"So, what's up with Roman?" Egrer asked, having found a secluded spot on the roof of one of Beacon's buildings.
"Well..." Melanie dragged out, twirling a red feather in her hand. "You know Torchwick pretty well, right?"
"Oh no, I knew this day would come eventually! Tell Junior that even though I had a falling out with my family, I have no intention of sharing any information. Period!"
He was already about to end the call, but the Malachite sisters frantically waved their hands and started shouting over each other at him.
"Alright, alright," Egrer surrendered, calming the twins down. "But give me at least one reason why I should rat out the people I practically owe my life to?"
"You don't need to rat anyone out!" Melanie assured him. "Hold your horses, just let us finish. Long story short—Torchwick is stirring up some shady shit, and Hei hates being kept in the dark, especially when something like this is going down in his city."
"Are you talking about the recent spike in Dust shop robberies?"
Miltia shook her head negatively.
"If only it were just that, Eg. There are suspicions that Torchwick is in cahoots with~" Her sister nudged her in the ribs.
"Hei is gonna be pissed if he finds out we're blabbing about this to you," Melanie whispered. "Anyway, can you guess off the top of your head what he's plotting? Things are really shady; it's not just robberies."
Egrer really didn't like that they were hiding some very important information about his adoptive parents from him.
"Honestly, I'm not even sure if those are his robberies. Trust me on this, Roman doesn't act that stupidly. Walking into a shop in broad daylight, robbing it without even worrying about witnesses, and then bailing in a Bullhead across the whole city? I mean, maybe if they were diversions to cover up raids on major Dust warehouses or something... but shops? Fucking little shops? That's not his MO; someone else is probably planning these robberies. Or Roman suddenly got brain damage, which is hard to believe."
"Interesting thought, but wrong," Miltia said. "Torchwick has been spotted among the robbers more than once."
"Then I have no clue," Egrer replied almost honestly, "Roman usually doesn't deal with such small change. But judging by how many shops he's already hit, he doesn't need money; he needs the Dust itself."
"Thanks, Captain Obvious. What would we ever do without you?" Melanie replied with a ton of sarcasm.
"The public is forever in your debt and that of your deductive reasoning," her sister echoed.
"What do you even want from me? Everything I know about these robberies, I learned from the news. Your boss is an information broker, and if he doesn't know anything, then I definitely don't. Although..." Egrer dragged out slyly, "you two happen to know quite a lot about these shady dealings. If you share the details with me, I might be able to guess what Roman's up to. And for starters—spill it, who is he in cahoots with?"
Melanie sighed heavily and looked at her sister. She responded in kind and slightly raised an eyebrow. They communicated via their twin telepathy method for a long minute.
"Torchwick is in cahoots with the White Fang."
"Hilarious," Egrer scoffed. "And I'm dating Weiss Schnee, figure that."
"Eg," Miltia began earnestly, "we're telling the truth. It might be unpleasant to realize, but Torchwick really is working with the White Fang."
"You'd better believe us," Melanie chimed in. "Our people have frequently seen your daddy among those terrorists."
"What kind of bullshit are you feeding me!?" Egrer suddenly yelled. "Roman suddenly starting to work with those maniacs?!"
He wouldn't believe it for a second. Torchwick somehow involved in joint business with the White Fang? He had a golden rule that ensured his "criminal cleanliness," as he liked to put it: no dealings with drug lords, organ traffickers, or terrorists. Those were, in his opinion, the three dirtiest sides of the criminal world, from which he kept his snow-white suit as far away as possible.
And the White Fang weren't just terrorists—they hid behind good intentions and were the biggest hypocrites and liars in the world.
When Egrer was still living in the orphanage and first heard that the White Fang had abandoned peaceful protests and moved on to decisive measures, he was overjoyed. He thought, here they are! The ones who will change everything! Soon everything will be fine!
And at first, everything was great. The White Fang robbed the rich, smashed up shops that refused to serve Faunus, meted out justice to corrupt officials and lying reporters, and constantly raided the wretched SDC mines, rescuing workers from what was practically slavery. It bore fruit.
But as time went on, they were met with resistance. The rich built themselves impregnable fortresses, compensated for the damages by enslaving the Faunus even more, and unleashed an army of police onto the streets.
And then some genius got the idea: "Robbing the exploiters has become kinda difficult, and we need to get money for the struggle from somewhere. Therefore—it's time to move on to the common folk. All for the greater good!"
When Egrer understood this, he realized that no one would take care of him but himself. Relying on others was dangerous; it would bring nothing but disappointment.
And now they were telling him that Roman was somehow connected with those freaks. And not just connected, but working together! Torchwick wasn't a saint, but even he wouldn't stoop that low. Besides, the White Fang themselves, having turned from a bastion of racial solidarity into a breeding ground for misanthropes, were unlikely to agree to this alliance. Especially considering that many take Torchwick for a racist due to his shitty sense of humor...
"You realize you're speaking absolute bullshit, right?"
"This is what Hei meant when he talked about dog-like loyalty..." Melanie grumbled.
"Wolf-like, actually," Egrer corrected, insulted. "Wolf-like loyalty to one's pack, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that."
"No one is saying it's bad; it just stops you from seeing the whole picture," Miltia replied pacifyingly.
"I see everything perfectly! Roman wrapped the whole fucking Remnant around his finger as usual, and you guys are happy to fall for it. Has Hei gone senile or something to take this seriously?"
"If you don't believe us, will you at least believe yourself?"
"What do you mean?"
"As ancient wisdom says," Melanie began mocking his raspy voice, "it's better to see once than to hear a hundred times."
"A large shipment of Dust is arriving at the port in a week," her sister continued for her. "I think Torchwick won't pass up such an opportunity."
Egrer nodded with a sigh. He didn't believe it was true, but he simply couldn't not check it out.
"Thanks, at least, for not trying to drag information out of me secretly."
The Malachite sisters winced slightly and exchanged glances, as if they were ashamed of something.
"Don't go thinking we suddenly grew so fond of you that we wouldn't lie to you," Miltia said quietly. "Hei is still more important to us."
It sounded a bit harsh, but at least it was honest. She had always been much more open than her sister. Melanie just rolled her eyes at this confession.
"It's just that this is the kind of issue where you can only barge straight ahead. We'll tell Hei that you need to think. See ya, Eg. I hope we'll chat again in a less... business-like setting."
The Scroll went dark, and Egrer trudged back to the arena, thoughtfully scratching his cheek.
Torchwick and the White Fang, huh...
He didn't doubt for a second that this was all some trick of Roman's. But why would he soil his reputation as an upstanding thief by associating with terrorists, even an imaginary one? What was his goal? Why did he need so much Dust?
With every passing minute, the questions multiplied, but there were no answers. Even though Egrer had spent several eventful years under Roman's care, he still hadn't figured out what part of his body this criminal mastermind used to cook up his crazy plans. Any scheme of Torchwick's was maximally showy, inadequate, and effective, so trying to understand his intentions was just as useless as trying to understand Magenta's.
Egrer shuddered at the comparison.
In any case, all he could do now was wait.
***
It was a completely ordinary day at Beacon. There were absolutely no signs of anything "special" going down.
Having somehow survived the first two classes, all of Beacon gathered in the cafeteria for lunch. Team Majesty, as usual, sat next to Juniper, who in turn sat next to RWBY. As always, Yort and Illmond were against this idea, but Magenta, as always, used her right to command. Egrer, by the way, was also against it, because when they all gather together, he gets the urge to sneeze and his nose runs.
He had only recently started to suspect that something was wrong here...
But something was fundamentally wrong. A thing so mundane that no one paid attention to it anymore. So typical that no one doubted today would be like yesterday, the day before yesterday, and the day before that. If someone were asked right now what was wrong, that someone wouldn't even understand the question.
The thing was that Egrer had no appetite today. At all. All he did was stare at his two trays of food, but he didn't dare touch them.
The spoon lay lonely next to the bowl of borscht, the mashed potatoes had already cooled and begun to harden, the butter in the semolina porridge melted and spread in a thin film over its surface, the cocoa in the four mugs settled, the loaf of bread stopped exuding the smell of fresh baking...
Jaune was still being celebrated for his incredible victory over Cardin, and no one saw this terrible deviation from their everyday routine. Only one person, who had known Egrer long enough to understand the gravity of the situation, noticed his friend's anomalous behavior.
"Are you alright?" Illmond asked quietly. "You didn't sleep all night."
"Huh? Yeah, just got lost in thought."
"I see..." He never was good at talking to people. That's why he would forever remain a lonely pervert shut-in. "And... what are you thinking about? If it's not a secret, of course."
"About a lot of things."
"Got it..." Illmond looked around awkwardly, trying to pretend he hadn't just been talking to anyone. "And how is it?"
"It isn't," Egrer replied irritably. He hadn't lied once when he said he was lost in thought. "Leave me alone, will you? You're distracting me."
"Alright."
When the irritant was gone, Egrer was able to return to his heavy thoughts.
Today he really had barely slept, replaying that conversation with the Malachite sisters every minute. What they told him was utter bullshit, but for some reason, he just couldn't snap out of it and stop thinking about it.
Whatever Egrer did, his thoughts inevitably flowed to the mind-boggling topic: "is Torchwick really working with the White Fang?". And although he was almost completely sure that the answer was no, the insidious thought of "what if" wouldn't leave him alone.
Egrer thought about it from completely different angles.
He imagined himself as an independent and impartial critic who suddenly heard this news right on the street or on a bus. The critic concluded that this was just nonsense and that people really had nothing left to discuss.
Egrer donned the persona of a journalist who was approached with this news and offered to turn it into a sensation. The journalist concluded that such an idiotic sensation would ruin his entire career.
Next was a big mafia boss whose lackey had just reported that Torchwick was working with the White Fang. The boss concluded that they were simply trying to slander or frame an honest thief.
Finally, he imagined himself as a police officer whose superiors ordered him to set up an ambush in the docks for Torchwick and the White Fang members. The police officer concluded that he first needed to tell this joke to his colleagues.
No matter how you looked at this information, it sounded like total bullshit. Egrer really wanted to just throw it out of his head, but he couldn't. And now he would suffer for another six days, eight hours, and thirteen minutes until Torchwick showed up at the port for a shipment of Dust.
Egrer decided that he absolutely had to see this with his own eyes. Then everything would fall into place.
All that was left was to wait.
But almost a hundred and sixty hours without answers... he wouldn't survive such torture. The very next day, having somehow endured a sleepless night, he wanted to text his mom something like "Are you working with the White Fang?", but he stopped. Of course, Egrer desperately wanted answers, but he couldn't just ask her outright like that. He had left their little family and had no right to ask about such things.
Egrer began to seek solitude and often skipped classes. He would run off to Vale and sit in the port for hours, either in the vain hope of suddenly running into his dad, or wanting to find traces of preparation for the upcoming robbery.
But each time he returned to Beacon looking gloomier. The time spent alone was clearly not doing him any good, and his team couldn't help but notice. They finally cornered him one evening, right after he got back from a walk around the docks.
"I'm telling you again, I'm just taking a walk."
"You haven't eaten anything for three days," Illmond said. "And every evening you run away from us somewhere."
"And you toss and turn at night, it's impossible to sleep," Yort added. He was concerned about this too, even though he didn't show it.
"I just need to rest a bit, okay? Away from... everything."
"I get it," Magenta nodded. "In that case, tomorrow we'll go for a walk in Vale all together!"
"Madge, what part of 'I need to rest from everything' is unclear to you? The term 'everything' includes you guys too."
"You don't need to rest, you need to clear your head," she countered, pointing a finger importantly. "And it's easier to do that in good company. Besides, it's a holiday! We should take a stroll through the city."
Egrer tried to argue for a long time but eventually just gave up. Besides, some part of his brain understood that he really did need a distraction. Otherwise, at this rate, he wouldn't survive the week—he'd lose his mind before then.
***
Flags of all four kingdoms were hung all over the city: the crossed axes of Vale, the three pointing-down swords of Vacuo, the shield with the torch of Atlas, and the lamp of Mistral.
By Magenta's decree, the whole pack headed into the city to soak up the mood of the upcoming holiday and cast aside all heavy thoughts. The only thing that ruined it was one fact—she had absolutely no plan, and they were just walking the streets. The pack was already getting bored, but Magenta herself was ecstatic and having a blast.
She ran up to every foreigner with interest, walked circles around them, sniffed them, and, ignoring their panicked looks, offered her hand. During all this time, only two fellow weirdos dared to shake it. Ordinary citizens practically ran away from the strange girl with multicolored hair and a flamethrower on her back. She even put on her gas mask! According to her—to show her team's determination to take first place in the Vytal Tournament. As if it wasn't already clear that Pyrrha's team was going to win...
"Let's do something at least," Illmond groaned. Their leader had taken away his Scroll, which was also a sound idea, and now he was suffering from unbearable boredom. The outside world didn't interest him at all. "There's an ice cream vendor over there, let's go."
"Ill is asking us to go somewhere?" Egrer asked, astonished. "Did hell freeze over? Is the moon falling on us?"
"And do you want to keep wandering the streets and harassing passersby?" he nodded toward Magenta, who had just scared two kids. They hid behind their mother, but she herself would have gladly used someone as a human shield. "If this keeps up, they'll call the cops on us soon."
"We need to stop her," Yort agreed.
"You agreed with Ill?! Gods, the moon really is falling on us!"
"Eg, fuck, your attempts to act normal are gonna make me hurl. Stop this circus, you're not meant to perform in it."
"Ha-ha," Egrer clapped his hands sarcastically and grumbled in annoyance. "Funny joke about wolves. Ha-ha. I'm dying of laughter."
"Now that's the Eg I know." Yort slapped him on the back. "If you feel angry—cuss everyone out, why the fuck hold back and pretend?"
"I'm trying for Madge's sake. Let her think her idea worked."
Egrer had agreed to this walk only so they would finally get off his back. Even here, almost every second he was mentally formulating an exact plan of how he would act in one unforeseen situation or another at the port. When the zero hour arrives, he will be ready.
And of course, it pissed him off to no end that his own pack didn't understand the simple phrase "fuck off" and was distracting him from this important matter.
Right now he felt even worse than when he was rethinking his struggle with Magenta. Back then, he managed to hold back and not hit her, but now his patience was like brittle ice—it would crack from a simple breeze.
"Hey, Madge! Want some ice cream?" Egrer called out.
"Yes!" It was simple, too simple even.
She stopped bothering the kids with her offer to play with her flamethrower and skipped over to them with an airy gait. Even through the gas mask, her ear-to-ear smile was distinctly palpable. Obediently approaching Egrer, she was immediately surrounded on all sides and put into a combat formation. But Magenta remained blind to such an inconvenient occurrence. She was overflowing with happiness, and nothing besides this happiness interested her, nor could it.
"What are you even so happy about?" Egrer asked, leading her away from the people. "I mean, you're upbeat by default, but right now it's getting annoying."
"Well, it's a holiday! We gotta have fun," she said in such a patronizing tone, as if it was a self-evident fact that was shameful not to know.
"The holiday is still almost a month away, right now is just the preparation."
"Really?!" Magenta stared at him in shock. "And I thought... Last Vytal I celebrated when they hung up these ribbons with pictures. Does that mean I was celebrating wrong?"
"Those ribbons are called flags," Illmond informed her. "And yeah, you were celebrating on the wrong day."
This came as a heavy blow to Magenta, as if her entire past life had been instantly devalued. She froze in the middle of the road, wide eyes visible through the eyepieces of her gas mask. But Magenta wouldn't be Magenta if the harsh revelations of life could break her. Just a couple of seconds later, she was back to normal and skipped onward.
The ice cream vendor's van stood lonely by the curb; no one wanted to buy ice cream in the autumn. Inside sat a bored, working-class guy with bull horns.
Out of boredom, he was twirling his mustache around his finger and wincing in pain when he pulled it too hard. However, noticing their approach, the guy yelped and quickly hid in his van, reappearing in the window a second later. He handed them four wafer cookies.
"Free for Huntsmen."
"Wow, mister, talk about service," Egrer nodded approvingly. "You'll go far with a business plan like that."
"He'll go bankrupt," Yort disagreed, passing his wafer to a beaming Magenta. "You can't supply enough for every Huntsman."
"Well, not everyone comes to me," the ice cream vendor started making excuses, giving them a sly wink. "And those who do, usually end up buying something else."
"Crafty guy, now I don't want to buy anything out of principle," Egrer laughed falsely, but suddenly, out of nowhere, Magenta grabbed him by the ear and pulled him down.
"Yes, you do," she said, taking off her gas mask. "You promised ice cream."
"Let go, you idiot, I was joking! We'll get ice cream, we'll get it!"
"I'll take three vanilla," Illmond whispered quietly, putting on his hood and hiding behind Yort's broad back. The poor shut-in couldn't muster the courage to say it himself.
"Aren't you gonna get a sugar crash?" the Vacuan revolutionary on the run grumbled.
"The brain needs a lot of sugar to work efficiently."
"Whatever. Three vanilla and this one, shaped like a flower." He poked a finger at the stand showing off the van's entire assortment.
"I'll have a chocolate cone," Egrer said, pulling out his wallet. "Madge, what do you want?"
"I want this red one."
"You like watermelon?" the ice cream vendor asked amiably, hiding in his van again.
"No, this ice cream just looks like a bloody steak." Something dropped and shattered inside. Egrer perfectly understood the cognitive dissonance the poor guy must have felt. It's not every day you hear something like that from a cute girl, even if she has a flamethrower on her back and a gas mask dangling around her neck.
"Here you go." The vendor rubbed his forehead, but he managed to maintain a professional smile. A cup was dangling from his head, its handle hooked onto his horn, but the ice cream vendor didn't notice it. Or pretended that was the intended look.
"Thanks." Egrer handed over the money, but the man suddenly froze.
A police car sped by with its sirens blaring. He watched it tensely and only relaxed when it turned the corner.
"Phew, not at our place after all," the ice cream vendor sighed, handing over the change. "We've already had three robberies on this street. I keep worrying they'll clean me out too."
"Mister, they're robbing Dust shops, not ice cream vendors. Nobody gives a damn about your cash register."
"Oh, you kid. You don't know how things work around here at all."
"I don't know?" Egrer smirked. "Enlighten me then."
"While the police are dealing with the Dust thefts, all sorts of punks are using the commotion to rob honest people. My brother was robbed last week, a colleague got beaten up, and there are thugs with knives walking around here in the evenings, attacking anyone they meet."
"That's actually true," Egrer was forced to agree. He had already forgotten how it all worked in the criminal world, which he undoubtedly considered a good sign—the less of a criminal in him, the more of a musician. "And all this right before the holiday... Torchwick has absolutely no sense of tact."
"He's a thief, what do you expect," the man nodded sagely, and the cup on his horn did three rotations. "No matter how he dresses up, you can't hide a rotten soul behind clothes. The essence is always in the deeds, and he's done nothing but villainy!"
Egrer decided to stay silent, although he was strongly against such a characterization of his adoptive father. He just led the pack to a bench, away from that place.
"He's not a villain at all..." Egrer grumbled under his breath, taking a bite of his waffle cone. If Roman was that bad, he wouldn't have helped him, wouldn't have clothed and fed him, wouldn't have taken him along. "He's just nasty, but not a villain..."
From the very beginning, his acquaintance with his adoptive parents had been strange. Torchwick and Neo weren't locals, which was obvious from their neat appearance and squinting eyes that found the rare, barely working streetlights insufficient. They definitely needed a guide through the dark tunnels of the Mistralian favela, and no one fit that role better than a kid who snooped everywhere, saw everything, and heard everything. And you hardly had to pay someone like that; a couple of hot meals and some candy would be enough.
That's exactly what Egrer told the bewildered Roman, who threw him a single pathetic Lien, praised his creative approach to begging, and walked on.
But Egrer didn't fall behind and kept pestering the future world-famous criminal genius, intending to deceive and rob him. But Torchwick suddenly threw up his hands and admitted that he had no money for meals or candy, and that he had just given him his last Lien. Egrer didn't believe him and jokingly suggested he give him his hat in exchange for his services, and the man unexpectedly went ahead and agreed.
Whether out of pity or because of Neo's friendly attitude towards him, Egrer changed his mind about scamming them and decided to just help them. Besides, what could he take from them, beggars just like him? Thus began their cooperation.
When the petty thief had done everything required of him: showed them the secret spots, the right people, told them who was best not to anger, and who was susceptible to flattery, he was just going to leave. There was clearly nothing to catch here. But Roman suddenly promised that he would definitely buy his hat back for a lot of money if he waited a few days and kept it clean.
Parting with such a cool accessory was painful; he hadn't expected those two weirdos to come up with the money so quickly. Especially since Egrer had already gotten used to playing with his new item: respectfully taking it off after his musical performances in front of the other orphanage kids, tossing it in the air and catching it, spinning it on his index finger...
"You look sad. What are you thinking about?" Magenta suddenly asked.
"Just... about the past," Egrer replied, looking lost. "Everything has changed so much. I'm studying at Beacon, I want for nothing, I'm building grandiose and perfectly feasible plans for the future, but I'm always longing for the old days. And yet, if you think about it, I have nothing to be sad about."
"Maybe things were simpler before?"
"Hm... you're actually right," he nodded at her apt remark. "Back then I just drifted with the flow. In a way, it really is easier to live like that. No thoughts about a career or music, just trying to make ends meet."
"Just like livestock," Yort said, biting off half of his ice cream. "I don't believe you could live like that."
"To be honest, I barely remember how I lived before my dad unlocked my Aura. The memories are so faded. Only a couple of moments are clearly imprinted in my head."
Torchwick's question, "Do you want to die in this place like a rat, or will you try to change at least something?" and his smile when Egrer answered, "And what about you?"
Then Roman laughed, and afterwards said in all seriousness that if Egrer became useless, he would be dumped somewhere on the street immediately. It didn't dawn on him right away that this was an invitation.
And only a few years later did he learn that this was a standard scheme for finding loyal followers. Pull a kid from the bottom, provide everything necessary, raise them strictly exactly the way you need. Trust and loyalty—that's the main currency of the criminal world. And who would be more loyal than a boy indebted to you for life, who grew up with the idea that he has to repay for all this? And how else to repay for a life of being well-fed, other than with absolute loyalty?
Perhaps it was this realization that became the starting point of the path that led Egrer to run away. Although, this didn't diminish his debt to Roman in the slightest.
"I remember my childhood poorly too," Magenta happily declared, swinging her legs. "Probably because it was terribly boring."
"You had a boring childhood?" Yort chuckled incredulously.
"I had a rare disease from birth, and I laid in the hospital until I was sixteen," she explained, and everyone immediately made an awkward face. Even Magenta herself was no longer bubbling with happiness like before. "By the way, I remember everything about the disease very well: the treatment, the symptoms, and even why they paint the wards green. Psychologists think it's calming. I guess I just read too many medical books; back then I had nothing else to do."
"And what was the disease?" Egrer asked after a second of silence. He didn't want her to think everyone had suddenly lost the festive mood because of her. Magenta was trying so hard, after all.
"Oh, you probably haven't heard of it. Nothing dangerous."
"You don't lay in a hospital your whole life for non-dangerous diseases," Illmond noted, taking this information much more to heart.
"Nothing dangerous," she repeated, "it just gets in the way of living. I'm cured, if that worries you. At sixteen, my Aura unlocked, and it did everything instead of medicine. Half a year later I was discharged."
"An Aura doesn't unlock on its own for trifles," Yort said, crossing his arms, "only if there's mortal danger."
Magenta just shrugged and didn't offer any explanations. And he decided not to press the issue.
"To spend a whole sixteen years within four walls..." muttered Illmond, who knew better than anyone what that was like. Except his isolation had been voluntary and not nearly as long.
"Well, my relatives came to see me every day, brought flowers and candy, so I wasn't lonely. True, over time there were fewer and fewer of them, and at some point, only my parents and younger brother kept visiting me. But the doctors were always with me!" Magenta concluded positively.
"Did they at least let you go outside?"
"Of course. Even more—they built a private hospital specifically for me with a garden, a fountain, and a play area."
The pack exchanged bewildered glances. Magenta said this in such a matter-of-fact tone, as if every needy person was provided with something similar if necessary. It wasn't clear if this was another fabrication or simply an exaggeration.
"That's very expensive. What, are your parents billionaires?" Egrer chuckled.
"Yes," she replied without batting an eye. "Even before I was born, my mom won a million in the lottery, and my dad founded an electronics company with it. Now 'Toti Electronics' takes the leading spot in the world for producing computers, Scrolls, and microchips for military hardware."
The pack exchanged glances again and immediately reached for their Scrolls to verify this information. To their horror, such a company actually existed, and its wealth was second only to the SDC.
And the photo of its owners, the Toti couple, left no doubts—they were definitely Magenta's parents. The family resemblance was obvious, not to mention that the woman in the photo had multicolored hair. The butterfly Faunus heritage passed down to their daughter, no less.
But there was something else. Something that plunged them into such shock that the ice cream had time to melt and drip onto the asphalt.
Magenta is the heiress of "Toti Electronics."
Someday in her hands would be the production facilities that supply electronics to almost the entire known world. Someday she would enter the top three richest entrepreneurs in the world. Someday the responsibility for thousands of jobs would pass to her. And there was almost no doubt—she would ruin everything.
The web was full of rumors about the mysterious heiress to the Toti conglomerate, about whom there was no accurate data and whom no one had ever seen. Only a blurry photo of a ten-year-old girl with multicolored hair looking out a window let people know that Magenta wasn't a myth and actually existed.
"Holy shit, you're a lucky bastard," the shocked Yort said, slapping Egrer on the back. "Turns out, you're friends with the heiresses of two of the richest families in the world."
"Is that what you care about right now?!" yelled Egrer, who was surprised several orders of magnitude more. "Madge... she's a future billionaire!"
"Why are you yelling like that? You're acting like this is the first time you've seen something like this."
"Weiss is Weiss, and Madge is Madge! Can you seriously not see the difference? This can't be! I mean, remember how we first met Madge—she was walking alone at night in the rain..."
"I like walking in the rain." Her remark went unnoticed.
"...through the streets of Vale, and if we hadn't accidentally bumped into her, she would have died of starvation. Remember! Remember how she looked at me and my cheap instant ramen. What was a billionaire's daughter doing in a place like that, at that time, and in that condition?"
"I just want to play with my brother." Magenta's explanation added no clarity whatsoever and only elicited a pained groan from Egrer. It was as if she had just blurted out the first words that popped into her head.
"Could you elaborate? And preferably from the very beginning."
"I had just been discharged from the hospital, and my brother and I were constantly playing things. Tic-tac-toe, dominoes, checkers, hide-and-seek, poker, roulette a couple of times, until our mom caught us. She took our revolver away and promised to give it back when one of us became a Huntsman. Well, since my Aura was already unlocked, I decided to go to Beacon~"
"Hold up, hold up, way too fast!" Egrer covered Magenta's mouth and tried to understand what was going on. It didn't go very well; with every second, questions multiplied faster and faster, threatening to crush his fragile sanity under their own weight. He already had little space left in his head after pondering the connection between Roman and the White Fang, and now this. "For starters: you were playing that roulette with a revolver? And you were the only one with Aura?"
"Uh-huh," she mumbled.
"I'm stunned by your bravery," Yort nodded respectfully, raising his melted ice cream like a glass during a toast. "Forget what I said earlier. You're a worthy leader, unlike some, and I'm proud to follow you."
"Think about what you're saying, you blockhead." Illmond kicked his leg. "What if she had gotten hurt? Her brother could have died altogether!"
"That's exactly why she's worthy to lead us."
Egrer ignored their conversation and tried to formulate his next question.
"And your brother... is he also..?" An ambiguous wave toward her hair. "A butterfly?"
"Uh-huh."
"Alright, that explains everything. And you really decided to enroll at Beacon so your mom would give you back the gun?" Magenta carefully took his hand and moved it away from her face. Egrer didn't resist.
"Revolver," she corrected, before putting his hand back in place.
"So is that a yes or a no!?"
"Uh-huh."
"And your parents? Do they even know where you are?!" Magenta removed his hand again.
"Of course, I didn't run away from home. I told my mom right away that I was going to study at Beacon, and she even made me sandwiches for the road."
"Then why were you walking at night in the rain, starving, and didn't even stop anywhere for the night? Lost your money and food?"
"Uh-huh."
"But why did you live with us in a pathetic one-room apartment and eat cheap instant ramen? Don't tell me you forgot you're the heiress to a multi-billion Lien company."
"Eg, how could anyone forget something that important?"
"You could have. It's totally your style."
Magenta shrugged, not even knowing the answer herself. Maybe she just wanted to get a taste of poor life, quite literally, and that's why she hadn't called her family. Guessing here was pointless; it's Magenta, after all.
But what definitely didn't need guessing was that this revelation wouldn't change anything. Magenta would still remain an irresponsible weirdo to them, a loyal friend, and their leader. Even despite the fact that she's a future billionaire...
"Why didn't you say anything about this earlier?" asked Illmond, who always zealously gathered the slightest bits of knowledge about his "waifu," as he called it. Except, apparently, he hadn't thought to type her name into the extranet.
"There was no reason to. Is it that important?"
"Not one bit," Yort shrugged. "But you could have told the story about roulette, goddammit."[1]
"Okay, I'm almost certain that's some kind of Vacuo swear word," Magenta said, hesitantly reaching for the ear of their tame giant. He briskly scooted away.
Meanwhile, Egrer was trying to digest this revelation. Actually, this story explained nothing. Except that it was now clear that she was slightly crazy precisely because of long loneliness, and that she got so attached to them also because of it. They were her first friends.
"How little we know about you," he shook his head.
"You guys are no better yourselves," Magenta replied. "You constantly keep all your problems bottled up inside. You need to trust the rest of us! We're a team, helping each other is our direct duty."
"Exactly!" Egrer agreed. "I could have saved so many nerves if you guys told me about your worries more often. You know I'm always ready to help you~"
"Eg, I meant you too."
"Huh? I don't trust you? That's not true at all!"
"Then why are you always running off somewhere and constantly snapping at people?"
Egrer stayed silent; he didn't want to tell them about his father's possible connection with the White Fang. Moreover, Magenta didn't even know who his father was. Such a revelation could affect her badly; she already had a hard time accepting that he and Yort were former criminals.
"See? We are still very far from being a real team. We can't trust each other completely; there are still some secrets standing between us. You never talk about your problems so as not to bother others, Ill just doesn't want to be bothered, and Yort trusts no one but himself. I'm the only one who has no secrets from you. We need to trust each other more."
True words, but no one took them seriously. No one ever took Magenta herself seriously. Even when she got the leader's badge and became slightly more responsible, to them she was still the same unreasonable child who constantly did all sorts of crazy things.
Could she actually say something worthwhile?
"We already trust each other with too much as it is," Yort grumbled.
"Madge, some problems are too personal," Illmond chimed in. "And they're called 'personal' because you have to solve them yourself. Don't take a page from Eg's book and meddle where you're not asked."
"With you guys, every problem is personal." Magenta pouted and crossed her arms. Egrer was offended too.
"When did I ever meddle where I wasn't asked?"
"Are you kidding? No, did you really just say that?" Yort asked rhetorically. "You constantly pestered me with your 'friendship', had those heart-to-hearts of yours, and were always snooping around for something."
Egrer was about to say that it was different, but Illmond started speaking first.
"Agreed. Eg, it's like you think we can't do anything ourselves. Even though we're the ones who understand our own problems best."
"If every issue could be solved alone, then there would be no need for friendship or any kind of society at all. Why would people unite if everyone could solve anything on their own? The way out is always seen better from the outside."
"It's easier to judge from the outside," Yort disagreed. "Because of your peskiness, I couldn't stand your leadership. A dark era in the history of our group."
"Well, maybe I'm a little pushy, but my intentions are pure! And don't exaggerate, I'm just very friendly."
"I wouldn't call you friendly; I'd call you obsessed with friendship. Friendship this, friendship that, how important it is to protect friends, and all that stuff. It's annoying."
"Yeah," Illmond chimed in again. Their current unanimity was already getting scary. "Maybe you just didn't have enough friends before, and that's why you cling to us so much?"
Egrer didn't consider his friendliness a bad thing. That was his main quality, lying at the core of his personality. An unlocked Aura had multiplied it many times over, and this was the result.
"I'm an introvert, understand?" Illmond spoke up again. "I don't need that many friends; the three of you are enough for me. You're the one who'll wither away without a crowd of acquaintances, but I can live alone, by myself."
"What are you saying? No one can live their whole life alone~"
"And anyway—we don't need to trust each other more, but believe in each other. You don't believe in us, Eg. You think that without you we'll definitely screw up or do everything wrong. Or do you think we're just waiting for our knight to come and save us? We can do things without your help."
"You can't, because you're fine with the way things are! Yort would gladly leave us altogether, and you constantly keep everything bottled up inside, and I'm afraid it might turn into something terrible. I'm just trying to save our team!"
"Terrible? You're afraid I'll try to jump off a bridge again?" Egrer cautiously nodded, and Illmond laughed. All his sarcasm suddenly vanished somewhere. "I haven't had thoughts like that for a long time, Eg. Ever since I became friends with you."
"I kind of doubt my company is that miraculous."
"It's not your company, it's time. You're always doing something and getting into something, all sorts of interesting things happen around you. There's no time to think about heavy stuff. Besides, I've seen a lot of other people who have worse problems than mine. And yet they are in no hurry to leave this life."
"Holy fu-u-uck," Yort dragged out. "I mean, I knew you were slightly whacked, but that much? Jumped off a bridge, you say?"
"Wait!" Magenta suddenly shouted, not even paying attention to the swearing. "Did you really try to do... that?" she drew her thumb across her neck and stuck out her tongue.
"Yeah, I tried. But I solved that problem, and I solved it myself." Illmond put special emphasis on the last word and turned to Egrer again. "Believe in us."
"I would, if you guys actually did something. But as I said, you're all fine with the way things are. Take Pyrrha for example~"
"I can deal with Pyrrha on my own too. That's just a problem between her and me. More like just mine, actually."
"Then take at least one step in that direction. Because all this time you've just been hiding from her. Crawl out of your shell already! Or do you think I have nothing better to do than wipe your asses?"
"Maybe you do," Yort spoke up, "but 'wiping our asses' is exactly your favorite pastime. And we don't ask for it, in case you aren't aware."
"Well of course you don't ask! You feel fine in shit-stained pants, and I find it unpleasant to be around people like that, by the way."
"You think you came up with a pretty-ass analogy and now you're right? I've got one for you too—go fuck yourself."
Egrer jumped up and grabbed Yort by the collar. He looked at him with a silent challenge, ready to consider someone else's point of view only after being beaten up. And a fight definitely would have broken out if not for Magenta's quiet request:
"Please, stop fighting. We were supposed to get closer, not all this... Let's go back to Beacon."
No one wanted to leave on that note. Egrer slowly sat back down, and after a few seconds of oppressive silence, decided to apologize.
"I'm sorry. I probably really am too pushy, since both of you say so. And sorry for snapping, I'm just on edge." No one answered him, but through some feeling, he understood that they weren't offended and accepted the apology. "I guess I should stop looking after you guys so much..."
"And we appreciate that," Illmond answered for both of them. "Believe in us."
The walk didn't go at all the way Magenta had wanted. Egrer still continued to run off alone to the port, Illmond watched Pyrrha's victories in the arena out of the corner of his eye, and Yort disappeared into his club. At first glance, nothing between them had changed, but in reality, they had grown a tiny bit closer. So tiny that only she noticed it.
But it was better than nothing.
[1] There’s no way I can translate this euphemism or expression. It’s way too colloquial—the kind only old-timers use. Feel free to stick in your own instead of ‘goddammit’. Seriously. I just can’t translate this properly.