The natural goal of all campaign plans therefore is the wendepunkt [lit.: turning point] at which the attack becomes defense.

Chapter Text

"Oh, Miss Schnee."

"Headmaster. Sir."

Winter Schnee and James Ironwood suddenly found themselves standing at opposite sides of a threshold, an open door between them. The door happened to be that to the registrar's office, which Ironwood had just dropped in on to clear a minor bureaucratic logjam.

"Is there a problem, Miss Schnee?"

Ironwood was too observant a man to miss the way Winter clutched a bundle of paperwork slightly closer to her chest in response to his question.

"Just a, um…" she fumbled for words in a most atypical manner "…family matters, sir."

"I see." He didn't really, but that was the kind of thing sagely old Headmasters were expected to say to nervous young students. Ironwood made a show of peering at the stack of documents Winter was still grasping for dear life. "Official paperwork, I take it? Shall I put in a good word for my top student and have everything cleared up?"

"Sir, it would be inappropriate for you to give me special…" Winter's voice trailed off when she realized she'd missed the joke.

"Returning home?"

His voice was low and somber, but not sorrowful. Maybe he was already coming to terms with losing her.

Winter had put on a show of rebelliousness, if all the private messages he was being inundated with were to be believed, but Jacques Schnee was by no definition a gracious loser. Nor was he at all obliged to take Winter's defiance lying down. As cathartic as it must have been for Winter to turn her back on her father, Ironwood knew she'd soon be fighting a rearguard action, against a man with an army at his disposal and a temperament that was anything but forgiving. Ironwood had survived too many battles to let wishful thinking cloud his vision.

"Not quite, sir." Winter hesitate for a long, long moment, before tilting the stack of paperwork forward so the Headmaster could see, Ironwood taking it in with a sweep of the eye.

Even upside-down, it didn't take long for Ironwood to make out APPLICATION FOR STUDENT FINANCIAL RELIEF.

"I see." He wasn't lying this time.

Winter swallowed. "I know it's a bit of an unusual situation, sir. I don't think I qualify for the 17-B exemption because my parents' income is greater than…" She trailed off for the second time in two minutes. Ironwood's cheek twitched slightly upwards.

He knew the problem Winter was going to encounter. Financial relief was determined on the basis of the income of the student's parents, assuming the student was below the age of the majority, which Winter, for a few more months, still was. If Jacques Schnee didn't know every loophole in the tax code he'd have been in the absolute highest bracket in Atlas. The Schnees were quite literally the last family in Remnant to qualify by the conventional rules. Because the conventional rules, drafted years ago by unimaginative bureaucrats, didn't take into account a scenario where a student's parents refused to pay.

Ironwood would've preferred his Academy to be free, as were Beacon and Shade, but the downside to technically being part of the Atlas Royal Army was that his Academy was financed by taxpayers. And Atlas was not renowned for having particularly generous social service programs. Taxpayers would pay for the education of soldiers, but not Huntsmen, pollsters and politicians had long confirmed. Not when Huntsmen had no binding obligation to serve those citizens in turn, when they were in fact free to live lives of (profitable) adventure in more hospital corners of Remnant. And he had no doubt that Winter would qualify for any number of scholarships (certainly when he decided a solid half of them), but those were all done on a calendar year basis, and Winter's next tuition payment would be due in a little over four weeks.

"Are you aware that Atlas Academy waives all student fees if a student agrees to enlist in the Army for four years after graduation?" Ironwood knew that that would either be his greatest moment of tactical genius or the kind of idiocy that would haunt him in the quiet hours before sunrise.

He had no doubt that Winter was aware of that fact. For someone of her intelligence it was all-but-impossible not to. He was thus trying to elicit not what Winter Schnee knew but what she thought.

Her teeth sunk into her lip.

"I… had heard of that, sir," she began, slowly and haltingly, but every word was well-enunciated. "But I don't know… I don't know if I know all the details." From a certain (if rather epistemological) point of view, that was technically true.

"I've said that my office door is always open," Ironwood began, choosing each word carefully. That was also a technical truth, though rare was the student who felt confident enough to take him up on it. "Perhaps you'd like it if we discussed it over coffee, or tea?"

"Coffee, sir," Winter answered unthinkingly. Her head snapped upright when she realized what she'd agreed to.

"Coffee it is, Schnee. Is tomorrow at eleven-hundred convenient for you? My usual office hours."

That rarest of smiles, small and true, crossed Winter's face. "It's perfect, sir."