Whitley Schnee was a cold person. It was practically in his blood, and his development being what it was and happening as fast as it did only made it so much worse.
It was scant hours after the rather terrible incident that had been his sister leaving for Atlas Academy and he found himself looking over the balcony, still in his usual attire of a short-sleeved blue vest with a white undershirt although the tie was nowhere to be seen. His hands as manicured as they were also held a small pure white stick with a single silver band near the base, held in between his Index and Middle finger. It looked out of place in a boy his age, having only turned eleven last week it unfortunately fit with his face of mourning instead.
"So… my dream is dead, not like it had all that much of a chance here really, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised." He mumbles a little bit taking a careful glance back to ensure that the door to his balcony was still closed before his left hand strays to his pocket to grab a small vial. A vial that is almost empty with only a tiny amount of red powder at the bottom he rather quickly pops off the cork.
He lets his aura soak into the Dust before making a small fire at the tip of his fingers a bit of a waste given how cheap lighters were but it was also one of the few ways he allowed himself to train his aura. With a quick application of finger fire onto the tip of the cigarette the small stick burned rather quickly allowing him to take a long drag from the other end even as he waved off the fire from his fingertip the smoke was moments from his lips before he began to monologue to himself.
"Winter's gone, father's already on his way to replace her, probably won't be home until evening tomorrow because of it and Weiss is still going after Winter like some sort of lovesick puppy only she's even more delusional than Winter if she thinks she's going to be able to be a huntress and run the company whenever she gets back." Another drag of the cigarette and he felt his aura wrap around the smoke as it entered his lungs, the second reason he smoked after the need for the relief the nicotine brings him. A twist of his aura and the smoke was turned into an internal wrap for his lungs, by the time he was done with his smoke he would have a subdermal armor as strong as rock in his lungs.
Internally of course he knew that he only got something like this because he did an exercise like this so often, it was practically the only way he would train his aura, although it did wonders for his control over the damn substance.
"There's always the chance that Weiss won't follow Winter's footsteps but... no, there's no chance of that Whitley, she's going to follow in that idiot's footsteps even if it's going to cause her way more pain than it's worth. She already trains daily and her grades have been slipping in exchange for it but given what happened here there's no way she's going to Atlas she always has relied more on the money than Winter." Another drag, this one smaller as he wants to actually finish his thoughts out loud even as they rush through his head.
"She won't go to Vacuo they're too against outsiders at that academy and they would almost certainly chafe her with their extreme focus on survival over everything else, and Minstral has the highest graduation levels of any academy, but is also famed for their rather mediocre graduates. She will go to Beacon, it's her only real option and there's an almost perfectly zero percent chance she fails the entrance exam so my sister will be in Beacon come five years." It was with that he had to take another deep breath of his poison, only to wince as he feels embers hit his fingers looking down he found that the cigarette was gone, he had already smoked the whole thing.
Almost instinctively his hand twitched downwards to the pocket that held the rest of the pack his mind demanding the rush of dopamine that would come with a second stick but he squashed the itch like the maggot it was to his mind. His mother had rather intimately shown him the result of addiction in these past few years and while he would take the edge off he had limited himself when he first started to one cigarette a month, and that was going to stay exactly where it was.
As he flicks the remains of his cigarette off the balcony he leans against it distracting himself for a moment how he always would before imagining his dream a dream that lived in his head. A dream of standing next to his sister Winter, Weiss on the other side of her, who sat in father's now former chair as the three of them talked business giggling at the pitiful plays by different members of the board, occasionally drifting into talking about their various families and how they could bring their children into the business. Whitley, Weiss, and Winter, just as it was, how it would have been, exactly how it should have been the three of them against the world.
He gripped the railing with a grip of iron consciously pulling his aura back less he shatter the soft stone beneath his fingers pulling himself from the dream he now knew never could be, and with Winter's actions he couldn't imagine Weiss in her place and him and Winter alongside her. Whitley may be young but as his father ensured he was not stupid, one of the earliest classes he took was psychology, it was a three-week course but with that time just like every other field of study he had the knowledge of psychology crammed into his skull.
All those lessons told him now was that she was determined to learn to be a huntress, and as much as he was sure he was angry with Winter for doing so he could tell he was already forgiving her in his mind.
With a sigh he finally left the cold night he could only barely feel walking into his room he ignored his bed despite how much it may or may not help him at the moment. The door to his room was closed and his room was soundproofed as all of their rooms were, his father constantly joked that it was like that so that he couldn't hear when his children grew up it was one of the few jokes Whitley only sometimes had to fake laugh at.
As he plopped onto his desk he booted up the Tablet before using the holographic keyboard to pull up a text document rather quickly naming it Stage 1 he sets to work, "Alright so game plan time here Weiss is going to go to beacon and father likely won't immediately disown her he doesn't need to do as such after all as she's rather vocal about wanting to take over the company after all unlike Winter... but can I take that chance? No, I can't."
His words come out a mile a minute as he's already using separate tabs to bring up bank accounts and other such financial records for himself, "Father is unstable in his decisions at the best of times, calculating to a fault but incredibly emotional in the same breath I can't leave what he decides to chance. Weiss is much more dependent on the money Father gives than Winter is and even if she adjusts at a rapid pace just cutting her off from that leaves her vulnerable to losing access to dust out in the field which could very well get her killed, unacceptable."
His sentence is cut off at the last word as he comes to the mental realization a look of steel forms in his eyes his fingers on the keyboard somehow going faster than before, "Taking my current allowance every month I have ten percent to use on personal projects, if I take five of that ten percent with each installment and place it in a fund along with roughly fifty percent of the profits from the investments made with the remainder of the ten percent assuming I use the Monochrome bank to further limit father's ability to discover the account, that leaves me with an interest of oh point oh seven percent which after five years leaves her with 850,000 Lien on a low ball and 1,200,000 Lien on a high ball estimate."
"That's assuming that Father cuts her off in her first year it's likely to increase as she gets older and more independent, which actually brings into question me getting the inheritance... if Father declares her unfit in the first year then it's simple and I'll have plenty of time but assuming that he waits till her third or fourth year then she could graduate and use that as a means into the business which would complicate things immensely." He types out a more clear and cut version of this on his computer in a little notes section he made just above where he plans to make the next step.
"Although if she graduates first... then there's no need for this plan, but that's neither here nor there either way if I'm named the heir then the moment Weiss gets out of the academy she's going to be causing trouble in the hopes of getting into the business probably in pursuit of her dream to make the company better and with her lack of knowledge she'd probably run it into the ground. If I'm going to convince her not to then I need to show results which... I won't be able to do that if Father is still the CEO, if I want to do that I need to be in control which wouldn't happen until years after I'm declared heir or until-." He cuts himself off as his eyes stare straight onto the screen his hand stopping as it hovers over the last key to finish the sentence he was speaking verbally just a moment ago.
"Until he dies." The words, the tone, and the imagery they provoked all spoke of the same idea beginning to brew within his mind. For the moment he had to hesitate to wonder if he could truly go through this before he let his logic speak to him, 'If I don't do this and Weiss really does enter the business to try and overthrow or otherwise challenge Father then the two of them would fight be it through business or through more direct means if Father is feeling truly threatened which moves on and on a back and forth with neither side yielding out of sheer stubbornness until father wins and kills Weiss, or Weiss wins and kills Father.'
The former was only briefly considered as he was certain Weiss would be strong enough to win against the man but even still he could only imagine how she would feel if she managed to go through with it, 'Sister just like the rest of us deals with the cold easily but she doesn't have the same steel to ignore the act of taking another's life even if it's perfectly reasonable to do so, I can't let her bear that burden.'
Steeling his heart and narrowing his eyes he speaks his mind, "I will be the one to kill Jacques Schnee."
The burden began to settle on his mind as his hands moved once more only making a brief twitch towards the box of smokes he still has in his pants pockets but he once more squashes the itch with a focus on his plans, "Father is rather unpredictable on most occasions, with the sole exception of the Vytal Festival, he always keeps to the same routine every time so that's when I'm going to have to strike. If I can leak his location to the White Fang how long would they need to go in and do a successful operation?"
A quick search online told him his answer rather handily, "Interview with a deserter reveals the fastest operation they launched took three days to prepare for but we can't take the fastest as the only option especially if I want them to have a good chance to actually kill him, so I need to ensure this is a victory. If the fastest is three days and the longest it takes is a month then I can meet in the middle with two weeks, not only that but they'll likely wait until the third day due to security."
He continues talking as he types out the rest of his plan the fatigue of the whole thing starting to get to him perhaps that's why he just keeps talking, "First, second, and last days are the ones where security will be the tightest and they almost certainly won't be willing to wait to try their hand at killing him making the third day the perfect day for their attack, and if I can figure that out I'm sure they will too."
He somewhat feels like his rant is getting out of hand, his notes aren't even about what he's talking about but he knows if he stays quiet he'll start to go to sleep and that's not something he can afford, "The first and second days set the pattern for the security workers, if the first is mostly peaceful and the second follows then the third is likely to be the same after all, I wonder if there's some fancy term for that? Something like the Magical Number Syndrome or whatever cause three is called the magic number a lot."
Then his mind is suddenly faced with something else, "oh, mother. Right I suppose if Father dies she could attempt to retake her place if she can find it in herself to pull her mouth from that bottle."
That lead to his thoughts wandering to Weiss she wore that lovely red scarf today normally his mind wouldn't drift this much but in this case it was for a reason, after all his mother gave her that scarf. She went out into town to get more wine got drunk on the way, threw up in an alleyway, found the scarf and wiped the vomit from her mouth and kept it as she walked back to the house.
Anger flooded him as he remembered the scene that followed, his mother walking into Weiss's public party confused until she gave her the vomit covered scarf claiming it to be a birthday present. To this day it was the only present Whitley has seen her give to any of them.
He's told that she used to give them presents every year but that she stopped when he was two years old the incident he was talking about happened on Weiss's eighth birthday, Whitley was five, he never hoped she would give him a present again. "No... She won't get the position, that isn't something she deserves and it certainly isn't something I trust her with. I'll have to talk with her about it after father is gone, and if she tries to push... Then she'll be joining Jaques."
His voice is cold even to him, as he types that the last line in his plan he reads it over and nods his head, it's done. He stretches out a little bit and yawns thoughts of getting some sleep crossing through his head before he blinks as sunlight hits his eyes. Blinking slowly he realizes it's already morning and sighs standing up. He can't get sleep now otherwise his father would berate him for being too lazy so he supposes he'll just have to go to bed a tad bit earlier than normal tonight.
He would later find out his father didn't return to the house that night, nor for the rest of the week and the following week as well, although he dare not hope that he had some free time he was maybe getting more used to not having his father at the house. That would of course change when his father returned that second Sunday, and his life became far too much.
It all started when his father called him to his office.
