I'm looking for editors by the way, so if you think you can help improve the quality of the story and want to decrease the time between updates, feel free to message me.
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.
"Now hold on, Schwarz. Let's hear her out," Mr. S proclaimed, speaking in a gentle, understanding, and genuinely hopeful tone of voice that everyone elected to ignore for the sake of their sanity.
"Sir, as the head of your security, I can't allow you to sit here with an admitted terrorist!" Schwarz explained, turning slightly to face Mr. S while making sure to keep Blake in her periphery.
"Don't get too excited now, Schwarz," Mr. S beckoned. "At worst, she's a former member; besides, I doubt Weiss is the kind to knowingly date a murderer," he said, guessing.
"I highly doubt the risk is worth whatever information she can offer," Schwarz retorted, managing to keep her tone professional.
"Trust me, I know what I'm doing," he said, lying.
"Even so, can this discussion not be held off until proper security measures are in place?" Schwarz said with a pleading tone.
"That's not feasible given the current situation," Mr. S said, gesturing to the red screen behind him and slipping comfortably into that alien vernacular which seemed to take effort to avoid. "Besides," he continued, "I doubt it's even necessary," he said before turning to look at Blake and asking "What were you doing in the White Fang? Carrying letters? Spying?"
"Front line combat," Blake answered mechanically.
"Sir!" Schwarz said nervously, gripping the phone in her hand.
"We still don't have the full story here, she could be a victim of circumstance." Mr. S pointed out. Again, everyone elected to pretend he didn't say that.
"And she could also have joined willingly," Schwarz retorted.
"Well, there's only one way to find out isn't there?" He said, looking over to Blake and asking, "If you could elaborate, that would be nice."
Blake, for her part, was still working to dig herself out of the catatonic state she'd been worked into; mortified into stillness by the sudden reveal of her deepest secrets on live television, the completely off the wall happenings of the past couple of hours, as well as the obligations that kept her from running. It was all for the best, though, she would gather later on: that office was probably the safest place in all of Atlas for her at the time, considering its inhabitants.
"Blake, wake up!" she heard Yang whisper as Ruby worked to gently shake her awake.
"Anytime today, if you could," Mr. S said, just as Blake's brain rebooted and her eyes blinked open, her irises relaxing into gentler circles.
"Uh, well," Blake stumbled awake, "my father was a-"
"Keep it short, we don't have much time," Mr. S said, hiding his impatient tone while he nervously glanced back at the stock screen behind him. "Around twenty words would be ideal," he added, looking back at her.
"Well, I was born into the white fang when it was good. I guess I stuck around too long after the fact," Blake said easily, surprising herself with her own words.
Not for the first time, Mr. S was struck back: this time for a completely different reason than fear or surprise or self preservation. He found himself easily slipping on a mask of calm analysis as his heart rung out in response to the sorrow in Blake's voice: the sorrow of lost ties and crushed hopes. With that, he found himself taken fully away from the strangeness of his situation and drawn into the fact that he was surrounded by people: people just like him and everyone he'd ever known, living all over this world and deeply under his power. He wouldn't know how to express this moment until later, but that sorrowful moment would be the healing light that burned away the acid in his heart, and gave him a purpose for being there.
Of course, without the clarity of hindsight all that the sobering moment had managed was to tear him fro his idle world of apathetic observation into the harsh reality of the room. 'People' the word seemed to echo in his mind as the distressed voices of investors rung against his ears and the desperate murmurs of worry coming from the factory floor tickled against his ears, and a casual glance toward the girls before him revealed anguish, heart wrenched despair and a stubborn defensiveness as they all seemed to huddle together for protection. He held back a cringe as he felt the endless dread this inspired in his soul. People were getting hurt, in ways that could ruin lives and he-
"Father, you have to save the company!" Weiss's voice called out as she leaned tiredely onto his desk, fear and trepidation leaking through into her words as the extended silence harried her, making more desperate attempts to draw Blake away from his attention.
Mr. S once again, was pulled from his thoughts. That one word, "father" lighting up in his mind, seeming alien the way it left Weiss's lips. 'She wants something,' He thought instinctively, deducing that from her tone, the formaility and nice blandness of her words, as well as the fact that her sentence had contained a request.
'Save the company.' The phrase shone in his mind as he clung to it and centered himself.
"Give me a moment, I'm thinking," he turned to Weiss with an earnest tone and false confidence. He quickly turned back to his desk and looked intently into the surface, his heart slowing and that stagnant pool of dread in his stomach lightening as if it had been set aflame, energizing him until excited shivers ran up his shoulders and the world came into crystal clarity. Incidents were gut wrenching and horrible, often requiring that you answer for something, but this...this was a problem, something he could face and look for an answer in.
'I've spent my entire career solving problems, no need to stop now,' he thought confidently as an excited jitter went up hs body and he quickly slipped back into that comfortable suit of engineer. His mind ran faster than he could hardly process, running quickly over thoughts and concepts on levels that couldn't be described with words, as he planned, thought and planned his thinking. In a flash, he came to the first goal, his mind turning and his gut whizzing as he dredged up every last bit of knowledge aboout companies and economics that he could muster, every incident, news article, example, case study and definition he'd ever learned rushing forth to present itself in his minds eye.
A company is a large entity that exchanges goods and/or services in order to make a profit.
...
That was it. Mr. S realized in a panic, once again cursing that charismatic physics professor who'd swindled him into taking Quantum Mechanics as an elective when he was considering a business class!
He quickly dropped that train of thought, however as anxiety began to rise...people were depending on him and he was just sitting here! People were going to-
'Oh,' the thought came.
It was people that he needed to fix this problem for, people that were the cause of those red numbers behind him and, fundamentally, people, panicking people but people nonetheless, that made up Schnee Crop; what those people needed at this moment was a leader, and he would need to become that leader he accepted; a strange calm falling over him as everything fell into perspective.
'Ok, I need to be a leader,' he thought, thinking through the issue in as simple terms as he could muster. 'That's not too bad. I've lead more engineering projects than I can count over the years and this is just like that,' he continued, building confidence. 'Yeah! I'm basically just leading an engineering group after the world's started suspecting us of affiliating with terrorists,' he thought with a hopeful tone shortly before getting serious.
'First order of business, damage control,' he decided, turning to Schwarz with a serious look.
"Schwarz," he said, breaking the increasingly antsy secretary from her focused reverie before continuing on with his plan. "Set up a press meeting for," he paused, taking a moment to confer with his watch, "...twenty minutes from now, and contact the best speech writers you can get a hold of, they have fifteen minutes to write the best speech ever. Offer them whatever we can afford," he ordered, strategically sidestepping any currency names.
"What do you want the speech to say?" Schwarz asked, the purpose driven task doing a great deal to calm her harried nerves shortly before a mad screaming emanated from the tv, drawing all eyes onto the news station once more.
"The White Fang are controlling the Schnee Corporation, man!" a twenty something fellow with bare feet, torn pants and an over sized, green ski hat proclaimed directly into the news camera, completely ignoring the reporter next to him in his frenzied theorizing. "How else do you thing those faunus get all that dust?" he proclaimed with wide open, red eyes as he stepped forward to stare deeply into the camera, "they've been controlling it this entire time! Right under our noses! And now they're ready to reveal themselves! I tell ya that Beacon attack was just the beginning-" the footage suddenly cut off, revealing the very excited news anchor as she struggled to maintain a neutral face for the camera.
"You heard it there from our on-the-ground-reporter Heinz Dasler," the anchor said, leaning forward across her desk. "Though extreme, people are starting to worry as to what possible connection the Schnee family has to the White Fang, and events transpiring are-" a blue light appeared once more as the tv muted.
"Thank you, Schwarz," Mr. S said without having to look over at the secretary. "And as to what I want the speech to say…" Mr. S hesitated, circling a hand in thought and leaning back in his chair, "how about, 'I'm not a terrorist and neither is she'," he said, gesturing towards Blake through the wall of people between them.
"Yes, sir," Schwarz said, tapping furiously onto her tablet, making sure to keep Blake in sight.
"Now, Blake," Mr. S said, standing up from his chair as he did so and pacing around to the front of his desk, "what exactly wa-"
"Wait, you're not planning on going in front of the camera like that, are you?" Weiss interrupted with a genuinely frightened tone.
"Like what?" Mr. S asked, looking down at himself as Winter, Schwarz, Glynda and Ozpin all honed their eyes onto the lower left section of Mr. Schnee's suit jacket.
"Like that!" Weiss said, stepping forward and pointing at a spot on the lower left portion of his suit: and there, just in front of Weiss's finger, was a spot of cloth which, in just the right light, on just the right day, seen by just the right eagle, could possibly have been made out to be a stain.
"So what?" Mr. S responded without thinking.
"What do you mean 'so what'?" Weiss responded angrily, "the company's failing, you can't go out in front of the cameras like you're already a washed up drunk!" she finished as Ruby self-consciously looked at the macaroni stains decorating her dress.
"I have to agree, sir," Schwarz said.
"It would be bad form," Winter added as Ruby frantically started folding her dress to hide the stains.
"Ok, so do you want me to chang-"
"What is wrong with you!" Weiss interrupted once more, now transitioning to a more personal anger at the man who wouldn't let her eat supper until her clothes were "prim, proper and perfect." "All changing your clothes will do is let everyone know you stained them! And theories about the size of said stain are going to be headlining the news for weeks. Or, wait, they would be headlining the news if you hadn't tanked the company!" Weiss yelled, clicking her heels together and pointing once more to the stock screen.
"Very well," he conceded, eager to move the topic of conversation, "Schwarz, have someone send down another white sui-"
"We no longer carry identical items in your wardrobe sir, not since the duplicate tie incident," Schwarz said with a weary sigh and bad memories.
"Huh," Mr. S sighed, putting his face into his palm. This was going to be a long event.
NTTN
