Most subconscious realms were voids. Infinite expanses of infinite darkness that held no surfaces, colour, material, or light. The only exceptions to this, were the souls that inhabited it and whatever shapes they chose to take. More often then not, if one were to visit their own realm, they would have a body wearing the same clothes as before they entered.

This was the case in a normal situation. Currently in Remnant, there are ten individuals who's subconscious are exceptions to this.

Ruby Schnee has a foreign memory contained inside of it, one left behind by a different conciousness not her own. Her own experience in dealing with said other person, has also formed a floor to her void. A small change to some, but a gigantic difference to those who knew what a subconscious was meant to look like.

Each of the Harbingers had the same foreign entity in their subconscious. A connection to something else. Those titles were similar to a contract, though only one Harbinger had ever actually payed for their power.

Four individuals held similar connections to another being, though a different one to the Harbingers. Rather then it being a price they may or may not have to pay, this connection was a bridge meant to funnel mana.

Even given the powerful beings and odd circumstances that affected all of these souls, none of them strayed too far from the generic void. A floor, some lights, a doorway or two... in the grand scheme of things, they were still mostly the same as a normal subconscious.

The tenth individual however.

"Neo"

"I'm tired..."

"I wanna sleep..."

"Can we sleep...?"

"Sleep is good... right...?"

"Sleep is silence..."

"I like silence..."

"...I like it when we all stop..."

"Why can't we stop forever...?"

To describe life in a word, loud. Each step felt like a hammering thunderious bang of a noise, each shuffle of movement made torrential winds ready to rend houses from the ground, each whisper a scream so loud it would rival the roar of any creature that dared challenge it. Everything felt exposed, on stage, all eyes aware and watching. Every sense was overloaded with the premonition that all attention was on you. But that wasn't your audiences fault of course... no, it wasn't that they wanted to watch you so closely... rather, they had no choice. There was nowhere else to look.

Having multiple conciousness occupying one mind was difficult, but manageable. So long as you could cooperate or talk - or so long as one assimilated the other - things could become easy. Life could become... simple. Multiple souls however...?

Still fine. There were rare occasions in which Lycanthropes could be born with two souls, in which case there tended to be a primary and secondary. Essentially it usually just boiled down to the primary soul getting an extra Affinity for free. In certain cases, both souls would learn to live together, each with one hand on the wheel and letting the other take control when they needed to and living Life as best as they could... but that was with two souls. Only two people squeezed into the drivers seat... it was uncomfortable but... it could work. Three? That could work. It would be a more extreme case but it would follow the same principles.

Now what about five? Ten? One hundred? A thousand, a million?

All of those souls... crammed into that one spot, that one seat.

With each and every one of them... forced to have both hands on the wheel at once.

Now what if all of them were kids? Too young to even understand that this wasn't just how life was meant to be?

"We don't have to imagine..."

None of them old enough to be able to say a single word... but all of their collective minds forced together in such a haphazard way that they formed one collection barely able to understand sentences.

"We don't have to imagine..."

All of them possessing mana tanks so small and pathetic that not even the bare minimum of magic would be possible... but together? Why, they held enough to rival a Harbinger in scale.

"We don't have to imagine..."

And for what? To produce a farm? The chance to harvest as many souls as you could ever want? Who would be so cruel as to force someone into a role like that? Especially if that someone was a child?

Or at the very least... how logic orientated did they have to be?

The realm they existed in, it wasn't a void. It wasn't a blank subconscious with just a floor or some lights to keep them company... no. It was a theatre. A sprawling and magnificent theatre that would make Atlas nobles fawn over its posh architecture and decoration. Each column and brick was carved to perfection, each inch of the building was sparkling clean, and each seat filled. Though, the audience in attendance lacked faces... They lacked everything. The people on stage - a stage of design and beauty matching the rest of the area - were the same, faceless, bodiless... empty. They weren't even lights, rather... shadows. Empty voids where something should be. But there wasn't anything to put there. There wasn't anything to assign each individual... This realm, this subconscious, this theatre... it was Neo's. But 'Neo' was just the name given to the collective conciousness that occupied all of those souls. Neo was simultaneously each and every audience member... as well as the people performing on stage. What were they performing? It was impossible to tell. All details, a substance, it was missing. Only the fact that it was a performance remained.

Neo was the name given to them by the one person who had understood them... and pitied them.

Even though they all held together as 'Neo', there were cracks in the facade. Arguments, bickering, anger, they each all still had a voice. Just because they were Neo didn't mean that they all couldn't be more then that... each and every one of them could have been a normal person... but instead they were a part of this. And there were only two escapes.

The first, a reward of sorts for doing as Cinder asked... brief, simple, and perfect... silence. A spell that Neo couldn't figure out, but all it did was completely disable them for a few minutes. All brain activity stopped, all the movements of their souls, even their body failed to breath without the help of a special ritual... and then, just as quickly as the perfect silence had arrived... it vanished. They were brought back into the screaming loud of life, and forced to do more work in order to recieve more silence.

The other escape? Death. And even that wasn't perfect.

When their body was killed, a random soul was destroyed in exchange for its survival. It the state their body operated in nearly all of the time, they were unable to generate more heads... more souls. It was what allowed their whole body to count as the head, but it also prevented them from gaining lives when they had their head cut off. No, that could only be done in a form that had all of their heads on display. Though, of course, those heads could still be removed without generating more... using a Hydras primary weakness.

Pyrrha Nikos

"Fire magic."

Pyrrha knew as well as most others about a Hydras most prominent defense mechanism. While their necks were the most vulnerable part of their body, it was a trap of sorts, a bait in order to lure someone within range to cut off their head... before surprising them with two more. Of course, it was a well documented phenomena well before even the Great Erasure... and so was its fatal flaw. Heads couldn't sprout from a cauterised wound, it was unfortunate luck for their whole species that fire magic was perhaps the most common kind of magic for people to learn as basic offensive spells. Made even worse of course by people with Affinitys, and the fact that elemental Affinitys were the most common of all.

"I didn't want to use this if I didn't have to."

She wasn't referring to this fight in particular, rather, the situation as a whole. It had been years since she'd gained another addition to her list of conquered individuals, and in that time she had yet to use Yangs power in a fight... until now of course.

Her palm outstretched with an almost casual air to it, the heat emanating off of it enough to burn someone to ashes... and that was before the spell started. Pyrrha and Neo looked tiny in comparison to the size of the arena they stood in, but soon the Harbingers presence was overwhelming on the face of it. The flames that emerged from her hand were a dancing mixture of white and yellow, the inferno consumed most of the arena as it bellowed out to such a scale that most would compare it to a breath attack or something similar. It was too much for anyone to dodge, let alone someone unprepared for it. The sudden overwhelming flames consumed Neo completely, but refused to stop even after the fact. A stream of that same fire kept pumping from Pyrrha's hand, flowing and crashing against the walls of the arena like a tsunami, the only thing keeping the attack contained inside being the newly improved barrier. Pyrrha currently held a double Affinity for fire that had been copied from Yang complete with a Berserkers curse... that unfortunately Pyrrha hadn't inherited. Still, it was a powerful addition to her skill-set... one made even more potent by a revelation from her soon to be husband.

"You know... A Holy Magic Affinity actually applies separately from a normal one... you can use it to cast spells that you already have Affinitys for." A comment she had remembered well, and one he hadn't quite understood the level of. Her double fire Affinity was now a triple so long as she applied Holy Magic to the flames. While she didn't get the ease of casting or the information of the spells granted from an actual triple Affinity - which was why she couldnt just use this method to create Relic tier items with the Affinity copied from Ruby - she did get the mana efficiency boost... which was all that really mattered for her circumstance. Pyrrha wasn't a Wizard, she didnt fight using overly complex spells. Rather, she just poured a lot of mana into rather simple ones when magic was needed.

Her flames cut off as the arena grew too full, the inferno of Holy Fire was closing in on her from all directions as the spell stopped and luckily she had timed it well. When the smoke cleared, Neo at first appeared undamaged, the only sign of injury or pain being a slight tremble in their legs... but Pyrrha could feel the difference now. It was slight, not enough to be considered a drastic change, but enough to be visable. Neo's mana tank had gotten smaller.

"How many souls did i just burn through?"

Pyrrha's thoughts were calm, though she had to do her best to keep them that way. She was well aware of what exactly her opponent was, and how much pain she was likely putting them through. Neo wasnt just a single child, she was an entire schools worth... probably more.

"I'll need to be careful with the Holy Magic from now on..."

Pyrrha wasn't exactly sure if this would make her vulnerable to Holy Magic... but it was better to be safe then sorry.

Neo stepped to charge, but that was cutt off almost immediately. Another torrent of flame spewed out like another vicious roar, Pyrrha would keep up this strategy for as long as it worked. Mainly due to Neo not being able to hit her back with a spell of a similar level. Ruby had figured out the main downside to what exactly Neo was, while yes, the Hydra could theoretically have an Affinity for everything... it was only a first tier Affinity in everything.

Thus, a pattern formed. Pyrrha had more then enough mana to keep this up, while Neo had more then enough souls stocked up to tank all of it. The floor of the arena had melted and flowed into a smoother shape, the patterned brick of the walls resembled waterfalls of molten stone closer to actual solid matter, and the Harbinger of Conquest had yet to take a single step. Each inferno lasted longer then a minute, each break between barely being a few seconds and never enough for Neo to try and make a move... so, eventually the Hydra had to resort to brute forcing its way towards their opponent. Neo forced their body to move, slowly but surely taking steps towards Pyrrha in a desperate attempt to bridge the gap. Attempting to ignore the pain of having their body incinerated and reformed was difficult... but it would continue for even longer if they couldn't get closer and stop this.

Pyrrha knew the smart play was to take steps back... to undo all of Neos progress by simply backing up for every inch of ground they took. But she couldnt do it. She didn't want to be torching them like this, only her drive to end this was keeping her from breaking down in shame. Something had to give, something had to change, and Pyrrha was determined to make sure that it wasn't herself.

Luckily she didn't have to worry about herself breaking first. After a final torrent of flame, Neo was close enough to charge in. They lunged at Pyrrha while leaving their weapon behind, dropping it for whatever reason as their hands reached out to grab at the Harbinger. Pyrrha was quick to step back and avoid the 'attack' but Neo's assault hadn't just been a lunge. Their skin began to convulse and bulge, like the muscle and flesh underneath couldn't be contained and had suddenly started to expand. The once meek and small body grew suddenly, but not cleanly like a normal transformation, their body blew up like a balloon as maroon scales formed over them completely. Their head shot from their body as their neck elongated, the almost snake-like length of it forming a head not unlike a Dragon's at the end... and it wasn't alone. An uncountable amount of those same heads and necks shot from their body, every spot that had space available had a head expand out from it... and some spots that didn't have space. Pyrrha had backed up immensely as the transformation started, and she bore witness to this... things... full form.

Calling it a creature was less accurate then calling it a mess of heads. It resembled a writhing mass of eels before it resembled a coherent form. Somewhere under all of those heads, Pyrrha knew there was a body and maybe even some legs... but they couldn't be seen or even found. Neo had been fully outmatched, that's why they resorted to this. For as badly as Pyrrha was beating them, she could only burn through one of their lives at a time before... but now? Now she could probably burn through hundreds at once.

And there were plenty more then hundreds to burn through.

Trying to count the number of heads was impossible. It would be like trying to count the number of droplets of water in a lake... the second you counted one and moved on to the next, it was impossible to tell which you had already counted. The only thing that separated each head from the others was their eyes, each head seemingly had a different Affinity... though with a lot of repeats. A vast majority of them held Pink eyes, with the second largest amount having Brown.

"You exposed a stronger form... but in this context, is it really viable?" Her words were almost tired, and her eyes had nearly glazed as she looked over the writhing mass of heads. Neo was bigger then any of the Dragon's Pyrrha had seen so far, yet it wasn't anywhere near as intimidating. It's power was immense, but it was unrefined... uncontrolled. "Are you just trying to get this over with faster...?" Her mutters fell on deaf ears, Neo hadn't even yet tried to attack her... was this form hurting them? Or perhaps they actually had given up.

Either way, it didn't change what Pyrrha had to do. She unleashed another torrent of flame.

"Just a few more."

The Hydra... it was roaring, the uncountable number of heads all hissing and groaning... whining almost... like they were screaming in pain.

"Just a bit longer."

Each blast of fire cleared dozens upon dozens of heads from the bunch, yet it still felt too slow.

"I know it hurts... just bear with it a bit longer."

She didn't want to do this... but more then that, she didnt want anyone else to have to.

"I promise... it'll be over soon."

The Hydra - if you can even call it that - could finally be seen.

It's body was... wrong. Bloated in all the wrong ways and places, as if it had been trying to make room for all of those heads. It had barely any scales left on it, Pyrrha could finally see the stumps that should have been legs... and she was finally able to count the amount of heads left. Only ten more to go.

Neo wasnt even moving anymore. The creature perhaps not even being able to be called by that name now that it had lost so much of itself. Without so many souls all mashed together, it's mana tank had plummeted to near undetectable levels... and it's brain power likely had the same effect. In a way, perhaps it was truly a baby now.

Pyrrha had to be careful, if she got all of the heads then it would truly die... no, she needed to leave one. A large torrent of flame wouldn't be the right way to end this... so, her blade erupted in flames. She intended to cleave the other nine off all at once.

The Harbinger couldn't bare doing them all individually anymore.

With a single slash and the ringing of her metal slicing straight through its scaled necks... only one head remained. One soul... one last piece of 'Neo'. Which meant she had one last thing to do.

"Ruby... are you sure this will work...?" Her voice was tired, and her steps mirrored that as she slowly moved over to the creature.

"Yeah... I'm sure." Pyrrha couldn't focus anymore, she wasn't even sure if Ruby was still in the booth high above them or not anymore... but that didn't matter. Her blade clanged against the ground as she let it go, and her hand reached back to draw the other 'weapon' from her back.

"One last bit of pain..."

She readied herself, raising the javelin up... and preparing to bring it down on the Hydra.

"I'm sorry..."

Ruby Schnee

"The Formula spears. When stabbed into someone, they hit them with a three stage ritual. The first is a good ol'dose of the Abaddon Curse... then a creature Formula, and finally a cleansing ritual to fix all wounds and alterations."

The only thing it didn't change was a Print, but she hadnt exaclty been worried about Neo's Prints.

"In that things case in particular... it should have some... 'other'... effects, as well... mainly-"

She smiled a bit, her head resting on her hands as she looked down at the arena floor... a bright light now flooding from the Hydras body as it slowly shrunk... and what remained begun to cry.

"Neo's souls were all tampered with... so the ritual probably complelty refreshed their last soul... no memories... no subconscious... no alterations... nothing kept from who they used to be."

Ruby's smile grew as she watched Pyrrha lean down, her arms gently wrapping around and slowly cradling the baby. She ripped off the red cloth draping from her armour and wrapped it around the little one in her arms, a quite adorable sight that reminded Ruby of her wife and Argus... when he had been younger of course.

"Welp... step one is done then." 'Step one' in this case had referred to the whole plan that everyone else had known about thus far... the next bit of information had been something she had worked on all by herself.

"No one actually asked me what Formula I put in those spears."

She chuckled and leaned back a bit.

"That makes six." Now... she just had to explain things to Weiss.

"This is her, then?" The Queen gently moved the blanket out of the way to get a better look at the baby, to which she couldn't help but smile. "She reminds me too much of Argus..."

"I mean, all babies kinda look the same." Ruby's comment didn't leave the Queen looking very impressed, Pyrrha and Jaune seemed kind of awkward about it too.

"Ruby, i meant-"

"I know, Weiss." Sometimes she could swear that they all thought she was an idiot.

"Anyway-" Turning back to the other couple, Weiss smiled at them while gently rocking the baby in her arms. "I believe this marks our first victory against our enemies."

"It was a team effort-"

"Pyrrha." She winced a bit at Jaune's voice, it sounded a bit harsher then normal. "This was all you, you should be proud of yourself." And back to its usual softness.

"I was hoping I could trust you with another mission?" Weiss cut in before Pyrrha got a chance to refute that, and luckily she asked the one question Pyrrha would always respond positively to. "Good. See, I need someone I trust to take care of this one." Before even giving them a chance to register that, Weiss stood and moved over, handing the baby to Pyrrha with a smile.

"I... what...?"

"You know, adoption?" Ruby cut in with a smile not unlike her wifes. "I know you guys are having trouble getting married... having an heir should fix things over, right?"

"Yeah... but..." Jaune seemed less reluctant that Ruby had first expected him to be, but he was still a little unsure. "The issue is not having an heir of... Hero's blood..." He clearly hated saying that.

"Then what about a kid with stronger blood?" Ruby took a sip of her drink, and gave the two of them a moment to think about that. "C'mon guys... whats the one Formula I know?"

That's about when they both realised.

"Ruby!" Both of them stammered a bit, but Weiss cut in before either could form a coherent sentence.

"A Dragon with a Hybrid Affinity is strong... trust me, I would know. I also know something about not being able to marry the one you want... so say the word, and i can get the adoption papers ready in less then an hour." Another smile had the couple looking unsure... but Ruby could tell that Jaune had already made up his mind.

Pyrrha though? She made up her mind when she glanced back down at the baby in her arms. The infant was slowly blinking, as if fighting off sleep... Neo's eyes slowly blinked, one Brown, one Pink... and she drifted off to sleep... in her new mother's arms.

Neo Arc

It was warm... cosy... peaceful... she felt safe, even if she didn't know any of that yet. No memories, no experiences or knowledge to draw upon... just the instinctual recognition of the warmth that held her... the safety of a mother...

And a peaceful silence that accompanied her.