Application - Deer Country

[threelayers]

Character Base

• Character Name: Neopolitan Sustrai, Neo for short
• Age: 21, as of the conclusion of Deerington
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: Volume 8, Conclusion
(Player Note: A Novelization is slated to release during September which has backlogged information on Neopolitan and Roman Torchwick's relationship prior to the events of Volume 1. The information in “Roman Holiday” will not be incorporated until one month after the book has come out, unless doing so would require no canon updates. I will be in touch with the mods if there are any concerns. For now, I include this only as a caveat to let the mods know that there is potentially new background information on this character that the fandom was not aware of prior to this date.)

• Items Coming Along: (10 because she's a returning character
-Hush, her combat umbrella with a concealed and blade, both extendable in the umbrella's tip and removable, as with a sword cane. Surprisingly reinforced not only by her Aura but in construction, and capable of enduring blows with well crafted melee weaponry.
-Her traditional pink, white and brown steam-punk-esque attire,
-Her Wedding Ring
-A Cat Necklace given to her by Glitch, that sees through illusions
-Her “Scroll,” a communication device capable of communicating with other scrolls in a closed network, which also doubles to keep tabs on connected users' aura levels
-Pocket B&E kit with Lockpicks
-Roman's Bowler Cap and Scarf
-A small quantity of remaining Ice and Fire Dust Crystals from Deerington
-A Backpack from The Dog Keeper containing 10 items: Rope, Harness for Rock Climbing, Carabiners, Belay Device, Belay Gloves, Water Purifier, Fire Resistant Sleeping Bag, Waterproof/Scent-Proof 2 Person Tent, Rope, 5 Flares
-A hand-held notepad with attached stylus that can be erased with a swipe (To assist speaking person to person)

• Content Warnings for Character: Ableist Society, Violence and Death, Attempted Murder, Fantasy-Race Racism (Very badly done Racism I might add)

Also: Spoilers for Volume 8 of RWBY

Character Background

• History:
(Again – Elements of history are subject to updating pending the events of “Roman Holiday” released this month. This application is based upon only known source material.)
Wiki: https://rwby.fandom.com/wiki/Neopolitan

Neopolitan was the former associate of a criminal kingpin in the Nation of Vale, Roman Torchwick. A mute since birth, she was incapable of speaking and communicated through text messages. In her first appearance, in Season 2, she is seen following and ghosting Roman at the rally of a militant Faunus Organization known as the White Fang, while he manipulates their status as second class citizens in Vale and anger at this state to lead them towards violent action that suits the interests of his current employer, Cinder Fall. Prior to this time, Roman's various lackeys were demonstrably little more than canon fodder, incapable of taking on even junior Huntresses in training and local security forces with any regular rate of success. Neopolitan was demonstrated to be the only competent member of his organization in the first three volumes, prior to Roman's death in the ending events of Volume 3 and the Fall of Beacon.

Neopolitan was at all times in the series a loyal follower to Roman, performing his every command without hesitation and pausing her activities only at his behest. He appeared to be the only person capable or willing to reign in whatever behavior she got up to, and she attached herself to him as an attache whenever the two were in the same vicinity and he did not have orders for her to the contrary. She did not answer to any other individual than Roman, and obeyed only him.

During the events of the last year of Roman Torchwick's life, he and Neopolitan became embroiled in the schemes of a woman named Cinder Fall, acolyte of the master of the Grimm, Salem. The existence of Salem was, for the most part, unknown to either of the two of them during the time of their employment, and Roman on at least one occasion indicated that he only suspected there was a greater power behind Cinder and that he was reading the writing on the wall, choosing the more powerful horse to bet on as an act of survival. They did Cinder's bidding, employing the White Fang to smuggle explosives via a train and open a hole into the city of Vale, capital city of the kingdom bearing its name, which would have allowed the Grimm to enter the city unimpeded. They ran smuggling operations to acquire Atlesian technology for Faunus dissidents with the White Fang, and participated in the siege leading to the Fall of Beacon. During this time, they came into frequent conflict with the students of the Beacon Huntsman Academy and Atlesian personality on loan during the Vytal Festival Tournament, notably the members of the team known as RWBY (Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long). Roman was captured briefly by Atlas personnel and, while incarcerated, Neopolitan worked alongside Cinder Fall, Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black undercover in the Vytal Tournament to bring about the events of the Fall of Beacon by causing destabilizing events in the tournament. All of this was largely a front so that Cinder Fall could acquire the considerable magical power of the Autumn Maiden, currently housed in medical care in Vale after her first failed attempt to siphon those powers, which would have enabled her to make an attempt to acquire one of the four artifacts needed by Salem for her plans.

In the events of the Fall of Beacon, Neopolitan and Roman fought one last confrontation between the two of them and Ruby Rose on the deck of a battleship in mid-air. During this confrontation, Roman revealed their desire to be on the winning side of what he saw as a pointless and hopeless war, shortly before Ruby managed to knock Neopolitan off of the vessel, seemingly to her death at the hands of Grimm flying by while she used her combat umbrella to slow her fall. Roman Torchwick subsequently died, eaten by a Nevermore Grimm before Ruby's eyes.

The reality was that Neopolitan survived, unbeknownst to Atlas personnel, Beacon Academy or even her former allies in Cinder's Group. She landed safely, only to learn of Roman Torchwick's death after finding his signature bowler cap. Driven insane with grief, she disappeared from the scene until the events of Volume 6, where she appeared in the city of Mistral, seeking Cinder Fall and Ruby Rose in order to enact vengeance upon both of them for the death of her boss. She first encountered Cinder as she too was seeking information on Ruby's whereabouts after the failed attempt to get the Spring Maiden's powers. The two fought in a bar owned by the local criminal syndicate, Neopolitan keeping pace and actively threatening Cinder's life until the latter revealed the full magical power of the Autumn Maiden and managed to convince her that they should both be seeking to kill Ruby Rose. Though later events showed that Neo in no way had forgiven Cinder, she agreed for the time being and the two began working together again. Neopolitan used her semblance to create large scale illusions, enabling them to steal vessels and transport themselves into the kingdom of Atlas, tracking the last known location of Team RWBY.

In Atlas, Cinder and Neo arrived in time to watch the destabilizing of the whole kingdom through the action of Salem's agents. Neo was to remain a mostly free agent initially, and was employed by Cinder first to perform intelligence on Councilman Jacques Schnee's public gatherings to determine Ruby's whereabouts and the location of the artifact Lamp of Knowledge. She then infiltrated a team of allies of Team of RWBY (Oscar Pine, Lie Ren, Nora Valkyrie and Jaune Arc), stealing the Relic in a pitched battle with the four and escaping to return it to Cinder. She vented repeatedly her silent frustration that they were not targeting Ruby for vengeance, but agreed to continue with the plan so that Cinder could regain the alliance of her mentor Salem, waiting for the best chance to strike.

Shortly after acquiring the Relic, the two were re-united with old allies and the rest of Salem's forces, as Salem arrived with an armada of Grimm to the city of Atlas. Cinder presented the Relic of Knowledge to Salem in an effort to regain her favor, taking credit for the act to the silent irritation of Neopolitan. Salem took note of the existence of Neopolitan under Cinder's employ, noting that she had begun collecting interesting allies of her own, while Neo remained quiet and taciturn, gauging events. During the siege of Atlas, Neopolitan received no assignments other than helping Cinder in a failed attempt to acquire the Winter Maiden's powers from Penny Polendina. The fight went south due to miscalculations by Cinder, and Neopolitan barely kept pace with a retired master Huntress named Maria “The Grim Reaper” Calavera before extricating both Emerald Sustrai and an unconscious Cinder Fall from the fight. While Cinder nursed her wounds and Emerald developed increasing misgivings over her presence in Salem's employ, Neo was left to her devices and skulked silently and in disguise through the halls of Salem's base. She witnessed parts of the torture of Oscar Pine by Hazel and found the location of the Relic of Knowledge. During the battle for Atlas, she stole the Relic of Knowledge just at the point that Oscar Pine temporarily destroyed Salem's body, allowing his, Emerald's and Team JNR's escape from her base. In the conflagration, Neopolitan kept the Relic for herself, messaging Cinder for a deal, provided they attacked Ruby Rose, threatening to keep the Relic on the assumption that this might prove perilous to Cinder's well being if Salem learned it had not been retrieved.

Neo met with Cinder and Arthur Watts, hatching a plan to help bring Atlas down. She and Cinder left Arthur to handle the hacking legwork while they chased Teams RWBY and JNR through a magical realm called the “Central Location” created by the Relic of Creation and Ruby's Wish, originally intended to evacuate the citizens of Atlas and the city of Mantle beneath it before Salem was reformed. Within that space, the climactic battle raged and Neo and Cinder collectively caused Team RWBY to fall from the platforms into the darkness below, their fates unknown. Cinder, however, betrayed Neo as she also did Arthur (leaving the latter to potentially burn to death in the command center in Atlas), telling her she should never have threatened her before kicking both she and Ruby Rose into the darkness. It is unknown where Neo and Ruby landed (events of Volume 9 coming to a theater near you this fall!), only that Neo repeatedly tried to choke Ruby to death as the two were apparently falling to their doom, her last known thoughts being of vengeance.

• Core Relationships:
Roman Torchwick:
(OOC: Once again, the current interpretation of Roman and Neo's relationship as being filial and not romantic is dependent upon the events of “Roman Holiday.” Barring further information and a backstory that was never expected but is now being released, an interpretation was made in Deerington that the two were best of friends, allies, trusted compatriots, loyal to each other, but not romantically involved. The reality will be confirmed and updated, but for now the following is made with assumptions made prior to Roman Holiday. It is safe to assume that this relationship will probably remain consistent, as there is a 10 year age difference between them in “Roman Holiday.”)

Roman is everything. This cannot be stressed enough for Neopolitan. She has forsaken her family, such as it is, for the loyalty that she feels to Roman Torchwick, and later his memory as the only person who has ever been good to her. She trusts him implicitly and obeys his orders without hesitation. Where she sneers and mocks literally everyone else in the canon with supreme confidence, she demures to him, listens to his advice, heeds his words and seems capable of communicating with him without words. In fact, we never so much as see her speak in the first three volumes until she sends a single text message to Roman saying 'guess who's here' when Ruby arrives for their fateful confrontation in the Fall of Beacon, something that could not be conveyed non-verbally. She uses text communications regularly with others to convey information, but with Roman she does not have to. They fight without words, easily coordinating highly ornate tactics, making use of her semblance in battle without issue and seeming to almost implicitly know each other's wants. They care about each other's well-being, where it can safely be said that neither is shown to care about anyone else in the world's safety, not even their allies'. She is devastated when he dies (reflected in the song “One Thing,” a curiosity of the series being that canonical information is sometimes revealed and hinted through the lyrics of its soundtrack, such as the nature of Ruby's relationship to her mother in “Red Like Roses.”), and spends the rest of the series to date seeking only vengeance for his death with almost suicidal abandon. Roman is the only person who understands her. He is the only person she can be fully herself with. He is the only person she loves, even if that love is of filial and friendly adoration, as her best friend (rather than lovers).

Theirs is a relationship built on obvious trust and respect, and there is an element of it that implies that they view the world in the lens of themselves against the world. Nobody can be trusted other than each other, and they will do whatever it takes to protect each other. Roman's reaction to Neo's falling off the battleship just before his death, as he screams out her name (where he never gave a fig about anyone else) and seems to lose his mind in his remaining attacks speaks to it, that the only person he actually cared about was her. They aren't good people, but they're good to each other, and without him Neo is a lost, violent woman who knows only to destroy her enemies until there is no fight left in her and she can finally die.

Ruby Rose:
Neo barely knows who Ruby Rose is, other than as the woman who took her Roman away from her. She's met her in the canon a scant few times, and without exception, they were violent ones. Whether it was their first meeting where she rescued Roman from Team RWBY's wrath, the Train to Beacon where she tried to kill Yang as a distraction at Roman's orders, the Fall of Beacon on a battleship or years later when she appears seemingly out of nowhere in Ruby's life trying to plunge her into the darkness and end her life, even if it kills her, it's always violent between them. She doesn't know her, and who Ruby is, what Ruby cares about, who loves Ruby, who Ruby's family is, the fact that she's trying to save the world from the fate that Roman was afraid of? None of that matters. Neo doesn't need to know anything other than one simple fact.

Ruby knocked her off the battleship and because of that her Roman is dead.

That singular fact creates a laser focus for Neo. While she still clearly harbors intent to enact vengeance upon Cinder, she has no willingness to defer it with Ruby. She is not out to hurt Ruby by killing her friends. When she knocks Yang off the platform to her seeming doom, Neo doesn't celebrate for the look of grief, shock and horror in the eyes of Yang's sister. No, she's furious. Her attack was meant for Ruby, to stab her through the heart and kill her. She didn't want to kill Yang, nor Blake, nor Weiss. She wanted to murder the woman who had taken her Roman from her, and nothing else mattered. She didn't want to torture her, to make her suffer. It was as simple as an “Eye for an Eye, a Life for a Life.” She had stolen Roman away, caused Neo's life to be without meaning, and now Neo wanted only one thing: She and Cinder to die. Everything else in this world was extraneous, and until she was falling in the darkness to her death, trying to choke Ruby to death even still then, unwilling to let the fall kill her but insisting that it be her that did it? There was no hope that anything else was possible, and there may still be no hope within her world and life. All she sees is blood.

(Events within the CRAU will include a major update to Ruby's relationship with Neo, below.)

Cinder Fall:
Neopolitan wants to kill Cinder Fall. It is important to never forget that at one time? Neopolitan actively attempted to murder Cinder Fall in the streets of Mistral and has, on at least one other major occasion, acted very much in her own benefit to manipulate and harm Cinder's interests, stealing the Relic of Knowledge from Salem in order to blackmail Cinder. Cinder is a means to an end, and also one of two ends on her own. She is one of the two people who Neopolitan holds personally responsible for the Death of Roman Torchwick, the only person in all of Remnant that Neo ever gave a shit about. She hates her. She distrusts her. She frankly doesn't appear to think much of Cinder's plotting abilities and demonstrates on several occasions that she openly disrespects the woman's ability to actually understand the limitations or utility of her allies, having to prove herself again and again to Cinder whenever the other seems unimpressed because someone can't do her job for her. Unlike Emerald, however, there is no worship for Cinder in her eyes. Cinder will get her to Ruby, and Neo wants Ruby dead. That is all that matters. Cinder must die. Ruby must die. In Neo's mind and behavior, Cinder is simply the more powerful of the two, and so her vengeance will have to wait until a moment that her back is turned and she can stab her in it.

Arguably, Neopolitan also underestimates the scale to which Cinder will consume her own allies on a mere whim. For the slightest of slights, or merely being the one to point out the obvious failures that Cinder has had, Cinder will murder any number of powerful and useful allies in cold blood, replacing them at the slightest provocation. This has come back to bite her in the ending events of Volume 8, when she is betrayed in turn by Cinder to her death. In part, one can argue that she put Cinder at risk, but she also demanded only what Cinder had mutually promised they wanted (and wanted herself, the death of Ruby Rose), and her actions ensured the Relic of Knowledge was not lost. Neopolitan will not likely assume that Cinder would not simply try to murder her again in a heartbeat without warning or reason in the future, a lesson hard learned.

Emerald Sustrai, Arthur Watts, Mercury Black and other Allies:
Neopolitan is noteworthy in that she doesn't display close relationships within the span of the canon with anyone other than Roman. She works easily with others, quickly taking orders as necessary, but showing an active unwillingness to do so when she sees them as fruitless or not helpful towards her goals. She does not actively show disrespect towards others, other than generally rolling her eyes whenever she thinks they're stupid or do not appear to understand her, but she generally allows herself to be a background presence right up until the moment that she's needed. She then steps in, makes her move with almost surgical precision and supports them in a fight without hesitation. Once the job is done, however, she's not seen socializing with anyone or spending quality time with her allies. She exists, in a fashion, within a bubble of her own world and seems only to be distantly aware of the needs or concerns of others.

The above relationships change in one specific case in the CRAU of Deerington, Emerald Sustrai, which will be explained below.

• Summary of CRAU Impact:
Two major impacts for Neopolitan are key canon relationships with Ruby Rose and Emerald Sustrai. While her relationships with other cast members have been rocky, moving towards neutral territory with occasional positive moments such as her building friendship with Oscar Pine, the central theme of Neo's transformation in Deerington has surrounded specifically these two people. In one case, they finally began to matter to each other, and in the other they were able to finally achieve closure.

First of all, Neo finally got what she wanted. She murdered Ruby. Countless people tried to convince her that her desire to vengeance would not make her happy and she retorted that she knew this, and did not expect happiness, only for Ruby to die like Roman had died. People tried to plead that death was not the end, and Neo insisted she would kill her until she didn't come back. They tried to say that there were bigger concerns, and Neo shut them down over and over again, trying not once, not twice, but three and more times to actively murder her rival. She was warned that people would try to kill her, and snorted, replying that of course they would because Ruby was the kind of girl who got protectors. Nothing would sway her, not until the day that she was forced to do the one thing she had never planned to do in all the time she tried to kill Ruby.

She talked to her.

That was the beginning of the end, the beginning of closure. Ruby Rose did the unthinkable to Neopolitan. She did not pretend or lie, did not excuse. She forgave Roman for causing the senseless deaths of so many in Beacon, apologized to Neo for taking him away from her, embraced that she'd hurt Neopolitan in a way that could never be hurt, and forgave her in turn. It wasn't immediate. It took several conversations, several occasions where Ruby had to realize why Neo hated her so much. It wasn't like that time with Tyrian when she asked if it was about Roman and the man just laughed. Roman had been Neo's life, and battle had claimed his life. What if Neo had taken Yang or her father away from her? (Never mind that she damned near took Yang away from Ruby in Volume 8. they didn't know this until just now.) Ruby's forgiveness was something Neopolitan hadn't wanted, and she at first hated her for it, and then began to realize that what she needed was to be able to put Roman's spirit to rest in her life, to be able to come to terms with his death: Whether that was by murdering the woman who killed him and then finally dying herself, or crying as she realized that Ruby was sorry that he'd died and the two finally forgiving each other, because Ruby was the only other person who gave a damn he was dead. When Neo killed Ruby, she was cursed, driven insane. She'd forgiven Ruby, and as the haze of madness faded she saw her dying with her umbrella's blade sticking out of her chest and she wanted nothing more than to stop this, to take it back, to keep her alive even as she flaked away.

The two have reached a shaky truce. They've forgiven each other. They've made peace and Neo in part is willing to try and be there for Ruby. However, she also feels a deep emotional divide with Ruby. Everything she does causes Ruby pain, and likewise much of Ruby's actions are painful for Neopolitan. She has hurt her family and friends, and she doesn't know if she deserves the forgiveness that was granted to Emerald, the home that her lover was given. But at the same time, Ruby is one of the only people who understands, and so Neo is trying... Even with the confusing images of volume 8 in her mind, she is trying to stay forgiving. The road back from the abyss is a rocky one.

Emerald Sustrai is another major, changed relationship. Where the two were co-workers once, they weren't terribly close. They worked alongside one another, and she did Emerald more than a few favors in saving Cinder's sorry ass, but they weren't friends. However, when Emerald arrived in the nightmare that was Deerington, she was also the only person who remembered their world from their perspective and so she initially gravitated around her. She didn't have many friends, and Emerald became one of her only close friendships in the nightmare. Over time, friendship blossomed, and Emerald became one of the supporting rocks who bolstered Neo's willingness to forgive Ruby and try to change who she was. She, in turn, began to give Emerald the first tastes of someone who cared about her in ways Cinder never would. Rather than an abusive relationship, Neopolitan was simply a friend who was there for Emerald. Her home was safe, if cold and sterile. They would protect each other, and Neo would ask nothing of her, other than not being in her way at first when she still tried to kill Ruby. And with time, they began to find there was more.

Neo fell in love. She found something she wanted to live for, more than simply something she was willing to die to achieve. She found in the lost girl abused by a cruel, rapacious and all-consuming force of envy that was Cinder Fall someone who was worth having around and making part of her life. At first tentatively and teasingly they flirted. Unsure, they dated, going on little crime sprees (because they're still terrible people, let's not kid ourselves.). They protected each other, and they fell fully in love. Eventually, after they shared a bed, in the final hours of the nightmare, Neo asked Emerald to marry her and the two were wed in a fast civil ceremony right before the end of the dream. Trusting in the possibility of a happy life, of a life lived instead of existed, Neo pledged herself to her love and married her.

Finding out (in all likelihood) that Emerald Sustrai did not arrive in Trench will break Neopolitan, but not the same way that Roman did. Emerald gave her hope, and she will cling to that hope, wanting to continue to build something for her lover to come and find when she washes up on the shore one day. Neopolitan waited her whole life to fall in love, to find someone besides Roman who understood her, and she is willing to wait for years, for decades, for her whole life to find her again.

Besides these changes in relationships (which are massive ones by canonical standards, even if Emerald's transformation in game prefaced unexpectedly her redemption arc in Volume 8, an accurate prediction of the direction of the character's arc.), Neo's relationships to the entire RWBY cast in Deerington changed fundamentally. Her relationships with several characters remained very strained, particularly Jaune Arc and Nora Valkyrie, neither of whom had reason to trust her when they arrived. Her relationships with Yang and Qrow were equally troubled, but developed over time to a point where they were willing to trust in each other to step in, should someone go crazy during a nightmare-fueled event. She has a certain respect for the old drunk, though it is a shaky one at times, and relies on him to help keep her from losing it at key points. Oscar Pine, more willing than most to forgive her past transgressions and understand her reasons, has become something of a distant friend to her, one who helps her understand some of the nature of the mistakes she made in working for Salem.

In general, Neopolitan has begun to find something she didn't have in RWBY: A Support Network. She had only one person she could trust in Remnant. In Deerington, others rose to the surface like Helena Bertinelli, Darth Maul, Scorpia, Varian, Michael and others. Each of them struggled in their relationships with Neopolitan because while she could be easy to have a good time with once, she was a violent, untrusting and obsessed woman, which made ongoing relationships difficult. Yet, each of them for their own reasons found purpose in continuing to associate her and she started to understand the concept of a network of friends. She's still not 'good' at making friends, and she tends to mock others more easily than she does trust them, but she's actually able to grow close to others eventually, which is a major shift in her time.

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:
1) Self-Reliant (Video Clip)
Neo is shown throughout the series to be both gifted with her illusionary tactics and quite simply good at what she does. Besides being the sort of thing that is a tip of the hat to her skill set as a sneak-thief, rogue and B&E expert, it is reflective of an aspect of her character that comes out in particular after the death of Roman Torchwick. Neo depends on nobody but herself. She has survived on her own. Nobody understands her, and she needs nobody because the one person she needed is dead, and she's alone in this world. So, she learns how to fend for herself, how to force other people to rely upon her. Despite her bravado, Cinder is not able to enter Atlas in a timely fashion in this sequence, and is left licking her wounds, trailing weeks behind Team RWBY and the advancing armies of Salem. Neopolitan takes advantage of this vulnerability to force Cinder to rely on her, as she does on several other occasions (which admittedly causes Cinder to view Neo as more threat than ally in the end, as she is both a crutch and prone to threatening her well being, potentially resulting in one of the reasons that Neo is betrayed in Volume 8). She refuses to be the person to rely on others. She is not weak. She is not disabled. She is not “differently abled.” She simply is a woman who does not speak, and who neither needs to, nor cares to. Nobody is worthy of her words, and she eye-rolls at the world around her who isn't Roman Torchwick. She will just make herself better than them, force them to rely on her, force them to interact with her on her terms, and if they don't? She can simply take the controls and fly away, leaving them in her dust (considering she's the one who pilots the vehicles throughout volumes 6-8 for Cinder, she could literally do just that.).

This self-reliance comes at a significant price. Refusing to rely on others, there are occasions where she stands or falls purely off of her own skills. She works well with others, but only to a certain point. When she fights alone, she does so without a support network or safety net. It's nearly gotten her killed several times in more recent volumes. In Deerington, it was a significant problem for her early in until she began to accept the help of others (Oscar, Maul, Helena and Emerald in particular). When she attempted to murder Ruby with the help of a magically cursed book, for instance, working on her own caused her to end up cursed by the book and literally dig herself into the sewer system of Deerington rather than accomplish her task.

2) Chutzpah (Video Clip)
Neo is confident is like calling water wet. She does not back down from threats. Faced with opposition from 4 trained huntsmen perfectly capable of slaughtering powerful monster named Grimm, she is utterly unperturbed. She adapts, changes tactics, keeps her fight up and does not shy away from the potential danger. Whatever her goal is, numbers are not a concern. She puts her life on the line without blinking or hesitation and shows only the smallest of concerns if the odds seem against her. Neopolitan is not simply confident, but rather prone to outright audacity in her activities that reflects the yiddish concept of Chutzpah. She has the cheek to take a person on, emotionally manipulate them in the fight, brazenly take the prize away from them, and walk away whistling and skipping. It is not merely that she is confident in her skills, but that her confidence is part of her skillset. If you believe that you can do a thing strongly enough, you will act with the brazenness to see it happen. This lack of hesitation has, in many occasions worked in her favor.

In reality, this as much a double edged sword as one can have. On the one hand, it can permit the unlikely to happen simply because someone lunges in where angels fear to tread. In Remnant, it is powerful because it makes her nearly invisible to Grimm who rely on strong emotions like Fear or Rage to home in on a target, as even in her most venomous vengeful state she is coldly methodical in her actions. However, it can easily cause a person to overstep boundaries, getting them deep into situations which, when it's remembered that she is stubbornly self-reliant, can leave a person hanging quite literally by her fingers with the object of their revenge clinging to their ankle seconds before being kicked into the darkness far below.

3) Loyalty (Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3 in Sequence)
(Please ignore the actual texts in clip 3. Finding a clip of the scene is difficult. The focus is on the subsequent scene in fandom. In the sequence, Neo threatens to keep the Relic of Knowledge, which she knows Cinder needs, in order to get them back on track going after Ruby.)

Many characters are loyal to those they love. Very few will willingly put their lives on the line on the back of a flying battleship surrounded by monstrous Grimm, thousands of feet from a potential death, just for someone they love. Even fewer, when they survive that fall, will spend the next many months of their lives hunting down the two people they deem responsible for the death of the one they love, willingly team up with one to kill the other, but always plot and prepare with the intent to murder them both merely for the memory of the one person that they love and care for. Neopolitan does not love easily, be this a love of family, a love of friends or romantic love. She has few, if any, friends and the ones she has? She will kill for them without hesitation. She will hide the bodies. She will start a war for them. She will initiate the destruction of an entire city. When they die? She will forego shame, forego sustenance and her well-being, foresake her life, team up with the devil itself for a day if it gets her just one step closer to killing them. She will do anything in her power for them, and if she doesn't have enough power? She will get enough power to do what they need. With Neopolitan, loyalty is mono-focus, bordering on outright obsession. Roman Torchwick was her world, and if he had told her to jump in a fire, she probably wouldn't have bothered to look back at him other than to wink. She willingly helped start a war that would consume her home town in flames and lead to countless deaths. She methodically hunted Cinder down and only stopped her mad plan for vengeance when it was clear she would die before killing Cinder, and teamed up with her to kill Ruby. But when the chance presented itself, she manipulated Cinder ruthlessly, threatening her life in a way that made it clear to both of them that she had never once stopped planning vengeance on her as well. All of this was for Roman's memory. If you have earned her loyalty, she will do anything for you.

Mono-focus comes with its own obvious drawback: Tunnel Vision. Neopolitan was, in Canon and at the start of her time in Deerington, incapable of seeing anything but one thing: Her loyalty to the memory of Roman Torchwick. Only an eye for an eye was enough, a life for a life. She could see nothing else, and until the moment Ruby Rose embraced the memory of Roman along with her, she was probably not capable of seeing anything beyond her vengeance. It was the only thing that ever broke her rigid focus, seeing someone who shared her loyalty for someone that she cared about (even if Ruby did not care as much, she cared. Nobody had ever cared for she or Roman, and now his own killer had done so.). But, until that time she was incapable of seeing beyond her loyalty, and in fact did not even make an attempt to do so. Instead, she simply acted out of nearly blind faith in Roman and his memory.

(2+) Negative Experiences:
1) Flippant (Scene: The Schnee Party, as Jacques Schnee is carted off to prison)
Neopolitan is perhaps one of the most flippant people imaginable at times. Even though she takes things very professionally in terms of getting the job done, she treats the world that is not Roman Torchwick with utter disdain. Perhaps one of the most obvious occasions of this comes when Jacques Schnee is arrested. Neo, posing as a house servant, is able to observe events, learning that the city of Mantle far below is about to freeze to death, forsaken to the Grimm. Jacques has been arrested for treason, and the literal armies of hell are descending in a cloud of monstrosities in the distance, Salem at their head. Meanwhile, Neopolitan skips as she walks away from the scene, completely unconcerned with the plights of those she leaves behind. It is not that she can alter the situation, but rather the casual way in which she shows an utter lack of empathy towards others. She shows no real emotion that descends past the eyeroll on her face, the smiles and flippant skipping she uses. Neo is almost emotionally stunted by the mono-focus that she shows towards her relationship with Roman. It is not that she doesn't care. She is almost incapable of caring about others. She stopped caring about anyone who wasn't Roman a very long time before the series, and people can be dying in front of her, the world can be burning, and she behaves on the surface like a child. Part of it is an act, but part of it is also very real. She doesn't care about others, not deeply. This is born from the fact that, as the song “One Thing” indicates, nobody in the world of Remnant but Roman ever game a real damn about her. She's grown most of her life with only one person, and at this point she's returned the favor and no longer considers any of the people that she meets worth her time. It isn't childishness, because children care about people's reactions. It's not even self-centeredness, because ultimately what she does is primarily in the memory of a man now years dead. It's a complete lack of empathy.

In deerington, this finally began to break down. She actually spent time with Emerald Sustrai without the two of them being on a job, and realized that Emerald might have given a shit about her from the start. It might not have been much of a shit back in canon, but she cared a tiny bit, and that started to open the door. When Oscar empathized with her, and Ruby asked her forgiveness, the walls of defenses began to break down and she experienced something she was deeply uncomfortable with: Empathy and caring for others. However, this does not come naturally to her. She isn't able to put aside her disdain easily, and most interactions are still just surface ones with her.

2) Hatred (Clip)
There is hate. Then, there is what Neo has. She and Ruby Rose are falling into the darkness towards what both must assume is their deaths. Both have enough knowledge thanks to the relics to know just how perilous this fall is, and until the moment Ruby wakes on the shore of some strange place and Volume 9 begins, they didn't know that they would survive the fall. Ruby is about to die, the fall sure to kill her and that's not good enough for Neo. Neopolitan demands that she be the one to put her hands around her throat and choke the life out of them as they both fall to their doom. She doesn't want Ruby to die. She wants to be the one who kills her, and nothing else is acceptable. The hate has kept her alive, rather than plunging into despondency and loss with mourning. It fires her every action from Volume 4 onwards. However, it is a vicious, all-consuming, mind-breaking hatred of Cinder and Ruby that fills every waking moment of Neopolitan. It is a poison that has seeped into her soul more surely than any honeyed words of Salem. In fact, it is so all-consuming that it transcends even fear of Salem. Tyrian, Hazel, Oscar, Emerald, Mercury, Cinder, Arthur, they are all terrified of Salem and, even when they argue with her immediately bow to the slightest crook of her finger. Neo bows to her face, but without a second thought steals directly from Salem. She sneaks around her base of operations in the name of furthering her vengeance. Salem doesn't even try to convince her to join the cause, and Neo doesn't approach her for help killing Ruby. Satan themselves does not even enter the equation of her mindset. She sees only red, knows only vengeance, feels only hatred, blind, methodical, obsessed hatred. It is killing her inside (And in Volume 9 she will probably be forced to either die for her hatred or finally break past it. Only Volume 9 will tell us if that's even possible in canon, outside of CRAU influence.)

Arguably, the only reason that she never could break past her hatred is that she was never allowed to see anything else, and didn't allow herself to see anything. When Ruby forced her to face the fact that they could both have remorse and shame for what happened in Beacon, pain finally became weeping, became the first glimmers of closure. Still, she struggles with the fact that, however much she has grown to care about Ruby's well-being, she also still hates her. She may always hate her somewhat, even if they become friends, because she will still have been the woman who saw Roman die. But, at least she has finally begun to heal.

3) No Moral Compass (Clip)
The scene in context is of a time she is ordered to stall and try to kill Yang by Roman. She does so, fully aware that they are riding on a train that is filled with explosives and attracting every Grimm in a the ruins they've left behind. She is well aware that what she is doing means that Grimm will pour into the city of Beacon, murder innocents and unleash untold carnage. She does so without blinking because Roman told her to do it. It isn't that Neopolitan is an evil, totalitarian person who wants to crush her enemies. It is that she has nearly no moral compass and has never once demonstrated one, other than a very crude, basic interpretation of an Eye for an Eye. She does not care about murder, about property destruction, about arms dealing, breaking an entering, impersonation, kidnapping, assault, hacking, grand-theft or presumably anything else. Laws do not matter to her. Rules mean nothing. Other people suffering doesn't matter. On the one hand, this is freeing. When she informs people that she intends to kill Ruby Rose, her totalitarian, over-simplified world-view makes it perfectly easy to accept that Yang, Calavera and others will try to kill her right back, and to just take it on the chin as a consequence of her actions. Actions have consequences and she's fine with that, because she only cares about getting the job done, not who gets hurt along the way. It's hard to even call this a pragmatic focus. It borders on the robotic, as it does not allow any real value judgments to factor into its thinking.

In Remnant, there are occasions where this has its advantages. The most noteworthy is the fact that she is able to carry the Relic of Knowledge without being hunted down by the literal Grimm armies attracted to it as she skips through the carnage of Atlas. While her semblance's illusions may be helping here, it is just as important that this kind of value-less viewpoint permits Neopolitan to remain calm and focused at nearly all times. Her smiles are skin deep. Her laughs and eyerolls barely have a thought behind them. Grimm are attracted to emotion, and she doesn't exude much of that, making her hard for Grimm to hunt. It's a survival tool in Remnant, but anywhere else? It makes her an amoral murderer.

In Deerington, it isn't possible to say that this has truly changed. While she has learned empathy and begun the arduous road of forgiving Ruby Rose, she still doesn't actually feel any real compunctions about criminal or immoral acts. If an illegal act would get what she wants, she does it without hesitation, and she doesn't really care if others are hurt. Winter sees this in her when the two fight the pirates on the boat. What Winter perceives as cowardice is just a lack of caring about doing the right thing. She helps only because it is convenient, and because she's gotten an order she doesn't disagree with actively. Teaching Neopolitan actual ethical restraint may be a much longer process than even teaching her to care.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers:
-Aura: All characters in Remnant possess Aura, which can be closely akin to 'ki' or the Force. Most citizens are not trained its use and so it never develops beyond simply existing (causing normal citizens to be vulnerable to attack like anyone else). It is the manifestation of a human being's soul, and to have greater functionality must be 'unlocked' via use of another's Aura or training. Those who train in the use of Aura are able to create a field that to protects them to a limited extent from physical injury, increases overall physical robustness and the rate of healing, along with augmenting attacks through additional physical force. It gives limited protection against the elements and generally shields a user.

Most Aura users are simply 'better' than an average soldier at what they do, edging close to the supernatural. However, the supply of one's aura is generally sufficiently low that most Aura user's abilities are either a reflection of their semblance or their actual combat training.
Limitations in Deer Country: Neo's Aura is never shown to be particularly impressive compared to most. Her healing factor is only slightly augmented, and she can only take so much damage before she feels it break, which it can do easily. She relies on not getting hit far more than she does on her toughness, and this will persist in Trench. Her aura makes her more robust than a normal person, but not supernaturally so. There shouldn't be much need to 'nerf' this power. If one wants an actual number, she's probably 2x as tough as the average soldier despite her stamina, without reaching superhuman levels.

-Semblance: “Overactive Imagination” Named as an outcropping of her own imagination creating the appearance of Neopolitan that she now wears, her semblance is the ability to create elaborate visual illusions through forming her aura into shards of light. These illusions have limited physical presence and can deflect attacks, allowing them to appear to be the real thing until a stiff hit strikes, at which point they shatter like glass, revealing that Neo was nearby, invisible. These illusions can take on much larger structures like a helicopter with effort and concentration over long periods, but doing so is draining.
Limitations in Deer Country: I consider her illusions to be complimentary to the power that she possesses through her Blood Type, and so the two will essentially be fused into one power. As such, with her power reliant on her blood more than her Aura, it will be changed subtly to reflect a co-location effect described immediately below.

• Blood Type: Darkblood
• Omen: A Black Cat named Licorice
Neopolitan's Omen is a surprisingly normal looking black cat. Never one for pets, she is followed around by a creature of ill-omen who watches her every act, purring from time to time. It reminds her of how the Authority would chase after her and hound her almost every day until she made peace with Ruby. She names it Licorice, because of course little miss candy-name would.

• Blessed Day: July 4th
• Patron Pthumerian: The Reckoning
(Despite the fact that Neo herself is a violent murderer who has created a great deal that deserves punishment, she is herself something of a figure of absolute vengeance. Even making peace with her hated enemy, she is still a retributive soul. An Eye for an Eye, like the Reckoning itself. She can appreciate that absolutism...

Even if part of her understands the Doorway's waiting for something that may never come to pass.)

• Blood Power Manifestation:
-Power: Schroedinger's Neopolitan
Neopolitan's blood fuses with her aura, causing her illusionary powers to work mostly normally, but when she is creating an illusory copy of herself there are always two. Until one of them shatters, even Neopolitan is not 100% sure which of them is the 'real' her, like Schroedinger's Cat. This does not allow her to teleport, so much as simply choose which copy is the real her the moment that she allows one to be shattered.

Her Blood Power is an augmentation to/complimentary aspect of her canonical power, helping to justify her canonical power being largely unchanged.

Writing Samples

One: Neo and Ruby nearly come to blows (A Canon Point scene where their end volume 8 canon is running in conflict with memories of Deerington and the two struggle to piece their minds together.)
Two: Tense Times with Winter Schnee (Picture perfect image of how different her self-serving attitude is from the selfless soldier's.)
Three: Awkward Talks with Oscar (A reminder that, at her current canon point, even if there is tension she still isn't out to get those who aren't Ruby, which makes remembering that they were becoming friends easier)
Four: Dragging out of the Water with Maul (Her no-nonsense attitude in working with the usually very dangerous ally)

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Other Characters

N/A – First Character (Jointly Apping as Vira-Lorr from Record of Agarest War)

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