Update time!
Winter Schnee found herself feeling a lot of conflicting emotions, lately.
There were some parts of her that really wanted to feel happy and content, while at the same time she was being eaten away by her worries. Both of those emotions were so prevalent that she was starting to think they were one and the same.
It was quite a conundrum.
A conundrum that was magnified by the fact that all of those emotions originated from the same place, her younger sister.
Deep in her heart, she knew she should have been happy about Weiss finally finding herself a hobby and starting to genuinely smile during the day. However, the reason behind her sister's happiness, made it quite difficult for her to do so.
It wasn't like she disapproved of her sister's hobby, though.
Sure, it might have been a bit jarring how suddenly, and out of nowhere, her sister had found a new hobby, and how quickly she changed her attitude towards the life as a whole as a result of that, but that wasn't the problem.
The fact that Weiss's hobby, as she had secretly found out, was playing video games, wasn't a problem either.
Things like video games were made to be enjoyed by the people in the first place, and she wasn't going to stop her little sister from doing just that.
She might have been a disciplined young woman, with great dreams for the future, but she wasn't going to instil the same high standards on her siblings, as well. It would have been just cruel.
The real problem came from the dedication her younger sister put into that hobby, instead.
Ever since her little sister found out about gaming, she dedicated basically every single one of her free moments to it.
It was so bad, Winter hadn't had a chance to properly talk to Weiss, even once, since her sister's obsession for gaming had begun. Every single time she tried, she found her younger sister busy on the computer.
A small sigh escaped her as she entered the corridor her sister's room was located in.
Concepts like childhood obsessions, and fascination over a newfound hobby, weren't foreign to her, but the sheer fixation her younger sibling had for playing video games seemed to go far beyond the most common depiction of those.
From her discrete observation, it looked less like her sister was simply playing those games out of boredom, and more like she was desperate for any form of relief, from her ordinary life.
In short, it looked like an addiction to her.
Was the everyday life in the mansion so unbearable for her sister, she needed to escape to cheep entertainment?
If she were to be perfectly honest, it wouldn't have surprised if it was the case. Jacques, and Willow, Schnee could be called many things, but loving, or even just decent, parents was not among them.
She bit her lip.
It didn't mean her sister should suffer isolation because of that, however.
Approaching Weiss's room, she slowed down her steps a little, and began to walk a little bit more quietly. She only wanted to check on her sister, and see just how she looked while playing, there was no reason to startle her.
Her arm slowly reached for the door's handle, but when a quiet humming of her happy sister entered her ears, she had to stop herself from going any further.
It wasn't the first time she heard her sister hum, as there were multiple times she had heard Weiss sing entire songs, let alone hum quietly to herself. She always heard them during her sister's music lessons, or family gatherings, though.
She closed her eyes as she listened to her sister's humming, before moving her hand away from the handle.
It was the first time, she heard Weiss hum something to herself, unprompted.
The melody was unfamiliar to her, most likely because it wasn't anything taught to them by the music teachers, but it was as catchy, and beautiful, as any of the songs they were forced to learned by their teachers.
There was no doubt in her mind, that it came from some game Weiss had played, but, when it was hummed so passionately, it didn't matter.
When compared to all the soulless performances, she had heard her sister do for their parents and teachers, it was probably the most wonderful melody she had ever heard. There were no doubts about it.
"This new hobby of yours doesn't seem so bad for you, Weiss." She whispered to herself, trapped in her thoughts.
A subtle smile appeared on her face, as she turned away from the doors, and started going back to her own activities.
Personally, she still wasn't entirely sure whether escaping into all those video games was truly healthy for her little sister, but if it allowed Weiss to actually feel happiness, then she wasn't going to forbid her from doing that anytime soon.
"Uhm, M-Miss Winter, are you returning from a meeting with Miss Weiss?" One of the servants asked her as she passed them by, the nervousness clear in their posture. "T-There's a plan of recommended activities, I was ordered to deliver to her."
She raised one of her eyebrows as she looked at the sleeved sheet of paper in their hands.
"Give me that plan." She extended her arm.
"H-Here it is." The servant shakily handed her the plan.
With disinterest clear on her face, she quickly scanned through her sister's plan, before folding it in half, and putting it in one of her pockets. She was going to throw this away later, the very moment she would get the chance to do that.
Her little sister didn't need to bother herself with such things.
Nearly all the activities on it were practices or reading some boring poetry, no child actively enjoyed, anyway.
"Before you go, please spread the info to other family servants that my sister will be busy for the entire day, today." She said just as the servant was about to go back to their duty. "If anyone truly requires her for anything, they are to enter only after knocking on the door, and getting her permission to enter."
The servant gulped.
"M-May I ask what is Young Miss doing?" The servant asked with some hesitance in their voice.
"She's doing important studying." She said shortly. "Now, go back to your work."
"Y-Yes, ma'am!" The servant clumsily saluted before scurrying away.
She sighed.
Moments like these really made her impatient to join the Atlas academy. A military career might have been a dangerous and cold path, but she very much doubted it was going to be nearly half as bad as being the heiress of the Schnee family.
There was only so much hate and fear one could endure being directed at them before breaking.
At the very least, she could comfort herself with the fact that her little sister found a way to deal with all the pressure on her own.
It had to count for something, right?
(...)
Browsing through random forums and video game review sites, was a surprisingly informative experience.
Never before had Weiss learned of so many, so different, video games, and heard the rough descriptions of them at the same time. Before visiting those websites she probably wouldn't have even believed there were so many so diverse video games for her to experience.
It was almost overwhelming!
There were so many different genres, and titles inside those genres, that she wanted to try out.
Before her were so many RPGs, Platformers, Action games, and other interesting positions, she couldn't even think on where to begin. It felt as if no matter what she chose to play, she would always feel a little bit bad about not trying everything else.
Although, with all those titles and recommendations before her, she knew she wouldn't be able to experience even half of them, any time soon.
Not only would that take an absurd amount of time, but her father might also become a bit suspicious of her passion if she spent too much money on the video games with no restrains.
Jacques Schnee might not check her expenses, or anything about her really, too often, but the moment he did, it was usually rather thorough.
Weiss hummed in thought, as she looked at her computer screen.
Maybe finding a cheaper game to play would be for the best, for now. She was pretty sure her father wouldn't care too much about her free time activities if all her expenses were small enough to be unnoticeable.
A cheep enough purchase could be literally anything, without full context, right?
She proudly nodded to herself in affirmation of her thoughts.
If her spend money was ever going to be questioned, she could simply claim she had used it to buy some candies or optional materials for her lessons.
It was foolproof!
Now, she only needed to find an interesting game that would be cheep enough for that tactic to work.
The review website smoothly but quickly moved down, as she quickly scanned through all the video games recommended by the critics. However, even after she scrolled past easily a couple pages, and a few dozens of games, she still didn't find a game that would be cheep enough for it to go unnoticed by her father.
It was almost as if every critically acclaimed game was at least mid-budget and recent enough to not have its price decreased.
Her eyes slowly narrowed at the list of titles before her.
If none of the so-called quality games listed on this site were cheap, then she would simply move directly to the game store website and filter by popularity, instead.
There had to be at least one popular game which she could quickly and easily buy for cheep.
It was impossible for there to not be any!
She clicked on the search bar at the top of the internet browser, before writing the name of the same store she had gotten the Sci-War from. She had already bought one game from it, she should be able to find a second game there as well.
After she wrote the store's name and hit enter, a small loading icon appeared over her mouse cursor, before the store site took over her web browser.
It was the standard Atlas entertainment web store with its games menu opened.
The store might not have been the most artistically designed website in the world, but it worked perfectly well and was based in Atlas, so it was perfect for her current situation.
She didn't want her father to notice those increased prices on files downloaded from outside the kingdom, after all.
Things like these could easily expose her passion in a single moment.
"It doesn't matter, right now." She said as she quickly shook her head from side to side.
It wasn't the time to be afraid of getting caught, yet. The only thing she should be focusing on doing, right now, was searching for a game to play. Everything else could wait until the next couple of days.
There wasn't a moment to waste!
Sorting the games in the store by their popularity, and setting up an upper price limit that wouldn't seem too suspicious to her father, revealed a short but somewhat expansive list of different games before her.
While it was obvious that most of these games were either among the old or low-budget ones, it didn't bother her too much.
The only game she had played, the Sci-War, was neither technologically impressive, nor really new to begin with. She could handle playing a couple more dated, yet interesting, games just fine.
It was just like her history teacher always said, the old age of things was just their proof of surviving the trials of time.
Her teachers were people chosen by her father for being the most experienced in their fields, so they had to know what they were talking about. There wasn't a single reason why this proverb couldn't work for video games, as well.
With clear excitement on her face, she promptly scanned through all the games shown on the store before her.
All types of games, from RTS to Action games, were being offered before her. Every single one of them was more intriguing than the previous ones, and only the fear of her father finding out about her hobby was stopping her from buying all of them.
A silent sigh escaped her.
She could have experienced so many wondrous stories and adventures through them, if not fer her strict family.
It took her a couple good minutes to finally decide on a single title, but she settled on an older-looking first person multiplayer action game, called GrimmBattle. Supposedly, its gameplay was inspired by real anti-Grimm expeditions from around the times of the Great War, but she wasn't really able to verify it.
Apparently, she would just have to trust the game developers on their word for this one.
Besides, the historical accuracy, or its lack, wasn't the reason why this game looked interesting enough for her to try it, anyway.
The main reason for choosing this game, above all the other, was its multiplayer mode, which, if believing the game's store page, was still kept alive and thriving by its community.
In other words, there were still people in the community for her to interact with!
If she was lucky, she might find another friend like Knight in that game, doubling her amount of friends, and finding yet another person to share her passion with.
It would only happen in the most optimistic situation, of course, but the amount of money she needed to spend on it was insignificant at worst and the game still looked fun regardless of her quiet hopes for friendship.
She bought the game with a wide smile on her face, before immediately starting to instal it, right after.
As the installation of her game proceeded without any issues, and she stared at it in impatience, her mind preoccupied with a singe thought, and it was that the game she wanted to play couldn't install itself soon enough.
In the end, it took a little bit over half an hour for the game to be downloaded and installed completely.
Surprisingly, the majority of those thirty minutes, were spent on installing the game rather than downloading it, completely different to how she remembered the Sci-War being installed.
Apparently, it was because the game had quite a few fan-patches, necessary for the game to work perfectly on modern computers, included in the store file.
She didn't know what exactly those patches did, but if they were going to allow her to play the game on multiplayer without any issues, then she wasn't going to start complaining about them.
After the game had been installed fully, she didn't wait a single second before booting it up.
"Alright, it's time to play." She said with a wide smile on her face, as logos of all the companies responsible for the GrimmBattle presented themselves one after another on her screen.
Unlike the Sci-War, however, the moment all these logos disappeared, she wasn't immediately put into the main menu.
Instead, a small window asking for her username appeared in the middle of the screen.
It looked like this game was far more focused on the online side of things, if it was demanding she created her username for multiplayer modes before even allowing her to enter the game.
She stretched her fingers a little.
Unlike the last time she was asked to think of a name, she already knew what her username was going to be now.
Her hands quickly entered all the correct buttons as if they were on autopilot, before she hit the confirmation button, right after. There was only a single name, she could call her own in the online world, and she was going to use it.
{Welcome to the GrimmBattle, Soldier SnowReh01!}
There was a strength in recognisable brand name, after all.
Despite being advertised as a multiplayer game, and having a community focused around it, there was still an option on the main menu which looked to be a single player game mode. Although, with it being called Missions instead of things like campaign or single player, she wasn't quite sure about that.
She closed her eyes for a moment in contemplation.
The story in Sci-War was probably the most entertaining story she had experienced, yet, and it was told completely through the perspective of someone way above the action. Who knew how immersive a story seen from a first-person perspective was going to be?
In case she was incorrect, and the Missions game mode turned out to be some other form of multiplayer, she would simply have to enjoy an entirely new form of gameplay, instead.
It was a win-win situation!
"Video games are the best." A genuine smile appeared on her face.
Well, it wasn't like she was going to find out by pointlessly staring at it anyway, so she might as well get into the Missions game mode.
With no hesitation, she clicked on the top option of the menu, taking her directly to another window.
There she saw a long list of different missions with a scroll bar right next to it, on the left side of the screen, and a small friends' menu that was completely empty of any entrees on it, on the right.
"Huh, so it really is a multiplayer only game." She murmured to herself.
It was a pity she didn't have any friends in this game, yet. Playing through a game mode focused on cooperation was always more fun when doing it with someone she had a good connection with.
Sadly, the only person she could say she had a good connection with, and who also was willing to play video games with her, was Knight, and she didn't have them listed as a friend here.
She paused for a second.
Wait, before she joined any mission, she should check whether Knight played this game as well.
If they did, then she would only need to send them a friend request to hopefully have a chance to play this game together, someday.
She quickly clicked on the add a friend option, before writing her friend's nickname in it.
They had this game!
Although, unsurprisingly, they weren't online, right now.
A small sigh of relief escaped her as she sent a friend invite to Arch06Knight1, once they accepted her invite, both of them were going to rock this game.
With a wide grin on her face, she looked back on the missions to the left.
Before any of that happened, however, she was going to try this game on her own.
She casually chose the first mission from the top to join. Its description talked about some well known scouting operation from the faunus rebellion, and how she was going to play as one of the revolutionaries, but she didn't really pay too much attention to it.
All that was on her mind, was her impatience to finally try a completely new game.
A small window popped up, as the game began searching through all the internet for three additional players to join her for the mission.
Less than a minute later, the screen turned dark in a smooth transition, and the game moved her into a lobby. Just like the store advertised, it seemed the community of this old game was still very much active.
"It is going to be incredible." Weiss whispered to herself as the game loaded her onto a lobby with three different people on them.
(...)
"It is going to suck." Ilia Amitola, the youngest kid currently present in Mantle's largest internet café, murmured to herself as the stupid game, she and her two human friends were about to play, finally loaded in.
Why did she allow herself to be talked into attending this stupid internet video game party?
It wasn't like she was really that into video games, in the first place!
The only reason she accepted the invitation, at all, was because everyone else she knew was attending. The kids organising this stupid party also told her that playing some multiplayer matches together was going to be the best way for them to integrate with each other, despite their difference in age.
Great, it was something she could agree with.
It was something she agreed with.
However, the moment they entered the café, and all the older kids began separating themselves into teams for their multiplayer matches, she, together with two other young human kids, went completely ignored by them!
She wanted to scream in rage!
What was the point of inviting her to a party if all the older kids were going to ignore her, anyway!?
Where was the integration!?
To top it all off, she couldn't even call it quits, right now, and go back home, as she was far too young to safely travel through the city of Mantle, and both her parents were still busy working in the mines.
Whether she liked it or not, she was practically forced to endure until the end of this stupid party.
She sighed as she looked at the lobby she was currently in.
As if to laugh at her misery even further, and make her want to rage more loudly, she and the two human kids with her here were forced to play together with some random they couldn't even talk to, properly.
It was as if the world itself had something against her, today.
Whoever this SnowReh01, she was about to play with, was, by the end of this session, she was probably going to end up hating them, as well.
Hopefully, they would be able to at least play the game pretty well, because none of them three certainly had any experience in it.
"It's about to start!" One of her human friends called out as a short countdown appeared under their lobby screen.
"Yeah, I know." She rolled her eyes.
Well, she supposed she could, at least, get it over with as quickly as possible.
SnowReh01: Let's win this mission!
In any case, it looked like someone was excited.
The countdown soon hit zero, and the screen turned black as the game loaded the mission.
Before they could go in and start killing the computer controlled enemies, a short cut-scene, explaining the details of their goals and the lore behind them, played as an introduction for all the players.
Apparently, they were going to play as an all bird faunus scout group who was ordered to find a safe, and hidden, path to the capital of Mistral.
A tiny smile appeared on her face, at the very least they were playing as the good guys of the revolution, and not the oppressors.
Who knew, maybe playing through it wasn't going to be as terrible as she thought?
After all, out of all the topics they had covered in their history lessons in her elementary school, she did find the topics about the Faunus Revolution the most entertaining. It was always fun to hear about the successes of her people.
"Ugh, can't we just skip this boring crap, already? Nobody likes the opening cut-scenes, anyway." One of her human friends groaned out loud at the cut-scene.
She did her best not to scoff at them.
Of course, her human friends didn't care about the important historical context of their entertainment. All they cared about was getting a chance to shoot some grimm without risking their own safety.
Was it how human kids usually acted when not overseen by a higher authority of the teachers?
She might have been currently posing as a human girl to fit in with all her friends from school, but she would rather have no friends, at all, than pretend to act as disrespectful as they were.
Thankfully, that SnowReh01 guy, they were currently playing with, didn't think the same way as her friends did and was willing to patiently watch the whole thing.
Unfortunately, since the game needed every single player in the lobby to accept skipping the cut-scene, and she wasn't about to make herself look bad to her friends by not skipping with them, it meant that her friends weren't looking at the SnowReh01 in the most favourable light.
She shrugged slightly.
If anything, she respected them all the more for it.
The mission briefing ended with a quick good luck wishes, and all four of them were dropped into the game.
Each of them were equipped with basic pistols and machetes as their starting weapons. They could pick up more weaponry from defeated enemies later, but considering that they were in a thick, grimm infested, forest, it might take some time before they find anything actually useful.
There wasn't any doubt in her mind, that they would get them this mission, though.
Based on real history or not, GrimmBattle was still a video game, and it existed primarily to be fun for them.
It wouldn't make any sense to lock all the weapons away from them.
SnowReh01: Alright, what's the plan, teammates?
A small smile appeared on her face as she read the message. It was rare to find someone actually caring about a proper grammar online, even she, despite often complaining about it, didn't usually care about it, either.
The fact they were asking for her, and her friends', opinions was also nice.
If the willingness to wait through the mission briefing made her think that SnowReh01 fellow was rather kind, this message made her respect them even more.
"That's actually a good question." She murmured, before turning to her two friends. "What's our plan for this mission, guys?!"
She saw her friends roll their eyes at her question.
"We follow the marker, and complete our objectives." One of them said a little impatiently. "It's as simple as that. GrimmBattle isn't some simulator shooter, and it's the very first mission. We don't need a plan for that."
A frown appeared on her face.
Okay, she could understand the reasoning behind it, but did they really have to answer in such a rude way.
"Quit stalling, and let's go!" The other friend shouted from their computer. "We've got grimm to kill."
She sighed, as she watched the standard player characters of her friends move forward into the mission.
They could have at least write their answers to Snow before going forward like that, the poor guy was probably super confused at the lack of any communication from their team, right now.
Oh well, if neither of her two friends wanted to communicate with their fourth teammate themselves, then she supposed she would have to do it on her own, instead.
MineChammy09: we just move forward apparntly
SnowReh01: Thank you, but I have already noticed that.
She winced a little.
Her human friends moved forward without waiting for anything, leaving her together with Snow at the spawn.
It might be a good idea to quickly find a way to write her messages a bit faster. GrimmBattle was an action game, so the moment they entered any combat scenario, there was going to be hardly any time to respond to any question.
If she didn't, there might not be any enemies left to defeat, by the time they stopped writing.
SnowReh01: What a bunch of impatient brats those two are.
She winced again.
MineChammy09: yeah sorry for them
MineChammy09: thos e guys are my friends and they are usualy quite fun to be around
MineChammy09: sadly it doesnt look like they are that much fun to play with
As she wrote to their fourth teammate, she quietly hoped that the two human kids were too busy playing through the level to read the chat. It sure would be awkward if they started to question her about it later.
SnowReh01: It's alright.
SnowReh01: At least, you are a good person to interact with.
"Oh, that's nice." She smiled a little.
It was probably the kindest thing she had ever seen anyone say on the internet. Most people start to act far more disrespectful than normal the moment they become protected by the anonymity of the internet.
Seeing someone be kind to her through the game chat was truly a rare and nice experience.
MineChammy09: those guys will probably finish the level wihtout us
MineChammy09: wanna join me for some two player mission later?
Part of her felt a little unsure about inviting some random person for a two player gaming session. However, the moment she remembered how she was treated by them when compared to the treatment she had received from her friends, she stopped feeling so conflicted about it.
She might need to watch herself to not accidentally reveal too much personal information, but it was something she could manage.
Doing that would certainly be a far more pleasant experience than whatever she was forced to do right now, anyway.
SnowReh01: There are two player missions in this game?
A quiet chuckle escaped her, it turned out that Snow was even less knowledgeable about this game than she was.
It was good to know.
MineChammy09: yeah you can check the people requiremnt by right clicking the mission name on the list
SnowReh01: I didn't know that.
SnowReh01: In that case, I'm more than willing to play some games with you as soon as this game is over, MineChammy09.
She smiled as the mission checklist they had in the top right corner quickly filled out.
With the efficiency her human friends were completing this mission, they weren't going to need to wait for long before they could play together some other mission.
Despite how terrible this party started for her, and her original uncertainty about it, she actually couldn't wait until she would be able to play with Snow properly. They might be strangers to each other, but she could already feel that they could become close friends.
Hopefully, Snow was able to feel it too.
MineChammy09: oh and before we do anything else
MineChammy09: feel free to call me Chammy
MineChammy09: its what all my internet friends call me
She nodded her head in satisfaction at the messages. It should be enough to show that she wanted to get to know Snow a bit better.
SnowReh01: You got it, friend.
Another friend got!
Damn, for some reason this chapter was a pain to write.
Maybe it was because of the longer break before it?
Ah, whatever, that's it for now, se ya!