RWBY: Fuchsia Petals of Phantom Wings
Introduction:
I want to thank everybody who chooses to read this story. This is a story I have wanted to write for over a year and am only now putting the words down.
This is the story of a girl named Touko Fuchsia, a girl who only exists in the Remnant in my mind. In one sense, her story is still being written, but in another its all been laid out like fate. I would like to warn that, much like Touko herself, this story is somewhat gloomy, and has moments that would be considered more descriptively violent or depressing than the events of the actual RWBY series.
Thank you again, please enjoy Touko's story.
Chapter 1 - Planted Seeds:
It was the first moment in her life she actually had a memory of. A young brunette girl, at most 7 years old, watching as her parents had movers clearing out their house. She had been pretty confused as to why, not really comprehending the program on the TV that was still hooked to the walls. The news reporter, a boring individual who always seemed to be on TV, was discussing a bit of a corporate struggle, showcasing pictures, one of those the girl recognized. "Hey dad, you're on TV." The girl spoke up, trying to get her father's attention. The man, a slightly tanned Mistrali individual with somewhat stern features but an otherwise slender build, looked over in frustration before shutting the TV off.
"Don't listen to anything that channel says, don't you know that his connections are everywhere? Why, that's the same channel that gave that awful canned response about the mine explosions that have been happening all across the country, jacking up the dust prices, either he's doing it on purpose or he can't contribute even a slight amount of safety just because the workers aren't there of their own free will." The man scoffed, causing his wife, a soft spoken looking pale woman who the girl resembled quite closely if it weren't for the woman's jet black hair and blue eyes, to rush over.
"Now Claude, don't fill Touko's head with that nonsense. You're already forcing us to move out of Atlas, despite the General's desire to keep us here, he knows how to keep that man in line-"
"I won't have it, Shirley. Jacques Schnee has been a thorn in my side for far too long, stifling MY company by refusing to sell bulk dust in a reduced price unless he acquired the Fuchsia Foundation, which if its anything like how he became the head of the SDC, he only wants it for the technology and the name, not the people, its all about Lien with him. No more, I'm getting far away from the Schnees, Anima is too lawless, and Mistral is stuck in the past. Vacuo is way too risky of a place, they won't want any big companies coming there after Jacques mined the place dry, so Vale is the best home for us and the company, temperate climate, safe from Grimm, we can live near the coast, and it'll be like we never even left Atlas to begin with!" The man boasted, feeling somewhat confident that his plan would work. His wife did not seem so convinced, looking over at her young daughter, who had turned the TV back on and had tuned out of her parent's conversation.
It was no secret that the Fuchsia household was, for lack of a better term, strained. Claude had met Shirley on a business trip, working as a scientist for the Atlas Military brought him to the city in the sky quite often, a place he had loved so much that he cut himself off from the greater Fuchsia family in Mistral and took to living in Argus. Almost as if to spite his family further the two had a breakneck romance and wedding, and topped it off with bringing a child into the world, the half-Mistrali half-Atlesian girl was named Touko, and while her mother loved her dearly, her father seemed more interested in his career, having left the Atlesian science core on good terms he used his connections and Shirley's modest fortune to make the Fuchsia Foundation, responsible for great leaps in the burgeoning field of robotics and dust application, they'd made a name for themselves in Atlas with their eye for quality being noticed by General Ironwood, who would authorize grants for the advancement of military technology, in the event of a major Grimm attack that the General seemed oddly convinced was going to happen at some point, he wanted ways to minimize casualties and get soldiers back on their feet whenever possible.
Claude was happy to take the contract, but found an icy thorne in his side with the Schnee Dust Company's lack of willingness to budge on dust prices, while in Jacques' eyes this was because he felt jilted not being put in on something that would provide his company with even more wealth than he had, in Claude's mind it went far more conspiratorial than that, blaming Jacques for intentionally causing accidents in his mines to raise prices, or saying he was directly responsible for the White Fang and was secretly controlling them in a form of controlled opposition, again as a way to keep prices high. He had become a bit of a paranoid man, and his best way of dealing with it, in his eyes, was to haul his company and his family over to Vale.
For what its worth, its not as if Touko had really any friends to lose, she was homeschooled, as Claude felt public schooling was a bit too lowbrow and private schooling was where the Schnees would be, and the most important thing to him was to keep the Schnees away from his family. At least in Vale he could rest assured no Schnees would be in his area, but still insisted that once they got there they would continue to homeschool their daughter. Shirley had objections, feeling that isolating her child from social interactions would lead her to become a social outcast, unable to form positive interactions with others. To which Claude responded by just buying Touko a very expensive computer for her last birthday, one that usually only scientists would have since Remnant was on the verge of moving towards more compact technology, in a sense it gave her a very easy access point to the world at her fingertips from the comfort of her room, but it wasn't a substitute to talking with flesh and blood people.
It had been a few weeks, but the last boxes were finally unpacked and Touko's new home in the hustle and bustle of Vale was finally feeling like home. She had been surfing through channels to find something interesting to watch, since everything was new she wasn't entirely used to the types of programs they had in Vale. There was the news, of course, though it was mostly told by a young woman rather than a stuffy old man. She was easier to watch but it was still the news, on the other channels she could maybe find some of the Mistrali programming she used to enjoy in Atlas. But her surfing was short lived as she heard the front door open and slam shut. She sighed, noting it was that time again as her dad came inside, grousing once again about work. Things hadn't been so good since he moved to Vale, chalking it up to a lack of communication between his primary client. The pay was still good, but he needed more of a personal interaction that he couldn't figure out.
"With the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if the newest prototypes get lost in transit, Grimm activity has been up in the skies and these latest Huntsmen couldn't care less about doing their job right!" Claude angrily grumbled. "How the hell am I supposed to show Polendina and the other eggheads the newest stuff i've been working on?" Shirley, almost on cue, came out to comfort her husband, while she wasn't a scientist like he was she was hard at work at home managing the accounts for the company, figuring out communications and solidifying business contracts. "Well, maybe we need to have some way to ensure everybody who needs to see your work can see it in real time? Not in the way we've been managing it currently, what with the sending multiple prototype units to multiple people and having them inspect it over a video call, we need some way to spend that money on just one prototype and still let everybody see it."
Touko had been hearing this, while not really in the conversation, she felt it best to interrupt as to focus on something considerably more important to her at the moment. "When's dinner? I'm really hungry." Shirley looked over at her young daughter with a disapproving look on her face, "Touko, we'll worry about food in a minute, your father is trying to-" as she said this, Claude jumped up, inspiration coming to mind.
"EUREKA! That's actually a really good plan, whenever we have something new to show off, say, once a month, we invite the eggheads and the general to show off our new tech in a way to get more funding. Its a long shot but it might work. We can hire a few people for events like this so we don't have to worry about the prep, just the tech." Claude beamed, he looked over at his daughter, and gave her a pat on the head. "Nice thinking kid. You're getting pretty smart, that homeschooling is paying off."
And thus, Touko's childhood had led to her unintentionally creating a Fuchsia family tradition, a monthly dinner where the top scientific minds in Atlas would make their way to the Fuchsia household to discuss business. This would have been fine, had Touko not been wary of people she didn't know Touko was always a quiet girl who hadn't made much of a fuss, and hadn't even been paying attention to the calendar since they got to Vale that she had completely forgotten her birthday was tomorrow. Maybe in response to her giving him the idea unintentionally, Claude pulled out a small box from the closet that was on the top shelf way in the back where she couldn't have possibly seen it, before handing it to the quiet girl. "Here, we were going to wait till tomorrow to give you this, but I think you've earned it, Happy Birthday."
Touko looked at the box with confusion, what could something so small be? As she unwrapped it she was greeted with a small white rectangle with a golden diamond shape on it, she'd seen these, it was a Scroll, a pretty new model too from the looks of it. "Now, I know you don't really have anybody to really talk to besides people online, but you're growing up and everybody needs to have a Scroll at some point in their life, it really can do everything, so why don't you go set it up? Sync up the data from that big computer of yours, though I imagine you'll still want to keep it." Touko smiled at her father, it was a rare sight to see him being so generous that she excitedly ran upstairs, eager to test out the device.
Touko was astounded, the world at her fingertips, she could reconnect with people from Atlas... if she had anybody over there she had known. Maybe she could make friends in Vale? Or anywhere in the world, really. Deep down, the girl was lonely with little in the way of knowing anything about the world, school taught her the basics, but she didn't interact with other kids, everything was about as anti-personal as you could get, there wasn't any sort of classroom setting, just a teacher on the other side of a computer giving assignments and written lectures. Touko was a smart girl and could read like a pro, but she was lonely. She didn't know anybody, and she sort of thought that was just how life was.