The couple's walk ended at RWBY dorm. Reaper was surprised when they stepped inside. Somehow, she didn't imagine Weiss and Blake would alter the room. But now she could see the bunkbeds were gone, replaced by a single, slightly larger bed with its headboard pushed to the right wall. The rest of the room was repurposed into what looked like a den area with a few chairs, the old sofa, and a coffee table. The bed confirmed suspicious Reaper had about the two team mates she left behind.

"So when did you two start dating?" she asked them. The pair, along with Velvet, were thrown off guard by the sudden question. None of them were expecting Ruby to be so observant.

"A little over a month after you left." Weiss finally answered.

"Congratulations!" Reaper put on a bright smile.

"Thank you." Blake smiled. The black and white pair were honestly concerned with how Ruby would take the information. Reaper really was happy for them. They deserved a little happiness in their lives, all the better that they found it in each other. "So," the cat girl continued, "where are we going to put your bed?"

Bed? Pfft… they would only have to get rid of it later. "I'll be fine on the couch." Reaper replied.

Her team mates traded uneasy looks. "Are you sure? Moving a single bed is really no trouble." Weiss asked.

"It's not like I'm planning to run again." Reaper told them, surprising her friends with yet another astute deduction. "I just haven't even slept on something as comfortable as a couch in a long time. Slow adjustments. I'll get a bed in a few weeks, okay?"

"Are you sure you don't want to reconsider my offer?" Velvet asked, hopeful.

Reaper stepped close and kissed her. "I'm sorry, Velvet. I love you."

Velvet nodded and sent a small smile. "I love you too, Ruby. Goodnight." With that, the rabbit girl left the dorm for her own bed. Along the way, she thought on everything that happened. On the surface, she was the same Ruby. But there were little differences… sometimes Ruby hesitated before responding to Velvet. And while she could feel that the girl's 'I love you' was genuine, there was a sadness to her voice when she spoke it. She must have gone through things that changed her. Things I doubt she wants to talk about. Perhaps there's something on that scroll…

She spent the rest of the night as she normally did, except when her team settled for bed, she stayed awake until she heard them snoring. Once Fox's breathing altered and Velvet knew she was the only one still awake, she pulled out the black scroll. It still felt wrong in her hands, like it had some vile purpose to its existence. She opened it to see the device was password protected. A ten digit code… what's ten letters long that Ruby would use for a password?

Velvet's first instinct was 'strawberry'.

Passcode Denied.

She searched her mind before smiling and typing in her own last name, Scarlatina.

Passcode Denied

Her smile faltered. She continued to think, but couldn't come up with any more ten letter words that Ruby would use. She decided she should try it with a less tired mind. Tossing the scroll under her pillow, Velvet allowed herself to walk her dreams. For several minutes, the room was deathly quiet. Then, the window to the room opened very slowly. A shadow dropped silently to the floor and began searching the room without waking its occupants.

Making sure everything she moved was restored to its original place, Reaper soon stood over Velvet. Slowly, carefully, she slid her hand under the girl's pillow. Reaper smiled as her hand felt the scroll, and she extracted it without waking her old girlfriend. Fox woke with an uncomfortable feeling, and quickly scanned the room. Nothing was out of place and the window was closed. He shrugged it off as a fluke and lay back down.

Outside on the grounds, Reaper breathed a sigh of relief. There were so many ways that could have gone wrong. But I made it, and it looks like Velvet couldn't break into it. She opened the scroll and was greeted by the password screen. Reaper had set it with something easy for her to remember, and something her old friends could never guess in a million years.

N-E-O-P-O-L-I-T-A-N

Passcode Accepted

Finally, after a full afternoons delay, Reaper could begin her mission. She opened up Neo's contact and sent her a message. 'Infiltration successful. Weiss seems uneasy, but they suspect nothing.' She waited a few moments and felt the buzz of a response.

'Await orders.'

Await orders? What the hell? How long!? Reaper took a deep breath. They must still be fine tuning things on the other end. It had only been one afternoon. She slipped back into her own dorm and checked on her team mates. Seeing they were asleep, she checked the note she left. She had written 'Nightmare. Had to cool off. Be back soon.' on a napkin and left it face down. If the girls read it, it would be near impossible to replace as though it was never picked up, which they would only try if they truly suspected something.

If they didn't wake up, there's no need for them to know I was gone. Reaper rationalized, crumpling the note into her pocket and returning to the couch.

The next morning at breakfast, Reaper joined the table next to an anxious Velvet. "What's up?"

"Oh! Ruby! It's nothing, just… oh Ruby, I'm so sorry…" Velvet responded, falling into a gloom.

"Sorry? For what?" Reaper raised an eyebrow.

"I found your black scroll… and I had a bad feeling about it, so I wanted to check it out, but… I think I lost it somehow… I'm sorry…" Velvet looked up to see a blank stare on Ruby's face.

"I never had a black scroll."

"What? But it was in the pocket you had on… your… what?" Velvet checked Ruby's cloak and saw no sign of a secret pocket.

"Are you feeling alright Velvs?" Reaper brought her hand up to Velvet's cheek and looked onto her with concern.

"Um… yeah, I am…" Velvet was confused. Could I really have imagined the whole thing? I should have shown the scroll to one of my team mates… but if it didn't really exist… maybe that's why I didn't? "I guess you coming back and everything changing so quickly again… I must have mistaken some daydream or something. I'm fine, love."

Reaper grumbled, showing doubt, while on the inside she couldn't believe that actually worked. Hopefully her luck continued to hold out. "If you say so, Velv." They returned to their meal as the others started showing up. Reaper noticed Weiss visibly relax upon seeing her.

"You were gone before we were awake again, part of me thought, perhaps…" Weiss explained.

"I'm still here, princess." Reaper gave her a warm smile.

"Hey, Ruby?" Velvet brought her girlfriends attention back to her. "There's something I haven't done much since you've been gone… I want to go to the arcade with you again."

Reaper smiled. She had missed that too. "Sounds like a plan." They finished their meal quickly and left, leaving the teams behind.

"Well, it looks like little red's trying to make up with Velvet alright." Coco noted. "I kinda wish Velv would resist a little, make her work for it."

Blake nodded. "It would only be fair. But it's not our place to design their relationship."

"Unfortunately." Coco agreed. Weiss left the table during this conversation, and Blake noticed she had yet to return. The cat girl politely excused herself and set off to find her girlfriend. She soon found her pacing in a back corner of the main hall with a look of deep thought on her face.

"You okay, Weiss?" Blake advanced cautiously.

"Doesn't it seem a little convenient to you?" Weiss turn and questioned the faunus.

"What do you mean?"

"Just when we start to look for her again, she shows up. And so quickly everything returns to normal. How much of that is because of her suddenly cooperative attitude?" Weiss continued.

"You mean Ruby? What are you saying Weiss?" Blake asked.

"Something just seems off about her… refusing a bed, stepping down from team leader. She's making up with Velvet, but refusing her offer to advance their relationship, even slightly." The heiress answered.

"Yeah something's off," the faunus responded, "but she's spent the last how many months surviving, living off the land, outside the walls? And Yang's semblance? She didn't feel like she was ready to come back yet, we made her stay."

"But it just doesn't make any sense!" Weiss resisted.

"Except it does. Ruby has explained everything. Weiss," Blake threw her arms around her restless girlfriend, "We've had a lot of reasons to cry in the past while. Don't you think we're owed some smiles?"

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, you mean?" Weiss grumbled, returning the hug.

"I was trying to be a bit more tactful." Blake frowned. Weiss sighed. Maybe she's right. I'm over-analyzing this. So much has gone wrong… and instead of enjoying something gone right, I'm waiting for it all to go to hell again… maybe this time really is different.

Reaper found that after so long out of practice, Velvet was not an opponent to underestimate. For once, the red dressed girl lost more than she won. But she didn't care, because Velvet was happy. And with how sad she would be later, she deserved this day. Eventually they abandoned the arcade towers for the skee-ball game. Even before she left, Reaper was terrible at skee ball. I just can't predict the trajectories as well as Velvet… I throw a better fastball, and I don't even play baseball… wait a minute…

Reaper smiled and instead of rolling the ball, took aim and pitched it straight into the 1000 point hole.

"Ruby! That's cheating!" Velvet slapped her girlfriends arm.

"Come on! You're like, a million points ahead! I've always sucked at this game, call it a handicap!" Reaper pitched a second ball for 1000 points.

"If you keep throwing them into the slot that hard, it's going to break the machine." Velvet told her.

"Ugh, fine!" Reaper pitched her final ball into the 500 slot so she wouldn't pass her old girlfriend's score. "I won't do it again, okay?" They gathered their tickets and moved on to another game. Reaper stopped them at one of the many claw machines. She had become a far more analytical and cautious person since she left Beacon, and wanted to test those skills.

"Love, these are impossible." Velvet hated claw machines.

"Not impossible, just really difficult." Reaper spent her quarters and spent a few moments setting up her angle. The girls watched as Reaper hit the button. The claw descended, gripped the doll Reaper picked out, and sent it into the collection box on the first try.

"No way!" the rabbit girl was astounded. "You were lucky! You cannot do that twice!"

Reaper only smirked as she put in more quarters. Two tries and she had two dolls. Then a third. And a fourth, fifth, sixth. Velvet watched in amazement and Reaper spent half their Lien and cleared out the entire machine without missing a single grab. "Now, what are we going to do with fifty little stuffed animals?" Reaper asked.

As Velvet pondered this, she turned to see the audience of kids that had gathered, all of them 13 and younger. The rabbit girl held onto an Ursa plushy and offered the rest to the crowd. "Now wait a minute, I practically bought all these! It wasn't as easy as I made it look!"

"Ruby!" Velvet dragged the girl away as the children all pounced onto the pile of stuffed creatures. "What's gotten into you?"

The younger girl was about to answer when she realized what she was doing. She was having so much fun, she had forgotten she was supposed to be playing 'Ruby' and let too much 'Reaper' through. Ruby would have agreed to give the stupid dolls away immediately. Hell, Ruby would have come up with that idea before Velvet did. "I'm sorry Velv… I guess I got a little carried away…" Reaper cursed herself for almost blowing it.

The black scroll buzzed in her pocket as they closed in on their next game. "Hey, I'll be right back. Bathroom." Velvet nodded and set up to play a round of the game by herself. Reaper entered the bathroom and pulled out the scroll. 'Alley' was all the message said. She then secreted herself out the back door of the arcade and saw the redheaded secretary waiting for her.

"We gotta make this quick and quie- holy shit what happened to you?"

"Just a little accident…" Roman's assistant nervously answered, gesturing to the left side of her face that now had a large and disfiguring scar. "Anyway, quick, quiet, I know. Take this." She handed Reaper a small electronic device.

"What is it?" Reaper asked her.

"It will get you into Ozpin's office. Next time you get a chance, attach this to the keypad somewhere out of sight. It will slowly decode the passkey and send the code to the scroll when it's done." She responded.

"How slowly?"

"A day, maybe two."

I have to keep the act up for a day or two longer. If today is any indicator, it may be harder than I first thought. Reaper scowled. "I best get back. I'll see you around, red."

"Not likely, honestly…" Reaper gave her a puzzled look. "Like you said, poor job security."

"What about 'finding a way to stick around'?" the scythe master questioned.

"I should look for opportunities elsewhere first…" she refused to meet Reaper's eyes and turned to walk away.

Reaper wasn't bothered that she was losing a prospect with red. She wasn't about to get hung up on some poor secretary she was likely to dump after a single fun night anyway. What bothered Reaper was the way it happened. "I may not be able to see you, but I can always feel an uneasy tension in the back of my neck when you're watching me." Neo shimmered into existence beside her. "That wasn't an accident. That was your umbrella. What the hell is your problem?" Reaper shook the black scroll to show she demanded an answer.

'She didn't know her place.' Neo eventually replied.

Didn't know her place? What the hell does that mean? "Wait… you're not… it's not because we hit on each other?" Neo only crossed her arms in response. "What the hell!?" Reaper whisper-shouted, trying to stay quiet. "I don't belong to you, Neo! I appreciate you helping when I need to calm down, but if I want to enjoy myself with someone else, you have no right to chase them off!" Reaper shoved the black scroll back deep into her pocket and stormed back inside the arcade. Neo was left in the alley with a genuinely hurt look on her face.

Velvet saw Ruby coming back. "Hey did you fall in? I almost sent a search par-... Uh oh… Ruby, your eyes."

"Just some assholes in the bathroom." Reaper told her quickly, not needing to ask if they had turned red. "Let's get home before I start destroying the machines."