Chaptah time!
The room felt cold, almost like ice.
There wasn't actually any drop in the temperature, nor were there any physical reason for there to be one. Yet, as Winter was subjected to the cold glare father was directing at her, she couldn't help but shiver from the cold.
It appeared that her desire to join the Atlesian Military wasn't something her father expected of her.
"No, you will not." Jacques said.
The answer she received didn't surprise her a single bit.
If the choice she made was something her father had agreed with, completely, she wouldn't have bothered with informing the man about it in the first place, anyway. Although, if that was the case, her choice would have been just another thing that was expected of her as a Schnee.
It was fortunate for her, that Jacques had scarcely anything to do with matters relating to the military side of their kingdom.
"Why would I not, father?" She asked, keeping her voice even. "Joining Atlas Academy will finally grant me my desired autonomy, and guarantee a stable future for me, as well."
Jacques scoffed at her reasons.
"You won't do it, because I will not allow you." The words of her father were cold and full of contempt. "There's no way one of my children will be allowed to waste their prestige, by working in a profession as lowly as a military dog."
A frown appeared on her face.
She might have been perfectly fine with her father refusing to let her abandon her position as an heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, but she couldn't accept the CEO of said company insulting her desired career like that. It was simply impossible when the soldiers of Atlas were the ones responsible for protecting all the people living here, including them.
Was her father so detached from the rest of the world that he didn't comprehend the fact he would have died without the people protecting him from the grimm?
"Your permission has barely anything to do with me joining the military, father." She said in a cold tone.
Jacques narrowed his eyes at her, with suspicion.
"Why would that be, Winter?" Her father slowly stood up from his desk, his body scarily tense. "Have you already done something, our family will no doubt regret later down the line?"
Her fists tightened from anger.
"I assure you, father, nothing I've done is going to cause me any regrets in my future."
"I asked, what have you done, Winter!?" Jacques slammed his hand into his desk, making a loud bang, that echoed through the room. "I don't care about your opinions on the matter, in the slightest."
While keeping her forcefully still eyes on her father, she took a quick breath.
There was no way her father would be able to keep himself from doing anything drastic, after she revealed to him what exactly had she done already. The best she could do was prepare herself for it.
"I have already sent my papers, and contacted the school prematurely." Her words were cold and even. "With my exceptional results in education, combined with the prestige they would get if a Schnee were to study there, I'm practically guaranteed to join the school, next year."
A loud crash spread through the office as something fell from the table, her father was standing nearby.
Things were about to turn violent, she knew it.
Her father snorted, then chuckled, before finally exploding in an insane laughter that wouldn't look out of place on a madman who had lost the last shred of restrained they had, a moment ago.
She took a step back.
"Is there something funny?"
Her father's laughter ceased for a second.
"You think I find it funny?" Jacques asked, fury and rage clear in his voice. "No, I don't think it's funny. I think, it's hilarious! You can't believe how much of a failure you are, right now."
She couldn't help but shift in place a little.
It wasn't exactly the reaction she was expecting from her father. She had expected many things, shouting, scolding, objects being thrown around, and maybe a couple of physical attacks directed at her, as well.
The laughter of her father wasn't among the things she expected, at all.
"What are you talking about!?" She couldn't help but raise her voice.
Thankfully, it seemed that her visible anger had been enough to calm her father down, and now instead of laughing in her face, Jacques was merely looking at her with an amused expression while leaning on his desk.
Her father clearly didn't take her seriously.
"You claim that you wish to join the Atlesian Military to gain autonomy from me, right?" Her father asked, before stopping for a moment, and, upon receiving a subtle nod from her, continuing. "Yet in order to acquire that independence you so desire, you are using the very name that I've made worth so much, in the first place."
Jacques looked at her with a cold expression on his face.
"Do you not see how pathetic it is?"
An annoyed scoff escaped her in response.
"Shut up!" She said. "We both know the situation isn't as simple as you say it is!"
Of course, she was aware of the hypocrisy of her actions, however, there was nothing she could actually do about it. Everyone already knew her as Winter Schnee, and no matter how much she would try to keep her name hidden, people wouldn't forget who she was.
It wasn't like she could simply stop being a Schnee, after all.
The world didn't work like that.
Jacques chuckled again, this time in a less maddening, and instead more hollow, tone.
"Yes, we do." The words of her father lacked any strength behind them, making them sound almost pitiable. "That is why, I don't believe your silly attempts at separating yourself from your legacy are going to work."
She gritted her teeth.
On the inside, she was seething—there had never been any time in her life, that she felt so mocked by someone, before—yet, she kept herself from voicing her displeasure.
There was no way she wasn't going to attend the Atlas Academy, her father permission or not, but it didn't mean that she didn't want her only sober parent agreement, too.
It certainly would make her life easier.
With a stiff movement, she opened her mouth to try and convince her father of her choice, but before she could say anything, a loud sigh from her father cut her off.
"Fine, I will let you go." Jacques said. "Do what you want in that military career of yours, I'm not going to stop you. Don't expect to receive any help from this family, however. You will have to pay for all the mistakes you will make on your own."
She slowly closed her mouth, disbelief at her father's words clear on her face.
It wasn't really a support she received from her father, nor was it an agreement with her decision either, but it was far more than she had expected from the man.
"Are you serious?" She couldn't help but ask.
In her mind, she was searching for any catch her father had set up to that. That man would have never let go of her, or either of her siblings, that easily. There had to be something he was going to do to either punish her, or gain more money, as a result.
A raised eyebrow was the reaction of her father as he looked at her in amusement.
"Yes, it is." Jacques said, waving his hand in a dismissing manner. "Do what you want, as long as you keep in mind that you are a Schnee, and will be expected to act like one. Your position as an heiress to SDC will be given to Weiss, however."
Ah, there was the catch.
In all honesty, it was better than she was expecting.
"Thank you, father." She said, in a formal tone.
Jacques rolled his eyes.
"At the very least, you still know how to thank someone properly." The words of her father lacked any respect, but at least they weren't a direct insult. "Now, get lost. Unlike you, I have work to do here."
With a permission to leave, regardless of how rude it was, given to her, she didn't waste any time before exiting the room.
Her goal was accomplished, and she had even managed to get a free day for Weiss. Now, the only thing left for her to do was share the news with both of her siblings, later down the line.
She couldn't help but wonder how her younger sister was going to react to the knowledge that she was now the direct heiress to the SDC, though.
(...)
Weiss sat in her room looking at the screen before her.
She had been so excited at the prospect of playing with her friends for the entire day, that she had forgotten that both of her only two friends were probably busy in their respective schools right about now.
It wasn't like they could have known she was going to have a free day, to synchronise their own breaks with hers, beforehand.
Unfortunately, it left her with quite a problem to solve.
What was she supposed to play when both her friends weren't online yet?
For all the experience in playing video games she now had, there hadn't really been any occasion for her to build up a collection of things to play. At most, she had only around four games she could play, and half of them she had already beaten in their entirety.
A small frown appeared on her face.
There was no way, she could leave it like that!
Today she was going to play through a completely new game even if it meant sacrificing her entire free day on it! If she wasn't going to do it now, then she wouldn't get any chances in the nearby future, anyway.
The only question she now had, was what game she wanted to play, in the first place.
The last time such a situation happened to her, she had gone on the online game store to search for something interesting.
While it resulted in her finding a really interesting game, as well as meeting Chammy, finding a random somewhat popular game to play online wasn't exactly the activity she wanted to partake in, right now.
Thankfully, it wasn't her only option for finding fun games, any more!
Throughout the entire time she had known Knight and Chammy, they've chatted with each other quite a lot. Thanks to that, she now had the entire catalogues of recommendations from the backlogs of their chats!
With an excited nod of her head, she quickly opened the Sci-War, before instantly going to the friends menu, and going through all her chats with Knight and Chammy.
As she looked over all the titles she had been recommended by her friends, she noted that a lot of them were of similar genres to the games they've already played, such as Sci-War or GrimmBattle.
It wasn't particularly surprising, considering that they tended to talk about those two games with each other. It did, however, make her search for something to play that much harder.
She didn't want to play another Military Shooter or RTS!
She wanted to try something new!
As if commanded by her complaints, her eyes managed to spot a game that was neither an RTS nor a Shooter.
"Finally, something different!" She said, excited about the idea of finding a new game to play.
Its name was The Huntsmen Fantasy, and Knight, who recommended it to her, said it was an 'RPG'. To be more specific, he claimed it was something called an 'M-RPG', short for Mistralian Role Playing Game.
In all honesty, she found the naming convention of this genre a tad confusing.
What did the game's kingdom of origin have to do with the name of its genre?
If such a thing was truly important, then all genres should specify the kingdom a game was created at. However, as far as she was aware, none of the other genres bothered with doing such a thing.
At the very least, she had never come in contact with a genre called Atlesian Military Shooter.
It definitely wouldn't have surprised her if such a thing existed, though. The stock up elites of her home kingdom, she was expected to work alongside of in the future, did enjoy feeding their fragile egos whenever they had a chance.
She could almost imagine some rich people across the kingdom making a fuss over not having the name of their kingdom mentioned in a name of a game genre.
Sadly, such a thing could only happen in her imagination.
In reality, people like these most likely wouldn't have been caught playing simpleton things like video games if it cost their lives to keep it a secret. Playing Video games was hardly an activity of the elite, after all.
"I guess, I stopped being an Atlesian elite then." She murmured to herself with a snort.
Well, she hadn't even bought and installed the game, yet, and it already managed to make her amused. If there was any sign that she had to try some game, then it had to be it, hadn't it?
With a smile on her face, she happily closed the Sci-War, before opening the web store of Atlas, and immediately clicking on the game section.
Once there, she didn't bother with any filters, or searching through the games catalogue, instead she simply typed the name of the game into a search bar, and hit enter, knowing it was going to quickly present her the exact game she wanted.
The store finished loading every game that included the title she had written, in a couple second.
As it did so, she instantly noticed there were more than ten games in the series that Knight had recommended to her. To top it all off, not all of these game were numbered, as some of them appeared to be spin-offs of those titles.
She widened her eyes in a confused stare at the amount of games before her.
Which one was she supposed to play?
As far as she remembered, Knight didn't mention any numbers in the title he had given her, and as she glanced at the prices of all those games, she couldn't help but note that it was by far the cheapest out of all of them.
It was even sold in a bundle with the next three numbered titles!
It had to be the game, Knight have been referring to back then.
With a nod of her head, she quickly bought the bundle, before starting the installation process of the first game in the series. It wouldn't make any sense to buy a collection of multiple games and not start from the first one.
Thankfully, the game wasn't very space heavy, and not a few minutes later she had it ready to play on her computer.
"Didn't expect it to be this quick." She said, as she looked at the new icon on her screen, the icon presented an image of a tiny huntsman raising their weapon high into the sky. "I wonder if it's purely because of how old, and light, it is."
Not wanting to waste more time on thinking about it, she quickly clicked on the icon, and started the game.
There was an entire day of gaming before her, and she had just acquired four entire new games to go through.
Surely, she was going to be able to easily go through at least one of those M-RPGs today.
The moment the game opened, it immediately started with a high quality, albeit a bit dated looking, intro, presenting multiple characters while playing a rather catchy music in the background at the same time.
As the intro passed its one-minute mark, she couldn't help but gulp a little at the amount of characters, and story beats, it appeared to be foreshadowing.
Her friend wouldn't have recommended her a game she couldn't possibly finish in her life, right?
(...)
As Jaune made his way back from his school, he couldn't help but feel an unexplainable dread, for some reason.
It felt almost as if he had unknowingly done something that made someone close to him extremely mad. He could practically feel the complaints being aimed at him from here, and he was just walking down a barren street.
His steps faltered abruptly as he noticed his house reveal itself from the distance.
Did his parents finally find out that he had been constantly staying up late to play video games with his friends, recently?
A shiver went through him.
No, it wasn't something he could allow to happen. The moment his mother learn exactly how many hours he spent on playing with Snow and Chammy, he was going to get grounded for decades!
The fact most of those hours were technically way past his curfew wouldn't help his case, either.
A sigh escaped him, as he arrived at his house, and noticed the light coming off from the first floor of the building.
If there was one thing every child of the Arc family knew, it was that there were only two reasons for there to be light on the ground floor. It could be either because it was already dark outside, or one of their family members, usually their mother, wanted to have a meeting with them as soon as they came back home.
He glanced at the sky above him.
It was yet to get dark.
He quickly turned around to see if any of his sisters were behind him, in hopes that the ground floor meeting could be about them instead.
The road behind him was empty.
He grumbled.
It looked like he really was the one his mother was waiting for down there, right now.
His late night gaming session were going to be discovered by his parents at some point, he supposed. It was only a pity that it happened so quickly, and mere days after he finally managed to properly talked with his friends, on top of that.
At the very least, he could hope that he would still be able to sneak in a couple gaming sessions while grounded.
After a short preparation inside his mind, to make sure he would be able to brave the scolding without any issues, he steadily walked up to the door, and opened it in a collected movement.
The person who awaited him wasn't his mother, however.
"You sure took your sweet time to get here, little bro." One of his older sisters, Noir, called out upon his return, before pointing her thumb towards her twin, Blanc, who stood next to her. "Me and Sis were waiting for you to come back home forever."
"It's Sis and I, Noir." Blanc rolled her eyes in exasperation. Despite being literal twins, those two couldn't have more different personalities. "We weren't waiting for that long, either. It's been barely half an hour."
Noir let out a groan.
As Jaune observed his sisters starting to argue right before him, he couldn't help but feel a little bit lost.
Sure, he was beyond relieved that he wasn't currently facing his angry mother scolding him, and getting him grounded for multiple years. At the same time, however, he wasn't really sure what his sisters wanted, or why exactly had they went out of the way to set up a meeting with him.
Were they the ones who noticed his post curfew gaming sessions?
Was this their attempt at blackmailing him?
What would they even want to gain from him with that blackmail, anyway?
It wasn't like he had anything they would want for themselves, the most he could give them was his pocket money, and he was pretty sure his sisters wouldn't step so low as to steal pocket money from their only little brother.
Whatever their reason was, he doubted he was going to learn it by letting his two sisters bicker in front of him for the next few minutes, or so.
"Uhm, you two wanted to meet me?" He asked dumbly.
Both Noir and Blanc turned towards him at once, making him jump a little.
"You're right, we did!" Noir snapped her fingers towards him, while a cheeky grin adored her face. "I know it may sound unbelievable to you, especially coming from girls as perfect as we are, but we need your help."
"What do you need my help for?" He asked, as he took a step back from the finger extended towards him.
The fact that Noir and Blanc, two of his proudest sisters, were asking for help was a reason for him to be concerned, on its own. This concern was only strengthened when he realised that they came to him specifically for help.
Their problem really must be something they didn't want to deal with if they were willing to come to him for help.
"Don't worry, it's nothing much." Blanc assured. "If anything, I think, you will find the task we want your help for rather enjoyable."
He raised one of his eyebrows.
"Why would that be?" He asked.
Blanc sighed.
"We want you to play a video game for us."
He could only blink as he heard the words uttered by his sister.
"What?"
"Look, we know that you spend entire nights on playing games with your friends." Noir cut in to explain before her twin could say anything. "It's not as big of a secret as you think it is. We want you to play a single game for us in exchange for keeping the info about your nightly gaming sessions a secret from mom. It's practically a win-win situation for you, don't you think?"
As he followed the explanation given to him by his sister, he couldn't help but nod his head. It was obvious to see why he would be interested in taking that deal. Although, it did leave him a single unanswered question.
"Why are you doing this, anyway?" He asked.
In response to his question, Noir started to grin cheekily, while Blanc only sighed.
"It's because we are making a game, silly!"
(...)
On a forgotten island separated from the rest of the world, a team of four experienced huntsmen and huntresses was preparing themselves for their final fight to save the entire existence itself from a newly ascended emperor of grimm.
All four of them had gone through multiple emotional journeys to reach this point, and they were now bidding their final goodbyes to the ordinary world they knew all their lives.
They knew that it was going to be their final adventure.
The leader—who was the most experienced huntsman out of all four of them—had already declared their love towards one of the members of their team, and was more than ready to take revenge for their destroyed village.
It was clear that it was the final act of their story.
Weiss Schnee couldn't stop the tears falling from her puffy eyes, as she watched it happen right before her eyes—on a flat screen of her computer, of course.
An entire day had passed since she had started her play-through of The Huntsmen Fantasy, and she simply couldn't believe what sort of rollercoaster of emotions she had just gone on.
It wasn't like anything she had ever tried before.
All the characters she had met, enemies she had defeated, and places she had saved were probably never going to leave her memory.
She had been on a journey like no other.
It was a pity she wasn't able to finish it.
The evening was rapidly approaching, and with it the time she had promised to go online to meet with Knight and Chammy. It honestly wouldn't have surprised her if they were already online, waiting for her.
As she wiped off all the tears from her face, and made sure to look presentable, she quickly made her way to a save point in game to save all of her progress.
Although, she wasn't going to continue her journey today, it didn't mean she wasn't going to return to it later down the line. The game's story had absorbed her, far too much, for that to be the case.
With a sigh, she closed the game.
As fun as the single player journey through the world of The Huntsmen Fantasy was, if she had to choose between it, and playing with her friends, she would choose her friends, without a moment of a doubt.
Watching a story unfold, and relationships deepen, before her eyes simply couldn't equal to actually strengthening the bonds she had with her friends.
She clicked on the Sci-War icon.
Despite the fact that they finally talked to each other out loud, as opposed to using written messages, they still decided to use the voice chats included in their games for their conversations.
It was mostly because they couldn't decide on a single program to use outside of their games, though.
Neither Knight nor Chammy had the fully free access to their computers, so they couldn't just install any random voice call application and have it ready in working order for the very next day. At the same time, voice chats from games like Sci-War or GrimmBattle were readily accessible to them, so the choice was rather obvious.
At some point in the future, they were probably going to settle on a single voice call app, anyway.
They would simply do it later.
The game opened to reveal its main menu to her, but she ignored practically all the options before her.
Instead, she immediately focused on the friends menu to the side, which was currently showing that both her friends were online, and in a voiced conversation.
It was also telling her that they were apparently in game, as well.
A small frown appeared on her face as she checked the time.
She wasn't late, from what she could tell, so her friends must have simply started ahead of the time. It wasn't that strange, she had warned them she could be coming late to their sessions due to her lessons, the previous day.
Of course, it didn't mean that she wasn't a bit miffed about missing a game with her friends, in order to play some other games.
"We really should have a way to contact each other outside our games." She murmured as she moved her cursor over the friends menu. "If we had, such a situation wouldn't have happened."
She clicked on the names of her friends, joining the conversation.
"Hey, Snow!" Chammy's and Knight's greetings came out of her speaker the moment she entered the voice chat.
A small smile appeared on her face.
It was clear that her friends were excited for her.
"Good evening." She greeted back, sounding as calm as possible, and making Chammy snicker as a result. "I see that you are in a middle of game. Have you been playing for long, before I've arrived?
"Nah, we've barely started." Knight answered, as Chammy was too busy chuckling at the formal way she was speaking. "The game has yet to truly get going. You can join us if you want."
"You are playing a custom game?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.
It was impossible to join in the middle of a match for any type of game beside the custom ones, and even among the custom games, only a couple of them bothered to include an option to join late. The fact they were playing a custom game in Sci-War instead of a match in GrimmBattle was also rather surprising.
After all, Chammy did prefer the military action game.
"Yup, we are." Knight answered her question with a tone that suggested he had a wide grin on his face. "It's a special custom game, on top of that."
A message inviting her to a game popped on the bottom of her screen.
"How is it special?" She asked absent-mindedly, as she clicked on the invite.
"It is being made by Knight's sisters." Chammy chipped in, after containing her laughter. "We are practically beta testing it!"
As the screen before her turned dark to load the map, and she processed all the information she had just heard from her friends, she couldn't help but blink a couple of times in silence as she went over everything in her head.
"Are you serious?" She asked.
"She is." Knight said, before explaining. "Two of my older sisters had to make something innovative for their school assignment, so they've decided to try their hands at making a mod for the Sci-War."
"Interesting." She hummed.
It really was, despite having the greatest teachers, money could buy, giving her lesson, she most likely wouldn't have been able to make a custom game mode by herself. The fact Knight's sisters were able to do it regardless of still going to school was beyond impressive, in her eyes.
Granted, the main reason she couldn't do something like that was because she didn't have a teacher for things like programming, or game design, but the point still stood.
"I assume they are trying to make something outside the typical genres that could be found among the other custom games." She remarked as she noticed the game finish loading.
"Yeah, they are." Knight said, a little bashfully. "They don't have a name for the custom game itself yet, but they do know how they are going to call this new genre."
She hummed again, Knight's sisters must have really thought ahead a lot if they were already thinking of names for their creation. They must have a lot of it already completed, or at least planned out.
"Really? What's its name?" Chammy asked, also curious about the new game genre.
"Multiplayer online battle arena."
And cut!
We will be playing some MOBA's next week!
See ya then!