ACT II
For the first week of Schnee Dust Reborn's existence, the sisters never left Skjulte Perle. Priority one was building up the town's infrastructure to support the mine and the miners. Supplies came in by ship, meaning the pier needed to be cleared and its equipment restored to operating condition. Those supplies had to go somewhere when not in use, meaning the warehouse had to be cleared. The citizens of Skjulte Perle had used it as a general-purpose storage building for all manner of bric-a-brac, all of which needed to be either relocated or disposed of. New communal houses had to be built from the ground up, and though laying foundations was trivial with the liberal use of Stone Dust, setting up heating and plumbing were significantly more difficult.
Even the sisters' office needed to be created from scratch. Negotiations with the owners of the hostel resulted in the sisters claiming most of its top floor. They rented one of the two guest bedrooms long-term, then moved a desk, filing cabinet, and other necessities in what had been the upper-floor common area. It only supported one sister's work at a time; luckily (or unluckily), it was rare for both sisters to have the time to retreat there for office work.
Just getting these things started consumed all the sisters' attention. Aster Cristata had officially-unofficially become the foreman for the Crater Faunus; Leif filled a similar role for the townsfolk of Skjulte Perle. This marginally reduced the sisters' workload, but less than they'd hoped, because the obstacles seemed endless. The two groups of workers had no lack of enthusiasm, but a pronounced lack of other things.
The Crater Faunus, for example, had been living in ramshackle make-do conditions for so long that setting up decent housing was beyond their experience.
It was one thing after another, every moment. After five days, Winter put her foot down.
"We're going to begin purging the local grimm now," she said.
Weiss didn't even look up. "If we leave now, the processing plant won't be ready for months."
"A day makes little difference to a timetable of months."
"We have two days to finish the expansion to the sewage system before Leif throws the Faunus into the sea."
"I'm sure some of them can swim."
"And if we don't get the payroll system set up…"
"Weiss."
At last the younger sister looked away from her holo-screen, face nearly a snarl. "Yes, Winter?"
"Even your timelines had us beginning extermination missions this week."
"Yes, well, as you pointed out, expecting perfection from others was a fool's errand," Weiss grumbled. "I tried to build some slack into the schedule, but obviously I didn't add enough. Now we need to compensate by pulling together this new order for piping before…"
"Weiss."
Weiss slammed her hands on the table. "What?!"
Winter arched a single eyebrow, her expression as chilly as her namesake. "I thought you cared so much about how Schnees are perceived. Is this tantrum all you amount to?"
"Are you stopping me from running our company just for the fun of needling me?" Weiss shot right back.
"No. You're proving my point right now. You're out of balance. It's just like the lather you worked yourself into when you were starting the business plan. You need exercise. Healthy body—"
"—healthy mind, yes, I know," Weiss finished shortly.
"You know the words, but you still fail to apply them." Winter killed Weiss' display and eased it away from her across the desk. Weiss, for all her prickliness, didn't stop her. "So I am intervening. We will do other tasks that need to be done, which coincidentally get you out of this chair."
"It'll take time to get an expedition organized," bargained Weiss, her eyes drifting to her scroll.
"The truck is waiting for you outside with the engine idling," Winter said, and her eyes twinkled in victory. "Don't make us waste fuel waiting for you."
Even turning away before Weiss could react, Winter knew she'd won.
Skjulte Perle was one of a string of settlements along the coast, clinging to the warm ocean currents that created (relatively) mild, livable microclimates. Grimm surveys of the region were done on a regular if infrequent basis, and each of those settlements paid for Huntsman sweeps of its surrounding area. This was typically once a quarter, though it could be more or less often depending upon each town's finances and moods.
A mayor who had a feel for their town would know when things were going well enough they could delay calling in Huntsmen. Similarly, an empathetic mayor could tell when bad vibes abounded that might draw in more grimm, and preemptively call in an early sweep. Unfortunately, the most common reason for pervasive bad feelings was being short on money, which made it harder to afford extra protection.
Leif's endless energy and upbeat attitude were more than personal quirks: they were necessary tools for mayors hoping to survive at the fringes of civilization. The edge of the world is the edge of a knife, was the old Mistrali saying.
All of that meant that, in broad strokes, the typical grimm threat in the Skjulte Perle area was known. Sabyr packs rolled in from the outlying tundra; Teryx roosted high in the mountains; Centinels occasionally built hives in outlying regions; every so often a Goliath would wander into the area, usually not more than fifty years old and only just strong enough to shake off an anti-tank missile. It didn't cost Skjulte Perle too much to have Huntsmen push that level of threat back.
The arrival of SDR changed everything. With so many more people, the total amount of emotions was much higher. In these early days, Weiss knew that good feelings were running strong, but that wasn't guaranteed to last. If there were problems getting the mines online, if there was some sort of accident, if money got tight…
All of those things were worth worrying about on their own, but any of them risked bringing the grimm down in force. That meant Winter and Weiss had to clear not only the mining site, but a wide swathe around that mining site. They had to push the grimm back, back, back. Keep them far enough away that no grimm would be around to detect whatever negative emotions cropped up.
It wouldn't be permanent; even if they were totally successful, the grimm always came back, so they'd have to repeat their sweeps later. Maybe, someday, the sisters would be able to pay Huntsmen to do that job—or at least part of it—for them. As it was, money was tight, and, as Winter had pointed out, they needed the practice.
All of which is the long way of saying that Weiss' combat experience septupled in a matter of hours.
Weiss saw Winter out of the corner of her eye, standing in a ready position, the glow of a glyph lighting her from below.
Then she was cursing her inattention as the Teryx snapped at her. She ducked away just in time, but it was still close enough for her to feel the push of wind.
The Teryx glared at her, growling low. Winter had done Weiss the favor of shredding its wings before backing off, so Weiss didn't have to contend with the Teryx's full arsenal. She still had to find a way to kill the thing.
On her own. Winter had demanded Weiss kill it without assistance. Weiss' pride would allow nothing less.
She laboriously called up memories, pictures and text from a book about grimm that was as close as she'd gotten to this species before this moment. The armor was concentrated on the leading edges and the back, weaker behind and below the wings, the lower side of the neck, and on the underbelly, so if she could—
Scheiße.
It was barreling at her, maw gaping to bare finger-length teeth. Its mouth sounded like a steel trap springing shut with every bite.
Weiss tried to fend it off, with mixed success. Fencing techniques designed to redirect a human-sized weapon were only so effective against this battering ram of shadow and malice.
She managed to deflect its head past her—there, an opening. She reversed her grip to stab down; before she could, the Teryx whipped its neck at her, throwing her into the air.
She recovered mid-air, bent into a spin to reorient herself, touched down as lightly as she could given the distance and airtime. Already the Teryx was charging at her again.
"Don't just defend!" shouted Winter. "Are you a Huntress or not? You should be hunting it!"
Easy for her to say—
A slash of the Teryx's claws purged Weiss' resentment in a second.
She had a point, though. Weiss kept waiting for the Teryx to give her an opening. She needed to create one.
She spun Myrtenaster's cylinder.
The Teryx gathered itself for a moment, its head rearing back to extend its range on the lunge. It screeched as that head whipped forward—
A pillar of erupting earth caught it beneath the chin and knocked its head into the air.
Weiss seized the moment—she only had this one instant of disorientation—
She darted beneath it (her small size an asset for once), found the lowest point of its chest armor, and stabbed just below that point into unprotected belly.
She knew it'd worked when the Teryx screamed not like a predator on the hunt, but like prey in pain. It thrashed and its body sagged, almost crushing her, but she ducked beneath, then rushed towards its far side, ripping open its underbelly as she tore Myrtenaster free.
She found daylight, dashed past its thrashing tail, and turned to plot her next attack.
There was no need. The Teryx shuddered, screamed again, and dropped.
Weiss caught her breath. Victory.
"That would have been easier to do if your blade had an edge and not just a point."
…of course, she couldn't have even this small victory without the inevitable critique. This wasn't really a victory, you see, you actually lost and were just lucky…
But there was a difference between criticizing her fighting and hating on her weapon. "I like Myrtenaster, and I will not be entertaining arguments about it," she said, not bothering to tamp down her emotions, still running hot after the fight.
"Of course not," said Winter, to Weiss' surprise. "Even military Huntsmen get individualized weapons. We want to draw out each Huntsman's best, and if that means people have unique weapons and styles, that's a price we happily pay.
"All I'm saying is that, if you're going to use a rapier, you must understand its strengths and its weaknesses. Don't ask it to do something it's ill-suited for."
There it was. Weiss knew she wasn't perfect. That was her goal, not her reality. Being reminded of that constantly, every time Winter spoke, was grating. Still, it was easier to accept criticism of her technique than her weapon.
"I'll keep that in mind," she said, before raising her scroll to check her Aura. Below half. Fight after fight, plus warding off the Solitas cold, were taking their toll. Winter was still in the green, naturally.
Weiss checked the time while she was at it. Hm… getting on towards evening. That checked with how she felt: she was sore and achy all over, and hungry enough to eat her weight in ration packs. "Shall we head back to town?" she asked.
She watched Winter weighing her options. Whatever Winter meant to say, she second-guessed as she looked back up to the truck—and the handful of workers with it, who'd been given survey tasks to do along with the sisters' clearance operation. Said workers, who'd clearly been gawking at the fight, hastened to look busy when the Schnees looked back up to them.
With a sigh of disappointment, Winter said, "Yes, we might as well. You and I might be able to stay out overnight, but I wouldn't push that on this lot."
Meaning: they hadn't brought enough gear for the workers to camp out even if they'd had unlocked Auras, which they didn't.
It was a bit disappointing, because time in transit was time wasted… but Weiss had prepared for that. She was in the truck before Winter was. In the time it took Winter to get aboard, Weiss set up a CCT booster and pulled up her scroll to work through her message traffic.
"How efficient," Winter said.
Her tone made it impossible tell if she approved or not. Weiss tuned it out.
One of the workers spoke up. "You weren't kidding when you said you'd be sharing the danger. You're really gonna kill all the grimm yourselves?"
"That's the plan," said Weiss without looking away. "It saves money."
"Seems like a lot of work."
Weiss' started to snap a response, but she caught a glare from Winter and had to pause.
Soldiers are like children, Winter had said. They're always listening, whether you realize it or not. You're always on display around them. I imagine employees are the same way.
Weiss looked at the workers around her. They all had a casual aspect, but they were all listening closely. Weiss was sure that whatever she said would be repeated throughout Skjulte Perle. If she said something bad or wrong, it'd be the talk of the town in minutes.
No pressure.
Weiss tried to imagine them as board members or business partners. It helped. "We're investing ourselves in the company and looking out for its interests. As we said at hiring, we're all in this together. That wasn't a sales pitch. It was an oath."
She pretended to look at her messages again while listening out for whatever the workers might say. She didn't hear anything, but there was a mood in the truck she liked.
She glanced at Winter. Winter's eyebrows went up a hair's breadth.
It was very nearly a compliment.
Weiss relaxed for a moment, let calm wash through her a moment. Good.
Then it was back to work.
For a week the sisters alternated days of office work in Skjulte Perle with purge runs around the periphery. At the end they dedicated two full days to clearing the very edge of their perimeter, the furthest distance they considered a threat for grimm attraction after accounting for their population.
Winter remembered those lessons in Grimm Studies very well. She could do the equations backwards and forwards, in combat and under duress.
She was less comfortable with other aspects of the job.
"Can you move those temporary houses you're building?"
"No," said Winter flatly. The denial didn't even seem to really register with her petitioner, a late-middle-aged woman of Skjulte Perle who seemed like she was all neck and cheekbones, and who'd identified herself (as if Winter cared) as Holly Hemlock.
"I'd really like for them to be further towards the fjord, you see," she went on.
"No," Winter reiterated, slowly. "We've already laid the foundations, run the pipes, run the wiring. It would cost more to move those houses now than it took to build them in the first place. No."
On the second 'no', the word seemed to reach the woman. "But you simply must move them," she insisted.
"Why must I?" Winter said as frostily as her namesake.
"The animals need to be closer to the fjord. You know, to put them downwind of proper folk."
Hemlock said it without any apparent shame, the way someone might have asked Winter to let them through a blocked doorway.
It ignited something inside of her.
"I need for you to move," she said in short tones.
Hemlock frowned. "I beg your pardon?"
"I said, you need to move," Winter repeated. "The ventilation duct is behind you, and I don't want you upwind of me."
Hemlock flushed. "Why you—you-!"
Winter merely raised an eyebrow and concentrated all her fury on being as still as possible.
The woman apparently couldn't even think of what Winter was, because she stormed off without another word. Good thing, too. Winter had barely realized she was even drawing that glyph.
She released it and sighed, trying to let her anger fritter away with her breath.
"Sorry you had to deal with that."
Winter looked up to see Leif ducking under the doorway. "She's been pestering me every day about it," he went on apologetically. "I'd run out of ways to tell her 'no', so I figured maybe you'd have better luck, don'cha know?"
"I suppose I do," said Winter, clenching and unclenching her hand. Her anger was still sloshing around in her chest. "I can't believe such attitudes persist in this day and age."
"You can't?"
Winter paused, closed her eyes, and thought. She remembered the research she and Weiss had done. She remembered what they'd found about the White Fang's grievances with the Dust industry. She remembered the Crater.
"Maybe I can," she said.
Leif nodded. "It doesn't help that some of the citizens here have never seen a Faunus before. All they know is what they see on the news."
"Have never-?"
Leif looked embarrassed, but he gave her a helpless shrug all the same. Winter did a rapid mental inventory of her previous experiences in Skjulte Perle.
"This town didn't have any Faunus?"
"Not a one," Leif said.
That left Weiss aghast. Statistically, she knew the percentage of the total population that was Faunus. Even with Skjulte Perle being so small, it should have had at least a few. Even Atlas Academy took in Faunus and made sure they were put in positions of visibility. There hadn't been any at Father's galas, aside from the staff, but then, there weren't that many rich Faunus—
Oh.
Of course there weren't.
Trying to keep her voice steady, Winter looked at Leif. "And that decision was made…"
"Twenty years ago," Leif said delicately. "By my father."
"I see."
Leif pulled up a chair—it seemed he barely needed to stretch to reach it—and sat down, even though it was pitifully small for his frame. "There were a few Faunus here, at first. For a while, even. There were problems. As far as I can tell, the same sorts of problems you see across this Kingdom.
"Well, when passions are running high and people are upset and it just never stops, you know what that brings. Dad kept having to call for more grimm culling missions, and more, and more. The town couldn't afford it. Eventually, he came to the only decision he felt he could. If he kicked the Faunus out, there wouldn't be any human-Faunus conflict, and that would stop calling in the grimm."
Leif looked up at the ceiling. Winter felt sick.
"It almost sounds reasonable when I say it like that," Leif said. "You can sort of see where his head was at. At least I can. The thing is… a person can think logically and be reasonable and take a problem seriously and think about it long and hard, and still get it wrong. Still leave things broken behind him.
"Of course," he added, looking at Winter as if for the first time, "I reckon you Schnees know a thing or two about the sins of the fathers."
"A thing or two," Winter said, mouth as dry as the Vacuan Abyss.
This, Winter realized, was part of what made Faunus so vulnerable to trafficking. When they were alienated or tossed from their host communities, they'd be willing to take a chance on any promise of employment... and evil people lived to take advantage of that desperation.
Evil people who Jacques Schnee, without any qualms at all, would dignify with the term "employment agents".
The edge of the world was the edge of a knife.
"I tried to invite some Faunus in, from time to time," said Leif, dragging Winter back to the present. "Offered them the same deal I offered you—a stipend if they came in and started a business. Even got a few to come check it out. Didn't take." He shrugged. "They noticed the lack of Faunus here faster than you did."
Of course. To Winter's eyes, a place that had no Faunus wasn't unusual. It was almost normal. It certainly wasn't an implicit warning.
"Without any newcomers, well, the only Faunus the people here saw were on the news. Crime reports, stories about the White Fang, that sort of thing." Leif half-smiled. "Bit of a shock when there are a few hundred of them on your doorstep instead, eh?"
"For some reason," Winter said, trying to tamp down her Schnee rage, "this town now seems to more closely resemble a Dust bomb."
"We'll see," Leif said affably. "We'll keep trying. It helps take the sting out when you're waving this much lien around. Speaking of…" Leif hauled himself forward. "I meant to thank you for the lease terms."
"Oh?" said Winter, thrown off-balance.
"You paying so much up-front, I mean," Leif specified. "We had a bunch of debts outstanding and the creditors were getting noisy. Well, we're back in the good books now, or we're at least getting there. It made a huge difference."
"We're trying our best to be good citizens," Winter said, and she was proud of herself that the lie wasn't audible.
"We appreciate it," Leif said as he moved for the door. "Just thought I'd let you know. Anyway, I'll try to keep Ms. Hemlock away, find something else for her to do. I bet she'd be great scouring the warehouse, seems like she loves to live in the scum, really relates to it…"
When he was gone, Winter closed her eyes. She'd gained experience in the military pretending that decisions from above were her decisions, and it'd paid off here. It had been Weiss' idea to frontload their payments to Skjulte Perle, over Winter's objections.
"Now is when our own cash is the most crunched," she'd said to Weiss. "Now, when we're having to pay out-of-pocket for everything and have no income stream."
"But that's true for the town, too," Weiss had replied. "We can buy a lot of good will this way."
"What's the going rate for good will?"
"If it's more than ten percent of our lease, we're coming out ahead."
That didn't even make sense, Winter thought bitterly. The real source of the bitterness, of course, was that she'd been wrong. She was self-aware and self-disciplined enough to realize that.
With enormous reluctance, she lifted her scroll and messaged Weiss.
You weren't wrong about paying Skjulte Perle up-front. It was the best she could manage.
Weiss' reply came almost instantly. Your grace is appreciated, Miss Schnee.
Go to hell, Miss Schnee.
By the third week, even Weiss was ready to admit defeat on the workload the two sisters were carrying. The two were spending nearly all their waking hours managing every task needed to renovate the town's infrastructure, the mining site, and everything in between, along with endless personnel and labor problems. The work began as soon as the morning's coffee hit their lips, and chased them into their dreams at night.
The two were desperately in need of assistants to help them keep up with their paperwork. That fact was emphasized whenever the sisters were called away to do things only they could do—manage security, ward off grimm, finely manipulate Dust, and the like. Half an hour laying down new Dust put them two hours behind schedule. Weiss protested that this shouldn't have been chronologically possible, but the fact remained.
The sisters had budgeted for several office worker types, but those were primarily to handle regulatory paperwork and legal filings and the behemoth that was Atlas' bureaucratic machinery. They hadn't planned for anyone to help them get through the day.
It soon became clear that no amount of coffee could let them power through the work they'd set themselves, especially not when Winter was diligently monitoring their personal health to ensure they could fight at full strength.
It became an interesting test case. Hiring assistants was, technically, enlarging the workforce, and so required the sisters to put it to a vote before all the stockholders. On the third week's regularly scheduled company meeting, the sisters put their proposal before the company, needing two-thirds of the other employees to agree.
Aster Cristata led the opposition. The Schnees never had a chance.
The counterproposal was to reallocate one already-hired employees to help the Schnees. That proposal needed a lower threshold, and passed handily.
It was the first proof-of-concept of their idea of corporate governance. It had mostly gone against the Schnees. And yet…
"We may not have gotten what we wanted," Weiss said across warmed-over soup that night. "But the system worked, and it got us what we needed. Is it strange that I consider that an overall success?"
Winter raised an eyebrow as she considered. "Yes," she finally decided. "But also no."
Weiss nodded. "I can live with that. You can have the personal assistant, by the way."
"Oh, can I?" said Winter, voice dry as sandpaper.
"I'm deferring to you," Weiss said.
Winter hummed thoughtfully. "You mean you're teasing me by implying I need the help. Well," she said, as Weiss' face split in surprise and regret, "I accept your offer. It will be good having an assistant all to myself."
Weiss fumed.
There was a smaller ceremony when it came time to break ground on the mine.
Weiss felt ambiguously about that. On the one hand, just getting all the infrastructure in place to the point where they could start digging felt like a heroic achievement. On the other hand, Schnee Dust Reborn was burning through its startup loan at a breathtaking pace and still had a grand total of zero revenue. There wasn't much time for dilly-dallying.
So she consented to a small groundbreaking celebration (which Winter did not attend) and shared a piece of cake with her sister that evening. It was all they had the appetite for.
It was as they were finishing the cake—Weiss scraping her fork against the plate so as not to waste any—that something occurred to her. "I thought I was prepared to run a business," she said.
Winter waited for her.
"I was groomed for it, and I sought out as much instruction as possible when I saw that mother… well."
Even so many months later, both sisters avoided the subject of their mother. Even now Winter could see Weiss swerving hard to avoid it. It was too tender.
Winter wondered if it always would be.
"The point is, I had all sorts of schooling and training on how to run a business, even a massive business like the SDC." She gestured all around her. "It didn't even come close to prepping me for this. This is more and harder than I've ever worked, including during the bankruptcy."
"You were so frantic then I thought your hair would catch fire."
Weiss gave a hmph and tossed her off-center ponytail over her shoulder indignantly. "The thing is, that felt much harder. This feels easier. Or at least better."
Winter nodded slowly. "There is a certain satisfaction to seeing work pay off. Even if we're not making money yet, every day we get closer to that point."
"That's part of it, I'm sure. But I think there's a bigger difference."
"Do tell," said Winter in a voice devoid of curiosity.
"People want us to succeed here," Weiss said as if divulging a secret.
Winter blinked.
"Everyone who was involved in the bankruptcy—except for me—wanted the SDC to fail," Weiss said, scraping against the plate one more time. "The banks, the other companies, the regent… sometimes I think the Council itself wanted us broken up. That made everything hard."
"You get energy from defying people, though," Winter pointed out.
"Yes, but not infinite energy. It's still exhausting. It's still hard, being the only one trying to find solutions, and being the only one trying to implement those solutions. Here? It's the opposite. Whether I'm working with the villagers or the miners, everyone wants us to succeed.
"I wasn't prepared for everything we've done here. Maybe no one was. But everyone's trying. People are trying to cover for our mistakes."
"'Our' mistakes?" Winter said dubiously.
Weiss glared. "Just because I can't name your mistakes right this instant doesn't mean you haven't made any."
Winter set her eyebrow to 'stun'.
"It helps," Weiss said lamely, licking her fork one final time and taking their plates. "It helps when people want us to succeed. It makes me think… we might actually make it."
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment," Winter said.
"That sounds like a recitation. Is that Atlas Academy training?"
"I don't remember. It might have been Father."
"Hm. Well, I think I'll dare to hope." She smiled, and Winter almost felt her own hope rising in sympathy. "Other people want us to succeed, and that makes me think we just might."
It was time to put the other Dust companies in the ground.
Cinder confirmed it for herself as she read the latest reports. All the SDC assets she'd scooped up were restored to working order and ready to run at full capacity. There'd been a temporary worker shortage—apparently, some of the ex-SDC's Mantle workforce had exited the job market—but that was nothing the so-called "recruitment agents" couldn't fix. Now, Fall Dust was ready.
"All facilities are to go to maximum production," Cinder ordered.
The executive before her quailed for a moment. "Maximum production?" she repeated.
"Did I stutter?" Cinder said, voice sharp as obsidian.
"No, ma'am!" the executive said, showing a keen instinct for self-preservation. "It's just… that'll flood the market and drive Dust prices through the floor."
Cinder smiled.
"I know."
Next time: Arriving
