Roman struggled to keep his eye from twitching as he saw Cinder help herself to a generous pour of the scotch he'd been saving for a special occasion. He was pretty sure he'd kept it in a safe hiding spot, but of course, she knew about, and how to access, all of those. He knew she was only drinking it to make him aware of that, and he was using all of his self-control not to let her know she'd gotten under his skin.

But he brushed his feelings aside as best he could. He had a plan, and you didn't go to Cinder Fall with a plan unless you were nothing but self-confidence. Even the slightest hint of weakness and you'd be ash upon the carpet—and since they were meeting in one of his safehouses, this was a nice carpet, one he'd spent quite a bit of time picking out.

"Roman." He stifled his shudder—her voice always sounded like he was talking with the devil. "You've called us here to propose something. Talk."

Alright, showtime. He cleared his throat. "What's the common denominator in all our defeats?"

"That you suck?" Ah, how wonderful for Greenie to chime in. Truly, what a lovable gang of misfits Cinder had brought into his life.

But he did the smart thing: ignored her and kept talking. "That's right—bands of scrappy teenagers! And what beats a band of scrappy teenagers?"

Now it was Legs' turn to cut in. "Guns? Poisons? Explosives, knives, drownings, hitting them with cars…"

"Other teenagers!" That shut the kiddos up, who blanched at him with a look of disgust. "No, not you. Likable kids, like the ones we've been up against, with dreams and love triangles and that sort of thing. Not serial murderers or whatever your whole deal is."

The kids moved to whine, but Cinder silenced them. "Roman." Ah hell, now she was using her pleasant voice. Not good, not good. "You have two sentences. Use them wisely."

"I've signed up with Beacon under a fake name to get a team of Huntsmen-in-Training to serve as 'Community Outreach Interns' with one of our 'wholly legitimate' operations! We get some kids desperate for extra credit, and we exploit that in until we've got our own band of teens with attitude to use against Red and her friends!"

The kids seemed ready to mock him, but they were, like him, watching for Cinder's reaction first. Her face, befitting her status as The Devil, was unreadable as she pondered his proposal. She sipped his scotch, and then nodded. "Proceed."

Internally, he sighed with relief. Externally, he shot his smuggest grin at the kids, who impotently snarled back at him. "Well, boss, it works like-"

She cut him off. "I do not care what you plan to do. All I care for is that you do not allow this… diversion lead anyone back to us. They may be Huntsmen in training, but you've seen how dangerous that can be for our operations. They must not be allowed to know who you are. Do not fail me, Roman. Do not fail me, again."

Fine, fine. She had to threaten him to keep up the power balance. He could live with that. "Please, I'm a master criminal! A disguise to fool a bunch of kids isn't even a challenge for me."

He was expecting a lot of things from these kids. They would be, after all, the next generation of Valean criminals, the future of modern crime, and it was his sacred duty to mold them into something that upheld that glorious tradition.

What he was not expecting was to immediately have several weapons pointed straight at him when he entered the room.

"Whoa!" He put his hands up disarmingly—to no effect. Had he been betrayed? Were the kids tipped off? Cinder's lackeys would have loved to do something like this, but they weren't so stupid to sabotage his operations while they were on the same side. Or were they some kind of super-Huntsmen, trained to pierce his disguises? He recognized the famous Pyrrha Nikos among them—maybe they were an elite team of super-Huntsmen. Just his luck, of course. Well, try to play it down. They could just be excitable and heavily armed children. He put on his best "bewildered civilian" voice and hoped it'd work. "What's with the whole guns-and-swords pointed at me deal?"

The blond in the breastplate looked at him incredulously. "…because you're Roman Torchwick? An extremely wanted criminal?"

What! How did they know? How could they possibly know?

Nikos' eyes narrowed, and he was very aware of how steady her aim was with her rifle. He might need to make some calls about what odds they were offering for her in the Vytal. "Did you really think we wouldn't recognize you just because you took off your hat?" What? They had seen through that gambit? That was absolutely insane—did these children have no concept of branding?

"Surely you're mistaken! After all, this," he pulled at the lapels of his suit and laughed, in a hopefully disarming way, "is a Vinacchi. Surely, a notoriously successful master criminal wouldn't be caught dead in a brand this cheap!" They stared at him blankly. "Don't you kids know the first thing about suits?"

The blond shrugged. "I had to wear a suit for graduation?"

"What, were you raised in a barn?"

"Ren and I were," the other girl piped up, "Well, more like, several barns, and also some non-barns as well. So to answer your question: I don't know!" She advanced on him with her grenade launcher, which was somehow less intimidating than the intense smile on her face. But he had to admit, though: this girl had potential. Distressingly Neo-ish.

"Hold up, hold up, hold up!" This was bad—he needed to salvage this, quick. It would be one thing to have to cut his losses and run, it'd be another thing to admit to Cinder and the brats that the plan he'd hyped so much had failed so immediately. "Alright, so…" Think, Roman, think! Then, inspiration struck. "You!" he pointed at the blond, "you need this, right? Don't try to lie to me—I can see it on your face. You're calculating exactly how badly you need the extra credit, and if working for me might still be worth it."

Sheepishly, he looked at his friends and mumbled something that sounded like denial, but nobody was buying it. One down. He jabbed a finger at the shorter redhead. "And you, the one pointing a grenade launcher at me in a small, enclosed room!" Obliviously, she glanced behind herself, as though looking for whom he was addressing. "I'm- I'm talking to you, I'm obviously—moving along, you seem like someone who's felt stifled by Johnny Law and his tyrannical explosives regulations!"

She seemed to be receptive to his argument, stroking her chin as she contemplated it, which clearly set off a panic with her dark-haired friend. "Nora, please tell me you're not-"

"And you," Roman smirked. All too easy. "Have you, by chance, recently come to the conclusion that you have absolutely no control over your life?"

"I- I-" he stammered, then his shoulders slumped "Yeah, I have."

"So you're in!" Roman laughed and turned to- ah, dust. Her. Miss Perfect. The Invincible Girl. But he was too close, far too close, to give up now. "Alright, this one's a longshot, but how do you feel about making lots of money, like-"

"Oh, I'm in."

"-like we're talking—wait, you're in?" He gawked at her, incredulously.

"Yeah! Sounds fun." She looked at the blond. "Right, partner?"

Well, alright then. Gift horses, mouths, and all that.

"Well, welcome aboard to Team Torchwick! I think you'll find that, really, there's not that much difference between fighting the Grimm and, say, breaking into a jewelry store!"

They stared at him blankly.

"Alright, so it's nothing like that. But if you don't report me to the police, everybody gets an A. Deal?"

Starting with the redheads, then the blond, and finally, regretfully, the kid with the magenta stripe in his hair nodded their assent. Part 1 down! Now to introduce them to criminality and win them over for their side!

Neo had high hopes for the kids, really high hopes. Alas, the one she'd been saddled with in inducting into the criminal underworld was just too much of a goody-goody to have any future here. She had given him an outline of their operations, vaguely attempted to communicate with him before getting bored, and just passed him a stack of papers detailing schemes that Roman had wanted her to look over. She figured, if he was going to be interested in crime, he'd show it. And if he was hopeless, she could make him do the work she was supposed to do, which sounded like a win-win to her.

But there was just nothing there. No talent, no interest, no basic criminal ability! He was just shuffling paperwork and chatting with Junior, but without the barest hint of criminal competence.

"-then we come back for the second bite of the apple when we strip the wiring from the place." He quickly jotted down some calculations on the paper in front of him, then continued rambling about his spreadsheets or whatever. "Otherwise, we're just leaving money on the table."

No talent whatsoever.

She sighed, as Junior just stared at the kid's nerd talk in slack jawed amazement. "This- it's- I- I can't believe we've never even thought of half of these!"

"Eh, that's just the small stuff, it won't be more than a rounding error against the real plans, but it just felt wrong to not take the whole pie, you know? See, I've been looking at our bookmaking operations, and I noticed-"

Junior, alas, never had a real appreciation for criminality. For him, it was all about the money, just like with the kid. She flipped through some of his plans, hoping to find at least some spark of potential in them, but it simply wasn't there. It was just… numbers. No real opportunities for leg breaking, barely even chances for intimidation! Not a single murder in sight! And she was fairly sure this scheme with the housing bonds didn't even break the law!

But of course it impressed the hell out of Junior and his girls. Criminal dilettantes, at best, all they heard was "millions of lien" and "minimizing legal risk" and "I use fancy words like 'tranche' because I think I'm so special." Where was the violence? Where was the basic, joyful lawlessness that made getting up in the morning worth it? He was just shuffling papers around like one of those 9-to-5 losers! The Malachites were the worst, practically cooing over him as he walked them through his incredibly lame plan to do something with home loans (home loans?) that Neo couldn't even begin to care about. But they were all "Oh, please, sir, can I get you a drink?" and "Oh Mr. Jaune sir, you're soooo smart, can I light your cigar for you?" A guy waves around a series of multimillion-dollar foolproof scams and all of a sudden they couldn't get enough of him.

Idiots. She scoffed at their amateurishness.

She shot a glare at Junior for encouraging this behavior, but he, being a hopeless dweeb, was just too enamored with paper. "I can't believe we've never thought of this. I just… we've never thought this big before! And it's all legal?"

"Haven't you ever heard?" He puffed on his cigar, in some vague approximation of criminal behavior. "The best way to rob a bank is to own one!"

Neo rolled her eyes. If that was his attitude, he was truly hopeless.

Ren sighed as Nora counted out lien onto a makeshift table in the warehouse they were currently loitering in. Roman Torchwick had told her that she was a "natural criminal" who "needed no instruction," and now there was no way to dislodge that thought from her head.

"Wow! I can't believe all those businesses just gave us this money!" He stifled the urge to correct her on what "protection money" entailed. There was a 50/50 chance that pushing Nora on the ethics of criminal shakedowns would only end with Nora moving her personal morality more to the criminal side. And roughly a 10% chance she'd decide to start her own racket. She was already dangerously close to just rejecting the social contract outright, and Roman Torchwick's influence was not going to help. Sometimes it was just easier to let things slide.

"Doesn't it make you wish life was more like this back in the old days, eh Renny?"

Those words, though, like a knife in his heart, stopped him cold.

It was the wistful way she said it, the simple honesty of her voice. She was remembering the hard times, the lean times, when they, orphaned homeless beggars, went from shop to shop desperate to survive. They had been turned away, mocked, spit on, beaten up, and threatened in ways too terrible to ever want to remember. For every oasis of kindness, there were a dozen hateful, cruel men, fat on their prosperity and contemptuous of others' suffering.

It did make him wish life was like this in the old days, in all the realities of what they were doing. If she had Magnhild and he had Stormflower back then, maybe, just maybe, they'd have seen some of that milk of human kindness. They were literal! starving! orphan! children! and how many people had sneered at them in disgust, how many times had police officers threatened them with vagrancy laws? And once they had power, with their Aura unlocked and their rudimentary training, he had been so committed to living the straight and narrow, the result of a lifetime of lectures on morality and responsibility from people who never knew the painful truth that you can't eat morals. How many times had they risked their lives for traveling merchants who figured gratitude was payment enough?

Why shouldn't they enjoy the kindness they'd been denied for so long?

He smiled, a feeling of contentedness rising in his heart. "Let's count it again, Nora. And then let's see about visiting some more shops, see how generous they might be…"

Roman was astounded, simply astounded at what he was witnessing.

The Hill Street Gang were local legends. Under the brutal grip of the Rosso brothers, they were the single most dug-in gang in all of Vale. Not the biggest, not the richest, but certainly the toughest. Even he knew not to try anything on their turf, for fear of their retaliation. And yet, he watched in rapt amazement as their entire operation was being surgically dismantled by an unarmed, teenaged girl. It took all his willpower to not immediately call his bookies to update the odds they were offering with the Vytal Festival.

How could he deserve this fortune? Did some divinity realize it'd gone too far in bringing Cinder into his life? Or had he accidentally done a good deed? Maybe from one of the charities he had set up as fronts for money laundering? Or was literally every church wildly wrong about the just deserts of sinners? Or had he done so much villainy that his meter had rolled over?

Again, gift horses and mouths, but it was really hard to believe that this was his life.

As Nero Rosso slammed into the pavement, Nikos loomed over him, with that terrifyingly focused expression of a champion, knelt down, and whispered, "There will be no more sales of illicit substances in these neighborhoods. Understood?"

"Alright, alright!" he moaned piteously as she pressed her knee into his chest, "We'll stop dealing!"

He knew he had to be smart, to not immediately throw out anything too objectionable to the cereal box mascot, but it was hard to have a second enforcer this good and yet keep holding back. Just had to keep her focused on the front end: "End Hill Street's drug dealing in the neighborhood" and keep her in the dark on the followup: "So I can sell drugs in the neighborhood." And, hopefully, he could work her up into real crime eventually.

But, he reminded himself, slow and steady was the smart thing to do. As she walked back to him, no arrogance, no swagger, just the self-assured confidence of a champion, he knew he'd have to handle this issue delicately. But at the same time, he needed to learn more about her, figure out what agenda or interest had her on his side. "So, uh…" great going, champ, that's why you're the boss, "Been meaning to ask why you're so…"

"Why am I cooperating with a notorious criminal?"

"Yeah… that."

"Your plan's fairly transparent," Hurtful, but probably accurate. They did see right through the hat disguise. "Your biggest setback's been Team RWBY, correct?" He nodded. "And you're probably looking for us to defeat them, am I right?"

"Yeah, that's-"

Suddenly, she was in his face, her smile as pleasant as ever, but just like with the Rosso brothers, she radiated a violent intensity. "Then I think we're on the same page. Just let me know when I have an excuse to fight Team RWBY, and I will take care of the problem."

Words failed him in a way he only ever felt around Cinder Fall.

He tried to regain some control of the situation, to stammer something out, but she, clearly, was done here. She was all smiles as she turned to leave, turning back to leave him one last remark. "Let's just say it's about a boy."

Alright, so: she was completely insane. Now things made sense. Things made all the sense in the world.

This was the moment of truth.

Roman had been astonished by the success of his plan, in only a week of criminal induction. Profits had soared—protection payments were coming in on time, with extra, and from more businesses than ever. The money was being laundered into legitimate investments in a diversified portfolio, plus an incredibly ambitious plan of financial malfeasance. And best of all, the kids were just so eager to commit crimes.

The short one with the grenade launcher, he kind of saw that coming. And the blond looked like a smart kid, so he was really only surprised by his ridiculous ambitions. But the other boy? He seemed to have had a revelation, and took to enforcement with an almost religious zeal. For someone Roman hadn't even bothered to win over to criminality, this was a spectacular piece of luck. And it didn't even stop there—he had a four-time regional champion, a literal celebrity of professional violence, now on his payroll—oh yeah, that was right: he wasn't even paying them!

But still, it was one thing to commit regular, everyday crimes, like assault, racketeering, or bank fraud. Those were just a fun distraction from the orderly world of their school. But except for the Nikos lunatic, they'd likely find it was quite another thing to face down their friends in a head-to-head battle. They had seemed excited as he walked them through the plan—the dark haired kid certainly seemed to have developed a vendetta against the store, or possibly stores in general—but he wasn't willing to bet his run of luck would last that long.

The plan didn't really matter—the theft had gone off more or less without a hitch, except for the one hitch that was the whole point. He'd been… careless with his plans amongst some of the less-than-disciplined White Fang members and, as he hoped, a familiar shadowy figure emerged from the darkness.

"Hello, Roman." Ah, politely addressing your foes rather than shooting them from the darkness or anything sensible! He loved fighting heroes!

He shot her his biggest grin. "How wonderful to see you again, kitten! But I seem to recall the last time we went one-on-one, you took the worse of it! Shame you didn't learn anything…"

"No." He could feel the self-righteousness radiating off of her as Blondie, the Schnee girl, and, of course, Red stepped out of the shadows. "This time, I brought my friends."

"Excellent! Glad you learned a valuable lesson about friendship. You see…" he gestured to his newfound associates and savored the dramatic gasps. "I did too!"

Nikos strode forward, weapons ready, face expressionless, and practically wreathed in murderous energy. "Dibs on Weiss," she called out.

"What!?" the Schnee girl practically shrieked.

Blondie laughed uproariously at that. "Oh, man P-money, the claws are out!" She cracked her knuckles. "But if you think you're not facing me, you're out of your mind."

"Fine by me," she growled, "Don't think I haven't seen how you flaunt your-"

"Guys, stop!" Red wailed. It seemed that she had finally had enough. This would be the big- "Whoever fights Jaune should also have to fight Roman so it's fair." Oh, alright, that's how it was going to be.

"Aw, come on, Ruby!"

"Sorry."

Well, 5-on-4, especially with Nikos looking… unsettlingly focused, seemed like odds he could enjoy. He hefted Melodious Cudgel and prepared for a-

"WAIT!"

He looked around in confusion until he realized it was the other girl, the short one (he really needed to learn these kids' names). She gave them all a pleading look and Roman, on the cusp of victory, could feel his luck slipping away. "Guys… do we have to fight?"

"You're- you're robbing a Dust shop!" a flabbergasted Miss Kitty shouted.

"Yeah, but breaking the law is a lot of fun, and we're really good at it!" It did his heart proud to hear her talk like that. Practically had to wipe a tear from his eye, to see the young ones so committed to the side of larceny. "And I think you guys would be really good at it, too!"

"Wait a sec," Blondie seemed to be piecing something together. "Are you proposing that we join forces and take over crime in this city?"

Roman looked around the room, seeing as the kids seemed to weigh their options, though, from the look of things, they seemed pretty receptive to the idea. And then he noticed that they were now all looking at him. Oh. Oh, no. Yeah, they were friends, and he was now the competition. At that moment, he realized that his luck had, indeed, run out.

Brought down by teens. He should have known.

Pyrrha smirked as she looked over the city. Her city. Vale sparkled beneath her as she sipped from her glass of wine. She could point to any building and trace how each and every one of them belonged to either her or one of her allies, by direct or indirect means. But as she looked at them, she caught sight of her own reflection in the glass.

She looked good.

Say what you will about Cinder Fall, the girl had fashion sense. Red and black were a good color combination, but, in Pyrrha's opinion, she personally wore it better. Her tight black dress certainly flattered her form, and as her fiery red hair spilled over it, she had to admire the striking look she created.

"They're waiting on us, you know."

"Let them."

She had so many new titles: the Fall Maiden, the Scourge of Beacon, the Unconquerable… but "Queen of the Underworld" was her favorite. She particularly enjoyed it as she curled up into her King's embrace and pulled him into a passionate kiss. But alas, he was right, she couldn't keep their friends waiting on her pleasure, as much as she might enjoy it.

Together, they strode down from the penthouse to the meeting room, their friends seated around the great mahogany table. They had found that, once she'd established a few ground rules, RWBY and JNPR worked just as well together as international crime lords as they did at Beacon. Between the eight of them in the inner circle, they controlled not only Vale's criminal underworld, but also most of the global Dust supply, the White Fang, and many of the world's financial institutions. They made lien hand over fist, but money was only a tool. They accumulated power—the power of money, the power of fear, the power to crush anyone who might oppose them.

She and Jaune took their seats at the head of the table, their friends raising an appreciative glass to their health. She always knew Jaune had the potential to become a magnificent leader, and now everyone could see what she had seen in the Emerald Forest. He shuffled a few papers in front of him, and started to begin the meeting.

Only to be cut off when a voice asked, "You ever think we're taking things too far?"

She glanced around the room, shocked to hear an interruption, but she shouldn't have been. It was Nora, the one who had changed the least of all of them. She, always a bundle of chaos, was as at home interrupting a meeting of crime lords as she had been interrupting breakfast back when they were students.

"I mean, we've got Ozpin in a cage over there, and I can't even remember why we did that."

She looked to Ozpin, who merely shrugged and sipped his coffee. She couldn't remember why they imprisoned him, either. Strictly speaking, it made sense, he was the Headmaster of Beacon, but, judging from his general indifference towards being imprisoned, and their continued inability to figure out what, exactly, he did at Beacon, she wasn't sure what they had gained.

Jaune gave her a sheepish look, seeming to all the world to be an ordinary teenager once again. "Er, maybe we have, um… Maybe things have gotten a little out of hand." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It has been a crazy month."

"Aww, damnit," Yang whined as she slapped the table, "I was having fun."

"Yeah…" Ruby sighed wistfully. "Guess we gotta go back to being ordinary people."

Her words hung in the air as they pondered it. All around the table, she heard the sigh of deflated enjoyment and the realization that, as fun as ruling Vale with an iron fist had been, they were really just a bunch of excitable, heavily armed teenagers who were really, really good at crimes.

"Or," Ren broke the silence, "we could keep doing what we were doing, and, you know, not go back to normal?"

It was like his words flipped a switch to reboot the room. She smirked and swirled her wine glass. Yes, she was the Queen of the Underworld once more, surrounded by the shadowy, secret masters of the world, and she looked to her King, a sheaf of papers in front of him, each one containing a more devious, more dastardly plan for the world of Remnant.

"My friends," confidence restored, he raised his glass, "to Crime!"

Just a short fun story while I'm drafting out whatever my next work will be. I hope you enjoyed it!