrong.” 

Myrtenaster came off her hip with a quiet click, and she tapped it against the roofing. “Are you familiar with the rules of a duel?” 

Neo hesitated a second before cautiously nodding. *She can’t be serious.*

“Hurting you really isn’t my intention. I just feel like I need to do this to feel safer. So I can feel like my team is safe. I understand if this is rude to you, or it feels like I don’t believe you, but all I ask is a simple request.” 

*Gods, she’s like Red.*

*This is absolutely absurd. They’ve all got to be utterly screwed up in the head. Maybe it’s some Atlesian honor bullshit she hasn’t broken off.*

“Please.” Weiss’s voice wasn’t as steady as she had been aiming for. 

*Fuck.*

Hush’s canopy was slid off and set on the ledge Neo had climbed up on as she walked to the opposite end of the room from Weiss, dropping it down to match her stance. 

“Defeat or to the edge. No Semblances. Aura drops count.” She nodded at the terms, gaze locked in Weiss’s as her grip on Hush’s blade twitched just outside of standard stabbing. 

*Usually loyalty tests are a lot more painful.*

Weiss moved first, bringing Myrtenaster up in front of her face before dropping it into a feint lunge. Neo pushed it up and away in a second, letting the trick play out as Weiss swung Myrtenaster around to her open side. It got close before Hush’s blade intercepted it, and Neo forced it outwards as she slipped past Weiss, just brushing her back with the tip of the blade before slipping back into a ready stance. Weiss spun around, letting out a quick nod of acknowledgement at the hit before launching into a flurry of swipes. Neo blocked all of them, pushing the last one aside in a textbook riposte and swinging the blade up at her face. The blow glanced off Aura right above her eye, but it was still enough to send Weiss backwards, plunging Myrtenaster’s tip into the roof to stop her slide. 

Neo cocked an eyebrow, and Weiss shrugged. “Nobody sees the roof, anyway. I think you might have taken off a lot more Aura than you meant to, though.” 

She paused for a second. “Your weapon’s meant to fight Hunters, isn’t it?” 

In response, Neo flickered her Aura across her hand for a second. “Just Aura users. That makes sense.” *If she thinks I’m gonna tell her the precious backstory, she’s wrong.*

“What’s its name?” 

That got Neo’s attention, and she tilted her head in confusion. “I’m sure you already know the names of all of ours. What’s yours?” 

Neo paused this time, running through the reasons why Weiss would ask, but she caught the other girl’s confusion. “We can finish the duel some other time. I just want to know what it’s called.” Proving the point, she gently walked over the roof and picked up the canopy, tossing it to Neo. She caught it and slid the blade back in, staring at it for a moment before looking back up and Weiss and signing four letters at her. 

“Hush.” She chuckled to herself a little. “I like it. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a weapon with a simple name like that. It’s unique.” 

Weiss smiled at her, one without paranoia. “Do you like the quiet, or is it just a name?” 

Neo flashed a few signs back. “No. Not just a name. Never is.”

“I know.” 

“Thank you, Neopolitan.” She let out a sigh. “I needed this. Thank you.” 

Neo didn’t follow her as she climbed back down inside.

*They really are all as insane as Red.*

Chapter Text

“Yang, do you take constructive criticism?” “No.” “This plan fucking sucks.”

Bumblebee Version 2 let out a rev, filling the safehouse’s open garage, and Yang flipped Blake off. “This plan is gods damn perfect, and frankly, miles better than taking that train again.” 

“It also leaves us completely vulnerable to Grimm, which there will be a ton of if the relics keep attracting all of them. And the last time we tried hiking through the cold part of Mistral, we found Brunswick. Does anybody here think that was fun?” 

Jaune glanced over in confusion as Blake shuddered, but Ruby just stared at the ground for a second in thought before responding. “I learned how to use my eyes there, so it wasn’t all bad.” She turned to Neo. “Brunswick Farms wouldn’t be related to Roman Torchwick, would it?” 

Neo shook her head before flashing a few quick signs at her, hoping the few attempted lessons they’d had over the last few days had paid off. *He got that a lot.*

They had, but Ruby’s nod of acknowledgement was cut off as she snapped her gaze down to her ringing scroll. She answered the call, setting it to speaker. “Yeah, Weiss?” 

“The train’s not an option.” Weiss hadn’t turned the camera on, but her exhaustion was still clear in her voice. “Argus Limited hasn’t been running to Argus since the whale showed up. It’s barely gone into any of the villages in the mountains. If we want to take it to Haven, we’re going to need to catch it down there, which means we’ll need to go with Yang’s zombie bike plan to get there.” 

“Hey!” Yang revved Bumblebee again, ignoring the water that came out of the tailpipe. “I did not spend 48 straight hours restoring my waterlogged beloved for you to call it a zombie bike. This thing is a work of art.” 

“A work of art that kept me awake for thirty of those hours.” “It’s Bumblebee! I literally care about this more than I care about my arm.” 

“Yang, we can’t get replacement arms any more.” “I care about this as much as I care about my arm.” 

“Regardless,” Weiss snapped from the scroll, “We have a while to go. Thanks to Amity being back up, I can tell where we need to go, but it was a few days of driving out. I’d advise packing for a week. Probably more, knowing our luck.” 

“I mean, we don’t have Uncle Qrow with us, so it might be easier this time?” Ruby sounded like she barely believed herself, and Neo rolled her eyes before poking her in the shoulder and gesturing to everybody in the room, holding up six fingers, then pointing and Bumblebee and holding up two. 

“We had a trailer last time we came here. Jaune, do you think you can ask your sister for one?”

“Another sacrifice from the Arcs to the cause, I guess.” Jaune let out a sigh, but the humor in his tone was clear. “Weiss, you want me to grab you some coffee when I go to ask them?”

“I’ve spent all morning asking every official terminal I can and trying to fall for every ‘scam the rich girl’ ticket scalper and have come up empty. Yes please. I’ll meet you at your sister’s house.” Weiss closed the call, and Jaune was out the door before anybody could give him a weird look. 

“On a different note…” Yang kicked something back into Bumblebee by the throttle and looked up at Ruby. “Any news from Vacuo? I’ve kind of been in the garage for two days.” 

“Ozpin said that no news is good news, and I think he’s right there.” She shrugged. “Salem hasn’t made a move yet, so they’ve been trying to fit all the refugees in. Emerald apparently thinks that Mercury’s gone rogue, because she got some weird texts, and she’s been trying to find him. Oh, also, apparently Maidens can generate air bubbles around them with the weather control thing.” 

“Penny found that out when she flew up to see Pietro, didn’t she.” “She forgot she needs air now, yes.” 

Blake chuckled and hopped onto Bumblebee’s rear seat, leaning against Yang as she fiddled with something under the handlebars. She didn’t say anything, just leaning there, and Ruby smiled before leaning to the side herself and propping an elbow up on Neo’s shoulder. 

She was on the floor in three seconds flat, groaning as Neo walked away and into the house. 

Yang tried to stifle a laugh as she looked at Ruby. “You of all people should know not to annoy short people.” “She’s tiny, I had to!”

Chapter Text

The road out of Argus was just as empty as four of them remembered. 

Bumblebee Version 2 rumbled along, kicking up gravel and dirt into the undercarriage of the trailer hitched onto the back. Ruby was perched on the back of the bike, Crescent Rose folded up and ready to fire, watching their back as Yang kept them moving as fast as she was willing to go on the just-rebuilt bike. 

*This is boring as shit.* 

The ride was driving home to Neo just what she had gotten into. She’d only sort of agreed with Ruby on accident, having been literally dragged out of Mantle as it fell, and now was stuck with them for the foreseeable future because what, exactly, else was she going to do. 

That didn’t make this any less boring, though. 

*Gods, I wish I still had my headphones.* 

The trailer bumped on a rock, and Neo shuffled from her position on the floor, pulling her new hat over to better block out the sun. Hush was functioning as a pretty decent pillow, the kinetic absorbers reducing how much her head bumped in spite of the horizontal and less than optimal placement, but the sheer boredom was somehow too much for her to properly sleep. Probably instincts from survival among people that didn’t exactly like you. Sure, Weiss was definitely as insane as Ruby, and way too honorable to be in any line of business but this Hunter shit, but Yang was still definitely suspicious of her, and Blake and Jaune were probably in the middle ground. 

*When did I lose those headphones?* 

*Oh, right, fucking Vale.*  

The sound of a bird cawing nearby made Yang slow for a second, obviously thinking it was Qrow for a bit, and Neo got a flashback to all the time spent waiting in the apartment and the Monstra in Atlas. Only this time the company was more annoying in the opposite direction, but also less likely to stab her. 

It was also less likely to give her a chance to steal something. 

She let out a sigh and tilted her hat back enough to see, digging her scroll out of her coat and starting typing. Yang’s scroll buzzed a second later, and she slowed to a stop as she pulled it out. 

<Does this road have a speed limit?

 

Yang whipped around to glare at Neo over Ruby’s shoulder. “Why are you messaging me while I’m trying to drive?” 

Neo waved her hands at her like she was punctuating a question. 

“No, it doesn’t have a speed limit. Nowhere outside the cities has speed limits.” She rolled her eyes and turned back to the handlebars, kicking Bumblebee into gear before her scroll buzzed again. 

<Then why are you going so slow?

“We have a damn trailer on the back! Do you want me to crash this thing?” 

“Yang, calm down! You’re going to drag something in.” “Not while this little shit keeps distracting me while I’m trying to drive!” 

Ruby knocked the butt of Crescent Rose into Yang’s shoulder in response, glaring at her. “You know you’re not supposed to get angry about this.” 

“Why, because you want to protect her?” Yang threw her arms up in the air. “Am I the only person that remembers that we never actually asked her to come along on this? She’s just tagged along!” 

“We spent four days in her house, Yang, and you’re just tired. So please calm down before—“ “Before what, Ruby? You hit me again for being mad at the sad new girl?” 

“No—“ A howl cut through the air, and all of them sighed. “Before you do that.” 

*Damn, they were on us fast. Talk about shit luck.* 

*Are we sure the alcoholic isn’t following us?*

Chapter Text

Yang had in fact been willing to go fast. 

It just took the threat of imminent death to do it. 

Any anger aimed at Ruby or Neo in her instantly vanished as she revved Bumblebee and pushed the throttle down, jerking the trailer as it took off down the road. Ruby held on best she could with her legs as she scanned the trees, Blake trying to do the same as she pulled herself to her feet and snapped Gambol Shroud into the ballistic variation. Weiss and Jaune were slowly readying themselves for a close-up fight, Weiss preparing a summoning glyph in her hand, and Neo was just kind of standing there with Hush in hand. 

*I’m suddenly realizing how shit I am at this part.* 

Crescent Rose roared behind her, a round flying past and literally vaporizing a Beowolf that leapt off a tree, and Yang pushed the throttle down even further as Ruby racked the next round. “Go faster!” “Already trying!” 

Another Beowolf jumped into the road in front of them, and Yang blasted an Ember Celica shot through it before kicking Bumblebee down another gear. “How many are we dealing with?” 

An Ursa got torn apart mid-roar, and Ruby counted to herself as she looked around. “A lot. Confirm at least two dozen.” “And we’re only going to get more, huh? Just our damn luck!” Ember Celica auto-loaded a high yield shot, and Yang twisted around to fire it behind her. The explosion tore through the growing pack of Grimm behind them, sending disintegrating bodies flying, and the servos in Yang’s arm flexed and recalibrated themselves as she kept moving. “How long to the nearest town?” 

“The rest of the day, at least!” Weiss reached for her scroll as she ducked down, pulling up the map. “It’s hours out, and I don’t want to lead whatever horde we’re dealing with by then to a town that might not be able to take it!” 

“Right, because we already hit our quota for that!” Another Ursa lunged for the bike, and Yang swerved to avoid it, sending everybody stumbling as she fired right into it and recentered Bumblebee. “So we deal with the horde now, how, exactly? They’re gonna get to the trailer at some point.” 

“Thanks for the reminder of my own mortality!” Jaune shouted as he swung Crocea Mors clean through an Ursa that was far too close. “All I know is, I’m really wishing Ren was here right now--oh gods!” Yang swerved again, and Jaune stumbled to the floor, barely bringing his shield up in time to stop a Beowolf lunging for his head. The Gravity Dust kicked in, and it flew back, claws digging into the ground as it chased after the trailer. 

And then immediately veered to the side after a flash of pink shaped like the trailer slammed into a tree. 

And then the entire rest of the pack followed. 

*Damn do I wish I could have done this in Vale.*

The illusion of the crashed trailer shattered at first touch, and Neo sent another in the opposite direction. She flashed a few signs at Weiss with her free hand, hoping she got the message, and pulled Jaune back to his feet with Hush’s handle in the other. 

Weiss did, in fact, get the message. “She says it won’t fool them forever, and she can’t even do it forever. We’ve got a window to plan.” 

“If we stop, Bumblebee is going to get fucked up, and I just fixed this thing.” “If we don’t stop, they won’t stop chasing us, and I’m not going to run out of ammo.” 

Gambol Shroud clicked empty as if to agree with Blake, and she threw the empty magazine into the eye of a slightly more intelligent Ursa before reloading. It barely stumbled, and she swung the cleaver-sheath straight through its skull before looking back at Yang and Ruby. “Case in point.” 

“Weiss, is there a clearing coming up?” “Nope. But Yang’s right. Unless we have some sort of really useful plan, we’re screwed.” 

Weiss’s scroll buzzed, and she glanced down at it, suddenly confused. “Why are you sending me a picture of a bottle of whiskey right now? We’re not making firebombs!” 

*You know how to make firebombs?* Neo shook her head and pointed at the label on the picture, then to Yang. 

“I--what? What are you OH fireball. Of course.” She glanced up and Ruby, who nodded and immediately turned to Yang. “Hey, Yang? What would happen if you punched the ground?” 

Yang’s eyes literally lit up, and she planted a foot in the ground and spun Bumblebee around. Neo was on the same wavelength, and she lunged for the coupling, popping out Hush’s blade and plunging it into the coupling. The metal came apart as Yang pulled away, and the trailer spun out to a stop just short of a tree as Ruby dashed after Yang. 

“Getting real sick of this shit!” The brakes on Bumblebee screamed as it slammed to a stop, and Yang let go, flying straight off the bike and into the center of the horde. Her hair ignited behind her as her Semblance flared, and she reared her arm back, servos kicking into overdrive as Ember Celica reloaded itself and fired, sending her flying down to the ground even faster. 

“Now take my advice, and fuck OFF!” 

She hit the ground fist-first, and stayed there for a second, the counter-force keeping her up in the air as the combined impact of metal muscle, high-power rounds, and Aura converted straight into kinetic energy slammed into the ground. 

The Grimm that didn’t survive the shockwave burned in an instant, the sheer force rending them apart. The ones that did went flying through the air, Ruby weaving between them, jumping out of her Semblance long enough to send a fully extended Crescent Rose through them before weaving through the smoke to the next one. The ones that survived that somehow just landed on trees hard enough to splinter wood and bone. 

“Huh. I should do that more often.” 

*Fuck, physics is terrifying.*

Chapter Text

Neopolitan was really suspicious of taking another walk.

Considering the last one had ended in an almost-murder bender, and the one before that had led to a relic-stealing stunt, she wasn’t having the best time with them lately. 

She decided to keep it close to the hotel. 

The town was on the smaller side, one close enough to Argus to have afforded to build up instead of out. The roads were paved, the streetlights were the same nice orange they were in Mantle and Argus, and the Mistral nights weren’t as chilly as the Atlas ones, so it was actually kind of pleasant to just go on a little jaunt. 

She left the coat in her room, much more willing to be too cold than too hot, but Hush stayed in her hand as she strolled through the streets. The novelty of finally being somewhere new wasn’t something Neo wanted to waste, and a walk through somewhere she didn’t recognize would have been perfect for taking her mind off of just about anything. 

It was a pretty place to be. There wasn’t going to be anybody else really out and about this late, but there were still far more lights on in here than there had been in Atlas. More people, still scared of watching the kingdom fall, but Ruby had become a bit of a celebrity lately, and just seeing her around and alive probably made people feel a little better. It honestly didn’t matter all that much to Neo, but it did mean they’d gotten the rooms for cheap enough that she’d been able to excuse not running a scam for them out of boredom. 

The smell of something sweet grabbed her attention, and she turned down a side street to find a cafe still open at this time of night for some reason, open-fronted with tables on the sidewalk and some tasty looking pastries on display on the counter. 

*Holy shit this is the coziest thing I’ve seen in like two months.*

There wasn’t really a door to slip through, so she just strode past the tables and dropped a card on the counter, pointing at a cinnamon roll with way too much icing on it with a polite smile. The cashier gave a tired smirk in return and took the card, handing her two of the buns. Neo just nodded as she took them and cradled them under her free arm, smiling as she headed back to one of the tables out on the sidewalk. 

She was halfway through the first one when she heard the steps on the pavement behind her. 

The stride pattern was unfamiliar, but not entirely so, so she wagered it was somebody from RWBY+J doing the same thing she was. 

The soft sound of moving servos was definitely familiar, and she turned around mid-bite to see Yang standing in the street. 

*Shit, Blondie.*

“Can I sit?” She pointed at the chair opposite the table from Neo, and immediately went to sit in it once Neo nodded. There wasn’t a lot of hostility on the surface of her movements, but she looked at everything around them for a solid minute before actually turning her eyes to Neo. 

“Look, I…” She sighed to herself. “I’m sorry for snapping at you on the bike earlier. I haven’t gotten any sleep the last few days, and I wanted to say sorry for it before I crashed and forgot about it.” 

Neo glanced from side to side for a second, trying to hide the confusion on her face, and Yang made a motion to start getting up before she stopped and let out another sigh, much more defeated sounding from the last. 

“Okay, no that’s...that’s not it. Can I--can I be honest with you for a second?” 

Neo slowly nodded, caution filling the motion. 

“I’ve been mad at you.” 

She just dropped the bun back down on the table and gave Yang the strongest deadpan look she could at that. *Noooooo.*

“Okay, yeah, you could tell, but--fuck, I’ve got to be way too tired to be doing this.” Yang leaned back in her chair and chuckled a little. “That, or Ruby’s better at convincing me of things than I thought.” 

Neo’s head tilted in confusion, and Yang noticed. “Talking to you before I slept was her idea. She was kind of right.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned, screwing her eyes shut. “Gods, how did I get here?” 

A quiet giggle, and she looked up to see Neo looking smug as ever. “Oh, don’t be like that. Every time you do that, it makes me want to punch you as payback for the train. And I haven’t forgotten the fact that you used to work for Roman, and he’s half the reason Beacon fell.” 

Neo tensed, reaching for her scroll for a reply, but Yang cut her off with a deep breath and raised her hands in surrender. “Sorry, I snapped again. I’m tired. Just...I’m mad at you. For everything. But I also know you didn’t really have much of a choice, with Cinder holding you guys at gunpoint. I definitely won’t be able to forgive you,” she said as she rapped the prosthetic’s knuckles on the table, “but we’re in this together now, and fuck if either of us can afford to be pissed at each other when the world’s on the line.” 

“I don’t think I can ask if we’re good, so, are you good?” 

Neo nodded and smiled, tamping down the smugness on this one, and pushed the untouched pastry towards Yang. 

“I’m trying to get to sleep soon, remember? I’ll pass, but thanks.” She laughed to herself a little. “How did we get here?” 

They both shrugged in sync, and Yang stood up to go. 

“If you’re not gonna eat that, Ruby might like it.” 

*Maybe.*

Chapter Text

It took them another three days of travel to make it to a town with the rail line. 

That included two days of camping. 

And several consecutive relic-bait-induced Grimm attacks. 

It was starting to get annoying. 

“I swear to the gods, if we need to spend any more time waiting around--” “Jaune, you’re nice and I understand what you’re saying, but I will hit you if you keep this up.” 

“We’re not going to be doing any more waiting.” Ruby literally pried Jaune and Weiss away from each other. “Yang went to go get the tickets, and the train leaves in a few hours. We’ll be on it by the time the sun goes down.”

“No I didn’t.” Yang spoke up, and Ruby whipped around in shock. “Wait, what?” 

“I didn’t.” She took a bite of an apple. “I just saw a produce stand. Was a little hungry.” 

“But I thought I saw you--you went there!” Ruby pointed at the train station, which was currently bustling with people trying to get the last few tickets on the Argus Limited before it started the journey back to Haven. 

“Nope.” Yang jutted a thumb over her shoulder. “I went that way. This is a really good apple, by the way.” 

“Wait, then who--” Blake glanced between Yang and the station. “Wh--when--who went to go get the tickets?” 

Her ears twitched, and she took a sharp breath as she looked back up at the station. “You!” 

Everybody else spun around to see Neo standing on the front steps, several tickets bunched up in her hand, and a very guilty look on her face. It was honestly a little adorable.

*Shitbiscuits.*

No it wasn’t. Ruby slapped herself and threw out her hands in exasperation. “What are you doing?! Why did you just pretend to be Yang and walk off to go get tickets?” 

Neo just kind of stood there for a few moments before slowly extending the hand with the tickets towards them. 

“No, I know you went to go get the tickets, I mean why did you pretend to be Yang?” 

She did a few quick signs with her free hand, sliding Hush's handle over her forearm. 

“I don’t think stealth is an appropriate excuse--oh no.” Weiss sighed and shook her head at the ground. “Neopolitan, did you steal those tickets?” 

She just shook the tickets at them. 

“Neo, you can’t just take people’s tickets.” Yang walked up to her and took them out of her hand. “If you’re going to be with us, we need to keep things legal ooh these are first class tickets!” 

“Yang! They’re stolen!” “Hmm?” “We--never mind.” Ruby let out a sigh of defeat and facepalmed. “We can’t use these! Somebody else paid for them. Huntresses--” “And Huntsmen!” “--and Huntsmen, yes, Jaune, we don’t take from the innocent.” 

There was a solid five seconds of silence as everybody tried to determine if being paid for hunting missions counted as that since they were mostly government-sanctioned, and then a collective shrug as they all discarded the thought. Mostly collective. Yang kept staring at nothing for a few seconds before glancing at Neo and gasping. 

“She’s not a Huntress.”

“She stole the tickets.” 

“She obtained tickets somehow. We have no way of knowing if she stole them or not. In fact, I’d say this is actually a big step up for her, doing something that’s beneficial for others. Wouldn’t you agree?” Yang gave Neo the most professional look she could muster, and the shorter girl just tried to hide every expression she could. 

Ruby actively fought back the temptation to ignore the sarcasm for several reasons before responding. “Guys, help me out--” She turned to look at the other three, only to find them staring at various lampposts and cracks in the pavement on the street. “I’m not winning this argument, am I?” 

“Nope.” Yang smiled and mashed the tickets into Ruby’s hand. “Now let’s go get on the train. It’s gonna take a bunch of time to get Bumblebee on there, and I don’t wanna miss it like we almost did last time. Plus, we’re gonna have to insulate the relics, and I need to call Oscar for that--” 

“Me and Jaune can handle it, Yang. Don’t worry.” The older sibling just nodded, smiled, and walked off, grabbing Blake’s arm as she did. Jaune, Weiss, and Neo all followed close behind, but Ruby caught up to Neo before they got too far away. 

“I know Yang was messing around, but she was kind of right. I don’t entirely agree with it, but thank you for doing something to help us. Really.” 

Neo didn’t sign back, just nodding with a smile as Ruby nudged her. “Just don’t do it again, okay?” 

This time she did sign back. *No promises.*

Ruby laughed at that, then immediately bit it down. “You’re going to have to.” 

*Red, seriously, no promises, this is my version of you hunting Grimm. It’s far better than the other option.*

Chapter Text

*Oh, shit, this was NOT my best decision.*

*No, no, the tickets were a great call, I’m not fuckin going coach anywhere for another year after this. Spent way too long in fuckin Spider-land for any of that shit. Absolutely nasty. Malachite has no taste.*

“Neopolitan? Where exactly did you get that?”

*Fuckity fuck fuck shit fuck.* 

“Ooh, can I have some?” 

“You’re a terrible older sister.” *What ice bitch said.*

*Damn, though. This is some wack shit. I honestly don’t know how on earth they serve this in first class.*

*They should have some standards at least, nobody in Vale would have this.*

“Ruby? How did this get here? Did Qrow accidentally leave something in our bags?” 

“What are you talking about--oh no.” 

*This shit is definitely not his. You guys have smelled his, it’s so much wooooooorse.*

*Oh, shit, lucidity.*

“Yang, this was a very poor decision.” 

“Vomit Boy, I’m pretty sure we’re all legally allowed to do this. Including Neo. Right?” 

*I am short it does not matter how old I AM as long as I LOOK like a small child.* 

*I really wish that shop actually had heels I don’t wanna be shorter than Red.*

“Neo, really, you should stop. I’m pretty sure that--oh gods, how many did you have?” 

“This is almost empty! We’ve barely been here for an hour!” 

“It is a really long ride.” “Blake, you weren’t on it for half the ride?” “Yeah, but I talked to Jaune. Right?” 

“Hmm? What? Sorry, I was just...taking in everything.” 

*Holy shit, how were they the team that everybody was worried about.*

“Okay, well--somebody should be on lookout or something. We could get in trouble for this.” 

“We’re officially licensed hunters, Rubes, I thinwegon be fine.” 

“Yang, please tell me you didn’t.”

*Oh my god she did, that’s fuckin hilarious, I was saving that one for me.*

“How are you already--Yang, you’re literally the biggest. You went to Junior’s every other week in Beacon!” 

“Yeah, but this is some wild shit. You want some, Blakey?” 

*Oh fuck she’s getting the pet names out I need to move.*

“Woah, Neo--Neo! Don’t! You are not in the state for this.” 

*And she is?*

“I am perfectly FINE--” “You’re not, Yang. Blake, can you please stop her?” “Already trying. I’m trying to stop the jokes before they get bad.”

“So, uh, Weiss, should we get out of here? I don’t know if this is a good idea--” “Jaune, I’ve spent two weeks sleeping in random places and on the run. Every single one of those days after Amity has been with the fear of being caught, hunted, or something worse having happened. Plus, I recognize the people Neo took the tickets from, and they’re all assholes. And going to Mistral is something you should never do if you’re an asshole.” 

“Thank brothers Ren and Nora didn’t hear you say that.” 

*No, no, the ice lady has a point, this place is fuckin CRAWLING with people that are gonna steal your shit if they think you’re an ass. Bit of a miracle the whole “arresting Big Schnee” thing was one of the big things to get around. I’m not saving her from all the pickpockets.* 

*Was that sarcasm? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck I definitely should not have had that much.*

*I wish people could hear my jokes.*

“Okay, Neo, just try and sit down, have you tried using your Aura to get better?” 

“Ruby, that’s not how it works.” “Of course it is! Have you ever seen a drunk Huntsman apart from my uncle?” “I’ve never seen a Huntsman drink apart from your uncle.” *Heh, me neither.*

“Heyy, would this happen to be a long-term reservation cabin?” “For the assholes? Hmm, yeah, looks like it. Wait, Yang, what are you thinking?” “I’m gonna need a running start.” 

*I support this.* “I don’t support this, Yang.” “Noted, Blake. Not really caring.” 

*Come on, maybe we can--okay, no, standing’s a really bad idea oh thanks Red you’re catching me.*

“Neo, just--just stay here. I’ll go get something to eat so you can get this out of your system.” 

*Aww, she’s worried. Painfully adorable. I’ll probably be sorry when I come to.*

*Wait, is--she’s actually going, oh man. No, she’s back, with--man, she has no idea how this works, does she.*

“Weiss please help I don’t know which of these to take.” “Any of them, it doesn’t matter. Hey, Jaune, you want something to eat?” 

*She’s actually ignoring fireball making a mess to fail at making me more alright.* 

*I really hope we don’t get caught.*

*I’m almost enjoying this.*

Chapter Text

And then Neo woke up in Haven. 

Specifically, slung over Bumblebee’s rear seat as Yang walked it through the streets. 

“Oh, good, you’re up.” Yang lifted Neo off the bike with one arm and set her down next to it, ignoring how she was kicking and flailing the whole time. “You passed out a little bit after the guards came around asking about the noise. They didn’t come back, and the vent covering was reattached fine.” 

Neo just stared at her in confusion, and Jaune coughed behind her. “Um, what’s the last thing you remember?” He asked. 

She signed a quick response, and he nodded. “Okay. Bottom line, we’re not going first-class on there again. They didn’t ban us, but we got close. Apparently they’re still looking for the wallet of one of the guards.” 

Neo blinked at him, and he tried to assure her. “No, you didn’t do that, you just did everything else. Ruby and the others are getting the relics right now, and we’re going to try and find somewhere to stay. Ozpin let us use the place we used last time, and we’re going to meet up with Haven’s new headmaster as soon as we can to try and stash the relic. Since the Vault’s open and everything.” 

Right on cue, Ruby, Weiss, and Blake came running down the street and caught up to them, the lamp and staff hanging from the first two’s hips, respectively. “Oh, you’re awake.” Ruby brushed some dust off her gloves as she addressed Neo. “I was kind of worried, since you just kind of passed out on us. Did I miss anything?” 

“Nothing we didn’t already tell you.” Yang started walking again, and everybody followed after her. Jaune cleared his throat a little before speaking up. “Does anybody actually have a key to the place we’re going?” 

Neo cocked an eyebrow, lightly annoyed at the forgetting the fact she could probably pick the lock, but Ruby beat her to a comment. “Ozpin told me a lot of stuff before we left. That includes where he leaves the spare key.” She glanced to her side, and mistook the expression on Neo’s face for confusion. “Something wrong?” 

*Might as well get some good stories.* A few quick signs. “What did I miss?”

Weiss and Ruby both sharply inhaled at that, and Weiss’s eyes jumped to the three others before looking back at Neo and mumbling a reply. “Bad decisions. Lots of bad decisions.” 

Her eyebrow rose even higher, and Yang sighed. “I broke a table in half, Jaune pissed on a monitor because Weiss dared him too, somebody stole the wallets from a bunch of guards but we don’t know who, and you missed an episode of ‘Blake runs from the cops’ set on a train--” A shadow clone clamped a hand over her mouth, and Blake pinched the bridge of her nose. Yang spat the Aura construct out of her mouth and made a show of furiously wiping nothing off her tongue before continuing. “Okay, fine, I won’t talk about it again. It’d be a great story if you let me tell the whole thing, but apparently that’s illegal.” 

“It literally was.” Ruby wasn’t laughing. “This whole thing was illegal.” 

“I was completely lucid--” “We know, Jaune.” “Ah.” He flinched a little, and Ruby and Weiss sighed in tandem. Neo almost felt tempted to play up a wince in reaction, but the smug smile on her face really didn’t want to stay hidden, and Weiss smacked her on the head as she exaggerated holding in a fake laugh. “Leave him alone, he doesn’t need it.” 

“It’s not like you were any better, Weiss. You encouraged him.” “And you didn’t exactly do a good job of stopping Yang.” “I don’t fuck with her arm.” “You don’t?” 

“Okay, let’s just stop talking.” Ruby flicked them both on the ear and sat down on the back of Bumblebee to address everybody. “We need to plan something out. And really, we don’t need to be talking about this stuff in public. Let’s just get to the place and get some sleep before doing anything stupid.” 

*That’s a little tough with this crowd.*

Blake leaned in behind her, and it took way too much self-control for Neo to not whip around and slash her. “That means you, pipsqueak.” 

Neo flicked her middle finger over her shoulder, and flipped Blake off while hitting her right between the eyes in the same motion. She looked around the group, idly chatting about some thing from the last time they were here, which she hadn’t exactly been around for, and sighed quietly to herself. 

*What the fuck am I doing here?* 

Ruby caught her standing a bit behind the others, and gestured with her head towards the end of the street. “It’s just up here. Come on.” 

*Right.* 

*Better than nobody at all.* 

*But that’s not entirely right, is it.* 

*They don’t actually hate me.* 

*Fuck, this is extraordinarily stupid. They’re all idiots that aren’t likely to kill me. And unfortunately, whatever the fuck Jinn is backs that up.*

*They’re funny though.* 

Chapter Text

Coral Raytha was a very skilled woman to have become Haven Academy’s Headmistress after Lionheart died. Highly intelligent, a Huntress of immense skill and renown, and a good enough politician and teacher to ascend to what was one of the most powerful positions on Remnant. 

It should not have been a surprise to any of them that she would recognize Neo. 

“And Ozpin was okay with this?” 

“How do you--” “There’s a whole process for taking over an academy. He wrote a pamphlet. Had all I needed to know. Was he really okay with this?” She brushed off Jaune’s question before it was even fully out of his mouth and gestured to Neo, who was eyeing the various paintings in Haven’s main hall. *I think that one’s forged.*

“We sort of made the decision independently, but he hasn’t told us no yet. She’s been with us since Atlas fell, and I trust her.” Ruby met Coral’s gaze with equal intensity, not flinching, and took a step forward. “I know Atlas wasn’t our best call. But once we put this,” She pointed at the staff, currently in Weiss’s hands, “in the vault, we’ll all be safer than we’ve been at any point in the last year. You know about Salem. Everybody does. And once we put the staff away, that’s one more thing she’ll have to fight to get. And we can fight her.” 

Coral stared at her for a second longer before scoffing and smiling. “Impressive little speech. No wonder a lot fewer people panicked at your little announcement than I expected.” She nodded. “You’re pretty good.” 

“Kind of had to be. Now are you convinced, or…?”

“I remember what you all did the last time you went to Haven, and I’d rather not have my school get destroyed again. Also, Ozpin called me last night. He sounded younger than I remember, but the code phrases checked out. Come on. The elevator’s still working.” She turned and began to walk up the stairs, waving them to come forward with her. Everybody followed close behind, Neo getting tugged away from leaning toward a particularly nice looking painting by Yang, and the elevator started moving downwards as soon as they were all on it.

As the platform rolled through the several hundred feet of rock below the school--at a pace much slower than Yang remembered--Neo glanced down at Hush in her hand. The umbrella hadn’t been more than two feet from her at any point in the last two weeks, though she hadn’t really used it since the murderbender in the warehouse. 

It really had only been two weeks since this whole mess started. It felt like they had to be closing in on a year since the fight in Haven, one she’d missed without much regret, and something close to that since she’d bumped into Cinder, gotten a new outfit, stolen an airship, and snuck into Atlas. 

Her Semblance flickered over her hand for a moment, the illusion of Cinder’s arm appearing in its place as she remembered the trick she’d pulled with the airship. Overactive Imagination had always been a bit of an odd Semblance for her, but she couldn’t deny she’d gotten better at using it over time. She brought her index finger and thumb together, rubbing the claws together, admiring the faint scraping noise it made as the fake claws made contact. Yeah, she had definitely gotten better at it. It was damn near real at that point. 

The illusion faded in a swirl of pink as the elevator ground to a halt in front of a massive door, ancient and very clearly inert. Neo tapped Yang on the shoulder and started signing. 

“This thing’s actually safe?” 

“It needs the Maiden of each relic to open it. The staff belongs to the Winter Maiden, and Penny’s on the other side of Remnant. We just drop it off in here, and there’s nothing else we have to do to keep it safe, unless Salem somehow steals the Maiden powers again and we need to stop her before she gets all the way over here.” 

Neo nodded, playing up her skeptical look about the actual security of the vault as she leant back on Hush, but she was completely out of it. 

*There’s nothing else I have to do, either.*

She heard a conversation between Coral, Ruby, and Weiss, something about only using Gravity Dust next time, but it got tuned out unintentionally. 

This was her shot. If the fight in Vacuo kept going how it was going, this war was as good as over. Not her problem. It had never been her problem, really, not in a way she wanted. If she wanted to, the second the elevator stopped, she could shatter and vanish out the hall, and they’d never track her down again. 

*Well, Ice Queen might want the cash from her fit back, but it’s mine, so fuck off.*

The Vault door sealed itself, the lights glowing a pale shade of blue, and the platform shuddered and started moving again. Neo straightened herself, grip tightening on Hush and glancing at Coral for a second to judge her threat level before looking back at the ground in thought. 

Leaving really wouldn’t be that hard. But then she’d have to get around on her own, without the presumed protection of being a part of the *wonderful* Team RWBY+J. Have to get back to Vale, or wherever she was going to run off to next, without support, probably being hunted in the process. And for all she knew, Roman’s network had utterly crumbled, and he had definitely been the brains behind the operations. She could steal, but fencing was something she had never really cared for. Beyond pawning the haul off in a back alley, at least. 

*Better call for survival and business if I stick with them.*

The elevator arrived back in the main hall, which was still thankfully empty, and Neo relaxed her grip on Hush as the others began to let out little sighs of relief. She was actually, somehow, safe around these morons. That was good for survival. Good for her. Especially since she was kind of lacking in plans beyond that at the moment. 

*Just survival.*

She ignored the fact that Ruby’s mixed pleased-gracious gaze at the entire group for actually making it back here included her. 

*Survival.*

She tried. 

*Living.*

Neo smiled back at her, and waited for her to move before stepping off the elevator. 

*Fine. I’ll stick with them a little longer.*

*They’re adorable in a lost puppy way.*

Chapter Text

Somehow, Neo’s silence in that moment was an audible response. 

There was a solid thirty seconds of Weiss, Blake, Yang, and Jaune trying to speak, only for every attempt to wither under the absolute lack of noise. Weiss kept reaching out and poking things to make sure Neo wasn’t using her Semblance as she stared at Ruby, eyes shifting colors between every blink. Ruby stared right back, her expression just as unreadable as she stood in front of the TV in the house they were crashing in. 

Ruby finally broke the silence. “Yes, I’m serious.” 

*I really am surrounded by morons.*

“Why? “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” 

Everybody asked the same question at once, and Ruby let out a small sigh. “Literally everybody from Vacuo agrees that we shouldn’t just go over there and try to meet up with them. Mistral’s still recovering from having almost all its hunters killed last year. Doing a few missions before we head over is far from the worst idea.” 

“But there’s a war going on over there! Ren and Nora--” “Are fine, Jaune. You just called them. Vacuo is being handled, but right here, where we are, there’s people that need help.” 

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Weiss waved Jaune down and turned her gaze to Ruby. “We all know that there’s people that need help, and if we’ve got time, it’s our duty to help them. We’re not hiding out anymore. None of us are confused about that.” 

“Yeah.” Yang took over for her. “What we are confused about, and I mean all of us, is…” She held her hands up like she was about to point at something, and then dramatically pointed to Neo. “This. This is what’s confusing us. She’s not a Huntress. We’d have to sign her up for that. Just...Ruby, this is a terrible idea.” Neo nodded along with every sentence, trying to play up a mix of unreadable and adorable. *It’s worked before.*

It did not work now. “It would be less suspicious for her to work with us. If we leave her behind, somebody might recognize her, and we’re probably going to need all the help we can--” “You already signed us up for a job didn’t you.” 

Ruby shuffled a little under Blake’s glare. “I put us down as potentially interested, yes.” 

This time, nobody even tried to speak from under Neo’s silence. *You swing between reading people so well and being so stupid so fast it’s going to give me whiplash if I need to stick around longer.*

*Oh, wait, I am.* 

She ran a hand through her hair. “Look, guys, I didn’t have much of a choice. This farm a few miles to the west has been getting hit nonstop with Grimm, and they’re worried about bandits showing up soon, too.” 

Neo let out a huff of fake incredulity, and Yang picked up on it. “You want to put her on bandit duty? You--you want to put Neopolitan. On bandit duty. Alone. With the bandits.” 

“Ruby, we just dodged one massacre.” 

“I know, Blake! I know.” Ruby closed her eyes and took a deep breath before reopening them, confidence seeping back into her posture. “I wasn’t going to put her on bandit duty. There’s a lot of Grimm in the area, and fighting any of them would be helpful. We just need to clear out the area, help the people out, and make it back. It’s a simple job, doing a simple thing that we trained for, that we’re here for. There’s no point in fighting Salem if there’s nobody to protect afterwards.” 

There was an actual natural silence for a second, and then Jaune coughed. “Bit of a moodkiller at the end right there.” “You’re doing the speech next time.” “Hey! You don’t have any authority over me!” 

Ruby’s reply was cut off as Neo rapped Hush on the ground and held up her hand, rubbing her fingers together. *You’re forgetting something.*

“You’re seriously expecting to get paid for this?” “Well, Blake, she--” “If you say she’s not a Huntress again I’m stealing your arm.” “That was disarmingly angry.” “Fuck it, I’m stealing it now.” 

Weiss rolled her eyes, snapped her fingers, and a pair of glyphs appeared to hold Blake and Yang in place before she turned to look back at Neo. “I know you’re not a Huntress and all that, but let’s have that argument after we actually get this done. Who knows, you might actually enjoy being able to help people.” 

It took quite a bit of Neo’s self-control to not roll her eyes at that, but she silently agreed to drop the subject of payment as Ruby started going over logistics. *Really, I should have agreed to get paid now. That way if something goes wrong I can just book it out of there.* 

*Actually, nah, terrible idea.*

*I really should be getting paid in advance though.*

Chapter Text

*I definitely should have asked to be paid in advance.*

The forest outside the city was about as boring as Neo had expected. 

The Grimm were all scattered throughout the woods surrounding the farm, the group having just missed the chance to cut them off during a surge, so they were all split up and hunting them individually. Apparently, none of the Grimm had decided to hide in Neo’s area, leaving her to just walk around, “enjoying” the nature, and waiting for something to show up at all. So far, she’d seen a very brave squirrel and the remains of a deer that had gotten really fucked up. 

*Seriously, why the fuck did I not ask to get paid in advance?* 

*Why did I even AGREE to this?*

She kicked a root and made the closest thing to an annoyed growl she could manage, shoving away the thought of how far she could stab Hush into a tree. There had to be a damn good reason that she hadn’t ditched those idiots yet, considering she’d had the chance back on the train. 

Hush’s tip was slammed into the ground as her grip tightened around the handle, and she reached up to run a hand through her hair, only to stop as it touched the hat. Her hat. Not Roman’s, which was buried safely away, her last reminder of him. Hers. And the only reason she had it was because of those idiots. 

It wasn’t guilt. It was never guilt. She was perfectly happy with everything that she had done. But she had it on literal omnipotent authority that these five idiots were just about the only few people on Remnant that didn’t hate her--except that was a rationale she should have disregarded long ago. It couldn’t just be that they didn’t hate each other, because that would not have led to...whatever the hell the train was. It couldn’t--

Something broke a branch behind her, and Neo whipped around, thumb over the button to extend Hush’s blade. A bird was circling around the tree where the branch had just broken, letting out quiet caws at nothing Neo could see. She shrugged and turned around. *Didn’t think there were ravens in this part of Mistral. Weird to see birds around a surge. Thought they were smart enough to run off from the fuckers.*

*Wait, wasn’t there some rumor about omens for bandit attacks?*

A few more branches broke behind her, and somebody’s steps started crunching on dead branches and leaves. Neo’s eyes went wide for a second before she got them back under control and turned to face the source, letting her coat swing dramatically behind her as she did. 

No effort was made to hide in shadows or be subtle. Just a person walking through the forest, in broad daylight, sun reflecting off the cylindrical dark gray scabbard at their waist. 

And the Grimm-bone mask on their head. 

Neo’s heart stopped a fraction as she recognized it. 

Raven Branwen tilted her head up a fraction as she stopped walking, and she reached up to remove the mask. “Neopolitan.” 

*Can she smell fear? I hope she can’t smell fear.*

“Why are you following my daughter around?” 

She flashed a quick illusion of Ruby over herself before dissipating it, keeping her face as straight as possible. 

“So you are wrapped up in this little war. Was it her little broadcast that did it?” 

Neo shrugged and waved her hand from side to side in a so-so motion, before shaking her head and dropping the hand. 

“Whatever the case, I don’t care. What I am asking you to do is to leave Yang alone.” 

The question was all over Neo’s face. *Why?*

“You’re a risk to her.” Raven’s hand floated ever so slightly closer to Omen on her waist, so subtle that Neo barely noticed. “The others might be fools, but you’re a danger. I remember what you did on that train. You almost killed her.” *Holy shit, does this entire fucking family remember that?* “And I won’t let Yang get any worse off in this war. So go away.” 

*I don’t know if I can win this.* 

*Why am I not scared of her?*

*Oh.*

Neo’s eyes widened a fraction, and she whipped out her scroll and began typing into the text to speech with one hand as she stared Raven down. 

“Killer to killer, your daughter isn’t one. We’re both here for the same reason. Protect her.”

*It really isn’t just not hating her.*

Raven sighed. “Neopolitan, this isn’t a winnable war. I’m giving you the chance to walk away from this, and from her, without me making you.” 

“Killer to killer. I don’t fear you.”

Omen let out a grinding noise, and Raven’s hand shot away from the scabbard, a dark green Dust blade attached to the hilt. “I’m not asking. Step out of this war. If I have to cut you down to keep her safe, so be it.” 

“I’m doing the same.” Neo tossed the scroll to the side and took a deep breath, her grip tight on Hush. 

*Well, we’ve got our answer.*

*Turns out I just care.*

She heard the faint shimmering of Overactive Imagination under Omen whirring and Raven readying her stance. 

*Deep breath.*

*And plunge.*

Chapter Text

The first thing Neo did was lie. 

She pushed off and lunged forward, bringing Hush up around her neck to swing it back down. Raven shifted forward a fraction to meet it, snapping Omen up and around into a sideways swipe to perfectly block the blow. Neo shattered instantly, but Raven kept the blade swinging, the momentum spinning her around to intercept another swing from Neo coming from behind her. She shattered again, appearing at Raven’s side, aiming a swipe right at her diaphragm that whiffed as Raven brought the blade around in a backhanded swing. Both of Neo’s hands shot up around Hush’s canopy, and she shoved the weapon forward, clashing into Omen’s blade with a shower of dark sparks. Raven’s stance flinched backwards the tiniest fraction, and Neo pulled one hand back while shoving the other forward, hooking Hush’s handle around the blade and pulling it through with all her strength. The Dust blade shattered, and Neo took the split second to release a flurry of blows from Hush as she shifted her hands to the middle of the canopy before jumping away and resetting her grip. 

Raven didn’t waste a second before sending another blade flying out of Omen’s scabbard, the compressed Ice Dust unfurling to its full length while she ran forward alongside it and attached a Fire Dust blade to the hilt. Neo dropped to one knee and popped Hush open, just in time to feel the airborne blade shatter and explode into a freezing cold cloud around the canopy. Raven’s swing impacted it a second later, the blow completely stopping in place as Hush’s kinetic absorbers took in the impact without any blowback. The canopy fell back into place, and Neo swung Hush out to the side to try and bat Raven away. The bandit just took a single step back to dodge the hit and mirrored her action, swinging Omen’s blade directly at Neo’s head. Neo leaned back and kicked the kneeling leg up, striking Raven right on her forearm, and she wrapped her leg around the limb as she pulled herself up and planted a series of kicks on Raven before pushing off her chest. 

Omen’s blade extended to twice the length it had been, and Raven made a heavy swipe up at Neo before she could finish a flip through the air. The Fire Dust exploded as it hit the flipping girl, and Neo barely regained control of herself as she plummeted to the ground. A Gravity Dust blade from out of Omen’s scabbard nullified that, and she felt herself go flying back up as Raven leapt up and unleashed a literal storm of hits on her. She held herself back until Omen’s blade chipped a fraction, and shattered in sync with the blade, dropping down above Raven and planting both feet on her back in a physics-assisted dropkick that sent Raven back down towards the earth as she stomped on her spine. 

Or would have if Raven didn’t suddenly turn into a fucking bird and vanish from under Neo. 

*WHAT THE FUCK, BRO.*

She popped Hush open for long enough to angle herself toward a tree, and Raven transformed back into a person in midair, aiming for a helm breaker right on top of Neo. She couldn’t fix her trajectory in time, and the hit connected, slamming them both straight through a tree. Neo bounced through it and landed on her feet after a few spins, slowing her breathing back down to its normal level as Raven returned the blade to Omen’s scabbard and drew a new one, Lightning Dust sparking as she leveled it in a ready stance. 

*Cannot let her take initiative. Won’t be able to take it back.*

She shattered right where she was and reappeared right in front of Raven, far too close to Omen to actually be usable. Hush struck her legs twice, and Neo kicked her right in the knee, sending her to the ground, but not before she plunged the blade into the ground and shattered it. The jolt sent Neo stumbling, and it took all the effort she could manage to stay standing and land a blow on Raven’s neck. They were both left gasping for breath, and Neo’s thumb itched over the button to extend Hush’s blade. 

*She’s not using her Semblance.*

Raven stood back up, and drew another Lightning Dust blade from Omen’s scabbed quicker than Neo could send Hush’s handle around her leg to yank her back down. Neo’s grip on Hush was too strong to send the umbrella out of her hand, but the deflecting blow knocked her off balanced just enough to require shattering on the next swing to recenter herself. 

*I’m not using my fucking rapier.*

She reappeared as far from Omen as she could behind Raven, and clicked the blade out of Hush’s tip as she slashed at Raven’s unguarded back. She got to hit five before Raven flipped into the air, launching up and over her, with Omen’s scabbard aimed right at her. A Gravity Dust blade came flying out of it before Raven even hit the apex, sending Neo flat onto the ground as she leveled Omen in the air, aiming the blade straight for Neo’s throat as she fell. Neo grimaced, eyes fixed on the blade coming for her, and she waited for the last possible moment before impact to twitch her wrist upwards and click a few more buttons on Hush’s handle. Raven’s body contacted the rapier tip as it receded back into the parasol, shaving just a little bit more off her Aura, and she was right on top of Hush as the canopy opened and sent her flying off. The blade snapped in two as she was launched, and Neo pulled herself up, picked up the Lightning Dust fragment, and hurled it towards Raven in one swift motion. She just batted it away with what was left of the blade attached to the hilt, and flicked the hilt off to the side, expelling the remaining Dust before sliding it over her arm and reattaching it to the Scabbard, drawing an Ice Dust blade. 

Only for said blade to immediately get a black ribbon wrapped around it. 

“Leave her alone!” 

“Ah, Belladonna. You should go.” Raven sounded almost conflicted. “You know how much of a threat Neopolitan is, and I know how much you care about Yang. You need to make her go. I do not wish to fight you, but if you really do care about Yang, you need to get her to step out of this war, and make Neopolitan leave. You’re clearly winning enough to manage both.” 

“Like hell I will. Yang’s fighting with us, and so is she!” Blake leapt out of the tree she was perched in, yanking Gambol Shroud’s ribbon back to her as she raised the cleaver sheath in a helm breaker. Neo immediately began running forward, trying to outpace Omen’s scabbard cycling another blade and Raven’s subtle twitches unwrapping the ribbon from around the blade. 

*Oh no.*

The ribbon came free, and Blake began to lose her horizontal momentum a fraction as Raven raised the blade. 

*You fucking fool.*

Hush slipped to her other hand as Neo uselessly reached out, a silent scream on her lips. 

*No.*

She reached to project Overactive Imagination around Blake, perfectly visualizing the outcome. She would shatter and land by Neo, Gambol Shroud returned to her hands, avoiding the blow from Raven and whatever was going to come out of Omen, the swing of the blade in Raven’s hands, not letting her get the chance. 

She saw the glass shards appear, manifesting in a shimmer of pink and brown as Raven began her swing and Blake began hers. 

*No.*

And she saw them appear around Raven’s hands. 

Raven’s eyes went wide, and Omen’s hilt froze in her hands. The blade held still for a second, long enough for the cleaver sheath to smash straight through the Dust construct and break it into pieces. Her hands dropped, the glass around them vanishing as she tried to parry the next few swings away with just the hilt, but one more cleaver sheath hit to the side and a sword strike to the arm put her permanently out of it. Neo shuddered, looking at her own hands and flickering Aura to see what just happened, then up to Raven in time to see something in her eyes that nobody could quite make out. 

“What did you just do?”

Chapter Text

The others arrived moments later. 

“Mom?” 

Yang disarmed Ember Celica the moment she saw Raven, but everybody else kept their weapons trained on her. Raven tore her eyes away from Neo to look at Yang, and her expression softened as she began to speak. “Yang. I--” She glanced around at all the guns pointed at her and winced a little. “I was looking for you.” 

“You were about to say that you made a mistake, didn’t you?” 

Raven sighed. “You were monitoring Neopolitan’s Aura, weren’t you?” 

“And the sudden drop is making a whole lot of sense. Why did you attack her?” Ruby racked Crescent Rose for emphasis as Yang finished her sentence, and she shot her younger sister a confused glance before looking back at Raven. 

“I was under the impression she was a potential threat to you. I didn’t know that she had…” Raven stopped to try and find the right word. “Joined you. Despite the fact you’ve raised that floating monstrosity of a coliseum again, the news of where you have actually been has been limited. The last news I got was of an incident in Argus that had to be her, so--”

“No. I mean, why did you attack her? She wasn’t a threat to you. You could’ve won. I’m not asking for an answer for each part of the question, I want to know why.” 

Raven sighed again and slumped ever so slightly, the leftover strength from the fight leaving her as she looked down at the ground and back up at Yang, and Neo would end up using as a bragging right later the fact she saw Raven Branwen finally crack and break. Mainly because she did, and that was a privilege that not many people had. 

“I wanted to protect you. After Atlas, I was only sure you were alive because of my Semblance, but I didn’t know where you were. And Atlas was such a close call, I didn’t want to risk losing you.” 

“Why?” Yang took a step closer, and everybody’s weapons dropped a little as she did. “You never came by to check. You never even cared about what I was doing before Beacon.” 

“Because Beacon made me realize just how much I did care, and the thought of you getting wrapped up in Ozpin’s secret war was bad enough.” She glanced up at Ruby for a second, then shook her head like she was discarding the thought and continued. “I’ve seen what it costs people. Then at Haven, you kept going, and I wanted you to not risk everything in this.” 

“Did you really think asking me to not keep fighting Salem after we’d won against her?” “What would have happened if you didn’t win?” 

Blake raised both parts of Gambol Shroud again at Raven’s yell, and Yang matched her volume. “Oh, so now you were going to fight them?” “I did! And Vernal died for it! And before you say anything of the fact that every hunter knows they may die one day, so did she, and it changed nothing!” Raven clamped her mouth shut before she could say anything else, and took a breath before speaking again, her tone borderline mournful. “You are winning this war, Yang. I was wrong when I called it otherwise. So please, while you can, step out of it. Take yourself out of the danger. Please.” 

Yang didn’t move for a minute, staring at the ground, before looking at Blake and then at Raven. “Once we win. Long enough for us to talk about...whatever we need to talk about. But just because the world doesn’t end today doesn’t mean it’s all over.” 

“Until he brings the gods back, it’ll never be over.” *I’m not even going to ask.*

“You’re right there.” Yang brought a hand up to her temple, massaging it, but immediately dropped it as something struck her. “Do you really want to protect me?” 

“I want to make sure you don’t die in this war.” 

“That…” Yang sighed. “That’s the best I’m going to get out of you. But does that mean, if I ask for something, you would be willing to give it?”

“Yes.” 

Ruby picked up on Yang’s idea immediately, and whirled on her. “Absolutely not. This plan is terrible.” 

“I will not drop you off at my alcoholic brother in the middle of Vacuo.” “He’s not drinking as much now, actually.” 

Raven actually looked caught off guard by that. “Oh. That’s unexpected.” 

“A bit. And this plan isn’t what you think.” Yang met Ruby’s gaze, utterly certain. “We can’t stash it somewhere else right now, so we need it off our hands.” 

Neo rolled her eyes in sync with Raven. “Yang, really. Even I wouldn’t trust myself with that lamp right now.” 

“And I’m not. But I am trusting Dad.” Ruby slowly handed Yang the lamp, and Raven kicked Omen’s hilt up off the ground, caught it, and clicked it back onto the scabbard without taking her eyes off Yang. “Open a portal to him. Check in to make sure it’s there. Don’t let anybody get away with it. 

“I have a tribe to run.” “Figure it out. You can spare some time to protect me, you just said so. And if you try and run off with this--”

“You forget I’m a Maiden too. There aren’t many places I can go.” A dark red portal flashed open next to Raven, and she took a step away from it before giving Yang one last gentle look. She didn’t return it, stepping through for a few seconds before coming back out empty handed. The portal vanished, and another one opened behind Raven. 

“If you need transport out of Haven, tell one of her contacts you’re my daughter.” She tilted her head at Neo. “They’ll respect a Branwen.” And with that, she stepped through the portal before it disappeared. 

Only then did what she said kick in for Neo. 

*Wait, why DIDN’T she use the Maiden powers on me?*

Chapter Text

Neopolitan didn’t want to sleep that night. 

It wasn’t because she was still wondering why Raven hadn’t used the Maiden powers on her. There were half a dozen reasons why it would have been a bad idea, and Neo had come up with all of them on the journey back to the house. Raven was only technically a part of the reason she was sitting on the couch, in the front room, staring at Roman’s hat in her hands. 

*I’ve thrown myself into it now, haven’t I.*

Team RWBY+J were morons. They barely grasped how the world worked, even after Atlas, had shockingly poor survival instincts, even by hunter standards, and for all intents and purposes were literal children thrown into a war they hadn’t understood and were not way too deep into to back out. 

Then again, so was Neo, now. 

*It wasn’t the blonde.*

She gave a shit, for some reason, now. Something had made her decide that fuck it, Raven Branwen wasn’t terrifying anyway, and she’d gone and stood her ground against one of the only people on Remnant that could kick her ass. 

At least, she’d thought. 

Blake had very thankfully either not noticed or not mentioned what had happened with Raven, and Neo didn’t plan to until she either had no choice or actually knew what the fuck she’d done. She had a hunch, but she wasn’t sure. Well, she didn’t have a clue as to the what. She just had a hunch as to the why. 

*Cat’s too attached to Fireball. The closest thing I shared with her was kicking that Fang’s ass.*

Raven had made a threat. Nothing unusual. She never really reacted to threats before, at least not since Beacon. She hadn’t really...cared. 

*It’s not either of the sword ones. Ice Queen’s weird, but I wouldn’t do that for her. Same goes for Vomit Boy.* 

*Vomit Boy?* 

Neo shook her head like she’d just swallowed something nasty and let Roman’s hat dangle from her fingers for a moment, looking at nothing in particular for a moment. She definitely had to come up with her own nickname for Jaune. It wouldn’t do to give Yang any more credit than she already had or deserved. 

*She only went for Fireball, but I don’t care about Fireball.*

*Not enough to fight Raven fucking Branwen.*

*Which means it wasn’t Cat either.*

*But it had to be something with them both as the common denominator. It had to be something to make me want to protect Fireball. I said as much.* 

Somebody’s steps creaked on the stairs behind her, and Neo silently tossed Roman’s hat on to the coatrack. She recognized the tread. 

*The irony stings.*

“Neo, you should sleep.” 

Ruby didn’t turn on the lights, letting the only illumination be the streetlights coming in through the window, but she could still see Neo rolling her eyes. “I’m serious. You remember what happened last time you refused to get any sleep.” 

She flinched the second the words left her mouth. “Sorry. That was a low blow.” 

Neo waved the line away, but she gave Ruby a smug look through the gesture. She cocked an eyebrow at her, otherwise not moving from her position on the couch, and tried to convey the question. *You were looking for me.* 

Ruby nodded in acquiescence and moved to take a seat on the couch next to Neo. “I wanted to come and say thank you. For a lot of things.” 

Neo’s expression got even more smug, and Ruby stifled a giggle. “Don’t let it get to your head. I’m serious. You didn’t need to be here for anything, or say sorry in Argus, but you still did, and you’re still here. You went and protected Yang today, even if she didn’t really need it, and you probably saved Blake’s life. Really, thank you.” 

Neo shrugged and leaned back into the couch, sinking into the cushions. It was actually quite comfortable, and she probably would have tuned out Ruby’s next question if she hadn’t asked it. 

“Why did you do it?” 

Neo’s eyes swapped colors in her next blink, and she pulled herself halfway out of the cushions, trying to gauge Ruby’s neutral but vaguely positive expression. “You didn’t have to. You could have left. Blake expected you to. You could have ducked out any day of that week we spent in Argus, or on the road to here. But you still stuck through to here. Why?” 

*I was wondering that myself.*

She held her hand out, and Overactive Imagination flickered over it, projecting an image of her old glove soaked in blood. The sensation was startlingly accurate, and while Ruby didn’t actually feel what was on Neo’s arm, she still got the message. “Okay, I can understand Argus. You weren’t in a good place, and I was hoping that trying to give you a way out would help. Did it?”

Neo held up a finger, signaling for her to wait, then made a rewind motion to step back in the conversation. 

“Last question, okay. Why?” 

Her sleeve flickered to Blake’s, then Yang’s metal arm, then back to normal as she dropped it and reached out with her other arm. 

And gently poked Ruby in the ribs. 

*It wasn’t them. It was the connection.*

Ruby gently smiled. “You didn’t get hostage syndrome, did you?” 

Neo matched her smile as she shook her head, just poking Ruby again. Her smile got even wider. “I told you I didn’t hate you. I just wanted to help.” She shifted a little closer to Neo on the couch. “I did, didn’t I?” 

*Like I’d admit that.* Neo just raised her hand to her lips, making a little shush motion, and Ruby stifled a full laugh to not wake up the rest of the house. *But yeah. Fuck me, I’m caring about Red of all people.*

*It’s been way too long since I cared.*

“Don’t worry, I don’t think I can beat how smug you can be.” Ruby wrapped her hand around Neo’s, which was still poking her in the ribs. “But I’m glad.” 

She didn’t let go as she shuffled over, right next to Neo. “I know I’m probably never going to convince you to stop being you, or anything, no matter how much you care, but...seeing you alive, after what you looked like in Mantle, it...I’m glad.” 

“Thank you.” 

Neo tilted her head, waiting for the second part of the sentence that was obviously coming. 

“For helping prove both of us right.” 

Ruby let go of Neo’s hand and stood up, stretching a little. “I need to get to sleep. You should do the same.” She started to move toward the stairs, and was halfway up them before she stopped and looked back to Neo. 

“Really. Thank you.” 

She vanished into the dark up the stairs, and Neo’s eyes drifted to Roman’s hat on the coathook. 

*It’s been too long since I cared about somebody.* 

*And of course it’d be her.* 

*Damn you, Ruby. Damn it all.* 

*This is what your crew’s supposed to be.* 

*And apparently, it’s what mine is.*

Neo took Roman’s hat off the hook as she went upstairs to her own room. 

She did end up sleeping that night.

Chapter Text

“We need to get to Vale.” 

*Well, that’s a fucking take.*

Neo put down Hush’s blade and the cloth she was using to clean it, gently setting both down onto the coffee table before looking up at Ruby in her little team leader pose in the middle of the living room. 

“Well that’s certainly an idea.” Blake draped the outer jacket of her gear over the back of a chair and sat down in it. *I just said that. Not really, but.* “But we’ve been running missions all week. I checked the logs, and we’re going through hunts twice as fast as the last time, before we left for Argus.”

Ruby didn’t even look uncomfortable as the other five people gave her looks of varying degrees of confusion. “I know. And I’m willing to let us have a day or so to recover, but we need to get to Vacuo as fast as possible, and Vale is the best way to get there. It would take a solid month by boat to get there, and we’ve already spent three weeks leaving them to fight on their own against Salem.” 

“You say that like they haven’t been winning.” “I know, Weiss, but we can’t risk sitting back on our victory. We’ve seen what happens if we don’t push the fight to the end, Salem gets momentum, and we can’t lose any more ground.” 

“So, what, you want to clear out the entirety of Vale on our way to Vacuo?” Blake let out a short laugh. “Ruby, we can’t do that. I know your eyes are a lot more powerful, but that Wyvern is, well, it’s fucking terrifying. I don’t care how under control the rest of Vale is, as long as that thing’s there, it’s not a good idea to get close to Beacon.” 

“No, I know it’s not a good idea to get close to Beacon. That Wyvern is an issue for after Cinder.” Ruby politely waved a hand at Blake and turned back to the others. “I just mean that we should do what we’re doing here in Vale for a bit, take out some big nests outside the city, and then keep going to Vacuo or try and head off wherever Salem wants to hit next.” 

Yang dragged a hand down her face and tried to keep a calm expression. “Ruby. I trust you, I really do, but I don’t know if this is a good idea. This is different from Neo. We can only have so much luck on our side, and the fact that we haven’t run into any bad shit since, I don’t know, but it was a miracle we managed to stay hidden in Argus and that nobody followed up on that bar fight. I don’t know if the luck is going to hold.” 

“In fairness to Ruby, our luck has actually been fairly consistent. We just spent so long in positions where one bit of bad luck could send everything crumbling down that our perception of bad luck has been all shifted around.” Everybody shot Weiss a fairly confused glance, and she sighed. “Our luck hasn’t actually been better. It’s just been smaller scale, which we can manage more.” 

Ruby motioned to Jaune, and he tossed a map to her. She unfolded it on the coffee table, deliberately ignoring Hush sitting right next to it. “We don’t need to stick too close to Vale the city. We can go through the outskirts and the suburbs, just pass through it on the way to Vacuo. The finer details can get worked out once we’re there and know what the situation is.” 

Neo leaned back into the couch, the motion catching everybody’s attention, and she covered a hand in an illusion of Cinder’s Grimm arm for a second before dispelling it. Ruby nodded. “We think Cinder’s still in Vacuo. The odds of us finding her in Vale are really low. And I really doubt Salem’s just going to give up on Shade before the relic’s out in the open.” 

*Not convinced, but I doubt it’ll be bad.* Neo returned the nod and leaned back into the couch, eying Ruby with a little bit of skepticism. *And even if it is, I’m stuck with these fuckers as my crew. I need to pro--pro--* She let out a little cough, causing Ruby to pause in the middle of whatever she was saying about travel plans. *Gods, I wish anybody could hear these jokes.*

The conversation went straight back to figuring out how exactly to get to Vale, and Yang was already trying to be pragmatic. In a sense. “I suggest we let Neo handle the tickets this time. It went well last time.” 

“No. Just...no. There’s no way we’re getting away with that twice.” “Ruby, we’re in Haven. This is the best place to get away with it.” “What about Vacuo?” “Most people from Vacuo would notice, pickpocket you back, and stab you for trying to pickpocket them in the first place.” 

*Far from wrong.* Neo raised her hands in faux surrender as everybody turned to look at her and pointed at Ruby. *You want to do it legit, fine, just ask her to.*

The resident team leader sighed. “Alright. Blake, you go looking for airship routes or express ships out of here.” “After a nap.” “After a nap, yes. If anybody wants to go with her, they can.” 

Jaune glanced over at Weiss. “Since we’re leaving soon, you want to see if there’s any good places to eat tonight? I’m sure there’s some nice spots near the academy.” 

Neo completely missed Weiss’s response as she faked a retch, drawing annoyed glances from everybody else in the room and especially from Yang. “Oh, I’m sorry that you don’t like that we care about each other, shortstop, but you clearly do, so shut the fuck up.” Yang rolled her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know why you’re still here if you’re gonna do that.” 

“Okay, give Neo credit. She does care.” Ruby leaned over and put a hand on Neo’s shoulder, missing the pink and brown death stare she got in return. “She stuck through a lot of bad stuff. And she’s already committed to us a lot. Give her at least a little bit of credit.” 

Ruby paused before she spoke again. “Also, you two ruined the basement of her safehouse. She deserves to make fun of somebody.” 

Blake and Yang both started shouting in sync, but Neo just rolled her eyes. *It still reeks of that stench in there. I liked that room.* 

Ruby’s hand patted on Neo’s shoulder, and the death glare came back, but it was a little less intense this time around. 

*Somehow, both wanting to kill you and cover you gives me the same amount of grief.*

Chapter Text

“We can’t get to Vale.”

Everybody immediately started yelling at Blake. 

“Calm down! Calm down.” A shadow clone popped up from her side and started trying to wave them all down, vanishing once it was quiet and Blake started speaking again. “I tried, but nobody’s willing to do big flights to Vale. All the legal ones stop on the coastal settlements, there’s no direct ones. There *were*, up until a few weeks ago, and I can guess why they stopped doing direct flights.” 

Ruby ran a hand over the short side of her hair. “We really should have come up with a better plan.” 

“That’s a pattern with us.” Blake was deadpan. “But unless we want to take what could be several days to upwards of a week to get to Vale, and waste even more time, we’ll need to try and find another option.” 

Yang let out a huff and started to walk off to dramatically sulk, only for Neo to hook Hush around her neck and drag her back with some exaggerated choking noises. She spun the much taller girl around and removed Hush from her neck, signing out a name for her. “B-R-A-N-W-E-N.”

“What do you--oh. Oh, shit. Oh no.” Yang’s eyes went wide, and she shook her head as she got the terrible idea Neo was putting forward. “We are not trusting a promise made by my mother of all people.” 

Everybody else got the sign language message, and Ruby tentatively shrugged. “You kind of already did the other day. And she wouldn’t try and do something to kill you. She’s got a really, weirdly messed-up sense of motherly love, but it’s still somehow there.” “Ruby, you can say fuck.” 

“Nope!” Ruby’s response was her brand of very loud and very cheerful. “Don’t wanna. But Neo’s kind of right. We’re with you, you’re Raven’s daughter, and anything that makes you mad would probably make her mad.” 

Jaune shrugged. “I feel like that should mean more to me than it does. But if we’re going to get to Vacuo and help Vale along the way, I don’t see many other options.”

Yang pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. “This plan is absolutely terrible. Do you understand--” 

“I know a guy. And the five sane former White Fangs on the entire continent. They might be willing to help. The slightly more devoted ones would probably also be willing to help if we dropped the Branwen thing on them.” Blake smiled at Yang as she paused the sentence, waiting for her to notice. “You know, if I had just told everybody my girlfriend was the daughter of a bandit queen, I feel like we could have cut down on a lot of the trouble we’ve gone through everywhere outside of Beacon and Atlas.” 

“Blake, please, shut up before she realizes you’re an ex-terrorist.” “I feel like she already knows. I think she’d actually like it better if I was a full-fledged terrorist.” 

Jaune shot a glance at Weiss and sighed in relief. “Thank gods you don’t need to worry about your own parents--” he stopped the sentence halfway through as Weiss glared at him. “Okay, yeah, should not have said that. I just meant it’s good that neither of us has something like that hanging over us I should probably just stop talking now huh.” 

*Imagine having a good relationship with your parents.*

“Yes. You should.” Weiss turned away from him, arms crossed and apparently not noticing everybody staring at the discussion. “I do know what you meant. You just said it in the worst way possible.” 

“Yeah, sorry about that.” 

“At least Whitley would have had some sort of clever remark to go with it.” “Okay, seriously.” “Maybe something about how relationships can be bad for business.” 

Ruby’s sharp inhale made Weiss’s head snap around, and the redhead started speaking. “About that...have you checked his recent activities and who he’s been tagging.” 

“Of course that little shit’s still keeping up a social media presence, I swear…” She started grumbling as she yanked her scroll off her belt and opened it up. “If I have to see another picture of him wearing sunglasses indoors, I don’t care how prescription-mandated it might be--” 

A very tense pause as Weiss stared at the screen.

“He’s dating WHO?!” 

“Yeah, how about you deal with that...later.” Ruby gently lowered Weiss’s scroll hand before she could break the hard light screen. “Illegal airship flight to Vale first, your little brother’s relationship trouble later.” 

“I feel like we’ve slowly been drifting further and further outside the realm of what’s legal.” “We have, Weiss. We have.” 

*And it’s not even my fault.*

*Okay, half my fault.*

Chapter Text

Neo had the distinct feeling that the White Fang members were more scared of her than the threat of Raven. 

She didn’t want or really care to know how a small leftover cell had managed to secure an entire Valean airship undamaged, but it meant she was going to be in Vale proper in a few hours along with RWBY+J, so the question was ultimately one she wasn’t going to worry about. 

*I wonder if Junior ever fixed his bar.*

Vale wasn’t really somewhere that Neo had a lot of baggage about. The Fall of Beacon and all those events surrounding it had happened there, he had died there, and that was something that still hurt a little to think about, but at the same time they’d both had their entire career there. History, yes, baggage, slightly less. It was less the graveyard it had become and more the garden ripe for lotting it had been to her. 

She’d also really expected Yang’s arm to be, like, already twitching with her own bad memories by now. 

Pleasant surprises did apparently still exist. 

Proving the point, Ruby strolled right up next to Neo and leaned over to look out the window. 

*Wait, what.*

She spoke up before Neo had the chance to properly begin processing that last thought. 

“You know, if nothing holds us up, we could probably say this was a world tour. Team RWBY+J+N.” She spread her hands in the air in front of her as she rattled off the name, then immediately dropped them. “No, that doesn’t work. Your initial in there makes it sound like a sandwich, and I don’t know where Jaune fits in.” 

Neo cocked an eyebrow and shrugged, signing out a suggestion. “RWYNJB, Ruin Job.”

“Is that like, some sort of smear campaign thing? Did you guys go into politics?” 

A snort and a head shake. 

“Was it not bloody enough for you?” 

A gesture like she was wiping her hands off, and back to looking out the window. *Ink stains don’t wash out.*

“I’m going to take that as a no.” Ruby turned and leaned against the window, her back to the glass as she looked at Neo with an expression that looked almost confused. “You...just kind of let your name get fitted into the team name.” 

*You didn’t notice me notice you notice that.*

“I mean, it’s not a team name we can really work with, but it was a good attempt. Really, it is a good name, but it’s not actually a hunting team name. If we were a bunch of criminals--” She paused as Neo’s eyebrows vanished into her hair in skepticism. “Actual criminals, not Ironwood snapping and having to have Winter stab the sense back into him. Did you ever have to stab the sense back into somebody?” 

She didn’t even respond with an expression this time, just a sheer blank stare right at Ruby. The other girl let out a strange noise that sounded like a bubble popping in her throat and nodded. “That’s another no, isn’t it.” 

*Yep.*

It was a good few seconds before Ruby spoke again. “Hey, I’m sorry for sort of...forcing you into this, all the way back in Atlas. I never really went and thought about if this was something you yourself wanted, and I’m sorry for kind of taking the choice away--” 

Neo just shook her head, one hand waving the topic away. It was a calm set of motions, and one she was ever so slightly trying to keep impassive in the face of her actual thoughts. *I cannot afford to acknowledge this now.*

“No, Neo, I know it worked out, but I still kind of did it, and--” 

*Fucking gods, Ruby.* Neo let out an exasperated sigh and turned to look her dead on, face resolute. She tried to keep her signs as quick as possible. “Not. Problem.”

This time, Ruby sighed. “Alright, I’ll drop it. But you really haven’t had the hostage syndrome kick in?”

It took pretty much all of Neo’s self-control to not punch her right then and there. She settled for a light backhanded hit to the arm. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll give you that one.” Ruby giggled as she batted Neo’s hand away. “And I know we had this conversation last week, but thank you for coming along on everything. Really. It’s been...a few months, but I’m honestly glad that you’re here.” 

There was even less silence this time around. “So are you actually from Vale or did you just move there?” 

*Right, that’s it, no more personal questions. This is not going to help me at all. I should not humor her.*  

She nodded. 

“I’m not going to pry anymore, but also, nice! It’s a cool city, cool kingdom. I’m gonna be glad to be back. Even if Beacon is kind of broken.” 

Ruby kept rambling on about something about Vale’s tour districts, and Neo gave a few mildly expressive replies as she slowly spaced back out, trying to ignore the important little thing that this whole conversation had hammered home. 

*It’s not even a crew thing anymore, huh. It’s personal now.*

*You know what, fuck it. It’s gonna be fine.* 

*I guess I’ve got these morons covered, even if they drive me a little crazy.* 

*I wonder why Ruby’s exempt from that rule.*

“Have you considered modifying your weapon? Hush & Havoc sounds like a really great name, and you could do something neat with those kinetic absorbers.” 

She nearly stabbed her then and there. 

Only nearly, though.

Chapter Text

“Miss Rose, I respect you and your team greatly. You are all clearly very skilled, and have earned the trust and respect of Ozpin as well. However, with that said...” 

“Are you going to tell us how we could have done Atlas better?” 

“You managed to save more people than Ironwood would have, and I have...spoken with Ozpin about it.” 

“Teach, how many times did you call him?” 

“What I am meaning to ask is this.” 

Glynda Goodwitch let out a sigh and aimed her riding crop at Neo. “What is Torchwick’s partner doing here?” 

*This is never going to stop, is it.*

“She’s on our side, really.” Ruby held her hands out in a gesture that was clearly meant to assuage without entirely surrendering control of the situation, and it definitely would have worked if she wasn’t facing Goodwitch and on the receiving end of one of her shit-list glares. 

“Assuming that you are going to claim that she was forced into assisting with the Fall of Beacon under duress--” “She was, actually.” 

Goodwitch didn’t even make a sound, just making her glare slightly more intense before continuing. “This does not excuse the fact she worked with Roman Torchwick, one of the most wanted individuals in Vale, before the Fall and preceding events, as well as her own career. You do grasp just how deeply linked she is to so many happenings in the criminal underworld, yes?” 

“Professor, we are entirely aware, but we know for a fact she is on our side, and right now we need just about every advantage we can get over Salem.” 

Neo felt Goodwitch’s gaze land upon her as she fiddled with one of the little keychains hanging from her waistband, and she glanced up long enough to shoot a look towards Ruby and shrug before going back to messing with the ice cream keychain. *I mean, they’re not dead yet. Get the memo.*

“Besides, the ones in Vacuo are--” “Doing something similar with another of Cinder Fall’s former allies, I am aware. I am less inclined to be suspicious of her, however, since Miss Sustrai was not a perpetual thorn in our side even before Cinder launched her scheme at Beacon.” 

“Professor, why are you calling everybody except Cinder miss?” “Signs of respect, Miss Belladonna. Also, you don’t need to keep talking to me like I’m one of your teachers. You all did technically graduate from Atlas Academy, despite the lack of proper transfer paperwork.” 

“Regardless of who we’re working with now, we want to help.” Ruby waved off Neo’s presence and dropped her arm, reaching for her scroll. “We’re trying to get to Vacuo to help with the fight there, but we want to do what we can along the way. Vale still has a lot of Grimm problems, and we’re trained. It’s the least we could do.” 

Goodwitch sent another skeptical glance at Neo, and looked back at Ruby. “You’re certain you can keep her under control, then?” 

Ruby nodded. “I trust her at this point, Professor.” 

She returned the nod. “If something goes wrong, or she does something illegal, that will be added on to the list of things you are responsible for. But otherwise, very well. Doctor Oobleck has been working to maintain local networks, and is currently in charge of the bounty network for the city proper. Though, I am sure if you are not too busy, reconnecting with those you knew from your time at Beacon would be beneficial.” 

Neo glanced from side to side and tried to look as innocent as possible. *Junior definitely never fixed his bar.*

As Ruby fumbled for her scroll and smiled at Goodwitch, Yang sighed and took a step forward. “Teach, I’m gonna be honest, I can see you sideyeing shortstop like you think she’s about to steal your kidneys. And I get why you’re suspicious. I really do.” 

“Miss Xiao Long, please stop patronizing me.” 

Yang threw her hands in the air. “Missing the point. Neopolitan was willing to fight my mother, of all people, just so she could protect us, and she helped us get the other two relics to somewhere safe and outside of Salem’s reach. Sure, she’s done a few things that are less than legal, but she has as much of a reason to work with us as anybody else. Plus, she hasn’t stolen anybody’s kidneys in like, a month now.” 

*Ignoring the warehouse bender. I’m not apologizing for that.*

*Okay, I did apologize, but only for everything else about that mess.*

Goodwitch didn’t react externally, typing in the network password on Ruby’s scroll without looking at it and staring at Yang for a few more seconds before sighing. “She will need to answer for her crimes at some point. And while she may be an ally now, there are still many things this will not make up for.” She paused, checking her own scroll as it buzzed, and slipped the device back into a pocket. “Doctor Oobleck and some of the other teachers and students in the area wish to see you again, according to the message he just sent me.” The scroll buzzed again. And again. “The several messages,” she corrected. 

The rest of the team gave vague murmurs of assent and started to shuffle off with Goodwitch, and Ruby caught Neo’s arm right before either of them could join the group. 

“She’s kind of right, but I’m not worried.” She gave Neo a gentle smile. “We can work all that out once it’s all over. And even then, I’m sure you’re going to be fine.” 

*We are very casual about my casualties, apparently.* 

Ruby patted her gently on the shoulder and set off. 

*I must be of very questionable judgement.*

Chapter Text

“Is anybody else getting really bad deja vu?” 

Neo just nodded in reply to Yang as the team pushed through the empty warehouse. Half of Vale’s empty district had just been up and ditched after the Beacon clusterfuck, including the ones that the criminal element had been using, and that reputation had apparently still lingered when the cleanup duty had to kick in. 

Which was why RWBY+J+N were currently walking through a bunch of them, looking for straggler Grimm. 

“We have a really bad track record with Vale warehouses.” Blake already had Gambol Shroud in her hands, still sheathed but ready to cleave something in full machete form. Her ears were twitching a little as she spoke. “Hopefully this one doesn’t lead to a fight against a giant robot.” 

Neo let out a tiny giggle and signed a quick comeback at Blake. “You met me last time. Not so bad.”

“Neo, you tried to kill me like, a week and a half later.” Yang didn’t look away from the shattered windows and darkened offshoot hallways as she made a comeback, somehow. 

“I do that with all my friends.”

“Were we friends then?” Weiss still had Myrtenaster hostered for some reason, even though Jaune kept poking her to at least keep a hand on it. “I thought that fell in the time frame where you wanted us all dead.” 

Ruby laughed and patted Weiss on the shoulder. “It also fell in the time frame you were a jerk. And a tiny bit racist.” 

“You were pretty bad at the start.” “I’m wounded, Blake. Truly. I thought you liked me.” 

Jaune cleared his throat. “Guys, please focus. We don’t know who’s out here.” As if to prove his point, a crate off in the distance suddenly dislodged from its position jammed between a few rafters and cratered to the floor, causing them all to jump in the direction of the crash. Neo just rolled her eyes and shook her head. *It’s fine, this happens all the time.*

“Honestly, I kind of doubt there’s people out here. Nobody’s been poking around here since Beacon, and apart from that pack of Creeps in the plaza, I don’t think we’re going to find anybody.” Ruby shifted Crescent Rose in her hands, betraying her actual wariness as she glanced around the sides of the room. “Unless...hey, Neo, did you guys ever use this warehouse for anything? Are there any traps or something?” 

Neo nodded and held up a single finger, indicating the first part of the question. “Great. Which other ones, if you remember?” 

In that reply, she just threw her arms out at the warehouse and counted off as many warehouses as she remembered on her fingers. *All of them. Just all of them.*

Something hit a crate in the distance, and Blake’s ears twitched again as she whipped around. Neo sighed, ignoring it, but something in the back of her mind told her that rats did not make THAT much noise. Or knock that many crates around. 

“There weren’t any in this one, right?” There was a definite edge of concern in Blake’s voice. “Because there’s something mechanical shifting over in that corner, and I don’t know if those footsteps outside are just rats or something.”

A realization struck Neo in a split second. 

*I haven’t actually seen any rats.* 

And then just about every crate in the building exploded. 

Jaune and Weiss immediately went back-to-back, Hard Light shield extended and repulsion glyphs projected. Yang braced her arms in front of her, the shrapnel and high-velocity debris coming at her pining off her aura as her Semblance tanked the kinetic energy, and Blake, Ruby, and Neo all just dodged out of the way without even using their Semblances. 

Over the clatter of crashing metal, a few hasty callouts hit Neo’s ears, and she spun around in time to bat an incoming grenade away with Hush. It exploded harmlessly in the air away from her, and the smoke blew away to reveal quite a few armed people that didn’t look like guards. 

More than quite a few. 

*Wow. We’re surrounded. How the fuck did we walk into this?*

The subtle chatter and callouts ceased as the five hunters and Neo readied their weapons, and an almost sharp voice spoke up over what sounded suspiciously like a chain clinking. “Well, good to see you’re quick as ever, Ice Cream. The grenade was worth a shot.” 

A pale man in dark pants, an off-gray trench coat, and dark, dull blue pinstripes the same shade as his hair over both parts of the outfit pulled himself up onto one of the crates that was still intact, looking down on them as he rested a double-edged sword on his shoulder. “How've you been doing since you skipped out?” 

*Oh, not you.*

“I remember you.” Yang flexed each finger in her mechanical arm slowly as she stared him down. “From when I was looking for my mother. Slate Wilson. Junior always called you knockoff Torchwick, before everybody dropped off the grid.” 

“We are nothing alike, and I am going to tell Junior you told me that and fuck up his bar for good measure afterwards.” Slate ran a hand through his hair and tossed it back before turning his gaze back to Neo. “‘Sides, not like we had much of a choice. Word traveled fast about what he'd gotten wrapped up in, and nobody had a good feeling about that Fall lady.” 

“But that don’t matter now, does it?” He half-slipped off the crate, the sword staying up on his shoulder as he dropped to sit on it, still looking down on the group. “‘Cause he's not here. Most of Vale isn't. And as much as he might have looked like a drugged-up moron, he was respected and feared. As was anybody connected to him. And his right hand woman. So, if we want to keep things from going pumpkin-shaped again, we've got some clean-up to do.” 

The people all around the room re-cocked and otherwise armed the various melee, ranged, and other weapons they had. 

“Plus, you up and ditched us for Hunters, and there’s still a few people mad about that.” 

Slate’s sword began to whirr. 

“It ain’t entirely personal.”

Chapter Text

The explosion was much more figurative this time. 

Jaune was the first to launch, aiming his shield at his feet and blasting off a Gravity Dust pulse. He didn’t quite stick the landing among the firing line he was aiming for, but he spun around in time to fire another pulse off and halt his momentum while sending them all flying back. The smack of bodies hitting the sheet metal walls of the warehouse was the only thing everybody else needed, and a sheer wall of gunfire erupted from all directions as Slate’s people armed with melee weapons charged. 

Slate’s smirk dropped into a snarl. “Kill Torch’s bitch! Get her new friends too!” 

He really didn’t need to say it to get the other five moving. 

Neo ran straight for a wide guy shoving a chunk of fire Dust into the chamber of a blunderbuss, her grip tightening on Hush as he aimed. The combustion blast tore straight through the illusion, but Neo just reappeared past it, swatting the barrel of the gun away with one hand  and swinging Hush into the guy’s head with the other. The air left his throat with a choked gasp, and the blunderbuss clattered to the floor as Neo cracked Hush into his skull and shattered. She reappeared a few feet away back-to-back with Weiss, who threw up a glyph immediately, holding both of them in place for a split second before launching them. Neo barely caught a glimpse of a literal storm of ice blasts going off behind her and trapping at least five people before a chain broke through the air in front of her, the hook on the end whizzing by her face. 

A quick glance to the side revealed the dirty-yellow-haired woman holding the revolver with the chain on the end, and she thumbed a button on the side of the gun and yanked her arm back the same instant Neo snagged Hush’s handle on the chain. There was a whirr as the chain retracted, and then Neo’s world went white for a second as she crashed into the woman headfirst and hit the floor. The feeling of something smacking into her Aura jolted her back into full awareness, and she spun around on her back, kicking out and knocking the woman down before she could fire another shot and take out even more of Neo’s Aura. A boot to the face knocked her out, and a few quick swipes of Hush’s blade broke her Aura. 

The takedown chain went unbroken as she ran off towards a polearm-wielding bear Faunus and shattered the weapon and his wrists in a few quick moves. Sent a short woman with a flashbang-like Semblance through a window and into the pavement. Yanked somebody holding a high-caliber bat-rifle to the ground by the neck as Gambol Shroud’s ribbon pulled their legs out beneath them. A few rounds hit her aura, a blade or two nicked her, but as she slowly chipped through the veritable horde alongside the others, the main thing on her mind was what wasn’t there. 

*Usually there’s a little bit of fun in this part, not just fighting.*

She paused after hitting a dark-haired man dual-wielding submachine guns hard enough to make something in his chest crack, biting down on her tongue in thought. The lack of the familiar feeling of a fight was unnerving her, considering it had been present even marginally in her fight against Raven right up until Blake was in danger. 

*Hell, fighting to protect takes so much.*

“Well, I wanted this over quick.” 

Neo braced at the sound of Slate’s voice, turning to deal with a guy holding a revolver-dagger glowing with Lightning Dust, only for him to be thrown aside by a very angry crime boss. 

“But I guess I've got to do it myself.” 

She dashed forward, taking Hush in both hands and spinning around to hit Slate hard. He was slow to react, bringing his sword up to block it, but she shattered the second both weapons made contact and reappeared behind him, crashing the umbrella into his neck. 

Bone snapped and tissue crunched under the hit, and Slate’s head jerked to the side as Hush crushed his entire throat, bone and all. Neo froze for a second and yanked the parasol away, blinking a few times in surprise. 

*Huh. Could have sworn he had more tricks than that.*

And then the crunching noises repeated in reverse as his airway began to fix itself. 

Slate turned around to face Neo, a cold smile on his face as the bones Hush’s blow had shattered restructured into place. His neck snapped back into the position it was supposed to be with a twisted pop, and a spark of midnight blue Aura flew off the wound as the bruise faded out. 

“Yeah, I'm not planning on dying right now.” 

*I say again, oh no.*

He lunged forward, sword swinging to the side, barely grazing the brim of Neo’s hat as she leaned backward in a dodge that turned into a backflip to get out of the way. Slate spat out a bit of blood in his mouth leftover from the shattered throat and stomped toward her, grip tight on his sword. The notches along the blade began to glow, and he started throwing wild swings at Neo as she slowly backed away. 

“Hold still, you little shit--” 

A button clicked, and Hush’s blade was poking through the tip of the parasol, covered in blood and a little bit of torn muscle as Slate’s sword arm dropped, dangling from where it sat half-torn off the rest of the limb. Neo lunged for another swipe to finish the job, but Slate pulled himself back, flinging the arm up in a bladed haymaker. More muscle tore as it flew by Neo, the range of motion far outside what a normal blow could have been, and she sidestepped the swing and flicked the muscle off Hush’s tip. Instead of swinging back around, though, Slate kept moving in the same direction, turning into a full spin as the sword began to whirr and hiss. 

The notches on the blade glowed brighter than they’d been the entire time, and the entire length of metal suddenly separated into shards, all held along a thin filament in the center of what had been the blade. 

*Oh, shit, THAT’S what he did to Razormind.*

The tangle of metal whipped around and bit into Neo’s Aura, sending her stumbling as Slate stopped spinning and jerked the nearly completely detached arm back into the place. Razormind retracted back into sword form as the flesh knitted itself back together, clotted blood staining the new tear in his suit. 

The sounds of battle around them were starting to fade out now, Slate’s people slowly dropping from broken Auras or unconsciousness, and he rolled his shoulders as he stared at Neo. 

“Fuck you and your friends.” 

And then a metal arm punched through his stomach.

Chapter Text

Neo didn’t quite hear what Yang yelled as she lifted Slate above her and ripped her hand out of his stomach, then immediately grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the floor hard enough to send out a shockwave, but it definitely sounded angry. 

His Semblance didn’t even get the chance to kick in before she started hitting him again and again, cracking the ground beneath him as she unloaded ballistic-enhanced punch after ballistic-enhanced punch into what was increasingly looking like a pile of flesh in a mostly intact suit. 

Yang threw one final punch and backed away from the six-inch-deep crater she’d made, ejecting the spent shells from Ember Celica and slapping a magazine in as she caught her breath. Jaune sprinted up behind her, panting a little heavier but still in fighting shape. “Is he dead?” 

There was a muffled gurgling noise from the blue and red stain on the floor, and then every piece of shattered muscle and bone began pulling itself back together into the suit, which was still somehow almost completely intact apart from the cuts it had taken from Hush. Limbs reformed from pieces of bone and sinew, skin knit itself back together where it hadn’t broken and grew back where it hadn’t, and a very annoyed scowl emerged on the face pulling itself back together. 

Jaune gagged and hunched over, and Yang sighed. “What kind of bullshit is this, really?” 

“Times like that, I’d prefer something that actually gives me a shield.” The sentence started out rough, but became clearer as Slate’s lungs reinflated. “But times like these, when I get to do this brand of bullshit to people?” His jaw cracked as he smiled. “You bet I like what I’ve got.” 

Razormind whirred and began to glow again, the rapid switch mode engaged. “Time for pinkie and the brave ones to piss off and solve my problem.” 

He reached up and Razormind lashed out, the metal teeth of the whip wrapping around Crocea Mors. The weapon began to retract and snap back into place, and Jaune got dragged along with it, finally tugging the sword free just in time to get hit and sent to the ground by a blow to the side. Yang launched forward and into a spinning kick that twisted Slate’s shoulder, and he retaliated with an elbow to the back of her knee and an overhead swing of Razormind in sword form. Neo ran over and yanked Jaune upright with one hand, taking stock of the duel between Slate and Yang that was going on in front of her. 

Yang was winning by far, her training and power winning out on damn near every hit she landed, but Slate’s Semblance kept him standing even as she hit through him. His own blows lacked finesse, but Neo knew how Razormind was designed to deal with Aura like Hush, and the fact he wasn’t going stumbling to the ground with every blow and just letting it break skin and bone kept him standing somehow. Probably something with distribution of kinetic energy. 

Something tapped her on the shoulder, and Neo turned to see Weiss standing behind her with a scroll that didn’t look like hers. “I took this off of what I assume was his second in command. Most of the people with Aura are on here, and a few have plenty of it, but it also has his on it.” She pointed to Slate, now whirling Razormind’s whip form all around himself to buy space against a two-pronged attack from Jaune and Yang, and then opened up his Aura bar on the phone. 

It was at about 68%. 

*Holy shit.*

“How are we going to stop THAT?” Weiss dropped the scroll and spun Myrtenaster’s chamber to the Fire Dust, heating the blade up as she did. “Deal enough damage to burn through his Aura?” 

“Try immobilization!” Ruby blew past the both of them in a blur and slammed Crescent Rose down, the blade piercing through Slate’s leg and jamming into the floor. The redhead swallowed and looked up at Slate’s face. “Uhh, that’s going to be fine, right?” 

“Yes, little red, it is.” 

*No, you don’t get to use that nickname. That’s mine.* 

The black parts of Crescent Rose got painted red as Slate yanked his leg free of the scythe, tearing apart the entire limb and sending the limp muscle flailing, unobstructed as Ruby started on in shock. His Aura sparked around the wound for a split second before it knit itself back together, much faster than it had been doing so before, and he kicked Ruby right in the diaphragm. The air rushed out of her, and she gasped before vanishing into a cloud of petals and swirling past him, reforming a few feet away right next to Yang and Jaune as she skidded back. 

The three of them all charged at Slate at the same time, only for Yang to get Razormind tangled around her mechanical arm and slammed into the other two. Gambol Shroud rang out, and Slate’s head snapped to the side from a low yield Dust round impact that didn’t quite get past his skull as a Boarbatusk summon charged him and threw him into the air. Blake ran in from her perch and leapt off the summon, turning her weapon back to the cleaver midair and slamming the blow into him, reversing his momentum and sending him flying to the floor hard enough to break the summon on impact. 

*Oh, you BITCH*

Neo took stock of her own Aura, flicking her scroll open to see the bar at half, and sighed as she charged in, grabbing Yang by the back of her jacket and shattering the both of them as Razormind tried to bite at her, dropping Yang a few feet away. She popped Hush’s canopy open, bouncing off one attack but feeling two more bite at her as she hooked the handle around Crescent Rose’s blade and pulled Ruby out from another attack, but not enough to block Slate’s lunge and slash at her. Blake pulled on the ribbon as she threw Gambol Shroud, the recoil propelling it into Slate’s shoulder and pulling him into the path of Jaune’s swing, splitting his arm off halfway down, only for the muscles to latch out and pull the severed limb right back on in time for his backswing. 

Hush’s handle slipped a fraction in Neo’s grip as she shattered and reappeared just outside of Slate’s reach again, watching her friends try to take him down, their breaths and her own all beginning to run short as Slate cursed and swung again and again. Hush wasn’t meant to fight truly soft targets like this, and she ran through options in her head as she caught her breath atop one of the boxes. 

They could wear him down, try and get Jaune to do some quick combat amps, but his own Aura was getting drained with each hit and he wouldn’t last long. Weiss’s attempts at keeping him pinned weren’t working out, shrugging off the hits, and any sort of physical hold he could break by taking the injury. Nobody else’s Semblance would be able to actually hold him down, not even hers unless she tried to toss him around, and if she did that enough to hurt him it’d disorient the others and burn her Aura out. None of her kit was useful for this, she was good at fighting hunters, not Slate’s fucking Semblance, she had better chances against Raven–

Raven. 

Neo tossed all the plans she was running through away in an instant and shifted on her perch, judging angles for the jump. She didn’t know what she was aiming for, but she knew what she’d wanted then, and she knew what she wanted now. 

Slate let out a hiss-grunt as a shard of ice tore through his stomach, and he flexed his muscles to shatter it before snapping Razormind out at Weiss and knocking her back across the floor. 

They were all going to walk out of there. And Slate wasn’t in that picture. Not in that world. Not how she saw it.

She pulled Hush’s blade out of the canopy and leapt, using her own skills and as little of her Aura as possible as Slate turned around to face her. 

“What do you--” 

The blade carved through his neck, blood splattering everywhere as he spun in shock. Neo spun the handled back into the canopy before he was done pitching, tossing the weapon back into her off hand and winding up. 

Slate barely finished regenerating before she punched him in the face.

The air around him crackled and shone for a second before Overactive Imagination wrapped around him, flickering pink and glitter around his weapon, his suit, all of him, shards of ethereal glass showing glimpses of the space where he was but empty, absent of anything but the pink light of her Aura shining through nonexistent cracks. 

It held for a moment, long enough for Neo to know exactly what she’d done and how, and then it all broke apart in a shower of breaking glass and pink sparks. Slate staggered backward gasping for breath, Razormind limp in his hand, and Neo just stayed where she was, panting, eyes wide as her Aura faded out from her.

“Gods dammit.” 

He lunged, fully healed, Razordmind’s sword form aimed at Neo’s throat, but it didn’t make it halfway before Yang punched the weapon itself out of the path. He flicked it to whip mode, biting teeth coming back around behind him to strike her, only for a glyph to flash just enough to pull it to the floor. Slate retracted it and pulled his arm hard, dislocating it as he fought the glyph, and literally whipped the weapon around to parry Blake and Weiss’s swings, half-transforming it. They both dropped away as Ruby materialized out of petals, Jaune’s shield in hand, and triggered the pulse. Slate went flying right into Crocea Mors, the sword punching straight through his ribs, and Ruby tossed the shield to him as Slate dud his weapon into the ground and pulled himself off. One more snarl, and he swung Razormind around to make space, only for Blake to throw Gambol Shroud at it as he retracted the flail mode, the ribbon tangling up in the mechanisms. She pulled, and the weapon was wrenched from his grip and to the floor. Slate barely had time to stare before Ruby fired a shot with Crescent Rose right into his stomach, the wound barely knitting itself back together before he let out a cough and his Aura shattered around him, dark blue sparks trailing off what remained of every wound. 

“I just wanted to kill the short bitch.” 

Everybody else began running around, taking out scrolls to make calls and explain the fight or make sure nobody had actually died yet, but Neo just stood there, staring at Slate’s unconscious body as his words sunk in and her Aura stayed broken.

*He was there for me.* 

*She was.* 

*I was.* 

*I should have seen it sooner.*

A threat assessment ran through her brain, connecting common threads. She looked around, checking to see if anybody was paying attention to her, and discreetly opened up her old contacts list on her scroll. 

There were too many people whose names she still remembered. 

*They almost lost to fucking Slate.*

*We can't do this again.*

*Not with them.* 

*I'm not doing this again.*

Chapter Text

Ruby was alone on the rooftop when her scroll buzzed. 

She tensed a fraction, a bolt of worry shooting through her as she recognized the notification. Neopolitan had bolted as soon as they’d made it back to where they were staying, hiding herself away for nearly the entire day, and nobody’s attempts to try and make contact had been successful. 

<In living room.

 

<Need to talk.

The roof was empty in a second, the only sign Ruby was ever there a handful of petals leading to the window she’d climbed through. Petal Burst barely made any noise as she swirled through the apartment, her mind already whirring with concern over what was going on. The last time Neo had texted her had been the evacuation, and if she was saying that they needed to talk, Ruby wasn’t willing to let that go alone. Especially after whatever had happened earlier.

She tried to keep her worry from interfering with her Semblance as she darted around, doing her best to not wake up the others, swirling under the door to the rooms and into the living room and reformed in front of Neo standing beside the door. 

With Hush and a bag at her feet and a note in her hand. 

So much for not worrying. 

The note was in her hands before she could even ask for it, Neo shoving it into her grasp like she was trying to get it away from herself as fast as possible. Their gazes met for a second, and then Ruby blinked, took a deep breath, and began reading. 

Red, Ruby,

I can’t stay. Slate came after us today because he wanted me, not you all. So did Raven, and so could Cinder. I can’t pretend to be sorry for the other things that have happened, but I’m putting you all in danger if I keep hanging around, and I can’t do that either. 

Go do your hunting things. Stop Salem. Kick Cinder’s ass. All that jazz. 

I

I

I’ll leave you to it. 

She hadn’t signed it. 

Ruby looked back up to see Neo’s impassive face, looking back at her with a perfectly blank expression, or would have been if she wasn’t straining so hard to keep it still. 

“Neo, this is one incident, you don’t need to run away because of one thing—“ 

The arm slowly reaching out to her shoulder in an effort to comfort her got slapped away as Neo glared up at her, the impassive veil dropping away. She pointed to Slate’s name on the note, then frantically gestured imitations of something. 

A bird. A house. A tree. Something falling. 

The meaning dawned on Ruby, and she internally cursed herself for not asking about this sooner. “Neo, if you’re feeling guilty for what happened with Atlas, we can talk about that alter, get something worked out with the academies and the councils.” 

A choked sound like a scoff came out of Neo, and she just shook her head. Ruby kept meeting her eyes, trying to get what she wanted, but Neo just sighed and turned around, picking up the bag and Hush and moving to open the door. 

“Wait!” 

Neo’s hand froze halfway to the handle, and Ruby’s froze halfway from her arm. “Why can’t you?” 

When Neo turned around, there was confusion all over her face. Ruby continued. “Why can’t you put us in danger? If you are, which you’re not, but if you were, why can’t you? Don’t you trust us?”

Another scoff died halfway through Neo’s lips, a reminder of the fact that no, she didn’t trust anybody, force of habit, but she dropped her gaze to the floor in silent thought for a few moments before looking back up to meet Ruby. 

She could have sworn she saw growing tears in the corner of her makeup as she mouthed two words at Ruby. 

“Can’t. Care.” 

“What do you mean you can’t care?” 

Both of them winced as Ruby’s shout echoed, and almost angry silver eyes met pink and brown ones. “I KNOW you care, Neo. You wouldn’t have stayed past Haven if you didn’t. So why on Remnant are you pretending that you don’t—“ 

She cut herself off when she saw the hand on Hush trembling ever so slightly. 

“Ah.” 

Shame and pity flooded on in.

“My bad. Didn’t quite get what you mean.” 

Neo almost stomped up to her, still not managing to be taller than Ruby managed to be even angrier than the taller girl had been just a moment ago as she started mouthing words at her again. 

“ If any of you fuckers think I’ll sit around and watch the people I care about suffer and die you’re as fucking stupid as I thought you were.”

The look on her face was somewhere between rage and sorrow, like she was trying to deny something was getting to her, that she was feeling something and didn’t want to admit what she felt or knew. 

It was just like it had been back in the mine, in Argus. 

“Neo, part of caring about people is knowing that they might get hurt.” 

She threw her arms up in the air and waved them around, a flippant gesture of ‘I already knew that’. 

“Then why are you doing this?” 

She froze, staring at nothing for a second, then slowly signed out a word. 

“All.”

Ruby’s voice utterly broke. “Neo, has it really been so long since--” 

Neo shook her head violently, repeating the sign and the crossing her arms in an X shape. Not the team. 

Then she reached up and gently grazed the brim of her hat. 

And pointed at Ruby. 

And all of a sudden, it all made sense. 

The fear Ruby’d had since that night in Mantle, where Neo had been tied up and captured, the fact that she was going through the exact same messed up not-grieving process she’d seen her family go through when Summer died, that she’d almost seen Yang go through, that she was experiencing the effects of now, trying to stop Neo from meeting the fate as the magic woman long ago who couldn’t get over a death, all came rushing together. 

She hadn’t wanted Neo to meet the fate she’d seen others meet. And along the way, she’d started actually caring about her for her.  

Now Neo was on the opposite side, where she’d stood not long ago at all. 

She cared about her like she’d cared about Roman. 

She didn’t want to see the person she--she couldn’t see that person die again. 

“Neo.” 

Ruby held out her open hand toward Neo, palm facing up, the same offer she’d made in Atlas in an outstretched hand once more. 

“I know what you’re feeling.” 

She probably felt more about the killer than she should. 

“I know it might be stupid of me.” 

“But I’m not scared, Neo.” 

“I know what could be coming. What dangers are there. And you’re not one of them.” 

“Promises of the fact that I’ll never leave are meaningless.” 

Neo made an attempt at an eye roll, but it didn’t take, the sarcastic mask not even starting to hide how she felt. The tears growing at the corners of her eyes were proof, and Ruby thought she felt her own too. 

“But as long as I have a choice, I won’t.” 

“And even when I don’t, I’ll come back, because I owe you.” 

“Because I know what you feel just as much.” 

Neo blinked and reached up with her free hand to wipe the tears out of her eyes, and Ruby couldn’t tell what she was thinking but she could guess. 

“I don’t want you to leave, Neo. Not just because we need more people or you’re my teammate now.” 

“I want you to stay for you.” 

The bag and Hush dropped from Neo’s hands, and the tears came back in full force as she took Ruby’s hand and pulled her into a deep hug, jamming her face as far into Ruby’s shoulder as she could. Ruby felt her try to pull herself tighter, like she didn’t want to leave, like she couldn’t risk losing somebody again. 

Ruby didn’t blame her. 

She didn’t want to risk losing Neo. 

She gently reached up and pulled Neo’s head out of her shoulder, two sets of tear-stained, bloodshot eyes looking into each other. 

“Why else would I have been so happy with every little thing you do? I haven’t been doing this for Emerald’s little actions, or whatever Mercury’s pulling over there. I wanted to help you first, and over time it just changed, like you somehow understood or maybe I understood and I don’t know, but…” 

Neo wiped away one of Ruby’s tears. 

“I think we need to talk about some things.” 

A little exhale of air escaped Neo’s nose, and she mouthed two words. “I know.”

“Are you scared, Neo?” 

*Of losing you? Always.*

*But you’re here.* 

*I really must be delirious for this.*

“No.”

“You mess with me sometimes, you know that?” 

A little nod, and Neo leaned into Ruby, trying to hold on as tight as she could. 

*It might get us both ripped to shreds.*

*But I don’t think I care.*

Ruby didn’t say anything, just holding on to Neo in the living room in the dark, feeling her breathing against her and holding on like she was the only thing around for miles in dark waters, and leaned down to rest her heads against Neo’s. 

She didn’t care either. 

She just knew the feeling Neo had. 

*I don’t need to run.*

Neither of them quite wanted to say it. Neither quite knew what the feeling was. Or really wanted to admit it at a bad time like this. 

All that Ruby knew was that she’d found something new. 

All that Neo knew was that she’d found something past where she thought it was all gone.

Chapter Text

“You sure you don’t want to spar?” 

“Jaune, I’m pretty sure the only person whose ass she hasn’t kicked here is Blake’s.” 

Jaune turned to look at Neo, who quickly counted off the roster on her fingers and nodded in agreement with Yang’s reply. She was leaning against the wall of the empty courtyard the others were practicing in, Hush around her arm as the hunters in the area practiced tricks and Grimm fighting maneuvers she really didn’t care for. 

“To be fair, I’d like to know exactly what you did in that warehouse as well, Neo.” Weiss dispelled the swarm of tiny Lancers she’d been trying to create and holstered Myrtenaster. “I know Semblances can evolve, but that’s a Schnee-level Semblance change, not like Ren or Qrow. That’s a complete shift in functionality.” 

“Actually.” “I have a theory!” Ruby and Jaune piped up at the same time, shooting confused glances at each other before Ruby motioned for Jaune to continue. “Thanks, Rubes. Anyway, I was thinking, and I have a theory on what happened. We know Semblances can evolve and change, but not in a way that changes how they work at the base level.” 

Weiss nodded. “I’m not creating different forces, I can just create different glyphs to generate different effects, as opposed to the physical ones of the summons. I don’t do anything, the glyphs do.” 

“Exactly. It’s more like unlocking a bigger level of your Semblance than it actually fundamentally changing, but what you can do with it does shift. Blake’s shadow clones can interact and do things in a limited capacity now, but they’re still just shadow clones. She can do more with them, as opposed to back in Beacon where she could only use them to dodge hits.” A shadow clone appeared right next to Jaune, only for Blake to appear where it had been a moment later. “And teleport between them now, apparently.” 

“I’m not expecting to be able to do that in combat. I had to focus to pull that off.” Blake clicked the safety on Gambol Shroud and plunged it into the ground, leaning on it and completing the sudden circle that had formed around Neo. “But with like, Qrow’s luck changing, that was just because his Semblance could manipulate luck and he only saw the downside of that at first. This was...what even was it?” 

Neo raised her hand and focused, and the air between her fingers sparked with glass and pink before fading out. She coughed and leaned back against the wall, and Jaune reached out with a glowing hand. *That hurts, ow.*

“I have a theory. You all know Emerald’s Semblance, right?” 

That just earned Jaune a bunch of blank stares, even from Neo. *I am a far superior illusionist, thank you very much.*

“Hear me out, hear me out.” He finished topping Neo’s Aura back off and held his hands out in front of him, gesturing along with his explanation. “Emerald makes you hallucinate. We say that they’re illusions because they’re not real. There’s no physical effects to them, we don’t feel anything change, and any attempt to interact with them just results in our brains realizing they’re fake and erasing them from our perception.” 

Yang’s mouth slowly opened, and she let out an “ohhhhhhh” as realization started to dawn on her. “But Neo’s are.” 

“Exactly!” Ruby snapped her fingers, and Jaune stepped back to let her take over the explanation. “Neo’s powers are physical, and have physical effects. She can change the shape and mass of things, like make herself taller, and when she does do that and we interact with it, it feels real. Her illusions have physicality to them, which means they can’t be illusions, they have to be real.” 

Weiss swallowed a little and looked Neo in the eyes. “What did you say your Semblance’s name was, again?” 

She signed a reply. “Overactive Imagination.*

An uncharacteristically dry chuckle from Ruby drew the focus back to her. “That’s pretty funny, because of my theory. Neo, when you do the thing where you shatter and reappear somewhere else, are you really running around in that time?” 

A shake of the head and another signed reply. “There one moment, gone the next.”

“So it’s just kind of a teleport?” 

Neo went to sign another, but froze up, slowly nodding along as the realization slowly hit everybody. *I think I’m starting to get the memo.*

Ruby let out another weak chuckle. “Neo, I don’t think you were making illusions. I think you were literally changing how things are. You remember the warehouse?” 

*And the dozens of other times my Semblance has done something that’s more than illusions over my life, yes.*

Yang lifted her hands a little before leaning in further. “I’m not gonna ask what was in the warehouse before we found it, but what are you actually saying here?” 

“When Neo projects her Semblance, she’s changing the world to make it look like something’s there, or it’s different than it is. They’re not illusions, because we all see them, and our minds aren’t getting messed with. She’s sort of temporarily, in a limited space, changing the world to how she wants things to be. That’s why they can be physically different.” Ruby took a breath, motioning for everybody to wait until she was finished. “That’s also where I think what happened to Raven and Slate came from. Instead of just trying to cover something up or make them look like they weren’t there, she tried to...actually make them not there.” 

It was a long moment of baffled silence before Blake spoke up in a tone so shocked it looped back around to being monotone. “That sounds like bullshit.” 

“Hey, hey! It’s just a theory. Was that what you were trying to do, Neo?” Ruby turned back to Neo, her expression inquisitive. “Were you actually trying to make them not be there, or am I wrong?” 

Neo paused in thought for a few seconds, then tried to sign her reply. “Don’t think that much into it. Just do. Didn’t want them to hurt you.”

“Assuming that is our confirmation, do you all grasp how insane this is? If Neo’s Semblance really is just being able to change things, even temporarily…” Weiss reached up to rub both her temples, breathing far too carefully for anybody to think she was calm. “This should be incongruous with our understanding of Semblance theory. You can’t just…change things.” 

“They’re not permanent changes. They’re still illusory, just not illusions. And even a tiny little subtractive change totally destroys her Aura.” Ruby’s scroll opened up, displaying the history of Aura levels of everybody linked. “Seriously, look at this. She lost almost all of it after doing it the other day, and then a whole lot against Raven and even just now.” 

The others nodded and turned to Neo, and Jaune finished the explanation. “So, yeah. Once we get some downtime not running hunts, we should probably test this, and it’s not permanent or anywhere as strong as you guys apparently think, but it’s still incredible.” 

*If I get a lecture about the benefits of selflessness and caring about people, I’m stabbing whoever it’s from. Unless it’s Red, she gets a pass.*

Chapter Text

Yang, Ruby, and Blake were wrist-deep in Yang’s arm when Neo walked through the door and threw a servo at Yang’s head. 

She didn’t catch it. 

“You bitch!” The angry reply came as soon as the part bounced off Yang’s head and landed on the table with a thunk, and she glared daggers at Neo as the latter stood grinning in the doorway. “Once this thing’s working, I am going to punch you. Hard.” 

“Yang, please don’t try to kill Neo. We’re going to have to fix this all over again.” Blake didn’t even look up as she tightened a screw on the elbow joint. “Now give Ruby that servo. The wrist is going to seize up if we don’t replace the parts.” 

“Why did we get an entire servo when we’re just going to use tiny parts of it?” Yang tried to shrug with her currently missing right arm as she slid the servo across the table with her left. “And why are we trying to get stuff from around here when it’s Atlas tech? It’ll just be a downgrade in quality from here.” 

“That’s only if we’re replacing any of the synth-muscle or movement components, not some of the wiring. Even if the servo freezes, it’ll lock in a straight line at your arm, so you’ll still be able to punch and fight.” Ruby was already dismantling the servo as she spoke, removing small parts and wires as she pushed the rest of it into the growing pile of metal and junk surrounding her. “And we just need some new wires so that it doesn’t burn itself out and we need to do a full restring of the entire prosthetic to avoid the damage spreading.” 

Neo and Yang both blinked. “Couldn’t we have just bought more wires instead of the entire part?” 

“Maybe, but I wanted to be sure we would have ones rated for prosthetics and the strains this thing goes through. You should stop using those heavy rounds, by the way. They wear it down twice as fast.” A stray wire snapped and whacked Ruby in the face she finished her sentence, and she yelped and reached up to rub her nose. Blake just let out a tiny sigh and looked up at Neo. “Have you found the others yet?” 

Neo just shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself, making mocking kissing noises as she tried to not knock Hush off her arm while making the joke. Yang rolled her eyes while Ruby just stared at her in confusion, and Neo sighed and jerked a thumb over her shoulder to the door. Right on cue, Jaune and Weiss walked through, Jaune very obviously attempting to fix his hair as he did. 

“I think I’m gonna go back to the long hair after this. Easier to keep in place, and I didn’t need to spend ten minutes every morning doing it up at Beacon.” Jaune sighed and slumped into a chair. “Speaking of Beacon, it’s a little better, but not enough. The locals put a dent in it, but it’s been a really long time, and the local despair’s really starting to compound the Wyvern’s attraction. The odds of us actually being able to fight it are messy, even if Ruby manages to destroy it this time.” 

Everybody save Neo nodded along, mentally rating the risks associated with the situation. Neo just shrugged and started fiddling with the collar of her shirt, trying to loosen it a little. As far as she was concerned, Beacon was fucked, and it was going to take years to fix it. Not much of her problem, even if she was only sticking around for the others and mainly Ruby at this point. She more than owed the redhead by now. She was officially Roman Tier, and Neo wasn’t going to leave her. 

They were all so deep in very distinct thoughts that it startled everybody when Ruby’s scroll rang. 

Ruby jumped off her chair and scrambled to get the scroll out, holding it up high so the video call could get everybody in frame. The picture was static for a few seconds, then cleared up into an image of a very panicked Nora, jittering and cutting back to static every few seconds. 

“Guys! We got a--week--missing--storms--cover for Shade--hey!” 

The static blasted for a few seconds as the image slowly shifted, a pair of orange gloves taking the scroll away before the signal suddenly went crystal clear and showed a very worried looking Oscar, talking much faster than he normally did. 

“Oz isn’t gonna be happy with me using some magic to clear the signal, but you guys need to hear this. Right now.” The camera shifted, and the shapes of Ren, Nora, Penny, and a few gray and green blobs that were probably Mercury and Emerald in the background were revealed as Oscar kept going. 

“It took Salem about a week to get here, and the Grimm got all coordinated, but whatever she was planning on doing got thrown off by Emerald. She didn’t expect Amity to actually fly, or for Cinder to not get the relics. I don’t know, but even by her standards, it’s been chaos over here for the last few weeks.” 

“Did she make a move? Do you guys need help?” Yang was the only one vocalizing how everybody felt then, the tension in the room crystal clear in their stances, their shoulders, the hands slowly drifting to weapons. 

“We don’t think so. Things started to get bad north of Shade, so a lot of people went to deal with it, but the Academy itself was fine, and Qrow went to do some scouting. We got through the fight, and he got to the Vale border, and…” 

Qrow stepped on screen, the stubble on his jaw slightly longer than before, and grimaced. “The Grimm surge was a smokescreen. At least, it was meant to be. We found traces of something getting hit close to Shade, a breaching attempt. Drag our attention away while Cinder stole the Summer Maiden’s powers.” 

A bad feeling settled in Neo’s gut. *Empty getaway cars mean wild cards.*

The look on her face got noticed, and Oscar took back over. “We didn’t find her. She hasn’t shown up in Vacuo in a while, and then Qrow saw something over on the border.” 

Oscar sent a resolute look into the camera with a deep breath. “Cinder’s moving. Fast. And we think we know where.” 

There was a moment of silence were the other sound was Ruby muttering a plea to the gods under her breath. 

“We think she’s heading to Vale.” 

“To Beacon.”

Chapter Text

It felt like everything exploded at once. 

Neo locked eyes with Oscar immediately, unspoken communication confirming what Cinder was after. Ruby began scrambling to finish Yang’s arm, and Jaune ran over and dropped the case of Dust and ammunition they’d acquired onto the table. Weiss popped it open and began sorting through it, tossing the highest quality ammo and dust she’d found to the people that needed it as Oscar let out a gasping breath and kept talking. 

“We don’t know how far away she is, but there’s only one thing at Beacon she could be going for. Oz isn’t even willing to tell me how to find it, but apparently she doesn’t know, either. So you guys have time to stop her before she finds the crown.” 

Ruby slammed the last plate down on Yang’s arm and screwed it shut, jamming it onto Yang before she could even notice the finished work. It whirred as it synced back up with her body, the muscles flexing in calibration as the blonde turned to Oscar. “Can you tell us anything about how to find it?” 

“I--why would I be able to tell you anything if Oz isn’t going to tell me anything? Yang, Yang, it doesn’t matter. We’re not using it.” Oscar’s eyes flickered gold for a second, and Ozpin spoke through him. “We’re not using it.” 

Another flash, and Oscar was back in control. “What he said. I don’t want to keep you guys out of the loop, but the relic is legitimately that dangerous. He--” A pause as Oscar listened, and the case clicked shut as the last of the Dust was shoved into pockets and onto belts. “He says it’s not worth it to see if it could be better or worse.” 

Ruby shoved the chair out from behind her and grabbed Crescent Rose from off the table, holstering it behind her with a steeliest expression she could muster. “Where is she now?” 

Qrow took the camera back. “Not far out. She was moving fast when I saw her at the border, and she’s probably moving even faster now. Look, kids, there’s one way out of this. There’s nothing to defend, and nothing to protect. Beacon’s just the backdrop, and you need to stop her without getting distracted by that.” 

“Bit of a shame, honestly.” Yang spun Ember Celica’s chambers, double-checking the loading mechanisms. “Everybody’s already over all their payback.” The barrels locked in place with a very loud click. “I’d almost say we deserve to make it personal.” 

“It doesn’t matter if we make it personal or not.” Crocea Mors slammed into the table, shield fully extended with the sword still sheathed in it, and Jaune’s expression was stoic as he looked between everybody. “What Cinder did to us doesn’t matter. What she’s done to everybody else has. We can still stand and fight, but there’s so many people that can’t anymore because of her. So when we go, when we stand in the same place we stood that night years ago, we’re going to remember them when we stop her. Everyone.” 

He didn’t name names, but the thoughts echoed through everybody. Amber, Vernal, the ones they’d barely known but had been thrown away for worse than no reason. Pyrrha, Ozpin--because yes, he did die there--, what had almost been all of Atlas, the ones they’d known, just because they got in her way. Emerald, Mercury, the ambitious but misled members of the White Fang, lost because they didn’t fight the fact they didn’t see a choice. 

A thought touched the back of Neo’s head as she unsheathed Hush’s blade, quickly checking it for any imperfections before sliding it back in and nodding at Ruby. The redhead returned the nod and gave the camera a firm look. “We’re not going to lose anybody else.”

“Good, good.” Oscar was talking at his normal speed now, glancing around the room with a bit of panic in each word. “You guys should get moving. Me and Ozpin will call the others, and see if we can pull together some support. I’ll ask him if he has any tricks.” Yang opened her mouth to speak, but Oscar cut her off. “Oz says we’re not using your mom. He’s amazed it worked the first time.” 

“We’ll call Goodwitch and see if she can get everybody running. That help will be needed with all the Grimm.” Everybody could collectively swear they saw Ruby’s eyes shimmer for a moment. “We’re not going to fall again.” 

A nod from Oscar and Qrow, and the call ended. Ruby slid her scroll back away and started moving for the door, newly determined. “Weiss, Goodwitch. We need to call her.” “On it.” “Everybody else, to Beacon. We need to get those Grimm cleared out before Cinder gets here. With out luck, she’s gonna be here before the end of the day.” 

Something exploded in the distance, and Neo tossed Hush up into the air and caught it around the middle as Ruby sucked in a breath. “Maybe sooner.” 

*Sometimes, you have to finish a job quickly as you can. No schedules. Just fast.* 

*Clock’s ticking.*

Chapter Text

Beacon was beautiful and horrid at the exact same time. 

Neo had seen the architecture plenty of times before. A lifetime in Vale would do that. The castle-like exterior, high arches and stone so solid-looking you’d think it was indestructible. 

If she wasn’t currently climbing over a chunk of rubble she remembered dropkicking a scavenger off of in the aftermath of the Fall, she probably would have. 

A mechanical shearing noise echoed from behind her, and she heard a Creep groan and die as Crescent Rose and Ruby ripped it in two. The horde of Grimm around the school had in fact let up from how bad it had been the last time Neo had been in Vale, but it was still almost a sheer tide of black, ashy mass and red-marked bone, and that wasn’t a good environment to fight Cinder in. The last battle proved that point, but to be entirely fair, they hadn’t known Cinder was the enemy to be looking out for. 

Unpreparedness was not an excuse. Which was why Neo moved to unsheath Hush’s blade as fast as possible and plunge it through the roof of a pouncing Beowolf’s open mouth as soon as she heard the steps behind her. 

*Fighting these things really has to be an acquired taste.* The blade was out of the Grimm before it even finished disintegrating, and Neo clicked it back into place as she took a step backward and batted a normal-sized Nevermore out of the air, disrupting a trajectory that probably looked aimed for her head. 

*If we could just hurry this up, that’d be great.*

They’d come to something resembling an actual battle plan on the way to Beacon, after having communicated with Goodwitch and just about every hunter in the area to start pushing through the Grimm en masse. Ruby would goad Cinder into being reckless, the other four would jump in to outnumber her, and Neo would hop in when the full Maiden powers inevitably got brought out and throw her off guard enough to finally knock her out. The thought was enough to make Neo grip Hush even tighter as she leapt off the rubble, kicked off a lunging Ursa in midair, and planted both boots through the head of a Boarbatusk. The warehouse incident hadn’t exactly been incorrect, but if Cinder really hated her, Neo would most certainly oblige. Frankly, the fact that she’d been enough of a presence and probable threat to be hated by her at all was enough, but a fight that wasn’t severely emotionally charged was something she could go for right now. 

The Boarbatusk squirmed beneath her, a sudden reminder that it was apparently still alive, but a blast from her side and a slug through its skull but an end to that. Yang barely gave a head tilt of acknowledgement before blasting off towards an Ursa bigger than most, and Neo just shrugged and hopped off the disintegrating corpse before surveying the scene around her. 

Weiss slid to a stop beside her, dispelling the glyphs she’d been jumping around on, and looked up. “Do you think we have a chance against that?” 

Neo followed her gaze, landing at the Wyvern that somehow felt like it was worsening the feeling in the back of Neo’s head, and shrugged. *You’re the one who makes a career out of hunting these things.*

“Well that’s helpful.” She huffed and rolled her shoulders, absentmindedly reaching up to run the hand without Myrtenaster down her braid. “Brothers, why did Cinder have to force our hand like this?” 

There was a short pause before Neo flashed a quick sign at Weiss in reply. *Desperation. She needs one last score before she loses her shot.*

A breeze kicked up right behind both of them, and Ruby rematerialized in front of Weiss, panting slightly as the last few petals fell to the ground. “If we need to fight it, we can kill it. In the worst case scenario, I know what I’m doing now. Now let’s just--”

“Guys!” Jaune’s yell made all three of them snap around to where he was standing a little while away, scroll in hand and sword sheathed. “Message from one of the suburbs! Some big fireball in the distance, getting a lot closer. They’re prepping rescue teams, but…” His voice withered off. “I don’t think they’ll need it.”

Ruby shifted Crescent Rose back into its folded form with one hand, raised it, fired a round through a Creep’s head, and unfolded it, all within a few seconds without looking away from Jaune. “How far out is she?” 

The notification pattern of an emergency message bouncing into everybody’s scrolls gave a solid answer. 

The flash in the distance gave a very morbid one. 

“Oh no.” Ruby planted Crescent Rose into the ground and immediately took aim, steadying her breath as the trails of orange fire got more defined in the distance. “Oh, no no.” She reached behind her without looking away, racking the rifle bolt open with one hand and slipping a mottled purple Dust cartridge in the breach. “Weiss, sorry, but the crowd control shot might have to wait.” She fired, and Neo jumped a little at the strangely distorted firing sound. The purple tracer went flying, headed right for the fireball, and then winked out. 

A yell of “FUCK!” was almost audible under the miniature singularity that went off next to her. 

“I should have saved that.” 

The massive pulse of purple and white vanished in a split second, leaving the only light in the sky a rapidly approaching fireball. It seemed to swerve and wobble, then start approaching them a lot faster than before. 

Weiss threw up a series of cover glyphs and hunkered down. “Everybody down!” 

The firestorm, as a more accurate description, crashed down all around them in a blaze of bright orange fire and whipping winds. Neo leapt up onto one of the glyphs and jumped off, shattering on the landing and vanishing into nowhere as the shockwave passed over them all, throwing up dust and debris. 

The winds faded out, and Weiss dropped the glyphs while the dust settled. Weapons shifted into heavy hitter modes, and everybody grimaced as the flames died down to reveal the impact blast at the center of the crater. 

Cinder Fall violently brushed the dust off her cape and smugly snarled at Ruby. 

“Hello, little Red.”

Chapter Text

The savagery on Cinder’s face was barely contained behind the confidence in her eyes. 

“You’re not getting the crown, Cinder.” Ruby’s hands shifted on Crescent Rose. “You’ve lost.” 

“Right, I’ve lost because everybody I know betrayed me, and Salem—“ her arm twitched as she said the name. “—won’t keep the fight up. She doesn’t understand.” 

She let out a loose sigh and chuckled to herself. “All that power, and she threw it away. She wanted to keep trying. Flailing for the Maiden like a lost child.” 

From her perch, Neo snorted. *You of all people, criticizing that?* 

“She didn’t get that we’ve lost. She was so focused on the sword, the staff, the toys of everybody else, she forgot that she gave me the power to get the biggest one of all.” 

“So this is history’s biggest temper tantrum?” Weiss took a step forward, Myrtenaster dropped in a ready pose in line with her front foot. “You’re going to throw a fit and unravel everything just because you didn’t get what you want?” 

“This wasn’t even my fault!” A surge of flame licked the corner of Cinder’s good eye as she snarled the reply, composure slowly slipping. “Emerald and Mercury might have been cowards, but they chose their paths. So did Hazel. Watts and Tyrian, frankly, got what they had coming to them. Neopolitan was a little shit, through and through.” The edges of a memory pushed against Neo’s mind, and she neglected coming up with a witty retort to try and ignore it. 

“But Salem…” Cinder shook her head. “Even Salem forgot what she was fighting for. Tearing down this rancid, corrupt system. And even though Atlas suffered and fell like it should have, it didn’t happen right. She—she was nothing better than any of those power hungry bastards, more than willing to let me starve.” 

The ground around her began to shimmer with heat, and all of RWBY+J tensed and shifted as particles of blackglass began to drift around, the dirt and dust reshaping in her Semblance.

“So I’ll fix it. Undo all that damn damage. When Atlas falls, when Beacon falls, it’ll happen properly this time.” 

“Not happening, Fall.” Yang racked Ember Celica in both arms and brought them up to a fighting stance, shifting her weight to be ready to launch or lunge. “You’re not getting any of this. You’re going to pay for what’s happened, face the punishment, and live with the memory of everybody that’s fallen to you.” 

This time, the chuckle felt much less sane. “If I lose. But I won’t. Because I’ll stop Salem from turning into that. I’ll win in Atlas, and she won’t starve me again. I refuse to let it happen.” 

“Too bad.” 

Ember Celica rang out, and Yang went flying forward, both fists ready to hit. Cinder spun, shaped the matter around her into a handful of daggers, and threw them at Yang in one smooth motion. Another blast shoved the brawler out of the way, the daggers missing her by a fraction of an inch, only for a fireball to the other side to knock her away. A glyph from Wiess caught her before she could hit the ground, and she flipped and dived behind it as an explosive javelin blew up right where she’d been. 

Ruby, Jaune, and Blake all lunged to move, but Cinder just threw an arm forward and pushed them back with a blast of wind. 

“You are not stopping me. None of you are!” The control outright vanished from her voice as she finished the sentence, and before any of them could react, she whipped around, shaped a bow and arrow, and fired it up at Beacon’s tower. 

“We’re already back here. Why not complete the set and bring the whole party back?” 

Nothing exploded, but it didn’t have to. Just the distant sound of cracking stone, and everybody watching stood stock still and terrified as a monster shed its prison. 

“This won’t go the same way.” The faintest of glows kicked up in Ruby’s eyes. 

Cinder’s flame matched it. “It’s not the same fight.” 

The Wyvern roared.

The Grimm answered. 

Chapter Text

The next move was Ruby’s. 

She spun Crescent Rose around and fired, flying forward with the full force of the shot. Cinder barely backstepped in time to dodge the uppercut, a pair of swords appearing in her hands and coming up into a crossguard as Ruby kept spinning and brought Crescent Rose right back down with a shift of the blade. 

“You know, Red? I don’t even care about you any more. I’m just moving the pieces around now, and you’re in the way of my checkmate.” 

She pushed out with the swords, snapping her fingers to send a fireball into Ruby’s chest that stunned her as she readied for another swing, and lunged for her. The Wyvern let out another roar and swooped down, puddles of Grimm liquid splashing beneath its path and forming into all manner of monsters in black, white, and red. One particularly large mass of liquid was halfway to the ground before Gambol Shroud’s blade slashed through it, sending it splattering uselessly into small drops that evaporated as they hit the ground. Blake pulled the ribbon back to her, spinning it around to untangle it before settling the weapon firmly back in her grip. 

She glanced over to where Neo should have been hiding, only to be met with an absence of pink or brown. Yang followed her gaze, and cursed under her breath. “Fuck. Change the plan?” 

Jaune spoke up before anybody else could reply. “No. She’ll show. In the meantime, we deal with these things.” He glanced over at Weiss and shifted, hands tightening on Crocea Mors. “You ready to do the trick?” 

An Arma Gigas emerging behind her was the only reply needed. “Maybe clear some trouble first.” 

The first Ursa to charge was cleaved clean in two by a giant glowing blade, and Jaune and Weiss met the herd head-on as Yang and Blake both hauled their way up onto the remains of the arched walls that used to surround Beacon. 

“You know, I’m kind of wondering why I agreed to this plan.” Yang jammed her mechanical arm into the rock hard enough for it to stick and took a moment to catch her breath. “Isn’t there an easier way to do this part?” 

Blake leapt on top of the former arch, stretched, and reached down to offer a hand to Yang. “You suggested it. And it was the best idea we had.” 

“I know, I know.” She rolled both shoulders, quickly flexing the mechanical arm before crouching down in a ready pose, eyes trained on the Wyvern coming back around again. Blake matched the motion, Gambol Shroud’s ribbon loose and ready to throw in her hand. 

“Blake?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t lose your arm for this. That’s my thing.” 

“Why do I like you?” 

A barked laugh. “You wish you knew.” 

The Wyvern came flying back in close, and Blake hurled Gambol Shroud as hard as she could. The blade pierced through the membrane of its wing, but it barely flinched as it kept moving, and Blake barely wrapped the ribbon around her arm to secure it before getting yanked off her feet. Yang blasted after her, spinning through the air and firing another shot off as she lunged to bury her fist in just about anywhere on the Grimm’s tail. 

Cinder barely flinched at the sight of the two huntresses chasing along with the Wyvern as she flicked a handful of quite literally flaming blackglass throwing knives at Ruby, then suppressed a grimace as the redhead dashed through them in a flurry of petals. 

“Honestly, Ruby, I’m far too sick of you to even be mad at this point. You’re no hero. You just keep trying to get in my way!” She reached down with her Semblance and pulled upward, the asphalt cracking and forming into jagged knives and blades. Ruby rematerialized right above them, and immediately whipped Crescent Rose around as fast as she could, firing a round and rocketing away. The flame in Cinder’s eye flared, and she threw her arms to the side, sending the knives after her. Ruby fired off more shots, bouncing off of rubble and the occasional Grimm that got too close, dodging the knives she could and blocking the ones she couldn’t with Crescent Rose’s shaft.  One clipped her in the ankle, knocking her balance off midair, and Cinder took the opportunity to literally take off after her, a sword in each hand. She cut her thrust and dived for Ruby, aiming to skewer her, only for Ruby to launch herself horizontally at a still-standing pillar, shift Crescent Rose to lance mode halfway through, plant the blade in the concrete, spin around and redirect her momentum, and fire again, sending her into a dropkick that landed right in Cinder’s solar plexus. The Maiden’s breath left her as she fell, and she hit the ground hard, grumbling and gasping a little. She pulled herself up, floating off the ground a fraction with fire licking her boots, and shaped a spear into her hands. 

Only for it to immediately shatter as Yang dropped to the ground in front of her and uppercut her. 

She dodged back in time, but the spear broke into pieces on the blow, and Yang whipped around to Jaune and Weiss. “Syzygy!” 

She barely got the sentence out before the Wyvern roared and swooped down, shaking and rolling in the air violently. Blake held on as tight as she could, stabbing and cutting through joints and the wings just barely faster than it could regenerate. The bellow stopped the other Grimm in their tracks, matching the roar, and Weiss and Jaune immediately disengage and backed away from the growing horde, Weiss dropping the summons she’d pulled up. Yang blasted over their heads and crashed into the ground with a shockwave, her hair sparking as she reloaded Ember Celica and leapt at the Grimm, eyes burning red. Weiss planted Myrtenaster into the ground and took a breath, looking at Jaune. 

“Are you ready?” 

“As ever.” 

She nodded and took a breath, and he put a hand on her shoulder, the golden glow meeting white-blue as he poured his Aura into hers. A massive gravity glyph appeared in the sky above the Wyvern, and Blake yanked both blades of Gambol Shroud out of the monster and jumped off as the glyph took hold and pulled it back, the Grimm thrashing against the tug of power. 

And then another appeared the same distance away below it. 

The Wyvern let out a roar that literally curdled Ruby’s blood, and her focus slipped long enough for Cinder to get a backhand with her Grimm arm in past her blocks. Crescent Rose nearly fell from her grip, and Cinder formed a kama in each hand and started swinging wildly, the sheer power in each blow keeping Ruby on the back foot. 

She hurled one at Ruby as the redhead went to shift her grip on Crescent Rose, and it exploded, sending her skidding back as Cinder twirled the remaining one in a trembling hand and looked back at the Wyvern, now straining against the force of a third gravity glyph behind it. 

“Of course. I have to do it on my own again. That’s fine. I always could.” 

“You sure about that?” Ruby wiped the ash and dust off her face with one hand, eyes slightly glowing. “Even back in Beacon, you needed people like Torchwick and Adam. We couldn’t do this on our own. And you couldn’t, either.” 

The wind began to pick up, and the beginnings of dark clouds formed in the sky as the flame around Cinder’s eye flared to the brightest it had been. “You think I couldn’t have taken Beacon down all by myself if I wanted to? Emerald, Mercury, those cowards, Roman? I didn’t need him. Any of them. They were fools, and I’m going to fix this, do it all, and make sure that the future has me in the front, burning it down. You’re all idealistic, sycophantic hunters fighting for things you don’t understand, furthering a system that’s torn people down. It’s pulling every bit of food and power away from you, and you’re letting it, but I refuse to–“ 

She never finished as everything went quiet all at once. 

The cries of Grimm, of Yang and Blake fighting the horde, of the Wyvern being pulled apart and trapped all at once by Weiss using up more Aura than she ever had before, even the growing thunder itself, all silenced before a single sound. 

A single scream, like a dying breath stretched across so much time, pulled beyond when they should have passed. 

Like choking on blood and water, drowning in their own life. 

Like a final cry of defiance, no longer taking the deep black fate thrown upon them. 

Like a life that shouldn’t. 

Like breaking glass.

Chapter Text

Memories, welling up, like blood to a wound that never healed.

Or a burn picked back open. 

“You know my policy on survival, Neo.”

A gift, traded, at the start of something true. 

A home lost, replaced with something, someone more. 

A plan, long upended by a dark interloper, co-opted into a plot to bring the tower down. 

A brawl on a highway, a rescue, a display of power that should have raised more questions than answers. 

Nights spent pacing, worrying about fates and futures with a knife held overhead. 

“Neo!” 

A rush of wind and feathers and black and gone. 

Hunting, chasing, ignoring how much he was missed in an effort to consume it all with something. 

“Who did you say you were looking for, again?” 

A lead, tracking down the nearest thing to blame. 

“I don’t have time for your misplaced blame, girl. If you want to avenge your boss, take it up with little Red.” 

A click, and the realization. Belief of hatred, in hope of being able to hate back. 

Buying into a self-created lie, holding on to the last token the whole time, fully believing that one single person’s unproven hate would explain it all. 

“This is Neopolitan. She is an asset.” 

Scorn, barely disguised, mixed with impatience, and all hidden by a burning assumption of guilt. Utterly blind to the signs.

“I’m not sorry I stopped him.” 

A crack in the visage, hypothesis disputed. 

A walk gone wrong. Running, old habits, finding truths.

“You haven’t done close to enough to make them hate you like Cinder. She does, though.” 

Truths from an oracle, infallible from even the gods. 

A truth forgotten under the shattering of a lie.

A reminder of who was being hunted first. The interloper. 

Who truly hates who. 

“Roman? I didn’t need him.”

*hatehatehateitwasyoushesaiditwasyouImisseditbutitwasyouallalongyouwereneverevenCLOSETOINNOCENTITWASYOUYOUHATEDMEHATEDUSNEVERCAREDIFWELIVEDORDIED IT WAS YOU*

“I didn’t need him.” 

Gifts for two, held by just one. 

“I needed him.” 

The world broke.

Chapter Text

Everyone was silent as everything shattered. 

The sky broke apart in a whirl of pink, white, and brown, what was left of the blue crisscrossed with spiderwebbing cracks that weren’t there. The Grimm recoiled and howled, trapped in place by invisible shards of nothing pushing them back. Just beyond the courtyard, hints of what was could be seen, the hunters from the rest of the city pushing back against the tide but slowing as they approached the maelstrom of colors. Nothing inside looked quite right, rubble and dirt and grass and paths all fading in and out of shades of white, the only stability being underneath where everybody stood. 

Cinder whipped around from direction to direction, trying to find the source of that now-silent scream and the bizarre barrage of colors. It was too bright to be Ruby’s eyes, but nobody else there had a Semblance to do this. Not even Emerald could do something this big on this many people, or affect the Grimm that much, and yet—

Something whispered behind her.

Cinder Fall heard words nobody on Remnant should have. 

“I needed him.” 

She barely had time to process the voice, an upper-class accent that sounded like it was choking the words out past a knife to the throat, before something pulled at her back and spine and ribs and heart and she looked down at her chest. 

The tip of something imperceptible was piercing through her, an angular shape almost like her own swords, shifting through shades of brown and pale light. Something tugged at her, her being, her soul, and her Aura flared everything as it felt like the universe itself didn’t want her here. She gasped, barely comprehending the phantom pain signals her brain was receiving, and the blade-shape was pulled out of her, spinning her around to face whoever was behind her. 

Neopolitan stood, not dead in Atlas’s rubble like she’d assumed, Roman’s hat in one hand and the shape in the other. Her eyes were wide and furious, one a darker and richer brown than any color she’d seen, the other a boiling pink like cotton candy threaded through with million-lumen lights, and shards of ethereal glass floated in the air behind here, sparking pink. 

And jammed into her throat, phasing through it like she wasn’t real, wrapping around it, piercing her, shining with Aura like a should-be-deadly necklace. 

“I needed him!” 

She lunged forward and shoved the blade-shape through Cinder, not touching anything, running through her as the world—her world, Cinder realized, Neo’s world, worked to tell her she wasn’t there, wasn’t supposed to be at all. There was blood seeping through Neo’s clothes, dribbling out of the corners of her mouth as she screamed and swung the blade-shape again and again, plunging it through Cinder’s Aura. The sensations barely registered beyond the twisting and pulling at her core, the strangeness of her soul itself being attacked. Neo plunged it through her heart one last time, and Cinder’s Aura shattered, vanishing in golden sparks as she slumped backwards and fell unconscious before she even hit the ground. 

The shape vanished from Neo’s hand, and she stood for a moment, panting, before reeling backwards and screaming hard enough to send blood flying out of her mouth. Roman’s hat dropped from her grip, and the shards around her neck and all around the courtyard started to wink out of existence. 

“Neo!” 

A split second to cover their eyes was all the rest of RWBY+J had before silver light spilled over the entire courtyard, blowing straight past what was left of Overactive Imagination. The Wyvern hissed and screeched, struggling to pull itself back together against the tug of the gravity glyphs, and let out one final roar as it petrified. There was the sound of grinding stone, and before it could break out, the Grimm shattered, crumbling apart into pieces as Weiss dispelled the glyphs. The other Grimm just turned straight to dust as the light washed over them, leaving the courtyard barren save for the humans. 

Ruby rushed straight over to Neo’s staggering form, barely standing upright as her Aura flickered, and grabbed her by the arms. “Neo, Neo! Are you okay?” 

Neo coughed one more time, blood spilling down her face, and tried to mumble something. Nothing came out, only a weak gasp, but Ruby could tell what she was trying to say. 

“I know, you needed him, Neo, I know you miss him, but I need you here too. I need you right here, Neo. Alive. I don’t–I need you and you know why, Neo.”

A small smile crept its way onto Neo’s face past the blood, and she reached up and gently placed her hand on the side of Ruby’s head, both of them ignoring the blood getting on her gear and a little in her hair. 

Neo thought it looked cute on her.

*I think I need you too.*

She pulled Neo tight, and Neo held on.

Chapter Text

Vale was dark, after that. 

Oscar and the others had appeared through a portal of Raven’s creation mere moments after Cinder had fallen, when the shards were still winking out of the sky around them.

Ren and Nora had made straight for Jaune, pulling him up in a tight hug without bothering to check for Grimm around them. Penny made up for them, eyes aflame, but the fires winked out as soon as she saw the lack of any of them. 

Emerald and Mercury had come through in a panic, only to stop cold at the sight of Cinder’s unharmed, unconscious body, smoke trailing from the twitching remains of her Grimm arm. 

Weiss had ran to Winter, Willow, and Whitley the moment she realized what was going on, the family pulling each other close in a tearful embrace. Oscar slowly approached, his own check finished, and Weiss pulled herself away enough to start berating him and Whitley’s choices through the sniffles and tears.

Raven took a step towards the clearly exhausted Yang, cutting the movement off halfway past when it began, but the sight of Qrow running past her finally set something off, and she let out a sigh as she moved forward to help Yang back to a standing position, not commenting on anything, just picking her up and helping her stay up. Blake barely knew what to do, only for Tai to catch her in a crushing hug, mumbling thank yous for everything she’d done for Yang. 

The Ace-Ops and Vacuo’s hunters came through and spread out, weapons dropping from ready or sliding into holsters as they linked up with Vale’s hunters, listening to Goodwitch as she coordinated plans to rid the remaining pockets of Grimm, shouted orders and objectives fading out as everybody spread out. 

Oscar and Ozpin, both truly in sync for once, took calm, careful steps away from Whitley and towards Ruby and Neo as the final pieces of glass and Semblance faded from the world, Neo’s Aura barely hanging on by a figurative thread as her own blood, for once, permeated her clothes. 

Ruby turned to face him, both of him, but neither said anything, Ozpin’s smile understanding and Oscar’s genuinely happy. Both gazes flickered to Neo, breathing quietly as Ruby held her up, and Ozpin quietly muttered a reassurance, one with terms to be defined later, before turning to speak to Goodwitch. 

Neo’s eyes rolled upward, staring at the sky and the shattered moon slowly rising in it, wholly unaware of the legend she’d written herself into, the stories that would come from what had happened, and she let out a silent sigh. There she stood, alive. 

Her gaze drifted to the hat on the ground by her feet. 

But not without having lost. 

Ruby’s gaze followed hers, and then jumped back to Neo’s eyes, a question in the silver. 

She reached down and gently picked up the hat, his hat, and pulled herself free of Ruby’s grip as she staggered away. Ruby said nothing, no platitudes or pleas to stop, simply following her as she slowly walked on. 

Even with her wounds, it was no trouble to slip a cartridge of Earth Dust from Blake’s pocket. Raven noticed, a sharp glance being shot toward Neo, but no move was made to intercede as Neo kept moving out of the courtyard of Beacon,  eyes set on a back street close enough to the school to not be suspicious but far enough away to dodge campus surveillance. 

Vale was dark, but there was yet enough time for Neo.

Chapter Text

It was a small affair. 

Fitting, Neo thought. 

She hadn’t been to that specific Vale safehouse since she’d left the city all that time ago, even though it had been her favorite. But that fact had meant she’d thought it fitting to hide away something important to her. The only other thing she had besides what she’d given him. 

Melodic Cudgel, as intact as she’d been able to make it in the months after the Fall, stood tall in the small pile of rubble and dirt holding it upright, marking his favorite spot to watch the undeniable beauty of Beacon’s campus. His hat hung upon it, at an ever so slight angle, tipped forward like he did when he wanted to show respect on the rare occasion he felt it prudent. 

There wasn’t much else on the street, nothing but rubble and ruined houses that had been caught up in the crossfire when Beacon itself had fallen. It wasn’t a large effort at all, even if Ruby had helped her make it, only coming up to a few inches below Melodic Cudgel’s height. The street being on an overlook helped just a fraction, but it was still a small thing, barely as tall as she was. Not that it really mattered. She and Ruby had made it, and it was the last and least she could do. 

Her hands shook as she fumbled with the Earth Dust cartridge, taking the last dregs of her Aura and pouring it into the small pile of the substance before dropping it onto the makeshift memorial. The rubble shifted, fusing with the ground, melding the pieces into something more fitting an actual memorial, and Neo knelt down to trace something into the malleable stone before the effect wore off. 

She got the last letter in, and what little bit she’d recovered of her Aura finally went, dissipating with a quiet shatter and a few pink particles as she let out a single gasp and nearly fell, both hands falling to the ground. Ruby moved to help her up, but Neo waved her off, slowly pulling herself to her feet as she looked at the memorial. 

A single image of his Jack-O’-Lantern adorned the top above the message she’d drawn in, the script flowing and smooth despite her own unsteadiness and writing with her finger. 

“Dance until the wick burns down.”

She looked back up to the broken moon, and for a sliver of a moment, she imagined him there with her, smiling, twirling his cane and fixing his hat as he wisecracked about how she’d survived, how Cinder had lost, how she’d managed to con an immortal into thinking she was dead and get all of the team that had been a thorn in her side for so long on her side. 

For once, it was just her imagination. 

Ruby held out a hand, and she took it, walking away from the last memory of him as the moonlight shone down brighter than she ever remembered it being. 

*I miss you.* 

*I think I always will.* 

*But you’re gone now.* 

*I know you wouldn’t have broken your promise if you had the choice.*

*I needed you.*

*And in some way, I always will.*

*I’ll remember you.*

*Always.*

Chapter Text

“Please, run this by me again.” 

Cinder sighed and stared at the table of the interrogation room. “I don’t know how much more you want. How much more I can give.” 

Ozpin-as-Oscar just gently smiled and shifted his hands. “We simply want to know what your plan was, Miss Fall. Nothing more at the time.” 

A limp shrug, a little difficult with only one arm. “I told you. Salem...I thought something in Atlas had changed her. That the fact we didn’t get the relics had made her mad. And then when things didn’t work out in Vacuo, she didn’t--do what I thought she would, I panicked.” 

“You...panicked?” 

“I--yes. I–” 

“That may all come later. I would just simply like to know what happened”

“Okay.” She ran her hand through her hair and kept going. “I thought there might have been a way to undo it all. I disputed the diversion, even though it hurt, and when the attack started I pooled all the energy I could and ran.” 

Ozpin leaned back a little. “To Beacon.” 

“I didn’t know where the crown was. Salem never bothered to tell me. But I hoped that it would do something. Anything.” A natural gold eye met two unnatural ones. “Now what?” 

“Now,” Ozpin said as he cleared his throat, “now we determine what happens next. Despite your actions in the past, you are still the Fall Maiden, and you are likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. This is, of course, assuming you have no intention to escape and return to Salem?” 

Another limp shrug, her gaze dropping to the table. “I didn’t think I’d get to this point.” 

“I see.” He stood and turned to leave the room. “Very well, Miss Fall. You can return to your cell.” 

He was halfway out the door when he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “If I may ask, what exactly did you plan on changing, if you could?” 

“It started in Atlas. I didn’t know Neopolitan had...joined them, but I knew her failure at the Academy was part of it. If we’d had the lamp from the start, maybe things would have gone different.”

“I’m inclined to agree.” 

Oscar was halfway down the hall before he finally got control back, just in time for Goodwitch to round the corner. 

“What did she say?” 

“She has no idea where the relic is, for one. Or even what it does.” He peeled off his gloves and shoved them into his coat pockets. “She didn’t want to go back to Beacon or Haven, but from what I heard of her scuffle in the vault, there was no choice she could have made to win it. Is it still holding up?”

“According to Coral.” Goodwitch’s eyes glanced around the hallway and then landed back on Oscar. “You’re certain she’s not here?” 

“Ruby says she isn’t, and that’s probably the best we’ll get on her location for a while. I’m scared of her too, honestly. Oz is legitimately shocked a Vanille of all people could do…that.” Ozpin shuddered inside Oscar’s head. “Yeah, he just shuddered. But considering how much that seems to hurt her, and the last month, I don’t think we need to worry about it.” 

“You?” “Ozpin doesn’t. I think he’s talking sense.” 

“And what of team RWBY and Mister Arc?” She crossed her arms and let out a tiny huff. “How do we know they’re not potentially compromised? They won’t even tell us where she is.” 

“Professor Goodwitch.” Oscar was solely speaking his thoughts now. “Have you seen their moral compasses? If she hangs out with them any more, she’s going to be taking Qrow’s job.” 

“Very well.” The doors flew open with a twitch of Goodwitch’s Semblance, and the two of them walked out and back into the sunlight. “And if she does do something illegal?” 

“She totally will.” Oscar shrugged. “We’ll do what we did before.”

“Do you think we’ll have to?”

Ozpin spoke now. “I think it’s been a strange year.” 

“That’s a no, then.” 

“Much has changed, Glynda. Much has changed.”

Chapter Text

Nice. 

Chapter Text

Neopolitan had expected to be evading arrest after Beacon. Maybe fleeing to Vacuo to hide out in safety. Hell, worst came to worst, a plea deal and hope that the testimony of the four morons and Ruby would keep her out of jail or death row, if Vale still had that. 

She hadn’t expected to be in the Xiao-Long front yard watching Nora absolutely crush Jaune in a hug while Ren watched to make sure she didn’t suplex him. 

The reunion was going shockingly well, by her experiences. Ozpin, Oscar, whichever it was, hadn’t asked her where she was going after Beacon, and Ruby hadn’t snitched, so there she was, by all accounts the newest member of the team present. 

She was somewhat surprised by how easily certain people were getting used to her presence. Winter had clearly recognized her from some news bulletins or some other channel, but she hadn’t actually done anything yet, and Mercury and Emerald were surprisingly calm. Then again, Mercury was currently trying to explain the mechanics and point of Hot Pockets to a very baffled Whitley, so all sense of standards and self preservation had probably left his head the second he’d bit the bullet in Vacuo and joined them. 

Something crashed inside the house, and she heard Qrow’s name yelled by four separate people loud enough to be audible from down the road before the front door was flung open by a confused looking Taiyang, who immediately shrugged upon seeing everybody there and stepped out of the door frame to let them all inside. Neo stuck to the back of the procession, watching the contrast of Whitley’s very prim and proper stride against everybody else with humor until Tai called her name. 

“Neopolitan, right?” 

She cautiously nodded, grip firm on Hush. 

“I do remember who you are, you know. You and Roman weren’t subtle.” 

Grip confusingly tight on Hush. 

“But…” he sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was really hoping Ruby would have slightly less bloody taste.” 

Needlessly tight, apparently. A snort escaped Neo’s nose and she flashed her Semblance over her outfit to mirror Ruby’s, pointing out every patch of dark red. 

“Fair enough, I let her get away with that.” Tai paused for a second, then gestured for her to keep going. “Thank you, by the way. For keeping my girls safe. Ruby told me about how you didn’t have to, but you stuck around anyway.” 

She dispelled the Semblance and smiled, nodding. 

“Also, weapon goes there.” 

Neo obliged, begrudgingly, and slipped her hat on top of Hush’s handle. Roman’s was still in Vale, secured to the memorial. Goodwitch had apparently been annoyed that it was so close to Beacon, but Ozpin had messaged her with assurance that they weren’t going to destroy it, and that was enough for her. 

Ruby noticed her the second she entered the main room, and sprinted over to her. “Neo! So good to see you! Come on, we’re just about to get the food ready!” She grabbed Neo by the hand and pulled her into the kitchen, and Neo didn’t even bother to try and hide the beginning smile on her face. She tried even less once they actually arrived in the kitchen and she saw what Ruby had made. 

“We tried to get something for everybody, so I made you some ice cream cookies!” Said cookies were small and multicolored, all decorated with pink icing in the shape of tomoes, ice cream cones, umbrellas, and in one case Hush’s blade. “Dad didn’t like that one. I did it anyway. I couldn’t figure out how to get three flavors in at once, so it’s just chocolate and vanilla with strawberry icing. Hope you like it.” 

“Oh sweet, cookies.” Mercury slipped into the kitchen and reached over both Ruby and Neo’s heads easily for the cookies, only to catch a slap on the hand from both of them at once. He recoiled and shook off the sting, only to clamp both hands on his ears when Ruby screeched at him. “You have chili still cooking!” 

“Brothers, okay, okay.” He cleared his throat and slipped back out of the kitchen. “Hey Emerald? Remember that bet we had in Beacon about the sugar wars?” 

Ruby giggled to herself, and Neo matched it silently as she picked up the cookie with Hush’s blade. A taste test resulted in a resounding yep, that was an ice cream cookie, and she scarfed it down in two bites. 

Ruby’s smile almost blinded her then, and the redhead was back in the main area with the cookies a split second later, announcing another dish ready to eat. Neo leaned against the countertop, watching Ruby as she handed out the food. 

It felt weird to her, being here. Surrounded by people that she’d spent so long assuming hated her, thinking that they wanted her dead, and now sharing food with them at a party like old friends. So far past the last thing she’d expected to happen, beyond the last time she thought she’d be seeing any of them. 

She’d found something she hadn’t had...ever, she was sure, in Ruby. Even Roman had his limits, as Jinn had proven, but even when she’d been fighting Ruby, all she’d wanted was to help Neo out of kindness, and then out of the fact she well and truly cared for her. 

Yeah, screw it, call it love. Neo didn’t have another name for it. 

She strode into the main room without any weight on her, bouncing in every step as she made her way to Ruby on the couch. Hopping over it was no trouble, though doing a flip as she did got an angry look from Tai, but the shock on Ruby’s face when she suddenly landed next to her was priceless. 

“You’re almost making me regret all those times I thanked you.” Ruby fake pouted and crossed her arms in a huff, scowling at Neo out of the corner of her eye. 

Neo just silently laughed and leaned in, smiling as she got close enough to whisper into Ruby’s ear and focused. It took an insane amount of her Aura to do this, hence why she’d passed out for eighteen hours after Beacon, but two words was enough. 

She was glad she didn’t have to imagine it this time. 

“Thank you.” 

Her Semblance faded out before the end of the last word was properly out of her mouth, but Ruby’s fake pout immediately vanished and she turned to Neo with absolute joy in her eyes. 

“Neo, you let me. Through all of that. Neither of us could have done it alone.” 

She crashed into Neo, hugging her as tight as she could, resting her head on Neo’s shoulder, but Neo didn’t complain. Ruby was right, she knew. It had to have been both of them the whole time. She couldn’t have done it alone. 

Ruby placed a little kiss on Neo’s cheek, and in that moment, by her side, surrounded by people that knew and cared, Neo got it. 

She hadn’t been alone.

She wasn’t going to be alone on this. 

Not now. 

Not ever. 

She turned and returned the kiss. 

Not even past the last thing she knew. 

End.