A.N. (3/6/23) - Short chapter today, here's the scheduled Monday release chapter.

Atlas (9) - Premonition

Rin imagined how her first meeting with Winter's family would be like many times before. When it was clear that she would inevitably encounter characters she recognized, it was a sort of mental game that helped prepare her for how she would interact with them. After all, a good first impression would go a long way toward easing future relations.

"It is nice to meet you."

Meeting Whitley was something she did not expect, but the youngest Schnee acted like a gentlemanly young man as he crossed his hand over his chest while bowing slightly. Winter had brought her directly to meet her younger brother where he stood alone in a corner of the room. Even though Rin was technically only slightly older than him, he seemed even younger than he appeared due to his height and youthful features.

"Likewise," she replied. "Your sister has nothing but good things to say about you."

He chuckled. "It's nice to know that she isn't talking bad about me behind my back."

"Ahem." Winter coughed. "Whitley, where is the rest of our family? I'm aware of our father being tardy, but what about our sister and mother?"

"Mother has been taken to her room for the night. As for Weiss, she's preparing for her upcoming performance. Since Father is supposed to lead with a speech, she's waiting backstage until he finally arrives and attends to our guests."

"I see."

"But it is good to see you as well, dear sister." Whitley gave a polite smile. "After all, with all your recent schedule changes so that you will be working closely with Father, I'm surprised that the two of us haven't run into each other lately. Why, I hear that you've already visited Weiss last weekend while I happened to be gone. It's a shame that I missed your visit, especially since it has been a long time since we last caught up."

Yikes, even Rin could sense the hidden emotions in his words.

"My apologies." Winter at least had the gall to look embarrassed. "It was only recently that I was permitted by Father to visit the main manor. It was just bad luck that I did not see you on the day that I visited."

"Hm, is that so…"

"I am happy to see you, Whitley. If you asked Weiss, I'm sure she would have told you that I inquired about your absence."

"Well, the two of us aren't really on talking terms lately. I suppose it is my fault that I did not bother checking if my eldest sister cared about me."

Rin shuffled awkwardly in place, and the other two seemed to finally remember that she was also there with them.

"Let's change the conversation," Winter said. "Whitley, I heard that you've been progressing in your studies at an admirable level. Did you know that several institutions are pushing for more students to take advanced classes lately? Rin here is one such example, taking a few classes at Atlas Academy despite not being a full-time student. Are you interested in doing something similar? Since I work closely with General Ironwood, it would allow us more opportunities to meet one another if you attend."

"Oh?" He turned to face Rin. "What kind of classes exactly are you taking?"

"Grimm Studies and History," she replied. "Learning from a huntsman's point of view does make things interesting, especially since we usually cover trending topics that are relevant to the occupation. Lately, we've mostly been discussing topics related to Amity and the Vytal Festival."

"Ah, yes. I suppose the upcoming launch does make things like that relevant. I hear that viewing spaces for the public get quite crowded if you don't claim a spot early. It's not something I have experience with, since I usually watch the launch when it is broadcasted online."

"Does your family normally not attend the event? I thought the whole point of this gala was to celebrate the launch of Amity."

"Father usually does," Winter answered. "The last launch, I worked with several other soldiers to keep watch of the crowd. I believe Mother used to attend in the past, although this was when I was a young girl, so forgive my memory on that one."

Whitley shrugged. "I wouldn't know. The last time Mother spoke with me was wh–"

Before he could finish his sentence, the doors opened with a bang as the sound of footsteps echoed throughout the room. Walking to the center was Jacques Schnee dressed in a white suit and accompanied by several guards. His arrival had caught the attention of the entire room, and Rin wondered how much of this was planned or whether he was just being ostentatious.

"Good evening, everyone." Jacques chuckled. "Sorry for arriving late, but I was busy advising a few friends of mine regarding important matters of Atlas. The conversation went longer than expected, so I think my driver can be forgiven for going a bit above the speed limit to reach our destination. For a moment, I feared that we would get pulled over when we passed a patrol car. Imagine that, Jacques Schnee getting a ticket for being late to his own party."

Most of the room laughed, and Rin figured that they were mostly being polite since he was the host.

He continued to speak, but Rin's attention was stolen by something else. Again, she felt her senses telling her that somebody was watching her. Looking around, she saw that most of the guests were busy looking at Jacques, including Winter and Whitley. Tracing the source of that feeling, she finally saw who was staring at her.

It was a woman.

Nobody that Rin recognized, although she doubted that she would forget someone who looked like she did. Long wavy auburn hair with a single silver streak, golden eyes, and a figure that filled out the waiter uniform she sported. Rin had to admit that she was beautiful, but there was something about the woman that made her wary. The fact that her gaze was locked on Rin only made things even more suspicious, especially since everyone else was paying attention to Jacques.

The woman smiled at her before she turned around and walked away.

"—but I've wasted enough of your time." Rin caught the tail end of Jacques talking. "Now, let's give it up for the entertainment of tonight. Starting things off will be my wonderful daughter and her performance."

Everyone began to clap as one side of the room slowly began to open, revealing a stage where a single girl stood at the center.

Weiss.

}-{

"There he is."

Robyn found herself looking at the figure of Amoncio Glass as he clapped along with everyone else around him. The overweight man seemed to fit in well with the rest of the guests despite his involvement in the criminal underworld. Not that she doubted that most of the people here had plenty of their own skeletons hiding in their closets, but she was only here to keep an eye on one person today.

"He's surrounded," Joanna said next to her. "I don't know if we'll have an opportunity to corner and force a confession out of him with your Semblance."

"Just wait," Robyn replied. "Worst comes to worst, we hit him with the tracker that Terra made for us."

"She's a real help to the team. Thinking of asking her to join us?"

"No, and not because she isn't a huntress. I already feel bad taking advantage of her like this, especially since she's not suited to the vigilante lifestyle that we're used to. Better if she returns to her normal life once this is over."

"Not sure how much I agree with that, but it's your call."

"Wait." Robyn's eyes narrowed. "Glass is trying to leave the room. He's headed out of one of the side entrances."

"I see it. May and Fiona should be able to catch up to him."

}-{

Winter was watching her sister slowly walk up toward the microphone when she received a notification. Pulling her Scroll out of her pocket, it took her a moment to let the contents of the message sink in. Her face paled as she finally realized the situation, and she hurriedly turned to leave.

"Excuse me, I have to go."

"Huh?"

She ignored Whitley's confused look and moved in the direction where her father was. Jacques had moved to a nearby table where only his guards lingered. Getting past them, she marched up to where he sat and faced him.

"We have to get you out of here."

"Hmm?" Jacques gave her an annoyed look. "What are you talking about? I thought you didn't want to see me until this whole thing was over."

"General Ironwood is dead."

Only after several seconds passed did Jacques react with boggled eyes and a surprised look. "What?" He blinked. "Dead? Is this a joke? A man like him can actually die?"

"This is no joke. Just a few minutes ago, his car was bombed by what we suspect was the White Fang. If they're doing something as outrageous as this, they might have other plans already in motion. The risk that they're planning on targeting you is not something I'm willing to bet on."

"Are you saying…"

"I'll coordinate with your security detail. Once you and my siblings are on your way out, I'll stay behind to keep our guests calm while I have some people investigate."

"Right." He nodded. "I'll leave this to your hands. But people will no doubt notice if I try to leave now, not to mention with both Weiss and Whitley."

"Don't worry, I'll handle things here."

Right as she said that, the lights in the room dimmed as the spotlight shifted until it focused on the stage. Winter realized that the performance was finally starting and all eyes were on her younger sister.

Weiss took a step forward…

…and started to sing.

}-{

Something was wrong.

Rin spotted the moment Winter took off with a panicked expression toward the direction where her father was. Next to her, Whitley seemed unsure of what to do once he was suddenly left alone with her. And right as the room dimmed, Weiss Schnee opened her mouth and allowed her voice to carry across the room.

"~Mirror, can you hear me?"

She ignored the singing and forced herself to pay attention to the room. Ever since the incident where Rin was forced to confront Merlot, she realized something about herself. She had no idea why, but her body constitution was unnaturally sensitive to ill intent similar to a priestess or seer. It was too vague to classify it as foresight, but it was on a comparable level to prediction instead.

Her constitution was not a trait that the original Rin possessed, but something she had because she was a 'person that was turned into Rin Tohsaka'. Thus, she only had the last four months to understand what was going on with her body since she could not rely on the knowledge and experience that the original Rin possessed. But because there was hardly any impact on her daily life due to this constitution, Rin did not get much opportunity to look into this issue.

But right at that moment, Rin regretted not studying how to control her new ability more. Her senses were crying out to her that something was wrong, although it was impossible to hone and pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. It was similar to synesthesia with how her spiritual sensitivity was mixing with her physical senses. Frustrated at her lack of progress, she realized that there was something that she could do to help.

The illusion around her head fell as she released the projection magecraft hiding her eye. Her application of shell projection meant that she could project the illusion of normality without anyone the wiser, but it also made using her mystic eye difficult. Once she removed the spell, she lifted her eyepatch and sent a trickle of magical energy into her eye to activate it.

Her mystic eye of sympathy allowed her to see the emotions of anyone within her sight, but that was not all it did. The way it worked was that she could see a visual cue of what someone's state of emotions looked like, similar to how a trained Aura user could see the color of other people's Auras.

There.

Several people around the room stood out amongst the countless colors of the crowd. Not only were their emotions more vivid in comparison, but all of them possessed an almost identical color. Which should have been impossible, since there were always variations between a person's inner energy from another's.

Deactivating her mystic eye, she saw with her normal vision that they were all waiters. It was hard to tell, but a little more than half of them appeared to be faunus judging by the ears and other obvious animal traits. Reaching toward their vests, all of them simultaneously stretched them open to reveal something inside.

Bombs.

"Get away!" Rin yelled. "Get away from the waiters!"

The crowd was unable to react on time. All Rin could do was shield herself and Whitley next to her at the last second right as the nearest waiter exploded.

Reminder that I'm posting new chapters every Monday and Friday now. I'm still busy with midterms this week, so I might shift my focus to studying instead of writing for a while. Since I'll mostly be busy up until Wednesday, I'll probably have enough time to work on the Friday release chapter though.

Rin's explanation of her constitution goes back to a chapter when I discussed the fact that she could use Sibyl Magecraft. To summarize, since she is a vessel for the girl known as "Rin Tohsaka", she has an affinity for possession and sensitivity to negative emotions. The reason it acts up in this chapter will be revealed soon, but I'll throw out a hint and say that it has something to do with the fact that this is a Fate crossover.