I was standing in front of 'Master Schnee' in the clothing I had picked out for myself and I felt very, very small. He was tall and slim, with hawkish features and slicked-back silver hair. I didn't know if that was age or dye. His eyes were a piercing icy blue. I had the feeling he was judging me.

"Please sit." He said after a long minute. "Would you like tea or coffee?"

I almost fell into one of the chairs in front of his desk. "Coffee please. Black with a tablespoon of sugar."

He nodded to the butler, who bowed and walked out of the room. It was silent again, save for the hum of the electronics built into his desk. He seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

"I have no idea how I got here." I finally said. "I was reading, then I heard the dogs barking and I went to investigate. I saw something, blacked out, and suddenly I'm here. Whether or not I was brought here remains a mystery. I don't know where I am either, and I don't know where I came from in relation to here."

He nodded. "I see."

I thanked the butler when he came back with coffee, and Mr. Schnee sent him away. I took a sip and inhaled the aroma, then sipped again before holding the coffee cup in my lap.

"Vacuo's finest." He said. "Tell me about yourself."

I sucked in a breath, and then I did. I told him about what I did, what I felt. I told him I wanted to go home, wherever that was. He didn't interrupt, and his expression had never changed but he was judging me nonetheless.

"And your name?" He said after a minute of silence.

"Carlos."

"An odd name, but you are an oddity." He said after a few minutes. "You are useless: a liability and a drain on resources. You have little skills or experience. And yet you have found yourself on my property, wearing my clothes and drinking my coffee. I have been generous, and perhaps that generosity is wasted."

I stared into my coffee and said nothing.

"You are a blank slate. Furthermore, you are a survivor. You will etch upon yourself because that is what you will do in order to survive, and you must survive in order to achieve your goals."

I blinked. That, I didn't expect. But I suppose it all boiled down to expectations. I was sitting in front of a character who had only been characterized as cold. And that he was. But it seemed that he had an understanding

"I will do what I can to see that you return home, but I want you to make yourself useful in return. Nothing is free, after all." He paused, then looked behind me. "Winter, please show our guest around the house. I have work to do."

I turned to look at the tall young woman who moved in from the doorway. She had been standing in there for who knew how long. She had the presence of a glacier, but certainly did not move like one. Her motions were graceful, if measured and precise. Military perhaps? Her clothes did pull off that kind of impression.

"Yes, Father." She bowed, then turned to me. "This way, please."

I finished my coffee and stood up. I thanked Mr. Schnee for the time and followed Winter out of his office.

"One last thing." He said as I exited. "Congratulations on the recovery."

I turned to Winter after she closed the door. "Recovery?"

Winter looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "You don't know? You were out for a week!"

"Oh, huh." Then something clicked. "Why didn't I wake up in a hospital, then?"

"Father thought it would be better if you were kept as much of a secret as possible."

"Why?" I asked, though I already knew some of the reasons.

"Well, there's the White Fang." She said with a sneer, though it wasn't directed at me. "They strike at our assets, and they will see you as one whether you want to or not."

Her expression loosened. "And there's also the media circus. And we wouldn't want that."

"That too." I shook my head. "I attended a workers' rights rally once."

She looked at me again. "Oh?"

"Yeah. They had free food." I shrugged.

"Ah."

"Anyway, I got ambushed by a bunch of reporters who wanted my opinion and all that. Wouldn't leave until I told them some crap about a cause. It wasn't long after that some people tried to recruit me into the Communist Party. I told them no."

"What's that?"

I hummed. "I'll explain in detail later, but they're similar to the White Fang. Except that they're human."

Speaking of which. I don't think I've explained how I came from elsewhere, and how I knew things. They probably figured that I'm some sort of. That would have to come up later. I didn't know when I should explain, though.

"Ah." Winter was thinking. She seemed to be less constrained around her father, but I had only known her for a few minutes at this point. "Anyway! Here's the dining room."

We entered a large dining hall. The floor was marble and the walls had wood paneling, and were lined with paintings and sculptures. Massive crystal chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling and provided warm lighting. It was something out of the Victorian era.

"Go ahead and look around." She said with a gentle push on my back. "I'm going to go get something from the kitchen."

I walked over to the paintings and sculptures. The older ones were probably of Winter's grandparents by the look of it. They didn't seem as severe as Mr. Schnee and his daughters were. They looked rather pleasant, in fact. Further down was a painting of a younger Mr. Schnee and a woman who looked to be around the same age. They were smiling while holding hands. I saw that the painting had been ripped and then stitched back together.

Next was Winter, and then one of Wiess. There was a story here, but it wasn't time to dig into it yet. Another thing to navel-gaze about later.

I jumped when Winter spoke up next to me. "Hey, I snuck cookies from the kitchen."

"F-!" I whispered the rest. "-uck."

She munched on a cookie, then held the bag out to me as she led me away from the paintings."Well?"

I took one and nibbled on it experimentally. Chocolate chip. Yum. "Tastes good."

We continued on with the tour of the Schnee Estate. It was massive, and we probably took up the better part of a few hours just walking from place to place.

"So…" I said to Winter, gesturing around. "Where is everyone?"

"Huh?"

"Well, I'd expected there to be more staff around."

"Oh! Well, most of the staff was replaced with robots." Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if the walls had ears. "Father had most of the staff fired after that bombing."

"That's not going to happen any time soon, right?" I whispered back.

"Hopefully." Her tone made it an admission that she herself didn't know. She looked tired. "It's been hard on all of us."

We had already exited the house and entered the garden by then. It was around 3 PM judging by the sun's position, though I had no way to know whether or not Remnant's orbital characteristics are the same as Earth's. Our shoes made a steady rhythm on the stone path as we walked in silence.

"So," she looked at me, "what about you?"

"What about me?"

"You know, stuff."

I shrugged. "I just sit around and play computer games in between writing. Nothing much."

"No fighting or anything?"

"Yeah."

"You must be pretty well-off, then." She leaned back on a lamppost. "To not have to fight against the Grimm, I mean."

"Not really. I'm piss-poor, actually." I shrugged. It was a fact. "Just rather safe. The most I've ever had to deal with are thieves and bullies."

She was silent as I rambled. "I'm sorry."

I stopped and looked up at her. "Huh?"

"I'm sorry." She sighed. "I expected different, but I didn't see what I expected."

"I should be sorry as well, then." I said. "When you first came in, I expected you to be… how do I say it… a bitch?"

She laughed at that. "Ha! I'd have enough money to start my own company if I had a Lien for every time someone said that. Hey, hold up." Her scroll rang and she pulled it out of her pocket, then sighed and looked at me. "Hey, I gotta go."

"You're cool, so talk to you later!" She dashed off and disappeared in a flurry of snowflakes.

Well, that went better than I expected.

Dinner passed without further incident. Mr. Schnee and I ate in silence, while Winter was absent. I soon found myself in the room I had been loaned, lying on the bed, just letting the gears in my head spin as I processed the day's events.

I had somehow found myself in the world of Remnant, in the home of some of the most influential people in the world. That enough was cause for concern, as it seemed that Mr. Schnee would have no compunctions about throwing me out onto the street if I failed to live up to his expectations of 'being useful' and wasted his generosity in the process. The added danger was that they-and by association, I- was a target for terrorists. I had to be careful. If I didn't have an Aura and a Semblance, then my chances of survival during an attack would be very slim. Likewise, my survival would still be in question even if I had one.

At the very least, I seem to have made an ally in Winter.

However. If a week had passed, how come nobody had noticed my aura or the lack of it? How come there were no doctors to check on me.

I sighed as I opened the drawer on the nightstand and looked inside. A cylindrical device sat next to my laptop charger with a note taped to it:

My employees have developed a converter for your device's charging unit. Use it well. – Eisen S.

"Cool." I inspected the device and plugged the laptop's power cord into it, and it into the wall socket. A green light lit up on the side of the device as it hummed quietly, and the laptop's charging indicators lit up as well. I turned it on and started typing.

It was going to be a long night.