Chapter Text
Cold white sunlight from an equally cold and white morning streaked into a room no different, large enough to serve as a full on home for a small family. There was not a shred of home or family in the Schnee Mansion, only frigid, sterile stone that luxurious fabrics and beautiful gothic arches could do nothing to ameliorate. It felt like nothing short of a tomb, despite having not a speck of dust and the bright light coming in through the balcony, and its sole occupant would very well argue it was one as she looked into the eyes of a dead woman through a full length mirror.
Weiss Schnee, her name had been. As of this morning, she was dead, for all her body still drew breath and her brain held a treasure trove of memories neatly tucked away. As though she had neatly packaged everything before moving onto the great beyond. If only there had been anywhere near as much consent and time to come to terms as that notion implied.
Aura came at the call of the body’s new inhabitant, shrouding her fingers in a miniature whiteout, rippling and fading at the edges. Exactly as Weiss' memories recalled it, were it not for the glint of blue underneath, so faint she would have missed it if she weren't holding the light of her soul inches away from her eyes. She knew that shade. It was the blue of glacial ice, made from compressed snow, all air squeezed out until clear crystal remained.
Rayleigh scattering, it was erroneously attributed to.
That... yes. There was a certain poetry in taking that. She would still use Weiss' name, it would raise too many questions and obstacles if she didn't, but she didn't have it in her to truly claim it. Weiss Schnee was dead and gone, she was simply paying lip service to the role thrust on her. But this? This she could keep tucked under that mask. A new name for a new life, something truly hers, even if it wouldn't be spoken for the longest time.
She jolted as she felt something click into place, suddenly loosening a tension she hadn't noticed was there until it left. Not on her body, but the comforting chill of her Aura. She startled a second time when she caught sight of her reflection, glacial blue meeting her gaze. She couldn't help the sound that bubbled from her throat, somewhere between a chuckle and a giggle. It seemed the eyes were truly a window to the soul.
The shift in shade was subtle, Weiss always had bright blue eyes. Nobody would notice, much less understand the significance of the change, but for her- for Rayleigh, it meant the world.
Which made it perhaps unsurprising that, when she reached with that Aura-coated hand to touch her reflection, something caught . A set of snow white and ice cold fingers interlacing with her own, as her reflection daintily stepped out of the mirror by her hand, lacking all color but a glacial blue undercoat to her hair and shining from her eyes.
“Miss Schnee?” someone asked through the door, a gentle rapping accompanying the words. It was an accented voice- British, if ‘Weiss’ had to guess. As much as there could be such a concept in this world. Remnant , what a fitting name. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”
The specter gave her an encouraging smile, snapping her out of those thoughts far more than the man’s voice. A moment of rummaging through those tucked away foreign memories returning the name ‘Klein’; specifically his calmest personality (‘Doc’, which toddler-age Weiss had been very proud to christen as such), going by the cadence of his speech.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought and did not notice the time,” Weiss replied as she wedged on the proverbial mask as well as she could, her bleached reflection deciding to show a bit of cheek by pressing her forehead into hers, stepping into her body with a comforting chill. She was still there, lurking right under her skin, a distinct presence in the background thrum of her Aura. “Or my stomach’s complaints, for that matter.”
The attempt at injecting a bit of humor into the conversation felt a little hollow, sitting awkwardly on her tongue, but what was said was said. She was simply glad that she had already taken a while familiarizing herself with this new body forced on her, dressing up following nothing but pure muscle memory. It was what had caused this current spot of awkwardness, but at least she didn’t have to send Klein with apologies to the staff and a request to reheat breakfast while she figured out how to properly clasp a bra.
“That’s perfectly alright, Miss Schnee,” Klein said through the door, making no comment on that attempt at lightheartedness. Probably for the best for all their sake’s, frankly. “I will let the staff know you are coming.”
A door which opened not a second later, the subtle sway Weiss’ heels imposed on her gait coming as naturally as breathing. What did not was having to hold Huldra - that'd work as a name for the summon - back from making her Aura bloom out into a Glyph and reach to open the door for her, the show had really undersold how willful the Schnee Semblance could be. Didn’t stop her from offering her butler a genuine smile, refusing to let this rotten day get in the way of basic courtesy. The way her cheeks felt out of place with the expression, though, said absolutely nothing good about the real Weiss’ life, “Thank you, Klein.”
“Of course, Miss Schnee,” he said, falling in line behind Weiss as the two of them walked through the long, empty hallways that made up the Schnee manor. He blinked, just for a second, and his eyes changed into a mint green (‘Dopey’) before he smiled widely at her. How she could tell without line of sight, she had little clue, perhaps the sixth sense Aura conferred? “It is an exciting day, after all! You’ll be showing off your talent to your father later.”
Thank god for the real Weiss having gotten PR training drilled into her goddamn bones , otherwise she would’ve tasted the carpet right then and there. As it was, the revelation that apparently today was the day of the Arma Gigas fight according to a frenetic rifle through Weiss’ memories ‘only’ meant that Huldra was no longer taking ‘no’ for an answer. A Glyph engraved with masks and mirrors spilled out from the soles of her feet like ink on paper, the pale specter peeling herself off her back and draping herself over her shoulders. It was only by the dint of that steadying presence that Weiss managed to roll with the proverbial punch, actually making it look like she had meant to do that by replying, “I certainly have something to show off now, no?”
Klein’s eyes widened (even if Weiss couldn’t see him) and he sneezed in surprise, his eyes flickering to a light blue and then a light brown before settling on a yellow color. “Miss Schnee!” he said, beaming in excitement. “Is that a breakthrough with your Semblance I see?”
“That you do.” Weiss replied with a smile to match - studiously ignoring how her cheeks ached at the expression - deciding to show off a bit by spinning on her heel, Huldra splitting off of her with the motion like they’d practiced the choreography for their whole lives. There may be great many things to be upset about the current state of affairs, but having what was effectively magic at her fingertips would never be one of them. Her smile still dimmed a touch as a thought hit, “Although I can only hope it is in time to make a difference.”
Huldra, of course, took that as her cue to flick her nose with a brilliant blue nail.
“Okay, okay, no moping before breakfast. Honestly .” Weiss grumbled with a long-suffering huff, the smile still tugging at her lips putting the lie to that. She could hardly be upset at one of the better parts of her soul.
Klein smiled at her again before his eyes flickered to brown. “We are always growing, Miss Schnee,” he said, ‘Doc’ back in the forefront. “You are stronger than you were yesterday, and stronger still than the day before. I have no doubt you will rise to the occasion.”
It wasn’t growth, what had happened. But she had risen to the occasion and she would be damned if she let the reality of the situation drag her down into the muck. “And if I fall, I will simply have to get back on my feet and try again. Good thing there’s helping hands pulling me up.”
A meaningful look, there, at both Klein and Huldra. She may not be the little girl the butler had all but raised, or the dead woman the specter wore the face of, but they were there for her. Weiss may be gone, but her legacy and her dreams were anything but.
“Well, Miss Schnee, I hope to see you continue that determination on the battlefield,” Klein said, stepping forward and opening the door to the dining room. “But for now, your breakfast awaits.”
____________________________________________________________________________
The dining hall - the one they normally took their breakfast in, at least - was… large. A long table with several seats upholstered in blue, two massive double-doors on either end, one wall taken up by windows into the courtyard and the other dominated by a portrait of Nicholas Schnee himself. High arches slope the ceiling into something almost cylindrical with a chandelier dangling down the center, illuminating the immense displays of wealth.
As Weiss entered the room, she found herself beaten there by Whitley, who was polishing off the last of his meal. A glance at her own place at the table showed her a now-slightly-cold soup of cabbage and carrots, a crisp looking bread roll, and an array of sliced cheese and selection of jams for her to make use of. A tiny glass of white wine and much taller glass for water was next to this, though she noticed Klein’s eyes pinching ever so slightly at the sight of Whitley gulping his booze down.
Weiss couldn’t rightly fault him for it, given the household they were all stuck in.
As far as the youngest Schnee was concerned, he appeared… a little disheveled, today. Uncharacteristically so, as she took a precious two seconds to access the relevant memories while Huldra pulled the chair for her to take a seat. White shirt, slate gray vest and pants, and a black necktie as normal, but just a tad off . The necktie was a little crooked, the vest a bit wrinkled, even his hair wasn’t as neatly combed as it should be. If any of the servants she only belatedly noticed lining the hall, so still as to be mistaken for statues, had noticed too they sure weren’t about to comment on it.
Despite seeming for all the world to be as normal and apathetic as ever, Whitley was off balance by something .
“There you are, sister.” The teenager said, voice as smooth as silk, a sneering half-smile curling his lips. At least that seemed normal enough, after another tiny lapse in focus to dive into the real Weiss’ memories. “I almost thought you weren’t going to come- but that won’t do for both the Heiress and a Huntress. You’ll need to learn to wake up early again if you’re going to find time for it all.”
“It was not a matter of when I woke up, but what kept me in my room.” Weiss replied evenly as she grabbed for the bread roll, slathering a thin layer of butter on it while her doppelganger poured her some water. As if nothing was out of the ordinary, but Huldra’s mere presence was a statement in and of itself. “I would say good morning, but that would be a lie for the both of us, wouldn’t it?”
“You realize that flaunting your mental instability will only make Father disinherit you faster.” Whitley pointed out with a raised, thin brow, as he slowly smeared his roll in some sort of berry jam. Cold blue eyes tracked Huldra’s every movement, and although he hid it unfortunately well, the boy’s unease was rather clear. “Really, sister, being so distrustful that you’d rather have a copy of yourself than an actual friend? What will your team say when you go tromping off to this… Beacon backwater?”
“Now, Master Whitley,” Klein interjected, stepping forward with a flash in his eyes. Weiss didn’t have the right angle to see what color they had shifted to, but the tone of his voice alone was telling. “Beacon is no backwater. It’s a premiere Huntsman academy-”
“Far away from her kingdom, her family, and her responsibilities.” Whitley sniped back with a roll of his eyes. He was far more… direct than in Weiss’ memories, as she used the little back and forth to check them once again. The Whitley before she woke up would have maintained his passive-aggressive bullying for far longer. “Honestly, sister, at least Winter had the good sense to stay in Atlas when she went off on her rebellion. How are you expecting to learn to manage the company and train as a Huntress when you’re across the ocean?”
Weiss arched an eyebrow, a silent ‘are you done?’ conveyed flawlessly in a half beat before she finally deigned replying, “By proxy, as always. It is not like Father has the time of day to show his face to either of us, even through a screen. Today’s little test to see if I am ‘worthy’ of leaving his shadow will be overseen by his secretary, that speaks for itself.”
A squeeze of bracingly cold fingers on her shoulder, there, and she relaxed minutely. Taking a split second to breath and step back from the brewing argument. With that restored clarity, she looked the brother she inherited dead in the eyes, dropping all the masks and simply saying point blank, “Whitley, I am fully aware I have no right whatsoever to call myself your sister or impose anything on you, not with how I have failed you. But I will no longer just shrug, say ‘that’s how life is for Schnees’ and move on.”
Neither of them were acting quite like themselves today, it seemed. She wasn’t sure if she hoped it was for the same reason, but there was something she was certain of. The shoes she had stepped into were weighted down with regrets and it was about time something be done about it.
Faintly, she registered Huldra melting into her, collapsing like powdered snow into her shoulders. It didn’t matter, right here and now she only had eyes for Whiteley. “What do you want from me? Heirship of the company? For me to stay here and for us to try and rebuild something between us? That I leave your life and never show my face to you again?”
There wasn’t a single sliver of accusation or judgement in her voice or face, just someone owning up to the mistakes they inherited. The servants lining the walls remained in their places, yet just a brief glance could make it clear that they were woefully out of their depth and pay grade when it came to two arguing Schnee scions. Whitley himself, meanwhile, seemed to be… lagging. Stuck processing, looping the conversation through his head, as though disbelieving that Weiss would even dare mention the thought of handing over ownership of the company, most likely, or show an interest in mending bridges.
Or burning them down for that matter.
In the time they had spoken, the teenager had remained in his seat, but there were tells for his agitation beyond his tone. A tremor in the hand. A twitch to his lips as though unsure whether to sneer, scowl, smile, or frown. These came to a halt when he closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, pressing fingers to forehead as though trying to ease a headache.
“Father will doubtless move to disinherit you regardless of our intentions.” He finally said, looking up at the high roof of the dining hall rather than at his sibling. “You are no longer a mere ballerina that he can turn a key to make dance. Acknowledging this, the most likely option is to wait for you to make some sort of scandal in Beacon, point to that as evidence of your lacking, and either force you to return or cut you off.”
It was laid out clinically. Coldly. Methodically. Coming from a child who had fifteen years to learn how his father worked. Those had not been gentle lessons for any of the Schnees.
“Anticipating this, I will siphon some of my generous allowance into a secondary account. Should the worst come to pass, these funds will be transferred to you to spend or invest as you see fit. Else, it will be a pleasant little gift if you manage to make it a school year without ‘disgracing the Schnees’.” Whitley stated, though he rolled his eyes at the last phrase, pulling himself up to sit prim and proper again. Cold eyes leveled a gaze on Weiss with the weight of an economic behemoth behind it, prior sneers bit back with a quiet sigh. “The Schnee Dust Company provides nearly ninety eight percent of Remnant’s Dust needs, sister. Energy, munitions, materials, research, technology, and beyond. We have our fingers in every flavor of pie you can think of-” He smirked, then, “and some cakes, as well. I harp on you not because I desire the company, Weiss, but because I want you to be prepared to carry the burden of an entire planet’s expectations on your shoulders.”
Whitley turns his head slightly, allowing him to glance towards the portrait of Nicholas Schnee on the wall. His and Weiss’ grandfather, though they’d never met the man in person. Only stories from their mother before she became a recluse.
‘A breathing corpse’ something bitter hissed deep, deep in Weiss’ mind. A mark left there by the original so strongly even this switch of souls could not keep it contained with the rest of the original girl’s memories. Rayleigh, the person behind Weiss’ eyes now, simply let it go as easily as it had come. One step at a time, however many it took.
“Honor our name, sister.” Whitley eventually said, chair sliding across the floor as he got to his feet. “Just be ready to mantle your responsibility upon your return. I will manage the homefront until such time.”
As, seemingly, he believed he always had.
“I will, brother. That is a promise.” She replied, with all the implacable, indefatigable weight of a glacier. All packed into just seven little words that she would sooner lop off her legs than recant on.
A short nod is all she got in reply as Whitley turned to leave.
Then stopped, tilting his head to regard the servants lining the walls. The very same servants who had listened in on everything, having blended into the walls to become part of the scenery.
“A word of this to Jacques and you’ll be thrown to the cold.” The boy stated flatly, tone as frigid as the winter wind. “Disavowed, discredited, and blacklisted from every job listing within Atlas and Mantle.” His eyes narrowed, then.
“Dismissed.”
They were all too eager to hurry through the servant doors, now that the order had been given. Only then did Whitley resume his walk, waving a hand over his shoulder in the process.
“Enjoy your breakfast in peace, sister.”
And the doors closed behind him.
____________________________________________________________________________
Weiss stepped forward into a massive arena, vaulted ceilings stretching high enough as to be lost in the shadows. The room itself had large windows baked into the walls, though a split-second check into her predecessor’s memories told her it was all some sort of fibreglass, rated for Manticores and worse. She paid them little mind, instead turning towards the viewing box jutting out of one end of the rectangular room. While the one-way glass didn’t let her properly see inside, she didn’t need to with the feeling of eyes on her, Huldra shifting under her skin as her Aura sensed the presence examining her.
Isolde Weirdmann, the secretary of Jacques. A loyal and reliable woman, her inherited memories told her. There were also some extremely unflattering opinions from the real Weiss laying around in there, but the same could be said of most people not named ‘Klein’ or ‘Winter’.
“Ms. Schnee. You truly are a credit to your family,” Isolde said by way of greeting as Weiss stepped out into the centre of the arena. Those same words could be very easily construed as an insult, depending on who spoke them. Rayleigh had no doubt the real Weiss would have snapped at all the implications in that sentence.
“Thank you.” This new Weiss she now acted as, though, simply took the words in the spirit they were given. “I certainly intend to carry the name well and add to its legacy, even if Father and I may have our disagreements on the how.”
Isolde nodded, or at least that was the impression Weiss got through her spiritual sixth sense. “But your current skill alone is not enough. At Atlas Academy, your studies will increase in difficulty tenfold and your father expects that you will not lapse in your skills.”
“That is rather the point of Academies, yes. Although I stand by my decision to go to Beacon. My personal preferences aside, I believe we could all do without the inevitable cries of nepotism Winter’s position would cause, if I were to join Atlas’ military in any fashion. Never-you-mind the SDC’s military contracts.” Weiss riposted with an arching of her eyebrow, “Better for me to learn Valish doctrine and spread out our influence just by a Schnee being there and excelling as a Huntress, no?”
“Vale is quite far, Miss Schnee, and the facilities at Beacon won’t have anything different than at Atlas,” Isolde countered. “But because of the distance, we won’t be able to respond quickly if something happens to you. The president is just concerned for your safety.”
“The facilities may remain the same, but the way they are used? The cultural zeitgeist of what it means to be a Hunter and how they should comport themselves? The only ones more different from us in that respect are Vacuo, and the less said about their ridiculous survival of the fittest and every man for themselves mentality, the better.” Weiss replied with a bitter chuckle. She had in fact spent a few minutes on her Scroll to confirm that, and indeed, while maybe not as egregious as in the show, Shade Academy remained a heaving abomination. “As for my safety, Beacon may not be Atlas Academy, but there is something to be said for rooming in a castle atop a sheer cliff filled to the brim with Hunters in training and veterans. I expect some attacks of opportunity from local White Fang cells if I tour Vale proper, but some basic precautions like staying armed and bringing my teammates with should more than handle whatever they can afford to bring forward.”
“Then you should have no problem proving that you can handle yourself.” The secretary pointed out mildly.
“Mhm. Onto business, then?” Weiss asked as she unsheathed Myrtenaster, Huldra’s Glyph seeping into the ground underneath her heeled shoes. Aura sure was a convenient thing, negating pretty much all the disadvantages of that kind of fashion statement in combat.
There was no response from Isolde; instead, with the hiss of some unknown mechanism, a door opened up in the wall just below the viewing box. Hideously, terrifyingly fast for something its size, a sword longer than some apartment buildings were tall shot out through. If that thing had made contact, Weiss would be an indent on the opposite wall at best.
How fortunate that she and Huldra pushed off of each other the moment they had seen the glint of metal and felt their Aura scream out in alarm, landing at either side of the massive blade in a perfect mirror of each other, their own swords up and at the ready.
Slowly, a Grimm lurched forward from inside the chamber, completely unlike anything that should exist. Because that right there was a Geist animating a custom-made suit of armor, the sort of warmachine that should never leave the history books. It did not seem to care about ‘should be’s, lifting its sword off the deep divot it had carved off the ground, with one hand and not a speck of effort to show for it.
Huldra and Weiss traded a glance, the silent conversation that passed between them in a heartbeat best summarized as a single word.
Fuck .
____________________________________________________________________________
It had been two minutes of heart-scrambling darting and twirling, Aura and abilities rationed like they were under siege as they bled the Arma Gigas for information from a thousand proverbial cuts. Its speed, its reach, its flexibility, its situational awareness, its ability to split attention, its reflexes.
Isolde had blithely commented that this bespoke monstrosity was on par with Atlesian Paladins. Not the prototypes jerking along in a lab somewhere, but the projected specs the project had. Weiss believed the secretary, the dozens of gouges carved into the arena’s floor and walls were a testament to that.
The issue, of course, was that a warmachine lived or died by its pilot. A Grimm would remain a Grimm, it may not be mindless, but it was not old enough to overcome its instincts. There were bright souls in front of it and it couldn’t help but attack them relentlessly, even if the strikes changed each time, even if it could lurch and rotate its joints in unnatural ways–
This was a fight they could win .
Because if it would always take the chance to advance and attack, that made it predictable. If you were predictable, you could be controlled.
Huldra danced at the very edge of its range, skittering away from a downwards chop on the propulsion of a White Glyph, but lagging just enough the monster lunged forward. It succeeded, using the full extension of its body and weapon to skewer the phantom and disperse her into a shower of powder snow.
It had also just smashed its boot onto that same White Glyph from before, and leaned all of its weight on it while over-extended. The light of the soul sang a high note and its footing turned more treacherous than ice over mud, the monster’s mass and momentum turned against it as it was forced into a leg split with a screech of tortured metal.
Weiss practically teleported to the now-exposed mechanisms on the hips, Myrtenaster on an icepick grip as she allowed powdered Fire Dust to suffuse the blade. It struck like a runaway truck, Aura-reinforced steel of the finest alloying money could buy punching half of its length into vital internals. Then, a glowing white fist smashed into the pommel as a hammer would a chisel, ramming the weapon home to the hilt and triggering a fiery explosion entirely inside the confines of the monster’s shell.
She still paid for it, that exacerbating strike adding enough time to her attack that when she threw herself back with a Glyph, the retaliatory backhand clipped her on the nose. If she lacked Aura, she would be lacking a nose right now, turned into a spray of gore. As it was, there was blood streaming like a faucet down her front.
Dainty fingers clutched the broken bone and snapped it back into place with a disgusting wet crunch. It felt like someone had stuck red-hot nails up her sinuses, but that didn’t stop her from grinning at it with blood-stained teeth.
It couldn’t get back up, not even on a knee.
She would heal, it would not .
With the unholy screech of metal on metal, the creature threw itself onto the ground as it lunged forward for Weiss, its sword thrusting at her abdomen like a freight train.
Adrenaline singing in her veins, she leapt onto the sword, trailing White Glyphs over its surface as she shot for its hand. The Arma Gigas was no slouch when it came to speed, but a Huntress using her Semblance to essentially turn herself into a railgun projectile was not something it could respond to in time. Once more, a burning red blade drove itself into a seam between plates, all of Weiss’ momentum dumped into a singular explosive attack that turned the monster’s inner mechanisms into useless slag.
Then, the White Glyphs on the sword activated again , violently ripping the sword from limp fingers and into the far wall. Thankfully not the one Isolde’s viewing box was in, she didn’t want to kill the poor woman.
This time, when the butcher’s bill came in the form of a massive hand trying to splatter her like a gnat, it was Huldra who paid it. Springing out of her body of her own volition and twirling her into a throw straight at the crippled monster’s head. Huldra smiled in the split second before she was crushed, watching her Master conjure a White Glyph under her feet as she reached the apex of her jump.
For a third and final time, Weiss became a living projectile, aura burning white and bright around her body as she tore through an eyeslit and the optics housed inside of it. White light began to seep out of each and every seam in the warmachine, White Glyph after White Glyph laid down in the monster’s guts as Weiss tore through them, until finally–
BOOM.
All of those repulsor pads triggered at once, taking the internal damage she had meted out and using it to turn the Arma Gigas into a fragmentation bomb writ large.
Amidst the wreckage, Weiss stood wobbly and thoroughly bruised but triumphant, raising her rapier in salute at the viewing box.
____________________________________________________________________________
Unknown Number (possible spam):
Greetings strange person I’ve never met in my entire life!
You do not know me, and neither do I know you!
The only reason you’ve received this is because, in a bout of complete boredom, I’ve used a d10 (10 was a reroll) to assemble a scroll number.
I am bored, temporarily bedridden (I’ll get better tomorrow) and forbidden to leave my house by my father and my uncle.
Therefore, I ask of you stranger I’ve never met, nor ever will.
Would you like to be friends?
(PS: My dad and uncle would ground me forever if they knew I did this. So if you want to be my friend, we’ll have to use super secret codenames! Mine shall be… Evoluder.)
You:
I would say it is against my better judgement to reply, but I have a literal clump of my soul who I’m 90% sure is my Will To Stand Up Straight and Hope To Be A Better Person shoving the Scroll in my hands and giving me a thumbs up, so fuck it.
Sure.
Call me Rayleigh.
Also, your alias sounds like the villain of a campy Mistrali show.
Tokusatsu? I always mess up the spelling.
Evoluder:
Pleasure to meet you Rayleigh!
And I will have you know that my name is taken from the bravest of man!
Someone that was ready to stand against evil and corruption!
He was the bravest because he didn’t hesitate to rely on others BTW.
He fought and beat all of his opponents, but the King of Braves was never alone.
And I don’t believe I’ve seen a Mistrali Tokustsu?
I am… rather sheltered. My house is large, and there are many people, most of them quite friendly!
But I only gained access to a scroll some two months ago.
Could you send me a picture of these ‘Tokusatsu’s?
You:
Uhh, give me a sec. I only ever heard about them from cultural osmosis.
Aaaand nevermind, Huldra found something by puttering around on my desktop.
Here .
Evoluder:
He looks quite cool!
…I can’t tell if he’s the villain or not though.
I will have to watch it to discover if he is not!
Thank you for making tomorrow more bearable friend!
You:
No problem.
Huldra seems to like you and I can’t say I disagree with that part of myself.
…God, my Semblance’s mechanics make me sound deranged sometimes.
Evoluder:
Oh, I thought they were your significant other. But it is a semblance?
This means you have aura too, yes?
I have aura too!
I would be dead if not.
But no semblance.
I wonder what mine will be.
You:
I hope yours doesn’t manifest like mine did.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Huldra, but the fact that my soul budded off an independent actor made out of my determination and optimism should tell you a lot of the sort of thing I was pushing through at the time.
It is nice having an anonymous chat like this if only to just out and out say that .
But yeah, I just hit the breaking point, refused to break and my soul reacted.
Evoluder:
That sounds…
Unpleasant.
But, well. Mine hasn’t manifested while I could see my naked skeleton.
So I hope it’ll manifest thanks to a happy event.
I do not need another panic attack.
Fuck !
ohgoditsallovermyhands
You:
Breathe in for five seconds, hold it there for five seconds, breathe out for five seconds, breathe in for five seconds.
Repeat.
That’s all I can do for you short of pulling a nonsense Semblance breakthrough out of my ass and sending Huldra through an internet connection.
…Fuck, I hope you’re still there and were able to read that.
…Please tell me you’re still there.
Evoluder:
I AM FINE!
Sorry for being gone for ten minutes!
I have mentioned the fact I have seen my skeleton, yes?
You might have guessed that is no longer the case, I now have mechanical limbs.
They are great!
Being able to see the pistons and magnetic rails is- it makes me hot under the collar as it we
…
I tried to delete that.
I want to curl up in a ball now.
Plz ignore that
I beg you
You:
Ignore you having impeccable taste?
(Also, yes, this is now a topic change unless you want to talk about the other stuff )
May I suggest transparent synthskin, so you can enjoy the view without any gunk getting in?
Evoluder:
Maybe.
But I don’t think dad and uncle would be okay with it
For many reasons
But I am glad that you too are an enjoyer of slick, perfectly engineered, mechanical perfection~
It’s really cool.
I couldn’t stop touching myself with it.
…Wait, no that came out wrong.
You:
I mean, I’m not judging.
Add some brass accents to that and I wouldn’t be able to help myself either.
Evoluder :
How lewd !
But unfortunately, I do not believe they are available as such.
thank you for answering a message from a complete stranger Raleigh.
unless there is anything you wish to say, I'll leave you to have a night's sleep.
It is four in the morning after all.
You:
That it is.
I’ll tell you tomorrow about how I fought a giant robot today, maybe.
And how it broke my nose.
Evoluder :
Do not do that!
Either of these! Broken noses are painful, and replacement ones with senses as good as a human’s don’t exist, no matter what people trying to sell you on body conversions might tell you.
My uncle said as much an
Shit, dad’s here.
I must go, he’ll revoke my scroll privileges if he sees me texting
I will send you more messages later. Maybe next week? The rest of the opperatin is gona tak awhil
____________________________________________________________________________
Next morning, Weiss found Willow inside the lady’s private room, laying back on a leather couch; there was a one-quarter empty bottle of vodka in her hand and the stench of high-proof alcohol and other things best left unmentioned was like a punch to the nose. At least Willow had the common decency to straighten herself and her outfit up once she saw who was visiting, setting the bottle down on a coffee table. Not much that could be done about the stains here and there, but it was heartening to at least see an attempt .
“Oh! I- I didn’t expect to see you this morning,” said the Schnee matron, smiling faintly at her daughter. “You don’t normally come to visit this early.”
“I think my tutors would have my head if they saw me try to go through the usual morning training routine after what I put myself through yesterday.” Weiss replied with a wan smile as she slid herself onto a single-seater couch. Aura did absolute wonders for one’s recovery, but there was still a faint impression on her nose and hands of what she had gone through. She really should get herself some armor, even just some leather and chainmail would do wonders until she could get Arma Gigas overlaid on her. “Besides, I would rather make the most of the time we have left for meeting in the flesh. It will be a while until Beacon has a break long enough for a cross-continental commute.”
Very pointedly, Weiss did not directly ask Willow if she was well. Both of them knew the answer to that, it was sitting on the table between them with a fancy top-shelf label.
“I heard that went well,” Willow offered faintly. Heard it went well, Weiss noted - she didn’t see it. She didn’t expect Willow to attend, but still. There had been recordings, she was sure.
“Bloodied my nose in a very literal way, and it raised some questions of what, exactly , the company has been getting up to in the background to make a mechanized Arma Gigas like that without anyone the wiser. But yes, it went well.” Weiss replied softly, taking heart that while far, far from ideal… things weren’t as bad as she had initially feared them to be. “Hopefully I will be able to get the new Summon functional enough by the time of Beacon’s entrance test, but it doesn’t really seem to want to downsize, and I don’t really have the Aura to bring out more than maybe an arm. Not as wilful as Huldra, but also nowhere near as happy to accommodate me.”
Hearing her name, the specter peeled off of her, just enough to rest her chin on Weiss’ shoulder. The Schnee Heiress chuckled indulgently, ruffling the wraith’s hair as unnaturally cold arms draped over her, their foreheads tapping together playfully, “Yes, yes, you are the best. Smug little thing.”
It meant that Weiss wasn’t facing her mother when Willow gasped, looking back she found the lady of the house with eyes blown wide and her entire bearing frozen still. Like she may shatter at the slightest touch.
“...Mother? Is something wrong?” Twin looks of concern from identical glacial blue eyes scanned over Willow, Huldra going as far as to fully step out of Weiss to slowly, gently reach out to their mother.
“Is that… I…” Willow stammered. As Huldra reached towards her, she flinched, looking for all the world like she had seen a ghost. Not wrong, by any measure.
“...I made a breakthrough.” Weiss said softly, after a few moments of searching for the right words. Finally, she gave up, and simply lanced the boil and bled the poison out. As much as she could, with how she had to couch her explanation. “In the full sense of the term. Yesterday I barely could get out of bed, it was like there was a slab of stone over me as everything sunk in. I don’t know how long I spent in front of the mirror, either. Just that I didn’t like what I saw, much less everything behind me.” Her eyes tried to drift down, to stare at her hands on her lap and let her bangs cover her expression. She allowed no such thing, holding Willow’s horrified look. “I felt like I was drowning, and… I’m not sure what I did. But something in me snapped, said ‘ no ’, and I managed to pull myself back up.”
Huldra smiled softly, drifting back to Weiss on silent steps full of floating grace, draping herself over the soul that had spawned her. Weiss leaned into the touch, letting the supernatural cold ground her, “As far as I can tell, Huldra here is that part of me, that little something that had me pull through and stand up straight. But I don’t… I don’t really know how this aspect of our Semblance works, what this really means . I never got it to work before this, so I just lost myself in Dust Casting and what the Glyphs could do for that.”
Willow refocused, looking at Weiss like she was someone new and unfamiliar- like the fog had been lifted from her eyes. It wasn’t perfect clarity, but it was better than it had been before; better than it had been for ages, according to Weiss’s memories. “I- I see.”
Weiss breathed in, closing her own eyes for a moment, feeling Huldra melting into her. Filling her bones with implacable, indefatigable glacial ice. Her was spine straight and strong as she stood up, walked forward and–
Hugged her new mother, burying her face into her shoulder.
She was not the real Weiss, she was not this woman’s daughter, not truly. But Rayleigh would be damned before she let the Schnee home remain a frozen tomb, if that meant becoming a changeling child to a grieving mother, then so be it.
She would do right by them and the true Weiss’ aspirations, no other outcome was permitted.
Slowly, softly, like she was made of glass, her mother returned the hug, her hand gingerly placed on Weiss’s back. Which one of them was made of glass at this moment, Weiss wasn’t sure, but it was a first step.
And it fell on them both to continue down the path together.
____________________________________________________________________________
As it turned out, planning a farewell concert cum charity event with only a week to spare before the flight to Vale? Not easy . Thank God for the power of delegation and competent help.
Even if over the course of said week, when she wasn’t busy mending bridges with Willow and Whiteley (and texting with who was almost certainly Penny, either that or Watts had made a robo-daughter of his own), she got entirely too many disturbed side-glances. Rayleigh knew that the change in her character was obvious, but the reason behind it was simply so fantastical nobody would really think she was a changeling wearing Weiss’ face and name. She could have kept up the act, but frankly?
It wasn’t any more pleasant being a truculent bitch than being on the receiving end of one. Weiss, from her inherited memories, has been frigid at best with anyone not named Klein or Winter. Too much seething vitriol under her skin for anything else, so she couldn’t rightly blame the teen, but at the same time she saw no reason to continue the trend she had set.
Now, the greater masses would see the change, after a fashion. There was a thread of trepidation shivering up and down her spine, but she didn’t even need Huldra’s steadying presence to keep her back straight and shoulders squared as the curtains parted and she stepped onto the stage proper. Already, there were murmurs, her iconic dress was still there, so were the tiara and the sideways ponytail.
They were all in black. Mourning clothes only missing a veil, for all nobody but her knew who this was an elegy for. Huldra peeled off of her between one step and the next as she made for the piano at the center of the stage. She was her perfect mirror, ponytail to the opposite side and everything done up in white stark as death and brilliant glacial blue.
Black gloved fingers stood out against the ivory keys, as she took her seat in front of her instrument. All the more as Huldra draped herself overtop the piano, her two-toned hair and clothes spilling freely over the glossy black finish.
Then?
Then Rayleigh played . Not a word spoken but the ululating tones of Huldra accompanying each piano piece she had practiced. Just her and the keys, tapped with wistful playfulness, pounded with anger and grief and passion, caressed with gentle mourning. Flowing from one song to the next without pause, from one emotion to the next without break, simply letting everything pour out clean and pure.
Until, finally–
“ Fly, broken wings. I know you are still with me. All I need is a nudge to get me started. ” She sang, so, so softly. As though raising her voice would break something. “ Fly, broken wings, to somewhere we can be free. Closer to our ideal. ”
“ Teary eyed, once-gentle soul, I watched as you rotted away. ” That ‘something’ may very well shatter, because she was done mourning, and this was both her farewell and her final attempt to reach out to Jacques. For a week everything had been ignored or rebuked, so this was the last chance. The last olive branch she would hold out.
“ The mirror says that I still remember hope . ” Her voice interlaced with Huldra’s own at that final word, before they heterodyned in melodious hums. The very first word Huldra had ever spoken since she was forged from Rayleigh’s turmoil.
“ You’re doing what you love. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that enough!? ” Weiss gritted out, allowing her voice to rise in full, raw with emotion as she demanded . “ A genius, perfect job! Isn’t that enough!? Isn’t that enough!? ”
“ Again and again you locked me down! ” Weiss railed, only for all the fire to wink out with the next verse, her shoulders slumping as she leant into the piano. “ I locked me down. We staked me to the ground… the soil gave me warmth… ”
“ Please die, little dreams. Kill the camellias in me. ” Pouring out every last drop of emotion and remembrance she could hold in her body for the real Weiss, for that poor young lady whose dreams and life were strangled to death in her sleep.
“ Wouldn’t it be easier to give in? ” Rayleigh sang, and this time it was HER emotion, not Weiss’. The sheer crushing weight of despair that had greeted her on that bitterly cold morning a week ago. “ Why are my hands chasing dreams out of my reach? ”
She took a breath, in perfect sync with Huldra. Her spectre rising smoothly to her feet with weightless grace, loosely wrapping her arms around Rayleigh’s neck.
“ Fly, perfect wings. ” They sang as one, voices layering together in eerie, echoing perfection, “ Show them who I can be. For the last time, if you will. ”
“ That’s all. ” They spoke more than sang, Huldra melting into Weiss as she raised to her feet.
Faced the audience.
Bowed.
Then turned and left, not a single look thrown back.
____________________________________________________________________________