Dead By Roselight

Chapter 17: Need To Survive

Weiss stared up in horror a the smiling mask that was looking down at her. The killer took his bloodied knife and slid it over the smile painted on his mask, leaving behind a red line. As the masked murderer raised up his weapon to strike down his next victim, the heiress closed her eyes and waited for the pain to hit her.

However, the pain never came, but she did hear the sound of a blade cutting into flesh. Weiss opened her eyes and looked up to see Klein using whatever strength he had left to put himself between the member of The Legion and the girl he had sworn to protect. The knife was now buried deep into the butler's arm, who managed to hold back his scream of pain.

"KLEIN!" Weiss screamed in horror as she watched the person she could consider a surrogate father get attacked again.

"Madame... RUN!" Klein managed to yell, despite the pain he was in. In order to hold back the killer more, he pushed forward and latched onto the masked teen's legs, preventing him from moving. "You have to get out of here! You need to run as fast as you can and get away from these bastards!"

While the butler was struggling to hold back one of the killers, the door to the storage was broken down by the three others, who soon started attacking the other survivors inside the building. Thanks to the confusion that was caused by the carnage, Weiss was able to somehow run past all the killers and get out of the storage.

Once she had made her way outside, the white-haired girl kept running as fast as she could, until she had gotten far enough to feel safe. She hid behind what seemed to be an old snowplow that had been left there to rust with everything else. Weiss' whole body was trembling, as she tried to catch her breath and make a sense of what had just happened. Just a second ago, she had been having a warm reunion with a person she had known for all of her childhood. The next thing she knows is that the same man was suddenly getting stabbed by someone she thought was a friend. It just didn't make sense to her.

However, Weiss then remembered that Klein had been alive the last she had seen him. There could still be a chance that he might be saved. With a newfound determination coursing through her body, the heiress got up and left her hiding spot, hoping to save the only person she had left in the world.

Weiss made her way to the storage building quickly and quietly, hoping to not give away her position to the killers. She soon arrived near the building, hiding behind a broken snowmobile, so that she could observe the situation safely. It seemed that the killers of The Legion were just finishing up, as they were exiting the storage. Each of the killers were either carrying ir dragging behind them survivors, who were still somehow alive. The white-haired girl assumed that they were going to offer these unlucky people for The Entity as sacrifices, since they were still breathing.

After waiting for a moment, all four members of The Legion had left, allowing Weiss to go into the storage to look for Klein. She had not seen him get carried out by the killers, so there was a chance that they had just left him behind in order to get him later. The white-haired girl at least hoped that was the case.

Upon entering the storage, Weiss walked into a scene of pure carnage. The floor and the walls were practically painted with blood from the struggle. There were a couple of bodies there as well, which belonged to the people that hadn't survived The Legion's attack. The heiress looked around in panic for Klein, already fearing that the worst had happened.

It didn't take long for Weiss to find the butler and confirm her fears. Klein was laying on his back in the middle of the room. There were several stab wounds all over his body, with blood dripping from all of them. The man's chest wasn't moving even a bit, showing that he was not breathing and that he was already dead.

Despite knowing that Klein had already been lost, Weiss still slowly walked up to his body and fell to her knees. She raised her shaking hand to his neck in order to check for a pulse and found nothing. With the death of one of her most precious people in the world confirmed, the heiress broke down into tears and cried on the dead man's chest, hoping that this wasn't real.

After spending a couple of minutes mourning the loss of Klein, Weiss finally walked out of the storage. If one were to look at the white-haired girl, they would think that she was dead, as her eyes had lost all life in them and even her movements were slow and sluggish, like a zombie that had just risen from the grave.

Without even really looking at where she was going, Weiss walked into the large hotel in the middle of the area. The generator that was needed for escaping the area was also there, but the heiress simply walked past it and hid herself in a nearby locker. She had lost all of her will to fight at this point.

As she sat in her hiding place, staring down at the ground, Weiss kept asking one thing over and over. What was the point of surviving at this point? Why would she bother trying to live, when there was nothing to live for? The white-haired girl had lost everyone important to her, so what was the point of trying to live?

While she was thinking about this, a sudden memory came to Weiss' mind. It was one from when she wasn't even ten years old.

Weiss was sitting on her bed in her room, crying. She had gone through a pretty bad day, where she learned about the truth of her family. The little white-haired girl had gone shopping with her mother, when a mob of angered faunus had tried to kidnap her. Luckily, the Schnees had bodyguards with them that had managed to protect the young heiress, but not before she had witnessed a horrifying amount of death and bloodshed.

However, what had troubled Weiss the most wasn't the attempted kidnapping. It was how the faunus had been looking at her and cursing her. The expressions on the faunus were ones of pure hatred and rage, and they cursed the young heiress like she was the worst criminal in the history.

While Weiss was crying, she didn't notice the door to her room opening and Klein stepping inside. The little girl didn't realize the butler was there, until he had sat down next to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Madame, is everything alright?" Klein asked in a gentle voice. "I heard that you were crying, so I thought it would be best that I would check up on you. Is what happened earlier today still bothering you?"

"Y-Yeah..." Weiss managed to say while wiping away her tears. "I-I was so scared. All those big men just charged towards me. And what happened after that... I don't even want to think about it. But it's not the thing that's bothering me the most."

"Then what is it?" the butler asked, hoping that he would be able to help the girl.

"It's... It's the things they were saying about me," the young heiress answered. "They were calling me all sorts of mean things. But they were also talking about "the sins of my filthy family". Do you know what they mean by that? Did my family really do something wrong?"

"I... I'm afraid it's very complicated, madame," Klein replied with a heavy sigh. "You see, your father has risen to the position he's at by doing... all sorts of things. Some of which are definitely bad. While I'm sure those men that attacked you had every right to hate your father, they have no right of placing any of their hatred on you. You have never done anything wrong, so you shouldn't be punished for such crimes."

"But... But they are still crimes of my family, right?" Weiss asked. "Will people like them still hate my family and me for the things that have happened to them?"

"I fear that might be the case," the butler said sadly, hating how such a heavy burden was placed on a small child. "Hatred is a dangerous thing. Unless one can get over it, they can be bound by it. So badly that it might even consume them to the point where all they feel is hatred. But the most dangerous thing about hatred is that it can make you hate things you normally wouldn't hate, just because they are somehow connected to what originally caused that hatred to born in the first place. Hatred is almost like a disease that keeps spreading and infecting those around it, while corrupting those that hold it within their hearts. And the sad fact is that it won't disappear easily. Not even with years passing."

The white-haired girl looked down in thought, thinking about what had just been told to her. She then looked up at Klein with a new determination in her eyes that surprised the butler.

"Then I know what I need to do," Weiss said without crying any longer. "Once I grow up, I'm going to take over daddy's company! And once I'm in charge, I will fix all the bad things that my family has done and get the people to love us! Then there won't be people like those men that tried to kidnap me ever again!"

Klein looked at the young girl with wide eyes for a moment, before a wide smile made it's way to his face.

"That's something I would love to see. And I'm sure you will be able to do it. I'll be counting on you to achieve that noble goal."

A small, broken smile appeared on Weiss' face. She had just realized why she needed to live. Why she needed to survive this nightmare.

'That's right. I can't die here like this. I still have something that I need to do,' the heiress thought to herself as she got up. 'I still need to take over the Schnee Dust Company. I need to clear my family name. That's something that needs to be done. Even Klein is counting on me to do it. That's why I can't allow myself to die here.'

Once she had gotten up, Weiss heard something outside her hiding place. It sounded like someone was trying to fix the generator there. She looked through the small slits that were on the locker's door and saw a group of four survivors working on the generator, trying to get it running. Three of them were doing their best to get the machine working, while the fourth one was looking out for the killers.

"Hey, do you see any of those killers out there?" a black-haired young man called out to a woman with dark skin that was at the large hole in the hotel's wall.

"No, I don't see any of them," the woman answered. "I think we're safe for now."

"Okay. Keep looking out there. You never know when those lunatics might appear," the young man said and went back to fixing the generator.

"Hang on. I think I've got it," another member of the group, a man with glasses, said with slight excitement in his voice. True to his words, the generator was soon working like it should be.

"Yes! Now we can get out of here!" the last member of the group, a young girl with red hair, said.

"Let's not get too excited just yet," the black-haired man warned. "We still need to get to the exit and open it. We might still run into the four killers out there."

The group of four survivors began to leave the place, hoping to escape this realm alive. However, they were completely unaware that someone had just been watching them, as Weiss exited the locker and followed the group silently.

It didn't take long until the group of four survivors had made their way to a place that was close to the exit. Every member of the group was hiding at various places, looking towards the gate that was their escape from the realm. They were currently looking around for the killers, wondering if they should take their chances and go for the exit.

A little farther away from them, Weiss was at her own hiding place, watching the group of four. Like them, she was also thinking about how to escape this realm. The only thing was that her plan would be a bit different.

"Alright. I think it's safe for us to go now," the man with the black hair said. "Let's get going, before the killers show up."

"Hold on," the man with the glasses quickly said, stopping his comrade. "Look over there."

The other members of the group looked at where their comrade was pointing and saw the members of The Legion there. It seemed that they had found out about the generator being fixed, which is what brought them to check out the exit for any possible survivors.

"Shit! Why did they have to come here!?" the black-haired man cursed. "And we were so close to getting out of here!"

"Calm down. This could just be a bump in the road and nothing more," the dark-skinned woman said. "They don't know that we are here, so we just need to stay quiet and out sight. Once they have left, we can-"

Suddenly, a rather large rock was thrown at them from somewhere, causing a lot of noise, which in turn got The Legion's attention. The four survivors were soon spotted by the killers, who charged towards their prey with their weapons held high. The survivors tried to run away, but were quickly chased down by The Legion, who were soon on their helpless victims, cutting them down.

While the four unlucky survivors were being cut apart by The Legion, Weiss managed to sneak past the killers and make her way to the exit. She faced no trouble with opening the gate, as the members if The Legion were too busy with their current victims, allowing the heiress to make her escape without any trouble.

Before she left, Weiss looked back at the people that were being attacked by The Legion. She could still hear their screams of pain and pleas of mercy, yet it didn't affect her in the least. After all, the white-haired girl had been the one to get the four survivors into trouble by revealing their location with the rock she threw. She had decided that in order for herself to survive, she would need to use the other survivors as a distraction for The Legion, so she could escape safely.

It was for the best in her opinion. She was needed back in her own world. A lot of people were counting on her to make things right back there, so she couldn't die now. A few sacrifices would not be a problem for her, as it was for the greater good.

As she turned away from the screams of the dying people that she herself had doomed, Weiss felt nothing. No guilt. No remorse. She had no time for those, as more important things waited for her.

She was going to survive, no matter what.

Author's notes: The thing I meant about Weiss surviving in a different way from Yang is that she is going to not only go on her own, but she will also be using other people more as tools and sacrifices for her own survival. This is different from Yang, who is working with a group and tries to help and keep everyone safe. One forsakes others for her own sake and doesn't get hindered by them, while the other seeks safety from others and has to face possible problems that come with a team.

Also, the group of four that Weiss used as sacrifices for her own escape were actually characters from the game. I only gave them very vague descriptions, as I didn't feel like going into too much detail on their appearances, and suddenly naming them without a proper introduction would have just felt strange in my opinion. The characters were the four original survivors from Dead by Daylight.

Anyways, next time we will be following Yang again. I'm not sure when the next chapter will be done, but I'll try to get it done as soon as I can.

Until next time.

RWBY is owned by Rooster Teeth and Dead by Daylight belongs to Behaviour Interactive.