The light faded.

There Neo and Roman were, back on Remnant at last. Familiarity was back; the skies were once again blue and all the strangeness of the previous world was behind them.

In front of them, however, lay an even more terrifying sight: an expanse of sand no doubt itching to wiggle itself inside of Roman's shoes.

Roman sighed; such was one of the reasons Vacuo was always number two on his "kingdoms to start a criminal enterprise in" list. The thriving criminal element also didn't help, really, but once you've effectively toppled one local power—or in the case of the last guy, left to die in an exploding house—you've seen them all. Honestly, Roman was sure that with enough time and energy, he could wrangle the Vacuan underworld into his sort of order, but that was far from a priority right now. There were other, bigger questions to answer first, such as…

"Why are there so many airships?"

Directly above the city of Vacuo hovered a hodgepodge of airships. Vacuo never was one to organize a standing army, let alone an airfleet, yet their airspace was now occupied by Atlesian warships, Valean cruisers, and assorted Mistrali aircraft in somewhat equal measure. Punctuating the sight was Amity Colosseum, nestled roughly in the middle. It, too, was strange to see, as the embellishment of Remnant's lofty and laughable idea of peace had been refitted. The floating arena almost looked like it had been run through with half an airship, leaving an imposing main cannon sticking out the front.

Ever so confused, he glanced back towards Neo. After a moment, she met his gaze, shrugged, and pulled out her Scroll. A few moments of swiping her fingers across the screen later, she switched the Scroll to projector mode, and within an instant a holographic projection of Little Red set against some industrial military-esque backdrop sprung to life.

Roman rolled his eyes at the sight. A year later and she still can't help but stick her nose where it shouldn't be, he thought. At least we won't have to deal with her again. Heedless of his thoughts, the video unpaused and Red began to speak.

Two minutes afterwards, Roman's head was still spinning with the implications of what she'd said. Atlas was under siege? There was an indestructible entity who could control Grimm? Ironwood flew off his rocker? It was a struggle to process the rush of surprises—well, except for Ironwood going cuckoo. Roman was pretty sure he'd seen a less-than-reputable betting pool pose that question a few years ago, and given that he'd gone on to have the bright idea of bringing three incredibly-hijackable warships to a glorified peace festival, it really wasn't much of a stretch now, was it?

Everything else, though… One question bubbled above the rest. "Who's Salem?" he finally asked.

In response, Neo snapped, and a terrifying illusion came into existence: a woman with deep red veins tracing all over her bone-white skin, a dark red iris floating inside otherwise pitch-black eyes, and a strange hairstyle dating back to… well, Roman wasn't exactly knowledgeable about that particular subject, but it didn't take a genius to figure out it came from anywhere but the modern day.

The woman slowly levitated forward and began to melodramatically monologue. "I am Salem, queen of the Grimm. I wish to destroy everything!"

At her side, another illusion appeared. Despite her shorter hair and change of clothes, it only took Roman a moment to identify her as Cinder; in spite of all the other changes, her distinctive amber eye remained unchanged. The same couldn't be said for her other eye, as it was covered by an extensive patch that stretched across a good third of her face. She, too, began to speak. "I love destroying things! Can I go destroy those things?"

"Salem" looked at "Cinder" fondly. "Yes," she answered, "go destroy all the things." The two then began to laugh in an absurdly over-the-top manner, with campiness that would put even a children's cartoon to shame.

They were then both crushed by a falling piano.

Try as he might, Roman couldn't stop himself from chortling at the unadulterated slapstick on display. It didn't answer all of his questions, though. "And… Atlas?"

Neo created another illusion, a fairly detailed one of the city of Atlas hovering over Mantle. A moment later, a third illusion entered the scene: a giant, floating Grimm whale which would have been the most disturbing sight in Roman's life had he not just stepped out of a fairytale. Alas, he had, so the whale barely scratched the top ten.

The whale slowly closed the small distance between itself and the floating city, a cloud of much smaller winged Grimm growing around it, and Roman felt himself take a breath in anticipation.

The entire setup was then crushed by another piano.

Roman immediately shook his head and gave Neo a tiny frown. "It's never as funny the second time, is it?" he remarked. The cheesy smile that had previously occupied her facial real estate quickly evacuated the premises, a look of resignation taking its place. Shenanigans aside, Roman at least knew enough to draw up a plan of action. The wheels in his head had been turning for a good couple minutes, and they'd arrived at a satisfactory arrangement.

"I think it's time we form another plan," he began. Neo nodded enthusiastically; as good of a sign as any. "Step one: get inside the city. Bad news: it's Vacuo, there are eyes everywhere in the dead of night. Better news: with your Semblance, we can still sneak in undetected. And good news: I happen to have a friend on the inside."

At that last part, Neo shot him an eye roll. "Okay, okay," he admitted, "she's more of a won't-attempt-to-kill-us-on-sight friend than an actual friend, but that still counts for something." Neo shrugged, and Roman continued. "Cammie's the name. You'll know her when you see her, so probably never. Last I checked she was a Vacuo-based plant for Spider, but I doubt a dead man walking is high on their list of priorities right now."

Neo had never met Chameleon—she had come up maybe twice in the last five years—but they could worry about Cammie later. For now, it was time to sneak into the city.

Like usual, Neo cloaked herself and Roman.

It had been a while since Neo had turned themselves invisible, but the intuition to let her know where Roman was never faded. Brain muscle memory really was magic, huh? Thanks to that, it was a trivial matter to sneak into the city, at one point passing by a monolith memorial. Beyond it, brutalist sandstone homes and Shade Academy awaited them, plus the numerous camps set up by and for Atlesian refugees. Passing through an otherwise empty alley, they uncloaked, taking on the forms of two Atlesian refugees—a guy with a purple beanie and the other with a goatee and glasses, wholly unremarkable in every conceivable way.

To be honest, most of the refugees, the ones whom she figured were from Mantle and the scattering of outer settlements in Solitas, blended into the background. The same couldn't be said for the rest, easily identifiable by their still-haughty demeanors and yet-to-be-stolen jewelry—those who hailed from the city of Atlas. They were the ones who had it coming. Not a day of difficult life, and now they'd lost everything. They'd probably deserved as much. Still, it was hard to ignore the fact that an entire Kingdom was now gone.

At the very least, though, so was Ruby. Yes, the very source of her troubles was resting in the Ever After, patiently awaiting her ultimate erasure. The rest of Team RWBY may have ended up making it out, but she had a hunch that they were lost without her. Plus, even if something was to bust out of that wooden shell, it certainly wouldn't be the Ruby she knew and despised.

…That was enough thinking about Ruby for now. Before Roman's return, her mind had been stuck on the red reaper for far too long, and old habits died hard. It was the best she could do to belatedly redirect her train of thought to more pressing matters; namely, Roman's face that even through the illusion was waiting to ask another question. She gave a slight nod to prompt him.

"Now, about Cinder…" Roman immediately inquired, "remind me what happened between you two?"

Neo stopped, then mimed herself hanging from an edge by one hand before turning around to imitate a stomp, temporarily taking on her own, then Cinder's form in sequence.

As soon as she reverted to her disguise, she saw her partner being bemused. "...Why am I not surprised?" he began. "One moment she makes us acquire as much Dust as humanly impossible, the next she turns around and says we're done with Duuust! And then she uses our lives as pawns in her little game?" He sighed bemusedly, shaking his head as he faced a settlement's walls and put his forehead against it, fist raised. "Oh, she's going to regret this..."

Pure. Freaking. Catharsis. To hear Roman finally say what she wanted to hear was a long time coming. To think she ever trusted Cinder. Cinder, the reason she ever got into that mess. Cinder, the real reason all that time with Roman was ever lost.

That was in the past, though. Now, the future was here and ready to make up for lost time by, at minimum, humiliating Cinder. Admittedly, the emphasis there was on "future;" at present, neither she nor Roman had the slightest idea where she was. Well, it wasn't a multi-step plan for nothing. All there was to do for now was find the house of Roman's friend, which… judging by the way he was squinting at his Scroll for the third time in five minutes, wasn't going terribly well.

"It's in the residential area behind Shade, right? Or is it there and a bit to the left…" Roman mumbled. His struggles were understandable. One of the many near-useless things she'd been taught in the past was that due to the inherent instability of the desert city, a nontrivial amount of Vacuo was made up of temporary buildings that rearranged themselves given enough time, which made navigating using outdated information a nightmare.

In spite of all that, after an infuriating half-hour of quintupling back, Roman was confident the small house they now stood in front of was their destination. "So, Neo… got any lockpicks?" he jokingly asked.

With a smirk, Neo casually conjured her preferred set of lockpicks straight into her hand, knelt down, and began probing the door's lock. It wasn't anything special, and Neo was sure she'd seen the brand before. It would be a simple job to–

As she pushed inwards, the door suddenly gave way and began to open. Startled, Neo flinched away, and the door's momentum quickly tapered off, leaving it midway open. A minor convenience, sure, but it held a far more distressing question: what sane person, let alone a member of a criminal organization, would leave their front door unlocked in Vacuo?

Roman had arrived at the same worry, evidenced clear as day by his hand's tight grip on Melodic Cudgel. "Check for traps," he ordered, the whimsy from just a few moments ago vanished. Neo obligingly created an illusion of herself and sent it into the open door. Five tense seconds passed and absolutely nothing happened.

With a nervous shrug, Neo drew Hush, pushed the door all the way open—the hinges giving off an unnerving creak—and slowly stepped forward, carefully brandishing her parasol in front of her. The door opened up to a short, well-lit hallway that quickly opened up to the house proper. A few doorways dotted the stretch, light emanating from all but one of them. It was the darker one that caught Neo's eye: setting up lighting in a way not to project a shadow into the target's line of sight was a basic principle of setting up an ambush.

As Neo continued forward, she focused her Aura in front of her and all at once lunged into the opening, Hush at the ready.

Nothing.

Still on edge, Neo stepped back into the hallway. Roman was right there, keeping a watchful eye on the opposite side. They slowly continued forward, creeping forward one step at a time until the hallway ended, leading into a living room. Like the rest of the house, it was both eerily quiet and unspectacular. A couple chairs, a table, and a small couch decorated the room, though none were of much note.

At least, not compared to the dead woman on the floor.

After a split-second's hesitation, both Neo and Roman hurried towards the body. Immediately, Neo's eyes flew to the one visible cause of death: a gaping stab wound in the middle of her stomach with a strangely wide puncture hole, still somewhat fresh. Tyrian, Neo immediately concluded. It was only then she registered the shattered vase on the floor, or the singular painting knocked ajar; signs of a struggle, albeit not a very long or fruitful one.

"This isn't good…" Roman muttered as he rose back to his feet. "Someone may have reported this already. You check the front, I'll get the back."

There wasn't a moment to lose. Neo ran back through the hallway and quickly reached the front door. Taking a tiny moment to disguise herself, she opened the door and scanned the dusty street. Fortunately, there was no one in the immediate vicinity, though that said more about the low visibility of the city streets than anything else.

Neo needed a better vantage point. Her first instinct was to look upward, and lo and behold, the flat roof of the house awaited her. Getting up would have posed a problem to almost anyone else, but for her it was trivial to summon a small spiral staircase and hurry up it as it disappeared behind her. The elevation did wonders: the neighboring blocks were now mostly visible, and so too were a pair of Vacuan police officers, recognizable by their distinctive light blue visors, en route to the building. Fortunately, they didn't look upwards at Neo before she jumped off the roof, but that was all the luck the universe felt like dealing to her at that moment; at their current pace, the officers would arrive in just a couple minutes, if not faster.

Neo threw open the door with enough force for it to close itself on the rebound, then tore through the hallway and right into Roman, who was much more calm and even a touch startled; evidently, there wasn't anyone out back… meaning it would make for a serviceable escape route.

Before Roman could even ask, Neo snapped an illusion of the two policemen walking into existence. Roman immediately began contemplating the issue, and with fair reason; they could dispatch the cops—heh—in a matter of seconds, but… "We should keep as low of a profile as we can right now," he concluded.

Without a further word spoken, they both turned to the back door. It flew open, and the pair hurried out, subconsciously aware that wherever they were going, they couldn't turn back.

NOTE FROM MYST:

- Spend nearly four months writing nothing for this fic.
- Collectively write the entire chapter in three days.

What could we possibly mean by this? (Writing is hard)

-Myst.