Chapter 4

Blinking, Layla swapped the colour of her eyes around, confusing the shopkeeper in front of her.

Or rather, her illusion did. She was right now walking around the shop itself, perusing shelves curiously whilst occasionally leaning back to see if the man was still 'talking' to her. It kind of hurt her head to make her illusion hold a conversation, since she had to essentially make it intelligently maintain a conversation despite her not actually being able to hear what was being said, but considering the man was having what seemed like a pleasant, if somewhat confused, time talking to her, it was working.

She was currently stretching the boundaries of how much her semblance could do, but that was kind of the point. Since she could make a self-sufficient illusion of herself who could maintain a conversation without her actually knowing what was being said, that gave her a lot of utility for using her Semblance. It was honestly scary just how strong Overactive Imagination was.

Deciding to play with the guy a little, she slowly made her illusion more transparent, smirking as he freaked out, though she steadily returned her illusion to opacity. Of course, by conversation, it was more a game of charades, since her illusionary clone couldn't actually talk either. It would have been stupidly helpful to be able to just have an illusionary clone be her face, speaking and all that, while she just hid herself away and attacked from the shadows.

Picking out a few items from the shelves, she scooped them into their inventory, having looked around for cameras or anything that might give the game away. The shopkeeper understandably wasn't paying enough attention to the shelves to notice some items disappearing from the shelves, since he believed the store was empty. She had her illusionary clone break off the conversation and replaced her after putting herself where the duplicate was and then carefully de-activating her semblance, meaning there was no shatter effect, nothing to give away the fact that she had just taken the place of her clone. She put a bag of cookies and a milkshake on the counter, since otherwise he'd be suspicious as to why she entered the store, wandered around for a bit, then came to chat to him.

Paying for them, she exited the store with a grin on her face, only to glare as Roman rolled his eyes at her. "I never took you for a petty thief." Resoundingly ignoring him, she heard his strangled noise as he hopped to move alongside her, hiding her grin with a negligent use of Overactive Imagination. "I mean really, you could waltz into any dust shop and steal to your heart's content, but you use your semblance to steal snacks and...and cooking oil?"

Layla snorted in amusement, glancing over at Roman before holding her arm out to form signs. "I like cooking, and nobody in Vale can make good barbecue ribs. Remember that time you bribed me with ribs? Those ribs were no good." She punctuated this with a frowning face sign, then let it fizzle into nothingness, tucking one hand into her pocket while the other twirled Hush.

She had finally gotten her beautiful umbrella made, and it was just as awesome as she hoped it would be. It did mean she was living on a split pay for a while to pay off the weapon, and that was for a very good reason. Hunter-quality weapons were fucking expensive. The materials used and the techniques made them as insanely durable as they were as well as being able to channel aura to make it so that they wouldn't be broken unless things were fucked enough that the wielder's aura was gone anyway. But in turn, this made them incredibly expensive.

The reason so many students had these incredibly valuable weapons was rather simple actually, they weren't as valuable. Each Hunter-in-training had to make their own weapon, buying the materials themselves and using them to create their weapon, the entire process from ore and dust crystal to finished armament. Layla would have done so with Hush, but decided she had five years until canon even started, so she could afford to practice with a weapon made by another whilst she levelled up and improved herself, to the point that she could use a high level of blacksmithing to make a weapon far superior to the one now in her hands.

Not that she was implying it was bad, the weapon was beautiful, able to serve as a bludgeon with a fireable hook similar to Roman's cane handle, the hidden blade located within the shaft, and the fabric itself, whilst delicate-looking, wouldn't be damaged so long as she had aura to shield it with. And it did actually have a separate proficiency for using her umbrella, it was called 'Dainty Fighter' and covered using her umbrella in combat, synergizing with her hand-to-hand proficiency and her athletics, dodging, evasion and jumping proficiencies.

In just a few weeks of training with the twins, she had gone from entirely hopeless and having to rely on her semblance to last longer than a minute, to being able to evade their attacks neatly, or block those that she was out of position to dodge. It helped that she had levelled up from level 4 to level 11, in thanks partly to the quests the game gave her for sparring with the twins, challenges to last a certain length of time or hit her opponents a certain number of times.

There were also the quests she got to assist Roman in robberies, with extra challenges like not being spotted directly by anyone other than Roman's hired help or Roman himself, or knocking out at least five people, slightly obscure challenges that she tried her best to complete, and usually managed to fulfil without much hassle. These extra challenges gave her extra proficiency points and experience, letting her bump up her more specific abilities. Unfortunately, she didn't receive any attribute points, meaning to gain those, she had to actually level up, but that wasn't the end of the world.

Worthy of note was the fact that upon hitting level 10, her experience requirement didn't scale up. That had the potential to be rather...powerful, since as she got stronger and faster, she could get more experience from tougher foes faster than before. If the experience earned scaled up as she assumed it would, her later levels would paradoxically be easier to earn than her earlier levels. Then again, level 1 was surprisingly difficult for her to escape, but as she progressed and got better stats, she was definitely getting faster at levelling up.

As it was, she now felt at least somewhat confident in her ability to run the fuck away from a huntsman, investing in Dexterity would pay dividends in the future. If it was someone like Qrow, she would have no chance of course, but the chances of her running into someone like him were exceptionally low. Though, would his Semblance interfere with that? It would be good luck for him to run into her, from his side, since he could easily beat her in a fight, so probably not. Maybe investing in luck would be a better idea. If it existed, she'd even take Intelligence, so she could make those kinds of decisions easier.

...Wait, wouldn't decision-making fall under the purview of wisdom?

Coming to a stop at the Vale docks, Layla took a moment to catch her breath as she looked out over the boats gathered there.

She had established a schedule with a little help from Junior managing her time, allowing her two hours for exercise when she woke up, followed by an hour of sparring with whoever she could drag into it, usually Miltia or Melanie, then she'd spend most of the rest of the day doing whatever she felt like until the club opened. On some days she'd be assigned to work with Roman, and while at first she was just doing it because she wanted to stick close to canon, she did start to actually somewhat enjoy verbally sparring with Roman, or...well, sign-arguing.

He was pretty easygoing in her eyes, which fit with what she knew of canon. He didn't kill unless absolutely necessary, which fit with his gentleman thief title, and kept his crimes clean and away from civilian damages. This made sure that nobody would get a hard-on for seriously trying to persue him. He probably had bribes going out to the police as well since they never really had much of a problem escaping, even during the very few heists where police showed up at all in the time it took them to loot the place and leave. But, while all this was going on, Layla felt...nervous. It had been a month, and from all the heists she'd gone on with Roman, one thing stuck out to her like a giant cock in a pen of hens...why was Roman stealing dust so much?

In canon, he only really ramped up his thefts when Cinder leaned on him and all but forced him to do so, stealing pretty much every speck of dust from Vale. While they were nowhere near that level currently, they were definitely stealing more than they really had a use for. Roman had multiple fences for the stolen dust, obviously, but she doubted he could get rid of that much dust without risk.

Shaking her head, Layla cracked her arms and yawned lightly before hopping and starting to jog away again, thinking as she moved. She had years before Cinder would move on the maiden, and honestly, Layla was a little tempted to steal that power from under her feet. It'd mean getting literal magical powers, beyond what a Semblance was capable of.

But it'd also piss off Salem, and that was not even slightly something she was interested in. Ozpin could have his chess pieces, his silver-eyed warriors and maidens and all that bullshit, Layla was perfectly happy to simply follow canon and not really make waves. Of course, she was planning to level up like nobody else was capable of and be powerful enough to fight with the big players, but that didn't mean she needed to willingly paint a target on her back.

One potential route was actually one of the more dangerous ones, and that was to go to Beacon and be trained professionally. While at first it sounded like a stupid idea, she had no doubts that she would receive a very strong education and probably level up to a strong standard. One of the main issues was that it would take up four whole years and would likely mean Roman and Junior wouldn't trust her.

If she could sell it as being trained by the enemy and learning how they acted so they could counter them then maybe it'd work, but it'd be risky. Plus, being in Beacon for four years would mean they'd know a hell of a lot about her, her Semblance and how she fought. It'd basically be handing them a dossier on how she acted. The other combat schools thus would also immediately have the same problem. If she wanted to be trained properly, she'd basically have to give away all of her secrets, and they'd know exactly how strong she was, meaning leaving to rejoin Roman and Junior would be pretty bloody pointless.

So for now, that idea was shelved. Her birthday had come and gone with no fanfare since nobody alive aside from herself and possibly her unknown father knew it, and with it, she was a year away from being able to apply for Beacon, plenty of time to internally debate as to whether it was worth it or not. If she was normal, she would definitely be trying her hardest to get into Beacon.

However, she had the System backing her up. With that, all she had to do, really, was practice endlessly. Her stats were all on the rise, mainly aided by the three total hours of strenuous exercise she put herself through, and she was constantly gathering experience. There were also the skill books, most of which were useless to her, but there were some that unlocked things like Gymnastics, helping her to be as lithe and evasive as the in-show Neo was.

Gymnastics - Lvl: 7 (376/700). Your body has been trained to be limber and easily contorted, allowing you to pull off maneuvres that a normal human would believe was restricted to fantasy. 35% increase to Limb Flexibility, Maximum 500%.

With that proficiency, she was already able to bend her arm so her bicep ran along her shoulders without breaking anything, which, from what she knew of biology, was physically impossible. Of course, she couldn't exactly talk about physically impossible when she was in a fantasy world where living people walked around with forcefields and could benchpress buildings, but it was still a bit weird being able to fold her arm like that.

On top of that proficiency, there were others that enhanced her vision, hearing, touch and smell, each one with their own proficiency that needed levelling up. Amusingly enough, enhancing her vision wasn't actually as important as her smell and hearing, at least in her opinion. Being able to hear was a given, but being able to smell things like the hint of weapon oil or gunpowder would give away targets who were trying to ambush her.

Compared to that, being able to see better wasn't actually as useful, since she didn't intend to be looking at people from a distance. That didn't mean she neglected it, but in reality, that proficiency levelled itself up, since she was always looking at things anyway. The others levelled as well, but considering her reliance on eye-sight, a trait pretty much any sane human being had, it was obvious which one was going to level up the fastest. What amused her the most though was that she also found a skill book for 'Eloquent Speaker', providing buffs for persuasion.

And the best part? She didn't even have to speak to prock it.

'Oh come the fuck on!'

Yelling in her own mind, Layla backflipped away from the overhead swing of a rocket-propelled sledgehammer, unable to kick her assailant as she normally would since his weapon was in the way. She drew Hush back and watched her opponent, gritting her teeth as she saw one of Roman's flares stream up into the sky, then yelping as her opponent lunged forwards, heedless of her blade as his aura deflected it, forcing her to contort to avoid his horizontal swipe, then roll sideways as he swung down, shattering the ground.

This was supposed to be a normal everyday heist, just a nice easy in-and-out. Of course, it just had to be Roman's shoddy luck that there were a pair of Hunters-in-training shopping for dust in there. Thank fuck they weren't fully-fledged Huntsmen or they probably would have been beaten. Huntsmen, from what averages she had managed to spy, averaged at around level 30/50, while Beacon students could be anywhere between level 10 and level 30. Roman had risen in level twice since she met him, and he outclassed his own opponent, but that didn't mean he was guaranteed to win.

On the other hand, her own opponent was level 27, and while she had been working hard, she was still only level 14. She outclassed her opponent in Dexterity thanks to her Athlete perk, but he was much higher than her in terms of Vitality and leagues above her in Strength. If he hit her even once she'd definitely have her aura shattered. The ground around them was already perforated with craters from his heavy attacks.

Irritatingly enough, while they were indeed telegraphed, he wasn't an idiot. The guy was in Beacon for a reason, and that wasn't because he was bad at combat. Sure, she was faster and able to bend around his attacks, but he only had to hit her once. Plus, he knew when to balance his attacks, so for all that she was faster than him, she could only get minor cuts and scrapes, all of which were deflected by his aura, while she herself couldn't afford to let him hit her even a single time.

An explosion from behind her drew her opponent's eyes for just a moment, and she immediately darted forwards, only to roll to his side as his readied weapon slammed down, an irritated 'tch' coming from his mouth as she evaded his ploy. She immediately jammed Hush against his side and rolled again as he slammed his fist out in an attempt to punch her, immediately righting herself and regaining a lock on him.

Their fight, if it could even be called that, was honestly a little bit sad. She couldn't take him down easily, she was far too low-level for that, but since she knew that, she was playing hyper-defensively, not giving him a chance to hit her. If it came to deciding between a heavy attack with high risk, or a light with low, she'd take the light attack every single time, and she could tell her opponent was getting utterly pissed at her.

With a growl, he placed both hands on his weapon, and she watched as the lazy flames at the rear of the head guttered before blasting into action. She wasn't sure if it was his Semblance or just him burning dust, but she immediately leapt up as he slammed his weapon against the ground, sending out a shockwave. Amusingly enough, the attack actually fucked his teammate over, as she lost her footing.

Roman capitalized on that by whipping out with his cane and cracking her across the head viciously, breaking her aura. That was all the time that Layla had to look at him as her own opponent leapt towards her, swinging in a wide sweep to hit her, only for his face to contort in confusion as her 'body' shattered into particles. Whilst she was in the air, she created an illusion and had it fall faster than her. Only a little, or he'd notice the difference, but enough that, as he broke her illusion, Layla came crashing down on the top of his head.

Planting both her boots firmly on his head, she jammed Hush down on the top of his head then flipped forwards as he tried to throw her off. Upon landing she turned and jammed her blade into him again before he could land, drawing a ferocious yell as he unleashed another, far more frenzied horizontal swing at her, using his turn to gain speed.

To avoid the swing, she dropped to the ground, using her small frame to the fullest, then had to endure as he finally landed a solid blow on her, kicking her full force and sending her spinning across the ground, draining her aura majorly from the shattered illusion, the kick and the subsequent journey across jagged and broken ground. At that time a flare from Roman smashed into his chest, giving her a few moments to drag herself to her feet and dust herself off, blanching at the dregs of aura she had left.

She glanced over at Roman, seeing that his opponent was down on the ground and not getting up. If she was dead or not, Layla honestly couldn't bring herself to care at that moment, but apparently the other guy definitely cared as he focused on her downed form for a moment before yelling wordlessly and charging at Roman. Since Roman was now his focus, Layla spared a glance at the shop.

The mooks were still loading dust as quickly as possible, apparently confident enough on their ability to hold off the two students, and so she left them to it, turning her attention back just in time to fall backwards in her sudden and fearful dodge of a sudden flying rocket hammer, letting her watch as it slammed into the wall behind her and was embedded halfway down the shaft.

Shivering slightly at the display of force, she looked back towards the fight. She wasn't quite sure how things ended up that the guy she was fighting threw his weapon at her, but evidently without his weapon he wasn't able to match up to Roman, who was able to hold his own against him even with a weapon. The guy quickly found himself on the receiving end of a vicious wide swing from Roman, which shattered his aura and sent him stumbling backwards.

Roman followed that up with a flare that exploded on his chest, knocking the guy on his back, then shifted over and smacked him on the side of the head with a textbook golf swing, knocking him out cold. Normally Roman wouldn't actually knock people out with violence, there was too high a chance of giving them brain damage or even killing them, which would attract some very serious ire, but apparently he just wanted to knock the fucker out. Layla honestly couldn't blame him, nor did she blame herself for stomping on his gentleman's vegetables while he was down.

Sure, he wasn't dead as per Roman's creed of only killing by necessity, but he'd probably wish he was when he woke up.

Name(s): Layla, Neopolitan

Class: Slum-child

Level: 14 (628/1400 EXP)

Title: Enforcer - 15% Damage Increase when on Heists

Health Points: 265/265 - 5% Regeneration Rate (13.25 Per Minute)

Aura Points: 275/275 - 7% Regeneration Rate (19.25 Per Minute)

STR: 8 (+5).

VIT: 5 (+2).

DEX:24 (+6).

WIS: 7. (+1).

LUK: 3. (+1).

Perks:

Novice Body-builder - "You been hitting the weights? You look bigger." - Grants +1 to STR per rank. Increased by weight-lifting. Current Rank: 5

Novice Tanker - "Jeez, you should get yourself patched up." - Grants +1 to VIT per rank. Increased by taking damage. Current Rank: 2

Novice Athlete - "Gotta keep up with that cardio, yo!" - Grants +1 to DEX per rank. Increased by exercising. Current Rank: 6

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

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: 1.