Neo so desperately wanted to bitch and moan and row over being shipped off to oversee a group of pansy-ass White Fang wackos, but stayed her tongue and focused on settling in. This was a job from Cinder, so like it or not she was forced to adhere to their fiery boss's command.

On the bright side, she could count on Roman to deliver her wonderful little peacekeeper.

One of the first things she did upon her temporary return - besides toying with her partner's somehow still alive complaints towards Ruby - was head on back home to their shared apartment and rest before readying up. Roman and her owned many safehouses all across Vale, but during their time with Cinder they'd decided on only using one. This was due to wanting to keep the others secret, on the off chance they needed to scoot and hide out.

Unfortunately, this also meant that Neo had to leave much of her good belongings behind so they weren't stolen.

There was, however, one exception to this rule, and that was the small plastic beowolf she never let go. Could someone steal it? Potentially, but if it were ever to go missing and be ruled stolen, then she'd take it out on the entire city. Vale didn't deserve half the shit it had on a good day, let alone the day they chose to mess with her, and should they make the poor decision to take away her sole reminder of why people sometimes deserved her mercy, then there would be grimm to pay. She'd ransack everyone and everything that called this stain of a city home, sparing none but Roman and a curious handful who'd managed to gain her interest.

She may have been a mere ghoul in the eyes of many, but becoming a nightmare was entirely within the line of possibility. Even fate wouldn't be able to save them; this she swore.

Perhaps to the benefits of Vale's continued survival, her figurine was worn, old, scratched, chipped, and so very, very worthless in terms of monetary value; heck, Roman sometimes joked about how he careless bought it for cheap at a garage sale simply because he thought it looked neat. The safehouse they shared had been robbed a few times before, but never once had any of the crooks touched or even moved her toy. Disposable scrolls, monitors, and extra appliances were always the targets, but never her personal prize.

Her little Wolfie... that would be a nice change of pace once she got back to Beacon.

While she didn't directly sleep with the plastic plaything, her Wolfie - as she'd come to name it - was very special to her indeed. It signified a turning point in her life, and the introduction that, despite all odds, people could show kindness and mercy. She didn't have to be alone, and that toy was a symbol of a change from a nobody into that of a somebody. Just having it in the vicinity of her resting place would be enough to put her nerves at ease... Even if it did just end up wrapped in a sock or something in her bag under the bed.

"Miss Politan." Like the expectant flies that they were, Neo's bubble of daydreaming over misplaced theoretical vengeance popped when one of the lads came up to her. Heaving and sighing with sweat trailing down the exposed lower half of his face and arms, he took a second to breathe before carrying on. "We've got the dust loaded up. Shall we move it off to the new warehouse now, or is there anything else we need?"

Now that was interesting; under Roman's orders, these guys should have taken an extra half hour or so to even come close to finishing. They'd been at this particular dock for... what was it, thirty minutes or so? In fact, this was such an interesting development that she wouldn't believe it on word of mouth alone. Plopping down from her seat atop the fifth stair of the flight, Neo followed the tired goon outside to the main area where they were loading their haul.

Nope, he wasn't lying: it really seemed to be packed away.

But Neo wasn't one to trust her eyes immediately, and so went about observing the five loading vans on her own, ordering each of the guards to open up the back. One by one she'd confirmed, with some unexpected satisfaction, that everyone had done their jobs properly. But like all things, it had to come to an end, as when the final truck opened up, Neo saw the problem.

Yep, leave it to them to forget a few crates.

Honestly, it wasn't all that big a deal. Most of the crates took three or four men to handle due to both how heavy they were, as well as how delicate movement needed to be. One slip up or a dropped side might spell disaster, and so there were teams of four for every crate, that way if one tripped or whatever then the other could hold out until control was back on their side; or they could at least lower the bad end to the ground carefully instead of outright dropping it.

Neo pointed, but the guy at her side didn't appear to catch the problem.

"What is it?" he said while leaning in, voice clear with confoundment about what he should have been seeing.

Neo wanted to facepalm, but that wouldn't be fair. They were the ones loading the trucks, yeah, but it wouldn't surprise her in the least if they weren't told just how many boxes they were working with. Normally, they'd be told to move a pile, and that was it, so even if they were supposed to count out the number of crates moved, most rarely did so. These were the lax procedures that many people gave up on after enough time due to how rare a situation like this was, but these situations still existed, and so she'd need to make it more direct.

Hopping into the van, Neo's plan had been to pat down one of the crates and hold up a couple of fingers. They were only missing two, so this should have been sufficient to get the point across. She really didn't want to type out a whole sentence for these guys; come on, they couldn't be dumb enough to require a whole explanation just for a few missing crates.

But in the end, and while they weren't that dumb so far, it seems they were stupid in other ways, because the moment she took a couple of steps inside the back slammed shut.

Regular people would panic at this point, believing themselves the victims of kidnapping, but Neo liked to think she knew better. Forgetting to lock the latch was standard for even the help Junior put up for sale, so it came as no shock that the White Fang were much the same.

"Augh! S-sorry!" Yep, that was him: the guy left outside. "Hold on, we'll get it open again!"

Well, wasn't that lovely? Despite the groan-worthy situation, Neo took it in stride. Smirking, she seated her bum down atop the shorter pile of boxes, amused and wondering how many Fang cronies it took to open a door - the lightbulb didn't have anything on this. But, as sad as it was to say, her fun got cut short when the engine of the van roared to life. Perplexed, and mildly concerned for her own potentially pointless safety, hopped back down and strode over to the door. If they couldn't pull the stupid thing back up, then she'd do it; that engine made her wonder if they'd somehow thought these particular vans had an automatic opening feature. They didn't, but she wasn't willing to wait for them to figure that out.

She reached down and began to pull up... but it didn't budge.

Somewhat confused, she tried again. Nope, nu-uh, no way. No matter what, it wouldn't yield to her command. Did those idiots end up locking the thing? Yep, they probably had, and based on the scurrying she heard outside, she figured they knew so too. But regret wouldn't help them, as Neo was already set on totally telling them off once she got out, through the only way she knew how: physical violence. Just a little bit though - they'd make a stink otherwise.

Her plans were, once again, cut short by a change: the van began to move.

Okay, she could believe their incompetence when it came to accidentally locking the door; it was a special kind of stupid, but whatever. Starting the van; again, weird, but not out of the reach she'd seen a good few of these guys go for. When her prison started to move and drive, that's when she had to round this up to the obvious. Swallowing her pride, Neo accepted that they'd managed to pull a fast one on her, taking advantage of her low expectations to get it done. While it seemed a touch above their average collective intellect, it wasn't entirely impossible, considering she was living through it right then and there.

Getting kidnapped wasn't something she'd been planning around, but it wasn't entirely unexpected either. The White Fang, as far as she could guess, had been given the task of kidnapping her by Cinder. The reasons why this was her prime idea came down to the simple fact that there was nothing outright beneficial to taking her on their own, and she knew for damn sure they weren't so foolish as to think they could ransom her. And besides, Cinder hadn't stooped down to the old capture and execute trick yet, so she was bound to try it eventually.

For a moment, Neo pondered trying to force the doors of the van open, but with so much dust stockpiled in the truck, all it would take was a bit too much rustling and a spark to ignite the entire road - and possibly erase a street from the city of Vale. She contemplated over doing it anyways, knowing she could just dodge death via the same method she had been doing so since forever now, but she'd never been put in a position where her whole body faced possible evisceration.

It was possible that using her semblance, only to then let her body be completely destroyed, might leave her a wandering ghost for all eternity. After all, she'd have no 'body' to go back to, even if logic should dictate her death space would remain the same, and that was a risk she wasn't quite willing to take over something so mundane as a kidnapping - mundane when it came to herself anyways.

Hunkering down it was, she supposed.

Settling her tooshie atop the shorter pile of crates again, she crossed her legs, pulled out her scroll as she contemplated whether to bother Roman over this. He had his own job to attend to, and there was a chance Cinder might prod him at any given moment. Plus, she still gained nothing by telling her dad about this temporary new development other than him bitching about it to the Fang.

Like it or not, they were stuck in the mud no matter the actions they took, and so instead, Neo opted to do a little prying of her own. Opening up her GPS, she began to note the directions they took in real time. Even if she couldn't see outside of the van, she could still make a map of the route they drove, and even somewhat predict where they might be headed.

There were only a few safehouses where the White Fang stored their acquired dust, and she'd already been filled in by Roman about the new warehouse earlier.

Well would you look at that: they took a right when they should have gone left, trailing down the road on the opposite street to their would-be destination. Actually, if she was looking at this right, they were headed into one of the more commercial areas of the city. Darting off into a side path, they stopped in the alleyway on a back road behind quite a peculiar place.

Tukson's Book Trade... or what was left of it.

Neo distinctly recalled this being another thing Roman liked to complain about. Cinder gave him orders to do away with the owner, a man named Tukson - who would have guessed? However, Roman wasn't the type of guy to immediately carry out hits when there were far easier methods of getting the job done. Sadly, Cinder's kids had other ideas, and had done the deed themselves. Apparently, they got a little chewed out too, but not nearly as much as her pa.

Considering they were stopping here, it was easy to guess they'd already begun repurposing the place.

.

.

"Did we really have to do it like this?"

Roman, rolling his eyes, dismissed the poor guy. In the end, it wasn't really their fault his orders for them were a tad... unconventional. Stepping beside the worried faces of the two hired help, he ignored their pleading looks and went around to the back of the van. Neo sure wasn't going to be happy about this, but with Cinder's jobs becoming a tad ridiculous by this point, Roman figured they weren't left with much of a choice.

They needed a backup plan, and he wasn't about to let little-miss-serial-killer continuously put the one person he could actually trust in danger over and over again.

Giving a couple of knocks to the back of the van first, Roman spoke a little louder than normal to grab her attention.

"I know you're perched somewhere in there ready to cut the throat of whoever opens the door, but you can relax, it's just me… and the boys." A swift series of clanks followed afterwards, and Roman went to work - and by 'went to work,' he obviously meant ordering the other two guys to unlatch and open the back of the van.

As they released the beast within, Roman had to hold back the little bit of snark trying to break past his confident mask. Neo stood there, arms crossed, and with an equally cross expression. She hopped down, dusted herself, and went for her scroll - presumably to tell him off in an overly colorful display of every curse under the sun. He put a stop to her though, because there wasn't really a reason for her to get too mad at him.

"Look, while I'm sure you'd absolutely love to rip me a new one, hear me out first."

She did so, but in her own funny little way, fishing out her scroll anyways and sending him a quick note.

"Did you really need to yoink me like a streetwalker?"

"I'd rather have contacted you with a bit more class..." Roman began, soon holding up his own scroll... or what should have been his; instantly he saw the puzzled look slip across her features as she took a brief second to really take in the details that proved the device in his hands wasn't one of his usuals. "But Cinder currently thinks I'm on another robbery halfway across the city, and I'm in no rush to prove otherwise."

A sly look slipped into place, and Neo quickly called his escape ploy out; nothing ever slipped past her.

"So you left yours in their hands, huh?"

"Unfortunately." To be honest, for as easy as it was to trick anyone keeping an eye on the device's whereabouts via GPS, it still stung to do it, and Neo pretty much told him to his face why.

"Didn't know you trusted them that much."

"I don't." Grumbling to himself, Roman fixed his stature - having unconsciously hunched over whilst pondering about all the ways this could come back to bite him in the ass. "But I don't plan to be gone all that long, and I knew for a fact the easiest way to get you here unseen was by this little detour."

"And how exactly did you think it would go had I not harbored such low expectations for them?"

Roman laughed a little at that, hitting her with a grin afterwards.

"The easiest way to get you inside would be if you had to show them something by hand." Neo, as he expected she would upon hearing that, pouted. While Roman could see how much it irritated her to be tricked this way, he could also tell she knew it was entirely on her for allowing herself to be fooled so stupidly. She was far from stupid, but that didn't mean she had any real faith in the lowly crooks they usually worked with.

But despite being responsible for her own failings, that didn't mean she couldn't bite back and point out some of the holes in his idea for getting her here.

"And you explicitly had me kidnapped via the free candy van, because?"

"Neo, be honest with me: if either of these guys told you during your drive that you needed to stop somewhere along the way, without mentioning my name, would you have believed them?" She didn't even need to message him: her face said it all. Smirking, he laid it out straight. "Trust me on this, I can give these boys an entire damn word-for-word script, and they'd still find a way to muck it all up."

One unhappy onlooker spoke up from behind.

"Hey, we're right here you know."

"Come now, guys." Roman raised up a single hand, freely rotating it dismissively. "That's not a jab against you personally. It's a jab at how much faith I have towards any plan going off in accordance to itself. For as good as I am, even I have to succumb to lady luck."

A bit of mumbling and grumbling accompanied the pair, but nothing beyond that. Good, they understood the half-lie, meaning they'd, at worst, feel a little annoyed for all of this job alone. Once Cindy's wacko plot - whatever it was - went off, the boy's would be too absorbed in the chaos to remember insignificant gripes like this. Roman set his focus back on Neo, who merely huffed and presented herself more lady-like, which was a good sign as it meant she was ready to get down to business.

With one more fling of the scroll, she set everything alight.

"So what's the big play, and how does it involve me?"

Clasping his hands together, Roman's smirk twisted into a devious grin, and he settle his hands back to his sides, reaching one back to grasp his personal weapon - a multitool firearm disguised as a cane, aptly named Melodic Cudgel due to the distinct whistle each shot produced. Valiantly, he thrust his mighty weapon towards the crates of fresh-and-ready dust, feeling more than satisfied with how simple and effective the plan to "borrow" it had been.

"We're scratching a little icing off the top of Cinder's birthday cake." Bringing the cane down, he hummed pleasantly. "We already have enough to make a killing in resale alone, but seeing as she always wants more, I'm pretty sure she isn't planning on letting any of it go."

Neo gave him a plain look, probably already having worked that fact out on her own. She wanted to know why they were here with this now, and why he'd gone through the trouble of stealing her away from her current job temporarily. Her absence wouldn't be reported - even terrorists folded to the sway of cold hard cash - so they could get on with loading everything into the abandoned shot without too much hassle. The police already cleared the place, and with the newly available property having already been purchased by one Sparta Wickerlight - an alias he was quite alright with resurrecting for the occasion - there would be no nasty intrusions or buyers trying to scope it out and stumbling across their catch. Seeing as Cinder kept hounding them for more dust, and the fact she and her personal guard were all newly set up in Beacon with Neo as a fourth wheel, Roman was sure he could fudge their supply in a believable manner so as to avoid anyone discovering the lightness of their goodie bags.

But that wasn't the reason he'd reclaimed his little leech.

"But along with that..." He returned his gaze to her, now using a subtly lower tone to make it crystal clear he was speaking in full seriousness. "You don't think I haven't noticed what Cinder's doing to you, do you?"

Neo tried to get out of it by feigning ignorance, casually twisting her head as if to ask "What?" and so he took a more direct approach.

"I know how each of those jobs she sends you on end, and to put it bluntly, I'm disturbed how you end up "resurrecting" after every one." She made a little 'o' with her lips, following it up with far too casual of a shrug. Not at all happy with her attempt to brush it past him, Roman shook his head and tsked. "Neo, tell me honestly, right here and now: have all of her jobs downed you at least once?"

What should have been a pout was dangerously filled with genuine anger. Shutting her eyes, she paused, but Roman was more than adept at waiting. And so he did, and for his patience over the course of a few seconds, Neo typed up a quick, single word response for him.

"Yes."

Author's note

…

A bit more development this time; as fun as silly nonsense can be, I still have to keep this plot moving.

Neo's abduction, while played for laughs in a sense, seems to have finally shown that Roman wasn't quite as oblivious as he made himself out to be, and it appears he's taking action in regards to their boss's orders. Stealing some dust while Cinder's away may be risky, but desperation calls for drastic action.

On another note, I'm thinking of touching up the first chapter a bit; I never was quite happy with the execution of it, even if it checked every box I needed it too. I don't know, it just feels a bit weird to read through… but then again, that's every chapter of this story so far.

Meh… I probably won't anytime soon, but if any of you notice the story updating without any new chapters, it means I'm fixing things up. In these cases, I'll mention in the next new chapter both if anything important was changed - unlikely - and which chapter it pertains to.

Anyway, that's it for now.

Until next time.