Neopolitan

**Neopolitan** (ニオポリタン, *Nioporitan*), born **Trivia Vanille** (トリビア バニラ, *Toribia Banira*) and now better known as **Neo** (ネオ, *Neo*), is the partner of Roman Torchwick, with the two sharing a romantic bond. Her weapon of choice is called Hush, a parasol with a concealed blade. After the Fall of Beacon, she hunts down Cinder Fall in revenge for Roman's death, but subsequently joins forces with her, shifting her target to Ruby Rose.

However, she was betrayed by Cinder in the Central Location and knocked into the void, finding herself in the Ever After.

## Description

### Appearance

Neo, themed after Neapolitan ice cream, has the appropriate trio of colors in her hair and on her outfit. While sometimes altered via illusion for disguise, her hair color is typically half pink and half brown, with white streaks on the pink side. As of Volume 6, Neo's hair is also styled differently. It is noticeably thicker with a slight wave to it along with shorter bangs and missing her white streaks.

Neo's natural eye color changes between brown, pale pink, and white, and they can alternate coloration in differing combinations, with this ability apparently being entirely under her control. Neo appears to have a condition known as heterochromia iridum, where the eyes of a subject have two different colors. In her case, it is complete heterochromia, where one iris in its entirety is a different color from the other. During her childhood, her left eye was pink and her right eye was brown. In Volume 3, she is seen wearing green eyeshadow, starting with her paramedic disguise.

Despite being in her twenties by the start of RWBY, Neo is also rather diminutive in stature, compared to the rest of the main cast, including Ruby Rose, as shown in the height chart presented by Monty Oum. This is demonstrated in "No Brakes", when she stands off against Yang Xiao Long, as Neo is only able to reach her chin despite wearing high heels.

Neo sports an outfit while still wearing Roman's hat. It consists of a chocolate brown jacket that starts just below her shoulders and above her chest and has a pink interior, two brown belt shoulder straps and twin gray button seams. She wears a gray scarf similar to Roman's, and a white three gray button-up vest style top that is strapless and cropped exposing her midriff. She also wears a pair of chocolate brown detached sleeves with puffy tops and pink trim alongside a pair of white funnel cuffed gloves with gray button detailing. She also wears white belted pants and black and white spat styled ankle boots with cutout detail just above the ankle. The back of Neo's jacket is shown to have a small, coned ice cream key chain that is usually covered by her hair.

### Personality

In her early years as Trivia Vanille, Neo was withdrawn due to being isolated from the world by her criminal parents who couldn't accept her heterocromia, semblance or muteness. As a result, she created an imaginary friend named Neopolitan, whom was her desired future self. As she grew up, Trivia grew to hate her family and constantly escape home with the help of her semblance. This lead her to meet Roman Torwick, who accepted her muteness and saw how useful her semblance was; leading to the newly self-christened Neo to form a partnership with him. At this point she had no love for her family, feeling happy they died in the dust explosion that destroyed her childhood home.

Roman was the sole person Neo put her trust and respect in, since he saw value in her. Their partnership was steady, unlike their alliance with Cinder's Faction, which they only agreed to under threat of Cinder's allies in a secret cabal. Proof of this is that Roman went into a rage against Ruby Rose for sending Neo flying into a flock of Grimm during the Battle of Beacon. Surviving that, Neo later returned the sentiment by seeking revenge against Ruby for her supposed involvement with Roman's death; to this end, she allied with Cinder again, as both wanted her dead.

Neo exhibits a stern, pragmatic and businesslike demeanor at the White Fang meeting. However, when intervening to help Roman following his defeat, she wears a self-assured and authoritative smile, and she politely bows to Team RWBY, showing confidence on the battlefield. Neo's confidence is also seen in her fight with Yang, smiling throughout the entire fight, whilst quietly mocking and taunting her as well. She displays confidence before the fight, not only against Yang, but also Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna, as she reveals herself immediately to the trio, and is prepared to fight them.

Neo is also shown to have a sadistic and manipulative side, as seen in her smile when she prepared to stab Yang. However, she does seem to exhibit fear and hesitance when she knows that she is outmatched, fleeing if her opponent proves to be as such. It is shown when Raven Branwen appears and engages her on the White Fang cargo train. Neo also appears to have a vengeful side, as seen in her attempt to kill Cinder for her part in Roman's death, only stopping when Cinder reveals her full power and agrees to work with Neo to kill Ruby.

Neo does not trust anyone except Roman, but is willing to ally as long as there is a common interest or she has leverage over them. Hence why she agrees to ally with Cinder to kill Ruby (after being intimidated by her Maiden magic into not blaming her), but looses her patience when Cinder puts appeasing Salem first; thus she uses the Relic of Knowledge as collateral to make Cinder put their deal first. Ultimately, Neo learned Cinder couldn't be trusted as she kicked her, along with Ruby into a void.

## Trivia

* Her name and appearance reference Neapolitan ice cream, which is a combination of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla flavors. These colors correspond to her color scheme.
	+ However, it is also speculated that she also alludes to Mary Poppins from the book of the same name, due to her umbrella and magic-like abilities as well as her semblance.
	+ From the 8th to the 11th of July 2014, Monty hinted at this long before the character's first appearance by tweeting pictures of Neapolitan ice creams.
* There has been some confusion regarding the spelling of Neo's name. Prior to 2019, it was spelled as one word, "Neopolitan", by the series' creator, the late Monty Oum, as well as on merchandise. In 2019, Rooster Teeth claimed that her name was spelled "Neo Politan" (her presumed first and last name), due to Neo's character files in the game *RWBY: Amity Arena* being named "Neo\_Politan", a fact allegedly confirmed by the *RWBY* crew (affectionately nicknamed "CRWBY"). However, with the release of *The World of RWBY: The Official Companion* book, the confusion was settled when her name was confirmed to be spelled "Neopolitan". Despite this, the crossover fighting video game *BlazeBlue: Cross Tag Battle* retained the two-word spelling.
* *Neo-* (νεο-) is also a Greek prefix, meaning "new". In English, "neo-" is also used as a prefix to denote something that is contemporary, recent, modern, or new. The word neapolitan itself derives from the Greek *Neápolis* (Νεάπολις), meaning "new city". Neo also means "young" and "immature" in Greek, usually in medical terms.
* Monty stated during the August 21st Rooster Teeth livestream that Neo's design is partially based on a presentation-play cosplay of Torchwick made by one of his friends.
* Neo, according to a photo Monty posted on his Facebook, is the shortest person of all characters in *RWBY*.
* Though Gray G. Haddock has confirmed that Neo has an offical voice actress, she has not spoken once during her screen time. Whilst she never makes any vocalizations whatsoever in Volume 2, including grunts in combat, she does make some nonverbal sounds in the episodes "Round One" and "Heroes and Monsters".
	+ However, Neo implies she is indeed mute, as she pointed to her mouth in annoyance when Cinder says they should talk.
* Neo can change the color of her eyes at will, usually alternating between pink and brown. They can also turn white (completing the ice cream theme) although rarely; one turns white as she removes the sword from her umbrella, and both turn white when Raven appears. Later, she also changes her eyes to green as part of her tournament disguise and magenta as part of her paramedic disguise.
* Neo adopted her current name and entered a life of crime with Roman at 18; being roughly 23 at the time of Volume 7.
* Cinder says Roman was Neo's boss, but *RWBY Roman Holiday* reveals that they were equal partners in crime.