"In the end, we're all just chalk lines, drawn on the concrete only to be washed away. And for the time that I've been given, I am what I am." - Five Finger Death Punch, Never Enough
§SS§
Weiss Schnee stared down her father with a glare that would have cowed most men. Mister Schnee was not so much cowed as simply impressed- he'd taught her to do that, and he was so, so proud of how well she'd learned. He was disappointed, however, in how slow she was being to learn that defying him was a bad decision. He expected better of his eldest. "You are not going, young lady. Leave the hunting to those who have nothing better to do, and come to your senses!"
His little girl's glare intensified, and with it, both his pride in her determination and his shame for her inability to listen. She was a difficult, confusing child, no matter how much he loved her. "And just why not?" Weiss asked. Her sharp tone both angered him and served to remind him that she wasn't so little anymore.
"Because I worry about you, and you have a company to run when I am gone! I will not have my heiress running about endangering herself for nothing!"
Weiss' hand came to rest on Myrtenaster's hilt in a silent threat. "You know, Father," she said, "I've never heard you call me by my name. 'Girl, child, my daughter.' But never my name. I'm starting to doubt you really care."
The older man snorted. "Oh, take your hand off of that weapon. As if you would stand a chance. That's just sad. Weiss, believe me, I care. If I didn't, I'd tell you to go do what you want," he spat. "But I do, so you won't."
Weiss gave a haughty sniff of her own in return. She was getting tired of this. "I'd skewer you like a pig if you weren't my father."
"Then try," he challenged, tiring of her defiance.
"If you would listen to your daughter, you would have caught the second part of that statement," she snapped. "You're still my father."
The old man sighed. "Then let the living armor be your opponent in my stead. Maybe that will teach you something. If you can defeat that, then you can go to Beacon to become a huntress. But until then you're to stay in your-"
"Where is the thing, then?! Neither of us is getting any younger, and I will not look back on my life the day I die and regret every moment of it because I never got to be me! I am who and what I am, and if you were a better father, you'd love me for it," she snapped, infuriated. "I have a limited number of heartbeats and I refuse to waste them debating my fate with someone who has no right to control it! You don't own me, Father."
The business leader looked shocked. She'd never had the gall to interrupt him before. "It's in the basement. Of course, you are to bring a house servant with you- someone to stop the machine if need be."
She turned her back on him and drew her weapon. "There won't be any need. You're going to have to buy a new living armor."
§SS§
Not much later, Mister Schnee's study door opened again, and the gigantic head of his suit of living armor was slammed down on his desk in defiant triumph. "I believe I'll be packing my bags."
His glasses just about fell off his face when he looked at her and the bandages on her head. She'd really done it. "You have my leave, then," he said haughtily. "Go, pack your bags. You accomplished the task I set you to fairly, but you'll be coming back before long."
On the inside, her defiance had made him both angrier and prouder than he'd ever been before. Angry because he'd lost his last bid to keep her home, safe and sound, to continue training her to take his place. Proud because she didn't give in, because she hadn't allowed even the fearsome machine he set to guard the family home to stand in her way.
She left the room, and he sighed, burying his face in his hands and trying to worm out his inner turmoil over her behavior. She went back to her own chambers to begin packing up for Beacon, with a self-satisfied smirk on her face and a song in her heart.
She was her own person, a free person, and nobody would ever take that away from her.