Chapter 62

The door clicked shut behind her. Her back fell against it, making her shiver slightly from the cold wood. Before her, the grand entrance of the manor loomed back at her in the mid-day light. The polished marble floor reflected her face back up at her as she looked down at her feet. The air felt dead.

The Schnee Manor had never felt less like home.

Weiss slunk down against the floor, letting her two large suitcases just sort of fall over, clattering loudly. The floor itself was even cold against her butt as she sat down, pulling her legs against her chest. What a miserable, pathetic excuse for a day. Two days stuck in airports, delayed flights, and a chauffeur who was late? She shivered, not making any sound. Some of the snow that had collected in the thick fur collar of her winter jacket fell out onto the floor as it began melting. It left a wet patch around her butt. Not that that mattered anymore.

Nothing mattered anymore.

What was the point? What was the point of anything anymore? Was the whole reason she existed at all to be the pawn in some treacherous romance plot where she would always loose? Every single instance where she could have had what she wanted had been squandered. Did she ever once think about anyone other than herself? No, don't be stupid. Nine years, wasted. Just like that. Some treacherous plot it was, indeed.

What was it she wanted, exactly? Ruby? Probably. But in what way? She couldn't bring herself to think about it. Not that she even knew how to think about it.

Perhaps it was the sexual aspect. Yeah, that sounded right. A selfish desire for the busty and muscular body that the once frail and delicate girl had been blessed with was certainly appealing to her. Huge tits, wide hips, skinny waist, muscles toned and defined enough to make most professional boxers go green with envy. Nothing short of goddess-level attractiveness. And she wanted it. She wanted to tear the woman's clothes off, and ravage her until neither party could breathe, walk, or even think straight. What a joy that would have been. An unattainable, unbelievable, unrealistic joy she would never get. It was unfair how hot Ruby was, and how close she had come to getting to sleep with her. Maybe that's all she had wanted. Once around the block and then home.

Did she really only see the poor girl as a sexual conquest? Well for one, she had never been with anyone else, so she didn't even fully know if what she imagined sex to be like was real. And touching herself in the shower probably didn't count towards that, either.

What even was sex? Two adults getting naked and touching each other? Sounded like a pretty gross thing if she thought about it hard enough. Nudity in itself was a stupid social construct, so why did sex have to be the same? It hurt her just to imagine it. Seeing of course, as she would never again get it. From anyone.

The romantic attraction is what worried her more than any petty, gross, sexual feelings she once imagined she had.

Romance? Love? You sully yourself.

Of course she did. Love was such a fickle thing. An emotion so simple, and so complex at the same time, that she rarely believed she was capable of feeling it in genuine. She remembered a quote that Klein used to recite to her over and over. Something his wife had told him very early on in their relationship, and he had tried his hardest to drill into her head, lest she end up like her mother. Unhappy and married to an asshole.

"Don't look for someone you think you want to love. You'll know when you love someone. They'll be the person who welcomes you into their house at two-thirty in the morning to eat pizza and throw socks at each other. The person you argue about the nutritional value of celery with at the grocery store. The person who wakes up in bed next to you, kisses you, and says 's'up dude' in a semi-ironic way. That's what love means. Attachment, commitment, attraction, and stupidity."

The quote was usually finished with 'and celery is useless, don't listen to Clara, she's wrong'. The quote itself held no value anymore. She had tried. Really tried to have all of that. 'Advanced friendship' as she had called it to herself. She tried the attachment, making Ruby the centre of her life and her best friend before anyone else at Beacon. Before Blake, before Yang, before Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora even. She had done nothing but hang out with the girl, every day after class, every weekend, every spare moment of time was spent just sort of being around each other.

That clearly hadn't worked. Ruby wasn't attached to her. She was as disposable as a McAlbert's Slappy Meal bag. Ruby had only ever come to her when she felt like she needed to run away. She wasn't Ruby's friend. She was her security blanket. That wasn't attachment, that was reliance. When a person experiences a traumatic event, or events plural, it's not unexpected for them to need somewhere to run to. Even Weiss herself could admit to needing to run away sometimes. She used to use the loft above the manor library, a place with soundproof walls and stacks of books she had 'borrowed' from the library proper. It was a place where her parents' arguments and shouting matches couldn't reach her.

But she didn't want to be her loft, her security blanket. She wanted to be her girlfriend. Her best friend, too. She just wanted to be with Ruby, above all else. Was that strictly too much to ask? Apparently so. Nobody else in her life meant as much to her as the short, gorgeous, dorky brunette. She hadn't seen Blake or Yang in years since she had moved back to Atlas, so they weren't very high up on her list of friend list simply because of lack of connection. The last person she had spent an extended period of time with who wasn't one of her siblings or business partners would have to have been her university roommate, Ann. But Ann had spent most of her time partying, sleeping with rockstars, and being generally elusive around the dorm.

They had a strange relationship. Despite the general ambiguity of Ann's presence in the dorm, they still spent a reasonable amount of time hanging out, even if it was only for two years. Some people around them even assumed they were an item, which Ann would always adamantly deny with a loud outburst and a lot of stomping around. Although to their credit, they never really had any relationships outside of their own, save for Weiss having Ruby and Ann having that 'thing' one time with that musician.

To a degree, they had been at least semi-committed to each other. Every morning they would wake up at the same time, go to breakfast, attend their respective classes, and return to the dorm for dinner and studying. Then she would leave, go to whatever party was currently causing large amounts of property damage and dumpster fires, and not be seen until the next morning when they would start over. It was comforting, if a little strange. It probably felt nice at the time to have a friend who seemed permanent, and who wouldn't walk away for no reason.

Since university, Ann had moved away, gotten married, had a couple of kids, and had settled down in a small suburban community outside Vale so she'd last heard. The quiet life didn't seem to fit the former party-girl, but Weiss wasn't one to complain, so she never mentioned it. Weiss tried not to think about her home life too much, realizing quickly that Ann had everything she wanted at present. A little bit of commitment, a little bit of family, a little bit of love.

But she knew she couldn't have that anymore. Weiss stood up, bracing herself against the door. Her legs wobbled, threatening to give out again. No one was going to be around at this hour, of course. Her brother would be at work, her parents would probably be out at the country club, and most of the serving staff would be at home, as they always had the middle of the day off so they could be at home with their families. She looked around. The artwork stared back at her, as if taunting her. She felt a wave of anger and shame wash over her, realizing her life was in shambles. Or so it felt, anyways.

Without her control, and probably against her own best wishes, her left hand fell to the larger of the two suitcases. The zipper fell open with ease, and her hand slipped inside. She felt around inside for a few moments, before finding exactly what she was looking for. Her fingers coiled around the leather-wrapped grip, her pinkie finger hooking itself just under the pommel, and her index finger resting itself against the chamber trigger. With both a pushing motion and a forward pull, she extracted the long and elegant weapon from her case, shoving the white leather suitcase to the floor. Myrtenaster's long and scary sharp blade scraped sonorously against the metal zipper of the bag as it was pulled from it, ringing softly in the silent air.

Her heartbeat increased. Quickly. The handle felt foreign in her grasp, cold and far away. She grasped it tighter in an attempt to steady her shaking hand. To little avail, it seemed. The sound of her boots on the floor was deafening in the empty house as she took a few tentative steps into the vast empty lobby, eyeing the few statues lining the far wall. A collection of medieval suits of armour sat lining the bottom of the gigantic staircase. She grimaced. Why did she even still have these things? They were a forgotten relic from a forgotten time her father had decided to outfit the manor with during his ownership of it. And now that she herself held the ownership papers, she had just left them be, not bothering to ever move or replace them. A burden, they were.

Perhaps a bit of remodelling was necessary. A sharp anger boiled inside her. Closing the distance quickly to one of the unnecessarily polished steel suits, she held out her rapier before herself. The statue seemed taller up close. Her eyes only came up to the middle of the stomach on the old war outfit. Electing for a higher vantage point, Weiss jumped as high as her legs allowed, summoning a glyph beneath her feet. It was a meter and a bit extra, but it was enough to get her eyes in line with the lifeless figure's face. She teetered on one foot, trying to keep her balance on the centre of the narrow snowflake-shaped platform. It had been a long time since she had wanted or needed to use her semblance, anyways. She paused, trying not to lose focus and drop herself.

With a restrained cry, she swung the delicate Mytenaster like a broadsword, carving a huge arc of shimmering anger towards the neck of the armour. Titanium impacted steel, sending the suit of armour clattering to the floor with a cacophonous noise. Pieces of the thin plywood frame that held up the suit scattered wildly across the floor. From her perch on the floating glyph, the broken soldier looked a lot smaller splayed out on the marble. She smirked. Pitiful.

Her head snapped around to look at the line suits of armour on the other side of the staircase. More useless scrap for her to... recycle. A quick flick of her wrist lit up a short trail of glyphs along the front of the stair. With a minimal amount of skip in her step, she crossed over to the second row of suits, still floating above the ground. As soon as she reached the next offending steel exoskeleton, the remaining glyphs disappeared into thin air with a sizzle. Odd. They didn't use to do that.

Pushing the thought to the back of her mind, she focused her attention back onto the statue. It didn't flinch when she raised the tip of her sword to it's chest. Not that it would, of course, being inanimate. Bracing her right foot behind her and tucking her right arm behind her back, she gave a few test flicks against the steel breastplate. With a sniffle of restrained anger, she gave a harsh jab forward, the expertly sharpened blade piercing directly through both ends of the armour, severing the wooden support structure inside. The suit, however, didn't fall over as she pulled her sword out of it, as she had expected it to. Her eye twitched. This wouldn't do.

"Useless!"

She screamed, swinging Mytenaster across the statue's neck, actually slicing the metal open with a clean efficient cut. It toppled to the ground with the sound of a hundred-piece brass orchestra falling off a cliff. Quickly forming another glyph, she stepped to the next one in line with a loud thud of her boots. Another heavy swing of the usually delicate instrument cleaved the artifact in twain, each halve falling loudly onto its neighbour. Another glyph, another opponent waiting patiently for its judgment. And Weiss judged harshly. Her ears were ringing at this point, pained from the sound of crashing metal. She turned on the spot, her long hair swinging around like a whip. She very nearly lost her balance, stumbling on the glyph. These leather boots provided little traction on the glass-like surface of the ethereal platforms. Across the far side of the lobby sat the largest of the statues.

She eyed it with displeasure. It stood a leviathan eleven and a half feet tall, made of the finest carbon steel and magnesium. Its peaked helmet gave it a very imposing and aggressive face, very much reminiscent of a large bull with wide horns. She hated this particular relic. It had always frightened her as a child, with its huge, wide-bladed sword it caressed before itself that, despite being only a show piece, was massively sharp. The whole statue, sword and all, weighed something in the region of four thousand kilograms, and it had to be supported by thick braided cables suspended from the ceiling.

Size alone wasn't the only thing that scared her. This particular suit of armour wasn't just as it seemed on the outside. At one point in her family's history, before they lived in Anfang, the Schnee name was a noble one, harking back to the monarchical rule of the kings of old. They had always been a wealthy family, once being a right hand to the king and member of the Atlesian Knights, the then-current patriarch Christian Von Schnee. Her great-great-great grandfather or something like that. This relic was a replica of his personal suit of armour that he wore in service to the king, built for him after he saved the king and the rest of the royal convoy during a Grimm attack on the castle. But that was ancient history.

When she was only eleven, during an annual cleaning of the huge steel structure at a metalsmith in Anima, there was another Grimm attack. Far enough away that nobody save for the metalsmith himself was injured, and remote enough that at first, no one in the family even cared. When the suit was returned, however, it had changed. It started moving on its own. It had become host to a Grimm no one had ever encountered before. A possession-type intelligent Grimm. And it had tried to kill them. Still in the infantile stages of her huntress training, Weiss had stupidly assumed she could take on the massive, living suit of armour all by herself. The four-tonne sword-wielding Grimm had destroyed most of the east wing of the manor in the six and a half hour battle, requiring nearly twelve million lien in repairs.

It had also given her the gaudy scar down the middle of her left eye.

And now it sat, forlorn and forgotten. Never having been cleaned, repaired, or even dusted in the last fourteen years. It still had the puncture wounds she had given it in a vain attempt to flay the hollow steel body. It also still had soot around the cuffs of it's neck and wrists from where she had filled it's chest cavity with a ball of searing flame which finally roasted the Grimm out of it, ending the horrifying battle. Which no one had even offered to assist her in.

Anger flared up again inside her, bringing a red mist to her vision. Her hand wrenched down harder on Myrtenaster's delicate leather grip.

Kill it!

Finally letting a real scream escape her lips, Weiss charged forward. Assisted by a trail of speed-increasing glyphs, she closed the distance to her ancestor's statue in less than half a second, her rapier held out before her in a piercing grip. She was going to tear the stupid thing to bits like it was tin foil.

Wham

Pain blinded her immediately as she contacted the massive thing. Her head spun like she was in a washing machine. Had she not hit it? Certainly no, she had used a precision targeting glyph to guide her forward. She opened her eyes to find herself on the ground face down in the marble, her hands empty of her precious sword and her face in considerable pain. She pushed herself up onto her hands. Two tiny drops of red hit the spot of floor she was looking at. She blinked. Blood? Two more fell. Sitting up, she gingerly touched at her upper lip, pulling her hands away immediately when her face began to sting again. There was blood on her index finger. She looked up at the statue again with fire in her eyes. Myrtenaster was buried hilt-deep in the suit's sternum, some eight feet off the ground. There was a little smudge just to the right side of the impact point.

Weiss stood angrily, teetering a little on her feet as her head seemed to be swimming in a mix of numbness and pain. To her credit, it had been a perfect hit if she was trying to kill the statue. Except it was still just an inanimate replica. And now it taunted her with it's own little game of keep-away, holding the delicate rapier just out of reach. Weiss tilted her head to the side, holding her nose shut with her right hand. She raised her left hand, palm out, and tried to form a glyph on the end of the pommel. A little black ethereal circle opened up, sparked a few times, and fizzled out. Nothing. She let out a sigh. Without her rapier as a focusing tool, she had great difficulty forming accurate glyphs that were any use.

She clenched her fist, reserved to just seething with anger and hatred. How useless she was. Trained as a huntress, well studied in school, and here she was requiring a fucking ladder to collect her weapon. She was useless without it. Her whole body shook. She didn't even know if she owned a ladder. To anyone else this would be hilarious. Weiss gave a harsh chuckle, simply to let the angry air out of her lungs. Wiping the last of the blood off of her nose, she turned away from the huge monster, stepping cautiously back towards the middle of the lobby.

Coming to a stop in the middle, she looked down at her feet. The enormous twelve-pointed snowflake symbol embossed in the marble floor gleamed back up at her, reflecting the similarly shaped chandelier that hung precariously from the high vaulted ceiling. Her shoulders dropped. This was all a pointless waste of time, money, and resources. Such displays of opulence were usually reserved for impressing fellow dignitaries and the like. She had no one to impress anymore anyways. It was all for naught.

Something in the reflection caught her eye. A face, surrounded by white. With a scar. She frowned, glancing back upwards. The painting. She blinked a few times, trying to get her eyes to focus on it from this far below. Standing eighteen feet tall and spanning thirty-two feet across was the painting. The Schnee family portrait, featuring her father, her mother, Winter, Whitley, and herself. Dressed well passed the nines in pristine white suits and elegant ball gowns, they all shared the same lifeless and dismal expression on their faces. As if they all knew some dark and foreboding secret.

She needed to get closer. Closing her eyes, she tried relaxing her whole body as one, keeping her breathing steady and even. She held her palms open and forward, focusing as hard as she could on the floor beneath her. With all the trust of a scared rabbit, she took a step forward.

Her boot connected with a glyph as it hovered only eight inches above the floor. She gingerly ascended it like a stair, pulling her weight up onto it. The next glyph formed soundlessly, just ahead a few feet and another eight inches above. With her eyes still closed, she walked slowly and steadily up the ethereal staircase she was creating for herself. With the sound of humming steel, the lower glyphs started to vanish. She smiled. That was the sound she remembered them making. With a few more steps upward, she came to a stop on the middle of the glyph. Her expensive boots didn't slip this time, giving her a firm and reliable grip on the glassy surface. She opened her eyes.

Dead centre. She was directly in line with the middle of the painting, where she herself looked back out from the canvas surface. Painted in pale white, her acrylic skin shone back in the midday sunlight, reflecting the drab and two-dimensional personality she figured was fairly accurate now. She elected to examine the painting. Drawn very scaled-up, everyone was much larger than they were in real life. Her sister, who was placed in the back right of the picture and normally stood six-foot-one, was a gargantuan fifteen feet tall. Her brother, even, who was not a tall guy, was painted to be nearly thirteen feet tall. The scar on her face alone stretched to almost a foot long. She wondered how much pale pink paint had been wasted in making the scar alone.

The dress she wore was horrible. Floor-length, hooped at the bottom, corseted, and a ridiculous creamy-white colour. It looked like it was midway between a wedding dress and a Victorian-era ball gown, complete with too many petticoats even for the artist to have drawn in this scale. Her hands, covered in bicep-length white gloves, lay crossed on her lap, holding a tiny baby-blue clutch she couldn't remember if she owned, or if it was added by the artist afterwards. She probably had something similar in her house-sized closet.

She wanted to reach out and touch the painting, but she was just slightly out of reach. What would she have done, anyways? Caressed the acrylic? She was still to angry. She blinked a few times. Something drastic was creeping into her mind.

Do it.

She raised her hand, arm outstretched, palm turned upwards to the ceiling. A glyph hummed into existence halfway between her fingertips and the painting, no more than a metre across and slowly rotating clockwise. She winced, trying to keep the glyph in focus. It was much, much harder doing this without her rapier in hand. With a slow turn of her wrist downwards, the glyph faded to a silvery grey colour, then to a mirror-smooth black. Her hand ached from the strain of keeping the glyph in focus and in existence, her wrist demanding she release. But she couldn't. Not when she was this high off the ground.

Pulling her hand slightly towards herself, the glyph slowly doubled in size, until it stood at a height equal to that of her painted reflection. Pausing for a moment, Weiss let out the breath she had been holding, allowing her aching and stiff chest finally have some reprieve. The moment she spared herself was enough to think critically about her actions today. How wasteful she felt...

...or would have if she had actually used the time to reflect. Instead, she used it to focus the glyph to a standstill, aligning it perfectly with the painting. Finally satisfied, Weiss placed her left foot back behind her right, holding her right hand steady. Her eyes shot open, filled with a fire she didn't know she could have for a painting. The glyph flashed red. She let go.

WHAM

With a cacophonous noise, the painting exploded, taking a huge chunk of retaining wall out with it. Plumes of concrete dust rose from the room behind as large pieces of wall fell loudly to the floor. Her hands shook as she watched the rubble collect on both sides of the new hole in the wall, the light from the adjoining room almost blinding. Taking a second to catch her breath, she examined her handiwork. No longer was she in the painting, replaced instead by a new massive hole.

Heh...

She was just too angry and frazzled to even begin to laugh at that rather crass and uncouth joke as she normally might have. She did, however, realize she needed a drink. Letting her shoulders relax and her arms fall back to her sides, Weiss released the glyph she was stood on, falling backwards. With an elegant flip, she landed upright on her feet on the marble floor below, her long and flowing hair billowing around her face as it had been left untied. Wobbling for a second on her legs as her hair briefly blinded her. With an angry flick of her head, she began the long march to the kitchens.

The Schnee Manor was a large building. Very large. Ostentatious, even. Situated on a forty-five acre plot of land in the very middle of Anfang, it took up more space than even the Atlesian parliament buildings, complete with a fifteen-foot high concrete and wrought iron fence encircling it on all sides. Well, not the side with the hundred-foot high sheer cliff that faced the south side of the city. The manor wasn't a house in the strictest sense. The same architect who had built the Atlesian royal palace in König had designed this massive eyesore. It had an aircraft-hanger sized garage built undergroud, a regulation olympic swimming pool in the east wing, and a library the size and density of the Atlas national archive. The national freaking archive!

It also had a kitchen. It was the size of medium sized four-bedroom house. Three full stories high not including the vast wine cellar, it came complete with every conceivable cooking implement, including ceiling-high ovens and woodstoves, two walk-in freezers, an elevator, and seven individual kitchen sinks. Seven! Who the hell needs that many kitchen sinks?! Well, it was a good thing that the kitchen was in its own wing of the house then, or else someone might misconstrue her as being a little 'over the top'.

The passageway to the culinary wing was, unfortunately, just as ridiculous as the rest of the mansion. The walk along the vaulted corridor was blinding, as the floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows faced directly towards the sun seemingly at all times of day. She had to squint.

The large door to the kitchen read 'Staff Only" in large gold letters on the front. Amusing, as this sign was only supposed to be followed by guests of the house. Weiss could come and go as she pleased. This was her stupid house. With a forceful shove of the stiff oak door, Weiss found herself in the main prep area of her dumb kitchen. The three rows of stainless silver range tops stretched down to the end of the massive first floor. All of her fancy and exuberant side dishes were made in this room, along with the hors d'oeuvres that were served to any and all house guests. She ran her hand along the edge of the closest row, her fingers brushing over the polished burner dials. The nameplate on the front of the range glinted back at her in the sunlight. These were the most powerful, hottest elements money could buy, capable of well over six-hundred degrees of heat.

And she briefly considered what it might do to her hand.

Clenching her fist and looking elsewhere, she moved towards the stairs leading down to the cellar. Each step creaked mildly under her boots, making her cringe internally. However, years of service to her family with thousands of trips up and down these steps meant the creaking was both expected and acceptable. She still thought about calling a construction contractor to fix the noise.

The cellar was cold. Well, chilled actually. The dark room came into light as she smacked the switch on the wall. Kept at a chilly forty degrees, the walls were lined with a library-like series of wooden shelves, filled to the ceiling with something like a fifteen hundred bottles of alcohol. Something caught her eye across the room. A single bottle, in a dimly lit green crystal case all by it's lonesome on the wall. Weiss moved over to it slowly, as if her movements might wake it up. She peered at it through the glass. The deep red liquid was housed in a delicate blown-glass flute, more akin to a fine conical flower vase than a bottle of wine. It only held enough wine for one drink, however, and it had never been sampled by anyone since it was purchased seventy-three years prior.

And now it was just taking up space. She gently pulled at the little chrome tab at the base of the glass door, swinging it slowly open with a whoosh of liquid nitrogen depressurizing. The tiny ampoule of liquid was lighter in her fingers than she was expecting given the thickness of the glass capsule. She examined it before her, running her fingers over the little silver and gold inlay on the vial, reading Penfolds 1940 in glimmering script. With a twist of the glass cap to pull it free, Weiss gave the wine a moment to breathe. Satisfied she had alcohol'd enough, she raised the vial to her lips, sending it all back in one go.

What the hell is this shit?!

The taste could only be described as absolutely putrid. Coughing violently so as to not vomit the wine back into its fancy wooden cabinet, she spun around, grabbing the closest bottle on the middle rack. Another red wine, this one a Château d'Yquem 1811. Not having a cork remover handy, Weiss went with the more barbaric option, cracking the neck of the bottle against the edge of the shelf. Bringing the broken neck of the bottle up to her face, she tried her best to wash the sour and vicious taste of the Penfolds out of her mouth. The d'Yquem certainly tasted so much better, even if she hadn't let it breathe properly or even bothered to pour and swirl it. Downing the whole litre and a half of wine in no more than three seconds, she stopped to have a breath herself, realizing her body was shaking from the sensory assault.

She leaned against the wall, grabbing another bottle of alcohol from the closest shelf. This one, a Dalmore 62 red whisky, felt very heavy in her grasp. The bottle topper came out with a hearty yank, making a loud popping sound as it did. Grabbing the bottle around the neck, she took a swig while pocketing the topper. She pushed off the wall, stumbling forward into the middle shelf, nearly knocking herself out on it. Steadying herself and trying to focus through the haze that had begun to collect in the room, Weiss fumbled her way back to the staircase, having to pull herself up each step one by one. She stopped halfway up the steps to take another drink of the whisky, which went down very smooth and very hot, despite being well chilled.

The light in the kitchen was so much brighter now, and it seemed to be coming in the room at a much steeper angle. It also came with a much increased level of headache. With her legs weakening beneath her quite rapidly, Weiss elected to leave the kitchen. Down to the end of the hall again, she spied the staircase that lead down to the garage. With a smirk, she pushed the door open with the bottle, taking a few more swigs as she descended into the sub-basement. At the bottom of the stairs, she kicked open the unassuming-looking stainless steel door. It hit the doorstop with a crash, nearly punting it through the plaster wall. She found herself in the workshop that was built next to the underground garage. Through the massive glass panels at the edge of the workshop she could see the garage floor laid out in its usual fashion, with the four lines of cars displayed on their individual red carpets.

She moved towards the window, very nearly tripping over the two-post car hoist closest to the door. The smell of motor oil and grease filled her nose as she moved towards the garage entrance door, a smell she elected to quell with another large drink of the sharp whisky. She stopped at the glass. One car in particular stood out to her, making her grimace. How dare it sit there, idle. How dare it even exist in any fashion at all? Weiss looked around, trying to find some way of getting even. Against the large red toolbox in the corner lay her weapon of choice. Picking it up in one hand and taking a swig of whisky in the other, she moved into the garage.

Using the vibrant green head of the massive tool to push the door open, she stomped her way into the garage, her boots muffled by the carpeted flooring. Striding purposefully past the deep ivy green Range-Cruiser and the bright orange Donvkerwolke supercar. She stopped in front of the white whale that made her so angry today. Taking the last drink of the whisky, she placed the now empty bottle on the long and elegant hood of the big white sedan. Her breathing hitched and her legs wobbled as she pulled the hammer up into a two handed grip.

All her senses were slowly muddling together at this point. Some half a million lien in alcohol had just begun to hit her like a train. With a grunt of restrained agony, she hoisted the long-handled tool above her head. She paused, teetering as the heavy headed wrecking weapon tried to pull her to the floor.

"RRAAAGH!"

With the heaviest swing she could muster, she sent the head of the twenty pound sledgehammer through the glass bottle, putting a massive dent in the fine aluminum hood of her Klasse-7. Glass showered the floor, falling with quiet tinkling sound as the car's extra-loud alarm started blaring wildly.

"Useless!"

Another swing, sending the bright green hammer head into the passenger side front fender. Another nasty dent, crushing the bulging arch over the wheel.

"It could have been you!"

Taking the passenger-side mirror off with one swing and carrying through with a second hit to the windshield, Weiss screamed over the sound of the alarm.

"We could have been there in a day!"

Another strike, into the rear passenger window. It was true, they could have taken the Klasse-7 instead of Ruby's truck. She knew they should have. The double-pane glass windows gave way very easily thanks to the sledgehammer's bright green head. Her arms were on fire, but she kept swinging, landing a violent blow on the rear fender and knocking the right side taillight housing clean out of the bodywork.

"A hundred and fifty grand PAPERWEIGHT!"

The rear bumper came off the car next, the carbon-fibre air diffuser shattering like glass from the heavy impacts. Weiss remembered why she wanted to take her own car over the truck. With a top speed of well into three hundred kilometres per hour, the trip would have taken no more than twenty hours, instead of four days.

"Why?! So you could spend time with her? Unbelievable!"

The choice to take Ruby's truck had been a selfish one on her part. She knew they would need to take the Atlas municipal highways as the big VHI truck couldn't match the hundred and forty kilometre-per-hour minimum speed limit on the Autobahn network. This meant she could spend more time alone with the girl. And being alone would have left her open to activities. Activities she never got.

"Worthless scrap!"

Moving around to the other side with her vision clouded in a red haze, another blow was landed on the driver side door, leaving a manhole cover-sized dent in the delicate aluminum bodywork.

"I hate you!"

Whether or not the words were directed at herself or the car didn't matter. All that mattered to her was the destruction of the once elegant white sedan. The Klasse-7, to some, was an unattainable dream car with its massive top speed, brutal acceleration, and ultra-precise handling that only the elitest of elite could afford. And this car exactly was even more elite still, being the only one with a factory installed manual transmission.

"RRAAGHH!"

With a final blow to the hood in the approximate area of the battery, the alarm and flashing lights were silenced as no doubt one of the battery terminals had just been punted through the battery case itself. The electric door locks all unlatched and the sloping rear hatch sprung open as the power was cut. A neat safety feature in the event of electrical failure, but right now it seemed almost as if the car was mocking her. With a cry, she tossed to sledgehammer across the garage floor, where it thudded to a stop underneath the Range-Cruiser. She heaved her chest a few times, the tears welling up in her right eye.

"We could have been there..."

Her voice went quiet in the now-silent garage.

"We could have been there when she wasn't dying..."

A few days lead time would have meant Pyrrha would have been alive. Or slightly more alive than she had been, right at the end. She sniffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve and stumbling slightly.

"I... could have been...there when it happened..."

Another pause. The ringing in her ears was reaching an unbelievable level of deafening. Her left leg tried to give way as the alcohol had made its way into her extremities. Something in her head clicked.

"I could have been there to comfort her! It could have been ME she ran to!"

With a powerful kick, she planted her boot into the fine glass right-side headlight, shattering the assembly with the end of her foot. The glass fragments dug into the rich leather of her boot, ripping back the material and shredding the finish. With a stumble, she fell backwards onto the floor, pulling her foot free with an awkward twist of her ankle. Pain shot up her leg, numbed by the volume of booze in her system, and the feeling didn't quite pass her hips.

"Why?"

With a grunt, she pushed herself onto her feet again, her legs once again trying to knock her down. She wiped the tears out of her right eye. A cursory glance back over at the workshop got her blood boiling again. Her hammer was out of her reach, and her leg hurt too bad for another kick. Unsatisfied but in pain, she left the garage with haste. Marching up the two flights upstairs was a painful task on her now-wonky leg and her aching arms.

The grand staircase was steeper than she remembered it being not even a week prior when she had descended down them to the grand dining room to have crepes with the younger woman. It took her much more energy than her body had at this point to pull herself to the top of the carpeted stair, the railing trying its hardest to freeze her hand to it. The house was too cold for her liking, she was noticing. This was to be expected, of course, as she wasn't supposed to have returned for another five days or so, so the building's HVAC system was likely set on power-saving mode. It wasn't cold enough to see her breath as she stomped drunkenly down the upstairs hallway to her room, but it was cold enough to be uncomfortable.

With a purposeful shove from her shoulder, the door with the little Weiss badge on it swung open and bounced against the doorstop with a loud bang. The lights in her room came on automatically as she entered, lighting up the vast expansive bedroom. It had been expertly cleaned and kept up in her absence, all the clothes she had left out on the floor and bed had gone back to the closet, and the bed had been made exactly to her liking. Whoever had cleaned had also bothered to place her stuffed collectible dolls back up in their display cabinet. She eyed the room with distaste. Nearly two-thousand square feet of room stared back at her, beautifully furnished and expensively so. More mental calculations filled her head as she scanned the room.

Sixteen million lien in furniture, fabrics, and flooring. Just in the one room. The rug that sat just at the door was itself nine grand. Nine! She wanted to scream. It was all for show. All of it. Her body twitched. With a very well stifled shout, she stomped over to the makeup table, that was more of a makeup department than just a single table. She kicked the artist's stool out of her way, slamming her hands to the table and peering at herself in the mirror.

"Ugly..."

Muttered under her breath and so quiet that even she barely heard it, Weiss sniffed loudly at her reflection. Her face was a scarlet mess of pain. There was a blood stain under her left nostril. Her eyes were bloodshot red and puffed up, and a streak of dried salt stained down her right cheek. Ever since the fight with the possessed suit of armour and the acquisition of the gaudy scar, she had only ever been able to cry out of one eye. And it always left her like this, with one cheek stained with makeup and salt and not the other. On the plus side, she only used fifty percent as many tissues during sad movies compared to anyone else.

"Fucking joke..."

She gave herself a pitiful smile. Her teeth, stained by both wine and airport coffee, glared back at her, making her look down at the countertop. The little plush doll of her favourite TV show character sat against the mirror, leaning on a paint-can sized tub of concealer. With a smile, she picked the little toy into her hands. She thumbed the tag out of habit, reading Valerie the Redeemer on the little stripe of white fabric. She remembered loving the show the little character was from. Tales From Neverwinter, she remembered. It was a show about the comical battles of the character and her pluck sidekick, Ephriam the Huntsman. A dumb show, in hindsight. But it was supposed to teach a lesson, one of cultural acceptance and co-operation.

Interesting that her favourite show promoted positive human-faunus relations, especially after she had been lectured for years to the contrary by her father. Weiss nearly spat at her reflection just from the thought. She hated being his daughter. She hated him. Years of oppression, years of deceit, and years of being a dick to his children. And all so he could claim the Schnee fortune for himself. He wasn't even actually a Schnee! He was born Jacques Gelè, heir to nothing special at all save for maybe a small rural bank somewhere in Vacuo. In marrying her mother and abusing her last name for himself, he was able to collect on the vast fortune and become probably the richest man in all of Remnant.

That was, of course, until Weiss herself was given control of the family business. But she was still a Schnee. And she hated it every single day. She hated the insidious implications the name itself brought on. A short but violent history of gross misconduct at the hands of her father had turned what was once a prosperous and amicable company into one that promoted the enslavement of thousands. The specific enslavement of faunus, no less. 'Oh, but we do pay them'. Sure, with lies, a phony car towing service, and eight percent of what would have been considered minimum wage at the time.

The reparations alone had been something to the effect of seven hundred billion lien. The company had nearly gone into receivership twice. She had broken down and sold so many assets that she had very nearly closed the doors and shut down. It was only her own stubborn persistence that kept the business open, including hiring a teem of engineers to produce a whole new series of autonomous mining equipment to replace the workers deep in the dust mines, as well as boosting the wages well above what would be considered even high income. Even the lower-level employees were paid like brain surgeons. Weiss hated the company she ran. Not because it cost her huge amounts of money, no that part was okay. She hated it because it cost her her soul.

"What are you?"

She questioned hr reflection, wiping her cheek on the back of her palm. Of course, the reflection didn't respond. Everything that she was was wrong. A soiled name, attached to what she saw as a soiled person. Useless.

"...And why do you even exist!?"

With a shout, she slammed her fist into the mirror, shattering the lower half into a pile of razor-sharp shards. A sharp pain shot up her arm like she had been electrocuted. Her face in the mirror twisted, her teeth bared. Her hand felt wet as she pulled it off the mirror's backing board, and examining her knuckles, she saw the gallery of cuts she had just given herself. Blood seeped from the lacerations, down her wrist and arm. She looked back at the mirror. Or what was left of it, anyways. The fractured glass turned her face into an abstraction. Some of her hair fell into her face, obscuring her vision.

Her bloodied hand gripped her hair, pulling it from her face. The longer she looked at her reflection, the tighter her grip became, and the more blood seeped out and into the stark white locks. Her other hand fell against the pile of mirror shards, gripping one in her fingers. The pain in her fingers was apparent, but not as scorching as she liked. She wanted nothing more than to pull her own hair out until she passed out from the pain.

She hated her hair.

It didn't represent her.

It was a symbol of her resistance to her father, who hated women with short hair. She had grown it out to exuberant lengths out of spite so her long hair would collect around the house. And now it had been kept this way. And she hated it. She hated what the long hair represented.

"You are worthless..."

With a flick of her neck, she brought the glass shard up to the hand which gripped her hair. The glass dug into her neck, marring a tiny cut. Her breathing increased quickly as the muscles in her arms flexed, gripping both her hair and the glass tighter. Her hands burned from the pain.

"No more... Never again..."

With a tiny cry, she drove the piece of mirror through her hair, severing the whole of her ivory locks. Dropping the mass of hair to the ground, she tossed the piece of glass across the room, where it shattered into smaller pieces against the wall. Her lungs burned through the tears. Her head felt...well, in pain from the alcohol, impact with the suit of armour and floor, but it did feel lighter. Almost as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Almost.

"I hate you..."

Her short-but-fluffy-haired reflection glared back at her, making her finally turn away from the counter. With a final sob, she threw herself face-first at the swimming pool-sized bed in the middle of the room. She grabbed a pillow, and pulling it over her head, blocked out all the light in the room.

As much as everything was spinning, it was at least in visible.

Love sucked. Life sucked. She was stuck without the one thing she wanted or even cared about. Ruby was gone from her life, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She screamed into the fine silk sheets.

The world ceased to matter.