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I'm also posting this story on Space Battles. com, feel free to look it up there since I'm more active in the comments section over there.
"Sir," Schwarz whispered, lightly placing her hand atop Mr. S's arm, "we should go," she said, hooking her arm through his and pulling him away from his seat as raucous chattering filled the ball room. Excited onlookers cried out in the frenzied excitement of the moment as a sort of spontaneous dialogue seemed to have formed in every corner of the room as every guest strongly agreed that this was not good, each person tripping over themselves to denounce the situation more sternly than the last. Some of the ladies lightly dabbed at the mascara ridden tears that streamed down their cheeks as many of the people stood precariously on their chairs to videotape the scene with their scroll cameras.
Interestingly, nobody bothered to directly address, or even interact with, Mr. Schnee during all of this, allowing Schwarz a relatively quiet moment to guide him to the nearest exit: a secret door, hidden behind one of the tapestries that hung against the North Wall. Weiss, having recovered before the rest of team RWBY and quickly locating the pair, managed to yell out an impassioned, "Wait!" just as the heavy marble door shut neatly behind the retreating pair, resting flush against the wall once more as the tapestry swung smoothly back to cover it.
Schwarz's dress heels clicked sharply across the marble floor, resonating within the small tunnel they traveled through as Mr. S wondered if he should say something to break the silence before quickly deciding against it. He shivered with aftershocks at the memory of what was literally his first informal conversation of the night as, eventually, they came upon a small, circular room with four mechanical doors lining the walls; a fifth door shutting cleanly behind them as they entered the circle. And, for just a moment, as they both stood in the quiet and otherwise empty room, well...honestly, he thought she was here to kill him. His blood pressure spiked as Schwarz turned suddenly.
"Where should we go, sir?" she asked with a straight voice while staring intensely down at the scale-model hologram of a building that floated above her tablet. A fiery red web of secret pathways snaked their way throughout the projected building's interior while a blue, flashing light indicated their position in those very tunnels.
"Take me to my office," he replied monotonously, managing to force a semblance of alertness and strength in his voice. And, at his word, the rightmost door whirred with a mechanical hum as the metal moved to reveal another small tunnel.
They once again headed into the maze of pathways, occasionally coming across forks in the path and winding around strongly curved and inclining walkways. During all of this, Mr. S felt keenly the unsaid questions hanging uncomfortably in the air as Schwarz worked her hardest to pretend the answers to those questions didn't matter: questions that Mr. S couldn't identify.
'Alright, this is too much,' Mr. S decided, eagerly pulling his scroll from his pocket and searching for "History of The World." It wasn't much to go on, but it was all he could think to search for at the moment. His eyes desperately scanned over the first link, reading in a flurry...
Remnant is a rocky planet with one natural satellite. Home to two races, Humanity and the Faunus, the history of Remnant is...
'Motherfucker!' he worked to keep himself from yelling as he scrolled down, only to see more links for this "Remnant" world building crap. 'Seriously, how much was this guy into this fantasy book if it affected his recommendations this much!'
Frantically, he started typing away for a more specific query when a news story popped up, partially blocking the screen.
Former Schnee heiress makes surprise speech at ball! the headline read, continuing on to say, "You won't believe what happened next!"
A grainy picture of the dining table he'd just been sitting at appeared below the title, showing standing at her seat and looking down at Mr. S while multiple red arrows decorated the photo, pointing to a spot on Ms. Messerschmitt's cleavage, which itself was highlighted by a red circle. He scowled at the image, clicking it away as he worked to type in a new search once more.
"Sir, we're here," Schwarz interrupted.
Mr. S looked up to see Schwarz standing patiently by a heavy, metal door. He followed her light glance towards the small fixture embedded into the wall beside the door.
'Oh, she wants me to unlock it,' Mr. S realized as he strode confidently towards the fixture.
'Ok,' he thought on his way to the door, 'If "PASSWORD" doesn't unlock the door I'm going to pretend to pass out until I can figure out what-OH THANK GOODNESS IT'S A FINGERPRINT SCANNER!'
Mr. S exhaled in relief as he approached the door. A loud and deep CLICK resounded from inside the metal door almost immediately after he pressed his thumb onto the thumb pad. The door clicked a second time, more softly this time, before parting in the middle into two parts, each half swinging smoothly inwards to reveal his office.
If he'd been in the mood, he would have quickly run in and jumped into the swivel chair before spinning about to take in the aesthetic beauty of the room while softly saying "whoaaaa…" with each revolution. The floor of the room was covered completely in custom fitting, snow white, tiles that lined the room from wall to wall. The walls themselves were amazingly designed. The front wall was a solid block of metal, the same type as the doors'. The two side walls were covered in a lightly toned, hard carpet of some sort that brought a lot of balance to the stark contrast created by the white floor and dark, mahogany desk which sat near the back edge of the room. And finally, behind the desk itself, there was the main attraction: a wall made entirely of glass. He experienced a bit of vertigo as he looked through that wall and saw the skeleton crew working, their colored uniforms contrasting nicely with the white factory floor below. On the opposite wall of the warehouse was what could have been the largest television he'd ever seen. The screen itself was larger than his entire office, and on it was displayed the stock information for Schnee Corp, or rather, SCHN. A bright, green line ran along the surface of the screen, fluctuating up and down on a black graph as other companies and numbers flashed onto the lower bar of the screen, feeding real time stock price information straight through the glass wall. The green glow of the graph was just powerful enough to stretch into his office, coloring the snow white tiles a decorative teal.
He wasn't paying attention to any of this as he walked in, however. He was intrigued more by the crowd of people who mulled about on the inside, apparently ready to greet him. Schwarz followed hesitantly behind him as she looked more obviously at the two groups which stood on either side of the room, forming a path for Mr. S to reach his desk as they all stared at him with expressions ranging from curiosity to incredulity to rage.
He looked straight ahead as he walked forward, keeping his eyes on the desk as indistinct features passed by on either side of his periphery. Each step he took seemed to echo in the crowded room, his every movement risking a casual brush against either of the two lines they had formed against the carpeted walls. He released a soft breath he'd been hiding as he curved around to stand in the clear space behind his desk. Reaching forward, he pulled back the chair behind his desk and lowered himself into it, trying his hardest to look regal as he did so.
As he sat in his chair, his desk surprised him by humming on and powering up all the electronics and computers that sat upon the mahogany.
"Good. Morning. Mr. Schnee," a staccato, computerized voice sounded from the telephone which sat on the nearest corner of the desk. "You. Have. Nine...Thousand. Four. Hundred. And. One. Messages," the computer finished just before a loud, cacophonous ringing overtook the machine.
The ringing stopped after several seconds. "You. Have. Nine. Thousand. Five. Hundre-"
CLICK. The sound resounded throughout the room as Schwarz's hand pressed harshly into the largest button on the machine, though Mr. S noted that a small light still flashed on the grey surface of the device, indicating that the stream of calls continued. He looked up, seeing the contained grimace Schwarz directed at the machine, before focusing his attention to the people in front of him. Careful not to ask suspicious questions like, "who are you people?" he elected to take a more subtle route. The first thing would be to find out whether "he" was supposed to know these people. His only guess was that he knew at least some of them quite well, and must be quite friendly with at least one of them if they had the key to his office, so a more casual approach might be appropriate for the situation, he gathered. He felt a cold shill fall over him as he thought of what to say, unable to come up with any excuses or apologies about whatever it was he did.
"Professor Ozpin, what are you doing here?" Schwarz asked with a mixture of relief and worry as she directed a familiar smile towards the man with the cane. Mr. S thanked his lucky stars at this and elected to stay silent for as long as he could manage.
"I was just dropping by to say hello," the man he now knew to be Ozpin replied with a genial smile, breaking the silence as he took a sip of, he guessed coffee, from a mug he'd been holding up ever since Mr. S walked in. "We didn't get to talk much during the party," Ozpin continued, directing the statement at Mr. S.
"I don't think you're the only one who wants a talk with our dear Mr. Schnee," a slightly tipsy man with raven hair chuckled. The man gestured with his flask hand to a television embedded into one of the side walls.
"Why, because she's obviously an excellent listener!" the statement blared from the tv's speakers as an aerial shot of the ball showed Mr. S, a small figure in a white tuxedo sitting at the far edge of the largest table. Despite his small presence on the screen, however, his words tore through the surrounding silence of the ball room and seemed to pass through the tv and into his office to haunt him once more.
"Now, as you can see quite clearly, his voice is clear and unstrained, and there is no hint of discomfiture from Mr. Schnee as he speaks, nor is there any indication that he meant to be deceptive. In fact, if you will pay attention to his chuckle there at the end, I can see no intent to follow up his joke with anything substantive," a man wearing a brown suit explained while the news station replayed the statement, along with the following chuckle, in slow motion on the left half of the television screen.
"So would you say that Mr. Schnee seemed tolerable of, even friendly with, the faunus that kissed his daughter?" the reporter sitting next to the man asked as she hooked her hands together and leaned forward on her stool.
"Yes, uh, I would characterize his behavior as friendly," the man answered with a curt nod.
"Well thank you, doctor Braun," the reporter said with a respectful nod before turning back to face the camera with a serious expression. "We will now talk LIVE with our body language analyst on the scene who-"
A light blue, circular light appeared on the lower corner of the tv as the sound muted. Turning his head, Mr. S looked up to see Schwarz standing beside him with her arm outstretched towards the screen, a remote grasped firmly in her hand. Mr. S wondered if he ought to give her a raise sometime.
"Now why'd you have to," the raven haired man took a long swig, "go on and do that. We were just getting to the fun part," he finished with a devilish smirk.
"Actually," a cold voice interrupted Schwarz's heated reply. Weiss stepped forward from the line she and her friends formed against the left wall, "I actually...agree with Qrow," she said as if swallowing something distasteful. "You have a lot of questions to answer," Weiss continued, her voice losing its initially wavering nature to take on a braver tone.
As she said this, the rest of the group trained their gazes on Mr. S, who sat still in his chair, thinking over the situation.
So he was sitting in a room with seven people. His daughter and her friends, along with Ozpin, were the people he "knew" apparently. That left two people unaccounted for.
Standing next to Ozpin, against the right wall, wearing a white and purple dress, was a displeased librarian with a riding crop. No. Really. She just carried that thing around and no one batted an eye, not even when she was wandering around the party...Moving on, Mr. S. decided to ignore her attire as he went to analyze the other unknown. Next to her, leaning on the wall in a roguish manner, was a man who apparently just did not give a fuck about dress code. He was wearing a cape for god's sake! And even while wearing that outfit he managed to make it look like he was too drunk to dress himself. Now, Mr. S wasn't usually one to pay too much attention to appearances in the first place, but the man seemed to have a talent for annoying people. His look, his hair, they way he talked, and his nonchalant attitude in the face of this disaster…whatever it was.
Man, he thought he was just soooo cool. Well he wasn't.
Mr. S exhaled lightly as he looked at his "daughter", who now stood defiantly in front of his desk.
"Now what could I possibly have to answer for?" he asked with an ironical smirk that implied he knew what the hell was going on.
"Buh, ghhh," Weiss floundered at Mr. S's playing dumb act. "Everything!" she finally settled at with a breathless, exasperated shout, "you have everything to answer for! What kind of act ar-"
"Excuse me," Schwarz interrupted strongly. "While Mr. Schnee appreciates your...excitement...to meet with him, you are still trespassing." she noted to a now surprised Mr. S. "Please leave and we'll be sure to schedule appointments for all of you," she finished in a tone that made clear that they wouldn't be getting any appointments. While she said this, her hand hovered dangerously over the visible emergency button.
"You're excused," Weiss responded, calmly fixing her dress, "and we're not leaving."
"Actually," Schwarz said in the closest thing to a sneer Mr.S had heard from her, "you wi-"
"Schwarz," Mr. S interrupted, drawing Schwarz's attention to him while he looked out to the group ahead, "why don't you get our guests some chairs."
"What?" Weiss asked indignantly.
"Of course, sir," Schwarz looked down at him, smiling while her hand hovered over the hidden emergency call button.
"No..I mean, actually get them some chairs," he clarified, drawing a confused look from Schwarz as she fought an internal battle between her trust in him and her duty
"What?" Schwarz summarized her feelings, immediately recoiling at the apparent impudence in her voice.
"Of course," Weiss chimed in, crossing her arms haughtily.
Schwarz turned her head to face Weiss with a glare, "I don't know what on Remnant-"
Mr, S didn't hear the rest of Schwarz's admonitions; for just as he heard the word "Remnant" leave her lips, he'd leaned back in his chair just enough to see the REAL centerpiece of the room. Above his head, expertly painted onto the ceiling of his office, was a giant map of…
"REMNANT".
Dark, bold letters spelled out the name of the world in stylized lettering, with each of the continents "Atlas," "Minstral, "Vacuo," and "Vale" being similarly labeled.
A series of epiphanies slammed into his mind as he gazed up at the world in a contemplative silence.
'They're basically just modified Atlas thrusters.' Jon's words rung clearly in his head.
'oh' Mr. S thought
'Remnant is a rocky planet with one natural satellite,' the words from the web entry flashed in his mind.
'Oh' he continued.
'...home to two races, Humanity and the Faunus…'
'OH' his mind began to burn with implications.
'...seemed friendly with the Faunus that kissed his daughter?'
'OH!'
'Because she's obviously such a great listener!' his own actions flashed painfully in his memory for no particular reason.
'D'OH!'
Quickly recovering, however, the final piece of the puzzle slid into place.
...Analysis of Dust Vein Decomposition Patterns In Fucking Remnant…
'OH SH-'
"Mr. Schnee," Schwarz interrupted his inner monologue, bringing his focus down from the ceiling. "Are you sure you'd like to speak with these people now?" Schwarz continued, putting emphasis on "now".
"Yes," he replied. No matter what was going on in the news, he NEEDED to find out what was going on. Now. Because he was far from being Montana or Alaska, and he definitely wasn't in Kansas.
"Ha!" Weiss said, snubbing her nose at Schwarz while the dark haired woman begrudgingly called for the chairs with raised hackles and a nervous posture.
"Just be-"
"While you're at it," Mr. S interrupted the dangerously toned statement that Schwarz directed towards Weiss, "would you mind going through my voicemails?"
Schwarz was a gem, and he appreciated her at the moment more than he'd appreciated anything in his life, but he could tell a frazzled person when he saw one. She was best off doing something other than talking to the people present.
"You want me to look through all the voicemails?" Schwarz asked incredulously.
"Of course not," Mr. S replied. "Just randomize the order and look through a few to get a feel for the environment."
"Randomising. Voicemails." The phone chimed, seemingly deciding Schwarz's next course of action.
Schwarz seemed to get the subtext of the statement and lowered her shoulders as she picked up the phone handle, pressed some buttons and pushed the phone to her ear as she read off of a transcript. Though, Mr. S noted, the task seemed to have a calming effect on the secretary, as a hint of a smile formed on her countenance at the first contact with the hard plastic of the phone.
Now, he needed to get some very key questions about this world answered...and he couldn't ask any of them. In fact, instead of asking questions, he would have to give detailed answers about the politics and behavior of Mr. Schnee while providing an adequate explanation for the apparent difference between his behavior and what Mr. Schnee's behavior would have been.
He was sure that was possible though…somehow.
Maybe if he answered in question form?
He wasn't a pessimist, but he was sure this would be the hardest game of Jeopardy ever.
Mr S. blinked as he looked over the expectant crowd. Everyone was silent, looks of confusion, anger and intense curiosity flooded the room as everyone trained an idle gaze on Mr. S. Even Qrow, looking unusually serious as he leaned back against a side wall, managed to show some reverence towards the situation, as if the mystery of the century was about to be solved in this very office. Mr. S looked back at them with a blank gaze, slowly regretting his rash decision to keep them here as they all waited for him to bust out a completely rational and sensical explanation for what was going on. Well, that wasn't happening. His mind was still burned out after accepting that the future reality was actually some alien world and he wasn't really in the best state to come up with anything convincing. Really, the only explanation he could think of was the truth, and it was just stupid.
Breathing in lightly, he prepared to grind out some half thought declaration when sweet respite came with Weiss as she cut through the awkward silence.
"Can we get on with this, father?" Weiss leaned forward to glare down at him.
The question buzzed past him as he barely acknowledged the meaning of the statement before it slipped from his mind. Really, he was thankful that someone else had taken the burden of starting the conversation, but Mr. S was still a bit distracted by the fact that this crazy body snatching adventure was actually on another fucking planet! As such, at the moment, he was more concerned with the Fermi paradox and the logistics of interstellar travel then he was with the conversation before him.
"Get on with what?" he managed to reply with a straight voice and gentle smile, concealing his lack of fucks expertly.
"You!" Weiss pointed a finger at Mr. S while she slowly intoned each word, "answering our questions!" Weiss finished as she felt her pointing finger shake with a growing rage at having asked the same, impossibly interesting, question of her father.
"Well, what questions could you possibly want answered?" Mr. S replied, trying to put on an interested smile that came off as more smug than intended. 'Yeah, this probably isn't Proxima, what with the whole tidal locking. Maybe Alpha Centauri?'
Weiss shivered with a contained wrath at his apparent nonchalance. "Well," she began with an overly calm attitude as she felt herself being undone. Her expressions and movements become looser and more exaggerated as an impassioned fury expressed itself through her. "You could start by explaining your behavior back at the ball, old man!" At this point, Weiss was a raging ball of hot fury, barely holding herself back from yelling as she let it all out. Everything. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she noted that she'd never gotten this far before, having always been shut down, or slapped or threatened before she'd reached this point, but she was free now. She'd already been disowned and had nothing else to lose, nothing else he could take from her. Best of all her father was stupid enough to let everyone stay, to let himself be cornered in public like this! Finally, after all these years, like a dream come true, she would be leaving this poisonous relationship, and she would be leaving with her head held high, her friends by her side, and most importantly...getting some answers!
So why was she so angry?
Weiss leaned intently forward as Mr. S moved to speak, hating that she was so captivated by his words and beginning to listen to that muted voice in the back of her head that told her to calm down as she felt Blake move to stand beside her, allowing her to relax just a bit.
"Well, whatever would I have to explain myself for?" Mr. S replied as if this conversation was the last thing on his mind.
"Why did you say that back at the ball!?" Weiss exploded once more, on the brink of shouting as Mr. S Idly thought about paying more attention and care to his responses before resolving to muscle through this, he was bound to mess up, best not to overthink it.
"Because it was funny," Mr. S replied simply with a forlorn smile.
"You. You. You. You." Weiss stuttered, rapidly blinking as she struggled to come up with more words that could express her fury.
"Well what was I supposed to say?" he replied defensively as he felt his mind begin to wake once more and notice the rest of the people in the room who watched, as Yang in particular looked ready for a fist fight and Ruby weakly hooked her arm through Yang's in a worried attempt to hold her back.
"You were supposed to say that you didn't approve of our relationship!" Weiss replied with the obvious answer, almost begging for the world to make sense again.
"Well, why wouldn't I approve of your relationship?" Mr. S asked.
"BECAUSE SHE'S A FAUNUS!" Weiss exploded, stretching her arms up as she stood on her tiptoes to point vigorously at Blake's cat-ears.
Blake blushed as she flattened her ears and looked bashfully at the floor. Blake wondered if she should be offended at her girlfriends words.
'No," Blake thought, 'she's not like that.'
Mr. S, meanwhile was taken aback, visibly reacting to Weiss's words for the first time in the conversation as his eyes widened a hair and he moved to lean back against his office chair. There was a noticeable lull in the conversation as everyone seemed intrigued by Mr. Schnee's reaction, hooked onto his lips as they all eagerly awaited his next words. Weiss had said it straight, there was nowhere for him to deflect the conversation to. Mr. S himself was shaken from his reverie as it all hit him like a train, bringing him fully back into the conversation, the here and now, as "Remnant" left his musings and yet another stream of epiphanies streamed into place. Despite this being the third time that night that he was having such an experience, the power of the moment was enough to overwhelm him once more, to wipe away his thoughts as a singular conclusion formed in his mind, and, like a deer staring into the headlights of truth, there was nothing he did other than look back with wide eyes and reflect what shone onto him.
Mr. S paused for just an instant to consider his words, the whole room going still as even Qrow moved from his relaxed position against the wall to look fully upon the unfolding scene.
"You know," Mr. S paused with a slightly shocked tone, "Weiss," he brought his hands together, touching them to his lips as he looked down at his desk top in concern, "that's kind of racist."
NTTN
