Chapter 2: Make Way for Tomorrow

Far off in the distance, Neo could hear the faint scream of the blonde-haired monkey Faunus from earlier. A screeching "HELP!" accentuated mostly by the droning of horns as car after car flipped in Roman's wake.

The Paladin he was piloting haphazardly skated along the highways in chase, tossing everything and everyone in its path high up into the moonlit sky.

Neo dashed between each projectile, trying in vain to help passengers from the wreckages with her umbrella, extending its steel tip into the door frames, carving out openings for escape. But for each one who crawled from the metallic jaws, two more lay unbreathing in pools of velvet.

She had seen Roman at his worst. Long ago she made a pact with herself to never give him the pleasure of hearing her voice for as long as she was in his "company". She had drawn out every ounce of his ire, suffered blow after blow, and still she had never seen him this way.

A complete disregard for life in the pursuit of power.

This side of him reminded her of an old friend. A pair of twin tears fell gracefully from her chocolate eye as she pulled a balding man from his carriage, spitting a toothless "Thank you" and praying at her feet.

Under streetlights ahead she saw the pair from earlier in the warehouse, trying desperately to stop the mechanical beast. Two more soon joined their ranks, a slender blue-haired boy, and a fiery blonde girl, both straddling a motorcycle adorned with flaming decals.

"What a badass!" Neo whispered aloud, almost ashamed at herself for speaking. She hurried atop the wreckages to join the fight, just as the blue-haired boy leapt with his weapon in-hand off the steel mare, spearing the Paladin through the shoulder. Behind him, at the front of a semi-truck, stood the monkey Faunus.

He was…meditating. As cars flew past his body, barely missing him, he stood in a mode of unfaltering prayer, as two ethereal copies of himself appeared behind him, both rushing to the aid of his friend.

With the doppelgangers evaporating as Roman's fists pounded through them, the monkey flung himself onto the mech for a blow with his staff, quickly being thrown aside along with his friend in a single swipe by the Paladin.

Neo had to act fast. She quickly activated her semblance, placing in front of Roman two crystalline images of the boys, confusing him into hitting thin air. She dove from the side railing, catching the Faunus mid-fall, and tossing the blue-hair her umbrella. He fell gracefully to the sidewalk below, missing the landing only slightly, with Neo and her newfound friend falling a little less gently to his right.

"Cool hair sister, thanks for the assist! Even though we totally didn't need it, isn't that right Sun? I'm Neptune by the way!" Neptune rushed his words and slicked back his oceanic hair, thrusting his hand back out to shake Neo's and giving her back the pink and brown umbrella.

"Hey, wait. Aren't you the girl from…" Sun began to speak, but was quickly cut off by the shuffle of boots as Neo ran in the direction of an accumulating cloud of fog at a nearby underpass.

"Well, she was cute. Wanna grab some ramen?"

Sun replied with a hint of shock in his voice, "Sure, Neptune."

When Neo arrived, she noticed a couple of familiar faces. The blonde from the highway was here, sans badass motorcycle, and the brunette cat Faunus from the warehouse, now decorated with a thin veneer of ribbon to conceal her ears.

"Odd."

Two even newer additions joined their ranks in the thick mist, however. A petite redhead, but not Roman's kind of redhead. This girl had hair and an outfit the color of roses blooming in the summer…

…or slick pools of blood in a wrecked car. The girl carried a scythe the size of her entire body that seemed to double as a gun, and was using it to fire shot after shot at the Paladin.

At the redhead's side was a dainty, almost princess-like figure. Clad in white and wielding in an offensive position a rapier. She appeared to be summoning a kind of rune in front of the sniper-scythe's barrel.

The conjunction of these attacks began to freeze over the remaining limbs of the mech. Neo felt a little disappointed she had missed the removal of the arms, but washed that thought away quickly as she remembered the lives she had just saved.

Making sure to position herself behind Roman's line of sight, Neo began to conjure illusions of each of the girls, one by one, in front of the mech. With his legs weighed down by the ice, it became harder and harder for Roman to pilot the beast, eventually crashing down on its side while attempting to kick a mirage of the blonde.

Off to the left, the Faunus and blonde were combining their weapons to ready a final blow. The brunette's whip-like blades hurling the blonde, with her mechanized gloves primed for a punch, right into the pilot seat of the paladin, shattering it into scrap.

Neo hid behind a pillar of the roadway as Roman leapt from the mech's interior.

"Where is that bitch! I told her to follow me. I would be in a much better position right now, if she weren't so goddamn lazy!" He flailed his arms with every word, stomping off away from his four adversaries.

"Ladies, Ice Queen, always a pleasure. If you happen to see a good-looking girl with weird eyes sitting flat on her ass anywhere around here, do let me know."

And with that, Roman entered an airship that had descended onto the underpass during his monologue, spraying frost all about in its landing. With four armed-guards pointing guns from the interior, none of the girls dared take off after it.

When the dust settled and the airship was long gone, Neo began to walk away. She had been too scared to face Roman in person, and even though she had helped, something about being on the sidelines for the last bit washed her face red with guilt.

"Hey, wait!" The ruby-clad girl was waving in her direction, wide-eyed and smiling.

"You were AMAZING out there! You were all like 'woosh' and then there was two of Yang and…wow!"

"Yeah, what Ruby said! You really helped me out there, short-stack!"

Her name was Ruby. How…fitting.

Neo flushed an even deeper vermillion at the words "short-stack". Roman had always made fun of her height, but something about this Yang girl saying it sounded…nice.

"I guess I do owe you some thanks as well. I, uh, I like your dress. My name is Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee…HMPH!"

Yang silenced her with a punch to the shoulder.

"What she meant to say was that it's nice to meet you!"

Ruby turned to the brunette, who was silently eyeing Neo throughout the introductions.

"Blake, your turn…"

"Nice…to meet you." And with that, she turned and walked away.

Yang was the first to speak up as the girls turned their attention back to Neo.

"What's your name?"

"I'm uh...Neopolitan." She choked out in response.

"Like the ice cream?"

Neo stifled a laugh, as if she'd never heard that one before.

Ruby added, "That explains the dress! And the eyes! And the umbrella! Wow, what fashion sense! Is the umbrella also a sword? WOW YOU'RE SO COOL!"

As Ruby continuously sheathed and unsheathed the sword at Neo's hip, Weiss pulled her away before addressing the multicolored girl before her.

"Would you like to accompany us back to Beacon? We can take you to see Ozpin and maybe…"

Ozpin? Neo had heard that name before. Many times, actually. None of them in a welcoming light. The same tears from earlier began to resurface, this time in the other, strawberry eye.

"NO!"

This was the first time Neo had spoken up like that in close to two years. The three girls before her looked on with awe, as a shaking hand moved up to cover her mouth. Away she ran in silent tears, umbrella catching on the wind behind her.

Weiss looked on confused, like she had uttered some horrible curse Neo's way, and the three walked anxiously back the way Blake had gone.

As Neo sat staring blankly at the shattered moon above, feet dangling along the guard-rail she had just recently dove from, she couldn't help but feel as if she'd made a horrible mistake. On the main street below, Sun and Neptune sat at a ramen shop, both silently slurping their hearty meals.

Neo wiped away her tears, descended elegantly, and walked their way.

"Maybe it's not too late."