Updateh timeh!


In the two years following Winter's decision to join the Atlas Academy, Weiss found her responsibilities and the expectations put on her increase highly in both number and intensity.

No longer was she allowed to simply attend the lessons and study all the materials given to her; now she had to exceed at them, too.

Apparently, having the position of heiress to her family meant that she was currently the face of the entire company. She had to represent it well, and she had to do it with the pride of a Schnee.

The entire world was observing her, after all.

A visible scoff appeared on her face as she moved towards her singing lessons.

Yeah, right.

Her father might have tried to instill the importance of her position in her, but she already knew just how hated she was going to be by the rest of the world because of it.

The very fact that she was Schnee meant that she was going to be hated by the majority of the Faunus population of the world on its own.

On top of that, when she became the face of her company, it wouldn't surprise her if she found herself the target of countless hatred-driven attacks and smear campaigns as a result.

She sighed.

The worst thing was that she wouldn't even get that many benefits in return for that reputation.

Sure, the money she was going to have access to would be quite substantial, but it wasn't like she would be able to do anything with it. All her finances, in the end, were always going to be controlled by her father and multiple accounting advisors, who would always have the final say on what she was allowed to spend her money on.

In reality, the only funds she would be able to spend in whatever way she wished were going to be as insignificant as they had been up until now.

Her shoulders slumped; buying new games certainly wasn't going to get any easier anytime soon.

With a dejected expression on her face, she looked up to look at the door before her. She still wasn't too pleased about having so many music lessons in her new timetable.

It had been two years since she started having them, damn it!

She knew how to sing already!

After containing all the displeasure she felt towards that lesson with a quiet grumble, she knocked on the door.

"Please come in, Miss Schnee!" The deep voice of her music teacher echoed from behind the door. The man clearly sounded excited about something. "I have fantastic news for you!"

A slight shiver went through her.

It wasn't often that her teachers said they had some 'fantastic news' for her, but almost every time they did, she tended to find herself being forced to do something far from enjoyable.

She still had nightmares about that one time her history teacher arranged for her to work as a guide for a couple of elite families from Mistral.

The place she had been supposed to guide them through was the Great War Museum of Atlas.

In all her life, she had never felt so bored again.

It had been torture.

"Hurry up and come in, Miss Schnee! We don't have the whole day!" Her music teacher shouted in impatience.

A sigh escaped her.

Well, whether she liked it or not, she couldn't put off her lesson any longer. Even if she were to run, there wasn't a place for her to escape to, and sooner or later, they would find her.

With a somewhat steady hand, she opened the door and entered the room.

Despite the supposedly exciting news that awaited her—she still felt wary of whatever it could have been—the classroom didn't look any different from how it usually appeared.

The single microphone and recorder still stood in the middle of the room, with a couple different instruments lying around them.

With a quick glance, which she made sure wouldn't be noticed by her music teacher, she quickly checked the sides of the room.

There didn't appear to be any unexpected people here, either.

She relaxed a little.

Whatever those fascinating news stories were, it appeared that she wasn't going to have to deal with them just yet.

"It's great to finally see you again, Miss Schnee." The music teacher said it with a shallow smile on his face. "I was slowly starting to worry that you weren't going to enter our classroom at all."

She turned towards the teacher.

"I would never do that, sir." She said, trying to sound sincere.

"Of course, you wouldn't." The teacher smirked.

There weren't any benefits to skipping that lesson, anyway.

The music teacher already knew she attended all the other lessons today, and he would undoubtedly become angry at her if the only lesson she missed was his. The only thing skipping this lesson would accomplish was getting the teacher to report her absence to her father.

It wasn't something she wanted to happen.

"Alright, let's get down to business, shall we?" The teacher grunted.

Weiss prepared herself to move towards the microphone and start singing all the songs that she was about to be asked to do, only to stop as the teacher raised one of his hands to stop her.

"Don't worry, you won't have to sing today." The teacher said. "There are more important things to do."

She looked towards the man with a questioning expression on her face.

"Today, we will be selecting the songs for your first public performance, my dear!" The music teacher said, with a wide grin. "It's the fantastic news, I mentioned to you earlier! You will have your first true concert next month!"

"What?!" She asked angrily.

That was going to take so much of her free time away!

It was going to be so soon, as well! There was no way she was going to find time to make sure everything was up to her father's standards without sacrificing all her free time!

She could already picture all the gaming sessions with her friends she would have to sacrifice in order to prepare for that.

"Are you excited?" The teacher asked, not noticing her angered expression. "I made sure to keep it quiet from you for the last couple of weeks. I wanted it to be a surprise."

It took all of her power to not scream at the man.

Why would she be excited about any of that!?

All the boons a public concert like that could grant, such as more publicity for her name or improving her image, would only benefit her father and maybe the Schnee family as a whole.

The only thing it meant for her was less free time for her to use on spending it with her friends!

She would have to do most of the work herself as well!

"I-" She started, seething in anger.

"Now, before you explode in enthusiasm, we have some work to do." The teacher clasped his hands, before pointing towards a small table in the corner of the room with his head. "There's the catalogue of all the songs you've created in the last two years. I want you to pick ten of them."

With gritted teeth, she turned towards the catalogue on the table.

"Keep in mind that you don't want too many of your songs to have the same tone." The teacher reminded. "Having a theme is nice, but performing too many sad songs is only going to bore your audience."

Ignoring all the words that her teacher was saying, she stomped towards the table.

Whatever, she should just get this over with already.

Not wasting any time, she swiftly picked a couple of songs she was rather confident in playing from memory alone before putting the catalogue back. If she was forced to give a concert anyway, she might as well make it easy for herself.

"Decided already?" The teacher asked.

"Yeah, I did." She answered, giving the catalogue to the man. "I hope you won't mind if I choose those few songs to play. There isn't quite enough time for me to be fully confident in playing other ones."

The teacher waved his hand dismissively.

"Don't worry about it." The teacher said. "It's your concert. You can play any song you want—as long as they are the ones you created, that is. In the worst-case scenario, it will only affect you anyway."

A small smile appeared on her face.

"Thank you." She said.

It wasn't often that one of her teachers was willing to help her like that. Usually, they wouldn't even bother to check whether the things they were asking her to do were feasibly possible.

In their minds, a Schnee heiress was apparently supposed to be able to accomplish anything they asked her to do.

There were scarcely few people, outside her two friends, who were able to recognise that she was a simple human like any other.

"You're welcome, Miss Schnee." The teacher said, without looking away from the catalogue in his hand. "I will look over it, prepare all the props and instruments you might need, and make sure the guests will know what to expect."

She nodded her head.

"You can leave now, Miss." The teacher shushed her out. "There isn't much we can do right now, so you can go back to your room to relax. Please keep in mind to prepare for the concert as much as you can."

"Of course, sir." She said, before leaving the room.

As she was leaving the room, she couldn't stop a smile from forming on her face.

In spite of the fact that she had just received frankly terrible news, the lesson itself wasn't actually all that bad. The fact that it ended so quickly certainly did help to brighten her mood quite a bit.

Her smile became wider.

After all, it meant she would have more time to play with her friends today!

(...)

The computer in her room whirred to life with the calming noise of its fans as she sat down at her desk and watched it turn on all the necessary programmes to function.

It had been a couple years since she sneaked it into her room already, and although it could never be counted amongst the most powerful gaming computers out there, it still worked like a dream.

A quiet chuckle escaped her as she saw all the icons on her computer's screen.

Well, as long as it could run all the games she and her friends were playing—which weren't really that demanding on the system—without any issues, then its power didn't really matter to her all that much.

The few single-player games she played whenever she had the chance weren't that difficult to run, either.

She looked at all the game icons before her, and before deciding which one to play, she instead clicked on one of the very few icons on the screen that wasn't actually connected to any game.

No, the programme she was booting up wasn't a game.

It was voice-call software.

In the last two years, her friends and she had come to the realisation that relying solely on the couple of games all three of them were playing for communicating with each other wasn't the best idea.

It might have worked back when they were playing mostly just two different games together and could always reliably plan their gaming sessions ahead of time. However, the moment the heiress position of her family was given to her—and the responsibilities placed on her began to multiply as a result—it no longer was a viable solution for communicating with each other.

There were only so many missed opportunities for playing with one another they could endure before they were forced to use something specifically designed to deal with their issues.

It really was lucky for them that the most popular voice chat programme was completely free to use, and none of them had to struggle much with setting it up.

The programme opened, and she immediately went to check whether her friends were online.

They were.

She instantly started a voice chat and invited both of them.

"Hey, Snow!" Chammy's voice came from her headphones. "You're early today!"

"My final lesson was way shorter than usual." She explained. "The teacher simply delivered some news to me and let me go afterwards. Although those news stories were quite annoying, they ended up quite good for me."

"Annoying?" Knight asked.

Weiss winced a little.

"I'm going to have an exam from it soon." A lie left her mouth.

She couldn't exactly tell her friends that she was giving a concert in a month. If she did say that, it wouldn't take them long to figure out that she was Weiss Schnee, and the moment they did, they were going to hate her.

It was something she was certain of.

There was no possible way they wouldn't; it was her family that caused the deaths of Chammy's parents, after all.

"I pity you, Snow." Chammy remarked, unaware of the real situation. "Tests and exams are never enjoyable. I don't know about you two, but I can never relax if I know one's ahead of me."

She winced once more.

"Y-Yeah, they are terrible."

Chammy hummed in a way that made her think it was an agreement.

"How about we take your mind away from that with some good old games, then, Snow?" Knight asked, his tone peppy. "Surely, you will be able to relax a bit when you're playing the final update of the 'Arena of the Great', before the full release."

Weiss raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Your sisters have finished it already?" She asked.

While the custom game mode had been originally created as nothing more than a school project by Knight's sisters, after they had passed their class thanks to it, they decided to continue working on it.

Now, it had been a bit over two years of improvements and ideas being implemented into it, and it was almost good enough to be considered a completely new game on its own.

It was also something of a passion project for the three of them as well.

In the end, they were the ones responsible for countless ideas and minor improvements that were implemented into the game mode across the years. She would go as far as to say that without them, Knight's sisters wouldn't have considered trying to finish it.

To hear it was so close to being finished was a wonderful thing!

"Yup, the final update's practically done." Knight said. "The only thing we need to test is networking. After we are done with it, Arena of the Great will be ready to be released to the rest of the Sci-War player base."

Weiss opened her eyes wide in excitement.

A loud groan echoed through her headphones.

"I still can't stand this name." Chammy complained. "How come we went with something like that?! This game mode would have been so much cooler if we called it something like The Battle of the Chosen Warriors instead."

Knight and her chuckled.

"Do you want to propose yet another name change, Chammy?" Weiss asked. "The last three were put to vote, and they all lost. You can't complain about the results, especially when your name ideas are all so unimaginative."

"Our voting system is unfair." Chammy grumbled quietly.

"It's not." Knight said. "You are just mad because you never managed to have an idea popular enough to be implemented."

Weiss snorted.

"You have no right to talk about it!" Chammy said with indignation. "Of course, all your ideas were going to be used; your sisters are the ones making this game mode! It is clear and obvious signs of nepotism!"

"I have told you before that it isn't like that. If anything, my sisters were far less likely to use my ideas than yours." Knight said in his defence. "Your ideas for this game mode are simply that bad."

Chammy huffed audibly.

"I still don't believe you, Knighty."

A quiet sigh escaped Weiss as she listened to her friends argue over their ideas.

It had already been a conversation they had a couple of times before. The crux of the issue was that no matter what sort of idea Chammy came up with, it always ended up being rejected.

More importantly, the ideas were always rejected by Knight's sisters first.

In all honesty, she didn't think that most of Chammy's ideas for the game mode were all that terrible. She could easily see how things like a fully working third-person camera or having the characters be custom-made units based on historical and legendary figures would make the game much more entertaining. None of them could be realistically implemented into the game, however.

In the end, it was the main issue most of her friend's ideas had.

They were too grand and difficult to do for a team of two student programmers making a custom game mode.

There were limits to the changes they could make to the original game, after all.

"Oh, come on!" Chammy whined. "You can't honestly tell me that Arena of the Great is a better name than The Battle of the Chosen Warriors! It wouldn't be difficult to change it. It's just a couple lines in the game mode's menu. You agree with me on this, right? Snow?"

Weiss chuckled again.

Of course, for every idea proposed by Chammy that couldn't be implemented solely because of technical reasons, their friend came up with another terrible idea that they simply couldn't vote for.

All the failed name changes were great examples of such terrible ideas.

If there was one thing she learned about her friend throughout the last couple of years, it was that Chammy was terrible at naming things. Her friend might have been worse at naming things than she was, and the nickname she was using for everything was still the same one she came up with when she was ten years old.

"I'm sorry, Chammy. I can't say the name you came up with is that good." She said, trying to sound kind.

"Y-you too, Snow?" Chammy asked, heartbroken.

She coughed as she turned her gaze away from the screen.

"How about we just get into the game now?"

The pressure from her friends, acting as if they were disappointed with her, was too much for her to handle.

"Aargh, alright!" Chammy growled. "I will show you that I can have some great ideas by carrying our team to victory again! I'm sure once you see how good I am, you two will realise that I know what I'm talking about."

"That might not actually be a good idea today, Chammy. We are going to be playing against real players this time, and not a single one of them is going to have any experience with this game mode." Knight said.

"We don't want to scare off any potential players." Weiss nodded her head.

Chammy sighed.

"You two can put a stop to the simplest and most foolproof of my plans, can't you?" Chammy asked.

"Yup!" Knight said. "That is why you love us so much, though, isn't it?"

"Shut up!" Chammy spluttered.

Weiss giggled as she started the game.

After three good years—which were already quickly turning into four years—of their friendship, the three of them were really in sync. There was no way some good-natured teasing was going to put a dent in that friendship of theirs.

Her fists tightened as she remembered all the horrible things her family had done.

She could never let them know her real identity.

It was something she had promised herself.

"Hey, the newbies have been found!" Chammy said in excitement.

A sigh escaped her as she saw the game starting to load.

There was no point in fearing the worst at the moment.

They had a game to play and new players to test themselves against. She almost pities all the five people who the game selected to play with them; they were going to get absolutely demolished.

A small smile appeared on her face.

Well, four of them, at least.

Their final teammate was going to have an easy first victory under their belt.

(...)

Neptune Vasilias had never really dabbled much in gaming.

Sure, he had played through a couple odd games when he was younger, and nowadays, he did turn up whenever his buddies needed someone to play with, but he never really delved into the media of video games further than that.

It simply didn't catch his attention.

Hell, he was pretty sure that he wouldn't manage to get that far into it if he tried. The only computer he had at home was an old machine that saw the glory days of his parents, and he didn't see himself spending money on upgrading it.

He would rather spend money on the girls he was seeing than that.

At least, they would reward him with their smiles and pretty looks if he did decide to spend money on them.

A dazed sigh escaped him as he thought of all the pretty girls he was lucky enough to go to school with.

It had been barely a couple of years since puberty hit him, and he started to care about all the beautiful girls around him. Yet, it didn't stop him from devoting all of his attention to making sure that those beauties would care about him as well.

He had his priorities straight.

Why would he bother to spend any effort on such childish and unattractive things as video games when he could make sure he looked attractive to any girl he wanted to flirt with?

The answer to that question was simple.

It was because the girl he wanted to flirt with was interested in such childish things!

Normally, the girl being interested in such things would have been enough for him to reconsider trying to flirt with her on its own—no beautiful girl would bother herself with things like gaming, after all—but Stephanie Grey, the girl he was interested in flirting with, despite being an obvious nerd, looked better than ninety percent of his whole school.

Seriously, if there was one person who was blessed by their puberty, then it must have been that girl.

That girl was also the sole reason why he was currently sitting before his computer screen, with some stupid old game playing on it.

Apparently, Stephanie had managed to get herself access to some unfinished part of the game or something. He didn't particularly care about that. The important thing was that she wanted a bigger group to play with her, and he was more than willing to come to her aid.

The fact that this group was mostly made of Stephanie's friends, who were almost all girls, also helped him settle on that decision.

A wide smile appeared on his face, as he already began imagining how thankful those few girls were going to be after he helped them win a couple of games with his superior skills.

Now, that was something he could spend his time on!

The game finally opened up, and the first thing that he noticed was a message saying that their party was too large.

There could only be four people on one team.

They were in a party of five.

One of them would need to play with the opposing team.

XXStephsStarsXX: could u pls join the othr team, neptne?

He groaned loudly.

XXStephsStarsXX: me and my frinds wnt to play togthr

Of course, he would need to be the one to change the teams.

In the end, he was the one who joined the group last, and he wasn't even a close friend of Stephanie yet. It would have been naive of him to think that the girls would want to be on the same team as him.

XXStephsStarsXX: i didnt knw it was 4 plyer gamemode

It didn't change the fact that he felt cheated, though.

XXStephsStarsXX: im sorry :(

He couldn't help but groan once again.

Damn it, she had to use a sad emoji at the end of her message, didn't she?

There was no way he could stay mad at her if she wrote like this!

It was just too cute!

1H8DEWATR: It's alright.

There had to be some ways to impress the girls while playing against them.

Maybe he could simply throw the game in their favour. Nobody liked to lose, and he was certain that the girls were going to feel so much better about themselves if they won their very first match.

His mood started to improve slightly.

Yeah, his evening wasn't lost yet!

It wouldn't be difficult to do that, either. As far as he was aware, the game they were playing was still completely new, so his teammates wouldn't know how to play it properly anyway.

The only thing he would need to do was make sure he wasn't doing his best, and the girls were sure to win.

With that strategy, if the girls got mad at him for losing the game on purpose later, for some reason, he could always explain himself by saying that he was new to this game mode as well.

A chuckle escaped him.

It was a win-win situation for him.

He was a genius!

"It's only a pity that I have to play with some loser nerds for this whole game, however." He murmured with some dissatisfaction as he quickly looked at the names of his new teammates.

SnowReh01; Arch06Knight1; MineChammy09

The names of those guys sounded like they belonged to some sweaty nerds with no prospects for their futures. They were truly lucky; someone like him would end up playing with them on the same team.

Those nerds didn't deserve him.

It was fitting he would be losing them this game then, he supposed.

The game started.

His team spawned in the bottom left corner of the map.

MineChammy09: make suret o buy potions newbie

He rolled his eyes.

Great! Not only was he forced to play against the girls he wanted to be with, but his teammates also thought they knew better than him, despite being as new to the game as everyone else was.

It was looking like a terrible game already, and he hasn't even done anything yet.

SnowReh01: Please don't mind Chammy's behaviour too much.

SnowReh01: She's a bit prickly today.

As he read through the messages of his teammate, Neptune couldn't help but raise his eyebrows in response to the message. There was a single word at the beginning of the message that immediately managed to gather his attention.

1H8DEWATR: She?

The messages from his team turned quiet for a moment or two as the game proceeded forward.

After a couple seconds had passed in silence from his team, he began to think the mention of the first word from that last message was merely a typo on the part of that SnowReh01 guy.

There was still some hope inside his heart, however.

The chances to find a girl gamer weren't large, but they weren't non-existent, either.

SnowReh01: Yes, Chammy and I are girls.

SnowReh01: Do you have any problems with that?

A wide smile spread across his face.

Maybe this game wasn't going to be as terrible as he thought it would be.

With the smile on his face not leaving it for a single second, he hid his character in some bushes along the lane he was playing on and moved his fingers towards the rest of his keyboard to be able to write better.

It was time to sweet talk a couple of girls!

1H8DEWATR: Of course not pretty ladies.

1H8DEWATR: In fact I think it's even better to play with such beauties as yourselves.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a couple of the characters on the screen stopping in place, no doubt amazed at how suave he was.

Arch06Knight1: yuo dont even kno how they look like...

He ignored the message from his teammate.

The man was probably jealous of his smooth words anyway.

Sure, he might not know what the beauties of his team looked like, but that didn't mean he couldn't praise them. It wasn't like he expected much from their single game together, and making the girls feel better about themselves would certainly make them remember him for longer.

Besides, there was absolutely no harm in some light flirting with strangers on the internet.

XXStephsStarsXX: NEPTUNE U DAMND WOMANIZER STOP FLIRTING WRITH UR TEAMMEATES ON A PUBCI CHAT!1!1

He winced.

Okay, there might have been some negatives to what he had just done.

In his defence, he didn't quite remember the difference between the chat, which could be seen only by his team, and the one that could see the entire lobby. It wasn't like he needed to know those types of things beforehand.

XXStephsStarsXX: U CAN FORGET ABOUT PLAYING WITH US EVER AGAIN!1

Well, at least he hasn't lost his chances with the girls on his team yet.

MineChammy09: your an idiot.

Yeah, this genius plan of his failed before he could even implement it, didn't it?


And Cut!

The puberty hit neptune hard, huh? At first I wanted him to become part of the main crew, but at some point decided against it, so I used him here instead. He will have a couple appeareances later down the line, but don't expect him to become part of the main cast here.

Anyway, that's it for now.

See ya!