Chapter 7
In the frozen north of Solitas, in the middle of the polar region's worst winter storm, coming late in March, Atlas was covered in a blanket of snow that the city's central heating system could not melt fast enough.
Weiss looked out the tinted window of the limousine as it passed through the stone walled gates into "Old Town." Straightening out her dress, Wess looked up at her personal butler in the rear view mirror. Klein glanced at her as he drove the car to the airport. "Nervous, Miss. Schnee?"
"Of course not Klien…" Weiss said. "Beacon is a prestigious school, and Vale is a reputable country. I was just surprised that my father was so supportive of my choice to study abroad."
"Mr. Schnee won't admit it, but he wants you to get out of the mansion and experience the world for once." Klein said, as he stopped at a red light. "I think you made a good decision, leaving home. You can't just lock yourself in your room for eternity, by the good graces of god, you at least participated in concerts and made charity event appearances while you were home. Your mother would…" Klein caught Weiss's saddened look as she faced away from him, and cut himself off. "Would have approved of you going to Beacon too." Klein sighed, as the light turned green and he began to pull through the intersection.
"Yeah, she would have…" Weiss said, before she felt herself violently thrown against her seatbelt, then slammed into the door of the limo, as the vehicle practically exploded.
To the eyes of a bystander, it initially seemed as if a hatchback sedan had simply ran the red light, ramming straight through the side of the limo which broke in two, sending the remaining ends spinning outwards from each other, as the sedan came sliding to a halt.
The doors of the sedan opened, and 5 men, hidden behind the metal masks of the White Fang emerged, chambering rounds into their weapons.
Holding her hand to her forehead, Weiss winced in pain, before the activation of her aura took care of the potential head injury. Looking through the cracked remains of the autoglass window to her left, she could see the four White Fang members slowly approaching the rear half of the car. In half a panic, Weiss released her seatbelt, and tried to pull open the trunk access through the rear row of seats to take her sword out of it's travel case. "She's still alive!" Weiss heard shouted from outside of the vehicle before bullets started blowing out the glass, and piercing through the side paneling. In a frantic rush, Weiss ducked to the floor of the limo's rear, rolled out onto the sidewalk, and crawled around to the other side of the vehicle.
Looking to her left, she saw Klien finally manage to push open the driver side door of the limo's other half, brandishing a semi auto handgun. He fired twice, as he ducked back behind his half of the car's destroyed passenger compartment, attracting the gunfire from the 5 man team, one of which had eaten the .45 caliber slug, and fell over screaming, as the others in the fire team scrambled back towards their car for cover.
"WEISS!" She heard Klien shouting, before the passenger compartment's concealed revolver was thrown across the street towards her. Weiss caught the snub nose gun and as Klien popped back up to fire, she peeked around the side of the destroyed limousine and lifted the trunk with her free hand. A bullet from one of the White Fang's guns skipped off the trunk, and Weiss ducked back into her cover to avoid being shot.
"You savage animals!" She yelled, blindly firing 3 out of 5 rounds she had in the direction of the faunus attacking her.
The White Fang goon, laying bleeding from his gut wound on the ground, grit his teeth in pain. "I'm gonna' skull fuck this bitch!" He yelled, before rolling onto his side, and emptying his magazine on full auto in Weiss's direction, before Klien popped out from the side of the limousine and put a well placed shot between the man's eyes.
Weiss peeked her cover and fired the last two shots from the revolver Klien had thrown to her, as she reached into the trunk of the destroyed limousine, and pulled her sleek weapon case free. Taking cover again, she pulled the clasps open on the case, and unveiled Myrtenaster, a custom made diamond blade profile rapier, and six cylinder dust dispenser. She pulled the sword and it's glass "munitions" free from the foam, and loaded the two Caerulium Patetium compound vials she had with her into the free chambers through the side loading gate. Rotating the first chamber into position, Weiss pulled the hammer back, and then pointed the sword to the space between the two broken halves of the limo. She squeezed the trigger, and the "ice dust" ignited, rapidly spraying out of the short barrel situated above the blade, creating a thick wall of ice for her and Klien to hide behind.
Taking the initiative now that she had favorable cover working to her advantage, Weiss loaded another two dust vials, into her sword's chambers, and rotated them appropriately, before pulling back the hammer once more. Jumping over the 5 foot wall of ice with the air of her aura, Weiss pulled the trigger at the nearest White Fang member she saw, who stepped out into the open, unleashing a wave of fire upon him, as the raw powdered Rubrumium, (better known as fire dust) sparked and ignited.
As he screamed in pain, while rolling on the ground, his body having been engulfed in flames, Weiss landed, and with her free hand, created a barrier with her semblance. The white glyph blocked a few incoming bullets, which were suspended in her grip before she let them fall to the ground. Maintaining her glyph, she used her thumb to rotate the cylinder of her rapier, cocked the hammer, pointed the tip of her blade over her head at the floating white aura construct, and pulled the trigger. The ice dust expanded, and flowed into the glyph before forming into compressed shards, which rained into the metal rear of the White Fang's sedan, embedding icicles into the metal, and striking one of her attackers in the shoulder, who fell over screaming in pain at his impalement.
Dropping her glyph, as the gun in the hands of the last man standing clicked empty, Weiss approached, rotating the cylinder of Myrtenaster, selecting the remaining cylinder filled with patetium. As the goon began to reload, Weiss thumbed the hammer on her weapon back, pointed her blade at him, and pulled the trigger, unleashing a hurricane force wind through the street. The gale blew her attacker over onto his back, and swept his weapon away.
The last White Fang member pushed himself up onto his elbows only to find the tip of a sword pressed against his eye mask. Weiss scowled at the faunus, before she pushed him by the point of her sword back against the cobblestone street. "Stay down you filthy animal." She said through grit teeth, before trailing the tip of her sword down the man's chest and letting it rest against the groin of his pants. "What was it your feral friend was going to do to me again?" She asked.
"That's quite enough Miss. Schnee." Klein said, having come out from behind the wall of ice. "I think you've made your point." He said, tucking his hand gun into it's concealed holster, and pulling his mobile phone out, extending the hidden glass screen from it's metal housing. "I'm calling the police."
Weiss lowered her blade, and looked around at the three still living faunus around her, she spit on the ground towards the one Klien had killed, before sitting down on the hood of the destroyed limousine. "Great… Now I'm going to miss my flight…"
A short and skinny young man of only 5 foot 5 and 110 pounds sat in a leather seat aboard a hydrogen airship bound for Vale. One could argue a man of such a short and diminutive stature would not be cut out for the work of Huntsmen, but Siniy Garnet would prove anyone making that argument wrong.
The amount of money the young man had spent to get on board was ridiculous. Though that was some fault of his own, as he flew first class. No amount of anti faunus policies were going to stop him from flying in the same section of the dirigible of higher society the likes of the famed Weiss Schnee. As to why the Schnee flew on a civilian airship instead of a much faster chartered airplane just to flaunt her money was unknown to Siniy of course.
She seemed to have noticed him eyeballing her from a distance. Whether the beanie he had on covering his ears deflected attention away from the fact he was a faunus, or if she'd seen through the simple disguise was unknown to Siniy. Frankly he wanted nothing to do with Weiss, and if she ignored him so be it.
Expensive as the flight might have been, some fault of his own, Siniy was happy to be attending Beacon. Prometheus academy in Atlas, the uniform of which he still wore out of frugality, might have admitted Faunus quite regularly, and had a knack for taking problem children, but Al Seus Academy would have turned him away the second his status as an undocumented citizen came up. Being a faunus was no help. Beacon had no such qualms about those lack of records so long as his exam scores were high enough. Come to think of it, the heiress across the cabin from Siniy was attending Beacon, or so the tabloids said… Why, though?
The airship shook slightly, and there was an uncharacteristic thunk of something hitting the exterior of the craft. Looking up from the newspaper he was reading, Siniy waited only a few minutes to see that the Airship had been boarded… Oh just his luck, the Vale Chapter of the White Fang, 3, 4, 5 members in the first class cabin total by his count…
Slowly, Siniy took his beanie off, exposing his bear ears and looked around the cabin as the Fang members started going about robbing everyone in first class. Spotting one other faunus passenger in the cabin, a dog by the looks of his tail, Siniy nodded, and the Faunus gave him a thumbs up, which Siniy returned. Two humans looked back from the rows that had already been robbed, and whispered to themselves, audible to the sensitive ears of the bear among them. "I think those two faunus are going to try to save us." The dog faunus shook his head, as Siniy nodded with his lips pursed together, as the closest White Fang member approached him.
"Brother, whatever your reason for sitting with the Schnee we ask you to help us kill-" An aura assisted fist impacted the boar tusked jaw of the Fang member. Siniy stood up from his seat, and as he pulled his weapon out of the overhead rack, the nearest still awake White Fang Member tried to rack the bolt on his rifle, only for the dog faunus in the cabin to grab the barrel and keep it pointed out of the way.
Sinny freed his 25 pound gun, and tossed the plastic case at the struggling White Fang member with one arm. With his heavy weapon, "Seal Club," held high, Siniy walked over to the next Fang member, and struck the taller man in the chin with the metal butt plate of the wooden stock.
By this point Weiss herself had taken action, pulling her rapier from its case to lunge at the 4th and 5th White Fang members, only to be swept aside by a 6th member that had entered the cabin with a broadsword. Deploying the folding spade attached to the stock, Siniy swept the legs out from under the 6th man before he could seriously hurt the heiress, then hit him over the head with the butt stock while he was on the ground. Weiss meanwhile had jumped off his back and cocked her weapon's hammer back, and pulled the trigger, activating the electrically charged Rubrumium and Fuscusium "lightning dust" within. She swiped her blade at the 4th and 5th White Fang members as she landed, the blade stunning both of them through what appeared to be active auras.
Weiss looked over at the bear faunus who'd helped her, and muttered under her breath. "Gross." Siniy paid Weiss no mind, as he headed for the cabin's maintenance hatch as he loaded his gun with a loose belt of ammunition, believing that if there was a boarding party, then there was another airship.
Weiss followed behind Siniy, preparing a set of fire dust cylinders for her rapier. Once Siniy made it through the hallway, then opened the roof hatch, he climbed outside, and spotted the nearby airship, as did Weiss when she poked her head out of the hatch. "Great." Weiss said, as she prepared a glyph and cocked her weapon's hammer to try shooting at the airship, only for Siniy to shoulder his machine gun. Modeled after the Atlas AN/M3 aircraft mounted gun, "Seal Club," looked comically big in his hands.
Siniy cast a single glance at the heiress next to him. "Can that fancy spell affect my bullets?" He asked, only for her to scoff, then put the glyph she created over the muzzle of the gun, and squeeze the trigger of her sword, the raw rubrumium dust flowing into the enchanting circle, turning it red.
Siniy depressed the trigger of his machine gun, and a string of red reached out from the muzzle of his gun at 1,300 rounds per minute, ripping into the airship loitering near them, and catching it on fire. Within just 5 seconds the White Fang marked Airship had pulled away, before the hydrogen cells inside burst into flames, and the dirigible exploded into a fireball.
Siniy lowered his weapon and cast a single glance over at Weiss before going back into the cabin, and finishing his newspaper. Shortly after, Weiss returned to her seat, and spared a single hateful glance at the bear boy, before balling her fists. "Filthy animals." She muttered.