What if one were to tell you that cause and effect, as a concept, was fundamentally incorrect?

Crazy sounding, perhaps, but if the defender were to fight so fiercely for that idea, then surely they must have some sort of concrete proof, right? Neo had such proof, however explaining that proof proved difficult when you were the only one witness to the revelation. It mattered little to Neo, for her career path relied on others not understanding her powers, and so the more lost in the forest they were, the better.

Neo's semblance was a thing of myth, and for quite a long time she herself couldn't really understand how it worked. Oh sure, they dubbed it an illusory based semblance now, but that implied she was using trickery to perform her acts and deeds. There was nothing false about her abilities, no matter how hard anyone tried to deny it.

Having skipped back from the wannabe gangster, she'd made the unfortunate, and yet unavoidable, mistake of not checking her corners. Had she been younger, she would have berated herself for that slip up, but as it stood now, there was nothing to criticize. She never noticed the trap because she wasn't meant to.

In fact, seeing as the blow of the surprise newbie's axe ripped apart the last of her aura, Neo could tell this was another moment in time space where she was meant to die.

Time space... many would wonder if she'd jumbled up the words. They'd say, "shouldn't it be space time?" No, it wouldn't be, for that implied that time was dictated by the behaviors of space and its supposed ebb and flow, and that was the complete opposite of how it really functioned.

Honestly, she should have suspected foul play when Roman had been called off to deal with another buyer elsewhere. Cinder had been rather picky with how she wanted their work done, and while Neo herself would rather tell the woman to go shove a spike up her ass and do it herself, she couldn't.

Cinder Fall: the seductive matchstick who'd lit up in their lives not too long ago, and had subsequently began burning their house to the ground.

The bitch had immediately taken to ordering them around once Roman accepted the deal she proposed, and it took them a twistedly long time before they realized their new client just up and, "had," them. It sucked too, because Neo knew nothing could have been done about it. Roman often talked about some schemes to potentially do away with the woman, however Cinder's grip was too strong, and he hardly ever got more than a sentence in before she had to remind him of another silly facet to their client's character.

It was for the best, really, because Neo couldn't feel anything in regards to Cinder's fated end in the near future - not yet at least.

But as for these guys, and especially the man who'd rushed ahead and was about to impale her with his oversized knife... Well, she reckoned he'd meet his end soon enough; after all, he'd picked a fight with her, and she had little aura left, whereas he had none to begin with.

While the circumstances had been questionable at best, Neo had no reasons to worry back when she agreed to Cinder's command. She'd known the cunt wasn't all too happy with not fully understanding her semblance, few people were, but Neo hadn't had anything to fuss about. Cinder still needed Roman, and by extension her, so why should she have suspected a double cross?

The hail of gunfire raining upon her once she'd stepped into the alleyway reminded Neo never to assume.

In an instant her aura had been shredded to a sliver, and she'd just barely had time to dash behind a dumpster before it could break. It was here she knew she would 'die' at least once, but that was okay. Unlike regular semblances, hers worked without aura, and so she could activate it as she pleased; not that it had much use outside of avoiding death and sneaking around. Using her semblance would break her aura anyways, regardless of its previous amount, and so she saved it for special occasions.

That being to dodge destiny.

From here, the bozos made the glorious mistake of actually stepping into the alley to try and fight her. She'd sauntered out, blocking their remaining bullets with her parasol - conveniently enhanced with dust to make it a viable huntress weapon. Like the idiots they were, the crew had emptied their carts of all ammunition without her needing to do much of anything. Perhaps if they'd aimed for anything other than her head which was behind the shield, then they may have ruined her legs, and thus grounded her and forced her to drop the parasol.

But it seemed they weren't interested in her lower half, which was a shame really, as it would have helped them greatly. The White Fang dogs Roman and her were forced to work with couldn't keep their eyes off her shapely goods, and ironically, that perversion may have saved the idiots thinking they had the capability to 'truly' kill her...

Or at the very least, it would have delayed their own soon to be deaths.

But regardless of their fates now, she still felt the twang in her core, and knew that even if she'd somehow manage to kick them to the curb, she'd still 'die' in the end. They would have lived far longer if her 'deaths' were permanent, but unfortunately for them, that was never the case. After a quaint tussle with the fools upfront, one of them had forced her to dodge backwards to avoid a swipe of his massive knife, leaving her open for that one sneaky reinforcement to finally break her aura.

Sighing internally, she held her breath, and in turn let her semblance breathe.

Seeing him rush forwards, blade prone and ready to cut into her heart, Neo couldn't help but notice how the inside of his jacket had a slight bubble along the inner breast pocket. He had something on him, and after she was finished killing him, she'd be taking a look at what that was.

He finally met the space where she should have been standing, and Neo heard the ruffling of fabric and muffled breaking of bones as the scene played out as fate previously decided. The dirt where she would have been murdered shifted, as if she'd locked up from the sudden shock of her heart being forcefully stopped.

A soft breeze carried with it airborne grime, which interestingly avoided the space she would have been, while leaving some of its muck stuck midair, outlining how she would have appeared while dying. It had been raining a little before her encounter, and now it pelted down heavily, having previously soaked through her clothes and would be leaving her needing a good drying off after. However the rain remained in a layer above her Death Space: the area in space where, at the point in time where she was to die, the surrounding air, and all matter of anything else was forbidden to be.

Basically, it was an empty void in the world that perfectly outlined her and how she should have met her end.

Right now though, Neo was overlapping the oxygen and several pelts of rain, which flowed through her like a ghost as she watched the man pull his knife free from the nothing. He, and everyone else watching, should be seeing her fall to the ground right now, bleeding and choking up blood. The water below where she would have fallen to her knees spread, as if the limbs themselves were forcing the puddle to disperse, whereas her own boots from where she now stood phased through the liquid.

That was another funny thing about reality: nothing ever touched, and even if things did, they'd pass through one another effortlessly, as if completely incorporeal. That's how reality worked: nothing ever interacted, it simply went where it was supposed to be in its place in time. Imagine picking up a cup for a second, and then setting it back down. Some would say that you were the reason the cup was lifted, for you picked it up, and put it back down.

Wrong.

You did not pick up the cup, the cup was always meant to occupy the space above at the time it did, in the place it did; your hand just so happened to be there at the same time as well. You, the individual, didn't 'do' anything: you'd simply been where you were meant to be, when you were meant to be there. This was destiny, or fate as others called it, and it alone dictated how, and why, the world worked.

This, in turn, meant true freedom was a myth.

Back when she was younger, and upon realizing just how her semblance functioned, Neo had stressed and torn apart her mind. Running through an existential crisis in an attempt to grapple with the fact that her life had been pre-written before she was even born, back when she was the load her mother should have - but never really could have - swallowed. Decisions and luck were irrelevant, choice was a façade, and everyone was slaves to both who, and what, they were. Ideas, such as terms and names, were just the chemicals and electrical signals being where the where, and how, they were supposed to be; reacting in a way that allowed perception of what you were supposed to understand at that point in time.

It took her too damn long to come to the realization that none of it mattered.

She could not see the future, and because of that, destiny as a concept, even if it was real, didn't make a difference to anyone's lives. If you couldn't both see and plan for your destined future, then it didn't make a difference if fate itself existed or not, and was thus a waste of time to worry about. This, though, was what set Neo apart: she could not see the future, but she had something far grander than that at play, and realizing how it worked put her high above the people who coveted power in their shared world. Her semblance, by allowing her to ignore her placement in time space, had given her two gifts via its very existence and function alone.

It allowed her to both defy her placement in time, and rewrite the future itself.

All of this nonsense, this introspective insanity and wildly hashed together explanation of how space and the objects themselves moved within time was just a fancy way to tell how reality interacted with her semblance. Or, in other words...

Time was Neo's bitch.

"Well well." The man looked over his dampened looking knife, who's blade had splashes of rain bouncing and breaking just slightly above the surface where it should have hit. Apparently, more blood would have stuck to its surface than Neo had assumed, and so would have blocked the water from tasting its steel. Her killer smirked at the empty space just below his waist and maybe a step or two ahead. "You weren't so tough, were you?"

The Death Space continued being coated with rain, slickly outlining her would-be dying body perfectly and allowing light to paint texture across the non-existent surface. As the weather dancing within the alleyway continued to visualize her, Neo heard her own breathing sputter and spit as it mocked her. She'd have choked a good bit, and being mute, it meant she'd barely get much in the way of discernable words from her demise.

Otherwise she'd have mocked the man for needing a team to kill a woman half their size; men like him would be furious at having their pride shattered by such an insult.

"Hell yeah!" One of the other guys pranced over, grinning intensely and patting her killer on the arm. "Way to go boss!"

The boss, in turn, spat out a huff and shoved the man away.

"Ah shut up." He then leveled a curious glare at her invisible kneeling corpse - invisible to her at least. The other guys seemed to sense something was up - as if that was hard to do when your boss is glaring at the supposed issue - and inquired about it.

"Something the matter, man?"

As they awaited his inexplicably slow answer, Neo began her trek back to them. She always found it more fun to strike terror into them before handing them their free passes into the afterlife. Just as she drew into position, stepping one foot into the spot where she had died and kneeling down so that at least 50% of her being overlapped with her previously destined position, the boss guy finally talked.

"She was smiling at me."

"Huh?" Almost everyone replied, and so their leader elaborated.

"She grinned right at me, almost as if mocking me."

"So?" Another, younger lad than the two before tried, puffing his chest arrogantly as he spoke from up high. "Stupid bitch thought she had a leg up, but look at her now." He then extended his hand towards her body, and so Neo stepped back into the world. "On her knees with her mouth open just waiting for-" His eyes probably widened; she didn't need to see them to know. "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

There was a curt inhale before the sudden twitch, and with a cough, boss-man chanced a look down at the blade piercing his very heart. Neo enjoyed the poetic justice of trading fates with her wannabe killers, even if that wasn't exactly the case. Not that anyone would ever truly know that. To those watching, she'd gone from dead to living in an instance, suddenly there and woundless, with no blood in sight - even the man's knife was now clean. She needed to have at least half of her body overlapping her Death Space to step back into the world, otherwise she couldn't jump back into time.

And so, a new future was written once more, and she could feel the end of their lives now just a step away.

Ripping the blade out, Neo inspected the fresh coat of blood the bastard had tainted her sword with, but that was fine; it loved bathing in the filth of insignificant sobs like these.

"YOU BI-!"

She never let him finish, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him into the ground. Neo wasn't the strongest physically, but the guy was a wimp, so much so that even she could take and hold him down. It didn't last for long though, and she shoved her sword right between his eyes, and he went limp.

Not feeling up to wasting anymore time, she stood and faced the final guy, who'd fallen to the ground now crying, which was mostly obscured by the rain, but she knew from the red around his eyes how terrified he'd become. The pitiful display meant nothing to her, and so she marched ahead. If this idiot wanted to live, he wouldn't have tried to kill her. It didn't matter though: nothing could save him now.

"W-wait! No! No p-please!"

She pulled him up by the collar, resting her weapon uncomfortably close to his neck. He'd die, that was a fact, but perhaps he'd be willing to speak up if she gave him a few seconds more - even if it wasn't her choice. Her guess was correct, and the crybaby began spilling the beans.

"I-I never wanted any of this, honest!" His breathing sped up, but Neo remained patient. Curling a brow, she hoped he wasn't so oblivious as not to get her hint. Luckily for him, he understood that she'd commanded him to speak. "S-some black haired woman came to our hideout, spoke with our boss a-and handed him a card. S-she said to take you out, b-but wouldn't say why she wanted you gone."

Pressing her blade against his neck, she saw the terror in his eyes spark from a simple candlelight to a blazing bonfire.

"S-she wore a red dress, a-and had some sort of fire semblance!" His eyes clenched shut. "P-please." He spat, coughing and whining. "That's... that's all I know, I swear. Please *sob* don't kill me."

Smiling a little to herself, she granted his request.

He fell to the gore-caked pavement, stuttering his breaths and shot a frightened, intense look up at her. His eyes were wide, and his pupils shrunken. Placing a pleasant, loving smile across her lips, Neo eyed him with so much warmth you'd swear her a freshly lit hearth. Damn near panicking now, the guy backed up, only to fall as his hands slipped on the bloody rain puddles.

Neo didn't need to kill him herself; no, his end was already here.

That was the second aspect of her semblance: along with defying her place in time and rewriting the future, she could also sense when lives were reaching their final act.

And so, she watched with pleasure as he turned, crawled, clawed himself up from his knees, and booked it down the alleyway. Neo watched as he drew nearer to the end, maybe thinking himself in the home stretch if he could just get out. It didn't matter, as every second he ran, she felt his doom approach.

3…

He slipped, falling to the ground, and yet he used a nearby discarded window sitting against the wall to stand himself anew.

2…

Pushing off the forgotten garbage, he took a steady stride and made it out to the edge of the alleyway; he was in the home stretch now.

1…

Right as his feet hit the pavement of the main sidewalk, he didn't hesitate for even a second. He booked it ahead, right out into the main road without sparing a glance any which way.

0…

And just like that, it came as no surprise when a massive hauling truck punched him squarely from the right. His body did nothing to slow its approach, and she heard the screeching of tires as the driver no doubt panicked and slammed on their breaks. It didn't matter though, for Neo knew the man was killed on impact: she'd felt his life vanish in an instant, and his soul be whisked away from the world they inhabited.

Carelessly, she slipped her blade back into the shaft of her parasol, looking down at the men who thought her an easy kill. Certainly Cinder didn't think these goobers would be enough to kill her. Neo's eyes soon found their way back to the boss of the group, and she reached down to claim her prize. Shifting through his coat, she took from him the contents of all pockets. Most of it was the usual schlock you'd expect: a wallet, set of keys, and some spare cash.

However the inner pocket contained a package, just as she'd suspected - not the package itself, but that it was an important item. Tearing open the small stuffed packet left her with a flash drive, and seeing as the dead men didn't sound or act the technologically savvy type, she assumed it warranted some checking out.

It very clearly couldn't have been for them.

Slipping the drive in her coat pocket, she opened up her parasol. While it wasn't as good as an umbrella, it would do well enough with staving off the brunt of the rain until she got home. And home was her target destination, because while her life may have been at risk, that didn't mean she could go without reporting it.

Not only did she have a story to share with Roman, but they also had some information to investigate on the drive.

Author's note

…

So… this isn't going to be getting many updates - at least not yet.

I've been toying around with an idea like this for quite a while in terms of original fiction, but I don't actually have a story to tell with it yet. And so here we are. I've repurposed the idea and made a few changes to make it viable for RWBY.

Is giving Neo what is undoubtedly a super overpowered semblance a good idea? Who knows, but it sounds fun in concept.

Anyways, this won't be getting much attention until L&K is finished. To be fair, that story is literally wrapping up right now in a few chapters, so it shouldn't be too long a wait. Besides, if I get in the mood I might just power through a new chapter and upload it anyways.

That's all for now. Toodles.