AN:

Guess who's back! Sorry for the long delay after treating you with updates almost on a daily basis but life got in the way and I really am struggling financially. It's really bad and my looking for a 'normal' part time job is not going great. I've even considered going on but honestly, I don't want to lock content for my stories behind a paywall and I'm also not even sure how many would be willing/able to pay even $1/€/whatever. Escort/Callgirl was another thought I dismissed quickly because I am way too scared about getting hurt in that line of work, no matter how promiscuous I admittedly am, even though a friend, who works in that sort of business, didn't have bad experiences there...as far as I am aware. If any of you guys have ideas to help me out, I'm glad to hear them because I can ask my parents only so many times for help when their business isn' t going great either. I seriously am getting desperate. Also, if any of you guys have suggestions that could make work without offending you guys, I'd also be happy to hear it.

Now, with all that being laid out in the open, let's get to your reviews of the last chapter!

Star's Keyblade4114: Yep, Neo's done messed up. And you are right, she did have her reasons but was it worth it in the end? Obviously not. Now all she can do is survive and hope.

JackTheSpades: Ikr? It did look like Neo knew whom she was facing in the show when Raven suddenly appeared. I wonder if RT will ever 'reveal' what that reaction was about, if there even was anything to reveal in the first place.

Masane: Hah, yeah, the Neo-Betrayal-Trope is kind of cliché, isn't it? But not everything cliché is automatically bad, so I'm glad you found my version of that to be well told. As for Neo's parasol, if you search 'parasol' in google images you can also find lace parasols which basically are what Neo has. A parasol can be those giant things for your garden but also for you to carry around in your hand. Also, Neo did not draw the blade out. If you remember in Volume 3 when Neo and Roman fought Ruby, when Ruby was hanging from the edge of the ship they were on, Neo was able to have the tip of her blade show from the top end of her parasol. That was what Neo did here. Other than that, she just fought with her parasol, sometimes opening it and sometimes closing it.

KHARAKI TAKAN: Thanks, I'm glad you liked the fight! I did have a lot of fun writing it and honestly, I can't wait to write more Neo fights. It really is as much fun to write her fighting as it is to watch. As for Neo and Raven...I have an idea or two.

"Wow."

"Yep." Ruby was on Nolan's bed, lying on her side, wearing her birthday suit only. It had been a couple days since teams NDGR and RWBY had returned from their mission; a mission that turned out to be a lot more exciting than either team could have anticipated. After, once team BRNZ returned, proposing to a certain redhead that they once again reap the benefits of their friendship, Nolan eagerly agreed and here they were, both comfortably on the bed and telling each other of their respective missions after they were done with their romp.

"We just did some patrolling at some villages. Nothing exciting at all happened."

Ruby just rolled her eyes as she glanced at Nolan. "And that would have nothing to do with the nature and location of the mission your team chose."

"There could have been surprise attacks of some kind..."

"Right."

"Sooo," Nolan began after a small lull in their conversation, clearly wanting to say something but not quite sure how to go about it. Seeing Ruby's raised eyebrow, he let out a sigh before rolling over to his side and propping his head up with a hand. "How do you feel?"

Now with both brows raised, Ruby let out a small chuckle. "Utterly satisfied."

"Good to know, but I wasn't talking about that. You just told me you killed people. Aren't you...I don't know, affected by that?"

"No," Ruby answered with a careless shrug of her shoulders. "If I hadn't killed them they'd have done worse to me."

"I get that, believe me. I'm sure they deserved it too. But it still couldn't have been easy."

"But it was."

They both were silent for a few moments before Nolan spoke up again with a slight frown on his face. "How are you so okay with that? Have you...killed before?"

"I did. It was a man. He tried to rape me. I stabbed his throat with the knife my mother gave me to protect myself. I was ten...or eleven, I'm not sure. I puked afterwards." It was an easy lie that would serve its purpose. It wasn't like she wanted to gloat about killing those White Fang but she knew Nolan cared for her and he would hear about it sooner or later through his team leader when Dew would share their team's shenanigans with BRNZ' leader, who also happened to be Dew's boyfriend. Ruby just wanted the inevitable out of the way as fast as possible.

"Damn."

"It was a hard lesson to learn, sure, but some people are just vile enough that I figured there was no need to not use lethal force when I defend myself since my potential attackers don't care for my well-being. At the very least, once they are dead, I will have rid the world of of people who are nothing more than a waste of space."

"Fair enough, I suppose, though I'm not gonna lie and say it isn't slightly unsettling to see you be so cynical...you know, considering your age and everything."

"Maybe," Ruby replied with a shrug. "I mean, I admittedly didn't have the luxury of naivety in my childhood. I learned harsh but necessary lessons very early on and don't get me wrong, I am glad I learned those lessons the way I did."

"Really now? You are glad some pedophile tried to rape you?" Nolan gave her a doubtful look.

"Not that, obviously, but other things. I'm not going to go into detail here and I never will but what I have been taught...prepared me early on for the ugly side of the world. Those lessons have numbed me in many ways. I'm not going to panic or try and hold speeches and appeal to their better sides when someone tries to attack me in whatever ways. I will just attack and show them that they have made a fatal mistake."

Her friend was not looking at her, his eyes fixated on the wall behind her as his brows were furrowed in deep thought.

"Huntsmen and huntresses will be in life or death situations, Nolan. Do you really think you will get away fighting terrorists by appealing to their better nature? Do you really think you will get away with just trying to disable someone while they hold nothing back against you? While they have no qualms about killing you? The most important lesson I was ever taught was that life is no fairy tail. I...do remember my birth mother and then Yang reading me all the stories about huntsmen and huntresses and their adventures and I wanted to be just like them. But life isn't like that, Nolan. Idealism is all good and well but eventually it will hold you back and kill you. There are no second chances in life."

The silence following her long speech was awkward, even she had to admit that. Her silver eyes were seeking Nolan's pink ones and he eventually locked gazes with her. "You sure you are younger than me?"

Ruby couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped her. "It was made sure that I was mentally ahead of my peers."

"Look, I understand your point," Nolan began, scratching the back of his head awkwardly, "but it's not exactly an easy thing to process how casual you are about taking other people's lives."

"I never claimed it should be otherwise," Ruby replied, "but this is simply how the world works. The weak die, strong live. Those are the rules. If I had been weak against those animals we wouldn't be having this conversation," the young Branwen smirked at her friend as she patted his cheek lightly. Her hand then wandered to his bare chest so she could push Nolan onto his back, before swinging one of her legs to the other side of his hips, straddling him in the process, giving him an eyeful of her naked front. "Enough of this, Nolan. I am up for round two, but are y- nevermind, there's my answer," she chuckled, raising her hips a little bit and reaching for the firm offender poking her butt-cheeks before impaling herself onto him with eyes closed in bliss and a moan escaping her when she felt two strong hands roughly groping her breasts. "So much better than talking, don't you agree?"

"Alright, alright, I'll shut up if you keep going..."

And with that the only sounds heard were the rythmic squeaking of the bed as it was thumping against the wall and the moans and groans of the two teens.

"Of all the people wanting to meet me I did not expect you to be one of them, Raven."

Raven closed the portal behind herself after stepping out of it before turning towards her twin. She didn't actively hate him but she did hate what he had become. A slave to alcohol and nicotine. A slave to a wizard's cause from an era that was not theirs. It was a shame and she regretted agreeing to being sent to Beacon to learn how to fight as and against huntresses and huntsmen. They could have just lived on how they did without that knowledge. Maybe the tribe wouldn't flourish as it did now but at least they could have remained blissfully unaware of the hidden truths and dangerous secrets of this world.

"I need information." Raven wasted no time with chit-chat as she sat down across from him at the dimly lit corner of yet another dingy, Mistrali pub. What she did actively hate were meeting places like this.

"Oh?" Qrow leaned back against the chair he was sitting in, the drink he was holding in one hand sloshing around in its cup with his movements. "Really now? Gimme a moment; let me just throw all the information at you, out of the goodness of my heart and because I love you so."

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Qrow."

"I beg to differ."

Raven had thought long and hard how to go about this meeting with her estranged sibling. They were close, once. Inseparable even, as twins were always, or at least often, said to be. But ever since attending Beacon, they drifted apart.

The Branwen tribe's chieftain would be lying if she said her time in the academy didn't change her either, because it did. They may have been in their late teens, at the crisp of legal adulthood, but they were still teenagers, they were still impressionable. She fell in love with Taiyang. She acted on it. Eventually she got pregnant. She could see her brother had feelings for their leader, for Summer, but he was never as straightforward as she was. He was always quiet, distant.

But the dynamics of the team were changed forever, for better or for worse.

The fact that their team was notorious for its raw strength and talent made them an easy target to get picked by Ozpin and his secret missions.

That was when they truly drifted apart. Qrow didn't question things. He saw how Summer took those missions as a privilege and acknowledgement of their team's achievements and went with it. But Raven...Raven was the suspicious one. She always asked questions.

And she was right. Their blind trust for Ozpin was what ruined them, was what killed Summer, was what tore apart her family by blood.

And now here they were, like two strangers, always trying to set up deals in exchange for information.

It was what it was and no matter how many times she cursed Ozpin's very existence, nothing would change.

She would always have to think long and hard about how to go about these meetings with her brother, about how to get him to part with the information she wanted from him.

"I assume you have heard about Neopolitan?" She looked at her brother, her expression indifferent at the smirk that immediately broke out of his face at her question.

"I've heard of how she robbed her own tribe and disappeard...which apparently had you very displeased."

"You could put it like that, yes."

"So...what about this Neopolitan?"

"I will give you something I know you really want...in exchange to everything you can tell me now or at a later date about Neopolitan, Torchwick and who the person behind them and the White Fang working together is."

"You ask for a lot. What could I possibly want so badly that I would agree to this?" Qrow asked with his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Raven gave him that smirk she knew her twin hated so much. "To see and talk to Ruby of course."

Some time had passed since most of the teams had returned from their missions. There had been tell, of course, about a particularly exciting mission two freshmen teams had found themselves in but the rumour mill did die down pretty quickly.

As it was, the semester inched closer to its end and with it, the official beginning of the Vytal Tournament came closer.

Ruby couldn't deny the small surges of excitement she felt every time she thought about it. Fighting other huntsmen and huntresses in training, finding out where she stood when going head to head against the supposed best every one of the academies had to offer? She was definitely up for that.

But for now she had to go through a few more classes before her entire attention could be focused on those things.

At least, currently, she was in combat class and not history or anything of a similar boring nature. Although, watching that slow mace-swinging brute...Carlos? Corden? Well, watching him and the rest of his team get humiliated by a single girl wasn't half as interesting as it sounded, so Ruby found herself drawing a sketch for a new weapon she may or may not be thinking to add as a second weapon to her Mist Thorn.

"Designing a new weapon?"

Ruby glanced up from her sketch to her partner before giving a quick nod. "Yes. It's not like I have anything to complain about with Thorn but a little bit of variety won't hurt."

Looking at the various sketches, all but one crossed out, Dew gave a thoughtful hum while tapping her chin with her index finger. "I don't see how another melee- even a curved dagger- gives you all that much of a variety in fighting styles. You'll still be fighting up close."

"That's what I'm struggling with. I was thinking about adding a ranged weapon but I'm not sure how effective I'd be with one. All I've every trained with were melee weapons."

"Let's find out then and head to the shooting range after class."

Ruby shrugged in response. "Alright." It wasn't like she had much else to do.

"Her."

Ruby looked towards the arena at the male voice and saw a young man in all grey and black clothing with grey hair pointing at her. "What about me?"

"Mister Black wishes to spar with you since we have time for another match, Miss Rose. Had you paid attention then you would be aware of that."

Ruby just rolled her eyes at the blonde woman's scolding and got up from her seat, her hand on the comforting hilt of her weapon. Once arriving at the arena, Ruby gave her opponent a once-over. She wasn't sure if she had seen him before but he definitely gave her a vibe of vague familiarity. Maybe she saw him in passing at some point. "I'm flattered you chose me to fight."

"I heard things. I got curious."

Ruby quirked up an eyebrow at that but didn't comment any further. Instead she backed away a bit and readied herself for the fight.

Once Professor Goodwitch gave them the signal, Ruby activated her semblance and rushed at her opponent, drawing Thorn and slashing at Black in one motion. He dodged her with a surprised look on his face before it morphed into a fierce grin.

He aimed a hard kick at her side but Ruby blocked it with her sword, now looking surprised herself at the faint metallic sound she heard coming from the clash. She quickly ignored it and forced her concentration back to the fight at hand. Her opponent was definitely of a different caliber than what she was used to up to now. He used several kicks in quick succession and caught Ruby off guard once again as those kicks unleashed explosive rounds at her direction. Using her speed to get out of the way of that attack, Ruby decided for a hit and run strategy, making more use of her speed powered attacks. So she kept dashing in and out of battle, slashing at her opponent, forcing him into reflexive blocks and his aura to absorb what he couldn't block.

Still, Black managed to keep his composure and he even forced her to interrupt some of her dashing attacks to dodge occasional kicks he still managed to get out.

This continued on for a while, both fighters trading blows with each other, Ruby continuing with her hit and run strategy while Black was content with being on the defensive and getting choice hits on Ruby in reply to her fast attacks.

Neither of them paid attention to the time and were surprised when the bell sounded, indicating the end of class. Due to aura levels Ruby barely won, the difference only marginal.

"A formidable match, you two. I can see you both going far in the Tournament," Goodwitch complimented them before dismissing the students.

Ruby gave her opponent a quick nod before heading back to her teammates, thanking Dew who waited for her with her bag at the ready.

"You still up for the shooting range?" Her blonde partner asked.

"Yes, let's go." Ruby answered with a nod, a brow quirked up when she caught Black looking at her with a smirk and a wink.