Author's note: In the interests of managing expectations, I'll say that other members of the RWBY cast will be showing up eventually, when the plot calls for it. In the short term, we're going to be staying close and personal with the Schnee sisters. Just so you know.


Winter wasn't sure what she'd expected.

She knew the value of planning, of course. All military ops were planned and practiced beforehand. The routine of building and delivering mission briefs, rehearsing the mission, executing the mission, and debriefing afterwards had been ground into her. She knew from experience that talking about a mission before and after its execution took far more time than the mission itself.

Even so, several days of planning was a bit more than she'd anticipated… and it still looked like they hadn't gotten far.

"Our needs, then," said Weiss, pulling up a diagram with bubbles for the different topics and itemized lists beneath each bubble. "We need a workforce, which needs capital." She drew a line pointing from the Workforce bubble back to the Capital bubble. "We need mining machinery, which needs capital." Another line. "We need equipment to refine, synthesize, and/or convert Dust, which needs capital and facilities, which is more capital. We need mining sites, which need to be cleared and secured."

"Which is capital," Winter added automatically.

"Not as much as you think," Weiss said slowly. "There are potential mining sites across Solitas that have been surveyed, but are unowned for one reason or another. Grimm, usually, enough grimm that the profit margins don't justify the effort. I had in mind we would clear one of those mines ourselves and get it basically for free."

"Taking grandfather's example a bit literally, are we?" said Winter drily. There was a reason their grandfather's armor was practically a symbol of the family. Nicholas Schnee had been as much warrior as businessman.

Winter tried not to wonder which creditor owned their grandfather's armor now.

Weiss flushed. "It's not for the romance of it. It's practical. We can both fight, we won't be operating more than one mine at the start, and doing it this way saves money."

Winter raised an eyebrow.

"Y-yes," Weiss admitted, "it's also because that's how grandfather did it. But my reasons are the reasons he did it! Anyway, the whole point of calling our company 'Schnee Dust Reborn' is because we're trying to get back to doing things the right way. We could do worse than emulate grandfather."

"Granted, except for one thing," said Winter. "How many guards does it take to oversee a Dust site?"

"More than two. I know what you're thinking," she continued before Winter could interject. "You're thinking there's no way we can handle all the security work just by ourselves on top of our CEO duties. If this were a Schnee Dust Company mine, or a Fall Dust mine, I'd agree with you. But that's because SDC practices and Fall Dust practices attract a lot of grimm. We can do better."

"How very vague," said Winter.

"We'll come back to it in more detail later," said Weiss. "I'm trying to stay high-level for now."

If this was what Weiss considered 'high-level', Winter dreaded what it would look like to get into the weeds.

"We need distribution and delivery to get our product to market, which is capital," Weiss continued. "We need advertisement or an alternative. We need office workers to handle regulatory compliance, payroll, and finances, which means we need office space and equipment."

"We can't do all of that?" said Winter.

"Not by ourselves. I've seen the volume. If the forms weren't digital these days, Atlas would be deforesting whole continents to make enough paper for it all." Weiss drew several more lines, all pointing back to 'capital'.

"What about worker support?" said Winter.

"What do you mean?"

"You have workers, but those workers need to eat, don't they? They need somewhere to sleep. That means you have to construct a base by the mine, or have a transport system to let them commute, and both of those get exponentially more expensive the further into the wilderness the mine is."

"That's a good point," said Weiss, but even as she drew a new bubble she gave a suspicious look at Winter. "I thought you never got deep into business administration."

"I didn't, but do you think they only teach combat classes at Atlas Academy? There's an old saying inscribed on the walls there: "Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics"."

"Fair enough." Weiss drew another line from the new bubble back to 'capital'.

Winter took it all in with wide eyes. "That's a lot of arrows pointing at 'capital'."

"Dust mining is a capital-intensive industry," said Weiss. "Always has been. That's part of how Mantle mining companies were able to exploit Vacuan Dust supplies better than Vacuo could. They had the excess money to invest, Vacuo didn't." She winced. "It turns out that the easiest way to make money is to already have money."

"That's a problem for us, because we don't," said Winter. "My separation pay will tide us over for a few weeks, but it won't even start to cover all of… that."

"Neither will my trust fund," Weiss agreed.

Winter blinked in surprise. "You have a trust fund?"

"Technically it was my mother's trust fund for me, unavailable until I came of age," said Weiss, "but yes. It was the one piece of the family's finances that was segregated from the SDC, so it's the one thing that didn't get seized in the bankruptcy."

"That was…" Winter hesitated.

"Unusually thoughtful for mother?" said Weiss cuttingly. "Yes, I agree."

For a moment, Weiss' eyes went out of focus, and Winter's heart went out to her. When Winter had come to the realization that their mother wasn't going to get better, she'd started looking for outs, and found one in the military. Hindsight was showing her that she'd just left Weiss alone with the problem. No, worse—Weiss had been stuck with an even less-functional Willow than the one that had driven Winter to flee the estate.

Winter tried imagining how Weiss must have lived all those years, stuck in Schnee Manor with their increasingly drunk and erratic mother, a company falling to pieces around her, and snide whispers behind every closed door and false smile.

"It must have been hard," Winter said.

"I have no desire to talk about it now," said Weiss, her voice as clipped and stern as Winter's best dressing-down-an-inferior voice.

"We have the time," Winter offered. "And it might help."

"No," said Weiss, with a dangerous combination of pouting and yelling. Her face was full of emotion too intense and complex for Winter to parse. "It won't help. Nothing will help. It happened, and it's over, and I need to move on. I want to move on. Let's talk about the company now."

Winter disagreed. Compartmentalization in the heat of the moment was a vital Huntsman skill, since runaway negativity drew more grimm; but coming to terms with those emotions when one had the chance was just as important. Fleet Psychiatry was an important part of the Atlas military, after all.

But Winter had never been part of Fleet Psychiatry, and she had none of those skills. For that matter, she was little better than Weiss when it came to navigating through the wreckage of their family. It would be the blind leading the blind if she tried.

In which case, better to bow to Weiss' wishes, and move on. "How much money's in the trust fund?"

Weiss visibly relaxed—ironic, given her answer. "Enough to cover some of this, but not nearly all of it. We're going to need loans, that's for sure."

"You mean like the SDC needed loans?" Winter said with some bite.

Weiss looked up at Winter with confusion.

"I have no debts," Winter said proudly. "I… was hoping to avoid having to borrow."

"But every business borrows. The world as we know it couldn't exist without loans."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it." Winter frowned as her insides churned. "It feels like a handout. It feels… like we can't do things we ought to be able to do."

"That's not…"

"I didn't say it was logical," Winter interrupted. "It's just a feeling. I'll try to suppress it." She sighed. "I think half of it is I don't like bankers, never mind banks. They were the worst of the vultures during the bankruptcy. They made me feel sick."

"Without their loans, the SDC would have collapsed years earlier," Weiss said. "They were the only things keeping it afloat… wait. You don't blame the bankers for the bankruptcy, do you?"

"They didn't seem too heartbroken when there at the end," Winter said scathingly. "I know, I know, my feelings don't make sense. Just… I don't like them, is all. I don't like being in debt, I don't like owing people things, and I doubly don't like owing them anything."

"Don't get me wrong," said Weiss, "some bankers are real pieces of work. I met a few so slimy that if you poured salt on them they'd shrivel and die. But we don't have to like them for them to be useful."

"I'll be happy to defer to you, there," Winter mumbled.

"Fine." Weiss put some finishing touches on her diagram, then pushed her chair away from the table so she could look at it in totality. "That… is a lot."

"It is," said Winter as her mouth dried. "Do you really think we can manage all of this, and maintain our Huntress skills?"

"We'll have to," said Weiss. As if it were that simple!

"Make no mistake, I have to practice a lot to keep my edge. You need to practice even more to get to the level all this," Winter waved vaguely at the diagram, "requires."

"I can fight, you know that," said Weiss. Winter couldn't tell if Weiss was more annoyed or embarrassed.

She'd fix that. "Really. What was the last non-simulated enemy you defeated?"

Weiss didn't reply, which was its own answer.

"What's that? There've been so many they all blend together?"

Weiss' silence got louder, somehow.

"Well, in that case, at least tell me which enemy inspires your summoning."

"I can't summon yet, as you know perfectly well!" fumed Weiss.

"I do know. That's my point, little sister." Winter looked at the diagram again and something inside her snapped. "We're going."

"Excuse me?"

"Grab your weapon and your combat gear," Winter said, rising from her seat and stretching. "We've been cooped up entirely too long, neither of us have gotten any real exercise in days. We're going to go train."

"We're not done with this," said Weiss stubbornly.

"And the longer we stare at it, the harder it will get. 'Healthy body, healthy mind.' Physical activity stimulates the brain, I know I've told you that before."

In the context of their increasingly sedentary mother, who'd had reasonable fighting skills once upon a time… skills that had rusted solid from lack of use.

To her credit, Weiss neither folded beneath Winter's pressure nor whined like a child. Her eyes narrowed. "Just one detail, since you're our logistician. Where will we train? We don't have wide open spaces in the manor gardens anymore."

"Do you think I only trained when I came home?" said Winter with eyebrow raised. "Mantle has facilities for Huntress' use. I may have resigned from the military, but my license is still in good standing. We'll use those."

Weiss crossed her arms defiantly. "One and a half hours physical training, three hours working the business plan."

"Two hours physical training, half an hour for personal hygiene, half an hour for meal prep and dinner, one and a half hours working the business plan."

"You drive a hard bargain, Miss Schnee."

"I'll take that as a compliment, Miss Schnee."


"Too sloppy."

Winter's voice seemed to come from miles away. Weiss had trouble hearing it over the ringing in her ears, the pounding of her heart, and the gasping of her breaths.

The fact that one ear was flat against the training room mat didn't help.

She forced herself back to her feet, aching though her muscles were. Winter looked like she wasn't even breathing hard, like it had taken no special effort to throw Weiss asunder.

Weiss knew Winter was fighting with one hand behind her back—literally and figuratively. Winter's off-hand was, in fact, behind her, which also meant she wasn't dual-wielding against Weiss. She didn't need to. She only needed (generously) seventy percent of her strength to flatten Weiss again and again.

Logically, Weiss knew that Winter was bigger, stronger, older, more experienced, and better trained. Winter had achieved the rank of Specialist before she left the military, and that rank was not given lightly. Weiss should expect to win zero training bouts between them.

Weiss' pride was not logical, and so had taken quite a bruising.

She took a deep breath and focused on her Aura, patching up her aches and soothing her soreness. They'd been doing this routine—interspersing business planning and Huntress training—for days now, and she had yet to score a single hit. If she could score even one, she'd consider that victory.

"The grimm won't be this patient," Winter said sternly. "Neither will bandits, nor the White Fang, nor any other enemy you'll face. You won't have the luxury of a leisurely recovery between falls. You'll just die."

Breathe. She's trying to provoke you. She wants a reaction. She knows it'll make you sloppier, when that's already your weakness. Be calm, be focused.

"You'd better stay behind me when we go to the mines, little sister. You have no place being in front, not when you're too weak to face what's out there."

Heat flared in Weiss' chest at the taunt. Her patience died a sudden, silent death. With a gesture she drew a circle of glyphs centered on Winter, giving her a choice of attack vectors. She could move from one glyph to another, slashing at her sister with each pass—an exhausting tactic, but one which should allow her to pry open a gap in her sister's perfect defense.

Winter's eyes widened slightly, the better to take in the possibilities.

Weiss bent her knees, choosing where to start—

And Winter was upon her.

Before Weiss could leap to the first glyph in her pattern, Winter was charging, accelerated by a glyph she'd drawn beneath her with neither noise nor motion. Weiss' glyphs shattered as she lost focus on them. She threw a slap of a parry that just barely knocked Winter's saber off target, but Winter carried on into a shoulder check that knocked Weiss flat on her back.

She was still trying to catch her breath when Eiszahn's point appeared before her eyes.

"Your attack took far too long to develop," Winter said. "You need to think and act faster to have a chance when it counts."

"Of course," Weiss replied.

"You have a long way to go," Winter said curtly. "And spending hours cooped up indoors isn't helping you get there."

Weiss stopped trying to rise; she tapped against the mat beside her and Winter's saber withdrew. Just because she was beaten, though, didn't mean she'd given up. "I haven't been 'cooped up'. We've come out here every day for the last week. Two hours a day, every day."

Winter snorted. "Is that supposed to impress me? How much training do you think it took me to get to this point?"

"Plenty," said Weiss, cheeks burning. "I'm not trying to wow you, I'm just showing you that I am trying. I think we're putting in plenty of training time. The business plan needs its share of attention, too."

"And it's getting it. How many hours have we sunk into that plan over the past two weeks?"

"A few," Weiss allowed.

Winter backed away and flicked up with her saber. "Which means we have time to spare on this."

Weiss resisted the urge to groan. She staggered to her feet, a bit ungainly, muscles protesting and Aura losing its ability to quiet them.

"Or are you saying you've given up on us being SDR's security?" Winter said cuttingly.

Weiss pounced at the words, almost before they'd been said. There were a few seconds of flashing metal which she couldn't truly follow, all instinct and reaction—right up until she felt her balance abandoning her. Somehow there was a hand on her ankle… and then she was pinned down on her face, almost literally eating dirt.

"Better," said Winter from above and behind her.

"Mohr rearry," said Weiss.

After another thirty years (or minutes, at least), they wrapped up their session and headed for the lockers to shower and clean up. The showers were quite small, but still enclosed to enforce modesty. It was while Weiss was standing beneath the spray that certain thoughts, which had been murky to this point, began to coalesce into something real, something almost tangible.

She didn't voice them as she and Winter dressed to head back to Winter's apartment, only opening her mouth after they'd boarded a bus and there was nothing else competing for her attention. "Winter, you mentioned the White Fang as a threat to our Dust mining."

"Naturally."

"What if it wasn't?"

Winter narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Comparative advantage," Weiss said, clinging to her script in the face of Winter's skepticism. "We can't just be any old Dust company. This isn't a pride thing," she said when she saw Winter's expression, "it's practical. We can't operate like the other Dust companies. We can't just do the same things they do. They'll stomp us if we fight straight-up because they have deeper pockets."

"Like you during our sparring session," Winter said keenly, "using the same techniques you learned from me to try and beat me at my own game."

"Table that thought for another day. The point is, we have to find things to do better, and throw our weight behind them. We have to find comparative advantages." She sucked in a breath. "What if one of our advantages is we don't have to worry about the White Fang?"

Winter looked sharply at Weiss. She felt herself being cowed by the glare. "I never took you for an idealist, but it seems you need a reality check. We're talking about a Dust company, Weiss. The White Fang needs Dust to continue its terrorism. Any Dust company will have to deal with their attacks—including ours. The sooner you come to terms with that, the better prepared you'll be."

Even as she felt her heart sinking, Weiss grabbed ahold of her nerve. This wasn't like their spar. Winter couldn't just overpower her. In the realm of ideas, Weiss could fight her as an equal. "Why Dust companies?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why are Dust companies, specifically, the White Fang's targets?"

"Because the White Fang needs the Dust," Winter repeated, slowly, patronizingly.

"Plenty of industries use Dust, though. Large quantities of it, and in different form factors. Companies like the SDC convert the Dust they mine into their most stable forms for transport. Those are the hardest forms to weaponize. Other companies using Dust—arms manufacturers, power generation, industries of all sorts—use the more volatile forms the White Fang really wants. But it's the Dust companies that get hit the hardest and most often."

"Because the miners have to transport their Dust cross-country, while other users are mostly inside the Kingdoms' borders," Winter said, parrying Weiss' words as effortlessly as she'd parried Weiss' sword. "The Dust is most vulnerable while it's in transit."

"Is it, though? I saw the SDC's security budget. Most of it went into protecting the trains and ships that do bulk Dust transport. Even the mining bases themselves have less security than the transport systems. It started that way because of grimm attacks on transports. The SDC protected its mines by having Huntsmen cull the grimm in those areas, but they couldn't cull grimm along the entire transport route, so they had to arm the transports. As the White Fang hit more and more transports, the security on them got heavier and heavier."

Weiss pursed her lips. "Maybe this was just more SDC mismanagement, but I don't think it is."

Winter looked uncomfortable to Weiss' eyes, but she yielded nothing. "I think you're privileging experience. You read about it, so that's what you know best."

"In which case," Weiss said promptly, "we need to get off at the next stop and transfer to Line 77."

"Which will take us where?" said Winter.

"According to my scroll, Line 77 has a stop directly in front of the Mantle Public Library."

"Given up hope of working more on the business plan tonight?" said Winter, dry as ever.

Weiss fixed her sister with what she hoped was a fierce glare. "We need this for the business plan. I have some ideas, but I need to prove them. If I'm right… if I'm right, there are things we can do different. Better."

"Then lead on," said Winter. "But don't blame me if you're giving the White Fang too much credit."

Weiss huffed. "Now there's a sentence you don't hear every day."


Cinder Fall very nearly purred.

Victory tasted so sweet.

It was intoxicating, this feeling of power, of conquest. An enemy was ruined. Her ascension was secure. The two ideas were intertwined, she knew in her heart. Power was liberty. Power was zero-sum. If you wanted freedom, you got it by depriving others of theirs.

She desired total freedom, thirsted for it, lusted for it soul-deep. That meant everyone else needed to be laid waste.

This was a step towards that goal—a big step.

As she watched remotely, the auction of the SDC's assets continued. It was delicious theater. Some people might have thought it tedious, but not Cinder. It was proof of her triumph. It held a similar thrill to plucking the weapon out of a still-twitching hand to add to her trophy collection.

One of the other Dust companies raised the bid on an SDC mine. Cinder could see her representatives, visibly sweating, typing in their scrolls to message her for instructions. The bidding frenzy had driven prices to eye-watering levels, far beyond her guidelines to them.

Before the message even got to her, she'd replied. Raise.

She could see their incredulity through the screen. They had to be wondering how Fall Dust could possibly afford this. Short-sighted fools. If you had a chance to grab a monopoly, who cared how much it cost you in the short term? Any investment could be recovered when victory was complete.

Besides, she had far more resources than they knew.

Cinder's mood soured slightly at the thought. As succulent as triumph was, this wasn't her triumph alone. Not completely. The knowledge that someone else retained power over her was galling. A fly in the ointment.

Well. That wouldn't last. This success set up future successes. She wouldn't need to rely on anyone for much longer. Once she put the corpse of the SDC back to use under the Fall Dust banner, she would be the colossus in the Dust market. She'd knock off her remaining rivals, one by one, until there was only Fall Dust.

That would be true victory. She'd be unassailable, untouchable. Free, truly free.

She would never rest until she tasted that nectar. She would pay any price for it.

Her representatives texted her again, asking for confirmation. With annoyance, she repeated her command. Raise. It went through, and finally her minions obliged. (She took a note about potentially replacing them. She had no patience for disobedience.) Even with the screen muted, she could see the moment her bid went through. Representatives from the other Dust companies threw up their hands in exasperation, or put their hands on their heads in disbelief, or sank into their chairs in despair.

What a rich buffet of defeat. Cinder feasted on it.


"The White Fang does not exclusively target Dust mining companies," Winter said after taking her seat onboard another bus. "As the Fang has grown more militant, it has attacked a variety of organizations: retailers, restaurants, political pressure groups, media groups, other criminal entities, and many others."

"That checks with what I thought," said Weiss. "But none of those targets are exactly swimming in Dust, are they?"

Winter looked over her list again. "No, I daresay the Atlas Above political group wouldn't have much Dust on-hand."

Weiss nodded slowly. "But the Fang does operate here in the city."

Winter felt herself tightening. "The White Fang's presence in Atlas is strictly limited. The Atlas military controls immigration, while the military police operate a surveillance regime that gives the White Fang little room to breathe. This isn't Mistral."

"You know you aren't part of that any more," Weiss said quietly.

"I know," said Winter, although having to say it left her off-balance. "So what?"

"You said that like you were," Weiss pointed out. "You were awfully proud of it."

To her surprise, Winter realized she had puffed up a bit without thinking about it. "I… suppose."

"Regardless," said Weiss, pulling up something on her scroll, "the White Fang does operate in the biggest cities. Yes, including Atlas," she said, even as Winter burned to correct her. "Let's combine that with the other thing we know. The White Fang needs Dust to operate, like you said. Where do they get it?"

"They steal it," said Winter. "They can't operate any mines themselves, because Dust mines are too expensive to run and too big to hide. Any Dust they need to launch their attacks, they first have to steal."

"But they steal it exclusively from the Dust mining companies," Weiss said with an air of triumph.

Winter opened her mouth to argue—and stopped short.

Like Weiss had said earlier, there were other Dust-intensive companies in the world. Manufacturers and power generators guzzled Dust. Climate control in Atlas and Mantle consumed downright embarrassing amounts. Plenty of Dust passed through those industries, and they kept reserves of it on-hand just in case. Those would be tempting targets for any thieves—including those with the resources and gumption of the White Fang. And, as Weiss had pointed out, the White Fang operated in cities, where those utilities and factories were located.

But as Winter scrolled through her list of reported White Fang incidents, she didn't see any mention of utilities or factories being targeted.

"So what?" Winter said, feeling off-kilter. "Okay, so the White Fang needs Dust, and they make a point of targeting the mining companies to get it. What difference does it make?"

"It means," said Weiss quietly, "that things are worse than I feared."

"I don't do well with cryptic answers," Winter said with bite in her voice. "You'll have to be more straightforward."

Weiss took a settling breath. "The Silver Tongue mine in southern Anima was an absolute sinkhole for funds. Security funds, in particular. The mine was targeted by grimm over and over again, to the point that it was costing more money to operate than it was worth.

"Ten months before the bankruptcy, I dug into the matter. I found that the mine supervisor was up to his ears in graft. Of all the security money that SDC headquarters sent, maybe a third of it actually went to securing the mine. The rest was diverted into the pockets of the supervisor and his flunkies.

"And why did the mine need so much security? Because the labor force of that mine was all trafficked."

Winter's blood ran cold. "You mean…"

"Forced labor, yes," said Weiss in clipped tones. "Modern-day slavery on company property. After all, who'd catch it? Kingdom police forces rarely operate outside the major cities, and most mines are in the hinterlands. Military forces passing through the area don't have a law enforcement role. Even the Huntsmen who come around for culling missions never go inside the mine's grounds."

Weiss' hands balled up tight. "Using forced labor let the supervisor cut labor costs and pocket the difference. And who cared if it made the workers sad? If that attracted grimm, corporate would cover it. Everybody wins.

"Except the people being worked to death, of course."

Weiss' Aura shimmered over her hands at how her nails dug into her skin.

"I brought it to mother," Weiss went on. "I… I tried to get the supervisor fired. It took a lot of work just to get the ideas into her booze-flooded head. In one of her less lucid moments, she said to me… 'What do we care about some dirty animals, anyway?'"

Winter felt sick.

"And when I finally did get that supervisor fired for corruption, a new one stepped in, and labor costs didn't change. I'm sure they were still trafficking, but I couldn't prove it, and I didn't have time to look because of all the other… everything."

Weiss took a long, slow breath, the sort Winter recognized as a trained coping mechanism. It left a void that Winter felt herself being sucked into.

Was she complicit, somehow? How many times had Winter been out in the field? She'd been in the vicinity of mines on several occasions, but she'd never gone into one. She'd never had reason to; those were company property, their own little fiefdoms… where the rule of law never saw the light of day.

Had all of this been happening right in front of her without her knowledge? Without anyone's knowledge, just because no one could be bothered to look? She'd never thought about the conditions in the mines, and why should she? As long as the Dust came through, reliably and inexpensively, what else mattered?

Which was how they got away with it, she thought with a jolt.

"What I didn't know," Weiss said, "until we made this library trip, was if this was an industry standard. What if most mining operations run on trafficked labor, especially trafficked Faunus? With what I found, it sure looks like it. The White Fang goes after all the Dust miners, not just the SDC. And now we know why: because the mines are all big offenders in Faunus trafficking."

"You don't know that," said Winter, shaking free of her doldrums. "You know only about a single mine from a single company. Saying it's bigger than that is just a guess."

"It's not just a guess," Weiss said crossly, "we have data…"

"…that's far removed from firsthand evidence," Winter interrupted. No. Atlas prided itself on its mastery of Dust, and Winter was Atlesian, through and through. She could not countenance—could never accept—that this mastery was bought with blood money. "Have you been to a single mine? Have you found trafficking going on at any other SDC mines?"

"No and no, as you know…"

"…which is why I have trouble with this," said Winter. "I also have issues with you taking the White Fang's side."

"Excuse me?" scoffed Weiss. "I'm doing nothing of the sort!"

Winter remembered with a start that they were in a public area. While only half the bus was occupied, that still meant plenty of people were close by—close enough to hear if Weiss' volume kept rising.

"Keep it calm," Winter cautioned. "Self-control."

"Of—of course," Weiss said, blushing. For a moment, Winter saw something different from a would-be entrepreneur and Dust magnate. She saw a child—a competent, capable child to be sure, but still a child, someone below the legal (non-Huntress) drinking age.

Weiss recovered her bearings, and the mask slid back into place. She said more calmly, "I'm not taking the White Fang's side. Of course they're bad. There's no way I condone their activities."

"It sure sounded like it," said Winter, unable to help herself, though she kept her voice to an undertone. "You seemed to be blaming the victims of their attacks."

"No," Weiss said, backpedaling as hard as possible.

"Good," said Winter. "Because I've seen the White Fang's handiwork. I've done grimm cleanup missions in the aftermath of their smash-and-grabs. It is nasty business. Whatever grievances the White Fang has, this terror campaign cannot be the appropriate response."

"I said I'm not… not taking their side," Weiss said, barely controlling her voice. "I'm saying this is an opportunity."

"What kind of opportunity?" said Winter. "Because I don't see anything here."

"The opportunity to do better business by doing better by the Faunus."

Winter snorted. "Better than what?"

"Better than being trafficked, at least," said Weiss.

"Congratulations, you've cleared the lowest possible bar," Winter said acerbically. "What else?"

Weiss' righteous fury faded some. "W-well, I'd have to look into it some more…"

"Then go to the Crater."

Winter's head whipped about, but the speaker was already moving past them—a tall, indistinct form wearing a hat and an overlong greatcoat that went all the way to the shins. "If you want to know how to do better by the Faunus," the figure said gruffly, "ask the Faunus. And don't ask at the library. If you want to know about Faunus misery, go where the Faunus are miserable. Go to the Crater."

The bus came to a stop and its doors groaned open; the speaker stepped out onto the street and away. Winter looked, trying to figure out who had been speaking to them, but there was nothing—only, at the hem of the greatcoat, a tuft of what might have been brown hair.

Brown hair? And the back of the greatcoat was being pushed back, somehow, like there was something else… down there…

Like maybe, just maybe, a tail that someone was trying to hide.

Winter looked to Weiss, whose eyes had strayed to the same features. "Winter," said Weiss, more sure of herself now, "I think the business plan needs to wait a little longer."

Winter nodded. "Me too."


Next time: Transparency