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"How long are you going to follow me, you mute bitch?" With her teleportation and illusions there wasn't much I could do about it. We both knew if it came down to it I'd win, though. I'd shown that earlier. But she could escape anytime she wanted so I couldn't chase after her and end it. I could activate my semblance and smash her around with my strength or speed and win by standing still.

But only by standing still.

I walked past a billboard proclaiming Mercury Black, Emerald Sustrai, Cinder Fall, Hazel Rainart, and the Scorpion as wanted. My friends lived. I'd go spy on them later, when Neapolitan wasn't watching. Just to check up on them. Then I'd head my separate way.

She rapidly poked one finger through a loop in the other hand. "Fuck," I interpreted. She pointed at me. "Myself."

She clapped her hands giddily in her approval and her eyes switched colors.

"I need money," I muttered. "And a new scroll. I don't suppose you have any ideas."

She reached out into an illusion and retrieved a red brimmed hat.

"Ones that don't involve Ruby. I really seriously don't know where she is."

She looked like she didn't believe me, eyebrows furrowed.

"Well tough shit. Unless you want to go another round." She rubbed her chest where I hit her. "I'd be all for that."

She just frowned.

"Fair enough," I said. "Why do you even want to find Ruby?"

She drew a line over her throat and fondled the red and black hat.

"You want revenge for Roman Torchwick."

She nodded.

"Ruby didn't kill your boss." I dropped the harsh news on her.

She cocked her head sideways at me as we walked together through Mistral. It was… it was actually nice to have someone to talk to. Talk at, even. Otherwise I'd be alone with my thoughts and that just wouldn't be good for me. I was still wishy-washy on ending my own life.

I deserved it too. I wanted to die for what I'd done to my friends. I was the culprit, the thief in the night who robbed them of the opportunity of ever being 'together, together.'

At least they were together in death, now.

"A Grimm got him," she frowned up at me at that. "You can't even get revenge." I laughed. "You poor bitch. Not that I'm any better." Who was I supposed to kill in my hunt for vengeance now? Me. And believe me I was thinking of ways of getting to that son of a bitch. Unfortunately he was running out of friends.

An alien goddess had control over my mind. I was little more than a puppet under the right circumstances. I suppose if I had been like a puppet, all uncoordinated, Ren and Nora might have had a chance at subduing me. Instead I'd acted more or less fluid. That was a little scarier. Or a lot.

She smashed one fist into the other.

"If you were going to kill me you would have done it back at the bar. Don't act. You can't pull it off. Not while I'm awake and I assure you I'll be on my guard while sleeping. You won't get it done then either, not with my aura level."

She gave me an adorable pout. Her pink lips pressed together and out. Her pink and brown hair flowing over her shoulders.

"I know how you feel. I need revenge against Cinder. You know her? Cinder Fall?"

Her grin stretched.

"Don't tell me you want to kill her too? Did she get your boss killed? Set him up?"

She nodded.

"That's as good as killing him, I suppose. I think we may be able to help each other. Ruby really didn't kill him. Ruby doesn't have it in her to kill somebody. She always goes out of her way to avoid it."

She frowned and pointed at me.

"She's not like me. I'm a murderous asshole."

She shook her head indicating I'd guessed wrong and pointed at me again.

"What about me?"

She rotated one finger next to her head.

"I am crazy. Don't even get me started. If nothing else I'm suicidally insane. And that doesn't even get to these bugs in my eyes."

She pantomimed doing a line of hyper. Pinching one side of her nose and breathing in.

"I'm not on anything. I'm just fucked up."

She touched the tips of opposite forefingers together.

"What's that mean? It's not the same thing."

We walked in two-sided silence for a few minutes down a rainy street.

"You know where somebody with a loose moral compass can make some money around here relatively fast?"

She pointed a thumb over her shoulder back at Malachite's bar.

"Yeah, I sorta burned that bridge. And it can't involve Don Corneo. I had him tortured. Killed a bunch of his men, too."

Her smile widened looking up at me.

"Oh is that how you get your jollies?"

She just grinned up at me.

"Well I suppose we could just do official huntsman work. That's always lucrative."

She pointed a finger between us.

"Yeah I thought you were following me. That makes it an us. Keep up. Plus I just might be your best shot at murdering Fall. I almost fuckin' had her. And I might know where she's headed next."

She looked at me in surprise.

"Yep. Her and Black, too. Fought them relatively recently."

She put a hand to her mouth and silently laughed at me.

"Yeah they lived. Go ahead and giggle. Next time I'll get one of them. At least one of them. Well, Cinder has the powers of the spring maiden now. It might be even harder than before."

She gave me a confused look. Hell, who was she going to tell? She was… easy to talk to besides. I wasn't sure if it was the muteness but it might be.

"It's a whole thing. Ancient powers passed along person to person. Myths and legends. It's fucking bullshit is what it is. Girls only club. So maybe you could get in on that action."

She silently snorted, full of doubt. A little air escaping her nose.

"It's true. You can be the one to fight her and find out the hard way or you can take my word for it. She's even more dangerous now. And she was already a heaping pile of it before. I surprised her yesterday and I'm only getting stronger from what I've seen but she just added a big helping of power to herself."

She pointed at herself then smashed one fist into her open palm to indicate violence.

"Could you beat her?"

She nodded. Letting me know I'd guessed right.

"Maybe. Maybe before but probably not now. You'd be in serious trouble. I'd be in serious trouble." I let that sink in, I was able to beat this ice-cream girl and if I was not able to beat Cinder that only meant she wouldn't be able to either.

She made a complicated series of gestures.

"I didn't get that. But it doesn't matter, does it?"

She just frowned at me and I strode forward. She was practically jogging to keep up and I had no intention of slowing down.

The relic jingled by my side as I walked.

"You know, maybe it can involve Don Corneo. You up for stealing from a mob boss? It might involve torture and death. I could use someone with your talents."

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Some broken limbs and I learned the news (Neapolitan had clapped at that). Don Corneo was holed up in his mansion with a whole lot of guards and probably a whole lot of money. Evidently he hadn't taken being tortured very well.

Go figure.

Neapolitan or just Neo was working beside me and honestly it felt good to have somebody watching my back, even if they were criminal scum. Which, I mean, beggars couldn't be choosers from their glass houses.

I needed a pseudonym. I could hardly keep calling myself Jaune Arc even though my weapon and face would be recognizable. I needed a haircut and makeover and a new name. I had to hide from my friends as much as it bit at me.

I was lucky they hadn't reported me to the police. The wounds on Nora and Ren's bodies would be unmistakable as coming from my weapon.

More importantly I needed the money to do all that. I was a long ways away from hopping on a horse and riding out to Merlot's laboratory, as much as I may want to. Instead I needed to stay in the city for a while.

That meant laying low and coming up with a heist. I needed money. Enough that I didn't have to worry about it for a long time.

I was struggling to come up with a new name for myself. That was always the hardest part. Names. I thought that as I broke one of Don Corneo's lackeys' fingers.

Neo and I had him tied down in a hotel room on the lower levels. It was dirt cheap and nobody would ask any questions. Especially if we left no body behind.

He screamed into a gag and it came out muffled. Nickel was the name we managed to get out of him.

"Shshsh." I told him. "You're going to tell me the security details on Don Corneo's mansion or I'm going to break every last bone in your body. If you scream I'll hurt you even more than that. Are we clear? Everything goes well and you get to walk on out of here. You might have to find a new boss but that doesn't really matter compared to your life, does it?"

He seemed to realize I was actually waiting for a response and gave a slow shake of his head. I nodded at Neo and she pulled out the gag.

"Now, what's the security look like?"

"He's going to kill you for this, he's going to-"

Neo gave a lecherous grin and stabbed him through the foot. Who was this guy fooling? He didn't even have aura. There was no way the Don cared about him a Lien. Not that we cared considering we were planning to rob him blind. She covered his mouth with the other hand, not that we really needed to down here per se, and looked him in the eye.

Her gaze flickered out like a hungry lizard's tongue to meet his eyes and devour all of the pain therein.

"Boy you don't even have aura. I can fix that for you. Unlock your aura and make it all go away." He was older than me, probably by a few years. Might be twenty-one, twenty-two. I watched him consider it. Aura was a game changer. A kid like him had to know what it meant, what it could mean. It'd mean a pay raise if nothing else. It meant increased survivability. It meant the power to fight back against those dastardly huntsmen.

"I can make the pain go away too. It'll heal you right up, even your broken fingers." They were tied behind his back. Nice and easy within snapping distance. "What's it going to be, my man."

"Fuck you, I ain't your man."

I broke another one of his fingers. Neo stuffed the gag back in his mouth while he screamed.

"We're not making much headway with this one. Might have to kill him and grab a fresh one. Start over." I said it clinically to Neo. Her eyes went wide at the thought of the violence. I even thought maybe the tips of her breasts were protruding more than before from the excitement. She gave a silent laugh and I hoped it was just my imagination. For my part I didn't have a carnage boner.

A murder erection I distinctly did not have. I wasn't a sadist. Just a pragmatist.

I had to admit there was a bit of an endorphin rush at the thought of snapping this guy's neck, though. With Neo's semblance we'd just walked up and grabbed him from the mansion and we'd walked away, under the cover of an illusion.

Suddenly I had some symptoms come at me and I blinked hard at the tactile sensation of bugs in my eyes until they stopped. Nerves firing which shouldn't have been.

"I'm thinking maybe we just hammer the place. Go all in and kill everyone in our way," I said. "Your thoughts, Neapolitan?"

She stamped a foot.

"Beg your pardon, I meant Neo." I hadn't but she seemed content to insist on it now that I'd figured it out. I took it as a good sign.

"M-m-m. M-m-m." Came from under the gag.

"Sorry, do you have friends in there? Some buddies perhaps?"

Neo pulled the gag out of his mouth. Nickel spat on the floor, very much not in our directions. He didn't want another broken finger was what that told me.

"You'll never make it like that. The Don has a safe room. A panic vault. You'll never get in and get what you want that way."

"And you've telling us this now because…"

"I want a cut. He's got millions stashed away. A-and I want my aura unlocked... And I walk free."

So that's how it is. Money talks, money talks. Apparently louder than broken bones could.

"Tell me about this panic room."

"It's got Titania walls and big electric locks."

"What kind?"

"The fuck should I know? It's like you see in bank vaults though. His office is in there. Or at least it is now they moved it from the second floor. He's been paranoid. There's been talk."

"Talk about how somebody got to him." I nodded. I put my face in his. "Somebody did. I'm going to do it again."

"It was you. It was you at the Honey Bee Inn." His brown eyes went wide.

"Maybe. Tell me about the mansion."

"It's built with choke points in mind. And places we're supposed to go to to lay down fire if there's an assault. It's all built around this central courtyard, too. It has mines in the walls, explosives at every corridor. They can be remotely activated by the Don. The whole place is booby-trapped. It's supposed to be huntsman proof."

"Nothing is actually huntsman proof."

He shrugged but the fact he was panting hard ruined the illusion of calm. "Couldn't say."

"Talk to me about the patrols you were on."

"They're fairly strict about it. Somebody will have noticed I'm gone, even. Every hour on the hour and through the center courtyard. Around the building, too."

"How many?"

"A hundred of us at a given time, maybe."

A hundred could be a problem. Especially if they had proper choke points and the right hardware. Hard light weapons or magnetically accelerated rifles were huntsman level. There were also electric weapons which I was sure could find Neo, invisible or not. I'd seen Neptune use one. An explosion could also take me down. Limit was good but I wasn't invincible.

"Aura?"

"Some of us have it, some of us don't. The Don hasn't been in a position to be picky about his men. Not with his empire crumbling under pressure from the Malachites."

I leaned back and folded my arms. I exchanged looks with Neo. She flickered in and out of the visible spectrum and warbled a hand.

"Might be too many to just walk in to. Plus the explosives. They gonna be a problem for you?"

She waved her hand again.

"Samesies," I grunted.

I had him walk me through the layout of the place in enough detail that I was able to draw a map of the first and second floor. The panic office was on the bottom floor. A big, heavy thing like that couldn't be above ground.

Neo gave me a pleading look and I nodded. She walked behind Nickel and she bent down like she was going to untie him. Giving him one last shred of hope before she snapped up and slit his throat. I watched her take extreme pleasure in doing it.

She shuddered with the living corpse as his lifeblood drained soundlessly onto the floor. She looked ecstatic in the company of death. A low narrow smile on her lips.

It was clear to me. I just needed to give her lots of targets. It seemed like it had been a long time since she was able to indulge in such things. Heists. Murder. All of it. Money must trickle. The blood must flow.

Most importantly I needed to keep her focused on Cinder rather than Ruby. I think the message was starting to sink in but she could relapse. Besides, I wanted Cinder to die and another body wouldn't hurt.

I just needed to make sure she didn't run out of her little pleasures and it seemed to me like I'd have a loyal ally. Underneath it all it seemed like she was just lonely and scared. Especially without her boss. I think there was a part of her that liked taking orders.

And weren't we all like all that? I was like that without Ruby for one. I wasn't sure she would approve of this but she probably didn't approve of me murdering our friends either so there was that.

Neo didn't seem so bad. A bit of a sadist but hey, me too. There was a part of me that took sick pleasure in bringing ruin to my enemies. There was a sideways joy in delivering a boot to their faces.

And my friends… if I ever saw them again they'd have to understand. I did what I had to to find out about Merlot… this… my father. I had so many memories. Like visiting Shion. We're they all fake? I had to learn more about myself. If I had to shake hands with a few demons to make it happen then big fucking whoop.

Neo looked at the blood on her stiletto and wiped it off on Nickel's clothes.

I could work with this. I could live with this. I just needed to throw away my pride.

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-WG