A/N: This omake takes place in my Victorian gaslamp fantasy AU, somewhere around the end of Belladonna Lilies. It's also based in part upon a piece of fanart (art of the show, not of my AU) by mojojoj of Blake and Weiss playing chess.

~X X X~

Weiss Schnee thought of herself as a skilled planner. After all, she'd spent the year since her twenty-first birthday staking out her claim to the Schnee Dust Company, navigating its web of internal and external politics to promote the strength and profitability of her areas of control while at the same time not allowing the internal conflicts with her father to weaken the Dust Company's power and influence in the larger world. This required manipulation, negotiation, and the wielding of financial, political, and even military power when necessary. And she'd made a success of it! Though not every tactic ended in victory nor every gambit in triumph, she had steadily built herself a power base that demanded her enemies and rivals take her seriously.

So why couldn't she beat Blake Belladonna at chess?

Weiss believed herself to be a very good chess player. The game was certainly easier than the Byzantine complexities of corporate politics. The moves were open, and unlike in real life the pieces inevitably went where she told them without the risk of accident, failure, or betrayal. No, she wasn't some Steinitz or Anderssen, but against the majority of her opponents, she won considerably more than she lost.

Just not against Blake.

Some part of Weiss's brain suggested that she was taking it easy on Blake. After all, there were many people incapable of cutthroat competition against their lover, and Blake was most definitely Weiss's beloved partner, her wife in all but actual legal force. But Weiss just wasn't one of those people. She could spar with Blake at an intensity that often left one or both of them bruised because that level was necessary to maintain the skills that had in the past and might someday again save their lives. So why would she take it easy over a game, particularly when she took nothing joyful from the relentless frustration?

Nor was it simply that Blake was brilliant at chess. Weiss could easily have accepted that, but Blake just wasn't. Her games against Weiss's aunt or the automatist Dr. Verhart or other players put her roughly on or just below their level, and Weiss could regularly beat all of them. It made sense; Blake was highly intelligent and well-read, but she was trained in the arts of stealth, of infiltration, of pursuit, and of combat. Her practical experience was on the personal, tactical level, not the kind of operations planning that was directly comparable to chess.

Yet Blake still beat Weiss nine times out of ten, and that was rounding the statistics in Weiss's favor.

She didn't even seem to take the game seriously! Rather than being bent over the table, intently studying the board, considering moves and countermoves as she waited for Weiss's play, she was turned sideways in her chair so that the open book in her right hand wouldn't bump the pieces. As usual, she wore trousers, so it was easy for her to cross her left leg over her right, black fabric stretched tight across the curves of thigh and hip.

Weiss pushed a white pawn one square forward, threatening Blake's knight while uncovering a route of attack for Weiss's queen against Blake's rook.

"There! See what you make of that."

Blake did not turn, just directed a sidealong glance at the board out from under her long, black lashes. Her amber eyes seemed to carry a smoldering glow; that wasn't imagination or metaphor, as in the evening's dimness Weiss could see how the Faunus's irises caught and threw back the lamplight like a cat's, which was only natural.

Idly, Blake reached out, picked up her other knight, and made her move.

"Checkmate."

"What! How?" Weiss dropped her gaze to the board, realizing that the knight had her king in check and had simultaneously uncovered a bishop to threaten the only possible retreat…which bishop had previously been blocked in its path by the pawn Weiss had just moved.

Weiss let out a long groan and sagged back in her chair.

Blake got up from her seat.

"Thanks for the game, Weiss."

"Any time," Weiss groaned. "You're lucky I love you, the way you win so unmercifully."

Blake stretched out the kinks from how she'd been sitting, arms above her head and arching her back. Weiss decided that she was lucky Blake loved her, too.

"Well, I can't let you get bored. I know how you love a challenge," Blake said, then headed for the door. She didn't quite strut, but she did make sure to put a little extra sashay into her hips for the benefit of her lover's gaze. In Blake's experience, there was very little icy about the Snow Princess.

Weiss might have been the master of corporate intrigue, but the art of stealth had taught Blake well the value of a tactical distraction.