Chapter Two

Tantrum

There was a significant problem when Bianca awoke.

She lay on a massive king-sized bed layered in the finest silks of the most luminous whites and blues.

She hadn't had one of those since she left her home.

That frigid bitch of a castle locked away in the mountains of Solitas.

Atlas.

'How' was not the important part as she realized she was missing a critical aspect in her usual bed.

A warm body.

She couldn't quite remember the last time she woke up without Summer, Kara, or Nova in her bed; the three her usual and only bed companions she ever had. Nova was her most frequent, but she knew not to get jealous.

Kara needed to dominate Bianca sometimes, something about revenge for Menagerie against the Schnees. She didn't begrudge her her roleplay and fantasies, especially with those razor sharp ribbons she liked to use.

In a fit of exasperation, the bed sheets and pillows were sent flying about the room, a primal noise of rage and petulance echoing within her chambers.

Whatever Summer and Rei had done had sent her back to her home in Atlas, a place she knew held little to no positive memories for her. It was a shocker there weren't several Grimm nest surrounding the castle with how her parents raised her.

This wasn't her home.

This literally wasn't.

This was Weiss' home, not hers. The fate of her Castle Schnee was unknown, but Primordials shredded through stone as easily as Summer did through anything vaguely resembling strawberry.

She was a trespasser in this home and no one would be fooled she was Weiss. Not with her short hair or gruesome scar.

She swung her body upright, wondering why her body felt as if just woke up. This wasn't the first time she pulled an overnight mission, and she didn't feel the tiredness until the next night. She got her answer as something long and white brushed across her vision.

She tried to push it away, thinking it was a stray blanket that survived the earlier explosion of limbs, but it instead swayed back to her, as if attached to her head.

It was her hair. Magically grown back to its obnoxiously long length which took several hours to dry properly, got tangled for the slightest fucking reason, and got stuck on absolutely FUCKING everything!

The usual knife or dagger under her pillow wasn't there as the quickest answer to shortening the miraculous hair growth.

A sinking feeling in her stomach had her sprinting to her personal bathroom, long hair flying behind her. She skid to a stop in front of her mirror, staring at a face unblemished by Taurus, but still with the scar crossing her eye. Fingers probed the rejuvenated skin, testing and pulling the tautness.

Summer had managed to do the impossible and send them back in time to the summer before their first semester at Beacon.

She managed to get away with her suicidal parley with Salem, not only making her sacrifice useless by shifting them back in time, but denying Bianca her wish to give Summer another chance to see by giving her one of her own eyes, being the only O- donor on the team.

She knew any transplant wouldn't take, but it was supposed to be symbolic and how cool would it look if two members of Team SKBN wore eyepatches.

Though, she supposed it was Team RWBY again as they were back in their original dimension. Something which needed exploring as she finally managed to wrench herself away from the mirror. The scar she could live without, but the hair was going to go as soon as she could get out of this castle.

The castle was a good staging ground for her escape. It was large enough to move about unnoticed by her parents and was connected to the worldwide internet, allowing her to confirm her theory about which dimension she was in again.

It would have to wait as there was an intruder in her room, someone she had long forgotten about when she left Castle Schnee for Beacon and never came back.

"Miss Schnee, I've prepared your morning outfit." Her personal servant, Bast, stood by her bedside in her stereotypical maid outfit. She was unlike other Faunus, as she lacked a tail or ears, but she possessed the slitted eyes and claws of many of her kin.

Another example of how Jacques Schnee lorded his status over the Faunus, giving her to Weiss to foster a sense of superiority over them, hoping she'd follow in his footsteps. Bast was forced to wear such a demeaning outfit and keep her nails short.

"Thank you." Weiss ignored her usual battle dress and made her way to her dresser, frowning at her earlier choices of clothing, but was eventually able to find a pair of jeans Winter had given to her along with a polo.

"Did I pull out the wrong outfit Miss Schnee?" There was an undertone of fear in her maid's voice, knowing a mistake meant punishment, especially as a Faunus staff member to the heiress of the company.

"No, but I wanted to try something new." Weiss stripped from her nightshirt and donned her change of clothes, unabashed to Bast being in the room with her. She still averted her eyes per decorum. Weiss took this time to take the dress and walk to her closet.

"Miss Schnee!" Bast jumped into action after Weiss as she grabbed a hanger and made to put the dress back onto its hook. "You shouldn't be doing my work."

She had to resist the urge to facepalm at the servitude Bast showed her, not allowing her to perform even the smallest amount of work. It would always somehow get back to her father and then she'd either be disciplined, let go, or worse, get send to one of the dreaded labour camps.

"Where is my father?" She had to be careful with her phrasing. Bast was used to following orders, not requests. This request from Weiss would usually be instead phrased as 'Tell me where my father is', a command.

"Your father left earlier this morning for a business meeting and won't return for a few days." Bast hung up the dress and closed the closet, returning to Weiss' side. "Your mother is in her solar and has asked not to be disturbed."

No doubt she was back to drinking and doing work again. Maybe it was the loss of Whitley as a miscarriage which caused her to start drinking, maybe it was the menopause which caused her to succumb to the cup, or maybe it was just her family being fucked up.

Whichever reason it was, Weiss wasn't going to waste time consoling a woman who was barely there for her during her childhood. She had more important things to do.

"Good." Weiss left Bast to chase after her as she left her room and proceeded down the hallway, angling for the lower levels of the castle.

"Where are you going Miss?" Bast fell into a submissive step behind Weiss, keeping a respectful distance.

"Kitchens. I need breakfast." Weiss replied casually, as if it was something she did her herself any other day. Ruby was the one in charge of any exquisite breakfasts, but she could still make simple things. Anything more and Yang stood by in full firefighter gear and extinguisher.

She could be an ass, but it was why she loved her.

"I can have breakfast brought up to the dining room for you." Bast quickly supplied, but Weiss wasn't going to be swayed as she continued down the stairs towards the kitchens.

"I can make breakfast for myself Bast." Weiss pushed opened the dual doors to the kitchens, causing every staff member inside to freeze at her presence. No Schnee had ever come down here in recent memory. "You can, however, tell me how many Faunus staff there are in the castle."

This was an order, as much as she hated to give one, but she needed to know for her escape to succeed. She wasn't taking much more than clothes and Myrtenaster, but Bast and the rest of the Faunus would be blamed when Jacques came back and found her missing without a word to anyone.

Bast looked ready to jump in at any moment and stop the heiress from making breakfast, but thought it better to ignore her wishes. "There aren't many Miss Schnee. Less than a dozen."

"Please just call me Weiss." She added as an afterthought, absentmindedly. "Miss Schnee makes me feel old." She was a 22 year old stuck in the body of a 17 year old again. She didn't need reminding she was older than she was supposed to be.

"I can't do that Miss Schnee." Bast tried hard to not meet Weiss' disapproving gaze, and fidgeted with the hem of her skirt. "Your father's order are to treat you with deference."

"And if I ordered you to call me 'Weiss' instead of 'Miss Schnee'?" She knew it was a mute point. She didn't want to order people to call her by her first name, she wanted them to do it because she could be an acquaintance; a friend.

Bast looked unsure of how to answer. Lord Schnee's orders came before his daughter's, but Bast was her personal handmaiden. Never had Weiss given a contradictory order to her.

"Just forget about it. One day, I hope you'll be comfortable enough around me to call me by my first name." Weiss let the topic drop and Bast inaudibly sighed in relief, satisfied she wasn't going to have to decide to between Lord Schnee and Miss Schnee. "Sit."

Bast looked at her with confusion until Weiss plated breakfast and held it out for her. It wasn't anything fancy, an omelette with a few veggies tossed about, but it was the symbolism which got to everyone in the kitchens.

Weiss Schnee had asked the help, a Faunus no less, to eat breakfast with her. Not only eat, but eat a breakfast she had personally made.

"I can't Miss Schnee!" Bast tried to protest under the looks of confusion and horror of her workers. She was protesting a Schnees orders, but it was highly unorthodox to eat at a table with one in the first place. "It wouldn't be proper."

"Fuck proper. Sit." Bast went into a borderline comatose state at the profanity coming from the heiress. It gave Weiss the chance to manhandle her to a seat on the table used by the staff for their breaks. Weiss pushed Bast's plate to her and took a seat across from her, beginning to demolish her own food. "Eat."

Bast moved in an almost autonomous haze as she ate her omelette. Weiss made some sort of satisfied noise as she snapped out of her stupor and began to actually eat the food Weiss prepared. She shrank under the gazes of her coworkers.

"Bast, I have an important mission for you." Bast perked up at that, ready to be of service to her. "Do you know who all the Faunus staff are?"

Bast nodded, as Weiss thought she would. If there was less than a dozen as she claimed, then it wasn't a far stretch to assume she knew all of them, at least in passing.

"I need to meet with all of them." Bast's eyes suddenly filled with justified fear. Weiss was singling out just the Faunus, not a good track record with who her father was. "You have nothing to fear from me Bast. I've never treated you wrong, have I?"

She couldn't remember if there was a moment where she treated Bast any less than she deserved. Harshly, maybe, when she was angry at a mistake she made, but never as a thing to be looked down upon.

Bast shook her head, dissuading her worries.

"No one's in trouble Bast. I just want to meet all of them. The conference room next to the main foyer will suit my needs. Please have all the Faunus there at around 2100." Weiss took her leave from the kitchens, depositing her used dish in the sink. She'd enjoy the luxury of servants while she had the chance.

Twelves hours to go.

Sometimes she regretted waking up early.

It was weird having to be covert in her old home. She wasn't even having to be covert against her parents, seeing as one wasn't at home and the other was locked in a room at the top floor. It was Bast, and her prying eyes, she was avoiding.

There were only so many tasks she could send Bast on before she had to order her to leave her alone. She could deal with her presence when she was in her office, researching the Remnant she found herself in again. It was a good sign when she couldn't find any evidence of Whitley's existence.

Her worst worries were if she was separated from her team and found herself alone with a Team RWBY she couldn't recognize. There was nothing she could do to confirm which of her team members were who; if they were hers, or this dimension's.

She should've left as soon as she woke up, but Bast would've been blamed for her disappearance and she couldn't live with knowing she could've done something to save her from her father's wrath.

She might not be able to save all the Faunus within the camps right now, but she could help the few around her.

Emulating Blake to an extreme, she slunk through the castle and acquisitioned every resource she needed. Though the SDC didn't use the castle as a storeroom, Weiss had more than enough Dust allocated to her for practice.

Dust was as good of money, and she lacked the physical Lien she wanted, Fire Dust especially with its majority used as fuel. The SDC R&D wanted to focus on renewable energies, but couldn't work without their president's approval.

She got a few weird looks from the security in charge of the castle's built-in hangar, but she moved with confidence as she pulled along a trolley stacked high with crates of the four major Dust types.

They even helped her load it onto one of the bullheads when she beckoned them over, briefly stating she was taking a sanctioned trip out to Atlas' Hearth Academy to test her abilities before her semester at Beacon.

She didn't get any questions after that as she continued to load her luggage and other necessities.

Before she knew it, her scroll alerted her to the meeting she requested with the Faunus staff. They were all going to leave with her when she left for Patch where she'd pick up her team and they'd all move onward to Menagerie.

She arrived early to the conference room, and unsurprisingly, Bast had everyone already gathered there, waiting for her. They all greeted her with a small bow of their heads, but Weiss refused a seat around the table and remained by the door as no one else was seated, waiting for her to take a seat first.

"None of you have any reason to trust me, and my family has given you no reason to do so. I'm leaving this castle with no intention to ever return and I'm giving you a chance to leave." She gave them a chance to speak up, but no one raised any concerns. "I'll be leaving right now and making a short stop on the island of Patch before we leave to Menagerie."

"Why are you helping us?" Bast was the only one brave enough to ask a question. Weiss could guess they thought it was a trap and she was instead shipping them to one of her family's labour camps.

"Jacques will persecute each and every one of you, regardless if you knew my intentions to leave or not, just because you're Faunus. My conscious wouldn't allow me to leave you to your fates when I'm taking a bullhead with more than enough room for all of you."

"I'm going." Bast was the first one to throw her support behind Weiss, and the rest of them agreed, some of them reluctantly and with distrust. "Do we have time to pack?"

"I'll take care of anything you need when we get to Vale, a small penance for my family's wrongdoings against the Faunus." Weiss left the conference with Bast and entourage trailing behind her.

The group of nine Faunus and their impromptu leader walked down the corridor to the hangars, but were stopped by Weiss' command just before the entrance to the hangar.

"Follow me as if you're supposed to be here." Security didn't stop her as her group made their way to the prepped bullhead. The doors were already flung open and Weiss hopped into the fuselage, then the cockpit. Bast followed her while the other eight spread out and tried to find a comfortable place.

"Do you know how to fly this, Miss?" Bast audibly gulped as she fastened the belts over her shoulders and waist.

"Of course I do." Different body this may be, but the information was still there. Maybe not so different body as she still had to stretch to reach the overhead console, even with a seat adjustment. They just weren't built for small people. "It'll be around six hours to get the Patch."

She was cleared to forward out into the open by the air controller. No one questioned her as a Schnee, even with the entourage she kept.

The lights of Atlas twinkled below her far in the distance as Weiss stopped the craft and ran through her preflight checklist. Bast looked on as she ticked away checkpoint after checkpoint on her scroll and then rotated the engines to vertical.

Slowly, the craft rose from its pad. Weiss grinned at the feeling of piloting again. The craft rose higher and higher until it peaked over the castle and she slammed the engines forward, enjoying the feeling of freefall until the wings caught lift.

She could make out the tears in Bast's eyes and she detached a hand from the steering column, offering it to her. She hesitated until Weiss manhandled a hand into her grip and squeezed assuringly. Weiss let her hold it all throughout the trip. She didn't mind.

Her team was waiting for her.

Bast: the Egyptian goddess of cats, among others.