I know, I know, Overactive Imagination isn't that powerful actually, but this is my version, and it's fucking terrifying. Layla isn't going to be getting any bullshit like Mana Arrows or Elemental affinities. To make up for it, she's going to have a lot of proficiencies, some of which are really awesome, like Animal Friend, alongside her Semblance being scarily powerful.

As mentioned in the first chapter, she will be able to learn some skills like Aura Bolt, which condenses her aura into a thin lance of energy then solidifies it and propels it like a bolt. Then she can learn to enhance its damage with fire, ice, lightning or whatever.

Also, when a Line-Break occurs, often it'll be a perspective change, since I'm going to jump between Layla and 'Roman' a lot. So, anybody got a fun old-world name for the guy currently masquerading as Roman? I might make it so he doesn't care too much about his old name, he basically fully embodies Roman Torchwick, with the extra knowledge of course.

Finally, proficiencies. Layla will sometimes use skills she hasn't actually been seen using, nor have they been listed. For example, one day she might just decide to go fishing, and so she'll use that proficiency to do so, but because I'm lazy, I'm not gonna bother keeping track of it.

Chapter 3

"P-leeease, heeeelp..."

A croaky voice rasped out slowly, attracting the attention of the lone guard for the store. He checked the door very quickly, just to ensure it was locked, then drew his baton and swiftly approached the alleyway. As he rounded the corner, a gasp slipped past his lips as he laid eyes on a charred body. Their back was a crispy black, with streaks of crimson blood, and their eyes...they were gone, completely. Empty sockets looked about helplessly as the poor soul rasped their pained breaths out.

As the guard settled on one knee to try and help the poor person, a quick smack on the back of the head knocked him out, and Neo quickly dispelled the illusion. "Y'know, that's a mighty scary ability there." Roman remarked. And it was. In his honest opinion, Neo was capable of some scary stuff. It wasn't just a visual illusion, it could cause auditory, olfactory, somatosensory and even gustatory illusions.

That means not just sight, but hearing, smell, touch and taste were affected. If Neo wanted to, she could make someone feel the pain of being kicked in the balls repeatedly, forced to swallow Cyanide, have their eyes gouged out, with Ghost Pepper paste smeared across their tongue and Hot Sauce squirted up their nostrils. All without laying a finger on them.

Of course, as soon as someone actually did something to them physically the illusion would shatter, but in the interlude between starting the illusion and it being broken, she could mentally rape somebody to the point of permanent insanity. "Just...promise you'll never use it on me." Roman muttered, shuddering when she turned a saccharine smile on him, and held up a sign. "...Sure, I'll get you some barbecue ribs later on."

It was weird, Roman assumed that Neo's favourite food would be at the very least Ice Cream of some kind, and that she'd demand he take her to an Ice Cream parlour for a bribe, but nope, she wanted to be taken to a very specific Barbecue joint and given a full-rack of ribs. It wasn't really a very expensive joint, so he wasn't being gouged for a joke, and it seemed Neo was genuinely excited about getting to have some ribs, so who was he to complain.

Pointing at the guard, Neo rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers, prompting several of Junior's guys to jump to attention and grab the man, tossing him behind a dumpster. It was quite funny seeing this diminutive little girl ordering around grown men like that...huh. "Hey Neo?" She turned to look at him from her position at the end of the alleyway, peering out to see if anyone was coming. "Just curious, how old actually are you?"

Tilting her head, she fiddled with her fingers as though counting for a second before sticking one up in one hand, then all her digits in the other, putting the one before the rest and grinning. "Wait, you're fucking 15?" She nodded emphatically. "...Right. So, what about Miltia and Melanie?" She zipped her lips quickly. "Oh, right, girly secrets or some crap right?" She nodded and leaned out again, twisting her head to look the other way then turning around and nodding once at him. "Right then, let's get this show on the road."

The small group burst out of the alleyway and huddled around the door. Roman made to blow it open with a small round of dust, but Neo quickly pushed his cane down with a huff, pulling out a pin and shaking her head. "And you also know how to lockpick..." He muttered. Within mere seconds the door clicked open, and Neo quickly replaced her pins...somewhere...before waltzing into the store and hopping up on the counter, sitting down cross-legged and gesturing at the dust.

All the guys hopped to it, leaving Roman a little peeved. "Hey, you know, I'm supposed to be the one running this whole gig?" Neo just shrugged, kicking her feet about and fiddling with something in her hands. When he tried to get a peek she hid her hands and glared at him. Actually glared, not just a weak 'don't try to look at this or I'll be sad' glare, but a 'try that again and I'll break your neck' glare. "Woah woah, okay!" He raised his hands placatingly. "Point received."

Satisfied that Roman wouldn't try to peek again, Layla gave another gaze at the faintly-rusting hunk of metal in her hands.

It wasn't that if he saw it anything bad would happen, he'd probably dismiss it out of hand, but it was...personal. Layla didn't really profess to care too much about anybody in her new world, but her mother always loved her, even when she was such a strange child. She had a weak aura, and she could manipulate metal a little with her semblance, but never anything more than that. Despite that, one day, she made Layla a little model.

The model wasn't bigger than her palm, but it was an intricately designed piece of metal, shaped to resemble an ice cream. When she gave Layla that little piece of metal, the pair had no idea that it'd be only a few more days before her mother would be dead. Layla still faintly remembered her old-world mother, the woman had died a long time ago by then but she still remembered her face, even after all those years. Her old-world father was still alive, but they were estranged when Layla died.

She didn't know Neo's father. Presumably, he had disappeared during her mother's pregnancy, and as such didn't warrant even a single thought in Layla's opinion. But her mother decided to stay with her, through all that she could. Layla could have quite easily been given up to an orphanage and her mother could have moved on, or simply been aborted, but the woman tried her absolute best, and Layla was honestly thankful for every moment she spent with the woman, even if she had to watch as her mother got thinner and thinner, giving Layla more of her food so she wouldn't suffer the same fate.

Twisting it over in her hands once more, she pocketed it and glanced around. Most of the dust tubes had been filled, and the crystals were being bagged up quickly. Bringing her menu up without moving, she hopped off the counter and began throwing some crystals into a bag of her own, watching with a smirk as each crystal added some experience to her stealing proficiency.

It was annoying to learn that she had to directly perform the actions of stealing, even if she was the one doing the commanding, but she supposed it made sense. Just watching them taking things wasn't going to make her better at stealing. And of course, just taking things from an empty shop also wasn't going to make her improve, but since she was doing it directly, Layla supposed the Game counted it.

With a flourish, she flipped a crystal up into the air, caught it on her finger, spun it around then threw it again and caught it in the bag, turning to see Roman giving her an amused look. She eloquently stuck her tongue out and ignored him, drawing a laugh from the man. Roman didn't seem too bad to be honest. The anime never really showed him doing anything too bad. Arguably the worst thing he did was run the train into Vale, but considering he was being forced into it Layla didn't blame him. When he fought Ruby on the first episode, he didn't look like he was aiming to kill, he just wanted to get away.

A loud crashing noise from the back of the shop drew Layla's attention. She hopped off the counter she was sat on, leaving her bag behind and wandering over to where one of Junior's goon's was sat on his ass rubbing his head, scattered crystals of dust around him. "Seriously? Idiot." She put a sign up as she yanked him onto his feet and pointed at the dust with a glare.

"Sorry boss." Boss huh? She could get used to that. With a roll of her eyes she just gestured to the dust again and watched as he sheepishly grabbed his bag. Honestly, he was lucky that wasn't activated dust. if it was a live crystal, the block would probably have been blown sky-high, even with the rest of the dust in the store not being active.

That was an interesting thing, dust worked in a pretty weird way. There were crystals, powdered dust, but then you had a variant of each called activated dust, which was the type used for weaponry and whatnot, because it burned far faster, and far stronger. De-activated dust was the kind used in vehicles, lights, power generators and whatnot, it was far less volatile and safe, to the point any ordinary civilian could get their hands on it. Activated dust was like military-grade ammo from her old-world, you had to be licensed to get it.

"Chop chop, get a move on times a'wastin here!" Neo gave Roman a dead-pan look, and he just shrugged. "What can I say, I like the accent?" Neo made a vague stabby motion, and he blanched a little. That was...interesting. "Okay okay, I won't talk like that. Yeesh, bossy boots much."

Ignoring Roman, Layla gave another sharp glance at the mook who fucked up, and when she was sure he was sufficiently cowed wandered back to the front of the shop, just in time to see several guys leaving the place and venturing down the alleyway. Snapping her fingers a few times, the last of the guys quickly hurried up and fled the building, with Roman twirling his cane as he exited.

Just to be cheeky, Neo closed and re-locked the door, snickering to herself silently.

Update Log!

A new tab has been added to The Game: Perks!

Perks can be unlocked through special actions, and will grant bonuses based on certain factors. For example, the Expert Woodworker perk will grant a 50% Quality Increase to crafted Wood items. There are also perks like "Tough-Gal!" which will grant direct bonuses to Attributes. These can be unlocked through certain activities like Weight-Lifting, Cardio, Games of Chance, etc, and will be incredibly beneficial. Repeated actions will level perks and increase the benefit gained.

Layla stuck her middle finger up at the air and swore to herself that if she ever got her hands on the entity controlling her game, she'd punch them in the tits.

Simply translated, her ability was now actually incorporating her hard work. Since Melanie and Miltia considered her too weak, she had been dragged into the Gym repeatedly to do weight-lifting and stuff, and because of her bullshit abilities, it never made a lick of difference to her strength stat. Sure, it was now being fixed, but what about all those hours she spent witho-...oh.

New Perk - Novice Body-builder - "You been hitting the weights? You look bigger." - Grants +1 to STR per rank. Increased by weight-lifting. Current Rank: 3

So, considering it was Rank 3, presumably, it was retroactively calculating all the strength training she did with the twins, which was nice of the game. Flexing her arm, Layla glanced around the room she was living in, settling her eyes on a dresser before strolling over and attempting to lift the filled furniture.

Before, she wouldn't have budged it an inch. Now that she had an extra three points of strength, she could-

"NEO! GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!" A rather obnoxiously loud yell came through the door, leading Layla to frown and close her menus, quickly standing from her bed and nipping through the door, racking her mind for reasons why she'd be yelled at like that. It sounded like Junior, but he never really raised his voice, so she wasn't sure. Taking a guess, she turned towards the gym and wandered down at a jog, passing a few slightly disturbed goons who looked at her in confusion.

Peeking around the door to the gym, Layla took in the scene with quick eyes, before falling over clutching her stomach as she cackled silently. Junior was stood in the centre of the gym, with a few autonomous training dummies laying around him, and a few dozen giant shards of porcelain around his feet. "Layla, you get one chance. What, the fuck, did you do?" He carefully enunciated, keeping his voice level even if it looked like he wanted to go find his rocket launcher.

Reigning in her laughter, Layla wiped a tear from her eye, trying to stand up, before grinning widely. "Well, Melanie told me that I was just hopeless, that I might as well just throw everything at my opponent, including the kitchen sink...so I did." Junior looked like he couldn't decide whether to be amused or furious, so his face just did a kind of slump, as he gave up trying to rationalize Layla's actions. "Several, actually..."

With a drawn-out sigh, he gestured towards the mess with his arm. "Just...just tidy it up." When Layla raised her arm, he glared at her. "Without blackmailing any of my guys into doing it for you." She swung her arm back down with a frown. It wasn't her fault her abilities were great for gathering blackmail. Like how one guy frequently tried to hide in the room she and the twins lived in so he could spy on them, the perv. Or the other guy, who snuck bottles from the bar and hid them around the place, gathering them up when he was sure he wouldn't get caught and taking them home.

The first one she ratted out immediately since it was just creepy to see him in there. Needless to say, after what Junior did to that mook, none of the others even considered entering the room she shared with the twins. The second one was much more harmless, but it was nice to have blackmail to hold over peoples heads. Especially since it meant if she ever needed to do something, or have something done, they'd be more than willing once she reminded them of their dirty little secrets.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a tiny voice told her what she was doing was mean, but then vindictively added suggestions for better ways to use said blackmail.

'Power-Strike!'

Swinging her fist, Layla uprooted the little metal dummy from its base, sending the husk of metal careening through the room before coming to a short and sudden stop, buried an inch deep into the concrete wall. Hearing slow claps from behind her, Layla quickly spun and bowed dramatically to the amused visage of Roman. Looking over her shoulder, she smirked whilst her face was concealed before 'breaking' her illusion and placing a new dummy in the centre of the room.

It wouldn't do to let on how strong she actually was, so playing the whole thing off as an act was for the best. "So, Junior told me a funny story recently..." Groaning, Layla flipped Roman the bird. "Oh come on Neo, it's funny. Well, I don't think Junior thought it was funny, but I did. Honestly, throwing a literal sink, why didn't I think of that?" She threw up a derogatory sign and turned away from the flamboyant thief, kicking her leg up into the throat of another dummy, then using it's shoulder as a pivot-point, hooking her foot on the back of its neck to spin around and throw herself at another dummy. "Woah."

She heard Roman's surprised remark, but she was far too busy making sure she didn't end up- *CRASH!* 'Ow.' Shaking her head, Layla grit her teeth and punchd the dummy in the face, pissed off that she still wasn't quite dextrous enough to pull that move off without faceplanting into the ground. It didn't help that Roman was laughing his ass off at her. Or, at least he was until a dagger ended up embedded in the wall right beside his head.

He gulped and looked between her and the dagger. "Point taken." Grinning, Layla skipped over to rip the weapon from the wall, looking at Roman with sharp eyes. "What? I don't have a cookie for you." Glaring, Layla looked between him and the dagger a few times, a thoughtful expression coming across her face as if realizing the solution to some great mystery. "Alright fine, I have another job, and Junior has oh so kindly agreed to give me you to work with, alongside a half-dozen mooks." Frowning, Layla held up a sign.

"Fine. If you must know, there's a dust shop out by the sea-front which just got a shipment of some high-class weaponry, along with plenty of activated dust ammunition for them. I've made no secret I want to get my own crew, and to do that I need guns, I need dust, and I need lien. Junior's knows I'm good enough to guarantee he gets a cut, and you yourself get paid a bonus for your...hard work." He gestured at the training dummies strewn about the room, several of the autonomous ones sparking lightly. Holding another sign up, Layla grinned. Playing as Neo, a little...psychopathic and unreasonable was definitely a bad influence on her.

But that didn't mean it wasn't fun.

When Roman said the shop was on the sea-front, he didn't mention just which seafront it was.

And so it was that Layla found something about Neopolitan, feared assassin and partner to Roman, which wasn't pleasant. She hated the ocean. It was weird. Layla in her old life never had any kind of thalassophobia. Glass-bottom boats were one of her favourite ways to travel, seeing the ocean through the floor of a boat. But when she peeked over the edge of the boat they were on, she felt an irrational fear try to make her panic. Fortunately, it was rather muted, presumably Gamer's Mind hard at work suppressing the majority of that fear. She still felt a little afraid of the water, but nothing overwhelming. In all honesty, she found it amusing. To think that such a strong and feared character was herself afraid of deep water.

Then again, in this world, the oceans really had megalodons hiding within the inky darkness, waiting to consume anything which entered their domain. For a moment, she pondered the possibility that there were genuinely megalodon-sized Grimm sharks out there in the deeper parts of the ocean, then was thankful that there were aircraft in Remnant, so she didn't have to go in the ocean. Sure, there were flying Grimm, but she'd take them over massive Grimm-sharks any day of the week.

Fortunately enough, the boat was only going to Patch, the large island off the coast of Vale, so they didn't have long to spend over the water. Didn't make her feel any better, and she vowed that if Roman ever tried to get her on a boat again, he'd definitely be regretting it. "Aww, come on Neo, look sharp. What's the matter, scared of a little water?"

Scratch that, he was gonna be missing body parts by the time the boat arrived on Patch.

I'm sorry this took so long. I ran into a writer's block a mile wide after writing the initial robbery scene. I'm honestly going to probably go back over this chapter later and add some more substance, ending it here feels wrong, but you lovelies have waited long enough for a new chapter!

Please, leave some shiny tasty reviews, I love to hear from you all, and don't forget that I do have other stories!

Name(s): Layla, Neopolitan

Class: Slum-child

Level: 4 (192/400 EXP)

Title: Enforcer - 15% Damage Increase when on Heists

Health Points: 160/160 - 4% Regeneration Rate (6.4 Per Minute)

Aura Points:165/165 - 5% Regeneration Rate (8.25 Per Minute)

STR: 6 (+3).

VIT: 4 (+1).

DEX:12 (+2).

WIS: 5.

LUK: 2.

Perks:

Novice Body-builder - "You been hitting the weights? You look bigger." - Grants +1 to STR per rank. Increased by weight-lifting. Current Rank: 3

Novice Tanker - "Jeez, you should get yourself patched up." - Grants +1 to VIT per rank. Increased by taking damage. Current Rank: 1

Novice Athlete - "Gotta keep up with that cardio, yo!" - Grants +1 to DEX per rank. Increased by exercising. Current Rank: 2

Inept Book-worm - "Jeez, you have ADHD or something?" - Grants +1 to WIS per rank. Increased by researching. Current Rank: 0

Inept Gambler - "You're unluckier than a female whore in a gay bar!" - Grants +1 to LUK per rank. Increased by playing games of chance. Current Rank: 0.

(Just an FYI, Layla's class, Slum-Child, will change eventually to something more fitting. But, for right now, she still identifies as that.)